Various video game stuff not deserving its own thread

[rusty_shackleford]

I actually like how early software renderers would 'curve' near the edges
(not my screenshot)

Reminds me that I did a rather technical post some years back about correcting high fov. I'll see if I can dig it up, but here's a comparison

[rusty_shackleford]

I actually like how early software renderers would 'curve' near the edges
(not my screenshot)

Reminds me that I did a rather technical post some years back about correcting high fov. I'll see if I can dig it up, but here's a comparison

It requires additional correction that's not usually applied, but at high FOVs it causes far less distortion than perspective either way.
(click the images and use the arrow keys to quickly flip back and forth to compare)
Original 180 degree fisheye wide-angle shot:

Perspective(rectilinear) at 130 degrees:

Panini at 130 degrees:

'Corrected'(as I referenced earlier) panini at 130 degrees:

Slight curvature distortion near the edges is a much better tradeoff than the perspective massive proportional distortions across the entire image IMO.

Perspective(rectilinear) at 150 degrees, note how distorted it's becoming as the FOV approaches 180:

Panini projection at 150 degrees:


I find the vertical distortion less bothersome than the massive distortion near the edges caused by the perspective projection. Compare the stack of papers and the woman in the bottom right, for example.

It becomes obvious why it's superior at high FOVs for video games, as your main concern is typically near the center of the screen rather than the peripheral, just like IRL human vision. Standard perspective distorts lines near the edge of the screen, and the distortion increases drastically as the FOV approaches 180 degrees. There's no way to avoid the distortion of projecting a 3D surface onto a 2D surface, but it can be mitigated.


You'd probably have to render at about 25% higher internal resolution to get the 'same' image as in perspective projection though.

[Roguey]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry ... -ever-now/

Now we see games made by teams that range from one person up to potentially thousands, if modern GTAs are to be believed. But according to Sawyer, these larger teams haven’t lead to greater job security, nor even necessarily better conditions. Instead, we see more contracts and short-term work for specialists, while crunch has been replaced by mass burnout.

As Sawyer says, "Games are bigger than ever (again), baby!" And this is a huge part of the problem. Development cycles have gone from an average of between 10 months to three years in the 2000s to 5-8 years now. While not every member of the dev team will be on board for the entire cycle, those that are often wind up feeling incredibly drained by the long process.

"Guys we need to make even smaller games, we're getting burned out working 40 hours a week for 5-8 years on a single game."

Wages for game developers also aren’t necessarily any better than before. With remote work becoming easier, some studios are outsourcing to the cheapest bidder. This has lead to devs looking for a living wage—or healthcare when it comes to living in countries like the USA—going hungry.

They deserve this though given the following statement.

But remote work hasn’t been all bad. One area Sawyer has seen change for the better is diversity, which has been improved not only by changing times but by remote accommodations.

"I didn’t work with any women developers for my first five years", he says, adding that while ***** and ***** folk were definitely present, finding those that had the safety and comfort to be open about it was a rarity. Even other nationalities were uncommon, which is in stark contrast to the wonderfully diverse landscape we see now.

[rusty_shackleford]

sure, the product is definitely worse… but gays and minorities!!!!

[DemoGraph]

"Guys we need to make even smaller games, we're getting burned out working 40 hours a week for 5-8 years on a single game."

Hes right that AAA games sometimes blunder and get harder and harder to justify in preproduction. While small mobile and online games (like bejeweled, farms and various pseudo-strategies) are some of the most profitable in the world.

Personally, I've recently stumbled on some porn visual novels. I found that, while they're rough at the edges and are stuck in a permanent demo state, I find them quite interesting to actually play. The gameplay is sometimes pretty simple, but still, there's something attractive in simple management sims coupled with a bunch of minigames.

I unironically play them for the plot.

Also, come to think of it, most of the games I liked in the past were made by pretty small teams, and were very simple graphically.

[rusty_shackleford]

"Guys we need to make even smaller games, we're getting burned out working 40 hours a week for 5-8 years on a single game."

Hes right that AAA games sometimes blunder and get harder and harder to justify in preproduction. While small mobile and online games (like bejeweled, farms and various pseudo-strategies) are some of the most profitable in the world.

Personally, I've recently stumbled on some porn visual novels. I found that, while they're rough at the edges and are stuck in a permanent demo state, I find them quite interesting to actually play. The gameplay is sometimes pretty simple, but still, there's something attractive in simple management sims coupled with a bunch of minigames.

I unironically play them for the plot.

Also, come to think of it, most of the games I liked in the past were made by pretty small teams, and were very simple graphically.

There's barely any AAA games even made anymore
The studio he works at spends 8 years working on a mediocre slop game with 20 hours of content

[edit]
Avowed took 6 years to make

Selection_026.webp

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Now, instead of fake and gay government virtual money numbers, we look at the wages over the same period of time as related to purchasing power.
...
Line goes down.

So true, you prepared to pay $300?

There are no costs for physical media and its production and games have become cheaper to produce thanks to all modern technologies! Cartridges in the past needed separate parts to save game progress, but now that's no longer necessary! Where does this price tag come from?

[Rienen]

I'm guessing most AAA games have their reported "In Development" times inflated by adding in time spent in "pre-production" and including the multiple project restarts due to leadership incompetence/changes and trend chasing.

I'm not defending them, by any means. A **** dev team filled with activists is still going to produce garbage no matter how much time you give them.

[rusty_shackleford]

Where does this price tag come from?

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm guessing most AAA games have their reported "In Development" times inflated by adding in time spent in "pre-production" and including the multiple project restarts due to leadership incompetence/changes and trend chasing.

I'm not defending them, by any means. A **** dev team filled with activists is still going to produce garbage no matter how much time you give them.

"Pre-production" is still part of production, they just call it that to look less ********

[Tweed]

Slave away for ten years to make eight hours worth of content for seventy bucks.

Truly, the golden age of gaming is upon us.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Where does this price tag come from?

Well, than the aswer is simple: fire all wokies and there will be no need in price increase. But who will be making games? All old devs who are not woke left this dump a long time ago.

[DemoGraph]

There's barely any AAA games even made anymore

Well, for me Witcher 3, TW:WH3 and BG3 are AAA. As well as that endless flow of asscreeds and modern combat FPS slop. And that French RPG, Expedition something.

Am I too old? For me they're recent.

[rusty_shackleford]

Well, for me Witcher 3

It's almost 11 years old.

[rusty_shackleford]

GamePass basically exists as a form of gamedev welfare at this point to keep the industry alive, large amounts of gamedevs would be unemployed tomorrow if microsoft cut it

if you listened to libtards you'd think microsoft is completely against them when it's the only thing that allows the current situation to continue, a shambling corpse
if gamepass was cut there would be tens of thousands of firings in the next year

[DemoGraph]

Well, for me Witcher 3

It's almost 11 years old.

Ok, but WH is 2022, BG is 2023 and Expedition is 2025.

[rusty_shackleford]

Well, for me Witcher 3

It's almost 11 years old.

Ok, but WH is 2022, BG is 2023 and Expedition is 2025.

Expedition 33 a small-budget title, much smaller than even Obsidian games.
We used to get multiple blockbuster titles a month at one point, now we maybe get 1-2 a year.
[edit]
But I agree Expedition 33 has excellent production value

[logincrash]

Decided, on a whim, to play GTAV again. Installed it through Steam. Then had to deal with about 40 minutes of troubleshooting to fix the ******* Rockstar Launcher. And then something called Battleye popped up. This **** requires kernel-level access which even someone as technically illiterate as me sees as a ******* HUGE red flag.
This is why I ******* pirate all the games I play.

---

I'm so ****** off that I made and had to fix like 3 typos.

---

I was so ****** off that I made a typo in the edit about fixing typos, lmao.

[Roguey]

There's barely any AAA games even made anymore
The studio he works at spends 8 years working on a mediocre slop game with 20 hours of content

That's just the critical path and I prefer short main quests myself. With all the optional content it's 30-55 and that's rushed.

[Jordy]

Decided, on a whim, to play GTAV again. Installed it through Steam. Then had to deal with about 40 minutes of troubleshooting to fix the ******* Rockstar Launcher. And then something called Battleye popped up. This **** requires kernel-level access which even someone as technically illiterate as me sees as a ******* HUGE red flag.
This is why I ******* pirate all the games I play.

---

I'm so ****** off that I made and had to fix like 3 typos.

---

I was so ****** off that I made a typo in the edit about fixing typos, lmao.

I went through the same thing a few months ago. Not sure when they added it but it was an instant uninstall for me.

[rusty_shackleford]

Client-side anticheat does not work, any game that has it should be avoided unless you really like the game, especially if you care about other people cheating(they are)

[Jordy]

viewtopic.php?p=307698-what-game-are-yo ... ng#p307698

Ok I went back to it and am 2-0 up at the start of the second half.

@Manny V - Any tips?

[rusty_shackleford]

I actually like how early software renderers would 'curve' near the edges
(not my screenshot)

Reminds me that I did a rather technical post some years back about correcting high fov. I'll see if I can dig it up, but here's a comparison

It requires additional correction that's not usually applied, but at high FOVs it causes far less distortion than perspective either way.
(click the images and use the arrow keys to quickly flip back and forth to compare)
Original 180 degree fisheye wide-angle shot:

Perspective(rectilinear) at 130 degrees:

Panini at 130 degrees:

'Corrected'(as I referenced earlier) panini at 130 degrees:

Slight curvature distortion near the edges is a much better tradeoff than the perspective massive proportional distortions across the entire image IMO.

Perspective(rectilinear) at 150 degrees, note how distorted it's becoming as the FOV approaches 180:

Panini projection at 150 degrees:


I find the vertical distortion less bothersome than the massive distortion near the edges caused by the perspective projection. Compare the stack of papers and the woman in the bottom right, for example.

It becomes obvious why it's superior at high FOVs for video games, as your main concern is typically near the center of the screen rather than the peripheral, just like IRL human vision. Standard perspective distorts lines near the edge of the screen, and the distortion increases drastically as the FOV approaches 180 degrees. There's no way to avoid the distortion of projecting a 3D surface onto a 2D surface, but it can be mitigated.


You'd probably have to render at about 25% higher internal resolution to get the 'same' image as in perspective projection though.

Forgot to add:
If you want to know why it's called 'panini projection', it's actually a misspelling of Pannini. It was a technique rediscovered by analyzing the artwork of 18th century artist Giovanni Paolo Pannini. His artwork was analyzed and they realized he was using non-rectilinear projection.


Here's the paper(2010):
http://tksharpless.net/vedutismo/Pannini/panini.pdf

(They state it doesn't prove he did use it conclusively, but he probably did.)

[rusty_shackleford]

Also, I don't know if any released game has made use of it, but Unreal Tournament 4 was supposed to
And as a consequence, it can be forced on in most UE4/5 games.
Without:

With:


https://imgsli.com/NDIyODEy
(look at the barrels/boxes)

[Manny V]

viewtopic.php?p=307698-what-game-are-yo ... ng#p307698

Ok I went back to it and am 2-0 up at the start of the second half.

@Manny V - Any tips?

What team ya playing?

General gameplay tips I can give:
Do your risk-free actions at the beginning of your turn (moving players around that aren't marked, getting up knocked over players, not having to roll any dice), then the least risky (double dice bashin, high agi players picking up the ball/dodgin etc)
Tryin to bash a guy with a 1 block dice, coin flip chance actions n whatnot as well, best saved to the end of your turn (since when the dice inevitably go against you at least you've done most of your actions anyway do it's not as bad)
Game is all about minimising risk, so sometimes it's better to just group up your lads and dogpile the weaker players, while avoiding the dangerous ones (usually better to try to dodge away from an ogre or minotaur or whatever other 'big guy' than trying to outmuscle him with a group)
When leveling your lads up, some reliable skills to get are ones like Block, Dodge, Guard, Tackle, since they put the dice in your favour (although it's a bit boring)
Should prioritise getting a few team rerolls with your money asap, although an apothecary and reserve players is also important. Probs only really need like 3 or 4 rerolls but getting more can't hurt
Never waste your apothecary early on in a match if you can help it, you never know when some bullshits gonna happen in the last few turns of a match (like what happened to Manny )
If ****** cheap linemen or other equivalent players die/cop permanent injuries, best to let it happen over using apothecary, since you can replace em with the money you get from a match (usually)

That's about all I got, may Nuffle's blessings be with you

[Jordy]

viewtopic.php?p=307698-what-game-are-yo ... ng#p307698

Ok I went back to it and am 2-0 up at the start of the second half.

@Manny V - Any tips?

What team ya playing?

General gameplay tips I can give:
Do your risk-free actions at the beginning of your turn (moving players around that aren't marked, getting up knocked over players, not having to roll any dice), then the least risky (double dice bashin, high agi players picking up the ball/dodgin etc)
Tryin to bash a guy with a 1 block dice, coin flip chance actions n whatnot as well, best saved to the end of your turn (since when the dice inevitably go against you at least you've done most of your actions anyway do it's not as bad)
Game is all about minimising risk, so sometimes it's better to just group up your lads and dogpile the weaker players, while avoiding the dangerous ones (usually better to try to dodge away from an ogre or minotaur or whatever other 'big guy' than trying to outmuscle him with a group)
When leveling your lads up, some reliable skills to get are ones like Block, Dodge, Guard, Tackle, since they put the dice in your favour (although it's a bit boring)
Should prioritise getting a few team rerolls with your money asap, although an apothecary and reserve players is also important. Probs only really need like 3 or 4 rerolls but getting more can't hurt
Never waste your apothecary early on in a match if you can help it, you never know when some bullshits gonna happen in the last few turns of a match (like what happened to Manny )
If ****** cheap linemen or other equivalent players die/cop permanent injuries, best to let it happen over using apothecary, since you can replace em with the money you get from a match (usually)

That's about all I got, may Nuffle's blessings be with you

I'm playing the campaign and only in the first match, Humans vs Orcs. Not entirely sure what to do when the other team starts with the ball. I kinda just held back and blocked players while they kept the ball near their touchline for a turn or two. They did eventually try to run with the ball and fumbled it, allowing me to score again.

[Manny V]

viewtopic.php?p=307698-what-game-are-yo ... ng#p307698

Ok I went back to it and am 2-0 up at the start of the second half.

@Manny V - Any tips?

What team ya playing?

General gameplay tips I can give:
Do your risk-free actions at the beginning of your turn (moving players around that aren't marked, getting up knocked over players, not having to roll any dice), then the least risky (double dice bashin, high agi players picking up the ball/dodgin etc)
Tryin to bash a guy with a 1 block dice, coin flip chance actions n whatnot as well, best saved to the end of your turn (since when the dice inevitably go against you at least you've done most of your actions anyway do it's not as bad)
Game is all about minimising risk, so sometimes it's better to just group up your lads and dogpile the weaker players, while avoiding the dangerous ones (usually better to try to dodge away from an ogre or minotaur or whatever other 'big guy' than trying to outmuscle him with a group)
When leveling your lads up, some reliable skills to get are ones like Block, Dodge, Guard, Tackle, since they put the dice in your favour (although it's a bit boring)
Should prioritise getting a few team rerolls with your money asap, although an apothecary and reserve players is also important. Probs only really need like 3 or 4 rerolls but getting more can't hurt
Never waste your apothecary early on in a match if you can help it, you never know when some bullshits gonna happen in the last few turns of a match (like what happened to Manny )
If ****** cheap linemen or other equivalent players die/cop permanent injuries, best to let it happen over using apothecary, since you can replace em with the money you get from a match (usually)

That's about all I got, may Nuffle's blessings be with you

I'm playing the campaign and only in the first match, Humans vs Orcs. Not entirely sure what to do when the other team starts with the ball. I kinda just held back and blocked players while they kept the ball near their touchline for a turn or two. They did eventually try to run with the ball and fumbled it, allowing me to score again.

general rule of thumb is to create a scrum line, so that you can bash boyz out of the way.
since every player has a 'zone of control' around them, it stops you just running around them to get to whoever's holding the ball. you get 1 blitz a turn, usually you wanna use it to charge the ball carrier, or if not, someone guarding him. if you can at least mark the ball carrier with one dude standing adjacent to him, it forces him to either bash him(preventing him from moving on his turn), dodge out of the tackle zone, or using his blitz to try to bash and run.
often the tactic when you have the ball is to make a 'cage' around the ball carrier, which is when you place other players around each corner of the carrier, so that nobody can get adjacent to him without having to dodge through (which is highly unlikely) or bashing one of the guarding players.

anyway the campaign isn't too tough, it gives you some free strong players n **** along the way which is fun, it's a good way to familiarise yourself with the game.

[rusty_shackleford]

lmao

Selection_013.webp

[KnightoftheWind]

Concord is unironically the best thing to happen to gayming in the last 5 years. When I think of this console generation I'll just picture Concord and laugh.

[Rand]

lmao

"Should we make the characters look cool?"

"I thought we already did, but I have no aesthetic talent."
"We made them all be the right things for 'representation', that's what's important."
"I have no idea how, I'm still learning how to use blender."
"I got my art degree, but classes were all just old lesbians railing against the white man every day."
"The other executives and I were out golfing. Is this done yet? I want to buy my yacht with the hundreds of millions we make taking over from Fortnite."