A lot of people in that little Denny's! I got to meet some cool people and play Werewolf, so that's time well spent

Ok! Well im a dude with two bags and a red jacket. See you soon!

Sure. Where you at?

I went to the IGDA party. It was really packed and had tables for card games and board games, but otherwise didn't seem very interesting. I'm already on the train, maybe I'll meet some of you tomorrow.

Hmm... the IGDA party line is freaking huge. And it'll take me an hour to walk to Haight st from Moscone. O_O

I don't hang out here enough, hope I get a chance to meet some of you in person!

Also kind of sucky that so many Tuesday events are overlapping :X

We're having a game jam in the queue for Indie Game: The Movie, come along to 2016 West Hall at 4:00 to join us!

Didn't see any game jam activity when I went to wait was it in the room?

I'm going to be here for the 5 days! I'm not staying up in SF this year so I'll be going up to Moscone early in the morning and going home later when I feel like it. If anyone wants to meet up, look for the chinese guy with the red jacket and 3 bags.

My team and I developed a fun and super cute game called Chum! The idea is to go through as many generations as possible. You start as a tiny fish, then grow up and eat other fish, then spawn eggs as an adult and become one of your children, which completes a generation.

I'm pretty sure the only way to fight those things is to beat it on the head until it opens it's mouth the correct way

Nope! You can also kill Dekubabas by cutting off the stems using the Beetle. 1 hit. Don't need to sword them all the time

Also yellow dekubabas aren't a guessing game... they just switch from vertical to horizontal each time they close their mouth unless they're attacking in which case either bash them or dodge. (though when they attack you can stab into them and get some mutual destruction.)

Ah, maybe I should be clearer. My swinging is too slow usually, so by the time I want to prep the direction and swing, either the yellow dekubaba is already attacking and has the mouth closed, or else it changes the way the mouth is opened and I hit it wrong.

NotHere: The beetle does artificially get drained of stamina if you get too close to the sky limit or near a character for a story pertinent cutscene. Upgrades help a lot. I have mine fully upgrade and its a BEAST.

I agree. Absolute bestest item in any Zelda game ever Too bad it doesn't damage everything, but they can still kill bats and stuff, and if I switch fast enough I can put down a Bomb and make the Beetle pick it up. I can "taunt" enemies that are some distance away too, by ramming the Beetle into them. When that happens, usually only that one enemy comes to attack me alone

I really like the beetle It helps me out by scouting out the environment for traps, puzzles or dangers, and I can use it to kill the yellow dekubabas without having to play the bullshit guessing game on swings (and yeah my swinging is probably a little too slow). Controlling it wasn't too bad either, though I wish it had better turning and shooting it out in certain parts of the game drained its stamina really fast for no obvious reason.

The thing with TBS is that they are just too slow paced.

You know, why don't TBS games use tricks from RTS games in their interface? Especially with unit movement. In pretty much any TBS game I've played you need to move each individual unit (or stack, which still takes micromanagement to fill) separately. Why not allow for group select, move the whole group (retaining shape), waypoints, etc?

Yes, in that case the units would move simultaneously, but that's a small price to pay I think. Also, ever had to rearrange units in Civ V? It can get really tower of Hanoi-like.

Hmm... well I'm not sure if there's a TBS example you want to try with group movement mechanics. For my position, I'm going to use Advance Wars: Days of Ruin as the example. In this TBS:
1. The units don't necessarily have uniform movement patterns (units have different move ranges and/or different movement penalties across certain terrain).
2. The units cannot overlap, regardless of allegiance (one unit per space).
3. The player cannot undo moves (this is so that players can't abuse fog of war and invisibility).
4. The player moves units move along a specified path, rather than one step at a time (this is also so that players can't abuse fog of war and invisibility).

With those constraints in place, moving unit groups together will have some collision issues. What should happen when any one unit in the group moves and overlaps onto another unit? Does that unit stop? Does the unit stopping cause other units in the group to stop as well to prevent them overlapping each other? How should movement work for groups containing units with different movement capabilities? Obviously AW:DoR was not designed to deal with group movement, so one should expect some problems when attempting to introduce it, but I hope it shows the design decisions one will need to deal with when allowing group movement in a TBS.

This is not as big an issue for RTS because one can give new move commands to units at any time, rather than having to wait until the next turn in order to undo a positioning mistake. If I start moving units into enemy attack range in an RTS, or if some units start lagging behind, I can at least try to pull them together and minimize losses if I pay attention and act quickly. If I don't have my units aligned correctly in a TBS, that's just a turn of free beatings for my opponents, and it would really suck if this is due to the inherent pathing AI making unintelligent decisions in certain cases when it would work fine in general cases.

BTW... if anyone has examples of group movement being done competently in a TBS, I'd like to check that game out

On Isotropic, there exists players who just simply don't feel like playing anymore but don't respond and force one to wait out the five minutes or so before one can boot them for inactivity.

As I said, I've only experienced this once.

Oh, my intent wasn't to say your experience didn't matter or to ignore that part, but I think for online TBS games that kind of behavior is very difficult to suppress (particularly when it can happen unintentionally). A couple of times on AWBW I would start a game with someone but would forget to do another turn until about a week later, and I had to wait on others as well sometimes =[

Yeah, try to play against registered players with a higher rank. It's surprising how polite and professional they get up the curve.

Hmmm... well last I checked I was a measly lv 18. I did happen to get matched up against lv 40s every once in awhile and got absolutely destroyed But you're right, those folks tend to be very polite, or at least were silent the entire time anyway.

I want to say I like both for different reasons, though I guess like TBS a little more (but I won't vote because I don't intend to favor one over the other (the subject matters that much to me (and I am honestly not overly familiar with RTS and TBS))). Starcraft and Warcraft 3 are great and the first fan game I ever worked on was a clone of AW

* Specifically regarding competitive multiplayer:
One thing that will always bug me to the ends of time is the problem of FTA in all TBS games that don't have the players' actions work simultaneously. Some folks say that playing more than one game with turn orders switched would be a good way to get around that advantage, but then that admits that individual matches are not very meaningful and admits that such an advantage exists. FTA matters once a loyal competitive following is established, such that the players understand the game well enough to know what dominant strategies (or at least choices of best potential) there might be by looking at map composition, available resources and relative positions.

For RTS, (usually) as long as the maps and positionings are symmetric then players are on even footing more or less and their choices matter more than what the game hands them. At the highest level, when all players should be practicing the best decision making possible (and assuming the game is well balanced), then the player(s) with the best concentration and reactions should win, which I am totally fine with.

i feel that RTS games are better for online competitive games. online competitive TBS games take forever and often someone leaves in the middle of one. even something as simple as playing wesnoth with someone online can take 2-3 hours for a *small* map, whereas an RTS game (and i include dota-likes as RTS games) take 10-45 min. also RTS games are much more fun to watch. starcraft is a spectator sport. a game like civilization could never become a spectator sport on that scale, since they're so slow.

but i feel that TBS games are better to play single-player, since they're more strategic. playing single-player RTS games is very boring, once you've played the campaign once, there's no reason to replay it, and it's very lacking in challenge in single-player mode. whereas i can play civilization or alpha centauri a thousand times in single player mode and never get bored.

tl;dr: RTS is better for multiplayer, TBS is better for single player

Totally agreed. The Campaign and War Room challenges for AW are great to play through and similar options never worked that well for RTS games. Civilization works out very nicely when one can play at one's pace, especially without having to deal with the pace that other players want to engage at.

tl;dr: RTS is better for multiplayer, TBS is better for single player

Not really, TBS is great for offline multiplayer, where people won't disconnect in the middle of a match.

Local multi is great for TBS, and it is the way I would recommend it be played as well, but is simply not an option available to everyone at any time.

It's funny because I just wanted to post the exact same thing and also use Dominion counterexample.

I've been playing Dominion Online for about two months now (playing the game offline with real cards is more fun ofc) and I've only had one occasion of someone quitting on me (that I can recall). http://dominion.isotropic.org/

I'll say first off that I like Dominion quite a bit, but the problem with FTA is an annoyance that I can't ignore. A matter of chance, but I could potentially play 1v1 against another player in a kingdom that has Sea Hag, and if he manages to play it first, I'm already in pretty big trouble (especially if he hit any card that I bought last turn, like a Silver or my own Sea Hag). Also applies to cards like Militia and Cutpurse. And when playing games involving more than 2 players, the existence (and continued use of) cards like Cutpurse, Torturer and Saboteur become absolute nightmares, especially for the last player. Even outside of Attack cards though, the player that hits their draw card first tends to be in a much better position to buy more stuff, and the first player is in the best position to gain this advantage.

On Isotropic, there exists players who just simply don't feel like playing anymore but don't respond and force one to wait out the five minutes or so before one can boot them for inactivity. They're even worse when they take the time to wait it out, then suddenly finish their turn before the inactivity booting option comes up (and yes I have encountered griefers on Isotropic, more often than I'd expect). Other griefers like to tell me to hurry up all the time or else let me know how stupid my strategy is and how stupid I am for following through with it, but those are not specific to Dominion anyway.

(btw I'm FishingVillage on Isotropic, but I haven't played in a long long while)

Whee, I'm the guy in the red jacket I didn't get anything done, but it was cool to see some of the projects that got demo'd later that night.

I got pretty big into Dominion about two months ago because I found some coworkers playing it in the office. It was pretty fun to play, and the idea that one doesn't need to buy a bunch of booster packs to keep up was very appealing (although, the base set and each of the expansions were pretty pricey).

I don't go to the following site much anymore (I've consciously made myself stop because I was spending too much time there), but there's a free online version of Dominion available: http://dominion.isotropic.org/

It's got all of the cards, all from the base set and each of the expansions (including Cornucopia, Farming Village is awesome), it sets up the board for everyone and afaik, the rules are all followed correctly (I'm curious about the wording of Trusty Steed on isotropic, but maybe I read it wrong before).

An unmotivating job =[

On my scale of good things: doing > showing > telling.

genius

interactive > visuals > words

How did you learn about this thing called videogames? You've discovered something big here.

...

What worth is in responding sarcastically to a post that was not directed at you? The sub-thread expanded beyond the relationship you specifically quoted (such as whether or not the lore hunting in Metroid Prime counted as "doing" or "telling"), so it seems as though you have put in no effort to understand why it appeared in the first place.

Jonathan Mak
"When you break gameplay down to its essentials, it's not just interaction, it's an action and a reaction."

And the sky is blue during an uncloudy summer day.

I read the whole thing. It was stupid. Lore in MP was an interruption anyways which broke the pacing. Even if you didn't have to do it, you felt like you might miss out on something if you didn't because of the puzzle nature of the game, so a player would have to be forced into doing them. The bigger point about the lore was lost on everyone.

Oh no, quoting someone and making a trite tautology. What ever shall one do? ;-\ Again the need for a sarcastic response is lost on me.

As for the MP lore thing, if you found it to be forced instead of being an optional immersion element, it would probably be fruitful if you shared that perspective instead of your earlier post. It could be a nice sub-thread about filtering primary and optional content, and communicating that separation so players that want to progress do not have to scour the earth.

I strongly recommend Liero. Once you get used to the controls, it's one of the best multiplayer experiences out there.

Agreed. I used to play liero with my friends back in high school, or nearly anywhere as I was able to fit it on a floppy back during that time (not sure how large it is now). Real time worms combat is fantastic.

On my scale of good things: doing > showing > telling.

genius

interactive > visuals > words

How did you learn about this thing called videogames? You've discovered something big here.

...

What worth is in responding sarcastically to a post that was not directed at you? The sub-thread expanded beyond the relationship you specifically quoted (such as whether or not the lore hunting in Metroid Prime counted as "doing" or "telling"), so it seems as though you have put in no effort to understand why it appeared in the first place.