Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Lyric Suite]

Testosterone drops with age so if you didn't have much to begin with, which most game designers don't, you are likely to turn into a massive pussy later on.

Might explain what's going on with older devs becoming indistinguishable from modern nu-devs, that or society no longer frowning upon weak men so they think they are finally free form the burden of having to live up to some masculine values.

According to Aquinas, effeminacy is a vice btw:

https://www.churchpop.com/2018/08/2...acy-what-st-thomas-aquinas-says-in-his-summa/

This post was written by an AI bot that was given an archive of all tradcath posters on the Codex.

Here's the Codexian version then: faggots gonna faggot.

 

[Harthwain]

After the sequel to Arcanum was turned down, we made a design for a Lord of the Rings game for Sierra. It never got made, but I can show you some of the small demo we made in 2001.

It looks like something made in 2000s alright. I bet they'd do something similar to Arcanum 2.

 

[whydoibother]

Here's the Codexian version then: faggots gonna faggot.

The Science™ is not Settled™ on this, looks like.
Creativity seems to be correlated with testosterone in some studies, but inversely correlated in others.
The funniest one is on music directors. They had lower urinary testosterone levels, but higher salivary testosterone levels. So I guess it also matters what you are measuring for it.
Maybe just judge this game designer on his work and not on his penis, is what I am asking. We know his work. We don't know his penis. At least I don't, and I'm afraid to ask you.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Here's the Codexian version then: faggots gonna faggot.

The Science™ is not Settled™ on this, looks like.
Creativity seems to be correlated with testosterone in some studies, but inversely correlated in others.
The funniest one is on music directors. They had lower urinary testosterone levels, but higher salivary testosterone levels. So I guess it also matters what you are measuring for it.
Maybe just judge this game designer on his work and not on his penis, is what I am asking. We know his work. We don't know his penis. At least I don't, and I'm afraid to ask you.

We've been burned too many times by promises from older devs not to be cynical about Tim Cain as well, all though i guess it would be kinda of funny if the actual faggot in the bunch turns out not to descent into faggotry and produce something worthwhile.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Lifting maintaints your testo levels to a good extent, so we just need to find all those older devs that are still svole.

Anyone disagreeing with me don't even lift.

 

[whydoibother]

Lifting maintaints your testo levels to a good extent, so we just need to find all those older devs that are still svole.

Your testosterone will go down with age, regardless of your behavior. And even if you keep introducing more external testosterone, the sensitivity of your receptors goes down, so you'd need to keep upping the dose. And as you up the dose, you increase your risk of heart and liver failure. Also you are making yourself infertile if you get on TRT, more or less.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Look i'm just trying to understand this:

 

[Kev Inkline]

It will go down, but lifting maintains it higher than a sedentary lifestyle. In no part was I referring to external injection of testo, which you somehow inferred from what was said.

 

[whydoibother]

In no part was I referring to external injection of testo, which you somehow inferred from what was said.

Its the only way to maintain high testosterone as you age, and it will continue to get normalized as more and more insecure men blame all their personal failures on low test brah and refuse to age gracefully into being wizened elders.

 

[Don Peste]

Do you think Timothy Cain's STAR RAIDERS clone with >30-year-old AI and Unity Store assets could outsell Redfall?

 

[Yosharian]

Didn't Tim Cain develop TOW? Dude is most likely going senile

 

[Yosharian]

• Mistake #1 - Steep Learning Curves: Tim thinks character creation in Fallout, Arcanum and other RPGs was too complex. He's experimenting with creating a completely numberless character system that uses geometric shapes to visualize attributes.
• Mistake #2 - Letting Math Trump Psychology: Revealing the influence of the years he spent developing Wildstar, Tim wants to develop mechanics that are psychologically satisfying and addictive, even at the expense of mathematical elegance. For example, he says the player's first attack against an enemy should always hit even if his overall hit percentage is the same regardless, and that rather than allow players to increase their critical hit chance, they should only be allowed to increase their critical hit damage.
• Mistake #3 - Conflating Player Skill With Character Skill: This one will be familiar if you've watched some of Josh Sawyer's talks. Aiming and hitting in an action-RPG should not be determined by character stats. On the other hand, things like the impact of recoil can be affected by stats, as well as the aforementioned critical hit damage.
• Mistake #4 - Misunderstanding Randomness: Here Tim lays out his frustration with the sorts of people who can't believe they could miss a 95% chance-to-hit attack three times in a row. His conclusion is that when people talk about "randomness", they often mean selecting a token rather than rolling a dice (ie, events can't repeat themselves).
• Mistake #5 - Forcing Linearity: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Tim says games are not movies, using Fallout's Tandi rescue scenario with its multiple solutions as an example of the sort of non-linearity he prizes.
• Mistake #6 - Being Non-Reactive: Tim seems particularly interested in the sort of reactivity where characters in the world have different dispositions based on your character's background, clothing and attributes, as seen in Arcanum. He also loves having different end slides based on the player's choices in the game, using Temple of Elemental Evil's evil ending as an example.
• Mistake #7 - Telling Horrible Stories: Tim uses this to emphasize again that games are not movies. Not every character in a game has to be important or advance the plot. Tropes likes the Chosen One protagonist and amnesiac protagonist are tiresome and should be discarded.

Nearly all of these are borderline retarded. Imagine thinking any of these constitute smart commentary on CRPGs, what a fucking joke

Now yes on the one hand that's quite a mean thing to say

On the other hand, Tim Cain made TOW, so he deserves it

 

[Lyric Suite]

What's TOW?

 

[whydoibother]

What's TOW?

The Outer Worlds, a game marketed heavily as FROM THE CREATORS OF FALLOUT NEW VEGAS.
For me, it lacked je ne sais quoi, I didn't finish it. Dropped it the moment I stopped unlocking new guns.

 

[vortex]

I would like Lord of the Rings CRPG. Embracer group can easily give it to Obsidian and Cain as contractor. Make it happen.

 

[AW8]

Nearly all of these are borderline retarded.

Only #1, #2 and #4 are dumb, the rest are good points. Having stats affect base accuracy in an FPS makes for awful gameplay, focusing on cinematic spectacle over player choice is bad, having reactive NPCs is great, and amnesiac Chosen One stories are dull.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Cool.

 

[Yosharian]

Nearly all of these are borderline retarded.

Only #1, #2 and #4 are dumb, the rest are good points. Having stats affect base accuracy in an FPS makes for awful gameplay, focusing on cinematic spectacle over player choice is bad, having reactive NPCs is great, and amnesiac Chosen One stories are dull.

#3 is a matter of taste, personally I have no problem with it but I understand people that do.

#5/6 are stupid because they are so obvious. Like of course you want multiple-solution quests and reactivity. Duh. How is this insightful? Next you'll be telling me DOOM games need powerful guns.

#7 is completely irrelevant, what matters is that the story is well-told.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Harthwain]

Only #1, #2 and #4 are dumb, the rest are good points.

Amnesiac protagonist (#7) is a good idea if you want to throw the player into the middle of a game without an introduction. It puts both the player and the character on equal footing, without making the player feel like a third wheel when the character speaks with an NPC about something only they know about.

 

[Fargus]

Last thing i want to do is to listen to this freak's ruminations. Faggot has-been who made Utter Shit with his depressed vegetable fuckbuddy Boyarsky. To me they both should've died with Troika Games.

Hopefully he still got enough decency (which i wouldnt expect from a faggot) to leave Arcanum in peace.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Amnesiac protagonist (#7) is a good idea if you want to throw the player into the middle of a game without an introduction. It puts both the player and the character on equal footing, without making the player feel like a third wheel when the character speaks with an NPC about something only they know about.

You can get the same arrangement with just about any 'stranger in a strange land' scenario without the amnesia contrivance.

 

[Harthwain]

You can get the same arrangement with just about any 'stranger in a strange land' scenario without the amnesia contrivance.

There are some problems with that:

1) You can't make the stranger hold an important role (as he is stranger in a strange land).
2) You'd still have to explain to the player how his character arrived to the starting point.

 

[AW8]

Amnesiac protagonist (#7) is a good idea if you want to throw the player into the middle of a game without an introduction. It puts both the player and the character on equal footing, without making the player feel like a third wheel when the character speaks with an NPC about something only they know about.

I think KotOR 2 did a good job informing the player of the game world without resorting to amnesia, by having a multitude of descriptive dialogue choices. Even if the player doesn't pick the line that says "Atris you fucking bitch, your gloating tone reminds me of the day you exiled me from the Jedi Order", they still learn something about the world by just reading it.

I recently watched the intro to Mass Effect on Youtube and it doesn't work as well there, the shortened responses on the dialogue wheel means you have to pick a line and have Shepard say it to get the information. (And the exposition was also not as smoothly written, making Shepard ask obvious stuff that he should already know.)

BTW, are amnesiac protagonists even a thing these days? Feels like it was common enough in the 90s-00s that it became a clichè and is thus avoided today.

 

[Harthwain]

I think KotOR 2 did a good job informing the player of the game world without resorting to amnesia, by having a multitude of descriptive dialogue choices. Even if the player doesn't pick the line that says "Atris you fucking bitch, your gloating tone reminds me of the day you exiled me from the Jedi Order", they still learn something about the world by just reading it.

True.

BTW, are amnesiac protagonists even a thing these days? Feels like it was common enough in the 90s-00s that it became a clichè and is thus avoided today.

The Witcher went with that, if I recall correctly. And Disco Elysium.