Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Goral]

It's a shame that more devs haven't kept notes on everything (well, not everything, but at least for games that are universally loved).

I talk about my extensive note-taking, starting in grad school, and how I went from paper to electronic and back again. All those notes are what led to this channel's existence.

 

[Geomancer86]

Tim showed his autobiography very briefly, I had to pause to see the name, Bits and Bottle Caps, 500 pages, his friends told him it's a little dry so not selling that one.

Also finally showed some of his notes.

 

[Roguey]

One for the "Tim Cain is reading your posts" file: He mentions that he'll get around to talking about Carbine eventually, but is putting it off because it's painful.

He also mentions that the reason this is a video series and not a blog is because friends have told him his stories come across as too mean in prose.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

He mentions that he'll get around to talking about Carbine eventually, but is putting it off because it's painful.

Have you seen how sensitive he is? His regular work office shit from 20 years ago is still painful, and I assume whatever went down there was
1) legal, as in nobody got physically abused, killed, etc
2) he wasn't the owner, his livelihood wasn't at stake at any moment
And yet he "can't talk about it". Yeah, he's not reading the Codex.

If he was, I'd tell him there's no urgency to talk about Carbine. I'm a fan, and even I don't know what it is. I understand it's something mmo-related, but there's been no good mmos out there except WoW since 2004, so what does it even matter? He worked on some vaporware? Nobody wanted to shower with him at Carbine? "The showers I've lost... It's like they're all still there!" I think it's a nothingburger and if he doesn't want to talk about it, and I don't want to hear it anyway, might as well skip this subject.

 

[Roguey]

He mentions that he'll get around to talking about Carbine eventually, but is putting it off because it's painful.

Have you seen how sensitive he is? His regular work office shit from 20 years ago is still painful, and I assume whatever went down there was
1) legal, as in nobody got physically abused, killed, etc
2) he wasn't the owner, his livelihood wasn't at stake at any moment
And yet he "can't talk about it". Yeah, he's not reading the Codex.

If he was, I'd tell him there's no urgency to talk about Carbine. I'm a fan, and even I don't know what it is. I understand it's something mmo-related, but there's been no good mmos out there except WoW since 2004, so what does it even matter? He worked on some vaporware? Nobody wanted to shower with him at Carbine? "The showers I've lost... It's like they're all still there!" I think it's a nothingburger and if he doesn't want to talk about it, and I don't want to hear it anyway, might as well skip this subject.

Allegations were made years ago that he's yet to address https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/cain-on-games-tim-cains-new-youtube-channel.147060/post-8541953

He said that this and Fallout 2 were the only two games he had to walk away from.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

This notebook may be the only holy artifact that really exists.

 

[NecroLord]

There are no "good" fantasy settings. Forgotten Realms? Tamriel? Thedas? Rivellon? None of it matters.

Some really hot takes Roguey...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It will never be released because it has lots of drawings of dicks doodled on Fargo's face.

 

[CodexTotalWar]

They did well but the Divinity games and its copycats i.e. Wasteland 3 did considerably better.

I'd rather point towards Pathfinder being better copycat of the original Baldur's Gate style rather than Divinity or Wasteland. Both in terms of the universe and in terms of how complex the character building is.

TBH character building in BG1/2 is pretty barebones compared to Pathfinder.

Just the nature of the different systems, but still.

 

[skylar1146]

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Hopefully he ugprades that mic setup tho lol

 

[Harthwain]

TBH character building in BG1/2 is pretty barebones compared to Pathfinder.

Just the nature of the different systems, but still.

Maybe so, but it still gives me that BG/IWD vibe.

 

[Butter]

Wherein Tim grapples with the uselessness of Charisma.

 

[NecroLord]

Wherein Tim grapples with the uselessness of Charisma.

Charisma got fixed in Fallout 2, thankfully.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I love how Tim thought it was a good idea to have intelligence decrease the time it takes to read a book. Such a small thing, he may be totally right that no one ever has noticed it (I didn't), but it tells so much about where Tim heart lies.

 

[Geomancer86]

He mentioned not repeating the same shirt twice on his videos being a goal, I'm pretty sure he does read the forum haha.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the systemic effects of each of the eight attributes in Arcanum.

 

[Roguey]

Tim talking about the wrinkles on his shirt as if anyone straight's gonna notice.

That being said he should have washed that before putting it on. If you have dust allergies, you're going to feel it.

At the end Tim realized that it's possible for him to go back to the old system where you had to spend more points in the later ranks. If he gets around to that, ideally he'll find that it's comparatively bad, and he should have figured out a third option.

 

[Goral]

I would like to play Arcanum at least once with Tim's points idea so I hope he will do it. It was rather easy to reach maximum level in Arcanum so that way it might be more challenging and more fun. It's a shame he won't release the source code though, I'm pretty sure that we would get some awesome mods that way.

Edit:
Oh, and this comment takes the cake:

No imagination is necessary. We had no time for a game balance pass before Arcanum shipped. Crash bugs and game slow downs had priority in QA.

Leon and I joke these days that The Outer Worlds was the first (and only) game we ever made together that didn't ship in its alpha state.

And yet it's by far the worst of them all.

Edit 2:
He also said that if you've had 20 CHA you could steal followers from other players in multiplayer so I've asked:

What if both players had 20 CHA? I assume it would cancel out and followers would remain where they were.

to which he said:

The game would probably crash. Seriously, looking at the code, it doesn't check the other player's CHA, so they could probably steal the follower back and forth forever, like some kind of follower ping pong match.

:D :D :D

 

[flyingjohn]

We had no time for a game balance pass before Arcanum shipped

The Outer Worlds was the first (and only) game we ever made together that didn't ship in its alpha state.

I wonder if those two things are connected to how Outer Wilds turned out?

 

[Butter]

Todd getting btfo.

 

[Roguey]

Tim's been won over by Sawyer's thoughts on attribute balance and making systems that don't require metaknowledge or digging into a wiki before you even start playing, but he's not in favor of getting rid of them altogether unless there's a strong perks, traits, and flaws system to replace it.

(I believe PoE could have done fine without attributes or at least a smaller number of them)

He's also concerned about Fallout 5 given how Beth has been slowly chipping away at Fallout's systems (first traits in 3 [which Josh added back in New Vegas] then merging skills into perks in 4).

 

[Butter]

SPECIAL is probably too iconic to remove. I can imagine a hypothetical system where you increase one of your SPECIALs every level and that automatically improves your weapon crafting/stimpack usage/melee damage/haggling/etc, but I suspect even Bethesda would think that's going too far.

Pillars pretty much had to use 6 attributes ranging from 3-18 because it was being sold as an Infinity Engine game. The problem is that each point has negligible effect. You can get a +4 and not even notice the difference. Sawyer fucked it on purpose because he didn't want chargen choices to affect character viability.

The point that Cain has only obliquely addressed in these videos is that attributes are supposed to create meaningful distinctions between characters from the start of the game. If high PER/low INT and low PER/high INT play exactly the same way, the system has no reason to exist.

With this in mind, a good attribute system should be the opposite of what Pillars uses. It should have very low granularity, and each point should feel important. Maybe this is going too far, but I've thought of a binary attribute system where you can be Smart or not, Strong or not, Fast or not, and selecting one of these characteristics would put you miles ahead of other characters in that category. This wouldn't be the most satisfying system for build autists, but it would cut through a lot of bullshit.

 

[Roguey]

Pillars pretty much had to use 6 attributes ranging from 3-18 because it was being sold as an Infinity Engine game.

Sawyer's autism declared this to be so but I believe most people honestly wouldn't care given all the other ways it's not like 2nd or 3rd edition D&D. As Avellone said, he tended to discard or insist on things based on his own whims rather than a carefully-detailed philosophy.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

He's also concerned about Fallout 5 given how Beth has been slowly chipping away at Fallout's systems (first traits in 3 [which Josh added back in New Vegas] then merging skills into perks in 4).

15 years too late to be concerned about Bethesda Softworks' version of a Fallout game.

Granted, from what I've heard about Fallout 4, the mechanics were rendered even worse than its immediate predecessor. Regardless, any prospective Fallout 5 developed by Bethesda would be created after The Elder Scrolls VI, which in turn will be created after Starfield is released, meaning that even if Bethesda manages to complete their next two games in four years each, which is unlikely, their next Fallout game would be released in 2031. More realistically, Fallout 5 would be released even later into the 2030s, assuming Bethesda decides to return to the post-apocalyptic subgenre rather than to create a Starfield II or to select a third Science-Fiction subgenre for adapting their game model.

 

[Goral]

I chat with Scott Campbell, the original lead designer on Fallout. Scott left Interplay in late 1995 (which we discuss) and was replaced by the equally talented Chris Taylor, whose game Stonekeep had just shipped.Learn about Scott's company White Moon Dreams here: https://whitemoondreams.com/

And read his article on the "Origins of Fallout" here: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Origins_of_Fallout

Edit:
Tim Cain has some inside EA sources (very high up) from which he learned that EA would have never given Interplay Wasteland license (13 m 55 s).

Much of Fallout design was ready in 1995 (Junktown, Shady Sands, Killian vs. Gizmo quest, etc,).

Edit 2:
Tim Cain and Scott talk about Steven Spielberg when he visited Interplay (he snatched one of the artists to work on Shrek). Around 45th minute.

Edit 3:
Around 55 minute he talks about how Brian Fargo fired an expert IT guy for demonstrating how badly secured net they have at Interplay.