Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Jedi Master Radek]

Tim did the first pass on ciphers, monks, crafting, and strongholds.

The stronghold was originally less abstract and included procedurally generated dungeons (here we go again) your companions would run through to complete quests.

He also wanted to include player-generated companions you could level up through procedurally generated dungeons. Starting to get the idea that he's obsessed with putting procedurally generated content in RPGs.

He wanted to add a bunch of annoying Watcher-oriented animations to skills (like a ghost springing a ghost trap, a ghost opening a secret door instead of those things just popping up as colors when detected). Like Fallout but worse. Felt so strongly about this that he advocated for it once more after it was rejected the first time.

They moved him to Tyranny immediately after Pillars shipped. Lotta work to be done.

Tim must like a challenge; Josh Sawyer said in his recent CP2077 stream that random generated content in Pillars is [U]impossible[/U]to do due to the engine (Unity).
Not sure if it cant be done in any Unity game, or if its just the way Pillars was programmed.

https://gamedevacademy.org/complete-guide-to-procedural-level-generation-in-unity-part-1/

Certainly seems possible, but I'm not sure why Tim thought it could be done with Pillars and its prerendered backgrounds, unless he was thinking of just reusing the same maps and only replacing enemies/treasure.

He might have wanted to create modular fragments of maps that are put together by random generation, like rooms or corridors.

 

[ciox]

Planescape Torment did this shit in 1999. Clearly it's impossible in the current year.

https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Modron_Maze

 

[Roguey]

Planescape Torment did this shit in 1999. Clearly it's impossible in the current year.

https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Modron_Maze

That's just one room copypasted multiple times with entrances and exits randomly assigned.

 

[0sacred]

I talk about my most fulfilling game development experience, which led to the hardest lesson I had to learn about game dev.

Tim attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

 

[0sacred]

Items going unused is a problem of gaming difficult and balance.

This. If you feel you can hold on to all your precious consumables, the game isn't challenging enough. Or maybe using those consumables make you lose an action that you'd better spend doing something else, in which case it's a problem of balance.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I talk about my most fulfilling game development experience, which led to the hardest lesson I had to learn about game dev.

Tim attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

Stupid people are often quite nasty. If you're a stupid person in a corporate environment, then there's likely to be a dangerous combination of stupidity and ambition, such as found in many professions.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

There's an adage about how people can be classified on two axes: smart/stupid and energetic/lazy. The best combination is smart+lazy - they make everything more efficient. Stupid+energetic is the dangerous combination.

 

[ds]

Skyrim is the worst offender I can think of for potion-hoarding, and it's caused by a few factors. One is that the game is generally pretty easy, so you don't need to bother with consumables. The second is that the inventory UI is fucking awful, and players will naturally avoid using it whenever they can. The third is that most potions (especially player-brewed potions) have worthless effects like +12% fire resistance. That shit is going to clog up your inventory for the next 40 hours while you wait for the fight that's actually difficult enough to justify digging through the menu to use it.

Elder Scrolls games (or at least Morrowind and Oblivion) have the additional problem that anyone can use restoration spells and they become more effective the more you use them (even if you are already at full health). Having effectively free unlimited healing makes using the finite potions in your inventory even less attractive, especially when those potions don't advance your healing skill.

 

[Wesp5]

A usual problem I know from several games it that eating food heals you. So I normally do that instead of using potions or meds which might cause drug addictions !

 

[Egosphere]

A usual problem I know from several games it that eating food heals you. So I normally do that instead of using potions or meds which might cause drug addictions !

Instead of healing, rpgs should strive for realism. Make the character really fat and slow the more he eats.

 

[Bulo]

A usual problem I know from several games it that eating food heals you. So I normally do that instead of using potions or meds which might cause drug addictions !

Instead of healing, rpgs should strive for realism. Make the character really fat and slow the more he eats.

Grand Theft Auto did this twenty years ago

 

[Egosphere]

A usual problem I know from several games it that eating food heals you. So I normally do that instead of using potions or meds which might cause drug addictions !

Instead of healing, rpgs should strive for realism. Make the character really fat and slow the more he eats.

Grand Theft Auto did this twenty years ago

oh yeah, sa, i forgot lol
would be even better in first person. you spend hours running around not knowing why your speed is slowing down, then you find a mirror and there's an obese bastard on the other end

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about game development caution and how it seems to be affecting newer games.

 

[Alienman]

Wish he would talk about greed/monetization sometime, either in publishers or developers themself.

 

[Quillon]

he just listed the reasons codex been shitting on commiefornian devs for the last...probably 15+ years but called it "caution", well played Tim.

 

[Butter]

It's definitely caution when programmers pad their schedules by several thousand percent. It's not gross incompetence and laziness.

 

[Harthwain]

A usual problem I know from several games it that eating food heals you. So I normally do that instead of using potions or meds which might cause drug addictions !

Instead of healing, rpgs should strive for realism. Make the character really fat and slow the more he eats.

Eh, I am fine with food working as sort of timer. This means you need to plan around it (also makes some spells in certain systems more useful than they usually are in cRPGs) and can't abuse some sort of "sleep to full health" mechanics.

 

[Roguey]

Cain calling out Safesidian, yet he contributed to it with The Outer Worlds.

Also giving praise to Scorpia and Desslock for saying what was on their minds even if it hurt feelings.

He mentions that some people were seething about missing out on Outer Worlds discussions because they couldn't handle being yelled at or yelling back. A submissive gay man saying young millennial/zoomer devs are a bunch of pussies.

 

[Jaesun]

he just listed the reasons codex been shitting on commiefornian devs for the last...probably 15+ years but called it "caution", well played Tim.

Exactly! It was at least amusing he even brought that topic up.

Welcome to 15 years ago Tim! Glad you could join us.

 

[Diggfinger]

Cain calling out Safesidian, yet he contributed to it with The Outer Worlds.

Also giving praise to Scorpia and Desslock for saying what was on their minds even if it hurt feelings.

He mentions that some people were seething about missing out on Outer Worlds discussions because they couldn't handle being yelled at or yelling back. A submissive gay man saying young millennial/zoomer devs are a bunch of pussies.

Ahhh, Scorpia

Pissed off JVC too after she gave Might and Magic II a harsh review (mostly based on the end-game timed puzzle).


I named a character in my book after her

 

[Riddler]

It's definitely caution when programmers pad their schedules by several thousand percent. It's not gross incompetence and laziness.

Hand on the heart: who here does more than 10-15 minutes of real work a day?

 

[Cohesion]

Cain calling out Safesidian, yet he contributed to it with The Outer Worlds.

Also giving praise to Scorpia and Desslock for saying what was on their minds even if it hurt feelings.

He mentions that some people were seething about missing out on Outer Worlds discussions because they couldn't handle being yelled at or yelling back. A submissive gay man saying young millennial/zoomer devs are a bunch of pussies.

Ahhh, Scorpia

Pissed off JVC too after she gave Might and Magic II a harsh review (mostly based on the end-game timed puzzle).


I named a character in my book after her

Video game journalists then.

Scorpia was named after a video game journalist who gave a negative review of Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World.

Video game "journalists" now.

What is your book about by the way ?

 

[Infinitron]

FYI, here's my thread from 2016 about Scorpia: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/scorpia-and-baldurs-gate-a-discussion-from-2006.109632/

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I talk about game development caution and how it seems to be affecting newer games.

He asked the programmers to add a simple aggro mechanic that takes 45 minutes to implement (a map of actors who inflicted damage and how much damage), the programmers gave him an estimate of 4 weeks, refused to elaborate. He said okay I'll write it myself, they forbade it. Obsidian programmers in a nutshell.

 

[Alienman]

Kinda getting the feeling that games are not supposed to have these giant teams. It's not movie-making, it just seems to make stuff more difficult.