Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Roguey]

Tim says videos about coding are both the most requested and least watched of his videos (unsurprising)

You may end up with you know the person who made crafting loved crafting so much that all the best items come from
crafting and so now there's really no reason to ever use a dropped weapon or a quest reward weapon because the best weapons all are made with crafting.

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

I'm also somewhat confident that in Arcanum the best tech weapons were things you had to craft yourself, which made sense.

I've seen someone suggest a feature that was bad and when it got shot down he said "You guys never let me put in any of my ideas, I haven't had an idea put in this game for months," and then out of this misguided sense of fairness this bad feature is put in because you feel bad for the person and you want to be fair. I've done this, I've actually let features go into my games that I didn't really like but I realized that the person who was suggesting it hadn't had an idea going in the game at all.

Sounds very Arcanum. "You have your qualities, but providing ideas for this particular game isn't one of them" seems the thing to say.

In committee-made games I often see the vision as this generic "well it's kind of a fantasy game and we go around and do
fantasy quests and get money and treasure and we go up and we get new abilities and then we beat up more fantasy monsters." Okay, I've seen those games in development. Yikes. There's really just no strong vision there because it's being made by a whole bunch of people.

Cain throwing some subtle shade at Pillars of Eternity which was absolutely designed by committee (even stapling three different pitches together for its story).

 

[Viata]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

Just make the reward either be a weapon or some item for the crafting of a superior weapon. So either the player already get something to use or a part of something that he will build later on. There is no "farming for that part" as you can only get it from that quest and after you made your choice, that is it.

 

[NecroLord]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

Why, yes, I enjoy crafting and using the Pyrotechnic Axe in Arcanum, how can you tell?

 

[scytheavatar]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

That is why crafting is a mistake and should not exist in CRPGs. The fundamental problem is that there are people who love the idea that all their best equipment are stuff they craft themselves, then there are those who hate the idea that the sword they get for killing a dragon is trash compared to what they can craft themselves. It is impossible to make both group of people happy. If you hide the best crafting items behind dragons then people will start to get angry that their rewards are hidden behind a crafting mechanic they don't want to engage in.

 

[ds]

Crafting can somewhat work for consumables. For equipment it should either be restricted to early-game low tech items (to fill in until you find a real weapon of the type you want) or to a low number of very powerful items with dedicated quests to make them. Having crafting compete with loot throughout the game is extremely shit.

 

[Roguey]

That is why crafting is a mistake and should not exist in CRPGs. The fundamental problem is that there are people who love the idea that all their best equipment are stuff they craft themselves, then there are those who hate the idea that the sword they get for killing a dragon is trash compared to what they can craft themselves. It is impossible to make both group of people happy. If you hide the best crafting items behind dragons then people will start to get angry that their rewards are hidden behind a crafting mechanic they don't want to engage in.

As Viata noted, one solution is to put the ultimate weapons in the game itself, but you can improve them even further (but not by too much, no turbo plasma rifle) with crafting.

 

[Daedalos]

Tim says videos about coding are both the most requested and least watched of his videos (unsurprising)

You may end up with you know the person who made crafting loved crafting so much that all the best items come from
crafting and so now there's really no reason to ever use a dropped weapon or a quest reward weapon because the best weapons all are made with crafting.

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

I'm also somewhat confident that in Arcanum the best tech weapons were things you had to craft yourself, which made sense.

I've seen someone suggest a feature that was bad and when it got shot down he said "You guys never let me put in any of my ideas, I haven't had an idea put in this game for months," and then out of this misguided sense of fairness this bad feature is put in because you feel bad for the person and you want to be fair. I've done this, I've actually let features go into my games that I didn't really like but I realized that the person who was suggesting it hadn't had an idea going in the game at all.

Sounds very Arcanum. "You have your qualities, but providing ideas for this particular game isn't one of them" seems the thing to say.

In committee-made games I often see the vision as this generic "well it's kind of a fantasy game and we go around and do
fantasy quests and get money and treasure and we go up and we get new abilities and then we beat up more fantasy monsters." Okay, I've seen those games in development. Yikes. There's really just no strong vision there because it's being made by a whole bunch of people.

Cain throwing some subtle shade at Pillars of Eternity which was absolutely designed by committee (even stapling three different pitches together for its story).

Depends on how you define "best"... crafting could introduce not maybe BETTER but alternative cool ways a weapon handles or alternative fires and shit. People not wanting to invest skillpoints into crafting will want some cool good gear anyway, so how do you satisfy both parties? Theres several ways to do that
People will always minmax and meta-game shit.
So having multiple "best" ways to get stuff, is desireable, because it opens up design space and playthroughs. Like I said, being a talker allows you to experience the game 1 way, being a crafter allows you to experience combat and weapons another specific but not always better way of killing shit than normal.

Kind of like traits and disadvantages I guess... go down this path fully? okay, u get some special stuff unlocked which is cool, but all ohter paths are blocked for you for another playthrough with another skillbuild. allows for alot of replayability and C&C

I absolutely would hate being shoehorned into skilling into "crafting" just because I need the best weapons in order to murderhobo in combat, that seems like restrictive and shit design
Tim talked about it alot before.
Maybe crafting doesnt MAKE the best weapons for you, but maybe makes the ammo, that is very rare, for the best gun / coolest gun in the game? shit like that is interesting

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

That is why crafting is a mistake and should not exist in CRPGs. The fundamental problem is that there are people who love the idea that all their best equipment are stuff they craft themselves, then there are those who hate the idea that the sword they get for killing a dragon is trash compared to what they can craft themselves. It is impossible to make both group of people happy. If you hide the best crafting items behind dragons then people will start to get angry that their rewards are hidden behind a crafting mechanic they don't want to engage in.

I dunno, I've seen this argument before, but I'm not sure how valid it is for most people. There have been games I've found the crafting system engaging, and crafted, and there have been games with crafting where the crafting system hasn't interested me. With the former, of course I wanted weapons with an edge for my efforts, but since these things were always in tiers, I was happy enough to find something better when the right time came; with the latter, I don't recall being insanely jealous of hypothetical unknown players out there who were getting super-duper weapons via crafting.

Like, e.g., it was very pleasurable to craft a sword that gave me an edge for a few levels, but if I found a better sword just as that edge was starting to wear off, it's not like I would stamp my little feet and have a hissy fit.

As with a lot of these balance questions re. games, to me they only matter (and really matter) in a PvP context, and they matter only loosely in a PvE context (i.e. things can't be stupidly OP or out of whack, but it's not like balance has to be autistically precise).

 

[StrongBelwas]

By Remake, he means it still plays like Arcanum, just changing some things it shipped with if he had more time and money.
Obviously, bug fixing, and balance skills/spells.
Wish Beauty did more, wish Harm wasn't a goto.
Understands they have been fixed in fan patches, would probably use fan patches and people's reaction to them as a guideline for balance goals. If something was done in a fan patch and people hated it, probably avoid it.
Run the game in higher resolution, make the UI fit more nicely, might make the UI more 'sleek and modern', pushing it to the corners. Maybe even hide elements of the UI when you don't need it, such as health bars when you out of combat.
Try and recover original art files (He doesn't have them) and rerender them at a higher res. Failing that, they can upscale them, which is still pretty decent nowadays. Doesn't want it to be pixelated at higher resolutions.
Remove multiplayer, only implemented because they had to, not really part of Arcanum. Allows them to remove a lot of code that would no longer be needed, code that operated under the assumption it couldn't be calculated locally can be cleaned up or removed.
Almost certainly would make the game turn based only. Now that's its turn based only, everything can be on the assumption of turn based instead of accounting for both real time and turn based.
Would implement some of the turn-based features of Temple of Elemental Evil, such as sequential movement for enemies and/or rapid movement.
Would implement procedurally generated ruins and caves on the world map. Would expand playtime without touching main quest or side quest.
Wanted roads to connect all the cities and villages, could not figure out how to get it working. Would be faster to travel along the roads, with separate encounter tables. You could meet more guards, but also more bandits because they target the caravan roads. Some exclusive monster encounters on road and off road. The roads were hard to generate on the world map and never quite looked right on the sector level. Would be cool to put in a remake.
Would restore option for single point per level, but multiple point would still be there.
Remove the level cap, was only there so you could be forced to make a new character and couldn't get everything on one playthrough. Knows people who like to play without a cap, would be trivial to remove it.
Put in a story hook for the idea of Arcanum 2 about Journey to the Center of Arcanum. Would add some NPCs and locations plus new dialogues that would just hint at what could be happening. Franklin Payne the explorer disappears before the end of the game, or you could go to his house and see him building his machine.
Would not touch storyline and dialogue outside of fixing bugs.

 

[NecroLord]

By Remake, he means it still plays like Arcanum, just changing some things it shipped with if he had more time and money.
Obviously, bug fixing, and balance skills/spells.
Wish Beauty did more, wish Harm wasn't a goto.
Understands they have been fixed in fan patches, would probably use fan patches and people's reaction to them as a guideline for balance goals. If something was done in a fan patch and people hated it, probably avoid it.
Run the game in higher resolution, make the UI fit more nicely, might make the UI more 'sleek and modern', pushing it to the corners. Maybe even hide elements of the UI when you don't need it, such as health bars when you out of combat.
Try and recover original art files (He doesn't have them) and rerender them at a higher res. Failing that, they can upscale them, which is still pretty decent nowadays. Doesn't want it to be pixelated at higher resolutions.
Remove multiplayer, only implemented because they had to, not really part of Arcanum. Allows them to remove a lot of code that would no longer be needed, code that operated under the assumption it couldn't be calculated locally can be cleaned up or removed.
Almost certainly would make the game turn based only. Now that's its turn based only, everything can be on the assumption of turn based instead of accounting for both real time and turn based.
Would implement some of the turn-based features of Temple of Elemental Evil, such as sequential movement for enemies and/or rapid movement.
Would implement procedurally generated ruins and caves on the world map. Would expand playtime without touching main quest or side quest.
Wanted roads to connect all the cities and villages, could not figure out how to get it working. Would be faster to travel along the roads, with separate encounter tables. You could meet more guards, but also more bandits because they target the caravan roads. Some exclusive monster encounters on road and off road. The roads were hard to generate on the world map and never quite looked right on the sector level. Would be cool to put in a remake.
Would restore option for single point per level, but multiple point would still be there.
Remove the level cap, was only there so you could be forced to make a new character and couldn't get everything on one playthrough. Knows people who like to play without a cap, would be trivial to remove it.
Put in a story hook for the idea of Arcanum 2 about Journey to the Center of Arcanum. Would add some NPCs and locations plus new dialogues that would just hint at what could be happening. Franklin Payne the explorer disappears before the end of the game, or you could go to his house and see him building his machine.
Would not touch storyline and dialogue outside of fixing bugs.

Expand playtime? I think the game already has just the right amount of content.
Harm is OP, scales with Magickal Aptitude. Beauty spell was pretty decent, as it increased Reaction and interactions with NPCs.
I'm wondering what he considers to be "the center of Arcanum"...

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Run the game in higher resolution

This is a terrible idea. Running older games in higher resolution gives you a helicopter view, or sometimes a view from Earth's orbit. What it needs is an integer scaling from 640*480 with a CRT shader, that's all.

Let me give it a try, 10 mins...

 

[Roguey]

Run the game in higher resolution

This is a terrible idea. Running older games in higher resolution gives you a helicopter view, or sometimes a view from Earth's orbit. What it needs is an integer scaling from 640*480 with a CRT shader, that's all.

Let me give it a try, 10 mins...

This is why he said he'd pair it with re-rendering the graphics at a higher resolution or upscaling them if the original assets are no longer available.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I can't believe it..! I mean, you... A 800*600 game...
And the 4k resolution...! And the CRT-crispness...!
And Tim Cain says...! Do you have any
idea how great it plays?

 

[agris]

ugh, the arcanum models always looked so ugly to me. like claymation or playdough was used as the target material representation

 

[Roguey]

ugh, the arcanum models always looked so ugly to me. like claymation or playdough was used as the target material representation

The same is also true for Fallout, but there it just works whereas Arcanum does not for reasons I can't quite articulate. I guess Arcanum looks too clean whereas Fallout's grittiness makes it more palatable.

 

[agris]

ugh, the arcanum models always looked so ugly to me. like claymation or playdough was used as the target material representation

The same is also true for Fallout, but there it just works whereas Arcanum does not for reasons I can't quite articulate. I guess Arcanum looks too clean whereas Fallout's grittiness makes it more palatable.

That’s Fallout 2’s models, yeah. Fallout 1’s have no such issue and look great.

 

[agris]

Roguey maybe it's been too long since you played, but all(?) the new models added in Fallout 2 have this doughy, plasticky look that none of the Fallout 1 models have.

pure speculation: the art pipeline changed for F2, spearheaded by Leonard, so that when he left for Troika the F2 team continued it. It's why the Arcanum models look the way they do as well, since he was effectively Troika's AD.

edit: while you'll have to zoom the page 2-3x to really see (much like how you should play the fallouts in low resolution), this sprite sheet really highlights it. especially starting with Fallout 2 sprites NFNICE and below. The gangsters, shi, Vic, Myron (i know), all those models look inferior when you're playing in something approaching the original resolution (960x540 for today's screens).

 

[NecroLord]

Roguey maybe it's been too long since you played, but all(?) the new models added in Fallout 2 have this doughy, plasticky look that none of the Fallout 1 models have.

pure speculation: the art pipeline changed for F2, spearheaded by Leonard, so that when he left for Troika the F2 team continued it. It's why the Arcanum models look the way they do as well, since he was effectively Troika's AD.

edit: while you'll have to zoom the page 2-3x to really see (much like how you should play the fallouts in low resolution), this sprite sheet really highlights it. especially starting with Fallout 2 sprites NFNICE and below. The gangsters, shi, Vic, Myron (i know), all those models look inferior when you're playing in something approaching the original resolution (960x540 for today's screens).

What are you talking about, my man?
They look just like the ones in Fallout.
If anything, Fallout 2 looks and plays a lot better.
Though it is not better as a game than Fallout.

 

[caffeine]

I can't believe it..! I mean, you... A 800*600 game...
And the 4k resolution...! And the CRT-crispness...!
And Tim Cain says...! Do you have any
idea how great it plays?

Text doesn't look good there. What shader do you use? It shouldn't display scanlines at that resolution. Also, it looks like there's some interlacing going on.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

What shader do you use? It shouldn't display scanlines at that resolution.

Hyllian. Why no scanlines?

 

[caffeine]

Hyllian. Why no scanlines?

Scanlines are more of a TV thing when displaying low-res content, I don't remember the technical explanation exactly but it had to do with filling out low-res 240p content on the screen. As far as I remember, PC CRTs didn't display scanlines, they work differently from TVs. Hyllian and most well known shaders are based on TVs. There are some shaders that change the way scanlines work past a certain resolution, others display them all the time.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Hyllian. Why no scanlines?

Scanlines are more of a TV thing when displaying low-res content, I don't remember the technical explanation exactly but it had to do with filling out low-res 240p content on the screen. As far as I remember, PC CRTs didn't display scanlines, they work differently from TVs. Hyllian and most well known shaders are based on TVs. There are some shaders that change the way scanlines work past a certain resolution, others display them all the time.

I may tune them down a little for higher res games.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah I used console emulators in the 90s and they had options for enabling scanlines and interpolation because playing one of these games on your monitor did not look the same as playing one on your tv, even if you were setting it to the original resolution.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about what I would add and change if I were to remake The Temple of Elemental Evil today.

 

[Jigby]

2:10 - not as many people were a fan of the radial menu, because you couldn't hotkey things. I'd add hotkeys

b-but... there were hotkeys. Or is this a temple+ thing? Sitra Achara