Screenshot thread

[yellowcake]

I'm doing a checkup on my old boxes. This is P3 1266/Geforce4/Win2k. I put first gen Audigy I found in the drawer in it instead of Live! to check it out. This game is DX7 AFAIR (Q3 engine). I swear to god that HRTF positional audio on stereo speakers is better than in modern games.

Seven of nine slouching over control panels

my team

a chat before mission

alien stuff

doc gives me checkup after mission

while lieutenant Paris is hitting on my female teammate

siccbay!

 

[baud]

How are the controls? I've read it's a bad port.

With KB+mouse, the control feel a little rigid, but it's way more smooth with a gamepad. You can remap the KB+mouse controls (but not the gamepad), but I didn't do it during the hour I played before plugging my PS3 controller: the defaults are fine and it's not as if there's a lot of keys.
Since it's a port of the PS3 version, the graphical level is higher that the PS2 original.

And on my 7 year old laptop I had to lower the quality to low before it ran smoothly.

 

[Citizen]

:nice:

 

[Maggot]

 

[DJOGamer PT]

My main problem with Opus magnum was that programming part was very limited and tedious and that it was unconstrained enough to make it relatively easy to finally arrive at a decent solution just by throwing enough oscillating arms (or code) at the problem.

Sure but the point of the puzzles aren't for them to be so hard that you have to spent a lot of time and thought in figuring out a working solution.
You are meant to keep replaying them until you finally get that extremely efficient and "harmonious" solution that scores very high.

 

[HansDampf]

My main problem with Opus magnum was that programming part was very limited and tedious and that it was unconstrained enough to make it relatively easy to finally arrive at a decent solution just by throwing enough oscillating arms (or code) at the problem.

Sure but the point of the puzzles aren't for them to be so hard that you have to spent a lot of time and thought in figuring out a working solution.

I'd rather spend time thinking than on tedious coding.

You are meant to keep replaying them until you finally get that extremely efficient and "harmonious" solution that scores very high.

Good scores are also easy to accomplish in most puzzles. All you need to do is grab the inputs as fast as possible (there is a hard limit) and build an engine that doesn't break down under the workload. Since you can always throw more arms at the problem, like DraQ said, it's not that hard, only tedious. It only gets challenging once you approach the lower limit, and if you are really eager to squeeze out the last 1 or 2 remaining cycles.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

The best roadtrip with the boiz simulator for whatever that's worth

Don't judge foreign habits
















Boring game overall with time wasting animations, easy real time combat, the story is out of place with your country getting conquered 30min in but you somehow find time to pet chocobos and take pictures, it has some endearing charm to it but not much else, worth a try if curious.
Bonus Chocobo:

Spoiler

 

[DraQ]

My main problem with Opus magnum was that programming part was very limited and tedious and that it was unconstrained enough to make it relatively easy to finally arrive at a decent solution just by throwing enough oscillating arms (or code) at the problem.

Sure but the point of the puzzles aren't for them to be so hard that you have to spent a lot of time and thought in figuring out a working solution.

I'd rather spend time thinking than on tedious coding.

You are meant to keep replaying them until you finally get that extremely efficient and "harmonious" solution that scores very high.

Good scores are also easy to accomplish in most puzzles. All you need to do is grab the inputs as fast as possible (there is a hard limit) and build an engine that doesn't break down under the workload. Since you can always throw more arms at the problem, like DraQ said, it's not that hard, only tedious. It only gets challenging once you approach the lower limit, and if you are really eager to squeeze out the last 1 or 2 remaining cycles.

Pictured: The exact kind of solution I hate:

What I really miss is some aggregated complexity score - accounting for both the number and complexity of moving parts (arm pivots, telescopes, linear track segments) and the complexity of code. That would be a fun score to minimize and should yield fairly "realistic" looking steampunky engines.

Optimizing for speed usually just means a huge number of arms waving back and forth, optimizing for cost or area a minimum number of components (usually a single arm, possibly telescoping or tracked) performing a hideously long program (most of which is contortionist dance to pack intermediates closely if optimizing for area). Don't get me wrong, this can be impressive, but it's the same kind of impressive as watching someone take a shit, wipe their ass and flush - all with the lid closed over them (without getting wet or dirty) - roughly one third genuine admiration, one third sympathy and one third morbid fascination.

 

[Viata]

Started Opus Magnum. What a fun game, just did the tutorial and the Stabilized Water thing. Does someone knows how the best score works? Is it cycle based?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Is it cycle based?

Well, there are 3 different scores, one of them being the cycles.

By the way, apparently the best solution to that level is like 15 cycles.

My solutions are usually cheap, because I rarely can keep track of a lot of arms. Optimizing for cycles is probably the most autistic one. And I wish I could do it.

Since you can always throw more arms at the problem, like DraQ said, it's not that hard, only tedious.

Well yeah, but as he said, it's not necessarily only about completing a level, but also going back and trying to get a better place on the histogram. And just dropping a ton of arms in can only help with the cycles.
But most likely there's always gonna be some assholes you can't beat so well, maybe it's not worth it in the end.

 

[Viata]

Is it cycle based?

Well, there are 3 different scores, one of them being the cycles.

By the way, apparently the best solution to that level is like 15 cycles.

My solutions are usually cheap, because I rarely can keep track of a lot of arms. Optimizing for cycles is probably the most autistic one. And I wish I could do it.

Since you can always throw more arms at the problem, like DraQ said, it's not that hard, only tedious.

Well yeah, but as he said, it's not necessarily only about completing a level, but also going back and trying to get a better place on the histogram. And just dropping a ton of arms in can only help with the cycles.
But most likely there's always gonna be some assholes you can't beat so well, maybe it's not worth it in the end.

Thank you. I will first finish the game before I go full autism in low cycles, because the more complex stuffs you do, you can think of better ways of solving simple ones.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Well, since we're posting GIFs, here's one from Exapunks:

Spoiler

Beautiful isn't it?
Well, fucking no, because I think it's 1 fucking cycle short of the best solution and I can't imagine how to get that one.

 

[Viata]

I just downloaded exapunks, still have to read the tutorial to learn it. I'm really loving their games.

 

[Viata]

Damn, getting the record on first try is such a great feeling:

 

[octavius]

Fall and Rise of the Sharai for HoMM 3.

 

[DraQ]

Damn, getting the record on first try is such a great feeling:

That's just your best score.
For instance:

Well, there are 3 different scores, one of them being the cycles.

By the way, apparently the best solution to that level is like 15 cycles.

The fuck? I can only go down to 17 and it looks like maximum rate:

Smol, more normal solution:

 

[FeelTheRads]

The fuck? I can only go down to 17 and it looks like maximum rate:

Spoiler

Apparently that's the hard limit.

 

[Viata]

I see. I didn't know that. Thank you!
So there are 3 different limits: least area, least cycles and least costs, right?

 

[FeelTheRads]

I see. I didn't know that. Thank you!
So there are 3 different limits: least area, least cycles and least costs, right?

Yes. The histograms show how you did compared to the rest of the people playing.
If you're on the highest bar, it just means you're average.

 

[DraQ]

The fuck? I can only go down to 17 and it looks like maximum rate:

Spoiler

Apparently that's the hard limit.

The first one is actually nice (it also has glitchy gif, I will need to replicate it and look in game). The second is a bit kludgy.

 

[HansDampf]

Opus Magnum is really great for the first half of the campaign. But after chapter 2 you've seen almost everything. There are no surprises except for the bonus chapter at the end. It's probably a good way to get into the genre. But coming from SpaceChem it's a mechanical downgrade. Too bad that game looks like ass in comparison.

Speaking of which

Spoiler

 

[Alienman]

It's like watching "how does it work" on discovery.

 

[Viata]

I like how the process of developing this things goes. First you spend some time thinking how to solve it:

It's the usual "it's ugly, slow, but works". Then you starts to think that you can optimize this shit(you are an engineer and the maintenance of this ugly shit may kills you) and you start to see you could remove some cycles and getting something a lit bit faster:

Now you start thinking that maybe you can decrease the cost of it:

While this pleases you, it doesn't look as ugly as the last version, but it is slower. And everyone hates when a new update makes the game slower. Now, it would be greater if you could keep this cost, but slow down the cycles. Thankfully, the market creates cheaper arm that can be used:

Thus we got to the second version, but cheaper. While this is far from the best model, I think this it the best I can get without changing the whole model. But in that case, it's better to start it over than trying to remove things here and there from this model. And that is why I may suffer from autism and why this is a fun game.

 

[DraQ]

I usually try to make the solution (both the code and mechanism) as simple as possible, and also involve spinny things (rotors give opportunity to "wind" some shapes plus they sometimes allow omitting reset phase - and they look cooler).

Here I have manage to sperg some cost and area (just area would be easy with telescoping arms) out of cycle optimized stabilized water without dropping speed.
In before someone puts all those arms on 1-2 super-tight looping tracks without losing speed for maximum autism - I tried but for some reason kept fucking up the code.

I thought I had a genius idea to drop one of the arms and a bit of track, but it turned out you really need to be dead-center on glyph for it to work, almost dead-center doesn't count.