this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
656 points (98.7% liked)

Greentext

3900 readers
1448 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 71 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Fun fact. The original sound file for "SEGA" that played right before you started some of the original Genesis titles was larger than the games themselves.

Looks like we're returning to tradition.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For me, that is a very fun fact. I can hear that "SEGA" in my head. Now it seems obvious, but little kid me didn't understand why we had such amazing graphics and sound, but so few spoken words.

The video game goddesses "sega" and the dude gods "rise from the grave" are probably the earliest I remember.

"Finish Him" from Mortal Kombat was also genesis no? "Round 1, FIGHT!" I think was street fighter, but for me at least sf2 on SNES was my intro to that series..

Anywhoots I'm less mad now about balders gate 3 asking me to pick a voice for my character that it (so far, for me) uses for literally none of the dialog options.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Earliest voice I can remember in a game was BLADES OF STEEL on the NES.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Mine was SKI OR DIE, and young me was very impressed. If anything, I might actually be more impressed now by the ingenuity in tricking chiptune technology into sounding plausibly like a human voice!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The NES actually did have a 7-bit PCM audio channel, there wasn't really any "tricking" beyond finding the storage capacity to hold a sample of useful size.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Okay, more I'm legitimately interested. All this time I'd assumed that the voice was a clever manipulation of the chiptune tech to make it sound like a human being. But it was actually just a dramatically compressed audio clip? That might be even more impressive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Some technical details then, if you're interested!

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/APU#DMC_($4010%E2%80%93$4013)

The most important point for getting "higher" quality audio from it is probably this:

The $4011 register can be used to play PCM samples directly by setting the counter value at a high frequency. Because this requires intensive use of the CPU, when used in games all other gameplay is usually halted to facilitate this.

Which is why you generally only heard it on title screens. Usage in games was much rarer, and usually much shorter samples.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Had a DOS game (which was a port of something even older) that started with a "BARBARIAN!". Had the worst control scheme I'll ever see. Function keys for fuck's sake.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

To be fair we had no idea how to pronounce it before that.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

If on PC, you can usually remove the abundant startup logo videos by finding the relevant video files in the install directory and either renaming them or deleting them. Just make sure if it's a steam game you disable the automatic update for it or it'll just redownload them.

For some games you can even just add -skipintro to the launch parameters.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

First website I go to before booting up a game: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Absolute GOAT for finding fixes or workarounds to nearly everything these days. If I have an issue not mentioned on it, I know I'm fucked because it's probably a rare issue. lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Thanks for this. I like to be able to hop into games and save/quit at will. I have five minutes to play, I load the game, play for 4 minutes, save, quit, move on to whatever I have to get done next.

Works for single player stuff mostly, anything event/match based (TF2/CS2/fortnite/whatever) this doesn't work super good unless the match timer is less than the time I have free.

There's a good number of games that I have to intentionally make time to play, because I'm not waiting through 3-4 minutes of bullshit to play for 10 minutes. It's just not going to happen.

So by eliminating the title screen/splash screen garbage, I might be able to have a quick session of game between tasks.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's not just "press a button" either, for some reason you have to hold it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

For immersion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

At least they are finally putting the option to remove this hold thing, but it's somehow in the accessibility area?

[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 days ago (2 children)

press any key to proceed to the main menu

WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SHOW IT???

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago

blame Nintendo and Microsoft, you have to do that to be certified for their platforms.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Actually, this isn't the worst idea. It can be hard to tell what kind of input device the player's using, especially on PC. Are you using kb+m, xbox controller, psx controller, generic bargain bin controller, etc? Also you can't just assume that because a controller's connected the player is going to use it (and lots of games do... much to my dismay since they make me go disconnect the controller). Once the player presses at least one button you can tailor all the inputs to that thing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Newer games simply switch active input devices on the fly by using the input scheme of the last pressed button. For example, if you're using WASD but then press A on an Xbox controller, the engine automatically and quickly switches to that input

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

And you couldn't do that by just interacting the the menu itself? Come on mate, plenty of games switch it on the fly.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

But the player will press some button or will use their mouse in the menu anyway.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 3 days ago (9 children)

Whoever decided that "hold to interact" was to be the new default needs shot.

It works when building tension, or even for showing a character putting effort into an action, but when I need to hold a fucking button for 5 seconds just to have random junk magically teleported into my pockets, it kills my want to interact with the world.

Fuck you, David Cage. I don't think you're the progenitor, but you certainly abuse the shit out of it as a mechanic, and your reign of terror shoulda ended with Indigo Prophecy.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i also don’t love the new default of unskippable animations for trivial things. no, i don’t want to see the same animation every time i go to pick up a plant, craft an item, skin an animal, etc. i’m going to skip the activities if i can’t skip the animations.

i have a similar disdain for inventory/shop menus that don’t let you sell/move/craft things in bulk

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I specifically downloaded a mod to have nicer cigarette smoking animation on Stalker. I want that immersion of smoking one after getting assraped by fucking cats

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R fans are a strange breed. You either bull through it and walk away with a "Okay time, never going to boot it up again", or you're 2 hours deep and already halfway through the bottle of vodka, chewing on hard bread, and singing along with the NPCs.

We live and die by the Zone.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

I like the Borderlands approach where clicking interact would put it in your inventory, holding interact would either equip the item if it was equippable, or else pick up all the pickups around you if it wasn't.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 days ago (2 children)

also, get flashbanged by the extremely bright white logo screen on a dark game at night

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Oh, oh, and: the volume setting for background music only applies once you load into a level so you get blasted with loud music while you wait.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

A movie with extra steps.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What pisses me off for the most part is that you first load the intro video, then you skip that and is just taken to a static screen where you click/press enter to continue, then it has to login so you wait again.

Why can't the game logon while the videos are playing?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago

Multithreading will be covered in Game Development 201.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (2 children)

PCGamingWiki is a great resource that includes instructions on skipping intro videos for every game that it's possible to do it with.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Love to spend $70 on a game and then spend another thirty minutes to an hour learning how to hotwire it to start in a timely manner.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

There's your problem, you're buying new games!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

But think of the time saved! Only need to launch it 30-60 times for that payoff.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 days ago

Why don’t games have playable credits?

Let me play the tutorial and show the obligatory Unreal and whatever logos during it like in the movies

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I've stopped buying EA games when they turned Battlefield 2 into a pay-to-win game back in the mid-2000's. But I remember distinctly how bad EA was with those stupid unskippable splash screens. My guess is that they've never improved, from what I can see. What's the point of those anyway, other than annoy your players and make them hate your company?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I've stopped buying EA games when they turned Battlefield 2 into a pay-to-win game

Battlefield Play-for-Free. Horribly cut down and butchered version of a great game.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"You're finally awake"

Legit one of the best games every though

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You were crossing the border, right?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

"Border? I was supposed to be on a boat headed to Vvardenfell!"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Interesting dog whistle...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Every time I want to play Lego DC Super Villains I have to go through this intro which lasts an entire minute. Unskippable, by the way. That game is awesome, but that intro is only worth watching it on the first time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Lego_DC_Super-Villains#cite_note-Note1-10

This is a simple mod that doesn't add anything new to the game, but instead makes some small 'quality-of-life' changes to things already present in-game, making the experience slightly different and hopefully more enjoyable and/or immersive. No new models/textures/effects are applied by this mod, only a few script changes to the base game.

· Fast Boot- Makes the startup screen and cutscene (LEGO,DC,Tt logos) faster and skippable, respectively.
· Rush Start - Some unskippable cutscenes can now be skipped (e.g.: can skip level 0 cutscene and jump right into character creator)
· More Characters- Unlocks "hidden" unobtainable character and animal.
· More Vehicles- Unlocks every "hidden" unobtainable vehicle and turret.
· No Bad Words - Custom characters are allowed to be named anything, all 'bad words' have been removed.
· Kill Everything - Civilians, Babies and animals can now be killed, they can even fight back when attacked.
· Bigfig Ride- Allows Bigfigs to use vehicles and ride animals
· Grabs Extended- Allows to use Grab moves and executions on followers (or other player) and civilians. Cannot be performed on all characters.
· Faster Credits - End credits scroll much faster and are forced to finish 156 seconds in, instead of 900 seconds (15 min), ensuring only one playback of the "I fought the law" song. Credits can still be skipped at any time.
· Customizing+ (experimental and buggy) - Custom characters can now use more than one body attachment part at once and with every hair, without limits.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

This mod is useful, but I can't use it. I only play this game on the Nintendo Switch, and I won't mod it due to damage concerns.

load more comments
view more: next ›