Random Gaming Thoughts

[Stark]

It also can't be helped what a thing in the industry is called. We do things like that all the time, because it means less manpower on something to make it look and play close to final. There's no menus shown, you don't know if the structure of the game is place or that the narrative flows right. In other words, you have no idea how much work is left on that game based on the trailer.

[Damm64]

Yes vertical slice it is a thing. Looking at the trailer you can easy say that is far more advanced than "pre alpha" like stated in the video. Alpha are early stages, basic deveploment.

Pre alpha footage should look something like this in the trailer you can crealy see they have, voice acting, animations, textures, good collision detection, combat, and so on. It should be beta where they are finishing the product and some other stages. They call it pre alpha because "it sound's cool" and better than "Video not representative of the final product" or "Game could change when it launches".

This and and people calling the remaster's remake's are pet peeves of mine.

[MrPopo]

That's not the proper definition of alpha.

[Damm64]

Well tell me then

RGT: Kid icarus on the 3DS is awesome but my hand barely can play a hour of the game.

[Exhuminator]

This made my morning:

Playism is publishing Japanese indie studio Yamiuchi Project’s first-person dungeon crawler Dungeons & Darkness for PC. It’ll be out in Japan soon but will be heading to the west afterwards. It’s described as a “love letter to classic dungeon crawlers,” with Playism namedropping the likes of King’s Field and Ultima Underworld.

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/08/05/du ... ding-west/

[Ack]

This made my morning:

Playism is publishing Japanese indie studio Yamiuchi Project’s first-person dungeon crawler Dungeons & Darkness for PC. It’ll be out in Japan soon but will be heading to the west afterwards. It’s described as a “love letter to classic dungeon crawlers,” with Playism namedropping the likes of King’s Field and Ultima Underworld.

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/08/05/du ... ding-west/

Looks pretty cool to me.

[Stark]

Yes vertical slice it is a thing. Looking at the trailer you can easy say that is far more advanced than "pre alpha" like stated in the video. Alpha are early stages, basic deveploment.

Alpha means that it is feature complete and you're doing level design, texture work, animation work, bug fix, and other polish. In that trailer they show Faith being able to shoot glass and burst through it. What if that feature gets cut? Or they add more to that feature?

Again, you can't base it on how "finished" it looks. That's the point of a vertical slice. They take a section of the game that they think is close to what will represent the final game and they spend a bunch of time polishing it up for a demo. You just don't know what the state of the rest of the game is based on that demo.

[Damm64]

Alpha means that it is feature complete and you're doing level design, texture work, animation work, bug fix, and other polish.

Oh, good to know. The line in the video is not so wrong after all.

[Snatch1414]

So I have a Retron 5 now. My one request for my birthday from the girlfriend since I wanted a nice all in one option for another room of the house besides my basement where the real stuff lurks. After about an hour of messing around:

+ The HD upscaling is a great feature built in. A catch all solution for recording footage of these consoles, and obviously a solution to playing on a modern TV.

+ The filters are handy to tone down the upscaling and tune it how you want.

+ Save states. I guess I'm just not hardcore any more but I'd say it's probably a good thing I don't play the first 6 levels of Castlevania III over again for the millionth time before getting stuck.

+ The sheer options. I was surprised these even had their own OS. You can adjust a lot of things and although the options themselves are pretty basic, it's a great addition.

+ Using whatever controller you want is cool (you can use a Genesis 6-button or SNES controller on an NES game for example). Plus you can assign extra random controllers if you want to play a 4 player game.

+ The emulation is up to par in my opinion.

- Controller ports on the front and moving the GBA slot somewhere else would've been nice if it was possible.

- This will never be a catch all solution. Thankfully I have a Power Base Converter for Master System games, but most people won't. Plus, any CD-based stuff ain't happening obviously. That's a big chunk of games though.

- I couldn't get it to play my precious Chinese multicarts for the Famicom. It recognizes them and puts up a white screen but won't load them. Surprised actually, and disappointed.

- The included wireless controller is actually worse than I thought. Just ignore it at all costs.

- The HD looks a little TOO good a lot of the time, and the filters aren't strong enough in my opinion. I couldn't get anywhere close to the look I wanted. Maybe simply cutting down the brightness would help, or maybe I'm just not used to seeing the pixels that big on these games. Super Castlevania IV looks like a completely different game to me.

- The emulation is really good like I said but not perfect. The difference in sound is negligible and usually not an issue at all. As far as graphics though, Contra Hard Corps had noticeable tearing during one of the early boss fights and the original Castlevania had an odd white block that flickered on my character at one point.

Well, that's my first impressions of it.

[ExedExes]

A new Retron 5 fan! Does yours have the plastic controller port caps? That means it's the 2nd version which is overall better in terms of build quality.

Be sure to check out the Retron 5 thread for further thoughts/discussions.