Quoting: scaineThere's no way that TheSheeeep could defend the appalling, muddy, messy graphics of something like Teleglitch (despite its fun gameplay),

While I personally don't like the Teleglitch style, either, from screenshots and gameplay videos, the style seems to be very consistently done and applied throughout the game - nothing seems unfitting or out of place at a first glance.
So I would still say its graphics are well done - if I (or anyone else) personally enjoy them or not doesn't matter in judging their quality.

Don't know if telling different zombie types apart is even relevant in a game like that (it sure wasn't in good old Alien Shooter) - if it was important, then yeah, you would be right about it.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: TcheyToo many games release in Early Access way too soon in their life.

I don't understand this statement. Isn't the whole point of early access for developers to charge customers for the dubious privilege of beta testing their broken and unfinished games with no guarantee that it will ever reach a finished state? There's a reason I stay far away from any game with the "early access" tag.

Early access, just like anything else, can be done right or done wrong.

A game that is mostly finished, but just needs some more months in the oven for bugfixes, balancing and "polish", would be done right.
As would be a game like RimWorld or Rise To Ruins, where even the unfinished state is actually very polished and fun already and just grows from there.

A game like this, however, in a barely even playable state with tons of bugs, myriads of missing features and mostly incapable of delivering its own core gameplay - well, that is definitely done wrong.
They should have done a closed alpha or something like that instead.

Funny enough, I think the game would have had a better chance (still small, but nvm) if it had been kept in the oven until now and then announced and released in early access during the whole Warcraft 3: Refunded desaster. Not that that was foreseeable, but it should have been kept in the oven longer anyway.

You aren't wrong that many developers simply use early access completely wrong and due to that it is always a good idea to be very careful around early access titles.

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At some point, maybe, developers will realize that classic RTS development with a multiplayer focus just doesn't make sense.
For single player, sure, more than enough successful enough single-player RTS titles out there.

But multiplayer-classic-RTS is a dead genre, with a handful of (old) titles holding the players that are left captive. And those old titles are so well polished by now that any new challenger can only fail. Especially if it is in such a rough state as this one was on early access release.

I was looking forward to playing this game, actually. The campaign, that is.
Too bad it won't happen.

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To be honest, this wasn't the first thing that came to my mind with a game with "dongers" in the title...

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Quoting: Acrophobic

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI always look at Rust and think "I can do all of this in C++ and have a larger wealth of libraries available - and most importantly I can code however I want, without being forced into some styles and restrictions to *keep me safe*.".

IMHO the "keep me safe" part is what make language like Rust and Go really popular.

I could see that for starting out with programming.
But as someone who has been doing C++ for a long time, I can code in it, shoot myself in the foot, find the bug and fix it - all of that faster and in my own way than if I'd have to subject myself to restrictions I really don't agree with.

I don't know too much about Go, but I think it is very different from C++ on many levels, and from that follows different areas of usage.
While Rust is actually very similar to C++ in all but a few key points. And thus both fulfill pretty much the same roles and areas of usage.

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Quoting: PatolaIt's not a method to lull our brain to sleep. Is to make things believable. Ever heard of suspension of disbelief?

Absolutely.
And there is absolutely no problem in suspending my disbelief if the graphics are consistent and well implemented. If they are realistic or not is rather irrelevant.
Because I'm actually using my imagination. Not actively, mind you, like most things mind-related, it happens "in the background".

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf you want to lull your brain to sleep with AAA graphics - because that is exactly what happens, your brain got nothing to do there as it doesn't need to fill any blanks, the more realistic the graphics get - well, that's your choice.

So, making the brain tired with artificial, non-believable graphics is something you enjoy? Curious. I'd think they get in the way of enjoyment, not somehow improve it.

You're not painting a very optimistic picture of your brain if a bit of imagination is already tiring it.
The brain is like a muscle, excercise it. It is not too late (assuming you are not 60-70+ and the cells are actually decaying).

I continually use it from working to learning a language to playing games that require actual thought and imagination - and I'm not having tiredness problems with any of it.
Of course I rest it, too. Rest is important. I usually do it before going to bed, helps with sleeping.

Quoting: Patolabecause you are not even first-person (except for Hardcore Henry, a truly amazing flick).

I see a pattern forming here.
First person makes immersion a lot easier, no doubt about it.
But it isn't the only thing allowing it, it can be done with pretty much any perspective.

Though I do agree that was maybe not the best example. Series and movies are almost exclusive watching someone else do stuff, you are not the protagonist.

Quoting: PatolaSimple graphics .... They instead offer you a simplified, flat version of what you would be supposedly interacting with -- a token of an entity, and not by any means an attempt at a convincing exposition.

Exactly. And everything they do not show you, every thing lacking to complete the "picture" and form a non-flat version of what you are seeing, all of that is done by your imagination.

Quoting: PatolaAt no time you have to really imagine something, but if you really had -- like in those games made for blind people, with sounds alone, where you have to use the imagination all the time -- it would likely be a bad, tiresome game, at some point you would really demand to see the monster, or whatever that is it should offer.

So you acknowledge that your brain goes active if it is presented with a lack of information.
Good, that is correct. That's how brains work, filling the gaps and completing patterns is what we're really good at. Especially if trained correctly.
But retro graphics are full of a lack of information. The only difference between something like an audio-only game and something with a simple graphical style is the amount of information lacking.
Your brain doesn't care, it becomes active either way, the only difference is in how active it has to become.

You don't have to take my word for it. I would seriously recommend reading some books about how brains work, or at least what we know so far.
We got recommended these two in a completely random course at my "vocational school" (not sure what the correct translation would be) years ago, or at least older printing of these:
https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Mind-How-Brain-Works/dp/0393974464 [External Link]
https://www.amazon.com/Imagination-Understanding-Minds-Greatest-Power/dp/1643132032 [External Link]

Though I didn't finish the latter, to be honest, it was a bit "out there" with its excourses into psychology.
Edit: The latter one says it was released in 2019. Uhm... I'm either mixing it up with another one with a similar name or they got the dates wrong.

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I think it is fair to say that in general, the majority of games are not well done.
No matter what industry or kind of skill you talk about, people who are truly good at what they do, the top of the class if you will, are in the minority. Thus, it is only natural that the majority of products in any sector is not good - while the few that are good crystallize and become apparent over time.

The thing is just that there are a lot more indie than AAA games, and with that naturally also comes a larger number of good indie games compared to very few good AAA games.

AAA games have the advantage of being shiny on the surface level - and many players rarely look further than the surface when it comes to games.

I'd compare it to cinema - are all the movies that are most successful also the best movies? Certainly not.
They are just good popcorn cinema. Won't demand much from your audience, will show quite a spectacle on the screen, people leave with a good feeling (well, if the movie wasn't downright terrible) while not really being richer in any meaningful way and having no thought provoked.
Truly great movies rarely achieve a high level of success, even though some certainly do, often over time.

I don't think there's anything wrong with popcorn cinema, and I'm definitely mostly a popcorn cinema viewer.
My standards when it comes to cinema or movies in general are a lot lower than when it comes to games.
But I'd never even get the idea of saying that large scale cinema movies are better than their lower-budget counterparts in any way other than surface-level bling.
Quite the opposite, actually. In true artistic value, not a single movie by Marvel comes close to anything put out by Von Trier, for example. I watched Antichrist once and it still finds its way into my thoughts every now and then - that sure won't happen with a Marvel movie.

It is very, very similar with gaming.
Just that indie games are a lot easier to access and consume than indie movies and therefore can find a potential audience more easily.

Quoting: BeamboomIt's also quite symptomatic that an indie game does some parts well, but are very weak on others. A direct consequence of being so few on the project.

The parts that indie games do well are the parts most important to any game, those related to gameplay, to whatever the core of the game is.

The parts that they don't usually do well in are art and, to some degree, audio. And I'm not talking about high-end effects or models here, those have nothing to do with art quality. What's important about quality game art is its consistency and (usually) variance. That's where many indies fail to various degrees, and not always because of budget.

Just to make it clear, I'm talking about good indie games here; that bad ones fail at what they do is kind of a given.

AAA on the other hand focuses on high-end art and audio - because that's what will rake the cash in big time, with the casual audience. While gameplay, if things went well, is serviceable at best. Which is kind of funny, because great gameplay can be achieved by very few people and is thus actually much cheaper than high-end art which requires lots of manpower.
A AAA game that is also truly good or even great in gameplay and not just a boring rehash of things devoid of challenge and creativity?
Dark Souls comes to mind. I'm struggling to name more.

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Quoting: Geppeto35aaah Rust... recoding everything in Rust, the hobby of the moment in the linux community (after redocing in ruby, in python, ...) XD

Not only Linux. I always look at Rust and think "I can do all of this in C++ and have a larger wealth of libraries available - and most importantly I can code however I want, without being forced into some styles and restrictions to *keep me safe*.".

Though I do get that after many years of C++, you definitely wanna do something else - for me that became Python/GDscript and JS, somehow.
Backend development and game dev as a hobby take you in funny directions.

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Huh. So I always pronounced their name wrong.
The more you know.

Also, funded in under a day.
But they deserve it, while I didn't personally like their last game too much, they are just very reliable devs and still release patches for their older games.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: TheSHEEEPOf which you did not counter a single point, so I am most likely simply right about you.

Again an assumption. You are really eager at judging others, aren't you.

An assumption in a sentence with "most likely"? Why yes, yes it is!
And one you continue to reinforce by evading all points made.
I am not one of those people who pretend judging others would be something bad. All of us judge everyone else (and ourselves) all the time, we do it since we walk around on this dirt heap. I'm merely as open about that as I am about anything else and do not care for initial handshaking to get a discussion started.

Quoting: BeamboomThe problem is your attitude, it's not one I care to spend time on. Be a bit more inviting and not so full of attitude and you may establish an interesting conversation. I don't have a single thing against people with different perception on things than me. But I do have a thing against people that respond like you.

I have no interest in being inviting. My interest lies in speaking my mostly unfiltered mind and receiving an equal response.
Take it or leave it, but know that leaving it will only reinforce my "assumptions" about you - not that I could give you any real reason why you should even care about what a random online person thinks about you.

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