Idle Thumbs 249: Half-Take Special

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 249:

Half-Take Special

Today's the day. Today you can play all those games you've been eyeing but didn't feel you had the time. Unfortunately you only have a couple spare hours, and those games are XCOM 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and the goddamn Witness. This week we scratch the surface of some great games, and share our impressions with you. Welcome to the half-take special.

Games Discussed: Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Goddamned Witness, XCOM 2

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Listen in iTunes

[eot]

The Unreal Tournament mod Infiltration had an interesting implementation of camera movement. You had a range around the center of the screen within which you could move your gun freely without rotating your character (just upper body movement). The cool thing though was that your weapon actually had collision with the environment, so if you were looking down the barrel of a long rifle you would be unable to for example strafe out of the way if you were sticking it out of a window or peeking out behind some cover.

Arma does a similar thing (without the collision), but they also let you hold down a modifier key to free look with just your head. It's actually useful because you can't run backwards like in most games, so you have to use it to look around when moving.

[Cordeos]

How Xcom 1 is explained in Xcom 2, minor spoilers:

  Reveal hidden contents

While the commander was being held captive the aliens are running battle simulations. So essentially the aliens were watching you play Xcom 1 and developed their tactics based on your actions. So all of your Xcom 1 play throughs are canon. Which is pretty great.

[dbgdbgdbg]

Pro tip: after finishing listening to the episode, rewind to the beginning and listen to the intro carefully.
 
IdlestThumbs app actually generates "and" part, it just doesn't always get it right.

[BigJKO]

Holy shit!! :tup:

[Badfinger]

I tweeted this, but to expound in more than 140 characters, even if you are thoroughly familiar with the XCOM mechanics I 100% endorse playing the tutorial mission at some point. There is an awesome story beat that made my eyes bug out when I found out.

 

Funny enough, it is much more strategically valuable from a gameplay standpoint to skip the tutorial. It's so worth it to see that stuff though, and would have cleared up a lot of Nick's confusion (probably, it's Nick).

[Gormongous]

  On 2/11/2016 at 5:13 PM, Badfinger said:

It's so worth it to see that stuff though, and would have cleared up a lot of Nick's confusion (probably, it's Nick).

 

Never underestimate the power of Nick Breckon to build a narrative that he finds personally confusing, regardless of the material he's given.

[zerofiftyone]

  On 2/11/2016 at 3:20 PM, dbgdbgdbg said:

Pro tip: after finishing listening to the episode, rewind to the beginning and listen to the intro carefully.

Whoa, I barely even noticed the second time!

[sclpls]

  On 2/11/2016 at 6:24 PM, Gormongous said:

Never underestimate the power of Nick Breckon to build a narrative that he finds personally confusing, regardless of the material he's given.

 

Listening to the Thumbs correctly surmise what the actual premise of XCOM 2 is, only to have Nick go off on his own insane theory about what he thinks was going on was the most hilarious/infuriating thing to listen to.

[Badfinger]

Just listened to the 1st person/3rd person/strafe/look/mouselook discussion. Arma bridges the gap between moving/aiming/looking. It has a toggle to free your look without changing your direction or aim. It's not super surprising that Arma has something like that, because it's one of the most mechanically complicated 1st/3rd person sims, but I imagine it's a bear to implement and it does not make things easier to grasp. I have to imagine it's nearly impossible to do with a controller as well.

[Gormongous]

  On 2/11/2016 at 7:05 PM, sclpls said:

Listening to the Thumbs correctly surmise what the actual premise of XCOM 2 is, only to have Nick go off on his own insane theory about what he thinks was going on was the most hilarious/infuriating thing to listen to.

 

Right? I loved it and hated it. It reminds me of a friend (well, the son of my mother's friend) I knew growing up, who fundamentally didn't get that Shadows of the Empire was a story that took place concurrently with Empire Strikes Back, and so he sold me on the game with this confusing spiel about how, when Vader threw the Emperor down that shaft on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, the Emperor landed on a planet, survived, and then attacked Hoth again(?) so Dash Rendar had to come kill him. Hence the events of the video game. It didn't take me, dumb kid though I was, to realize that he was wrong, but I didn't have the heart to tell him. He wouldn't have taken it well.

[SuperBiasedMan]

The traversal discussion was particularly interesting because I just today watched a video about That Dragon, Cancer that noted the game used a point and click style interface that let you travel to different nodes in 3D space.

 

Basically, you can look around freely. You can click on things to interact with them, or sometimes to move over to the place you just clicked on and then look around from that point. It is essentially what the Thumbs were talking about (albeit in a more guided, small and narrative game).

[J.C.]

Re: using Snapchat for The Witness. iOS has a universal app that is also free, called Paper. Originally an iPad app, it allows you to draw, in what basically amounts to MS Paint, with lots of similar tools. You can take a photo in it, or import existing ones, and draw over them. There were a few where I couldn't really take a photo of the solution, so just drawing the squares (if you draw one and close it, it makes it a proper square, which is nice) and then drawing the solution from there was far less frustrating than trying to memorize or anything. It also allowed me to work on some tougher puzzles while away from my PS4, which was nice. Best part: you don't need to install Snapchat.

[SecretAsianMan]

Regarding "first person tank controls", I would refer that reader to the reader from last week that described their mom playing The Witness.  Her instinct was to walk to a spot, stop, look around, pick a direction, then proceed forward.  All I could think of while hearing that reader mail was "she's playing with first person tank controls".

[darthbator]

That particular email and the ensuing conversation kinda got to me. I was on my way to work and as soon as I got in instead of working I cooked up this little prototype! (Android only)

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ww4r2pfjxnju6z5/Movement%20Proto.apk?dl=0

 

It's a basic statement of thesis on that idea. I was thinking about how I would want a "first person adventure" like Gone Home, Firewatch, or even The Witness to play on device and that's what I came up with. The controls are all based on multitouch. Each additional touch layers on an additional capability. 1 finger down looks around, 2 fingers down adds forward motion (while preserving looking), 3 touches down accelerates into a run moves backwards! If your initial 1 finger "look" touch lands over a selectable object that object "activates" (just turns green here for testing). 

 

I might be wrong, but when people talk to me about this kind of accessibility stuff I always scope it into mobile. If your audience is unfamiliar with FPS style controls their chances of going to any PC game are slim IMO. The future of the broad market is touch screen devices [face_shrug]

[eot]

I remember seeing some footage of the iOS version of The Witness, and it was kinda like how you guys described it. Here's the video:

  Reveal hidden contents

  On 2/11/2016 at 3:20 PM, dbgdbgdbg said:

Pro tip: after finishing listening to the episode, rewind to the beginning and listen to the intro carefully.
 
IdlestThumbs app actually generates "and" part, it just doesn't always get it right.

God dammit!

[Apple Cider]

  On 2/11/2016 at 3:20 PM, dbgdbgdbg said:

Pro tip: after finishing listening to the episode, rewind to the beginning and listen to the intro carefully.

 

IdlestThumbs app actually generates "and" part, it just doesn't always get it right.

 

I noticed something was weird the first time around but that's because I have edited like a billion podcasts. 

[Korax]

The Last Tomb Raider game was sort of halfway to what Rise ended up being. There are some sort-of-open areas, but nothing as wide or detailed as in Rise. There was crafting, but using generic "salvage" that you got from everything, rather than the specificity of hide/wood/cloth/etc, and it mostly just applied to weapon upgrades. There was a fairly detailed skill system, but I think Rise adds even more to that, especially with how exploring the optional tombs gives you special skills beyond what is normally available.

 

Something that Chris might be more interested in is the Endurance Mode. It's rather unfortunately relegated to a $10 DLC pack, but more or less just throws you into an area of the game to let you explore and survive as long as you can.

[rincewitch]

  On 2/11/2016 at 7:57 PM, SuperBiasedMan said:

The traversal discussion was particularly interesting because I just today watched a video about That Dragon, Cancer that noted the game used a point and click style interface that let you travel to different nodes in 3D space.

 

Basically, you can look around freely. You can click on things to interact with them, or sometimes to move over to the place you just clicked on and then look around from that point. It is essentially what the Thumbs were talking about (albeit in a more guided, small and narrative game).

 

I haven't played or watched any of That Dragon, Cancer, because I know it would destroy me for all time, but the way you're describing its UI reminds me a lot of SWERY's D4-- a realtime rendered 3D environment, that you interact with by moving between nodes and clicking on objects (and I guess with gestures if you have a kinect or whatever?).

[SuperBiasedMan]

Was D4 like that? I coulda sworn it had free movement. There's definitely a difference in that TDC takes advantage of the limitation. The area changes shape while you're looking away, and uses the directed camera. In D4 it's a fully simulated 3D space regardless of that.

[malkav11]

  On 2/12/2016 at 7:52 PM, SuperBiasedMan said:

Was D4 like that? I coulda sworn it had free movement. There's definitely a difference in that TDC takes advantage of the limitation. The area changes shape while you're looking away, and uses the directed camera. In D4 it's a fully simulated 3D space regardless of that.

 

No, it's definitely node-based. Presumably because although it has gamepad support it was designed with the Kinect in mind.

[Mike Danger]

Can someone tell me what everyone is hearing in the intro? I am clearly missing it.

[mikemariano]

  On 2/13/2016 at 11:09 PM, Mike Danger said:

Can someone tell me what everyone is hearing in the intro? I am clearly missing it.

 

The uninterrupted intro (after Jake messes it up) uses the Idlest Thumbs service which pastes together old Idle Thumbs intros.  The intro is created by robots!