I want to take a second to tell a story though, about the graphics in this game. I hope to explain why this game actually has the best graphics ever.
Context for some folks: the game is entirely rendered using ASCII characters (for the purpose of this story. I know, I’m leaving out detail, it’s okay). So the goblins in Dwarf Fortress look roughly like this
g
A dog looks like this
d
And a dragon looks like this
D
Learning to play Dwarf Fortress can be tough at first because there’s a soup of letters and other typing characters on the screen and your brain needs to convert that into a scene that makes sense. But here’s the thing … eventually that’s exactly what your brain does! You stop seeing the semicolons and hyphens, the letters and the strange formatting characters like “╥”. You start to see rivers and grass, tiny people working hard, a bustling metropolis, an invading horde.
And the creator of this game hasn’t simply cut corners on making the game look good by using ASCII tilesets. The grass (made of commas or single quotes) sways in the breeze. Running water shimmers. Cherry trees gently rain cherry blossom petals during certain seasons. There’s actually a ton of little details there for your brain to pick up and immediately upscale into high def for you. It’s delightful. And sometimes terrifying.
Sometimes something new will happen. A creature you’ve never seen before will approach your little community. It will be represented by some letter and your brain will render that for you in the way it has been taught to do. Your eyes see a d and you see a dog. Your eyes see a D and you see a dragon. It’s bigger than a dog. Most things are, no big deal. But you’ve been deceived.
You watch as a band of dwarfs approach the dragon. The creature is quite still, right next to the round trunk of a tree that looks like this O. The brave warriors are still far from the creature. You’ve built whole dinning halls, with wooden chairs and stone mugs and carvings decorating the walls, that could fit within the space separating the warriors from the capital D dragon. One canny dwarf let’s loose an arrow at the beast. It zips through the air like this -
As it approaches the Dragon, which is surely just to Iike a dog but a bit larger and green right, time begins the slow. It ticks. And ticks. And hell is unleashed. Flames jet from the Dragon. Unending flames pouring like red ink in billows that quickly fill the vast space and enrobe the dwarven warriors in a superheated death that pushes in and flows past and even through the band until flickering flames fill virtually all space to one side of a capital D that you will never, ever, mistake the size of again.
My scalp tingled and it felt like my skull was over heating when my brain spontaneously supplied all the extra graphical details for that particular scene. I’ll never forget it.
Can you share screenshots of what you’re describing? It’s send awesome and I’m very curious about it, but I can’t find anything similar on search engines.
Took me ages to find anything, but here’s a dragon encounter in adventure mode. It’s a bit slow because it’s turn based, but at least it has dragon fire in it, albeit not as great as described above:
The video above has the ASCII style graphics I was talking about. This video shows a dragon attack using a different tileset. (This video begins with some loud music).
You can see in this one how the flames billow and spread.
So you’ll have to imagine what the combination is like. You’re already in a headspace where your brain is filling in details not supplied by the ASCII and then the world just explode into flames.
These other tilesets have their advantages. But I’ll never give up the text-based rendering of the world - I’ve had too many great experiences to give that up.
My understanding is that the steam version released with no ASCII tileset, but there is one now after an update. I bought the steam version but haven’t played it much at all, so I haven’t confirmed this myself.
Yup, you can play the ‘post steam’ version via steam or free download and get the ASCII characters, however you are still forced to use the mouse to play it, which doesn’t work for me, so I stick with the old 47 release and just play that forever I guess!
Yep. In addition, there is now a free build of version 50.xx on the official website, which uses the same code as the Steam version, but does not include the tileset and the soundtrack.
I tried that free build on the weekend (because I didn’t want to bother with installing Steam on my ARM64 laptop), and it still looks as amazing as always. Now I just need to learn the keybindings for the Steam version - because using a mouse with ASCII graphics feels just wrong 😉.
They’re even making sequels to “the carp stands up” now. They added exercise to the game, and now carps get ducking ripped as fuck just swimming upstream, so when they start walking on land they’re there to just destroy you and everything you hold dear.
The fun part of “Oh. It’s you.” Is that it can be read in so many ways. It’s not a particularly good line on its own. But the way that it’s said in the voice of GLADOS is just a peak “I’m fucking done with this bitch” mood. Major props to that voice actress.
I mean i dont think its the best game ever or anything, but compared to say breath of the wild which is celebrated for its open world for some reason but which is just 99% empty space with a thousand rocks you have to turn over, cyberpunks world is so much more dynamic and alive. There are tons of little hidden quests that you have to stumble upon or be in the right place at the right time. There are tons of little hidden easter eggs, like a dead sniper on one roof with a log entry, and on the roof opposite that a bunch of dead gang members with a corresponding log entry. You really have to search and read everything in cyberpunk to find the little gems, and by the end theres a lot of unnecessary loot and repeated data files, but when you stumble across the reallt interesting hidden bits it makes it all worth it i think. Regardless if you play for more than an hour or two and take the time to explore then its obvious a lot of care went into crafting the world, more than just creating a dumb little puzzle and then copy pasting it 50 times all over the map.
I agree with you about BoTW. I played the whole thing. It is actually overrated. Maybe I just needed to soace it out a bit since I played it a ton in college.
Nah you’re right. It’s overrated. It shaked the Zelda formula up and that’s all that people see in it. It has a ton of fun details in the world sure but let’s be honest BOTW has like 8 different enemies you will fight over and over. The shrines aren’t even a challenge after the first third of the game since you know the ins and outs of your abilities. Your abilities are all gained right at the start too and there’s no cool loot other than another bow or a random melee weapon.
The open world nature kills so much of the story pacing and cinematic elements we have come to expect from the series. Then there’s the whole no real dungeons thing. a Zelda dungeon used to be an all day affair. Took you hours with a challenging unique boss fight at the end. The beasts we got and the copy pasted phantom ganons were so lame.
I honestly feel like they serious took a dramatic dip in theming and focus with BOTW. It took a dramatic leap forward in innovation for the series but it really doesn’t feel like a legend of Zelda game anymore.
Tears of the kingdom is just The Legend of Zelda Nuts and Bolts. Change my mind
Monster Hunter. The first one I played, MH4U back in the 3DS days, I put 1,000 hours into. That was nearly 10 years ago, and I’m still playing the franchise to this day. Currently finally going through the Sunbreak expansion of Monster Hunter Rise on the PC, and noticing a marked improvement in my mental health over playing other games.
A kind of similar thing has been floating around for decades now. Combining something like Farming Sim with Euro Truck Sim and with flight sim to create an all-in-one logistics simulator
…omg that sounds AMAZING!!! I haven’t even played any of those games. But like, your friend playing trucking simulator, and you play farming simulator. You grow corn. He trucks it.
Because it’s a shit company which seems to employ more lawyers than devs. Their lawyers routinely go after emulators, which hurts game preservation. They also go after fan projects a lot, which hurts the community.
as a major fan of classic video game emulation, I understand the conversation surrounding game preservation… but I draw the line at emulation of current gen games that are still actively being sold with hardware that you’re still easily able to purchase.
I can understand why nintendo may want to destroy and threaten anything that hosts software through unauthorized channels as well, as the biggest source of their income is gaming hardware and software. anything that threatens their main source of income will have the book thrown at them, wouldnt you do the same?
Check this quote out. if you were running a business, do you not see where they are coming from? I feel like their hands are tied:
You Can Lose Your IP Rights if Not Enforced If you don’t take adequate or sufficient, reasonable means to protect and enforce your IP, then you run the risk of losing your IP rights. What is sufficient and reasonable action is not always clear; it depends on the situation. But, suffice it to say, if you know someone is using your IP without your authorization, you should promptly look into it to determine what, if anything, should and needs to be done so that you don’t lose one of your most important business assets – your valuable intellectual property.
piracy of current gen games is what you’re against. As a consumer I should have the right to purchase a game (software) and do whatever the fuck I want with it, if I want to emulate Tears of the Kingdom because it runs and looks better on my computer than on my switch I should be allowed to do so. I purchased the console and the game, they’ve received my business, they should no longer have a say with what I do with my stuff.
Nintendo themselves use emulators for their products, there is nothing inherently wrong with emulation.
As a consumer I should have the right to purchase a game (software) and do whatever the fuck I want with it, if I want to emulate Tears of the Kingdom because it runs and looks better on my computer than on my switch I should be allowed to do so
Can I Download a ROM If I Own the Original Game? No, downloading ROMs from direct download sites, linking sites or other illegal sources, even when you own a copy of the video game, is not allowable under the Copyright Act.
But can’t I make a backup copy if I own the video game? You may be thinking of the backup/archival exception under the U.S. Copyright Act. There is some misinformation on the Internet regarding this backup/archival exception. This is a very narrow limitation that extends to computer software. Video games are comprised of numerous types of copyrighted works and should not be categorized as software only. Therefore, provisions that pertain to backup copies would not apply to copyrighted video game works and specifically ROM downloads, that are typically unauthorized and infringing.
so no, you cant just run it on whatever you want to, legally speaking. I think you should be able to do whatever you want with software, but its never been this way.
But can’t I make a backup copy if I own the video game? You may be thinking of the backup/archival exception under the U.S. Copyright Act. There is some misinformation on the Internet regarding this backup/archival exception. This is a very narrow limitation that extends to computer software. Video games are comprised of numerous types of copyrighted works and should not be categorized as software only. Therefore, provisions that pertain to backup copies would not apply to copyrighted video game works and specifically ROM downloads, that are typically unauthorized and infringing.
This statement is misleading and a lie. Computer software encompass video games as part of the legal definition outlined in Galoob v. Nintendo in 1992, which Nintendo lost in court. They do not have a legal leg to stand on. If someone wants to make an archival copy of a game they own physically, they can legally. The terms backup and archival are not interchangeable from a legal stance and Nintendo intentionally uses misleading language when answering the question.
Since we are going to take a deep dive on this, I attempted to read a Wikipedia article on this court case. I stopped reading after the second sentence since the top of the wikipedia article does not support your claim, at all.
The court determined that Galoob’s Game Genie did not violate Nintendo’s exclusive right to make derivative works of their games, because the Game Genie did not create a new permanent work.
the game genie did not create a new copy of a video game, an important distinction. what is a ROM if its not a new, permanent file and what does this court case have to do with my previous statement?
I was responding to the statement found currently on Nintendo’s website, the question Nintendo states, “But can’t I make a backup copy if I own the video game?” which you posted.
Nintendo makes the claim that making an archival copy of a physical game you own is not legal because video games do not fall under computer software,
“There is some misinformation on the Internet regarding this backup/archival exception. This is a very narrow limitation that extends to computer software.”
According to the court case I referenced, it in fact does just that. This court case clearly spells out that video games do fall under computer software and that they are subject to all of legal rights that go with it, your right to archive your physical copy of your game just like any other computer software, but this does not extend to making “backups” which Nintendo uses interchangeably with the term archive.
In legal terms backups are intended for short term storage and readily usable. An archive is intended with the purpose of long term storage and preservation of the software. Nintendo conflates the two and claims both are illegal, this is the problem. Not the subject of the court case mentioned, the court case I referenced is only to reinforce that the court recognized that video games fall under computer software and that § 117 of The Copyright Act of 1980 do give you that right. Here is a link to that section of the law.
No one is complaining about Nintendo’s developers, they’re complaining about Nintendo the company.
The company is garbage. Anti-consumer as hell, proactively fighting against video game preservation, bullying fans out of making passion projects, the list goes on.
Literally no one is mad at Nintendo for the games they make, they’re infuriated because they make great games while the company shits on its own legacy.
Although I’m not 100% ok with some of the things they do. I agree with you and I enjoy their games. I think the things most people complain about that Nintendo do pales in comparison to so many other games companies it’s not worth my breath. I’m here still having a nice time playing TotK or Advance Wars Reboot camp etc!
My final straw was giving takedowns to assets used in Garry’s Mod. Those uses are generally associated to pro-Nintendo artistic messaging, and don’t go towards any game piracy.
I decided from there I was done with Nintendo, haven’t given them a dime since. They need to downsize their law department before I consider them again.
I don't think the state of racing games is poor, it's just that they aren't as popular as they once were. And that's ok, I don't think we need a bajilion racing games coming out every year if they're gonna be shit. But to answer your question, I think right now, there aren't a lot of new games coming out that are new IPs, they're mostly a continuation of established franchises, and are mostly simulcade or full-on simulation racing games. I've been having tons of fun with Automobilista 2, for example.
But if you want to go a bit more in-depth:
On the arcade side, yeah, I suppose there aren't a lot of recent releases (maybe The Art of Rally? I think there was an Outrun-style game too?). But you still have Wreckfest, GRIP, and Redout 2. Oh, and Trackmania.
In the simulcade side of things (think Forza and Gran Turismo), there's Forza Horizon, Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo 7, WRC 24 (could also be put in the simulation racing, to be honest), and the F1 games, which are yearly releases as someone already mentioned.
As for simulation racing games, there's Le Mans Ultimate, from the rFactor devs, and a new Assetto Corsa coming out. Automobilista 2 is getting updates pretty consistently, and iRacing is still going strong and getting new content. Oh, and BeamNG, which apparently turned into a full-fledged racing game?
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