Hello, and (almost) Happy New Year, everyone! Thanks for coming back and reading about another week in the life of me and my ventures. I figured that I would talk more about my Killing Floor map this week.
However, since I slacked A LOT, there really isn't much to fill you guys in on this week. Sorry. The only thing I got done was section off a few more rooms, and made a (what a thought) big design decision with the map. More or less, I opted to cut the map in half. If you have played Killing Floor before, and are familiar with the maps, the flow kind of goes in a circular motion. Most fast-paced shooter maps are. So in a sense, there are next to no "dead ends" The player usually doesn't run down a long corridor and into nothing essentially. If that were to happen during a round, the players could get overwhelmed and not have even a remote chance of defending themselves. Having the chance to run around and collect ammo helps a lot when playing on higher difficulty settings. Currently, the way the map is set up, there is one giant dead end. The players would get there, and there would, in my opinion, be no way players could get back to the desired areas of holding out unscathed. I was thinking of cutting this piece off, and maybe adding another addition to the map at the other end. Not only would it add another option, it would be a lot easier to map out. Think of a medium-sized courtyard area. This weekend, I'll be tinkering around with that, and seeing how that works out. I believe it'll work out a lot better in the long run. Outside of that, I have no pictures this week, possibly next week.
Here is where I'll be honest with you guys. A friend of mine got me the XCOM collection for Christmas and I really couldn't put it down. I have succumbed to skipping out on doing my level for it, and I sort of regretted it. Only sort of, because I honestly believe I got some value from playing. Just letting you guys know, I don't normally play turn-based strategy games. I played the occasional Fire Emblem or advanced wars, but nothing really in depth like XCOM. If you aren't familiar with this game, it's about aliens taking over the Earth in the near-distant future. It's cool, you can upgrade your facilities, and rank up your people to get better weapons and such. Another nifty feature is naming your units. Every unit has a class with a loadout, and you can name them whatever you want. At the time, I thought it was pretty cool. Named a few units friends from back home, and from here. Little did I understand, was how easy units can die and never come back. Yeah, once a unit is dead, they can't come back. Which, in the end, I thought was great. Even though it made me feel very crappy that my friend died on the battlefield, I took it in as a lesson...from a game design perspective. I mostly get a kick out of a game that makes me feel something. Even though it's XCOM, a game about blasting aliens to bits, it's been an interesting experience. No one likes to have someone die and then never come back. The worst part is a really highly-skilled unit die. So not only did you lose that unit, you need to train up a unit from the bottom, and hope things work out. Losing an asset like that teaches you to be weary about what plays you make in combat, considering you could lose units, which leads to a massive loss of resources. Decisions definitely have a huge impact in what you do, and how you handle them. On top of that, the game is cool. Every time you go to shoot an enemy combatant, or make a move, I am always at the edge of my seat. This isn't so much of a review as it is about how this game in particular made me see turn-based strategies in a new light. It's one thing to hear and look at things, but it's another to experience something. Before going into the game, I knew some things about it, but experiencing it was something I didn't expect. I highly recommend the game to you readers who are interested in turn-based strategy games. Tl;dr: XCOM is a cool game. I took some things in as a designer. Play it, it's cool.
One more thing before I finish this up. I have an update on the Raspberry Pi...it works! It actually took less time for me to get through than I thought it would. The only hurdles I ran into were no sound, but fixed it after finding out how to access the audio output in the code. It really wasn't difficult. The other is getting N64 and PS1 games to work. I downloaded an N64 ROM, but it lags. Quite a bit I may add. I know there is some special thing I have to do to get that part running better, but it shouldn't be an issue. For now, I am content playing Chrono Trigger on it. Next week I can post a picture of it actually playing.
Thank you everyone for reading this week. It means a lot. Next week, I plan on updating you with what I did this week on my map, and more shenanigans I may get myself into...including learning how to wet shave. Yeah, it's a thing. Those of you reading may already know I'm learning, and so far it's been successful...as in I haven't horribly cut my face off. Which is good. Hope to see you next week. And remember! If you are reading this before New Years, be careful out there! Be responsible while you are out and about having fun. Safety is the key to having fun.
Here is where I'll be honest with you guys. A friend of mine got me the XCOM collection for Christmas and I really couldn't put it down. I have succumbed to skipping out on doing my level for it, and I sort of regretted it. Only sort of, because I honestly believe I got some value from playing. Just letting you guys know, I don't normally play turn-based strategy games. I played the occasional Fire Emblem or advanced wars, but nothing really in depth like XCOM. If you aren't familiar with this game, it's about aliens taking over the Earth in the near-distant future. It's cool, you can upgrade your facilities, and rank up your people to get better weapons and such. Another nifty feature is naming your units. Every unit has a class with a loadout, and you can name them whatever you want. At the time, I thought it was pretty cool. Named a few units friends from back home, and from here. Little did I understand, was how easy units can die and never come back. Yeah, once a unit is dead, they can't come back. Which, in the end, I thought was great. Even though it made me feel very crappy that my friend died on the battlefield, I took it in as a lesson...from a game design perspective. I mostly get a kick out of a game that makes me feel something. Even though it's XCOM, a game about blasting aliens to bits, it's been an interesting experience. No one likes to have someone die and then never come back. The worst part is a really highly-skilled unit die. So not only did you lose that unit, you need to train up a unit from the bottom, and hope things work out. Losing an asset like that teaches you to be weary about what plays you make in combat, considering you could lose units, which leads to a massive loss of resources. Decisions definitely have a huge impact in what you do, and how you handle them. On top of that, the game is cool. Every time you go to shoot an enemy combatant, or make a move, I am always at the edge of my seat. This isn't so much of a review as it is about how this game in particular made me see turn-based strategies in a new light. It's one thing to hear and look at things, but it's another to experience something. Before going into the game, I knew some things about it, but experiencing it was something I didn't expect. I highly recommend the game to you readers who are interested in turn-based strategy games. Tl;dr: XCOM is a cool game. I took some things in as a designer. Play it, it's cool.
One more thing before I finish this up. I have an update on the Raspberry Pi...it works! It actually took less time for me to get through than I thought it would. The only hurdles I ran into were no sound, but fixed it after finding out how to access the audio output in the code. It really wasn't difficult. The other is getting N64 and PS1 games to work. I downloaded an N64 ROM, but it lags. Quite a bit I may add. I know there is some special thing I have to do to get that part running better, but it shouldn't be an issue. For now, I am content playing Chrono Trigger on it. Next week I can post a picture of it actually playing.
Thank you everyone for reading this week. It means a lot. Next week, I plan on updating you with what I did this week on my map, and more shenanigans I may get myself into...including learning how to wet shave. Yeah, it's a thing. Those of you reading may already know I'm learning, and so far it's been successful...as in I haven't horribly cut my face off. Which is good. Hope to see you next week. And remember! If you are reading this before New Years, be careful out there! Be responsible while you are out and about having fun. Safety is the key to having fun.