Mendelbug!
Breakdown by Michael W. Smith
Hi all. Things have yo-yo'd back and forth between dead quiet and vigorously busy in the learning lab. Summer semesters have classes with wildly varying schedules, so we get exams popping up and bringing students in for cram study, then days soon after when only a few students come in.
I've been able to get a decent amount of work done in Forgotten Gates again this month. I made a minor change to the way collision detection between monsters and the hero works, and that enabled me to make the specifics of how a battle starts unique to a monster's behavior -- for example, if the hero touches a deku baba while it's doing a snapping animation, the battle starts with a preemptive attack on the deku baba's part. I also discovered a "Mendelbug" in the code, meaning it was an error with complex and unpredictable causes. It only caused noticeable errors every once in a while, but I was able to track it down by creating a function that checks all of the "constants" in memory (technically just variables which I decided should be given set values at the start of the game and never changed afterward) to make sure they're still holding the values they should. It turned out there was a function call that shouldn't have been there in the random dungeon generation code, and it was causing changes to variables based on what certain other variables were set to before (which was random because hey, they were being used in random dungeon generation). Most of the time the variables that wound up being changed were overwritten again before they were used anyway, but occasionally a constant was changed, which is what caused the bizarre and unpredictable errors.
On the design side, I've been trying to work out a good experience points progression, both for the amounts needed for heroes to progress in levels and for the different monsters to give when defeated. Initially, I worked out a formula which gives different XP values for a monster's various stats and adds them together, with the value of a stat increasing on a gentle exponential curve -- after all, since it takes more and more XP for the heroes to get from one level to the next, the monsters should provide more and more XP as they get tougher, right? Unfortunately, even a gentle exponentiation explodes as you get up into the higher levels. X) So I came up with an interesting solution. First I set the monsters' XP value by a set of "base" stats, i.e. the stats I'd want them to have if the heroes were facing them at level 1. Inherently tougher monsters still get an XP value higher up on the curve than easier ones that way, but it's not such a dramatic explosion. Then, I extrapolated from there to make the XP value of each monster grow in parallel with the hero leveling requirements. For example, if it would take defeating 10 "base" deku babas at level 1 for a hero to reach level 2, then it should also take 10 "normal" deku babas at level 3 (when the heroes are expected to run into them) to reach level 4, and 10 "hard" deku babas at level 33 during the second run through the game to reach level 34.
Unfortunately, that does still leave me with another problem: it will make the heroes level up faster and faster as the game goes on because they'll be facing monsters that are tougher at base and have had their XP value adjusted to match the current level. Traditionally RPGs have done the opposite, allowing players to level up quickly at the start and making it sparser as they go on. I could try changing the level adjustment to lag behind the XP requirements of the heroes a bit, but it would be difficult to make that interact predictably with the exponentially increasing base XP values. Maybe I should make the base XP values increase linearly with the stats instead, and place the burden of controlling growth speed more on the hero XP requirements. e.ea
Finally, Mituni, a player with artistic leanings, recently provided me with menu portraits for the characters who will be playable in the demo. n.n I've had to touch them up a bit to keep them consistent with the style of the rest of the game, but the finished product is better than I probably could've done entirely on my own, and I did want the game to be something of a collaborative effort for the MUCK. ;)
On NMR, Noab led a mission about defending a hot springs resort from a group of bandits. It turned out that one of the bandits was from a certain clan that could turn their bodies into water temporarily, which explained why they specifically targeted hot springs -- this guy would sneak in through the underground waterways and sow terror from within. Noab also ran a mission where Gonff, the Prince of Rat-Thieves, made another appearance. Last time, Gonff's flute-controlled rat minions raided a festival and made off with a lot of food. This time, Gonff arranged for a pie filled with blackbirds to be entered in a contest, and the blackbirds were trained to grab jewelry from the judges (the town officials and their wives) and carry it back to a big nest.
Shemri also managed to get a mission in. She and a couple others went to investigate a shaft at a salt mine which several workers fell into when the floor collapsed beneath them. The shaft turned out to be the tunnel of a giant worm, which the team fought off right after finding the sole survivor of the collapse.
Rayman Legends:
This game...is a wild ride. That's the best way I can think of to sum it up. X) It's one of those games that isn't especially innovative in terms of mechanics, seeing as it's a fairly traditional side-scrolling platformer. It's just absurdly polished, richly flavorful, and madly fun. Playing it is like chugging nonstop from some sweet caffeinated beverage. 8D
Much like in Donkey Kong Country Returns, a lot of the richness in Rayman Legends can be attributed to its optional collectibles. Each stage has either ten or (for stages with an unusual premise) three teensies to rescue. On top of that there are lots of lums scattered around, and most of them are worth double points if you collect them in a predetermined chain order. This allowed the level designers to guide players through the stages in an ideal flow, assuming they have the skill to follow it. Luckily failure is lightly punished, merely sending the player back to the last of fairly frequent checkpoints.
While I said Rayman Legends is a fairly traditional platformer, it does have a few interesting conceptual gimmicks. There are some stages played with the Wii U gamepad's touchscreen, manipulating the environment. If you're playing solo, a computer-controlled hero will walk (or run if appropriate) through the stage as needed in conjunction with your guidance; if you've got friends along, it's up to you to coordinate things and make their path smooth. Also, at the end of every "world", there is a special musical stage as a reward, set to a Rayman-ish rendition of a popular tune. These stages are set up to be straight-forward non-stop obstacle courses wherein the jumps, smashes, and swings correspond to the music. Makes me wish there were more of them.
Finally, there's the fact that the game is visually and musically awesome. This has always been a strong point for the whimsical and artistic Rayman series, but it's especially true here. The worlds have zany and imaginative themes, and the background music contributes wonderfully to their feel.
Bottom line? Absolutely worth picking up.
Mario Kart 8:
Yay for yet another Mario Kart entry. n.n You're all pretty familiar with the series in general I'm sure, so this should be quick. The main new addition to the gameplay is anti-grav track sections, which allow the vehicles to run along walls and even upside down. One of the tracks is a big Mobius strip taking advantage of this. X) So how does that affect gameplay? Well, besides creating more potential for side paths and branches, if racers bump into each other during these segments, they'll each receive a small boost, and there are also "bumpers" in some of them to provide this advantage environmentally. A subtle addition, but it changes behavior a bit.
There are also a couple new items. First is the boomerang. It wings out in front of you a good distance, hovers a moment, then comes back, destroying anything in its path on both swoops. That's until the third toss, when it wanders off and is lost. I just read on GameFAQs that a racer with no item can actually catch a hostile boomerang with a well-timed item button press. :o The other new item is the super horn, which crushes anything within a certain distance of the player, including the dreaded blue shell.
They're a little more generous with items for the front-place racers in this Mario Kart than they are in some others. You can expect an occasional mushroom, super horn, or other decently powerful item even when you're in first place. Of course, you'll also get coins fairly often, which are pretty useless especially once you've accumulated the limit of 10. X) More importantly for overall strategy, you can only hold one item at a time in this one, even if you're dragging it behind you -- no holding an item in readiness to use while picking up another as a reserve. This makes dropping an okay defensive item in favor of picking up a new one more of a risk for front-place racers.
This wasn't so much a review as a quick rundown of what's new in this title. After all, do I even need to say it? ;) Yes, Mario Kart 8 is definitely worth getting! Especially since if you get it and register before July 31, you can get New Super Mario Bros. U, Pikmin 3, Wii Party U, or Wind Waker HD for free. Two triple-A games for the price of one! :D
Oh, and here's a video I uploaded because the computer player made a suspiciously accurate rebound shot against me with a bob-omb. :P Be sure to watch it at high resolution or you won't be able to see what's going on until the bob-omb is in your face.
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon:
Much like its predecessor, Dark Moon is a bit of an oddball. It isn't exactly a shining gem in the action category. Catching ghosts can be frustrating, especially when there are several of them around to interrupt you.
It does, however, have a lot of rather interesting puzzles. It focuses a lot on seeing through trickery. In particular, they added a mechanic in which some objects are shifted out of existence by illusion and have to be brought back by shining a "darklight" on them. So if it feels like you're missing something needed to solve a particular puzzle, you probably are. X)
I really can't think of that much to say about the game. c.ca I found it worthwhile personally, but not hugely satisfying; I doubt I'll bother going back to gain 100% clearance on it anytime soon. If you liked the original Luigi's Mansion, Dark Moon is probably worth picking up, but I wouldn't call it a must-have, even for general Mario afficianados (it is, after all, pretty different from most Mario games mechanically). Sorry Luigi ol' buddy. :/
Click to viewHi all. Things have yo-yo'd back and forth between dead quiet and vigorously busy in the learning lab. Summer semesters have classes with wildly varying schedules, so we get exams popping up and bringing students in for cram study, then days soon after when only a few students come in.
I've been able to get a decent amount of work done in Forgotten Gates again this month. I made a minor change to the way collision detection between monsters and the hero works, and that enabled me to make the specifics of how a battle starts unique to a monster's behavior -- for example, if the hero touches a deku baba while it's doing a snapping animation, the battle starts with a preemptive attack on the deku baba's part. I also discovered a "Mendelbug" in the code, meaning it was an error with complex and unpredictable causes. It only caused noticeable errors every once in a while, but I was able to track it down by creating a function that checks all of the "constants" in memory (technically just variables which I decided should be given set values at the start of the game and never changed afterward) to make sure they're still holding the values they should. It turned out there was a function call that shouldn't have been there in the random dungeon generation code, and it was causing changes to variables based on what certain other variables were set to before (which was random because hey, they were being used in random dungeon generation). Most of the time the variables that wound up being changed were overwritten again before they were used anyway, but occasionally a constant was changed, which is what caused the bizarre and unpredictable errors.
On the design side, I've been trying to work out a good experience points progression, both for the amounts needed for heroes to progress in levels and for the different monsters to give when defeated. Initially, I worked out a formula which gives different XP values for a monster's various stats and adds them together, with the value of a stat increasing on a gentle exponential curve -- after all, since it takes more and more XP for the heroes to get from one level to the next, the monsters should provide more and more XP as they get tougher, right? Unfortunately, even a gentle exponentiation explodes as you get up into the higher levels. X) So I came up with an interesting solution. First I set the monsters' XP value by a set of "base" stats, i.e. the stats I'd want them to have if the heroes were facing them at level 1. Inherently tougher monsters still get an XP value higher up on the curve than easier ones that way, but it's not such a dramatic explosion. Then, I extrapolated from there to make the XP value of each monster grow in parallel with the hero leveling requirements. For example, if it would take defeating 10 "base" deku babas at level 1 for a hero to reach level 2, then it should also take 10 "normal" deku babas at level 3 (when the heroes are expected to run into them) to reach level 4, and 10 "hard" deku babas at level 33 during the second run through the game to reach level 34.
Unfortunately, that does still leave me with another problem: it will make the heroes level up faster and faster as the game goes on because they'll be facing monsters that are tougher at base and have had their XP value adjusted to match the current level. Traditionally RPGs have done the opposite, allowing players to level up quickly at the start and making it sparser as they go on. I could try changing the level adjustment to lag behind the XP requirements of the heroes a bit, but it would be difficult to make that interact predictably with the exponentially increasing base XP values. Maybe I should make the base XP values increase linearly with the stats instead, and place the burden of controlling growth speed more on the hero XP requirements. e.ea
Finally, Mituni, a player with artistic leanings, recently provided me with menu portraits for the characters who will be playable in the demo. n.n I've had to touch them up a bit to keep them consistent with the style of the rest of the game, but the finished product is better than I probably could've done entirely on my own, and I did want the game to be something of a collaborative effort for the MUCK. ;)
On NMR, Noab led a mission about defending a hot springs resort from a group of bandits. It turned out that one of the bandits was from a certain clan that could turn their bodies into water temporarily, which explained why they specifically targeted hot springs -- this guy would sneak in through the underground waterways and sow terror from within. Noab also ran a mission where Gonff, the Prince of Rat-Thieves, made another appearance. Last time, Gonff's flute-controlled rat minions raided a festival and made off with a lot of food. This time, Gonff arranged for a pie filled with blackbirds to be entered in a contest, and the blackbirds were trained to grab jewelry from the judges (the town officials and their wives) and carry it back to a big nest.
Shemri also managed to get a mission in. She and a couple others went to investigate a shaft at a salt mine which several workers fell into when the floor collapsed beneath them. The shaft turned out to be the tunnel of a giant worm, which the team fought off right after finding the sole survivor of the collapse.
Rayman Legends:
This game...is a wild ride. That's the best way I can think of to sum it up. X) It's one of those games that isn't especially innovative in terms of mechanics, seeing as it's a fairly traditional side-scrolling platformer. It's just absurdly polished, richly flavorful, and madly fun. Playing it is like chugging nonstop from some sweet caffeinated beverage. 8D
Much like in Donkey Kong Country Returns, a lot of the richness in Rayman Legends can be attributed to its optional collectibles. Each stage has either ten or (for stages with an unusual premise) three teensies to rescue. On top of that there are lots of lums scattered around, and most of them are worth double points if you collect them in a predetermined chain order. This allowed the level designers to guide players through the stages in an ideal flow, assuming they have the skill to follow it. Luckily failure is lightly punished, merely sending the player back to the last of fairly frequent checkpoints.
While I said Rayman Legends is a fairly traditional platformer, it does have a few interesting conceptual gimmicks. There are some stages played with the Wii U gamepad's touchscreen, manipulating the environment. If you're playing solo, a computer-controlled hero will walk (or run if appropriate) through the stage as needed in conjunction with your guidance; if you've got friends along, it's up to you to coordinate things and make their path smooth. Also, at the end of every "world", there is a special musical stage as a reward, set to a Rayman-ish rendition of a popular tune. These stages are set up to be straight-forward non-stop obstacle courses wherein the jumps, smashes, and swings correspond to the music. Makes me wish there were more of them.
Finally, there's the fact that the game is visually and musically awesome. This has always been a strong point for the whimsical and artistic Rayman series, but it's especially true here. The worlds have zany and imaginative themes, and the background music contributes wonderfully to their feel.
Bottom line? Absolutely worth picking up.
Mario Kart 8:
Yay for yet another Mario Kart entry. n.n You're all pretty familiar with the series in general I'm sure, so this should be quick. The main new addition to the gameplay is anti-grav track sections, which allow the vehicles to run along walls and even upside down. One of the tracks is a big Mobius strip taking advantage of this. X) So how does that affect gameplay? Well, besides creating more potential for side paths and branches, if racers bump into each other during these segments, they'll each receive a small boost, and there are also "bumpers" in some of them to provide this advantage environmentally. A subtle addition, but it changes behavior a bit.
There are also a couple new items. First is the boomerang. It wings out in front of you a good distance, hovers a moment, then comes back, destroying anything in its path on both swoops. That's until the third toss, when it wanders off and is lost. I just read on GameFAQs that a racer with no item can actually catch a hostile boomerang with a well-timed item button press. :o The other new item is the super horn, which crushes anything within a certain distance of the player, including the dreaded blue shell.
They're a little more generous with items for the front-place racers in this Mario Kart than they are in some others. You can expect an occasional mushroom, super horn, or other decently powerful item even when you're in first place. Of course, you'll also get coins fairly often, which are pretty useless especially once you've accumulated the limit of 10. X) More importantly for overall strategy, you can only hold one item at a time in this one, even if you're dragging it behind you -- no holding an item in readiness to use while picking up another as a reserve. This makes dropping an okay defensive item in favor of picking up a new one more of a risk for front-place racers.
This wasn't so much a review as a quick rundown of what's new in this title. After all, do I even need to say it? ;) Yes, Mario Kart 8 is definitely worth getting! Especially since if you get it and register before July 31, you can get New Super Mario Bros. U, Pikmin 3, Wii Party U, or Wind Waker HD for free. Two triple-A games for the price of one! :D
Oh, and here's a video I uploaded because the computer player made a suspiciously accurate rebound shot against me with a bob-omb. :P Be sure to watch it at high resolution or you won't be able to see what's going on until the bob-omb is in your face.
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon:
Much like its predecessor, Dark Moon is a bit of an oddball. It isn't exactly a shining gem in the action category. Catching ghosts can be frustrating, especially when there are several of them around to interrupt you.
It does, however, have a lot of rather interesting puzzles. It focuses a lot on seeing through trickery. In particular, they added a mechanic in which some objects are shifted out of existence by illusion and have to be brought back by shining a "darklight" on them. So if it feels like you're missing something needed to solve a particular puzzle, you probably are. X)
I really can't think of that much to say about the game. c.ca I found it worthwhile personally, but not hugely satisfying; I doubt I'll bother going back to gain 100% clearance on it anytime soon. If you liked the original Luigi's Mansion, Dark Moon is probably worth picking up, but I wouldn't call it a must-have, even for general Mario afficianados (it is, after all, pretty different from most Mario games mechanically). Sorry Luigi ol' buddy. :/