Btw, that cover is from the US release of Megaman, and generally considered horrid. (People really don't know about true art!)
But what was the original Japanese cover like? I don't remember ever seeing that one.
Seriously, could people please use the proper original numbering for the Final Fantasy games? It's really confusing otherwise, and I can never remember which bastardized number corresponds to which original number.
(It's not like anybody would get confused if you use "FF4" or "FF6". Those are pretty unambiguous.)
I personally think that you shouldn't vote on a game you haven't played
Most definitely not true.
As of writing this, there are currently 999 published TASes (wow!) It's completely unrealistic to expect that every single person who has voted for them to have played the games.
The target audience of TASes are not only people who have played the game. You don't need to have played the game in order to appreciate the TAS (even though in many cases having done so helps). Thus it only makes sense that a significant portion of votes are from people who have not played the game. It gives a perspective of what the TAS looks like from that point of view. It's very valuable information.
To others who said too fast to be published:
You should have a watch of the Viewtiful Joe TAS run, that's the real deal of too-fast-to-watch.
I don't think anyone has a problem with the gameplay being too fast, it's the fact that the gameplay is so fast that literally most the run is cutscene.
If the cutscenes could be skipped, I might have voted yes, just for the insanity that would have been the result. However, the endless cutscenes and level transitions are quite a downer.
Nicos wrote:
saying that a run mitght be too fast made me think of all the already published dungeon crawlers run or kings bounty
The difference to king's bounty (at least) is that it doesn't have any cutscenes nor level transitions, and it's extremely short. You literally don't have time to get bored.
Let me emphasize that it's not only about this TAS being so fast that you can't see what's happening.
But as said, I voted "meh", not "no". I don't mind if this is published.
But the primary audience of a TAS is people who have played the game
I played the game (and loved the unassisted speedrun), but I still considered this to be way too fast for its own good.
The technical quality of this run is good, but the result is... underwhelming and even a bit boring.
I bought and played this game when it came out, and loved it. I loved the (unassisted) speedrun of it (or at least the first one published at SDA; haven't checked if it has got an update). Thus I was basically 100% sure I would vote yes on this.
However... This run left me really ambivalent.
Can a TAS be too fast? That sounds like a crazy question considering the nature of TASing, but there comes a limit between being amazingly fast and being so fast that you can't even see what's happening. And I have played this game, so I know the idea and have seen all the levels. It's still extremely hard to see what's going on because it goes so fast. I can only imagine how it looks to someone who has never seen this game.
I have to consider this game borderline unsuitable for TASing. Normally a game is unsuitable for tasing because it's too slow and boring; this is borderline unsuitable ironically because it's too fast. It might not have been so bad if the level transitions and cutscenes weren't so slow and numerous, but as it is now...
The vote that perhaps describes best this opinion is "meh". Borderline "no", though. (But I vote "meh" because I don't think this is completely unsuitable for publication. It has its merits.)
Nintendo consistently appears to be doing something incredibly stupid that then turns out to be brilliant -- at least in terms of success for their company.
Nintendo seems to be "the Apple of game consoles".
When Apple introduced the iPhone for the first time, many people doubted and laughed. "It will never catch on." "It doesn't even have a keyboard!" Now it's one of the best sold cellphones of all times, and every single other cellphone manufacturer has copied the idea.
When Apple introduced the iPad, many people doubted and laughed. "It's too large to be carried around, and doesn't have many uses." "It will never catch on." Now it's enormously popular, and almost every single cellphone manufacturer has their own tablet clone.
Apple has had its highs and lows during its existence, when it was/is highly popular, and when it was struggling with a waning (but loyal) fanbase.
Nintendo seems pretty similar.
Kyrsimys wrote:
You can certainly play games like Just Cause, Assassin's Creed or Skyrim in a casual way and in a hardcore way
I would never classify those games even close to "casual". Even what you consider "playing in a casual way" is hardcore from the perspective of an average consumer of actual casual games.
By FF3 he means FF6. Obviously.
Stupid game renumbering issues.
I know about the numbering chaos that was the US releases of FF 1-3, and I wrote that as a jab. A jab with a point: Please use the actual numbering unless you want to cause confusion.
Those were strange times. American entertainment companies that imported foreign products had sometimes strange notions of how they should be imported. Think about Japanese anime, for instance. Some companies had this strange notion that Americans are morons and wouldn't understand nor appreciate foreign cultural references and customs in a TV show, and thus they often re-edited the shows to "localize" them and make them more palatable to their (mostly imaginary, I assume) American audience. Sometimes they went to incredible lengths and basically butchered the original work until it was completely unrecognizable (the producer Carl Macek being probably one of the most infamous examples, and the source of the fan term "macekre".)
Ok, that deviates quite a lot from the original topic of game series numbering, but I think it's related. This mentality of that time also had the notion of a strong disconnect between the two countries (this was, after all, an era slightly before the popularity of the internet.) Since they were not importing all the games in the FF series, they seemingly wanted to create an illusion of continuity nevertheless, by renumbering them. That decision has been really unfortunate. When Square has decided in more recent times to re-release upgraded versions of all the original games, the original numbering is now confusing to people who only knew the American numbering. When you see "Final Fantasy II" on the shop, is it the original Japanese II, or is it the American one?
At least they stopped this renumbering by the time of FF VII... (which of course introduced a strange jump from FF "3" to FF 7 in the American market...)
But I'm rambling again...
Hardcore populace is holding on to previous generations and actual PC games, while casuals move on to iOS/Android, browser games (Facebook apps included), and shovelware Steam titles.
I'm not so sure the situation is that clear. (This kind of thing is not, in fact, nothing new. For instance, when Microsoft first announced their Xbox console, many people predicted that it would mean the downfall of PC/Windows as a gaming platform, as all the gaming development would move to the cheaper, stabler and piracy-free Microsoft console. This didn't happen and PC gaming has been alive and well to this day.)
Handheld multimedia/gaming platforms have certainly raised to be a serious competitor to traditional consoles. However, they occupy a slightly different niche, and they have their limitations.
A touchscreen is good for many things, but really bad at others. It will never supplant controllers. But that's only a minor thing. The major problem is that they can't easily be multiplayer. While a group of friends could ostensibly play around an iPad, it's just not the same thing as them sitting on a sofa playing a party game in a normal console in front of a huge-ass TV, each player with their own controller. (And the iPad was the most capable handheld that could ostensibly be used for multiplayer games. Just forget about it with the ridiculously small smartphones.)
Also, for example on the Xbox 360 side, quite surprisingly, studies have shown that over 50% of the total time spent using the console, on average, is not for playing games, but for watching multimedia (mainly movies). You can, of course, watch movies with a smartphone/tablet, but it's just not the same thing, especially since it's basically a one-person experience. Quite often it's a family or friends who want to watch movies, and they want to watch them on a big-screen TV, not on a laughably small tablet screen. I'm certain that most people, even when watching alone, would prefer a big screen instead of a smartphone for this.
There's also a quite funny phenomenon with Apple's AppStore in particular: The vast majority of apps/games are priced in the 1-2 dollar range. Almost nobody will buy a game for 50+ dollars. How many big game companies are ready to sell their games at 1 dollar apiece, when there's a market where they can sell them at 50+? (There's nothing stopping them from selling the games at 50+ dollars at the AppStore. It's just that almost nobody will buy them when they can buy 50 other games for the same money.)
I believe that this, rather ironically, limits the iPhone to only very small-budget games. (There are, of course, big exceptions to this, but they are very rare when comparing to the PC/console market.)
It's hard to choose, but the choice would have to be between Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger and Tales of Phantasia. There are probably others that I haven't played but would probably also make the list.
They are hotlines they can call in confidence which help with issues like that. Trying to talk it over with a friend or relative is usually pointless, because they'll often not take it seriously, be dismissive or maybe even laugh at it.
I do not understand your point. My advise was precisely for those friends and relatives: Do not ignore the signs. Do something about it. Make that person socialize, bring him/her to events and social meetings, make them meet new people, make them feel comfortable with friends and family. Do not just leave it at empty useless advice.
By the way, what I meant to say with my previous post above, and which I failed to express clearly, is that if you have a friend who talks for example about feeling lonely or depressed, especially if this has continued for some time, don't just shrug it off. Don't ignore the signs. Do something about it.
And by something I don't mean just give empty verbal advice. Do something more concrete. Make them socialize. Make them meet new people, take them to your hobbies and other social situations. (And please try to do it in a way that they feel comfortable, not forced.)
Now why he didn't mention anything to us is hard to say. Maybe because he didn't consider us his friends? Maybe because the internet isn't serious business? Or maybe because he felt we couldn't help? It's impossible to say and we will never know.
While suicide can sometimes be very spontaneous and surprising (even to the person him/herself), it's more often the result of a long period of depression and desperation (when it's not caused by an outright mental illness). Often people in this state show early warning signs (such as giving references to the problems they are experiencing and the subsequent depression, which might escalate over time), but every person is different, and not all depressed and desperate people necessarily show any signs, even to their closest friends.
In fact, if someone like that feels deterred from talking about their problems and depression to others (eg. because of a feel of shame or the fear of being shunned or laughed at), that usually only worsens the problem.
Often they do talk about it, but only to close friends. They might feel that his problems are best not divulged to the internet because they are personal.
Unfortunately, many times these close friends fail to see the warning signs. They may listen and be understanding, but might still just shrug it off as just a passing phase, or something minor. The majority of people wouldn't even know how to help such a person. (Some people try to give empty advise that's not helpful, others just realize that they don't know how to handle the situation and just let it be. Seldom do they suspect that this person might actually be suicidal, though.)
(I'm painfully aware that posting topics that are potentially controversial is a sure way of getting backlash and a negative reputation, but what the heck. It's not like my reputation could sink any lower than it is...)
I appreciate the forum moderators policy of not deleting posts/threads they don't like (except probably if they contain something outright illegal or highly offensive) and instead just locking them, which allows people to read them even after the fact. However, I have to question some of the policies about locking threads.
Locking is appropriate and to be desired when a thread has turned into an endless flamewar with accusations and insults being hurled back and forth without end. It's more questionable when it's done on a thread which simply consists of people acting foolishly and making completely random posts, especially if this happens in the off-topic group (in other groups it's more appropriate because such random unrelated foolish posts do not belong to those, but even then moving the posts is better than locking the thread). Not much damage is done in this latter case, but it still feels arbitrary.
However, shutting someone down who is making a formal complaint by immediately locking the thread crosses a border IMO. Whether he is right or wrong, and whether or not you agree with the complaint, I don't think it matters. Shutting someone (and everybody else) down like that shows a lack of respect and professionalism. People should be given a chance to voice their opinion, even if it's critical of moderator behavior. I could use some nasty adjectives to describe a person who pre-emptively shuts down a thread they don't like that's critical of the admins, but I'll just leave it at that.
If locking such complaints is acceptable by the admins, then make it an official policy and write it in the forum rules. "We don't tolerate complaints against the moderators and admins we don't agree with, and will lock any threads doing so."
(I hope you see the irony if you were to lock this thread as well.)
If justifying (ie. aligning left and right) the two lines is desired, there's no need to change the contents of the text simply to achieve that effect. Any sufficiently advanced text editor (or, in this case, any image manipulation program with a sufficiently advanced text object) will allow you to justify the text by automatically adjusting the font spacing. It will look good as long as the two lines were even marginally close in length to each other to begin with.
Yes, you're reading it correctly, it works on anything that can be iterated C++ style. A static array no, a std::array yes.
My point is that I think the code can be expanded to support traversing static arrays in reverse too, using the same syntax (to make it more in line with the regular functionality of a range-based for).
