Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

No, I got that part

The "What." was more:


Anyway, how's everyone doing?

Doing alright. Just struggling to find motivation for a project I'm working on. How are you?

Debating if I could plea deal some house arrest if I started a crime spree. I don't think I have the capital to pull it off.

The crime spree is where the funding would come from, but there have to be cheaper ways to get that fashionable ankle bracelet you're after.

Work has been a bit overwhelming these past few months. We print and distribute the fan cutouts you see in sporting stadiums, and I'm overseeing about 25 teams. Between the weekly shipments for them and multitude of questions coming in from the ones ordering, my alcohol consumption has increased proportionately.

youtube is busted.

Who says I am after it? I'm just fathoming the inevitable of "getting caught." :P

Apparently for real, thought it as just me but its on the news i guess

I have no motivation for the projects I have time for, and no time for the projects I have motivation for, so you're half up on me at least.

Sorry it's stressful, but if it's any consolation, those cutouts are hilarious. Rows and rows of dudebros frozen in time, like they ran into Cardboard Medusa.

Nature is healing

PS5 going live tonight, get those F5 keys ready.

But why though? Anything new that is exclusive?

Nah. Just Spiderman. Its a weak launch lineup, but its better than Microsofts. Just waiting for Cyberpunk.

and the bots win again, not even at midnight

the main pro of photobashing isn't realism. i'd argue most art that utilizes photobashing looks inferior to the ones that don't but art directors don't care cause it isn't visible in the final product (the game) and its a quick way to add/simulate detail and convey a idea.

major hickups are expected if you have to face the challanges of a pandemic unprepared but despite this a lot of times the conclusions seems to be that WFH can be done efficiently.


it's weird, you paint a picture of a industry with way to high costs and competition to break even at the end of the day yet the marked kept steadily growing since its first inception.

if the only way to sustain production of most AAA games is relying on predatory microtransactions that utilize psycological trickery then most AAA games don't have a right to exist. loot boxes are gambling with extra steps, completely unregulated for about a decade by now, targeted at children.
microtransactions mutilated gaming.

You just contradicted yourself in the same paragraph :p. Photobash were used in AAA projects because AAA game has to look real. If your environment has metal texture in certain part then in a concept art has to look like metal so 3D artists know exactly what texture to use. Hence photobash weren't a thing back in pixel art era, but it got utilized more these days.

If you look at art used in mobile/anime games they don't photobash. So it's not that they utilize photobash to cut down the man hour of this particular position(this position never has tons of man hour in gaming industry to begin with), they just use it to simulate realistic looks.



I already explained why: there are many more games released every month compare with 15 years ago. Just steam has close to 900 games released every month. Remember back in the day when we only have a few video game titles to choose from? Most steam users that I know of has long list of backlog on steam because games are so cheap these days. With this many games in the market taking our time we have less time to dedicate on a new game. Overall it gets tougher and tougher to sell a new title because players are busy playing other games.



It depends on the genre, and the type of microtransactions. If an AAA game has single player structure, and they utilize microtransactions to sell items that will change the actual gameplay (like better equipment and such), then I can see why it's not a good idea to implement it.

But for things like different outfit DLC, it's perfectly fine to rely on such DLC to generate more income IMO. Different outfit doesn't actually change actual gameplay, it's completely optional and it offers a new way for fans to pay extra money for extra income Why would you take $5 from your customer when they are very willing to pay $10 for some additional services?

For an industry that completely relies on long development cycle to see investment return, IMO more way to generate stabilized income the better it is for the industry.

Three days off starting today. Supposedly Wal-mart will have online orders at 12pm for PS5... hmm... somehow I think I will lose out on ordering again. /sigh

"the man that screams in silence
do you hear his cries
in mind of violence
do see the blood in his eyes
a tortured mind where battles rage
never knowing right from wrong
he fights through a timeless age
living a life for doesn't long"

drunken thoughts from the immortalmoon

Gonna try again at 12 but then just gonna give up. Not in a huge rush anyway

it is not the single player games but the multiplayer ones that are mostly targeted by micro transactions. it doesn't work as well in single player games for multiple reasons.

cosmetics do harm as well. they create a incentive to tip balance in favor of certain characters to sell more skins. just look at MOBAs like league of legends, they openly admit that they aren't trying to achive balance, yet they want to be a esport title.
look at CS:GO and their introduction of player skins. VALVE is in a perpetual cycle of redesigning and texturing tried and tested maps cause the new models blend in with the background.

the fast majority of those 900/month titles released on steam are shovel ware and indi games, neither compete with AAA games. there is also a much wider audience than there was in 1990s. sim type games like sims or animal crossing that also or even primarily target female gamers.
nintendo had success reaching out to a new group of casual players with titles like wii sports or wii mario kart that would never have picked up a controller in the 90s.
CS:GO doubled its playerbase within 1-2 years just by penetrating the chinese market.
i think ppl are busy playing other games not because there are too many AAA games, but because games these days are designed around microtransactions. artificially inflated game times or entire game concepts that are designed to never end in order to create more oportunities to sell microtransactions.

now you're just picking buzzwords to build a strawmen argument.
i didn't argue photobashing doesn't help to simulate realism, i said its not its main pro point. a skilled artist can achieve similar or even higher lvls of realism without photobashing just not within the same time frame.
iirc feng zhu (a artist who heavily uses photobashing) once estimated in one of his videos it would take about 1.5-3 hours with photobashing and 5-6+ without photobashing for a skilled artist to get a piece to a lvl a 3D guy could use it for reference. here is a video of a guy in the industry raving for about a hour how photobashing and other techniques speed up the process.

i know that concept art is not the most time consuming step in the game development pipeline, i just used it as a example cause know a bit about the steps involved and the progress of techniques and tools utilized. i'm fairly certain those aren't the only tools and techniques that have improved over the years.

you are right, in the example of anime games photobashing will probably not get you far but there are other tools that have been added or refined like perspective guides and improved masking/selection tools. some even start with rough 3D models to get the lights right. however, mobile games don't compete with the AAA market either.

With Twitch running mid-roll ads, part of me is curious as to how GDQ will work with ads on 10 minute intervals and the rest of me is looking forward to watching the shitstorm roll through.

Imagine putting money on whether or not an ad will save some poor schmuck from the Twitter mob should he accidentally reference "Cosmo."

I'm at least 80% confident they will disable the midrolls for gdq... it would be hard to pass up that much viewership, but the backlash would be massive.

I'm also not entirely sure they won't screw it up, even if they intend to deactivate it for that week. or compensate by doubling up ads on other streamers. Something.

I fell down the vtuber rabbit hole and after watching a ***ton of them on YouTube, I wouldn't mind watching GDQ on YT. Well, not GDQ because I quit watching them, but RPGLB.

If twitch keeps going the route they're going, wouldn't be surprised to see the events migrate... Actually... can gdq even be on twitch this time? They play youtuber music during breaks. Instant DMCA.

https://i.imgur.com/te1HF83.jpeg




3 of the four internet horsemen of the apocalypse

Tinyurl.com to make a link small

Shadyurl.com to make a link shady and frightening

Website to make all your link long and confusing

I'm not sure if this is true at least for PC users. My brother's steam library has just as many indie game as AAAs. In fact he doesn't even beat most of AAA that he has.

I used to prefer AAA games, I had several consoles and handheld before 2010. However now that indie is frequently 1/4 price of AAA games these days, I've been adding more indie games to my library too. I don't see myself paying $60 for an AAA game that only has 10hr of gameplay anymore. Many good indie games like hollow knight cost 15 bucks with 20hrs of very good gameplay. AAA and their price aren't THAT attractive.

I guess for younger generation of gamer graphics matters more. But for many older generation gamers, AAA graphics aren't must have in a game. We used to play AAA a lot and now we can accept indie graphics too. So not all older generation AAA gamers stay AAA game only. To me a game with good gameplay, creative concept, competitive price and not too horrible graphics will grab my attention. AAA games aren't always competitive v.s indies.

The reason so many indie games are made that make no money is because it's a form of lottery, some indie games explode and they become millionaires overnight.

Its a toss as many at the wall as possible and see what sticks strategy.

your brother sounds like a man of culture.

13 Sentinels is making me go "NANI?!" much more often than I thought possible.

On one hand Steam is good because they offer lots of sales, on the other hand they predate on FearOfMissingOut. So you can end up spending far more money than you normally would anyway in those sales, and end up never playing most of your library. If you can control your spending it's great, but many can't.

Steam sales are like buying 2 for 1 sale on milk, where the 2nd bottle is 60% off for the next 1 hour only. Did you get a good deal if you bought more than you can consume and it went off?

Problem is for many, they keep buying new games so they never actually play that backlog...ever. Total waste of money.

it used to be

but since steam added the refund system the games aren't that cheap anymore.
where they really start to pile up is with humblebundles, it often is still i good deal even if you are just interested in 1-2 games in the bundle, you add the other games of the bundle cause you paid for it but never bother to install.