[OT] Which IDE / Editor do you use?

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sat, 21 Sep 2013 03:29:59 +0200
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 20 September 2013 at 19:17:45 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > I dunno, I find that my good memories of those old games are 
> > quite tainted by nostalgia.
> 
> True in some cases, but in others I find myself able to 
> appreciate them even more now. But I avoid the taint by playing 
> them again every few years :)
> 

I agree. I don't really get when people say that older games are just
nostalgia. I mean, I'm sure it is for some people, but I genuinely do
like a lot of those other games even when I actually go back and replay
them (not *all* of course).

Yea, there are occasionally areas where those older games are rough
around the edges by today's standards. Ex: The mouse handling in
Lemmings 3 is really awkward, and save systems weren't always good in
the rare cases they existed at all. But most of these issues are either:

A. Obviated by save states

or B. Easier to put up with than extremely *inane* non-skippable
cutscenes (*cough*Assassin's Creed, Shift 2, and the original
non-blood-dragon FarCry 3*cough*), endless company logos, patronizing
tutorials, endless chatter, inability to use keyboard/mouse for FPSes
on systems with *actual USB ports* (ie every console FPS except CS:GO),
bad framerates *despite* being on hardware several orders of magnitude
more powerful (16-bit systems ran at 30 fps, there's *no* excuse for
bad framerates anymore - I'm looking at you Sonic. If you're having
framerate difficulties then quit being such graphics whores and tone
down all the effects and poly counts for godssakes, you're not
targeting 1991 hardware, you can make things run at least *that* well),
and all the other shit from so many modern games.

But back to the topic: I admit there are a few "retro" games I've
played and enjoyed SOOOO much over the years that I've started to just 
get tired of (like the NES Marios), but more often than not my reaction
isn't disappointment of "Ehh, I remember it being better" but
frequently one of these:

A. It's been too long since I've played this. It's really nice to get
back to games where you have to actually *think* and/or *try*. Man I
like this game.

B. Hmmm, I wasn't into this at the time, but all of a sudden it all
just "clicks" and I "get it" now. Sweet!

C. I never played/heard of this at the time, and that's a shame because
this is fantastic! (Ex: I'm currently going through a fan translation
of Monster World 4 on Genesis.)

Of course there *are* plenty of duds on those old systems, but that's
true of modern systems, too: Last Of Us[1], anyone? No thanks. God no.

However, all that said, there *is* a lot of modern stuff I like, too.
Just *some* of them off the top of my head:

- Rayman Origins/Legends
- Splinter Cell 1-3 (4's not terrible either, haven't played 5 or 6)
- 3D Dot Game Heroes
- Forza/Gran Turismo/Need for Speed: Shift 1
- Sonic Racing Transformed
- Sonic 4/Generations
- Limbo
- Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F
- BioShock (once you get past the completely worthless first ~20-30min)
- Portal 1 and 2
- Disgaea
- From Dust
- Kirby's Epic Yarn
- New Mario
- Kororinpa
- Pikmin
- Wii Sports Resort (believe it or not)
- Angry Birds in Space (believe it or not)
- Adventures of Big and Tiny (or something like that)
- Braid

So I'm not really a "new games" hater so much as an "idiotic bullcrap"
hater. There *are* good games being made; it's just there are also some
very irritating trends: For example, a *lot* of the modern AAA games
that are actually good, are complete and total shit for the first 30-60
minutes - *then* they become worthwhile. It's as if they're *trying* to
make their games leave a bad first impression.

Wanna see a *good* first impression? Play "Castlevania: Symphony of the
Night". But a lot of AAA devs take what leads to good first impressions
and do exactly the opposite. (BTW: No personal offense intended, Manu.
I don't know how long you've been there, but I actually love the first
two Max Paynes. I honestly do.)

[1] Last Of Us <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTsBn36yPrg> Ie "Lets
make a game about wandering from one empty, pointless room to the next,
to the next, to the next, while seeing how much inane whining you can
tolerate from the NPCs, and after every so many rooms of non-gameplay
force people to watch parts of a generic zombie movie with the only
distinction being a protagonist who's a grown male drama queeen ('What,
she's infected and lied to us?! Whine whine whine, bitch bitch bitch.')
and then watch the whole industry to praise it as an alleged
breakthrough in cinematic gaming" What horseshit. And yes, I've played
it, as well as Assassin's Creed 2 which isn't any better.

Last Of Us isn't even good as a zombie *movie*. It's more like "If JJ
Abrams made a zombie movie". Want a good zombie movie? Try Zombieland
or Sean of the Dead.

<pet peeve>Zombies are supernaturally reanimated corpses, not viral
infections. Supernatural: Cool. Virus: Boring.</pet peeve>

> > many annoyances that have been eliminated in modern games.
> 
> Oh, modern games have their own annoyances. For example, the NES 
> would flash or glitch. The playstation three freezes up and 
> disconnects its own CPU with its excessive heat.
> 

So *that's* why it crashes more than any other console I've owned!
(Although I think another reason for that is that Crackle apparently
can't handle the clock being pushed a year ahead to kill Sony's
bullshit forced-telemarketing-to-paying-customers. Not that Crackle is
really worth using...)


> I'll take the NES though, at least it didn't have such 
> ridiculously long load and boot times!
> 

I *LOVE* that about the NES. Here's what an NES game is like:

- Purchase game
- Open shrinkwrap
- Insert cart
- Push power
- (3rd party only) Wait <= 5 sec for copyright/legal screen(s)
- Wait <= 1 sec for title screen
- Press Start
- (Sometimes) Select save slot, player name
- Now playing game!!

This is what a typical AAA PS3 game is like:

- Push power
- Wait for health and safety warning to appear
- Wait for warning to go away
- Wait for system menu to appear
- Purchase game (I'll count this as one step. I think that's fair.)
- Download game
- Install game (Downloading *isn't* installing? On a *console*?)
- Wait for system menu to load list of games...one...by...one...
- Start game
- Download game update because Sony's infrastructure is too fucking
  stupid to send you the latest version in the first place.
- Wait for PS Eye/Motion health & safety warning even though nobody
  owns a PS Eye/Motion.
- Wait for first company logo to finish animating.
- Wait for second company logo to finish animating.
- Wait for third company logo to finish animating.
- ...etc...
- Wait for it to connect to network even though you're already logged
  into PSN and don't intend to play multiplayer.
- Wait for it to explain "Auto Saving" and show you what a "Saving"
  logo looks like
- Wait for it to load the title screen
- Wait for the title screen to animate in
(Are you *still* interested in playing at this point?)
- Press start
- A loading screen just to load the main menu
- Select an option
- Wait for the screen transition animation that some artist decided was
  necessary
- Select another option
...etc...
- Wait for game to load
- Surprise, it's a cutscene and you can't skip it.
- Wait for game to load for real
- Another cutscene
- Hope to heck *this* loading screen is for the first level
- The first level is a tutorial. After several lines of completely
  unnecessary dialog, some Sergeant is telling me how to push buttons.
  I can't kill him no matter how much I want to because the last three
  times I tried the tutorial restarted from the beginning (*cough*Call
  of Duty 4*cough*).
- Spend at least several minutes playing "Simon Says" with Mr.
  Chatterbox "Can't Get To The Freaking Point" Windbag. (*cough*Much,
  much more than just Call of Duty*cough*)
- Loading cutscene.
- Go to the kitchen and make a sandwich while more windbags ramble on
  about whiny bullshit I don't care about. Occasionally peek my head in
  to see if they're almost done. Ignore the controller rumbling itself
  off the edge of the table.
- More loading
- Bring my snack back to the living room
- First level starts, but by now I'm more interested in my food
- Finish eating, take control of the now-waiting player character
- Walk around a stage that doesn't have much of any gameplay, but maybe
  has some barely-interactive scripted sequences (with more
  blathering), or more interspersed cutscenes.
- Wait for next level to load
- It's now about 30-60 minutes from the first company logo (not from
  power on) and I finally get to start playing the *real* game. Or
  not...my laundry's probably done...

The bizarre thing is, I swear to god I'm *not* exaggerating any of
that. And that means somebody, somewhere, actually thought all that
bullshit was acceptable for the price of console + game. Yea, obviously
some of it is to be expected (downloading, various purchasing steps,
multi-tiered menu system), but most of it's just badly designed, badly
engineered bullshit.

I've played PUO-heavy DVDs that have far less bullcrap than that.

> 
> Gameplay wise.... eh, the new games I like tend to be similar to 
> the old games.
> 

Heh, that's often (though not always) my experience, too.

> 
> They also loop so well, I can set a video game song playing for 
> 30 minutes straight as real life background music and not get 
> annoyed with it.

Well, that depends on the song ;)

I can understand why parents got annoyed at us playing those games too
long, relegated them to the basement, etc... <g>

Journey to Silius had good music. And of course MegaMan and Sonic.

> Sometimes that works with mp3s too, but the 
> video game ones are specifically made for infinite looping so 
> there's no discontinuity as it goes around again.

Yea, that is true.