Topic Zone! Context Sensitivity | 7th Gen Recap | Virt-izontals | Psikyo | Combo Em' Ups | Rogue-likes
Added 2024-12-06 06:05:54 +0000 UTCHello Patrons!
Today is the pilot episode of TOPIC ZONE, the patreon exclusive show where I give my thoughts on topics submitted by the patrons. Because this is the pilot episode, this ep will be for free members as well, but moving forward the future eps will be for the paid patreon tiers. The way the show works is that each tier gets a certain amount of submission slots and then I randomly choose from the submissions in the dedicated posts of each tier. This ep is a bit unique in that I chose the topics from the submissions because it's the pilot episode, but moving forward they will be selected by pure lottery (though I retain veto power to some degree) and here are the selections for this episode! Each episode consists of 6 topics, 3 from the Gentry, 2 from the Illuminati, and 1 from the Homies :-)
Gentry
1. Rebuttal to Matthewmatosis video on Context Sensitivity | Munstah Zero
2. The Strengths and Weaknesses of the 7th Console Generation | RC
3. The Untapped Potential of Virt-izontals | Vidyer Game Enjoyer
Illuminati
4. Why Psikyo is Underrated | KillAllMusic
5. My Thoughts on Combo-Focused Beat Em' Ups (Combo Em' Ups) | Mister Mama Mia
Homies
6. Roguelikes VS Arcade | Ryan O. Smith
Thank you so much everyone for supporting the channel!! I think this is going to be a really fun series.
Sincerely,
Mark
Comments
I feel like Sektori is the best current example of an arcade game with roguelite aspects. The randomized elements know how to be contained, it’s sort of similar to the zippers section in DOJ but expanded more into the whole game where it’s a lot of RNG functioning inside a limited framework. For example the enemy spawns are all hand made but are randomized and spawn in sets, but that randomness is kept in check by the arena which evolved in a more linear way and every stage transition kills off some of the enemies. So the level design and hand made sets of spawns keeps in check the randomness. The bosses are randomized but level up with the levels, so all bosses have 5 versions
Musashi
2025-06-09 17:04:02 +0000 UTCgreat episode
Kuma_Wamu
2025-04-19 02:58:41 +0000 UTCThanks for this! Really enjoyed the Vertizontal discussion, and you're right: I didn't expect the discussion to go in that direction! What kinda got me interested in talking about them to begin with is me realizing how many vertizontal 4:3 games I really enjoy, and I inherently kinda like "wackier" shmups like Zero Gunner 2 where enemies come from all over and you have no screen-clearing bombs. Really bold design choices like that always appeal to me for whatever reason haha
vidyer game enjoyer
2024-12-15 05:40:43 +0000 UTCSorry I think I missed how we submit topics for the Topic Zone. Can anyone tell me? Thanks
Brent Cox
2024-12-13 18:57:02 +0000 UTCHaha yeah. Roguelikes kind of lost the genre war it seems. Bullethell facing a similar thing. Another term is usually traditional roguelike and non traditional. It stems from an old game called Rogue. But thinking on it I think traditional ones add scoring often like Adom and Caves of Qud as well. But I never really delved into the metric meaning or engaged with it. These also aren't action-oriented games. Overall very deep topic you can get into with those genres and subgenres. Looking forward to your takes about the genre as you learn more 8)
Ushi Mushi
2024-12-12 01:33:00 +0000 UTCOMG thank you for clearing this up for me! I have thought my ears have been playing tricks on me or something cuz I ve heard both terms but had no idea they are actually different things. That s insane lol. So Rogue-Likes and Rogue-Lites are two different things? Wow that s obnoxiously similar vernacular ha. Noted though
The Electric Underground
2024-12-12 01:10:36 +0000 UTCCool format! One thing with Psikyo I think makes it really cool, like Shikigami, is the characters usually have very unique and different play styles. A huge problem with Psikyo, in my opinion, is the scoring is absolutely stale save for like Dragon Blaze, which even that isn't very ground breaking. But other than that I agree, Psikyo definitely has some great ideas. Also, and a little semantic, there's roguelikes and roguelites - typically the lites have the metaprogression elements and are more popular. The metaprogression I think helps not break the spirit of a lot of 'casual' players when they die a lot. Anyhow one roguelike that I know has scoring is Jupiter Hell. I'm not sure how good or robust it is, but possibly something to look at.
Ushi Mushi
2024-12-11 23:51:49 +0000 UTCI'm gonna put that on my list because I do think it seems like a really important game to cover and explore
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 22:53:23 +0000 UTCI think its a port of the version Epyx made for the Amiga if I remember correctly, so slightly more graphically advanced than the original ASCII visuals but the actual gameplay is totally unchanged from the 1980 version. Definitely worth a look in any case and would be a really cool game for you to cover :)
Saoirse Hughes
2024-12-11 22:21:15 +0000 UTCyes! if someone was willing/stoked to port it, it would be an instant hit im sure
CookSomeSoup
2024-12-11 21:45:26 +0000 UTCand yeah! i love it too :D
CookSomeSoup
2024-12-11 21:15:30 +0000 UTCExactly, I wish it was possible to contact the dev and make something like that happen ha
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 21:10:15 +0000 UTCthat would be insanely cool!! if it could run on MiSTer id definitely eat it up
CookSomeSoup
2024-12-11 21:06:13 +0000 UTCOh great point!!! I think you are right! God a love that crazy little game, imagine if someone did like a retro console port of it, people would eat it up
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 21:00:05 +0000 UTCIt's actually really interesting no one has played with it at all. i think because mostly the aspect ratio of games has been hardware decided rather than viewed as an essential gameplay element, but these days since we have such crazy options in terms of aspect ratio, i do think playing with it as a a game design element is an under-explored idea.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:47:29 +0000 UTCvery much! i was considering it at one time for my game because i couldnt make up my mind about the aspect ratio lol. btw i think that ring^27 game is 1:1 or close to
CookSomeSoup
2024-12-11 20:47:00 +0000 UTCYes I completely agree that the beat em up genre can make some interesting use of combos as risk and reward for sure. And you do see a bit of that here and there, but I think this CAG path that a lot of modern beat em' ups have decided to travel down is sort of a dead end. One idea is that if you had maybe a combo juggle system for groups of enemies, but if the enemies get dropped or fall out of the juggle they actually get more aggressive or something ha. Essentially like you said there needs to be some kind of trade off or risk to the combo, rather than making it the go-to option all the time.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:46:07 +0000 UTCExactly! and what's really cool is that they even developed this further in Resi5 where you can get different contextual kicks based on where you are standing! So if you get behind the zombie you do a full finisher move, it's such an amazing layer of depth that again wouldn't be possible without contextual positioning without just outright adding some kind of full on grapple system or something ha.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:44:02 +0000 UTCExactly! Isn't that really cool! Its funny and also kinda sad how the original Rogue is still more properly developed in terms of game structure than a lot of the roguelikes we see now. Actually, I didn't know Rogue had a switch port but that might be a perfect opportunity for me to cover and discuss the game actually.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:42:09 +0000 UTCyeah exactly Dio, beat em' ups tend not to have very many execution elements to them (besides like weird grab resets or something) and instead focus in on spacing and positioning as the main skill being tested. I think that needs to be more directly stated in discussions around the genre for sure :-) Also yes I think your point on roguelikes adding metaprogression for commercial purposes is absolutely the case. One way you can tell is that as the sub-genre has developed, it is sort of regressed in design rather than progressed forward, that's why I think you are right that the earlier roguelikes are now pretty distinctive from what we see now. Of course I still have a lot to learn about early roguelike stuff, but I think it's an important area of game design I need to start looking into.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:40:50 +0000 UTCAbsolutely! They will be a patreon exclusive regular :-) Gonna have the next batch of topic submissions posted next week.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:37:42 +0000 UTCexactly ha! It's such a fun concept to play with I think.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-11 20:37:30 +0000 UTCI enjoyed it, hope you do more of these.
David Andrus
2024-12-10 15:50:16 +0000 UTCwith a 1:1 aspect ratio you could also just flip the whole thing 90degrees if your setup is tate :D
CookSomeSoup
2024-12-09 17:56:05 +0000 UTCI'm not especially experienced with beat 'em ups so I could be wrong here, but from what I've played they seem to have very little in the way of execution checks and rely more on decision-making, which is cool but it's nice to have both and I think potentially combo systems can add the execution element. In fighting games, too, combos are tricky to execute but once you've found the hit you also have to decide what kind of combo you're going to do depending on if you want damage, oki, corner carry, to spend meter, and whether or not you can actually do the combo consistently. And which options you have depend on what the combo starter was to begin with of course, and some starters are more difficult to land than others. If you had those elements in beat 'em ups I think it would justify the inclusion of a combo system. Regarding roguelikes, maybe you already know but this concept of metaprogression is a newer addition to the genre that is not found in the majority of traditional roguelikes, e.g. NetHack, Brogue, Infra Arcana. In those games when you die you start the next run completely fresh, nothing carries over, exactly like an arcade game. These games also have scoring, although I'm unsure how seriously people take it, not to mention time limits in the form of limited food usually. I know players from the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup community are also really into maximising their win rate and winstreaks. I think metaprogression was added to roguelites as a concession to commercial viability since most players won't stick with a game they have to restart constantly without making some form of persistent in-game progression. Personally I really dislike it even if a lot of the games with it are overall good, it means it's not true permadeath IMO. This doesn't really detract from what you're saying since most roguelites do have metaprogression today, I just hate the thought of people thinking that's synonymous with RLs rather than a newer concession, ha. So many people get all their ideas about the genre from roguelites but never play a proper, traditional roguelike.
Dio Damke
2024-12-08 15:23:26 +0000 UTCOn the matter of scoring in roguelikes, I recently picked up the Switch port of the original Rogue and was surprised to discover it has a scoring system and online leaderboards! The gold you collect throughout your run has no function besides representing score, meaning a player who explores more of each floor and takes greater risks (fighting more enemies etc) while still surviving and making it deep into the dungeon will have a higher gold count than someone who made it far into the dungeon by playing it safe. It makes me wonder at what point the genre abandoned scoring, as it feels like a natural and engaging part of Rogue.
Saoirse Hughes
2024-12-08 14:58:33 +0000 UTCAnother great part about the re4 kicks being context sensitive is how it ties into the shooting/moving. You aim at different parts of body to get different kicks. You need to stop shooting to run to enemy to kick them. So incredibly tight.
Ryan O. Smith
2024-12-07 23:26:41 +0000 UTCReview it!
Ryan O. Smith
2024-12-07 23:22:50 +0000 UTCYeah exactly. Unless you settle for only trivial games or examples, you’ll always run into mountains of obscuring complexity. It’s always tough with actual real world examples. How do you _very cleanly_ tease apart all the individual elements, so you’re _only_ describing the one element you’re focused on? I do wish Matt saw the value in trying to explain things more objectively, so the reasoning would be easier to follow consistently and universally across examples.
Dan Matte
2024-12-07 22:58:50 +0000 UTCI totally agree on the combo beat em ups idea. I think Fight N' Rage does it perfectly, there's some stuff you can do for extra damage, but enemies aren't so spongy or big enough pushovers to really force you to do anything long and boring. I do think combos could have a place in beat em ups as a kind of risk reward thing. I don't want to inflate enemy health too much but I thought about having potential different enders that can do different things based on what attacks you do. Your fastest option could end with a shove that can push an enemy into another enemy and stun them both, a medium option that could knockdown, a heavy option that could sliding knockdown and potentially knock down other enemies that get caught in the slide, stuff like that. I think about Killer Instinct and how it's combos are kind of all utility based, how you want to pick certain buttons and enter the combo mode based off what you expect your opponent to respond with at any given moment, and I wonder if that could be translated into a beat em up. I think just having an aspect of time and a high aggressiveness of enemies could emulate how you'd think about doing certain combos in a fighting game, especially if you have stage interactivity that can change what you want to do based on your positioning. I always know deep down the heart of a beat em up is good, thoughtful movement and enemy management, but I do wonder if you can introduce combo ideas into that that aren't artificial mechanics.
Mister Mama Mia
2024-12-07 19:11:24 +0000 UTCOn the topic of giving a camera system to shmups, Kid Icarus Uprising came to mind. I think of it as an on rails shooter but with no rails, so you get all the fun aspects of a rail shooter where you can aim your shots, but you also get to physically move around the field. I remember Boghog bringing up how shots in a rail shooter are only active for a couple frames when they get close enough to the screen, but this game totally sidesteps that by having all projectiles maintain an active hitbox, since you can move in a 3d space. You get to have a field with enemies shooting active projectiles at you, but because the camera is in your control and to your back, you can have them surround you so you have to pick and choose targets, they can be on your level, above or below you, and you have this freedom of movement that you'd expect from a shooter that relies on bullet dodging more than taking direct positional advantage, like a cover shooter. Obviously that game isn't perfect, but I truly believe that idea of having a rails shooter aiming reticle that you can move freely, as well as a camera than you can turn mostly freely turn as well, is an extremely interesting idea for a bullet hell/shmup inspired game.
Mister Mama Mia
2024-12-07 18:26:33 +0000 UTCThe problem here is that most systems in games have not such "ambiguity". Most camera/lock on systems are very consistent. They are just hard to learn and often impossible to master because there are so many scenarios/variables especially with multiple enemies. It creates depth. Matthewmatosis sayed that he don't like to control the camera in any game. I would say that the camera is always part of a 3D game (even in wonderful 101 or classic resident evil).
The Febo
2024-12-07 18:20:04 +0000 UTCI'm very interested in 1:1 aspect ratio too.
Андрей Лыков
2024-12-07 12:01:01 +0000 UTCOh, that's interesting to hear! Working towards a more robust scoring system for roguelikes might be the core in bridging arcade and roguelike fandoms, so I'm looking forward to seeing what your revised take of it will be.
SanNevo
2024-12-07 02:47:19 +0000 UTCThat would be really fun I think! I'd love to proto type something like that at some point
The Electric Underground
2024-12-07 01:21:51 +0000 UTCYeah I haven't played it but bog really likes the game so I trust his judgement :-)
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 23:29:34 +0000 UTCDerek Yu's Spelunky does a good job of blending arcade and rouguelike elements. There are daily challenges with fixed maps that are judged via scoring.
Christopher Ladd
2024-12-06 23:23:25 +0000 UTCMatt's definition of context sensitivity is really maluable which he acknowledges at the beginning and honestly it has to be since the concept of overlapping mechanics is too deeply baked into game design just overall to be a distinct phenomenon. But yes I do think the focus and shotgun would fit his definition because there is input overlap and uncertainty which he really makes clear he's not a fan of. By his arguments the natural change would be to make the shotgun and focus two distinct buttons since they are two distinct attacks. The resi 4 clip if you keep watching (it's at the 12 min mark, I have the vid nearly memo'd at this point ha) he says that Godhand's manual kicks are what he wants to see. Funny enough resi 5 does separate the kick function from the item pick ups which is what I think your thinking of, but that's because resi 5 has real time item interactions where resi 4 just hard pauses the entire game for items. I think resi 5 is def the better example to support his point, but he wants his manual kicks godhand style ha. And the cube not having 4 trigger buttons wasnt the issue since 5 mapped the item button to "B" in GameCube terms. I think the half of what Matt says about the issues with input overlaps is def valid and important, but he forgot the other half of the vid where he could point out the necessary and elegant features context sensitivity lends to game design and balance. And yes Shmup are one of the lowest context sensitivity genres because they don't have many shifts in game state, so I m surprised he didn't use them as an example but that would really undermine his point about low context sensitivity lending to game popularity ha.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 22:52:07 +0000 UTCI'm a bit confused on two things with the Matt portion at the beginning. First is that is the Devil Daggers/shmup stuff really context sensitivity in the way it's being addressed by Matt? To me those come off as discrete inputs and not contextual actions (or at the very least they're contextual in regards to the player's thinking rather than the game logic in the same way I would choose which 8-way direction input to use when moving a character around). I also just can't tell from the clip if Matt meant the RE4 example in the way you interpret it or if he just thinks it should be on its own button (like, it works the exactly the same as it does in OG RE4 but now the input is on R2 which IIRC is not used-in that case maybe we can make a case the original design decision came from the fact that the GameCube had the Z button instead of second R and L triggers). I do agree with your big point of him getting in the weeds too much and being hard to critique. I appreciate that you offload stuff like gameplay density into it's own video so we don't get 3 hr Joseph Anderson esque vids (now there's a juicy topic lol).
Spaghedward1
2024-12-06 22:27:27 +0000 UTCHoly shit the press button to shift vertical/hori is such a good idea
nogden
2024-12-06 22:25:41 +0000 UTCThat sounds cool as hell lol
Tim French
2024-12-06 21:00:14 +0000 UTCYeah I think unique weapons is a really good idea 💡 imagine this one, a guwange style shiki you can unleash and control and move around the screen, that would be fun and you could make the hitbox all horizontally stretched like a dash ha --
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 20:20:57 +0000 UTCExactly San! If there is a way to more effectively build the combo system into the crowd control (which Fight N' Rage and AVP do to some degree) that's where I think it would really get cooking. Like if you made juggling enemies somehow risky with some kind of rank system ha! Where the more you juggle the enemies the more aggressive they'll be if they survive or something, that would be a really interesting dynamic I think. I do think there is a lot of room to play with combos in beat em ups, but not in the CAG sorts of ways for style and so forth. Gotta keep risk reward and spacing and crowd control front and center! Also yes, on the roguelike shuffle mode stuff, I do think I will attempt to do something like this in HOB, so we can see how well I can make it work during the playtesting phases of the game LOL. I start working on it around march of next year.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 20:17:47 +0000 UTCI also thought that a good solution for dealing with the aspect ratio they have been dealt would be using some sort of extra weapon system like what radiant silvergun uses for dealing with things on the sides. It also would help conveying the intention of such a design by using some sort of wide, multi-turret gunship rather than a fighter plane or starfighter. That, or maybe you just have to design the game in 1:1 first, and then literally just stretch the image to 16:9. I wouldn't even be mad lmao
Tim French
2024-12-06 20:15:07 +0000 UTCYeah I can tell Matt is really excited to talk about the issues he's noticed with context sensitivity and there are PLENTY of them we can see in modern gaming ha (both he and I agree suck to target is awful). I just think the topic itself is such a beast that it's really hard to capture it without seeming really wishy washy and I definitely can understand his desire for direct inputs in games and their strengths, but I almost wonder if he hadn't fared better sticking to more old school examples like shmups and stuff ha. Because when you start introducing a lot of game states it's basically impossible to avoid using context sensitivity to organize them -- look at hitsun and throws and fighting game mechanics. All of that becomes a massive lasagna of context sensitive states and actions, even smash brothers ha. Even street fighter 2, look at the proximity throws and throw techs of the game, context sensitive. I have really grown to love proximity throws too, they add that real classic feel and ironically they are about as context sensitive as you can get. It's the modern versions of street fighter that use direct inputs for throws, kinda interesting right.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 20:05:21 +0000 UTCAll good points! Think I agree with all that. I agree that RE4 and God Hand are completely different games in tons of ways. Talking about anything in specific is always a nightmare, because there are always all these other elements and systems. I imagine Matt was more giving an example of a thing that has issues (input misinterpretation in RE4), and then a subsequent example that doesn’t have that very narrow and specific issue in the context of roundhouse kicks. I’d like to think he’d also agree with most or all of what you’re saying above. But who knows lol. Mostly I think you and I are agreeing that Matt’s desire to avoid all context sensitivity of inputs is extreme and unrealistic, because there’s way too much complexity in games to reduce things down that much. Allowing context sensitivity of outputs alone is not sufficient to fully resolve all design challenges in all games.
Dan Matte
2024-12-06 19:33:49 +0000 UTCI really appreciate the thoughtful reply my dude! You're a really perceptive thinker on these topics for sure! Yeah there's a sort of irony that I like Matt's vids a lot because he's thoughtful and digs into these deeper topics, but there is hardly any overlap in our perspectives a lot of the time ha, so it makes it really interesting for me to interpret what he says through my views of game design and I think you articulate the difference between us really well. On his Godhand example, I revisited the vid yesterday for the recording and I remember this distinctly. There's one massive glaring difference between godhand and resi 4 that I think Matt overlooks, which is that in resi 4 you have a gun and aiming and shooting are actually primary combat, the kicks are secondary to guns. In godhand, the whole game is melee combat. So in godhand having the same style of contextual kicks makes no sense, there s no gun to connect them with. Also godhand has a guard and block system which resi 4 doesn't. So godhand actually has contextual kicks because of block right, I just think Matt doesn't view them as contextual in the same way because they are manually output by the player. So I guess resi 4 could have manual kicks that get blocked by the zombies unless in the contextual state ha, but that seems messy and adding inputs for the sake of adding them. Actually this reminds me of a design principal I want to talk about I'm gonna call "chekhov's button" which is that if you give the player a move that s a dedicated input (like a kick) that move needs to be deeply important and part of the core moveset. Which manual kicks are in godhand. But the elegance of resi4 is that kicks in that game are not a spacing tool, they are a reward state like a grenade essentially. Actually I wonder if simply changing the animation of the contextual kicks to like a grenade would change Matt's feelings on the move. Because it would feel silly to argue that Leon should be able to manually toss grenades for free. In short, even though the animations of the kicks in godhand and resi4 look similar, they function and exist in the context of the game design extremely differently
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 19:03:58 +0000 UTCAhh bummer I should have tried to do that ha, but I got all excited about this 1 by 1 idea ha. I do think a lot of virt izontal design does go back to dealing with changing aspects ratios outside of the genre's control ha, more so than a strong creative reason to have them. I think their biggest strength actually would come from playing around with dealing with attacks on all sides, since they are wider the wideness needs to be utilized in some meaningful way. That would be my best idea so far ha
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 18:47:33 +0000 UTCGreat show, great selection of topics, great episode. That being said, I think the person asking you to defend the vertizontal shmups was asking you to steelman them as they are now, rather than come up with a way to fix them. Though I could be wrong, I was hoping to see you try to do that lol
Tim French
2024-12-06 18:10:58 +0000 UTCSo firstly thanks for the reply, and I actually agree more with you than Matt overall :) Context sensitivity (of inputs) is often good. I don’t agree with his overall argument in the video, but at least both of you will speak about a deep topic at all, like glasses of water in the proverbial desert of YouTube. And I agree that Matt doesn’t like to give clear definitions and keeps things overall vague and fuzzy. He does a good job of _descriptively_ explaining the overall concept. But in doing that he gives a ton of examples of distinct aspects of context sensitivity, so that gets really confusing. He is consistent on wanting unambiguous input interpretation throughout the video, though. So I tried to tease apart the overlapping concerns by distinguishing inputs vs. outputs, to make things clearer to reason about it. The fundamental issue is, like essentially every topic, this is not one-dimensional: context sensitivity as “good” or “bad.” It’s actually two-dimensional: the tradeoffs are around internal vs. external perspective, and subjective vs. objective perspective. Here’s the key thing: Matt’s very next example after RE4 is God Hand. He gives that as a different design example of avoiding the RE4 issue entirely, albeit with an entirely different system. You can roundhouse kick whenever you want in God Hand and it’s not OP, but the _outputs_ are context-sensitive—the vulnerability state of an enemy is external to the player input. So roundhouse kicks aren’t OP, but you still get a larger effect when kicking vulnerable opponents. Anyway, that’s why I thought inputs and outputs were worth distinguishing. Can’t imagine he wouldn’t agree with you that it’d be a bad idea to allow (OP) roundhouse kicks at all times in RE4. Overall roughly I think Matt strongly gravitates towards internal-oriented games, while you gravitate more towards objective-oriented (e.g., skill-based) games. My two cents, anyhow. Keep up all the great work 🙂
Dan Matte
2024-12-06 18:05:10 +0000 UTCGlad to hear it my dude!!
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:56:19 +0000 UTCOh I'm gonna promote the exclusive patreon stuff at the ends of vids I think, that could work well.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:55:52 +0000 UTCYeah I ll have to work out the kinks of how I reply to the prompts as I get a bit more settled into the format.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:54:26 +0000 UTCThank you my dude!! Glad you enjoyed it!
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:53:39 +0000 UTCWell s and p2 has a lot going on control wise. It s got the charge shot, the normal shot, the melee, your moving in 8 directions, and also freely aiming independently of your movement. I do love the game, but I do think I could have benefited from layering the controls a little more, it s got a lot happening at once ha. I think keeping the melee contextual and situational worked really well in the first game and could have fit well in the sequel, I think focusing on the movement and aiming is asking for enough precision ha, the contextual melee would have worked well I think. After all it s a shooting game, it makes sense to tether and balance the melee with the shooting as a secondary attack. Also by making the melee it's on dedicated button, I think it over-emphasizes it as a dynamic. Because I think the way it works (still working on this theory) is that if you have a manual button, that button needs to be part of the core moveset overall. But as your in the stages and stuff, the sword doesn't do much. So I think keeping it contextually linked to the shot and then utilizing it in that fashion against bosses makes sense. Or they could do something interesting and like have sections where you shot just becomes the sword for certain fights. That would be really cool actually ha and would make the boss fights more clear I think. Like during phases your character holsters the gun and draws the sword, that would be awesome.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:52:24 +0000 UTCI'm surprised you feel that way about S&P2. Admittedly I didn't like how it controlled either until I mapped the melee to a separate button entirely to remove the input lag from it needing to confirm a button release, completely changed how the game felt to play imo.
gavi888
2024-12-06 17:31:26 +0000 UTCYeah I think the tight pace of the game really compliments the patterns , absolutely! Psikyo has a lot of hard and brutal memo and so yeah if the game was like 50 min long for a single loop, that would be too ruthless I think ha. The short run time and the intense patterns compliment each other extremely well
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:27:24 +0000 UTCThanks very much frisken!! I spent an entire day editing it together ha
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:25:32 +0000 UTCOh yes there are a lot of great examples of when removing context sensitivity can have improved outcomes -- though I'm not sure if I prefer the controls of sin and punishment 2, that one is debatable because at times I do think the game would benefit from a bit more elegance, but that one can go either way I think. And that is ultimately where I disagree with MM on the vid. I think he hit the gas a bit too hard on some of the issues that can arrive from context sensitivity, but really ommited it s strengths as a design tool and how necessary it often is when creating elegantly layered mechanics. As I say in the ep though balance means that sometimes context sensitivity is gonna be good in some places, other times it won't be but that has to be determined by the individual structure of the game. Also I disagree that having some ambiguity with the inputs is not deal breaker. Especially if the skill the game is reliably testing involves spacing and positioning. It all really depends of course, but I think MM draws to heavy of a line in the sand on stuff like contextual attacks (resi 4) and soft locking cameras (Shinobi) where part of the game's skill set is creating reliability with positioning. Look at the throws of final fight, they are context sensitive and are about as elegant of design that I can think of.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 17:19:39 +0000 UTCI see what mattosis is talking about but I think it's really important not to get lost in a lot of the semantics of the vid which I explained in the ep is a real difference in our styles of communication. I get what Matt is saying in the vid and the first 6 min of the vid where he is outlining the semantics of what context sensitivity could mean. Actually if I really wanted to wade into all of that his definition of context sensitivity isn't very reliable because like he himself says all game design is context sensitive ultimately. Matt is very programming oriented and this is a perspective of game design that I often think can get lost in viewing games as bits of software at times. Case and point his view on inputs. Throughout the vid he talks about how inputs are best when they are fully reliable and accessible at the players will at all times, this is why he doesn't like soft locking systems or why he doesn't like context sensitive attacks like the resi kicks. I do get what he's saying. But he is too dismissive. Because he is seeing game design from a too programing oriented perspective because navigating ambiguity and interacting with the behavior of inputs is part of the skill that game design tests. He describes context sensitivity as an arbitrary layer between the player and the inputs. I don't agree. There is nothing arbitrary about the game having context sensitive states. It can be arbitrary if the design is poor, as he points out with spiderman and stuff like that. But he really biases his examples in the vid. He also makes a claim that the lack of context sensitivity is what makes games popular, but then describes to except spiderman 2 and batman Arkham because their licensed games, but what about God of War? That game is extremely context sensitive (suck to target) and massively popular. Also why would this even matter, does popularity make a game's design good? Like I said in the ep Matt is extremely talented at presenting his ideas and diving into semantics and the possible definitions of the words he uses. But what is really important to focus on are his practical applications of these concepts, how does one actually apply context sensitivity and why? Follow that and what we often see is him presenting a lot of lopsided arguments against context sensitivity but not recognizing that it's such a powerful and important tool to creating a game with mechanics that elegantly layer together. Think of throws in final fight, those are context sensitive and a huge part of the skill of the game is setting up the spacing to utilize them. Matt in the vid says that what devs should aim for is maximum action reliability right. He makes this point multiple times. So should final fight have a dedicated grab button, that way there is never a situation where the grab doesn't happen when the player doesn't want it? I would say no. The video doesn't factor in that having the game act contextually is a powerful and elegant balancing tool -- like the resi 4 kick. It s a complicated topic lol and in the end I think Matt pressed way too hard on the issues context sensitivity can have when poorly designed, but not the great strengths it provides when done well.
The Electric Underground
2024-12-06 16:59:10 +0000 UTC1) I hope this doesn’t come off as pedantic or negative feedback, but I think you might have missed Matthew’s point about context sensitivity with the RE4 example. He was effectively talking about context sensitivity for _inputs_ there, not outputs. It can be confusing and subtle, but context sensitivity applies to both. Why this isn’t so obvious in RE4 is because both things _seem_ merged together through the singular A button. You’re guessing Matthew meant “no context sensitivity would be better” would entail always having distinct buttons/inputs, but it’s possible he meant separate input options only during the given context/moment. The context insensitivity could actually be context-sensitive :P 2) You do astutely say a couple times that all these design decisions are tradeoffs. And while I don’t fully agree with either of you overall, I don’t think you addressed Matthew’s argument. His root point—which is really identical to his hatred of non-manual camera control—is from the programmer’s perspective. When you have multiple possible outputs mapped to the same input (in the same given context/moment), the program does not know which output the player intends; it has to _guess_. Overall in the video he’s advocating for 100% unambiguity on player inputs being interpreted correctly, not necessarily unambiguity on the outputs. 3) The deeper question is, “when does the computer program understand the user’s intent?” The real answer, hilariously, is “never.” 🙂
Dan Matte
2024-12-06 16:19:08 +0000 UTCI got a 1-all of Sengoku Blade a couple months ago and I remember that when stage 5 came it felt completely impossible. Enemies would fill the screen with slow bullets and then a big guy came who shot a very fast bullet pattern and if you didn't kill him fast enough the next big guy came with a different fast pattern and you'd have two big guys on screen at the same time. If the 1cc wasn't like 10 minutes it would have been so much harder.
HPPrinter
2024-12-06 15:49:44 +0000 UTCThis is a fantastic format. Love the pacing, the topics, and the music to set the mood.
Fisken
2024-12-06 15:35:03 +0000 UTCGreat episode, Mark. This is really interesting stuff.
The Gaming Hubby
2024-12-06 11:24:00 +0000 UTCThis was a great listen. I think an issue of the format is that when submitting topics, people really want their own views and opinions to be reflected so they might end up disappointed when that doesn't end up happening (like with the vertizontal topic here). But to me it worked out just fine anyway.
Steve-Fiction
2024-12-06 10:37:36 +0000 UTCAlso you should consider uploading this to YouTube
gavi888
2024-12-06 10:15:32 +0000 UTCAs a MM defender I must mention my favourite instance of mechanic decontextualization, where in sin and punishment 1 your melee was context sensitive, but by giving it it's own input in 2 it's easy to whiff, leading to bosses being designed a lot more around the melee and the melee being given more functionality (like cancelling normal bullets) since it won't overlap with your shooting as much. A somewhat similar game kid icarus had to over contextualize to fit on the 3ds, meaning your shot, charge shot, alt shot and melee are all on shoot and your dash, walk and dodge are all on the circle pad, and dodging is context sensitive taking some of the challenge away. In regards to things like devil daggers I think decontextualizing the input but adding a cooldown would achieve a similar effect although there is an artistry to intentionally overlapping inputs to balance movesets by having them get in eachothers way like you'd see in motion inputs in fighting games.
gavi888
2024-12-06 09:42:30 +0000 UTCNice episode! Your comment about combos in beat'em ups not serving much purpose is something that I wonder as well, seeing all these vids showing off intricate combo systems ON A SINGLE ENEMY even though the emphasis should be placed on crowd controls and utility of the combo, like whether it moves you and the stunned crowd, how far they are knocked back, how long they are stunned etc. While playing Sailor Moon bmup, doing those turn-around jab combos on a crowd and back-jump attack knocking down entire crowd, and after reading Bog's article on pacing, I wonder whether combos could be used as and execution-based combo-length limiter with the dps of the combo be the tool to combat slow-pacing from having to damage enemies after you've already achieved the win-condition via positioning. Having the damage of the combo being directly tied to its execution difficulty would increase the risk, especially when you are forced to do the high damage combo due to timer running out like in Sailor Moon. Deciding whether to do a combo with high damage upfront but knocks down enemy really fast or a combo that has decent dps but can go on longer to lock-down enemies for longer or deal more total dps compared to having to knock them down and wait for them to wake up would be really cool imo. For the roguelike vs arcade, the scoring system of taking the average of 10 runs you mentioned is really cool. Like have a system where there's a "Ranked Run" and "Casual Run", with casual run not registering into online leaderboard and take score of only 1 run while ranked run has 3 modes: 10 runs, 25 runs, 50 runs, with the number signifying the number of runs the average will be taken from. Ranked runs cannot be canceled and every ranked run started will have its score factored into your leaderboard with no exception. Abandoning the run or disconnecting from the internet will result in the current score be taken and factored into the leaderboard. Each runs last upward of only 20 minutes, so you can do multiple runs per day. I think this system could work as a solid scoring system for roguelike/lites, since they're all about consistency and all. Though it still won't fix the problem of the rng design resulting in players not taking risks and always go with the safest choice like you mentioned in your Punisher stream. Heck, this scoring system will exacerbate that even.
SanNevo
2024-12-06 07:29:48 +0000 UTCWhat a great way to start this grey winter morning ☕
100hundred
2024-12-06 06:50:26 +0000 UTC
