If you were to take a competitive game like Counter-Strike and look at map data, you'd see this: Most games are played on the same few maps. Just a handful. Then take another, more casual game like Team Fortress 2. Image Credit: Teamwork.tf
Look at that trend! Over 1/4 of official games are played on just three maps, and half of all games are played on just nine maps. So why is this trend happening? The first thing that I can ascribe this too is nostalgia. Four of the top five maps listed: 2fort, Upward, Badwater and Dustbowl, have been in the game since launch. That's fifteen years ago! Despite all the newer maps that exist, people keep returning to the same ones. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. Playing the same map you played years ago will immediately invoke a sense of familiarity and comfort. It's exactly how you remember it and you don't have to worry.
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print "C# | An Absolute Nightmare";
print "By Glenn Thompson"; C# is interesting. On the one hand, I cannot sit and say that I hate it. It is useful. I'm aware of that. On the other hand however, I also find there to be faults with it. Many, many faults. It is hard for a computer to interpret human language. On a fundamental level, human language is subjective. What I mean by this is that it has a certain flexibility because connotations for words can and are different from person to person. And there is not just one language in existance. There are thousands. Because of this, it is hard to translate that into machine code. At a basic level, computers run on ones and zeros. Ons and offs. To convert human words into these ones and zeroes, and in meaningful ways as well, we need scripting. This is where I understand why C# is difficult. There are rules and mechanics to C# that are unique to itself. It's a programming language, not a programming dialect. You cannot simply tell the computer to "Please make it so that the WASD keys move my character like in every other video game" since the computer just won't understand what that means. Using a series of inputs, semicolons and a liiiiiiiiittle bit of luck though, it will understand. On the other hand though, I wonder at times why it must be the way it is. Why are some rules in C# the way that they are. I suppose I would understand that more if I learned the language, however the language almost seems intentionally counter-intuitive at times which makes it a vicious cycle of wanting to understand and not being able to understand. Likewise, should we not strive to make code interpretation as much like human speach as possible? It's food for thought. I love puzzles. Puzzles are incredible games because they are able to stimulate your thoughts like no other medium. Whether it's solving a mystery or a code, or maybe finding what pieces fit together, puzzles are able to captivate. My favorite genera of puzzle is called the "Riddle Game" but do not be confused. These riddles are not like your normal ones. No, they're totally different. The online riddle game has simple mechanics: Using the information presented to you, you need to find the next level's URL. I think the reason why this system works so well for an online game is that it doesn't require fancy coding, graphics or music to captivate players. As long as a player is dedicated, they won't need a fantastic PC. It can be played anywhere on anything. It is this that I think is the core of a good puzzle. It needs to be able to be enjoyed by anyone anywhere.
There is a lot that can be said about the 1990 show 'Twin Peaks'. It's weird, paranormal, surreal and sometimes scary. It's a complex mystery surrounding one simple but impossible to solve question: Who killed Laura Palmer? The writing of Twin Peaks has proven to be very inspiring to me as a writer. With my current story at about 43,000 words in length, I found myself running dry for new ideas to keep it interesting and Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks taught me something that I feel as though I had forgotten about both writing stories and video games. Death is a tragedy.
In the words of Joseph Stalin: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." I think this is important because when we play games about killing many, many people. We start to grow detached. Twin Peaks though changes this. It's about one death. A tragedy. Every episode is not another random person to serve as a plot device. I think it is this that is important to remember. We need more stories and games that do not desensitize the player to the concept of murder. Normally in my blog posts, I try and maintain a neutral approach to my writing, but I just couldn't for this one. NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are the stupidest economic bubble that's waiting to be burst. An NFT is a piece of art usually or any file that someone buys a unique URL to to prove their ownership. Because they're an image though, people will claim that right clicking and clicking "Save As" is property theft. This is not in fact property theft. Also, you're not technically buying the image or file itself, you're buying a unique link to it and only a link. However, you do get distribution rights so you can put them on things and sell them. It all makes it very complicated and frankly stupid.
They also take a ton of resources to make since they can only be bought by cryptocurrency (The second stupidest thing that exists on the internet). This means to actually buy one, you need to be insanly rich or willing to create tons of pollution through computer crypto generators. In conclusion, if someone tells you that NFTs are cool, you run. Hearts of Iron IV or HOI4 for short is a grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive AB. Right now on Steam, I have 822.7 hours played of the game. The game is very fun and captivating as it was able to hold my attention for so long. I have found the gameplay to be very satisfying, but it can sometimes be annoying when the AI decides not to cooperate with you.
Gameplay is very complex, but also very enjoyable to master. You pick a nation during WW2 and have to naviage it through the war by managing the politics, military and economy of your nation. Countries have "National Focus" trees that let you pick a path for your nation to go down and improve yourself. Most are unique to each country. Factories can be used to build infrastructure, railways, other factories and an assortment of buildings like forts, airbases, anti-air towers and fuel silos to improve the capabilities of your nation during warfare. War is where the game really gets interesting. You move around individual units, but can assign frontlines. Warfare is dynamic and complicated as you can customize almost every aspect of your armies like your division composition and creating your own tanks. Visually, the game does not stand out, but is by no means bad. The graphics are detailed and pretty but aren't anything to be impressed by. Animations are smooth but not complicated and the map is clear so it's easy to see everything going on. The UI can be a bit challenging for new players as there are a lot of menus to naviage through, but once you learn where everything is, there isn't any issues with it. Controls are simple and the game can be played entirely with a mouse although keyboard shortcuts make things faster. Options for graphics and audio are on the more basic side but are perfectly servicable and fuctional. There is a tutorial but I suggest for players to jump straight into the game because learning from experience is more fun and fulfilling to me rather than using the tutorial. You can't play the game if you're blind but I don't think that video games are really on the agenda for blind people in general. People who struggle with hand movements might struggle with the mouse but most things are easy to click. Text is legible and the UI has a scaling slider to make it as big as you want. There were not any typing errors that I could see. The game is stable and does not crash often, but mods can be an issue sometimes because they are fanmade so quality cannot be verified. The base game though is very stable. There aren't any dead ends since the game can be saved and loaded at any times and no stalemate truly lasts forever. My rating for the game is Five stars because it is a quality game with infinite replayability. Also I sold my sould to be good at the game and cannot say otherwise. In my time on the internet, I've heard a lot about Unity. I myself never had any personal biases against it. I didn't think it was as powerful as something like Unreal Engine 4, but I never thought it was bad. Quite a few games that I like, notably Cities: Skylines, was made in Unity. Despite that, I've heard many people online say that they do not like the Unity engine. It's not because of the actual engine itself though, but rather the games that come out of it. So, the question is, is the problem Unity, or the people that use it?
My belief is that it's the users. What Unity offers you is a powerful engine that's not insanely hard to use for absolutely free. It's a no brainer to pick up if you're interested in game design. Because of this though, there tends to be no shortage of bad games made by people. I think it's unfair to blame the Unity Engine for the amount of bad games that comes out of it's free software. The nature of the internet is that if you offer a free service to people, anyone and everyone who encounters it will use it. What's there to lose? Below: This shows some of the tokens in the game, including the cards and die that are used for determining random chance aspects of the game. Below: Shows a portion of the game. As you can see, it shows players moving in different directions as they attempt to explore the cave as quickly as possible. Below: Shows the exit of the cave and two players who won.
Oh boy, it's currently 12:34 AM and I'm writing my blog post. I realized though before making this, that I always seemed to get hit with inspiration at night. Why was that exactly? Why was it that when I'm lying in bed, I feel the urge to write or draw? What is it about lying down that psychologically inclines us to get up and start doing something creative? I really didn't have a clear answer. I decided to dig into this and see why this was the case. After doing some digging on the internet, the prevailing theory has to do with how our brains react to sleep and nighttime as a whole. During the night, your body has much less to focus on. This decreses the amount of energy your body spends on analytical thinking and other life processes. The effective result of this is that spare energy is able to be dedicated to things like creativity. You also have much less distractions and obligations at night. While throughout the day, assuming you don't have a job in a creative field, you probably don't have a ton of free time to give to creative tasks. At night however, this burdon is lifted from your shoulders and you can take the time to be creative. In summary, it's not my fault I stay up late doing things. It's my brain's... which technically is me.
On September 12th, I celebrated the two year anniversary of my job as a freelance voice actor. And oh boy, what an uneventful two years it has been for me. Sure, I was fairly active. Soon I'll be reaching the 100 auditions point, but despite that it's been rather quiet. One problem that I've noticed in the industry is the lack of apparent proactiveness from a lot of my directors and staff that I work with. I get the constant feeling that I'm the only person working on the project, and I'm only doing voice lines. In another situation, I had to put the entire video together myself on the behalf of the director just so something would get put out. This is the problem I have noticed in the field of freelance and unprofessional work. There just isn't any structure or motivation to finish things. This lack of motivation for small groups though is something I've noticed outside of voice acting however. In groups of people I work with that make games, I don't see much getting done. Friends of mine who are very talented artists aren't getting anything done. It seems as though people who work independently just get less done than those who are part of a structure. Why this is has been on my mind for a while. Was it because there was nobody but themselves to get them to do it? Was it an effect from the stress and drain of quarantine? I don't frankly have a clear cut answer.
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AuthorI am an artist as anyone else is an artist (if that makes sense). My style is abstract and I also draw cartoons. I am also a voice actor for a web-series. Archives
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