I can't believe I first learned of Fortress Tiberius, an _Enterprise Transformer_ from you guys! I also can't believe Hasbro hasn't made it as a damn toy!
Re: time it took the devs to make Thronefall Generally, for that kind of thing, you want to look at four aspects, being visual assets, code stability, game design and UX/'game feel.' For this one, the breakdown appears to go something like this: *Disclaimer: an inordinate amount of conjecture is about to happen, based entirely on vibes and personal experience* - Visual assets: there aren't many of them, and they're pretty simple. Animations are mostly static meshes bouncing up and down, particle effects are very limited, most everything's covered in the same CEL-shader, UI is minimalist but functional. The people making this likely aren't primarily visual artists, though from the sleekness of the UI it's possible at least one person on the team has had a decent bit of practice there. - Code stability: seems to run very smoothly from what I can tell. I've watched a few people play this now and haven't seen any weird glitches, which considering this is an early access game, is unusual to say the least. Even if there isn't a lot of mechanical or visual complexity to code, what's there is likely done pretty efficiently, or at least professionally. The person(s) doing the coding are likely pretty experienced, and may have had training. -Game design: this is where most of the game shines! The people making this have taken the limited assets and used them to great effect. The level design, the creative mechanics, the intuitive controls and interesting perk system, the list goes on. The mechanics are cohesive, meaning nothing really strikes as 'annoying busywork' or 'pointless', you never wonder why a portion of the game is there, it just fits together so well. That points to a clear design goal, and an organised development team. The designer(s) are likely passionate about their work and have experience making and playing games. They wear their inspiration on their sleeves as well, given how close aspects of the game are to the Kingdom series. - UX/game feel: this is a sneaky one, often overlooked. Essentially, what I'm referring to is quality assurance. If a game feels clunky to play, has many bugs, weird difficulty spikes & lulls, or has odd game mechanics or visuals that don't really seem to fit right; that's usually because nobody took the time to play and give themself the opportunity to notice any of that. Even if one person fulfills several roles in a game's development, the different disciplines tend to be fairly separated out, so it is crucial that there's someone constantly checking if the whole is still greater than the sum of its parts. That means going through the same bits of the game over and over and over and over and over again, trying to break anything and everything you can think of, but also recognising areas that could use improvement to make playing the game more fun overall. It is the constant cycle of 'development -> evaluation -> feedback -> research -> repeat' that makes a game great, and this team appears to have that nailed down. It is very likely that the devs are mostly if not all experienced gamers, who enjoy both playing games and critically thinking about them, and so they know how to do QA, how to do it well, and how important it is to fellow players. In conclusion, while on paper it might not take a lot of working hours to build this, behind the scenes a lot of time was likely spent refining the mechanics, cleaning up the code, and doing playtesting to ensure all the pieces fit together well. The team size is probably fairly small, I reckon a Tiny 2-4 people, mostly programmers and designers, with a lot of skill overlap. Actual dev time will have been... a year? I'll guess about a year, maybe a year and a half, though it's likely the idea for it has been stewing in one or more of the developers' brains for quite a lot longer than that. N.B. Sound design and music both play crucial roles in determining a game's overall quality as well, but those tend to take up much less time in comparison, and especially music is often outsourced, which is why I didn't include them in the evaluation. Generally, unless the sound design is exceptionally well done and/or plays a major role in the game (like rhythm games or esoteric artsy interactive audiovisual experiences), the time spent as a proportion of the whole process is pretty negligible.
there is a plot point where magneto becomes young again which is way different than the version i know from x men evolution cartoon, which is magneto turning himself young via some sort of device, but in the comics apparently he engineers a mutant that goes rogue and turns magneto into a baby so you got babyto, it just works
-At --2:35:50-- Ben is looking at it backwards. You -_-can't-_- control your internet -*-history-*- . Whatever weird rabbit hole you went down 20 years ago is recorded and people would know. You can police your future thoughts better than your past, fixed in stone- Internet history all the way. I've never looked up anything centaur related.
While I have a lot of problems with how Star Wars reworked the Clones and Order 66, overall I think it was a net positive. Even in episode 2 and 3 a massive amount of clones have their entire Identity tied up in some sort of "we fight so others don't have too" which is further shown in the animated stuff. Just taking the well "I was ordered to" approach makes little sense there. They aren't gonna turn on people who fought side by side with them. Also, it really sets up the Emperor's plan like it could actually work instead of some BS where a dude just took over because a war was on and no one was paying attention. He had to wait until the right time but basically mental conditioning and the chip meant he could trust most of Order 66 would go off as he had planned. Furthermore it sets up better the plan after clones, like it is full Space Fascism going all "us vs them" he wants normal Empire citizens to be storm troopers dying on the front lines so they are caught up in conflicts that mean nothing and eating his propaganda instead of wondering how we went from a Republic to a Dictatorship. Edit: Also unless I am remembering wrong the chip is explained to be an absolute last resort failsafe from the Kaminoans, it is just hijacked and used for Order 66, and is implied was cranked way higher to make sure they complied means some clones suffer side effects from it and some actually become resistant to it, its not a perfect mind control it like floods their brains with chemicals to control so they could only trust it to work well once. Also besides clones with different brain make up or injuries I don't believe any resisted it at all. Just some of them got stopped (by non clone comrades or jedi) until the worst effects of the chip being cranked wore off or had the chip removed.
Weirdly coincidental that they start by speaking about Kelsey Grammer's Beast and they just brought him back in the post credit scene for The Marvels. 😂 And THEN they shift to Magneto Nazi Hunter, that's weirdly similar to recently released The Killer on Netflix, Michael Fassbender, an assasin hunting other assasins.
Um technically there were Sentinels in X-Men 3: The Last Stand. At the very beginning Wolverine is training some Young Mutants in the Danger Room and they're fighting Sentinels. We never really see them on screen except for a Sentinel head that gets lobbed off by Wolverine after he was tossed by Colossus doing a "cannonball special." At least that's what I remember, haven't seen the movie in almost 20 years.
Ben, I love you, but your nerd opinions are sometimes extremely questionable. Sometimes I just want to know the internal logic that goes around in that head of yours.
I STAN ready salted Ben! He is the best vanilla ice cream there ever was
I can't believe I first learned of Fortress Tiberius, an _Enterprise Transformer_ from you guys!
I also can't believe Hasbro hasn't made it as a damn toy!
The little roulette with gnome and goblin. "Try not to Horny". Chefs kiss vod gobbo, i think i just excreted a pearl.
i was eating when you guys were talking about big eyes guy and i took a huge bite right as you said "sand in the face" and choked so hard
Re: time it took the devs to make Thronefall
Generally, for that kind of thing, you want to look at four aspects, being visual assets, code stability, game design and UX/'game feel.' For this one, the breakdown appears to go something like this:
*Disclaimer: an inordinate amount of conjecture is about to happen, based entirely on vibes and personal experience*
- Visual assets: there aren't many of them, and they're pretty simple. Animations are mostly static meshes bouncing up and down, particle effects are very limited, most everything's covered in the same CEL-shader, UI is minimalist but functional. The people making this likely aren't primarily visual artists, though from the sleekness of the UI it's possible at least one person on the team has had a decent bit of practice there.
- Code stability: seems to run very smoothly from what I can tell. I've watched a few people play this now and haven't seen any weird glitches, which considering this is an early access game, is unusual to say the least. Even if there isn't a lot of mechanical or visual complexity to code, what's there is likely done pretty efficiently, or at least professionally. The person(s) doing the coding are likely pretty experienced, and may have had training.
-Game design: this is where most of the game shines! The people making this have taken the limited assets and used them to great effect. The level design, the creative mechanics, the intuitive controls and interesting perk system, the list goes on. The mechanics are cohesive, meaning nothing really strikes as 'annoying busywork' or 'pointless', you never wonder why a portion of the game is there, it just fits together so well. That points to a clear design goal, and an organised development team. The designer(s) are likely passionate about their work and have experience making and playing games. They wear their inspiration on their sleeves as well, given how close aspects of the game are to the Kingdom series.
- UX/game feel: this is a sneaky one, often overlooked. Essentially, what I'm referring to is quality assurance. If a game feels clunky to play, has many bugs, weird difficulty spikes & lulls, or has odd game mechanics or visuals that don't really seem to fit right; that's usually because nobody took the time to play and give themself the opportunity to notice any of that. Even if one person fulfills several roles in a game's development, the different disciplines tend to be fairly separated out, so it is crucial that there's someone constantly checking if the whole is still greater than the sum of its parts. That means going through the same bits of the game over and over and over and over and over again, trying to break anything and everything you can think of, but also recognising areas that could use improvement to make playing the game more fun overall. It is the constant cycle of 'development -> evaluation -> feedback -> research -> repeat' that makes a game great, and this team appears to have that nailed down. It is very likely that the devs are mostly if not all experienced gamers, who enjoy both playing games and critically thinking about them, and so they know how to do QA, how to do it well, and how important it is to fellow players.
In conclusion, while on paper it might not take a lot of working hours to build this, behind the scenes a lot of time was likely spent refining the mechanics, cleaning up the code, and doing playtesting to ensure all the pieces fit together well. The team size is probably fairly small, I reckon a Tiny 2-4 people, mostly programmers and designers, with a lot of skill overlap.
Actual dev time will have been... a year? I'll guess about a year, maybe a year and a half, though it's likely the idea for it has been stewing in one or more of the developers' brains for quite a lot longer than that.
N.B.
Sound design and music both play crucial roles in determining a game's overall quality as well, but those tend to take up much less time in comparison, and especially music is often outsourced, which is why I didn't include them in the evaluation. Generally, unless the sound design is exceptionally well done and/or plays a major role in the game (like rhythm games or esoteric artsy interactive audiovisual experiences), the time spent as a proportion of the whole process is pretty negligible.
Kremlo came from space to bless this vod
Praise Froggo AAAAA
still suggesting Void Bastards as a potential stream game, in case the boys are still in need of ideas to tide you over till jingle jam
The Gorn in Strange New Worlds are quite Xenomorphy
With the columns I can see elves adopting napoleonic tactics. Who cares if you can't charge if you strike first and have a billion rerolls anyway
there is a plot point where magneto becomes young again which is way different than the version i know from x men evolution cartoon, which is magneto turning himself young via some sort of device, but in the comics apparently he engineers a mutant that goes rogue and turns magneto into a baby so you got babyto, it just works
Wait. No. Warhammer 8th edition random charges was roll 2D6 + ADD MOVEMENT.
It was never just roll 2D6, that's 40K !
They probably mean 8th ed warhammer fantasy.
-At --2:35:50-- Ben is looking at it backwards. You -_-can't-_- control your internet -*-history-*- . Whatever weird rabbit hole you went down 20 years ago is recorded and people would know. You can police your future thoughts better than your past, fixed in stone- Internet history all the way. I've never looked up anything centaur related.
2:11:14 I remember that issue of White Dwarf too Ben!
A chest burster would probably hurt its head quite a bit trying to burst out of a Borg chestplate
Killteam on Games Night, or Mystery Quest Narrative campaign?
While I have a lot of problems with how Star Wars reworked the Clones and Order 66, overall I think it was a net positive. Even in episode 2 and 3 a massive amount of clones have their entire Identity tied up in some sort of "we fight so others don't have too" which is further shown in the animated stuff. Just taking the well "I was ordered to" approach makes little sense there. They aren't gonna turn on people who fought side by side with them. Also, it really sets up the Emperor's plan like it could actually work instead of some BS where a dude just took over because a war was on and no one was paying attention. He had to wait until the right time but basically mental conditioning and the chip meant he could trust most of Order 66 would go off as he had planned. Furthermore it sets up better the plan after clones, like it is full Space Fascism going all "us vs them" he wants normal Empire citizens to be storm troopers dying on the front lines so they are caught up in conflicts that mean nothing and eating his propaganda instead of wondering how we went from a Republic to a Dictatorship.
Edit: Also unless I am remembering wrong the chip is explained to be an absolute last resort failsafe from the Kaminoans, it is just hijacked and used for Order 66, and is implied was cranked way higher to make sure they complied means some clones suffer side effects from it and some actually become resistant to it, its not a perfect mind control it like floods their brains with chemicals to control so they could only trust it to work well once. Also besides clones with different brain make up or injuries I don't believe any resisted it at all. Just some of them got stopped (by non clone comrades or jedi) until the worst effects of the chip being cranked wore off or had the chip removed.
Weirdly coincidental that they start by speaking about Kelsey Grammer's Beast and they just brought him back in the post credit scene for The Marvels. 😂
And THEN they shift to Magneto Nazi Hunter, that's weirdly similar to recently released The Killer on Netflix, Michael Fassbender, an assasin hunting other assasins.
what is going on with ben's eyebrows and beard? it looks lighter
Dune:imperium Uprising please guys!
Good soldiers follow orders
+1 for Google being able to return results for that search query😂
Um technically there were Sentinels in X-Men 3: The Last Stand. At the very beginning Wolverine is training some Young Mutants in the Danger Room and they're fighting Sentinels. We never really see them on screen except for a Sentinel head that gets lobbed off by Wolverine after he was tossed by Colossus doing a "cannonball special." At least that's what I remember, haven't seen the movie in almost 20 years.
Ben, I love you, but your nerd opinions are sometimes extremely questionable. Sometimes I just want to know the internal logic that goes around in that head of yours.
No Ben is right, the flute episode is not that good