After a fair amount of speculation, the ever-patient and super-stretchy Dhalsim was officially announced for Street Fighter at Paris Games Week.
His play style is built around keeping the opponent away and being able to strike from long distances. In a new twist, the most obvious change to his projectile moves is that they now can travel in an arc, so it might still hit an opponent that you thought was going to jump in even when they're on the ground.
Here's some examples in gameplay from some Canada Cup players.
If you don't want spoilers for the upcoming characters of Street Fighter V, don't click the link for the words "this image" just below here.
Some data for other characters has been found in the data files contained in the latest beta versions of the game. If you have a look at this image, this is some raw code from the beta that had been picked through with a hex editor, looking for file names similar to the structure of the files in Street Fighter 4. Only time will tell if this really true or not, because they're still working on the game and parts could still be changed at this point.
Bonus tip: Angry Birds 2 - complete a section of a level with a single bird, and you get a "Strike" - they're 25,000 points. Complete it with two birds and you get 10,000 points. You don't get any direct bonuses for having birds left over at the end, but if you gets lots of strikes and birdies, you probably will have birds left over.
If you got here from Twitter or Facebook, the answer to the question posed is "parabolas".
Showing posts with label hurling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hurling. Show all posts
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Sunday, October 25, 2015
It's dangerous to go alone...
Despite the warning at the very beginning of the first Legend of Zelda game, you spend a lot of time in the Zelda games alone. A couple of the Zelda games (Phantom Hourglass & Spirit Tracks) have a battle mode where you can play in a battle arena against each other, but it's not really the main game. Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures were real multiplayer games, although the original Four Swords was odd in that it couldn't be played single player at all. Four Swords Adventures is odd hardware-wise in that you had to connect four Game Boy Advance units to a GameCube using a cable that had few other uses, but it did also have single player. Hyrule Warriors for the WiiU can easily be played multiplayer, and you play cooperatively in the main game, but it's different from most of the other Zelda games since there's no dungeon element.
The brand new Zelda game, officially called "The Legend of Zelda : Triforce Heroes", has implemented better multiplayer options, so while it's played on the Nintendo 3DS handheld, you can either play locally via Download Play, or play with two friends or strangers on the internet, or just play single player with yourself and two "Doppels". Simpler than a regular Zelda game, it is comprised of eight dungeons only, with no overworld. Each of the dungeons has a variety of challenges and sections for groups of three players. The controls are very similar to "A Link Between Worlds", another recent 3DS Zelda title. The silliest part of the operation is creating a 3-link totem pole to gain altitude or special moves.
We've just scratched the surface of this game since it just came out Thursday, so we may have more to say about this later, but it's still a Zelda game and Nintendo really cares about their franchises and delivering a satisfying experience.
In other gaming, I have been playing Angry Birds 2 on my phone. It's not particularly different from the original Angry Birds - you fling birds of varying properties at destructible structures with pigs in them. I suppose if I had had a smartphone when the original Angry Birds was out, I would be less likely to want to play Angry Birds 2, but the graphics are nice, and the Arena Battle is fun. Sadly, I have only one other person on my Facebook Friends list (Thanks, Taryn) that is playing this game so I have no idea how well I'm doing. Rovio changed parts of the formula, because the boards are now semi-randomly generated. A given board has a fixed number of pigs and a fixed set of background platforms, but the destructible parts change every time. My biggest compliant with the original game was that I had wished that you could use the birds that you were given in a different order, which has been fixed in this game by a card system that allows you to pick one of three birds at any given time, which is actually more important now due to the variable nature of the boards. Nearly all of the professional reviewers have complained that the game has been ruined by microtransations, but since I play for only a few minutes at a time in between other things in my day and I'm not spending any money on the game, I don't really find that complaint relevant. It's not Gauntlet or Quake or some RPG game that you might play for hours at a stretch - it's a fun little bird-flinging game you play while you're waiting for your lunch to arrive. The down side of that is that they're not making much money from me but I have watched an ad or two.
If this game ever comes out as a paid release, perhaps on 3DS, they're going to have to change how you accumulate powerups if you're not going to pay for them. If the free-to-play model isn't making them money, though, they're going to have to add enough new content to the game to convince people that already played it for free that they need to pay for it.
Maybe Rovio needs a partner software company to help with making their games work with a bigger audience. After all, it is dangerous to go alone...
The brand new Zelda game, officially called "The Legend of Zelda : Triforce Heroes", has implemented better multiplayer options, so while it's played on the Nintendo 3DS handheld, you can either play locally via Download Play, or play with two friends or strangers on the internet, or just play single player with yourself and two "Doppels". Simpler than a regular Zelda game, it is comprised of eight dungeons only, with no overworld. Each of the dungeons has a variety of challenges and sections for groups of three players. The controls are very similar to "A Link Between Worlds", another recent 3DS Zelda title. The silliest part of the operation is creating a 3-link totem pole to gain altitude or special moves.
We've just scratched the surface of this game since it just came out Thursday, so we may have more to say about this later, but it's still a Zelda game and Nintendo really cares about their franchises and delivering a satisfying experience.
In other gaming, I have been playing Angry Birds 2 on my phone. It's not particularly different from the original Angry Birds - you fling birds of varying properties at destructible structures with pigs in them. I suppose if I had had a smartphone when the original Angry Birds was out, I would be less likely to want to play Angry Birds 2, but the graphics are nice, and the Arena Battle is fun. Sadly, I have only one other person on my Facebook Friends list (Thanks, Taryn) that is playing this game so I have no idea how well I'm doing. Rovio changed parts of the formula, because the boards are now semi-randomly generated. A given board has a fixed number of pigs and a fixed set of background platforms, but the destructible parts change every time. My biggest compliant with the original game was that I had wished that you could use the birds that you were given in a different order, which has been fixed in this game by a card system that allows you to pick one of three birds at any given time, which is actually more important now due to the variable nature of the boards. Nearly all of the professional reviewers have complained that the game has been ruined by microtransations, but since I play for only a few minutes at a time in between other things in my day and I'm not spending any money on the game, I don't really find that complaint relevant. It's not Gauntlet or Quake or some RPG game that you might play for hours at a stretch - it's a fun little bird-flinging game you play while you're waiting for your lunch to arrive. The down side of that is that they're not making much money from me but I have watched an ad or two.
If this game ever comes out as a paid release, perhaps on 3DS, they're going to have to change how you accumulate powerups if you're not going to pay for them. If the free-to-play model isn't making them money, though, they're going to have to add enough new content to the game to convince people that already played it for free that they need to pay for it.
Maybe Rovio needs a partner software company to help with making their games work with a bigger audience. After all, it is dangerous to go alone...
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
How to get motion sickness while sitting comfortably.
I think about motion sickness a lot these days. I used to have problems with it from time to time, but I have developed strategies to deal with it. Mind you I don't spend much time on boats or roller coasters, so technically the word that most people use for what used to happen to me and currently happens to my younger child is "carsick". My younger son has really liked playing Scribblenauts Unmasked lately, but he's had to be careful about how much he plays in the car.
I don't remember ever having big problems reading in the car on family vacations, but since we had a big van I was probably lying down when I was reading. I think it happened occasionally, but I couldn't nail down the triggers for it specifically. The first time I specifically remember having a big problem was after I got a Game Boy.
The first video game that made me sick was "Atomic Punk". It's not that it was a poorly Americanized attempt at re-branding Bomberman while capitalizing on the success of the Game Boy as a platform, although I can certainly see how you might think that. It's just that I was so nuts for Bomberman then that I wanted to play it all the time - especially on long road trips where all I really had to do was sit in the passenger seat and navigate. However, that was exactly the time that I could not play it. I was ready to hurl even before we got out of the city limits. It has occurred to me that the biggest difference between playing an action game and reading a book in terms of the motion sickness that when reading a book, there is nothing to stop you from periodically looking up from the book. (Sure, you could pause the game, but who does that?) So, when playing a game in the car, you're looking at a mostly fixed screen, and your peripheral vision is seeing the interior of the car which is also not moving, but your inner ear is reporting data that would indicate that you are moving. So, I presume that motion sickness stems from the brain's inability to process conflicting data under certain conditions.
Now, some people that I know used to get nauseous from playing first person shooters back in the early days, like playing Doom and Quake. This is kind of the opposite problem from the handheld game, where your peripheral vision and your inner ear report no movement, but your central vision reports movement. I do not recall ever having issues with this back then, but I started playing Doom and Quake with the arrow keys and I did not start whipping my point of view around with the mouse in a rapid fashion until some time after I started playing those games. Since how much you move around depends on your input to the game, I presume that I had no issue with it because I understood the relationship between controller input and screen movement.
Typically when moving around in a virtual world, or watching a movie where they pan the camera around, the motion is very smooth. Part of the reason it tends to be smooth in the game is because you're aiming the direction of movement and your weapon with the mouse, so it needs to be somewhat smooth so you can aim your weapon and travel in the intended direction. Your brain is able to extrapolate perceived movement and figure out where you are looking to some degree.
Once the camera becomes small enough that it can fit in a person's hand, all that smoothness is right out the window and we end up with feature films like The Blair Witch Project, which I thankfully watched in a nearly empty theater in the middle of the afternoon so only my wife and a friend of mine had to watch me slowly freak out. The movie was considered innovative for its use of handheld footage, but it was too jittery for me to process. I tried using chocolate and caffeine to combat the effects, but I left the film feeling like someone punched me in the back of the neck. This is similar to the Doom/Quake example where the inner ear and peripheral vision report no movement but central vision reports movement, but I wonder to what degree the brain trusts your peripheral vision in a movie theater.
I presume that this is similar to why some people have problems with in 3D films, again because of the differential between the inner ear information and the visual information, but complicated by the problems with stereo vision and a forced fixed perspective. When you move your head around in a 3D film, the 3D scene doesn't correctly track to your head movement, so again you have a disparity that your body's visual procession and sense of balance aren't happy about. I haven't had issue with this yet, but I have been pretty picky about which 3D movies that I've watched so far.
With games, I had assumed that since I hadn't had any issue with the old first person shooters, I was unlikely to have any issues with any games. Strangely, this turned out to be wrong. The first time I had a big problem with in-game nausea was the 2001 Playstation 2 game Twisted Metal:Black. It's not a first-person shooter, it's a related genre that only exists periodically: Vehicluar Combat. Despite imitators like Vigilante 8, Blood Drive, and Twisted Metal 3 and 4, Twisted Metal:Black reigns as the best of the genre and a good game in its own right. Running on a rather well-optimized engine and capable of a rather high sustained frame rate, there seemed to be too much going on. I was only able to play the game by building up a tolerance for it, and I think I still only managed to finish with some of the characters. I don't recall that the game was jittery, only that is was fast, so I don't feel like I sufficiently understand why the game made me motion sick.
Just recently, I have been making some progress on Resident Evil 6. This game is similar to Resident Evil 4 and 5 in presentation where the camera is positioned over your character's shoulder. I have tried to play the Mercenaries mode a lot to acclimate myself to the controls, and I have just gotten to the second chapter of Chris' campaign having started there after many attempts at the introduction. I have noticed that the game engine is rather sophisticated and tries to replicate a cinematic feel some of the time, including an area where you fight a boss enemy from the second floor of a building which he's trying to knock down while you're in it. What do you get when the boss is trying to knock down the building you're in? Jittery Action! I was so glad to get to a checkpoint so I could quit but I think I'm nearly out of bullets. So, if you hear me say that Resident Evil 6 makes me sick, it's not a comment on the story.
Well, at least not yet it isn't.
I don't remember ever having big problems reading in the car on family vacations, but since we had a big van I was probably lying down when I was reading. I think it happened occasionally, but I couldn't nail down the triggers for it specifically. The first time I specifically remember having a big problem was after I got a Game Boy.
The first video game that made me sick was "Atomic Punk". It's not that it was a poorly Americanized attempt at re-branding Bomberman while capitalizing on the success of the Game Boy as a platform, although I can certainly see how you might think that. It's just that I was so nuts for Bomberman then that I wanted to play it all the time - especially on long road trips where all I really had to do was sit in the passenger seat and navigate. However, that was exactly the time that I could not play it. I was ready to hurl even before we got out of the city limits. It has occurred to me that the biggest difference between playing an action game and reading a book in terms of the motion sickness that when reading a book, there is nothing to stop you from periodically looking up from the book. (Sure, you could pause the game, but who does that?) So, when playing a game in the car, you're looking at a mostly fixed screen, and your peripheral vision is seeing the interior of the car which is also not moving, but your inner ear is reporting data that would indicate that you are moving. So, I presume that motion sickness stems from the brain's inability to process conflicting data under certain conditions.
Now, some people that I know used to get nauseous from playing first person shooters back in the early days, like playing Doom and Quake. This is kind of the opposite problem from the handheld game, where your peripheral vision and your inner ear report no movement, but your central vision reports movement. I do not recall ever having issues with this back then, but I started playing Doom and Quake with the arrow keys and I did not start whipping my point of view around with the mouse in a rapid fashion until some time after I started playing those games. Since how much you move around depends on your input to the game, I presume that I had no issue with it because I understood the relationship between controller input and screen movement.
Typically when moving around in a virtual world, or watching a movie where they pan the camera around, the motion is very smooth. Part of the reason it tends to be smooth in the game is because you're aiming the direction of movement and your weapon with the mouse, so it needs to be somewhat smooth so you can aim your weapon and travel in the intended direction. Your brain is able to extrapolate perceived movement and figure out where you are looking to some degree.
Once the camera becomes small enough that it can fit in a person's hand, all that smoothness is right out the window and we end up with feature films like The Blair Witch Project, which I thankfully watched in a nearly empty theater in the middle of the afternoon so only my wife and a friend of mine had to watch me slowly freak out. The movie was considered innovative for its use of handheld footage, but it was too jittery for me to process. I tried using chocolate and caffeine to combat the effects, but I left the film feeling like someone punched me in the back of the neck. This is similar to the Doom/Quake example where the inner ear and peripheral vision report no movement but central vision reports movement, but I wonder to what degree the brain trusts your peripheral vision in a movie theater.
I presume that this is similar to why some people have problems with in 3D films, again because of the differential between the inner ear information and the visual information, but complicated by the problems with stereo vision and a forced fixed perspective. When you move your head around in a 3D film, the 3D scene doesn't correctly track to your head movement, so again you have a disparity that your body's visual procession and sense of balance aren't happy about. I haven't had issue with this yet, but I have been pretty picky about which 3D movies that I've watched so far.
With games, I had assumed that since I hadn't had any issue with the old first person shooters, I was unlikely to have any issues with any games. Strangely, this turned out to be wrong. The first time I had a big problem with in-game nausea was the 2001 Playstation 2 game Twisted Metal:Black. It's not a first-person shooter, it's a related genre that only exists periodically: Vehicluar Combat. Despite imitators like Vigilante 8, Blood Drive, and Twisted Metal 3 and 4, Twisted Metal:Black reigns as the best of the genre and a good game in its own right. Running on a rather well-optimized engine and capable of a rather high sustained frame rate, there seemed to be too much going on. I was only able to play the game by building up a tolerance for it, and I think I still only managed to finish with some of the characters. I don't recall that the game was jittery, only that is was fast, so I don't feel like I sufficiently understand why the game made me motion sick.
Just recently, I have been making some progress on Resident Evil 6. This game is similar to Resident Evil 4 and 5 in presentation where the camera is positioned over your character's shoulder. I have tried to play the Mercenaries mode a lot to acclimate myself to the controls, and I have just gotten to the second chapter of Chris' campaign having started there after many attempts at the introduction. I have noticed that the game engine is rather sophisticated and tries to replicate a cinematic feel some of the time, including an area where you fight a boss enemy from the second floor of a building which he's trying to knock down while you're in it. What do you get when the boss is trying to knock down the building you're in? Jittery Action! I was so glad to get to a checkpoint so I could quit but I think I'm nearly out of bullets. So, if you hear me say that Resident Evil 6 makes me sick, it's not a comment on the story.
Well, at least not yet it isn't.
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