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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Dec-31-16, 11:16 PM (EDT) |
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"Subnautica"
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LAST EDITED ON Dec-31-16 AT 11:18 PM (EST) So over on Steam, there are approximately 152 million games with the same basic premise: you're stranded on an alien planet with only your wits and some curiously-high-tech camping gear, with which you must a) survive and b) craft stuff. All of them seem to be in more-or-less-permanent early access. Generally they aren't very good, or at least very polished.Subnautica is... well, one of those, although it adds an interesting twist in that the alien planet you're stranded on appears to be an ocean world. (Or maybe you just happened to come down in the middle of an ocean. It's hard to say.) So instead of roaming around the landscape on foot, plundering a variety of suspiciously compact biomes for their suspiciously specific resources, you're swimming around in an aquatic environment... plundering a variety of suspiciously compact biomes for their suspiciously specific resources. I riff, but I rather like this game. It's better-realized than a lot of its land-based counterparts (I'm looking at you, StarsOne), the undersea theme gives it more distinction than my remarks above may suggest, and it's really pretty, particularly once you have a personal submersible* and can cruise to adjoining biomes without having to walk swim. It also seems still to be under active development, and not lost in the perpetual twilight of abandoned early access. Which is nice. And it's only 10 bucks, so hey. Here are a few hours of Sips from the Yogscast fooling around with a couple of the earlier builds. (Caution: Sips is not very good at video games and has the attention span of a caffeinated hamster. It's part of his charm, but also very frustrating at times. :) --G. * © 2016 Sips -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Bad Moon
Member since Dec-17-02
310 posts |
Jan-02-17, 07:11 PM (EDT) |
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1. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #0
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Sips is a treasure and being bad at games is part of that.. I've heard him say on other vids that he's not as actually bad as he seems in videos as being funny while also concentrating on the game is difficult, though he will never be good at games either. He could be bad at games and funny or mediocre at games and not funny. RIP in peace Little Jesus. ------ Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Jan-02-17, 07:30 PM (EDT) |
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2. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #1
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LAST EDITED ON Jan-02-17 AT 07:30 PM (EST) >Sips is a treasure and being bad at games is part of that.Oh, no argument. I'm just warning people who might take this stuff more seriously than I do. :) (I'm sad that he and Kim are Mostly Done With YouTube, mainly for the entirely selfish reason that I deeply dislike the user experience on Twitch, but I can't blame them given the colossal fuckovers Google seems to have performed on YouTube's backend and high-volume YouTubers generally over the past year or so. I've seen some people chalk YT up as another casualty of 2016, which is probably overstating the point somewhat, but I can see where the sentiment comes from.) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Jul-02-17, 01:24 AM (EDT) |
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8. "update"
In response to message #0
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This game is still coming along; another large update just dropped a few days ago, and while I'm not far enough into it to comment on any new areas that might've been added, I noticed that the art assets are looking a lot more polished now than when I first started playing. They're also getting more of the story in place, to the extent that the game has a discernible story now (and it's shaping up to be a pretty good one for this sort of game). Also, it's on sale for $9.99 on Steam right now. (That's the price I originally paid for it, but it seems to have gone up to $19.99 normally as it approaches completion—which I understand is a fairly typical early-access thing, for the games that don't just languish in alphaland forever.) YMMV, of course, but I'm still having a good time. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-05-18, 02:37 PM (EDT) |
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13. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #10
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>The Mighty Jingles has started showing a playthrough (as usual, don't >expect to watch this and see brilliant optimal play)... although you will see more generally competent play than you'll find on, for instance, Sips's Twitch channel over the last few days. :) Mind you, he isn't helped by the fact that the voice of the computer in Subnautica seems to have been recorded using the same text-to-speech voice that he has reading his Twitch donations, which has led some of his viewers to donate specifically to have her give him spurious in-game warnings. As is often the case with user interactions on Twitch, that was funny the first time someone did it... --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-07-18, 05:59 PM (EDT) |
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19. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #17
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>I'd watch Sips' stream more if his viewers weren't constantly abusing >his donation announcement. It's got better, it aint as bad as back in >the Stardew Valley days, but it's still horrendous.Yeah, unfortunately, his community is... well, it's not toxic, it's not the blistered wasteland that is YouTube comments, but it does tend to be really annoying. I think a lot of them are probably really young. (Also, he encourages them.) Mind you, he's made an effort to reduce the amount by which he makes the subs-and-donations thing worse. He used to have the most horrendous sound effects set to go off before the text-to-speech part, so that even the users who didn't post their doctoral dissertations along with their donations caused the casual viewer (i.e., me) to want to start ripping people's ears off. (Check out the vods of his Farming Simulator streams from a year or two ago. O God.) I find the Twitch user experience bemusing because of these features—it's deeply weird for me to live in a world where you're supposed to interrupt people while they're performing and you have to touch the screen—but I admit I do like the interactivity when it's managed well. On the Lewis & Ben Save the World streams, for instance, they have (reasonably discreet) donation and sub notification graphics, but no loud sounds or TTS, and they pause to read through and acknowledge their messages at strategic points in the gameplay rather than be constantly interrupted in real time. I think that's a nice balance. It probably wouldn't work with every game, though. Old-school X-COM has convenient places to pause for that kind of thing, particularly with two players; one of them can read out the donations while the other one plays the Spreadsheet Simulator 1994 portin of the game. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-08-18, 02:22 PM (EDT) |
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21. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #20
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>He did a nice bit of Twitch start-all-over the other day, too. And >managed to be THOROUGHLY Jingles, in that he found an island, he >picked up a bunch of seeds, he brought them back to the >base-to-be....and ate them.That is annoyingly easy to do in Subnautica's interface. Many has been the time I've opened up the ol' bioreactor to put in a fuel item, and then stuffed it in my face instead. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-05-18, 09:28 PM (EDT) |
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15. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #14
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LAST EDITED ON Feb-05-18 AT 09:28 PM (EST) >"Come on, come on, where's the fucking silver hiding?" "Rock on, shale outcrop! Now I can—crap. It's just gold." --G. what, look, I really need lithium, all right? -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Trscroggs
Member since Apr-26-16
63 posts |
Feb-12-18, 08:58 AM (EDT) |
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26. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #9
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*Potential Spoilers for Subnautica below* One of the things I don't get about Subnautica, and none of the streams I have examined has made clear, is a question.
Are you on a hidden timer all game long? I know there some timed events you cannot intervene in. The Aurora exploding for instance. (In fact, supplementary question, can you rush the Aurora and get caught in the explosion?) I think I know that if you put off going to the Aurora long enough the radiation level will give you a game over. Is there yet another, better make progress or else, timer in the other progression? |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-12-18, 02:56 PM (EDT) |
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28. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #26
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>*Potential Spoilers for Subnautica below* > > > > > > >One of the things I don't get about Subnautica, and none of the >streams I have examined has made clear, is a question. > >Are you on a hidden timer all game long?It does not appear so. The progression is keyed to story points as you arrive at them; if you don't get around to them, it seems there are no consequences. (Sort of like putting off all of those flavor-texted-as-if-time-critical errands in Elder Scrolls games in order to fart around with side quests.) There's even sort of an oblique, implied in-game explanation for this, if you squint hard enough at some of the revelations you come across in the course of operations. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Kendra Kirai
Member since May-22-16
587 posts |
Feb-13-18, 09:53 PM (EDT) |
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30. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #28
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EVEN MORE SPOILERS AHEAD there is one timer in the game, but it's triggered by story, and it's something that I'm pretty certain is impossible to intervene in, because it doesn't give you enough time to do the considerably amount of work to do so. The timer is basically just to get you into position to see what happens.
I believe the "story" triggers are actually that of progression. Once you've done X, picked up or scanned Y, built Z, things happen around you. I suppose theoretically you could just dick around in god mode through use of a trainer to keep your food and water up indefinitely so long as you didn't DO anything. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-14-18, 00:44 AM (EDT) |
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31. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #30
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>I suppose theoretically you could just dick around in god mode >through use of a trainer to keep your food and water up indefinitely >so long as you didn't DO anything. Or just turn off hunger and thirst. There's a legit mode for that. Also: man alive, Cyclops doesn't handle so good in town. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22422 posts |
Feb-14-18, 08:46 PM (EDT) |
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33. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #32
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>Oh, there is? I only saw the 'story free, hunger free, thirt free' >mode on startup, I wasn't aware there was an option for that. Okay >then! I think to change mode on the fly, you do have to use the console (as for instance in Minecraft), but the modes themselves are legit game states, unlike, say, turning off aggression or using the unlimited oxygen code. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
437 posts |
Feb-12-18, 08:52 AM (EDT) |
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25. "RE: Subnautica"
In response to message #24
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>I think you spelled "over-done" wrong, there, but then, I'm not >native-English-speaking, so I'm not entirely sure. >Oh, foo. Sure, it's a bit busy, but when you live in a controlled environment, you have to maximize the use of space. And a little color never hurts. Ebony the Black Dragon "Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard." |
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version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions,
Unlimited
Benjamin
D. Hutchins
E P U (Colour)
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