Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[TransatlanticFoe]

Up there with "it was all a dream".

Pity those who suffered the SMS port of Strider just for a "lol didn't think anyone would beat this simulation" ending.

[BIL]

^ And I thought that Euro PC port of Contra where Bill and Lance destroying Galuga Archipelago blows up the Earth "BECAUSE RANDOM BAD END LOLZ" was disgusting. How dare they impugn the ultimate ninja planetary saviour.

Taito knew how to do bad ends. And good bad ends, like Elevator Action Returns where the ending

Spoiler

where the fucking nuclear warhead blows up IN THE SILO WITH YOUR CHARACTERS

is the good one. Everyone else should take notes. Porters should step the fuck off entirely.

Next you'll tell me there was hidden dev message where some shirking cunt bloviates on about his favourite bands for a million pages. (there's a real Shitty Euro PC Port deep cut for the hardcore faithful )

Wait what the... here's a new one, Chrome is redlining "bloviates." Bloviate, is be a word motherfucker. It means to blather on like a great big flapping sack of hot air. Chrome spellcheck can fucking do a backflip into a woodchipper with technical bonus awarded for going in feet-first.

[EmperorIng]

I still wish I knew exactly what happened at the end of Elevator Action Returns.

[BIL]

In the good end,

Spoiler

EVERYONE IN THE SILO DIES

KARTE
JAD
THAT SNEAKY FUCK RED SUIT

AND EVEN LOVABLE EDIE

However, this averts the bad end where

Spoiler

EVERYONE ELSE DIES

Fuck my old boots! I never wanted this! I'm not crying, I'm just cueing up Wolf Fang's hiscore entry BGM, the only thing that can express what I'm feeling right now!

[Squire Grooktook]

I have a little personal theory that bittersweet ends are easier to pull off in story-lite games. In order to have a cathartic happy end, you need to be attached to the characters themselves. It's easier to just punch players in the face directly by murdering their avatar after a lot of hard work, heh.

I'm a bit influenced by that idea and by Taito's approach in my own shmup. Somewhat. My plan is basically to

Spoiler

Subvert it and get a trippy "happy weird" ending.

Normal ending:

Spoiler

After closing the gate to the spirit realm on the moon, the dragon plummets from orbit and burns up as a shooting star. Centuries later, a new religion forms worshiping the dragon as the divine savior of mankind. The End.

TLB ending:

Spoiler

Same as the above, except instead of burning up, she's transformed into a human(ish) by one of the very eldritch horrors she fought against, and is left to wander the earth for eternity in search of answers.

And thas what the human form character design is for~

[BIL]

Sounds about right.

Agreed about the "working relationship" between the player and their avatar in a grueling action context. Feels disproportionately personal when they get their shit ruined, or even just don't make out well. I remember liking JB 5th's ending in ESPRade, where no matter how well you did in-game, he's utterly beat to shit and goes out in a feral rage. Underlined the countless times he'd been shot down in flames until I could finally reach that point, and in-universe, the nonstop brushes with burning death. Or The Ninja Warriors ending in a merciless fulfillment of purpose and, well, you know. Even Samidare's little spaceship has a similar pathos in its 1CC end (I think it was 1CC?), struggling home damaged and on fire after the boss's catastrophic detonation.

Also Rayforce

I'm a softy so even ones where the protagonist vanishes or transcends like Ninja Spirit have a sense of loss. Similarly I appreciate happy escapes for my battle-worn counterparts. It's why I busted my ass to get the super secret no-knockdowns TNWA ending for Ninja. ;3

MAJOR SPOILERS:

Spoiler

Or Crude Buster where mah boys get paid and are set for life with the post-apocalyptic day-glo and Brylcreem!

Spoiler

Also I only just now realised that "Galuga Archipelago" is damn near Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

Then again it took me fifteen years to twig Bill (Paxton) (Paul) Rizer and Lance (Henriksen) (Michael) Bean. I'm just here to kill aliens ok

[null1024]

Taito knew how to do bad ends.

Taito seemed a bit obsessed with bad ends.

and man, for a while, I thought the RayForce ending was a bad ending for using continues
nope, you'll see that shit if you 1cc it

[BIL]

Haha, I thought EAR was holding something back for a no-miss, or a speedier clear, or some cumulative trigger ala Assault Suits Valken. NOPE

Rayforce pilot is one of gaming's great silent saviours. ;-;7 I try to remember her selfless example when I can't be arsed to mow the lawn or wash the car.

Shoutout to the dudes who got blown up in stage 2 while she snuck in behind the moon, too. ;-;7 Skynet, not even once.

[drauch]

Man, I hate that I sit so much that my butt is all sore n' shit. Just let me be a fat lazy fuk in peace.

[orange808]

Closed source walled garden bullshit from devs that gladly swipe information and algorithms from the open source developer community.

These grifters stand on the shoulders of giants--and instead of paying it forward to the gaming community (like the rest of us did), these grifters lock their work (based on everyone else's work) in a walled garden.

Also, I have watched these folks pop in all over the internet asking for technical information. Always begging for help. Always polite, but always working to build something that can be locked up tight behind a paywall. I never offer assistance; figure it out, man.

Don't think we don't see you. Don't expect me to worship you. You're no hero. You're a grifter.

[Zen]

Don't think we don't see you. Don't expect me to worship you. You're no hero. You're a grifter.

Same as it ever was. “Talent borrows. Genius Steals!”

[Sumez]

I'm not sure what "walled garden" developers you are talking about, but as a person working professionally as a programmer, employed by a company, don't ever expect me to contribute to the open source community during my work hours. I will do it for my hobby projects, but those don't run on paid time.


As any developer will know, developing anything in this day and age involves spending like half your time on StackOverflow looking for solutions, and of course making use of a ton of open source libraries. That said, we usually work with technology that is typically employed by commercial businesses in the first place, so I don't know if your rant really applies to me.
Funny thing is that I usually think we end up with solutions that are much better than what I see used in examples around the internet, but even if I could just take the time out to post a much better example somewhere that no one would ever see it, I feel like at the end of the day I really wouldn't have much to contribute with. I consider myself a good developer, but I'm not a reliable expert at anything.
We could of course make our products open source, but I'm not sure what purpose that would serve. Also, it would require a ton of refining the code and structure to actually make it useful for anyone aside from our own purposes, and more importantly, exposing our source code would be considered be a pretty huge security breach.

I'm not programming for myself, I'm programming for a company that I have no personal stakes in. And I only do it because they pay me. Would you expect them to dedicate 4 hours a week for charity work?
It might be regrettable, but you can't fault any individual for it.

[orange808]

If you're coding from scratch, that's fine. If you're grabbing open source code and pretending the usage contract doesn't exist, you're an asshole.

And, I'm not going to start posting names or companies.

[BulletMagnet]

Expensive "premium" tea that's so weak you need to use 2 bags per cup to taste anything.

[Zen]

[BulletMagnet]

Yeah, I know, real tea drinkers spend weeks on end in their custom-built blending labs snorkeling through vats of loose leaf in search of the perfect hand-made blend; to that I can only say dangit, I had a coupon.

[null1024]

My parents decided to go switch to Comcast for TV because it was cheaper or something.
At this point, I'm really glad I don't watch TV. At least, not on a TV.

the X1 receiver or whatever the living fuck is actually the worst god damn piece of shit I've seen in my life
- my mom called me over to check out what was up, and she was literally, actually stuck on a channel, since the UI wouldn't come up and gave an error about not being able to connect to the X1 service any time you tried to do something -- keep in mind, a movie was still playing, something or other was being recorded in the background, it's not like the cable was out
- it took over five minutes to reboot, much of which was spent flashing the screen on and off
- navigating the menus once the thing was on is was usability nightmare and I have no idea how my elderly parents are going to manage using this shit
- even the remote has shit like directional buttons that are largely flat and a tiny ok button

it's so bad
I can't even imagine how it's this bad. I couldn't even open my mouth next to my mother about just how awful it was, since the only words I'm able to really say about it are what a god damn worthless pile of fucking ass
whatever staff decided that this was a finished product and allowed this to release as it is should be fired and then publicly flogged

[Stormwatch]

People who say something "dropped" when they mean "was released". That makes me want to punch someone.

[Zen]

Yeah, I find that one particularly obnoxious. And its spreading, like some type of semantic infection.

[orange808]

My parents decided to go switch to Comcast for TV because it was cheaper or something.
At this point, I'm really glad I don't watch TV. At least, not on a TV.

the X1 receiver or whatever the living fuck is actually the worst god damn piece of shit I've seen in my life
- my mom called me over to check out what was up, and she was literally, actually stuck on a channel, since the UI wouldn't come up and gave an error about not being able to connect to the X1 service any time you tried to do something -- keep in mind, a movie was still playing, something or other was being recorded in the background, it's not like the cable was out
- it took over five minutes to reboot, much of which was spent flashing the screen on and off
- navigating the menus once the thing was on is was usability nightmare and I have no idea how my elderly parents are going to manage using this shit
- even the remote has shit like directional buttons that are largely flat and a tiny ok button

it's so bad
I can't even imagine how it's this bad. I couldn't even open my mouth next to my mother about just how awful it was, since the only words I'm able to really say about it are what a god damn worthless pile of fucking ass
whatever staff decided that this was a finished product and allowed this to release as it is should be fired and then publicly flogged

Yep. I'm glad I got away from the cable biz. At least in the states, it's a mess.

Cable boxes are cheap crap. No doubt about it. Underpowered hardware and unresponsive UI. Even worse, I worked with a cable company that developed its own proprietary (broken) software for the boxes--instead of forking the manufacturer's code. What a mess. The customisation and flimsy additional antipiracy wasn't worth it. Although, I hear some companies are teaming up to develop some shared software that works better (at least in theory).

Even with bugged software and slow hardware, the box shouldn't be THAT unresponsive, though.

UI lockups and slow boot times are often a result of a slow/bad connection. Everything eats up data on the line.

Every device in the house soaks up bandwidth--and the new boxes (on any cable network) are bandwidth hogs. The worst part is cable companies oversell and allow customers to install more devices than the network can handle in real homes. When I was working for a cable company, we were allowing six televisions and internet for residential customers. That's too much under real conditions. There was no way to get it right.

Next issue is old wiring in the house. The electric company doesn't own the wires in your house. The city doesn't own your pipes and fix plumbing. The cable company doesn't own the wires in your home. Coax has been revised since the 1980's and 1990's and homes are full of shit wire (and cheap ass homeowners that won't pay to upgrade). Once again, the cable company will sell you service you can't handle and they won't force you to buy what you need. (And, you'd just whine and bitch anyway.)

Finally, there's the lack of maintenance. If there's trouble up on the line before the local box "hub" (that feeds your "drop" line to the box on your house), you can forget about having it fixed. Until that comes up for regular maintenance, the company will just send an endless stream of subcontractors to your door to make minor adjustments and apologise. That means months and months of shit service until the problem is addressed in your area. This leads to more frustration when people pay to upgrade their house wiring and still get shit service.

I don't miss that. God help the people that have to actually deal with angry customers.

[Udderdude]

As far as I can tell, people still subscribe to cable so they can pay to watch ads in standard definition on their HD TVs.

[orange808]

People that share/release/commit busted and buggy code and deflect all criticism by whining, "I don't get paid to do this".

Fuck that.

If it doesn't work right and you can't manage the project, don't share it with the world. Fix the damn bugs.

See how simple that is? Nobody asked about money. Everything is open to criticism, so don't post code that isn't any good. Nobody needs free garbage. I can get that out of a garbage can. (And the dust bin won't get paid, either.)

[soprano1]

People that share/release/commit busted and buggy code and deflect all criticism by whining, "I don't get paid to do this".

Fuck that.

If it doesn't work right and you can't manage the project, don't share it with the world. Fix the damn bugs.

See how simple that is? Nobody asked about money. Everything is open to criticism, so don't post code that isn't any good. Nobody needs free garbage. I can get that out of a garbage can. (And the dust bin won't get paid, either.)

That's the majority of the 3DS homebrew scene right there.

[namcokid47]

I cannot stress enough how much I hate it when people don't use the word "literally" correctly.

[Blinge]

the L button on my DS lite has broken. I now have to push super hard if I want an input to register.
Hmph.
I'm not at the point where I wanna risk taking it apart yet cause I'm only playing EO2, don't need the L button much.

[trap15]

Pro-strat: shoot some compressed air into the gap where the button meets the main body. Isn't a long-term fix, but it worked for me for a good few years once mine started doing that. Just gotta re-do it every once in a while.

[Immryr]

My ps2 doesn't seem to read discs any more

[BIL]

A long shot, but in case it's the same issue I once ran into - ever tried the rubber cement fix? Might be nothing to do with the disc platter, ofc.

[Immryr]

Hmm. Mine is a slim, dunno if they have the same issue but I'll have a look into it.

[drauch]

Any of y'all have any buds you game with? I mean, like ones ya can count on?

With age everyone I know has turned into a little bitch, ya dig. Nobody can play for but a few hours; everyone hates a challenge; people don't want to dedicate the time to learn, ETC.

And most of these turkeys don't have a buncha other stuff going on. A couple buds have kids and whatever, so I'm not a complete monster and get that, but these other wankers are just skulking cowards.

I don't wanna journey off into the unknown of the fabled internet. I am doomed to a life of scrubbery.

Regards, a dying man.