Samuel_Tow

Um... Believing my own nonsense is the very foundation of fiction.

OK, will try. Hope there isn't anyone else in the zone right now

Not like you can tell what they're saying in those games, anyway.

As for the movie itself, it's pretty much the video equivalent of a pun.

If you feel that stories about magic are inherently inexplicable, illogical and contrary to having fact-based plots, then you are already lost. Magic, along with super-science, implausible mutations, aliens and basically any fiction you make up is governed by whatever internal rules are set in it by the author. If the author started by saying: "Your life is just a dream. The real world is controlled by robots." then this is an explanation and a "fact" which you will need to work with if you want to make sense of the universe in question.

In fact, applying real-world physics to movies, stories and games is often counter-productive to the actual story, as most of anime is a pretty good example to. Little of what goes on in your typical fiction anime is in the slightest realistic, but as long as it doesn't contradict ITSELF, who cares?

The only "facts" you have to work with in any fictional work are the facts the author has stated. Everything else, including real-life science, is subject to contradiction if the author so chooses. I, as the hypothetical author of a hypothetical fictional work regarding the multiverse, say in unambiguous terms that we're dealing with converging realities. If you'd don't like it, you're free to stop reading. But if you don't, then you need to accept this as fact and work backwards to uncover what this means for the various worlds. This makes it easier to explain, because I've explained it in the narrative. "These worlds are very similar because they are converging. I wonder what else will happen to bring them closer?"

Your divergent reality theory suggests that realities started diverging long, long ago, which then puts the weight on you to explain how so many ended up so close to each other anyway, considering how wildly they could have fluctuated. I've no doubt you CAN explain it, but it's still not as easy as it is the other way around where the setting itself gives you the answer, rather than needing a narrator to give you the setting AND explain how it works at the same time.

This is fiction. Everything in fiction is "functional magic" because everything is as it is because the author said so. It's a question of writing skill that determines who can pull what off, but if utter nonsense like Divergence Even can make sense, then there's a lot of leeway.

You're not missing much.

What are the chances that a man can fly? What are the chances that a man can leap tall buildings in a single bound? What are the chances that a man can run faster than a speeding bullet? Pretty low, actually. Must be either a bird or a plane.

You know, instead of spending your time browbeating people into reading what you meant, rather than what you said, why don't you spend more time reading what people actually said? Take this instance, for example. What I said was:

IN FICTION. You wanna' go ahead and tell me it's nonsense and I'll tell you all fiction in general is nonsense. And all religion, while we're at it. That one true creator? Pshaw! Destiny? No such thing. Faster than light travel? Einstein would like to have a word with you.

So? Screw 'em. This is fiction, and not even hard fiction. We have super heroes of diverse origins and elements, all susceptible to the same power suppression field that turns them into humans, while all of them are applicable to be cloned in vats, despite some having actually been CREATED on an assembly line or built out of Lego bricks. We have all sort of soft science that's there for dramatic effect and plot convenience.

Besides, are you really going to compare the theory of probability to multiverse physics? You failed to account for the elders of the universe and the multiverse god. You also forgot to carry the prophecy and the coefficient weight of trans-dimensional destiny. You also neglected to mention the factor of "timeline rigidity" that alters the timeline to account for errant events and alter it so the result is always the same. And, of course, you never mention that, in the end, a wizard did it all.

I PREFER the theory of convergent realities because it's MORE INTERESTING NARRATIVELY. I don't give two rats about theoretical dimensional science as exists today when scientists can't even prove alternate dimensions actually exist. Trust me, I graduated applied mathematics. I'm well aware of ******** theoretical constructs of higher-dimension space. They're all about as boring as they sound.

That's not Marvel vs. Capcom. It's an open-source project called "Super Marvel vs. Capcom" for the MUGEN environment that gathers characters from around the franchise, actually hand-made by the users a lot of the time, or so I hear.

And, yeah, it probably looks worse than Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but it IS free, and I assume legal, whereas Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is not playable on my PC, and by the looks of it, never will be. And as long as Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is console-exclusive, I REALLY don't feel bad about putting one over on Capcom.

That's something I've always agreed with. The female run is ulcer-inducing to such an extent that no amount of hip sway can save it. It feels like I'm playing Peg from Married with Children... Ugh!

Again, I'm not advocating yanking the animation away from people who like bad run styles, but we NEED run style customization at SOME point.

Wait, what'd I miss? Why wouldn't they let you resub?

So global are super heroes that the game tanked SO BAD in Korea the City of Hero branch had to be shut down almost instantly. You guys keep going on and on about super heroes, completely neglecting the fact that many of us are NOT in the game for the super heroes, but rather for the excellent game. If I wanted super heroes, I'd have shipped off to Champions Online, or turned into a DC fanboy, or foamed at the mouth over the Marvel MMO. Instead, I'm still here, snarking at those other games. And it's not because of the comic books and the super heroes and the tights.

Super heroes are primarily an American thing. They're not ONLY an American thing, but to think you can market a game to a non-American market on JUST the heroes is foolish. Super heroes on their own are not enough of a draw. Hell, I'm not sure super hero comics are even SOLD where I live, and I do know nobody reads them, or indeed reads comic books of ANY kind these days. Not here, anyway.

City of Heroes is a decent game with contemporary settings mixed in with fantastic themes, offering almost unlimited customizability. That's what ought to be selling the game.

For this reason exactly. People can easily avoid it... And people do just that. So the content sits unused. Waste of resources, waste of space. Yeah, it's unlikely to be changed, but don't expect the same mistakes to be repeated on the next big TF. We've been complaining about the stupidity of fighting mountains of HP for years. It's sad that it took one mission designer getting burned out over it for the development team to see the problem, but I'm convinced it's becoming more and more obvious now.

As far as it being fun, it's about as much fun as doing your taxes. We're past the age of Pong and Space Invaders where people were satisfied with one static screen of gameplay for hours and hours of fun. These days people expect stuff to actually happen in their games, and with Reichsman, this just isn't the case. Good content balances repetitive content with content rotation, preferably rotating activities and settings just as they're getting boring and tedious. Reichsman is fun for a few cycles. After that, I unmute my TV, swivel my chair and push buttons sideways.

Yes, please. I would gladly trade the inability to use certain short-handled swords and shields in general if we ever got two-handed animations for Shield and Axe AT LEAST. While we're at it, can we please get a selection of bigger axes and swords with longer hilts? Where's the harm in that? Better to have new animations than a brand new two-handed sword set.

Speaking of which, can we please get a "large hammer" set at some point?

Personally, I'd like to see the Shadow Maul animation simply sped up a great deal. If it's supposed to be fast punches, then why can't they be FAST punches? Do I need to bring up Chun-Li's rapid kicks? That's the kind of speed I envision. If I get the time, I'll do a sped-up mock-up of Flurry.

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More to point, it occurs to me that there's one good source of inspiration to draw on for "cool energy attacks," which is basically ever fighting game ever made, but Capcom's "VS series" more than anything else. So I did a couple of mockups:





The first one features Sakura's aerial Hadouken from Marvel vs Capcom 2, Iron Man's basic strong punch from Marvel Super Heroes (don't think it's named), Thanos' basic strong punch from Marvel Super Heroes and Captain Commando's Captain Corridor from Marvel vs. Capcom - it's the big full-screen energy bolt

The second one features four super moves: Iron Man's Proton Cannon from Marvel Super Heroes, Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken from Marvel vs. Capcom, Cyclops' Mega (or was it Hyper?) Optic Blast from X-Men: Children of the Atom and Dr. Doom's "I don't know what it's called" super from Marvel Super Heroes (or possibly Marvel vs. Capcom 2) that I caught mid-way - that energy ball explodes into a much larger blue fireball that wasn't as photogenic.

When I say Energy Blast could be more ambitious and more elaborate, and that other sets could very well be, as well, this is what I mean.

Yikes! I love it! Why didn't I think of that

OK, picture this with me: You have a psychic who is so powerful and so confident that he never lifts a finger. Picture him permanently stuck in the Magneto float, just soaring a foot above the ground. He never lifts a finger. He never looks his enemies, not even sideways. He just keeps on slowly floating forward, and people around him just DIE seemingly by themselves.

You see, my friends, such a character is so awesome he doesn't even need to act cool to kill people in cool ways. His mere PRESENCE kills them.

Of course, we can't have it quite like that in-game, but mental blasts firing from the character without ANY animation would be really, really, REALLY cool. Possibly without turning around at all.

*edit*
Come to think of it, that would be a lot like Spriggan's Colonel MacDougall.

You're probably the reason I just rolled my eyes over this and decided not to respond Believe me, my feelings on people's dislike for the levelling speed changes are very much as strong and as entrenched as they were before. As long as I can slow my levelling speed down, then I see no problem with it now.

Well... They're grey...

Why? If you want more options, then give me a choice between them, don't make that choice for me. I'm all for power pool customization, but origin-locking that customization strikes me as the worst way to go about it.

Precisely. If you don't know it's there, you may well miss there's anything to be know.

However, to explain, EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER who is given a name in Gaussian's arc is from Oban: Star Racers. In fact, if you do a comparison to the character roster in Oban's Wiki page, you'll find it's around a 60% match to the character roster in Gaussian's Arc.

Some characters are taken as direct name and personality borrows, such as Colonel Toros, the Krog representative on Alwas and primary bad guy who appears in the Protect Lady Grey mission or Captain Flint, the Alwas home champion who appears as the captor of Sah'Teece, the "Rikti sports hero before he became a diplomat. Some kind of racing, I guess."

Other characters are plays on Oban characters, such as the aforementioned Sah'Teece the Rikti sportsman who is a reference to Satis, the Earth Team host on Alwas and secretly the mysterious pod racer who called himself "Super Racer." Then there are Captain Nin and Captain Skung who show up in the Save Lady Grey mission, one as an ambush when fighting the other, who are a play on Ning and Skun, the alien racer women on Oban who race as a tag team as... Sisters, I think. They're weird aliens hinted to be something like vampires. Lemme' tell ya, as soon as I saw Captain Nin, I KNEW I was waiting for an ambush, and I was right.

It's all over the place, and most characters correspond to their personalities from Oban. For instance, the Longbow Super Strength Warden Lt. Rush corresponds to Rush, the titanic superstrong alien who piloted the biggest racer of them all by quite a margin. His going "AHAHAHA! Let's fight then!" is a direct crib from Oban, where he has the habit of doing that sort of belly laugh and and be prone to contests of strength. Or like the Rogue Vanguard Engineers Kan and Stoji, aka Earth Team engineers Stan and Koju, with one being a cowardly brainy little guy and the other being a gruff and rough grease monkey.

Having seen the show, it was less a question of what story I was reading and more what cameos I would see next. I'm surprised we didn't see General Cross (I don't think), but supreme bad guy and omnipotent magical being Canaletto does make an appearance as Renegade Leader Gen. K. Alito of Vanguard acting as, surprise surprise, supreme bad guy of the Rogue Vanguard operation.

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Might want to ask for fingers first

The basic stance has the left foot forward. You CAN have the right hand forward in a left-foot-forward stance, but it's something people usually don't recommend and it's something that looks twisted and unappealing. Of the two solutions, swapping the "handedness" of the katana was the less costly, with swapping the footing being rather a lot more costly. Currently, all of the animations for swapping between the different combat modes already exist, and adapting them for Katana was a question of retweaking the arms. Had they tried to swap the footing, you'd have faced a complete redoing of all the animations, INCLUDING the arms anyway.

At the time, it was decided that a left-handed Katana wasn't a big deal (and I agreed with it, then and now) so they picked the less expensive variant for re-animation - reuse as much as possible. Remember also that they weren't making a new set. They were re-tweaking an old one.

Coooool! Want!

Seriously, though, even if it's not quite on the same power level, this kind of showmanship is exactly what I'm talking about. It's power obvious from looking at the attack, not just from looking at its damage stat. We have a precious few powers that actually look and feel BIG!