I wrote previously why you should not listen to the hype, when it comes to video games. Well, yet another excellent and rather infamous example has appeared recently: No Man's Sky.
Like with Evolve, this one was also highly anticipated and extremely hyped. However, No Man's Sky is arguably an even more blatant example because of all the broken promises made by the hype. At least with Evolve not many promises were made that were then broken or left out of the game; it simply turned out that what sounded like a great idea wasn't all that great after all; it just didn't work.
No Man's Sky, however, is more blatant than that. The pre-release material, teaser trailers and project leader interviews all promised a large bunch of features that were not in the final version of the game after all.
For example, teaser trailers were highly scripted animations that showed things that are not in the final game. These include things like the ability to fly above the surface of planets (in the actual game you can only land from orbit in a scripted sequence; you can't fly over the surface), gigantic space battles with factions and fleet warping in to join the fight (neither of which are in the actual game; moreover, the huge destroyer ships do not even move in the game), herd behavior including things like stampedes and animals felling down trees, sand planets with gigantic sandworms, and mysterious teleportation devices on the surface of some planets (again, none of which appear in the actual game).
Moreover, interviews with the project leader hinted at many features that, once again, do not appear in the game. Such as the game being a massively online multiplayer game, where people could encounter each other. Or having a wide variety of available space ships for different purposes. Or factions that the player can join, or fight against. It's not a multiplayer game, and people cannot encounter each other. And there is only one type of ship. And there are no factions.
And that's just scratching the surface. The game has been given the moniker "No Man's Lies" because of all that.
The amount and severity of broken promises and false advertisement was in fact so bad that several distributors (including Steam, Amazon and Sony) offered a special refund policy for this game.
Friday, September 16, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Difficulty levels in video games. Which one to choose?
While I have been playing video games since the early 1980's, the question of difficulty levels didn't really come up until I bought my first PC in the mid 90's. Many PC games from the time (one of the most notorious examples being Doom) had difficulty levels to choose from.
For a quite long time I had the principle that I would always, always play with the hardest difficulty. After all, I paid a hefty sum for a video game (especially since back then I was just a university student with a bugger-all income), which made it quite an expensive commodity, and I wanted it to last for as long as possible. I hated games that were too short, especially if they were full priced, or even nearly full priced.
With some games choosing the hardest difficulty actually made a lot of sense because it was not artificial difficulty. For example, some point&click games of the time had (usually two) "difficulty" levels, which meant in practice that on the "harder" level there were more puzzles, and some puzzles might be a bit more complex, or involved more steps. Which was absolutely perfect for me. I would have hated playing those games with less or easier puzzles.
Back in those days I was also more invested in beating games on the harder difficulty levels, even when they were at least approaching artificial difficulty. With some games it truly made them more challenging in an enjoyable manner. For example, I remember Midtown Madness having difficulty levels, and the harder levels meant that you were racing against different, more powerful cars, than the easier levels.
By the time I played Half-Life 2, I still had this mentality in full force, and I played it on its hardest difficulty. It was perhaps this one that finally made me lose that principle (or, at the very least, it was one of the last games I ever played on hardest difficulty due to wanting the game to last longer and be more challenging.) In this game the difficulty really is quite artificial, and borderline makes the game only frustrating rather than challenging.
My mindset has changed quite a lot from those times. I have become a huge consumer of video games, and I purchase tons of them. While I enjoy a very long game (those that take over 50 hours to play through) from time to time, if really well made, I prefer a video game to be enjoyable rather than it lasting as long as possible. I don't mind if a game lasts only 10 hours, if it's a really enjoyable experience (although, to be fair, that's already starting to be on the quite short side, especially if we are talking about a full-priced game; for a 20€ or cheaper game that's completely fine. I have played 2-hour games that have been absolutely marvelous, and the length has been completely fine.)
The drawback of buying so many games is, of course, that there are only so many hours of free time in my life to play them. Thus in many cases I actually prefer games to be shorter, so that I can get to play more of them. A game needs to be really epic and exceptionally well made for me to want to play more than about 30 hours of it. (There are examples of this of course. For example Steam reports that I have played Skyrim for 110 hours, which is quite unusually long. For Fallout: New Vegas it reports 60 hours.)
In general, I thus nowadays prefer playing such games in their "normal" difficulty.
I have, in fact, noticed that the "normal" difficulty tends to be the most balanced one in most games. Sort of like the intended difficulty designed by the developers (as in that it feels like they designed the game from the ground up to be played on that difficulty, and then only in the very last stages added the other difficulty levels as an option.) Choosing a harder difficulty very often makes it feel artificially hard, as in the enemies being "unrealistically" hard to kill (if you can talk about "realism" in such video games; it may be more accurate to say that it starts breaking willing suspension of disbelief when enemies are too hard to kill.) These harder difficulty levels are often not as enjoyable, as they feel unbalanced and needlessly difficult. This, in fact, goes all the way back to Half-Life 2 (and probably beyond).
Some games, however, entice the player to choose the hardest difficulty level. I have sometimes been suckered into choosing it because of that, and regretted it later. As a recent example, Battlefield 4 has this to say about its hardest difficulty level:
Well, I'm quite an experienced player, so I decided to choose that difficulty level. I stopped playing the game somewhere around half-way through, out of sheer frustration, as enemies were way too hard to kill, and it was way too easy to die. I tried a bit of the beginning of the game with the normal difficulty, and it immediately felt a lot more balanced (enemies actually died from a moderate amount of gunfire instead of having to empty two clips into them). I might some day restart the game on this difficulty level and play it through like that.
A few games, however, are quite different from this, and "difficulty level" means something quite different. An interesting case is Alien: Isolation. While there are enemies to kill in this game, the main focus is the alien, which is unkillable (this is more a horror survival than a first-person shooter). Thus "difficulty level" means something else entirely than how hard enemies are to kill. In this case it affects the behavior of the alien, which is an interesting deviation from the standard formula.
Also this game entices the player to choose the hardest difficulty:
And here, too, it's not quite clear whether this really is the best way to play the game or not, regardless of what the developers are saying there. The reason, however, and perhaps obviously, is quite different from your ordinary first-person shooter like Battlefield 4.
In the "hard" difficulty level, in the levels where you are trying to hide from the alien, that's chasing you, the alien will constantly be in your vicinity. You don't have a moment to take a breath. The alien will always be there somewhere, ready to jump at you at any moment you make the tiniest of mistakes. It never wanders off too far. It's like it can constantly sense your presence in the vicinity and never goes too far away. Your tasks thus indeed become a lot more difficult, as you must watch for the alien much more closely, and time your movements much more precisely.
Many people report, however, that the game is actually best played on the "easy" difficulty level. That it's actually much scarier and has much more ambience to it. That's because now the alien isn't actually constantly in your vicinity but can wander off somewhere else, even to the opposite side of the level. What makes this scarier and more immersive is that now you truly don't know where the alien really is. It could be just around the corner, or it could be on the other extreme of the level. You can't know. And thus it becomes much more surprising, and terrifying, when the alien suddenly jumps at you when you least expect. In the hard difficulty level you just know that the alien is just a couple of corridors away at most, so there aren't many surprises. In the easy difficulty level the anxiety is much higher because now you really don't know where the alien is or when it might turn up.
I have yet to play the game through again (I very rarely play games twice), but if I ever do, I will most certainly try the easy difficulty.
For a quite long time I had the principle that I would always, always play with the hardest difficulty. After all, I paid a hefty sum for a video game (especially since back then I was just a university student with a bugger-all income), which made it quite an expensive commodity, and I wanted it to last for as long as possible. I hated games that were too short, especially if they were full priced, or even nearly full priced.
With some games choosing the hardest difficulty actually made a lot of sense because it was not artificial difficulty. For example, some point&click games of the time had (usually two) "difficulty" levels, which meant in practice that on the "harder" level there were more puzzles, and some puzzles might be a bit more complex, or involved more steps. Which was absolutely perfect for me. I would have hated playing those games with less or easier puzzles.
Back in those days I was also more invested in beating games on the harder difficulty levels, even when they were at least approaching artificial difficulty. With some games it truly made them more challenging in an enjoyable manner. For example, I remember Midtown Madness having difficulty levels, and the harder levels meant that you were racing against different, more powerful cars, than the easier levels.
By the time I played Half-Life 2, I still had this mentality in full force, and I played it on its hardest difficulty. It was perhaps this one that finally made me lose that principle (or, at the very least, it was one of the last games I ever played on hardest difficulty due to wanting the game to last longer and be more challenging.) In this game the difficulty really is quite artificial, and borderline makes the game only frustrating rather than challenging.
My mindset has changed quite a lot from those times. I have become a huge consumer of video games, and I purchase tons of them. While I enjoy a very long game (those that take over 50 hours to play through) from time to time, if really well made, I prefer a video game to be enjoyable rather than it lasting as long as possible. I don't mind if a game lasts only 10 hours, if it's a really enjoyable experience (although, to be fair, that's already starting to be on the quite short side, especially if we are talking about a full-priced game; for a 20€ or cheaper game that's completely fine. I have played 2-hour games that have been absolutely marvelous, and the length has been completely fine.)
The drawback of buying so many games is, of course, that there are only so many hours of free time in my life to play them. Thus in many cases I actually prefer games to be shorter, so that I can get to play more of them. A game needs to be really epic and exceptionally well made for me to want to play more than about 30 hours of it. (There are examples of this of course. For example Steam reports that I have played Skyrim for 110 hours, which is quite unusually long. For Fallout: New Vegas it reports 60 hours.)
In general, I thus nowadays prefer playing such games in their "normal" difficulty.
I have, in fact, noticed that the "normal" difficulty tends to be the most balanced one in most games. Sort of like the intended difficulty designed by the developers (as in that it feels like they designed the game from the ground up to be played on that difficulty, and then only in the very last stages added the other difficulty levels as an option.) Choosing a harder difficulty very often makes it feel artificially hard, as in the enemies being "unrealistically" hard to kill (if you can talk about "realism" in such video games; it may be more accurate to say that it starts breaking willing suspension of disbelief when enemies are too hard to kill.) These harder difficulty levels are often not as enjoyable, as they feel unbalanced and needlessly difficult. This, in fact, goes all the way back to Half-Life 2 (and probably beyond).
Some games, however, entice the player to choose the hardest difficulty level. I have sometimes been suckered into choosing it because of that, and regretted it later. As a recent example, Battlefield 4 has this to say about its hardest difficulty level:
Well, I'm quite an experienced player, so I decided to choose that difficulty level. I stopped playing the game somewhere around half-way through, out of sheer frustration, as enemies were way too hard to kill, and it was way too easy to die. I tried a bit of the beginning of the game with the normal difficulty, and it immediately felt a lot more balanced (enemies actually died from a moderate amount of gunfire instead of having to empty two clips into them). I might some day restart the game on this difficulty level and play it through like that.
A few games, however, are quite different from this, and "difficulty level" means something quite different. An interesting case is Alien: Isolation. While there are enemies to kill in this game, the main focus is the alien, which is unkillable (this is more a horror survival than a first-person shooter). Thus "difficulty level" means something else entirely than how hard enemies are to kill. In this case it affects the behavior of the alien, which is an interesting deviation from the standard formula.
Also this game entices the player to choose the hardest difficulty:
And here, too, it's not quite clear whether this really is the best way to play the game or not, regardless of what the developers are saying there. The reason, however, and perhaps obviously, is quite different from your ordinary first-person shooter like Battlefield 4.
In the "hard" difficulty level, in the levels where you are trying to hide from the alien, that's chasing you, the alien will constantly be in your vicinity. You don't have a moment to take a breath. The alien will always be there somewhere, ready to jump at you at any moment you make the tiniest of mistakes. It never wanders off too far. It's like it can constantly sense your presence in the vicinity and never goes too far away. Your tasks thus indeed become a lot more difficult, as you must watch for the alien much more closely, and time your movements much more precisely.
Many people report, however, that the game is actually best played on the "easy" difficulty level. That it's actually much scarier and has much more ambience to it. That's because now the alien isn't actually constantly in your vicinity but can wander off somewhere else, even to the opposite side of the level. What makes this scarier and more immersive is that now you truly don't know where the alien really is. It could be just around the corner, or it could be on the other extreme of the level. You can't know. And thus it becomes much more surprising, and terrifying, when the alien suddenly jumps at you when you least expect. In the hard difficulty level you just know that the alien is just a couple of corridors away at most, so there aren't many surprises. In the easy difficulty level the anxiety is much higher because now you really don't know where the alien is or when it might turn up.
I have yet to play the game through again (I very rarely play games twice), but if I ever do, I will most certainly try the easy difficulty.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
The downside of single+multiplayer combo games
Many games, especially big-budget first-person shooters, often have two completely separate modes of play: A single player "campaign", and online multiplayer (which is very often some kind of "arena shooter", either in a free-for-all mode or in teams.) Quite often these two modes are so separate, so distinct, and so independent of each other, that you could just as well consider them two different games bundled into one package. They might use the same engine, assets and game mechanics, but otherwise they have usually nothing to do with each other, and often do not even interact with each other in any way (eg. by having things unlocked in one mode becoming available in the other.)
(In fact, with some games the two modes are so separate that you even have to launch them separately, often from a launch startup menu dialog.)
I assume that most companies produce these "two games in one" combos in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, ie. to those who buy such games primarily for the single-player campaign, and those who are mostly or even exclusively interested in the online multiplayer mode.
There are downsides to this, however.
One is that making two games is more expensive than making one. Sure, it's not nearly as expensive as making two completely independent games (because the same core engine and assets can be used in both playing modes, which probably cuts down development time and costs quite a lot, compared to having to make two entirely separate games), but it's also certainly more expensive than making just one of the modes. Perhaps for this reason in recent years more and more examples of single-player-only and multiplayer-only games have been published. Rather than split resources into making essentially two games, they put all their resources into just one of them. (Of course by doing this they are cutting a chunk of their target audience out, but it may still be profitable to do so.)
Another problem is that almost universally, publications and reviewers will give only one score for the entire game, rather than scoring the two sub-modes separately. (Even if some publications do give two scores, which is rare but not unheard of, aggregate scoring services will only show one score, such as the average of the two.) Since the two modes are often completely independent of each other, and do not affect each other, it would be fairest, and most useful for the potential buyer, to know the reviewers' scores for each mode separately. But this basically is never the case, and instead you get only one score for the combo.
This means that if eg. the single-player mode is excellent, but the multiplayer mode is absolute rubbish, the latter will drag the overall score down. However, for a player who is only interested in the single-player mode (like me), it would be much more informative and beneficial to know the review scores for that mode only. If there is a great disparity between the two modes, that muddles things.
I really wish that such games were actually considered two separate games, in terms of reviews and review scores, even if they come packaged in the same product.
(In fact, with some games the two modes are so separate that you even have to launch them separately, often from a launch startup menu dialog.)
I assume that most companies produce these "two games in one" combos in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, ie. to those who buy such games primarily for the single-player campaign, and those who are mostly or even exclusively interested in the online multiplayer mode.
There are downsides to this, however.
One is that making two games is more expensive than making one. Sure, it's not nearly as expensive as making two completely independent games (because the same core engine and assets can be used in both playing modes, which probably cuts down development time and costs quite a lot, compared to having to make two entirely separate games), but it's also certainly more expensive than making just one of the modes. Perhaps for this reason in recent years more and more examples of single-player-only and multiplayer-only games have been published. Rather than split resources into making essentially two games, they put all their resources into just one of them. (Of course by doing this they are cutting a chunk of their target audience out, but it may still be profitable to do so.)
Another problem is that almost universally, publications and reviewers will give only one score for the entire game, rather than scoring the two sub-modes separately. (Even if some publications do give two scores, which is rare but not unheard of, aggregate scoring services will only show one score, such as the average of the two.) Since the two modes are often completely independent of each other, and do not affect each other, it would be fairest, and most useful for the potential buyer, to know the reviewers' scores for each mode separately. But this basically is never the case, and instead you get only one score for the combo.
This means that if eg. the single-player mode is excellent, but the multiplayer mode is absolute rubbish, the latter will drag the overall score down. However, for a player who is only interested in the single-player mode (like me), it would be much more informative and beneficial to know the review scores for that mode only. If there is a great disparity between the two modes, that muddles things.
I really wish that such games were actually considered two separate games, in terms of reviews and review scores, even if they come packaged in the same product.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
Xbox One S: Too late?
Microsoft recently published a new version of their Xbox One, the Xbox One S. From what I have seen, this is the console that the original Xbox One should have been, when it was released three years ago. But before going into that, let me recapitulate the tumultuous story of the Xbox One. (I have written about many of these things in other blog posts, in my other blog, but allow me to briefly summarize the whole story.)
The story really begins with the Xbox 360. Microsoft got an entire year of a head start over their main competitor, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 was enormously successful almost from the start. The console did many things right, while the PS3 did many things wrong.
For one, being published an entire year later did certainly not help the PS3. It also didn't help that, unlike the Xbox 360, the console used a very exotic processor architecture that was very difficult for game engines to optimize for. It took a year or two after the launch of the console that the big game engines finally started to be able to take advantage of the unusual processor design, and games started really competing with the Xbox 360 in terms of performance. For quite many years the PS3 was seriously an underdog in the competition. Quite fortunately for Sony, however, it almost miraculously succeeded in catching up, and actually ended up selling almost as many units (about 80 million, compared to the about 84 million Xbox 360's.) These sales figures were probably helped quite a lot by the fact that the PS3 had a BluRay drive, making it, at the time, a surprisingly affordable BluRay player.
While the PS3 managed in the end to catch up with the Xbox 360 in terms of success, the latter led the race for years, and it can arguably be said that it kind of won said race by a small margin.
Maybe for this reason Microsoft became, perhaps, a bit too sure of themselves, and tried too much to "innovate" with their next-generation console, ie. the Xbox One. They made many, many mistakes that cost them quite a lot in popularity.
Firstly, Microsoft wanted the Kinect to be an integral part of the console (so much so that there would be no versions of the console without it; it would be a mandatory peripheral that comes with the console). They really, really tried to push the Kinect as part of the Xbox experience, and induce game developers to use it. However, both the pre-launch and post-launch audience reception of this idea was lackluster, to say the least. Gamers were not exactly thrilled, especially given that the Kinect would raise the price of the console by quite a lot (which it really did.)
Microsoft's second mistake was to announce that the Xbox One would need to be connected to the internet, and for the Kinect to be always connected and turned on, or else it would refuse to allow games to be played on it. This announcement received a ton of backlash, all the way from gamers to big name critics. The backlash was in fact so enormous that Microsoft reversed this policy prior to launch. This was probably a very smart move, but it didn't exactly help their or their console's reputation; the damage was already done, and only partially fixed.
Their third mistake was to announce that copies of games would be tied to single user accounts, which meant that you wouldn't be able to give a game you had bought to a friend, or to buy used games. Same thing: Enormous backlash, causing them to reverse the policy prior to launch, but damage to reputation already done, only partially fixed. In fact, Sony got some free points by riding on this, and announcing that the PS4 would not have any such limitations.
Their fourth mistake was to concentrate way too much on multimedia features, and too little on actual games. In fact, in their big pre-launch E3 conference, their entire presentation was about multimedia features (such as video streaming, online video rental, and so on and so forth), and almost no mention of actual video games. You know, the main reason that people actually buy video game consoles. Microsoft really tried to "innovate" too much with the Xbox One. But this didn't sit well with their audience, and the reception was, once again, quite lackluster.
The console itself, once released, did not have the best possible reception either. Not only was it slightly less efficient than the PS4, but it was amazingly bulky (resembling a big VCR from the 80's), and had an external power supply ("power brick") with its own fan... which is on all the time, when it's plugged into a wall; even if the console itself is in sleep mode. And it's quite noisy.
Immediately after launch, the PS4 sold like hotcakes (possibly breaking records on the fastest-selling console ever, after launch). The sales figures for the Xbox One were significantly more moderate. It didn't exactly help that the Xbox One was significantly more expensive, mainly due to the useless Kinect peripheral.
Credit where credit is due, Microsoft tried to learn from their mistakes and went into quite a damage control mode. Some time after launch (about a year or so), they announced a version of the console without the Kinect, which was significantly cheaper, bringing its price point to the same level as the PS4 (and even slightly cheaper). Of course this had the unfortunate consequence that many people who had bought the original version with the Kinect (because there was no alternative) felt a bit defrauded because the Kinect was not, after all, an essential component, and game developers are probably not going to make many games for it. But that was just a minor drawback.
Secondly, in their 2015 E3 conference presentation, their tone had shifted radically. Now their presentation was all about games, games, and more games. Nothing about the multimedia features, and no mention of the Kinect. This was exactly what the audience wanted. Unfortunately, two years too late. Another announcement was backwards compatibility with most Xbox 360 games. Great... except that once again it was two years too late. If this had been a feature right from launch, it would have probably boosted sales figures.
So now, finally, three years after launch, we get to their improved version of the console: The Xbox One S. The new version is significantly smaller in size (almost the same size, in volume, as the PS4, although maybe just slightly larger), has an internal power supply, and is slightly more efficient. And most curiously, it does not have a Kinect connection port at all. (A Kinect can still be connected to it, but it requires an expensive adapter. It's quite clear that Microsoft is not expecting anybody to actually want a Kinect with it.)
(Not pictured in the image: The power brick of the original version. Which is about a quarter of the size of the Xbox One S.)
The Xbox One S is, arguably, what the original Xbox One should have been from the very start.
It seems that Microsoft is constantly late to the party with this console generation. Things that should have been part of the initial release are coming years later. This is almost the exact reversal of their performance in the previous console generation, where they were the clear leaders for years.
Will the Xbox One S be enough to save the console, or is it too late? My bet is that it won't save it, especially since Microsoft has already hinted at their next console version. I don't think many people, especially those in the know, will want to purchase an Xbox One now, especially if they own a PS4 already. (Some people who don't have either, and really want the Xbox, eg. because of brand loyalty, might now be induced to buy the S version, but I'm betting these people are quite a small minority.)
Edit 8.8.2016: Anecdotal evidence is making the rounds that the Xbox One S is actually selling really well, at least on the initial days after release, with many stores being sold out. These are of course just unconfirmed rumors at this point, because no official sales figures have yet been released, but it seems that my prediction might turn out to be wrong. (It is, of course, also possible that even if the rumors are completely true, the sales will plummet after the initial rush.) I may make a new edit after more reliable figures come out.
The story really begins with the Xbox 360. Microsoft got an entire year of a head start over their main competitor, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 was enormously successful almost from the start. The console did many things right, while the PS3 did many things wrong.
For one, being published an entire year later did certainly not help the PS3. It also didn't help that, unlike the Xbox 360, the console used a very exotic processor architecture that was very difficult for game engines to optimize for. It took a year or two after the launch of the console that the big game engines finally started to be able to take advantage of the unusual processor design, and games started really competing with the Xbox 360 in terms of performance. For quite many years the PS3 was seriously an underdog in the competition. Quite fortunately for Sony, however, it almost miraculously succeeded in catching up, and actually ended up selling almost as many units (about 80 million, compared to the about 84 million Xbox 360's.) These sales figures were probably helped quite a lot by the fact that the PS3 had a BluRay drive, making it, at the time, a surprisingly affordable BluRay player.
While the PS3 managed in the end to catch up with the Xbox 360 in terms of success, the latter led the race for years, and it can arguably be said that it kind of won said race by a small margin.
Maybe for this reason Microsoft became, perhaps, a bit too sure of themselves, and tried too much to "innovate" with their next-generation console, ie. the Xbox One. They made many, many mistakes that cost them quite a lot in popularity.
Firstly, Microsoft wanted the Kinect to be an integral part of the console (so much so that there would be no versions of the console without it; it would be a mandatory peripheral that comes with the console). They really, really tried to push the Kinect as part of the Xbox experience, and induce game developers to use it. However, both the pre-launch and post-launch audience reception of this idea was lackluster, to say the least. Gamers were not exactly thrilled, especially given that the Kinect would raise the price of the console by quite a lot (which it really did.)
Microsoft's second mistake was to announce that the Xbox One would need to be connected to the internet, and for the Kinect to be always connected and turned on, or else it would refuse to allow games to be played on it. This announcement received a ton of backlash, all the way from gamers to big name critics. The backlash was in fact so enormous that Microsoft reversed this policy prior to launch. This was probably a very smart move, but it didn't exactly help their or their console's reputation; the damage was already done, and only partially fixed.
Their third mistake was to announce that copies of games would be tied to single user accounts, which meant that you wouldn't be able to give a game you had bought to a friend, or to buy used games. Same thing: Enormous backlash, causing them to reverse the policy prior to launch, but damage to reputation already done, only partially fixed. In fact, Sony got some free points by riding on this, and announcing that the PS4 would not have any such limitations.
Their fourth mistake was to concentrate way too much on multimedia features, and too little on actual games. In fact, in their big pre-launch E3 conference, their entire presentation was about multimedia features (such as video streaming, online video rental, and so on and so forth), and almost no mention of actual video games. You know, the main reason that people actually buy video game consoles. Microsoft really tried to "innovate" too much with the Xbox One. But this didn't sit well with their audience, and the reception was, once again, quite lackluster.
The console itself, once released, did not have the best possible reception either. Not only was it slightly less efficient than the PS4, but it was amazingly bulky (resembling a big VCR from the 80's), and had an external power supply ("power brick") with its own fan... which is on all the time, when it's plugged into a wall; even if the console itself is in sleep mode. And it's quite noisy.
Immediately after launch, the PS4 sold like hotcakes (possibly breaking records on the fastest-selling console ever, after launch). The sales figures for the Xbox One were significantly more moderate. It didn't exactly help that the Xbox One was significantly more expensive, mainly due to the useless Kinect peripheral.
Credit where credit is due, Microsoft tried to learn from their mistakes and went into quite a damage control mode. Some time after launch (about a year or so), they announced a version of the console without the Kinect, which was significantly cheaper, bringing its price point to the same level as the PS4 (and even slightly cheaper). Of course this had the unfortunate consequence that many people who had bought the original version with the Kinect (because there was no alternative) felt a bit defrauded because the Kinect was not, after all, an essential component, and game developers are probably not going to make many games for it. But that was just a minor drawback.
Secondly, in their 2015 E3 conference presentation, their tone had shifted radically. Now their presentation was all about games, games, and more games. Nothing about the multimedia features, and no mention of the Kinect. This was exactly what the audience wanted. Unfortunately, two years too late. Another announcement was backwards compatibility with most Xbox 360 games. Great... except that once again it was two years too late. If this had been a feature right from launch, it would have probably boosted sales figures.
So now, finally, three years after launch, we get to their improved version of the console: The Xbox One S. The new version is significantly smaller in size (almost the same size, in volume, as the PS4, although maybe just slightly larger), has an internal power supply, and is slightly more efficient. And most curiously, it does not have a Kinect connection port at all. (A Kinect can still be connected to it, but it requires an expensive adapter. It's quite clear that Microsoft is not expecting anybody to actually want a Kinect with it.)
(Not pictured in the image: The power brick of the original version. Which is about a quarter of the size of the Xbox One S.)
The Xbox One S is, arguably, what the original Xbox One should have been from the very start.
It seems that Microsoft is constantly late to the party with this console generation. Things that should have been part of the initial release are coming years later. This is almost the exact reversal of their performance in the previous console generation, where they were the clear leaders for years.
Will the Xbox One S be enough to save the console, or is it too late? My bet is that it won't save it, especially since Microsoft has already hinted at their next console version. I don't think many people, especially those in the know, will want to purchase an Xbox One now, especially if they own a PS4 already. (Some people who don't have either, and really want the Xbox, eg. because of brand loyalty, might now be induced to buy the S version, but I'm betting these people are quite a small minority.)
Edit 8.8.2016: Anecdotal evidence is making the rounds that the Xbox One S is actually selling really well, at least on the initial days after release, with many stores being sold out. These are of course just unconfirmed rumors at this point, because no official sales figures have yet been released, but it seems that my prediction might turn out to be wrong. (It is, of course, also possible that even if the rumors are completely true, the sales will plummet after the initial rush.) I may make a new edit after more reliable figures come out.
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Turning 3D off on a 3DS: The devil is in the details
I bought myself a New Nintendo 3DS (not just a brand new one, but the device named "New Nintendo 3DS"). I had been for quite a long time pondering about buying a 3DS, and the new version of the console finally gave me the impetus of buying one.
One of the major new hardware features of the console is better 3D via eye-tracking. The original 3DS has a parallax barrier 3D screen (which in practice means that the 3D effect is achieved without the need of any kind of glasses). Its problem is that it requires a really precise horizontal viewing angle to work properly. Deviate from it even a slight bit, and the visuals will glitch. The New 3DS improves on this by using eyetracking, and adjusting the parallax barrier offset in real time depending on the position of the eyes. This way you can move the device or your head relatively freely, and the 3D effect is not broken. It works surprisingly well. Sometimes the device loses track of your eyes and the visuals will glitch, but they fix themselves when it gets the track again. (This happens mostly if you eg. look away and then back at the screen. It seldom happens while playing. It sometimes does, especially if the lighting conditions change, eg. if you are sitting in a car or bus and the position of the sun changes rapidly, but overall it happens rarely.)
There is, however, another limitation to the parallax barrier technology, which even eyetracking can't fix: The distance between your eyes and the screen has to be within a certain range. Any closer or farther, and the visuals will start glitching once again. There is quite some leeway in this case, ie. this range is relatively large, so it's not all that bad. And the range is at a relatively comfortable distance.
Curiously, the strength of the 3D effect can be adjusted with a slider.
Some people can't use the 3D screen because of physiological reasons. Headaches are the most common symptom. For me this is not a problem, and I really like to play with full depth.
There are a few situations, however, where it's nicer to just turn the 3D effect off. For instance if you would really like to look at the screen up close. Or quite far (like when sitting on a chair, with the console on your lap, quite far away from your eyes.) Or for whatever other reason.
The 3D effect can be turned completely off, which makes the screen completely 2D, with no 3D effect of any kind: Just slide the slider all the way down, and it turns the 3D effect completely off.
Except it didn't do that! Or so I thought for one and a half year.
You see, whenever the 3D effect is turned on, no matter how small the depth setting, the minimum/maximum eye distance problem would always be there. If you eg. look at the screen too closely, it would glitch, even if so slightly, and quite annoyingly. With a lower depth setting the glitching is significantly less, but it's still noticeable. Some uneven jittering and small blinking happens if you move the device or your head at all, when you are looking at the screen from too close (or too far).
Even though I put the 3D slider all the way down, the artifacts were still there. For the longest time I thought that this might be some kind of limitation of the technology: Even though it claimed that the 3D could be turned off, it wasn't really possible fully.
But the curious thing was that if I played any 2D game, with no 3D support, the screen would actually be pure 2D, without any of the 3D artifacts and glitching in any way, shape or form. It would look sharp and clean, with no jittering, subtle blinking, or anything. This was puzzling to say the least. Clearly the technology is capable of showing pure and clean 2D, with the 3D effect turned completely off. But for some reason in 3D games this couldn't be achieved with the 3D slider.
Or so I thought.
I recently happened to stumble across an online discussion about turning off the 3D effect in the 3DS, and one poster mentioned that in the 3DS XL there's a notch, or "bump", at the lower end of the slider, so that you have to press it a bit harder, and it will get locked into place.
This was something I didn't know previously, but somehow this still didn't light a bulb in my head. However, incidentally, when I was playing with the 3D slider, I happened to notice, when I looked at it from a better angle, that the slider wasn't actually going all the way down. There was a tiny space between the slider and the end of the slit where it slides, even though I thought I had put it all the way down.
Then it dawned on me, and I remembered that online discussion (which I had read just some minutes earlier): I pressed the slider a bit harder, and it clicked into its bottommost position. And the screen became visibly pure and clean 2D.
I couldn't help but laugh at myself. "OMFG, I have been using this damn thing for a year and a half, and this is the first time I notice this?" (Ok, I didn't think exactly that, but pretty much the sentiment was that.)
So yeah, the devil is in the details. And sometimes we easily miss those details.
I have to wonder how many other people don't notice nor realize this.
One of the major new hardware features of the console is better 3D via eye-tracking. The original 3DS has a parallax barrier 3D screen (which in practice means that the 3D effect is achieved without the need of any kind of glasses). Its problem is that it requires a really precise horizontal viewing angle to work properly. Deviate from it even a slight bit, and the visuals will glitch. The New 3DS improves on this by using eyetracking, and adjusting the parallax barrier offset in real time depending on the position of the eyes. This way you can move the device or your head relatively freely, and the 3D effect is not broken. It works surprisingly well. Sometimes the device loses track of your eyes and the visuals will glitch, but they fix themselves when it gets the track again. (This happens mostly if you eg. look away and then back at the screen. It seldom happens while playing. It sometimes does, especially if the lighting conditions change, eg. if you are sitting in a car or bus and the position of the sun changes rapidly, but overall it happens rarely.)
There is, however, another limitation to the parallax barrier technology, which even eyetracking can't fix: The distance between your eyes and the screen has to be within a certain range. Any closer or farther, and the visuals will start glitching once again. There is quite some leeway in this case, ie. this range is relatively large, so it's not all that bad. And the range is at a relatively comfortable distance.
Curiously, the strength of the 3D effect can be adjusted with a slider.
Some people can't use the 3D screen because of physiological reasons. Headaches are the most common symptom. For me this is not a problem, and I really like to play with full depth.
There are a few situations, however, where it's nicer to just turn the 3D effect off. For instance if you would really like to look at the screen up close. Or quite far (like when sitting on a chair, with the console on your lap, quite far away from your eyes.) Or for whatever other reason.
The 3D effect can be turned completely off, which makes the screen completely 2D, with no 3D effect of any kind: Just slide the slider all the way down, and it turns the 3D effect completely off.
Except it didn't do that! Or so I thought for one and a half year.
You see, whenever the 3D effect is turned on, no matter how small the depth setting, the minimum/maximum eye distance problem would always be there. If you eg. look at the screen too closely, it would glitch, even if so slightly, and quite annoyingly. With a lower depth setting the glitching is significantly less, but it's still noticeable. Some uneven jittering and small blinking happens if you move the device or your head at all, when you are looking at the screen from too close (or too far).
Even though I put the 3D slider all the way down, the artifacts were still there. For the longest time I thought that this might be some kind of limitation of the technology: Even though it claimed that the 3D could be turned off, it wasn't really possible fully.
But the curious thing was that if I played any 2D game, with no 3D support, the screen would actually be pure 2D, without any of the 3D artifacts and glitching in any way, shape or form. It would look sharp and clean, with no jittering, subtle blinking, or anything. This was puzzling to say the least. Clearly the technology is capable of showing pure and clean 2D, with the 3D effect turned completely off. But for some reason in 3D games this couldn't be achieved with the 3D slider.
Or so I thought.
I recently happened to stumble across an online discussion about turning off the 3D effect in the 3DS, and one poster mentioned that in the 3DS XL there's a notch, or "bump", at the lower end of the slider, so that you have to press it a bit harder, and it will get locked into place.
This was something I didn't know previously, but somehow this still didn't light a bulb in my head. However, incidentally, when I was playing with the 3D slider, I happened to notice, when I looked at it from a better angle, that the slider wasn't actually going all the way down. There was a tiny space between the slider and the end of the slit where it slides, even though I thought I had put it all the way down.
Then it dawned on me, and I remembered that online discussion (which I had read just some minutes earlier): I pressed the slider a bit harder, and it clicked into its bottommost position. And the screen became visibly pure and clean 2D.
I couldn't help but laugh at myself. "OMFG, I have been using this damn thing for a year and a half, and this is the first time I notice this?" (Ok, I didn't think exactly that, but pretty much the sentiment was that.)
So yeah, the devil is in the details. And sometimes we easily miss those details.
I have to wonder how many other people don't notice nor realize this.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Which chess endgame is the hardest?
In chess, many endgame situations with only very few pieces left can be the bane of beginner players. And even sometimes very experienced players as well. But which endgame situation could be considered the hardest of all? This is a difficult (and in many ways ambiguous) question, but here are some ideas.
Perhaps we should start with one of the easiest endgames in chess. One of the traditional endgame situations that every beginner player is taught almost from the very start:
This is an almost trivial endgame which any player would be able to play in their dreams. However, let's make a small substitution:
Now it suddenly became significantly more difficult (and one of the typical banes of beginners). In fact, the status of this position depends on whose move it is. If it's white to move, white can win in 23 moves (with perfect play from both sides). However, if it's black to move, it's a draw, but it requires very precise moves from black. (In fact, there is only one move in this position for black to draw; every other move loses, if white plays perfectly.) These single-pawn endings can be quite tricky at times.
But this is by far not the hardest possible endgame. There are notoriously harder ones, such as the queen vs. rook endgame:
Here white can win in 28 moves (with perfect play from both sides), but it requires quite tricky maneuvering.
Another notoriously difficult endgame is king-bishop-knight vs. king:
Here white can also win in 28 moves (with perfect play), but it requires a very meticulous algorithm to do so.
But all these are child's play compared to the probably hardest possible endgame. To begin with, king-knight-knight vs. king is (excepting very few particular positions) a draw:
But add one single pawn, and it's victory for white. But not a white pawn. A black pawn! And it can be introduced in quite many places, and white will win. As incredible as that might sound:
Yes, adding a black pawn means that white can now win, as hard as that is to imagine.
(The reason for this is that the winning strategy requires white to maneuver the black king into a position where it has no legal moves, several times. Without the black pawn this would be stalemate. However, thanks to the black pawn, which black is then forced to move, the stalemate is avoided and white can proceed with the mating sequence.)
But this is a notoriously difficult endgame. So difficult, that even most chess grandmasters may have difficulty with it (and many might not even know how to do it). It is so difficult that it requires quite a staggering amount of moves: With perfect play from both sides, white can win in 93 moves.
Perhaps we should start with one of the easiest endgames in chess. One of the traditional endgame situations that every beginner player is taught almost from the very start:
This is an almost trivial endgame which any player would be able to play in their dreams. However, let's make a small substitution:
Now it suddenly became significantly more difficult (and one of the typical banes of beginners). In fact, the status of this position depends on whose move it is. If it's white to move, white can win in 23 moves (with perfect play from both sides). However, if it's black to move, it's a draw, but it requires very precise moves from black. (In fact, there is only one move in this position for black to draw; every other move loses, if white plays perfectly.) These single-pawn endings can be quite tricky at times.
But this is by far not the hardest possible endgame. There are notoriously harder ones, such as the queen vs. rook endgame:
Here white can win in 28 moves (with perfect play from both sides), but it requires quite tricky maneuvering.
Another notoriously difficult endgame is king-bishop-knight vs. king:
Here white can also win in 28 moves (with perfect play), but it requires a very meticulous algorithm to do so.
But all these are child's play compared to the probably hardest possible endgame. To begin with, king-knight-knight vs. king is (excepting very few particular positions) a draw:
But add one single pawn, and it's victory for white. But not a white pawn. A black pawn! And it can be introduced in quite many places, and white will win. As incredible as that might sound:
Yes, adding a black pawn means that white can now win, as hard as that is to imagine.
(The reason for this is that the winning strategy requires white to maneuver the black king into a position where it has no legal moves, several times. Without the black pawn this would be stalemate. However, thanks to the black pawn, which black is then forced to move, the stalemate is avoided and white can proceed with the mating sequence.)
But this is a notoriously difficult endgame. So difficult, that even most chess grandmasters may have difficulty with it (and many might not even know how to do it). It is so difficult that it requires quite a staggering amount of moves: With perfect play from both sides, white can win in 93 moves.
"Tank controls" in video games
3D games are actually surprisingly old. Technically speaking some games of the early 1970's were 3D, meaning they used perspective projection and had, at least technically speaking, three axes of movement. (Obviously back in those days they were nothing more than vector graphics drawn using lines and sprites, but technically speaking they were 3D, as contrasted to purely 2D games where everything happens on a plane.) I'm not talking here about racing games that give a semi-illusion of depth by having the picture of a road going to the horizon and sprites of different sizes, but actual 3D games using perspective projection of rotateable objects.
As technology advanced, so did the 3D games. The most popular 3D games of the 80's were mostly flight simulators and racing games (which used actual rotateable and perspective-projected 3D polygons), although there were obviously attempts at some other genres as well even back then. It's precisely these types of games, ie. flight simulators and anything that could be viewed as a derivative, that seemed most suitable for 3D gaming in the early days.
It is perhaps because of this that one aspect of 3D games was really pervasive for years and decades to come: The control system.
What is the most common control system for simple flight simulators and 3D racing games? The so-called "tank controls". This means that there's a "forward" button to go forward, a "back" button to go backwards, and "left" and "right" buttons to turn the vehicle (ie. in practice the "camera") left and right. This was the most logical control system for such games. After all, you can't have a plane or a car moving sideways, because they just don't move like that in real life either. Basically every single 3D game of the 80's and well into the 90's used this control scheme. It was the most "natural" and ubiquitous way of controlling a 3D game.
Probably because of this, and unfortunately, this control scheme was by large "inherited" into all kinds of 3D games, even when the technology was used in other types of games, such as platformers viewed from third-person perspective, and even first-person shooters.
Yes, Wolfenstein 3D, and even the "grandfather" of first-person shooters, Doom, used "tank controls". There was no mouse support by default (I'm not even sure there was support at all, in the first release versions), and the "left" and "right" keys would turn the camera left and right. There was support for strafing (ie. moving sideways while keeping the camera looking forward), but it was very awkward: Rather than having "strafe left" and "strafe right" buttons, Doom instead had a toggle button to make the left and right buttons strafe. (In other words, if you wanted to strafe, you had to press the "strafe" button and, while keeping it pressed, use the left and right buttons. Just like using the shift key to type uppercase letters.) Needless to say, this was so awkward and impractical that people seldom used it.
Of course all kinds of other 3D games used "tank controls" as well, including many of the first 3D platformers, making them really awkward to play.
For some reason it took the gaming industry a really long time to realize that strafing, moving sideways, was a much more natural and convenient way of moving than being restricted to only being able to move back and forward, and turning the camera. Today we take the "WASD" key mapping, with A and D being strafe buttons, for granted, but this is a relatively recent development. As late as early 2000's some games still hadn't transitioned to this more convenient form of controls.
The same goes to game consoles, by the way. "Tank controls" might even have been even more pervasive and widespread there (usually due to the lack of configurable controller button mapping). There, too, it took a relatively long time before strafing became the norm. The introduction of twin stick controllers made this transition much more feasible, but even then it took a relatively long time before it became the standard.
Take, for example, the game Resident Evil 4, released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube, both of which had twin stick controllers. The game still used tank controls, and had no strafing support at all. This makes the game horribly awkward and frustrating to control; even infuriatingly so. And this even though modern twin-stick controls had already been the norm for years (for example, Halo: Combat Evolved was published in 2001.)
Nowadays "tank controls" are only limited to games and situations where they make sense. This usually means when driving a car or another similar vehicle, and a few other situations.
And not even always even then. Many tank games, perhaps ironically, do not use "tank controls". Instead, you can move the vehicle freely in the direction pressed with the WASD keys or the left controller stick, while keeping the camera fixated in its current direction, and which can be rotated with the mouse or the right controller stick (and which usually in such games makes the tank aim at that direction). In other words, direction of movement and direction of aiming are independent of each other (and usually the tank aims at the direction that the camera is looking). This makes the game a lot more fluent and practical to play.
As technology advanced, so did the 3D games. The most popular 3D games of the 80's were mostly flight simulators and racing games (which used actual rotateable and perspective-projected 3D polygons), although there were obviously attempts at some other genres as well even back then. It's precisely these types of games, ie. flight simulators and anything that could be viewed as a derivative, that seemed most suitable for 3D gaming in the early days.
It is perhaps because of this that one aspect of 3D games was really pervasive for years and decades to come: The control system.
What is the most common control system for simple flight simulators and 3D racing games? The so-called "tank controls". This means that there's a "forward" button to go forward, a "back" button to go backwards, and "left" and "right" buttons to turn the vehicle (ie. in practice the "camera") left and right. This was the most logical control system for such games. After all, you can't have a plane or a car moving sideways, because they just don't move like that in real life either. Basically every single 3D game of the 80's and well into the 90's used this control scheme. It was the most "natural" and ubiquitous way of controlling a 3D game.
Probably because of this, and unfortunately, this control scheme was by large "inherited" into all kinds of 3D games, even when the technology was used in other types of games, such as platformers viewed from third-person perspective, and even first-person shooters.
Yes, Wolfenstein 3D, and even the "grandfather" of first-person shooters, Doom, used "tank controls". There was no mouse support by default (I'm not even sure there was support at all, in the first release versions), and the "left" and "right" keys would turn the camera left and right. There was support for strafing (ie. moving sideways while keeping the camera looking forward), but it was very awkward: Rather than having "strafe left" and "strafe right" buttons, Doom instead had a toggle button to make the left and right buttons strafe. (In other words, if you wanted to strafe, you had to press the "strafe" button and, while keeping it pressed, use the left and right buttons. Just like using the shift key to type uppercase letters.) Needless to say, this was so awkward and impractical that people seldom used it.
Of course all kinds of other 3D games used "tank controls" as well, including many of the first 3D platformers, making them really awkward to play.
For some reason it took the gaming industry a really long time to realize that strafing, moving sideways, was a much more natural and convenient way of moving than being restricted to only being able to move back and forward, and turning the camera. Today we take the "WASD" key mapping, with A and D being strafe buttons, for granted, but this is a relatively recent development. As late as early 2000's some games still hadn't transitioned to this more convenient form of controls.
The same goes to game consoles, by the way. "Tank controls" might even have been even more pervasive and widespread there (usually due to the lack of configurable controller button mapping). There, too, it took a relatively long time before strafing became the norm. The introduction of twin stick controllers made this transition much more feasible, but even then it took a relatively long time before it became the standard.
Take, for example, the game Resident Evil 4, released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube, both of which had twin stick controllers. The game still used tank controls, and had no strafing support at all. This makes the game horribly awkward and frustrating to control; even infuriatingly so. And this even though modern twin-stick controls had already been the norm for years (for example, Halo: Combat Evolved was published in 2001.)
Nowadays "tank controls" are only limited to games and situations where they make sense. This usually means when driving a car or another similar vehicle, and a few other situations.
And not even always even then. Many tank games, perhaps ironically, do not use "tank controls". Instead, you can move the vehicle freely in the direction pressed with the WASD keys or the left controller stick, while keeping the camera fixated in its current direction, and which can be rotated with the mouse or the right controller stick (and which usually in such games makes the tank aim at that direction). In other words, direction of movement and direction of aiming are independent of each other (and usually the tank aims at the direction that the camera is looking). This makes the game a lot more fluent and practical to play.
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