SURVEY_PROGRAM

Starting the survey program.


I just want to have some talk about Deltarune. More in the line of what I see of the game not in terms of fun but more in terms of how people are reacting to it and how I see Toby Fox is dealing with the whole thing. Yes, I will also refer to his tweet longer post as well (http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqn3p9).

As for story speculations I leave it to the rest of the internet to debate this to hell and back. Personally I am not that keen on that aspect. The game is not completed, the demo could change etc

Definitely going to have a bit of spoiler in this though mostly not intentional. The game is free, go play it.

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A quick summary of how the game fare to me.

Going through the opening of the game already I feel emotional and nostalgic. By mid game, you have already grown quite attached to the characters and their quirks. After reaching the castle, you hope this is not the end.

Did I talk about the music? Oh man the music. You have to hear it yourself. (Fields of Hopes and Dreams has this Seiken Densetsu vibe. Has some Touhou tune in it as well)

The animations and battle section of the game is more polished than Undertale.

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Now onto the main topic here

I will talk about the thing that has been hanging over in my head. Toby's tweet longer post. Coming from the success of Undertale has really made it difficult for him. He believes that he will be unable to fulfill hype for his next game and have accepted that fact.

This is interesting for me as a lot of the other developers seems to believe their game can do a lot better than their previous success. Though I believe Toby's acceptance that he cannot fulfill the coming expectations of his next game is going to least help evaluate the pressure of making new games in the future.

He is having difficulties making Deltarune as the game is much bigger and more complex than Undertale. Just the demo itself took a few years to complete. He also stated that he has no experience working with a team to develop games.

In regards to that, this is easy to understand. Undertale was mostly done by Toby himself. Undertale as you can see playing it is almost fully Toby's vision and his own storytelling method. With a team, not only does Toby needs to think about making the game, he needs to supervise other people on the game as well. It is nearly impossible for the game to be fully his vision when done with a team. I am not sure if Toby himself is ready to accept that fact.

Talking about the game development came another point, the game will only have 1 ending. This seemed to have brought some debate between people not wanting to play the game because it only has 1 ending. For me, I don't see any issue. Some of the best JRPGS around are single ending. Single ending or not, I am more interested in the story Toby wants to tell.

Which leads me to the Toby wanting to tell this story for a long time. His initial drafts of Deltarune dated somewhere in 2012. I am not sure if it is the same feeling as I have when I needed to write about Tokyo Dark (ahem read it here https://t.co/TW3De3PnEM). The feeling of need to get it out of your head before it drives you insane not doing so.

Now that I have gotten this off my chest. I can go back to wasting my free time by napping.



End of survey.

My misadventures with learning how to cook.

A few years ago I decided to learn to cook. Well, more of learning to make more than instant noodles.

I figure the easiest way to learn is to start learning how to make some of the food I eat out like Japanese Ramen, curry etc.

So now in 2018. I learned how to make food scambled eggs, poached eggs, some simple pan meats, some soups etc.

Honestly what I learn is nothing great. My mum probably beats me hands down in the same stuff. I do feel a lot happier now I can make some food without resorting to instant noodles. (Though I still love instant noodles)

I also learned that it is alright to use like pre-done stuff for cooking. Like chicken stock for, powdered dashi instead boiling bonito flakes, using curry mix again instead of making your own.

That lesson was taught by my Mum (Thanks Mum) and well she did say there is not a lot of reason to make everything from scratch unless you have some secret recipe for certain ingredients or simply wanted a dish to have a different taste.

 As for the whole experience of learning how to cook. Well, it is nothing really new to anyone learning how to cook, lots of under-cooked / over-cooked stuff. Burnt more eggs than I dare to admit. Not to mention my knife skills so poor, the slices of meat looked more like something that came out of a 5-year-old trying to cut meat with a pair of scissors.

So I will appeal to more people to learn how to cook. You may not be the winner for the next MasterChef but you gain some satisfaction that you can take care of yourself better.

P.S. My knife skills are still bad.

The noob trap that is Dragon Ball Fighterz

Yes literally. It is not even day 2 (I think it is going to be day 3) and I already see people leaving bad reviews of Dragon Ball Fighterz. Oh yes and the bloodbath of day 1 Dragon Ball Fighterz streams.

This is going be mostly what I feel are unpopular opinions and what people do not want to hear.

Why Dragon Ball Fighterz or any fighting games are not for you.

1. Fighting games are hard and you are going to lose almost 99% of the time before you could figuratively start thinking of getting some wins in.

2. In line with fighting games being hard, you need to actually put in work to get better. If you just want to be entertained. Please look elsewhere. If you want to know the story mode of DBFZ, go to youtube and watch the cutscenes or something. You save your 60 bucks.

3. Now comes the question, what does putting in work mean? I mean everyone seen those great matches at Evo or big fighting game tournaments? What you don't see is people spending a lot of time reading, researching and even going to gyms to get themselves ready. I actually spend time in training mode back when I was very active in meltyblood as well training to figure out how to beat certain tricks and strategies. Those hours spent are never seen by people.

4. Playing fighting games is also a stressful affair. Again this is similar to the point 2. If you are in for the entertainment. Go for other genres (Well maybe not Tetris Grandmaster).

5. If you cannot take losing well, Fighting Games are also not ideal for you. Look I am also often salty (salty here meaning not taking the loss well) when I lose. Get salty, rage, cry whatever but I still come back to the game.

6. Fighting games are also based on the idea of mastery. The mastery of anything means the devotion of time and effort. Something I will actually say is counter to what modern video games are.

To summarise, if you wonder why people in the Fighting Game community enjoy playing it so much. It is basically a form of mastery of yourself, overcoming your opponent and seeing the fruit of efforts.This is not replicated in other games especially team-based PVP games. Win or lose it is all you. No one can take it away or steal it.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. This piece here again comes with me needing to get it out of my system.

Its done! More thoughts that I feel couldn't fit in properly to the main piece

Yes it is finally done. The main piece which is published on Medium.

Here I just want to say a few more things.

Honestly I don't hate Tokyo Dark that much but I needed to get it out of my system. Also I have nothing against the Developers of the game. I always believe that being a game dev is much harder than me writing an article about why something isn't good. (maybe I can learn how to actually make a game someday)

I remember doing a short poll about giving Tokyo Dark more leniency as it is a Kickstarter game but people seem to want me to be more fair regardless of how it was developed.

Several points during the game I was talking to the screen saying "Please give me a god d*mn reason to care about the characters". Obviously that never happened.

One point I didn't talk about in the main piece was how much the game wants you to take the whole scenario seriously. It was especially jarring when the god characters try to convince you that you need to be the mask bearer then have them at the end of the game asking if you did the right thing. So which is it honestly? Again subtly is all lost from there.

I didn't get all the endings. I got 2 endings and the second play through got me the true ending. I watched the other endings on YouTube I just balked at how much more it wants you take it seriously.

This is really the first time I run into a Visual Novel with bad writing and it really drive home the sin of bad writing since a Visual Novel is still a "novel" after all.

I wanted to try for a long time and now I finally did. Medium's online editor is a bit lacking in editor functions. I mean like blogger has more tools I can use. Blogger even has a spellcheck tool built in. I guess the only upside is medium has a place where you can make money from your articles. Oh well,  sell congratulatory with the fact I finally completed this article and gotten Tokyo Dark out of my system.

Now onto the next thing!