I was perfectly happy with the yellow Abe face at the bottom. The rhymes were unnecessary and stupid.
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I liked the rhymes.
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I also disliked so many rhymes, I rolled my eyes at them so many times.
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Abe even uses rhymes in the cutscenes,
I also like them in the loading screens. |
The rhymes in the loading screens sounded like a child had written them. The rhymes in the cutscenes from Oddysee had a different feel. Maybe because Abe spoke them... but something was better and more fitting about them.
For me, after expieriencing New 'n' Tasty, it's now clear that a large part of what made the original game so appealing was that it was a grid based game. I would like that back for Abe's Exoddus. Leave them as close to the originals as possible. If you want to do something different, make a new bloody game. |
The loading screen rhymes were terrible.
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The original AO rhymes were awesome and added so much to the feel. The new and tasty rhymes made me wanna fall of a cliff and smash my head....
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Well as Lorne gets older, it's natural that his feelings and perspectives will change and the original vision may not be exactly the same anymore or gone in to a new direction.
I can't blame a creator for feeling this way considering he had to return to his original content back from the 90's I would want to freshen it up a bit too, however I agree that the direction he went in was not perfect by any means from the vibe of the game to the humour involved. |
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The original had a well balanced silliness/seriousness ratio while New N Tasty often times is just unnecessarily goofy. Even worse, it should have been obvious to them that when a joke repeats it usually stops being funny. But that's not my main point. It's the appropriate amount of humor without ruining the original game's vision and atmosphere. The chattering of the muds for instance would have been way more effective if it wasn't as overdone as it was in the NnT. It would have been way more funny if it only happened in a certain spot, as a kind of easter egg. Just that tiny bit of humor, to ease the atmosphere a little but not to ridicule and shit all over it. Same with the silly Slig chatter such as the "mommy" screaming or commenting on how they should stop eating Scrab cakes (again, it would have been more effective as a one-time joke) Sometimes less is in fact more. In the original game the Sligs were so much more intimidating, exactly BECAUSE they really didn't talk much at all. They had a much more mysterious presence, since pretty much all they were doing was making weird ass noises and shouting "WAIT!!" at you before shooting you in the face. You really had respect for them, especially if you were new to the game. In comparison you can't really take the Sligs in New N Tasty very seriously. Yes, we had "mommy" shouting Sligs already in Abe's Exoddus but those were pantsless, so there it merely served as a vehicle to demonstrate the vulnerability of the otherwise tough-guy Sligs without their mechanical pants and their guns. It being funny was a side effect in that case. The original game added the silliness factor (in appropriate amounts) out of the necessity to counteract the overall very serious and dark tone of the game, not to be funny as an end in itself. It would have been a very dark and probably depressing game otherwise, and Lorne realized that back then (only to forget it later, I guess). |
Fischkopf, I agree with you. The thing is: in Lanning's mind, NnT is the real AO. You must deal with it. AO was an happy mistake.
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Ooooo Vlam is telepathic now too.
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The term is "happy little accident".
The smooth transitions were cool but are a hard limit on loading times. I'd like to see something like that though, even if it kept scrolling off, faded to black until it loaded (possibly with a yellow mud head) then faded back in to finish the scroll to the next section. It wouldn't be as clean but you'd get the sense of motion from the cut example without as much of a loading time issue. |
Fun fact if the whole game was one long area with transitions there wouldn't be any loading screens because everything would already be there.
And after typing that I realize that would've actually worked if they streamed the levels instead of using loading screens. Why don't all games use streaming? |
From my VERY LIMITED VERY BASIC knowledge of Unity, it doesn't do level streaming out of the box. You'd have to write your own system for it from scratch.
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With a 2d sidescroller the streaming doesn't have to be too crazy - not like a big open world game. The fixed transitions like in the clip cut from NNT make it a lot simpler too, by introducing a hard barrier for the player and giving you a fixed amount of time to load. You can maybe get away with unloading parts of the level as you go - more so in AE which introduced slam doors that can permanently stop you backtracking - and then as long as the transition is loaded you have that time to just load the first bit of the next section, and ensure that nobody can get ahead of the rest of the level loading. Again to be AE specific, if I was working with a system like that for the game I'd probably make good use of the wheels that take a certain amount of time to turn in order to gate progress to loading. Maybe some wheels even take a bit longer than the others ;)
I can't speak for performance coding that above Unity's systems though. The fixed transition-tunnels and side on camera perspective make it a simpler problem either way. Also I'm no expert or anything. I have been thinking about streaming level formats a lot lately though. |
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I think my point was that AE was a good indicator of what sort of series Lorne wanted Oddworld to be. A series that tackles some dark themes but injects humour so as not to be too preachy. AO had humour in it but it was pretty bare bones on the narrative front. Characterisation was minimal and a lot of AE's humour was character driven - it had about the same amount of slapstick/fart humour as AO. It seemed like some fans were taking the serious elements of the original too seriously and almost ignoring or putting up with its humourous elements rather than embracing it.
Obviously there's a balance and I thought AE struck a pretty good one. Stranger's Wrath did, too. MO wasn't particularly well developed on either front, however. Although maybe I said some other things. I don't quite remember. Anyway, I said earlier in the thread about NnT: :
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For AEHD, I would much rather see some Vykkers Labs advertisements as a loading screen than a little rhyme. Theres plenty of ads too
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Or instead of breaking immersion, how about just a black screen with a Mudokon face in the corner like in AO.
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Oh yeah, in-universe ads, like the Fallout loading screens. That would actually be really cool.
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I'd prefer not to have loading screens.
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There needn't be loading screens, if they build an engine that allows for it.
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That requires a much higher budget
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Yellow face on screen then with some wavy transition effect, with ambient sounds playing all the while.
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Yes. I'm all about those wavy transitions.
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Those transitions in the original are loading screens. Ever notice how sometimes there's a pause before it starts of variable length?
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They worked much better, too.
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Oddworld are going to spill the brewery very soon!
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Because they're tied in the basement, and Samlaptop95 is pointing a gun on them.
It's just a matter of time untill they confess. |
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Also he's like the fastest Oddworld speedrunner so just trust him.
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Sam, we already know Abe's Exoddus HD is coming. Although it could mean they might be showing something off very soon.
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Edit: Probably another good reason to get rid of the rhymes otherwise loading screens need an artificial delay so they can be read. |
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Someone replied to their tweet with this. Looks like some kind of modified Exoddus cover art with ice around the bottle. It's so happening. |
They already released that same image in full on the 6th of December.
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I'd be kinda surprised if they showed off AEHD footage soon. Didn't Lorne recently say in an interview that it'll be a while before anything happens with it?
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They might have some pre-alpha. Or perhaps artwork/logo to build the hype.
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