Max Nichols
He/him. Game designer. I make worlds that you want to explore. Sr. Tech Design in AAA. Prev: Bungie, Turbine. I run @HyruleInterviews.bsky.social
Blog: namelessquality.com
Portfolio: maxnicholsdesign.com
- I told @paigeedits.bsky.social that I was sorry we didn't start out as enemies, so that we could have lived out her favorite enemies-to-lovers trope She said something like "If you were my enemy I'd've been bored of you in minutes" Chat, is this good...?
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- Ouch
- If we'd be enemies I wouldn't have been enough of a challenge, it's starting to make sense
- It's funny how detached I've gotten from caring about console specs. I don't think there's been a console in like a decade or two that would have struggled technologically with anything I might want to do as a designer. Specs make little difference to me
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View full threadThe caveat, of course: I'm not an engine programmer who needs to actually solve these problems. I may SEEM closer to the problem than most people, but that's largely an illusion. I'm still far enough away that it's largely conceptual >_>
- But yeah, when game devs talk about wishing for more powerful specs to work on... these days that's largely just moving goalposts. The goal is just as wide. You aren't gonna absolve yourself of the need to optimize no matter how powerful the specs get.
- But if you have a target spec from the beginning, you're not thinking about totals; you're thinking about whether you're hitting a target. Either you're on target or you're +/- some % off of target. It's just as easy to exceed your specs by X or Y % on powerful or weak hardware.
- And as a designer, I feel like I could make a great game for a supercomputer or for the GBA. Whatever. Constraints are half the job and none of my ambitions involve pushing cutting edge tech. As a player, most of my all-time favorite games were on hardware that's weaker than the average phone now
- Weak hardware IS painful when you develop for a higher spec and then have to go back in after-the-fact and make it compatible. But it's never really about totals, it's about delta from your target.
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- Yeah they were really excellent
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- He’s saying that that is the CMS’ fault And like I guess But if your goal is to give journalists usable images, then acknowledging the reality that webp is unusable or highly frictioned for their purposes seems like a good move
- Soon our stockpiles will run out and _nobody_ will be able to pass cert anymore The game industry is in crisis
- Caught up Re:Zero. I think it might be the only great isekai? The show manages to reach past the power/harem fantasies of a lot of the genre, while doing a little interesting subversion of the expectation that the audience (and protag) have for a litrpg world. CW: Violence, body horror, Gore
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- For what it's worth, when I said "the only great isekai" I wasn't including 90s shows from before a lot of the modern isekai genre conventions coalesced. I think Inuyasha is great, too, and I really liked the couple episodes I saw of Escaflowne. Hadn't heard of 9th Kingdom!
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- Hmmm Zenshu WAS pretty good
- The other isekai that I thought was on track to being really great was Grimgar Of Fantasy and Ash It was not renewed after it's excellent first season and MAN I wish it had been Still worth watching. Trailers aren't great. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-S6...
- I actually really enjoy isekai as a genre, and have watched a LOT, but I also think most of them aren't even trying to be more ambitious than whatever variety of on-the-nose wish fulfillment they happen to be doing It's nice to get some that take their storytelling a little more seriously
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- Oh MAN you're right I forgot about Ascendance of a Bookworm! It's been too long since we got a new season It is also very good you're absolutely right
- It's got great character designs from top to bottom, I don't think there's a miss in the show. And DAMN does it have some really excellent creepy villain themes, see my link below youtu.be/9K7VUnrbvSk?...
- And of course: every season gives us another chance to enjoy a new Myth & Roid song, which is ALWAYS a win www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVUE...
- (Unlike, say, Mushoku Tensei which also does the "look the character sucks at first but this is a story about his growth!" thing, but never comes close to moving beyond the protag being a detestable piece of shit. Re:Zero isn't guilty of any of the leering sex-pest stuff)
- It SEEMS like it's gonna go in a typical harem direction for a bit there, too, but it sidesteps. Seems to have an actual honest-to-god heartfelt romance happening too.
- It demands attention: there's intricate plots, subtle hints, with details you can miss and things you can figure out early if you pay attention. By the same token, I am often surprised and often can't predict what's gonna happen.
- It's one of those where the protag is very UNlikeable for a while as he goes through some character growth arcs in the first season, and @paigeedits.bsky.social and I bounced off of the show for that reason our first try. But there's some genuinely good writing around his growth
- The main character has no power or special abilities except one: when he dies, time rewinds for him. Most arcs are about him trying to figure out all the moving parts of impossible-to-overcome scenarios, while navigating his own trauma and breakdowns from repeated deaths. It gets quite dark!
- He doesn't solve problems with power, or at least not his own power. In most situations it's all about using the knowledge he's gained from his failed attempts to move pieces, charisma to convince people, and relationships he's built up. This is where the main drama of the storytelling comes from
- I made another hyper-specific chart for a discussion in a Zelda discord, you're welcome
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- I was only counting mainline, original releases The two Oracle games were released simultaneously with the same underlying systems, but unlike Pokemon Red/Blue splits they actually had different content.
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- If we count only console Zeldas, and assume Switch counts as a console, it normalizes a lot:
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View full threadAlso see: Anime/cartoon openings The THX startup sound Pulling down the curtains and turning off the light
- I generally don't find the concept of "The magic circle" to be useful day-to-day, but I think it's helpful to explain the power of entry rituals andrewfischergames.com/blog/the-mag...
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- Well even when those things exist, modern machines typically allow immediate sleep/resume And that's probably worth it, overall! But it unavoidably bypasses these kind of start-up elements (unless it's like an MMO where you get kicked to title when disconnected)
- Ok we joke but I DO think the modern lack of entry ritual (start-up, title screen) reduces how much we transition into a immersed and focused-on-the-game mindset >_> It's basically the same reason filmmakers wish people would go to theaters, hahah
- I BET that if someone wanted to do a big study, we'd find that people are less likely to look at their phones while playing a game if they go through an entry ritual like that I don't know if it would be a very _big_ impact though xD
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- A slightly different bell shape than normal but it tracks xD
- A cool group of folks did a music + voiceover treatment of one of one of my old friend @omnomberries.bsky.social's (many) Zelda fan comics She's been making Zelda comics for literally decades, glad to see her work getting some appreciation!
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- I’m trying to see if I can start entirely conducting all my posts with just zelda dev quotes, lol
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- It may be hard to articulate, but what do you mean by adventure game? To my kind that genre is mostly defined by bespoke cause-and-effect (non-systemic) interactions in a non-action game, but I feel you’ve got a different interpretation (And possibly more experience playing adventure games)
- In 1994, development of Yoshi's Island briefly went through a "baby wizard" phase whereby Baby Mario was considered to be replaced by an original baby wizard character. I have compiled a timeline of Baby Mario's development based on known asset timestamps.
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- I have no idea! These seems likely to be info from someone digging into one of the big leaks, which I’ve generally not investigated
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- Clearly we just need to upgrade all our monitors to also emit UV rays We’d need to wear sunscreen and eye protection but I think this could work, I am a genius
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- I prefer East overall but they have pretty different vibes. Worth seeing both for sure
- Whew, after Polygon's buyout it felt urgent, so I spent a good 6-8 hours over the past week scouring their publication history for things I need to add to @hyruleinterviews.bsky.social , ended up with a 124-item spreadsheet. Now time for... data entry Tomorrow, maybe xD
- Not all of these are actually stories on Polygon; many are stories I found on other publications, sometimes in other languages, because Polygon cited them.
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- That’s a very strange take Even if you mostly think the traditional big Marvel/DC shared universes are pretty awful (as I do), they have enough characters and history to fill 1000 trading card sets each
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- AHH ok yeah that sounds extremely plausible as the explanation then
- Huh, yeah I'm not sure what he might mean here. It looks like this was Dec 19999, the same month the N64DD came out. His attention was probably shifting more and more towards GameCube at this point, and I know "Communication" games were a big theme of his at that time. Hmmm
- GameCube & GBA*
