Whoa. Missed more than I thought.

[xaq_the_aereon]

In my last entry, I mentioned how XKCD had recently done a comic whose sheer size was mind-boggling.

Someone has decided to show me that I underestimated the boggle factor.

Holy shit. o_O

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I feel better knowing I actually managed to see most of it before I gave up... and worse knowing that there's things hidden in the sky that I had almost no chance of finding XD

[davidn]

I was going to ask you, actually, about how this... exploration toy played into your liking for purely exploration-based games... it felt a lot to me like playing Knytt, exploring the world and seeing the environments scattered throughout.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Y'know, somehow that didn't even occur to me at the time...?? But yeah, in hindsight it seems like an obvious comparison... honestly, at the time, I was mostly frustrated by the way it felt like he was keeping a joke from me.... I can't explain that feeling, but it was clear as day, though it's mostly evaporated now that I've seen exactly how little there is to it. I guess the difference between this and a game is that I had no indication of whether I was "doing it right" -- I might miss something, and forever be behind on XKCD jokes that everyone else got. I dunno...

[davidn]

It's also an (exaggerated) depiction of what I felt when building CT2, and have felt when looking at maps of a lot of other games with large hubs or environments - that when laid out like that, the map looks pretty simple even if there's a lot there at the small-scale level... but when the screen size is restricted, the mystery of exploration increases thousands of times, having to look around and take in each part of it gradually and build up a mental map of the entire space on your own...

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I do love that feeling :) I love the youtube videos people make like that.... I wonder how long it'll be before people start patching it into those LUA-compatible emulators...?

[xaq.livejournal.com]

LUA?

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

It's a scripting language, which lets people do things like this with an actual ROM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jbFjhBYCjg#t=33s

[kjorteo]

Man, I actually don't like that feeling ... mostly because the NES era used it for fake difficulty a lot, you know? I mean, like, take the pyramid in Crystalis.

http://mikesrpgcenter.com/crystalis/maps/pyramid.html

Just enough identical corridors that when you zoom way the hell in and see it one screen at a time, you'll get lost and stuck forever (especially because the ends loop back around to each other!) yet simple enough that when you zoom out to this level and realize that was the big great maze you could never solve, you just feel like an idiot.

Willow did that a lot, too. RAGE

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Whoa. And I thought the original Lost Woods were a bitch. o_O;

[kjorteo]

Aren't those just infinitely repeating + shaped four-way rooms that end once you go in the right order, almost like inputting a password?

And aren't there clues to said password, even?

Something like that I could figure out, it's when there's no trick to it and that's just really what it looks like and you just have to navigate it and not get lost or something that I get turned around. I mean, that Willow map has just as many T intersections as the Lost Woods had + ones, but there's no password :(

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Yes on the first, yes-kinda on the second...there wasn't so much "clues" as "talk to the guy in the far southwest cave and he'll give you the directions to get through."

( Specifically, "North, West, South, West through the Forest of Maze." Except in all caps due to the game using a monocase font. ...Like I said before, the more trivial and unimportant a bit of info is, the better I remember it. Doesn't hurt that my mom and I both love that game.)