Scan Lines

Buggy Runner

Over the hills
Through the woods
In the mud and snow...

The life of an off road trucker is a harsh one, but as Kurt J. Mac of Youtube and Twitch fame put it "[Snowrunner] is slow, chill, methodical, with a chance for error comedy."  It's also very scenic.  The developers, Saber Interactive, have done a commendable job of making each of the three major regions in the game look distinct.  Thanks to having unique music, they sound distinct too.  The tunes even change depending on the time of day (or night).  That's the macro of Snowrunner, but if you get out the magnifying glass and examine every little detail it becomes obvious that the same design philosophy is applied to the micro as well.

Each of the forty different vehicles in the game is meticulously detailed, both inside and out.  Each has distinct engine sounds, distinct handling characteristics and even a distinct horn.  So, it's basically par for the course compared to any racing game.  However, Snowrunner really isn't a racing game so much as a puzzle game.  Again, on the macro level the player needs to consider which routes to take in order to get cargo where it needs to go.  Often, the shortest route is not necessarily the optimum choice.  There is also fuel consumption to consider.  One of the most difficult choices I found myself making throughout the game was when to bring a truck into the garage for repairs, upgrades, a change of equipment, and full tank of gas versus having to once again make the long drive back out to where it was needed.  Of course, on a micro level there are puzzle elements as well.  Sometimes it can be as simple as dodging potholes and rocks, or doing a bit of cross country driving to avoid a muddy section of dirt road or fallen trees.  Other times it involves doing a bit of experimentation since there's lots of little hidden paths and shortcuts that aren't readily apparent on the map.  Not since Dark Souls have I found a game that rewards exploration to such a degree.  It's not all good times though...

A least on the PS4 version, Snowrunner has a lot of issues.  I have never had a game crash more than once or twice on any PlayStation system until now.  Several patches released by the developers have improved stability, but it's still not great.  I don't want to nitpick though, because the people over on the official forums have done that to death already.  On a more positive note, I do have a little story about that "error comedy" mentioned earlier.

I was doing a convoy system involving a big truck up front, a smaller one in back and wench linking the two of them together.  The one in back was pulling a heavy trailer.  Normally, if one of these trailers gets banged around too hard it will pop off, but simultaneously deploy support legs to make reattaching them a cinch.  Unfortunately (and possibly because it wasn't the truck I was controlling directly at the time), when the trailer popped off after clipping a telephone pole the legs didn't extent.  Hence, reattaching the trailer back to the tow truck wasn't going top be so easy.  Given that one of these things costs 6800 bucks though, I wasn't going to write it off as an acceptable loss.  Instead, I brought over another truck outfitted with a huge crane.  It proceeded to raise the trailer and then set it back down on the tow truck mount...only to have the trailer clip through.  When I switched control over from the crane truck to the tow truck nothing changed.  Both the tow truck and trailer were seemly doing the impossible act of occupying the same space at the same time.  On the bright side though I had placed it close enough that I could try to reattach it anyway.  Again, normally when you do this sort of thing the trailer will jerk into the correct (mounted) position.  It tried to do that, but for some reason collision detection decided to reactivate causing truck and trailer to frantically gyrate for about five seconds before the trailer popped off once more.  This time though, the legs deployed making the next attempt to hook on properly a breeze.

Incidentally, to make some extra cash I've become somewhat of a cowboy trucker; rounding up trailers instead of cattle.  Sometimes I can even haul two (or three) at a time by using a combination of the wench and loading one on top of the other.  I'd go into more detail, but I don't want this blog to get a reputation for especially lurid vehicular content...anyway, back to it!

Technical Difficulties

While I have never adhered to a strict schedule for this blog, I have (for many years now) tried to make four entries a month (spaced out to average about once a week) with a fifth bonus picture set at the end.  Unfortunately, due to a catastrophic computer breakdown, I was not able to maintain that unofficial plan for May, 2020.  In my defense, I swapped out the graphics card, power supply and ram in an attempt to nurse my aging rig back to some semblance of functionality.  Sadly, it was not to be...So, I ordered a new PC.  It took a while to arrive though due to ongoing pandemic induced supply problems.  That's the bad news.

The good news is my new computer arrived and seems to be running smoothly, so (moving forward) this blog should go back to business as usual.  I'm currently organizing my thoughts on Snowrunner and I'm excitedly anticipating the release of Last of Us part 2, as well as Ghosts of Tsushima.  On the side, I've also been playing some Astroneer and Alien: Isolation.  They both look really good on this new rig I got despite it being a fairly bargain bin machine by computer gaming standards.

Anyway...that's all for my special update.  Everyone take care out there!  2020 is proving to be a rough year in way more ways than I think most of us expected.

What's Old is New...

...or perhaps a better way to put it would be "What's new is old, and then new again."  These are words that can be applied to many things, but since this is a blog about video games let's frame it in relation to the Splatoon duology.  I'm not really talking about the original release and its sequel though...no, this goes way back to 1986.

It was a good year for video games.  Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kidd Icarus, Bubble Bauble and Castlevania all came out for the NES.  Rampage was the hot new game in arcades, and for computer gaming enthusiasts Space Quest had just hit store shelves.  It was also a good year for movies: "Aliens," "Big Trouble in Little China," "Labyrinth," "Flight of the Navigator," and "Castle in the Sky."  There was also a short film that debuted in IMAX at the Vancouver Worlds Fair - an Oscar Nominated, 19 minute long mini-epic entitled "Rainbow War."

By modern standards this little fairly tale has a very antiquated and slightly theatrical quality to it.  The lack of any spoken dialogue outside of some narration at the beginning gives "Rainbow War" an almost silent film quality reminiscent of "Metropolis."  The story revolves around three floating islands in a seemingly endless sky.   Each of these lands is dominated by a primary color.  To quote from the Wikipedia entry:

In the blue kingdom everything was blue, because blue was beautiful.  And besides, everyone who was anyone loved blue.  In the red land, everything was red because they trusted red, but were afraid of everything else.  The golden kingdom was dominated by yellow.  Other colors were to be eliminated on sight.

Although each was aware of the other, having no means of air travel meant that the three kingdoms developed relatively isolated from each other.  However, the story kicks off with a youth from the golden kingdom inventing a flying ring.  Almost immediately after, a man in the blue kingdom comes up with the concept of a hot air balloon.  The climax of the story takes place in the red kingdom as it is simultaneously invaded by gold and blue.  Being a film rated for children, the conflict isn't driven by a need to destroy, but rather color convert by painting.  Sound familiar?  Basically this is a live action version of Splatoon.  I'm not sure if anyone working at Nintendo knows of this rather obscure piece of cinema, but if they think their IP is totally original then I got bad news for them.  Conceptually, they were beaten to the punch by almost three decades...minus the squid kids, of course.     

Ray Tracing

As we creep ever closer to the next generation of console gaming hardware, there has been a lot of talk on message boards about what we can expect graphics-wise.  Unlike the jump from, say, NES to SNES there probably won't be much difference in terms of visuals beyond a little sharper, a little faster and a little further...so how do you advertise this new technology to consumers who (possible due to finical hardships) are not especially eager to pick up a PS5 or Xbox One X?  Well, it seems like the selling point and new hotness that tech bros are all excited for is ray tracing.  The problem with that is, it's more of a boon for the people who make games rather than those who only play them.

I'm sure most of the folks reading this blog post have already seen those with/without ray tracing videos of Minecraft (see blog post pic for those few who have not).  The thing with that is ray tracing is such a resource intensive feature you really need a relatively undemanding game like Minecraft in order to keep the GPU from getting overwhelmed.  On top of that, the simple, blocky nature of the game helps highlight the visual differences.  When ray tracing is applied to a game with more polygons and higher res textures to begin with (such as Control) the effect is much more subtle and harder to discern.  One might be tempted to say it looks more realistic, but the same can also be said for frame rates (something that will almost certainly suffer when ray tracing is turned on).  So, ray tracing may or may not be all that impressive visually.  What does it have to do with making game development easier?  As it turns out...a lot, actually...

When you get down to it, ray tracing is just a lot of vectors being sent out from a central source.  It can be used for light, but it also has a number of other applications.  Sound is one such example.  Another is visual detection for AI units, yet another is splash damage from explosions.  Normally, all these different mechanics have to be broken down into separate subroutines.  Even something as basic as proper lighting in games requires special code for reflections and shadows...heck...back in the PSX era, textures themselves had to be created with light source placement already decided on.  With ray tracing though, all these fiddly bits can be put into one universal system that handles all the calculations.  What's more, it's not just a bunch of parlor tricks involving the digital equivalent of smoke and mirrors.  Instead, ray tracing imitates real-life, albeit with some concessions made to fidelity.  The end result of all this is an easier time for developers.  How that actually translates into future games is hard to say because it's up to each and every studio to decide what to do with that freed-up time, money and manpower.