Messages

1

General / Re: Great Game Horrible Controls?

« on: January 23, 2009, 06:20:23 pm »

Well I'm not sue what this mouse is but I use it on a graphed cutting mat and I have no problems with crawl or shooting of the side?
Ok it says 'wheel mouse optical' underneath and it's a Microsoft one.  In fact this exact mouse and looking at this leaves me none the wiser?
http://www.sharplogic.in/products.aspx?pcode=SL00085

It's just a plain optical one.
I should point out I'm not saying that everyone has the horrid effects that I get from plain optical mice, just that in my experience I always find they occur.
I used a model very similar to that one at uni computer labs with plain blue mouse mats and often had the crawl/shoot off side effects for example.
Must just be the way I use mice.

2

General / Re: Great Game Horrible Controls?

« on: January 21, 2009, 03:21:30 pm »

I'm not 100% sure of the technological differences themselves (I think it's just a standard LED compared to a laser diode) , but laser mice usually have a much larger DPI, which means better accuracy.

Also, in my experience, laser mice don't get any of the whizz-off-to-the-corners or "crawling" that optical mice almost always have.
Tbf, my experience with optical is limited, since I moved straight from ball -> good quality laser, but every optical mouse I've used on someone else's machine has always had the whizz-off or crawl effects, regardless of the price of the mouse or the surface used (yes, even single-colour high quality mouse pads).

3

General / Re: Great Game Horrible Controls?

« on: January 19, 2009, 07:10:47 pm »

There's enough different control types to please everyone I feel.

Personally I use a gamepad (similar layout to a PS2 pad, but 6 buttons instead of 4 and 2 shoulder buttons) and map the unused buttons and d-pad to shortcuts. Makes for a very nice control scheme.
But there's always the mouse for extra control (sometimes needed when singing).

4

General / Re: Thinking of buying... Linux!

« on: January 12, 2009, 06:43:56 pm »

Hmm, with that VirtualBox, can I install Leopard as long as I have a CD or CD Image for it in a Windows Vista 64bit environment?

I wouldn't be sure.
I've managed to get OSX86 on my laptop before, and I've run it under VMware, but I don't think VirtualBox has the necessary support for it iirc.
Also in VMware it was atrociously slow. Without hardware acceleration the GUI is almost unusable (think XP without graphics drivers, but slower  ).

As to the install itself, it's largely trial and error. You WILL need patched versions of the OS X CDs (can be torrented, obviously you should own a copy yourself though) and be ready for several hours of frustration as you poke the installer with multiple configurations and kernels followed by another few hours of poking drivers only to have the entire install die completely and need reinstalling.
It's NOT much fun I assure you. I finally broke mine running the OS X auto-update and I never got sound working under either VMware or natively.

What Virtualbox IS good for is running a Linux VM in Windows or running an XP VM in Linux. The last is very useful if you're not bothered about game support (VirtualBox lacks 3D acceleration) as you can dedicate a desktop to Windows and use the rest for Linux.
VirtualBox also has an integrated mode that will let you run Windows and Linux windows alongside each other. It's a very neat solution for many things but I doubt running OSX86 is one.

5

General / Re: How was Aquaria animated?

« on: January 08, 2009, 01:43:11 am »

Just if anyone missed the Independet Tour from the Wolfire guys: Part 4 : Aquaria with some making of stuff 
(hopefully Alec&Derek inlcude a "large/full" Making off Special to the boxed Version of Aquaria)

Thanks for that. I found the World of Goo one very interesting when I found it a few weeks back, didn't realise they'd done several more.

As a note to mentioning the puzzles being hard: Watch the World of Goo one, you'll note that it's pointed out how the game subtley explains how things are done. Aquaria doesn't do this.
It's not a criticism imo, and the guy doing the video does point out it's a design decision. The reason I bring up World of Goo is because that skirts around explaining things, which Aquaria does at the beginning then largely leaves you to find things in the background or such that aren't immediately obvious.
Finding the right spot for that sort of design in a game as complicated as Aquaria is far FAR harder than a comparitively simplistic one such as World of Goo, but the point being made in the video is that for a lot of people it was too far on the "obscure" side of the line, and as such it is deemed as hard.
Personally I can't believe people got stuck at the door mentioned... It was really obvious to me what to do there.

6

Gameplay / Re: I can't get past the sun temple boss! (Spoilers?)

« on: December 22, 2008, 09:51:54 pm »

Beat it earlier today with just spamming in energy form and using tough cakes to heal (also gives you a defence boost so consequently lost less energy being hit afterwards.

Would probably have swapped forms more, but I only just found the keyboard shortcuts.

7

Gameplay / Re: Finished the Energy Temple - now I'm just sort of lost.

« on: December 22, 2008, 09:40:31 pm »

Good! Then you're on the right track.    Whatever you do, don't venture into the extremely dark areas to the south unless you want a challenge.

Hehe, I wandered into this area immediately after the Energy temple. Even managed to find the jellyfish boss down there with no light. Died rather horribly of course.

8

Off-Topic / Re: Introduce Yourself!

« on: December 21, 2008, 04:21:08 pm »

Been lurking for a few days, finally signed up.
Played the Aquaria demo about a year ago (I think, I forget exactly when). Enjoyed it and was recently reminded of it on Steam so bought it. Enjoying it a lot.