Iji

You guys are making it reeeeeeeaaal tempting to break my vow to avoid spoilers until release.

SPOILER ALERT SIGMA WAS THE REAL VILLAIN

The real spoiler is that Snape killed Trinity with Rosebud and then it turned out they were both Tyler Durden.

how dare you im suing

edited 1st Mar '17 1:29:09 AM by Medinoc

I've always irrationally disliked the whole concept of .ico files.

Irrational indeed, because they're cool, being able to hold several versions of the same image...

edited 1st Mar '17 1:28:37 AM by Medinoc

I'm surprised they didn't just use PNG as the basis for the modern Icon files.

They do for big 32-bit images within icons (such as the 256×256×32 ones) but for smaller images like 32×32×4, a PNG is overkill, less compatible and bitmaps were here first.

</offTopic>

Edit: Should we continue this conversation in The Computer Thread in OTC some new thread in Yack Fest?

edited 1st Mar '17 11:49:22 AM by Medinoc

Welp, I forced myself to have a deadline and released 1.7: http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php

The last few days were full of nonstop bugfixing, and I'm sure there's lots more in there somewhere, but I've gotta stop sometime before I go nuts. If there's some major issue left I'll just have to hotfix it but still call it version 1.7.

Here's the full changelog (MAJOR SPOILERS): http://www.remar.se/daniel/misc/iji_changelog.txt

Since I updated all the text in the game, I fixed every single lore discrepancy I could find, some of which were likely written while the game was still in development, which clashed with the stuff written in 2010. :p Overall the tone may be a bit terser, but it's a lot more consistent now.

Now all I worry about is whether the game is so different that people won't like it. :p

Yay! Now I'll have to try it out. Good thing you released it while I was bored/procrastinating.

Damn, it's not the best week for me, it's a really busy one. Guess I'll have to sit on it...

I've only even opened half the games I bought in the Humble Freedom Bundle once. So please don't be offended if it's a while before I play.

Eh? I'm not offended :p Frankly it's good for my sanity if people don't come with questions and comments about the changes all at once right now. :)

Well, I had time and didn't want to wait any longer...

I gave the passive weapons a go, and I found most of them to be great fun to use. Except the Impact Machinegun, but maybe I was just using it wrong. The ranged auto-crack weapon was entertainingly effective at disabling weapons, and if I weren't a stickler for ammo conservation, I would have used it more often (I've mostly just been hitting assassins with it).

In general, the passive weapons led me to actually use the combat stats again, rather than just maxing Health/Assimilate for survival and Strength/Crack for getting into places. Granted, I specifically prioritized Tasen/Komato just to be able to access all the stuff, but the point stands, it's a viable strategy for pacifist runs now.

On a different note, I didn't kill anyone during that run, but Iji still tells Tor that all the Tasen are dead, despite her meeting the very much alive Tasen in the emergency bunker, and their presence in the credits. I would have to assume she's bluffing, but I don't think I saw this scenario discussed at any point.

She's bluffing, but I guess I didn't make it clear enough. Maybe she needs to be a worse liar for the player's sake :p

I seem to recall her stuttering the line. it does make it come off as a lie on the spot

Oh, I may have removed that stuttering 'cause I thought it was a bit cheesy. Maybe that was a mistake.

edited 14th Mar '17 1:26:28 PM by Ulti

Well it's hard to make it obvious someone is lying, unless you do something drastic like make her stutter or add some stage directions like "IJI: (poker face) They're all dead!"

Not spoiler because this was all in 1.6

Edit: Now that I think of it, could try with some visual cues, such as adding a Pinocchio Nose to her character portrait or setting her pants on fire...

edited 15th Mar '17 4:51:40 AM by Medinoc

So I haven't actually started the game yet, but I already noticed one problem - the sound doesn't work properly. Every second or two, there's distortion noise and stutters in the background music. This only happens in Iji 1.7 - the music in 1.6 works just fine.

The sound problems happen in both fullscreen and windowed mode with both speakers and headphones.

Also, you may want to update the date on your logo to 2017.

And now on to the game: The new cyborg station is cool. I would suggest automatically exiting once you spend all your points though.

edited 15th Mar '17 7:16:53 AM by storyyeller

Try changing the sample rate in your speaker settings in Windows, that worked for some people. Unfortunately GM 7's sound system is garbage compared to GM 5, with several of its functions being straight up broken. :|

I tried changing it, but it said something about failing to initialize the audio, and now audio doesn't work at all. I reset the speaker settings to the defaults and reboot my computer, but there's still no sound.

Then all I have is my standard answer; please try it on another computer if possible, also sorry. :(

Unfortunately, I only have one Windows computer, and Iji doesn't appear to support Linux. Anyway, I gout the sound working again, though it still has the lag and distortion.

For my first playthrough, I just did a Normal kill everything run. The first time around, I accidentally skipped Asha, and was surprised to see Dan talk about seeing him suicide. Is that line new? I also spared Tor because I was surprised by the prompt and wasn't sure what was going on and then it ended.

Then I redid Sector X to kill Asha and Tor. That was an interesting ending. Anyway, I'm assuming that the prompt to kill Tor only shows up if you're on a violent playthrough?

Also, sometimes the logbooks end up a little dissonant. For example, I decided to kill everyone, but spare the soldier in Sector 3. Then when you get to the logbook in sector 9, it mentions that the Anomaly looks like she is sad and doesn't want to kill anyone, which I found a bit amusing. Admittedly, it could just be the soldier's interpretation.

edited 15th Mar '17 1:46:03 PM by storyyeller

For the people with issues with audio: Try setting the sound rate to 16bit, 44100 HZ sampling; it seems to be an issue with the ffdshow audio decoder, if those settings aren't working, try hovering over ffdshow's icon, which should state Output: "something,stereo, X Hz, Y", Set your sample rate as X, and the bit rate as Y.

As to Ulti: Hi, I first played this game in 2011, and I've loved it ever since, it's my favorite indie game by far, and one of the games that I'll run whenever.

I'm really happy that you decided to revisit it, and upgrade it for modern computers, I'll finally get to witness Asha 2 and Tor at their full might. The changes and additions, what with the Non-Lethal guns, are also very welcome!

I've seen by now one of the new endings, so spoilers ahead:

So, Iosa's considerably less noble than what she seemed like. I wonder how she saw her relationship with Tor, considering where her priorities where. Also makes sense why Ansaksie straight up doesn't care if you kill her.

I don't really like how the twist is executed, however. Iosa's story comes up too late, and it feels like a weak setup for a punchline that comes too soon. The way she straight up shoots you also feels kinda weak, my first instinct in that scene was to duck, or try to pre-load/buffer the Non-Lethal Machine Gun to see if you could pull of a shot in-between the text. It kinda feels like a straight up moment of cutscene incompetence, in a game that really had none of those, more so considering how you can subvert a lot of seemingly impossible stuff with preparedness and ingenuity in-game. Also, couldn't Ansaksie have saved Tor, if she was gonna stick around to hear his last words? I get she hates Iji's bleeding-heartiness, but still.

really don't mean to come out as disrespectful, I'm beyond amazed at what you've put out through the years, and I'll forever look forward to whatever else you may do in the future. Though it feels like you started with the idea of going with a player punch, and I always enjoyed how this game, especially, constantly empowers you to try and subvert it's attempts to do so.

As to some less relevant natter:

Was Iosa's super gun supposed to be Gen 2? Isn't that what's already available, and Gen 3 the super secret pre-loading stuff? A shame Crax Masta and pals couldn't figure out how to crack THAT gun.

It's a shame Asha has no reaction to getting styled on with the Shockgun, I wanted to disrespect him a little further, see how he felt about it.

As to more positive stuff:

I love how effects of hacking are now nonlethal even for the scouts. And more over, I really like all the new tools pacifists get to play with now, including nonlethal rockets to move enemies around, and the return of the Another World gun-barrier! The Eased Proxima fight is kinda nice too, now getting that supercharge isn't impossible if you haven't been building Assimilate for a while.

It was nice to see how Tor'd be like without any personal grudges against Iji, he's considerably more earnest about feeling powerless before his people. Kirion too! Really makes it seem like no one who's above battlefield deployment in the KIA wants to go on with the Tasen Genocide. It's cool how we get to know a few more names of the Tasen, and finally get to see them survive into the future with humanity.

While I realize this post as a whole might come off as negative, I can't stress how overjoyed I feel about your work, and your continued support of it even a decade after the fact. I hope that whatever you do, you keep with you the passion that Iji shows, because i've few other times seen such care put into a work, and never into one who so clearly benefited from it.

All around, thank you profusely, wholeheartedly, for your work!