Grant Kirkhope Blocked Me on Twitter - And That's Heartbreaking

I really want to stress that I wasn't one of those crazy anti-vaccine persons, nor was I "gun advocates" in ways that supports ridiculous laws allowing overly lose protections of guns, nor was I into dangerous conspiracy theories, nor was I supportive of overly sensitive anti-abortion laws (granted I do think it depends but I'm no super solid on it either.). I also want to stress that that I don't much care that's he's political on Twitter as I can try learning let that aside and still follow him for his good stuff.

The reason why I state that is because I wanted to calmly criticize a small post he posted showing desire to block anyone for being into specific things, including those that were "pro-gun" or "conspiracy theorists", and I was worried he was technically including people who simply wanted to own a gun, or was into the "fun" conspiracy theories that were harmless, since a lot of people who are sane may have some slight different stances here and there. So I got a bit concerned and simply wanted to reply saying this:

"I like your work, but I really find saying things like this that includes the fun conspiracies (I mean the harmless fun kinds), and people who wants to own a gun really unnecessary. I mean it's possible to still get along with those people without having to agree with them."

In response to this: 

"the list of people that should unfollow me is getting longer and longer:
Antivaxxers, conspiracy theorists, gun advocates, Pro lifers.
It's a pity there wasn't some button that can block them from following me in the first place."

Note here is my comment here. You can scroll up to see his message too.

And frankly as someone who's enjoyed his music and has think about it a lot, it really does break me to see him do this to some of his own fans. I don't know if I could of said my reply better or not (I was mainly only concerned that he was including people who simply was into fun yet harmless conspiracy theories and those that simply wanted to own a gun for lawful reasons alone), but at this point it just feels like he's expecting everyone who likes him to have the same opinions as him, or else you're blocked and he finds you crazy and idiotic. He has a right to do that, but that doesn't mean people lose the right to be concern and state their own sane thoughts about it. But anyway this really is heart-breaking for me that I felt the need to post this.

I don't like bringing up drama in these places, but this is due to personal reasons. Biggest reason was that he was part of my childhood involving some of his music. I feel ridiculously discouraged from modding Banjo Kazooie, even if I replaced all of his music with music not from him. It's a shame he feels that he can't make peace with people who has a different political opinion than him like "mine" and it's a shame that my comment has offended him.

I personally hope he sees this article and knows I wasn't intending to offend him. I was just worried.

The Forgotten Beach - Shadow of the Colossus

A couple of months ago, I was still exploring the E3 5 demo build of Shadow of the Colossus, a special E3 early build with thankfully the entire lands, new game intro, colossi, and ending not being deleted for the demo. In fact, the only thing that was likely placed and deleted for the demo were: The large rocks, the missing rock bridge pieces, and maybe most of the extra items including some of it's functions.

Anyway as I was exploring, I went ahead and explored more of G8, then upon exploring, I discovered a brand new cave (granted, a small one) leading right to the end of a cliff.

In the PSU preview and beyond as far as I know, the cave was removed. When I first saw this cave entrance, I 'froze' for like 6 seconds in shock. I guess seeing a brand new cave was the shocking part. On the other side of the cave, there happens to be multiple cliffs leading down, suspiciously forming a trail that would be perfect if there were vines leading down.

Unfortunately, the collision was designed to avoid going down there safely. The moment you try to jump down to next cliff after the cliff you can explore, Wander will roll. It seems the collision tried to 'wrap' around the lower cliffs showing the collision was made after making those cliffs likely.

Upon further research, it turns out there is a full blown beach all the way down! (note: I don't think I first discovered this, and will likely update this once I remember name), but it's covered by a separate water surface object. You remember that small patch of "beach" land next to some rocks? Well, there is more of that. (Note: Model was extracted through Wisi's converter tools, and through a special Blender version Wisi helped me with.)

This entire area (including the cliffs above) has a ridiculous amount of geometry detail. Perhaps one of the most detailed areas in game. Though there is an ugly water layer that actually is part of the seamless (main land) model, but it does expose more beach than what the separate prettier water layer does. I've modded the collision (big thanks to Wisi) to help explore, and also show the special water.

Water layer turns dark when sword is raised.

Though the water layer doesn't render in a pretty sight. There is several geometry rendering problems with it, but it's likely that such layer was designed after (or even if they even did) so-called blocking access to the beach.

Layer problems. There is more some geometry past the white/grey water too.

Could This Beach Be Explored at One Point?

This is the moment that I care most about I think. There appears to be some design evidence that it could actually have been explored. The cliff pattern, the amount of geometry the exposed beach has, the fact that there is alpha shading detail all the way down here, and that there is beach land hidden under the separate water layer. However, not knowing 100% has often bothered me, especially since there are a couple of small ideas, and maybe even clues suggesting that it wasn't.

In the assumption that it was, this was likely a build where it was after such time. There is concrete evidence of vines being added later in some parts of the main east cliff side in one spot, but the collision here seems to point that the so-called vines were rather removed.

Some of the rocks has death collision, cliffs wrapping around the lower cliffs, and no collision on main beach thus player falls through, but the beach is hidden by a separate solid water layer object, suggesting the collision was designed with that in mind. Only catch is one rock above the separate layer not having collision.

There is also the possibility that it was just never finished, then canceled out. There is signs of that for the main garden temple in the game, so I wouldn't be too surprised if this applied here too.

For the idea part, one idea is that perhaps the beach was only meant to be viewed from above. There is a small opening on main land above where you can see some of this beach, and the lowest ground parts of such a beach doesn't have an even height layer, though the broken water height covers it all.

The thing I am wishing to know so much is if the same geometry found in this build (the vertices) was the same exact ones that could be explored, assuming this could normally be explored at one point? Of course the vines and (maybe) actual normal water was removed if so, but I only care if the main cliffs and beach land was the same or not. There is a chance the geometry was somewhat altered during the so-called cancellation thus losing the true original image of such a place. Hopefully an answer will be given at one point.

At least for now, we know for sure that there was a full-blown new cave to explore normally and at the moment leading a new mysterious wonder for a beach with it. There is also the fact that the large cliff at the end of the larger cave (which mainly exists (but geometry slightly altered) in the NTSC build) was longer.

I still am thinking of making a video about this beach by the way and also, this article might get modified in the future.

Clustered HUDs With No Option to Toggle Off Is Terrible Game Design

I don't usually post here these days, but I honestly feel like more developers of good games really need to be aware of the fact that having too much HUD on the screen for certain games is bad game design, especially for exploration games in the third dimension. The reason? Well, some developers don't seem to care that much about how important immersion is for exploring, and that's honestly a problem.

Whenever I play a third person game that feels good, having no HUD (or at least not too much and is far away from the center as possible) really gives me more of an immersive feel of the world that surrounds me. Take Shadow of the Colossus for example, there is a HUD but it naturally hides from the screen when you don't really need it, and the remake of the game allowed options for it (despite it already being dynamic rather than static). Sometimes I like to see a HUD, such as the dreaded mini-map, but as long as the option to hide it is always there in case I just want to explore without feeling like it's a 'game' (yeah, ironic I guess), it's good.

Let's show how different a clustered HUD can impact the game. I'm going to just show a picture of an area from Shadow of the Colossus (from PS2) and then take another picture and modify it a bit:

A world that I feel part of.

This doesn't feel right...

 Note: The HUD at the bottom and bottom right is actually from the game, but as I said it does auto-hide.

The game wouldn't feel the same if all that stuff was on the screen at all times. It would honestly ruin the sense I have with the world when such stuff happens and becomes pretty much a deal breaker if there is no toggle option for it. Whenever a HUD is so small and far from the center, or there is no HUD during exploration, it feels better and doesn't actually feel 'fake'. Zelda Breath of the Wild is another game with immersion, and thankfully despite the HUD being a bit clustered, there was this option to hide most of it which was very useful to get that feeling I wanted.

Back then, when 3D platformers was pretty much king, there was often a design where the HUD on the screen would auto-hide. Banjo Kazooie for example did such that except for when health is low. Even the Super Mario Galaxy games did that (but such dynamic feature was forgotten during Super Mario Odyssey?), and now these days that feature seems to be more missing, but maybe it's just me.

I feel like this sense I have is not just me either. I believe there are a lot of people out there that feels the same, and I really wish this gets recognize more with many great developers who aren't aware. I hope more great developers becomes more aware of this idea I'm trying to share!

Why was this article made? Well, as someone who is desperate of owning (owning a physical game for a Switch is really important for me) good third-person exploration games, E3 2021 was really terrible for this year, and Nintendo was the only hope I've had. Sadly the only other third-person game they've shown outside of Zelda Breath of the Wild's sequel, was a game called Shin Megami Tensei V. The trailer during E3 looked great, but when I saw the Nintendo Treehouse Live gameplay, it became pretty much a deal breaker and felt like a final straw for this article.

Maybe there will be an option?

Anyway, that's it for today. I apologize for any sloppy writing here.