@goodguy5 Does just running the rsync part of it work or yield an error?

@goodguy5 The alternative is scp, but that won't check if the bashrc file is there or not.

A random series of thoughts that started from the platformer and metroidvania discussions of yesterday led me to an interesting observation

oh yeah?

do tell

Most 2D platformers are oriented left-to-right, so the player predominantly starts in the left end of the level and progress is made towards the right (this is a cool observation but one I had made earlier)

yeah and just to input, it's nice in a way because you always/usually know "go right" is the right direction

Super Mario Bros is so LtR that you can't even go backwards. Mega Man very rarely features RtL screens and seldom if ever longer than a single screen.

Commander Keen, for MS-DOS, is where I'm going with this though

though I also enjoy the greater complexity we have today in choice of where the heck to go

@kviiri Which Commander Keen game? Just the series in general?

It was one of my favorite platformer series when I was a kid. There's seven games in the original series: games 1-3 are straightforward side-view platformers, and the other four have a slanted view that gives the illusion of 3D

I only played one (I think it was no.4?), but it was great.

And very much not linear, as I remember it.

I never played any of those

@Miniman This is where it gets interesting, they follow LTR pretty rigidly for games 1-3 but as they change the angle of view, they suddenly have about 50/50 LTR and RTL levels

It's a peculiar change, seeing as it was made by the same people. Seems like there must be a reason for it

not saying this is the reason

but I have observed that often, as the technology available for creating video games changes, often the same people will do drastically different things in some way because they can

I actually bought the Commander Keen complete collection on steam, for the princely sum of $2. One of these days I'll bust it out.

lol

oh god 2$ how will I ever afford it

XD

assuming I want to try them at some point

I have a hypothesis of my own that, due to how the slanted 2D view works, they found they could easily hide secret areas on right-side walls (left-side is harder because the entire "Keen-facing" surface of the wall is player-visible)

Secrets like that might've been too easy to figure out by accident if the levels were always LTR

@trogdor That wasn't a recommendation. You don't want to buy it.

Yeah, Commander Keen is a decent series of platformers for its time but ultimately I don't think they're of particular value to anyone who isn't nostalgic for them or interested in retro games in general

Keen 4 is my personal favorite and that one should be available for free, though? It was the shareware episode of the second (unfinished) trilogy

@kviiri That probably explains why it was the one I tried as a kid.

@Miniman Yep, lots of people had it because of that. Adult me hopes the sales of Keen 5 and 6 (which had a demo of its own) made up for the relatively big investment in making a full-fledged game as a shareware

@Miniman XD

I do like the none-too-serious approach Keen has though

well and I'm refraining from buying games right now too

It feels like a cozy thing of yesteryear despite being at times quite hard.

even 2$ ones assuming I wanted to

but yeah that's kinda the way I feel about Soul Reaver

it's a chore for anyone who is just looking for a game that has the elements it has

@trogdor I don't know what Soul Reaver is but it doesn't exactly sound like a "cozy thing of yesteryear" lol :P

because today there are better looking, more polished, more easily controled games

But I've been wrong before haven't I!

@kviiri Honestly, more platformers need to use pogo sticks.

@kviiri well yes the name is scary but for me it's a nostalgic game

@Miniman I have fond memories of the "impossible pogo trick"

it's about a vampire who has a grudge against all other vampires and proceeds to murder a swath through all of them all while giving semi shaksperian sounding monologues expositioning the world he is in to the player

I loved it but yes don't play it expecting cozy bunny stuff

XD

it's murder and platforming and puzzle solving

and also rather old now for sure

and it's also not even technically about the main character which I didn't even know when I was playing it as a kid

but I love it for all it is still XD

(basically it's set after the first game in the series, which is about the actual main character (also a vampire) and picks up after the cannon ending of that first game but now from the point of view of,..... well this completely different vampire)

I'll stop there because if I don't I will talk about this game until no one on the planet wants to read anymore XD

I played Soul Reaver and Soul Reaver 2 and none of the other legacy of kain games

it was therefore a bit confusing

yeah I will second that

I kinda thought Raziel was the main character of Legacy of Kain

which, you know,... looking back was silly of me but I literally didn't know it was in the middle of a franchise that existed before it was made XD

but I know now that it literally picks up after the consequences of the first game's ending can be fully seen,... and I actually really enjoy that I know that now and didn't at the time

it's weird but my brain is weird

@trogdor Have fun

oh you are far too late

It is probably one of the most intricate and tangle plot I saw in a game

I looked up the series plot

and yes it's,.. ridiculous

XD

I mean, the amount of time travel in SR2 alone

yep

still, it is quite admirable that it mostly makes sense, especially if you consider how butchered some of the games where.

I think the transition from the first game to Soul Reaver itself is especially good

the rest varies definitely

even from the first Soul Reaver to Soul Reaver 2

and yet the first Soul Reaver game is probably the one that had undergone the largest cuts

yep, they did a good job in savaging the plot even after cutting so much stuff

also between 1 and 2 the most egregious thing I can think of is that they changed the two main characters motivations

Raziel, instead of being a "vengeful monster/angel of purification?" bent on destroying vampires is "looking for the truth" and Kain, instead of being a "jelous god" is now the guy trying to save the world in an incredibly convoluted plot that requires him to have acted like he did in the first game,....... XD

I have no idea why they made those decisions but wtv

Well, the first Soul Reaver game was originally intended to be the only one. Had they enough time they probably wouldn't have changed the plot like they did

The original idea was to have Kain die there and Raziel succeed in purging all the vampires from the land. So... probably no more sequel.

Funny thing is that the Chronoplast visions in the first game still show events from the original script.

So they had to retcon it - part by introducing new events that would look like the old ones (the intended battle with Kain at the mountain retreat was somehow remade in a later game) and part by claiming that some other visions were only possibilities or straight made up visions.

well

I don't even mean the visions

I mean purely based off of the supposed motivations of the two characters

Yep, that too. See here if you never read about this

The original plot did indeed end with Raziel purging the vampires from the land, so he was indeed a "vengeful monster/angel of purification"

There was kinda no "truth to be found", because apparently Kain never had a plan to fix the mess and save the world.

yeah I mean

basically Kain definitely didn't act like that in the first game

the things he said were practically the opposite of "but I threw you in water that feels like acid to us for a good reason"

he was taunting, not explanatory

@trogdor but you know what? For me that is still better than Chrono Cross.

lol

I mean, I'm really not upset by it to a large degree

just more or less disapointed?

I really wish the first game had ended with one of the two of them dying

or that the second game was about setting up their actual final cofrontation as two people who could never be reconciled

OR actually like,.... coherently set up why they would work together,.... instead of just the incoherent sliding into being freinds because,... that's what the new plot needed

oh, I just meant that since I had played Chrono Cross, I am able to tolerate the retcon in Legacy of Kain

XD

fair enough

Few things surpass Cross in the Cerberus Retcon department

@Yuuki Probably not what you meant, but... here

(@doppelgreener @BESW that last one comes from me looking up and seeing on my bulletin board a picture of the student who died three years ago this weekend....)

@nitsua60 :( <3

Yeah--at least after three years I've started to recognize that I'm going to get pensive this time of year, and know why. So I handle it a lot better this year than I did two ago =|

They must have meant a lot to you.

@doppelgreener Yeah. Whatever it says about my parenting, for a three-year period I spend as many evenings doing something with her (among other students) as I did my own kids.

I think that says positive things. Life isn't zero-sum, and being able to spend time around others enriched your life and yourself, and by extension everyone whose life you are in.

@nitsua60 I'm sorry, Nits. My sister died this month also and while I don't mark her day of passing in any way (I mark her birthday), it still affects me.

<3

@NautArch I'm so sorry to hear that :'(

:'(