I tend to spend hours browsing Gopherholes and Phlogs, but I tend to lose track of where I am. So I implemented a navigation system that I have yet to see in any other Gopher client (or web, for that matter):
- Drill-down Columnar Navigation.
It is heavily inspired by Finder's own column navigation, so if you like that, you'll be at home.
In addition, it has other features that every modern browser should have:
- A tabbed interface
- An omnibar with search capabilities (Using Veronica-2)
- Files and folders view
- Inline image previews with zooming
- Caching
I have many more ideas to contribute back to the Gopher ecosystem without losing its essence (see the roadmap), so if you want to contribute, send ideas, share your opinions, or just show support, please let me know! I hope you like it!
Happened to move to New Zealand from South Africa, immediately met up with the Indigo Renderer guy whom I'd spoken to previously through my tutorials on an ancient website, in the FlipCode and cfxWeb days.
The main thing is actually spending a lot of time writing ray tracers... you should write your first 5 ray tracers as quickly as possible :)
Even greater than UFO Defense, in my opinion, was its expansion - Terror From the Deep.
It truly taught me that our oceans are so close, yet much farther than outer space can ever be. Looking at that lone blue globe in space always makes me feel so insignificant, so meaningless. Space is vast, but empty, and sterile. Down the abyss, not even light can shine to bless and purify.
The greatest contributor to that is certainly its soundtrack. With its unnerving, relentless low horns; harps hitting on the same two or three notes; there's a feeling of utter despair, hopelessness. A sense of doom, as aquanauts armed with teeny darts and harpoons grunt through the deaths of their colleagues, outmatched by opponents so unfairly superior, in the harshest environment on Earth. They couldn't have done a better job.
I have been working on a new "HD" soundtrack for TFTD that I plan to release as a mod for OpenXCOM (this article is great timing!). I am not finished yet, but you can listen to some of the tracks already (and download them if you wish):
As a diehard fan of the series, I'm shocked! TFTD was such a major letdown to me after the predecessor, and I believe even Mr. Gollop doesn't have a high opinion of it. I'm also shocked to see the author of the linked article laud it as better than the original. I've honestly not heard that expressed by other XCOM fans.
It, bizarrely, leans heavily into its predecessor's flaws instead of fixing them or at least steering around them.
- The much more cramped battlefield areas (namely, ships) expose the very frustrating shooting/projectile mechanics. you can understand squaddies missing an easy shot in the heat of the moment. fine! understandable! but in cramped areas they make even more exasperating mistakes -- if a guy is standing next to a doorway for cover, i might expect him to miss his shot... but i do not expect him to empty half his clip directly into the door frame six inches from his face
- grenade tossing in cramped areas is essentially just a great way to frag yourself and your squadmates. dear lord. grenades are really only useful in the early game, mostly, but TFTD doesn't even let you have that!
- some weapons only work underwater, some only work in air! adding to the already mind-numbing micromanagement of equipment, not to mention the punishing difficulty
- perhaps my memory fails me here, but I remember distinctly less destructible environments, which added so much fun to the original. can't find a way into the house? Blow a wall open! But, also, watch out for collapses! So much fun and so unique at the time.
More importantly, regardless of which series entries we like the best... nice to see a fellow X-Com fan -- and so many others on here! Cheers!
I don't think Jimmy Maher, author of the linked article, said he preferred TFTD.
"Unfortunately, Terror from the Deep does little to correct the original’s problems; if anything, it makes them worse. Most notably, it’s an even more difficult game than its predecessor, a decision that’s hard to understand on any level. Was anyone really complaining that X-COM was too easy? All in all, Terror from the Deep is exactly the unimaginative quickie sequel which the Gollops weren’t excited about having to make.
Nevertheless, it’s arguably the best of the _post-original_, pre-reboot generation of X-COM games."
The problem with TFTD was that it crossed the time-reward curve threshold for many missions. The feedback that led to TFTD being so difficult was also related to the bug in the original that screwed up difficulty even if you played on Superhuman. So many players got the impression that XCOM was too easy and asked for a harder game
> some weapons only work underwater, some only work in air! adding to the already mind-numbing micromanagement of equipment, not to mention the punishing difficulty
This is Terror from the Deep's biggest fail, in my opinion. Environment specific weapons added nothing to the game but more micromanagement.
If I remember correctly, TftD was bugged as hell, too.
I absolutely love the original X-COM and think it's one of the best -- if not THE best -- games from my youth.
Of course it's a matter of personal taste. But disclaimer, TFTD was indeed my first entry to the series. And yes, I hate the ship as well.
The atmosphere is absolutely terrifying. It really made me clutch for the life of my soldiers as if it was mine. It was unfair, but not without reason, as even today our submarine warfare would pale against T'Leth. So close yet so powerless.
The superb work on the graphics brings me deep into the abyss. Just look at how well the battle maps fade into the darkness. The various aliens are actually scary for once, and their shared past with the human species is realistic yet particularly disturbing. We all came from those same oceans, after all.
I already spoke about the music, but it really seals the deal.
I know this might sound it's all about the assets and the mood. But the game was already quite good, and TFTD gave that engine the content it deserved.
I will hazard a rough comparison – UFO Defense feels more like Starship Trooper, while TFTD is more like Alien. Intimate and downright scary.
To a certain extent yes, but TFTD is objectively even buggier than the original. IIRC it is even possible to put the original game into an unwinnable state by simply researching things in an unintended order. Fortunately OpenXCom[0] fixed this.
I didn't find TFTD to be scarier than X-Com/UFO Defense! Not arguing; just funny how different people have subjective experiences.
I think the game you played first will be scarier. Once you've played one, the other one is obviously just a bit of a re-skin, and just doesn't have quite the same fear factor. =)
> The atmosphere is absolutely terrifying. It really made me clutch for the life of my soldiers as if it was mine. It was unfair, but not without reason
I feel that way about the original X-COM ;)
TFTD crossed the line into unfair, in my opinion. And buggy, too!
> The greatest contributor to that feeling is certainly the music.
If you are ever startled by a mobile phone nearby ringing with the menacing gmbigmar.mid buildup, please say hello, it's probably mine.
I found TFTD a bit too much work-like in some missions (finding that last panicked Gray on a freighter...), but they sure earned an entire spot in gaming history only for their audio.
OpenXCOM and OpenXCE fix almost all of TFTD's problems with tons of quality-of-life improvement, like the "bug hunt" mode which reveals the location of those pesky aliens when a play drags too long. Give it a spin if you didn't already!
- weird research paths. It was possible to ruin your game by doing the wrong research in wrong order. Also, you need a lot of luck to get some techs, e.g. to get early armor you need to kill a Deep One, which usually are only found in the beginning of the game and near the end of it. Similarly to get a vibroblade which is very useful against Lobstermen, you need to kill a Calcinite, which is a very rare spawn in the game.
- maps are too big. I like the variety, but the maps are just too big. Also they consist of tight tunnels providing perfect shooting gallery opportunities for the aliens
- tentaculats are badly balanced. I fear no lobstermen disruptors, I fear no tasoth mind control, but a one or two tentaculats can destroy your team in a single round. And they can fly across half the map to get you.
The ability for clients to render the markup as they please is actually one of the most important features, and a stark distinction from HTML, which only has one correct way to render.
I exploit this in my Unnamed Gopher Client[0], a client for the predecessor of the Gemini protocol, where I render links in a familiar files/folder format:
A website can be rendered at different resolutions, with or without stylesheets, in dark mode, in printer-friendly formats, in a text-like format, with user stylesheets, with some elements hidden, as plain text, etc.
True, but at a given resolution, with CSS turned on, and in dark mode all users will basically see the same HTML view. The user can't have a dark mode HTML page unless the web site offers one or the user has an extension that makes a best effort to create one. HTML with complex Javascript rendering makes it hard to give the user control.
The concept of a user agent that gives the user much greater ability to choose how they want to view content could mean each user will:
* Pick their own font, font size, line spacing, margins
* Pick their own text color and background color. Like dark mode, high contrast, etc.
* Choose how linked images are shown: inline, click to load, load in new window, expandable thumbnails, etc
* How sections, section headers are displayed. Add a table of contents? Add a button to jump to the next section? The user can choose.
I like reader view, which gives me the ability to choose how I view HTML, but only when reader view can figure out how to extract the content (sometimes disastrously missing paragraphs of text...)
This right here should be the headline selling point on Gemini existing as its own separate protocol segregated from standard HTTP.
This thread is the first I've heard, and up until this comment I was thinking in my head, "sheesh, what kind of value proposition would justify that amount of work. I'm just not seeing it."
It's kind of like what REST was meant to be. More about entities than verbs. Cool. I get it now.
Most of my list is available as extensions on other browsers [1] (which I'd generally prefer to reduce bloat).
However, in my experience, the DOM for some sites is such a mess that trying to apply user preferences is a hack. I.E. reader view accidentally loses text. Does the implementation Opera has always work? That would be cool, although I'd still avoid Opera for privacy reasons.
Gemini seems to be to throw away all that complexity, which makes user customization easier. I.E. the problem is HTML/JS/DOM complexity, not a browser or its extensions.
I used a similar (but not identical) multi-column drill-down navigation technique in my Unnamed Gopher Client[0].
However, instead of coding my own scroll gestures, I delegated to CSS Scroll Snap, which works beautifully, even in complicated scrolling scenarios, and scrolls natively.
Thank you for your advice. I would very much like to depend on native scrolling for managing positions, except that I ran into some roadblocks early on and resorted to javascript. But I will look into CSS scroll snap for this.
