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chalcedony_starlingsAnd (with some inspiration from zlatohrbitek) I finally beat the last few challenges last night for the “Ideal DATA WING” achievement! The third challenge of “Chemtrails” (three laps in forty seconds) and the second challenge of “Patterns” (one lap in fourteen seconds) were the last two to fall; the former of those was especially tough.
It's not very long or difficult to get through to the end, and the little storyline's charming: you play as an eponymous Data Wing, a little Asteroids-like ship which apparently can carry a one-byte payload, and it's gradually revealed where you are and what your place is in the world. I liked the graphics style quite a lot, though it might be a bit flashylights/color-aberration for some people. The soundtrack claims to be a vaporwave one, which fits the theme quite well, but I don't know if it's real vaporwave or, like, fake vaporwave, that's some kind of fashionable thing right? I don't want to use the new lingo wrong, right? I wish I could just get the soundtrack but the only links seem to be to some Spotify lists and stuff. Uhh…
The smooth physics and controls are maybe the centerpiece, with the whole “brushing against the walls to move faster” part being also TRON-like, the virtual adversary/role-model other ships, and there's the way you have digital control over—I'm pretty sure it's angular acceleration so what you're often really trying to do is tune the angular acceleration at just the right time (or with a sort of pulse width modulation) to leave your averaged angular velocity in bounds to trace the curve of the wall so you can stay at high speed, since smashing into walls is a major slowdown and all. (“Oh, I failed to hit full speed there.”) You're something like (if I'm perceiving this right) four three integrators away from velocity, and five four integrators away from position—it's a real mental calculus/geometry/indirection squint to get the pattern right!
So yeah! So cool. I think I want to get the shirt at some point.
(Updated an hour later because for some reason I thought angle → acceleration was an integrator when it's actually just trigonometry. Oops.)
(no subject)
Date: 12 March 2018 09:19 (UTC)A- They sure considers themself Genuine Vaporwave, and other people seem to as well.
B- They've got a bandcamp with a "contact" link, if you want to make inquiries about picking up the music somehow. It's always worth a try.
The calculus of going fast reminds me of some of the stuff built up around Quake-era bunny-hopping/strafe jumping, where you could tilt at THIS angle and sliiide across the wall just so and hit speeds of Absolutely Ridiculous and then jump-slingshot yourself across the map so fast textures would start to break.
Except, y'know. On purpose.
Blinkycolors + soundtrackwhee interests me. I may shove my nose into this in future.
(no subject)
Date: 13 March 2018 00:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14 March 2018 04:48 (UTC)(+) It's not just Luxury Elite, though? The in-app credits also list 18 Carat Affair, ESPRIT 空想, ｔｅｌｅｐａｔｈテレパシー能力者, Eyeliner, and NxxxxxS. That's kinda the problem with looking in one place for the soundtrack. They have links to Spotify and Apple Music on that screen, which I could dig out if you'd like (for this or any other reason).
Added: thanks for doing the lookup though! It's helpful for our curiosities. ^..^ And we'll be curious what you think if you wind up playing it.
(no subject)
Date: 14 March 2018 07:08 (UTC)Well, looking in one place, but also doing research without actually investigating the primary source. *sheepish*