Start-to-Crate

[Simon]

"All games contain crates, therefore all games can be judged empirically on those crates.

Games can be rated and compared based on the shortest amount of time it takes a player to reach the first crate, which represents the point where the developers ran out of ideas."

Exact rules to determine start-to-crate, including penalties.

How well does Lix do on the test? Here's a screenshot from the very first level, without scrolling:



0 seconds until the first crate is visible
-2 seconds due to penalty #1: crate is on fire
= -2

This sucks pretty bad, I consider it a design bug. :>

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Given that the cuber icon in the skills toolbar looks rather like a crate, and even with no cuber skills given we'd still display a grayed-out icon, one can argue that Lix's StC can never be higher than 0?

[Simon]

If there is doubt, it's a crate?

geoo has already suggested that the low StC is a feature. The game welcomes you with its open arms, and declares Completely Unoriginal!.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

As I mentioned in chat, DROD does better here, perhaps setting some kind of record (if you don't count games with no crates at all -- yes, they do exist -- as having an infinite score).

The attached picture shows the first appearance of a crate, four minutes into The City Beneath. But this game is a direct continuation of the previous game, Journey to Rooted Hold, so perhaps it would be fair to include the time taken to play through JtRH in its entirety -- which, on my most recent playthrough, was twenty hours.

[ccexplore]

(if you don't count games with no crates at all -- yes, they do exist

Pong, the world's very first video game by most definitions, is decidedly crate-free (unless you want count the ball as a "barrel").  Anyway, I think that relevation was what decidedly clued me in that the whole thing cannot really be taken seriously even if you try.

And looking at the original post of the people who invented StC, I also noticed a heavy focus on FPS type games, of the 27 or so games they "reviewed".  I feel like even as a joke, it probably works much better humor-wise for those games compared to other types of games.

[Simon]

Right, 3D games are more likely to have crates. Therefore, having a -2 score in a 2D game is even more of a problem.

With Lix and the crate metric, I love how the coincidences pile up here. Our level designers have come up with a few ingenious decorations. The burning crate, cut open with an eraser piece, is a nontrivial leap of mind. We even have many crate-free levels after this.

-- Simon