the Hearth @Felthry@awoo.space

@socks when doing high level programming we're doing scripts in matlab to do calculations, so think in vectors and matrices, and when doing low level programming we think in arrays and pointers
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@socks yeah i think of them as vectors, i'm not sure what the difference is
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@socks it does have the useful feature that putting a . before any operator performs that operation separately on every element of two equal-sized matrices. So .+ and .- are the same as + and - but A .* B multiplies A₁₁ by B₁₁ and A₁₂ by B₁₂ etc, which is a really handy thing to have a dedicated syntax for instead of some function name you have to remember
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@socks we're also very used to matlab though, it might be less intuitive for others

matlab is heavily matrix-oriented so operations generally behave as they would on matrices; that's just how matrix addition and subtraction work. * is matrix multiplication, and / is actually a complicated operator that computes the inverse of the matrix on the right and left-multiplies it by the matrix on the left (there's also \ for inverting the matrix on the left instead)
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@socks I feel like the behaviour we would intuitively expect would be that {1,2,3}+{4,5,6} yields {5,7,9}
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@trysdyn 1 and 3 are definitely worth playing; 3 especially. 2 is kind of worth it but kind of let down by its bad translation (oh, 2 is also where the mechanic I was talking about was introduced, forgot that wasn't in the first one), and we have yet to have the time to play 4 or 5 but we've heard that 4 is disappointing and 5 is really good
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@trysdyn I think--and yes i bring up this series a lot but it's good okay--wild arms has an interesting combination of the two. Attrition is less of a concern but still a concern because while there is healing between battles, that healing is a limited resource and there are pickups throughout the dungeon to restore it, so you have to keep progressing and managing healing and stuff but also there's less of a worry about going into a boss fight on 1 hp remaining. the pickups are pretty generous but not to the point of completely obviating the mechanic (think coins in early super mario bros games, perhaps 1 or 3)

the later games also bring the focus onto single battles by having your equivalent of MP be something that starts at zero every fight and has to charge up over time, so there's no worry about conserving MP (this feature exists in the early games too but is used exclusively for special moves, alongside a conventional MP bar for magic)
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@kat it is at least a point you could argue, and one that we probably would argue, but you could just as well argue otherwise and i don't think it would be wrong
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@kat also ys was 1987, not 89
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@kat well that's why I said "arguably" in that initial post
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@kat definitely not ones with story as integrated as that of Ys, roguelikes have never really had that much focus on story
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@kat mm, computer adventure games didn't really cross my mind here

we don't know enough about such games to say anything much about them but ys at least has the distinction of being arguably the first graphical game with conventional controls (by modern standards, you know dpad and buttons) to be story-focused
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@kat yeah--it came after final fantasy 1 and dragon quest 1 but in both of those cases i'd argue that the story is kind of not integrated into the game the way it is in Ys; the player characters aren't really *characters* in the story, they're just the means with which you interact with the game (the FF and DQ series both got better about this in their second entries, but Ys was before either of those)
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@kat it's a pretty good game and also a game of some historical significance, being arguably the first story-based video game--and it actually has a *good* story too, with actual character development and NPCs who are significant to the story at more than one point in the plot

it's also been remade like a million times so you can get it on steam nowadays for like $5, highly recommend
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@kat look i just really like ys 1 and 2 and will take any excuse to inform people about the things we like about them
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@kat the dialog is frequently somewhat amusing too

a lot of them talk about trying to find that Adol guy (the player character), some of them are slacking off and ask you not to tell their boss that they were there, some of them just want to go home
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@kat and they all have names too, at least in the remakes
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@kat Ys II had something sort of similar: you could get magic that turns you into a monster, and then talk to literally any monster in the game and they all have unique dialog
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@bj I'm not sure there could be one. The way we do it is just to be open to people requesting CWs for things.
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