Good Examples of "Trainhatting" in Games?

[martyrdrebel27]

Trainhatting (verb): To employ a clever or unorthodox workaround or solution to a problem esp. as it relates to coding and programming.

if you haven't seen it going around yet,
http://www.geek.com/games/a-train-you-ride-in-fallout-3-is-actually-an-npc-wearing-a-train-hat-1628532/
here's where I personally first saw it, but in the comments, it turns into a Reddit vs 4chan war about where it originated.

so it had me wondering if any of you knew any other clever workarounds that games have used that we might not be aware of.

 

[Ravinoff]

Gamebryo does stuff like that a lot. For example, the slideshows are really just putting the player into first-person view in a dark room facing a screen and locking their movement.

Hell, the slideshow voiceover is even provided by an NPC in that room, Ron the Narrator [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Ron_the_Narrator]. And that's not even counting the weird debug stuff they left in for reasons unknown, like Testacles the Debug Centurion.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Chaos Gate.
Devestator squad only allows for 2 heavy weapons, even if the Codex calls for 4.
Here's what you do. Get an Ultramarine bravely killed against the thrice-cursed Word Bearers. Mourn and lament his sacrifice with a tall glass of brandy(this is critical!)
When equipping for the next mission, go to your Dev squad. Select the 2nd Marine, the 1st after the Sarge, and drag him out of the squad to fill the gap left by our brave Apematus/Pintarius. The game automatically moves each marine in the Dev squad up 1 space. Replace the marine in the now empty 5th spot in the squad.
Here's what happens. Automatically the 5th marine in a Dev squad is given a Heavy Bolter, which as a Heavy Weapon allows him to replace it with any heavy weapon in the game. However, as per the game's programming, once a marine is assigned a Heavy Bolter, you have to manually change it to something else.
So here is what happens. Start with a full 5 man Dev squad. Man 5 has a Heavy Bolter. Remove man 2. Man 5 becomes Man 4, but keeps his heavy bolter. Place the removed Man 2 in the now vacant Man 5 slot. He will be given a Heavy Bolter.
Repeat for the now man 2 (Previously man 3 BEFORE you moved anyone).
Repeat again.
If done correctly you'll have a Sergeant with a bolter and 4 marines with Heavy Bolters than can be replaced with ANY heavy weapon in the game.
Let me tell ya', a Blood Thirster are a lot less scary with 4 lascanons facing him down!

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Evidently the Creation Engine has just as many weird quirks as Gamebryo, as in Skyrim Bethesda were unable to code ladder climbing (which is why everything is either stairs or ladders that you click on and get teleported through a loading screen to the top.)

Also there are invisible NPCs embedded in walls to speak as the disembodied voices (like the cannibal sidequest in the crypts)

So it seems to be a case of "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

 

[Aerosteam]

In Dark Souls, you might think that Solaire is distinctly taller than the player character (and any other NPC who are human sized).

Actually, he has a regular character model and they just made him levitate from the ground slightly to give that illusion, see the space between his shadow and his feet:

Spoiler

That's all I got. XD

 

[Sir Pootis]

I believe the first Wing Commander game would reliably crash upon exiting the game. They couldn't work out a fix, so they just changed the error message to "Thank you for playing Wing Commander".

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Perfect Dark's rotating windmill blades are part of an oversized drone gun. This is why the K7 Avenger marks the windmill as a threat. Also, using moon jump codes to get close enough will result in the windmill shooting at you.

 

[silver wolf009]

I know in old games like Duke Nukem and Doom, to make a mirror, you had to create a separate room beyond a hole in the wall to give the illusion of depth in a reflection, but that's about all I've got.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I believe the first Wing Commander game would reliably crash upon exiting the game. They couldn't work out a fix, so they just changed the error message to "Thank you for playing Wing Commander".

hah. That's a good one. Not like it mattered much (not for DOS anyway). There's lots of strange things in games if you start looking into it.

Reminds me of older games in general.

Like, Doom had heights for terrain, but in fact the levels were entirely 2D in terms of layout.
But then you got the Original Duke Nukem, where you suddenly had what appeared to be actual 3d layouts, with one floor on top of another.

As I recall though, this is a rather peculiar hack, in that to get to the upper floors actually involved some form of teleporting, and the various floors were in reality seperate parts on the same level stitched together in a clever way.

I'm sure the proportion of outright weirdness and workarounds is much larger in older games than in newer ones, that's for sure.

 

[MeatMachine]

Another Fallout 3 one, remember that time you were a baby? Say hello to papa!

Spoiler

Oh god, it's like one of those creepy pre-renaissance baby paintings where the infant has the dimensions of a very small man.

Spoiler

 

[Batou667]

Like, Doom had heights for terrain, but in fact the levels were entirely 2D in terms of layout.
But then you got the Original Duke Nukem, where you suddenly had what appeared to be actual 3d layouts, with one floor on top of another.

As I recall though, this is a rather peculiar hack, in that to get to the upper floors actually involved some form of teleporting, and the various floors were in reality seperate parts on the same level stitched together in a clever way.

IIRC Duke 3D had some very weird physics made possible due to the not-quite-3D nature of its engine. One of the multiplayer maps made use of this, it was an arena that was basically a circular building with a corridor surrounding it - but to get to the same door on the building, you'd have to walk around the building *twice*, not once. The building had two different interiors depending on whether you'd gone around it an even or odd number of times. Complete and utter mindf*ck.

Another famous one is the observation that in Super Mario Brothers, the clouds and bushes are the same sprite.

 

[Kiardras]

Another Fallout 3 one, remember that time you were a baby? Say hello to papa!

Spoiler

What ever happens, don't use a body texture mod and a first person body mod, or that part of the game is messed up.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Like, Doom had heights for terrain, but in fact the levels were entirely 2D in terms of layout.
But then you got the Original Duke Nukem, where you suddenly had what appeared to be actual 3d layouts, with one floor on top of another.

As I recall though, this is a rather peculiar hack, in that to get to the upper floors actually involved some form of teleporting, and the various floors were in reality seperate parts on the same level stitched together in a clever way.

IIRC Duke 3D had some very weird physics made possible due to the not-quite-3D nature of its engine. One of the multiplayer maps made use of this, it was an arena that was basically a circular building with a corridor surrounding it - but to get to the same door on the building, you'd have to walk around the building *twice*, not once. The building had two different interiors depending on whether you'd gone around it an even or odd number of times. Complete and utter mindf*ck.

Another famous one is the observation that in Super Mario Brothers, the clouds and bushes are the same sprite.

Oh, yeah, I remember that. Super Mario Bros. Is an extreme example of storage space constraints.
Not like their artists couldn't draw more sprites, they simply didn't have any more storage spacd to work with.
Somebody I think demonstrated the source code also contained hacks to reduce duplicate code.
Mario and Luigi (and the fireflower powerup) are all palette swaps of the same sprite, and I can't quite remember, but I believe there's another terrain tile being recycled as well.
(possibly the ground bricks and vines... They do look similar..., not quite sure)

Basically, re-use everything. XD

The things that got done to work around hardware limitations huh.

Actually, that reminds me, the entirety of metal gear can be said to have started from something like this.
At least, if Kojima's GDC speech was anything to go by.

Apparently, Kojima was asked to create an action game (a popular genre in arcades at the time)
To do that, the minimum you need is 4 sprites; the player, at least 1 enemy, and at least 2 bullet sprites.
Unfortunately, he was asked to implement that style of game on a system which couldn't draw 4 sprites at once onscreen. (I know, right? sounds insane).
His solution?
Create an action shooter without any shooting.
And with that, the stealth action game was born. XD

All because the hardware couldn't cope with actual shooting going on. XD