T w e n t y S i d e d
In case you missed it, on New Year we got together with a group of friends and played a bunch of games. Josh and Jarenth played, while I watched on Twitch and interacted with the people in chat. (I love doing this. I just wait for people to say something funny, read it out loud, and take credit for it. It’s like a license to steal jokes!)
We played Spintires, Far Cry 4, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure, and FTL.
Warning: This isn’t pristine HD video that’s been edited and audio-balanced like a typical episode of Spoiler Warning. This is a raw download of the Twitch stream. But while the quality is low, we make up for it in quantity. We’ve got over four hours of quasi-entertainment for you to consume! Enjoy!
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The rest of the videos are after the jump:
Link (YouTube) |
Link (YouTube) |
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Good to be the King?
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
The Terrible New Thing
Fidget spinners are ruining education! We need to... oh, never mind the fad is over. This is not the first time we've had a dumb moral panic.
Apropos of nothing, and this will only mean anything if Shamus is OCD, but since he seems to “enjoy” tweaking the site and how it looks…
Shamus, I dunno if it’s just me, but the main site has “Twenty Sided” separated from the very top of my browser window by about a 1/4 inch black bar, yet when I click on comments, “Twenty Sided” abuts the top of the page.
At least I’ve given you something to accomplish today, right? :)
I didn’t notice this until you pointed it out.
You monster.
Thanks…Now I will never NOT notice that…
And speaking of site problems, visiting this site on my PS3 causes the whole system to freeze. And it is the only site that does that (at least of the ones I visit). It had been a month or two since last visiting on a PS3, when it worked fine. I don’t know if one of the PS updates broke it, or if they even affect the browser; they seem to just use it these days to put more and more ads in the Playstation Store.
You are using an out of date browser. You must update your browser to the PS4 version. If you continue to experience this issue after purchasing a PS4 please contact Sony customer service.
/s
So I had no idea at the time how bad the framerate was for the first 2/3rds of the Spintires stream. Or indeed that apparently FTL’s game audio wasn’t being recorded.
So uh, sorry about that.
I think the masterful gameplay skills obscured any issues with the framerate. No worries. :)
In the Spintires (or Far Cry 4) settings, could you have quartered the resolution to 1280×720 to improve performance? Or would that have caused you other problems (like confusing the recorder software)?
yeah, so every time your mouse pointer was on the “resolution” setting i was shouting at the screen to reduce the effing resolution (while watchin the recording just now…) … If you turn anti-alias off because it’s invisible in the stream anyway, then how much more invisible would it be if the render resolution was equal to the stream’s (which is a lot lower than 2560×1440)?
I think Josh and his Howling Lumberjack Commandos would be up for some kind of environmental award for preventing deforestation if it wasn’t for all the fuel they wasted disincentivising the lumber industry.
Oh, there are plenty of trees around to absorb that CO2 anyway.
“while I watched on Twitch and interacted with the people in chat.”
And tea trolled everyone.
Can’t believe Josh missed out on the opportunity to call his ship the Spoiler Warping.
Driving big trucks through mud in video game format is oddly compelling, so I bought Spintires and put in a couple hours with Duneyrr, though it seems to have gained an unusual bug since the new year causing repeated crashing on even numbered days.
Campster: you are NOT the only one who wants a “not-roguelike FTL where you take the basic mechanics and turn it into a big, open world, space trading game” with “diplomacy”
That would rock my socks off…
…except what you said later about not like ME and more like Spore? I’m not sure what you meant though. I guess you mean more truly open-world, where your only goal is riches and dominance, rather than having some plot shoe-horned in on you?
The problem is you would need much more money to make such a game since the amount of content would have been a lot grater. And that is why it hasn’t been made. It’s cheaper to release the combat engine with some light story and “path choice” wrapping than to invest in making a truly open universe game.
On the other hand, not having to create a “main plot” might free up some resources for enhance the existing environment with some more-or-less random/procedural stuff that will lead to interesting things without scripting them. Even without going No Man’s Sky on it, you may very well end up with something good sooner than you think.
doesn’t The Federation kind of scratch that itch? I’ve never played it, but from what I’ve heard it’s the best bits of star trek diplomacy combined with weird bullet-time combat…
Do you mean “The Birth of the Federation” game? If not, is there a link to their homepage or something? Just “The Federation” brings up loads of Trek wikis, TV Tropes, etc.
Maybe “The Last Federation”?
There’s Drox Operative, which is kind of like that. It’s basically got a bunch of AI nations playing a space 4X while you fly around in a ship fighting space monsters and interacting with them.
It’s from the same guy as Depths Of Peril, which Shamus once blogged about.
“Escape Velocity” and “Escape Velocity: Override” are very good examples, though without the detailed ship combat mechanics. “Escape Velocity: Nova” is okay, and easier to run than EV or EV:O, since for those you need either a very old mac computer running OS9, or Sheepshaver, an OS9 emulator.
But it does include space trading. Not really Diplomacy insomuch as there are many factions, any of which you can join. The first game includes the Confederation, the Rebellion, and the Artemis group. The second game includes the United Earth, the Renegades, the Voinians, any of the three Strand groups. (Not all are mutually exclusive either.) You can, of course, remain neutral in all of these games, just being a space trader or a pirate if you want. (Renegades in the second game are pirates, but you don’t HAVE to follow their plot.)
The other advantage to the original games running in their original environment is that the major plug-ins can be found online still. You can’t play those plugins (mostly) with the Total Conversion to Override or Classic from Nova.
The Kickstarter for “Into the Stars” seems to be offering pretty much what Chris was after.
Thank you for putting this up! I really wanted to be there, but I was on a plane or travelling to/from the airport the whole while : /
My thanks also. I live in Australia and have weird sleeping hours there too, and they get weirder on extended holidays. I remember seeing the countdown timer at 6 hours to go and 16 hours ago and I’m not entirely sure what happened in the intervening time.
Heading to the twitch channel left me highly disappointed that there was no VoD for the stream, and this just made my day (after an annoying day at work).
My thanks as well. I missed the stream due to non-gaming New-Years obligations, but now I get to watch the hilariousness too! Huzzah! :)
In all honesty, I had little interest in playing Far Cry 4 before this, but after seeing this ending I kinda want to try it. I mean by just simply acknowledging a sensible, logical ending, the game puts all the stupidity that will inevitably follow into context and says “you know, it didn’t have to be this way but your choices lead us here”. It will be much easier to take the game at face value when I’m responsible for getting involved in the absurdity in the first place.
The best thing about Far Cry 4 is the writer’s acknowledgement of the series’ own sins. The real ending has some very unsubtle hints that “this all could have been avoided if you just stayed and ate my crab rangoon”, to encourage you to reflect on how ill-advised your journey of murder and mayhem has been.
All the terrible parts of Far Cry 3 – the druggies, the bros, the scripted missions, the nonsensical collectibles – are still there, but the dialogue makes clear that you (the player character) don’t like them. Same for Longinus, who is both an homage and a mockery of Far Cry 2.
MUD FOR THE MUD GOD!
GLOB FOR THE GLOB LORD!
In all seriousness, Spintires is the game where I think I’ve heard the most praise for the graphics while Josh is playing. Of course, it was moving at .004 MPH, so it could be rendered pretty easily, but still.
I think games that have mud are Josh’s thing. If only Fallout 3 had been made of mud…
I believe the general consensus is that Fallout 3 was composed of a substance similar to, though less sanitary than, mud.
Oh the Spintires episode. 2 hours of practical demonstration of why you never, ever fight a land war in Asia*.
Also why you Don’t March On Moscow. The Russian steppe has four seasons: Summer, Mud, Winter, and More Mud. Movement is only really possible during Summer and Winter, and Winter is cold enough that bits of your weapons and/or soldiers might well snap off.
And why older Soviet cars lack comforts and look like they were built in a tractor factory. They were built by ex tractor/tank factory workmen, but they also had to be built to be driveable in mud and ford shallow streams.
Also this is the reason why Soviet tanks ussually carry logs on themselves.
Also why their cars often had a hole for a starting-handle, for all that it must have looked comically old-fashioned to Western eyes. You don’t want to rely on lead-acid batteries in the Russian Winter. Practicality comes first.
I FUCKING LOVE, the in game achievements for Spintires.
Now I kind of want to watch Josh play Offroad Velociraptor Safari.
Spintires is a real uncut diamond of games. Just one tiny example of what could be made if game makers were not so set on having combat and competition on every single game. You would never see game like that coming from Ubisoft, EA or Activision.
I just wanted to say I really appreciate the time taken to upload this to youtube. Twitch is absolute garbage constantly stopping and restarting on my computer and having a youtube video series for convenience (and also knowing it won’t get deleted in a week or so) Is very nice so I tip my hat to you.