Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 27, 2020

Filed under: Column 216 comments

Next PostThings Are Great but I'm Angry for Some Reason 

I’m sure you know the drill by now: A big publisher does something destructive that we don’t like. Maybe they lay off some people. Maybe they force their teams to crunch to hit a deadline. Maybe they close an entire studio.

In response, we get a bunch of people saying, “No! Don’t do this Destructive Thing. The loss should come out of the CEO’s salary. The CEO is paid millions of dollars. Just take a few million bucks from them instead of punishing the peasants! The CEO won’t even miss it!”

All three of these destructive things are bad, but to limit the scope of this video let’s just focus on the problem of crunch. That is, the practice of having your development staff work painfully long hours in an effort to meet the desired ship date for a game.

Link (YouTube)

The most recent version of this problem was when we found out that the team at CD Projekt RED was working crunch hours to meet the ship date on Cyberpunk 2077. A lot of fans and critics were outraged by this. People were saying, “CD Projekt RED promised not to do any crunch, and here they are breaking their promise! Why can’t the company just let the game ship late and take the losses out of the CEO’s ridiculous salary?”

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Executive Pay is Not the Problem”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Microsoft Ate ZenimaxPrevious Post

Next PostThings Are Great but I'm Angry for Some Reason 

216 comments

Diecast #320: VR, Amnesia Rebirth, Mailbag

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 26, 2020

Filed under: Diecast 77 comments

 Diecast #319: Halloween, Noita, MailbagPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #321: Happy Halloween 

Like I said at the end of the show: Pretty soon I’m going to have Ross on the show and we’re going to talk about Watch Dogs: Legion. The game launches on the 29th of this month, and Ross worked on it. I don’t know if I’m going to have him on the show next week, or the week after. I’m eager to talk about the game, but I also want to make sure I have enough time with the game that I can ask him meaningful questions.

We’ll see how it goes.

Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast RSS feed.

Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast320

Link (YouTube)

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #320: VR, Amnesia Rebirth, Mailbag”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Diecast #319: Halloween, Noita, MailbagPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #321: Happy Halloween 

77 comments

Jedi Fallen Order Part 10: The Sideshow

By Shamus Posted Thursday Oct 22, 2020

Filed under: Retrospectives 80 comments

 Jedi Fallen Order Part 9: Evil Wins Because Good is DumbPrevious Post

Next PostJedi Fallen Order Part 11: Duel of the Flakes 

At some point in this game, you’ll eventually encounter some bounty hunters. There are a few different bounty hunters and numerous different places they can spawn, but sooner or later you’ll tangle with these idiots. When that happens, you’ll get hit with a writer-mandated stunlock and end up getting captured.

You are captured by a hitscan, un-blockable, un-dodge-able stunlock that lands the instant your foe has line-of-sight. Okay, that's how cinematics work in linear stories I guess. Although the game designer can sod off with this bullshit 'nice moves' taunt.

And so we come to a great big pointless sidequest with…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 10: The Sideshow”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Jedi Fallen Order Part 9: Evil Wins Because Good is DumbPrevious Post

Next PostJedi Fallen Order Part 11: Duel of the Flakes 

80 comments

This Week I Played… (October 2020)

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 20, 2020

Filed under: TWIP 180 comments

 This Week I Played... (July 2020)Previous Post

Next PostThis Week I Played... (February 2021) 

It’s funny that this series wound up being called “This week”, since they’re not even monthly. I could go back and change the branding, but… nah. “This Fiscal Quarter I Played…” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

So here’s what I’ve been playing since the last one of these…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Week I Played… (October 2020)”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 This Week I Played... (July 2020)Previous Post

Next PostThis Week I Played... (February 2021) 

180 comments

Diecast #319: Halloween, Noita, Mailbag

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 19, 2020

Filed under: Diecast 90 comments

 Diecast Unplugged #3: Scheduling Madness, The Boys, CrunchPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #320: VR, Amnesia Rebirth, Mailbag 

So once again, my audio is severely over-boosted. It sounds perfect during recording, and then the resulting saved audio sounds like I’m talking through a megaphone. The same thing happened a few episodes ago. Afterward, I went in and balanced all the levels to stop it from happening. And then I was VERY careful to not touch any volume levels. And yet here we are again.

I’ve been doing this show since 2013, and this has never been a problem before. Now for no reason my recording volume is being randomized every week. I can only speculate what sort of nonsense is going on under the hood. The one clue here is that this began happening right after the latest Windows update. I wonder if they added some horrific new “smart” volume system that tries to do your thinking for you.

I guess I need to stop and make a test recording every week, just to make sure I haven’t been sabotaged again. If this was really triggered by a Windows Update, it means this supposedly “helpful” undocumented invisible feature is adding friction and complexity to my workflow.

Oh, and there’s another Windows update waiting for me. I’ve been delaying it every time it pops up, but I know it won’t let me do that forever.

Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast RSS feed.

Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast319

Link (YouTube)

Show notes:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #319: Halloween, Noita, Mailbag”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Diecast Unplugged #3: Scheduling Madness, The Boys, CrunchPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #320: VR, Amnesia Rebirth, Mailbag 

90 comments

Jedi Fallen Order Part 9: Evil Wins Because Good is Dumb

By Shamus Posted Thursday Oct 15, 2020

Filed under: Retrospectives 111 comments

 Jedi Fallen Order Part 8: Dathomir SoulsPrevious Post

Next PostJedi Fallen Order Part 10: The Sideshow 

We’re back on the planet Zeffo, but this time we’re going to be exploring the back 9, which wasn’t reachable on our last visit. Apparently the Empire has resumed their efforts to dig up old artifacts, and this has opened up a fresh batch of obstacle courses for us to navigate.

Let’s just skip past the next half hour of platforming, puzzling, and stormtrooper-murdering. It’s all good stuff because the base mechanics of this game are usually strongThe quicktime events can go die in a Sarlacc pit, though., but I don’t have anything new to say about that.

Ha! You only scratched me with that vertical lightsaber stroke through my chest!

At the end of the road, we come face-to-face with the Second Sister, who we fought back in the tutorial. As before, the fight is cut short. The two combatants find themselves on opposite sides of a force field.

So now it’s time for them to exchange some words. But before we do that, let’s back up a bit…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 9: Evil Wins Because Good is Dumb”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Jedi Fallen Order Part 8: Dathomir SoulsPrevious Post

Next PostJedi Fallen Order Part 10: The Sideshow 

111 comments

Project Bug Hunt #6: Model Madness

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 13, 2020

Filed under: Programming 52 comments

 Project Bug Hunt #5: More About the AtlasPrevious Post

Next PostProject Bug Hunt #7: It Works! (Kinda.) 

One of the major goals of this project is to see if we can furnish a space station. That is, we want to load in some models and arrange them around the level in ways that make sense.

My first thought is to build some crude models, just to prove that my idea is sound. I don’t want to stop programming so I can re-learn 3D modeling. I haven’t done any serious modeling since the turn of the century, and all the technology has changed since then. So I figure I’ll just make a few basic cubes to represent the various objects in terms of size.

That wasn’t a good idea. It just didn’t give me the sense of whether or not the system is working. I could see it was probably working in theory, but that wasn’t a very satisfying way to conclude this exercise. I don’t have any screenshots of this experiment, which is fine since the screenshots would be roughly useless.

So let’s skip that misadventure and jump ahead to the point where I finally open up Blender and decide to make some models.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Bug Hunt #6: Model Madness”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Project Bug Hunt #5: More About the AtlasPrevious Post

Next PostProject Bug Hunt #7: It Works! (Kinda.) 

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