T w e n t y S i d e d
Link (YouTube) |
And the (very late) final episode of the week. Fortunately, it’s completely topical and we don’t spend fifteen minutes driving cars into trees.
Josh Plays Shogun 2 Part 19: Holding it Together
 |
Yes, it’s finally back! After gathering vital intelligence at PAX and fighting off the vile ninja minions of Rutskarn, Oda Nobunaga has finally returned to conquer Japan! Now let’s see, where were we? Oh yes, we fought some siege battles, had half of Japan declare war on us (including the largest and most powerful clan in the entire country, the sea-ruling Mori) and extended our domain to the doorstep of Kyoto and the ruling Ashikaga Shogunate.
 |
Oh yeah, and we converted to Christianity so we could crash our entire economy and insult every other clan on the island for the slim chance that we can build some European-style galleons to stop the inevitable Mori naval invasion before it happens.
If our own citizens don’t get us first.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Josh Plays Shogun 2 Part 19: Holding it Together”
Alan Wake EP11: Physics and Pasties
Link (YouTube) |
So this wasn’t actually a short week or anything; I didn’t delay this post because we didn’t have a fourth episode. No, I was just sick Thursday morning. I suspect Shamus might be trying to get back at me for crushing all of those sleeping pills into his tea last week.
Also, for those of you interested, Josh Plays is totally actually really coming back tomorrow. For real this time. Like, the post is (almost) all written, I just need to finish the last bit and compile all of the images for upload. And of course there will be the fourth Spoiler Warning episode next week too. And hey, Shamus might have even written an article for the Escapist this week! (But I get bonus points if Shamus only remembers that he was supposed to do that when he reads this post.)
Project Octant Part 6:Tiling
So here we are, six entries into this series and we haven’t really done much in the way of making software. I actually find this kind of liberating. In Project Frontier I felt driven to get my core features in there. I like that this project is more an excuse for endless digressions. It’s a lot easier to navigate when you don’t care where you’re going.
Still, I guess we’d better get started with the actual thing and stop whinging on about technology and development platforms. First, let’s look at texture mapping…
 |
(We don’t have a lighting system yet, so I’m just painting the sides of cubes darker than the top. That’s close enough for now.)
I’ve slapped the default stone texture from Minecraft onto this landscape so I can illustrate the thing I want to work on. As in Minecraft, flat stone can look kind of dull if you see too much of it at once, and I’ve deliberately designed this scene to show us way, way too much of it.
This texture is kind of bland. I mean, it’s a scattering of grey values that barely deviate from each other. Of course, this is by design. Notch knew what he was doing when he made his textures. Some well-meaning modders come along and try to make the textures more “interesting”, and you wind up with:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Octant Part 6:Tiling”
Alan Wake EP10: Nightingale, Agent Nightingale
Link (YouTube) |
And we almost made it through a whole episode without fighting any darkness-related creatures. Damn.
Oh well. At least we have coffee.
Project Octant Part 5:The Rainbow Collection
Today we’re finally going to start adding some features to make this thing look a bit more… What? You say you want another digression on noise filtering and interpolation techniques? You sure? Okay then!
(Nerd!)
If you remember from last time, we’re taking tables of random white noise and expanding them to create “interesting” patterns. Stuff like this:
 |
Now, I really don’t want to have the next bunch of images be black & white scramble squares. That’s boring and it’s actually hard to see the effect I’m talking about. So I’ve altered my program to output example images that will use color-blending to make the gradients more clear. So the above image now looks like this:
 |
Just remember we’re not really dealing with color data right now. We’re actually just generating heaps of numbers between zero (dark blue) and one (red) and this color-fade makes it easier to see what we’re doing. Okay? Great.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Octant Part 5:The Rainbow Collection”
Alan Wake EP9: But You Can Hit People With Cars!
Link (YouTube) |
I’ve done it! I finally got rid of Shamus! Now I rule Twenty Sided! Mwahahahaha!
Good thing Rutskarn was able to hire those Algerian terrorists. Even though they might not have actually been terrorists. Or Algerians.
Or people.
Okay, so Shamus might have just gotten sick and didn’t make it to the recording session. Which means he could recover and be back to posting on this blog any day now. Cherish the Shamelessness while it lasts!
From The Archives:
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
Project Frontier
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
PC Hardware is Toast
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Do It Again, Stupid
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.