Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 29, 2018

Filed under: Rants 90 comments

 7 Bits of Misguided AdvicePrevious Post

Well, it’s been half a year since I added something to the “rants” category. I guess we’re due. I should warn you that while I normally try to keep things civil and family friendly around here, this post is going to be pretty raw. This last week has been an ordeal of frustration and dismay and I’m pretty fucking salty about it, is what I’m saying.

I’m sure you noticed that my site was down for almost a week. This is the longest stretch of downtime my domain has experienced since I launched it in 1999. Blame for this is divided thus:

To be fair, you could probably bump my blame percentage as high as 6 or even 7.

First, some background: There are two parts to webhosting. One, you need someone to hold onto your domain name. Two, we need someone to host your files and databases to make the site go. These two things don’t NEED to be hosted by the same company, but in the past I preferred to keep them together to keep billing simple. My wife runs a lot of sites and a lot of domains. She uses a different service, but we like to keep the total number of hosts and registrars as low as possible so we don’t have a bunch of chaos trying to figure out what bills go with which sites / domains. Putting my domain and web hosting on the same account seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

When you go to a webpage, there’s a multi-step process that takes place. First you request the domain from your DNS: foobar.com. Then the DNS serverYes, I’m aware that this is a case of RAS syndrome. goes, “Say, who is in charge of the domain for foobar.com? That’s AlyxHosting.” So then it asks AlyxHosting for the IP address where you can find foobar.com. AlyxHosting replies with an IP address where you can find the site. Let’s say: 12.34.56.78.

It turns out that 12.34.56.78 is owned by the webhosting company BarneyHosting. BarneyHosting sees the request come in at 12.34.56.78 for foobar.com. BarneyHosting has a great big datacenter full of machines in racks. It knows that foobar.com is stored on machine #19 in directory /user/foobar/www/. So then it looks in that directory and sends you the files.

This explanation is simplified enough that I’ve probably pissed off a bunch of professional sysadmins, but there’s no way they’re more pissed off than I am. Let’s move on and hope they forget about it.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “1 And 1 Equals Zero”

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.

 7 Bits of Misguided AdvicePrevious Post

Next PostWelcome to the New Site 

90 comments

Welcome To the New Site

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jan 24, 2018

Filed under: Notices 83 comments

 Site MovePrevious Post

Next PostWhat's New? 

If you see this post, then you have joined me on the new webhost. Welcome. If you look around, you’ll notice everything is basically the same. That’s actually kind of disappointing, considering the work it took to get us here.

(If you’re curious, I went with 1And1 Hosting. Seems pretty fine so far. Good speed. The control panel makes sense, although it has some annoying upsell features I keep bumping into when looking for controls. I got the low-level access I wanted and I even managed to use the Linux shell without killing anyone. I’m so proud of myself.)

What’s really strange is that there are still people seeing the old site. They can’t see this. The old blog is still running, even though I can no longer get to it. I can’t moderate the comments or post updates back there. The people left behind are like the folks that end up trapped in ghostly Silent Hill: Inhabitants of a purgatorial realm that have no idea they’re trapped.

I’ve still got a bunch of fussy housekeeping to deal with. I’ve taken the Wolfenstein post and pushed it off until next week. I’m sorry this entire week has been nothing but boring maintenance announcements. If it makes you feel any better, you should be able to edit your comments again. I mean, there’s no content to talk about this week, but if there was just imagine the typos you could fix!

The forums should return soon. Let me know if you’re still missing any features / plugins.

UPDATE: I’m doing the domain transfer now. I thought this would be quick and painless, but aparently it can result in days(?!WTF!?) of downtime. Hopefully it goes quickly.

(I don’t know why I’m posting this, if the site goes down you won’t see it.)

UPDATE 2 DAYS LATER: I fully retract any endorsement I gave this host. If you signed up for their service based on my recommendation, I sincerely apologize. I’m monumentally unhappy with how they’re handling things. I’ll have a more complete rant up once I’m done fighting with them. I’m torn between dropping them and moving to a new host, or staying with them and hoping nothing else goes wrong. On one hand, I don’t want to move AGAIN because I can’t tolerate any more downtime. On the other hand, my account is only three days old and I’m already feeling angry and powerless. How much worse will they treat me once the “money back guarantee” period is over? So I dunno.

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.

 Site MovePrevious Post

Next PostWhat's New? 

83 comments

Site Move

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 23, 2018

Filed under: Notices 56 comments

 Future SeriesPrevious Post

Next PostWelcome To the New Site 

I’ve been with Hosting Matters for almost 12 years. For all that time, they’ve hosted the site you’re looking at right now. It’s been a good run, but the site is moving. I’ve been feeling like I need to migrate for a while now. With the recent security concerns, now seems like a good time to pack up and move.

What you need to know:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Site Move”

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.

 Future SeriesPrevious Post

Next PostWelcome To the New Site 

56 comments

Future Series

By Shamus Posted Sunday Jan 21, 2018

Filed under: Notices 168 comments

 Broken Stuff and Security ConcernsPrevious Post

Next PostSite Move 

Last week we wrapped up my Borderlands series, and this coming week will be the start of my series on Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. These things generally take months to write, so it’s time for me to begin work on the next one. I’ve got a few candidates I’ve been batting around, and I thought I’d discuss the pros and cons of writing about each one.

Fallout 4 is obviously a game people never get tired of talking about. I’ve had a few essays on it lingering in Google docs for over a year now. The problem is that it feels a bit like beating a dead horse. There are things wrong with the game, and I think Bethesda knows they’re wrong and I think they don’t care. This series would be less about constructive criticism and more about cathartic bitching and moaning. Also, writing this series means playing through the game without mods, and that’s not a lot of fun for me. So the main thing holding this series back is basic laziness.

It might be interesting to do a deep dive on Grand Theft Auto V. (And do a bit of a retrospective on the series as a whole.) I’m conflicted about this game. It’s probably one of the greatest feats of open-world construction I’ve ever seen and some of it can be really fun, but I can’t stand the game’s snarky Holden Caulfield approach to comedy where the writers just piss all over a strawman caricature of American culture and accuse everyone of being phonies. I enjoy playing this game, but sometimes I want to punch it in the face. So that might make for a worthwhile discussion.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Future Series”

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.

 Broken Stuff and Security ConcernsPrevious Post

Next PostSite Move 

168 comments

Borderlands Part 25: Wrapping Up

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jan 18, 2018

Filed under: Borderlands 114 comments

 Borderlands Part 24: The Rise of Handsome JackPrevious Post

Earlier in the series I paid lip service to the notion that “the story doesn’t matter”. Hey, it’s just a comedy game, right? This isn’t Mass Effect. We’re not here for the story so it’s okay if it doesn’t work. But now that I’ve made my case against the story, let me do a face-heel turn:

Story matters more than most people think it does.

The post-credits reveal shows the newly-minted Handsome Jack - complete with mask - choking the life out of corporate rival Tassiter. This would have been so much better if Tassiter had been a larger element of the story.

It’s true that not every game needs to be Planescape: Torment. I’m not expecting Witcher 3 levels of storytelling from Bulletstorm. Death Road to Canada doesn’t need to tell a story like the Last of Us.

A story doesn’t need to be big, complex, profound, clever, poignant, hilarious, long, incisive, or surprising. But if a writer tries to make a story do those things then it’s worth looking to see if they succeeded. Even if you don’t care about the story in terms of learning what happens next, the story provides the context and tone through which we experience the gameworld. Having a “good” story doesn’t mean having one that’s long, complex, deeply emotional, or philosophically profound. A good story just needs to achieve its goals and remain true to its characters.

Diablo II didn’t have a lot of story. In terms of story-to-gameplay ratio, the player spent many hours clicking on monsters for every minute they spent watching those cutscenes. But even though the vignettes were short and far between, they still accomplished the basic goal of telling you why you were going to these places and clicking on these monsters. They made it clear that this world was dark and desperate, and that even though your character seemed pretty powerful they were still very small in the face of such overwhelming forces. That setup and mood is still there in the back of your mind, even when you’re grinding for rare drops and skipping cutscenes. The Diablo II story accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, and doesn’t get in the way beyond that.

It’s true that there are lots of fun games with terrible stories. But that doesn’t mean the story doesn’t matter. It means the game would have been even better if the story had delivered on whatever it was trying to do.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Borderlands Part 25: Wrapping Up”

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.

 Borderlands Part 24: The Rise of Handsome JackPrevious Post

114 comments

The Death of Half-Life 3

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 16, 2018

Filed under: Column 281 comments

 This Dumb Industry: Wilson BoxesPrevious Post

Next PostThis Dumb Industry: Violence and Science Fiction 

I didn’t get around to mentioning it in my end-of-2017 retrospective, but one of the big stories of the year was that Marc Laidlaw, the lead writer of the Half-Life series, published his own story outline for the game that Could Have Been But Never Was. Laidlaw had been with Valve for 18 years before departed the company back in 2016. The story he published is ostensibly what was planned for Half-Life 3.

Having read the story synopsis, I have to say it felt just right. This feels exactly like the sort of story I’d expect from the series. Outside of Valve everyone had guesses, fan theories, fan fiction, and suggestions for what could / should happen in Half-Life 3, but none of them quite hit the mark the way this did. Like I said during my Mass Effect series:

Sir Terry Pratchett was an amazing talent. But if J. K. Rowling had hired him in 2002 to help her pump out Harry Potter books twice as fast, it would have fundamentally changed the tone of the series. Different creative people come up with different ideas, and this will give the new work a different texture. And even if it's an improvement – even if you want to argue that Pratchett-Potter books are better than Rowling-Potter books, the new books will still feel ill-fitting and alien to people who fell in love with the originals.

Amazingly enough, it turns out Marc Laidlaw is really good at writing fiction in the style of Marc Laidlaw, so this unofficial ending to the story rings true for me. This takes the edge off of never getting a follow-up to the cliffhanger ending of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. We at least have an answer to the question of “Where was the author going with all of this?”

Of course, this doesn’t ease the annoyance of never getting another Half-Life game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Death of Half-Life 3”

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 Dumb Industry: Wilson BoxesPrevious Post

Next PostThis Dumb Industry: Violence and Science Fiction 

281 comments

Super Mario Odyssey Is “No Masterpiece”

By Shamus Posted Sunday Jan 14, 2018

Filed under: Game Reviews 185 comments

 Now Playing: Wolfenstein II: The New ColossusPrevious Post

Next PostSteam Backlog: Fract OSC 

Like I’ve said in the past, Joseph Anderson is one of my favorite game reviewers. His content usually isn’t directly useful to me because our tastes are so hopelessly divergent that we have very few games in common. Even when we do both play the same game, we come away with very different opinions and seem to want different things out of the games themselves. But while I can’t use his reviews as a guide as to whether I’ll like a game or not, they’re immensely informative in helping me understand what makes these other fandoms tick. If I ever find myself thinking, “How can anyone enjoy X?” then all I need to do is find a Joseph Anderson review of X and I’ll be able to turn the question around and ask, “Dangit, why can’t *I* enjoy X?”

Anyway, here is his two hour(!!) review of Super Mario Odyssey:

Link (YouTube)

This is really interesting because it goes against the grain of what I’ve been hearing from critics. I’m not part of the Mario fandom, so I really only hear about the game from big sites. And according to those kinds of people, Odyssey is an instant masterpiece. But Anderson makes the case that the game is shallow, repetitive, uninspired, and lacking in meaningful challenges.

It’s always a little scary when you stick your neck out and argue with a consensus. I know this because next week I’m going to be starting a series where I do exactly that and I won’t rest easy until I’ve made my case. There’s always the worry you’ll end up arguing with an angry crowd, and that’s no fun.

I know I don’t have a lot of Mario fans here. My audience definitely leans towards PC games in terms of platform, and RPG games in terms of genre. But if you’ve spent time with Odyssey I’d be interested to hear what you thought of it. Are you new to Mario / Nintendo? Did you like Odyssey at first? Did you actually finish it, or did you get bogged down by the busywork repetition?

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.

 Now Playing: Wolfenstein II: The New ColossusPrevious Post

Next PostSteam Backlog: Fract OSC 

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