T w e n t y S i d e d
DM of the Rings Remastered CXII: Insubstantial
Wednesday Action Log 03-26-25
This week I’ve been playing more Deep Rock Galactic, and R.E.P.O.
R.E.P.O. continues to be fun. I’ve been having fun tumble launching myself at enemies to stun them. then I am promptly killed by that enemy, while my sibling try’s to collect the recourses to revive me. I’ve also realized you can stun the duck by flushing it in the toilet.
Deep Rock Galactic, on the other hand is mostly just me farming for levels so I promote all the dwarfs. Engineer and Scout are already promoted and I’m currently working on the Driller. He’s fine but I miss having my grapple hook or the turrets, maybe I’ll miss his equipment when I move on to the Gunner.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
So Much Dirt
The last few weeks have been awful, weather-wise. See the splash image above? That’s the sky. That’s dust. And the image pictured is on a good day. We’ve had a couple of 40 – 60mph days and probably six 20 – 40mph days. A dozen or more 15 – 20mph days. I’ve been dusting most of the house every couple of days. Running the vacuum a lot, and pulling pounds of dirt out of the carpet. It’s tiring. This also has been awful for everyone’s health. People are literally sneezing dirt. I am so looking forward to moving away from here.
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DM of the Rings Remastered CXI: You Can’t Take it With You
Wednesday Action Log 03-19-25
This week is more of the same, Deep Rock Galactic, and R.E.P.O.
nothing new with Deep Rock Galactic, just bugs and minerals.
R.E.P.O. on the other hand continues to be delightfully silly. The game has remained spooky despite its silly nature, and there is a lot more skill involved than I previously thought. It turns out you can get significantly better at hiding under tables and throwing lawn gnomes
Anyway, what’s everyone else doing this week?
Spring 2025 Around My Gaming World
General news update. Probably one or two other things. The latest Galactic Season has started in Star Wars: The Old Republic. As expected and understood, there is no real story for this season and no voice acting; a facet of the game that has been a prominent feature until the last year or so. There is an ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike against performing in video games, and a handful of attempts to “go around” the strike have been caught by the strikers. It has been interesting to watch Reddit discussions on this feature, as it shows how many people are actually noticing the lack of voice acting AND how many players of the game seem to know *why* there is no voice acting already. The primary functionality of this season is playing “Uprisings” with new stimulants that have unknown effects. SWTOR Uprisings are four-player, existing-open-world short missions that essentially work like those “survive X waves of assault” and/or “while moving from point A to point B.” They are meant to be kind-of “short” Flashpoints for multiplayer content. I don’t play them myself, although I don’t rule out maybe trying them in the future. I have a couple of characters geared up and playable enough to not embarrass myself, I think; but I just don’t do hardly any multiplayer. The biggest prizes of “beating the season” so-to-speak seems to be the same combination of mounts, pets, appearance armor, Cartel Coins, etc.; so I’m taking part of course. It’s free appearance stuff!
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spring 2025 Around My Gaming World”
DM of the Rings Remastered CX: Roleplaying, at Last
From The Archives:
Tenpenny Tower
Bethesda felt the need to jam a morality system into Fallout 3, and they blew it. Good and evil make no sense and the moral compass points sideways.
Good Robot Dev Blog
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
Quakecon 2012 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Spec Ops: The Line
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
This Game is Too Videogame-y
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
MMO Population Problems
Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.