
I think I’ll post these M-W-F until I get tired of them.
– Shamus, Monday Sep 11, 2006
Continue reading 〉〉 “DM of the Rings Remaster: Small Town Blues”

I think I’ll post these M-W-F until I get tired of them.
– Shamus, Monday Sep 11, 2006
Continue reading 〉〉 “DM of the Rings Remaster: Small Town Blues”
This week we skip another 20 years forward. In 1970, the year we’ve lept to, Mr. Smith has passed away and Mrs. Smith is in her 80’s. The house is too big for her, but she is vehemently against being put in a home, so her son has moved in to help manage the place. Let’s decide that the Smiths had three children. Their oldest, a son, has gone into the family business, he’s too busy to help out. Their middle child, a daughter, has children and a family of her own. The youngest Smith boy will be helping Mrs. Smith in her old age. He works under the oldest son at the family company and is very keen to prove he can do something his siblings can’t. He is easily in his 50s, but he’s got no family of his own and never strayed far from home. He isn’t a bad guy, he just lacks direction. We’ll call him Jimbo to avoid any more ‘Mr. Smith” nonsense.
Continue reading 〉〉 “Sims 4 Overthinking: The 70s”
Dad’s made a birthday post consistently for over ten years, so, on one hand, it feels natural to make one of my own. But, on the other hand, it feels like elbowing into a spot I don’t belong, like my cat trying to “share” my recliner with me. Like, sure, okay, you fit, kind of, but at what cost? Nothing feels natural or right, and you literally have a bed right over there. Derailed cat analogy aside, maybe I’m overthinking it.
Continue reading 〉〉 “Ding 25!”

A couple of people were foolish enough to encourage me yesterday, so now I’m inflicting another one on you.
– Shamus, Friday Sep 8, 2006
Continue reading 〉〉 “DM of the Rings Remaster: Been There, Done That”
Mr. and Mrs. Smith began their marriage in 1912. By 1915 they had a custom-built house, courtesy of Mrs. Smith’s father. They were allowed to make whatever decisions they liked, even bad ones, to make their dream home a reality. In my mind, I think Mrs. Smith’s father had a building company, which Mr. Smith was working at and intended to take over once her father retired.
This means that Mr. Smith would have lied through his teeth to his father-in-law. Imagine, for a moment, that the two men are speaking about the house plans. Mr. Smith mentions that they want that awful go-nowhere balcony, for the visuals of it. The father-in-law is a builder by trade and knows this is a horrible idea. But, the moment his eyebrow is raised and he is expressing that he is skeptical of the plan, Mr. Smith is shaking his head and laughing, insisting it’s all his idiot wife’s idea and he’s just going along with what she wants. It’s 1913, both of them laugh at the folly of vain women, and the stupid balcony is built. Mr. Smith was who wanted the balcony, he liked the idea of climbing up there to hang Christmas lights. Mrs. Smith hated the balcony because she was worried he’d break his neck up there.
Continue reading 〉〉 “Sims 4 Overthinking: Function Over Fashion”
Finally, the holidays are over and I am dog tired. I just got some rough news about permanent damage to my ankle and possibly right wrist Thank god that left-handedness is actually the majority in my family. . It’s a lot of stupid bitching and moaning but TLDR; I’m cranky. I swear every time I complain I can almost hear my dad saying exactly the same thing, in the same tone, and with the same candor. Complaining but with enough humor to make sure no one else is uncomfortable. Jeez, I miss that guy, having annoying health issues just makes it more prominent; we always complained together. It wasn’t ever bitter or angry just…almost laughing at the audacity of the universe. I inherited so many of his health issues, it was something to bond about. In hindsight, I think it ripped him apart that he had any hand in passing on that lot in life, but he never let that be the focus of things. He could have so easily made every interaction about my health a pity party, and I’d have stopped telling him about it. But…he didn’t, we just laughed. I’m really, really grateful for that.
I am meaning to sit down and write a Sims 4 Overthinking post, but honestly, I don’t have it in me. Some weeks are super easy, I love writing, I love the Sims, I love this site, I always have. But…some weeks not so much. I went through Steam Rewind on what has become my steam account but used to be dads, ouch, oops, yeah that might be why I don’t have the heart to talk about virtual plumbing right now.
How were your holidays? Or, if you don’t celebrate any, how were your last 3-4 weeks? I don’t always have the energy to reply to comments right now, but I read all of them. The community here helps, a lot. Thanks for sticking around.
Continue reading 〉〉 “Steam Rewind”
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?