T w e n t y S i d e d
…things get a little bit busy. And by “busy” I mean sometimes **** just falls off the rails and you struggle to keep your head above water. That’s mixing metaphors quite badly, I think. Images of a train crash and going in the water in an uncontrolled way, which I guess *could* actually be related. The Well There’s Your Problem podcast did a great episode on the “Overseas Railroad” for the Florida Keys, where a train crash could literally throw you into the Atlantic Ocean. Or technically the Gulf of Mexico, I guess.
A few weeks ago I was just zooming along with my primary task related to Twenty Sided being relocating some old files to a different host to make space. And I’m not even entirely sure I can *remember* what all has happened since then. One car replacement, another car broke its serpentine belt and yet somehow still drove 30 miles without even getting SLIGHTLY warm, got the belt replaced, AND IS FINE NOW. One bathroom floor replaced, one front screen door replaced (and subsequently broken by the effin’ German Shepherd who doesn’t understand why doors, walls, or windows don’t open for him when he wants and proceeds to open them however he can (and yet is otherwise a complete wimp. The miniature dachshund picks on him. Oh, and I was able to fix the door. Unfortunately it looks like this particular design is not German Shepherd-proof.) My dad finally found out what’s causing his deteriorating motor skills. He’s had bad shaking and has been reduced to shuffling (he has trouble picking up his feet), and he’s certainly old enough and has been through enough to just say “well, that’s old age” and be done with it…but this all came on pretty suddenly. Just in the past couple of months he has developed a problem with sudden fatigue and dizziness. He’s also had both knees replaced; the first of which they botched the physical therapy so it’s been a bit stiff from the beginning. The second one they put a bad “part” in and had to REDO THE SURGERY to replace it, and in the second surgery he got an antibiotic-resistant infection. It is under control now but could be a problem again at any time. In fact I lost my closest friend a few years ago to the same thing. Anyway, long story short (too late, I know) in dealing with all that the doctors ended up trying to deal with non-step swelling, and in dealing with that his blood pressure and heart rate went almost out-of-control, and in dealing with that we finally eliminated heart problems from the list of possible causes of his shaking, memory problems, shuffling, and sudden bouts with dizziness and fatigue; and finally found out he has Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. The current treatment prognosis is trying to get it to NOT make things worse, but he should be able to walk better. The other problems…we’ll see. And speaking of “see,” I was right. I almost forgot about the late-night tire blowout and the other flat that needed to be changed. We live in rural Texas. They don’t really maintain the roads much around here. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner stopped working and had to be replaced.
Since switching to using my Dell laptop as my primary computer, I haven’t had much of a problem with normal stuff. Like writing, file management, etc. Pretty light usage, really; but I do like it to be instant and spotless. Playing games has been more problematic. Not so much in getting things to work in the first place (with some exceptions) but in getting the games to run. As I have documented repeatedly, Steam-based and GOG-based games generally install without problem, and most start without any issue as well. Usually trouble occurs when doing something more memory-intensive. Star Wars The Old Republic will cause *Steam* to crash with an excessive memory usage error if I have other programs running, such as the Discord app or sometimes even Firefox. Switching in and out of the game can trigger this behavior if it is otherwise running ok. The 12GB of RAM this laptop is limited to likely is the main culprit, although using a slower, SATA mechanical hard drive for my Steam archive is undoubtedly part of the problem. Until just the last week this could be managed.
And honestly, there are other issues with the recent “problems.” I came across several videos on YouTube about collecting…well, everything…in World of Warcraft. One player, Lord Knabble, is using one character to collect everything in the original areas of World of Warcraft, and that got me interested in trying the same thing. I last left off in WoW doing something similar with a couple of characters, because my attempt to play through Wrath of the Lich King was just boring the pants off me. But that was on the big computer; I didn’t have WoW installed on the laptop. And I can’t get it going. After several attempts and some research, I’ve come across a few posts from a few months ago that something changed in the Battle.net launcher that has caused *some* players to have trouble installing or even launching an existing installation. Clearly not everyone, but it was several people all at the same time. Installing and running through Steam is getting more popular, but I ran into my old friend trying to install:
Incidentally, Lord of the Rings Online works *fine.* No problems of any kind. Not even slow-downs.
I did manage to play ONE new game in the past couple of weeks. With all the talk about horror games because it’s that time of year, I downloaded (and ran without problems) Do You Copy?, a 2017 Gamejam creation. Created in 24 hours (that’s what the ‘Gamejam’ thing means), Do You Copy? is highly-regarded for its atmosphere and restraint. You play as a park ranger on a Lookout Tower (think Firewatch) and your movement is constrained essentially to the single room at the top of the tower. You can read a lot of things in this room that gives background to the story. None of this is necessary to play the game. Your mechanics are interacting with your radio and answering questions, and activating the spotlight on the walkway railing just outside your door. There are six endings (but not really) and a play-through only takes a few minutes. I mean, it was made in 24 hours, what did you expect? Two sequels have been made, one over the course of a week (allegedly) and one that…took longer. Neither is particularly liked or well-reviewed.
This paragraph has spoilers, so if you want to play the game yourself you can go do that right quick. You can get all six endings in about 40 minutes. You can come back and pick up at this paragraph.
SPOILER BREAK
There is a “good” ending, a “bad” ending,” an “almost as bad” ending, and three “well, at least you survived” endings. The story is simple: right after you go “on shift,” you will get a call on your radio from a panicked hiker being chased by someone or something. The hiker will ask you (in either the first message or their second message) if they should follow the right path or the left path. It doesn’t actually matter what you say. This choice has no significance to the story. The second choice does: the hiker will ask about heading toward the mine or the lake (at least that’s how it comes off in the story). Heading toward the lake will result in the “bad ending” or one of two of the “you survived” endings. The “mine” choice will give you the “good” ending, the “almost as bad” ending, or one of the “you survived” endings. Either choice will take you to another question to help the lost hiker. One answer in both cases will lead directly to one of the “you survived” endings. This is the shortest game you can play, going from loading to ending in just a few minutes. The other choice will lead to another interaction to determine the final ending: how you use the spotlight/floodlights at the appropriate time. If you forgo the lights, you get the final “you survived” ending…but the hiker is dead. Just as with the other “you survived” endings…maybe I should have mentioned that already. If you DO activate the lights on the path involving the Lake that does give you this option, well; it doesn’t matter. This is the “bad” ending and everyone dies. On the path to the MINE however, if you reach the option to do the lights; you can ignore them, flash them once, or flash them multiple times. As long as you don’t leave the lights on for a long time (you have to hold the mouse button down to do this, the light switch is damaged so the lights only come on when you hold the mouse button down), you’ll get the good ending. Everyone lives! If you DO hold your mouse button down, hoping the hiker uses the light wisely…they do! But you die.
And that’s it. That’s the game. You don’t even see what gets you, or the hiker. Or both. Or neither. Technically. You see some glowing red dots that I think are meant to be eyes, but they look out-of-scale with the surroundings. But I guess you could say it’s sort-of in your mind. Does the game work? Ehhhh…it can. If you go out of your way to make your environment spooky, and you actually read the things posted and take the situation seriously, this game can be creepy. Eschewing a direct chase or exposure of what is “out there” helps a LOT. Limiting your movement to one room and not having any protection or control of the access to your location can make you feel vulnerable if you get into the game. Especially since the “whatever it is,” which could actually be the hiker in a deranged state-of-mind, communicates with you and indicates it is coming for you. This is the most effective part of the narrative, the possibility that the hiker you’re meant to help is actually a serial killer trying to GET TO YOU.
The flip side is, if you know ANYTHING about the game going in, you know it’s gonna be short and very limited. *It was made in a day,* for goodness sake. If that’s playing in the back of your mind, you *know* it’s gonna be over in a few minutes no matter what. Reading all the material can slow you down, but this really takes effect on later playings, because the radio messages make you want to hurry and watch the woods to see what you can see. You don’t want to read a book or look at pictures while trying to save someone’s life. If that’s what you’re doing.
But the game is NOT BAD. I can’t really tell anyone not to try it. It works on almost everything (if it worked on my laptop running Linux, etc.) and only takes a few minutes for each game. The sequels? Have NOT been recommended. By anyone.
That’s it for this week! See you later!
Artless in Alderaan
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
I thought this was going to have something to do with the approaching of Christmas! I put up some hallowe’en lights. I have never been particularly fussed about hallowe’en. It sort of melds into one with Bonfire Night and general autumn festivity. Go and see a fireworks display for Bonfire Night, toffee apples, treacle toffee, honeycomb / cinder toffee, maybe bobbing for apples will be somewhere. The sort of bad barbecues we have here. Rain. Turn the lights off so that trick or treaters will leave you alone if you’re in an area where it’s not children with their parents but but rather rough teenagers in hoodies asking for money. That sort of thing. But of late the amount of hallowe’en merchandise available in shops has skyrocketed, and in the village I lived for a couple of years there were more hallowe’en lights on houses than there were Christmas lights a couple months later, it was fascinating, huge inflatable spiders on porch roofs, graveyards on front lawns, mummies, spiderwebs, coffins with corpses. It was, to be fair, fantastic. And encouraged me to actually open the door to trick or treaters and be disappointed that there weren’t many. There were even a couple of teenagers in outfits. Now I live in a part of a city in which even the number of christmas lights is way down, due to a large demographic shift to culturally non-British people, and so I can’t rely on others to provide the christmas light experience of my childhood being driven around the local streets looking at lights. So last year I got some outdoor xmas lights. And this year I thought you know what I’d like to see some orange and purple, and got a spider and a cauldron, and nailed both on the garage door next to the father christmas. Unlike the father christmas one, which is white when not switched on, these have black frames, against a white door, so I’ll have to remove them in a month’s time! It’s grey enough during the day that I might not even bother turning them off at all.
We live outside of the nearest town now, so no Trick-or-Treat’ers; but we lived IN that town for over a decade. In the early 2000’s we had lots of kids every Halloween. By 2010 the community had bought into the idea that was dangerous and sponsored “controlled” visitations in marked areas. Where the people handing out candy, etc. had to follow certain rules AND PAY A FEE to participate, in exchange for being able to hand out and/or advertise whatever they wanted. Small, rural Texas area, so almost all of the particpants were the local churches and church groups. That pretty much killed neighborhood Trick-or-Treaters. I have HEARD these events have been held less and less the last few years, because all of the various groups have decided they’re not really getting anything out of it. I mean, small area. It’s the same people you would be seeing in every other situation ANYWAY.
I will be talking about Christmas soon. Although interestingly, I have seen (especially on some of the British and European channels I follow) a lot of commentary about how Christmas stock has shown up in stores much earlier than it has been. I’ve been seeing it for a month now in larger cities, so America was following the same timing.
Mince pies have hit the shops at the beginning of September for the last couple of years. Have people become more miserable and just want it to be xmas as soon as it’s ‘back to school’ time? Maybe the fact that I was expecting a xmas post from that headline, and that I’m writing about it, is answer for myself. As Autumn falls and jumpers have to be brought out, the heating has to come on, and the nights come earlier, the longing for xmas does begin in some ways. Despite Hallowe’en getting bigger here, somehow that hasn’t stopped xmas coming earlier, apparently both can be true. My friend has had his xmas tree up for weeks. But that’s because his wife is from the Phillippines. Apparently in the Phillippines you get 3-4 months of full xmas. Not just the shops getting in early to get a headstart their most lucrative period, but decorations and celebrations. Quite literally a festive season. Perhaps that’s what we’re all headed towards. The only decorations I’ve seen up recently are the flags that festoon our high streets and suburban streets now on lampposts, some divisive political activism shenanigans going on by people not happy with the lack of integration of immigrants, or feeling disenfranchised for a variety of reasons, some real, some imagined, some ignored, some mocked, etc., unintentionally and ironically displaying foreign tendencies themselves by being outwardly patriotic in a flag-waving manner, usually the reserve of the times when the World Cup is on. What I hope happens is that people put up a load of other flags too and we end up with a beautiful array of flags from around the world. I wonder if they’ll stay up when the xmas lights on the lampposts come on. I’ve never actually known if the xmas lights stay up all year and I just don’t notice them while they’re off, or if they actually take them down and put them up every year.
Aside from all that, when I saw the picture with “do you copy?”, without reading the text, I assumed it was a sad figure of a person looking downwards dejectedly and the tagline was a player-choice or a question asked of the player, for whether or not you copy someone/something, such as in a test when you’re not allowed to. A moral choice / confession. I now see that it’s a microphone :D
Re: “Do You Copy?” picture. That’s what I thought two the first time I saw it. It was only after playing the game that I realized it was a microphone for the radio set.