T w e n t y S i d e d
So, my friends and I have been waiting for the newest “last” Terraria update to come out and it finally arrived. The timing was terrible, though. We all had our own fixations and real life fun things keeping us busy so we didn’t get the opportunity to play together until this week. Now having had some experience with my buddies and on my own solo worlds, I have to say it has really taken me back.
When Terraria first came out in 2011 I was in college. I was with my ex. I was just getting into PC gaming after building a PC with a friend. I was living with my parents but spending as little time at home as possible because that life was hell. I had no money. I had no job. I had no life, really. Now, 15 years later I have an incredible wife, new friends, new hobbies and interests. I don’t have much in common with my past self. I don’t like my past self. And yet Terraria takes me back in time to the simple pleasures of watching some good background content on YouTube or Netflix and spending hours mining away. It’s incredibly fun visiting a classic that happens to be one of my favorite games of all time and still having some of that wonder of new things in the game to discover.
In my DLC article recently I discussed the current trend of Indie games being supported long after the normal lifespan of your average game and Terraria is a perfect example. It’s 15 years later and they still haven’t stopped cranking out free content for us. There have been multiple “final” updates that get followed up with more additions. It’s not just regular content updates either. The game has had tons of quality of life improvements too. Terraria has relatively seamlessly kept up with modern expectations in gaming and that makes it an easy recommendation for the group to go back to every once and a while.
This might be a short post but take it as a prompt to spend some time revisiting a classic with some friends. Also last week’s article was basically novel length, I’m giving myself a bit of a reprieve. <3
Object-Disoriented Programming
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
The Game That Ruined Me
Be careful what you learn with your muscle-memory, because it will be very hard to un-learn it.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
Hardware Review
So what happens when a SOFTWARE engineer tries to review hardware? This. This happens.
Project Button Masher
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
My personal comfort game from 2 decades ago is Heroes of Might and Magic II (or III, depending on my mood). Every once in a while, I’ll just get the urge to fire it up and play a few dozen turns, before re-realizing that I absolutely SUCK at TBS games unless I cheat the hell out of it. XD But the nostalgia urge always comes back.
…I think most of the games I play are comfort games. Super Mario RPG was my first experience with RPGs, and is still in my top 3 for them. Then there’s, like… Double Dragon 2. The old beat-em-up that could only have two opponents on screen at a time; that’s the kind of fight I can survive.
I guess if I wanted to really get into it, I’d have to look up that NES top-down plane shooter that ended with shooting down, like, the moon covered in eyes. I played a good bit of that when I was young, and have no idea what the name is.
…also Strike Gunner, the one that let you pick superweapons for each level, but you could only pick each one once. That might have been my first exposure to the genre, and was definitely the first one I played with friends.
Oh yeah, there it is. Captain Skyhawk. Amazing how little I remember of it.
(Was tempted to leave the typo of “Captain Shykawk”, but childhood deserves better.)
I’ve been trying out the latest Terraria update too! This means a “base” world just to see what’s new; a skyblock world to see what that’s like (kind of boring, actually, given the amount of grinding required to build the world); various secondary worlds/modes for chasing achievements. It got me to start a “For the Worthy” playthrough, which is… quite an experience. Also looking forward to seeing how things look modded after I’ve gone through the base game; when he’s done with Silksong maybe I’ll do some multiplayer with The Kid.
Other than that, as those who’ve seen my Wednesday Action Log updates know, the hex-grid turn-based tactics game Battle for Wesnoth is pretty evergreen for me. It’s always good for a quick skirmish to fill ~15-30 minutes here and there while my mind is on other stuff.
I bought Terraria for my gf a few years ago thinking she’d like it based on Minecraft and Forager and other such games. It was just about the most complicated looking thing I’ve seen, the most PC-type game ever. Suffice to say she didn’t play it, and went back to the likes of Animal Crossing and Bear and Breakfast.