Chainmail Bikini is now on strip #8. We’ve just finished introducing Marcus’ character, and as part of that introduction one of the other characters forcefully groped “her”. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you’ll just have to read it or skip this. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Chainmail Bikini: Controversy!”
First off, Color Jack is a cool little tool, and fun to manipulate. It’s for anyone who’s ever wondered, “what colors would look good with this?”
Now, when I try it in Firefox is works fine. Just slide the points around and they do their thing. In Internet Explorer, the program runs with an agonizing slowness. You’d think that color sphere was comprised of 10,000 bump-mapped self-shadowing polygons. It gets about a frame a second. How can it possibly be that slow?
Very odd.
Rampant Coyote followed up to my earlier posts on this subject. Mr. Halbert had more thoughts on this as well. (And while I’m thinking about it: I check Technorati for incoming links. Technorati is sometimes capricious and unpredictable. As always, if you have a response post on your blog feel free to throw a link in the comments.)
I do notice that two of the big items on everyone’s list of things computer RPG’s should have are:
But that’s not so much a pair of features as a tradeoff. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Freedom vs. Story”
I am continually amazed by the absurd and useless things people learn to do. There seem to be entire hobbies and skill sets that have no other purpose outside of making amusing YouTube videos. See also: Cup stacking.
How long does it take to lean to do something like this, as compared to (say) learning to Tap Dance or play the Violin?
Still, I gotta hand it to them: That is really amazing. It didn’t even look possible for the first few seconds. At first I thought it was a magic trick.
Amazing.
The DMotR comics are down. It seems that the comic’s ravenous appetite for bandwidth has finally caught up with it, and shamusyoung.mu.nu has been placed on a diet. I think the limit was 300GB of transfer. Yikes.
I expect the bandwidth meter to reset at the onset of October, so we should be back up and running in a couple of days. The comic is finally cooling down now that I’m no longer posting new ones, so I don’t think this will happen again.
LATER: Looks like it’s all better now. Still, if you’re going to run out of bandwidth, eighteen hours before the meter resets is a really good time to do so.
I thought I’d post some spoilers for The White Chamber. There are a lot of endings for the game, and you don’t really get a feel for the whole story until you see a couple of them. (And I really didn’t consider the game complete until I got the “good” ending.)
You should reach the end of the game at least once before reading more. (Actually, a lot of this won’t even make sense until you’ve taken a trip through the game.) Spoilers ahead. Duh.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The White Chamber: Endings”
Earlier in the week someone lamented the passing of the Adventure Game genre. Adventure games were how a lot of us 30 and 40-somethings were introduced to PC gaming. Adventure games once ruled the Earth, and now we’re lucky if we get one a year. (And we’re even more lucky if it actually tells a full story and not a suckerpunch “installment”.)
I think Erik of the now-defunct Old Man Murray pretty much cut to the heart of things with adventure games and what killed them. The genre was really polluted with stupid titles and awful puzzles. For every Full Throttle and Grim Fandango (both of which I sadly missed) we got a half dozen “Pixel Hunt VII: Maximum Save and Restore”. I loved the humor of both Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest, but those games had some absurd “puzzles” and a penchant for offing your character every three or four clicks. Ugh. Games from LucasArts were better, but they just don’t make them like that anymore.
But here is an interesting nod to the good old days of LucasArts adventure games: The White Chamber, a sci-fi horror point and click adventure game. You can download the full and complete game for free.
The game makes a poor first impression. I was put off by the anime style (even though I like anime, go figure) and the initial room is exceedingly dull. The very first “puzzle” isn’t much to write home about, either. If you can get through the first five minutes, the game gets a lot better and a lot more interesting. I don’t want to say too much more. It’s good to go into this one cold, without knowing too much about the plot.
You can beat the game in under two hours, but the game is designed to be played multiple times. Experiment with how you answer questions and how you solve problems in order to get the different endings.
Very enjoyable.
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Be careful what you learn with your muscle-memory, because it will be very hard to un-learn it.
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
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.
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
T w e n t y S i d e d
