Link (YouTube) |
And so our mailbag week comes to an end. Initially I was rather concerned at the prospect of doing an entire week of probing Q&A episodes, but in the end I think it turned out alright.
Next week we should return to our normal routine of complaining bitterly about Mass Effect 2’s plot. Provided Rutskarn’s internet troubles don’t persist through the weekend anyway. Though I hear Mumbles has a sock-puppet she named “Hipster” that would be happy to fill in for a week as a guest host…
Link (YouTube) |
I don’t know what sort of temporal garbage disposal we pass through every week, but every Sunday night we misplace several hours. I sign on at 9pm, hang out with the Spoiler Waring crew for an hour and a half, and then sign off again at 2:30am.
I distinctly remember us losing at least two hours to this conversation, but here is, somehow fitting into four 15-minute episodes. I don’t have any explanation for this. Perhaps a DeLorean is involved.
This has been on my to-do list since Josh and Mumbles began posting here. I need a quick visual way to let the reader know who wrote the post. Usually this is done in a byline, at the end, which I always thought was a bit late for that sort of trivia. I know this is causing confusion for some of you. (And me, to be honest. I’m still not used to the idea of sitting down and finding new posts on my own blog. It’s like finding new groceries in your fridge. Awesome, but disorienting.)
Having a picture of the author is obviously the way to go. I can easily pull up the avatar for the author and make it whatever size I like. We already have the author’s name at the top, but since that says “Shamus” 99.99% of the time, there’s not much reason for people to look there. Then Mumbles says something like, “As a woman, I’m offended by Shamus’ willingness to put words in my mouth!” and people read it in my voice. Suddenly it sounds like I’m [even more] schizophrenic, gender-confused, and an idiot.
Where the picture should be put? I could put it on the right of the title, opposite the category pic. I could put it beside the category pic. I could put it on another line just below the category pic. The important thing is that the header should be as compact as possible, while maintaining some sort of pretense of caring about aesthetics.
Any suggestions? Any blogs that do this properly that I might emulate?
EDIT: IT IS DONE.
I’ve made a plugin that will add the author’s icon to the beginning of every post. Except, it wasn’t that easy. I had to make it search past all the images and youtube embeds and whatever other crap might be sitting at the top of the post, and then scan down and find the first real paragraph of text. And then it has to tuck the icon in between the opening <p> and the actual first letter of prose.
But it seems to work. I might fuss very slightly with the theme, but let’s see how this shakes out. It might break some obscure old posts in my archives. Rather than inspect all of my thousands of posts manually, I’ll just wait for one of the many archive-skimmers to notice and say something.
Thanks for the feedback.
Link (YouTube) |
In this episode we actually talk about a thing called Dungeons and Dragons. I heard it’s kinda fun? My only real-life experience with it was in High School where I got kicked out of a campaign because I wanted to make a Robot Abraham Lincoln. Josh mentions a game we tried to start with Randy one late night in Ventrilo through some shotty D&D program. But, I’m not sure if that counts since we just spent the entire time getting in bar fights before promptly being kidnapped.
I’m not entirely sure how a campaign would go with these boys. I’ve heard stories about Shamus vanishing from the group in Borderlands so that he could park everyone’s vehicles on top of an impossible peak. Rutskarn is unrelenting in his hipster swagger and drawn out, blood curdling puns. And, Josh insists on breaking everything in his path. I don’t know if I’d get out of it alive.
A few of you guessed it already – this is the long-awaited “probing” episode, where we show off the probe minigame of Mass Effect 2, which can only be called a game under the broadest possible use of the word. It’s a game in the same way that coloring in an entire sheet of graph paper with pencil might be called arts & crafts. The idea is that you scan the surface of the world, launch mining probes, and then take the resulting resources and buy upgrades. Note that the speed at which the cursor can scroll over the planet is limited, and at launch it was much slower than what you see in the video.
Link (YouTube) |
Our intent was to make a single mailbag episode, and we got together on Sunday with that goal in mind. Five hours later it became clear that questions and the answering thereof is a time-consuming endeavor. So this is what we’re doing this week. Probing and answering questions.
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This is the most impressive construction I’ve seen in Minecraft. It’s not the biggest or the most labor-intensive, but it does capture a murderously elaborate building. This one isn’t on the Twentymine Server, so I don’t know where you would go to get the tour. Still impressive, though.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Postcards From Minecraft, Part 6”
I made a joke in an episode of Spoiler Warning last week about how I didn’t know anything about (American) football. That’s only 95% true. Very occasionally, I have paid attention to the game in the past. Understand that it was very, very hard to grow up this close to Pittsburgh in the 1970’s and not have some of the football fandom rub off on you. My brother is a zealous Pittsburgh sports fan, and keeps the rest of the family abreast of which celebrity athletes are overrated preening hacks and which rule changes are bringing the pastime to ruin. Talking to him always reminds me of how vast other fields of knowledge can get, an ersatz version of a total perspective vortex.
Yesterday was a family gathering at my parents, and so when I sat down with Patrick I decided to find out how much I didn’t know this week.
SHAMUS
So, how are the Steelers doing this year?
The conversation STOPS. Everyone looks towards the table.
PATRICK
Dude, are you messing with me?
MOM
Patrick! He’s pulling your leg!
SHAMUS
No. (Laughs.) I mean, I guess they’re doing good, right? I mean, I know they’re doing good. I was just asking…
MOM
Did you not notice the decorations?
SHAMUS looks around the room. Black and gold towels are hung over the backs of chairs. A CAKE is decorated with black and gold frosting, and beside it is a large plate of black and gold SMILEY COOKIES. MOM and PATRICK are both wearing black and gold. ANGELA has black and gold fingernail polish.
SHAMUS
Yeah. That’s… Oh wow. You guys really went all out this year. Is that because they made the playoffs?
PATRICK
(Deadpan.) The Superbowl is tomorrow.
SHAMUS
Yeah. Is it? And the Steelers are playing?
(Beat.)
PATRICK
(Deadpan.) The Steelers are playing.
(Long, awkward pause.)
SHAMUS
Yay! Go Steelers!
I had a plugin for running polls installed at one point, but I either uninstalled it or it went out-of-date. So we’ll do a manual poll, which is sometimes called a conversation. So do you care about American Football? Do you have a favorite for today’s game?
EDIT: Like I said, I don’t have proper poll software installed, but allow me to simulate this incredible chart of the poll results:
| Pittsburgh Steelers: | . |
| Green Bay Packers: | . |
| Complete and all-encompassing apathy: | _____________________________________ |
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.
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
T w e n t y S i d e d
