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I mentioned my brother in this episode (Patrick, in the comments) and how he tried to go for Vegas. He ran into a chorus line of Deathclaws. We both agreed this was stupid. It looks ridiculous to see them standing shoulder-to-shoulder like that. And if you’re so adamant that it should be impossible to go that way, why not just build a wall?
Oddly enough, I stuck to the rails. I resented them, but I was afraid I’d miss something.
You knew this was coming, didn’t you? You’re smart like that. Yes, we’re doing Fallout: New Vegas. Also, don’t miss this rare guest appearance by Randy Johnson. (The Spoiler Warning host, not the baseball player.)
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Youtube has given us more room. We can now upload videos greater than fifteen minutes in length. Given the extreme length of Fallout 3, and the likely length of New Vegas, we’ve decided to bump up our episodes to twenty minutes. This just means we’ll be putting out an hour and twenty minutes of show a week, instead of just an hour.
This is actually a huge bonus for us. One of the biggest headaches of Mass Effect 2 was when our episodes would run just a little bit long. It would eat an enormous amount of Josh’s time, editing and trimming to get the episode under the limit. You can’t just cut a whole minute from one spot and leave a hole in the episode. You can’t just fast-forward without breaking the continuous flowing conversation. If you just chop the episode early, then that extra minute of footage winds up in the next episode, thus perpetuating the problem. (We record episodes four at a time.) So Josh would have to reclaim that minute by painstakingly trimming away a few seconds at a time.
Now that the limit is lifted, this isn’t a problem. If we spill over to 21 minutes, it’s no big deal.
And yes, we began playing without turning on the subtitles or turning off Steam notifications. This is only our fifth season. I’m sure we’ll get good at this eventually.
I know I’m not the first person to say so, but the Dead Space 2 ad campaign was bathed in the stench of uncreative desperation.
Three days ago I said on Twitter:
Just finished #DeadSpace2. Visceral Games: Guys, love the production values. Call me. I can fix this pacing and atmosphere problem you have.
Visceral Games never called. They probably lost my number. Rather than make them hunt it down, I’ll just post my fixes here:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Stolen Pixels #248: HI MOM!”
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So you’re curious about the math involved in graphics programming. Well, someone is. People ask me about this stuff now and again. But a subject like “the math of graphics programming” is large enough to fill one of those great, big reference books that nobody likes to use because they’re so heavy and they take up so much space.
Years ago I had a devil of a time learning this for myself. Most tutorials are dense with Greek symbols and mercilessly heavy on jargon. It’s one of those situations where you have to already understand the subject before you can comprehend the lessons to teach you the subject. So I offer my own explanation here for the curious. This won’t teach you everything you need to know, but it might help give you a frame of reference so the other lessons make sense. Or it might just be a fun way to blow five minutes. Whatever.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Transformation Matrix”
Some people have strongly-held beliefs on this whole Kirk vs. Picard business. Perhaps this will settle things…
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Also, I apologize.
Well, lookie what I found during a Google Image search!
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It’s impossible for me to imagine this face having some other voice besides the voice of Commander Shepard. But of course, in reality that voice belongs to another face:
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Reality is confusing. And disappointing.
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There’s this scene in Star Trek: Voyager, where the character Neelix realizes that his era of usefulness has come to an end. He was guiding the crew through a section of space, but eventually they reached the edge of his knowledge. Going ahead, he didn’t know any more than they did. (The fact that he was an annoying idiot regardless of his navigational knowledge was not discussed.) I think I have reached the same point.
Up until Half-Life 2, and even as recently as Fallout 3, I would have technological insights on the games that I played. I could spot walls that had been placed, not for the sake of the gameplay, but to cull unwanted details from the scene and give the computer a break. I could identify and explain visual glitches, artifacts, misaligned textures, and other problems. My years of 3D modeling and coding gave me an unusual perspective on what games were showing us. But my knowledge has stagnated in the last five years while the industry has charged forward, and I have almost no understanding of today’s engines and how they do what they do. For me, the Cry Engine 3 is now indistinguishable from magic.
I can still comment on the game from an artistic standpoint, though.
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
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?
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.
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.
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
T w e n t y S i d e d
