Diecast 180: Game Design By Way of Twitter

By Josh Posted Monday Dec 12, 2016

Filed under: Diecast 68 comments



Hosts: Josh, Rutskarn, Campster. Edited by Josh.

With both Shamus and Mumbles out, Rutskarn proposed something a little different for this show: Before we started, he asked twitter for game pitches. The following podcast is our attempt to design them.

The pitches:

0:02:10 – WRPG about a prisoner trying to escape a dungeon to start an adventure–never succeeding – @justcallmenmd
0:10:40 – Lovecraft-themed Pokemon – @Barmn89
0:16:30 – Open-world crime, real-time sentences @NerbieDansers
0:28:00 – The Sim City of legislation – @ErikRadman
0:33:05 – Mass Effect from POV of Reapers – @bhleb_bhleb22
0:39:40 – Mystic Messenger via Watchdogs 2 – @MrRicce
0:44:30 – Vending machine manager- @BryceWalton
0:51:00 – Game about podcast about designing games – @BryceWalton

 


 

Hangout: Overwatch

By Josh Posted Friday Dec 9, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 18 comments


Link (YouTube)

Still no Spoiler Warning this week. Instead, here’s the archive of the Overwatch PTR hangout we did a few weeks back. We played around with the new hero, Sombra, and spent a lot of time losing. And then we stopped playing Sombra and spent a lot of time losing.

 


 

My Mother

By Rutskarn Posted Thursday Dec 8, 2016

Filed under: Notices 103 comments

Sitting in my freezer is a rack of tragedy ribs.

My mother knew my partner and I liked barbecue. Whenever she got the chance and she knew we were coming, she’d have a slab of Texas-style ribs waiting in the fridge that we’d take home and freeze. Considering ribs were just about the only thing we weren’t equipped to make ourselves, and the expense of the meat, and the time and effort they took to make properly, it was a thoughtful and ambitious gesture–the very kind she excelled at.

Her condition fluctuated beyond the doctors’ ability to predict, never mind ours, but some time ago she went through one of her rare and merciful upswells. For a week or two she was well enough to get up, stretch her legs, and–apparently–cook one more Texas-style rack. We ate them as a family, and when we were finished, and I had to go back home, I took the lion’s share home in a Ziploc. We went through them fast, but a few lingered, and a few times late into the night I thought to myself I really needed to eat the damn things fast. I didn’t want to eat my dead mother’s barbecue.

Two months after I found out she wasn’t going to get better, she passed away. That was a week ago.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “My Mother”

 


 

Spoiler Warning Does The Jackbox 3

By Josh Posted Thursday Dec 8, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 17 comments


Link (YouTube)

So, no Spoiler Warning this week.

But we dicked around for an hour streaming The Jackbox Party Pack 3 on Campster’s twitch channel on Saturday. Rutskarn got to play a Jackbox game for the first time. And Glitch showed up!

So… yay, content! We’re not lazy, we’re just… really lazy.

Actually the Until Dawn season is up in the air for the next few weeks, since holiday shenanigans are now in full swing and we’ve got no idea who’s going to be available when and for what. We’ll see what happens. We also have a few older streams to post, so you can expect to see those later this week. We’ll see what happens.

 


 

Crash Dot Com Part 5: It’s in the Can

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 8, 2016

Filed under: Personal 77 comments

It’s early in the year 2000, and I am trying to build a virtual shopping mall because of the dot-com boom.

Like I said, our company isn’t the typical dot-com startup. Our company is small. There are less than a dozen of us. We’ve been around since the early 90’s, and while we’re not taking over the world we have been self-sufficient for several years.

This is one of the reasons I haven’t run away from this project screaming. The place where I work isn’t some soulless corporate meatgrinder. I don’t work for Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss. I’m not a cog in the machine. I’m a valued member of a small team of friends who have built something valuable together. This team-up with the virtual mall guys has thrown the company off-kilter, but right now this feels like something temporary. I’m not going to quit over one bad project. I’m thinking that someday this project will end and things can go back to the way they were.

Hi. Me-from-2016 again to remind you that the above is how I was thinking at the time. I’m not suggesting my company was perfect. Obviously SOMETHING had gone wrong that we went into business with this other outfit. They didn’t storm the building and point guns at us to make us join them for the virtual mall project. But I didn’t really understand the thinking that drove this decision, and at the time I wasn’t really curious. So let’s just leave it at that, rather than speculating about events I barely remember that involved information I wasn’t privy too in an area of business I didn’t understand.

Anyway, back to THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Crash Dot Com Part 5: It’s in the Can”

 


 

Master of Firin’ Sword CH4: Human Resourceless

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Dec 7, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 50 comments

After a day or two in Snechko I find my coffers, and palette of Polish obscenities, greatly expanded. From my interactions with the populace I’d allow that this village provides apprenticeships to all of Poland’s artisanal whiners. One strange Swede rides in and collects taxes at gunpoint on behalf of a warlord and they cry “coercion.”

I intend to give them some perspective on the subject.

But amassing riches isn’t all I care about. All the wealth in the world is worth nothing measured against the company of friends. This is why I’ve elected to buy some.

Behold; the friend merchant.
Behold; the friend merchant.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Master of Firin’ Sword CH4: Human Resourceless”

 


 

Object-Oriented Debate Part 1: Many Kinds of Coding

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 6, 2016

Filed under: Programming 174 comments

A while ago I came across this youtube video, which broadly denounces the programming paradigm known as “Object Oriented Programming”. (OOP)


Link (YouTube)

If you’re not a programmer, you might not get a lot out of it. Author Brian Will is deliberately talking to other coders and so the whole thing is fairly dense with jargon and theory. That’s fine. I’m going to translate bits of it for the purposes of our discussion here. In fact, this series is aimed at non-coders and casual coders who are curious what all the fuss is about and what people are talking about when they say “Object Oriented Programming”.

Depending on who you ask, this video is either obvious, slightly controversial, or deeply heretical. The author certainly seems to believe they are about to say something likely to induce backlash. And indeed, with just over one-third of the people giving the video a thumbs down it does seem to be an unpopular opinion. After watching the introduction I was prepared for the screed of an iconoclastic madman. But by the end I didn’t find anything particularly objectionable. In fact, his final guidelines basically describe the coding style I’ve developed over years of working in both new and old coding paradigms.

I might quibble over a few points, but I think Will is pushing back against a bit of orthodoxy that doesn’t get challenged nearly enough. This debate has popped up now and again over the years and it usually ends with a bunch of people talking past each other and arguing in circles. This is partly because it’s tough to challenge entrenched ideas, but mostly because programming is not one job, but dozens of different jobs.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Object-Oriented Debate Part 1: Many Kinds of Coding”