T w e n t y S i d e d
Josh is playing Civ V. We’re talking online games. Stop by and shout things at us in chat. This will be something not unlike fun:
http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer
That was fun. Thanks for stopping by. You can see the archived session here.
Star Wars The Old Republic: Artless in Alderaan
People have been heaping shame on Star Wars: The Old Republic for months now. I can’t hope to add anything new, so the best I can manage is to just say everything again, only longer and with more digressions. You know how we do things around here.
The art, like everything else in SWTOR, is never truly awful. It’s just bland. Ordinary. Safe. Unremarkable. There are little flashes of brilliance in there if you’re willing to sift for them, but this game does not deliver an experience in keeping with the standards set by BioWare or the reported two hundred million that was spent on it. There is something unbearably sterile about The Old Republic.
Now, I am not an artist, as I’ve proven many times in the past. I don’t have an eye for it and so I don’t know how to really dig down and explain things when things go wrong. But I ask that you humor me while I try to grope around and figure this out. This is a really important failing of the game, and it’s worth dissecting.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Star Wars The Old Republic: Artless in Alderaan”
Upcoming Hangout 7/16
The Spoiler Warning crew will be doing another hangout on Monday, July 16th at 6pm Eastern Time in the USA. For other time zones, check this page. Josh has told me that he’s definitely going to be playing Civilization V, or Shogun 2, The Secret World, or Crusader Kings. Which means he’ll probably play Angry Birds.
I’ll post the related stream when the event goes live.
This Dang Website III: Dang Harder
The site overhaul continues. I apologize for the upheaval. I think we’re nearly done. I want to thank everyone for their patience, bug reports, screen shots, CSS advice, layout advice, and general suggestions.
The changes so far:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dang Website III: Dang Harder”
8 By Zombies Part 1
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We recorded this game a couple of weeks ago. Now here is the final product of that endeavor. The Spoiler Warning all-stars in an eight-player pre-recorded live broadcast of Left 4 Dead 2, versus mode, using Left 4 Dead 1 levels. Here is the final footage, edited together to give you the viewpoints of both teams.
Link (YouTube) |
I think we’ve agreed that we’re not doing this again anytime soon. While it makes for hilarious footage, it actually requires a major investment of time to cut together two separate feeds, plus two audio tracks, plus the audio track from the Livestream to fix patches where people were cut off or muted. Also, I don’t know if our friendships can withstand this level of sadistic curb-stomping of team Pro Strat vs. Team Newbie.
This weekend we MAY actually begin our Mass Effect 3 season. The time is right. However, I have it on good authority that certain members of the cast have been saying they will, “Start [my] play-through, probably tomorrow,” for almost a month now. Credulity being in finite supply, I am beginning to doubt this will actually happen. We’ll see.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Trial
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Okay, so apparently SWTOR is now free to play up to level 15. Now, I’ve tried to play this game before, an ordeal that wasted a lot of my time and did not result in me playing the game, mostly due to the complete ineptitude of the policy makers.
But I’m willing to give it another go. I already have an account created. I already have the client downloaded. It should be fairly painless this time around. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Trial”
This Dang Website II: The Dang-ening
Sorry for the lack of content. I’m making small changes to the site here and there, based on feedback. There’s more work to be done. I’m taking cues from a few suggestions, and from the approach James Lileks uses to wrangle his content. (Seriously. He was doing his thing for about six years before I got started, and he’s even more prolific than I am. (Although he’s somewhat held in check by his need to go back and fuss & reformat old stuff. (Not that I have any room to talk.)) There is a huge mountain of content there, and if nostalgia artifacts, retro-curiosities, and loving mockery of the past is your thing, there’s enough there to keep you entertained for months.)
I seem to have ruined the preceding paragraph with parenthetical shenanigans. Let me start again: I’m working on the website. It’s boring. So no content. Sorry. Almost done.
As some have suggested, Spoiler Warning, Comics, and Programming posts will be getting their own index. The Spoiler Warning one is done already. I’ll be adding some kinda promotion for the book, somewhere. We’ll see.
More feedback is welcome. The previous feedback made for some dang fine improvements.
From The Archives:
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
The Biggest Game Ever
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
Megatextures
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
The Best of 2015
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
The Strange Evolution of OpenGL
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
What is Vulkan?
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
Bethesda NEVER Understood Fallout
Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.