Stolen Pixels #125: Sith in the House

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 15, 2009

Filed under: Column 18 comments

Breen interviews Darth Vader.

We have quite a few running series in Stolen Pixels now. Breen, Travis, “Stock photo PR people”. Some people prefer some series over others (and some people don’t like the running series at all) but I like this variety. Of course, it’s nothing compared to some people, but if I had enough imagination to write seven strips a week I wouldn’t be working on Stolen Pixels at all. I’d be too busy ruling the lot of you from my flying doom fortress high above the surface of the earth.

From the feedback I’m getting, it seems like Breen is the favorite right now.

 


 

Super Cache

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 15, 2009

Filed under: Random 44 comments

I’m using a WordPress plugin called “super cache”. Every few months I’ll get a link from a big site and the resulting crush of traffic that will flatten the site. Instead of me getting new readers, everyone – existing readers and visitors – is left out. Everyone loses. I eventually determined that it was (probably) a CPU problem, not a bandwidth one. (I can post some huge image that will increase my bandwidth usage for the day by a factor of three with no ill effects. But triple traffic can bring the cite to a crawl.) PHP pages like the one you’re reading now are generated on the fly. It’s cool like that. Except, it can take time to produce. WordPress eats a good bit of CPU, and then my dice rollers and sidebar shuffler add to that.

Super Cache will pre-generate all pages for the site. Since installing it, I’ve absorbed a few decent hits from larger sites without going down. It works. Now, if you leave a comment anywhere on the site you’ll be exempt from Super Cache because your page must be generated: Note how the comments form remembers your name and such. In order to have it do that, the page you’re viewing must be generated just for you.

But for everyone who hasn’t commented, they all view a single common page. Problem: My theme selector. Whoever views a page first will set the page for everyone else. If they’re using the evil theme, then all non-commenting visitors will see the page in black for a while. This explains why I often see comments from people:

Hey, your theme switcher isn’t working.

EDIT: Oops. Looks like it’s working now.

Of course, it’s “working” because they left a comment.

Now, I can tun off super cache and have things work right. I normally don’t need it. But if I get hit, I do need it. And usually I don’t know about the problem until I’m already locked out by the mob and I can’t get in to turn it on. Still, it seems to make more sense to design the site to work properly in most cases, instead of designing it to malfunction all the time so that it can stay up in a rush. Hmm. Anyway, that’s why things are sometimes wonky, in case you’ve ever wondered.

Aside: Ever notice how WordPress blogs always say “Twenty Sided is proudly powered by WordPress” or “World of Wombats is proudly powered by WordPress”, etc. It makes it seem like WordPress doesn’t have any standards. It would be much better if it could say, “World of White Supremacy is shamefully and begrudgingly powered by WordPress”.

 


 

The Path: Ruby

By Shamus Posted Monday Sep 14, 2009

Filed under: Game Reviews 46 comments

Her bio from the website:

The other girls call her “goth”… It’s one way of killing people: stereotyping them, putting them in a box and throwing it away. But there’s more to Ruby than meets the eye. A young lady by now, 15 years of age. Life has opened up to her as a rotting flower of corruption. She can see through it all but remains an enigma herself. When asked about her leg brace, Ruby says she’s in pain. But doesn’t specify where it hurts. Ruby does not long for death. She takes a perverse pleasure in observing the extreme decay of adult society. But what will happen when she ceases to be a witness and becomes a participant instead?

thepath_ruby1.jpg
Ruby is playfully morbid. So is her story.

Some of the girls – Ginger in Particular – have tales that defy logical explanation and challenge the player to dig deep for meaning. Others can be explained just fine as literal stories, leaving the player to wonder if they’re supposed to do so. Ruby is the latter kind.

Ruby wanders around the woods making sardonic or nihilistic observations until she comes to the abandoned playground. As she arrives, we see a cutscene of a young guy pulling… something. Something bodybag-esque.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Path: Ruby”

 


 

Zero Punctuation: Wolfenstein

By Shamus Posted Saturday Sep 12, 2009

Filed under: Movies 29 comments

First I did a Dr. Suess-style rhyme from Overlord. Then I made another for Overlord II. Then I wrote what was probably the first videogame-based villanelle.

Yahtzee raises the bar yet again with a chained attack of limericks:

The Escapist is clearly the premiere site for videogame-based poetry.

 


 

GameQueue

By Shamus Posted Friday Sep 11, 2009

Filed under: Notices 117 comments

My current queue of games:

1) Reviewing: The Path. I have two more posts left to round out the list of girls. I might have one more wrap-up post after that.

2) Reviewing: FUEL. I’m pretty much done with the game, but it has brought a lot to mind on procedural content, how it’s done, and where it can go from here. I’m looking at FUEL the way some might look at the original Doom: Regardless of what you think of the game, this is an important piece of technology. I also have a few comments on racing games in general.

3) Playing: Still playing Team Fortress 2 in fits and starts. I think the new king of the hill kind of watered down the game for me. I can’t point to any specific fault in it. The only thing wrong with KotH is that it isn’t Payload. It’s not that I dislike the other game modes, it’s just that I like Payload so much better. I thought I’d eventually get tired of Payload and want to explore the other modes, but after more than 100 hours of TF2 I still feel a pang of disappointment when a non-payload map pops up.

4) Ahem: Champions Online. Thanks so much to everyone who offered their thoughts in the earlier thread. Clearly the consensus is that the game needs another month to bloom if I want to get the most out of it. So, I signed up last night. Yes, I solicited your advice, and then disregarded it. Wisdom check fail. First thing I did was attempt to re-create Detective Grimm. I was not impressed. No matter what I did, he always looked like a young guy with a fake beard. Sunlight shines through the main part of his hat, but not the brim, casting a shadow that ends up looking like tribal facepaint or something. Boo. Man, it’s almost as if I should have waited a bit before signing up…

5) Playing: Left 4 Dead. I added a could of bonus campaigns to the server, and have been enjoying them on occasion. Soon the new campaign will be out, which will most likely increase the time I spend with the game.

6) Watching: Borderlands looks very, very interesting. Also looking forward to Left 4 Dead 2.

7) Played: Evil Genius: I played the everlovin’ crap out of this last weekend, and pretty much finished it. It’s old and considered a classic, but it was new to me. I might do a single post on it if I have anything interesting to say.

8) Shelved: Velvet Assassin: A shame, really. The game isn’t horrible, it’s just pervasively bland and peppered with poor gameplay decisions. This is another game that could have been much, much better with a few basic changes. For the same investment of time and money, they could have made a much better game.

Open thread: What are you playing these days?

 


 

Stolen Pixels #124: Heeeere’s BREEN!

By Shamus Posted Friday Sep 11, 2009

Filed under: Column 14 comments

Very much fun to set this one up.

I was actually going to name the band “The Stunsticks”, since some late-night bands have their own name. But then I realized that if they were named that, their logo should be on their gear someplace. So they got the generic name. That actually makes more sense, given the nature of the band members.

 


 

Champions Online

By Shamus Posted Thursday Sep 10, 2009

Filed under: Video Games 49 comments

John Funk reviews Champions Online. I’d been warned that the team who made Champs was the team who originally worked on City of Heroes, and that CoH wasn’t awesome until those people left. I also have not been inundated with people telling me, “Shamus, you have to play this game!”, which I would have expected if it was any good. On the other hand, John Funk seems to like it without loving it, and I value his opinion pretty highly:


Full review at The Escapist

On the other other hand, it looks pretty dang fun. On the other other other hand, none of my usual gaming buddies are playing, and after having such a good time in Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead with net friends and the guys from my gaming group, I’m sort of off the idea of playing with strangers. On the other4 hand, maybe the game is just too new and more sensible gamers are waiting until the first-month shakedown period is over. I’m sure more than a few are staying away until they’re sure Champions isn’t going to be another Tabula Rasa.

It’s been a while since an MMO appeared that captured my interest. I’m not going to care about another one until Old Republic comes out, and that one doesn’t even have a release date yet.

Any comments from those who have played? How does it hold up against CoH? What’s the community like? How is solo play?

Man, I really want to muck about with the character creator.