Once in a blue moon I do one of these Reset Button analysis videos. Today is one of those blue moons.
Link (YouTube) |
After posting this video, I’ve gotten a few comments on YouTube and Twitter. Here are my answers to common questions regarding the video:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Reset Button: Megatextures”
Link (YouTube) |
Okay, so what game logic drives the decision regarding what weapon you can offer Windmill? I did this twice, and both times I could only offer him my silenced, capacity-upgraded, damage-upgraded pistol. Now we get here with Josh and we can only offer him the revolver? Gah! Will he only accept your #1 weapon? Or is it random? Or will he only accept sidearms? This was a very frustrating part for me, not just because of the restrictive choice, but because of the words (attitude, really) the game put in my mouth for saying no.
And as we said in the episode: The bad guys are very, very stupid here. Accepting that they have unlimited power and no accountability, this public murder spree is just a bone-headed way of going about things.
 |
And so here we are – once more unto the breach, as it were – as yet another Scary Enemy Army shows up on our doorstep and moves to attack our territory in the seemingly ceaseless border conflict into which we’ve become so entangled.
 |
Oh, and this particular Hojo army is composed of seven veteran katana samurai. Fantastic!
To be fair, I’m really just stalling for time until I can get Nobunaga’s force together, but it would sure be nice if the AI would give me a break. Then again, I was the one who picked legendary difficulty for this campaign, for some reason…
In any case, while Kai province does have a garrison of roughly equal manpower (and composed of more experienced units), they don’t have a general around to keep them encouraged, and the advantages of castle fortifications probably isn’t enough to balance out the much higher stats of so many katana samurai. I suppose pitched battles do make for some interesting reading, but… I already have a whole other video series dedicated to demonstrating how remarkably I can fail at simple tasks like “dropping heavy items” and “being a mercenary.”
I want to win, damn it!
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Josh Plays Shogun 2 Part 14: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before…”
Link (YouTube) |
One thing I’m discovering as we play through this game is that I like it more than I thought I did. I keep coming up with new positive things to say about the game as we go, which is opposite of the trajectory that our show usually follows.
So, I’ve created an official page for people looking to join the Twentymine server. Comments are closed there, so if you have any feedback on that page (or if my primate thumping on the keyboard has resulted in typographical mishaps) then please leave your feedback below.
I’m also a bit curious as to how many people play the game these days. Minecraft is so popular that it’s accepted that “everyone” plays it, but of course we’re really only talking about a few million sales. So how about you: Did you play the game? Still play? Multiplayer? Single? If you quit, when did you lose interest? Has anyone beaten the game in survival mode?
I’m still a fan of single-player for survival and multi-player for grandiose constructions. I play less than I used to, but the game still has quite a bit of charm.
Link (YouTube) |
Apologies for the late post today. The only explanation I can give in my defense is that my alarm clocks only work when I don’t need them to, which seems to be an ongoing problem in the life of Reginald Cuftbert.
Fortunately, nothing even remotely interesting or funny happens in this episode to make up for it.
Ubisoft has been in the news more than once recently for their DRM shenanigans. This week’s column is sort of a catch-all for their recent crimes against customer service. I also allude to the technical problem of how you can make a program identify the specific computer that it’s running on.
Tangentially related anecdote:
Back in the 90’s, the company I worked for needed a way to protect users from data theft. All of the user’s settings, including their password, were stored in a plaintext ini file. That’s madness by today’s standards, but in 1996-ish that wasn’t all that radical. The resulting problem should sound pretty familiar / obvious to anyone familiar with security today: Savvy users began swindling the clueless into sending them these ini files.
This sounds ridiculous today, but this was the early days of the internet as we know it. There were armies of clueless new net-immigrants stepping off the boat every day. When they entered our MMO-ish world and someone offered to help them out with some technical problem, they had no idea that sending people files off your own computer was dangerous.
We policed this problem as much as we could, but there’s only so much you can do in an online world where anyone can instantly create a new account for free and most people are on AOL dial-up where their IP address could jump around randomly. It’s like trying to moderate 4chan. Good luck with that. We tried educating people as much as we could, but the rush of newcomers was so constant that there were ALWAYS going to be a few rubes around.
So the technological solution our programmers devised was to hash these text passwords with something from your local machine. This leads back to what I talk about in the linked article: Software trying to figure out what machine it’s on. There were a lot less identifiable bits on computers back then, but by using things like hard drive volume labels and such it was possible to come up with something that had a good chance of being unique to your machine.
Once this system was in place, the problem went away. The con men couldn’t read the ini files they were stealing. They didn’t have the ability to un-hash the password, because they didn’t have the serial number (or whatever it was) used to hash it. This was a good self-regulating thing: Anyone smart enough to look up a serial number on their computer is too smart to fall for the “Send me your ini file and I can show you how to double your frame rate” line.
The only drawback was that if you moved the program to a new machine (remember the days when you could install something just by dumping the files onto your hard drive?) you would have to re-type your password.
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
A look at the main Borderlands games. What works, what doesn't, and where the series can go from here.
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
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.
T w e n t y S i d e d
