We did it. We made 200 of these stupid things. If you listened to the show for 40 hours a week, it would take you 5 weeks to hear the whole thing. And that’s ignoring the fact that most episodes are a little over an hour. (And some episodes aren’t included in the numbered list.)
Episode edited by Issac.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #200: Mailbag!”
Last Wednesday I did an hour long stream of Grand Theft Auto V. We drove around the city, fussed over environment detail, talked about the walk cycles of pedestrians, discussed the tricks used to make storefront facades look believable, looked at environment maps, analyzed different sidewalk textures, got excited about the dynamic day / night transitions, and killed hundreds and hundreds of people.
I’ve uploaded the video to YouTube for those of you who missed the stream.
Link (YouTube) |
This was actually really fun. I was always worried that streaming would be stressful, but this was pretty chill. I guess it helped that only 40 people showed up, so I didn’t have the anxiety of learning to stream in front of a huge crowd. It felt more like hanging out with a small group of friends and talking about games. (There were 40+ people, but only a handful participated in chat, so still felt like a small group.)
I’m not going to commit to making this a regular thing, but I do plan to try it again this week. Wednesday night at 6pm eastern time / 11pm GMT.
Stuff I’m working on:
I’ll probably keep doing this until I get bored of it. See you there.
BJ Blakzowicz gets to the top of the Empire State building and meets the New York branch of the American resistance, which is every bit as important and successful as the Antarctic branch of Ben & Jerrys. Don’t get me wrong. I like these characters in terms of their overall design. Leader Grace Walker is an interesting re-imagining of the idea of a Black Liberation Army leaderYes, it’s about a decade early for the BLA, but the Nazis invaded America so…. Super Spesh is a fun bit of comic relief as an alien conspiracy nut in a world that’s already overflowing with crazy. But as vibrant as they are from a character design standpoint, it doesn’t change the fact that these two are stuck at the top of a crumbling irradiated ruin, surrounded by Nazi troops, and they don’t seem to have a plan to change any of that, much less “liberate the United States”.
They do turn out to be useful laterWell, as useful as any of the other quest dispensers in the story. Obviously BJ does all the shooting., but wouldn’t this sequence be more interesting if these characters had something concrete that we needed? As it stands, our motivation is, “Caroline wanted to make contact with these people and none of us is capable of forming plans so let’s just do that and hope something good happens”. It’s not strictly wrong, but it could be better. If the game wants to give us vague orders like, “Go here to make the plot happen” that’s fine. But if that’s all the more the writer cares about framing and motivation then they shouldn’t waste our time with so many non-interactive cutscenes.
After BJ meets Grace and Super Spesh the Nazis attack. BJ must hold off waves of Nazis while the resistance escapes. The cutscene makes it look like Grace and Spesh live alone at the top of the tower, but then Grace starts shouting to “her people” and we realize there were actually a bunch of other people in the room that the cameraman has been ignoring. These people are resistance fighters living in a sea of Nazis but I guess none of them can fight for themselves. BJ has to hold off the Nazis while the entire group escapes.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Wolfenstein II Part 5: Tower Defense”
This is a first of a many-part series on The Witcher 3, which I’m writing out of fear.
My fear – and I think this fear is well-justified – is that CD Projekt will eventually disappoint us. So far, they’ve been on a startling upward trajectory: the first Witcher was rough but promising, the second was excellent, and the third is one of the most critically acclaimed games ever made. Now they’re working on Cyberpunk 2077, which is in a genre that’s a personal favorite of mine, and all indications are that it’s CDP’s most ambitious game yet.
The last time a developer had this much credibility with me personally was probably Valve right after the release of the Orange Box. Oof, there’s a kick right in the ol’ anxiety. Now, more than ten years later, Half-Life is dead, I would not at all be surprised if we never saw another Portal again, and Team Fortress 2 is more hat than game at this point. Of course, there’s no reason to think that will happen to CD Projekt. Valve created a digital distribution service that made so much money they kind of don’t even need to make games anymore… oh no.
So, like I said, I’m writing this out of fear. Really, it’s a precautionary measure: let some of the air out of my own personal hype balloon as a hedge against future disappointment. It won’t be easy – The Witcher 3 was, in fact, a very good game. But that’s not particularly reassuring. Mass Effect 2 was (in my opinion) a very good game too, but you could still see the seeds of Bioware’s decline in it if you knew how to look. I’m going to flatter myself that I know how to spot the worrying parts of The Witcher 3. And, for the sake of not appearing to be a crank, I’ll also point out the good parts.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Witcher 3”
Due to quasi-popular demand (and personal curiosity) I’m planning on doing some streaming. I’ve never done this before, so there are bound to be some problems. With that in mind, I’ll be doing a little test stream tonight to figure out how to use the software and get the bugs worked out.
Here, this should give you an idea of what you’re in for:
I’ll be playing Grand Theft Auto V. Well, not so much playing as wandering around, commenting on the technology, and poking at bits of the simulation to see how it responds.
I realize it’s just the nature of the medium, but it bugs me that I’m slack-faced in the image. I realize everyone does this and it’s nothing abnormal, but it feels abnormal to me.
Yes, that is the face we make when we play a videogame. But that’s not the face we use when talking to people. When we’re talking to people we make eye contact and adopt some facial expression. Even if you’re talking to a large group of people, you keep your face expressive.
But when it’s only a camera watching you, the entire social thing collapses and most of us revert to our unflattering “staring at the television” face, which isn’t very welcoming. That’s the face of someone who is tuning you out because they’re not interested in what you have to say.
This is probably only a big deal to old-timers like me. Or maybe just me. I dunno.
Anyway. I’ll be streaming at 6pm tonight, eastern time. That works out to 11pm GMT. Again, this is just a test stream.
When I go live, it’ll be on my Twitch page. I’ll announce here and on Twitter when I go live.
EDIT: That was fun. Thanks for watching. I’ll upload the VOD to YouTube for those that missed it.
I don’t know if I’ll make this a regular thing, but we will be doing it again.
It finally happened. I backed a Kickstarter project that spent the money and didn’t manage to create a product. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but it really is a shame it happened to this project in particular.
As I’ve said before, the 1994 classic System Shock was a really important game, both for the industry and on a personal level. It was the first of the immersive simThis genre name is wonky and confusing now, but back in 1994 “sim” wasn’t so strongly associated with Will Wright-style simulations. games, making it the progenitor of Thief, Deus Ex, BioShock, Prey, and (to a lesser extent) the Dishonored series. It’s a game I loved so much I novelized it. The sequel, System Shock 2, is often considered one of the greatest games of all timeParticularly for PC gamers above a certain age..
So when I saw that Nightdive Studios was crowdfunding a remake of System Shock, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Of course I was going to support it. But what really made me glad to put my money in was this blurb from the Kickstarter:
A modern take on System Shock, a faithful reboot; it’s not Citadel Station as it was, but as you remember it. Many improvements, overhauls and changes are being implemented to capture the spirit of what the original game was trying to convey, and bring it to contemporary gamers.
(Emphasis mine.) This was exactly what I was looking for: The game as I remember it.
The tricky thing about nostalgia titles is just how much we forget their faults. I remember the game as looking cool. I remember the sounds being spooky. I remember the gameplay feeling frantic. But then I launch the game twenty years later and discover the visuals are so blocky I can’t tell what things are, the font is illegible, the gameplay is awkward, and the interface is an abomination. I didn’t notice those problems at the time because all of the technology was new and nobody knew how to do better. What the Nightdive team seemed to be offering was a way to revisit the game with all those problems fixed. And maybe this would give us a way to share this classic with the younger generation without having to explain “You can’t use the mouse to look around. You have to use the keyboard. I’m so sorry. We didn’t know any better.”
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dumb Industry: The Death of System Shock”
It’s been a while since we talked about programming around here. But this week Paul and I brush up against the topic.
Hosts: Shamus and Paul. Episode edited by Issac.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #199: System Shock Kickstopped, Creeper World, Factorio”
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
T w e n t y S i d e d
