Fair warning; I did say I’d explain how to succeed in Fire and Sword. You’ve probably figured out by now how much of that means doing bad things to good people. We’ve got one or two more posts after this, then I’m moving on to another game, so if this isn’t your cup of tea I’ll catch up with you in a week or two.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Master of Firin’ Sword CH5: The Christmas Bonuses of Sin”
I’m back from visiting my daughter Rachel in Texas. If you remember, she’s usually the one to edit the Diecast for us. I’ve spent the last 5 days or so in and around the tiny town of La Mesa in west Texas where she lives. I also spent about half a day in Dallas, which is five hours away and yet somehow still in Texas. (And in fact, neither place is anywhere near the edge.)
It was good to have the whole family together again, and the trip gave me a nice break from making content.
I know that travel observations from a guy who never leaves the house is about as useful as restaurant reviews from someone who only eats pizza, but for the curious: Here are a bunch of random comments on Texas based on my brief visit…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “I Messed With Texas”
To discuss what Object Oriented Programming is, let’s discuss the problem it was designed to solve. Well, let’s get as close as we can to an explanation while keeping this readable for non-coders.
Originally, programming was procedural…
…but the problem (the argument goes) is that procedural programming (PP) can get out of hand in terms of complexity.
Let’s say we’ve got a game. We’ve got a big list of (say) space marines taking part in the simulation. Each space marine is nothing more than a block of data describing where it is, how it’s moving, what weapon it has, how many hit points it has, what team it’s on, what it’s AI is up to, what character model it’s using, if it’s dead, and so on.
Here, let’s make up a pretend data structure to hold our marine:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Object-Oriented Debate Part 2: Okay, so what is OOP?”
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
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.
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”
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.
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
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.
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
T w e n t y S i d e d
