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SOMA EP5: Insatiable!

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 31, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 92 comments
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Note that this season is getting kind of verbally graphic, with jokes about sex and body parts. I think it comes with the territory. Yes, we make immature jokes about robo-dicks, but those jokes stem from the ongoing mysteries of what robo-life would be like.

Anyway, it gets slightly… raunchy. I guess? Honestly, I don’t know what the standards are these days who who taught Rutskarn all those words. Adjust your viewing habits accordingly.


Link (YouTube)

To articulate the point I was making in the episode in a more coherent way:

Let’s say we’re going to build a robot to hold a digital copy of someone’s brain. Are we just copying neuron activity? Because a lot of our personality and behavior is driven by the output of the testes, ovaries, thyroid, pancreas, and other hormone factories. If we don’t include and simulate their activity, then we’ll be missing a big part of what defines the subject and shapes their personality.

For example… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SOMA EP5: Insatiable!”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

SOMA EP4: Deputy UnweldPrevious Post
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92 comments

 

Mass Effect Retrospective 41: Cerberus Sucks

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 31, 2016

Filed under: Mass Effect 210 comments
Mass Effect Retrospective 40: TIM IslandPrevious Post
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Last time I talked about how building a massive warship in secret is an implausible idea that, at the very least, needs a thick layer of expositional excuses and lampshading.

Cerberus Building an Army

Cerberus is SO MASSIVE that Hackett thinks that even a "rogue faction" can stage a simultaneous invasion of multiple cities?
Cerberus is SO MASSIVE that Hackett thinks that even a "rogue faction" can stage a simultaneous invasion of multiple cities?

Think back to last week’s hypothetical project to build a single destroyer. Now imagine you don’t need to build one destroyer. Imagine you need to build an entire fleet of them. Also you need warships of several different classes. You also need shuttles, fighters, mechs, and ammunition. You need thousands of trained soldiers, pilots, mechanics, medics, officers. You need special custom-made body armor for all of them.

You need to feed, house, clothe, and train thousands of sailors, soldiers, officers, and military support personnel. You need cooks, plumbers, electricians, doctors, machinists, police, heavy equipment operators, and all those other people we talked about.

You’ll need literally hundreds of TIM Towns for this. Even if you steal the ships or poof them into existence using vast automated robo-factoriesBuilt by who? you still need supply lines of food, ammunition, fuel, and replacement parts to keep your forces going. And instead of moving all of those supplies over the vast empty ocean, you have to transport them from civilization to your (hopefully remote) base through many well-traveled mass effect relays.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 41: Cerberus Sucks”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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210 comments

 

SOMA EP4: Deputy Unweld

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 30, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 38 comments
SOMA EP3: Creepy MessagesPrevious Post
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Link (YouTube)

I just played through this bit of the game a couple of days ago, and I ran into the same problem I had on my first trip through the game: The normal guidance markers don’t provide enough guidance. The common thing for players is to walk toward the nearest light. But here, doing so can send you into the loop. I found I had to leave the circuit of lights and wander off into the darkness at just the right point to find the next marker on the otherwise invisible trail.

I still don’t have a clear map in my head, but from watching this episode it looks like you need to go towards a RED LIGHT, after the game has taught you that red lights = danger.

As promised, here is a link to TRAINS WITH A ZEE.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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38 comments

 

Mumblo Drama: Spoiler Warning Edition

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 30, 2016

Filed under: Diecast 170 comments
Diecast #146: Zack Snyder v Superman, Daredevil, D&DPrevious Post
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EDIT: Okay. That’s enough of this. Topic closed.

For me, it's always like this.
For me, it's always like this.

Last week there was a bit of controversy on Spoiler Warning. If you don’t watch the show or don’t read the comments then you probably won’t have the context for this. Basically, Mumbles made some jokes about torturing robots, some other people objected, and then Mumbles recorded this:

During the show, when she said she was sick of the female coach character, it hit on something I’d been thinking about for weeks, which was the series of design decisions that led to this trope. So as she commented on it, I reflexively went, “Oh, here’s a segue into that thing I’ve been thinking about!” So then I tried to talk about it on the spot, and halfway into it I realized it was too big and complicated to cover on the showThis actually happens pretty often. I should rename my column, “Random Shit That Didn’t Fit on Spoiler Warning.”. I ended up turning it into my weekly column. But then that dumped even more aggro on Mumbles. (Sorry Mumbles.)

Hopefully this clears everything up and puts the controversy to rest. This is supposed to be fun.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Diecast #146: Zack Snyder v Superman, Daredevil, D&DPrevious Post
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170 comments

 

Ruts vs. Battlespire CH3: Disco Fever

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Mar 30, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 33 comments
Ruts vs. Battlespire CH2: The Eldark ScroulsPrevious Post
Next PostRuts vs. Battlespire CH4: BAbagsGS

Last week we learned something very important about the Battlespire: it’s going to kill us a lot.

Time to take inventory. Things we got:

  1. Note that doesn’t tell us anything
  2. Sigils that don’t do anything
  3. Bags that hold
    1. Bags that hold
      1. Bags that hold
        1. Bags that hold
          1. Javelins we can’t use

Things we don’t got:

  1. Pants
  2. Slacks
  3. Trousers
  4. Hose
  5. Leggings
  6. Crotchgard(tm)

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Ruts vs. Battlespire CH3: Disco Fever”

 

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.

Ruts vs. Battlespire CH2: The Eldark ScroulsPrevious Post
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33 comments

 

Good Robot Hangout: It’s OVER!

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 29, 2016

Filed under: Good Robot 29 comments
Good Robot #47: A Script ReadingPrevious Post
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We are streaming Good Robot. Come watch Josh play the game, and ask questions of the development team. It’ll be fun. And also terrifying, if you’re one of the developers.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone who watched!

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Good Robot #47: A Script ReadingPrevious Post
Next PostGood Robot: Out Now!

29 comments

 

Experienced Points: On The Sketchy Woman Character

By Shamus Posted Monday Mar 28, 2016

Filed under: Column 192 comments
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My column this week is a tangent on the topic that Mumbles brought up on Spoiler Warning last week, about how she’s sick of the bossy female coach character archetype. I can relate. I’m not tired of the female coach, but I am sick of the Aiden Pearce brand of protagonist, and I get how irritating it is when developers stick to that one trope that really gets on your nerves.

And while I didn’t say so in the column, I think this is a point worth making:

I know I’m always grumbling about male protagonists and male characters and ranting about how developers need to get out of this rut, but Firewatch showed me that I can still enjoy a male lead character, as long as he’s written properly. I’m not sick of male leads, I’m sick of shitty male leads. Or as I’ve come to think of them: Ubisoft MenThis is NOT to suggest that Ubisoft is the only publisher guilty of this. They just have the ones that get on my nerves the most.. You know the type: Growling badasses with no emotional vulnerabilities, no sense of levity, and central motivation built around vengeance or aggression.

I used to be fine with these guys. I’m not sure what’s changed:

  1. Age? Maybe because I’m older now, I’m interested in more texture and nuance and less raw id.
  2. Fatigue? Maybe after 30 years, I’m in the mood for something different.
  3. Dissonance? As games become more cinematic, maybe their shallow leads are looking more and more out of place. DOOM Guy was fine in DOOM, but DOOM Guy in a 2015 game with cutscenes and dialog and a supporting cast is another thing entirely.

Then again, sometimes it works. As much as I whine about these guys, I really loved William “B.J.” Blazkowicz in the recent Wolfenstein games. I’m still trying to figure out why he works for me and (say) Jason Brody doesn’t.

Also, be sure to read my disclaimer on the Escapist before you go and make a mess in the comments. I love to talk about game design decisions like this, but I’d really rather this didn’t veer off into gender politics.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Experienced Points: Microsoft's UWP is Games for Windows Live 2.0Previous Post
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192 comments

 
OLDER POSTS
From The Archives:

The Best of 2011

My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.

 

What Does a Robot Want?

No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.

 

This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism

Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.

 

Silent Hill 2 Plot Analysis

A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.

 

Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!

An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.

 

Programming Vexations

Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.

 

Free Radical

The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.

 

Juvenile and Proud

Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.

 

Artless in Alderaan

People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.

 

The Plot-Driven Door

You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.