T w e n t y S i d e d
DM of the Rings Remastered LXX: The Needs of the Many
Break Week: First Job Second Verse
This post was supposed to be a cheerful, excited outlook into the job I’m starting today, my first ‘real’ job in seven years. But, sorry, there’s some real truths mixed up here. We keep trying to tiptoe around the hard things as gracefully as dad did but it just leads to questions I can’t answer, and there’s so much behind the scenes. I keep having to make bummer posts, I’m not a fan. Hopefully next update will be actually a good one, it helps to put the cards on the table so improvements don’t sound like negatives down the line.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Break Week: First Job Second Verse”
Wednesday Action Log 5-1-24
This week I’m still playing Minecraft. I’ve mostly just been mining copper, and I’m mad at the way they implemented it. Copper ore is quite common and you get multiple raw copper per ore You need to smelt 9 raw copper to make one block and if you don’t want it to oxidize you need to use one honeycomb per block. So instead of doing anything productive I decided to make an obelisk out of raw copper blocks for some reason. This is created 100% in survival, and only over three days.
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I Bet You Forgot I was Playing WoW (so did I)
By which I mean I actually stopped playing World of Warcraft for the last few months. I got Cinderlynn up to level 60 and all the other characters to 20, or a little higher. I experimented with using Chromie-time to level in Burning Legion, Wrath of the Lich King, and Mists of Pandaria. Basically I had set all my alts to level in a different expansion, including an Alliance-side character in Battle for Azeroth, the current default leveling path. But honestly, once I hit level 60 with Cinderlynn the game starts throwing pop-up ads at you to jump straight to the latest content. Quest givers that start all the different areas of the latest expansion, or other recent expansions; suddenly appear everywhere. You can accidentally take a quest that starts, say; Shadowlands…and you jump into a non-stop starter quest that ends with not only quest givers to continue that story and sidequests, but also prompts to jump you straight back into the expansion you just CAME from. The bottom line is, my brain got overloaded, I stopped having fun, I felt like I was being herded away from the content I wanted to play, and I just went to playing only Star Wars: The Old Republic. WHICH I HAVEN’T STOPPED PLAYING, don’t worry. I have Rix’larril’an and Mikan Sixteen completing a crafting challenge for the current Galactic Season while I type this. But as I mentioned in my very first World of Warcraft post, there is something very…comforting about WoW’s gameplay and design to me. So about a week ago I updated the game and logged back in to see what was going on, and if I could make sense of anything and get going again without much hassle.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “I Bet You Forgot I was Playing WoW (so did I)”
DM of the Rings Remastered LXIX: New Dimensions in Storage
Observing that the “pack” in D&D is a much-abused simplification is not going to result in forehead-slapping revelations on the part of anyone who has played the game. We know this, already.
Still, it is amusing to see how eagerly these compromises are embraced. Even “hardcore” gamers are happy to treat the average knapsack as a soundproof bag which will distribute the weight of the contents evenly over the body of the wearer. I guess it’s good that geeks don’t go outside very often, or someone would notice this and come up with a set of complex knapsack simulation rules that would make GURPS look like checkers.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings Remastered LXIX: New Dimensions in Storage”
Minecraft Complaints
Sorry about no Sims 4 Overthinking this week, the usual writer team for that series is undergoing a possible integration (two system members becoming one) and I’m not gonna touch it till I know what they want to do Confused about what any of those words meant? Check out our explanation post. I’m Jax, or Jaxson, whichever. I was the system member that wrote all of the very first posts we did after Dad died Real cheery stuff. He/him and all that jazz, just please don’t refer to me as a woman it makes me itchy.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Minecraft Complaints”
Wednesday Action Log 4-24-24
This week I’ve just played Minecraft. I intended to play other games but I didn’t realize that it had been so long since I last played. So I got to explore some new stuff and hopefully I will not run into a Warden.
What are you guys playing?
From The Archives:
The Best of 2011
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Stolen Pixels
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
Wolfenstein II
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?