This week we’re doing another quasi-technical article, talking about what languages are used to develop games. The Escapist has recently expanded their focus to include science and tech, and I’m sort of testing the waters to see what kinds of things people want to read about. I know here we like to talk about coding, but we’ll see what people say.
Also, what quasi-technical questions would you like to see tackled in 1,500 words or less?
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Hosts: Josh, Rutskarn, Chris, and Shamus.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #58: Dark Souls 2, Marvel Unlimited, Unrest, Civilization”
So back when my webcomic was all the rage, my little website here wasn’t really able to handle the load. I was using a small plan on a small webhost and the traffic was crushing me. A friend-of-an-internet-friend offered me some space on their sever. I took it, put the webcomic on it, and everything was awesome.
It’s been eight years. Apparently everyone forgot about this little arrangement. Last week someone finally took the hosted images down and my webcomic vanished. Of course, I can handle the traffic now. It’s no problem. But…
I don’t have the images.
I’ve looked around, and I can’t find the DVD backup. It might be hidden someplace obscure in the attic after the move last year. I don’t know. I probably have the source images on a DVD somewhere in the attic. But even if I found it, those would be the raw images with random names. It would take hours to re-size them all and sort out all the file names.
SO.
Before I tear the house apart and begin a massive project like that, I’m wondering if anyone out there has a backup of the images. Yes, I realize how absurd it is to be asking THE INTERNET for my own webcomic. But that seems to be the most expedient way to get the thing back. Ideally, I’d love it if someone could just put all the files in a zip where I could download them. Hopefully still with their original filenames.
Anyone?
EDIT: Nevermind. Looks like I found them. Can’t find my 2007 backups, but I found my 2008 backup, which had the goods. It’ll take me a little time to get all of these pulled from DVD, uploaded, and then update every. dang. post. But I’ll get it done. DMotR should return soon.
EDIT II – Son of Edit: Okay. I half-assed it and modified the script I use for embedding images. Instead of altering all 144 posts, I just had it strip out references to the old host. Images are uploaded and everything should be working again.
EDIT III – Revenge of Edit: Also, I restored the category browser (look in the sidebar to the right) which I managed to delete last time I messed with the site. So you can now browse by category again. Also, this is a great reminder that it’s been ages since I did a detailed backup. I rely on source control and google drive for small stuff, but the really bulky stuff hasn’t been backed up in years.
EDIT IV – Edit Harder: Man, these archive DVDs are a goldmine. Photos I forgot about. Pictures of dice I no longer own. Maybe I’ll freshen up some of the dice images around here.
This first part isn’t important to the project. But we’re talking about it anyway basically because I want to.
Obviously in 3D space, the concept of which way is up or forward is completely arbitrary. We’ve got 3 axis, one for each spatial dimension, universally named X, Y, and Z. You can arrange these any way you like. If you want, X can be down, Y can be forward, and Z left. If we’re looking to assign an axis to the directions of left-right, back-forward, up-down, then we can do it six different ways: XYZ, XZY, YZX, YXZ, ZXY, or ZYX.
Furthermore, we can change the orientation of any of these lines, so if we chose XYZ, we could have positive X values go east and negative values west, or we can flip that around and have the axis point the other way. So there are six ways to organize our axis and within each of those there are eight different combinations of which way they point.
In a pure mathematical sense, none of this matters. It’s all arbitrary. Instead of XYZ you can name your axis HUMPERDINK, SNAGGLETOOTH, and CARROTJUICE. They can be in any order and point any way you like. The math will all work out. But from a practical standpoint, we’ve basically settled on some conventions and you shouldn’t break from those unless your plan is to drive people crazy.
In the end, any of these coordinate systems will fall into one of two groups: Right or left-handed systems:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Frontier Rebooted Part 2: Welcome to Orientation”
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For the record, the quest they started with the drinking game is actually pretty fun, and it’s too bad it got messed up here. Hopefully we can pick it up again next week. It’s basically: The Hangover: The Quest. I could swear you’re supposed to be naked when you wake up. The idea is that you retrace your steps and discover what happened to you while you were blackout drunk.
I’ve never done this quest for the priestess of Dibella. As far as I can tell they’re asking you to kidnap an innocent girl for no pay and turning you loose without any other motivation to do as they ask. By not doing the quest I always felt like I was putting one over on these loons, and the desire to shaft them was always greater than my curiosity about what actually happens in the quest.
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Why did Malborne have an iron mace? Do the Thalmor really let their bootlick bar-tending servants bring conspicuous heavy weapons to their fancy dress parties?
The dragon attacks in this game make me thing of the old Mitch Hedberg joke, “On fishing shows they always throw the fish back. They don’t want to eat them. They just want to make them late for something.” The dragons in this game don’t want to kill the dragonborn. They just want to waste your time.
Has there ever been an occasion where Josh shouted someone across the room and it wasn’t the Best Thing Ever? I think I’m finally done with Skyrim, but if the fever comes back my next character is going to be named Fus Ro Dah. And I’m going to introduce myself to everyone.
Also: The riddle this week is apparently: WHY DOES JOSH HAVE ALL THESE FLOWERS?
I assume we’re looking for out-of-character justification. Like, why did Josh spend time stealing deathbell?
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I’d like to interrupt this special episode of “hoarders” for the following political commentary: The whole “Ulfric is a sleeper agent” idea pretty much ruined the entire political questline for me. Once I discovered that, I lost all interest in it.
I like the idea of idealism vs. practicality that the quest represents on its face. Do we support the religious freedom of a nation of people who are partly, but not entirely racist? Do we condemn all based on the way some have lashed out at non-Nords? Do we side with the Empire, who are really just trying to make the best of a bad situation? I mean, sure, we could fight to defend Talos worship now. But we would lose badly to the Thalmor. Wouldn’t it be better to just keep the Talos-business secret while we try to build up enough power to crush the murderous and genocidal Thalmor? Then again, if Talos worship is diminished, that might also diminish the power of Talos, who might be key to overcoming the Thalmor. Then again again, if the Nords are so hell-bent on shoving their Talos in everyone’s face, wouldn’t it just be better to let the cede from the Empire? Let the Thalmor and the Nords duke it out for a decade or so, rather than expending our finite supply of imperial power basically fighting the Thalmor’s battle for them? On the other, other, other hand, don’t the Stormcloaks kind of have a point? Why serve and pay taxes to an empire that’s clearly unable and unwilling to do its job and protect you from foreign powers? Can we blame the Stormcloaks for wanting to keep fighting about something that means so much to them? They’re not the only people in Tamriel who would rather die than give up their god, they’re just the only ones being asked to do so.
I’m sure we can do another couple of paragraphs of pro-and-con. The point is: This is a really interesting setup and there are lots of ways of looking at this.
And then in this stupid message it’s revealed the whole thing is a massive waste of time. The idealistic Stormcloak leader is just a brainwashed puppet, the whole war is a plot of the Thalmor, and the only winning move is not to play. Okay Bethesda. You talked me out of it. I won’t play the political questline. Not sure why you wanted to reduce the most interesting problem in Skyrim to an uninteresting reveal, and I don’t know why you’d want to dissade players from playing the second-biggest questline in the game. But whatever.
AND THEN YOU CAN’T SHOW THE NOTE TO ANYONE. WHO WROTE THIS COMPLETE DROSS?
If someone at least SAID this out loud, then we could have fun with it. Were they telling the truth? Were they mislead? Who do we believe? It would also give us a justification for why we can’t show the proof to the various leaders. I mean, every other piece of paper in Skyrim is considered irrefutable evidence of this-or-that. But the same apparently isn’t true for this, the most important document in Skyrim that isn’t an actual Elder Scroll.
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