Twenty Sided

By Josh Posted Tuesday Mar 5, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 124 comments

 Fallout 3 EP19: Stop Calling Me MungoPrevious Post

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Playing through Dishonored again, it really does feel like something is missing from the game. The game clearly has this whole, fleshed out world, but there never seemed to be any hook; anything to pull me into it or encourage me to explore anything but the most cursory of background information. The main storyline is all exposition about events that are happening right now, with little explanation for what happened before or why any of this is important. It really was, as I touched on in the episode, like I’d missed the first few chapters of the story somewhere.

It really didn’t help that I didn’t figure out the Heart could reveal background information about the NPCs if you pointed it at them until I was nearly finished with the game. I’d tried it early on, but apparently none of the people I’d tried to learn about were interesting enough for me to distinguish the Heart’s dialogue about them from everything it was saying about the general area. Also, it totally doesn’t count if the only way to learn about the background of the setting is to point an item at everything I see.

And yes, the brightness problem will be fixed next episode. Patience!

Josh Viel is the primary editor and producer of the Spoiler Warning video series. You can support the show by backing the Patreon.

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124 comments

Experienced Points: Why the PS4 Doesn’t do PS3 Games

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Mar 5, 2013

Filed under: Column 106 comments

 Experienced Points: Aliens Isn't About Shooting AliensPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Not Greedy, Just Clueless 

The recently-announced PS4 is getting a bit of bad press lately because of the lack of backwards compatibility. My column this week explains why this was inevitable.

While reading up on how the Cell Architecture works for this article, my eye began to twitch s I pictured just what I complete mess it would be to emulate this beast. The cell lets a bunch of processors share different levels of cache. There’s all this stuff governing when memory writes are performed and it’s basically a bunch of distributed computers shoved in the same case. That’s awesome if you’re doing brute-force cryptography or building a render farm, but as a system for making interactive games it comes off as… weird.

I’ll repeat the borderline conspiracy theory I’ve floated in the past:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: Why the PS4 Doesn’t do PS3 Games”

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: Aliens Isn't About Shooting AliensPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Not Greedy, Just Clueless 

106 comments

Fallout 3 EP19: Stop Calling Me Mungo

By Shamus Posted Monday Mar 4, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 140 comments

 Dishonored EP3: Your Stupid Dumb FacePrevious Post

Next PostDishonored EP4: Grandma's House 

Link (YouTube)

In this episode we discuss games where you’re given a friend / companion / family member in a game, only to have them killed off two minutes later. It’s interesting because we were just talking about this in relation to Dishonored.

So here we are, in the very depths of the bowels of the pits of the dungeons of the bottom of Fallout 3’s barrel. This is the part of the game where the writers thumb their noses at the player while blowing raspberries and taunt, “Stop degrading yourself! Stop degrading yourself!” This is the most ludicrous, poorly-justified, aggravating, lazy railroad job in the entire game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 3 EP19: Stop Calling Me Mungo”

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.

 Dishonored EP3: Your Stupid Dumb FacePrevious Post

Next PostDishonored EP4: Grandma's House 

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Do Not Panic

By Shamus Posted Sunday Mar 3, 2013

Filed under: Notices 169 comments

 The New Years Stream is Live - It's Over!Previous Post

Next PostThinking About Forums 

Yes, the site theme has changed. No, this is not a permanent change. I’m just mucking around trying to figure out why the site is so ridiculously slow. I’ve fussed with the database, I’ve turned off all my plugins, I’ve checked the error logs, I’ve scoured the WordPress help pages, and I’ve said swear words in a loud, authoritative voice. I’m basically out of ideas at this point.

SOMETHING is making it incredibly expensive to show pages. It gets bad when lots of people are commenting. It gets horrible to the point of uselessness when I add a new post. We’ll see what this does.

EDIT: Initial test: Inconclusive. I’m going to let this sit for couple of hours and watch performance as comments appear and I edit posts.

EDIT: Well, I stripped the site down to the bones. Default theme, no plugings. (And then, just plugins to rebuff spam.) The site loaded fine, but posting comments still takes over a minute. Actually, the comment goes up right away, but the person leaving the comment gets stuck waiting for the page to refresh. The same thing happens when I dd a new post or update an old one. Basically, submitting a form results in an epic page load for no reason in the world. It could be the form. It could be modifying the database. It could be rebuilding the affected pages. I don’t know.

There are 235,000+ comments on the site. That’s a lot, but in the grand scheme of things they shouldn’t clog up the works that badly.

I really am at a loss. There’s no reason for this. I contacted my web host and the machine itself seems fine. No rogue processes eating CPU/memory/bandwidth. It’s just another stupid WordPress blog.

EDIT: On the advice of the tech support guru at my host, I dropped the Super Cache plugin and switched to W3 Total Cache. The difference is pretty stark. I’m hopping around the admin pages with a speed I haven’t seen in over a year. Comments seem to be working well. We’ll see how this goes.

Thank you for your continued patience.

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.

 The New Years Stream is Live - It's Over!Previous Post

Next PostThinking About Forums 

169 comments

Dishonored EP3: Your Stupid Dumb Face

By Shamus Posted Sunday Mar 3, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 114 comments

 Dishonored EP2: Rat TrapsPrevious Post

Next PostFallout 3 EP19: Stop Calling Me Mungo 

Link (YouTube)

Of all the problems with the game in the opening act, the shortcomings of The Outsider are the most painful. The entire concept of this story is excellent. Emily, the conspiracy, the outsider, Slackjaw, Daud, the strife in the city… this is great worldbuilding. We’ve got politics, intrigue, characters to care about, rivals to worry about, short and long-term goals, large and small-scale threats, justifications for magical powers that don’t immediately fall apart into “Why don’t they just use magic?” as a solution to every problem. All of this could have been fantastic if it had just been given a little room to develop before it was time to start shanking dudes.

But the outsider. The outsider needed a re-write and re-design. He sounds boring. His clothes are unremarkable. His haircut is boring. His goals don’t seem particularly ambitious. His face is ordinary. THIS IS A TRICKSTER GOD, NOT BLOODY MARTIN SMITH FROM CROYDON. We should be afraid of this guy. We should feel like he’s got us backed into a corner and we have no choice but to accept his “gift” and worry about what consequences there will be down the line. We should spend the game fearing an inevitable betrayal that never happens.

Instead The Outsider is somehow even more boring and flat than our silent protagonist. Tragic. What a missed opportunity.

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.

 Dishonored EP2: Rat TrapsPrevious Post

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114 comments

Dishonored EP2: Rat Traps

By Shamus Posted Thursday Feb 28, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 193 comments

 Dishonored EP1: A Capital Offense!Previous Post

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Link (YouTube)

The area around the Hound Pitts is amazing. Bright, colorful, decayed, detailed, varied, and open. There’s lots of vertical space to explore and none of it feels copy / pasted. Thought was put into making the layout sensible. Beer barrels just off the bar, places for the help to live upstairs, nice rooms for the owners, and so on. Verisimilitude and such.

And since we’re talking about the 451 code:

In System Shock (1994) the very first keypad-controlled door you encounter has an access code of 451.
I’ve never played it myself, but I’ve been told that in Sanitarium (1998) the first door code is 451.
In System Shock 2 (1999) the first keypad-controlled door you encounter has the access code of 45100.
In Deus Ex (2000) the first keypad (for the little com station just outside of UNATCO headquarters) is 0451.
In Deus Ex – Invisible War (2004) the game was simplified so that you no longer entered keycodes, but you begin the game in room 451 of Tarsus Academy.
In BioShock (2007) the door code of the crematorium is 0451.
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011) the code to Sarif’s office elevator (to the tutorial encounter) is 0451.
And here in Dishonored the first safe code is 451.

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.

 Dishonored EP1: A Capital Offense!Previous Post

Next PostDishonored EP3: Your Stupid Dumb Face 

193 comments

Dishonored EP1: A Capital Offense!

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Feb 27, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 215 comments

 Fallout 3 EP18: If Wishes Were Black Helicopters... Previous Post

Next PostDishonored EP2: Rat Traps 

Link (YouTube)

I want to stress that this is not going to be a season of rage and bile. I like a lot of things about Dishonored, and even its shortcomings are kind of understandable. The problem is that its problems are all front loaded. Most of the problems with the game happen in the introduction. The pacing, character introductions, worldbuilding, level design, and mechanics are all handled sideways and backwards. The game is trying to cram way too much stuff into this opening, and as a result it’s like watching a movie on fast-forward. This was incredibly frustrating to talk about. The opening is so hurried and the problems are so dense that we didn’t even get to cover all of the problems.

As a result, these first few episodes are going to be very negative. Again, this isn’t a horrible game, it just makes a really awkward first impression.

Since I brought up the Thief series, here are my posts on Thief 3 from way back in 2006.

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.

 Fallout 3 EP18: If Wishes Were Black Helicopters... Previous Post

Next PostDishonored EP2: Rat Traps 

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