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My tree-building code is a lot less sophisticated than I planned. This is really rare in programming. (And, I expect, in most other forms of engineering. Problems usually become more complex as you examine them in greater detail.) Still, this is in keeping with the spirit of this project, which is to solve 90% of the problem with 10% of the effort.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Frontier #10: More Trees”
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This was going to be a post about a couple of sci-fi reviews on Blip.tv. After ten minutes of fighting with the site and watching the same ad over and over, I scrapped that idea and now I’m going to rant about the service instead, because if Blip is going to waste my time I’m going to pay them back in bile.
Blip.tv sucks. Blip.tv sucks in numerous, infuriating and unforgivable ways. It sucks in ways which are carefully enumerated in the following list:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Blip.tv Sucks”
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With apologies to the late Bob Ross. His work has been widely criticized, but this project shares a certain kinship with his work: We’re not trying to make Great Art, we’re trying to make “Pretty Good Art” in 10% of the time. I imagine that if paintings could somehow cost as much to produce as videogames, the “Bob Ross method” would be the only way to get anything done.
Hopefully my tree-making skills are better than my photoshopping skills.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Frontier #9: Happy Little Trees”
Josh is on vacation this week. By some strange coincidence, someone else is on vacation next week. I can’t remember who. Oh! That’s right. It’s Josh. Again.
Now, if it was any other cast member I’d suggest we just keep doing the show without them. But since Josh is the one with all of the save games, recording software, editing software, special equipment, and the souped-up computer, we can’t just cut him out of the deal. If we did, the show would consist of Mumble, Rutskarn and I all showing up and watching a blank Livestream window for an hour, not recording anything, and then releasing no content whatsoever.
So, the show is taking a break. I promise to pick up the slack by maybe linking to some YouTube videos or some crap. If I remember.
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It’s sad to run into quests like this. Do we give Obsidian a pass for striking out because they were swinging for the fences? Does than mean we’d rather game developers not dream big? (Although both approaches are better than Fallout 3, where the story aimed low and it still failed.)
This plot of this quest alone is larger and more complex than some games. The number of parties and viewpoints is large and there’s a lot going on. There are several points where you have lots of choices on how to proceed. But in the end, the whole thing is broken and your choices don’t make a lot of sense. (I wonder how many people got frustrated and just killed everyone because they didn’t know what to do next.)
My experiences with Obsidian games always end up conflicted like this.
I thought I’d end the week with another snapshot of how things are going. Yes, I’ll have a post detailing the trees and sky and how they were made, but in the meantime here’s some shiny things to distract you.
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Note that I didn’t bunny-hop my way through this demo. If you’re used to Spoiler Warning you may need to shake your monitor up and down to avoid the nausea associated with smooth, non-hopping movement.
My family is home all day. All of us. My wife teaches our kids, so they don’t go to public school. I work from home. She works from home. This is a busy house.
The main hall is lined with paintings and drawings by my wife. This hallway connects the front door, the back door, and the bathroom. All day long we have kids roughhousing, and people slamming the heavy doors as they enter and leave the house. (Not to mention the persistent level of traffic you get around a bathroom in a house of five people. ) Despite this constant vibration, the art manages to stay on the walls.
Last year, my wife took the kids on a trip to visit a friend in another state. They were gone for a few days. The day after they left, one of the paintings randomly fell off the wall. No reason. No provocation. I was sitting in my office like I always do, when I heard a crash from the hall and found the floor glittering with broken glass. I wasn’t even listening to loud music. “Hm. That was random,” I thought.
Yesterday, my wife left with the kids to visit that same friend. It’s now the next morning, and another painting just fell off the wall. (No broken glass this time, thank goodness.)
I am annoyed at how utterly mystifying, inexplicable, and random this is, while at the same time being completely mundane. It’s just a stupid little mystery that I’ll probably never figure out.
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
What makes this borderline indie title so much better than the AAA juggernauts that came before?
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
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.
So what happens when a SOFTWARE engineer tries to review hardware? This. This happens.
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
T w e n t y S i d e d
