T w e n t y S i d e d
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I was going to skip this quest, but the people demanded it.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Shamus Plays: WoW #12: Hogger!”
Spoiler Warning S4E22: It’s a Small World After All
Link (YouTube) |
True story: The entire batch of episodes we recorded last Sunday had to be trashed because the voice recording file was somehow corrupted. I’m still wrenching my brain for an explanation as to how it happened. We record using ventrilo’s record feature (we’re all in agreement that the benefits of skype are far outweighed by the lack of a bind-able push-to-talk key). Ventrilo also makes it very easy to separate each individual’s voice into a separate channel for re-composition later because that’s how they’re saved natively, and all you have to do is export them to .wav files (rather than having everyone record their own voice and then send each recording to me). Right now the only explanation I can think of is that I may have killed the program before ending the recording, but that doesn’t quite mesh with what I remember – I’m fairly certain I recall ending the recording long before I left the server, so I really have no idea.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spoiler Warning S4E22: It’s a Small World After All”
Spoiler Warning S4E21: Gethbusters!
“Don’t try what you’re about to see us do at home.”
“We’re what you call ‘idiots’.”
Link (YouTube) |
If you want to know a bit more about Mumbles, check out the post on her blog where she talks about joining the cast of Spoiler Warning and gives a bit of her gaming background.
I tease the other cast members about how they make me feel old. When you can’t see someone, you’re not constantly thinking about their age and background. I’ve never met any of them in person, and they’re all fairly mature. So I forget how old they are and treat them like same-age peers most of the time. But then suddenly one of them will mention something crazy, like how they were a kid when the Nintendo 64 came out, and I’ll suddenly be reminded of our huge age differential. (Not as huge as some, but still.) So I keep saying annoying old-man things to them.
“Hey, I met my wife the year you were born.”
“So wait, you’re YOUNGER than Tetris?!?”
“Please tell my you’re joking about not seeing Back to the Future.”
“My oldest daughter turns 13 in about a week. You’re closer to her age than to mine.”
They’re all good sports about my sudden revelations regarding my own mortality. And I had a point to all of this but I’ve forgotten it now.
Oh, right. Mythbusters is awesome.
Experienced Points: Vexing Complexity
This column might not be of tremendous value to us here this week. We’ve kind of already had this discussion last Wednesday. But I wanted to expand my thoughts on it a bit and go over my problems with the WoW gear mechanics in more detail. And I thought it was worth taking the discussion over to the Escapist.
I predict that the most common response to my suggestions at the end will be “But, that would break PvP!” Which is the response I always get whenever I suggest fixing any of the ridiculous number of things wrong with the solo and co-op aspects of the game.
Spoiler Warning S4E20: Follow the Yellow Brick Railroad
Link (YouTube) |
So they filled the dialog in the game with irrational confrontational hostility. I suppose that’s easier that familiarizing themselves with the first game and learning characterization. (I totally need a fanboy rage emoticon. Pretend I do, and that I used it here.)
On the upside, an old foe returns in this episode, and you’ll never geth who it is.
I have to say I liked the bright sunlight mechanic. I wouldn’t want to put up with it for the whole game, and of course your AI companions aren’t actually properly programed to deal with it (I really hope they’re immune) but I thought it was a worthwhile idea for mixing things up. If you compare Mass Effect 2 to a lot of cover-based shooters, it’s actually a pretty smart game. Compare it to the mind-enema that is Kayne & Lynch to see how monotonous it could have been.
I’m really curious how BioWare views their play for the shooter market. Was this imposed by EA? Did it work to their satisfaction? Are they going to veer back towards more RPG elements now that they’ve “hooked” this new audience, or are they thinking they’ve hooked us RPG players (which, okay, they totally have) and can keep courting the Gears of Kayne & Killzone fans? I know a lot of us raged against this game, but did they even notice? Do they even see the thematic shift of the series as something that needs to be fixed, or are they saying, “Sales are good, keep doing what we’re doing”. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at one of their meetings.
Or, I guess, just employed there. Actually that would be way better because then I wouldn’t be a fly.
Let’s Code Part 7: Video Production
This week Michael is talking about ray tracing. Ray tracing is an odd thing. It’s both the most primitive and the most advanced way to create lighting in a scene. It’s basically just a brute force solution. You simulate the light. It’s crazy expensive is terms of CPU power, so I was shocked at how fast his lighting system is. Apparently his program can render a single frame in just 2.4 seconds. Now, that’s too slow to actually use in a game. But I remember messing around with ray-traced scenes in the early 90’s, back when a single frame would take over a minute.
I haven’t thought about ray tracing in a while, and I guess the progress from 60 seconds to 2.4 seconds sounds about right-ish for the CPU speed increases we’ve seen since then. (Allowing for the fact that our screens are now larger so we have more pixels to contend with. Perhaps it’s even possible to render a 640×480 or 800×600 scene at interactive framerates.) But it was still shocking to be reminded of how far we’ve come.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Let’s Code Part 7: Video Production”
Spoiler Warning S4E19: My Mommy Says I’m Special!
You know, I don’t hate this game nearly as much as Fallout 3, although you couldn’t tell that from our conversation. For the record, Fallout 3 was a vortex of mind-numbing stupidity where the setting, the characters, the premise, and the story were irritating and infantile. Mass Effect 2 was merely a disappointment. Really, I wouldn’t have been nearly as irate with the game if its predecessor hadn’t been so good. If the next Gears of War game aspired to the Mass Effect 2 level of storytelling, I’d be overjoyed.
Sadly, you can’t really modulate criticism to account for this. We either comment on something or we don’t.
Link (YouTube) |
Oh, now that you’ve watched the show I guess I should point out that there was a pretty heavy Jade Empire spoiler in there. So I hope you skipped over that. Yeah. Someone spoiled the plot of Jade Empire. I don’t remember who. I think it was Rutskarn.
Yeah, pretty sure it was Rutskarn.
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Megatextures
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Hardware Review
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Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
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Crysis 2
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The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.