Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Saturday May 23, 2009

Filed under: Movies 72 comments

In honor of the big update for Team Fortress 2, and the fact that TF2 is free to play this weekend, I thought I’d post these intro movies for the TF2 classes.

I’m a medic by nature and habit, so I’m a bit sad Valve never made a movie for the medic.

Let’s see, we have:

Scottish demo man.
Bronx (or Brooklyn, I can’t actually tell the difference) scout dude.
Russian heavy weapons guy.
German Medic guy.
Indistinct pyro man.
Frenchman spy.
American soldier dude.
Aussie sniper guy.
Texan Engineer.

You’ll note that none of the characters are: A) Female or B) British. This seems like a major oversight. They need to add that. Maybe a Mary Poppins-style “governess” class, to rap perpetually AFK players on the knuckles, make the foul-mouthed brats wash their mouths out with soap, and pwn the naughty enemy team with her umbrella. (Which doubles as a transport device.) They could sexy her up by having her show a bit of ankle.

My unhealthy Poppins fetish aside, I’m having trouble picturing what new class they could introduce to the game or what role that character could play that wouldn’t simply overlap with existing classes. It’s a pretty well-rounded game.

EDIT: Put the Engineer on the list. Sort of daft, seeing as how I’m a [software] engineer.

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.

 Multiple SidosisPrevious Post

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72 comments

Experienced Points: Your Demo Sucks

By Shamus Posted Friday May 22, 2009

Filed under: Column 48 comments

 Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1Previous Post

Next PostStolen Pixels #93: Crysis Demo, Part 2 

It really does, it totally sucks.

The worthless demo is a trend that’s been bugging me for a while now. Just thought I’d share my agitation with you, seeing as how you seem to enjoy that so much. Or was that the comics you enjoyed? I can’t remember. Either way: Your demo sucks.

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.

 Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1Previous Post

Next PostStolen Pixels #93: Crysis Demo, Part 2 

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Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Friday May 22, 2009

Filed under: Column 20 comments

 Stolen Pixels #91: Print is DeadPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Your Demo Sucks 

Your demands for more comics about the demo for a two-year old game have at last been answered.

I aim to please.

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.

 Stolen Pixels #91: Print is DeadPrevious Post

Next PostExperienced Points: Your Demo Sucks 

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Time Capsule

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 21, 2009

Filed under: Random 162 comments

 Timetravel: What to Take?Previous Post

Next PostThe Top Story 

Civilization is about to undergo some calamity. You can see it coming, but you can’t avert it. (Perhaps it’s unavoidable.) Sometime before the end of this century, civilization is going to be blasted back to the stone age, but projections suggest that things will calm down again in 100-200 years. During that time it’s expected that humans will lose nearly everything, technology-wise. We’ll be back to spears and animal skins.

A clever scientist has come up with a very sturdy time capsule. She’s confident that it will:

Survive the apocalypse.
Remain hidden, safe, and airtight until things blow over.
Be found by any surviving humans once the planet returns to normal.
Those that find it will be reasonably interested in using whatever they find inside to better their understanding and aren’t going to ignore it or waste it. (They won’t burn textbooks to keep warm, even if they can’t understand them.)

Let’s assume we’ll retain the abstract “technologies”, like phonetic alphabet. If we have to nail things down, assume that the people who find the capsule will be reasonably intelligent adults with a second-grade education and almost no understanding of what the world was like, pre-disaster. (I’m not going to specify what the disaster is, or people will begin gaming the system and suggesting ways to avert or survive the disaster instead of tackling the proposed question.) Note that while you can be sure a group of literate humans will find this, you can’t be sure they will be able to read and understand your textbook on quantum physics.

You’ve been given the job of filling the time capsule. Assuming the goal of jump-starting technology, what do you put in?

EDIT: Oh. I forgot to give a volume limit, just to keep some smartass from stuffing the entire library of congress inside of a power plant inside of an aircraft carrier and putting it in the “capsule”. The capsule is one cubic meter.

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.

 Timetravel: What to Take?Previous Post

Next PostThe Top Story 

162 comments

Death to Good Graphics!

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 20, 2009

Filed under: Video Games 43 comments

 Duke Nukem NeverPrevious Post

Next PostTwenty Sided Server: Novelty rounds 

I just want to point out that another installment of my weekly column went live at The Escapist last Friday. I didn’t link it at the time because the site was inaccessible to me. They were in the midst of some hardware upheaval, the emergent result of an upgrade of some sort. I thought I’d let that business calm down before I tried to send you in that direction. The column is about the self-destructive pursuit of graphics, and what I think developers should be doing instead. In order to make up for the lateness of the link, I am linking it an unprecedented eight times in this paragraph, so that you’ll be able to find it easily.

Also, I want to congratulate The Escapist on the new site design. Some people have groused about the layout in the past, but I think this new thing they have going is, in youngster parlance, “totally sweet”. If this were the 80’s I would pop my collar, put on some awesome shades, and declare the site to be “rad”. I may even go so far as to say it was bitchin’, and I’m sure you know me well enough to realize I don’t make such unqualified appraisals of excellence lightly. But there it is: Bitchin’!

I love the new Stolen Pixels index with the little comic thumbnails. There is something compelling about seeing those little windows into the comic that makes me want to click on them and see what they say. Then I remember: I’m probably already familiar with said contents.

Anyway, Death to Good Graphics!, and so on.

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.

 Duke Nukem NeverPrevious Post

Next PostTwenty Sided Server: Novelty rounds 

43 comments

Stolen Pixels #91: Print is Dead

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 19, 2009

Filed under: Column 17 comments

 Stolen Pixels #90: Left 4 Dumb: Part 12Previous Post

Next PostStolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1 

Stolen Pixels is taking a break from Left 4 Dumb. In the meantime, please enjoy this look at some back issues of Gamepunx.

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.

 Stolen Pixels #90: Left 4 Dumb: Part 12Previous Post

Next PostStolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1 

17 comments

Please hold

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 19, 2009

Filed under: Personal 27 comments

 InsomniaPrevious Post

Next PostFree Radical Review 

If you’re one of the dozens and dozens of people who has contacted me recently, then I beg your indulgence a bit longer. The procedural city project captured a lot of attention. It wound up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Kotaku, Flowing Data, BoingBoing, a cross-section of various blogs, and even Digg. (Although true to form, Digg managed to scorn the original link to my site and then embrace one to a different site, days later. (Someone sent me an email explaining the malfunctions and social gaming going on behind the scenes at Digg, but that rant will have to wait for another post.) Still, this follows Digg’s usual pattern of picking up on news that is both late and wrong, and then acting as a spawning pool for a “discussion” that would be too stupid for YouTube.)

This surge of attention brought in a flood of project invites, feature requests, programming suggestions, bug reports, criticisms, business proposals, code snippets, collaboration proposals, and fan mail. As an example: I have requests from three different indie bands who want to use footage of the city builder in their music video / stage performance.

Keeping up with my day job, the Pixel City stuff, my column at the Escapist, my webcomic, and this website proved to be too much. Managing a large slate of projects is a lot like juggling: If you drop one, you’re probably going to drop them all. I dropped everything for a bit this weekend and went for 48 hours straight not producing anything for anyone. And it was awesome.

I’m going to idle along for a couple more days, meeting my business obligations (day job, Escapist) and let everything else slide for a bit longer. Better this than burnout.

Anyway, if you’re waiting for me to get back to you, I apologize for the delay. It’s in the queue.

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.

 InsomniaPrevious Post

Next PostFree Radical Review 

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