T w e n t y S i d e d
My Twitter feed:
(Deleted, moved to sidebar.)
Don’t get too attached. I’m sure I’ll get bored and quit any minute now.
If, by some miracle, I decide to keep doing this, I’ll figure out how to tuck this thing into the sidebar.
Cyth Guitar Hero Cult of Personality
What to do if you don’t have time to play videogames? Build a robot to play them for you:
Link (YouTube) |
I think I’m the only guy in the world that hates that song, but I love the robot.
Friday Notes
I didn’t have time to finish up the final post in the Fallout series, so we’ll have to wait until Monday to have that conversation. Actually, it’s not that it’s not “done” as much as I realized I was beating a long-dead horse and it would have made for a laborious read.
In other news, today’s Stolen Pixels launched, and promptly landed again with a dull, wet thud. A sound not unlike that of a body striking the ground in the desert, right beside a freshly-dug hole. I’ve been excited about this one for a while and I think it’s thought is was my best work so far. And it’s garnered what might be generously referred to as a halfhearted “meh”. At first this stunned me like a blow to the forehead. I was prepared for rejection. Or confusion. But apathy?
Then I looked at my logs here on this site, and realized the internet (or at least my corner of it) is a ghost town today. It’s the Friday before Christmas. I think school is out, college kids are home, and people just aren’t around right now. Still, 2 comments? Merry Christmas Shamus! Santa has brought you a box of FAIL.
At the risk of ruining a joke by explaining it, Travis Taylor is just a character I’ve added to the comic. I don’t know how often he’ll show up, but it will be handy to have an ongoing personality aside from the EA Guy. I like the EA Guy, but I’m just about out of usable pictures of him. I’m explaining this because people keep telling me this new guy isn’t as funny as I am, which is either a very polite insult or a painful compliment. It’s a bit like someone sharing an ice cream cone with you by launching it at your head with a baseball pitcher. Delicious and painful.
Also, in response to about a thousand (give or take 995) requests, I started one of those twitter things. I expect to amuse myself with it for a few days and then lose interest, as most people do. But there it is, while it lasts.
Right. Back to work.
Stolen Pixels #48:
2008 Awards, Part 1
I’m taking Christmas off from Stolen Pixels. Travis Taylor will be filling in for me. Yes, THE Travis Taylor. He’s difficult to work with, but nobody else was willing to do it on such short notice.
Edit: And please don’t be shy about leaving comments. I don’t know what the deal is. There have been less comments than ever, even as traffic for the comic has grown. What the heck?
Fallout 3: Tenpenny Tower
So a few people have complained that the quests in Fallout 3 are shallow or nonsensical. Other people really dig them. Two common responses are:
- The quests in Fallout 3 are stupid compared to the earlier Fallout games.
- The quests in Fallout 3 are so much better than in Oblivion.
Let’s look at one of these quests.
Allow me to set the stage: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Fallout 3: Tenpenny Tower”
Worst Campaign Train Wreck
No GM advice this week. The Big Project continues to bear down like an unbearably overbearing… bear. I don’t have time for the fancy writing and whatnot, which is why the previous sentence was so appallingly lame. Seriously, I don’t even have time to highlight it and hit “delete”, that’s how amazingly busy I am. So let’s have a topic for discussion instead:
This won’t apply to people who run or play freestyle off-the-cuff games, but for those who strive for some sort of specific plot:
Players
What is the worst derailment you’ve ever perpetrated? Usually player cleverness leads to more interesting situations, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it just wrecks an NPC / location / dungeon / conversation that promised to be fun. Maybe you killed the bad guy without even realizing it. Or you alienated a key ally. Or caused a cave-in of a dungeon before you even set foot inside. What is the one thing you did that put the GM off his script, and which you later regretted? (As opposed to all the other times you put him off his script, just because that’s half the fun.)
Game Masters
What is the worst railroading you’ve ever perpetrated? Maybe one time when you manipulated things so that they went according to some overarching scheme, and afterwords you realized your plans sucked compared to what the players had in mind, or you realized that things would have been more fun if you’d let the players have their way.
If you want to answer both, go for it. You can even do so in two different posts, if that helps. I know it sucks trying to write long comments in that little box.
Stolen Pixels #47:
The Obligatory Cameo
If you’re playing Silent Hill, then you-know-who has to show up sooner or later.
I fear this is one of those jokes that will amuse only me. So far it’s earned blank stares and blinking, but I still giggle at the last panel. And I hardly ever giggle at my own jokes. Please don’t feel bad. I’m sure I’ll write something you find funny one of these days.
From The Archives:
Final Fantasy X
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Game at the Bottom
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
Quakecon 2012 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
The Strange Evolution of OpenGL
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
Object-Disoriented Programming
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.