{"id":22813,"date":"2014-04-14T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=22813"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:14:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:14:36","slug":"diecast-53-ftl-civilization-beyond-earth-actual-sunlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=22813","title":{"rendered":"Diecast #53: FTL, Civilization Beyond Earth, Actual Sunlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/embed\/ThAiHbSb#3iis9e9vWdjNbcxw-GqihqqDI43MqayiNwEUKM7f46A!1v1c\" width=\"711\" height=\"144\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/ThAiHbSb#3iis9e9vWdjNbcxw-GqihqqDI43MqayiNwEUKM7f46A\">Download MP3 File<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/mgYmHIjS#EbaO1r--NsHBGLsNbFsyEQjkXODLg2xpMxPDhdwRoNw\">Download Ogg Vorbis File<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hosts: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesonwhiskey.com\/us\/agegate\">Josh<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.errantsignal.com\/blog\/\">Chris<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\">Shamus<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Show notes:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>1:20 Josh is playing FTL: Advanced Edition.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"FTL: Random vs. Skill\" href=\"?p=17335\">My write-up on FTL is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>8:00 Chris is playing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zfbheiGx0-A\">Disney Magical World<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>13:00 Chris is also playing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0qsdIveYJ0Y\">Actual Sunlight<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Interesting that this is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.depressionquest.com\/\">second<\/a> game about depression I&#8217;ve run into in the last few months.<\/p>\n<p>Personal talk:<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had days where I woke up and found I couldn&#8217;t feel joy or happiness or even contentment. Where nothing felt worth doing. The usual fire I had to consume and talk about games (or do anything else) was just&#8230; <em>gone<\/em>. There was never any reason for this. Everything was fine in my life, aside from the fact that my mood was unaccountably mis-calibrated. I don&#8217;t know that this is anything like the clinical depression that some people talk about, but I use it as a frame of reference. My episodes always blow over after a few days and don&#8217;t linger for weeks or months on end.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of whether this is depression or not, it&#8217;s certainly an interesting phenomena. We tend to assume that our moods are linked to our situations, and it can be completely baffling and frustrating when that connection is broken. <em>I have no reason to be sad right now. So why am I sad?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Having never played either game myself, I do wonder what the intent behind them is. Are they a way for people suffering from depression to feel some sort of connection with each other? Is this a way of saying &#8220;You are not alone&#8221; to others? Or is this intended to share the experience with people who have never been through it and don&#8217;t understand what it&#8217;s like?<\/p>\n<p>I wish I&#8217;d asked Chris during the show, but I&#8217;d love to hear from anyone who has played either game.<\/p>\n<p><strong>15:00 Shamus is working on programming. But not Good Robot.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Stuff I&#8217;m working on \/ thinking about:<\/p>\n<p>1) GLSL shading language. 2) Systems which are incredibly robust with regards to consistency of framerate. 3) Different techniques for offloading CPU work onto the graphics card.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe we&#8217;ll talk about this later in the week. Maybe not. I still need to finish my write-up on Thief.<\/p>\n<p><strong>16:00 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civilization.com\/#trailer\">Civilization: Beyond Earth<\/a> has been announced. So we spend a bunch of time talking about Alpha Centauri.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This topic gets derailed by religion in games. If you want to skip that, jump ahead to somewhere around the 37 minute mark.<\/p>\n<p><strong>26:00 Surprise mid-podcast mailbag!<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What do you think about religion in video games as a mechanic and why is Christianity not as explored as Greek and North mythology?<\/p>\n<p>-Adrian<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"dmnotes\">NOTE: We touch on religion in this segment. This doesn&#8217;t mean the comments are a free-fire zone where you can snipe at religions, try to convert people to your religion, or sneer at religious people. This includes stuff like passive-aggressive &#8220;I respect your right to believe in stupid drivel&#8221; that people throw out when they&#8217;re pretending to be tolerant. Stick to the subject as it applies to games and remember that I value harmony and patience over thoroughness when it comes to these kinds of exchanges. I will be moderating the comments with an eye to preventing fires and weeding out people who get worked up or cause problems.<\/div>\n<p><strong>34:00 We talk about Jade Empire.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>37:00 And back to Civilization.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>44:00 Mailbag!<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Diecast\/Shamus<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;re familiar with your stance on graphics resources. After reading your recent article on the Oculus Rift, do you think the &#8220;graphics arms race&#8221; is (truly) relevant again in the games industry because of VR?<\/p>\n<p>~Ian<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Amazing question. I&#8217;d already been thinking about this it for a while when the question showed up, so I had a lot to say about it.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Diecast,<\/p>\n<p>Do you find international perspectives on games to be interesting? For example, is Diecast irregular Jarenth valuable for his Dutch-ness as well as his Jarenth-ness?<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<\/p>\n<p>Neil from England<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ninja-blues.com\/\">Let me plug Jarenth here while I have an excuse.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Download MP3 File Download Ogg Vorbis File Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus. Show notes:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[361,360,362,363,257],"class_list":["post-22813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diecast-2","tag-actual-sunlight","tag-civilization","tag-depression-quest","tag-disney-magical-world","tag-ftl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22813"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59333,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22813\/revisions\/59333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}