voxn

I spy R2-D2, the Transistor, and a bunch of poorly composited photo stock.

i'm sure that helps, but league follows the same format & glancing at some of the patch notes it doesn't look remotely comparable. really I think it just comes back to Icefrog. As a designer, he has got to be almost singular. Moving from a member of the beta team to in 2005 and turning a haphazard, unbalanced, terribly optimized mod into one of the most popular gamesgenres of all time. Years spent - for no profit - putting out new content and, even as it rose to absurd popularity, constantly making sweeping balance changes and alterations to core mechanics. And to this day his real identity is unknown, which almost like a campy movie ending

poor artists already have to make up over 1k house sigils for the $100 tier, and 75% of them are probably "MAKE MINE A COOL DRAGON"

One thing thats really standout about dota compared to almost any other game is Icefrogs balance ideals. Whereas other games almost universally balance by using small, incremental number tweaks The Frog balances laterally, throwing more crazy shit in. Its really refreshing, and reminds me of an older school (ie. games like Diablo2 or Broodwar) where things were 'balanced' by the devs by letting systems of sufficient complexity balance themselves. Broodwar would go through phases where one race would be dominating, and a month later things would be back on par - not because of feverish, overbearing tweaking by blizzard, but simply because the game was so mechanically dense that something would be discovered, and it kept the game from getting stale at the pro level. Or in Diablo 2's case: it was okay that things where broken, that there were a million affixes of questionable usefulness, and that 99% of players had no idea how any of the deeper, obfuscated, mechanics worked. It didn't matter because it was interesting. (one of diablo 3's biggest failings (after the RMAH) was homogenizing items into utter blandness, an issue they've taken pains to remedy with the new legendarys, but they've still rather missed the point). dota patches are still fun to read after all these years. Necrolytes aghs upgrade makes heros unable to buy back for that death (hilarious), suicide with a bloodstone, empty bottles make couriers slower, etc. All balance changes to under/overpowered things that add even more depth to the game. One of my favorite balance changes was a while back to Shadowfiend. He's wasn't terrible by any stretch, but definitely not in the top tier. How could we buff him a bit, Icefrog? -Shadowfiend now explodes on death

my terrible email got read again

Dark Souls would make for a really good stream, especially if none of you have played it before!

My only experience meeting an internet personality was a brief run in with Nick Breckon. It was going pretty well - I'd already rattled off a couple bad anecdotes, and he seemed to be enjoying them - when the realization hit me that who I had mistaken for Nick Breckon was infact a tiny baby

what was the music video mentioned by sean as being cool+rad? I tried feebly scrubbing though the episode but can't find it. ;________ ;

its bad, or at least falls at too many hurdles to ever be called anything but generic. Checklist: Crafting is pointless, dungeons are bland exacerbated by bosses randomly having absurd amounts of hp, the cash shop is extremely intrusive, items are worthless by virtue of being so generic & common, talents are boring +small % bonuses, and like a bad facebook game there are loads of transparent 'click this every 2 hours'/'do this daily' hooks. there's potential with the foundry I suppose, but I'm skeptical of enjoying content wrapped in a fairly tedious game.

"This is Alex Ashby of Idle Thumbs, introducing Nick Breckon, and his 18 minute vocal rendition of Battletoads Pause Theme"

my oh my this was a fantastic game I would have loved infinitely more had it been half the length, explained less, and scrapped all the shooting(+ endless dominos of concessions it requires). Interested to hear TheThumbs thoughts; especially Chris who I imagine must have played an earlier build. edit; okay it sounds like that woman is screaming MORTAL COMBAT which is kind of hilarious

Kind of bummed at this book choice. :< It has to be one of the most widely read literary novels you could pick, and proportionally difficult to discuss anything original about. (It's a great book though, and one of my all-time favorites! Just not what I'd hope for in a book club.)

For a novel centered around a theme of: "Which taught her early on a thing or two about the power of whats visible - it derives its mystery from what it hides." (pg.174) I didn't get the sense that it left much of anything unsaid. It was a beautiful story of three lives, with much beautiful writing, but a week out from finishing it I can't say it sunk many barbs.

I was just wrapping up some planning for a game of my own (solo; hobby style). Its awesome that this project started when it did. I'm really excited to get some perspective - and see what pros can create - in such a limited time frame. Maybe I'll throw together a quick thread and document my progress alongside theirs As far as the DoubleFine game ideas go, I voted for all the winners (minus Bragging & Fighting which I thought was a rad & concrete concept :<) except hack 'n slash. Admittedly, Black Forest snuck a vote primarily on the back of that amazing concept art, but hearing more about it got me more interested, and something about 'the hunters daughter' as a character strikes a chord with me. A slightly nebulous title prefaced by 'the' conjures images of the kinds of almost abstract storytelling concepts that I love so dearly, and my game(idea) primarily uses that same nomenclature to refer to characters; the blue sun oracle, the bone-sea witch, the blind siren, the clockwork archon, etc. and appears in many of my favorite games/lit, ie: the torturers apprentice, miralda the executioner, the lady of pain etc etc something odd to get hung up on, I suppose, but I'm really holding my excitement in check till we see how some of the ideas talked about today start to flesh out. As a budding programmer (who is primarily an artist) I have a much greater appreciation of the difficulties involved in translating your hazy ideas into hard mechanics