Synnah

I sketched a basic outline of what I wanted the ship and the cockpit to look like. I'm not great at drawing. I also don't have a scanner! Or an eraser: Perspective is HARD. Anyway, my next step is to load up Blender and realise that I've chosen a really awkward shape for the ship, which will probably make it impossible to make a cockpit that looks like that. I've used it before, but I haven't made anything concrete, so I'm essentially new! I'll let you know if (when) I have any questions.

I was thinking about this; a Subforum would probably be useful. TIGSource's competitions each had their own subforum where people would make a thread for the game they were working on, and could post updates directly into them and keep the first post updated with screenshots and download links. I'd be happy for something like this. Voxn, that is amazing!

Beat you by 4 minutes!

If anyone hasn't read Duncan Fyfe's post about GamerGate for the Campo Santo Quarterly Review, it's a very good read.

So I'm having quite a hard time finding enjoyment in this game. I'm currently around 10-12 hours in, in Old Yharnam, and I'm having an incredibly frustrating time but also because most of the enemies in this area have lots of annoying small, non-telegraphing attacks that can open you up for a lot of damage if you get surrounded. So far, my issues are mostly with changes made to the general balance of the combat over the previous games, and the knock-on effects these have on the other mechanics. For example, because the game puts you in a lot of situations where avoiding taking damage is very difficult (Large groups of enemies spread out, or just attacks that are difficult to read), it feels like the health regain system was implemented to compensate. However, this makes you lunge back in after taking damage, rather than make space, so you end up taking more damage (Maybe I'm just not good enough to avoid this yet, but I've had a number of panicked encounters where I got completely surrounded because I lunged back in to regain health, where my Dark Souls instincts were telling me to create some distance). It feels like the health system was changed to compensate for this, as the general consensus is that you go through a LOT of health items. This is the kicker to me; the Estus flask was an amazing mechanic, coupled with the bonfires, which fixed the problem with farming for health items in Demon's Souls, so doing away with both of them is kind of baffling, and makes you play the game in a very different way. Couple this with dreadful loading times and the awkwardness of having to return to the Hunter's Dream to do basic things, and the experience is generally one of frustration. I have to keep reminding myself that I got frustrated quite a lot during all three previous games, too, but there was always something that kept me hooked. Often it was just the wealth of options for your character, in terms of armour, weapons and play styles (Shield, shieldless, dual-wielding, bows/crossbows, pyromancy/magic). All of these seem to be limited in Bloodborne. There were so many different kinds of armour before, which affected your play style, but everything I've found so far seems to look identical; a kind of bad steampunk cosplay. I like the trick weapons a lot, so I can't complain much about them, although I do feel like there might be slightly less variety overall. The range of useful play-styles seems to be a lot narrower, though, and that's what I have a problem with. Souls games were always about playing the character you wanted to play, and I don't really feel like I can do that at the moment; maybe that will change, though. I'm fairly intrigued by the story and setting, but I don't feel like it's going to be enough to keep me from giving up on the game after a particularly shitty string of encounters.

I'm down for this, given that I've been looking for a way to basically force myself to learn UE4 for a while now. Using Idle Thumbs titles as inspiration flooded me with ideas, too! 'Nineties Cockpit Freakout' is one of my favourite titles, and I have a pretty solid idea for it already. I also like the idea of using 'Dot Gobbler' to remake the C64 game with the story that they made up in the episode. But maybe 'Shambling, Goofy' would be a good way to start the Twine horror game I've wanted to make for a while. Options! So yeah, I've got a tiny amount of experience with UE3 and UE4 already, but I'll happily accept any help that's available. I kind of want to try to do everything myself; It's basically possible to make a game in UE4 without coding, so I'll avoid it if possible, but I've got a Software Engineering degree in my distant past, so I can probably figure things out. I'm going to give Blender a shot, too; I've done a few things in Maya before, so I have a foundation to build on, but if anyone is familiar with it, help would probably be appreciated. I've got music and audio covered. Speaking of which, I'm happy to lend my knowledge of Ableton Live and FL Studio (It's been a while since I used the latter, but I can always install the latest version and get up to speed), along with Sound Forge and Audacity. Or if you want to make some C64 music with GoatTracker! I don't know if I'll have time to do audio for someone else's project, but I'd like to. I'll see how much time I've got! Here's a bunch of sound effects I made with my mouth for an old TIGSource jam; .wav format. I don't remember if they're any good or not!

Good point, actually! The poster's gender isn't revealed at any point; I just assumed male based on the tone of the post, but that's mostly my personal prejudices, I think. Although yeah, as Bjorn said, the aversion to hugging does sort of point towards an overt masculinity.

This is such a confused collection of garbage. The way he complains about the new wave of indie devs and 'hipsters' makes him sound like he's a) Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, and b ) Someone who's been in the industry since the early '90s and basically hasn't matured since then. But he opens by saying he's been in games for 'a few years', a vague statement that I'm reading to mean 4 years at most. 4 years is not a long time to work in games if you're claiming to know how the industry works, and what's best for it. And he talks about the rise in prominence of indie developers like it isn't something that's been happening since 2008. And at fucking GDC, the home of the Independent Games Festival. It's bizarre. This section of his rant is pretty telling: Recalling the time Idle Thumbs discussed , Chris said, "Imagine if [it was easy to develop for the PS3]. ". And here's someone saying as much unironically! He's in the TotalBiscuit school of 'if it wasn't a fiddly ballache to make, it's not a real game', with this weird elitism about crunching (A practice that is genuinely harmful to developers) that is pretty typical of someone who's only worked in games for a few years and doesn't think he'll ever burn out (I've been there myself). There's a lot of weird cognitive dissonance too. He's a minority who recognises that he works in a predominantly white field, and then talks about the inclusion of diversity panels at GDC like it's a bad thing. The whole dyed-hair screed is just weird, culminating with '...they were always artists, at the top of their field, and they earned that right to dress and look however the hell they wanted to, and I respected them for it'. What the fuck is he even saying with this? He mocks the idea of indies carrying out 'literal physical hugboxing', but ends by expressing gratitude for people agreeing with him, creating his own 'hugbox' (This term is garbage). And he took a shit in a bathroom and was amused that the staff had to deal with it? Also this: Hilarious.

It's kind of amazing to me that Aurini would post, on his own blog, chat logs that make Owen out to be the much more reasonable and level-headed of the two, and himself as a Roosh-idolising sycophant. A lack of self-awareness is kind of characteristic of the movement at this point, though. I read this back when it was published, and my response was, 'Yeah. Fuck yeah. Denmark!'

Occasionally Thunderf00t comes up in my YouTube recommendations, and it makes me want to throw my PC out of my window. This guy has gone from being kind-of-misguided-but-maybe-sort-of-well-meaning-probably to genuinely infuriatingly stupid. It's depressing to me that anyone still pays any attention to what he says.

Yeah, fair enough; I can't really comment on the tone of the show, and how that portrayal felt in the context of the rest of the episode. It's enough for me to know that Zoe Quinn was disheartened by the episode, as someone whose experiences it's ostensibly based off. EDIT: Steve Hogarty's review of the episode, having not seen it.

Going by Danielle's (who was a victim of GamerGate) Twitter feed, she didn't hate it either. But I don't know, it still grosses me out. My friend pasted the synopsis from NeoGaf into a conversation and I thought it was a GamerGate fantasy of how it should have played out. The main problem I have is with Raina saying 'Women in gaming, what was I expecting?' and concluding that they've already won, because the message is basically 'It's always going to be like this, so why bother?'. I feel like I need to watch it to understand any nuance in it, but I kind of don't want to go near it. I've seen a few Gaters claiming the episode as a victory for them, but man, they'll post 'We've won!' in response to pretty much anything at this point, so who knows what that means.

Man I haven't gone back to Ruby for ages! I need to at the very least grab the three Gen V starters. Contrary Serperior! And maybe beat the Elite 4 at some point.

I had this stuck in my head for like three days. I bought this pair of chumps.

Richard D. James (AFX/Aphex Twin) recently uploaded 112 old unreleased tracks to SoundCloud and made them downloadable (A full archive is here if you don't want to download 112 individual files). My interest in Syro, the album he released last year, kind of dropped off a cliff after the first listening, but these tracks are much more exciting. I've probably only listened to 10% of them so far, but my favourites are 35 Japan, 28 Organ and luke vibert spiral staircase [future music competition] [afx remix]. I like Psapp a lot! 'The Only Thing I Ever Wanted' was always a bit of a favourite of mine. I should listen to their other albums some more. Awesome! The only Vaporwave I've really listened to is Chuck Person's Eccojams, and Oneohtrix Point Never, which is the same guy. I got kind of obsessed with Eccojams for a while, with this being the obvious standout:

There's a BuzzFeed article about the Meninist hashtag, and I honestly have no idea how many of the tweets in it are joke tweets. All of them, bar a couple of the most egregious ones, look like moderately clever satire of things people opposed to Feminism would say; If GamerGate has taught me anything, however, it's that if something looks like satire, someone somewhere is almost certainly saying it in earnest. I always had an irrational hatred of BuzzFeed (as a staunch opponent of the 'listicle'), but stuff like this makes me glad they exist.

"Have you tried getting your kid into Pokémon" says the Queen of Bees. EDIT: I should do an actual post. My 3-and-a-bit-year-old nephew recently got a Wii U, and he's really into Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 and Captain Toad. These are basically perfect games for kids; colourful, imaginative and really well-made. I imagine you'd get plenty out of them yourself; most adults do! But I can't really speak for your general gaming tastes. Kid-friendly games are a little thinner on ground on Xbone, but it does at least have Rayman Legends (Although the Wii U probably has the definitive version of that), and is also really nice, especially if you want something to play with your daughter.

So I was watching the on Steam, and I noticed a pull quote from none other than IGN.com that read, "When Gone Home meets The Walking Dead... With time travel". The Thumbs circle of references is complete.

Getting bad items never really annoys me; Binding of Isaac is a game about risk. When I get an unknown pill I know there's a chance that it will reduce my health or tears or damage, so I don't particularly find it frustrating when it does, and I know that using one right before a boss or when I have low health is probably a bad idea, in case things go wrong. Similarly with items that I don't know the effect of, I know there's a risk that they might have a detrimental effect on my character, but I'm generally happy to accept the hand that the game deals me and attempt to make the best of it. That's just how I play the game, and I enjoy what I get out of it. When I think about it, I rarely got angry or frustrated with Spelunky, either. I think when I do get frustrated with a game it's because I can see the designer's hand, and I think they've made a bad decision (Or a series of bad decisions) that's having a negative effect on my play experience. If things going wrong is part of the brief, I feel like I have more patience for it. See Far Cry 2. That's probably part of the reason why that game is so divisive; some people are able to accept that the scales aren't really in their favour, and that things are going to go wrong for them and struggling against that is what the game is about, whereas other people believe games should be empowering and that when things go wrong that are beyond their control, the designer is at fault. It's a matter of personal taste!

I've added you as well, Jennegetron; my friend code is 3780-9031-7475. If for some reason there's something you need that Tegan doesn't have, I can also have a look for it. I have an Aromatisse that I can breed for a Spritzee!

Surely the is the new Windows 10 startup sound.

Spiders are total pricks. I also have quite a bit of trouble with the mid-sized poos that charge at you, although I'm kind of getting better at recognising their tells and avoiding them.

Shanley Kane posted about the harassment she's been receiving for speaking out against Linus Torvalds, a large amount of which came from GamerGate. Weev and Milo figure highly in it, and it's clearly a misogynistic attack, rather than anything related to games. Funny how much of a crossover there is between those two groups of people.

"PLAY WITH ME"