Woebin

Phaedrus' Street Crew
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    59

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Woebin

  1. Posted · Edited by Woebin

    I realize I'm a bit late in hopping on this train, I always get a backlog of episodes to listen to so I hear about these too late to be here on day one. Anyway, hi, I'm mostly a coder but dabble in everything, currently studying game development here in Stockholm. I'd love to either contribute to someone's project or start my own, whichever really. Let me know if you want me! Also, how do I get an invite to the Slack?

     

    E: Badly misjudged how much time I have available, much as I'd love to I can't participate properly.

  2. Posted

    There was a slight hiccup with the podcast posting (I messed it up), so for a brief and shining moment this was in the Idle Thumbs feed. It was quickly fixed.

    In my defense, I've had a sick 1-year old to tend to for several days so I'm clearly off my game a bit.

    Well hey, it made me listen to an episode of 3MA I probably would've missed otherwise (I like 3MA, but I only tend to check in when they're discussing a game I'm fairly invested in), so I think you can consider it a service rendered :)

     

    Good episode, too.

  3. Posted

    So here's a weird thing: this episode just showed up in my feed as episode 263 of Idle Thumbs. I mean, as part of my Idle Thumbs subscription and not as my 3MA subscription. Has that happened to anyone else?

     

    Can't say anything about the episode as I haven't listened yet, but I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the game since I'm interested in it. I just, uh, guess I expected to hear those thoughts via my 3MA subscription.

  6. Posted

    I'm no good with riddles as such, but I did recently discover the game of Word Golf. It's quite simple, although everyone I've explained it to has been terribly confused. Basically you get a starting word and a target word with the same number of characters, and you need to get from one to the other by changing one letter at a time and getting a real word at each step. I don't know if my explanation is very good, so an example: "Love" to "hate":

    Love

    Live

    Hive

    Have

    Hate

     

    Would that be appropriate at all for this thread? Either way it's good fun.

  8. Posted

    I read it as a wild card search modifier - so, used to include a bunch of different possible interpretations of trans (-gender, -sexual) without getting caught up in discussing which is strictly applicable...

    I hear it's been falling out of favour lately, though, and just "trans" is preferred. I don't remember where I heard it though so I can't vouch for the veracity of that statement.

     

    Anyway as someone who falls under the trans/trans* umbrella I'd grown to like the asterisk, personally. It kind of makes it sound more inclusive. But I guess to the uninitiated it just looks like there should be a footnote connected to it?

     

    *this is not a footnote.

  12. Posted

    It wasn't out of disrespect; in the midst of the conversation I assume my brain just latched on to the nickname I've known them by for most of their careers. I've only seen two Wachowski films and I don't really pay attention to them much at all, so even though I was aware of Lana's identity, I haven't had enough discussions or considerations of the them for the proper collective noun to fully propagate into my brain. It was an unfortunate slip. It usually takes me at four meetings of someone to remember their name when I actually meet them in person, let alone someone I've never met whose personal affairs I am only dimly aware of.

    Oh yeah, as I said I didn't think there was any malice or disrespect involved, and I'm sorry if I sounded like a douche bringing it up. It's just that trans* issues are kind of a Big Thing in my life for various reasons and it's something I care a lot about, and the notion that a transwoman/transman isn't a "real" woman/man comes up so often that I tend to jump at any sign of someone possibly holding that opinion. I'll stop going on about that now.

    Anyway, the cast is overall great so far, and as a couple of others said it makes me pick up books I probably wouldn't have read otherwise which is great. I'm even cautiously looking forward to the Cloud Atlas film after loving the book.

  13. Posted

    Hm. I thought I only heard it once, since it kind of put me on alert. Nevertheless, the sort of thing that is easily excusable by ignorance. Chris doesn't especially strike me as someone who keeps current on the personal lives of celebrities.

    Oh, I don't think it was said with any malicious intent at all. And I'm really not one to keep up with the personal lives of celebrities myself either, but Lana Wachowski's transition was treated as such a big deal that it seems hard not to know about it. I also heard lots of people at the time dismiss it as "him" just being full of shit/a weirdo/insane, which really put me on edge.

    Anyway, didn't mean to derail the thread too badly. It's just really something I care a lot about and I might get a bit overzealous.

  15. Posted

    I'm not good at saying deep and thoughtful things about books, so I'll be content to say I liked it a lot although the ending felt a bit unfulfilling somehow. One thing that bothered me about the cast, though, is how you (mostly Chris, I think) referred to the Wachowskis as "the Wachowski brothers". Lana's been openly trans for a while now and finished her transition in 2008, I don't think it'd be too much to ask that people respect that.

    Not trying to sound like a douche, it's just that trans issues are something I care a lot about and it bothered me.

    Edit: Oh, and the structure of the book made me think of another recent favourite of mine, Zack Parson's "Liminal States".

  16. Posted

    I absolutely loved The Road, and I've been meaning to read some more of his stuff, but his aversion to proper punctuation and use of apostrophes is really offputting to me. Why does he do that? Is it unique to The Road, or is it an authorial quirk he keeps up through all his books? I finished the book despite of it and am very glad I did, but it kept pulling me out of the narrative and breaking the flow of the text. The book would have been much better served by his editor going "what is this shit?" and fixing it.

  17. Posted

    I really want to recommend a book I don't think most of us would read or even know existed if not linked to it; The Zeroes, debut novel by Patrick Roesle. It's self-published and hasn't received widespread acclaim or anything which I understand might be a red flag, but it's really good. Most of it is deliberately mundane, which is also the sort of thing I understand might throw up red flags, but still amazing. It's a book that invariably makes me feel thoroughly miserable whenever I read it. I love it, and expect that a lot of people on these forums would at any rate be able to recognize themselves in it. I can't really describe it in any good way, but I absolutely recommend for everyone to at least read the free sample available on Amazon.

    I want to make it clear that I'm not the author, by the way. I know it sounds like I'm shilling for this book, but i'm not a writer at all.

  18. Posted

    I did!

    Those games may have not been much for story, but they had solidly designed and entertaining missions. (I remember especially enjoying the TACC campaign.)

    Won't be sad if PA doesn't have a campaign though, these games were always much more about the AI skirmishes and the multiplayer, no question. (It does need to have an AI skirmish mode, they've fucked up if it doesn't. TA and SupCom were such huge and intimidating games, offline botstomps were basically the only way you could learn.)

    Well, the Kickstarter page says this, so we should be safe:

    Play a quick skirmish with a friend on a single planet map with a low unit cap or a 12+ hour game with 40 of your closest frenemies and thousands of units. You can also hone your skills against Planetary Annihilation’s AI or team up with a friend against multiple AI’s.

  19. Posted

    I see people asking for a campaign, and I'm genuinely surprised. Did people play the campaign in TA and SupCom? I just played endless skirmish battles against the AI when I didn't have friends to play with (never been much for going up against complete strangers, especially as I'm generally pretty bad at these games despite being very enthusiastic about them).

    Anyway, definitely backing this. I have fond memories of playing TA and upping the unit cap to thousands by .ini editing. I'm a bit apprehensive about the lack of Chris Taylor involvement though.

    Edit: Rob Zacny, of Three Moves Ahead, writes a bit about this for PC Gamer. It's pretty exciting!

  21. Posted

    On the topic of Dark Souls:

    I think the most amazing thing about the game is the multiplayer. You spend so much time memorizing enemy locations and attack patters, so that you can mow through them with ease. The battles become rote and simple, but the game would still be amazing if that was all it had.

    However, if you're human and trucking around, you can be invaded by another PC. Somewhere, in your world, there is now a new, more deadly enemy who is bent on killing you. They aren't restrained by needing to be approached by you and getting triggered. They are cunning and malicious. They make all other enemies in the game benign because your heart rate will never soar as much as the instant you are invaded. It's amazing. At this point in the game, chances are that you'll be invaded by someone who really knows what they are doing and are equipped with a scary amount of equipment. That means that your chances of survival are zero, but you still have hope that you might fight them off. As we all know, that's the best way to teach despair: give the person some hope.

    I can't get over how amazing this game is.

    The multiplayer in the Souls games is fantastic, but sometimes - rarely - fucks you over proper. I was playing Demon's Souls last night (I went back to it intending to complete it before I allow myself to keep playing Dark Souls) and came upon three Black Phantoms. Now, for anyone not familiar with the game, Black Phantoms are either other players invading your world or, as in this case, unique enemies that won't respawn once killed, are supremely dangerous and are worth a lot of souls. Often they drop something cool too.

    Anyway, as I was approaching these Phantoms, I got the message that someone was invading my world. Obviously I went into panic mode, quickly spotted the invader - and saw them run past me and attack the Black Phantoms I was about to tangle with. The invader killed them all and then went on to kill me, thus robbing me of any loot I'd've gotten.

    Still awesome though.

  22. Posted

    Since you guys talked a bit about Demon's Souls, you should definitely enjoy Dark Souls as well. It's the same but better in pretty much every way, and also has an open world as opposed to the Nexus and different levels as in Demon's (not that Demon's way was bad, I just enjoy open worlds a lot more). Also, it takes place in the same world as the old King's Field games, which I think is really cool despite never having played them.

  23. Posted

    They found Diablo 1 too scary as single player game. So instead of making Diablo 2 coop they made it less scary.

    Is this a joke that's flying overy my head? Both Diablo 1 and 2 are co-op.

    Still worth playing Titan Quest nowadays? I think I got it from an earlier Steam sale.

    It's all right, if you like that sort of thing. It feels less satisfying to me than Diablo 2, but very few games nail the feel of hack-and-slash lootfests as well as D2. Give it a try, at least. I remember some thread at Something Awful recommending the Underlord (http://www.moddb.com/mods/underlord) mod, which I have installed but haven't played enough of to actually cast judgment on.

  24. Posted

    What's funny to me is that that little blurb immediately makes the Treasure Goblin less memorable in my brain. Suddenly it's just yet another enemy described in generic fantasy-novel prose.

    That's a totally valid point, but not something that ruins it for me personally (I was never into Diablo for the lore or amazing writing to begin with). I like to think this great Greed demon is actually Gheed though, the gambling merchant from Act I of Diablo II.

    Which reminds me, they removed gambling for Diablo III. I hadn't realized that I missed it until just now.

  25. Posted

    I love the Treasure Goblins and would definitely be up for going to Greed's domain in an expansion or something. From the game's lore on the topic:

    Some devious little goblins have been robbing our merchants! When pursued, they simply open portals and disappear with a most aggravating chuckle. The peasantry seem to believe that the goblins serve a great demon lord known as Greed and furthermore, that their portals lead to Greed's domain! A ludicrous notion, truly.