Merus

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Merus

  2. Posted

    How do you have natural mapping on a controller? Other than triggers for triggers, it's all arbitrary. 

     

    The GameCube controller came as close as I think anyone will to natural mapping on a controller: a big central green button for important tasks, a small red button off to the side, and kidney buttons to the top and right which felt different to the finger for secondary tasks.

  3. Posted

    It didn't bother me that Mark Watney was ridiculously resilient, because he's an astronaut and they choose the people who can handle the stress of having to figure things out or die. It does mean you get people like that woman who drove across America as fast as possible, wearing adult diapers so she didn't have to stop, but it also means you get people like the astronauts in Apollo 13. Mark Watney's not out of line there; heightened, sure, but not unreasonably so.

  5. Posted

    So I started work at a university that claims that social justice is a core pillar of the university community. During the new starter's welcome the other day, I thought I'd ask the Vice-Chancellor (who insisted people should feel comfortable approaching him) about the response of UC Berkeley to claims that a prominent astrophysicist had a long history of sexual harassment, and how the university would handle that situation. He was alarmed, particularly at the response of the chairman of the department who asked faculty members to rally around the astrophysicist, and he ended up calling me over after his presentation to discuss it further with HR. It was an interesting conversation. I got the sense that they've had to handle smaller-scale incidents like this, and that sexual harassment is an ethical breach at this institution and so would result in the researcher being pushed out, in much the same way as if they'd falsified data.

     

    But I'm wondering: it seems like most of the fight is to get universities to admit that they have a duty of care. I'm less clear on what happens when that fight is won. What sort of things should a university have in place if they're in the position my employers are in, where they consider it a core commitment and are (presumably) open to changing policies where necessary to better embody social justice? What sort of things should they be measuring, what could they implement to demonstrate that they're doing more than the minimum?

  6. Posted

    I gotta say, I'm over people comparing whether Back to the Future II 'got things right'. It suggested the possibility of Jaws 19 directed by Spielberg's son. It was not trying for accuracy. It was flattering an 80s audience: the idea that in 30 years the two worst teams in baseball would be the best, that the Iranian revolution would loom large in the psyche of the nation, that we'd be watching sixteen channels because people already channel-surf, amirite? Skateboarding is still relevant, except now it floats! Flying cars are real because of course they are in the future (even though in the back of our mind we know we don't actually want the reality of flying cars, of every crash being lethal and having to navigate in 3D space).

     

    Or, as a wag on Twitter put it, its boldest prediction is that Elijah Wood would be 8.

  7. Posted

    It feels like there's fairly dramatic swings to the left across most of the developed world - the centre-left parties are having real struggles because they're seen as having the same answers as the right-wing parties.

  8. Posted

    Somewhere i read a rumor that the system OS will be built on Android.

     

    While Nintendo and Google collaborating closely wouldn't shock me, it would surprise me, as it seems like Google has closer links to The Pokemon Company than to NCL. I don't know if it makes strategic sense for either company; Android exists so that Apple doesn't control mobile internet, and Google doesn't really have a pressing need to move into the games space. Nintendo wouldn't be able to run anywhere near stock Android for what they need, and they can define the specifications of the hardware to their advantage, so they might as well build the firmware to that specification.

  11. Posted

    I'm banking on two pieces of hardware that share a unified architecture, including APIs. From a dev perspective, it'd be like building a game for a phone or tablet. This would also mean that Nintendo could use the NX platform to roll out third-party products with full compatibility, like a smartphone.

     

    This won't happen to any great extent, but it'll be touted as a possibility.

  13. Posted

    By 'datamined' you mean 'they showed it on the official stream', presumably. The axe is Astralarium, after the observatory in Elona, and the staff is Nevermore. It seems the new legendaries can cover the character's arms, which is neat.

     

    They also mentioned on that stream that you'll be able to break down the Gift of Fortune into their components now that you need them for two different recipes. Clovers will probably still be useful because they drop in PvP; Gift of Mastery is Central Tyria-specific.

     

    Super-excited for the action combat camera they showed off on stream. No more holding down the right mouse button, hello precision aiming.

  15. Posted

    Germany and Sweden are doing something quite clever, if they can pull it off as well as America and Australia have: they're accepting enough refugees that they'll be able to help each other acclimatise. They need food, they need shelter, they need to build a life, so they're going to grow the economy as they establish themselves. And there will almost certainly be people who'll find use for people who are educated, not picky, relatively cheap and don't need to speak the language at first. So long as the Syrians don't get ghettoised, and manage to forge links with the natives, it'll be a win-win for everyone.

  16. Posted

    People buying monitors with their computer is relatively common, whereas TVs are expected to last at least a decade and can be used separately to a console. People balked at buying a PS3 at $599; imagine if they had to buy a new television as well! Imagine if you were $400 more expensive than your competitors because your television had a console in it that a fraction of the marketplace cares about!

     

    TVs that can run basic apps already exist, and they're a nightmare of incompatible specifications; adding a console to the mix would just add another one, one that wouldn't see game industry support because you can't put the console in two televisions. But it exists because those apps are really useful - manufacturers couldn't convince people that a DVD player built into a TV had any point at all.

  18. Posted

    I actually finished it this weekend as well! I soloed it, and it was nasty. (I found the elementals really do not like Caithe's bleed attack, so I used that, waited for them to die, stealthed, stabbed Wildmane in the back, repeat.)

     

    Halloween this week, and Heart of Thorns launches on Friday, and I am ready and waiting to unlock legendary crafting. I wants me a Juggernaut, and I wants me a H.O.P.E, and I might do the Quip collections but Quip remains dumb as hell. (Actually the Flameseeker Prophecies might be fun. I think they're all going to be a lot of fun, to be honest.)

  20. Posted

    I'm feeling the same way with the way that Guild Wars 2 has launched a same price, full prices game expansion with the previous version of the game included and no benefit to veterans except 1 extra character slot.

     

    This really bothered me as well. I ended up making my peace with it, especially after it became clear they were doing this because they were going to make the base game free-to-play, which is a great move that also screws over veteran players. I understand Wildstar people feel the same, except there's no expansion on the horizon there and going free-to-play is much more clearly a desperation move in that case.

  23. Posted

    It would be smart for Nintendo to try and port their handheld ecosystem to the home console. Launching another dedicated handheld device at this point probably wouldn't go amazingly well for them, and their achilles heel in the home console space is that they don't have an ecosystem of developers like they do on the DS.

     

    There's enough meat on the bones of marrying a handheld to a home console with a shared ecosystem that Nintendo, if their firmware is significantly better than it usually is, could clean up. Rumours were swirling that Apple was intending this for the Apple TV but they botched the implementation, and Sony has had 'cross-play' with the Vita and the home consoles for a while, except the audience for the PlayStation and for the Vita are pretty different. Miiverse feels like a v1 of a great idea - even in its limited state, it's adding a lot to Splatoon and Nintendo seem to be able to shepherd the community more effectively than Microsoft ever managed.

     

    I think Pokemon Go will be a really good indicator of what Nintendo are planning. If it's integrated with Miiverse and Nintendo are using it to create a multi-platform brand, like what Disney does except not lame, Nintendo will be able to use their scary deep back catalogue to provide something different to Sony and Microsoft instead of creating something that's like their stuff except not as interesting. It probably won't help them grow the home console ecosystem but honestly I can't imagine anything Nintendo could do that would grow that.

  25. Posted

    Gameloft's business model was to crank out shitty phone games for a non-discerning market, and that market got a whole lot tougher in the last ten years. They weren't good enough to make a Candy Crush, and not ruthless enough to make a Clash of Clans.

     

    I am surprised Niantic has so much money to throw around but I'm guessing that's because of Google. Admittedly they're essentially making an MMO: it needs a server, it has a wide variety of platforms, it's got multiplayer, and unlike most MMOs it has to be good on day 1. That's not cheap.