Security_Tubbs

I call bs on todays daily. On 2-3 you can't reach the exit without bombs. Unless you're immune to piranhas.

Most spectacular death. I agree. I love that the difficulty in the game comes as a combination of rather simple and fair systems. And while it allows for insane maneuvers to clear the difficulties, it's not necessarily required (a more careful and slow approach is often available). And it's not about jumping on 1-pixel-wide platforms to avoid a screen-wide floor of spikes.

Today, after two consequtive days of embarrassing failure, I managed to succeed a little. I got the furthest I've ever been, died at 4-3, I think. Most of the time, I was completely out of ropes and bombs, which made every jump down really scary. Regardless, I managed to kill one of those giant mummy guys using the environment, and I managed to slip by one of the Anubis-looking creatures that shoot those homing purple rings. However, the most unbelieveable stroke of luck happened in the ice caves. Despite progressing as carefully as I could (without any bombs and ropes), I managed to get myself stuck in a pit with a 3 blocks high ledge to get out. The only items I had was the compass, and a clay pot in my hands. There were some UFOs flying a bit to the side, but they wouldn't come close enough to shoot out the floor or anything. My only hope was to throw the clay pot at the UFOs and hope they'd crash nearby, creating an exit for me. So I jumped, aimed up and went for a long throw... The pot hit the upper corner of the ledge. But holy shit, there was a green snake in the pot! Nearly shitting my self due to the glimmer of hope, I took one damage from the snake. However, I regrouped, waited for the snake to get into ideal position, jumped on it, bounced up and grabbed the ledge. I was back in business. Later I died to a trap in the temple. Without thinking about it twice, I scoped the area for places to escape the boulder once I grab the golden idol. Unfortunately for me, they're not boulder traps anymore in the temple, and I still had no bombs.

This is almost EXACTLY what happened to me. I just fell into the spikes after the first hit. Also, another person on my Friends list had a score of $2000, so he almost certainly shared our cruel and spiky fate.

That is indeed a very nice detail. I smiled and gave the developers one solemn nod when I saw it myself. Anyone tried it yet? I haven't yet set aside the time to do so myself. I've heard that there are (obviously) bugs and problems, but I'm under the impression that it's not a complete and utter mess, either.

Yep, I'm with you on all accounts. Super excited about the game, but wary about trying (the very first launch of) the beta. Luckily I have some exams coming up, which forces me away from spending tons of time with an unfinished and very likely buggy version of the game I'm excited about. But I will probably try it for an hour or two tomorrow, and again the day after if it's worth playing. Hopefully by the holiday break they will have ironed out the most glaring bugs, because that's when I'll be more likely to actually dig (no pun intended) into it. Hopefully a lot of thumbs get this game, for some community fun and birdman erotic rolep space exploration.

I got to play this a bit two weeks ago (still haven't bought it). I too noticed that in the end, you can't really make large profits if you don't have your prisoners working in workshops. That's why I designed my second prison to have the workshop really close to the prison entrance (for faster material delivery), and I researched prison labor much sooner. That is also why I was so reluctant to add one hour of free time into the middle of the day. Only when faced with a potential riot did I finally compromise. Speaking of my second prison, I recorded a time lapse video of it, sort of ex tempore. That's why the video starts with almost two buildings finished, and a lot of the prison planned out.

Bought this game yesterday, tried it today. I'm pleased at how familiar the gameplay felt compared to the free version. I've played a whole ton of it and I could pretty much just jump right into this and play by muscle memory. I played through the mandatory tutorial and then for some reason went right into the daily challenge. I think I was doing pretty well, but I was being too slow. The damned ghost showed up and I royally panicked. RIP my first character. One thing I think I'm going to have a hard time un-learning from the free version is that I can't change the attack direction mid-air while attacking (or even on the ground?). Took some unnecessary damage and even died once to a bat because of that. But that is the only thing I've encountered so far that doesn't translate directly from the free version. I feel I'm going to spend a lot of hours on this. The following day... Made it all the way to the jungle today. I played so many games after the daily challenge that I don't even remember what killed me. Maybe it was spikes. I also got to the ice caves and lasted a total of maybe 10 seconds. I threw a boomerang at a flying saucer. I knew it was going to explode, but I expected it to fall straight down. I was thoroughly surprised (and very very dead) when it didn't.

Aces. I'm all for more things for good games. Especially for free, hot beans!

I love this way of having an almost open beta, but not quite, so that when the game finally launches and I get to play it too, I'll be facing tons and tons of really experienced players and I'm sure to get my ass handed to me constantly. Does wonders for my irrational debilitating fear of 1v1 online games. As for the game, it looks fun. I will definitely try to try it.

I've failed my duties as a Kerbal enthusiast. KSP version 0.22 was released on the 16th of October, and only now I remember to make a post about it. However, I'm sure that this thread isn't the main source of KSP news for anyone interested in it. This new update brings into the game the first version of the career mode. You start off with only some very basic rocket parts. The small variants of the command pod, solid fuel booster, fuel tank and the non thurst vectoring engine. There's also one structural girder part, a parachute and an antenna. You get more rocket parts by doing scientific experiments and unlocking them with science points. The first points you get by doing crew reports (right-click on command pod -> crew report) at different altitudes. You get science points by transmitting the data back via the antenna (which drains power, and you also don't have batteries or solar panels yet) or landing the craft safely and recovering it (once landed, a recover button becomes available above the altitude meter when you mouse over a tiny arrow up there). Later on you can unlock Mystery Goo containers and Material Bays that allow you to do more experiments. Basically what you do is take these science parts to different places, do the experiment and get the stuff back on Kerbin. You can also transmit the data from experiments, but you get a smaller amount of points that way. You also get less science the more times you perform the exact same experiment/report. The ultimate source of science points is bringing back surface samples from other stellar bodies. The game also tracks your location on the stellar bodies. For example, experiments and samples from the equator of the Mun are different than those from the poles (and I'm sure there are a lot of additional distinct areas). There's stuff to explore on Kerbin as well. Here's Jebediah on Minmus with the heavy science craft. Also a picture of the cool Idle Thumbs Space Agency flag planted on the ground. Mun's north pole is a nasty place. The improved Munar surface really makes it a horrible pain to land there. With the science points I got from the Munar Polar Expedition, I unlocked the nuclear engines. Now I can set my sights to other planets.

Looks very interesting. This goes straight to my list of games to keep an eye on (and almost certainly buy), along with Sir, you are being hunted and Prison Architect. I'm about 15 minutes into the following video, and my thoughts are "It's like Prison Architect meets Space Station 13 ...In space! Obviously"

The Dark Mod, which used to be a mod for Doom 3, has now been released as a free standalone game. It basically recreates and improves the first two Thief games (mechanically, not the levels etc.) in the Doom 3 engine, while very stealthily avoiding any sort of copyright problems. Their website has been murdered by traffic for two days now, but you can download the game through a torrent: Once I got the game started (I had a bit of a memory problem, I think) I was almost overwhelmed by all the good old memories of the original Thief games. The feeling has been captured very well, and I had adrenaline pumping through my veins within minutes of sneaking around... in the tutorial level. Not only does TDM appear to be a good stealth game and a worthy honorary successor to the originals, but now I can take my mind off and completely block away the horrible abortion Thi4f is most likely going to be. [edit] Changed the thread title, since the 'mod' part might be misleading.

I tried Requiem and Lords & Legacy, both of which seemed very promising. Especially the former seemed very detailed and high quality. Unfortunately however, they both had so many characters, lightning sources or whatever, that my FPS was constantly somewhere below 10, so I couldn't bring myself to play them for very long. My computer is crap, so anything better than a 5 years old laptop will fare much better. So those seemed worth a try at a first glance. And just now I finished Flakebridge Monastery, which wasn't as detailed or very challenging. But the level was rather large and quite atmospheric. At one point I was pretty terrified entering a room, and at another point I nearly shat myself (although that was a cheap jumpscare). Overall: 4

Played some more levels. The Knighton Manor was a good one. If we keep the Tears of St. Lucia as a baseline, so it would be a 5 (out of 10). The Knighton Manor would also be a 5. It was also probably about the same length as the Lucia one. I also tried Vengeance for a Thief: Part 1 which unfortunately wasn't as good. Maybe a 3 with this ranking system. The beginning was decent, when you have to break out of a jail cell and sneak around without any equipment, until you recover them from an evidence room. In the latter part of the level, you sneak around pretty monotone streets desperately trying to find doors that you can actually open and find loot. As the name implies, there is a part 2 of this map, but I think I might skip it for now, and play some other level next. So come on, people. Try this game and play some levels, so you can recommend me the good ones.

Tonight I had some more time, and I got into an actual mission. I tried the other mission that comes with the installation, besides the training mission, The Tears of Saint Lucia. A very nice level indeed. But boy, did it leave me a nervous wreck. It took 1 hour and 16 minutes (not counting the times I got my ass handed to me by angry Builders and had to reload a save), and I bet three quarters of that was me huddled in a dark corner listening to footsteps. Then, when the time was right and I had mustered the courage to move out, I'd see the door handle on the opposite end of the corridor turn unexpectedly, and back into the dark corner it was. I did gain some confidence once I got more familiar with the mechanics of the game (how close exactly does a guard have to get to spot you in complete darkness etc.) and in the end I got quite fast and confidently from one end of the level to the other without being spotted. Now I'm pondering wheter my willpower is strong enough to handle another mission, or if I should play something more cheery. ps. Looks like the website is back up. Download and ~60 additional missions available now. pps. If you're playing the first standalone release (2.0), make sure to install it in a directory called "[whatever]\darkmod". Anything else, and saves don't work (I have first hand experience of this).

The mechanic is certainly interesting and very cool. I just hope they focuse on making use of it instead of "weirdness" and words and faces flashing on the screen.

It's time for a bump once again. There have been occasional updates, but I think now is the time to remind my fellow thumbs of this game's existence. Here is the latest post in the developer blog. It includes a link to a PC Gamer interview and a new gameplay demonstration video. According to the interview, the release of this game "will definitely be before the end of the year". I'm sofa king excited.

Cool beans, a new version is available. Seems that the biggest changes and additions are: crew management, new SAS system and different terrain generation. More precise information can be found here. Haven't had the chance to try it yet, but sounds interesting once again. The new SAS modules use electricity to provide torque. You can also apparently turn your vessel without having to toggle the SAS off and back on again. Also, apparently a lot of behind the scenes information gathering etc. was added for future career mode updates.

I bought: Fallout: New Vegas Torchlight 2 I'm pretty cheap. Especially considering I bought the latter game with money I got from selling trading cards and my old TF2 crap in the Steam marketplace. But it feels nice that I basically got a free video game by playing video games. I could get used to it.

There's something funky going on on the Mun. I landed two craft there. First one was a rover/buggy drop-off with a skycrane. It was a really close one, probably the closest one I've ever had, fuel wise. There was probably no more than two seconds of fuel left at the time of the drop off. The problem is with the buggy, though. Even as it's supposed to be perfectly still, it jitters and bounces slightly. It does it when the buggy is moving as well, so it's basically unusable. I thought it was just a physics bug from unevenly placed wheels, or that there's something wrong with the new wheels. I landed the second craft, a one-man lander with the tiny lander legs. Everything went fine until the point of touchdown. That craft started doing the weird physics dance as well, only more so. It was literally jumping and flipping over, it even did a flip. To prevent tragedy, I fired up the engines as the craft was pointing upwards, jumped brave Lofrey Kerman out and landed him with the jetpack. That way he wouldn't die if the lander twitched and crashed itself, or he wouldn't get crushed by a random jump as he's trying to get out of it. (In reality, though, I also wanted a crash without killing any kerbals). What further convinced me something weird was going on, instead of just two unlucky random bugs, was that the flag I planted after Lofrey was on the ground exploded after I went in to time acceleration. ps. I freaking love skycranes. Even when they work as planned, you get to watch something crash and explode. This wasn't my first skycrane drop-off, but it still makes me feel fuzzy. No wonder NASA used one for Curiosity.

I claim this site in the name of the Idle Thumbs Space Agency. It is actually the flag, but having all textures on the lowest setting makes them a barely recognizable smudge. Also, here are the flag images. They go into the (game directory) \ GameData \ Squad \ Flags -directory

Oh my stars, perfect timing. I just did my last exam before summer, now it's time for space exploration again. I hope the new large docking ports are a bit more rigid than the medium and small ones. I don't think they will be, though...

Gimballing rocket engines are ones whose nozzle can turn up to a point. This way the engine thrust can be used to turn the rocket. Locking gimbal, as you might guess, stops the nozzles from turning. The reason to do this is to prevent the rocket from wobbling (from over-correction when using the ASAS). Most of the rear-mounted engines have a gimbal range of 1 degree, and it is enabled by default. I've actually not used gimbal locking. Only after the Idle Thumbs discussions about gimbal locking did I find out it can be used to stop the wobbles that occasionally have torn my rocket apart. I've also never really been able to use the asparagus staging because of the wobbling, which always led to collisions with the decoupled parts. The more you know!