Security_Tubbs

If I had to pick only one game to take with me to a deserted island, Dwarf Fortress would be my choice. It's been a few months since my most recent DF activity peak. I haven't played the most recent version(s) with minecarts and stuff, but I feel the wave coming again. One of my latest forts went down pretty magnificently. I had a population of around 100 and I had settled in a haunted location. Filth rained down periodically and getting infections was not uncommon. Necromancers from a nearby tower arrived with groups of zombies, but they were either captured in cages or torn apart by weapon traps. A larger zombie invasion also took place, not long before the downfall. I had made more weapon traps as a response to the increased invader activity. Only a few zombies got through the traps, and my military took care of them easily. A seemingly endless effort to clean the traps and haul the zombie remains into stockpiles (to get the bones for crafting etc.) was interrupted by an unexpected reanimation of all the corpses. Most of my population was hauling corpses and bodyparts as they all came back into unlife, attacking my dwarves. The resulting chaos was unlike anything I'd seen before. My militia was taking part in the labour, inactive and most without their weapons or armor. A few managed to get to the equipment stockpile, but their efforts were futile. Eventually the devastation, both physical and emotional, brought down the might of the Dwarves. No efforts to reclaim the fortress are planned.

Bit of a thread resurrection here, but definitely worth it. The Wrath of the Lamb DLC was just released today. It was a Day One Perch for me, and I bought it within hours of it coming out. It adds all the things you'd want more: items, monsters, levels and bosses. There's a new item slot, called the trinket and a new character. The trinkets work passively and their function remains largely a mystery to me. The DLC costs 3€ on Steam right now, and the original is only 2€ due to a special promotion. If you loved the original, this DLC is a must. If you haven't yet played the game, but have been intrigued, now is a great time to buy. I'm still at the discovery phase of the new stuff, so I haven't consulted the wiki. I've only talked to other people about their experiences and it seems there's quite a few powerful combos. That is of course the beauty of the game: getting the right items will allow you to absolutely devastate the game. Problem is that with more and more items, the number of those combos increases and thus the difficulty of acquiring them decreases. A new upgrade, Blood Lust, which the new character starts with, can lead to pretty hilarious damage output. When an enemy is killed (doesn't matter by whom) your damage increases until you leave the room. The total amount it can increase is apparently limited, but if you start with an already high damage you can get to ridiculous levels. It is especially good against bosses who summon lots of mobs. I killed in just a few hits after entering the room with maxed out damage and killing the he summons. Here's business as usual:

Speaking of shitty wizards, I was playing Torchlight today. I had (note the past tense) amazing shoulder armor for my vanquisher, had like +15 dexterity and other useful enchantments. Of course I was greedy, so I went to meet the wizard. 1% chance of disenchant, no problem. First try and it was all over. So, I moved my cursor behind the shitty wizard, held down shift and clicked. As the gunshot was still figuratively ringing in my ears, I quickly turned away, to not see what happened (or didn't happen) to him. In that playthrough, no wizards inhabit Torchlight.

So, as I stated in the first post, I pre-purchased the game last weekend and I've been obsessively playing it since then. And in fact on the 17th, a new version was released that added, among other things, space plane parts (wings and jet engines) and another moon orbiting around the planet. It's amazing how much depth the mission persistence adds. Now I can have multiple mission flying at the same time, which also means that if I botch the landing on the Mun and break the engine, that crew will remain trapped on the Mun. It also means that decoupling parts while you're in stable orbit will leave those parts there as space junk (although collision with space junk is probably as likely as winning the lottery). As a result I've started dumping my orbital entry engines a bit early even if there's some fuel left, just to ensure they fall back to the planet instead of littering my orbit. I'll make this recommendation again: if this kind of stuff intrigues you, try the demo. Experiment a bit first, then find some tutorials. Get into orbit and learn to adjust it. Learn how to get to the Mun, and eventually land. Try to get back alive as well. If after all that you feel hungry for more, paying $15 will be a great investment for you. Story time again. I launched a lander mission to the Mun and tried to land on the dark side. I literally couldn't see the ground, plus I was unaware I was landing on a few kilometers tall mountain. I crashed to the surface way too fast and my rocket blew up. Weirdly enough, the crew pod survived and was trapped on the surface. I launched another mission, but this time I built a a Munar rover by attaching a few sets of wheels on the side. I managed to land a few kilometers away from the first crash site, and drove to it. There's no space walking, so it was up to my imagination to picture the crew from the first pod climbing into the rescue craft. Picking up the pod with another craft is also possible, but it as you can see, it's . I barely managed to take off, and as I was climbing into orbit, I noticed something weird on the surface. I made note of the location of the mystery object and headed back to Kerbin. The crew landed successfully. Later another mission was launched (after experimenting with some mods) to explore the mystery arc. And there it is, even more glorious and slightly more bugged than I thought. Finally, two screenshots of the new moon, Minmus. I made sure not to run into any kind of spoilers about what the moon looks like, etc. before exploring it for myself. So I'll just post the links instead of embedding the images. 1: Minmus from about 70 km away 2: Minmus landscape as seen from the surface

I remember shitting my pants at how cool the slow-mo dive was the first time I tried it. I was also surprised to find that the ending to Max Payne 2 was different if you beat it on the hardest difficulty. I was exposed, against my will, to some spoilers (although I don't know if they were accurate) about the ending of the third game. If they are true, they sound pretty shitty to me.

Here's a story and some images. #1 Thumb mk II, blast off! I can see my space center from up here! #2 Orbit around Kerbin achieved. Now waiting for the optimal time to fire the trans-Munar engines. #3 Velocity is about 3 km/s, trajectory just about right. Should hit the Mun straight on. #4 The screenshot was a poor one, but I got into orbit around the Mun without problems. #5 Killed all my horizontal velocity and now I'm waiting for gravity to do its job. I'll use as much of the remaining trans-Munar fuel close to the surface as possible before decoupling the engine and fuel tanks. #6 The engine crashed into the surface and exploded. The winglets act as landing gears. In Thumb mk I the winglets were too high up and the couplings aren't 100% rigid. They gave away so much that the engine hit the ground and came off of the rest of the rocket. Were there object persistence in this version, they'd still be trapped on the Mun. #7 We came, we saw, we conquered. Now it's time to head back. I fired the engine, dumped the winglets and headed for orbit. When my orbit took me in 'front' of the Mun (the direction it was heading in its orbit), I fired towards Kerbin. I got back into orbit around it and my trajectory took me through the atmosphere (which would eventually slow me down enough to get back on the surface). #8 My orbit was too elliptical, and eventually (after 6 or 7 passes) I didn't have enough velocity to miss the surface again, and I re-entered in too steep an angle. This doesn't bode well. #9 Surely enough, the parachute couldn't slow me down enough. In addition, I missed the water, which is a bad thing. However, on the Kerbal scale: Success!

I'm excited. I haven't pre-ordered yet, but I just might. Buying a 4-pack with three other people seems like the reasonable thing to do, once again.

If you want to remain in your glorious state of existence indefinitely, just send your PC to be repaired, but have them return it to my address instead of yours. I could really do with a computer that can run Dwarf Fortress better than my laptop.

I tried the demo briefly last night. Judging by what little I saw, I really liked it. I defended my city against a goblin invasion, counter-attacked and captured their city, killed a few monsters and explored a bit. An earth elemental destroyed my settlers and my warriors had a long battle with some bears in the woods. I have never played Civ 5, so the game being "a simplified Civ 5" in many ways has no effect on my opinion. Also, this is my first hex-based TBS in a long time, so that novelty propably has some effect. I'm going to play the demo again later and see what my final opinion will be. Most likely this is going on the wishlist.

Hello all, I'm Security Tubbs. I once saw Jeff Goldblum while I was handing out plastic security tubs. I started listening to Idle Thumbs near the end of the pre-kickstarter era and I've loved the podcast ever since. It is great to have them cast pods right at my ears again.