Colourful Stuff

I can make it tonight but I don't want to bump anybody else's spot. There isn't much wine left this morning so hopefully I'll play a little tighter. Guess it's time to grind out some more helium.

Amnesia: A Mechanical Ghost, coming 2015 from the Fullbright Company.

What if Chris, so ensorceled by his crossword, failed to notice a third man eviscerated and consumed by phone man. The big guy must have been terrified.

I thought the gay thing had been lifted in England but was still in effect in Wales. My partner is unable to give blood in Wales if she's had sex with me in the past 12 months on account of my lifetime ban for gay sex. The first time we tried they called us into interview rooms and asked us detailed questions about our sexual histories before just saying no because of the gay thing. The the next time she tried without me they pulled up her record and quizzed her about me again! They wanted to know if she was still with me and asked her if she's had sex with anybody HIV positive, despite her saying she was still with me and that precluding her from giving blood in the first place. The ban isn't what bothers me as much as it is the strange data gathering they do. If your gay they want to know every sordid detail of your filthy, bum-bothering life.

That's like an instruction manual for contracting dysentery. The best I've heard about Windows 8 is you can basically make it boot into something resembling Windows 7. Update; operation thermal paste was a success. After changing the paste and emptying the Hoover bag (there was a moth in one of the outlets) I'm getting an idle CPU temperature of about 50°C and haven't been able to get it above 65. The screen is also fixed (one of the cables had popped out as I wrestled with the case.) The only problem is I failed to solve the problem. Despite my frigid internals I still got the same freezing after an hour or so, then again about an hour after rebooting. Running on battery power seems to solve the problem, which makes me suspect that my AC adapter may in fact have ticks or flees.

Hmmm... So I may have destroyed my graphics card or forgotten to plug the screen in. I decided to change the paste on both the GPU and CPU. The CPU was presumably a success as I was able to boot and log into Windows. The only fault I can identify is a complete lack of any visual output on the screen or HDMI. My current theories are that a) I bridged something on the GPU or I didn't plug the weird mushy cables in properly. My partner has banned me from working on it until tomorrow.

That would be significantly more stressful! Instead of a blood loss meter for the patient there would be a blood loss meter for the player character which would deplete as they lacerated their hands.

Premo paste ordered. Everything I've heard since about 2008 is there is nothing to fear. Intuitively it still feels like something that should be difficult.

Thanks thumbs. Thermal paste was my guess too however the prospect of unseating the CPU was too frightening. Come to think of it there was an odd white powder in the vents which looked pretty new. Looks like I'll have to bite the bullet. Maybe I'll find a home for the three disposed screws from last time I disassembled it. How would one 'check the power pack'?

My laptop seems to be super hot and super broken. My current theory is that there is a goblin trying to cook a fry up on my CPU. It's a fancy Asus affair with a slightly outdated i7 and has been freezing quite alarmingly. It just locks up completely, usually within a few minutes to an hour of turning it on. I thought it was an overheating issue so took it apart and gave everything a clean, which fixed the problem for about a week. Now the problem has returned. The idle core temperatures are about 60 and they seem to get close to 100 before locking up (however this is difficult to prove as I've been unable to overheat it while CoreTemp is in sight. What would YOU do in this situation?

Good point. It may have been what compelled me to do so much tidying up on my play through. Returning Christmas Duck to his proper place made perfect sense, I'm not a monster. Returning an empty can to a table top is far less intuitive so I'd always put junk items in the nearest bin. It also seemed like what a worried big sister would do and a part of me thought "Sam is going to be in so much trouble if mum and dad see this mess." Maybe my play style saw me using physics more than most as I got pretty good at chucking cans into bins. Also the non-functional water cooler is a disaster, why wasn't is just broken? I was sure it would work so tried several different receptacles. Alternatively it should have spilled guts onto the floor like Viscera Clean up Detail.

To the point of 'video game' being imperfect nomenclature, I don't think history will view Gone Home as being too different from a shooter. Cliff Bleszinski has talk in the past about how the guns in Gears of War are the only means the player has of touching the world. This makes it important that the weapon and bullet impact effects are as chunky and physical as possible and is why chunks of masonry fall from walls and heads explode. The basic interaction you have with the world is satisfying (and a little bit dumb.) Gone Home is basically the same. Your only means of interacting with the world is by pick up and spinning about realistic physics objects. Fullbright obviously spent a lot of time and effort ensuring that their objects have a heft to them and collided believably. This ensures the interaction the player has the world is satisfying and grounded. I think as the medium continues to mature and a greater number of non-violent first person games are made the argument will disappear. A video game isn't inherently challenging, narrative, 2D or 3D. It is simply a computer program you can play. What play means should be left in the hands of the developer.

Yeah, and the sound of a banzai charge coming over the top of your trench. There's a sort of heightened melodrama to the audio which helps sell their version of the conflict.

Sean, Rising Storm is the Pacific Theatre expansion for Red Orchestra 2. Like BF:1943 it has more interesting sound design than more typical shooters. The Marines and Imperial Army are highly asymmetrical in their abilities and weaponry. This makes weapon reports crucial low level tactical information. In a game that has friendly fire and one hit kills knowing the difference between an M1 Garand and Type 99 rifle gives lifesaving battlefield awareness. The audio also feeds into the macro strategic layer and map flow. The maps are rolling objective based, attack/defend affairs; when A and B are captured the spawns will shift and C and D will be contested. Spawn are also wave based, meaning that there is a natural ebb and flow to the conflict. This means that the audio periodically becomes harder to read and generally more stressful, especially as Marines close in on the Japanese with their cacophonous automatic weapons. The cheapness of human life and swiftness of death also means a full blooded assault will often be stopped in its tracks, which will lead to a sudden, unsettling quietness. I haven't even mentioned the dynamic barks and score. What I'm saying is I like the sounds the video game makes.

Are you still playing together? I'm a pretty good helo pilot if you need somebody with my particular set of skills.