Luftmensch

Speaking of bad internet, any of you hear about the fiasco when North Carolina decided to outright ban community internet because it "stifled competition"? And by stifling competition they meant it was a not-for-profit high-speed internet service that delivered on its promised data rates and didn't charge egregious prices. It got some national attention including from Lawrence Lessig, with a lot of data backing up that it was a terrible idea. I haven't found any articles on the aftermath, but it looks like the bill was passed. Ugh.

I also had tested the URL an got an error. I was disappoint.

Me too at first, I'm glad there was a lot of confusion there. I was still listening to the episode when I made my last post, and now I'm super stoked cause you read my email on the cast! Sorry I'm not a badass level designer from Ubisoft Montreal who's never seen a house before, but I was encouraged to hear about your level designer with a background in set construction. Until recently, I've basically spent my life avoiding falling into a particular niche out of some vague lofty philosophical ideal of roundedness (that, in fact, is the basis for my username: Luftmensch is a Yiddish term for a person who, foolishly, is more concerned with airy intellectualism than solid practicality). Because of this, I've spent my time as a carpenter, building a boat, working as a screenprinter, writing, doing desk work, making so-called art, and, coincidentally, building sets for plays. I'm not expecting anything to come of it, but all your kind words for carpenters has encouraged me and you'll be seeing my resume coming in soon over at Telltale. Cheers. P.S. I know Jake it's hopeless but it makes me feel better. P.P.S. My email wasn't intended to test the waters and see if someone of my experience could make it. Really, I was curious if you had ever worked with an incredible architect who blew your mind with his insight or whatever. Unfortunately, you spoke so glowingly that now you're going to have the burden of rejecting a guy whom you personally addressed on your podcast. Sorry about that.

Weird, I was just listening to a back episode this morning when I walked the dog, and Chris was comparing King's Bounty to Heroes of Might and Magic. Then in this episode while you were doing the whole turn back time joke, Chris, totally unaware of himself, made the exact same comparison. Good accidental job, guys. I can't agree with the idea that Monkey Wrench Puzzles are bad game design. You guys love crossword puzzles, and that's totally what those are about! The question mark clues are all about making weird jumps with plays on words. I think, unlike adventure games, the NYT Crossword does have the advantage of a long history of conventions (unlike, as Sean noted, the weird Homestar Runner universe), but they're not at all afraid to throw in incredibly unintuitive clues that make sense when you think about them. I can't call that bad game design. I think it does help, also, that the weird punny clues can actually be solved completely by solving the intersecting words, so they're never a bottleneck by themselves.

Saw this linked over at RPS: FTL Themed Lego Set on Lego Cuusoo The races are pretty cool:

Oh I don't think for a second that's actually the cause, but I like the fiction of a bumbling Gaben doing a double take while he files his taxes, running into the office, pointing at the first couple dozen people he can find, and firing them on the spot.

I don't like lame speculation that much either really, but it does amuse me how close this is to all his talks saying "we have the best per-employee profitability in the industry!" Noted in the comments on Gamasutra, Jeri Ellsworth was fired.

I hope this isn't at all ominous, but it does make me think about Gabe's comments, "oh, we don't do quarterly financial reports! We only do them annually like we're required to by law for tax purposes!" As we approach tax day, I'm curious if there's a connection.

I would actually love a game that, maybe doesn't systemically specifically model behaviors intrinsic to religions or ethnicities or whatever, but totally has bigoted city councilmen or letters from voters blaming "those lazy blacks" or "the snooty Catholics" for their problems. I'd like it the most if the systems didn't literally model any of those perceived behaviors but was capable of generating racist observations. Just like real stupid small communities. The writing would have to be pretty good though to warrant that. There's a pretty fine line to walk to have a game that simulates and represents bigots without coming across bigoted itself.

I was just listening to back episodes of IT where they were talking about BL. I don't own any consoles so I've been wanting to play it, I'm stoked.

The RPS interview suggests that Night Dive will also be publishing SS2 on Steam. I'm not in a rush to play it either way (just got too much stuff I'm doing already) so we'll see what happens.

Is there any footage of Jake doing a double-take? I need some. I searched for "video games" and I found all this modern warfare bullshit instead of Jake Space Rodkin.

I disagree with that about Limbo. If limbo was just being in a dark scary world the whole time, I feel like the horror elements would have dissipated on their own at the same time and it would have gotten tedious. It's a very content-driven, as opposed to systems-driven, game. Maybe the designers could have done it, but I dunno if it would have been better. It was fun by me.

I'd be into that. My family's church was desperate to expand, so they wanted to take the existing church, remove the back portion, and enlarge it massively. Although the facade and steeple would be left untouched, the church itself was protected as a historical building so there was a huge legal battle between the priest and the historical board or whatever. Some people even joked about the possibility of "accidentally" setting the church on fire so that it'd have to be rebuilt anyway. That priest left and when a new one came in, he said "hey, we own this huge plot of land across the road, why on earth would we deconstruct a historic landmark when we can build an even huger church from scratch for a fraction of the cost?" and last I heard that's the plan. If that game existed, I'd want it to be full of different personalities that can change over the long run. I'd also love it your office could get stupid bullshit angry letters from "concerned voters" ranting about stupid crap they hate. God I want to play this game now.

For some reason I've had this idea in my head that, from watching tutorials and reading the release notes, that I more or less know how to use Blender? Anyway, I started working on making my character, and as I was doing it, it was this weird combination of knowing what keys to press and where the menus are and also realizing that I've never made anything from scratch with this software in my life (I've a bit at best). Anyway, right now I have something that looks like this, which at this stage I'm surprised I just made without running my face into a wall.Also the sun came out and I put the first coat of real paint on my boat. Yay! Edit: I went ahead and changed the attached image to my last update for todayt. I still have next to no idea what I'm doing.

Link's Awakening was probably the first game I played all the way through in my childhood, so I've got a lot of fondness for that melody. In Zelda history though, I think the piece of music that stands out most for me is Link's Awakening's credits theme. (I don't know why the credits are messed up here, but the music's intact) I loved this them. It ties in with the game's themes, but it's still something totally new and memorable. It actually feels like a kind of reward for beating the game, which is awesome. Unlike many Zelda games, the credits are just set against an ocean sky with prominently, which I thought was pretty nice. The game's over, all the threads have been tied up and it's done. Then there's the (starts at about three minutes into the video)Egh, maybe it's just me, but the music was just a long boring medley to me, and I thought it was a really lame to just throw the original LoZ theme music in there out of the blue. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way. The style of the music seemed totally inappropriate for the quality of the midi too. Terrible synth strings sound bad anyway, but they sound even worse when you're trying to be emotional. Even besides the music, first I got pretty bored with the 15 minutes of throwbacks, but then I was mad that Hena wasn't even featured! The woman who runs the fishing pond, she was my favorite character in the game. She was the only person who wouldn't put up with Link's shit. If you're going to hold the camera for 30 seconds over every area in the game, why not take a moment to feature the one character with a personality? Edit: I'm getting real tired of this weird video limit. I'm having to jump through hoops even to post links to videos.

When I was in high school, loving Russian crap was everyone's favorite ironic pastime. The Russian Winnie the Pooh is legit good stuff though (so is the hedgehog short but good grief how many surplus Soviet hats did high school students even need?) Here's a few other gems: Café Allongé Yellow Cake Crater Face (this is the best. If you can only pick one to watch let it be this) Tatooine This Land is Mine (tbh I think Nina Paley is insufferable and her politics obnoxiously smug and idealistic, but she's pretty good at making weird animations) Going to the Store The External World (I may have lied and this may actually be the best)

It's a toss-up with those made-up -egan names. I went to high school with a girl named Degan and a guy named Kegan.

FreddieW and others make me really optimistic. It's exciting that we have talented productive filmmakers who play and understand video games and are able to draw from their experience meaningfully, both from understanding what it's like to play games as well as what it's like to be a person who likes games, both of which have been hilariously terribly portrayed for years (Spy Kids 3D, The Wizard respectively)

The Dory: Part Two: Prime Time This past weekend my dad was in town, so I was finally able to use his router to carve out a hole for the daggerboard. I didn't take a picture, but at the time it was covered in bundles of stringy shavings. Since we had to flip the boat anyway, we left it out upside-down on the ground for painting. This isn't the most comfortable level to work but it's incredibly hard to flip this boat. That's a good thing. In this photo you can see the bottom of my boat, the boat trailer, and the daggerboard and rudder resting on the trailer. Fun fact, I also built the fence. I dropped by the hardware store to pick up a bit more masking tape, which I'll need when I paint the navy blue accents. I decided to pick up some black paint to cover the foam flotation (which was just pink and not very nautical-looking), so I grabbed a couple cans of matte black spray paint which worked in a pinch. Spray paint works best on a smooth flat surface. Because foam tends to get dinged up, all the exposed surfaces have a thick layer of epoxy, but the other parts are pretty ugly up close. Fortunately that's where nobody will by looking. Finally I applied a final coat of primer on the bottom of the boat. The slot where the daggerboard slots is doomed to be ugly I'm afraid. No Shaker craftmanship here. I painted as deep as I could and resolved that the inside will just be submerged and out of sight so I'll have to deal with it. Besides that detail, I managed to get a good, thick, mostly even coat throughout. Painting the ridges was a slight pain because, with marine grade paint, you need to use a very thin foam roller, which means you have to go back and clean up details and ridges with a brush. That was tedious but not hard. Even just on the boat itself. Once this is all dry, hopefully by tomorrow morning (it's getting pretty soggy out) I can apply the first proper coat of paint. The boat is going to be white with accents of navy blue trimming which hopefully will be sexy. If we get any sunny days, I might be able to work in two coats of paint in the same day, and have this all done by the weekend. Then, my dad and I install the convoluted sailing rig and we'll be ready to go.

It was mentioned briefly in this thread, but Hitmen for Destiny is a pretty incredible comic. The art's kind of offputting at first, but once you can get past the simple MSPaint art and slow start, it turns into a huge incredible story with interwoven stories and some really clever fantasy science. Also, it's totally finished. It's 587 pages long, so it'll keep you occupied for a while, but you don't have to wait for updates.

I don't know if any of you use Blender (actually I know for a fact Brendon Chung does but w/e) but I kind of follow it's development from a distance, and the one thing that is always weird to me is its built-in game engine. It's such a weird bastard project. Sometimes I hear of people using it for like installation projects, like some interactive show at a planetarium, but besides that it just seems to be this weird platform for people to make that they never finish. I listen to the Blender Podcast, where basically two of the main sort-of-full-time programmers talk about what sort of development and community news is going on with Blender, and the game engine is always this weird aside, "oh yeah and I guess there's the game engine too but I dunno what's going on there..."So yeah, I'm curious about what folks know or think about it. I just don't really get it, though I guess it's kind of cool that young programmers are adding features and I guess learning software development on it. Also recently I found a game that actually looks good and well-polished, and the guy who makes it doesn't sound like a completely inarticulate mumbling nerd which gives some sort of authority to his work. I'll post a video below. Do people use this? Do people even care?

Don't forget Tails Gets Trolled. It gets pretty epic.