Niyeaux

Man, that is some seriously fancy hand writing.

You guys should really worry less about going off on non-Video game-related tangents. They're usually some of my favourite moments of the podcasts, and I doubt I'm alone in this. Also, I'm glad you guys mentioned Link's Awakening. That game is really, really good.

I've got three people in on this so far, which is enough to make it amusing. Most guesses are in the six months to a year range.

Then no one wins I guess. I'm assuming it's going to go Old Republic at some point, though.

Jake is under the impression that I painted this for some reason. Hahaha. I'm not even sure who's getting trolled anymore here.

Yea, that latest screen shot has much better looking ground. You've clearly managed to tighten up the graphics. Also, the overall style of these is totally my jam. Keep it up!

Yeah, I'm in this boat.

It is ridiculous how many talented artists there are around here. Good job, all of you.

I started trying my hand at photography a couple months ago, and have been shooting a lot lately. Here's my stuff from this month!

Holy shit that is good.

Alright, so I'm writing a feature for a video games website on the internet. It's about Steam economy stuff and how weird it is, basically. One of the interviews I would like to do for this piece is talking to a person who has been scammed out of a fairly valuable TF2/DOTA item. I want them to tell me their story, how it came about, and what kind of crazy rare item they lost. Do any Thumbs fit the bill? If so, please get in touch. Similarly, if you have friends who fit the bill, PM me, and I'll give you my email address for you to pass along. Thanks guys!

I PM'd him and he didn't reply. No bueno.

You should leave donations open, IMO. Myself and probably others would totally chip in for this, but I didn't see this thread until today.

It's looking like no dice, eh? Most unfortunate. I can't find anyone who qualifies amongst my twitter followers either... The scam is that they find people who have valuable items but don't know that they're valuable, and offer to trade them worthless items (perhaps ones for a game they actually play).

The bit about Gone Home's super obtuse nods to the Bioshock universe is hilarious.

This is more than just a good idea - it's an idea that will at some point become a necessity. We're increasingly automating production-oriented tasks, and the actual things we need are requiring less and less human beings to produce; instead of recognizing that that means we all shouldn't have to work as much, we're sticking with the paradigm of everyone working full time jobs. Increasingly we're employing people to do redundant busywork, simply because our economic system demands it. At some point, it's going to get so ridiculous that we'll have to realize how useless it all is, and just let people do other shit with their lives and still get the things they need to survive. Whether mincome is the answer, or another answer involving simply not involving money in the whole giving everyone food and shelter thing is a better solution, remains to be seen.

Hot damn that screenshot looks good, Lacabra.

Given how long it's been since they've actually shipped a single player game, one would imagine it's not so great for creative types these days. At least not creative types of the "I want to release a complete, standalone artistic work for people to enjoy" variety.

If you played Diablo 2 back in the day, lost a substantial chunk of your life to it, and then bought Diablo 3 hoping it would be more of the same...there may be hope for you yet. A developer from New Zealand just released their game into open beta, and it's pretty much everything you wished a sequel to Diablo 2 would be. It's called Path of Exile, it's free to play, and it's really, really good. The skill tree alone in this game is absolutely astounding. It's like the Final Fantasy X skill tree, but it's entirely composed of passive attribute improvements, and all your active skills (spells and attacks and all that jazz) come from equippable skill gems that you find as loot drops. There's also no gold, which is an unexpectedly awesome idea. Vendors will trade you commodity items like identification scrolls for your leftover loot, instead of giving you arbitrary amounts of gold. It's a handy way of avoiding the problem most ARPGs face, where the ingame currency inflates so much that it becomes useless, as people find more and more loot. Anyone who has played Diablo 2 will be pretty at home in Path of Exile. The UI, quest structure, loot mechanics, etc. are all pretty similar. They've made a lot of key improvements, however, and they've avoided all the pitfalls that Diablo 3 fell into (RMAH, shitty loot system, etc.) The story also won't drive you crazy nearly as much as Diablo 3's shenanigans. Best of all, there's no pay-to-win nonsense; the only things that cost real money are cosmetic stuff like weapon particle effects, increased stash pages, and additional character slots (and they give you like 24 slots and a huge stash to start with, so you probably won't need more). I'm like 20 hours in already, and I can't believe how it feels as exciting as Diablo 2 did over a decade ago. If anyone else is playing, add me up! My in-game name is the same as my forum name.

Well, there were the bits in the actual conversation about Starbound where you talked about how Minecraft's gameplay language has kind of spawned its own genre and that that's pretty cool, and I agree with all that. But prior to that, when Terraria came up, it was referred to as "a 2D version of Minecraft" multiple times. IMO, that's a really reductive way of describing that game, as it has a lot of its own thing going on. But...whatever. I'm probably just being overly defensive about a game I've spent way too many hours of my life playing.

I'm running a 24/7 dedicated server for me and my friends. I don't really want it to be a public server, because we've built some cool shit already and don't want griefers to fuck it up, but if you're a reputable Thumb with a decent number of posts here, feel free to PM me for server credentials.

Calling Terraria a 2D ripoff of Minecraft is a bit unfair. Especially since no one on the cast has actually played the game. Insofar as it's a game where you can use a pick to mine squares and then use those squares to make other stuff, sure, it's a Minecraft ripoff. But it also has its own thing going on, with a bunch of big boss fights, different biomes at different places in the world, a ton of weapons, spells, etc. It's a really cool game. Full disclosure: I've only played about 10 hours of Minecraft, and got bored of it before I really got into any of the serious building stuff. On the other hand, I've played well over 200 hours of Terraria, beat all the authored content (bosses and stuff), ran a dedicated server for a few months, etc. That game is totally my jam. ON THAT NOTE: Starbound is everything Terraria was, with the scope broadened to the point of absurdity. The planetary travel stuff is bonkers, the amount of cool procedurally generated shit you find is insane, and the RPG-esque gear progression is way more in-depth than Terraria's. I'm 30 hours in and I feel like I haven't seen much of the content. I'm also running a Starbound dedicated server on my linux box, so if any Thumbs wanna come play on a multiplayer server (that currently is in use by just me and about half a dozen of my friends), PM me for the credentials.

For some reason I've decided to teach myself photography. I bought my friend's spare DSLR body for cheap, figured out what all the buttons do, and then just started trying to take pictures that don't suck. Here's what I've managed to accomplish so far. I'm pretty happy with how some of them turned out, though I obviously have plenty of crap about aperture and ISO and depth of field and all that to figure out still. I'm sure there's some Thumbs who are decent photographers, so critique is very much appreciated.

Yeah, it's a real bummer how many cool-sounding games there are that only come out on iOS, a platform that only exists on devices I have zero interest in ever owning.

Jesus Christ, that last email is one of the most insane things that has ever happened on this podcast. You guys have to get this Zoe character on as a podcast guest ASAP.