clyde

For the week of January 19th, 2015 we will be playing: FF35 by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

My recommendation would be to try the Super Football League demo for Zen Pinball 2 on xbox, ps3, or steam (not tablet or phone because nudging is near impossible). The reason I would choose this one is because the table actually expresses what we are talking about through the way the main mode is beaten, whereas in the other two tables I mentioned, it's just the strategy I have developed personally. In Super Football League you are encouraged to hit certain ramps and orbits in quick succession before moving the ball to the upper-playfield (because it's pinball, even the strategic set-up requires dexterity). The more ramps and or its you hit in a small amount of time, the less pop-targets that block the goal.

I really enjoy how Unity can be used for studies like this. I love it when strategic scope modes give high amounts of incentive for dexterous modes. I actually associate this with pinball. On tables like Black Hole, Centaur, and Super League Football, I spend a lot of time setting the table up for moments of heightened significance. It's rare for a pinball table to then allow the results of the dexterous moment to affect back to the strategic scope though. I'm having a hard time thinking of games that do this; they often reset the wins and losses after a dextourous mode so that you don't snowball or get snowballed. This is great.

I get the impression that the two scenes with interaction are there to highlight the lack on interaction with the citizens of Stephenstown; in most of these games, little animated figures produce dialogue or events when collided with, in Stephenstown they are just as static as trees or boundaries. Some places can really feel like this, being incredibly alone in a crowd of people because the people around are not interested in interaction. Often I feel this way in the towns I've lived in, that the only opportunities to communicate with others are commercial interactions and church greetings. I'm certainly guilty of the stoicism that causes this, epecially when it feels like ever person who approaches me is just going to ask for money because that's what has happened in every interaction outside of work for the past two months. Based on the description of Stephenstown, I imagine that the established cultural habits of this particular place exacerbate this inaccessibility of social interaction. The need of the narrator to contrast the lack of social interaction with the visual beauty of the urban planning makes me think that visitors give the character a hard time about his displeasure with a place that is nice to visit, but a terrible place to live.

My wife and I recorded a chat about short, free games. Sorry about the "p"s, we will get better at it. I forgot to put socks over the mics. Games discussed: Secret Habitat, Oneiric Gardens, and Thunder Plays. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92741283/podcast/2014-1-17.mp3

I'm taking advantage of the free-weekend and I'm 200 turns ito my first game. So this will largely be extrapolation based off of my partial experience. I'm not poking at the other factions and it's relieving that they don't seem to default to aggressive behavior. I think the non-aggression fits well into the narrative where initially resources are plentiful, we are all in a dangerous and alien place, and we don't know how much we need each other against a shared threat. Additionally, personally, I'm much more interested in how to send signals of potential military-strikes in Civ 5 than actually executing them. In my small amount of time in Beyond Earth, the alien life-forms have provided me with a great artificial-intelligence to play with in this way. I am not agressive towards them directly, but I have played very territorially and somewhat expansive; so I've used a very small military (about one unit per colony or outpost) to effectively herd the native life-forms. Thus far, this ability to influence these potentially dangerous creatures that I have little knowledge of is the most interesting part of the game. If they expand the game, I hope it takes the direction of having more intimate relations with a more various, consistent but unpredictable, bestiary of life-forms who have interesting and evolving survival-strategies. I enjoy thinking that I am herding them into maintaining no-mans-lands that I don't want settled (or if they are settled, then I want it to be costly for the other factions. At 200 turns, I'm starting to see this type of strategy be acknowledged by the game's systems as miasma is benefit for some technology-paths, a nusaince for others, and a little bit of both for me. I want more of that and maybe I'll get it. I'm divided on the tech-web based on whether I value what it says about the narrative or if I value the ability to know what I'm doing. Early in the game I felt that I was making potent decisions based on immediate, percieved needs. 200 turns in, the tech-web has begun to highlight my lack of direction towards any of the victory-conditions and it's stressful in a not fun way. I like the narrative that we are a pioneering colony on an exoplanet just throwing all our scientific curiosity on whatever someone happens to write a grant for, and it might be designed for flexibility once I've become familar with what they do and how they are connected, but I'm frustrated with it at its particular combination of high-investment and I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-commiting-to. I have a lot of amateur ideas on how to solve the tech-web and I'm sure that if any of them were implimented, no one but me would like it. I'll tell you anyway because it's fun to do so: Option 1. -I don't want all these choices listed out in front of me. I'm sure that most people want to play this like Civ 5 where youcan see that astronomy leads to aircraft carriers, but I don't; it would piss everyone off, but I think the tech-web should be randomized and everything but your current options should be obscured. That would be interesting. Remind me to bring this up in reference to affinities. Additional to this, it would be so cool if you could make trades for specific technologies. This would work especially well if the use of a technology was telegraphed clearly. An obvious example of how to do this would be running into a military unit unlike one you can make; click on it and it opens up a negotiation screen. Selling individual units or the ability to manufacture would be so exciting to choose between and cost/benefit analyse. You could negotiate for individual orbitals too for example. Ideally each manifestation of a new tech would be noticed by the player in world-map interactions, but when not possible, or just in combination, new techs available for negotiation could be presented when other factions are actively looking for sales or through the quest-system. A lot of interesting stuff could be done within this system narratively and mechanically. Some trades would require actual trade-routes; this would be a new type of incentive for a geographically scattered empire. Another possibility is that maybe you could have the option to observe and/or capture alien life for additional risk and gain a alien-specific technology that way. I guess my main point is that I want the selection of tech put into the other systems rather than it being its own. Science as currency could still work in tht system, but it would probably be better to treat it as maintance costs rather than as one initial expenditure. ---- As far as affinities go, I'm only 200 turns in, but when I looked at affinity-specific victory conditions it was a turn-off. I may be completely misreading this, but it looks like I'll need to focus on an affinity to get an affinity-specific victory. I don't like that at all. It takes all the fun out of affinity decisions for me if that's the reason I chose them. I want to chose them for diplomatic reasons or urgent needs (that I perceive in my gameplay rather than ones I'm just reading about) during quest decisions. 200 turns in on my first game, affinities feel like how-I'm-going-to-fuck-up more than anything. I going to come off as more of a know-it-all with this because the game might already have it, but I'd like the affinities to make you blind to other options more than anything. Treating them like an addiction would be cool; I get the impression that this is already the case in the sense of trying to concentrate on one for affinity-specific bonuses, but I'd love it to be like "you don't even know that that faction that became a bunch of alien nests is still normal, it's you who have changed" kinda stuff. Also your affinity could determine which techs you are even aware of. ---- I got a little side-tracked designing my own game there. I like Beyond Earth so far mostly because of the miasma and the aliens. If there was more of that stuff that distinguishes it from Civ 5, I would view it as something different than a optional mode for Civ 5.

So it took me all of 5 minutes to use Array.Copy() for the first time and solve all the problems I've been trying to fix for days. Knowledge is power. I'm relieved that it was because of something I just Did Not Know, but it's hard to feel like I didn't waste a lot of time. I'm getting better at not getting frustrated when this type of thing happens. If nothing else, I ended up with what I wanted and I probably got better at using Debug.Log() to zero in on problems. public void SetPicturesShow(GameObject[] _pictures) { Array.Copy (_pictures,this.pictures_show,25); }

One day I'm going to wax nostalgic about watching these VR videos with my phone an inch from my face.

For the record, I was referring to SSX (2012). That game is so much fun.

On sniper rifles: If I want to do well in Attrition, I'm not going to use a sniper rifle, but it is a nice little break to use a sniper rifle for a while and just shoot grunts from a nice vantage point. On challenges that are so distasteful that you will never advance: I just saw that the Black Market allows you to buy your way past a single challenge for a lot of in-game currency. If I didn't take pride in my Gen3-status, I might do that, but I just ended up buying all the AI voices becUse there is something oddly relaxing about listening to people speak to me in languages I don't understand. On map-packs splittng the community: Yup. It was a bone-headed move.

A lot of the lines in here are sharp. I find myself wishing that it wasn't absurd in its details because the campy noir is what I find most enjoyable. Thanks for the recommendation. TeamBatsu gets cyberpunk/noir for sure. (Playtime was about an hour for me, I consider myself a slow reader.)

I can't imagine being a big enough douchebag that I would be willing to force someone into a cage and remove them from their friends and families because they smoke or sell pot. I would be more than willing to support criminalization of such actions because people who are willing to perform such an ethical oversight are incredibly violent and dangerous.

Apparently there is a probe going to Pluto that is using an original Playstation CPU. http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/15/7551365/playstation-cpu-powers-new-horizons-pluto-probe The article cites interest in the reliablity of established commercial products.

One thing that I'd like to see addressed is this fantasy that we can exist in our society without causing harm. I'm not saying that lessening the harm we cause isn't valuable, but sometimes it seems like all of us (especially animal-rights folk and environmentalists) should consider the side of the equation where our mere survival is detrimental to the environment. I often feel that there is a lack of acceptance that we will inevitably cause some amount of harm. This is probably mostly true of myself.

I'm horrified by the possibility that I will one day have no option but to work in a slaughterhouse. I don't think I could slaughter a pig. I faint at the sight of blood and I believe that my cats have different personalities and that they like me for more reasons than that I feed them. I get upset when I step on a bug, but I burn the shit out of some coal and eat plants lathered in pesticides. Edit: If I had just waited a minute before posting, I would have seen that Bjorn said it better.

Oh yeah, I played it yesterday or the day before.

If you still have the game I recommend trying Capture-The-Flag these days. These noobs are easily distracted.

In my experience, all the pleasurable flavors come from the seasoning. I do enjoy the texture though.

I think the majority of us eat meat because it is convenient due to the current food-supply infrastructure. I have a hard time believing that we will be eating meat on the moon or on Mars.

I value differences of opinion of issues such as these. That said, I want to express how mine differ. I think the (comparatively) low number of weapons was a great design choice. I still don't understand why there are two SMGs. What I like about the amount of customizable weapons is that I can wrap my head around them enough to switch them out between games and have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. All the weapons (except from the SMGs) feel distinct from each other while in games like the COD Modern:Warfare series the differences seem to be in things like having a slightly shorter clip in exchange for slightly less kick or whatever. I understand that discovering, debating, and optimizing that minutiae is something that others value, but Titanfall's customization is just as far as I have interest in going. That stuff takes time and effort to sift through and I often feel that I've just made a bad weapon because I don't know what I'm doing. That's fine because I can change it right? Well the reality of that is that I get tired of changing all that stuff around on a single primary weapon and then I just stop changing it when I find something that works. Titanfall's customization system is prioritized to be clear, fast, and noticiably consequential when any change is made. More options is not always a good thing. Besides that consider the scale of variety in weapons, abilities and titans within their classes. The smart-pistol encourages wildly different play that the SMGs. Chosing to use the Guardian Chip instead of the Minion Detector feels like a drastic move. For me, the customization balances well between managable without being obsessive and various enough where I can make builds that play much differently. I've clocked 148 hours and it was just this morning that I discovered how effective the Arc-Cannon is in Attrition. It's a chain-lightning gun; how did I miss that? I've gone through a chain-gun phase, a triple-threat phase, a 40mm-Cannon phase, and I will never touch that Rail-Gun again (Gen3 FOR LIFE!) I think the Burn Card design is brilliant. What it does is give you a chance to raise the ante on individual lives. I've never activated a spare-titan or rematch card casually; It's an excellent way to allow for a power-up but maintaining fairness. It can be tedious to re-queue them though and I have gone multiple games having used none because I didn't want to pick any out. They fixed that though, you can select an option where it just re-queues them for you between matches. Give me some arc-grenades, cloak, a titan-drop and a shotgun and I can get through that line and bring you back a flag. I understand that this is a personal hypothesis for you, but it doesn't ring true to my experience at all. Titanfall IS a great game as far as I'm concerned. I have a ton of fun losing and I have a ton of fun winning. That's a huge accomplishment! While the studio's experience was obviously necessary for them to execute on this so well, I don't feel that I like the game because of Respawn's reputation. If that was the case, I would like at least one Blizzard game.

Thanks Noyb, I wouldn't have known how to figure that out. I still don't completely understand why this is the case, but I'm reading this long explanation about references and values and I'll eventually get it. http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/parameters.html I feel like this was a problem I had before, I wonder why it hadn't come up again.

I've been working on this problem for a few days and I can't tell if I'm blind to something or if I just lack a vital piece of foundational information. The way this script is supposed to work is that when it runs, it checks for a string and then populates a bunch of a custom class called "Page" based on the commands in the script. So all of this happens during the loading. Then later another script accesses pages individually in turn. It's basically a visual novel. After days of debugging, I can confidently say that the problem is that the array of pictures which each page is supposed to have is getting overwritten by the array of pictures that the next page is supposed to have. Here is the code, I used comments to highlight the area where the debug.log()s are placed. Here is the console when the "hub1" string is selected. Chapter[0]'s pictures_show GameObject[] should not be overwritten like it is for the first time where I highlighted. What am I missing here?

Oh ok, I misunderstood. I don't know if the Battle Rank is just PC, this green thing flashes on the screen and green lighting energetically informs me that ranking is active then it tells me to get points then it gives me 0-5 dots during play and tells me I did a good job then I can press "y" after the game to see how many attrition points I gained and lost on a bar-graph that includes players from both teams.

I think what you are asking is "Is this worth playing on PC?" Yeah, totally. I doubt it is the best platform to play it on, but it's certainly worth your while if it's your only option. The main problem is population on PC; it can be hard to find a game of anything but Attrition during some times of the day. Good thing that Attrition is the best mode. Last night I was just sniping grunts as much as possible. I kept on saying "Why don't I do this all the time?". The game has drastically different playstyles to go between. It can really feel like a different game based on your weapons. The most infamous example is the grunt-grinder known as the smart-pistol. Racing around the map locking on grunts that just hatched and going pop-pop-pop-pop-pop is really fun. I find myself trying to finish skirmishes with other pilots as quickly as possible so I can go to where the actual points are.

I could have sworn there was a playable build of Tiny Tires by BigJKO, but I can't find it. Also I still need to go through the playtest thread because I am still not seeing all the stuff I remember.