clyde

@Apple Cider Your podcast sound-quality seems fine to me. Also I really enjoyed the tactical combat on hard in Dragon Age: Orgins and Dragon Age 2. It was really fun to position my party and time their efforts to optimize their effectiveness. The indoor combat was especially fun because I enjoyed sending my rogue ahead to lay traps and then ambushing them. In retrospect, I can understand why others would feel that it was tedious, but for me it was the first game where I could control an entire party (I don't play many rpgs) and I could go between turn-based and real-time with ease. The reason I stopped playing Dragon Age: Inquisition was because the tactical combat was broken on the 360.

After reading all the GTA sex-worker talk in the feminism thread I'm stuck wondering: It is kinda strange that I can't buy hallucinagens in GTA 5 and then have them available for consumption in my inventory. Maybe I didn't get far enough in the game. Gosh, the more I think about this the more confused I am. I would think that buying and ingesting hallucinagens in a place of the player's choosing would be a high (get it?) priority in the GTA games.

I'm about 150 turns into my first game and I just realized that I don't know how to win. I feel that I've done a pretty good job of getting my population up; I am now starting to question whether or not further expansions of borroughs in my capital city are still beneficial. I've settled five regions if varying interest. My northern tip is an ice-land that has a hard time growing food. One of the most fun decisions I've made was hiring a Necrophage mercenary to govern my ice-land city of forest-people beause he/she/it could teach them to use rotting substances to fertilize the farms and get a higher yield. Anyway, no one wants to be my friend and now that I've established my civilization, I'm not sure where to focus my productivity. I need to look up whether or not there is a science-victory because I have a ton of science exploitation available to me. I hope I can figure out how to open up the diplomacy part of this game and that there is something interesting there. After playing some Poker Night at the Inventory I want a similar feel added to the Civilization V diplomacy-system. Also some romance would be nice. Maybe it's time to try Crusader Kings 2 again. Edit: After looking up the victory-conditions, I think I'll try for the quest one because I'm interested in the lore.

For the week of January 5th, 2015 we will be playing: Doug.zip 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.

I'm having trouble understanding some aspects of the combat-system. -I select the option for when I won't have control over my units, but I don't understand when that will happen. -After the initial set-up, do I have the capability to tell my units where to move? If they move to a tile adjacent to an enemy, will they attack? Thus far I've just been selecting "Hold Your Position" and choosing targets. I'm not sure when a unit will have to move in order to attack.

So when I go back and play Nasty, I find myself enjoying the format and the decisions that were made within it. Each numbered option, played in numeric order, zooms out a little bit to extrapolate upon the fact that the last exists in a larger world. The game itself is cute and interesting (for reasons that the Noted Scholar actually addresses in many cases once they manage to get past the absurd citations and warrants); the author's note is ridiculous, but also a fantasy which I can get into; the Noted Scholar steals the show with their willingness to dive deep as a clumsy caricature with some genuine hints of insight; the Synopsis for Students confirms that this is kind of really happening (or just says "Yes, you get the joke."); then the study-questions resolve this excercise in absurdity with a short summary that exemplifies the through-line of Nasty's humor. The Noted Scholar is such a great character. I love to find old art-history books and read the introductions for similar reasons that I enjoy the Noted Scholar. I should find some of them, but it's really going to be hard. I feel like one of them was written by someone named "Orzafont" or something like that and they were so cute with the way they made everything feel so grand when summarizing the the significance of the entiriety of western Art's history in 15 pages or so. I don't remember how the rest of the book was. One example of this tone that I do remember (though it is not on the same scale of zeal) Is Alfred G. Martin's Hand-Taming Wild-Birds at the Feeder. Sometimes the subject matter is just a jumping off point for a skilled writer to tell you what they think about painting deer in the fog. There was another book I came across once that was a moth-bestiary that had poetry between entries and these really entertaining stories about sugaring for moths* and what those experiences meant to them. So as an appreciator of that tendency in specialists, I really enjoyed reading a parody of those naturalists/critics who start from an observation relevant to the advertised subject-matter before trailing off into anidotes to nihilism. *Holy shit, I found an excerpt from The Moth Book online and it explempifies what i'm refering to. It is so good.

I thought some of you might appreciate this list Paul Hack made. http://playboard.me/android/channels/54698ca2eb9e19560c0043fb

The next game in the collection is doug.zip available here and here. I'll post the announcement on Monday. As far as another game-club goes, I would enjoy moderating it (especially if no one else wants to or needs to take a break). We seem like a polite enough bunch that we could probably come to agreements on whose turn it is to pick the game for the next week. I think that picking the games way ahead of time would encourage drop-off (but what would I know about preventing drop-off looking at this thread). If no one suggests a game, I have no problem coming up with one, I usually post atleast one game a week in the Share Short games that you enjoy and require no fee thread anyway. I just don't want to impose my own taste on others too much because I tend to do that by getting excited about things I like. What expectations would y'all have about the games we post? I'll go ahead and mention that I'm not likely to pay for the weekly selections and I am unlikely to post if the game takes more than an hour to play.

I've been looking through all my junk and found a set of drum-microphones (two of which pick us up pretty well) and I'm in the process of cleaning the pots of my 4-track so we can use it as a mixer. Pro-tip: audio-splitters with two females and one male connection that are designed for outputting through the females do not work as a mixer. I didn't really understand the electrical diagram that explains this, but it looked like the person who drew it did.

Does anyone have recommendations on what equipment to get to start a podcast where two hosts are local and they like headsets because they are particularly gesticular? We want to keep it under $100 and we are using Audacity.

Electroplankton is a huge inspiration for me, but I don't know anything about Toshi Iwai. By the way, I got a hard-copy of The Nature of Code for Christmas and it is exactly what I need for a better technical understanding right now. I'm going to try to concentrate on my year's goal of creating character-driven romances, but I'm still excited to have this book to read at my job. It was a great recommendation for me.

I thought I had seen an Endless Legend thread, but now it seems that I was making that up.

Does itch.io allow people to make browser-only games pay-what-you-want?

Assuming that you will also be making computer-games, itch.io and Gamejolt are free. Itch.io has payment options (but I get the impression that the EU just fucked up somehow) while Gamejolt has ad-revenue. Itch.io allows you to follow developers in a feed while Gamejolt allows you to follow games individually and has support for public comments. I put my games on both.

At first I thought that the Noted Nothing Much Scholar was a strawman constructed from speculation about Nasty's audience, but I think this is more of a fun role-play than anything else. The absurd expertise with which the Noted Scholar attempts to establish themselves, gives us all an opportunity to laugh at them. I'm sorry,that the following sentence is so long, I couldn't figure out a good way to break it up: The more you examine the particular gallimaufry of literary allusions the Noted Scholar casually throws out to excuse their incompetence when dealing with the sublimity of the game whose most notable scene is showing us a mouse player-character that demonstrates that their t-shirt says "I love to eat pussy" on the front then turning around to reveal "...and I fuck like a dog" on its back, the more astounding and hilarious their apology becomes in this context. After reading Wikipedia's summary of Cú Chulainn's story in the Ulster Cycle and then reading Yeats' Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea, I still had no idea what the Noted Scholar was comparing their role as critic of the game to until I got lucky enough to find an interpretation that made sense somewhere on Google Books after finding a few that did not make sense. But the Noted Scholar can also identify with the lay player, shown by the next casual allusion to Wiley Coyote, a classic Looney Tunes character whose sisphyean existence we are likely to be more familiar with. Is the Ulster Cycle and Yeats' poem widely known in Ireland? If so then I guess my experience isn't quite as relevant on this point; maybe it's more a demonstration of the Noted Scholar's breadth of cultural pools from which to draw these allusions. I saw the author's note as being a part of a polite fantasy where we are all retiring to our smoking rooms to enjoy the subtle aromas of the game. Not so much a fantasy of controlling how it is perceived as much as a fantasy that the living artist is comfortable in their role being humble and simultaneously of significant cultural importance (and communicating that to the patrons and institutions they rely on). I see the purpose of Nasty's components mostly as a setting for the Noted Scholar's character to perform. The parody of academia and high-culture that is presented builds up expectations of formality that allow for punchlines such as "This critical overview contains spoilers". I don't think it is a warning as much as a humorous exploration of widely accepted stereotypes about in-depth art criticism and interpretation. Whether or not you think that your highschool experience with The Yellow Wallpaper demonstrated the potential expression of symbolism or the science of bullshitting, we are still likely to have a caricature of the academic who states that something means Everything and then comes around to contradicting themselves with just as much passion with their argument that it means Nothing-At-All. I think Nasty reveals that thecatamites shares your enjoyment of literary-criticism because it would not be possible for them to write this parody without the type of exposure to it that only comes from a willing interest. A deep understanding of what is being made fun of is apparent in the craftsmanship of the barbs. Speaking of barbs, have y'all ever heard of Gáe Bulg? I think this is really interesting for a lot of reasons. I think about fame, influence, and significance to the broader culture and/or multitudes a lot; largely I consider how it is a more accessible measurement of social success and how the math doesn't allow for us all to achieve it on those grand scales with which we can easily identify it. The grand versus local scale aspect is additionally fascinating when you consider how the larger scale of desemination necessitates the disempowering of the author's further involvement with the work. Indeed. Games that advertise +30 hours of required play-time often end up hiding any most of their potential messages with their inherent rhetorics about tedium, mastery, and commitment. Short games offer us an alternative where we can expect more people to have the time to read the source material and where the essentials are more apparent.

@Maxtion It's exciting that you are joining us! @gamesthatexist You are making so very interesting points that I will eventually be responding to. @Deadpan There are 50 games in this particular collection and I'm posting one every monday for a week's worth of discussion. So it comes out to about a year of discussion. We are currently about 25 games into the collection so we should finish around July(?) That said, there is really no need to catch up, all of these games are very modular. We just happen to be talking a lot about the general sensibilities that we are noticing throughout the collection because we are noticing it. It would be nice to have you come in now because you would have a fresh perspective on the current selection(s). Also, I am very interested in starting/participating in another game-club where we discuss a short, free hobbyist game every week. I'm not sure how games should be chosen. I would think that the next week's game would be suggested and chosen by people who posted about the game discussed the week prior. That way it would avoid a long queue of upcoming games that people are waiting to discuss and keep the selections current and relevant to the people still posting. If anyone is also interested in this, please tell me so and add concerns/suggestions.

My goal for 2015 is to experiment with character- driven episodic narratives with an emphasis on romance. I'll still allow myself to digress into programming odd mechanics, fractals, and procedural textures; but I feel the need to use the new year as a reason to refocus on what I want to accomplish. I enjoy digressing into increasing my technical knowledge and ability, but at the end of the year I would rather have written a good romance game with memorable characters than have made a procedural world with glitch-aesthetic.

I got: Poker at the Inventory 1 & 2 Endless Legend Pinball Arcade Season 1 & 2 and FaeVerse Alchemy (early access) off of an itch.io sale that I'm pretty sure was encouraged by the Steam one.

I'm getting a lot out of considering what my game-making goal will be for 2015. I've been paring it down and refining it for a few days. Tommorow my wife and I are going to take a walk and discuss our goals for further refinement. I perform better with goals that have a good balance between specificity and flexibility. It's exceedingly dorky how excited I am about stating a clearly defined goal of something I really want to accomplish in 2015.

The first two seasons of Pinball Arcade are $15 each on Steam right now. I went ahead and got both of them. I resisted for a long time because of having bought as many as I could on Xbox 360, waiting for 3d support on PS3 (and being disappointed with those results) and then realizing that I'll probably have to buy them again for Oculus Rift when it comes out. Plus, I've bought a few packs so I'm effectively buying those twice. I've been playing demos for a long time. Anyway I got through all that and it sure is nice to play a full game of Centaur. I think I might stick to that table for a while, learn everything about it and then record a a goofy tutorial video.

This is by the same person. It may be even more of what you are looking for. 100 Free Assets When I first played it, I was like "It's so simple, why didn't I think of making games where you just fall past 3d-models arranged in space?" I still want to to try making one or two, but I just haven't. After playing Merry Coristmas, Sergio I think I'll go for the hand-drawn patterns/paper aesthetic in my attempt to clone one of Rylie James Thomas's games. I want to see what I could do with the template. The falls feel like these slow-motion, temporal vantages that I want to take in fully. It's much different than standing still in a game to appreciate the landscape; it's kinda similar to appreciating a computer-game's sun-set though because you don't control how long it lasts.

How would this differ from 80 Days? Do you mean mechanically this, or specifically a The CannonBall Run themed game?also: If the 80 Days vignettes were selectable, how would you want to select them? By clicking on a city? Maybe a mixture where you have to use resources to get to certain stories (I think this may be exactly the solution I'm looking for)? Or having short-story titles that remind you of the main crux that you can click on?

Do y'all ever go back and play completed levels when they are selectable from a menu? It seems like the Angry Birds 3-star system encourages levels to be full consumed and then forgotten. How would you imagine a character-driven narrative game that had selectable menus and designations of completion while still encouraging players to go back and play through their favorite short-stories again? Like with the Tell Tale episodic games, I never say to myself "Oh I'm going to go back and play chapter two again!" Is there a way to organize or present or write short, narrative-centric vignettes that encourage revists? Btw: I will likely be stealing the ideas that y'all provide and using them as my own. Edit: I think this might be the motivation behind unlockable abilities and unlockable characters/classes.

Merry Coristmas, Sergio http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/9040

I'm going with Problem Machine on this one.