UltimateHurl

Oh wow, I hadn't seen this topic. Would love to contribute, turns out I haven't drawn as many video game characters as I thought, so here's an old painting I call "Sunday Morning on World 1-1":

Gunpoint creator Tom Francis is hosting a daily Spelunky club thing, which shares videos of Daily Challenge playthroughs: http://www.pentadact.com/2013-08-11-spelunky-explorers-club/ I really want to record a playthrough, but I know mine would be terrible

I hear it'll be 12 noon GMT every week when the episodes are put on Netflix UK. Heard people getting upset when they didn't see it on there, can understand, can't wait to see the latest!

I've hit myself wit ha few arrows that way

Oh I wouldn't argue against randomness, I enjoy roguelikes too much, but unmanaged randomness can lead to difficulty spikes. neither bats nor spikes inherently add more randomness, but through their placement can make difficult to traverse environments even more difficult to traverse, but there isn't a sense that that is in any way accounted for within the game (i.e. it doesn't feel like "don't put a bat over a pit of 3 spikes, because it would get in the way of the only survivable trajectory"). Of course one way to answer it is increased skill, or exploiting mechanics like throwing ropes to kill bats (had no idea that worked, not very discoverable), but it seems like an interesting design challenge to make randomness that respects a curve beyond "these enemies and obstacles are just harder, using them as your building blocks", and more toward "These level designs and subsections are harder". Spelunky would, theoretically, be an ideal platform to try this with too, as all the data being collected from the daily challenges could be applied to improve the generation algorithm.

Haha, I had no bombs, so I was trapped til the ghost got me. Some of the mechanics can surprise you in awkward ways, like the time I died cos I threw a rock at a wall and it hit me in the face

Well I was talking more generally, the systems can clash in awkward ways, throwing the difficulty curve of the critical path off wildly, which is annoying, especially when platforming and combat combine, i.e. the bat frequently approaches at an angle that avoids the hitbox of your whip, but can also be awkwardly placed relative to spikes, such that navigation becomes much harder. There's no greed element to it, it's just a pitfall (no pun intended) of inherently less managed system. I've been in situations where the critical path has suddenly required bombs based on my actions (i.e. just today I grabbed a statue and the rolling boulder wrecked the level, leaving me trapped above the exit without any way ahead), which was something I couldn't have foreseen, but is a different thing. JKO you should look into Wineskin: http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?comments_parentId=3711 I had some success using it to play Dota

Well it's only a small point, but designed games can often have slightly obnoxiously hand-holding design, the latest Tomb Raider popped up a notification that a secret cave was near my current position enough that I was wondering why they called them 'secret', but rogueikes can sometimes swing the other way, where I'm in world 1-1 and _have_ to do pixel-perfect jumps over spikes which will instantly kill me despite my full health because the randomly generated level doesn't respect that there are good reasons I may be here with no ropes/bombs or whatever. It's actually something that only annoys me at the beginning, as the further I get into a game the more I expect the challenge to randomly increase. I just hate finishing the first level of Spelunky with 1 heart because the random generator made it tougher than usual.

I just got Spelunky on Steam, and so far I'm really liking it, though at times it can be frustrating. I like roguelikes, but they frequently seem to be excessively unmanaged responses to over-managed and over-designed similar non-roguelikes. Or maybe that's just me getting mad because I fell on randomly generated spikes again

I used to do some scanning, but mainly work digitally now, because I can see all the imperfections when I scan. From memory 300dpi is probably optimal, should leave you with a file about a 10th the size. You can also take the scanned image into photoshop after scanning and tweak the levels to make the line-art look cleaner.

Hmmm, I respect King Vanaman quite a bit, but I'm worried about his concept of acceptable age differences in marriage. The International has been incredible, and has made me miss Dota Today quite a bit. Haven't been able to find an Irish Pubstomp nearby though

I really love Welcome to Night Vale! I've also been listening to the new podcast by the UK PC Gamer staff (and former staff, including Gunpoint creator Tom Francis) called Crate and Crowbar, it's pretty great.

Actually a friend who missed Planetary Annihilation's kickstarter dug into their early access page for info, and it's worth pointing out (they don't point it out well) that not only is the 90 dollars the same as the kickstarter pledge price, but you get all the rewards of the pledge at that price, i.e. exclusive commanders and other bits and pieces. With that info it's certainly a different story, especially since seeing unfinished games (and paying for them) is a relatively new phenomenon in a place like Steam.

I think every week should have a variable amount of time between "And this!" and the "Is Dota Today", because this week felt longer, and I totally expected him to say "And this!.... Is your life!".

If there's one thing I've learned with Dota 2 its that they really are great at patching/updating their games, but non-game things, such as the Steam client itself, don't seem to move as quickly (how long ago was the simple "remember my age!" feature request first brought up?). Trading cards sit somewhere between the two. Hopefully they can make something more worthwhile out of them, I just don't expect it to happen quickly.

I think expecting Valve to do anything in less than glacial time is probably bad. "Valve time" is a phrase for a reason (but I trust it's usually because they want revisions to be great). The trading card ...meta-game (?) isn't a game, so I wouldn't imagine it's a high priority.

Great episode, I kind of like that there isn't an assumed in-depth knowledge, because that's what can make Dota discussion so dense, in that Dota academics (if I can call them that) will just throw out things like "armlet toggle" or other more obtuse tricks without any explanation, while ye are actually taking the time to explain things people might not understand, which I can appreciate a lot It's weird that the prison comparison was drawn so quickly in the low priority talk, I have three abandons, two of which were because I have a crappy internet connection and couldn't get back in 5 minutes (that crappy). I wonder if the view of the low priority queue as a prison forces all these unfortunate abandoners to be ultra-nice when really they are just mild-mannered innocents who were wrongfully imprisoned. In this way being ultra-nice could be like beating up the tough guy on the first day of actual prison.

Really love the GK3 feel to that image, the car is more geometrically detailed than the background, but the background texture is more interesting, so it feels like it balances well In my spare time I do digital painting and drawing. I'm not really sure what I want to do with it, but I post the results on my tumblr: http://ultimatehurl.tumblr.com and I'm having fun doing it. This is my current progress on my latest pic:

E3 this year was strangely cold, quite happy that Thumbs didn't get caught up in the sort of hype that can be the bread and butter of some discussions. Interesting to see that, under cover of being 'not as bad as Microsoft', Sony are implementing charging for multiplayer, which was a downside of Xbox Live this generation. If I was coming back to console gaming (I am not) I'd see that as a minor disadvantage they will see no bad press for because of Microsoft ... being a company who want to put a microphone in my living room and who have allegedly being sharing data with a secret data-mining program. Still reeling from the announcement of the WiiFit avatar as a playable Smash Bros character. I love this. Edit: and Peach (Toadstool to me) fighting side-by-side Mario is really cool. I was interested to hear she had gotten her own game, but never really explored, glad she is incorporated more fully as a character in the main Mario line.

I've been kind of hesitant to try it since Dota is my LoMa of choice, and I know how brutal PvP LoMas can be on beginners, but I think I'll have to give it a go, just to see how the 2D aspect affects things.

A bookseller friend of mine was telling me that A Storm of Swords is sold as two books in Europe because we use thicker paper, but I thought it was a useful look at the division between Game of Thrones' seasons. A Dance with Dragons is split up into two as well, but that already has its own timeline issues. All in all a lot of interesting room for adaptation! Really like what they are doing. Sherlock is a lot of fun, have been meaning to see if Elementary is worthwhile, has anyone seen it?

The podcast continues to be great, really enjoyed Brad's perspective! Look forward to seeing what ye do with it, also more than a little jealous ye will be visiting The International, will there be a special podcast? I've a friend who, before he starts playing, copies a string of Cyrillic so, if any Russians start angrily shouting or typing at him he can paste it into chat. He's told me it means "and the same to your mother, sir" or something similar