Bjorn

I had friends who recently moved from Kansas City to Houston. They solved the cost issue by renting a U-Haul and packing all their stuff, but hiring day laborers to load and unload the truck at each side of the trip. It also meant they didn't have to bother friends with helping them move. You're still stuck driving the truck, but it does alleviate a lot of the other work at a reasonable cost. You could also use a service like Ridester to find someone else headed to Texas around the time you need to move to share the driving time with you, if it's driving that's the biggest obstacle.

I haven't played it yet (just downloaded it late last night!) but on Three Moves Ahead they said there is a kind of tutorial/training wheels time period in which there is no permadeath, guys are just injured. But past a certain point, permadeath for soldiers kicks in. Now that I've played it, I have no idea what the 3MA people were talking about.

I've been curious what the Soiler tag does. The description just says that it "soils" things. This seems like an appropriate thread to try it in.

I read that as "tasty" and thought you were offering yourself up to be made into a delicious vegan treat.

I'm in awe of that Remo. Like, sitting here mouth agape. I would, quite possible, buy a print of that to hang in my office.

It's so hard to get fresh vegans in the middle of winter.

So while I initially liked this, I was also not blown away. But as I've ruminated on it for a few days, it's steadily growing on me even more. One thing about Schafer's games is that they tend to have a very fucking dark edge to them, which he blunts through artistic design and humor (themes about death, loss, depression, abuse and mental illness have shown up in multiple games). Those are all present here. The darkness in Broken Age is right in your face the entire time, but it didn't really sink in right way for me. Detailed thoughts in the spoiler, which is full of very specific spoilers. I wonder if any of the future documentary stuff will get into how intentional some of those things are, and if there was some commentary intended by Schafer with them.

The saga continues... I mean, we're all shocked, right? Who would have imagined that King may have a history of stealing other people's games and infringing on other companies' trademarks?

There's a link to a Kotaku article below the interview. They got it from a scan of the Dark Souls art book. I'd love to actually see the entire art book now to see what other gems are in it. Sen's Fortress is now one of my favorite areas, particularly because of how intimidating it was the first time through. It's also a good lesson on why you should always have a ranged option. Even if it's just the lowest stat bow available, having something can make a world of difference. Here's another good article on DaS2. Nothing really spoilery, but a nice deep dive on the challenges of making a worthy successor without just copying/pasting everything from the first one and some of the balance and design concerns that were raised from the network beta test. The Collector's Edition is now supposedly sold out. I still haven't found any retailer in the US selling the Black Armor edition for PC, which is seriously bumming me out. I'm still debating on getting a console version just to have the metal case for my game collection.

Well, turns out you're not just going to be able to use any old computer you have lying around. My IBM T61 didn't fare very well. It's a 2Ghz Core Duo with 2GB Ram and AMD X1300 onboard video. Trying to push 60FPS 1080P video crippled it. Got about 25FPS at best, and 15 was more normal. Tinkering with some options resulted in a 720p image with a capped bandwidth stream, and that delivered a stable 30FPS in most games. Unfortunately sound was still poor, it wasn't in sync, stuttered or had some static. I also could only get stereo, not 5.1 sound. But I'm betting that was a limitation of the laptop. Apparently the biggest limiting factor on the client end hardware is how much bandwidth the incoming stream is using, older hardware just isn't going to be able to decode it fast enough. The image still looked incredible at 1080p though. I'm going to borrow an HP Pavililion 15 with an AMD A6 APU in it this weekend and see how that fares. I'm hoping the APU and sound coming out over an HDMI will result in a much better experience.

I'm with Merus' take on this one. On Mass Effect, at this point, you could probably write a book on the good and bad of how the ME series was handled. If anything, I would say that BW was way to insular in their development of the final chapter. A wider range of perspectives would have helped it. The interesting thing there is that the team was fairly open and communicative with the community on the co-op mode, and it just kept getting better, with a few missteps. Future BW games are likely going to have better combat, and that's going to be thanks in part to the passionate community that developed around ME3's multiplayer, providing constant feedback on every conceivable element of it.

It's also part of this week's new Humble Bundle.

That's a nice story. I'm trying to learn to tone down my responses on social media, and instead of delivering my opinion, just asking questions of people who say things I disagree with.

I've historically liked John Walker's editorials over at RPS. I don't always agree with him, but I like that he's banged the drum on feminism and certain business practices in the industry. But his most recent one is just awful. Here he builds an argument for why open development is terrible. Because one game, that happened to be an MMO, was terrible. That's it. One example in a genre that almost no one gets right, from a dev that had never made an MMO before. And presents an argument that assumes the industry was apparently so fabulous at innovation in the pre-open development universe. There's a level of disconnect from reality in this piece that is staggering. Given the choice between a community influencing the development of a game, and a traditional publisher influencing the development of a game, I know which sounds better to me.

Both desktops connected to a gigabit wired network, sitting in the same room (grand total of 40-50 feet of cable between them because it runs in wall). An early FAQ from Valve had recommended using a wired connection for now. Bandwidth is fine over wireless, but it doesn't necessarily maintain a steady connection. When I test on the laptop tonight, I will likely stick to wired as well, as it only has a G card in it. Wish I had a laptop with an HDMI port on it. Not sure if I can pass anything better than basic stereo out of my laptop. Edited to add: I'm really hoping this works well. My current setup is that my wife and I both have desktops in our home office, which we work out of. Both machines are decent gaming rigs. For single player and local coop games, we prefer to be in our living room though, so we actually move her machine to the living room to play in there. It's not terrible, only takes a couple of minutes to unplug and replug everything. But it would be so much better if I can just leave the laptop in the living room and turn it on rather than physically moving anything. Edited edit to add: Alienware clarified the upgrading of their console Steambox. It's possible, but the internal space and build design will make upgrades much more limited. That makes more sense.

So I couldn't resist going ahead and trying it between my two desktops, even though I should be working. First impressions: It's really neat! I can manage the game libraries of both machines once I'm logged in on both (installing games to whichever I prefer). My install list shows every game installed on both machines. For games installed on both, you can play from the machine you're on, or stream. For games not installed on both, it defaults to streaming. There's an overlay that you can activate that shows all the geeky stats about how the stream is performing. I tried Spelunky, Don't Starve and Bioshock Infinite. Overall latency was running around 100ms, though input latency was consistently below 5ms. The image quality was perfect, couldn't tell that it wasn't running locally. But, the video felt very slightly choppy to me in Spelunky and Bioshock. It wasn't smooth like butter. Don't Starve felt very smooth. But I also didn't do anything to optimize, just fired it up and ran. Tonight I'll run it out to my living room and see how it performs on my aging business class laptop (no fancy graphics card, outputting 1080p video is its limit).

Me too! I originally had some plans tonight, but I think I'll stay home and geek out to see how this works, otherwise it will be probably be Sunday before I can mess around with it. Hmm, 90MB update to the client once I opted in.

None of the gold/gems in the rock match up either. In reading about the seedlunky mod, the author learned that in regular Spelunky runs, a whole bunch of stuff is randomized on the fly. Boxes generate when you break them, Alters pick the item when the first tier is reached and each level is generated as you pass through the door. The Daily Challenge handles item and level generation in a different manner. It looks like the stuff in rocks was missed though.

Unless they are using all integrated components, I can't imagine how at least something like the ram couldn't be upgraded. Unless they are just making it a pain in the ass by design.

Huh, I had never seen that, had to go searching. It's a charm. Only decorative, but pretty neat looking.

I've definitely considered it worth reading so far, the world building in it is excellent, and I'm enjoying the detective, noir elements so far. It's the first work by Mieville I've read, so I don't have a frame of reference for whether or not this is typical of his writing style. I know that he tends to be a love or hate kind of writer for a lot of people. His writing at times feels slightly alien to me. It's English, I understand it, but there is something disconcertingly "off" about it. That's not a criticism or complaint, I'm rather enjoying the sensation. Just can't think of anything else that has given me that impression.

Nice, congrats!

After thinking about it, I don't think it's going to affect much. If you want recognition for a great run, the whole thing has to be recorded. Having the video, the community will know if someone is claiming to have pulled off a world record on a random map. If they are just being too prescient (making unoptimal decisions early because they know there are better options later), that will be obvious. If someone seems to know where the exit is for every level without a compass. I think the upside to it is much better than the downsides.

I've played around with a bit now. I was initially skeptical, but I do think it's a neat tool with a variety of legitimate uses. I'll still play most of my games on either the Daily Challenge (which this is designed not to be able to touch) or normally seeded games. It's fun to type in your own name and know that you're playing a level that was generated based on you.