Vasari

Wow, this game was great! I love the animation, the presentation in general is super good. The intro music had me grinning.

I'm about to graduate from a game design course, so I have tons of these books kicking about. I'm sure I'll think of more later but here are some good ones I have now: Characteristics of Games Really in-depth explanations of mechanical concepts and challenges. Alot of the concepts it talks about are agnostic and could apply to any kind of game, but it uses specific examples from genres as well. Homo Ludens Huizinga is the father of alot of current research on the concept of Play. It's from the 50s but it's a really great read about a fundamental concept behind games. Man, Play and Games Another one about play, this was huge for my dissertation. Caillois qualifies four categories of play and a continuum of play structure that's really fascinating. This book can also be used to beat people who call things "not games". Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish Probably more useful for actually developing games, this walks you through the process of creating a game yourself and all the things you need to consider.

You should be able to call up your local council and ask them if you're registered. If you're not registered then you're out of luck, you've missed the deadline. But for next time, it's a really easy process, it only takes a few minutes. https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

Today I handed in the first draft of my dissertation. I'm not done with university until my final hand-ins next week and I have plenty more to do before then, but fuck me. It feels like I'm actually going to make it. I haven't had the best time here and I'm repeating my final year, but I can fucking see the finish line! A week from now I'll be finished and then I can do whatever I want.

I was a bit gutted about not getting a new raid, but I'm definitely looking forward to HoW. Diversifying the endgame content is a smart move. By the way, I don't know how many people are still playing Destiny, but in the next few weeks it'd be fun to organise a Thumbs raid night. If anyone's interested then let me know and we can work something out.

I'm an evil cybernat so I'm voting SNP.

No discussion of magical realism is complete without 100 Years of Solitude. I read it last year and it's absolutely one of my favourite books ever. It's a standout piece of fiction by any measure, but it's also a perfect example of why magical realism is so enjoyable. I love it for alot of the reasons I love Kentucky Route Zero (Which if you haven't played you absolutely should).

It's not entirely relevant to the spider monsters, but the creepiest robot I've seen is the talking piano. It's a computer that synthesises speech, but instead of synthesising its own audio it uses a piano to output sound. Sound is sound, so all it needs to do is press the right combination of keys to make the correct sounds for the speech. Spoilers, it's HORRIFYING.

I really liked the first Killing Floor, I didn't realise this was coming to early access. I'll definitely try it out once I have the time.

I was going to make a Super Briefly game! I've had the idea rattling around in my head for a while now, but I'm not done with university until next month. I might pick it up once I have some more free time. I'm surprised nobody else has made one yet.

I went with Ashley in the first game, but I doubt I'd make that choice now. In 2, I went with Miranda. I almost went with Jack just because you can sleep with someone in Mass Effect by just choosing the top right dialogue option over and over again. In 3 I was pretty annoyed about the whole game and left Ashley. In hindsight, she'd almost died and was on a hospital bed when I dumped her so I wish the game had reflected that by making everyone else on the Normandy treat me like a piece of shit. Instead everyone was cool with it and James shagged her and told me all about it while he was making food in the mess hall. Again, I probably should've been able to flip out and punch him at that part, but the romances only go one way or the other.

Yup, all you can get from USB on a PS3 is the multiplayer chat. The audio can come from either the hdmi, optical or AV cables. You can get a separator but it's pretty expensive considering I'm only using it for a few days. I'm doing the same with my PS4, using a headset from the controller. It really drains the battery, though.

I've been trying to hook up a PS3 to output audio to headphones. Turns out it's not possible to put audio through USB on a PS3, but that's not the point. What bothered me is that when googling for solutions I was looking through a bunch of forum posts from 2007 and it reminded me just how heated the "console wars" were for that generation. PS3 fans were incredibly defensive about their chosen console. Whenever anyone asked a question about something the PS3 can't do, the reply was always incredibly hostile. My favourite was this one: There were dozens of posts just like that. "Why would you want to do something the PS3 can't do? It's a perfect machine, and you're flawed for trying to exceed it!" It's making me think about how I was probably guilty of being an Xbox 360 fanboy back then. It's such a weird time to think about. I was going to say that I'm glad people are mostly over that kind of dumb factionalism, but I suppose the same arguments happen today, just with the Xbox One as the underdog. I still recall a facebook post from a friend of mine who loves Microsoft that actually used the words "I was ready for the always online experience of the future".

Oh man, this is giving me Xybots flashbacks.

This looks really cool!

Vinny posted a Video Thing. A VIDEO THING. http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/video-thing-world-of-subways-4-intro/2300-10106/

Hello, Destiny DLC!

I just started watching Steven Universe on a recommendation from a friend. I liked Adventure Time when it was about goofy people having adventures, and for me the moment it got boring was when it tried to have a big mysterious backstory where all the characters were secretly lesbians. I guess Steven Universe just jumps directly to that point because every other episode has some subtle reference to a big convoluted back story and I just find it kind of tedious because other than that it's a fun show. Or maybe I'm just a crotchety old man yelling about cartoons that aren't made for me, but it seems like loads of people my age really like this stuff and I can't understand it. I guess what I'm really saying is stop trying to make me care about Lore, his TNG episodes were the worst.

Here's a discussion between Jeff Gerstmann and an actual Gamergater. It's amazing just how ridiculous his arguments seem when they leave the echo chamber and come out into the real world.

Here's a discussion between Jeff and an actual Gamergater. It's amazing just how ridiculous his arguments seem when they leave the echo chamber and come out into the real world.

It all comes back to Chris Metzen.

Mass Effect actually does have a really good backstory, and the codex has alot of cool stuff in it. They go into detail about how space battles work with FTL weapons, they explain how space travel works (ships at FTL turn around and face backwards halfway through the journey so they can slow down in time to stop at their destination). I especially liked how Zen Buddhism became popular with Turians. So much science fiction gets into what we learn by meeting other species, its fun to think about what they'd learn from us.

"Lore" is what happens when writers take all the notes and world building they did to help write their story, and then actually make it the story. Tolkien is notorious for having written a massive backstory for Middle-Earth, but it exists with the purpose of building a meaningful setting for the real story to take place in. When the story gets way too eager to tell you its history, that's when it becomes "Lore".

Cara is from Aberdeen, so it's probably not an accent you hear much unless you're from Scotland.

What keeps me going through these episodes is imagining the writer who really loves James. The writer who felt the character was smothered by the setting of Twin Peaks and that he needed to go on the road to really flourish. And everybody else on the staff is so checked out by this point that they just let him write his dumb James stories. So he sits and he writes about an honest kid on the road just looking for his place in the world, with nothing to his name but his bike and a past he can't seem to leave behind.