Vasari

Doesn't this defeat the point of going in blind, if half the group does the first section ahead of time?

I don't think we're anywhere near ready this weekend. Maybe some of us will be ready next weekend but the one after is probably our best bet.

Sounds good. I spoke to my friend and he's on board.

I'm not sure this is really an "ARG", it seems more like there are buffs that spread between players ingame, and more people receiving the buffs unlocks more entries on the website. Considering the expansion is out on tuesday I doubt there's anything to figure out. The practical ingame effect is that we're getting increased rep and XP gain for having one of the buffs. It's some fun story content (outside of the game, as is tradition) but I don't think there's going to be any great surprises. You can read the entries here, they're pretty interesting: http://owlsector.bungie.net/#en

The sequel to Explode Mode.

I'd love to do a blind raid, but I've arranged to do it with a friend of mine so there'd have to be two spaces.

I can't believe you've been recording podcasts for 280 years. The best thing about the FMV man in Obduction is played by Rand Miller, the founder of Cyan who also played Atrus and Achenar in the Myst games. There was a really good interview with him recently on the AV Club.

This system is already breaking down; I have "face/" in my browser history so when I try to type "facebook" it takes me there instead.

I wonder if the focus on the grappling hook has made traversal less interesting? In TF1 I knew routes around maps to scale buildings in seconds. In TF2 I'm hooking onto ledges to get onto roofs and flailing around when I overshoot and go boosting into the air above where I wanted to land. It feels imprecise and floaty compared to how snappy wallrunning was. I agree that TF2 is definitely missing *something*, but I'm still having trouble figuring out exactly what it is.

I can't stand the slow piano trailers. They all sound like they're ripping off the Halo 3 announcement trailer.

It sounds like Homestead is a one-off and they'll have other kinds of maps, hopefully that means better maps. I did realise that the one thing they didn't address here is the lack of AI soldiers in modes other than Bounty Hunt. I hope they bring them back in hardpoint etc. because they're a pretty important part of Titanfall. Turns out there's also another tech test this weekend so we'll get another shot at it.

Coming Soon? Coming Attractions? I don't know what the episode is called, brand awareness is at an all-time low!

So turns out the rest of the community had the same complaints we had here. And Respawn addressed every one of them!

I don't use bookmarks or any fancy addons. I use a very tenuous workflow where I hope that whatever website I want to go to will autofill when I type in the first two or three letters. This system is bound to fail me someday.

Yeah, I'm not super thrilled with some of the changes. Titans take so long to charge that you're lucky to get more than one per match, and they've removed the AI entirely from the hardpoint and deathmatch modes (at least in this beta). There are little things, like the way batteries work on titans or how abilities recharge that feel overly complicated and not very meaningful. And maybe it's just these maps, but they're very open compared to TF1. The original maps were incredibly well designed and gave titan and pilot players plenty to think about, but this now feels like there are areas that pilots just shouldn't go to at all because they're so big. What bums me out most is that the animation for getting into your titan happens in third-person now, so you don't get the cool first-person view of a big titan hand grabbing you and pulling you inside.

Speaking of being the No Man's Sky Coastguard, there's actually a group in Elite Dangerous called The Fuel Rats who assist players who get stranded with no fuel and can't make it to a space station. That sounds simple enough but they're really serious about it! I won't quote the whole thing because it's quite long but that typical IRC log is incredible.

This was posted in the No Man's Sky thread and might be the reason Chris had performance trouble with the streaming software this weekend:

It'll be interesting to see where everyone has chosen to set up their colony. Here's mine: Highlights so far: Cool Uncle proved just how cool she is by one-shotting an attacking Robot. That's the only time she's done anything cool with guns though, it takes her about 50 shots to kill anything while hunting. Goldblum spent all day outside during a heatwave in a malnourished daze. When she passed out I brought her back to base and installed a cooler to keep the temperature down. But I installed it backwards so it was blowing heat into her room and she nearly died!

You can turn on iron man mode on this, right? So that nobody can savescum? I think this should be a one-run game.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/30/japan-humanoid-alter-robot/

On the topic of death/failure in games, there's a really cool text adventure game called Spider and Web that plays with this in a novel way. You play as a spy infiltrating a secret lab, but the story is presented as your character having been captured and being interrogated as to how he broke in. So when you get something wrong, the interrogator will say "You're lying, that couldn't have happened. Tell me again." That doesn't just happen for failure states, but if you do something like solve a puzzle a certain way, the interrogator will say that the method you used couldn't have been done (Which is actually a neat trick to stop the player using an item that they need to keep for a later puzzle).

I still have to dive into some of the commands. Jake suggested on twitter using the beep command after every wait command, so you get an audible cue when the next step occurs.

Fuuuuuuck, this game is peak Blendo. I'm ten minutes in and there's already so much amazing stuff happening. The storytelling is so good!

Handy tip if you don't want people dragging dead raiders back to your storage and then getting depressed by their rotting corpses: Find a quiet corner of the map, and create a new dumping stockpile zone there that only accepts stranger corpses. Then disallow stranger corpses at the dumping stockpile in your colony, and your colonists will drag any dead invaders away to rot somewhere they can't be seen. If you do this, make sure to remove the Home zone designation around the dumping area, or people will wander out there to clean it. And keep an eye on people who go out there to dispose of bodies to make sure there aren't any dangerous animals nearby. I just started a new game where one of my characters is a noble from a medieval society who grew up to become a teacher. After starting the game, a naked man came running out of the mountains and joined our group. His name is Robbin Dekker, and he's a rogueish castaway who is also the noble lady's ex-lover. It's so perfect that the sweet, optimistic girl's shitty ex has shown up on another one of his wacky adventures and has to live with her now.

I picked this up because of the podcast discussion, and I'm in love. I never got my head around Dwarf Fortress but I could see myself spending alot of time with this. My first game lasted about half an hour. I went in completely blind so I've just been learning everything by ear. I saw a big structure on the water near where I started and realised it was artificial. So I was curious, and I sent someone over to break the wall down and see what was inside. Suddenly my screen flashed red and I get a message that I've awoken some "Ancient Killer Robots". Sure enough, two Ancient Killer Robots step out of the structure and gun my poor doctor down. They then make a beeline for my colony, break down the doors, and kill my other two colonists in their sleep. If you see a big building that doesn't have an obvious entrance, stay the fuck away.