toblix

Also, Russian accent appear much fake!

Myst with guns without guns.

So, they're making a non-combat game about exploration, which sounds just like the kind of game I will buy. Could be a lot of things, and I instantly thought of Myst, which are great non-combat explore-em-ups. Then, I imagine The Witness, which is also something in these veins. Anyway, it'll probably be great, and I should fucking get around to playing Minerva's Den.

I lost in the end, not surprisingly. The game is great, but something's still bugging me... in the city mode, or whatever it's called, when you go in and rescue people, there are two phases; in the first one you place the pick-up zone and all your mercenaries and hit go, at which point the zombies start coming. Now, in this mode, you can still do a lot of stuff, like firing artillery, detonating explosives, moving mercenaries around, etc. During this last phase, though, it always felt like when you hit go, things would go down so fast, most of these things were almost useless. All, of the cities are of pretty similar size and layout, and you can only do so much to control the flow of zombies. I usually get two full or near-full choppers from the initial spot, and then there's usually an insignificant number of stragglers I can try to rescue, but there's no way I have the time to move stuff around or do anything tactical. The weapons are too slow and imprecise to use in any useful way, I think. I could just be sucking.

Just kidding, it's Chris.

Apparently I bought this at some point, and I just played it and holy maloney, this game is slick. I love it when there's so much love and attention put into every single GUI element. Also, my campaign is going to shit, but still.

Okay, so if you see the grin, you will never unsee it. I've played for a good while, and still see it. Actually, I think it's just bad character art. Also, I gave up. Having unlocked the basement floor, there were just too many monsters and too little ammo. The main problem for me was that the player had too many states that were badly communicated, and combined with the scarcity of resources I could never be sure what the right thing to eat or drink was, and whether I was actually doing the right thing or just wasting resources. It felt very much like an old-school RPG, which is fine, but not my particular cup of tea. I also never managed to orientate myself without constantly looking at the map, which was annoying. What the game succeeded at was the oppressive feeling of dread and hopelessness, and that everything was dead, and there was no point. I guess just giving up sort of fit, then. Oh, and if any of you have completed the game, could you give a little rundown of how the game goes on from after unlocking the basement?

I just checked in on the server and holy shit.

What the fuck? Is this a game for a hidden club of superbeings? I'm trying to get past the first guy, but the controls are so fucking intricate and I always end up slitting his throat. Is the whole game based around this running around in the fucking jungle with the camera too close bullshit? I hear this game has received awesome scores and is hailed for being so great. How come?

Also FYI I've totally been an angry nerd in this thread and apologise.

Your forum signature is all the way to the right. If it's always been like that, please ignore me.

Sir your signature is all the way to the right.

Okay, most people have already mentioned what I'm about to, but anyway: Maybe not my strongest comparison ever, but I wasn't really trying to compare Notepad and echoing text into file, but rather to maybe clumsily point out that I wasn't saying Notepad is unusable as a HTML editing tool (let's just pretend I'm also including CSS and javascript whenever I reference HTML), but that choosing to use it can only be based on ignorance of better tools, weird restrictions in the tools available to you, or some sort of masochism (as you admitted, though I think it applies in all contexts, not just professional web development). Notepad does almost nothing more than letting you put text into a file and edit it at random locations. You can also write standards compliant HTML with a hex editor – my point was (supposed to be) that no matter how good you are, and how well you know your standards, and how fast you type, there are better tools that will let you work faster. In reality, you will make mistakes, and Notepad won't tell you, ever. Just to repeat myself once more, knowing how to write HTML without the help of an IDE (or syntax highlighting or WHATEVER) is great, congratulations, but you'll still be an even better developer if you use more advanced tools when you can. I think we're possibly in agreement here. Okay, so either: We're using different Notepads You're using a very old or broken version of Eclipse You don't know what syntax highlighting means I don't know what syntax highlighting means Also, if you look further than pure HTML, and consider what using an IDE gives you (first thing off the top of my head, a project structure that lets you search and replace across multiple files), Eclipse is infinitely better than Notepad. I know it's probably not the best tool for static web development, since I haven't done much of that. Why? You have to explain this ridiculous statement to me; additional features, like autocomplete, are never handy in HTML (,CSS and javascript)? Yes, but only then. Again, I think we agree.

You're wrong, and I'll get back to why.

Sure. If you're adept at vim, it seems to me like a great tool for HTML, CSS, javascript, basically any form of structured text. If you're not after an IDE, it's probably the most powerful tool for that kind of stuff. You're just saying Notepad lets you put text into files. Hey, why not just echo the text directly into the file from the command line? Because there are better ways of doing it. No matter how good you are, you'll still be terribly limited using Notepad. My boss has started working in Sublime. Seems like a great editor.

By plain text editors, I was referring to the likes of Notepad. Not having used Notepad++, my impression is it it's a great, free tool for this kind of stuff. The first thing I'd look for is syntax highlighting; it lets you move around faster, it lets you read HTML and CSS faster, and as a bonus it ususally lets you know if you've made an error. After all, HTML and CSS are games of matching quotation marks, braces and tags. The next thing I'd look for, which I also assume Notepad++ has, is more powerful text editing features, like searching and replacing (across files), context-sensitive editing, etc. Stuff like auto-completion is also be useful, but only if it's strict and correct and up to date. Same with validation. I work mostly in Eclipse, and I'm pretty happy with its editors for this kinds of stuff.

They are having some technical issues releasing in on their own site, so they're handing out Steam keys to those who bought it from them as a workaround. I'm guessing it's only for the first episode, though.

Ideally you would use software that is good at letting you edit HTML and CSS directly, and not generating it based on a WYSIWIYG editor. There are plenty of great free and commercial software for this that helps you write good, correct code, and people have literally killed each other over which one is the very best. People who recommend using a plain text editor are wrong and/or not doing it professionally.

I pirated it. Who pays for a single player game?!

All I know is, Chris has never banned me. Also, Chris' hairstylist tells us ... Sean — who went to cops yesterday and filed a report claiming the 14 kids were living in squalor — tells us she couldn't believe Jake was spending this kind of loot on haircuts when her plumbing didn't work.

Wouldn't that a question better aimed at Chris Jones? I'm guessing it's already in the works, since they're doing another Tex Murphy kickstarter this summer.

Oh, apparently changing shadow quality from high to low fixed it almost completely.

Don't worry, I got the steam code and have installed it. Didn't know you were having technical issues – it soothes my entitled gamer rage. Played the game for a little bit. Seeing Sean and Jake in the credits was cool, the super-serious "the game is tailored by how you play" message screen reminded me of Fargo and Peter Molyneux and Japanese games, and just the intro (in the car), particularly the thing, was maybe the best thing Telltale has or have done. Unfortunately, I'm having some issues with the game. It seems Telltale has really settled on weirdly low-quality sound in the games (the compression, not the production). If it's for size reasons (there's probably lots of dialogue) I really wish they would let me download a mega hacker's edition with higher quality sound from their ftp and I could unrar it into my game folder at my own peril. The sound's not a game breaker, but it really takes me out of it when a character snorting sounds like my computer is about to crash. It's an old complaint, but I'm not done with it. Completely game breaking, however, is the general performance – every time a new asset is streamed in (I'm just guessing here) the game freezes for half a second to a second (or skips ahead, making me miss what the hell just happened). This happens every time a new animation is loaded or the camera switches (I just gave up right at the start of chapter 2, as it turned into a frustrating series of pauses). Anyway, I'm guessing these things (the last thing, anyway) will be sorted out in time, and I'll get to experience it properly. From what I'm hearing, and judging by the little I saw, it's terrific.

Ask him: "What is the secret of Monkey Island?" lol he'll be so angry!

Sometimes, learning what not to do is most important.