Erkki

Haha, that is amazing.

Learning some functional programming has helped my OO Java coding habits a lot, along with a series of two or three videos about dependency injection and testability. I'll try to find the links. After combining that learning, I often feel like I'm writing the only sensible code*, there's nothing to add or remove. * given the constraints I have. [edit] Here is one of the talks, by Miško Hevery http://misko.hevery.com/2008/11/11/clean-code-talks-dependency-injection/ I think there were some more directly following this (should be on the same site), but I'm a bit lazy ATM.

I am generally not a fan of shooters and didn't really like TF2, but this seems like something I might play. The characters and their skills are diverse, which I like. But if the game modes will be the same as usual, I'm not sure if it'll hold my interest. [edit] hmm after watching that video of the match I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be playing this. Too similar to TF2

I've been feeling somewhat elated for the past few days, as if something great is about to happen. I was a bit ill for over a week and besides playing video games, it gave me a chance to get out of the routine. Even when I had a brief vacation this summer, I was still going to all my regular workouts (yoga, dancing, football), so still following part of my weekly schedule, but now I was totally just at home and not having any obligations. It was great and helped me realize just how reliant on routine I had become. My job has necessarily become more routine as we become bigger and more and more professional about developing our products, but I gotta find any chance I can to get out of that and do something unexpected. Thankfully I'm senior enough that I can get away with that pretty often. Last month also marked 4 years at my current job, which is the longest I've held any. I really like it, but at the same time I'm realizing that I wouldn't be very sad if I had to find a new one soon. I still want to work there for a year or two at least, but I kind of get bored of seeing the same people over and over again every day (is that a negative or neutral quality?). Something else pretty cool also happened this weekend, but I'm still not comfortable about discussing very personal stuff on the internet, maybe due to being from such a small country where "everyone knows everyone". Anyway, it left me feeling kind of hopeful about things, and even though I'm already 35, I feel as if I was still in my early twenties at the same time. I just have a feeling like anything could happen and whatever it is, it would be awesome.

Glad you're still with us, Cine.

Sorry to be that guy but could the planning for setting up a time for the game go into it's own thread?

With GTA V still not out on PC, I am getting an urge to play one of the GTA clones instead. I mostly ignored all of them so far. And I don't mean clone as derogatory, that's the best name I know for the genre. I've played all GTA games, but I'm not enough of a fan of the genre itself to having played the others. There has to be some other aspect that makes the game interesting beyond having implemented the driving/combat mechanics well enough. Mafia was great, although I guess it's not really in the genre, as the open world was more for creating the setting than an integral part of the game. I played a bit of True Crime, but that was rather boring. I've seen trailers for Saints Row games, but it seems like the kind of humor that I don't really care for. I just noticed Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition on Steam (what actually triggered this post) and that might be interesting, but it seems kind of ultra-violent, which I'm also not a fan of, but can tolerate if the game otherwise seems compelling. Can Just Cause be considered in the same genre? I played the demo, but it seemed like a rather confusing mess to me, despite having fun mechanics. My favorite in the genre (if horses are allowed) so far is probably Rockstar's own Red Dead Redemption.

I finished the main story, and did the Zodiac Tournament and most of the side content. I'm still missing some triad points (why did they do it like this that it's really hard to get triad points?) and have only managed to complete one derby -- those are fucking impossible, maybe because my controller driver doesn't allow adjusting speed and aiming/firing at the same time. I've tried to do them while parked as well, but that only worked for one so far. So pretty close to 100% I think, but I haven't started the DLC that is started separately from the main menu. Anyway, this game is really really good. It has some annoying bits, but overall it is probably the best game in this genre I have played so far (I'm excluding Red Dead as I've come to think the GTA clone genre really needs to be about cities mostly). It's giving me a Vice City vibe for some reason -- not exactly the same style, but besides the size being similar, the city is laid out in such a way that you will almost certainly learn it and recognize each place easily, even though there's the almost constant GPS navigation help (I dunno if it can be turned off, didn't try). In IV or San Andreas that didn't really apply, I think (and I haven't played V yet). The focus on hand-to-hand combat instead of shooting was really great, and outside of the story missions and some side content there didn't really need to be as much brutality as I feared. Another awesome thing was the persistence of your car (and even other cars I think). I could wonder off a long way, return from a mission and still found the car I arrived in waiting for me. This is such a pleasant surprise compared to the GTA games where you couldn't really go very far from your car without it disappearing. Some minor disappointments: canceling side content missions takes you back to your home instead of where the mission started, not enough checkpoints in main missions and no "retry" for some side content such as the drug bust beat-ups. Not being able to action-hijack from a scooter. WTF? Those things demand that feature! When you find one it's probably because there was nothing else nearby and you want to quickly jump onto something else (or you really just wanted to take a slow ride on a scooter). Great game!

I finished Sleeping Dogs (Definitive Edition) just in time as I got well enough to go back to work tomorrow, and it was awesome. More thoughts in the Sleeping Dogs thread. Maybe I'll get to playing Saints Row III or Just Cause 2 soon as well.

Assassin's Creed: Untie

Haha, nice Arrested Dev. reference

WTF is going on in that shot? Is the G-Man involved?

Lol. What the hell is that hanging thing?

Apparently I still haven't gotten over my rum buying addiction, and I bought two more rums that were on sale. One is a cheap rum, Carriba Blanco, and it's a piece of shit. I just wanted to try if cheap rums are really worse tasting, and at least this one is. I drank half of my coke'n'rum and then down the drain it went. The other one is usually more expensive, and even comes in a cylindrical cardboard case -- El Dorado 5 years cask aged. However, even taking a sniff I knew I wasn't going to like it and after being mixed into a coke'n'rum it went down the drain after a few sips. It has a too whiskey like taste for me and it's a taste I seemingly can't stand even watered down. Then I tried my luck with Dr. Pepper again. The first time I tried with Plantation 3 star rum and that was actually pretty good. The second time I tried with my favourite Santiago de Cuba Añejo and it was still a bit meh. I guess that rum is just made for a great cuba libre and probably not much else. I kind of like it that I'm starting to develop a sense of which rums go well with which cocktails.

So among getting some ad campaigns pulled, gamergate has achieved that their biggest enemy is getting more and more recognition.

Another thing I thought about while playing: the smallness of Hong Kong in the game is actually good because it means there's less filler space and everywhere is something interesting going on. The size feels like GTA Vice City, although I think it's actually a bit larger. I think that is a good size for this type of game. Rockstar seemed to me to have a need to make everything bigger with each release, except GTA IV, where they probably had to scale down a bit due to the sudden jump in fidelity. I think that they kept enlarging the world didn't really make it better, and is perhaps why the series has stagnated. On the other hand I liked that the world in Red Dead was big, but it was a very different game. Anyway, for this game I think the world size they picked is perfect.

IIRC, the main complaint about the drug bust cases were that you did not have to identify the dealer yourself? I don't know if that was patched in the new version, but there's now like 40 seconds before the game tells me who the dealer is. Before that I can guess it myself -- usually it's a better dressed guy, maybe sometimes complaining aggressively, or killing someone, or making a deal. If I doubt I can wait or risk guessing wrong, in which case I can try again immediately. I'm not sure if guessing the dealer yourself increases the score or not, but at least it saves time if you guess right. But indeed it could have been done much better. I spent a lot of money on clothes for a big part of the game -- even as much that I wasn't able to afford cars. This is pretty cool, because in most games clothes are usually decoration only and boring. Here some clothes actually change the gameplay.

I envy how cool your dreams are.

Yeah, I could link to some tweets, but I'm too lazy to make a storify and they are not all connected in a reply chain. https://twitter.com/timsoret is the twitter. He is retweeting gamergate stuff as well. I think he is not anti-feminist, but he is probably very confused about some things.

Unfortunately the developer is a gamergater or at least supporter.

Yeah. I think countering is a bit easier when locked, though. Mainly your own movement slows down while locked, but I always have the problem of being locked to the wrong guy, and the vault-over-enemy button not doing anything due to that (which means I missed pressing a useful button at the appropriate time and will take damage). I ended up fighting without locking mostly and I've become a lot better after that change. So it's now even weirder to me why they put that in.

I just got the Definitive Edtion and have been playing it since (I'm ill at home and too braindead to do work). Quite good! However, I'm noticing a weird ludo-narrative dissonance, or maybe it's narrative-side-narrative dissonance even: the guy is an undercover cop, and it's made rather obvious that blowing that cover would be very deadly. Yet at the same time he can regularly go on cop side missions. Fuck, he can even wear a fucking SWAT uniform while doing triad missions (I think). Another thing I want to mention so far is that I haven't really figured out what the locking in combat is useful for or how should I use it: when to keep an enemy locked and for how long. For example, to use the batman-esque jumping over enemy, which in this game requires locking, it would seem best if I didn't lock until the last minute so that I could be more flexible about who I'm jumping over.

I discovered that steam lets you create categories for your game library now. And it's kind of cool, to me at least, that it doesn't let you use existing genre associations, but requires you actually write a name for each category. It was a nice thought experiment arranging some of my 300+ games. There are still over 30 games without a category -- either I haven't played them enough (at all) or they would basically be the only game in a genre, which I'd rather avoid as well. Like, what's a genre for Poker Night? Poker? Sim? Roguelike?

I finally got around to playing the third chapter of this EPISODIC game, 3 and a half years after playing the second chapter! But I love it, though! The fourth one is also available, but generally the development seems to have slowed down a lot, with the last two chapters still missing. Maybe it's due to needing so many new scenes? I would have loved to have a down-to-earth mystery game just set in that one house like the first chapter was hinting at.

Haha, that's hilarious!