Thrik

Diddy Kong Racing was some stellar shit. I loved Mario Kart 64, but that game just took the biscuit. Mario Kart: Double Dash remains the racing game I have put the most ludicrous amount of time into, though. My god.

Heh, aw. Was he always an indoor cat?

Well, that's life. Full of disappointments. Seriously though, sounds like a bunch of complete assholes. It is my experience that a lot of sales/marketing people are like that. The gift of the gab extends to being intolerable for more than a few minutes, I guess.

So, did it turn out to be an unimaginable disaster that has ruined your life forever?

I think what you've done looks much better. It is a shame that distance and MIP mapping causes the pixellated effect to be lost over distance. I have thought of one way you could solve it, however it could be very difficult to implement. Essentially, I'm thinking that the further away from the camera the texture is, the larger the pixellation effect. This would counter the blurring and look pretty sweet in its own right. I did a basic Photoshop mock-up by just applying pixellation on a gradient: How you'd do it is beyond me, though. Is MIP mapping capable of literally switching up textures over distance, like how model LODs work? If you handled it carefully you could probably build the illusion of a gradient that way. Anyway, just an idea.

ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH Source 2 Left 4 Dead 2 Prototype Screenshots Leaked

Just remove the link so it's a plain URL.

Also probably good to not make your life all about your work, whether it be your dream job or not. Cutting back sounds like an inevitable requirement for pursuing your writing, but don't let it be at the cost of literally everything else that makes being young fun — socialising, finding love, all that jazz. One day you'll be too old to do that stuff and have nothing but writing to keep you busy!

I'm still excited about this game but am waiting for the final release. I've been trying to follow this whole 'underlying narrative' story but I'm struggling to figure out where we're at now without spending a lot more time than I want to reading about it. Can it be summed up? Is it the case that the developers don't really have any idea about how a prison actually works, leading to a completely unrealistic depiction that's comparable to nothing but itself — and they have no interest in it being anything else? Or is it more like what most people probably imagine a US prison to be like after years of watching things like Escape from Alcatraz, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, etc? See, the latter I'm OK with. I don't really know how US prisons work, and I'm not entirely sure that I want to. But then, for all I know it could be that US prisons are largely singing and roses compared to the aforementioned films' depictions. Yet I am interested in playing a game that exists within the world those films imply the existence of, certainly more so than a UK prison simulator which is likely just gentlemen knocking over each others' cups of tea because they had a disagreement while playing Mario Kart earlier, and leaving passive-aggressive notes for each other on their cell doors.

Depends how much your redundancy pay-out was.

Yeah, I read that recently too. No idea how all that's working, but shit that community has a lot of talent. In other news, after looking into it I found that five tracks from the upcoming Donkey Kong Country: Returns have been released: One is a remake — one of DKC1's most beloved tracks, cheaply making this relevant to the thread. The last track in particular reassures me that we're going to be hearing more of the 'dark' style that pervaded the majority of DKC2's soundtrack (and DKC1's to a lesser extent). I'm looking forward to giving it a go when I eventually pick up a Wii U. The original Returns was a solid foundation to build upon, and it'll be nice to experience something that musically stands on its own two feet a bit more rather than just remixing music from the original trilogy. Also the levels look more varied and interesting this time.

New Donkey Kong Country 2 remix on OC ReMix: A good time to point out that OC ReMix's albums remixing the entire DKC1, DKC2, and DKC3 soundtracks have some great stuff, although with the styles varying so much between tracks you might not like everything. Here are some I enjoy: Underwater level music from DKC3 Pipe level music from DKC3 Mama banana bird music from DKC3 If you've not listened to the albums and like DKC's music then they would be a great way for you to kill (a lot of) time. Incidentally, the DKC2 composer is co-composing the next DKC Returns soundtrack. If he delivers anything like the DKC2 soundtrack I will be... very pleased.

Jesus Christ I'm on the edge of my seat here!!!!!

Haha, awesome. Reading that makes me really want to dig this out and play, it is after all my second favourite LEC classic (Grim Fandango is #1, obviously). That section you've just hit incidentally has some of my favourite music from the whole game throughout it and the following several areas — basically everything beyond the trail you cut. Not that the game isn't oozing wonderful melodies.

I agree with Ben, although I think it's worth clarifying that when he said 'attracted' I took that to mean in the sense of chemistry and general lover appeal (i.e. the spark) rather than anything physical. Likes you more as a friend, that kind of thing. Or maybe I'm just projecting what happened with my last relationship, heh.

If you're having to actually try or even think about having an opinion, you're probably doing it wrong. I certainly don't go around worrying about what other people might read into everything that I say. Instead, I focus on being a genuinely good person who has reasonable beliefs and treats others as a human being should. If you do that, then unless your beliefs happen to be pretty racist or generally assholish then you're unlikely to ever run into trouble. I'm my own judge and I believe myself to be a very fair and balanced person. Then again, so do racists I guess. Edit: It's hard to really verbalise what I mean so I'll try again: say and do what you believe to be right. If you happen to offend someone, be open to the idea that maybe you're actually wrong — and if not, why aren't you? Question yourself, and if you still believe it then stand your ground. Don't just give up on caring about whether or not something is right. If it weren't for constantly educating and questioning ourselves, we'd all still be like Winston Churchill: great in many ways, but kind of a racist fuck.

good god Change nothing.

Excellent. I will make this in approximately 330 days!

Decided to put the final bullet into a relationship that's been lukewarm at best for a long time now. Really not easy being the one who has to take the lead and initiate the conversation, but in all honesty things had gone quickly downhill during the past couple of weeks (not arguments, just outright not talking). Having never dealt with such a long-term break-up I was pretty much all "I... think we need to break up" and then had literally no idea what to say next and after she said 'OK' there was a good portion of silence before things got going. Whoops. She said she saw it coming and entirely agreed about its necessity — she'd even started looking into apartments the day before. And actually it was all a very restrained and mature conversation, perhaps a sign of how little our emotions were intertwined with the relationship any more. She's moving out in a couple of weeks and we're alternating between bed and sofa. Glad I got a good-ass sofa now. It sounds horrible but I'm actually feeling really positive at the moment. The relationship had lost its heart so long ago that it's felt like we've been desperately trying to discover a magic fix for as long as I can remember. We probably should have decided to end things a year or so ago, but after 3.5 years and without an 'ultimate reason' (e.g. cheating or huge arguments) you just hope for improvement that's never coming. So while I'm very sad in that the good memories (albeit mostly quite a long time ago) and things that I miss about her will surely play on my mind, I'm feeling like a ginormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can now just go crazy spending amounts of time that weren't really appropriate while in a relationship doing whatever I want. While I don't think that this was the primary cause of the loss of closeness because that was happening on a much deeper level I think, in all honesty I'm not that ready to settle down right now which is probably why I feel OK. I haven't got that 'oh my god I'm getting older and need a long-term partner and children' feeling — it's more of a 'holy shit, I can just go live or work anywhere I want now' feeling.

If I play this and find it really hard I'm totally going to feel really dumb.

Haha, excellent. I also happen to live next door to a shitty club called Oceana.

Wait, you are?

I found this video notable for no reason other than that it really sounds like Tim Schafer is narrating it (give it 30 seconds):