Ben X

Aw, I was there a year ago but I've moved now. Say hi from me to Chris Fletcher at CUP if you meet him! If there aren't any Thumbs around, and you happen to be an indie dev, check out #cb2indies on Twitter - indie devs meet up once a week at the CB2 cafe either to chat or just get some work done in a different environment. It's often in the daytime, but they sometimes meet in the evenings too. (If you're not an indie dev, just knock out a Twine game - they're not fussy!)

Ah, well I started it as practice while Cwine got up and running, then I accidentally spent so much of the jam time on it I didn't want to waste it so I finished it and stuck it into BHC! I only separated it out a couple of weeks ago (as per my update post above). The existence of it in BHC is tied to the story but there aren't actually any clues within it. Anyway, I'm in the process of making an incredibly indulgent and boring set of dev-play vids for them so you'll be able to hear the entire story in excruciating detail soon enough!

In the comments for this article about some Obsidian artists making a Mos Eisley environment as a hobby, someone posted (I assume jokingly) in the comments, "Better than No Man's Sky!" It got memeified already!

After years of having my PC hooked up to my plasma tv, I finally shelled out a few hundred quid on a nice big monitor, and I've had to send it in for repair twice in the first six weeks. First for a vertical line of dead pixels or similar down the entire screen, and now because the brightness flickers up and down, and any contrast between black and other colours turns into a big smudgy mess. I tried it with a different computer and HDMI cable, turned it off and on again etc, with no luck. Just as I was about to spend a day on Deus Ex, too!

I've started season 9. It's the final season I bought on DVD - I might look through some later seasons and see if there are any particular episodes I want to procur for a re-watch. I remember the Mel Gibson one being great and the Behind The Laughter and Run Lola Run ones being interesting at least. This doesn't have as many lows for me but a large number of mediocre episodes. So far I really like New York Vs Homer, The Principal And The Pauper, the Fly Vs Fly TOH segment, and the Apu wedding one. The Ralph Wiggum one is good, not quite great. The submarine one is a particular low, full of Epic Movie type gags. Scanning through the remaining episodes, I remember them all being mediocre too.

Yes, but I'm done now.

better than No Man's Sky lol

better than No Man's Sky lol

Hooray, thanks brkl! Did you play either of the other games, either within BHC or on their own?

Spore is on sale on Steam, so I went to take a look at how its overall review status is. I was surprised to see it was mostly positive, considering it's generally considered a notorious disappointment, one that many likened their experience of NMS to. Turns out loads of NMS haters have gone on and given Spore positive reviews because "it's better than No Man's Sky". Gamer petulance at its finest.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/09/02/firewatch-adding-free-audio-tour-free-roam-mode

I agree with all of that. And yeah, it felt incredibly fan-ficcy throughout to me: I think anyone reading it should be aware that a) Rowling only has a joint story credit on it, and sunglasses) as Jake says, it probably works much better live where you're enjoying the special effects and immersive atmosphere - the story is easily digestible nostalgia in service of that, and the play shouldn't be considered as HP8. BUT ANYWAY WHAT ABOUT RELEASING ANY EXISTING PODCAST MATERIAL AND/OR DOING A READ-THROUGH THREAD? edit: it just struck me that you used a classic tabloid manoeuvre with the title of this thread: "Whoa, we're doing a Harry Potter podcast?" *reads through article, finds the answer is no*

I have tidied up the art and text in this - I originally used jpegs with horrible artefacting, and the in-editor text balloons which were still in alpha and not really working properly - so if it was a bit too ugly for you to play before, it's all nice and Lucassed up now. I have also added in my most recent jam comic as an optional branch to jump in and out of, and copied out the now-polished Often-Ending Story branch as a standalone comic. So: The Often-Ending Story: Graphical Edition A Very Pretty Pipe-Dream or Memeify McCree or A Chill Hell Blue Hag Christmas all polished up with the other two games as optional sections BHC's edit now looks like this:

Whaaaat?! Decision reversicus! That's a real shame. Any chance of the unfinished first ep (or whatever you've got) getting bunged up online somewhere? Also, perhaps you could start a mega-thread in the Books board (or on this one, I guess) if you still feel like reading through them and discussing...

I'm over halfway through the Cursed Child play and it's awful. I hope this 'cast a) happens and sunglasses) covers the extra-novels stuff so I can hear the hosts' opinions on the play.

I don't think I've seen this mentioned before, but I've started to notice it on every 'cast: there's at least one Thumb who regularly sighs and yawns and grunts, seemingly into the microphone, while others are talking. Anyone else bothered by this? It has a weird peer pressure effect on me of suddenly finding what the talking Thumb is saying a bit dull.

That reddit post has already been updated saying his discoveries have now shown up again, and plenty of others have gone back and found theirs intact. Seems it was a hiccup. Edit: while I'm defending NMS, here's a defense blog post from Paul at Frozen Synapse dev Mode 7 Games: https://blog.mode7games.com/promising-the-earth-no-mans-sky-c6227ae3a35d#.piueftyrt

Great trailer, I'm looking forward to this.

I'll try to remember to re-post this in my FPS thread when I get back to it! (I'm spending my computer time polishing up my jam comics at the mo, and my new monitor also needs to get repaired, but hopefully I'll get back on it after that.)

I'd be interested to hear more about why You Only Move Twice is considered such a good episode, if anyone feels likes expounding further. (Not that I'll be converted or anything, but I'm genuinely curious - I enjoyed Problem Machine's point about him being a prescient parody of tech celebrity CEOs.) In other news, I'm working my way through the older commentaries and special features, and the clips of Albert Brooks improvising as Jacques are fantastic.

Yeah, the whole idea of this thread is subjective, and this is all of course just my opinion. But I don't mind outlandish stuff in Simpsons - I love the monorail episode and the first Sideshow Bob episode, for example - it's really just that I don't think the writing on these episodes is very good. I'm sure I'd enjoy a 'Homer works for a super-villain played by Albert Brooks' episode if I felt they did more with the concept, or a rollicking action-intrigue episode if it were lighter on its feet. One thing I don't like about the Hellfish episode which is probably more along the lines of what you're talking about is how, to my mind, it throws away Abe's characterisation from the past seven seasons. I always liked the way that in flashbacks to Homer's childhood, Abe is an angry, neglectful parent, mostly glowering at the television from his armchair. it explains some stuff about Homer and nicely contrasts with how he's utterly pathetic and abandoned by his family in present day. It's why, when you see this character shed a tear at the moon-landing, it emphasises how important a moment in human history this was (as well as giving the character a little more depth). So the Hellfish episode turning him into a grandiose war-hero, attempting to assassinate Hitler and so on, breaks that. If it had been, say, Jasper with a secret war past, that would work a lot better for me (and also wouldn't fuck up established continuity between Abe and Burns, but I'm not too bothered about that - the show's been self-contradictory from the start). Having said that, it doesn't bother me that Homer goes to space or whatever; I guess if outlandish stuff happens to them in the present it doesn't bug me like finding out they were superspies in their twenties or whatever. But isn't this basically what this thread is about? Outside of joke quality, which changes in the spirit of The Simpsons as a show are the point of no return for each of us? I also don't like how they became more eager to have songs in the episodes with no particular justification. I mean, that burlesque house song? Jesus.

Well, I wouldn't call Jacques one of the most hilarious inventions in the history of the show either, but I do think that episode is much stronger and his character feels more organically derived from the story to me, whereas Scorpio is the story, The undercutting of assumptions with the origin of Ox's nickname is clever but I can't enjoy it that much when it's building on a joke I find to be weak. (As for the rake bit, I discussed a while back why that doesn't work for me as much as it does for a lot of people.) But these are individual jokes and even the duff Simpsons episodes are likely to have one or two good moments in. Even if I loved the Ox joke, it wouldn't curb my feeling that the start of Season 8 absolutely crashes.

Well, I said sub- not post-... I disagree on Scorpio - again, outside of the general conceit, I don't think he's that funny. He's an overly-nice boss, that's about it. As for the Ox joke: if you're talking about when he explains the concept of the tontine, I groaned out loud at the overused "dumb person says something complicated" gag; if you mean the one about him dying first, of a hernia carrying the paintings out of the mansion, I did enjoy that one.

Aside from the sub-Austin Powers (and redundant as Homer already worked for Mr Burns) supervillain boss conceit, the Scorpio episode is incredibly dull. The Hellfish episode is a betrayal of the show's characterisation and soul for the sake of some unimaginative comic book nonsense.

I'm onto Season 8 now and it's starting to fill up with stinkers. Season 7 was still mostly strong despite poor to terrible episodes like the Hellfish one, the Lollapalooza one and the Sideshow Bob bomb one. Season 8 starts off with a great Treehouse then crashes with a string of stinkers: the Scorpio one, Homer boxing, Burns' kid, and the burlesque house. It picks up with the Millhouse divorce and Lisa dating Nelson, both crackers, but then sinks again with Flanders goes crazy, Homer eats a chili pepper (both have good elements but are mostly forgettable) and then the awful X Files and pretzel episodes. And I see I have the cabin fever and Mary Poppins episodes coming up, both of which I remember being pretty poor. Ah well, there's always Poochie. The main thing I've noticed in recent episodes is that they often cannot come up with a proper ending and cop-out with some lampshaded ironic thing.