miffy495

Wait, you can run into him? Is he still running around my city somewhere?

Dude, get two. The way you talk in GTA, you'll need them both operating at full capacity.

Ah, so you intend to use this "controller" in conjunction with "files" that have been "installed" on a "hard drive" to simulate the experience of playing a piano. I understand. I have never used a keyboard sophisticated enough to interact with a PC. All I've ever played have been those with internal speakers which sound kind of crap but at least let me practice. I miss the big ol' legitimate piano at my mum's house, but oh well. Haven't played in long enough that I'm probably terrible anyway. On a music-related thought, picked up the guitar again for the first time in a while. Sadly, it was because of the Giant Bomb endurance run of Deadly Premonition and the fact that I didn't want to watch it over again just to hear that stupid whistling song. So I grabbed my acoustic guitar and started strumming and whistling along myself. Then I thought about playing other things, and with the time I'm going to have after this last week of school, I may start playing for reals again. I miss having any real musical ability to speak of.

I have no idea what those may be for, but am intrigued. What's up with piano sounds, 'blix?

Was it Breed?

You would probably fail the mission. I thought about but don't think I actually did.

Thanks for that.

The best nicknames just fit and need no examination of their origins. You can't force them, and you can't explain them. Just roll with it, there's no need to examine everyone's nickname.

Well, congratulations Thumbs. I've chuckled a bunch at your 'cast before, but I can't recall ever totally losing my shit before. This episode had me do it twice. First, at "Mighty Ducks shenanigans" referring to TF2 play, followed by the confirmation of a flying V. I laughed way too loud at that mental image, with each class being represented in my mind's picture. Second, when you talked about Dracula Shepard, I went over the edge completely and couldn't stop laughing for about ten minutes. Well played.

Sweet! A swift and much more positive response than I was hoping for!

Anyone else playing around with this? I just spent about an hour and a half making a simple minigame based off of an injoke between a friend and I, and had a great time doing it. Of course, I should have spent that time on homework, but it's mid-afternoon so I have that "eh, I have all evening to work on things" mentality going on. Most of my time was spent on art. Luckily it's harder to fuck up a heavily pixelated picture of a person than it is to fuck up a semi-realistic thing. The programming is incredibly basic (hell, the games are 5 seconds long) and thus easy to get a grip on. The tutorials at the beginning of the game take fucking forever to get through though. Didn't mess around with the musical track composition, except for changing around the instruments used in the generated track in order to fit the mood I was going for. Seems decently deep for a two bar music creation tool. I can easily see occasionally getting struck with a stupid idea and creating a game. Oh shit, I actually just had a great idea for modifying the game I made. Damn, I wonder if you can edit a game you've already clicked "ship" on. EDIT: Yes. Yes you can. Game edited and made better. Anyway, any thumbs messing with this thing? I'm having a bunch of fun so far, and I'd look forward to seeing what sorts of things you folks would create given the chance. How do we trade games, and who wants to?

Yeah, what's the deal with those Sam and Max items? Is that a scheme for people who buy it on Steam only? I've bought every Telltale games (except Texas Hold 'Em) directly from Telltale. Am I shafted?

Well, if no one else is going to say it, I will. Nice touch with the use icon.

With enough slaves rowing, everything goes faster.

Yay! ...That is all. More when I've listened to it.

Just gonna say right now, the music composition system, though limited to only two bars, is straight-up copied from Mario Paint. And you can compose longer things in the music creator if you do it outside of the context of game creation. You can pretty much consider this game the love-child of WarioWare and Mario Paint. At least check out some video reviews or tutorials or something to get a feel for how it looks and works. It's wonderful.

I'm editing my 14,000 word thesis right now, while also having just finished giving a 20 minute presentation on Carnap's dual concepts of probability and I have a paper on Quine's view of accuracy in our perceptions as an evolutionary necessity (basically, we should feel ok about basing science on our perceptions because, flawed though they may sometimes be, if they didn't track the real world at least somewhat accurately we'd have died off long ago) due tomorrow I've only just barely started on. That one is only about 2000 words though, so I'm saving it for later. Also, I went to sleep at 6:30 this morning after staying up to do more preparing for that presentation and finish an assignment for another class. Four hours of sleep and 5 times the recommended daily intake of energy drink later, and I'm getting really fucking sick of school work. Of course, a month from now I'm really going to miss academic life when I have to go and try to make a go of the real world, but right now I just can't wait to finish up my last ever batch of undergrad assignments. Also, seeing the phrase "only about 2000 words" above would have freaked the hell out of me 4 years ago. Funny how that happens.

Nice recovery, Andy.

On the plus side, this leaves them free to get to work on Freedom Force 3. Right? Anyone?

My ideal game score would include pizzicato violin every time I stepped onto a stair and a flurry of a manic string section whenever the action got intense. Also, when I lose a life.

I would still recommend it regardless. I've only created 2 games with it so far, and it's already one of my favorite things this year. Hell, with LittleBigPlanet I tried making a level, I really did. I have a three page design doc kicking around somewhere of the level I wanted to make for the Idle Thumbs contest, including exactly how everything would work and an extra page containing sketches of every object the level would require. I could never make it manifest due to the editing tools not clicking in my mind. WarioWare makes everything just work. I figured it out. I even found weird workarounds for cycling through art in ways unintended by the game when I hit a wall mid-design. It's programming, not flying a sackboy with a jetpack around a level. As much as the latter sounds more friendly as an interface, actually having all the triggers, conditions, and outcomes staring you in the face as they do in WarioWare makes the whole thing much smoother. I straight-up love the creation tools in this game. The Mario Paint vibe gives it just enough whimsy to not be terrifying, but the lack of separation between you and the scripting keeps your mind on track with how things are going to end up.

There's no way that one was random.

I never thought Ironside's voice matched Fisher's look that well, but as I was staring at the back of his head most of the time, I never cared. It's a great voice regardless.

Bwah ha ha. I'm an Australian undercover in Canada. People think with the name "Worthington" that I'm just some haughty British type. Little do they know the true sordid nature of my family's past. And then, I strike...

My mistake. I got the developer of Myst and the publisher of Myst confused. In my defence, I was about 10 years old when all of this was current information.