Nachimir

In theory that's cool, but particularly with procedural tech, I think a lot of designers would struggle to make something that didn't either telegraph it (Huge! Teeth!) or fill with annoying gotchas (Haha! Poisonous!).

Ryse was a launch title though. They would have been under all kinds of pressure to get the thing out on time. Fixing the above in some way was probably on someone's to do list, along with the multitude of other stuff. "That looks about right" was not the error of judgement here, more "This is appropriate to a dramatic scene". The direction and art decisions that led to it happening are icky.

Pretty much what an animator said here too. Also:

I think it's just very early in development, they'd been struggling with a host openly insulting the show, long haul flights seem to beat the shit out of Sean going by other times I've seen him interviewed or met him, and the interviewers were asking some dumb questions like "Is there anything this game doesn't have?"

A celebrity being an asshole. Probably. In a room filled with some other assholes as well as some very hardworking people. Probably. Hey look they have a car on a podium too. This year's must have accessory for videogame things.

Most UK magazines are sold the month or week before the one printed on the cover. I've never understood it. An old housemate used to read some grim, gossipy tat, but that's so much worse. Surely it wouldn't be a crime to go burn their office down?

Joel McHale openly insulted the VGX awards while presenting them last night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL4hrg49oTg Particularly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL4hrg49oTg#t=4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KL4hrg49oTg#t=130

An entertaining shopkeeper death today:

We have a few banjo players at the hackspace nowadays. They keep recommending stuff to me:

I think it depends what kind of area you're in. Where I used to live there was a house down the road that went way over the top with decorations every year, with scallies living not too far away, and they never seemed to be destroyed.

That is one spectacular death Nappi ( )

Kraken spiced rum, which I am rather pissed on right now. I just played Spelunky on vita expecting nothing more than spikes on 1-1, and got to the temple for the first time, after aggroing shopkeepers and successfully cleaning out the back market. I should probably be this drunk all the time* *no

We died on exactly the same set of spikes, for the same reason.

Has anyone else been watching American Horror Story? A friend recommended it, and I found season 2 very odd indeed:

That's the only Christmas decoration I've ever wanted to put out

So, after four hours of rail travel with a friend, spent taking it in turns to entertain each other with Spelunky, there are some rules I'm holding myself to for now: Rob every shop. Teleporters are compulsory. Today, I got off to a hamfisted start, things began to look promising in the darkest moment, then a single inept move ended it all:

Where does the yellow box go? Does it get thrown away? Does the drone come back for it later? How do the drones operate in dense urban areas? How would they deliver to a tower block? Will street view expand to highlight overhead cables? What happens in bad weather? How does the drone cope during interactions with pets and wild animals? How do they defend against air rifles or illegal eighty buck signal jammers? Is the calm atmosphere and relaxed pace of fulfilment centre workers shown in that video a subtle attempt to manipulate our perception in the face of what we all know about those jobs? What stops someone netting the drone and breaking it for parts? Will we all have tiny helipads attached to our homes? Why is buying a tiny spanner for his skateboard such a priority for the man? How will Amazon acquire access to enough property to run the required number of fulfilment centres with drone heliports when the range and speed of multicopters are so catastrophically limited? Will there be a fulfilment centre in every neighbourhood? How will Amazon and their affiliates maintain the required stock levels in so many places to enable thirty minute deliveries? How does this differ from a mailman carelessly throwing a package over your fence? Can drones take signatures? Parts for multicopters are already pretty cheap. They don't work on fuel though, they work on LiPO batteries, and while everyone is hoping nanotechnology will soon result in massive, scalable leaps and bounds in power stored relative to mass, batteries are a technology that's stalled far short of what we'd like to do with it. 30-minute deliveries could be done right now, in most weather and environments, almost certainly cheaper than this, by cycle or motorbike couriers. Amazon Prime Air is the worst kind of design fiction guff, shat out at the exact moment they needed some PR. I'm surprised it didn't have twee piano music over it.

It's purely a coincidence Amazon announced drones on on the biggest online shopping day of the year, following a bunch of negative stories in the preceding week. Uh huh. Definitely not shit PR based around an idea that doesn't make much sense.

I have a working headset now. The only difference it makes is that you can occasionally hear me swear. I'm not as grumpy as I sound!

Jon Snow was excruciating in that. He kept interrupting, and I cringed pretty hard when he said something like "I'm on Twitter. I think I'm on the cutting edge". I wonder if he blocks people who make obvious Game of Thrones jokes at him there. *cough* I am looking forward to the telly program.

I only just found out about it because of you, Lacabra, and another friend. Much of this is gorgeous: http://soundcpu.bandcamp.com/album/holograms

Lacabra, do you want this to remain relatively quiet or are you happy for me to post it in other places? I know a bunch of people who would probably love this. I showed it to a friend who said "He appears to have invented the Vaporwave FPS", which is a Good Thing. I also think it's worth pursuing, even (or especially) if it ends up a really small, brief game.

Bananasaurus Rex kills the ghost in this. It takes a long time and is a little anticlimactic; I'd advise watching the setup then skipping to 12:50

You are definitely not stupid for thinking that, Zeus. It's glorious.

I was twitchy and made all kinds of stupid mistakes today: