Nachimir

How much ground fascism gained there in the past fews years is utterly terrifying. I doubt it'll be long before people have to leave and claim political asylum.

Syndicate was probably my favourite thing on the Amiga, but I too have a load of money in Kickstarters and feel like taking a break from it. What they have so far is looking good though. I'm surprised more indie developers haven't done projects inspired by the original Syndicate games before now.

Someone I follow was objecting to the apology being all "OMG I designed too much game!", and calling it a personality cult. I can understand someone not liking that being given instead of just "oops, we fucked up", but it doesn't change the actual issue. A bunch of Kickstarter projects have way overshot their funding target and ended up in trouble as a result of someone expecting a small project having to scope and run a much bigger one. I find this DF thing perfectly understandable, and I think they're acting well by their backers. The other complaint I saw was that this was only revealed after the Massive Chalice one had concluded. Maybe they did wait, but why the fuck wouldn't they? I'd do the same. This kind of thing, with crowdfunding, is kind of uncharted. I see it as an act of good faith (or certainly good intention) to alter scope when faced with a vastly increased budget, rather than just making the $400K adventure game and pocketing the difference. Doing that's also in the spirit of not using Kickstarter as a preordering system.

#twitterchillers (I miss Duncan Fyfe's twitter chillers).

I agree, but that's a complicated fight as far as hate speech and people's right to believe are concerned. I strongly suspect that in the next few decades, religious communities and organisations will become much more self-selecting around gay rights.

I'm not sure if this is by Dan Marshall, or if he just linked to it, but it's excellent.

I'm thinking of maybe doing that in New Zealand in the next year or so. A friend of mine spent two years cycling around Japan WWOOF'ing. During and since those two years, he got married, bought a patch of woodland on a mountain, learned traditional Japanese carpentry, and has built a beautiful two storey, two room hut to live in. I don't think he had much clue he'd do any of that after graduating from a photography degree.

I totally forgot to post about this. I tried one out properly a few weeks ago. The first time I tried one, in May, it was just a looping video on a low powered PC, so as underwhelming as 3D cinema, but really low res. At Rezzed the other weekend, I played Ether one with full head movement, and it was incredible. The sense of real scale and place completely obliterated the shutter effect; it's going to be phenomenal at higher resolutions. Being able to look behind me was… weird. It also made me feel really, really sick after a while, but there are reasons for that. That really surprised me, because I don't get motion sick and almost nothing can make me nauseous. The potential mismatch in signals from synchronised head and character movements can do some weird things to your brain and inner ear though. The programmer I spoke to said he's done a bunch of work on finding settings and things the minimise nausea; apparently with the first settings they used, everyone felt sick, instantly and all the time. A big part of it was also that in later parts of the demo, the crosshair disappeared and the frame rate dropped. Neither of those helped, especially not having a centrepoint for my eyes to return to: pretty sure the orientations of my head and my eyes were gradually diverging, with the headset effectively isolating them from each other. Interesting thing I've heard from several people working with Rifts: It's basically impossible to do 2D HUD at the moment without it being a blurry mess. To make a crosshair appear legibly, it has to be rendered in 3D, slightly in front of the character.

Some developers I know are working on an oculus rift version. Dying to try it.

We love you Kroms, wherever you go. I hadn't heard of that, but thought your decision might have something to do with similar current events.

It makes quite a bit of sense to me. Mattrick is insanely rich, and has a reputation for having turned the xbox division around. He probably sees Zynga as a challenge rather than somewhere his career can die, but if that does happen, he doesn't exactly need to worry.

I should give that another go. I played it once and it seemed okay, but frustrated me in one aspect: As the rounds went on, it was easier to make mistakes in the build, and then have to live with them for longer in the space part too. Someone pointed out that if you make a catastrophic mistake, your ship gets smaller and harder to hit, but it was obvious how the game was turning out about ten minutes before it actually ended, so that last bit felt like going through the motions. Other games I've liked a lot recently: Cosmic Encounter: It's almost entirely negotiation. We played enough that we started using the flare deck (which adds extra powers to races. If the flare you draw corresponds to your race, it gives a much more enhanced power), and didn't realise that one race had a controversial early version and an updated one included, so accidentally put both in. I drew the new one corresponding to my friend Jay's race, and felt safe in the fact that he wouldn't have an absurd power. In fact though, he drew the old one, which: Cosmic Encounter surprises us in most games of it we play. Lifeboat: Wrote about this about a year and a half ago, and am still immensely enjoying it. A bit like Cosmic Encounter, it uses negotiation to compensate for asymmetry. It has all kinds of subtle and not so subtle viciousness to it, but always seems to make everyone laugh rather than get tense. I think it's because many of the ways to attack people are quite indirect, and partly to do with environmental hazards. Character size makes a difference in fights, and alliances combine size. In one game, I was the first mate (huge), and the tiny kid was the deciding factor in a confrontation I'd started. The other players were trying to bribe that player with all kinds of riches they looted from the provisions chest, and after letting them do it for a while, I said "Look kid, you can side with me, or I can mug you every turn for the rest of this game". It does a fairly good job of evoking a boat full of people who hate each other but don't really have the energy to fight. In another game, we fought at every opportunity, then in weakened states were all swept overboard and killed within a few turns. Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre I hate that the title obviously comes from somewhere on the internet, but this has a nice combinatorial magic system and is pretty good for goofing around.

Ah, I see. I didn't read Ben and James' posts closely enough. Wikipedia Brown, I think we're on the same page What I'd like is for marriage to be for everyone, and for religious ceremonies, if they can't incorporate that, to exist within the bounds of those religions rather than creeping into civic life and clouding the issue. As Zeus says, they don't have a particular claim on the term, and for them to argue for it is to also claim they deserve privilege. The religion I mentioned earlier was Bahá'í. To them, marriage is a very serious thing in which they believe the souls of two believers are bound together throughout and beyond this life. It carries no weight legally though, so they have a small registry office ceremony to make it a marriage in the eyes of the state too (Here in the UK, registry office weddings don't have to have any kind of religious content). They don't seem to get their panties in a twist over which of those is marriage, they just understand that one is a part of their faith and one is a part of the state, which seems sensible to me.

That's no part of why I suggest it. It would do anything but placate bigots, because they want to retain a monopoly. I'm suggesting taking that away from them. I'm not saying they don't. Since we don't live in theocracies or ecclesiocracies though, I think that and civil and religious gay marriage are different fights. While there's intersectionality to it, I think it's a different fight in the case of every religion that doesn't allow gay marriage.

I see you skilfully cropped out your own reflection in that Razer Hydra, toblix.

Kind of like Super Hexagon, but you move in three dimensions: https://sites.google.com/site/fortdagamesauxiliary/ My record so far is 33.88

James, we're on the same page.

Boo to Russia. It shocks me there's a superpower that can be so unabashedly homophobic in this century. Me too. I know plenty of people who follow a religion whereby they have to have their religious ceremony and a civil ceremony for it to be a legal marriage, so why not make it that way for all religions? It'd neatly separate legal/civic benefits from religion while not touching the sanctity of whatever it is whichever religions regard as marriage. Also, (when it's not already) it'd make it really blatant when religious people are simply fighting to preserve privilege and advance politicised homophobia outside the bounds of their faith. Anyway. Monumentally good week for gay rights in the West. Huzzah, etc.

Congrats Miffy!

This is the best quadrocopter demo I've seen: http://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_athletic_power_of_quadcopters.html

Still works for me (Chrome).

True, but I'm delighted they're so ignorant of the Streisand Effect. In terms of PR, a fundraiser couldn't ask for much better than such cartoon, moustache twirling antagonists to their cause. They spout the worst, most repugnant hate, yet seem to have none of the charisma of other cults or dictators.

I made a quiet hissing noise at this point. This sounds… uninteresting.

I'd be sad to see you go Kroms, but totally understand you have your reasons and might not want to share them.