RubixsQube

It's been running pretty well on my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), actually. Real good looking. I'm using a magic mouse, which makes it a huge pain in the butt to choose dialogue options, especially given the little time limit. Sorry, Delilah, I'm just trying to choose the right thing to say by slowly pawing at plastic, give me a sec

this game is profoundly beautiful, jeez.

Where the hell do the soundtracks download to, on a mac, if you get the bundle. What the hell, steam.

https://vine.co/v/iJVhe0qUEHV

https://vine.co/v/iJVhe0qUEHV https://vine.co/v/iJVhe0qUEHV https://vine.co/v/iJVhe0qUEHV

Yeah, this is going to force me to play the game at work, on my iMac. : ( At least it's nice that it has a Mac option, though!

Hey everyone, Downwell, from moppin, is out today on iOS and Steam. What is Downwell? First off, it has a really well-made webpage that kind of says everything you need to know, really. But, if you need a little bit more to sell you on the idea of the game, it's a procedurally generated platformer/shooter with high-contrast visuals and a novel idea. You're an adventurer falling down a well, using your boots to both shoot and give you some power to slow down your descent. You also collect treasure (in a way very reminiscent of Cave Story, which shares it's aesthetic somewhat) and unlock new weapons and upgrades. People have been comparing it favorably to Spelunky, and I think that makes sense. It's got a kicking soundtrack. It's only a few dollars, and it was made by one person [EDIT: THIS IS PATENTLY FALSE, IN FACT MORE THAN ONE PERSON MADE THIS GAME], and I've been having a lot of fun. And I'm fairly certain it's going to get discussed on the latest episode of Idle Thumbs, so get a head start on the cast! EDIT: THIS GAME IS REALLY GOOD

Yeah, Nick's AGDQ rant was full of a lot of half mistakes and overstatements. Most of what TASbot did in both Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World is what is generally known as a "total control" hack, where you can use controller inputs and carefully done Mario maneuvers to load code into RAM, that, when executed, allow the computer (which is generally a laptop connected to the game console, generally through a connector that has a little ROB mascot around it, you can see it in the Ars Technica article) to run any code through quick button inputs on the second controller. I'm pretty sure that at no point are actual physical inputs on a physical controller ever used. The SMB3 backdoor that Nick described, with the message from Shigeru Miyamoto, was a joke programmed in by the TASbot guys, and the "dinosaur" was a reference to an AGDQ favorite, the NES game Color-A-Dinosaur. It's pretty neat to see, and the Ars Technica article does a fantastic job explaining it in detail, but the hard part wasn't executing the code, it was finding the space to run the code on the cartridge, which could only have been done for the Super Mario World Maker hack by using the Super Mario All-Stars cartridge, which offered more on-cart space to allow for so many save games. I also want to be pedantic about something else AGDQ related from the episode, since it actually reframes an entire discussion. Nick was talking about the pretty amazing , and at one point early in the run, (and potentially unbelievable): these levels are not memorized, but rather, high-level players are just looking for patterns actually coming up the screen, and using their intrinsic muscle memory and pattern recognition they manage to work their way through a song. Watch the run with this in mind, especially for the moment later when a second player steps in and plays a version of the game where the arrows spin into place from opposite directions on the screen. It's nuts.

The 8-players-on-2-teams Mario Maker Relay Race of some new AGDQ levels was the highlight of the whole thing thus far. Absolutely amazing. There are only some low-quality streams up of it now, but when a better stream comes out, you should take an hour and watch it, you will 100% NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.

Pluto was dubbed a "dwarf planet" in 2006, right as I was starting graduate school, just in time for me to answer five billion questions about the decision for despondent schoolchildren at planetarium shows. Noby Noby Boy, as mentioned, came out a few years later.

I am tentatively in, although this week coincides with a big business trip for my job, but I think I'll have a huge amount of potential free time to horse around with an idea I have. I had a lot of fun last time, even if my game was altogether real dumb. It was super exciting to have a reason (and a deadline) to focus creativity.

I am excited for one of the tiers of a future idle thumbs kickstarter 2.0 being the level codes for jake's secret Mario Maker levels.

Whoops, I've edited my original post to reflect my error. I apologize to whoever was mislead by my statements. BACK TO THE GAME: I like having it on my iphone, but if I have to use screen controls I like it better on my iPad since they get out of the way. I think it's probably much better with physical controls though, as it is for any twitchy platformer.

yesssssss

I just started playing Splatoon yesterday, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm not a huge fan of competitive multiplayer, but the way that the games seem pretty low-pressure (I'm not at level 10 yet, and haven't unlocked the ranked mode) yet are really fun. Any time I've played online FPS games I'd inevitably get frustrated by how often I would die without really learning anything. Here, there are things to do as each match starts, and while I will still get killed, it doesn't feel as bad if I've helped to mark territory. It's incredible how, over the matches that I've played, even with a big range in levels of the combatants, everything has felt so even. I kind of wish that I could play this with some friends online, the battles would benefit from voice chat (but only with people you know/trust). The wide variety of weapons is pretty intimidating, but the first weapon is pretty solid, especially for a new player. PRETTY FUN. Thanks for the links in this thread, they've been helpful!

I have been making levels, and while Goob (from above) has found them too hard, I don't know. Here is one I made yesterday that I'm a fan of: Super Cool 'n Ghosts: C22C-0000-007B-8BC2 I think that someone should curate an Idle Thumbs playlist. Maybe I'll take a crack at it this weekend. Mostly I just want levels that don't feel like some giant epic experience which has to be done without checkpoints. I want more Mario 3 type levels. Here is an interesting idea, here, try it out, and you're out.

Actually, my birthday is the most common birthday, so happy birthday to me, Amy Poehler, David Copperfield, Jennifer Tilly, Flo Rida, Micky Rourke, Ed Begley Jr., and Nick Jonas. Oh, and H.A. Rey! Of Curious George, and more importantly for me, The Stars, fame! Everyone should own a copy of The Stars. I own four, I think. Let's imagine you want a perfect gift for a young person who might possibly be interested in science. Or a middle aged person who wants to learn about the constellations but gets bored easily. Or someone who likes well designed, beautiful books. The Stars is the book for them.

It's my birthday! Also Amy Poehler's, I guess.

The best thing about the Mario Maker release date is how Nintendo bends over backwards to not say "September 11th" in their marketing, choosing instead to say:

I asked Spaff on Twitter if he was referring to when he talked about a video where a dude plays a hard Mario level who sounded "exactly like Marek Bronstring," and he confirmed it was. Weird fact: that's me, way back in my first or second year of graduate school, cursing and being obnoxious in that video.

When Jake made the joke about Little Big Planet physics, it was especially weird coming from muted-background-Jake because it was what I had been thinking for ten minutes. Muted-background-Jake is the audience.

Ha! I think that worrying about anything other than "reliance on fossil fuels leading to global warming severely and forever changing the planet on a global scale" is not supportable. There are so, so, so many steps between now and "oh, we have the ability to alter the orbits of asteroids such that they can be used as weapons." The thing that is happening right now is the extreme effects of climate change. Right, fucking, now. Extreme heatwaves, terrifying weather patterns, global droughts, this is the current worry. Also, sometimes I worry about the eventual horrifying earthquakes that will ravage the entire east coast of North America. I was just reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, which is fun, but it reminded me that the rising sea levels means we lose all beaches, around the world. Beaches came about through years and years of erosion. Raise the water, lose the beaches! Gah. This, I know, is a REAL BUMMER. I have friends who are earth science PhDs with research focusing on the effects of climate change, and they're envious of my being able to talk with kids about black holes and galaxies, while they have to be the bummer patrol. But people need to know this, and need to think about this. There are so many things people need to understand about the real worries in the world, even if they are major bummers, and it's more fun to worry about dumb stuff like (heavy, eye-rolling sigh) "zombie uprisings."

I know it's been a week since the last episode, and also I think that this discussion must have happened one million times over in previous threads, but are the Idle Thumbs people actually worried about an AI uprising? Or is it one of those things where it started off as a funny joke and now they're still playing a long, since it's fun to speculate on (it is!). I find robot news to be really funny! The whole show is really, really a highlight of my week. But more and more I hear Nick, and Sean, discussing the subject as if they've started really freaking out. I know I'm probably reading too much into this, in which case, the next paragraph is unnecessary. But just in case... ...there is no way a Petman is going to hurt people because of a rogue AI. They'll hurt people because they're big moving machines that can sometimes be poorly programmed, but the idea of them turning and doing murdering because of some sudden burst of perfect intelligence is zero. Right now, we cannot produce AI that should actually worry us, because we don't have the computing power, nor do we have the understanding of intelligence that can be recreated with computer code. Popular articles from the internet that discuss experiments that show how "artificial intelligence has demonstrated self awareness" are way too far removed from what the actual scientific experiment indicated to be a source of worry. Again, I know that this is me being far, far too ornery, and I know that the proper response is that "this is the kind of thinking that ignores the true threat until it's too late!" And I still want to hear robot news segments, since they're a fun highlight, but like, I keep having responses to some of what's discussed similar to what happens when I watch videos of Andy Kaufman. What should I believe?

Super Mario Maker's skinny Mario is a treasure.