chummer

Phaedrus' Street Crew
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    648

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by chummer

  2. Posted

    i remember that you could disarm and take enemies' weapons in Wind Waker as well. it's interesting to note how Nintendo has already applied a lot of the changes people seem to be excited for in small ways across various games, but never committed to them in the same way they seem to be doing with Breath of the Wild.

     

    regarding those subscription boxes that aren't about food: in my least charitable mood, they're this weird excess that's about having so much disposable income you're willing to give it away in some weird lottery for a chance at some trinkets you may or may not enjoy. i also realize though that it's closer to people signing up to being surprised, which while may not be a thing i find joy in, i can understand is some sort of relief in this capitalist hellscape.

     

     ✌

  5. Posted

    i'm a big fan of listening to other things while playing games and while i strongly associate ska music with with N64 games, i think my strongest song association happened when i was playing the original Fallout. this was in 2010 and since i hadn't played any PC games from the 90's, i was going through a lot of them. i was also dating a girl who was really into Radiohead and had given me a mix of their stuff. whenever i hear 'Idioteque,' i still recall traversing deserts and mutant-filled hallways.

     

    speaking of traversing, the walking simulator talk had me thinking about whether genre and form names should be represnetative of what they are. for instance, someone who knows nothing about 'magical realism' would probably be able to discern what the genre is about, but someone who knows nothing about 'house music' probably couldn't tell you anything about it. 'metroidvania' has often been derided as a genre name, but i feel that it at least gives information to those who have a particular context with video games. to get at the point of the reader's letter tough, while i don't think organically created names are always good, i'm generally in favor of them and calling it a 'walking simulator' or 'secrets box' or 'software theater' (though i love those last two) still won't change the attitude of those deriding it (who i think was the target of the reader's concern).

     

    that said, calling a video game a 'secrets box' is very beautiful and evocative and i want it to be called that. i also like the idea of calling a Call of Duty 'software theater.'

  7. Posted

    not sure if this is the game that reader was looking for, but i'm almost positive that the Steve-recommended game Chris mentioned was Saira. the premise of the game is that you're a young woman looking for an explanation as to why every human has seem to have disappeared after you teleported to Mars. it's a 2D game in the style that's not quite a Metroid-like, but does have the same joy of exploring spaces.

     

    the dev- Nifflas- also made Knytt, which is a 2D platformer about a stranded alien looking for replacement parts for their ship. it feels like a more boiled down version of Saira, but it's one of my favorite games and is worth checking out if the reader enjoyed Saira.

     

  8. Posted

    I fucking hate Snapchat. I can't even figure out what the goddamn buttons do. There are ghosts everywhere somehow and some buttons are purple and others are red and what the fuck. And I don't even grasp the basic idea. Why do I want to send a Mission: Impossible this message will self-destruct? How is that convenient? When someone sends me something what if I want to keep looking at it?

     

    Don't see the appeal of Snapchat. I just don't get it.

    Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.

     

    snapchat was the app where i also tried it and realized i had crossed over into the sphere of old people.

     

    i think the appeal of it over vine was that for a while youngins sent nudes over the service because they believed it was deleted after viewing, but the media turned out to still save to your phone, just with .nomedia extension or something.

  10. Posted

    That's good, let's hope they don't make the same mistake again. I'm sure they will, it's such an obvious thing to charge for. Has any traditional console shooter released map packs for free? Or do they all wait until the community is dying in an attempt to bring people back?

     

    isn't Battlefront giving out free maps? i googled a bit and am still baffled at who is getting what on that game.

  11. Posted

    It might be fun to hitch a ride on a titan and repair them as I hold on. And I love spotting in Battlefield games.

    I would also enjoy an ability or piece of equipment that significantly boosts a pod of grunts.

    It would also be cool if you could set a trip-wire for Titans that just paralyzes their system for twice as long as an arc-grenade.

    How cool would it be to be able to hitch-up ziplines for use by your team?

    Yeah, there's a lot of potential support abilities.

     

    it'd be an interesting counter to the 'just kill bots' strategy if you were able to give them a temporary boost that made it so that they needed 2 bullets instead of just 1 to be killed. also, the ability to use ziplines would really open up the maps in some neat ways. seeing the sword in the trailer reminds me of super sentai shows and then wondering what co-op titans would look like.

     

    what i would really want is some taller levels. I loved how in the Rise map you could be wall running over Titans while they made their way through the narrow passages- what an incredible feeling that was.

  12. Posted

    i got a Nokia Lumia 635 for <$50 because i'm cheap and don't need my phone to do a lot. aside from basic phone functionality, i just use it for e-mail checking and web browsing, which it does great. coming from a Galaxy S3 i do miss some apps (specifically Google Keep and Maps) but i'm pretty happy otherwise.

  13. Posted

    Titanfall has a meat-grinder pacing where players typically find themselves in combat immediately after spawning and die often. 

     

    maybe i'm wrong, but i feel like the meat grinder moved at a slower pace than CoD, which really appealed to me (though my strategies rarely put me in contest w/ many other players, so that might contribute to my perception of this).

     

    asides from TF2, this is the only online FPS that i've ever played more than a handful of hours and that's almost entirely b/c of the movement mechanics. i also liked how going after bots meant that i could play almost solipsistically and still end up being a help in attrition.

     

    how would you guys feel about the game adding some Battlefield style support abilities/classes? i think i could def see myself playing a Titan engineer/hacker in this game and still having lots of fun. i almost always enjoyed playing on foot when the Titans were out b/c it really added to the sense of scale the levels had. if the game encouraged that in some way, that'd be a treat.

     

    edit: also, this thread title has me imagining Titans with mudflaps. get ready for that micro-transaction.

  15. Posted

    Defy the expectations of the geeks in the audience.

     

    finally saw ep. vii this past weekend and i felt like its strongest quality was the way in which it was informed and worked against the original trilogy (though i often found myself bored w/ what was going on).

     

    wonder how a different lead writer and director will affect all that though.

  17. Posted

    I've been playing my melodica at my job lately which is interesting and nice. Mostly what I do is play major and minor chords in variating keys and paying attention to how they share notes. So for instance, Cminor shares C and E flat with Gsharp major. I am having fun moving around the keyboard and mixing chords this way.

    Have you looked into the "circle of fifths"? I think it is related to modulation, but I'm not sure.

     

    i guess i'm specifically interested in how to use that stuff. conceptually, i understand what the different modes are, just not quite how to implement them in interesting ways when creating chord progressions or writing out melodies. i've messed a little with the IV-iv progression and using the sharp from a IVmaj7 and can hear how it adds a lot of flavor, but it always feels like an accident.

  18. Posted

    Do you guys know where I could get some good quality, very clearly marked WAV samples? By clearly marked I mean I need to know which notes they are, if they are only labeled with a number it gets too cumbersome. I'd love to have several instruments, but even a set of 88 piano samples would be appreciated.

     

    you're going to have to convert them into WAV, but you can get recordings of individual notes from Bb0 to C8 here:  http://theremin.music.uiowa.edu/MISpiano.html

  19. Posted

    does anyone have any good advice or pieces about changing tonality and/or using substitution chords? feel like that's the next thing i need to really get at in my composition skills. 

     

    on the engineering side, i still feel like i've no idea what i'm doing in regards to mixing, so anything on that would be appreciated as well.

     

    other than that. how's everyone doing? ya'll make any new pieces that you're excited about and want to share?

  22. Posted

    Yesterday I devoured the archive of Tuner, a podcast about pop music. Each week, the hosts take a pop song and break down the music theory behind what it's doing. They do a really great job of explaining stuff in laymen's terms and also staying aware of the fact that all the meaning behind any piece of music is ultimately contingent on culture, social status and history. It's a really fantastic show.

     

    great first ep! gonna subscribe.

  23. Posted · Edited by SgtWhistlebotom

    This synthesis of dance music and cyberpunk fetishism emerges perfectly in Burning Man: the Google engineers that methodically work to turn our world into a dystopian nightmare security state of total surveillance and drones are the same people that go out to the desert to lose their minds for a few days in a Dionysian spectacle wrapped up in some vaguely conceived of ideal about a post-commodity society.

     

    the talk about Hackers as a story of marginalized youths working against the system got me thinking about how a young tech wiz today is more likely to be envisioned as an entrepreneur who has assimilated into the system- the 20 year old who makes an app and then sells it for a billion dollars. the lingo around this stuff evokes transgressive ideas- the underdog startup, disruption, sharing economy- but are either just new words for old ideas and/or bolstering established hierarchies. how incredibly disappointing.

     

    simultaneously, the internet's promise of a broader world where you encounter more types of people has been fulfilled for me. i can point out specific tweets that have challenged my ideas of race, gender, economics and have pushed me to expand my feelings of empathy and kindness; the internet has definitively made me a better person. while that may not be as flashy as hacking a romantic message on an office building or getting arrested for messing with banks, it's a much more useful manifestation(?) of that implied transgressive-ness. (on a side note, the internet has also gotten me laid and paid. so there's that.)

     

    Edit: oh! also: great episode!

  25. Posted

    so apparently Fallout 4's season pass is going to be $50?

     

    anywho, i was going to wait for the GOTY edition and hope to pay $60 for everything, but not sure if that'll happen anytime soon (usually Bethesda has that version out around a year after initial release). that said, Newegg is essentially doing that deal right now for the PC version.

     

    so if you're one of the rare few like me that hasn't played this game yet, might be time to bite.