SecretAsianMan

I won't get into too much detail but I'm only senior because everyone else above me has retired. I don't have any more authority than I did before and in fact I have more work than ever. But maybe that will change now that a new company has taken over (something that literally happened last week). Enough about me, glad to see you're still kicking around. I do miss our convos about whatever happened to be on our minds at any given moment.

I feel like you are a parallel universe version of me and wonder if we are in fact two distinct people. I turned 40 last year and have also not interacted with social media (beyond window shopping) in years if not longer. My daughter will be 8 this summer and my son just turned 4. Lately I've been going back over things I'm supposed to know (and in a few cases be the expert on) to obtain a deeper and more nuanced understanding for my job. I'm now with my third company in the last 5 years even though my job and desk haven't changed in all that time. The only difference is now I'm the senior engineer.

It's funny, in the most cosmic of coincidences I actually came to relive some of our old interactions (specifically discussing Fate of Atlantis). I noticed that you had recently posted something and on a whim decided to see what it was only to find myself being called out. I was compelled to respond. I think you really did summon me out of the ether.

WHO HATH SUMMONED ME FROM MY SLUMBER?

The purpose of this thread is to post tutorials for GameMaker. It can be a tutorial you've made youself, or one you found somewhere else. Difficulty can range from stuff for beginners to advanced techniques.

Killing Floor 2 is coming to Steam Early Access on April 21. At that time it will come with •3 non-linear levels •4 perk classes •27 weapons •11 Zeds •7 playable characters, including a female character •1 boss character (not the Patriarch) •Mod SDK supporting custom level creation I'm not really into horror games, but I love cooperative stuff. One thing I loved about the first Killing Floor was that each class was very distinct and a large emphasis was placed on teamwork. KF2 looks to be more refined with less grinding. And as dumb as it is to say this, the gun animations really look amazing. The game has a bullet time mechanic called Zed Time that will sometimes activate when you get a headshot. In order to make the weapons look really good, they animated them at somewhere around 200 fps. When the slow-mo kicks in, you can actually see things like the barrel shake and individual parts move. It's a neat detail. Anyone else interested in the game?

Looks like Steve is making Bioshock 5: Moonshock But seriously, I'm excited! http://www.tacoma-game.com/

I've seen a lot of other complaints about Picard being slow. I don't entirely disagree, I was probably able to get through it because I binged the entire season so it felt more like one big long episode. The most jarring thing to me is the rather drastic changes to the personalities of everyone involved. Maybe it's because I haven't watched any of Discovery but the tone is so very different it's hard to feel comfortable saying it's still the same Jean-Luc. I'm willing to accept that people change over time but we're talking about a major shift of his core personality and some of the defining traits of the character. It's such a radical shift that it makes the resulting conflicts feel very manufactured.

After watching the premier of Picard, I did a rewatch of DS9 and Voyager. I increasingly appreciate DS9 the more I watch it but as a Trek show I still prefer others to it. I especially hate anything to do with the Prophets and the Pah Wraiths. That entire storyline goes nowhere and the resolution is almost completely inconsequential to anyone. My feelings on Voyager are about the same as they were before. Some serious character missteps but otherwise good sci-fi fun. Afterwards I saw that CBS was doing a month of their streaming service for free so I hopped on that and watched all of Picard. I've got some mixed feelings on it. On the one hand I enjoyed watching it and genuinely wanted to know what happened next after each episode. They kept things moving along without resorting to cliffhangers or surprise twists or a lot of other lazy gimmicks. The characters have a lot of nuance and some DEEP flaws which makes them far realer than the mostly pure paragons of humanity of previous Trek. On the other hand it's kind of disjointed. The actual plot is kind of hard to follow because of the way they tell it (lots of flashback type stuff). There's a lot of reliance on the previous shows, not so much that you'd get nothing out of it if this was your first Trek, but you'd be missing a TON. And not just fan service stuff, really important and sometimes vital plot info that isn't explained at all. And there's just a bunch of loose ends and open questions that don't really get addressed. Maybe in the future but at the end I had more questions than the beginning. Still, I did end up digging it, enough to be looking forward to a second season.

I watched a couple episodes of The World According to Jeff Goldblum. I can't watch anymore. It spends so much time saying absolutely nothing. One of the episodes is about video games. A portion of the episode is spent with a couple who do sound design for free to play mobile games. Another big chunk is spent with LARPers because all geeks are interchangeable I guess. If you really REALLY like Jeff Goldblum and want to see him Goldblum it up on random subjects without learning anything of substance or interest on the actual topic, then I guess this is the show for you. The only thing I learned while watching it was that I can only take Goldblum in small doses.

Has anyone watched Picard? The series premiere is currently free on YouTube. I watched it and I admit I'm a little intrigued, mostly at the way it both follows and abandons the Abrams films. I'm still hesitant to get a CBS account to watch the show but it has put me back in a Trek mood.

I've been feeling the stress a lot more than usual lately. On top of the normal horrors that exist in the current social/political landscape, my home life is in a state of flux right now. My daughter is 3.5 years old and she's entered her "NO" phase where she doesn't want to do anything but run around and scream her head off. That in itself isn't a huge issue, except for the fact that my son is due to be born in a month so we've been trying to get the house baby ready again. Not to mention this Wuhan virus is preventing my in-laws from coming over to help out like they did when my daughter was born. They're fine and not in any immediate danger but the travel restrictions mean they're going to be stuck in China for the foreseeable future. Life has such shitty timing.

I didn't catch most of it live and I'm slowly going through the archive as it's put up. The Fallout anthology run was pretty great, lots of entertaining bits and even some props. The Link to the Past crowd control run was about as crazy as I was expecting. Super Metroid impossible was really impressive. Rather than link to a bunch of videos I'm just going to do the playlist thing again. It should be editable if anyone wants to add to it. AGDQ 2020 playlist

Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 is coming up on Jan 5-12. AGDQ is a marathon gaming event where some of the best speedrunners in the world gather together to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation by beating games as fast as possible. Schedule Twitch Stream Donation page Donation tracker Official YouTube Channel

Quick reminder that the event has started

The event is still a number of months away but they released the games list and there's a few I wanted to highlight. There's some really interesting stuff this time around. A Destiny 2 raid. Will be interesting to see how this plays out live, especially if the game gets patched between now and the event. A Guitar Hero showcase Mega Man 4-6 relay race Zelda series relay race (I'm guessing Zelda 1, Zelda 2, and Link to the Past based on the platforms listed) Link to the Past Randomizer crowd control race. Crowd control with an audience the size of GDQ is going to be insane. Fallout series (Fallout 1, 2, 3, 4, and New Vegas) Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (2 players 1 controller)

Game idea: a city builder game where the city you're building is a giant mecha. It cuts between city management and mech combat, where your effectiveness in the combat part is directly related to how well you've managed your city. Damage taken during combat is repaired during city building and so are upgrades. Sim City meets Macross.

I just finished Photographs, a mobile game by EightyEight Games, the makers of 10000000 and You Must Build a Boat. Man I really loved this game. Without going into too much it's 5 little vignettes about rather tragic stories. Each story is told through scenes with some voiceover. In between each scene is a mini-game that varies from story to story. For example one is a match-3 game while another is a ball bouncing puzzle. They're all well suited to the story they tell and the mechanics even play a part in the storytelling itself. They add mechanics as they progress and the difficulty paces along pretty well. A couple of the stories are a bit weaker than the others but they're all interesting in their own way. There's also a dev commentary mode. I was super into this game, I just wish it was a bit longer.

Nice work! That's quite the accomplishment.

I didn't see the second one but I totally agree about the first one. I liked that movie quite a bit, above the Sam Raimi ones (even 2 which I feel is overrated). The thing that really endeared me was the scene where he stops the car thief. His quipping, sarcastic banter is exactly what I wanted out of Spider-Man. Tom Holland is doing a good job but there's something about Andrew Garfield's performance that I miss. I was also into Dennis Leary as Captain Stacey.

I think "unfair" is a weird way to describe it. If you wanted it to be "fair", then the complaint should start with Tom Holland's Spider-Man intro. This iteration completely skipped the origin and instead just assumes you know who he is and how he came to be. I've seen people complain about this but I've seen way more positive feedback on it because it cuts out a lot of slow and somewhat boring exposition and allows the story to move much faster. I don't think the expectation of background familiarity is unfair, especially considering that this plot thread has been going on for more than a decade now. Somewhat related, I think they've done a pretty clever thing in Peter and Tony's relationship here. Tony is essentially this version's Uncle Ben and Far From Home does a nice job of hammering in the "with great power comes great responsibility" lesson that's the cornerstone of Spider-Man. I was afraid that since they skipped that entire thing this Spider-Man would lack the same moral quandaries and convictions. Having Iron Man fill the Uncle Ben role lets them keep the spirit of the character without retreading familiar ground yet again.

I also recently learned that! It's a neat detail. My favorite bit from Into the Spider-Verse is when Miles and Peter are escaping after stealing the computer and Miles throws a bagel at one of their pursuers. As it hits the guy the comic sound effect that pops up says "BAGEL"

If anyone is still looking for good runs to watch, I highly recommend the Wii Punch-out Blindfold run. The runner, Zallard1, has previously done blindfolded runs of Mike Tyson's Punch-out and Super Punch-out at other GDQs. This Wii run completes the trifecta and is probably the most impressive one.

Watched a few movies on the plane to/from China recently Aquaman Better than I was expecting. Some really good action set pieces. The plot's kind of loose but good character portrayals for the most part. Hellboy David Harbor did a good job but everything else was lacking. The plot is all over the place, it lacks the whimsy of the Guillermo Del Toro films, and I really couldn't care about any of the characters. Captain Marvel It was fine. I don't have a lot to say that's not just diving into the MCU. Into the Spider-Verse Really enjoyable, though the art made my eyes hurt a couple times. Not that it's bad, it's just hard to focus on.

I also enjoyed Far From Home. I won't go into my usual rant of nitpicking a lot of the bits. One thing I do like in both this and Homecoming is their version of MJ. I like that she's a little strange and not the super hot most popular girl in the school she (and Gwen Stacey and Liz from Homecoming) have previously been portrayed as, but she's still an awkward teenager. One thing I did like about Mysterio was that his costume was a straight up mocap suit.