SecretAsianMan

I meant the structure of the podcast is loose in comparison to most other podcasts that have "segments" or something of an order in which they talk about things. That's vaguely present in Idle Thumbs but much less pronounced, apart from reader mail being the finisher for most episodes. The internal consistency of Idle Thumbs has been pretty steady.

I am preparing to send my semi-annual big fat box of teeth rotting candy and snacks and I still don't have a regular item for Nick. Last time I sent baby pacifier candy (with a surprise bonus item that surprised me as well). Now I need a new idea. Any suggestions?

As one of those longtime hardcore listeners readers, I'll say that the loose structure of Idle Thumbs is one of the things that endears it to me. It feels more like a conversation among friends than a "show" which in a way makes me feel more included, as though I were sitting in the same room but not saying much. I enjoyed the expanding and rotating cast as it made things feel fresh but still maintained what I loved about the podcast. That said, I completely understand what Chris said. I look forward to hearing from Sean again. Maybe I can entice him with candy.

Firewatch isn't about the ending, it's about the path you took to get there. If you look back at this thread, you'll see that people see Henry and Delilah differently because of the interactions they had along the way. This colors their perception of the ending and what meaning they derive from it. I played the game a couple of times in different ways. In my first playthrough my Henry was devoted to Julia. In another he was resentful of his situation. Even though both encountered the same events, they were different people in my mind and had different stories. That is meaningful to me. In short, it's the journey not the destination.

Speaking of fast food automation, Dominos introduces autonomous delivery robots

I also don't like it for shooters or third person camera control. I tried it on a couple FPS games and I hated it, although that's probably because of my general preference for mouse+keyboard despite playing a significant amount of console shooters. I also tried it with Batman Arkham Knight but that just didn't feel right either. Granted that was right after I got the controller and I'm much more used to it now so maybe if I revisited that game it would feel better. But for almost every other game where I'd normally use a controller, I really like the Steam controller, especially now that you don't have to be in Big Picture mode for the settings to apply (although you still have to be in Big Picture to make the settings in the first place).

I have mixed feelings about Skyward Sword. I actually like Fi's design and think she's an interesting character. I particularly liked her behaving like an AI and the idea of having said AI inhabiting the Master Sword (although I was sad at the end when you seal her into an endless sleep). But on the flip side, she's SUPER annoying, possibly worse than Navi who I eventually learned to just tune out. Fi constantly pops up to tell you things you already know, something you can't avoid. I agree with Vader about there being some clever puzzles and combat (highlights for me are fighting Ghirahim and Koloktos who is probably my favorite Zelda boss). On the other hand there are the repeated fights with the Imprisoned which drove me nuts. Those were neither fun nor clever. In general, I think the brilliant parts are some of the best in any Zelda and the annoying parts some of the worst. It's fun enough that I occasionally want to replay it, until I remember the parts that I hate.

God I hope it's Amazon. I cannot wait to hear the sounds of my Amazon Prime packages buzzing down the street toward my house on the back of a Big Dog. That article also reminded me that Google's parent company changed its name to Alphabet Inc

Tacoma release pushed back to Spring 2017

That fourth game is exactly why I expected them to play all five games. Even though AlphaGo technically won the match after the third win, the real point here is to gather data and I think a human win provides a pretty valuable data point.

The Ace Attorney series is based on the Japanese legal system, which is not an adversarial system (where an impartial third party like a jury determines the verdict and the judge is usually an mediator) but an inquisitorial system (where the judge is an active participant in the investigation and determines the verdict). Think of it as the difference in style between a murder trial and contesting a parking ticket. Obviously you wouldn't convene a jury for a parking ticket, you'd just argue in front of a judge who then decides whether or not you have to pay. In Japan the format of a trial would be closer to the parking ticket than the murder. AA exaggerates this of course but its a significantly different system than what most of us are probably used to. At least that's how I understand it. I've never been in a Japanese court before (or an American one for that matter).

Earlier this week the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a ruling made by the Alabama Supreme Court regarding the adoption rights of a LGBT couple. The couple, identified only by their initials EL and VL, were originally both granted parental rights by the state of Georgia to the three children birthed by EL. The couple later separated and VL moved to Alabama where she sought visitation rights to her children. The Alabama court ruled that Georgia should not have granted VL parental rights because she was not biologically related to them. In a unanimous decision, SCOTUS overturned the ruling saying "A state may not disregard the judgment of a sister state because it disagrees with the reasoning underlying the judgment or deems it to be wrong on the merits". While I wish something more supportive of LGBT rights had been said rather than "you can't just disagree like that", I'm still glad they overturned that shit.

I was actually more optimistic about Lionhead after Molyneux left because while I think he's interesting with great ideas, he so often promises more than he can deliver. I was hoping that some more tempered realism might make their games better.

I started it but haven't finished so I don't have an opinion yet but you can change the audio track. There are multiple languages, including Chinese for both the spoken dialog and the subtitles.

Your point about friction making runs interesting is absolutely true. While runners like to complain about things like platform cycles or movement patterns, in truth those are some of the things that distinguish speedrunning. The difference between a world record in a game might come down to executing a route perfectly in order to make a platform cycle. If the cycles were designed to always be there, then the run is much less interesting because it takes minimal effort. Part of what's amazing about watching high level speedrunning is not just the amount of knowledge the runners have of the game but the skill with which they can utilize such knowledge. Speedrunners enjoy rising to meet and exceed the challenge presented to them by the game. I don't think many want the game to come down in order to accommodate them.

While talking about Superhot, Nick mentioned speedrunning the game and how he thought the community might react to it with stuff like unskippable segments and being forced to quit the game to advance. I can say that those things are more common than he might realize and the speedrunning community tends to take them in stride. There are a lot of games with unskippable cutscenes that are commonly speedrun. Some runners actually like this because it gives them short breaks during what is otherwise a fast paced activity. And of course there's the work put into the routes to get around the cutscenes entirely if they can. With regards to quitting the game, this is also not uncommon. Some routes for games incorporate doing exactly that on purpose (two I can think of off the top of my head are Ori and the Blind Forest and Minecraft). I can see why these things would bother Nick on subsequent playthroughs but in the speedrunning community it's par for the course.

Count me as one who agrees with Sclpls, except for calling the design a failure. I think the design was fine and executed exactly as they intended, it just wasn't one I particularly enjoyed. I knew going into the game that I would probably end up liking Bastion more because it fits my playstyle better (and I was right) but I can definitely see what about Transistor appeals to people like you. I'm just bummed I wasn't one of them. I did love everything else about the game though, Supergiant has such great art and sound that I will always enjoy their games on some level.

Yeah, all I knew was that I had it in my inventory right away. I'm level 35 with everything unlocked and maxed and close to 300 research points, so if there was an unlocking criteria I figured I automatically hit it. My understanding is the update is to celebrate the one year release of the game (on PS4 presumably). I tried it out a few times on some difficulty 7 and 12 cyborg dives. I feel like the Trident overheats too quickly, or maybe it doesn't cool down enough. Without the penetrating power and rate of fire of the Breaker it's not quite as good at taking out groups, though still fairly effective. Range and accuracy are what you'd expect from a shotgun style weapon, namely not great. And of course since it's a laser weapon ammo usage is a nonissue if you're careful. Personally I still prefer the Sickle. I can the Trident being useful in retaliatory strike missions where things are more close quarters but outside of that I'm probably sticking with long range over short.

There was an update to the game today. It added some cosmetic stuff and a new weapon, the LAS-13 Trident. It's a laser shotgun, similar to the Breaker. It follows the rules of the other laser weapons but it shoots out multiple beams with a spread. It's fairly strong as you'd expect but it overheats quickly and doesn't cool down as fast as the Sickle so you can't feather the trigger as much. It also costs quite a bit of research to upgrade, 16 total. It's free, though I'm not sure if it has any unlock requirements like level.

The purpose of this thread is to post tutorials for Unity. 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.

Thanks everyone

So I've got some news that's going to be a surprise to... well probably everyone here. I've been married for about 3 years now and today we had an ultrasound and I've learned that in a few months I'm going to have a little baby girl. This will be my first kid and I have to say I'm pretty excited. Also scared and nervous and all those other things I'm sure most people are when they're about to be a parent for the first time. It likely means I'll be around less in the coming months/years. Before that happens I'd like to get sappy for a minute and say that this forum and it's community have been one of the most positive things in my life for the past couple years. I've made some good friends and had some good times. I can't wait to introduce the next generation to it. Hopefully some of you will still be around when that happens.

Shaka, when the walls fell.1 The river Temarc in winter.2 Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra shirt.3 Temba his arms wide.4 I am the biggest nerd. Also the shirt lists Earth and San Francisco as two separate locations. 1Stop, you guys are doing this wrong. 2Listen to me. This is how you should be saying it. 3That Darmok and Jalad shirt 4Give it to me

Lately I've been considering resetting my progress and starting over. I'm lvl 33 right now and I really don't have much interest in making it all the way to 50, but I greatly enjoy starting games I've completed over and doing them again knowing what's coming. While it's not quite the same here, I'd be able to streamline my progression this time since I already know what works where.

On the topic of Goldeneye 64 and movement, one of my favorite things about the game is the built in co-op mode. There are a couple of controller schemes you can select that enable two controllers to be used. Both can do actions and select weapons, but one controller will control movement and turning on the targeting reticle while the other will control looking and shooting. I used to play this mode alone with one controller in each hand which was a very interesting experience before the modern dual stick shooter scheme was created. Here's a speedrun from AGDQ 2014 that demonstrates the control scheme ( )