RoutineMachine

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by RoutineMachine

  2. Posted

    1. I think you're maybe taking my comment out of context. 2. I never said I had a low tolerance for frustration. 3. I don't think it is evident that is true at all.

     

    1. Yes, I think I was operating in a different context than you, I was primarily thinking about the Brothers discussion, I hadn't read your posts up to that point in the thread.

    2. Wasn't aiming the low frustration tolerance comment at you or anyone in particular.

    3. Temporary frustration is a part of a lot of games.  My thinking is that someone has video games as a hobby has by necessity bought in to the concept of occasionally being thwarted.  

  5. Posted

    That tree was a big deal for me. I love it when a developer isn't afraid to use their Mature rating early to convey just how serious a situation is, not with something necessarily violent or bloody, but just by showing the aftermath of some fucked up thing that happened. It's rarely done well, just look at 99% of Mature rated games. Obsidian did the same thing in Fall Out New Vegas:

    I think it was about 30 minutes in when I saw a whole lot of crucifixions.

     

    Another example is the film version of The Road:

    Pretty early on you see a basement full of human cattle. That's the setting of this movie, folks! If you weren't already engaged and taking this seriously you sure are now!

    Reminded me of waking up in a mega-mortuary in Planescape: Torment

  12. Posted

    In Dark Souls, there's a bit in the first level where you have to run across a bridge before a dragon breathes fire upon the bridge and kills everyone on it. I died on that bridge 10 times in a row... trying different timings and guzzling health items till I was out. Was never quite able to get across.

    It never occured to me that there was a sprint button...

  15. Posted

    The reason it doesn't make much sense is that electricity will only through an object if there is a voltage difference between the two points of contact. This is why birds can sit on power lines unaffected -- both of their feet are at the same voltage, so electricity does not flow through their body. Another way to say this is that there's far less resistance for the electricity to flow through the wire than through the bird. Of course, if a really long boa constrictor wound itself around a power line while still touching the ground, electricity would flow from the high voltage power line through the snake and into the ground, and it would die instantly.

    All this seems to indicate that if I were to jump into an electric puddle, then, since both my feet are at the same voltage, no electricity would flow through me and I'd be fine. Or, looking at it from another viewpoint, it's really easy for the electricity just to keep flowing in the puddle rather than through my body, from one leg to the other. Needless to say, I'm not about to test this in real life.

    The feet in the puddle is more similar to the boa constrictor example than to the bird example. With the bird, you have a tiny voltage difference between the point of the wire where the bird's left foot is touching, and the point in the wire where the right foot is touching. (different because the electricity is being transmitted in a sine wave, and one part of the leg is at a different point in the wave than the other)

    With the puddle, you have 110 volts(or 220 in some parts of the world) coming from the exposed wire and looking for ground by whatever means it can find. The puddle is basically a wire. And if your feet are wet and in the puddle, your feet are basically wires too, so electricity will travel up your leg a little ways until eventually your body's resistance stops it (This will hurt.)

    The difference between the two scenarios is difference (voltage difference).

  16. Posted

    Discussion ran very true, and was well timed for me, as just this last weekend I was teaching Dominion to my parents. Went right from 3 people learning the game cold, absent any context (I'd never played a deck-building game before) which resulted in frustration and everybody giving up on Saturday, to coming back with an expert (me after watching youtube tutorials.) and ending with balancing the desire to win with the desire to teach.

  18. Posted

    Yeah, after reading that book, Armstrong as a public figure is quite an oddity.

    After this crash, Neil Armstrong is in his office an hour later quietly doing paperwork. A coworker (who wasn't present for the crash, burst into his office. "Neil, you were in a crash? What happened?" Armstrong thought for a moment and said calmly "Yeah, I lost control and had to bail out of the thing." And that was all you heard about it from him. Years later, when interviewed for the biography, Armstrong remembers being somewhat depressed about losing the machine. And that's it.

    I also learned that Armstrong was teamed up with Buzz Aldrin because most of the other Astronauts found Buzz to be aggravating. And that when it became clear that Aldrin and Armstrong would have a chance to land on the Moon, Armstrong was chosen to have the first steps mostly so that needy, neurotic, addictive Aldrin would not have the historical focus.

  19. Posted

    Seemed topical, so I picked up First Man, the authorized biography of Neil Armstrong.

    Armstrong as a public figure was a bit of a cipher; certainly not motivated by fame or the desire to express himself. These are not usually the kinds of people that biographies are written about.

  22. Posted

    Got killed by a player for the first time yesterday. Was crawling up some stairs and suddenly realized he was right behind me. He didn't look bandity, and he didn't kill me right away. So I turned around to salute him. Unfortunately, turning around to face him meant I had my gun pointed at him, and he wasted me. I lost a lot, but I'm willing to chalk it up to a communication failure.

    I wonder how culture would have developed if tribal people with shitty communication skills had the ability to kill each other instantly at range.

  24. Posted

    I survived for 6 hours, visited 5 towns, and raided around 20 caches without finding a gun (lots of ammo though).

    After I finally died in that one, my next run through I find a shotgun in the loft of a barn in the town I started in. When getting down from the loft, I break my legs by hopping off an 8 foot platform. Frustrated, I shoot my shotgun into the air to summon the zombies to finish me off.

  25. Posted

    Oh, I know about him. I even read one of his books, saw the dragon speech. He is a lot of talk, and that's the comparison I draw with Blow. I generally agree with his take on game criticism.

    I am surprised he's no longer working on an interactive narrative engine. He seemed pretty set on that.