CaptainFish

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Posts posted by CaptainFish

  1. Posted

    I hope you're feeling better after recovering from the norovirus, Nick.

    I'm also wondering if there's any substantial or noticeable difference between Canadian Wonder bread by Weston vs American Wonder by whoever bought it after Hostess went under. Maybe a comparison could be made when you're back stateside. I feel like I've heard tons of differences between food here and there, but I dunno how much of it is apocryphal.

  5. Posted

    I have to admit the Nick thing threw me off because I started listening more to how the words were delivered. At one point I thought Chris was putting on extra emphasis and wondered if he re-read those lines. It was a pretty good experience.

     

    Also, the premise of that wine question posed immortality, so the idea of Chris being buried and chiding others for opening his wine was slightly more disturbing in my mind.

  7. Posted

    8 hours ago, Urthman said:

     

    Isn't it against the Wikipedia guidelines to erase a documented, cited fact, one you can verify from IMDB and other places, based on nothing but an email read out loud on a podcast?  That's hardly a valid primary source.

    I considered this as well, it seems pretty hasty to revise this based on one e-mail to an oft-hoisted cast. But I guess if the source used to add the fact originally is verifiably false they can remove it.

  10. Posted

    I was figuring out what to get during the steam sale and randomly came across this and remembered that I really wanted to play it.

     

    I really enjoyed a lot of the game. Especially the light feeling of danger and tension in the first few chapters. The self-contained  single character stories were really great, and a good way to switch up the scale of the possibility space from the entire city to a few rooms. Also, the characters came across very strongly, especially the two agents. They really struck me when they were introduced. I found myself wishing there was more back and forth between them as you accomplish goals (and more notes for flavour). 

     

    Being able to split tasks across characters and locations felt extremely good, and I really enjoyed the puzzles that required teamwork. The traversal was very snappy as well. The only bit that bugged me was waiting for the elevator, but having it move around in real-time was impressive.


    As for the ending

    Spoiler

     

    having it go so far into "whoa this is a game whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" was disappointing. I was pretty much fine with the light fourth wall humour, although the meta stuff that was played straight added a really nice sense of weirdness to the game. When Ray says the body is becoming pixelated, without any explanation it worked well for me. But then they do pile it on quite a bit as the game proceeds.

     

    I do agree with Jake that the little journey through the wireframe art was nice though. It felt more cohesive and stylistic than I would've expected. It was more like the original versions of Space Quest 1 and early King's Quest games compared to their VGA remakes than an intermediary/early art pass. The wireframe PillowTron was especially good, great stuff. But I was really expecting the game was going to have the characters in conflict over their goals and I would've appreciated seeing those interactions more than the meta stuff.


    Also the basic conclusion was also disappointing in how it sort of painted Chuck as a misunderstood genius instead of a pretty vile person who was ruining the town and lives before he ever expected what was up.

     


     

     

  13. Posted

    Maybe it's the excellent football story (great recommendation, Jake) or the hubbub around the big boxing match, but all I could think about during that average person bit was turning on the TV to watch how sports changed only to see that they're such outliers in physical ability that virtually nothing changes. Although I guess my lack of interest in sports would maybe kill the industry as people stopped watching and attending in droves.

     

    Dota would get a lot bigger though.

  14. Posted

    5 hours ago, LyonArtime said:



     

    It's actually an open question whether or not it's paradoxical to "be the kind of person who will pick closed box, then don't do it." It depends on your understanding of how much people can manipulate their own intentional states over time, and is only possible in this case because there's a time lag between when the AI makes its decision and when you have to make yours.

    This is basically immediately where I went with the question. My interpretation is that if you're someone (person A) who will mitigate risk primarily, the AI will only put 1000 dollars in the boxes, whereas if you're someone (person C) who will go for the biggest payout, the robot will ensure that there is 1 001 000 dollars in the boxes. But then my mind went down the AI's yomi of "well this person has been very risk-seeking in moderate situations but this extreme situation would cause them to be more risk-averse, so I'll only put $1 000 in the room." Because the AI doesn't just want to predict how you normally act, it wants to predict how you'll act in that exact moment, which are different things.

     

     

    I actually really like Nick's almost zen-like response of "trust the robot will be right, and pick the closed box" even if there is a chance to fail, rather than trying to outplay the AI.

     

  18. Posted

    Yeah, I had pretty much the same reaction to the idea (presented in the question) that you could just scoop incredibly talented and often well-known artists on their greatest hits just from memory, that part of the premise didn't hold up*.  I think Nick was just running with the idea as presented, although the multi-Nick cast does make me want to see him try a full performance of Hey Ya.

     

    *Maybe the question poser is really talented, I dunno. 
     

  19. Posted

    I found it so fascinating that Nick chose Hey Ya as the song to make if you go back in time. Some time ago I discovered that despite the upbeat nature of that song, the verses are actually a sad reflection on difficulties of relationships and love in the guise of a bubbly frivolous pop song. It's weird because I knew some of the lines, but didn't feel the need to look up the lyrics for years, and it becomes clear once you do that. He even comments about how no one is paying attention quietly at the end of the second verse after singing stuff like: "If [] nothing is forever, [] what makes love the exception?" "Separate's always better when there's feelings involved," by singing "Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance."

     

     

     

    So I think Nick is totally correct in that you'd make Hey Ya, meaning make a song that musically is a fun dance hit, while hiding all your angst about being a time jumping three year old who doesn't know how to capitalize on his knowledge and find his soul mate. Just keep the fun bridge intact.





     

  22. Posted

    I was really bummed last night when I got a bonus of 100-something and despite getting a Steam achievement, the actual in-game reward was still just 100 gems, 1 charge, and 1 health. Owned. I guess I should figure out the exact number at which the combo maxes out, and break every combo there.

     

    Yeah, trying to get huge combos seems like it's not worth it. I'm not sure if the combo has any other effect though. For example, I thought maybe it increased the natural gem drops of enemies, but I definitely made way more gems by ending my combos early than I ever did doing long ones.

     

    It gives you the +1 Health bonus once you have a combo of 25, I think. 

    Edit: Beaten!

  23. Posted

    Thanks for reading my e-mail on the show! I'm still trying to beat Downwell, I've made it to the end a few times but haven't beaten it. Right now I'm trying this thing where I stop my combos at 8 hits to cash out with the gem bonus to try to get the most out of the stores.

     

    Another weird exercise I've been doing is trying to get through the first stage without triggering the music.

    It seems the music starts when you land on the ground or kill an enemy, so if you control your descent and bounce off of 'junk' you can try to get through.The furthest I've made it is like 3/4 through the level and I think it's literally impossible on some boards, but it's a nice warm up before playing for real or cool down to try after a long run.

  25. Posted

    I'm glad you guys talked about Downwell, I apprecaite hearing the Spelunky fanatic angle. I never got into Spelunky but I love Nuclear Throne, and this game feels a lot like that(obviously from a visual standpoint) but also from the the way I gravitate towards specific weapons and perks, rather than feeling like I have to grasp everything. There's also some Luftrausers in the use of wacky 3 colour schemes (Pastel and Vivid are particularly great! Grandma a close 3rd).

     

    The combo stuff is really cool, but I'm not sure how I feel about how it's presented. I wonder how many people play a little bit and bounce off before they figure out the fun of chaining a bunch of bounces, or before they get to try Levitate which really makes combos a lot easier to do. The Levitate perk only changing the physics of your character without changing any other balance makes me wonder if high level players would stop using it. World 3 does introduce a time-based mechanic, but I haven't gotten there enough to know if dropping faster would make that easier or tougher.


    As a weird aside, I play most of my 2d games on an arcade stick, as long as I can get the buttons to work out. It feels particularly great with Downwell, since it's uses 3 digital inputs. It also has a very arcade style presentation with a very narrow vertical field of play, reminiscent of a lot of early arcade vertical shooters. I might try that vertical monitor trick if I can figure out how to do it later.