Idle Thumbs 213: Build the Nublar

[your name here]

Yeah. When you click on server browser, and then join "Jim's cool server" and there's a bunch of custom server crap, it's something that you can understand. When you click on "play game", and get auto joined to Jim's server, it's a much more confusing experience.

 

Though, on the other hand, in terms of appealing to people who have never played an online shooter before, maybe it is better to have a mode that doesn't require you to learn what a server browser is. Ideally, it would work like L4D, where auto-matching connects you to an unmodified server by default. In the end, it doesn't really matter either way. TF2 is so dense at this point that any new player on-boarding they have is woefully inadequate and you basically need to already be familiar with online shooters with progression systems to even stand a chance.

[Coods]

I'm glad by nature of the joke, the "ever wish you could rewind time" joke is probably the oldest idle thumbs joke still in frequent rotation. It still gets me, embarrassingly.

[Cleinhun]

I basically only ever play tf2 on valve run servers anymore, since any other server is extremely likely to contain either crazy server mods or be populated mostly by players who are taking the game way more seriously than I do.

[gavku]

I'm aware of that! I find it much less confusing and much more transparent than what seems to be their new-player-onboarding "just play" path.

OK! I obviously misinterpreted what you were getting at. I don't think I've ever clicked on play game and just assumed it was similar to LFD etc. Can see how a new player would be pretty thrown being dumped into a surf or random melee map.

 

Hoping that the announced matchmaking pumps a bit of life back into the game.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm aware of that! I find it much less confusing and much more transparent than what seems to be their new-player-onboarding "just play" path.

The just play path is actually incredibly simple if you click the tick box for official servers only, because then you can only get vanilla servers with none of the custom crap. Also usually less experienced players go there so it can be more fun and casual.

[Problem Machine]

I liked The Spirits Within alright and thought Advent Children was wretched. Oh well!

 

Also I think when I was a kid I was convinced that ninjas walked slowly sideways with their hand on a sword behind their back because that's what they did in the Ninja Gaiden arcade game.

[natellite]

This is the only thing I know about this game:

 

tumblr_mljak9MxXl1qbw0i1o1_500.jpg

 

Oh, Mr Goldblum! I'm a married woman!

[Twig]

Ideally, it would work like L4D, where auto-matching connects you to an unmodified server by default.

...I thought it did work like that?

 

I've played using that server finder thing pretty much exclusively ever since the old GAF server finally died, and I've never run into any wacky servers.

[Salacious Snake]

 

Also, a few years before that, I made a GURPS module for Star Trek: Voyager by myself and never shared it with anyone. Since I'd made it using photocopied pages of the core GURPS rulebook, I doubt it was very good at all, but it took me almost half a year to finish and I was extremely proud of it, because I thought it was something no one else could or would do. Star Trek's really niche, right? It only occurs to me now to check online and... yep! Ah well.

This is a weird tangent, but that product is something far stranger than you may imagine. Prime Directive takes place in the "Star Fleet Universe," which is the setting of Star Fleet Battles. It's based on a tangled licensing agreement that gives the publisher the use of only certain elements of Star Trek, including data from Franz Joseph's technical manuals and the various races of the Animated Series. 

 

It was introduced before the films appeared, and can't incorporate anything from beyond the cartoon, but it's developed in its own in different directions. There are Federation Heavy Cruisers that look an awful lot like the Enterprise, but there is no Captain Kirk, because the characters aren't included in the license. The Klingons are based out of a planet called Klinzhai, because that's what some novel or other thing had said, and Qo'noS wasn't established until later. It's lousy with cat people.

 

It's also a hyper-militaristic setting where everyone is always at war. I guess that makes sense for a wargame, but it also dovetails with the creator's openly hyper-conservative bent. You may already know about all this, but I'm sure someone will find this dark, freaky corner of nerd shit interesting. (info from the publisher http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/about_universe.shtml'>here.)

 

(GURPS PD is a good starting point for a homebrew Trek campaign, though.) 

 

Oh! To make this post relate to video games, the Starfleet Command series was based on Star Fleet Battles, and the first few products even took place in that weird setting.

 

And finally, I'm going to round this meandering post out with some pilfered images.

 

This does look like fun to me:

 

 

I wish it were easier to get SFC running on a current computer.

 

[Nick Breckon]

 I'm sure you've had a million people ask this. but has @nickbreckon played Jurassic Park Builder?

 

After playing it for 30 seconds, it seems like I accurately described it on the podcast without knowing it exists.

[Gormongous]

I wish it were easier to get SFC running on a current computer.

 

Me too! It's such a dense, rewarding game that I've beaten dozens of times, even though my favorite faction, the Federation, has the worst campaign storyline by far. Thanks for the history lesson!

[namman siggins]

Here's the origami robot Nick was talking about

 

[feelthedarkness]

Fun as always, though when you guys were talking about how Life is Strange seemed out of time, I kept thinking how "90s kid" is a thing people do now, and how the game could be doing that (though it's easy to bet against).

 

One of the weird things about modern, now life is how seamlessly nostalgia has been integrated into current milieu. There are a lot of flavors of 90s revivalist stuff, though I'm mostly familiar with music.

 

The one I find particularly baffling is semi recent emergence of the London record label, now genre of dance music known as PC Music (https://soundcloud.com/pcmus) (http://releases.pcmusic.info/). (Did you miss Orchestra Hit? It's back!) Which has brought the return of brutal early Photoshop filters, and cheesy stock art, as retro pastiche, but it's not seemingly far enough away for me to register as actually old.

[Patrick R]

I remember that Xbox tech demo! Or at least, I remember thinking the screenshots in EGM were rad.

[tegan]

Chris, the robot you controlled wouldn't have been the Kuratas, which has multiple onboard Kinects for tracking pilots and targets, would it?

 

[Valorian Endymion]

I think a lot of people soon as they got their first contact with a rpg or boardgame might start have ideas and desire to create their own games (specially in the early days of rpg where there wasn´t much around) it´s followed side by side with desire to create it´s own campaign background (because drawing fantasy maps is really fun). For me, I do remember once trying to come up with my own war (the boardgame) rules, which I kind remember trying to have rules for things like diseases in your troops, that slight before I do even know rpg. Later one, once I did know rpg, I too tried around creating my own rule set, but what I did most was creating lots of extra rules for system which I played (including a system for battle between armies and a lot of rules for a anime themed campaign) and drawing fantasy maps and planning campaign backgrounds (I did kept the maps and some annotations).

[agorman]

Here's the origami robot Nick was talking about

 

Man that thing just fucking plows through that pile of cubes.

[Professor Video Games]

Man that thing just fucking plows through that pile of cubes.

 

In the classified version that bit is replaced by a "boring through human flesh" demo. Watch as it dissolves in human blood, leaving no evidence behind!

[Caspar Neickel]

Enjoyed this week's version of Robot News. 

 

Has anyone made a master cut of all the Robot News segments from all podcasts? That would be amazing. 

[Zeusthecat]

One thing that's been disappointing me a bit lately about the cast is that Danielle keeps randomly dropping all of these wonderful references to things and they seem to go completely unnoticed by everyone else. I can't remember if it was this episode or the last one but how the hell is a great Home Alone reference not immediately recognizable by every human being in the 30ish age range?

 

Danielle, please keep doing the lord's work.

[Chris]

One thing that's been disappointing me a bit lately about the cast is that Danielle keeps randomly dropping all of these wonderful references to things and they seem to go completely unnoticed by everyone else. I can't remember if it was this episode or the last one but how the hell is a great Home Alone reference not immediately recognizable by every human being in the 30ish age range?

 

Danielle, please keep doing the lord's work.

I don't think I've seen that movie since I was a kid, and even after looking up the video I just don't remember anything about that scene. Sorry!!

[natellite]

Danielle, you totally aren't the only person who never played an MMO before - Patrick Klepek hasn't either. Y'all should do a series. 

[syntheticgerbil]

One thing that's been disappointing me a bit lately about the cast is that Danielle keeps randomly dropping all of these wonderful references to things and they seem to go completely unnoticed by everyone else. I can't remember if it was this episode or the last one but how the hell is a great Home Alone reference not immediately recognizable by every human being in the 30ish age range?

 

Danielle, please keep doing the lord's work.

Haha, yeah and there was that sly My Girl reference recently as well.

 

Although, despite wishing I was Kevin McAllister for a tiny sliver of my childhood, I did not get that everyone saying "woof!" over everything was a Home Alone reference either. I guess it doesn't matter now since every podcast on the planet has moved past woofing responses, except for fucking Ira Glass.

[Jake]

I heard the home alone reference and respected it in my brain but I think it was so potent that it blocked any possible vocalization from happening.

I doubt Ira Glass is saying "woof" as a callback to Buzz's girlfriend.

[Argobot]