Jake

Idle Thumbs 29: Dreaming of Gillen

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Episodes!

"Dreaming of Gillen"

Sometimes the past is just as good as you remember it. Sometimes it's better. Nick turns back the clock ten years to explore the less traveled branching paths of adventure gaming, Jake is revamped and thrown back by Nintendo's latest offerings, and Chris? Chris dares to dream.

Games Discussed: The Last Express, Blade Runner, PiCTOBiTS, Punch-Out!!, Team Fortress 2, Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Nintendo DSi Sound

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Bonus sad-note: We won't be doing a cast next week due to two of us (Nick and Chris) being at E3, while one of us (me) stays home, with the recording equipment sitting unused in Chris' apartment.

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CrossOver (from CodeWeavers) is not virtualization. It's based on the "Wine" project, and what it actually does is implement the Windows API for Linux/Mac OSX. The WinAPI calls are simply redirected to equivalent API calls in the system. For example Direct3D is mapped to OpenGL.

Again a week without a podcast? :/

Will be get news blasts thingies?

Edited by elmuerte

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Following Nick's lead, I dug out my copy of Blade Runner last week and played it through. There's an awful lot that Westwood did right even though it does get a bit tiresome at times.

The multiple paths through the story and random changes are sweet. It felt pretty cool doing the VK testing and I loved using the Esper machines to analyse photographs. :tup:

Sounds like I really need to grab a copy of The Last Express. I've been meaning to play it for ages but I just never get around to it. :tdown:

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CrossOver (from CodeWeavers) is not virtualization. It's based on the "Wine" project, and what it actually does is implement the Windows API for Linux/Mac OSX. The WinAPI calls are simply redirected to equivalent API calls in the system. For example Direct3D is mapped to OpenGL.

Again a week without a podcast? :/

Will be get news blasts thingies?

Sorry, you're right about that. I couldn't remember which Windows-esque solutions were Wine based and which were visualization, took the gamble, and lost on CrossOver. I made a reference to some being virtualization and some using bottles, so does that count?

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Yes, it was very good. Also, I attained erection for The Last Express, with all the praise it got, and am working towards playing it now.

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I am one of those idling Team Fortress 2 douchebags.

The one key thing you forgot to mention about the unlocks is that you can and will get stuff you already got. So after playing for 4 hours the first night I finally got my 2nd set of boxing gloves. The next night I got my 2nd sandvich. Then I said some unkind things about Gabe Newell and found a server to sit afk on while I slept.

It would have taken me about 15 hours of actually playing until I finally got the new Sniper bow. Along the way I have gotten triples of 5 different items and I still don't have all the new stuff or any of the hats.

So you guys may have hated the grinding of achievements but how much do you like the idea that you will have to play casually for 2 months to get an item you don't have?

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I think there are very few people who would say that the TF2 unlock system isn't broken. I have a strong preference towards not tying them to achievements, but I don't think the 100% random drops are the right solution either. I don't want to have to grind achievements for unlocks, but I want them to be intelligent in some way. Having them just fall from space into my inventory completely at random, unaware of what I already have or even if I'm actually playing or just standing still, is not an exciting solution.

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Again a week without a podcast? :/

Will be get news blasts thingies?

Sounds like that's not an option unless by some miracle the Idle Thumbs UK crew shows up and smuggled in recording equipment.

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ps, I have to try Last Express now...

pps, from what game is that music?

Sounds like that's not an option unless by some miracle the Idle Thumbs UK crew shows up and smuggled in recording equipment.

Why not? you're not allowed to have recording equipment near E3?

ps, the link to your twitter account on your blog is wrong, it links to .con instead of .com

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I accidentally posted in last weeks thread, oops haha. heres what i meant to say in this thread

I REALLY want to buy Last Express as iv never played, been looking all morning on where I can find this in Australia buy cant find, any ideas?

I wish GOG had it :(

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I can confirm you did not wipe your collective ass with my ears this instalment (unlike last week). :tup:

However, seeing as Chris' microwave has now broken, I'm concerned as to how you're going to effectively reheat your cooled E3 scoops in a fortnight..? :shifty:

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I wish GOG had it :(

Have you emailed them and asked if they might be getting it?

Pretty sure that they've said in the past they like hearing from potential customers about old games and then look into sourcing them.

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Have you emailed them and asked if they might be getting it? Pretty sure they like hearing from potential customers about old games they'd like to buy.

good idea, thanks :) ill send em an email now

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They have a good system for that on the site :woohoo:

I'd love to play The Last Express as well given the massive Jordan Mechner erection Idle Thumbs has, most of the time their opinions align fairly well with my own.

Did anyone else get weird audio quality with this episode? Nick's voice was doing that horrible distortion thing for me.

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They have a good system for that on the site :woohoo:

I'd love to play The Last Express as well given the massive Jordan Mechner erection Idle Thumbs has, most of the time their opinions align fairly well with my own.

Did anyone else get weird audio quality with this episode? Nick's voice was doing that horrible distortion thing for me.

wow, thats a really good system, put a vote down for last express and sent them an email. :)

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It was a bit "blippy" in places, and Nick's level seemed to be a bit higher than everyone else.

...but it's a podcast. And it's free. And it's fucking great.

I'm extremely grateful for all these things and don't mind/care about the trivialities as long as a) I can hear everyone (which is never an issue), and B) you're not wiping your collective ass with my ears. :shifty:

I especially liked Jake's blippy music and fucking about on the DSi. Does that come as standard, whatever it was you were using to distort your voice, Mr Rodkin?

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wow, thats a really good system, put a vote down for last express and sent them an email. :)

Gah, I knew they had something like that but was too busy this morning to look. Sorry. :getmecoat

I notice Outcast is creeping in at the bottom of the Most Popular list at the moment, so I voted for that. I also searched for The Last Express and added a vote there, too!

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I remember there was a Blade Runner (the game) trailer before some Westwood game I had (probably Red Alert). That's my first memory of Blade Runner in general and possibly my first conscious encounter with it. I didn't really understand what it was, but was impressed by the visuals of the columns of flame and the giant screen displaying something about Coca-Cola, which are I think still two of the most striking images in the film (alongside the blimp with the advert screen on it). The stuff about randomly deciding plot elements sounds very interesting, though, and kind of reminds me of an idea that's probably ridiculous and stupid that's been floating around my head involving a game in which your actions would influence the fiction's history in pretty radical ways. I don't know what they'd be, but I like the idea of having a kind of reverse choose your own adventure, except you don't know what choices you're making. I don't know why I like the idea; it's more a conceptual thing than something that would actually be enjoyable.

I ALSO HAVE STUPID IDEAS FOR FILMS, which I guess we all probably do.

So you guys may have hated the grinding of achievements but how much do you like the idea that you will have to play casually for 2 months to get an item you don't have?

Surely they would have had to play a similar amount of time if not longer with the old system. Not that that makes this any better, of course.

With all these things there's a problem of conflicting interests, and it's something that comes up in all multiplayer reward systems. You want to reward the people who are really serious about the game and give them some sort of long term and difficult set of goals to keep the game going for them, but you also want to avoid making players who have paid just as much for the game feeling like they're missing out. You either have an unlock system that's so short that it might as well not be there, or you get people whining and gaming the system in order to power their way through to the prize they want. My friends and I quite like the idea of having functional rewards relatively easy to unlock (something like CoD4's system, or perhaps a little bit shorter), then having purely cosmetic achievements that go on and on near-indefinitely (I remember looking at some of the top Warhawk medals and wondering whether anyone would ever achieve them). I guess the Prestige system in CoD manages that pretty well, too. I like that Warhawk actually unlocked new skins, though.

Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this. I like the idea of being able to visually distinguish players who have excelled at a game (or at least put a lot of time into it), but I also want to be able to use all the weapons and so on before it gets to the point that I'm missing other games just to grind my way through the list.

I have no particular problem with the TF2 system. It's been around long enough now that the latter point in the previous paragraph doesn't really apply (people aren't just playing it because it's the new thing), and I've accepted that the serious players are basically playing a different game than me (being someone who has only properly played the game twice, and is only ever likely to drop in from time to time). I can see how it could annoy others, though.

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I ALSO HAVE STUPID IDEAS FOR FILMS

I would like to hear these.

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Gah, I knew they had something like that but was too busy this morning to look. Sorry. :getmecoat

I notice Outcast is creeping in at the bottom of the Most Popular list at the moment, so I voted for that. I also searched for The Last Express and added a vote there, too!

haha yeah i put a vote in for outcast and monkey island aswell

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I would like to hear these.

Today is not your lucky day.

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I especially liked Jake's blippy music and fucking about on the DSi. Does that come as standard, whatever it was you were using to distort your voice, Mr Rodkin?

Question not addressed to me, but I may as well answer it. Yeah, the voice distortion stuff is one of the pack-ins pre-installed on the DSi. You also get the photo distortion thing that they were advertising before the film last night when I went to see Star Trek.

The music was the stuff that he was talking about from PictoBits, the second-newest release on DSiWare. Got the game the second it was available, and it's amazing. The music is indeed a high point. I love that if you go into the sound test mode, start a song playing, and then close your DSi, the song keeps playing, even though the screens have gone to sleep. Basically, if you wanted to use the sound test mode as a portable music solution, with the DSi in your pocket, you can do that. Fantastic game, and highly recommended to anyone with a DSi. Gets hard as balls after a few levels, but still awesome.

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