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Jake

Idle Thumbs 92: The Mind-Tech Contingency

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Idle Thumbs 92:

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The Mind-Tech Contingency

We come up for air from the fantastic SimCity beta to find ourselves in another place, lost in a world where firing a gun in a video game is a complex and specific act, an unfortunate world where there is cyberpunk crap everywhere. With special guest Steve "Hot Scoops" Gaynor.

Games Discussed: Receiver, SimCity, SimCity: The City Simulator, Escape from the Haunted Ship, Hundreds

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in case anyone was curious, I went to the trouble of figuring out how to grab an rss feed from a given youtube user (even though the new one isn't there yet for some reason? CONSPIRACY!):

http://gdata.youtube...haedrus/uploads

That's because the new one is unlisted, which hides it from public view. There used to be a bug that would show unlisted videos in the RSS feed, but I guess that's been fixed!

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That's because the new one is unlisted, which hides it from public view. There used to be a bug that would show unlisted videos in the RSS feed, but I guess that's been fixed!

No! My attempt to keep tabs on the phaedrus group's shady dealings has been thwarted.

I shall have to deploy HUMINT resources.

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I really resent this episode because it's making me doubt a decree I made a few days ago about how I'm not interested in supporting Electronic Arts and its Origin platform until they change their provisions about what constitutes being banned from the service. This was in response to some news about the EULA or TOS or whatever it is for SimCity specifying that if you don't report bugs in the beta you'll be banned from Origin rather than just the beta. The changes you guys were describing to SimCity are just too good. It's what I want. This is an awful predicament to be in.

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Reciever is pretty neat! It just feels really good once you've adjusted to the mechanics. When you pick up some bullets off the ground, and you can seamlessly remove the clip, holster the gun, load the ammo, and replace the clip without breaking stride, it kind of feels awesome. If only I was better at shooting at robots...

Podcasts have been really good at making me impulse buy cool games I've never heard of lately.

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Once again, the Netflix Axiom presents itself: any movie I hear about, no matter how old or new, obscure or popular, fine work of art or straight-to-DVD, Netflix is guaranteed to not have it available for streaming.

The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley McLaine, is not available for streaming.

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So I've got to be That Guy and point out that the theory of "This is a post-Zynga SimCity" is way off-base. The only reason I bring it up is because I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it's actually a slam on Maxis to suggest that the exchange of ideas between SimCity and Cityville or Farmville or whatever was anything other than one-way.

Just about everything in the new SimCity (except for the cool data layers as in-world infographics) is a direct descendent of SimCity 4 and the "Rush Hour" expansion. It feels to me like they took the concept art and prototypes from SC4, combined them with the amazing scripted effects system that Andrew Willmott & Ocean Quigley did towards the end of the project, and then waited ten years until they could actually make an entire real-time city simulation out of it. (And made Spore in the meantime).

That's actually a big part of what's got me excited about the game -- the effects system started out as a side project to add some visual flourishes, and over time it became more and more powerful, until they could go from idea to having it in game in a very short amount of time. It ended up being as powerful as the system I'd spent almost a year making, and it was a lot more extensible. To see that basic idea driving the entire simulation is awesome.

It means that exchange of stuff between regions can be simulated and doesn't have to be as faked. The bit in

where he starts a fire in his city and the fire trucks come in from the neighboring city is the best thing.

Plus it means the behavior of the simulation is modular, not just the buildings. That's what makes the Sims series so expandable. People all over the place are complaining (predictably) about greedy old EA forcing expansion packs on innocent victims, but I think that the prospect of being able to add entire new industries or new types of services to SimCity -- instead of just cosmetic changes like new building sets -- is amazing.

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Listening to the reactions on the mechanics of receiver reminds me of the first time I handled and operated a firearm at cadets (a single shot .22 target rifle). That realization that fundamentally, it's a piece of not particularly complex and surprisingly heavy (often verging on cumbersome) machinery that hasn't really changed since the invention of antibiotics and all the implications of that - lots of fiddly bits, moving parts, maintenance needs, ways to not work. It also points to something that often gets overlooked in legislation - guns are not especially complicated compared to things like engines and are well understood machines and that also means that a reasonably skilled machinist with access to publically available information can create one from a raw billet of metal given a bit of time and inclination. (At least two Canadian makers of AR-15s for the civlian market machine them from solid aluminum billets). All the hullabaloo over 3D printing gun parts ignores the fact that computer-controlled machine tools have had the same (actually more flexible) capability for years, only working in reverse by removing material from the raw metal instead of layering polymer to build up an item.

Incidentally the 1911 that you see in Receiver (and every WW2 shooter ever) is over a hundred years old now. Try finding any other designs of anything from 1911 still being made today.

PS. I suspect the name Receiver has a dual-meaning. The body of a gun (the section that either contains all the other parts or that the other parts like the barrel attach to) and which the RCMP and BATF consider to be the 'actual*' firearm is the receiver

*This is just like the frame of a car being considered to 'be' the vehicle because of the possibility of all other parts being removed or changed.

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About halfway through this week's cast. Found it humorous that you have to actually know how to spell "phaedrus" in order to visit this week's sponsor.

e: Asking here, is there no thread for Sim City: The City Simulator? I poked through the first 2-3 pages of games the other day when I wanted to have a nerd freakout with everyone and I couldn't find it.

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Plot thickens, Steve does a bad Ganon impersonation in this episode just to hide the fact that he is Ganon.

(solid proof from an earlier episode, repost for this special occasion)

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There was a run where Jake slipped in 4-5 quick little high-pitched "Yup"s while Chris was talking that had me in stitches. This episode had some top-tier silly back and forths but those yups take the cake.

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I can't tell you how excited I am for Sim City. So excited that I made two posts about it.

Re: effects multiplayer will have - that is EXACTLY what they're planning with the always-on multiplayer region play. Things you do in your city have an impact on other cities in the region, so if you want to be a Casino Lord crime boss, the other cities will benefit from their citizens being able to go be a tourist and play the slots, but also have to deal with the increased crime in the region.

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By the way, the voice actor for Dr. Kleiner, Harry Robins, has a local radio show called Ask Dr. Hal which I think plays on Radio Valencia Friday nights at 10:00. If you ever listen, he's a really weird dude. His show goes on for something like three and a half hours and it ends with an old-timey radio sign-off with the national anthem and everything. I happen to know about him because he's a major figure in The Church of the SubGenius.

his page on Radio Valencia

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