Presence

Who Framed Roger Rabbit definitely belongs on a lot of must see lists, and for multiple reasons. It's that rarest kind of film where one can say with authority that it's the best of its kind and it will remain the best forever. Admittedly its main competition is, what, Cool World and Space Jam? Even if the (partly true) story isn't your cup of tea, the technical accomplishment is pretty epic. It's relevant to more modern film-making too. If you want to talk about the cg heavy Star Wars prequels causing the acting to suck you kind of have to think about Roger Rabbit. Same exact kind of acting challenges, but here's a 1980's film where they overcame them with everything from good practical effects to Bob Hoskins taking lessons on how to focus his gaze on thin air. As a bonus it was a period piece to begin with, so it's unlikely to ever become too dated looking.

That was very good for a first attempt. If it had a flaw it was that I had trouble splitting my focus between two different information streams. As to the question of how Ross can deal with the chat torrent, I think there are three main solutions. First is is some kind of split feed. One for chat, the other for questions. I think both should be publicly visible to reduce duplicated questions. This could work, but might cause more frivolous questions. "If you were a fruit, what kind would you be? " Second is keep it as is, and record common answers in a faq/wiki/whatevah. This would require the least work and might be fine, since after the first couple streams things will probably calm down and it'll become moot. Third idea was presending the questions. That would let Ross partially script his answers, which is exactly why I'm ambivalent about the idea. Politicians do that kind of predictive scripting all the time, and it can suck the life out of a response in my opinion. But it might save time, and time is precious for Ross right now.

I loved what Ryzom tried to do, where there were no classes or respecs and you just got good at the skills you used, and basically all gear was player crafted except the tools for harvesting the base level resources. Pity the game was/is bog standard. I might fiddle with it again just to check out the lore. Did anyone here ever play Atitd?

Nice meaty review, just exactly the perfect amount of content.

Looks fine on my phone, ironically.

And the big bad wolf said "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope."

Stating up front I haven't played The Bridge, it looks like a kamishibai or paperdoll style game. You are quite right that it's an inexpensive alternative to pixel art, but I'm going to claim that pixel art is usually superior for three reasons. First, it's easier to learn to make good pixel art than it is to draw well. Second, most forms of doll animation have a jointed look that is grotesque looking. Third, it's been my observation that sprite and pixel art is superior when it comes to supporting visual effects. Lighting, bloom, playing with the colors, transparencies, there's just something more forgiving about the pixel medium when it comes to those things. Imagine, say, a dungeon torch in each style. I think you'll notice that a most paperdoll games have a limited range of colors, look washed out, or are pure black and white. Off the cuff I can name Ballpoint Universe, The Bridge, Don't Starve, and Our Darker Purpose as examples of limited color in 'drawn' games. I'd like a more educated opinion on that actually. I'm pretty sure I'm right though.

Braid is a terrible example, it had like a 200k budget.

At first I didn't think I had any screenshots that said anything about me as a gamer, but it turns out I've snapped a few shots over the years from a wide variety of games. I had trouble choosing just three. I figured I'd go with one retail game, one indie game, and one classic game. This is a screenshot from the free indie game "The Cleaner" where you play a flying wizard who has to fight off some kind of dimensional incursion. The plot is kind of ambiguous since I think the only cutscene with expository text is the intro. If you've played Morrowind, I don't even need to explain what's going on here for you. I used no hacks or anything to spawn that many cliffracers. This is like one single loop around the mountain's worth of the bastards. Pitfall II just before doing one of the main game objectives. Not an interesting shot I guess, but it was one of my favorite 2600 games.

Your editing was exemplary in this episode. You also beat me to the punch, I was going to post a message comparing the timed emails to the Deus Ex hacking. I wouldn't consider giving yourself enough experience for max hacking to even be a cheat in that game.

It was a nice touch that the episode was actually able to reflow to tallscreen.

Excellent episode. Bit short since the game was decent. This episode made me think of the music I encountered in a z0r.de loop three days ago. Don't go to z0r.de with your volume tuned up, you'll blow your ears out.

Ross, do you have any use for game keys? I've hesitated to ask in the past since I don't know if that kind of thing is of any value to you and you've never really talked about it one way or the other. In case you've been on mars, what happens is people who buy a lot of bundles (pretty much the only smart way to get indie games these days) wind up with a lot of repeat keys. Some trade them, some give them to friends. I've got tons, especially for services I don't use, like desura and gog. I imagine many of your other fans do as well. The main drawback is it can be a little time consuming separating the shovelware from the genuinely good stuff.

I looked through the games on the OSP website. Surprisingly full descriptions of the games and on the screenshots, all things considered.

That wasn't bad, about the appropriate length for weaker game(s). Personally if a game isn't a solid one I'd like one or two more jokes/bloopers/cuts to something funny, and maybe a little more about what inspired you to examine said game. It's very cool that you're doing videos on games no one else has. That flicker was pretty weird. I know what can cause flicker in Atari 2600 sprites, but this was all PC based.

Although I think it's very wise to refuse Father's offer, I kind of dislike this jumping down his throat. Ross asked for ideas in the blog post. To most of us it's obvious he didn't mean out of the blue financial planning offers, but still. The kind thing to do with weird offers is start with a polite "Thanks, but no thanks." Maybe Ross has had a problem with windfall vultures in the past that make people feel angry about strange offers, I dunno.

It would appear you're right, although the brand was degraded and disbanded just like everything else HP touches. So, I guess I'll claim they are the oldest and most elegant surviving brand?

Why doesn't anyone remember Falcon Northwest? They were the first and are still the most elegant.

You can like or dislike Patreon, but this hack business would be a very foolish thing to hold against them in particular. So many huge companies have experienced data breaches that you should flat out expect that EVERY company you deal with online will leak all your data. Data breaches are the rule, not the exception, and that's just based on the stuff we know about because it was found and publicized.

I think it's a two step process. In the current version of their website, you go to your profile (the gear), look for "Preapproved payments", find Ross Scott's link, and cancel your existing payment. In the old version of their website, it's in your profile, "My Money" -> preapproved payments. Then you set up a new donation on this site for your new amount.

I'd like some more information about Paypal monthly donations. Your chart was very helpful to me, but do you experience higher fees if I use an amex credit card vs a visa card vs a bank account? I've avoided having a bank account tied to them, because if I want to use my 2% back on everything credit card, they give me multiple pester popups about using the bank account instead on every single purchase forever. Obviously I don't want you to soak 20% higher transaction fees though. Also, if you're gonna use Andrew Sega's music, I hope you'll be doing In Pursuit of Greed or Crusader or at least talk about tracker software.

I watched a documentary about Dota 2, and it convinced me that: 1. eSports are definitely real professional sports. 2. Everyone involved in professional sports is nasty and I don't like them. 3. Maybe it was wrong of me to think baseball is stupid?

That was fantastic. Shorter than I like, but fantastic.

I admire you for trying new things, and I was sorry to find myself voting "no". I tried to allow for it being a very different vibe from your usual videos, but I kept coming back to my not really having gotten anything from it. No history, laughs, or story for me to get into. That's never happened before. I mean, you made a textureless racing game fascinating to me. I hate to be discouraging, so I'll say that if you went script heavy with around 1/5 of the video being devoted to some backstory about your character I'd definitely give it an enthusiastic second chance.

I liked that you put in ambient sound whenever it cut to you. Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer you cut any instances of you being frustrated to the point of skipping stuff. The video as a whole might have been improved if you developed your character more and your guest(s?) also had some oddball backstory that you'd make up during the slow parts. "I wonder what aliens might think of our old TV shows." "You ever see that Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man'?" "Stuff like that could only give aliens bad ideas." "I always kinda wondered what recipes might be in that book." "Hey, what kind of default access codes do they use on moon capsules like yours?" "Do you have any marjoram?" "Sorry, I was just looking up the service manual for lunar access hatches."