Presence

Man, simulated surround audio touches on even more of my rage than I'd thought. At first I was just angry because of how companies mislead consumers with headphone specifications. Then I was trying to remember the first time I heard of a card that processed sound like that, guess what, it would have been an Aureal card. It was over this exact thing that Creative ruined them with lawsuit costs. Then they bought the patents and sat on them. Fuck you, Creative labs!

I hear this one all the time and it baffles me. I wonder if people are making this one up. I wear glasses and can't read this text without them, and I watch 3d films with great enjoyment. You got like half inch thick revenge of the nerds frames or something?

NASA could have powered a space shuttle launch with all the whinging that began when Avatar was released. "It's so blurry and makes all my pirate friends feel sooooo excluded!!! :( :(" In movies, cg tends to work well in 3d since it's easy to process them with a high level of clarity. I make it a point to always go to the theater and watch any animated films in 3d. I've never regretted it. I remember Kung Fu Panda 2 having some very nice scenery porn. It's probably the only thing Dreamworks tends to outperform Pixar in. I guess that doesn't do anything for your complaint, which sounds like you are angry about a lack of ambition. I guess I have the opposite of your opinion; I find things flying in my face to be a childish use of the tech. All I want is some depth to the scenery, particularly to enhance the feeling of movement given by camera motion. How about a rant on the audio equivalent of 3d? I could probably manage a sixty minute rant on my experiences with headphones and simulated surround just from memory.

If you're holding off Patreon because you don't want to surprise people about new kinds of content, just launch now and provide an explanation that you'll be doing new kinds of things in an announcement video.

That's a damn shame about Activision. I know that companies don't deserve nostalgia, but they did such tremendous good in their early years.

This episode features some fantastic work and commentary. I was looking forward to it and you did even better than I'd expected. I had a problem with the pacing however. You'd go from something that fascinated me to something that made me upset about the industry, and the mood shifts made it hard to stay immersed in the video.

Experiment with putting up your patreon account!

You can save in combat, the results vary. 99% of game rngs will use the clock to grab a new seed every second since it's easy and good enough. I fired up a new game on hardest difficulty. Gifted+fast shot, so not even getting any special accuracy bonuses. I'm not miserable so far, except that Ian keeps shooting me in the back.

Fallout has many very real flaws, but your difficulty with the gambler's fallacy isn't one of them. It was praised for being an early game where dozens of different character builds could complete the win in a satisfying way, from gunner to conversationalist to using pickpocket on an npc not to steal, but to put live dynamite in his trousers. Maybe I should say that if probability in Fallout has a flaw it is one of presentation. They don't rig the dice to have memory, and that can be frustrating, and that can make people dislike a game pretty darn quickly. It's a very real convention in modern games to make events seem more random by making them less random. Developers write actual advice columns on the best way to make probability act exactly like you think it should. First time I heard about it was the Kol adventure queue, but it's been going on for a long time now. Do yourself a favor though, don't ever gamble with real money. Expecting casino dice to work like they do in modern games is a high risk personality trait.

I played Fallout when it was new and remember thinking it was pretty ok, so it's not nostalgia in my case. I don't remember it being that difficult to be honest, and I think I took like "skilled" and "bloody mess" which is close to the worst trait selection. If memory serves, something like a base 7 pe, 7 agi, 7 int, 6 lck, "one hander" + "Action boy" + focus on small guns and you have a customizable combat build that works well from start to finish. (In 1 and 2.) Maybe not "Minigun the final boss to death in 1 round" level of minmax, but solid. One hander and a readily available pistol just by themselves give like +40% to hit. I have Fallout in my library....hmmm.....

That's kind of a brilliant question since hating a game is at odds with bothering to finish it. There've been plenty that made me foam at the mouth, but frustrating isn't the same as bad and they usually had some spark that kept me going. If I'm allowed to fudge a little, I almost beat Wizards and Warriors 3, and had a nearly foolproof strategy to abuse the game engine and kill the last boss, but I chose the 'bad' last dialogue choice and that caused him to instakill me. That was an awful game with basically no redeeming qualities. Stupid power ups, ugly graphics, worse than the previous games, terrible level design, and the worst ending of all the nes games I've ever played. Closest thing to a compliment I can pay it is that they at least put the effort in to animate the story cinematics. Games I've truly beaten...I dunno. I could name games that were simply tedious, like Mutant Mudds Deluxe, but that's no fun. A part of me wants to say Aquaria because of how empty it was beyond the atmosphere, but I truly admire what they tried to do and don't want to bash it just because they shot for the moon and missed. That's really a great question, makes me want to catalog all the games I've ever played with at least a few thoughts on them. Edit: Zombie revenge on the dreamcast is probably my answer. Trivially easy, incredibly short, no comprehensible plot.

That was a really good episode.

What? It's a hack and kind of kludgy, but it's not THAT kludgy. I know I didn't post any kind of walkthrough, but the whole point of my theory was to find something easy for all parties that is free and doesn't require much networking experience. 1. Steam is free, available on all major platforms, and supports streaming of basically any application via "Add non-steam game to steam". It's easy to use and most gamers will have steam or won't mind installing it. Steam is trustworthy. You DO want to create a dummy account for both parties to use since this method requires both users be logged into the same account at once. Both computers will need to be validated during the first login. The client party needs to start the game with the stream option, but that's about it for starting a hotswappable game. 2. VPN is available on all major platforms, and a router that can manage one up for you is not expensive. It's super easy to access a VPN in windows at least.

I did a partial test of Steam Inhome Streaming over Vpn. 1) I setup a VPN on my router, and connected to my home network on my laptop via my phone hotspot. 2) Steam in home streaming does work over a vpn. 3) Steam in home streaming does work with non-steam programs. 3) It wasn't acceptable for Super Hexagon at super high graphics settings. 4) Dwarf fortress worked great! 5) It supports hot swapping flawlessly. Not only that, it supports simultaneous input. I was able to do a ctrl+> hotkey combo with one key pressed on two different computers, how cool is that? You could do Star Control II Super Melee this way. 6) I then ran out of phone data for the month, no more testing from me unless I go to McDonalds, sorry. 7) I don't know if it applies a wrapper that would do anything funny to recording. My guess is it would not. 8) Obviously lower resolution games would not need as much bandwidth. No real way to know if Wolfenstein would work, but Master of Magic or Adventure Construction Set would be a blast. Plus Adventure Construction set REQUIRES hot swapping for the multiplayer.

If one were to use savestates one would simply point both emulators at the same cloud directory. That's not the awkward part, the awkward part is swapping between playing, streaming, viewing and recording the gameplay.

I almost wonder if a virtual LAN + a dummy steam account + steam inhome streaming might be a workable hack for the problem.

I wish you'd please make that Patreon account. I worry about you man. I hope you're not holding back because you think putting in a placeholder account is going to make anyone angry. Think of it as getting the groundwork done. Believe it or not, modern internet folks do understand that supporting the stuff they like simply to get more of the stuff they like is a valid thing.

I was trying to speculate about the next video, and I'm having a heck of a time thinking of games with incredibly bad names, especially if one excludes console titles due to the game dungeons being PC heavy. Weird names, sure. Stupid and horrible names, not so much. Tongue of the Fatman shows up on a lot of bad name lists, but I almost think it's so bad it's good. There ARE plenty of foolish names. Like, Meat Puppet isn't a terrible name in and of itself, but naming your game similarly to a long running rock band is pretty bad decision making. "Hey, wanna play my game? It's called Stone Temple Pirates" I would totally play a game called Stone Temple Pirates. The only one that really came to my mind was Gorky 17/Odium. Those are two awful names for the same not-awful game. To be fair it might've sounded different to the developers. They were from Poland. Hay, wait a minute...

I always pretended I was a cult leader in Master of Magic. Ironically life magic was best suited to it. Stream of life = heroin in the water supply, gimme all your money. You also got to summon the chosen one and invoke a crusade. Then it was just a matter of sending your fanatic lionhearted halfling slingers to go forth and kill ancient dragons in one hit.

It was great getting some insight into what games you are excited about; I saw at least twelve I'm now interested in myself. I liked the interstitial cards too. I think a lot of people would be very surprised the Atari could handle a game like Solaris. The only one I was iffy on was "The Crew." Might be worth giving a miss to, since within five years I'm sure developers will be making much better games that eat out of google street view for full intercontinental driving/flight simulation. Anyway, not really my place to say what you should be excited about, so if you get it I hope you love it a lot and have a great time.

Did I see the hover vehicle sinking in water?

1) Ross takes a game dungeon request for every, maybe, third dungeon. Since he started the thing people have wanted their favorite hidden gem to get Ross Scott brand polish. It shouldn't happen too often of course; the worst thing in the world is for a unique perspective to become opinion by committee. 2) Your sponsorship earns your name or handle in an episode's credits. This is cheap and easy, which is why people always offer it. Ross is a person, so he can offer it too. 3) Signed swag. I hear a merch store is in the works? Why not get merch with marker all over it? 4) Custom audio of some kind. Buy an audio pack for Baldur's Gate or something? I'm not sure about this one, could be a lot of work. 5) Access or early access to extended editions of things?

Ross says he doesn't know what to offer for rewards on a Patreon account. What a strange person! We get a new video to watch and that's somehow not a reward? Well, let's see if we can throw reward ideas at the wall and see if they stick. I guess the wall in this case is Ross, and reward ideas are things that we like? Throw things you like at Ross.

This was pitch perfect, though I wish it were longer. A great look at a game I'd never have taken a first look at, all kinds of interesting facts, and content that has probably never been shown before. Mmm. That's a lot better than the socks I got, I'll tell you that.

I'm definitely gonna buy it during the holiday sale. Hopefully I won't be swarmed by space ants.