samtheflamingomain

[samtheflamingomain]

50 Funniest Tweets About The Trump Vs. Elon Feud (So Far)

[samtheflamingomain]

they spent billions on this

[samtheflamingomain]

I love seasonal fruits they're like girl we're back lol

[samtheflamingomain]

[samtheflamingomain]

No children are allowed in the Library of Congress.

It's not that kind of library.

In other words...

You are being lied to

again

[samtheflamingomain]

when chris fleming is almost horizontal midair in the thumbnail you just know the bit is going to go crazy

[samtheflamingomain]

clear my schedule (1)

Schedule 1 is a perfect game.

I know it's in early access, and it will be for a very long time. It will change. But the core things that make the game what it is are a perfect storm of gameplay. Let's investigate.

It's the latest party drug sweeping the nation, and YOUR KIDS ARE ALL ADDICTS.

I have a pretty specific taste in video games: parkour (a la Spiderman or Infamous) or story-driven (a la Heavy Rain or GTA 4). And The Sims 4 because I like to build houses.

To say Schedule 1 shouldn't have me hooked like my bespokely mixed anti-gravity Samethamphetamine is an understatement. I tend not to like games with no story, I don't like minigames, and I really, really don't like open worlds without fast travel.

But I can get behind a game where you can imagine your own story, the minigames don't feel like minigames, and traversing the world is far less daunting than it seems at first glance, and if you get high on your own supply, you can bound over buildings and go from North to South in 30 seconds flat. (Again, anti-gravity Sameth. Buy Now!)

Because there's really no story to speak of and the gameplay is what's on the tin, instead of dissecting the game itself, allow me to indulge in a bit of a different angle: why the game is so addictive.

Let's all get our "how ironic"s out of the way. A game about making drugs is addictive. A fine observation, well done.

I'm really not exaggerating when I say I've never been so addicted to a game before. I got it 5 weeks ago and I'm 280h in. I didn't play very optimized for the first 70h or so and started a new save to make some changes. While the core game loop obviously hasn't changed, it feels like I'm playing a sequel to the original because when you learn to do things the right way, the upgrade isn't just pennies.

Example: 4am-maxing. Before, I hit 4am in the game, the game says "go to sleep to progress to the next day", so I go to sleep. I played about a month in-game and got to early/mid-game. Then, in my second save, I grew my plants by day and, when they stop growing at 4am, I make my meth and do my mixing, because those things don't stop working at 4am. I'm late-game and only 2 weeks in.

It's a perfect storm of very deliberate design that make this game an absolute joy to play: the aesthetics, the random elements not feeling unfair, the dopamine you get from pretty much every action in the game, and the many, many ways to play. Choose your playstyle:

I don't like getting chased by cops. I'm bad at outrunning them, and I usually carry drugs in 7 of my 8 inventory slots, so if I do get caught, I will kiss goodbye to a half hour of gaming, going back a save to salvage my 125 bricks of meth. I worked hard on those.

Some people love the stealth parts, doing deals after curfew for the bonus it gives. I just retire to my abode for the evening as the law dictates. That's where my meth machines are, anyway.

I don't like making coke because it takes a long time and lots of steps and it isn't worth a whole lot more than meth. I don't mind weed cuz it's quick to grow, but as you may have picked up on, I prefer meth because it's (for me) the most engaging minigame, not a lot of garbage to pick up, can be done at 4am, and sells for a lot more than even your most heavenly of weed.

At first I didn't see the point in mixing, until my smooth brain wrinkled when some Youtuber mentioned mixing multiple times. Oh, that makes sense. Starts new save. As in, you mix with Adderall, then mix the result with gasoline, then the ever-important horse semen, obviously available at your local gas station.

I love the lack of lore in this game, not gonna lie. What city has a curfew from 9pm to 5am, enforced to the point where if you're on your own front lawn and one cop sees you, you're under arrest? What city has a population of 50 with its own law firm and courthouse? What city has beds, horse semen and Viagra available 24/7 at the same place where you can fill up on "regular gas" or "sexy gas"? It's a breeding ground for theories, and because we don't have any canon explanations, the imagination can go places.

Back to gameplay.

I don't mind doing deals, but it's not my favorite part of the game, which is good because you can make a killing just through the dealers you hire to push your stuff. However, unless you really know what you're doing - which I still don't feel I do - paying people to make your drugs can be more expensive than they sell for. If you made me, I could set up a coke barn that would turn a profit in a few days, but only after failing to do so a few times. The game has zero learning curve until you start to hire employees at which point the curve does donuts in the parking lot.

Which isn't a huge problem, but it brings me to the (admittedly few) gripes I have with the game, number one being the absolute uselessness of chemists. Want someone to grow your weed plant? No problem. Tell them which shelf to pull supplies from, what pot to put it in, and press Go. Want a chemist to mix that weed with one (1) thing? Well, you'll need yourself a handler to checks notes move the bananas from the shelf directly next to the mixer onto the mixer so the chemist can click the "mix" button and then go stand outside for an hour. Botanists cost $200 a day. One chemist and one handler is a total of $500.

There's plenty to do in the game, but also there isn't. If you're not making drugs, managing employees, stocking up supplies or doing deals you can… get a haircut. Launder some money. Buy clothes. I'm not expecting an entire simulation game in my drugs game, but there are a few interesting locations that aren't accessible. I don't know why, but when I saw you could buy the taco place, I was fully expecting to be able to make tacos. Instead of clicking on a computer and hitting the big red "launder money" button, it would've been cool to have to do a quick minigame in order to do that - a load of laundry at the laundromat, sort some mail at the post office, wash a car at the carwash, sell some tacos at Taco Ticklers. But also, in late-game, you're gonna be pulling in so much cash that the measly 20,000$ you can launder per day just won't cut it.

I also think, aside from customers, dealers and suppliers, there could be a few more types of NPCs. We have cops, but they're very easy to not even interact with unless you actually want to. Loan sharks, competition, hostile NPCs, even undercover cops could be interesting.

My main, only actual "complaint" is that the game is too easy. You never really run short on money, there's no penalties for missing deals or leaving plants unattended for days, and as I mentioned, cops feel entirely like optional gameplay.

There's more to come, the developer has said. Quality of life upgrades, new locations. It's very much in its infancy. Shrooms are coming eventually, which will once again make me start a new save. There's never a dull moment. Even when everything is fully automated, it's remarkably satisfying to see everything coming together.

Schedule 1 is a special game. A one-man operation at that. It reminds me very much of Rollercoaster Tycoon. It's incredible the quality of this game to be entirely done by one guy with fewer bugs than a Sims expansion made by thousands of people and ten thousand times the budget.

One last thing: there's a lot of potential for challenge gameplay. I've already seen "RV only%", "Buy Nothing%" and "No Laundering%" as challenging ways to play the game. I'll be starting a new save soon, and my idea is "Motel only" or "Taco Ticklers only" or maybe something to do with equipment like "Hardware store only", never buying anything from Oscar at the warehouse. The possibilities are endless.

Stay Grater, Flamingos

[samtheflamingomain]

a falling knife has no handle

panhandles to florida (south, away from you)

you can't unsalt a fish, you can't fish out salt (from a pot)

baking is a science, cooking is an art

re: garlic: slice it, taste it, dice it, feel it (finer = more flavor)

has anthony bourdain done it? then don't

40 Chefs Share Pro Cooking Tips Anyone Can Incorporate Into Their Own Kitchen

[samtheflamingomain]

*wakes up with a huge united states government sized gun pointed at my head every day that no one who doesn't also have the same gun pointed at them will admit exists* guess im going to fuckin work i guess lmao

[samtheflamingomain]

[samtheflamingomain]

it is so dang funny to me that there is this cultural pressure for artists to be modest about their art. 'you cant say your own book is five stars' WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO RATE IT FOUR? buckaroo if you create ANYTHING from your heart it has all the grand cosmic uniqueness you do. CELEBRATE YOURSELF

[samtheflamingomain]

amateur game developer. write spaghetti code. make it so many unnecessary if loops. do what it takes to make It Work. do it right next time. this time, do it.

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner's roadblock to art isn't even technical skill it's frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach's capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That's how you build on the technical skill. Throw that "won't even start because I'm afraid it won't be perfect" shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck.

[samtheflamingomain]

After forgetting to bring sufficient entertainment for the two-hour flight from Atlanta to O’Hare Airport, area man Kenneth Vargas reportedly spent his entire time aboard a plane Thursday reading War And Peace over the shoulder of the passenger seated in the row ahead of him. “I felt like an idiot for not downloading any books on my Kindle, but when I noticed the guy in front of me was reading something, I figured I could just look off of his,” Vargas said of the man’s print copy of Leo Tolstoy’s roughly 1,300-page seminal Russian epic.

Full Story

[samtheflamingomain]

important question

[samtheflamingomain]

and she wanted HIM to carry HER up the mountain??

Eartha Kitt shows off her strength and athletism by doing yoga at the beach, 1960s.

[samtheflamingomain]

You should only write in present tense with extreme caution.

not because it's bad or anything but because if you do it even once you're going to be editing the bits where you shifted tenses out of your writing for the rest of your life

[samtheflamingomain]