#the PC version was fair enough

[moose-mousse]

Frustrations

Following other developers, learners and makers are great. It facilitates learning and gives inspiration

But one thing that is often missing from people telling about how it is going, is the failures, frustrations and problems any developer will run into.

For this reason, two of my favorite maker youtube channels are Extractions&Ire (Chemistry) and Code Bullet (machine learning). Because these madlads are brave enough to not just show their process and result, but also their failures, mistakes and errors. And how they overcome them. Not always by learning (Sometimes making a dumb mistake is not really something you can learn from...)

It's good, because it's real.

Code tutorials and guides can give the impression that the normal process of development is "Open IDE, code, fix tiny typo error, compile, success". They don't do it out of malice, but out of a want to be concise. Which is fair.

So I also want to share when things do not go so well. I have programmed Atmel's AVR Chips for quite a while now. But I have done it mostly in microchip studio(former Atmel studio) and a bit in the arduino IDE. A job I am currently applying for, uses visual studio code. Which is fair enough. So to prepare for this specific job, and to acquire this quite good-to-have skill, I want to set that up for myself First things first, since I have not done this before, I cannot know if my code would have a weird error so I want to know everything else is working first. So I write a tiny program which simply have the microcontroller increase a number every 2 seconds and write it to my PC over UART. Takes 2 minutes.... I grab one of my Arduino Nano boards and a USB cable for it. And then... I cannot flash it... Its communication protocol have troubles.

I have seen this before. It is to do with the cables not being correct. If they are USB 2.0, very little magnetic noise can cause trouble. (And you cannot tell if a cable runs USB 2.0 or 3.0 by looking at it... because the universal serial bus is not universal... Insert grump rant here) I then spend an hour finding and trying different USB A to USB B-mini cables. Give up, notes down to buy (and MARK) some USB 3.0 versions for the future. I then grab a Arduino Uni instead, as they use USB B, which is much more resistant to noise... And then spend half an hour trying to find a the cable, as I do not have a lot of them, since... nearly nothing uses them. Finally find it, and yes, the program can now be flashed. So I packed all the cables I tested back in their places, after marking them so I will(hoefully) not have to do this again. Had to take several breaks feeling depressed and grumpy, and all in all, this adventure took 4-5 hours. And now I can START on this... And this is how work sometimes is. And that is ok. It is still... VERY frustrating ...

[chrysanthemumgames]

Hi Jess! Do we need to choose every flirt option in order to successfully romance our favorite RO?

Sometimes the non flirt choices resonate better with me. My favorite is the fidget choice in Chapter 2. That whole scene with Hades can be really wholesome and adorable especially if the PC has a similar stim.

I worry that I may be put on Hades platonic path if I don’t have enough romance points. I hope this makes sense. I tend to ramble a lot! Thank you in advance!

You don't need to ever outright flirt with them, actually. At least not as the game currently is. The plan is for at some point each RO/PO to have a discussion with the PC about what their relationship is. Whether you end up on the romance version of the path or the platonic one will most likely be decided by the answers you give there.

Though, in fairness, that part of the game design is still a bit up in the air. Regardless, though, you won't ever have to hit every single flirt opportunity to move into the romance. That's definitely not going to be what it's about.

(My romance system may in fact be in for quite a redesign before publication. Moving away from anything resembling a 'points' threshold and generally lessening the number of flirt options early on, towards a personality-based system... but that's going to require a rework of my personality variables, too, so you can see how it's hard to describe it just yet.)

(P.S. Before I get a bunch of asks worried about whether a PC with X character trait will still be able to romance their preferred RO, the answer is still yes. For all X. It just may look a little different.) :)

All to say, it's absolutely okay if the non-flirt choices resonate better with you!

[samueldays]

Retrospective: D&D 3e class feature advancement and design

Of the editions of D&D that I've played, I think Third Edition is my favorite. It's imbalanced, sure, but part of what differentiates D&D from videogames is that there's a DM on hand to say "let's change that". Much of the general success of 3rd was probably due to the Open Gaming License that you may recall a recent fuss about, and two specific impacts of the OGL were 1) explosion of fan content to add on and change stuff, 2) fanmade polish of the System Reference Document (SRD), such as this hyperlinked and crosslinked version where just about everything is accessible in one click. Much less searching for rules!

I also personally liked it for the unusual way it tried hard to put player characters and monsters in the same mechanical framework using the same scale, unlike far too many games, video or tabletop, where the PC has 138 HP but does 9999 damage. (This was to some extent present in earlier editions, but 2e's Monstrous Manual fails to give a creature's Strength score, only specifying its damage directly.) D&D in general was unusually fair and honest about letting you loot Lord Mega-Evil's Mega-Sword instead of doing "2% drop chance" shenanigans. 3e went a step further to making the bugbear playable out of the box, if you wanted to play a bugbear. Bugbears were now real creatures in a sense, not simply bags of HP you popped for XP.

If you're waiting for me to get to the subject announced in the title, just keep waiting, this is a twenty year old game and I'm a grognard with a pet topic. ;-)

4th edition decided to strip much of this stuff back out again, and I detested it. 4e was super weird. 5e tentatively tried to be the simplified best bits of 1e and 3e (IMO) which is nice for the newbies, but I feel its class system still leaves much to be desired. The whole notion of "classes" in a RPG is a bit of a necessary evil. It doesn't exist in-universe, it's an abstraction because doing full pointbuy is more tiresome for players and far easier to accidentally break the system by neglecting one stat or pushing another too high. At the same time, you don't want to lock characters into a progression at level 1, so designers tend to re-invent various class options and class choices that veer back towards pointbuy, and multiclassing...

Bluntly: The "favored class" rules and multiclassing xp penalties in 3rd were failures. The hypothesis was that it would discourage "5 levels of this, 1 of this, remaining levels of this" cherry-picking and encourage keeping 2-3 classes balanced, with an exception for the favored class. What it actually encouraged was "5 levels of this, 1 level of this prestige class, remaining levels of this prestige class" because prestige classes (PrCs) were exempt. Removing that exemption would have had worse second-order effects because prestige classes had different numbers of levels and conditional advancement permission! A deeper overhaul was needed, but didn't appear. My groups usually ended up ignoring multiclassing xp penalties. Worthless rule, no content, no value. Especially the bit where it's possible to get stuck at -100% XP if you made deliberately bad choices, that's nonsense.

What was also a failure, but less so, and produced the content I want to ramble about today, is how the class system incentivized multiclassing in very different ways for different classes. I'm going to gloss over questions of obscure splatbook availability and optimization level here; if you know enough to have an opinion on them you probably don't need to be reading this.

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Fighter: Multiclass out or prestige class ASAP. This because Fighters have no class features that scale specifically with Fighter level - feats, BAB and HP can be gotten anywhere, and stack cleanly from different classes. Fighter 4 / Barb 1 / PrestigeClassA 5 / PrestigeClassB 10 is an example outcome of starting from "Fighter" and keeping the concept without being bound to the classname.

Sorcerer: Prestige out, but only to +1 caster level classes. Sorcerers have 1 scaling class feature, "spellcasting", which is advanced as a whole by several prestige classes. Something like Sorc10 / Loremaster 10 is cool, gets you 20th level casting, and more class features.

Druid: Stay pure. Druids have multiple scaling class features, and very few prestige classes advance other than spellcasting.

(I reiterate: this is what the class system incentivized. Not what you 'should' play.)

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This difference was not a matter of party role, but of class feature wording.

Broadly speaking, there's two kinds of class features in 3rd Edition: those that provide a static ability at a fixed level (for example, Paladins become immune to fear at 3rd level) and those that have a progression scaling with each level (for example, Paladins can Smite Evil to add their level to the damage done).

Fighters got almost entirely static abilities, and those with diminishing returns. Spellcasting was almost entirely scaling.

Paladins were closer to the Druid end of the scale due to Smite Evil and Lay on Hands saying "paladin level" (not caster level, nor character level) when calculating what to scale with. A few prestige classes explicitly advanced these features, but there was no standard framework for advancing them the way the Thaumaturgist prestige class had "+1 level of existing spellcasting class" for any of druids, clerics, wizards or sorcerers.

Theoretically, the Thaumaturgist or Mystic Theurge prestige classes also worked for other spellcasting classes such as Paladin, but this was mostly worthless because paladins were tertiary casters who got slower per-level spellcasting progression. +1 level of spellcasting had lower value for paladins or bards than it did for clerics or wizards. This was aggravated by partial progression classes such as Eldritch Knight, which provided less spellcasting advancement - measured in terms of fewer levels. They got community shorthand like 9/10 or 7/10 casting progression.

An intuitive-seeming fix haunted me for years: PrCs that give partial advancement to full casters should give full advancement to partial casters. Perhaps even more than one-for-one when advancing tertiary casters. But it was hard to spell out in rules.

Instead, WotC printed special case ugly hack PrCs like the Sublime Chord, which was blatantly "The Bard Prestige Class For Bards" that gave faster-than-bard spellcasting progression up to 9th level bard spells. (In the core game, wizards get up to 9th level spells, but bards stop at 6th level.) It worked by specifying in detail a new separate spellcasting progression meant to be used at each level from 11 to 20, after using the regular bard progression from level 1 to 10.

Ironically, this special case could then fit back into the standard framework: take 10 Bard levels, take 1 Sublime Chord prestige level, now Sublime Chord has its own spellcasting progression so it can be advanced by other prestige classes such as Loremaster or Thaumaturgist. Sublime Chord was a prestige class that bards took mostly for the spellcasting, and then they didn't need to stay in that class for the spellcasting, because spellcasting was a standard class feature that could be advanced in other ways.

What a mess.

-

Still, I gotta give Wizards credit for being willing to fuck around and try new stuff to get out of this mess they'd made.

During 3rd edition, some of their later pile-ons to this mess were the Truenaming magic system that worked based on a skill check instead of levels (this was swiftly exploited because Make Single Number Go Up is easy for nerds with a wide variety of options), the Shadowcasting magic system that got to retroactively convert the class levels of a wizard who multiclassed into shadowcaster (I never saw this used in practice), and the Initiating not-a-magic system in the Tome of Battle:

Instead of caster levels you had initiator levels, and instead of casting a spell you initiate a martial maneuver, and the maneuver involved swinging your sword around so expertly that it shot fireballs or healed your friends or added an extra 8d8 damage or froze the enemy's lifeblood with the Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike. It also let you resist poison or block mind control by concentrating really hard on how you are a mall ninja One with the Blade.

(image: a Blade Magic user who has convinced the DM that hitting people with your bare hands counts as a 'blade' if you call it Knife-Hand Strike.)

It was actually pretty good, once you got past the flowery names, the weeaboo aesthetic shift, the increased complexity, the dissociated mechanics, and the fact that Wizards printed three initiator subsystem classes that were different enough to be annoying. Now that I'm done damning it with faint praise: you calculate multiclass initiator level by taking your main initiator class's class level and adding half the levels in other classes, whether or not they are initiator classes. A Swordsage 6/Fighter 6 character counts as Swordsage 9 for purposes of the Swordsage's primary class feature: initiator level and martial maneuvers.

This sort of worked to encourage a moderate amount of multiclassing on occasion by reducing the cost, but not really, because of nonlinear scaling. The low-level Swordsage abilities are on the order of "Fighter but with 1d6+1 fire damage". The high-level Swordsage abilities are like "Enemy has to make a Fortitude save or die. On a successful save, enemy still takes 20d6 extra damage on top of your regular damage" and "Quasi-timestop: you get 10 opportunities in a row to pick up a nearby enemy and throw him. Your choice whether you want to throw 10 guys off a cliff, or bounce 1 guy against the wall until he dies."

This class feature progression was cribbed from the core spellcasting system for Sorcerers and Druids, see above for the multiclass incentives on those.

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I don't have a general solution. Here is my sketch of a fix to the spellcasting part, also usable with the cribbed-from-spellcasting class features like initiator progression:

Build a spellcasting progression separately from a class. Each progression goes up to 9th level spells at character level 20, or the system equivalent. The "Wizard" class then gets a class feature which says something like "+1 spellcasting progression at each level". The "Bard" class gets a class feature which says something like "+0.75 spellcasting progression at each level". The Paladin class get a class feature which says something like "+0.4 spellcasting progression at each level". Round up or down with minima to taste.

This replicates the effect of the 3e progression where the Wizard got up to 9th level spells, the Bard got 6th and the Paladin stopped at merely 4th.

But by separating the spellcasting progression, all these base classes get the same amount of benefit from a Prestige Class which provides +X spellcasting progression per level (X probably 0.5-1). In regular 3e, spellcasting progression classes were worth far more to the wizard than to the paladin, because the paladin got 1/20th of a step towards 4th level spells and the wizard got 1/20th of a step towards 9th level spells.

This eliminates the weird special case that is the Sublime Chord, also eliminates certain other kinds of dumb cheese around Ur-Priest, creates space for semi-focused casting prestige classes that provide 0.9 spellcasting that's an improvement for bards but a slowdown for wizards, and makes it easier for Fighter-adjacent and Rogue-adjacent classes and prestige classes like Assassin to dabble in a little bit of spellcasting at a controlled rate. In weird design space, it allows backloading on a class that goes from +0.5 to +1.5 over the course of several levels to "catch up".

A downside is that this "fractional casting" is more granular, more bookkeeping, and closer to pointbuy, but it's a small step and D&D 3.5 was already including the similar Fractional BAB/Saves in optional rules. Maybe someone can be inspired by this to make something easier.

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Now I would like to say that D&D Third Edition has come and gone and will probably never be repeated, having been supplanted by two later editions twenty years on, especially 3.5e with all its baroque customization, but that would be a lie because not only did it spawn a great many clones, Pathfinder is out there being a big name 3.5e clone with just enough tweaks to not be a copyright infringement. (Also: just enough tweaks to not quite be backwards compatible.) So I feel I should try to give helpful advice for design of class-based RPG systems, rather than just this historical overview so far. Here's my big suggestion:

Figure out how a class offers value, and why I should keep taking it.

The D&D 3e Fighter fails this test. You should multiclass out. Full BAB, d10 HD, crappy skills, Fortitude save (more chassis than feature) are available elsewhere. Feats (the only real feature) have diminishing returns.

The Pathfinder Fighter still fails this test - it's been given tiny value buffs like the scaling effect of Weapon Training: for every 4 levels get +1 to damage with a weapon group. Meanwhile the wizards are still off getting caster levels that give +1d6 spell damage every single level, and it's easy to get 1 damage every 4 levels from other sources.

Also, the Pathfinder Fighter has been given a Bravery feature: +1 on saves against fear for every 4 levels. Meanwhile the Paladin is still getting outright fear immunity at level 3.

The converse of this suggestion is asking yourself in design: Which of a class's valuable features can I get elsewhere?

For the Fighter it's "all of them", for the Sorcerer it's "all of them, but fewer places" and for the Druid it's complicated but "one-third" is a first approximation.

Extra corollary: "...and if getting those features elsewhere, what am I giving up or getting on the side?"

[zalrb]

we already talked a bit about this in private, but now that you had some time to think about it, i think you might be able to give a more detailed response so here's my question - do you think bojack losing diane was enough of a consequence for him? how do you feel about his dynamic with diane vs pc?

1. This will be long and all over the place since I'm writing my thoughts in real time. Because of the 30-image limit, I'll probably answer this in two posts.

2. OK so, as you know, I'm not in the Bojack fandom, I just watched the series for the first time and finished it a couple of days ago and we've been talking about my impressions and you've been sharing trivia with me so my view feels like it's probably an unpopular opinion especially because what you indicate

is certainly meant to be illustrated. I'm not saying that it's narratively untrue because it isn't, I just don't believe it the way that I should because while I was watching the show, I was like Diane's relationship to Bojack is like a 2.0 version of his relationship with PC

and so I became interested in what it would've meant if the person he "lost" at the end of the series was PC because I do think that would've been an appropriate and big enough emotional consequence for him and his actions and I do think it would've been more narratively resonant. So, you wanted me to expand a bit more on the 2.0/two sides of the same coin thing and why I thought PC and Bojack were more "entwined" than him and Diane -- I'll do this part in another post.

There are just a few things I don't think we can ignore, like the 23-year history between Bojack and PC because, of course, knowing someone for a long time doesn't automatically mean that your relationship with that person means more or is more profound than someone you met later but while I was watching the show, I did draw parallels

or things like

that made me go, I don't think his relationship with Diane is more profound either or that he treats her with more reverence in a genuine way, I just think he knew her for six years

while he knew PC for over two decades

and he's restarting a cycle.

even the way that Bojack would leave drunken, long-winded messages on Diane's voicemail parallels the way that he would drunkenly show up on PC's lawn.

To be fair, I don't think we can ignore the way in which Bojack expects the people in his life, particularly women, in general to emotionally labour for him. PC says it herself, "You want a mommy you can slide your dick in and out of" and we could of course talk about the cyclical nature of his self-hatred which can then create the same type of relationships with other people in general, over and over, and obviously because Diane and PC are different people, their relationships to Bojack aren't exactly the same. There are similarities between them with how they get sucked into Bojack's orbit

but they do respond to him differently, one major difference being that Bojack and Diane never had sex and were never together romantically but that again reinforces to me that they're two sides of the same coin

even the way that Bojack desperately begs Diane to tell him that he's a good person

is just the other side of Bojack lashing out at Princess Carolyn for making him feel like he's a bad person

and both instances sprout from him thinking that they know him too well and while some of the scenes with Princess Carolyn happen after they happen with Diane, they're also contextualized by their long history.

So, for me, while obviously he has two separate relationships with each character and while obviously the Original Relationship(s) Bojack has is with Beatrice (and Butterscotch), which impacts all of the relationships he has afterwards, I ended up looking at his relationship with Diane through the lens of his relationship with Princess Caroyln, which made Princess Carolyn and her relationship with Bojack the more narratively compelling and why I ended up with this as my takeaway

because I actually thought that it had already been established that Diane moved on and coming back to that in the finale felt like an unnecessary rehash but more importantly, what Bojack said about Princess Carolyn was right, I do believe that she was this person in his life and had been for nearly thirty years

“You're the little plastic table they put in pizza boxes to keep the pizza from getting smushed."

and to have that table removed, would've been emotionally resonant and a well-earned consequence that also isn't a punishment, it's just life.

I don't know if any of this makes sense.

[gloryinthunder]

about your Astarion post, to be fair, in the same scene where: “The PC can even tell him in Act 2 that they don't have to have sex for as long as he needs. (Which I take to mean possibly forever.),” you can ALSO tell Astarion to suck it up and have sex that he doesn’t want (i.e., rape) where he says he’ll do it for you if that’s what you really want, but he’s super upset about it. Like, the game does allow you to pressure that man into having sex a lot. It doesn’t shy away from SA, and even allows you to SA Astarion.

So tbh I don’t think Larian would not pull its punches when it comes to Astarion/Tav/Halsin. I think it’s a cute pairing, but Astarion seems really insecure and begrudging about the whole thing and the game does allow you to even SA Astarion so idk man. I don’t think Astarion’s fully into the whole polyamorous thing. In general though Astarion/Tav/Halsin is really cute and could work out well

That's fair enough. The post, and all my posts, are for sure from my POV and my interactions with the game. (They are hot takes for a reason. XD) There are things I've never come across or don't know about and everyone has their own experiences.

I watched this amazing interview with Scott Joseph, the VA for The Emperor, where they asked him if they thought his character was meant to be just a straight up evil manipulator or if there was more of a grey middle ground to him. He basically said the devs built the game in a way that either could be valid based on the dialogue choices the player makes in relation to trusting The Emperor throughout the game.

I feel like that can be applied here as well, to a degree. Both versions of Astarion can be true and I don't think that necessarily invalidates one persons POV over another. If the person playing chooses not to also romance Halsin because they feel like Astarion is uncomfortable with it, that's 100% okay. Far be it from me to tell anyone how they should feel about or interact with the game. :)

[actualaster]

I really want to get into tales of symphonia because you have increased my background exposure to it enough but is the anime a decent place to start??? Or should I go find ye olde emulator?

I haven't actually checked the anime out myself, so somebody who's actually seen it should be better able to tell you but from what I gather it's better to give the game a play if you can.

The original game is available on GameCube, PS2 (Japanese-only), PS3, PS4/5, PC, Xbox One, and Switch--though from what I've heard and seen the Switch version is a mess of a port with genuine major performance issues. So you've got options for which version you're interested in (regardless of if you emulate or not). Just, like I said, maybe steer clear of the Switch version lol.

The sequel didn't ever get an anime adaptation as far as I'm aware, and the game is sadly only available via Wii and PS3 (and considering the quality of the TOS Switch port, I'm thinking it doged a bullet there lol). The PS3 version is good, no major technical issues in it or anything.

The sequel game did also get a manga that was part prequel, part interqeuel which ran in the Tales Of magazine (then got published in 2 volumes), of which there is a scanlation though I would suggest avoiding that unless you play the game first due to massive spoilers. But if you do check the sequel game out, it fleshes out a character significantly vs their in-game appearance (which makes sense for plot reasons I won't spoil for you here!)

The sequel is personally my favorite game, I liked the cast more than those in the original though many people like the original more (and an annoyingly large number of them are very rude about making sure people know it). But I would definitely suggest, if possible, checking out the original game first because it will give a lot more depth to things. Though you definitely can jump into the sequel if desired and not be totally lost. But it will dramatically change your perspective on various early-game events depending on what you know of thr first game and it's cast.

That said, expect it to be a fair time sink (especially if you want to try for the multiple ending variants--they aren't for the most part wildly different but there is one specific route that will change if a character kives or dies) and also as it's 20 years old now, it'll have some various technical limitations on the gameplay that aren’t present in more current entries in the series.

The sequel isn't as much of a time sink--however, while the restructuring of how Bamco classifies the games now puts it on more equal footing with the original, it was developed as more of a side sequel and not given the full resources of mainline game and it shows at various points. It does, however, have 2 different endings (and a "bad" game over end unique to one specific part of the endgame sequence) which are determined starting earlier in the game. So, if you want to go for both that's still more of a time sink than just one.

You could, though, if you opt to play one or both just do one playthrough on each or either and then look up alternate scenes via YouTube or something.

(Also, however, keep in mind when deciding if you want to play them or not that both games do have missable side quests that will flesh out characters and such so having a guide handy may help--or, again, you could probably find YT vids of them)

[arcthebreeder]

DMO: Digimon Military Operatives_45.TXT

I was short on food today, so I had to go grocery shopping after my morning classes, and of course something had to get on the way.

While I was walking back with, mind you, MY GROCERIES STILL ON ME, I saw a military mobilization approaching the facility used for the tech team to work, and of course, I had to stick around and see what would happen, after killing some time mindlessly staring at my phone while taking random peeks at the soldier crowd to see how close they were to my location, I finally got the chance to adjust the two digimon I would be using for this operation, Canoweissmon and Stiffilmon.

Once the armed soldiers started entering the facility, I approached one of them, and simulated a "casual encounter" while I was walking, making us bump into each other, thus, sending Canoweissmon and Stiffilmon into the soldier's phone, and began monitoring from there. Stiffilmon reported that the Soldier's partner was badly injured, it was an Etemon that was sleeping due to the bad state his body was in, Canoweissmon insisted on leaving a Recovery Chip for them, so I ultimately had to, but even tho I didn't wanted that digimon to die or something, I didn't thought helping the enemy was a good idea, but anyways, once everyone entered, Canoweissmon and Stiffilmon reported that the soldiers were there after a gathering mission to get more and more digital weapons, which, explains why that Etemon was so hurt, the soldiers came around to connect their phones to a healing station so they could skip the natural healing process of a Digimon which is... Actually a pretty smart thing to do, that's pretty clever from them, but anyways, once the phones were connected, Canoweissmon and Stiffilmon felt something that they described as "a fresh wind" of emotion and relaxation, so I guess they must've been affected by the effects of the healer too, which, was pretty useful honestly, seeing that we wouldn't be received with kindness if we got caught.

Canoweissmon carried Stiffilmon while they took a deeper dive into the healing program, which, led them to an unprotected PC that appears to only run the healing program and Digital Monster Window, or DigiWindow, a program that analyzes digimon. It's a pretty old program and it's not used anymore since us who breed digimon tend to have extended knowledge on the matter or equip our versions of Digimon Capture with built in analyzers, but everyone works at their pace I guess.

Once they got there, my digimon quickly realized that it was a dead end, they tried to kick back, but there was something else on that PC that made Stiffilmon want to investigate at least a little bit more, and she was ultimately right on having that extra bit of curiosity, apparently, upon further examination, DigiWindow doesn't just store the information of the Digimon it analyzes, it also stores the data of the phone that digimon came from, so with that in mind, we got to spy on the soldiers a little bit more, and we found that they're apparently... Pretty happy with their Digimon, I sincerely prepared myself to find gross acts committed by these people or poorly treated digimon but... They're having great times together and I feel like It's not really fair for me to take them away...

I don't really know how to feel about this but, I'll have plenty of time to evaluate that once I publish this. Getting back on track, none of the soldiers that came today had a high enough rank for me to make it a target, so I didn't get any new information, not much aside from the fact that this PC has the same Spiral problem as the other.

Not that much time before I ordered Canoweissmon and Stiffilmon to get back, they were attacked by Spirals, probably generated from the trash data that comes with every device to device transmission, it wasn't a hard fight at all, once again, time consuming, I got my Digimon back and called it a day.

The good side of things is that now I know that if my digimon get injured I can steal the code of their healing program almost at any time.

As of now, the only thing I need to initiate my attack against the military is all my digimon to evolve into their Ultimate forms so I can truly face the (maybe) Ragna Lordmon they may be preparing as a weapon. Tomorrow is my next tournament fight, and I hope that this, along with the fights against the spirals I've recently dealt with, help Canoweissmon and Stiffilmon evolve, Helloogarmon is one step further of them since he can Slide Evolve, but he should also try and reach his full potential, however, I can force them to evolve or something, that would only cause them pain... So I'll have to do it the old fashioned way!

[scrunkore]

Scunkore Media "Thread" 2023: Part 3

welcome back to the scrunko core

25) OneShot (PC, 2016)

It's not often that you fall in love with a videogame protagonist immediately, but I did just that with Niko - the little cat creature is possibly the most adorable kid I've ever seen and I did not want a single bad thing to happen to them ever. Though that's enough about them, the rest of the cast is really nice too, and the actual game itself is REALLY good. The relatively simple item-combining puzzles aren't that special, but the story and world have such a particular vibe to them that I enjoy, especially with the kinda huge extra stuff they added sometime after the initial release of this version. And that's not to mention the extra twists that do very interesting things with the medium, and I do not really want to spoil that if you don't already know about it, so go play it if that's the case. This game is honestly beautiful and I love it, and do play it on PC if you can. [5★]

26) VVVVVV (3DS, 2012)

This game's pretty simple, but it's also kind of a classic little indie joint, and it's really cool that it got a 3DS port that actually makes (admittedly not very interesting) use of the 3D effect, probably due to how early it came out. The core gameplay is just solving puzzles by rapidly flipping gravity up and down and swooping around the world map rescuing your friends, which can be done in basically any order, and it's really quite fun for the most part. Not a whole lot to it beyond that, but its simple graphics are cute and I enjoyed it a fair bit, although I did have to use the available options to make it easier when it was its most difficult - not cheating if the options are there, come on now. Anyway, it's a decent game. [3.5★]

27) Yume Nikki (PC, 2004)

Here it is, perhaps the single most well-known RPG Maker game, as well as one of the most bizarre and cryptic even to this very day. The creator is equally cryptic, and infamously elusive, only giving an interview to Toby Fox with just yes and no answers. Nobody really knows what the game is even about other than the pretty obvious yet not very descriptive answer of "shut-in girl explores a strange and often scary dream world", and it's not like it has a plot aside from the ending that was added at some point for when you get all the collectibles, which I do recommend you try to do for a somewhat complete experience. All you do in it is explore the various weird dream worlds, each one uniquely atmospheric, intricately designed and full of secrets in the most unusual of ways. I don't think it's something you can really assign a numbered score to, it's just a surreal and unsettling experience that's worth having at least once, even if you don't enjoy it. It's fuckin' Yume Nikki, you probably already know how influential it is. [?★]

28-31) BOXBOY! Series (3DS/Switch, 2015-2019)

HAL knows their stuff when it comes to puzzle games, believe it or not, and this really shows with the adventures of Qbby the funny little cube guy. In this consistently solid series, you solve a wide range of puzzles based around creating and destroying cubes to make it to the exit, with each new game introducing its own gimmick to shake up the basic formula and make it more interesting. It's kind of a deceptively simple game, as the puzzles ramp up in difficulty and end up becoming some real head-scratchers, and I appreciate that. The presentation is also charmingly simple, with pleasant audiovisuals, and even a simply story that eventually gets surprisingly interesting in the later entries. Give these games a try to finally see what that one sticker in Kirby: Planet Robobot was all about. [4★]

32) Pokémon Picross (3DS, 2015)

Pokémon and Picross feels like a pretty effortlessly winning formula for a crossover, and this one is... well, it's okay. The puzzles are decent Picross, and the gimmick of catching and using Pokémon to help you out in the trickier stages is pretty good too, but the area where it suffers is in the actual design of the game - it's one of those 3DS titles that is basically a mobile game, with stamina cooldowns and microtransactions to speed up wait times, though like Kirby Clash it does have a cap on how much money you can spend. But that spending cap doesn't make up for the core way in which it's designed. I don't find Picross too repetitive, so I want to be able to play it for hours at a time, but the damn game doesn't let me, and it just feels kinda poorly designed in general. But when I get to play the game properly, it's solid Picross. Maybe the unreleased but eventually leaked Game Boy Color game of the same name is better just for that. [3★]

33) Learn With Pokémon! Typing Adventure (DS, 2012)

This game is such a gimmick but god, I kinda really like it. It's a typing game on the DS, and so to facilitate that they made every copy come with a small Bluetooth keyboard that was pretty good for the original price at the time but of course isn't that good nowadays. But it works quite well, it's responsive enough to play this game, even if it can be kind of awkward sometimes just because of positioning. And the game is quite fun too, it's not very long but it can pose a pretty tough challenge if you're not that good at typing fast, and the typing action is actually quite intense as you get into the harder levels. It's marketed as an educational title to help you learn typing, but I don't think it really does that so much. But it's a fun game, with pretty good music and a funny computer voice reading everything you type out loud, and I am actually glad I shelled out for a complete copy of this obscure Pokémon gem. [4★]

34) Undertale (Switch, 2018)

Yeah, I didn't actually play this one until 2023 despite being a fan of it and Deltarune for quite a while, sue me. There's not much new that I can say about it, but this indie smash hit really does hold up even now that there's a similar game from the same guy that does a lot of gameplay things better. It's filled with unique and charming characters who you can either kill or spare (the latter is what you should do, but the former can be tempting), a really good and somewhat meta storyline particularly if you go for the "true" ending, and some pretty fun bullet-dodging gameplay that can be pretty difficult - though there is an option to grind for several hours and get an item that makes it much easier, no shame in doing that if you can be bothered. You probably already know everything that one should know about this game, but yeah, I liked all those things about it that much more after playing it for myself. It's definitely something you should play if you have interest in it, and I just know Deltarune is going to be way bigger and even better. [5★]

35) Animal Crossing Movie (Anime, 2006)

It's kind of an anomaly that this movie even exists at all, Nintendo rarely makes anime adaptations of their games and they're almost never full movies, plus it's based on Animal Crossing, a game series that doesn't really have much of a story and certainly didn't back in 2006. What they actually end up doing with this one is kinda fun, it's a fairly standard slice of life anime condensed into a movie decently enough, with a very comfortable atmosphere and nice interpretations of some of the characters from the games, and the narrative follows a young girl making friends and taking part in a few of the events from the earliest entries in the series - about what you would expect from it, really. It's not anything special or even particularly good, but it's really nice to see them replicate the vibe and characters of Animal Crossing in anime-movie form, and I do wonder if they'd try something like this again. [3.5★]

36) Tunic (Switch, 2022)

I don't really play very many games that aren't in a language that I understand - it's easy to find stuff in English most of the time - but this game technically counts, because it's specifically aiming for the vibe of playing a game like that, with almost all the text in a totally new language the devs came up with entirely by themselves. And honestly, I kind of love it for that, it combines with the lonely and mysterious vibe that the whole game has. Because the game doesn't tell you much, you kinda have to feel it out as you explore the top-down Zelda-like world fighting monsters and collecting pages of the literal manual while figuring out what's going on with everything. It's filled with cryptic (sometimes too cryptic) puzzles and secrets, with one even leading to a pseudo-ARG that helped people decode its language, and it's clear a lot of love went into this project. Towards the end I did look things up about it, but as it stands, this game is a wonderful adventure that might not be to everyone's tastes, but I certainly really liked it for what it does. [4.5★]

37) Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S (Switch, 2021)

Yes, another Picross game, and this time everyone's best friend Hatsune Miku is there, along with her other Vocaloid friends for good measure. And... that's about it. It's super barebones, only offering puzzles and unlockable music, but that is basically all it needs to be. It's cute, it's Picross with Miku, it does what it says on the tin. I just don't have much more to say about it other than that, it's just an average Picross game that does average Picross things, just without using the actual name Picross. It's fine, it kept me occupied for a few hours. [3★]

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[thepringlesofblood]

Dimension 20 Neverafter FPE (Fairytales Per Episode): The Numbers

I’ve been updating the original version of this post since Ep. 3, and as such it has a lot of theories/additions/explanations/ramblings. This is just the numbers. Every fairytale, nursery rhyme, or piece of folklore included, referenced, or alluded to across the series (that I found).

For some of these, I was unable to determine one specific tale, and for some of these, I am unsure as to whether the reference was intentional. I’ll put that if that’s the case. It is what it is, baby. Enjoy!

Full list beneath the cut, by episode.

Ep. 1

The PCs (and their backstories)

 Mother Goose (+1)

Mother Hubbard  (+1)

Jack

jumped over the Candlestick (+1)

and the Beanstalk (+1)

Ylfa (Little Red Riding Hood) (+1)

“Huff and puff, little one” = 3 little pigs allusion (+1)

Pib (Puss in Boots) (+1)

Pinocchio (+1)

Cinderella (+1)

stepmother’s official art says “Cinderella...” at the bottom

Rosamund (sleeping beauty/briar rose) (+1)

Gerard (the princess and the frog) (+1)

Snow queen (mentioned by Elody) (+1)

the rest of the episode

the little red hen (+1)

Ol king Cole (+1)

The little old lady who lived in a shoe (+1)

(alluded to) Alice n Wonderland (+1)

rabbit pulling a teapot

total tale count: 16

Ep. 2

Herr Drosselmeyer (+1)

The Nutcracker

Snow White (+1)

(alluded to) Beauty and the beast (+1)

furniture coming alive

total tale count: 3

Ep. 3

.........nothing new to report

tale count: 0

Ep 4

the fairy with the turquoise hair is actually not exclusive to Pinocchio - she has her own book*.

*I found out later that this is not true, hence no +1

(alluded to) the little mermaid (+1)

“a dancing princess who either cannot or will not speak near a beach.”

there’s. So many rabbit and fox tricksters in the world.

One specific tale for Fox is alluded to, so he gets (+1)

a reply to the original post mentioned a character named Reynard the Fox from medieval French literature that might be the reason that the Fox speaks with a French accent.

“Isengrim” is the name of the daggers Pib gets. There’s a tale called Ysengrimus from 1152 CE where Reynard the Fox (along with a certain Wolf) appears.

No specific tales for Rabbit are specifically referenced except for Pinocchio’s story, but if Fox’s French accent is an allusion to Reynard the Fox, I’m taking Rabbit’s Cockney British accent to be an allusion to Peter Rabbit (the most famous British trickster rabbit I can think of.) He gets a (+1)

There are surely other rabbits that inspired Brennan, but I’m not qualified to sift through all trickster rabbits ever.

I’m sorry if it’s not a Cockney accent. That’s just what it sounded like to me. +1 for each of them seems fair regardless.

the golden goose (another Jack/Mother Goose tale not specifically mentioned before) (+1)

total tale count: 4

Ep. 5

hey diddle diddle (+1)

the dish ran away with the spoon + the cow jumping over the moon

itsy bitsy spider (+1)

first allusion to little miss muffet (+1)

(alluded to) goldilocks (+1)

”just enough” oats

first mention of Aesop (+1)

1001 nights (+1) (scherazade/The Endless Nights)

“spider queen”/scherazade’s spider (+1)

I cannot describe the lengths I have gone to to try and figure out who the mythical spider that fuses with Muffet is. there are many possibilities but none seem more likely than the rest. please, god, if you know which spider is being referenced here, let me know.

sinbad (+1)

“Sinbad the Sailor”

magical palace w the tapestries of starlight (+1)

there’s a fuckload of magic palaces in 1001 nights. idk which one this refers to but it does refer.

total tale count: 9

Ep. 6

No new tales - expands on ones already mentioned (muffet, scherazade’s spider)

first actual appearance of little miss muffet

total tale count: 0


Ep 7

the cloak of rushes (the gillesuit/haystack cloak) (+1) 


As of Ep. 9, we know that this is probably from the English fairy tale “Cap-o’-Rushes”

the golden bridle (+1)


some cursory googling indicates that this is most likely from the celtic tale of Guleesh.

In ep 13 & 14 (& the adventuring parties) they talk about what it does, and while nothing they say rules out Guleesh, it doesn’t really match up either. 


so…….maybe it’s not intended to be the one from the tale of Guleesh. I remain optimistic. 

the golden chair (+1)


a grimm fairytale with a weirdly christian bent

it is very possible that this was not an intentional allusion.

I have to mention here that the cloak of stars recovered from the spider’s den is a reskin of the DND 5e “Robe of Stars”

I spent multiple months trying to figure out what this cloak could be an allusion to. there’s nothing clear-cut. like the sword of truth, I believe this to be an archetype from no one tale in particular.

total tale count: 3

Ep 8

first actual appearance of Aesop!

the lion and the mouse (+1)

the boy who cried wolf (+1)

the scorpion and the frog (+1)

total tale count: 3

Ep 9

BABA YAGA  (+1)

(alluded to) the princess and the pea (+1)

siobhan asks if anyone sees any stacks of mattresses without peas under them to sleep on

(alluded to) this little piggy went to market (+1)

it’s not in the captions but emily axford says ‘well there has to be a market, right? cause this little piggy went to market’

first actual appearance of 3 little pigs

total tale count: 3

Ep 10

(alluded to) peter and the wolf (+1)

the baron’s named peter and there’s a wolf. that can’t be a coincidence,

total tale count: 1

Ep 11

the emperor’s new clothes (+1)

“the naked emperor”

rumpelstiltskin (+1)

“the king of apogee“ and the rumor about him

Koschei the deathless (+1)

(alluded to) the binding of Fenrir (Norse mythology) (+1)

Ylfa puts her hand in the Wolf’s mouth to prove her and Mother Goose’ good intentions.

I didn’t catch this one at first - thank you to the many posts about it in the #neverafter tag!

total tale count: 4

Ep. 12

Rapunzel (+1)

The North Wind (+1)

from what I can tell, this is from "East of the Sun and West of the Moon"

I’m sure The North Wind is from other things too, though

first actual appearance of the little mermaid!

total tale count: 2

Ep. 13

no new tales - expands on the little mermaid & pinocchio

total tale count: 0

Ep. 14

the legend of the children of Lír (+1)

it is revealed in this episode that the sea witch is named Alba Mac Lír

“Mac Lír“ in Scottish Gaelic = son of Lír

thank you @twoeelsforsupper for this observation!

total: 1

Ep. 15

no new tales, unless you count Clara The Horse Princess

total: 0

Ep. 16

thumbelina (+1)

hans christian anderson tale from 1835, in the second volume of his Fairy Tales Told For Children series.

tom thumb (+1)

English folklore, there was a 1621 book called The History of Tom Thumb

Jack the Giant Killer (+1)

in ep 17 adventuring party, brennan talks a bit about the multiplicity of jacks, and clarifies that there are TWO separate Jack + Giants myths.

Jack and the Beanstalk - an English fairytale about a young boy who accidentally grows a beanstalk to the Giant World and only “kills” the giant at the end by cutting the beanstalk down, leaving the giant to fall to his (their?) death.

Jack the Giant Killer - a Welsh fairytale about a warrior named Jack who fights a bunch of giants with a huge club and wins

So, while we’ve already counted Jack and the Beanstalk, this episode does introduce a new variation on Jack - Jack the Giant Killer.

total: 3

Ep. 17

Fear Not (+1)

another grimm fairytale

the brave little tailor (+1)

aka “the guy who kills a bunch of flies with his belt”

Jack and Jill (+1)

three blind mice (+1)

total: 4

Ep 18

The Wishing Star (+1)

look there’s many stars you can wish on. “star light, star bright” has one but there are many others

Ep 19

no new tales - it’s finale time!

total: 0

Ep 20

fairies!

so in the 1880s, Andrew Lang wrote a series of fairytale books named after fairies of various colors. I’m counting each fairy who has a book named after them as a new tale.

NOTE: the Blue Fairy (+1)

ok look i fucked up yall. The Fairy With Turquoise Hair is re-named “The Blue Fairy” in a lot of adaptations, so when I previously counted her separately from Pinocchio bc she had her own book, I was referring to “The Blue Fairy Book”

so we’re counting it here instead bc it’s the first appearance of the actual Blue Fairy

The Red Fairy Book (+1)

The Green Fairy Book (+1)

The Orange Fairy Book (+1)

The Yellow Fairy Book (+1)

total: 5

total series tale count: 62

allusions (aka ones where nothing is referenced by name e.g. Fenris): 17

could be unintentional: 8

direct, clear references: 37

have a good one yall!

[jayextee]

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap

(including Dragon's Curse/Adventure Island)

So, apart from the Brazilian release Turma da Mônica em: O Resgate, I believe I've played through every version of this game now. Spoilers, they're all 5/5 bangers.

In essence, one of the OG MetroidVania games before the genre was codified, in its year of release 1989 this was absolutely amazing and truly made me have no regrets growing up as a SEGA kid. I believe I've waxed lyrical in my review of the 2017 remake, so I won't gush too much. Heh. So instead, some notes about the three main versions before that.

The original Master System version needs no introduction. It's a solid romp, probably the best game for the system. Looks great, sounds great (with PSG or FM sound!), and is a nice 2-3 hour distraction when I need it. No notes.

The PC Engine version, known either as Dragon's Curse or Adventure Island (confusingly, given the series' spaghetti-ball of a lineage) is a fair enough game. Because it's the Master System version. Kinda. Apart from some changes to Lizard and Piranha Man, plus Lion Man being replaced with Tiger Man, you'd be hard-pressed to see any difference between the two outside maybe one or two recoloured skies. But I assure you, there's more shading on almost every visual element here.

This may sound like a diss, but despite it not really 'feeling' like PC Engine fare it's still good. It does run at a full 60fps though; double the other two versions here.

My initial impressions of the Game Gear version were basically to the tune of 'oh dear, oh dear me'. I wasn't impressed. Rather than redraw a whole game's worth of assets to compensate for the smaller screen real-estate, the game is instead crunched to a tiny space with simplified layouts in places. Combat is tougher as a result of the reduced visibility, but it's nothing that can't be adapted to. Oh, but I'd have killed for a camera that looks ahead in the player's facing direction. Alas.

However, as I played further, stubbornly due to my want to play all the versions of this childhood favourite, I started to notice changes that really improved things on a fundamental level.

For starters, the 'charm point' system is gone (buy what you want, when you want! As long as you've got the rubies, uh, coins), as with the 2017 remake. Unlike that version, however, the charm stones have been replaced with teleportation gems that serve to return the player to the main village on use. And there's plenty of them; perhaps a quality-of-life measure with the Game Gear's poor battery life in mind? Either way, it's welcome -- even if the lack of 'home' doors post-boss was initially sorta confusing.

But. Also. Due to the game essentially having a small-scale redesign to accommodate the crunched screen, certain areas have a particular new 'flavour' to them. It's now impossible to accidentally stumble into the lava canyon area before you've access to Piranha Man's swimming now, for example. There are a few interesting screens in the final dungeon as well, and the pyramid's key is now in the sphinx at its far side. Et cetera, and so on, and so forth.

Actually that made this version totally worth playing through, and I think it remiss to not have paid homage to some of the changes in the 2017 version. Ah well. Had it a look-ahead camera I'd actually call this tiny handheld version the definitive one of the pre-remake versions. But it's not to be.

Either way, I told ya. Three absolute banger versions of a great game.

5/5

[fullmetalgirl98]

30 days Hypnosis Mic challenge

DAY 7: character you can relate the most

🎤 Ichiro Yamada (MC name: MC. B.B)

I knew this post would take some time, so I fulfilled my university duties first (I'M DEFINITELY DONE, FINALLY. I stared at the pc screen because of Neurosurgery from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with time passing without even realizing it, but details. IT WAS WORTH IT.) .

But here I am (even if no one gives a damn, but it's ok anyway). So let's start, please, because I've already babbled enough I haven't even begun to talk about the serious stuff.

-------

I chose the first option of the question because my absolute favorite character is Dice, about whom I've already disquisitioned definitely enough on Day 2.

So, why Ichiro?

Ichiro is one of my favorite characters in Hypmic, and this is quite obvious, because, seriously, how can you not love him?? It may be obvious, yeah, because he's the leader of the first division you learn about by approaching the project, his predominant color is red (obvious on obvious) and he's skilled and passionate and a good boy and- ... blah blah blah. But you can't help but love Ichiro. Reason why, to stand out from the crowd, I chose Dice as main fave (no, I'm joking. That's not true). Here, however, it's not a matter of simply "liking" the character, but I really see myself in him. In the way he thinks, in the way he weighs situations, in the way he acts ... I'm convinced that the two of us could really get along so well (if only he existed. SIGH).

Getting serious, Ichiro is really the character I feel most akin to from the personality pov. My way of thinking and acting is very overlapping with his, and our personalities are also quite congruent: he's ENFJ, I'm INFJ... so basically he would be the extroverted version of me, if we wanted to put it that way.

By that I mean I feel represented by him. Both in his positive and negative sides.

Ichiro loves what he does, he puts his whole self into it. Exactly as I do or try to do, when I'm not at my best. He's always ready to help others when they need his help, and others know for sure that they can count on him. And that's beautiful.

Ichiro loves his family, he would do anything for his brothers. And in that, too, I recognize myself.

He's an otaku of pathological level (here I am, gentlemen), loves music (not me, with my white headphones perpetually around my neck. Yeah) and can't sit idly by, always busy with activities of some sort (yeeeey! Hi, guys! I'm Anna Yamada. No, not that Anna Yamada).

He likes to keep fit and has a strong sense of justice. But if he's wronged, however inclined to dialogue, he cannot always keep calm and collected.

Because he is proud.

And unfortunately, this also unites us.

Ah, I almost forgot! We're both of the sign of Leo! We were both born in summer, and the funny thing is that Ichiro was born on my name day, which is July 26 ... Which is exactly two weeks before my birthday lol

So probably our temperament is similar for that reason too ahahah

I'm a pacifist by nature, I don't like arguments and I always try to be as unpleasant as possible.... But I just can't stand it when people make fun of me. And if I get the 5 minutes going I can get aggressive, even verbally, and I start ranting and saying things that maybe it would be better not to say.

Eh, Ichiro ... you know something about that, don't you?

I always try to reason and analyze everything well before acting or making any decisions, because I like things to be fair. And that's really one of the characteristics that makes Ichiro what he is, the character everyone turns to in difficult situations (and it's really better that way, because if they turned to Samatoki it would be a problem. So Ichiro, get over it and endure for the sake of the country).

[bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls]

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Jun 16, 2023:

Kesha Calls Viral Seinfeld Snub the ‘Saddest Moment’ of Her Life — Girl, if you were actually watching the show on the plane, you’d know Jerry has issues with casual physical intimacy.

Confidence in science fell in 2022 while political divides persisted, poll shows — The biggest failure of social media was giving stupid people the opportunity to connect with other stupid people who could reinforce their stupidity. The libertarian/meritocratic ideal that prevailed Way Back When assumed that idiots would be inevitably swatted down by superior facts and arguments… we never considered that the dumbest among us would congregate together and “promote from within”. Turns out that as with a pandemic-spawning virus, it’s easy to underestimate the survival strategies of primitive life forms.

How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist — Wow, that’s wonderful.

Jesse Malin, 56, reveals that he's paralyzed from the waist down — Wow, that’s alarming.

Ancient Egyptian followers of a deity called Bes may have used hallucinogens

Legendary Marvel Artist John Romita Sr. Dies Aged 93 — As a kid, I didn’t appreciate JRSR as much as I did JRJR. (In fairness, I didn’t like Kirby or Ditko, either. I was a Neal Adams/Mike Grell kid.) But as I grew older, I developed an admiration for the old man’s talents, and now look back fondly on all the work I once took for granted.

Apple's Secret Weapon to Getting PC Games on Mac — There have been lots of headlines like that over the years. We’ll see if this one pans out.

Rob Schneider to Take on Wokeness in New Fox Nation Stand-up Special — Elle King’s dad is the kind of cutting-edge comedy that the Fox audience can appreciate.

Southern Baptists vote to expel two churches led by female pastors — Don’t ever let them tell you their trans-panic isn’t inherently misogynist, ‘cause everything they do is inherently misogynist, based as it is on a world-view that demands strict adherence to gendered codes of conduct.

Brand new Atari 2600 game cartridge coming: 'Mr. Run and Jump' — The linked article is busy talking about the VCS cartridge version, but the attached preview is for modern consoles.

Cormac McCarthy dead at 89

AirCard Combines Find My Support With a Digital Business Card and More — This is cool, but it isn’t a “business card”. That’s like printing a QR code on a t-shirt and calling it a business card.

Instant Pot’s maker declares bankruptcy amid declining sales — My Instant Pot has sat unplugged and idle for years. Its only purpose now is to hold the supply of weed gummies and vape cartridges, because, well, Instant Pot.

The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens — Peter Theil and his ilk need to be shut down en masse.

You No Longer Have to Be a Pro to Get a Big-Screen MacBook — I’m still happy with my M1 Air, but when the day comes that I need to upgrade, the 15” Air will be the way I go.

Riley Keough to Pay Priscilla Presley, Ending Legal Battle Over Family Trust — I’m a little surprised this settled so quickly and quietly. But Reilly has a career of her own now, and who wants to spend grandma’s twilight years fighting over a million here and there?

Deepfake porn of TikTok stars thrives on Twitter even though it breaks the platform’s rules — The real societal change of the 21st century is in the way that reputation and personal narrative are now assets the average person values. If pornfakery becomes truly verboten, it won’t be for the sake of privacy or decency or liberation… it’ll be because no one can afford to have their lives devalued.

Tactical Free Radio — Pump up the volume, man.

Apple redesigns its Shortcuts app in iOS 17 to be easier to use — Not enough of you are using Shortcuts, or even know it exists. But you should. It’s an app that ties other apps together… it’s programmatic duct-tape, for lack of a better metaphor. I use Shortcuts every day, to generate posts like the one you’re reading: I “favorite” articles in my RSS newsreader, and when it’s time to post The Daily Dad, I hit a button. With one tap, my “RSS to Tumblr” shortcut grabs the favorited articles, organizes them into a bulleted list of links, and posts the whole thing as a draft to my Tumblr, where I can add images and commentary before adding it to the queue. Same thing with my livestream announcements… I edit a tiny text file that contains a description of the night’s show, then hit a button. Poof, Shortcuts automatically turns up the lights in my studio, sends out an “I’m streaming now” message to all relevant parties, puts all my devices into a specific Focus mode, and then posts the show description to Tumblr without me doing anything else.

Every Season of Love Island, Ranked — I can quibble with most of this, but I’m comfortable with their #1.

[miloscat]

[Review] The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Tactics (PC)

A decent tactics RPG if a bit buggy.

The spinoff prequel show to Jim Henson's 1982 fantasy adventure The Dark Crystal was, like the film itself, a brilliant showcase of puppeteering, production design, and worldbuilding. Like many shows on their service, Netflix did not renew it for another series to follow up on its lingering plot threads, but they did at least commission a tie-in game from American studio BonusXP, who had previously made two Stranger Things games for them before shutting down mid-last year. The only other Dark Crystal game was a Sierra text adventure, which got a highly abbreviated browser-based remaster around the time of the show's broadcast.

As an adaptation of the show, the large cast and themes of rebellion and questing lend themselves well to a tactical RPG, although the reality of this game feels a bit restricted, with compact maps and characters usually limited to four or five per stage. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as I appreciated the manageable scope; I don't have a huge amount of experience with this genre but I know how bloated Wesnoth scenarios can get. The setup for this game is square grids with no zone of control, turn order dictated by a dynamic action timeline, and experience and gear gained between levels. On top of equipment customisation, there's a job system where you can shuffle anyone into any role, although they need to get experience in that job to unlock skills and advance to new sub-jobs.

The character roster again could be considered limited, with a final total of 14 selectable characters (although others join as temporary allies in various scenarios). About half are from the show with the others being OCs who fit in well enough. Most of them are Gelfling, who have the most developed job system with three broad categories of soldiers, scouts, and mages who get further specialised as you progress. Apart from them there are two Podlings and two Fizzgigs, who all have a smaller job pool but can usefully fill niches on your team.

The key art depicts the urRu urVa, but they only appear in one mission as an NPC, and the game's store blurb mentions "familiar faces from the classic film" which is just an outright lie, unless they mean broadly the races and creatures of Thra seen in the film... but I won't concede that. Lacking these kinds of surprise bonus characters, a broader array of the show's cast, or other types of creatures for the playable cast like Arathim or Lore, was a disappointment but I have to accept the realities of a likely budget development and to be fair I had loads of possible characters lingering on the bench anyway given the scale of the battles.

My core team was Deet, for me a versatile offense/healing caster, Brea, a strong healer with other utility spells, Hup, who ended up a beast-summoner/debuffer, and Kylan, a dependable rogue-type. In the mid-late game I tried to switch them all into new basic roles to level into the high-end hybrid jobs, but starting from scratch at that point made them all too weak to get by so I just reverted to their existing specialities and went from there. I played on Normal and found the difficulty to be highly variable, some levels being a walk in the park where others kicked my arse. A few missions had specific objectives or required keeping plot characters alive such that they required quite a few restarts, and that's without the crashes...

I do have to mention the state of the game, which will likely never get an update thanks to the shuttering of the studio. At first I tried to run the Mac version, but it crashed on launch without fail. The PC version at least runs, but had a tendency to crash repeatedly during certain missions. This would lose my progress in that level, since there is no ability to save mid-level (which would also have helped in the more demanding scenarios). A couple of times the game also went into a state of intermittent hanging or stuttering, and for a few of the character jobs it would reliably fail to remember my skill choices, so that I would only be able to fill two out of three available ability slots. Pretty frustrating!

The plot of the game broadly follows the show, although it skips quickly through the first half and the pace slows down for the later episode events. But this is fine, as the two mediums are very different and this works for the pace of the game. I liked when things opened up late in the game and there were a lot of sidequests and scenarios that expanded on events unseen in the show, like doing requests for each of the various Gelfling clans to win their support. The enemies consist of other Gelflings who use the same job system you do, Arathim, and Darkening-afflicted creatures, with a few Podlings and Skeksis boss fights thrown in for good measure... I was kind of expecting Garthim to show up, but I guess they really only appear in a late cliffhanger in the show.

In some senses the game works well as a tie-in to the show, but there are limits to how one is able to capture the charms of the puppetry and production design in a budget 3D video game. Apparently the range of movement of the in-game models is accurate to the puppets themselves, but rendering the characters the way they have, while necessary, does lose something, not to mention the world being built of square tiles for gameplay purposes gives the environments something of an artificial feel. You also sadly lose the show's all-star voice cast, as the game is entirely unvoiced. There are nice hand-drawn cutscenes from time to time which I would compare favourably to the better Dark Crystal comics, but they're few and far between.

Given the technical issues I had in my playthrough I find this game hard to recommend, but I did enjoy the customisation, the strategy of the battles, and the little expansions on the show's story. This definitely works best as a supplement to the show though, as it doesn't do much to flesh out the characters, assuming that the player is familiar with them. It's something to treasure in that it's a rare game based on this marvellous but niche Henson property... just don't expect too much.

[marinaiguess]

SONIC HEROES BRAINROT TIME (pros and cons :) )

Cons:

The physics are terrible to deal with. I can’t blame sonic team, they tried their best in the time they had but,,,try playing casino park without rage quitting I DARE YOU. or rail canyon. or final fortress. okay, you’ll find yourself rage quitting a lot. and most of the time, yes, it is not your fault.  

You are obligated to go through the same stages 4 DIFFERENT TIMES. 14 stages. 4 different times. all teams have the same objective, except for team chaotix and that’s: reach the goal. 

You can’t unlock the last story unless you collect all chaos emeralds. Which is fair. But how exactly do you collect them? You have to acquire a key (there are a few scattered around the stages) but only on the second act of each “zone”. And, dont even dream of getting damaged. One wrong move and you lose all your rings and the key. So, you have to restart the stage or move on. 

Bonus stages. You thought the physics in the regular stages were a problem? Try this one. You move the joystick like 1mm and you’ll be thrown in the air and by the time you’re back on track the chaos emerald is like 67 miles ahead of you or your time’s up. If you switch to fly type during this by accident? Good luck reaching that emerald. Oh, and say goodbye to your thumb, it’s gonna get wrecked from how fast you are supposed to smash the button to boost. And the chao sections are horrible.

 Did i complain abt the physics enough? Did I analyze how attrocious and unforgiving the rail system is? I did? It deserves an extra bullet anyway. 

Ah yes, the boss fights. The ones with eggman are ridiculously easy, you spam one button, then wait till that energy fills up and lastly, do the blast attack thing (rinse and repeat the last steps) and done! They get quite repetitive and most feel like a mini boss rather than actual bosses. 

Dont get me started on the team fights. These are either too easy or unbelievably hard. That thing is COMPLETELY broken, I cant explain how frustrating it gets. 

While in this topic, the fights between the teams had absolutely no reason to happen? Everyone was in a bad mood and didnt want to socialize and thought fighting was the best option lol. 

Moving on to the story, Amy, no, you are not supposed to throw Sonic from a fucking building/arena because YOU WANNA MARRY HIM? Also, youre 12, the heroes manual states it, you SHOULDNT wanna marry anyone girl. 

Shadow why are you here? Weren’t you supposed to be dead? Oh, you lost your memory, awesome. *cough* fan service *cough* Okay but seriously? The fuck did they add Shadow for? My boy didnt even turn into super shadow in the end even though HE WAS RIGHT THERE. 

Also on that note, no super tails nor super knuckles. They get some fancy, glowing, bubble shields that make them fly alongside super sonic. No seriously, thats it.

There’s idle chatting in the pc version but you’ll never hear it cuz you have to stand still to trigger it. And thats a shame cuz its really good and interesting. 

Voice acting did not pass the check.

Pros:

Many playable characters! 4 teams, 12 characters, each with their special abilities (seriously, their abilities are cool, Espio literally turns invinsible) You can switch to whoever you want or whoever you need so you can proceed. Fun mechanic to include many characters.

The chaotix! They’re back! (sort of) Omega’s debut! Cream is here for her first 3d appearance!

The stages are quite a lot and there are a lot of interesting environments for you to traverse through. Starting from the classic valley, passing through a casino, an industrial area, a forest and ending up in the sky.

Also, you do go through all the same stages with the separate teams but there are a few differences. So, Team Sonic is a regular gameplay, Team Dark is a harder version of Sonic’s, usually longer stages and harder robots to deal with. Team Rose is very easy and each stage is quite short. Also features an extra tutorial stage in the beginning. Then there’s the Chaotix. You need to do a mission for each stage and there are a lot for you to do. 

Getting the key in the first act gives u the ability to go to the bonus stage and practice! Also gives you extra lives if you get enough points :)

The bonus stages are a reimagination of the bonus stages of sonic the hedgehog 2! The idea is really cool and it’s the first instance of sonic boosting in the entire franchise. 

Getting that A rank won’t be easy. You have to earn it. Idk, thats a good thing imo. The ranking system in some cases is a bit meh (team dark ocean palace im looking at you, 90,000 points in less than 4-5 mins? it’s just the 2nd stage, gimme a break) but overall it’s just right. 

You have a level system! It makes the game more interesting, trying to level up in each stage so you can unlock the better utilites of your character and make your job so much easier. The blast attack is a bonus as well! You earned it. Now kick robutt with just a push of a button. 

The music is literally iconic? So good? 11/10

Actually solid cutscenes.

Drummond on his best performance ever. 

Story-wise, the plot is pretty good for the most part. Every team is doing their own thing but ultimately they’re chasing the same thing (for different reasons, sure). Sonic and co. need to save the world, Dark try to catch eggman so they can get info abt why shadow cant remember shit (why did no one tell him he was supposed to be dead btw?), Rose are after chocola and froggy (in reality, theyre after sonic LOL) and the chaotix are trying to pay their rent. 

METAL SONIC IS THE REAL VILLAIN? WHAT DO YOU MEEEAAAAAAN? that was a cool plot twist (even if it was predictable after a certain point, it was still pretty cool okay?)

The interactions between the characters are very very interesting. You should check the idle chatting for everyone, really sums up their characters. 

SUPER SONIC HAS TAILS AND KNUCKLES BY HIS SIDE TO FIGHT THE FINAL BOSS, POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!

okay that was a lot, but yeah, had to write this down. i think you need to try it to be pleasantly surprised :)

[averagereviews]

Starfield and the problem in general

Intro

Hello fellow gamers out there in the galaxy. This will be my first ever review I done in the first blog I ever created so dont expect much there, but there is just so much fustration piled up in me about the gaming industry, that I have to write it out of me.

Disclaimer

First thing first, there are far worse games out there than Starfield, but this game was the trigger point that made me do a blog, so I will make a honest review from the game. I will only focus the problems here, as official platforms are not highlight them out enough, and since I did not played the game I cant say much about the story either. My review is based on what I seen from Youtube and other streaming platforms so if you want to hear an in depth version, you might look somewhere else.

But hey, you did not play the game, how can you do a review about it, you might ask the fair question. Well my answer to that, you dont taste poop either to know its gonna be bad. I will belive to my fellow gamers that this game has some potential and has good moments, but generally it is another product that was not created with a soul, with the desire to be good.

Technical issues

First of all lets state the obvious, this game was in development for 5-7 years. In 5-7 years they came out with a core game that can be done in about 30 hours, if you focus on the main story quests only. They used the same engine as they are using since eternity and was out of date already at the time of Fallout 4, so it shows its mark on bugs, glitches and on performance as well. While the game runs on a steady 30fps on consols, the PC version suffers a lot. With an upper mid range setup like an I5-10400F+RX6700XT and 32GB ram + an SSD the game barely runs at 40 fps on ultra at 1080p during city walk and gunfights. This is just ridiculus to say the least, while better looking games like CP77 and BG3 or RDR2 runs way above 60 fps all the time. You might think that it may be my system that is weirdly not compatible with the game, but even better rigs suffer from this.

What is more funny in a bad way, that Todd Howard said in an interview, that they put a lot of effort into optimalization and that you may need a better PC to experience this game to the fullest. I dont know about this guys, for me its just feels as a big fat lie onto my face, as said before, better looking games runs better than this. Its not ugly or anything but more like a buffed up Fallout 4 in space theme. Here is some examples:

While you may find better looking areas, your major part in the game will live with this.

Lazy work

Another point I would like to highlight is the use of AI. It was a bad idea back then at No Man's Sky and it was certanly a bad idea here as well. They put 1000+ planets into the game that was generated by the AI depending on where you land on the planet, and most of the time its barren, empty, lifeless. It feels like they gave out the order to the AI, to use these assets on planets and create 1000+ of them. What you can find on them are most of the time rocks, some creatures put into the area randomly and without any real purpose. And yes I admit, if you would travel to 100 planet you would probably find rocks and barren lifeless areas, but as a gamer its boring. It may be fun and interesting for the first couple of times, but it gets boring to the eye very fast. What I would love to see is more planets with life on it, more vegetation, more creatures, better and meaningfull stuff on the surface or marks of a fallen civilization. And we might see this later like 7 years or so just as in No Man's Sky was very bad at the start and they hammered it until it became a good space exploration game. As of right now however this game is without a soul. Also the harsh reality why they do not changing the engine they use, because they know they can create a base game, with a lot of empty suff, and then rely on modders whom will do the hard work and fill up the empty or missing elements for free. They say its a gamer/modder friendly attitude, but its just about saving money and resources which is unacceptable in my book. Create a good game then let the modders live out their hobby, but do not rely on them to make your garbage playable while only you profit on it.

Marketing vs Reality:

This game was marketinged as a very good space exploration + RPG game where you can freely explore hundreds of systems and planets and find interesting stuff on most of them. While on reality this game restricts you from exploring, since you cant land manually on a planet just everywhere (like in No Man's Sky for example), but you have to choose your landing location from a planet view, then loading screen, and you are there in your 4x4km barren field that you can explore with some point of interest you can visit on foot (Because if they would give you wehicle, then you would realise easier that how small the area they let you "explore") These point of interests varies between "kill some pirates, or creatures", "explore this cave with 3 loot nodes inside" or "scan this or that" "Explore the lab" type of activity. Again maybe the first 10 will be interesting, then why would I want to do stuff like this for hours? Where are the crypt like systems that Skyrim offered with full of interesting puzzles? Where are the npcs that did something in previous games around you? Where are the secrets you can discover? Where is the wilderness? Where is life? Its a game its not a space simulator that offers you the same kind of experience you would do in real life. It should be full of fantasy to sell itself. Again it was marketinged like this and not as "Empty planet viewer simulator 2023"

And after all of this, we arrived to the real problem that is not Starfield's only fault. Its the era where we live and what we get for our money. Im sure some of you have much better gaming rig than me and you dont even have to care what you spend on your 70-100 bucks, but there are people, whom like to do gaming and has to think twice where they put their hard earned money. And this game with many others in my eyes are not worth the full price. The general problem is that developers are probably forced to make the games to deadlines that are way too short. I accept that creating an AAA game is not 1-2 years now, especially if you want to make it uniq in some way. Developers are pushed to their limits, they dont have enough time to create something that has a soul nor they have the time to test the games properly looking for bugs and glitches, and they rely on technologies like FSR and DLSS to avoid the need of optimizing. All because the publishers are not gamers, they only looking for money, they dont care about you people. They put a lot of investment to marketing/false marketing to generate hype, and when they got their paycheck they are happy and get the conclusion, they can sell games this way too, why bother with all the details and polishment? Fanbase will always buy it, defend it, as I encountered this with Starfield too. I asked people, what makes Starfield better than even Fallout 4 if it has so many flaws and missing elements? They could not give me a correct answer. All they said it has a good story and ship and base building is very fun, and modders will make this game better anyways, so I will belive them that story may be better, but again its not up to the modders to polish a game or make it playable, interesting, especially not for free even if this was the general case with Skyrim, Fallout series in the past (except that those games had more content by default than Starfield). In other cases I was immediately banned from some forums for said reason "I was trying to generate flame" Well if asking the hard questions is flame generation then yes I was doing that. Is this what we will get from now on? That companies will sell their leftover soul for more money and the gaming industry will only have 2-3 games per 10 years that are really outstanding and was created with passion? What are your toughts about this? Tell me in the comments below.

[pathfinderunlocked]

Unlocked Siren - CR5 Magical Beast

A Pathfinder Unlocked version of the Siren.

Artwork is official Pathfinder 1e artwork from Bestiary 2, copyright Paizo.

The original stat block for a Siren is insanely deadly.  It blasts everyone within 300 feet with an AOE will save (with a pretty high DC for its CR), and if you fail, you either fight your own allies or stand there and wait to die.  Worse, it lasts until the Siren’s silenced or knocked out.  A big chunk of the party will usually fail, and even one person failing is enough to make the encounter extremely deadly.  If half the party fails, the fight is almost certainly unwinnable, unless you get very lucky and crit the siren to death right away.  The original stat block also gives no indication of what kind of action it is to start or maintain the Siren Song ability.

Most of the monsters in my Pathfinder Unlocked series are attempts to make a creature more interesting to fight without changing its difficulty, but in this case, I believe that the actual difficulty of this creature is wildly different from its CR and from its intended difficulty.  So in this case, I significantly nerfed the original Siren in order to bring its special abilities in line with its challenge rating.  Its stats are unchanged, because those were fine; it’s just the Siren Song ability that was insane.

My goal was to keep the general original strategy of being able to attack the creature to break your friends free of the song, but make it more fair and more interactive, and drastically reduce the number of rounds that affected PCs lose their turn and sit there doing nothing.  So the biggest difference between the Unlocked Siren and the original Siren is that my version’s Siren Song ability ends if the creature takes damage, instead of only if it gets knocked out.  The captivation effect also has a secondary break condition.

As an aside, the above artwork is NOT how I ever imagine a Siren looking.  It’s a good thing they have nice voices, because they're built like radio stars.

Siren - CR 5

This creature has the body of a hawk and the head of a beautiful woman with long, shining hair.

XP 1,600 CN Medium magical beast Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +15

DEFENSE

AC 18, touch 14, flat-footed 14 (+3 Dex, +1 dodge, +4 natural) hp 52 (8d10+8) Fort +7, Ref +11, Will +6 Immune mind-affecting effects

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., fly 60 ft. (good) Melee 2 talons +11 (1d6) Special Attacks bardic performance, siren’s song, sneak attack +2d6 Spell-Like Abilities (CL 7th; concentration +12)

3/day—cause fear (DC 16), charm person (DC 16), deep slumber (DC 18), shout (DC 19)

STATISTICS

Str 10, Dex 17, Con 12, Int 14, Wis 19, Cha 21 Base Atk +8; CMB +8; CMD 22 Feats Dodge, Flyby Attack, Lightning Reflexes, Weapon Finesse Skills Fly +7, Knowledge (history) +10, Perception +15, Perform (sing) +13, Stealth +14 Languages Auran, Common

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Bardic Performance (Su) A siren may use bardic performance as a 4th-level bard (9 rounds/day), and can use countersong, distraction, fascinate, inspire competence (+2), and inspire courage (+1).  It can start these performances as a standard action.  Levels in the bard class stack with this ability.

A siren can use a bardic performance at the same time as its Siren Song ability.

Siren Song (Su) As a standard action, a siren can begin to captivate creatures with a song.  It can continue this silent song as a free action on each turn thereafter.  When a siren uses its Siren Song, all creatures except for other sirens within a 60-foot radius must succeed on a DC 19 Will save or become affected by one of its songs (see below).  The effect depends on the type of song the siren chooses, and continues for as long as the siren continues its Siren Song and the target remains within the radius, and for 1 round thereafter.  A creature that successfully saves cannot be affected again by any of that siren’s Siren Songs for 1 hour.  These are sonic mind-affecting effects.  The save DC is Charisma-based.

Continuing the Siren Song is a free action, and changing which song it is singing is a standard action.  Whenever a siren that is performing a Siren Song takes damage or is subjected to an effect that would require a concentration check when casting a spell, it must make a concentration check (typically with a +12 bonus) to maintain the Siren Song, treating it as a fifth-level spell.

Creatures that fail their saving throw behave in one of the following four ways, which the siren chooses when it begins its Siren Song.

Captivation: A siren’s song has the power to infect the minds of those that it touches, calling them to the siren’s side.  A victim under the effects of the captivating song moves toward the siren using the most direct means available.  If the path leads the victim into a dangerous area such as through fire or off a cliff, that creature receives a second saving throw to end the effect before moving into peril.  Captivated creatures can take no actions other than to defend themselves.  A victim within 5 feet of the siren simply stands and offers no resistance to the siren’s attacks.  If the captivated creature takes any amount of damage, the effect ends.  This is a sonic mind-affecting charm effect.

Fascination: Affected creatures are fascinated.

Obsession: An obsessed victim becomes defensive of the siren and does all it can to prevent harm from coming to her, going so far as attacking its allies in her defense.  The victim is not controlled by the siren, but views her as a cherished ally.  This is a mind-affecting charm effect.

Slumber: The victim immediately falls asleep, rendering the creature helpless.  While the siren is using its slumber song, no noise will wake the sleeping creature, though slapping or wounding it does.  The creature wakes up on its own 1 round after the siren ends this song.