Nintendo kicks off 'Crowdfarter' promo for Game & Wario
Narco Terror announced from Deep Silver
Call of Duty: Ghosts teaser gives tenuous look at next-gen COD
OZombie will be Spicy Horse's take on Oz
Deadpool listed for Wii U on Amazon Canada
Morning Discussion
by Alice O'Connor, Feb 14, 2011 5:00am PSTMonday! What a glorious day! And how better to celebrate than with some links?
How do you woo a Brit? It's simpler than you might think!
How to manage nerds. It's possibly simpler than you might think, or maybe not!
A lovely (but workplace-unfriendly, if you work somewhere soul-crushing) photo project of grown adults recreating photographs from their childhoods.
Pondering a different approach to video game interviews. It's inspired by journalist Gay Talese, a proponent of 'literary journalism.' Seeking interviews that are more than simply transcribed Q&A sessions, interviewers would treat answers as a 'first draft' then massage them into a richer, deeper narrative. Food for thought.
People aren't stupid about other units, no one says "My house is 1200 square inches" I really don't get it. It's not that complicated, is it?
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::raises hand::
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Shadows in Darksiders shimmer like crazy. Doesn't seem to be a fix. :[ I havent seen shadows this bad since Stalker came out.
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I'm 31 years old and married.
My mother showed up at my front door yesterday with a Timmies coffee and $50, and told me to pre-order RIFT
I try to explain to people how my mother plays video games, and they don't really get it.
She used to run 2 computers at once when she played DAOC.
Anyone else have parents that are more hardcore than you are?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpEC9WdC9Vk * 360 vid *
Hot, March is gona be crazy :)
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http://www.antiquiet.com/news/2011/02/foo-fighters-white-limo-official-video/
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Yo, Esperanza, I'm really happy for you, ima let you finish....
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/14/hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-belieber-scorned/?hpt=C1
LMFAO
I'm glad they actually went with Jazz. She's pretty groovy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15M62OtLrBQ
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Is Batman: AA worth $7.50?
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http://www.news.com.au/business/secret-coca-cola-ingredient-list-found-in-newspaper/story-e6frfm1i-1226006104069
Tired of supercoolmcgee's content farm spamming up your google links when you really want the original stackoverflow page? Well check this out:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef#
Yay! :)
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Link: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20824948&postcount=8
More info in reply
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From watching it last night, it was a movie without any sort of subtext, that took few or no chances on doing anything daring, and was filled with excellent actors putting out interchangeable performances. There were only a handful of aspects that I could look at and say, "this is the way things had to be for the best possible result."
And this thing is probably going to win Best Picture. Argh.
My only solace is that Fincher won the BAFTA for Best Director so he's probably going to triumph there, and there's a possibility that the instant-runoff voting system will work in The Social Network's favor.
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Shit, I knew there was something I was supposed to do this weekend.
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This is the awesome article from a developer at Relic that inspired me to write the not stuff you are a bout to read: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6267/lifting_the_designers_curse.php
I've noticed something in game development recently, and it's probably been around since the beginning, but I'd like to point out recent examples. There are two different positions available in developing a game called a game "designer" and a game "director". The director is supposed to be in charge of the overall picture "the game feels like X, and so my job is to make sure each component fits into that." Whereas the designer is the guy that well, designs the components. He's the guy that makes the rules for the gameplay systems that eventually contribute, along with the other systems, art, sound, and etc. to X.
The trend I've noticed is that some directors are acting like designers, and the game suffers for it. Civilization V is a great example. It's obvious the director (I can't remember his name) played the game almost exclusively as a war game. So every decision was geared towards producing that wargame that was in his head. Consequently the only viably fun way to play Civ 5 ended up as going for the "conquer everyone" victory scenario, because the other victory conditions were all deferred towards making sure the "conquer" condition was good.
Another, upcoming game seems to be Skyrim. Listening to Howard talk, you hear him talk about how it's his job to re-work the skills system, and combat, and etc. This doesn't sound like the talk of someone in charge of the overall project, but someone who wants to be in charge of the leveling mechanics and etc. Specifically, it sounds as if he plays the game along the lines of "Go into town, get your quests, leave to bash things, come back to trade in your loot and get more quests." If you like that focus, you'll probably enjoy Skyrim a lot.
The problem comes in when your realize games can be about more than just one focus. In the Civ 5 example, there has been traditionally several ways to win. Similarly in Morrowind there were several ways to play and have fun. But with the game's director acting more as a designer, the focus is narrowed. Perhaps the narrow focus betters what it's on, but at the expense of having a broader appeal.
I would talk about Fable 3, but I'm not sure if the guy that was their director just didn't know what to focus on, or it if the game's problems were mainly due to his refusal to delay an incomplete game or what. But the point of all this is, games are often "better" when they have a director who can ensure that the game can be played in many ways, even if he or she doesn't understand all the ways that others might want to play it. At least, better in a business sense. If a game's narrow focus is perfect for you, then it'll be all the better for you. But you'll still only pay $60, so from a business perspective it's better to have as many people as possible get a good experience and pay $60, rather than a more limited amount of people have great experience and still pay $60 each.
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Basically I have a set of scores (range 1-5) for an item (of which there are many) and the function is supposed to return a list of all these items that have been scored in the order of average score from highest to lowest. Very basic stuff. It also takes a single argument that signifies how many items in the list to return. So if you want the top five you pass 5 etc. So I am looking at all the queries generated by this thing and there are dozens and dozens of them, one for each item in fact, but all I ever ask for is the top five. So of course I am like "what". I look at the function and what it does first is run a query for every item (okay, fine I guess) and then iterate through an array of them and individually run a query for each one to get the sum of the votes and the number of votes for that item (not the average, mind you, I decided to do that in PHP within the loop). And then, and this is truly where my brilliant design shines, instead of using the fucking LIMIT clause it just runs array_slice on the whole thing with the function argument.
I literally facepalmed when I saw what I had done. I am actually trying not to laugh now because it is amazing. I was pretty awesome back then!
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I recently went to Hobby Lobby to get some posters framed. It came out to 200 dollars for 2 frames, and this was the cheapest they said they had. So I thought that was okay until I talked to people and said that was horrible.
So now they've called me and said they're ready to be picked up, but now I'm finding it hard to stomach paying 200 dollars for two $2 posters to be framed.
They have my name and number and address, can I just ignore them and it'll go away, or do I need to man up and pay for my posters in case they send me to debt collection?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-_4mcYsQdE
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http://www.simplyshredded.com/the-truth-behind-5-food-myths.html
suck it, trebeck!
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http://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/
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I don't know if this was part of the Valentine's update, but I've noticed that my tank charges are CONSTANTLY BEING INTERRUPTED by another grapple. As in I hit Charge, the animation starts and then the other guy's grapple animation immediately overrides mine. There's flame coming out the jetpacks on my back and everything, the noise goes off, but it gets ignored in favor of the other guy's grapple. The only other possible explanation is that a Charge to their front means they have an opportunity to grapple immediately, but it didn't use to be like this.
Also, tank charges are much less powerful - what was an easy ring-out before is now not even half the distance.
Finally, Highlander needs to be a browseable field in the server listing.
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I start my first day of Mandarin classes today, so I have a question for the shackers who speak Chinese...how scared should I be?
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nope. for her boyfriend, she was hiding it :(
HOLY SHITBALLS! This trailer hyped me, and after playing PC games for 18 years it takes a fucking miracle to get me excited about a game.
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I spent most of the weekend playing ranked as the Lord General, trying to figure out how to better play this stupid game. I've got a more or less .500 win ratio, which is okay by me, and generally have pretty decent games when I don't get stuck with teammates who build nothing but Sentinels.
Some reflections on Guard:
- rush to Tier 2 immediately because that's where ALL the good stuff is
- they're capable of totally melting other infantry in massed numbers (3 squads will beat scouts + tactical marines generally)
- Sentinels are surprisingly powerful but also fragile as hell and I still can't really figure out how to use them properly
- the Lord General's meltagun ability, plus three squads of plasma guardsmen, will completely demolish commanders, Marines, and light vehicles
- Plague Champions are complete assholes
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