General Discussion [ Page 50 ]

Game/Show: 2013 Biggest Ideas in Gaming

"We've assembled a collection of the BIGGEST IDEAS in gaming of 2013! Yes, there are numbers, but we swear, it's totally not a list. From voice activated control to consoles, from ASCII to narratives, see what was on our list, and then complain about all the things we forgot about!"

This is a good episode of Game/Show to end out the year with. Discussing some of the bigger ideas of the year, some of which I am happy to see take shape. I think the games as vehicles for social change is something I am very interested in personally. I wouldn't have expected when I first saw Super Mario Brothers that video games could get as far as they are now. It's a great time to be... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Roundtable Ep 9: The Holiday Special

This is our last episode of the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable in 2013. We talk about what we've been playing, the recent Starbound beta, SteamOS and Steam Machines beta launch, our top 3 most played games in 2013. We also ask Baby New Year to grant us some wishes when we look forward to 2014 in gaming.

Also, WhiteboySlim shows off his holiday sweater and I get a bit upset when I hear Steam Machine beta recipients are installing Windows..... Barbarians.

Papers, Please: http://store.steampowered.com/app/239030/

Starbound beta: http://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1784

SteamOS: http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1782

Terraria 1.2: ... Read All

Steam Holiday Sale: What Are You Getting?

Tomorrow is the day for the Steam Holiday Sale. Any games you are looking to pickup?

I still have yet to play BioShock Infinite & Dishonored but I have so many games already!

Join the CG event for the discussion:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/44

You can read a bit of our discussion on SteamOS:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1782

SteamOS Details: Debian Linux, Gnome 3 & Why it Matters

SteamOS shipped last night and after it hit the net many people started analyzing it and trying to figure out more of the technical details. Valve has a really great SteamOS FAQ that outlines many of the details you should be aware of and i'll summarize some of the important ones.

SteamOS is based on Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy using some Valve custom bits. Valve has added a nice mechanism to load games from SteamOS, its own packaging of graphic drivers and a customization to have the console auto-update.

SteamOS seems to be require 64 bit processors.

SteamOS contains a setting to drop out of Steam to the Gnome 3 Desktop. Gnome 3 is a full featured Linux desktop you can... Read All

SteamOS shipped last night and after it hit the net many people started analyzing it and trying to figure out more of the technical details. Valve has a really great SteamOS FAQ that outlines many of the details you should be aware of and i'll summarize some of the important ones.

SteamOS is based on Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy using some Valve custom bits. Valve has added a nice mechanism to load games from SteamOS, its own packaging of graphic drivers and a customization to have the console auto-update.

SteamOS seems to be require 64 bit processors.

SteamOS contains a setting to drop out of Steam to the Gnome 3 Desktop. Gnome 3 is a full featured Linux desktop you can learn more about here: http://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/

Valve has enabled easy access to gain root access on SteamOS. Basically this means you can customize it to do anything Linux can do.

Right now SteamOS targets NVidia only, but there are drivers included for Intel and ATI.

I have been involved with Linux for many years and Valve's choices on what to ship with SteamOS are very exciting. Basing SteamOS on Debian Linux is a brilliant choice as it allows some awesome customization options for opening up your SteamOS to do nearly anything. I will be keeping my eye to how things advance to see guides on adding extra package repositories to SteamOS so you can setup your Steam Machine to run XBMC, VLC or act as a file server.

I have a mac-mini under my TV so I can watch web video and use VLC to play any movie file I throw at it. Now that SteamOS is basically a customized version of Debian, I can replace the mac. In a world where Sony can ship a console without mp3 playback or support for DLNA/UPnP, SteamOS will ship something you can hack to do practically anything you'd want a computer to do.

Valve shipped out the initial 300 Steam Machine beta machines and so far we are waiting for people to obtain them and report back. A few people in the beta are YouTuber's and I will let you know when they start talking about stuff.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/

If you want to download the backgrounds SteamOS ships with, you can download them here. I set the main one as my Linux desktop background, you know, for science.

http://repo.steampowered.com/steamos/pool/main/v/valve-wallpapers/

As an aside, I have been running Debian Wheezy for a few weeks as I recently switched from being a long time Ubuntu user. It's a great distro and at some point in 2014, I am looking to switch my primary Linux Desktop to SteamOS.

My Thoughts On Western Digital's WDMyCloud NAS

I have tons of digital files I have amassed over the years. I have 155 gigs of music I have acquired from ripping CD's, buying it online or getting stuff people release for free. I also collect PDF books, games, movies, digital pictures and a ton of other stuff I never want to lose. I take pride in that the majority of my digital collection is legit stuff I actually own. For many years I have been happy with how I access my stuff because I typically used to operate on only one computer. Everything lived in one place and life was great. That said, after University I started acquiring more devices and then managing all my files got a bit harder.

After I added a few more... Read All I have tons of digital files I have amassed over the years. I have 155 gigs of music I have acquired from ripping CD's, buying it online or getting stuff people release for free. I also collect PDF books, games, movies, digital pictures and a ton of other stuff I never want to lose. I take pride in that the majority of my digital collection is legit stuff I actually own. For many years I have been happy with how I access my stuff because I typically used to operate on only one computer. Everything lived in one place and life was great. That said, after University I started acquiring more devices and then managing all my files got a bit harder.

After I added a few more computers to the mix, I started treating one computer as the "canonical point" for all files and then I used various scripts to keep everything in sync over my network. A few years ago I picked up an iPhone and things started to get a bit hard to manage. It wasn't impossible, it just was tedious. I'd buy a new album, rip it, copy it to my Linux machine then sync it to my laptop and other computers. Then use iTunes to copy it to my phone. It was manageable but not fun.

A few months ago I decided to bite the bullet and look into buying something I have wanted for a few years now. I got a NAS. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and it's basically a hard disk you plug into your network that can serve up your files. After doing quite a bit of research I bought the 3TB Western Digital WDMyCloud.

First off, the WDMyCloud is awesome. At 3TB, I have more than enough disk to store my files. Once your music, movies and photos are on the device the MyCloud scans your files and serves them up over Windows & Apple filesharing + DLNA & UPnP. DLNA/UPnP are protocols many devices like the XBox 360 & PS3 can stream media over. Right now, I can browse through all my music and movies from the MyCloud on my PS3. Western Digital also has an app for the iPhone but you can use any generic DLNA/UPnP app as well.

One of the neat things about the MyCloud is that it lets you enable ssh by simply checking a box in the admin UI. Most devices don't allow this and to get ssh access you need to flash the device or hack it. The MyCloud lets you unlock it by default and it's pretty awesome as under the covers it runs Debian Wheezy(Linux). I have used this ssh access to turn the MyCloud into a local Linux server.

If you are looking for a way to consolidate your media for easy access, I recommend you check out the WDMyCloud. So far, I love using it and it has made sharing my files on my home network really simple.

http://is.gd/AAoHuM

Steam Machine beta boxes shipping, Steam OS Friday!

The Steam Universe group has updated with new info about various upcoming events. The 300 lucky recipients will get their boxes very soon-- they're shipping Friday-- and Steam OS will be made available that day.

Check your email today at 2PST to see if you're one of the lucky 300!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/1930088300965516570

GOG Moving to a Better Refund Policy in the Digital Age

"Game doesn't work for you? Contact our support (http://www.gog.com/support) and tell us to fix it! But what if they cannot find a solution? If such a rare event should occur, we'll give you your money back. Simple as that. If you buy a game on GOG.com and find that it doesn't work properly on your system, and our support cannot fix the problem, you get a full refund. It's a worldwide guarantee, and you have whole 30 days after the purchase date, to contact us about the refund.

There's even more! If you bought a game by mistake, or simply changed your mind about a purchase, you can get a full refund within 14 days, as long as the game wasn't downloaded."

I mention this... Read All

Tales from the Borderlands announced at VGX

Telltale Games, the studio behind some amazing adventure games like last year's The Walking Dead series, showed a teaser trailer for Tales from the Borderlands at VGX last night. This is a totally new style of game for the Borderlands series, but I could definitely get behind a more story-driven look at Pandora.

Penny Arcade Report is shutting down

http://hw1.pa-cdn.com/par/img/editorial/parDone.jpg

This is really sad news. I have been a fan of PAR since they started two years ago.

The post by Ben Kuchera doesn't go into the details about why they're ending their run, but alas, it's over.

Ben, feel free to come post over here :)

See more here: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/it-was-a-great-two-years-but-now-its-time-to-say-goodbye

EDIT: Penny Arcade proper posted some info about this, saying that it was to streamline things, but it isn't entirely clear.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/12/06/changes

Game/Show: How Much Do PS4 & Xbox One's New Graphics Matter?

"So, there's been a ton of debate recently about the resolution disparities of certain games on PlayStation4 and Xbox One, aka RESOLUTION GATE. And this of course follows a long tradition of gamers and marketers obsessing over next-gen graphics. But after taking a look, we began to wonder do great graphics make for a great game? Sure, graphics allow game designers to do amazing things, but what most gamers truly want is IMMERSION - that feeling of being fully sucked into a game. And when we looked at the psychology of immersion, we found that graphics might not be that important :/. In fact, our obsession with graphics might be holding us back from spreading games... Read All