jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2753 Posts

If you're like me you play Hearthstone but are free to play or don't spend much therefore you don't have every card. This means you need to work within a constrained gold(what you earn from dailies) and dust budget. This isn't too bad, but at times can seem like you don't have options to play with fun decks but recently I've found two decks that are really good and can be created fairly easily. The first decknis called "Disneyland Warrior" and is featured in the Kripparian video above. It's essentially a Zoo deck that only contains Warrior commons. Like many Zoo decks, this decks works becase you can keep pumping out cheap minions on curve to win. It's one of the only decks that runs Gurubashi Berserker which can get huge if you play things right.

You can watch the video above for the decklist and see the one on Hearthpwn below.

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/560481-disneyland-warrior
http://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/624-gurubashi-berserker

The second deck is Pirate Warrior, a deck i've mentioned before but want to highlight again because it's not hard to make and swashbuckling fun. You can swap out Reckless Rocketeer for Leeroy Jekins and Sylvanis Windrunner or another Arathi Weaponsmith for Captain Greenskin. The pirate synergy makes for some crazy turns and huge weapons that love to go face. Hearthstone streamer Trump has a series on him creating a free to play account and trying to make Legendary with a Pirate deck very similar to this one so if you are also interested in how to make the deck work and do it free to play, you can start the series with the YouTube link below and continue on until you learn the basics of the deck and how to build it.

http://www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/legendary-pirate-warrior-aggro-rush-standard-deck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aJOBlClZXg

Have fun!


The Floppotron is an impressive creation built from hacked floppy drives and other old PC hardware to create musical tones and then made to work together to recreate the Star Wars main theme.

Can General Solo get these people a medal?

"How does it work? The principle is simple. Every device with an electric motor is able to generate a sound. Scanners and floppy drives use stepper motors to move the head with sensors which scans the image or performs read/write operations on a magnetic disk. The sound generated by a motor depends on driving speed. The higher the frequency, the greater the pitch. Hard disks use a magnet and a coil to tilt the head. When voltage is supplied for long enough, the head speeds up and hits the bound making the „drum hit” sound. The disk head coil can also be used as a speaker to play tones or even music, but… that would be too easy and too obvious.

Every column of 8 floppy drives is connected to one 8-channel controller built on ATMega16 microcontroller. One controller acts as one voice with envelope simulation – the higher the volume, the more drives are playing. This allows to make ADSR-like shape and simulate a musical instrument, like a piano (exponential decay) or string instrument (sine, vibrato).
"


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Polygon has a really great article that covers the history of the infamous Blizzard game StarCraft: Ghost. Ghost was a game that was aimed at consoles and featured stealth gameplay starring the Ghost character Nova. I remember hearing quite a big of buzz about the game and as with many upcoming Blizzard games, I was really interested in playing it. Eventually Blizzard stopped talking about the game entirely and then we found out the game wasn't in active development but never properly cancelled. Up until now we didn't know much as to why the game was scrapped but Polygon has a very well written article that covers the story of Ghost from conception to it changing hands to an entirely new team.

"The story of StarCraft: Ghost is a complicated one that spans two development studios, a buyout by Blizzard and declarations that, even though no work was being done on the game, it was never technically canceled. Polygon recently spoke with nine developers involved to look back at the project.

"StarCraft: Ghost was in the wrong place at the wrong time," says James Goddard, a fighting game veteran who worked on Ghost for years.
"

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/5/11819438/starcraft-ghost-what-went-wrong


Recently Mighty No. 9 launched to very mixed reviews. Some Kickstarter backers didn't get the correct game codes for the platforms they pledged to and many more experienced some unfortunate game glitches at launch. In one of his latest videos, Cygnus Destroyer runs Mighty No. 9 through the Innocent and Proven Guilty courtroom and I found his verdict fair. As a fan of the original Mega Man series I had high hopes for Mighty No. 9 but I had mixed feelings about picking it up until I saw this video.


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Chucklefish is finally releasing Starbound 1.0 coming July 22nd. After making a huge early access splash, Chucklefish hit a few snags with some pretty large delays and as such garnered some community backlash. I am happy to see the game finally hit this milestone and as such am really eager to play it in it's final form.

"In case you missed it, Starbound is coming out of Early Access on 22 July, 2016.

After ~5 years, the game we set out to make finally exists, and to say that it all feels a bit surreal would be a massive understatement!

While Starbound will be finished in two weeks, this isn’t the end. We will continue to update and support Starbound for as long as we can. We’ve got loads of cool ideas we couldn’t fit into 1.0 but hope to put into future updates.

Thanks again for all your support over the years! You’ve stuck with us, and it means so much.
"


After Diablo became a huge success on PC, Blizzard partnered with EA to port it to the original Playstation. This bit of retro knowledge wasn't something I was aware of until I saw RetroSnow's recent review of Playstation Diablo. From his review, the port seems to be very well done if not a bit dark in certain levels. It's nice to see Diablo III make a strong comeback on modern consoles and if you have a PS3, PS4, 360 or XBone I seriously recommend you download the Diablo III demo to see how well it plays.


I recently found a video that catalogs the history of Doom and also briefly discusses iD Software. I've posted videos before talking about iD Software but this is a bit different in that it mostly covers Doom, it's origins and the most recent Doom 2016 installment. Not a huge amount of new information here but if you don't know the story of Doom, this is a very good way to get it.


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Speedrunning charity stream Summer Games Done Quick will be blasting through the gaming stream-o-sphere starting July 3rd @ 9.30am and wrapping up on the 9th. As with every year, the game speedrunning lineup is a buffet of classic retro titles and many hot new modern titles such as Goonies II, Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening DX, BioShock, Dishonored, Hexen and Fallout 4.

I've created an Event you can join to add to you calendar to remind you of the event or just queue it up on Twitch starting July 3rd. As with every year there will be some great speedruns of this event and i'll share the ones I really enjoy. Let me know if you plan on watching and what games you are going to tune in for!

Summer Games Done Quick is supporting the Doctors Without Borders Charity and it's a very special one and well worth you considering making a donation during the event!

"Every year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides emergency medical care to millions of people caught in crises in more than 60 countries around the world. MSF provides assistance when catastrophic events—such as armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, or natural disasters—overwhelm local health systems. MSF also assists people who face discrimination or neglect from their local health systems or when populations are otherwise excluded from health care."

https://gamesdonequick.com/schedule
https://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick


"Relive the depths of Rapture and sail through Columbia in BioShock: The Collection! Remastered for current-gen, this edition includes all three #BioShock games, complete with all single-player DLC and a never-before-seen video series with commentary from Ken Levine. Available September 13, 2016 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC."

If you haven't jumped into BioShock yet this upcoming collection will be a great time to do so. Whereas the original game didn't sit as well with me as others, I thought BioShock Infinite and both DLC missions were incredible. If you enjoy heady sci-fi games with compelling stories, characters and gameplay or simply want to head back and experience Rapture again, the BioShock Collection drops September 13th on PC, XBone & PS4.


After Game/Show launched I posted quite a few episodes to Cheerful Ghost because I liked the style of the show and what it had to say. Today I watched the latest episode that sort of just let us all know the show was over using a title roll and series of clips. Not that everything that ends needs to wave goodbye, but this doesn't seem like the shows style and I wonder what the story here is?

All that said, Game/Show had a really solid two year run and like many I appreciated it's perspective and what it added to the discussion.

*waves goodbye*