Minecraft fans are amazing. When the game first dropped and got popular people spent lots of time building cool stuff in the game. One such thing I will never forget was The Enterprise that was featured in the Minecraft movie. Seems someone decided that the floating city of Columbia, as seen in BioShock infinite needed to be built.
This is pretty impressive, but that Game of Thrones business is completely insane! I will never play Minecraft again, having the knowledge now that I'm doing it all wrong.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/02/2014 at 03:40pm
Yeah. I sort of treat Minecraft like my own personal survival island game. So very lonely.
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"You've all had it too easy for too long. Sitting there, building your prisons, not caring about deaths or insolvency. Well NO MORE! We've introduced failure conditions and now, if you f**K up it's game over.
We've also graded all prisoners on four scales: Punishment, Reform, Security and Health. You can check these out in the rap sheet and when summed over the whole prison you end up with a score. Lefty-liberal reformist paradise or super-right super-max super bad ass punishment amplifier - you go ahead and max those stats. The Punishment Inspector shall be pleased."
Really enjoy seeing this latest batch of Prison Architect updates. Introversion has added endgame failure states which are pretty interesting. Too many people die in your prison? You get in trouble for criminal negligence and become a prisoner in your own prison. Have a riot that goes on too long? The national guard will come in and take over your prison.
Introversion also added a scoring system for the chance your prisoners will reoffend. With all these new changes, it seems they are getting closer to the final game. Unsure what else they plan to add to the game but it is pretty awesome to see all they have added to it till now. I started with a pretty early alpha build but it was already loads of fun and it just keeps getting better.
You can nab Prison Architect on Steam for Linux, Mac and Windows right now for 66% off so get it now if you are interested.
In this episode of the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable we talk about what we are playing, drinking and dive right into talking about Star Wars Episode VII and the recent E.T. dig. What horrible games would you bury 50 feet under the ground to never be played again?
We talk about all of that. So yay for you.
What We are Playing & Drinking
0.52m Travis: Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
2.45m WhiteboySlim: Diablo III, Knights of Pen and Paper +1
5.30m Scrypt: Risk of Rain & Road Trip
7.19m jdodson: Wayward Souls & Age of Mythology Extended Edition
My only casting concern in SW EP VII is Cari Fisher. She of course has a very important role in the original movies, but The last time we saw her in SW she was super hot rocking a golden bikini. Now she kind of looks and talk like the hunch back of Notre Dame. I'm a terrible person, I know.
It is a shame that we couldn't have seen those original characters (during their prime) continue to develop on the big screen. I'm sure Han and Leia will take on some kind of Owen and Beru role, making blue milk smoothies in the kitchen, reminiscing of times we never got to see.
@jdodson, speaking of Humble Bundle, did you click over to see the actual bundle this month? Image comics! East of West, Lazarus and Saga are all good reasons to pick that up, for anyone interested in having their world rocked.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/02/2014 at 12:50am
@Matt_Derkson: Yeah, you are a terrible person so please feel bad. :trollface:
That said, I hear you but it's not a huge thought in my mind. Carrie Fischer looked like Princess Leia and now she likes more like Queen Leia. Which is to say, she is old enough to be someones Grandma and looks the part now. This isn't a slam, grandparents are awesome BUT most of them I never had the hots for so it's strange.
@scrypt: I am happy we are getting this far. I would have wished a 30/40 something Luke doing cool shit and it stinks we won't get it, but I am happy that we can finally point the Star Wars camera at these actors and see something new.
As far as the new bundle, yeah I did see it. I got the ol' Audiobook bundle and it's great but I still haven't listened to any of them. I love the idea of the Comic Book bundle I just think it will turn out similarly to the Audiobook bundle.
Let the characters act their age! This is like real life, people get older, it happens. I guarantee we'll see Luke doing some cool shite, a la Yoda. He's older, but that just means he knows how to kick ass better than the wet behind the ears Jedis coming up. I for one am looking forward to the new series, especially with the combo of Kasdan/Abrams. And for all you pups, Lucas first envisioned the series as a 9-parter (see OLD interviews), so finally it's coming through.
You may have noticed that most shooters only enable you to play them in one way. Run and gun. Looks like the new Wolfenstein game has considered this and is designed to allow you choice in how you approach it. Not only can you run and gun, causing mad amounts of carnage and also paint the world with the blood of your Nazi foes. It seems Machine Games is also enabling people to play with a stealth mode style.
If you are the more "hang back and slit throats while taking some sniper shots at the Nazis" type of person, they seem to have you covered. All told I enjoy the "run and gun carnage" but I also really loved the stealth aspect of the recent BioShock Infinite DLC Burial At Sea Part 2.
Excited to try my hand at both styles when the game drops.
I've never experienced a lead-up to a game like this except maybe Bioshock Infinite. Every trailer that comes out is better than the last, and it just gets me more and more pumped. I can't wait to get my hands on this one.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/30/2014 at 03:17am
Bethesda is really keeping the marketing going on this all the way to launch for sure.
Gameplay looks solid, and worth getting excited over. If id can pull it all together with a somewhat compelling story, I'll be thrilled. Consider me very interested.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/30/2014 at 03:26pm
iD isn't making this game Machine Games is.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/30/2014 at 03:27pm
But I agree with the great narrative bit, I hope it has one too.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/30/2014 at 06:25pm
Right. They have farmed out the last few Wolf games to external studios and this is continuing that. I think the last one they made was Spear of Destiny.
Yeah, I'm under-spec as well. Considering Ps4 option, or the possibilities of upgrading my PC, but then I'd need a new processor AND video card. Maybe a power supply. Probably more hard drive space, too. Definitely. Definitely more hard drive space.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/01/2014 at 04:05pm
Well. My power supply on my PC isn't great BUT there is a new Nvidia card that supports it. It's the low power high spec option Nvidia releases every so often. Let me rustle up the info here...
Ok so it's the GTX 750. It doesn't require anything more than to plug it in.
I will tell you that some of my specs are just under the minimum requirements for Assassins Creed 3 and 4, and both of them run perfectly on almost maxed out settings. So it may run perfectly, or may sputter along, depending on how much of a margin they allowed.
Ah, this is telling: "The system requirements are based on the game being a next-gen experience running at 60fps. These are the system requirements to deliver the PC game as it was intended to be experienced."
So you can probably get a this-gen or last-gen (whatever the hell we're calling the PS3 and 360 generation now) experience with your setup.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/01/2014 at 05:44pm
Nice. I plan on getting the 750 some time this year, but prob not before New Order comes out.
My setup works pretty well for 90% of what I throw at it BUT Diablo III is lagging a bit more than i'd prefer.
Really? Katie's laptop is using the Intel 3000 series integrated video and she doesn't have any issues with it. She does have Low FX turned on though, which I've actually considered myself at times for different reasons-- when you have a Wizard or a Monk with Epiphany spamming the screen with all kinds of colorful effects, it's easy to lose the action.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/01/2014 at 05:59pm
Yeah, I run D3 @ 1920x1200 and don't skimp too much on the VFX. Most of the time, it's fine but more oft that not on Reaper, things chug.
It's a pretty hefty machine beyond the video card though. I'd LIKE to run it at my full res of 2560x1440 on the GTX 750 but that might be wishful thinking :D
Did you see the size of that download? 50Gb! I'll wait and get it used on the Ps4. It might take a few weeks to find a used copy, but that's probably how long it would take me to download that on Steam.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/01/2014 at 07:22pm
Yeah I did. One one hand, YAY it should look fantastic. On the other hand, Comcast is going to shut me off in the middle of the month.
Good thing the cap isn't enforced in my area right now.
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Nekro is a pretty cool game i've been following since I played it at PAX Prime last year. DarkForge Games will bring it to Steam Early Access on May 2nd so you can sink your teeth into the evil for yourself.
But don't take my word for it, peep the new trailer above.
Nekro will drop on Steam for Linux, Mac and Windows and will be 25% off at launch so if you are interested, you should pick it up while it's on sale.
If you are interested, check my beta review of Nekro:
Can't seem to go far these days without hearing about a new Indie Rogue-like and this post is no exception. RocketCat Games, the company that brought us such greats as Mage Gauntlet, Punch Quest & Hook Champ just released Wayward Souls for iOS. It launched a few days ago and has made some pretty big waves in the Indie scene and since I am always in the market for fun mobile games, I decided to give it a shot. To date, my list of fun mobile games is very small but some games really shine and Wayward Souls is one of the best yet.
In Wayward Souls you start out by picking one of five classes, the Warrior, Mage and Rogue. Not all of the classes are unlocked from the start. You can unlock the Adventurer, Spellsword & Cultist classes by completing in game zones. Part of the fun of Wayward Souls is learning your enemies so you can avoid death. Each enemy has a very different mechanism for attacking you and it's fun to find a new one and learn the particular pattern to take it down. Wayward Souls also features totally random dungeons so no play through is the same.
One annoying aspect of perma-death rogue-likes is that you start fresh from game to game. Wayward Souls does something different in that you earn in game gold you can use to permanently enhance the classes you play. You might have a spectacular failure during one session but if you collected enough gold you can upgrade the class to do better the second time. Whereas most games make these upgrades useless, in Wayward Souls the class upgrades really effect your next game.
One gripe I have with hack and slash phone games is that the controls usual suck. Wayward Souls breaks out of the this tradition with a really great use of phone gestures to make the gameplay smooth. I'd rather play this with a traditional controller for certain, but after some time with the game found the touch controls to be perfectly acceptable substitutes.
The overall art in the game looks like a love letter to Secret of Mana and as such totally love it. The music is fantastic and really brings it's unique style to make the game that much better. The game score is so imaginative I was finding myself in awe of what was happening musically. With that, I hope they release it as a download in some form as i'd love to add it to my personal collection.
Wayward Souls is a great game if you are looking for something pickup and play that offers a deep PC like experience. One huge complaint I have with most phone games is that they are trite and devoid of fun and Wayward Souls really breaks out of that and offers up a real "meat and potatoes" experience.
Wayward Souls is available right now on iOS for $5 and will be ported later to Android and PC. RocketCat plans on increasing the price over time as they add more content to the game so if you are interested, best to pick it up now.
**EDIT**: Looks like we can all nab the Wayward Souls OST from Bandcamp for only $3.
"For over 35 years, the Expanded Universe has enriched the Star Wars experience for fans seeking to continue the adventure beyond what is seen on the screen. When he created Star Wars, George Lucas built a universe that sparked the imagination, and inspired others to create. He opened up that universe to be a creative space for other people to tell their own tales. This became the Expanded Universe, or EU, of comics, novels, videogames, and more.
While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align.
Now, with an exciting future filled with new cinematic installments of Star Wars, all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.
“We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon,” said Kennedy. “We’re set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before.”"
So basically we are learning what seemed real enough since the new Star Wars films were announced, they are taking an entirely new direction. All told this doesn't bother me and I look forward to the new stories the new films will tell.
That said, not all fans are happy about this news at all. I'll admit, I grew up considering the Timothy Zhan's Heir to the Empire books to be cannon. Now that they are not, I am a bit sad but it's not like Lucasfilm is taking them away.
What do you think, is Lucasfilm doing right by the new direction Disney is taking the franchise or is this something else?
I came here to post this. It kinda sucks that Kyle Katarn is no longer canon. He was my favorite character in any Star Wars lore.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/26/2014 at 09:26pm
Yeah, but the character is still around it's just not official cannon. Kind of like we have the original films regardless of any new direction or whatever.
Well, I was personally hoping for Kyle to show up in the new movies. :)
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/27/2014 at 04:52pm
Sure. I bet lots of Star Wars "Extended Universe" fans wanted stuff like that too. Personally i'd love for the Star Wars Bounty Hunters book to be a movie, it was freaking amazing.
That said, when I heard Lawrence Kasdan was writing the scripts for EP VII all my fears about the story part being good kind of evaporated. Kind of excited to see what new stuff he brings to the table.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/29/2014 at 08:41pm
It's like anything else. Enjoy the extended universe as much or as little as you want, but the main source of that universe will always have precedent. Do you really want a rehashing of these stories told in a different format, or do you want to see something entirely new? I vote for the latter.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/03/2014 at 09:36pm
I agree and I sort of think they will pull elements from the EE but mostly do new.
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Wanted to share some Cheerful Ghost fan art from one of my friends and local PDX artist Hagen Deloss. I love seeing this stuff, so if you have seen someone make something or have made something yourself please share it with me.
Like many of you, I excitedly boarded the Starbound hype train. After a few weeks of reading the nearly daily updates, watching the update videos and talking to friends, I was hooked. I wasn’t alone as many people on Cheerful Ghost and all over the internet were really excited to see play Starbound. In April of 2013 the Starbound beta hit and over the next few months the Starbound fans funded the game at 4 million dollars! We sailed through the three pre-order bonuses of the new race, collectable fossils and starter pets. My excitement level was crazy. Clearly this game would be the answer to my prayer for an awesome open world building game in space that took the best elements from Minecraft and Terraria.
As the 2013 was nearing an end Chucklefish let us know the game beta would finally release. To be able to finally play Starbound was like a nerds dream come true. When the beta date hit, I refreshed the Humble Store got my key and frantically kept checking Steam to be able to download the game on my Mac. Later that day the game downloaded and I started a fresh character. The game was beautiful, the score was moving and the game was fun. I didn’t understand the weapon level system, the game was way too easy and the entire universe was really empty but none of that mattered because I was high on Starbounds glow. I sunk many hours into Starbound over that first week but as my play time grew the games flaws started to become more apparent.
Chucklefish mentioned the game would be buggy. They said the game wouldn’t be finished. I kept that information in the back of my mind as I played but as the games oddities increased, my excitement waned. I decided to walk away from the game a bit to give them a few months to fix the games biggest flaws. I came back to the game after Chucklefish said to expect no more player wipes. I figured that would be a good time as i’d have some permanence to my game. After a few days of playing a bug hit the game wiping out all my treasure chests. After this bug hit I also noticed how much the game hand’t really progressed in those few months.
Recently, Tiy posted something to the Chucklefish blog that I wanted to respond to.
"Tiy: The first reason is relocating the team. This is a complex and time consuming process that is (thankfully) almost at an end. We hope to have the entire team over here by the end of the month. Making this work has meant going through the visa process, setting up a work space, finding a new home for each person, team members driving for days to get legal documentation. It’s been a challenge.
Some people tell us that its a waste of time and there is no benefit to working in the same office when tools exist to work remotely. These people are grossly mistaken."
I am currently a Software Engineer that works for a very large company and we have developers distributed all over the world. My team consists of people spanning Oregon, Washington DC & Brazil. There is no question that having all development centrally located can be helpful. That said, working remotely in tech isn’t crazy. Having team members that span different timezones does take some organization and care. One mechanism is to have people flex work hours a bit to accommodate the team.
"Tiy: The other reason updates have slowed down was the community response to faster updates. People like to point out that we said we would deliver near daily small updates and have failed to do so. They do not however point out that we made the decision to go back to more substantial updates because we were criticised heavily for putting out small updates without much substance (though larger updates were ongoing behind the scenes). Critics argued passionately that updates containing one new sub biome, or new guns, or new structures, or new weather was just pointless fluff and they wanted real ‘game changing’ updates. So we listened and that’s what we went back to focusing on."
When you say you are going to do something and then later change your mind, I can see why people would be frustrated. I read the big update post where they said they were changing the way Starbound development happened to push out quicker updates and thought it was a good idea. That said, I don’t really care to much about HOW they update the game, there are lots of ways to develop software. Whatever works best for them, is totally fine.
Which I think is something worth considering. I don’t think Starbound fans care much about how Chucklefish makes the game, they just want the thing they love to be awesome. Enraged fans take to the message boards and Reddit to complain about Chucklefish relocating it’s staff to the UK or the update changes not because they ultimately care about how someone runs a company. People are complaining because the thing they lovingly funded isn’t the way they want it to be. Chucklefish could open a moon base to continue development and as long as the game was awesome, no one would care.
That said, development of the game has vastly slowed down since it’s beta launch and it's not entirely clear where development of the game is.
At the end of the day I think Starbound is a rad game and wish Chucklefish to an awesome final launch. Alongside that, it’s been a wild ride tempered by some disappointment felt by many fans. All that needs to be done at this point is to make Starbound awesome and I have no doubt it will be. Angry rage filled fans have a way of coming back to sanity when things turn around. And ultimately we all want the same thing, for Staround to be awesome.
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 04/23/2014 at 01:56am
I haven't played Starbound yet, I've been waiting. I'm glad to get an update on the development of the game. I've been wondering when it would be released. I feel like I can sympathize with Chucklefish in trying to have a central hub of developers. Sure there are remote tools out there and such, but I think that face-to-face contact will be a big help. It would also solve their time management issues. I'm sure that once everyone's together then development will speed up and hopefully we'll see that in the quality of the game.
As for when to play Starbound, I'm still not sure. I believe all I have to do is tell "someone" that I'm ready and he'll hook me up (yet again and gratefully). If that offer still stands "T" *cough*, then I'm probably ready for it as I've been playing Minecraft and growing tired of it (playing and not knowing why I'm still playing it). Otherwise, as stated above, I'm sure once the team is together then that will be a great time to play or prepare for a significant update or release date.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 04/23/2014 at 04:31am
Face to face does have advantages for sure. I've seen working remotely work out fine, but each company is different.
I think things will improve as well. It's a great game and I hope things get.. More greater
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 04/25/2014 at 11:19am
As I mentioned in Travis's Minecraft post, I've been watching one of my favorite YouTube gamers, Paul Soares Jr. Before playing Minecraft, I watched his "Survive and Thrive" series. I just recently finished watching his "Paul Plays Minecraft" series. I noticed he has some Starbound (and Terraria) videos as well, so I've started watching those. Initially, when I first saw video of Starbound, I thought it looked a bit ugly, but after seeing more of it, that initial impression is fading. The game looks like a glorified Terraria, which is good really. I like some of the game mechanics I've seen so far. It's cool how gravel works in the game (like water) along with sand. There also seems to be LOTS of items. I'm also curious about how to tell if an alien is friendly. Apparently some are and some aren't, but even the friendly ones can be killed. Anyway, the game does look interesting and I look forward to watching more of Paul's videos. It may be getting time for me to jump in the game.
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Those are great. I also love the crazy Westeros ones also http://westeroscraft.com/ That's the Game of Thrones world.
WOW thats pretty impressive.
This is pretty impressive, but that Game of Thrones business is completely insane! I will never play Minecraft again, having the knowledge now that I'm doing it all wrong.
Yeah. I sort of treat Minecraft like my own personal survival island game. So very lonely.