Cheerful Ghost Roundtable

One thing we didn't touch on (or I totally wasn't paying attention) is the advent of Twitch Plays, and what that means for both games and the streaming of them. It's a brilliant use of the technology, though I don't know how practical it is. With services like Twitch, the primary pull, outside of watching a stream, is being able to interact with a streamer, as well as the rest of the audience. In Twitch Plays, it seems that there is less room to interact with each other, as everyone is focused on getting the character in play to do their bidding.

Also interesting, that DMCA enforcement that we expected is here, and quite jarring:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/thousands-of-twitch-videos-silenced-as-streaming-site-mutes-copyrighted-audio/

I think it's worth pointing out that Twitch has had these guidelines in place prior to the Google buyout, they just put the onus on the copyright owner to take action. (http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/questions/987917-playing-music-in-stream)

Now, it seems that Google is nipping any future lawsuits in the bud; it's a move to CYA. This is only affecting archived streams, for the moment, but I'm sure that Google is hard at work to figure a way to mute live streams, as well.

Ha, I was just coming over to post about twitch muting videos with copyrighted audio. Looks like you beat me to it Scrypt! I'll still share my link though: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/08/07/twitch-muting-video-contains-copyrighted-audio

Reddit AMA with Twitch CEO Emmett Shear: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo_emmett_shear_ask_me_almost/

Via Joystiq, it is pointed out that the muting of in-game musics is a "mistake". "We have zero intention of flagging original in-game music." Shear says.

How did that happen?? How did we let that happen!? ;)

Don't engage. Do not engage...

a.k.a. The Tim found the sound effects episode. :P

I promise not to abuse my power in future episodes.

Yeah, Tim, I thought it was a brave and victorious move. You've taken us to a new level. Like, we could be ready for endorsements and shit. I wish you would have jumped in sooner, when I was drowning in my own beverage ;).

I'd hate to steal the lime light from you during your special moment. :P

Such a special moment :)

"That wizard came from the moon."

That's why it's so difficult to work as an artist, with someone looking over your shoulder, or in this case, show a small sample of your unfinished project. You have to expect that the viewer/player will go off the rails from time to time, and lose a bit of perspective. I'm glad that Bungie took it in stride :).

Listened to the RT while cooking dinner tonight. Great episode everyone!

It was a fun romp. Nice to sit in with Cap again. You were missed!

I was just on another game site (for shame...) watching a dev diary for Valiant Hearts, a new game in the UbiArt pipeline coming out next month. One of the comments under the post said "Ubisoft are doing indie better than the indies." This is a ridiculous statement, and is exactly what I'm talking about. When did "indie" become an aesthetic? No wonder people want to dump the monicker. It's been misappropriated to the point of falling under vague urban definition. Next step: games that are solely created in the state of Indiana = Indie games.

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.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you can't have 'beholder' without the 'older'. (I have no idea what that means...)

I've never beaten the game. I'm not even sure if I've made it to the last sector, I think I've made it to sector 7. I tried the Advanced Edition, which put me at just over 60 hours in the game. I didn't survive very long, but I did enjoy some of the new things. Like Travis I was impressed because once I started up the game and realized not only that my crew were already in positions I normally place them, but I was able to set them to a hot key and have them return with the press of a button. That really impressed me. I did get a Clone Bay, but it was a bit late after one of my crew had died. I also enjoyed the new feature to the navigational map, with the ability to see where different points lead to. I didn't play AE very long and I didn't last very long either.

I finally made it to Sector 8 and I fought the final ship, which utterly destroyed me. Hahahaha.

Thanks for the mention and the link to the post. You guys have made some excellent points and covered many things that I agree with. When Aurora arrives, I'll have to change my user pic. So far I can't tell what color the lights are because in the picture you showed they look red, but on the website's gallery they look purple. For now, I should get a pic of Blue64, I have the blue lights on, except for the side fan as I've replaced it with one that doesn't light (the original and replacement have died and has been replaced).

You guys are running better PCs than I currently am, but I'm about to smoke you. I've been building for the last decade or more and have been satisfied, especially when a custom built PC ran right away and booted fine. I always do my research when thinking about building and upgrading. One think I enjoy of building my own is the ability to get what I want and being able to upgrade later (if I choose to). That said, I thought about upgrading Blue64, which by now would be relatively cheap, but the motherboard lacks some of today's standards (DDR3 for instance). When researching on a new build or pre-built PC, I managed to figure out the components I drooled over and really wanted (like the GTX 690). In the end it was more expensive to get all of the components I wanted as compared to all pre-built PCs I looked at. When it came to Alienware, they had what I wanted and at a cheaper price than purchasing all components separately. Since I could afford to, I bought the Aurora. It's one to drool over.

My current specs are listed in the post along with the Aurora. Right now my only complaint with Blue64 (my current custom built PC) is that I'd like a little more speed at least. I've seen little lag in Terraria at high quality, but otherwise that runs fine. Minecraft runs ok, but will look sweeter with the new PC. FTL runs with no apparent lag. I haven't done much PC gaming except for some Command & Conquer, Magic the Gathering, and Morrowind, for example. Although, I think I'd like to play Starcraft 2 and The Sims 3.

I like the cheap cost of great Steam games like the two I've mentioned and Portal (which was a free download, and the other two were given to me). I haven't really questioned a $60 because I got used to buying console games. I haven't bought a lot of them and am particular when it comes to games. That and my budget hasn't always allowed me to buy many games.

I think Steam is my first experience with digital games and ones that are apparently in the cloud. When I move to my new PC, I'll see how all that transfers. Luckily, I know how to back up Terraria.

As an IT guy, like Travis, I'm experienced with working on Dell, Gateway, and HP computers, such as troubleshooting and all the tech basics. I've seen lots of issues, but that's what my job has been as a tech guy.

I'm glad you mentioned controllers. I don't have a 360 controller, so I'm interested in a good PC controller. I suspect Logitech would be my best answer. I've had some of their products and like them, but I found myself liking a wired mouse and keyboard better because of battery usage.

I've been loving AMD and buying their processors, but I am abandoning them for the first time in over a decade. I'm not sure what got me hooked on Nvidia as opposed to Radeon brands, but I've been sticking with Nvidia. Some of the CPUs don't be as expensive as I remember, but some really good stuff is expensive. You can easily build a decent PC, suited to your purposes for it, cheaply. It's a fun thing to do and be able to do. Researching components is something I'm fond of doing, even though I'm not always up-to-date on what's out and what's new and best.

Right now, I'm happy with buying as it does actually seem to save some money. This will be a somewhat new experience for me as I've been running this build of my PC for about 7 years. This recent purchase will give me a decent PC that I can let my son use and still do what we'd want it to do and with an ability to be upgraded at some time.

Aurora is still "in production."

Should I just buy an XBox360 controller just for my PC? I'm not sure how much it costs, but I've heard it's great. It might be worth it. I tried getting my PS3 one to work, emulated as an Xbox360 controller, but it still didn't exactly work as I wanted with Morrowind. Maybe I need to change and set some of the controls more properly. I'd like to be able to use a controller for it the same way that I use my PS3 controller to play Skyrim on the PS3.

My Aurora arrived today (well technically yesterday since it's after midnight). I now have two working PCs in my room that are turned on and ready. There's another very old PC in the room that I tried to set up for my son, but it couldn't handle Minecraft. I can't wait to play Minecraft on this new one with full, ultimate settings! Anyway, I have a point with this comment. Now that I have both PCs up and running in my room, something that I think Jon said in this video is really sticking out to me...the noise level. I built the old PC and the case fans are new and replaced the old ones not long ago. I can tell you that this Aurora is so quiet!!!! I can hear the old PC's fans running. It's not really loud and kind of what you'd expect from a PC, but it is loud compared to this new PC.

No wonder I saw that Travis and Tim were playing hours ago!

Capn, tell me about your upgraded gaming rig. Mine is quite old, I've been told I should upgrade since I can now afford to. I looked into some components and got a bit overwhelmed.

Travis, what is the DRM-free version? Does that mean it's free? Hearing you guys talk about the game makes me want to play it.

My gaming rig is actually a Macbook Pro, dual-booting into Windows. The good news is that it's a perfectly respectable gaming machine in a laptop form factor. The bad news is that the price tag on the sucker is probably in the neighborhood of $3,000 - I say "probably," because it was bought and provided to me by the company I work for.

If you have three grand to drop on a gaming rig, you can certainly find a better one than a Macbook pro. For what it's worth, though, this is the base model: http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=ME294LL/A&step=config

I have plenty to drop on a gaming rig, but I'm not one to buy a computer, I prefer to build them. I have no desire for a Mac or laptop. I have nothing against Apple, really, but I'm predominately a Windows user and have barely used anything Apple at all.

Oh, Jon, when you talked about the FTL score, it reminded me of how I feel about the Minecraft music. It is wonderful and music that I would enjoy listening to if I was programming.

There is no shame in playing on Easy, especially in this game.

I don't like the sectors that are entirely nebulae (I had to look up the plural of nebula...) but when there is a nebula in an otherwise normal sector I always head for them to slow down the rebels and give myself more time in a sector.

Otherwise I kinda go where ever. A couple of the ships can only be unlocked from events that take place in hostile sectors though, so keep that in mind.

The spider event has become one of those things where logically, I know it's not "supposed" to be any worse than anything else, but when I lose a crew member I always feel like I should have known better. I know I've had positive outcomes with it but I can't even remember what the reward is for it.

Hey, are they taking requests for the expansion? If I had an option to fire a torpedo and nuke the spiders from orbit, I'd probably take it regardless of what the loot odds looked like. :)

This whole conversation is making think of getting FTL. I'd prefer to play a free demo (before buying so that I can be sure I want the game), but there doesn't seem to be one.

Oh! That's awesome! I'm not sure about Fez, but sure I'll take FTL. Are we friends on Steam? Nope, what a shame. Well send me a friend request. http://steamcommunity.com/id/gawoodruff

I could give you some $ for it, but I've already given you $ (Cheerful Ghost official paid member here). Hahahahahaha! Travis hooked me up with Terraria.

You guys are awesome! I'm glad I was able to donate to the site, I felt like it was totally worth it and I'm glad that I was able to help keep the site alive.

Awesome, I'm glad I came back to this discussion now that I've been playing. Adym, you've said what Tim said in my discussion, pretty much, about raising the evade %. That's something I'm going to work on.

At first, I was avoiding the nebulae, I'm working on getting out of that habit. However, I don't like them because I often find that some of my systems are disabled and I have to re-route power to be able to jump. I usually try Civilian sectors, but sometimes also go for Engi or Rock. I sometimes choose the Pirate sectors to, especially as opposed to Rebel.

Here are my stats: http://i.imgur.com/b9u0eOn.jpg