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FTL: Advanced Edition - The Lanius

"The Lanius are scavengers – metallic lifeforms that rely on the absorption of minerals to sustain themselves. Their society ebbs and flows in hibernation cycles; they may lie dormant for many years, even while hurtling through space. As soon as they become aware of significant metal deposits they reawaken. Usually this occurs in the dying stages of a galactic civilization or in the wake of intergalactic war.

Reports of reawakened Lanius have appeared in many of the war-torn and abandoned sectors of Federation Space. Their arrival has created panic as they indiscriminately seek our sources of metal – although more diplomatic individuals have suggested that they can be... Read All "The Lanius are scavengers – metallic lifeforms that rely on the absorption of minerals to sustain themselves. Their society ebbs and flows in hibernation cycles; they may lie dormant for many years, even while hurtling through space. As soon as they become aware of significant metal deposits they reawaken. Usually this occurs in the dying stages of a galactic civilization or in the wake of intergalactic war.

Reports of reawakened Lanius have appeared in many of the war-torn and abandoned sectors of Federation Space. Their arrival has created panic as they indiscriminately seek our sources of metal – although more diplomatic individuals have suggested that they can be reasoned with."

More details came out today about the FTL update in the form of a new race of creatures, the Lanius. I really don't want to meet up with them as they only seem to be hostile and seem to be pretty menacing. I wonder if they are enemy only or if you could get a Lanius on your ship? They seem to naturally destroy the ship so... perhaps not.

The FTL developers let us know some rather large details about the update:

It will contain a ton of new content and improvements: although the larger additions can be disabled if you prefer FTL “vanilla.”

This large update is free for those who already own the game on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

FTL is also coming to iPad; it will be the full version of the game including the new “Advanced Edition” content.

FTL on iPad will have to be purchased separately from the PC version.

An exact date for release has not been decided but we are aiming for early 2014.

I really appreciate the "FTL vanilla" setting. Some of the new content will change the game very much and it might be nice to return to basic FTL if one would want. For newer players it might also be nice to see what the game was before the Advanced Edition as well.

I am seriously considering picking FTL up on the iPad as well, something about it seems like a great idea. Anyone else with me on this?

http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=621

If you haven't seen it already, you need to watch the announcement trailer:

http://vimeo.com/79104930

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls releasing March 25

Reaper of Souls is coming out March 25, and you can pre-order it now! It costs $39.99 for the standard edition and $59.99 for the digital deluxe edition.

I'll probably wait for the physical version if that's an option. I'd like to see what kind of swag comes with any potential physical version of the game.

One interesting thing to note about the system requirements:
"Requires the Battle.net Desktop App "
Looks like they're ready to move forward with the B.net app. I'm still hoping for the ability to actually use it as more than a game launcher, like chatting with B.net friends outside of games, etc.

More info: ... Read All

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/20/2013 at 03:11am

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/11867681/reaper-of-souls%E2%84%A2-unleashed-on-march-25-2014-prepurchase-now-12-19-2013

"If you're looking for even more loot, the Reaper of Souls retail-exclusive Collector's Edition comes fully equipped with all the in-game goodies from the Digital Deluxe, plus a range of premium collectible items:
Malthael mouse pad, bearing the impenetrable visage of the Angel of Death
Hardback Collector's Edition art book, chronicling the game's artistic development
Behind-the-scenes Blu-Ray/DVD two-disc set, featuring in-depth interviews with the development team and members of the Diablo III community"

I will be nabbing the collectors as well. I really enjoyed the CE of SC2, HoTS and Diablo 3. The only unfortunate bit is that Reaper of Souls CE doesn't come with the game score. That's been a pretty large staple of the CE for me and it's a bummer it's not included here. That said, the art book, behind the scenes, mouse pad and in game pet do seem worth it to me.

I am still using the HoTS mouse pad right now, so maybe switch it out. :D

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/20/2013 at 03:13am

So far it seems Amazon is the first retailer to list the CE, I hope Best Buy or someone can get it so I can just walk in and pick it up game launch day.

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 12/21/2013 at 05:43am

Fear not: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10972387439?page=1#3

Blue post about the soundtrack says it's in!

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/21/2013 at 06:17am

Awesome! Then I have reservations about pre-ordering this the second I can.

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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

Earthbound in 3D looks amazing!

I loved the original pixel art style of the original Earthbound, but I would play the hell out of a 3D remake if it looked this good!

3D designer Christopher Behr did an amazing job recreating Earthbounds starting town, Onett. More (and bigger) pictures can be found at: http://www.christopherbehr.com/Onett

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

Tales and Nevewinter Lore

When Neverwinter Nights for PC released in 2002 I was really excited because I heard lots of great things about it. I bought it second hand off a friend and dug into the main story. Neverwinter Nights was a little long, but it offered a rich story that I found really interesting. By the end of the game I had a really epic Cleric that could kill nearly anything with a few spells. I enjoyed the Shadows of Undrentide expansion and really loved Hordes of the Underdark.

Recently watched the above Neverwinter Lore video and though it was worth sharing. You can play the Neverwinter MMO on Steam now or the entire 2002 Diamond Edition on GOG.com for $5.

... Read All

Starbound shows tons of promise, room to grow

I've been, quite frankly, a bit obsessed with Starbound since it launched. I've been watching the progress for what seems like years now and was thrilled to see the beta launch.

For those who haven't kept up with the development, the beta cycle is going to be in three phases. We're currently very close to the beginning of the first phase. As you should expect, things are very incomplete, some stuff doesn't work, there are tons of bugs, and your character will get wiped a lot.

That said, Steam reports that I've spent 21 glorious hours playing this game, and I could just keep going. Even this early, there's a lot of fun to be had. There are literally millions of planets... Read All

SANTANK!

This video shows a preview of some of the things coming to Terraria in the Christmas update, which should be hitting on December 20. I dunno about you, but I'm really looking forward to the Santank boss.

A PSA: If you launch Terraria now, the old Christmas event is going on. It starts every year on December 15. Don't be disappointed by the lack of new content-- it's coming!

jdodson Admin wrote on 12/17/2013 at 03:22am

Santank reminds me of in the film The Santa Clause when they talk about "Santa and the total tank."

Really looking forward to the new mechanics and I hope Santank doesn't destroy player houses :D

Oh and the scene from The Santa Clause:

http://klipd.com/watch/the-santa-clause/sweatpants-to-work-scene

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/26/2014 at 07:41am

I don't know how I missed some of this stuff last month. I saw Presents, but they didn't seem to contain a lot of new loot as the video claims, mostly just Candy Cane Blocks and Gingerbread Cookies. I never saw a Christmas Tree, maybe I didn't look it up. I never saw Santank either, but again that's probably just because I didn't look it up either. Is Santank part of the Frost Moon event?

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 01/26/2014 at 06:08pm

Those enemies come from the Frost Moon. I think Santa sells the christmas tree. And most of your time during the holidays was before the patch hit, so that's why you didn't get a ton of the loot, but I'm surprised you didn't start getting more afterward. That said, if I recall correctly, you had some sort of weird bug with presents too, so that could have played a part.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/26/2014 at 10:12pm

That makes sense as I did the Frost Moon once, but didn't survive long enough to see Santank. Santa never moved into my world either, so that also makes sense as to why I didn't see a Christmas tree. Yeah, the bug I had was that in order to open a present (after the holiday update), I had to right-click on it in my inventory screen and then once I exited the inventory window, the game would tell me what the present contained. It didn't act like that before the holiday update, where as right-clicking a present simply opened it and showed me what was in it without having to exit the inventory screen. It has continued to function in the seemingly buggy way ever since that holiday update, but I got used to it and it didn't really bother me. Oh, the Frost Moon and Pumpkin Moon events are brutal even with a Terra Blade and Turtle Armor, but you know that from experience and my post about it.

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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

Travis Admin wrote on 12/13/2013 at 04:20am

After Jon told me he got this I snagged one up as well. It's pretty impressive. Previously I used PS3 Media Server for DLNA streaming to my PS3, but this has all but replaced that. The downside is that it doesn't do transcoding on the fly, so any formats the PS3 can't handle, you just can't stream them. This is rarely a problem though. Most MKV's can be converted to MP4 in just a few seconds and without any quality loss since they're both just containers for other formats. VLC can even do it without any extra software, though I ran into some issues with it on a few files that handbrake was able to handle with no problems.

Just to see if I could, I managed to get a full rails dev environment set up on it, though I seriously don't recommend actually using that. It *should* be possible to set up printer sharing on it, but CUPS is a fickle beast that I didn't feel like dealing with.

What I have done successfully, though, is add a secondary drive to it and set up a cron job to rsync everything once a day, so I have two copies of everything and will lose at most a day. This is something I highly recommend and if anyone is interested I'm totally willing to give a few pointers. You can also make a cow moo at you every time you ssh into it.

So in short, yeah what Jon said. It's a great device. It isn't the best or fastest NAS on the market, but it's the best I can find in the price range.

MoonWyrd Supporter wrote on 12/15/2013 at 05:45pm

This is an intriguing looking device. Especially for the price.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/15/2013 at 06:30pm

I agree, it really is. Travis his the only negative with it though, it's not terribly fast. I don't mean transfer speeds, that's mostly fine, occasionally it's not very responsive.

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