Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Latest episode of Wil Wheatons TableTop they play the

Latest episode of Wil Wheaton's TableTop they play the awesome Ticket to Ride.

Few video game companies tinker with hardware like this.

Few video game companies tinker with hardware like this. Taking a mounted display and making it work really well with your video game is amazing. John Carmack is well suited to this because he deeply understands how this technology all works and I envy him for being able to talk the time and dabble in this kind of work. The video is a fascinating look into the tech he has been working on with head mounted displays. Have to admit, slapping a screen inches from my face doesn't appeal to me, but it the game adjusts to my movements that does appeal to me.

The video drops a few tid-bits about Doom 3 BFG edition in that it will ship with 3D and a few other features. A recent... Read All Few video game companies tinker with hardware like this. Taking a mounted display and making it work really well with your video game is amazing. John Carmack is well suited to this because he deeply understands how this technology all works and I envy him for being able to talk the time and dabble in this kind of work. The video is a fascinating look into the tech he has been working on with head mounted displays. Have to admit, slapping a screen inches from my face doesn't appeal to me, but it the game adjusts to my movements that does appeal to me.

The video drops a few tid-bits about Doom 3 BFG edition in that it will ship with 3D and a few other features. A recent Penny Arcade article goes over the head mounted display and some of the Doom 3 BFG edition design points.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/hands-on-with-doom-3-bfg-and-the-terrible-secret-behind-the-original-games

From the article:

"There was controversy over the flashlight in Doom 3 when the game was originally launched. You couldn’t have the flashlight on while you had your gun out, and the player had to choose which one to use, and flip between them quickly. I thought it was inspired, other people wondered if the future existed without duct tape. The flashlight is mounted to your body armor in Doom 3: BFG, so you can finally use it while a gun is in your hands, although the battery life is limited. My thought on the matter? id sold out. "

I heartily agree with this statement. Doom 3 made a bold choice in many situations between seeing and shooting. In a jump/scare shooter this was magical for me. I know the flash light feature had its haters but I loved the difference. Many times I had my flash light out and enemies would jump out and I would scramble for a weapon. Often that meant I took a beating in the scramble. Sometimes I did fine but it was a choice I had to make.

I hope there is a setting to turn it back to the old method. That said, I have the original box copy so I can always go back to playing it as it was I suppose. Feels a little like some of the changes made to the original Star Wars because of my mad love for Doom. Regardless of how this all shakes out, ill still pick it up as the new stuff really interests me.

Whimsyshire Is Brutally Cute Fun!

Recently panickedthumb and chowda helped me get to Whimsyshire. Whimsyshire being D3's version of Diablo 2's cow level. Grinding for the items took an evening of solid runs on items but after a few hours I had all the gear to craft the Staff of Warding. It was nice of panickedthumb to walk me through the parts he had done as it was my first time in a game grinding for certain loot drops. Not too bad but you should expect things not to drop more often than they do. Or said another way, it can get tedious. The payoff is well worth the time spent though.

Oh and the total amount of money it takes to get the normal Staff of Warding is 150k. 100k for Wirts Cowbell and 50k... Read All

Ben_Dodson wrote on 06/14/2012 at 06:55am

"There is no Cow Level." Best line from the ghost.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 06/14/2012 at 05:02pm

The cow king is cool. I like how Whimsyshire is a zone you can keep going to if you want.

When did you grind for the staff?

Ben_Dodson wrote on 06/14/2012 at 05:27pm

I haven't. I was brought there by people who have it

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 06/14/2012 at 08:20pm

Oh cool.

Travis Admin wrote on 06/18/2012 at 03:58pm

That staff starts getting expensive. 200k to upgrade it for Nightmare, and 500k for hell. A whopping 1.5 million for Inferno.

But the way gold is dropping in Hell, I don't think it's going to hurt my gold pouch too much.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 06/18/2012 at 04:25pm

Yeah one of my friends who farms Inferno act 1 lent me 50k for the orig staff. He could get that in a quick run too.

Are you in Hell now? How is compared to Inferno?

Travis Admin wrote on 06/22/2012 at 03:53am

Sorry for the delay in responding. Diablo 3 to play :)

Hell is fun. It's harder, but not cheap. The extra affixes on packs of blues make for a harder time judging how you're going to fare, so you have to be on your toes.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 06/22/2012 at 04:42am

Cool. When I Played Nightmare last of wasnt too challenging so it will be good to up the ante in Hell :)

Travis Admin wrote on 06/23/2012 at 05:28am

I think the initial difficulty adjustment with Nightmare is more shocking, since you don't know what to expect and Normal is *really* easy. Act 2 Hell has me dying about as much as Act 2 Nightmare, but that's because I've gotten better. The difficulty scaling is generally pretty good. Until Inferno, from what I gather, when you get smacked into submission.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 06/23/2012 at 08:48pm

Awesome. Looking forward to Hell.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 11/07/2014 at 12:16am

I just found out about this (over two years later) and I'm going to work on getting there.

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Todays Retro Tuesday is an old DOS game I loved as a kid

Today's Retro Tuesday is an old DOS game I loved as a kid called Fairy Godmom. It wasn't as well known as Doom or Mario Brothers but it was fun. Some games I can't forget and this was one of those games. It wasn't amazing, but it was fun and I spent many hours playing in on my old DOS machine.

Back in the day DOS systems had a few graphics layers. Basically at a certain point you had a CGA, EGA or VGA graphics card. Since we didn't have the top of the line computers for many years we have a DOS CGA computer. Many shareware games could run in CGA, EGA and VGA mode. VGA being the pinnacle of awesome computer graphics. I remember playing Commander Keen on a VGA system and... Read All

My first thought about this game was that it was designed to

My first thought about this game was that it was designed to give people seizures. Not that it does give people seizures, in fact I imagine it doesn't but it has fast blinky lights that I don't see too often in games. In fact the art style of this game I don't see often in games for that matter. Obviously one draw this games has is its unique style.

The premise is that floors fall on your condo and you have to choose which monster to slide any given floor to. Helps if you slide the yellow floors to the yellow monsters and the like for all the different colors. You can do that and a few other things to score points but you mostly choose where to slide floors and if you... Read All

Blizzard recently let loose the information on the units

Blizzard recently let loose the information on the units they were adding to Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. Blizzard is adding a few units to each race and also removing units as well. Expansions typically add to the mix, they don't remove. That said, it will give people a reason to return to the Wings of Liberty game. I wonder if different events will have Heart of the Swarm tournaments as well as Wings of Liberty? I wonder how the games will differ in balancing? Oh well, interesting to say the least.

A few units getting the cut in Heart of the Swarm:

"In the current design of Heart of the Swarm, the protoss are not able to deploy Motherships and Carriers, though... Read All

Super Mario Fishtank

People are awesome.

If you havent picked up The Humble Bundle V yet, you should.

If you haven't picked up The Humble Bundle V yet, you should. So many awesome games included and this time around the bundle includes FLAC files for all the soundtracks.

http://www.humblebundle.com/

That said, the port of Sword & Sworcery to the PC and Mac is superb(included in the bundle). I wasn't sure a game made for touch devices would translate well to the mouse and keyboard but it does. I am going to finish my game on my iPhone because I have played pretty far on that device, but if you have the humble bundle 5 I implore you to give Sword & Sworcery a try.

Recently I was at the Trigon battle(I snapped the pic above) and kept dying. Since when you die you... Read All

So with E3 and the big tech season passing through theres

So with E3 and the big tech season passing through there's one aspect I'm really intrigued with: game engines.

Epic has released info on Unreal engine 4.

http://youtu.be/OZmRt8gCsC0?hd=1

Square Enix has release a tech demo called Agni's Philosophy as well as posted job openings for next-gen game engine development.

http://youtu.be/UVX0OUO9ptU?hd=1
http://www.square-enix.com/na/careers/getech/

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the two. I'm blown away as always with the textures and animation in most everything Enix does. Epic on the other hand is doing fantastic things with lighting and color. That's pretty funny considering how brown, dull, and dark their games are, but... Read All

Add this nesmaps.com to your awesome list. They have entire

http://nesmaps.com/maps/Contra/ContraMapStage1.png

Add this nesmaps.com to your awesome list. They have entire screen shots of popular NES games for your enjoyment. The above image is Contras first level.

A few awesome maps:

http://nesmaps.com/maps/MarioBros/MarioBros.html
http://nesmaps.com/maps/MegaMan2/MegaMan2.html
http://nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda2/Zelda2.html

Awesome to see what people can do with retro games.