Recent Posts

126

Living Room / Re: Kickstarter has a problem... the Solution

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2015, 06:19 PM »

Uh... is there a typo? I see the same paragraph three times ...

127

Living Room / Re: Game developer laments gaming industry marketing/psychological warfare

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2015, 04:51 PM »

This is kind of relevant:

Propaganda Games: Sesame Credit - The True Danger of Gamification

-Deozaan (December 16, 2015, 01:15 PM)

One of the better vids I've seen Deo, and we're doing our own version, but like a different cultural version with "pseudo neutral media" in the middle.

(Countless X things from YouTube vids, articles, and whatever) "If you enjoyed this, please Like this on Facebook and ReTweet and share share share!"

So the Govt is a couple of steps more indirect in our version. Think about it. There's this giant hole int he middle. "Right. So you got more Facebook Likes. So what do you plan to DO with those?! Don't tell me that's just to make your ego feel better. So how much is your going rate you're selling your base to advertisers for?"

So for the "types of jobs you can hold", anyone with more brain cells than fingers on one hand can figure out who I am, but at least an HR rep who typed my name into Google won't get all 5,000 of my board posts without actually spending some work, at which point the point is there.

And yeah, those blunt force "tools" that are so 70's / 80's bad tv plots, are passe mostly. These little increment steps are hard to see and then they don't go away because there's nothing shocking to rally against.


"If you enjoyed this, retweet it

128

General Software Discussion / Re: Softpedia yet again with the Firefox stable release jump

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2015, 02:52 PM »

I'll deal with it later, but the takeaway to stick in my head is "I don't have time to screw with all this, so I'll use DevEdition" and trade off slightly less stable but it Does Stuff, for some actions, and PaleMoon for others, and just try to train my muscle memory which is which.

129

DC Gamer Club / Ascending Roots Cont.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2015, 12:22 AM »

More stuff:

- Because there's no time limit, no "lives lost", and full level restarts, go slow, use small taps of the movement keys, make sure you don't scramble your muscle memory trying to do some kind of speed run, because if you mis-click and lose a water droplet, don't waste your time because chances are you're hosed and can't finish the level. just start over.

- The level "Summit" isn't all that hard, but there's a vine on the top level in the middle that you can't see that's the finisher. This game "plays fair" so it's about the water droplets, not trying to find hidden vines.

Two strategy tips:

- The *implications* of only holding six droplets is that you can't "fill up with less than 3" so you waste the last drop you need somewhere else. So make "partial progress" growing something you need.

- In a couple of cases you have to run across a smoldering log and grab the water and back before the fire lights up.

- The trickier levels have "loops" so watch what order and direction you cross the smoldering log because that one's free but it wastes a water coming back and if you do the loop the wrong way you'll likely be one water short somewhere near the end.

Good luck!

I will also be reviewing this one over at DonationCoder.com with mostly a mirror of these notes, along with some other Ludum Dare 34 games!

https://www.donation....com/forum/index.php
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42010.0

130

DC Gamer Club / Ascending Roots Cont.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2015, 12:22 AM »

On the more technical side, a chat with the developer lead yielded the following "fairness tips".

- A couple of the levels have small sprouts that are really hard to see and know they're there. One idea is to just "burn lives" because there's no timer, no game over, each level has a restart, and no need to rush.

- Wander around just trying to water everything in sight to find out what grows. The game "plays fair" so it's about interlocking your water usage, not "find the hidden sprout".

- When you're putting out fires with the water, *don't stand on top of the "smoldering logs" * (that only catch fire when you cross over them once) - you have to stand to the side to put the fire out.

- Mushrooms and other "background" plant lichens don't grow - only the main green sprouts and vines grow.

- Wander around "wasting a couple lives" learning which are "legal" jumps and which are unsafe (you die). Otherwise you could miss a legal move because you thought it was an unsafe / illegal jump down (falling off a raised element.) Some work, some don't.

131

DC Gamer Club / Ascending Roots by Tim "Blackbird" Beaudet

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 16, 2015, 12:21 AM »

Ascending Roots by Tim "Blackbird" Beaudet
http://ludumdare.com...preview&uid=1888
(Downloads)

There's a couple of different types of puzzle games - the ones with "sneak shots" where a player can get really frustrated (some like it though!) with obscure things to do to advance the action along.

This one tries to "play fair" in that it's about the pattern sequencing of the water vs the max capacity 6 drop cap and which way you go which direction and so on.

So I just ran through it with the help of the devs and with one exception once I got past "some funny stuff" I did just fine on all the levels except one.

More detailed stuff in a second post just to avoid walls of text.

The art is solid, there's some soft music, and the puzzles are ultimately very doable. There's one level in the middle Into the Trees that some of us think is actually harder than some later levels so don't get discouraged!

132

DC Gamer Club / Learning to Dance by WetDesertRock - Desert Rock - Art Piece

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 15, 2015, 01:07 AM »

Learning to Dance by WetDesertRock / DesertRock
http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=30221

This one is an art piece, with a little bit of soft interaction from the middle on.

It's not really a "game". But it's pretty sensitive, so it def will get a post, and I need a couple days when I'm not hyper to study it!

133

General Software Discussion / Re: Softpedia yet again with the Firefox stable release jump

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2015, 09:15 PM »

Firefox 43.0 stable on Softpedia.  I can;'t find release notes that aren't about the 43.x beta though.

Supposedly this is the last FF that will let you opt out of signed AddOn enforcement by using the about:config setting xpinstall.signatures.required

-MilesAhead (December 14, 2015, 06:04 PM)

Watch out for this one though, if I recall, this is the one it stops being a warning and "auto -blocks" unsigned add-ons so I dunno what that means for various people. I certainly haven't examined my addons in detail ...

134

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2015, 09:13 PM »

I don't recall it Iain but something else showed from Dilbert (the disconnect tech support) so one of these months I'm gonna end up on varying Dilbert marathons!

135

DC Gamer Club / Full Metal Democracy by deepnight

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2015, 03:56 PM »

Full Metal Democracy by deepnight
http://ludumdare.com...preview&uid=2982
http://deepnight.net...ull-metal-democracy/

You control a pair of Giant Robots! 







( ... and they say this entry is not as good as this guy's other games?! Uh oh...)

136

Living Room / Re: Game developer laments gaming industry marketing/psychological warfare

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2015, 12:25 PM »

I'm flat out involving myself with Ludum Dare but I saved / jammed this into a diff node of virtual window Dexpot, so I will probably get to it in a bunch of days. (Days are like grapes - Bunch can mean wide vars on quantity!)

137

DC Gamer Club / World Grower by rhebsgaard

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2015, 12:19 PM »

Placeholder for World Grower by rhebsgaard

http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=38348
Downloads only (someone remarked if this is increasing this LD!)

It's a fun cute mini-SimCity.

138

DC Gamer Club / LudumDare34 Dec 2015 - Honorable Mentions 1

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 14, 2015, 01:22 AM »

This is the first post where I'll list games too cute to ignore, but not my usual full workup.

http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=10665
http://verra.xyz/2direction/

These first couple games share some similarities. No life score, no timer, no exhausted resources, just puzzles (with some threats, sure) but no artificial pressure.

The first one is more disorienting, as it involves a lot of jumping in teleporters and toggling levers back and forth.

New for me in LD this time is visiting the IRC chat. This one is by Verra / Verrazano
http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=10665
http://verra.xyz/2direction/

This one is less confusing per se. You play a carnivore plant (deja vu!) that decides it wants to take classes from Tarzan. So you swing on a sort of telepathic rope-line to catch way station markers and swingyour way around the course layouts. Again the first few levels are nice and simple, though I ran out of energy because the difficulty jumps when you hit one of the spike levels.


Sector 9
alvaromartin / Alvaro Martin Lopez
http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=60100
https://s3-us-west-2...es/Sector9/game.html

As a reminder, this LD included a "half theme" of "(sometimes) only using two buttons for control" so that leads to an odd holistic feel if you're not expecting it. I felt it was one of the more "unstable themes" that could be hard to flow naturally, so one category is "endless runner" where movement isn't in the controls so your leftover two do things.

This one has an interesting gravity mechanic (which makes the first level when you reload the page a hysterical echo of the old shortcuts in Mario Brothers Nintendo series!). It's simple (I think so far!) and LD is about staying in scope to escape alive with a working game. Interesting grey-ness of the color scheme, and I wonder if that saved time because a joke in LD is "Damn I wasted 8 hours on my art and now my game has bugs and time's up!!"


2 Growing Buttons by psypol - Compo Entry
http://ludumdare.com...preview&uid=7155

Extremely simple game but per the site notes the guy isn't a coder, but found something and gave it his all, and made a game and I don't see any / many bugs. And it is the closest I've seen to a private joke about a program I made as a child some 28 years ago and now it reminds me of "avoiding random people here in New York City wandering around looking at their cell phones and you have to dodge them" : ) So that's fine for the honorable mention thread!

139

DC Gamer Club / Terror Plant From Outer Space by Tetha

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 13, 2015, 04:57 PM »

Placeholder for a later writeup.

My first best pick ended up being an intensive playtester for a turn strategy game with developer Tetha.
Terror Plant From Outer Space

More stuff coming in a few days!

LD Page:
http://ludumdare.com...preview&uid=4995

Game page:
https://tetha.github.io/ld34/

140

Developer's Corner / Re: Developer PSA: Support Ending for the .NET Framework 4, 4.5 and 4.5.1

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 12, 2015, 03:35 PM »

Well good stuff Wraith and Joker, that's why I started out vague,

I have like 8 things to test before I can ask a coherent question, not the least 1 of 8 or whatever is my comp itself is starting to go and I haven't rebooted for weeks. (I just have too much important stuff open right now!). The two processes could have the same name and one is open right now, who knows.

At least when I try to ask a question, I try hard sometimes to do as much homework first as I can so the question comes out better.

So all I know is I have to get past Ludum Dare first, then some health ins stuff (kick it back to their court then I get to wait aka breathing space while stuff wanders around on their side of the cyber-space tennis court).

Meanwhile the dev  / team looks like he tries pretty hard, he's issued .x version updates like 4 days apart, and the new copy came out a month ago, so if in case he missed something like this and I "prove it" with you guys, I'd wager he'd fix it and recompile and he has no qualms about "oops i goofed" and that's awesome he doesn't try to bury stuff in squirrelly language.

I just won't have anything coherent to ask for a couple of weeks.

141

Developer's Corner / Re: Developer PSA: Support Ending for the .NET Framework 4, 4.5 and 4.5.1

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 12, 2015, 02:55 PM »

"As previously announced, starting January 12, 2016 Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, technical support or hotfixes for .NET 4, 4.5, and 4.5.1 frameworks. All other framework versions, including 3.5, 4.5.2, 4.6 and 4.6.1, will be supported for the duration of their established lifecycle. The decision to end support for these versions will allow us to invest more resources towards improvements of the .NET Framework."

All of this wraps into some weirdness with my AdiIRC client new version, so I gotta keep my eye on this thread!

I expect I'll have to ask for tips in a lil' bit, I just don't have my grasp together on this yet what to ask.

142

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Essential PIM Pro - Mini-Review ("also-ran")

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 12, 2015, 02:49 PM »

As a sufferer of CRIMP*, over the years I have trialled probably hundreds of pieces of software for PIMs (Personal Information Managers) - including Wikis, database tools and computerised card-indexes.
...
However, the "also-rans" have rarely warranted much of a mention from me.

Until now, that is. Earlier this year I changed my work methods and began to methodically use OneNote to capture more of my activities in a Journal form, and this included trials/evaluations of all PIMs and other software - i.e., including the also-rans. So, I am now slowly building notes on the also-rans, which is useful when I next see them available on (say) BDJ, as I can quickly see and refresh my memory as to what my conclusions were the last time that I looked at the software on sale or being given away, and without putting any real effort into it.
...

-IainB (December 12, 2015, 01:06 AM)

Heh vive la difference!

I tend to use a few select programs and minimal features of even powerful programs. (I use exactly one (custom added?) feature of Mouser's SC Capture!)

This week as raved elsewhere, is another edition of the Ludum Dare game programming contest, and I have a blast just wandering around reviewing and adding feedback because I don't program. This time around I got some help from the regulars in the chat room and learned how to access the different server the #ludumdare channel is on.

Eek! I now had to access *two* channels on *two servers* (that don't even have the same control command structure!) But that's not enough. A few days back one of my "lazy" alter egos got jammed into cyberspace and locked up as well. And something else happened, some kind of ghost process from using the Kiwi client or something that has never been a problem on the DC channel but the LD IRC server took a snit and kicked me off in the middle of a convo.



So ALL THAT was finally enough for me to go back to using a desktop client. (When it was equal footing and "2 extra features" it wasn't worth it. When it became *three serious problems that wasted cumulatively a few hours of mine and people's time, BAH!)

So at least I had some half-baked IRC research from a few months ago, and that at least saved me like six hours of starting from scratch. But this time I had clearer use cases including how to register a nickname to get addl protections and stuff.

So with a few quirks and loose ends, my current "survey winner" is AdIIRC version 1-9-5. I won't go into a full review here. And not insignificantly there is a new version, but my comp is misbehaving again, and I don't want to mess much more with it during the LD weekend esp because I found my first star review entry game and I am debugging-playtesting it with the dev. And also there's some weirdness with .Net - I think it wanted V4.5 but I think I saw a thread MS is fiddling with supported versions.

So for this note, sometimes an "Also-Ran-Thing/category" can switch to become front runners. And I am just in general agreeing with Iain it's great to keep partially baked notes around to help avoid head-desking. He didn't want to forget why Essential PIM was useless - I suddenly needed a new front runner.

143

DC Gamer Club / DonationCoder thread for LudumDare34 Dec 2015

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 11, 2015, 07:10 PM »

Woohoo!

This time I am joining the #ludumdare channel at Afternet.org

This is the thread starter.

144

General Software Discussion / Re: What is Runtime Broker, and Why is it working so pathetically bad?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 11, 2015, 01:23 PM »

Curt, what OS are you running?

I hear it's at least part of win 8.x , but I'd like to hear from the win 10 gang on this.

145

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Continued software development?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 10, 2015, 10:45 PM »

I suggest if he's out of the woodwork you tie shoelaces and ask him if you can put that into the help menu / about or something so it travels with the code and avoids annoying Murphy's Law scenarios later.

"Whatever you want" sounds very close to the thing on my Turbo Processor with fancier language "Copyrighted by ____, with all rights to continue further work with no royalties" or something. If he wants to release copyright, you need another message and another line in the About section.

The irritating thing is Software has a different culture than Movies, but Copyright has become the beast it is by them.

146

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 42.0 stable is out - only Softpedia shows it though

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 10, 2015, 01:24 PM »

All this security stuff is getting to be a drag.  Used to be you could photocopy a document such as a birth certificate and mail it or present it when filing for some other government stuff.  Now thay make you buy additional "originals" often at more than $10 a pop, just to stick in a file cabinet.  Like it is all computerized so why not just send a "fetch" RPC call to the other government agency requesting the file be transmitted?  Anything to squeeze another buck out of us.

-MilesAhead (November 05, 2015, 04:28 PM)

Drifting a little off topic, I wanna go slightly less vicious and say one of my emerging top new phrases of the year is the difference between malice and chaos.

I like DC because if *I* am the "dumbest one here" y'all only get scarier after that!


So then "regular people" have to feed their families too, but can only absorb so much training, also filtered (for different mixes of cost and ability-of-rep reasons) in layers and they just don't notice things like their printed provider manual is two years out of date. Sometimes they're giving it all, and to quote Cpt Stottlemeyer of Monk, "I look at what he looks at, and I *just don't SEE* the things he sees."

Life is just more complicated than just the snarky "bastards saving money". I had a rep from WellCare NY Health Insurance do her damndest, and it "wasn't her fault" she was working for one of the only two of eight (Borg!) companies that don't offer a crucial mental health plan. It's info she should know, theoretically, but people just have their limits too.

147

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: LOLCODE: a silly snack in a silly language

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 07:13 PM »

Side note, if a dev gets fed up and writes part of key company code in LolCode and it works as intended, and later leaves, is that considered one of the computer crimes?

148

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 06:44 PM »

the older guy whose name I don't know because I haven't seen any episodes with him as the Doctor, not counting the one where he's the new regeneration at the end of the episode.

-Deozaan (December 07, 2015, 06:37 PM)

Peter Capaldi.  I hear he's had quite the career as a distinguished thespian.

-wraith808 (December 08, 2015, 07:23 AM)

Thanks!

More trivia: Peter Capaldi currently plays Doctor Who, but he also played a WHO Doctor in World War Z.

-Deozaan (December 08, 2015, 01:24 PM)

Not sure if that identifies him as a distinguished thespian.

-wraith808 (December 09, 2015, 04:46 PM)

No, but it makes for an epic homage to Who's On First!
Who? Yes, the Doctor.
Dr. Who?
Yes.
wasn't he in the WHO?
The Who?
No, the WHO.
Playing a Doctor. Right?

149

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: "Good enough" and NANY proto-components!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 08:40 AM »

By my lazy blind guestimate, we have *over a hundred* text widget-snacks-apps here on DC. So not counting coding language clashes, the idea was you just make each one of them called as a module from a menu and then you have a super-processor that just does everything! : )

150

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: "Good enough" and NANY proto-components!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 08:12 AM »

Because it's far from clear to anyone, I'm posting notice here that there was a long standing bug for the "Turbo Processor" (Word Processor + custom functions prototype) that was never meant to be a tease.

In original Nany a couple years ago I ran into a bug (that was still there) but I was too tired to chase it down then, so just had to finish my Nany posts and live parts of life.

This week mouser did agree it's a funky bug, so he's still poking at it with a stick, but in the meantime, he smashed it up there. So here's a quick recap a couple years later:

The compressed file is TextInfra.rar
Because of the bug, it's in two places - the original post where it belonged all along and Mouser mashed it into, and the new post on the bottom while we were testing things. They are the same version.

I commissioned all this stuff because I don't program, but my spirit is Nany/CodingSnacks. After checking with Mouser, he decided that if it's posted here in DC spirit it's fine even if it's not technically hard coded by me; I design and commission my stuff and leave the things like language choice to devs, mostly from oDesk so far.

So this was my prototype of the concept you saw years ago. There's tons of problems with it, but the idea was in for example the Data Control menu are functions you would never see in any standard word processor but resemble a lot of stuff you see here as individual modules. Unfortunately they're pretty broken! : (

But at least it's up now and it's free/available for people to whack at.