Ahoy,
It recently came to my attention that people were actively using or referencing the HTML5 Boomshine port I had written a while back. However a few months ago I switched hosting companies for my sandbox server and neglected to update the original article.
For anyone looking, the code is back online at: http://192.95.11.89/html5/boomshine/
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
The Last of Us experience
Ok, so this isn't the video game writing I normally do, but I felt like I needed to write something about my experience around this game. I'm still working on another beer article, but motivation is scarce. This has been on my mind a lot lately and I wanted to get it out there quickly, so this is a barely editing accounting of my experience buying and playing The Last of Us. I'll admit to not being very far in the game, but there's a reason for that.
So The Last of Us is a Playstation 3 exclusive game developed by Naughty Dog, and it was released in the US on June 14th. I ordered the game on June 15th via some odd configuration of eBay and newegg which I saw posted on reddit.com/r/gamedeals. I'm generally a patient gamer but the hype around the game and the fact I could get it for an entirely reasonable price made me go for it. I got the game on the 18th with plans to play it the evening of the 19th.
Knowing the game was going to need to be updating immediately, I put the disc in and told it to download and install the patch. My 6 months of PS3 ownership have taught me that the PS3 is now going to be absolutely useless until it's done which could be upwards of an hour from now. So later that night I went to check on the status and it was done. It was too late to play, so I turned off the console.
The next day, I went to play the game after work only to discover that my PS3 controller had run down its battery. I'm told that keeping a USB hub near your sofa to charge your PS3 controllers is all the rage nowadays, but I've apparently not kept up with the times and the closest place for me to charge my controller is the PS3 itself using the 3 foot cable that ships with the console. My hopes dashed, I plugged the controller in to charge and played some Mass Effect on Xbox.
The next day I went again to play using my freshly charged controller. Starting the game yields a loading screen for a few minutes before bringing up the menu which was peaceful, yet sparse and showing signs of decay. Selecting new game yields another loading screen. This one is all black apart from some sparkles that look like they could turn into the PS3 main menu at any point. After a minute or two some "Loading..." text appears in the bottom right corner with a percentage that slowly climbs. When the percentage finally reaches 100%, the loading screen starts it again. A few more 0-100 runs of the "Loading..." text and the opening cinematic finally begins.
So I play the game, and it's pretty well done. A little heavy on the cutscenes, but still not bad. Then I start to get into the main part of the gameplay and realize I'm really bad at this. But I'm not bad at this because I don't understand what to do, I'm bad at this because the control scheme is fucking me up. I feel like the game really demands I know the controls pretty immediately. I find whenever I try to be really stealthy I'll be trying to sneak up on a guy and then football victory-check a brick directly into the ground or lunge at the empty space next to someone. It's pretty frustrating. And if there's more than 2-3 bad guys I'm generally better off just starting a huge fight and beating everyone to death with a board instead of taking them out one at a time. I tried to take out that fucking Clicker in the beginning of the MBTA station level right before the Goldstone building like 4 times and failing at it before I just shot it in the head a few times then Molotov'd the mob that ran in. That pissed me off because that is not how I want to play this game.
Rewinding a bit, a few hours before that point I decided I want to save, in case I was about to do something totally boneheaded and I didn't want to restart the entire section. Now I stare at a message saying "Autosaving still in progress" for a minute, then an unresponsive options menu for a bit with several messages about Autosaving before finally being allowed to select a savegame file. It's around this point that my girlfriend casually quips, "This got 10 out of 10?"
I want to bring this up in relation to a 9 out of 10 game that I played on the Xbox 360: Batman Arkham City.
I bought Arkham City several months after release date from a gamestop and brought the disc home. I put it into the Xbox and turned on the controller. I don't think the controller had been dead, but if it had I have plenty of rechargeable batteries around because I use them in: My wireless mouse, other Xbox controllers, digital cameras, digital scale, TV remote control, my brewing thermometer, and a few other things I'm sure I've forgotten.
I intend to play the game tonight, but am greeted by an update screen. Which is no big deal to me, I know that historically the Xbox will finish updating in under a minute. My experience has not led me astray and the game is ready to play and at the menu before I can think about how uncomfortable my couch is. I start a new game and with less than 30 seconds of loading, the opening cinematic starts. I then proceed to play the fuck out Arkham City and continually revisit the game.
This experience also applies to every Xbox 360 game I have played: Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Alan Wake, Assassin's Creed(s), etc, while a similar "Oh Gods I hope it doesn't need to update" scenario unfolds every time I try to play something on the PS3.
Now the point:
I firmly believe that the strength of a console lies in its games. Graphics and capabilities are generally equal and have been for a generation or two, so the exclusives and online services are where the difference is made. I am not a Xbox fanboy or part of the PC master race. But, I find the PS3 and incredibly inconvenient console to use. It seems like there is no such thing as deciding to play a game and then playing it on the PS3. The console feels replete with loading screens and saving progress bars. If there is an update, you might as well cancel your plans. And the lack of replaceable batteries in the controllers will never fail to aggravate me. It's a wireless freaking controller, it feels like it's missed the point if I have to plug it in to use it.
I firmly believe the experience of The Last of Us is being hindered by its console exclusivity. I think the PS3 is holding me back from really enjoying the game and that sucks. I'm not going to say I'd be able to control it better if I were on a PC or Xbox 360, that's unfair. But the time and waiting I had to put into playing the game at all, and the time I need to spend waiting for the game to be ready for me to play it every single time I want to really saps the enjoyment. This is compounded by the fact that the platform seems to continually pull me out of the game whenever I save.
I'm hoping they eventually port this because I'd like to see how it fairs without the PS3 getting in the way because it really feels like it does.
So The Last of Us is a Playstation 3 exclusive game developed by Naughty Dog, and it was released in the US on June 14th. I ordered the game on June 15th via some odd configuration of eBay and newegg which I saw posted on reddit.com/r/gamedeals. I'm generally a patient gamer but the hype around the game and the fact I could get it for an entirely reasonable price made me go for it. I got the game on the 18th with plans to play it the evening of the 19th.
Knowing the game was going to need to be updating immediately, I put the disc in and told it to download and install the patch. My 6 months of PS3 ownership have taught me that the PS3 is now going to be absolutely useless until it's done which could be upwards of an hour from now. So later that night I went to check on the status and it was done. It was too late to play, so I turned off the console.
The next day, I went to play the game after work only to discover that my PS3 controller had run down its battery. I'm told that keeping a USB hub near your sofa to charge your PS3 controllers is all the rage nowadays, but I've apparently not kept up with the times and the closest place for me to charge my controller is the PS3 itself using the 3 foot cable that ships with the console. My hopes dashed, I plugged the controller in to charge and played some Mass Effect on Xbox.
The next day I went again to play using my freshly charged controller. Starting the game yields a loading screen for a few minutes before bringing up the menu which was peaceful, yet sparse and showing signs of decay. Selecting new game yields another loading screen. This one is all black apart from some sparkles that look like they could turn into the PS3 main menu at any point. After a minute or two some "Loading..." text appears in the bottom right corner with a percentage that slowly climbs. When the percentage finally reaches 100%, the loading screen starts it again. A few more 0-100 runs of the "Loading..." text and the opening cinematic finally begins.
So I play the game, and it's pretty well done. A little heavy on the cutscenes, but still not bad. Then I start to get into the main part of the gameplay and realize I'm really bad at this. But I'm not bad at this because I don't understand what to do, I'm bad at this because the control scheme is fucking me up. I feel like the game really demands I know the controls pretty immediately. I find whenever I try to be really stealthy I'll be trying to sneak up on a guy and then football victory-check a brick directly into the ground or lunge at the empty space next to someone. It's pretty frustrating. And if there's more than 2-3 bad guys I'm generally better off just starting a huge fight and beating everyone to death with a board instead of taking them out one at a time. I tried to take out that fucking Clicker in the beginning of the MBTA station level right before the Goldstone building like 4 times and failing at it before I just shot it in the head a few times then Molotov'd the mob that ran in. That pissed me off because that is not how I want to play this game.
Rewinding a bit, a few hours before that point I decided I want to save, in case I was about to do something totally boneheaded and I didn't want to restart the entire section. Now I stare at a message saying "Autosaving still in progress" for a minute, then an unresponsive options menu for a bit with several messages about Autosaving before finally being allowed to select a savegame file. It's around this point that my girlfriend casually quips, "This got 10 out of 10?"
I want to bring this up in relation to a 9 out of 10 game that I played on the Xbox 360: Batman Arkham City.
I bought Arkham City several months after release date from a gamestop and brought the disc home. I put it into the Xbox and turned on the controller. I don't think the controller had been dead, but if it had I have plenty of rechargeable batteries around because I use them in: My wireless mouse, other Xbox controllers, digital cameras, digital scale, TV remote control, my brewing thermometer, and a few other things I'm sure I've forgotten.
I intend to play the game tonight, but am greeted by an update screen. Which is no big deal to me, I know that historically the Xbox will finish updating in under a minute. My experience has not led me astray and the game is ready to play and at the menu before I can think about how uncomfortable my couch is. I start a new game and with less than 30 seconds of loading, the opening cinematic starts. I then proceed to play the fuck out Arkham City and continually revisit the game.
This experience also applies to every Xbox 360 game I have played: Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Alan Wake, Assassin's Creed(s), etc, while a similar "Oh Gods I hope it doesn't need to update" scenario unfolds every time I try to play something on the PS3.
Now the point:
I firmly believe that the strength of a console lies in its games. Graphics and capabilities are generally equal and have been for a generation or two, so the exclusives and online services are where the difference is made. I am not a Xbox fanboy or part of the PC master race. But, I find the PS3 and incredibly inconvenient console to use. It seems like there is no such thing as deciding to play a game and then playing it on the PS3. The console feels replete with loading screens and saving progress bars. If there is an update, you might as well cancel your plans. And the lack of replaceable batteries in the controllers will never fail to aggravate me. It's a wireless freaking controller, it feels like it's missed the point if I have to plug it in to use it.
I firmly believe the experience of The Last of Us is being hindered by its console exclusivity. I think the PS3 is holding me back from really enjoying the game and that sucks. I'm not going to say I'd be able to control it better if I were on a PC or Xbox 360, that's unfair. But the time and waiting I had to put into playing the game at all, and the time I need to spend waiting for the game to be ready for me to play it every single time I want to really saps the enjoyment. This is compounded by the fact that the platform seems to continually pull me out of the game whenever I save.
I'm hoping they eventually port this because I'd like to see how it fairs without the PS3 getting in the way because it really feels like it does.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
The Beerening: On craft beer, beer styles, and how to "get into" beer
I've been thinking about the topic of introducing what I think is good beer to my friends for a long time, however it's very relevant at the time of writing since there have recently been a slew of articles with insider and outsider perceptions of what craft beer looks like and what it's like to get into. The actual points of view range from "Why does beer have to be so fancy, what have you guys done?" to "Craft beer has too many snobs, we need to chill" to a recent article that "Craft beer's obsession with extreme beers is giving craft beer culture a bad rep". But the point is that it's interesting, it's generating discussions which could get people into beer. Advertising and beerfests and brunches and all that, I don't think, get people into beer. Other people who genuinely like beer are what get people into beer.
But specifically I wanted to address some points I had about what seems to have been a pretty contentious style recently: The American IPA.
IPA stands for India Pale Ale, the history of it has a few origin stories, and some conflicting marketing and research complicating things. From what I've heard a great book that straightens the whole mess out is "IPA!" by Mitch Steele. However, I haven't had a chance to read it. Mitch's presentation at last year's NHC was very good though. I don't want to get too historic but basically the strength of the IPA as a style is dependent on the strength of your regions hop plants, and America has done some crazy things with hops between great growing conditions and breeding programs. It was a great way we could call beers "ours", by using our fresh great new American hops that smelled like pine trees and oranges and mangoes (and onions and cat pee depending who you ask). I don't know specifically what the IPA was like in pre-prohibition America but I know that post-prohibition we basically made American Lager and copied a few UK styles (like the IPA). But the IPA of the time wasn't what people wanted. It had morphed into a lower ABV, maltier, more subtle thing and lager was easier to drink. So as Lager became The American beer other beers fell to the wayside, and eventually we hit rock bottom in 1980.
When the US craft brewing scene began to resurrect itself it effectively did it with the Pale Ale and the IPA. A lot of people credit Sierra Nevada with beginning the resurgence, though I've also heard some of the credit go to Anchor Steam. It obviously appealed to a lot of people and now IPA is the most popular style of beer in the country. With that popularity comes a lot of breweries hoping to make themselves a reputation on a flagship IPA. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it flops, but the net result is a lot of creative people doing whatever they can think of the make their mark on IPA. I love the variety and a lot of it is regional which harkens back to a pre-modern notion of styles as beer brewed to the tastes and strengths of a particular region. But where I take issue is that the significant buzz around a single style like this has a tendency to obscure other, just as worthy, beers.
If you follow the larger online beer discussion the most extreme beers continually dominate the conversation. Which is fine since to a degree we're all beer nerds trying to find the next must-have, but when you picture yourself on the outside looking in it's a very different picture.
We're in a position now where craft beer is a big deal. Newcomers are hearing about craft beer and trying to find a good inroad. This is an huge contrast to when I got into beer 7-8 years ago when an "amazing" beer section was 3 shelves in the back of the store. I got into beer by spending a ton of money on beer I knew nothing about, and it was a really expensive way to learn about my tastes and styles. But I was young, just turned 21 and had my first real job so I was Capital-S Stupid with my money. I still spend a ton of money on beer, but I know what I'm getting into now. There are a lot of people who are looking at craft beer who are way smarter than I was and they won't do that, they're the people who want to look around the clubhouse a little and tour the gym before they decide if they want to join. And our club looks like a bunch of folks swimming around in a giant pile of green, sticky, hop cones.
The majority of our internal conversation is over hoppier beers. Specifically a very certain type of IPA, the majority of which is produced on the West Coast of the country. Where can I find Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger is about to be tapped. Green Flash puts hops in the beer 8 times. This bar is using a randall (a device which is used to force pressurized carbonated beer through a chamber of hops or other herbs/spices on the way to the glass for the freshest flavor)! I'll never claim that's all there is, because there's also a lot of discussion about new beers, seasonals (especially summer), oaked stuff, wild & sour beers, etc. And that's fine, but from the outside looking in you'd get a very skewed picture.
Further complicating the issue is beer rating sites, beer blogs and people's top 10 beer lists. If you, as a novice, wanting to see what's good you might look at a list of someone who seems to know what they're talking about. Odds are you will find extreme IPAs and Double IPAs. I'm not going to say that this is incorrect by any stretch but there's an element of hype that pushes these highly rated beers even higher on community sites (though personal lists may be more even-handed). Someone with context seeking out these beers because they're rated so highly could have a rough surprise.
While I do agree that the insane hype surrounding the Double IPA is not warranted, I'm not going to say we should stop talking about it so we don't turn people off. Just maybe stop talking about it so loudly so it doesn't look like we're saying it's the best beer in all creation.
Put another way: We in beer have a tendency to think of "beer" as it stands in the public consciousness as pale and bland, while craft beer is flavor. We tend to want to impress other people with the great flavors we have in craft beer and so try to trot out what we think our best flavors are, and a lot of people really like IPAs. But we forget that variety and quality is what makes craft beer something we enjoy, not always amazing and unique flavors. So we bungle the attempt at putting our best foot forward by putting our favorite beer forward, and that's not always the best approach.
So since this post thus far has been mostly reiteration, what do I think is the right way to go about this? Friendly guidance. People need to know that craft beer is about quality and variety, they need to be able to figure out ways to relate the flavors present in that variety to things they already know. Everyone knows that wine is made of grapes, but people have less of an idea of the variety of grains you can make beer out of. When people are interested in our beer we can't be absolute with them since it's all about taste. My favorite beer probably isn't yours. We cannot say "This IPA is AMAZING" to someone who doesn't have the context to understand IPA in the realm of beer, we have to know what flavors they might like and then can point out great beers in those styles. We also need to do away with misconceptions like hoppy == bitter and dark == heavy. But telling people they are wrong isn't going to work. If you're drinking with someone and they say they don't want your dry Irish stout because dark beers are too heavy, offer them a contrast like a black IPA that is generally crisp and refreshing with a touch of roastiness or something lighter colored that they might be more receptive to but still shares some flavors with stout like a scotch ale or an Irish red.
In short, beer is about dialog and for once people outside of craft beer are starting that dialog. We have a great chance not to blow it by setting aside our personal favorites and using our knowledge to find the beer for them.
Drink on!
And, Cheers!
--PXA
(p.s. my favorite beer is Trappist Rochefort #8)
But specifically I wanted to address some points I had about what seems to have been a pretty contentious style recently: The American IPA.
IPA stands for India Pale Ale, the history of it has a few origin stories, and some conflicting marketing and research complicating things. From what I've heard a great book that straightens the whole mess out is "IPA!" by Mitch Steele. However, I haven't had a chance to read it. Mitch's presentation at last year's NHC was very good though. I don't want to get too historic but basically the strength of the IPA as a style is dependent on the strength of your regions hop plants, and America has done some crazy things with hops between great growing conditions and breeding programs. It was a great way we could call beers "ours", by using our fresh great new American hops that smelled like pine trees and oranges and mangoes (and onions and cat pee depending who you ask). I don't know specifically what the IPA was like in pre-prohibition America but I know that post-prohibition we basically made American Lager and copied a few UK styles (like the IPA). But the IPA of the time wasn't what people wanted. It had morphed into a lower ABV, maltier, more subtle thing and lager was easier to drink. So as Lager became The American beer other beers fell to the wayside, and eventually we hit rock bottom in 1980.
When the US craft brewing scene began to resurrect itself it effectively did it with the Pale Ale and the IPA. A lot of people credit Sierra Nevada with beginning the resurgence, though I've also heard some of the credit go to Anchor Steam. It obviously appealed to a lot of people and now IPA is the most popular style of beer in the country. With that popularity comes a lot of breweries hoping to make themselves a reputation on a flagship IPA. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it flops, but the net result is a lot of creative people doing whatever they can think of the make their mark on IPA. I love the variety and a lot of it is regional which harkens back to a pre-modern notion of styles as beer brewed to the tastes and strengths of a particular region. But where I take issue is that the significant buzz around a single style like this has a tendency to obscure other, just as worthy, beers.
If you follow the larger online beer discussion the most extreme beers continually dominate the conversation. Which is fine since to a degree we're all beer nerds trying to find the next must-have, but when you picture yourself on the outside looking in it's a very different picture.
We're in a position now where craft beer is a big deal. Newcomers are hearing about craft beer and trying to find a good inroad. This is an huge contrast to when I got into beer 7-8 years ago when an "amazing" beer section was 3 shelves in the back of the store. I got into beer by spending a ton of money on beer I knew nothing about, and it was a really expensive way to learn about my tastes and styles. But I was young, just turned 21 and had my first real job so I was Capital-S Stupid with my money. I still spend a ton of money on beer, but I know what I'm getting into now. There are a lot of people who are looking at craft beer who are way smarter than I was and they won't do that, they're the people who want to look around the clubhouse a little and tour the gym before they decide if they want to join. And our club looks like a bunch of folks swimming around in a giant pile of green, sticky, hop cones.
The majority of our internal conversation is over hoppier beers. Specifically a very certain type of IPA, the majority of which is produced on the West Coast of the country. Where can I find Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger is about to be tapped. Green Flash puts hops in the beer 8 times. This bar is using a randall (a device which is used to force pressurized carbonated beer through a chamber of hops or other herbs/spices on the way to the glass for the freshest flavor)! I'll never claim that's all there is, because there's also a lot of discussion about new beers, seasonals (especially summer), oaked stuff, wild & sour beers, etc. And that's fine, but from the outside looking in you'd get a very skewed picture.
Further complicating the issue is beer rating sites, beer blogs and people's top 10 beer lists. If you, as a novice, wanting to see what's good you might look at a list of someone who seems to know what they're talking about. Odds are you will find extreme IPAs and Double IPAs. I'm not going to say that this is incorrect by any stretch but there's an element of hype that pushes these highly rated beers even higher on community sites (though personal lists may be more even-handed). Someone with context seeking out these beers because they're rated so highly could have a rough surprise.
While I do agree that the insane hype surrounding the Double IPA is not warranted, I'm not going to say we should stop talking about it so we don't turn people off. Just maybe stop talking about it so loudly so it doesn't look like we're saying it's the best beer in all creation.
Put another way: We in beer have a tendency to think of "beer" as it stands in the public consciousness as pale and bland, while craft beer is flavor. We tend to want to impress other people with the great flavors we have in craft beer and so try to trot out what we think our best flavors are, and a lot of people really like IPAs. But we forget that variety and quality is what makes craft beer something we enjoy, not always amazing and unique flavors. So we bungle the attempt at putting our best foot forward by putting our favorite beer forward, and that's not always the best approach.
So since this post thus far has been mostly reiteration, what do I think is the right way to go about this? Friendly guidance. People need to know that craft beer is about quality and variety, they need to be able to figure out ways to relate the flavors present in that variety to things they already know. Everyone knows that wine is made of grapes, but people have less of an idea of the variety of grains you can make beer out of. When people are interested in our beer we can't be absolute with them since it's all about taste. My favorite beer probably isn't yours. We cannot say "This IPA is AMAZING" to someone who doesn't have the context to understand IPA in the realm of beer, we have to know what flavors they might like and then can point out great beers in those styles. We also need to do away with misconceptions like hoppy == bitter and dark == heavy. But telling people they are wrong isn't going to work. If you're drinking with someone and they say they don't want your dry Irish stout because dark beers are too heavy, offer them a contrast like a black IPA that is generally crisp and refreshing with a touch of roastiness or something lighter colored that they might be more receptive to but still shares some flavors with stout like a scotch ale or an Irish red.
In short, beer is about dialog and for once people outside of craft beer are starting that dialog. We have a great chance not to blow it by setting aside our personal favorites and using our knowledge to find the beer for them.
Drink on!
And, Cheers!
--PXA
(p.s. my favorite beer is Trappist Rochefort #8)
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Dead Space 3 demo, Addendum
I just realized I forgot to make one major point which was the parts based crafting system. They've touted the hell out of it and it's not as confusing as I was worried it would be. It's generally pretty sensible and is just customizable enough to be unique and cool. I'm sure it will be a bit more daunting in practice when they don't front load you with a lot of resources but it makes a lot more sense than the blue print/store system from earlier games. I had always wondered in that situation 1) Why they would even sell vital supplies like health, air, guns, ammo, armor on a ship like the Ishimura and 2) What's to prevent Isaac, with his engineering prowess, from hacking the freaking things to give him free shit? Needing a certain part removes these because now you're not buying what you need from a store, you're really building it and improvising a weapon using parts and a work-bench. It's kindof cool.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The Dead Space 3 demo
I know I'm a bit late to the game but I finally got a chance to play the Dead Space 3 demo on Xbox. Most of this post is going to be mentions of things I noticed while playing. Some items will be discussed at more detail, but not all.
The first thing I notice is the interesting change in menu style. Previous Dead Space installments used a menu style evocative of a RIG-style computer interface with a nebulous background of shifting tones and shapes. 3's menu panels are on large cross-sectional slices of what appears to be a necromorph or some other organic thing frozen in a block of ice. I suppose if I were trying to read into it I'd draw a parallel between the more concrete and grounded menu system with the terrestrial basis of the game. Dead Space 1 was entirely in space except for the last level and so far Dead Space 2 has been all in space as well (You can follow that playthrough on youtube). Either way, it's got a lot of motion and is very cool to watch although I can see possibly being annoyed at the length of some of the animations.
Immediately after the menus I noticed the focus on music. The previous Dead Space installments used music as a background element, and they were very effective with it. The menu is subtle and unnerving but very much ambient, it's tense in the battle scenes and generally serves purpose...but I couldn't hum you the Dead Space theme. This new game puts the music front and center with a discernible theme in the menu, however it sounds like a poor man's Batman theme (Nolan era films, possibly including Arkham games). Not that it's bad since it's a great theme and other recent movie themes have lifted from it somewhat and it's possible it lifted its inspiration from something I can't recall, it's just very reminiscent and I couldn't stop noticing it.
Onto the actual gameplay, the game begins with Isaac pulling a Luke in the Wampa cave. Apparently he somehow ended up upside down when his ship crashed following Dead Space 2. Isaac is either the unluckiest or the LUCKIEST S.O.B. ever. He keeps running into these Necromorph outbreaks and somehow surviving them. Deciding he's the unluckiest, he assumes that if he survived everyone else is probably safe and begins to look for them.
I don't know that I can take full credit for this as I already saw Chris of gamertagged notice that Isaac shields his face with his hand while wearing his face-shielding helmet in the snow storm.
The early game in general is a lot more linear that previous installments, I barely felt like activating the beacon. The outdoor texture is quite well done and they have an interesting looking snow effect for when you're walking, though I do hope they make it look less lumpy for the final release. The footprints look good. It's a nice way to conceal the borders of the level, but I think in some spots they go overboard. There are a few spots where you can see the path really well, then take a few steps forward and now the snow is everywhere and you can't see more than 3 feet. It's not time based because it doesn't go away until you back up.
The physics system for loose objects on the ground has been upgraded, though still seems a little rough. This game involves the standard "Isaac stomp all boxes on the ground to receive goodies" mechanic, but the boxes are a bit more jiggly than they used to be. Stomping can sometimes just move the box. Also, the engine is so picky that when Isaac raises his foot to do said stomp, it can result in kicking the box like a soccer ball. At one point Isaac just straight up punted a box off the side of a cliff because of this. It was actually really funny.
The quicktime events the game uses are interesting. I had to do the opening one where you climb through the falling vehicle cab 3 times because I was having a hard time figuring out if the panicked and flashing buttons meant to tap, hold, or spam. The arrow for which direction to push the joy stick is hard to pick out until you realize what it means and the constant flashing is confusing. It turns out you HOLD the joystick even though it's flashing and spam the buttons because it's flashing.
The snowy terrain leads to some interesting potential where enemies literally pop up through the snow, but since this is Dead Space I have the sense they're going to beat the gimmick like a red headed step-child. The enemies are more charred looking and smaller than enemies in previous Dead Space games. They're all wearing snowsuits and from what I remember don't have many extra limbs. Some enemies will break in half causing 3 huge tentacles to spew from their waist. I'm not sure if this is because of a specific kill type or enemy type since there's a lot less differentiation...or the demo primary included this enemy type with a few variations. There are also pure human enemies due to the planet magically being a Unitology stronghold or something. There are some humans who are neutral to you and another faction that wants you dead. Also the necromorphs.
Initially the game invited a lot of comparison to John Carpenter's The Thing, and I kindof wanted to think it too, especially when I first ran into the co-op character but I can't see it happening. The Thing is all about slow tension and paranoia, a sense of isolation. With as much action as the series involves at this point I don't think they could pull it off. First off, Carver is the other player character. They simply couldn't have the character betray Isaac or be implied to be an enemy which removes the paranoia that could result from not knowing if your friend was really on your side. Sure they can do this with some of the other characters, but we're kindof used to that twist by this point in the series...it's happened in every game so far. Also, there are so many necromorphs, and random human allies and enemies that show up and fight you or shout and die by a scripted event that I don't feel isolated at all as Isaac. I feel like Doomguy. It's finally gotten to the point where I am no longer even pretending to cautiously move down a hallway. I am Isaac-Fucking-Clarke with advanced degrees in engineering YOUR ASS TO BE KICKED!!!!!!RAAARGH!!!!1oneshift
I'll still have to decide if the game is worth buying initially. I kindof want to play it on Let's Drink to Gaming, but I don't know if it's worth it. EA's doing a lot of stupid stuff around the game that I don't want to support so I may wait a few months until it goes on sale. Another option would be buying it and immediately marathoning the whole thing in a single sitting live on twitch.tv. That's sort of outlandish and would probably take 12 hours or more given the times on howlongtobeat.com for Dead Space 1 and 2. Maybe I'll ask twitter to see if there's interest in it.
Anyway, that's what I thought of while playing the demo. Take from it what you will.
The first thing I notice is the interesting change in menu style. Previous Dead Space installments used a menu style evocative of a RIG-style computer interface with a nebulous background of shifting tones and shapes. 3's menu panels are on large cross-sectional slices of what appears to be a necromorph or some other organic thing frozen in a block of ice. I suppose if I were trying to read into it I'd draw a parallel between the more concrete and grounded menu system with the terrestrial basis of the game. Dead Space 1 was entirely in space except for the last level and so far Dead Space 2 has been all in space as well (You can follow that playthrough on youtube). Either way, it's got a lot of motion and is very cool to watch although I can see possibly being annoyed at the length of some of the animations.
Immediately after the menus I noticed the focus on music. The previous Dead Space installments used music as a background element, and they were very effective with it. The menu is subtle and unnerving but very much ambient, it's tense in the battle scenes and generally serves purpose...but I couldn't hum you the Dead Space theme. This new game puts the music front and center with a discernible theme in the menu, however it sounds like a poor man's Batman theme (Nolan era films, possibly including Arkham games). Not that it's bad since it's a great theme and other recent movie themes have lifted from it somewhat and it's possible it lifted its inspiration from something I can't recall, it's just very reminiscent and I couldn't stop noticing it.
Onto the actual gameplay, the game begins with Isaac pulling a Luke in the Wampa cave. Apparently he somehow ended up upside down when his ship crashed following Dead Space 2. Isaac is either the unluckiest or the LUCKIEST S.O.B. ever. He keeps running into these Necromorph outbreaks and somehow surviving them. Deciding he's the unluckiest, he assumes that if he survived everyone else is probably safe and begins to look for them.
I don't know that I can take full credit for this as I already saw Chris of gamertagged notice that Isaac shields his face with his hand while wearing his face-shielding helmet in the snow storm.
The early game in general is a lot more linear that previous installments, I barely felt like activating the beacon. The outdoor texture is quite well done and they have an interesting looking snow effect for when you're walking, though I do hope they make it look less lumpy for the final release. The footprints look good. It's a nice way to conceal the borders of the level, but I think in some spots they go overboard. There are a few spots where you can see the path really well, then take a few steps forward and now the snow is everywhere and you can't see more than 3 feet. It's not time based because it doesn't go away until you back up.
The physics system for loose objects on the ground has been upgraded, though still seems a little rough. This game involves the standard "Isaac stomp all boxes on the ground to receive goodies" mechanic, but the boxes are a bit more jiggly than they used to be. Stomping can sometimes just move the box. Also, the engine is so picky that when Isaac raises his foot to do said stomp, it can result in kicking the box like a soccer ball. At one point Isaac just straight up punted a box off the side of a cliff because of this. It was actually really funny.
The quicktime events the game uses are interesting. I had to do the opening one where you climb through the falling vehicle cab 3 times because I was having a hard time figuring out if the panicked and flashing buttons meant to tap, hold, or spam. The arrow for which direction to push the joy stick is hard to pick out until you realize what it means and the constant flashing is confusing. It turns out you HOLD the joystick even though it's flashing and spam the buttons because it's flashing.
The snowy terrain leads to some interesting potential where enemies literally pop up through the snow, but since this is Dead Space I have the sense they're going to beat the gimmick like a red headed step-child. The enemies are more charred looking and smaller than enemies in previous Dead Space games. They're all wearing snowsuits and from what I remember don't have many extra limbs. Some enemies will break in half causing 3 huge tentacles to spew from their waist. I'm not sure if this is because of a specific kill type or enemy type since there's a lot less differentiation...or the demo primary included this enemy type with a few variations. There are also pure human enemies due to the planet magically being a Unitology stronghold or something. There are some humans who are neutral to you and another faction that wants you dead. Also the necromorphs.
Initially the game invited a lot of comparison to John Carpenter's The Thing, and I kindof wanted to think it too, especially when I first ran into the co-op character but I can't see it happening. The Thing is all about slow tension and paranoia, a sense of isolation. With as much action as the series involves at this point I don't think they could pull it off. First off, Carver is the other player character. They simply couldn't have the character betray Isaac or be implied to be an enemy which removes the paranoia that could result from not knowing if your friend was really on your side. Sure they can do this with some of the other characters, but we're kindof used to that twist by this point in the series...it's happened in every game so far. Also, there are so many necromorphs, and random human allies and enemies that show up and fight you or shout and die by a scripted event that I don't feel isolated at all as Isaac. I feel like Doomguy. It's finally gotten to the point where I am no longer even pretending to cautiously move down a hallway. I am Isaac-Fucking-Clarke with advanced degrees in engineering YOUR ASS TO BE KICKED!!!!!!RAAARGH!!!!1oneshift
I'll still have to decide if the game is worth buying initially. I kindof want to play it on Let's Drink to Gaming, but I don't know if it's worth it. EA's doing a lot of stupid stuff around the game that I don't want to support so I may wait a few months until it goes on sale. Another option would be buying it and immediately marathoning the whole thing in a single sitting live on twitch.tv. That's sort of outlandish and would probably take 12 hours or more given the times on howlongtobeat.com for Dead Space 1 and 2. Maybe I'll ask twitter to see if there's interest in it.
Anyway, that's what I thought of while playing the demo. Take from it what you will.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
A foray into video recording and editing
I'm fully aware it's been a very long while since I discussed anything technical on this site, and that makes me feel a little sad as that was the original point. I had been somewhat hindered by the fact that there was very little I was doing outside of work that seemed interesting, and a lot of what I was doing in work was too difficult to make generic enough to not get me in trouble. However, since I had started doing YouTube Let's Play videos (as mentioned previously) I've got something that's pretty interesting and somewhat technical, so here we are.
Let's Drink to Gaming is a Let's Play show with themed cocktails. I wanted this to be a little more interesting than just playing a game and narrating what's going on, so I decided that I would play with a rotating cast of guest hosts over the internet. This leads to a somewhat interesting challenge of broadcasting the game video to the other person while simultaneously recording it. It also raised the question of how to record multiple audio sources, and broadcast multiple sources. I needed to hear and record their voice, they needed to hear me and the game.
I did some wandering around Google and tried: XSplit, FFSplit, Fraps, Taksi, Bandicam, and I think "GameCam"? Eventually I settled on Dxtory. It's paid software but it has a lot of features that were really important in my situation that only really XSplit also mirrored, and since XSplit uses a subscription pay model Dxtory is technically cheaper. The most important features Dxtory has are:
Streaming via DirectShow is the way most webcams work, so since Dxtory can do that, I have a lot of options for video conferencing or streaming software. I tried Skype first since it's super-easy, but the video quality is awful. Skype uses 640x480 streams. We've been trying to get RTSP with VLC working for some time can't quite get it over the internet. I have a sneaking suspicion Verizon may be blocking RTSP. I had also briefly toyed with the idea of using a game streaming site like Twitch and maybe making the channel private, if that's possible, but the lag on my stream was unbelievable. I just recently found out this was because one of the utilities which came with my motherboard, a bandwidth prioritization utility, was devoting almost all my network resources to a Synergy server. So maybe this is an option again. I should also revisit the VLC tests in case bandwidth was an issue.
Audio mixing for the live feed was still unanswered. This market is unfortunately less varied and most of it is paid software. I tried without success using PulseAudio for windows, Jack for windows. Eventually I bought Virtual Audio Cable. VAC lets you create virtual audio devices on your PC and also arbitrarily route real and virtual devices. This has been really important when we've played non-co-op games and had my girlfriend in the room with me. I can use VAC to combine both of our microphones, and the game audio into a single device and make Teamspeak use that as its microphone while not affecting my ability to record all 3 of those sources alone.
So once I recorded everything I end up with a few gigs of x264 encoded AVI files with separate audio streams. All the post-production work is done in Linux. The software for windows I bought to record and stream was pretty cheap, and they were the only programs I saw with the featuresets I wanted. Video editing software, however, is really freaking expensive. I tried some free programs for windows, but they were all terrible. Nothing could even match the feature set of of Adobe Premier Elements or Windows Movie Maker. So I went to Linux where there were at least a few programs for me to choose from: Cinelerra, KDEnlive, and OpenShot.
I made my first video in Cinelerra but it was clunky, old looking, unstable, and couldn't export quickly or easily. I wound up rendering the audio separately, and the video into a ludicrously large MOV, 80 gigs or something, then muxing the two together and reencoding on the command line. Since then I've been using KDEnlive and it is much much better. It still crashes and it has some clunkiness around certain tasks or filters. I'd love some project templates and previewing animated title cards has some problems. Also, it had this super-strange audio glitch that made creating the clip show utter madness. I may try OpenShot soon, since it looks really good but I have nothing on it now.
I have a shell script that invokes ffmpeg to extract all the audio streams from the video file so I can work with them in Audacity. Audacity seems like the go-to cross platform audio program, so I use that to import all the tracks, then run noise removal and run a pre-amp on anyone who seems too quiet. Then I basically listen to the entire project covering up bits of keyboard noise or other unwanted sounds and if anyone talked over anyone else, bring out whoever said something better.
Anyway, that's the basic setup:
VAC to setup the audio so everyone can hear what they need.
Dxtory to record all the audio to independent data streams and output video in a usable format.
Google Hangouts to stream video to the remote commentators.
Audacity to clean and mix the audio into a single track.
KDEnlive to put everything together into the final video.
Yeah, this is long winded, but at least I'm talking about software again. Maybe I'll post the bash script next time I boot linux to do some work.
Let's Drink to Gaming is a Let's Play show with themed cocktails. I wanted this to be a little more interesting than just playing a game and narrating what's going on, so I decided that I would play with a rotating cast of guest hosts over the internet. This leads to a somewhat interesting challenge of broadcasting the game video to the other person while simultaneously recording it. It also raised the question of how to record multiple audio sources, and broadcast multiple sources. I needed to hear and record their voice, they needed to hear me and the game.
I did some wandering around Google and tried: XSplit, FFSplit, Fraps, Taksi, Bandicam, and I think "GameCam"? Eventually I settled on Dxtory. It's paid software but it has a lot of features that were really important in my situation that only really XSplit also mirrored, and since XSplit uses a subscription pay model Dxtory is technically cheaper. The most important features Dxtory has are:
- The ability to record an arbitrary number of audio streams.
- The ability to stream the video it's recording to several DirectShow contexts.
Streaming via DirectShow is the way most webcams work, so since Dxtory can do that, I have a lot of options for video conferencing or streaming software. I tried Skype first since it's super-easy, but the video quality is awful. Skype uses 640x480 streams. We've been trying to get RTSP with VLC working for some time can't quite get it over the internet. I have a sneaking suspicion Verizon may be blocking RTSP. I had also briefly toyed with the idea of using a game streaming site like Twitch and maybe making the channel private, if that's possible, but the lag on my stream was unbelievable. I just recently found out this was because one of the utilities which came with my motherboard, a bandwidth prioritization utility, was devoting almost all my network resources to a Synergy server. So maybe this is an option again. I should also revisit the VLC tests in case bandwidth was an issue.
Audio mixing for the live feed was still unanswered. This market is unfortunately less varied and most of it is paid software. I tried without success using PulseAudio for windows, Jack for windows. Eventually I bought Virtual Audio Cable. VAC lets you create virtual audio devices on your PC and also arbitrarily route real and virtual devices. This has been really important when we've played non-co-op games and had my girlfriend in the room with me. I can use VAC to combine both of our microphones, and the game audio into a single device and make Teamspeak use that as its microphone while not affecting my ability to record all 3 of those sources alone.
So once I recorded everything I end up with a few gigs of x264 encoded AVI files with separate audio streams. All the post-production work is done in Linux. The software for windows I bought to record and stream was pretty cheap, and they were the only programs I saw with the featuresets I wanted. Video editing software, however, is really freaking expensive. I tried some free programs for windows, but they were all terrible. Nothing could even match the feature set of of Adobe Premier Elements or Windows Movie Maker. So I went to Linux where there were at least a few programs for me to choose from: Cinelerra, KDEnlive, and OpenShot.
I made my first video in Cinelerra but it was clunky, old looking, unstable, and couldn't export quickly or easily. I wound up rendering the audio separately, and the video into a ludicrously large MOV, 80 gigs or something, then muxing the two together and reencoding on the command line. Since then I've been using KDEnlive and it is much much better. It still crashes and it has some clunkiness around certain tasks or filters. I'd love some project templates and previewing animated title cards has some problems. Also, it had this super-strange audio glitch that made creating the clip show utter madness. I may try OpenShot soon, since it looks really good but I have nothing on it now.
I have a shell script that invokes ffmpeg to extract all the audio streams from the video file so I can work with them in Audacity. Audacity seems like the go-to cross platform audio program, so I use that to import all the tracks, then run noise removal and run a pre-amp on anyone who seems too quiet. Then I basically listen to the entire project covering up bits of keyboard noise or other unwanted sounds and if anyone talked over anyone else, bring out whoever said something better.
Anyway, that's the basic setup:
VAC to setup the audio so everyone can hear what they need.
Dxtory to record all the audio to independent data streams and output video in a usable format.
Google Hangouts to stream video to the remote commentators.
Audacity to clean and mix the audio into a single track.
KDEnlive to put everything together into the final video.
Yeah, this is long winded, but at least I'm talking about software again. Maybe I'll post the bash script next time I boot linux to do some work.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
2013, Hello, how are you?
I had originally intended to write this around Christmas time to explain the radio silence on the site, but the holidays just get so incredibly busy I just couldn't find the time. So it's pretty late on New Year's Day and I figure I can write this pretty quickly.
2012 was a helluva year, it was the year I started trying to be a lot more regularly active on this site, writing the articles on Bro-horror and the video game articles about SCP-087 and Self-extension and the horror of Discovery. Also, a ton of movies.
The House at the end of the Street was probably the most disappointing movie I'd seen. I really ripped into it, and that may not have been fair but if I had seen this movie on Netflix instant I would have wandered off or found something else to watch.
I didn't write a full post about it, but The Woman in Black impressed the hell out of me. It was a bit of a comedy of errors trying to watch it, but on the 2nd attempt we got all the way through it and it was a great old-school horror movie. It had a lot of Thing-In-The-Background, Weird-Shape-In-The-Storm styles of scares. Almost no jump scares and false scares used well. I wasn't making nearly as many "Oh look it's Harry Potter" jokes as I was expecting, since the acting was actually not half-bad. I'm planning on getting this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
In other news I also went to the National Homebrewer's Convention this year. It was a wonderful experience, and also very educational. The 2013 Convention is going to be in Philly, and as usual you need an American Homebrewer's Association membership. If you brew ANYTHING, vinegar, kombucha, beer, wine, sake, etc. you should get an AHA membership. It's not expensive and they are doing good things for homebrewer's across the country.
Also in beer I made the official change to all-grain brewing and started kegging my homebrew. Kegging is much more satisfying than bottling, it's a worthwhile switch. In 2013 I'm switching from a braid filter to a false bottom. I recently re-attempted the Chocolate Orange Stout, but won't get to try that until 2013 as well. I'm also anticipating some sours beginning this year.
2012 also saw me traveling much more than I ever have before. As mentioned the NHC was in Seattle, so I had to fly there. I also went to Florida twice, once in February to visit my folks on vacation and then again in October for Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios. It was an incredible collection of haunted houses. The whole thing teemed of some very annoying people, but with a speed pass it was possible to see everything. All the haunted houses followed the same basic formula, which really good in some haunts and not so well in others but it was all really professional quality. I can only imagine the show will get better in 2013, though I'll probably get a multi-night pass and spread the visit out a bit.
However, one of the main reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I started a Youtube Channel. Currently the only show is is "Let's Drink to Gaming", which is a Let's Play-style show with themed cocktails. Check it out, the edges are still rough but the quality is improving. There are a few more things in planning, so stay tuned. It'll hopefully be interesting.
Anyway, that's some stuff that's been going on. Now I need to start getting used to writing 2013 on my checks.
--Phil
2012 was a helluva year, it was the year I started trying to be a lot more regularly active on this site, writing the articles on Bro-horror and the video game articles about SCP-087 and Self-extension and the horror of Discovery. Also, a ton of movies.
The House at the end of the Street was probably the most disappointing movie I'd seen. I really ripped into it, and that may not have been fair but if I had seen this movie on Netflix instant I would have wandered off or found something else to watch.
I didn't write a full post about it, but The Woman in Black impressed the hell out of me. It was a bit of a comedy of errors trying to watch it, but on the 2nd attempt we got all the way through it and it was a great old-school horror movie. It had a lot of Thing-In-The-Background, Weird-Shape-In-The-Storm styles of scares. Almost no jump scares and false scares used well. I wasn't making nearly as many "Oh look it's Harry Potter" jokes as I was expecting, since the acting was actually not half-bad. I'm planning on getting this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
In other news I also went to the National Homebrewer's Convention this year. It was a wonderful experience, and also very educational. The 2013 Convention is going to be in Philly, and as usual you need an American Homebrewer's Association membership. If you brew ANYTHING, vinegar, kombucha, beer, wine, sake, etc. you should get an AHA membership. It's not expensive and they are doing good things for homebrewer's across the country.
Also in beer I made the official change to all-grain brewing and started kegging my homebrew. Kegging is much more satisfying than bottling, it's a worthwhile switch. In 2013 I'm switching from a braid filter to a false bottom. I recently re-attempted the Chocolate Orange Stout, but won't get to try that until 2013 as well. I'm also anticipating some sours beginning this year.
2012 also saw me traveling much more than I ever have before. As mentioned the NHC was in Seattle, so I had to fly there. I also went to Florida twice, once in February to visit my folks on vacation and then again in October for Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios. It was an incredible collection of haunted houses. The whole thing teemed of some very annoying people, but with a speed pass it was possible to see everything. All the haunted houses followed the same basic formula, which really good in some haunts and not so well in others but it was all really professional quality. I can only imagine the show will get better in 2013, though I'll probably get a multi-night pass and spread the visit out a bit.
However, one of the main reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I started a Youtube Channel. Currently the only show is is "Let's Drink to Gaming", which is a Let's Play-style show with themed cocktails. Check it out, the edges are still rough but the quality is improving. There are a few more things in planning, so stay tuned. It'll hopefully be interesting.
Anyway, that's some stuff that's been going on. Now I need to start getting used to writing 2013 on my checks.
--Phil
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