shadower @shadower@mastodon.technology

Great summary of the two dominant RPG dialog approaches ("every word" / "summary").

I grew up on and <3 the former, but this brings up great points on both sides. Especially around exposition and not having to do the old amnesiac/foreigner workaround.

https://www.tripthearkfantastic.com/ark-blog-thursday/whats-in-a-dialogue-choice-anyway/

Hey instead of the winter games sales, could Steam & co sell us some time to play the ones we own already?

I'd pay money for that.

Huh, someone put my blog post on Hacker News and it hit the frontpage.

I don't collect metrics and the webserver logs rotate fast (less than a day, got to investigate journald), but it got at least 10k GET requests.

No Hug o' Death, the server chugged along nicely \o/.

I did no optimisations, no CDN, serving everything locally, uncompressed images even (not in that post tho!).

But it's a static site, obviously.

Shoulda put on a "buy muh game plz" ad and rake in the millions tho

Put up my thoughts on the Disco Elysium game: https://aimlesslygoingforward.com/blog/2019/12/11/disco-elysium/

It's everything I hoped for, but didn't even dare to dream. Because no one makes games like this any more.

The Paleblood Hunt by Redgrave as an excellent analysis of the Bloodborne lore:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JL5acskAT_2t062HILImBkV8eXAwaqOj611mSjK-vZ8/edit

107 pages, incomprehensible to those who didn't play it and massive spoilers for the players who didn't finish.

But Oh My God it is amazing. I've missed a ton of connections on my first play through and this puts everything nicely together.

And the last section dedicated to the final-final ending blew my mind completely.

Play the game, then read The Paleblood Hunt.

One of the underrated benefits on working with CoreOS:

To do the initial configuration (think cloud-init) it uses a tool called Ignition.

Which means every time a server doesn't boot I'm like:

"♪ Check Ignition and may God's love be with you♫"

Yep, this is another Bowie toot.

Cool video on talking your way out of combat in games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9TzqNQBmr0

Agreed with the broader point, but as someone who really dislikes combat in pretty much any game*, the skipping it IS the better gameplay option. Lets you go back to the actual game you want to play.

* Dark Souls and Bloodborne's relentless defiance to this remains a mystery. Maybe the combat in literally every other game is just crap and DS/BB's one is the only one that's any good?

Here are some thoughts on Bloodborne (and a little bit of PS4) in blog form:

https://aimlesslygoingforward.com/blog/2019/07/28/bloodborne/

I've finished #Bloodborne yesterday (by defeating the second of the three final bosses). It is an absolutely wonderful game.

Everything I loved about Dark Souls was there.

This coming from someone who generally dislikes combat, repetition and bosses. And in the game.

I've miscalculated and my supply of meds-in-syringes will not be enough for the next resupply.

I've still got the old injector to carry me over.

But: the injector cartridges expire at the end of this moth.

It'll *just* about work out. But how am I even still alive. #idiot

"Kid just rages for a while."

My favourite line from the game Bastion. Gets a completely new dimension with the Orphan of Kos boss in #Bloodborne. That kid does know how to rage.

Sigh.