February 2016 – Page 12

Streaming Goodness

February 4, 2016 by Belghast

RWBY

Rooster Teeth is one of those groups that I have known has existed forever… but never really watched much of. I was not a Halo player, but I do admit to watching quite a bit of the first few seasons of Red vs Blue. Similarly RWBY is one of those products that I have known was available, but for whatever reason never actually watched. There was a certain bit of fitting tribute the other day that I started watching the show, on the Anniversary of its creator Monty Oum’s death. Over the course of several hours of watching I went from knowing absolutely nothing about this show, to becoming a huge fan. I had always heard it described as “An American Anime” but didn’t really know what to expect from that. I mean Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra are pretty much what I think of when I think of American Anime. I love both of those shows and a lot of other continuous narrative cartoons like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Bravest Warriors. So as to why I never started this one in particular, is as big of a guess as any.

I guess what I like about it so much right now is that it has pretty much everything I loved about Bleach, without all of the stuff I didn’t love about it. What attracted me to Bleach was this premise that created a universe full of really interesting characters. Sure while Ichigo is the “main character” there are a bunch of other extremely interesting good guys and bad guys that make up the tapestry. RWBY does this through the creation of teams that fight together, and can either be positive or negative influences on the story setting. Also there are shades of post apocalyptic, in that the characters exist in this world that is being plagued by a bunch of supernatural creatures known as the Grimm. The only way mankind has managed to survive is by harnessing the power of dust, refined elemental essence to power up their abilities and be able to fight back. The show itself takes place in a sort of Hogwarts for demon hunters, a school known as Beacon that trains individuals to become either Huntsmen or Huntresses. So all of those elements like Bleach and Naruto are there, to keep churning out interesting people to encounter in the world.

What makes the show better for me… is the fact that thus far at least over the course of the three seasons I chain watched… there isn’t a lot of repetition. The frustration with Bleach is when you have the realization that every single season is the same. Ichigo gets his ass kicked by some new bad guy > Ichigo trains to unlock some previously undiscovered ability > Ichigo wins… but just barely… but still enough to save his friends. While RWBY borrows heavily from Anime tropes, the way it puts things together feels more fresh to me… because it is based in a culture I already understand. The problem with Anime in general is that there are so many cultural experiences that I lack, and I simply cannot understand without having to research why the hell “this thing” was funny or important. When I watch most Anime, there are certain points where I feel I need footnotes to understand the subtle nuance of what is happening. RWBY however makes sense out of the box, with nothing lost in translation… because it quite truly IS “American Anime”. So I have to say… I am now hooked and will join the folks waiting every week for the next show to release. I’ve even gone so far as to hook others on the show, which I guess is the truest sign of enjoyment.

Heroes Reborn

When I am sick I seem to ratchet down my game playing and increase my television watching. So over the last few days I have been hunting for things to watch, and over the last two nights have picked back up on Heroes Reborn. I started the first episode of the show some time ago, but it either failed to grab me… or I got distracted. I’ve now chain watched my way through the entire first season and I have to say… I really enjoyed it. Heroes is one of those shows that I have both extremely fond and extremely negative memories of. The first season was among the best single television seasons I have seen… and then that second season…. I would probably rank among the worst. The third season came along and fixed some of the problems with season two… but by that time the audience was gone and the show was doomed. I don’t think I actually watched any of that fourth season… which honestly after watching Heroes Reborn, makes me want to go back and chain through the originals again.

Reborn is the perfect example of a show that stands on the shoulders of the original, but doesn’t actually require you to have watched any of it. Sure there are plot points that you will get earlier if you know who certain characters are from the original, but you learn soon enough what powers they have. The entire show takes place in a very “Days of Future Past” storyline, where the heroes… now called Evos are being forced to register their powers. There is very much a “humans” vs “evos” undercurrent that runs through the show, along with the expected “no evos allowed” signs. What makes this season work however is the same thing that makes me question if they are setting themselves up for a crappy second season again. Much like the “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” plot of the first season of the original, there is a clear narrative path that ends up being concluded in a massive event. The problem is… I am not really sure how they top this. I mean you can only quite literally save all of humanity so many times during a television show. All of this said… I really enjoyed myself and I guess I am along for the ride when the second season releases.

Pax Pox

February 3, 2016 by Belghast

The Convention Crud

So this weekend obviously was Pax South, and I am not sure how you could read my blog and not know this… but whatever. It went pretty well overall, but on the drive home Sunday my throat kept getting more and more sore. At first I was thinking that maybe I was getting closer to Oklahoma, and as a result my allergies were just going haywire. The entire time I was in the San Antonio area, I honestly did not have much issue with my allergies. It was just like they magically went away, so in theory driving back home… could feel like I was coming down with something. However yesterday I heard from Damai that he too is in the sore throat phase, so I am guessing we quite literally did walk away with whatever crap happened to be going around down south. PAX is this universal incubator for illness, and last year I somehow escaped catching whatever Ashgar and Rae ended up bringing home. This year however I was not quite so lucky, and in spite of using the hand sanitizer every single time I passed one… I still caught something.

I’ve been in hibernation pretty much the last two days. Originally I had requested off both Monday and Tuesday to recover, but had not planned on actually taking Tuesday. However it seems like I apparently was clairvoyant in knowing that I would need that extra day. This morning… I still feel like crap, but my fever broke sometime between going to bed Monday night and getting up Tuesday morning. My lungs are getting consistently clearer, and my throat while feeling sore still is getting consistently less sore as time goes on. While it felt flu-like at first, I am guessing it is just a run of the mill virus or cold, because I seem to be getting over it pretty quickly. The irony is… that I completely resisted catching whatever my wife had prior to the convention… but I am guessing that probably taxed my immune system to the point of catching something while there. In any case I think I am more or less on the mend, but going out and grabbing some groceries last night left me completely exhausted, so I can only imagine what state I might be in tonight when I finally get home.

Lady Monk

The great irony of a gaming convention is the fact that during those few days… I end up playing far fewer games than I usually do. The other strange side effect has been, that now that I am back at home…. I am not quite sure what to play. As a result I have been poking my head into Diablo 3, even though I have seemed to lack much purpose. Monday night I spent a good chunk of it running around with Grace and completing various stuff like greater rifts. Then when she logged to go take care of something, I ended up starting a brand new character. I realize that I could have probably gotten one of my friends to boost it to 70 within a few minutes… but instead I have been leveling a monk through doing bounties. The funny thing about this is that with all of my paragon levels, Master is the new Normal. I could probably ratchet up my difficulty some more, but I like how fast everything seems to be going right now. I’ve needed to run bounties for a bit, and doing so on a fresh character feels like I am gaining more than doing it on my crusader.

The truth is, I’ve never managed to get a monk to 70. My original non-seasonal one is 68 and I realize that I could very easily push it over the line. The problem being that I just haven’t had any desire to play non-seasonal characters. I have been in this mindset that “seasonal” are the “real” characters… and that the normal characters are almost like playing on some test server somewhere. I realize that it is backwards from the truth, but I have shifted to this point of view as looking at the season as the only thing that really matters. As a result I just can’t seem to bring myself to play any characters that aren’t in the current season, which I guess works out nicely since that seems to be what most people are playing. The only thing that worries me is how I am going to function when I need to merge this season into my existing already overloaded bank. At some point I need to spend some time eating some legendaries and unlocking abilities, because half of the junk that is clogging my non-seasonal vault is never actually going to get used. In any case as of last night I hit level 43 , and I plan on working it up some more tonight. I should be able to hit 70 in no time as I am gaining at least one level per bounty step on average.

The Division Impressions

February 2, 2016 by Belghast

Bad Christmas Simulator

The Division Impressions — Black Friday Ends in Tears

I have to say I was pretty sad when I found out that The Division beta would be going on the same weekend I would be in San Antonio at Pax South. So when I heard that they planned on extending the deadlines, I have to say I was pretty pumped. The Division is one of those games that has looked good on paper up, but I have been really questioning as to whether or not I will like it. Call of Duty for example, is one of those series that I enjoyed when it first came out, but as it has evolved I have become less and less interested in the continued military operator fantasy. I think a lot of it has come from the fact that every game seems to use exactly the same guns. I mean I get why this is the case, since these guns are real world guns… that they are just trying to replicate in a game. So when I started thinking about The Division versus Destiny…. I have to say I lean heavily towards crazy space guns over things that can actually exist in the world I happen to live in. However I am also a huge fan of post apocalyptic settings…. and The Division seems like it might deliver on a near future version of that. So to say I was fraught is an understatement, then over the weekend I ended up talking with a couple that told me who much they liked it, coming from a heavy Destiny background. So when I got home Sunday night, I went upstairs started the hefty download.

So when I got up yesterday morning I finally got the chance to play the game. I really was not sure what to expect, and I guess in all of the screenshots and video I had not really gotten it through my head that it was a third person shooter. This has honestly been the biggest challenge for me when playing Warframe recently, because I am generally bad at playing a shooter from a third person perspective. Third person definitely makes things easier to move around, but when it comes to aiming a gun…. I just find it awkward. The fact that this is a game that relies heavily on ducking behind the next patch of cover, it almost HAS to be third person to make that work. In many ways it reminds me of Gears of War, in that you are constantly rolling forward trying to move up on mobs while at the same time staying in safety. The problem with that is… I am just not that kind of a player. I tend to be very run and gun… and sure I use the hell out of cover but I am constantly zipping in and out of it. This game feels more like a tactical RPG at times than it does a pure shooter, and I am not quite sure how I feel about that. You have to understand… that I have never played any of the other Tom Clancy branded games, because that player fantasy never really appealed to me. The fact that this game is an MMO Shooter of sorts… is really the part that places it in my wheelhouse rather than the content matter.

The Systems

The thing that I really want to talk about is just how damned good this games mapping system is. When you pull it up it brings up a holographic representation of the area you are in, and it has various objectives marked. You can go talk to an NPC inside each of the bases that gives you a situation report on the area, and as a result creates these little highlighted markers. As you are running through the world, you can see every single blip on the map… but you get special visualization for whichever objective you happen to have highlighted. In the various screenshots I am posting today, there will be these orange lines running down the street, and these serve to show you the best route to the location you are trying to reach. This makes movement through the very dense sections of New York city pretty manageable. What it does not take into account is that in many cases you can actually cut through buildings to get to your destiny and in doing so find all sorts of hidden resources. As you are roaming around there are lots of caches that you can find, and these have everything from resources to weapons, and it feels like looting structures in a zombie survival game. I am still not 100% certain what some of the resources are used for, but the obsessive side of me cannot leave a single bag sitting un-looted.

The gameplay for the most part resolves around expanding your reach and setting up these bases of operation in new areas. At first you start out on the banks of the Hudson River, and you push into the city with the first mission based around driving away the hostiles and reclaiming a base. From there you start retrieving people from the impromptu medical center set up in Madison Square garden. So you rescue a virologist to take back to your base, and then that launches a sequence of quests that involve collecting additional resources to help set up your medical facilities. The problem is for me at least that I cannot seem to stay on track, and that even though I have a giant orange line leading me to the objective…. I keep ending up going off the rails and looting every building that I happen to come across. The other issue that I am having is that I struggle how to identify who is just a harmless bum roaming down the street…. and who is someone that will actually kill me. I ended up wandering down this alleyway, without much options for cover… and next thing I know a patch of what I think are harmless survivors… ended up opening fire on me. In the middle of the batch was apparently a major boss that straight up killed me. So while the mapping system is amazing, the threat assessment portion seems to be kinda confusing at least for me… since everyone including me… dresses like they just came from a shelter.

Still on the Fence

Right now I am not sure if I am on board or not. I played enough to decide that I mostly liked it… but I still struggle with whole third person thing. The big boss fights are pretty hectic, but I have learned that for the most part… I simply need to find a hidey hole and kill mobs until the boss finally comes to me. It isn’t nearly as heroic as rushing in and dodging bullets…. but it seems to be more consistent than trying to run around and stay alive at the same time. The other big take away…. is that gear is really damned expensive. I am used to being able to buy upgrades pretty quickly in games… but I have sold a lot of random crap that I have found out in the world, but have been able to afford absolutely nothing. One of the things that I love about Destiny is that I am constantly getting new weapons to play with… and if this game ends up keeping the same set of weapons around too long I am going to get bored. What makes MMOs interesting for me… is the whole aspect of constantly upgrading gear. I have learned over the years that characters get stale for me, when I stop getting upgrades. So while I am getting drops that are upgrades are mostly armor, but I have yet to get a single interesting weapon drop. So I think in the long run that might be an issue if the beta test is relevant to how the rest of the game is going to feel. The other big problem for me is that I have a feeling that if folks get this…. we are going to be spread out between PC, PS4 and Xbox One… and I am certain that there will not be cross platform play. Right now I am leaning towards the PS4 version… but I have a feeling that most of the AggroChat folks if they got this… would be playing it on the PC. So now I just have to decide…. do I pick this up or do I wait, and while making this decision I should probably see how nice the pre-order bonuses are.

Efficiency

February 2, 2016 by Tamrielo

I’m really motivated by efficiency. I like to see how things can be done effectively, and once they’re done effectively, how to do them faster, using fewer resources, and in general, “better”. It’s rarely enough for me to get something done; I’d rather get it done well. I had someone the other day ask me about this, and ask me about my process for writing and working, so here we are.

I want to meet this guy’s tailor.

I’m big into efficiency because I’m fundamentally lazy. My mom is nodding her head right now and probably doesn’t know why, but her admonitions during my childhood were pretty much spot on. I don’t like to do unnecessary work, and I like to figure out ways in which I can do things that need doing quickly, because getting things done quickly means less time spent doing them. Speed isn’t everything, though, because getting something done fast but having to do it twice isn’t saving me any time, and I have to retread (boring!) work I’ve done already. “Measure twice, cut once” resonates with me because measuring is a lot less work than cutting, the savings in materials aside.

People ask me how long I spend doing various tasks, and tend to be surprised by my answer. I recently finished a paper for a class in about an hour and a half, for four pages. A classmate of mine expressed surprise that I was so quick; it didn’t seem particularly fast or slow for me. Part of it is that I’m used to writing– these blog posts are 700-1200ish words every day, and I rarely take more than 30-45 minutes writing them. A lot of it, though, is just writing efficiency. I write like I play Tetris, setting up a block of thoughts and massaging them until they’re complete, then moving on. It means I don’t have to keep the entire paper in my head at once and can focus on what I’m saying right now, because I’ve put the previous bits to bed, as it were. A lot of my editing is done on the fly, as I’m writing a sentence. If I’m editing something bigger or that needs deeper review, I ignore it for two or three days and return to it then– my mind is fresh and I’m not still thinking about the details of each paragraph, so I can review it more objectively.

My work process is similar; I look at a task and think about the minimum possible amount of work necessary to complete it, to establish a baseline. From there, I can then add content and broaden the scope reactively, as I work. A lot of times, I find that the parts I think are going to be time-consuming or have little room for further attention turn out to be easier than expected, and that parts I thought would be simple require a lot of careful thought and iteration. Knowing the minimum lets me get something in and functional quickly, then focus on where it can be improved effectively, without wasting time, effort, or resources.

All of this means that I have a long list of little ‘tricks’ to make my life easier, so when something requires a lot of focus and attention, I have the energy to spare. I never really know when these are going to come up, so I try to ensure that my daily energy expenditure is conservative, to keep that reserve going. I used to be apologetic about this, now I’m simply straightforward about it. Sometimes I don’t put in extra energy because that reserve is getting low, and that reserve is what allows me to keep a cool head in a crisis, or juggle lots of different things at once.

I’ve found it’s always worth taking the time to think about the process, because process is where a lot of work and time is lost. Sometimes the best solution isn’t necessarily the most complete one, just because the most complete one isn’t efficient. Coming up with a highly elegant, reusable and revisable script to automate a task I’m only going to do once isn’t terribly efficient; sure it does the work quickly, but I could do it by hand in about the same amount of time and run less risk of wasting a lot of effort. To that point, risk management is an important part of my process; if something I’m trying to make a task complete faster might end with me wasting a ton of time and not moving forward with the actual task, that’s a fairly high risk, and probably one I’ll avoid.

I don’t know how much of this is interesting or useful to anyone; all of the things I’m saying sound like really obvious, “duh tam, everyone knows that” kinds of thoughts. I’m still not yet great at getting out of my own head enough to know what things are obvious to everyone and which are obvious just to me and useful to others. Working on it, though, we’ll see.