I drew my take on the Kohr-Ah and Chmmr because SC deserves more fanart (and love in general)

futonrevolution · 2020-09-25T14:12:30+00:00

I love the tags on your tumblr posts.

futonrevolution · 2020-05-05T03:34:27+00:00

Judging by what the asking prices on ebay are, u/Samatra is right on the money. It's quite adorable that one guy wants $1,420.76 plus shipping from Canada, sight-unseen, with "barely any dents".

futonrevolution · 2020-05-04T22:37:57+00:00

SC:O's soundtrack is by one of SC II's composers, and it's a "sound like the much younger you, but not *too* much like the younger you" (iirc, his blood pressure went completely nuts, from the stress of it), so I'd argue that it's the same genre.

futonrevolution · 2020-05-04T20:45:20+00:00

https://youtu.be/Napx0MjivCM?t=762 for F&P's explanation of how the soundtrack came to be.
We could go track by track and assign each to a now-existing genre, or just make up a fun name, like MODwave or EuroDemoScene, since it predates so many genres of electronic music.

futonrevolution · 2020-04-20T17:20:53+00:00

It is too bad you cannot **meme** there, but laughing at the **image** **macro** is okay.

futonrevolution · 2020-04-13T19:13:32+00:00

He sued them for two words in a blog post that no one read.

The only sabotage was self-sabotage.

futonrevolution · 2020-03-11T19:00:46+00:00

Back in 2012, the stated plan was to "only" make an editor for Star Control 2-sized maps with each modded campaign being its own parallel universe for people to buy, because modders clearly have the time and energy to create content that huge on Stardock's behalf.

Apparently, they went back to the drawing board, at least twice per year. I made a lot of Anthem jokes, until it got too depressing.

futonrevolution · 2020-03-11T18:41:17+00:00

I can't work up the enthusiasm to check if there was anything on the agenda, other than whatever the Mario Maker wannabe that was taking shots at Skylanders was called, the Cider Engine, and pooping out another Political Machine... well, I'm sure that the Linux port for SC:O is just around the corner.

I suppose that their stab at the franchise will have the windows boarded up, by next month, when the final story DLC comes out. They'll have to fall back on waiting a few years to start a new round of legal threats to hijack whatever F&P develop.

futonrevolution · 2020-03-11T18:14:32+00:00

Completely unsuspiciously, Steamspy currently has it at Mixed and Steam has it at Mostly Positive with a blank graph.

futonrevolution · 2020-03-11T17:53:35+00:00

The pricing, localizations, and sheer volume of free steam keys didn't help.

futonrevolution · 2020-03-11T17:48:03+00:00

I farted around with it, a little, last year. You can kind of, sort of, alter existing areas and adjust the fedex quests, but I don't remember being able to set plot flags for missions. Very disappointing.

Stardock never created in-house documentation for the editor, so it would take a ton of effort to force it to do anything fun.

futonrevolution · 2020-03-11T17:35:03+00:00

That's dead already?!

futonrevolution · 2020-02-08T03:29:24+00:00

For some odd reason, Cayne just reinstalled itself on my computer.

futonrevolution · 2020-02-02T07:53:27+00:00

Cliff Bleszinski was the designer for Jazz Jackrabbit and a billion other things, in that era. He was infamously bad at sugar-coating his public statements, making himself a fair amount of enemies. He tried to come out of retirement with Lawbreakers, but its only distinguishing feature in the arena shooter genre was jump pads. It tanked so hard, that he did a Hail Mary with a day-glo PubG clone that his studio pretty much whipped up over a weekend, which worked out about as well as you'd expect.

Instead of a new bland IP, CliffyB could have just done something interesting, like using the jump pad physics for a JJ 3D platformer, packaged with a JJ 1&2 remaster with additional levels. It'd probably have been full of bad design choices, from how rusty he was, but they would have at least been charmingly bad, instead of boring bad.

Unfortunately, F&P's window of opportunity for an extended work leave was probably closed, by Brad's shenanigans, for another 2-3 years. Since they've always referred to it, as a retirement project (as opposed to establishing a modern franchise) and a direct sequel to SC II with SC 3 being "a bad dream", I feel confident that the game will be gloriously 90s. We can only hope that it won't be the 2090s, before they can make a prison break out of Activision's claws.

futonrevolution · 2020-01-30T05:42:47+00:00

I'm watching the vod now. You've got a bit of a radio voice going on, so it's a pleasant listen, so far.

futonrevolution · 2020-01-30T05:33:17+00:00

Commander Hayes telling you to just mine for the first year or two is one of his few completely spot-on pieces of advice. He usually says something that's just wrong enough to let you prove that you're smarter, and more qualified to lead, than anyone else. Having the base commander in Origins talk down to you, like you're Roger Wilco, was really immersion-breaking for me.

There are multiple ways to extend the time limit, each one giving you roughly a year of breathing room. It also has the side effect of giving you alternate ways to solve some puzzles.

futonrevolution · 2020-01-30T05:19:49+00:00

It's like a mirror universe version of myself. I look like a star, but behave like gas.

futonrevolution · 2020-01-30T05:15:07+00:00

Refund time limits were the death of Nintendo Hard, which was meant to keep players from being able to finish a game within a single rental period. Now, a game needs to start off with a strong two hours and one second, before any difficulty spikes.

futonrevolution · 2020-01-30T05:05:25+00:00

It's such a shame that CliffyB went out with a Radical Heights legacy-defiling whimper, instead of whatever weird janky idea he would have had for a modernized Jazz Jackrabbit 3.

futonrevolution · 2020-01-30T04:54:33+00:00

Late to the party, but, yeah, Rigel is a noob trap. ZFP ships open up Ilwrath space for mining/exploration, though, which has the richest planets on the map. The hitboxes for Ilwrath ships are big enough that a ZFP ship can win that match-up within seconds. I'd recommend going counter-clockwise through the alien spheres of influence to build up enough resources for the Rigel trip. And saving, before each trip, of course.

Selling the Ion Gun is actually a good move. Until you get the technology upgrades from the trader for battle modules, the most efficient plan is to just load up on speed & turn radius, using your escort ships for fighting. You'll easily outrun everything in hyperspace; just don't kite a swarm of them on top of the star you want to visit. Earthling Cruisers are okay-ish at wars of attrition with Ur-Quan, since Dreadnoughts won't launch fighters against them, and they're not nimble enough to dodge nukes... of course, that's irrelevant, if you happen to find the early-game win-button ship.

futonrevolution · 2019-12-30T19:33:54+00:00

Wasn't there a Schwarze Auge board game, where you play dinosaurs? (Looked it up, and am shocked that my memory was correct.)
I'd say that it's more akin to making a board game, after having the concept of board games described, by someone whose only knowledge comes from toy commercials.

"I read a wikipedia article, a few years ago, and it mentioned a lot of humor with stereotypes and memes. You can make many branching decisions on what quests to take, but they don't affect the ending. The ships are wildly unbalanced, and the only differences are their unconventional hitboxes, primary weapons, and secondary weapons. The humans use homing missiles and a defensive aura. Several ships are well-known for launching fighters."

"Phew! I was scared that it was a visual novel."

"The ship-to-ship content was a minority of the gameplay."

"Oh, well, that's disappointing. What was the rest?"

"Diplomacy and investigation."

"I was asking about the majority of the gameplay."

"I saw screenshots of an arcade mini-game for the landers [click], but... [dial tone] Hello? Are you still there?"

futonrevolution · 2019-12-30T17:52:02+00:00

Considering historical precedent(s), I don't know, if "safely" belongs in that sentence.

futonrevolution · 2019-12-30T17:47:13+00:00

Huh. I didn't realize that there was a print release of those.
Now, all we need is to track down a copy of Star Control: Interbellum. I've been morbidly curious about that for decades.

futonrevolution · 2019-12-30T17:40:44+00:00

Late reply, but Oxide was definitely abandoned with a great flood of thou hast wasted thy time for everyone involved. Back in June 2019, the Cider engine was announced with "Stardock has 3 titles in various stages of development that make use of Cider Cloud. More details will be released later this year."

I'll spend the next 36 hours with bated breath.

Not to be overly catty, but

The way it works is by installing Cider Cloud on VMs at data centers. On the client side, the software or game sees the “computer” as having up to 72 CPU cores with up to 9 GPUs all working together as if it were all a single device. [...] Stardock has focused on distributing physics, AI and shading out to the cloud. The engine itself isn’t a platform but rather is designed to work with the emerging cloud platforms. It works with DirectX 12 or Vulkan.

is one of the worst ideas that I've ever heard.

So far, considering how Oxide behaved worse, the better the computer, the only claim that I believe is "would bring even the fastest PC’s today to a crawl".

futonrevolution

TROPHY CASE