"The Monster-Slaying Game You Can Play Almost Anywhere"
A neat article that delves into the story of how Doom became the game which the world loves to run on any gadget that can.
Id had programmed Doom to be easily modifiable by players. Four years after its debut, the company took the radical step of releasing the game's source code to the public for noncommercial use; an international community of fans suddenly had access to the guts of the game, and could retrofit it to all kinds of hardware. "It was not only a gracious move but an ideological one — a leftist gesture that empowered the people and, in turn, loosened the grip of corporations," David Kushner wrote in his book "Masters of Doom."
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Long live Zustashadil
As the date neared, the dwarves began work on their great hall. An expansive cone room designed to amplify the voices on the dais. Day and night they toiled, chiseling and mining out the massive space.
And then on the 6th of Obsidian, when their queen awoke, she alerter her advisors of the vision that today was the day. The day the dwarven fortress Ancientwalls would forever turn their back on the overworld.
The message went out, summoning all dwarves to the great chamber. The speeches were made, from the mayor, from the duchess, and lastly from the queen. As the queen spoke one dwarf, Urist, was dispatched to make the trek upwards. He ran down the halls, trotting up the stairs, huffing and puffing down the final corridor until he reached the two levers. WIthout hesitation he yanked on both, and turned back towards where the citizens were gathered, listening to the mechanisms behind him as they began closing the gates, forever locking them within.
The engineers had cleverly devised a system that would send noises down to the chamber, magnifying the same mechanisms that Urist heard fading behind him as he began the trek back from his ceremonial mission. And as the hall fell quiet, the grinding of gears and ticking of latches echoing and distorted over the distance, until a clang rang out - that noise sending the dwarves into a joyful cheer. "Long live Zustashadil! Long live Zustashadil!"
Zustashadil was the ancient tongue for Ancientwalls. And now, they were forever safe, with caverns to conquer, and no more reason to step out into the sun. Thus Zustashadil had become a hermit kingdom.
This is my current Dwarf Fortress and I had decided around year 107 in game that I was going to do this by 110. I had visions of doing it as the year turned over, but as we got late in the year 109 I decided to just go ahead and pull the trigger. The fortress was relatively large with over 350 dwarves, and it just felt right to do.
For theatrics, I did actually force all of my dwarves into the great chamber and, humorously, that may have borked the game.
I opened it up last night and most dwarves were not working and did not begin taking jobs that were needed. I'm not clear if this is just the game being overly loaded with pathfinding after having all these dwarves in the same place and the calculations for line of sight and path finding being overly taxed, we'll see. I have a different save I can fall back to where I forego the theatrics before closing the gate, if need be.
But, all that said, we'll see what happens to Zustashadil on this new stage of the game.
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Ep. 4 of the Noclip Dwarf Fortress Documentary
I loved the series of videos, they did a fantastic job shining a light on this crazy/silly game and the brothers behind it.
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Very thankful for Stardew Valley as my selfcare game this week. Been playing for a little bit each day to just help me relax.
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Play Day of the Tentacle in your browser
They released this game originally in 1993, and back in 2016 they released a remastered version of it on Steam. But it randomly popped into my mind this morning and I found the original online as something for me to play later.
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Baldur's Gate 3 - Thoughts Thus Far
[Disclaimer: I work for Wizards of the Coast. While the game was produced by Larian Studios, it is a D&D title.]
I am nearly 40 hours into playing Baldur's Gate 3, and I'm quite enjoying it. I'm playing a Paladin and Arrolan, and my current companions are:
- Shadowheart, the Cleric
- Astarion, the Assassin Rogue
- Karlach, the Barbarian
Karlach is the newest member, so I'm still figuring out if this is the line-up I like, but based on the first battle - I am quite happy. Shadowheart is still underwhelming as an offensive weapon, but we're getting there. I might switch her out for Wyll, or maybe go track Gale down... we'll see.
I'm playing a Balanced game, which mixes the narrative with combat.
I feel like these combats are helping me be a better DM for my D&D games. I've long felt combat is my weakest area for running games for friends. So often I would just be grinding actions and not really introducing variety to what they do each round. We'll see if this bears out over time, but I feel like I'm learning and improving.
The narrative for the game is good as well! There are a lot of hooks for me to pursue with one clear plot that I am meant to follow.
Looking forward to putting in many more hours and working through the plot.
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13-year old 'Scuti' became first human to crash NES Tetris
Link goes to Twitch VOD of it happening, the crash occurs around 1:09:37 and you can see Scuti's reaction realizing what had happened.
From MetaFilter's posting:
On Thursday, 34 years after the game's original release, a human player crashed NES Tetris for the first time. The game's original programmers assumed that nobody would get past the "killscreen" where speed doubled at level 29, but using the "rolling" technique discovered in 2020, players have been playing deeper into the game than ever before. It was known that a crash was possible after level 155 due to flaws in the scoring code, but no human had ever reached this point. 13 year old "Blue Scuti" was on level 157 and had been playing at killscreen difficulty for over half an hour, with a world-record highscore over 6.8 million, when he became the first human player ever to crash the game (full game video).
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"Every U.S. President Ranked by How Good They Would Be at Video Games"
This is incredible.
Bottom of the barrel is Teddy Roosevelt at #45:
Teddy Roosevelt practically invented touching grass, and would be horrified at the idea of something like Death Stranding, when he could go outside and walk around with a bunch of shit on his back in real life.
It only goes on from there and is very very funny.
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87% of classic video games are inaccessible
Quick facts from the study (pulled from the linked page):
- 87% of classic games are not in release, and are considered critically endangered
- Availability is low across every platform and time period tracked in the study
- Libraries and archives can digitally preserve, but not digitally share video games, and can provide on-premises access only
- Libraries and archives are allowed to digitally share other media types, such as books, film, and audio, and are not restricted to on-premises access
- The Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry's lobbying group, has consistently fought against expanding video game preservation within libraries and archives
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The Fate of Zunturasan
From 3 years ago on my Facebook page:
Last night, my Dwarf Fortress "Zunturasan" came to a joyous end after I succumbed to a goblin and troll invasion. I sat confidently behind my iron bulwarks and went on with my business assuming the monsters outside would tire and head home.
Little did I know that the goblin which we knew was stealing things and sneaking away was apparently hard at work burrowing a tunnel in for the invading force. Suddenly my notifications were filled with notifications that dwarves were being killed and I found that not only had they gotten into the fortress but that they had snuck in into the middle of the residences, giving them immediate access to dozens of dwarves.
I had not built a military, relying instead on good walls. And so the fortress fell, countless riches lost the greedy hands of the goblins.
Bummed Zunturasan ended, it was the fortress I had done the most with. I had made it to magma and was in the process of moving the fortress deep into the earth. But alas, it was not to be.
And so I shall begin anew, hard at work on building a truly great dwarf fortress.
This time I think I'll work on military a bit, lol
I haven't played much Dwarf Fortress in a while. I have the newer visual version purchased, I just need to sit down and play it. Maybe I'll do that some later this week.
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I updated my Minecraft
Today the latest version of Minecraft released. 1.20 comes with a new cherry blossom biome, and new recipes using bamboo among other things. I went ahead and made some bamboo wood, and then I went exploring for a cherry blossom biome. I eventually found one very far from my main base.
I need to figure out the best way to trim my world's chunks. I've explored a lot of it and I'm very spread out, but there are really only a few things I need to make sure I keep and then I can delete other stuff to see what biomes and new generation take place.
We'll see. I've got a work trip this week, so I'll get to dig into it next week. That said, I also got clearance to tackle a project I've been thinking about for a while, so I might dive into it hardcore.
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"28 years later, Super Punch-Out!!’s 2-player mode has been discovered"
I loved Super Punch-Out. One of my all time favorite video games. I'm sad I never got to play it 2-player with friends. This functionality seems, to me at least, to be coded for artists to jump in and quickly check stuff.
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"Sony’s racing AI destroyed its human competitors by being nice (and fast)"
But Sony soon learned that speed alone wasn’t enough to make GT Sophy a winner. The program outpaced all human drivers on an empty track, setting superhuman lap times on three different virtual courses. Yet when Sony tested GT Sophy in a race against multiple human drivers, where intelligence as well as speed is needed, GT Sophy lost. The program was at times too aggressive, racking up penalties for reckless driving, and at other times too timid, giving way when it didn’t need to.
Sony regrouped, retrained its AI, and set up a rematch in October. This time GT Sophy won with ease. What made the difference? It’s true that Sony came back with a larger neural network, giving its program more capabilities to draw from on the fly. But ultimately, the difference came down to giving GT Sophy something that Peter Wurman, head of Sony AI America, calls “etiquette”: the ability to balance its aggression and timidity, picking the most appropriate behavior for the situation at hand.
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"Teens are rewriting what is possible in the world of competitive Tetris"
I've been following competitive Tetris for a while (yes, really) so I knew a lot of what this article covered, but still an interesting read about the game's latest generation.
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Jason Brassard Spent His Lifetime Collecting the Rarest Video Games. Until the Heist.
I haven't gotten to read it yet, but this certainly seems like something I'm going to enjoy reading and hate the reality of the story.
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Super Mario World music restored
A group of superfans have begun reverse engineering? Sourcing? I don't know how exactly they are finding the songs, but they are putting up the soundtrack from Super Mario World at the uncompressed (aka like it was played and not rendered down to fit on a cartridge.)
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