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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Doom - At Doom's Gate (E1M1)

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Game Review: Jupiter Hell

I'm going to start this review by talking about my first ever roguelike win, which was not in Jupiter Hell.

Over a decade ago, a single developer did a couple short roguelikes for the 7DayRL Challenge, including one based on Aliens (AliensRL) and one based on Diablo (DiabloRL). The latter is really great and I wish there had been more development on it--it has a function where you can point it at your Diablo installation and it'll play music, sound effects, and voice clips from the game, but lightning damage still hasn't been implemented. More relevant to this review, though, was DoomRL, based obviously on Doom. You pick up a shotgun and kill demons while listening to E1M1 / At Doom's Gate. It's a roguelike, though, so you also pick a class from marine, scout, or technician, level up and get to pick perks that change your playstyle, from gaining extra HP to dodging attacks easier to being able to dual-wield pistols to auto-reloading shotguns when moving to making melee attacks with zero turn cost if you kill an enemy while doing it. Since moving increass your dodge, it may be the only roguelike in which circle-strafing is an actual viable strategy.

After playing it for a long time and eventually using a Marine with an Ammochain build and plasma rifle (every burst consumes only one ammo), I was able to consistently make it to the Cyberdemon, and eventually I made it there with a thermonuclear bomb and also having gotten an invincibility powerup the previous level, so I activated the bomb and it blew up the entire level...and revealed secret stairs down to even more levels! I kept going and made it down to the Spider Mastermind and killed it, thus attaining the true ending. Or so I thought until literally today, when I learned there's an even more secret ending if you also nuke the Spider Mastermind and then you get to go fight John Carmack. So maybe I should get back to that.

But back to Jupiter Hell, eventually id Software politely asked if DoomRL could please not use their IP, and so it become DRL, and then creator said he was going to make a graphical roguelike with the same premise called Jupiter Hell. I bought it years ago, a couple weeks ago I cracked it open seriously, and now I've beaten it. Rip and tear.

Ahhh, fresh meat.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Atrium Carceri - A Stroll Through the Ancient City

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We grant you the rank of developer

Last night I was officially invited to become a developer on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.

It's kind of funny because like 99% of my work is on the mods that ship with the game--I barely ever do anything on the core game itself. But because I'm so prolific--I've submitted the most PRs every year for three years running now--I elevated myself to one of the devs.

It's a free open-source game, so this position comes with no salary, no responsibilities, and no real cred except among fans of niche roguelike survival games. But nonetheless, all my work on the game got this for me!

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we didn’t plan to go to worldcon

like, at all

even though it was fucken here, right downtown

because until a few months ago it was going to be utterly impossible, economically (we’ve only really dug out of a two-year financial crisis just now, just the last month or so)

and also because of the pandemic and how that’s never fully ended (check out how people who study long-term covid do conferences and tell me again it’s over)

and also because I have some ambivalence about it anyway, despite all the work I’ve done on cons including a couple of worldcon bids, a NASFiC, a couple of v-cons, and arguably way, way too many norwescons (because of the way the latter fell out when i was finally done there)

and also because, well, look the fuck around you, fascism everywhere and month to month reanalysis of whether we have to leave the fucking country (and the depression which inevitably falls out from that)

and so on

but it starts today, and we didn’t plan to go because we literally couldn’t

and yeah

i’m pretty sad about that.

i have work today, anna has work today, tomorrow, and friday. sunday’s the last day and probably a half day like they usually are. i guess that leaves saturday for… something? anything? i don’t even know. i was gonna do the tesla takedown protest, like usual. maybe i still will. but after that…

anybody gonna be around?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: C418 - Minecraft Alpha

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Game Review: Vintage Story (patch 1.20)

You ever have a game come out of nowhere and just kind of...take over your gaming life?

In 2023 it happened with Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, an event which has repercussions to this day, considering how much hobby time I spend how on developing CDDA--we're about to release the 0.I version and I have top billing in the special thanks section--and this year it happened with Vintage Story. I can also blame that on CDDA, since on the development discord people would constantly talk about Vintage Story, about mining and smithing and clayforming and farming and being attacked by bears that lunged at them out of the underbrush. I watched the stories with fascination while I played Horizon's Gate (which I still plan to get back to), and around halfway through January I finally gave in, went to the dev website and bought Vintage Story, and downloaded it. I installed a few mods that came highly recommended like that one prevents a fire temperature from resetting on each item in the stack, loaded up the game, and was promptly greeted with a very familiar sight:

Vintage Story - Autumn River Valley Review

Admit it, you can hear the song.

( Read more... )

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no better satire could be written

Holy hell. The Tesla Truck is such a complete fucking sales disaster that he’s getting a corrupt deal with the military to buy them as targets.

I repeat:

THE TESLA TRUCK IS SUCH A COMPLETE FAILURE THAT THEY’RE SELLING THEM TO THE MILITARY AS TARGETS FOR TARGET PRACTICE.

Only a couple at first. Still, no doubt it’ll be at full price or some shit. Gotta claw those losses back somehow, right? Try this, see who complains.

Regardless, “OFFICIAL US MILITARY TARGET” stickers for Teslas, y/y?

Also, I may need to make yet another new sign for the Tesla Takedown protests because holy shit xD

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Current Mood: worried
Current Music: Computer fans spinning up

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Stressed about stress tests

More spontaneous restarts with WHEA errors (could be caused by...a ton of things).

So I'm sitting here running some diagnostics and seeing if I can fix the problem. Hopefully I don't need a new computer.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: 松原みき - 真夜中のドア〜Stay With Me

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Wamono: the Art of Japanese Rare Groove

sashagee and I went out to an event!

Ever since Murasaki closed last year, I've been glad that I got a chance to take

sashagee there to see Van Paugam spin one of his sets before the end, and I've been on the lookout for more chances to see him. The people at the Anime Club mentioned this event, hosted by the Japanese Cultural Center in Kamehachi, the first sushi bar in Chicago, so I got tickets, yesterday morning

sashagee drove Laila out to spend some time at the grandparents--not a problem, Laila has been clamoring to see grandma and grandpa basically all week--and in the evening we got on the L and headed down to Kamehachi. The hostess saw how we were dressed and immediately asked us if we were there for the event and then ushered us upstairs.

The music schedule was Japanese vinyl from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and we arrived during the 70s section, took our bentō and out complimentary drinks, and sat down on one of the high tables.

It was a lot of fun!

sashagee, inveterate gacha fan that she is, bought a mystery box and then when Van Paugam offered another mystery box to the couple with the best dancing, we went out on to the dance floor and won the box! We got a lot of dancing in--though not as much as one guy, who spent basically the entire evening on the dance floor even when he was the only one there--

sashagee got to hear her favorite city pop song, Mayonaka no Door -stay with me, when the Hits section came on at the very end, and we chatted with people and had a lovely time. They even promised to do another event, though since we were in the slightly closed-in upstairs of Kamehachi and it was kind of hot, Van Paugam mentioned it would probably not be until next year to avoid the heat from causing any more problems.

I need to keep better tabs on his sets. The only problem is that they're mostly only announced a short time beforehand, and having Laila means we can't exactly drop anything and head out on a moment's notice. But right now we almost never get a date night, and that's definitely not helping things. It'll be better when Laila's speech is better, because right now

sashagee is worried that if we got a babysitter and something happened, Laila wouldn't be able to tell us what was wrong. So we need to wait a few months and see if her speech improves, and then we can re-evaluate.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Nox Arcana - Unhallowed Halls

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Actually had a dream that I remembered

That happens so incredibly rarely nowadays that I had to write it down.

It was basically inside a first-person shooter video game, in that I was basically a floating camera with a gun (as the saying goes) and almost never had any real sense of my body or its physical existence. The dream took place inside a sprawling haunted house in a way that my waking mind recognizes as obviously a product of video game considerations (like the giant stepped courtyard with basically no furniture and a thirty-foot wall separating it from the outside) but which seemed perfectly reasonable inside the dream. There was what we would call a hub area with several other people, but I can't remember anything about them other than their existence.

Everything beyond that was extremely gamey. In the dream I was exploring the corridors, fighting enemies, picking up weapons, and so on. The only weapons I remember are some kind of staff thing that required charging up attacks before being able to get off a shot and the trusty v1.0 Booted Foot. Enemies I remember a bit more variety: there were floating balls of light that zapped me, a gray faceless mannequin in a black coat that grabbed me and slowed me down (having this happen was basically the only time I had any sensation of my body), a blue floating headless shadow in a thick cloak, and a giant dog but one which looked more like the faehounds from Final Fantasy XIV. I went around exploring, fought enemies, went back to the hub area and healed up and talked with the NPCs, you know, like a game. And eventually in that courtyard a mannequin grabbed me and I guess that sensation of actually having a body shocked me out of the dream because that's when I woke up.

This is obviously inspired by me playing Infra Arcana lately.

Current Music: Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - Desertwalkers

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Two annoyances

Annoyance the First:

I wrote a bit ago about how my computer is acting up, and having looked into it, it seems to just be a problem endemic to the Ryzen 5800 processor series--which is what I have, of course. There's a ton of threads about it with people's problems and solutions and so far I have two problems:

Screen turns back and the fans spin up: The one person I found with an actual diagnosis said this is related to the graphics card overvolting, so I downloaded MSI Afterburner and limited it to 90% of normal maximum voltage since it's not like I play Crysis on max on this machine anyway. It hasn't happened since but it only happens once every few weeks so no way to tell if it's actually fixed.
Spontaneous restarts during idle: Everyone seems to agree this is a problem with one or more of the cores undervolting, hence why it only happens during idle periods. There are a ton of solutions posted out there and I did try one that worked for a while (setting the power plan to high performance--I have a desktop, it's always plugged in anyway), but recently it started happening again. While investigating possible solutions, I saw people mentioning their BIOS version and thought, huh, I should look into that too and it turned out that the BIOS I have is version 303 and dated to 2021 (a year before I bought this computer). We're now up to 307 released this year. Well, the BIOS is partially responsible for controlling core voltage so updating certainly isn't going to make it worse, so I updated. It's been a couple days and I haven't had any spontaneous restarts yet, but we'll see if I need to keep looking. Everything I found online seemed to indicate this is a problem that gets solved different ways for different people because computers are notoriously finicky, so I might be back to the well.

All I can really say is, though, I have never previously had this degree of difficulty with a computer. I took a chance on AMD and boy have I had nothing but problems. Never again.

Annoyance the Second:

So yesterday I went into to buy Laila's medicine for the month as I do when she runs out and it came to this princely sum of three-hundred and twenty US American dollars, of which one single medication was $300. I asked the person at the counter what was going on, and she said that the manufacturer has coupons but I need to call my insurance. So I call my insurance and they tell me I need to call the manufacturer, and also that the insurance has a different price scale based on supply (a 43-day supply, like we got, is more than twice as expensive as a 30-day supply). So I call the manufacturer and can't get a hold of them since it's after 9 p.m., so I try again this morning. The main number you're ""supposed"" to call sends me in circles until the machine hangs up (and later, I learn, does exactly the same thing to the pharmacist when she calls them), so I call a different number and actually get a hold of someone and they tell me that they don't deal with customers at all, the entire thing is handled between pharmacists and the manufacturer. So I go into the pharmacist again, and she has also been on the phone, and the only thing she can say is that maybe the coupon was already applied but it ran out, citing the transaction in June where we were only charged $167 on a $300 expense, and that may be possible--I went back and checked and we were previously charged $55.03 for a for a $159 expense. Which is all well and good I guess, since we're almost at the spending limit for Laila's health insurance for the year, but still.

Well, the doctor wants to take her off two of those medications, and if she responds well, that will vastly reduce our monthly bill. I can only hope, becuase I'd rather not spend $300 a month for one medication on top of the other medical expenses we have. And this is with good insurance!

(That's a lie, America does not have good health insurance, only health insurance that is less bad Emoji Sad Eagle Flag

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Infinity Nikki - Serene Sounds of Danqing Island

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The House of Plague

Well, today was rough.

Last night I started feeling a bit odd at 9 p.m. or so, like I had a frog in my throat, so I assumed I was going to come down with the cold that first Laila and then

sashagee had. But then in the middle of the night, I started sweating profusely and my stomach started gurgling, and, well. I thought it was something I had eaten, maybe the sandwich I bought at the work canteen, but the next morning when I woke up after having called off work--

sashagee having kindly let me sleep in for a couple hours--it turned out that both she and Laila were also feeling bad in the exact same way. And the air outside was bad, so we didn't go anywhere, we didn't do anything, we just sat around in the morning and Laila watched Bluey and we mostly avoided eating anything. And then by the afternoon, we were basically back to normal again with only a bit of lingering bleh feeling.

I only write about this because it came on all of us nearly at the same time. Usually Laila gets sick first, then

sashagee, and then me (and not always me). This time it was

sashagee, then Laila, then me, and all within hours of each other. And then gone again by the next day.

I bet we have a lot more of this to look forward to when Laila starts school in a couple weeks(!).

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Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.0.1

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0 – 4 August 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.1.

Mostly small updates this time, but one in particular is very important, and another is pretty important if you’re in Shoreline:

ADDED: Alaskan Way Connector linking Elliot Bay Trail to Waterfront Trail with fully separated bikeways. Decades in the making, finally here (MEGAMAP only)
ADDED: Painted bike lanes on Meridian Ave N in Shoreline between 155th and 175th streets (both maps)
ADDED: “Commonly used” markers on Meridian Ave N throughout Shoreline (both maps) – this is somewhat aspirational, as there has been use of this road as a secondary to tertiary bike arterial but not quite enough to justify marking it as such until now. I am fairly certain that the new bike lanes in the middle of the route will increase its utility enough to justify it (both maps)
ADDED: “Commonly used” makers on a section of Fremont Ave in Shoreline, because that section is used a little more than parts of Meridian which now carry that marking, and one should be consistent (both maps)
ADDED: A weird little section of bike path I found in Lynnwood north of 196th at Wilcox Park. As 196th loses its sidewalks in that area, even this standalone oddness serves a useful purpose if you’re having to sidewalk-bike on 196th, say, to get to Gregg’s Cycles (MEGAMAP only)
ADDED: A few more street names in City of Seattle, along with a couple of small adjustments on difficult streets (both maps)
CORRECTION: REI Lynnwood’s icon was placed very slightly left of its actual location, and has been adjusted (MEGAMAP only)

Screen resolution preview of MEGAMAP 2.0.1 - 4 August 2025

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.