Roadrunner Twice - Dreamwidth Studios
Charles L. Harness — Firebird July 20 So I was talking about Mina the Hollower and I managed to surprise bzedan (who was already background-discourse aware of the game) by mentioning that Mina is an anthropomorphic mouse. This is part of the base facts of the game's marketing, it's not a stealth reveal or anything, but apparently much of the ambient conversation around the game's gameplay style…
Adam de Souza — Blind Alley (webcomic backlog) May 27 Readable online. This comic rules! In proper old internet style, I learned about it because K.C. Green did a guest strip for it and posted it on his tumblr. There seems to be a slow-burn plot going, a slight and gradual gravity pulling together these threads of psychic kids, cryptids, mechanical surveillance, questing animals, and semi-absent…
Right, so the thing about the ECS pattern is that it makes it straightforward and concise to do a bunch of the really nasty video game shit: Intrusive and cross-cutting systems that affect a lot of entangled state across many domains. I'm not even gonna start with this, but perhaps you have seen something that qualifies. Scheduling-level concerns — for example, gameplay systems shouldn't run while…
Oh, and also I just picked up Ginga Force and Natsuki Chronicles on playstation because for some random-ass reason they were TWO DOLLARS (/paperboy-from-better-off-dead-voice) for a couple of days, which is ludicrous. Those are the two most recent games by Qute (who made Eschatos and Judgment Silversword ); they're very cool, and I was planning to eventually just pay full price for em. I haven't…
Unrelatedly, I'm starting to close in on a Maniac 1cc of Mushihimesama (using S-type shot) which is probably going to be my first clear of a Cave game. It's gonna be a bit, still; I'm missing some answers for the stage 4 boss, the stage 5 boss, and the section around 3/4 through stage 5 where it just goes absolutely apeshit on you. I checked out Kiwi's survival strats video, but I can't use his…
qntm — Fine Structure Feb 4 This novel covers some of the same ground as Ra, but I didn't like it as much — it didn't feel as coherent and directed, which drained some of the impact of the big gonzo ideas. Anyway, read Ra! I can't yet speak to There Is No Antimemetics Division, but I'll probably get to it at some point. (Actually, that's what I meant to read this time, but the hold line at the…
There’s a Greatures tournament arc on right now and it’s ludicrous. comments
Just discovered this new webcomic. I love this dumb lil strip about trading card smell. comments
I'm not actually too much of a framerate princess, like honestly 30fps feels mostly fine once I've spent two minutes adjusting. But unfortunately it turns out I'm both an input latency princess and a screen tearing princess, and that's a combination that will guarantee you a bed full of peas. comments
I'm mostly writing this here for my future self. ( You definitely aren't interested in this unless you landed directly on this entry via a search engine. ) comments
So, in many recent years, there's been a massive fall PDF sale run by an on-again/off-again comics publisher called Shortbox. The gal who runs it, Zainab Akhtar, has a tremendous sense of taste and is plugged in to scenes of emerging cartoonists in a way that seems implausible, so the offering is always rich in this very particular overlap of weird/high-quality/unobtainable/inexpensive. I think…
This is a gamedev post. Don't do this when converting analog thumbstick input to discrete up/down/left/right (d-pad/arrow-key) values: Do this instead: ( More detailed explanation below the cut. ) comments
I've been loving Greatures , the current KC Green comic. It's a gag strip that takes place in some kind of purgatorial labyrinth that gradually reduces the people and objects caught in it into strange archetypes. (Much like a continuity-free gag strip does, now that I think about it.) comments
Everything's extremely fucked up at the moment, and I'm heartsick and volcanicly angry on behalf of my old home of Minneapolis. "IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT" IS FAKE MIGRATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT DISBAND ICE HAND OVER THE MURDERERS AND ABDUCTORS TO THE PEOPLE'S JUSTICE THAT INCLUDES NOEM AND TRUMP That's about all I've got on that. But, I guess I've also got some babbling about games and stuff stacked up…
When I was working at the counter in the bakery in Minneapolis, I would sometimes read a library book during downtime. (Hey, listen, you can't really go in the back and start mopping if you need to be ready to react to customers. Once you've tidied up the front, you're out of tasks.) So at one point, a co-worker asked me "how many books do you even read?" and I realized I did not actually know the…
OK, here we go — the final 2025 bookpost! And it's, uh, well, it's certainly something. Daniel M. Ingram — Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (2nd ed.) Feb. 25 Readable online. There’s also a pdf on the site, but I ended up downloading the html version and scrunching it into an epub. Here's that , if you want it. (Hopefully the author won't mind a little light format-shifting in the name…
Another end-of-year bookpost batch; we're down to two remaining books in the queue after this, which of course are some of the harder ones to talk about. Vajra Chandrasekera — The Saint of Bright Doors Mar. 24 This book is incredibly flashy and stylish. Dazzling? I think in cover-blurb dialect, you'd say "dazzling." Well, fair enough: I was dazzled. It does lots of exciting things at the…
It's coming up on the end of 2025, so let's do a couple review posts. Cameron Reed — The Fortunate Fall Apr. 10 Holy shit what a ride. Newly back in print after a long period of unavailability, this landmark work by the author of a favorite short story was brought to my attention with a link to an old Jo Walton review of it . Walton is a superior book reviewer, so maybe I should just tell you to…
All right, so first off, those Spotify assholes can go fuck themselves. With that motion carried, let's get down to business. I'm working on a longer version of this post, but I think I'm at the point where I can manage a hyper-compressed version. You have many ordinary music files. You want to listen to the same library on all your devices. You want the option to create and edit playlists on any…
I don't think I shared this in my original review, but there was one specific moment in the game ZeroRanger where I went from "rather intent on it" to "full werewolf:" the part where the true last boss deletes your fucking save file. This is one of the most brilliant pieces of polemical or instructive game design that I've ever encountered. I think it's at the core of why this one particular game…
Hey, let's do another bookpost. Though first, speaking of comics: please be aware that the Shortbox Comics Fair is now running, through the end of October! It's a limited-run PDF sale of all-new comics, curated by one of the most fascinating and eclectic editorial tastes I've run across. I still need to do my shopping, but figured I'd put out the alert early so everyone else has time to peruse.…
Hey, let's do a Friday bookpost. Naomi Novik — the Scholomance trilogy A Deadly Education — Dec 26, 2024 The Last Graduate — Jan 4, 2025 The Golden Enclaves — Jan 13 These were delightful, and I blazed through em. (Only slightly delayed by waiting for Ruth to finish each book ahead of me, lol.) They're a wizard school story, with a bunch of familiar shapes and tropes, except the wizard school is a…
Had a fun experience today — one of my friends finally took the bait and asked me for the full download on how to make my default crusty bread. I said “hang out at my place for a full day and I’ll get you to the next level,” and he actually did it. First graduate of nick’s bread school! (Most people want nothing to do with that whole process; you’re looking for someone who gets excited by how many…
Sure, why not, let's bookpost. Wren Hyde — Beneath a Burning Sky (zine) Feb 27 A friend we know from Ruth's shapenote singing community wrote a zine about going on long bike tours. It's good! Wren generally puts a lot of energy into thinking about things like the practical exercise of freedom and the purpose of risking yourself on an adventure, and I always value the sense of being gently shaken…
Oh, hmm. I've had some of these reviews sitting around for a while, let's thin the herd a bit. Isaac Safron Robin — Witchtrade, issues 1-6 (comics) Mar. 11, 2025 Available at author's itch.io page You might also know Robin as the character artist from Christine Love's Get in the Car, Loser. I liked these a lot! I think I previously reviewed Robin's short comic Baby Universe here; I thought the…