If you don't run an ad blocker you may notice (up to three) ads between my blog posts now. A while back YouTube offered me the ability to monetize my videos (all three of them...), and I figured what the hell, sign up. I still have to manually enable revenue sharing per-video and they have to review it before it gets enabled, but whatever. Anyway, with that having gone through, I got an AdSense account that I could link this blog to. So I did that.
That's the entire story.
Still feels kind of weird running ads even though I'm so vocal about using ad blockers. I doubt I'll get much money from them, but you never know...
Edit: I did some customizing so that they look better. As you can tell by looking at them, they're now centered within this column and have a border below as well as above.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Magicka
Remember when I played the Magicka demo and made a post about it? Well thanks to a free weekend on Steam, I've beaten the full game now, and I'm back to offer my thoughts again.
The demo is an older version of the game, and several things regarding how various elements work have changed since then. The area cast Shield, then spam heal mines trick no longer works. Earth and Ice armors no longer hold you in place when you cast them, but you do move more slowly. That's really about all I noticed.
The game is set in a satirical fantasy setting. It makes references to a lot of things. Just the ones I noticed, in no particular order:
Rather early on in the game, a village that manufactures gunpowder gets attacked, and if you save it without any of the five houses being destroyed, you get the M60. It's a machine gun. That takes your melee weapon slot. It doesn't deal a heck of a lot of damage, but you can just keep firing. A lot of enemies are vulnerable to it, or can be made vulnerable to it.
A fair distance after that you kill an enemy that has a Staff of War that doubles your HP and has an Arcane Bolt active ability. I used this up until I got...
...the Daemon Arm. It doesn't offer any active ability, but it gives your beam spells infinite duration. Without it the beam will just stop after a while and you'll have to recast it. With this, you can just keep on beam spamming.
One of the things I like about Magicka is its lack of a mana bar. This makes each fight more about skill and knowledge of the elements, and less about "oh I wish I could cast the spell that would end this but I don't have enough mana". It helps greatly towards the end of the game where it starts getting really frustratingly difficult.
On that note, the game does have a decent difficulty curve. At the beginning it's easy and you have a lot of opportunity to play around with the elements and what spells you can make, then as it progresses you start encountering more and more enemies with elemental resistances, immunities, or armor that needs to be destroyed, and you need to know exactly what you need to be doing at any given moment. Giving yourself elemental immunities becomes very important towards the end of the game, especially so in the final boss fight (both phases of it!).
A rather fun thing I had to do towards the end was effectively dropping enemies into lava. You're going through a room with tons of lava that you have to use aoe frost spells to solidify so you can cross it, and there's enemies waiting for you on all the platforms. Including the annoying guys with the instant kill rocks. I would get their attention with my M60 and lead them back out onto the solidified lava, then shoot fire at them to un-solidify the lava and drop them into it. It might be cheap, but hey, if they're going to spam instant kill rocks at me in an area with limited room to dodge, I declare free license to drop them into lava.
One of my go-to spells when there were lots of enemies around is the ARSE mines. Yeah, those are the keys you press to make the spell. They could be in any order, but it's more fun to call them ARSE mines. Anyway, they have lightning and frost in them, so they deal a fair amount of damage and slow enemies down, which helps as you're trying to run around dodging instant kill rocks.
One of the great things about this game is that there isn't really a set method for getting through most of it, leaving you free to experiment with the magic system. You know, the magic system that was designed to be experimented with.
Throughout the game you get Magicks as well. These are specific element sequences that you enter and cast by pressing the spacebar. These range from being overlookable, to helpful and useful, and finally to required to get through certain parts of the game. I came pretty close to getting them all (for the vast majority you have to find books to learn them, which can be hidden).
The game offers up a lot of achievements to get, some of which contribute references (as I previously mentioned). A fair amount of them can be obtained just through normal gameplay. Others I got because of repeated failures meaning I racked up more kills (the "overkill 1000 enemies" and "kill 1000 enemies with firearms" achievements).
When you begin you can select a robe, and the different ones do different things, including affecting your starting weaponry. I beat the game with the Vanilla Robes that don't do anything special, and I have another game started up with the Space Marine robe, just so I could get the "have trouble choosing a robe color" and "die while wearing a yellow robe" achievements.
Normal post ends here, spell bullshit after the break.
The demo is an older version of the game, and several things regarding how various elements work have changed since then. The area cast Shield, then spam heal mines trick no longer works. Earth and Ice armors no longer hold you in place when you cast them, but you do move more slowly. That's really about all I noticed.
The game is set in a satirical fantasy setting. It makes references to a lot of things. Just the ones I noticed, in no particular order:
- Star Trek - There's an enemy you fight named Khan, and NPC dialogue just before the fight concludes with "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"
- Back to the Future - you get sent back in time partway through the game, when this happens you get the achievement "88mph"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail - The druids shout "Shrubbery!", "Ni!", and "Ecky!", and there's an achievement called "Blue! No... Yellow!" that you can get while selecting your robe color. I got it by selecting blue, then yellow (lol).
- SkiFree - Remember that old Windows 3.1 game? Where once you got past a certain distance a yeti would come and eat you? Well, that happens in the game. A soldier skis down a hill, goes over a rainbow colored ramp, lands, and gets eaten by a yeti. Then you have to fight the yeti to avoid being eaten yourself. Here's a hint: fire.
- Guitar Hero - Believe it or not, there's a staff in the game that grants fire immunity and a resistance aura, and in its description it says "'Through the fire and flames' - 100% guaranteed".
- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - When you use your first checkpoint, you get a fairy. This fairy will resurrect you if you die (only once, the second time you go back to your last checkpoint), and periodically gives you useless gameplay tips after saying "Hey! Listen!". Also, a general reference, you can find the master sword, and it shoots a projectile when you're at full health.
Rather early on in the game, a village that manufactures gunpowder gets attacked, and if you save it without any of the five houses being destroyed, you get the M60. It's a machine gun. That takes your melee weapon slot. It doesn't deal a heck of a lot of damage, but you can just keep firing. A lot of enemies are vulnerable to it, or can be made vulnerable to it.
A fair distance after that you kill an enemy that has a Staff of War that doubles your HP and has an Arcane Bolt active ability. I used this up until I got...
...the Daemon Arm. It doesn't offer any active ability, but it gives your beam spells infinite duration. Without it the beam will just stop after a while and you'll have to recast it. With this, you can just keep on beam spamming.
One of the things I like about Magicka is its lack of a mana bar. This makes each fight more about skill and knowledge of the elements, and less about "oh I wish I could cast the spell that would end this but I don't have enough mana". It helps greatly towards the end of the game where it starts getting really frustratingly difficult.
On that note, the game does have a decent difficulty curve. At the beginning it's easy and you have a lot of opportunity to play around with the elements and what spells you can make, then as it progresses you start encountering more and more enemies with elemental resistances, immunities, or armor that needs to be destroyed, and you need to know exactly what you need to be doing at any given moment. Giving yourself elemental immunities becomes very important towards the end of the game, especially so in the final boss fight (both phases of it!).
A rather fun thing I had to do towards the end was effectively dropping enemies into lava. You're going through a room with tons of lava that you have to use aoe frost spells to solidify so you can cross it, and there's enemies waiting for you on all the platforms. Including the annoying guys with the instant kill rocks. I would get their attention with my M60 and lead them back out onto the solidified lava, then shoot fire at them to un-solidify the lava and drop them into it. It might be cheap, but hey, if they're going to spam instant kill rocks at me in an area with limited room to dodge, I declare free license to drop them into lava.
One of my go-to spells when there were lots of enemies around is the ARSE mines. Yeah, those are the keys you press to make the spell. They could be in any order, but it's more fun to call them ARSE mines. Anyway, they have lightning and frost in them, so they deal a fair amount of damage and slow enemies down, which helps as you're trying to run around dodging instant kill rocks.
One of the great things about this game is that there isn't really a set method for getting through most of it, leaving you free to experiment with the magic system. You know, the magic system that was designed to be experimented with.
Throughout the game you get Magicks as well. These are specific element sequences that you enter and cast by pressing the spacebar. These range from being overlookable, to helpful and useful, and finally to required to get through certain parts of the game. I came pretty close to getting them all (for the vast majority you have to find books to learn them, which can be hidden).
The game offers up a lot of achievements to get, some of which contribute references (as I previously mentioned). A fair amount of them can be obtained just through normal gameplay. Others I got because of repeated failures meaning I racked up more kills (the "overkill 1000 enemies" and "kill 1000 enemies with firearms" achievements).
When you begin you can select a robe, and the different ones do different things, including affecting your starting weaponry. I beat the game with the Vanilla Robes that don't do anything special, and I have another game started up with the Space Marine robe, just so I could get the "have trouble choosing a robe color" and "die while wearing a yellow robe" achievements.
Normal post ends here, spell bullshit after the break.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Giant Foods Free Sandwich Coupons
So for quite a while now I've been getting the deli sandwiches from Giant. They have this deal where if you buy six of them with your bonuscard, you get a coupon for a free sandwich. I typically make the free sandwich one of the more expensive ones just to save money, and this has worked up until today.
Today, suddenly, without warning or notice, there's now a price restriction on the sandwich that you can get for free. This restriction isn't listed on the coupon, or anywhere else. In fact, the only restrictions listed are "Participating stores only, limit one per transaction", which I happen to be totally fine with because both stores around here participate and I only ever spend one coupon at a time anyway.
But to suddenly say "these coupons only work on the cheapest sandwiches" when they've been working on the more expensive ones all this time feels like a massive bait and switch to me.
I will reiterate. All the coupon says is "This coupon is good for one free sandwich on your next visit. Participating stores only, limit one per transaction". It doesn't mention anything about a maximum price threshhold. At all. Which is why I feel justified in complaining about there suddenly being a maximum price threshhold.
Stop your shenanigans, Giant. Either make this price restriction publically known, or remove it. As it is currently where it just "exists" but isn't listed anywhere isn't fair to the customers that are trying to redeem the coupon.
It did kind of work out. They wouldn't give me the sandwich I'd picked for free and honor the terms printed on the coupon, but they did take the "maximum sandwich price" off the cost of the sandwich. That doesn't make the lack of notice of a maximum price forgivable, though. In fact, it just might make me stop buying the sandwiches altogether.
On a side note, the coupons don't actually say "limit one per transaction". They say "limit one peoooransaction". Somebody failed somewhere, hard.
Today, suddenly, without warning or notice, there's now a price restriction on the sandwich that you can get for free. This restriction isn't listed on the coupon, or anywhere else. In fact, the only restrictions listed are "Participating stores only, limit one per transaction", which I happen to be totally fine with because both stores around here participate and I only ever spend one coupon at a time anyway.
But to suddenly say "these coupons only work on the cheapest sandwiches" when they've been working on the more expensive ones all this time feels like a massive bait and switch to me.
I will reiterate. All the coupon says is "This coupon is good for one free sandwich on your next visit. Participating stores only, limit one per transaction". It doesn't mention anything about a maximum price threshhold. At all. Which is why I feel justified in complaining about there suddenly being a maximum price threshhold.
Stop your shenanigans, Giant. Either make this price restriction publically known, or remove it. As it is currently where it just "exists" but isn't listed anywhere isn't fair to the customers that are trying to redeem the coupon.
It did kind of work out. They wouldn't give me the sandwich I'd picked for free and honor the terms printed on the coupon, but they did take the "maximum sandwich price" off the cost of the sandwich. That doesn't make the lack of notice of a maximum price forgivable, though. In fact, it just might make me stop buying the sandwiches altogether.
On a side note, the coupons don't actually say "limit one per transaction". They say "limit one peoooransaction". Somebody failed somewhere, hard.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Advanced Renamer 3.15
So after 3.10 had issues and I switched back to 3.05, I checked the site recently and noticed in the update notes "Fixed incompatibility issues with Windows XP". I downloaded the installer (at that point, 3.14 was newest), and then promptly forgot about it.
Until today.
I installed 3.14 and this time it happily converted all my presets from the old format to the new one. Then I check the settings dialog, and no more access violations upon closing it. Awesome. Next, I inspect the preset list, and find it to be empty. Oh well, it moved all my presets out to external files, so I go and load one back in.
This is when I discover that it polluted the converted preset files with methods from other presets. So then I got to go through and delete all the methods that shouldn't have been in each preset, and re-save them. With that bit of "I shouldn't have had to do this" out of the way, I noticed it was still saying "Update available" at the bottom, so I downloaded 3.15.
A bunch of new stuff has been added since 3.05, which I may or may not actually end up using. One method (or possibly tag) I wish existed would be for CRC32. Being that I remux anime a lot, I end up with files where the CRC32 no longer matches what's in the filename, and I'd like to be able to easily update it. I've got a ghetto setup now where I use a command-line CRC32 tool to calculate all the CRC32s, and then manually rename the files, then go back to the command line and verify that I typed them all correctly. I'd very much like the ability to just chuck the files into Advanced Renamer with a rule that replaces 8 characters starting at the 5th character going backwards with the file's CRC32, hit Start Batch, wait a while as the CRC32s are calculated, and have it just be done.
Yeah, I know, CRC32 is a rather useless data integrity checking algorithm these days, given that it's so easy to forge one and that the files I have with them in the filename are distributed via BitTorrent, which has its own data integrity checking. But it's useful on a case-by-case basis, I guess, and the case I made above is one of those.
Another thing that I wish existed would be a way to remove a preset. Even with the new format, once you load a preset, it stays there. No way to remove it from within the program. You have to go into the Data subdirectory of its directory in Program Files and edit both methodlists.ini and settings.ini to remove it. methodlists.ini is technically the old format, which I edited just because I felt like it, and the settings.ini just points at a bunch of .aren files that you've used. The new format is really just taking each preset's method list out of methodlists.ini and putting it into its own file, which doesn't explain at all how the presets got polluted when I converted them.
Overall, it's still a very useful program for renaming tons of files at once.
Until today.
I installed 3.14 and this time it happily converted all my presets from the old format to the new one. Then I check the settings dialog, and no more access violations upon closing it. Awesome. Next, I inspect the preset list, and find it to be empty. Oh well, it moved all my presets out to external files, so I go and load one back in.
This is when I discover that it polluted the converted preset files with methods from other presets. So then I got to go through and delete all the methods that shouldn't have been in each preset, and re-save them. With that bit of "I shouldn't have had to do this" out of the way, I noticed it was still saying "Update available" at the bottom, so I downloaded 3.15.
A bunch of new stuff has been added since 3.05, which I may or may not actually end up using. One method (or possibly tag) I wish existed would be for CRC32. Being that I remux anime a lot, I end up with files where the CRC32 no longer matches what's in the filename, and I'd like to be able to easily update it. I've got a ghetto setup now where I use a command-line CRC32 tool to calculate all the CRC32s, and then manually rename the files, then go back to the command line and verify that I typed them all correctly. I'd very much like the ability to just chuck the files into Advanced Renamer with a rule that replaces 8 characters starting at the 5th character going backwards with the file's CRC32, hit Start Batch, wait a while as the CRC32s are calculated, and have it just be done.
Yeah, I know, CRC32 is a rather useless data integrity checking algorithm these days, given that it's so easy to forge one and that the files I have with them in the filename are distributed via BitTorrent, which has its own data integrity checking. But it's useful on a case-by-case basis, I guess, and the case I made above is one of those.
Another thing that I wish existed would be a way to remove a preset. Even with the new format, once you load a preset, it stays there. No way to remove it from within the program. You have to go into the Data subdirectory of its directory in Program Files and edit both methodlists.ini and settings.ini to remove it. methodlists.ini is technically the old format, which I edited just because I felt like it, and the settings.ini just points at a bunch of .aren files that you've used. The new format is really just taking each preset's method list out of methodlists.ini and putting it into its own file, which doesn't explain at all how the presets got polluted when I converted them.
Overall, it's still a very useful program for renaming tons of files at once.
Backlog Gone!
The one remaining thing was the Gundam 00 movie, which I watched last night along with a metric fuckton of other stuff. Seriously, my computer was decoding video for 12 hours straight (with breaks for food/bathroom, duh).
That 12 hours contained:
Overall I'm glad my backlog is finally fucking empty. I hope to keep it that way.
Oh, what did I bring to the theme showing, you ask? Yuri Seijin Naoko-san, which I immediately thought of when the theme was announced, and Rejected. Yuri Seijin inflicted bouts of WTF on everyone for its relatively short six-minute runtime, and Rejected is just awesome and needs to be shown periodically, and I figured it might be wtf-inducing enough to bring it.
That 12 hours contained:
- Carnival Phantasm 5-7
- Fate/Zero 7 (Rider = most awesome servant ever)
- Gundam 00 movie
- and the last six hours of the Far Lands or Bust livestream archive. My guess for the contest ended up being pretty close (the extra four hours added by donations helped), we'll see if it was close enough to win eventually, once Kurt organizes all the entries.
Overall I'm glad my backlog is finally fucking empty. I hope to keep it that way.
Oh, what did I bring to the theme showing, you ask? Yuri Seijin Naoko-san, which I immediately thought of when the theme was announced, and Rejected. Yuri Seijin inflicted bouts of WTF on everyone for its relatively short six-minute runtime, and Rejected is just awesome and needs to be shown periodically, and I figured it might be wtf-inducing enough to bring it.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Backlog almost gone!
So, rather than pointlessly marathonning early seasons of The Simpsons, I decided to buckle down and work through this shit.
Since the last post I've watched everything on my backlog except the Gundam 00 movie. Yes, including Tsukihime. Since I'm curious why the internet collectively denies the existence of this anime, I think I might just track down the visual novel. To me, who hasn't experienced the actual story, it seems like a case of "it's a semi-decent story on its own, but given the name it carries it delivered less than was expected of it" or something to that degree. We'll see, I guess.
I remuxed Ghost Stories to turn on the dubtitles by default. For the uninitiated, when ADV dubbed Ghost Stories (original name: Gakkou no Kaidan), they basically threw out anything that wasn't the bare shell of the plot and just had fun with the rest. The English language dub is therefore quite hilarious. The dubtitles add a bit, as they captioned some sound effects in creative ways, like "[Leo screaming like a little girl]" or "[Keiichirou sob™]".
Later on they start throwing in foreign languages. There's a bit that's entirely in Spanish, they bring some Japanese in (as in, the English VAs are speaking Japanese), and there's one scene where Satsuki and her dad are speaking in Pig Latin. There are many third (fourth?) wall breaking moments, and they point out when the anime rips off various classic horror movies (like The Ring, about four times). I highly recommend watching it dubbed, and the dubtitles help for verifying that they really just said that.
The only series on the list that I didn't watch was Sekirei. I instead deleted it. From both my hard drive and my MAL anime list. It had potential, but squandered it in favor of ecchi fanservice, then rushed a plot in the last few episodes, didn't conclude it, and ended with a "to be continued". Then they made us wait two years for more, only to go back to the ecchi fanservice. I no longer have any desire to watch the series.
I went into Asobi ni Iku Yo! knowing very little about the series. All I knew was that it was something about catgirls and probably had some fanservice. Well, I was right on both counts, and it was a pretty decent series overall.
I'll get all this into my MAL account eventually, I've been focusing more on getting through the backlog as well as not falling behind on current stuff.
I'm intentionally leaving out the re-watch list for now, as it's less important. My first priority is making sure that I've watched all the anime I have on my hard drive.
Also, since CAINE's showings wrapped up all three series for this semester, I got to give Seto no Hanayome the treatment it deserved. I marked it on MAL as Dropped at 26 of 26. I'll be using the Dropped section for stuff that really isn't worth watching that for whatever reason I've watched.
Since the last post I've watched everything on my backlog except the Gundam 00 movie. Yes, including Tsukihime. Since I'm curious why the internet collectively denies the existence of this anime, I think I might just track down the visual novel. To me, who hasn't experienced the actual story, it seems like a case of "it's a semi-decent story on its own, but given the name it carries it delivered less than was expected of it" or something to that degree. We'll see, I guess.
I remuxed Ghost Stories to turn on the dubtitles by default. For the uninitiated, when ADV dubbed Ghost Stories (original name: Gakkou no Kaidan), they basically threw out anything that wasn't the bare shell of the plot and just had fun with the rest. The English language dub is therefore quite hilarious. The dubtitles add a bit, as they captioned some sound effects in creative ways, like "[Leo screaming like a little girl]" or "[Keiichirou sob™]".
Later on they start throwing in foreign languages. There's a bit that's entirely in Spanish, they bring some Japanese in (as in, the English VAs are speaking Japanese), and there's one scene where Satsuki and her dad are speaking in Pig Latin. There are many third (fourth?) wall breaking moments, and they point out when the anime rips off various classic horror movies (like The Ring, about four times). I highly recommend watching it dubbed, and the dubtitles help for verifying that they really just said that.
The only series on the list that I didn't watch was Sekirei. I instead deleted it. From both my hard drive and my MAL anime list. It had potential, but squandered it in favor of ecchi fanservice, then rushed a plot in the last few episodes, didn't conclude it, and ended with a "to be continued". Then they made us wait two years for more, only to go back to the ecchi fanservice. I no longer have any desire to watch the series.
I went into Asobi ni Iku Yo! knowing very little about the series. All I knew was that it was something about catgirls and probably had some fanservice. Well, I was right on both counts, and it was a pretty decent series overall.
I'll get all this into my MAL account eventually, I've been focusing more on getting through the backlog as well as not falling behind on current stuff.
I'm intentionally leaving out the re-watch list for now, as it's less important. My first priority is making sure that I've watched all the anime I have on my hard drive.
Also, since CAINE's showings wrapped up all three series for this semester, I got to give Seto no Hanayome the treatment it deserved. I marked it on MAL as Dropped at 26 of 26. I'll be using the Dropped section for stuff that really isn't worth watching that for whatever reason I've watched.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
TRAUMA
TRAUMA is a point and click exploration game. The story is fairly simple: the main character is hospitalized after a car accident. You're playing through four dreams she has while in the hospital.
The game is available on Steam for $6.99 outside of a sale. I got it through the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle.
The game is available on Steam for $6.99 outside of a sale. I got it through the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle.
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