Tales of the Aggronaut

In Gaben We Trust

September 25, 2013 by Belghast

Steam OS

I feel like I am late to the party when it comes to talking about this announcement. Yesterday seemed to be the big day of it spreading out onto various blogs both professional and private. At this very moment… I am not really sure what to think about it. Admittedly I am a PC developer, I write code for Microsoft products, I play games that run under windows, and I have never found a reasonable replacement for Photoshop. All of those things mean I am pretty much chained to windows as a platform goes. The biggest of those however is the fact that it is a pain in the ass to get my games running under Wine in Linux.

While the Microsoft developer portion will likely never go away anytime soon, being able to reliably play all the games I want under Linux would make me likely kick windows to the curb as a home operating system, at least on my main gaming machine. The problem is… steam has literally thousands of games in its catalog… but only roughly 200 of them run on Linux. The vast majority of those are small indie titles, that are fun, but not the meat that the PC gamer is looking for. So the real challenge will be for Valve to get major developers to support their Steam OS on an even playing field with the consoles.

Good For Linux

Linux has always been an extreme niche community. The problem with Linux as a whole is the freedom of choice that is a positive for the serious user, is a massive negative to broad based adoption. Too much choice confuses the average consumer, and vendors don’t like not having a clear winner they can invest money in. Old fights like Gnome vs KDE and Ubuntu vs Redhat etc have always stunted the growth potential of what otherwise is an extremely mature operating system, more than ready for primetime.

While Linux has floundered at becoming a viable desktop operating system for the majority of America, I feel like a gaming machine is a niche it CAN conquer. Windows 8 licenses start at $100 and go up from there. I know no gamer that would not be willing to switch to a free operating system, and spend that hundred dollars elsewhere on games or gaming stuff. If I could get the games I want to play, running reliably and without fiddling under a Linux based operating system… I would kick windows to the curb without a second thought.

Ultimately I am going to have to find a replacement for Photoshop as it is… so that piece is no longer the hurdle it once was. With Adobe switching to a monthly subscription fee, that is just too much bullshit for me to deal with on a regular basis just to be able to comfortably make images. I am not making any money from Photoshop, and therefor I just cannot justify the cost. I have always had access to it through my work machine, so I have always kept my home version a few releases behind the curve. But with the licensing mess for the foreseeable future, it is making Gimp and namely GimpShop that much more appealing.

In Gaben We Trust

Basically steam has done this miraculous thing as far as I am concerned. They have gotten me to not only tolerate… but LOVE DRM. If I have a choice to buy something through steam, or through a secondary retailer like green man gaming that provides a steam code… I will always do it. I like having my entire games library organized in one spot, that is easy to download and play whenever I feel like it from each of my machines. Valve and Steam have absolutely won me over with dirt cheap pricing and truly epic sales. So while I mostly abuse their sales… when it does come time for a title to be released that I care enough about to pay full price… I will almost always gravitate to buying it through them.

Right now if ANYONE can bring enough gravitas behind Linux gaming… it would be Steam. They have the best chance to make this work, because they provide what every games company has to have to make a new operating system work… a prebuilt retail outlet. You can say whatever you want about Steam, but I feel like they are doing far more good for the gamers than they are doing harm. I know publishers really do not like dealing with them… Origin is the evidence of EA breaking out on their own to avoid the “Steam Cut”. However I really don’t see any of these splinter groups making enough of a dent to be worthy of jumping ship. Everyone universally hates Origin, as much as they seem to love Steam.

What This Means

If anyone can make Linux gaming viable, it will be Gaben, and as a result I am cautiously optimistic about this. A lot of the posts yesterday keyed in on the whole concept of bringing steam to the living room. For me that is not the significance here, and not really something I would want to do anyways. The majority of the reason why I don’t play consoles more than I do is because it is chained to a television, and not something I can do either on my gaming rig upstairs or my laptop. Sure there will be the occasional gamer that wants to hook up a steam box and play PC games like they used to play console games. That is totally cool and awesome that it might be a reality.

For me however this is about unshackling PC gaming from the “Windows Tax”. I would say probably 95% of what I use my PCs at home falls into one of two categories. Firstly there is gaming, and up until now that has been entirely a windows based activity. Secondly there is using web based technologies… these are 100% platform agnostic, and if Steam OS has Chrome I can pretty much do anything I would ever care to do here. I no longer use a traditional word processor and have converted to Google Drive for everything I do for myself. I use Live Writer to do my blog, but there are numerous really solid Linux packages that do the same thing. So if the gaming worked awesome on Linux… I would have nothing left chaining me to the windows operating system. As far as running visual studio, I could always Virtual Machine that… or just remote desktop into my work machine.

Wrapping Up

I need to wrap things up and get on the road, but at this point we really don’t know many details other than the fact that something called Steam OS exists. There are supposedly three more big announcements waiting in the wings regarding this. Right now I am cautiously optimistic, but if this turns out to be nothing but a set top box… I will ultimately give zero fucks. I am hoping for a viable windows gaming replacement. Anyways…. I hope you all have a great day ahead of you. My mother is having surgery today, so hopefully that will go extremely well.

Return of NBI

September 24, 2013 by Belghast

Return of NBI

One of the coolest initiatives that I can recall in the gaming blogosphere is returning, and this time the torch has been passed from Sypster of Biobreak to Contains Moderate Peril and T.R. Red Skies. As a result they are asking for new bloggers and sponsors to sign up and be counted over on the newly relaunched NBI Forums. You can check out the official announcement here… but the bulk of it is as follows.

Whether you’re a vlogger, blogger, podcaster, artist or whatever …if you own a blog dedicated to video games, the Newbie Blogger Initiative 2 needs your support! A great number of bloggers supported the Initiative last year and we are calling on you again to participate as well as imploring new bloggers to snatch this opportunity as well. The goals of the NBI are simple: Find, visit, and promote new video game bloggers. Create a friendly network of support. Increase survival of new bloggers. (This is a new area of focus this year!)

I participated in the program as a sponsor blog last year and it was a great upwelling of community support. I look forward to seeing what all comes out of it this time. Back in May, Wilhelm did a post running down who all had survived the year. We had 110 start new blogs during the program and a year later 30 had survived. So as the above statement says… the focus this year is to find ways to help bloggers keep up with the blogging. This rings true especially for me… who has embarked on this whole post something each morning madness.

Signing Up

Once again I will be signing up as a sponsor blog, but quite frankly I still feel like a babe in the woods when it comes to blogging. I shared a number of more technical topics last year, since that tends to be the end of the thing I am best at. This year… I will likely share some of my experiences after setting down this daily blogging path. I still think this is one of the most awesome community sponsored events we have, and while we did not keep many of the voices that started the process, I think it is a start in the right direction.

You can see a run down of the posts I made last year by following my newbie blogger initiative category link. Additionally I made a post awhile back called Infertile Ground where I talked about how the gaming blogosphere lacks a real sense of cohesiveness. Maybe during this years NBI, we can start to work on that as well. During the last round, I added pretty much every blogger that had twitter to my personal feed, and while many of them dropped off the face of the planet… quite a few have become constant fixtures in my scroll. Hopefully this year can do the same, and build our blogosphere into a more tight knit community.

Wrapping Up

Really don’t have a lot more to say this morning, so I am honestly using the NBI announcement as a bit of a crutch. I ran a truly silly amount of low level dungeons last night for various guild members, and then wrapped the night up by doing a bit of questing. My Warrior is almost 47 now, which still seems a long ways off from 50… but I am starting to pay attention to all the things I need to do once I reach cap. Hopefully all of you out there have a great day, and that the week as a whole is turning out to be a good one.

Unfunny Dead

September 23, 2013 by Belghast

Vegetative State

After our day of random running about on Saturday, I spent most of yesterday hanging out on the sofa and catching up on movies that I had meant to watch. It takes an act of congress to get me into a movie theatre… I have a thing with large crowds and a completely and total lack of enjoyment of them. So most of the time I prefer to just wait until something is available either through on demand or to the home market in general. Among the movies I watched was World War Z as hinted at by the tower of zombies image above. I have to say despite all the negative press about the movie I actually rather enjoyed it.

Sure there were many super sensationalist shots like the ant like zombie tower… but for the most part it was one of the most intense zombie movies I have seen since 28 days later. I am a heretic, while I own World War Z the novel… I have not made it terribly far into it. So I can’t really appreciate just how bad a movie this was (or at least that is what I keep hearing). What was there was something I enjoyed watching. Granted I have never been a huge fan of track star / parkour zombies… but it does generate some intense viewing. At the end of the day I greatly prefer Walking Dead… but this was fun as well.

Unfunny Dead

Another film that I had wanted to watch but never got around to… was the 2013 remake of Evil Dead. A little preface leading into this… I love the previous Evil Dead movies. However this is primarily because I love Bruce Campbell as Ash. He is the perfect blend of smart ass and campy super hero for my personal tastes… and if you have never watched My Name is Bruce… I highly suggest you Netflix that. I went into this movie knowing that the end result of this reboot would essentially destroy everything I loved about the movie. Ultimately I was fine with this… I wanted to see what the new version was anyways. If you have not see the movie, be warned I am going to spoil various things.

I feel like the characters in this movie… could have done with a SINGLE play session of Call of Cthulhu pen and paper. If you find a book, that is wrapped in barbed wire and left on an altar of sorts… the last thing you EVER want to do is clip the barbed wire. If you by some strange compulsion to you decided to clip the barbed wire… and found that the cover was made from what looks to be human flesh… for the love of god do not open it. If for some strange reason… you then opened the book and saw all sorts of dire warnings… for the love of fucking god do not read ANYTHING THAT IS SCRATCHED OUT ALOUD. Essentially after the first ten minute I had already decided that the characters deserved whatever they got.

I feel like Cabin in the Woods was a so much more enjoyable version of this movie. After the first few minutes I spent most of my time trying to figure out which single person would survive. Ultimately that was the big surprise that I did not see coming. The one who survives essentially throws all horror movie cannon to the four winds, which is I guess something. The trailers billed this as the “most terrifying film you will ever experience”… to which I assume they just had a ridiculously low bar to measure this against. It was neither terrifying nor particularly scary other than the fact that it had near silent dialog… and blaringly loud sound effects. So at the end of the day it might have frightened my ear drums.

Big Horns

The highlight of the day was taking my Warrior in FFXIV to 45 and completing that class quest. One of the really awesome things is that at level 45 you get a full set of relic gear minus the chest piece. Within moments your character turns from looking essentially the same as anyone else of your gear type… to looking like all of the character artwork for your job. For me I get to start inching my way towards looking like the badass on the right. Another cool feature is that finally I have a helm that you can use the /visor command on. The above image is with the visor snapped down.

Now begins the slow climb to 50, but at the same time I have a bunch of other classes that I want to level. I feel like I would probably be better served pushing the Warrior to 50, and then using the xp bonus on all of the other classes I level. However right now we have a large number of guild members staggered in level. As they need dungeons I am usually at the vanguard of folks offering to go along with whatever alternate class fits the level range. Quickly becoming my secondary is the Archer, and I managed to get it to 25 this weekend with numerous dungeon runs. I think bard will more than likely be the next job I pick up.

Sword and Bored

Additionally I worked on my Gladiator a bit over the weekend. I managed to push it up to 25 and have it read to tank Toto-rak if anyone needs it. I really want to be a Paladin eventually, because I would like to have both Warrior and Paladin maxed out so I can choose which tank class best fits the encounters we are facing. I feel I do a good job at playing the class, and I rarely have the threat problems inherit with the class in general. The problem is… Gladiator is just not a fun class for me. Compared to the Marauder it is just a boring class with nothing much interesting going on other than spamming savage blade and occasionally stunning something. I wish I had leveled it first… because Marauder would have been a breath of fresh air compared to it.

I really don’t feel much pressure to level a gladiator however, because we have at least two players coming quickly through the ranks that have chosen that as their main focus. Ultimately if we as a guild encounter things that require the paladin abilities, we will at least have access to them as a class. I feel like I am probably better spent pushing up my Dragoon to 50 or getting Archer to Bard and running it to 50. Being able to play a high level dps in additional to a high level tank seems more beneficial. I still feel like eventually I will level most of the classes, but I feel like I have put a pretty massive dent in them so far.

You can check out my character on the lodestone… but the summary is…

Warrior – 45
Dragoon – 32
Gladiator – 25
Archer – 25
Pugilist – 20
Thaumaturgist – 6

Essentially I am working on pushing up all of the disciple of war classes so that I can turn the lower tiers of gear into materia and clear out some inventory space. Once I get the archer to 30, I will likely start working on the pugilist to push it up. I can’t really see playing Pugilist/Monk as a main class, since it is even more positional than the lancer… but it is fun to play around on it. I have to say though that they are completely screwed when it comes to fates. They have no viable AOE early on, and no ranged attack to tag mobs with… so essentially you just have to spam attacks on whatever you can come in contact with. In the world of Quick Nock, Overpower, and Ice 2… you are just screwed for contribution.

Wrapping Up

Well I need to get downstairs, feed the animals, pack up my laptop and get on the road. This weekend overall was an extremely relaxing one. Combining watching movies and working on classes in FFXIV I really enjoyed myself. The one thing I have enjoyed about FFXIV more than anything at this point is the grouping. There are several touchstone moments in the game that require a group to get past, and as a result everyone is always ready to do more grouping. The fact that they scale you automatically, and give you decent experience for your own level is a huge plus. I hope you all have a great week ahead of you, and that you get accomplished whatever needs to be accomplished.

Garuda Sucks

September 22, 2013 by Belghast

Casey Jones?

I was extremely slow starting this morning, continuing to fall back asleep from 7 am til roughly 9 am. When I finally got up and around I did what I do every morning, and ran off to forage for food. Generally I run to QuikTrip for sausage rolls, which is a gas station chain based in Tulsa. If you do not have the miracle that is QuikTrip… you won’t really understand how gas station food can be that amazing. On the way back into the neighborhood I saw two young boys, one chasing the other. I could see he had something in his hands, and as I drove closer I noticed it was a rubber katana and a golf club. My immediate thought was… whoa is that kid playing Casey Jones?

I think of the Turtles as being a figment of my childhood, as I can remember buying the original indie black and white comics, and the first series of playmates toys where all the turtles had trademarked red bandanas. But the longer I thought about it… the more I realized that sure enough that kid COULD be playing Casey Jones. The TMNT franchise has been rebooted every few years to a point where kids of almost any age could easily recognize everyone’s OTHER favorite psychopath with a hockey mask.

As a tween I thought Casey Jones was the coolest, some kind of cross between a ninja and the punisher (another favorite character of mine). Likely the two boys were just fighting with whatever they happened to have their hands on. I remember my friend and I used to sword fight with baseball bats. That was when I learned that a wooden bat can pretty much cleave an aluminum bat in two…. but that is a tale for another day. Seeing the two kids running around like that made me super nostalgic. I remember my cousin and I went through a phase where we went NOWHERE AT ALL without a slingshot and a bag of rocks. Granted I grew up in the country… so that was entirely reasonable given that I have used said slingshot to thump a bull and get him to go the other way.

Tokyo Game Show and FFXIV

This week the Tokyo Game Show has been going on, and unlike the various western game conferences it has been pretty closed door to the public… or at least closed door to anyone who does not have a fluent understanding of Japanese. Luckily Dual Shockers has posted a pretty good write up of the various 2.1 announcements for Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. The awesome part is… there is a TON of content expected to release for the first patch. So far the items that have been confirmed… Good King Moogle Mog primal fight. New extreme modes for Ifrit, Titan and Garuda… and after doing normal mode Garuda last night, I don’t want to see what Hard mode looks like… let alone Extreme mode.

Additionally they are adding player housing for each of the three grand companies, daily beast quests, and treasure hunting mode… neither of those two I understand but they both sound extremely enticing. Additionally they are adding a pvp arena system at Wolfs Den, one completely new dungeon, and two new hardmode dungeons with new boss strategies. They also announced that there would be limited time free transfers to a server of your choice in October, to help join together the various people that were split up by the server caps. Finally later this year they announced that there would be cross over events with Dragon Quest X and Final Fantasy XI both of which appear to reward unique pets for FFXIV.

That is a lot of goodness, but I have not heard a timeframe for 2.1. Considering I have yet to cap out, and I have an army of alternate specs to level… I am sure I can hold on the current content for awhile. I have always loved the art style of the Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games… so I am looking forward to collecting the cute little golem pet. Here is hoping they do this as a duty… and not some random spawning fate. The whole random drop pet/mount thing has not really worked out too well for any of us in Rift, and most of us have not collected more than one color of Hellbug.

Garuda Sucks

Both Ifrit and Titan were extremely enjoyable encounters. They introduced us to the concept of a primal fight, and I believe eased us into the difficulty of the encounters. In both cases there was this one thing you had to watch, and if you did it… you pretty much won. As various guild members have gotten up in level I have looked forward to tanking or dpsing these encounters to get them through. They are both extremely fun fights to participate in. Last night we took on Garuda… the third primal encounter… and I have to say no one will be looking forward to repeating this one.

The problem is… I am trying to think of ways to explain how big of an increase in difficulty the fight was from the other two without really spoiling the fight OR the other two. We have tried really hard to go into every fight cold and figure things out on our own. This of course has meant a lot of deaths as we figured out just what the mechanics were doing. I think we had somewhere less than ten deaths last night… but not sure just how far from that number we were. We latched onto one of the central concepts of the fight extremely fast. As Tam said… this is not our first rodeo… so if a fight gives you a thing to hide behind… chances are they want you to hide behind it at some point.

The big problem that I saw was the sheer amount of damage I was taking as the tank. The various people in the know have all said that they wait until they have completed their 45 class quest to do this fight, since that fight rewards you every piece of an armor set but the chest piece. Additionally I could have outfitted myself in at least a full set of the level 45 heavy mithril armor set… which self buffed gives me about 300 more hitpoints from what I did the encounter with.

Being the stubborn bastards that we are, we pulled and pushed and prodded on the encounter until we finally beat it. I just have to say though… this is the hardest fight to date… filled with “all manner of fuckery” as Tam commented last night. I have so much fear and loathing about what the various hard mode version of the primal fights could bring, especially considering how close a call making it through normal Garuda was for us.

Wrapping Up

Well time for me to finish this up and get on with the day. I am sure I will be logging into FFXIV to hang out with the guild, maybe even venturing into Rift to try and finish up 58. Yesterday we did a lot of running around town, so I think today for the most part will be a stay at home day. We have to go out this afternoon to meet someone to buy my wife another Miche shell. For those not familiar with this concept… it is a weird purse with changeable appearances. My wife has suddenly become enthralled by them… and since she is always so damned good about my Lego expenditures… I figure it is only fair that I am cool about her growing collection of purses.