Super Mega Comics Returns to Action

If you arn't familiar with Super Mega Comics, it's MS Paint slosh done all in yellow and black. This is one of my all time favorite comics, webcomic, paper or otherwise. The writing is done on a strictly anti-humor basis and most strips are devoid of traditional punchlines and have absurdity in their place. This is a formula which has been done before, but as webcomics go, Super Mega Comics did it best.

Go check em out. Here is the latest strip as a sample.

Where is Blockade Runner?

Blockade Runner was first announced about 4 years ago when Minecraft was still riding the frenzy from it's initial boom. There were a lot of articles being published at that time of people doing and making things in Minecraft that indie blogs were considering newsworthy.

The idea was to take the Minecraft style which is highly duplicated these days, and give players the ability to construct spaceships that they could then pilot, engage in space combat, explore and adventure with. There was a playable demo available at that allowed players to fly around and construct the ships, but piloting was limited and there wasn't really anywhere you could fly to and there were no resources to collect or pretty much do anything else.

They were charging 10 bucks for early access, which was a reasonable amount and a popular business model following Minecraft's release. I bought in. Young an naive. It is now 2016 and the game is not out. The site says they are changing engines, but I feel like they were the first to the party with the "Crafting in Space" idea, but it has taken so long for the game to come out, better options are already available like Space Marines and what not. I wouldn't call it vaporware, because it does look like they have a Unity Engine test together, but come on Blockade Runner, it's been years. Get it together!

EDIT:

Okay so the devs responded very kindly on Twitter to this article. Here is what they had to say:

I understand custom engines take time. And from what I gather, it is usually worth the effort. See Trackmania or Hard Reset for examples. I can't help but feel like I chipped in based on a demo which was scrapped quickly afterward.

Here is an honest technical question. How feasible is it to make your new engine Linux compatible? The original demo was released at a time before Windows 10 was a thing and Microsoft hadn't started completely shitting the bed in the OS department. I have since switched over and I'm not really looking forward to going back.

At any rate. It was nice to receive such a nice reply. I was really really taken with the original Blockade Runner concept and I'm hoping to see a finished project some day.

P.S. My ten bucks is still good for a copy of the game right? Because I haven't logged into your site for years.

Steam Sega Collection to Offer Rom Hacks

So the Steam Sega collection has rolled out Workshop support. Workshop, usually offered with games that either have a comprehensive level editor, or some kind of modding community, tends to make most games more valuable to own. But what on earth could a user get from a workshop in this case? Rom Hacks. If you own any of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games on Steam, you can get one-click, no patch required rom hacks.

I took a look at the catalog this morning and some of the games offered at this point are translations of Japanese versions such as Bare Knuckle III, but more interesting are the straight up bootleg games that are offered. I saw one workshop item for a Mario clone built off of Wonder Boy III. It's a bold move by Sega and it's nice to see the users get a little something extra.

Tiger Claw Radio #166 - Point

This is episode 166. Enjoy Chiptunes, some heart to heart from my on sight analyst, and vancast times two.


Download the episode on Podomatic

TCR Comes Out Tomorrow.

So I overslept this morning and ended up sleeping straight through the time I had allotted to complete TCR and get it up for the week.

I'll get it up tomorrow morning I promise. I hope everyone is having a good Monday! Hang in there!

CS:GO Competitive Finally Unlocked

This morning I finally unlocked competitive mode in CS:GO.

If you haven't been following, I used to play CS:GO Competitive back in 2014, but I lost access to the computer I was using. Late last year I set out to build a gaming machine slowly, one part at a time for 10 bucks a week. Including selling some of my stuff on ebay and getting a GPU for my birthday, this still took 5 months. The entire endevor was set with one goal in mind. I wanted to play CS:GO competitive again.

After many pitfalls, I got the PC up and running only to find out that Valve had instituted a policy where users need to level up over time to unlock competitive mode. The concept is to prevent high level players with lots of game experience from buying a second copy of the game solely to pick on new players. (A phenomenon referred to as "Smurfing") I finally got the game going only to be locked out of the one mode I wanted to play.

So, after playing deathmatch to level up as quickly as I could, I finally unlocked competitive this morning after putting in an additional 10 hours of gameplay since returning to action. I haven't had the chance to play a game yet. All I can say is this policy had better work to keep out smurfs.

Microsoft 3d Movie Maker (Jam Enslaver Reviews)

Jam Enslaver recently posted a review about a piece of software I have fond memories of. Here is his review followed by some discussion of the software.



I came across Microsoft 3d Movie Maker two different times in life. My friend had a demo version on an old Hewlett Packard machine which had only a small handful of the items usable, and I picked up a copy of the CD much later in life for a dollar in a bargain bin of a thrift store.

One thing that was very different from my experience and those described in this video from Jam Enslaver was

TCR #166 Postponed

Tiger Claw Radio #166 is going to be postponed until next Monday. I couldn't quite get it done. It's Sunday night right now and even though it's not that late, I'm barely awake and I have to get up for work tomorrow. Rather than push and risk falling back into hiatus again, it makes more sense to let it breath for a week and keep things going at a comfortable pace.

Thanks to everyone who has been listening and I'll resume again next weekend.

Peace!

-CF

Jam Enslaver Reviews Body Harvest for N64

Now if this isn't a trip back in time I don't know what is. Jam Enslaver was a reviewer who published videos on Retroware TV years and years ago back when I was still making videos for a side project called R-Dub Force. This particular video came out 4 months ago, and in the credits, he notes that he started work on this video 5 years in the past.

Thanks for finishing this one Jam Enslaver! You should all watch it. Also, a couple of my favorite classic episodes are embedded for your viewing pleasure after the jump.

First Week as a Linux User

So my new computer, affectionately nicknamed "The Panzer", named after the whirring sound the CPU cooler makes, has been in full effect for over a week now. The whole processes has been a roller coaster ride. One moment I'm thrilled that it's put together, then I'm depressed it didn't post. Then I'm thrilled I got the hard drive in, but then I have to deal with the fact that I forgot all about putting in a wireless card to get onto the Wi-Fi.

I have finally got all of these things resolved and I am up and running on Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon. So there are a couple of observations I have after my first couple weeks as a Linux user.

1) It Feels Great Giving Windows 10 the Middle Finger.

After a week, I already cringe at the thought of

I Nuture My Skin

Tiger Claw Radio #165 - Max Damage

Join me on TCR for this short discussion on two new chiptunes fresh from the charts, revenge, driving, and being awesome.



Download the episode from podomatic.

Tiger Claw Radio #164 - Revenge Week

Making it happen again on Tiger Claw Radio! Join us for revenge week!