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STEAM | July 2014-3 – Let Off Some STEAM Bennett

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KarmaCow

Member
Just had a clusterfuck of stupidity on my part today.

I start my computer and noticed three worrying things. It's running a little hot (7 degrees or so higher than normal), I'm apparently uploading something, and my PS4 controller wont connect. I start freaking out because it has to be some malicious software or something else horribly wrong. I open up the case to clean out all the dust, cross reference all the active processes and do multiple scans but nothing fixes the problem. Then I realise it's because I set my display to Extend instead of Computer Only, I accidentally put something in my Google Drive folder and I unplugged my bluetooth dongle when putting in another controller.

God damn it.
 
thanks for replying


cool by me, i'm not trying to shit on the game, just give my thoughts

i often come off as like "my opinion over others" but that's not my intent

just the way i talk
np. I enjoy discussing Cage's games if it doesn't start with "fuck him and his games".

i don't think i've said they were pointless tho, but aimless. maybe it'll make sense in the end but i feel like this game would've been much better as a linear thing. just small scenes of life-sucks that build up until you get to be badass cia agent jodie.
I think there would be positives and negatives to this, as you will probably realize in the end. I definitely agree though it should have been an option at least, after you beat the game anyway. There are some subtleties that are easily lost if you don't pay close attention to everything.

at least less back and forth, at one point i was actually thinking if the order of the scenes might've been chosen randomly at the start of the game or something (which would be kinda dope)

things are kinda coming together now after the whole navajo business but damn if it took a long time to get there.
Yeah that would be a pretty sick idea actually. But in the end the order of the scenes has a reason. The first quarter is mostly justified by the gameplay, as they have to show you the fighting and Aiden controls first before throwing you into a fight, that's why the CIA training scene comes before Hunted for example. The forest scene in Hunted completely mimics the obstacle course from the CIA chapter before that, which I thought was pretty clever. The Embassy chapter introduces the Aiden exploration aspect etc.

After that the order is mostly chosen to set up certain things that get resolved in a later scene. If I had the call I would probably change the order a little bit, but not too much. It mostly fits where it is for one reason or another. I do agree though that after Homeless there was a great opportunity to reduce the back and forth a bit and switch to more linear storytelling that was missed. It still does that however, just a little while later. Navajo drags for way too long, but fortunately after that things start to pick up in the main plot. It's not really a spoiler to say that the game will only go back for 2 more scenes that are directly related to each other and the final part of the game.

After Navajo the rest is completely linear going forward (only with some small jumps ahead). At a certain point it doesn't jump at all anymore. The last third was definitely the stretch of the game I enjoyed most.

you know, i'm actually surprised you mentioned the diner thing since i never thought about that. i didn't think about that cos i wanted to check out inside a truck and it didn't let me so i just assumed i wasn't gonna get anything out of aiden that scene
There are a shit ton of hidden things, especially with Aiden. I should make a montage at some point. It took me like 4 playthroughs to find most of it I think. Some very interesting optional dialogue.

i think playing the game with friends is actually worse in this game, at least coop, cos basically one person is bored as hell while the other one plays and you're always thinking "is it my turn? is it his?" instead of just working together to get the most out of the game
I played alone for the first time, then again with a buddy. This was better as I knew what to do, but he didn't. Made for a fun experience.

i'm really surprised some of the action scenes which involve both jodie and aiden have you just playing as him as they would've been really cool situations to make you and your coop buddy coordinate with like both trying to run in the same direction with no on screen prompts
Yeah the coop mode was a very late addition. However they are looking into this stuff for their next game apparently and it has pretty great potential, especially when it comes to choices.

i really want to understand how did everyone magically get a job after
jodie falls into a coma
(imma spoilertag this a bit). felt really awkward. i can't remember if i did the wife thing cos we split playthroughs in the middle of the homeless section cos it was getting late but i got what you say to happen so i guess i must have
The scene where Jodie wakes up is like 4-6 months later. Only Stan got a job, as it's implied he had a pretty good job before his wife died. There is another possible scene I'm not going to spoil which goes a bit into that.

The game actually has a fully fleshed out timeline using real dates placed on calenders, clocks and PCs. Everything checks out too, which is pretty neat and another sign of great attention to detail. I can pretty much tell you in which year and month every given scene takes place and how old each character precisely is. If you want I can send you a picture of that.

stan is a cool character, i enjoyed him

not so much meth head jimmy and tuesday and whatnot
Stan was one of my favourites. The others are pretty secondary, but I had not much problems with them. The game makes it pretty clear where the focus lies I think. There is also something you might get at the end that goes a bit deeper here.

well what's weird is that i have full aiden control, but i know it can be set by player so i guess it must have bizarrely set itself different on both things

i'm not opposed against shitty modes (tho i'll reserve my right to call em that) but defaulting to them is like the most cynical thing ever :/
The difficulty can be set individually for Aiden and Jodie if you play coop. They both are set to Normal/Hard by default. Only if one or both players use the smartphone app it defaults that character to easy, since the app has to work with touch gestures only and the Easy difficulty is build for that. I guess if you don't use the app at all someone accidentally switched the difficulty for Jodie during install. You can change that at any point though.
 

Pelydr

mediocrity at its best
I bought the indie gala 24 hour bundle earlier. Seemed pretty cool as I was wanting to check out 99 levels to hell anyway. Everything else I will probably just idle for cards. :)
 

bakeray

Member
ModBot said:
Instructions for participants:
I am giving away 2 Steam keys. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line from the message below that corresponds to the game you want. (if you include more than one game, you will be blocked from entering). Confused? Watch this GIF tutorial or ask for help.

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Rules for this Giveaway:
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Cave Story Plus -- MB-AF865B7AA72D36EF - Taken by PLASTICA-MAN. 2 entrants total.
Brutal Legend -- MB-0779A59BF7254907 - Taken by DJSebolski. 2 entrants total.

t1406594214z1.png
.
 

ModBot

Not a mod, just a bot.
Thanks to an anonymous benefactor, I am giving away a Steam key. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line from the message below containing the game you want to enter for. Confused? Watch this GIF tutorial or ask for help.

ModBot Basics:
- Do not trade keys you win off-site to enrich yourself. Don't try to claim games you have no interest in collecting or playing. Don't claim games to give them to friends off-site.
- If the key is already taken you will not receive a reply. Replies may take a minute or two.

Rules for this Giveaway:
- This giveaway is a LIGHTNING raffle. The winners will be selected by random draw 15 minutes after the draw was created. Any games not claimed after that point will be given away first come first serve.



t1cxE6r.gif
Divinity: Original Sin -- MB-CE4A8ABFD0D1685A - Taken by rookiejet. 42 entrants total.
Early access version, includes Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity


t1406594634z1.png
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
So I can't test this code because I don't have SAM or a Windows computer to run it on right now, but this theoretically does the automatic idle processing thing jshackles was talking about. (IE it idles every single game you have card drops left in until you have no more card drops left)

*snip*

You'd need to put the python file, the text file, SAM.Game.exe all in the same folder and taskkill would have to be in your OS path. If it requires some troubleshooting in the main SAM execution loop, then... well... I can't be the one to troubleshoot it, but I'm sure a Python programmer of even modest skill would find this pretty readable.

Awesome, that should work and looks pretty close to what I had (BeautifulSoup FTW). Gonna give it a try, I'll let you know how it goes.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Awesome, that should work and looks pretty close to what I had (BeautifulSoup FTW). Gonna give it a try, I'll let you know how it goes.

Make sure you use the version of the code that I updated like 3 minutes after I posted, not the original one. I had a variable error in the second set of drops remaining detection. If you have the updated code it'll note in a comment that I edited it.
 

Backlogger

Member
So I tried using the account retrieval method to see if a key I have has been redeemed or not. Does it give you clear messaging that a key has not been redeemed or should I assume the key has been redeemed:

2014-07-28_1736.png
 

SSPssp

Member
So I tried using the account retrieval method to see if a key I have has been redeemed or not. Does it give you clear messaging that a key has not been redeemed or should I assume the key has been redeemed:

2014-07-28_1736.png

The key has been redeemed. Also, there's no way to check if the key is good or not on steam.

Edit: Account retrieval is in case you don't remember what account you redeemed a game on in case you have multiple accounts.
 

zkylon

zkylewd
oh my that's a fucking long ass post lol

what i have gotten from yours and rico's posts is that for sure this game's more subtle about some of its shit. i'm not a big fan of that because of how aiden's a toggle, tho. i've found "aiden spots" to be inconsistent to the point it's led me to believe it's basically like i said, a "progress" button, like there's a piece of furniture in the way, aiden does his thing, path unblocked. we tried using him a bunch of times and got some side-dialogue (stan's wife's picture, overhearing the adopting parents, etc.) but more often that not it was a whole bunch of nothing and a blue spot of "here's the thing you should actually do". and since i as jodie do absolutely nothing in the meantime, it's pretty damn boring.

so yeah, i don't like how they did coop at all, lots of wasted potential if you ask me, specially since at some points you like move another character with aiden, so you could've had some pretty cool ass two characters conversations and i dunno, have some friction between aiden and jodie, have aiden be an actual problem for her if you so desire.

it would've been probably a much better thing to do this as just me, even if i'm playing it with people (i didn't touch a controller for the entirety of heavy rain and still had a great time, despite all "omg i can't believe he put a weirdo stripteasing scene in the game" hilarity) for that reason. i do think these games are great for playing with friends since a lot of the fun of em comes from fighting each other over which decisions to make.

so yeah, imma probably beat it next week or something after we get our final session, and if everything comes together at the end it'd be pretty nice. i'm not having a particularly good time with the game and it'll be weird if the end changes my mind about it but i can appreciate having missed some stuff, not having the right difficulty, etc., so maybe it's not that bad.

i said it before, i don't particularly think any of his games are very good but they're always interesting and i'm just amazed he keeps finding people willing to pay for them

Ah fuck it, I'ma just buy Divinity.

FUCK YOU (CONGRATULATIONS) VOLIMAR
go for eet duder

you'll love it
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Just had a clusterfuck of stupidity on my part today.

I start my computer and noticed three worrying things. It's running a little hot (7 degrees or so higher than normal), I'm apparently uploading something, and my PS4 controller wont connect. I start freaking out because it has to be some malicious software or something else horribly wrong. I open up the case to clean out all the dust, cross reference all the active processes and do multiple scans but nothing fixes the problem. Then I realise it's because I set my display to Extend instead of Computer Only, I accidentally put something in my Google Drive folder and I unplugged my bluetooth dongle when putting in another controller.

God damn it.
lol, glad to hear none of those problems were serious. Though having the three of them together definitely sounds like trouble, so it's totally understandable if you panicked at first.
 

Hugstable

Banned
When did every day turn into epic giveaway day? I remember when it just used to be extras, or "spares" as JaseC calls them.

After sale hype, along with alot of birthdays and tons of new members, as well as the evolution of modbot with things like the payitforward rule have really brought about tons of giveaways. It's pretty fun to win stuff to, because usually once you do win, you get into the spirit and feel like giving back as well!
 
C'mon zky, spiders aren't so bad. Come and stay with the missus and I when we're back in Australia in a few months, we'll cure you of your arachnophobia or kill you trying.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Make sure you use the version of the code that I updated like 3 minutes after I posted, not the original one. I had a variable error in the second set of drops remaining detection. If you have the updated code it'll note in a comment that I edited it.

Got it. Do you mind if I alter it yet again, and potentially package it for easy distribution? Of course I'll provide credit back to you. :)

I'm going to add in Enhanced Steam's API to order the idling by most expensive cards first.
 

zkylon

zkylewd
You should just handle the pain.
brb flicking the crazy switch

Imagine if this glitched out and the trolls were still making the spider sounds! :X
they actually still make the spider sounds since it's very much an alpha but i don't mind that so much

C'mon zky, spiders aren't so bad. Come and stay with the missus and I when we're back in Australia in a few months, we'll cure you of your arachnophobia or kill you trying.
not the first invitation i've gotten to go to australia

but yet another i'll have to politely decline

and by politely i mean are you fucking insane

What do you do in LoL when you face an Elise player?
i actually play elise every now and then and she doesn't do anything to me, tho she took a bit of getting used to.

it's much worse when i'm like watching a blurry twitch stream cos like her legs look fatter and hairier (at least in my head they do) which is really what i don't like at all
 
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