July 31st :: Emergency Situation

[James]

Enjoy this weeks podcast, its another long one.
Mind you not as long as last week.

[kkief02]

Wooo! Podcast

[Lyinginbedmon]

So tactics was like playing the Questgiver? Interesting...

[Cybren]

FF6 was the easiest one to break if you knew what you were doing, FF5 was probably the hardest. I didn't even realize changing abilities effected your stats like changing jobs does until last year.

I liked FF8 more than 7, 10 less than that, and while the first 15 minutes of FF9 were fucking amazing, the entire rest of the game sucked donkey balls. I never even got into 12.
Also I couldn't stand party switching in FF10. It made no sense. Why not have everyone out at the same time and just gang bang the monsters? I just never got why the FF games had progressively smaller parties with every iteration.

And all the positive attention given to Bioshock depresses me. The game was fair but was rife with faults and had a fairly bland delivery. Deus Ex should be getting all this acclaim.


(Edit as i progress into the podcast)


I always hated the argument "Don't do X, you should cure cancer" or "this was useless they should have spent their time curing cancer"

Aerospace engineers don't often advance the biomedical field. We can focus on multiple things at once, we are not dominated by a single industry nor do we (we being the western world) use a command economy.

[King Kool]

Graham, the way I make the timecode thing go longer than 1 minute is I take my entire sequence and nest it in another sequence, then apply the filter "Timecode Generator" to the single-piece nested sequence. You need to right-click on the nested sequence to open it in the viewer to modify the generator.

I apply the timecode to any rough cuts I make, so I don't get lazy and just stick with it.

Back to listening...

[Yukikaze]

My best friend couldn't stand the card game in FF8. He actually asked me to try to understand it, as I'm better at puzzles and most general excercises than him. I think I looked at it for a minute, and decided I'd never understand. The trip from start to Ifrit was so much less fun than the Reactor 2 mission in 7(or the cave mission in 6) that I put the game down and declared I would never use it again.

In FF7, there is definitely some XP leak to out-of-party characters, because I generally play through the game using exclusively Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith from exit of Midgar to Aerith's death, swap Aerith out for Yuffie(I see a pattern here...), and by the time Cloud goes swimming in the Lifestream, the other characters, while not as powerful as my primary trio, are still far ahead of where they were back in Midgar.

FFX I don't think has any XP leak, which made the character shuffling annoying. I got the airship and promptly lost the disc about a year ago.

My first copy of Okami, as well as my copies of Fantom Brave and .Hack, and the Growlancer Generations I was borrowing from a friend at the time disappeared at the same time.

Megaman: Matt, I feel for you. Megaman games are HARD!
I did get to the final area in Megaman 1.

Graham: see Humanity on Mars nothing, I want to be on a mission.
If that means I never see anyone from Earth again, I do not care, it's worth it.

[Misty]

I love Triple Triad. I have a .pdf of all the cards on my computer that, provided I get enough ink/card stock, I'm going to print out and play with in real life

[Frozengale]

I was going to be mad at Paul for not mentioning Boyd (the Schizophrenic Conspiracy Nut in Psychonauts) but thank goodness you remembered. He has the silliest part in the whole game (hopefully you've seen it by now Paul, after he makes the "final delivery").

I still yet have to complete a Final Fantasy that isn't FF VII. It's interesting to listen to you guys talk about how broken/unbroken and how good they are. I think you guys have convinced me not to get VIII at least, though I still want to get IX and finish up some of the older ones. 80 hours into XII and I still don't think I'm half way through...I even forget everything about it so I'm just starting it over. And I've been on the final boss fights in X for the past 1 or 2 years.

[ArmondoSC]

My feelings on space and space exploration are greatly influenced by the anime Planetes. Which you should all watch because it is awesome and informative. I'll try now to simplify the shows message.

As space becomes more profitable, i.e. mining tourism etc, the currently rich countries will exploit this making themselves richer. As this happens the poor countries, which are unable to profit on space resources due to the still high cost of launch vehicles, will become poorer and descend into war amongst themselves over remaining earth resources. The rich countries will then either occupy these countries or completely ignore them letting local warlords take over and drive the regions further into poverty. Which will only make these countries hate us more, causing more and more terrorist actions.

The show itself didn't delve into this right away, however the entire second half dealt with the first manned mission to Jupiter and how the resources would be divided among the rich countries only.

Pretty much I feel that when we start colonizing and mining space it should be as a planet, not as countries. However I have my doubts that we could do that at this point in time.

Anyway, go torrent Planetes. Its very realistic and deals with many real world space problems. Like no gravity and radiation and being born on the moon. And space junk, pretty much the whole show is about space junk. You may not think space junk is important but it is. How much damage do you think a inch long bolt could do? Now realize that the bolt is traveling at thousands of miles per second! Probably faster! One of the terrorist plans was to create a kessler syndrome by destroying a space station which would have grounded all space flight for years! Its a real problem we currently face, go google it!

Sorry, I tend to babel... but good podcast, keep it up.

[Emperor Gum]

I have played FF 7, 8 and 10; 8 was the weakest for all the reasons Matt stated. Tidus was annoying but at least he was in earnest, Cloud was illegitimately cool, Squall was just bland. X had a quick leveling up system, 7 had an interesting one, 8's was stupid. However, the music to 8 was by far the best.

Also I couldn't stand party switching in FF10. It made no sense.

Dude, magic? Gunblade? Hit points? Final Fantasy.

[Keith K]

It's pronounced Teeeedus! (Though both Kingdom Hearts games seem to contradict one another on the subject, the very first trailer of the game pronounced it Teedus. That gives precedence.)

And its pronounced Von, not Van, its pronounced that way right in the game.

The voice acting in FFX was compromised to try and lipsync the japanese. They abandoned it in FFXII when it didnt work well in X. Hopefully they resync the lips in FFXIII, we'll see. Square-Enix are really lazy assholes when it comes to localization.

FFX-2 starts out a lot worse than it actually is. It has a very good on-the-fly job change system which is pretty awesome. Unfortunately the story is not good enough to have played through it enough to get the real story. I also started FFXI shortly after FFX-2 came out, so I lost interest.

Fact is: Matt is right, FFVIII is terrible and the worst game in the series, even worse than MysticQuest.

[Cake]

It's pronounced Teeeedus!

No. It isn't.

read: rules of English.

[Lord Chrusher]

Paul and anyone interesting in computers I highly suggest that you learn Python. It is an easy, powerful language which is highly versatile. While there are some things I like about Perl it can easily turn into gibberish.

[Yukikaze]

It's pronounced Teeeedus!

No. It isn't.

read: rules of English.

Game was originally made in Japan. Ergo, use Japanese pronunciation rules.

Teedus and Von.(and "Seed," though it seems everyone and their brother pronounces it "sid." Maybe there was just greater precedence in fans, there.)

As for lipsync... Valve actually has their facial animations encoded into the voice files for localization purposes. While I can understand why Advent Children wasn't voice-synced for English(shudder!), there's not really any excuse if your graphics are realtime.

Apparently, Auron's VA used the fact that his mouth is almost always hidden behind his collar to great effect.

[jtaylor]

Paul and anyone interesting in computers I highly suggest that you learn Python. It is an easy, powerful language which is highly versatile. While there are some things I like about Perl it can easily turn into gibberish.

What is your opinion as to Python vs. Ruby?

[Lord Chrusher]

Never used Ruby. A large part of why I use Python is that there is a Python wrapper for the most commonly used astronomy data processing package. I have had mixed feelings using Python with web design. I disliked using Zope although I was quite pro Perl and anti Python at the time causing me to replace the previous system with one based on Perl and a lot of JavaScript. However in the last week I have been working with Mod Python which I have enjoyed.

[jtaylor]

I found Ruby to be designed better than Python, and some things made more sense than they did in Python. However, I have abandoned both because I prefer semicolons and braces and static typing.

[Cybren]

It's pronounced Teeeedus!

No. It isn't.

read: rules of English.

Game was originally made in Japan. Ergo, use Japanese pronunciation rules.

Teedus and Von.(and "Seed," though it seems everyone and their brother pronounces it "sid." Maybe there was just greater precedence in fans, there.)

As for lipsync... Valve actually has their facial animations encoded into the voice files for localization purposes. While I can understand why Advent Children wasn't voice-synced for English(shudder!), there's not really any excuse if your graphics are realtime.

Apparently, Auron's VA used the fact that his mouth is almost always hidden behind his collar to great effect.

It's pronounced "Sid" because Cid is a real name. Just like it's "Tide-uhs" rather that "tee-duss", because that doesn't sound stupid[/i]

[Graham]

Game was originally made in Japan. Ergo, use Japanese pronunciation rules.

Tell that to the voice actors.
If you're localizing the game, you change pronunciations like that.

Tie-dus
Vahn
Sid

[Paul]

Since I am a web developer by trade and interest, I tend to look at all scripting languages in that context. The most important requirement I have for a language is that it allows me get a finished project out the door and online as quickly and easily as possible, so I use PHP for the simple reason that it is very reliable and works in almost any web hosting environment.

Whenever I look at a new language, I get all excited about all their cool innovation to make my life easier, and then realize that I can't get the stupid thing to run without a specially configured server. I have played around with Python/Django a bit and have read a lot about Ruby on Rails, but without an easy, reliable way to deploy your applications in a crappy shared hosting environment, you might as well be programming in LOLCODE. Python is almost there and I am very tempted by some of the cool admin stuff in Django, but I haven't yet had to time get it working.

[Telaril]

If you were going for complete authentic pronunciation of the kana, it'd be "Teeda." So I don't feel bad going with Tide-us, because they've already acknowledged that the original japanese name is inappropriate for the US.

I mean, you could also argue that Yuri Hyuga from Shadow Hearts should be Urmnaf Bort Hyuga, or that you should pronounce Yuri as "Uru." But one of the aims of localization is to make things sound good and natural, and Tide-us sounds more natural to me.

Hehe, Bort.

[jtaylor]

I stopped trying Ruby on Rails for the same reason.

[Cybren]

Anyway let's not forget that proper localization can contribute to a gains overall quality. FF6 is particularly well known because of the quality of Woosley's translation.

[Tetsubo]

Lazy Town was mentioned on the cast today. I thought this might be entertaining:

Lazy Town - Post Apocalyptic World?

From the Kenzer Boards:

I've been watching Lazy Town for some time now. I can't help it, it's the only thing on aside from news before Gillian goes to work. Doesn't matter, because it's a very fun show that unlike most children's shows I do not despise. But I was talking to Wyatt and he mentioned he was replaying the game Fallout, and that reminded me of a theory in the back of my mind. I think Lazy Town actually takes place in a delusional post-apocalyptic world where all the main characters are suffering from some kind of radiation poisoning. While it's possible to argue anything about anything these days (and people online often do) I think it's amusing just how well this view holds up.

Please note I say "some kind of radiation poisoning" because my theory also allows for the fact that something other than traditional nukes were used. Allow me that much leeway.

First of all, let's look at the survivors...er I mean cast. In the town of Lazy Town (which appears from the air to have between 50 and 100 houses in it) there is a grand total of SEVEN permanent residents. That's it. Seven. Nine, if you include Stephanie and Sporticus, but she's visiting and he might be a figment of their imagination. That's a whole other topic. There are three adults - Mayor Meanswell, Miss Busybody, and Robbie Rotten. The others are all children - Ziggy, Trixy, Stingy, and Pixel. None of the kids have parents. NONE. They're never even mentioned. I suspect they all died while the children were to remember them, leaving the Mayor and Meanswell to indirectly raise them.

Let's look at the town itself - not a single straight line to be found anywhere. Everything is curved, sloped and twisted like a caricature. Surely it's all been warped by some strange kind of fallout, the same kind that has affected everyone's minds to think they live in an idylic pastureland instead of a desolate wasteland (see below).

The people themselves are obviously no longer quite human, they're much shorter than regular humans, are all plasticy and puppet like. This must be another affect of the fallout. The only ones still truly human looking are Stephanie (but she has pink hair so she must be mutating), Sportacus (who lives in an airship far away from fallout zones, and who might not even exist) and Robbie Rotten (who lives in a deep underground bomb shelter)

There are other little things that raise my suspicion. Pixel, the local computer geek, lives alone in a house with a HUGE satellite dish, dozens of computer displays, security cameras, you name it. He's constantly playing video games fighting off wave after wave of invasions. Everything about this says “military grade” to me. I think Pixel may in fact be Lazy Towns last line of defense against mutant invasions. The games he supposedly plays probably link to robots, connected via satellite via his giant satellite dish, fighting off the ever growing army of brain dead hungry mutants inching ever closer to Lazy Town. Pixel might not even be aware of his vital role in Lazy Town's defense. Before his dad died (where is he after all?) he might have taught him how to use all the equipment by making it into a game for him.

How do we know there are barren wastelands out there? After all, we see only green fields and rows of trees in aerial views of the town. I put it to you that this is how the residents imagine it, but is not how it really is. This is supported in one episode where the Mayor makes a call out of town, trying to call Elvis on the phone (though called Johnny B Bad, it's clearly Elvis, and given that Elvis is thirty odd years dead, this only proves his mental deterioration). As he calls we see the phone call being sent out along endless length of telephone wire, through a cracked and dry desert, where Robbie intercepts it and pretends to be the singer. I suggest that this is how things really are. Robbie alone sees the reality of things, but when others are around we must view the world through their rose tinted radiation soaked glasses.

Now, this leads me to a complete re-think what is going on in Lazy Town. I believe that Robbie Rotten is, in fact, the tragic hero. Safe, secure, and relatively mutation free (his jaw is a bit warped), he's biding his time in his fallout shelter with machines that can make just about anything, waiting for a time where he can properly resurface and begin the reconstruction of mankind. In order to do this he needs to have the other survivors stay indoors as often as possible to minimize their exposure. He doesn't want them to come down into the shelter as well because, well, they're all frickin nuts. Who can blame him?

He needs Pixel to stay above to man the military hardware and keep the town from being overrun. Stingy is clearly the only one left who has any sense of monetary value, so he'll be needed to rebuild the economy. Trixy... well she's just a breeder, I'm sorry to say. And Ziggy? Well some moron has to do all the manual labor Robbie's machines can't do. The two other adults are in the twilight of their lives and won't live to see humanity rebuilt. Their purpose is to keep the children alive to create the next generation.

Robbie's plan starts out working fine. In the first episode everyone stays indoors, exposed to as little radiation as possible. Pixel is manning the defense stations from his home, Stingy is working out theories of economics... then there is a problem. An outsider arrives. She claims to be Mayor Meanswell's niece, but his brain is so fried she could have used any cover story. She seems human enough, but her pink hair is suspicious. And almost the first thing that she does is try to get the kids outside where it's still not safe to stay for long periods of time! Humanity could die out before it even has a chance to rebuild, and Robbie is not going to let that happen. He knows the children's weaknesses and manages to manipulate them like puppets back inside. He could just get rid of Stephanie, but then, she is another potential breeder and less mutated than Trixy. Better to keep her there and try to get things back the way they were.

Unfortunately, she contacts Sportacus, who arrives in his giant high-tech airship and from that point on helps encourage the residents of Lazy Town to get outside and enjoy a slow painful irradiated death.

Thing is, I'm not convinced Sportacus even exists. Oh the airship exists, Robbie's been in it. But I think it's a relic of the last great war. Perhaps even connected in with Pixel's software. Part of me believes that Sportacus is a shared delusion as the residents of Lazy Town lose their minds thanks to Stephanie's meddling. He's just too perfect, after all. I can just imagine them running around delusional, thinking Sporticus is there saving them when no one at all is there, while Robbie desperately tries to get them back indoors where it's relatively safe, putting his own life at risk for the sake of the humanity's future.

Another possibility is that Sportacus does exist, but is in fact a robot, part of the remaining post-apocalyptic defense network gone slightly haywire. After all, he has a crystal on him that lets him know when people are in trouble, and his primary function appears to be to help people. It would also explain his superhuman reflexes and agility. But something must be wrong if he doesn't realize the radiation levels aren't low enough yet to allow people to go outside. His programing has malfunctioned, and it seems unlikely to ever be fixed.

And so we have a tragedy being played out. The interloper Stephanie, whose true motives we never fully understand, has brought about the slow but inevitable destruction of humanity. Either through contaminating the already dubious genetic stock of the survivors through radiation exposure, or by having the city overrun by an army of mutants once Pixel slacks off his duties enough. It may be she was sent by the mutants for that express reason. Robbie tries to do what he can with everything at his disposal, but because of a malfunctioning defense robot (or because the survivors brains are just too fried to distinguish fantasy and reality) he is doomed to failure.

The final conclusion is inescapable: I watch too much goddamn Lazy Town.

[meisbored]

Textwall about Lazy Town or something

tl;dr