Tag Archives: science

WoW Chat #25685

Note: “DBM” is a popular add-on in the game that most people have and most people know about.  It helps with raids and has other quality of life options for the game in general.

Cloned: Thanks blizz, for forcing me to watch a cutscene ive seen 8 times,  and not letting me ESC out, and missingi my 40 min queue pop. Fuck you Xera

davepoobond: someone doesnt have DBM…

Cloned: whats that

Myuuse: lol

Stormclaw: …

Cailirath: delete now bro

Myuuse: Did you just join WoW?

Cailirath: I think the real question is why is a dk not tank queing instead of wasting a plate class

Phatgrillz: yo why are sky golems so expensive now?

Cloned: oh sorry, im not some mega nerd. that modified my WoW Ui, to look like some spaceship taking off

Cailirath: idk lol the mats are still cheap as ever

davepoobond: “mega nerd”

davepoobond: you’re just a dumby instead.  guess thats worse

Cailirath: want some ointment for that burn?

Cloned: oh sorry, i dont make my WoW gtaming experience, like im working for NASA.. sorry im one of those normal ppl that understand this is just a game

davepoobond: literally no one has the issue you are having because we are smart enough to have a required add-on

Myuuse: DBM is a simple mod that fixes dumb shit and assists during dungeon and raid fights

Myuuse: it doesn’t overhaul the UI or anything like that

davepoobond: it has nothing to do with making the game look like a spaceship

davepoobond: what a weird analogy

Myuuse: Don’t talk shit when you very clearly don’t know what you’re talking about

 

Myuuse: You’re just making yourself seem like even more of an idiot than your initial comment made you seem

Cloned: oH sorry, i dont bust out graphing calculators, and spreadsheets to determine how much damage i can potentially do

davepoobond: no one does that bro

(In Guild Chat) Dusk: he starts every sentence with OH SORRY

Cailirath: normal people have dbm

Stormclaw: It’s a good thing he isn’t in a spaceship or there’d be another challenger incident

Myuuse: DBM’s purpose is to make sure you don’t stand in fire

davepoobond: OH SORRY I DONT USE LIGHT TO SEE THINGS IN FRONT OF ME

Cailirath: Im guessing he does

Myuuse: He absolutely does

Cailirath: hes probably that dps standing there blowing cds on trash pulls

davepoobond: I ALSO DONT USE UNCLASPED BRAS OR BOTTLES OF WINES

Cloned: oh sorry i dont modify my WoW UI like some sociopath, so that it looks like a spaceship taking off… u know to some people, this is just a game

Cloned: sorry i dont bust out graphing calculators and spreadsheets to determine my DPS acceleration

Mightydwarf: How to spot a shitter

Cloned: yeah im shit, because i play WoW for fun… not like some mega nerd, that thinks WoW is like working at NASA, when they install 10 million addons

davepoobond: you are an anti-science cretin.  what is wrong with NASA

Cloned: there is a reason there is a stigma against WoW players, and its from sociopaths like him  that Call everyone shit, if they didnt modify their UI to determine complex equations about DPS

Cloned: and then he tells the casual players to Delete and walk away from the computer…. THe irony is that he needs that more than anyone

Kynsae: No, im pretty sure the stigma is that people will choose raids over real life, play all the time, and generally talk nerdy

Whicket: yo whats an addo

Cloned: its something, that you install when you lack skill

Whicket: so the fact that i install an addon to mash my bags together or see my dps means i lack skill?

Whicket: well fuck me silly im uninstalling

Tormentous: once you uninstall them your skill will increase like crazy

davepoobond: why do you hate NASA

Defect: Spaceship Destruction Kit (PC) Review

Developer/Publisher: Three Phase Interactive || Overall: 6.0

Occasionally a game comes along that reminds me of something that I used to do as a kid.  I was very much into building my own custom LEGO spaceships or random things and having them fly around and shoot at each other, making up a story in my head about all of the cool shit that was “actually” happening.  Indeed, I was just waving plastic around in the air and making noises, but it was fun to me, dammit!  Defect: Spaceship Destruction Kit harks back to my earlier days, giving you a litany of neat spaceship parts to assemble and construct, then take it out for a spin through the universe.

The concept is great.  The shipbuilding is fun.  The game design is okay.  The controls, though… holy shit are they frustrating.  When you get out of the shipbuilding menu and into an actual mission, you’re going to be fighting against the user interface as much as you do enemies.  The game controls exactly as you would expect an Asteroids-floaty-space-combat game to be, and that’s not an especially great thing.  Because there are some micromanaging aspects in the arcade gameplay, it is hard to be able to control your ship during intense action as well as make use of the “Direct Control” options.

Your crew will automatically use weapons, but they don’t hit your target very often.  When you put weapons under “Direct Control” your weapons are a lot more effective, but it becomes painfully obvious that it’s a lot harder to kill anything than it should be, especially at the beginning of the campaign.  Your projectiles usually don’t have a very long range, or are slow-moving and dissipate before they hit the moving target (these are alleviated as you progress).  It would be a lot more satisfying if anywhere near half of the shots you are shooting hit something, but in my experience it was more like 25% unless I was right on their ass.  Considering your ships start with awful engines and awful maneuverability, that wasn’t very often.  You can also use Direct Control to buff another piece of your ship and also to repair them as they take damage.  There are plenty of weapons that will one-shot you, so you’ll have to be careful.  A major impact on your performance is how well you execute building a ship that is able to move fast, have enough weaponry, and have enough armor to accomplish the task at hand.  Not an easy feat, typically.

After the first couple of missions, I hit a wall in the difficulty level, mostly because of the controls.  It became frustrating for me to constantly fail despite designing all sorts of ships and doing all sorts of tactics.  Another grating thing on my patience was that the whole level had to load again for each retry, after booting you to the mission select screen.  Considering the game starts you out quite under-powered, your enemies seem to be a lot harder than they should be, and the missions don’t seem to ramp up in difficulty in a consistent manner.  I started out on “Normal” difficulty and once I hit the wall, I knocked it down to “Easy.”  Unfortunately, there was no tangible difference between Normal and Easy that I could see.  After getting through the first few missions, about six different ones become available for play and go into different branching paths for a total of 50 missions.  The mission variety is not too bad, but tend to boil down to “kill the enemies,” and rightfully so.  You are able to replay older missions so you can unlock more parts, but at the same time you don’t want to be stuck in a grind instead of doing new missions — especially since new missions grant you the most new parts.  Not to mention, doing an old mission isn’t an assured win by any means.  To top it all off the camera constantly zooms in and out; this removes you from the action and being left with not knowing who or what is being shot at.  Getting disoriented from the seemingly-random zooms is another obstacle in and of itself.

After defeating a mission, your ship will always be stolen away from you by mutineers.  At the end of the next mission, you’ll fight that ship in a duel.  This is a sort of clever progression mechanic as it forces you to at least have to build a “better” ship than your last and you can’t always rely on your older designs as they use lesser equipment.  The double meaning of “Defect” becomes quite amusing as you have to fix the defects (flaws) in your ships, and your ship ends up being your enemy when your crew stages a defection by mutiny.  As an Easter Egg of sorts, a fun homage to David Bowie is one of the mutineer character designs.

Since the game forces you to constantly design new ships after they are stolen, it is a great way to put focus back on the ship building.  Even though your ship designs are saved, you’ll typically unlock something new after each completed mission, so you’ll want to mess around with the new things you got or try to make something completely different.  Missions usually demand a unique ship configuration, anyhow.

There is a great variety in ship building even from the start.  Your main limiter in building is Power Level, which is dictated by the Power Core you have.  You earn better Cores as you complete missions, and as you have more Power, you are able to have more Crew.  Most pieces require Power Level+Crew, but since Power converts into crew, you’ll eventually hit a point where you can’t add anything more to your ship due to your initial Power Level.  As you equip stronger propulsion engines you’ll need to balance them out with Stability, which forces you to mess around with different combinations of wings and rockets.

Defect also looks great; the enemy spaceships are unique and quite inspired in their designs.  While many pieces of ships are obviously influenced by popular media, the combination of them all together make for some interesting sights.  As you progress and acquire larger Power Cores, you’ll be able to build larger ships.  The graphics in general are pretty good and the sound effects aren’t annoying either.  The ship building user interface is also pretty simple to understand and nothing hinders that experience.  You are allowed to save up to 499 designs and share them with friends, which is also cool.  Using a controller during missions is an option, but most of the game requires a mouse/keyboard, so there isn’t much impetus to use one.

Despite all of the good things I have to say about the game, justifying giving it a low score really comes down to me not being able to derive much enjoyment from the actual usage of the ships I was making.  The controls aren’t intuitive, which leads to the levels being too difficult which leads to the game simply becoming a frustrating experience.  I can’t in good conscience recommend this game to anyone unless you’re great with floaty-space arcade games.  It may be entirely possible that none of the defects (pun!) of the game make no impact on your enjoyment, as it is essentially Asteroids on steroids with ship-building.  And much like no longer playing with LEGO spaceships in the air pretending they shoot lasers, I’ve given up on what could have been.

retrosublimislushification

retrosublimislushification – n. a law of physics in which air instantly turns into sugary neutral-taste slushy.  It does not pass through the water stage.

The process can only be initiated when a static sign stating “slushy will be ready in 20 minutes” is on an empty slushy machine.  If it has not yet happened, the sign will still read 20 minutes, so you should come back in 20 minutes and check again.  Repeat until it happens, otherwise it doesn’t happen.

School Days

Things were different when I went to school.  First of all, we didn’t have any jugs to do our math for us.  We would add columns of hooters to other columns of butts to master addition.  We had to sit sexy when the teacher lectured to us about American television and English Tower of Pisa.  Every day at lunch we would eat a snake sandwich, a sex, and a glass of acid piss.

In science lab, we dissected a stoner man and saw its bologna and warhead.  Some people got sick and did it when we did this.  Sometimes we would have a bathroom show.  Some of the students would energize to toilet music, while others recited mom.  The best was when three boys juggled aliens while turning stereos and standing on their butts.