Then, if you'll excuse me, but I'm in the middle of 15 things, all of them annoying.
Saturday, May 19
Cheerful Afternoon
Stretch goals:
- [UNLOCKED] $350k - Dual wielding pistols.
- [UNLOCKED] $360k - 25 extra pieces of unique item art.
- [UNLOCKED] $375k - Additional end-game boss monster.
- [UNLOCKED] $385k - 25 more pieces of unique item art.
- [UNLOCKED] $400k - A new environment set.
- [UNLOCKED] $412k - 2 additional monster types.
- [UNLOCKED] $425k - Three large, high-level dungeons.
- [UNLOCKED] $450k - Savage two-handed melee weapons.
- [UNLOCKED] $465k - Additional end-game boss.
- [UNLOCKED] $480k - New survivor town.
- [UNLOCKED] $480.5k - New and higher-quality developer beer!
- [UNLOCKED] $490k - 2 additional monster types.
- [UNLOCKED] $500k - A new dungeon art-set.
- [UNLOCKED] $520k - SURVIVAL MODE!
- [UNLOCKED] $535k - A new faction and story-line!
All the stretch goals beyond $480k were added and achieved in the last 24 hours.
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And Now, An Overworked Minx Pulling Four Shifts As Substitute Site Mascot
Art by the supercalifragilistic Chelsea Rose.
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Friday, May 18
Schadenfreuded
So, Diablo III is out, and people bought it despite the fact that the always-online-DRM-crap obviously wouldn't work, and it doesn't work.
So, Diablo III is out, and people bought it despite the fact that the always-online-DRM-crap obviously wouldn't work, and it doesn't work.
Ha ha!
Me, I'm waiting for Torchlight II, which isn't out yet, but won't be completely crapped up either. And runs one third the price.
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Wednesday, May 16
Dear Fuckheads
Yes, you, who thought it would be a great idea to ruin people's websites with your horrible spam when it gave you a tiny boost on Google, and, now that your misdeeds have caught up with you, are issuing entirely baseless DMCA complaints -
Yes, you, who thought it would be a great idea to ruin people's websites with your horrible spam when it gave you a tiny boost on Google, and, now that your misdeeds have caught up with you, are issuing entirely baseless DMCA complaints -
I will cheerfully remove the offending links. Not only that, but I will also ban all the IPs involved, all IPs registered to your company, all URLs and trademarks and product names, and anything else even remotely associated with you or your business, from ever appearing on any site I run.
And may your businesses, whose names you value so highly, founder, fail, and rot in bankruptcy hell.
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Monday, May 14
Also Also Wik
Before I forget, there's also this:
Before I forget, there's also this:
Yes, it's an updated X-COM clone. Of course, updated X-COM clones already exist, but they've failed to recapture the magic, and there's a real X-COM coming soon, but it's been simplified from the original, so there's still room for another attempt.
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Sunday, May 13
Purely Coincidental, I Tells Ya. Purely Coincidental.
Although the game may vaguely resemble a familiar family entertainment...
Okay, although the game may closely resemble a familiar family entertainment, it's not like it at all. It works rather in reverse, starting with a bustling happy city and proceeding toward the titular doom, the winner being the player bringing about their particular form of doom first.
And the special editions ($75 and up) come complete with pewter figures of the Elder Gods, which is not something you want to miss.
If you know what's good for you. 
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Friday, May 11
Creatively Clouded
So Adobe's new software rental model is finally out, and a lot cheaper than the previous version. And I noticed that they're offering a significant discount if you sign up for a full year and already have a license for any of their professional products version CS3 or later. Given the number of applications and bundles I've bought over the years, surely I'd have something that will do the trick.
So Adobe's new software rental model is finally out, and a lot cheaper than the previous version. And I noticed that they're offering a significant discount if you sign up for a full year and already have a license for any of their professional products version CS3 or later. Given the number of applications and bundles I've bought over the years, surely I'd have something that will do the trick.
So, let's see (shuffle, shuffle...) Macromedia Suite Version 8? Probably not. Aha, Fireworks CS3 license key. Type type type... Achievement unlocked: 40% discount! Achievement unlocked: Adobe Everything!
I will of course be too busy to ever do anything with any of it, but that's not the point. The point is, mine!
Update: There we go, I now have working installs of CS3, 4, and 5 Design Premium, and CS6 Master Collection. Skipped over CS5.5; it didn't really seem worth the effort.
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Thursday, May 10
Things That Are Sort Of True #1
The last veteran of the Crimean War only died in 2004.
The last veteran of the Crimean War only died in 2004.
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Wednesday, May 09
Minx: Tales From An Adorable Universe
more...
Fiametta, music lover and podcast addict from mee.fm:
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Win Some, Lose Some, But Mostly Win
No servers are on fire today, so I can spare a moment to check over my Kickstarter pledges.* Only two of the projects I backed have failed so far. Bit of a shame in both cases; MetaCell II looked interesting, and Popchilla's World looks like a good idea and something worth developing.
Starlight Inception didn't look like it would make it until about an hour before it ended, when the pledge rate suddenly went through the roof.
These have reached their goals and are still open. I'm really looking forward to Grim Dawn, which has been in development for a couple of years and already looks awesome. And Almond Quest is as cute as a bug sandwich.
The others are all pen-and-paper RPG projects, which are just thriving on Kickstarter. Without the uncertainties and expenses of computer games, or the odd production requirements of board games, they can set small goals for quirky projects, and very often, exceed them by miles.
Together with Hasbro / WotC / TSR's remakably liberal licensing of the older versions of AD&D, this has generated a mini RPG boom.
And these still need your help!
Drifter is a space trading game in the tradition of Elite; it's mostly complete on iOS and raising funds for a Windows & Mac port. It's doing pretty well with more than 50% of the goal raised so far.
Kinetic Void is a spaceflight sandbox adventure thingy. I think the loose definition and the fact that it's at an earlier stage of development (so no gameplay videos) are hampering the pledge drive. Still, I was willing to toss $10 at a potentially interesting indie game.
Republique is an SF action game for iOS / Windows / Mac. They've already raised $300k out of an ambitious $500k, but with less than three days to go, it's looking shaky.
Light Table is an experimental free-form programming IDE, one that gets out of your way and lets you code. If you've seen a recent version of something like Visual Studio, or even something like PyCharm (which I use) you'd likely know why this interests me. Visual clutter is the order of the day; PyCharm is wonderfully functional by very annoying to actually use.
On a good day I can spend 10 hours in an IDE, so if something comes along that makes me even 10% more productive, or even just 10% happier, it will pay for itself in no time.
Light Table has nearly reached its goal, but they're looking to raise more money to added support for more languages, and Python is the first stretch goal.
Update: Last Minute Surges 'R' Us, and Republique crosses the finish line with 8 hours to spare.
* INAA.
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Saturday, May 05
Currently Hiring
Tech support fairies. Must have own wings and fairy dust.
Tech support fairies. Must have own wings and fairy dust.
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We Interrupt These Faces For
Drifter: A Space Trading Shut Up and Take My Money.
Okay, sometimes the developer isn't the ideal spokesman for the game, so here's some footage of the game itself:
The game is already well into development for iOS (iThingies); the Kickstarter project is to raise funds to do Windows and Mac ports. They've raised 20% of their target in 20 hours, so it's looking promising. Just $10 for the digital download.
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Thursday, May 03
Software For The Talentless Hack, Mid-Week Edition
This little Flash facemaker is kind of neat too.
This little Flash facemaker is kind of neat too.
Only problem is a slight lack of variety; there's only one head shape and only one skin tone. Hope the creator chooses to extend it.
Let's see how they look littlesized:
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Sunday, April 29
Software For The Talentless Hack
I've been tinkering with RPG Maker VX Ace the last hour or so.* It's a system for building old-school JRPGs - think Final Fantasy III or thereabouts.
Yes, a winged bunny girl.
I've been tinkering with RPG Maker VX Ace the last hour or so.* It's a system for building old-school JRPGs - think Final Fantasy III or thereabouts.
It's got the usual tools you'd expect, like a tile-based map painter, event triggers, a database where you can define characters, classes, skills, monsters, equipment and so on, and a neat little character designer that creates a portrait and matching sprite like so:
And it's programmable in Ruby. It doesn't have the full Ruby standard library - for good reason, because that would make it too easy for games to mess up your system - but it has the full language and a useful set of game libraries.
If you don't mind the old-school graphics, it looks like it's a very flexible system. You can alter all the standard character classes, skills, spells and so on to fit your own design, and anything you can't create directly in the game tools can be scripted in Ruby.
So if you're a programmer with no art skills to speak of looking at creating an early 90's JRPG of your own, you might want to give it a whirl.
* While waiting for a three failed RAID arrays to be repaired.
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Benchmarks: E3, E5, 6200
Comparing Kurumi (Xeon E3 1230), Midori (Opteron 6272) and A12 at my day job (dual E5 2620)
| Threads | Kurumi (E3 1230) | Midori (6272) | A12 (E5 2620 x2) |
| 1 | 385 | 289 | 241 |
| 2 | 771 | 564 | 477 |
| 4 | 1216 | 1085 | 958 |
| 8 | 1627 | 1819 | 1930 |
| 16 | 1629 | 2116 | 3032 |
| 32 | 1626 | 2178 | 3126 |
The E5 2620 is the only dual-socket system, and is the most expensive of the three. It also offers the best performance under heavy load - not surprising given the greater CPU resources - but as expected, lags behind under lighter loads due to the slower clock speed.
My performance model predicted a peak score of 3055; it actually outperformed that slightly, but I was pretty close.
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Saturday, April 28
Hadn't Thought Of That
If time travel is possible but causality still holds, then P = NP.
If time travel is possible but causality still holds, then P = NP.
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Wednesday, April 25
I Hate Computers
I have now been working for 21 hours straight.
I have now been working for 21 hours straight.
Computers are evil. Evil.
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Monday, April 23
Almond Quest
This message brought to you by the No, Seriously, It's Not an Addiction Council for the Promotion of Neat Stuff on Kickstarter.
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Fringe Logic
So, we have 2009 Universe 1, 2009 Universe 2, 1985, Post-Ppocalypse, and now Post-Opocalypse timelines.
So, we have 2009 Universe 1, 2009 Universe 2, 1985, Post-Ppocalypse, and now Post-Opocalypse timelines.
Has anyone done a flowchart of cause and effect in this show? A good detailed one, including the dinosaur wormhole and the white tulip timeloop? I suspect it would end up looking like a map of the London Underground.
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Saturday, April 21
Kurumi And Midori
Midori has now been set up. Benchmarky time!
Midori has now been set up. Benchmarky time!
Kurumi is a 3.2GHz Xeon E3 1230; 4 cores with hyper-threading for 8 logical cores, and turbo mode up to 3.6GHz.
Midori is a 2.1GHz Opteron 6272; two dies on a single package, each with 4 modules with 2 cores each but with some shared resources, for 16 physical cores, and turbo mode up to 3GHz.
The Xeon E3 core is more efficient than the Opteron core, as well as running at higher clock speeds. But the Opteron gives four times as many cores at a very modest price.
Let's see how they run for single-threaded applications, moderately-threaded ones, and then huge horrible messes of applications. These scores are aggregate throughput on my little Python benchmark.
| Threads | Kurumi | Midori |
| 1 | 385 | 289 |
| 2 | 771 | 564 |
| 4 | 1216 | 1085 |
| 8 | 1627 | 1819 |
| 16 | 1629 | 2116 |
| 32 | 1626 | 2178 |
Hmm.
Things are pretty much as expected up to four threads; the higher clocks and stronger cores on the Xeons outrun the Opteron. At eight threads, the Xeon delivers a better than expected result from hyperthreading, but the Opteron delivers an 80% scaling factor and outstrips the Xeon.
At 16 threads there's no improvement for the Xeon... But there's not much from the Opteron either. At 32 threads there's little change.
So...
The Opteron is 25% slower for single-threaded applications, and 30% faster for multi-threaded ones. The performance at 16 threads is disappointing; that's probably due to a combination of the lower clock speed when all cores are active and the shared resources between core pairs. In fact, the performance gained by the extra cores in the Opteron is less than the gain from hyperthreading in the Xeon. That's a surprise, and one I hope AMD can address in future versions of the chip.
But it supports four times as much memory, so it's a much better chip for large servers.
A dual Xeon E5 2620 (the other option I was looking at) would be as much as 40% faster, based on these benchmarks, but it would also be about 40% more expensive (for the same amount of memory and storage). And - here's the tricky part - up through 8 threads it would offer no advantage at all. A dual E5 2620 would offer 12 full cores vs. 8 dual-core modules, but its lower maximum clock speed would offset the stronger architecture, and it would offer no performance advantage until you get beyond eight threads.
A dual Opteron 6272 would be about 40% faster again - at least, for heavily threaded workloads - and at the same price as the dual E5 2620. But I've decided to go for dual servers once we get to that point.
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Friday, April 20
Unpleasant Morning
Do it. You know it's right.
The Grim Dawn project on Kickstarter is doing okay - they're up to 44% after three days - but I want to see them at 440% so they can make the game extra double awesome.
If the idea of a slick steampocalypse action RPG appeals to you, hop on over and sign up. $18 gets you the game, DRM-free, and a sense of smug self-satisfaction for sticking it to the lizard. It's from some of the creators of Titan Quest, which I picked up for $3.74 on a Steam sale and then played for about seventy hours.*
This message brought to you by the It's Not an Addiction Council for the Promotion of Neat Stuff on Kickstarter.
* In the game, you walk from Greece to China. This takes a while.
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Tuesday, April 17
One Door Closes, You Know The Drill
Wasteland 2 is safely under way with nearly $3 million in hand (actually, just over $3 million counting separate Paypal contributions).
Wasteland 2 is safely under way with nearly $3 million in hand (actually, just over $3 million counting separate Paypal contributions).
And the long-awated Grim Dawn, from the team that created Titan Quest, has just launched its own Kickstarter project.
Plus, the Shadowrun project is still running, comfortably over a million dollars and going strong.
Oh, and there's an intriguing post-Ragnaroktic role-playing/turn-based-strategy game called The Banner Saga closing in the next few days.
Of course, the first of this generation of big crowdfunded game projects only launched two months ago, so none of them have actually delivered anything yet, and it's possible they could all fall short of their promises even as they are funded beyond their goals. But given what a mess the existing game publishing industry is making of things, that would still be better than the status quo.
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Friday, April 13
Midori And Kurumi
Just placed orders for two servers with ReliableSite.Net:
Just placed orders for two servers with ReliableSite.Net:
Midori
- Opteron 6272 (16 cores, 2.1-3.0GHz)
- 64 GB RAM
- 2 x 2TB disks, RAID-1
- 2 x 240GB SSDs, RAID-1 (Intel 520-series)
Kurumi
- Xeon E3 1230 (4 cores x 2 threads, 3.4-3.8GHz)
- 16GB RAM
- 4 x 1TB disks, RAID-5
Midori will be main server, with Kurumi handling backup, logging, and monitoring tasks. Depending on how things go, I might end up adding more small servers like Kurumi to act as the web servers while Midori handles databases and applications. Everything is virtualised, so it will be easy to migrate tasks between boxes.
This is a very cost-effective solution too; it's about the same price as one Xeon E5 server, but gives me more CPUs (on the Opteron), faster CPUs (on the Xeon E3), more total memory, and a lot more disk space.
Really looking forward to getting these up and running. 
Update: Kurumi is online!
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Thursday, April 12
GamesGet
I regularly buy games on Steam and GOG, and I'm ashamed to say I've even bought a game on Origin, but I've only used GamersGate a couple of times, for things that were either drastically cheaper that way or that I couldn't find elsewhere.
I regularly buy games on Steam and GOG, and I'm ashamed to say I've even bought a game on Origin, but I've only used GamersGate a couple of times, for things that were either drastically cheaper that way or that I couldn't find elsewhere.
I just changed that in a significant way: I bought the 1C pack, the IndieFort bundle, and A-Train 9. About 100 games in total for less than $60.
It's a very mixed bag, but the 1C pack offers more than 80 games for $20, including the well regarded King's Bounty, Men of War, and Space Rangers series. Along with what I'm sure are some real stinkers, but given that the first King's Bounty game alone would set you back $15 on Steam, $5 for another 80 games is pretty amazing value.
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Monday, April 09
Joisey?
Talking to the hosting company in New Jersey, and it looks like mee.nu might be migrating eastwards in the coming months. We have been there before, from late 2005 to 2006. As best as I can recall:
Talking to the hosting company in New Jersey, and it looks like mee.nu might be migrating eastwards in the coming months. We have been there before, from late 2005 to 2006. As best as I can recall:
2003 Miami
2004 Lansing, Michigan
2005 Houston
2006 New Jersey
2007-now Dallas
I'm looking for a suitable provider in San Francisco / San Jose to replicate services to the opposite coast, but our main hardware will likely be in New Jersey.
I've got the money to spend on this, but I wasn't eager to upgrade our current systems because it didn't feel like I was getting good value. With this move, we'd be getting more hardware for less money - or a lot more hardware for the same money - which will give me scope to roll out lots of goodies.
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