Gyokuyoutama

How many times has the melody to DOTA been used in songs?

There is:

• Basshunter - DOTA
• Basshunter - All I Ever Wanted
• Daddy DJ's self titled song (Where Basshunter got the melody from)
• Pretty Rave Girl
• That Polish spinning toilet homosex song
• DVNK1 - Vi aker här i Volvon

Am I missing anything?

Install German game with apparently no English version available.

Click quit (which is in English for some reason).

Message: "Spiel verlassen?" i.e. "Quit game?"

No buttons on screen to hit, so I hit enter, only for the message to go away.  Then I assume it wants me to answer on the keyboard, so I press "Y."

I did that about a dozen times before I realized that I was supposed to press "J" for "Ja."

Fun fact: "Char Aznable" came about from Japanese people mangling the name of the French Armenian singer "Charles Aznavour."

Also I don't know if the image is supposed to be related since A Bao A Qu is also related to Gundam (name of the Zeon fortress where the final battle takes place.)  Of course it ultimately goes back to a creature that supposedly follows people who try to climb the Tower of Victory (but was probably made up by Jorge Luis Borges and passed off as an actual myth.)

Internet archive is back.

Get your winamp skins before it goes down again.

EDIT: You know, that was a joke, but swapping WinAMP skins gives me more joy than most of the ways that I use technology.

Tomoko would later join WWE.

If you watch a bunch of VTubers followed by a bunch of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 videos, this is what happens to your recommendations:

EDIT: And if we go 26 years back:

There's been a few times that someone or other here has made the point that "the internet is forever" is a complete lie and that in fact things can vanish very quickly.

But the simultaneous debacles with archive.org and wordpress really hammer home just how fragile the modern internet ecosystem is.

It would be interesting seeing how many times you can spot a Naganuma sample being used in another song.

Here's another one I've know about for a long time:

As promised a review of Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard.  It's an indie German game (and of course it's German; those guys seem to hold LucasArts adventure games in the same regard that Slavs have for Heroes of Might and Magic.)  It's a retro throwback game, and practically uses the SCUMM system, but it doesn't really ape any one game in particular.  I was strongly reminded of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, The Legend of Kyrandia, King's Quest VI, Beneath a Steel Sky and Inherit the Earth (though not as much as you'd think for the last one, considering that this is a game with anthropomorphic characters.)  So I guess we're targeting the mid-90's.  You can imagine the game as something for late Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 where CD audio was still a big new thing and get pretty much the right vibe.

The plot is about a deer named Finn who comes back home after being gone for some reason or other, only to find that his home has been ransacked and his parents are missing.  Everyone blames the wolves, but the game doesn't really hide the fact that it's really some sort of robots that did it.  Of course figuring out why robots are even around, and why they are doing this, takes most of the game (since the setting is generic medieval fantasy land.)

The game is somewhat low-res, like games from that era would be.  But this is a clear design choice, and the backgrounds look great.

 



 

We've even got some sort of medieval grunge band playing at the tavern, furthering the illusion that this came out in the mid 90's.

 



 

Really captures the feel of artists using the Super VGA card to try to paint on a virtual canvas.  The character sprites don't look quite as good, but they are serviceable, and have top class animations.  The main character has at least dozens of special animations for various actions.  I also quite like how he sorts of skips around for his default walk animation; it stresses the fact that he's a deer and gives you the feeling that he's more care free than he should be.  There's a lot of subtleties.  For example, Finn's idle animation is usually one where he blinks and occasionally glances around.  But in the more dangerous or spooky areas of the game he will pull back and tremble while doing this.

Something I like is that in cutscenes, it's still the same resolution as in gameplay.  They certainly could have animated the cutscenes at a higher resolution, since they aren't held back by the game engine or anything, but I think that doing so would just pull you out of the experience, especially when you get thrown back to the lower res gameplay.

The maker of the game said that he wanted to "put the adventure back in adventure" in that there should be a sense of exploration rather than just a narrative or a bunch of BS puzzles.  I think that it succeeds in that regard.  As you would expect there are never too many locations to go to at any one time, but they are usually varied and you will often find out that a location you had visited repeatedly is hiding some secret or other.  I won't get into spoilers, but there are some pretty big shifts in where you are through the course of the game.  It kind of reminds me of the King's Quest series at its best in that regard.

I was going to say that this is a short game, since I beat it in about 8 hours with only checking a walkthrough  three times.  But that's actually about standard for adventure games I think.  I can get these comparisons for other adventure games I've played recently: The Curse of Monkey Island: 7.5 hours, Toonstruck: 6.5 hours, Zniw Adventure: 5.5 hours, Pegasus Prime: 4 hours, Stasis: Bone Totem: 11 hours.  So it's within the parameters of the genre.  I played on "classic mode" which says that it makes items harder to find and timed puzzles trickier.  The times I did look at a walkthrough did all involve not realizing that I could interact with some object or other, or assuming that it wasn't worth it (there's dozens of rocks that you can examine, but only one which helps you solve a puzzle.)  There's a "modern mode" which is supposed to help with it, but I didn't really think that the game was unfair in classic mode.  Then again, I have played something like 30 or 50 adventure games before so your mileage may vary depending on your experience with the genre.  In any case, it definitely doesn't follow the modern trend that some adventure games have done by having "puzzles" consist of being told you need an item and then having your main character tell you where you need to use the item.  There are hints that you can get by examining objects and talking to people, but you will have to think things through.  This is an adventure game so some of the solutions were off the wall, but nothing stuck me as completely illogical or something that should have been easily avoidable given your resources.  If you've played adventure games from the time period that this is targeting, you will be satisfied with the gameplay.

You can die in the game, but the game will throw up a save icon when you enter a region where you can get killed.  If you choose not to save, that's on you.  I find this a nice compromise between the brutality of classic games and the "can't fail no matter what" attitude of modern adventure games.  The deaths are both brutal and comedic at the same time, which does fit with the likes of King's Quest.  I don't think that it's possible to get yourself into a situation where you can't win because you fucked yourself over somehow; at least I didn't run into any and I noticed that the way that you interacted with certain items definitely was there to prevent you from losing an item you would need later.  Similarly, if you need an item late in the game, you will always need it to solve a puzzle before you reach a point of no return.

There is a lot of detail put into the game.  It's not to the insane degree that the first Edna and Harvey game was, but still way more than they had to.  For example, most characters will have unique reactions to being shown your inventory items.  They will have a "I don't know what that is/I have no opinion about it" generic reaction, but I found that they only gave it to maybe a quarter of the items I showed them.  Some of these reactions contain hints, but mainly it's just world building and telling you more about the characters.  There's also some minor stuff like when you pick up a fish to solve a puzzle and you can choose to take it back to its lake (though there is no in-game reward for doing so) or leave it in your pockets to die (if you are a horrible person.)

I don't like the English voices very much, and Finn in particular sounds like an annoying wimp.  I didn't have any problems with the German voices.  Finn still is overly cheerful, conflict averse and kind of a coward, but he comes across much more as someone who prefers to find a clever way to solve a problem than someone who is just woefully unprepared for an adventure like this.  I'm not fluent in German, but there are subtitles and you can swap the language for those independently of the audio.  When I understood the audio it mainly lined up with subtitles, though there were a few places where the German audio was a short matter of fact statement like "I'm scared/ich habe Angst" but the English subtitle was much longer with a pun or other joke.  But overall it seemed accurate.  Music was fine, though the only piece I can remember after the game is the main theme.  They sell a soundtrack now; I don't see any need to get it.

The story of the game isn't exactly groundbreaking since I've seen every idea it used done somewhere else, but at the same time it does have plenty of twists and turns.  It did feel like it ramped up at an appropriate pace, both in terms of the threats that you face and the way that it explains the mysteries of the game.  You will run into plenty of points where you aren't sure what to do, but I got through most of them without hints and can't recall any points where I got through things just by clicking on stuff until something happened; it was always a matter of guessing a solution and then implementing it.

Basically if you like adventure games, you'll probably enjoy this.  If you specifically like early point and click CD adventure games from the 90's, you'll definitely like it.  I look forward to more from WatchDaToast, just like I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel to Zniw Adventure.  Speaking of WatchDaToast, he also did some Doom WADs, though the first one is really more of a Wolfenstein 3D homage.

I'll write a more detailed review of Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard in the future, but for now I just have to note that not only does it allow you to climb a ladder straight into a vat of acid, but if you do this the main character will pause halfway through the climb, say auf wiedersehen, and cheerfully jump to his doom.

10/10

Same rap:

(It's actually some sound library rap that both games chopped up and rearranged in different orders, so you don't get every line in either version but you can definitely hear the repeats.)

I think I understand Twin Peaks pretty well, but I've never been able to make sense of when these scenes are supposed to occur in the series:

I've played a bunch of European games (mainly adventure games which weren't originally in English) which will boot up with some flags.  Obviously this is a language selection, but it often doesn't say that.

It made me think that a good way to start up a sort of meta-parody game would be to have the same prompt of flags, but have it be a game where you are the US president and what is actually going on is that you are selecting which country to nuke.

"Understood Mr. President.  We will launch missiles at the United Kingdom immediately.  I sure hope you know what you are doing."

Going through those old SNK and Atari collections, as well as the later discussion of the Dreamcast's anniversary, made me reflect on just how much of a gap there was between the arcades and the home market until the sixth generation, though it was especially insane in the first three.  For example, in 1984 in arcades you'd be playing something like this:

while at home it'd look like this:

Or for something a bit more obscure, try Peter Packrat:

and the Commodore 64 port:

The arcade games are about a generation and a half ahead, and that's without getting into control gimmicks or things like Dragon's Lair use of laserdisc video.

While there has always been arcade emulation, the emulation scene has very much focused on consoles, and since the Dreamcast home ports have generally been identical to or good enough for all practical purposes.  This makes it hard to remember just how impressive arcades were through the mid 90's.  I suppose even after that point you still had games like DDR, light gun shooters, etc. which still offered a different experience than what you could get at home, but gone were the days of going to the arcade and saying "wow! I didn't think it was even possible for video games to look this nice!'

Also

She reached the US markets 25 years ago today.

How time flies.

EDIT: Thread theme:

I stumbled across something much more interesting.  Really it's the channel that is interesting, but this video in particular is wild:

Lots of art from various M:TG cards, mainly from Tempest through Mirrodin block (1997-2004).  The sound is from anime that I don't recognize.  The art almost seems random but certain images repeat, in particular Zodiac Pig  The title of the video is 俺が真の女性恐怖症トラウマ無双だ！！俺を怒らせた！！！ meaning something like "I am truly unmatched in gynophobia! You made me mad!"  The channel's title is 女性恐怖症, meaning gynophobia (i.e. fear of women.)  Most vides on the channel are simply gameplay videos or clips from advertisements, but they always have weird titles like this.  For example, this video is just an ad for Jojo: Eyes of Heaven

But the title means "Mesukemo are scary mesukemo are scary" where "Mesukemo = 雌獣" i.e. female anthro characters.  The description is this statement repeated something like fifty times.  Your guess is as good as mine as to what that has to do with Jojo's bizarre adventure.  Or how about this one:

The title means "I hate Nate and Whisper from Youkai Watch," but the actual video is clips of Brolly from the Dragonball Z videos.

Most of these titles are repeated over dozens of videos, with no relationship between the videos with the same titles that I can discern.  There is a focus on Jojo, SRW, Fist of the North Star and Project X Zone though.  The titles are generally complaints about women or humans in general, though when some specific character is named it's almost always from Youkai Watch.  The only exception I saw was one talking about Quess (which I assume to be Quess Paraya from Gundam: Char's Counterattack.)

Uploaded Aug 6, 2024

We have very good insulation here, but that isn't going to be sufficient when temperatures have been known to get to -40 (Fahrenheit or Celsius, take your pick.)

The funny thing is that while the insulation is for the cold, I think about it more in the summer. I have a relative in California who complains about how ineffective his air conditioner is on hot days, but once I've got the inside cool I can turn the air conditioner off and still have it be reasonable for a day or two, even if the outside temperature is 90 F+.

6 hours ago, Moby said:

Its more of an UFO. Pictured: most common model (left), the one we have installed here (right)

 

 

Water goes in, electricity heats coil, hot water comes out.

 

If you have two neurones to install it (not leave the wires exposed, hanging and/or wrapped around metal piping), they are perfectly fine.

Statistically, there are 0 reported deaths due electric showers and a few thousands due gas heating monoxide poisoning.

 

Trouble is that the way the plumbing works there's not enough pressure to get the water to the shower head unless there is already hot water flowing.  I.e. I couldn't even take cold showers.

Anyway, water heater has been replaced with a good old natural gas warmed tank.  If it wasn't something through warranty I might have considered tankless, but I dunno, other than leaking out every so many years the tanks have worked fine for me.

As for monoxide poisoning, I'm definitely not going to a non-natural gas furnace, so it's a moot point.  I don't know how the bills shake out for heating your water with electricity as you need it vs. using a flame to heat water in a tank, but I do know that heating your whole house with electricity is ridiculously expensive compared to using a gas fed furnace to blow hot air around.  Also less satisfying.  The only problem I've had with the furnace is where it refused to open the gas valve due to thinking there was no fire (due to a sensor error) so it's not on the top of my list of worries.

On 11/11/2018 at 4:18 PM, Gyokuyoutama said:

My water heater developed a big leak on Friday.  I managed to line up a replacement, but I have to wait until tomorrow afternoon for it to happen.  Major annoying thing about all this is needing to wash using water from a bowl, since the shower doesn't work without the pressure from the water heater.

Water heater broke again, and once again it happened at a time where everything was closed for several days.

On the plus side, warranty was for six years so it still counts.

On the minus side, this sucks for the reasons stated six years ago.

EDIT: I guess for better or worse I've become an expert at this.

Pro tips: Use a big bucket for the water used to wash most of your body.  Dip washcloth and soap in as necessary.

Use a one gallon pitcher to pour water over your hair to wet and to rinse out shampoo/conditioner.  Follow up with wash cloth and then wet comb to get the remainder out.

VERY IMPORTANT TIP: Only fill containers about 3/4 full using tap water directly.  Fill remaining 1/4 with boiling water (you can use an electric kettle or a pot on the stove.)  Preferably do this overnight so that when you wash in the morning the water is about room temperature instead of just above freezing.

Even if the water isn't super cold you'll still lose a lot of heat to the air due to the increased length of time it takes to wash.  So put a space heater in the next room and budget 5 minutes or so of time to lie next to it with a blanket.

If you get so tired of this shit that you just want a hot shower even if you have to pay for it, truck stops have hot showers you can pay for, and many gyms allow you to buy one day memberships.  I guess shady love hotels that you pay for by the hour are also an option in some areas, and if you have a friend in the same situation you can have wacky romantic comedy misunderstandings when you offer to the split the bill.

In other news, Valve finally admitted that they are making that game that was leaked a while back:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422450/Deadlock/

I know that there's been a lot of reporting on this before (though nobody talking about it here) but I think this is the first time that Valve has officially confirmed both the game's existence and that they plan to release it (i.e. it's not just one of their experiments that ends up going nowhere.)

As far as I can tell it's supposed to be a MOBA in FPS mode with UT2k4 movement mechanics and Overwatch-style Hero shooter aesthetics and character branding?  That seems either incredibly ambitious or the laziest take you could make, depending on whether the game design or the marketing came first.

Right now all I can say is that in the private Beta gameplay available nothing has great readability, from the character models to the UI, so I can't tell what the hell is going on.  But that's also one of the easier things to fix in Beta, so who knows.