Salacious Snake

This is the best part. No matter how you do a remake, the old fans will find reasons to take issue with it, but the fact that new people will be playing the game is just fantastic. Personally, I like that they're not being as slavish about recreating the original this time around.

The importance of smooth scrolling cannot be overstated, and Apple really understands that. When you're swiping your way through a document, the metaphor of pushing the page around completely breaks down if it gets jerky. The inertial properties of the page also have to be finely tuned. Even with the extra horsepower, HP may not prioritize that stuff enough (or they may be hamstrung by the OS), and that would make it absolutely brutal to use the Slate. Also, there's no way I'm going to tap on a scrollbar, so if they were to ask me to do that I would just put the device down immediately.

I really dig (initially typed dick; shows where my mind is) how the multiplayer builds on the strengths of the sandboxy/open-worldy nature of the game instead of trying to work around it or even negate it like so many similar games have done. I can't wait to get into a roving posse of assholes. I'll be getting the PS3 version. I just hate turning on the 360 these days between the ridiculous dashboard UI, the noise, and the knowledge that at any moment it's going to self-destruct. I can never get rid of it though, because I've bought so much god damned Rock Band music on it.

You can also use a bluetooth keyboard.

A friend of mine got one today, and I played Sam & Max on it. It's pretty fucking amazing. The device itself is really nice, and I plan on getting one of the 3G models. I don't see what there is to be apprehensive about. You don't have to get one if it's not the kind of device you're looking for. It's not going to invade your living room. It's like a vampire; you have to invite it inside before it can enter.

The BigDogs are coming:

I knew there was a puffin, but I don't think I picked up on its wizardliness at the time.

I'm the guy with the nautical hat. sorry about all the voxels and ray casting. It was pretty goddamn awesome to meet everyone.

That's not really true. There are a bunch of methods for rendering the double image, and there's generally a performance hit, but you don't actually need twice the framerate. For things to look good with shutter glasses it's helpful to use a 120hz display, but that doesn't mean that the game itself must run at 120 frames per second for it to look smooth. Also, using the shutter method, it's only ever rendering one view or the other at a given moment. Actual head-mounted displays can generally get away with using fairly low resolutions, or they can flip back and forth between each side or use interlacing so you're not actually rendering two full screens at a time. (Yes, I'm one of the idiot early adopters who has a bunch of this crap. I have a 3D monitor that uses polarized glasses, an HMD and two kinds of shutter glasses.) Using the parallax barrier method, the 3DS will only be devoting half the pixels on the screen to each image, which will buy back a lot of performance. And yeah, it's not that big a big deal to make a game play nice with stereoscopic 3D. You just have to avoid a few tricks that don't hold up when you can see things from two angles at once. Nintendo can publish some simple guidelines for developers to make their games look good. Whether or not it will be widely supported is still a valid question, though.

It does appear to be a parallax barrier type of thing, like what baconian linked to. I ordered a DSi XL yesterday, but I canceled it when I heard about this. (I may still get it, because it'll probably be a while before the 3DS actually materializes, but I wanted to think about it for a bit.) I'm a total sucker for stereoscopic 3D. I wish Gunpei Yokoi could see this shit.

I have a room for two all to myself that I wouldn't mind splitting. It's at the Colonnade, which is a block from the expo center. It looks like SoulChicken has Chris covered, but if anyone else needs accommodations, it's available.

I'll be there for you, goonsire. I'm excited about this thing. I'll mostly be running around trying to earn my press pass, but I'd be into a get-together. My feet hurt just thinking about it.

I'm in a weekly Hackmaster campaign that is consistently hilarious. I also have a huge collection of boardgames that I never play.

Why, yes it is! Over on the Llamasoft forums (yakyak.org), I had the actual box art as my avatar for a while, until one of the more unhinged forum members decided to make mspaint versions of people's avatars by request. I do quite like how it came out. As a bonus, I've attached a picture of everyone's favorite Reggie. I have no idea who made it.

Just made an account to say that I'm going to miss the show. It's been hilarious lately. I hope BREDON is going to be doing something cool at Bethesda. If he's destroying the podcast and leaving the Shugashack to go do something dumb like being a "community manager" then I'm going to be upset. To make it worth it, he needs to do something rad like bringing back Redguard (an Elder Scrolls game that wasn't about wandering the wilderness and picking mushrooms), or pushing for an iphone version of Battlespire. Ah well, I think it's cute that he's following in the footsteps of his big brother, Video Games Rodkin. I should vent my frustration by being a Space Asshole to some miners.