Gaslands And Kill Team

Those are the two projects I am spending my time on right now.

Oh, and I am doing fine, just incredibly busy. Dealing with a lot of things, but its improving, if you are worried about me. And if you are, well... thanks. I appreciate it.

Monthly Progress Report For My Twitch Channel, FuzzyJCats, Nov 25 Through Dec 24

Twitch Channel FuzzyJCats

During this month of streaming, I continued to work on improving the usual chatting and gaming at the same time, and not using filler words, though I noticed I constantly slip into using a lot of filler words as they help to fill dead air.

I was also trying to find out how we can tell if we're entertaining. Certainly watching your VoDs help you notice if you're articulate or not, if you move around too much such that you're off the facecam, but I still can't tell if my streams are entertaining.

However, I started having an inkling as to what's entertaining to viewers this month. Since the entertainment is in real-time, and people are chatting, like with everything, people find you very interesting if you ask about them and talk about their issues. This is try-hard but cbenni.com can let you review your logs so you can remember what your viewers say, so when they show up the next time, you can ask them about that specific thing. 

For instance, if they mention that they're starting a new job, you can ask them how work is coming along, if they like their new boss, coworkers, and so on and so forth.

So another try-hard method is after each stream, I have been more or less writing these topics to talk about when the viewer shows up next.

Again, this is very try-hard, but it can help not only make your chat more entertaining for specific viewers, but with these topics on hand, it will help reduce dead air.

Aside from the usual goal of chat and gaming ratio, working on dead air, and removing filler words while streaming, improvements to be made is to be more aware of my viewers so I can ask them about issues next stream. 

The How of Happiness Review

XCOM - The Long War Files

I recently became obsessed with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and decided to try out the player made overhaul known as "Long War" which expands the base game to be exceptionally difficult and in most regards more like an actual war. I decided to blog the exploits of my team in a yet unnamed project. I'd like each post in the series to be a stand-alone short story about the experiences of those involved - with some scattered pictures of the mission highlights. One of the greatest parts of the XCOM series is the stories it generates about these characters and their ordeals. I hope to capture some of that and share it here in this writing project.



Table of Contents

• Mission 1 - Shattered Apollo
• Mission 2 - Severed Line
• Casualty Report - Spectral Vanguard

The Customer-Driven Culture: A Microsoft Story - IT eBooks

The Customer-Driven Culture: A Microsoft Story

SuperTuxKart 1.0 Release

It's been a long and winding road for mascot racer SuperTuxKart, but after more than ten years of continuous and dedicated progress, the team has finally announced the release of build 1.0, marking an important development milestone for the project.

 As quoted from the official release post:

Yes, if you have followed our development a bit, that might be a bit of a surprise. But we have been asked why we don't call this release 1.0, and the majority of us developers discussed this and decided that indeed this release is a major milestone that deserves the big 1.0 number.

Indeed a nice surprise and definitely a big step forward with the inclusion of online multiplayer!

See more new features in the official release video:



As usual you can download the game here. Also don't forget to head over to our forums to provide some feedback to the developers.


Code License: GPLv3
Assets License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

This post was retrieved from freegamer.blogspot.com.

Tech Book Face Off: Rails AntiPatterns Vs. The Rails 5 Way

It's been a while since I've cracked open a Ruby on Rails book, and there were still a couple of these books that I've been meaning to read. So far the Rails books I've read have been beginner's books and tutorials. With this latest pair of books, I wanted to go deeper into Rails and learn how to program fluently in the framework. The first book, Rails AntiPatterns: Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring by Chad Pytel and Tammer Saleh, was published way back in 2010 when Rails 2.3 was cutting edge. I took a chance that the book would focus more on timeless advice than version-specific tips and tricks. The opposing book, The Rails 5 Way by Obie Fernandez, was published much more recently at the end of 2017 and should be at less risk of being out-of-date. Although, it looks like Rails 6 will be out soon. One thing's for sure: technology doesn't stand still, but that shouldn't matter too much if the books take that into account. Let's see how they fare.

VS.

Rails AntiPatterns

Most programming books will tell you the right way to do things and give examples of how to implement that advice. This book takes a different tack and instead shows you what not to do, with examples of how to refactor those mistakes into clean Rails code. This change in approach is refreshing for the intermediate to advanced programmer because over time we develop certain habits as we try to discover how to do things in a language or a framework, and they're not always the best (or even very good) ways of doing those things. Having a book to help identify where our code has gone astray and how to fix it is a helpful tool indeed.

I was a bit worried about reading a book specifically about Rails that was written so many versions ago, being that Rails 2.3 was out at the time and we're now heading into Rails 6.0. I normally don't mind reading older books about programming in general, since those books have been filtered by time and tend to contain plenty of wisdom that has survived current fads. However, this is a book about a specific web framework, so if it is over eight years old, how could it possibly still be relevant? I needn't have worried. Most of the book focuses on general good programming practices within the context of the Rails environment. Such advice is still as valid in Rails 6.0 as it was in Rails 2.3, even if some of the implementation details have changed.

The structure of the book works well, with ten chapters each focusing on a different topic of the Rails framework. These topics range from the obvious models, views, and controllers on which the Rails architecture is based, to the related services, testing, and databases that are all a part of web application programming. Each topic covers a few antipatterns with descriptions of a common programming mistake and why it's wrong, followed by one or more solutions that fix up the antipattern into beautiful, DRY code. The obvious solutions—like that views should contain strictly display logic, controllers should be thin, and models should contain all of the business logic, but broken out into helpers and plain Ruby objects—are covered along with a number of less obvious antipatterns. Some of the more extended solutions are quite satisfying to follow as the refactorings morph an ugly hack into a pretty Rails implementation.

Throughout these refactored antipatterns the authors relate clear reasons for why things should be done a certain way and sound advice on how to choose between competing options. For example, when discussing whether or not to use scopes to create chainable filters on models, they say:

There are downsides to this approach, including problems with readability and simplicity, as well as abuse of the Law of Demeter. Whether you use this approach is a judgment call on your part. Will you use the added flexibility? Is it better than defining a handful of separate finders? Like many advanced refactorings, this one has no easy answer and depends greatly on your tastes.

I appreciate the honesty of this advice. In programming, as in most things in life, not all rules are hard and fast. Multiple good options can and do exist, and in these cases it comes down to a judgement call from the programmer, given the context of the specific situation. Experience and taste will develop into a programmer's style, and as long as they're not making a poor choice for the wrong reason, it's okay to prefer one viable option over another.

The authors aren't always so amenable to choice in correcting antipatterns. They do discourage attempts at divining the future, as in this example:

Developers new to the template pattern tend to want to err on the side of flexibility. This is a form of future-proofing, and it's a mistake—especially when working in a language as geared toward agile development and the refactoring cycle as Ruby.

It's almost always better to spend time fixing real problems in the here and now instead of trying to predict and head off future problems that may never happen.

The whole book was full of insights like these, and it was all packaged in easy-to-read prose and concise, relevant examples of how not to write Rails code, followed by how to fix it. I found it to be a quite enjoyable way to learn better Rails programming practices, and it reminded me of an old chess book that had followed a similar format: How Not to Play Chess. Seeing the mistakes that can be made and their consequences clearly laid out can prove quite helpful in identifying our own mistakes and seeing the path to correcting them. This teaching method was expertly executed in Rails AntiPatterns, and I highly recommend giving it a read if you do any programming in Rails.

The Rails 5 Way

This was definitely the longest book on a programming language or framework that I've read in a while. Weighing in at over a thousand pages, it definitely achieves tome status, and strives to be a comprehensive map of the Rails 5 framework. The forwards and introduction recommend reading it straight through at least once to get the lay of the land and see everything that's available in Rails before using it as a reference.

I would agree that knowing what tools are available in any given language or framework is half the battle when attempting to develop solutions as efficiently as possible. If you know that something you want to do is possible and you know where to look to research how to do it, then you're already ahead of the game in reaching an optimal solution. However, I was not going to read all the way through this book, considering the last third of it is a pure reference listing of the Active Model and Active Support APIs. That's skim-worthy material at best.

At least another third of the non-appendix part of the book is also reference listings of various APIs in the Rails framework. The trouble with this reference material is that it is interspersed with actual guidance on how to use the different parts of Rails. That makes it much harder to skim through the boring, tedious method descriptions without missing tidbits of more useful information, so most of the book was kind of a slog.

Obie Fernandez took a slightly unconventional approach to covering Rails, and instead of starting with Active Record, he started at a high level by covering the Rails configuration and environments, then followed the flow of a request by going into routes, REST, resources, and controllers before getting to Active Record. After five chapters of the various aspects of Active Record, he continued with Action View, helpers, and Haml, followed up by an assortment of short chapters on session management, security, Action Mailer, caching, background processing, Ajax, Turbolinks, Action Cable, and testing with RSpec. Whew. Like I said, comprehensive, and even if some things couldn't be included in depth, they were at least mentioned so that the reader could be aware of them and do more research on their own.

Some chapters were quite useful and informative, like the main chapters on the MVC architecture of Rails. These chapters contained a fair amount of good advice and recommendations that can save developers a lot of trouble, such as:

Rails' schema definition provides the authoritative record of truth for the latest version of your database schema. If you need to recreate your database on another server, you should be using db:schema:load, not running all the migrations from scratch.

Anyone who's tried to run a long chain of migrations while setting up an application on a new machine can attest to the futile debugging situation you end up in when one of the migrations inevitably fails halfway through. Using the schema is definitely the way to go. I also found the chapters on security, caching, and Turbolinks to be quite helpful, and I learned a bunch of great things that will help me build better Rails applications.

On the other hand, there were large swaths of the book that were pure drudgery. Most of the helpers chapter was like this with page after page of very similar method descriptions:

11.3.1 asset_path(source, options = {})
Computes the path to asset in public directory. If :type options is set, a file extension will be appended and scoped to the corresponding public directory. All other asset *_path helpers delegate through this method.

<...code example...>

11.3.2 asset_url(source, options = {})
Computes the full URL to an asset in the public directory. This will use asset_path internally, so they behave the same way. If the :host option is set, it overrides the global config.action_controller.asset_host setting normally set in config/environments/production.rb.

asset_url "application.js", host: "http://cdn.example.com" # => http://cdn.example.com/assets/application.js

Also aliased as url_to_asset.

Ugh. This kind of stuff is much easier to search for in the online Rails documentation when you need to look it up, not by paging through a giant book. I was also surprised at how much of these method descriptions ended with comments about how useless they were. Maybe 20% of the methods would have a description of what they did with a code example, and then Fernandez would end it with saying he had never found a use for this method or you would never want to do things this way because some other method was much better. That got more than a little frustrating as the book dragged on.

It may sound a bit strange to criticize this book for including ways not to do things in Rails, having just praised a book whose entire structure was showing how not to do things and then showing the right way, but this is different. In Rails AntiPatterns, the author was showing common mistakes when programming in Rails and how to fix those mistakes by using Rails the right way. My complaint with The Rails 5 Way is that time is spent describing irrelevant methods that may have been included in the framework for completeness or for a specific, uncommon use case, but are hardly ever used in practice. When those things are included in a book whose title asserts that this is how things should be done, it muddies the waters.

Between the appendices, the long lists of method descriptions, and the inclusion of dozens of methods that are rarely used, this book is probably three to four times longer than it needs to be, all for the sake of being comprehensive. It was light enough on actual recommendations for how to use Rails, focusing more on every single thing that's available, that a more appropriate title would simple be The Rails 5 Documentation.


I much prefer reading programming books that directly address the 'how' and 'why' of programming, like these books I previously reviewed on how to use Rails. The Ruby on Rails Tutorial is especially good and the latest version is also up-to-date with Rails 5.  Even Rails AntiPatterns is still relevant nearly a decade later because it addresses the fundamentals of developing in Rails. I would rather leave the 'what' of programming to the online documentation where it is easily searchable and stays updated to the latest version of the tools. In that respect The Rails 5 Way falls flat. It would have been a much more compelling book if it had stripped out all of the drab documentation and focused on showing the right way to program in Rails and explaining why that was the best way to do it. As it is, reading through Rails AntiPatterns and referring to the online documentation is the more productive path.

Area Handbook for Bulgaria by Baluyut, Giloane, Keefe, Long, Moore, and Walpole

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Crimson Dragon Slayer D20 Review

Here is Endzeitgeist's review of Crimson Dragon Slayer D20.

It's a solid review, but there's something I'd like to address - the "broken" cleric class.  Before getting into details, all 4 classes are kind of broken in their own way.  Which means that each one is "the best" in its own way, assuming you stick to class abilities.

I'm copy/pasting my comment, just in case it disappears from the internet.  Not because of anything the reviewer is doing, but software glitches, etc...

____

Thanks for the review, hoss!

Regarding the cleric, in play I've found that his unlimited healing works rather well. Let's say an adventuring party of 5 PCs has 2 clerics (something you might actually see, if playing Crimson Dragon Slayer D20).

This last round was brutal on the PCs. 1 guy down and unconscious (a fighter), and 2 others badly wounded (a cleric and sorcerer). There are still a couple monsters remaining. Does one cleric heal the unconscious fighter? Would that even make him conscious again? What about the wounded members of the party? Is 1d6 healing going to prevent the sorcerer from dropping if hit next round? Wouldn't it make just as much sense for the clerics to attack rather than heal, in this instance? I feel like it's a toss-up, and an interesting dilemma for those playing a cleric.

As for the thief's backstab, I see what you mean. Personally, I like things kind of nebulous so the player is forced to come up with some sort of cunning plan or sneaky maneuver to get that bonus. If he's willing to put in the creative work every single round, there's a possibility (depending on the circumstances) of continual backstabbing. A lot depends on the GM, player, and environment.

VS
____


So, I've already gone into detail re: the cleric (his lack of spell list is another drawback) and touched on the thief.  The review mentioned how over-powered the wizard can be (any spell, as long as he has enough HP to cast it).  And, if you take a good, hard look at the fighter, he obviously owns the battlefield - the most damage, the most HP, adds +1 to both to-hit and damage every level.

Incidentally, if the cleric wants to aid the wizard (allowing him to cast higher level spells) by healing him right away, that's a very doable and legal "cheat".  However, the cleric is then focusing on the wizard, and not those on the front lines.

The fantasy worlds I run are so deadly that even in a one-hour game with only 1-3 combats, PC deaths happen frequently.

On the other hand, compared to old D&D, the cleric, along with his other 3 pals, probably seem super-powered.  If I remember correctly, the old school cleric didn't even get a spell, prayer, or whatever until 2nd level.  And I'm sure that was usable once per day.  And he probably started with 3 HP.  And the party had to walk uphill to get to the dungeon... both ways!

And that's precisely why I love the OSR.  It's not necessarily shackled to however they played in 1979.  It's a mix and match of everything from the last 45 years!  Of course, a few traditional tenets must be followed, but those are also malleable and hard to pin down.

In any case, CDS D20 works great for quick and dirty online games containing one or more noobs.  I've been using this system / hack / house-rules for almost a year now.  That's not a ton of playtesting, but it's held up remarkably well so far.

You can download the FREE PDF here.  They're also included as an appendix in Cha'alt.  Speaking of which, check out the latest Kickstarter campaign for Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise.

VS

Lisa's Floor Mirror

DOWNLOAD

Mario & Sonic At The Olympics: Tokyo 2020 Review (NSW)

Written by Anthony L. Cuaycong

Title: Mario & Sonic at the Olympics: Tokyo 2020

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Genre: Sports, Party, Multiplayer, Action

Price: $59.99

---

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 is exactly as it sounds, which is to say a game that has Nintendo and Sega's iconic characters participating in the latest staging of the Summer Games. It's part of a long-running series that taps multiple licenses to generate crossover appeal. That it works, and how, is attributable to its polish; it isn't simply a product that lops together seemingly disparate intellectual properties for expediency and quick gains. Bottom line, it's an extremely well-thought-out title that succeeds in making a variety of sports — events, really — accessible to a population of gamers otherwise loath to dabble in the genre.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 boasts of a Story Mode that, owing to the machinations of Dr. Eggman and Bowser, compels gamers to participate in the 2020 Olympics and the 1964 Olympics, both in Tokyo — albeit with a twist; the former is presented in three-dimensional format, and the latter in eight- and 16-bit graphics and sounds reminiscent of those churned out by the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis. The retro presentation has 10 sports on tap, while the modern one has twice as many; exclusives in each are present, further underscoring the differentiation.

Significantly, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 gives gamers options in steering their favorite characters. Joy-Cons can be used together or separately, and provide motion, directional-pad, and button alternatives. Regardless of choice, controls are extremely responsive, and at no time do they hold back or interfere with the unfolding action. To the contrary, the technical proficiency of the interface proves a boon, especially in light of the immediacy of the proceedings. If there's any bane, it's in the waiting time required to get an online multiplayer session going; apparently, there isn't enough competition out and about and angling for a quick mini-game. And, yes, only one can be set up at a time; after a button-mashing bout that literally lasts for seconds, there is need to repeat the process.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 notably brings back the popular Dream Events, over-the-top versions of Olympic sports. Considering their potential for fun, particularly as party options, it's too bad that only Dream Racing, Dream Shooting, and Dream Karate make the leap to the franchise's latest offering. That said, the release also doubles as a repository of information on Tokyo, as well as on the characters themselves. If nothing else, they widen the knowledge of gamers and serve to elevate the title to more than mere passing fancy.

On the plus side, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 puts forth an excellent audio-visual presentation. In fact, no other release in the series looks and sounds better. No doubt, Sega was motivated to put its best foot forward given own ties to the venue of the Quadrennial. Nonetheless, it succeeds in earning its AAA price tag. For all its frailties, it manages to generate interest as a multiplayer marvel, directly involving up to eight, and indirectly keeping more transfixed, in its adrenaline-pumping offerings.

---

THE GOOD:

• The finest in the series to date
• Polished presentation
• Doubles as a repository of information on Tokyo
• A variety of control options on tap
• Quick input registers

THE BAD:

• Dream Events fewer in number
• Online multiplayer sessions take a while to get going
• Mini-games not threaded together

---

RATING: 8/10

---

A Rare Victory At Glucken Ridge

   I played a game of Team Yankee a few weeks ago with my friends at this local club called Board and Brew. I say "local" but it's a good 30 miles from my house, forty five minutes with traffic on a good day. Anyway, it's a pretty good place with plenty of tables and they have beer. So its good.

   I played a fellow I have known for several years but rarely get to see, named Anthony. I was his first opponent ever in Flames of War. He plays Italians, I play Indian Army British. Anyway, in this game, I played a Czech Force with Soviet allies and he ran an American force.

Soviet T-64s advance on the left flank - daring the Yankees in their flashy M1s to attempt to do something about it. One Hero of the Soviet Union is made.

Minefields slow the Czech armoured advance, but a few turns of rocket artillery have softened up the American infantry defenders and the T-72M assault drives them from their foxholes.

All of my scouts are killed. Because I stupided. And my infantry never disembarked.

Beyond the trees in the background to the left, T-64s keep reinforcing M1s occupied.

Burning platoon of M1 Abrams. A sight sure to please any Warsaw Pact player.

In fact, I got very lucky and took them all out in one turn.

   In the end, I won by pushing the American infantry off the objective. The Americans did destroy enough of my units to make it a 5-2 victory rather than a 6-1 overwhelming victory. But I will take it! Anthony was a great sport about it all and a lot of fun to take on as an opponent.

How To Download And Install Batman Arkham Asylum With Joker DLC On PC Wi...

VC 1012, M.A.D.!

What, me worry? Not when I have M.A.D. from U.S.Games as this episode's game! Hoo boy. I hope you enjoy the episode. Next up is Robin Hood by Xonox. If you have any feedback for that game, please send it to me at 2600gamebygame@gmail.com by March 8th. Thanks so much for listening!

M.A.D. on Random Terrain
John Hall's website
Interview with John Hall by Sean Fitzgerald 
No Swear Gamer 426 - M.A.D.
No Swear Gamer M.A.D. gameplay footage
Get Matt's Repro Freeway patch on eBay

Existentialism And Essentialism

The problem with so many modern RPGs, post Snes era RPGSs is that whilst many of the great titles  pushed the boundaries in graphics, gameplay, FMVs etc, in the characterization and storyline we find made major concessions to dodgy philosophies and false values.

How many of then however strayed into typical "enlighten the deluded masses that need to be rescued from their perverse religion"?

(That is no bad thing in one sense as most religions are false. There is only one true religion the Catholic Faith and all the rest are evil in some way or another- Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Calvinism, Pentecostalism, Anglicanism- they are false religions.)

But even worse, and even more toxic, how many of them essentially preach the doctrine of existentialism.

Man comes to realise that he does not have an essence- his essence is simply his existence- he makes who he is. Man is. There are no laws he must obey, no standards he is called to and no way of life that makes sense of the world.

This is problematic. Deeply problematic.

The challenge of the Christian RPG is to promote essentialism- you have a nature, you have a destiny, you have an end point, you are charged with a mission, you have inbuilt rules, you inhabit a world in which you have a place even if you don't know it yet, religion can help you discover who you are, your essence, your vocation, the meaning written into every fibre of your being.

This can be exciting too. In fact it can be far far more exciting that having a revelation that you are nobody and that your life is in fact empty of meaning.

We all find joy and experience a sense of expansion even in discovering some weird fact about a biological relative, say a grandfather. Imagine tomorrow you discovered your great great great grandfather was a prince who had been exiled from some small European state 150 years ago. Wow! And you are in fact the heir to that kingdom! Wow!

The joy of discovering your true place in the story of the world is awesome and the amazing thing is- God does have a place for you in this story.

Freedom means you can deviate and reject this role,

in eternity you will discover it, you will see your essence, who God had intended and designed you to be.

Unfortunately the vast majority of souls will gaze upon this essence in rage, amidst the fires of hell, for only those who conform themselves to this image, this vocation, this essence will make it to purgatory and through purgatory to heaven.

Domine ut videam.

Lord help me to see who I am, who you have made me,  help me to live according to your design for me, to flourish and to lead others to this fulfillment that solely comes through relationship with you- in and through the one church you founded.