Diecast #377: Xbox Desolation

Diecast – Twenty Sided

I forgot to mention it on the show, but I got a community award from Steam this week. I didn’t even know that community awards were a thing? The award also came with a prize! I received 100 Steam points, which were added to my 177,085 total. I’m rich! Or something. More details below.

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Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast377

Link (YouTube)

Show notes:

So about that award. Is it for some content that I made? Maybe the Portal 2 level I posted a few months ago? Or those Distance tracks I made back in 2016? Who nominated me? Who voted for me? I’m flattered, really. This is just so…

Oh.

Apparently, the award was auto-generated by the system because I posted a review that got lots of upvotes. So this isn’t an award given by people in recognition for an artistic creation, this is just some output from the social-media server because I did some bitching and moaning that played to the momentary mood of the crowd.

“Such poetry!” Steam tells me. Shit, Gaben. If you think THAT dashed-off whining is poetry, I got 186,000 words of bellyaching that will knock your socks off. I got nitpicks for days. I’ve got more grievances than General Grievous. I’ve got enough salt to make Canada drivable in winter. I do this shit for a living.

So… thanks for the 100 points, I guess?

Anyway, here are the show notes:

00:39 Aria

I forgot to ask Paul if Aria IS Omega. Missed opportunity.

04:06 Xbox for Windows doesn’t understand either Xbox or Windows

Game pass is financially a good deal, but it wouldn’t be a Microsoft PC gaming product without an imperial assload of jank and metric arseload of terrible UI.^[1]

09:54 Beautiful Desolation

Link (YouTube)

20:06 Penny Arcade Remix

How fun.

24:31 Mailbag: Migrating Mojang accounts for Minecraft

Dear Diecast,

Have any/either/all of you on the show this episode tried migrating your Mojang account to a Microsoft account so you can continue playing Minecraft, as required after March 10? Might make some great fodder for another of Shamus’s rants! (No fewer than five emails from Microsoft [including three different one-time codes], and the process got stuck on the final “yes I really do own this email address that was already tied to my Mojang account” verification step and had to be manually restarted…)

May your diamonds be ever plentiful,
Daniel “Philadelphus” Berke

29:13 Mailbag: Shooting in statsdriven FPS RPG

Dear Diecast,

In a statdriven shooter, some games make the guns deal little damage, leading to a situation where shooting someone in the head 5 times doesnt seem to do anything. Others give the player bad accuracy. But these systems can make the gunplay feel bad, which turns off a lot of people (which is why human revolution got better shooting than DX). And if you just have worse sway or something. A skilled player can compensate for it. In the end a character, supposed to be bad at shooting, can shoot very well because the player compensates for it.
How can you make a system where a character not skilled with guns cannot shoot well, but the guns don’t feel like toy guns?

With kind regards,
Chris

37:39 Mailbag: Diecast Listening Habits

Dear Diecast,

I know Shamus enjoys hearing about the weird ways we consume his blog content. With regards to the diecast specifically, the first episode I listened to was episode #200. At that point I decided to go through the back-catalogue, starting with the very first episode, whilst also listening to each new episode as it was released. Do many listeners consume Diecast content either out of order, or years late, like me? Does Shamus have access to any statistics?

Now, after listening to every diecast episode at least once, I feel qualified to summarise my entire diecast experience into the following 4 short questions:

After it was suggested to you on multiple different episodes over the years, by both Chris and Paul (and possibly also Josh?) did you ever get around to playing Frog Fractions?
Did the Satisfactory developers ever get around to patching in correct inverted mouse controls for driving vehicles?
Do you have Minecraft open in another tab right now?
And of course, the obligatory question… Hey Shamus, did you hear the RSS feed is broken?
Yours cumulatively,

Nick

43:04 Mailbag: Deliberately Subverting the Level Designer

Dear Diecast,

When playing a linear game with collectables or secrets to find on each level, it is not uncommon to find the path ahead split off in more than one direction. At that point I ask myself, “which path is the game designer most likely trying to direct me?”, and I then proceed to ignore that path at all costs until all other side paths have been searched. Just one of those things I’ve found that I have conditioned myself to do over the years, like always checking behind the character when a new level loads in, due to the occasional secret that level designers like to hide behind you at the start.

I find it funny that the intention of good level design is to subtly lead the player in the correct direction through the level, and yet so often I find myself actively fighting against the will of the designer in order to play the game in the optimal way. Have you gentlemen experienced a similar phenomenon?

Oh, and can we all please just agree that when a branching path inexplicably leads to a cutscene and checkpoint that won’t let you backtrack, that is a crime against humanity that should not go unpunished?!?!

Yours contrarily,

Nick

48:26 Mailbag: Videogame Logic in the Real World

Dire Deercast,

Have you ever caught your subconscious trying to use videogame logic in the real world?

The best personal example I can think of relates to Metal Gear Solid 5, which had shipping containers in the open world map that your character could capture for resources. For a while after playing that game, whenever I spotted a shipping container in real life, for the first half-second my subconscious would try to tell me to run over and capture it, before my brain would wake up and gently remind me that I am not – in actuality – a legendary soldier.

Another example would be me imagining the best way to rack up points by skating through the local urban landscape (Tony Hawk style), even though in real life I’m sure I would struggle to even stand on a skateboard.

Yours disassociatively,

Nick