Emasher

It's nice to see Microsoft acknowledging the PC as a gaming platform for once. I was pretty disappointed when I saw the username above the other character's head though. Competitive multiplayer can be fun, but anything that requires co-operation with a bunch of other people isn't all that great unless you have a group of friends who are into this sort of thing, or the game is extremely mission oriented, and everyone is clear on what they're supposed to be doing. I really can't see exploration working in co-op either, especially with more than a couple of people.

I don't think there are all that many people who really like online dating. It's just better than a lot of alternatives. Maintaining a profile on one of the free sites, and occasionally sending out a wave of messages takes up a lot less time than going out somewhere to try and meet potential dates, not to mention, a lot cheaper, and a lot less irritating than going somewhere like a club. Then there's the fact that you can pre-screen people a little bit. If there's some sort of major deal breaker, I'd much rather know about it before I put in any time and effort if possible. Of course these days, about half the women near where I live on these sites don't even bother to fill out their profile beyond a few pictures, which I've always found makes them difficult to message.

Don't worry, I'm under no delusions about what she really meant, I've heard it all before. A few years ago when I was still naive about this sort of thing, I texted a girl off OkCupid almost daily for four months (and she initiated many of these sessions, not just me). We had all sorts of interesting conversations, and we had explicitly established that we were trying to meet up for a date. We had very different work schedules though, and whenever there was a gap, she had some excuse. Then one day, she took several days to reply to my text, after which she told me she had met someone else, but hoped we could keep texting. I explained to here why that was a bad idea, and I figured that would be the last time I ever talked to her. A few months later, we got back in touch through a different dating site she had created a new account for. We arranged a coffee date, which actually did happen, but things were obviously a little awkward. Still not a bad date as far as they go though. A few days later, I got a "we just don't have enough in common" text. A perfectly understandable reason to not want to continue things with someone, but obviously a lie in this case.

The vast majority just want attention. Tinder is particularly bad for that. Like I've said before, I've seen women whos main picture is them self with their boyfriend, and even a couple wedding photos. I'm currently in a texting session with a woman who's suggesting she doesn't want to meet up in real life because she doesn't want to tell people "We met online". Still might be able to turn this around if it's not just an excuse for something else. Edit: And just got the "I've just realized I'm not looking for anything right now" text. Massive waste of my time.

I must have misread what you were saying, I thought you meant you were just going to leave it for a few days and expect it to unlock everything.

I don't think it works like that. I think you have to play around with the components until the delivery is scheduled for the next day every time you get new components. Anyway, although I'm really enjoying the game, I'm finding the number of components a little lacking, even after unlocking everything. At the very least I'd like to see star coins and checkpoints. It would also be nice to have a few more level themes, and more game specific items and mechanics, and maybe a few more bosses. I'm sure this game is going to get a ton of DLC like that though.

For those having trouble unlocking timed component sets, all you have to do to unlock them quickly is play around with the new stuff for a few minutes until the game says you have a delivery scheduled for tomorrow, and then spam blocks everywhere for a while and they unlock early.

It's nice in terms of easing you into it and forcing you to do something creative rather than just throw a bunch of late-game type obstacles together. I think it's a little slow though. I've made a couple levels and the first set of stuff just isn't quite enough to do some of the stuff I want to do.

Pretty good video explaining how Nintendo themselves design Mario levels (and how it can be applied with Mario Maker). Some of the rest of this guys videos are definitely worth watching as well:

The reason they haven't continued to develop the prime series probably has a lot to do with most of the people responsible for the existing games no longer working for Retro. As much as I love the Metroid series, what I really want to see is more games in the Metroidvania style. In the very least, something that incorporates exploration, permanent upgrades, and backtracking in an interesting way. Open world games have been starved of these mechanics recently in favour of a GTA-like mission structure. While such mechanics work when the gameplay is interesting in itself, it gets boring pretty fast otherwise. Metroidvanias are special because the structure of the game itself is a gameplay element rather than a menu. If more developers understood that interesting gameplay is what makes a game special, and not the assumptions that have lead to the cinemization of games, we wouldn't be so starved for another Metroid game.

It gets boring pretty quickly. It's not really designed well as a management game.

Dammit, now I have to subscribe to another streaming service.

What sort of first messages are you sending people?

They let me photocopy the registration. No way they could have faked that in the time it took them to find it. It's possible the owner of the car let his registration lapse, since he's out of town. Or it could just have been an error of the insurance company.

Well, just had it towed away. When I called the insurance company, I found out that apparently the information on the photocopy of the registration of the car that hit me doesn't match the information in their system.

I think I'll sit this one out. Just not all that interested in vanilla anymore. To be honest, I spend a lot more time working on my mod than I do playing the game.

I'm not saying it's acceptable in any way. The boyfriend didn't have a license either. Personally, I hope they deport her, but I can't see that happening unless the owner of the car she was driving presses charges for theft. The cop said she'd likely just get a huge fine and not be able to get a license in Canada for a very long time. The insurance company will also likely go after her for the damage to the three vehicles.

She wasn't trying to justify it, just explain why she was driving a car that wasn't hers I think.

Yeah. I haven't had time to make the claim yet, but what will likely happen is that the insurance company will pay market value for the car and take it off my hands, since the repairs would obviously be more than the car is worth at this point. Something along the lines of they were clearing the driveway to "play a game". At 12:30 in the morning... Obviously I can't prove this, but I think it's much more likely they were doing some sort of booze run. I definitely smelt alcohol on one of them, but I wasn't sure which it was. As far as the fraud goes, she wanted to find a licensed driver to pretend they had been the one driving the car instead of her. I just told her the police report had already been filed and she'd have to deal with them now.

My problems seem like absolutely nothing after reading that. A few nights ago, not long after midnight, someone backed out of the neighbor's driveway, and into my car. Except they didn't just back into it, they managed to scrape along it, taking out the driver's side mirror and headlight, and reducing the whole side of the car to one massive dent. Then they kept going and managed to hit another parked car down the street as well. The driver ended up not having a license (actually not having one, not just not having it on her), and the car she was driving actually belonged to the the neighbor, who's out of town right now. Apparently, she's the girlfriend of the neighbor's border or something like that. It took ages to get all of this information out of her, and in the end, I had to file a police report (since that's the law here when an accident occurs involving an unlicensed driver). Multiple times now this woman has tried to get into contact with me to try and make an underhanded deal, and even committing fraud to avoid her getting in trouble, and when trying to exchange details with her, her boyfriend tried to give us someone else's passport instead of hers when he went into the house to get it (she's some sort of foreign student or something apparently). They gave a pretty dodgy story when explaining why they were using the car in the first place. Anyway, my car is almost certainly a write off since it's about 15 years old. I can afford to replace it, but just can justify it for a while since I normally take the bus to work.

The speed limits here tend to be between 100 and 110 km/h on the highway. It really is a massive country though. A day of straight driving won't even get you half way across it. Things might be faster if we built a second road. That said, even if she was going to be living in the same city I wouldn't be interested. It was really quite a terrible date.

Well, that was a waste of time. She was late (had a reasonable excuse though), and then it turned out she goes to university in a different city (about a 30 hour drive) most of the year. We also had absolutely nothing in common which made for a pretty awkward time. Back to the dating sites I guess.

Well my date cancelled on me. She works at an outdoor pool (I knew this before), and got to leave early today since it was cold. And then forgot about me. She suggested re-scheduling, so we're going out Thursday instead. A little bit annoyed because I wasted nearly an hour wondering around killing time, but it's a good thing I texted her to confirm at least. I've learned from experience not to re-schedule a first date more than once, so we'll see how things go.

It's definitely on my list. I've had it sitting in my Steam library since the summer sale, but I'm trying to finish Unity first so I don't have two Assassin's Creed games going at once.

The way the Apple TV works is very different from what was described a few pages back, unless I completely misunderstood what was being described. Essentially, it's equivalent technically to a LAN multiplayer game, with the game data only being stored on one side. You could actually do something like that with a 3DS and Wii U now if the right software was written for them. From the users perspective, I don't really see it as being significantly different from what they're doing now with the gamepad. Yeah, you'd be able to take the pad out of the house, but who would do that? It's certainly not a compelling enough feature to base an entire console around.