Linux Mint 13 - Second Impressions

I'm a Linux man myself. I like Mint especially, as it seems to take the attention to ease of use that Ubuntu is so big on and and mix it with the goals of power, configurability, and less bloat that Ubuntu forgot about. Also, the Ubuntu aesthetic is awful, whereas Mint has an awesome aesthetic. While I've always preferred it to Ubuntu, it never played all that well with my multi-head setup and tended to always find something to keep broken at any given time. I suspected that a lot of this had to do with the desktop manager/environment shenanigans that Linux distros still haven't quite gotten over, so you can imagine my stokedness(which should totally be a word) when Linux Mint 13 came out.

Cognitive Observation #30

What? All comic artists have the right to a pun every once in awhile.

Hecticity is not a word

This week/weekend has become excessively hectic. Please accept this Hard Trance release as a symbol of my willingness to do a proper game design article, even if I ended up not having time.

Infiltrator - Part 23 - Heads Up

This session has gone almost completely into updating the HUD.

The giant speedometer style shields indicator, while cool looking, was hogging a ton of screen space and giving the player a noticeable blind spot. Thus, I have replaced it with a progress bar like the energy, and have shrunk both of them. The screen now has more space for the action and gameplay, but still provides you with needed info.

That's pretty much all I've had time to do so far. I've been working on the fighters, but they're kind of in a mess at the moment. Right now I'm just basking in the glory of knowing that the HUD is finished. Unless I get far enough to start adding the adventure game parts anyway...

        --LazerBlade

Action RPGs

I like almost anything that takes multiple good things and mixes them well. I like Pizza, programming(a blend of science and art), cross-genre music, a well color coordinated room, and I like action RPG games. But what makes a good action RPG tick? Why do we all love them so? Why must so many articles and analysis' start off with a bunch of questions?

This may be a bit subjective, I.E: why I love action RPGs, but I highly doubt that this won't produce fruitful game design ideas and knowledge.

Music Hacker - You broke my beat!

Because you all demanded it.

Infiltrator - Part 22 - Primordial Code

The majority of this session went into one very fun improvement. It's not that great, nor is it something that can be fully communicated via screenshot, but it's awesome anyway.