Bittenhard's bday

Today is Bittenhard's bday, so Zach made a cake and i hid in it!

After he stopped crying, we gave him our real presents and he was ever so happy.

I apologize for the lack of updates, but I've been fairly sick and couldn't use the computer at all. I'm just now slightly recovering.

The "Retsupurae Special"

At first retsupurae was videos of good LPers from the something awful forums making fun of terrible "Let's play" videos that were flooding youtube. You could think they were just being mean, but they were funny and had good points.

Then for a while they started making fun of Navigator, some middle aged man who supposedly did video game reviews in the Clinton era and had no clue what he was talking about.

And then started something i especially liked, They started playing and making fun of flash games found on newgrounds. Among these was a really bad game called "Arrival in Hell".

And yesterday, they uploaded "Arrival in Hell 2". Might not b too safe for work, but if you watch 55 mins movies at work, i want your job.

Important if you're gonna play Alien Swarm!

I forgot to post this rather important note about alien swarm.

On some systems alien swarm has been known to raise the temperature to abnormally high levels.

It's been reported by several users on steam that their computer either burned out or did fail-safe shutdowns because of Alien Swarm. The game probably isn't optimized at all right now.

HOWEVER.

There are measures to prevent this, if you're planning to play alien swarm you should take the following precautions:

• In the video options, set multicore rending off, one of the issues is processor temperature rising, multicore rendering heavily contributes for that and doesn't even help that much with performance.
• Still in video options, set VSYNC on double buffering, anything else will heat up your GPU greatly, which is the other issue people report with the game.

After these 2 steps you should b safe as many steam forum users reported, however, if u want to take it an extra step, get a system monitor app that monitors the temperature, play windowed, and keep an eye on the temperature of the CPU and GPU as you play. Play some other game you own first as reference (like TF2 or portal) so you know how high the temperature should go normally.

Lots of Demons

Here's a buncha crap I drew for no reason. Well, mostly. As per usual, I got far too into something pointless: This is part of the reason I have way too many characters.

These guys are based on historical figures from Japan's Sengoku period. Namely, Musashi Miyamoto, Ieyasu Tokugawa, Tadakatsu Honda and his daughter, and Hattori Hanzo. Also Haohmaru from Samurai Showdown, who is also a composit character of Musashi Miyamoto.

I even thought of punny names for all of them, but they don't matter. Only Garbanzo Hattori and Gary's dad Makar matter.

These mark a bit of a milestone for me. Inahime there is the first original female member of Gary's race I've drawn. Truth be told, I've drawn Hellina in this sort of build, but it sucked. Wanna know what it looked like? Picture her twig thin, really short, with giant hands and feet. There ya go.

Free Steam Games: Alien Swarm

The reason it took me 3 days to write a review about this game is because I've been playing it almost the entire time.

What's it like?

This game is top down view, like Diablo 2, you play as a team to survive and complete objectives, like L4D, and you can pick characters from 4 classes and a bunch of different equipment that unlocks with levels, like borderlands?

Watch as Zach is about to lag behind as usual.

What are the classes like?

Differences are really minor. there aren't many class restricted items at all.

Obviously, only medics can use healing equipment, and the rest seems rather unimportant.

Ma promotions.

When you max up your level, you can take a promotion and get a medal, that resets your level to 1 and re-locks all items again.

The medal doesn't do shit, but i want them all for bragging rights!

What are the enemies like?

Once you've played through the only campaign the game has a few times, the swarm are fairly predictable, which i sort of like.

There is a console command to turn on an AI director L4D style though.

As for the aliens, they're decent variety in those, there's some that take tons and tons of damage, some that fly around u and are quick, some that shoot at you from long range, some that explode when they die and drop explosive orbs around you, etc.

The aliens are like fucking bugs though, they'll pop out of unexpected places and rush you. On that aspect, the worse ones of all are the parasites, which id u don't have healing around, they'll kill you for sure if they grab you.

Me, yours truly, myself, and moi. the perfect team.

Other details?

• Cool feature: you can pick a songs you have as the battle music for the game. It's kickass!
  
• Don't play with Spanish people, they'll shoot u in the face for no good reason, complete the level so that u get the exp anyway, and then kick u out (srly, that was fucking retarded).
• The game is free, the source code is free, modding for it is highly encouraged. This could b a big deal for gaming.
• Most people right now suck at this game and run off by themselves or lag behind trying to kill everything (aliens can spawn forever so it's pointless), so playing with people can b frustrating.
• From the first level you run into parasites, FOLLOW THE MEDIC! I cannot stress how simple this logic is, and yet everyone ignores it.
• If you never played as tech, do it at least once in offline practice, no one wants to wait 5 mins in an actual game for you to figure out you're dumb as fuck. (so far, the longest i had to wait was around 7 mins, dude was french)

Anyway yea, it's fun, it's something to do with friends, higher difficulties are more intense and also rewarding.

But importantly, think of this game as a demo of things to come.

In the next month there will b tons of content made for this game, expect a lot of new content, maybe weapons, campaigns, who knows. I'm looking forward to it a lot.

"Free" Steam games

Here's the deal, about a week ago i started planning making a small video series where i show u guys some games and mods that were either free or required at least 1 source engine game to play. It was just a bunch of games that you could probably play and didn't know about.

The intro video didn't turn out too bad, but then i tried to get footage of the first game, and something is just way too slow for that on my system. I suspect the hard drives but that's besides the point.

I did record it and added commentary on the video, but with the system i currently have i can't do stuff like that with games that have requirements as the source engine does.

So here's the deal, I'm just gonna write about it on the blog like i normally do. I know ya all hate reading, but can't do much about that.

A game that i wasn't going to talk about but suddenly popped out is Alien Swarm. It was released just yesterday.

Alien swarm falls right into the scope of the videos i was going to do.

To my surprise, this game doesn't have any requirements at all, as in, you don't need to previously own anything at all to play it.

Only reason i know about this game is because Valve released Hats for TF2 to celebrate the game. I'm downloading it right now and i'll b testing it soon.

As Robin Walker says...

Took me way to long to think of making this...

Best, Sonic 2, hack, ever

This blew the win scale.

Connecticon Commissions

Here's some more stuff I did during my little trip a while back. You know what they say: The devil's hands are idle playthings. Or something like that.

Fucking OS geeks

You know what i hate?

I hate people who are ignorant and affirm that their OS is clearly better than yours based only on the fact that's it's newer.

For starters, unless you know exactly what the other person uses, you can't say thier OS is worse. As long as your OS runs what you need and doesn't cash, that's all you need.

But then there's those asshole who say vista and win7 are better than XP. and i ask, why?

When XP came out I resisted it and held to win98se because XP was already starting to lose compatibility with older software and for the time, it was a resource whore. I was eventually forced to
change because hardware was made to run with it.

As of now, XP is still the fastest OS from the windows family. Win7 is good but still barely loses to XP in many aspects so there really isn't a point to it.

The real discussion is 32bit systems vs 64bit systems.

Again, 64bit systems lose compatibility, so for me it's not even an issue.

And I'm still fucking amazed at how retarded the concept of 64 bit processors is. Do you know what a 64bit processor's selling point is? it processes 64bit integer data in 1 go. Whoa... that's... kinda useless.

If u know a bit about programming, u know that those kind of variables aren't even that common.

When i had a 64bit operating system earlier this year, so much crap didn't run or crashed all the time it blew my mind. Trading stability for something so minor as processing fucking 64bit integers in 1 go. And people say that like 32bits processors couldn't process 64bit integers, BUT THEY CAN!

Unless you have over 4gb of ram, there is absolutely no point in using 64bits, it's asking for trouble. In the future i expect win7 to evolve, either into losing performance and losing it's ground to XP more, or into becoming efficient and stable enough so that i switch to it.

Otherwise, i still have hope in ReactOS.

I'm just pissed because i was watching Spoony's stream again, and it's still slow as fuck and Spoony was talking about how he couldn't get a game or 2 to run cause of his OS (win7 64bit), So i suggested he dual boot into a 32 bit OS for those things.

One asshat just kept saying that if it doesn't run on win7 64bits, it won't run on a 32bits OS, WHAT THE FUCK, that was the most ignorant statement i ever heard! I easily got 10 apps that i can run on my computer that will NOT run on a 64bit system.

Spoony is always digging older games to review, so all the more reason for him to setup an older OS. Bleh, people piss me off sometimes...

Mary & Luanne Haizelle

Mary and Luanne are Kimmy's aunts, who used to watch over her growing up. They've since moved back to their family farm in the South, but occasionally pop in to Crust Town for special occasions...and emergencies. They share the same familiar, an iguana named Yog-Sothoth, or just Yog for short.

Mary is loud, jovial and boisterous, speaking in a husky Southern drawl. Her stout, heavy-set appearance belies her agility and physical strength; she tends to handle problems head-on through sheer grit and determination. Mary's in charge of fieldwork, and spends a good deal of time outdoors.

Luanne by contrast is more reserved and timid. She's much more delicate and feminine, and enjoys handling housework. She's more reliant on her witchcraft and Yog when it comes to magical warfare than her rough-and-tumble sister. Luanne speaks in a manner akin to Penelope Pitstop.

Yog is...an iguana. It's an odd choice of familiar, but then again, Mary and Lu are odd witches. He tends to stick near Lu, as she is more reliant on his assistance... When he's not getting into things he shouldn't be, that is.

Mary, Lu and Yog are just meant to be minor characters, hence why they're fairly clear-cut allusions to Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi. Still, me being me, I at least attempted to not make it too apparent and get some sort of personality into them, in case I ever wanted to promote them from that status.

I'm particularly fond of Mary, who is quite unlike any other female character I've drawn. I tried to make her decidedly "unattractive", giving her thick eyebrows, a tick build, and an implied slight underbite. And yet, I can't call her "ugly". She has an odd allure to her, and I think the implied "ugliness" I tried to employ only ended up going in a weird direction where she ends up being "cute". It's kinda like the Oracle version of Impa or Sister Bikini from the third Ace Attorney game.

As for color...Obviously, based on Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi. Lu's colors are based on Luigi's SMB sprites, solely so I cold keep her apron white. I thought Mary's initial color scheme was too strong an allusion to Mario, so I did a second version using the same approach I did for Lu, and used Mario's SMB sprite colors instead, and I think it looks MUCH better. I was going to give them both hair to match Kimmy's at first, but after the clothing, I decided to do something more down-to-earth, so I wouldn't have so many red-headed mages running around. So Mary became sorta of a chestnut, and Lu a somewhat strawberry-blonde (it's NOT a Daisy/Peach reference though, I SWEAR...neither are their complexions for that matter). All-in-all, I like how the second version turned out.

First post

Hiyas all, Bittenhard here.
This is my first post and first step into the blogging community.
Btw, I love Borderlands.

Back from Connecticon

Well, to be honest, I only ended up going for the first day, due to unfortunate setbacks. In any case, I managed to be uncharacteristically productive on that one day, mostly passing the time everyone spent overlooking me and my giant nose by doodling random things. I really dunno what to say about it besides "hey, look at these". So...hey, look at these.

TF2: Engy update / Rant about streaming

I am SO beat, played til 7am yesterday and all day today.

Before the update itself, i really enjoyed the drama on the steam forums. 6 people banned, rage and vast amounts of stupidity. It was priceless...

There's a few posts i really liked and took note:

Gabe's infernal trolling machine has harvested enough sweet tears from this ordeal to operate nonstop for at least the next one hundred years.

this one almost sounded erotic:

Drunken F00l squirmed in his chair, desperately trying to break free of his restraints. He tried to call out for help, but each cry was muffled by the gag upon his mouth. The darkness in the room was broken as the door swung open, and Robin Walker entered the room.

"It really is a shame it had to come to this," Robin said, his voice a frightening mix of genuine dissapointment and sadistic glee. F00l was one of the biggest contributors to the TF2 scene (he had even been awarded a community item) and now he had to be dealt with like any low grade hacker. "I had such high hopes for you"

"MMMMMGH!" F00l continued yelling, attempting to gasp out a legible word.

"Don't strain yourself," Robin chucked, running a hand down the F00l's cheek. "You may have passed up a golden opportunity... but that doesn't mean that the game is over."

Robin reached out, removing Drunken f00l's gag. Exhausetd and defeated, he only had one thing to ask.

"R...Robin. Am I going to die here?"

Robin laughed, removing a rusty wrench from his pocket.

"No F00l, you wouldn't learn anything from that. I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget."

And then it all went black.

the summary of Drunken F00l's brilliant contributions to TF2:

DF has to be brain damaged or something...

- Create idle program, which was obviously against the rules;
- Get a slap on the wrist from Valve accompanied by a "don't do it again...";
- Do it again;
- Get busted, again;
- Get banned;
- Complain it's Valve's fault.

Seriously DF? Did you use all your "logic"s on your scripts and left none for yourself?

Anyway, the update itself, is actually neat. achievements aren't too hard, unlockables are all good and fun. Only problem is teams with 10+ engies and, honestly, in some of the matches i was in, i don't even see how it'd b possible to win. All engy defense teams seems pretty strong right now.

And now i shall rant about LordKat's stream.

I check Lordkat's livestream less and less. it's just gone worse and worse, and just bores the shit out of me now.

On a few occasions that i checked, he's just got a webcam pointed at the floor, wall, a motherboard, i just don't know. All those times he wasn't even around and i waited like 3-5 mins each time, so i guess he just leaves the damn thing pointing at whatever when he leaves.

A while back, i saw him playing D&D with another group, and you could see the board but not hear anything. what is the fucking point of that? All u could hear was him talk once every 10 mins and you couldn't hear the other end, much like listening to someone have a phone call. Why do people watch him do that? for fucking hours too.

So a few mins ago i checked his stream, he's playing tf2, and filming his keyboard and monitors and that's what he's broadcasting. Actually imma get a screenshot of it right now.

The guy went from broadcasting what's on his screen, even cropping to the specific window of the app he was using, to this? You can't even tell wtf is on his screen. he was playing TF2 earlier and the game looked like the face of god!

All u could see is a tiny portion of the screen moving and his fat fingers pressing keys. Whoa, that's a huge improvement indeed..

How do you do this? how do you start doing something properly at the beginning, and when you're more experienced, make it shitty and as boring as possible? God i wish his stream somehow got retsuprae'd.

While he was playing TF2 someone on his chatroom asked him why he doesn't play full screen. A simple question, and LordKat flipped the fuck out started cursing and saying he'll play how he god damn please and started to rant over it to his skype guests. Did a fullscreen kill his parents or something? I've never seen anyone overreact so much about a simple question like that.

Dude's kinda retarded.

In other news, Zach's away at "connecticon" or something for 2 more days, 4th member can't think of anything to post yet, and I'm just playing TF2 til i get sick.

TF2: Delicious drama

So here's the deal: the random system giving out golden wrenches isn't random. Some people apparently figured it out and are getting the wrench on a single craft attempt.

Steam's TF2 forum is furious, and want to hang Drunken fool, who is the most obvious case there is a system to get these, such evidence which was found using the site he designed himself "TF2items" to view people's backpacks.

I rather not into detail about it but there's tons of info on that on the TF2 forums.

Once again, Valve managed to enrage their fanbase by doing something stupid AND unfair. So what else is new? heh.

There is a person though that has risen to b a hero. Although i don't like Brazilians in general, this guy had the golden wrench #27, and he DESTROYED it (you can check the history of his backpack, it was there before). His massive balls are being now admired by most of the TF2 forums.

It seems that when someone gets a wrench, it's broadcast on all servers everywhere to everyone. and as this guy demonstrated, if u destroy one, the same thing happens as well.

No one knows why he did it, but i like to think it was a "fuck you" to valve's random systems that make most of the community feel like crap for no good reasons.

All and all, it's just retarded drama, couldn't care less about the wrenches, just want ma update so i can have fun.

This has way more uses than one would first think.

Slightly related, I guess Spoony played TF2 for the first time in a long long time, and said on his twitter, and i quote:

Since when could Pyros just fucking hurl people into the air with their minds? The fuck is this shit?

Besides the fact that he hasn't played TF2 in over 2 years, he seemed really pissed at the fact that 10 or so updates to the game changed it [/sarcasm]

But seriously, i can imagine the frustration of playing a near vanilla TF2 and then going to the version we have today. Must b quite a shock. Spoony proceeded to rant about how the game sucks now and how there's no strategy anymore and how Valve is breaking every single class.

I'd say he's exaggerating but I could see myself reacting the way he did if i was in a similar situation (I think i have, but was about a King of Fighters game). Still, Not having played in over 2 years and judging this quickly? nah, that ain't right.

I'm kind taking a break from working on the new layout, mood's crappy lately and i need to find something fun to do.

EDIT:

HE DID IT FOR TEH LULZ! That is so win, check the photos!

EDIT 2:

Turns out someone hacked into the account and deleted the wrench, but now valve gave it back, oh god the drama is delicious!

It's getting hot in here

It is absurdly hot in Portugal right now! I feel like i slept in a oven.

Last week I had been trying to play "UFO: enemy unknown" lately, but really kinda failing at it. i had never played it before, but i had played "X-COM: terror from the deep" and way back in the day i had beat that game which is supposedly harder.

in UFO, i got how to make money down by manufacturing laser weapons as soon and ass many as possible, but ended up running out of fuel for my pimp alien tech ship and just couldn'y intercept any enemy ships anymore. fuck...

UFO:EU and X-COM:TftD are practically the same game in case you haven't player them, only difference is that in X-COM you get to do underwater missions.

In X-COM i remember having missions down to a science, I remember a rocket launcher that allowed u to make the rocket change direction like 5+ times. so i'd have a guy scout as much as possible, and guys back in the craft shooting the rocket and take out aliens from across the map.

I'm surprised today to get up and see on my twitter that Spoony is (or was) playing X-com live on justin.tv, either way it was recorded and it's cool cause I can pick up hints on how to play the game again.

I just started watching it and like me, feels a lil rusty. when he opens the menu for the first base there's a pause and you can just fell him thinking "oh shit, i don't remember any of this!", and i can so relate to that.

Here's Spoony's steam if you care to check it out, but be warned, X-COM is a strategy and management game, it's very very slow paced so most people prolly won't like it.

In other news:



Valve is finally getting to it, but my excitement is all gone. I'll prolly get it back in time for the weekend though.

What i don't like though, is that they're randomly giving away Golden wrenches, and making it impossible for most people to even have a shot at getting one. What i mean is, when u craft something, you have a chance to get one of those. and seeing how miserable the drops are, most people ran out of shit to craft like 2 days ago. great...

the weird thing though, is that on TF2items, on the recipe list, the golden wrench can b used along with another golden wrench as a crafting material for scrap. Supposed to be rare? possibly common in the future? don't really care.

1st weap was announced though:

Awkwardly convenient timing

So yesterday I made this post about social networks, it's a subject i really never talk about or give much thought on, and when i went to dinner, there was a crime investigation show on TV, and guess what the "theme" for that crime was? fucking social networks.

Although it doesn't happen often, there's been many instances of my life when things seemed to happen on cue, Almost like some sort of superior being was manipulating the events in my life to make them seem oddly convenient.

It's like finding the key to the toolbox where u keep your soldering iron in, which u haven't needed in years, just hours before something breaks and you can use the soldering iron to fix it. Or learning the meaning of a word you've never ever heard the day before someone u met actually uses it in a convo with you.

Since I'm almost done with the new layout, I started fucking around with a possibly bar idea: The post header. On a crazy idea I'm making the header of posts look like the top of a game hud, as in, a lifebar, mana/power bars, stats, etc...

Cute art that Jimmy made the other day, thought it was cute enough to post.

I thought it'd b neat because cause we can use a portrait of the poster, everyone could have different stats and, really, the more i talk about it the more i think it might b a bad idea...

I'm still enjoying fiddling around with it because i have been needing an HUD for a project or mine, and this is rather good practice. I will most likely drop the idea and make simple simple and clean looking for the blog though.

Spoony just posted 2 videos about the Ultima series, i have only played 1 of the games, Ultima IV, but it was a game that had a huge impact on me and that i'll never forget. that is not to say i liked or hated the game, it just had an impact is all.

So I'm looking forward to whenever Spoony does video 5 of that. u can find video 1 here and video 2 here.

Also, for the hell of it:

Sounds like an orgasm, or going into labor?

Web "social" stuffs

About a week ago, when I told Jimmy i was fiddling with a possible new layout, he saw that I put on share buttons for social networks.

We started talking about how we're both old men and hate them fancy gay ass social networks and their buttons. I mean some sites have like 15+ of those buttons so you can share whatever on anything with great urgency to the masses!

Call me old, but back in my day, all we needed to share a page was it's URL, and that was it.

These are the buttons Blogger makes available for sharing.

So it's E-mail, Blogger itself, Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz. All these buttons do is save you like, 2 clicks though. Are these so necessary? Are people so lazy now?

Ok, granted it's stupid to complain about added convenience, but the thing is, i've never met anyone who ever used these. I think I know people lazy enough to appreciate those, but to most people, these buttons became part of the decoration.

in the end, I'll probably add these in the next version of the layout, since this stuff is meant for the readers and not the authors. And I'm declaring right now that the main reason I'll b adding these is decoration.

Oh also, there's officially 4 Mighty Panty Raiders now. Our 4th member hasn't posted yet though and i don't wanna spoil who it is, even though if you're clever you can easily find out who it is.

Shuuuuuuuu!

You could say it's an inside joke, but if you've watched hokuto no ken, you'll get it.

Crap Tof's playin: Eastern Sun

Pizzacat kept mentioning this to Zach and me, and i had to try it: Eastern Sun.

Eastern Sun is a Diablo 2 mod that just enhance many aspects of the game without making it too easy, just more convenient.

Improvements?

• Huge increase of the carry space.
• Stash has several pages, also shared stash (between your own characters i believe).
• New and modded skills, way more to choose from.
  
• Mercenaries can be FULLY equipped, also their skills don't suck now.
• Shops sell gems, and more types of gems exist.
• Gems can be removed from equipment, which makes placing a gem less stressful.
• EVERYTHING can have sockets.
• Uncommon items drop way more often and with improved stats.
• New Enemies (with recycled Diablo 1 sprites)
  

Now you would think that makes the game easier wouldn't you? not quite, everything is scaled up so it actually feels harder. Everything that was increased is justified.

It actually took us a really long time for me, Zach and pizzacat to just get through act 1. You find interesting gear much more often, you end up switching gems and upgrading them periodically, etc. Somehow, I was very entertained while playing this.

I'd like to point out that When people play normal diablo 2, they enjoy it through act1, get a lil annoyed at the longest passages of act 2, and at act 3 might even say "Fuck this!".

A very nice thing they did in this mod is cut out the boring ass long parts of act 2 and 3, and it's well cut in my opinion. Feels as long as act 1 and u don't wander off in maggot tunnels, deserts or jungles for hours, just enough time so that it's not boring.

This mod also contains special hard areas (much like the secret cow level) where u can challenge yourself and maybe get awesome loot. all and all, actually quite fun mod.

Valve is pro cock teaser

So the TF2 blog is all like "Hey!" and then says that nothing's happening still.

Well that's not quite true, they're saying that the Polycount pack contest is ending, and i have to admit, the stuff i seen on that is actually pretty cool. who am i kidding, it's better than what valve comes up with.

The other announcement is that there's a new wiki that's like the unofficial wiki, made by the people who made the unofficial wiki, except now it's official. In other words: derp.

How long ago did they show that damn engineer teaser? months? I've gone from being addicted and waiting impatiently for the engy update, to burning out and not playing for game for a week, to addict and burning out again like 3 times.

been trying out lots of stuff while waiting for TF2 to deliver a real update, one of those things was minecraft, which is very oddly addicting and fun. if u like legos you'll prolly like this, if u don't like legos, u'll prolly still like this.

You play in the browser so there's really no reason to try the game out. Creator is making a better version where u can craft items, weapons, armor, etc. but for that version you have to buy the game. If this game turned into a MMO, i would seriously consider it.

I've also been working for a few days on a new blog layout, but this time using one of the newer templates so we can use features that have been implemented in the last years since the original template mod.

Also, we're going to have a new member in the Might Panty Raider crew soon. Not telling who though, it's a surprise.