Nuclear Monster

  • This is old news to some, but it’s still something I wanted to write about. Linus Torvalds, the Linux kernel creator and project manager, has stepped aside (temporarily) to work on his attitude, which is acerbic and awful. Spewing expletives and insults at anyone who dares to work on the kernel. At first, it wasn’t understood why Torvalds chose this moment to take a break.

    Noam Cohen has the scoop for The New Yorker:

    Torvalds’s decision to step aside came after The New Yorker asked him a series of questions about his conduct for a story on complaints about his abusive behavior discouraging women from working as Linux-kernel programmers. In a response to The New Yorker, Torvalds said, “I am very proud of the Linux code that I invented and the impact it has had on the world. I am not, however, always proud of my inability to communicate well with others—this is a lifelong struggle for me. To anyone whose feelings I have hurt, I am deeply sorry.”

    It shouldn’t take a journalist looking into your attitude for some self-reflection to happen, but I’m pretty happy that this acknowledgement is happening at all.

    Torvalds’ shitty attitude of non-conformity to being a good person was infectious, it helped encourage a younger Jack Slater to be a bad leader for the ioquake3 project in the IRC channel and on the mailing list. I thought this attitude made for a good leader, it had the opposite effect. Being an asshole only brought in other assholes and a few extremely great people who helped me change as a leader.

    Other “open source” leaders like Eric S. Raymond have already been found to be complete shitbergs blocking the flow of progress, at least Torvalds had enough sense to step aside and try to change.

    It is decades past time for better leadership in open source and free software. Bring out the open-source 3D printed ultra mega guillotine for the leaders who refuse to step-aside or change.

  • Josh “Cheese” has a ton of thoughts on the latest developments with Valve’s Proton Windows pretendulation software for Linux gaming through Steam. Cheese is always good reading, but he provides some especially useful historical context for this conversation.

    I am still extremely concerned for where Linux gaming is going with Valve-controlled pretendulation as the default mode for new and old games, instead of native ports. It isn’t something many people playing those games will care about, if the pretendulation is good enough for them.

  • Katamari Damacy is almost unplayable today. You can’t buy it online through any platforms or services.

    The 2004 PlayStation 2 original game is out-of-print. The Xbox 360 sequel isn’t backwards compatible on the Xbox One. No Katamari has ever been available forWindows or any other desktop computing platform.

    Mobile versions of the real Katamari existed on the iPhone, but aren’t available anymore. The only Katamari games that you can download on an iPhone today are free-to-play explorations of other game formulas like the modern clicker game or the endless runner. Those seem to exist solely to siphon off our shared nostalgia.

    Katamari Damacy is just a great example of the difficulty in preserving original games in their original format. Hooking up a PlayStation 2, 3, or Xbox 360 is the only way to experience it today without walking in the harsh desert of emulator country and I haven’t even begun to explain why anyone who hasn’t played some version of Katamari would care about it.

    It’s a game where you roll a big-ass ball around, it’s extremely weird, the ball collects things in a fictional version of our world and the things all have a kind of low-poly aesthetic. The ball is called a Katamari and it is being pushed by the Prince of the Cosmos under orders from his father, the King of the Cosmos. As you collect things the ball grows larger and larger until it’s finally going to roll up entire continents and at some point the level ends and the King is either satisfied with your work as the Prince or you can repeat the level. Some levels had annoying goals, it wasn’t perfect, but Katamari Damacy is missed by everyone who loved it. I still listen to some of the soundtrack with my family because it’s fun music that is approachable even to people who haven’t played a Katamari game.

    I’m eternally grateful to whatever print magazine or 1UP.com show that told me about the original, because I wasn’t hooked into anywhere else that was talking about it when it was released in 2004.

    All that said, this remaster of the original Katamari Damacy will finally be available on December 7th, 2018. Katamari Damacy ReRoll (it’s strangely an all-caps REROLL in the press release) on the Nintendo Switch as well as Steam for Windows. I don’t have a firm price available yet. ReRoll will also have new motion controls on the Switch. Very curious to see how well this game caps off our year of remasters and remakes as Katamari takes one more roll through the ephemerality pipeline.

  • Pocket Camp didn’t stick with me, maybe it was too obviously a mobile free-to-play exploitation machine, but I am glad that Nintendo announced a new Animal Crossing for the Switch for 2019. They did it with a goofy bait-and-switch during the most recent Nintendo Direct by announcing Isabelle as a playable character in the upcoming Smash Bros. Ultimate first.

  • The Nintendo Switch Online service is now available to lock you out of the multiplayer functionality in video games you’ve already bought or might buy in the future.

    Nintendo Switch Online $20 for a year which seems fine until they raise the price, or when you think about how well Nintendo has handled any kind of online systems in the past.

    That $20 gets you the online multiplayer, cloud saves, access to a rotating library of old NES games, access to the Nintendo mobile app for voice chat because Nintendo refuses to allow voice chat through the console, and access to some kind of special members-only offers to purchase things.

    It’s up to publishers and developers to decide what games get support for cloud saves. The upcoming Dark Souls 1 remaster/port won’t have it because people might cheat, which is a lame excuse but it also might be understood as because the game was already in development for some time. All games should support cloud saves if they can or the service should change to support games with limitations on cloud save restoration to prevent cheating. Anything is better than losing your Dark Souls save.

    Cloud saves should be free for anyone buying a Switch. That service is kind of free on Xbox Live (or at least they won’t drop your saves if you don’t pay for Gold). Cloud saves are entirely behind the Plus paywall on the PlayStation 4, and they’ll be dropped after 30 days of a Plus account expiring.

    There are 20 NES games at launch and Nintendo promises more to come. Nintendo’s website has a list. You can also interact with a friend playing a NES game by controlling an onscreen cursor while they play. It lets you clap for them or point to things that are important. I’m going to go ahead and predict that this feature is gone within two years or at least never added to any future online service that Nintendo does.

    Access to old NES games is another feature that might help make this service worth money to someone. Nintendo have also locked the ability to buy a set of ($60) wireless NES controllers behind the service. The controllers look kind of nice and hook up to the Switch like Joy-Cons by sliding onto the sides of the console, but having to pay for the ability to buy something else is lame as heck.

    I’m probably not going to pay for online access to Splatoon 2 or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe anymore, but I didn’t play them online enough while multiplayer was ostensibly free. There are enough other ways in my home to play old NES games, and I don’t care enough about those NES controllers to buy them. Cloud saves should be free for everyone and Nintendo should provide more ways to backup your saves.  This service stinks and the only good thing about it is that it exists as an example of how every console and platform is trying to pry money from us on a recurring basis. They’re parasites who want to exploit us at every turn.