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Nothing I didn't already know, at least subconsciously, but very good to hear it all put together, particularly since he grouped things a little differently.

I just started playing Civ5. And by "just started", I mean I started about nine hours ago.

Dammit, I knew this would happen. That game dissolves my already weak self-control.

Just finished Sleeping Dogs. That game is awesome. End of story. Not sure why I let that game lie on my to-play pile for so long (lolhiddenpun).

I'm actually not sure what I'll play next. Zeno Clash 2 was fun for a bit, but it's not flowing the same way the original did (and the acting and story seem a lot worse). And after Hotline Miami *and* Sleeping Dogs, I think I'm done with punching people for now. I think I need something slower.

I've got both The Last Remnant and Civilization V downloaded, might go for one of those. Or some of the other dozens of games on my to-play list.

I've been testing out my new monitor with some old games. Unreal Tournament 3 is better than I remember it being - of course, I've been avoiding the Warfare maps, which always pissed me off the most. I played through Bad Company 2 again, particle effects are still the #1 killer.

And now I've started playing Sleeping Dogs - very awesome game. The story is like The Godfather as directed by Bruce Lee (and a rare example of a game that has very high-quality cutscenes but does not go too heavy with them). The gameplay is Grand Theft Auto plus Arkham City - guns play second fiddle to fists, but the hand-to-hand system is incredible.

Probably this. I subscribe to all my comics with separate RSS feeds, and I probably didn't remember to "subscribe" to all the ComicFury-hosted ones (since I don't actually read them with CF's subscription feed).

So a friend of mine invited me to go watch a NASCAR race with him. I'm not much of a racing fan, never been to one in person, but I went anyways.

My ears are STILL RINGING. 36 600HP engines are LOUD.

There were about five crashes in the first race, and about three more in the second (the first was sort of a minor leagues NASCAR equivalent, leading up to the bigger races this weekend; the second race was a charity event, a mix of pros running their personal racecars while in town for the weekend race, locals running their own cars for fun, and random race-related people who don't normally get to drive).

There was some pretty intense stuff. A seven-car chain wreck - they were literally coming into the first turn after a caution, everyone was still lined up, and someone missed a gear shift or something and they all piled up. Then there was the wreck early in the second race that left some cars running with no front fender, or other mostly-cosmetic damage.

Fun, but I'm not likely to go back for a while. I still don't get a lot of what's going on, so I need someone explaining stuff to me as it happens.

And when I do go back, I'm bringing some freaking earplugs.

I'll try some more stuff tomorrow, but I'm not too optimistic. Remember, as far as the computer or any programs are concerned, the USB adapter "is" the MIDI device it's talking to, so if it worked for one keyboard, it should work with any others.

If I do have to buy a new cable, it won't be that big a deal, as long as I can find one that's not obscenely expensive (looking now, one that's known to work costs $40, which is more than the keyboard cost).

I'm using a $7 cable, so I'm not too surprised I'm having a few issues. But I am annoyed.

The USB adapter installed drivers automatically - USB->MIDI adapters are a standard USB device class, just like mice and flash drives, so the drivers are pretty much built into the OS.

And it worked just fine on my other keyboard, using the same drivers and cable. USB is pretty much designed for plug-and-play.

Dammit.

So I got a MIDI->USB cable today, and while it works fine on my big old keyboard, it isn't working with the RB3 keyboard controller. The RB3 controller would actually make a better MIDI controller for most purposes, since it has velocity and pitchbend (and is also more portable, so I can use it with my laptop on the go).

I suspect it has to do with the RB3 controller only having a MIDI OUT, no MIDI IN. I suspect my USB->MIDI adapter doesn't like that. I might see if there's a particular adapter that works well with RB3 keyboards. It might be a good idea to have two adapters anyways - would let me use both at once.


In brighter news, yesterday I ordered an absolutely beastly monitor - a Dell Ultrasharp. 27 inches. IPS. 2560x1440 resolution. Full AdobeRGB coverage - that means bluer blues, greener greens and redder reds than sRGB (most monitors aren't even full sRGB, either 99% sRGB or 75% sRGB for the really cheap ones). Should be here Friday.

[spoiler]Yes, but they were the ones leaving messages on Jacket's phone, and the ones that called to "report a break-in at the phone company", sending him to go kill Biker. Why would they send him to go kill himself?[/spoiler]

In non-Miami news, I finished Brütal Legend last night. Or technically today, since I stayed up til 4AM to do so. I think Brütal Legend may now be my favorite game I've played this year. That game is pure METAL. I'm talking like weapons-grade Uranium, not some pansy bismuth or copper. I think you could use any random screenshot as an album cover and it would work (it couldn't be any worse than Dance of Death's atrocious cover, at least).

Except [spoiler]the phone guys are aware of Biker and send Jacket to kill him. Still doesn't add up.[/spoiler]

No, split timelines are something different.

Let me explain what happened.
[spoiler]You start the game playing as a guy called Jacket. There is some minor non-linear storytelling going on, because some of the between-level cutscenes are in the future, but for the most part it's linear. Towards the end, there's a rather difficult boss fight against a character called Biker. The player, naturally, wins this boss fight after fifty tries or so, and Hotline Miami being violent as hell, it ends with you scattering Biker's brains across the floor with a golf club.

The game continues on, still playing as Jacket, still mostly-linear. The game "ends" at Chapter Fifteen. But then it rewinds several days, and you start playing as Biker. After a few levels of that, you have a boss fight against Jacket, in the exact same place the first one was, on the exact same day, and he tries to do exactly what you did to beat that boss fight earlier. But you, Biker, win this fight, and his story continues on.

And that, right there, is the problem. The game goes nonlinearly, but it does so in a way that contradicts itself. No matter which way you look at it, one of those endings has to have not happened. Which means one character's ending gets nullified. That wouldn't have to happen if "getting killed by Jacket" was Biker's ending.

Hotline: Miami isn't the only game, let alone story, to do this. It's common in time-travel stories, where every time you time-travel, you end up "splitting" the timeline into one where you didn't go back, and one where you did. That's actually a common scientific theory for how time-travel would actually work. Other variants have "parallel dimensions" instead of branching timelines, but it's not hard to see how it's effectively the same storytelling device.

But every time it's used *well*, it's as part of a story where time-travel is actually happening, and that it's acknowledged in-story. See Back to the Future, or the Zelda series as a whole. Here, it's used to crudely spackle over all the plot holes in Jacket's story, but it manages to do so in the most contradictory way imaginable. I get some of the reasons why it happened, but it still comes off as a huge plot crutch, one even I found a way to do without.[/spoiler]

Anyways I just started playing Brütal Legend and HOLY CRAP THIS GAME IS AWESOME

I command an army of headbangers in a fight for justice. I light people on fire with a guitar solo. I ride some sort of demon-speedster given to me by Ormagöden himself, later upgraded by the Guardian of Metal, Ozzy (yes, *that* Ozzy, both in appearance and as a voiceactor). I have slain General Lionwhyte, bearer of the False Metal of Glam.

It is both unrepentantly ridiculous, and unbelievably badass.

The soundtrack is pure metal. Seriously, it's got Sabbath, it's got Slayer, it's got Manowar, it's got Megadeth. Even the bad songs, the ones I normally wouldn't much like, fit in well.

And the gameplay! Normally if you told me "open-world action-RPG plus RTS with vehicle sections" I'd look at you like you were crazy. But it works. Some of the boss fights could have used better cues, but it still works pretty well. And the interface was clearly designed more for consoles, but it's a pretty well-done PC port.

I was trying to count my webcomics folder, but I think we may need better definitions.

For instance, I see a lot of references to "dailies", conflating them with gag comics. However, I would hesitate to call Schlock Mercenary, Skin Horse or Sinfest "gag comics". They may have some small joke every strip, but the primary emphasis, I would say, is on telling the story.

After some thought, I have devised the following five categories:

1) The Pure Gag Comic:
The emphasis is purely on humor. Characters rarely come back after one appearance. There is no story or continuity.
Examples: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Scenes From A Multiverse (to an extent)

2) The Static Character Humor Comic
The emphasis is still primarily on humor, but it has developed a recurring cast. However, there is little-to-no continuity, and characters rarely (if ever) change.
Examples: Dinosaur Comics, Nedroid, Basic Instructions

3) The Story Comic With No Plot
There is a mixed emphasis on humor and character development. Characters grow and change, which is much of the appeal, but there is no "plot" in that there is no story arc, just aimless meandering.
Examples: Questionable Content, Shortpacked

4) The Graphic Novel
There may be jokes, even regular ones, but the primary aim of the comic is to tell a story. It has a story arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. After the end, it may continue into another story, or it may just end.
Rule of thumb: If you can imagine an "ending" to the comic, it's probably in this category.
Examples: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Gunnerkrigg Court, Order of the Stick, Schlock Mercenary

5) The Oddball
This doesn't tell a story. It also doesn't have jokes. Maybe it's packed with inspirational quotes. Maybe it's some deliberate anti-humor. Maybe it's educational. Whatever it is, it's not one of the above.
Examples: Zen Pencils


Now, here's where it gets weird. Comics can change between them - Crazy Sunshine started at 2, and is moving towards 3 or 4. Comics can bounce between them - Penny Arcade tends to alternate between short story arcs and random jokes, toggling between 2 and 3. And it doesn't need to be consistent - XKCD typically is just a 1, but will spring a full story arc or a recurring character on you at random.

Really, 1-4 form a spectrum, not distinct categories. I can definitely say that both Questionable Content and PvP are between 3 and 4, but QC is "higher" than PvP is.

Side note: Not all comics are about humor or story. I sort of just shoved them all into 5, but there's more I could have done. I think the point of any comic is to make you feel some emotion - whether comedy, or romance, or tragedy, or any of the other emotion. A true, detailed classification system would need to account both for the level of "plot", as well as the level of humor or whatever else. But that's thesis-level stuff right there.

Dude, I could barely beat some levels with the *helpful* masks (killer doors, peaceful dogs or silent guns, usually). Doing it without that? Madness.

[spoiler]And split timelines are a bullshit cop-out storytelling crutch, unless your story actually involves either alternate timelines, or time travel.[/spoiler]

An homage is both clearly inspired by, but clearly distinct, from the original. For example, in Wreck-It Ralph, Felix and Ralph are obvious homages to Mario and Donkey Kong, respectively. Clearly inspired by, and paying tribute to, but also distinct.

If it isn't clear that you both took the idea from someone else, but are doing so to honor an artist you like, it isn't an homage. I don't think it's really anything, since if you did take anything from him, you didn't take enough to be noticed. It may be an odd case if the original is nearly unknown and you're a major, well-known artist, but that isn't what's happening here.
On the other hand, if it isn't clearly different in some significant way, it also isn't homage. In this case, it *is* stealing. Telling the same joke, but with different characters, isn't really changing enough. Changing the punchline (especially if it's a joke most of your readers will know) would be. For example, if I were to retell Carlin's famous "seven dirty words you can't say on TV" joke, but change it to talk about how you can't say the words, but can totally get away with showing the acts or objects, that would be an homage.

So the questions are:
If I had seen both the original, and your potential homage, would I recognize it as a reference to the original?
What makes yours different from the original? Can you imagine someone not liking the original, but still enjoying yours?

Finally beat Hotline: Miami. Well, I didn't get the secret ending, but nuts to that. It was hard enough just trying to beat some of those levels; I'm not doing it again while hunting for 9-pixel puzzle pieces.

Story talk, massive spoilers:
[spoiler]Shit *STILL* doesn't make sense.

For one, the whole Biker/Jacket fight. Doesn't make sense, since chapter 7 Jacket kills Biker, while in chapter 18 Biker *clearly* kills Jacket. The only explanation that makes sense to me would be that Biker won, but Jacket survived and the rest of his story is just a concussion-induced hallucination... but chapter eleven/twelve *also* involve Jacket being nearly killed and hallucinating, and that's a level of nested insanity I just can't handle.

Secondly, Jacket didn't really get an ending. If we assume he's not 100% insane, he ends up killing the Russian mafia boss, and then, what? You're still wanted by police, still controlled by the phone guys, nothing's really changed. I get that you're a pawn in the hands of others, but his story literally just ends.

Third, how crazy *is* Jacket? At points he's clearly going completely out of it, hallucinating corpses talking to him, people popping in and out of existence. But after he gets out of the hospital, nothing. Did being in a coma for a week somehow cure his schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder and whatever else he had going on? After he breaks out of the hospital, it's just "break into police station, kill the rat, then go take down the Russian mob". Or did he perhaps go so insane that his hallucinations started to make sense again? I will admit that the last few Jacket levels seemed a bit more fanciful than normal - panthers, a one-eyed ninja assassin chick - but not much crazier than, say, Uzi-wielding waiters.

I actually sort of prefer the theory I came up with earlier, before finishing the game. Not only would it have been a great twist, but it would have had an actual goddamn ending.

Or perhaps this would have been a better second half of the game:
Both Jacket and Biker were doing hits at the order of the phone hackers. While Jacket slowly goes crazy from the violence, Biker realizes they're up to something bigger, and decides to get out. But the only way he'll get out and live is to take them all down. He starts leaving Jacket phone orders as well, having him undermine their whole operation, preparing it to crumble as soon as the Russian mafia is dealt with. Once the phone men find out what Biker is up to, though, they send Jacket to eliminate him, which he does. However, Biker had prepared some taped orders to Jacket, which allows him to end both the Russians and the phone guys from beyond the grave. The last message, after having Jacket eliminates the phone guys, leads Jacket to a stash of anti-psychotic medication, which (plus his ex-hooker new girlfriend, who probably should have gotten a level of her own, come to think of it) gives the sole survivor of the game a happy ending. But one that doesn't interfere with the sequel - when the city falls to madness again, he can stop taking the pills to become the psychotic killer once again.[/spoiler]

Perhaps, instead of describing it in terms of light, you describe it in terms of dark:
Sunset is "shadow comes", sunrise is "shadow leaves" or "shadow departs". Replace "shadow" with "umbra" for a more technical-sounding "umbrafall" and "umbrapart".

I mostly just organized my music collection. Built up best-of playlists for some of my favorite metal bands, added album art where missing, added ratings to a few albums I'd never gotten to.

The playlists are a bit interesting. I tried different things with each. Iron Maiden I ordered from "least metal" (Journeyman) to (Run to the Hills). Megadeth I grouped thematically - grouping songs about crime (Public Enemy #1, 44 Minutes), insanity (The Right to Go Insane, their cover of Paranoid), war (Holy Wars, Gears of War, Rust in Peace) and so on. Metallica I went further, trying to build up a full story (a kid, drafted into war, suffers from PTSD, tries to commit a murder-suicide but failing that second part, finally being executed). I'm setting it up for whenever I get control of the office stereo - I think my co-workers are getting tired of having raggae on repeat day after day. And for all of them, I tried to include the less-popular songs, not just the obvious must-haves - so "Just a Bullet Away", "-Human", "Kill the King", "Blood of Heroes", "Como Estais Amigos", "Montsegur", "Another Life", and so on.

Somehow now I'm listening to the soundtrack to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. What. The. Hell.

My music collection is weird.

So I went to RavenCon today.

I am exhausted, but soooooo worth it.

Met Jennie Breeden, chitchatted for a little bit. Met some other comic artists, got a signed copy of some indie print-only thing I'd never heard of (Red Knight) and discovered a few webcomics to check out.

And the games! I finally committed myself to getting into tabletop gaming, picked up the Pathfinder beginner box. And like three versions of Fluxx (which is AWESOME) and something called "We didn't playtest this at all". All very random games, but good ones.

And I grabbed the other half of the Ender series, which I never got around to.

Next year I'm definitely going earlier, so I can see some of the panels. And have more time to trawl the art room and vendors - even at such a small con, on the last day, it was still impossible to check everything. I'll make a note to bring more loose cash, since debit doesn't exactly work well.