antimony

ifcomp: quickies

Sat, 02 Nov 2019 21:02:55 GMT

Some short impressions of short games (I haven't been having much time/energy to play, but did a bunch of short web games while commuting -- I stuck with going forward on my personal shuffle to the next half-hour or shorter web/choice game):

( reviews/spoilers behind the cut )

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IFComp 2019: group 1

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 01:15:04 GMT

Well, the first batch coming out of the shuffle is Very IFComp. One short-cute parser puzzler, one Dramatic Web Game About Dark Subjects, and an old-school puzzler in a format I'm not sure I can play. In we go!

( Reviews/Spoilers for Extreme Omnivore, The Mysterious Stories of Caroline, and Treasure Hunt in the Amazon )

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another year, another IFComp

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 23:32:49 GMT

Do I post about anything in my actual life? Not really. But I'm going to try to judge IFComp again. There are 82 entries this year; I'm hoping to get to more than the minimum 5 for judging, but there's no way I'm playing them all.

I'll be going via the comp site's personal shuffle order, skipping games I can't play on my antiquated mac laptop, and making exceptions if I only have a short window to play, when I will scan down the shuffle looking for the first 15-minute game on my list.

As I've done in the past, I'm planning to keep my reviews more about the positives of games/be constructive, and I will often be writing up notes a while after playing, if I was playing from my phone on the bus etc, so they may be quite vague. Sorry, authors, who were hoping for something in-depth; there's 82 games and I'm going for quantity over review quality.

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Thu, 08 Nov 2018 01:06:47 GMT

Well, life got away from me, but I've played a few more games -- reviews inside the Read More for Within a circle of water and sand, Tower, Bullhockey, and smooch.click.
( Read more... )

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IF Comp, group 3

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 01:14:31 GMT

Next up: three earnest short games that all could have used a little more polish and all were going for a strong narrator's voice. (Through random chance, played together!)

( IAG Alpha, Eunice, Shackles of Control )

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IFComp: batch 2

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 16:48:59 GMT

Next batch, a bunch more short web games. Let's Rob A Bank, Let's Explore Geography!, Instruction Set, +=x. And two longer games: Bogeyman and Escape from Dinosaur Island.

( Reviews and spoilers inside )

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October!

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 00:39:09 GMT

It is that time of year when the Interactive Fiction Competition and the Coffeeneuring Challenge start, and I remember that I have blogs and despair of ever catching up on posts I meant to write.

Oh well. Time for some text adventures. I started with just a few minutes to dip my toes in, so I went scrolling through my personal sort for some short games...

But FIRST A PSA: the Interactive Fiction Competition could use judges! There are about 80 games, with little cover-art and synopses available, and a bunch of metadata (expected playtime, is this parser (type commands) or one of the newer web formats, although almost all the parser games are also available in a web interface, content warnings, etc.) Judges must play 5 to judge, and you play until you are done with the game (either by finishing it or being 100% DONE WITH IT, which happens) or you have spent two hours, at which point you record your rating and move on. So a max of ten hours to judge 5 games, but most of them are shorter than two hours. They're a mix of short heartfelt emotive pieces, one-room puzzlers, usually a healthy helping of cyberpunk dystopias (in the current political climate I don't know whether I should expect more or less of these...), classic dungeon crawlers, etc. Try a game!

Okay, so my first few games.

( Dream Pieces 2, I Should Have Been That I Am, Bi Lines )

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Re: the most recent LJ migration

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 00:30:49 GMT

antimony = antimony. Same username(s), same me. I'm not intending to delete my accounts, and I don't feel the need to back up ancient melodramatic posts, so my configuration will stay the same. I check my friendslist/readingcircle both places.

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kitty: doing better than she was

Fri, 13 May 2016 01:22:11 GMT

So I mentioned on FB, but not here, that Salem had a stroke on Friday; she's getting better, slowly; not sure if she'll ever be 100% back but she's now happy to cuddle on the couch and can get herself between a soft blanket on the floor and her food/water.

And then I was surfing elsewhere and came across this post generator meme and it told me to blog about:

i love my cat even though she smells like pee and i know she doesnt blog about flesh

COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT.

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oh, internet

Sat, 06 Feb 2016 19:48:35 GMT

Ugh, why does searching for recipes bring up so many freaky patriarchal-devotional-mommy-wifey blogs? (And why do they have to have actually good recipes but if I made them the creep might wear off on me.

Ew. But I do think I know what I'm making for the work dessert potluck that is a) simple to make with one hand bandaged, b) fits in a 9x13 because I have a carrying bag for 9x13s that is easy to take on the T and c) actually tastes good and is not a repeat of what other people are bringing (i.e. not chocolate), at least not the last time I checked.

(The answer: key lime bars, since the internet (wifey blogs and big corporate food entities agree!) says that you can, in fact, put a standard key lime pie recipe in a 9x13 pan and end up with key lime bars that you can cut and serve in a reasonable fashion. The hardest part will be separating the eggs. I was originally going to do lemon pound cake, because it's super-simple, but I'd have to carry it and that's a pain.)

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this is a "fuck cancer" post, but not as bad as that could be.

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 21:53:07 GMT

A broadcast message, since I've started telling folks piecemeal: it looks like I'm fine and cancer-free now, but I had a tumor removed from my thumb earlier this month, along with the last chunk of my left thumb (the entire joint containing the nail). They also took a bunch of lymph nodes out of my armpit to check, which were all clean, hooray.

So, cancer sucks, but they think I'm free of it, and now for my PSA: if your nails ever do something weird, go to the dermatologist ASAP.

This is likely going to cut down on my bike-riding goals for this year but I should be back on the bike soon; the thing that I expect to be hardest to relearn is video games, since 25+ years of console gaming muscle memory has been amputated along with the tip of my thumb.

Also, big thanks to the family and friends who helped out while this was going on; you know who you are.

(Manually x-posted to facebook, because not everyone is on LJ any more, alas.)

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bye bye, kitty

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 11:59:58 GMT

I guess I updated on FB but not here -- Tigger was very ill, and we lost her a week ago. Today we scattered her ashes in the yard.

Salem seems to have entirely bounced back from her health crisis, which is good, although we're still a little worried about the Italy trip, even if we have an excellent pet-sitter and a friend coming to give her some company.

( Here she is, a few years back, excited to explore the construction we were doing on the house. )

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tiiiired

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 14:36:16 GMT

It's 9:30am on a weekend, and I've been up for a while -- mainly because I managed to go to bed at 10pm last night.

This seems like, without context, a good thing; sleep is good! Not getting my schedule too far off weekday-normal on a weekend is also good! But the reason is that I'm just exhausted, mostly due to the T. My 2-hour commute (each way) was already kind of dragging on me; usually it's fine, but right now I sort of want to have that time back. And then it started being ~3 hours a lot of the time.

So, so tired of it. I want to have time to spend at home with dphilli1 before he heads up to bed (and not resent that he's enough of a morning person that he's getting up even earlier for a non-lengthy commute). I want to be able to cook dinner at home occasionally on weeknights. Blah.

I'm not actually going to do anything about it, except wait for spring when I can at least bike a significant amount of the time, which doesn't make it any faster, but does make it do double-duty.

ETA: and I think the snow may have killed all my bushes along the front of the front yard. Now, not being sick, I went out to try to unbury them, but if I dig down to where they are, the shovel just crumbles them. :(

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I have a new laptop!

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 01:32:34 GMT

Had the plague that is going around; it was vile, and dphilli1 got it almost as badly, which is unusual. It's mostly departed, leaving only the fact that I managed to spittake/cough tea all over my laptop keyboard, rendering it inert (and the laptop cranky in various ways).

So, new laptop time. Everything is in the wrong place and strangely flat. Wah. I will be back to my usual lurking ways shortly, although since I never post much of anything I'm not sure anyone noticed I was less lurking.

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ranting about one social network on another

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:11:51 GMT

It's nice to have extended family added on facebook sometimes -- I can see how my cousins with health problems are doing, and see people's happy news, too.

And I usually can ignore the stream of Glenn Beck reshares, though eventually I might block both them and a few of the other major content generators (including liberal ones and I fucking love science) because I use facebook for seeing peoples lives, not their media. (I love that on twitter, though -- I'm antimonysarah there and everyone should feel free to add.)

But JFC my aunt posting conservative race-baiting crap re: Ferguson when her own great-grandson is a little black boy growing up in central Ohio. The state where a 12 year old was just shot dead by cops for having a toy gun.

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ifcomp, last batch

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 14:40:35 GMT

And here we have it; the last few games of the Comp.

( Sigmund's Quest )
( Krypteia )
( Jesse Stavro's Doorway )
( Paradox Corps )
( Begscape, also contains more thoughts on With Those We Love Alive )
( Origins )

And now to score stuff; I am one of those folks who curves scores; I always give 10s to my favorite game(s) even if I don't think they're perfect, and I generally use the whole range; I will be giving a 1 this year. Basically I put them in order from Best to Worst and then start assigning numbers. The number of really small games in the Comp is throwing me a bit; how do I rate a very good, completely bug/issue free, very short game compared to a mostly very-good long game with one or two issues? Not sure, but I have a tentative list.

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ifcomp, five by five (next to last batch!)

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 01:21:33 GMT

Next to last batch, and I have now played all ~~but one game~~ that I can play on my hardware, the reviews are just still to-be-edited. ETA: Milk Party Palace requires OS X 10.6 or above, so my little 10.5.8 laptop is no good. (That's kind of true in general, really, but I've been buying bike crap with all my disposable income, lately.)

( Creatures Such as We )
( Hunger Daemon )
( Enigma )
( HHH.exe )
( The Entropy Cage )
( Ugly Oafs )
( Laterna Magica )

Last batch will be: Begscape, Origins, Sigmund's Quest, Krypteia, Jesse Stavro's Doorway, Milk Party Palace, and Paradox Corps. Milk Party Palace is the only one I haven't played yet; maybe tonight, maybe not until this weekend. I'll do a no-spoilers rec list then too. (I will be skipping Slasher Swamp, Jacqueline, Jungle Queen!, and Building the Right Stuff due to platform limitations.)

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ifcomp, fore!

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 01:03:38 GMT

I think these reviews may be coming off crankier than I am; I'm a software quality engineer and thus my reaction to "here, try this" is to list flaws. It's what I do. That said, this was not my favorite batch of games, so this batch is pretty harsh.

( One Night Stand )
( The Black Lily )
( Following Me, also has spoilers for The Urge )
( Hill 160 )
( Tower )
( Inward Narrow Crooked Lanes )

Next up: Creatures Such as We, Hunger Daemon, Enigma, HHH.exe, The Entropy Cage, Ugly Oafs, Laterna Magica.

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ifcomp, group 3!

Sun, 12 Oct 2014 02:29:40 GMT

I'm...probably going to make it through all the games that will play on my machine(s)! I'm not sure I've ever managed that while judging before. (And I don't care to dig up my old posts to rec.games.int-fiction to find out.) I'm about 3/4 through the games, though the ones I have left are larger parser games. These posts are just lagging as I polish them up from raw reactions.

( The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer )
( Tea Ceremony )
( Transparent )
( AlethiCorp )
( Arqon )
( Icepunk )
( Excelsior )

Next up: One Night Stand, The Black Lily, Following Me, Hill 160, Tower, Inward Narrow Crooked Lanes

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ifcomp reviews, batch 2

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 01:39:59 GMT

I feel like perhaps I should say more on how I rate games; I've scored a bunch of these competitions before, but the last time was in 2000 or so. And I haven't played much IF from the years in between; I've missed many chapters in innovation, both technological and artistic, and so I don't always know where a competition game is doing something new and where it's doing something that was done better in 2008 but I haven't seen before. I am not worrying about that, and am scoring on whether I liked it.

Also, I have two platforms to play on: an aged Mac laptop running OS X 10.5.8 and the corresponding version of Safari, and a version 1 iPad, also running its corresponding Safari. Both can be bogged down by very basic websites, and both are a little flaky. I've been playing most of the web games on the iPad while commuting on the T, and the interpreter games at home after I write down notes on the web games. (I have, at the point, played almost all the web games, but actually editing my notes hasn't caught up.) (And the numbering sequence of these reviews reflects the original shuffle list I had; if I was at home I played the next interpreter game on it, but I was playing web games as I felt like it.)

( The Contortionist )
( Fifteen Minutes )
( The Urge )
At this point I got tired of doing the cutesy summaries, plus the next group included some games that felt like the author's first IF, and being snarky about the shortcomings of a first game isn't something I want to do, because all of them had something good about them and I'd like to see their authors keep writing.

Though the next game wasn't one of them; in fact, it wasn't the first game from this author in this competition.

( Zest )
( Unform )
( Raik )
( Missive )
( And yet it moves )

Next up: The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer, Tea Ceremony, Transparent, AlethiCorp, Arqon, Icepunk, Excelsior.

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ifcomp reviews, group 1!

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 01:14:22 GMT

So the annual Interactive Fiction Competition just started, and apparently we don't have to hold reviews until the end of the IF Comp any more, so I might as well post these as I play. (Feel free to wait until after to read if you're going to; I am going to do that with other people's reviews after feeling odd about reading a few which disagreed with me on games I've played.)

I'm not putting numerical ratings on now, as I do tend to grade on a curve for the comp. Instead, I'll just do pretentious hipster-restaurant menu descriptions. :)

I've mostly stayed spoiler-light with these reviews, so that they won't spoil the experience if a description sounds intriguing, but they're not spoiler-free.

( With Those We Love Alive )
( Eidolon )
( Venus Meets Venus )
( Caroline )

And those were the games I played on my first day. Next up: The Contortionist, Fifteen Minutes, Unform, The Urge, Zest, Missive.

Note: if linking, link to my ifcomp 2014 tag so that the spoiler cuts are intact.

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tact, you haz none

Fri, 01 Aug 2014 18:16:11 GMT

Ugh, this spin class substitute instructor.

If I come up to you after class, pull you aside where there are no other people, and quietly tell you that the reason I asked if we could have the lights on wasn't because I wanted to see the readout on the bike (which is also nice to be able to do) but because I can't hear you over the music without lipreading and didn't want to shout that with everyone there (work gym, so these are coworkers), the correct response is:

1. Turn away from me (music still on) while replying.
2. Walk back into the group of people.
3. Shout, oh, you wanted to LIPREAD, you should have said something then.
4. All of the above.

hint: none of these answers are correct.

I could have gone to gaming at lunchtime and then done one of my podcast spin sessions and had a better workout, blah. Especially since she was big on having us grind in very tough gears while seated, which is a quick way for me to re-tweak my knees, because I can push them harder than they can really take and not feel it until later.

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one track mind

Mon, 05 May 2014 00:48:12 GMT

literally all I have done this weekend is eat, sleep, and ride my bike. (Well, okay, not quite literally all, but about as close as one can come and still post to LJ to mention it.)

now to decide: more food or more sleep? no more bike. ow.

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Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:50:12 GMT

( spoilery Captain America: The Winter Soldier question behind the cut )

Icon in honor of how Cleveland is blatantly every city ever in the MCU, and it cracks me up.

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bike journal

Sat, 15 Mar 2014 21:48:12 GMT

I decided to go ahead and create a separate journal for bikey stuff, even though everyone who commented assured me they wouldn't mind more posting. I just sort of feel like keeping it separate, like I used to with my fandom and my regular journal, until the whole LJ/DW split made it four journals to keep up with and that turned into too much. We'll see.

I did, however, put it on LJ/DW so people can just add it if they like. (Also, the username I wanted was already taken on several other blogging sites. :) ) bikingandbaking/bikingandbaking. Also bikingandbaking is me if anyone cares. Although I mostly used that as a training log before switching to GDocs, and plan to port the ride reports over there to this new journal.

Inaugural post is up, rambling about running errands, with a lack of pretty pictures because my camera batteries were dead.

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