Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii friends! You may have noticed that I haven’t updated much. Honestly I’m not gonna start making promises, because I’ve already done that enough to guarantee a pretty large karmic backlash at some point in the future/past/present.

Game of the Week #4

Zombies aren’t a new concept. The term originally denoted an animated corpse brought back to life via mystical means, such as voodoo or witchcraft. In the “modern times” the term now refers to an undead being, primarily in horror fiction. It’s mostly down to George A Romero’s 1968 film “Night of the living dead” you see. So yeah, they’re not a new concept in the slightest. Recently though they’ve taken a pretty massive surge in popular culture, there’s been a few pretty good zombie films, such as Shaun of the Dead et al, a few supposedly good comics, and a few games. Now, some of the films and comics capture the desperation of a zombie apocalypse pretty well, but as of yet no game has, in my opinion, done the concept justice.

That’s where Cataclysm comes in. _Not_ the WoW expansion. Cataclysm is a roguelike based on, well, surviving in a post zombie thing world. You start, a lone survivor, with basically nothing but the clothes on your back. You take stock of your surroundings using a handy map that you somehow have, and then you get on with it. This includes raiding shops for food, weapons and other essentials, all whilst avoiding the zombies which track you by, in this order, Noise, Smell and Sight. This means firing guns is REALLY FUCKING STUPID and will draw a MILLION zombies to you, just like it should.

It’s pretty hard to explain quite why Cataclysm is as fun as it is. Roguelikes are fun, and this is more so because you actually have a sense of desperation. Firing a gun is genuinely your last resort because if you do so without a silencer you’re probably fucked.

Let’s have a short story, to make up for the fact that literally no one ever suggests a game to me, and literally no one wants to write a segment either.

Alfred was hungry. His legs and his right arm ached after the recent assault by a few zombies that he'd beaten off with his baton. He limped along the road desperately, scanning the horizon for any hint of life that wasn't trying to eat him. Nothing...he carried onwards.

As he limped along, his arm and legs hurting even more than they had earlier, he noticed a shiimering on the road ahead. He noticed how parched his throat was, how much he needed a drink. He popped a pill of adderall to give himself a speed boost and limped towards the pool of water...There was a blinding flash, and the world ended.

At this point PDN crashed for some reason so I lost my screenshots. Later on I found a house with a few zombies, and an MP7. I wasted one shot on a zombie because I was basically dead anyway, which soon brought the hordes down upon me. Maybe I’ll find my body on a later character, which’d be nice since I had a lovely police baton.

So now I know what you’re thinking. “Ew, ASCII, that makes me so ill I think I’m gonn- BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURGH”. But fear not, brave/cowardly hero/scum! Our very own CIB used to maintain a tilesetted version, and now he’s returned to doing so. You can find all that in the downloads section.

Anyway, Cataclysm is fun and you should play it.

Downloads/Links:

Cataclysm Download page - Has source code, windows executable and linux executable.

Cataclysm wiki - Guides and such. Also loads of spambots

Vehicles mod - Adds vehicles that you can lose control of and crash into a million buildings. Worth getting.

Tileset version. - Has vehicles also. Probably the best version for a new player, honestly. Windows only atm.

Thread of the Week #4

Do you like music? I like music.  This thread is good because people like different types of music and I love finding different types, so yeaaaaaaaaaaah also I couldn’t really think of any threads and mister_fox was about as useful as you’d imagine a fox to be so…

WHAT MUSIC U LISTEN TO?

Word of the Week #2

 Agley – Off the right line; wrong; awry.

Links:

Game of the Week thread

My email, as always, is cheeckan@gmail.com  Feel free to email me suggestions and also tell me how dumb I am for posting my email (again) (again).

*SkyMarshal dons a thrown-tomato-proof poncho*

Hello, all!
I’m sure most (if not all) of you know me.  I’m that coder that adds stuff and perpetually forgets that he had debugging info left in!  Anyways, I’ve been around for a while (almost two years), and originally came here from a wonderful binge on TVTropes.

In game, I tend to play Robert Zhalimit, kleptomaniac and unashamed CE, or Phillip Oswald, the cheerful and soft spoken detective.  Unfortunately between school, life, and coding, I do not get to play very often, so do not be suprised if I am not in game.  I do, however, frequent the forums and IRC, so you’ll probably see me there, more often than not.

I’ve coded a few things for the community, and even pushed some of it back to /tg/, however I am a derp sometimes and miss something/screw something up.  Most of the stuff I add originates from me looking at how something is either coded, or looking at how the game functions, and thinking: “This seems stupid/too simplified/not cool enough” and promptly preforming an overhaul.

Anyways, now that I’ve bored you to tears, you may throw your tomatos and blame me for everything that goes wrong!
*SkyMarshal ducks*

NOTE: I AM APPLES, BUT I POSTED THIS FOR SKY CAUSE HE ASKED ME TO OKAY.

I think I’ll preface this with a message, again. Although I do of course want to do this and I hate myself for being lazy, I will, for the sake of transparency, tell you that I was threatened with molestation and grievous bodily harm if I didn’t write this today. So now you know.

Game of the Week #3

The other day, I was thinking to myself “Apples, whatever happened to Disney making awesome cartoon adaptions of popular fairy tales?”, and then that thought was promptly followed by a desire to watch Snow White and the 7 dwarves.

But I couldn’t, so I turned to the next thing I could think of that also has 7 dwarves. Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is -the-…dwarf…fortress… simulator, coded and designed by two brothers,  Tarn and Zach Adams. The basic, and I mean basic, premise is that you are tasked as a sort of omnipotent overseer of a fortress of dwarves. You start by choosing a site to embark on, then you set up your first 7 dwarves, and then you go forth and strike the earth.

But it’s also way way way way way more than that, because that on it’s own would be pretty dull. Dwarf Fortress has some kind of coded magic that I will never understand, so when you generate a world in the first place not only are you generating a world, but also all the history that comes with it. This includes individuals, such as  ”Lorbam Alathkod” (Lorbam Boltblotted), Who, in my world, was not only one of the first dwarves, but also killed a minotaur and a cave ogre, which isn’t bad considering she was a fishery worker.

Now, Dwarf Fortress has two modes but…honestly writing about both of them would make this post super long, if I wanted to do them justice. Basically you have Adventurer mode, where you play as a single dwarf/human/elf (nope)/whatever you mod in, and get quests to go kill things, or there’s a dwarf fortress mode, which I’ve mentioned. There’s also Legends mode, but that’s just a way to read the history of your world, which is actually pretty fucking awesome.

So yeah, Dwarf Fortress is ostensibly about managing a fortress and making sure it doesn’t die, but that’s a lot harder than it seems it should be. Couple the insane detail given to each dwarf with relationships, fell moods and goblin invasions, and it soon becomes a struggle. It’s even harder now that necromancy exists.

I’m honestly struggling to kinda…explain dwarf fortress. It can’t be explained in a way that suits the low word count of my posts. So I’ll just link to a few things that’ll help you. Namely, LP’s. Well, just one, really.

It shouldn’t need an introduction, and you’ve probably already read it, but here we go: Boatmurdered

Boatmurdered is exactly what got me into Dwarf Fortress, and it’ll probably get you into it too. It’s exactly what makes DF awesome. Sure, [redacted] aren’t as dangerous anymore, but the latest version has massive swarms of…well, massive mosquitos. How is that NOT awesome?

I’ll also include some links to tutorials in the links section.

Downloads/Links:

Dwarf Fortress

Their forums – You may recognise a certain aspect *cough*

A tutorial - Please bear in mind that a new version was released about 2 weeks ago, so this tutorial (or indeed any other you find) will be out of date. It still teaches the basics though.

Thread of the Week #3

This week’s wonderfully wacky and wickedly…uh…fantastic? thread is the Ask the Admins thread. Started by Hawk_v3, it has already evolved into a wonderful place where you can finally ask us those questions you’ve always wanted to ask. like “Do you really have a secret IRC channel?” and “Do you really ERP in your admin forum?” The answer is yes, but only to one of those questions. Guess which.

But on an actually serious note, I think this thread is awesome. It’ll help people understand what goes into things, and it’s sort of like asking your favourite dev team what goes on behind the scenes. In fact, it’s EXACTLY like that.

Kinda.

oh, I also decided to do a new feature.

it is called WORD OF THE WEEK.

Word of the Week #1

Adamantine – utterly unyielding or firm in attitude or opinion.

Links:

Game of the Week thread

My email, as always, is cheeckan@gmail.com  Feel free to email me suggestions and also tell me how dumb I am for posting my email (again) (again).

Hello again, friends. Maybe, since a week (I perfected time travel, by the way) has passed we’re more than friends now. In which case, greetings, prospective husbands/wives! I agree that’s slightly more creepy than is expected, but you’ll cope and if you don’t I won’t marry you.

Enough of that, onto the post.

Game of the Week #2

So, the other day I was on the bus, and I heard two probably super old people saying how it was their dream to instigate and see through to the end of a global nuclear war. If I was a lesser man I might have though “Nonsense, surely there is no such simulation wherein I can partake in the instigation and completion of a global nuclear war!?”, but I’m not so I didn’t. Instead it reminded me of DEFCON, the frankly fabulously fantastical fucking nuclear war simulator from the godly goat people at Introversion. It also reminded me that I love alliteration, which is probably slightly relevant at this point.

I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Introversion, whose work includes: Uplink, Darwinia, Multiwinia and DEFCON, with the now cancelled Subversion and the upcoming Prison Architect also included.

I’m trying not to quote stuff that well, Quote, is going to say later, so I’m going to have to keep it relatively short, but essentially: If you like games where you can backstab people, you will -love- DEFCON. Trust me, I’ve been on both sides of this deal. Nothing beats sending a stream of nukes at your “ally”, just as nothing is worse than seeing said stream heading for your lovely radars.

“Break the w-”…he said. No, wait, wrong game. “They’re going past your radar don’t worry” he said. And then he left the alliance and destroyed me completely .

So yeah, I’ll provide links below, which is simpler because Steam. Here’s Quote/Ingel Zombie/Moonie’s piece on it, enjoy!

Quote’s piece:

Gentlemen and gentlewomen. World leaders of all shapes, sizes and with differing opinions on nuking each other back to the Stone Age. May I have your attention please?  Do you like nukes? Do you like sending said nukes at your friends? Alternatively, do you just enjoy a walk in the park, while nuking hapless AI opponents?

My BS12 nickname is Quote, and I know I sure do, and that’s why I just HAVE to suggest that you play this wonderful game called Defcon.

DEFCON,  the global thermonuclear warfare simulator, allows me to live the “what if” that is “What if the whole world ended up in global thermonuclear war, with me safely in a command bunker somewhere with control of the nuclear assets of a major power”. And not only do I get to (e-)live this thought, I also get to nuke my friends in the process.

If you just want to check out the game, and the wonders of its multiplayer, click the following link. It will take you to a really fun Let’s Play, and should give you a good picture of what the game is like. Both gameplay-wise, and playing-with-friends-wise:

http://lparchive.org/DefCon/

If you want to try this game, there’s a demo, and the game itself is only about 15$. I do really suggest you try and/or buy.And if you do, make sure to check out the following thread on the forums:

SELF PROMOTION WOO

Downloads/Links:

Introversion’s DEFCON page – Has purchase links and stuff.

DEFCON on Steam – You can get the demo here, etc

Thread of the Week #2

To make up for the failure to post this at all last week, I’ve decided to, yet again, link to two threads. They are as follows.

The first is the thread created by Biscuitry regarding Wire Art. I’m not entirely sure why it is, but if I didn’t choose that I’d have to choose my own RTD, and that seems a little bit too bias. So if you like wire, and you like art, feel free to pop over here and gawp at the fantastic art. Note the use of singularity things as eyes. Truly astonishing.

The second thread of the week is vaguely important. So, in BS12 we all have fun and stuff, and then out of the blue sometimes, the server goes “NOPE” and crashes/freezes up on us. This causes a lot of worry and personally I tend to physically cry whenever it happens. (Which is probably another problem, really). So what can you, a simple player, do to help? Well, first you can learn to understand the mess that is BYOND, and then you can head over to here and help fix those dang runtime bugs! Woo!

So that wraps up this week’s X’s of the Week. I apologise profusely for the possibly low quality of the thread/s of the Week, but honestly I’ve been too busy this week to actually enjoy any thread, and those two are either neat or actually useful, so yeah.

Links:

Game of the Week thread

My email, as always, is cheeckan@gmail.com  Feel free to email me suggestions and also tell me how dumb I am for posting my email (again).

Hello, friends, and welcome to the first installment of “X’s of the week”!

As is, I hope, fairly evident from the title, this post is the first in a series of posts that I will now be doing every Friday. These posts will consist of, well, basically what this post will be after this little intro. Since this is the first post I’ll write a little description under each segment in italics so you know what that section is. Although it -should- be pretty obvious. Really obvious, in fact.

Game of the Week #1.

This segment will each week be dedicated to a different game, as suggested to me by any member of the community. Suggestions should be emailed to me, and if chosen I may ask you to write a little bit, as Gunther Hermann has for this. In the event that I find the game originally on a blog site, I’ll just link the article.

This week’s game, wonderful reader, is space exploration-cum-hallucinogenic simulator Noctis. This relatively well known game prides itself on having an in game galaxy, Feltyrion, that is approximately 90 thousand light years in radius which is approximately double the radius of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The only things you can’t land on and explore in this game are gas giants and Substellar objects. Everything else is able to be explored to your heart’s content.

I myself haven’t dipped into Noctis for a while because I played it a while ago now, but it’s certainly worth downloading if you have any notion of how pretty procedurally generated content can be.

As of 2003, the current version of Noctis, which is Noctis IV, had its source code released for people to play with whilst the creator toils away on the next version, which he presumably still is. This led to the inception (I know, right, INCEPTION is a word) of Noctis IV CE, otherwise known as NICE. NICE solves some problems and stuff, but is no longer supported, whereas -another- variation, Noctis IV Plus, is. I have provided links for all the versions in the download section.

Anyway, now let’s hear Gunther’s opinion on the game!

And by hear I mean read.

Gunther’s Opinion:

Apparently Gunther is still asleep despite it being a time when he is usually here. I intend to chastise him when he comes online and extort words out of him, which will then be edited here. Until then, I guess he thinks it’s good and stuff.

Downloads:

Noctis CE – Not Supported

Noctis IV Plus – Supported!

Noctis IV – Not Supported

Thread of the Week #1

In this other weekly segment, I will highlight a thread on the forums. That’s basically it. It might be a funny thread, a thread, that’s been around for ages, a brand new thread,, or maybe even something vaguely important, such as the thread, on the SOPA/PIPA blackouts.

This week, however, I will not sully us with the taint of things that actually matter. This week’s thread, of the week is Forsamori’s “Let’s Play Space Station 13, with Baystation 12!” thread.

This thread represents something that I’ve always liked about the whole Let’s Play thing. Firstly, someone else playing a game and relating their experiences to their audience means their audience doesn’t have to play the game themselves, which is nice for the lazy ones amongst us. Secondly, LP’s allow for community participation, as can be seen in basically all the Something Awful DF let’s play’s, and community participation is good.

In fact, screw it, because I mentioned Dwarf Fortress and let’s play’s I may as well link to Strumpet’s already wonderful “My First Dwarf Fortress Let’s Play”.

So you get two threads of the week this week. I bet you expected me to link the MLP thread, didn’t you? Well, you didn’t, because I didn’t even know I was doing this post til a while ago, but whatever.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this post, and join me again next week for “X’s of the Week #2″.

Links:

Developer’s Website/Noctis website - I’m afraid this uses some weird HTML trickery or something so I can’t link to anything within it. If you need help mastering Noctis’ controls, which you will, try the forums.

Game of the Week thread – This will remain the same but I’ll always link it anyway, go here to discuss the GotW, obviously.

My Email – cheeckan@gmail.com – Email me your suggestions for GotW and also tell me how much you love me for taking the risk of posting my email publicly like this.

So, new code, new base. We now share a codebase with /tg/ and intend to alter it to our purposes.

However, while our code is now running off similar bases, the playerbases are seperate.

• Anyone raiding or griefing on /tg/ in Bay’s name will find the ban /tg/ applies mirrored. Anyone from /tg/ doing the same here gets the same treatment.
• Anyone here who insults a /tg/ player just for being from /tg/ will find themselves having a daycation, or more.
• “X plays on /tg/” is *not* a valid point against someone in an adminhelp, or a Appeal. It will get you punished for saying.
• Slurring any playerbase looks bad on us. Don’t do it.

Finally, hello all! I’m Hawk! ^v^

Well it’s been a long year for us filled with change with going open-source moving over to the TG branch, but all these changes I feel have been for the better.

But no rest for the wicked, it’s the time to look forward and plan for another year filled with dedication towards getting Complexion into something playable.

Thank you for being sticking around in good and the bad.

Last but not least a merry christmas and a happy new year from the Baystation 12 team.

-Head

Now that my ego has been established, I think it’s time to introduce myself.

I am MISTER FOX, resident crazy person. I am, in a moment of absolute serious, legally declared bonkers. However, this doesn’t mean I’m some psycho who will flip out at the most minor of provocations.

Let’s pretend that there’s a sliding scale of admin seriousness:

|——————————–|

With the farthest left being a silly person and the farthest right being ULTRA-MEGA-SUPER SERIOUS DISCIPLINARIAN. I am on the far left. I rarely, if ever, take even myself seriously.

In any case, it is me. Some of you might not know me since I took a break from the server. Luckily, I’m back to grief all over the place! You know that singularity escaping? How it conveniently seems to drift over to the escape wing every round? Not me. That’s just bad luck. Honestly, I’ve only possessed the singularity once, and then I possessed a wall and a rune.

Anyway, I am Mister Fox, and I love you. ALL OF YOU.

I’ll likely be making more posts later, because, at the moment, there is a large man in a leather mask prodding me in the back of the head with a baseball bat.

TA TA

I’m admin and also kinda dev but pretty lasy when it come to actually do thign.

Lot of people no like me because hardarse admin with permaban fetish.

I need to play moar.

Goawaynow.

(This is an introduction btw. We’re meant to do them.)

So were finally getting setup on the new server. It’s a refreshing change from the rather slow server we had before.

So please have some patience while we try to remember what is next to install.

-Head