Sequence Indexer program It’s been long enough that I should go over what TIS-100 IS. TIS-100 is a programming puzzle game by the makers of SpaceChem (a previous obsession). Where SpaceChem kind of hid the programming knowledge necessary to solve the puzzles beneath a fun graphical abstraction, TIS-100 just strips away the candy coating. TIS-100 simulates a fictional multicore reduced instruction set computer (RISC). There is no RAM. Sometimes there is a stack or two. Each processor has just one directly-accessible register. ...

Just sit right down and you'll hear a tale... I’m usually a little wary of games that advertise the soundtrack as something you can buy separately. It’s just usually not going to be that memorable… but the songs that sing the tale of your triumphs or, more likely, your defeats, are so hilarious that it might just be worth it to be able to play one of them in a real life D&D adventure…. ...

A sudden, stabbing pain... It was probably the most damning condemnation of religion I’ve ever come to see in a video game. Final Fantasy XIV’s pope-analogue, the Archbishop Thordan VII, acknowledges to his bastard son, Lord Commander Aymeric, that the entire Ishgardian religion is nothing more than a sham. They’ve known all along that all Ishgardians contain the power of the ancient dragons. Religion is just a convenient tool to focus all that inherent power into the body of the Archbishop and his personal guard, the Heaven’s Ward. ...

The General is the Pope's bastard son. Niiiice. When I logged in Monday, Kasul was just finishing up his level 56 in order to start on the new Ishgard plot. The one that will finally explain just what the Ascians and the Holy See were up to. We just know it’s something evil. Turns out Ser Aymeric is the Archbishop’s kid, and everyone thinks dear old dad has been behind his stratospheric rise to the top of the Ishgard defense force. The old guy’s vow of celibacy notwithstanding. That’s really for the little guys. ...

That moment you realize your whole life has been a lie... It was a night of revelations! And dragons! And cutscenes! So, so many cutscenes… We Scions of the Seventh Dawn had long known that primals are actually created by the thoughts and power of those that summon them. King Moogle Mog XIV, we’ve known for a long time, was just a fanciful story Moogles told themselves before he was given form by those stories (and killed repeatedly by me, a fact that hasn’t seemed to harm Nina/Moogle relationships). The entire Summoner job is based around summoning smaller versions of primals under the summoner’s command. ...

Tell me can I be your honey be, be strong... Every few years, I wonder whatever became of EQ Next. It was going to change the face of MMO gaming. Mobs that reacted to over-hunting or being left alone to become a bigger problem. Emergent events. A fully destructible world. All the old lore tossed away for bright shiny new lore. Simple control scheme for console play, but depth for PC players. ...

Kickin' back with Raven We’ve been working on the T7 DCUO alert, Desecrated Cathedral, for a few weeks. The basic plot is that the demon Trigon’s miscreant sons are fighting over the scraps of their father’s power. Trigon’s not that interest in giving them any of it. HE wants to share his power with his daughter, Raven. SHE keeps waffling between being evil and good. When she’s good, she’s a member of the Teen Titans and stops robbers and stuff. When she’s evil, she is a psychic juggernaut who infects your dreams and is totally awesome. ...

Outside of space, outside of time Peaked into Shroud of the Avatar again yesterday. This is Richard “Lord British” Garriott’s MMO-in-development that brings the morality-based gameplay of his Ultima RPG into a more modern incarnation. I backed this on Kickstarter about two and a half years ago, and have been checking into the alpha and beta releases on a regular basis since they started becoming available. Not EVERY one… but often enough. ...

Ranked up! Rank 14 and owner of the flag marking me as a member of the Second League… that is really available to anyone who is playing the ranked battles in World of Warships at all. You can’t lose ranks until you get to 14, so unless you just never win a match, you will enter the rarefied heights of the Second League. Now that I have reached a rank that I could lose, I am reluctant to play any more. If I remember right, the next rank, 13, gets some new camouflage, and then 12 gets nothing, and 11 gets some more signal flags. 11 is as far as I can get with my ships – after that, I have to stop. Or buy a premium ship and get boosted into Tier VIII. I don’t see much point in that, though, except as a generator of Free XP for my lower tier ships. ...

Tiamat. I mean, Tioman. We expected to have to spend more time questing in the Dravanian Forelands before being allowed to ascend the mountain of Sohm Al and fulfill the promise we made to deal with the desperate dragon Nidhogg the only way we could – by killing his girlfriend, Tiamat. TioMAN. I don’t know WHY I keep making that mistake. We felt there’d be more makework quests between the killing of Ravana and the next step, but nope, up we went and took on the thoroughly enjoyable dungeon of Sohm Al. ...