Participation - Blog Posts
My subreddit Floating Is Fun
Hi, all! I’ve been away adapting to my new life as a dad. Reddit and its great RSS feeds have been helping me keep up with eclectic music fans, retro gamers, the FGC, CAP makers, dreamers, explainers, and otaku. Still, those don’t scratch my itch for a feeling of floating, so I made my own subreddit for that!
At Floating Is Fun, we play around with things that float in the air, real or fantasy, and it doesn’t take much work for me. If prolonged loss of contact with the floor sounds like a good time, come on in and give us a push!
Source: r/FloatingIsFun on Old Reddit; screenshot contains content by Thomas Pesquet, chanomach, momokan315, Chris Fay, OK Go, Foo Midori, and Maki’s Atelier
Columbus Police Tear Gas and Pepper Spray
UPDATE: I wanted to say something positive here, but it wasn't true. Columbus Police continue to pepper spray peaceful protestors who block the streets, and the mayor allows it. They even stole a double amputee's prosthetic legs and forced him to crawl on his hands to seek medical attention. The city demands answers.
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, downtown Columbus, Ohio saw several days of peaceful protests and unfortunately, some looting of small businesses. Mayor Ginther found it necessary to have a curfew for seven nights. Columbus police with nameless uniforms repeatedly used tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets indiscriminately against peaceful protestors, street medics, bystanders, news reporters, a veteran, government officials, and hippie circus performers.
But this is a blog about good things! I'm happy to report that the police were ordered to stop using tear gas and pepper spray on peaceful crowds. Now that we can walk the downtown streets in peace, we can discuss how to heal the racial divide. Columbus State has decided to take down their statue of Christopher Columbus. If the city of Columbus can do it, hopefully the rest can follow. Please continue to fight for racial justice. Black Lives Matter!
Source: T. Greg Doucette, WBNS 10TV, the Columbus Dispatch, WOSU, and the rest of the Internet, pretty much
Control Config Menus
I’ve been updating my VOGJAM game Skeleton Hunter with new features like custom button mapping. PC games need this because players might have foreign keyboards, nonstandard gamepads, or disabilites that make the default controls unusable. Mine works like the PC version of Skullgirls where every action has both a keyboard key and a gamepad button, and you can assign them one by one or all at once. Please try it and tell me if the menus work the way you expect them to.
Source: my game Skeleton Hunter v1.02 reusing code from my Control Config Demo
Retromania!!
Two weeks ago, Columbus Retro League put on an excellent pro wrestling-themed event. More than just a tournament, this show had all the promos, interviews, and hype you’d expect from a Pay Per View. About two hours in, I defended my CRL Season 2 #1 ranking in Fire Pro Wrestling D and WWF Royal Rumble, both on Dreamcast. Check it out while you’re binge-watching speedruns from Summer Games Done Quick.
Source: YouTube via Chris Bidwell
Retro Gaming in Columbus
Columbus Underground interviewed Chris Bidwell about what’s cool about retro gaming, his invite-only tournament, the Hexadecathlon, and its expansion into a public tournament series, the Columbus Retro League. Retro games bring out a completely different crowd from the modern fighting game events, and it’s been great to get to know them. They know how to get hype, too! Come on out to Video Hockey Day in Columbus on Sunday!
This room is full of beastly players. In this picture, I'm playing Marble Madness on the NES and having the run of my life, 95610 points. It only got me third place in that game. The only high score contest I actually won was Star Fox Super Weekend. It's Star Fox with a Star Soldier-style five minute score attack mode with huge bonuses for shooting down all the enemies in a stage.
Source: http://www.columbusunderground.com/retro-gamers-celebrate-bygone-era-of-video-game-classics via JD Lowe and Columbus Underground’s RSS feed, photos via Chris Bidwell and my phone camera
I Need More Music
UPDATE: Here's the same playlist on Google Play Music.
Hey, you! I need some music recommendations to get me through long days at work. In the comments, please give me an album or a playlist that I’m not already listening to and that I can find either on Spotify or free on the Internet somewhere. I’m an openminded metalhead and I like just about any music if it’s hard enough. As for my own recommendations, here’s a metal playlist I made about a year ago.
Source: Spotify Web Player – Hitstun's Mixtape of Melodic Metal Insanity – Jonathan Landis.
Hitstun's Challenge (and Failure)
For the past four years, I've been doing a weekly Twitch stream where I attack a game in my backlog. If I pick the game and fail to finish it in reasonable time, my viewers get to pick next week's game as punishment. That happened tonight.
This time, I've put up a poll with five games my friends and Skype chatters want to make me play. Whatever wins this poll is the game I will run next Tuesday at 10pm EDT. This poll is open to everyone. Here are your choices:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (PC) Megaman X6 (PS2) My Little Pony Crystal Princess: The Runaway Rainbow (GBA) Redneck Rampage (PC) Kick Master (NES)
I must have seen this screen a hundred times.
Source: The House of Hitstun » Stream and my Twitch stream of Rogue Legacy.