Whatever happened to that English guy, with the ‘Brummie’ Accent?
He disappeared like a soap opera plot, no doubt I’ve missed a show or some there.

Probably not the greatest question, given an age – Love that dude BTW.

I looked up that poem as a result of hearing Loreena McKennit’s adaptation, which I liked. She also has a musical version of It was an English Ladye Bright which I also consider quite good.

The Lady of Shalott is Elaine. We don’t know who cursed her in the poem, but it is a magical spell which will doom her if she ever looks out at the real world. Instead, she must work her loom, and she looks out at the world by gazing at its reflection in a mirror. When she sees Lancelot, she is so taken by his vision that she turns to see his real form, thus condemning herself to die.

Lancelot is there simply because he happens to be riding by, as a Knight errant. In other versions of the Lancelot and Elaine story, Lancelot and Elaine have a relationship by which Elaine has a child (Galahad). Elaine then dies and her body, arriving in Camelot by boat, is a silent condemnation and shame to Lancelot: something which has no outwardly identifying signs of meaning (their relationship being a secret), but which is nevertheless known/discovered to the key figures (Guen, Lance, etc.). In those versions, Lancelot is away from Camelot after having had a sort of disagreement with Guenivere, the details of which vary in the stories (she is jealous, she thinks he is not attentive enough, they mean to end their affair, etc.).

This episode is situated within a larger story, the details of which would have been common knowledge to Britons of the time (and probably still amongst most literate Britons today). However, other readings of the poem borrow from the New Critics (looking only at what is in it, and ignoring all else). Wikipedia gives a few such readings:

Modern critics consider The Lady of Shalott to be representative of the dilemma that faces artists, writers, and musicians: to create work about and celebrate the world, or to enjoy the world by simply living in it. Feminist critics see the poem as concerned with issues of women’s sexuality and their place in the Victorian world. The fact that the poem works through such complex and polyvalent symbolism indicates an important difference between Tennyson’s work and his Arthurian source material. While Tennyson’s sources tended to work through allegory, Tennyson himself did not.

This is super-general and these readings are pretty ‘ordinary’ in the sense of being somewhat unsophisticated, but there’s nothing wrong with them, and I would say that any of them are perfectly sound and readily defensible.

Not to worry: we’ll be revisiting Tennyson again!

It doesn’t matter how much lag there is behind the scenes as long as players never experience it at the business end. That’s a matter of optimisation of netcode and game design, but ultimately these things can be made more or less invisible.

Certainly, a lossy network connexion or high latency to the server will cause even these efforts to fail, but that’s down to the individual user. If I choose to play with my friend in, say, AUSTRALIA, then I can expect more lag (probably around 120ms) than if I play with my friend who lives a couple of hours away (probably less than 20ms). And it’s worth pointing out that 20ms of latency doesn’t mean that I (or anyone else) *see* everything happening 2/10s of a second late–because the netcoding and the game design are set up in such a way that the 20ms latency are negated by things like local processing and staggered sending.

I used to play UT99 on a dial-up modem with my friends. I don’t *ever* remember complaining about lag, despite being a little camping sniper bitch. That was in 1999 on a 28.8k connexion! ON A LANDLINE!

I’ve played so many online games since then, and in nearly all of them lag was not a problem. Many of them required split-second responses, with collision detection, projectile physics, environmental effects, and so on–elements far more complex than Towerfall, which is essentially an artillery game that needs to transmit only projectile launch time and character location (projectile movement can be calculated on each user’s end, as long as position data and launch time are known. This is one of the MAIN ways to get around lag issues).

So no, I don’t buy it. It’s a very smug, self-satisfied response which probably jacks off the vintage 70s shirt-wearing sector of the population, but one only needs to look at the variety and capability of current online multiplayer games–to say nothing of those from the past two decades–to know that this is a line of horseshit. And that’s in despite of whatever Ben “Industry Shill” Kuchera may claim.

FPS games have managed since the late 90s, and they handle a lot more information per frame than Towerfall does. Some of them (TF2 springs to mind, Borderlands 2 is another) are MUCH faster than Towerfall.

As for 2D platformers (including those with a vs. mode!) I’ve seen plenty that handle it just fine–and I don’t mean “Super Smash Bros.” levels of fine. I mean genuinely non-laggy simultaneous gameplay. I’ve even seen these produced by TINY developers (the fan-made 2D TF2 game again springs to mind).

Despite what they claim, there are very obviously analogous (or perhaps identical!) methods used that could just as easily be employed by the people who make Towerfall–they simply choose not so to do.

Let me translate the article into TRUTH for you:

We’re not very good at optimising our netcode, and also we’re lazy. It’s easier to make excuses and prevaricate than it is to actually buckle down and include a feature which has been a staple of computer games for twenty years now. So, please buy our game even though we’re too fucking lazy to include a feature that lets you play with your friends. We’re going to characterise this as ‘how the game is meant to be played’, but of course it is really down to the fact that we’re bone-idle. Excuses ARE easier than work! Also, we sound way more hipster and artistic this way!”

To borrow a mental image from Kisaki, I imagine them twirling their fucking moustaches and jacking off as they talk about how ‘local’ is how it is ‘meant’ to be played, and that they want to ‘control’ the ‘artistic experience’ Because, being hipsters, they’re totally against whatever is de rigeur. If online multiplayer is the standard, they’re going to show how ‘hip’ they are by listening to everything on vinyl and playing everything local, and then claiming how ‘superior’ or ‘more authentic’ it is.

Here’s the thing: how does including online multiplayer as an option HURT the experience for the people who want to play it locally? I have NO problem with there being a local multiplayer mode. Sure! Include it! I think that’s great. It should have that. But ONLY that? No. That’s ridiculous.

You’re welcome!

I’m inclined to agree with the article. Thoughts?

ON ANOTHER TOPIC:

NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN. CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE GAMES FOR SELECT-A-MISERY NOW!

I was at work listening to 109 a few days ago and had to go on break when my name came up. I had completely forgotten about this, and there’s Bup curb stomping me in his glory. Like 3 years ago, tears shed in laughter. I really should comment more on his articles.

As to why I was listening to old podcasts, I remembered a lot of old Oliver phone call interstate crime podcasts. They were all funny. Missed that shit.

http://lusipurr.com/2011/03/28/map-109-tell-your-friends/

Timeframe on this one: 4:15-6:15 Enjoy. “WHAT A MARooooon”. Did not learn my lesson that day, apparently.