Penny Arcade

It feels like subterfuge, and the raw facts of the case are true, but Kara is way into this kind of shit.  It’s not really a “deal.”  This is not how it works at my house.  There is no special allowance for toys-playing-with, even if they are the very best toys.

We had a chance to check out the Twitch App for the Xbox One, and and maybe it wasn’t the best advertisement for the app because we found a bug, but…  yeah.  They’re coming out swinging.  I’ll let Gabe do that part, that’s his thing.

It’s one part of a suite of improvements that get the box much closer to something you might consider launching as a retail product.  The alterations to Parties, with more sensible defaults and a generally more thoughtful execution, are well timed.  They’ve hidden some things, and some things work in idiosyncratic ways, but the overall arc is toward “more competitive” as a product and a service, so let’s call it good.

The features I use often are kind of dumb, and probably not universal in any way, but I miss them when I don’t have them so I think it’s worth mentioning: the voice command “Xbox Volume Up” gets use at my house.  Down, also.  But the default amount of down-ness or up-ness is incremented at “3” which means one typically needs to issue the command a couple times.  The system update allows you to set this value, a creature comfort on such a miniscule scale I never thought they’d entertain it, but it’s tucked the fuck away.  You can get to it by going to:

Settings, TV/One Guide, Troubleshooting, Audio, and Volume change.

Which, you know, my father would have called going the long way ‘round the fence.  But I’m glad it’s there.  The February Update that came out around the time of the Titanfall Beta made a silent update to the controller, but the new system update has a rework of the controller’s firmware that requires it to be plugged into the system.  It’s not onerous, and you can force it yourself if you go to Settings, System, but I think it’s only of value if you’re planning on taking advantage of the new headset options.

    People with substantial investments in Xbox 360 headphones, and the prices on the higher end options stretch into the “brutal” range, will be well served by the update as it now shunts the optical signal they crave.  But in many of those cases, they were products built around proprietary base stations that aren’t really a part of the top-down, proprietary “plan” for Xbox One hardware.  The controller itself acts as the base station now, and is capable of it, which is what that update is about.  My expectation is that the controller will eventually be configured to receive surround all by its lonesome, which is why their current offering is called a Stereo Headset.  You can hear the benefits of their wireless channel if you ever use your Chat headset; the voice quality is bonkerian, if not literally bonkers.

The Stereo Headset comes with the adapter that all normal headphones require to attach to the port, but I ordered the adapter anyway, because I’m so used to their savagery on the accessory front that I assumed it would either not include it or would include it attached permanently to their own product.  I’ll either send the extra it back to Amazon, or I’ll bring it into the office, either way.  The headset, though.

I am one of those people that thinks headphones are really important.  I can’t call myself an audiophile, because that person is someone who knows the language of the interaction between people and sound.  I have tried very studiously to avoid talking about my headphone addiction, in an effort to tamp down the unnecessary poetry that is always rising over the top of the boot, spilling over the lip and down in.  When I was working on the original Precipice game at Hothead, their audio dude Adam let me wear a Grado SR80 and I still think about it.  That was six years ago.

I think I can maintain my policy for another couple hours at least.  The main thing is, I don’t think the official headset sounds like an eighty dollar pair of headphones.  In the good way.  And if it comes with the puck that lets you grow, with the handy Mute light and the controls to handle audio mixing right on the pad, it recommends itself.

(CW)TB out.

Major Nelson came by the office on Wednesday to show Tycho and I how the new Twitch app worked on Xbox One. He had stopped by a few weeks prior and found us streaming from the PS4. Larry is a cool guy though and even jumped into our stream and showed off the Titanfall controller. I was a little worried the PS4 camera would melt him but he left unscathed. Anyway he knows we like to stream now and he wanted to show off their new app. He ended up hooking me up with a code so I could grab it myself at home and play with it before its official release on Tuesday alongside Titanfall. I played with it last night and came away really impressed.

I don’t stream much from my PC. I’ve really only started streaming seriously since the PS4 made t so easy. So what does this new app do differently than the PS4? A lot actually. Here’s the big stuff in my opinion.

You can archive streams

Not sure why this isn’t a thing on the Playstation. Ever since we started streaming we’ve had people asking if we can record them so that folks who can’t make the live show can watch it alter. From what I understand this is something that is coming to the PS4 “soon” but it’s in this Xbox One app and it works great. In fact you can watch the stream I did last night on my Twitch page.

Awesome UI

On the PS4 the streamer gets a black bar at the bottom showing two lines of Twitch chat at a time. You also have a bar on the right side that is mostly empty space with a preview of what your camera is showing viewers at the top.  There’s a ton of wasted space and the chat is essentially worthless if you have a lot of people talking.

On the Xbox One you have a few options. First you can “snap” the twitch app to the right side of the screen just like any other Xbox app. when you do this you see a preview of what the Kinect is showing viewers as well as ten lines of Twitch chat. You can also run the game full screen though. If you do this you just have a little button at the bottom that says you’re live and gives you a viewer count.

Another great feature is the ability to change the position of the PIP window. For example last night I had the Kinect showing me and my son on the couch and that was superimposed in the bottom right of the feed. But in Garden Warfare that is where the game displays your character’s powers. So people at home could not see them and were asking about how they worked. The Twitch app lets you move that PIP window though so I was able to throw it up in the top left which didn’t really have anything going on in terms of game UI.

Great video quality

Based on your bandwidth the Twitch app will determine the best quality for your stream. I’ve got a pretty nice setup at home and so it let me stream at the highest setting. On Wednesday and again last night lots of people were commenting on how great the stream looked. I am not usually one to talk about resomolutions but it was apparently significantly better than the streams I was doing from the PS4 based on what people in the chat were telling me.

There’s also a bunch of little stuff that’s nice. On the PS4 if you need to back out to the dashboard it automatically stops your stream. On the Xbox One it pauses your stream and shows viewers an animated hold screen. On the PS4 if I get a friend request or a trophy while streaming it covers those up with a big black box. On the Xbox One it simply does not render those elements to the streaming audience. Over all it’s just a much better experience.

I’ve been pretty vocal about preferring the PS4 so far this generation. I have to say the Twitch app is a point where I can say the Xbox One is just way beyond what the PS4 is doing right now. Combine that with Tianfall and I think you’ll have a hard time getting me off my Xbox for a while.

-Gabe out

I just wanted to give a few updates on some of the stuff we have in the works.

Pax East Pins

Kiko just posted a preview of this year’s PAX East pin set. You’ll be able to pick this up at the merch booth. We will be updating that site with more pin news over the next couple weeks. We’ve got a lot of cool pins launching at East this year and we’ll be covering them all on the Pinny Arcade site.

Game Night 2

I’m going to be hosting another board game night at Snapdoodle Toys in Kenmore on March 15th. The last time I did this we packed out the store with folks playing all sorts of cool games. This time I’ll be playing Tsuro of the Seas. I have word that the game’s designer might even make an appearance which is awesome. I’ll be there from 4 to 8pm and there will be tables and snacks. Bring your own games if you want, bring your kids, bring your Pinny Arcade pins. My son and I will probably bring our Magic decks as well if anyone wants to tap some cars. It should be a fun night but it’s a super tiny store so be prepared to get cozy.

Automata: Silverside

I Just wanted to let you all know I’m still working on this. Automata is probably the hardest of our projects for me to draw. I like drawing organic stuff, but anything with straight lines is a real challenge for me. I’m pushing myself though and after struggling with the the look for a while I’ve finally got something I’m happy with. This will come out sometime shortly after PAX East is my guess and there’s a very good chance we’ll just release the entire project all at once rather than a page at a time.

Thornwatch

We’re working hard to get Thornwach ready for playtesting at PAX East. We are playtesting it multiple times a week trying to hammer out as many bugs as we can before the show. I’m really excited to finally show it off and I’m anxious to get some feedback from people outside the office.

-Gabe out

The comic we were attempting to make about Project Spark never materialized, and instead, this comic managed to peck its way out the of the shell.  Kiko asked me if we had a podcast of this writing process, presumably because it would have been “interesting,” but we didn’t.  And when I think about it, there is no causal chain that results in the strip.  The strip is like something we found half-submerged in sand, complete and entire.

With Titanfall hitting on the 11th, I’m trying to crush a backlog that wants instead to grow.

I got it into my head that I wanted to wrap up Ironclad Tactics finally after a brutal stall, connected with the game’s difficulty and my own sloth and ineptitude.  My subconscious had been hard at work though, and upon my return I was able to crack it - but they just dropped a rad campaign DLC for it, expanding the load somewhat beyond my original spec.  The new Walking Dead episode is out, downloaded but with the seal still on, not even installed.

I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that the time up to the 11th is going to be taken up with Shadowrun: Dragonfall.

I liked the original Shadowrun campaign, I like Shadowrun basically.  I’m from Seattle, you know?  But I encountered various levels of paralysis connected with the inability to save when you wanted, and also to make different characters to accomplish increasingly granular, one-off objectives when I should have just committed myself to playing it twice.  Dragonfall (which I got from backing it, anyhow) was a chance to just go with it - to go again, for the first time as they say.  One of my favorite CRPG stories of all time, Shadows of Undrentide, was itself an expansion.  You can feel stable development tools, even as a player: both of these are ambitious, second cracks at it that are enabled by experience.  They’re Journeyman projects.

It’s nice to have Club PA rolling again; early access to things is essentially the touchstone, but it’s the early strips specifically that I think are the most interesting bit.  For the Club PA stalwart, Penny Arcade now updates on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday - probably the biggest material change since the site’s inception.  We are trying to figure out other ways to spoil that cadre, but in the meantime we’re collecting addresses so we know where to send the exclusivo Pinny Arcade pins for the $30+ crowd.  Thanks for taking us up on it, it’s nice to know you are out there.

(CW)TB out.

When the new site launched a few weeks ago I mentioned it was a work in progress. Erika, Levin and Kenneth have all been hard at work finishing stuff that just wasn’t ready for launch and also taking all the feedback we got into consideration. Well last night we updated the site with a bunch of new features. Let me break it all down for you.

TXT & JPG Links
We’ve added a few features to make it easier to navigate through the comics, and from comic posts to the corresponding news posts. Each comic now has a .TXT icon next to the title that links directly to Tycho’s post for that days strip. Also, every Tycho post that relates to a comic has a .JPG icon next to the title to get you directly to the comic in question.

Comic Navigation
If you are catching up in the archive or checking out old strips, you can now simply click on the comic image to advance to the next comic.

Hero Content Update
The hero at the top of the home page now shows live comic art for each of the latest strips. The first three are our network of weekly updated comics and the last slot is a special one we’ll be using to showcase (new and old) Side Stories from The Eyrewood, Sand, Automata and anything else we may cook up.

Easier Access to Latest Content
The Penny Arcade comic crop in the hero is the easiest way to get to the most recent PA strip, but we recognize that some folks prefer to read Tycho’s post before checking out the latest strip, so we wanted to make things just as easy for them. There is now a new .TXT link next to the news on the homepage that will take you right to Tycho’s post for the latest comic.

-Gabe out