Today we talk for an hour and a half.
I can't even remember what it was about.
And we just talked about it like an hour ago.

It's probably a bad podcast.
You might not want to listen.

Our partners at Machinima.com asked us to put together a couple tutorials to aid others in their machinima production, and those have been released over the past week.

The first is on scrolling credits, which is something you'll see in almost all of my videos, and almost none of Phil's. I'm a fan of them. He isn't. Whatever. Now you can know how I do them. Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/yej8vob

The second is on Track Matte Keying which is slightly more advanced, but super useful. We use it on Firefright to make the credits at the end appear out of nothing, and have used it with some portal effects in the past. Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/yej8vob

[edited by skitch to make the tinyurl links ACTUALLY LINKS. way to fail dave.]

The title says it all.

Below are samples from my twitter account for the past week. If you don't care about anything below, I highly suggest you only listen to the first hour of today's podcast.

"Dragon Age is amazing. 1hr in and I already care about the characters way more than I should, and the moral ambiguity in the world is great"

"Dragon Age pretty much rocks my socks. I haven't been this happy with the fact that I payed for a game since Portal."

"I love the fact that as Dragon Age goes on, they force you to use real tactics to survive. Blocking doorways to protect squishies and such."

"@bloodtobleed297 I haven't been this happy with a game since portal. That's how good Dragon Age is. 100% beyond amazing."

"@Kranitoko Better than WoW right now? Absolutely. Better than WoW at its golden age? Equally good for different reasons, maybe an edge to DA"

"Dragon Age gets better every time I play it. Everything but the load times is superb. And honestly, I can deal with the load times."

"Nearing end of first playthrough of Dragon Age I think... and holy shit is this game fucked up. In a good way. Like seriously, omg."

"Beat Dragon Age as City Elf Warrior. Ending was fantastic. Making Human Mage. Expecting completely different game. Either way, So good."

"10 minutes into human mage and I love what the game is doing. The way they're using characters, learning about them from different angles."

"This is awesome. I'm setting in motion events I saw in my first play through. Dragon Age = Game of the Year."

"Downloading Dragon Age toolset. Should be able to do some wicked sweet machinima stuff with the engine."

Tonight on Dude, Where's my Podcast:
5 People, 1 Room.
We tell you to watch 28 Below
We tell you to watch FireFRIGHT
We tell Phil to work on 10
My chair squeeks a lot.

AKA: Why PCs are better for Gaming than Consoles


Section 1: Cons to PC Gaming
A. Required installation time of most games
If you buy a 360 or PS3 game, you can put that game into your drive and begin playing immediately. With a PC, you do have to spend a few minutes, sometimes more, installing the game files directly to your computer.

B. Hardware Issues
If you buy a 360 or PS3 game, you know (most of the time) that your hardware is going to work with the game. You don't have to worry about whether your video card is good enough.

C. Invasive and over the top DRM
When you buy a PC game, you don't always know how many times you'll be allowed to install it, what kind of background software will come with it, and when/if it will stop working.

That's pretty much it.

As to requiring installation, that seems at first a legitimate concern, until you really question what 10 minutes or so is. It happens once, you can go make a sandwich, grab a drink, and be ready to play.

As to hardware issues, the required computer upgrades occur at such a low frequency, it's really equivalent to buying a new console every few years, and the games that really do require a retarded amount of computing power (see: crysis) are generally not going to be released on console anyway, so you aren't missing out for the purpose of this comparison.

As to invasive DRM, that is an issue that the developers themselves need to work out. Game copying is not just a PC issue anymore, as can be seen from how easy it is to bootleg games onto a Nintendo DS or PSP, as well as the (slightly more difficult) mods to 360s that allow pirated copies of games to be played. If DRM truly is a concern to you as a PC gamer, look at the games before you buy them. If the DRM is dangerous to your computer or invasive to the point that it shouldn't be there (to me anything more than a serial and a disk check is too much, and even a disk check is pushing it these days), bootleg it or buy it on console.

Section 2: Pros to PC Gaming
A. Console Abilities
Phil bought Fallout 3 for 360. I bought it for PC. We both encountered the same bug at the beginning of the Broken Steel DLC. He hasn't been able to do anything with that DLC because he has to start a new character to experience it. I was able to type in a quick and easy console command and the game worked just fine. Even the best of games can have glitches, and they're a whole lot easier to overcome on a PC.

B. 3rd Party Support and Modding
When you buy a console game, you get exactly what's on that disk, and support for as long as the developers want to support it. You have no guarantee that you'll be able to play Halo 3 online 10 years from now. You have no guarantee that those typos in Fable 2 dialogue will ever get patched. If a game is playable on PC, it can be modded. Beat a shitty one storyline one ending game like Terminator? Go online and find someone who modded in some crazy shit. You just got more game for your money. All sorts of bugs and balance problems with your copy of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines? Go online and find the wealth of patches available, created by fans of the game who felt it deserved far more support than its developers gave it. Wondering if you can still play your game online that there are no longer supported servers for? Find one of the many private servers available. None of that can be done on a console.

C. Hard Drive Installation
What was once a con is now a pro, as games can be much much larger when you aren't limited to the size of your disk format. Sure you can do a multi disk game, but who wants to get to a climactic part of the game only to see "Insert Disc 2."? This allows for larger worlds, more voice acting, more complex storylines.

D. Better Graphics
Think 1080p is hot new stuff (phil?). PCs have been doing 1080 for over a decade. While you may think you've got a pretty and sharp and detailed view of Borderlands on your 1920x1080 tv, I've got so much more definition on my 2560x2048 QSXGA monitor. And if your system can't handle those higher resolutions, just lower the quality a bit and you'll still be at least as good as what you're getting from your console. Have a super high powered system? Rock those high resolutions at 16xAA and you'll be nothing but a console player's wet dream.

E. Control scheme
Imagine playing WoW with a 360 controller. Maybe you could pull it off as a healer back in the molten core days, but don't even thing about trying to raid or do arenas these days without having everything nicely keybound or without being able to use your mouse to turn. Yes a keyboard and mouse can be plugged into your 360, but they'll never develop a 360 game that's designed to be played that way, because not every 360 owner will do it. With an entire keyboard and mouse available, control schemes can be much more detailed, allowing more control over a character than you could dream of with your controller. And if you don't like using a keyboard? Plug a 360 controller into your USB port and it'll work just like it does on your console. Maybe not for every game, but every game it doesn't work for, you wouldn't be playing on a console anyway. Net gain.

F. Guaranteed ability to voice chat (through 3rd party programs)
Sure on a 360 you can form parties and be able to chat all you want, but the controls are limited. You're limited to whatever chat codec Microsoft wants you to have. With a PC and a bit of 3rd party software, you have complete control over your voice chat experience.

G. Backup your games
Your ROck Band 2 disc get all scratched up? Bummer, you'll have to buy a new one. Your Far Cry 2 disc get all scratched up? Well you could have made a copy of it before hand. But even if not, go online and grab a nocd exe.


The one issue I haven't really adressed is that of multiplayer play, specifically local multiplayer. With your 360 you can sync 4 controllers and rock your splitscreen play. The reason I haven't adressed that with regard to PCs is that A. Many PC games do support split screen play (notably Left 4 Dead), and B. It's perfectly viable of developers were to do it. You'll be hard pressed to find a PC without 4 or more USB ports. Plug in USB instruments and a PC version of rock band (I wish) and you're set.

The other issue that I'm hesitant to bring up is one that Phil is passionate about, and that's that when he gets on his 360, he knows what his friends are doing, he can invite them to games, he can bring them into voice chat, etc. There are countless PC programs that will allow the same thing, notably STEAM, which also functions as your online game store that far surpasses the abilities of the Xbox Live Store.

The last point that is often brought up by both Phil and Skitch is
"All my friends own 360s, so if I want to play with them, that's where I have to go."
My rebuttle is simple, and often tuned to the person saying it. In Skitch's case it's "All your friends eat meat too, but you think any diet with meat is inferior, so you don't eat meat."
With Phil, it's often a bit more outrageous:
"Living the rest of your life is better than dousing yourself with gas and lighting a match, but if all your friends were doing that would you follow suit?"

Essentially what I'm saying is that just because your friends are using an inferior gaming method doesn't mean you should follow suit. If anything, you should do everything in your power to convert them, just as you would push them towards rehab for a drug addiction, or towards a helpline if they were suicidal.

TL;DR:
PCs give you
Better graphics
More game for your money
More options in general

Friends don't let friends play games on inferior systems.

so, in an attempt to cut down on the spam on the newsposts comments, i've made it so only registered users can post comments. if you want to be able to post comments, send me an email (click on my name over there by this post) and i'll hook you up.

sorry i didn't do this sooner.

Sorry for the almost week delay in the podcast. I had some family emergencies come up that kept me from getting everything put together. It's out now though, so enjoy.

Addendum:
This is even a week later than I originally wrote this post. The guys who do our hosting had their sprinkler system go off, which pretty much completely fucked over their servers, which are, essentially, our servers. Thankfully they kept good backups, and we're up and running again, with a sweet new podcast. We've also submitted some new shows to machinima.com, which will hopefully be out soon, and Phil got his account back active to start work on DWMM10. Good times.

Phil talks about Mass Effect like I talk about Dragon Age.

On another note, I've reactivated me EVE Online account after discovering during my 5 day free reactivation that the game has improved greatly. If anyone cares to find me, I'm chilling around in the Minmatar regions under the name Parleion.

Also, LOST comes back on in the US tonight. You should probably watch it. It's going to be amazing.

You may or may not have noticed the absence of this weeks podcast. We at apt-t have decided to make the podcast every other week, rather than every week. We just had trouble finding enough content to make an hour out of every week, and instead of dropping to a half hour or 45 minute format, as we discussed on the previous podcast, we will simply move it to every other week.

I'm sure this will pain some of you, but you don't know real pain. Real pain is having to cram yourself into a tiny room with Phil every week and listen to him talk for an hour.