Quoting: CrendgrimPlease do note that Packt books apparently very often lack in quality.

Skimming through "Beginning C++ Game Programming"... Yeah, it's bad. :(

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Huh. You don't really get to see many people from the first game, and certainly not the main antagonists. If you think you know what happens in the first game now, after having only played this game, then you're dead wrong.

I'm unsure about what the best order to play them is, though. With this game first, at least you don't yet know that a certain character's death is a forgone conclusion? On the other hand, it might hit you worse.

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Just finished the game (+ the bonus episode). Still need to go back into collector's mode to get the graffitis I've missed.

However... I do agree with that RockPaperShotgun article from a while back: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/08/life-is-strange-before-the-storm-cant-escape-the-first-games-use-of-harmful-tropes/ [External Link] (spoilers, of course)

Spoiler, click me

But after the credits roll, a brief cutscene plays. In the first half, Chloe and Rachel are joking around in a photo booth. They look happy. At one point, Rachel kisses Chloe on the cheek. This is then juxtaposed with a shot of Rachel’s phone. Chloe is calling; she’s called seventeen times and Rachel hasn’t picked up. She can’t pick up, because in the background we hear her being abused by Mark Jefferson, in the lead up to her death.

This scene isn’t only wildly unnecessary, it’s profoundly cruel. It plays like a Marvel cinematic universe tease, as though we are supposed to get excited for the brutal murder of yet another queer female character. But we already know what happens; the scene has no purpose beyond being a gut-wrenching reminder that, yet again, the same-gender couple does not get a happy ending.

[...]

And the final seconds of the game threw away their good faith for the sake of cheap shock.

(Boldening mine)

So my feelings about the game, and the series as a whole, is mixed.

I liked that they were more explicit with the relationship, but...it's not a happy story. And the ending of the bonus episode too, that again hits the same beats, what a shitty hand Chloe has been dealt.

Heck, I think Before the Storm did a lot of things better, and I do, well, identify with Chloe more than with Max, so to speak. The concert scenes at the start were on point, the D&D sessions sprinkled through-out were a riot.

But, in the end, it leaves me sad, depressed. And I'm not sure that this is what I needed right now.

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Whelp, no sound without PulseAudio, it seems :(

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I've spent a sizable portion of my career getting laughed at by developers when I tell them to take their back catalog seriously, and even customers look at me funny when they see that my AAA contract wishlist is a bunch of old-but-feasible-to-port games

I can really relate to that. I get the same looks when I talk to people about my work for ScummVM, and more recently, xoreos.

Yes, I care about the weird adventure games of an obscure French studio, thank you very much. I care about the that overlooked horror game with art by HR Giger. I care about d20 RPG games. And I wonder why so few do. They're part of our history, our culture, and it would be a shame if they were forgotten.

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Quoting: x_wingApple deprecated OpenGL, which doesn't mean that they doesn't support the API on their current platforms. I doubt they will completely remove the API in the short term, there is a lot of software that still uses it.

Remember, they're also completely removing 32-bit support with the version after the coming Mojava. Apple doesn't care about compatibility with third-party software. They proved that time and time again.

I have no doubt that OpenGL will be removed, relatively soon even. Probably not the next macOS release after Mojave, but possibly the one after.

As for the way forward, one possible way is for ANGLE [External Link] (an OpenGL ES implementation retargeting onto Direct3D) to add a Metal backend.

There's also MoltenGL (from the same people who are doing MoltenVK), but that's currently commercial and proprietary, and I personally haven't heard anything good about it.

Another idea is to go OpenGL -> Vulkan -> MoltenVK (-> Metal).

I haven't heard that anybody has done anything to move into any of these directions yet, though, so take that all with a grain of salt.

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Here's hoping for a gay romance option for Sean :)

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I have that Pathfinder campaign on my RPG shelf. Still haven't run it, though.

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For the Infinity engine games, there is GemRB [External Link], which can also use some love

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Quoting: no_information_hereKOTOR 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TQcmo4atic [External Link]

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