Codo_Sapien's recent activity

  1. Comment on Team Fortress 2 community peacefully protests bot problem with #SaveTF2 campaign, Valve responds in ~games

    Codo_Sapien
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    This was also my thoughts on playing OW. I'd have to "git gud", and I am already just fine on TF2, thank you very much.

    This was also my thoughts on playing OW. I'd have to "git gud", and I am already just fine on TF2, thank you very much.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Team Fortress 2 community peacefully protests bot problem with #SaveTF2 campaign, Valve responds in ~games

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    Sure, that's a fair point too. Meet Your Match definitely triggered a "meh, sure" response from me, so it may not really be that impactful for TF2. To be perfectly honest, my best memories on TF2...

    Sure, that's a fair point too. Meet Your Match definitely triggered a "meh, sure" response from me, so it may not really be that impactful for TF2.

    To be perfectly honest, my best memories on TF2 pretty much always came from a community server. That "pure Internet" kind of creativity that you'd see in custom maps, like Mario Kart, Trainsawlaser, or My World. Player endorsements don't really matter out there.

    That also goes for chat. I'll have to admit, I'm extremely jealous of the friendship stories I've heard of where TF2 was the catalyst. When I play on a Valve server, I barely chat with anyone anymore. Though that could be due to competing technologies like Discord chat, so I don't hold that against Valve-hosted experiences.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Team Fortress 2 community peacefully protests bot problem with #SaveTF2 campaign, Valve responds in ~games

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    Overwatch was definitely a major shift in the player base, to be sure. When it came out, I didn't feel like I could justify buying and playing it enough because of life responsibilities - I simply...

    Overwatch was definitely a major shift in the player base, to be sure. When it came out, I didn't feel like I could justify buying and playing it enough because of life responsibilities - I simply had too much going on at the time.

    I agree with you - TF2 could use quality-of-life updates like player endorsements. I've also seen requests to update the in-game custom server browser, which is something I'd agree with too.

    TF2 is still comfort food for me, so I hope it gets the TLC it deserves. I know it won't be around forever, but the state it's in is pretty painful given that it's supported by a AAA company.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Team Fortress 2 community peacefully protests bot problem with #SaveTF2 campaign, Valve responds in ~games

    Codo_Sapien
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    Background For those who don't keep up with Team Fortress 2, the game has been experiencing issues with bot accounts infesting the official Valve servers. This has been going on since 2019 -...

    Background

    For those who don't keep up with Team Fortress 2, the game has been experiencing issues with bot accounts infesting the official Valve servers. This has been going on since 2019 - auto-aiming Sniper bots frequently overrun servers.

    Valve has made some attempts to resolve the issue, but the bot plague has persisted for nearly three years. The community has been critical of Valve's handling of the problem - even though the game is 14 years old, it still has a player count that keeps it on the top Steam games by current player count .

    #SaveTF2

    Several prominent members of the TF2 community organized a campaign to communicate their frustrations surrounding the issue via the #SaveTF2 hashtag. The intent was to peacefully protest the state of the TF2 experience by letting Valve know how important the game still is to the community.

    The campaign organizers coordinated the campaign to take place on May 26, asking fans to use the hashtag on social media to share what the game means to them.

    Best of all, Valve replied! They posted this tweet acknowledging the campaign and briefly reiterated that they are working to improve things.

    My thoughts

    While I don't have a huge online presence, I have been playing TF2 for well over a decade. I have put a ton of hours into this game, and while I know things can't last forever, it's been a sad state of affairs for the last 2.5 to 3 years when I occaisionally fired up the game.

    TF2 still means a lot to me, and it's heartening to see that the community at large can get together and orchestrate this kind of positive approach to communicating criticism instead of resorting to negative means.

    Valve making one tweet doesn't mean that the game gets better overnight, but it's literally the first post on the official account in 2 years - that means something! I don't know what, but something!

    12 votes

  6. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    Thank you! It's not the fastest in the world, but it's my fastest for a long while.

    Thank you! It's not the fastest in the world, but it's my fastest for a long while.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health

    Codo_Sapien
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    I went out for the first run of the season and I managed to squeeze out a 42 minute 5k! I'm in my 30s, and I stopped running after college. Last summer, I trained with one of those Couch to 5k...

    I went out for the first run of the season and I managed to squeeze out a 42 minute 5k!

    I'm in my 30s, and I stopped running after college. Last summer, I trained with one of those Couch to 5k programs, and managed to get through it and ran a 45 minute 5k in October. So I'm really excited that I'm essentially picking up where I left off after a winter hiatus!

    My legs are pretty sore, but it's been manageable. I'm going to take it easy ramping up over the next couple of weeks - I'm thinking of increasing session frequency to 2-3 days over the next couple of weeks, and then I'll work on getting that time down to the 30s for now.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on ‘Avatar 2’ is officially ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’: James Cameron debuts first footage at CinemaCon in ~movies

    Codo_Sapien
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    Oh, then I've got the next three then. Avatar 3: The End of Earth Avatar 4: The Fate of Fire Avatar 5: The Acolyte of Air

    Oh, then I've got the next three then.

    Avatar 3: The End of Earth
    Avatar 4: The Fate of Fire
    Avatar 5: The Acolyte of Air

    5 votes

  9. Comment on I finally understand why US evangelicals support Donald Trump, and it's not just hypocrisy, mindless anti-gay, or stupdity in ~talk

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    I stopped listening around the time the second voice actor for Whit died in real life. I've heard that the later episodes are much more agenda-heavy with horrible topics like "traditional...

    I stopped listening around the time the second voice actor for Whit died in real life. I've heard that the later episodes are much more agenda-heavy with horrible topics like "traditional families", where Whit challenges logical fallacies.

    Regarding Narnia - I frickin' know, right? Everyone picks up Narnia expecting LotR numbers, but they lose steam halfway through because the only one everyone loses their moviegoing crap over is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

    At least the original VeggieTales run is still golden, amirite?

    3 votes

  10. Comment on I finally understand why US evangelicals support Donald Trump, and it's not just hypocrisy, mindless anti-gay, or stupdity in ~talk

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    Oh man, have I got good news for you (maybe)! That was from Engine of a Million Plots way back in 2013. FIF dropped Until This Shakes Apart last year, and it was more confrontational. That said,...

    Oh man, have I got good news for you (maybe)! That was from Engine of a Million Plots way back in 2013. FIF dropped Until This Shakes Apart last year, and it was more confrontational. That said, it's still rock-with-horns, so it may taste sonically bad for you. As for me, it's definitely become musical shorthand for how I've been feeling for the last 5 or so years while I've been deconstructing.

    I agree that we need more Christian artists challenging the Evangelical status quo.

    6 votes

  11. Comment on I finally understand why US evangelicals support Donald Trump, and it's not just hypocrisy, mindless anti-gay, or stupdity in ~talk

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    I haven't read as many of the FotF books, but they were in the house for me to read as I was growing up. Most of my personal experience with the entertainment wing: Adventures in Odyssey (the...

    I haven't read as many of the FotF books, but they were in the house for me to read as I was growing up.

    Most of my personal experience with the entertainment wing: Adventures in Odyssey (the early, less-preachy stuff) and the Narnia audio dramas come to mind. What's frustrating is that this is genuinely good art from an extremely problematic source.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on I finally understand why US evangelicals support Donald Trump, and it's not just hypocrisy, mindless anti-gay, or stupdity in ~talk

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    Ah, you're right. Thanks for the Evangelicalese translation!

    Ah, you're right. Thanks for the Evangelicalese translation!

    2 votes

  13. Comment on I finally understand why US evangelicals support Donald Trump, and it's not just hypocrisy, mindless anti-gay, or stupdity in ~talk

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    I'm an Olivet alumn! Looking back it's amazing how small the bubble was. On the inside it was huge...

    I'm an Olivet alumn! Looking back it's amazing how small the bubble was. On the inside it was huge...

    3 votes

  14. Comment on I finally understand why US evangelicals support Donald Trump, and it's not just hypocrisy, mindless anti-gay, or stupdity in ~talk

    Codo_Sapien
    (edited )
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    As an exvangelical in the Midwest, I can definitely attest to growing up around the groupthink that goes into conservative Christianity. When I was graduating high school and becoming voter-age, I...

    As an exvangelical in the Midwest, I can definitely attest to growing up around the groupthink that goes into conservative Christianity. When I was graduating high school and becoming voter-age, I was told by my grandma that "voting Republican is the Christian thing to do", and that gets carried into the voter booth by a lot of people.

    I don't have any standout sources regarding the rise of the Religious Right at the moment, but this has been going on since the 70s (so I'm told, I'm not that old to have experienced that firsthand). The work done by Jerry Falwell, Sr. and the others who founded the Moral Majority did a depressingly efficient job of marrying good ol' Christian values to conservative political identity.

    This Last Week Tonight piece on Mike Pence from 2018 resonated deeply with me. Particularly, I started paying close attention when James Dobson and Focus on the Family was brought up - a household name in my Nazarene PK childhood. It turns out that FotF (and other organizations of similar ilk are doing the same, I'm sure) has been collating listener/reader contact information for the past 40 years, and they're not shy about communicating to the millions of people they have on record. In doing so, have established significant political power brokerage - that conservative politicians clamor for. All you have to do to get that voter block is promise to build toward theocracy. Or abolish abortion, but pototato, potato.

    If you're interested in a more academic source on the topic, I'd like to recommend the Exvangelical podcast. I haven't listened to every episode, but Blake Chastain does a great job of hosting deeper discussions about Evangelical identity from a historical perspective.

    If you're not - here's Zen & the Art of Xenophobia by Five Iron Frenzy.

    12 votes

  15. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    I have made it through both Hitchhikers and Good Omens. I didn't enjoy the humor of those obviously-humorous books, and I struggled with enjoying both of those works at times, but I think it was...

    I have made it through both Hitchhikers and Good Omens. I didn't enjoy the humor of those obviously-humorous books, and I struggled with enjoying both of those works at times, but I think it was an expectation disconnect. I will probably need to give them another go sometime.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    Codo_Sapien
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    I just started Discworld with The Colour of Magic. I'm only 60 pages in, but I really enjoy the setting and writing style!

    I just started Discworld with The Colour of Magic. I'm only 60 pages in, but I really enjoy the setting and writing style!

    4 votes

  17. Comment on I need help with gender options in my game in ~lgbt

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    Depending on what you're doing, your can play with mobile OS dialogues to direct your user to the file, and then they could open it with an external editor. I don't have a lot more insight into...

    Depending on what you're doing, your can play with mobile OS dialogues to direct your user to the file, and then they could open it with an external editor. I don't have a lot more insight into specifics - my work over the last year was writing the HTTP API that supported the mobile app my company launched last year... But I didn't get my hands too dirty in the mobile work. That said, you should be able to point your user to a plaintext file somehow.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Codo_Sapien
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    I'm a few weeks into my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate EE. It's fun, but it's overwhelming... in a fun kind of way.

    I'm a few weeks into my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate EE. It's fun, but it's overwhelming... in a fun kind of way.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on F-Zero X OST (1998) in ~music

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    This also looks rad! I haven't thought about it too much, but I think I'm in love with all of the games in the futuristic anti-grav racer microgenre, even if I haven't tried them yet.

    This also looks rad! I haven't thought about it too much, but I think I'm in love with all of the games in the futuristic anti-grav racer microgenre, even if I haven't tried them yet.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on F-Zero X OST (1998) in ~music

    Codo_Sapien
    Link Parent
    I started out with F-Zero X, and can't really go back to F-Zero. I haven't made it to trying out GX yet, but it looks like an absolute blast. My skills on X have long atrophied - I can barely make...

    I started out with F-Zero X, and can't really go back to F-Zero. I haven't made it to trying out GX yet, but it looks like an absolute blast.

    My skills on X have long atrophied - I can barely make it through the Standard cups.

    I loved the big-band jazz/metalish fusion arrangement in MK8 for the F-Zero tracks!

    1 vote