fully patched to hell and back with custom updates, it runs like XP. DMA works on all the drives too, so its quite nice. Since I run almost zero games and nothing else, stability is near perfect.
Yay.
But that would make too much sense.
KOHCTPYKTOP is a lot of fun (at least for me as a former EE student), simplified IC design sim. Could be a lot better with a few interface tweaks.
Codex of Alchemical Engineering I've been unable to really get the hang of, it involves building and programming mechanisms to assemble (al)chemical compounds. Interface seems to be deliberately irritating.
Ruckingenur II involves reverse engineering some simple access control stuff, really short and simple despite a fairly solid framework. There's a level editor and Zach put together Ruckingenur CE with some hard community developed levels.
Bureau of Steam Engineering was interesting... but I kind of just flailed my way through it. You build Civil War era steampunk mechs and battle them.
Didn't spend much time with Infiniminer (a multiplayer game, so I didn't get much out of it) or WikipediA Quest (which is fully as bizarre as it sounds).
---
Also played Fig. 8, nominally a bicycle sim, it's like a game version of doodling in a textbook. Simply, pretty and strangely serene.
---
[edit]
One of Zach's earlier games was Manufactoid, which involves the design of computer controlled factories for building stuff. It's similar to the later Alchemical Engineering, but not as polished, and involving direct LUA programming. Played around with that for a few hours, can be irritating but still nice to put things together.
It took me a while to realize, but these aren't puzzle games in the traditional sense, they're even somewhat a step beyond The Incredible Machine, with its limited palette of tools for each level. Zach builds a sim with a whole set of tools and invites you to find a solution of your own, and there are certainly always many possible. In the comment thread on Bureau of Steam Engineering, he said: "I try to create all of my puzzles blind of their solutions, so I quite often have no clue how to beat them, let alone how to perfect them." I'm trying to decide if this is genius or lousy game design.
edited 2:41 AM EDT July 11, 2010
Since I'm posting links anyway (really, I just wanted to acess these links on a different computer), I wanted to post this as well. This article talks about the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "Obtain the Triforce" rumors. They're all bogus, but some of them are pretty elaborate and interesting. #11 even provides an alternate ending (which he describes), if you successfully obtain the triforce (HA!).
I ran out of time on this PC, and wanted to read these articles. I figured here would be as good of a place to post the links as anywhere, and others might find them interesting as well (though, probably not the Zelda rumors article as much). Mouser X over and out.
Fascinating:
Too bad I have the dumb, fat PS3 model that came out right before the slims and after Sony decided it was a good idea to remove the Super Audio CD support (must be hardware). Now I won't be able to experience the superior sound stage and surround support of SA-CD.
If you have a smart and fat PS3, an analogue connection to your receiver would avoid the conversion of DSD to PCM over HDMI. I don't think surround, analogue connections are possible from the PS3, though. You'd most likely have to live with the converted, multichannel PCM over HDMI.
edited 11:02 AM EDT July 11, 2010