2019 And Beyond - Plans for the Caster Clan

I briefly mentioned in Monday's Vlog that my Twitch Channel (see also, the thing at the top of the blog) crossed two exciting milestones recently. First, the channel finally met Twitch's qualifications for Affiliate, meaning that I can start making a little bit of money off the channel by accepting Bits and monthly subscriptions! Second, Mini-Me has decided to hold down a regular Sunday afternoon streaming slot with his own show!

The thing is, none of this was really my plan when I started streaming in early 2015. At the time, my goal was to create an additional where I could promote th things I was writing, and maybe generate a little side income.

What my vision for the channel has become is to make it a place where people can be encouraged to chase their dreams. Where I hope seeing an average guy do slightly crazy things like run marathons, lift weights, bake, and learn motorcycle restoration inspires people to get off their butts and try something new. Along the way it’s turning into a big family channel, because there’s no way I can exclude my kids from these endeavors.

Cruise at 175mph, 510lbs useful load with full fuel, 4+ hour endurance... That'd put a lot more places within reach
without having to deal with TSA! (official phot from Van's Aircraft)

Since Adventure Girl also wants her own show, it seems like a name change for the channel is in order. It's not the Shadowcaster show anymore, it's all about the Caster Clan, since this is turning into some sort of crazy family streaming team.

That's both exciting and terrifying for me. Truthfully, some days I think it would probably be best for the kids if we turned Amish, and raised them up without any TV or Internet at all. Unfortunately, that genie's pretty well out of the bottle, and not going back in. The next best thing seems to be if the kids want to create content, then let it happen in an arena that I can exercise at least some moderation and control over. My hope is that the kids will learn some valuable lessons about interacting with people, having a professional attitude, and time management. Maintaining a broadcast schedule is tough, and so is dealing with people, especially the occasional troll.

Who knows, maybe this will all take off, and in a couple of years, I'll be a partnered streamer broadcasting family adventures as we assemble an RV-14, Waiex-B, or Kitfox S7 Super Sport in our garage!

It's better than planning on winning a MegaMillions jackpot, at the very least.

Coffee is for Closers - Episode 3: Shackle Colanders!

Welcome to Episode Three of Coffee is for Closers. In this episode, Yuri gets closer to figuring out the Big Bad who's haunting the starting zone.



With the game now in full release, it's a great time to try it out.

Let's Play: Minecraft: Story Mode Season 1, Episodes 2 & 3 - Get the Band Back Together

It's time to get the band back together in Minecraft: Story Mode! In an uncharacteristic decision, I chose brains over explosives, meaning that I got the Episode 2 quest to save the brainy mage, rather than the TNT obsessed troll.




Then things got weird...



I'm sure this will work out fine, and that the remaining five episodes are just happy fun times, right?

Halfway Through - Progress Check

At the beginning of the year, I put down a few goals. Since we're now halfway through, it's probably a good time to make a progress check, and see how I'm doing so far.

Still one of my favorite bike photos this year.

1. Motorcycle Stuff: Turns out there's no Experience Rider Courses in South Dakota this season. So much for that one. I did manage my first Iron Butt ride, though, so that one's complete!

2. Health and Fitness: Making progress. I'm just a few pounds away from being under 200lbs, and was lifting weights consistently for the first five months of the year. I'm currently taking a break from lifting to focus on 10k training with Adventure Girl, but the weights will come back in the fall.

3. Youtube/Twitch: It turns out a fair bit of people enjoy talking workout streams! Those were pretty popular, and will be back, again, in the fall. Followers are slowly increasing, and I hope to hit affiliate status soon!

4. Writing: I mean, this blog is getting updated regularly, and my Marooner's Rock byline is showing up regularly, so I guess that's doing all right.

5. Reading. Finished Atlas Shrugged. Finally. Jumped into a bunch of other books too.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter Wrap-Up

Over a hundred missions. More than thirty hours spread out over five and a half months. It all comes to an end this week as Campaign #13, Mission #8 goes live on Friday.

TIE Fighter has been near the top of the list all sorts of top games of all time lists almost since it was first released. Despite a few aggravating quirks when compared to modern games (there's nothing like wiping out three quarters of the way through a mission to make you wish for a mid-mission save point) the game play absolutely holds up. It's also STILL, twenty years later, the most straight-up playing as the "bad guys" game in the Star Wars universe.

There are a few issues. The Steam version works poorly, if at all. The game doesn't like Windows 10. It's virtually unplayable with a gamepad, so you'd better own a good joystick.

But if you can get past these issues, (buy the GoG version, sort out the Win10 issues or run on Win7, buy a good joystick, and definitely download and set up the 3D graphics fix) you can absolutely enjoy one of the great classics of gaming history.

As for me, I'm moving on to something I never actually finished before. Next week starts a playthrough of the Balance of Power campaign for Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter!

Game Review: ChromaGun

This plot may sound a little familiar: Mysterious corporate entity invites you in as a volunteer "test subject" to test their new prototype gun. You progress through a series of white-walled chambers, sometimes encouraged by a semi-snarky voice.

Okay, it's basically the plot of Portal. But, in a well executed game, with enough of a different hook to make things interesting, that's not really a bad thing, now is it?

ChromaGun is essentially a Portal-style game, where you solve puzzles by mixing colors. Your only weapon is the eponymous ChromaGun, which fires blobs of super adhesive red, yellow, and blue paint. Combining two colors will give you orange, green, and purple colors as well, combining all three colors (or hitting orange, green, or purple painted objects with any color) will give you brown.

Using these seven colors on the walls, ceiling, and worker bots, you progress through eight chapters (roughly fifty rooms total) of puzzles.

The puzzle rooms are, with a couple of exceptions, well thought out, and gradually reveal new mechanics as you go. The plot, well, the announcer talking to you throughout the puzzles is male, so that's different than Portal at least. Plot isn't really that important to a puzzle game though, provided the game is fun, and this is.

Overall, I definitely recommend this game, it's a fun 3-5 hour set of puzzles, challenging enough for adults, but also kid appropriate. In fact, I'm probably going to let my ten-year-old have a go at it next week.

You can find ChromaGun on Steam.

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Schedule This Week:
Mechwarrior Misadventures returns to Twitch on Monday night, 9:30-ish and running for a half hour.
Star Wars: TIE Fighter playthrough continues on Saturday

More World War II aviation history coming on Thursday.



Disclosure:
Pixel Maniacs provided me with a free key for ChromaGun and asked me to play it. No promises of positive reviews or anything else were provided in return, I just really enjoyed the game.