And thus endeth the life of a very special teacup.

School started yesterday!  I am super stoked for my second year; all signs point to this semestre being really fun and tough.  Unfortunately, me being at school may also mean that the comic will be posted less regularly (if the haven't been already ;__;), but I'm going to try my best to churn out a comic each week!

Here's how my semestre's looking: Animation Layout, Sound Design, Acting for Animators, Storyboarding, and Contemporary Vocal Ensemble.  I have a handful of other classes, but these are the ones that have got me excited, especially since they're totally applicable for TaffyGunn work.  I'm also looking forward to my Film Workshop class, and hopefully my film this year will not suck as hard.

On a totally unrelated subject, I found a sweet groove spot for working in listening to FFVI, Ogre Battle, and Chrono Trigger OSTs.  I guess that's not inherently a big deal, but Gideon installed an .SPC music player on my computer so I could listen to them in full quality, on my stupid Lion-running laptop  (it's called Vox).  It's even better than playing songs right through the emulator because I can organize them into playlists.  Needless to say, I'm one happy panda hard at work now.

- Megan Ruiz

Minty tea time: The Journey Continues.

Today Valve released Big Picture mode for Steam.  It's a different interface layer for Steam for when using on a couch.  It works quite well with a wired 360 controller and immediately made me look into getting a wireless controller.  It's a great start, and is already more fun to use than the Microsoft and Sony products it's competing with.

It does still have some potholes, though; when navigating through the store you'll sometimes get kicked back to the Steam web browser.  The browser is designed to be used with a controller and works pretty well, but it's still a bit jarring to go from a really well-designed tiled interface to a webpage.  Somewhat reminiscent of when using Windows 8 and getting kicked around between the Metro interface and the legacy desktop.

There doesn't seem to be a way to set Steam to start up directly into Big Picture mode, but hopefully I'm either missing something or that is on the short list of to do's.  There are a few things that could be better, like having a home/start page where the user could have some limited customization.  Big Picture mode does help make a console-style PC like the Alienware x51 much more alluring.   However, those start at around $700, and when talking about a couch-potato gaming entertainment center, one has to start talking about a much less expensive and easier-to-setup PS3 or 360.  It does, however, fill my head with wonderful optimistic thoughts of the modular computer entertainment console of the future.

- Gideon done

The life-and-times story of tea in a teacup continues.

So Valve announced that they are seriously looking into making hardware.  It's not exactly clear what kind, but it's most likely some kind of PC-gaming-related setup.  This is the result of Microsoft trying to lock down the Windows PC, and big players like Valve getting worried about the ramifications of this.

Microsoft in Windows 8 is doing its best to make people not want to use the legacy Explorer environment and force users into their new Metro/Windows/modern/whatever environment.  The potential problem here is that the new start screen interface is indicated to be about as locked down as iOS or the XBox at the moment.  So there is one store to rule them all: the Microsoft Store.  It's unlikely that Steam and similar stores will be available through this store and things will be hunky-dory.  Steam will most likely be relegated to the legacy Explorer platform that Microsoft will be trying to kill off.

In response, Valve has been very interested in Linux and is getting into the hardware market.  I can't really say if this is a good thing, but it's definitely crazy.  But what I am sure of is that a lot of people would rather get Half Life 2: Episode Three than a Steam Linux console for use on their couch that plays Counter-Strike: GO with a controller.

- Gideon done

I like tea.  Megan makes the best tea.  This is a story about tea.

Square Enix announced Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, or, as I like to call it, "Final Fantasy XIII-3".  The game actually sounds pretty good but that's not really as interesting as they announced this thing without a word about Versus XIII—the game that was originally announced at the same time as FF XIII and Agito/Type-0 back in 2006.  It felt like forever for FF XIII to come out, but they've done a good job pretty much annualizing it.  Normally I would hate that term, but I'm actually happy because games are getting made and they're making use of that White Engine/Crystal Tools they spent years developing before jumping to their next engine which they also spent years deving for the PS4/720 generation.

I like anyone who lived through the early SNES and PS1 days have a soft spot for Square Enix.  I was a bit down on them (to put it lightly) when they got cocky just like the rest of the Japanese gaming industry at the outset of this generation.  Over the last 8 years they've taken a real beating, though, and I think they're starting to get it together.  Supporting games like Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex and upcoming Tomb Raider were amazing decisions that must have been hard.  They gave Westerners a lot of freedom to come up with amazing games.  It feels like they are on their back foot and not rolling over, I think in the upcoming years we're going to get some great games from them.

- Gideon Done