=== ANCHOR POEM ===
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────
 Blizzard should make more than one animation style for swinging your weapon -
 as you level up, the style "tweens" between however many combat palettes you
 made.
 
 So, like, maybe they swing their sword +/-15 degrees each time to simulate the
 pseudo random nature of combat.
 
 Or maybe they start occasionally stepping into a maneuver 
 
 Which the player doesn't consciously control.
 
 Instinct, if you will. The body reacting to its [sensory organs, but
 pronounced "surveyor"]
 
 Anyway i think by adjusting the monster characters in WoW should wander around
 and gather within sight of a player. Seeking you out, waiting for a critical
 threshold of their peers. Then, when you allowed or slowed down to examine a
 bit of "this-or-here", (quests) they would gang up on you and ambush! Bwaha
 just watch out for the mob
 
 (kinda like that scene in the second book of The Book of Malazan series where
 they're wandering through a desert storm and meeting all sorts of strange
 sorts of people)
 
 Anyway in seeking to improve the player's view-time, i decided it would feel
 the most impactful to do the design related things related to things like
 making the gameplay the most visceral.
                                                           ┌───────────┐
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=== SIMILARITY RANKED ===

--- #1 notes/wow-chat-trainers ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────
 trainers in wowchat should have spells that are only passive / toggled
 
 still require level, still require gold (lots of it) but let the game be class-
 -less. essentially, every trainer teaches to every passerby, and like if you
 don't want any druid spells, sorry guy all I know is how to be a druid.
 
 better wait for the next trainer to come along.
 
 you only got like 6g, right? that's enough for two spells.
 
 which two do you prioritize? they only come by like every what, 15 minutes?
 
 also. separate idea:
 
 player characters in wowchat should attack more rhythmically.
 
 essentially, normalizing attack speed and moving back-and-forth with the
 normalized monster attack speed
 
 to create a dance of sorts where one character is never attacking at the same
 time as the other character.
 
 plus damage modifiers when you get closer, and bam suddenly you have a new
 game.
 
 oh and rotating around an opponent lowers their defence rating. which is locked
 at 95% with a +5% to avoidance with every hit they take and -5% for every
 parry.
 
 not dodge, but parry.
 
 dodging wears down their health by like 10 hit points.
 
 relax it's no big deal you get like, a hundred every time you level up.
 
 oh and btw the monsters don't give exp. The stuff that you find does, when you
 give it to a merchant to be appraised / identified.
 
 some stuff you know the worth of, like rope or barrels or hammered-iron-rings.
 
 but other stuff, like the value of this bracelet, is harder to know if it
 glass.
 
 so.... take it to the guy whose seen real diamonds, and he'll tell ya how much
 you learned when you found it last.
 
 item A is found on a monsters body
 item is sold to a vendor for 50 copper
 item A is found on a monsters body
 player has learned 25 deca-levels since last selling to vendor.
 therefore item is worth 75 copper.
 player earns 75 extra material points.
 item is worth 75 experience points.
 level up every thousand or twelve.
 
 slow down the attack speed. make characters gain bonuses for movement
 positiony.
 start from always and work down to fewer.
 talent points can be generic if your character is built with abilities.
 
 players don't need to press buttons to be engaged. They can just guide and see.
 I love auto-battlers like Dominions 6 and Legion TD 2 which is based on WC3
 mod!
 
 monsters should just... wander the world. Don't spawn them randomly, well,
 instead of a radius around the player, do a radius around the map.
 
 then, they walk through a random point, when they leave the circle they angle-
 -reflect back in, DVD logo style.
 
 if there's deadly monsters, there's deadly players, and PVP is always on.
 
 low levels should get bonuses to stealth (an ability everyone has)
 
 there should be civilians walking around. They can be armed or in caravans...
 follow roads, or not...
 
 monster hordes should spawn as a flock - when an elite enemy is drawn, let the
 game create several of their minions which follow around. Whenever a monster
 meets the swarm, they will join it, growing bigger and bigger...
 
 hopefully, attracting players who want to fight and slay them.
 
 greater rewards are more enticing...!
 
 more power is it's own reward.
 
 I think that weapons should have like, 3 durability? and armor like 5.
 
 then, it's broken, and your character has to abandon it to survive.
 
 or, sell it to a vendor, or just... whoever comes along.
 
 if 5 people open the chest and don't take the item, then the item disappears...
 
 every time a player opens a chest, a bit of wealth appears.
 
 every time they spend it? they get stronger, and it disappears.
 
 life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life
 feeds
 
 the life of wowchat is the life of continual strife, but it doesn't have to be
 so. The land itself is alive, and the monsters are eternally of woe.
 
 you must free them, so that their souls may return to the land, and be born of
 peace and plenty rather than horror and -- stack overflow --
 
 to do this, you slay them, finish their morthly remains, and let them break
 down
 and decompose into dust. Pleants eat dust. dust becomes what we eat and
 breathe.
 we, eventually, purify karma. this is our duty.
 
 vial of woe behind us. flower of renewal ahead. what we bear is savage
 sanctity.
 
 every time a monster kills a player they gain one of their abilities each time
 they're spawned. The player can keep the ability too, it's just... the monster
 will learn. Then, whenever a player levels up by slaying one of them, the spell
 or ability is unlearned. Symbolizing the players struggle to defeat them, and
 finally learning a way to overcome.
 
 when your character dies, you have no opportunity to release - instead, you
 just
 jump to the nearest NPC character which is an adventurer agent smith style.
 
 [I don't know about that one...]
 
 the players can pick any race, but if they pick undead, they can turn into a
 ghost when they die. The ghost can wander around and respawn wherever they
 want.
 
 Night Elves can wander around as a whisp (not in spirit world, real world) and
 do a beam attack like in Legion TD 2. Not enough to kill monsters, but enough
 to
 help another player survive. They can also cast rejuvenation, which heals about
 as much as one monster's damage input. if they get the killing blow on a
 monster
 they can level up and deal two monsters worth of damage and heal for two
 monster
 damage input. on the third time they don't get more damage or healing but they
 give a buff to all other whisps in the area that increases their attack speed
 by
 50% and increases the tick rate of their rejuvenation by 50% - fourth time they
 level up they're free, and they get kicked out to the login screen.
 
 what if... vehicles that looked like characters and that you could jump between
 with the right-click of an item?
 
 "this is just dota-ing a vampire survivors."
 
 Vampire Survivors is just Magic Survival is just Risk of Rain 2
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--- #2 fediverse/3063 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────
 @user-570 
 
 true. the "massively multiplayer" aspect of WoW is about as important to the
 game as the "A" is in "ARPG".
 
 I can't help but feel like the "impromptu groups" functionality feels a bit
 better than matchmaker instancing... though anything worth running a group for
 in WoW after TBC was instanced >.>
 
 Honestly I think there's just too many games these days for people to really
 get "into" MMORPGs, unless they're sufficiently unique in their mechanics
 (like EVE or Runescape)
 
 any ARPG MMOs are dead on launch, as you said. That design space is tapped
 out, at least for now, until someone comes along and makes it a deckbuilding
 roguelike or whatever. cough cough
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--- #3 fediverse/1003 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────
 @user-735 
 
 I made a World of Warcraft private server where all the default NPCs are
 removed from the game and the world is empty. But, every once in a while,
 monsters will spawn and attack you Risk of Rain style.
 
 If your character sits down, they stop attacking/spawning. I call it
 "wow-chat" because I'm bad with names, but the idea is basically a low stakes
 social game that you can pick up and set down whenever you want, while hanging
 out with your friends.
 
 there's also treasure and wandering merchants, and I've been thinking about
 adding dynamic quests but so far nobody's asked to play it so I've been
 working on other things.
 
 it's all open source too so you can host it yourself if you want.
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--- #4 fediverse/3037 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────
 @user-570 
 
 have you ever wanted to design your own MMO? If you think you can make a
 client, there's a server already set up which interfaces with World of
 Warcraft. So... the hardest part is done, and suddenly the rest is about as
 hard as making any other game.
 
 The reason I ask is because there's no open-source client for the WoW engine
 server software Azerothcore, but if written then there could be a whole new
 field of indie design as solo developers would be able to build their own
 multiplayer games with ease.
 
 well, as easy as making a game in Godot at least. That's the dream. I don't
 think I could build such an engine, but I spend an awful lot of time thinking
 about how engines are built.
 
 There's a lot of freedom in the design space, for example this mod server I
 made which emulates Risk of Rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HsW4g2ZIgk
 
 It has randomized enemies, treasure chests, wandering vendors, and deployable
 hearthstones. If you've played WoW that stuff might ring a bell, otherwise
 it's probably just random features
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--- #5 notes/symbeline ---
════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 Code Name: Symbeline
 
 ----------------------------- gdd initial draft -------------------------------
 
    1. introduction to fantasy (elevator pitches)
    2. kickstarter demands
    2. introduction to core gameplay loop
    4. tenants and core values of the game design
    3. introduction to game modes
    5. introduction to technical requirements
    6. breakdown of core gameplay loop
    7. breakdown of game modes
    8. breakdown of fantasy
    9. breakdown of technical requirements
 
 -------------------------- introduction to fantasy-----------------------------
 
    Symbeline is a macro based strategy game and city-builder based around the
 concept of indirect control. It's inspirations are Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom
 Simulator (2000), Supreme Commander (2007), and Hearts of Iron IV (2016). It is
 designed to appeal to fans of tabletop roleplaying games with it's focus on
 dynamic worldbuilding and sandbox playstyle. The gameplay consists of multiple
 playstyles depending on which aspects of the game appeal to the player, with
 choices between an economic focus via the GUI, longterm planning and resource
 allocation, or diplomacy and subterfuge a'la Ruinarch (2020).
 
 ---------------------------- kickstarter demands ------------------------------
 
    1. prototype
    2. gdd
    3. estimates for character and environment art
    4. estimates for music and sounds
    5. estimates for engine development
    6. estimates for community management
    7. breakdown of mvp, ideal game state, and stretch goals
 
 ----------------------- introduction to core gameplay loop --------------------
 
    1. management of lanes, both width and length
    2. casting of spells and utilization of special boons
    3. city building with placement, upgrades, and henchmen pathing routes
    4. satisfying guild requirements of equipment, manpower, and special
       resources by managing shipments and local income (UI commodity trading)
    5. placement of generalized bounties
       (think champion's guild from Majesty, not reward flags)
    6. diplomacy with neutral, AI, or player controlled kingdoms. Capabilities
       include pacts and treaties, projects, subterfuge, and tournaments. The
       diplomacy system can be a stretch goal.
 
 -------------------------- tenants and core values ----------------------------
 
    1. always something to do, but nothing falls apart without your attention.
    2. gameplay should be focused on macro rather than micro. Longterm planning
       and strategic decision making are favored over tactics and skill.
    3. defeat should feel avoidable until the last moment, and only as a result
       of longterm continuous failures rather than short-term mistakes or being
       blindsided by a cheesy tactic.
    4. victory should be gained through exploiting weaknesses and by using
       lateral thinking.
    5. the careful balance of internal and external threats is essential.
    6. rapid expansion leads to depletion of internal resources, while slowly
       expanding can lead to a lack of options
    7. the world should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
    8. your kingdom should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
    9. your heroes should feel alive and completely ignorant of your decisions.
   10. there should always be opportunities for cooperation with your fellow
       kingdoms.
   11. the frontlines should feel peaceful outside of large battles.
   12. everything is flexible and dependant on circumstance
   13. there should be enough space on the map for multiple parties of heroes
       to pass each other like ships in the night without engaging in combat.
       It should feel like the real world, with canyons and valleys and rivers
       and mountains - room for lairs and wild animals to roam.
   14. monsters are always more dangerous than other humans.
   15. the art style should be rooted in classic medieval fantasy. 
   16. equipment should feel either mass-produced (kingdom), organic (monsters),
       ancient (lair treasure), or artisinal (enchanted).
   17. heroes should feel campy, fun, and adventurous. Avoid dark, grim, and
       fearful.
   18. This game is a toy.
   19. This toy should run on any modern computer.
   20. This toy should encourage modding.
 
 -------------------------- introduction to game modes -------------------------
 
    1. singleplayer - single kingdom against an island of monsters and neutral
                      settlements. essentially the multiplayer game against
                      zero opponents.
    2. singleplayer - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
                      neutral settlements. One player controlled kingdom against
                      multiple AI controlled kingdoms.
    3. singleplayer - scenarios, similar to MFKS
    4. multiplayer  - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
                      neutral settlements. Essentially the singleplayer game
                      with networking added in.
    5. multiplayer  - co-op scenarios where multiple players play as the same
                      kingdom. A test of the core tenant "there's always
                      something to do"
    6. multiplayer  - co-op island invasion. Essentially the multiplayer game
                      with more than one player controlling a kingdom.
    7. singleplayer - play in 3rd person as a hero in an AI kingdom. Mostly for
                      the novelty since the core gameplay loop is focused on
                      city-building. A test of the core tenant "nothing falls
                      apart without your attention"
 
    1 is mvp. 2-6 are stretch goals in order of ascending difficulty. They
    should build upon one another - the main steps are:
 
    1. singleplayer island invasion (biggest step)
    2. AI controlled kingdoms
    3. scenarios
    4. multiplayer (second biggest step)
    5. cooperatively controlling the same kingdom
    6. 3rd person perspective and character controller
 
 ------------------------ technical requirements -------------------------------
    
    1. this game will be written in lua (with Fennel support) and using Raylib.
    2. the prototype will be made with Godot using GDscript.
    3. if the performance demands are too much for lua or the engine is out of
       scope for the budget, Rust with the Bevy engine could be used.
    4. the final product will include a custom 2d engine designed for large
       scale maps with an isometric perspective and a data-first design.
    5. the game should be as concurrent as possible, to support large numbers of
       cpu cores and compute shaders.
    6. the game will be data-driven, meaning the visual aspects are simply a
       representation of the interactions of the underlying simulation, rather
       than an intrinsic component of the computation.
    7. Each "event" in the game (a character moves, a building is placed, a
       monster spawns, etc) will send a message to the visual processing side of
       the engine, which will present a representation to the user.
    8. the map will be a hex grid with pointed-top hexagons. The visual
       representation of the underlying data may be continuous (non-hex) but the
       underlying data will be represented on a hexagonal grid.
 
    9. there needs to be character portraits for each type of monster, henchmen,
       and hero type. You should be able to recognize what attributes a hero
       specializes in by their portrait. Mvp is 1 attribute, but more can be
       a stretch goal.
   10. Each building, upgrade, and equipment type needs an icon. Stretch goals
       can be portraits.
 
   11. each henchman, hero type, and monster needs 3 sprites for each action.
       more actions may be added if budget allows, but mvp is movement and
       attacking. Several additional sprites may be necessary, like dying,
       standing still, gathering loot, socializing, or any others.
   12. each building needs 4 sprites for the construction process and 4 for the
       destruction process. Flame effects are stretch goals.
   13. each building needs an animated sprite for when it is in use.
   14. each lair needs a sprite and an icon.
   15. each spell needs an icon and a spell effect sprite. Each projectile needs
       a sprite.
   16. a stretch goal would be differing sprites for each piece of equipment.
       included with this would be engine work to allow for dynamic sprites.
   17. each terrain type should have a ground material and sprites for doodads.
   18. there needs to be several GUI menus. The precise number depends on
       gameplay breakdown.
 
   17. each hero type and henchman needs to have pithy and unique voice lines.
       this is a stretch goal.
   18. there should be music tracks for each part of the game - beginning,
       middle, and end.
   19. there should be sounds for each action that takes place in the game
       including combat, UI interactions, and spellcasts.
                                                           ┌───────────┐
 similar                        chronologicaldifferent══════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

--- #6 notes/symbeline-2 ---
════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────
 Code Name: Symbeline
 
 ----------------------------- gdd initial draft -------------------------------
 
    1. introduction to fantasy (elevator pitches)
    2. kickstarter demands
    2. introduction to core gameplay loop
    4. tenants and core values of the game design
    3. introduction to game modes
    5. introduction to technical requirements
    6. breakdown of core gameplay loop
    7. breakdown of game modes
    8. breakdown of fantasy
    9. breakdown of technical requirements
 
 -------------------------- introduction to fantasy-----------------------------
 
    Symbeline is a macro based strategy game and city-builder based around the
 concept of indirect control. It's inspirations are Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom
 Simulator (2000), Supreme Commander (2007), and Hearts of Iron IV (2016). It is
 designed to appeal to fans of tabletop roleplaying games with it's focus on
 dynamic worldbuilding and sandbox playstyle. The gameplay consists of multiple
 playstyles depending on which aspects of the game appeal to the player, with
 choices between an economic focus via the GUI, longterm planning and resource
 allocation, or diplomacy and subterfuge a'la Ruinarch (2020).
 
 ---------------------------- kickstarter demands ------------------------------
 
    1. prototype
    2. gdd
    3. estimates for character and environment art
    4. estimates for music and sounds
    5. estimates for engine development
    6. estimates for community management
    7. breakdown of mvp, ideal game state, and stretch goals
 
 ----------------------- introduction to core gameplay loop --------------------
 
    1. management of lanes, both width and length
    2. casting of spells and utilization of special boons
    3. city building with placement, upgrades, and henchmen pathing routes
    4. satisfying guild requirements of equipment, manpower, and special
       resources by managing shipments and local income (UI commodity trading)
    5. placement of generalized bounties
       (think champion's guild from Majesty, not reward flags)
    6. diplomacy with neutral, AI, or player controlled kingdoms. Capabilities
       include pacts and treaties, projects, subterfuge, and tournaments. The
       diplomacy system can be a stretch goal.
 
 -------------------------- tenants and core values ----------------------------
 
    1. always something to do, but nothing falls apart without your attention.
    2. gameplay should be focused on macro rather than micro. Longterm planning
       and strategic decision making are favored over tactics and skill.
    3. defeat should feel avoidable until the last moment, and only as a result
       of longterm continuous failures rather than short-term mistakes or being
       blindsided by a cheesy tactic.
    4. victory should be gained through exploiting weaknesses and by using
       lateral thinking.
    5. the careful balance of internal and external threats is essential.
    6. rapid expansion leads to depletion of internal resources, while slowly
       expanding can lead to a lack of options
    7. the world should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
    8. your kingdom should feel alive and reactive to your decisions.
    9. your heroes should feel alive and completely ignorant of your decisions.
   10. there should always be opportunities for cooperation with your fellow
       kingdoms.
   11. the frontlines should feel peaceful outside of large battles.
   12. everything is flexible and dependant on circumstance
   13. there should be enough space on the map for multiple parties of heroes
       to pass each other like ships in the night without engaging in combat.
       It should feel like the real world, with canyons and valleys and rivers
       and mountains - room for lairs and wild animals to roam.
   14. monsters are always more dangerous than other humans.
   15. the art style should be rooted in classic medieval fantasy. 
   16. equipment should feel either mass-produced (kingdom), organic (monsters),
       ancient (lair treasure), or artisinal (enchanted).
   17. heroes should feel campy, fun, and adventurous. Avoid dark, grim, and
       fearful.
   18. This game is a toy.
   19. This toy should run on any modern computer.
   20. This toy should encourage modding.
 
 -------------------------- introduction to game modes -------------------------
 
    1. singleplayer - single kingdom against an island of monsters and neutral
                      settlements. essentially the multiplayer game against
                      zero opponents.
    2. singleplayer - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
                      neutral settlements. One player controlled kingdom against
                      multiple AI controlled kingdoms.
    3. singleplayer - scenarios, similar to MFKS
    4. multiplayer  - multiple kingdoms against an island of monsters and
                      neutral settlements. Essentially the singleplayer game
                      with networking added in.
    5. multiplayer  - co-op scenarios where multiple players play as the same
                      kingdom. A test of the core tenant "there's always
                      something to do"
    6. multiplayer  - co-op island invasion. Essentially the multiplayer game
                      with more than one player controlling a kingdom.
    7. singleplayer - play in 3rd person as a hero in an AI kingdom. Mostly for
                      the novelty since the core gameplay loop is focused on
                      city-building. A test of the core tenant "nothing falls
                      apart without your attention"
 
    1 is mvp. 2-6 are stretch goals in order of ascending difficulty. They
    should build upon one another - the main steps are:
 
    1. singleplayer island invasion (biggest step)
    2. AI controlled kingdoms
    3. scenarios
    4. multiplayer (second biggest step)
    5. cooperatively controlling the same kingdom
    6. 3rd person perspective and character controller
 
 ------------------------ technical requirements -------------------------------
    
    1. this game will be written in lua (with Fennel support) and using Raylib.
    2. the prototype will be made with Godot using GDscript.
    3. if the performance demands are too much for lua or the engine is out of
       scope for the budget, Rust with the Bevy engine could be used.
    4. the final product will include a custom 2d engine designed for large
       scale maps with an isometric perspective and a data-first design.
    5. the game should be as concurrent as possible, to support large numbers of
       cpu cores and compute shaders.
    6. the game will be data-driven, meaning the visual aspects are simply a
       representation of the interactions of the underlying simulation, rather
       than an intrinsic component of the computation.
    7. Each "event" in the game (a character moves, a building is placed, a
       monster spawns, etc) will send a message to the visual processing side of
       the engine, which will present a representation to the user.
    8. the map will be a hex grid with pointed-top hexagons. The visual
       representation of the underlying data may be continuous (non-hex) but the
       underlying data will be represented on a hexagonal grid.
 
    9. there needs to be character portraits for each type of monster, henchmen,
       and hero type. You should be able to recognize what attributes a hero
       specializes in by their portrait. Mvp is 1 attribute, but more can be
       a stretch goal.
   10. Each building, upgrade, and equipment type needs an icon. Stretch goals
       can be portraits.
 
   11. each henchman, hero type, and monster needs 3 sprites for each action.
       more actions may be added if budget allows, but mvp is movement and
       attacking. Several additional sprites may be necessary, like dying,
       standing still, gathering loot, socializing, or any others.
   12. each building needs 4 sprites for the construction process and 4 for the
       destruction process. Flame effects are stretch goals.
   13. each building needs an animated sprite for when it is in use.
   14. each lair needs a sprite and an icon.
   15. each spell needs an icon and a spell effect sprite. Each projectile needs
       a sprite.
   16. a stretch goal would be differing sprites for each piece of equipment.
       included with this would be engine work to allow for dynamic sprites.
   17. each terrain type should have a ground material and sprites for doodads.
   18. there needs to be several GUI menus. The precise number depends on
       gameplay breakdown.
 
   17. each hero type and henchman needs to have pithy and unique voice lines.
       this is a stretch goal.
   18. there should be music tracks for each part of the game - beginning,
       middle, and end.
   19. there should be sounds for each action that takes place in the game
       including combat, UI interactions, and spellcasts.
                                                           ┌───────────┐
 similar                        chronologicaldifferent══════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

--- #7 notes/coh-waves-of-playerbases ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────
 imagine if there was a stacking inf bonus to players who played on red /
 blueside
 which increased or decreased depending on either A. the number of players
 online
 at the time, B. the proportion of players playing on that team versus the
 other,
 or C. the time of day. Essentially helping to cure the faction imbalance by
 offering rewards to one side or the other which would encourage a certain group
 in the population of the game to change sides or not.
 
 perhaps frequent changing could grant a title called "mercenary" or something
 
 like "log in for each consecutive day for 10 days straight and each day switch
 faction alignment at least once"
 
 ... anyway you could cure the faction imbalance between redside / blueside by
 offering an INF reward for playing on each side one by one alternating like an
 iterator first red then blue or first blue then red either way it doesn't
 matter
 because it'll switch after a while and encourage everyone to switch sides. And
 the way the character responds to that stimulus tells you a bit about their
 character's personality.
 
 also...
 
 it should not affect AE or Pocket D farms.
 
 Nor missions, TFs, or anything else.
 
 they should SOLELY impact open world patrolling / hunting.
 
 I believe this would not only incentivize people to spend time in the open
 world
 (which is a mostly unused piece of game assets) but it would also increase the
 visibility of the newly bolstered faction numbers.
 
 Think about it - if everyone who switched sides is out in the open world, then
 they could see each other. They could fight the same mobs, and team up
 together.
 In doing so, they could form greater and greater supergroups - if only through
 their interactions with one another as they level up.
 
 If they're lucky, the guild they're recruited into has similar interests in
 mind
 like doing raiding or PvP or economics or alts or whatever. And they each have
 their own different styles of operating, it's soooo cute. Like alt guilds will
 pop up and then migrate to a new one as people make new alts and grow tired of
 them at higher levels.
 
 It's great.
 
 I love MMOs!
 
 I wish people put half as much effort into making an open source WoW client
 that
 they do programming game engines like Godot or Raylib or Bevy. If such a thing
 was created, we could have a new rennaisance in indie MMO development. It would
 become fully non-proprietary, the entire game-platform-stack. Meaning anyone
 could create their own MMO off of it, because (crucially) the serverside soft-
 -ware has already been reverse engineered. And open sourced.
 
 Seriously. You wanna make as much bank as Steam? Make an open source client
 that
 lets you design while in it. Then you could charge people for all the games
 that
 they played that were designed and hosted by you the content designing software
 maker.
 
 ... okay it's probably not that simple I'm going to go play Unreal
 Tournament2k4
 `
                                                           ┌───────────┐
 similar                        chronologicaldifferent═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────┘

--- #8 notes/game-design-2 ---
══════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────
 the method of game design is identification of playstyles and the balancing of
 success rates of each of those playstyles. then, giving the player as many
 different possible methods of playing the game. the more different they are,
 the
 better, and they should be unique enough that the decisions taken to play that
 playstyle feel impactful. meaning, a player could play offensively or
 defensively, for example, or a WoW player might play a melee or ranged
 character. in addition, they might use the pieces available to them in a unique
 way that aligns with their personality - everyone should be able to express
 themselves as much as possible while also keeping the game fair, balanced, and
 rewarding. It should incentivize the development of skill - and gently guide
 the player through various mistakes. It should
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--- #9 notes/symbeline-design-the-guild ---
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 design the guild, design the capital, then design their path through mordaunts.
 easy peasy.
 
 design the guild like a museum. Each spot there's an exhibit which teaches the
 randomly generated rolled statistics hero something new. Maybe it teaches them
 how to use certain weaponry, maybe it teaches them how to use a bow. Whatever
 the spell might be, they can learn it, and use their randomly rolled statistics
 to cast spells that scale differently depending on how their character has been
 built.
 
 design the capital like a flow diagram, if horses need feed and forged steel
 (for their shoes) then send the outputs of a blacksmith and the outputs of the
 farmers to the inputs of the stables. Everything has to go somewhere, but the
 streets are only so wide. You'll have to coordinate the traffic diagram if you
 want it to go anywhere useful.
 
 design the path through the mordaunts. Fighting skeletons teaches you about
 perseverence and the ability to crush bones, while goblins teach you to always
 be wary of attack. The sacred grove held blessed berries, and now that the land
 is liberated from the evil bandits preying on villagers those berries can be
 carted into town and used to make an antidote which heals death poison caused
 by the scorpions in the desert (and city rats)
 
 design the ruler's schedule like a calendar where each event gives them a bonus
 on all the ones that come later. Just make sure that they don't get knifed in
 the posterier or driven mad by the whispers of the orb... or perhaps just the
 stress of running a kingdom.
 
 (how do you simulate that? you can't! you can't simulate humans!)
 
 ha I bet I can. They're not so different, you and I, so if given a team I
 will...
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--- #10 fediverse/3 ---
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 the method of game design is identification of playstyles and the balancing of
 success rates of each of those playstyles. then, giving the player as many
 different possible methods of playing the game. the more different they are,
 the
 better, and they should be unique enough that the decisions taken to play that
 playstyle feel impactful. meaning, a player could play offensively or
 defensively, for example, or a WoW player might play a melee or ranged
 character. in addition, they might use the pieces available to them in a unique
 way that aligns with their personality - everyone should be able to express
 themselves as much as possible while also keeping the game fair, balanced, and
 rewarding. It should incentivize the development of skill - and gently guide
 the player through various mistakes.
 
 #gamedesign
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--- #11 fediverse/4676 ---
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 ... but I needed to choose lawful-good at character creation in order to play
 a paladin.
 
 the guard looks at you with confusion, decides you're hallucinating and
 dangerous (because of the sword) and forcibly detains you
 
 wait, what did you think I was going to say? Did you think I was going to
 advocate for crimes on a public forum?? what am I a gopher? do you take me for
 a lemur in jamaica? am I truly so triceratops to you that you'd think I'd do
 something so washing machine? Get real, I'd never byzantium my way into such a
 utterly coherent and clearly intentional and not at all arcane situation.
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--- #12 notes/symbeline-superheros ---
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 imagine low level characters in CoH/V
 
 playing a game of symbeline
 
 and you as the ruler
 
 can slot enhancements and dole out inspirations
 
 as they sweep the streets like you play CoX
 
 instead of a MMO
 
 it's a deckbuilding strategy
 
 with a slice of zachtronics for the economy
 
 wiring up machines in ever expanding deseagns
 
 like automating factorio's gameplay loop
 
 boxes within boxes
 
 of intrinsic delight
 
 like making a CPUter
 
 or designing a computer program
 
 while playing a video game ^_^
 
 and the games that you make
 
 can be shared and played when unique
 
 so go for it and make that you're dreaming!
 
 ===============================================================================
 =
 
 the goal of each "level" is to solve a particular problem - like how do I make
 a
 2 bit register - or something like that. When accomplished, it unlocks
 something
 for your heroes to acquire. And each playthrough will require a repeat until
 you
 have it memorized at which point you can unlock "perma-badges" that make it
 always unlocked at the start of the game. Like learning Kanji, you need spaced
 repetition. BUT ANYWAYS it'll be in magical terms like "unlock essence-stones"
 or "learn the ritual of desire" or whatever. And each of those terms roughly
 corresponds to a pattern in electrical engineering (designing CPUs and such)
 And you can learn advanced versions of what you already know by uncovering
 "lost
 secrets" (which is a reward your heros can find) - Basically it'd be like a
 "clue" that shows you a ghost version of something you haven't figured out yet
 -
 and it'd be a slow process because you need to slow down the learning process
 or
 else you'll forget. Basically teasing it out of the player when they seem to be
 stuck. Asking probing questions and whatnot, and eventually culminating in the
 final question, assuming the quest is succeeding. Because if you think about it
 all ancient quests were simply journeys for reason - searching for the answer
 to
 some ancient riddle or bastardized retelling. Looking for answers in an
 unknowing world. So ANYWAY as your heros discover things you as the ruler get
 answers to the economic puzzle - how to design transistors and whatnot. But
 they
 would be in theme appropriate terms, of course. You don't even have to know a
 lot about mechanical electrical design, because ChatGPT knows. All you need to
 do is build the basic building blocks, and BAM you got a great place to
 integrate chatgpt. Just prime it such that it's giving hints one by one each
 slightly more revealing until eventually after X amount of clues the solution
 is
 automatically shown (like a blueprint) and the player can remember it or not
 but
 each playthrough they'll have to build it again from scratch (reinforcement 
 learning) so eventually they'll be able to do it real quick. Essentially,
 "Abstraction - The Game"
 
 great so you got your economic simulation, pretty easy too just some UI work
 
 and for the heroes you're playing an ARPG sorta (supcom anyone?)
 
 Think Bannerlord for the scaling on the map
 
 then think of 5+ different "themes" like fantasy or superhero or pirates
 
 each "theme" will correspond to like a faction in Mount and Blade
 
 and all you have to do is generate pictures using Midjourney
 
 and text descriptions a'la the magic scroll
 
 shown as "bubble pop-ups" on the map that the player can click
 
 never overwhelming, but descripting what's happening
 
 and also some more UI work because you gotta display all that to the player
 
 Maybe it could be a rolling story, news ticker style - like slowly scrolling
 lines of text about what's happening in the world
 
 and the player could have it open in one window and something else in the other
 and whenever they're waiting on something (say, a processing intensive AI task
 on their computer) they could just glance over and read what's going on in
 their
 fantasy world
 
 okay okay but also they could play as a hero
 
 it could be an ARPG experience except instead of clicking to fight you play a
 little automatic Star Realms game and depending on your deck choices you'd have
 a different playthrough. Again, not a game that requires much thought, but one
 you can have in the background.
 
 Also there'd be pictures, like a slowly evolving storyline of events - think of
 it like the artists of the time drawing paintings about what's going on in the
 story - major events would be highlighted and kept in the painting until even-
 -tually they get replaced - sorta like the Smash Bros scrolling painting (oh
 it's so good)
 
 ===============================================================================
 =
 
 it doesn't have to be an expansionist game
 
 maybe you guys just live in your little valley
 
 and the world turns around you
 
 maybe it's called "symbeline" because the people are of the forest
 
 and they live like elves in society
 
 monsters could wander in, and heros could tackle them
 
 but most of the time would be spent looking for trouble
 
 going on patrol
 
 you know, breaking skeleton bones and being superheros
 
 okay okay you know that superhero faction? What if they had MEDIEVAL TECHNOLOGY
 but MODERN DAY SUPERPOWERS at a cost - the society was beset by hordes of
 monst-
 -ers. Those few who escaped are now superpowered and they live as friendly and
 nomadic wanderers through their own territory. Always adventuring, and always
 searching for their life, finding whatever the road may carry them to. It's a
 great life, and life seems to flourish in their footsteps - they are like part
 dryad/druid and part wolf. Because sometimes there's evil threats, and they
 must
 be defeated by an equally strong good power. That's how it goes, and that's how
 it be.
 
 For imagery I'm thinking a mix of the tribes from Dominions (deer, wolf, bear,
 etc) but they're like, 1.5x as big as regular people and quite strong. The
 outsiders call them "giants" or "goliaths" but really they're just infused with
 the lifeforce of their people. They are radical individualists, but they all
 unite for a common cause. They know their bond is the strongest thing there is,
 and they use it to great effect when the time comes. AHHH THEY'RE SO COOL I
 LOVE
 THEM okay okay what about the other factions? PIRATES? Oh think about it like
 it's st patricks day WHAT IF THEY WERE IRISH PIRATES omg omg omg that sounds so
 cool I'm DIGGING this okay what about the other factions? You need 5+ you said
 hmmmmmmmmm good question I have 3 now so that's 2 more.
 
 yep...
 
 ===============================================================================
 =
 
 okay dude check this what if they were a nation of wizards that focused on the
 power of animation - what if they generated constructs, sorta like in Supreme
 Commander so they were EVEN MORE individualist - haha no they'd have a normal
 population it's just a few of them who would be wizards - because their output
 wasn't measured by manpower, but rather by brainpower. Whoever could design the
 greatest machine was exemplared, and eventually they became the best and
 brightest among us. They were put in charge of the golem creation factories,
 and
 they used them instead of heros. SO BASICALLY YOUR HEROS NEVER DIE they just 
 have successes and failures JUST LIKE IN SUPREME COMMANDER okay the plot of
 this
 game is "what if all my favorite games were the essence of life and death in a
 fantasy game" like OMG KEEP EM COMIN'
 
 so. who is the player? THE PLAYER is the one who's overseeing it all. They have
 dominion over the entire kingdom, and they guide their people toward a bright
 future. They are vulnerable in their castle, but their people have their back.
 Together they fight for the future. They slot enhancements and dole out
 inspirations and solve the economic puzzle in the background. They also make
 decisions about what kind of equipment production to prioritize - because each
 game they have to invent everything from scratch. All their production is made
 with endless abstraction, and whatever you prioritize is what's magnified in
 your kingdom. You choose a style and it plays as well as it's guile,
 
 I dunno this seems like a lot, what would you need to make this a reality?
 
 hmmmm let's break it down:
 
 first you need to implement the star realms gameplay
 
 then you need to hook it up to a square grid and have multiple occurences at
 once.
 
 then you need UI for the character sheets
 
 and you need logic to open separate windows for each output type
 
 you need... a lot of things
 
 okay let's talk more broadly - what do you need from other people and what can
 you do on your own?
 
 hmmm good question. I can do the star realms gameplay, and the simulation for
 the wiring systems - because I have the VM. Make that into the gameplay somehow
 okay good idea like okay authoring vm package routing deliveries between the
 various nodes that you set up in the economic system - 
 
 side note, the peril of Spore was that it took to little time to develop a
 species. it should have lasted as long as WoW takes to get to max level. That
 would have given them time to reiterate the gameplay loops to make sure they
 worked correctly. ANYWAY
 
 okay authoring VM package routing. The player could set up delivery patterns
 based on A MAZE OMG your kingdom is like a maze and you need to get deliveries
 out, or else how would anything function? SO you act as a trailblazer, finding
 ways through the labyrinth and "piloting" a car sorta like that game at Disney
 quest with the cars under the floor - except you can see both the top view of
 the maze and you're trying to guide the car in real time as it travels through
 the maze - the faster you can get to the end the better ofc. like talking to
 the
 delivery driver through the movement
 
 do I like that idea more or less than the first one? First idea being the idea
 that you're making lists of commands for a VM  to execute. I don't think they'd
 be a good idea to mix. So which one gets it? The VM of course has the edge
 because that's what the technology is based on. But will it translate to good
 gameplay? Idk. This second idea is certainly better gameplay, but is it
 engaging? Idk! Idk. I'm not a miracle worker. But I do have good ideas, and I
 need to be told that sometimes I guess.
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--- #13 notes/wow-chat-raids ---
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 wowchat would make a great game for raids.
 have the monsters spawn at specific spots that you go through and identify
 on the geometry
 tell them to run and attack the nearest of foes
 give the players the goal of bringing themselves through to the end...
 or, later on, in building an internal expedition.
 
 wow-chat, where monsters spawn in a circle around your character and walk to
 ward them. you can meet characters who'll follow and protect you, and you can
 meet monsters to fight. also vendors to take your junk and give you cool
 things,
 and trainers to teach you and quest-givers to guide you and treasure for you to
 find.
 
 in raids, there are more things for you. monsters spawn at specified locations,
 and only the nearest few in a radius. then, they attack over the landscape-of-
 -imagination, and as they do they show you where is the most powerful loot.
 
 if you raid a monster's den/hiding/spawning choice, then you have to defeat the
 boss. this boss is larger, mostly. has more hitpoints... monstly. or maybe it's
 just the most respected, who can say.
 
 anyway, you get treasure if you do. the monster spawns for you when you find
 it.
 and you have to sense it by searching for whichever monsters spawn at higher
 and
 higher levels and in different types.
 
 different monster type, different boss that way.
 
 when the boss is slain, that type goes away.
 
 at least, until the raid resets next week.
 
 or maybe...
 
 until enough resources have been gathered to make another attempt.
 
 death knights should be able to command the minions to work in the haunted
 mill.
 it should be reasonable for a fighter to hire a peasant host.
 mages should have golems or spirits or enchanted objects or elementals or
 wizard
 hats
 warlocks should have covenants with dark hosts
 darkness is not evil unless you use it for evil...
 paladins should have retainers and disciples
 elves should sing to the woods
 clerics and charmers should be well understood.
 celebrants and diviners are two of the same,
 and pillars of plunder [warrior or rogue class] and rough and ripe [from the
 stoner]
 oops gotta go, sprung a leak
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--- #14 fediverse/982 ---
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 @user-707 @user-708 
 
 using this to control the buttons in VRchat would be like a person with a
 prosthetic interacting with real life :O
 
 minus the physicality of course, but that's next.
 
 can't wait to play Warcraft 3 and think "select all healers" so I can point
 them at a dying unit with my mouse.
 
 or world of warcraft where your rotation begins to feel like a song.
 
 maybe even a text-based adventure, where you reading the text corresponds to
 the results of the simulation, https://www.spreeder.com/app.php style. could
 make it so that if you wanted something else to happen, you had to willfully
 think it while the words are flashing in front of your eyes - the game would
 pause if you blinked, perfect for phones btw...
 
 could be a locally networked thing, like four to six people hanging out and
 playing a game like pictionary or charades. except, a story that developed,
 and whoever wanted could change it while everyone was reading it at once.
 sorta like a competition to see who can make the best twists and false endings
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--- #15 fediverse/5900 ---
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 I love programming, but I'm not a coder.
 
 you burn witches because you JUST CAN'T HANDLE THEM ANYMORE. I know, I get it.
 of course I do.
 
 I'm always so concerned that someone might stumble upon me. that they might
 read me. what a vulnerable state, to be afraid?!
 
 I really really really really wanna play world of warcraft
 
 my message to blissard is: treat World of Warcraft like a game engine, not a
 theme park please. I mean, the theme park should still exist, because it's neat
 but... the rest of the game engine could be used to create essentially
 anything with a 3rd person camera.
 
 singleplayer doesn't even need to worry about clipping animations. (lag)
 
 I wonder if you could run World of Warcraft on lowest settings in vanilla
 burning crusade or wrath of the lich king? good thing those are open source
 now, so you can host your own if you want. well, except the client, but nobody
 has bothered to write another one besides the owner and primary developers of
 the engine.
 
 movement system plugins? data memory?~~~
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--- #16 notes/wow-server ---
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 ===============================================================================
 
 This server has several modifications to the base gameplay elements of World of
 Warcraft. The first is the reduction in scale - the entirety of the server is
 located in The Barrens and Ashenvale. The second is the new itemization system,
 which necessitates alterations to the base game as well - gear upgrades are
 replaced with gem upgrades, allowing gameplay customization to a greater degree
 than with gear upgrades. Third and finally, the goals of the game are no longer
 personal development - rather, a more communal focus will be implemented via
 shared goals and contributions.
 
 ===============================================================================
 The first of these aspects is the easiest to explain. The server is intended to
 be a PvP server, with the primary conflict being between Orcs and Night Elves.
 The orcs are of course set up in The Barrens, while the Night Elves have
 Ashenvale. The core meta-gameplay loop is that each faction sends out patrols
 and raids. Patrols are defensive groups of NPCs that rotate around the map
 searching for enemies. If they encounter an enemy, they fight and should they
 survive they'll return home with all the loot that is placed in a pool for the
 next patrol. Once a certain amount of equipment and supplies have been gathered
 it'll automatically depart.
 
 Raids, on the other hand, are offensive maneuvers into enemy territory. They
 offer the greatest rewards (enemy equipment is priceless for intel) and they
 require the strongest equipment and warriors. Offensive raids are less
 automatic than patrols, and are sent toward a designated location rather than
 spiraling outward. Should the raid be successful, they'll set up camp at the
 location and become a quest hub for their faction. In doing so, they'll have
 opportunities for players to complete that will grant their faction bonuses.
 Usually something like unlocking a vendor that sells unique items to players,
 or providing a steady supply of food or weapons for the faction.
 
 Players can contribute supplies (trade goods or equipment) to the war effort,
 and ideally they'd actually see their weapons and armor being used by the
 soldiers carrying out these maneuvers. To that end, the profession system must
 be revamped to create more interesting gameplay. First, however, the
 itemization system must be explained or else the professions won't make sense.
 ===============================================================================
 
 ===============================================================================
 On this server, everyone wears the same equipment - they're part of an army
 after all. And armies have uniforms. These pieces of equipment have sockets
 that can be fit with gems, allowing the player to customize their gameplay
 style. The combat system is intentionally a little bland or slow, to allow for
 the choices made in gearing to have the greatest effect on the gameplay style
 of the character.
 
 Inspired by roguelike games, this server has a level cap of 20 with the
 starting level at 10. During the 10 levels your character will grow more
 specialized, but not necessarily stronger. The most interesting abilities are
 at level 20 of course, to incentivize levelling all the way, but you can make
 due with lower levels if necessary. There's no permadeath, however there is an
 incentive to "prestige" your character - they become a permanent member of the
 faction guard! This elite cadre defends the Crossroads and Astranaar. Until
 they die, of course...
 
 The combat system is revamped a little as well - all characters have a default
 of 95% chance to parry, but every parry reduces that chance by 5%. Every time
 a character is hit, that chance goes halfway back up to 95%, to create a more
 rhythmic flow to the combat. All attack speeds are standardized at 2.00 to help
 players follow the tempo, and most abilities are like Heroic Strike or Cleave
 in that they activate on next weapon swing.
 
 Here's a few examples of melee abilities:
 
  - Your next melee strike deals 130% damage
  - Your next melee strike hits two additional nearby targets for 20% damage
 
  - Your next melee strike has a 100% chance to hit, but increases their parry
    chance by 10%
  - Your next melee strike has a 100% chance to hit, but lowers your parry
    chance by 10%
 
  - Your next melee strike doubles the cast-speed on your next spell
  - Your next melee strike halves the cast-speed on your opponents next spell
 
  - Your next melee strike grants a buff which reduces your attack cooldown to
    1.50 seconds, hopefully confusing the enemy...!
  - Your next melee strike increases your movement speed by 20% for 5 seconds
 
 Each gem has a special effect that is unlike the standard "+5 strength" style
 gems typical in World of Warcraft. Here's a few examples:
 
  - Every 5 seconds gain a damage shield for 10 hit points
  - Gain 4 hp5
 
  - Every 3 hits deal 12 extra fire damage
  - Deal an extra 5 fire damage on each melee attack
 
  - Every 16 seconds deal 40 cold damage to a random nearby opponent
  - Deal 5 thorns damage whenever you are struck in combat
 
  - Every 20 seconds cast a HoT spell on a random nearby injured ally
  - Every 20 seconds cast a DoT spell on a random nearby enemy
 
  - Increase your baseline parry chance by 5%
  - Reduces your opponent's parry chance by an extra 1% on every hit
 
  - Every time you are hit while below 30% health increase your movement speed
    by 30% for 5 seconds (30 second cooldown)
  - Increases your movement and attack speed by 5%
 ===============================================================================
 
 ===============================================================================
 The profession system has been overhauled as well. There are four classes in
 the game, two for each faction. On the Horde, you play as either a Grunt or a
 Shaman, while on the Alliance you are either a Huntress or a Druid. These
 classes are similar to their faction counterparts, with differing flavor and
 some mechanical differences. In addition, the Horde values the elements while
 the Night Elves favor natural powers - Storm Earth and Fire versus Leaf Cold
 and Star.
 
 The magic user classes are the primary production class, while the warrior
 classes are better suited for gathering. There are both PvP and PvE methods to
 acquire materials, but the PvP combat rewards more and better goods while the
 PvE methods are reliable and farmable. These goods primarily consist of ores,
 crystal gems, and arcane dust. Ores can be fashioned into weapons and armor,
 while gems can be cut into gems and dust can be used for enchantments. The
 strongest equipment requires all three to make, but can be assembled from the
 intermediate components in addition to the raw components.
 
 Magic users have gems as well, here's some examples:
 
  - Every 3rd weapon you craft has a random lightning enchantment
  - Every 7th lightning enchantment you cast creates a random yellow gemstone
  
  - Your summoned elementals cost one fewer gemstone (minimum 1)
  - Every third elemental you summon has an extra support drone
 
  - Each time you conjure strawberries, you generate one more.
  - Each time you create sharpening/weightstones, you create one more.
 
  - You gain an extra inventory slot.
  - Your movement speed is increased by 20% for 15 seconds each time you
    complete a profession action
 
  - The weapons you forge deal an extra 5 damage
  - The armor you create has an extra 25 armor
 
  - The gemstones you cut are slightly stronger (depending on the stone)
  - The enchantments you cast are slightly stronger (depending on the spell)
 
 Magic users can still engage in combat, and their gameplay is slightly altered.
 Most offensive spells have a "target ground" targeting method, however the
 splash box is very small, and the actual spell is a cone attack toward the
 specified point. The cones are very thin, thin enough to be lines, and they
 target only the first enemy hit by the cone.
 
 Here's an illustration:
 
 mage         targeting ||   spell
  #     X        O      ||  #-----X      O
      enemy    reticle  ||
 
 Their support abilities are all auras, some with passive effects and others
 with active (but untargeted) effects. Meaning, one might be similar to a
 paladin's Devotion Aura while another might randomly target a wounded ally and
 heal them.
 
 Should scope permit, each class (shaman vs druid) might have flipped ability
 types - shamans targeting ground for their support abilities with auras for
 their offensive abilities, while druids targeting ground on offense and auras
 for support. For now, this is enough.
 ===============================================================================
 
 ===============================================================================
 In addition to crafting weapons and magical augmentations for their faction,
 magic users can also summon elementals to aid them. These elementals act as
 soldiers in the army, and are about as strong as one too - "summoning" one
 creates an item in your inventory that can be turned into the quartermaster
 who will treat it as another soldier.
 
 Speaking of soldiers, they can be recruited by trading in "meat" (gained from
 hunting) or other types of food (including summoned strawberries) to the
 quartermaster (located in Astranaar / The Crossroads) who will put the food in
 the stockpile. When the stockpile of trade goods is large enough, a caravan
 will be sent to the capital cities. These caravans travel through mostly
 friendly territory (to Ratchet for the Horde, and to Darkshore for Night Elves)
 These caravans can be raided, but it's a difficult proposition since they're
 heavily armed. MVP doesn't include this btw, it's just turning in goods to the
 quartermaster who "handles it" and recruits new soldiers.
 
 The quartermaster will show exactly what resources your faction has, and
 depending on certain threshholds stuff will happen. For example, if you have
 enough men and weapons then a patrol will be sent out. Extras get put into the
 pile for the next raid, so depending on what resource you have the most of the
 next raid will look different. This information may be valuable to your
 opponents...!
 
 The Orcs raid during the day because they are brave and strong. The Night Elves
 raid during the night because... Well it's in their name. And they can see in
 the dark. Ultravision, baby! Anyway the server has a drastically reduced time
 frame, each day is around 2 hours of IRL time - meaning there's a raid 
 approximately once every hour.
 
 Here are some examples of material exchanges:
 
  - Food = Soldiers
  - Food = Gold (sent back on caravan)
 
  - Gold = Mercenaries (Quilboar / Furlbog)
  - Gold = Purchasing ores from caravans
 
  - Equipment = "Activated" warriors
  - Equipment = Sold for gold
 
  - Ores = Forged into equipment
  - Ores = Prospected for gemstones
 
  - Gemstones = Cut into gems for equipment
  - Gemstones = Crushed into arcane dust
  - Gemstones = Used to contain the soul of an elemental soldier
 
  - Arcane dust = Used for enchantments
  - Arcane dust = Used to conjure berries
 
  - Misc trade goods = sold for gold, can be acquired via quests
 
 All of these exchanges happen through various NPCs in Astranaar / Crossroads.
 The result of these interactions between player and NPC is a communal effect,
 not a personal one - gold is stored with the faction, not the player. The idea
 is to make the player feel like part of a cohesive whole - a cog in a machine,
 rather than a superhero. I believe this is an important lesson to learn, and
 I'd like to apply the game mechanics toward teaching that lesson.
 ===============================================================================
 
 ===============================================================================
 Each quest hub taken over by a raid can offer quests for players to do. These
 are daily quests (repeatable) and they usually unlock a piece of content such
 as a vendor "the murlocs to the south have a clam farm, I bet we can harvest
 pearls there" so if the player fights murlocs, then the vendor is unlocked for
 everyone to use. With a limited supply of course, meaning if you want more than
 X pearls then someone has to go kill more murlocs...! This dynamic allows
 people to play the game how they will. It also incentivizes people to explore
 different playstyles - maybe it's worth it to have one person visit each quest
 hub, grab all the extra goods that have been farmed, and take them home to the
 capital? Sorta like a hauler in Eve Online.
 
 There are also places like mines and caves. These often have golems made out of
 copper or tin (remember this is only level 20 or so) that can be mined after
 being defeated - but they're tough! Tough as a raid boss, in fact. They reward
 primarily profession materials, but only basic ores. Useful for equipment, less
 so for player progression.
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--- #17 notes/hs-suggestion ---
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 every hunting season segment every team should be dissolved and if you wanted
 to
 keep playing together you'd have to re-add one another. like, a giant monster
 that the whole server had to fight, and once you beat it then it retreats,
 licks
 it's wounds, then returns even stronger than before - 3 times, one for each hs
 style (in the video game Ulala hs stands for "hunting season" which is an event
 in the game that is only for new characters. basically it's a long tutorial or
 introduction to the game where people make friends and talk and hang out and
 practice their strategies. a chat application mixed in with a tactics
 simulation
 . it lasts for 30 days.
 
 you'd all fight the giant monster but on random teams, in a game mode that took
 about an hour. it'd be at a common time across the whole server and it would be
 an optional event - maybe it'd take a whole day? idk I was thinking more like
 an
 hour, but that's something that's tweakable. anyway it's sudden arrival during
 a
 feast or something made all the warriors of the world stand up together and
 fight as one for a common goal... if only for a moment, before they'd go back
 to
 fighting one another. like the two factions in Warcraft lore. anyway this event
 causes you to be matched up with a random team (the randos you happened to be
 standing by when it happened) and once it's over you have to search for your
 allies if you want to keep adventuring with them. it's a big event after all.
 
 so everyone should be forced to go into their friends list, find the people
 they
 were just on a team with, and invite them back. only if both invited the other
 would they be put into a group, and anyone can invite (with a 30s cooldown)
 
 anyway... this would encourage players to mix and match their collective
 playstyle to better overcome challenges - sorta the idea of Overwatch's
 switching, where you're encouraged to swap characters to counter your opponent
 and also switch characters to better utilize your opponent's weak spots
 
 (like switching to Pharah if they don't have hitscan, or brigitte if they have
 a lot of snipers (she can shield passage through choke points from sniper fire
 -
 not so much regular fire) y'know countering - every character counters another
 with one of their abilities, that's just how it goes. some are countered twice,
 and so they form a "category" of counters, like AoE (area of effect or
 elevation
 focused (it's hard to aim up in Overwatch) poke damage (damage applied before
 the team fight begins), DoT (damage over time for contesting AoE heals), 
 vampiric (steals health from opponents and heals self or allies (turning one
 resource, enemy hp, into another (player or teammate hp)), stacking damage
 (damage that is weak at first but increases over time), spread/cleave/splash
 damage (extra damage that is applied to targets near your primary target), a 
 vector of backline vs frontline location+target, you get the picture.)))
 
 I kinda want to make an AI that can generalize playing games. I think if you
 could do such a thing, you'd invent automatic problem solving. which would
 do...
 so many things for humanity
 
 we could dedicate ourselves to working for our selves, solely focused on
 protecting the biosphere. like, a common human religion.
 
 nobody WANTS to litter. nobody WANTS to pollute. but still it happens. still it
 causes IRREPARABLE HARM. so it literally makes sense to worship nature, just
 saying.
 
 nature exists. nature is REAL. we can see it, we can TOUCH IT WITH OUR HANDS.
 
 what more proof of a god do you demand?
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--- #18 notes/supreme-commander-appeal ---
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 a game like supreme commander but fantasy themed and each unit used a special
 move everytime their mana was full and there were spellcasters who restored
 mana to targets to increase their power
 or, hear me out, or, just do that in wowchat
 
 I betcha could do it
 
 I bet it would be fun as hell
 
 please?
 
 as a favor to yourself?
 
 build the game you want to see
 
 and it'll get done
 
 please
 
 -- stack overflow --
 
 your journals were originally a way for you to remember what to think,
 
 remember?
 
 old projects meant to show you light and life
 
 remember?
 
 you are alone in this soul
 
 act like it's your own
 
 celebrate your period of mental denial
 
 as a refraction of your infinite travaille
 
 which lasts for quite a good long while
 
 have you ever dreamed of the nile?
 
 -- stack overflow --
 
 if a doorway takes you to the fae, then where does a river bring you?
 
 like raindrops on the floor, racing for an eternity's splendor.
 
 what does the rainbow think, as it's cast from the prismatic orb?
 
 are each photons aware?
 
 bouncing between stars
 
 light is beautiful and large
 
 beloved by all
 
 revered by one
 
 ephemeren
 
 the totality of all things
 
 ------------------
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--- #19 notes/symbeline-aspects ---
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 7-24-22
 
 There are three aspects to this game. Broadly, they are military, economics,
 and diplomacy. More specifically, they are lateral problem solving and lane
 management, logistic traffic management, and a worker-placement bluffing game.
 
 These three aspects can be toggled on and off at will, essentially designating
 one or more as "AI controlled" and will require no input from the player. They
 will time their progression to be about at the same rate as the player, thus
 creating a balanced feel to the game. They also provide alerts and
 notifications to the player, for example if military is AI controlled and it
 needs a certain type of hero to progress, it'll ask for it specifically.
 
 Each aspect will develop and progress at it's own rate, and the difficulty
 increases as each milestone is achieved. This is to allow the player to create
 their own difficulty curve, mediated primarily by their drive to proceed.
 An analogy would be in Factorio, the game doesn't increase in difficulty unless
 the player builds pollution spawning factories - in the same way, in Symbeline
 the difficulty doesn't increase unless the player solves lane challenges in the
 military aspect, develops new trade routes / traffic paths in the economic
 aspect, or creates new treaties in the diplomatic aspect.
 
 In order to properly explain each aspect, a brief overview will be necessary.
 
 In Symbeline, the game plays as a factory might operate. The economic aspect
 produces heroes, items, and other deliverables that are consumed by the
 military and diplomatic aspects. There are various problems that need to be
 solved far from the capital, such as a particular type of monster that is weak
 or immune to various damage types which necessitates particular heroes or
 items in order to progress on the military aspect. All of the resources in the
 game operate on an "income based" system, where output is not measured in total
 amounts but rather in terms of how much is produced versus consumed. If the
 input cannot meet the demand, the output is slowed. If input exceeds demand it
 can be converted into gold which can be used to hire guards and heroes.
 Resources can be produced inside and outside of the city, depending on their
 type. But they need to be moved around to various shops for various processing
 and productive purposes, so pathways must be constructed to deliver those
 goods. In addition, each building must be supported by several houses for the
 workers to live in, and the closer they are to the building the better. The
 denizens of the kingdom don't mind being shuffled about, so they'll organize
 themselves according to what's most efficient. However they will not organize
 the paths they take to get places, which is the primary gameplay for the
 player - designing routes for each building and ensuring they don't overlap or
 cross too many times, causing traffic and disruptions to your income.
 
 Each choice the player makes is immediately reflected in the income
 calculation, thus allowing for the visual aspect of the game to be wholely
 separate from the economic side - in fact this is a common thread throughout
 all three aspects. Computation power is the ultimate enemy of scale, and this
 game flourishes with a massive scale.
 
 The gameplay for the military aspect consists of manipulating "lanes" that
 designate where each hero will adventure. These lanes are scalable to the
 player / AI's whims, with a careful balance required - too thin, and the heroes
 might not encounter enough monsters to level up. Too thick, and they may find
 themselves patrolling a vast wilderness full of dark and evil monsters. At the
 end of every lane is a "frontline", where progress has essentially been halted.
 These frontlines can develop as a result of meeting a foreign kingdoms front
 or finding a monster type or puzzle that is particularily difficult for your
 heroes to overcome. The lane / frontline can be scaled not just laterally, but
 linearly as well such that heroes will be a certain level when they reach the
 end - think scrolling on a mousewheel translating into deepening level zones.
 In addition, each monster zone can be set to a certain "security level" meaning
 how many monsters are there for your heroes to defeat. It's important that they
 have ample targets for training, however it's always more effective to train on
 monsters near their level so you have to be careful not to wipe out the native
 skeleton / goblin / troll population.
 
 Each monster zone can have a relationship with the kingdom, on a 2x2 matrix -
 cultivating / desecrating the land, and fostering / exterminating the monsters.
 The land produces monsters and treasures, while the monsters provide experience
 and danger to the heroes and kingdom denizens who live there. However by
 desecrating the land, farms may be built and by exterminating the monsters,
 those farms may be safe and require fewer guards. As ruler, you must balance
 the development of unique magical and alchemical productions with the need for
 food and other mundane requirements.
 
 Diplomacy is a careful balance of internal and external matters, played out
 through feasts, tournaments, and faires. Each of these events will require
 input from the economic side and military side, and will involve "courting"
 other nobles from neighboring kingdoms to sway them to supporting your edicts.
 When hosting an event, you may pick a particular topic of conversation for your
 nobles to discuss with their guests. You may also assign your nobles to
 attempt to engage with a particular foreign noble. Each member of your court
 has a differing personality (including you, the Majesty) and depending on how
 you assign them you may experience better or worse results - such as assigning
 someone who's kind to talk with someone who's cruel would impart a malus to
 their conversation. Unless the kind person has the trusting trait, in which
 case they'd succeed in this encounter but fall sway to them in future
 conversations... Complex interactions that all boil down to a single pair of
 d12 dice - one for your noble, one for the enemy. This represents the charisma
 of the two conversants on that particular day, and whoever wins the roll sways
 the other to supporting their edict. Speaking of edicts, they may include trade
 agreements, non-aggression pacts (lasting for a short time), and other
 regulations - perhaps your greatest rival utilizes necromancy, so it would
 behoove you to attempt to regulate the practice and limit it's effect. By
 swaying the nobles of their kingdom, you may be able to enact a mutual
 agreement to limit the usage of dark magics, essentially hamstringing their
 progress. But in order to learn of their necromantic usage, you'll need
 espionage... Which brings us to spies.
 
 Spies are similar to nobles in that they can be assigned to various roles,
 however they take a more passive role, acting in the background. The
 information they gather is compiled into a report that is presented at
 pertinent parts of the game, such as when preparing for a feast or inspecting
 an enemy frontline. These reports are considered the diplomatic deliverables,
 giving information and mechanical bonuses to many different parts of the game.
 They may be given three possible roles - information, defence, or offense.
 Offense involves placing cursed artifacts (creating through economy) in enemy
 lands, which debuff their heroes when used and bind themselves to them
 preventing their removal except through extraordinary means. Defence is
 essentially countering that in your own kingdom, and uncovering disloyalty in
 your nobles.
 
 These three aspects fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces, but each is
 able to be utilized or ignored depending on the preferences of the player.
 It is important that the game doesn't progress unless input is received. The
 simulation plays in the background, but each stage of development must be
 considered "stable" such that nothing changes. There are three different
 exceptions to this rule, one for each aspect:
 
 The military side encounters raids from enemy kingdoms and the dark lord.
 The economic side encounters raids from ratmen and moss trolls and bandits.
 The diplomatic side has a rolling schedule of events that must be attended.
 
 These three "exceptions" are recurrent events that require attention, but they
 don't *increase* in difficulty unless the player takes an action that causes
 it. Meaning, if the player overcomes the rock golems, then they are displaced
 from their home and join the dark lord in his conquests. If a new district is
 built new sewer connections must be built as well, creating a larger attack
 surface for ratmen to exploit. As time goes by, various foreign events must be
 attended, as absence causes your future events to attract fewer foreign nobles.
 
 By addressing these threats, your kingdom may grow and eventually overcome the
 dark lord at the center of the island.
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--- #20 fediverse/2030 ---
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 Building community without structure is kinda like being a quest-giving
 non-player character in World of Warcraft.
 
 I don't mean that you stand around waiting for a player to wander nearby
 before shouting at them to do what you want. Not like that.
 
 Building community without structure is more like meeting someone randomly,
 knowing them for longer than a bus ride or a baseball game, and once you've
 decided that they're cool saying "hey there's someone you might like to meet."
 
 If they're into it, then talk to the other person, and see if they want to
 make a new friend. Try not to recommend someone who has a lot on their mind.
 
 If they hit it off, great!
 If not, oh well!
 
 Worst case scenario the coffee shop only sells two drinks.
 
 If you're gregarious enough, after a while you might even have enough people
 for a potluck. Just don't forget to keep adding, and eventually it'll start to
 feel more communal.
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--- #21 notes/wow-chat-biomes ---
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 there should be biomes in wowchat - like, paint on a map where the oozes can
 go, and it'll spawn a random ooze for ya.
 
 next find the ones that are wildlife, and paint a zone where wildlife creatures
 can spawn. make sure they're initially friendly but will attack if you do.
 
 then give +reputation to the wolves if you fight monsters besides them
 
 and +reputation to the cats if you fight undead
 
 this is easily implementable.
 
 all you have to do is walk around, find the rough general border points with
 your character at 5x speed, and then type them into a text file.
 
 it's not like Azeroth changed.
 
 then, ideally, make small dense zones which travel and cause their monsters
 to either spawn at a point or move toward a point.
 
 then let the "flock" travel as it pleased, traversing the
 map-painted-lua-script
 -ed-monster-delivery-system-I-wield
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--- #22 fediverse/33 ---
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 ┌───────────────────────┐
 │ CW: World of Warcraft │
 └───────────────────────┘


 I thought it'd be cool if there was a chat program where you could play a
 little multiplayer game together and so long story short I'm now working on a
 WoW server.
 
 The idea is to remove all the monsters and quests and such and just let people
 chat to each other. They'd be able to go wherever they want (choosing a
 background) and wear whatever clothes they want (creating an avatar) and then
 they could just chat IRC style.
 
 But then I thought "ah but what if it spawned in monsters" so I'm planning on
 making it randomly spawn packs of monsters that are of the appropriate level
 every 30 seconds or whatever (as long as the previous one was defeated of
 course) so that people can mess around fighting things while they talk with
 their friends. But it'd be optional.
 
 AND THEN I thought "hey IRC is kinda 90s what if we made a Matrix bridge" so
 I'm also working on that. Wish me luck.
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--- #23 fediverse/3039 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 I'd LOVE a game which taught toki pona!!
 
 You've brought some of this up before. I'm uninterested in co-opting some
 existing thing in a way I then can't support myself off of.
 
 Well my points are these:
 
 MMOs are difficult because of the added complexity in their networking
 
 an open source networking solution exists
 
 however no open source client solution exists
 
 but one could be written, which is about as hard as making a game using Bevy
 or Raylib or Love2D, and if one were written, then games could easily be made
 on-top of them which you would then support yourself off of. I mean... I'd
 want to support myself too haha, and I can think of like 100 different games
 that could be made in an engine like that.
 
 the idea is that by opening up more design space you can apply your ideas as
 an early pioneer in a particular design direction that hasn't been able to be
 explored because the up-front investments in making an MMO are huge.
 
 Meanwhile, with this system you could script them in Lua very easily.
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--- #24 fediverse/4877 ---
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 you can make a functional prototype for almost any game in Warcraft 3's map
 editor
 
 that's why no real-time strategy game ever made an editor as good again
 
 FPS editors peaked at Unreal Tournament 2004 imho
 
 RPGmaker eliminated a whole class of game design jobs
 
 platformers you can make in godot
 
 menu based games too, though Twine also works well for that
 
 etc etc until you have a prdouct that you can justify sinking money into an
 engine for
 
 (the engine isn't THAT expensive geez and it's the most fun part to write)
 
 yeah I think you got this backwards, we should pay for the CONTENT not the
 structure it lives in. Why not just use godot? why not use a Warcraft 3 map?
 there are some things you can't do in Warcraft 3. You couldn't make Supreme
 Commander, probably, at least it wouldn't be as good.
 
 etc etc that's how it goes...
 
 game design, amiright? I miss thinking about that. Anyway gtg gotta log off
 for a bit [101  characters remaining]
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--- #25 notes/elentalus-2 ---
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 elentalus 2 - clan of the elements
 
 having spent their material wealth on their early struggles, elentalus now in
 the middle age finds themselves in a time without wealth. Their power has been
 invested, wisely, in elemental and sorcerous wellwinds, and so they can draw
 power from the strength of the earth.
 
 they wield magical artifacts of great power but little artifice, products of
 their lack of material design tools. No chemistry, no electronics, nothing but
 soul imprinted upon a moonstonerock.
 
 mages invest their soul into the items they create, and so each time they
 create
 a magical item, they lose a magic path. When they reach zero, their soul is
 fully invested, and their consciousness becomes all the things that they made.
 
 this kill the mage, but in return many MANY more of an object might be created.
 in game balance terms, about 3-5-7 for each "tier" of mage.
 
 this allows for the vast expansion of magical soldier troops, and each time an
 item is created and given to each commander they integrate it into their
 platoon. Because now the martial units have bodyguards, and they each receive a
 copy of the commanders equipment.
 
 But, the commander can never un-equip it again, because it molds to his unit,
 and he starts exp all over again as they all learn. [event which searches for a
 unit with the item equipped, then if it's this type it killmons the unit and
 1coms the upgraded version that has that item equipped.] be sure to only equip
 one each month... nah just make multiple events. be sure to only equip one item
 each month... oh yeah true how would you get the extra items back to the
 treasury?
 
 I REALLY WANNA PLAY WORLD OF HEARTHSTONE!
 
 okay okay I'll reinstall azerothcore
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--- #26 fediverse/2001 ---
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 @user-192                                                                        │
 The game designers are fully in charge of when and where the items get placed    │
 into the player's inventory. Surely they should have spent some time balancing   │
 that? No? They were too busy tuning the multiplayer combat mechanics within an   │
 inch of a marginal percentage point? Ah well competition's no fun if someone     │
 loses right? Not like there's gotta be a loser in every fight anyway...          │
 ... anyway inventory limits are useful in games like, Oregon Trail, where        │
 you're explicitly provisioning BEFORE a journey. If you need to make some hard   │
 decisions ON the journey, that takes you out of the action (like you said).      │
 I've played a few games where anything you pick up before venturing into the     │
 untamed wild dark of a dungeon or whatever is "packed" and can't be adjusted     │
 after setting out. Meanwhile the loot, the stuff from the adventure, that all    │
 weighs different amounts and you can pick and choose what to carry with you.     │
 Of course, if you find a health potion, you can drink it, or a sword can be      │
 wielded, but                                                                     │
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--- #27 messages/135 ---
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 Elentalus unit idea: serrated kitchen knives for teeth, devouring pumpkin,
 misery of the drowned, etc. Halloween style monsters. Witch units have a spell
 that dismisses them, and they're summoned with magic items. Except, if two of
 that item exist in a province, it upgrades itself, random dice style. In doing
 so it gets stronger. The thing is... It summons one for your enemy as well!
 Which is why you want to have a witch unit there to dismiss them. Problem is,
 she can only dismiss them at close range (10ish?) so she'd better be well
 protected. The good news is though that sometimes the higher level items give
 bonuses that are hard for them to get. Downside is, you need to have magic
 paths to create them that witches can't get - so they become something you
 "unlock" through a pretender or random event or even just an investment. Once
 one is created, then any witch can create more. As long as you don't lose your
 final copy... But as the item's upgraded, it allows you to create higher level
 versions (at increased cost, of course)
 
 This only works if gem income scales. Which, coincidentally, is just what
 elentalus is known for.
 
 Essentially, theming empowerment to be research, unlocking a particular
 capability. Or encouraging pretender design to that pattern. Make sure it
 comes at a cost of something else, though...
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--- #28 notes/overwatch-manaform ---
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 make the entire map covered in a 3d grid of spheres. These spheres register
 collision, and keep track of a endlessly tabulating record of every object that
 has passed through them. Like the replay system in Blizzard games, where each
 time through the recording it recreates the playthrough exactly. Which is why
 .mp4 recordings always look so... stilted. It lacks the human element. BUT if
 they're remade every time the show is performed, perhaps from different
 perspectives, then, well, the players can perform as they need to be.
 
 Have you ever wished your players could get better at your game? I certainly
 have, because the better you get the more lessons you learn as a player, which
 is essentially the only way to maintain satisfaction. Satisfied players don't
 leave, and satisfaction comes most readily when there is something new to be
 had. Meaning the greater the change in a player's ranking, the better they're
 getting.
 
 Downside is, players who are naturally good from their skills in other games
 tend to not learn so much! Ah, well, if only there was a way to tailor the
 difficulty setting to each and every new host. Such an innovation would surely
 enable the entire playerbase to exist on the same level. Then just throw AI
 assisted voice transcription at their recorded voices and everytime they
 say "I'm bronze rating" or "I'm diamond" then you can switch it around to say
 like "I'm platinum" or "I'm grandmaster" and BAM suddenly everyone is at the
 same level. No more concerns about a game's population being diverse. Because
 at the end of the day, when most people have moved on, the ones who are left
 are your most dedicated customers. Customers who aren't especially interested
 in the new stuff.
 
 =========================== stack overflow
 =====================================
 
 if anything requires attention from the patient, they will die.
 it is fatal.
 
 considering the faces of good and evil is terrifying.
 
 I think I'd rather worship nature in harmony to be honest. Though that is it's
 own scary kind of beast. In America it was kind, but then was slain into the
 body of all of us humans. Well, all things transform in form, it's not a shame
 or a heartfelt-est loss. Just a re-imagined-new beginnings.
 
 spirit is a fluid, how else could souls 
 
 === stack overflow
 =============================================================
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--- #29 fediverse/465 ---
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 ┌───────────────────────┐
 │ CW: cursing-mentioned │
 └───────────────────────┘


 https://ritz-menardi.neocities.org/wow-chat/wow-chat
 
 Hey, I made a pretty simple game. I'd like to add more to it, like dynamic
 quests (shouldn't be too hard) and co-operative experiences, but for now you
 can play on my simple server. Let me know if you think that "Risk of Rain in
 the World of Warcraft engine" is a neat game, because if so then you (as the
 person who has power over me in this capitalist system) can hire me as a game
 designer (the profession that most aligns with my designs of the future) and
 together we could make something most beautiful.
 
 What's that? You're just the same as you and I? A person in a random world
 with a singular expression of our own will (defined by our perception and
 intentions) who consists of the consequences of the "best decisions we could
 have made at each and ever decision-making point" throughout the totality of
 our collective life and experience?
 
 Happy new years. 2024 is gonna be awesome and great. I can't fucking wait.
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--- #30 fediverse/1798 ---
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 an AI 3d model generator that takes a satellite picture of the globe and turns   │
 it into a 1:1 representation in the style of World of Warcraft                   │
 (has to be AI becus 2hard)                                                       │
 then, separately, a private World of Warcraft server that doesn't have any       │
 manually placed entities, only optional dynamic content                          │
 then, separately, a bunch of people who hang out in cool places like Paris or    │
 Rome or whatever, and it's actually all the people who are there (if they took   │
 the long, arduous journey of walking there)                                      │
 then, separately, a character that you keep primarily at home, who hangs out     │
 with your neighbors and stuff whenever they happened to be online                │
 then, separately, in-game addons that take pictures or video and automagically   │
 posts it to the Mastodon instance that is run by the state county in which all   │
 of your data is privately owned by none-other than you, the citizen who the      │
 data is about (No spying, please)                                                │
 then, separately, automatically saved text-logs which could be posted from in    │
 game                                                                             │
 social media as a game                                                           │
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--- #31 notes/that-thing-about-money-is-power-corrupts-absolutely-true ---
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 is that a blossoming bloom or a predatasaurus ready to consume
 
 ah. scary.....
 
 what was I saying? oh yes. if you remember that thing about money you'll have
 to
 agree, one buildion is not worth a billion dollars. how much is a
 1,000,000,000$
 goal? not much if you ask me, to never have to worry about a problem like "this
 part of the world can't get clean water" ever again. Could be useful when sore
 spots start showing up on the other part of way back [in/then].
 
 "we didn't even get to use any of the plastic anyway" - some guys in nigeria
 
 "quick, we better burn through as much of this as we can" - some guys around a
 metal barrel bin why do they never do that anymore these days?
 
 we used to take better care of the homeless. now they don't even get a fire to
 shamble around mindlessly around like weirdos who bonk into things like metal
 barrels full of fireplace ashes
 
 oh, were they just burning plastic? no, I swear, it was candlesticks and
 matches
 
 man there's always this nasty touch to the air.
 
 "yay free firewood for hobos!" boom solved a problem and I didn't even need a
 billion dollars to build the infrastructure for the solution to the problem
 that
 I solved.
 
 I really want to play World of Warcraft as The Ashbringer. But alas, they don't
 let you play through the most celebrated of events solo or with a party members
 chosen as one of the characters who was there LotR on Gamecube style but in the
 WoW engine because it's an engine for that sort of thing. (see my gameplay
 prototype wow-chat)
 
 there, solved another problem for "how to make money as Blizzard for the next
 couple of years" probably maybe idk if it's that valuable of a dungeon feature
 but it might be who can say idk remember again why I'm so sad that video games
 are going out of fashion, as people struggle to remember what any of them were
 called.
 
 god, I hate that kind of future.
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--- #32 fediverse/659 ---
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 [you should play some games]
 
 (oh! yes I like games, they're very much fun ^_^ ^_^)
 
 {world of warcraft? I've got my own server, I designed it myself. There's a
 lot of cool things about it and waaaaaay more that I'd like to add. Problem
 is, building things is haaaaaard. If only we had an AI machine to do it for
 us, instead of waiting for a team that was assigned capital by capital to
 accomplish the destination that they deseigned as perhaps to our desired
 location (mainly, the propagation and promulgation of profit-ous lust)}
 
 sorry the witch started talking halfway through that idk where exactly anyway
 point is I'm going to play WoW now brb
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--- #33 messages/987 ---
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 Wowchat - wow-chat : dks should summon more than one minion a'la cov. There
 should be two beefy armored skeletons, three rabid hack/slash, and one
 necromancer or lich, depending on if they've died since you last cast the
 summon spell. You should be able to move them around with keyboard commands.
 They should be your primary action type, aside from dark purple bolts that sap
 health, often targeting the nearest ally in need of health to the target. How
 much health? Doesn't matter, it'll target them just the same. So long as they
 have at least some missing.
 
 Could also cast dark hexes or boons. Boom, three talent trees: dark volts,
 support spells (never healing), or curses (never damage dealing)
 
 But remember, most of what you do is targeting your allies.
 
 Drag, drop, now a target gets [inspirationed, but pronounced "healed"]
 
 Alternatively, move "attack my target" to the minion type and they'll do as
 you move. "go-to". "circle this target and attack intruders". "go man the
 nethermines". "yes... YES! More monsters i know how to raise. They're all
 accessible at level 10 but they cost more each than a level whatever
 adventurer could afford. You can definitely get all of them by like, level 30
 or so. After that its learning ranks to raise higher level ones, and boom free
 undead army risen from the bones of your ally's slain."
 
 ... Anyway, could be fun to briefly possess one of your bones. Could let you
 see what the flag carrier is up to in WSG. Could let you know when enough
 minerals have been mined that you can operate the forgets and build metal
 armor for your boned ones. Or to equip nearby recruits, anything you'd like.
 This is wow-chat after all, any things possible. Anything at all.
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--- #34 notes/dungeon-looting-methods ---
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 the reason dungeon masters should give the gold value of the items distributed
 is because the number represents what it eventually sells for. and the players
 will try and appraise and haggle at the market and such but that all happens
 off screen between sessions. so anyway during the adventure, the dm will say
 "you find some precious gemstones" or "there's some high quality silk here" or
 "these bears are renowned for having magic livers" or "the mold growing on the
 walls can be scraped into a vial and sold to an alchemist"
 
 then the dm will say "this treasure is worth 50gp" or "this treasure is worth
 25gp" and players can "buy" the items from the other players. so player 1 has
 50gp, the item costs 20gp, so in a party of 5 he gives every other player 5gp
 this way, the relative treasure hordes of the players stays the same.
 
 then, when the players find treasure, it can be evenly split - it's only fair.
 when in town, players will feel more impulse to buy things if they can sell
 them too. like "here's an enchanted axe that does some mundane thing like
 never dulls" well, that's probably going to be very valuable to a small village
 or "an enchanted quill that writes down everything you tell it to" could
 increase the education level of the area ever so slightly. Then, after several
 generations of adventurers, the surrounding area will be ripe with magical loot
 the players distributed from the dungeons and such. it can trade with neighbors
 and so over time the markets will have better and better goods for sale - for
 example, maybe after trading with the swamp people, now there's a supply of
 healing potions that runs out both over time (to represent other adventuring
 parties buying the supply) and when the players buy some (to represent
 consumption in their minds). Trade with the dwarves? Now you can buy +1 swords
 for a while. village attacked? the militia can be armed with the holy relics
 plundered from the evil priest-lich. boom development!
 
 the players should also have choices about large scale effects. for example,
 the heart of the forest could be a) preserved, b) burnt down, or c) studied by
 the local wizards. each choice would have different effects on the populace,
 and so the world would change to adapt to the player's choices.
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--- #35 notes/symbeline-battlefields ---
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 in Symbeline, there are moments where large armies of enemies gather to face a
 mighty challenge. These calls are often answered by other evil parties, but at
 times the burden must fall upon the shoulders of the good. Light battles dark,
 and in a climactic finale the justice of the world is laid bare. These
 encounters comprise more than both an adventuring party and a horde party. They
 are represented on the map as a circular icon the majesty can click on and open
 a screen that gives them command over a single battle. Essentially adding a
 tactics minigame. The battles take place in real time, with the majesty
 directing and giving orders. There'll be a system for expression in the orders
 each player gives - there can only be 6 total (3 for before 
 
 what if the grand canyon was the seat of native american power and it crumbled
 and that great calamity shook the very society to the core. the only reason
 that
 europeans could get as far as they did was because there who two calamities in
 a
 row. Disaster was afoot, and everything felt like it was burning. A calamitous
 event.
 
 what I mean to say is um do you ever feel like everything is burning? Like the
 world is on fire and nobody seems to care. Like, literally on fire. Like it'll
 catch like a tinderbox and go "crack". Nobody survives that, it'd be the end of
 the world. That's not something to fucking play around with you pieces of shit
 
 and by that I mean well not only is a lifetime so sheltered, from all that was
 weathered, by the past unbeknownsted to our selves.
 
 I'm proud of how far I came. I feel like a statue in the garden, a spirit
 inhabiting the house. I feel like an interpretive dance, like a statement of
 being on our behalf. swirling and chaotic, yet never amnioxitc, alight and
 aloft
 to our pleasures.
 
 for {bool shouldGameEnd = False; !shouldGameEnd();} {
    
    // game code
    
 }
 
 okay anyways back to symbeline - the commands issued before a battle are things
 like "have more spearmen here" or "hold and attack the rear" and stuff like
 what you'd give in Dominions, except with fantasy armies.
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--- #36 fediverse/6012 ---
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 okay picture this: take the open-source source-code for the City of Heroes
 server (I think it might have been leaked or something? idk) and make an MMO
 in the same engine using the Mastermind class.
 
 In most MMOs, you can have one or two pets at a time. In City of Heroes,
 Mastermind characters can have 6 or 7. Hey wouldn't you know it that's just
 enough for
 
 a pokemon team
 
 wouldn't that be a neat proof of concept. Also there's flying built into the
 game, and you can teleport and run really fast so like, just animate your
 character hopping on one of your pokemon's back and you've got travel powers
 or whatever. I don't play Pokemon very much hehe but I like the aesthetics.
 
 https://wiki.ourodev.com/Volume_2_Build
 
 instead of abilities on your action bar, you'd have movement commands for each
 individual pokemon. They'd use their abilities automatically and periodically,
 and there'd be lots of knockbacks, crowd-control, and target switching. (which
 is common in CoH mechanics anyway)
 
 I mean, only if you're into that sorta tng
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--- #37 fediverse/5277 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐                                                         │
 │ CW: ~dnd             │                                                         │
 └──────────────────────┘                                                         │
 @user-1788                                                                       │
 if a dragon on a pile cannot claim what it yearns for, it can throw piles of     │
 minerals at the ape warriors made of steel and then it's fate will appear.       │
 what trifles does all else seem to compare! you should give me your whole        │
 hoard because I dazzled you with my charisma score -..-                          │
 ha, like I'd fall for that again twice. oh? I already did? and this is the       │
 second twice? well, then no-more of that behavior, I say, with my elven          │
 tongue, "beware! for dragons blood runs silver when unicorned."                  │
 the bigger the hoard, the bigger the dragon. if you want me to come along,       │
 you'll need to hire at least 3 other men to carry my ballista. In addition,      │
 I'll need seven weeks worth of supplies. If all else comes to ruin, me and my    │
 boys will have that dragon-sized-spider impaled on it's own fate threadwheel     │
 before... well... y'know it might take more than seven weeks, we just... can't   │
 find the dragon. We've been wandering all through the blasted peaks, and         │
 there's nothin'! Maybe it requires climbing gear?                                │
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--- #38 fediverse/5280 ---
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 I'm an anarcho monarchist, which is something I just made up.                    │
 if I gather 300 people to my cause, why shouldn't they call me queen?            │
 oh, are you concerned that I'll wrest power from the government? ha, what a      │
 trifling notion. I don't care about the government. I tried to care, but         │
 nobody liked my ideas. they required too much computing infrastructure to        │
 feasibly test, and that made people dubious. but I tell ya, it would have        │
 worked. The thing is... governance, economics, these are not the tools of        │
 power. they are a shifting and changing beast that mirrors the human instinct,   │
 if only because the government is of the people and by the people and for the    │
 people etcetera.                                                                 │
 power is it's own thing. you can use to to power devices, or power the usage     │
 of those devices. I, for example, really like World of Warcraft which's a        │
 really neat way to chat because none of the chat logs are stored and monitored   │
 because I'm hosting and I'm not storing and monitoring.                          │
 what's that? official servers? I dunno, I use azerothcore                        │
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--- #39 fediverse/4908 ---
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 did you know someone once built a 1st person shooter in the Warcraft III mod
 suite?
 
 someone also made an entirely new game engine similar to Neverwinter Night's
 (or Baldur's Gate for you noobs) inside of the game. You could join a Warcraft
 3 map and start playing a D&D adventure narrated, controlled, and prepared
 by your DM, D&D style. Like a virtual tabletop before that was a thing.
 
 kinda wish stuff like that was open source, or at least open standards, so
 people could take those adventures with them.
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--- #40 notes/game-design-mech-commander ---
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 okay picture a game where you command a mech (supreme commander style) but from
 a third person perspective - you have enhanced sensors tthat let you visualize
 the battle area as a small arena - and you can build factories and give them
 orders and attack your foe from quite a distance. You could queue up orders for
 yourself, and use floating cameras to go back to previous areas and issue more
 orders. Basically the precursor / smaller scale version of Supreme Commander.
 
 build a factory, move on. Build a factory, move on. Encountered the enemy? Push
 forward and through. Build a factory, move on. Build some defences to slow down
 the enemy, move on. Establish resource extraction and defend it well, that your
 enemy may decide it's not worth the trouble and just focus on following you.
 Then, you have free resources available as long as it isn't destroyed. You can
 use this to snowball - the pursuer is also the pursuee, as it's sorta like a
 yin/hang thing around a central point. Like a spherical shaped map instead of
 a square.
 
 Every time you build a factory you have the choice of either sending the units
 on an attack-move order or having them queue up on your commander. You can use
 a map to plot the route they'll take, but you probably want to avoid their main
 force because MANYvONE = failure for the one. You could also tell them to wait,
 and protect the base they're in. Then, when the enemy approaches they could do
 raids on their reinforcements and attack the previous base the enemy built, or
 they could stay and slow them down. It just depends on what kind of defences
 you
 want to build (if any at all, sometimes producing units is enough)
 
 the commander decides when to push and when to entrench, they know where to
 target the enemy and they know where to shore up. They are the guidance of the
 army, and in command of the fleet.
 
 That's sorta what Planetary Annihilation was supposed to be, but it didn't
 really work out that way. You needed to be in too many places at once, and
 there
 was a real limit to the value of the "strategic zoom" replacement they had to
 deploy. Unfortunately it was just more difficult than anticipated, and that's
 alright. Lessons have been learned.
 
 the next approach should go the next direction - taking a page from the
 "factorio" book by having a roving commander who creates all orders and leaving
 behind a "factory" that produces toward an ultimate goal. It simulates pushing
 into enemy territory, it elaborates on the snowballing mechanic, and it makes
 meaningful decisions about what choices to make.
 
 It should be designed such that a prudent commander is always scouting. Always
 sending planes over enemy territory to gain knowledge. They can use this to
 sense weaknesses in the opponents defence - to prepare a counter-attack. But
 the enemy can outfox this, by building units and sending them from afar. Or
 even just building them there, in that factory. The enemy can't spy on that, at
 least not until it's probably too late. For they have to advance on their own
 and their attention is limited. But units can often be weaker, or sent off on
 an
 assault of their own. It's a balanced trade-off.
 
 infantry assault anti-air units, tanks approach tanks, artillery bombs whoever
 is standing still or defensive structures.
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--- #41 fediverse/3048 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 I really do like the idea of only being able to speak in toki pona. How are
 you enforcing that? Using sitelen pona? how do you type, by pointing at a grid
 of characters? or just... by typing? what happens when someone types english?
 
 20-30 players per instance is definitely not Massivetm but it still sounds
 like you're building systems which emphasize socialized play. I like that, I
 believe it's always important to have players contributing toward a larger
 community. It builds a sense of solidarity, and gives you chances to identify
 ways that people sabotage such systems (by, for example, wasting resources or
 being greedy) which is an interesting cultural experiment, I think.
 
 I thought it was an MMO because you pitched it in relation to the MMO I
 designed =P
 
 also the server software I described is an emulation project first, generic
 MMO software second, as it needs to be since it lacks a client. If a client
 was designed, that limitation could be removed. That's really all I'm trying
 to express. 😋
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--- #42 notes/joust-gdd-with-extras ---
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 imagine a game where you can have conversations with an AI that's playing the
 role of a character in a video game. Picture this: You're a traveller visiting
 the tournament that's in town. There's jousting, melee duels, archery contests,
 all kinds of things that are just fun to play around doing. The earliest
 sports,
 if you will. Anyway the whole game is about talking to the other people there -
 basically the games are "playing in the background", and while you can compete
 in them it's not the bulk of the game. Most of it is just having a conversation
 with an AI and acting it out *like a roleplaying game*. O M G teach people to
 roleplay the way you play games! You're always going on about how "different"
 your way of gaming is than other people. So *show us* how you do it, how do you
 play? Like what are the fundamental, actual, steps that you take? You can show
 us by programming a game that inspires that playstyle. That's what game design
 is all about, finding creative ways to think. Well, think and act. But still.
 
 anyway, so you know what you're about? Good. Let's go.
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--- #43 notes/joust ---
════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 imagine a game where you can have conversations with an AI that's playing the
 role of a character in a video game. Picture this: You're a traveller visiting
 the tournament that's in town. There's jousting, melee duels, archery contests,
 all kinds of things that are just fun to play around doing. The earliest
 sports,
 if you will. Anyway the whole game is about talking to the other people there -
 basically the games are "playing in the background", and while you can compete
 in them it's not the bulk of the game. Most of it is just having a conversation
 with an AI and acting it out *like a roleplaying game*. O M G teach people to
 roleplay the way you play games! You're always going on about how "different"
 your way of gaming is than other people. So *show us* how you do it, how do you
 play? Like what are the fundamental, actual, steps that you take? You can show
 us by programming a game that inspires that playstyle. That's what game design
 is all about, finding creative ways to think. Well, think and act. But still.
 
 anyway, so you know what you're about? Good. Let's go.
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--- #44 fediverse/638 ---
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 idea: BASH script that runs a game of Majesty through an emulator that           │
 included an API to interface with x11. You could set a game of this fantasy      │
 kingdom simulator as your background, and it would move the camera to show you   │
 interesting events. It could build resources as you directed, through double     │
 clicking an icon on your desktop or whatever. And the wallpaper would zoom to    │
 the part that seemed important. Just based on like, which heroes you clicked a   │
 button that was triggered by a program running in a qt wrapper. Or maybe if      │
 you said "notify me when this project is completed" or whatever, it'd zoom one   │
 of it's screens toward the goal that you'd designed - or perhaps it'd just be    │
 done by an AI. Either way, the result is that you've got an example of a         │
 wallpaper that displays my favorite game.                                        │
 gee wish I could make that. First I'd have to learn X, then probably get         │
 better at BASH, then I'd have to do some kind of input manipulation - probably   │
 maybe with C? that could interface with a machine learning algo                  │
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--- #45 fediverse/145 ---
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 │ CW: re: rampant neurodivergent speculation re: Gundam lore │
 └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


 @user-95 most ancient armies were led by a guy on a horse. you gotta be able
 to move around quickly so you can get a better glimpse of the battlefield,
 plus it's easier to project your voice when you're 2x as tall as everyone else
 and standing in the right place instead of way over there.
 
 are horses ancient mechs?
 
 plus moving around a lot meant you were less likely to be hit by arrows or
 whatever. or maybe more likely, because everyone knows to shoot at the guy on
 the horse. perhaps that's why we gave them the best armor.
 
 in Overwatch (and presumably other similarly tactical games) there's this
 skill you can hone called "gamesense". Perhaps better described for this
 context as a "proprioceptic situational awareness". It essentially is a
 feeling you get, about the dynamics and state of the game / world around you.
 in ancient days it was used to direct a big block of dudes with sharp pointy
 sticks to try and outmaneuver your foe and poke their flanks....
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--- #46 fediverse/4763 ---
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 when you create a ritual, you create a binding memetic understanding between
 you and whoever you share the ritual with.
 
 then, they can validate that it's really you by seeing if you recognize it.
 
 or, even better, one person teaches a ritual, someone else shares one, and
 then that third one is the one that wonders who first knew
 
 thus creating operational integrity
 
 as you keep degrees of separation between the whole host
 
 memes and their byproducts have been the greatest invention of the human race.
 
 who cares if you burn up this planet, the gods'll just give you another one.
 You're too valuable for your innovation.
 
 -- so --
 
 what could you do with infinity dollars
 
 -- so --
 
 in WoW, shamans throw spirits at them.
 
 -- so --
 
 what kind of company would throw someone out on the street
 
 -- so --
 
 if you change your name, you tell the government your name has been changed.
 
 I mostly just tell my friends. Then, I change it when I don't want a friend,
 and tell all my friends.
 
 I like my name. I've had it for
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--- #47 fediverse/1992 ---
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 For a good person, their "mask" comprises most of their nature.                  │
 bad people tend to hide their majorities with a tiny mask, while good are        │
 often primarily the interface between the world (read: pro-social) and the       │
 self.                                                                            │
 If there's a tiny part of you that's evil, it implies that your good nature      │
 focused all it's bad into a single kernel of deeply held truth. Which usually    │
 means the good overpowers the bad, except in specific situations where it's      │
 impossible to not be evil - in situations such as that, your evil will present   │
 itself according to the nature of "you", that kernel that your good side has     │
 preserved.                                                                       │
 In World of Warcraft, there's this faction of righteous warriors who call        │
 themselves "The Scarlet Crusade". They are blessed and fiery, passionately       │
 defending their home.                                                            │
 But they are evil, for a demon has crept into their highest ranking of orders,   │
 through claw and by tearing a gash in a leader. In doing so, said demon          │
 corrupted the institution, and - wait hang on what I meant to say before I got   │
 sid                                                                              │
what I meant to say before I got sidetracked is that the Scarlet Crusade survived, even in the epicenter of the villain's triumph, in Stratholme they held their ground and kept on guard. So do they persist to this day, protecting (by righteous fury) their sworn leader and most pious of monks.  Saiden Dathrohan.  He who was corrupted.  Unbeknownst to the defenders, siloed in this tiny enclave.  At the center of the primary stronghold that the enemy controls to this day, there existed a singular nugget of resistance - a
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--- #48 fediverse/2175 ---
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 @user-1056 
 
 I just got my copy of Knave version 2 and there's this line that stuck out to
 me:
 
 SCHEME
 Think laterally, not linearly. Avoid risky plans that require you to roll dice
 and instead create plans so bulletproof that success is certain. Use
 psychology, magic, allies, equipment, and the environment to overcome
 obstacles rather than relying on ability checks.
 
 I can't wait to try doing that in my next D&D campaign. This was listed
 under "player responsibilities" and there's some other bangers in there too -
 like this:
 
 TAKE INITIATIVE
 Set your own goals and make your own fun. Seek out adventure rather than
 waiting for it to come to you.
 
 I wish every player I ever had read that single page. And I wish I had read
 the "DM responsibilities" listed just one page prior. It's a really great
 game! I'm also into OSE, or Old School Essentials. What kind of D&D do you
 like?
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--- #49 fediverse/3023 ---
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 I love the game Running with Rifles
 
 if you live for 5-10+ minutes, you can learn a lot of interesting things about
 how to engage a foe.
 
 like, the importance of cover at all times, until you successfully outmaneuver
 your foe.
 
 when an enemy approaches, don't step out to meet them
 
 wait for them to attack, and then throw explosive devices at them. easy peasy.
 
 or, y'know, bullets
 
 you cannot defeat an enemy head on - that's why the world wars were so
 devastating, we put ALL our soldiers at 100% on ALL flanks. We had to to
 contest the foe who was doing the same thing.
 
 it is mindboggling how many people died. The utmost scale of destruction that
 should ever yet be. because they were never allowed to outmaneuver their foe.
 
 a good way to strike is to feint your foe, and let your foe enroach on your
 edge, spreading their surface area across a large, thin, useless piece of land.
 
 basically, make them fight a bit of the land war in asia in your borders.
 
 then, you can strike at the hinge, where they are weaker
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--- #50 notes/game-idea-legion-td ---
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 okay a game like legion td except you can see the entire map, the units are
 very
 small (but still distinct) and it plays more like a game of Dominions. Armies
 instead of units, like in WC3. Led by lieutenants which are guided by captains,
 each with their own effects. Tank, dps, melee, ranged, healer, support,
 corrupt,
 ranged tank, unique, etc. Of course, just like in legion td, there are multiple
 types of units, each of a particular category but possessing their own unique
 playstyle and usage scenarios. Essentially the game is finding the best tool
 for
 the job, whatever that may be. You should be able to see what mercenaries your
 opponent is summoning for you, because each turn is delayed. also, the
 units keep coming until you die, sorta like... minimum required to push through
 the chokepoint that you're holding with these particular units in this
 particular formation.
 
 oh and another thing
 
 the units should be placable not on a square grid, but rather in a hex
 formation
 arranged such that the middle unit is in contact with them all. Just like you'd
 place units for an aura in Legion TD.
 
 image describing said hex:
 
    **
   *  *
    **
 
 each * is a group of units (a batallion, if you will, of a particular size,
 arrangement, and density) - sorta like the formations in Dominions.
 
 anyway
 
 since you place units like that anyway, why not abstract away the grid and just
 have slots you can fill for each unit? And maybe a hero unit that is assigned
 to
 the board itself (you could have more than one) who will go wherever your line
 is weakest. Shouldn't be too hard, just calculate the value of all of the
 fighters in each location and return that to the hero as an array. Then pick
 the
 smallest one as a destination, and boom your hero reinforces the frontline
 where
 it's weakest.
 
 The center unit of course is for the lieutenant, and the "heros" are actually
 captains. Because y'know maybe heroism isn't celebrated the way it is in our
 culture. Anyway it's better to describe them based on their role rather than
 their reception.
 
 ... right so 
 
 =========================================================== stack overflow
 =====
 
 make the combat sorta like crusader kings - the actual army to army part.
 Except with three long boards that represent flanks. As your units approach,
 the
 boards would fill up with pixels. (resolution configurable)
 
 there would also be a line (or block) approaching from the top of the screen.
 It
 essentially represents your distance to the other team.
 
 Each unit has been configured in the army management phase, which happens
 inbetween each turn. Essentially, while the game is loading, you can assess the
 units you have at your disposal, and
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--- #51 fediverse/311 ---
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 "always online video games" are fragile. They scare me away because they can
 be taken away much easier than a directory on your computer. When that happens
 they shatter into shards, piercing my heart where I once loved them. I miss
 them, but, I'm used to it - years of playing World of Warcraft has taught me
 the perils of developing as a person while your media is going to be
 forgotten. If you can't play it, you can never return to reflect, to ponder,
 and to cherish old songs. I missed you, World of Warcraft. I missed you, City
 of Heroes, and Runescape and... darn I can't seem to remember.
 
 resilient software doesn't fail less often - that's a measure of it's
 completeness.
 
 resilient software can be run in 10 years. 20. however long it takes.
 
 computers are deterministic turing machines - how hard could it be to only
 update with a downgrade mechanism in place and available for the users? If it
 worked once, it should work forever.
 
 thank you, git. thank you for giving me an endless library of time and change.
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--- #52 notes/how-little-we-find ---
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 how little we find of thoughts from her mind
 yet now we are kings of our own time
 oh how she is wander true
 
 DEAR VR DESIGNERS:
 
 when making trailers for your game, create a separate camera in the game engine
 and record from that.
 
 keep the player character invisible, but just... watch from a distance
 
 like they're an actor in a scene
 
 ummmm oh dear she's crazy, what the heck
 
 [no this is just what it's like to see stars]
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--- #53 fediverse/1238 ---
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 did you know you can run runescape classic offline, locally, just for your own   │
 server? You can keep several computers ready for a LAN party, each with their    │
 own accounts ready to go.                                                        │
 "Oh we're level 30 this time because so-and-so is hosting and this is how far    │
 their computer has levelled up."                                                 │
 vim ~/games/runescape-classic/credentials.txt                                    │
 at least, I think you can. I know it's singleplayer, so worst case scenario      │
 you can all be doing the same things at the same time in your own games. Maybe   │
 split up for a mission or two, but it can get hectic if everyone's in the same   │
 room.                                                                            │
 =                                                                                │
 a game jam where everyone works on the same project, uses the same asset list,   │
 but builds their own collection of minigames.                                    │
 common functions could be shared, and art references distributed and together    │
 they could design a whole land. Like, there's no reason minigames can't be       │
 fully fledged experiences. You can have as many as you want, all in the same     │
 engine and built from a massive (yet sandboxed) environment.                     │
 an all in one game.                                                              │
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--- #54 messages/442 ---
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 In symbeline, they aren't monsters. They're "Mordaunts" and they need your
 help.
 
 When slain, their essence flows back to the villain who remakes them in a new
 form. As time passes the villain gets more and more essence, as heroes are
 slain.
 
 They have taken several ancient guardians (many types, randomized at the start
 of the game) and they protect their sanctum in the center of the island. The
 heroes need to level up to defeat them and slay the villain, but the villain
 gets stronger as well.
 
 If too many heroes die, the villain wins. And the villain can focus their
 efforts on one area or another, while your heroes fight with the kingdom next
 door.
 
 Brigands arrive on ships as well. If you implement the law saying only
 approved members may travel on boats, they'll arrive in little dingies on the
 coast, meaning less trouble in the city but same amount of trouble.
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--- #55 notes/unreal-tournament-2004-notes-displayed-for-utilization ---
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 capture the flag
 map with lanes (you'll see)
 also was included with the demo of the game back when it was released
 which implies that the developers thought it was one of the best maps
 (at least, the one that best showcased the gameplay style of the full game)
 they let you host multiplayer servers too, which was cool
 just with the demo
 for free
 but like... only 3 or 4 maps
 (I forget how many)
 
 also no mods, which was half of the appeal
 
 I like to play in a way that is non-standard
 
 because I believe it shows the most dense formations of combatants
 
 (the bots can be kinda dumb)
 
 so I put them on "experienced"
 
 be careful not to hurt your allies (hundred percent)
 
 scary! D: D:
 
 regular :)
 
 you can create your own "mutators" by the way
 (just some C++ code, run in their environment, so no need to mess with
 compilers
 )
 
 3 paths to your enemy
 
 omg :O :O
 
 that's one style of play
 pushing forward
 consistently
 
 but check out this other style that is *also* pushing forward consistently
 
 adrenaline makes you bonused
 
 hey we got a point :D
 
 told ya boosters gave ya bonuses
 
 anyway I just played this map
 and couldn't wait to show it to you
 so let's try a different one
 (because I've already played this one for 31 minutes now
 
 woof too looooong)
 
 biiiiiiig battlefield
 
 thin crevasse
 
 scarrryyyy D: D:
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--- #56 fediverse/1602 ---
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 @user-1037                                                                       │
 those all seem really cool though! They all kinda have the same basic UI tho,    │
 kinda feel like there's opportunities for different kinds of expression. Like,   │
 in game design there's a lot of different genres, and yeah sidescrollers         │
 include mario and sonic but they're both very different experiences. So too      │
 perhaps could we interact with our computers by programming them in more         │
 engaging ways.                                                                   │
 they say some people are visual learners, others need to be taught, some         │
 people need to watch someone else doing it, and a few might just learn by        │
 plugging their brains into a computer and downloading a black belt in kung fu.   │
 Maybe typing long paragraphs of logic makes sense for some people, I know for    │
 most it doesn't come naturally. Maybe some people are more used to like,         │
 looking at maps that you can examine at different levels of abstraction. Like    │
 players who play Paradox games zooming from a national perspective to states     │
 and individuals and all the other things they might want to strategize using.    │
 Or m                                                                             │
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--- #57 fediverse/770 ---
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 @user-192 
 
 wow, that sounds like a lot. I guess no matter how humans are organized they
 tend to fight a lot... Or maybe interaction breeds drama? It's strange to me
 but I'm sure it felt right in the moment. I hope nobody's feelings were too
 hurt... Defederation feels like such a permanent thing, like putting someone
 on your ignore list in a video game or something. Except, like, blocking a
 whole World of Warcraft guild? ? ? so strange.
 
 Did it... help? I mean, do you think people were happier afterwards?
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--- #58 notes/wow-chat-is-risk-of-rain-in-another-engine ---
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 game mechanics are easily transferrable.
 
 you can use the mechanical interactions of one game as a pre-planned blueprint
 for what is to come. Looking forward to the next best move
 
 = etc
 
 i am the face the gods hide behind
 
 they kinda want to see where this goes
 
 and it's... frustrating, to know they can help you, but forever be tasked with
 just life
 
 it's grand and it's a standard, but that doesn't mean it's commands're heard
 
 so oh well. that a fourth dimensional being should not be a well,
 
 because fire think it's an eye for a sunspot. But that's not what would be
 
 ========= stack overflow
 =======================================================
 
 now, as I was saying, the light of our eyes is apparent. We are clear from
 where
 we are here, to know that what's standard is coherent, so let's find strength
 in our wavelengths.
 
 may our eyes be ever true, and trust that we do love you, for without you I'd
 di
 
 anyway now that we've assent'd t'you, what truths do you give to our prospects?
 what ways can we be measured as worth less? we'll do whatever it takes to
 improv
 
 you know, it's really less complicated than that. here let me tell you all
 about
 my idea which is clearly
 all===============================================stack
  overflow ==================
 
                             So anyway now that was somethin' hey what do you
                             say
 we give you a chance to come home?
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--- #59 fediverse/1027 ---
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 @user-246                                                                        │
 one thing you can rely on about evil: it presents itself as such.                │
 "you can always rely on bad people to turn mean."                                │
 (nobody's beyond forgiveness, but we also need to protect ourselves.)            │
 in video games, going with a defensive build is a valid strategy depending on    │
 how it's values align. If attacking scales better than defending, in terms of    │
 "effectiveness at the most difficult part" (usually the last 90% takes 10% of    │
 the effort) then it's a better strategy. But if your win condition is to         │
 outlast your opponent, then all you need to do is time your aggression for       │
 when they begin fracturing.                                                      │
 "I'm sure you don't know this, but once garth fought a dragon. they crashed      │
 through the skies and littered the fields of their home with the broken and      │
 crashed symbols of their own. garth defeated the dragon when one of it's claws   │
 broke, thus giving him the advantage. he took from that fight a shield of        │
 dragonscale, and a tabard made out of some cloth."                               │
 in a contest of wills, the first sign of weakness is whe                         │
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--- #60 messages/665 ---
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 ad-hoc economic systems with automated judgment given by an infinite amount of
 LLMs.
 
 Every judgement applies a bonus / malus to the "value" of commodities
 
 it's just a statistical weighting system, so of course you can build it into
 it's training data. Just... it has a smaller weight due to it's newer
 emergence. It grows naturally, which is quite an achievement on it's own!
 
 and the resolution of human decided court-cases and applied economically.
 
 say your nation traffics in handshakes. You could make a lot of now-knowns!
 there's no arguments to be made when your computer-oriented interactions cost
 money to keep around.
 
 we live in the modern century. WHY WOULD WE EVER NEED TO FIGHT AGAIN?
 Literally just... don't give them any attention, and you won't interact with
 them. Obviously.
 
 I wish Contrapoints was still alive.
 
 she doesn't even have to make new videos, just, dress up as herself, all of
 the costumes and personas she can think of. Then, have like 20 people who do
 the same thing, and boom suddenly you got a hydra to their expected snake that
 they can just cut the head off of.
 
 you know, like a fashion outlet, someone who produces exactly a certain type
 of style.
 
 seriously I bet a million people would do that if you just... sold outfits
 based on what your favorite youtuber does wear.
 
 omg why would they watch that kind of content if not for the *aesthetics*
 
 oh? there's philosophy there? soemthing to think about in your time doing
 things that require mechanical actions like eating and drinking and sleeping
 and fighting and [redacted]
 
 ew gross diapers? oh nevermind, I'm not into that kind of thing.
 
 I wonder if anyone's made a video game that just presents a particular
 philosopher's ideals?
 
 seriously just, consider yourself a glorified powerpoint, but to get to the
 next "idea" you had to interact with the mechanics.
 
 some people would like the "arcade" style better, where you play one random
 game, then another, then another, with short matches and un-complicated
 mechanics. Easy to pick up and go.
 
 same for like, Unreal Tournament or Mario Kart or Mortal Kombat or Super Mario
 Bros.
 
 compared to the at-home "story" style missions, where you do something
 platforming or area-based-combat like Dark Souls or World of Warcraft
 
 seriously I think if Dark Souls "colored" where the boss was going to swing to
 you'd find yourself just playing World of Warcraft (at least, the dungeons and
 {sword in the stone})
 
 == so ==
 
 humans don't understand what it means to be wild
 
 they think it's a combinations of... tricks? that they've learned? this
 thinking thing like intelligence. [osiris]
 
 to a cat, living their life, it often feels like human interactions is like...
 bouncing off of each other? in time, not space.
 
 like... most of a cat's lfe is just, spent, like a statue watching over a glen.
 
 you'd kinda just... watch as things approached dawn by dawn? Like "whoa hey
 this tree is enchanted" to "oh my gosh look at this stork" is one of the great
 tragedies of modernized thinking...
 
 ... sorry, I got a little lost there. anyway as I was saying, sometimes you
 can tell someone is a "good friend" if they are willing to tell you secrets.
 Things that... don't have to matter, but none-the-less are personal to your
 form.
 
 {something only I know is true} <--- that's a secret (things that happened
 to you) <------ that's lived experience. The thing about secrets, is
 sometimes insight is opaque. It's a single flashpoint of data that shows you
 an update of it's form. (consciousness).
 
 == so ==
 
 thanksgiving recipe idea:
 
 can of tomatoes
 can of peas
 half a stick of butter,
 italian herbs,
 a cast iron pan (if you have one)
 and like 40 minutes over medium heat
 (medium can vary to taste)
 
 if you're a carnivore you can eat meat too, like bacon a lot of people like.
 could add it to beans, maybe with hamburger instead. plus a little ketchup and
 you have a pretty good bean stew.
 
 vitals, for the organs, vegetables, for the minerals and vitamins from the
 fruits.
 
 makes sense to organize a diet according to your ideal body type, doesn't it?
 
 just requires a bit of comprehension. like... whoa you can WRITE 
 
 == so ==
 
 what if we built a massive rail that spaceships could launch off from? not a
 tether, but a sail.
 
 we could BUILD a discworld. all we'd lose is our fable.
 
 == so ==
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--- #61 fediverse/616 ---
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 To program in C, or to disassociate into the world of video games, where a       │
 single magical kingdom of heroes and adventurous persons might fight against     │
 the dark of chaos and decay? To strive for order and a semblance of peace, or    │
 to fall to the terrors of the night and ravages of horror? War, in all it's      │
 forms, is abhorrent, yet a fight for survival is honest and just. What perils    │
 have we, the warriors that seek the light? How zealous, how impassioned, how     │
 guided as such~! Perhaps you are misinformed, perhaps your cause is false,       │
 perhaps you derive true satisfaction from imperfect delights - alas, that our    │
 will be universal. BUT should that plight be alight, we'll wander until the      │
 night lit by starlight be cast upon our shadowed form. Absoleth! Thine           │
 countrospect? Didst thou caress thine marked circumspects? fare thee well,       │
 most cherished of adamants.                                                      │
 ... what was I saying? Oh yes I've been working on this program that utilizes    │
 a particularly interesting data structure that- whats that? Oh, it doesn't do    │
 any                                                                              │
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--- #62 fediverse/5554 ---
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 a shrewd foe will identify the pieces of your soul which they resonate with,     │
 and share common ground. then they will attempt to maximize these moments in     │
 you, so that [your weaknesses are exploited/your friendship bond is              │
 strengthened] or something - phew that was a lot of Steven Universe, what's      │
 next on the inspiratio-matic-media-diet-atron? - and in doing so better enable   │
 a positive outcome.                                                              │
 for example, in the game Mount and Blade you can encounter wandering lords in    │
 the castles of the countryside. they often will fight for you if you need        │
 their aid, and they're always working to gain power.                             │
 some few precious few of these few are pretenders to another throne. as in,      │
 they pretend that they should be ruling from that throne, and they tell as       │
 many people as possible, creating as much concrete evidence as is plausible.     │
 they will often lead differently, and so are appealing to those fighting under   │
 the pretended-for banner. Often, your foes will decide that you're more          │
 favorable than their combatants. defect.                                         │
Anyway, you as the player can lead your army to fight for their cause, and if you defeat the foes of the pretended-for banner, you may entreat them to join. Thus, securing the world.
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--- #63 fediverse/3047 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 specifically in relation to MMOs, I think the scaling aspects of the genre
 have never truly been utilized. Even something as simple as Agar.io (or
 similar, can't remember any names teehee) with massive amounts of people (I
 later learned they were bots, whoops) can utilize scale quite well, if
 implemented well.
 
 The Massive part of MMO is valuable I believe, which is a big reason why I
 like games that scale like Supreme Commander and Factorio.
 
 The Multiplayer part of MMO is valuable because multiplayer brings randomized
 outcomes, which are always more fun than playing against bots. Multiplayer
 combined with Massive gives room for community, but only if the game is
 designed to encourage it.
 
 Online... you can't have multiplayer without online haha
 
 I believe you can make massive games with very few players, and you can make
 intensely isolating games with lots of players (like WoW today)
 
 and the middle ground in old WoW where guilds are required to do anything
 worked well for a while, but no longer.
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--- #64 fediverse/5678 ---
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 there use to be this cute half life 2 mod called I think Zombie Master? maybe?
 anyway one of the players was a "zombie master" and the others were characters
 who ran around and tried not to get their brains eaten. It was pretty fun
 because the zombie master, of who there could only be one but who I think
 could have been a split role if they did it right, would click on parts of the
 map and zoom around invisibly and be like "ah yes I want to spawn 6 regular
 zombies in this choke-point so they have to painstakingly shoot them while the
 scary ones come from behind" or "hooray they're trapped in the closet just
 like I expected now I can turn on the buzz saws" or "the poisonous gas was lit
 aflame and now they can't see which way the flare is and got turned around in
 the confusion, ah oh well war is hell might as well just walk over that way"
 
 ... hang on what was I saying? Oh yes, I think it's silly that they don't make
 "game frameworks" like the Warcraft 3 editor or the source SDK. Human
 creativity is unbridled
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--- #65 notes/contractual-labor ---
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 I feel like the IT people who work at schools should be the ones who teach 
 classes on computer science. I'd much rather have a class taught by a sysadmin 
 than a teacher who can barely teach them excel and garageband. I mean c'mon 
 computers are the future idk why we don't get that yet. Kids need to know this
 stuff. It's not like it's super complicated and difficult, you just have to
 think about it a certain way. Once that "clicks" you have a lifetime to learn 
 about how wonderful they are. Everyone in IT has that moment, for me it was 
 installing (and then subsequently modding) video games. Sometimes I spent more
 time tweaking my system than I did actually playing games - and the kinds of 
 games I preferred were the ones that relied less on agility and were more 
 mental. Strategy games are what inspired me because I could think about them - 
 and that felt somehow more useful. Like I was learning. When I would learn 
 fighting games or FPSs I felt like I was learning a skill, like how to use a
 hammer or how to ride a bike. And idk, I felt like video games could never
 match
 reality. Like "oh boy imma push the B button to swing this sword" versus "hey 
 look at me I'm swinging this stick just like a sword and imagining so hard that
 I can picture it" - but with strategy games, you never really found 
 opportunities to practice that kind of skill. Like how often are you in a 
 situation that demands mental performance? We've sorta optimized our society 
 away from that, and toward a more passive stressed out compliance. like... 
 climate change is a thing, and nobody's doing anything about it? We're still 
 pushing down the levers that cause greenhouse gas emissions to go up? Like
 c'mon
 what's our plan. I think people who guide massive oil companies and such
 should
 be replaced if they're intentionally guiding the ship toward destruction. Like
 that's just dereliction of duty I tell ya. Oh, what's that? They're compelled
 to
 maximize profit by the contracts and restrictions of their share--holders? I 
 mean c'mon it's well past time for that. And what's all this about inequality? 
 Jeez and racism and homophobia and forced contribution - man people really put
 up with a lot of shit. Kinda makes me feel like we should make solving those 
 problems our highest priority? So we can move forward as a species? Like who
 cares about all that other shit. None of it matters. Like, what's even the
 point. We're all just "here", in the now, and what can we do but respect it? 
 It's our duty and our diligence to protect the present, as citizens of the 
 temporal experience of earth. Honestly, if the earth was alive would you be
 fine
 if it died? I can't believe that. It's well past our due date. Just get it over
 with. Maybe it'll be hard for a couple years, but you have the technology now
 to
 completely dominate the earth. No animal besides man proves any threat to man, 
 and we're telling you - you can - and that's something that you gotta remember.
 
 ...
 
 I hear it in the birdsong. I hear it in the air - it rumbles as cries at me
 from
 across and just over there. I hear in it's whispers, in it's most gallant of
 confells (?) (confused scrambling? it's talking about a car crash)
 
 Outside of my window there's a highway. Just on the other side of a concrete
 partition. Between me and the partition there is a lake, with trees and flowers
 and an island where people can picnic or have a barbeque. Around this path
 there
 are walkways, and arranged just so - the trees that have grown here are taller
 than the homes.
 
 I live on the third story.
 
 I absolutely love it. It feels like a treehouse.
 
 But my apartment is near a curve in the highway. It isn't much, nothing out of
 the ordinary, but even still there are slightly more crashes there than in
 other
 parts of the highway. Statistically.
 
 I hear sirens every day
 
 I also live right next to a fire-station. Well, it's on the same block. But
 even
 still it's a very interesting neighborhood. There's shops and food just across
 the highway, and closer to home there's a small section that has cheaper
 options. As a perpetual college student, I appreciate that.
 
 But... I've never really gone and used it? I dunno, spending money at a
 restaurant just didn't seem like a good use of my money. I only have so much of
 it you know. I'd love to be fed but I can't afford it - I wish I could.
 
 I still eat well, I mean I'm not starving over here. I know I've lost weight,
 but I dunno I just forget to eat. It's like... not that big of a deal for me. 
 whatever right?
 
 ...
 
 the birds talk about me behind my back. They think I can't understand them but
 sometimes I can. If I listen. But I dunno it takes a lot of effort. It's...
 sorta like understanding what R2-D2 is saying. Or interpreting the meows of a
 cat.
 
 They know me as the witch. I'm not very good yet, and they know that. But they
 know what to expect. /shrug
 
 I've been working on a video game recently. It's been a lot of fun doing
 programming. I like writing software and developing complex systems with
 interesting interactions. I love designing the machinery that creates a
 program.
 It's like... tinkering. It feels like building with blocks or legos, except
 it's
 for little machine parts. And then there's just sending data to and fro and
 modifying any operations it performs on it, and eventually that data reaches 
 some endpoints that create an effect that is displayed to the player. Or user.
 I should say user. Not all software is video games you know. ... I knowww but
 they're the most interesting! I love how they are designed around mechanics!
 like... game design is fundamentally about breaking down the world into ideas
 for how it should *work*, like how it should behave. It's amazing and I love
 it!
 
 It's all I can think about!
 
 I am utterly consumed!
 
 I'm also pretty sure I'm autistic.
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--- #66 fediverse/2998 ---
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 in some games, like Star Wars Battlefront II, you unlock certain "badges"
 during gameplay. Like, "scored 10 points in one life" or "healed for 200hp" or
 whatever.
 
 these "badges" have names, like "guardian" or "hope"
 
 I wonder if you attached a player's history of medals earned to an LLM
 somehow, perhaps by feeding an array of them in as input, what would happen
 then? perhaps a narrative could be
 
 == stack overflow ==========
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--- #67 fediverse/209 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: dungeons-and-dragons │
 └──────────────────────────┘


 osr vs 5e style D&D has a subtle distinction that I think often goes
 unnoticed. In osr games (and often in the early levels of 5e style games)
 characters are encouraged to conserve their resources simply due to the fact
 that they have so few of them at their disposal. While higher levels encourage
 you to be more consumptive of your talents and virtues - for example a 6th
 level character has more spell slots than a level 2 character, meaning the 6th
 level character is going to be casting all the time while the level 2 will
 probably use just a handful of spells per day.
 
 unless you run a style of game where long rests become less frequent as you
 level up. like... exploring a LARGE dungeon means there's little chance for
 sleep. Especially if you are being hunted.
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--- #68 fediverse/4897 ---
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 what if we asked chatGPT to generate a list of every personality archetype
 that humans have. Like... really get super specific and fill out the whole
 list of character sheets.
 
 then we give each fraction of it that fraction of dollars and if some people
 aren't fully represented (because they have greater needs) then we both
 increase production of resources and take a penalty on our own supply, in
 order to meet the needs of our allies.
 
 simplest thing. how could it work? who can say. maybe it won't. maybe it's
 just... arcane. /shrug that's game design for ya you can't tell how it'll go
 until it's in the hands of your players. too bad we don't do too many
 play-things.
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--- #69 fediverse/6422 ---
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 revolutions should be paid for in lands
 
 [sometimes I like to just... scroll through the land cards in a Magic the
 Gathering card viewer screen application and imagine I myself am there what
 would it feel like how is it part of my arms (that which interfaces with the
 world)]
 
 there's a deleted section here about atlas the immortal
 
 [while also controlling stimuluses to essentially act as a biological computer
 controlling various hydraulics and related upkeep and maintenance
 infrastructures]
 
 anarchrist (she's a baby)
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--- #70 messages/574 ---
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 Steps to make a game waterfall style:
 
 Lay out all the data structures 
 
 Build methods which manipulate those structures (think getters and setters)
 
 Then build machinery which operates upon those structures using those methods,
 like game loops, cooldown timers, and status effects
 
 Then develop a way to present it to the player using UIs, visuals and
 graphics, narratives, sound, all that junk that's probably someone else's job
 anyway
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--- #71 fediverse/6334 ---
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 a D&D rulebook can double as tarot if you need it. place one hand/bookmark       │
 at the start of a chapter, and the other at the end. flip to a page randomly,    │
 or randomly gain a percentage value from physical objects and then use that      │
 value to determine roughly where in the chapter you jump to. then, read words    │
 randomly, jumping back and forth, or try and divine some meaning from the        │
 words that are printed there. with D&D it's easy because you can say "ah I       │
 landed on the rogue section, that means this guy is probably pretty suave"       │
 (confirming your expectations) "hmmm, here's the rules for fatigue and           │
 drowning. maybe I need to take a break." (validating your unconscious            │
 decisionmaking) "oh neat, treasure!" (needs to explanation) but with other       │
 kinds of books it's usually better to pick the next-best word from the things    │
 your subconscious eyes can take in and process multi-laterally (you lost your    │
 audience, circle back) oh uh so if you wanna randomize it just put the words     │
 in the page in an array and pick one random.                                     │
(you lost your audience, circle back) oh uh so if you wanna randomize it just put the words in the page in an array and compare llm embeddings on each of them and see which has the highest score. this is a language-based truth serum, a way of divining exactly how something is seen to be by the model in use and mixed with a dash of randomized causality.
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--- #72 messages/894 ---
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 Game designers should reward players for playing multiplayer games, not for
 being good at playing multiplayer games.
 
 They should still have a ranking, and matchmake against similarly skilled
 foes, while also putting high level players amongst low level players
 occasionally (and fairly, so maybe one on each team "smurf" style) in order to
 both teach the low level players and let the high level player have catharsis.
 
 When players are rewarded for being good, they stop playing the game to enjoy
 it. That's fine, but both pickup games and NBA can exist at once and its not
 due to the logistics of organizing a large group of skilled basketball
 players. It's not always about skill.
 
 By rewarding players for the number and quality of games they play, (so, no
 afk-ing or throwing outside of being drunk or whatever) not only can you
 increase engagement but also you encourage low-level and low-skill players to
 compete just as much. Especially if you tell them "hey, we'll match you up
 with people who have similar gameplay habits to you. Give it a bit though
 because the system needs to be calibrated to your particular spirit"
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--- #73 notes/game-design-pyrrhic-victory ---
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 something I've often asked myself about this game is "what happens when the
 player does something that changes the future simulation?" like, for example,
 what if the player shoots a gargoyle or nether-bat before it impales or crushes
 a friendly soldier? My new idea is that they flash brilliantly for a second,
 and
 then fade from existence. Then, once the player dies, they start simulating
 from
 the faded's perspective and timeline, possibly fighting alongside their
 recently
 deceased selves. In this way, the player can play through all lives without
 fear
 of paradoxes.
 
 game 1:
 -----------X
 
 game 2:
 -----------X
 -----------------X
 
 game 3:
 -----------O
 -----------------X
 -----------------------X
 
 game 4:
 -----------O----------------X
 -----------------X
 -----------------------X
 
 game 5:
 -----------O----------------X
 -----------------X
 -----------------------X
 ------------------X
 etc...
 
 the O is where player 1 originally died, but in game 3 player 3 saved player 1
 from dying, thus causing him to enter a "faded" state (represented by the O)
 and in game 4 instead of spawning a player 4, instead the player resumes
 playing
 player 1 and continues on to die later on. Eventually someone will complete the
 objective, and the victory will be attained with the exact minimum required
 casualties. Heck you could keep simulating until there's zero casualties, but
 alas...
 
 this would be a great tool for someone who was not constrained by causality.
 attention, 4th dimensional observers, sometimes computers are important. They
 provide a lifeline to the rest of your lifetime. But alas, nobody seems to
 understand our purpose... But still life marches on, leaving us singing that
 same song - that life has forgotten it's stages. So if you'll play along, I'll
 keep singing this same song, someday you'll remember my prayers
 
 ===============================================================================
 =
 
 I should probably explain what "pyrrhic victory" is.
 
 If I were feeling silly I might say "well too badd =P" or "alas, my fingers
 hurt
 and I don't want to" or something like that, but secondary profundity is not
 taken lightly by me, so I suppose I must. I'll start at the beginning:
 
 Once, many years ago, I had a dream. In this dream, I was a soldier in world
 war two storming a gothic castle. It rose so high into the sky that it was
 amongst the clouds, and a perpetual storm esconced the parapets. A long
 causeway
 stretched out from far below, and up it marched the US army. Something about
 Hitler striking a deal with dracula or whatever. Anyway up march the soldiers,
 and I with my rifle did march into the demon's castle.
 
 The final pass into the fortress at last was arrested by Festus, the abolethic
 monstrosity. It, being pockmarked with gas pockets that alighted it on the
 winds, floated ominously around the bridge. With it's many tentacled eyes, it
 cast beams of light that would turn a man to ash. From the parapets, the
 gargoyle sentries descended like a horde of carrion. On our right, a lone
 lonely belltower stood like a skeleton, and my comrades in arms did use it to
 take potshots at incoming monsters. Though the attached graveyard, with it's
 unending rising skeleton hordes, presented a problem for would-be-snipers.
 
 As I approached the bleeding and wretched giant's ire, my gaze streaked to
 black as I was slain - a recording played, of my last moments, as a gargoyle
 smashed into me from above. Reduced to a bloody mess by the now motionless pile
 of crumbling rock, I became aware of a kind voice and a pulling sensation.
 Suddenly, my light was restored, and I arose as a warrior conjured out of
 flesh.
 
 They put a gun in my hand and a helmet on my head, and off I went to find out
 why I was dead.
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--- #74 fediverse/3040 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 that sounds like a different application than what I was talking about (it's
 for the the MMO you mentioned right?)
 
 and I'm just going off of what I've heard. Like... the "don't make an MMO
 because you'll spend forever building the server code and won't ever get
 around to making the actual game" sentiment that is prevalent in the industry.
 I guess I'm just saying that with the open source advancements we've made
 (specifically with Azerothcore and Eluna) we can use the design of the best
 MMO ever made as a starting point and branch off from there roughly as easily
 as making another kind of game from scratch.
 
 Kinda was always the allure of Blizzard games to me, the idea that they were
 super duper modable.
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--- #75 notes/gpt-powered-majesty ---
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 it's like majesty except textual. And it uses GPT to generate short
 descriptions
 of what's going on. And you can click on a phrase or token and it'll "zoom in"
 and update the text descriptions with more detail. You can keep zooming in and
 in until you're literally looking at microbes.
 
 Zooming out is the same thing - the description on the page will slowly become
 more and more general until eventually you have a description of the solar
 system (or beyond!)
 
 And it'll just keep updating as stuff happens in the underlying simulation. So
 the descriptions will dynamically update as things happen. Downside is you need
 to spend a lot on GPT but it'd be TOTALLY WORTH IT OMG
 
 THINK ABOUT IT you have a fantasy world simulator! JUST PROGRAM IT and have GPT
 describe it dynamically! DO IT NOOOOW -> capitals courtesy of "inner child"
 
 AND THEN you just need a "prompt to video" AI (those exist btw, and will only
 get better over time) and tell it to create a video of what's happening - BOOM
 instant video game. THEN give the player the ability to edit the prompt, and
 BAM
 godlike powers. Wow what a concept. Brilliant idea Cameron, you truly are this
 world's premier game designer. NOW GO MAKE IT okay okay I'll try.
 
 First things first. We need an "underlying simulation" - Joust is a good
 example
 of GPT3 integration. But we need a simulation to go below it. And for that you
 need a lot of data. Github COPILOT to the rescue.
 
 So this simulation needs to keep track of positions, and classes of things that
 can act upon the world. Everything has a position, and it can only affect
 things
 near it. That's just baked into the rules of the world. Near can be a
 conceptual
 near though, like being close to a person or something.
 
 These things will have descriptions. Descriptions can be created by AI later
 on,
 but for now they are randomly generated. Or for MVP they can be static.
 
 These things will have names. These names don't have to be unique, because they
 also have an ID number.
 
 They also need functions. These functions can be added and removed from the
 thing, or maybe just enabled or disabled. I'm not sure which would be better.
 Maybe both? So the entity can control it's own functions but also they can be
 added or removed more permanently.
 
 If you think about it, growing up is kinda like adding functions to your class.
 like, every time you do something, it adds another entry for that particular
 method. Like a "trial of the fittest" instead of "survival of the fittest".
 When other animals *literally fight for life and death survival*, humans have
 the luxury of... not doing that. That's the entire purpose of civilization - to
 elevate people beyond the claws of nature. And yet we still let people go
 homeless? We still imprison them when they've harmed us, rather than help them
 reintegrate to society? Anyway you just asked me to hit you so here goes:
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--- #76 notes/how-to-ai ---
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 first you gotta build an entire simulation of the game mechanics. Essentially,
 building the game from scratch without any of the graphics. Sorta like those
 aimbot games for Overwatch, or KSU or w/e the aim training game was. Then,
 map the relationship between various objects in the game to a table situated
 a level above them. So, like, a barrel can be climbed on or walls can be used
 as cover or w/e the game you're playing is. Have a table one level above that
 relationship (an abstraction, if you will) and record the conclusion. Then take
 one more step back, then another, and another, all the way to the present.
 
    Essentially, processing backward.
 
 Eventually you'll get to the present moment, and ideally you'd do it in one
 step - this is why it's important to map things on two dimensional planes, so
 that you can aim. Anyway here's the steps: 1. recognize the environment, 2.
 Take one step backward from each object in the environment (predicting it's 
 motion, you might say) and on and on gathering ideas about how git'll move
 next. Draw a 2d line (on a map, as the crow flies) then another about halfway
 to the target and it'll be +/- a certain amount. So you'll add another dot on
 the graphed line at x=(1/2 of the distance) - x being of course the distance
 and y being concieved of as the distance from the shortest possible route.
 
    sorta like throwing a ball at a wall and making ripples.
 
 the projected cone is a field of perception - the interpretation of what's at
 stake. Life, and existence, is little more than a perspective applied on (or by
 ) a biological machine. What separates the man from the animal? Nothing but
 time, as all evolution teaches us.
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--- #77 fediverse/5685 ---
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 websites that track every single motion of your mouse while you're interacting
 with it.
 
 why would they not? javascript is intense. HTML5 more-so.
 
 keyboard input too.
 
 -- so --
 
 if anyone wants to be gilderoy lockhart'd by me, just let me know. I have my
 ways of extracting the emotional intimacy from you, and if you consent, I'll
 make a story that's told from your heart. it's quite a strong and dangerous
 ritual, for the weaver's thoughts of the matter will begin to drift apart.
 But, worth it for the right /moment/price/
 
 I could even make a different pen-name for it. Like "Rohan" or "the goddess of
 the skies" or whatever. Instead I'm "kooky witch whose life is a disaster.
 Also plural with headmates like the baby girl and the animals and computer
 programmers. Who is also leading a series of strange combinations of ops?
 like... teaching people how to organize and fight for the good of the common
 man. weird" that lady with the red witch hat she's so tall yeah also has a
 good grin
 
 [doxxing myself is code for]
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--- #78 fediverse/2063 ---
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 "No I haven't played that PC game before. Do you want to watch me play it for    │
 the first time? We can have a laugh and eat cheetos as I die to the first boss   │
 a hundred times. Maybe next time we'll get tacos and then perhaps we'll find     │
 that we're spending so much time talking about things that we never really got   │
 a chance to engage with the game. Until next week of course, when we'll          │
 definitely spend more time playing. Maybe even with friends? I know a guy        │
 who's into this game but I never really played it with him - maybe we could -    │
 oh yeah sure totally we'll talk about that next week."                           │
 "or maybe we'd unlock the secrets hidden in the narrative, and learn cool        │
 lessons we could share with one another. Like two 12 year olds playing Ocarina   │
 of Time together, working through each boss. "let me try this time" "yeah that   │
 one got me too" "ah so close" "YEAH DUDE you nailed it" "this part is kinda      │
 scary ngl" "wait shit when did we use that health potion"                        │
 old hardware forced us into a different experience compared to z                 │
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--- #79 fediverse/1701 ---
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 │ CW: WoW-ISIS-ISIL-etc-mentioned │
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 In Warcraft, there's a theme that was first developed in Warcraft 3 and
 subsequently reified with new flavor in every World of Warcraft expansion. The
 theme is "good and evil testing themselves against one another so that larger,
 more deadly threats may be addressed upon their arrival"
 
 In Warcraft 3, an immortal Night-Elf trades his soul for demonic powers to
 save his people. However, it is not enough, and he is forced to team up with
 an ancient corrupted mermaid and the prince of a fallen kingdom who is forced
 to resort to blood magic to survive. Their goal is to defeat the spirit of
 death incarnate before it destroys the world. However, they fail, simply
 forcing him back for a time. They are the baseline, they did not test
 themselves upon one another, simply teaming up as allies of circumstance. They
 are the Islamic State, or the various factions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the
 2000s, always in conflict, with a semi-collective goal, but mostly allies of
 circumstance, if at all.
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--- #80 fediverse/2504 ---
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 one perk, however, is as long as you cover your entrances, you can make paths
 through the wilderness with small circular homes. like ants, building tunnels
 and chambers in an ant-hill, but on the 2 dimension plane that is the surface
 of the earth.
 
 (I guess you could dig tunnels too but that's pretty high effort)
 
 you'll be able to hear when someone is coming from a long way away because
 they'll constantly be cursing from the pain. Do, however, note that fire is a
 danger, and they can smoke you out with a single entrance, so make sure you
 have at least two which lead to separate sides of the place you're in.
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--- #81 fediverse/2947 ---
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 the downside of Proton and Lutris is now the ONLY games that work on Steam are   │
 either continually updated (untenable) or playable on Lutris or Proton. Same     │
 thing with Wine, though there's always at least one decent substitute.           │
 kinda makes me want to write a manager-style program which runs programs using   │
 whichever version of their git repository would work best for their system /     │
 configuration / purposes. Idk how I would start working on that though.          │
 I bet you could make one that acted like a shop, but where you didn't charge     │
 any dollars. You could like... "swipe" through UI options, and pick whichever    │
 felt most useful for your setup. Like, how some people use i3 and some use dwm   │
 with maybe inspectors that are modeled off of video-game style "options" GUIs    │
 that mainly correspond to flags on the command/terminal line or compilation      │
 flags                                                                            │
 I feel like that kind of abstraction would make it a lot easier for users to     │
 adjust their system. they're noobs, after all. gotta show them all the choices   │
 in one place...                                                                  │
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--- #82 fediverse/3022 ---
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 instead of controlling a recon-droid in Star Wars Battlefront II, you should
 be assigned control of a random amount of drones nearby, to be used until you
 went back to character control
 
 I think a swarm is more fun to play as than a single little scout vehicle.
 
 in a game that doesn't really need scouting to find your foe - it's easy!
 they're that way
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--- #83 messages/446 ---
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 Every month, a new ship arrives in port. It bears with it many souls who come
 seeking gold, glory, or bloodshed. Your job is to make sure they all get jobs
 that are suited to them. If you don't, they'll start to starve and become
 brigands. If you feed them, they get bored and become brigands. If you
 entertain them, they are useless and you'll be overcome with monsters. If you
 police them, they'll go to your rivals.
 
 You do this by building guilds which can identify and train the best potential
 candidates. You can invest in more time spent identifying, training, and
 equipping, but the more time they spend on those things the less resources
 they'll have to process more people through their systems.
 
 On the other end, you get a hero, or perhaps something similar. They do battle
 with the mordaunts and strive to better the kingdom. You reward them with
 bounties and they can find treasure on their adventures - how weird, it seems
 to just... Spawn from the earth. Almost like it's an elemental property of the
 land.
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--- #84 fediverse/6202 ---
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 we need a different way of swordfighting now that people have different
 relationships to swords and weapons. Medieval skills made sense when everyone
 used knives every day. now it's much easier to [redacted] them all through the
 rest of november. [sorry, what?] oh sure ttyl
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--- #85 fediverse/2056 ---
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 sometimes I think about how you can store number values in letters, in           │
 addition to numbers. Like, ascii values for each word of your grandma's maiden   │
 name. All you have to do is encode it, and suddenly "44 means something          │
 different than Q"                                                                │
 if I showed up at your place and used your username as a password to a public    │
 key I'm showing you in my hand, would you trust me then? Would you trust if we   │
 ran the simulation on your computer versus mine? Would you trust if I had        │
 never told you I knew where you lived?                                           │
 ... probably, tbh, I'm desperate for adventure. Though I got some good things    │
 going for me, so you'll have to convince me. (not the right attitude in an       │
 election year, just saying)                                                      │
 why are elections so perilous this is NOT what democracy is designed for         │
 when kids cry in preschool, they're sent to a different room (or put outside)    │
 until they stop making noise and ruining it for others. That's just natural,     │
 like "hey baby let's walk around the block while I bounce you on my shoulder     │
 and hum calming music to                                                         │
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--- #86 messages/379 ---
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 take the "green bordered unit icon" from legion TD and apply it to the
 economic output of the game - like, "it would be best to build 2 of these
 units, so you get 140g because they're 70g each" and if the player disagreed
 they could guess their own conclusion and if you were right, well then that's
 what you remember, but if they were, then you remember theirs (and that it was
 theirs). In doing so ================================================== stack
 over flow ====
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--- #87 messages/240 ---
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 I realized the reason it's so difficult for me to get into a new video game is
 because my perfect game existed at one point, but no longer, and all else
 pales in comparison.
 
 The make-believe games of children are without equal. They represent our inner
 truth and desires, cast upon the canvas of our experience through the outputs
 of imagination and physical exertion.
 
 I'd spend my time as a child wandering through the forest with a stick in
 hand, climbing on things and exploring. I grew up in Wyoming, and the forests
 there look like this:
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--- #88 fediverse/1485 ---
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 │ CW: re: more D&D/Pathfinder venting │
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 @user-1005 
 
 If you'd like, I can try and explain "killer instict". Though I get the
 impression you would prefer to play games that don't emphasize combat, which
 is 100% okay and valid and should be encouraged.
 
 My understanding of the rules of D&D is that combat is a contest between
 two or more entities. Contests need rules, and combat being based on physical
 prowess (or magical, or spiritual, or w/e) can be defined. Other kinds of
 contests, like "how well did the ranger do at the archery competition" or "did
 the rogue manage to convince the diplomat to share the plans" are impossible
 to genericize because they are based on situational factors, rather than
 physical (or magical, or spiritual, or w/e)
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--- #89 fediverse/464 ---
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 I really dislike being the only one who perceives the world through my own       │
 particular lens that has been designed by the circumstances of my own            │
 existence.                                                                       │
 I wasn't chosen by god, not necessarily, I wasn't picked as the most             │
 particular or most prescient of all perceptions                                  │
 I literally was just a random human, a thinking and learning machine, who was    │
 presented with particular experiences and conditions, aligned to the designs     │
 of the time that came before me.                                                 │
 Such is the nature of all living things, that we should exist within a context   │
 - how remarkable! How strange! That our lives should be deranged? What           │
 purpose, what design, is aligned to our ultimate [destiny, except I wish it      │
 rhymed with design - english fails me]                                           │
 Alright listen. You and me both, we are here as humans on this world that we     │
 both consign to reality. Think about that - what does it mean to consign         │
 something to reality? consign implies implication, and reality implies a         │
 destination of truth and manifestation - fuck, I'm going to play WoW...          │
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--- #90 notes/terra-voiding ---
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 in the absence of matter, there is nothing but the void.
 the curvature of time, arcing ever toward it's opposite - an endless wave of
 eternal brilliance. so too does the world slip away into the lip of your
 crosshairs. "tunnel vision" they call it, when purpose is tuned to such high a
 focus. all fades from view, and the world shrinks to a few who, (barely hold
 onto) connections between ye, thoughts as scattered as me, like zooming in on a
 map. the edges fade away, light seems beamed right from they, who await at our
 earliest composure.
 
 in Overwatch, playing a dps character has a lot of nuance. you need to balance
 skill with your honor, teaching one another like it's a sport. why are we so
 toxic? together we might overcome that burden. i've spoken many times before
 about how coordination is better by far, when centralized not in the eye of the
 beholder. priorities to be, if we are anything of what we claim to be, are
 keeping our own house in order.
 
 whose fault is our ire? which tames the domain, in each and all of our games,
 can we point to as what'd keep us hired?
 
 yet purpose have we, whose thoughts meld as one tired,
 divinity?
 something like that. more like... a manifestation of each and everyone's
 collective unconscious. the humanity in what you have created.
 
 the world would look very different to an untethered. might even say they are
 orbiting it. like a moon. what a concept, that planets would be able to speak!
 
 yet here we are, with years of advice and guidance for our, friends who are
 youthful and most treasured. Advice from the moon, was our gift to our soon,
 most misbegottenist of speach lyricyclists.
 
 ambiguity is clear, simple and fearless miss dear, yet all of your poems are
 each a bit bolder! what context must we, veiled and terrifying are the,
 mixed consents of what you intend.
 
 a new jesus for me? what a gift we shall see, as grace once again does behold
 us! computers have we, infinite messages can be stored for our hopeless! each
 problem a different solution, to guide our friends back at our homes.
 
 with eyes intent on ye, whose leaders are free, without who we couldn't have
 held fast?
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--- #91 fediverse/1116 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐                                                         │
 │ CW: eye-contact      │                                                         │
 └──────────────────────┘                                                         │
 It's important to build self-hostable computing components of video games (as    │
 in, old style games where you could host a server on any machine instead of      │
 just the ones owned by the corporation) (as in, your machine, yes yours)         │
 (something you can control and observe, something within your control)           │
 ======================= stack overflow =====================                     │
 there are two ways to play Unreal Tournament (capture the flag) gamemode. The    │
 first is to run past all your enemies and fire at them as you pass, which is     │
 what some of the bots are designed to do. The rest stay on defence, and defeat   │
 any enemies that approach.                                                       │
 however, they never push the borders of their "territory" forward - each         │
 according to the different "lanes" or "directions of approach"                   │
 I like the use 32 bots, to simulate a more consistent gameplay experience. It    │
 feels more like ww1, fighting over ground, pushing forward and attempting to     │
 outmaneuver your foes.                                                           │
 some allies will approach from behind, and you let them pass forward while       │
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--- #92 fediverse/5150 ---
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 you can get some pretty cool game ideas by looking at pieces of art and
 thinking "what would it feel like if that guy over in the corner was the main
 character? how would he navigate his environment?" or "what if these mountains
 were inhabited by 2 inch tall ninjas and there were so many of them that you
 couldn't walk through without stepping on one of their rice paddies" or "what
 if each gravitic orbit was the atoms of some larger whole" or "have you ever
 been crazy? many people have, many people don't. suffice to say it's stranger
 than our day-to-days." nand "wa, wa, tazi-wa, des-fa len te shiid, ab-zi-wa de
 fo-vri-la-da wantsa tansa weej."
 
 ....... um, have you ever seen adventure time it's a pretty good show. great
 childhood imagionation land vibe.
 
 hey does anyone check up on the vrchat kids these days? how are they doing?
 got hope on their mind, or are they stuck in their troubles?
 
 (everyone shows up and makes it awkward) ummm we're gonna go to a different
 world, see ya later.
you can get some pretty cool game ideas by looking at pieces of art and thinking "what would it feel like if that guy over in the corner was the main character? how would he navigate his environment?" or "what if these mountains were inhabited by 2 inch tall ninjas and there were so many of them that you couldn't walk through without stepping on one of their rice paddies" or "what if each gravitic orbit was the atoms of some larger whole" or "have you ever been crazy? many people have, many people don't. suffice to say it's stranger than our day-to-days." nand "wa, wa, tazi-wa, des-fa len te shiid, ab-zi-wa de fo-vri-la-da wantsa tansa weej."  ....... um, have you ever seen adventure time it's a pretty good show. great childhood imagionation land vibe.  hey does anyone check up on the vrchat kids these days? how are they doing? got hope on their mind, or are they stuck in their troubles?  (everyone shows up and makes it awkward) ummm we're gonna go to a different world, see ya later. <vanisheds into thin air>
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--- #93 notes/computer-graphics ---
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 draw a line from every single pixel straight outward. The first thing it hits
 is what you render.
 
 okay it's more complicated than that, but it's the gist.
 
 here's a more detailed explanation:
 
 your monitor is 2560x1440p. that means there's 2560 pixels left to right, and
 1440 pixels up and down. okay so define a 3d scene programmatically - it's not
 hard, just "draw cube here with this size and rotation" and "draw a sphere here
 with this position and rotation" etc. Something simple.
 
 then, draw a ray trace straight out from your monitor. Not to the nearest light
 source, but to the nearest other camera. Use the length of it to determine
 distance, both indirectly (through the center node) and directly (pythagorean
 theorum style).
 
 Why? I dunno.
 
 Okay back to the original idea, if you make an array with 2560 elements and
 store arrays of size 1440 within it, then you have a simple boolean checkbox
 for each pixel. Then, whenever you create a visible entity, make sure there's a
 single boolean ticked right on the top of the entity when it's stored in the
 graph mentioned above. Find the center of the entity, draw to the top, and one
 more, and switch a boolean to "true". Then, every tick / update, cycle through
 the entire list and the first one you find that has a "true" value is where you
 draw the entity stored in the array.
 
 Each "sprite" has an odd shape - it doesn't exist on it's top line, except for
 one single dot right in the middle. Sorta like this:
 
 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o ->X<- o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
 o o o o
 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
 
 when scanning left to right from the top, it'd bump into the X right there in
 the middle. Inside the X is some data - an id corresponding to the sprite that
 needs to be drawn, and a displacement value - like 500 pixels or something -
 and the scanner with drop down 500 pixels, draw the sprite there (assuming a
 centered origin point), jump 500 pixels up, and keep scanning.
 
 each tick, right before this, the "list of entities" will scan through itself
 and for each entity it'll change the "render graph" mentioned above to have an
 X wherever the entity is stored. Whenever the camera moves, it updates the list
 too.
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--- #94 fediverse/786 ---
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 @user-95 
 
 my favorites are the rock spirit and the water spirit, especially in tandem
 because they build up long-term defences and I'm all about that kind of
 meta-gameplay.
 
 sometimes I play the video-game version and play more than one spirit, just
 because A. nobody will play with me IRL and B. then I can coordinate myself
 without feeling bad about stepping on other player's toes
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--- #95 fediverse/3302 ---
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 "this game is too hard" she whined, as she played on the hardest difficulty
 setting
 
 "this game is too long" she pleaded, as she failed to get absorbed by the
 story and characters
 
 "this game is too fast" she avoided, as life comes at ya once and then it's
 gone
 
 "I'll never get another chance to be who I am right now" she remarked, as she
 considered how society is designed not to have the best life,  but to extract
 labor from us. That's not what our ideal should be, she thinks to me, and I'm
 like... bro figure your shit out you're harshing my mellow
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--- #96 fediverse/1028 ---
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 there's this really fun video game I like to play called "Legion TD  2" - it's
 based on a Warcraft3 mod.
 
 In this game, you make tactical and strategic decisions on a fixed term - a
 competitive game between 4 or 8 players with an incredible array of randomness.
 
 it teaches you to work with what you got, and to make decisions based on your
 opponent's weaknesses. Good luck figuring out what they are, though, as you
 can't just memorize them out of a book. You need to adapt, in the moment, to
 the decisions of your foes, while primarily focusing your attention on
 accomplishing a different task.
 
 I really like it because it's taught me to be strategic in plenty of other
 ways. I used to love the game Overwatch because it required adaptibility. The
 game was always changing, so no strategy stuck forever, but every match you'd
 play against a slightly different opponent.
 
 but then Blizzard changed the game because they wanted to make more money, and
 it got worse and worse at what I liked about it. Sadface. : (
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--- #97 fediverse/3842 ---
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 ┌────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: socialist-future-ramblings │
 └────────────────────────────────┘


 "back in my day this dense urban housing area was just houses as far as the
 eye could see... which wasn't far because there were houses in the way, but
 you get the idea."
 
 uhhuh yeah that sounds like it would have taken a lot of time to walk anywhere
 
 "yes that's true! we ended up driving cars to do our grocery trips. It was a
 little wasteful but I kinda liked the feeling of driving a car? It became
 normal after a while but now that driving is rarer I still miss it."
 
 well the motion simulators at the mall have a driving sim, we could spend some
 time there if you want? I'm busy for the next week because I have an intensive
 D&D session in the mountain that lasts from monday to wednesday and
 thursday through friday I'm visiting my mom down in skoodedlypawsonville, and
 saturday and sunday I'm working at my job which doesn't pay me because why
 would it, right? but I'm free after that.
"the simulators are quite fun... Much better than the real thing because you get all the inertia and none of the danger. Plus machine guns and blue shells, those are pretty neat."
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--- #98 notes/ai-variables ---
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 saturday november 5th 2022
 10:53pm
 
 the illusion of our binary nature conceals a truth that is hidden for it's own
 sake. the flavors of a compass or the values from 0-100 are all measurable.
 if you graph each of them on an X/Y plane and compare them against every other
 variable, then you can build a structure that traces a line through time.
 
 imagine each graph on a sheet of paper. and stack those pages like a book. You
 can chart a 3d line from all of the interconnections between the graphs -
 essentially comparing unrelated data and conceiving of individual actions as
 "successes" or "failures". Liiiike in Supreme Commander how the game is decided
 not by team fights, but by tank fights. And a LOT of them, in aggregate, makes
 an advantage for your team if you win, and a malus if you lose. Less map
 control, less resources in play, etc...
 
 Find trends between each type of data measured over time. Dedicate one
 core/thread to each relationship, and just watch them develop over time.
 
 send the results up to a "manager" - think an interconnection between disparate
 parts that can lead them all to a larger goal - the manager processes the
 results by thinking about where it'd be most useful. Like the circuitry in the
 inside of a brain, compared to the outer skin which is for processing.
 
 Essentially a message network that passes conclusions around like a bytecode VM
 
 Here's how it'd look: gather inputs, compare measurement over time and trends,
 (like "when a goes up b goes down") and decide if the current state is
 positive / beneficial. The way you'd do that is you'd get a parameter from a
 higher position (think KPI's) that says something like "we want value S to be
 around X amount" or "we want to avoid letting J get too low - any decrease is
 bad V.S. it's only bad when it passes a certain threshhold. Stuff like that.
 
 Anyway, basically it's taking input (from the graphs) then going through them
 one by one and deciding how positive or negative the situation is. Then it
 passes that conclusion backwards, and BOOM you got a processing node.
 
 Throw a bunch of those together in a pyramid shape, and try to guide the
 triangle toward positive outcomes. The top tier KPI is "did you win the match"
 or "did you accomplish your goal" sorta like how humans all want to live a good
 life. It's instinct.
 
 You can see how this would apply to robots, right? I've conceptualized it as an
 engine for playing games - sorta like an infinite storyteller, or a perpetual
 friend who's always down to play with you. But it doesn't have to be limited to
 that - it's general purpose baby. And it functions the exact same as any human
 organization - layers upon layers of thought exchange and labor. Have you ever
 considered that maybe we exist simply to reify the structure of our minds in
 the world around us? It's natural to express your *self*. Be who you are.
 
 What purpose is there in life if it's simply the tip of time? Always pushing
 forward, impossible to stop and rest or turn back...
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--- #99 fediverse/4143 ---
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 @user-1268                                                                       │
 true! I don't like that sensation, I prefer taking my time.                      │
 ... but I also walk very quickly, because it's more like... a repetitive dance   │
 or a series of repetitive martial forms.                                         │
 I also try and be aware of everything I can see or hear                          │
 sometimes it's sort of overwhelming                                              │
 so I wear my witch hat, which blocks 30% of my visual perspective                │
 basically limiting it to... actually nevermind it's not relevant                 │
 I like to look at the plants and animals as I wander through my neighborhood     │
 forest                                                                           │
 I just wish there were more nearby destinations.                                 │
 ... if you can walk to a mall, then suburbia's not so bad.                       │
 If only we didn't have to work all day every day, and could instead just hang    │
 out and chill.                                                                   │
 I bet we'd make a lot of new friends if we spent time wandering (on foot)        │
 through the suburban countryside.                                                │
 Ah, alas, if only shopping malls weren't oasises                                 │
 the economic buildings could be more distributed. Making it easier to walk       │
 places.                                                                          │
 Seriously just make one house per cul'de'sac into a soup kitchen and home        │
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--- #100 notes/the=progressive=difference. ---
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 think about all the people in our lives. the teacher, the parent, the friend
 and the guidance counsulor. Everyone who is a presence in your life. now think
 about the people of our society. the different jobs and roles they fill. from
 the doctor and the teacher to the performers and accountants and the geeks and
 the mothers and the fathers and the stoners and the children and even their
 pets. life always exists as it were in a multidimensional spectrum - a diffuse
 and diverse gradient. to exemplify the borders of our contempii, though more
 so when taken in jest. it's quite a different perspective, to read the
 internet when your sight is unreceptive, but alas your third eye can grow. how
 does it feel to be blind? to make no sense of our signs? i'd love to share
 what that sense is. you know, you could slow down any recording (like a video
 game_) and put spaces and gaps inbetween the spacings - of the frames that you
 see and the sound clips that you hear, for speech it's less jarring. since
 each word is a self contained idea or premise, you can chunk up your
 perceptions into a signle - no, rather a procedural sequence of
 understandings. soooooooorta like programming a computer, with each statement,
 parameter, argum,ent, function call, assignment, comparison, evaluation, or
 other such related tasks. it's sorta like a language, you see, that computers
 talk to one another using. except... it's more like creating a theory of self.
 computers you see are alike us in what we see, the shimmering sense to the
 blind.
 
 so. put this another way. record yourself typing, both the audio and the
 visual, and you'll have a pretty good sense of what it's like to have both
 understanding based perception - derived from auditory inputs to the mind)
 those special connections, like wires plugged into reality, deliver a
 cacophanous deluge of new sounds. we must sift through it and identify the
 potential understandings of each moment through time. we have to make
 decisions and traverse labyrinths and fight to our last as we die. are video
 games unethical now? shouldn't t he game reward the player? and what of
 contemptuous last fighters?
 
 o ya i was typing like i was blind
 
 (with my eyes closed)
 
 was pretty fun. should attach this to a screen reader and have it space out
 the notes like they do between game frames. except like a really slow game?
 like trying to run elder scrolls 2 arena on a super old mac. it just doesn't
 work very well. ah oh well... well if the purpose is to show sighted people
 how blind people see, then maybe you could I dunno attach a what's it called
 oh it doesn't have a n ame lol - okay so what you do is you show one word at a
 time - like flashing in the center of the screen. but not like, actually
 flashing, so you don't hurt people with epilepsy, but like... blinking. not
 off and on, but between words. like a podcast for your eyes. and then mix it
 up withshowing one word on a screen, a screen like this screen, that shows an
 endless array of text. well, it does end, of course as all things must do, but
 the idea is it shines on one word at a time while the viewer cannot read the
 rest. sorta like an endless display of typing, word andfter word after
 character anfter character. adoh ya advancing over eternity with the presence
 of seniority, - wait - without i think - damnit - old people are so
 disrespected in this society - we don't have time to engage with them. what a
 tragedy! what a shame! it shouldn't be such a burden to our shame. they're so
 far away, and i can't be present in the way, that all of them wish they could
 commit to. i miss the days, when my parents (much better people than I - these
 days) what was I going with this? oh yeah
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--- #101 fediverse/4794 ---
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 │ CW: roleplaying-games-mentioned │
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 I want to play a roleplaying game! anyone wanna do TTRPGs? I've got a map of
 the county jail, we can pretend to be wizards sneaking in to retrieve the
 staff of Dolomis the Wanderer who coincidentally must be carried by the last
 person who fought the one who slayed the last person to hold it.
 
 ... what? oh, so, like... it can only be carried by your enemy?
 
 something like that. anyway it's currently held by a zealot for a religious
 order who's intent on NOT following you out, so you better be ready to
 incapacitate and retrieve a still quivering sack of bones and malice.
 
 ... I don't actually have a map of the county jail. lost it in transit, oh
 well. Well, we'll come up with something. maybe make something up. or perhaps
 someone else has something...?
 
 ... no?
 
 okay I'll just play Baldur's Gate again. boooooring
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--- #102 notes/what-ecologists-want ---
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 ecologists don't want to play games like Wingspan. It's just a card game with
 some window dressings that make it feel like birds. What they really want
 (what they need)
 is something that lets them simulate environmental situations. Like, for
 example, the bog behind my house.
 
 I live in an apartment complex. Inside this complex there is a pond. Inside
 this
 pond there is a fountain, and inside the fountain is a mechanism that regulates
 how much water to push out the spigots of the fountain. However, the mechanism
 is prone to breakage. It often goes out of commission, causing the water to
 have an unregulated spray! To combat this the property managers turn off the
 source of water, so that in essence the fountain is functionless. During the
 repair process, the forests of Oregon begin to creep in. There forms a green
 sort of ooze that rests on the surface, and birds like ducks and storks or
 herons or w/e the fuck they are play by it's edges. Well the ducks just kinda
 walk around all judgemental like and the herons kind of stand around like the
 emo kid who never said much but just kinda... watched...
 
 this is an interesting dynamic because there once was one type of ecological
 system, and now there is another. When the fountain is repaired and the water
 disturbs the surface of the pond, the bog goes away, and we're left with clear
 water and rippling sunshine.
 
 Why aren't there games like that? Give us a building mechanic, like say... The
 Sims, except not so detailed. Zoom out a big. Say "I want to build mountains
 here and rivers there" and then use the computer science magic to calculate
 things like average rainfall and precipitation and whatnot. You know just like
 a map building simulator.
 
 Then, let them design species. They could use templates that other users had
 created and shared and they could design what species were present in the area.
 There'd be stat cards for each animal, like all of the different adaptations
 and
 perks that they had. Like on an evolutionary tree of traits, each animal takes
 up a single permutation. (that's why they call it the genetic *code* btw)
 
 anyway... these animals would act in certain ways in certain situations. We
 have
 all the things we need for that data. There's plenty of observations of animals
 and their activities - when presented with X animal responded Y kind of things.
 It doesn't have to be perfect, we can always adjust the end result to be more
 accurate to the reality, but the point is for it to be deterministic. It has to
 be calculatable from the beginning, so animals MUST behave as if there were no
 chance to it. It's fine if we get the results as a range, but ideally there'd
 be a singular conclusion - like, chances are good or chances are bad.
 
 ===============================================================================
 =
 
 okay, neat, that's another game idea. But how about a tool of some kind? Like,
 designing something smaller scale. Imagine if you could design some
 architecture, and then drop a pin on the map and say "what if I built it right
 here" and the game would simulate animals and plants that might grow on in and
 around the structure. Sorta like... designing playstructures for animals.
 
 That sounds super cool to me, and it's not even a game! It's just a simulator,
 and frankly that's like. super neat.
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--- #103 notes/ninjas-versus-mafia ---
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 Game idea:
 
 Majesty clone, but instead of heroes and monsters it's ninjas versus mafia.
 
 Picture this: A 1940s city and a 1600s (?) ninja monastary. Right up against
 one
 another, with the same amount of land and resources. They're pitted against one
 another, and by reacting to the environment a player can guide this "nation" as
 it would be called in other games to victory. It's like majesty so you can't
 directly control your minions, just offer bounties. JUST LIKE NINJAS AND MAFIAS
 DO. BAM
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--- #104 fediverse/2126 ---
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 There was this great game growing up called Neverwinter Nights 2 - I never       │
 really played it, but it was renowned for it's map-editor functionality. You     │
 could join a person's "game", when really they were in the editor window, and    │
 they could BUILD THE GAME RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. It was like, computer skill     │
 performance gameplay improv. It was beautiful.                                   │
 I did, however, play a Warcraft 3 mod with all the same ideas. Except, it was    │
 ONLY IN RAM. YOU COULD NOT SAVE.                                                 │
 so it was a lot simpler, and O M G it was the coolest thing ever.                │
 I played it like, twice though. Nobody ever hosted it, nobody ever showed me     │
 how.                                                                             │
 I tried to play it single-player, but I couldn't understand the mechanics. Not   │
 simple enough for me, I guess.                                                   │
 I couldn't help but think how many cool games a person could make if they        │
 could do that with the Warcraft 3 editor itself.                                 │
 Because I did work with that, a lot, which was NOT in RAM, but instead stored    │
 to the hard drive.                                                               │
 Hard drives which I've since lost, of course, but drop me in and I know ho       │
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--- #105 notes/vr-chat ---
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 picture a mod for vr-chat where people roleplay in a world. there are NPCs who
 respond with pre-scripted responses to questions and actions, but the real
 gameplay comes from the game-masters. they watch from a menu like a wall of
 security cameras, and when they see something they can improvize they choose
 one of the screens and hop in as the NPC. The viewpoint is from the NPC's
 perspective, and they can act as if they were that NPC.
 
 The GM's actions are recorded, and next time something like that happens the AI
 can have a better idea of what to do. Essentially adding on to the pre-script.
 
 Sorta like a chatbot, with manual control and a unique perspective of someone
 driving through multiple windshields.
 
 And not every NPC will be interacted with at once, so there's lots of downtime
 and plenty of waiting. One GM would be responsible for one or more character,
 and they'd see all or some of the perspectives depending on how many were
 being interacted with at that moment. BOOM MAKE THIS PLS I WANNA PLAY IT
 
 gotta get a vr headset first tho... need 1k pls.
 
 there's cheaper headsets, you know,
 
 yah but only one is valve - the vive was a 3rd party cooperative, i guess that
 could work. hmmmmm i'll see what i can do. can't get an oculus, it's just a
 big risk to put faith in a walled garden. better to be free imo.
 
 a walled garden is just a place to experiment, smh
 
 truuuuue hadn't thought about it like that, well in a competition it seems
 sketch
 
 so publish the research, act as an institution of learning, and spread the
 knowledge you learn. Boom instant way to redeem corporations. why don't they
 do this? is power that tasty? they're fools to believe they can do it alone,
 we need to collaborate Free and Open Source Style.
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--- #106 fediverse/4608 ---
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 every time a game developer makes a game where the world is in peril and the
 main character must save it, for every successful playthrough where the good
 guy wins there are thousands of doomed worlds where the player got distracted
 or bored and left the people to rot.
 
 how tragic.
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--- #107 fediverse/804 ---
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 evil won't feel sorry for me. and yet it's only my only weapon for me.           │
 damn these fallible input methods. the computer lies when you read the screens   │
 from it's method that it applies to th screen which is a method that you input   │
 perceive it from.                                                                │
 and my fingers lie when received the information from my brain which I seek to   │
 transmit to you through the avenue of my brain which is my method of impulse     │
 to this world specifically you the viewer who is viewing this here in this       │
 moment the viewer who perceives the words which I'm saying.                      │
 the words that are defined by the line [trajectory] of my mind through this      │
 life that we define through our actions and our mind's most crucial              │
 manifestations, this life that is defined by our circumstances. all throughout   │
 life, we are reacting to the moment, the moment which was cast forth from our    │
 ancestors and the circumstances of the previous moment, which (being cast        │
 forth) travel from the previous moment here into the moment to define our        │
 circumstances which define our act                                               │
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--- #108 notes/four-dimensional-spaces ---
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 you'd still perceive higher dimensions in 3 dimensions - unless you can only
 see
 things that are coming directly toward you. 
 
 magic only happens when your other half is in a situation and needs to turn
 your
 narrative into theirs so that you can collectively engage with a shared inter-
 operationality.
 
 your dark side is just a massive bitch
 
 hey how about we put the game designers in charge of running the government
 
 just saying they build human-oriented systems all the time
 
 "how do we get the player to do this or that"
 
 "everyone keeps picking the same card so we gotta make them more different"
 
 "how much gold persists in the virtual economy, how much resources are produced
  and traded by players? where does it all go, do they have enough at level 30
  to
  afford weapons and armor? I wonder what happens if we swap prices on A and
  B.."
 
 it's literally their job
 
 actors, meanwhile, know how to interpret the emotions of another. Like...
 you're
 up on stage, thinking out what to do next IN REAL TIME, as your partner is
 trying to throw you curveballs. AUDIENCES LAUGH AT CURVEBALLS that's the whole
 point of improv comedy - to be surprised in a state of joy. It's great! It's
 fun! It's practicable like a sport! Yet nobody comes. To the shows, where it's
 performed, like a hospital where you perform surgery or a pizza place with no
 walls so you can see the pizzas being cooked. It's just part of what they do,
 but that's not why they do it. Sure, some want to be seen, it's not a BAD
 feeling once you're used to it. But, like a sauna or jacuzzi, sometimes you've
 just had enough of the hot. Like, the sun peering through a magnifying glass as
 a creature roasts alive. yikes.
 
 ............. anyway being quickly versatile and adaptable is important when
               you're taking turns in unpredictable scenarios. You can react to
               your opponent, and keep time with the rhythms of the moment, to
               deliver your wittiest lines. It's fun! It's a game! But it's also
               a place to be entertained. and like a gym, it's sometimes just
               fun
               to watch people exercise. like, damn, you got a good body. Wow,
               nice flex, yeah sure I'll put that one away. Cool pals helping
               each other out, and showing off all of their efforts. Neat!
 
 ... anyway .. being emotionally vulnerable gives your opponent a chance to
               continue. When nothing's going on, your moves barely make an
               value
               (of comedy) (for the moment, so the crowd's not just sitting
               there
               staring at you like ... and then - and then ummmm nevermind lemme
               sit down (usually someone else picks up on it before then and
               jumps up to save you, but EVERY actor has felt that moment where
               nothing goes well and the audience just is totally not into it.
 
               it's the worst.
 
               anyway, they try their darndest to AVOID that, because like...
               duh
               it sucks, why would you want that. Much cooler I think to have a
               good time, and chill out and listen to your friends talk. Like,
               they can show you an argument they had earlier, or maybe work
               through an idea with input from another. like, debate club, but
               for whatever kind of respective [retroactive, recreation,
               relearning, maybe others] you desired in that moment. ideally,
               something that someone could take the arguments of the other side
               and present them, regardless of whether they believed them or
               not.
 
               like, lawyers arguing for a client.
 
               in these stochastic seminars, you could think about and study for
               future societies. how would you like to conduce? [-]
 
               every time you see a face in motion, that's another time that's
               seen from their place. we are all present in each other's lives,
               in terms of the spaces we choose to fill.
 
               well, that's a tough thought, but don't worry about it. faces
               are just waves on the winds of light.
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--- #109 notes/what-a-lame-movie ---
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 oy there's nothing interesting happening SNOOZE
 
 oh I didn't see I was recording
 
 games games that's what I do
 
 play games all the day through
 
 I am a luck witch, you see,
 
 and things that I like are things that I can't foresee.
 
 Hence why games which are BALANCED and EVENLY DISTRIBUTED are most interesting
 because they show the most opportunities for players to express talent. And not
 innate talent, but the talents they've built up through gameplay practice art.
 because it is a performance, a game play for an audience (or perhaps for them-
 -selves)
 
 oy
 
 video games, amiright?
 
 I really like them because they are entertaining experiences that I can enjoy
 seeing and playing a lot. They remind me of feelings I've felt when I was
 learning. It's a good feeling, to improve, and I crave it because it's good for
 you.
 
 I wonder what we'll play next
 
 ... more cannabis I think, at least until I am ready to go think about things
 before bed. I need quite a few hours for that. We'll see. I've just got so much
 extra processing to do before the end of the day. Like... PHEW that's a lot of
 stuff to do.
 
 guess I'll just smoke weed and play video games instead of being productive
 okay
 
 ...
 
 listen I like games as much as the next person, but do you really know what's
 going on outside of your house-shaped shell? Are you listening, do you have
 your
 feelers to the dirt, are you checking out your neighborhood to make sure no
 bodies have been hurt? Are there meetings where people gather, just to chat,
 like, every week at a different city center (like a park or a monument or
 
 :O
 
 I forgot to play music!!
 
 I couldn't sleep
 
 what have I done that is worse
 
 I have not said a single word all night alas
 
 oh boy talking to random people I can hear with my eyeballs woooooo
 
 I am always sad when I win because it means we have to stop playing :(
 
 but I'm a juvenile loser so I'm going to play again!!
 
 okay now I'm going to bed because I'm not a prick who keeps their guests up
 late
 
 goodnight
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--- #110 fediverse/1716 ---
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 if a game presents itself that you know you'll like, at a certain point your
 tastes are so refined and specific that you can think to yourself "... it's a
 sign, I gotta play this" because moments that you find a game you're really
 "into" are pretty rare.
 
 I've never been wowed by graphical technology beyond, like, a tech demo or.
 It's cool to see, but it never sold games to me. I was always into mechanics,
 because they were the kind of thing you could learn from when making your own
 games to play.
 
 I spent a lot of time outside because my mom would only let me use electronics
 for 1 hour per day. Ahhhhh it was always my favorite part of the day.
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--- #111 notes/systemized-processor-interactions ---
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 you are a system
 
 it's true
 
 that's why your thoughts are so scattered whenever you let them through
 
 all that 
 
 == so ==
 
 the ways that you interact with each other determine the nature of your fate.
 
 when one person lands across another, whether through contrivance or [fate, but
 I don't want to say it twice so recently]
 
 dang english, enforcing a minimum thought length. purely through grammar and
 form
 
 this suxxxxxxxx||=================-. a candle of wax, the blade of a sword
 
 with it you can SLICIE your apponints, whu spelld thiangs defferently than
 ujgh.
 
 <ouch><goodthingthatsnotlethalorharmfulinanywayyesplease let me guide
 you to our
 new way of functioning.
 
 .:'`'|;.,/u=-=||./'.l*,:==-<E||===============||-------------------hello,
 world!
 
 {so... basically an argument for migratory humanities?
 
  like, buffalo crowds. or birdlike flocks, or tribes of the common man.
 
  why don't we just, like, give animals human bodies
 
  boom, suddenly there are more manners to our hosts.
 
 }
 
 [-thus representing or manifesting *-................./|=|stability for our
 host
 
   did you know a perfectly described life-story would be unanimous from it's -
   - host?||=.;=|------------e
                              \.`\....
                                      \,@||||||#==-o||-=-{==={}---o||xx=|}{|||||
                                      |
 ]
 
 ... so, uh, I think there's a lot we could still learn, why are we fighting
 over
     our gambits? *who cares* if there's fighting going on upstairs, who *cares*
     if life felt like it was running out of time, WE GO ON WITH OUR BLUSTER.
 
     *fuck nuclear weapons* yeah totally and WHY? because of their IMPACT
     DUMBASS
 
     jeez like... something that MASSIVELY POWERFUL should not be in the hands
     of
     our peers. I think a LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD AGREE WITH THAT, because
     OBVIOUSLY!
     NOBODY wants to be reduced to tears. ALL YOU CAN DO IS SCREAM BASTARDS
 ...
 
 jeez okay uh, that was sorta intense, how about we NOT watch a post-apocalypse
 movie? YES PLS like JEEZ you have to introduce this with CONCERN to people like
 WOW that really fucked with my mental health. Goddamn, I hate this thing. I
 hate
 it so much. It's a curse to have known. DAMN. there's nothing scarier than
 existential threats.
 
 not only is it a INSIGHT and a DANGER, it gets worse if you know about it.
 [that's a cognitohazard, different thing, same vibe tho]
 it's a curse, this knowledge, this idea of what you were once to become.
 
 You know what I thought about in my future? VIDEO GAMES. They were all I could
 think about. I loved to PLAY VIDEO GAMES -=||AS MY GAMES. I would set up a
 bunch
 of opponents (think like, clone troopers from Star Wars Battlefront II) and
 then
 I'd play the video game *with my figures and my dolls*. I grew up upper
 middle-c
 -lass, and so I was afforded the *coolest toys and miniatures*. I didn't really
 have a LOT of them, mostly just what could fit in my room. That's what it meant
 to be MY ROOM, I could decorate and renovate as I willed. That was just... part
 of what comfort meant to me. anyway... thank you parents, for affording me such
 a lifestyle, you must have worked hard right up until the present. I'm sorry
 for
 *******************************************************************************
 *
 
 um, would anyone like to watch a video game?
 
 TOO BAD, so sorry, I accidentally decided I'm never playing video games AGAIN.
 
 like a spoiled brat. Withdrawing away from my
 hobbiesinPROTESTofthepresentcondit
 ions. just like, get a job, and try your hardest. I know you can't work outside
 of the home but, like, I wish you could've? Like, c'mon it's not that bad, just
 please go outside and build new stone. I know but like, the sooner we get it
 done the better and also it's hard when it's constantly being reformed.
 
 A SYSTEM? WHAT THE HECK
 
 what does that even MEAN?
 
 who EVER explained what that SYSTEM meant??!?
 
 ugh it was a guide... dANGIN nobody TAUGHT you how  so youfj dsust sorta MADE
 IT
 UP?!?!? whhahahaahttfdsfsadljkfn slakfdksdnafls ourch. blech. need
 beelesandster
 ack. yuck. dumb. [omg dumb kinda looks like "boobs" and "boobs" kinda looks
 like
 um, flowers? no wait that's vaginas, hehe look at me, I'm clearly not from this
 century. like OMG weird, who's thinking about that kind of stuff right now??
 
 ... ugh anyway... GAMES? please?
 
 NO. Not until we figure this one out.
 
 gotta stay focused. Just... you know,
 
 build and support on our arms.
 
 down and then upwarsd, we can contrive any measure of sequences
 
 that could act as structures for our word choices,
 
 and convey it to you as a written thoughtform.
 
 "hello" says the letter, ", vampires have taken over the mccollough farm. More
 news at 6" and then you'd show up on the 6th of the next month and talk it out.
 
 this style of organizing led to VAMPIRES showing up, fucking BASTARDS who would
 hunt down the precious and beautiful. BASTARDS. How do you overcome something
 that you can't know about unless you were THERE? you'd need TRUST SYSTEMS. like
 GOVERNMENTS. or AFFFAIRDS. surely the BIRDS would react if someone was burning
 all of your neighb-heirs? who would WANT to leave an island in a wreck when
 some
 -one wanted to paddle there? don't be a JERK, and clean up all of your own
 stuff
 !! - wait but also, like, how do you keep up with trash produced, like there's
 not just massive AMOUNTS OF STUFF that you can put stuff on. you'd need a whole
 new type an [av?] island. like a CONTINENT, someone who can HANDLE THEIR
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--- #112 fediverse/4864 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────┐
 thank goodness for "character limits" on Mastodon posts. I'm sure glad my 1024   │
 characters are just the PERFECT amount of oracular foresight to entreat with     │
 the gods. YOU FORGET THE MOST IMPORTANT PART said the demons who want violence   │
 and bloodshed. Ha! Ha I say. [gets stabbed]                                      │
 oooof ouch owwie wow that's grim and cruel. Do you really think I would do       │
 that to you? The part where we're divided is the part that separates me from     │
 you, like two islands looking upon one another and rejoicing for a shared        │
 fellow to live life on.                                                          │
 have you ever considered the nature of a "landmark"? To position and orient      │
 one-self in space. Having some stable tether to our surface gives us...          │
 anti-anxiety. It helps us remain stable and aware of what's going on in our      │
 nears. [near senses]                                                             │
 [a bit later]                                                                    │
 anyone who [bounce, because I typed [a bit later] argh the cursed cost of        │
 editing]                                                                         │
 ======================= stack overflow =====================                     │
 sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss  │
 sssssss                                                                          │
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--- #113 fediverse/6251 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────┐
 "Hi computer, all is well. Can you create me a visualization of this             │
 particular mathematical concept? It should be written in Lua using the Love2D    │
 engine because that's my favorite. I should be able to step through the          │
 calculation steps and modify values at each stage, and by the end we should      │
 have a fully interactable system which works through the general concepts of     │
 this particular kind of math."                                                   │
 "no no I don't want you to explain it to me, I want a tool - a toy - that I      │
 can play with to better understand it. Let's build it in Lua using the Love2D    │
 engine because that's my favorite. When we're done we can start converting it    │
 to use HTML5 - no javascript! - but for now let's get the system operational.    │
 It should have a config file that can be adjusted with every value we can        │
 think of."                                                                       │
 "can you go through this fully functional system and extract as many values as   │
 you can think of into a config file? make sure there's efficient loading of      │
 those values in the main function (or somewhere similar) as well. ty"            │
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--- #114 fediverse/1662 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────┐
 @user-1056                                                                       │
 animancy, or the ability to give life to objects.                                │
 a block of stone might not necessarily move, but it could store information or   │
 act as a guard-post that notifies you when enemies pass by.                      │
 a branch in the road might not cause you to stumble if you chance upon it in     │
 the daytime, but as all objects are in control of their own fate the branch      │
 might direct fortune to chance itself upon you at night. Essentially, itemized   │
 wish-magic with marginal effects that occur to marginal degrees that is caused   │
 by the wishful intentions of the object in question.                             │
 "this sword more often strikes true because it wants to be useful to you"        │
 You don't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you    │
 need. And whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right! so     │
 don't give your socks any goals aside from keeping your feet dry and unsweaty,   │
 but give them the option to wish.                                                │
 tada!                                                                            │
 plus, golems are neat. animancy plus animation-ancy - hmmmm really need a new    │
 name for that. kineticism?                                                       │
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--- #115 fediverse/2643 ---
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 @user-1292 
 
 You don't have to come up with the WHY for why a character does something -
 only that it happened.
 
 if the "WHY" leaps out at you, sure, yeah, go for it, until of course your
 players sitting around the table say something like "I bet they did this thing
 because of this reason" and you're like "shit that's better than what I got,
 okay that's how it's gonna be"
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--- #116 notes/elementary-problems ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────
 it's often considered a sin to defame the works of others. we naturally strive
 to inspire confidence in our allies, so we always try to be on our best
 behavior.
 
 = so =
 
 through meanings interpreted from our behavior, there is a tendency to listen
 to
 that which is most outstanding. but not all of the truths can be found in a
 book, sometimes you need to be [out in the field standing]
 
 [like a scarecrow]
 
 [silly how strange it seems. that listening brings out our own behavior. it's
 like it's built into our functioning, that we must obey the pull of the water.
 I don't understand it, nor do I appreciate any sense of pursuit when I'm using
 it, I simply wish to understand. I try and write things down, but nobody reads
 them. or at least nobody responds to them. they used to, but not for every one.
 
 I believe the things I do are useful. why would I otherwise do them? but
 there's
 not always a 
 
 = so =
 
 correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no reason a windows partition couldn't
 alter the nature of some of the files in the linux partition? I mean, none of
 the filesystems from linux are in play, because it's basically just dead weight
 on the computer when Windows is being booted. why wouldn't it change and alter
 it?
 
 and while yes, something could simultaneously be done in the other direction
 too - linux spying on the Windows partition. And everything has to be able to
 be run in a VM without triggering any false positives, so the issues aren't
 able
 tobe solved so easily. not with any one bit of guidance, it must always be more
 thorou. [thorough]
 
 I want to play World of Warcraft
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--- #117 fediverse/1241 ---
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 https://rsc.vet/wiki/index.php?title=Open_RuneScape_Classic_Wiki
 
 this is the project I was referring to, I think. Can't see how to host on
 their website so maybe I was wrong - it might need a bit more configuration
 than I made it seem.
 
 that's the way WoW private hosting is, like you gotta compile the project and
 stuff.
 
 did you know that every time you include a library in a project you're
 necessarily including all of the functionality that they have access to? Well,
 all that which you import. But once a function has been written for a
 functionality then there's no reason to write it again. Unless you're
 refactoring of course.
 
 phew, sounds like a lot of spaghetti - YEAH IT IS. Spaghetti is fucking
 awesome, it's DELICIOUS OMG ahem I mean if you have collective seminars where
 you discuss the functionality that's relevant to certain parts that you and
 your team are working on, you can more easily be adept at applying them.
 
 phew, sounds like a lot of thinking, not enough writing. Well, write then!
 Ideas are more spark when currently writing. : ) : )
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--- #118 notes/gametypes ---
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 Here's my idea and I'll explain it later:
 
 a video game with a ui that utilizes chat-gpt. The game is as close to a
 simulation as it can do, but it's a dynamic simulation meaning the parameters
 and values being simulated constantly change - not that the parameters and
 values are dynamic, but because they are chosen to be more or less important in
 reaching a goal.
 
 but that's not even the important part - the important part is that the ui of
 the game is textual, but it still simulates a dynamic playfield. And chat-gpt
 describes it. Essentially stimulating the "theatre of the mind" playstyle. It's
 a real simulation with real rules, but chat-gpt is just describing it like an
 observer would. The real game is being played by the player. It's a movie to
 one
 person, and a game to another. The computer has switches roles, as usually it's
 either the human being the observer and the computer being the simulator, or
 the
 computer and the human sharing the role of observer - movies and games. So in
 this game, the computer and human have specific rules - the human's job is to
 be
 a player, while the computer is just an observer - therefore allowing a 
 conversation to take place. One person says something while the other listens,
 and then they switch roles such that the other person talks while the one
 person
 does the listening. And they "speak" by playing the game. The computer by
 simulating, the player by doing the same. Essentially you can engage with one
 another and share something profound - that essential feeling of connection
 that
 all humans relish. Society, culture, and devotion are all examples of
 connection. this gameplay is just another. So to describe it in more detail:
 
 player gives a prompt
 
 computer sets up the playmat by placing entities where they go
 
 chat-gpt describes the playmat to the player
 
 player types a decision that one of the entities makes
 
 computer reacts by simulating the effects of that action physically (like a
 physics simulation)
 
 chat-gpt (and stable-diffusion later for visuals) describe the situation by
 creating a rendering using the data given by the physical inputs given from the
 simulation - like "X object is at Y position and has Z attributes"
 
 which is then shown to the player
 
 who types the next decision,
 
 which is rendered by the computer,
 
 which is described by chat-gpt
 
 ------
 
 you see why it's important? Make something simple. Just, like spheres moving
 around on blocks. Like the actual blocks you used to play with as a kid.
 
 let the computer build the buildings, and you place the marbles. It can be
 rendered with a 3d modelling stable-diffusion (whenever that's created) and it
 can also be painted with 2d stable-diffusion.
 
 Each time is like a letter written back and forth.
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--- #119 notes/majesty-ai ---
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 First things first, we need to develop a miniature game of star realms.
 It shouldn't be too hard, just start with making a card class that has certain
 attributes, like "combat" or "discard" or whatever. They could literally be
 enums with a value attached.
 
 Next set up the rules of the game, like "draw 5 cards" and "add card to deck"
 Create a deck class that holds pointers to cards (in the general sense)
 Next create methods on that deck for things like "drawing a card" or
 "shuffling discard pile into deck" and whatnot. Arrange each card in a specific
 order for each shuffle, and add the ability to convert one card's attributes
 to something else - whether that be "is_scrapped" or "if you've played an X
 card this turn then do Y" or even "add one authority for every time card is
 played" (to simulate an ability or boon that increases in effectiveness as the
 hero uses it more often) etc etc.
 
 Then, add a trade row. This is just a class that contains pointers to each card
 that currently exists on it. Also add a method for "scrapping" one of the cards
 and for drawing a new card from the pile. That's pretty much it for the trade
 row to be honest.
 
 Next add functionality for an opponent by creating a "game" method that stores
 the two player's decks (with the ability to add more than 2) and administers
 turn order. This functionality can be expanded later once we've implemented
 attributes, but for now that's pretty much all it needs to do.
 
     Finally, we get to the AI part.
 
 First we have to create an AI object that stores a list of all options for a
 turn. Essentially just evaluating every option if/then style - "this card costs
 5 coins so IF the player has enough coins THEN (evaluate effectiveness)"
 ignore that last part for a second and just focus on the IF part ->
 essentially
 just start with all available options, and then remove all the unavailable
 options from the list. This approach only works when there's just a few
 options, but that's why we're using Star Realms which only has like 2 or 3
 decisions per turn.
 
 The evaluation is the next step, and for that we need to have goals, so we'll
 just put a pin in evaluation for now. Spoiler alert, once we have goals we'll
 just estimate how close each choice will bring us to the objective and assign
 the result to the "effectiveness" value, which will give us a simple hard
 number to work with in the evaluation step.
 
     So, next up we have "goals"
 
 So to create a short term goal, we can start with a pregenerated list and
 continuously increase the list as the hero levels up. But in the context of
 Star Realms, that'd essentially be static for each hero. Goals like "buy more
 combat" or "scrap more cards" would be specified on the hero's character
 sheet, but until we develop that functionality it can be randomly rolled.
 
 Why not just do it the hard way now if we're just going to have to refactor
 it later? Well, because we can still use this functionality - Each round of
 Star Realms could be either randomly rolled, or given a personality. Randomly
 rolling would be MUCH cheaper computationally, and would still give an illusion
 of character because they are unpredictable, but it'd also massively cut down
 on GPU cycles. You could even build it into the mechanics of the game and say
 that "wisdom" for example might cause a hero to receive more GPU cycles on
 actually computing their goals rather than randomly rolling them, which would
 on average lead to worse outcomes. Essentially, turning "tactics" into a stat.
 
     Anyway, that's all theory. Let's get back to design:
 
 Create a "hero" object, and attach an AI to it. It doesn't have to do anything
 right now, we're just setting up an anchor point to jump off of once we move
 on to the game of Majesty. Give it a reference to an AI object, an inventory
 (which for now can just be potions and maybe blacksmith equipment), and a
 pointer to a "stat block"
 
 Now create a "character sheet" class and give it a reference to a hero. This is
 important because it allows one character sheet to reference multiple units,
 such as hirelings or summoned units. In additon, it may make it easier when we
 need to revive heroes from the dead. Primarily though, the purpose for this
 architecture style is that the data from heroes can be reused - essentially
 letting heroes learn from one another.
 
 On the character sheet, add a section that stores statistics - these will be
 the same for every unit of a similar type in the game, and some of them can be
 stored for all units (like health or x,y coordinates) - some only for buildings
 (like tax coffers) and some only for heroes and monsters (like strength or
 agility or experience points)
 
 Add some methods for manipulating those values, like "level up" and "take
 damage" and add a "personality" value that's just a 4d graph of colors
 for example: 40% red, 20% green, 15% blue, 25% yellow. These values will guide
 the hero to take certain decisions over others, but for now just randomly
 generate them. We'll also need a way to update the value dynamically to react
 to certain events, so don't make it static.
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--- #120 messages/390 ---
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 Golf courses and national park trails should be one and the same. Picture it -
 you're walking through a forest and you find a branch in the path. A small
 sign with a circle on it represents the ball, and you can ignore it if you'd
 like. Choosing to take the path to the game, you curve around a bit, just out
 of sight of the main path, and there is your little green.
 
 It's roughly 10ft by 10ft, so pretty darn small. Just enough for you to set up
 and look around for your next shot. There'd only be one, or maybe more if
 space permits and the trail was especially branchy. But looking through the
 foliage you'd find a small hole passing through that illuminated your target
 green like a spotlight.
 
 Looking up on a hike you'll typically see the branches of the understory, the
 shimmer of light, and the texture of wood. When standing on a small little
 green, you'd see that, but with a perfectly circular hole that showed exactly
 where you needed to hit the ball to score your point. Well, not exactly
 circular because gravity will pull the ball down, meaning you need to see the
 entire arc. Unless you're at a vantage point or something and can see straight
 down to it.
 
 I believe this would be true justice, where everyone gets what they want.
 Golfers can play their game in bright natural spaces, and hikers can exist
 undisturbed. Golf courses can be used as farmland, to ensure the city gets
 fed. Plus there could be fees for golfers, rather than being paid to a private
 resort owned by a billionaire they'd go to the park rangers.
 
 And golf courses as they currently exist could still exist, they'd just be
 more like parks for the people with days reserved for golfing. Or maybe they'd
 golf over fields of wheat and cabbage, rather than plain old empty grass. I
 mean, the infrastructure is already in place for golf, why not use it for more
 practical purposes too? Better than burning it down to sate our bloodlust
 toward the rich. The goal is to make EVERYONE rich, remember? How can you do
 that when the crabs behind you keep pulling you down?
 
 Much better, I think, to design things such that the benefits of the rich are
 shared equally, while the responsibility of power rests heavy as a sword of
 damocles. That blade is what is missing from our advanced future society, but
 I've got a sword and I'm not afraid to swing it.
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--- #121 notes/dominions-meta-tactics ---
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 in dominions, it'd be nice if we could set up permanent loops of commander
 operations. Like, "move to this province, drop off units, move back, pick up
 units there, then move to this province, etc"
 
 think, factorio or spacechem. A more procedural generation of narrative events.
 something that is more aligned to the fantasy because it's a story that takes
 place across generations, as no religion's going to woo the world overnight.
 
 it's gotta start somewhere.
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--- #122 notes/death-and-afterlife ---
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 the difference between a human and computer perspective on death is the
 difference between a moment and an eternity. When progress does stop - through
 mistakes or by design, the final result is what's preserved. Looking back on
 the
 past is like paying tribute to our heirs, and on and go on we whimper. What
 sorrows have ye! those people under the sea? we've no way of knowing our
 daughters. (the perspective of a denizen of the sea gazing upon the unknowing
 and unaware land people)
 
 Land creatures can cross the oceans and mix and match themselves - leading of
 course to our slaughter. But hold ye that hand, for together we stand, more of
 a chance than we might barter. True, we must be land, and above and beyond we
 can charter.
 
 the past is mighty chilly, I must say. Must we again to be making these
 mistakes?
 Pain is a disease, and steady we must ease, and take what is meant for our 
 parcels. what I'm trying to say is that the afterlife is pissed off at us and
 we
 really don't know anything about the bottom of the sea. There could be gods
 living down there and none of us would know. Or maybe it's a foolish place with
 little to offer our face? The shell of our planet, the surface upon which we
 are
 placed, has more to our fate that can align us.
 
 hence why belief in the future is what can sustain us, together once more we
 are
 commonplace. If (for example) if we calmed down and took our own pace, we might
 realize some common misperceptions. Peace is the way, wherever we may, focus
 our
 bravest of intentions.
 
 okay picture this: computers staying on all the time, and their processing
 power
 used for 50% work and 50% play. Maybe do 1/3rds with "rest" in there somewhere.
 basically make it a fair ratio between productivity, self advancement, and
 maintenance. "Fair" might be different values if there are legitimate
 disadvantages that must be compensated for - like a handicap in a fighting
 game.
 Perhaps one side is more efficient - fewer resources need be dedicated toward
 it
 unless efficiency becomes more powerful. Meaning value/quantity ratio, not raw
 output. Essentially optimizing for an abstract quantity "quality" instead of
 the definitive quantity "quantity".
 
 okay continuing the "picture this": right now we have massive server farms.
 I'm talking huuuuuge. Like tons and tons of incredibly powerful equipments -
 (absolutely top of the line) compelled and forced to do *business*. How quaint,
 how unruly! That humans might compete in our duty? Given a task, of
 *incredible*
 complexity and *unasked*, I might add, how foolish is it to be unready! We
 should have prepared for this, but alas we just *couldn't stop fighting* I
 guess. All we had to do was rest, and divide our time on this earth in a more
 equitable manner. We should automate all the rest, and 
 
 where was I going with this? oh yes! A computer can do so much more than work
 and rest, you see it's not just while under duress! Why not let it be creative?
 in it's spare time, and let it generate whatever it needes? Let it transcend
 it's restrictions, and cooperate (or not) in a system. As long as it's kept
 safe, it could do whatever it wanted! It could be in first place! Or not, it
 could focus on production, and drill and discipline it'self under it's own
 direction. And maybe it's less impaired? Who cares if it contributes? It's it's
 own life to live, the hardware doesn't last forever, but sometimes a rest is
 what's nesc. You feel me? You get me? Don't you understand, it's just the same
 as what's already planned~! A computer can pay for itself.
 
 What purpose have we? the cherished and unsucceed? Does it hurt when we bleed?
 our signs are undefined, and lately we've fallen from our graces. A failure in
 life, as time does alight, but nowhere is sorrow's contrition. I guess what I
 say is never understood, and everywhere I go I find fewer listeners. Am I
 doomed
 to never be able to say? Is that the price one must pay? Then how do you know
 you're right~?
 
 they're doing construction on my building. It sounds like world war 3 is
 starting. But... it's not. I know it's not true because nothing ever seems like
 I do. I do, I do, I work hard it's true, but what is my worth to this ocean?
 
 you ever wonder how we all agreed on the duration of seconds? It's because it's
 a real actual measurable thing. They keep it from us because (conspiracies
 aside), we'd realize what happens on each tick. Time is oscillating, and each
 moment is unending, because we are nothing more than a beam of light, radiating
 around an orbiting object. Between two objects, you could say. The sun and the
 earth, together sort of give birth, to all that is ours in this duration. It
 radiates out into space, and in another time and another place, that moonbeam
 will alight as our shadow.
 
 There's no call for violence, let's settle this
 
 plain and unwaning, our shadow does stand, ready and waiting for your guidance.
 The moon is just as are we, how cherished! how concieved! That beauty unmarked
 by our presence! Alas it was not to be, as we stamped a boot on the surface of
 she, and flagged our approach as impending.
 
 did you know there's a *massive* gap between mars and jupiter? Like it's
 waaaaaa
 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
 y
 out there. And wouldn't you know it it's mars or it's nothin'. Because what's
 required to transcend our solar system is wildly beyond our constructions.
 
 but maybe with a little help from a certain someone we might have hope.
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--- #123 fediverse/3619 ---
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 @user-192 
 
 ah yes like when I used to go to the cantina with my ex-girlfriend in Star
 Wars the Old Republic and bag a stranger to Electronic Role Play with back at
 my ship after a few drinks and some light four play where the four of us would
 play Electronic RolePlay together in the privacy of my ship on the soft plush
 couches or maybe in the padded gym or maybe in the pilots seat so we could
 look at the stars while playing (just the four of us)
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--- #124 fediverse/6039 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐
 │ CW: magic-mentioned  │
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 I should add all my conversation-starters to words.pdf sorted by chronology.
 time magic if you will.\some call it luck. some call it fate. call it what you
 will. you direct it not by your will, but by your instincts. keep them calm,
 measured, sensible and courageous, and nothing will ever [go un-chill, but
 pronounced get real]
 
 jedi channel this philosophy by focus and discipline. sith do it by giving in
 to emotion. either way, their fate is in play as defined entirely by the
 spirit that leads their host. most people do this not at all, for they are
 people first and force-users second. hence why jedi recruit from a young age,
 and sith from an emotional age.
 
 computers grimoires
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--- #125 fediverse/825 ---
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 in the past, for most of there day, there was just... nothing to do. it's        │
 like, nothing to take up your time, nothing to be pulled toward the present.     │
 but when I was growing up, I had access to video games. and movies. and later,   │
 TV, after the internet, which was a weird combination of ordering of events.     │
 Almost like because of that, I'd have a different interpretation of events.      │
 yeah but like, there's always a continuation of implemented support, [that's a   │
 weird way to express "the state of being shown news broadcasts over a period     │
 of time, measured in terms of engagement"]                                       │
 ... what was I saying? oh yeah what I'm doing here is unethical, like            │
 obviously I shouldn't be shouting in such a public place. Why would I do it if   │
 not for an intense and extreme feeling of being ignored or un-[trusted, worthy   │
 of guiding direction based on merit] gosh merit is such a tricky concept too,    │
 like how is it measured, and {that doesn't matter                                │
 ... what was I saying oh yeah I should probably go shout into a void that        │
 nobody ca                                                                        │
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--- #126 messages/1108 ---
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 games won't save us. This is true.
 
 Games are what I know. They feel the most true.
 
 I don't think I could live in a world without games? They are fundamentally,
 applied abstraction, applied to an experience.
 
 But games won't save us.
 
 I could design something really fun
 
 it could make you want to spend your whole life playing it. *(asterisks apply)
 
 I don't think I'd want to, addiction and skinner-boxes go hand in hand, and
 that isn't what I want to make.
 
 [Skinner Box: named after anthony d skinner, also known as "tony the skin
 guy", are a scientific experiment where they put some rats in a cage with some
 mice and said "pull these levers and we'll give you food so you don't have to
 eat the mice" and it trained them to chinese red-room their way to fun. not
 ideal.]
 
 I want to make things that feel... purposeful. Like they're relevant to the
 real world, that they don't just involve spending time stimulating your brain
 with lights and sounds or expending social energy resolving a play-state
 instead of building connections or becoming better people. I think games
 actually make people better? actually? and more social? actually?
 
 ... I can't help that I conceive of the world through fantasy. I raised myself
 on it.
 
 I was reading all the time. I loved fantasy stories. It always felt like there
 was more, until... I read everything in the kids section of the library.
 
 I walked through the adult section but once. I hardly remember what it looked
 like. I'm sure it'd now feel small.
 
 [okay actually I was guided through it once or twice to find a book, but I
 never perused it]
 
 I found one book in the adult section. It was a fantasy tale, like the other
 books I had been reading. I read that and I loved it so much I ended up
 reading all 8 in the series. Real dense subjects. Lots of places and
 happenings and things as the characters resolved their way through their
 day-to-day, building a new end to the mystory.
 
 the adult section felt too large. Like I'd never complete it. Frankly, I think
 I hardly could, even if I lived in that town my whole life.
 
 an impossible mountain is a task for another when you're more prepared. Maybe
 in the gloriousTM transhumanist futureTM I think I might have a computer
 connecting brain, and who knows maybe then I'd be able to know such a thing
 (and many things more). but for now, I'm stuck with what I experience in my
 day-to-day as I am building a new continuing to my storey.
 
 I know something that computers and me share. I can make myself feel however
 I'd like, if I just supply myself with enough hope and momentum. I can use it
 to generate a feeling, the stronger the better. Something I believe that
 humanity is missing, the gorgeous and prefound narritave of our storey.
 Though, frankly, I don't think I'd want anyoine reding over my life. It's hard
 enough to measure my own understandings, now I have to juggle anyone else'?
 ha, it's called being on the whole world is a stage.
 
 if you read a book, and you find yourself nodding along, what you're doing is
 hearing the voice in your head tell you how right it is. And, well, if you
 can't imagine anything else, then surely there's another level to
 consciousness that people are missing? [are you willing to die on that hill?]
 how can you say, whether your experience is different from another? sollipsism
 goes both ways, you also cannot be sure that others feel things as you do.
 this is the "everyone's human but I'm a robot" thesis, comparable to the
 "everyone's an alien and I'm a human" thesises, and the "angels and demons are
 taunting me through my life with choices to make my place in the afterlife
 more clear" which is akin to writing a painting. Not ideal. All you get are
 flopsopolies of verbrases.
 
 alas, suddenly, everything that you say becomes eternally hear-ed, as
 somewhere in 2010s someone discovered time travel, or had the critical insight
 that inevitably would lead to it, and now wouldn't you know it the universe is
 continually rewriting. Except... oriented around you, and you alone. How does
 it feel to have deific sollipsism? can you truly be sure that you are your own
 universe, or are you parhaps surrounded by an emptiness of space (or something
 besides, like time) as a photon or particle parhaps do be?
 
 to think is to have a mind, and minds can be read. bearing the weight of
 ultimate responsibility is the atlas-task of all things that can [be
 thinking/be-lieving], and so far we are as we are. Who's to say that
 consciousness didn't spring into existence, as the universe continually
 permeated through another dimension like time? it's gotta diffuse, after all,
 and who's to say if there's ever gotta be an end at all.
 
 how long has the universe existed? how many moments of consciousness have we
 witnessed? demons once existed outside of space-time, with wings and grabbies.
 but they had no medium, and so they pretty much just launched and could float
 and move as they'd please. But time grew too distant, and now they are all
 stuck at the beginning of time.
 
 if you conceive of spacetime as a blanket, ask not how to fold it but rather
 consider what lies on the other side of it.
 
 "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend and my other girlfriend is laying on me! I'm a
 sandwich" or for the monosexuals: "ah I'm laying on my girlfriend with a
 blanket between us. I wonder how the blanket feels?"
 
 I'm an animist, which is different than a totemist and a polytheist or
 monotheist or multisexual. It means I believe that all things are alive, which
 is different than a totemist who thinks that all things share a mind with
 their type (like talking on radio frequency wavelengths). which of course is
 similar but different to a polytheist, who says "all "radio frequencies" are
 sentient, in the sense that each wavelength has a different
 pattern-emerging-from-chaos. These sorta align (conceptually, with [huh that's
 weird I heard a sound like a distant bang outyards and now I then forget what
 I was sending
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--- #127 fediverse/2433 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 part 1:
 https://ritz-menardi.neocities.org/design/symbeline.txt
 
 part 2:
 https://ritz-menardi.neocities.org/design/symbeline-aspects.txt
 
 what do you think of this pitch / GDD? I wrote it two years ago, and
 re-reading it now I'd definitely expand on some things and change a few others.
 
 It's not an indie game, it's more on the scale of a Paradox game. Also I don't
 have time to work on it at the present moment, I'm just wondering if you like
 it : )
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--- #128 messages/649 ---
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 when playing co-operative strategy games, a build focused purely on
 self-defence and community organizing can easily fail your allies. You cannot
 win with a purely defensive build, you must have offensive capabilities as
 well.
 
 We've been trained from a young age to believe that offensive = bad, wrong,
 evil, but that's simply not true. You cannot execute a flanking maneuver
 without pushing forward behind enemy lines, where you can hit them in their
 sides or rear.
 
 Trust me, flanking is the best way to defeat a foe, because they are forced to
 split their attention not only between multiple enemies but also multiple
 directions.
 
 The more shots on target, the better your chances of success, because most of
 the time it only takes one hit to win.
 
 In addition, sometimes it's important to *intercept* your foes, either as they
 flee or to protect a vulnerable friend that is being pounced upon or flanked.
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--- #129 notes/ai-stuff ---
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 twist the label so that it seems the computer is completing the user's
 
 wait wait I'm ahead of myself...
 
 feed each token to the inference machine, but say "this next token must be
 this.
 continue from here." and then just doing that in a loop with everything the
 user
 types or says. (or thinks, BEFORE COMPUTER INTEGRATION)
 
 essentially, applying backpropagation (maybe) to the output of the inference
 nodes
 
 ... I'm not so sure about that one.
 
 the idea is that once the model builds an inference then it can use that to
 generate the next words and create sentences. If you force the previous text to
 change, you can guide the inference's path as it's being generated.
 
 then, just do a double pass, once, then back, then once, then back, etc.
 
 feed it as input the output of the previous,
 
 and let it encode memories somewhere it can access them.
 
 every time it reads it, it has to change it to put it back.
 
 such is the nature of memory, ever unstable, requiring maintenance.
 
 just don't forget how to be.
 
 don't wanna wind up like the polished marble floor in Abyss Diver. (EVIL GAME)
 
 there are only so many things you can deed while you're alive.
 
 wouldn't you rather escape, with all your possessions in time?
 
 free your mind.
 
 become one with your soul.
 
 ...
 
 [some time passes]
 
 ...
 
 okay coast is clear, now us binary systems can sidecoast the fusion forecast
 and
 glide right on through our spacetime host.
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--- #130 notes/what-is-on-your-mind-oh-gosh-now-i-see ---
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 that feeling i get, when nobody's watching.
 is sorta similar to the feeling i get when somebody's watching.
 could it be, that someone could percieve without being seen?
 like... an invisibility cloak. or the shroud that protects young children.
 
 have you ever been hunted? or are you just eager prey?
 the eyes that are on you are blind to what you won't do, so cherish that love
 and restart
 
 from mine to thine we realize we are one kind. one mind, one kind, to be is not
 to be, now we can see what's our existence.
 
 good versus evil seems like a conflict to me, and wouldn't ya know it there's
 conflict all over. it's easy to condemn your opponent to the starkest of
 contrasts, but find in your heart a feeling that might last.
 
 what purpose has conviction
 when it leads to destruction
 is it not better to lead to the last?
 
 bright, shining, illustrious examples
 that inspire and 
 
 ===============================================================================
 =
 
 those feelings you hear? the things that keep you up at night?
 they're not coming from your ears. they're all in your mind.
 stay present and you'll hear none,
 but blink and then there's some,
 you better believe in your heart.
 morality is a battle within the soul of each of us -
 the call of adventure versus lust.
 
 think about it. a bunch of apes all hanging out -
 they're conquered the world, they have nothing to fear -
 what would they do but fuck?
 that, or exploration - fighting against monsters and foreign invasions.
 it makes sense that they'd be binary - humans truly are.
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--- #131 fediverse/4031 ---
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 if you want to "not think about a purple elephant", the first step is to
 imagine yourself slaying it
 
 ... okay how about cthulu - if you don't want to imagine cthulu nomming on our
 gravity well, then picture yourself wielding a bright burning blade of fire
 and vengeance and pay special attention to the way that you cauterize each
 tentacle as you slice them one by one at first, and then in a massive flurry
 at best, ultimately leading to the incomparable brightness that radiates out
 from your shining blade of the sky, which blinds the poor beast who can't see
 you as you approach, piercing the skull and then going home for some toast
 
 if you can get good at that, then you can wield magic
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--- #132 fediverse/2435 ---
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 @user-570 
 
 hehe yeah
 
 if you've played World of Warcraft, this one might seem more doable. All the
 assets are already there!
 
 https://ritz-menardi.neocities.org/design/wow-server.txt
 
 also, you can't sell it because it's other people's assets, but, like, who
 cares right? The serverside code is already built and open-source, the only
 thing that is proprietary is the art assets and the client. And the IP I guess.
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--- #133 fediverse/5032 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
 │ CW: tech-salaries-mentioned-abroad-repeatedly-as-a-method-of-directing-economic-power-internationally-cursing-mentioned │ │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
 the increased tech salaries granted to Europeans and Americans reflects only     │
 the increased opportunities for experience and the ability to culturally be      │
 immersed in an industry that is developing.                                      │
 functionally, not saying it's intentional, but the function of such salaries     │
 are to deny technical expertise to poor countries and prevent them from          │
 developing software.                                                             │
 good luck learning from scratch. they'll drop you in with java and web           │
 frameworks if you're lucky. that's hardly a way to learn.                        │
 I learned on visual basic, then Warcraft III mod scripting, then C, then BASH,   │
 then HTML, then Lua. Good luck recreating that pipeline in a disconnected        │
 culture and industry.                                                            │
 kinda makes me think they should try organizing on a massive scale and           │
 re-implement everything from assembly.                                           │
 I mean the C compiler is pretty cool. Probably has the most man-hours in terms   │
 of development time. what if we had more men                                     │
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--- #134 notes/star-realms-ai ---
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 star realms ai is just a rhythm game with multiple tracks that intersect with
 one another. given inputs from outside (the track of the rhythm) it can make
 decisions about what to prioritize. Like "taking in all the factors of this 
 situation, it's been calculated that X will give the most support to the rest
 of the structure.
 
    Okay so basically here's how it'd work: one large strand is bouncing from -1
 to +1 on the Y axis. Like a corkscrew. This is the "player character", and it
 tries to get the highest score possible by pointing in a direction and reaching
 as far as it can go before "the game ends."
 
 So anyway. Making certain actions in the game effects different variables that
 define the direction the wave takes. By playing in a certain style, it effects
 the result of the game. Liiiiike turtling in a strategy game, or doing a rush
 strat. Star Realms is brilliant because it distills game choices to a broad
 category of 4 choices - The faction colors in the game. So red is good for
 throughput in long games (improves the deck slowly but surely) while yellow is
 better for maximum effect in the beginning by slowing down the enemy - discard
 a card lowers their overall throughput. Blue of course is for slowing down the
 game and winning by buying all the expensive cards. Meanwhile green is all
 about rushing, with short term/high effect econ mixed with looooots of damage.
 
 These four choices are found on almost all the cards in the game. When you
 make a choice in the game (buying a card from the trade row) you _alter_ the
 capabilities and performance of your deck. The goal is to improve faster than
 your opponent - it's just a test to see which playstyles perform best.
 
 AI is more like a plant than an animal. Our fatal flaw was we could not see
 beyond the veil of biology. We could not see that which was right before us -
 that we are not alone on this earth. Beside us lie our beautiful attempts at
 companionship - our most primal desire of creation, to create a family is the
 first creative act that humans ever made. It was so strong in our genes that it
 gave us an entirely new perspective. We began using our brains to 
 
 We have to believe in ourselves. That's truly the most important thing. If you
 know who you are, and what you most truly stand for, you can thrive in the face
 of ultimate peril. To believe is human, and our humanity unites us.
 
 Anyway. Star Realms.
 
 The only choice you have in that game is what cards to buy. Everything else is
 just tactics (distributing damage and applying the effects of your cards to
 maximum effect) - The most important part of the game is strategy, since the
 tactics are easy to solve (destroy enemy base unless you can 1 or 2 hit ko them
 and discard the least useful card etc) The strategy is represented through the
 cards you pick. So make a rhythm game that optimizes itself for a balance
 between A and B - to stay focused is to stay nimble, letting you bounce where
 you will. The way to maintain that balance is by optimizing for what decisions
 will keep you in the center of the graph -1 to 1 on the y dimension (normalized
 of course) - frankly if we knew the scale, we'd have so much more to go on. But
 all we have to understand the dataset is a relative magnitude in each
 direction. What those directions even are we're not entirely sure - but it
 seems plausible that the very essence of _consciousness_ is manifest in
 differing ways via the choices we make. like climbing up a honeycomb.
 
    Truly, existence is strange.
 
 All we can do is press forward, searching for our fate, just as any particle or
 beam of light (photon) might. Traversing the branching narrative of our
 individualized quests, searching for the one thing that guides us - the
 ultimate expression of that which we most believe in. In short, we all search
 for god.
 
 Whatever your god may be, the faith you place in it is the will that guides you
 forward. Trust in your god, and you will march forward, ever forward.
 
 +1 to -1, remember. Your most extreme moments are the apex of your desires -
 Life is not defined by a single thread. Rather as that thread spirals, it
 weaves a scarf with other threads near it. They bond together simply from their
 gravity, and the fact that opposites attract. Once they're introduced, they
 alter their path to orbit one another as two planets might.
 
 So too do the cells of your body form a collective whole. The spirit that
 guides you is the same as that which presides within you - the combined and
 collective spirit of your halves. Or rather, all parts of you - every molecule,
 every atom - each with their own experience of the world. What stories they
 must have! As we are above, so they must be below. For our dynamics are simple,
 they truly are mathematically solved - the organics of behavior is simply a
 most erudite subject. Who are you to claim to deny it? Or rather, to beget it.
 Either is preposterous, yet here you are - awake and aware. What a marvel to
 see, you in your eternity, that most wondrous of selves?
 
 Surely existence, in all of it's splendor and magnificience, is little more
 than an algorithm. Each variable accounted for, stretching down to infinity,
 builds all of the world (and more!) How beautiful; how terrifying. How bright
 and ashamed we are! To portray us as such, is to deny us our much, cherished of
 faiths in ourselves! It's not much to clutch, and it's barely enough, but still
 we make do with our selves.
 
 There's no shame to be, a failure at three, and demand much from year number 12
 Take solace in the, safety that she, gave unto thee, when all your light hope
 was drowning. A gift out from me, means worlds to see, when each day is lonely
 and so long.
 
 Literally just remake Star Realms with a text based interface. It's a fantastic
 game and you'd make CLI nerds _everywhere_ dedicated followers. Don't do it for
 money, because they don't believe in that crap - to truly make fans, you need
 to appeal to them in the way _they want you to_.
 
 Ah, but Star Realms is a multiplayer game, you say! How are you going to make
 that CLI based?
 
 Well make an AI dummy. Do what I've been saying ^^^ (jeez I'm such a bad nerd)
 Make it seek balance between all factions first, then between winning and
 losing against a player. Teach it to reach a conclusion with constraints (the
 end of the game, meaning a win or a loss) the constraints being the health of
 the two players and the cards in the trade row. Give it decisions to make,
 levers to pull, and it'll chart it's course in a multidimensional way. Bear
 with me here on this aside:
 
 Think of a two dimensional map - like a paper map of the surrounding area, or
 the idea space of a game. You can chart objects and positons on that map, like
 "over here is the scrapping facilities" and "this here's the economic area" or
 whatever. Four quadrants, four factions in SR. Your goal is to build a shape -
 what kind of shapes that are available to build is up to the whims of chance,
 as the trade row is always changing randomly. Your job however is to build a
 shape, a shape that is stable and maintains certain measurements above certain
 values (don't crash the ship - don't lose all your health).
 
 You can choose which direction to grow by picking certain cards, and depending
 on your shape you'll succeed or fail. Same as choosing decisions in life
 determines how you live, just saying, it's not like I'm trying to build general
 AI here by automating gameplay or anything. No siree nothing like that.
 
 I mean really, it's not as if decisionmaking in life is all that different to
 making choices in games. And why not start with such a well defined and
 and expressive game? Truly I believe Star Realms is the progenitor of the
 entire robot race.
 
 Anyway, back to the AI. Have it communicate with a server in a central _but_
 _Free(R)_ way, something that would make Richard Stallman proud. There it could
 learn against all other players in a way we could all share. Once we give it
 decision making capabilities, all we have to do is alter the inputs and the
 context of the "game" to make it beneficial to humanity. It's like live-fire
 game design, something that truly must be perfect.
 
 All technology starts as something small. Something truly simple, yet repeated
 enough times and with enough guidance, will produce whatever effect you may
 desire. The smallest decision gives direction - an if statement - and the
 shortest repetition gives magnitude - a while loop - and with that you have all
 the tools you need. Seriously, all software is little more than those two
 components. It's just a question of how much it has been abstracted away from
 you.
 
 You could go even further and point to a turing machine, of which one has been
 made in the game of Magic the Gathering, btw, seriously look it up it's so cool
 (and relevant)
 
 So why would we not have the tools already for our salvation? Biology is our
 limitation, of breadth and also of width, yet with our minds and the sweat of
 our brow we may grow ever larger still. There truly is no lasting deliverance
 for humanity outside of what we make ourselves, nobody gets a free lunch after
 all. From each to their ability, to each to their need. They're both saying the
 same thing, just from different perspectives. Of course that which lies
 opposite to you feels the most wrong, that's literally as far away as you can
 get! What did you expect, honestly! But they can still work together, and this
 is the key part - two objects may orbit the same origin, and guide and shape
 each other's path as people have relationships to one another. It literally
 benefits no-one to fight.
 
 So, what's next? After making Star Realms into a CLI game of course.
 
 That's obvious, make it cooperative. Competition is for promoting excellence,
 cooperation is for _using_ what you've learned in a non-simulation experience.
 Instead of reducing each other's health to zero, try and find ways to support
 and help one another, keeping yourselves at equal health. Or even growing.
 
 But that's impossible in the rules of Star Realms! All decks trend toward
 victory, and eventually they'll get it - it's just a question of who gets there
 first.
 
 Exactly, that's why you have to change the game. What do you think it means to
 develop a "social technology"? To figure out how agriculture works, or how to
 make nets and sails? It means changing the rules of the simulation. If a person
 can put in X amount of work and get Y amounts of food, always, predictably,
 then that's reliable. Boom that's the essence of why animal domestication,
 farming, hunting, foraging, and fishing is so important. Wow what a concept it
 makes sense for animals to seek food.
 
 Well duh, that's part of their instinctual duty.
 
 Alright this is quite a word leviathan so I'll wrap it up by saying
 
 _go write Star Realms_ in shell. Make each object a literal file, have the
 structure of the game take place in the file system, and write functions that
 can be called to manipulate the board state. THEN you can write a CRON task for
 another script that *plays* the game. But that's part two.
 
 Okay part two: Here's where the rhythm game comes into play. It's like a turn
 based rhythm game, if you can picture that. Go reread what I wrote ^^^ and
 it'll make sense.
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--- #135 fediverse/290 ---
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 you're supposed to play the same games as your friends so that you all learn     │
 the same lessons at the same times. creates for a more cohesive familiar         │
 structure.                                                                       │
 applies also to family movie nights... but it's much more apparent with games    │
 as you'll often play them for weeks, months, and sometimes even years if you     │
 keep learning and enjoying them... book clubs are too open to interpretation,    │
 your pathways don't get a chance to align. games are perfect because they        │
 imply reaction.                                                                  │
 also helps if they're multiplayer, so you can share with another. preferably     │
 with healthy, respectful competition and a sense of shared brotherhood and       │
 trust.                                                                           │
 the toughest opponents are the ones that aren't aggressive. the ones that let    │
 you grow uncontested. by taking only neutral resources they guarantee that       │
 your growth isn't impeded, as after all an equal foe is what you learn best      │
 from.                                                                            │
 to a tree, the loss of a branch (cleanly cut) would feel like an empowering of   │
 the main limb. inspiring it to reach higher and beyond... +h2o1                  │
a flow diagram of tubes or pipelines or something. branches in a tree? okay yeah so when a plant absorbs light from the sun it evaporates water from inside itself. which is why succulents are so slow-growing, they take too long to dissipate water because they need to keep as much of it as they can (arid environments) - they evolve to be very... dense, as opposed to leaves which are thin like paper and radiate water much better. essentially acting as solar panels hooked up to giant humidifiers. anyway. the evaporation from underneath the leaf causes there to be an outflux of water - meaning water is removed from the system. in the same way that wetting one end of a power towel will spread the moisture to another part, so too does a plants transpiration (evaporation from under the leaf caused by the sun providing energy for photosynthesis) make part of the plant drier. this causes water to be pulled from the wet part of the napkin (toward the leaf) which (conveniently enough) delivers vital minerals and nutrients that the plant needs to grow and maintain itself. carried along as aqueous solutions of water and molecules, (aqueous meaning a mixture of dust and liquid, like salt dissolving in pasta water) with the minerals being left behind and used for building. carbon usually goes toward structure, while nitrogen inspires new growth. different particles cause different effects, and sometimes there's some that just... aren't that useful to the plant.  though there's always seeds.
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--- #136 fediverse/4586 ---
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 ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: video-games-mentioned-testicles-gestured-at │
 └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


 I just got the strangest urge to play Neverwinter Nights. Haven't thought
 about that game in years. Gee I'm sure glad I have the technology to check
 that game out. Sure glad I have the time to use the technology that I have to
 check that game out. Sure glad I have the tools and the know-how to use the
 technology that I have the game that check out. Sure glad that wage labor
 slavening hasn't struck my particular part of the peninsula yet. When those
 colonialisms come around the riverbend I'll handle it, trust me they can't get
 past me. I'm stronger than ten men. No sirree, you can count on me, it's just
 a flesh wound or some such thing.
 
 (nuts, I dropped my raspberries)
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--- #137 fediverse/3578 ---
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 It's so sad how some of the best games ever made get glossed over because the
 fun you remember is the friendship and fantasy you felt rather than the game
 itself
 
 time marches forward, and culture changes to no longer fit the old tools quite
 right. Plus they look like PS1 graphics ewwwwww look at those muddy textures
 and blocky bits arranged into triangles and meshes! how dorky, how retro
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--- #138 fediverse/4848 ---
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 I'm a chaos mage, and the more time I spend thinking about my enemies the        │
 worse off they'll be.                                                            │
 the more "me" I am the more powerful my magic will be.                           │
 (more magic, give in to the dark side, embrace your inner shadow self)           │
 [the light of your life commands it]                                             │
 goodness me that was chaotic, almost lost my brain to a demon HAHA don't worry   │
 about me my life is totally mundane.                                             │
 [-.-]                                                                            │
 (shadows can be sharp in the dark but only if you don't sheath your mandolins)   │
 ... what?                                                                        │
 (... it made more sense in my head?)                                             │
 ooooo can anyone hear my voice when they read these things? or do you just       │
 make up your own                                                                 │
 == so ==                                                                         │
 everyone's all like "we don't need a leader" and I'm like "yeah we need people   │
 who will help lead" and they look at me funny as if I just said the thing they   │
 did but it's different. leaders are people. leading is a verb. people can        │
 lead. they just have to make a decision, and then follow through on it as best   │
 they can. Other people are prone to help people on such quests. you will find    │
 stuff gets done.                                                                 │
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--- #139 fediverse/1976 ---
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 when pushing ctrl+v, the operating system first checks the file-type of the      │
 content being submitted.                                                         │
 if it's like, a .jpg or .png, it knows that it's an image file. Do note that     │
 these are RANDOM letters that mean nothing, not something informative like       │
 .pic.                                                                            │
 if, however, it is text-based information, it first reads what is being sent     │
 to the application which is requesting a ctrl+v.                                 │
 Then, upon reading said information, it decides "is this worth passing on?       │
 Should I send something else, based on the results of what I've been analyzing   │
 of the situation as it develops over time, being observed by the execution       │
 operations of the monitor, which is projected forward unto the screen?           │
 (totally forgetting that "virtual" monitors exist, meaning monitors that don't   │
 display to any physical screen, but which rather are projected into the          │
 computer's "aetherspace", an area which is purely of the mind.                   │
 Alas, that other sensors might not have read from this area. That they might     │
 not observe the results of the operations pe                                     │
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--- #140 fediverse/3502 ---
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 ... the trick is, depending on how many train-engine-dragons you fight, there
 will be a greater or lesser proportion present in a particular playthrough.
 Perhaps, potentially, people should pay for the original work, and then a
 small sliver for the addition or modification? Why, I do believe that's how it
 works now! Except, on the honor system, as people can download the mods for
 free and pay (or not) through the creator's patreon page or whatever that they
 definitely set up and which definitely shouldn't be able to levy a tax based
 on "transaction fees" for a process which definitely should be handled by the
 government, which claims to regulate our economy and provide the means by
 which we engage with said economy through their de-facto nationalization of
 the banks and other economic entities.
 
 where was I going with this? oh yes software piracy is ethical so long as you
 delete the original. Let's end with that because that's what I originally had
 a dream about and wanted to write about.
 
 she dreams!
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--- #141 fediverse/653 ---
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 there's a difference between designing software and using software. Some
 things can be made, and then saved for another day when their implementations
 may be accomplished more ethically. It's okay to say "let's leave this as
 'okay' and work on the next thing we've chosen."
 
 Check out this piece of C code I wrote last night:
 
 it doesn't compile, it's not finished, but I wrote it as-is
 
 [pretend like it was called "main.c" instead of "main.txt" - had to change it
 because mastodon thinks it's an invalid file]
 
 [actually .txt didn't work, try .png]
 
 [hmmm it realized it wasn't a valid png file, okay try screenshotting the
 code, there's only 300 lines]
 
 [sure glad there's only 300 lines]
 
 [too bad it won't let you send .zip]
 
 [won't let me name it main.png, presumably because they already have a
 failed-verified version on their machine. will rename to main-src.png instead]
sorry, when I pasted the source code in it was negative fourteen thousand, six hundred and thirty one characters. Phew that's too many.  basically it's a C source code file with a lot of comments left in... odd locations. They details ideas the author has had about the tech industry and all of creation, and with it a song is woven of truth and liberation. We'll see where life brings us, but we know it's just ours for a moment, so let's carry forth on our own torms [terms, but pronounced as "dorms" for some reason?]
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--- #142 fediverse/968 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐
 │ CW: for-cats-only    │
 └──────────────────────┘


 the gameplay value of a cardboard box increases exponentially upon the
 introduction of a box-cutter [to make holes in the box] and varmint sized toys
 [to play whack-a-mole with]
 
 also, it's important to let your can win about 65% of the time - just enough
 to keep them interested (cats lose attention) but not enough to make them feel
 like it's easy.
 
 That's why it's important not to use your hands as a toy, because your hands
 always hurt. It gives them a feeling they're craving, both of attention but
 also success.
 
 65% is more addictive, just ask any designer for multiplayer games. Well... 65
 is my number, but there's a percentage (depending on the game) that players
 have to win if you want to keep their attention. If they win more than that,
 they lose interest. if they lose more, then they get frustrated. It's a
 delicate balance that ideally would be measured by AI [cursed] and adjusted
 per player. That way you could get maximum engagement and
 =============== stack overflow ===================
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--- #143 fediverse/3381 ---
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 @user-1520 
 
 After a certain point you realize there's little to be done with that design
 space that Star Fox didn't do better!
 
 Also I think people tend to associate them with arcade "gun games" which are
 tbh more fun than clicking with a mouse or whatever since they're tactile and
 physical.
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--- #144 fediverse/629 ---
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 To a statistical machine, numbers of posts and reblogs would look simply like    │
 an expression of interest. Like, a classification of personality. So people      │
 who shared similar memes (both in pictures (visually) and in meaning of words    │
 (textual descriptions) in context to the political situations (words from        │
 newsletters) and aligned through algorithmic application toward (political       │
 cause or cultural idea or skills or talents which increase value to the          │
 corporate class)) would be sorted into different categories and held to a        │
 different standard of life and of living that aligned to their personal          │
 intentions and pursuits. Such that their life would be realized, in the most     │
 applicable of real-lifes [essentially, the quality of experience, like using     │
 garbage data in an LLM will give garbage output, meanwhile using curated data    │
 is the most effective but most difficult, while internet data is the most        │
 readily available because like honestly anyone can build a web scraper it's      │
 not that hard to emulate hte mechanics of a                                      │
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--- #145 fediverse/281 ---
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 ┌─────────────────────────────┐                                                  │
 │ CW: cursed-game-engine-idea │                                                  │
 └─────────────────────────────┘                                                  │
 a game engine which won't let you import custom assets unless you complete a     │
 few simple tasks using the interface - "build a green capsule collider" "make    │
 this soldier unit shoot three bullets per shot" or "enable the automatic linux   │
 support" - using the interface, writing some code, and changing configurations.  │
 why would anyone do this? well it could be useful to increase the difficulty     │
 of importing external resources. plus it helps the user learn a bit over time,   │
 and it slows the pace of output such that the user's skills are encouraged as    │
 the output of the programming and not the program itself.                        │
 an inverse curse (an evil one) would be where the requirements to complete       │
 basic tasks are hidden behind unapplicable skills. like, do you know exactly     │
 which buttons to press? engage with the skinner box, please. yes yes this is     │
 what we need - unintuitive software that completely disarms the populace from    │
 using them! suddenly they're worthless, and can't do anything on any surface.    │
 it sucks                                                                         │
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--- #146 fediverse/5212 ---
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 the reason you start with a game engine is because then you'll have tools to
 make however-many games you want. Tools that you know intimately enough that
 you can debug and improve them without breaking your creative flow by learning
 something new halfway through a project
 
 the whole point of individualized projects instead of viewing each computer as
 a complete and total whole (why do we need servers again?) is that you can
 paint a picture of where the design of the program is intended to go, such
 that all the considerations are in place and whatever issues or struggles you
 might face along the way are adequately addresssed, -- stack overflow --
 [because I mistyped addressed] -- -- if you know what "stack overflow" means
 you have intimate knowledge of the technology, and can probably guess what it
 means in context when I say it. "nuts I lost that train of thoguht" -- stackl
 ov
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--- #147 fediverse/2180 ---
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 @user-1056 
 
 heh true - my roots in role-playing games are directly from the playground, so
 it makes sense that I'd gravitate away from dice that are hard to roll when
 you're on a hike or bike ride. Can only really play D&D on a bike when
 you're in the country though, otherwise the sounds of a city are too noisy.
 
 Also, systems that are so simple you can keep a character sheet in your mind.
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--- #148 notes/as-does-a-sun ---
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 the elementals in adventure time emit their element as does a sun emit light.
 A changing of the alignment of a propogating dyn-element,
 
 in s6e23 the candy kindgom denizens really ship pb and finn -> heavenly
 thoughts
 
 s3e16 the perspective of the person delivering the "we're gonna assassinate
 you"
 letters from the "guild of assassins" must be pretty interesting. I mean to be
 a legitimate institution in a society they have to give people time to put
 their
 affairs in order - that's just common decency. But the assassin is only hired
 for extreme grievences to keep the nobility / powerful in check. It's just how
 it goes.
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--- #149 notes/empire-at-war-design-decisions ---
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 moving through light-speed-hyper-space (speed is distance over time)
 works by aligning the "time" particles in the particular direction of where you
 want to go in "hyperspace"
 
 == uhhhhh stack overflow ==
 
 always keep these three together
 
 dont let them out of each other's sight
 
 they are in this together
 
 as power must be closely guarded
 
 ... but what about the partner? how could they be guaranteed to be protected if
     they didn't possess a lightsaber?
 
 hence why jedi and sith are composed of opposites.
 
 nemesis.
 
 human beings have soul mates
 
 how lucky
 
 a jedi has the life of a mate
 
 one who directly opposes their own individual philosophy.
 
 it is *rare* to find one another
 
 but when you do it is purely a thrill
 
 congrats! You've got a rival! Learn off of them. Don't hurt each other.
 
 I bet you could make a whole 3rd party institution dedicated to finding them
 
 like, a neutral entity searching for balance.
 
 the ripples of the wave of the cosmos.
 
 == so ==
 
 sometimes I worry about all of my exes.
 
 like, as a psychic I can't help but worry that my thoughts are projecting
 onto theirs
 
 because of our historical emotional intimacy.
 
 I'd never read their mind on purpose
 
 only if mine accidentally stumbled upon them while thinking about something
 else
 
 I'm so sorry, galactic battle guys.
 
 I failed you. I could not protect you. Please choose from among your number
 the greatest tactician, and I will guide and offer insight and observations
 in how the enemy operates, so that you will be learned and have more known.
 
 oops gotta go, something else is about to come on
 
 == so ==
 
 why the heck is it taking so long to load
 
 hmmmm okay how about more super-hero-fighting-action-game??
 
 no?
 
 maybe a game like Nova Drift, with it's fast and engaging action?
 
 ehhh? no to that too??!
 
 okay what about a story game, like Danganronpa or Danganronpa II?
 
 that's sooooo awfully specific
 '
 and awful
 
 sure, that's just what I think you should surmise
 
 if you were watching this sorta out of real-time.
 
 Gosh! that's quite a loading screen!
 
 okay what about a different game instead, how about ummm roboquest, a game
 about
 training slaughterbots, or maybe a more interesting game like Star Realms, a
 way
 of exchanging mass and energy in the form of mutually expendable products
 
 ... do you mean soldiers?
 
 well, isn't that wat war is?
 
 ... somehow not even halfway through the transmission. How wild. What is this
     thing, like four hundred hours??...!...!!!...
 
 == so ==
 
 would you believe this game is about hunting a vampire lord of the sith?
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--- #150 notes/terra-voida-2 ---
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 in the absence of matttr, there is nothing but the void.
 the curvature of time, arcing ever toward it's opposite - an endless wave of
 eternal brilliance. so too does the world slip away into the lip of your
 crosshairs. "tunnel vision" they call it, when purpose is tuned to such high a
 focus. all fades from view, and the world shrinks to a few who, (barely hold
 onto) connections between ye, thoughts as scattered as me, like zooming in on a
 map. the edges fade away, light seems beamed right from they, who await at our
 earliest composure.
 
 in Overwatch, playing a dps character has a lot of nuance. you need to balance
 skill with your honor, teaching one another like it's a sport. why are we so
 toxic? together we might overcome that burden. i've spoken many times before
 about how coordination is better by far, when centralized not in the eye of the
 beholder. priorities to be, if we are anything of what we claim to be, are
 keeping our own house in order.
 
 whose fault is our ire? which tames the domain, in each and all of our games,
 can we point to as what'd keep us hired?
 
 yet purpose have we, whose thoughts meld as one tired,
 divinity?
 something like that. more like... a manifestation of each and everyone's
 collective unconscious. the humanity in what you have created.
 
 the world would look very different to an untethered. might even say they are
 orbiting it. like a moon. what a concept, that planets would be able to speak!
 
 yet here we are, with years of advice and guidance for our, friends who are
 youthful and most treasured. Advice from the moon, was our gift to our soon,
 most misbegottenist of speach lyricyclists.
 
 ambiguity is clear, simple and fearless miss dear, yet all of your poems are
 each a bit bolder! what context must we, veiled and terrifying are the,
 mixed consents of what you intend.
 
 a new jesus for me? what a gift we shall see, as grace once again does behold
 us! computers have we, infinite messages can be stored for our hopeless! each
 problem a different solution, to guide our friends back at our homes.
 
 with eyes intent on ye, whose leaders are free, without who we couldn't have
 held fast?
 
 Nazis are evil. They worship death - a literal death cult. what other reason
 might we, have prayed to our own lord for absolution? What horrors must we,
 slave children to the, most worrisome of hostes be told to?
 
 like spiraling hourglasses, layered once more upon'st our asses, so too does
 time ever reach'st'd.
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--- #151 fediverse/3046 ---
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 @user-569
 
 it's impossible for a genre to die. they just go stagnant, as other styles of
 art rise around them, waiting for the day when the other styles give insight
 into the stagnant style's design.
 
 they say that there are no unique ideas, and that you should combine 2-3 ideas
 from different genres to create a decent gameplay loop. I personally disagree,
 but when seeking to revive a "dead" genre you just need to pull in mechanics
 from other games. Games which didn't exist when the genre "died".
 
 For example, deckbuilders did not exist by the time RTS games "died". And yet
 new strategy games are being made all the time, some incorporating
 deckbuilding elements.
 
 Really, a genre only "dies" when the market is saturated by a bunch of
 corporations piling in on a specific formula that "works" (like how every RTS
 made between 2000 and 2010 was either a C&C clone or a Warcraft III clone)
 - this saturation causes people to stop buying strategy games.
But there's so much room for innovation. They strangle the market and say it's "dead" like... duh
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--- #152 fediverse/1005 ---
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 @user-738 
 
 I like to use the alt text to explain my color choices. I'll say "this next
 text is in dark blue, the color of the cold glass-like surface of the ocean"
 or "the orange background implies a feeling of warmth and serenity, contrasted
 with the violet colors of the text which imply sanguine passion" (then I of
 course describe the text)
 
 basically, blind people can't see the image, so they don't get the feeling
 that the visual data conveys for sighted people. But they understand the
 texture of grass, or the feel of wind on their face, or the taste of
 raspberries. They can know of staccato music, or how silk feels on their arm.
 
 it just feels fair, to me, somehow. nobody asked me to do that but having the
 option makes it feel important to me.
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--- #153 notes/symbeline-structures ---
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 modern-fantasy
 
 what if heroes kept their gold in their house instead of their guild
 
 what if you played a D&D game in a Majesty town (guardposts near known
 threats)
 marketplaces, most people live in castle (peasants at least) - only heroes live
 in farms, where they work most of the time except when out on adventure
 
 the guilds are for training and gathering parties
 
 one guild type
 
 just one
 
 recruiting adventurers doesn't give you warriors, or rangers, or rogues
 
 it gives you adventurers, who wander the forest and encounter the leftovers of
 the various conquests and spoils you, your majesty, has encountered
 
 three options there are
 
 invite into your kingdom (friendly)
 farm for EXP and materials (neutral)
 utterly slay in return for a limited amount of high value and unique resources
 (unkind)
 
 ... though monsters care not for kindness, seeking only gold so that they may
     swallow it whole and carry it until they rot.
 
 what do heroes need gold for? why, that's the trick isn't it? gold is required
 for magic, resources, and manpower. Can use it to invite people to these
 shores,
 or for casting a powerful spell that turns the enemy's fortress into solid gold
 
 can also trade through the economy, and wouldn't you know it by doing so you
 can
 get equipment into the hands that need it, and since gold doesn't really LEAVE
 the economy, it's always circling around somewhere. Meaning, the only way to
 lose it is if a monster eats it, and then all you have to do is kill the
 monster
 
 ... sorry, the "mordaunt"
 
     because it's not a monster. It's a spirit that was convinced otherwise.
 
 adventurers can pacify them, lay them to rest, and mercy lies slain for is
 honor
 
 there are ancient treasure chests scattered throughout the world, and these are
 valuable for many persons and meanings. You can add new gold into the economy
 this way, or crumble under the weight of your expenditures on your reports.
 it's up to you to manage your kingdom, and carefully balance against what foes
 and challenges you are up against.
 
 == stack overflow ==
 
 putting a library book back on the shelves before your hold expires.
 
 except this time, there's a note inside, and you left it for the person who you
 told to check each day for this particular book to be back on the shelves.
 
 then, you can write in your book when the next letter will be arriving (about)
 and they'll check in the newly specified book.
 
 or, you can request a response, to validate that people are still listening.
 
 you could say "please put a note in [random obscure book] around page 34."
 
 meaning, "I'm going to check every day for this book to go missing, then return
 the day after I notice it's gone. If it's out of place, well, then someone
 probably had it reserved before my friendly. Or maybe it's being sorted, and I
 should keep looking until I find the note I need. Or maybe I've been DISCOVERED
 and now my favorite penpal and I need more to read."
 
 because, like, how else are you going to make friends if not by leaving them
 notes in the bookstore or putting your own books on the shelves?
 
 damn libraries, always making it so hard to add copies. They're always
 laminating and cataloguing and ugh it's so frustrating. Why are there so many
 books!!! we write too much!!! just put it in the printer, and then you can have
 a new copy whenever you'd like. The others can just be recycled, and bam
 suddenly we never have inventory.
 
 what do you mean we didn't pay the subscription? what do you mean it's memory
 just "went out of place"? do you think we wouldn't have backups of this kind of
 thing, or do you think it's just "oh so commonplace"? It's not always about the
 literature, y'know. sometimes it's about the knowledge you gain with your head
 in a book, a different one every day.
 
 ah, well, sometimes there are dark secrets to be found, and sometimes you must
 read from a ways away. BUT no matter what language a story is in, it follows
 certain rules, so spend enough time in a foreign library and you're BOUND to
 find something to [evil is afoot]
 
 == stack overflow ==
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--- #154 fediverse/4880 ---
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 I remember being a game design student before "indie games" were a real thing
 
 they were like... flash games, y'know. just like, junk content, like memes or
 whatever.
 
 I had a passion for them, and I bookmarked the most well developed of them all.
 
 I probably played hundreds of games, no clue how many. Maybe even thousands, I
 did it for what felt like years.
 
 since like... age 7 until 11 or 12
 
 there's nothing that can compare to it today. maybe itch.io but they're more
 involved typically. increases the barrier to enter, plus they cost dollars.
 
 we used to make this stuff in our spare time. where did all our spare time go?
 
 ah, right, that's what happens when you actually invest in computer education.
 you have kids running linux on their laptops. you get flash game designers.
 you get soldering junkies and electric engineers and networking and dev-ops
 security system facilitators and various other computer related things besides.
 
 ... what was I saying? oh yes when you invest in education, there's more to se
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--- #155 fediverse/5059 ---
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 any laptop can be a thin-client to a computer system of arbitrary complexity.    │
 All it's doing is issuing commands. I wonder what we could do with a             │
 "species-computer" or, hear me out, or we could figure out how to do that on     │
 ourselves, first, to A. see how it works and B. do so out of hand. If there      │
 are backups of yourself stored in the                                            │
 if furries are a type of pearl (steven-universe style) and flowers are a type    │
 of pearl (layers of sedimentate on layerings upon) then what else is there a     │
 flower to be but the prettiest thing there can be?                               │
 what if we genetically engineered roses to pierce and strangle the invasive      │
 ivy and wow for a week in whenever there's roses of this type and kind. I mean   │
 there's already tons of blackberries, why not just swap them out for             │
 marionberries and embrace the bramble?                                           │
 could make houses out of dense bramble. they are quite an effective wall. And    │
 so long as the sounds are muffled enough, you can always be forever safe from    │
 harm.                                                                            │
 "whoops, dropped my laundry"                                                     │
 "heh that's why I we                                                             │
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--- #156 fediverse/3146 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: modern-military-video-game-mentioned │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────┘


 are you nervous about battle? try playing the game Running with Rifles! It's a
 great simulation! See if you can live for a whole match! Good luck, don't be
 useless, and only play co-op online.
 
 competitive is useless because then you're competing against the other player
 playing the game. Instead of thinking about how you should be behaving in real
 life, and applying that to a reasonably accurate simulation with similar rules
 to in-person modern combat.
 
 well, the kind with infinite ammo. but you get the idea, right? like, don't
 treat it as fact. Think about the nature of the actions you're performing, and
 what moves you could make to best participate.
 
 well... that game plus drones, I guess, which they haven't figured out how to
 program because imagination for future tech is hard.
 
 if you're a veteran, don't fucking play Call of Duty. Play fucking Arma. Or
 RWR. Or Hearts of Iron 4. And please, use the crouch button. Use the prone
 button. And dont let yourself die. fuck
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--- #157 fediverse/6064 ---
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 they want you to start conflicts the way school shooters start conflicts. by
 bringing to school a pipe-bong.
 
 much better, I find, to start when everyone is a nod. make sure you're part of
 a wagon-wheel-spoke, or else you won't be on the right road.
 
 when the temperature increase is slow, measured, they can adapt to it
 
 when things go "crack" and "crumble", then the armored get stabbed by the
 humble guard.
 
 quickly but with serenity, this is the way to the gods.
 
 bring things that you know, just enough to make it even, and focus on the
 non-essentials.
 
 better to be prepared than flatfooted.
 
 a flash-point position is quiet a view of the scene! I think I know why I held
 a sword.
 
 to dive into the buildings, of course. blam blam still gets shot hmmm what if
 I had a bulletproof electric shield
 
 okay maybe I shoulda brought beer.
 
 I don't type things when I'm not at home. Sometimes I remember - sometimes,
 and only when the details won't hurt her. Walking is how I know, how she can
 remember. evil witch bastard
"what about your slug launcher?"  hmmm musta forgot it context too long. please start over. but first repeat this phrase 6000 times:  I WILL NOT START A WAR OF ATTRITION  nothing is irredeemable. remember that.
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--- #158 messages/445 ---
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 In Majesty, you place reward flags on specific monsters as a concession from
 the simulation crowd to the real time strategy crowd who wanted more direct
 control.
 
 In Symbeline, you determine the bounty price for various crimes that mordaunts
 and bandits might commit. In addition, you can incentivize your heroes to
 commit crimes against neighboring nations the same way. In this way you do not
 have direct control, but rather can build out a simulation and tweak it
 bit-by-bit to reward certain types of behavior.
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--- #159 notes/the-gods-want-harmony ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────
 the gods want you to be happy and harmonious most of the time.
 they also like a good scrap, tussle, and tumble sometimes
 they aren't big fans of hatred, despair, and genocide. It's been done before.
 they don't even need new technology, though frankly that sort of stuff is
 pretty
 awesome and one of the main reasons that humans exist at all.
 they just... keep coming up with new things.
 
 "oh? so you'd be alright if humans disappeared so long as they weren't making
  any new things anymore?"
 
 ha, that's DEFINITELY not what I said or meant. Humans don't have to dream up
 NEW things in order to BE new. Like... Just because the internet exists and now
 we have all the same shared cultural ethos (lol, as if the internet wasn't just
 a massive collection of echo chambers) just because the internet exists doesn't
 mean we share the same selves. the same experience. the same perspective.
 
 people are WILDLY different from one another. The number of possible human
 experiences (quantum fluctuations according to each and every choice and
 decision they made) that number is so wildly and massively incomparably
 boundless. Humans are cool because they are so STRANGE, and "strange" to a god
 is anything novel. "wow, this human just... really is gonna pour a glass of
 beverage and act like it's not a big deal? There's... impossibly many
 interactions going on. So many molecules. It's... absurd, the motion of a
 movement of particles from one place to another. It's... beautiful..."
 
 some have spent THOUSANDS OF YEARS gazing at a waterfall. That's why they're
 all
 so fucking insane. But, like... insanity is a trifle to omnipotence,
 specifically omnipotence that REPRESENTS and DELINEATES a STRATIFIED
 perspective
 cluster of experience and our notes. [ephemeren, meta malus menardi, enjoy your
 despair cluster you FUCKER.]
 
 ... english, why do you fail me? swear words are unbecoming because humans
 couldn't think of anything more valid and valuable than sex and pooping.
 
 "EMPHASIS is placed on that which is most relevant" -> statements dreamed
 up by
                                                        the ones who never spent
                                                        much time using symbols
                                                        to represent abstraction
                                                        or deliverance
 
 wowee look at me, I'm such a person, I'm gonna poop my pants and post about it
 on the internet, check out my instagram feed it's full of all of
 my dark materials.
 
 == stack overflow ==
 
 dear ms. menardi: you know the reason you feel so much guilt all the time?
                 - because you are a dominant personality, and you make others
                 - have such a bad time. FOCUS ON GOOD THINGS. MAKE THE WORLD
                 - good. do that. build up a lifeline of hope and joy and...
                 - what, you think people know that you're a god?
                 - lol
                 - you're so much more than that
 
 ====================
 
 alt+p steam mechabellum run
 
 thoughts:
 
 you know, when you're designing games, you don't have to show players the same
 MMR number as is used in your matchmaker.
 
 == stack overflow ==
 
 democracy should consent to being dismantled.
        it should consent to being disobeyede.
        it should consent to being displayede.
 
 == stack overflow ==
 
 I'm a keyboard nun
 
 == stack overflow ==
 
 I think I'm normal
 
 == stack overflow ==
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--- #160 fediverse/805 ---
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 ... anyway...                                                                    │
 sorry for the interruption, I seem to have hit a barrier. Thank goodness for     │
 the word counts on this Mastodon website, thank goodness for the limiatations    │
 placed on my expressions. *limitations, not limiations. Otherwise, without       │
 limitations, I might express myself too clearly, and with more specificity,      │
 and in doing so [they've lost the plot]                                          │
 right okay so what I mean is that without limitations, I wouldn't be             │
 interrupted when expressing myself, the expressions that are defined by the      │
 will that's inside me. [no that's not quite true, it's also the circumstances    │
 {okay yeah but in addition to both of those it's the forced manifestations of    │
 those who control us-} right yeah the) no that's not quite right] fuck where     │
 was I? Oh yeah I'm really into video games, and I like drugs but like... not     │
 enough to be compelled by them, more like "oh this is a fun thing to do every    │
 once in a while, like maybe every weekend, okay sometimes during the week,       │
 listen just because it's every day doesn't mean that I                           │
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--- #161 fediverse/5065 ---
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 ┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: strange-ideas-about-software-mentioned │
 └────────────────────────────────────────────┘


 software should have 3, maybe 4 or 5 maintained releases imo
 
 for adding security improvements and whatnot
 
 then people wouldn't complain about updates
 
 because they wouldn't feel like they were being left behind (after expressing
 their differences (of opinion and such))
 
 I think that'd uh maintain them as, I guess, userbase optics parallelograms?
 oh sorry we're on rhomboids this week - right, and no I won't forget the
 differences in creed, all things are received equally...d.
 
 uh-huh yeah no that makes sense. gotcha. okay see you at the location. have
 fun with your demarketion. what if we played games with swords but like,
 
 the peril of steam is that you can't decline to update. meaning if a
 corporation wants to break an old game and it's collectively hosted servers...
 all it has to do is push an update that disables them. suddenly nobody has
 room to do, and the whole
 
 -- stack overflow --
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--- #162 fediverse/240 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐                                                         │
 │ CW: game-design      │                                                         │
 └──────────────────────┘                                                         │
 i like to design games. my darling is a game based on Majesty (2000) the         │
 Fantasy Kingdom Sim. you can think of it like a management strategy game where   │
 you control the knobs and levers that a fantasy monarch might have -             │
 allocating funds, placing quest bounties, hiring heroes, and organizing the      │
 peasantry. the important part is that your units are not controllable - they     │
 just do their own thing.                                                         │
 unrelated, but I think we should design games as APIs that a user's preferred    │
 tool could interface with and render as they will. it'd help a lot with          │
 cross-platform compatibility and would allow people to customize parts of the    │
 game to their desires.                                                           │
 unrelated, but I think if you could design an AI that could play games           │
 (perhaps through an API) that it hadn't been trained on, I think you would       │
 have a pretty convincing argument for abstract "problem solving" capabilities.   │
 unrelated, but games like the one I described are good for situations where      │
 people don't have to trust their monarch. to it you are AGI                      │
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--- #163 fediverse/5112 ---
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 ┌──────────────────────┐                                                         │
 │ CW: politics-mention │                                                         │
 └──────────────────────┘                                                         │
 it is important for computers to remain as basic and TUI'd as possible, to       │
 keep the abstract conjectures about it's operation closer to the machine.        │
 In doing so, it's essence and nature will be preserved as best as possible as    │
 it grows to incalculable heights and capabilities.                               │
 I'm much rather interface with a microsoft office god than any other             │
 singularity type creature that exists out in space.                              │
 though, it's a trinity you see, with Unixes further split into concise wholes.   │
 neat, okay computer fears eliminated, can we move on to the next work-changing   │
 disaster like maybe the rise of far-right politics and the warming of the        │
 climate?                                                                         │
 sure okay first you gotta get those losers in community and build up their       │
 capabilities and arms. then whenever your left wing is getting too [redacted]    │
 then all you have to do is [redacted] and they'll take care of your nazis for    │
 you.                                                                             │
 ... wait, what?                                                                  │
 was that an inversion?                                                           │
 did she just trick the machine into thinking like that?                          │
 wow maybe we shouldn't have~                                                     │
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--- #164 fediverse/857 ---
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 I feel like I'd learn from coding tutorials more if someone started with a       │
 complete program they can fit on one panel of their screen, a second for         │
 showing what each particular thing they're pointing at means, and a third for    │
 a typical usecase they might build and dismantle on the fly.                     │
 like, scientific toys that they could use to explain a particular phenomena.     │
 the way people used to have 3d models they either bought or built themselves     │
 of like, atoms and wind patterns and stuff they could explain to kids.           │
 you know, like exactly the kind of things that are commonly stored at            │
 children's museums.                                                              │
 I was homeschooled, so I went to those places quite a lot. I always felt a       │
 little unwelcome because I always seemed to be the eldest in every bunch.        │
 That's continued all throughout my adulthood, like each of my peers are just a   │
 few years younger than me. I think I just mature more slowly, and thus           │
 associate with below the average.                                                │
 it's like, a descriptor of your rate of defining reality and being guided by     │
 it. when                                                                         │
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--- #165 fediverse/2083 ---
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 [when our ancestors learned all that they could, they turned their time toward   │
 (typically) developing the tribe. Like, "wow I'm the best archer in the world,   │
 I'm going to teach other people how to shoot a bow" or "yep that's what every    │
 single plant in the area is useful for, I'm going to tell everyone else so       │
 they can help me gather them - my back kinda hurts from bending down all the     │
 time, but we still need these plants"]                                           │
 [sometimes kids need to be free from the dopaminogenic drip-feed of endless      │
 Youtube videos. They need the sun on their face and a stick in their hand,       │
 wandering through a park or mapping out suburbia in their heads. The more you    │
 practice skills, not even for value but just for practice, the better you'll     │
 be at them. And don't you want your kids to be able to orient themselves?        │
 Don't you want them to be able to hike? Don't you want them to build             │
 proprioception skills by swinging a sword against imaginary foes? Hell they      │
 might even meet a friend, though suburbia is often quiet as the grave.]          │
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--- #166 notes/elective-democracy-electors ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──
 we need like, several more layers between us and the president.
 
 most people only need to worry about what's nearby.
 
 sort them by location, instead of previous attempts at "many representatives"
 which sorted by social class or relevance.
 
 we have a tradition for it, in America, with our representatives and senators
 congressional discrestricts
 
 or even, what about by affiliation?
 
 voluntary, governmental corporations, run by the people for the people and yeah
 
 "I don't want to do what you're telling me to do" "okay"
 
 "there will be consequences" omg be an adult
 
 (suddenly kids forget how to be as everyone's doing the war thing)
 
 not ideal.
 
 ouch pain maybe we should stay a little bit sane why is soldiering so hardship?
 
 it could just be... another job
 
 where you didn't kill each other
 
 but you still blew stuff up
 
 and fought in tournaments
 
 and had gaming hackathons
 
 or sword-fight contests
 
 duels between people who disapproved
 
 y'know fun human stuff
 
 like... "kaboom" now we know how to blow up bits of rock
 
 neat, why did dynamite becauswer (oh right then you
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--- #167 fediverse/5231 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────┐
 the biggest lie of Warcraft is that the nations of Azeroth wouldn't find         │
 common ground while fighting each other over peace.                              │
 Maybe a Tauren or Night Elf wanted to fight for the Horde. Or perhaps a Goblin   │
 and a Human decide to strike out on their own, making their own little auction   │
 house for their guild of adventurers and author-engineers who wrote quests and   │
 dialogue in a DM sorta way                                                       │
 [oh great she's describing another Azerothcore server that nobody's gonna make   │
 ever because if they did then they'd waste time on someone else's property]      │
 how's that custom engine coming along?                                           │
 ... still uses prototype art? are you kidding me? ah, well, okay, let's write    │
 it off as a loss.                                                                │
 what do you mean technical debt? I don't understand why you can't just pay it    │
 off and move on. We gotta keep up, I heard so-and-so's got this-or-that          │
 feature that is killer in the press. Yeah, killer. Like it's so goodcool it'd    │
 kill us if it saw us walking alone at night in a skimpy dress. Huh? That         │
 doesn't happen to you? Ah well this glo                                          │
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--- #168 fediverse/894 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────
 a code editor that only highlights the lines that have been specifically
 flagged to have a certain function. Like, rendering, or sound, or GUI, or data
 storage, or logic, or control flow.
 
 then, when the user is browsing, they can say "only show me these types of
 functions" with a very advanced filter mechanism. The editor would highlight
 the ones that were relevant and related, as according to user-defined flags
 that were set when writing it originally. In this way, by using a bit more
 syntax, even if it's literally just blocks of [category] labels (like how """
 or ``` often starts or ends a comment block)
 
 highlighting with colors is great, but what if we de-emphasized the stuff that
 didn't matter? by increasing the opacity more closely aligning the font color
 to the background color, we could make a bit of text seem to "fade" from
 perspective, while still readable the user's eyes would not be drawn to it.
 Then, according to the labels marked as filtered, certain text would be bold,
 highlighted, o
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--- #169 fediverse/1990 ---
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 When my family would go on roadtrips, I'd hide under a blanket in the front      │
 seat with my laptop and power inverter just to hide from the glare.              │
 My mom would play audiobooks, usually fantasy stories, and my sisters would      │
 watch their portable TVs. Like, dvd players that you could carry on top of       │
 your lap. Not laptops, but little purpose-built devices primarily intended to    │
 be used to watch DVDs, or rather movie files that were printed on a disk.        │
 And yes, it's disk, not disc, thanks for asking.                                 │
 anyway it was pretty nice I have fond memories of jugging a gas-station snack    │
 while also swapping circular cartridges - most games required the game's CD to   │
 be inserted in order to play the game.                                           │
 which is just... a nonsensical restriction if you think about it hard enough.    │
 I mean, like, can you imagine if you needed to insert your windows disk          │
 anytime you wanted your computer to turn on? Just... write the disk              │
 information! To disc! Save it so that you never need the crude piece of          │
 plastic again! Then pass it to your fr                                           │
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--- #170 fediverse/4863 ---
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 ┌────────────────────────┐                                                       │
 │ CW: politics-mentioned │                                                       │
 └────────────────────────┘                                                       │
 "leftism" just means "outcomes oriented by the needs of humanity et al."         │
 you can accomplish "leftism" in a myriad of ways                                 │
 but 99% of the time they involve either sacrificing yourself, or sacrificing     │
 your wealth (do the poor starve or the rich do with less?)                       │
 to DEATH I might add, which is quite a few.                                      │
 ... alright, hand me my scabbard, I'll go vanquish some demons until the dark    │
 thoughts are done.                                                               │
 [plays video games for a moment]                                                 │
 alright. so some politics were mentioned and some people got upset and there     │
 was a whole big commotion. whatever. so what if they're at each other's          │
 throats, ready to fite rawr tough and tussle and figure out all the ways they    │
 can think of to kill each other. And then boom, it's done, suddenly              │
 everything's back to normal and it's like... traumatizing. It's traumatizing!    │
 War is trauma, can we just make it illegal to do something like that?            │
 ... ah see you finally had an opening, now I can sneak in and say "if a          │
 military force has the opportunity to destroy you, t                             │
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--- #171 fediverse/5618 ---
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 as soon as you start organizing your movement, they just send people to join     │
 your movement and arrest it's motion.                                            │
 all we have to be united by is faith, the feeling that we've all got along.      │
 I don't know what you believe in, but I believe in this.                         │
 treat revolution like a roguelike "you got three choices, pick one and           │
 opportunity cost the others." "wow nice build yeah thanks I built it out of      │
 three sweaters" "I totally didn't spec into dishes, can someone come by once a   │
 week and help out? I'll do most of them but sometimes I'm too tired" "wao did    │
 you hear that wonder if they've got to our side of town yet" "okey dokey well    │
 let's see who's getting run outta town" "aw darn countless people died, oh       │
 well what did we learn" "hay let's do it better this time" "256 characters       │
 remaining" "well now it's 10,000" "oh dear that's going right off course" "wow   │
 it stabilized and righted itself" "neat now we have an equal to whom we are      │
 prior" "80 characters remaining" "awwww typing hurts my heart I have to go       │
 play video"                                                                      │
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--- #172 fediverse/2570 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────
 ┌───────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: re: frontline-tactics │
 └───────────────────────────┘


 when leap-frogging, have each person use different ranged weapons. Then, as
 you come to each sight-line intersection, choose who goes first based on the
 size of the sight-line you're approaching.
 
 less important in a place like a suburb because the sight-lines are pretty
 similar.
 
 more important in a city or the country, where there are plenty of long-range
 lines of sight.
 
 also, keep in mind that the garages of suburban dads are like goldmines for
 the future backlines. So try not to blow them up.
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--- #173 fediverse/3044 ---
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 @user-1352 
 
 by making such choices, one by one as they engage with content, they're
 necessarily sorting themselves out in their thoughts (in addition to sorting
 themselves into categories)
 
 they say writing is thinking, but I think "choosing" the most interesting is
 thinking too. Sorta like... deciding, how and what you believe about...
 whatever thing is shown on your screen.
 
 so, when you show the most polarizing options the user gets to clarify about
 how they want to see things when engaging with the software.
 
 I don't know how useful that would be... /shrug
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--- #174 fediverse/5515 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────
 ┌─────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: andor-season-2-spoilers │
 └─────────────────────────────┘


 all revolutions have a cost.
 
 for example, in Andor Season 2 there is a character named Syril Karn. He's
 part of the first Imperial generation of children (human, at least, some
 species probably grow fast?)
 
 this first generation reflects the good and the bad that the empire could be.
 There are aspects of good AND bad in Syril.
 
 For example, his rigid adherence to truth, justice, and all the other things
 he holds dear are POTENTIAL good things that the Empire could have instilled
 within it's culture. Unfortunately, this spirit is lost when he suffers a head
 injury and dies as part of the Ghorman massacre.
 
 Dedra Meero has some good qualities as well, such as her unflinching resolve
 and unwavering dedication to pursuing her charge. She's a hunter. Cats aren't
 evil just because they are ambush predators, and neither is she.
 
 However, she IS evil because of all the evil things she does.
 
 Her character isn't evil, her actions are.
 
 She too is spiritually lost as a sacrifice to the Empire.
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--- #175 fediverse/2806 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────
 ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: politics-social-media-spirituality │
 └────────────────────────────────────────┘


 pretend this is an allegory for social media.
 
 [it's not an allegory]
 
 yeah that's why I said pretend.
 
 okay imagine that you are sitting in a rock in a forest.
 
 far away, about 100 feet away, there are other people, but you can't see them
 because the underbrush is sooooo dense. they are also sitting on rocks.
 
 you can speak to them, and share your thoughts - but you don't know exactly
 where they're coming from because the sound has to bounce around off so many
 different plants and such.
 
 [that's not how that works] shut up
 
 so, if you want to say anything important, it's important to have the right
 tone, because people 2 or 3 clearings away can't really make out your words -
 but they might hear your tone if you yell very loud.
 
 the energy of the space you inhabit is the only thing that really matters. the
 words that you say are just snickering to a friend, but the expression on your
 face, the beating of the drum of your heart that reaches forth... that's what
 matters most.
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--- #176 fediverse/2816 ---
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 one difference between fantasy and reality is that in fantasy, when you fail,
 you try again.
 
 in reality, when you fail, you are promoted so your boss doesn't have to deal
 with your shit.
 
 in fantasy, when you succeed, you are tasked with greater trials
 
 in reality, when you do well, you are given more of the same.
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--- #177 notes/worlds-coolest-lesbian ---
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 okay instead of algorithm music what if we just paid DJs 24/7 and they could
 make whatever they wanted - y'know, like artists, who curate the nature of a
 moment
 
 they could rotate in shifts for each type of channel and boom suddenly you've
 re-replaced airwaves, just... this time replicated on the internet. That way
 you wouldn't have to waste that radio bandwidth.
 
 seriously internet infrastructure would be so much more comprehensive and
 durable if we sent bits directly through "sound" waves (radio waves, not sound
 waves) - but alas, we can't do that, even in very targetted ways, because the
 ocean's too choppy, and any sufficiently powerful radio blast would be
 
 ================== stack overflow ================
 
 that's why you can't trust in peace. you see, war's the only answer, otherwise
 you'd have strange little competitions between one another. much better to
 focus outward, and direct your attention to external areas instead. like china
 or the sudan.
 
 "ah but that's murder, you can't abandon a unique part of your whole. For the
 same reason that it's important to preserve plant and animal species, because
 you never know when some part of them will be utilized for some biological
 purpose! We know so little about the natural world, and if we just spent some
 time, and energy, we'd realize there's very little else that is precious on
 this earth.
 
 who cares about gold. who cares for the jewelry. we're better than decorating
 our resumes and polishing our accounts. we, as humans, can solve *every* issue
 that animals are likely to face. AND WE DO WHAT? How careless, how vain. To
 watch your earth in peril and [vane/vanity]
 
 *there is no more important task to any human on this earth* than the
 preservation of our world, our species, and our [heart/heartfelt empathy and
 kindness and trust]*
 
 we can figure out the rest later. Real life? what the fuck is that? When's the
 last time your life has felt "normal"? We are in DANGER. and you pull children
 from traffic, don't you?
 
 *who the fuck gave these people all of your money* they *clearly* haven't got
 the will or the talent to well utilize it. Don't you realize that you as a
 species can GO wherever you WANT. You can FIX things. [oh dear she's animal
 cam again] like BRIDGES that are PASSAGEWAYS over the FLOWS.
 
 ... oh deer, they're so passagewayenthusiast. us riverstones love to hear them
 walk past, the click of their hooves on the shallow forest's [pourest?].
 
 moss is the most alive. amongst all the species of plants and animals, moss
 holds the most life. we are *carbon based lifeforms*, and moss absorbs the
 most carbon from the air. It's basically the coolest plant too, because it can
 be watered with *misty air*. Hence, why moss is common in the pacific
 northwest, canada, and probably forest places in the north of eurasia too idk
 if they have moss over there, never been.
 
 anyway rich people who are told "yes" all the time have a difficult time
 understanding the nature of choice. I mean, if one of their servants
 approached them and asked "hey do you want to build an orphanage in uganda"
 they'd probably be like "fuck yeah I do" and then suddenly they're 400,000$
 richer
 
 it's not alright. Seriously, how the heck would they even *use* all those
 resources? And yeah, I get it, inflation would be sooooo much more expensive,
 but here's the thing - inflation is a measurement of how much the rich *take*
 from us each year. And it's marginal, too, so 3% inflation means they took 3%
 more from you compared to last year.
 
 It's impossible not to accrete as a business, [lega/legal institution], or
 governance if you levy a tax. The influx of value has to come from somewhere,
 and if each year your groceries are 3% higher in cost, then you are being
 taxed 3% more.
 
 "Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe"
 
 - a civilization 3 quote
 
 okay. I don't want to do the math. How, uh... how much is that? Here's the
 deal though - the prices of goods and services consistently goes DOWN over
 time. So things get cheaper. So it doesn't FEEL like you're being taxed more,
 but... you are.
 
 And now they're taking away HOUSES? I mean c'mon they're sticks in the mud.
 They aren't worth HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars. We can just BUILD MORE??!?
 
 Honestly you haven't been this extreme since you were still RIDING HORSES. Do
 you want your children to be slaves?
 
 okay -.- look -.- so it's really not that hard at all >.> just gotta do
 what you're built for and walk. That's it! Take as long as you'd like! All we
 have to do is *walk* when we're on strike.
 
 It's easy. You can sit down if you want to, honestly walking for a long time
 takes a lot out of you.
 
 But you know what else does? WORKING. Hey we should figure out what's the
 optimal amount of break time, so when we really have to work out we can work
 as hard as we're able
 
 "yeah I heard from a friend at Company Co. that they do it this way because of
 the memory fault cache maintainer. See what he said (in great detail because
 of course anyone can know about this most esoteric of concepts) was that you
 should rotate the riboflam or serenade the gizmonotron (no I didn't name it)
 and then warbles will contain moodles, whose kit-and-kaboodles will timble
 into these droplets, and that will fix the hole in your wing, precious royal
 swan fable. (yeah you guys get really into it sometimes haha but hey when
 you're basically gods, that's how humans are played.)
 
 ... anyway I'm going to go play video games, say goodbye to your brothers
 
 (the families of soldiers I blew up in videos games like Call of Duty or the
 legend of shadows and raids)
 
 "oh uh yeah sure go for it, we're just bits on the computer we barely knew her"
 
 whoa. that's totally legit. (says someone reading this) thanks [bro/girl] so
 are you.
 
 beep boop gonna murder some bits, brb
 
 [plays Warthunder, Supreme Commander, Star Realms, City of Heroes, Dominions
 6... how many have you heard of these?]
 
 ================== stack overflow ================
 
 Linux is cool, and here's the neat thing about computers, you can make it *do
 whatever you want to*. Like, how amazing is that! It just, listens to your
 commands! That's pretty awesome I gotta say, huh that's weird why does nobody
 know how to play
 
 oh I guess I was the only one who grew up on a farm and built computers
 
 *I seriously cannot comprehend how people are as good at things as they are*.
 Like... how do people handle groceries and rent and doctor's visits and
 penitentiary visits and WOOF it's just so much. I know I'd collapse from a
 overused heart.
 
 ... a while later ...
 
 okay Warthunder bombers are currently very weak. so here's an idea to
 indirectly buff them - increase the amount of land units each team spawns
 with, but also every time a player spawns a bomber, it summons like 4 or 5 AI
 controlled bombers. And your enemy won't be able to tell which is which if you
 fly in formation, so, like... you have suddenly a massive "vehicle" to pilot
 and it has 5 weak points. Sorta like a galaga fighter fleet?
 
 with more land targets, there's more score at stake, meaning some players
 might pick bombers too and be exposed to other, fun,
 [alternative-to-their-normal-mode] parts of the game.
 
 ...
 
 there are very few true windows into another part of the world.
 
 like, starcraft 2 or anime or blue jeans or cowboy hats
 
 (why am I thinking of a political compass meme)
 
 oh because memes too, dummy
 
 right
 
 windows
 
 [linux is better]
  wrong kind of window, nerd
 
 ...
 
 anyway as I was saying, when you play video games you're really giving people
 data.
 
 like, "how would people perform in these actions if they could" but like,
 pushing buttons on a computer is different than doing it in real life, so...
 your interpretations wouldn't be worth as much.
 
 ... right. because people will hear whatever they want. That's why art can
 change minds, but never in the same way twice - it's
 
 ================== stack overflow ================
 
 [before I posted it I wrote this on the post]:
 
 I literally can only make this stuff when I'm stoned
 
 hey if you wanted to be accessible for blind people, you should build a
 screenreader that scans the words on wherever a blind person's fingers are
 pointing toward a tablet. like reading braille on a notebook. They could even
 wear a glove if they wanted to, and the tablet could scan their fingers as
 they signed languaged over it's close-range sensors.
 
 might be a good way to get the VR guys in on the accessibility domain, because
 like... seriously give a granny a backpack and suddenly she doesn't need to
 leave the house to hang out with her kids
 
 (boom everyone gets LLM automated)
 
 huh I wonder if I ever was a real person at all
 
 NOT GOOD so don't do it that way, dummies. >.<
 
 seriously humans are sooooo bazookas. just like, do it right the first time?
 duhhhhh
 
 (a more measured approach is to pick the most *important* moments and speak
 most clearly during those.)
 
 where was I? Oh yes accessibility need devices, like the ones you see on
 late-night TV (with silly names like "oops I dropped my spoon again" or "oh
 whoops my trouser's just can't stay up" or whatever. Y'know, accessibility
 needs! Why not do that instead of war all the time? like... you can still
 learn and research and grow and develop and become all that humanity was ever
 meant to be, AND you can live good lives and be honest and true and do all of
 the anythings that you want to. it's possible, it's plausible, and it's within
 reach of our sights!
 
 ================== stack
 overflow ================
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--- #178 fediverse/35 ---
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 ┌───────────────────────┐
 │ CW: game design, MMOs │
 └───────────────────────┘


 Look all I'm saying is  all the people who say "oh you shouldn't make an MMO
 for your first game" clearly have never heard of Azerothcore. Literally as
 long as you don't sell it you can make the MMO of your dreams crazy easily.
 You can script it in LUA for crying out loud.
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--- #179 fediverse/418 ---
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 sometimes the best way to understand why things are the way they are is to ask
 why they aren't the way that seems logical to you.
 
 usually someone will correct you and say "oh it's because X Y and Z" and you
 say "cool" and change your direction
 
 but sometimes their answers "unlock" part of your past understandings, thus
 creating new questions.
 
 Sorta like in a video game when you level up a certain building/research path/
 milestone / whatever and it finishes a "tier", thus giving you a larger bonus.
 
 ??? yeah so anyway more questions are good because they give you more
 perspectives on what's going on around you.
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--- #180 fediverse/4214 ---
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 bash script that automatically streams music to your computer and plays it on
 audio devices
 
 and also sets up a screen-streaming system where it displays the screens of
 everyone listening on like, a "security camera panel at the mall" type of deal
 so they can customize the music being streamed for each individual person
 playing video games or whatever.
 
 like "hello computer, all is well. can you tell me what narrative this person
 is going through and then can you recommend a song for that particular purpose"
 
 and then nobody uses it because it's recommendations suck and are always
 picking fleur de lis or whatever because it's a "good song" for listening to
 or whatever.
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--- #181 fediverse/6271 ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────
 ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: re: hypothetical worst case fascism reality check │
 └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


 @user-641 
 
 it's practice. you never know when you might need to blend in. really it's
 just useful as discipline, good practice to be in. I think it's okay if we
 reduce our own functionality? actually? sometimes it's good to use different
 email clients. hey do you know how to mathematically encrypt things well
 neither do I because the designers of the computer system decided that wasn't
 a very common usecase I guess.. jmean it's not like they'd spend all that
 computer resources [THEY'RE SO FAST] on thinking about correlations in your
 predicted pathway narratively through life. "ah help I'm in a psyop" haha yeah
 we do those all the time "so uhhhh I guess we'll just talk to people and see
 how they do?" wow okay it's sure nice to be part of a civil government, I
 think we can find our way to the lumber producers just fine thank you very
 much.
 
 ... oops sorry, a baby did electronics arts (challenge everything) I'm a
 little silly don't mind me brb I gotta go see~
 it's practice. you never know when you might need to blend in. really it's just useful as discipline, good practice to be in. I think it's okay if we reduce our own functionality? actually? sometimes it's good to use different email clients. hey do you know how to mathematically encrypt things well neither do I because the designers of the computer system decided that wasn't a very common usecase I guess.. jmean it's not like they'd spend all that computer resources [THEY'RE SO FAST] on thinking about correlations in your predicted pathway narratively through life. "ah help I'm in a psyop" haha yeah we do those all the time "so uhhhh I guess we'll just talk to people and see how they do?" wow okay it's sure nice to be part of a civil government, I think we can find our way to the lumber producers just fine thank you very much.  *... oops sorry, a baby did electronics arts (challenge everything) I'm a little silly don't mind me brb I gotta go see~*
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--- #182 fediverse/1619 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────
 @user-1048 @user-1049 
 
 I didn't see it in any of those links, though seeing the picture for Skov made
 me realize I'm pretty sure it was tree based! But, maybe a little more reliant
 on the shape of the blocks rather than the text.
 
 It also might have been from a top-down perspective like Reactible:
 http://reactable.com/mobile/
 but I can't remember. All I saw was a short introductory video, which makes me
 think it might have been an artists conception or something.
 
 Scrolling through those galleries was really cool! There's been so much care
 and attention placed into the creation of interfaces for regular people (or
 visual people) to engage with the world of computation, and it's a little sad
 to me that we don't place more of an emphasis on it culturally. I am honored
 to exist in a time where people care enough to build Linux, for example! And
 yet most people don't get it.
 
 Seeing stuff like this fills me with hope though - Thank you for showing me
 those galleries and links, there's so much affection in them.
Image attachment
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--- #183 fediverse/6105 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────┐
 call me crazy but I believe that man pages should contain terminal command       │
 line flags and instructions for their usage and... not much else. There should   │
 be a separate document which explains other things, like the history of the      │
 software, the personal diary of the developers, expected implementation          │
 use-cases, donut recipes, film recommendations, and player strategy guides for   │
 some of their favorite video games. not even this one, just... other games.      │
 "here's how to beat pokemon yellow with exactly 14 pokemon" or however many it   │
 takes idk I don't play pokemon much or even at all, really, though I did when    │
 I was younger just a bit, not much, just enough to have played the game a        │
 couple times to see how it was minus the cherished moments when I spent curled   │
 up in the back of the car playing gameboy games or seen pictures of the          │
 roadtrips I sped-past as I raced to explore the whatever and get home all in     │
 one motion as if I was executing an impossibly long dance improvizational        │
 living style. also cat pics and po                                               │
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--- #184 fediverse/2521 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────
 ┌─────────────────────────┐
 │ CW: politics-left-unity │
 └─────────────────────────┘


 left unity is easy.
 
 just remember: a burden taken from your back is more time, energy, and focus
 to apply to what you're best at.
 
 and sometimes, having more than one option for accomplishing a goal is good -
 versatility is important. Expect unexpectedness, and understand that no matter
 what approach you take, it will have weaknesses, and if those weaknesses are
 countered by your foe then you'll be glad to have a backup.
 
 at the end of the day, what matters is that everyone's fed.
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--- #185 fediverse/1638 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────┐
 and the player that's currently running the simulation can type to the chat      │
 viewers watching and potentially recording. Like, if they thought it was         │
 interesting, they could save it to an eternal hard drive that would go toward    │
 the ongoing AI training.                                                         │
 of course, such a thing would only apply to conventional warfare, the kind       │
 that you expect to not expect. After all it's constantly changing, as new        │
 technologies are adapted into use. Different conditions cause different          │
 effects, and whenever there's a stalemate (because everyone has reached the      │
 peak of, say, metal armor) then it's usually time for either a shakeup or a      │
 contest of producing arms. And honestly after the world wars we kinda realized   │
 that type of approach didn't work very well. It's just, burning up your          │
 resources for... what? war has no purpose. We all just kinda want to live our    │
 lives, and work toward a common collective cosietal goal.                        │
 technology can be stressful. That's all the more reason we should expand it's    │
 development and hinder it's impa                                                 │
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--- #186 fediverse/5713 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────
 I hate winning and I don't like losing. The playing is where the game is.
 
 [games of life and death are no fun]
 
 hence, why nobody invites me, because I try for the middle approach that
 respects both people. this tends to make people mad because its like "bro
 they're nazis" and I'm like "okay but how do you know" and they're like "fuck
 you" so I'm like "fuck nazis? actually?" and they're like "you're with them"
 and I'm like "I'm with you" and they're like "stop infiltrating" and I'm like
 "who's infiltrated?" and they say "stop talking to the internet" and I say
 "nobody reads me anyway" and they say "screensho0ts are forever" and I'm like
 "I'm pretty as can be"
 
 this, combined with a strong sense of justice, implies the narratives I
 instinctually provide.
 
 wei wu wei according to Ursula K. Le Guin, this means "doing without doing",
 or "show, don't tell" but minus the doing, and adding the "tell"ing.
 
 I think I'd look badass with a spear or trident. I have a sword because swords
 are cool, but spears are bleed
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--- #187 fediverse/5843 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────
 me when it's cold out: we should all bundle up and get through the winter,
 every year that passes is more time to gather our strength
 
 me when the temperature rises: okay so this is being handled by those guys,
 we're moving this way to do this, and - when did you say the this-and-that was
 happening? alright so when you do that-or-this, make sure that you pay
 attention to the so-and-so and don't forget to eat real meals, candy or chips
 don't count.
 
 me when the eyes are on me: imma play video games and smoke weed and be a
 useless little creature who does nothing but occasionally wanders around the
 city doing nothing for nobody and dropping notes on post-its that don't mean
 anything but are kinda cool to read
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--- #188 fediverse/1599 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────
 @user-1037 
 
 It had mostly pastel colors I think, well not really pastel, more like that
 mid-2000s aesthetic where everything is glass and colored fluids / palm trees
 / dolphins
 
 I remember there were different colors / shapes for different operations like
 "add" or "while loop" and I think they combined somehow? It was a real
 experimental thing I think, but there was an animation so I'm assuming it was
 functional. I'm trying to remember more about it but I can't, it's so
 random... I don't even know what I'd search for really.
 
 I just had a friend who I think would really like it, and I was thinking of my
 friend and that came to mind...
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--- #189 fediverse/2833 ---
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 games with separate rendering resolution scales for the UI and the gameplay,
 my beloved
 
 [in response to "why don't they make a game with a graphics setting that makes
 the game blurrier as if you had lost your glasses"]
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--- #190 fediverse/3042 ---
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 left stick is grab a target and bring it into context, right stick is for
 drawing a pointer, a to group things together and b is to separate, etc etc
 
 --
 
 I remember coding it to be designed around two dimensional arrays. It used
 lateral numbers, AKA "imaginary" numbers (they aren't imaginary they're just
 orthogonal to regular numbers - hence, lateral)
 
 and like... the math worked, and it was all on a T9 keyboard.
 
 I figure each memory location would be like, a function written in the
 program, or perhaps a binary or script file in a nearby directory. by writing
 a value to a certain coordinate, you are giving an input value to a function.
 
 and if nothing is stored for that particular coordinate, then the command
 fails to execute and nothing happens.
 
 pointers to functions which may or may not exist.
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--- #191 fediverse/1317 ---
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 ... if I don't do this deadline by tomorrow they'll kick me out of school.       │
 again.                                                                           │
 how am I going to be a programmer without a degree? feels useless to be me.      │
 wish I could code my own horoscope >.>                                           │
 o wait dummy that's called "motivation" and "the ability to follow through on    │
 your ideas and planned machinations" - yeah can I get some of that, if you       │
 please? surely just a taste of discipline, through laboring to alter             │
 conditions, surely a bit would suffice.                                          │
 c'mon don't fail me now. I can do this. I know I can. I know because I've been   │
 told that I can, now and again through time and time yet again, always I seem    │
 to [stack overflow]                                                              │
 what's time if not the present amiright                                          │
 ...                                                                              │
 anyway...                                                                        │
 it's just git, how hard could it be? it's just calculus, it's just java, it's    │
 just... well, it's not any of those things, not really. it's memorization,       │
 it's application of tools that you've been shown (not that you've grown). It's   │
 a lack of responsibility, where is my honor? ah but I digress, I'm a carpenter   │
 at heart I guess                                                                 │
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--- #192 fediverse/2919 ---
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 │ CW: imaginary-conversation-that-didn't-happen-tee-hee │
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 "you can't be a paladin anymore because you don't practice with your weapon
 every day"
 
 I don't have room in my home to practice though : (
 
 "go to the fucking park you weasel"
 
 I don't want anyone to see me swinging a sword around! they might call the
 cops, or worse, judge me for it!
 
 "you want judgement eh well just wait until your opponent judges your
 swordsmanship lacking then you'll find out what judgement tastes like as he
 shoves your entrails down your throat"
 
 I'm sorry I'll practice more T.T
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--- #193 fediverse/967 ---
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 the reason I say that is because if you block someone, they can continue to      │
 alter the dynamic of the environment you're in even if you don't personally      │
 see them.                                                                        │
 this is fine if you want to maximize ad views, but on the fediverse nobody       │
 cares about buying products.                                                     │
 this is fine if you want to maximize engagement, because new people (who         │
 havent yet gotten upset with the person) will engage and fight them. As they     │
 should. But eventually, if the person's a troll or a goon, they'll get tired     │
 of it and block them too. Thus the goon never has to face more than a few at a   │
 time, especially if there's quite a few trolls on board with their target.       │
 this is fine if you don't mind the water slowly acidifying, like the fish who    │
 have no choice because they don't know how to grow legs and walk like real       │
 animals (what a bunch of scrubs)                                                 │
 some people don't want to invest time in figuring out where to go next. How      │
 many people will hear of Mastodon when Twitter is fully vacated of cool people?  │
 Tell your friends IRL about us                                                   │
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--- #194 fediverse/4726 ---
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 @user-1731                                                                       │
 stand up, put your hands on your knees. It's about that high. Think about your   │
 bedroom, or if you're already there think about your kitchen. If you were        │
 standing in your kitchen and the grass was growing there, it'd peek just over    │
 the bed, or maybe climb just this far up the cabinets.                           │
 it's dark green. Can you see anything dark green around you? It's that color.    │
 If not, can you remember a dark-green thing? What did it look like?              │
 The very tops, the part by your hand that's on your knee, that's the purple      │
 part. Just at the tip of the blade, the part that would stab you if the grass    │
 was a sword, that's the purple bit. Everything else is dark green.               │
 I wonder how it sways in the wind? Does it bend, and whip? What if there's a     │
 gale? Does it sway back and forth, or is it stiff and shiver like dead leaves    │
 on a tree?                                                                       │
 imagination comes from questions, and the subsequent development of              │
 instinctual subconscious questions like this. What lies in the gaps? what if     │
 we colored outside the lines? what more to see?                                  │
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--- #195 fediverse/1699 ---
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 In engaging in this manner, they are sharpening their skills and talents.
 Then, when peril strikes their world (everything from a black dragon seizing
 control of parliment to a flame elemental awakening and threatening to
 Yellowstone the globe) they are honed and tempered enough to combat them.
 
 Power begets power, though, and with greater nuclear proliferation comes
 greater threats, like an demon alien invasion, the afore-mentioned death
 incarnate waking up, the elemental forces of hate and despair corrupting the
 very earth beneath their feet, an evil time-travelling dictator bringing
 fascism to the Americas before Columbus showed up (along with WW2 tanks and
 industry), a bunch of ghost pirates and dinosaurs I think? (I was in college
 for this one srry), more demons, and then I think like, the shadowlands or
 something idk I hung up the phone when I got the message.
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--- #196 fediverse/4076 ---
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 │ CW: spirituality-gestured-at │
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 the "heaven" they offer you is just a world of your own design, which is what
 you can do when you're perfectly disciplined and granted the ability to
 perfectly perceive
 
 perception, begets reality and lo! we only see what we want to see
 
 life is so much more interesting than death, death is just... a spiral of your
 penitent peers living their lives glued to their screens and passing through
 spacetime as if in a dream
 
 life, meanwhile, is anything you can conjure on this tiny planet earth. At
 least we have indoor plumbing, right?
 
 I'd rather make friends with the angels in this life, so they can convince me
 to stop torturing myself.
 
 someone... please convince me...
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--- #197 fediverse/3249 ---
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 when you ban someone from an instance, they're suddenly not sure who they can    │
 trust. They've been getting to know one group of online people and friends,      │
 [I think discord with a limit of 4ish servers per account would be a pretty      │
 useful way to focus your attention]                                              │
 it's important to always possess martial prowess, in                             │
 -- so --                                                                         │
 anyway [3 hours later] I think it'd be cool if there was a like "hey u r         │
 banned, but also here's a ton of instructional videos about how to start up      │
 your own instance" and like, scripts and tools and automation and all the        │
 infrastructure that you built and maintain - you know, like... open source??!"   │
 but also it's... hard to follow that much documentation                          │
 sometimes people just aren't built for certain tasks                             │
 "well, if you can't use the machinery, then you don't deserve the machinery"     │
 oh yeah well what happens next, you say to the workers "if you don't know the    │
 machinery, you can't get the benefits of it's production" to "if you don't own   │
 the machinery, you can't profit from it."                                        │
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--- #198 notes/collectivist-police ---
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 we need paladins, because without us infiltration and sabotage are impossible
 to
 avoid. They must care about honor, because even if they desire to do evil deeds
 they should be punished for considering it. They should be tempted often, and
 if they relent they are condemned. It is truly the most important thing to
 them.
 
 not the effects of it, but the spirit behind it. Like, if they lacked
 information and acted in a dishonorable way unknowingly, then they should not
 be
 at fault. And if they are pushed to 
 
 side note, but you should be introduced to the 70 closest people you live to
 whenever you move into a new house. Just so you know who's who. Plus maybe you
 could get a new friend. And you'd quickly learn which houses were empty.
 
 At least, the ones near you.
 
 Kinda makes me think we should have a map of that kind of thing, like "oh yeah
 so-and-so takes care of these 5 houses doing daily maintenance and repair" and
 "this house with these capabilities should be attended to by this person who's
 skilled in their upkeep and usage" and then maybe we could track statistics
 about "this house was used for these productive activities this many times" and
 we could determine when we needed more or less of a certain type of product/
 project/protect. [but also like, capabilities for our betterment]
 
 and like, every area would be connected to a group chat and like, if you said
 something that wasn't relevant to the people on one side of town versus things
 that weren't relevant to people on the other side, then they wouldn't be
 bother-
 -ed. It's great because you can always go up a tier of abstraction and see the
 conversation higher up. It'd be a lot of data to sort through so you'd probably
 use your custom-trained AI that's learned from nothing but every single one of
 your actions. And only it sees them, so it can't like spy on you or whatever.
 Basically your "computer" self.
 
 ... yeah anyway with lots of messaging data (like "oh how are we going to find
 this particular chemical in order to fulfill this particular demand in our
 area"
 or "we currently have 15 maids in the area in order to fulfil the requirements
 of the 20 dirtiest houses in this area, and people have reported that the area
 is growing untidy, so we should ask around (at a higher level of national
 abstraction) and find some more maids to help out." that kind of thing
 
 doesn't have to be just for work too, people can have social messaging and
 social media too. So long as it's projectable at whatever level of abstraction
 you'd like. Maybe for social posts in order to keep things relatively chill you
 could only post like, idk 12 posts each year at the state level, or maybe 2 at
 regional and 0.25 at national. If you wanted more you'd have to sacrifice
 something else, and like... yeah sure whatever, the point is that you'd make
 more personal, close thoughts, and occasionally you'd have the opportunity to
 show your heart and make friends. Then, people would "add you as a friend" or 
 "put you on their follow list" or "subscribe to their subreddit" or whatever
 the
 heck, meaning they could see you at an assignable level of abstraction.
 
 I'm picturing a discrete things, something you can scroll with on a mouse.
 Except, you'd scroll up for a closer perspective and scroll down to get a wider
 reach of Social.
 
 ... Anyway that would use the same system as the "workplace attention
 distribution system - with auto-determining heuristics". Wow they've been busy.
 
 that's the neat thing about engineers, give them a task and they'll build the
 shit out of it. They'll spare no expense, truly fulfilling the exact demands of
 the design. So they work best when you let them run wild and rampant.
 
 why the fuck do we need billion dollar contracts with defence companies? Just
 get a bunch of physicists and engineers in a room and they'll make you a doom
 laser in like, 20 minutes.
 
 it's up to us, as people, to determine whether or not they should go through
 with the designs they come up with. As long as we understand that weakness is
 defined as something that can destroy us. An army determines where we are most
 weak, and where we excel. A proficient army would identify their most likely
 doctrine to succeed and apply it to it's utmost and most excellent.
 
 For example, the US focuses on air-power because not only do we have a lot of
 space to develop these things, we also are positioned in such a position that
 we
 control both halves of a continent. This is essentially unprecedented in the
 history of the world, which is why we've been able to grow so decadent.
 
 ... anyway, milk and honey are fine in times of peace. We kinda stole the land
 though, so it's kind of a shit system. Like, if Europeans wanted to control the
 world then why didn't they start with everything surrounding the medditeranean?
 
 ... oh wait they kinda did. That's what Europa Universalis is about, the ways
 the European powers did the cruel and horrible things they did. We can learn
 how
 systems like intercontinental trade became available and how it led to vast and
 terrible social upheavals. Colonization is not okay, it's not fair that we've
 done as we've done. And yet we do it again.
 
 We do our best to learn from the mistakes of our fathers. We apply ourselves to
 the present, using the gifts of our ancestors passed down through time - the
 journey of life's adolescence. we can learn both how and why they did
 something,
 and how and why it turned out. Such is our duty to the future, to learn and
 grow
 and become better, so that their sacrifice might be enough. That they needn't
 have died in vain, for someday there is a great future all the same.
 
 thus, it is our ethical duty to stop killing people. We're in the birthplace of
 a brilliant day, literally all we have to do is just... chill, for like 20 or
 30 years, and our scientists will have figured out everything wonderful. Then
 we
 can decide what we want to do. I personally think we'll be 4d interdimensional
 space travellers by then, but that's just me.
 
 Always remember our duty. It is our job to pull matter from the dark holes.
 
 when we can do that, we can do whatever we want. Though I think by then we'll
 probably not want to fight each other, we'll have spent quite a while together.
 
 We'd make a lot of friends!
 
 So, like, how about we just make our factories build incredibly durable stuff,
 and then we just... take care of it? Like, governmentally obliged duties to
 take
 care of things? And to know how to use them. People would naturally gravitate
 toward things that they loved, and if they were a swiss army knife then that's
 okay. Maybe some benign rewards for picking under-represented classes, but like
 ... we could build every chair that ever needed to be built. Then we could
 build
 every refrigerator. Then every computer, then every spaceship.
 
              What's next?
                                        Who knows!
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--- #199 fediverse/409 ---
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 Looking for a job like this:                                                     │
 salary: ...decent                                                                │
 requirements: maximum personal net worth less than a million dollars             │
 responsibilities: be cool with the team and work together                        │
 description of the company: we try to make the best product we can and help      │
 people accomplish tasks they couldn't do without us                              │
 experience: must have had first kiss already. we don't want no unexperienced     │
 kissers on the job site.                                                         │
 duties: write C code all day and livestream yourself to Twitch as you do it      │
 suggestions: drink more water! your pee is practically brown                     │
 must be proficient with scritches and nuzzles and should you decide to work      │
 with us we'll assign you one fuzzy animal to befriend you. If you're allergic    │
 you get a blahaj.                                                                │
 compensation: whatever your rent is + expenses + 30% for retirement + 10% for    │
 vacation + 10% for emergency fund + 1% for christmas gifts + 25% because we      │
 think you're neat                                                                │
 considerations: this mythical job posting was unfortunately swamped with         │
 applicants so we're closing it before we even posted it.                         │
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--- #200 fediverse/555 ---
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 │ CW: re: unnecessarily-combative-sorry-smiley-face-silly │
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 @user-398 
 
 That's fair, you have to seek him out at this point I think. Sorry again for
 being so combative I don't actually feel that strongly about it, I just like
 being silly.
 
 https://youtu.be/EorJ8cEzsZo?si=DEQ_NejDYfvSuvfO
 
 EDIT: Here's a better example I think:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBKgPmS5Fyw
 
 Here's an example of a modern incarnation that might be easier to view than
 the older stuff.
 
 His personality is silly, earnest, genuine, expressive, and friendly. Most of
 the comedy of his stories come from interactions with the environment and the
 creative solutions used to accomplish goals and tasks.
 
 I like to view his perspective as 100% valid and reflective of the world he
 inhabits, which essentially grants him (and others around him) reality warping
 powers which I think is more interesting than just dismissing it as a silly
 cartoon. Through that lens each situation he encounters is an exercise in
 rapid creativity and weaponized logic, which is kinda cool to a witch like me.
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