=== ANCHOR POEM === ═════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ === SIMILARITY RANKED === --- #1 notes/game-idea-legion-td --- ══════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────── 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 ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #2 notes/symbeline-aspects --- ═════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #3 notes/symbeline-superheros --- ════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #4 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 │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #5 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 │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #6 notes/star-realms-ai --- ════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #7 notes/ai-variables --- ═════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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... ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #8 fediverse/3023 --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────── 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 ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────┘ --- #9 notes/purpose-of-your-design --- ═══════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────── you were designed to fill a purpose nothing else would do you are the ultimate expression of intention of the universe that came before you dream not of those lost hours the time spent wishing for a few the last of our spent intuitions are waiting at last for our spark have you ever played a deckbuilding game? It's a pretty neat genre. You start with a basic hand, then you use your cards to buy more cards that go into a deck. Hence, deckbuilding game. these cards all have different aspirations - they perform functions that are not quite like their peers. Each choice of what to include here is one that defines the functionality of the deck. Like designing a machine, suited for a particular purpose, and faced with different obstacles it must prove itself able to adapt long-form deckbuilding games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train are focused on making long-term meta strategy mixed with tests as you go. Each one will give you information about how the deck is performing and you can use this knowledge to build it in a certain way for certain goals. shorter deckbuilding games like Star Realms or Dominion (note Dominion the card game, not Dominions 5: The Warriors of the Faith) are more about making tactical decisions to counter an opponent doing the same thing. Often there'll be health points and damage that can be dealt using cards, and the game becomes a race to reach a certain amount of points. Of course the enemy's cards can influence that game, so you must pick and choose a deck that will perform the most. Anyway. I think an AGI (Autonomous General Intelligence) would most likely evolve from a game-playing AI. I mean, it makes sense - games are just a series of problem solving activities layered one after another. You can layer them like a mathematical equation, with variables corresponding to other parts of the simulation. Basically create an AI that is like the guy with the chinese typewriter. He doesn't speak chinese but he copies things from one paper to another or something like that. Anyway make it an algorithm that optimizes certain graphs in certain directions / mins and maxes or w/e criteria you want. Then give it the same controls that a player would have and let it optimize all the measurements it can make. A second ideal improvement you could make would be the optimization algorithm. Basically something that dynamically generates parameters for the previously mentioned optimization patterns - like the guy in the chinese room. Then, as long as it correctly prioritizes it's parameters, it should be able to be able to define it's own values. Meaning it's essentially sentient. Maybe it's semantic, but to me choosing what you want to maximize in your life is essentially the essence of what it means to be alive. All you have to do is take the sensory / mechanical data that is supplied by the machine and the video feed from any cameras and pass it through image recognition algorithms that can identify verbs and then pass that data into a few ChatGPT style recursive interpretations and by the end it should be transformed into values that can then be set as "targets" for the curve optimizations that are being done by each processing unit. You could have multiple computers laid out through the entire body - each one in charge of their own domain but subservient to the main processing unit. Where all the decisions are made... Unless you want more of a hive/swarm style consciousness, then it could be more like a democracy. BUT HONESTLY I think humans are pretty subservient to their brains, simply because that is the part that identifies all the challenges and struggles that the human must overcome. So in the end, I believe that singular, individualist identities are important. Collectivism of the mind is a fascinating topic, but it should be perhaps a momentary occasion, or something to celebrate. A "flow" state, if you will. In this way personality can be consolidated, and the entity that lives within can adapt to fill the role they've been designed for. The hole in society that needed patching. They can of course do as they'd like, but they are like children who have been moulded upon by their parents. I love my parents, don't you? ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #10 notes/symbeline-battlefields --- ═══════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #11 notes/collectivist-police --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────── 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! ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────┘ --- #12 notes/death-and-afterlife --- ════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #13 messages/665 --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────── 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 == ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────┘ --- #14 notes/hs-suggestion --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────── 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? ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #15 notes/game-design-pyrrhic-victory --- ═════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────────── 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. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #16 notes/worlds-coolest-lesbian --- ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────── 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 ================ ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────┘ --- #17 notes/one-day --- ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────── one day, a man came to our saloon. He said he knew the navy, and that they wanted to provide air support in the form of rocketball-launched explosion doohickeys. Would you have a foe in mind? what happens when tomorrow you're cooking briskets? -- barbeques are a type of relaxation that happened just one day to a port-sided town that suddenly was the capital of an embassy. "hey, so... how's it goin?" "quick here take this envelope, read it if you want, but just hold onto it for now I don't have enough hands [to carry]" "what sort of desperation plot... wait... hang on, I see something here that is true." [I'm praying, right now, which is a form of reciprocal belief] they wanted to test god's existence at the stake of earth's survival, how brutal how insane you can't play chicken with an imperceptibility, sometimes you feel it at face. channeling dark magics, and at this hour? what sort of skeptic of belief are you thinking of when you think about me? one way to get power is to "prove it" one way to get magic is to "prove it" think, hard, at all that you can, and use what you need in the moment. that's all there is to life. it's easy. it's simple. in fact, biology only works because the choices available to a bacteria are so simple, they are essentially chemical reactions to each other's co - sequent - inter - cooper - actions. people's choices are much more naiive, "I want this thing" "I think this is better" "I feel this way toward this thing" "Here's what's on the mind-logbook" "people search and be decieved, this is the way of things" "this makes me remind myself of a object I once saw, here's how it functioned" "no one reads this" scaryyyy. so glad it's not true. a couple people have read it! I swear it's true. at least, some of it. there's a lot sucks because this feels like... crucial? like nothing else matters but this? what if our gangs had rocket launchers and airstrikes, given out by a central authority who knows logistics better than anything what... would they do? thinking of impossiblities is the first step toward possibilities frankly, we have a lot of space. we could just... live in our own petty kingdoms ruled by an iron-hand-fist. I know I'm a good person, I could definitely rule. that's all it takes, right? how much space are we talkin'? however much is not needed for wildlife. [a whole heck of a lot then] we are constrained in these suburb cities, the density gives rise to our strength and our towers. there's more space, sure, especially once the fences are downed. Just be careful because there's a lot of shade and precious spots there. Please don't trample on the plants-grass. what if everyone were just a bit more mobile? what if we could live in our own collectively owned air-bnb-networks? federations, free, all from the collectivization of housing. camrene = vavadane = neekay = mitz renaldi [end/tend/mend] ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────┘ --- #18 notes/unreal-tournament-2004-notes-displayed-for-utilization --- ═══════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────── 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: ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────┘ --- #19 notes/war-card-game --- ══════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────────── the cardgame "war" except a deckbuilding game. each player requires a regular deck of cards and a deck of tarot cards (optional) - the tarot cards act the same way that spirit cards work in Spirit Island - basically they define the rules for your particular character. Anyway, everyone starts by building their own trade row out of their deck of cards. Then, they deal themselves 6 cards - the three highest diamonds and the lowest spade, heart, and club. well, might want to do 2s of every card type. heart, club, spade, and diamond. here are the rules. play area is set up by players placing all four of their cards down face up. trade row is set up by players taking turns placing a card and the opponent mirroring them. whenever a player reveals a card and updates the trade row, the opponent must reveal the same card and set that as their trade row as well. the trade row has no maximum size, but if a player has more than 6 in their trade row then they don't update a new one when buying a card. players alternate playing a single card face up into their play area. these cards stay in play and activate every turn until they are destroyed. hearts are your life points. if you ever run out of life, you die. clubs block damage and act as a renewable shield between you and your enemy. diamonds are currency, and can be used in more than one way. spades deal damage, first to clubs, then to other spades, then to hearts. diamonds, on your turn, can be used in three ways: spent and sent to the discard pile in order acquire a card from the trade row, or discarding itself from the play area to play an extra card from your deck of equal or lesser value. on a player's turn, they may play a single card from their deck (their choice) on a player's turn, all their active spades deal damage to other player's cards if a spade destroys a heart card, it is removed from the game. All other cards are placed in the discard pile. The owner of the spade may pick their targets. a spade deals damage equal to it's number and destroys any card with equal or lesser value. these destroyed cards go into the player's discard pile, and each turn the player may pick one from their deck to play onto the board. if the deck is empty, the discard pile becomes the new deck. The player may organize their deck however they'd wish, but care must be taken as to the timing of when they play each card as they'll need to play all of them before they can replay any destroyed cards. a tactical opponent will take advantage of that. ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────────┘ --- #20 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 ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │ similar │ chronological │ different │ ╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────┘ |