Problem Machine

I just watched through all of Adventure Time on the recommendation of my brother. It was pretty great. The first season is pretty stereotypical weird-humor-cartoon stuff, funny but kind of forgettable, but around the second season they started really getting into the characters and it got real good. A lot of people talk about the worldbuilding and stuff as what's cool about the show, but I don't think any of that would have worked without the glue of really interesting characters holding it together. That's actually something I would criticize about the sixth (most recent) season of the show, is that it seemed to focus a lot more on big P Plot and less on the characters and what they wanted. It's interesting that such an apparently lighthearted cartoon has such a consistent narrative theme of loneliness and isolation. When I grew up, cartoons were never really allowed to be sad. It's a nice change. The high point of the show for me thus far:

That's an interesting case because you could actually represent 640x480 graphics at 1280x960. If that's what's being done, then it's silly to believe that one is an improvement on the other since they're visually indistinguishable -- essentially the equivalent of running at 60 frames per second but only updating every other frame. If that's not what's being done, then it's absurd to believe that higher resolution graphics are in any way inherently better, since it's a matter of artistic and aesthetic intent. Either way.

I'd be pretty comfortable calling anyone who says a game running at 1920x1080 is objectively better than a game running at 640x480 an idiot. Haven't we basically reached consensus at this point that reviewing a work of art as though it were a camera is awful and reductive?

Yeah that sounds like gamergate alright

That's not surprising, given that the former views sex as a hobby and the latter as a magical talisman that will somehow transform them into real boys.

Okay which one is your waifu?

The developer is making a successor focused on childbirth anxiety and Filipino folklore with a bit more of a focus on linear storytelling and traditional gameplay challenges. I'll probably back it when I get the money to do so. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/infinitap/devastated-dreams

Hm. Maybe I didn't see well. Disappointing if so. I certainly prefer the interpretation that Riley either hasn't fully constructed a gender identity or is somewhat gender-queer.

Also IIRC the bakery lady had emotions of different genders like Riley did. It does seem like a choice made with some intent behind it. I think the volcano thing is generally accepted to be their worst short at this point. I'm pretty tired of this whole inanimate objects getting laid or working to get humans laid genre of cartoon. I didn't like the dog thing much either but that was a Disney short not a Pixar one.

And one copy of NS2 finds a happy home

Hm I suppose I have a few games sitting in my account if anyone's interested. I guess I should keep it to the same 6 months 50 posts thing as everyone else. Plain Sight Portal BIT.TRIP RUNNER Natural Selection 2 Natural Selection 2 (again) FTL: Faster Than Light Contraption Maker

Nice. Making something of that length and complexity daily is an impressive challenge. Hopefully you don't have a lot of distractions because that seems like it would take up most of a day.

Nice, I like the brazenly secondhand approach to lyrics. I think distorting a chimey instrument tends to lend to a kind of FM Synthesis feel, since I've gotten similar feedback on another piece in the past where I did something similar. It does make it sound like the lower bitrate channels used by old consoles.

Okay it's been 3 and a half hours or so of which maybe 2:30-2:45 was work and I'm pretty tired so I'ma call this done enough for now. If I go to sleep and like it a lot when i wake up maybe I'll develop it more then. My Heat Cuts the Ice https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100710544/My%20Heat%20Cuts%20the%20Ice.mp3

Apparently these forums just automatically embed dropbox links like that, which is handy. I had no idea at the time! Atmospheric cues like that feel vaguely cheaty in some ways, but I really feel like stuff like that becomes part of the music and adds a lot of naturalistic texture and tone to a scene. Strings very much change the feel of the piece. Now it feels kind of like you're in the boiler room of some kind of arctic facility in an atmospheric adventure game.

Nice. Atmospheric. Here's what I have so far. I figured if it was gonna heat up it better start pretty chilly, so I went with kind of a wintry sound to start with. I started um about 90 minutes ago, but stopped to do some stuff in between and otherwise procrastinate. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100710544/Heater.mp3

So are we all supposed to make heater songs? ... it's already pretty warm.

I dunno, being indie usually relies on a certain degree of goodwill from other indies and that seems like a super not good way to get that.

Yeah I'd be into something like that, though due to my current sleep schedule those particular hours don't work for me my time. I can just work in a 4 hour block and be confident that that covers 8-12 in some time zone though.

Certainly that attitude is out there, but I'm skeptical that the numbers behind it are anywhere near big enough to skew poll results. Oh well, hard to say. There's certainly a lot of noisily regressive elements out there, and it's sometimes hard to tell whether their presence is inflated by that noise or representative of a silently supportive majority.

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case

Yeah I've seen complaints about aGG from several people I'm inclined to listen to in addition to yourself: Veerender Jubbal and vivian_games are the ones I can recall offhand. I guess some people are more interested in being seen to be righteous than in actually trying to make things better. Well, I guess that's an easy trap for anyone to fall into, but it's gross.

I think it's worth observing and commenting on how the games industry interacts with GG, far more than commenting on the antics of GG itself. Devs like Rocksteady and publishers like WB were conspicuously silent when GG was at its height: Is this going to be the extent of their response, then? Toothless jokes that elide the actual harm that GG and the ethos behind it has caused as well as the role that game culture has in shaping that mindset? I think that's worth taking a look at.

speaking of which, her latest is a good one: Tale of Tales: Being Wrong Will Set You Free