clyde

In order to reach the recommended specs for Oculus, I have to update my gpu, cpu, and motherboard. I am considering just upgrading to a GTX970 (why are there so many types?), plugging it into my current setup and seeing how far that gets me before committing to a new motherboard and cpu. Is there any fundamental mistake I may be making by doing that? I imagine that when it doesn't work, I can just get the new motherboard, cpu and plug the new card into that instead.

Chris Crawford started a Kickstarter for a game that tries to simulate complex personalities that you can interact with. This is obviously a moonshot, but I like moonshots. I love talking about this type of character-algorithm based gameplay ambition so I figure that this kickstarter could light the fires of that debate again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=304&v=4MUxMRG2fqU

Everything about it is awesome.

I'm skeptical that they have an impressive conversational system. If it's as developed and impressive as is implied by the video, then they are going to release it as something regardless of whether or not the funds are raised.

I like that. I think I'll make it so it gets more intense the longer you are exposed to it. But it'll also have a nice comforting, expansive drone.

That's the spirit. Do you have an evokative mood word perchance?

Sure. What word or concept or whatever would be a good one?

Would anyone else be interested in a song-making jam-event. This type of thing is helpful for me in making games and I figure it can give me quick gains in music-composition too. I'd like to do something soon and something that only takes a couple of hours. So I'll just throw out a date to see if there is any interest. Anyone want to make a song Tuesday night? and then submit it here? I'll start around 8pm. How about a soft deadline of 12am your time.

I've heard of using face-recognition technology for identifying emotions, but this is the first demonstration of quantifying the information that I have seen.

Does anyone know what the deal is with Minecraft and Windows 10? I can't tell what is speculation and what is real. The impression I get from reading the NeoGaf thread is that upgrading to Windows 10 means that I can only play Pocket Edition. To be honest, I don't know how to do much in that game beyond building stuff with blocks, but I do like the massive expanses that I can explore. Pocket Edition has an invisible wall.

Would a Spiderman game work in VR?

So I just started playing The Last Federation. I've enjoyed my first hour or so. I was able to effectively conceptualize enough of what was going on, but then somehow my first sight of the flagship customization overwhelmed me so I decided to take a break and start a thread. I don't know how important the decisions I'm making at the beginning are, but they feel pretty important. I just gave space-faring tech to two peace-leaning species and to one that looks stupid enough that I may be able to control. Then a war-loving race became space-faring on their own so I took a black-ops mission to get another war-loving race into space-faring tech. Even though I haven't seen the consequences yet, it's a neat context to be looking at a galaxy map and reading about these different species; trying to figure out which ones I want to boost. I thought the 2D Flotilla-style combat would be tedious from the screenshots, but I'm enjoying it and quickly getting overwhelmed with the possibility to upgrade my ship. I probably just haven't encountered enough ships to understand why I would equip my flagship with a "disruptor". I'm having fun. I typically throw myself at these games and enjoy doing horribly. I'm looking forward to watching the gullible owl-race get turned against me or whatever.

The Last Federation is $4 on the Humble Store today. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but I've been having a good time trying to figure out how to play. I managed to encourage two planets to start trading with each other for the first time. I want the Boarine to start trading too so that everyone can start liking each other a little bit, but they are busy "privateering".

Candy Planet is a lotus-eater story in a Star Trek log format themed as a kid's paradise that turns out to be dangerously saccharine. I suppose a this may be helpful as a comparison:

I was reading something about kitsch as art and they were talking about artistic value (the historical influence a piece has on art as a whole that can't be accurately judged at the moment of inception) and aesthetic value (which they defined in an algebraic formula of unity, complexity and intensity). Actually, their definition of aesthetic value was kinda interesting. They argued that aesthetic value could be explored by changing aspects of a painting. So there are three types of possible changes: A. Changes which would make the painting better than the original. B. Changes which would have no effect on the painting's aesthetic evaluation. C. Changes which would make the painting worse than the original. So then they defined unity as C-A They defined complexity as A+B+C (I think)They defined intensity as (A+C)/B I like this idea a lot. I was using it while making music yesterday. So what that means is that I would adjust parts until I gave up on trying to improve them to create unity and I would try to remove parts that could be changed to anything without affecting the piece, or changing parts I was ambivilent to until changing them back made them worse in order to increase the piece's intensity. I've been using these techniques in writing and game-development for a while, but seeing it formulized with such clarity was helpful. Also it's interesting to see many of my problems with 60-hour games be described as "A lack of intensity in a sea of complexity" (my quote, but I felt I was channeling the author of the book).

The visual hallucination thing applied to video: https://twitter.com/kcimc/status/616662893120090113 ...ah, apparently Google released the code so that people can start experimenting with it. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/02/google-electric-sheep-image-processing-neural-network-algorithm

Still not sure if I'm doing it right, but things are starting to get bad for various planets (environment, civil-societyt, and economy) which is making piracy happen in a couple of places. This appears to be good for me because I can participate in battles that makes my approval rating go up with everyone. Before the piracy thing started happening, I had been researching tech with various species and then gifting them to everyone else that I wasn't afraid of. I wonder if I will eventually be able to have a grasp on this game. I probably will know enough to watch some sort of video-tutorial by the time this one is over.

My song is progressing. I'm starting to think that I'm ripping off a Björk song in the theme, but I haven't spent the time to figure out which one. Edit: I think I'm safe. I suspect that I was thinking of the overture from Dancer In the Dark which isn't melodically similar.

Besides mods of commercial games, the one that comes to mind in Experiment 12 http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/26/4559008/experiment-12-by-12-different-indie-developers They are making a new one right now. http://forum.makega.me/t/chain-game-2-schedule-games/1483 I think the game might just load a new scene, all of which are assembled afterward though and not really exchanged. I'm not sure. The game ihavefivehat is working on with everythingstaken and FirecatFG is probably a better example. http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/9226 They've been throwing the project file to each other. There's also Moonlit Corpse where Rylie James Thomas is organizing an exquisite-corpse game with Sword of Moonlight (the King's Field engine(?)) http://killscreendaily.com/articles/turning-dreamlike-spaces-kings-field-exquisite-corpse/ And the Sharecart 1000 project is focused on having games share a save-file which isn't really the same thing, but it's kind of related. http://sharecart1000.com/

I haven't played Endless Space. The Last Federation was just $5 the other day, so I could understand why in comparison $15 would feel expensive to some. I haven't played much of it yet, so don't take my suggestion as a knowledgeable recommendation.

I was not expecting tht the game would be that short. I'm pretty slow, but still I've only just now managed to get the Skylaxians to approve of me 100+ and I've been focusing on that alliance. I just got the forming-a-federation tool-tip. After about 3 hours of play I think I've progressed less than a decade in game. Thanks for your time estimate, that will change how careful I am. Did you ever try to duel a Burlust leader? I am curious what that would involve, but I don't want to die.

I did a let'sPlay of Sky Blue by Gigoia Studios

Stephen Beirne wrote an article arguing that needs for racial diversity in computer-games are typically percieved through an american lense.