Dualhammers

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Posts posted by Dualhammers

  1. Posted

    I'm loving Flanner O' Connor's book Wise Blood. Her short stories are pretty fun and trippy - but I really wish she wrote more full novels. I love her grotesque depraved surreal view of 'the south.' It wrestles with a Christianity/Christ that it claims to follow but secretly detests. It's very Twin Peaksy/Lynchian to me in its symbolism too.

    If you like O'Connor you need to read some of Walker Percey's work, such as "The Moviegoer"

  2. Posted

    Did anyone read Watership Down as a child? I read it recently at the behest of my wife and I don't think I was able to appreciate it the way she did growing up. There were some moments that felt surreal in a good way but overall the plot seemed to meander. 

  4. Posted

    This is interesting because I would really appreciate an explanation of why they made different choices. The exception to this is when the developer didn't really listen to what was said and responds to feedback as if it were similar feedback that they've heard before or if they are just being dismissive. As long as I get a sense that they are listening to the criticism, I enjoy hearing detailed responses.

     

    One of my criticisms was that ship and weapon names are evocative but ultimately meaningless without context. This is a peeve I have with a lot of games; it means people can't pick up the game and play it effectively without extensive encoding of names with their meaning. Their response was that they understand but not to worry because there will be descriptions of what the weapons do. Basically they didn't understand my issue I guess?

    The second one was about how the core combat loop, while fun, may get a bit stale. Enemy Starfighter has added fleet control RTS elements to the game to add depth. I suggested they add something similar. I also gave an example, such as a system where you can perceive the relative balance of individual furballs at a glance and direct other wings of fighters to shore up weak-spots in the battle. The response was "This doesn't make sense to me. A pilot already has so much to do managing their ship that they won't be able to handle fleet control."

    This kind of response isn't very interesting or useful, at least to me.

  5. Posted

    Also on the subject of Wings of Saint Nazaire. The game looks super awesome, but it is also staunchly retro. This isn't a bad thing but some of the parts they emulate felt like the flaws inherent in the limited technology of the time and not the nice touches. 

    Here is some advice, too. I got so excited by the game that I wrote them a long email of feedback after a long playtesting session. Hoped it would help and thought nothing of it. A day later I got an excited response back where they explained why they were doing all the things they were doing and explained why certain suggestions I gave didn't make sense; not for technical reasons but why they didn't make sense in terms of realism.  This is just a personal taste thing, but if you're a dev and a player gives you feedback you don't need to take it but you also don't need to tell the player why you disagree, especially when the reason is purely subjective. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

  7. Posted

    It's always struck me as wanting the praise for having a gay character without doing any of the work. (In reference to Dumbledore)

     

    First thought that comes to mind was Is it possible to create a gay character in fiction without having to "do the work" to give depth to that part of their character? Does our cultural reality prevent this? Or are specifically confining this to J.K. Rowling? I can see either being true, especially in regard to the way J.K. seems to have a perhaps dependent relationship with her fans at this point.

  9. Posted

    Going a little back to my earlier post, this is sort of the best part of jams though, isn't it? Now you have a Twine to Unity parser! That's awesome, and I imagine will be incredibly useful again. Making that little piece of tech or fucking around with that weird idea you never had an excuse to try, that eventually grows into something else is a much bigger win than some arbitrary number score on itch.io. 

     

    There might not be a lot of content in your submission, but I bet a Twine -> Unity tool would do well on the asset store :)

     

    It's super weird but my first thought would be to give it away for free. Especially since it is a tool used to interface with another free tool? I mean, I'm all for being able to thrive making games but I feel super uncomfortable asking people to pay for something that ought to be free.

  10. Dune

    in Books

    Posted

    One of the things I really appreciated about Dune is how it provides and intricate and detailed universe with an extremely light touch. The prose is straightforward like most genre fiction but it doesn't attempt to make itself seem smart by overloading you with jargon. The intelligence comes through naturally.

    Was it Frank Herbert who wrote quickly at a paid typewriter or am I thinking of Heinlein?

  13. Posted

    Venus Patrol and Juegos Rancheros are putting on a Game Jam in concert with Itch.io. It is a no-rules game jam about space cowboys and I've decided to take part. Any other thumbs doing the same?

    If you want to follow my work check out my twitter account. If anyone cares I may cross-post stuff here.

  17. Posted

    Woah. Posted this kind of drunk a couple days ago and just found it again. Pretty cool to hear I am not the only one using this tool.

    I found very quickly it was useful for teaching myself the structure of c# and and how Unity handles component scripts. Working out a project in Playmaker until I hit a wall and then building a solution in code was ideal.

    One thing I found it did not do well, however, was dialogue trees. It is better than a lot of things but like Chris said repetitive work should be simple and setting up a dialogue response takes a lot of actions.

    What I figured out was that Twine outputs plain text source code, so I wrote a parser for twine source files and built a set of actions that read from the parsed file and display the appropriate passages. One action loop, no need to repeat, and I can write all the dialog in twine. Pretty neat since I am writer by skill and not really a programmer.

  18. Posted

    Playmaker is a Unity extension that provides a visual scripting system. It allows you to program or prototype games without knowing pretty much anything about programming. I've been using it for the past month on my own game and I've been able to going from knowing nothing about Unity or C# to a fairly functioning game that I will soon be sharing on idlethumbs dot net.

    This is pretty much a shill post but when I was first learning Unity I was overwhelmed by the amount of extensions out there and I wanted to share what has worked for me, a random person on the internet. 

  19. Posted

    I'm torn on how I want Civilization to feel. I am completely with Chris' on how on an instinctual level it feels rad it is to have a game that celebrates human achievement. I also remember Alpha Centauri as being my favorite Civ game precisely because it taught me that while history arcs towards justice along the way we make many mistakes and often become far too enamored with our own cleverness. Finding some space between those two would be ideal.

    Hearing how Jake was the nexus of Chris' current life makes me think of my own experiences with friendships. It's always best to be bold with your friendships, you never know where they will lead. 

    This episode and last has made me awfully curious about how the podcast is put together. Maybe Chris could enlighten us on some of the work that happens behind the scenes to bring us a super good episode like this one?

  20. Posted

    I'm not sure that's ENTIRELY true. I feel like if, for whatever reason, you missed out on certain media in your childhood, you're to some extent locked out of that stuff forever. That can absolutely be a function of disadvantaged socioeconomic status. There's no real way to catch up, it's borderline impossible. I wouldn't claim this is on the same level as, say, institutionalized racism, but I don't think it's as class-agnostic as you claim.

    There can also be a certain class buy-in you need to participate in to feel completely welcome in a community, especially when it comes to references. The indie games community, for example, already has such a depth of referential history that you will be an outsider unless you have the time to spend now to stay aware of what is happening.

  21. Posted

    Does expecting an audience to take the intent of the author into consideration when they've been offended constitute enablement of oppression and/or victim blaming? Saying that someone's hurt feelings are ridiculous or suspect sounds a lot like a tone argument. 

     

    Argobot:

    If an audience fails to understand the point of a work that can be because of a failure in the creator, the audience, or both.

    The answer to the question can be found in this answer. Intent is complex and not every time someone is upset by a work is it because the intent of the author was to hurt, but it is valid to be upset even if the hurt is stemming from a place of misunderstanding.

    If an author of a work flatly says to an audience that they are being ridiculous in their response to their work that can irreparably damage the critical relationship even if they are correct. Simply being right does not make condescension or acerbic remarks helpful.

  22. Posted

    I think I'm with DarthEnderX on this one. It's not the responsibility of a work to be construed properly, and it isn't the artist's fault if an audience lacks empathy. I think with comedy this is especially important, because getting the joke is half the fun. If an audience thinks that the end of the joke is when a comedian recites a slur, that's laziness on the audience's part.

    I am concerned that this way of thinking can justify really selfish creative work that for all outward appearances is incredibly mean-spirited but falls back on "why don't you get the joke" when someone confronts the artist. 

  23. Posted

    The discussion of media literacy made me think of this piece on The Nation about the danger of suppressing viewpoints in an effort to create more progressive society. Not that I think Danielle, Chris or Sean were suggesting we ban South Park but the implication that media literacy is necessary to digest something correctly can and does lead some to consider the inverse. If enough people cannot understand the subtext is it better for it to not exist? I know a lot of my more progressive friends are proudly anti-classical-liberal and don't see a problem with suppressing certain things in an effort to create a more progressive society, but I wonder if using the same tools those we disagree with only makes us the same.