SuperBiasedMan

What I find especially is frustrating is that on sites like Stack Overflow, which is a very valuable resource for learning, poor english becomes a signal to people that a post is poor quality. So people draw assumptions about lack of intelligence and laziness, when really they're trying hard to write a post in their non native tongue. That's even aside from the genuine problem of communicating complicated problems in a language you're not well versed in. Thankfully, the site is trying to set up sister sites in other languages. Off the top of my head I know they have Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian, and I think they're going well and planning more.

Oh ok, I thought it was a different thing. That's what I used too, but them directly in. I just uh, had goopier food.

You used dough leaves? I've never heard of those (googling seems to bring up pies), but they look like they worked really well, you got real crisp looking layers. Also reminder that a new food is upon us soon, when dibs emerges to pick his theme (and of course following is optional).

D4: Dank Dmeme's Don't Die

Lore and themes definitely. Getting the right feel to the game in word choice and the sound of those words tells me more about the game than a few literal words, and can often make me wonder a little more about what they do mean, in a way that a literal title doesn't. else Heart.Break() is a fun game (that I ought to get back to) but it's title is oof. It sounds like it's asserting that it'll bring you to tears, while simultaneously trying to appeal to brogrammers. That's not the actual vibe I get from the game, but the title does. The same rule of not trying to describe your game as "amazing" or "heartbreaking" applies to the title. (I'll refrain from answering the third cause I'm generally averse to sequels so I think my answer would be atypical)

D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die

In theory sure, but on screen it was just a generic romance story. They meet and instantly fall in love, circumstances pull them apart and when they eventually get together they're largely happy. They have tragedy, but the romance seems stiffly fake. They just love each other and there's nothing else to their relationship. That doesn't feel like real life blandness to me, just Hollywood blandness.

Ah then I like the sound of that. And it makes it more Myst-like (I think, I have not played Myst). I agree about the details actually being superficial and flat, but I do again think that maybe it's intentional. The entire point is about trying to create a true rich experience that a simple simulation couldn't manage. (at least this is what I took the 'true' ending to mean) So it stands to reason that a simulation of rich histories can only be surface level.

I kinda liked that to be honest. I never did go deep on getting all the stars or easter eggs in TPP, but it was refreshing to see a puzzle game be fully willing to throw meaningless details in. It feels more real to have actual details like that, not just have everything honed to exactly what you need. Even though yes the game is explicitly in a simulation, I feel like probably that constrast was part of the point. Hearing that about the Witness is a tad offputting because it feels overly clinical and fake. I'm probably just extrapolating from what you said too much, but it makes me think of the early Portal levels, which are intentionally manufactured to be exact testing chambers with no fluff. I enjoyed this game being the intentional antithesis of that.

It turns out Steam categories support emoji, so I have: ❤ for games that I will return to frequently (contains 5 games) for games that I have started and wish to return to (contains 14 games) for games that I have not yet played, and possibly know little about (contains 99 games) for games that I am unlikely to play more, due to completion abandonment or some other reason (contains 99 games) for things that are not games (eg. prototypes/alternative modes to games) or in some cases games I will never want to return to (contains 40 things) EDIT: Well the forums refused my emoji, so here's a picture showing them (in the above order):

I wouldn't post and let the public at large weigh in on it, that only invites TB and his fans to flock there.

A Bug's Life isn't til next week, we're doing fortnightly. Speaking of which, my thoughts on Toy Story. The plasticy look everyone did mention, but I thought the animation was pretty nice. They had a good handle on how to work the 3D models even if the actual look of the models was ropey. It really did look too cartoony though. Woody's arms flail about and his face flops in ways that just don't work as well in 3D, which I don't think they had learned yet. A lot of modern 3D animation (at least in this realist style) tends to go more subtle and stylish than all out wacky. But before this pretty much all 2D was over the top. Subtlety in 2D is so much harder that it's often not worth thinking about. Plotwise, I also think they didn't know what they wanted to do with it. It struck me that it's almost an organisation rather than a family. Woody organises a "staff meeting", talking about weird office style activities. It's more like being played with is a job rather than an intimate thing they share with Andy. In a similar way, Woody is much more of a boss than I remember, and in bad ways. He's kind of a dick. He asserts power over the toys, and as soon as he's challenged by Buzz (who spends the entire film being a pleasant helpful person) he instantly hates and derides him. Frankly Woody doesn't do much good in this movie. He isn't a helpful leader to the toys, he just soaks up the praise and power. At the end, he's saving Buzz but in effect he's also saving himself so it's hard to see it as very altruistic. It is growth as a character though, and I'm not going to fault a show for having an unlikeable protagonist I just find it funny I never noticed. Tonally it doesn't really seem like they know what they want either. A lot of jokes a front loaded in the first third, when they make a lot of fun out of the fact that they're toys. Then they go in deep on Woody's story and then Buzz's. Not that Buzz's makes a lot of sense since there's not a proper human narrative to grasp there. Why does he think he's 'real'? What does that mean, and is it meant to relate to any human experience? It's treated as if it is, the same way Woody's jealousy is clearly relateable. Buzz's story feels like a bit of a joke that then managed to drive the plot forward at points, and they felt obligated to give it weight that it didn't need. Then both plots get resolved and there's a 20 minute action scene. It's a fun movie but it's really not one of the strong ones now that I'm rewatching it. It definitely seems like they were finding their feet so I look forward to a Bug's Life.

The pragmatist in me says it doesn't take much to just send them word and see if they answer, you likely wont get an answer but if you did it would be valuable.

One minor addition to Ninety-Three's confusion

I'm just gonna go all out spoiler for anyone who's not familiar with this, but this should spoil nothing for you Trip.

Aha, that's good! I played Massive Chalice recently which did exactly this and it made a big difference so I'm glad to see they're adopting it.

I can see charts and trends from month to month, as well as how individual tweets did based on expansions, favourites, replies etc. It seems pretty robust, and is clearly trying to sell tweet promotion to me. Here's the link: https://analytics.twitter.com/ I don't think it's very commonly advertised so maybe people just haven't noticed?

Great episode, as someone who's studied animation I liked the chatter about it. What's funny is that animation takes so much time and detail oriented work but it's strength is in stylisation rather than any attempt at subtle realism. A lot of animation is not about adding but observing what you have, tweaking the positions and timing of the movement until you can add more and make something that's communicative in the acting sense while simultaneously being physically believable. I loved the email about mechanics as a cultural artifact. I think one thing that heavily colours your take on that discussion is your definition of mechanic. I don't personally think you can divorce a mechanic from it's theming. If you wanted to go to the extreme end of reductionism, most game mechanics are just pressing a button or moving an input. Obviously that's a meaningless abstraction, but where can you draw the line between what's theme and what's mechanics? I personally feel like the theme is a necessary part of a mechanic, because it informs why the player perform the interaction. If Mario didn't jump when you pressed A then what's the point of that mechanic? By including the meaning behind an input (it's consequences and effect on the game world) then you get a full picture of what it does. I feel like reducing a mechanic to less than that robs it off half the point and makes the discussion flatter because surely I catch myself doing this so much with "x meets y meets z" games.

That seems out of date because I can filter notifications by all and mentions, I can also see tweet analytics and I thought all pages could filter between all tweets and tweets without @replies, and I'm pretty sure I'm not verified.

I've done a more similar lower key thing before. A crush on an Internet friend. I knew she wasn't interested even before we talked about it, but after we did we just stayed friends. It's harder to tell over the Internet, but I think when it was clear I wasn't going to be awkward about it she didn't seem to change her behaviour at all. I suspect your sister and friends are concerned that ultimately you want to date your friend, and that friendship won't be satisfying even if you think it will or are trying to make yourself think it will. As long as you're not actually expecting your friend to develop feelings, and have honestly accepted the rejection of romantic interest then I personally think it can go fine. Hope it goes well!

I found the romance in it very bland, I did really like the story of the guy though who's just dedicating his life to something he sees as beautiful even if it can be destructive to the world and even partially destructive to his own life.

I also did not know about the tapes. I also meant to say, check out the steam discussions, there's fun chatter of people "playing along" in there.

This is wonderful, I forgot about it. Nick doing it is a different beast, much more awkward than I was hoping for.

Yeah it's called both interchangeably here. I guess that in some cases they feel like "TVP" sounds less appetising as a name.