Notices by Craig P (craigp@mastodon.social)

@silverwizard I didn't see the first post, and this one sure reads weird without it. XD

@silverwizard The only thing that comes to mind is my toothbrush.

Like most humans, I don't actually want to be rich. I just want to never have to worry about money.

There's a difference.

@silverwizard But ALL the symbols rotated. Is it that they started to write sideways or something?

When we look at ancient languages evolve from strict pictographs into symbols, why do ALL the letters turn sideways?

What random-ass thing makes everyone turn their letters 90 degrees? Who would think "yeah, a field of barley, clearly that makes more sense with the barley growing sideways instead of up."

I don't think they suddenly changed from writing vertical to horizontal or anything. I don't get it.

@silverwizard Yup, with the addition that the stress propagates over time.

For example, if your rail stop supplies a local store, but then your rail stop rises to 200% capacity-

Over the course of a few days, the shop's stress level will steadily rise as well.

When it gets over 100%, that propagates to the customers of the shop...

@silverwizard What I want to do is make it so that exceeding your limits causes a steady decay in performance in dependent facilities, instead of simply being a "no".

I've been processing a lot of possibilities for the "stress-based" base construction game. The idea is that you almost never have a specific amount of anything: instead, everything is measured in terms of how much stress you're putting on the supply.

Let me pitch you a tutorial stage: a shipwreck. You wash up on land with a few survivors and all you can do is try to gather supplies from the beach and the tropical jungle.

To do this, you create a stockpile and assign folks to it.

I... don't WANT to dislike dansup, but every post of his feels like it's assembled by cutting words out of a magazine and pasting them on a computer screen.

I know some people are simply awkward in text. It took years to convince my boss to stop texting in caps, for example.

But it does make me curious if I'm the only one that thinks so. People seem to fave and boost these awkward posts pretty freely.

@silverwizard Ah, the classic city planning priority: classism. Followed quickly by racism.

@silverwizard Whoa, that's... bizarre. Like, that makes most flowers illegal. What a bizarre choice.

You know, I was thinking about cursed gear in RPGs. Why does it exist?

I mean, yeah, it creates tension when the player is grabbing loot, but why IN WORLD?

Do wizards routinely create joke gear and randomly throw it in dungeons? Did a ghost settle in? What's the explanation for cursed gear?

This is a lot more interesting to me than the gear itself. Imagine the ramifications!

I wondered how long it'd take the modders to crack Dragon's Dogma 2 completely, and the answer appears to have been about ten minutes.

There's a ton of mods available already including (checks) five for putting nipples on harpies.

@silverwizard being an actual trainer, like 'they sign up to be trained', has a lot of potential.

Thinking about settings which would facilitate a game about recruiting, training, and combining monsters.

One of the key elements to consider in these games is the "cockfighting" element.

Forcing animals to fight other animals is... pretty grim. And if it turns out those animals are sentient, that's slavery.

Obviously you can simply ignore these thoughts. Pokemon does.

But even though you can ignore them, I can't. It's impossible for me to enjoy making a world where the player does that.

One option is the Persona route: the monsters you summon are basically just your own personality fragments. Anything that makes them "not an analogue for real people or animals" would work.

Another option is the freedom fighter route: sure, slavery is bad, but your recruits are fighting against it!

When I try to think of worlds where these things are possible, I keep getting drawn to the more abstract, psychedelic concepts.

@silverwizard a house Santa would be a felis navidad

Oh, this newbie programmer YouTuber learning Godot is very charming. He's doing very well.

Video: "So when I asked ChatGPT for the code-"

What? What are you-

Video: "And this is wrong, this function doesn't exist. ChatGPT, this is your job, you're supposed to know-"

Are you... joking?

Holy shit, we're in the middle of losing a whole generation of new programmers.

@silverwizard there's a similar mod for Space Engineers, it's the only thing still alive in that game.

Struggling with the difference between a creator-player creating something and a user-player downloading and enjoying it, because in most cases the creator-player also wants to play and enjoy it.

Like... I can build a base that's fun for a rando to walk through... but it won't be fun for ME to walk through.

I wonder if we can do both. Like... have core play that's fun for both the builder and the player, but also decor or secondary play that's primarily focused on entertaining other people.