Suchian Musings And Ramblings About General Designs Involving Notable Estuaries

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Comments

  • It's a feeling when you read a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "The back-of-book description and the front-of-book praise-from-critics call this a hilarious dystopia, but the worldbuilding is too interesting for this to be a dystopia because the author clearly enjoys describing this world too much for it to be the diseased-death-shriek-of-warning-as-you-stare-into-heck-and-your-own-nightmares that a proper dystopian novel is, I mean, the only reason a dystopia would have this many cozy little tea shops is if it was MY personal heck and that's clearly unintentional because the author obviously loves cozy little tea shops".
  • It's a feeling when you read a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "GAAAAAAAAAAH THESE PLOT TWISTS OHMIGOSH!" and have a flashback to the first time.
  • It's a feeling when you read a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA" because you now know why you never reread it until now.
  • It was a feeling when you read the book for the first time and you were like "OHMIGOSH THESE PLOT TWISTS GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" and realized that that feeling of literary shock was becoming increasingly rare in your life.
  • It was a feeling when you read the book for the first time and you were still like "OHMIGOSH THESE PLOT TWISTS GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" and realized you wouldn't be able to get the same shock on a reread so long as you remembered this specific bit you had just read.
  • edited 2023-03-12 04:33:59
    It was a feeling when you read the book for the first time and you were like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA" because you realized that you can't intentionally forget stuff while keeping the intention to forget and the awareness of the thing being forgotten, so the desire to experience such a shock again prevents it being possible to fulfil the desire to experience such a shock again.
  • It's a feeling when you read a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" because you never forgot the last paragraph of the book and what a gut-punch it was but now you realize too late that that awareness lead you into a false sense of security...and allowed you to be distracted from the foreshadowing.
  • It's a feeling when you read a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "No amount of worldbuilding will convince me that Loganberry is anything but a disgusting waste of atoms, so cut it with the jam propaganda, author".
  • Ali_Roz said:

    It was a feeling when you read the book for the first time and you were like "OHMIGOSH THESE PLOT TWISTS GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" and realized that that feeling of literary shock was becoming increasingly rare in your life.

    mood :(
  • edited 2023-03-12 09:29:08
    Ali_Roz said:

    It's a feeling when you read a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "No amount of worldbuilding will convince me that Loganberry is anything but a disgusting waste of atoms, so cut it with the jam propaganda, author".

    in an attempt to figure out what book you're reading, i went and looked up loganberry, then instead read up on the real-life loganberry and am amused that loganberry is an accidentally-created hybrid cultivar
  • No, you have the right Loganberry.  The protagonist's ability or lack thereof to procure Loganberry Jam for the invisible naked man who can explain everything is a plot point.
  • It's a feeling when you finish a book you haven't read in a little under ten years and you're like "Gaaaaaah, it still hurts"  :C.
  • It's a feeling when you can't come up with anything interesting, pleasant, or worthwhile to say in your thread.
  • As far as I know, the only good long-form opinion youtubers are ThereWillBeFudd and GiantGrantGames.  (Cybershell doesn't count because his long-form videos aren't his opinion videos).  A large part of this is their genuine enthusiasm for their subjects.
  • All aboard the guilt train, choo-choo!  There are stops, but you can't get off!
  • Makima is listening....
    I hear that.
  • I have a lot of feelings on the Lackadaisy pilot.  Well, they're mostly feelings on the webcomic, to be honest.

    I've been checking the webcomic daily for updates, for about six years despite half of that being an ongoing stretch without updates because one day it will update.  One day, this little bit of the Pre-2020 world, the pre-2016, heck, the pre-2010 world, will return.  Quality takes time.  The Sistene Chapel took time.  The Notre Dame Cathedral took time.

    The webcomic stopped in the middle of a conversation, a conversation!  Conversations can be everything in a webcomic.  They can be world-building, characterization, climaxes, revelations, plot twists, buildup, payoff, emotion, humor, and so much more.  The infinite canvas that Scott McCloud named lets webcomics be more conversation-heavy than regular comics, the written word's reader-directed pace lets webcomics be more conversation-heavy than media based in the spoken word, and the use of image rather than pages of narration lets webcomics be more conversation-heavy than many books.

    Lackadaisy had some of the best conversations in all of webcomics.  It's arguably the best webcomic, or at least top two with Axe Cop.  Very nearly flawless, better every reread, jaw-dropping on so many levels, absolute A-.

    And here we have this translation of it into another form, a side project for which the core work was stalled, a distressingly common occurrence for those creatives devoured by Kickstarter (a problem that also broke Rich Burlew), and now it calls itself a pilot!

    And, honestly, that's a huge downer.  Because it means that this is what Tracy J. Butler wants.  And that means that she'd rather be doing this than the webcomic.  And that means that Ms. Butler is under no obligation to ever update the webcomic again (and especially under no obligation to put forth the nigh-infinite effort that each page required).

    Don't get me wrong, Lackadaisy is an incredible animated short, outstanding, marvelous, excellent and very good.  Lackadaisy is a great short.  But it was the best of webcomics.
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  • edited 2023-04-28 20:34:01
    I dislike certain tendencies in the current usage of suffixes.

    If one were to be prejudiced against terror, the current tendencies would describe that with "terrorism" or "terrorphobia".  "Terrorism" is already a word with an incompatible meaning, and "terrorphobia" is just silly.  This is a ludicrous example, but it aptly demonstrates why I dislike such uses for such suffixes.  I prefer the use of he "miso" prefix, or, in some contexts, the "anti" prefix.

    Furthermore, I dislike how the root "sexual" gives its own meaning to whatever root it is attached to.  "Homo", "Bi", "Trans", "Pan", "Hetero", become roots referring to sexualities in words like "transphobia".  Compare this to "Auto", "Allo", "Tri", "Mono", or "Ortho".

    Also, people ought to stop using "itis" as a root for disease or sickness; it means inflammation or swelling.

    Also also, "mancy" as a root for magic ought to refer to divinatory magics, and "urgy" ought to be used in its place for things like casting a fireball.

    Also also also "triphibious" is garbage and "tribious" or "tribian" is good.

    Also also also additionally "tsunami" is a word I hate because I cannot pronounce "ts" at the beginning of a word and "Tidal Wave" is a worthy term (sure, it's not caused by the tides, but the water's extreme movement away and towards the land is like hours of tidal movement all at once).

    Also also also additionally additionally I like writing e-mail with a hyphen like people used to do.

    Also also also additionally additionally additionally I like coöperate with the two dots because it helps remind you that there are four syllables in the word and it's not supposed to be pronounced like "cooper".
  • Oh boy, CNN did an article titled "What do Mormons believe?"!  Do you know what they believe, because I sure don't, and I'm soooo glad we have CNN to finally reveal to me what my beliefs are.  Maybe they'll make an article "What do Papists Believe*" or "What do Mohammedans Believe"; I hope so, because outside of the infinite informational authority of the news media there's no way to learn about "other" people because there are no primary sources, and every demographic loves having their own experience explained to them in the voice of an East Coast Ivy-League WASP.

    *Preferably including those offshoots known as "Protestants", because not to include them is erasure.
  • (HEAVY SARCASM)
  • Watership Down is a great book.  The Rabbit Language in Waterhip Down is great, especially the one untranslated sentence at the climax.

    If I was to make a fictional languages of my own, I think one of them would simply not have pronouns.  Not-having-a-way-to-refer-to-yourself-distinct-from-the-way-other-people-refer-to-you makes it (as far as I can tell) very difficult to tell first-person from third-person.  While signifying plural-vs-singular and masculine-feminine-neutral is useful in communication, storytelling often requires that such information be obfuscated, and by doing such obfuscation in every sentence, the audience is less likely to figure out which nouns it was important to hide this information about.
  • Speaking of fictional languages, yesterday I bought a game that uses a conlang.  The game is Jade Empire, a western RPG set in basically mythological fantasy China, and the language is called Tho-Fan.

    Separately, I know of a visual novel that uses Esperanto; it's titled The Expression Amrilato.  I haven't bought or read this yet though.
  • My brother used to play Jade Empire.  It wasn't as fun to watch as Baldur's Gate or KOTOR or Icewind Dale, so I never felt any urge to play it myself, and forgot the game existed for years.
  • Yeah I've heard it compared to KOTOR.

    Which I also haven't played lol.
  • edited 2023-05-06 22:33:06
    Oh, KOTOR is great, an absolute classic, and it (and its sequel) still hold(s) up.

    Seriously, how've you not played KOTOR?
  • edited 2023-05-07 04:51:02
    I wasn't much of a PC gamer.  I played some DOS games, but after that, I played very few natively PC games until indie games became a thing.  I've always been more interested in certain game genres that are more typically found on dedicated game systems, things like 2D platformers and JRPGs, and besides, I never had particularly powerful hardware (though this factor wasn't even on my radar until more recent years).  Besides, I wasn't particularly fond of the more drab aesthetic and sometimes more violent content and/or rowdy multiplayer scenes (particularly with first-person shooters, e.g. Doom, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike) that were more common in western games.

    One of the few exceptions I can think of is Age of Empires, which I was exposed to by friends twice independently, for two separate entries in the series (the first and second).  Another exception, also something played by folks at school, is Worms: Armageddon.  But I never had anyone introduce me to western RPGs, aside from me watching someone play Oblivion for like a couple hours a day, for a little while.

    I did have some acquaintances who'd talk about KotOR (KotOR II specifically, I think) pretty frequently -- I'm thinking of some folks in the Caves of Narshe community, which is a bunch of Final Fantasy fans -- but I wasn't particularly close to them, and they weren't meatspace acquaintances anyway.  And besides, I wasn't a Star Wars fan.

    Ironically, I've played JRPGs and TTRPGs but not WRPGs to much of a significant extent.  (Unless getting several hours into Avadon counts.)
  • edited 2023-05-08 03:58:42
    Honestly, growing up, I thought it was JRPGS that had the drab aesthetics and violence (See: Earthbound and Chrono Trigger, and the later Final Fantasies and the later Fire Emblems) and had to make up for it with plot and stuff.  The western RPGS I grew up with were all vivid, whether bright-and-vivid (Warlords Battlecry, especially Warlords Battlecry II), neutral-toned-but-vivid (Planescape Torment, though I didn't play that until I was quite a bit older), or dark and vivid (Baldur's Gate II, or the couple times on Halloween when the whole extended family got together to play Diablo in Grandma's basement while the young kids like me went trick-or-treating).

    Multiplayer just wasn't my thing growing up, still isn't, so I can't speak to the rowdiness of the multiplayer scene.

    I think what it comes down to is you weren't much of a PC gamer, but I wasn't much of a console gamer; in fact, the first video game console in my house was the Wii, and my parents only bought that on the basis of it being physical-activity-oriented.

    To me, first-person-shooters really are two genres, and one of them is closer kin to the puzzle-game and the platformer than it is to the other FPS genre.  Dark Forces and Voyager: Elite Force play more like a three-dimensional Metroid than they do to something like Halo (heck, Halo/Goldeneye/Battlefront smells closer to something like a first-person RPG like the Elder Scrolls).
  • Ali_Roz said:

    Oh boy, CNN did an article titled "What do Mormons believe?"!  Do you know what they believe, because I sure don't, and I'm soooo glad we have CNN to finally reveal to me what my beliefs are.  Maybe they'll make an article "What do Papists Believe*" or "What do Mohammedans Believe"; I hope so, because outside of the infinite informational authority of the news media there's no way to learn about "other" people because there are no primary sources, and every demographic loves having their own experience explained to them in the voice of an East Coast Ivy-League WASP.


    *Preferably including those offshoots known as "Protestants", because not to include them is erasure.


    At least people believe your religion's followers actually believe what they say they do. Such luxury is rarely afforded to non-Leontodites within the English-speaking world.

    Also: Unrelated, but probably something you should know; "Mohammedan" is a slur.
  • edited 2023-05-08 15:00:35
    I know it's a slur.  So is "Papist".  In some ways, "Mormon" is a slur, being originally a derogatory exonym, and the re-appropriation of it as an endonym in some contexts* does not make it otherwise.  My point is the casual normative cruelty of using a deprecatory xenonym in the title of what is ostensibly an informational article from an authoritative source.

    *Most of which have been recently rejected.
  • Ali_Roz said:

    Honestly, growing up, I thought it was JRPGS that had the drab aesthetics and violence (See: Earthbound and Chrono Trigger, and the later Final Fantasies and the later Fire Emblems) and had to make up for it with plot and stuff.  The western RPGS I grew up with were all vivid, whether bright-and-vivid (Warlords Battlecry, especially Warlords Battlecry II), neutral-toned-but-vivid (Planescape Torment, though I didn't play that until I was quite a bit older), or dark and vivid (Baldur's Gate II, or the couple times on Halloween when the whole extended family got together to play Diablo in Grandma's basement while the young kids like me went trick-or-treating).


    ...

    I think what it comes down to is you weren't much of a PC gamer, but I wasn't much of a console gamer; in fact, the first video game console in my house was the Wii, and my parents only bought that on the basis of it being physical-activity-oriented.
    My impression with regards to violence is that JRPGs and WRPGs probably have comparable levels of it.

    As for colorfulness, I think the move from 2D sprite graphics to 3D and more realistic graphics caused a lot of things to look less colorful, on average.  This isn't necessarily the case -- there are certainly drab 2D sprite games and colorful 3D polygon games -- but this is probably a product of things like increased use of muted tones and shades, contrasted with the more "explicit" coloration of sprite graphics.

    On top of this though I do think there's something to be said about JRPGs having somewhat more cartoonish aesthetics in general.  But I think there might also be the factor that "classic JRPGs" are more heavily weighted toward 2D sprite games (especially several very famous SNES games), whereas the "classic WRPGs" canon seems to be weighted a little newer (e.g. ES3 and 4, the Mass Effect games), thus picking up more 3D games.

    But yeah, you're probably right that a major factor was that I just wasn't involved in most of the PC gaming canon.  I'm sorta the opposite of you in this regard, heh.
  • My estimation of the "classic WRPGS" canon is less heavily weighted towards 3d than I think yours is.  I mean, ES3 and ES4 were Xbox games as much as they were computer games, and Mass Effect was on the XBOX 360 before it was on computers.  I mean, all those classic Ultima games, and the Might and Magic series.  There was a long time when "Western RPG" meant "Computer RPG" and "JRPG" meant "Console RPG".
  • So, if you eat too much of the same food for too long, you might start disliking it.  It might taste wretched to you.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that the food is rotten, or the recipe has changed, or that one of the ingredients is a nasty garbage sauce that ruins whatever it's in.

    By analogy, I would say that the same might apply on a cultural scale to stories and media.  Maybe the new Top Gun movie wouldn't be as beloved as it is if it was the thirty-fifth Top Gun Movie made in the last thirty five years.  Maybe these reboots and remakes and sequels and adaptations are all just too much too frequently, and our decadent culture , like a little kid, doesn't understand why its favorite treats and delights don't feel the same anymore.

    Maybe our decadent culture, like a little kid, deserves some sympathy and patience.
  • Hey, Teddy K., YOUR MOM and her consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
  • > YOUR MOM and her consequences
  • I heard that a character from Steven Universe, Lapis Lazuli, stole the Earth's oceans (or at least planned to).

    That's horrible.  We need the oceans to live, and the oceans are full of life, and also it's not good for the shipwrecks and icebergs to be exposed to air.  I'm not a geologist or a physicist, but I'm pretty sure that would do some bad things to the air pressure and make large sections of the Earth's no-longer-weighted-down-by-the-ocean oceanic crust experience some pretty scary things.

    If you could steal the oceans, why would you go by "Lapis Lazuli" instead of "THE IMMORTAL GOD-EMPRESS OCEANSTEALER E. NOTHINGYOUCANDOABOUTIT THE FIRST"?
  • Well, I guess if you replaced the water as you took it, that would prevent a lot of the problems, but that's still stealing.
  • edited 2023-05-16 20:22:42
    Speaking of water catastrophes, I remember back in 2014 when I did a college report on the waterways of the United States of America and how unsustainable water usage will lead to massive drought and collapse.  At the time, it was predicted that the Great Salt Lake would be completely gone in fourteen or fifteen years.  Now, in 2023, the prediction is that it will be gone in approximately five years.
  • edited 2023-05-16 20:25:01
    Fortunately, this is now being recognized as the huge problem that it is.
  • Also fortunately, it rained today.  Just for a few minutes, but it was comforting, and I'll take a sign of peace and hope when I can.

    Also also, my grandma is no longer 13*7 years old, she is now 23*4 years old.

    Also also also, my grandma has a new great-granddaughter as of yesterday, named in her honor.
  • When the strategy doesn't work because you failed to notice a key factor in the level's design hours ago, but you're emotionally invested in what you've made. so you try to merely beat the level and give up on some of your self-imposed rules that would have still worked in your original strategy but then the city is still beautiful.image
  • What was the strategy and what was the key factor?
  • My strategy:  
    (1) Have 2/3 of the population live west of the small river, 1/6 between the small river and the big river, and 1/6 east of the big river.  
    (2) Provide everything necessary for all housing to get to maximum spiffiness level* and thus maximum population capacity, importing additional food because that population is more than can be fed by farming the floodplains in the level and the highest spiffiness levels require more than one type of food (the only type of food I can grow in this level is grain).   
    (3) Have much more workers and money than needed for the city itself.  Use them on the final objective of the level, a massive triangular-square construction project.
    (4) At 99% completion of the massive triangular-square construction project, stockpile-instead-of-use the materials necessary to finish it.  Let the self-sustaining city continue making profits indefinitely.
    (5)  Since I get a small salary each month set aside into a family treasury I can use in later levels, an unending self-sustaining situation of "level almost complete" allows me to build up a dragon-hoard of TEH MONEYS.
    (6) Giggle at the fact that this is, from a certain point of view, a literal pyramid scheme.


    The key factor is that none of the trading partners in the level export any kind of food other than grain (and even that in tiny amounts).
  • (6) Giggle at the fact that this is, from a certain point of view, a literal pyramid scheme.

    i lol'd ^_^
  • The game pictured is Pharaoh by Impressions (the classic turn-of-the-millennium one, not the 2023 remake).  It's like Caesar 3 but in Egypt, and I could talk about those two games for hours but it's better if people just play them except I can't recommend them to people because they're addictive  (I call games like this "Desert Island" games, the kind of games you would want if you were trapped on a desert island).  I only bought Caesar 3 for Central Avenue because there was/is a pandemic going on (we were all essentially trapped on a desert island).

    Sure, there's the online community dedicated to the Impressions City Builders, but that place has less traffic than this, and posting there would feel like barging in on an undiscovered tribe from 1999.

    Okay, okay, there's also Zeus and Emperor by Impressions, but I never played Emperor and Zeus simplified the civic problems you have to solve so beating its levels doesn't have as much of that "did a hard thing" satisfaction.  Caesar III and Pharaoh are the best city-builders anyone ever made, Zeus just being So Darn Good is a step down, but it's a step they had to take to keep things fresh and interesting.

    Impressions was the best at what they did, but Maxis had better marketing and also, you know, invented the genre so they already had the playerbase and ALSO WINDOWS 98 ALLOCATES MEMORY DIFFERENTLY IF IT DETECTS THE ORIGINAL SIMCITY RUNNING BECAUSE OTHERWISE IT WOULDN'T WORK BECAUSE OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WINDOWS GENERATIONS BUT THE GUYS AT MICROSOFT LOVED SIMCITY SO MUCH THEY JIGGIED THE WIGGIES AND MADE IT WORK I mean come on, now that's the sort of IP success that Anonus daydreams about and there's no way anyone could run something like that into the ground and ruin the SimCity Franchise, I mean, I last checked in 2012 and things seemed as good as ever then.
  • edited 2023-05-20 05:45:52
    I could easily pick them up on GOG.  I might even have something similar already somewhere in my library of games.  Heck, I know I have Caesar II on CD-ROM but I just haven't ever played it.

    In general I haven't played these sorts of city builder sims before.

    Closest I've come might be playing Banished.

    I'd like to learn but I don't know where they'd fit into my schedule nowadays.
  • Caesar III and Pharaoh both have intuitive basic mechanics taught by well-designed early levels, in addition to extensive in-game documentation, though, of course, Pharaoh's levels do a better job at it because the developers learned from Caesar III.  Just make sure to choose the non-military levels if you want the best experience because the combat in Pharaoh absolutely stinks like rotten eggs despite Caesar III's combat being only "workable, but kind of disappointing".
  • ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    Ali_Roz said:

    Caesar III and Pharaoh both have intuitive basic mechanics taught by well-designed early levels, in addition to extensive in-game documentation, though, of course, Pharaoh's levels do a better job at it because the developers learned from Caesar III.  Just make sure to choose the non-military levels if you want the best experience because the combat in Pharaoh absolutely stinks like rotten eggs despite Caesar III's combat being only "workable, but kind of disappointing".

    NOTE: I'm pranking you, glenn. There's enemies and combat in some of the "peaceful" levels and the "military" levels have easier civic objectives. The real difference is in how much you want the difficulty to come from the objectives themselves and how much from THOSE GOSH-DARN HITTITES.
  • Never be with0ut a Hat!
    (2010 self)

     I don't know where they'd fit into my schedule nowadays.
    Pro tip:  Make sure not to boot up a citybuilder sim if you haven't done everything you wanted to do today; that way you won't miss out on stuff you needed to do if you lose track of time.

    Pro tip:  If you're too tired to find the "p", "[", and "]" keys to pause, slow down, and speed up the game, then it's not only time to go to bed, it's probably two and a half hours past time to go to bed.
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