Narry's recent activity
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
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Comment on How mods changed video games forever in ~games
Narry Link ParentTo be honest, Skyrim is everywhere and honestly it feels half-baked. Maybe three-quarters baked. It's a game where, in order to make it minimally viable, I have to: Refuse to engage the main...To be honest, Skyrim is everywhere and honestly it feels half-baked. Maybe three-quarters baked. It's a game where, in order to make it minimally viable, I have to:
- Refuse to engage the main storyline and forever leave the Jarl of Whiterun waiting for me to come tell him about the dragon from the intro scene.
- Install mods to give all characters the Khajit nightvision, make it stay on when toggled and not a timed spell, and take away the screen blur effect that it normally has because the color balance on the game in dark areas is basically crippling.
- Always play as a ranged stealth character, because melee combat is so impossibly broken that I have yet to uncover mods that make it more realistic
And that's just to be able to dink around in the game. The only other character type I can play is Nord/Orc/Redguards that sprint into battle and tank a ton of damage and bash people to death with war hammers or long swords. Nothing else can handle melee combat. I recall trying to make casters in the past, but basically if you don't burn/ice someone down before they reach you, in the early game you're basically glass and you'll go down in just one or two hits. Many is the time a low-level bandit one-shotted my mage.
But none of this, absolutely none of this has stopped me from pouring about 350 combined hours PC/Xbox into this game. It's an affliction, I don't know why I am like I am.
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Comment on How mods changed video games forever in ~games
Narry (edited )Link ParentAh, many a gameplay session of mine ended at the hands of Captain Hector. In later games he didn't do anything but fly into the system and nag you to buy, but I recall in early games he'd...Ah, many a gameplay session of mine ended at the hands of Captain Hector. In later games he didn't do anything but fly into the system and nag you to buy, but I recall in early games he'd annihilate you.
I never did end up paying for it, and honestly I might've cracked it myself, I can't recall. When I get the itch/urge to play EV again, I turn to Endless Sky: Steam / Github -- I have 265 hours logged on Steam, but I've probably got closer to 500 hours in the game across Linux / Mac / Windows. It's a very faithful recreation of the EV series as a whole, with a lot of Quality of Life improvements that game in later iterations. I still haven't managed to explore the entire galaxy.
As a fellow xkcd quoter, I usually find myself quoting 927 or 1053
Edit: Also I just noticed your name is Maelstrom. Did you know that game is available on Linux?
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry Link ParentI should probably point out that I construct languages as a hobby, so my answer to "would it improve the language" is an emphatic "yes" because... well, it's the unfortunate delusion of my hobby.I should probably point out that I construct languages as a hobby, so my answer to "would it improve the language" is an emphatic "yes" because... well, it's the unfortunate delusion of my hobby.
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry Link ParentI think the assumption here is that you drop all gender features, except in cases where it's important to describe what you mean. Like, take your example of "manzana roja" where if you just agree...You still have to say manzana roja, so you still need to know the gender of any noun you're playing with. At that point, is there any difficulty in saying la once you already know the gender of the noun?
I think the assumption here is that you drop all gender features, except in cases where it's important to describe what you mean. Like, take your example of "manzana roja" where if you just agree that the words always pair with the masculine as the neuter, you end up with "el manzana rojo" because "el" and "rojo" no longer carry the connotation of "the definite (masc) article" and "red (masc) color" they just carry the connotation of "definite article" and "red color" regardless of the noun they're attached to.
I'm just genuinely not sure what important information that gender agreement is carrying here. Take a longer descriptive, where all the genders must apply: una pequiña manzana roja. None of that tells me anything important about the smallness of the apple, the appleness of the apple, the redness of the apple, or even the oneness of the apple. I learn the gender rules in the languages I speak, but it doesn't mean I have to like them.
Anyway, let's agree to disagree at this point, I think I'm going in circles.
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry Link ParentI don't advocate for dropping the article before a noun, although that's something that can be done but relies heavily on context to make sense. In English you could say "I want apple" to mean...I don't advocate for dropping the article before a noun, although that's something that can be done but relies heavily on context to make sense. In English you could say "I want apple" to mean that you want apple-flavored or apple-scented items, but the context would need to be present that there's an option there. Just starting a conversation with "I want apple" has too little context to narrow it down to a specific apple, but it will be assumed that you want something apple-flavored or featuring apple heavily as the primary ingredient, so a natural response would be "What kind of apple?"
You'd need the article, "I want AN apple" or "I want THAT apple" or "I want THE apple" etc. if you wanted to talk about a particular apple, otherwise an assumption is made. I suppose in Spanish it would be more akin to "Quiero el sabor a manzana" but I'm not sure that's a sensible sentence.
I'm not saying Spanish doesn't need those articles, what I'm saying is that having to learn a special version of "THE" or "THAT" dependent on a feature of the noun seems superfluous. "El manzana" and "La manzana" both essentially mean "the apple" but one is correct and for some reason the other isn't for no other reason than... it isn't correct.
Here's a question that I'm just curious about, not using it as as argument I just want to know: what do you do if a word is introduced to two different regions without a definitive article and both regional variants arrive at different conclusions about the article?
Say that the word "bume" (which I made up just now) were to arrive in Spanish, meaning "a small fruit from the bume tree", and it arrives in both Mexican Spanish and Spain Spanish at roughly the same time. In Mexico, they decide it's "el bume", but in Spain they feel "la bume" is more appropriate. Who wins? Which version do you adopt? Does a foreign language speaker just have to learn that it's "el bume" in Tijuana but "la bume" in Madrid?
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry Link ParentDon't get me wrong, I love Spanish and I've been studying it for years, it's just tedious as an adult to memorize when "la" or "el" is appropriate when that's not a feature of my language. Spanish...Don't get me wrong, I love Spanish and I've been studying it for years, it's just tedious as an adult to memorize when "la" or "el" is appropriate when that's not a feature of my language. Spanish makes great use of discarding needless things, though, like I don't have to say "yo quiero" to say I want something, I can just say "quiero" which is a fantastic feature of the language. I think in order for your language to have the same feature, you'd just have to abandon la/las for things and agree that the ending of the word doesn't matter for the article in front of it.
Is there really a significant reason for not saying "Tengo un hija, dos hijos, y el señorita allí es el hermana de mí esposa" as opposed to "Tengo una hija, dos hijos, y la señorita allí es la hermana de mí esposa"?
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Comment on How mods changed video games forever in ~games
Narry LinkMy first swing at modding a game was the old Macintosh System 7/8/9 game Escape Velocity from Ambrosia Software. I got tired of getting wiped out every time a pirate showed up in the system, so I...My first swing at modding a game was the old Macintosh System 7/8/9 game Escape Velocity from Ambrosia Software.
I got tired of getting wiped out every time a pirate showed up in the system, so I made a weapon called The Big One, which had a detection range of the maximum system size, a payload powerful enough to wipe out the most powerful ships in one shot, and a range that would extend to pretty much the entire system. I also made it have an outfit size of 1, a weight of 1, and a price of 100 credits, then made it available at every single outfitter (that took the longest time as I had to work through a list of the outfitters in the game and laboriously input each one by hand). By the end I could take my little starting shuttle and begin taking over the entire known galaxy just for shits and grins.
I know that making an all-powerful weapon is supposed to make a game less fun, but I think when you build it yourself from concept to final product, it becomes a more interesting endeavor and even if it breaks the game you still feel a sense of pride and accomplishment (Jakey actually addresses this point in the video.)
In addition to learning how Escape Velocity worked under the hood, I also learned a ton about the 2-fork system of the MacOS System 9 stuff, where you had your data fork and your resource fork. This led to me learning AppleScript and automating my system, something I still use to this day on my Mac. It just makes using my systems that much more interesting to me.
If nothing else, I encourage modding so you understand more about what goes into the games you like so that you can understand why programmers made the choices that they did. To quote a tweet I once saw:
Programming is chaotic magic. There are no rules. You ask a game dev "Can the player summon a giant demon that bursts from the ground in an explosion of lava?" and they'll say "sure, that's easy" and then you'll ask "can the player wear a scarf?" and they'll go "oof"
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Comment on How mods changed video games forever in ~games
Narry Link ParentSomeday I might rescue Shawn from the Institute. But right now I've got a few dozen settlements to manage and Raiders to wipe out again. Thought you could retake Corvega Assembly Plant? You...Someday I might rescue Shawn from the Institute. But right now I've got a few dozen settlements to manage and Raiders to wipe out again. Thought you could retake Corvega Assembly Plant? You thought wrong...
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry (edited )Link ParentWe fight because in English there's what we call prestige accents, and other accents that are considered lesser/incorrect. To give you an idea, my mother would've had what we call a Southern...We fight because in English there's what we call prestige accents, and other accents that are considered lesser/incorrect. To give you an idea, my mother would've had what we call a Southern accent if she'd kept her childhood accent, but in college she received so much ridicule for it that she forced herself to take on the prestige accent of the era, and to this day speaks with only that and becomes embarrassed when her original accent comes out. Her way of saying a few choice words wouldn't be considered "correct" or "proper" and if she wrote them the way she actually says them she would be corrected regularly. That's the main complaint people have against making English spelling phonetic; they might accidentally give her accent legitimacy.
EDIT Sorry I was thinking I was replying to someone else about making words spelled regularly. My apologies.
To answer YOU directly, my language used to do that as well, but we decided it was a chore we didn't need to complete and went with just the neutral. Your language, for whatever reason, has decided that some things are la and other things are el and being corrected on them is annoying to someone from a language that wouldn't think to say "tha chair" vs "the tree" for example. To be sure, we do have some gendering in the language, but we don't change the words around the gender to fit the gendered word, usually. It's still THE actor and THE actress, not THE actor and THA actress, etc. It just seems unnecessary to have la/las el/los etc. Why gender that?
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Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
Narry Link ParentYou're playing my tune. For me the best experience so far has been The Planet Crafter which has a free demo if you want to check it out. I can get lost in it for hours on end, just jumping around...You're playing my tune. For me the best experience so far has been The Planet Crafter which has a free demo if you want to check it out.
I can get lost in it for hours on end, just jumping around harvesting resources, building my little bases, setting up my ability to explore the next thing as I terraform an alien world and unlock the mysteries of the crafters that came before me (and presumably perished, but maybe not?) It's one of the few games I not only purchased in Early Access, but at full price which was $9.99 at the time. I've recommended this game to a lot of people.
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Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
Narry Link ParentI don't know if it's fully up your alley, but if you enjoyed older games like Out Run, you might find some real enjoyment with Slipstream. It was last updated about 2 years ago and it's not...I don't know if it's fully up your alley, but if you enjoyed older games like Out Run, you might find some real enjoyment with Slipstream. It was last updated about 2 years ago and it's not getting more updates per the developer. It's feature complete. It has a ton of modes including single and multiplayer, Grand Tours, Cannonballs, Elimination Races, etc. I decided to reinstall it and play it with my controller and I found it quick to pick up and play. It's a very straight-forward set of mechanics:
- steer with the left/right stick
- accelerate with RT
- brake with LT
- drift through turns by releasing RT, tap LT, then pull RT again and you can control your car's turn into the drift
- rewind time up to 5 seconds with Y button
That's the entire tutorial right there. The single player race I ran gave me a choice of 5 cars and around a dozen cities. I picked a hatchback because WRX, and I won my race with about a half second better time than the next contender, and around 23 full seconds from the last placer. Doesn't feel like it uses BS mechanics: once I was in the lead position at the end of lap 2, the next two laps were just me vs the course, no BS rubberbanding and other cheap tactics to make the race "exciting"...
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Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
Narry Link ParentI didn't scroll down far enough to read, but I wholeheartedly endorse Just Cause 3 XXL as the best traversal system on the planet. For me, second best is Breath of the Wild. For some reason the...I didn't scroll down far enough to read, but I wholeheartedly endorse Just Cause 3 XXL as the best traversal system on the planet. For me, second best is Breath of the Wild. For some reason the traversal in Tears of the Kingdom doesn't really click as much for me. I've tried to play TotK several times and I get a few hours into it and just shrug my shoulders and set the controller aside.
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Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
Narry Link ParentI love the traversal system in Just Cause 3. Sometimes I boot it up just to goof around. You can ride in vehicles if you really want, but with their flight traversal mechanic you probably won't...I love the traversal system in Just Cause 3. Sometimes I boot it up just to goof around. You can ride in vehicles if you really want, but with their flight traversal mechanic you probably won't ever really want to...
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Comment on What is your dream game? in ~games
Narry Link ParentI saw a graphic the other day that I think sums up your entire game: Things Kids Have Sacrificed For Drivers and Things Drivers Have Sacrificed For KidsI saw a graphic the other day that I think sums up your entire game:
Things Kids Have Sacrificed For Drivers and Things Drivers Have Sacrificed For Kids
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry Link ParentThere may be some confusion here. I'm not calling to formalize English, I'm talking more about spelling reform which is a lightning rod issue at all times. Personally, I advocate for completely...There may be some confusion here. I'm not calling to formalize English, I'm talking more about spelling reform which is a lightning rod issue at all times. Personally, I advocate for completely changing to another script, even if it's not perfect. RobWords on YouTube did an episode about Shavian, among others.
Even if we kept the Latin script and modified it the way other languages that use the script do, we'd do better to capture the way the words are spoken. For example:
Tough, though, thought -> tuff, tho, thaut
I'm by no means the first to propose this. The problem is that any time we try to impose either spelling reform or script reform, there are inevitably those that complain that doing so will introduce regional variant spellings that will cause the same level of confusion.
For example, take the word pecan. I know of at least two ways I myself say it:
peekaen
pkawnSame thing with words like aunt (aent, awnt), route (root, rowt), or recording place names that are pronounced differently by the locals, such as Nevada, which is more like "Nevada" where the "vad" rhymes with "bad", versus outsiders who often say it closer "vod" like "bod" instead. Which is correct, the local variant or the regional or the national?
As an aside, President Teddy Roosevelt once tried to reform our spelling... it went... poorly.
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Comment on Minecraft developer Mojang has announced that the Sift is coming to Java and Bedrock Edition in 2027 – the game's first new dimension in over fourteen years in ~games
Narry (edited )LinkWhat I would really love from Mojang is: Improve My Survival Craft Horror Experience Let me turn off villages/villagers/traders. I don’t like them, they kind of ruin my survival craft horror game....What I would really love from Mojang is:
Improve My Survival Craft Horror Experience
- Let me turn off villages/villagers/traders. I don’t like them, they kind of ruin my survival craft horror game. I can do it in Java, let me do it in Bedrock.
Improve My Respawn Ability
- Let me make permanent beds that let me set spawn points and avoid phantoms out of something other than wool. Let me create rayon out of bamboo or other plant fibers, let me build a gin and turn grasses into yarn, something…
- Barring that, let me make shears out of copper, and make sure that sheep or other shearable animals appear in every biome; sheep, camels, llamas, alpacas, yaks, I’ll shear ‘em all!
Improve My Vegan/Vegetarian Food Options
- I just harvested fifty watermelon slices, why can’t I eat them and get seeds from that action?
- There’s pumpkins galore, why can’t I just roast them and eat them?
- The only creatures in the game that I don’t mind killing are the pigs, which granted are everywhere, but I’d like the option not to kill them either.
- Let me combine ingredients to discover recipes more like in BotW; sure, I may make something dubious, but at least it’s food.
I will say that I don’t keep up on the deeper level stuff, and some of this may be accomplished in ways that I don’t know (and if you know, please tell me if you’re up to it) but I play both editions and these are the main reasons why I’m spinning up a new world after 4-6 hours.
Edit: your -> you’re
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Comment on Jon Watts is our ‘Star Wars: Episode X’ director in ~movies
Narry LinkWhen I originally misread the title of this thread as “John Waters” I was a lot more intrigued about it than when I realized it was Jon Watts.When I originally misread the title of this thread as “John Waters” I was a lot more intrigued about it than when I realized it was Jon Watts.
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Comment on Using ASCII art to prove that I, not an LLM, wrote something in ~tech
Narry Link ParentAnother problem that I have is that I don’t actually type every individual letter in a sentence when I’m typing on a keyboard; what I’m actually doing is performing what is akin to a macro with my...Another problem that I have is that I don’t actually type every individual letter in a sentence when I’m typing on a keyboard; what I’m actually doing is performing what is akin to a macro with my fingers, where I know the pattern of the keys that I need to press so I just sort of sent a pulse to my fingers and they tap in a certain order and I get what I need; it honestly feels like what I imagine magic must feel like in systems where you use gestures to cast spells or shape magic. The trouble comes in when I’ve pulsed the wrong word, or when I’m stiff and cramped and my fingers aren’t flexing like they used to. My left index finger is particularly prone to not fully engaging the key or twitching and double engaging a key, or even sometimes engaging the key, but much later than it should have.
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Comment on What is your pet peeve with language acquisition? in ~humanities.languages
Narry LinkFrench: I can read 75-80% of what’s in front of me without reaching for a dictionary. I can write 60% of my sentences confident that I’m getting my point across but knowing I’m not really all that...French: I can read 75-80% of what’s in front of me without reaching for a dictionary. I can write 60% of my sentences confident that I’m getting my point across but knowing I’m not really all that grammatically correct. I can understand about 30% of any French I’m listening to. I can say “bonjour” in an accent that probably won’t get me kicked out of the boulangerie immediately.
French & Spanish & Swedish & German: getting a handle on the gender of stuff. I’ve found it tedious to memorize the gender of every noun, and I find absolutely nothing useful about having at least two different systems in place for addressing nouns (German… go sit down), but if you’ve got convincing evidence to the contrary please share it. Japanese is easier for not having this foible.
Japanese: the script. I know that Japanese people will tell you that it’s traditional and that there are many good reasons for keeping it around but honestly Hangul directly counters almost every argument I’ve ever heard about Kana.
English: (yes, I still study my native language) it’s more of a vibe than a proper language. It’s a Germanic language with a Latin vocabulary and script bolted on by lazy developer’s, and the American Spelling expansion pack has done nobody any favors. We keep abandoning attempts to reform the spelling or choose a more suitable script, largely because nobody wants to accidentally capture regional dialects and make them official in a dictionary, in my opinion. We might accidentally legitimize them and thus make it tough to look down on people that don’t speak “proper” English, whatever the fugg that means.
I think the problem is that it feels like an extra bit of work to make sure that gender agrees across the sentence, but it ultimately has no useful payout in almost all situations. It's extra work often for no reward, but if you get it wrong you sound like an uneducated speaker, at least from the perspective of an outsider learner. It's all drawbacks, but again just from a non-native speaker's perspective. If there was something other than "it makes it sound nice" that it was doing to make the sentence more clear and more understandable I wouldn't ever think twice about it. "Of course it's -ita for everything here, you must know that this is a very cute table. Lita lindita mesita."