Thomas-C's recent activity
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI kept up with Diablo II, and thanks to the gradual fraying of reality's threads had a wildly fun experience. I've been working on a character, Grognak, a Barbarian. I set out to play and not use...I kept up with Diablo II, and thanks to the gradual fraying of reality's threads had a wildly fun experience. I've been working on a character, Grognak, a Barbarian. I set out to play and not use any guide material/build information. It's been more than a decade since I played D2 with any regularity, I wanted that new experience again.
The way D2 is structured, the three difficulties are a single large progression. I won't bore you with details of that, but it means each difficulty pushes you into a new way of playing, because the rules get tighter/it gets harder and that means having to tune your character accordingly. The fun part came when I started screwing around with Suno, and inadvertently created Grognak's Theme Song. Theme song in hand, and a few lucky drops later, the build is consistently wrecking shit and making progress.
In D2 you get pretty attached to a fun character, so getting the Saturday morning cartoon theme song for mine made it feel pretty special. My build is successful too, thus far at least, because I've made it to Hell mode and have been running terror zones a bit to improve. Leap attack into Frenzy into Double Swing, "A machinegun of swords" I like to call it. With big crowds, dude hits so fast he can keep a squad at bay, stunning each monster and slapping the next one almost in the same moment. I'm nearly at six attacks per second with some room for further speed boosting, and I've really not touched much gear manipulation, so I'm excited to see how much further I can take this character. Hell is no joke; by that point in the game, it is trying to test you, poke at every little inadequacy and force you to adapt. I particularly appreciate that in D2 because it feels like the natural next step after what came before. Nightmare was mostly breezy, and I've been running terror zones to pick up some better gear.
The song cracks me up every time I hear it, and I ended up making quite a lot on Suno just to see how far I could bend stuff (I uploaded some examples if folks are curious).
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Comment on Have you had a life-altering change in who you are? in ~talk
Thomas-C (edited )LinkProbably fair to say life has been punctuated by these experiences when I think about it. I'll share one from a long time ago, an experience that both changed me in the moment and resounded...- Exemplary
Probably fair to say life has been punctuated by these experiences when I think about it. I'll share one from a long time ago, an experience that both changed me in the moment and resounded through what I did for years and years.
When I hit senior year of high school I went through a really dumb/bad breakup, and my group of friends disintegrated. Up until that point, I'd occupied an odd social position, of being both a very good student and an extremely reckless person. In high school at least, recklessness got you plenty of clout, so I was not an unpopular guy. I could float between different groups, had friends kinda everywhere, and could get away with nearly anything because how could the kid with good grades do that lol. It meant a lot of folks knew who I was, and me becoming single meant a whole lot of new attention. I was in the band (I played a saxophone) and one day I noticed a flute player looking at me some type of way. She was very pretty, but wasn't someone I'd really associated with, because she dated a guy who was scared of me and herself had a kinda mixed reputation. Her boyfriend and I butted heads earlier in grade school, and I smacked the crap out of him, was the story there. The same day I noticed this girl looking at me, after band practice, I watched her boyfriend throw some kind of tantrum and speed off without her. I offered her a ride, she accepted very happily, and along the way she asked if we could stop at a park, so we did.
For a long time we just talked. About a lot of different things. I wrote before she had a pretty mixed reputation. It was pretty typical high school shit - girl has male friends, therefore, half the women at school called her a slut, and folks wanted to believe it so it stuck. The truth was that what guys she did date were not fun folks, and Scared-of-me-Boyfriend had a propensity to talk shit when she didn't go along with stuff he wanted. Practically everything folks said at school was wrong in some way, if not just an outright lie. At some point the conversation died down and we just looked at each other for a bit. I remember a moment in which she said she felt something she couldn't put words to, and I told her how I felt something similar. I'd encounter this again in life, over and over - sometimes you meet someone and there's just an attraction. An intense, physical sort of attraction, wordlessly recognized and overwhelmingly present. No one was there to stop us.
We would meet up every weekend pretty much across the year and for a month or two after I graduated. We'd only ever meet in the evenings, after whatever stuff happened in our own social groups, because we both didn't want folks talking about us. As time went on, it almost became an in-joke - let's see how wrong everyone is this week. I existed outside the gossip sphere and she liked poking the bear, so we'd compare what we'd heard and make fun of people for lying/making shit up. As we talked though, it also became clear how unfair it all was. She didn't really do anything to begin with. While she'd antagonize folks at present, originally nothing really happened except a boyfriend being a big piece of shit. I was the only person she actually did anything with, because I had always been respectful, and was known not to gossip. "Safe" was the word she used, and I told her I was happy I could do that.
Our evenings would stretch across the night, often with us coming home just before sunrise. We'd talk, for hours and hours, with occasional breaks to work out some of that mutual attraction. We'd compare notes and laugh at the dumbasses making up stories and being petty. Sometimes we'd go way out of town and shoot guns, in the woods, at a junkyard, wherever. You could do that where I lived if you knew where to go. We'd bring each other things - snacks, trinkets, band stuff, etc. Outside of that time we each had our own social groups, our own friends, our own realities playing out, and over time we really came to understand ourselves as looking into things from outside. Above and beyond the bullshit, so to speak.
The experience of this really shaped how I understood people, and more or less stopped a reckless streak before it happened. I was still reckless, mind you - it's a wonder I didn't come out of this with a kid - but contained to the one person, the one behavior, with a lot of positives. I was happy, too. That woman understood me better than anyone I'd ever known. And yet, we both understood, there is no future in what we were doing. She wasn't going where I was going, I wasn't doing what she was doing. When I graduated it would be over. We just accepted it, and had fun. But too, in getting to truly know her and in telling our jokes, we both got to observe just how completely ridiculous other people could be. How they'd just make shit up, add details that never happened, say whatever outrageous thing got them some attention with no care for the expense. They never did figure out what we were up to, but said all kinds of things about her. We'd shout our memes at each other between classes just to see if anyone would catch on, but they never did, and we enjoyed the hell out of it. As an example, my ex would tell folks this dumb story about having a dream about me cheating on her. I never did anything like that (never in my whole life, I can say today). It was a stupid way of trying to drum up attention. My friend and I called this "the dreamcheat", and occasionally shouted "YOU'RE DREAMCHEATING" to amuse ourselves.
After I graduated, for about a month or two we continued to see each other. The very last time, we each thought to bring the other a big gift basket and had a big laugh over it. Wished each other the best, and hoped that for each of us the future would work out. I went on to college, met tons of new people, and got myself thoroughly immersed. She had one more year left, so as it naturally happens we drifted apart. Until one day I got a phone call from her.
This was about six months into my freshman year. I got the call in my dorm room and answered immediately. For a few seconds I couldn't hear anything, and then, a voice. A voice, but not words. It was her voice, that much was there, but for the life of me I could not make out what she was saying. I said it must be a phone issue, and tried calling her back. Same thing. There just wasn't anything there I could understand. So I said I'd reach her on Facebook. When I sat down to do that, and found her profile, I was confronted with a shocking reality.
I'm not going to spare it, but heads up, this is pretty rough.
The first thing I saw was a photo, of her on her birthday. She was in a motorized wheelchair. Her head was tilted, slumped, and her mouth hung open. Her eyes were not focused. There was a small tube in her ear. Her arms were bent, hands twisted, fingers curled. The cake had the word "miracle" on it, with a single, thin candle. The room was very brightly lit, like a clinic, and her mom was there with a smile that had a lot of tiredness behind it.I had to sit there for a while with that. I cried. I looked through her profile a bit to understand what happened. She was riding with someone, a guy who was once my neighbor, and he did something incredibly stupid. He was speeding along the highway, and while breaking 110, hit a semi-truck. They both, somehow, survived, with him coming out of it able to heal completely. Not true for her. It was indeed a miracle she was still there. But she could no longer speak, she couldn't move much, and there hadn't been much change since that new reality had settled in. A flood of memories hit me. The stories we told, the jokes we had, the gnawing anger at the unfairness of things. I worked myself up a bit, and called her back.
In that call, I told her what I'd seen, that I understood what happened, and that I was sorry for the calls before. I asked if I could just tell her some things, and she responded well enough, a gentle "hmm!". I told her about how much it meant to me, to have someone to talk to, who saw the things I could see, and how much fun I had with the jokes we told each other. Each time she laughed, it's like time stopped, because in those moments she didn't sound any different. Each time was like being shoved; a quick, intense burst of feelings. I couldn't maintain very long like this, so I brought it to a close by telling her how I'd never forget. As we'd talked about, our lives were going in completely different directions, so we understood it probably wouldn't be that we would keep in touch very much. I was also beginning a new, serious sort of relationship and you know how it goes with "exes" with that I'm sure. I didn't consider her an "ex" because that wasn't how we defined our relationship, but expecting someone else to understand is a tall order.
I did though, check in from time to time, and saw that she did end up improving quite a lot. The last time I saw some photos, besides the wheelchair she didn't look much different to how I remembered her, which made me cry in an entirely different way. By that point in time it wouldn't have made much sense to reconnect for a variety of reasons, so I left it there and carried the memories with me.
This whole experience set me up to look at things a bit differently. Arguably, it set the course for a lot of what I would do. Because I had gotten to see so clearly behind a veil, it made me more aware of the presence of many veils. And because I'd had the experience of such a positive, encouraging sort of relationship, it meant I could handle myself better as I navigated those. It didn't save me from a life of reckless, debaucherous nonsense mind you but it did mean the character of that wasn't quite what you might think. A lot of that nonsense was nothing but positive. I was painfully aware of the moments in which I had been the asshole, because of this experience. In moments when I'd feel some type of way, angry or vindictive over a bad time, I'd remember her, and shape up. "Shape up", because as I had been so clearly shown, whatever bullshit was going on in the moment could drastically, completely change, so instead of dwelling on the negative feelings I'd set out to bring the situation to a stable place. It also meant I would give folks some extra benefit of the doubt; a bad reputation could just be a lie, after all, and sometimes it was.
This experience, in two parts, had an immense impact on me and I think changed a lot about how I would behave afterward. I was a pretty wild person and would continue to be, but this experience meant I always tried to be that wild person without it coming at anyone's expense. I had the proof it was possible. Arguable how successful that effort was, but I tried. There was still plenty of growing to do too, so over time more experiences honed and shaped my perspective. But this, I think was foundational, a piece that persists until today and continues to affect a bit, how I go about engaging with people.
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Comment on What AI tools are you actually using? in ~tech
Thomas-C (edited )LinkI don't really have a professional use case for an LLM, but I do have GPT4ALL and have used Mistral Instruct for a few things now and then. Sometimes it's fun to toss ideas at it and see what it...I don't really have a professional use case for an LLM, but I do have GPT4ALL and have used Mistral Instruct for a few things now and then. Sometimes it's fun to toss ideas at it and see what it says, or ask it about something I'm only vaguely familiar with and get myself started on finding out more. One thing I like to do is just ask it to tell me a story about whatever weird shit I'm thinking about, like "tell me about a man who was eaten by a hamburger", "Write a letter to my mother explaining why she is forbidden from washing the dog", so on and so forth. It's a springboard in my mind, a generator of first steps I guess.
Edit: I wanted to give a snippet.
Dear Sister,
I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to talk to you about something that has been on my mind lately. As you know, we have had our fair share of disagreements in the past, but I want to make sure that we are on the same page when it comes to taking care of our shared living space.
I understand that you like to put your fried chicken in the laundry basket while you wait for it to cool down before eating. However, there is a reason why this is not allowed. Specifically, I am forbidding you from putting your fried chicken in the laundry basket under any circumstances.
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Comment on Linux Distro Recommendations in ~comp
Thomas-C Link ParentI'd second this one. I've been using Mint on a few machines and I'm very pleased with it. I put it on my parents' machines and they've done well with them. Even my grandmother does ok on it when...I'd second this one. I've been using Mint on a few machines and I'm very pleased with it. I put it on my parents' machines and they've done well with them. Even my grandmother does ok on it when she uses it (I haven't reformatted her machine just yet, learning curve and all that, but she qualifies as probably the noobiest of noobs and did ok using my machine for a bit).
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Comment on X4: Foundations 7.00 trailer in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentHad you played any of the previous games? I was a huge fan of the original X3 and Terran Conflict, so it's been kinda difficult when I've tried to get into X4. I haven't tried it since 5.0, so I'd...Had you played any of the previous games? I was a huge fan of the original X3 and Terran Conflict, so it's been kinda difficult when I've tried to get into X4. I haven't tried it since 5.0, so I'd be interested if you're able to describe how it's progressed a bit.
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Comment on Another update, our first event in ~talk
Thomas-C Link ParentVery much so! I made a playlist for it, mostly Disney music (Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, etc) and she was just ecstatic, singing with it and playing around with her friends. Though only 2, she...Very much so! I made a playlist for it, mostly Disney music (Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, etc) and she was just ecstatic, singing with it and playing around with her friends. Though only 2, she was very sweet and loved talking to folks, honestly one of the best behaved 2 year olds I think I've ever seen lol.
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Comment on Another update, our first event in ~talk
Thomas-C Link ParentId love to try that guy's food, I'm a bit envious. That sort of person though is exactly who I want to meet, and try to build connections with. If anything, I think it makes what they provide...Id love to try that guy's food, I'm a bit envious. That sort of person though is exactly who I want to meet, and try to build connections with. If anything, I think it makes what they provide better, if it's produced without a ton of stress. But more importantly, it's an opportunity both, to let them do what they enjoy and see that work be something pretty much immediately. At least personally, that's always what I was after - I just wanted what I did to contribute, to be meaningful. The way the little girl's grandmother lit up at the prospect made me really happy, you could tell in the moment it really did mean something to her. Hoping I can continue like that and one day have a big network, it's one way I'm trying to measure the progress/success of everything.
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Comment on Another update, our first event in ~talk
Thomas-C Link ParentBelieve it or not, the small, white plates are actually paper plates they brought along, as well as the cups. Everything else is ours. We do have a set big enough for this, but given the children...Believe it or not, the small, white plates are actually paper plates they brought along, as well as the cups. Everything else is ours. We do have a set big enough for this, but given the children everybody figured paper was the way to go.
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Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc
Thomas-C LinkRecently I finished up a run of Diablo 2, and it just so happened that one of my favorite folks put out a lengthy, detailed analysis. I've always enjoyed Noah Caldwell Gervais for his thoroughness...Recently I finished up a run of Diablo 2, and it just so happened that one of my favorite folks put out a lengthy, detailed analysis. I've always enjoyed Noah Caldwell Gervais for his thoroughness and originality - dude can certainly crank out a good quote like it's second nature.
I particularly enjoyed this one because it's a good way of understanding a series that I feel often is oversimplified. There's a lot in Diablo, more than just clicking monsters. You will click a lot of monsters, but especially by D2 there was a complex, interesting set of ways to grow and become stronger. The change after D2 was one of the first examples of enshittification (imo), that came about at a time before we had that word. Understanding how this particular series changed with time, I think is decently illustrative of how a new business model can undermine the product. Sure, each Diablo is more successful than the last, that's something, but as Noah puts it, they aim today for a sort of engagement that isn't nearly as fulfilling. It really was the case that Blizzard was on top of the world for a time, and their shift toward monetizing just about every aspect of play felt a whole lot like getting shafted.
It's also a bit sad, that D4 appears to be a real continuation but is undermined by its endgame/monetization. I've seen Noah's opinion mirrored in how a lot of others talk about it - that the campaign feels like a proper evolution of the concept, but it is presented almost as a tutorial for a world of endless treadmills that turns some folks off.
Thankfully, these days there's plenty variety and of course, D2 Resurrected, which in my opinion is a pretty incredible product. Both because it's a faithful remake and because it's not been gutted for the sake of further monetization.
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Another update, our first event
Hello once again! I wanted to show y'all some pictures, because today we've hosted our first event. Check it out! Today's event is a birthday party for a little girl, her family and friends are...
Hello once again! I wanted to show y'all some pictures, because today we've hosted our first event.
Today's event is a birthday party for a little girl, her family and friends are all here setting up for a meal and they've got a neat inflatable for the kids to play on. She's turning 2 and folks decided to just go all out for it.
I wanted to share too, how this event is helping out the overall plan. The little girl's grandmother was a caterer before they moved here. She doesn't want to do catering professionally anymore, because the job wore her out. She stopped doing it after they moved, because she was exhausted. The way she tells it, it's a pretty typical story of being worked to the bone for rewards that aren't fulfilling, for a larger business that was mostly just about growth/performance. Turned her off to the whole idea, because she was sick of being pushed past her limits. We got to talking with her and shared some of our own plans - to be a local space, small scale and low key, not trying to grow super fast or get bought by something bigger.
As we shared all this I noticed her grandmother's demeanor change, what was at first a negative recollection turned into a sort of hopeful interest. Turns out she would like to do catering again, she'd just like to do it without the pressures of a larger scale business. I said at one point, that our goal was to be a good place, not the biggest business or the richest people. She gave me her number, and said to reach her whenever we wanted.
I couldn't ask for a better outcome on this one, I think. They paid early too :). Anyway, I don't have just a whole lot more to say, I just wanted to show y'all some progress since I'd already written out so much. Slowly but surely, step by step, it's working out so far. Hope y'all's weekend is good, and I hope to show you more soon!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI ended up finding two smaller titles that really impressed me, so I've kept going in them now and then. The first is a first person, rogue-ish dungeon crawler called Devil Spire. It looks and...I ended up finding two smaller titles that really impressed me, so I've kept going in them now and then.
The first is a first person, rogue-ish dungeon crawler called Devil Spire. It looks and feels very much like a Kings Field game, but unlike that series focuses on procedural levels and multiple runs. Death means starting over, but you do get some of your progress counted, and can eventually unlock new game modes. While it is a slow paced game, combat is fluid and you have a few tactical options games like this don't always give you, like ducking under attacks and kicking enemies away, as well as being able to use environmental objects as both weapons and obstacles. It's straightforward to understand and building your character is pretty simple. One neat thing is it lets you customize your 2d portrait in ways usually only 3d creators let you do. In looking at their discussion forums and update feed, the devs were deeply committed to making it an enjoyable experience. They engage in the forums, they helped with troubleshooting and took feedback, just all around good things to see. They consider the game finished too; the latest update is the last. So, for ten dollars I was pretty happy with this one.
The second game is Svarog's Dream, which is an open world action RPG. What makes it interesting, is you don't play as a person. You're instead a spirit, who possesses a character, and when you die you'll move on to someone else. The game is built with this in mind; you are meant to keep going after you die, and what you did the first time around persists. You can go find your dead guy and get your stuff back, as well as finish up the quests they left undone. It's not really designed to be incredibly difficult nor particularly easy; you're just free to go wherever, and what you find may or may not be something you can handle. Go further away from the populated areas and you'll find more monsters. Go deep into a cave and you'll find some worse monsters. All throughout the game you come across people with quests and stories, and you're given choices for how to resolve various situations. There is a conflict taking shape between a monotheistic religion and a polytheistic one, reminiscent of Christianity and paganism, and while it appears one is good and the other is not, you find the nuance as you complete quests and talk to people. Combat is pretty standard ARPG faire, with a hotbar and active/passive skills you can put points into. Those you actually keep from character to character, and you can change class/put the points elsewhere with those new characters if you wish. It's fun to have a nice build and then use the points to come up with a nicer alternative on the next go. Similar to Devil Spire, the devs consider the game finished, so not much if anything about it will change. It's a bit rough around the edges with respect to its visual presentation, but the concept and execution are interesting enough for me to put that aside. One minor thing, it does not have proper controller support. You'll need to map keyboard keys to a controller in order to use one, and it will feel kinda clunky. It does support using WASD to move and gives you a button to quickly remap to that, at least.
Both of these have been a joy to play. I can see myself doing runs in Devil Spire every so often, and the structure of Svarog's Dream means it's easy to do the same with that. I intend to reach the end on both so I'm hopeful they'll be solid experiences the whole way through.
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Comment on Why do some people posting ChatGPT answer to the discussion/debate/question? in ~tech
Thomas-C LinkI don't mind a chatgpt post when the topic is about llms - sometimes it's interesting for comparison. But in the context of a different topic/discussion, I'm usually not going to engage with it....I don't mind a chatgpt post when the topic is about llms - sometimes it's interesting for comparison. But in the context of a different topic/discussion, I'm usually not going to engage with it. Once it's clear to me the writing is llm driven I tend to skip it. Both because the llm usually has little of interest to say and because I question whether the poster can really engage on the topic at all. I don't consider the post representative without some form of clarification on their part. I want to see what people have to say and chatgpt is not a person.
I think there's room to be flexible though. For example, I can get behind someone using chatgpt to help make their language more understandable. If they said something on the front end, that that's what they're doing, ok sure, go for it. What I'm after is your perspective, so if the tool is helping to show us that, all good. If it happens to be that the llm does accurately capture your perspective, ok, sure too. Just say so, is all. I think saying so should be understood as proper etiquette for that sort of thing, if I'm gonna be proscriptive about it.
What doesn't work to me is just posting whatever it says without any clarification/context. "Letting chatgpt represent them" maybe is a good way to put it. I won't engage with that. Skimmed at best, never voted on, never replied to. I don't care what chatgpt has to say about much of anything and I'm very doubtful someone who lets it represent them has much to say either.
If you're well meaning, as in you think you're being helpful by having chatgpt construct a response but offer none of your own, consider for a second the purpose of a forum, the topic at hand, and whether what you're doing actually contributes. If you can thread that needle, power to you, but I'm willing to bet if you went back and looked, there won't be a pattern of it actually helping anything or fostering much discussion. I can't see one when I've tried to look, hence me disregarding those posts outright. Doesn't matter if there's some nugget of truth in the spit, I'd rather struggle with someone's rough prose than glide through llm spit. Because that's what I'm here for: Folks perspectives and opinions. If that's not what you're giving me then I'm likely ignoring you, and a chatgpt response is like waving a big flag saying "YOU CAN IGNORE ME IN CONCLUSION HAVE A NICE DAY" lol.
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Comment on What are some of your favorite PlayStation 1 games? Any odd or unique ones worth playing? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentRacing Lagoon is very cheesy. I can't say I ever imagined "90's Squaresoft's Fast and Furious", but that's pretty much what you're in for. The characters are ridiculous, street racing is your...Racing Lagoon is very cheesy. I can't say I ever imagined "90's Squaresoft's Fast and Furious", but that's pretty much what you're in for. The characters are ridiculous, street racing is your entire life, the whole goal is to become the BIGGEST LEGEND. Strikes a decent balance between going over the top and taking itself just a tad too seriously.
That one was a real treat to come across because I just can't imagine Square Enix of today ever producing it. When I played it I couldn't help but think, this kind of thing is what I'd like to see get remade and enhanced. It would crack me up to see it given the FFVII-R treatment, I'd buy it day one.
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Comment on What are some of your favorite PlayStation 1 games? Any odd or unique ones worth playing? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkThere's a whole world of weird and interesting PS1 games. I'll give you one that I personally really enjoy and then a bunch of fan translations. I'm not guaranteeing quality here, just tossing out...There's a whole world of weird and interesting PS1 games. I'll give you one that I personally really enjoy and then a bunch of fan translations. I'm not guaranteeing quality here, just tossing out some things I recently came across that might be interesting.
My personal favorite is Armored Core: Master of Arena. AC has been fundamentally the same thing for its entire existence, you collect up stuff to build a mech and then go fight mechs in it. MoA has the most content of the PS1 titles and gives you the most leeway when you lose. There are versions of these with a mod pre installed to make the analog sticks work, I would highly recommend them.
Fan translated stuff:
JRPG's: Linda3 Again, PoPoLoCrois, Racing Lagoon (yes, a racing RPG, by Square of all folks), Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, Asuncia: Matsue no Jubaku
Tactical RPG's: Escaform, Brigandine Grand Edition (there is a modded version too with some balance changes on top of the translation), Goujin Senki, Front Mission 2
First person: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Germs: Nerawareta Machi, Baroque
Adventure/survival horror (these tend to be very bad lol, but not always): R?MJ: The Mystery Hospital, Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice, Aconcagua, Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi, ...Iru!, Mizzurna Falls, Clock Tower: The First Fear
Hopefully that'll get you going. You can find all of these pretty quickly/easily with patches pre-applied. Too, if you do end up needing to patch stuff, it tends to be pretty simple.
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
Thomas-C LinkI found a way cool album trawling spotify for a track I was trying to remember (Spotify, Youtube). It's a jazz/big band arrangement for some iconic tracks from Monster Hunter. There's another one...I found a way cool album trawling spotify for a track I was trying to remember (Spotify, Youtube).
It's a jazz/big band arrangement for some iconic tracks from Monster Hunter. There's another one that's more straightforwardly jazz. Monster Hunter Swing covers a few songs I particularly enjoyed/am nostalgic for, I really enjoyed how it changed up the mood of those pieces. If you want a track to start with, I would point you to the theme for Pokke Village. Just about anybody nostalgic for old MH will get teary eyed to it, and this arrangement drives home its best parts.
Another really good example is a battle track - a track that plays when the monster is coming for you, specifically, because there are separate pieces for things like "the monster has seen you" and "you are in pursuit". Compositionally, Monster Hunter's music tends toward the classical, maybe is a way to say it. Here is the original. It's of course, energetic, with a bit of a dramatic riff in the middle, and it's the first track you get in the third game so it's remembered pretty well/fondly. The rearranged version first extends it to more of a complete work (the battle track is intended to loop, so it's short and doesn't really conclude) and gives it what's maybe half of a new mood - it remains tense but goes for "frenetic" over "dramatic", is how I want to say it.
There is an enormous amount of music for those games that doesn't sound like a lot of others, in my opinion. They're more complex, and they cohere both within each game and across the series. I especially like that they create a unique theme for each game, and incorporate the original title's theme in every game. While they do reuse the basic composition of something like a monster's theme, they will rearrange it and sometimes recompose it to better fit with the theme they developed for the specific game it's showing up in. The original game's theme is often recalled during the most intense encounters, and when you succeed at things. That they maintain a pretty consistent sound across the games while making each game sound unique is pretty impressive to me. The most recent game, Rise, kinda took it in a more modern direction, but not a whole lot. It still sounds distinct while leaning very heavily in a specific direction, to me. Anyway, that's what caught my attention recently. I'm a sucker for saxophones and band instruments because that is what I did for a while. I was pretty impressed with their decisions about how to use the tracks they picked, they hit the nostalgic notes but are their own completely.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentOn the deck, fwiw I use a little auto-aim to get past the sticks feeling weird, with gzdoom iirc it should be in the Player Setup menu. ATM I have it set at 15, reduced head bobbing by about 2/3,...On the deck, fwiw I use a little auto-aim to get past the sticks feeling weird, with gzdoom iirc it should be in the Player Setup menu. ATM I have it set at 15, reduced head bobbing by about 2/3, and reduced sensitivity by about 1/4 on all axes (0.700 in the controllers menu). I found a piece of software called GZDeck that is very helpful for loading mods/organizing things, it'll let you quit out and load up new stuff without exiting.
It's taken an order of magnitude more fiddling than most things, that's for sure, but after doing it I feel like I've closed the gap enough to feel comfy in it. Early on I practiced a little by trying to run classic maps with that maps of chaos mod - the basic layout is familiar so you're never lost, but there's way more stuff to blow up, so you get lots of opportunity to see what you can do.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI'm still juggling weird stretches of time, so along with Monster Hunter I've been doing a few map sets in Doom. It's been many years since I last did anything with that game and some of the more...I'm still juggling weird stretches of time, so along with Monster Hunter I've been doing a few map sets in Doom. It's been many years since I last did anything with that game and some of the more recent maps I've been playing have been phenomenal. I'll list a few I've enjoyed thus far.
Infinite Doom - an in-progress procedural roguelike vision of Doom. It looks like Doom, it plays like Doom, but it also has a big set of progression systems and new stuff to use. It's developed enough to be winning awards on DoomWorld, I've really enjoyed the setup for short runs.
Insanity Edged - Massive, ultra-detailed maps with lots of neat setpieces. It's very pretty. The modder has a narrative for it, with this one being a sequel to "Winter's Fury". WF is well done too, but has a much more muted/grey color palette.
Cosmogenesis - I looked up "what's the biggest doom map" and found my way to this. It's a slaughter map, meaning the challenge is in managing massive hordes with positioning/judicious firing. It's very difficult, I've only gotten through a couple of the rooms. But the map is insanely huge and looks really cool with it's pink/black sort of color scheme.
Ashes 2063: When I was last into Doom shit this was just barely taking shape. Now it's two episodes, and it is easily one of the best mods I've ever seen. Could easily be its own product, it feels like it belongs with any other Doom/Build Engine game. You're a wastelander in a post apocalyptic town, doing wastelander shit. Original art, music, story, etc. Really impressive and there's a standalone version on their moddb page.
Total Chaos: This one is older but has the strongest presentation of any Doom mod that I know of. It's a survival horror experience, that feels kinda close to something like Condemned: Criminal Origins moment-to-moment. It feels liminal, like a Build Engine game that is impossibly good looking. It has an older design sensibility in its levels but is pushing all sorts of engine features about as far as they go.
Ultimate Doom in Name Only: This one is a remake of the original Doom, all of its episodes, with just a totally different, more modern sensibility. It's Doom, but more worldly, less abstract - you go in big bases and across landscape, things are very clearly defined and realistically organized compared to the layouts and appearance of stuff in the original game. Same stories, same general progression so to speak, just completely redesigned. My one gripe is they changed the music. I've been enjoying this paired with Brutal Doom, the levels are a lot of fun to traverse and have lots of monsters.
Hell on Earth Starter Pack: I never actually played this despite being a long time fan of Brutal Doom. It's pretty good. It remakes the campaign of Doom 2 and its secret levels, same guy who made Brutal Doom. Similar to the UDINO, it's the same basic story/idea just done up in a more modern way. You're still hunting down keycards and massacring demons, the architecture just makes more sense and the levels have a clearer sense of progression between them.
Auger Zenith: If you were a fan of Ion Fury, you might appreciate this one especially. It's cyberpunk doom, with everything redesigned to realize that concept. Lots of original artwork and cool setpieces, new weapons, basically its own game similar to some of the prior mods mentioned.
Legend of Doom: This is the original Legend of Zelda. You are playing that game through Doom, with everything redesigned to fit.
SIGIL I & II: New maps made by the dude who made the game, they're really good. Complicated, abstract, difficult. If you buy it from Romero's website you can get the not-MIDI soundtracks, both are free on their own.
Aliens: Eradication: It's an Aliens game. If you ever wanted to play a 90's style Aliens FPS this is it. Good sound design, good sprites and locations. If not for the movement being Doom's, it would feel like a completely independent product.
Maps of Chaos: This one is older but I enjoy it with Brutal Doom. It works with either the original game or Doom II, and it just expands all of the levels by adding in new sections, monster closets and types of monsters. A straightforward expansion on some specific aspects. Brutal Doom gives you a huge variety of weapons, so it tends to be really fun for trying out what all you can get. Dual wielding auto shotguns and shouting expletives is something I think a lot of FPS games could do with.
All of these can be found pretty easily, google the names and you'll find either their idgames or moddb pages. If you want an easy way to find more, check out the Cacowards. They've been running these awards for over twenty years, you can check out their lists from way back and find all sorts of cool stuff. A lot of what's out there can be done pretty quickly, and file sizes tend to be pretty small. They all worked in GZDoom on my steam deck, fwiw. It's nice to play on it because you can easily hit the screen's refresh rate while still seeing a bunch of crazy shit.
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Comment on Some thoughts about Starfield's world in ~games
Thomas-C LinkKeep writing :) I dropped off Starfield pretty fast. I really did not like it. I did see an interpretation later on though that at least made it make some sense to me. Starfield is not really...Keep writing :)
I dropped off Starfield pretty fast. I really did not like it. I did see an interpretation later on though that at least made it make some sense to me. Starfield is not really about exploration and discovery; it's a procedural dungeon crawler set in a science fiction universe. From that angle, it is doing an ok job - it needs some more content, and progression needs some revision, but the foundation is solid enough to build upon. It rubs audiences the wrong way a bit over time, because their expectation hewed closer to Bethesda's more recent titles. Starfield specifically eliminates a thing I think is central to how those games work - it marks all locations, and allows fast travel to them. There is nothing to find outside what's marked. That means you've eliminated a certain kind of experience, of "getting distracted along the way", which imo is what fuels the sense of exploration/discovery.
Personally, I can't square why Bethesda would do that, unless they were aiming for something else from the jump. Starfield wasn't burdened by the history of a franchise, it could be (and is) its own thing. The last time Bethesda did its own thing, was a very long time ago. They're also a much larger company, so it's possible this alternative interpretation is wrong and it's just a case of a badly managed project. But when I look at it as a procedural dungeon crawler, I can see how it could be fun.
Personally, I'd like to see it lean hard into character building and gun-play. Expand what your character can do, give us some customizable actions. Let the procedural systems shine by filling them up with cool stuff and come up with some neat things to do inside the dungeons. Stuff like "blow up a planet", "eat mutant food and become a mutant", "liberate/eradicate the child colony", etc etc. Just go ham on design and gameplay, tie it together with simple stories and archetypal characters. Get a writer with some wilder ideas and also get them an editor.
As it stands it's just bland as hell and doesn't do anything in particular well enough to keep me interested. I think it does represent a pretty severe step along their journey of game-making, too. I can't help but compare, there's multiple studios putting out what anybody would call their "magnum opus" products and those are going wildly well. Starfield feels like a wet fart in the middle of a really good concert. The show goes on and it's gonna pass but what the fuck did you eat?. Really hope it gets improved and worked on, because I like seeing stuff succeed. Working it into a robust set of systems could yield some interesting results and allow them the space to break free of Skyrim's grasp.
Appreciate you leading a discussion. A lot of what you said covers exactly how I felt about it. I was really unimpressed and came away with a very "corporate" feeling. Regardless of future plans, I think the company is in dire need of some reorganizing and internal clarification. Having a unified purpose makes a difference, as does ensuring that purpose is in fact shared among everyone. Starfield feels a whole lot like a game where parts were developed on their own and then smooshed together. Each thing is serviceable if not good, but as a whole nothing particularly interesting comes from it.
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Comment on Finally, something to show you in ~talk
Thomas-C Link ParentCongratulations! I hope y'all have a wonderful wedding :) Thank you for checking out what I had, too. I'd be full of it if I tried to say there wasn't a lot of luck involved, and I'm not...Congratulations! I hope y'all have a wonderful wedding :) Thank you for checking out what I had, too.
I'd be full of it if I tried to say there wasn't a lot of luck involved, and I'm not successful yet so I can't talk too highly. But we are working out all kinds of offerings to try to build up that sense of being a third place. The sign was pretty cool to do. I put the image together using a drawing my dad did of the house something like 20 years ago. I scanned a postcard of it and then traced over it to make it more bold, line by line lol. With the frame, I drew one myself with pen and paper, then fed it to an LLM and had it elaborate a bunch with various prompts until I got a result like what I was imagining.
I can share a few of the things we've been thinking about. Kids' birthday parties, graduation photos, as well as just having a flat rate package if you just wanna get people together for something. The house is nestled within the fine arts school's campus, so my hope is we can build a relationship with them, and provide for things like an after school club, or a cheap venue for presentations/performances.
On the note of performances, I really want to see if we can get some local musicians to perform here. That one has to be more of a medium term plan because we'd need to get a few things, but one of my personal goals is regular, live performances, and cater to a very wide range. Like, if you're just a guy with an acoustic, we can arrange an indoor performance setup and it wouldn't cost much of anything. If you've got more, we have the carriage house, where we can have a small stage and some sound equipment (that's the medium term bit, we'd need to buy some of that, and the carriage house needs some renovating). Music is just tremendously important to me, so I want to do something that makes more of it happen.
Local businesses are also top of mind. The accountant was very big on the idea there are a number of them who want to host meetings and parties somewhere, but there's just nowhere besides the restaurants trying to be available for it. It isn't difficult for us to arrange for small groups, and we've got a massive, fancy dinner table. I think we'd be able to make it work pretty easily, and it's a phenomenal opportunity for us to know folks/be known. One of the goals in general is building out a network of professionals. Hosting dinners and parties seems like a great way to work at that.
The only thing we really don't want to do, is lodging/bed and breakfast stuff. Though I'm branching out a bit, I'm still an introvert and so is my grandmother. Gotta have the ability to say the day is done and retire to one's own space.
My hope over the next couple of months is to have all of this (and more of course!) prepared for and ready to go the moment we're officially open. My thought is, if we come out the gate with a wide variety, priced affordably, folks will understand what we're doing quickly. Then we can busy ourselves with making each thing the best it can be, and whatever competition arises will have to make up for lost time.
Long, long term, I hope we'll be able to position ourselves in a way that means we can't really have a direct competitor - it's one thing to be a more profitable business, it's another to have to also convince the town you're better than the thing they grew to love, a thing with which they have years of (good) history. We just need to stay flexible and true to our aims, and I think things will work out beautifully.
Most recently, it was a decorating project. In moving to take care of my grandmother, I basically gave away/sold everything I had accrued. All of my furniture, all of my books, everything I could not fit in a four-door either got given away, sold, or pitched. There's two reasons for that. First was that I wanted to. I grew to greatly dislike a lot of that stuff because of what it represented to me, a ball of crap to keep track of/move around, cobbled together out of gifts and deals and whatnot. Second, my grandmother's house is stuffed with furniture already - there is no space for another bed, another couch, another desk (and my desk was enormous), and none of that stuff works with the aesthetics she has going on. So, since I've gotten here I've been puzzling over how to make a real comfy space, a space I could exist in all the time.
Anyway, this is what I was able to accomplish, rearranging what furniture was there and getting what accessories I wanted/needed. Tried to show both natural light and artificial. I like lights. I don't care if it looks childish or silly, I like my RGB and string lights and all that kind of shit. Tree thing was seven dollars, couldn't resist. The bulbs are set at purple atm but can be any color, string lights are white because that's all I could find. I think it works out ok. I would like to replace the bed cover, but that was the only one which was both, the right size and comfy to me, so I probably won't. Searching around upstairs, I found all sorts of busts and flowers and decorative things, so I tried to achieve an eclectic mix of what little I still have and what was already there. Took a lot of work too; this room was stuffed. Multiple recliner chairs, a loveseat, little tables and the bed, and it was all quite dainty as you can probably imagine. Room was already purple too, because this used to be my grandmother's upstairs bedroom (she's since moved downstairs, and painted that room purple too).
Finding out you can see the moon go across the sky from my desk window was icing on the cake. From about dusk until 10:30, it slowly goes across the sky, until the roof obscures it. My room faces the back of the property, so there's lots of green trees and you can hear the birds in the morning. If you leave the blinds open, the sun will brighten the room gradually, so you can just wake up as the day starts (no alarm clock!). I've never felt as comfortable as I do in this space, it's amazing and getting this done over the weekend felt like a pretty nice accomplishment.