secret_online's recent activity
-
Comment on Musings on "Developer Mode" in ~comp
-
Comment on What are your favorite and least favorite airports? in ~transport
secret_online LinkThe best I've been through is definitely Changi in Singapore. It's been well over a decade since I've been through, but I liked it for all the reasons @DrStone mentioned. My least favourite is...The best I've been through is definitely Changi in Singapore. It's been well over a decade since I've been through, but I liked it for all the reasons @DrStone mentioned.
My least favourite is more a personal vendetta than it being a bad airport, but I will always remember Dubai International Airport (DXB) for one time I had to go through.
This was on my first real solo overseas trip and I had a connecting flight through DXB after a 14 hour flight (my tiredness definitely contributed to this experience). The flight arrived on time, but then we had to wait for around 15 minutes, then walk for 5 minutes in the opposite direction from where I my connection was to reach a tiny security checkpoint that wasn't even ready for us to even enter the main area. Once I was through, I then had a 20 minute walk to get from one end to the other. And my outbound flight was due to start boarding in... 20 minutes.
You'd think that it would be easy to get from one end of a long and straight building to the other, but being an airport (in Dubai as well) it's designed to make you spend money. Brightly-lit shops in windy paths designed to slow you down and make you buy stuff you don't need. I was tired, a little annoyed from the security checkpoint, and determined to walk to the other end to reach my flight. Which I did, boarding started pretty much when I got to the gate. I made my flight, no disasters happened, but I dislike that airport for being the worst straight line I've ever had to walk.
-
Comment on What is the most insane, tedious, difficult, and/or noteworthy gaming achievement you have completed or given up on? in ~games
secret_online Link ParentOn interesting usage of achievements, the recent cosy game Wanderstop has achievements that you're likely to unlock during regular play, but they don't unlock immediately. Instead, they'll unlock...On interesting usage of achievements, the recent cosy game Wanderstop has achievements that you're likely to unlock during regular play, but they don't unlock immediately. Instead, they'll unlock like 20 minutes after you fulfil their requirements. For a game about burnout and trying to slow down after pushing past your limits, it's an interesting way to prevent players from rushing to do certain actions because the dopamine hit doesn't arrive.
-
Comment on What is the most insane, tedious, difficult, and/or noteworthy gaming achievement you have completed or given up on? in ~games
secret_online Link ParentI love reading the books in games. People are always shocked when I say I have favourite books in Skyrim (A Hypothetical Treachery, The Locked Room, and A Game at Dinner. I... definitely have a...I love reading the books in games. People are always shocked when I say I have favourite books in Skyrim (A Hypothetical Treachery, The Locked Room, and A Game at Dinner. I... definitely have a type), but it's just part of the experience for me.
-
Comment on What is the most insane, tedious, difficult, and/or noteworthy gaming achievement you have completed or given up on? in ~games
secret_online Link ParentTunic spoilers I know it's a bit late for this now, but in the accessibility options there's an option that brings up a popup where you can input Holy Cross patterns without worrying about timing....Tunic spoilers
- The Golden Path : I figured it out and wrote it down correctly, but ADHD prevents execution. Ask my kid to input it for me.
I know it's a bit late for this now, but in the accessibility options there's an option that brings up a popup where you can input Holy Cross patterns without worrying about timing. It even has a delete button in case you make a mistake.
I also didn't know about this until after I had followed the Golden Path.
There's a couple of nice things in there too. I've had people complain about the wind chimes fairy, and when I mentioned the accessibility options that helps with it they instantly understood what it was asking them to do.
-
Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival - Final day scheduled for July 17th in ~games
secret_online LinkI guess I went radio silent again. I didn't finish putting together the furnace new array, instead getting stuck in design hell trying to figure out item transport systems that were fast enough in...I guess I went radio silent again. I didn't finish putting together the furnace new array, instead getting stuck in design hell trying to figure out item transport systems that were fast enough in both item input and output. But I don't need to end this world on the thing I didn't do, because I did do stuff on this world.
Things I did end up building:
- My house area.
- The house, of course, all built on the hillside with as little digging as would make sense.
- The cargo elevator.
- The dock with its tiny boat.
- The warehouse.
- The train station.
- James' Watering Hole.
- And all of the lower area filled with so many armour stands.
- I was experimenting with lighting with this build, trying not to use lichen and use the full range of brightnesses from 15 to 1. My favourite trick is the singer in James' Watering Hole, whose clothes/fur go from bright white in the spotlight down to a light grey, with the light on the stage actually coming from behind to sell the illusion.
- The path to the South Valley from spawn.
- It started as building a path from Tildes Town to my house, but then I decided it should go all the way to spawn.
- The thing that convinced me I needed the path was Lone Table Cave. The view was just asking for a lookout.
- The forest between the hill and Tilde Town is filled with mossy logs, all hand placed. They're denser towards the path, with a couple in deeper so it feels more natural.
- Anywhere the forest is less dense, the roadside has little walls instead. These are to draw your eye to the path or point out something interesting when they're broken.
- There's a little fairy circle of mushrooms along the path. It's too bright for them. So any block updates will cause them to pop off.
- I made a little campsite in a clearing. When I started working there there were a few foxes in the area, but they've all either run away or gone down the stream.
- The nightclub in the portal tower.
- I love the tower, and not just for its solid building foundations that definitely don't need inspection, nosiree.
- I especially like that one of the constraints is that you can't just swap out all of the walls, it must still be the tower. When thinking of what to do, I had the idea of using map art as wallpaper. But what would I actually build?
- After some thought I settled on the nightclub. Its wallpaper would be easy to build, just being pure black. Except in order to make it darker it actually slopes downward towards the south.
- The secret_agent in the mall.
- I've had a shop like this on every server I've been on. It's just a little tradition of mine to run a bad detective agency.
- I usually put something in front of it to "hide" it. This time it was a couple of cramped apartments.
- There's no lighting on the walls outside the plot to sell that this isn't a place for customers.
- Also the secret_agent itself! The investigations I did were a lot of fun, thank you to the people who put requests in. I also got to put some little puzzles together in the books, and left dead drop locations around town and some of the nearby wilderness.
- The art gallery in the mall
- In the span of around a month we went from almost no map art on the server to having a couple of 1x1s, a 2x2, and even a 3x2! I'm so glad people rose to the challenge here.
- The idea for this came after I built the nightclub in the tower and I didn't know what to do with a pure black map. So I decided it would make good modern art, ready for your own interpretations.
- But I couldn't just have a pure black map in the gallery. No, I needed something else. So I built the Mona Lisa floating in the end so everything not in the frame would be transparent. Except I forgot that you needed to place glass where you wanted transparency, so I quickly overstuffed the furnace array with so much sand that I found it couldn't handle its own input speed on loads this large.
- Guess what, more armour stands in unique poses and unique outfits!
- Laser kiwi. Sometimes your apocalyptic lizard needs a friend, and who better than laser kiwi.
- This was a 1 day build, from concept, to material collection, to the final blocks placed on the server. Well, most of the material collection. I still had glass left over from playing the floor under the Mona Lisa in the end.
- I also set out to play around with the Axiom mod for modelling larger shapes and texturing them procedurally. It was also used for the forcefield protecting the kiwi from the nuke, with the additional fun of having it fade out as it got further from the point of impact.
- And I must mention my Hall of Heroes entry. I just love the idea of capturing the exact moment of hitting a tree while flying. If I remember correctly, I fully enchanted all the tools for this too, even though they won't get used. But the real challenge of this build was trying to fit the terrain details within the 3x3 space (ok, I cheated by having the trapdoors extend outside it. Sue me). I even included bits of the stone walls from my paths in here, though I suppose they just feel like the mossy stone boulders in a mega taiga.
If I learned anything from this world it's "don't burn yourself out, you silly person". I tried to do a lot given the little time I was setting aside, and it got to the point where I just wasn't having fun. It was great popping on again relatively recently to see all of the progress and new things people have built. Thank you to everyone, you've been great and I look forward to playing with you all again in the future.
- My house area.
-
Comment on OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome in ~tech
secret_online Link ParentThis was the idea of a crypto-based standard from the W3C called Interledger. The concept had 3 parts: The website owner would create an address for payments to go to and put it in the meta tags...This was the idea of a crypto-based standard from the W3C called Interledger. The concept had 3 parts:
- The website owner would create an address for payments to go to and put it in the meta tags of the website.
- The website's wallet provider would support receiving payments at this address from all types of cryptocurrencies (hence why the project was called "Interledger")
- The user would have a browser extension loaded up with some amount of funny money that would occasionally send small payments to the website being viewed.
There are perhaps two interesting things that happened with this system.
- Imgur, the image hosting site, used this system for their "Emerald" paid tier.
- The only real browser extension to support this was called Coil. You didn't load it up with crypto, but with US dollars. Coil would hide the crypto side of this whole thing away from you, which probably the only reason it saw any usage whatsoever.
But that's about all. Coil is dead. Puma, a chromium fork that also implemented this, has pivoted to AI. If cryptocurrencies were stable enough to actually facilitate transactions and weren't treated as vehicles for wealth accumulation/vacuuming, then maybe there would have been a chance. That didn't happen. Interledger is dead.
I think there's space for the large payment processors (talking Visa/MasterCard/AMEX) to facilitate this kind of payment. They already have infrastructure for a global payment system, but I imagine there'd be a lot of work to scale it for the kind of volume you'd get from this. I certainly don't want to support those companies any more than is strictly necessary, but I think they're really the only ones set up to be able to do a global system. Maybe PayPal, but they certainly wouldn't go for a standards based approach and it would die a slow death.
-
Comment on How did you ruin a game for yourself? in ~games
secret_online LinkThis is something I keep close to my chest and tell nobody, but I spoiled myself on Outer Wilds, and Outer Wilds is a game that absolutely should not be spoiled. Oh, and, uh, spoilers. Chapter 1:...This is something I keep close to my chest and tell nobody, but I spoiled myself on Outer Wilds, and Outer Wilds is a game that absolutely should not be spoiled.
Oh, and, uh, spoilers.
Chapter 1: The fall
Upon release the game had 1-year exclusivity on the Epic Games Store. I knew I wasn't going to buy it on Epic, which then led me to watch a series by a YouTuber I watched at the time. And watching that series was great, I was able to come along on the journey anyway, I theorised, I was wrong, I was scared, I was amazed, I cried.
But when it was over I realised my mistake. That was it. That was my Outer Wilds experience. I wasn't going to feel that when playing the game for myself, and when I did finally but the game and play it... it was a hollow experience. I had ruined it for myself.
So fast forward a couple of years and Echoes of the Eye comes out. There's now part of this game that is unknown to me and I haven't spoiled myself on. But I wait because there are other games I want to play. But I hold fast and don't spoil myself, until the day I start playing.
And it's good. I fly around parts of the base game to refamiliarise myself with the world and gameplay, then start going to The Stranger and exploring around. I'm having fun, there's an interesting mystery and new mechanics. Having to do the thing at the place with the thing is a cool way of gating what is really the core of the DLC, forcing you to learn a bunch about the people that built this place before meeting them yourself.
And meet them you do. And they're in the dark, waiting, making noises, and chasing me. I don't deal with horror. I just can't. It's not for me. I know people get an adrenaline rush from it and that can push past the fear. I don't. I just feel the fear with no enjoyment.
I wanted to stop playing, and I did, but I also wanted to know what this story I was playing built up to. So I...
Chapter 2: The other fall
What do you think I'm going to put here? "I stopped playing and never thought about Outer Wilds again"? No, I searched it up and ruined the DLC for myself too. Am I going to forgive myself for this one? No, I can't. This was a decision I have to live with now. Not only did I spoil the base game, I spoiled the DLC too despite knowing how I felt after spoiling the base game.
It's even worse because this fear is exactly what the DLC is about too. The owl people were too afraid of The Eye so they hid it away and the Nomai wouldn't even have received the signal in the first place had there not been one individual willing to stand up for what they believed in. I had that crippling fear too, but as a player instead, which prevented me from doing what I needed to do. Instead I
retreated to my own simulated sanctuarygoogled it instead.I've often thought about making a page on my personal website that's a slideshow similar to the ones on The Stranger that tells this story, but with parts about me spoiling myself burned out. There'd be a way of accessing the unburned original too. I haven't done this because I'd need to make the art and that's not really my forte. At least, that's the excuse I tell myself so I don't have to do it. I don't have to confront this reality and actually think about what this means to me.
Because despite all this, it's still an important game to me. The emotions this game evokes in people, I still feel them. The wonder, the curiosity, the despair, the emptiness, the love, and, of course, the fear. I just have... other emotions with it too, self-inflicted of course.
-
Comment on Jet Lag: Snake across South Korea | Trailer in ~hobbies
secret_online Link ParentEpisode 3 spoilers After everything that could go wrong going wrong for the boys, it's nice to see something go right. On the podcast Sam talks about his choice of taking the coastal route instead...Episode 3 spoilers
After everything that could go wrong going wrong for the boys, it's nice to see something go right.
On the podcast Sam talks about his choice of taking the coastal route instead of the Inland one. It was a lot more attractive to have one long segment where the chasers didn't have information, but he couldn't have really planned for the tracker card. I don't think it was the wrong decision, but it was the most obvious one.
There's a brief mention that Sam was a big advocate for the rule about the distance only counting when you reach the next node. Unfortunately for him, that cost him a bunch of progress at the end there. It's not the first time a rule has come back to bite the person/people that advocated for it, but that's part of the game. Often the rules lead to more interesting decision making. I'm pretty sure the inland route would have been completely irrelevant if Sam's progress was counted continuously, as it gives the lest information to the chasers and doesn't carry as much risk.
The final battle challenge was a late addition by Amy, and I think it's an interesting one. You can pick a number that's arbitrarily high, but there's a physical limit on the minimum number of items. On the podcast they predict that online discussion would say that the numbers they picked were too low, but I think they were too high. If the chasers had both gone for very low numbers (like 1) then there's very little room for Sam to get in the middle. From the podcast talk it didn't seem like they had anything planned for the case of a tie, which is odd considering how good the team is as finding edge cases when making the rules.
-
Comment on Give footnotes the boot in ~design
secret_online (edited )Link ParentYou're right that having footnote indicators link to the actual footnote and having links back to where you were is the right way to do it, and it's nice to hear that you've implemented them well...You're right that having footnote indicators link to the actual footnote and having links back to where you were is the right way to do it, and it's nice to hear that you've implemented them well on your blog. Unfortunately there are more websites on the internet, and not all of them are so considerate.
When visiting an unfamiliar website, there's no way to tell whether they've set up links back to the content, and you don't find out until you click one of the footnotes. This is in part because I don't know whether I just clicked an actual hyperlink (therefore adding an entry into my browser's history stack) or a button that's disguised as a link. If I hit the back button in my browser, am I actually going to go back to where I was or will I end up on the previous page? I do a lot of reading on my phone, where the perceived cost of navigation is higher. It makes me afraid to click a footnote indicator because I don't know whether I'll be able to find my way back easily.
If you have to have footnotes, I'm much more of a fan of a hybrid approach. Have your footnotes, but also have a way of bringing them inline. As the author mentioned, popovers are a thing you can do on the web that you can't with physical paper (though they have their own problems too). Some form of popover is also better on mobile, where the smaller screen width leads to much taller pages.
All this doesn't stop it from being a subpar reading experience. Footnotes break the flow of reading, and if you do follow them then you're taken to a space containing disparate ideas that do not relate to each other and have to find your way back. You, as a reader, get removed from the very context that you're trying to expand upon. My ideal solution to footnotes is to just... not have footnotes. If you're referring to something else, use a hyperlink. I can click it for more information. If you have an anecdote or opinion, put it in parentheses. If the anecdote is too long to fit in parentheses, put it in a collapsible section. If your opinion is too long, then congratulations you've got something to say and that should be its own paragraph. The writing does lose some of its personality in the process, but to me the sacrifice is worth it for the readability. It also forces you to think about how your are writing more, which I think helps with improving at writing itself.
-
Comment on Jet Lag: Snake across South Korea | Trailer in ~hobbies
secret_online LinkEpisode 2! YouTube Nebula -
Comment on AI is transforming Indian call centers in ~tech
secret_online LinkArchive link -
Comment on Nexus Mods ownership changing hands: An update from Dark0ne in ~games
secret_online Link Parentmod.io is an up-and-comer. They've integrated directly with some games (Deep Rock Galactic and Baldur's Gate 3 being the two I play), which definitely helps with adoption. I don't hold high hopes...mod.io is an up-and-comer. They've integrated directly with some games (Deep Rock Galactic and Baldur's Gate 3 being the two I play), which definitely helps with adoption. I don't hold high hopes for the site's quality and usability long-term (commercial interests and all), but I don't feel particularly confident about NexusMods right now either.
-
Comment on Jet Lag: Snake across South Korea | Trailer in ~hobbies
secret_online LinkNew season, and a new game! As usual, there was a game design episode of the podcast, so I'll include some bits from that in its own details section. Game design discussion (no spoilers) A good...New season, and a new game! As usual, there was a game design episode of the podcast, so I'll include some bits from that in its own details section.
Game design discussion (no spoilers)
A good portion of what they talked about was summarised early in the first episode as they introduce the game from both the Snaker (I'm just going to call them the Snake for phone autocorrect reasons) and Blocker perspective, so a good amount of my notes aren't all that useful.
There are two major factors that went into the design of this game. The first is the location. Originally the team really wanted to do a season in Taiwan, but its rail network didn't lend itself to a fun game so they had to look elsewhere. South Korea's is pretty interconnected and small enough that you could make a game over the entire area. It also has a Y shape of high speed rail, which makes the map a little more dynamic to play on.
The second factor was looking at what the previous games had been, and seeing what variables can be changed.
- Tag is a game where the runner is constantly moving, chasers know exactly where the runner is, the runner doesn't know where the chasers are, and the goal is trying to catch the runner.
- Hide and Seek is a game where the hider is stationary, the seekers don't know where the hider is, the hider knows where the seekers are, and the goal is to narrow down where the hider is.
Jet Lag is a travel game, so we can rule out games where both teams are stationary. There's also trouble if everyone has knowledge of where everyone is, as the ambiguity helps in these games. So what if they play into that? Make a game where the solo person is on the move, but nobody knows where anyone is. It makes a game about trying to predict where the solo person is going to go, and place challenges ahead of them. High risk, high reward.
Also being able to describe your game as Snake makes it extremely easy to get the vast majority of the idea across to an audience. The problem is with figuring out the last 10% of the game. That's where things like the cards come in. We'll see more of them throughout the season, so I'm not going to re-explain them here. Perhaps the most interesting part is how the battle challenges are weighted towards the Blockers, as a way of stopping the Snake. That's important, because just chasing the Snake isn't a good idea as you'll never get ahead of them.
They also mentioned a few other rules to prevent un-fun strategies, like there's a 20 hour limit on an individual run to prevent stalling. Since Ben went first, if he'd just claimed one segment and then waited out the rest of the time then he'd have the longest snake and win. Since he is already at a station the blockers wouldn't be able to place new challenges and it'd be game over.
One of the major challenges was the map they're playing on, for multiple reasons. Google Maps (and Apple's) isn't as well filled out, and the apps for the rail companies are apparently pretty bad. Not only that, but there's a lot of ongoing construction, so new lines might exist, old lines might have moved, and all sorts of other things. There was also a lot of agonising over where "nodes" (stations where there are multiple ways out) end up, especially when local lines join up to the same tracks as express lines but the express doesn't visit all stations, and so on.
Episode 1 spoilers
As I was watching the episode I wondered how much footage ends up on the cutting room floor for this game? Apparently the answer is a lot. In fact so much for cut that it was the first thing mentioned on this week's podcast episode besides Sam's "we are so back".
Adam and Sam start by going to Osong as it's a hub for the high speed rail network and if Ben went that way and they didn't block it then he'd get a very large distance very quickly. It did leave the eastern route open, but the trains there are less frequent. Ben decided not to go east because he wouldn't have been able to reach the east coast in time to have a solid run down the country without being blocked.
The Birthday Boat challenge was actually one of the last ones to be added, and it got added because Ben's birthday started as they crossed the international date line when flying to Korea... And then ended a few hours later. It just so happened to be the first challenge they drew from the deck. It's a shame they couldn't complete it there, but it sounds like it was either the wrong time of year or that waterway isn't for public use.
I think it's unfortunate for Sam and Adam that their train north left at the same time as Ben's train was scheduled to arrive, but Ben's train was slightly delayed. They mention on the podcast that this ended up being pretty normal, so close moves like this are less frequent as the game goes on. It was pretty lucky that they could get back to Osong within about an hour. I understand why they decided to play the battle challenge when they got back, but it looks like a rushed decision in the edit.
I haven't talked about Ben much. That's because there isn't a lot really going on for him. He decides to wait around and take a slow train, then wait around and take another slow train. Some of his reasoning makes it into the sit, and there's a little more discussion in the podcast, but not much. For a first run of the game it's not bad, but I hope that future runs are a little more dynamic. Ultimately, I think Ben's hesitancy throughout this episode is a safe strategy but not a winning one. Sure it would have led to a higher chance of being blocked, but he basically guaranteed that by taking the local lines. Yes, it's unfortunate for him that the Blockers got another battle challenge and he shouldn't have been planning around that, but I feel like this wasn't the strongest he could have been.
The Tuho was a fun challenge to end on. I like that the advantage to the Blockers comes from them being able to practice for a while. Adam noticed during practice that the game gets much harder as more sticks are inside the bowl, so Ben's decision to go second probably didn't help him. I think the battle challenges are definitely going to be the highlights of this season, so I'm excited to see what other challenges there are.
-
Comment on Apple introduces iOS 26 with Liquid Glass redesign in ~tech
secret_online Link ParentLooking at the effect in action, the Gaussian blur that's still in the effect will be the most computationally expensive part of it. The rounded edges effect is just a little bit more...This suggests that the folks at Apple figured out some efficient algorithm to achieve that visual effect.
Looking at the effect in action, the Gaussian blur that's still in the effect will be the most computationally expensive part of it. The rounded edges effect is just a little bit more trigonometry, which is extremely common in graphics effects.
If I can be bothered, I might try re-creating the effect myself and do a quick write-up about it. I'm sure many around the internet will beat me to it (my spare time for the next week is mostly allocated to other things already), so maybe search around in a day or so to see what people have made with the concept.
-
Comment on Lego Voyagers | Reveal trailer in ~games
secret_online LinkI'm loving that all of these co-op games are coming out (with Split Fiction being the most recent high-profile release). I just have to get to my usual co-op partner before their daughter does....I'm loving that all of these co-op games are coming out (with Split Fiction being the most recent high-profile release). I just have to get to my usual co-op partner before their daughter does.
Being from the devs of Lego Builder's Journey I have both high hopes and high confidence that this will be a great game.
-
Comment on What is a Witness-like? in ~games
secret_online Link ParentBeating the challenge is probably one of the highest highs I've had in a puzzle game. I usually dislike timed puzzles, but this one just felt good. Plus if I got frustrated I'd just wander around...Beating the challenge is probably one of the highest highs I've had in a puzzle game. I usually dislike timed puzzles, but this one just felt good. Plus if I got frustrated I'd just wander around trying to find more environmental puzzles until I was ready to do a few more attempts.
-
Comment on What is a Witness-like? in ~games
secret_online Link ParentSame spoiler warning for The Witness Fun fact: until a skip was found about 2 years ago, the 100% speedrun for The Witness was 1 hour longer than the 99.8% speedrun because of one environmental...Same spoiler warning for The Witness
Especially the big shipwreck one. Those puzzles actually do have an execution element, and the time to reset is irritatingly long.
Fun fact: until a skip was found about 2 years ago, the 100% speedrun for The Witness was 1 hour longer than the 99.8% speedrun because of one environmental puzzle. It won't surprise you what the more popular category was at the time.
As for the "real point of the game", I think this is a question the game is trying to get you to ask. The Witness is an art game, not question about it. Sure it has "real gameplay™" too, which is unfortunately unusual for art games because a lot of developers focus more on the art than the game. The game's story (perhaps "themes" would be a better word. This isn't your traditional beginning-middle-end story, unless you count your journey as a player), loosely told by allusion and metaphor through the audio logs and environment, is one about the nature of truth, self-discovery, and epiphany.
The most obvious in-game epiphany being the environmental puzzles. Since that moment is so memorable and can be encountered in regular gameplay, it's an easy point to talk about with people who played it. It can fit in a tweet. You can share a photo of a lollipop-shaped thing with your friends. The environmental puzzles are a shared experience that are also easy to share.
A slightly more subtle theme is one of cycles, as in the Buddhist concept of it. The game is obvious about it at one point, where if you end the game with 3 lasers then the great glass elevator resets the island and takes you back to the start of the game to try again. And in true Buddhist fashion, there is a way to break out of the cycle (the secret ending which does require an environmental puzzle) which leads to a cutscene that left me with more questions than answers. It really is an art game.
After years of reflection on the game (it occasionally pops up in my consciousness), I've accepted that this is what The Witness is. Its purpose is to be a space that asks philosophical questions of the player, but doesn't (and won't) give the answers. The answers come from within, from observing inside the game, from making connections from inside the game to the metatext of the game, connecting the inside of the game to the outside world, from connecting the game to yourself. I'm going to say the word "pretentious", but I do so with the understanding that this is the game's intent, and pulls it off to such a high standard that the word "pretentious" doesn't actually describe it anymore.
This game is pretentious.
Anyway, if you enjoyed The Witness, make sure to check out what is probably the most perfect parody game for it that could exist: The Looker. It was made by someone who clearly understood The Witness and wanted to pull it back a few notches. Some of the puzzles are a bit obscure, but it does a very good job at what it's trying to do.
-
Comment on What is a Witness-like? in ~games
secret_online (edited )LinkA talk from the developer of Taiji (a spiritual successor of sorts to The Witness) about the elements that make up games in this little sub-genre of puzzle games and what made The Witness work as...A talk from the developer of Taiji (a spiritual successor of sorts to The Witness) about the elements that make up games in this little sub-genre of puzzle games and what made The Witness work as a game.
From the summary slide at the end (it's still worth watching to get proper definitions for each of these):
- Gameplay
- Abstract and consistent core puzzle gameplay
- Inductive rule discovery puzzles
- Sophisticated non-verbal communication
- Knowledge-gated progression
- Puzzles affect the environment
- Environment
- Open world
- Sub-areas that group subject matter
- Environment affects puzzles
- Hidden in plain sight secrets
- Story
- Illustration of gameplay
- Environment as extension of story
- Must be optional
There's a follow-up Q&A as well.
- Gameplay
-
What is a Witness-like?
10 votes
It has already been pointed out that the developer tools are exactly that: tools for developers. Your post seems to be approaching this from the perspective of haves and have-nots, but I (as a developer, making me one of the "haves" in that model) don't see it that way.
Let's talk about the Android developer options. They're a bunch of very technical, device behaviour changing options, with a healthy dose of added security risks in there. These aren't "turn on Bluetooth" options, they're "how exactly do two Bluetooth devices negotiate a connection" options. Even I, a developer, don't need these for everyday device use. These are options that are used to test specific device configurations, a thing that a regular phone user does not need to do.
You mentioned browsers and the Discord desktop application (the latter is just a browser and the code for a web application tied up in a nice bow). The developer tools for the web exist because developers built the tools they needed to build websites (and later web applications), and now they're an expected part of the ecosystem and developers will stop testing against a browser that removes them. Opening up the panel to delete ads is not the purpose of these tools, the purpose of the Elements panel of the browser dev tools is to be a full editor for the content of a page. You can add, remove, modify, move, or copy any parts of the page because those are the tools that are useful. You can edit the looks of the page. You can pause the execution of JavaScript at any point to see what's happening. You can take a snapshot of the memory used by the browser to inspect it for memory leaks. You can record everything the browser is doing, from network requests, function calls, rendering timings, and more, because this information is useful when trying to build performant applications. The amazing part is that the browser dev tools are themselves built on web technologies, so there are browser extensions that add new functionality for specific use-cases (like particular libraries or frameworks).
It would be so easy for these tools to not exist or be locked behind some paywall. There could be a monetary divide between those who have the tools and those who don't. But there isn't, and we should be celebrating that. Professional tools, free and open, bundled with the software, only two clicks away. This is the easiest it's ever been. The gap between developers and non-developers is as close as it can possibly be. You might see it as a group of people being given extra power, but here you are given free reign with this same power. The opportunity to learn is being presented to you directly. The ladder has not been pulled up, in fact it's explicitly been put down, weighted, and reinforced. If you want to make this about class warfare, then I'm afraid you've got the wrong people.
Oh and as for that ChatGPT developer mode, that's just the LLM being instructed to output in a particular format. The model has some combination of dimensions that when given particular values corresponds to "things that look like what a developer would say" and it outputs text that looks like that. It doesn't have to be correct; LLMs don't know what correctness is, just what is statistically likely to come after what has come before. I wouldn't put too much stock into LLM jailbreaks or weird output formats as some indicator of hidden functionality.