secret_online's recent activity

  1. Comment on Jet Lag Season 15 | Official trailer in ~hobbies

    secret_online
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    Episode 4 Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/jetlag-s15e4/ YouTube: (come back next week) Episode 4 spoilers Congrats Adam and Michelle! They had a pretty much straight shot for their run, so most...

    Episode 4

    Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/jetlag-s15e4/

    YouTube: (come back next week)

    Episode 4 spoilers

    Congrats Adam and Michelle! They had a pretty much straight shot for their run, so most of the excitement came from the chasers trying to catch up to them.

    They do talk about this on the podcast, but this win wouldn't have happened if Adam and Michelle had won the coin flip as to who stayed on the train to Laon. If that coin flip had gone the other way, then Ben and Brian would have made the catch on Sam and Toby, leading to a very different game. Ben and Brian initially didn't agree to the coin flip (this was cut from the episode), but they agreed after it was pointed out that if both teams were to try catch them in Laon, Adam and Michelle would be able to run faster.

    They also finally mention what movie Ben and Brian saw in Laon: it was Lilo and Stitch.

    As an aside, Michelle is now the only undefeated Jet Lag champion.

    My watching buddy and I predicted what would happen this episode before we started. I remembered their coin balance being low enough that a 1 hour train would have meant doing a challenge, which would have probably meant waiting for the next train, which then meant they'd be caught, which was my guess. But it turns out the train is only 33 minutes and they had time to make the connection, so the game was sealed. I'm glad they planned for this in production, more jet lag is always good.

    While the train up to the observatory might've only cost 330 in-game coins, it ended up being quite expensive in real life. A return ticket is about 130 Francs, so multiply that by 6 and you're looking at nearly 800 Francs, or 1000 USD at current conversion rates.

    There was some discussion on the podcast about the new setup with only two teams. The two other power ups were removed because they would have trivialised parts of the game, but the double stayed because it's fun. The more interesting thing to me was the reason why they made the original winner's region neutral rather than splitting the whole circle in half. If they had split it in half, then the line would have been right where they were standing, and whichever team was running would immediately go "rat mode". This way, the runners have a straightforward goal at the start, which is much more predictable for the chasers, and therefore better for the storytelling of the show.

    I'm guessing there's probably at least a couple more episodes left in this season, which means there's a lot that can happen. I'm tentatively guessing that Sam, Toby, and Michelle are going to get the second place prize, but a lot can happen very quickly in Jet Lag.

  2. Comment on Jet Lag Season 15 | Official trailer in ~hobbies

    secret_online
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    Episode 2 spoilers I'm going to put this forward for one of the best episodes of Jet Lag yet. It's a bit of a shame to see Sam and Toby's run end like this, it seemed like they had a pretty good...
    Episode 2 spoilers

    I'm going to put this forward for one of the best episodes of Jet Lag yet.

    It's a bit of a shame to see Sam and Toby's run end like this, it seemed like they had a pretty good shot at winning it outright. It's maybe a good thing from the production side of things that that didn't happen.

    I love that Ben and Brian left Paris for Laon, only to watch a movie and (almost) immediately get on a train back to Paris. Not much action from the two of them in this episode, though I do like the move to try and fly from Paris to Zurich. Them taking the train south would have put them in the worst possible position if they made the catch and became the runners.

    The plan to go to Prunay and then zoom on through while the seekers are frozen was a fantastic plan, that fell apart through really no fault of their own. Their connecting train left as soon as they arrived in Reims, and the bus accident left them stranded for 45 minutes. From the podcast, the accident was them getting a scrape from another bus that had also pulled over. It seemed to be company protocol to wait for a technician to come out, inspect it, and sign a couple of forms before they could get moving again.

    I love the accidentally perfect framing of the shot where Sam and Toby do the throwing challenge, it was wide enough to catch Adam and Michelle sneaking up on them.

    Adam and Michelle had an interesting starting position. Drawing the pinpointing challenge when they pretty much knew where both chasers were was incredible luck, and the fact that it allowed them to get moving immediately was also pretty cool.

    Adam getting the coin flip challenge for a second time was incredible. Nearly 500 individual flips this time, which is just so many.

    This season has been pretty interesting. It feels like strategies from the previous Tag seasons aren't working as well, so they're having to try different things. It's been a great refreshing of the format, which I appreciate.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Who’s playing Blood on the Clocktower? in ~games.tabletop

    secret_online
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    I'd also be interested in playing with some Tildepeople, scheduling permitting (yay for the earth being a sphere!). Playing online is definitely a bit different to in-person. I do find solving...

    I'd also be interested in playing with some Tildepeople, scheduling permitting (yay for the earth being a sphere!).

    Playing online is definitely a bit different to in-person. I do find solving tends to be a little more mechanical than social. The official app/website has text and video chat, a grimoire-like setup that you can fill in, and you can make little notes next to people so there's lots of opportunity to track as much or as little information as you like. I think the game design itself still holds up pretty well, and there's still lots of room for social plays.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on What game is your personal "Silksong"? in ~games

    secret_online
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    Baldur's Gate 3. I was (and am) a big fan of Larian's previous game, Divinity: Original Sin 2 (if anyone wants to play co-op and can deal with timezones, reach out. I've run out of IRL friends...

    Baldur's Gate 3.

    I was (and am) a big fan of Larian's previous game, Divinity: Original Sin 2 (if anyone wants to play co-op and can deal with timezones, reach out. I've run out of IRL friends interested enough in a playthrough) so when I heard that they were going to be making BG3 I was very excited for it.

    I played early access when it first entered, did a couple of playthroughs and then stopped, waiting for the final release. Since then, I've done one full co-op playthrough, one more ongoing, an incredibly dishonourable honour mode playthrough, and an embracing the dark urge playthrough (that I needed to decompress after).

    BG3 is not a perfect game. It has a steep learning curve; everyone I've talked to who hasn't played D&D 5th Edition struggled with the concepts, and people who haven't played a Larian game struggled with the inventory/hotbar management. The lower city is physically large enough to burn people out right near the end (though now I know the place well, it no longer feels as large to me. It's just that the actually important things are further apart). The story itself is running on empty at the very end and just makes it across the finish line. But in spite of all its flaws, it has been one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had. I love the world, I love the soundtrack, and now I look forward to whatever Larian does next.

    21 votes

  5. Comment on Who’s playing Blood on the Clocktower? in ~games.tabletop

    secret_online
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    Another person who's become addicted over the past year. Clocktower has become my default background YouTube to put on while making dinner and other such mundane activities. Unfortunately...

    Another person who's become addicted over the past year. Clocktower has become my default background YouTube to put on while making dinner and other such mundane activities. Unfortunately timezones mean that I don't get to catch most of the streams, but I'm also not a huge stream watching person so that doesn't matter.

    I have a local group that meets occasionally, but unfortunately the venue they've been using is shutting down (last game this Friday). Quite often there'll be new players, but when there's not we've had some rather silly games. One of my favourites was a game of "Nobody Fucking Move" (one of the best teensies out there) that I storytold where the players drew their tokens, but didn't look at them. Everyone had to figure out which character they were. The Duchess did double duty of being the only real information the town had, as well as a mechanism for the evil team to figure out their own alignments and find each other.

    I've recently found someone else at work who owns a grimoire, so the two of us are now running fortnightly games after work in the office. It's most players' first or second times playing, so it's been TB and they're starting to get the game. Still very execution shy (and I don't really want to introduce the Vortox just yet), but there's been some decent world building. The players all seem to get the premise and are happily talking to each other afterwards, which I count as a success.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on The video-game industry has a problem: there are too many games in ~games

    secret_online
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    My Steam wishlist has been slowly growing over the past 4 years, whereas it was kept under 10 before then. I still go through and trim it every once in a while, but it's currently at 41. There are...

    My Steam wishlist has been slowly growing over the past 4 years, whereas it was kept under 10 before then. I still go through and trim it every once in a while, but it's currently at 41.

    There are still games that are an instant buy for me (Hades 2 going 1.0 this week was one of those, it's so worth it if Hades 1 was your thing), but more and more of those are games that have already released. Of those 41 games on my wishlist, 30 are already out, with 8 of those on sale. Games that I want are on sale and I'm not buying them because I have other games to be playing. Of the 11 that haven't released yet, only 3 of them are going to be "instant buy"s upon release with the rest joining that already growing list.

    I'm with you on this one, there are amazing games that I'm playing. Experiences that are truly artful, mindless fun, and social experiences among them. I've come to terms with the fact that I won't get to everything on my wishlist. If I were to do another wishlist trim right now there would be 8 games removed from it. That's the price I pay for taking time to enjoy the games I've chosen to enjoy. I'd rather be doing this than rushing to complete everything I'm interested in at the time it comes out and before the next one comes out.

    12 votes

  7. Comment on Jet Lag Season 15 | Official trailer in ~hobbies

    secret_online
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    I'm a bit late to posting this, I wasn't available at the usual time myself and my jet lag buddy usually watch. Not that it really matters. It's just a comment on Tildes. Episode 1 spoilers I love...

    I'm a bit late to posting this, I wasn't available at the usual time myself and my jet lag buddy usually watch. Not that it really matters. It's just a comment on Tildes.

    Episode 1 spoilers

    I love how having two teams of chasers competing changes the game. I don't think it would work for a non-guest season, but it makes for fun viewing here.

    I think it shows the strength of the show how tense this was with so little action. The runners got to a place, stayed there for a long time (for challenges and curse reasons), then are now moving. But in that time, we've seen the start of some chaser strategy and unreliable trains.

    Just on the unreliable trains, on the podcast (which was recorded with a live audience) they mention that there was some rearranging of events at Reims. There were two separate train delays, which is why the talk about a half hour delay then later say the train left an hour late. They didn't feel it was a good watching experience seeing them go in and out and in and out of the station, so they condensed it together.

    While they were at Reims, Michelle was calling a local airport to see if they could charter a plane. It never happened, but if they were able to then the group would have to have a meeting to see if chartering a plane was allowed. There was no rule against it, but it wasn't really in the spirit of things. She did end up talking to someone at the airfield, using Google Translate, who wondered why she would want to take a plane to Laon when she could just take the train instead. She didn't know how to explain the situation they were in.

    Toby's impressions of the other players were great. I feel Ben got a bit hard done by, but I loved Adam's impression. On the podcast, he said he loved editing that part. He mimed part of it on stage, but since a podcast is an audio only format I can't tell you which part that was.

    One of the very first things said on the podcast (beyond the "we're so back") was explaining why Sam and Toby didn't veto the curse. The main reason was the doubled veto period which would have set them back a lot, and that they were planning to use this run to farm coins rather than get all the way to Jersey. As they're the first team, it's likely they'll have another chance at it, though not as guaranteed as previous tag seasons.

    Both my watching buddy and I laughed out loud towards the end when Sam and Toby executed their plans to watch the station from the hill. The map slowly zooming out to reveal Ben and Brian being an hour behind was just golden. We did end up pausing for several minutes as we looked at the cathedral at Laon on Maps and Wikipedia. From what was shown in the show it looks like a magnificent building. I do wish it completed one year earlier so that it was the year 1234, but given the built the whole thing in only 85 years in the 13th century I can excuse them. Project management on that time scale is impressive in itself.

    Great start to the season, I'm hoping I can get my watch buddy organised earlier so I can catch up, listen to the podcast, and prepare next week's comment.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on Musings on "Developer Mode" in ~comp

    secret_online
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    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...

    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.

    9 votes

  9. Comment on What are your favorite and least favorite airports? in ~transport

    secret_online
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    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...

    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.

    8 votes

  10. 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
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    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...

    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.

    3 votes

  11. 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
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    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...

    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.

    2 votes

  12. 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
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    Tunic 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
    1. 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.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival - Final day scheduled for July 17th in ~games

    secret_online
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    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...

    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.

    6 votes

  14. Comment on OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome in ~tech

    secret_online
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    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...

    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.

    1. Imgur, the image hosting site, used this system for their "Emerald" paid tier.
    2. 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.

    2 votes

  15. Comment on How did you ruin a game for yourself? in ~games

    secret_online
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    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:...

    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 sanctuary googled 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.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Jet Lag: Snake across South Korea | Trailer in ~hobbies

    secret_online
    Link Parent
    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...
    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.

    4 votes

  17. Comment on Give footnotes the boot in ~design

    secret_online
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    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...

    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.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Jet Lag: Snake across South Korea | Trailer in ~hobbies

  19. Comment on AI is transforming Indian call centers in ~tech

  20. Comment on Nexus Mods ownership changing hands: An update from Dark0ne in ~games

    secret_online
    Link Parent
    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...

    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.

    5 votes