@DarkestKale@mastodon.social
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

DarkestKale

@DarkestKale@mastodon.social

It'll all be fine.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

HauntedOwlbear, to random
@HauntedOwlbear@eldritch.cafe avatar

Can't believe I spent the last four months thinking an article I wrote got spiked for being rubbish when it was in fact published with no edit notes and really lovely comments.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@HauntedOwlbear did you get paid tho?

lordof1, to random
@lordof1@masto.ai avatar

Watching a bunch of Toy Story films for and finding myself troubled by the implications of the story, and wondering about the origin of these animated toys. Was there some dark ritual in the last? What governs whether they animate? How dismembered do they have to get before they die?
The toys spend most of the films in states of fear and anxiety, and they are some of the luckiest. These films are really dark.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@lordof1 I feel like Toy Story is a series of films about (happy) endings - just that each film's ending is a different ending.

'This is the end, isn't it good?'
'Ok, but now here's a different end, it's also good, is it better? More mature?'
'Ok, but now HERE's an ending, it's also good, is it even MORE mature?'

... I haven't seen number four, but my wife tells me it's basically 'and THIS, THIS is the most mature, yeah?' ending, so... long shrug

DarkestKale, to random
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@RogerBW is the latest WH a sequel/thing for The Wolf Who Cried Boy?

I was slightly surprised because Spotify says 'Invisible Fires 5: No closer to understanding'

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@RogerBW @shimminbeg A quantum-immortality induced side-universe.

RogerBW, to random
@RogerBW@emacs.ch avatar

First of the month, so it must be time for as we delve into liminality and have a good old-fashioned grump. https://tekeli.li/podcast/archive/2023/A_Strong_Antinomian_Tendency.html

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@RogerBW splendid!

BigJackBrass, to random
@BigJackBrass@vivaldi.net avatar

Dug out my Small Furry Creatures Press edition of En Garde! as I'm starting an online game. @RogerBW is running it and @lordof1 is the poor sap who will be trailing in the wake of the dashing Jean-Paul De Caunes. Should be fun, if I can get my brain in gear.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@BigJackBrass I tried a few years ago to get an online game going, but my brain melted a bit and I never quite pushed through with it.

The economy of it seems... weird. Very much 'you rolled too low to start with, so now you're always fucked'.

Roger prob. remembers me whining to him about it via email, heh.

RogerBW, to random
@RogerBW@emacs.ch avatar

If I swear personal allegiance to the King, does that exempt me from the effects of the actions of the King's Parliament?

(Americans, before you mock, consider the performative use of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, which is clearly the most immediate inspiration for this nonsense.)

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@RogerBW Roger, I know you're taking the piss, but this is starting to sound a bit like sovcit talk, which typically stems from a desire to avoid tax and then ends up in fullblown conspiracy theory stuff :)

DarkestKale, to random
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Good morning folks

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

'Gaming's generative AI boom is just beginning'

Fucker.

Fucker.

Are you serious?

'Oh, wow, gamedevs are going to put generated content into games!'

gestures at procedural content that's been in games for over thirty fucking years

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

'Oh but it's AI now, a-'

No, it isn't.

It's also no fucking different to what games have already been doing for a long time. We've gone through all manner of shit like fuzzy logic in bots (quake bots! Twenty years ago!) and learning models.

Trust me, gamedevs have been on this shit for a long, long time.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

I remember when L4D's 'scene manager' was hailed as this big gaming AI breakthrough, when... it just turned out to be 'hey, I think we should spawn more dudes when they touch the bus?'

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Or when that LotR real-time strategy had 'oh we incorporated AI so the units run away and stuff' and it was... well, you pretty much just put in morale rules, that's not really AI either

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Bot players and Bot management in games is great (and as many multiplayer games should fucking have them in their backpocket as possible), but let's not get out of our arseholes and say it's an actual intelligence.

Let's also not pretend GPT/midjourney/whatever is an intelligence either.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

(As a side note, the smartest multiplayer games limit communication between players and use bots that pretend to be players so you can hit the Matchmaking button and get into a game IMMEDIATELY rather than lobby for seven hours.

I've seen far too many indie games not realise this and die out in their launch week because they didn't hit a sustainable lobby time... because their two hundred paying customers are all in diff. timezones, etc)

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@RogerBW I've never actually played any of the HL games, so I'm not sure.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Anyway, gamedevs are really smart at making things LOOK like there's more going on.

X enemy will shoot Y enemy in Doom, for instance.

It's not any form of intelligence, but it sure LOOKS like something different to your standard mooks.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

If you have a wall of simplicity and then one piece of complexity, that one piece looks RICH and VARIED and OH SO DEEP.

But, it's not. It's just a slightly less simple system. It's not amazingly deep, it's just deeper than the rest.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Look at music and how every generation thought WOW our <genre> is the hardest hitting, the craziest shit to exist.

... then someone else comes along and throws more complexity into the mix, and then you end up with Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragonforce.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Anyway, to divert this rant a little, Charlie can beg to be invited to suck my rigid todger:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/29/public-invited-to-swear-their-allegiance-as-king-is-crowned?

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

It's an odd thing, but I'll admit I didn't have super amounts of respect for the (previous) Queen, didn't really think of her much.

... but Charles? For some reason, he offends my brain.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

... and I'll admit, if it's about the colonial/feudal power structure, and all that, Elizabeth was just as (well, more) guilty for that shit, but somehow Charles just fuckin' narcs me up.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

It's 2023 and I still need a download manager because my cat fucking turns off my PC because some knobface decided having PC power buttons on the top of a PC case is a smart design and not at all a fucking ridiculous concept.

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

4.7gb non-resumable download, 13hrs, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

(The download manager at least tracks what files it needs to get in a list, not having one would mean going to find the source again, etc)

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

List of computer/tech sins (non-exhaustive):

  • Unskippable intros in games
  • Quick-time events
  • 'Yes/Ask Me Later' instead of 'Yes/No'
  • PC power buttons on the top of the case
  • Adobe (anything)
  • 'give us your email' popups on websites
  • 'this looks better in our mobile app' popups on mobile versions of websites (fuck you, reddit)
DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

Ok, but... are we just not going to talk about this one?

DarkestKale,
@DarkestKale@mastodon.social avatar

@RogerBW I swear someone sculpted that

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