Posts made by Sparks

The Secret World
The Secret World
also
The Secret World

(There is a chance that after writing that long post earlier, I now find myself seriously missing playing my Templar Paladin, and rereading old gdocs RP.)

@deathbird said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Sparks wow that was really nice of you to do that. Thank you!

No problem!

Also, even if you do the development of whatever it is in-house, I highly recommend finding a product development firm with NPI experience to help shepherd things into production. Even the best-organized projects from first time folks often run into huge issues once moving into production. (Poor tooling, parts that are bought

I'm willing to try to answer stuff if you've got questions in general; I've seen so many very enthusiastic projects break up on the shoals of underfunding and ill-preparation, or ending up going way over budget dealing with issues once they get to production/manufacturing.

Like I said, literally my day job.

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

@Ghost said in The litRPG thread:

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

Sooooo.... Reskinned .hack?

Kinda, but I think SAO is better by far. I also like that they change games between seasons.

Also, to be fair, while .hack//SIGN is the first litRPG story I can really think of, only Tsukasa was stuck in The World. In the Aincrad arc of Sword Art online, it's literally everyone who happens to be online at a certain time who becomes trapped in the game, unable to log out, and if the Nervegear is removed it will microwave their brains. And if they die in game, it's literal permadeath, as the Nervegear will also microwave their brain in the real world.

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

I love SAO, but the biggest disconnect for me is that each season, the dangers of the interface tech are exposed and explored, and PEOPLE STILL USE IT.......smdh

To be fair, they got rid of the Nervegear and its successor is entirely safe.

***=The only reason anyone was trapped in ALfheim Online in the Fairy Dance arc...***

***=And during the Phantom Bullet arc...***

***=Ordinal Scale was an original story for the anime, and...***

***=During the (extremely freaking long) Alicization arc, which the anime has only covered like the first third of...***

***=In the current (novel) arc, Unity Ring...***

@Runescryer said in The litRPG thread:

Also, if you didn't know, Excell Saga is sort of the sequel to SAO. Or SAO is the prequel to Excell Saga.

*whispers* I think you mean Accel World, not Excel Saga.

@deathbird said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Having two (I think) brilliant product ideas and having no clue how to get any ball rolling on it even after googling and reading some stuff about inventions, prototyping, etc. Clearly not entrepreneur material right here.

*puts on "hi, this is literally my day job" hat*

That depends a lot on what the product is, and how much prototyping you need.

Let's say it's an electronic device of some kind. You'll probably want to build an NFF version to start—NFF meaning Non Form Factor, i.e., something that's just bare electronics and enough mechanical pieces to cover any necessary bits of the system. Just enough to prove that your idea is technologically feasible at least in theory.

So you'd get a devkit from one of the SoC (System on Chip) manufacturers; a Nordic nRF52 or whatever. Or if you're planning to go with, say, embedded Linux, it's probably easiest to just go grab a Raspberry Pi 3 to start out with for your main processor, even if you might move to a different SoC for the final product. (Unless you need GPU acceleration for some kind of calculations, in which case, the Nvidia Jetson Nano is a frighteningly capable system.)

Then you'd want a good quality 3D printer to print any mechanical pieces you need, and do it yourself. Alternatively, find your local collective makerspace, get a membership, and go use their equipment; out here in Seattle we have Metrix Create:Space, for instance.

If it's something that's beyond your capabilities, find a techy business partner who can help realize it.

Once you have your NFF proof-of-concept, you can shop it around for funding from investors, or you can hit up crowdfunding sites. (Keeping in mind that a startling percentage of hardware Kickstarters vastly underestimate their needed funding and their timeline, especially when it comes to NPI—New Product Introduction, i.e. the whole manufacturing process.)

Once you have sufficient funding, you can either put together a company with employees to do come up with a form-factor test device as a next step, or you can hire a product development firm to do that for you. Product development firms will likely be pricier on an hourly basis than doing it yourself, but you'll get all the company's accumulated expertise, and it will likely go faster than spinning up your own team. And if you find one that's got a lot of NPI experience, it can save so much pain when it comes to actually going into manufacturing.

(Product development firms being places like Cambridge Consultants. Or Mindtribe, or Punch Through, or Tactile, or whatever. But Cambridge Consultants is the best. #notbiased #myemployer)

Obviously, if it's not an electronic device of some kind, the process will differ.

@bear_necessities said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

The only concept we've outright banned is former assassins turned history professors

Well dang, there goes my idea if I decided to app...

@Auspice said in The litRPG thread:

I still don't get it.

Does "Sword Art Online is very popular" help?

More seriously, I think litRPG mostly started with a "what if you were stuck in a game" version of portal fantasy (i.e. person from our world gets stuck in another) stories, like Tsukasa waaaaay back in the old .hack//SIGN anime. And that same premise was the beginning of the Sword Art Online novels, Log Horizon, and so on. (As well as books like Rachel Aaron's wonderful Forever Fantasy Online, which the second book of just came out, and which if you're reading litRPG I highly recommend. And I actually think Somnia Online was pretty good, among the self-published ones.)

Those are admittedly the types of litRPG I like best, since I really do like portal fantasy stories.

Now litRPG seems to be enough of its own thing that people do stories where the protagonists aren't stuck in the game, and sometimes the stories even involve their real-world lives. Or where the characters have always been in a given world, but that world happens to have video-game mechanics as guiding natural laws or such.

@Jeshin said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Kanye-Qwest

I'm open to better comparisons, do you have any?

Not KQ, but gonna answer anyway!

If you're excluding an ethnicity on geographical grounds ("people who look like that exist in this world, but they're from a faraway nation which, for various thematic reasons, we don't want PCs to be from at this point in the story"), it can be justifiable. It's probably still not great if that ethnicity happens to align with a player's iRL identity, but it can make sense on simple geographic grounds; it's unlikely, for instance, that you would've historically encountered an aboriginal Australian in Siberia in the 1700's, so I can see a game set in Siberia in the 1700's going, "Sorry, we're not going to allow this concept."

However, being gay, lesbian, trans, nonbinary... that's not tied to ethnicity or geography or really anything. Even in cultures where it wasn't acceptable to be those things, historically, it still never stopped people from being those things. It may have stopped them from presenting as those things openly—the nobleman who is gay, but forces themselves to conceal it and takes a wife to have children, etc.—but it did not stop them from being those things. Look at the military surgeon, James Barry, for instance.

It's far, far harder to justify "there are no QUILTBAG (or whatever acronym you prefer) people in this setting" as a result; while it's fair to say you would not likely have found an aboriginal Australian in Siberia in the 1700's, it strains credulity a lot more to say there were no gays or lesbians in Siberia in the 1700's.

I'm guessing that's what KQ meant by saying it's not a good analogy.

@Jeshin said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

I think @Tinuviel is saying whether he excluded red heads, irish people, black people, gay people, etc etc. That the specific group excluded doesn't matter to the question of whether excluding a group makes the game owner and/or staff bigoted.

I think the issue here is that from a game owner's standpoint, it's "I feel <concept X> is played poorly/fetishized/overused, therefore I shall forbid it on game-balance grounds and grounds of taste." And while there are players who do play trans characters very well, and use that aspect of the character to give them genuine depth, I can't deny that there are also players out there who also do borderline-insulting fetishy things with trans characters. (And lesbian characters. And intersexed characters. And nonbinary characters. And redheads. And...)

But to someone whose RL identity falls into <concept X>, seeing something like "no lesbian characters will be allowed on the game" or "no trans characters will be allowed on the game" is probably going to feel like a rejection of the player themselves, regardless of whether that exclusion is made with what the game owner believes is the best intentions. It will still often put a player on the defensive; "I'm trans iRL. You feel people like me don't have a place in this narrative?" or something similar.

People probably aren't going to find common ground here, because they're looking at a thing from two completely different angles. It's like a statue in a museum; two people can be looking at the statue at the same time, but if one person's standing in front of the statue and looking at the face/chest, they're going to have a different perception of the statue than the person standing behind it (and who can't see the face) does.

I am enjoying the feeling of accomplishment after having emptied out eight drawers of stuff in my bathroom and sorted the contents, cleaned the drawers out, put in little containers to divide things up, then put the sorted stuff into those containers. I actually know where everything in the bathroom is now!

#adulting

@Ghost - Cars that can be told "do not let the interior get above X" while you are parked somewhere outdoors in the summer are one of the best innovations in automotive technology, I swear. (Being able to check the temperature remotely and adjust the climate control before returning to the car is also acceptable.)

Double post, because it occurred to me in another thread: the Secret World. I want that as a game.

Give me a setting where secret societies have been shaping the world from behind the scenes throughout recorded history. Where the Illuminati really are the power behind the throne in the US, where the Templars were just one incarnation of an organization dating back to the Tower of Babel, and have viewed themselves as the border between the everyday world and that of things that live in the shadows... or in the spaces outside our world. Where a hidden Council has long existed to broker treaties and deals between these rival societies.

Give me a setting where all myths and conspiracy theories have a grain of truth to them. Where the Hollow Earth not only exists, but is filled with the myriad branches of the World Tree serving as express lanes between so many places around the world. Where there really was a secret base on the moon. Where December 2012 truly was the Apocalypse, but the rival societies banded together to stop it. Where cults lie to their followers, but those lies conceal even more horrifying truths.

Give me a setting where both horror and wonder are always present. Where hidden histories of Ages past lead to wonderous forgotten technology; ancient clockwork time machines, sarcophagi from times long forgotten which produce incomprehensible holograms when you toy with them. Where there are always things scratching at the door of reality, huge and incomprehensible, who are worshipped as gods but whose motives are both incomprehensible and terrifying. Where hidden Gaia Engines buried beneath the Earth which lock the Dreamers away in the Dreaming Prison, and you should pray to any god listening that they never wake... save that few things humanity has believed to be gods are truly what we believe, and even fewer are benevolent.

Give me a setting where people newly changed and awakened to the existence of magic as Gaia chooses new agents to work through find themselves struggling to understand the world they've found themselves pulled into, with no time to really sit and process the wonder and horror. Where you find yourself newly immortal, the dust of your body whisked away and rebuilt any time you die, over and over. Where you slowly begin to realize that nearly every immortal you meet from Ages past regards their immortality as a curse rather than a blessing, and are filled with worry for your future. Where a villain might sever your legs and leave you imprisoned in eternal pain, but refuse to kill you because they know that if they do you'll vanish and be reborn in the nearest well of pure anima. Where those they'd look to for answers about what they are rarely have them to give, because these hundreds of infant immortals taking their first steps into the shadows of the world represent something new, something never seen before, and something all of the societies would like to control if they could.

Give me a setting where the shadowy secrets of the world are becoming harder for even the Illuminati to conceal, and the impact is beginning to be felt. Where unethical corporations have captured some of these new immortals and begun trying to experiment on them. After all, once you figure out how to generate an anima well, you don't have to worry about the test subject dying. When they do, they just appear again in that well, whole and healthy and with a fresh batch of organs to experiment on. Where they have tried to make children into tools or weapons using what they've found. (Hello I walk into empty / hallways tell me not to worry / caution sends the signal not to / look around the bend and signal...)

Give me a setting where the bees are the voice, and perhaps the conscience, of the world itself. Where the Buzzing contains hidden truths for those willing to seek them out and listen.

Our wisdom flows so sweet, taste and see...

@Coin said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Jennkryst said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Coin said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Jennkryst said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Kingdom Building

Exalted! Mandate of Heaven! Bureaucracy Charms!

I miss it so.

Okay, but hear me out.

Dreams of the First Age. Full tilt elder Exalts with Limit Breaks turned up to 11. Also: must take appropriately Greek tragedy style Limits, not something lazy like half of the ones in the book.

Man, people are horrible. I wouldn't trust MUers with that setting, frankly.

I admit, part of me looks at how people play up trauma and angst—and sometimes become possessive of a particular flavor of it ("I don't care what the dice said! I'm the one who just lost a foot to the monster attack; that person who lost a hand two turns later because of a bad roll is clearly just trying to steal my spotlight by being injured like that!")—and feels like trauma and tragedy being a required part of chargen is a recipe for a whooooole lot of drama.

I may be feeling overly cynical today, however.

I would counter this; there's times where, for plot purposes, it's useful for an NPC to be disguised for some particular interactions and not OOCly painted with a neon "HI I AM A PLOT NPC" sign. If you have a particular NPC who is trying to be like "I am a normal bartender, yep" for plot reasons during a specific arc, if they are OOCly marked as an NPC people will often find reasons to "intuit" that something is up and act differently around the perfectly normal bartender. It's not even maliciously done, but OOC knowledge will make even tiny IC hints seem much more obvious than they really are. So I actually don't know that I think I agree entirely with saying every single identity an NPC might assume for a given long-term plot must be OOCly advertised as an NPC at all times.

But even if they aren't explicitly called out as such, I feel like you should hold yourself to whatever rules you would as a clearly marked NPC. If that's "the NPC never gets to have the spotlight on an on-screen scene, and is there to facilitate the player story" then you should stick to that even if the NPC is wearing a PC cover identity. If they have access to more than PCs do then they still count as an NPC and you need to follow whatever your rules for NPCs are.

@Tehom said in A fully OC supers MU:

If you decide to go with Evennia, they have a pretty lively IRC that's connected to a Discord channel, and people are usually pretty fast to answer questions. I'm also happy to help with questions about python/django if you're stuck on how to implement or fix something - I can be reached either by messaging here or on Discord (I'd show up in the mods list of the Evennia discord channel).

A second on this for the Evennia Discord. Very helpful community if you plan to do anything with Evennia, and I found it exceptionally useful when I was starting out and learning Evennia's overall structure and design philosophy. (Or even now when I do particularly wacky stuff on my Evennia sandbox, where I'm slowly building a reusable generic foundation for MUSH-like games.)

I'll add that there's an Ares Discord I hear superb things about as well for folks running Ares, though I gather it's somewhat more focused on running a game as well where Evennia's Discord is fairly heavily focused on developing one.

If you are interested in doing development in general, I figure it's really worthwhile to know both of the "modern" systems. Hence why I've got an Ares sandbox as well which I've started toying with extending. (On which note, I should probably go track down the address for the Ares Discord at some point myself.)

If you don't need a lot of custom code (beyond like, a new dice engine module for your specific system), I would honestly recommend AresMUSH. As noted, Ruby is a more modern and less niche programming skill than MUSHcode, and you get the benefits of the awesome web portal and scene system.

If you need a ton of custom code, go Evennia; it's way more bare-bones than Ares, but it's designed to be a platform on which you build a more customized game. And if there's some way in which Ares' great web portal doesn't match your usage case, Evennia's built atop Django (a fairly widely used system for building custom web applications) and is thus easily changed in drastic ways. Plus, like Ruby, Python is a modern and widely used programming language, so it should be easy to find coders for it.

If you want to get really weird, Python is right now arguably the most common language for machine learning work; you could do things like use a GAN to generate dynamic PBs for your characters in chargen like this does! (I might have prototyped doing this on my Evennia sandbox. It's an incredibly dumb idea; loading a GAN into a game server is not what I'd call "the best use of resources". But that has never stopped me from prototyping off-the-wall stuff before.)

If you have an existing codebase in MUSHcode, of course, just use Rhost or MUX2 or Penn or whatever.

But lacking an existing legacy codebase, for quickest time-to-open with the most modern interfaces? Use Ares, and either use one of the existing modules to replace FS3, find a way to use FS3 for superpowers, or get a Ruby coder to write you a new module with the system you want to use.

@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

things i have RECENTLY become obsessed with during hyperfocus holes, to the point i have read and watched dozens of hours of content about them:

arctic foxes

(It seemed the appropriate gif.)

@Auspice — I can just talk endlessly about the Witcher books instead. (Which I really should re-read before the series airs.)

@Auspice said in Good TV:

@Sparks said in Good TV:

backs away from this conversation slooooooowly, so the motion draws no attention

So how bout them Final Fantasies?

returns to conversation, vehemently waving FF6 banner, accompanied by Terra's Theme, and wielding large stack of arguments why it is the best FF game... then realizes this is the TV thread and there's really no justification for starting that conversation here as well

backs away from this conversation slooooooowly, so the motion draws no attention

@Thenomain - Yen's personality in the games is pretty much spot-on; it's just the appearance that's different from the books. (In the games she is older in appearance and more conventionally attractive.) The one thing they got wrong in the games for her personality is that Yen and Ciri should be as close as Geralt and Ciri, and that relationship didn't come through as well as it could have. Yen is really as much a mother to Ciri as Geralt is a father.

There's other little stuff. Book!Geralt's a bit more emo and wracked with self-doubt in places, for instance. ("Am I fucking up Ciri's destiny?" I mean, yes? But that is not a bad thing? Because her destiny kind of sucks?)

The one in the games who deviates the most is really Ciri; by Lady of the Lake she was a sarcastic and broken teenager, kind of borderline cruel at times, but she sure as hell didn't lack in confidence. (When I compare her to Arya Stark, I'm not kidding; Arya can't have inspired the character given the two pre-saga story collections and the first two Blood of Elves saga books were out in Polish before ASoIaF was published at all, but it's a frighteningly accurate analogy in places.)

That said, the shit she went through in faerie (how did she restrain herself from beating the living snot out of Avallac'h when she meets him again?!) followed by being lost for 5+ years in an entirely different world, along with not being a kid any longer, could have changed her a bit by the time she makes it home to her own world again in Witcher 3.