Posts made by Sparks

@Auspice — there's only two Hellblade ones in the screenshots folder I use for wallpapers right now, but here's the folder: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777scj72o0l3f2b/AAC4xVi4WifuUy0X-GuJN1tza?dl=0

The rest are (a lot of) Dragon Age: Inquisition, (a lot of) Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect Andromeda, a little bit of Black Desert Online, a little bit of Star Citizen (I actually have more shots from that I should really throw in), some Witcher 3, a little bit of Elite: Dangerous, and (a surprising amount of) The Secret World.

(I literally just have every machine I own, regardless of OS, set to pull wallpapers randomly from that folder. The folder is just a small set of the various screenshots I've taken, and periodically I remove ones and switch in new ones from my main library of screenshot work. I also used to maintain a screenshot blog, which has some of the shots I plan to swap in or add next.)

@Roz said in Good TV:

@Auspice You can still watched it subbed on Netflix.

Does the subtitled version still have Fly Me to the Moon?

(Also, the sub is best anyway. And the Japanese version of the opening theme is something I will still remember when I am old and senile and cannot even recall my own name; it got that deeply ingrained in my brain.)

Zankoku na tenshi no you ni, shounen yo shinwa ni nare! [instrumental intro] Aoi kaze ga ima, mune no DOA o tataite mo. Watashi dake o tada mitsumete hohoenderu anata...

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is part of this month's Humble Bundle. I already have the game, but I say this because it's an amazing game and everyone should play it.

Seconded. It's surprisingly affecting in terms of narrative and execution, plus has really quite good atmospherics; a couple of the screenshots in my wallpapers directory are ones I took in Hellblade using Ansel.

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

I feel weird whenever someone tells me they've run across someone that looks just like me.

Much younger, thinner me in the emergency room for an 80+ hour sustained severe migraine. Nurse says "oh, gracious, you could be my daughter's identical twin! She gets horrible chronic migraines too! When I saw the reason for visiting today and then stepped into the room without reading the name, I actually thought you were her for a moment!"

In hindsight I wish I'd quipped something like "Guess I'm not the only one of the clones to escape the top-secret military research facility!" But I think I just whimpered because the lights were still on.

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

@gryphter I think at that point you are almost at Rising Stars.

Which would also be an interesting setup for a game. A town where a mysterious light from the heavens hits a town, and every unborn child is born with mysterious powers? Where you could basically chargen a really messed-up adult, and then periodically play flashback scenes with other folks to flesh out past relationships (because you've all known each other all your lives, being born in the same town and being known globally as having unique talents).

If you want to be PvE you leave it there and let them deal with things the staff runs (maybe even more of their own, who are using their powers for ill). If you want to be PvP, you just introduce the 'each one of you who dies, the power is distributed among the rest, making you that much stronger' element...

@Auspice - My employer literally retains a "health care advocate" now; if the insurance gives trouble, we can just email her the details, and she can go snarl and breathe fire at UHC on our behalf. Which is an improvement inasmuch as now I won't have to go snarl and breathe fire at them (I am not good at snarling), but it's really freaking sad that this is a thing we actually need.

ETA: Ugh topiramate. I hate that medication. And if it's not even working right anymore... I hope you find what works for you, I really do.

@Auspice - my insurance has tried to pull that shit.

So, I'd like to try injections into my scalp, although "like" may be too strong a term. "Oh, well, we don't really want to cover that procedure. Hey, have you tried pills?" YES. ALL OF THEM. For more than half of my life.

Fine, I'll try to get aimovig instead. "Oh, have you considered injections?" Screw you, you spent two years telling me you wouldn't cover those until all other options had been tried! Now you want me to try it? No, we're going with what the neurologist suggested!

"Oh, we'll only cover aimovig for people with intractable chronic migraines." What the hell do you think I have?! "You need to exceed a certain number of days off headache per month. How many did you have last month?" 18 days. If you want to count the constant lower severity migraine that never goes away, 31. "Yeah, if the migraine is a baseline state it doesn't count as a migraine attack. And you need attacks on more than 22 days a month for us to classify you as suffering chronic migraines and cover aimovig." Are you shitting me?! Because my migraine never goes away it counts as baseline and thus not chronic?!

Long story short, I gave up on the insurance, got the aimovig anyway, and thank god because it has been life-changing. Also UnitedHealthcare is terrible and should be taken out and put in the trash.

I hope your new insurance is better about this than your current (or mine); good luck!

@Ghost - D-d-d-danger lurks behind me?

@Jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

I reluctantly draw the topic away from the beloved Final Fantasy but...
[...] the music is well done.

Really? How's it compare to FF6?

ducks and runs for her life

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

Imagine a space game on Arx code.

o.o

Honestly, the Arx codebase wouldn't be ideal for it. We don't handle ranged combat terribly well in the combat system at present, and space/SF combat usually is based around ranged attacks. Plus, there's no spaceflight code, and nothing you could repurpose as spaceflight code. So for true hard SF, you'd almost do better to just start coding a new codebase atop Evennia, or write a space plugin for Ares. (Because frankly, Ares' scene system is amazing, to a degree I want to write an equivalent for Evennia someday.)

That said, there was an SF campaign I wanted to run, where the players would be colonists who discover ancient alien ruins on the planet they've settled. And that you could do with Arx's codebase; the magic and exploration systems could be repurposed for exploring alien ruins and learning how to use alien tech, avoiding security systems and hostile local life. And the clue/revelation system could be used for uncovering more and more of the alien Precursor culture's history and secrets.

But "I fly around in space and shoot things pew pew" vs "science fiction Indiana Jones [cue triumphant adventure music]" (or throw in a hostile force that wants to control whatever ancient tech is found in the ruins and has thus seized the colony and go full Tomb Raider reboot, where you want to find and repurpose the alien tech to free your friends and family still stuck in the now-occupied colony) are very different things.

(Dang it. Now I want to run space Indiana Jones.)

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

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

A Sunrunner game is a really interesting idea, but I'd have to go back and re-read the source novels...it's been...30 years? since I read the first trilogy.

@Herja @Sparks

There is no way in hell I have time to help build a Sunrunners game; I'm behind on GM'ing on Arx as it is!

(And I'm pretty sure @Caryatid should've been tagged there too, as she's a fellow Sunrunners fan.)

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@egg said in General Video Game Thread:

I am incredibly excited about the FF7 remake, despite all of the sour grapes FFVI fanboys and girls who come out of the woodwork every time a new thing related to FF7 comes along...something something opera...something something Kefka...you know, FF7 has musical themes for every playable character, too.

waves FF6 banner anyway, albeit sullenly

Look, I'm just saying we've had a pre-smartphone phone game, a PSP game, the original PS game, two movies, a PS2 game, a smartphone game, AND now a remake of the original game. I'm a little Shinra'd-out, and I'm feeling the urge for some Magitek.

(Also, FF6 has better music, no matter how much a whoooole bunch of people want to say that One-Winged Angel is the definitive FF song. Terra's Theme is better, fight me.)

Shadow's Theme is better.

I will fite you over it.

I will grant it a very, very close second, and accept that someone else might (erroneously) rank it higher.

And Marc Papeghin's cover of it is pretty amazing. But Terra's Theme will always remain, in my heart, the music I associate most strongly with FF6.

Actually, I'm trying to think of any modern game soundtracks (for 'modern' let's go with in the past ten years) that I think of as being as iconic as the games of that era. Not just ones that you can recognize when you hear them—there's plenty that reach that level—but ones where you can hum them without prompting, without listening to them first?

I feel like Nate's Theme (in all its variations) from the first three Uncharted games is, in its own way, as memorable as the Indiana Jones theme; that one sticks with you once you've heard it, and it's easy to remember.

And of course, there's the Dovahkiin Song from Skyrim, which I think everyone on the internet knows. Whether or not they played that game. Or any video game. Ever. (FUS! RO! DAH!)

There's bits of the soundtracks from my beloved Mass Effect trilogy that might achieve that level; ME3's main theme, Leaving Earth, probably foremost among them.

Maybe Aloy's Theme from Horizon Zero Dawn? We're at edge cases now, though; I really like this one, but I don't know how many people who played HZD could still hum this one now, two years after the game's release, without listening to the track first.

But how many classic games are there where the themes are ones you could hum immediately without prompting? Super Mario Brothers, the main theme to Zelda (and the Epona song!), the main theme to the Pokemon franchise, Tetris, the soundtracks to the early Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, etc... I'm not sure if it's just because they were, in many cases, games during our formative years, or if it's just that in making the soundtrack for primitive sound hardware, they had to boil a song down to its basics and make those really matter.

@Atomic said in General Video Game Thread:

No video game I've ever encountered that I can think of has come close to achieving what FF6 did with character themes/leitmotifs. There are some wonderful, notable video game soundtracks, no question. But what FF6 pulled off is in a class of its own.

Have you played any of Supergiant's games? Bastion, Transistor, Pyre? Their musical direction and use of mood and character themes, up to and including re-recording a song for characters undergoing trauma, has impressed me a great deal.

That's true, Bastion is pretty damn close to that level, and Transistor moreso. I haven't played Pyre to judge.

@Atomic said in Atomic's Playlist:

COTA: Uh.. can't remember. Old. I think I had quills/spikes.

Which CotA, out of curiosity? There were three, if I remember right.

@egg said in General Video Game Thread:

I am incredibly excited about the FF7 remake, despite all of the sour grapes FFVI fanboys and girls who come out of the woodwork every time a new thing related to FF7 comes along...something something opera...something something Kefka...you know, FF7 has musical themes for every playable character, too.

waves FF6 banner anyway, albeit sullenly

Look, I'm just saying we've had a pre-smartphone phone game, a PSP game, the original PS game, two movies, a PS2 game, a smartphone game, AND now a remake of the original game. I'm a little Shinra'd-out, and I'm feeling the urge for some Magitek.

(Also, FF6 has better music, no matter how much a whoooole bunch of people want to say that One-Winged Angel is the definitive FF song. Terra's Theme is better, fight me.)

Double your pleasure, double your posts... (to the tune of the Doublemint Gum commercials)

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

I also think that we as a MUSH Community often have a very narrow definition of success. Like the only games that have perceived value are ones with a zillion logins like Arx or that run for years and years like Elendor.

If five people showed up to a game and had fun for six months, it's okay to consider that a success. Heck, that's more than some TTRPG groups get out of a campaign. Certainly more than the longevity of your typical PbPost or Storium game.

If I spent a year and a half building custom bespoke systems and doing world-building, then having 7 people have fun for four months would feel like the game was a failure, to me. But if I literally just opened it as a sandbox with minimal code and had 7 people have fun for four months? Worth it.

So my question to myself "was the amount of enjoyment generated by the game greater than the amount of effort which went into building it". And as long as I can answer yes? The game was a success.

(I mean, a zillion logins is not universally a good thing either; it means you can probably always find RP, which is definitely a plus! But as a GM, I can provide way more tailored attention to players' individual stories on a game with 7 regular players than I can on a game with 207 regular players.)

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

Now, if we were talking Lenfell, I feel like that would just be me. I love that story world so much. Melanie Rawn is an incredible world-builder even if her unreliability as a writer has made it so that I don't read her work anymore.

22 years this past March. 22 years. I have literally been waiting for the next book for more than half of my actual lifetime. Please just put us out of our misery and tell us you're not writing the last Lenfell book so we can move on, instead of posting every few years that you'll be working on the book soon and thus nudging the dying embers of hope back to a semblance of life!

George R.R. Martin's fans are still playing the waiting game on easy mode.

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

My kingdom for a Sunrunner game.

+1

(Though there's probably like two or three other people in all of MU'ing who would join us there.)

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

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

Heralds of Valdemar

I'd love a Valdemar game. But Mercedes Lackey has forbidden them. Not sure if that's changed at all.

Yeah, as much as my inner eight year old (and really, my outer current horse owner) would love a game where I can have a magic horse, it would get C&D'd.

@Auspice - eh. I think the Arx codebase would work well for the political and general setting side of things, but as soon as you bring Grisha into the mix, you'd need to gut the magic system I've been putting in, and write a new one (unless you wanted to just handwave the mechanics of Grisha powers).

You could go more Six of Crows, though, and have Grisha be a thematic element that is Over That Way Somewhere, rather than quite so major as it would be if you set the game in Ravka.