#(zork...<3)< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[gumyfish]

I love Wyll Ravengard of baldur’s gate fame I love him as a beautiful human man and as a beautiful devil man. however I can never forgive them (our oppressors) for taking away his big beautiful angelic brown puppydog eyes. eye. unforgivable

[templeofshame]

Plover the river and frotz the woods...

(Xavid's is v cool

)

[greatwyrmgold]

When was the first 3D video game published? Trick question, this is a post about how "3D video game" is a meaningless phrase.

In 1984, King's Quest: Quest for the Crown was published. King's Quest was marketed as a "3-D Animated Adventure," even though it looked like this:

At first glance, it looks like any other low-resolution 16-color adventure game of the pre-EGA era. But it has one revolutionary feature that sets it a step above its peers: You can walk behind things.

To be clear, that's basically it. There's not even sprite scaling or anything; King Graham is the same size whether he's close to the "camera" or not. Modern gamers would probably find it a bit ridiculous to say this game has a "camera" at all. But you can walk around in that green field, and you can go behind the tree or the castle tower, and those things would hide the part of Graham's sprite behind them—and you could also walk in front of them!

Well, if you didn't fall off the bridge. Why did Roberta Williams never put handrails on those things?

Anyways, the next game I'm going to mention is Wolfenstein 3D (1992), another game which marketed itself on cutting-edge 3-D technology.

You can see a lot of graphical improvement between these two games set in castles, and not just because Wolfenstein has thrice the resolution and 16 times the colors. The sprites can be scaled with their distance from the camera, for instance, and the backgrounds aren't static flat planes. They're dynamic flat planes, capable of warping as your angle to the wall changes.

In some ways, this is as great a leap over King's Quest as King's Quest is over Zork, or at least Mystery House. But is it really 3D? It's still just a bunch of distorted 2D sprites being drawn to the screen. There's nothing really 3D going on in the computer. It's no Super Mario 64 (1996).

SM64 is among the first popular "real 3D" games, with models and polygons and stuff. And it is, again, a great leap above Wolfenstein 3D. It doesn't distort 2D sprites to mimic 3D shapes; it shapes 2D textures around 3D models. Totally different! It has polygons and stuff!

Now, I'm not 100% sarcastic about that. There are some technical differences between how SM64 handles its textures and how Wolfenstein and other Id shooters handle their sprites. But those differences aren't so much "doing something completely different" as they are "doing the same thing with fewer limitations".

And it would be absurd to claim that Wolfenstein graphics have more in common with KQ1 than with SM64. It would be even more absurd to say that SM64 has less in common with W3D than it does with older and newer titles using what people commonly consider 3D technology.

On the left we have Battlezone (1980), an arcade title which predates KQ1 as much as W3D predates SM64. It has little in common with Wolfenstein's graphics, not needing to distort any kind of 2D image file to mimic 3D, because it's just wireframes.

From a graphical perspective, it has more in common with KQ1 than W3D; both use vector graphics. (Bitmap images would take too much storage space for KQ1.) In fact, you could probably make a compelling argument that KQ1 and Battlezone's vector graphics have more in common with each other on a technical level than they do with Wolfenstein's 3D sprites or SM64's 3D models.

And on the right...it's either leaked security cam footage from Area 52, or The Callisto Protocol (2022). I can't explain what separates it graphically from the other games in this post, because there are so many new systems—systems which require specialist graphical engineers to understand, let alone create or use. I could rattle off some technical terms like subsurface scattering and cloth simulations and soft-body deformation, but I don't understand these techniques on anything but the shallowest level, and TCP has elevated them to another level.

I know it sometimes seems like graphical technology stopped having Big Improvements some time around the seventh or eighth console generation, but it kept going. The difference, I'd argue, is that the improvements have been more spread-out, enabled less by advances in hardware technology and more by learning how to use those advances, distributed throughout a hardware generation rather than concentrated at the start.

Anyways. The point I'm trying to make is that modern games make every prior game in this post look ridiculously primitive. SM64 was impressive in its day, but Mario is rendered with less than a thousand triangles, separated into several rigid components. And his face is just a couple dozen flat polygons with a texture printed on them. Even modern indie games often animate eyeballs with more polygons than Mario's entire body, with the eyeball and eyelid and so forth all being separate models with textures and shaders bringing them to life. Giving them more depth.

Making them even more 3D.

There is not a firm line between 2D and 3D. Wolfenstein 3D is more 3D than King's Quest I, and Super Mario 64 is more 3D than either of them, and Skyrim more 3D than that, and The Callisto Protocol more 3D still. If someone dismissed Doom as not being "real 3D," they're drawing an arbitrary distinction around one of many graphical innovations that made gaming graphics incrementally more verisimilitudinous. That's all.

[homestuckreplay]

Homestuck Is A Game, Who Is The Player?

Week 3 Retrospective

'Video games have long been associated with spectatorship as well as play, from their origins in quarter-fueled arcades, where high score displays implied the presence of admiring or competitive spectators, to their migration to home screens and consoles. Live streaming chat emulates these older models, but its interaction with economies of scale on streaming platforms brings a different kind of intimacy and intensity to the experience. Chat lets spectators feel like they are there with the streamer as well as a part of a crowd, even if they are alone in their room.' [Jeremy Antley - emphasis mine]

From Homestuck’s very first page, the comic has made something clear. We are not allowed to immerse ourselves in John Egbert’s world. There is a layer of separation between us, an interface mediating our access to his life and story, a voiceover narration from the person who’s really in control. Who is this person, and what form does their control over John take?

Homestuck is presented like a video game, yet unlike a video game, we don’t control the character’s movements with arrow keys or have the chance to type our own commands directly into the text box. Instead of being able to explore the game on our own terms, we are confined to a specific and predetermined route, even though others seem theoretically possible. Simply put, we are not the ones playing the game.

Essay continued under the cut - about 2.6k words

I think there are two really important questions to consider when analyzing the meta elements of Homestuck and treating it as a game. The first - what kind of game is it? The second - where exactly do we stand in relation to the player(s)?

The most obvious answer to question one is ‘Homestuck is a text based adventure game.’ This guide to text based adventures is a great overview, and we can map the example commands here onto commands we’ve seen in Homestuck. ‘Examine room’ (p.4) is a one-word action, ‘Captchalogue smoke pellets’ (p.9) is an action and direct object, and ‘Nail poster to wall’ (p.19) includes the indirect object. John hasn’t given any orders yet - he’s too nice a guy for that - but ‘Report progress to TG’ (p.39) is definitely communicating with another character. All of these, and most other command lines, feel like reasonable instructions that could be recognized by a game.

However, commands like ‘Fondly regard cremation’ (p.52) and ‘Play haunting piano refrain’ (p.77) honestly feel too characterful to be fully interpreted by a computer, and ‘Squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk’ (p.16) is… well, I tried typing this into the command prompt for the classic text adventure Zork, and got the following response.

A text adventure is just not set up to interpret wacky, left field ideas, much less respond to them in an entertaining way. And we know there is a real person behind Homestuck doing exactly that.

If my party enters the wizard’s study in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and I tell the Dungeon Master that I squawk like an imbecile and sit on the wizard’s desk, that statement will be understood. Sure, the DM will probably call me an idiot and put a nasty spike trap on the desk, but what I said will become part of the story in the way that a nonsense command in a text based video game never can. It’s interesting to think of Homestuck as a tabletop roleplaying game, where the narrator is the Game Master, the command prompt is a player, and John is a player character (presumably TT, TG and GG are the rest of his party and they’re just really late to the session).

Homestuck isn’t just text based, though - it has a strong visual element, including interfaces and overlays where the player can click and drag items between John’s inventory and his environment, or around his space. This suggests it could also be a point and click adventure game, a genre that grew out of text based games as graphics improved, and is defined by a strong inventory management component (check), puzzle solving quests (check - we’ve recently solved our first quest of acquiring the Sburb Beta) and dialog trees (????). The sprite based, isometric art style is really good for getting an overview of the space and seeing possible interactable objects, and Homestuck does feature extended dialog sequences - we don’t know if there are other possible inputs from John, but it's interesting to think that there might be.

These three genres - text based adventures, point and click adventures, and tabletop roleplaying games - all developed throughout the 1970s and 80s. It’s reasonable that Andrew Hussie (born 1979) could have grown up with some of these games. But to answer the second question, ‘where do we stand in relation to the player’, we might need to look at media forms still in their infancy - let’s plays, livestreams, and actual play.

[Michael Sawyer, 2004]

In the past few years, ‘Let’s Play [Game]’ has become a relatively popular thread format on the Something Awful forums, as well as personal websites. This began with posters taking screenshots of their playthroughs of a game and adding commentary in the text. The medium has now advanced to video and is typically hosted on YouTube, with commentary overlaid. Either format gives a creator the space to play through as much of the game as they choose, and then edit exactly what content they want to show to the audience, providing commentary after the fact. 

Homestuck, with its per-page illustrations, could be seen as a long thread of forum posts by the player, each including screenshots as they move through the game. The inclusion of short Flash animations shows the edge into video, and makes me wonder if we’ll see longer or more complex videos, perhaps with voiceover narration, as Homestuck expands its focus. The self-referential and aggressive yet helpful commentary in Homestuck is similar in tone to Sawyer's playthrough above, and could easily be the work of a player who knows where the story will go, at least in the short term, and is dropping hints to the audience while purposefully concealing some things.

Livestreaming video games is a similar concept to Let's Plays, but performed in real time. Often hosted on Justin.tv, an open video broadcast website that’s been gaining prominence in the past couple of years, a livestream is an improvised and unedited way to watch someone game. Any commentary from the creator happens without knowledge of how the playthrough will turn out. Homestuck, by Hussie’s own admission, is being written similarly in real life - they don’t know more than the broad strokes of how the story will go, and it’s possible that neither the author nor the narrator knows the long term implications of an action such as John stealing his dad’s PDA. 

Livestreams open the possibility for viewers to influence game events, if the streamer listens to their audience. We know this is true in Homestuck - readers are able to submit commands, and some are chosen for the story. The real time nature of Homestuck, waiting each day for the new update, is equivalent to waiting for a streamer to come online and start playing again so we can find out where their game goes next. This is compounded by us having no access to Homestuck outside of the streamer - we cannot buy and play this game for ourselves, it’s still in some kind of early or limited access, and the streamer controls all our knowledge. 

The livestream is definitely most similar to how Homestuck is made by its author, but it's hard to say whether its narrator is commentating in real time, or after the fact. I can't find any definite clues in our pages so far - I think the narrator wants to seem smart and superior, but I can't say whether they have the knowledge to back it up.

[img source]

Our final media format is known as Actual Play. Almost a year ago, the creators of Penny Arcade (along with Dungeons & Dragons game designer Chris Perkins) began releasing Acquisitions Incorporated, a short-run, officially licensed podcast where the group plays through a D&D adventure to demonstrate gameplay interspersed with jokes. This isn’t the first time a TTRPG publisher has recorded sessions to help people learn the game, but this idea seems to be crossing over into the entertainment genre - and webcomics are part of that movement.

In the first episode, the group have a brief aside. The DM says that ‘some players prefer to refer to their characters in the third person… others prefer to get into the first,’ and one player says they’ve observed the same thing in World of Warcraft. What’s not explicitly said is that the Game Master typically refers to the player characters in second person, describing what happens to ‘you’ and what ‘you’ see - much like streamers talking to their chat. The blocks of narrative text below pictures in Homestuck could easily be a Game Master balancing giving information to an unruly player, and providing entertainment for the audience. John’s lucky or unlucky moments with his sylladex could be the result of particularly good or bad dice rolls from his unseen player.

Actual play is a really great format for deep diving into a small cast of characters, and exploring their emotional state in ways that aren't intrinsic to a lot of video games. As we're already seeing the beginnings of John's emotional arc, we know this will be a focus, but we need two to four more characters with equally large roles in the story to really form a TTRPG party. Actual play also tends to include a lot of combat and its mechanics. We know Homestuck can handle crunchy mechanics due to the sylladex, but I'd expect to see the Strife concept become just as in depth and central to the story if Homestuck ends up fitting into this mold.

All three of these formats can have a mass audience, just like Homestuck does in reality - but Homestuck also feels like a very personal experience. Two people playing the same video game, even a highly linear game such as Portal or one that doesn’t involve much active interaction such as a visual novel, have slightly different gameplay based on the speed they move through the story and their missteps on the way to finding the solution to a puzzle. 

Similarly, my experience of Homestuck is different from yours. I read the new update every day, while I know some people wait for a few days of updates to build up and then read a larger chunk. Maybe I clicked ‘Aggrieve’ and ‘Abjure’ three times each on p.90, alternating the options, while you clicked ‘Aggrieve’ five times in sequence and then ‘Abjure’ only twice. Maybe I didn’t realize p.110 had an interactive element at first, and skipped over it until somebody pointed it out to me (really telling on myself here). These elements of Homestuck that we have direct control over are currently only a small part of the story, but they do exist.

In this way, Homestuck feels a little bit like sitting in the living room as a kid watching your older brother play a game, begging him to let you take over for a minute, occasionally doing so until he gets frustrated with your inability to Strife and takes the controller back. The nostalgia of the simplistic graphics and the 70s and 80s games that are being evoked only adds to this cozy feeling. If Homestuck starts to add more interactive elements, such as branching paths, opportunities for us to take over the cursor, or a chance for us to use John’s sylladex ourselves and choose what he picks up, it might be worth thinking of Homestuck as different iterations of the same game, each of us watching our own, slightly different player, and even co-playing with them.

So, who IS this narrator? In my mind, I’m trying to draw a clear distinction between the author and the narrator. Hussie is the author in the real world, and the narrator, or player, or GM, exists within the work. Their role is best described on page 82:

‘The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself.’

The narrator is this unseen riddler (or perhaps unseenRiddler?), providing a secondary layer of control over what happens and what we are able to see. They’re the person clicking and dragging objects around John’s room, and choosing what actions to take next. The narration is their perspective on the game - whether we see this as a GM describing a scene to their players, or a streamer reading aloud information that the game has given them and providing their own commentary. 

So, we're watching the narrator play Homestuck, in whatever form it takes - but there's another layer to this. On page 22, an equivalence is made between the Sburb Beta, which John was supposed to receive on April 10 (and finally acquired on April 13 in-story, p.100), and the Homestuck Beta, which launched to us on April 10, but was quickly canceled and replaced with Homestuck proper on April 13. The Homestuck beta is linked within the comic, and might be canon within it - the narrator making an initial run at the game before restarting their save (perhaps on a different computer or console?) and trying again. Homestuck the game is currently about a kid who lives in the suburbs - and if the name and logo are anything to go by, Sburb could also be a suburbs-themed game. While we watch the riddler play Homestuck, the riddler will be watching John play the game Sburb. How deep does this go? Are there more layers inwards or outwards?

I’ve been puzzling this over for days, and I’m definitely left with more questions than I can answer. Here are the ones I'm focused on:

Is the unseen riddler playing the game as intended? Now that they’ve passed the tutorial, are they keeping the game on the rails and trying their best to follow a linear story, or are they pushing the boundaries, going for some kind of pacifist or resource-stripped run, trying to interfere with John’s intended story? Have they played the game before, and if so, how does this affect their gameplay?

If the unseen riddler is a character within the story, distinct from the external author, are we the true audience? Will there be an audience within the story, or perhaps other players? If so, how big will it be? What kind of reach does Homestuck the game have, and how many people are playing it or tuning in to watch?

How permeable are the boundaries? Is John simply pixels on a screen for the unseen riddler to play with, with no agency of his own outside of the riddler’s interpretation, like if we were playing The Sims? Or is it possible for the riddler to enter the game, or for John to leave it, and the two of them to communicate directly? Or a middle ground - something like ‘character bleed’ in TTRPGs, where a player embodies a character for so long that despite their not being real, they come to influence each other even outside of gameplay?

What the hell is the Midnight Crew? Is this a different game that exists separately to Homestuck? Will our riddler, or a different one, eventually play it? If we have three games - Homestuck, Midnight Crew, and Sburb - what exactly is the relationship between them, and how interrelated are they?

This is a lot of thoughts for what is, at time of writing, is 125 pages of comedy webcomic. But the story is just beginning, and we’ve been told it’s going to be a long day. Anything could be important, and with the frequent in-text nods to the meta elements - ‘examine third and fourth walls of room’ (p.61), ‘you decide it’s time for less meta, and more beta’ (p.113), the title appearing in the clouds on p.82 that John may or may not be able to see, the integration of the physical captchalogue card into the sylladex interface on p.98 - I don’t want to draw any firm boundaries, or make any assumptions about what is and what isn’t part of the story. Instead, I’ve cataloged the meta elements of Homestuck that might be worth paying attention to as we move through the comic, to develop a more concrete theory in time.

[vaguelyhumanshapedbeing]

Came up with a genuinely pretty cool writing exercise, and it actually helped me out of months of writers block. I call it “Zorking It” and this is how to do it:

Zork was an extremely popular old text based rpg, a game without graphics that you interacted with entirely by text, and I adapted that into a writing exercise that helps naturally discover an interesting story, and seriously killed 3 months of writers block for me. You start in a setting as complicated as you want, but I would suggest rather plain and light on details, as well as how you (the pov character) feel being in this setting. Here’s an example:

You sit inside a small cabin on a forest path. The warmth of the fire inside is a welcome respite from the rain outside.

Now, here’s where the magic happens. You actually write out what you want to do next as the player of this game. For example:

>Look around cabin

and then you, as the “computer” once more have to describe what you see. If you keep going like this—checking things out, opening things, going places—not only will you naturally flesh out your setting and world, but you’ll naturally develop an interesting plot just by playing the game. As a player you’ll be naturally attracted to checking out the most interesting thing or aspect of whatever situation you’ve come upon. What’s in that fancy container? Why is this character acting so strangely? Who runs the weird looking shop? Because you’ll naturally be motivated to check out the interesting things, you’ll end up writing the interesting things, and then bam, you have a story full of all the most interesting parts of its world!

This is a long winded way of saying that you should write a story like a text based rpg as an exercise. It’s fun, it’s great for world building, it naturally develops an interesting story, and it ended three months of my writers block.

[kujakumai]

There's a lot of people in the notes of this meme pointing out that there's only three Bakuras and trying to figure out why it says five. And the frank answer is that I recognize that there are 3 Bakuras but I thought conspicuously erasing the 1 in the original meme's 15 made it funnier, and that was worth being imprecise, and also I am lazy. But it is funny to see people rationalizing arguments for there being five of them and bringing up the abridged or zork or trading cards or something instead of the obvious devil's advocate answer, which is that Dadkura and Amane are also equally named Bakura.

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Volume I, book v: The Winners

To give the Volume 1 polls time to run through fully before starting on the next volume, I’ll be cataloging the winning translations/translators as well as some of my favorite observations on the posts!

I.v.1

This one was a win for Rose, with "A History of Progress in Black Glass Beads" getting 28.6%.

I.v.3

This one was pretty close, with "Sums Deposited With Laffitte" (of Hapgood, Denny, Rose, and Donougher) gaining a good amount of traction, but FMA's "Money Deposited with Laffitte" snuck out ahead with a 2.2% lead.

I.v.4

With a solid 49%, Hapgood and Walton's "M. Madeleine in Mourning" takes it.

I.v.5

To get a bit editorial here for a second, I love this chapter title a lot, and the winning Wraxall and Hapgood translation ("Vague Flashes On The Horizon", 59.2%) is the one I automatically go through, since I think it works so well. However I do have to say, I have a soft spot for Donougher's here. And if I had never started this whole translation comparison deal I might never've found that out!

I.v.6

Wilbour, Wraxall, Hapgood, Walton, FMA, and Rose's choice to translate this title in full as "Father Fauchelevent" won out over Denny and Donougher's choice to keep the French of "Pére Fauchelevent".

I.v.7

An impressive 90.5% of the vote for "Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris" (as translated by Hapgood, Walton, Denny, FMA, Rose, ans Donougher). I expected that to win, but jeez, what a sweep!

I.v.8

FMA and Rose take this one, garnering 47.8% for "Madame Victurnien Spends Thirty-Five Francs on Morality". The biggest point here, though, is the oddness of a full half of the translations zorking up the numbers. @blatherby kindly checked the different French source texts, but determined they all had trente-cinque. Curiouser and curiouser.

I.v.9

A decently split race, but it's a W for the Ws, with Wilbour, Wraxall, and "Walton's Success of Madame Victurnien" getting the winning 30.4%. (I gotta say, I personally think folks were sleeping on FMA's great word choice here.)

I.v.10

Donougher's "The Consequences of Her Success" got 44.2% of the vote. I also want to point out our second ever 0% of votes! Congratulations to our good friend Norman Denny.

1.v.12

It was a battle between M. and Monsieur, but Walton's "The Idleness of M. Bamatabois" won with 49%. Also, our third 0%: Hapgood's "M. Bamatabois’s Inactivity".

I.v.13

Donougher wins, with 31.1% for "Resolving Some Questions of Municipal Policing".

And now the tally!

Wilbour: 2

Wraxall: 3

Hapgood: 4

Walton: 5

Denny: 1

FMA: 4

Rose: 4

Donougher: 3

A pretty decent spread! Honestly, the Walton W is kind of a surprise for me because his isn't super well known; it's partly to do with agreeing with other translators from time to time, but I'm happy to see some success from him.

[s0l0th3w1s3]

Name suggestions after a friend's fluffy creechurs:

1) Fern

2) Cinnamon

3) Chives

4) Pizza

5) Smokey

6) Cheeser

7) Weezer

8) Sneazer

9) Nihm

10) Larry

11) Darell

12) Other Brother Darell

13) Sunkist

14) Crumb

15) Timothy

16) Egg

17) Bill the Rat

18) Zork

19) Silver

20) Clover

21) Nex

22) Milk

23) Speedy

24) Noodles

25) Pickle

- 🦊

Wah so many!!

Nex is cute but so is Sunkist

[skrumbly-booplo-incorporated]

Great Video Game Bracket 64 – CONCLUSION

And title of "THE VIDEO GAME EVER" goes to...

Disco Elysium!

Thank you to everyone who voted in this bracket's polls! The final scores for all 64 games will be listed below the "keep reading" tab.

It'll probably be a while until the next bracket – August at the earliest. In the meantime, there are two qualifiers going on as we speak...

Villain Bracket Qualifiers Form

Music Album Bracket Qualifiers Form

Until next time!

––––––––––––––––

FINAL AVERAGE PERFORMANCES

FIRST PLACE: Disco Elysium – 76.2143% (as of Grand Finals)

SECOND PLACE: Metal Gear Solid – 64.8571% (as of Grand Finals)

THIRD PLACE: OFF – 68.7375% (as of Semifinals)

FOURTH PLACE: Undertale Yellow – 59.8167% (as of Semifinals)

5th-8th Places:

#5: Stardew Valley – 71.4%

#6: Yakuza 0 – 68.767%

#7: Sam & Max Hit the Road – 66.4%

#8: Resident Evil 4 (2023) – 63.16%

9th-16th Places:

#9 – Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom. – 63.15%

#10 – NiGHTS into dreams… – 60.24%

#11 – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – 59.5%

#12 – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – 58.7%

#13 – PaRappa the Rapper – 58.4%

#14 – Night in the Woods – 55.917%

#15 – Yume Nikki – 54.14%

#16 – Shipwrecked 64 – 53.0%

17th-24th Places:

#17 – Dishonored 2 – 63.525%

#18 – Black Mesa – 57.675%

#19 – DuckTales (1989) – 55.88%

#20 – Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade – 53.98%

#21 – Pseudoregalia – 53.64%

#22 – God of War (2018) – 52.125%

#23 – The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – 48.75%

#24 – Sonic the Hedgehog Time Twisted – 47.26%

25th-32nd Places:

#25 – Lego Batman: The Videogame – 60.55%

#26 – Horizon Zero Dawn – 58.525%

#27 – DOORS – 53.75%

#28 – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – 43.95%

#29 – The Oregon Trail – 42.319%

#30 – Halo: Combat Evolved – 40.525%

#31 – Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) – 38.55%

#32 – Zork – 34.675%

33rd-48th Places:

#33: Cruelty Squad – 59.893%

#34: Dead Space (2008) – 56.067%

#35: Mega Man Maker – 54.933%

#36: Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga – 53.533%

#37: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk – 51.733%

#38: Plok! – 51.667%

#39: Papers, Please – 49.133%

#40: Journey (2012) – 41.6%

#41: Banjo-Kazooie – 40.167%

#42: BioShock Infinite – 39.841%

#43: Friday Night Funkin’: Hotline 024 – 37.6%

#44: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – 37.1%

#45: Wipeout 2097 – 36.9%

#46: Altered Beast – 36.767%

#47: Godzilla Creepypasta – 36.267%

#48: Spelunky – 32.933%

49th-64th Places:

#49: A Bite at Freddy’s – 34.5%

#50: The Secret of Monkey Island – 31.45%

#51: eversion – 27.6%

#52: Changed – 25.8%

#53: Power Stone – 24.9%

#54: Arkanoid – 23.05%

#55: Gimmick! – 20.5%

#56: Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void – 19.85%

#57: Day of the Tentacle – 18.75%

#58: Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings – 16.4%

#59: Human: Fall Flat – 14.55%

#60: Tempest – 14.51%

#61: Virtua Fighter 2 – 14.4%

#62: Command & Conquer: Red Alert – 14.3%

#63: Joust – 11.35%

#64: Sunset Overdrive – 7.95%

[rei-does-stuff]

Any more episodes you’ve watch of the dub yet?

Squirrel and hedgehog dub ep 4 lets gooooo

-Okay ik I said I liked this track but can you please stop playing it USE SOMETHING ELSE

-The difference in mic quality is staggering,,,

-“If slavery was good enough for the pharaoh its good enough for me” HUH??? WHAT???? That is such an insane line…

-Im still mad they made my gay squirrel brothers….I’m so sorry Jul and Geum you do not deserve this </3

-I still cant keep track of the names…

-Do they not have any other tracks….Did they only make like 3 tracks…Oh god, what are they gonna do for the song segments…Please tell me they get more music, PLEASE

-Btw I don’t hate them being brothers just bc I ship em, but bc I feel like their dynamic doesn’t work as well as siblings, ignoring Bamsaegi since he isn’t in this version but what makes Jul and Geum interesting is their very close relationship they’re VERY close comrades, and them being close just because they’re from flower hill and NOT because they’re related I feel like strengthens the whole message of the original show, regardless on your thoughts of said theme

-STOP SHOUTING THEYLL HEAR YOU !!

-I swear they’ll play this track in hell and I’ll have to listen to it for all eternity and go insane

-Dan Green better have gotten paid well for this, Yami Yugi is the king of all games INCLUDING war

-Saimo and Samo are such shit names btw

-I’m surprised they didn’t change the Korean to English

-Can someone good at Morse Code translate what the code in these eps are saying…Im curious

-I’m pretty sure the story is different in this ep…Why? What is the point?

-ZORK?? YUGIOH???

-Why are they yelling all their lines??? YOU WILL BE FOUND OUT

-It has this sort of flashing effect, probably from the film and it’s making my headache worse

-God this moment would be so good if they WERENT BROTHERS, “You’re the best friend Ive ever had, I truly expect for you and I to grow old together and maybe go into a little business for ourselves” YOU DONT SAY THAT TO YOUR BROTHER EVEN CENSORED THEY CANT HELP BIT BE GAY ITS DIC!HARUMICHI ALL OVER AGAIN….God I need to rewatch the original, after this perhaps?

-It is interesting to see them reacting to a potential Defector, but this is NOT how Jul would react to one in the slightest

-Oh yea everything is too yellow but you already know that

-God Jul is annoying in this…Not my gay Squirrel boy at all…

-Okay read them.” Ha, some of the lines can be a little funny, unintentionally

-THEY JUST CUT TO THE CREDITS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIGHT WHAT

That was insane and bad but oh my god this just reminds me I should rewatch the og after this lol

[faller-of-kharbranth]

//These are just some musings and stuff about Self Insert Fallers, generally focusing on SIFkah in particular:

//It’s under the cut in case the discourse contained in this is not something you want to be seeing on your dash, especially now.

//I am legit just… thinking that SIF!Kah should just be me but a step to the left.

//She already kinda is…

//If we’re talking in timelines here, it diverged from me on the 17th of April, so we have about… 7 weeks, or more accurately 1 month, 3 weeks, and 1 day of difference between us…

//(And also a few details I changed for anonymity reasons!)

//Ultimately, fae’s still more-or-less just me. Kinda.

//But… hm.

//Just… thinking back on the whole thing with Self Insert Fallers…

//There’s sort of a conflict between the creativity and will of the mun/writer and the fact that some people just… don’t take unreality stuff like this very well.

//(And the blame isn’t on those aforementioned folks for being that way, not at all. Telling people to “suck it up” if you’re writing about something that distresses them in some way is never good writing etiquette.)

//There’s a balance to strike there, as with all things.

//A balance between your own vision and other folk’s mental health, to put it in summary.

//Ultimately, this balance is why I still use the Self Insert Faller tag, and have another tag specifically for meta stuff.

//If just seeing a blog like this one makes you distressed in some way, then you can simply block the SIF tag.

//And if you’re fine with Mun Fallers, but just… cannot do well with outright fourth-wall breaks or similar meta shenaniganery, the other tag, “malkah meta moments”, is there specifically to be blocked in that case, at least for this blog.

//And, to be very clear, SIFkah in particular isn’t on any higher level of metafictionality or anything—I have seen a few SIFs that work like that, but SIFkah isn’t one of them.

//She is just a Faller who is a Zork with inexplicable Magic Anon abilities and some outside knowledge.

//However, meta moments from her may look almost identical to ones from SIFs with the higher levels of metafictionality.

//Looks like isn’t necessarily is, but in some cases the difference is irrelevant. Just because a cucumber happens to vaguely resemble a snake doesn’t mean it is one, but it triggers the cat’s startle response regardless.

//Regardless of the explanation I give here, if it distresses you, the tag is there for a reason.

//And ultimately, all this makes me think that there should be a tw/cw tag specifically for meta stuff that isn’t localised to one blog like mine is, if there isn’t one already. (#unreality comes to mind, but I don’t know if it’s the right one to use here. There was discussion about it at some point, and I can’t remember the ruling.)

[faafarchive]

RPG DE TERMINAL

Fala galera! Eu sou o FaaF e aqui está um projeto que eu criei em PYTHON! Chamado de "RPG de Terminal". Eu me inspirei no Easter Egg de Call of Duty Black Ops onde você consegue acessar um joguinho de texto secreto ao digitar "ZORK" em um terminal de computador:

E me inspirando nisso eu decidi fazer a coisa mais Nerd possível, criar um RPG usando programação, onde toda a história seria contada em forma de texto e o jogador tomaria ações que levariam ele a finais diferentes dentro do jogo.

Lembrando que se quiser ver o vídeo onde eu explico todo esse código é só acessar o canal:

Meu GIT-HUB para os interessados em ver algum código meu:

CHEGA DE ENROLAÇÃO!!!! VAMOS CODAR!

Lembrando que não vou acrescentar o código TODO aqui, vou apresentar aspectos que podem te ajudar a criar um RPG, se quiser a versão completa é só pegar no repositório do meu Git-Hub.

1 - CONFIGURANDO A ESCRITA DEVAGAR

Como vocês sabem, ao dar um PRINT em Python é normal que ele cole as informações muito rápidas no terminal, então aqui vai uma função simples que fará com que a escrita do seu terminal possa ser mais devagar, criando esse aspecto de uma história sendo contada:

Após criar essa função, não será mais necessário usar o print('') para fazer seus textos e diálogos, basta usar dessa forma:

Você pode regular a velocidade do seu texto mexendo na variável "intervalo".

2 - USANDO A BIBLIOTECA SYS

É muito importante importar a biblioteca Sys porque ela é responsável por criar funções para o interpretador do Python, e ao criar o RPG eu a usei para 2 finalidades: Limpar a tela do terminal e finalizar o código a qualquer momento.

Para evitar que fique muita informação poluída na tela, eu usei a função:

Assim quando ela for executada, a tela é limpa e seu diálogo/texto segue normalmente.

Em casos de muitos finais paralelos do jogo e várias vias de caminhos, eu me vi em situações onde eu precisava dar um "GAMEOVER" e fechar o código na hora, mesmo que ele ainda tivesse linhas a executar. Pra isso é usado a seguinte função:

3 - ADICIONANDO ANIMAÇÕES E UM DADO DE 20 LADOS

Uma das partes mais complexas do código se da pelas "belíssimas" artes em ASCII e um dado de 20 lados funcional que é usado em uma batalha que ocorre em um final secreto do RPG.

É realmente difícil você conseguir fazer uma arte linda para rodar no seu terminal de PRG, mas esse 1D20 que eu fiz quebrou o galho na hora de fazer uma rolagem, como vocês podem ver ele usa a biblioteca RANDOM para puxar valores aleatórios, fazer uma mini animação de números e no final exibe a rolagem do dado. Lembrando que para ver o teste real é só assistir no Youtube que eu tiro quaisquer dúvidas.

4- CONSIDERAÇÕES FINAIS DO CÓDIGO

Eu gostei muito de criar um joguinho com Python, recomendo muito vocês que querem aprender a mexer com IF/ELSE, LIST, MATHCASE, TUPLE...tentem fazer um RPG de Terminal e me marquem porque eu adoraria ver e apresentar em vídeo o projeto de vocês!

Se forem usar o meu código de inspiração eu faço uma última recomendação: Não usem tantos "While True" no código para não perderem, recomendo criarem funções e ir as chamando conforme o caminho do jogo seja acionado. MUITO OBRIGADO PELA ATENÇÃO AO MEU BLOG!!!!!

Ass.: FaaF

[randomtable]

1d8 Memorable Bartenders for your Tavern

1. A man named Saul who always dresses up in full jester garb and likes to do fun party tricks while he makes drinks. He’s always juggling things and putting on a show behind the bar. 2. Lolly, a plump older woman who has a kind and grandmotherly demeanor and a consistently heavy pour. 3. Herbert the land shark, a humanoid shark with a heart of gold. He’s not the smartest but he’s a good chum. 4. A lady who introduces herself as “Zork” but wears a name tag that reads “Susan”. Any time someone orders a drink from her, there is a 50% chance she tells them they’re all out—or that they’re all out of at least one ingredient, if it’s a mixed drink. 5. Bernard, a well dressed, older man with thick glasses and a perfectly groomed mustache. He appears incredibly out of place in the tavern but does not ever seem to acknowledge it. Bernard responds to any order with “Very good”, and moves with the curt stiffness of a cartoon butler. 6. A very small and very timid person named Porridge, who moves with incredible speed. When not busy with fetching drinks for patrons they seem to constantly be rearranging the bottles on the shelf—close observers may realize that they are placing them in order of how much liquor is left inside. 7. Salty Sabelle, former pirate who decided to settle down into an honest trade on land after surviving a shipwreck. Hard to say if the tales she tells of her former life are true, but they’re entertaining nonetheless. 8. Flim and Flam, a chatty pair of nearly identical, very androgynous siblings. They move with an improbable level of synchronicity, to the point where one can wordlessly pick up a drink that the other was halfway through mixing and finish making it correctly with no verbal communication between them.

[uhode]

Bok :) imas li mozda kakve preporuke za Beograd? Sto vidjeti, gdje na kavu/piće, hrana, hidden gems, što god? Dolazim na vikend za tjedan dana, nisam nikad bila :') tnx!

jao imam naravno!!!! ako juriš muzeje narodni je fantastičan, muzej jugoslavije i muzej savremene umetnosti su isto prezabavni i karte su smešno jeftine, u knezu tj glavnoj ulici ima i galerija sanua i slobodan je ulaz, baš se brzo obidje i uvek su zanimljive postavke, isto imaš gomilu galerijica po dorćolu ni ja ne znam da ih nabrojim sve. od bioskopa sve preporuke za jugoslovensku kinoteku i bioskop zvezdu, gvirni na instagramu šta daju kada ali karte za kinoteku su 300 dinara tj malo manje od 3€ a za zvezdu je ulaz slobodan i plaća se samo dobrovoljna donacija kako bi bioskop opstao. e sad za restorane baš i nisam ekspert ali za pića i kafice imaš lokal u alekse nenadovića, monks bar u knjeginje zorke, to su neki moji go to, cetinjska je beogradjanima postala kliše ali je svakako zabavno, to je kompleks lokala koje bih najbolje okarakterisala kao hipsterske i pretenciozne ali nisu loši samo mi volimo da ih pljujemo. gradski prevoz nije baš baš najefikasniji ali nije loš, možeš da se švercuješ do mile volje ako udje kontrola pošalješ A90 na 9011 i kupiš kartu to ti dodje oko 90 centi malo manje. moovit kida kad ne znaš kako da dodješ donekle i tačne su navedene autobuske linije. ako ti nije cimanje svrati do zemuna malo prošetaj se do dunava sedni negde kraj vode to je uvek fino, ako te mrzi da ideš do zemuna možeš da svratiš do savskog keja ispod kalemegdana ali ne u beton halu već na drugu stranu, brankov most nije strašan može da se predje peške, ima par slatkih lokala tamo kraj reke. malo sam se raspričala ali ako te zanima išta specifično pitaj slobodno sve ću ti reći

[steve0discusses]

Ep 44 Pt 2: Name Hunt

We start this half of the episode at the card game that is currently just kinda stalled. It’s more like a D+D session at this point, where everyone is separated, random enemies are appearing in random rooms, and their biggest issue is that they were balanced to work as a team, and as a solo fight they’re gonna freakin die.

Or Bjork will come back in the time it takes for the team to reassemble.

Sorry his name isn’t Bjork, it’s Korn. Or...well it’s something from the 90′s. Zork. It was Zork. But with a c. Bjorc Necrophades.

So as Yami dumps on Bakura about how boring this game is for him, Bakura reminds him that because Pharaoh shoved his memory in a puzzle piece, Pharaoh is dumb as a sack of bricks. Which like, relatable.

I STILL don’t quite get it.

I know that Seto kills Yami in the OG timeline, they have been saying that for 4 seasons. But if Yami had to put himself in that puzzle to put back Zorc...does this imply that the fight with Seto was to resurrect Zorc? that Seto was a pawn of Bakura even in the original timeline?

Wait is that it?

(read more under the cut)

Have I finally figured out the paradox that’s been bothering me all season, where before it looked like Yami died 2 separate ways in two separate timelines? I mean, while I am much better (not fully, hence the slow update schedule but am getting much better) Long covid for like an entire year removed so much of my memory, that I was able to play Undertale again like it was the first time. Which is incredible because it’s the most memed game and y’all, I forgot nearly every line that Sans said. Which I’m not gonna lie, kind of rocks. But also kind of difficult when I’m trying to remember the plot of this show.

Bro did offer to write the blog in my stead, but when he attempted to use Photoshop he could not figure out how to leave the text editor. Making these caps will one hundred percent crash my computer if he’s doing the driving. Photoshop crashes my computer about 4 times on a normal day, if you don’t know what you’re doing, Photoshop will seal you in a demon dimension before crashing your computer, and yet, still charge you 12 dollars a month. You cannot turn your back on photoshop, just like Zorc.

Anyway, back to the show:

I mean that’s my personal gamble. I will always gamble Tristan on who’s gonna die. And him being Bakura right now is just...ooo ripe to die this season, yeah?

Bakura took a moment to try and remind Yami that this is all a simulation and all of these pieces on the board were in fact not real people, to which Yami reminded Bakura that he himself is a ghost in a box and is only loosely defined as a “real person” himself.

👁👄👁

And then Karim, who’s name I had completely forgotten, so I’m glad the show reminded me, was like “Oh no! I’m dying!” PS he’s been “dying” for like 3 episodes, so I was very surprised he actually fully died.

Like Egypt Grandpa is going to outlast this stack of bricks down there, and that’s like a lot to take in. Modern Grandpa breaks his butt like constantly but Egyptian Grandpa is built like a truck.

Isis was very upset by this, and like I don’t blame her, look at the FEATURES on that man. True tragedy right there to lose that block of cheese right there and just be left with freakin Shada. Who, in case you forgot, has a motorcycle tattoo on his entire forehead. I too would be crying my eyes out, Isis, this is looking grim for you.

It only just now as I was writing this cap realized that when Bakura was like “who would you bet is going to die first?” he wasn’t talking about Yami’s high school friends, but was in fact foreshadowing the truly tragic death of Karim, who I totally remembered the name of.

Anyway, it’s still gonna be Tristan because for real, Karim doesn’t count.

Bit of a baby manger vibe to this shot, not gonna lie. Nice nativity we got going there. Baby jesus, Mary and Joseph, a shepherd, a wise man, and uh...Shadi. Shadi could be an Angel I guess, he isn’t technically alive. There. Print this out and put it above your grandma’s Christmas tree, instant nativity.

Speaking of the kids, Joey was really testing my gamble by walking headfirst into a trap that spits daggers into your feet.

Inside of this maze is step by step the same as the story of the tomb we saw with the hot version of grandpa that opened this arc.

Including this room, where Grandpa got betrayed by a very silly slingshot.

This was the show spoon feeding us Yugi’s character growth, since he was just a barrel of nerves and sinew when we first met this boy. He is braver this season, I will give him that, but it feels like it’s more that he’s the only person who’s fully aware that none of this is real. Yugi is inside of his own mind puzzle. It’s literally the only place he’s got full control (ish).

At the end of this little walk across the fear pit that literally no one here had any problems with (like Tea walked across this narrow fear pit in 5 inch heels!) The little box that carried Pharaoh’s puzzle isn’t here, instead it’s a bunch of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Reminder that even Season Zero Yugi, who is the most pile of nerves Yugi, would have kicked your ass even without the puzzle. Like this is mostly my own interpretation, but without the puzzle......Yugi would have straight up stabbed that guy, right? Like straight up? Yugi is a menace to society. Sure, he was nervous about having to defend himself, but Yami wasn’t a Pharaoh yet, he was Yugi’s dark side, who was backed into corners so hard by people with literal whips and people with yoyo’s with spikes on the end, he pretty much always had to choose violence in order to survive Freshman year.

Like yes he walked across a bridge without fear. Makes sense, the bridge doesn’t have spike yoyo’s, fire shooting out, a guy holding your girlfriend hostage with a gun at a burger restaurant, and whatever capitalist nightmare Seto has come up with that month. But we can still call this bridge character development, as a treat.

After Joey tricked the switch that opened the garage door to Yami’s secret name, the episode ended.

can’t wait to see Tristan hold up some fingers and have the show convince me it’s a gun.

Anyway, here’s a link to read these from the start, which I keep giving you although I need to reread my own blog myself, haha.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[hisuianhellion]

Fletchling?

An absolute CRITTER of a bean. But I'm judgin' directly, not taking into account evos, so I'd say a 3/5. Mostly because they're FIGHTY li'l shits and I just kinda like Fletchinder better.

I do not want to be accosted by a birb. Please do not the Zork.