#TOO AGGRESSIVE I KNOWWWWWW

[inkykeiji]

i can’t believe caleb likes having his hair pet i might actually jump into the sea

[heyimkana]

Duuuuuuuude that yandere deleted scene? MASTERPIECE

Can you imagine if reader told him she was obsessed with HIM?

Omg he'd lose it

Yandere Jinwoo x Yandere fiance anyone?

This is TOO GOOD QUEEN

AAAAA THANK YOU SO MUCHHHHH

honestly seeing how she keeps saying how much she wants to marry him, she's already obsessed with him at this point 😂

bro jinwoo would LOVEEEEEE to have his partner obsessing over him oh that man would be grinning and smirking all day long whenever she gets jealous and then becomes aggressive with him I KNOOOOOWWWW his kinky ass would enjoy being tied up to the headboard i knowwwwww he likes watching her ride him while she's angry UGHHHHHHHLKSDJFLKSADJFLK SUNG JINWOOOO

[thegatesofinfinitespace]

“you’re lucky you’re not dead.” ( YOU KNOW, YOU KNOWWWWWW)

--

It is swift. Decisive. Another God to be felled. The glow of its blood illuminates the darkness of the tower's halls, trailing through the winding architecture.

The flight of easy prey.

His target is backed into a corner, yet another room full of countless offerings. The habitual hoarding of one more "great" deity.

It is only as his sword comes down, that something else happens. Quick. Unexpected. Rho has no time to stop the motion, momentum already carrying his strike through.

His blade cracks into an object, a relic. The reaction is immediate and intense.

Bright, unyielding light.

Even unseeing, the Hunter knows he is thrown. Feels himself crash through a surface, and the consuming rush of air as he falls.

...a stupid mistake.

He doesn't feel the force of the impact, blacking out the instant the ground meets his frame. At least until....

.

.

.

A voice, parts impressed and scolding causes Rho to stir. His body aches, tries to shift against sand and stone. The sun blurs in his vision.

How did....?

It’s quite an entrance. 

Soaring across the sky like a star, only to crash into the reploid’s territory just as spectacularly. To say she was dazzled would be an understatement, and not many impressed the King of the Undead. If the source was anything valuable, Neo Arcadia would surely benefit from it.

To find a human at the epicenter, though, that was... The only conclusion that could be made was that said organic must have had a new-gen cyberelf on them. Not many worked on non-robotic life; the cost of energy alone would have been enormous. 

He’s quite big, but it takes no effort on her part to pull him out of his crater, and laid to rest against the nearest stone outcropping in the sand. It’s no bed, but better than being in the smoldering rock, the best she can do to assist a human. The weapons on him are all old, ancient in design, simple steel and metal. Being herself, the canine can appreciate a good antique, but... they’re too new. It’s odd.

Anubis Necromancess stands for a moment, her spear embedded in the sand, and eyes the organic laying nearby. He’s still alive, still breathing, injuries... less than expected. Hopefully that cyberelf isn’t one-time use. Lady Cial would have quite the reward for that to be given to her. An even greater one if...

The man’s eyelids flicker, and she looks down past her snout. “You’re lucky you’re not dead.” Metal fangs glint quietly, though no immediate movement of aggression is made quite yet. “No Neo Arcadian would be out here willingly.” A reasonable accusation, for the only organics that were outside of X’s protection belonged to one enemy cause. “I do not enjoy harming humans, however... You need to give me a good reason not to.”

[canmom]

to clarify on what i'm saying about the VA feeling awkward here - I'm sure when it comes to a big emotional scene they're going to nail it, the actual VA itself here is generally really solid. it's more about inevitable technical issues to do with how dialogue is implemented in a game like this - not new issues, they're the same issues that just about every Bioware game had.

I actually have in mind a really old post that @expertpedestrian once made, which sums it up very amusingly:

What I’ve been hoping is that DAI was phase one of the Great Bioware Technology Update, with them having to get to grips with a whole new engine; phase two could then be them updating all the little things, like their animation and conversation systems. The flaws in their dialogue pacing are particularly noticeable when one character interrupts another: ANXIOUS SERF: Inquisitor, it is absolutely vital that I– [just under one second of total silence] IMPERIOUS TWIT: Begone, peasant! The Inquisitor and I have much to– [just under one second of total silence] RAMBUNCTIOUS LAYABOUT: Will both of you stop yelling?! I’m trying to get some– [just under one second of total silence] [then the table explodes]

(yeah. i used to have a dragon age blog. i knowwwwww)

bg3 is generally not as awkward with it as Bioware games tended to be with the awkward pauses between lines, but it does occasionally have a similar sense of disjointedness. I would say the reasons for this are...

in just about every game, the voice acting must be chopped up into lines; in a Bioware-like CRPG, each line in the script will be associated with an appropriate emote animation which is then blended procedurally with other aspects of animation like gaze, blinking, general idle fidgeting etc.

if subsequent lines were recorded at different times, which they must be since this is a dialogue tree system with multiple paths, there might be a noticeable difference in the line read/intonation. this doesn't happen too often, but it is noticeable at times.

the game must write around the blank-slate CRPG main character, whose insertions into the dialogue tree are necessarily fairly generic, and in this case, unvoiced. a character can turn in a fraction of a second from aggressive to fearful because your character said something intimidating, but because the actual intimidating line is not reinforced by voice acting and animation, it leads to a jarring transition. (this is admittedly perhaps a downstream effect of overfamiliarity with the Bioware/Telltale model where the protagonist is fully voiced, and doesn't always say what you think they're going to say, which is a different set of problems.)

sometimes it's a writing issue - the NPC's reply seems to be repurposed from another part of the conversation tree and not quite fit what your character said.

the limitations of the animations and rigs. if the capacity for subtle facial expressions is limited, then acting must be quite broad. but we're at 'see the pores' closeup levels most of the time here. it's an odd sort of uncanny because the characters are generally quite alive - they blink, look to and fro, fidget etc. - but the animations seem kinda unmotivated on a physical 'acting' level, since it's still fundamentally just canned animations, there is physically no way that they could animate every cutscene.

to be clear this is the kind of thing that emerges because other aspects of the character rendering are so advanced. I feel like lower-detail or more stylised models can 'get away with' more.

the real issue is that rendering has advanced a lot faster than procedural animation in videogames. we understand the physics of light very well - which isn't to say that writing a well-optimised efficient shader for skin and hair and the like is easy, but it's a fairly bounded problem.

animation is another story. while we have all sorts of sophisticated techniques now - many kinds of IK, inertial blending, motion matching etc. - you're always dealing with all sorts of weird edge cases. animation is also potentially quite expensive, both in terms of rendering (the more complex logic you have to do, the more milliseconds the CPU isn't doing other things; the more detailed your animations, the more disk space they demand and the more data must be streamed into memory and unloaded afterwards) and in terms of time to author it (animations take a long time to make, and while you can use mocap to get to more natural performances more quickly, cleaning up mocap data and blending it plausibly is also time consuming). creating a good IK system is more of an art than a science - lots of tuning different parameters and solvers until it gets the results you like.

and while Naughty Dog and their ilk will go out and prove we can get very impressively natural looking animations in games now, it's way out of the reach of most studios, even with D&D money. the animations in BG3 don't look bad exactly, they're just... not on the level of the rendering, in a way that's noticeable. if you tried to shoot a movie like this, it would be a very strange and awkward movie. but then movies don't have to be hundreds of hours long!!

perhaps some relevant context is that I'm right now working on animation for our game - nothing anywhere near as complex as what BG3 is doing, but then we're not nearly so big a studio lol, and I'm trying to make something way better than it should be by dint of pure hyperfocus - so. perhaps I am particularly alert to animation jank right now.

I should say that even if I observe places BG3 is flawed, none of this is trying to say 'it's a bad game because bla bla bla'. it's more a record of encountering this artefact of the whole like, cultural machinery that produced it - the D&D revival, oldschool CRPG nostalgia, newschool CRPG-with-sex-in-it, the general evolution of the Bioware-like game, and in general observing what's easy and what's still difficult in even big budget videogames nowadays.

identifying the flaws in a thing helps me decide what I wanna do differently if I ever get the chance to work on an RPG lmao. (which would honestly be amazing, I really wanna make an RPG, I love games with a big emotional story most of all and those tend to be RPGs. hell an RPG might actually make sense in VR if the vision pro is as comfortable to use for a long period as they say. or maybe I'll end up working on flatscreen games at some point down the line.)

anyway. it's a bad game because it isn't disco elysium

more baldur gate

I think I've gathered most of the party now. time to venture forth

we did find another warlock it turned out. they've got a spin on him as a kind of demon slaying folk hero, which is cute. what's weirder to me is when characters will just casually speak of game mechanical stuff like being a 'warlock'. like, oh yeah i made a pact with an eldritch entity beyond space and comprehension, but it's no biggie, you know? there's one in every neighbourhood. though that is something of the problem of Forgotten Realms, it's such a kitchen-sink setting that it's very hard to figure out any sort of coherent narrative thrust for any of it.

my character seems to be settling by default into the kind of default 'pragmatic, generally prosocial crpg hero' model. most of the other dialogue options just seem needlessly standoffish. they do have certain party members disapprove when you take plot hooks, but honestly that all feels a bit silly to take as a prodding to play a more selfish character because like. what do you want me to do, not engage with the game? occasionally you get to click a 'hey, look, I'm also from baldur's gate!' dialogue option, but it never adds up to much.

it's frustrating in a way, because this being so specifically D&D-based really calls attention to the difference between CRPGs and TTRPGs. at the tabletop, I can give my character a distinctive voice, motivation, general habitas - and other players can respond to that and react appropriately. of course, this is not possible in a CRPG to the same degree, except within the rails laid down by the game writers. since the main character is unvoiced and characters react to dialogue the instant you click it, she is even further diminished from the voiced characters.

something noticeable in this is that it has a similar line reading problem as a lot of Bioware RPGs. characters' lines will sometimes noticeably differ in how they're acted - intonation, force, etc. - and there's that ever-noticeable cut between individual lines of dialogue. it has the feeling that the lines were recorded separately in a studio without much in the way of context.

overall the NPC acting in this game is... well it's that classic modern AAA videogame problem right? the character models and rendering are very lifelike when they're still, but the way the characters move is a bit stiff, a bit broad, a bit unnatural. of course nobody has the money to individually hand-animate every single dialogue line in a CRPG of this sort of scale, so they're leaning on canned animations and procedural blending techniques, and it works sorta well enough. it's got that fuzz of videogame jank to it.

it looks like we're about to run into the Evil Races D&D Problem pretty soon, oh boy! the goblins are attacking the poor tiefling refugees. why? i'm sure it will be given a clear understandable motivation and not just that they're evil by nature, right? this is something that I'm pretty sure the game is inheriting from the OG Baldur's Gate games - I definitely remember venturing into a mine to fight gnolls or something. Minsc was there. I have no doubt Minsc will show up in BG3 as well - he's like the most iconic character in the series.

the contrived nature of the premise is classic D&D shit. "you all meet on a mind flayer spaceship, united by parasites in your brain" is definitely the sort of thing that a human DM would cook up as a campaign starting point. that said, it does feel a little weird that everyone on the mind flayer ship between them cover most of the player classes, each with their own colourful backstory and an identically sized tent that they can pitch in your mysterious extradimensional campsite. I think the fact that the introductions are spread out a bit makes it feel more artificial - I get why they didn't want to frontload it with every single character right at the beginning, but it's like, 'damn, this guy has a player character sort of vibe, i bet he was on the airship' and sure enough, he was...

(speaking of the immersion-breaking camp, the respec guy really seems kinda unnecessary as a diegetic element. just have a menu somewhere, trying to make this skeleton guy make narrative sense just raises way too many questions.)

but I mean I can't complain too much that a videogame is a videogame, right? as I recall, in BG1, the recruitable party members were just random adventurers who you'd run into here and there. this is more of a KotOR II-like scenario, where every character has a thing in common that pushes them together.

the Tactician difficulty level, combined with the squishiness of level 2 characters, is definitely pushing me a bit. I had a fight with some bandits. all of them had names and unique voices, interestingly - really applying the Apocalypse World principles. however they will not like, surrender or anything. don't ask me why I was fighting these people to the death, I don't think they did anything that really did any harm to my character, but I wanted to unlock the respec character and you have to get past them to do it. not that I knew that when I saw hostile characters.

anyway, it was a cool fight because it was a bit of party-vs-party - the enemies were using the same abilities I was, and using the environment to their advantage (read: blowing me up with exploding barrels, the nerve of it). Larian of course have their fancy fluid sim system from the Divinity series, which actually integrates rather well with certain D&D spells like Grease. there's a lot of potentially interesting tactical possibilities, although in the end, it came down to the familiar tactics of 'split them up', 'disable them with debuffs' and 'focus dps'. D&D combat is very swingy - once I took out a couple of that other party, the fight was pretty much decided, but when I'd taken a few downed party members, there wasn't really much reason not to just load the quicksave.

I decided to spec my 'lock as a bladelock - I'm playing a chainlock on tabletop so this seemed like a good way to mix it up. of course then it turned out that Wyll is also a bladelock, so he's probably not gonna get much time in the party ^^' but maybe I should bring him along and we can just be warlock buddies. that said... the 4-person party size is... I can see its necessity as a balancing measure, but it does feel like it pushes me towards the standard healer (shadowheart)/tank (lae'zel)/rogue (astarion)/me structure. since I need someone to unlock doors, I need someone to heal, and I need someone to stop the enemy beating up my poor squishy party members. but now I'm a bladelock, maybe I can take over from Lae'zel as the frontliner and free up a slot for one of the other guys. probably it's a big enough game that there will be room to mix and match parties over the course of it.

one thing I do kinda miss from Bioware's games is the intra-party dialogue triggers. the characters here mostly don't have random conversations, at least so far - maybe they will later in the game. that stuff did a whole lot to add life to your party members and make them feel more like characters.

honestly? this is making me want to go back to various isometric CRPGs like Tyranny. so far, despite spicy elements like the mindflayer thing, I'm not fully hooked by this story. but I will give this one a chance all the same.

[sunlitevergreens]

just digging into my natal chart for a little review & thought id lay it all out there

my first house is just full of little-to-no boundaries and an elusive self-concept. i wonder if my self-concept would better emerge if i set better boundaries, or if i need to develop a better self-concept in order to make & manage boundaries

taurus in the 2nd house does not make sense to me in regards to aggression or practicality. i am too impulsive to be practical with money. but! i do force things much more often than i should. maybe that's where it comes into play.

yeah okay gemini ☀️ in the 3rd house means i am a hot mess of a person okay. my brain is all over the place & i rely on other people to figure out who i am because i dontttttt knowwwwww & communication is very important to me but i am notoriously bad at it soooooo 🤦 absolutely no surprise that this house has a mutable sign

so mercury is hanging out in my 4th house & if that just doesnt frustrate the dickens out of me. ugh. like, communication is at my core so why is it so haaaarrrrddddddd. also like, venus is in my 4th & between the two they really nail down the "empathetic listener" part but communication is more than just listening. so. 🤷

i guess i need to be more deeply in tune with my sexuality because that's what it seems like my 8th house is telling me. if im going to meet my goals, i need to call out that part of me & honor it. which like, as a queer person, my brain is like 50% excite & 50% uuuggghhh okay here we go again.

it comes to absolutely no surprise to me that my 9th house is very intense. i am very serious, especially in the context of learning. i take it very seriously or not at all. it makes it very challenging to take anything lightly.

my 11th house is quite a party. again, i can be very serious or intense. and this house even dares to presume queer activism, hinting at challenging societal standards of relationships.

despite my gemini ass coming off as flighty & verbose & loud & my need to constantly be heard & acknowledged coming off as clingy & outspoken, i am very private. and my 12th house highlights how intuitive i feel & how secure secrecy and introspection can feel. i constantly throw secrecy into the wind in favor of vulnerability in the hopes of making connections but it is not my comfort zone to do so. it is much more comfortable to shut down & do my own thing.

[colonel-jeff-tracy]

Please could you give a general gist of your rules and rundown for people who use Tumblr mobile and can't access your rules page please? None of us would want to cause trouble we didn't mean to cause just in case 😇

Sorry if I made a boob of it XDDDDD I’m not good at editing tumblr. Here they are…

RP Information from Jeff’s Mun

Thank you for following me! That’s super nice of you XDDD

This is an RP blog, and I do it for fun! It’s just a hobby, it’s not my job…I have one RL job and that’s more than enough XDDDDD. I do my best but sometimes RL gets in the way and I can’t reply to every ask or prompt. That, or I just can’t think of a response XD Please don’t be discouraged and keep sending asks, the next might cause a creative spark in the old noggin XDDDDDD

I have my own personal headcanons about Jeff. It’s fine if you don’t agree. We never see him in the show, only hear other peoples’ opinions of him. I don’t have any special insight, it’s just how I see him.

I love Bill Paxton, if you are offended by his face please leave immediately.

My Jeff is approximately 30 years older than Scott, that makes him mid to late 50s in our RP family. I knowwwwww some people like to RP him as super young, but that doesn’t really work for me as he’s crammed so much into his life already XDDDDD. I prefer a middle aged Jefferson.

As above Jeff has lived a respectable amount of time, and so the way I RP Jeff slightly differs according to his age at the time. I RP him as quite arrogant and reckless in his younger years, but evolving into an awesome dad slowly over time XDDDD

I’m a selective RPer: I RP with my friends in the RP Family so I am strictly Munogamous. If you send an ask or prompt IC for a character I already RP with then…it kinda puts me in an awkward position. It means I have to choose between disappointing my friend or disappointing you ☹☹☹ And friends always come first, so… XDDDDDDDDDDDDD

That said there are sooooo many roles that could be added to our family: Brains, Kayo, Kyrano, Lady P, Parker, etc etc etc. Just reach out if you’re interested!!!!!!

Feel free to ask OOC questions, I have a big mouth and love to go on and on and on and on and on and on about the Silver Fox.

For some random reason Tumblr doesn’t notify me of mentions (grrr) so please use my ask box!

Be mindful of RP Sins and don’t godmod! (It’s this! And this speaks of all various forms of it.)

Kind of related but sometimes the rules/boundaries Muns have can differ and that’s OK. I won’t RP if our styles just aren’t compatible as it won’t be fun and will just lead to conflict. Which…I’m (surprisingly) not that fond of XDDD

My Jeff has five kids only: Scott, Virgil, Gordon, Alan, and the other one. My Jeff doesn’t have any sets of twins, or “long lost” children. My Jeff was a devoted husband to Lucille and definitely would have noticed at some point during the nine-month gestation period that his wife was about to pop out a sixth kid XDDDDDDD

OCs on a case-by-case basis. My preference is to RP with canon characters but – sometimes an OC is just too good to ignore XDDDD As above, no extra kids please I have too many already!!!

Any mean or passive-aggressive posts about the RP Family will just be ignored. I have a no-engagement policy. If you are following me and are maybe kinda fond of my feelings?? I’d ask you not to engage or reblog them either but…obviously that’s down to you. They are very hurtful and sadly getting more frequent lately :’(

I think that’s it! Basically, RP is just about communication and consent. I RP for fun and because I like Bill Paxton’s butt. Thank you!