#but i think i'll get further if i take each variable that is hard to control for and think about them in sequence

[bellshazes]

there are very few things in minecraft that are truly dependent on time alone; i don't even mean the unit-rate of AFK farms, but things that are exclusively governed by the passage of in-game time, like sugarcane, nether wart, amethyst, etc. the most obvious of these is mob breeding, and the aging up of some but not all mobs. you can increase your cows by 50% each time you breed every five minutes, no less, ditto other mobs. sure, that counter only increments when the mob is in a loaded chunk, but that's almost always trivial.

turtles are doubly governed by time, seeing as they are constrained to 5-minute breeding intervals like all other breedable mobs AND their eggs hatch according to the immovable stubborn slow grind of random ticks. eggs, however, only have a chance of cracking each in-game day they are loaded, and need to crack multiple times to hatch.

Turtle eggs have a chance of cracking during random ticks. Throughout the vast majority of the day, random ticks have a 1/500 chance of causing the egg to crack. There's a small window in the very early morning hours where random ticks have a 100% chance of cracking eggs. This window is defined as the time between celestial angles 0.65 and 0.69, or 03:36 am and 04:33 am on a 24-hour clock. This window lasts 48 seconds in-game. - MC Turtle Mechanics on GitHub

if you are not loading the chunk during this 48-second window during nighttime, you may not get a guaranteed tick. if you skip the night, you will never get a guaranteed tick. other than refusing to sleep (at least until after 04:33 AM) you can not speed up turtles, only slow them down by sleeping and not being close by.

turtle breeding would be deeply, deeply frustrating and despair-inducing if it mattered at all, whatsoever. functionally, if you're farming eggs for various other farms, you only have to suffer gathering enough grown turtles to breed and harvesting those eggs immediately. if you're farming scutes for turtle master potions or scutes, you can do the same as farming eggs but put a hopper minecart under the sand to catch the scutes when the eggs hatch and the turtles grow up, and you're unlikely to need either turtle helmets or turtle master potions in bulk. either way, just set up your area where you spend a lot of time and let it run in the background after actively breeding them.

turtle egg hatching only becomes optimal when you are doing things that are not turtle egg hatching. the question becomes not how to optimize the farm, but what does maximum optimization look like for farms that cannot be traditionally optimized because they're gated by time? you're unlikely to even encounter waste-as-limiter, such as in some high efficiency, low redstone farms that substitute player inventory for hoppers. you have to understand the farm as a piece of a larger passive system composed of all the other separate things you intend to do, and your own rhythms and goals as a player.

[kastle09]

Principles: States of Play and Transition

This is a new sub category of articles describing very fundamental topics of how I think about games in a very abstract manner. As different as fighting games are in mechanics and scope, once you strip those things away what's left to observe are the underlying aspects. I wanted to talk about concepts that have application to any fighting game you play.

It's definitely something that you feel more than you can describe to someone so in that vein I want to articulate a new concept which I will describe as “The States of Play”. If you really boil down to it, at any point in a round I believe you are placed into one of five states.

The 5 States

The five states are as follows:

True Neutral - When neither player has advantage and neither is forced to initiate

Offense in Neutral - When neither player has advantage but you have to initiate.

Defense in Neutral - When neither player has advantage and your opponent needs to initiate.

Offense in Pressure - When you have advantage and have a set offensive plan

Defense in Pressure - When the opponent has advantage and you need a set defensive plan

Understanding which state you are currently in can inform your decision making and recognise what options are currently available to you and which aren’t.

True, Offensive and Defensive Neutral

Neutral gets used as an all encompassing word, but it can be broken down further as even if both players are playing “in neutral”, they aren’t always concentrating on the same aspects.

For instance a player who is Defensive in Neutral has more of a mind for things like Anti Airs, Dash checking, Defensive whiff punishing etc

Conversely a player who is offensively minded is looking for opportunities such as dash pressure, spacing traps, jump/divekick pressure etc.

All of these tools at a players disposal encompass neutral but which you are focused on and which you can kind of ignore because the state of the game can be dependent on a variety of factors.

I'd say it's actually quite rare where the state of play is truly neutral (for reasons I will go into soon) and in fact the shifting to one of the other types happens quite quickly whether it's due to health differences, meter advantage or character toolset.

When understanding what state of neutral you are in it, it helps to ask yourself the question:

“If the timer ticks down, and the neutral continues to be played in this way, who will win first?”

So let's look at some scenarios and apply this question.

Scenario 1: Mirror match, Life Lead

Let's say it's a mirror match but one player has a life lead on another. Just based purely on attrition as each side whittles the other down evenly, the player with the life lead is going to win as they just have more of a resource to maintain the status quo.

Therefore the onus is on the opponent to try and make something happen and initiate to change that variable.

Scenario 2: Grappler vs Zoner

So in a scenario where a character has a clear advantage over the other in neutral we can tell as soon as the round start bell rings, The character more dominant in neutral is automatically assigned to be “Neutrally Defensive” and the opponent is “Neutrally Offensive”.

The example of a grappler vs zoner archetype represents this in the extremes by the fact that often the grappler does not want to spend any more time in neutral then is required whereas a zoner is the opposite of that.

But now let's say it's later into a match and through exchanges the grappler has a life lead over the opponent, even though the zoner is stronger in neutral, They can no longer win by trading the same way.

Now we are in a scenario where the onus is on the zoner to initiate and the grappler is allowed to let the opponents come to them. The roles of each player are now reversed.

Scenario 3: Playstyles affect

This time, instead of thinking in terms of character, we are going to look at it in terms of how the players themselves can affect this dynamic.

If a person naturally tends towards being more offensive regardless of the matchup or resources at present he is evidently forcing an opponent into the compliment.

Think about a lot of beginner or intermediate level matches where it's common to give the advice to “let the opponent hang themselves”.

In other words, if they are taking all the risks, we don’t have to do anything but play reactionary and punish the over commitment. The reason that kind of blanket advice is effective despite matchups is the opponent is clearly not playing the matchup so it is no longer relevant.

Having said that, characters can still have an effect on playstyle match ups. Let's imagine a match between two defensively minded players who carry identical skill sets and play styles but one player has a character much more suited for that type of play then the other.

Just because the character has the tools to play strongly in that way, even if each player gets the same opportunities in neutral and captalise on them identically, the output of the stronger neutral character may be unequivocally higher than the other just because that character is able to produce more in each scenario. Either the opponent has to work even harder for the same reward or move to a different approach, one more suited to the character strengths.

Pressure as the Attacker and Defender

When I use the term “pressure” what I really just mean is spots where one player has frame advantage over the other. These are spots that just mean someone has an advantage and therefore definitively, Someone is attacking to maintain or get value from the situation and the other has to defend and escape.

As we know, there are a number of situations that this could represent but surprisingly, the decision making can be remarkably similar depending on the game. “A +2 situation by any other name would smell as sweet” you might say.

For instance in Street Fighter, a knockdown and an air reset after an anti air are remarkably similar situations even if we don’t internalise it as such. In both spots the rock - paper - scissors game of meaty vs throw vs shimmy is identical.

What's even more interesting is it's a spot where a player's default decision making can be so different despite that similarity. Someone may play close attention to how they act on wake up but autopilot during air resets for example. The biggest difference that sets these scenarios apart from neutral offense and defense is that it's far less free form. Usually there will always be a selection of very specific “correct” responses that each player needs to select from. This is a big benefit to players who thrive in making players ask the hard questions, shoving a multiple choice question in your face, that if you get wrong they get damage, oki and the ability to shove another one in your face.

If neutral is a mind game of intentions that leave a backdoor to remaining safe, A pressure scenario is like reaching the end of the poker hand, the River card has just been flipped and each player has to show their cards and live with the decision (There you are Cam, that was for you).

The Transition

So now that we have talked about the states, the final thing I want to touch on is how these interact when we have to quickly switch from one state to another and there are a couple of things to note. You will notice that however a player is playing in neutral (defensively or offensively), either situation can produce a pressure situation that gives them advantage. Whether I offensively whiff punished by setup or baited an opponent into over extension defensively the result has led to the same Attacking pressure. What this tells us is states aren’t linked in a circle only leading from one to the next. It's possible for these transition to happen from any state to any other in the flash if the opportunity presents itself.

I don't have to be aggressive to get an advantageous position; in other words.

The other interesting thing about this transition phase is the psychological aspect it presents, with particular focus on the difficulty of task switching. It's something that becomes most apparent when you watch someone play vs when you actually have to play yourself.

Think how much easier it is to anti air when nothing happens in the few seconds prior, vs when you have just whiffed a button.

What you may feel as an obvious error is actually a really difficult skill that needs to be trained and its difficulty can be explained when your brain had to transition from a state you were thinking about opening someone up to then having to mentally switch to defending in neutral.

In Football(Soccer), there is a well known concept that one of the times a player is most vulnerable is when they have just gained possession of the ball.

They have just expended energy in the challenge, still trying to get the ball under control, and haven't fully grasped where other players are on the pitch (teammates and opponents alike).

Tactics have been developed specifically on speedily identifying and defending in a manner to panic the player on the ball and regain position as quickly as possible and the same is true for fighting games, as possession in soccer is analogous to gaining the plus frame advantage once again.

Conclusion

It's an interesting experiment to see if when you play you can identify the states for your game. Not every game has the same neutral, or attacking defending options, but I think the broad strokes are there whether it be traditional 2D, anime, 3D or teams.

This is a concept that I'll probably refine in future as I consider it more and if I need to include or trim anything so if you have any thoughts Id like to hear them and improve what is this first draft on the States of Play in fighting games.

[iain-games-fmp]

Mechanic implementation: Family Management 1/2

A Major aspect of my game is the family management section, as it provides context and incentive for the player, as well as a sort of necessary outgoings, as you have to pay for rent, food, heat and medicine as needed. This should, ideally, work in tandem with the shop section, but I'm not worrying about that for the time being. For now, I want to set up the actual family system such that your actions in balancing money have a notable effect on the world around you. I was thinking of doing this by having, in the background, a sort of points system. So, for example, you start off with: Food points: 3 Water points: 3 Heat points: 3 And while rent is a constant deduction, you can choose to reduce these at the risk of your family becoming hungry or cold or thirsty.

I've decided to make a small mock-up of this in a blank unreal project just so that I've got something to work from. The first issue I faced, however, was that Unreal engine does not have "Global Variables". At least, not as I understood them. A small amount of research shows that this is because things like Actors and Pawns are refreshed upon changing levels and their variables are reset to defaults. So, you solve this by storing those variables in the Game Instance.

Ok, so further thought has revealed that the ideal way to do this is going to be Boolean values and working with probabilities, and the probability of me doing that is low, except I can't think of any other way to do it, so I'm going to have to give it a try. Next up, I want to create a "status" type thing because currently the text underneath those names that just says "healthy" is hardcoded, so I need to work on that being actually changeable. So next up, I'm going to create an Actor class called "Family member" and give it some different variables like "Hunger", "Thirst", and "Temperature". However, I was having a bit of a hard time figuring out how I was going to identify these actors, especially because there weren't any instances of them in the world. So I spawned 3 instances of them in my menu and then gave them each a unique identifier (1, 2 or 3)

Now, I need to get these speaking to my menu and then I need to worry about making the rest of the system. I'll probably just use a button labelled "advance day" as a debugging tool.

I created a set of boolean values that I can turn off and on as needed in order to create status effects.

OK, so on event "begin play" The actor "Family", which has 3 instances of it in the world, goes through and checks what it's ID is. If it's 0, it's the player, if it's 1, it's the partner, if it's 2, it's the child. Then, it goes through and assigns it's own four variables to the status. At the moment, this only happens with the player because I haven't yet set it up for the other two. AMMENDMENT: The outputs of the branch are, quite obviously, the wrong way around. We want to say the player is "Ok" if the four Boolean values are all false. This has been corrected in the code, I just couldn't be bothered to take a new screenshot.

The original plan was just to grab the variable names from this and then plug that into some text formatting, but unreal engine does not have the ability to grab variable names. So that idea very quickly went out of the window. Obviously I didn't want to hardcode every possible outcome of this system, so some reworking was in order.

I tackled this problem by creating some text variables that are equivalent to the boolean values I have and just setting them in a series of branches. I don't think this is very tidy, so I'll probably go through and rework it as a sequence later. Once those are all set as either the name of the variable I'm trying to set it as, or null (haven't figured out how to format that correctly.) Then, I pass the boolean values into an array, which I then pass into a foreach loop. The foreach loop goes over every boolean and checks to see how many array items are false. It's supposed to break out to set the player status as "OK" if all the Booleans returned false. However, at the moment this doesn't work as intended, so I need to do some more work to it.

1/2

[janadaniel4grassroots]

THE DIRTIEST DATA

TARGET FOR TORTURE

A TRUE ACCOUNT OF

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIM

September 2020

Contributor: Jana Daniel

Grassroots Guardians of Truth

UPROOT a DV Movement

The goal was to torture me through my own account that way no trace.. I did it to myself because I'm insane. Covert ops in a time where technology is impressive but vulnerable to data corruptions and lack of understanding especially in the legal arena where a firm understanding is needed the most. I was researching and running pilot programs to discover ways to truly keep women who make it out safe without cutting them off from society. This experience has proven that I'm a textbook case with tenure. Everything happens for a reason and my advocacy and philanthropy pursuits are far from over. The following is a percent of what occured and what I saw, technology throughputs allowed manipulative imagery and allowed changes to text photos before sent. The need is abundant whether we are ready or not.

Amazing what a year can do. I've learned an excessive amount of information now that I've acclimated to the happenings. By now, everyone has heard of predictive text and I'm sure it comes in handy. However, my experience was quite different. The global keyboard uploaded without my prompt, by a second individual who accessed my account on a seperate device and through the Google Play Store selected and downloaded the app. As my phone updated around 3 am the keyboard app uploaded and would change automatically while typing. I write a lot, so this became problematic and prevented me from continuing my endeavors until a solution is found. It would be another 7 months little did I know, before my life was my own again. A virtual kidnapping essentially the best way to describe this systematic, continual abuse and crime against a person. It's killing me faster than the physical abuse because I couldn't identify the perpetrators.

Deep-thinking and clear understanding of what is occuring and where protections and oversight will be needed. Automated decision making isn't a human function and nor what we're accustomed to. In less than a year due to the reality that someone or something is communicating data to me, i began to rely on the predictive guideline set before me just as an officer would be able to predictively policy enforce. But that in fact is exactly the point, there is a violation of human, civil, and individual rights to not be infringed upon. For my own pursuits in life I try to maintain a secure system and in doing so through my ordinary course of business I conduct certain procedures. One being, data mining, another being continued education, pilot programs when available, etc. I had experienced a different breach around December and I began seeking the identity of the criminal.

Initially, unsupervised or monitored only, (permission not given for either) coded script played out on my screen. After I reported, the game changed. Suddenly, an advasarial context is all that I'm receiving and I'm suddenly the victim of targeted surveillance that I'm very well aware of. Let's face it, you normally wouldn't know that you are being placed under surveillance. I now know that this in fact was, an example of Deep learning of general advasarial Neuro network a GAN with a generator and a discriminator being put against each other. Understanding that what your brain fires on it wires on as well. They fed the deepfake scenarios to me each with enough truth or probability that I had no choice but to seek the remaining info that they failed to disclose and that is described as (mask) words. It took a lot of time initially but I became more efficient as I continued to learn.

As protected individuals by order of a domestic violence protective order, to have the Thomas Co Sheriff Dept. And the Pelham PD testing my ability to decipher the information, realizing that I see what is happening and being further disrespected and even asked to park and contact an ambulance to let them know that I need help finding the right person, who at the time someone was insinuating that my deceased father was alive. The cops didn't even investigate.. couldn't get more obvious they violated my constitutional rights and mine and my children's rights as victims of DV. My children, by the way, utilize the phone as well, the constant changes to the screen and location of the apps was noticed first by my son. No matter what I did they had control of the content in the phone. Using face recognition to identify if I'm telling the truth and constantly surveilling me. My vehicle too, equiped to note my every move. Taunted by my home devices such as the ring light that would switch off when I needed the lights on. I haven't had moment's peace since the leave. I'm to blame according to the Sheriff Dept. Odd doesn't seem reasonable but okay, I have to use the healing process to investigate.

I wish I could say that is where it ended, far from it actually. Social engineered to stop trusting in everything, creating discord with people I'd just began to connect with after years of isolation. Then in state of grieving the loss only father, vulnerabilities exploited, cognitive dissonance attempted to create an unstable demeanor because who could possibly explain that cards- Google search pages- are leading to videos that contain AI image alterations so that what you see is familiar. Someone was available twenty four hours a day and when I wasn't seeking the information, someone was threatening me predictively and also implemented sounds that at first I didn't distinguish as just sounds. This would occur throughout the night sometimes. I honestly believed that we were in danger. I fell from the healthy state that I had just had a glimpse of into a sickened, deregulated state that would continue for months. Words uncommonly used by myself such as Tactically, vie, omniscient, etc. would flash and storyline would clearly be laid before me. Other tactics were used such as Fuzzing, quasi-imperceptible, emotional extortion at it's finest. It will be blamed on AI technology, but they failed to understand the identifying bits of info that I detected and categorized chronologically and per device or paper that they derived from.

I will be blamed for not seeing my children who were removed due to DV. I'll take the blame because it was a decision I was able to make due to the fact that I was being encouraged to have all four of the children together in order to get the money. Seemed like a ploy so I went alone to Rundown the people who had become increasingly more than I expected. Conspirators, bribe takers, and there's us… Collateral damage. It seemed to have turned into a game where death was the intent. I held on because I knew that someone has been made aware and I had reported to different agencies and to my trusted friends. Time lingered, and three months became six and suddenly they were threatening to arrest someone else. Realizing that they've violated our rights and worked diligently to destroy the security that I had worked so hard to establish after escaping DV with the belongings in my vehicle. They still were far from done. I had been forced to live without AC and the plumbing problematic after an attempted repair by the landlord left my room flooded. The Corona Pandemic began the same time, also the first and last time that my spouse had paid child support. After three months, they came to collect the rent. It now June, I demanded the air be fixed to no avail. I then had all repairs done myself. I spoke with him expecting a negotiation and then received an eviction notice. Upon filing a response and counterclaim, I was ordered an extra month rent above the amount petitioned for… I received no credit for the repairs that I had just had made, and I had seven days to vacate. I did not mention that the entire three months of No child support, no AC, no response from the landlord, that I had been receiving predictive context stating… “We built a prison just for you” forced to sleep with our windows open, remain outside during the day.. in a matter of no time, our happy home had become our misery. I offered the landlord the full judgement amount cash in hand, he denied to take it , he said he prefered that I move out. I didn't get my appeal in because I had confirmed that our family land has been sold under the premise of an invalid will and just as ten years before, heritage stolen from us all. Seven days came quickly and I didn't have but one who I still trusted at that point. I was granted a couple days and demeaned in the process. On that last day I left with my children who were unaware that we no longer has a home. We hadn't enjoyed any of the summer so I took my children on what they knew as a vacation. I was a nervous wreck managing them and their little hands, don't touch, don't breath, the virus! As I searched for options within my budget and tried to predict the next time that he networks and deprives. I decided that I will use the land that I own and homestead. No one can ever put us in that situation again. Now how can I make this work? I haven't built the house yet due to the lengthy divorce and the other intentionally created variables. Without revealing everything, I made it work and the house will be built soon.

After all of that, if it were a LAN network and the neighborhood and city were to blame then it's over… The worst has yet to come. My lawyer dropped the ball, so there was no contempt hearing, meaning no support from the abusive spouse. The final divorce scheduled for Monday August 24th. On Thursday prior, I advised my attorney that I wasn't a lamb being led to slaughter and neither are my children. I am not impressed with her demeanor seemingly in defense of the opposing side and reiterated that she needs to advise me of what the correspondence is rather than knowing everything they're saying and leaving me in the dark. She said that was mailing a check for $1500 of the $5k he owes. I explained how I intended on explaining everything to the judge with physical example of two clean devices in which he could type a sentence structure and I across the room could in fact with acceptable accuracy through mining relay his message… I was placed on hold, then she was going to return my call. I received an email the next day stating the hearing had been cancelled. I guess I was close enough to cause cleanup on DiVorce-20. I couldn't make up the incompetcy if I tried… it's been over a year and she let my protective order expire when she let the scheduling fail the kids and I. She's knowingly prolonged everything working an agenda.

Meanwhile, I'm mining data, and see threatening communications about my mother being the price that I will pay. For two days and there was even a signature of 4umud:\3 I had seen threatening messages all the while through, they wanted me to harm myself, so I didn't realize the gravity of the situation until the morning of August 27th, when they told me she had passed away. I am trying to hold it together, my heart is broken into pieces. In the last year and a half I lost my father, escaped DV so I thought, pandemic, bought a household full of furniture, got evicted after being tormented, burned most if the furniture that I had bought just a year ago, and then have to accept my mother's passing after being told of it prior to. How? I write sometimes into the night… Only to wake up and see everything has been deleted or modified to look like jibberish.

The plan was to make me appear alone and unstable. Then with a signature they could get the rest of what I have. The Underwoods made everyone think that I had a big check, that's so they would attack me and funny how I said to him.. your plan isn't going to work… He said they have a new one and the two days before my mom died he didn't call.. he has and did call every single day but those two days. So no, I don't believe that anyone has been here to help there is no reason that I could. The full story would take forever to explain a hundred different things … Deep learning of how sick these people are. That statement is inclusive of some judges, some lawyers, some landowner, some banker, some ex's, some banker, and some evils.

Regarding the factual basis for my findings… an advasarial context targeted at DV Victim and At some point to gain a new level of trust an observer weighed in - ALL CAPS- it appeared to be but this is stalking and Harassment using the same protocol as a guideline. Being that I worked for the Baldwin's and the quantity of equipment, servers, and technology couples with security… I'd say that BYOD could have easily attached to any device that I've had especially if someone made the mistake of hacking the email that I had as a corporate address. Quasi-imperceptible as everything in convulsion is nearly impossible to figure out. Casual reasoning nearly out the window now that I've used the Ai tech inappropriately due to the advasarial context intended to disrupt and destabilize.

Disquis was an app that he or someone loaded to my account and I did go back and test most of the apps I saw because I needed to know what info was obtained and how to prevent in the future. Red team, that's me. ResGN to reinforce the learning and GPT-2 is quickly being replaced by GPT-3 a natural language system that whether forward or back will remember the context of the usage of the specific word. Cryptography circles implemented initially to create a trustless environment. Deepfake tech that I've lived for ten years without the fancy assigned label's. Ultimately the same as always… Doubt your reality and make sure everyone doubts your capabilities because how else can they suck the soul out if you. If you see me and don't recognize me… Know it's because he is wearing my reflection… If I take it back he is the one who looks like an empty shell. I am not empty.. I have a flicker.

I hope this helps you understand that I'm capable of handling the delivery of proof and facts that will assist others to understand that this is a very sophisticated form of technology and weaponry all the same when abused and causes one to harm another or one to harm themselves then I'd say the prosecution rate will increase significantly. Once recognized for the heinous malfunctioned personality that takes the time and devotion to harm another in such a way that is worth what I just endured teaching myself because the law and legal representation failed to do anything to help ... Oh except drop the contempt, postpone the final, and my protective order expired too.

"If you really have to do something ... Go alone!" generations of wisdom... William Kirby Daniel