#which this stretching the narrative beyond it constraints maybe

[shallowrambles]

anon i agree with you and don’t have much to add to it except the latter paragraph is mostly what i mean sans my own hyperbole… i have a dialogue breakdown of it somewhere for andrea that gets into the nuances of how (regardless of how sympathetic i feel and how understandable i find it), that interaction for me personally comes off as: “i beat my devastating and difficult addiction and now you have two seconds to beat your own and if you don’t make the right decision and i am not enough for you to decide to try to change now (as i use somewhat antagonistic/dehumanizing/rigid language) hasta la vista bby!” 🫡❤️

i certainly agree no one was in a good place post-purgatory and everyone who battled there was prone to giving into that sense of hopelessness!

[mitigatedchaos]

Banished

(1,400 words, ~ 6 mins)

Banished, Colonial Charter, The North, and the 4 gigabyte Megamod

I purchased the game Banished (2014) some time ago, but hadn't gotten around to actually playing it until recently. (I also replayed the excellent Populous: The Beginning, a game released back in 1998, and thus presumably older than some of the people that read this blog. Both are or were going for around $5-7 lately.)

Reviews described death waves, crop infestations, entire towns lost due to starvation, families killed by frostbite, and fires wiping out house, smithy, and storage barn alike. And sure, I could micro-manage a hundred tiny medieval villagers in a never-ending fight against the crushing poverty of the era, slowly grinding away surplus on meagre human and animal power, always one harsh winter away from ruin in an unforgiving wild landscape... or, having bought it on sale, I could wait and test it out when the mood struck me.

After playing vanilla Banished, I wasn't sure who wrote those reviews.

(The old way would have been to attribute this to console gamers, but this is a forward-thinking blog and we embrace inter-system solidarity.)

Build the hut to gather some berries, then plunk down some houses and a woodcutter before the winter hits and you, too, will soon be waiting impatiently for the randomly-determined traders to bring the specific variety of seed or animal you were hoping for and finally give your villagers the nutritionally-balanced breakfast they deserve. Yields will vary with the climate and seasons (and you'll lose some yields when winter comes early), but stored food in Banished doesn't rot and only about a quarter of your villagers will need to be assigned to food production.

If you're used to these kinds of games - say you racked up some hours in Anno 2070 - vanilla Banished will seem light on content. The production chains are short, the variety of goods is low, and there are only two kinds of houses. If it seems as it were made with a development budget of "just one guy," well it more or less was.

Once getting a grasp on vanilla, it was time to get some mods. More specifically, mod compilation packs, something I've learned to appreciate from industrial minecraft.

Colonial Charter

Colonial Charter is a mod pack with a relatively unified aesthetic and theme (although less unified on either count than The North, which we'll discuss later). You're (implicitly) a colonial governor working on behalf of some European power perhaps in the 1600s or 1700s. If you were hoping to engage in the true violence of the colonial era, setting out to conquer a continent with only muskets of iron and a will of steel, you will be disappointed - Banished does not feature combat. With one fierce touch, hunters transmute a deer into venison and leather without even the pretense of a bow and arrow, and so Colonial Charter represents your colony's entirely-optional military adventures as just another production building, this time masquerading as a rocky outcrop. (It does dutifully note your soldiers will require snazzy uniforms, the 'full livery' itself the result of a production chain.) If you want to build the rest of the fort, though, with cannons and wooden palisades and the like, you're in luck. Vanilla Banished has certain rustic charm to the art, and that's still on display here, so you may well find yourself taking a picture of your snow-covered frontier fortress with canons that don't do anything.

Both vanilla Banished and Colonial Charter lack a capstone building, like Anno 2070's 'monuments,' as well as, it seems, specific victory conditions. Disasters, when activated, seem relatively rare. In one game two wooden houses burned down, hardly a major setback for the Mitigated East Pensachussets Company. In another, a tornado tore through an uninhabited part of the map, and in another, a disease outbreak resulted in the (ordered) slaughter of about 75% of my supply of beef cows - a herd which was itself only one third of my supply of farm animals. In fact, with traders taking food in trade, I was often swimming in supplies, the only real constraints being the slow rate of production for Building Supplies or Fancy Homewares and waiting for traders to bring the right kinds of seeds (either for specific industrial purposes, for diet balance, or for a diversity of crops to resist blight).

But buildings don't require maintenance, so even a relatively slow production of Building Supplies is just a cap on the rate of expansion (while in real life, if you don't continuously produce the same, your building stock will gradually decrease in number and condition). Banished could use some elements from Anno 2070 - the combat or the missions help to liven things up and create breaks in the periods of building and stringing up production chains, and present a bit of risk/reward in how you allocate your resources. Alternatively, a genius aspect of The Sims 3 was the "wishes" system, both the "lifetime wish" and the more ephemeral ones that came up in response to immedate context, which could be "promised," creating a stream of game-seeded player-directed mini-goals that implicitly create a narrative around the relatively empty vessels of the sims themselves.

Story aspects presented in either way might be interesting - and a good resource sink.

The North

The North is a mod best acquired from its website. The Steam Workshop edition is out of date.

The North is more-or-less everything I thought Banished would be, but Norse, and still without unpreserved food rotting. Starting with only a chapel, one man's worth of rye, and around 20 nomads, none of whom were in the posession of tools, I subsequently struggled to reap enough surplus production to afford a charcoal pile in the hopes of maybe one day using it to fuel a blacksmith, as often even if the grain were planted early, winter would arrive early, and despite throwing every villager in the village at the fields, not enough grain could be collected to survive the year before it succumbed to bitter cold. In one village an entire population froze to death. In another, they starved. It was, in a word, brutal.

But the difficulty of The North depends a lot on the starting conditions. In the Shepard start with three families for a total of nine villagers (six adults), each with tools and the village starting with a herd of sheep, the situation was much easier. The North requires a lot of micro-management. It extends the idea of the game's developer of a more personal style of city-builder, where each villager and each family matters. In this case fewer villagers was better - while rotating one or two through the production chain to replace the tools, there were fewer mouths to feed, and thus less overhead needed for manual hunting and gathering.

The buildings are nicely-made, but while in vanilla and Colonial Charter child villagers reach age 18 after about 4 game years, in The North it appears villagers age one year per game year. This makes the situation easier to handle (as The North is tough!), but growth takes longer. Ultimately I didn't want to micro-manage the village for 100 years to get it up to size, though it might be worthwhile to visit it every now and again for the gentle gardening feel of the shepard's hamlet.

Megamod

The problem with the 4.67-gigabyte (once uncompressed; it's 1.5 GB compressed) Megamod is that it has too many mods. This makes it in some ways reminiscent of Minecraft modpacks like Feed the Beast (long live Industrialcraft). If you want to build the perfect-looking little village, Megamod is probably the best - especially if you want to stretch across the whole map, rigging up canals, moats, ponds and castles. But it's unfocused, with too many concepts and too many buildings. Some of the buildings are great, while others are clearly novice efforts. With so many options for everything, it would likely be easy to min-max and lose the element that makes Banished a game. Had all the effort that went into these mods been, instead, applied as one project with a relatively coherent vision of gameplay, it would have been able to produce a game that is 'complete' in a way that vanilla Banished is not.

Alas, with normal Banished food yields in Megamod, I set my villagers off to gathering up food and farming and wandered off to look through the piles and piles of buildings. I'd say that maybe somewhere in Megamod is a tornado shelter, but I doubt the base game code supports it. In the Early Summer season, a tornado ripped through what very little existed of the whole town, destroying every building and carrying off all the villagers to the great beyond.

[scifigeneration]

Beyond 'Bandersnatch,' the future of interactive TV is bright

by David I. Schwartz

Make a choice to see the next phase of the story. Netflix

Make a choice: Do you want to engage with your media passively or actively?

The December 2018 premiere of Netflix’s “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” offered consumers a new way to influence the entertainment they’re watching. Netflix has a growing list of choose-your-own-adventure movies. What viewers might see as a simple choice, such as which breakfast cereal a character begins the day with, could affect the whole show’s storyline. There are other choices to make as well – some of which change the plot, and some of which may not.

Viewers aren’t watching these interactive films just once. Rather, they are watching them over and over again to find each ending and post maps of the diverging plot lines. I think I sat on my couch for nearly three hours straight trying to exhaust all of “Bandersnatch’s” choices as it followed a programmer and designer through the process of game development.

I’ve been teaching and researching game design and development since 2001. I see this type of experience not as just the future of entertainment, but as the expansion of a standard method of storytelling that game designers have been using for decades. Netflix is introducing new technology and new audiences to this type of entertainment, but fiction writers have been exploring similar themes for far longer, creating stories of time travel and alternative realities that let people fantasize about redoing decisions in life.

Controlling your own destiny

There is a kind of game made popular by “Dungeons & Dragons” that provides a way to understand and expand what “Bandersnatch” explores. Role-playing games let players pick characters with multiple traits, such as strength, health and special skills, and work together to achieve story-driven goals.

Fans of “The Lord of the Rings” books and movies will recognize the idea of a team of characters with different backgrounds, abilities and motivations, all trying to work together toward a goal. The adventure is not just in whether they achieve the task, but the encounters, mishaps and even battles that happen along the way. The ultimate outcome depends on the choices players make along the way.

Many role-playing games get people together around a computer to explore a collective adventure. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Role-playing games started with players gathered around a table, keeping notes on paper and rolling dice to incorporate the role of chance and probability into the adventure. A human game master coordinated everything, keeping track of what was happening and working with players to advance their stories and the overall plot of the adventure.

Early computer games, such as the 1980s-era Infocom text adventures, turned the role of game master over to a game designer, who controlled the choices and their consequences. In the decades since, more powerful computers have let modern digital games offer a great many choices. Teachers have begun to use elements of role-playing games to help students learn.

Illusion of choice

With “Bandersnatch,” Netflix used software to process viewers’ choices and deliver the appropriate video. When watching and “playing,” I wondered if there were too few choices. The show offered only two choices of breakfast cereal, and the viewer couldn’t choose to skip breakfast, make eggs or open the freezer to grab some ice cream. But, there’s a very good reason for these constraints.

Every story decision requires more writing and more development. Tony Hirst/Flickr, CC BY

I often tell my students that when they’re creating role-playing games, the problem isn’t giving players choices: It’s deciding what happens next. Giving players lots of options is great, and fun – but with every choice the job gets harder. If there are three kinds of ice cream in the freezer, that’s three different sets of video to show vanilla, chocolate and strawberry – and possibly three different scripts, if the choice actually has consequences.

In game design, we call this a “branching narrative,” where every choice spawns as many new branches as there are options, and the tree gets bigger and bigger all the time. A movie with an enormous number of options would require multiple sets, extra time for actors, huge amounts of special effects work, extended production times and increasing budgets.

Such a complex film would also take viewers huge amounts of time to experience. Digital game players can handle this sort of effort by saving their progress and taking a break, returning to resume play hours later, or even days.

With an interactive movie, would a viewer want several days’ worth of watching? I don’t know if anyone has an idea of how long a typical interactive movie experience should last. My three hours on the couch watching “Bandersnatch” seemed about right – and ran through most of the options.

The Netflix producers borrowed from game designers, and the classic “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series, to give viewers the illusion of choices when really the alternatives were limited. My own research recommended the same technique: Allow the players some choices, but bring them back to the main narrative thread at key points.

Future of interactive media

There will be more interactive movies. Netflix has built its own software for “Bandersnatch,” which it can use for other stories too. There are already several addictive interactive kids’ shows, including “Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale,” “Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile” and “Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout.”

Gamers are already familiar with this convergence of film, interactivity and branching narrative. Cinematic video games, like “Indigo Prophecy” and “Heavy Rain,” let players make choices in dialog and other cinematic aspects, all of which alter the endings. An academically published game, “Façade,” is considered important not just for showing that scholarly games can be fun to play, but also demonstrating that academic concepts of branching narrative and story can create meaningful play: The player visits a couple’s apartment, and depending on where the player moves and what the player says, the couple reacts in different ways.

Engaging with a couple on the rocks. 'Façade,' by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern., CC BY-ND

I anticipate different genres of shows will explore interactive formats. Imagine playing through historical fiction where you can choose to execute Marie Antoinette or not. I also expect viewers will be able to make their choices in different ways than just pressing buttons on their remotes – perhaps by using voice recognition on their phones.

If artificial intelligence and machine learning systems get better at telling stories, viewers might even be able to suggest new possible choices, with the resulting content generated on the fly while people watch. Of course, there’s a strong overlap with virtual reality, offering immersive escapism, which is, in my experience, a key goal of interactivity.

In the meantime, “Bandersnatch” fans who want to continue exploring choosing their own adventures to direct a story can look for local gaming groups and game stores. “Dungeons & Dragons” and “HackMaster” are regaining popularity lately. So is live-action role-playing, in which people physically act out their fictional encounters. In these environments, players can ask “what if” without running into the limitations of software development and movie production teams. Human players can engage in the full extent of their imagination without any illusion of choice.

About The Author:

David I. Schwartz is Associate Professor of Interactive Games and Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology

This article is republished from our content partners at  The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

[fire-of-the-sun]

Kabby Reunion Speculation

My thoughts on Kane and Abby’s upcoming reunion this season.

WHEN:

Waiting for Kabby content during this long hiatus is painful, though nothing we haven’t had to endure before. Last season we also had to wait a month to see the highly anticipated Kabby kiss in 3x09. Of course, that wait was made a little easier after already enjoying the first half of the season with them together and knowing their first kiss was guaranteed when the show returned. In this case, the lack of interaction this season has us all anxious, but I think our wait will soon be over...

As of now, there is no guarantee they will reunite in 4x09, but I think it’s highly likely now that Abby is seen in Polis in the promo images. There’s no indication if Kane is present in this episode yet as he’s not featured in the trailer or promo stills, but I have to believe that they wouldn’t bring Abby back to Polis just to coincidentally have Kane be missing. Even for non-shippers and casual viewers that irony would be inescapable and making us wait even longer for no legitimate reason would be incredibly frustrating for everyone.

I know there is a fear right now that their reunion could be overlooked, but I highly doubt that that will be the case. I think the more appropriate fear would be whether or not it gets the spotlight it deserves and whatever we do get is not overshadowed. Their relationship is far too important and its something we’ve narratively been building up towards all season and it’d be beyond thoughtless of the writers to skimp on the culmination of it. If the writers can take the time to give them conversations over a radio and reference each other in conversation, they care enough about this relationship to give it a proper reunion. They ship them too. Kabby is also literally the biggest canon romance right now and this will be their biggest reunion yet and it deserves a scene of fitting magnitude and payoff.   

HOW:

In the episode trailer, Clarke says they have 6 days left before the death wave which means 4 days have passed before they get to Polis. I believe Abby and Clarke would have radioed to announce their return and allow both ends to catch each other up as they've been doing. Because of this, I imagine Kane would be expecting her return and would greatly anticipate her arrival - probably prepared and ready to greet her even. Their reunion could potentially be at/near the beginning of the episode. Luckily, I think this presents an opportunity for a less stressful reunion as there will likely be no immediate danger or major time constraints. Yes, Polis is a less than savory place to be and there’s so much to do, but I think they can be afforded a healthy moment to interact and enjoy their reunion before getting down to business.

To imagine how their reunion could go down, let’s examine some of their interaction in the past. This reunion could bear some resemblance to 3x13 in their display of concern for each other and grant us another round of Kane holding Abby’s face and caressing her hair etc. Their lives were more immediately in danger then of course, and Abby was visibly injured, but I think its something Kane would do anyway regardless of whether she’s hurt or not. Though, by contrast, this reunion should definitely be happy rather than stressful. We also saw Abby genuinely smile when she reunited with Clarke in 4x07. I definitely think she’d do the same seeing Kane again, who will no doubt smile back. Another popular theory is them repeating their reunion lines from 2x08 and I think that’d be a wonderful callback. Also, knowing the amazing hugger that he is, will more than likely bestow her with his biggest, most loving embrace.  I’d love to see what Paige and Ian could do with a scene like this...

Also, not to sound demeaning in any way, but if Clarke can run up to Bellamy and give him a big hug after an absence in 2x05, then Kane and Abby - two people in a deeply committed and explicitly romantic relationship who are desperate to see each other again - should definitely be afforded the same, if not more. I’d love for a big embrace that knocks the wind out of each other followed by a kiss and maybe some loving words - possibly later in the episode if they get some moments alone. I don’t think it’ll happen here, but I’m still holding out for an “I love you” this season (x).

ABSENCES:

Paige and Ian have both missed 1 episode so far this season. If the idea of missing a minimum of 3 episodes per season is true, this only gives them a window of about 3 more episodes of interaction. With so little time left, I’d like to hope they won’t miss as many episodes especially as things are building towards the climax, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. Although they generally only interact for half of each season, less episodes this season means that at this point, no matter how many more episodes they’re in, they will have spent less than half this season together...

In terms of future interaction, I’m also holding onto the hope that 4x11 will feature some great Kabby content. Being directed by Ian and written by the Benson sisters (who seem very pro-Kabby) gives me hope. As painful as 3x13 was, the Benson’s still gave them a lot of spotlight in that episode and I think they’ll continue to do so if they can. This would of course be a really unique opportunity for Ian to helm and I wonder if knowledge of substantial Kabby content is part of the reason this episode was originally chosen for him (if that’s how it works?). Paige also tweeted to one of the Benson sisters (I can’t remember which) how much she loved that episode in particular and part of that comment could be attributed to her love and gratitude for the Kabby content they were given perhaps.

I’m very curious as to what we may see of them the rest of this season. How will Abby’s brain condition affect their relationship? Will we get any more explicitly romantic moments? Could situational strife leak its way into their relationship they have to work through or will they be as united and loving as ever? I just hope we have a lot more to look forward to and be grateful for...

We deserve to see them reunite and - if only for a handful of moments - stretch them into lifetimes in the joy of holding each other once more. To let their fear and strife melt away to nothing but immeasurable bliss. Knowing the nature of this show we could have a less conventional reunion but I still hope they are afforded some moments of joy, love and togetherness to shine as a beacon in these tough times... 

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts. No matter how their reunion happens or when, I’m just eager to see them together again!

You can check out more of my Kabby related meta HERE.

[globalwarmingisreal]

The Sad Irony of Trump’s Presidential Response to Hurricane Harvey

  The oblivious president

On Tuesday, August 29, as Hurricane Harvey lingered over Houston dumping an “unprecedented” four feet of rain, plus a few inches, the presidential entourage landed in Corpus Christi. Three days earlier Hurricane Harvey came ashore north of Corpus, pounding the small community of Rockport as a Category 4 storm.

South Texas took the brunt of what is becoming a new normal: other-worldly weather events. It’s hard to know how to respond to an unmitigated disaster. The president’s role as consoler-in-chief is critical in times of widespread tragedy, though awkward in the best of circumstances. The last thing local authorities need is the small army required to transport the president.

This is true of any president, a rare example of bipartisanship. What the president says, how he comports himself, is another matter. Much has already been written about President Trump’s narcissist-tinged, tone-deaf response while on the ground in Texas.

But beyond his grating, bumptious manner, there is a much sadder irony in the president’s comments, revealing a stark disconnect between what he does and his understanding of what he is doing.

The best crisis ever

“Wow – Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500-year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!” – Presidential tweet, August 27, 2017

Wow indeed, as Harvey is third “500-year-flood” to hit the Houston area in as many years and by far the worst. Never fear, Donal Trump is on it. Acknowledging it was too soon to congratulate each other, President Trump boasted at a meeting in Austin on Tuesday that his administration would meet the “epic” 15 trillion gallons of water dropped on Houston “better than ever before.”

Years from now people will say “this is how to do it.”

I hope so because with each passing year, meeting unprecedented natural disasters will demand the best of us. Aging infrastructure stretched beyond its design parameters, human displacement, resource constraints, economic, physical, and emotional devastation. We best be prepared. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Trump has no plan, and it’s the best

Mr. Trump rode to power on a populist message of remembering the forgotten Americans overrun by a world changing too fast. Promising to make us all “sick and tired of winning,” people ate it up. At least enough people to get him elected.

The problem with winning the presidency is then you become president. The job of selling is done, now it is time to execute. To execute you need a plan. President Trump’s lack of a coherent plan for his presidency is evident in his approach to climate change, though hardly exclusive to this one issue.

To be clear, there is nothing President Trump could have done to prevent Harvey’s devastation. Any poor decisions contributing to the storm’s impact were made long before he became president. But decisions he and his cabinet are now implementing ensures more devastation, more human and economic loss, and more “never before witnessed” catastrophic weather in the decades to come.

Trump’s plan? Undo whatever Obama did, including a policy mandate to improve infrastructure resilience in high-risk flood plains. The Trump administration believes it best to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in Harvey-like storms just “as it was before.” Like it will never be again.

If not now, then when?

There is one thing Harvey makes crystal clear, at least to me. We are out of time. The energy, heat, and water vapor producing Harvey was baked into the system many years ago. The sprawling concrete urban planning of cities like Houston is considered adequate, even as the city drowns.

Yet, the narrative from the Trump administration is that discussing the risk of climate change during natural disasters is “opportunistic.” A chance for the left wing media to politicize the issue, thereby diabolically politicizing the issue.

The obvious fact is that Trump and his people will never find a good time to discuss climate change. Not now, not ever. Expunge the phrase from official documents, defund research, turn off satellites monitoring the biosphere. Make false promises to coal miners and blame it on “fake news” when it doesn’t work out.

This is the world in which Donald Trump lives. A world very different from the one you and I will find ourselves all too soon. For many that world has already arrived on their doorstep with a vengeance.

The sad irony of Donald Trump

It’s safe to say that President Trump does not “believe” in climate change. Or maybe he does. He softened his rhetoric about the Paris Agreement when treated well in Paris and allowed to flirt with Macron’s wife.

From my distant (but all too close) perch, it seems Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in much beyond notoriety and monetary wealth.

He says things like “they’re gonna take out the coal and clean it.” As if there’s a job for someone with a scrub brush and determination to make that coal sparkle.

He withdraws the United States from the hard-won Paris Agreement, claiming the rest of the world will no longer be laughing at us.

In Trump’s world, the subtle nuance of a truly empathetic response to Hurricane Harvey, perhaps to anything, is simply beyond his abilities. He can’t make the connection between a successive series of unprecedented extreme weather events and a changing climate.

President Trump is oblivious. The real tragedy is that he just doesn’t care.

We can still mitigate the impacts of climate change headed our way. We must. Be we focus on adaptation to a new world.

Hang on, we’re in for a tough ride.

Images credits: U.S. Department of Defense

The post The Sad Irony of Trump’s Presidential Response to Hurricane Harvey appeared first on Global Warming is Real.

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