#Mike Sellers

[l-1-z-a]

What is your best 'The Sims 2' life story? - Answer by Mike Sellers, Lead Desinger of The Sims 2

I was A2A, which is cool but odd, since I never played the game much after it was released. All my stories come from inside, like:

the designer on our team who could make any two Sims fall in love in something like seven or eight moves, no matter what.

the careers we tried to put in, like the doctor’s office: better skills attracted more walk-in patients. Better waiting room decor and furniture enabled them to stay around longer before leaving. But you had to practice your skills (diagnosing and procedures) on patients, and if you got it wrong… they screamed horribly, causing some of those waiting to flee. This never made it in the game, alas.

the “story mode” we wanted to put in, where based on the kinds of objects you bought and put in the house, the lighting, sounds, and camera angles would change as the game deduced whether you were telling a Comedy, Romance, Horror, Action, or some combination of story types. The prototypes for this worked really well… but again, it never made into the game.

I probably have a few more, but those are the ones I can tell — and that professional courtesy does not stop me from recounting. :)

[the-gershomite]

Looney Tunes #150 -July 2007- DC Comics

"Daffy Duck Behind the Cartoons"

writer: Joey Cavalieri

penciler: Neal Sternecky

letters: Mike Sellers

colorist: Dave Tanguay

"O Martian, What Art Thou?"

art: Peter Bagge

"The Seventh Season of Darkness"

art and color by Bob Fingerman

"Moulin Stooge"

pencil and inks: Scott Shaw

"Office Spaced"

art: Mike Kunkel

"Take Manhattan and Run"

art: Aaron Renier

"Sari, Long (musical) Numbers"

art by Chynna Clugston

[splooosh]

“Terminus”

Mike Sellers

[cryptocollectibles]

Professor Xavier and the X-Men / Over the Edge Flip Book #1 (November 1995) by Marvel Comics

Written by Fred Schiller, drawn by Jan Duursema, Rick Magyar and Mike Sellers.  Daredevil Flip written by Ralph Macchio, drawn by Robert Brown and Mike Witherby; 

[watch-joey-collect]

[rainypebble07]

Hola! What if.......... byler, but it's Opposite Day? What do you think?

it’s been so long since you requested this, I bet you thought I forgot about you (I would never ever ever ever ever ever ever)

this… was probably not what you meant, but I think you’ll enjoy it.

Echo Absorber Acoustic Cotton is my favorite Normal Stuff character

[achillean-knight]

Behold, the greatest Etsy purchase ever

[mikedfaist]

that film idea from the mike x famous reader is insane and now i actually need it

I couldn’t agree more. I have a passion for funnel cakes.

[creature-wizard]

I've just started reading The Satan Seller (a book that was influential in the Satanic Panic) and like, the whole thing starts out with literal conversations the author supposedly remembers back from when he was eleven.

Also, the author is angry at people for having a good time at the lunch/dinner after his father's funeral:

The same people who were sniveling and crying all during the service were stuffing food in their mouths and having a ball, as if they were happy that now I didn’t have a mother or a father.

This would make sense from the limited perspective of a child, but the author is an adult now and really should know better.

I'm sure the rest of the book won't contain even more obvious bullshit and self-centeredness. :) :) :)

[curemoonliite]

you know you're too into collecting when someone sends you a link to ask if someone is legit and you're just like "oh that's mike, he's a good guy, always gets you what you need at a real good price but he's really going through it right now, had to pick up a second job and all" as if you know the seller personally

[l-1-z-a]

Recognizing stories in the player's head in The Sims 2

The last part of Will Wright's "Will Wright's Design Plunder" presentation at GDC 2001, called "Story Recognition," provides a picture of how what has been given the name "System of generating personalized player’s game reality in The Sims 2" should work. It binds together all the disparate pieces of available information and observations from players.

Here's a record of the presentation:

The presentation of this system begins at minute 58 and goes all the way to the end of the presentation.

This is what Will Wright says:

Now, the last thing I want to talk about here, real briefly, is interactive storytelling.

I've always been really happy in my little sandbox, you know, doing these open-ended games, these simulations. And I've always really avoided the idea of interactive story. But at this point, as you can see, our fans are going to basically drag me into it whether I like it or not. So I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, how we might enable this.

What's happening right now is the simulation is going off and doing one thing, and the fans are saying, "Oh, to hell with that, I'm going to tell my story over this direction." And frequently, they're having to take these Sims that just want to, you know, pee and eat and sit in front of the TV, and they're grabbing them, "No, stand over here, I need to take this shot." And so they're like these little actors on strike, you know, that you're trying to manipulate to take the screenshots.

So, what we need to do is try to get these things more to converge, bring them back into line. We've got basically this open-ended space, you know, you go in a direction in, but it's very flat dramatically. Now, drama, you know, is linear but has this added dimension that we don't have. And so, how do we get this added dimension of drama in our open-ended space?

I think the path to this, I see, is not teaching the computer to tell a story, but rather teaching it to recognize a story. If, when you're playing these stories out in the Sims, the computer can actually get some sense of the story that's in your head, it could then start helping you a bit.

It might, at first, be just a very simple thematic recognition. It might look at the things you've bought in the Sims and the interactions you've chosen, "Oh, you tend to kiss a lot, and you buy this type of stuff, I think you're doing sort of a romantic story." Or, you buy, you know, heart heads and jars, or shackles in your dungeon, and it might say, "Oh, that looks kind of like horror." And then it looks at what you're doing, it might even drive events to resolve it later.

You know, if it's not quite sure if you're doing a horror or comedy, you might walk into a room, and then there's a chainsaw and a cream pie, and it's looking to see which one you pick up.

Now, there are a number of approaches we can take towards this. One might be language to parsing, in language parsing, this is the way computers try to understand natural language. They'll look at the string of words and from those try to build higher and higher levels of features and eventually parse it into a complete sentence. I suspect there might be something similar possible with story parsing, where you look at an event stream and look for higher and higher levels of structure coming above to build the computer's understanding.

Let's assume that, for instance, we could do this. If the computer could parse this story, then it could actually start changing the presentation of the story in something like The Sims. We could start having the camera angles change, we could have the lighting change, the music. So, if it thinks you're doing horror, the lights start to come down, the spooky music starts, you see lightning in the background, the camera gets really close in, ambient sound effects, and all this stuff.

And the next step would be probably for the computer to actually start driving the events, rather than the events being random as they are now, events that are there to support your story.

Another way to look at this is that we have users always in the game trying to confine these success landscapes. If the computer can detect what goal the user is trying to pursue in the game, then perhaps, so say that a million people are playing this game every day, and after they play it, there's some fitness test.

You can measure how long you've played, maybe you score at the end, you give it a 1 to 10, "Oh, I really liked that experience today." Then it goes back up to the server, and it compares all the results. So, at the top level, we can have the server discovering these rules of story. It's not like we're trying to engineer a story grammar, what we're trying to do is develop a system to where we have enough information for the servers at the top end to discover this. This is very much like SETI at home, where we're doing a vast parallel search, except in this case, we're really using parallel things like SETI at home.

So, I think long term this might really be practical. And of course, you can look at different players, and they're going to want to play the games in different ways. So, a mapping that might work for me won't necessarily work for you. So, at some point, you want to classify the players. It might say, "Oh, that's the type of player that really enjoys the comedy experience." So, they get this mapping, and they'll be evolving a certain mapping for that group of players. These other players, we know, elected to kill and torture their Sims, and so we're going to give them a completely different experience.

So, that's about it on this. One more thing: once you've done this, you know, assuming we could do this, which is a big "if" - I know it's a very difficult target - once you finish this, once you've done the parsing, presentation, the computer is helping you tell the story. In essence, you've made a movie at the end, what you can then share with your friends. Maybe you can even go back and edit the camera angles. Other people with the game, you should be able to send this movie, very much like Quake movies we're doing, which was a very cool idea. If you have the engine, it's a very small amount of data I have to send you to send the movie, or it could be still saved out as a JPEG or an MPEG and given around other people, posted on websites. So, really what I think this is going to end up being more like is The Truman Show, where you're Truman kind of living your life out. You know, there's boundaries, but the boundaries are as far away as we can make them, and the computer is back there, sitting there, looking at what you're doing, saying, "That might be dramatic. What if I had this happen?" And maybe trying things on you all the time. The computer might be sending NPCs into your life, you know, seeing, "Oh, I see this love story developing. I'd better make the jealous ex-girlfriend appear at the door right now," so always, you know, trying to keep the dramatic tension going.

So, that's about all I have to say on that. I just wanted to close with one more remark, and that's that in game design over the years, I found that two things really made the biggest difference that I've seen in design, and it has to do with self-confidence and determination. A lot of times, you'll come up with a really crazy idea, and you'll start telling people about it, and they'll say, "That sucks. That's horrible." And frequently, you know, that's not always the case. I've only had two games where I had that experience where most of the people I told, you know, my idea for the game, they said, "That's a horrible idea," and those two games were Sim City and The Sims. All the other games I would describe, when people say, "Oh, sounds great. Let's do it," and they were all on board. They understood it.

So, basically, you know if you have an idea like that, and you go around telling everybody, and they tell you it sucks, you know, will prevent it pragmatically. It probably does suck. But um, there's really a chance that it doesn't, that you're actually going to jump outside the box. If other people don't understand it, that's probably a good thing, and that's where the determination comes in. At that point, it's entirely up to you to have the determination to fight, to scream, to do whatever it takes to get that idea out there, and maybe, you know, maybe it'll be a success. So, thank you.

Description of the process of determining the theme of the story that the player has in his head and setting camera angles and lighting - a description of what the developers wanted to implement for The Sims 2, one of the goals about told Mike Sellers (Mike Sellers), game designer of game:

Make the environment adaptive based on the player's decisions. This is probably my favorite thing that didn't make it in: we wanted to vary the lighting, camera angles used, and music based on the kinds of objects the players purchased -- so if you bought a bunch of creepy things vs. hearts and flowers, we'd use lighting/sound/view angles corresponding more to a horror movie vs. a romance. Among other things we were able to show that the same animation of two Sims kissing looked and felt very different when set to romantic violin music vs. smoky sexy jazz music (one exec who watched the two sequences said the jazz one had a lot better resolution -- but it was literally the same video of an animation in both cases).

From this answer you can also understand the degree of readiness of this particular part of the system, which is responsible for changing lighting and camera angles, before it was hidden.

But the system itself, the system of story recognition in the player's head is still in the game, and it works. How does it show itself in this case? You can find this out at the link directly after the question you asked - "How does the system behave?":

Add to that these interviews with Will Wright:

EA SimCity 2000 Will Wright Interview

Will Wright's 5th minute answer to "What do the people get out sim games?".

And this interview:

Will Wright on Big Thinkers [March 2000]

Here's what Will Wright says in this interview:

I mean, I think there's certain areas of technology that I would like to explore, and I'm not sure what would come out of that exploration. Like, what artificial intelligence or something like that? Well, actually, I think more importantly would be um, adaptive, uh, intelligence, adaptive computing, where the game can actually measure what I'm doing, look at what I'm enjoying, what I'm not enjoying, and then reprogram itself around my activities. So, I might get this game, and I, the longer I play it, it's basically uh, rewriting itself around what I like to do. And so, you might get the same game, and after a month of play, your game and my game are totally separate. You know, we're doing totally separate activities, totally separate settings. That would be good. Yeah, and you know, so in that case, it's more like having a, you know, it's like when you're a kid and you have, you know, a really good friend that you like to play with, and together you build these shared imaginative worlds and these activities you go and do together. Um, you know, I think the computer could do that to some degree in the future.

This relates with a previous interview and it also ties in with an answer from Mike Sellers to a question about goals in developing The Sims 2.

And it looks like The Sims 2 should be like this, a perfect Will Wright game.

На русском языке (On Russian language):

[boomgers]

En la era del Terror Lila, el amor es peligroso… “Compañeros De Viaje”

La historia gira en torno a la relación, arriesgada y volátil, entre el carismático y ambicioso Hawkins ‘Hawk’ Fuller y el piadoso e idealista Tim Laughlin, dos funcionarios políticos que se enamoran en el apogeo del Terror Lila de la década de 1950, cuando Joseph McCarthy y Roy Cohn declaran la guerra a los “subversivos y desviados sexuales”, iniciando uno de los períodos más oscuros de la historia estadounidense del siglo XX.

Estreno: 28 de octubre de 2023 en Paramount+.

La serie cuenta con las actuaciones de Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Jelani Alladin, Allison Williams, Noah J. Ricketts, Jane Moffat, Teagan Sellers, Michael Therriault, Keara Graves, Ben Sanders, Mike Taylor, David Tomlinson, Etienne Kellici, entre otros.

Sesión Fotográfica

[untitled-byler-blog]

my baby's finally here <3

[watch-joey-collect]

[strawberryspence]

I will never not be OBSESSED with the Famous trope + Found Family trope with the Party 😭 The headlines would be so chaotic? Like:

Famous Rockstar Eddie Munson is seen eating lunch with two time Pulitzer winner Nancy Wheeler, Highest Paid Photographer Jonathan Byers and Successful Entrepreneur Argyle Alvez. How does he know these people???

Three time Grammy Winner Eddie Munson seen in a McDonald's with World Renowned Astronaut Dustin Henderson and New York Times Best Seller Will Byers-Wheeler and Mike Byers-Wheeler. What the actual fuck???

Eddie Munson, seen in a Chicago Bulls game looking confused as hell, mere seconds after finding out his second album just went Multi-platinum, with his husband, Steve Munson. Also seen in pictures, Eddie Munson hugging point guard Lucas Sinclair and his wife, Max Sinclair. How???

MSG Sold Out Performer Eddie Munson seen in Chicago Medical Center with World Renowned Surgeon Dr. Erica Sinclair. Our insiders say that the rockstar is FINE and was only having lunch with the doctor. What in the multiverse is happening???

Eddie Munson and his husband seen in line at the book signing of rising Linguistics Author Robin Buckley. They ended up laughing so hard when they reached the author, they almost got kicked out. Turns out they all knew each other???

Rock Star Eddie Munson bringing packed lunch in pajamas to a small Chicago preschool where husband, Steve Munson and known friend, Jane Hopper works. Why??? How??? What???

Third most followed person on Instagram Eddie Munson, just broke the internet by posting a group picture with Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, Jonathan Byers, Argyle Alvez, Dustin Henderson, Lucas, Max and Erica Sinclair, Mike and Will Byers-Wheeler, his husband Steve Munson and family friend Jane Hopper. HOW DO THEY ALL KNOW EACH OTHER?! WHAT A WEIRD GROUP?!

The more people speculate, the more they say shit. Like people ask them how they know each other and they all just throw out the weirdest answers.

Nancy gets asked in a press conference how she knows Rock Star Eddie Munson? Nancy answers with, "I was driving myself to California when I was 19 and I picked him up as a hitch hiker along the way. We’ve been friends since then."

Robin gets asked in a lecture how she knows the Sinclair Clan? Robin answers with, "I go way back with Dr. Erica. She once saved me from Russian Doctors trying to cut my toe nails."

Eddie goes on an interview in National TV and the host asks how he's friends with Argyle and Jon? Eddie answers with, "I got kidnapped by a killer clown when I was 17. They saved me by crushing the clown's still beating heart with their own bare hands."

Steve gets bombarded with questions online of how he knows Nancy, Robin, Jon, Argyle and even Eddie (his husband)? Steve answers with, "We were stuck in detention every Saturday when we were in senior year. We all became friends when Eddie Munson started singing Don't You (Forget About Me)."

Will and Mike gets asked in an interview about their friendship with Basketball Star, Lucas Sinclair? Will says, “Lucas once gave my dog CPR, ultimately, saving it’s life and we’ve been friends since then.” and Mike just goes, “Who???”

Erica once got asked how she knew Genius Astronaut, Dustin Henderson. Erica rolls her eyes, “That boy owes me his life. Ask him, not me.”

Dustin gets asked how he knows Eddie Munson. Dustin goes with, “Eddie once saved me from a feral army of bats and almost died. I’ve never let go of him since then.” The fans think this one might actually be true, they’ve seen the scars on Eddie, they’ve got theories and Dustin just gave them a puzzle piece.

Argyle got asked in a Business Magazine how he knows this weird, interconnected group. Argyle says, “Oh dude! Those are my life long friends! It started with a pizza van, a dead man, and a road trip to Utah. There was also a bald girl involved. In the end, the real treasure really is the friends we make along the way.”

Jonathan gets asked how he knows Eddie Munson. Jon gives the softest, sweetest smile and says, “We were in a satanic cult together.”

Jane Hopper gets asked once in public (how she knows all these famous people), someone filmed it and it went viral on Twitter. El says, verbatim, “Oh. It all started when I was kidnapped by an evil scientist who tested stuff on me like I was a lab rat. Long story short, they saved my life and they are my family.” By then people already don’t believe any of them because they all give out the most ridiculous answers. Hopper still grounds her for that even though she doesn’t live with him anymore. (Owens, who hasn't called them in 15 years, reached out with a warning).

→ Current Additions: Lucas Lie Detector & Max's Future (Scroll down the link)

[fayesia]

Okay DONT JUGDE ME PLEASE but I have an idea for mike schmidt. Okay so basically she(y/n) gets these new meds for the two of them it was basically like had idk what it's called but sm that makes them horny af and yk what happens next and also they r just friends when this happens. U can fill in the details with whatever.

a/n: Ahh no trust me i’m not one to judge people ever about what they’re into and stuff like that, obviously it’s different when i’m asked to write about smtg i’m uncomfortable with or if it’s illegal, but nonetheless here it is, i apologise in advanced as i did rush to get it posted but ye enjoy!! 😭

warning: most of my replies to requests i get don’t include warnings but please keep in mind before reading that this will contain ⚠️drugs, taking of drugs, irresponsible drug use!!⚠️ other than that it’s just the usual smut stuff :)

“come on you’re not gonna pussy out on me now are you?” you jab at Mike knowing he was the one boasting about the drug being a placebo that wouldn’t work.

“of course i won’t since i know it doesn’t even work. whoever sold it to you just got a free 30 dollars.” he looks down at you kneeling in front of the living room table slicing the pill in two. You were told by the seller that it was a hormone enhancing pill that was basically just stronger weed, so you were being cautious about how much you both took.

“ok fine hurry up give it here” sitting down next to you, Mike grabs one half swallowing it down in one go, you do the same. After 15 minutes neither of you feel anything.

“see i told you, it’s a fucking scam”

“no no we must’ve not taken it right, come on one more chance pleaseeee” you whine looking at him with your hands clasped together.

“fine. only cause your my best friend” “mike..i’m your only friend but ok”

Taking out two more pills you grab a cup using the base to crush them into a fine powder, with your credit card you finely crush it and seperate the pile of white powder into two even lines. Meanwhile Mike neatly rolls up a dollar bill leaning forward to snort up one line, handing the note over, you sniff up the powder feeling a sharp sting in your nose leaning back against the couch to relax and let everything settle.

First there was nothing and suddenly so much was happening all at once. In two minutes you and Mike had gone from sitting beside each other dazed as ever to feeling heat all over your body. The sensation causing you both to remove layers of clothing to avoid any effects of what felt like heatstroke. “god what the fuck is happening y/n?” you hear Mike say as he removes his clothing leaving him in a pair of black boxers, “idk mikey everything’s so hot and suffocating” you respond back stripping down to just your bra and denim shorts.

You feel the heat rising especially at your core, the denim shorts getting increasingly more uncomfortable once you’ve soaked through your underwear. Raising your head you notice Mike sitting with a pillow on his lap, “Mike…is that what i think it is?” Before he can reply you’ve already removed the pillow, the sudden movement of his body attempting to hide his raging hard on shocks you as you fall on top of him. His arms support you pulling you on top of his lap as you straddle his thighs. Not even caring at this moment, you grind your pussy against his thigh the rough denim rubbing against your clit as more liquid gushes from your pussy. A dark spot forms on your shorts as Mikes hands grab your hips to push you down harder. He abruptly stops,unbuttoning your shorts and pulling them down, he flips you over on the couch so your legs hang off the edge while your back lays on the seats. Kneeling down between your legs he spreads your thighs apart, fingers digging into the soft squishy flesh.

“fucking soaked aren’t you”

“please do something please”

“say it i wanna hear you”

“please touch my pussy”

His nose brushes across your clit through the thin material of your thong as his fingers rub you you’re getting increasingly wet. He quickly rips at the flimsy strings leaving you bare to him, your folds glisten with your wetness as you feel it dripping down. His fingers enter your mouth as you suck on them like you would a lollipop, tracing down past your hardened nipples and to your clit. The first few seconds after contact has you writhing around on the couch, things only getting more intense once you feel Mikes mouth on you. His tongue explores every crevice, caressing your delicate folds and spreading your juices all over. He spits on your clit watching it drip down before collecting it with his index and middle fingers, entering your tight hole and watching it stretch. you moan at the intrusion finally being filled by something, his two fingers feeling like three of your own. You’re so close to coming, his fingertips rubs harder and harder against the soft sensitive spot inside of you, until he removes them. your eyes shoot open widening even more once Mike flips you over onto your front holding both your hands above your head, you’re barely able to turn your head due to the position of your shoulders. The tip of his cock is pulsing and red as it rubs between your folds, poking at your sensitive clit.

The gentle movements lulling you into a further daze, however that’s quick to end once his dick starts easing into your pussy. It’s a tight fit and you weren’t sure about how much would fit but Mike just said “gonna stretch you til’ we fucking make it fit”, his words have you moaning into the couch, spit dribbling from the side of your mouth the more that he enters. His cock is about three quarters in and you’re sure you can’t take any more, that is until he starts pulling out and pushing back in.

Finally he’s all the way in and you’re pulsing around him, your channel trying to fit around the girth of him.

“ok i think it’s fine, you can move”

his thrust start picking up speed, the sound of his hips smacking against your ass bounce off the walls of the room, his heavy balls slap against your clit adding to the pleasure.

“fuck mikey harder please, i’m so close omg”

He picks up the pace going faster and deeper into you, his cock pushes hard against your g-spot spurring you closer to the edge.

“baby i’m gonna cum, fill you up nice and full, fuck you everyday you want that?”

“yesyes please i need you, cum for me baby”

He continues ploughing into you, hips stuttering as he tilts his head back releasing a low guttural groan, you can feel drops of liquid releasing every time he pulls outwards. Finally a stream of Mikes cum pools inside of you, his groans grow softer the more that spurts out, your pussy clamps down on him and more of your come is leaking down his length the droplets staining the couch. Mike rolls over off of you to lay on the couch beside your panting body. The two of you are covered in a sheen of sweat, out of breathe and still coming down from the effects of the drugs you both took. After a few minutes you’re both still in your underwear, Mikes head resting on your lap while you stroke his hair, the two of you thinking about having a discussion on what this would change about your friendship but with the state of high you were both in that topic was for another time.

“well now that we’ve proven it works what do we do now?” Mike asks looking back up at you.

Reaching over to grab something off the table you simply smirk and wave a small clear packet containing two pills, identical to the ones just taken around and hour and a half ago.

~unedited~