#i'm not a programmer

[tista-bie]

realizing i'm going to need to do some fucking toby fox shit to get this fancy battle script to work how i want it with a character that can equip any weapon

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i find it very disorientating the way americans refer to uni as "school" (especially postgrad) because sometimes i'm talking to someone online and i'm trying to gauge their age (often if they're talking shit and i want to know how firmly to call them out on it) and they start talking about "school" and "homework" and I'm like. okay, they're sixteen, it's fine, i'll let them off

and then you find out they're 26 and a phd student or something

[adobe-outdesign]

There's something inherently funny about how (for some reason) the bag limits in SV can't go above 999 so GameFreak's solution was to have some random guy hold onto all of the extra Gimmighoul coins you collect and at no point in the game do they ever explain this or even indicate this NPC exists

[tapakah0]

[orbofrommyshows]

Something that I'm forever going to find funny about Turbo is the fact that he is (or at least was at the time of taking over Sugar Rush) very clearly an amateur programmer. The code box he made is just filled with disorganized spaghetti and I would be absolutely shocked if he documented anything lmao, so I keep imagining the utter hell of a time he'd had with it whenever he had to make a bug fix or something, because there's no way in hell that code didn't come with an entire dump truck worth of problems. Like, something in it breaks so he has to go back in and do the debugging to find out what went wrong and he's just combing through it going:

"wait what does that function do?"

"I should have picked better variable names, this thing is damn near unreadable."

"what kind of idiot wrote this- wait it's me… I'm the idiot…"

"okay I think I fixed the problem, let's see- I have created five new and interesting problems…"

[casino-lights]

so we have confirmation that veilguard was made in a year and a half. that's understandably such a time crunch and must have put unimaginable stress on the dev team, especially with the mass effect team coming in partway through. I do have empathy for the writers. no one deserves to lose their job at a time like this, especially not after such a roller coaster of a development cycle and after working on this series for so many years.

however.

obsidian made kotor 2, a game praised for its writing and many fans' favorite of the pair, in 14 months. they then proceeded to make fallout: new vegas, again praised for its writing and hailed as a shining example of video game storytelling, in 18 months. a lot of content was ultimately cut from both of these games, but in kotor's case, it was lovingly added back in by fans over the years despite not being especially easy to mod because the fans were so passionate about what they already had that they wanted to enhance it. these games are both known to be kinda janky as well. but the games at their core have satisfying stories, characters, and an incredible overall narrative that feels satisfying and fits with their respective universes, maintains respect for the established lore and characters, and is tonally consistent with the atmosphere and themes of previous games. hell, dragon age 2 was also made in about the same time frame based on what I could find, and as much as the assets were reused there and it could be occasionally glitchy, it remains one of the best bioware narratives with some of their most memorable characters, and it accomplished that while both keeping to the lore and vibe of the dragon age series AND expanding it into new territory.

I am aware that there are differences like engines, era, expectations, pushes from management, etc, but I'm mostly focusing on the writing and the narrative team's priorities. I wouldn't care if they reused assets to save time and money. I wouldn't care if a couple side quests had to go, or some character arcs were a little less polished, or some side characters were cut entirely. honestly I would have preferred it if some of the characters WERE cut entirely. if you're just going to spit on all of her character development, don't bring morrigan back. cut some of that banter in the lighthouse and let me talk to my companions properly. cut that goddamn arena and put those resources toward fleshing out the lords of fortune. even if the rest of the team wanted that entire faction cut so they could focus on other things, cut the fucking faction.

I will never apologize for rightfully criticizing the choices the writers made while making this game. the game talks to you - both you as the player AND you as the character - like you're stupid. repeating things over and over again just to make sure you Really Get It, dumbing down so many aspects of its own lore, reducing any kind of conflict to therapy speak or an HR meeting, etc. rook has no characterization to speak of and their dialogue and tone is wildly inconsistent depending on which npc you're speaking to at the time. why is rook clever enough to do playful, flirty hunter/prey banter with davrin but also too awkward to properly flirt with harding? the one canonically nonbinary neurodivergent companion frequently expresses themselves by growling and roaring and their individuality and competency are repeatedly undermined by their own writer's narrative decisions and banter. the game disregards its own lore and at times straight up contradicts itself. it's pretty, but lacks substance, and fails to live up to the standards a lot of us had for a dragon age game.

I won't pretend I know everything that went on behind the scenes but I think a year and a half is more than enough time to write a better narrative than what we got, even with some pushback from another dev team. I've seen countless thinkpieces by fans who have come up with solutions for plot holes and fixes for the overall narrative, and these are people who came up with this stuff in a matter of a few days or weeks, or sometimes just a few hours. you can't blame me for thinking veteran bioware writers - who SHOULD know their own lore by now - could have come up with something better than this in that amount of time, regardless of the limitations. choices were made and things were prioritized that shouldn't have been. I do not forgive the writers, EA, or bioware execs for this, and I will continue to criticize the responsible parties for the product we were sold, which includes criticizing the writers for shoddy work.

tl;dr: I don't believe the writing team made the best of the time they had and I fault them for that. but maybe that's on me for hoping that a game with its narrative led by weekes and epler would have actually been good in the first place.

[o-uncle-newt]

Which Cabin Pressure episodes do you play when you're breaking down and you need to turn off your brain and make yourself feel better?

I probably turn most frequently to (in order) Paris, St Petersburg, Limerick, Zurich, and Wokingham- though I haven't been able to listen to Wokingham recently because some of the themes about caring for aging relatives have been a smidge too close to the reasons why I need to be cheered up in the first place...

Honestly I think each episode provides something different- when I did an advent listen-through I identified St Petersburg as something I listen to when I'm feeling defeated and Limerick as something I listen to when I'm feeling lonely (about which more here) so I'm wondering- for the episode you picked, what itch does it scratch?

Please share in the comments- maybe we'll gain inspiration from each other for the next time we need a pick me up!

[wordswhisperinthedark]

"You're aware that you're exceptional. A scarcity."

// A what-if if Tsukasa continued skating singles. (used Yuzu's absolutely majestic photo as reference, but used his Seimei outfit 'cause I think it suits Tsukasa well^_^)

[fishwolfcrow]

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

nope, still annoyed at the fact that Andor gave itself the neatest, most poignant way out of both the question "why is Bix not around in Rogue One" and "at what point does Cassian start doing things that he actively resents doing" (because so far he doesn't seem to feel a large amount of guilt - yes, he says the faces haunt him, but he seems very convinced he can live with it), plus being able to make an actual point about sacrifice while doing it - and then they used it instead for a cheap "badass" moment to end the arc on, even though it once again makes Bix all about her trauma with very little agency and opportunity to show off her skills or qualities, opens a bunch of plot holes and is still just setting her up to die for Cassian's manpain soon.

Because bringing Gorst back into the narrative is actually brilliant. They clearly can't figure out anything else that Bix has going on (not gonna rant about that here. again.), so it only makes sense. But it also actually presents a perfect moral dilemma:

Lonni is running the expansion of Gorst's heinous torture programme

he has likely passed this information on to Luthen, who in turn knows what happened to Bix

Bix cannot move past what happened to her, and clearly has violent fantasies about killing him, suggesting she would jump at the opportunity to kill that guy

killing Gorst would also sabotage or possibly end the torture programme

BUT any attack on Gorst, whose existence and programme is very hush-hush, will also immediately tell the ISB they have a mole very high up

now, you hand Cassian all these cards, and then you give him some kind of mission where he runs across Gorst, and recognises him. You put them in some office alone together, the doctor's back is turned, Cassian has a hand on his blaster - and, understanding that revenge is not worth blowing up their eyes and ears at the top of the ISB because almost nothing would be... he drops his hand, and politely excuses himself, and lets Gorst live.

Then, you have him either confess this to Bix or let it slip on accident. She cannot forgive him, and he cannot agree with her - because it is the greatest possible betrayal of her, but that doesn't make it the wrong choice. Then you have them split over this, and have Bix cut ties with Luthen and all the other rebel contacts too. This could be a more peaceful endpoint for her (she is, at least, free from Cassian and this Rebellion she has no agency in), or, if that is too defeatist, make her last appearances ones where she starts stalking this guy on her own. This way, she actually gets her revenge without needing an assist from the Cool Rebel Guys. So she kills Gorst independently of the Rebels, and depending on how bleak you want this ending to be, she either gets away with it and finally gets to leave Coruscant, or she gets arrested. If she gets arrested, her getting framed as a rebel terrorist for it and it serving to whitewash Gorst's actions to the public, actually boosting the programme, could be very terrible and poignant. But maybe we end on her arriving in some prison camp where she is celebrated as a hero by the other inmates, and hey, we could end it at an ambiguous shot of a rebel ship overhead, suggesting that maybe they're going to be liberated. You know, bring that hope theme from Rogue One back just a little bit.

Anyway, this accomplishes several things that the ending of the Gorst storyline we got does not:

Gorst's return actually serving some narrative purpose over "needs to come back so his death can allow Bix her Moment"

allowing Bix some actual agency and competence that doesn't smack of plot contrivance (instead of a half-minute sequence of her swanning in and out of an ISB building with no explanation or consequences)

moral conflict instead of an oddly unambiguous "you go girl!!" moment that the show has so far always avoided

pushing Cassian further to where he needs to be if they plan on lining him up with his R1-personality even slightly, and putting him more on Luthen's side instead of pitting him against him

allowing them to keep their mole without this becoming a plot hole

give Cassian something to feel genuinely guilty about without that compromising his belief in the cause or needing to fridge yet another woman to do it

[vagueeyes]

s/f was great!! thank you @silverview for taking time out of your day to meet up with me before & after the show, and for the lovely bracelets!!! ddd my beloved 🥹 and also for being first in the queue for the stage door!!!!

quick summary of the stage door experience:

so. i had scriptbook 3 with me and had it open and ready when people started coming out. in my mind i thought steve could sign ttp (bc he's amazing in it) & reece could sign curse of the ninth (bc it's his "new favourite"). and i had my fingers on both of those pages...

but then while chatting i heard steve say hello and suddenly they were both in front of me?? i panicked and ended up having them both sign on curse of the ninth because my brain stopped functioning???

and yet i felt like externally i held it together 😅😅 and steve said to me, "ah, curse of the ninth - good choice!" so it was alright in the end i think!!!

then we lurked for a bit and watched them go in to j sheekey 😬

in hindsight, i wish i got them both to sign ttp but not dwelling too much on this. the queue was long and i didn't want to hold things up!

[nocturius8015ficore]

Quick art: Null ARC trooper Jaing, In Pastel Goth. Traditional ink and colors pencils

@wings-and-beskargam Nothing is impossible to a Null. 😘 You

You thought those socks would not fit the GAR goth night? -> original link

Nocturius: We got Mereel as a known whore but Jaing is fishing with fishnets in a totally the different pond. The holonet communities. The furries, the kinkies and other queers. With his ''programmer socks'' of course.

On a technical POV. I didn't have much time to draw a proper background and I drew way too fast with the colors pencils to have optimal result. I still decided to post it for the funzies. (which is all that really matter tbh) 😉

I might re-draw it one day or maybe one of you folk can re-draw it in your style. That would be cool. I'm not that good with cutie kawaii stuff.

[wuggen]

"No, we don't need to worry about leaking memory right now", "There's no structure here, just the raw bytes from the client. Just add the endpoint name at the beginning, it's fine", "Yeah we're leaving it to each of the language bindings to parse requests for now, don't worry about it", "If these functions block an async worker thread it'll still work, no worries", "We can worry about synchronizing mutability across the FFI later", and other insane things you might hear from your boss as he casually rakes in weeks to months worth of technical debt over the course of a few days

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

If I was in charge of the video game department at Disney, I would have released a Triple-A RPG open-world action-adventure game based on The Little Mermaid that serves as a video game prequel, adaptation and sequel to the original movie by now.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

"Ah. Thanks for being yummy."

[silentsialia]

I told myself I wouldn't be doomposting about F1 Academy but that was actually a lie. What are these teams doing to Maya. She scored points in FRECA so why is she doing 2 years in a racing series that's below it? Like she's already shown she can be competitive in a faster racing racing series. Could nobody in Ferrari's development programme secure her a seat anywhere? What is the end goal here?