MadJackalope

I got a random notification that someone replied to a post that was deleted by the time I got here. I imagine it was spam, the message I got was in russian. But it reminded me this forum existed. Was wondering how things were going. Looks like the forum is pretty dead, no surprise I guess. But was curious where people had gone. Anyone on Bluesky?

The repetitive nature that was discussed was very similar too. I did acid a fair bit back in the day and there's a similar kind of effect in the psychedelic experience it creates. I'm curious what structure or pattern of the brain causes that effect. The kind of looping in on itself, self-referential, fractal kind of thing. Both in thought and visuals. I also tend to like very meta humor, or storytelling and I've wondered if there's some kind of similarity. Also I play around with neural networks as an artistic medium, and have noticed that there is similar kind of effects in how neural networks generate imagery often, so I, with no real qualifications or knowledge on this, wonderif there is some kind of deeper connection there, as in the creation of imagery with the neural network is making visual a particular pattern of behavior in the training model and that this pattern is also present in our brains, at a much more complex level because our brains have been trained for visual recognition etc through evolution in a similar way. Just a thought. More discussion about dreams in the podcasts! People always say that the most boring story to everyone else, except for the person telling the story, is the story of an acid trip or a dream experience. I personally disagree very strongly with that. I love people telling me their dream stories. I sadly don't remember my dreams much these days.

Man the nightmare discussion was creepy similar to experiences I had growing up. I had them actually quite often though one of the worst I remember was shortly after coming home from a 3 week road trip. I had one this one night that was just a riderless Super Mario World yoshi jumping through the end level goals over and over and over again. Baaaaawhoop BaaaaawhoopBaaaaawhoopBaaaaawhoop Over and overagain, and in the back of my head I felt like Peach was telling me I had to save mario or something, and I was the yoshi? Or something like that. They were very weird, and horrible because I was already technically awake and couldn't get out of them. I'm not neuraltypical but it was kind of a shock to me as an adult when I casually mentioned these dreams and all my friends were like "uhhh... I've never had that happen to me".

I'm doing a couple different games. Here are two start menus. Hmmm... I can't post any images for some reason. It says I'm not allowed to use the image extension. So here's a link to the twitter post: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COvK3vYU8AAQx6O.jpg:large and https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COwS851U8AAxYB7.jpg:large

I'm so pumped for duplicade. I came back to Idle Thumbs forums after being away for a long time just to see who else was doing it. (life stuff happened and also I'm really bad at using forums, and my podcast machine is broken so I haven't been listening to Idle Thumbls lately. I am sorry! ) I did barfcade last year and really enjoyed it. If you live in Austin hit me up. Saturday a bunch of us are meeting IRL to work on our game jam games together. I'm working on like 3 or 4 different games with people. I'm super pumped.

Bingo.

Howdy, I'm new around here, been listening to the podcast for awhile but recently figured it would be cool to join in on the forums. So I've been watching a lot of videos for old MS-DOS games. These games were slightly before my time, but just barely. I didn't seriously begin gaming on the PC until 2006 and before that most of my exposure to gaming was through consoles. Anyway one kind of games that I've found really interesting are the FMV games, like 7th Guest, Hot Wheels Stunt Driving, and Ripper. I've heard them talked about on Idle thumbs before but never really seriously thought about them until I watched these video reviews. Of course there's the more traditional FMV games that Idle Thumbs types probably know of, the adventure games ones. And those are really cool, and there's been a modern resurgence in them that I find pretty neato. There's this new [Tex Murphy game on steam] that seems really smart and engaging. That said what I'm most interested in are more like the which uses pre-rendered graphics to make up for the lack of computing power at the time. It seems to me this offers an interesting avenue that has been abandoned in the wake of better and better hardware. But just because we can now fully render 3D doesn't mean that this kind of thing couldn't be used in an interesting way. I wonder what an intense hi-fi render game would look like. Pixar film level, you know what I mean? Ray-casting and all that jazz. I don't personally care too much for graphic wars debates, I much prefer something with a strong aesthetic, but I wonder what could be done with this kind of tech. I was pretty impressed with that Hot Wheels game, I didn't even realize the backgrounds were pre-rendered until the reviewer pointed it out. And maybe it's also just nostalgia but I find the particular look of pre-rendered graphics interesting from an aesthetic perspective (very similar to the way I feel about Claymation). Nintendo actually continues to use some of those methods in their modern games, such as the flat photographs of food in Smash Brothers. (in general the inclusion of photographic elements in games is a funny/weird thing to me I find fascinating). Anyway, thoughts? Do you know of any other cool uses of FMV in modern games? Would you like to see more? What are some cools ways it could be utilized with modern technology that in the past was not possible?

Oh thanks! That's very generous of you. If you're not using it, then yah I'd love to try it out.

I've never actually used Playmaker though I have heard of it. I thought that it was going to probably be too difficult but after looking it up after you mentioned it, I think I might give it a try.

I've been working on a game with a friend. Nothing I can show right now though, still too basic. I've not really been using the forums much because I got in a serious relationship and started a new job. But I just quit that job and may be around here more! Took a start up job and I am using my extra time to do more game stuff. I made this recently! I didn't do the modeling, but I did end up doing the coding which was weird because I don't code. I'm just a designer! But our coder bailed and I was so fired up I decided I would learn Unity to make it work. It's really simple but it's kind of cool being able to make something actually move and stuff without help. I've been thinking about learning modeling for that very reason. I don't want to stretch my skill sets too thin though. But it would be nice to be able not to have to worry about other people modeling for me and stuff.

To be fair, disco had a back lash because it was also seen as inspiring classist elitism and glorifying material excess. But that's why people should listen to discopunk.

I've been out for a couple of weeks, busy with life and stuff. Just wanted to pop in and say that while I support ethics in video game coverage, and was involved in the dialogue on this stuff earlier in the thread, I think all this gamergate stuff is fucked up, and I don't like it. I know I went back and forth on some issues with some people, still feel uncomfortable with how the indie game scene is organized (and also how the AAA scene etc in general is organized. I guess I'm just uncomfortable with how the relationship between "games as an industry" and "games as an artistic medium"), but the shittiness of the trolls really won't seem to stop. I sort of peaced out around the time the twitter tag began to take off, so I haven't been following the actual "gamersgate" stuff much, but it seems to me that the things I'm personally concerned about and the things that fall under the tag, do not align. Guess I just wanted to go on record about that.

Well, I mean most geocaching isn't out in the woods. It's around a city park or shopping center, or other public places like that. Also it's not a first date thing, def a second date thing, or third date. But that's just my suggestion. Depends on who you're taking out on a date. Also I'm very bad at jokes. I am unfunny.

Yeah I think I remember hearing the Thumbers express a similar idea and it really nailed down the idea for me. It's a really cool look, and serves a similar function. I think in some circles you can probably see it beginning to be overplayed a little but I don't think that's really a bad thing per se. I don't personally do pixel art but I'm still amazed when I see some really well executed sprite work. I did sort of do my first bit of sprite work recently, by necessity due to how low resolution the sprites were. Maybe I'll post that soon. It was for a game jam, which I posted about in another thread too.

Sorry I've been kind of out of the loop the last couple of weeks. Is gate stuff still going on? Did everything blow over?

+1 for art galleries. Especially gallery openings because freeeeeeee wine and cheeze. I also recommend geocaching. If the weather's nice it can take you all over the nooks and crannies of a city, keeps you active, and I think it's also a good test to see what kind of person you're dealing with, because geocaching pops up a lot of weird challenges and novel situations. That's really more a "second date" thing to me though. I personally don't like the cinema date thing because you don't get to talk to the person. I think the only reason that used to be a thing is because back in the day that's how teens got alone in the dark to make out or something. A coffee is good because it's quick and you can get in and out in case the date isn't going well. A pub date is nice though. I wish we had more pubs here in America. I hate American bars, they're always so loud and noisy. Pubs are much better for actual conversation. Either play music live music loud, and have the focus be the concert, or keep the fucking volume down so I can drink and talk without going hoarse.

My gf just got a cat so I am now officially an adult. Yay. I guess I don't have to worry about anything else ever again!

Dan O'Brien wrote an article awhile back that kind of spoke to that idea, of never really being an "adult" http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-they-never-told-us/ Yeah it's a dumb list article but Dan O'Brien is actually a really good writer who uses the format pretty well. I've been thinking about buying a trailer home or something? Seems better than paying rent. Is that a good/bad idea? I seem to have a much lower barrier to entry for what it means to be an adult. As soon as I can afford to own a pet, I will consider myself decently adultish. Oh yeah, and when I can stop deferring my student loans.

Also Clone Jam looks cool. I think I might do that.

Woah! Yay! I came to the Idle Forums to see if anyone else had done barfcade and I'd already played your game even. I liked it a lot. It was pretty fun. It reminded me of Muscle Cat. I made one too with my roommate. It's our first collaboration. http://madjackalope.itch.io/pistolshrimpvsninjashrimpgo

I think these days it is considered so, which is kind of weird when you go back and read more history and how mainstream a lot of non-capitalist theories were back in the day. There's a podcast I listen to called BackStory which had an episode on fair wage laws recently. It only really deals with American history but it's still interesting to see how a lot of assumptions I've made about the past were wrong, and they always delve into overlooked perspectives like minorities or feminist history when they tackle a subject. They also seem like really nice dudes. Like you know how people say "He's a guy who I'd have a beer with"? Well I wouldn't have a beer with them, but I would say they are the kind of guys who I could imagine being really neato dads. They're very daddish.

Holy shit is this thing still going on? Dadgumit.

It's really hard right now. I feel lucky to have this new job though it's still not quite what I want to do. At least it's a start. I'm trying to focus on building my own projects too, because I think ultimately just getting a good job isn't enough. If your work is owned by someone else, you're getting the short end of the stick in some way.

Oh nice. Also weird, that's cool. someone added my comment to the thread. I don't mind the simplification. I think if adventure games are really about story, rather than challenge, that an easy flow to a game is okay. I've actually been thinking about that ever since the end of Broken Age Act 1. I really like games for story. I have trouble completing a lot of games and that's because story is often times the last priority of game companies. I was talking to an alum from my school who writes and he was telling me the budget for writing has gone down in the last couple of years because the industry sees less and less point, financially, in supporting good story. Games are so intrinsically powerful as a medium that there's not much point writing a compelling story if you can just put some simple addictive mechanics in there. So appreciate it when that's the focus of the project.

I don't think it's so much mechanistic as it is reflecting the way stuff is argued in a more academic setting. And twitter is a really bad place to discuss anything with nuance so people end up boiling everything to jargon. Of course that's probably giving a lot of benefit of the doubt too, since there is a certain amount of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" going on. It's a lazy distraction and is actually it's own fallacy. The Argument from Fallacy I think the instinct of questioning appeals to authority is healthy, but it's not enough, especially when talking about professionally vetted journalism. That's the same mistake that climate change deniers make when they refuse to believe scientists. I think that's probably in part related to the issue I mentioned earlier, with festivals not dividing up games into enough categories. Certain kinds of games are simply not well suited to festivals, and certain kinds of games. Games are all still kind of lumped into one big bag still, and having specific categories to compete in would allow certain kinds of games that would otherwise get overlooked a chance to shine.