After watching The Game Awards… I think I need to play it. All of my writer friends have been singing praises about it for a while and I’ve just not tried it out yet because I’ve been pretty content with the games I’ve currently been playing. From what my buddies have told me, I would love the game. So, I guess we’ll have to see if I can get the moneys to buy it. Maybe I’ll do some posts on it as I play. The story seems like a very good case study.
Potato is yum
Potato is yum.
recent posts
Fun stuff (Coming soon)
-
I am a warframe player. Yup. I love the story. It hits exactly the spot I’m looking for in deep messaging while also being entertaining. Gaming as a medium has a lot of advantages and disadvantages in comparison to books, music, and movies. Well, that’s actually the tuesday topic so let’s leave that one for my big writeup. Anyway, spoiler warnings for the update. You have been warned. If you just want some update tips scroll down to the next horizontal line where I show some screenshots to help players with some weirdness.
The story starts from our operator remembering the events on Tau and remembering how this whole war thing started in the first place. I liked the story a lot. However, I felt like the workings of the “trick” was filled with so many holes and implied truths that I sort of struggled to get the messaging behind the story.
We see that the operator refers to their past self and Margulis being used as “tools” for the Ballas war machine. This terminology is used both literally and figuratively as we remember back to when Margulis is used as an ingredient to create the Lotus and eventually becomes a sentient herself. This terminology initially went right over my head. It’s been over 2 years since I did that story quest about the Lotus and it took me digging through my past recordings from years ago to figure out what was happening. I feel like as a casual consumer of Warframe it was pretty difficult for me to jump into the “chapter” to say. Just like how a book separates chapters into smaller packets that are meant to be consumed at once, each quest seems to follow a similar idea.
However, I feel like Warframe has started so many major arcs that it’s getting a little difficult to follow all of them. We now have a lotus, operator, drifter, and entrati arcs. It’s a lot. If Warframe continues on this trajectory and doesn’t wrap up any of these big ideas I could see it spiraling into a story I am unable to follow as a casual player.
So, when they did the update apparently they didn’t explain to people how to get to the new content once they complete the quest. Yup. They didn’t tell anyone. So here’s how to access the Dark Refractory.
You should be able to see this on your navigation by refreshing the instance of your base of operations. This means you just need to exit your base of operations and enter it again after you finish the quest. 🙂 Have fun!
-
To sum things up, today was the big Warframe update and I forgot to write up the media review I had planned. Um. Oops. I guess tomorrow we will be getting two posts! Yippeee!
-
I don’t consider myself the best writer, musician, producer, creator, or whatever. In fact, I often ridicule myself for my lack of skill. I know a lot of people tend to say statements like, “I am my harshest critic” or stuff like that. To be honest, I think this is bullshit. I can only hate my creations so much because at the end of the day I made it and am inherently biased. Somehow, I really don’t think it’s right for a creator to judge the quality of their own work.
To be clear, I think the ability for a creator to judge the quality of their work is very important. In fact, that’s what I’m going to talk about. However, I’ll talk about the approach I take to judging a final version of all my creations. In the end, I have to balance many factors that are weighed differently depending on the circumstances. To start with, I guess I could sum up my approach in a single sentence. I want to make something that respects the only thing a consumer cannot get back from consuming any media: time.
I find that a lot of stuff now days simply doesn’t respect your time. Half the time I spend at work is honestly not really doing any work but simply just waiting for random crap to be approved. When I go on youtube my homepage is littered with AI slop. When I open up a new AAA video game to relax in my room I get hit by an unskippable five minute cutscene. Like I decided to play a game not watch a movie dammit. If I wanted to watch something I’d go to netflix. So when I look at a lot of modern media I can’t help but feel like the amount of media I’m actually consuming is tiny compared to what I had planned for. When I sit down to read webcomics I dedicate a part of my daily expenditure of time to looking at that thing. Unlike money I can’t get that time back. That time is gone. That’s a second of my life I’m never getting back. I only have so many seconds to live alright? I want to make the most of what I’ve got. I can always make more money, I can always get a refund, I can’t get my time back.
This idea has become especially clear to me when I got diagnosed a few months back and landed myself in the hospital. I suddenly came to the very real reality that life is finite and limited not just for me but for everyone. I’ve made a post previously about how I tried to optimize everything in my life and I still believe that it is not healthy to optimize everything. However, I think that revelation was more of the fact that being optimal doesn’t mean doing something all the time but adding another activity to do which would improve my efficiency and overall make myself more optimal. Rather than saying you shouldn’t optimize it was more of a message to show how I was optimizing incorrectly and that there is more to efficiency than simply work.
When I make something, I want to make sure the people who consume what I make can efficiently take it in and turn it into something useful for themselves. What do I mean? Well, when I read a webcomic I turn that into one of two big general catagories: entertainment and philosophical thinking. This is just for me but I’ll break down how this works for me. The obvious component I take out of reading a webcomic is the entertainment value which I glean from it right as I read it. The entertainment value of a work is impossible for a creator to really know unless they get a bunch of people to consume it before the market but even then, it’s basically impossible to know. The philosophical value of a work is much easier to quantify. It is obvious that the philosophical value of portal would be greater than a game like brotato. On one hand, portal is a satire mocking the world we live in with multiple deep questions while brotato is literally just a game where you are a potato shooting stuff. The philosophical value of a work is difficult to see when initially consuming a piece of media. For example, cars held very little meaning for me when I was 8 years old but now that I’m in college holds very deep messages that have impacted my life in ways I probably don’t know.
A person is made by what they consume. It is paradoxically easier and impossible to quantify the philosophical value of any work as many of these deep messages and themes are meant to accrue value for the consumer as they live their life over time. Often, the philosophical value of a good work far exceeds the entertainment value.
When I sit down with something I’ve made, I ask myself, “What can someone get out of this?” If I think someone could get something worthwhile for the time they spend consuming it I judge that what I’ve made is acceptable. Does entertainment matter? Yes, after all, that’s how you get someone to first start consuming the work. But it’s almost impossible to judge if something is entertaining. Why try to make something perfect if perfection doesn’t exist?
So I kinda write a lot more than I predicted. Might be too much. Well, that’s the weekly serious post. Expect a lot of media review next week. Here’s the plan for the week:
- Media Review
- 50 Word Starter
- Sneak Peek At My First Chapter
-
So I figured out all the issues with my vram and such. Turns out I had to update my video drivers and everything magically fixed itself. Honestly it’s kind if hilarious that it took me this long to figure out that all my issues were from drivers when I’ve literally seen that in almost every reddit thread that I read. Anyway, I’ve started using SFM again and have decided to just do some shots without smokes because I can’t be asked to figure out volumetric smoke for a tiny edit that probably not many people will even watch. After all, I’m really only making these things to practice my skill and there’s no real expectation from any of this stuff.
I’ve found that I’ve been getting much better at fixing the random SFM BS and it’s generally getting less annoying. It does help that the program has stopped crashing my computer meaning my stuff is actually getting saved and completed which sure does help with making progress on the project. It still doesn’t change the fact that 3D rendering takes almost 20 seconds per second of rendered HD video at 60 fps.
Now that I’ve actually fixed all the issues I should be able to make real progress on the project in the next week. Oof.
-
So I’ve been playing Escape From Duckov a lot recently and have suddenly realized that the game actually has a decent shot as a speedrun game so I’m just gonna write a little thing with my thoughts on the potential categories.
I think it’s pretty safe to rule out the use of mods in runs as the community has seen some pretty wacky mods that alter the game very significantly. I think that the classes and such should be allowed as part of a run as a runner probably should have beat the game at least once before starting to do speedruns.
Currently the only runs that have been done are any% full runs of ending 0 of the game which is technically a full run but seems out of reach for a majority of the playerbase as each run would take a minimum three hours even with best odds for quests and such. As such I think categories should go for any% boss kills or all% boss kills for a more complete category. The difficulty levels of the game also are a little weird since custom difficulty can turn off damage to the player which technically would be the easiest way to play the game but would also open up a much different strategy for completing the game since then you could just run the whole game with the starter pistol. So, I think sub categories of difficulty would be necessary.
I’m still trying to put together a little group of moderators to figure this whole thing out. I kinda threw this together last second because I suddenly realized I promised someone I’d do this like a month ago (oops). Anyway, classic potato forgetting something mildly important and scrambling to fix the error.
-
So I’ve been a big titanfall player for a while and if any of you have looked at my youtube channel you can probably see that I’ve done quite a bit of editing practice with my titanfall clips. There’s a few issues with those edits though.
First, the pace is so fast it’s hard to actually see what is even happening and some of the effects are really horrendous for light sensitive people. So, I’ve started trying to figure out a better way to edit the impacts by taking inspiration from more modern film examples by adjusting the framing and such to add direction to the edits. This is something done in cinematography to guide the eyes of the viewer to the part that matters. I’m sort of doing this in my counterstrike edit that I’ve been working on for the past 2 months by using depth of field and camera tilts. However, the titanfall edit makes this much more difficult because I don’t have a camera I can control and can only get “film” in first person. This adds a bit of complexity in the time remapping too because I have to adjust the moving part to be a similar speed to other movements which will be different in every single clip.
The second issue is that I switched editing software. I used to use premier pro when I was still a student and was able to use it for free but now I can’t use it for free. I’ve been using the counterstrike edit to learn the basics of clipping and arranging an edit so hopefully I’ve done enough practice on my workflow to produce some kind of edit. The new software I’m using is Da Vinci resolve which so far has been better in every way. I would highly recommend switching if you are thinking about it since many of the features in premier that were locked behind paid plugins now come for free straight out of the box and it takes less space on my hard drive which is always a plus. I do have a few issues with the software but that’s probably for another post. I’m thinking this edit will take a month? Who knows. I should really learn to do less creative projects faster. I guess some stuff never changes.
-
Ads are hard. Like I know I’m doing this whole self publishing thing but holy crap there’s so much stuff to go through. Aight. I’m gonna just step you through the like three major things that are on my mind right now as I figure out this whole mess that is publishing a book.
So there are these things called shouts. Basically someone on RR says “oh look at this cool person’s book!” and you say the same thing for their book. This is cool and all until you gotta figure out who to ask and who would say yes and who would fit into your target demographic. Like sure, any exposure is good but I’d rather get people coming to my book that have a decent chance of sticking onto the story and staying. So that means I gotta look at the market for my book and ask those people who are in my market if they wanna help each other out. But then it gets even harder because the easiest people to find in your market are the ones that are successful and the ones who are successful are most likely already booked for months with people way above your level so there’s no chance to break into the club unless you somehow worm your way into a group of people with a really nice person that would bestow a shout swap upon you. Whew. Alright. Let’s just say I found some really cool people and somehow managed to get at least someone to care about my story enough to shout swap my story.
Now the second big thing is actual ads for like… getting clicks onto the story. Each ad on royal road costs $55. So like… yeah. And I gotta take at least a week to design an ad, run it past various friends to see how it looks and more so it’s a whole process and I’m literally going insane trying to figure all this stuff out. It’s gotten to the point that one of my friends is finishing up two of my ads so I can spend more time writing the damn book.
The final big thing is my cover and my blurb. So the cover I actually got commissioned and finished around 6 months ago and the artist did an excellent job. The only troubling thing is the blurb which is… well.. pain. Pain and suffering to be quite frank. I thought my college applications were painful but this is somehow even worse. I’m currently just showing the draft of my blurb on royal road and probably will change it… if I can make something better… I really don’t know.
This whole self publish thing might be a mistake but like… screw it. I’ve already taken the dive so I’m cooked either way.
-
I sort of have come to hate any kind of raw veggie but out of all the veggies I can’t stand raw broccoli is probably at the top of the list. Literally doing anything to the damn green stuff would make it taste infinitely better but for some reason the cafeterias I ate at would refuse to give me anything but gross raw garbage.
It’s not even that I dislike broccoli since it actually tastes incredible when steamed, boiled, or cooked in literally any way. The bitter taste comes out of the veggie and the texture becomes much softer making it quite nice to eat. I really don’t get why all these cafeterias can’t take a couple minutes to boil a big batch of broccoli instead of just throwing it out there and making children suffer.
Honestly I feel like lots of people dislike eating veggies not because it tastes bad but because people just generally don’t know how to prepare veggies.
-
When I first watched starwars I was 7. It was so cool. The most violence that was directly on the screen was a hand flying off with no blood. All other violence was kind of just inferred. Honestly I really just thought starwars was a really cool movie and never really sat down to think about the implications of much of the actions shown in the world. Until I watched Andor.
Every episode of Andor strikes directly at the heart of deep and philosophical debates we as people go through every day. It doesn’t offer any solutions and uses Starwars as a form of media to bring these questions to the front and make people think about our real world. Just a warning, there are spoilers for the second season of Andor beyond this point.
One of the most striking aspects of this view of the Starwars universe as a young adult is the connections between the empire with first world countries and the rebellion with terrorists. Much of what the rebellion does walks a fine line between terrorism and activism with much of what our main characters do literally being acts of terrorism. Once you think about how little power the average imperial officer actually has you start to question, “Why am I supposed to cheer for these guys? Are we the good guys?” And the show leans into this by adding friction between the characters and making clear differing intentions between each character.
One of the most striking scenes was the time during the dance nearing the end of the wedding where the character in focus seems to just be dancing to put up an act while thinking about how her childhood friend was about to get murdered for knowing too much. We don’t actually see him get killed but the end of the episode heavily implies the death of the banker with the mastermind of the rebellion simply saying, “It has to be done to protect you.” This scene reminded me about how so many of us go about our lives doing the actions, following the ceremony, completing the tasks that society tells us should be complete without ever being able to fight against the unending torrent of regret for past actions that might have caused much of these actions. Did she regret bringing her childhood friend into this rebellion? Probably.
Does this mean she killed her childhood friend? Yes. She literally led him to his death. This deep meaning and implied actions littered throughout the show makes me feel like I need to actually pay attention and keep my eyes open when watching the show. A blink might take me out of the moment and lose a potential message. The show somehow manages to give me a similar feeling of deep thinking as the films Oppenheimer and Barbie which both portray the internal vs external conflict.
I’ve actually noticed that many of the shows I used to love as a kid have much deeper messages hidden inside such as Cars which is a masterclass on maturing. When I look at a bunch of newer movies in comparison to all of these masterpieces I’ve just named it almost feels like I’m inhaling garbage. But I guess you can’t have beauty without something to compare it to.
Potato is yum 