Silly Metaphor

Not unlike a teddy bear he felt squishy and cuddly despite the fact that he weighed nothing and was more skin than bone. It was a testament to how twisted my head made reality that I wanted nothing more than to squeeze him like a good poop. That made me giggle entirely too much and now I’m screaming internally to tell him that.

My nails dug deep into the wood like a metaphor gouging out a meaning. It was desperate and likely hopeless but the alternative was to be forgotten without ever touching the lips of another.

There’s a science to the silly, inane, and, at times, quotidian things in life. Like slipping a burger into a patty, if you do it wrong then everyone at the barbeque will get angry at you. I suppose that makes life a big science bbq and you’re just desperately groping me for the ketchup.

It’s a shit situation and you were sabotaged from the start. When it comes down to the wire there were never actually any scissors. We were handed a butterknife and told to make the best of it.

I realize that we’re holed up here like rats on a sinking ship but I feel like a kitten in a box; everything is new and exciting and holy shit there are things outside that I want to bat.

As a child, in an attempt to create as much treasure as I possibly could for future generations, I generated a disproportionate amount of trash for my size. Some say this was because I didn’t know any better but I say it was because I was a little shit and an internet activist called me out. To compensate, I counteracted any actual good they could have ever done with the force of an undergrad trying to show off to their friends at a party; I spewed everywhere.

For awhile I had thought I was a man. I acted as they did, played kickball like them, and even peed standing up. It wasn’t until any sense of sexuality that I had was sucked away in a vacuum of emotions, tension, love interests, and an actual vacuum that I came to see myself as a woman.

The dolphin slapped me in the face like the motherfucker who was my new dad. I’ve come to understand that pretty assholes do shit just like every other asshole.

It was pleasant to have his eyes grabbing me from behind and slipping inside of me. The fact that it was only his eyes was no small frustration though, I assure you.

The Thought Process

The thought process:

Defense needs to scale well with Offense so that damage remains consistent if Health remains consistent. In this way characters can grow and specialize without terribly imbalancing things.

Older players cannot outgrow newer players by too large of a margin. Growth needs to be slow. Square root function. Slows growth. sqrt

Too slow. Slow as molasses. Too many dead levels.

Multiply the base and run it through a square root function. sqrt(base*2)

Faster, fewer dead levels, numbers stay reasonable as players get stronger.

Switch the square root function to defense. Increase the multiplier. Defense is slow but not too slow. sqrt(defense*4)

Offense is linear. Offense will always outpace defense. (offense)

Defense subtracts Offense before they are put into a multiplier. [(offense) – sqrt(defense*4)] * (Multiplier)

Maybe division would work better? Linear Offense divided by square root of defense.

Minimizes damage without negating it. Slow but not too slow. Too slow?

Divide variable multiplier instead. Makes numbers look bigger. Reduces outcome. [(offense/2) – sqrt(defense*4)] * (Multiplier/10)

Players feel strong, realize strength. Players see fast defense growth that tapers off.

Even as monoliths they aren’t overpowering.

Everyone is happy.

Candy Box!

Lets talk about games: Candy Box!

This post is high in spoilers and spoilerific posts aren’t for everyone. If you’re not cool with being spoiled then just know that it’s a neat little idle-game that has lots of cool features and some neat ascii art.

Here is a link: http://candies.aniwey.net/

- Spoilers -

Candy Box is an amazing little game by Aniwey that is much more than a simple idle game. As you progress into the game features become unlocked and you are given the option to do much more than wait for candy to accumulate. Initially you only start off earning 1 candy per second, with the option to eat all of your candy or to throw it onto the ground 10 at a time. Once you have accumulated 60 candy you unlock the ability to buy lollipops from the new merchant and at 150 you can buy your first sword, which opens up the ‘Quest’ mini-game.

Questing and candy will continue to unlock options for you. Once you have completed your first quest you’ll be given a nifty little key, a map, and if you happened upon a chest, a pair of seven league boots. These tools open up the lollipop farm, which allows you to grow lollipops for free, open up the Swampy Swamp which has a frog with riddles for prizes, and lets you adventure more quickly, respectively.

The lollipop farm starts slow but grows rapidly. Starting at 1 lollipop a day, once you have planted enough lollipops you can earn as many as 100 per second. It’s like compound interest and it happens before you know it, so buy lollipops early on and build your farm up because you need millions of lollipops to buy all of your upgrades.

As you continue to quest and unlock features you’ll open up wishing wells, new merchants, and the forge

where you can turn your sword into 1 of 3 different special swords: Sword of Life, Sword of Fire, and Sword of Summoning. The Sword of Life has life steal on hit, Sword of Fire has fire damage on hit, and Sword of Summoning summons monsters every time you kill an enemy.

Progress in the game is fast if you’re proactive. Clearing a run through of the Castle Entrance can earn you 17,000 to 19,000 candy at the cost of around 10 major health potions, which are cheap and quick to make once you have unlocked the cauldron. You can make a batch of 10 major health potions for 1,000 candy and 1,000 lollipops in 20 seconds, no more or less, with the cauldron.

In short it’s less of an idle game and more of a game that if you get stuck or have to go, rewards you for playing anyway. The art is endearing ascii and quite clever at times. Puzzles can be somewhat frustrating if you’re not sure what to think but there is lots of information available if you get stuck.

Check the game out at: http://candies.aniwey.net/

Game Dev Tycoon and Piracy

Official Data from GreenHeartGames.com

Sitting here staring at these numbers for the percent of people who pirated Game Dev Tycoon as opposed to buying it is both alarming and appalling.

The general sentiment amongst pirates is usually that you pirate because it's a big company doing evil things that you disagree with. If not that reason then it's because you have no other way to get the game. We all know what we're getting into when we snag a stolen copy of something and we know who it effects -- the game publishers and developers.

Then there is this travesty. A small indie game developed by some actually pretty rad dudes. The developers and publishers are one in the same in this case, a pair of brothers. They put the game out for a reasonable $8, or $7.99 to be more accurate, and even put out a pretty banging demo. After that, mostly to see who was actually paying for the game, they even released the game fully cracked on some pirate sites, not that it had any DRM anyway. The cracked version had a different meta data name than the paid version, which is how they got this data. Nearly 95% of everyone playing this game stole it from a tiny developer who cannot afford these losses. That's low.

A day in the life of Game Dev Tycoon

Piracy is nothing new and hardly novel. Discussing it is practically moot as, as stated before, everyone is familiar with the consequences of piracy and have stated that they don't care by continuing to do so for their own reasons. While pirates are familiar with the dangers of piracy to themselves, they perhaps don't think about the dangers of piracy to companies though. Ya, big publishers aren't going to be hurting from your actions but small companies will be. These start-ups are how gamers escape the use of damaging and invasive DRM, terrible pay-to-win games, and the ever growing $5,000 to play facebook games. They do not thrive from the thousands of people who might play their game, they thrive by selling the game to you.

It is not too late, of course. People can still go out there and buy games like Game Dev Tycoon. If you don't, no one is going to break down your door and scream at you. An indie company that tried to give gamers something that they wanted will just go under. That's all.

If you're not familiar with any of this mess then you should check Game Dev Tycoon out because it's pretty spiffy.
http://www.greenheartgames.com/game-dev-tycoon-free-full-torrent-cracked-download/

Note: The above link is not to a cracked version of the game.

I Bit Into Ice and Social Ills

I bit into ice and I didn't recoil or cringe. It wasn't painful or shocking. It's the little luxuries that you never thought about that hit you the hardest when you escape poverty. My teeth were always so sensitive from cavities that I couldn't really touch ice to them without drilling pain into myself.

Are there really people out there that can afford to go to a dentist whenever there's a problem? Did they really grow up being able to bite into ice?

In America we don't even think about it. Perhaps we've spent so long thinking about other things so we don't have to face the truth, that it is entirely natural for us to just let these things go. We don't think about the last time we went to the dentist or the doctor. We don't like to remember that it's the prohibitive cost that keeps us away. What we do like to do is create problems to get our minds off of things. Meaningless things that are easier to think about than social ills.

A country is only as rich as its poorest people. America is a very poor nation. We just don't like to think about it. We don't like to think about the little luxuries and instead cling to what we do have. It's easier that way.

Fandom

Fandom emerges when there is love of a story, of art, of music, of any form of expression. That love will change, shift, and become its own creature over time, deviating from its origin. It is then that fascinations begin. These fascinations start out slowly and creep their way into the logic of the fandom.

It is so easy to justify the small things. "I love this character," becomes more important than a plot point. Well, that's okay, there are lots of other plot points. "This band is so popular I love them, though I haven't listened to the music yet," the words pang against your inner senses but you bend a bit to allow it. At least they might start listening to the songs now that they like the band.

Then it turns dark. "I love this character so much, he's such a helpless baby!" The fandom cries about the megalomaniac who heartlessly terrorizes the innocent. "Oh my god, this song is so cute, I made a pony remix of it!" And that grunge metal song then had a pony remix. "Look at this art, it's so amazing I'm going to invert the colors and put a cat in it." Then Picasso had a cat, I guess.

Soon the story, music, art, or whatever else is irrelevant. The fandom is an incestuous pit of ideas loosely torn from these concepts, eaten up, regurgitated, and then feasted upon again. It has reached the point where there is virtually no connection to the source material any more.

Unfortunately your logic is still distorted from before. You accept a lot of material that you would otherwise question. The fandom accepts a lot of material that it should otherwise detest. Your standards have lowered.

The only question then is do you stay in this mess of a community and join into the cesspool or do you go back to the source material that you loved? It's a bit of a loaded question, I admit, but it's an honest to goodness question. There is no right answer, merely going where you will be happier. Sometimes the story was just the start, as the end of the book likes to tell you. You should probably avoid those who don't agree with your answer though, to save each other both a lot of headache.

Guilty

There’s a feeling of guilt in the back of your mind when you’re hungry. Not just ‘missed dinner’ hungry but ‘if I buy groceries I can’t pay rent’ hungry. It’s a despicable feeling and you hate yourself for it. How could you let yourself get here? Why can’t you afford the basic necessities of your daily life? Worst of all you’re just so hungry that you desperately cling to your last dollars trying not to buy food so that you have somewhere to sleep next month. It’s a horrifying existence. It’s an existence that 58.5% of Americans know. That is a sad, miserable number. That’s a guilty number but they shouldn’t be the ones feeling guilty.

Milquetoast

When you take a story or show and remake it, you are doing something that inherently violates people. You are taking their memories, attachments, and a part of their life and saying that it’s old and no longer belongs to them.

Normally these concerns are quelled when this new thing fills the place of the old and both have a place in the heart of a person. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common to take that thing and say, ‘I can make more money by selling it to these people instead of you.’

Now their memories, attachments, and history are thrashed. The characters they once loved are someone else entirely wearing the simulacrum. The stories are twisted and changed away from the comfortable lines they once drew. The history that was fondly buried is now dug up and put on parade in its necrotic state.

You’re disrespecting them and violating them. If you are doing this out of love for the story and characters, then I wish you well. If you’re doing this for money, you are a bad person.

Teen Titans GO! I’m looking at you.