I agree! And I’m thankful that lots of games build that in.

I hate using AWSD as direction keys. I don’t understand why some games refuse to map the arrow keys to the same commands, but some don’t and it becomes up to me to manually set that right before playing anything.

It irritates me so much to me that if a game doesn’t let me change the key mappings, I’m probably going for a refund rather than play at all.

Recent big sites that closed down: Jezebel, Pitchfork, Vice, Popular Science, and my hopes for the Messenger were dashed when they announced their demise: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4440773-news-startup-the-messenger-shutting-down/

LA Times and the like are hit with layoffs and – worse – Sinclair heavyweight added the Balitmore Sun to the list of ‘compromised’ media outlets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/01/15/baltimore-sun-sold-david-smith-sinclair/

That said, there are always new sites, but gaining trust and reputation takes time.

Social sites seem doomed to crest and then fall. Digg? MySpace? Friendster? Who remembers the good old days of (moderated) UseNet? Do we want any of those back? Would any of them have remained were it not for spam/bad-actors?

I’m not the lego person, but I am not taking that selfie because: 1) I don’t want to clean the house to make it look all nice before judgey relatives critique the pic, 2) my phone is old and all its pics are kinda fish-eyed, 3) I don’t actually want to spend the time doing the task right now when AI can get me an image in seconds.

I appreciate that the “Gradient Canopy” roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn’t do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.

It is good to hear that there are some non-whites in your story. Since there was no detail in your initial post, the art of an Aryan Angel did not inspire me to ask any question except, “Yet another blonde hero?” I get very tired of “white man’s burden” stories featuring white men picking themselves up and solving problems that ‘others’ could not overcome.

It sounds like your hero strays from the archetype enough to be atypical, so hopefully s/he realizes some reliance on the vital contributions of ‘others’ along their journey, too. All I’m saying is that the initial art didn’t speak to of any of that. The only thing it said to me was ‘racist agitprop’ (though not of the historic/Russian variety).

Why? Because – and while I applaud you paying someone to do the art – the art reminded me of Nazi Propaganda. I was saddened to see another idealized blonde haired, blue-eyed Jugend/baby getting elevated to special reigning status. Most of the world is dark haired and brown-eyed. Why give Nazis yet another piece of fiction to subtly push the zeitgeist into believing the abnormal caucus folk are better than the lower masses?

• https://ww2frauen.middcreate.net/en/the-third-reich-en/motherhood/
• https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/orig-period-german-propaganda-284177523
• https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/nazi-recruitment-propaganda
• https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/hitler-youth-propaganda

Less related, but stylistically similar: https://germangirlinamerica.com/history-hummel-figurines/

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The warning message said the port was not open, but my guess is that the message was inexact. I doubt the port was ever restricted at all. In fact – and with no evidence one way or the other – it wouldn’t surprise me if the only issue was my old video card and the ‘port’ error was simply the first error message the game found on initial launch. For my theory to make sense, though, some initial setup piece must have completed on 1st launch such that the 2nd launch had a newly made config file or something and that extra piece let me proceed to a more accurate error.

Ooooh, I’d like that! Well, there’s 3 parts to the (random user input / scripted game output) conundrum:

1. I think it is fair that if you ask, ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ the NPC might either respond as if it is being accused of sabotage, answer the damn question, lie, or prefer not to talk about it (it’s personal).
2. I’d keep a short list of standard options – probably in a collapsed scroller kinda thing so you could either verbally say or type whatever you want, OR you could click an arrow to pick from a list. That way lazy or stuck players wou;dn’t have to think of all the options, and players interested in roleplaying could do as they please.
3. I’m OK with, “I’m not going to respond to that”. I’d hope each character had several variations of that, but I think it is legitimate for NPCs to dislike being pestered. Shopkeepers might have replies like, “Are you gonna buy something or are you just here to bend my ear?” or “I don’t see how that relates to my inventory.” Random townies might reply, “Do I even know you?” or “Would you PLEASE stop bothering me.” or “You’re harshing my mellow, man. Shhhh… Just chill.”

It is probably easier. I used to run a program that ran its own mini server-like process to send input to other open programs. It used local ports. It didn’t need internet, but it did need ports. My first guess is that programmers already know a bunch of dev libraries that deal with ports so it is easier to use that than write something else from scratch.

NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

I prefer more casual games, but I do like Slay the Spire. I don’t think I’ve tried to get past A4. I got bored with it a while back and downloaded expansions. I LOVE Downfall and kinda like PackMaster, too. If I am feeling lazy, I will do a custom run and pick my starting cards, and choose ‘slow’ and ‘big game hunter’ options as well. It makes me overpowered, but – again – is enjoyably casual for a change.

For English writing, this is wrong. I don’t know enough about Japanese tenses to know how it worked in the original (before translation). Per the comment by apis, it may offer immediacy, but it made me cringe while reading. Caveat: my mother was an English teacher and would never let me submit anything in this state. She would tell you to rewrite and if a sentence isn’t working, it is better to find another way to say it than keep struggling. Here, though, I would think it easier and less jarring to simply keep the past tense, like so :

It looked as though he meant to ride up. He didn’t seem to be fooling around. He was quite a bit older than the other child-demons. Maybe a junior high student.

For the next line, you could go one of several ways:

If he couldn’t tell the difference between an ascending and descending escalator, there must have been something seriously wrong with him.

Or (less authentic?):

I thought, “If he can’t tell the difference between an ascending and descending escalator, there must be something seriously wrong with him.”

Or (possibly clunky):

I thought that if he couldn’t tell the difference between an ascending and descending escalator, there must be something seriously wrong with him.

(and so on)

FYI, the bot only summarized the first of three pages.

I’ve seen a lot of these, but not lately. The two standouts for me were absolutely HATING “Runaway” and being rather impressed with “The Quiet Earth”. That one has stuck with me for decades and I’ve only seen it twice. I’m not sure how well any of these will work in current times, but if I was going to recommend any, “The Quiet Earth” would be first on my list. I agree with the praise for “Enemy Mine” and “Starman”. I’d also suggest a double feature of ‘Buckaroo Banzai’ with the unlisted “The Brother from Another Planet” – no idea how that one missed the list. Speaking of which, where’s “Liquid Sky” and/or “Le Dernier Combat”? Maybe those last two aren’t listed because they’re too low-budget/art-school.

The bits that hit me most:

It wasn’t just author profiles that the magazine repeatedly replaced. Each time an author was switched out, the posts they supposedly penned would be reattributed to the new persona, with no editor’s note explaining the change in byline.

authors at TheStreet with highly specific biographies detailing seemingly flesh-and-blood humans with specific areas of expertise — but … these fake writers are periodically wiped from existence and their articles reattributed to new names, with no disclosure about the use of AI.

We caught CNET and Bankrate, both owned by Red Ventures, publishing barely-disclosed AI content that was filled with factual mistakes and even plagiarism;