Bay 12 Games Forum

You're mistaking popularity with worth, wanting games that you think are valid as art to be widely recognized and showered with riches, and at the same time condemning game companies for doing everything they can to make their games as popular as possible. Do you see how this could be fallacy?

And no, it's not a strawman to say 'Make one yourself'. In fact it's easier than ever, so the concept of an elitist barrier you have in the traditional 'art world' doesn't apply. The fact that you're mad about how terrible games are implies that you believe they can be better, so with the technical difficulties fast receding from a few month's hard work and a few years of natural accumulation of knowledge, all you're saying is that you're dissatisfied with gaming and everyone else should make better games. So sorry, we'll get right on that

Green roofs have a similar effect but it not as strong. Also, on the fish thing, I think it's called aquaponics(Aquaria+ hydroponics).

Nitpick, though I can see someone coining and using aquaponics for their business, hydro- is the greek root for water (with -ponics meaning work or labor), aqua- is latin. Mixing the two makes me cringe. I've heard it called aquaculture, or just fish farming.

What I'd love to see is more subterranean apartments and other buildings (earthscrapers) so that we can use existing skyscrapers for more sensible things like wind/solar platforms, epic gondola landing-pads, and the farming thing maybe. In an extensive underground city, you could tear up most roads on the surface and rely on tunnels and lifts, and use the huge amounts of space you gain for parks, farms, whatever you like. I doubt the engineering challenges are worse, just different - ventilation, combating shallow water tables and poor soil support, etc., fires (possibly), earthquakes (probably), and bioterrorism (what else is new?) are its biggest problems, but it'll get easier and cheaper as more people do it, as with everything. Maybe a pipe-dream, maybe optimistic in that people would still want to be surface-dwellers and would probably stay just as crowded on the surface, but I guess DF rubbed off on me for wanting this.
Edit: This is what I get for posting to nitpick, everything I just said has been said here by others. Durp. Sorry gaise.

Question: How would you guys deal with multiple submissions per critter? Late submissions that are awesome but made after the critter's page was finalized? Throwing a wrench for the hell of it here, but I do think the idea is great. Depending on what stylistic direction you settle on over time I might be able to contribute, even.

Also, why not include a section of the book for forgotten beasts, in case people want to draw theirs? Could be a good way for new artists to get started with contributions.

I want to leave as much behind that'll represent me as possible, and maybe give some enjoyment to others after I'm gone. I suppose if the payoff were slim (months of sedation for a month or two of extra work, versus simply working on what I like for a month or two and not worrying about it), I'd consider just avoiding treatment. But very often the timeframes are a rough guess, and when quality of life is discussed it isn't taken into account that someone might be willing to suffer with less anesthesia to keep living. You can learn to deal with pain, you can learn to deal with throwing up every time you eat after chemo, or being confined to a hospital and fed intravenously because you lack a stomach or whatever horrific nightmare scenario you can come up with. People have and will continue to do so right up until protocetaceans literally digest our infrastructure with their psuedoorganic cybernetic drysuits and take over the solar system with ill rhymes and krill underlings. It sounds cocky, but I'm confident I could because my work is that important to me. Not finishing some of it would bother me (until I died), but not as much as being prevented from trying because someone else considers a medical procedure too drastic to put someone through.

I rescind my recommendation. It sounds less like short-sighted slackerdom and more like a mental illness, from what you've described. Getting his way all the time doesn't really explain his avoiding leaving the house, or going to such lengths to stay in his comfort zone. Most people would look to expand theirs a little rather than brave Hotmail support

You need to gather clues for why he's avoiding life, as objectively as possible. Try and arrange speaking with a family counselor or therapist yourself for help in this - they can help you understand what might be going on and give you a better picture about what you can, should, and shouldn't do. I can't stress enough that his behavior might hide something a little darker than spoiled brat, and that you should tread carefully here, especially with any personal attacks you might feel the urge for.

It varies depending on day/time of year/phase of the moon/whatever, but I guess you could consider me a lurker (.3 posts a day?), and yet I've hung around since Slaves to Armok was getting updates. I don't think it's a big deal if you don't want to post anything, it's much more important that your posts are useful and reflect yourself.

At the same time, there's a point where you're needlessly self-censuring. Before you delete a post you've constructed and afterwards dislike, it's a good idea to look closely at why, and if possible remake it so that you're happy with it. Otherwise you'll keep doing it, and you might end up thinking that you can't write well or something. That always bugged me about me - the fact that someone can recognize their own failings means they can improve on them, and that's exactly the wrong time to give up on them.

Why does everything you say make it sound like you're trying to write an action story when they asked for a romance?

None of the traits they listed make a romance any more difficult to right, so I'm honestly a bit confused...

1: The only traits they listed were of primary importance for an action story. Unless the one of them is cooking a roast with his flame sword or something, or you get into the weird vampire fetish that seems to be emerging. If they had personalities I'd be able to make it more focused on that. As it is, the personalities must be established from the traits they've given me, and for odd traits like teleportation you can get some strange outlooks. Being able to jump over to Italy from America for an hour or two changes how they'd look at the trip, for instance.
2: There really isn't any such thing as a straight-up romance story. It's always (or should always be, in my mind) framed by surrounding action to establish the characters, even if it's non-violent action, like driving up to a cabin on vacation. Read any romance novel - you'll find the pro searching her soul in Maine while on a business trip for a photography studio, or solving a crime, or doing something else that give his/her affair some personal meaning. Especially since this will be for public consumption (with his permission) and not just for the commissioner, I want the story to make sense in respect to the character's obviously epic natures and not immediately throw them into a candlelit dinner on a bed of roses. With lightning swords.

Agreed. There are plenty of far more powerful characters in fiction that nevertheless manages to be well written and entertaining.

Their level of power has nothing to do with it. They have no past and very few established obligations. One of them is a marine, but a marine that can teleport wouldn't have to be a marine for very long, and a vampire wouldn't want to stay a marine for long unless it was an understanding that they couldn't do drills during the day. Thank god he let me nerf the marine.

Believe me, I'd love to tear these characters apart and reconstruct them into a well-written and entertaining story. Well, if I had no other ideas. But if you think convincing romance in sub-short-story format is easy with characters that just wouldn't normally give a shit (I can't make them hundreds of years old, at most I can give them some young-adult angst), feel free to take the commission off my hands I'll just go with what I know works.

When you're done, can I have your help on a story about a transgender space marine librarian apothecary chaplain from the Black Templars that falls in love with a hermaphrodite Eldar titan farseer, and their hate sex through the galaxy as they travel across the Webway?

*chuckles* At least your characters both have jobs and obligations.

They're apparently partial to the 'run like hell' plot, so it's time to make a bigger bad. The vampire-marine is also losing his teleport. This is workable.

I suppose I was mostly worried that there was some secret writer's/artist's code that prohibited telling commissioners that what they've provided is dumb and bad, but in retrospect why would I want to work this way if I couldn't at least do this for the worst of it?

So thanks, B12, the world is now to be smuttier due to your encouragement. Wouldn't your mother be proud.

angst

Becomes even more amusing if you keep their ages the same.

"Parakeets, my fallen friends, Tuna and Adagio. My cats! Your souls are welcome to me in this war-torn land. Inhabit this fallen warrior's body so that I may speak to you once more."
"Chirp."