Bay 12 Games Forum

... I would totes play a harvest moon type game set in something like Athas. We, like. Need more stuff like that. Rune Factory was a start, but we need... more. Steampunk, post-apoc fantasy, etc., so forth, so on. Lovecraftian influenced waterworlds. Kick it up a notch. Next week's crop will be people, selling for 14 brains to the pound. Your mate parasite wants a new jubjub bird.

GFWL v.2 came right around the time Battle.net was announced. [snip]

*confusion* GFWL seems to have launched '07... b.net started up back in '96, with diablo. Better than a decade earlier, et al. I... guess you mean Battle.net 2.0?

Rest of it seems fairly accurate, though.

If voters are uninformed, it's a failure of the political parties, whose proper role it is to inform people and build opinion blocks.

... problem being with that proper role that "inform people" often doesn't have a very strong correlation to "in a non-deceptive manner" Their actual role isn't to inform people, in the sense of actually giving them accurate and relevant information, it's to get votes and damn the guns. As such, that information and opinion building is just chock full of misdirection, distraction, deception, and outright lies all too damned often.

The unfortunate fact is that a functioning democracy necessarily requires a very involved and educated/informed (in terms of information relevant to effective governance.) voting base. The less of that a democracy possesses, the less effectively it functions and the more likely it is to turn into something else. Apathy, ignorance, and misinformation are three of the deadliest poisons that exist for a democratic system.

Figuring out how to improve the whole voting base is the problem, though. Disenfranchisement is nearly as damning to the effectiveness of a democratic system as anything else is. You need everyone involved, everyone interested, and everyone informed, or cracks start showing, corruption starts growing, and the whole machine stops working as effectively. Biggest issue, really, is trying to do stuff about it when those benefiting from the current situation are actively fighting improvement. We know how to find and present relevant information (when it's not being drowned out, spun so hard it ends up upside down, or actively prevented from being found), we know how to teach people how to analyze and break down that information (when it's actually being taught and the information itself isn't badly flawed), and hell, by and large we even have a pretty damn good idea how to engender interest and investment (at least if we had a good way to shut the goddamn media up and cut out a lot of the ignorance and apathy that's latched on culturally to the process). It's just getting it bloody done.

... actually hearing the stage theme again makes this thing... even more impressive. Remixes sometimes gives me tiny tears of joy ;_;

E: Actually, watching through a speedrun of X3 is becoming a very interesting experience, re: music. I actually didn't remember pretty much any of the megaman music's original form when I got keyed into the existence of VG remixes. Going basically backwards -- hearing the original and being able to link it to what was done with the remix, instead of hearing the remix and being able to link it back to the original -- is just... neat. It's, like. I know all this music! Even before actually hearing it. Is neat!

Well, I'd like to see you pick out all 4 bytes of all 4 possible colours by eye.
Since, that's what's leading me to this conclusion, it's not that these small details are similar, they're the exact same.

I... wouldn't do it by eye. Take screenshot, sample color, done. Not entirely sure that's all there is to it (I'm not really proficient with anything more complicated than mspaint... not really proficient with that, either.), but there wouldn't be much more involved. PlagiarizingCopying art assets is a cinch, really. We've got really good tools for that nowadays, and by and large they're getting better.

... regarding the game itself. I think I started downloading it at one point... wish I could remember why I stopped part way and went on to other things

Wiking probably better choice. Can even pronounce it the same way, I think.

Because, y'know, vizard is a bleach reference.

... maybe "take initiative" translates into "poisoned cookies for the supervisor"?