PLUG THREAD:

alex · Post by **alex** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 12:23 am

I would gratefully accept a code for the last of us 2, but only if no on else wants it

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 12:34 pm

pm'd codes to [mention]tim[/mention] and [mention]alex[/mention]. and i since got a third code yesterday so any one else holler and i'll pm you if it's still available

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 1:13 pm

We'll take that third code! Or rather [mention]joni[/mention] will! THANK YOU

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 5:24 pm

can do! or rather am currently trying to do? both the PMs to [mention]joni[/mention] and to [mention]alex[/mention] are in my outbox but not in sent messages, is there something about PMs that i'm missing?

(the one to @alex seems to have gone through fine)

alex · Post by **alex** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 7:19 pm

[mention]jamessumneriii[/mention] thanks!! excited to give it a go

Post by **joni** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 11:00 pm

[mention]jamessumneriii[/mention] THANK U!

I’m sacred to play this game! I played the first one and I was scared most of the time.

For some reasons this messaging service confuses “unread” and “unsent,” so messages appear to remain in your outbox until they’re read.

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Sun Jun 21, 2020 11:41 am

ahhh ok they've all sent now, cool

tim · Post by **tim** » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:05 pm

At that point! really fun and scary (which has been a really great way to focus my already existing fear! haha)
Thanks again, [mention]jamessumneriii[/mention]

Post by **joni** » Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:55 am

I’m taking it very slow. I’m in the grocery store with all the zombos.

[mention]jamessumneriii[/mention] is there a way to turn off the narrative and zombos and to just totally freestyle explore the world? I know this is a heavy ask, but wouldn’t it be cool if all modern games had a free mode like this?

alex · Post by **alex** » Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:45 pm

I just finished exploring the courthouse. I can only handle about 45 minutes or getting killed 5 times by a clicker before I've had enough for the evening

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:50 pm

[mention]alex[/mention] yeah some parts get nasty. the difficulty settings are super granular so if you want a buddy char to be more aggressive, or more ammo/crafting drops, or more forgiving stealth (and a bunch more) then you can tweak those all individually. i'm about to hit the courthouse in my first non-dev playthrough and i'm debating some tweaks

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:01 pm

[mention]joni[/mention] i'm actually with you in principle, assassins creed origins actually had a zero-combat/story mode that was free for schools, so you could just walk around and climb the sphinx and watch women weave papyrus and hear the mix of coptic and greek on the streets of alexandria and it RULES because that's a big part of why i play the AC games

but weirdly it would actually be a LOT more work with a more linear game like TLOU2 than with an open-world game. ND does a lot of "gating" in level design so when you like slide down a snowbank that you can't rescale, the entire level is designed with the narrative beats in mind, so it's tangled up with scripting logic for door locks / unlocks, conversations, etc.

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:04 pm

[mention]tim[/mention] awesome, glad you're digging it

RIP VITA

alex · Post by **alex** » Fri Jun 26, 2020 11:24 pm

Its weird that this is not the “what are you playing” thread

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat Jun 27, 2020 9:41 am

[mention]jamessumneriii[/mention] oh man that’s fascinating! I’ve always been super interested in the edges of game maps and how games manage to turn you away from stuff you’re not supposed to be doing. Always reminds me of that part in the Truman show where he tries to leave town and keeps hitting obstacles until it’s finally men in Hazmat suits shutting down the freeway completely. Is there a word for that? Is that what “gating” is?

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:51 am

Plug thread: my book comes out in paperback today. Took two years of near-constant grinding to justify it to my publisher but I finally did it! That's it!

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Tue Jul 07, 2020 12:12 pm

BIG WHOOP! Bravo, bud!

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Tue Jul 07, 2020 1:26 pm

Congratulations!! What an accomplishment!

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:52 pm

This is so fucking cool. I'm imagining someone picking up a copy at Hudson Books at an airport! So cool to imagine people discovering it.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Tue Jul 07, 2020 6:31 pm

When I first got the book deal, I thought paperbacks were something that happened with every book: first you have the hardback, then like a year later the paperback comes out. It wasn’t until six months or so after my hardback was published that I found out paperback release is based on sales, and if you don’t sell enough of the expensive version (hard) you don’t get to make a cheap one (soft). It made zero sense to me because wouldn’t you sell more of the cheap thing?? Especially if you have a younger audience?? But publishers make less money per copy sold when it’s in paperback so they just don’t prioritize it unless it’s going to be a sure thing for them. I basically said yes to everything for two years to promote the book and it wasn’t until that effort started paying off with high school & college course adoption (i.e. potentially large orders of the paperback) that my publishers offered it to me. Anyway, inside baseball! But every step of the way I’m learning about the process & how weird its assumptions are

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:14 am

That's really fascinating. I was just wondering about the hardback vs paperback stuff, because I far prefer to hold and read paperback books. Of course it's about money!

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Tue Jul 14, 2020 12:03 pm

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] that's awesome congrats!!!!!! i similalrly did not really know that about publishing

i think "gating" is more like in TLOU2 you open a door going into a area, something dramatic happens, but your NPC buddy has closed the door behind him, or rubble shuts off that route, so you have to go forward. so the art of shaping/ordering your progress without it feeling like handholding. earlier zelda games did this too where you'd need an item to progress to the next dungeon etc

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Tue Jul 14, 2020 12:05 pm

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] there WAS a game where you could try and scale the mountains encircling the game map, and either a booming voice of text imitating a booming voice is like YOU SHALL GO NO FURTHER and kills you if you keep at it. i thought it was elder scrolls oblivion but i can't scare it up on google, anybody know?

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:35 pm

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 12:51 pm

when the croquet ball hit

Post by **joni** » Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:56 am

Thank you [mention]jamessumneriii[/mention], that game was so much fun to play, actually scary, and SO fucked up.

: IMG_1640.jpeg (2.3 MiB) Viewed 19266 times

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed Jul 22, 2020 4:33 pm

I liked watching [mention]joni[/mention] play the game! It's so fucked up! I have a lot of questions about how it was made but if you're over talking about your job I can probably just Google it

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Wed Jul 22, 2020 10:51 pm

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] I saw your book in the NYT Book Review paperback picks! Woot woot!

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu Jul 23, 2020 11:50 am

Another inside-baseball thing I learned recently: in publishing those NYT paperback selections are referred to as "paperback alley" and they are considered a huge get!

infopetal · Post by **infopetal** » Thu Jul 23, 2020 8:31 pm

yourfriendclaire wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 6:31 pm I basically said yes to everything for two years to promote the book and it wasn’t until that effort started paying off with high school & college course adoption (i.e. potentially large orders of the paperback) that my publishers offered it to me. Anyway, inside baseball! But every step of the way I’m learning about the process & how weird its assumptions are

paperbacks > hardcovers always, thank you for fighting the good fight [mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention]!

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 10:47 am

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] & [mention]joni[/mention] awesome glad y'all enjoyed it!

and totally happy to field questions / ideas / discussion on the game H M U

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu Jul 30, 2020 12:35 pm

[mention]infopetal[/mention] truly! I can't think of the last time I bought a hardback!

[mention]jamessumneriii[/mention] okay get ready for a DUMB ONE: I know real actors voice the characters, but do they also do the whole motion capture skin-tight ping pong ball suit thing? The body language is so nuanced and heavy!

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:39 pm

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] not dumb at all! that can vary a lot depending on the game. but these days most "realistic" games use a base layer of mocap that animators adjust / tweak / dial up or down. so in TLOU2 main actors def wore the mocap suit for cinematics / cut-scenes but you also film and photograph those sessions closely at the same time to get reference for animators to layer in and/or tweak the body nuance and also to recreate facial performances (which, well, complicated but it's based on a library of the actors' expressions but isn't motion-captured the same way body performances are)

i THINK (only came on 15 months back) that in our case, the same actors wore the suits for in-game animation (which has to captured in remixable segments) though some games will use stuntpersons instead. iirc we used more mocap than most games for in-game since we used motion matching to blend between animation states depending on player input, terrain, etc

and we even mocapped horses!

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:39 pm

wowww yeah okay! The distinction between cinematic cut-scenes and action makes sense. I was trying to visualize mo-capped actors running through every possible permutation of movement and it was making my head spin.

tim · Post by **tim** » Thu Aug 06, 2020 10:48 am

joni wrote: ↑Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:56 am Thank you @jamessumneriii, that game was so much fun to play, actually scary, and SO fucked up.

IMG_1640.jpeg

Yes, thanks [mention]jamessumneriii[/mention]!! after finishing the game we jumped on an impromptu move upstate NY so shit's been insane. BUT, i really loved playing this and got so scared and screamed many times. also, as a super short-attention-span-person, this was maybe the first game i've ever 1. played to the end AND 2. never skipped a cut-scene or through dialogue or anything. Thanks again!

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:22 pm

[mention]tim[/mention] belated but hell yeah, stoked you enjoyed it! it's not exactly a chillax good-times game but i'm super excited that ppl i know/like/respect dig it

jamessumneriii · Post by **jamessumneriii** » Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:46 pm

to get emo for a sec, this part of TLOU2 choked me up for real, where you can show someone scared of dogs how to play fetch with alice. it was the thing i was proudest of my dog greta for, how she was gentle and playful and approachable for ppl / kids initially leery of not-small dogs:

tim · Post by **tim** » Fri Aug 14, 2020 9:17 pm

jamessumneriii wrote: ↑Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:46 pm to get emo for a sec, this part of TLOU2 choked me up for real, where you can show someone scared of dogs how to play fetch with alice. it was the thing i was proudest of my dog greta for, how she was gentle and playful and approachable for ppl / kids initially leery of not-small dogs:

Yes!! We played fetch for so long. Haha. Really loved this part too

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:12 am

Pluggin!

I've been freelancing a lot recently—I feel truly blessed to sit in my little writing cave thinking interesting thoughts as the world burns. This magazine, the in-house publication of a synthetic biology company in Boston, has been kind enough to give me a column to write about computation and biology...longtime readers may remember my slime mold computing article from earlier this year! Anyway this new one went up yesterday and it's about a sweet kooky biologist who made evolutionary computer life-forms in the early '90s and pioneered the field of Artificial Life:

https://www.growbyginkgo.com/2021/01/11 ... al-jungle/

I'm hoping that my second book will be about these themes broadly...life, intelligence, computation, nature, and plant/animal sentience/communication.

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Fri Jan 15, 2021 11:59 am

That's a great article, Claire. That guy seems cool. And I love the illustrations.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Fri Jan 15, 2021 4:02 pm

Thanks buddy <3

Abe · Post by **Abe** » Wed Mar 31, 2021 12:55 pm

Plugging!
https://abrahamingle.bandcamp.com/album/fields

Today I am releasing my most recent album, the first under my real name. Music is very hard for me to put out because I am not "good" at it but have been compelled to make it my whole life. I like making it and love/hate finishing it (very complicated). Now that I am more "known" for making instruments, that has taken a lot of heat/pressure off of releasing stuff so that is nice.
This album was made by making a rhythmic phrase on my modular synthesizer and then adding voices and phrases until something came out of it. Sometimes that was something more traditional (Fifths) and sometimes I zoned out into the poly rhythms. It's also on all these places https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/abrahamingle/fields-2

alex · Post by **alex** » Mon Aug 09, 2021 10:30 am

PLUG:

A book I have been working on for the past two-ish years came out last week. It is a bird fieldguide/history book about a "lake" (its not a lake) near my house that is home to the first official wildlife refuge in the nation. The book is called "Birds of Lake Merritt". It exists here: https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/bir ... e-merritt/, but I also made an informative site at http://birdsoflakemerritt.com.

The most exciting part might be that I got a "blurb" from the bird gawd David Allen Sibley. It has also been the "#1 New Release in Ecology of Lakes and Ponds" on amazon. This is not a distinction I would have ever predicted in life, and the competition seems to be mostly calendars, but I'll take it!

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Mon Aug 09, 2021 11:00 am

wow... this is so cool

alex · Post by **alex** » Thu Aug 12, 2021 9:41 am

thanks

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Sun Sep 05, 2021 1:15 pm

This is very cool! Bravo @alex

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Jan 31, 2022 10:20 am

RETURN OF PLUG THREAD

I spent two years working on this article about tracking down a lost '80s hacker named Susy Thunder and it finally went live this week after five drafts and the most intense fact-check I've ever undergone! Everyone involved worked so hard on making it look awesome and the art/dev is so cool. So far it's a hit and has brought a tidal wave of opportunities to my humble shore, which is such a relief and wonderful and scary and cool:

https://www.theverge.com/c/22889425/sus ... aire-evans

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon Jan 31, 2022 12:00 pm

I will say here what I have already told Claire, which is that this article is great. It is long and I enjoyed every moment of reading it. It is at least as good as anything that made it into *the book*. Well done!

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu Feb 03, 2022 9:42 am

THANK YOU!

It's wild. I'm fielding TV offers now!!!!

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Thu Feb 03, 2022 10:34 am

There you have it!