He ate a whole Caribbean pepper plant and was fine so I just think he's his father's son.

Interesting, I don't really think of it as having "jrpg elements" typically. I guess maybe the elemental reactions? Really the opening area is just a BOTW clone, and that's all you need to know to get into the game really. It opens up a lot more after the prologue and cements that it is own thing.

I wasn't expecting to get that into it initially but I was hooked once I started going into the second area (Liyue). There's so much more depth to mechanics than I expected.

Interesting. I've never seen the 80's movie to compare but that's good to know, 'cause I feel like the truly unique plot stuff doesn't come up until the second half so I was wondering if people would stick around for it.

That's just what I think my character's inner monologue sounds like, even if it's all just metaphor for an early 21st century american prize car.

Those Cixin Liu books were amazing. Of the three in that series I mentioned previously, my favourite has to be second one "The Dark Forest". Really changed how I think about some things and left an indelible mark on how I take in other sci-fi stories now. Highly recommended sci-fi stuff.

I'm re-reading Dune Messiah now. Then I will probably read Hyperion next.

I am not a greenthumb. But I'm starting to learn.

I have to do a lot of repotting so all my plants are too unsightly for photos at the moment. This summer I took gardening more than I ever have and grew some great sunflowers (all are now dead due to the season).

I also have aloes that are huge and won't stop multiplying. I started with one little one and now have about 6. Two of them are are like two feet tall and THICC, so they keep falling over and hurting other plants.

I forget the name of it, but I have one like Snare's second photo too. I'm having trouble with it lately as it recently grew a lot all at once but isn't uniform. It has a section of small (like a quarter) sized leaves and then the other side is all bigger ones. Specifically I think it's 'cause one of the big aloes is in it's airpspace.

Also my cat tries to eat any plants I bring in the house. I had a nice pepper plant for all of one day.

I like the Dune novel so I liked the movie. I'm curious what people who didn't read the book thought of the film, since I'm sure there's a lot of seemingly random terms being thrown at you with little explanation.

I'm not interested in Ghostbusters, I don't actually have any affinity for the franchise, but I find it odd that (based solely on the trailer) this adaptation is trying to add some sort of seriousness to the concept that was never there to begin with. I'm glad to hear this one's good though, I'll probably check it out on streaming.

So. Much. Genshin Impact.

Yes, there was a square missing from my blue heart.

So like, my whole schtick of being the plant guy has kind of persisted over the past 20 years.

Huhuhuhuhuh who would keep up a weird persona on a board that they invented at 13? Couldn't be me...

Really though, these are spectacular! Have you done any events or anything? As John said, you could definitely do weddings, etc.

Hi all, so sorry for all the downtime, I have been super depressed and not paying attention to anything.  I know this latest bout of downtime has probably killed the site for good but I still wish that one day I'll have it in me to properly resurrect everything.

This is a theme I made back when I intended to have multiple different themes available years ago.  I'll try to get the old "MMMv7" theme back in effect sometime too.  Not any time soon though.

It happens, but we got you homie. And MMM has never looked better. Fresh yet classic, this is great.

Maquette? Chisel? Bunk?

I shall cleave this stone with liquid swords into a divine image of precision and discipline.

This, an acolyte of the winding way jutsu can achieve with memory and a bolt of perception.

"Warp 10" was in some early episode in TNG, but it's possible the implications of that episode was just completely ignored by the rest of the series, as far as I know.

They did go beyond Warp 10 in one of Voyager's strangest episodes, hahah

The Forest is a lot of fun with the right group of people. I don't think I'd bother with single player even though there's some different features to it, but with pals it's a good time.

Y'all are talking Star Trek AND Mass Effect?
You have summoned me.

But I think we need to note something important in regards to Mass Effect; At it's core it doesn't just ape Star Trek. It does what any good science fiction writing does and pays homage to a HUGE wealth of stories both in and out of genre. I often see this simplification of Mass Effect, especially when it comes to this specific argument of ST: Picard taking it, but I feel that it's a disingenuous one. And we should also note the history of Star Trek itself, especially TNG and on onward, paying homage so other SF stories.

So anyway onto Picard:

I was wondering if the Federation discovered ME fields and a bunch of ancient ME relays or something, giving them access to more of the galaxy. Or if Picard could suddenly use "biotics." I guess not.

Actually it's not that far off. As Speed mentioned there is the Borg's transwarp technology or whatever, but I'll excuse that since they had it in Star Trek well before Mass Effect existed (although I don't remember if they actually used transwarp in the show or something "new").

The show actually copies the general thesis of the first 3 games--the rights of AI existence, but oafishly bumbles through it with the grace of your average "people of wal-mart" subject slipping in their own barf. Key things from the game are adapted into the show; The beacons that give Shepard visions are in the show, and the actual sequence of images in the visions are almost 1:1 with Mass Effect. The reason for the visions is exactly the same and the show goes as far as to copy




^{SPOILERS BEGIN}

the actual #####ing reapers and their purpose and their cycles AND their mechano-tentacles coming from "deep space" where they lay in wait for civilizations to get to a point where war with AI is inevitable so they can come wipe out organic life. Also doesn't look like bbcode spoiler boxes don't work in this anymore.

^SPOILERSEND




Moreover, Alex Kurtzman actually has a documented history of ripping off plots from video games. I don't necessarily disagree with adapting a story (hell, Shakespeare did that) but this is really blantant. Any parts of the plot that could have been interesting were taking directly from Mass Effect and slotted into the rest of what the writing team had to offer.

But more importantly accusations of theft, the story structure is just awful. The plot is lumbering and uninspired, the mirrors to contemporary politics (which I love in ST) lack nuance on a level I haven't seen in a while causing accusations of pandering, and the characters... Oh my the characters.
 
-Every new character is one dimensional, for example an eeeeeevil Romulan woman who delights only in her own baditude. I call this type of character "deliciously evil" because they seem to have ZERO character traits other than being bad, and getting off on being bad. It's like if the Adams Family weren't charming people and just high-school #####heads. You know, the ones you never talked to again.

-Every returning character is reduced into raw materials that betray not just any storyline they had, but EVERY storyline. It actually can feel contemptuous at times. For example, Seven of Nine had one of the most complex growth arcs in Star Trek to date. Now she's little more than a hot chick with guns. While most of her story involves hunting down people who experiment on XBs (ex-borgs), they waste the potential to have anything interesting done in that storyline. Where is Seven's intelligence? This was a character that struggled with moral conflicts while learning to adapt to her newfound humanity, but there isn't a shred of that person shown in the character anymore. Just a less interesting Beatrix Kiddo with a less interesting list.

This is typical of how every character is treated. It very clearly takes most of it's character inspiration from the TNG movies rather than the TNG show. This seems like a minute detail but the butterfly effect of it is massive because many of the characters, ESPECIALLY JEAN-LUC PICARD, act far differently in the films than they did in the shows... Which in turn culminates with the incongruous relationship between Data and Picard in Star Trek: Nemesis. Something that is a central theme and catalyst to Star Trek: Picard.

Then there is the just completely unlikeable state of the Federation, which have become xenophobic racist monsters.

Obviously I've been having this conversation for a while and this is all just my opinion, but honestly it would be insulting to sophomores the world over to say the writing is sophomoric. In my opinion it's something much more juvenile and done for the sake of the almighty dollar. I don't even mind juvenile content in the right place, I mean I like The Flash, but this isn't it. It simultaneously fails to be thought provoking like Star Trek was in the past, and fails to be entertaining. Literally Picard will say "we really need to find Soji, she may already be dead" and then ten seconds later go on a complete sidequest style detour out of their way (they SAY it's out of their way on this emergency rescue mission) so he can put on a terrible french accent in a pointless heist (indulging Patrick Steward I'm sure) or go to a planet where Picard had once made friends with a child (a defining part of his character in the past being that he doesn't like kids--I can accept that he may have grown from that but it's not well implemented, it's just an excuse to insert a USELESS ninja to the crew). There's many other tenants of the ST universe that are changed or completely ignored (starships being built in space, not on Mars) but those things just aren't nearly as important as the STORY. My take after working in television for so long is that you can't really justify bad story just because of some other factor, story is the essence of the entire endeavor.

it was like someone just hit Ctrl+V a bunch with the ships on both sides.

This is a small thing that is actually infuriating. They clearly didn't want to model a ton of ships so they cheaped out and then WROTE INTO THE SCRIPT a line of "this is our newest style of ship off the production line, ho" just to justify why you were seeing so many of the same ship in the same battle. Nearly every other time there is a space battle in a Star Trek show or movie you get to see tons of different Federation ships of varying sizes and types. To people that like Star Trek (aka the target demographic) that's always been something we like to see. It makes ST feel different from other shows.

I'll definitely check out season 2, I'm hoping for a HUGE change because I felt like season 1 was just indulging the ego's of the TNG cast members (whom we know never understood the show's appeal to fans) as well as a complete lack/disdain for story telling.

I promise I didn't get these opinions from there, but I do recommend watching the guys at Red Letter Media going through the episodes. I don't 100% agree with all their takes on it but for the most part they saw it the way I did and I think a lot of the time people get so distracted by lens flares they don't think about how the story makes no sense.

I love Reno 911.

I love Star Trek.

I haven't watched beyond the 2 hour premiere of Discovery.

Picard was a travesty.

Mikero, you trying to 100% that friggin thing? I just cleared my 4th run, first at 2 heat and I'm jealous seeing all your achievements popping on Steam. You've also got 4x my playtime so I expect to catch up! My first escape was on run 25, I think. The fact that you don't have the epilogue achievement yet is terrifying. Every run is so adrenaline pumping it's hard to imagine another 100 hours in it, but I also can't see myself loving it any less. SUPER addicting.

Also, Charon is SCARY. I think I need to devote a whole run to just him.


Sorry Edge, I play only on PC, Johncarllos on Steam. Glad to see ya![/size][/b]

Late reply but yes! The play time is a bit inflated since I didn't know you could save and quit mid run, so there's some times where I had left it running but that's still less than 5% of those hours. I spent a ton of time experimenting with different builds. I just got the epilogue but it's not hard to get it faster, I was just focused elsewhere. I have one achievement left but it's just about grinding so I'll get it soon enough. I really dig the game so much that I could play for ages even after 100%-ing it.

I've never heard of that but Hilda is it's own IP.

BTW Kid Cosmic released on Netflix earlier in the month, and the response has been great!

I've also been working with our studio for different Black and minority issues over the past year, and this one of the empoyee spotlights for Black History Month was a short Q&A with me about getting into animation and such, it's nothing really in depth but I was really honoured to be selected for it. I have it linked on my social media, I don't want to link it in this thread.

Thanks guys. The good thing is we were able to manage celebrating his 100th birthday in September at least. But honestly even at 100 years-old, him losing his life to this pandemic rather than just old age feels like robbery.

I think a lot people just say "well they're old" which is fine under normal circumstances but this is basically a case of others being irresponsible. He lived in a veteran's home in Montreal, and Quebec has been absolutely terrible about keeping Covid out of old age homes this whole time.

Thanks! Also, to add in another recent release is season 2 of Hilda, which we also did for Netflix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26fBRrCdiWU

A really interesting show based on children's books set in Scandinavia by British writer Luke Pearson. Totally different flavour (more whimsical fantasy) but I like this one a lot too, seasons 1 and 2 are both out already.

It was a deeply sarcastic statement.  It looks fine.

Ahhh ok gotcha.

The half-tone dots are only used for the credits (in a pretty clever way) and some promotional art like the image here. Dot tones look like garbage when fully animated, everything has full colour range and continuous tone. It's definitely not a low budget show at all, that's actually a surprising take.

Haven't been around much, I was in a bad place over the holidays due to losing my grandfather to COVID-19 in early December and I'm just starting to come out of all that now that I'm back at work and in a routine. Hopefully everyone had a better time over the past month, but I also wanted send out a happy birthday to our boy Speed!

I've only heard really diametrically opposed reviews of Cobra Kai, but I've never been a big Karate Kid person either.

Lately I'm just switching between 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Would I Lie To You. And then the odd episode of The Grand Tour. I guess I'm on my UK ##### again hahah

Haven't used this thread in over a year, I post art mainly on my art instagram, but I figured I really should share my actual 9-to-5 work more often so here's the latest release for our studio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBZ9UkhblkM

Kid Cosmic is a new show from Craig McCracken, creator of a show I previously worked on years ago called Wander Over Yonder as well this little show called The Powerpuff Girls.

I did a couple different jobs on this new show, and I'm really excited for this one to come out. You don't always actually like watching the show you're working on in this industry. It's finally coming out February 2nd, but I've literally been working on it for years at this point.

I just think it's funny anyone even bothered to play it and talk about the gameplay in this thread in the first place.

So basically we're all agreed now that this game only exists for the nice jpegs like League Of Legends.

Let's talk books again!

I burned through Cixin Liu's "The Three-Body Problem", a chinese science-fiction novel that I 1000% recommend to anyone interested in reading something in the genre with a perspective they may not be used to. This is my favourite book in a long time. I'm currently reading the second book in the series, "The Dark Forest".

In between those two books I read the first Dune novel. I'd never seen the movie or the new movie's trailer, or anything. Knowing very little about the story, I found the first quarter (about 200/800 pages in my edition) of the book to be pretty odd and dry but it really opened up after that into something I found extremely enjoyable. Also, going through the rest of the book changed my perspective on that first quarter too. I can see why there was reverence for this story even though most people only know it's (apparently bad) movie. I have the 2nd book ready and waiting.

Congrats again John! I don't know about you but my fiancée and I have been holding off on plans with covid now, but I know other couples that have set dates for next year.


I started a new job, but at the same animation company I've been at for 10 years. I used to be the head of my department so it was a hard decision to go back to the bottom of another one, but I'm way happier at the moment. Basically I grew stagnant and bored at the top of that old dept., I wanted more stimulus and to become more versatile. I'm now a character builds and rigging artist, which is basically creating the in-program characters for animators to animate. It combines the technical Toon Boom stuff I was doing before with more drawing.

I'm a big fan of Simon Stalenhag's paintings and they've made a television show OUT of them called Tales From The Loop. I've only watched one episode but I really loved the tone of it. I believe every episode is a contained story from the same universe/town.

Stalenhag's paintings are basically like Scandinavian vistas with science-fiction elements thrown in, but the magic of them lies in how mundane and normal everything is. It makes his paintings somewhat haunting. The characters are unfazed by what we see as grimly fantastical. I hope the show continues with it's respect to that.

Been playing a lot lately 'cause there's nothing else to really do.

Hades -- I am loving this. I'm not a fan of rogue-likes usually but this one weaves the actual story into it, and the gameplay is tight. This is highly addictive in a good way. I liked Bastion a lot but Supergiant has really outdone themselves with this one.

Ring Fit -- As someone who would go to the gym 4-5 times a week in the "old world", I can say this thing is really well made. As far as exercise programming, progressive overlaod, and training balance go it's actually super impressive how good this is. Where Wii Fit was largely fluff, this is an actual legitimate workout that's adjustable for all ages and body types. And it's actually fun. I highly recommend it as someone very into fitness (for reference when there's no covid I do heavy powerlifting 4-5 times a week and play basketball 2-3 times a week).

GMod -- So old but honestly in these times it's really great to load into a game of prop hunt with some friends and just goof off. There's also a mode that's trying to be like Dead By Daylight (a game which I'll start playing with people tonight).

Momodora III -- Dope platformer, I loved every minute of it (which is like 45 minutes really)

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight -- Just a more evolved version of previous Momodora games. A lot longer and a lot more involved, a really great platformer with awesome art.

Lifeless Planet -- I hate it.

Got a lot of other stuff to try out soon too, so I'll leave it there for now.

Late reply but I just want to echo Majikn here, it's amazing you're keeping this board going this long even without the fancy look. We can certainly deal with this, Abe.

Sick, I like that colouring style.

Always looked horrible to me, happy to pick it up for free.

To reiterate, The I-Land was a garbage show and nothing should be copied from it.

I really like that Nighthawks inspired piece, it's one of my favourite paintings.

The artwork is pretty much the only merit of supporting it.

I'm unfamiliar with the creator but honestly I hated this.

Just personally I dislike "random lol" style humour, and even then it feels about 13 years too late.

Recently played through Tacoma, a nice short interactive story game. I enjoyed it, but I got it for free from Epic.

Back to Phoenix Wright again, as well as occasional Wargroove (it's good, but still it's no Advance Wars).

Epic's store is giving away so many free games every couple weeks it's crazy, so I'll finally be trying 20XX which always looked like garbage to me. Barony and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP are also free right now so I grabbed them.

I picked up Hue on there when it was free too, maybe I'll try it sooner so I can have the same timing as Speed

That's dope, did he do all of it or just pencils/inks/colours?

That's too bad, Viz did an excellent job with Dragon Ball. I guess they put the B team on One Piece.

I think a lot of that had to do with wearing headphones too. The spatial sound in first person is really good, compared to 3rd person where a lot gets drowned out in traffic and phone call voiceovers.

The 970 still holds up really well for most games! I might cave and go for a new NVidia card when Cyberpunk 2077 drops (though its now delayed until November). I want to raytrace that bad boy, and DLSS 2.0 is absolutely incredible at upsampling your resolution. Check out the DLSS 2.0 videos for CONTROL, it sold me on the tech instantly.

Oh yeah that makes sense. 970 was a great descision when I built this machine. Though I keep up and learn a lot about it, I'm not really that convinced on PC gaming over anything else (I think the PC Master Race thing is super overblown) and the 970 ended up being perfect because it didn't need to be upgraded in 6 months like a lot of other people's PCs. I'll still check that stuff out though, I'm a fan of having the different gaming options of PC and console(s).

: Mikero  15 June 2020, 17:49:10

Replaying GTAV on PC (originally played it on PS3 so that's an upgrade) since it was was free from the Epic Games store. I've been having a lot of trouble with all the stuff going on lately so it's a good game to chill out with.

I absolutely love the singleplayer story, and playing on PC is such a treat. It's still so gorgeous, especially the headlight rays at night when they go through other car's windows and cast shadows against buildings. The first time I saw that at max settings was breathtaking. It still is, but now it's breathtaking at 1440p, 144fps, on a mid-high end IPS panel.

My second time through the story I played in first person the whole time. Caught a lot of small details and side conversations I would have otherwise missed, and it vastly increased the difficulty (which is needed on most missions).

I have a GTX970 so I don't know if I can do max settings but I found a guide that optomized it well for that.

I'm not huge into first-person but I might try it. It's fun to drive around like that in the game, you have to actually look around to avoid some dumbass traipsing into the road like real life. Interesting that you're hearing more side conversations that way.

I think its that self-challenge mentality that got me into such a bad spot. It's one of the reasons I liked to smoke or drink when I'm playing games, I found myself self-handicapping and using that as an excuse for the challenge. Eventually I almost started drowning in it as it became the norm.

That's interesting. Definitely not my style but I see how that can happen. I never drink alone or anything and don't even drink much at all anymore. My concept of challenging oneself is more about trying to learn new skills, finding new hobbies, or move where my goals are.

I got my job back the other day, That was neat.  Can you dudes believe I work at college-level Writing center?  Like, actually reading other student's work and improving on it?  Those of you who know me from like... 2004 might be blown away by that I guess... Maybe.   I actually blame this board and the people I kept in communication around that time for building my writing skills and building my vocabulary in a lot of ways.

That makes me happy to hear, congrats WW!

hey everybody

i've been trying to be active at protests and donating while also balancing safety during the pandemic. stressful times, lots of high emotion, but very fired up.

i've also been drawing a daily comic strip about being married to betty boop. miss you all!!!!!!!

I love that comic, it's so informative to me for how to get and keep a hot wife.


Also thanks for the support in all this man.

I went to protests too and actually have been able to start the ball rolling on some actionable change in my workplace. Hopefully it works out, in the long run I would like to set up an outreach program to show minority children that animation is viable career. In the short term I sort of became "the guy" for this stuff at work and organized a panel discussion and Q&A with myself and black members of the studio. It went amazingly well, it was the most cathartic and gratifying experience I've had in a while, I even saved the announcement graphics for it.

Something I fought for was to allow anonymous questions and to not shy away from uncomfortable topics/questions. If people are afraid to ask things, what's the point? There were portions where people cried, laughed, everything. I'm already trying to get the wheels moving on the next one because there's other people I want to see on the panel. Actually, one of the people helping behind the scenes was attacked (for being black) the night after the panel, so there's an obvious need for more discussions.

Only seem to have time to re-watch Modern Family and watch The Last Dance right now. Not complaining, I love them both, just working a lot on many things.

Great thread idea.

Novels

Most recently finished a novel called "A Legend Of The Future" by Agustín de Rojas, it's an 80's hard SF novel out of Cuba that was only translated in the past 5 years. First half was super dry for my tastes (and I like hard SF so I'm OK with dry), but the second half had much more interesting concepts. I gave it 3 stars.

Also read a book called "Black, White, Other: In Search of Nina Armstrong" by Joan Steinau Lester in March. It was fine. It's about a biracial teen and her troubles with finding her place after parents divorced. Them being two different races means she's torn between two worlds. Since I actually had this happen to me at 10 years old, I was hoping this book would highlight some interesting things about that kind of experience. It completely failed to do so and the main character is basically just doing the same crap any generic whiny teen would, just with a little race stuff peppered in at an incredibly shallow level. Over the past decade I've been reading a ton of books about race (mostly black and mixed black-white) issues, and once in a while I encounter a total dud that's lauded for some reason whether it's for adults or YA. This was one of them. Another example would be "One Drop" by Bliss Broyard.


Currently reading "Burning Chrome" by William Gibson, and then I'll be reading his more seminal works (Sprawl).

Hoping that I'm getting a box set of Liu Cixin's "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series for my birthday.

I also have a backlog of non-fiction to get to as well.

Comics

I read Descender vol. 4 recently. The series in general isn't really ground breaking (especially if you've played something like Mass Effect) but it's compelling enough. The water colour look is a nice touch that makes it stand out. This volume was a bit quick and uninteresting but I'm sure the story will pick up in the next one.


Re: The Viz conversation. I've probably mentioned it before but don't sleep on the Dragonball and Dragonball Z manga. Specifically the Vizbig editions as they have incredible quality and the full pages that Toriyama watercoloured. A lot of people just swear by the show, and it's great, but once you've read the manga it doesn't come close. Every single thing is better in the manga (art by far, storytelling in general, etc.)-- the only exception being the lack of side-stories, if you like those (I actually love the story with Pikkon and the tournament in Hell).



I'm also on Goodreads if anyone uses that. Trying to actually write more reviews there.

Been kinda #####ed up by everything going on with race lately. I'm mixed (re: Black) and it's been rough for me and others I'm in contact with. But there's good coming out of it I think. I've kinda started a group at work and we're making roads towards something better. We have a Q&A this week to demystify the black experience and stuff like that with people in the studio and I'm gonna be one of the panelists.

I've been seeing the late 20's to mid 30's really destroy a lot of my friends, but I've been motivated by the few people who have been turning things around. I'm glad to hear you're part of the latter group.

Attitude is everything. In my mid-20's I realized that I liked challenging myself more than anything. A growth mindset is a great way to face the future head-on.

Replaying GTAV on PC (originally played it on PS3 so that's an upgrade) since it was was free from the Epic Games store. I've been having a lot of trouble with all the stuff going on lately so it's a good game to chill out with.

Just bought some stuff I'm excited to play on Switch too: Katana ZERO, Katamari reroll, Wargroove.

Significantly cooled down on how much Animal Crossing I was playing now that my island is mostly done, but I'm still doing bits here and there.

People think your 30's is all downhill but it's silly. My 30's have been the best and I hit the best shape of my life last year. Keep grinding, John.

That was the plan when honeymoons were still a thing.

Yeah, it's likely that my fiance and I will just elope instead of having an actual wedding at this point.

Cuphead I've already annihilated so I'll look into Blaster Master for sure. Been a while since playing Castle Crashers, which I loved.