Month: August 2018

Kronar returns in a 24-page comic Dark Miasma! Oglaf is super NSFW, tho this one is pretty tame, but if you read the previous Kronar stories be prepared for… well, be prepared.

There is no surrender, there is only being dead

WordPress: Gutenberg

In brief: I tried to use Gutenberg for that, and it's fucking garbage. It repeatedly failed to load, just a blank page, and then after a couple tries it came up. It recognizes pasted-in Markdown, but doesn't let me write in Markdown. It makes half the window unusable whitespace instead of more editor. So I've installed the Classic Editor plugin. Why the fuck would they make their editor less usable?

What I'm Watching: Godzilla anime

I grew up with KSTW-11 every weekend playing monster and kung fu movies (those being cheap air-filler for a non-network station), and Godzilla to me is rubber suits smashing balsa-wood cities and toy trains. After a long dry spell of the '80s and '90s Godzillas being mediocre, I loved the Lovecraftian GMK: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack and the very goofy Godzilla Final Wars. But I haven't kept up with the last few.

So, anime Godzilla on Netflix? Sure. Long weird backstory about aliens coming to Earth, Godzilla winning anyway, Humanity & two alien species (who look just like pale or red Humans; no Xilians or mutants in this one) fleeing to space, was this in the last couple movies? Anyway, long recap/setup I didn't care for at all.

Then 20 years in deep space later, after spacing the old people, they argue a long time and eventually space-warp back to Earth, but it's 20,000 years later there.

Earth is overrun with Godzilla and smaller monsters, the atmosphere full of chaff from the monsters so long-range comms don't work, but criminal/Space Captain Awesome is gonna save the day.

"What? Send the landing ships to the front line? It's too dangerous. If they get shot down, how will we return to the mother ship?"
"But we're already home. There's nowhere else to return to but here. Isn't that right?"

The alien high priest says Godzilla is divine punishment for thinking you rule the world. Or as the song says, "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man. GODZILLA!"

Of course, the Godzilla you can defeat is not the true Godzilla.

Visually this is OK, a lot of it is just filtered 3D CGI to look cel-shaded, which I've mostly only seen in shitty sports anime or later-generation Transformers; it doesn't look bad, exactly, but it doesn't look like animation. Give me Neon Genesis Evangelion any day.

Plot, there's a lot of arguing and not much gets done from that arguing. A serious editor could cut 50% of this and make a better movie with the same plot. Most of the dialogue is "Space Captain Awesome! Sempai!" "Yes, we must throw our lives away for heroism!" and screaming, it's not good.

Godzilla's new wrinkly metallic look isn't my thing, but it's functional; she doesn't move much, just stands there and fires atomic breath, occasionally swinging at something. I so much prefer the classic rubber suits jumping around and being physically in the scene.

Meh. I'll watch the rest, but at present I'm not impressed. Maybe I'll just rewatch GMK.

What I'm Watching: Extinction

What I'm Watching: Extinction

Extraordinarily dull first 20 minutes of a working stiff having bad dreams of war against space invaders. Then a pretty solid chase/urban combat arc. Then the plot flips, which I did not see coming, a rare pleasure.

Go watch this on Netflix and come back so we can talk about it.

SPOILERS: Please see the movie first. So copy this text and view it in advanced rot13 encryption

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But the reveal and resolution is great, this is a perfectly fine actual-science fiction movie.

★★★★½

Why Even Make Software

Long week at the grindstone on the game, actual gameplay is mostly done, but a lot of the fine details of UI, animations, and music are janky or nonexistent: "the first 80% takes 100% of the schedule, the last 20% takes another 100%", as they say.

So I may take beta-testers and let them at it soon; comment/email if you'd like in. If you've played any of my games before, you know what you're getting, but much bigger:

Perilar: Fallen Kingdom, an entire world of Perilar, massive dungeons deep into the earth, towers up into the sky, hard tactical roguelike RPG. Mac/Windows/Linux.

I'm running late to think about marketing now, but: Should I Kickstarter for the final stretch? Set up a Patreon? Those feel like begging or grifting, even though I support some stuff that way. I prefer to release, try to get copies in front of the people who'd like it, collect money. Advertising used to be viable for user acquisition, now I suspect a large part of my potential audience are savvy enough to ad-block, and giant horrible things like EA drive the CPK up. There won't be ads or IAP in the game.

Apple killing the affiliate program could not come at a worse time. Kick all the little guys while we're down, Phil Schiller, that's what you're for.

And then there's always people who say "just release it as open source!", by which they mean I should starve and die in the street, and no software except command-line developer tools should ever be made. Yeah, that's not an acceptable business plan.

The Wolf

These are amazing. The most overwrought, insane, semi-plausible haxxoring through shitty wireless printers. Great production values, reasonably well scripted. I'm always inclined to favor Slater's side in a movie, especially as a prankster/villain. ★★★★½ and I'm excited to watch more of these ads.

Their previous "The Fixer" series with Mike from Breaking Bad was awful, he can't even pronounce half the technology.

Obviously, no sane person would run a wireless printer and expect it to be safe. Also no sane person would run an immune-deficiency Windows box, HP or not, and expect it to be safe. Get a Mac, or install FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or OpenIndiana in lieu of Solaris, or if you really hate yourself, Linux (inevitable comment: "well, actually, it's GNU/Linux ahem may I show you my fedora collection"). At one time HP-UX was good, but that was a long time ago.

Liberation in Art but not in Your Stupid Life: 2112, Real Genius, TRON, and Ready Player One

In which art is not blamed for the problems of the world:

2112

A man in a controlled, music-less dystopia finds a guitar, learns to play, and feels joy. The priests of Syrinx who rule the system in the name of "average" (a la Harrison Bergeron) crush him. The ancients of rock who created the guitar return and liberate the system with a prog rock concert.

Our world could use this beauty
Just think what we might do
Listen to my music
And hear what it can do
There's something here that's as strong as life
I know that it will reach you

Don't annoy us further!
Oh, we have our work to do
Just think about the average
What use have they for you?
Another toy that helped destroy
The elder race of man
Forget about your silly whim
It doesn't fit the plan!

TRON

A game designer dude lives in exile above his arcade, robbed by evil AI & corporate suit. His ex and her dork boyfriend let him into the building, and he goes into the computer world, which the evil AI & corporate suit rule as well. The ancient soul of the machine gives the dork's program access and lets it play Breakout against the AI, and the game designer sacrifices himself, liberating the inner world, deleting the evil AI & firing the corporate suit, restoring the game designer to power in the real world.

Greetings, programs!

Real Genius

A too-young, too-uptight student works for an evil professor, but makes friends with other weirdo students and loosens up. The evil professor and the military trick the weirdos and make a death ray from their work. The ancient student in the closet emerges and the weirdos hack the death ray and turn the evil professor's house into popcorn.

All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world

Ready Player One

A boy in a crapsack world, literally in a trailer home on top of trailer homes, finds solace in ancient movies and games from a book by an ancient nerd. The corporation which rules the world and the virtual world crushes him and his friends. The ancient nerd's program runs, and gives the boy power and he liberates the virtual world and the real one.

After a long silence she asked, "So what happens now?"

Just Stories

These stories, they're just stories of their time.

2112 didn't end the "Moral Majority" or censors. The PMRC of Syrinx was founded 6 years later to destroy rock 'n roll and rap; the PMRC is gone but Tipper Gore still lives and hates, and music is still censored; remember Fuck You, by CeeLo Green? You probably only heard the censored radio version "Forget You".

TRON didn't end centralized computing, AI, or thieving corporate assholes. Today EA has ruined large gaming, and Google & Amazon make AIs that will probably kill us all.

Real Genius didn't end all CIA/military weapons. Today the babykillers have unmanned drones that can fly anywhere and assassinate anyone (and any bystanders/witnesses).

Ready Player One didn't make the real Internet a "safe space". Facebook, Twitter, or Google can still track you, filter what you see, and give Nazis access to harass you.

This is not a failing of art, it exists for fun or catharsis, and to give you coping strategies. It is not a magic spell to fix everything.

So, you can do something inspired by art; make art yourself; or, if you are completely useless, just whine unreasonably about art and be held in contempt.