946 karma · joined July 23, 2018
Someone playing Zelda doesn't go into it ever expecting Ganondor to try to win. The player either solves the game, or they stop playing. But they can't lose, which is why I called it a puzzle.
In comparison to something like Chess AI where the computer agent is actually trying to win and make you lose.
So you'd find players asking whether it's single or multiplayer and competitive or casual and so on and they're really trying to place the game in that categorization. Is this game just a series of challenges for me, or are there opponent agents trying to win.
Most single player games are not "true games". They are puzzles. This is also how players perceive them.
As defined by Chris Crawford a game requires competition. Multiple agents who play, which creates the possibility of win and loss.
In most single player games, the game agents are not equal competitors who can win. They are only obstacles and challenges for the player. Even if the game is built with difficulty in mind.
So the mistake of thinking of actually intelligent game agents is like thinking why doesn't the Rubik cube ever win. It's not why someone plays it.
Notable exceptions are where software is used to substitute a player in a multiplayer game, where they do usually maintain the game structure and compete.
Somehow every story from comics books to video games fall into the lore trap and comes out looking like a kitchen sink of tropes.
https://youtu.be/xPC8aIl7nek https://youtu.be/mLr1co1f5-c
For example in Warcraft 3, which is much smaller scale with 10 - 20 units per player at any time, players constantly look for ways to block each other. While the fight is happening you might sneak a unit around just to block their path when they escape. This wouldn't be possible if the pathfinding was better at steering.
In terms of terrain maybe land/sea/air in Red Alert 2?
The more tactical RTS like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2 use the terrain a lot, but in small scale ways like moving from cover to cover and building to building. The terrain is very complex there.
The new Dune Spice Wars only has desert but it has some interesting ideas about movement. It's a much slower RTS and has been described as real time 4X.
Yes I'm talking about Bing's chat AI. There is absolutely no indication or precedent for legal concern.
I know people who work at Saudi Authority for Data and AI. They have no idea why we're blocked, while UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman can use it.
They've been holding regular AI talks and hackathons to grow the local talent. But we don't have access to GPT4 API and it's holding us back.
If it's blocked for political reasons I'd like to understand why, so we can understand their values that allow all those countries on the list but not Saudi.
I was able to register with a US phone number and VPN, but I'm also blocked from actually paying to get an API key.
I find the worry about compliance a thin excuse since a larger company like Microsoft that does have presence in the country offers Bing without issue. Same with SnapChat which has signifianct Saudi investmnet.
I believe it's some kind of misguided political activism.
If pathfinding is too efficient, and the same for all units, then the micro aspect of the game is killed. Micro is the "real time" part of real time strategy.
If you play something like Starcraft 1, Warcraft 2, or AoE 2 you'll see the pathfinding has immense peculiarities that as you get better at the game you learn to manage. Units get stuck on each other and so on.
Starcraft 2 has a very good pathfinding algorithm but it still intentionally adds a lot of variety to how units move to recreate that cumbersome peculiar pathfinding that rewards micro. Yet if you look at Starcraft 1 you see the units still move in much more unique ways.
I think it's too easy to fall into a technical rabbit hole and try to do the best pathfinding when it actively harms the game.
Even if we have brain-interface full immersion virtual reality, you can still have fun throwing cards into a hat. In fact you will prefer it.
Games are like food rather than cars. In food, high quality food doesn't really push out low quality food. Even a billionaire will want a grilled cheese sandwich sometime. While in cars, you can say that in general people would like the more expensive cars rather than cheaper ones.
To me this puts a hard limit on upside of quality for games. It doesn't matter how many thousands of hours of dialogue you have voiced and motion captured if a vampire survivors could always eat your lunch.
Then on top of that they built an ecosystem of toys and software to monetize their adoring customers.
Nintendo recognized the deadend of the hardware race in the early 2000s, and continued developing their "mascots" while Sony and MS abandoned theirs. I don't think Microsoft and Sony have the DNA to pull of something like this. They are still software and hardware companies respectively.
Employment is never a choice. You either can't work, or you must work. Choosing not to work means getting priced out by everyone who does work for all ranked goods.
If you could put a value on a stay-at-home spouse's labor, you can work out whether this was a positive or negative to the family's economy. You see that at the low income end, a double income society forces the family to have a lot less just to compete for rent. Educated professional couples earn more, while outsourcing house labor to the low income families. Capitalists are very happy because they doubled the supply of their labor.
Essentially you see a person go from full time cooking for their family and raising their kids, to working at a fastfood restaurant and babysitting other people's kids for minimum wage, while their own family gets no support.
It is naturally a race to the bottom. As long as a community is getting wealthier, the competition will be more fierce.
You can develop more land as fast as possible. Unless you're lowering the ranking of the whole area, then again as the community develops competition will become more fierce.
How much does a home cost? $(however much the second buyer can maximally afford) + $1.
It's not profound to put on blue-tinted glasses and marvel at how blue everything is. The only thing it tells me is the POV you chose for yourself.
"Everything is politics" is usually used as a wedge against uninterested people. Either you join my cause, or you're responsible for all current evil. It's certainly not an enlightened neutral observation. It's a call for culture war.
I disagree with the prescription that it shouldn't/couldn't. Saying something is unlikely is different to closing that door.
People and society are complex, and the long tail is really long. That's why being open minded and really giving the person in front of you some consideration is really important.
* You think you figured out people. But non of us have figured out people. Being open minded means at least trying to give any person a chance. You already have them divided into types and dismissed.
* You think to be friends you need people with the same hobbies and interests.
* You think your hobbies and interests are already set.
Whether your goal is to find a partner or to find friends, trying to figure out and decide about people in the privacy of your mind, then projecting that on the world will hamper your goals.
Humble yourself, assume you're wrong, and allow people to surprise you.
He took Nintendo from a playing card company to an international juggernaut who owns the biggest IPs.
He also never used to play games. He would greenlight games by having an employee play the game in front of him. Somehow he had a keen eye for game quality, since the Nintendo Seal of Quality was a big factor in the resurgence of the home console.
He was also a difficult person to deal with.
"Overall, 15,021 non-Qataris died in the country between 2010 and 2019, according to the government. A Guardian analysis in February 2021 found that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar since the award of the tournament. The death records were not categorised by occupation or place of work."
It's a normal number considering Qatar's 3 million population is 90% expats.
I remember Final Fantasy 1 on gameboy had a surprisingly open world and I could walk all over the map, and it had random monster encounters. I'd be fighting a lengthy turn based battle about every 20 steps, and it could be way above my level, and I was completely and utterly lost!
I spent so much time on that game. But I never progressed far into the quest. Playing it as an adult I realized one random NPC says there's a hidden cave to the east, and if you never read it's pretty much impossible to find.
Similarly in Pokemon, bumbling through caves in the dark until I go out the other side through sheer luck and grit. Turns out the move Flash just lights up the cave.
So the intuitive idea that you start with a burst of motivation and then you maintain it with discipline is wrong. Motivation is exactly the kind of impulsive distraction that destroys discipline.
Starting with discipline means rejecting random motivation when it comes, just like you might want to reject candy or lighting up a joint. Starting with discipline means you make the commitment first, and you fight to stick to it without any of the motivational high.
From that lens, I started seeing "get my life together" thoughts at 1am to be as bad as the worst impulses I struggle with.
The Qatari government is only being questioned about the 34 of 37 workers dying, and there's no evidence of a coverup either.
If your general point is "I don't like the Qatari government" that's fine. If your point is hundreds of workers died at work but was covered up then a lot more solid evidence is needed to back that up.
"More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago"
"death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work"
"There have been 37 deaths among workers directly linked to construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “non-work related” by the event’s organising committee."
"its 2 million-strong migrant workforce"
6500 deaths in a 10 year span, out of a 2 million demographic. Only 37 of those 6000 were workers actually linked to the construction of the stadiums. Only 3 of those are confirmed to be dead on site.