I understanding removing the ability for publishing reasons. It is the apparently mandatory apology which I find a bit humorous and pointless. “We’re sorry because of unforeseen player actions which were obviously not an intended part of design.”

Perhaps I’m just so deadened to the hollow “We will do better.” apologies belted out by companies and public personalities, where the apology reads the same regardless of the amount of actual fault.

Sims type games have always had that kind of appeal to be able to go full sociopath in a harmless way. Drowning Sims in pools is a classic of gaming. The devs can do what they want with their game, but (unless this was something they had to do for publishing reasons) it strikes me as strange that they apologized for players being able to hit kids with cars in game, or abusing interactions to kidnap NPCs.

I don’t know, but I do know copyright and patent are two different kinds of protection, so it might be useful to look into how you think the shape would be protected.

Copyright would be for a creative work, and the enforcement by the right holder is allowed to be loose in selectively pursuing violators without losing protections.

Patent is for useful inventions or designs rather than expressive works. Skimming the Theodore G Brown soap, it seems much more involved than a simple shape and I can see why it was able to be patented.

The feeling of cheaply produced 80s and 90s cartoon productions. Clean, minimal lines with no or very little lineweight variation. Bright colors and distinct silhouettes. Facial structures somewhere between to 80s TV cartoon anime, which were themselves often inspired by American cartoons and not nearly as distinct as modern anime most often is, and American comic books as drawn by Jim Lee or JRJR. Big influence of technology designs from blocky designs like Transformers, and comics like Liefeld where guns or robots are just stuffed with nonsense greebles.

Or at least I’m trying.

I want to combine them. Markers are bad for large areas because they streak. I may end up digitally combinding watercolor backdrops with marker drawings. Right now I’m just testing out how to watercolor.

Water based art markers, just the cheap ones. The drawings almost all exist inside a shared universe I’ve been imagining.

Thanks.

Y-y–you too.

Ah yes, the elusive they.

I’ve done traditional DIY mold casting using ProCreate putty and found it suitable, if that material is in your budget. I have used a little bit of mineral oil inside the mold as a release agent. For me the most success has come from letting the material sit in the mold two or three times longer than you think it should take to be fully dry.

That would be the game designers’ and game director’s job. The listing in the article is for a VFX artist, who is working on the visual side at the direction of the game director.

Just screaming “make the game more fun!” at VFX artists is misplaced. These people are necessary on games, but unless it’s a small/single person team, they don’t have any hand in the game design mechanics aside from implementing what is coming from the director.

Nothing in the job listing seems like it is looking for a revolutionary destruction system. That seems like flourish added by article. It looks like a much more mundanely written job listing for destruction VFX, which is a role that shouldn’t be surprising in any way in a military shooter.

My goodness, this is some insane mountain out of a molehill reporting. The article is extrapolating a lot based on some vague and not particularly noteworthy qualifications bulletpoints that should be expected for military shooter VFX work.

Oh yeah, I’m totally aware of that. I was more thought spinning a from the ground up redesigned remake taking advantage of knowing how far the tech and design knowledge has come. Change up the levels, mechanics, and weapons design with a profession game developer level of resources while still using a fairly retro engine and keeping the original spirit.

It’s a good thing to have the game faithfully remastered, though part of me does wonder what a more ambitious remake might have looked like.

Issues like the imprecise aiming seem like artifacts of having to work around the original game’s limitations. I don’t know how different the Jedi engine is to the Build engine, as they seem superficially similar. Seeing games like Ion Fury being made on the Build engine makes me curious how a from the ground up remake of Dark Forces on an improved Jedi or Build engine, with some unshackling in terms of redesigning game mechanics with lessons learned while still keeping the original atmosphere might have gone.

But I understand that’s a lot of money and dev time that’s way beyond the scope of these kinds of remasters.

If meetings are happening so long and going in so frequently that nobody can make sense of them without an ai summary, might I suggest there are too many meetings?

I say this as someone who used to work at a place that had meetings about meetings to figure out why so much time was wasted in meetings.

For professional settings, I understand the theoretical appeal of ai writing. A lot of people don’t like writing emails, but they have to for work. Many of those same people fret about tone or presentation, because silly office politics reasons (real or one-sidedly imagined in their heads.)

The solution, really is workplaces just need to cut down on the useless drivel emails and people need to be ok with short, no frills emails.

I know of a great way to get gear early in the first STALKER game, but everyone hates me for it.

All you have to do is goad the military into getting into a firefight with the rookie camp and hide in the shop until the shooting is over and the military loses interest. Lots of dead rookie gear to sell, and at least a few dead soldiers to provide some mid-game rifles early.

Fallout 1, which I’ve probably replayed about ten times more than the second game. It’s concise, with this depressing and dark world that gives a feeling never fully replicated in sequels.

Lords Of The Realm 2, a great little strategy game with an effortlessly charming aesthetic.

Civil War Generals 2, when I feel like really grinding out a strategy game. It has the bright colors and charming graphics which create a clear and readable battlefield that can be brutally difficult as units get ground down into ragged bands.

Really it just means the sorts of bugs you find with minimal QA testing combined with stilted voice acting, potentially untranslated audio or text, cultural beats that don’t quite cross over, and some game design choices that are different than how a game developed alongside western games might do things.

If you can stand this lack of polish, these sorts of games can at least give amusement for their price point.

Oh those. I meant the Gillette Fusion razor heads. They are supposed to be disposable, and I do eventually get rid of them, but I extend the lifespan by a lot with a squeeze bottle of alcohol on them to clean them. A head that should last weeks will end up lasting me months with just a little care.