Emails: permanent written record I can refer to later

Can reply in my own time

Low labour

Low resource use

Phone call: Times/dates mentioned will be forgotten often

Active demand of time

I don't pick up because that phone number looks weird but also my phone's vibrate function is weak

High labour

High data cost per information

My shrink's office seems to want to keep billing information and past/present appointments secret. (This also seems to be worse in local industry, everything has to be a meeting instead of a two line email)

A reply someone sent to me a while ago that annoyed me enough to respond. The vibe I got was: “Dune Spice Wars is just a palette swap of Northgard” with the implication that the devs are lazy and greedy for developing a game that is extremely similar to their previous game (asset flipping, I guess).

I hadn’t played Northgard at the time, but did watch the trailer. Northgard was on sale recently, so I gave it a shot after having played a bunch of Spice Wars.

Because this has bitten me in the ass a few times on hexbear, here’s a short list of things I’m not arguing in this post: Game Publishers aren’t using DLCs or low effort new games games as low labour sources of profit. Obviously, this is the case. Artist and programmer hours down, IP rent up is endemic to the games industry. The devs are “good”. I actually have no idea, I just think this particular charge was unwarranted. Dune: Spice Wars or Northgard are good. Idk, I’ve enjoyed at least one of them These are the two most different games, nay, nouns in human history. They are not. Idk why, but in my region of the world “completely different” gets used for “actually very similar, but legally distinct”. Comes up a lot in these sort of nitpicky nerd circles Devs are always right, publishers/critics are always wrong

Here is a short list of ways in which the two games are similar: Same engine Same genre (so, trad RTS, selecting units, giving them orders, building up an economy to ensure a healthy supply of units to defeat opponents in a roughly similar situation to you) Region-based mechanics (building limits, buffs, privileged starting zone etc) Diplomacy mechanics Variety of victory conditions rather than hunting down every last power plant

Having now played at least some of both, these games feel substantially more different than many other pairs of games from similar devs that don’t get targeted like this. The main differences I’ve found: What players spend a lot of their time doing. Northgard heavily preferences micromanaging of the core unit (peasants), whereas Dune feels more like a trad RTS with Northgard characteristics. Northgard feels more like a village building game that also happens to be an RTS. Personally, I find the removal of peasant micromanagement a substantial improvement and one of the more annoying aspects of Northgard (especially annoying because it takes up a lot of the game) Mechanics present in Northgard are tightened and simplified substantially in Dune. This makes sense as Dune comes after Northgard and the devs have had time to hone down what worked in Northgard. For instance, scurrying around with scouts and trade relationships in Northgard is now just a single interface in Dune where you can manage your relationships etc. This does make relationships with other factions in Dune a little bit simpler, it’s not necessarily “better”. Different resources. Obviously, the relationship with these and things you actually do can change with a button, but neither are just “Money” and “population”. They both have these, but Dune Spice Wars isn’t being accused of being a palette swap of Age of Empires or Act of Aggression. No permanent Alliances: My experience with Northgard’s diplomacy was everything generally felt more permanent, whereas Dune has much more ebb and flow (as well as a limited set of hostile actions you can perform on allies). There can also only be one winner per match (two minds about this personally, I like allying with my friends and stomping on the computer, but it does change the diplomacy part of the game a lot). Less factions, greater faction differentiation. Given Northgard’s bread and butter was making lots of small DLCs with minor player factions, I feel like making a different game with both less factions but more content per faction is important.

Beyond those, there are a lot of smaller changes that it would be weird to go over. There’s a couple of mechanics that are sorta tacked on (e.g. the Landsraad council/influence stuff) that are different, but I hope you get the idea.

I have played a lot of different RTSes and I would say that mechanically these two games are more different than C&C and Tiberian Sun, or C&C and Red Alert (two pairs from the pre-DLC times), Age of Empires and Age of Empires 2 (an example from another developer), Medal of Honour 1 and Call of Duty 1 (a pair of games from different developers with two different engines) etc.

I don’t really know why this annoyed me so much that I had to make a post. It might be touching on an extreme anti-DLC reaction that seems to want every single game to be entirely new despite most studios not having the resources to hire a network engineer every time they want to make a new game. The idea that a group of artists might commission a game engine (big, expensive, requires network engineers etc) and then write stories in that game engine (small, cheap, within reach for a group of artists) and not starve is apparently obscene.

I get pretty frustrated when someone walks slower than me and keeps lurching back and forth so I can't overtake. Idk why, might miss bus maybe.

I don't say or do anything, though sometimes I nip onto the road or between some tight terrain to overtake

It always seems to get deployed as a "The West are the only true innovators" and ignored if its like... The Islamic golden age or whatever. Also like some Arabian merchant couldn't have seen a steam train and gone "Oh, that's a good idea", it required colonialism to get ideas like plumbing etc. all over the world.

Bleh

I have not vetted the creator because I do not wish to go to twitter.

Marxist examination of malthusianism, "anthropocene", and the development of capital.

Rebuts the argument that this is a natural outcome of humans or "overbreeding" and more a specific productive system, and discusses why fossil fuels were uniquely over-exploited by early capitalists.

Should have more views.

Bleak tone

I live in an area where taking public transport to get food adds between 2 and 3 hours to get to the nearest shops. I avoid shopping on the weekend. There's a bulk food order that goes out on Friday or Saturday night but I can't imagine what I'll feel like eating on the following Monday, let alone Wednesday. Sometimes I'll do bulk food prep and by the time I've finished preparing the food I'm so disgusted by the idea of food (especially that food) that I don't eat it, which is also the case if I've eaten the same meal multiple times in a row. I apparently will just wait out the clock (food goes off) instead of eating food I don't want to. I don't like pasta (again, the main thing motivating me to eat pasta is the threat of someone yelling at me, hunger alone isn't enough).

Uber eats and taking ubers to go shopping is expensive. The freezer is full because there's five people living entirely separate lives in the household.

idk what I'm supposed to be doing. It's hard to eat at all even if I wasn't trying to be healthy, meat reduction etc.

I recently got a full time job after about a decade of no employment, so I pretty much don't have energy on weekdays either.

I've just finished my mech eng diploma and to keep up solidworks and drawing practice thought I'd dust off my silly "Bullpuppest Bullpup" idea. It's not really for ever actually making, but just exploring weird ideas based on some workshop experience and watching a lot of Forgotten Weapons and other gun disassembly. It's loosely based on the TBK-022PM, the F-2000, and some of those weapons that turn the bullet from the magazine to chambering. Awful complicated mechanics all around.

Anyway, I was going to make it in 5.56x45 NATO as I'm in a NATO country and assumed that would be the easiest ammunition to get (as well as pre-cut M16 or AR-15 barrels or whatever, and I didn't want to fiddle with ballistics really). However, I've had a heck of a time finding the technical drawings for the round (STANAG 4178)/chamber/magazine well dimensions to design around. (Yes, apparently it's not actually an accepted standard, but it would be nice to have something to work around)

I've also noticed that a lot of the supplied technical drawings are very old scans of very old drawings, with almost unreadable dimensions (and are often incomplete). Every AK-47M drawing that I seem to find, something that I feel must have an abundance of drawings, seems to be a tiny grainy picture maybe with cursive Cyrillic written all over it or something. M16A1 etc seems to also. Also, a lot of drawings have one or two dimensions missing that would be trivial to measure and include in a 3D model.

So I thought it would be a good practice project for me to take some of these old drawings and after much examination, interpretation, and discussion (and potentially measuring actual objects), reproduce the drawings in a very clear and readable format. The actual making of 3D models (especially if they are traditionally machined parts) does not take very long once dimensioned, and I can upload them here or where-ever. Solidworks is actually pretty intrusive with what details about your computer it includes in drawings/parts, so probably PDFs until I can work out how to scrub everything with the Admin tool SW has (if possible, hexeditors maybe).

I'm also pretty open to just changing the ammunition/magazine standard etc. to whatever, even a made up one. Can't do any physical testing, but would work fine for a "fantasy" gun for like... idk, an imaginary modern soviet Industrial Concern. The US Army seems to want its funny high powered 277 Fury with the stainless case base (is that really the best way of doing things).

It's also fine to roleplay as an engineer or end user with complaints and stuff around the design, but don't get too heated about it. This is mostly just a project to whet teeth on and get brain juices flowing.

What do I want from gun nerds? Interpretation of technical drawings Measurements for real parts (e.g. I could not find the STANAG magazine feed lip dimensions or how far the catch is from the lips etc, some parts could be reverse engineered based on the size of the round). Access to lots of parts is impractical, so we'd basically guess and decide what the tolerances were based on other parts. Design suggestions/comments (mostly for fun, this is a very silly design)

What does everyone get? Up to date, modern technical drawings with cut lists, welds, BOM, 3D modelled parts, tolerances (where possible) without having to squint at tiny pictures of scans and cursive cyrillic. I'm happy to do extra models/drawings for whatever "base gun" we're building off; models/drawings are pretty easy once details are finalised.

Current Decisions: Ammo/magazine standard. Probably based on ease of getting drawings, dimensioning, or models, but if there's an interesting set of old drawings we can use that as a standard we can go with that. Can hypothetically invent dimensions (and primers are standardised and interference fit, so that part is already "designed").

Odd features I'm including because I'm a weirdo (the absurd design is partly the point):

• Pulls ammunition from traditional AR sickle mag that runs almost parallel to the main length, turns the bullet 90°-ish, and shoves it into the chamber, thus maybe reducing the distance between the rear of the gun and the chamber.
• Funny membrane that pushes air out of the barrel when cycling
• Different funny membrane that has a filter (for dust) that allows air in but not out, and no water in
• Forward ejector for spent rounds (but like... yet another way of doing it)
• Different bullpup trigger/action

By the end, I hope to have something of an absurd rube goldberg machine wrapped up in a modern (or whatever aesthetic) shell. But that might be a couple of years down the line.

Notes:

• Could crib measurements from video game models for some looser fits maybe.
• I'm not above stealing other people's ideas, patented or not. But this is partly practice for me.

It does often seem to be correlated to reactionary conspiracy sentiments. There is the "non-white people could not have possibly stacked rocks this big!" thing

I guess also flat earth?

My partner has a big butt and has asked to see it. I cannot find it. Several others have asked to see it also.

It is manga, full of text, and the main character gets more unhinged and full of energy as the comic goes on.

Random notes: boobs are hereditary or bought

Butts are the product of labour.

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Was around a guy who literally never said anything that wasn't making fun of someone, complaining about someone, or direct work stuff (we were pulling up star pickets). Just kinda toxic to be around. He seemed to enjoy himself though.

Inasmuch as I disagree with XR, I disagree with this meme more.

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So, a while ago I was in a community theater and we put on plays that would break even largely. Our biggest costs were theater rent, followed by specialist hires (a worker with safety training that did our ropes and high powered electrical stuff). We charged pretty cheap tickets in the context of theater, which given the majority of our actors, costuming and props labour etc. was volunteer.

It got me thinking about games. I realise there is an intense dislike of DLC, particularly AAA companies doing day 1 DLC, but even longer term DLC that could not have been made on the budget of the original game and released like a year later or whatever.

The idea was having a platform for, say, RPG systems that's well coded, slick, bla bla bla, and comes with a few base stories, but after that the majority of development after that is done by something similar to the theater group but indie artists, writers etc. and you buy into a long form RPG (or, idk, subscribe on patreon or whatever). Every month (or whatever), some sub-team releases a new part of their adventure or a new system with a new adventure, and you can keep playing with what characters you had before (if that's what's happening).

Things like the Adventurer's Guild (or whatever the D&D one is, where you register and play each adventure bit once alongside thousands of other players) are a thing, this would wind up be something similar but system agnostic and more tech oriented.

IRL, every time a community theater wants to do a show, they don't rebuild the theater and stuff. It's not "wholly original".

I'd also want the writers/artists to be more connected to their community, hypothetically.

The system would have to have very non-coder friendly tools for writers to pull together systems and make maps and stuff. Dialogue trees may be a bridge too far.

Just got this email from one of the event ticketing place some of my friends use

(Um, I don't know why your post triggered me into writing this pitch for a wishlist game. Maybe the minecraft with guns bit? idk, I got excited) (repost, as this is enough crap for its on top level post)

I have this pitch for a builder game where you're a military procurement/engineering firm. The LoD would be about what Stormworks has (25cm blocks, or maybe 20 or 10 cm), you spend time fiddling around with air fuel ratios and RADAR etc. You'd be able to fiddle with various war nerd numbers on vehicles you create, but there wouldn't be much for you to do with the vehicles directly. Instead, you teach bots how to use the vehicle (some sort of waypointing system, some vehicle tests like turning, acceleration etc etc). After that, your vehicle and usage data is compiled and a little war goes on in the background. Hypothetically, this war would be happening on another screen or you could refer to it. Because the vehicle is compiled into this RTS mode and not run as a physics simulation (or at least, would be run as a very cut down simulation), that section would be quite light. Possibly multiple layers to examine (strategic, operational, tactical). Your vehicles would have logistical strain (e.g. fuel, maintenance/wear, damage from fire etc). You'd probably want to define a few other variables on how its used (e.g. This is a TANK, GENERAL PURPOSE, SWARM or something). I don't think it would be possible for an AI to account for all ways people would design vehicles and use-cases, but the basic classes are pretty standard nowadays, and people could request things that feel plausible to the dev.

A few reasons for doing it this way:

• Having it so that the vehicle is tested by itself on multiple predictable scenarios means the physics simulation (e.g. denting, beams bending etc) can be more detailed, and allows for more complicated vehicles.
• Once its "compiled" so that the bots can use it, it will run quite light (this is sort of explored in From The Depths, but not to its fullest extent). This couldn't take into account everything possible, but hopefully the bots would use things intelligently (e.g. using cover, grouping tanks, screening etc)

You'd watch combat and take notes on what works well and what does, and work on new designs as the war gets under way. Your new designs that you produce and test would percolate through the logistics system and slowly start appearing on the front.

There'd also be a little thing where you could define your squads that the AI uses in the war (e.g. 12 dudes, 1 command, 2 fireteams, each fireteam has a LAW and 5 assault rifles, command has 1 commander and 2 machine guns etc), with some reference to real world stuff. This would obviously be important for transport vehicles and logistics.

There'd be a mode where you'd have to do it "in real time" (i.e. no pausing for designing), a more freeform creative mode where you can design and save freely without worrying about wars and launch battles with your vehicle instantly, and a thing where you could compile all of your designs into a faction. Presumably, the game would ship with a few real world referenced factions, people could mod in their own ones. And people could also mod in maps that the AI will fight wars on, and opponent factions (of varying degrees of fairness). Tutorial mode, build a truck that carries a squad. It's an electric truck so you don't have to program a gearbox.

It's probably a bit beyond me as a coder (maybe, idk, the primary time I was trying to learn coding was when I had pretty severe depression), but maybe as a fresh godot project if applicable? I think it would absolutely kill amongst a certain sort of war nerd.

Um, comments, I guess. Obviously extremely ambitious on my end, it will probably be another half-started project in my collection :(

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One of the first cards is planting corn. !corn-man-khrush

Thought Cuban (or maybe vietnamese) gun ownership was a lot higher than it was by "guns per capita". Vaguely remember somewhere here that it's quite high but locked up in community armouries in case of invasion rather than individually held on to.

idek if 7zip is better than winrar anymore assuming both are being updated constantly, but like... My memory is that pretty much every tech oriented person on windows uses 7zip.