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Yippy skippie! Here is a place to put stuff!

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A sorta Final Fantasy 2/SaGa stat leveling system.

Here is a little script I was working on for my test game made to count tallies when each stat is used and randomly raise them after battle. It's kinda like the stat leveling system in Final Fantasy 2(j) and the SaGa series, but it works a bit differently.   Mostly it is different in that experience levels still exist and are used both to determine your max over all stat level, and whenever you gain a level you get a big random boost to your stat tallies. The actor class's stat growth curves also determines how much each stat level is worth.   Anyway the basic idea for how it works is stat tallies are used as percent chance that that stat will level up after battle, so if a stat is tallied 100 times it will always level up, but if it is tallied only 10 times you have a 10% chance. Tallies are remembered across battles but the level up chance only happens at a battle's conclusion. If a stat is leveled up a flat 100 is subtracted from the tally, and it can go into the negative. This practically means stat increases are random but predictable over a large period of time, and since your level acts as a cap for how many stat increases you can have and your class acts to show how many each are worth, the fact that the stats always grow at the same rate is not as important.   It's probably not going to be useful for most people's needs since it doesn't try to exactly match the system used in the old games, and is mostly me just experimenting with the mechanics. It might be useful as a base if anyone wants to do something similar though!   Here is the script:    
Kayzee

Kayzee

27
 

Super Dungeon Demo Thing

I decided to release a small demo/base/thing for my modifications of Saba Kan's random dungeon scripts. Attached here is a very striped down demo, but hopefully some people will find it useful as a base or something.   dungeondemo.zip   Included are seven different maps that hopefully show off some examples of different types of levels. Look in the map properties notes for some of the different options. There is only one type of enemy and a dummy chest item for examples in each map for now, and some maps have traps. There are things I wrote that I didn't include here like dungeon enemy level scaling and randomly choosing items for the chest just to simplify stuff.   (Made some basic documentation here.)   Edit: Updated to make traps work right, and added the blank tileset for dummy map.   Edit 2: Few more bugs due to left over code fixed.   Edit 3: Added code to randomize rect devision more, and to subdevide blocks more. Updated the sample dungeons to reflect this (mostly Dark Place, it's insanly cramped and maze like now). Also traps shouldn't spawn on top of other traps anymore, and the entity placement may be faster.   Edit 4: Fixed a big bug related to room lights not being disposed and makeing games not save right.   Edit 5: Added code to make paths across map edges for wraping maps.   Edit 6: Small fix for using this with the new version of my Cache Back script.   Edit 7: Fixed shops and added the missing script to fix the debug shop work.
Kayzee

Kayzee

56
 

Frame Buffer Battle Swirl

Wowsers, been a while huh? Anyway here is something I did the other day... a fancy Final Fantasy 7-9 style frame buffer battle swirl effect! All sorts of cool effects could be done with a frame buffer.       Edit: I updated the above with a more up to date version with a slightly different effect and the ability to set $game_temp.special_battle_swirl to true for an alternative swirl for bosses. For completeness sake I am putting a version of start_battle_swirl that emulates the old effect here:      
Kayzee

Kayzee

3
 

A Guide to Fairy Culture: Romance and Sexuality

Generally speaking fairies have very different ideas about some things then humans do, mostly because fairies have very different and often incompatible sets of ideals for how people are supposed to act compared to normal human ones. Humans that become fairies are mostly either already preconditioned to reject normal human ideals anyway, end up slowly accepting fairy ideals, or end up isolating themselves from other fairies.   One of the big differences relates to sexuality and gender. Most fairies do not really have a strong interest in ideas about gender, both in sense of identity or orientation. Of those that do identify as a particular gender, most think of themselves as female. Their is a real advantage to fairies in the female form because of the utility of being able to lay their own eggs, and so many fairies stay in a female-ish state most of the time. Fairies that prefer a male-ish state are not exceptionally rare, but still not as common. Many even prefer a state that mixes genders.   To a fairy, a person is a person, for the most part. Sure, a number of fairies are more or less attracted to, or more or less inclined to identify as, a particular gender, but most don't end up thinking in quite that way. Because many fairies can alter their bodies and become whatever they feel like at any given moment, gender is more a kind of fashion. That is to say, a fairy will often treat gender as a human treats the type of clothing someone wares, as a sort of statement about who a person is sure, but not a defining part of it.   Another big thing that is different is the fairy idea of romance. Romance is for fairies purely defined by how much someone in a relationship actually feels something special for another. Anything could be romantic, and it tends to be that to a fairy almost all of their interpersonal relationships are thought of as in some way romantic. Other times fairies can attach very little importance to any interpersonal relationships at all.   The most basic relationship that is often thought by fairies as romantic is friendship. Fairies don't always have tons of very close friends, but many of them can be very friendly. Fairies are naturally polyamorous and there is not often a lot of distinction between 'friend' and 'lover'. Even casual friends can often do things that to humans may seem shocking, such as going out as a couple, kissing, and engaging in sexual activity. Even so, many fairy friendships do not and lots of fairies do only do that kind of thing as part of a deeper relationship, either deep and lasting friendships or something a little bit more.   Fairies value honestly and mutual openness about each other's romantic expectations when it comes to friendship. Being dishonest or hiding activities with others tends to strain or break friendships. Sometimes fairies can take friendships very seriously and when friendships break it can get messy. Other times fairies don't take it nearly as bad and will simply move on without much fuss. It's not always easy to see how a fairy will react to such a break up.   Beyond friendship, fairies do have a loose sense of 'family' as such. Since fairies do not have normal offspring, they don't tend to have the same concept of 'family' as humans do. Often fairies will have those that they refer to in similar ways, such as thinking of another as a sibling, child, or parent. Sometimes this is just a way to show deep friendship or respect, but it can go far beyond that.   Often fairies who want to be bonded as 'family' will preform particular magical rituals. These rituals can be involved, are often sexual, and tend to alter the fairies who participate in subtle ways to become more alike. A 'family' formed this way is often called a 'brood'. Fairies of course have no incest taboo whatsoever, and in fact being bonded in this way is often motivated by becoming closer both in body and soul with another. A brood could have many members, but usually it is most stable for around three to five members to live together per steading.   It's possible to undergo another ritual to become part of a new brood, but most fairies tend to think becoming part of one overwrites any others. Without such a ritual, it's still possible for fairies to form what is often called a 'kinship'. Kinships are much more informal and such relationships can be formed and broken on the fly. A kind of mutual adoptive sibling kinship can sometimes be thought of almost as a kind of marriage (which outside of the higher social levels of the Seelie court is not a tradition fairies often practice), and the adoption of a child by a parent can have it's own social implications.   Often fairies, especially the Unseelie court, will also play games of domination and submission and a common relationship is that of the master/mistress and their playthings. This is an especially attractive option for those fairies who are too jealous and controlling or otherwise selfish to deal well with other kind of relationships. In such a relationship, the plaything is totally at the mercy of the master/mistress and will have to obey or else just be used to sate any desire the master/mistress has. Despite this, it is still often very romantic and a good number of them are mutually loving and caring relationships. They are also not always sexual.   The Unseelie court engange in this as part of their game too. An Unseelie may capture another to make into a plaything, but failing to make an Unseelie your plaything usually means the fairy ends up one themselves and the Unseelie gains all the playthings that fairy had collected. Seelie on the other hand only allow this sort of thing with permission and attempting to force a solitary fairy is likely to get the offender banished. Sometimes though selfish fairies will attempt to capture humans who are sometimes seen as fair game. But I would never to do that to you! Honest!   Aren't you glad you learned about fairy culture?
Kayzee

Kayzee

3
 

List of My Scripts

Since some people wanted it, here is a list of links to most of the scripts I have scattered around the site I don't think I have actually released that much of note, but hopefuly some people might be interested!   Important scripts - These are the scripts I think every project can probably benefit from:   Word Wrapping Script - Makes stuff in message boxes and item descriptions (and anything else that uses draw_text_ex) automatically start a new line if the line is too long to fit. Cache Back - Improves the RPG Maker VX Ace cache system so that games should run faster and use less memory. Note Field Hash - The script I use to load note tags for most of the scripts I make that need it.   Other finished scripts - Scripts with complete documentation and usable features that I think are suitable for release: NEW! - Crossfade script - Script to change the fades to use fancy crossades like battle transitions do.   Unfinished, undocumented, and/or scrap scripts - These are mostly experimental ones I haven't gotten around to formally finishing: Simple Database - A fixed up version of my old NPC Database script. Alternitive Antilag - A possibly more compatible variant of Theo's new antilag script that also may be faster in maps with few events. Doesn't include the optimization for large numbers of events yet though. Frame Buffer Battle Swirl - An effect when entering battle sort of like the whoosh found in Final Fantasy 7 and other psx era RPGs. (Undocumented, but should just work without any fiddling, may update and formally release soon.) Free Party Turn Order - Changes battles so party members can act in any order. (Unfinished and undocumented, may be buggy.) Accent Generator - An attempt to do something like Chrono Cross's where each party member can say a piece of generic dialogue differently (Undocumented, some of the functions are kinda obscure) Icon Event - Short script to make an event look like an icon. (Undocumented, uses the note field hash script with the :icon_index key.) Custom Item Menu Scripts - Some scripts to change how item menus work, requires some other scripts. (Unfinished, undocumented) Final Fantasy 2/SaGa Series Inspired Stat Leveling System - A experimental stat leveling system that tallys stats when they are used and randomly levels them up individually after battle.   Script demos/collections - Tech demos and/or base games for more complex collections of interconnected scripts:   Super Dungeon Demo - Everything related to my modification of Saba Kan's Random Dungeon Generator. Adds a lot of new features and rewrites a lot of the old ones. Also includes my modifications and add-ons to Khas Awesome Light Effects, my old Event Battler script (which was released independently but seems to have vanished from the site for some reason), my autotile update script (which I wrote for this) and lots of other stuff, most of which isn't really that useful on it's own. Lots of documentation available here.   Super Skill System - Based mostly around extensions and modifications to the Graphnode Install script and my own custom skill system to create a modular system to add extra effects to skills. No documentation yet.   Feel free to play around with these and use my code if you think you can do something interesting with it! I like to fiddle around with other people's scripts too so it's only fair.
Kayzee

Kayzee

12
 

Super Dungeon Documentation Thing

Since some of the features of my dungeon demo are even more obscure then Saba Kan's orginal and at least one person was confused enough to comment, here are some notes on various things:   1. Map Tiles   Mostly the same as Saba Kan's but with some added stuff. You need to set tiles in rows from the top left corner of the map (or x,y 0,0). All rows are read form left to right starting at x 0 and read until a blank tile is found, though some only the first tile is valid.   The basic set up:   row 0: One or more floor tiles, The first is the normal floor, any others are alt floors. These are placed in rooms and corradors, basicly anywhere you can walk. row 1: The edge tile, only first valid. Any empty tile adjacent to a floor or wall becomes a edge tile. row 2: the wall tile, only first is valid, but may be blank to create outside maps. A obstructing tile with a floor below it becomes a wall. row 3: the "object" tile, only first is valid, not really needed in outdoor maps. Any wall that has a floor over it becomes a "object" tile instead. row 4: the empty tile, only first is valid. This is the default tile. row 5(new): room detail objects. Randomly placed in rooms. row 6(new): zone detail objects. Randomly placed on a type of tile. Set the zone for this row to control what type o. 0 for floors, 1 for walls, 2, for objects, 3 for blank, and 4 for edge tiles. row 7(new): room pillar objects. Set this row to the lover halves of any two tile high decoration such as trees to be randomly placed in rooms.   2. Events   Like Saba Kan's orginal code, event names are importent. Normaly events are named with a number followed by a symbol.   The number is how it appears on the minimap, and the symbol is what type of event it is. Events with a 1 in the thousands slot will have a hole in the middle on the minimap (used for exits mostly) one with a 1 in the hundreds will never vanish from the minimap once you see it once. The tens and ones didgets control the color of the manimap square (based on your system/windowskin colors).   The symbol is for marking the event as a special randomly clonible event. There are three kinds, enemys marked with * chests marked with ! and traps marked with $ but you can also have no symbol for a event that is just randomly placed somewhere like exits. Enemys, chests, and traps differ mostly by how many of them spawn. By defualt a number of enemys will spawn equal to the "Steps Average" encounter rate of the map in the map properties of the map, a number of chests equal to between that number and 1/3 that number, and a number of traps between that number and 1/2 that number. The number goes up the larger the dungeon floor varible is.   3. Map Note Field (mostly advanced generation options)   Just a list of most of the tags.   Map Generation Options:   :min_rect - Minimum size to cut the map into. :min_room - Minimum size of the room in each rect. :room_margin - Minimum distince between the room and rect edge. :couple_rate - There is a one out of this number chance to make a new corrador between rooms :max_splits - Max number of times the map can split. (So max number of rooms + 1) :max_splits_dir - Max number of times a rect can split horizontally or vertically.   Event Options:   :enemy_num - Number of enemys to spawn, overides "Steps Average" :chest_num - Number of chests to spawn :trap_num - Number of traps to spawn :enemy_rate - How much each floor adds to the number of enemys. :chest_rate - Ditto for chests :trap_rate - Ditto for traps :chest_rand - Set the factor chests can be randomly decreased by. :trap_rand - Ditto for traps   Detail Options:   :detail_chance - 1 out of this number chance to add a detail to a room tile :pillar_chance - Ditto for pillars :region_detail_chance - Ditto for zone details   Other:   :blank_chance - 1 out of this number to randomly add blank tiles in a room :cave_automata - array of two numbers, a birth and a death value, used to make the cave and swamp maps   :exit_path - Set to true and the exit will lead out to the edge of the map :exit_event - Set to the event used for the exit, so the event will be moved to the right place.   :grass_walls - Makes higher layer autotiles count neerby walls as the same autotile.   :floor_format - sprintf string foir appending the floor number to the map display name.   There are a few more things related to my ai script and such but I think that will be it for now.
Kayzee

Kayzee

46
 

Pros and Cons of the RPG Genre

For reference (and because I feel like it), here are some of elements of RPG design (regardless of what kind) I find particularly interesting to talk about, both positive and negative. None of these are universal or strictly only traits found in RPGs, they are just things I think are worth mentioning. They are also all my opinion of course.   Pros: Complexity - There is nothing wrong with being complex. In fact the more complicated and intricate something is the more I personally tend to enjoy it, at least as long as it's not made too hard to understand. And if that sounds like a contradiction, it really isn't. Something can be complex and be relatively easy to understand as long as the connecting points are explained well enough. But more on that later.
Tendency for Abstraction - Abstraction is a very useful tool, especially in game design. The ability to take complex and/or hard to understand things and abstract them down into more easy to digest parts is perhaps one of the core essences of good game design, and RPGs often take that and run with it. Using formulas and numerical values for everything for example allows the building of complex yet easy to understand systems out of universal well understood parts.
Dynamic Gameplay - The ability for the gameplay to evolve in different ways is one of the great things about RPGs. Allowing the player to take the time to improve themselves or rush things allows for a kind of dynamic difficulty, letting the player to choose between different sets of abilities allowed for a greater possibility space and greater replay value. A set of static challenges where you have a set of static abilities just doesn't seem nearly as engrossing to me as a more open system that allows the player to fiddle with a lot of approaches.
Tactical and Strategic Focused Gameplay: A good RPG, in my opinion, is one where the primary challenge is about making you think about what you are doing, both what to do in the moment and in the long term for how to maximize your effectiveness. The execution isn't as important in an RPG as the thought and planning that goes into decision making. Crunching the numbers, finding weaknesses, exploiting systems, these are all vital parts of what makes RPGs fun to me.
Exploration - Most of the best RPGs tend to involve the player traveling and uncovering things, always finding themselves in a new location and finding new items and abilities to play with. It tends to, in my opinion, be better when things are not necessarily explored in an overly forced linear way and the player is allowed to explore and discover on their own. This allows the game to be a bit more magical and personal of an experience then a set linear series of challenges would be.
Cons: Skinner Box Syndrome - There is nothing fun about doing the same thing over and over again in order to get some reward given to you only for taking the time to do something over and over again. Even less so when it's random when you get the reward. It's nothing but exploiting a dumb psychological trick. It isn't fulfilling or rewarding. Allowing players to take the time to work on side goals and having chance factor into game decisions are fine, but grinding and farming are things that should be discouraged.
Mediocre storytelling - Yes it's true, on average I say RPG storytelling isn't done very well. That's partly my feeling for most games regardless of genre, but it can be even worse in RPGs. Partly it's the rampant overused clichés, partly it's that gameplay progression and story progression are always stepping on each other's toes, party it's the often forced town-dungeon-cutscene-boss-cutscene structure, but mostly I think it's just kind of a result of the overall difficulty of writing a good story while also making a good game at the same time. Doing one or the other is hard enough, but both?
Are Often Vague or Muddled About Lots Of Things - Here is the bulk of the 'later' I spoke of when talking about complexity. The thing about making something that is complex is you have to make sure it's intuitive enough or explained well enough that, even if someone can't really quite grasp the whole thing at once due to all the variables or moving parts, the bigger picture is still fairly understandable. But many many things fail to do this, leaving vital connections obscured or connecting things together haphazardly so that in the end it just looks like a big mess. And sometimes that's because it is a big mess, something that might look complex but really isn't. There is nothing complex about a pile of trash after all, it's just a pile of trash. Yes yes, if you go through the trash and try and reconstruct who the people who left it and what it tells you about them it might be a interesting result, but that's you going the extra mile to make it into something new.
Lack of Interactivity - In most (but not all) RPGs the world is mostly a static backdrop filled with static signpost objects which can only be really interacted with by pressing the 'interact' button, in which case they spew out a few lines of text or if you are lucky plays a cutscene or brings up some static menu. Battles are little better, offering little more then a menu of different attacks which can sometimes only differ by what flashy animation plays. Real time action RPG battles are mostly little better and mostly revolve around button mashing and spamming attacks healing when your HP runs low rather then featuring any finesse or skill. Fact is, it seems like at least 80% of the stuff in most RPGs is simply backdrop and has no actual impact on gameplay.
  Mixed/Neutral: Worldbuilding/Lore Dumps - Since attempts at traditional storytelling in games tends to fall flat and games are good at fostering exploration and discovery, a common tactic is to write up setting or background plot information and scatter them around a game's world to discover. The results of this are kind of mixed though if you ask me. First of all for those that are interested in traditional storytelling, focusing on lore doesn't really replace it. No matter how fascinating and fleshed out a world is, the details of it aren't going to satisfy someone who craves an actual plot. Secondly, for the purpose of most people playing the game, a lot of the details are pretty pointless and any that are important tend to be buried under pages and pages of stuff they don't care about. It can ideally solve a lot of problems with pacing and makes exploring more rewarding though.
Combat Focus - Other then a handful of RPGs (most of which are expressly trying to avoid this), most RPGs focus almost entirely on combat. And the thing is, while this is true for just about all game genres, RPGs are the genre with the least reason to be focused so much on combat. After all, RPGs are some of the most heavily abstracted types of games. Stats, formulas, and menus can be applied just as much to conversations or farming or fishing or whatever. I am not saying focusing on battling enemies makes games bad or uninteresting though, and I am especially not trying to make a big moral argument about violence in games. All I am saying is that I would maybe like to see more RPGs use their stats and other core gameplay elements in ways that don't relate to combat. Like the way a Bard in D&D is skilled in bluffing and influencing people while a Rogue is good at picking locks and disarming traps.
Wild Abstractions - This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, even though I recognize maybe it shouldn't be. I just can't help but notice there are lots of RPGs that have systems and rules that totally don't make any real world sense or correspond to any real world analogy. For example in FF8 one of the main ways you get stronger is to 'junction' absorbed magic to your stats. But what does that actually mean in the game's fictional universe? I have no idea. I mean I guess storing this para-magic stuff in your body can make you stronger? And you can choose how? But it seems more like a weird gaming abstraction then anything else. Also their are RPGs where battles are card based. How does that apply to have the game's fictional universe works? Then there are games like Undertale which just kinda implicitly say "hey, this is a game, everyone in this universe kinda understands that, so just roll with it", which I am not sure if I should prase or not. I mean, since I am not often that big a fan of most RPG stories I guess it shouldn't bother me, but I guess I still kinda wanna see games as simulations of other worlds even if they aren't very deep ones. Still, creative and interesting mechanics should be encouraged so I can't really think of this as all bad.
Tone/Atmosphere/Cinematics - It's interesting because for all I may yammer on about the poor quality of RPG stories and their lack of interactivity, there are few other genres of games that really tend to reach the same kind of awe, spectacle, and raw beauty that RPGs can. It's not too uncommon in an RPG for there to be a moment where the gameplay and even the story just... fall away, and it just shows you some awesome scene, or even better lets you walk through it, letting you pause as long as you wish. Powerful moments filled with almost pure emotion, where nothing needs to be said, nothing really needs to be done. You could even build whole games based around the idea, like Yume Nikki. The problem is though that it's not really an RPG when you do that, heck it's hardly a game at all. I know people rag on too much about 'walking simulators', and while part of the reason may be that they force way to much narration and story into a format that is often better with pure mood and impression, it's also that wondering around looking at something pretty isn't a very immersive experience for too long. The longer things like that last the more you will notice how it's little more then a cardboard cutout, a backdrop for a play without the play. A good breather perhaps, but unless you are playing up it's fake or unreal nature like The Stanly Parable or Yume Nikki (and sometimes not even then), people are going to lose interest in poking around your world. All and all, I much rather that those moments of awe and emotion be parts in normal gameplay.
  I guess that's it for now!
Kayzee

Kayzee

10
 

Alternitive Antilag

For the last week or so, I have been working with TheoAllen on his antilag script, mostly swapping ideas and code back and forth. Some of my ides and code made it into his script and some didn't, and while I was working on my own personal copy, he started added his "insane" optimizations, really trying to be able to support as many events as he could. I on the other hand, decided to try more for compatibility and speeding up sprites. Doesn't include the "insane" optimization for large numbers of events, so Theo's script is definitely faster when there are more events on the map, but mine might work better for people when there are fewer events or when there are compatibility issues, so I will post what I have so far here:         You should probably turn off OPTIMIZE_EVENTS_XY for any pixel movement or ABS scripts but give it a try with it on! This is not meant to compete with Theo's script and is only meant for better compatibility and/or to possibly speed up maps with fewer events.
Kayzee

Kayzee

10
 

Autotile Update Script

Here is a little script I did a while ago. I think I posted it somewhere but Tsukihime had use for it and couldn't find it, and said here would be a good place for it... so!   Anyway it's a script that updates autotiles, properly setting them as if they were placed in the editor. I made it mostly for the random dungeon scripts I am working on, to make more varied terrain.      
Kayzee

Kayzee

5
 

Custom Item Menu Stuff

I have been working on my own item menu replacement for a while, since I am not quite happy with any of the others I have seen.   Some screen shots:       The menu is actually spread out over three scripts. Well two if you don't count the small weight display script.   First is the trait/info window script (uses this script to display traits):       Next is the itemlist/category script which is based on this script with some stuff removed and some bug fixes and other tweaks:       Last is a little weight/item total display for FP Inventory Plus (it probably could be merged with the first script actually):       Phew! That's a lot of code! I am not sure if anyone would be interested, but there you go! Still needs to be cleaned up and stuff if I want to release it for real. I have some other scripts as addons to this too, such as a version of Tsukihime Inventory Script and a script the replaces the "draw_other_info" method of the trait window to display different stuff (such as the "Enchantable" text in the screen shot, and other custom info). So yeah.
Kayzee

Kayzee

8
 

Super Skill System Thing

Here is a sorta weird demo of a skill system I have been working on for a while. It's based on a modified version of this script with lotsa extra features.   skilldemo.zip   It's main extra fetures are the ability to attach skills to other skills, restrict stuff so you can only attach some skills to perticular skills or skill types, some extra animation stuff, and my own custom skills system that lets you have multible copies of skills, each with there own name and configurations of add on skills. It's kinda complex and the menu may not be as easy to use as it should be. I do think it's pretty neat though.   It's probobly gonna have a ton of little niggly details and strangeness I need to iron out. I think for the most part, if you know how to use the grathnode install script, it's more or less the same except you can make skills grathnodes... but there are so many little details to talk about... I may write more documentation later.   Some more info:       Edit: Made it so it didn't check the grathnode's/metaskill's occasion anymore, so you could have items and skills that are set to never and still work as grathnodes/metaskills. Also merged the "Grathnode Tweaks" and "Metaskills Apply" scripts since they overlap a lot, and made my weird minimum tp cost thing it's own script so it could be tweaked or deleted.   Edit 2: Custom skills now cost MP/TP properly now.
Kayzee

Kayzee

3
 

Simple Database

Here is a fixed up version of my NPC Database script with some changes and a bit of documentation. May have to fix this up a bit more later though.      
Kayzee

Kayzee

4
 

The End of Copyright?

One thing I am almost entirely sure of, is that "copyright", as we know it anyway, is going to mostly or totally go away... eventually. Don't get me wrong, it's not going to go away anytime soon or without a hard fight, but after a while it's just going to be impractical. It may take a while but the signs are already here, happening now as we speak. What signs am I talking about? Well here are a few: Linux won. Oh yeah yeah, I know the majority of desktop users probably still use windows. Doesn't matter. Linux is used for practically everything else. Servers? Mostly Linux. Smart Phones? A good number of them are Android which is a version of Linux. Most embedded devices? You guessed it, Linux. And let's face it, desktops are mostly dieing anyway, even businesses are starting to do "Bring Your Own Device" more and more. Even Steam is embracing Linux, so windows gaming may end up being a thing of the past soon too. And of course because of this,
The idea of "Free Software" is winning too. Big business is becoming a look more open to practical collaborative methods of programing. Google for example, are a big big pusher of open source. It's just an easier and simpler way of doing things. This has spilled into games too, but not as much as other areas. Most every application you can think of though has a free version, and most of them are just as good. Do you really want to pay $600+ for photoshop when gimp is offered for free with just about as many features? But this doesn't only apply to software because,
Creative Commons licenses allow the same type of freedom outside software. Wikipedia already uses it for most of it's content, and there are lots of places that use it to make free art, sounds, and music. Nowadays it's actually not that hard to look online and find sites dedicated to royalty free artwork, sound, or music. Some of it is made just for games even. But even without this type of thing,
People ignore copyright anyway. For most people I would guess, copyright is an afterthought, if they think about it at all. There is the matter of out and out piracy of course where people just copy things anyway, copyright laws or no. Not all of them even think about it, just copying a song or two out of habit. But that's not all there is to it. There are also remixes and fanfiction, works of art made from or based on other works of art. But how would people make money off of this all you ask if they don't have control over copying? Well,
People don't have to make money just of selling copies of something. Let's face it, half the Internet runs on ads anyway, and even if I don't particularly like that fact and block them on every opportunity, they still make money. People now can raise money for projects by themselves, and donate to a person they think is worth it. These aren't all viable all the time I know, but the point is alternative ways of making money exists. Even if it didn't there is still the fact that,
People hate Copyright more and more each day. Let's face it. Every time you hear about Youtube pulling some Content ID crap, every time you hear about one more unreleased game from Japan or old game that has been abandoned by publishers who hoard the rights but never do anything with them, every time some asshole makes a DMCA strike on something you like, every time the government caves in to lobbyists and makes a bill like SOPA and PIPA, someone gets even more fed up with all this bullshit. It's only a matter of time before the dam breaks.
I am not saying everything is going to change right away, I am just saying I wouldn't be surprised if within at longest the next hundred years the idea of copyright as we knowing slowly gets widdled down to nothing. And good riddance. But I kinda think it's worth thinking about at least. That's not all, The Singularity (the point where technology can recursively improve it's self on it's own and we all likely either die off or become cybergods) I heard may happen as soon as 2045. Will we even need copyright if, say, we are all connected as a super AI network?
Kayzee

Kayzee

24
 

Stuck in the Controversy Bog: Thoughts on Feminism and Identity Politics

Pew... Okay. I have talked about this kind of stuff before in various places, but it's a topic that keeps getting brought up over and over in gaming circles and I don't know if I ever really sat down and made a blog about the subject. Partly because I suspect 90% of people really really do not care, or if they do, are completely sick of hearing about it or talking about it. The other 10%? Well probably 90% of them have already made up their minds no matter what I say. So likely only 1% of people will actually care about and pay attention to anything I have to say about the subject. But I feel like blabbing about it anyway so here we go.   First of all, lets ask an important question:   What exactly is feminism anyway?   Feminism is, as far as I am concerned, a number of movements which concerns it's self with a subset of the larger subject of Identity Politics and is in particular focused on the liberation and promotion of the "female" identity. It is not, as some people would insist, simply the promotion of gender equality. For many if not most feminists solving the problem of gender inequality is, has been, and always will be, the primary goal of feminism, true. But feminism is not a goal, it is a rhetorical method. The method can be and has been used for different ends, even up to and including the promotion of the domination of the "female" identity over the "male" identity. This however is again a goal and not one a vast majority of feminists share.   Therefor, one thing that is incredibly important to realize is the goals and ideals of particular groups of people who use feminist rhetoric are not necessarily the same. Making blanket statements about all feminists or anyone who uses similar ideas and methods is incredibly misguided. If you have a particular objection to a particular recurring argument or a foundational criticism of feminist theory, then those kind of debates and criticism are far more valuable then just blatantly attacking a goal that someone may not share. On the flipside, if someone is using feminist rhetoric to argue for a goal or position that you disagree with, then arguing directly to oppose that goal or position is far more valuable then attacking the theory behind the rhetorical devices they use to push for it.   In short, feminism is a tool. If you oppose the tool's usefulness, debate the tool. If you oppose the people's use of the tool, debate the individuals who use it.   I have my own objection to feminist theory and to the whole field of identity politics, but on the other hand I also share the same goal as most of the people who are into it do: The ever murky idea of "equality". I just don't think identity politics as it exists is the best way to go about accomplishing that goal.   So, what, exactly, is the problem we should be trying to solve?   They say life isn't fair. Maybe that is true, but I don't think of it that way. Life is very fair. People are born in the same way as basically everyone else, and everyone's life has the same kind of random factor to it. Are you born as a particular race or gender? Roll a dice. Are you born with some genetic disease? Roll a dice. Are you born in a particular area of the world? Roll a dice. No it's not truly random, but from a personal perspective it might as well be. Everyone starts out pretty much the same, as a helpless baby. Everyone has pretty much the same odds of being born in any particular position starting out as any other.   No, it's society that's unfair. It's society that judges you for your birth, not life. Life just doesn't care. It drops you in the middle of things at some random point and leaves you to sort it out. Society wants to sort you, to put you in a nice box. Sure society protects people, but only for it's own interest. Unlike life, it cares about you, but only in how best to use you. The uncaring wilds may chew you up and spit you out but they won't judge you. Except if you count in retrospect by how many babies you managed to pop out and genes you manage to spread, but that's coincidence not intent. To life society is just complex tricks to increase the amount of wiggling things that can be wiggling together at any one time. To society, life is just a source of things to put into different boxes and judge according to what boxes things were put in.   So people are put into boxes like "male" and "female", and much more then just biological traits are put in these boxes. Ideas, behaviors, rules, everything is divided up into these boxes. There are boxes for gender, boxes for race, and boxes for other things. Some boxes are put inside other boxes to make a neat tree so everything gets cleaned up and organized. People are expected to take what box they are put in and use it to model their entire life around it. If they can't be put in a box or refuse to be put in one they are just thrown into the "other" box and distrusted and scorned. Once a group of people in the other box with some arbitrary number of traits the same emerges they can be given their own box. And so the cycle continues.   People of one box can find it easy to hate and scorn people from another box. People who identify as a box with fight furiously to defend and promote their box over other people's box. And boxes who gain some sort of "power" will try and dominate other boxes. Some boxes will be put other others. It has happened time and time again, and will continue to happen. Life doesn't care as long as that means more wiggly things everywhere. Society delights in it's happy little boxes without caring about the contents of the boxes at all. So what fights for us? Well we do of course. Nothing else will.   So what then is the solution to this problem?   I can tell you for sure what is not the solution. Playing society's little games with boxes. And that's exactly what identity politics is. If you insist to define yourself as "male" or "female" or "gay" or "straight" or "black" or "white" all you are doing is putting yourself in another little box. It doesn't matter how much you fight for the cause of your box, because your still fighting for the broken system that causes you to be oppressed in the first place. The only way to free humanity from this system therefor is to systematically tear down the system of boxes that people are placed into.   And yeah, that's really really hard to do. But maybe not impossible. Maybe as technology advances and humanity can change their bodies more and more in ways that they see fit, the need for these types of classifications will vanish. If people can change their gender whenever they want or even be in between, what need is there for gender identity? When people can change their skin or appearance what need will their be for racial identity? When people finally develop a post scarcity economic system what need will their be for class identity? But until that day comes, and maybe it never will, it will be hard to simply refuse to put ourselves in little boxes. Buit I think it's still something we should look to as an ideal if nothing else.
Kayzee

Kayzee

24
 

Blah.

I think it's kind of obvious that even if Hillary ends up winning somehow, the democratic party failed. They failed when they turned their back on Sanders. They failed when they didn't understand the issues. They failed when they sided with wallstreet. They failed when Obama bailed out the banks way back when. They failed. and maybe America has too. No not just America. The whole left spectrum everywhere in the world (except maaaaybe Iceland, and even then they didn't get ahead).   I know why they failed to. Because yeah, they got too greedy. They fed into a broken financial system, tried to tie everything up into a big global market. But globalization failed too. So did wall street. It was obvious it would really. Republicans got greedy too of course. They fed more and more anger and frustration until from out of nowhere they got exactly what they asked for and realized they made a mistake.   To everyone who supported Trump, I get it. Your angry. You want to smash the systems. You know what? I kinda wanted to also. But not by giving into insane bigoted reactionary rhetoric. Well congratulations. Now you are going to have to deal with what happens next. You could have waited to next election when I guarantee this election is going to make some waves. Though if Hillary somehow juuuuts manages to win, that is probably the best case scenario to me. But if Trump wins?   Well we might manage to be okay. I don't hate all Trump's policies. No I am more nervous about his ego and the message it would send to hateful reactionary people. If your going to be mad, be mad. But why Trump? It's just such a horrible idea.
Kayzee

Kayzee

22
 

The Ultima-ite RPG?

I am not sure exactly why, but today I started thinking about the Ultima games. I expect most people today have only heard of them from Spoony, if they have heard of them at all, but I don't think it's hyperbole to say that they act as the foundation that pretty much all modern RPGs rest upon in some manner or another. The series might probably still be going strong today and be rivaling The Elder Scrolls in terms of a popular fantasy RPG that impacts gaming culture had not EA got their insidious claws into Origin Systems.   My only solace is that nowadays EA finally gets the blame it deserves for it's many many crimes against gaming, but that is tampered by the sadness it came to late to prevent so much tragedy. But let's not get into that. I have hated EA for decades longer then most anyone else already, and I could spend all day ranting and raving about how they are ruin everything they touch. Ironically Origin seemed to hate them too before they were taken over if any of the many many jabs in Ultima 7 is any indication. I wouldn't be surprised if EA was run by The Guardian himself... it would certainly make a scary amount of sense to me for him to try to ruin his own universe.   Anyway, it seems to me kind of a shame that the series was kinda left to die and lie forgotten. I mean I guess Ultima Online may still be around in some form, and Shroud of the Avatar now exists as what seems to be a spiritual squeal in part, but the vast storyline and lore has still kind of crashed and burned and the gameplay innovations the series made were never quite followed up on. I guess you could argue that The Elder Scrolls seems to keep the open world fantasy RPG torch alive, but I always thought The Elder Scrolls was comparatively lifeless and uninvolving and were much better in the series earlier entries Arena and Daggerfall, where the focus was on creating a vast mostly randomly generated world without much detail. Once Morrowind came along it all kind of fell apart in my option.   I guess now that I think about it it's kind of a rarity in RPGs nowadays to do what Ultima did and try their hardest to tie the whole series into one long continuous continuity with the same core cast of characters while still having each game be it's own independent adventure. Mostly nowadays I see RPG series just have each entry in the series be completely independent, or have the few that have a continuity be preplanned episodes of a larger story. Ultima however can cheat a bit due to it's Narnia-like rules of world travel and the fact that a number of the cast seems to either travel back and forth from Earth or due to being from another world originally are blessed with long long lifespans. This means 200 years can pass between some games but the same characters can still show up. I won't say it makes perfect sense, because it doesn't. The characters, objects, locations, plot points, and so on that will reappear with each new game can be terribly random and inconsistent sometimes, and subtle retcons or plotholes seem to creep in from time to time (this isn't even counting the last game in the series which is a big rushed mess of plotholes and retcons). Plus the world seems way to small for all the events and history that are implied to happen sometimes though this seems like a problem with most games, particularly older ones (The Elder Scrolls seems to almost have the opposite problem, where the world is way too big for the games to seem like they have any real connection at all).   Though really the fact that computer/console RPGs had storylines at all is something that the Ultima series pretty much invented. Before Ultima 4, storylines in RPGs pretty much were excuse plots to run around a fantasy world and slaughter monsters. Ultima 4 did something different by focusing on character interaction and personal growth, and it introduced the concept of a morality meter, though it did so in a diffrent multi-dimensional way and basically punished you for being a bad guy. It was Ultima 5 though that really got the ball moving on story-based RPGs by having an oppressive government and villains that actually move around and do things involved with the plot. One unique thing is that Ultima 4 and 6 basically had no big bad villain at all, (though you are lead to believe 6 does) and no final boss. They basically exist as pure morality dramas. Most of the others after 4 seem to have a villain because it ties in to the theme of the story the games try to tell.   Most Ultima games after the first three early hack and slash ones have to do with ideology and ethics. Ultima 4 was purely about what it takes to be an actual hero and not just a guy who slaughters their way to the final boss. Ultima 5 has a theme of an ideology being corrupted into mandatory law by a tyrant, Ultima 6 is about what happens when two opposing ideologies clash. Ultima 7 seems to deal with the exact opposite of 5, well meaning people willingly being swept up in a corruptive ideology or group. Ultima 7 Part 2 is a bit more confused but has hints of being about what happens when people reject any ideology all together and/or what happens when an ideology is fractured into warring factions that take some ideals as more important then others. Ultima 8 is when EA started ruining things, but it clearly has a theme of being forced to do horrible things for what you think is the "greater good", and Ultima 9 has a running theme of why EA sucks and ruins everything it touches. I mean, that's not Ultima 9's intended theme, I don't think it really has one, but that is clearly what you will read into it. Maybe some of these themes are heavy handed and misguided, but they did attempt something that was not really done before, inject a little philosophy and higher thinking into a computer RPG storyline.   Also the open nature of the world is something that is subtly different then most RPGs today. I mean, I may bring the series too much as a comparison, but in The Elder Scrolls you seem to spend a lot of time trudging through uninteresting terrain on formally defined quests which NPCs hand out like personalityless vending machines, but in the better Ultima games like 6 and 7, maybe because the world is much smaller and there is a greater continuity of ideas and history to draw from, the terrain is more filled out with interesting things, the quests are less formal, and the NPCs converse with you more naturally and have more interesting personalty and personal history. It's a open world that doesn't feel as empty or impersonal.   Not that being empty or impersonal isn't always a bad thing, it's just that you need to design the game to focus on some other kind of engagement, like randomization and creativity like in Minecraft, or extreme character customization and freedom like Daggerfall. But I think the newer The Elder Scrolls games and other open world RPGs in that format are still trying, and failing, to really capture what Ultima 6 and 7 did so well, but maybe that is just me. Not really saying they are bad games, they are just a bit misguided I think in their design focus. Oddly the one The Elder Scrolls game I think that really does seem to capture that kind of Ultima-like feel is Battlespire, which feels a lot like the Utima Underworld games. It's kind of a pity Battlespire was such a buggy mess because it's really nice in several ways. I especially like how you can talk to a good amount of the game's enemies and get some to turn on each other or help you. I would have liked to see what happened if this sub-series developed further. Of course Battlespire is a linear dungeon crawl and not open world at all (and Ultima Underworld kinda ends up more like a metroidvania in a way, you end up backtracking a bit but it isn't really open world either).   And look, my point with all this is not to say that they are the best games ever and are so much better then the games they make today, because they aren't really. There are a lot of things wrong with the series. My point is simply that I don't think they should be forgotten, and I think most RPG fans, particularly "JRPG" fans have ever heard of them. The early Ultima games were pretty big in Japan too, and it can be argued Dragon Quest is basically a simplified Ultima clone, and that Final Fantasy is a simplified Dragon Quest clone, so I think JRPGs owe a lot to Ultima as well. And it seems a lot of ideas from the series didn't really get picked up on or were dropped or simplified over the years. So I just want people to be able to remember the series and maybe take it's lessons to heart for the next generation of great innovative RPGs.
Kayzee

Kayzee

6
 

A Undertale/Touhou crossover idea. (Spoliers of course)

Because I am a nerdy geek, I thought of a way Undertale and Touhou could coexist within the same universe. Consider this:   "What do you mean the barrier is going to collapse?!" shouted Reimu. "Haven't I done a good enough job as shrine maiden? It's not my fault if the shrine is always getting destroyed and no one donates enough for repairs! And why are you so calm about it!?"   Yukari sipped her tea. "It's not the fault of you or anything inside of Gensokyo. It's because of something happening in the outside world, and not something that can be so easily stopped... and it might not be entirely a bad thing."   Reimu cocked her head. "Not a bad thing? I thought maintaining the barrier was the most important thing to you? And what's going on in the outside world then?"   Yukari took another sip. "Simply put what is happening is that people are believing again. The outside world no longer doubts the existence of magic. Without that doubt, the barrier cannot maintain it's self. Eventually all of Gensokyo will be thrown back into the outside world."   Reimu blinked a few times. "You mean Gensokyo won't be destroyed? And won't that mean youkai will be hunted to extinction?"   Yukari shook her head. "Gensokyo was once part of the outside world, and it will fit back into it as if it never left. And usually perhaps youkai might be hunted but... things have changed. It might be that the barrier isn't necessary anymore."   Reimu stood, shocked. "H-How? How could the outside world have changed so suddenly?"   Yukari smiled. "Let me tell you a little story. About where Youkai came from long long ago"   Reimu looked confused. "What does that have to do with-"   Yukari just put a finger over her lip. "Shhh... I will explain after."   Yukari smiled and began to intone words as if they had long been committed to memory by a sage.   "Long ago two races ruled over the earth: Humans and Monsters. Humans were creatures of the physical, solid and resolute. Monsters were creatures of the magical, flexible and expressive."   "Both feared the other. The monsters feared humans for the humans were strong and often violent, able to kill the monsters en mass with the power of their determination. It was said even that the human soul was more powerful then the monster's. But there was the humans weakness. The humans feared the monsters for the monsters could steal the human's power, creating fearsome beings more powerful then anything either had seen."   "At first the humans and the monsters simply avoided each other,spirit, each making their own way in the wide world. But soon that became impossible. The humans and monsters began to run into each other more and more. At first, monsters simply chose to remain as invisible and inconspicuous as possible and worked to live with humans. The humans knew there were there and though fearing them began to see that they were mostly helpful and benign, and so left them be. Some they worshiped as gods and gave some power, but most they just left little offerings to in exchange for work. There are still stories of friendly elves helping a shoemaker make shoes, or protective house spirits, or other such creatures. Not all monsters were friendly of course, many were still tempted by the power a human soul could give them. Even so their was mostly harmony."   "But then, things took a turn. Maybe it was because monsters had remained mostly invisible and underfoot that they became less and less appreciated. Whatever it was, wars broke out. The humans wishing to exterminate and vanish the memories of all monsters. To wipe them from existence. Many were simply exterminated, but a few had the mercy of being sealed far under the earth. The rest fled, hiding in the shadows, and left to places where they had not reached. Soon monsters were pushed more and more, until this magical set of islands became out of our last refuge. But even here humans came and humans fought. But here monsters fought back from the shadows taking human souls and becoming strong, and those are the first youkai. Is it any wonder that we have grown more and more to resemble the humans that we used to hunt? Human souls changed us... in many ways for the worst, and many ways for the better. We have become both strong and violent like humans with all the magical powers of our monster ancestors."   Yukari sighed before continuing. "But... we were still too few in number. The humans still outnumbered us. We had the power of many human souls, but that power has drawbacks. Souls have a mind of there own. You can't absorb that power and not be effected by it. Even if you can stay in control form just absorbing a few, any more then 5 souls absorbed at once and the souls can rebel, and backfire on the user. Youkai have learned other methods of gaining power since then, safer ones, many which only involve absorbing small parts of human spirit energy and not the whole soul. But back then it was the only way we knew how. So to avoid extermination I planned and help create the Great Hakurei Barrier."   Yukari paused a bit and smiled. "So... can you guess what happened to change the outside world?"   Reimu gave a grunt of irritation. "Out with it already!"   Yukari chuckled. "Alright. As I said some monsters were sealed deep within the earth. One of the barriers sealing in monsters has been broken, and the monsters have left and are now rejoining humanity on the surface. Not only that but it seems to be going well, and they are accepting each other."   Reimu didn't know what to think of that. "So that's it? Monsters show up and then everyone is happy forever? What about Gensokyo though? Even if what you say is true, from what you have said youkai are not like innocent monsters anymore. Do you really think Gensokyo can coexist on the outside world too?"   Yukari shrugged. "I don't know. Humans and youkai here are in an uneasy coexistence, but many youkai are violent and sadistic and this place has been cut off from the outside world for so long. Maybe it would be better if it stayed that way, but... I seeing monsters and humans coexist peacefully again...   Yukari suddenly grinned. "It fills me with DETERMINATION."   Reimu suddenly wondered if she had missed a reference to something she didn't understand. She guessed that was the one normal thing about this conversation with Yukari.
Kayzee

Kayzee

8
 

Why the game industry needs to hurry up and crash already.

I probably shouldn't actually use this blog for actual serious opinion blog posts really, but I guess I might as well.   So I found myself watching a video about the whole GamerGate thing again. Is that still even going on? I am not even sure. I hate watching stuff about it because it seems no matter what side of the issue someone takes, they just manage to sound wrong to me. The only exceptions are when people are talking about specific issues with a particular very narrow scope, where they are able to make points on particular questions. If this was an issue about ONLY corruption in games journalism, or ONLY about issues of sexism, or ONLY about the failings of the SJW movement, I might be able to see one sides point over the other, but the fact it gets mixed into a big miss mash and everyone gets dragged into issues they never really wanted to argue in the first place makes it impossible for any kind of right side to emerge if you ask me.   Here is the thing though, I have felt, or more like hoped, for a while now that the game industry was spiraling into another crash. Too many over inflated budgets, too much loss of consumer confidence, too much DLC and microtransactions... even steam seams tio be filling with early access and shovelware now a days. It all leads into a huge mess and sooner or later things are going to have to either change or come crashing down hard on all the greedy publishers heads. And if you think about it, a crash will hurt the publishers and the greedy corporations then the consumer. Games aren't going to go away, all a crash will do is make the money-grubbers be unable to squeeze gaming for money any more.   Recently I started to realize a huge crash will also probably make games not be the "in thing" any more, and at the risk of sounding like a hipster, that can only be a good thing. Idiot man bro frat boys will move on to sports or movies or whatever is the new cool fad, and SJWs will move to where there is a bigger podium to preach their doctrine at. Games will go back to being something for enthusiasts and people who genuinely love the medium. And that is still millions of people. People will still make games and people will still play them.   So yeah, not really seeing a downside here. You might not see very many or any triple A big budget extravaganzas or anything like that, but honestly how many of them lately have actually been that amazingly good? I guess there have been a few, but I haven't played them myself. But I hope it happens soon because it's getting more and more annoying every day I see all this shit.
Kayzee

Kayzee

15
 

Free Party Turn Order WIP Script

Hi there internetland! Been a while I know!   Here is a WIP script I have been wanting to do for a while... it's intended to work with Yanfly's Battle Engine, and it basically makes it so party members always take their turn in the order you input their actions. The party is sorted by agi at the start of a battle, and using left and right to select different party members allows the player to control the order they go in. Of course, if a slow party member is selected to go first, it's highly likely monsters will move before anyone.   The biggest problem I ran into is I for whatever reason couldn't get the action icon displayed in the corner of a player's face with YBE to update right, and for some reason when I tried to print a number on top of it to indicate the order it was selected it would misalign the text like crazy. Right now pressing the cancel button when inputting orders will cancel all the orders. I was going to have it cancel only the last one, but because of the above problems there is little visual indication it. Also the battle system doesn't seem set up to handle multiple actions very well at all, since the turn order is determined by an actor's speed not the speed of each individual action. That basically means two actions will always be done right next to each other. I haven't actually tested multiple actions though.   This script is actually sort of inspired by Unlimited SaGa, even though Unlimited SaGa gives five actions across the party no matter how many players are in it. If I get into changing turn order to be based on each action individually it wouldn't be hard to do that though. I like it this way myself. Might be fun to add something like the Press Turn System or SaGa-style combos. But that's sort of extra stuff.      
Kayzee

Kayzee

0
 

The Follies of Recognition

This may be a weird to bring up a kinda serious topic late at night on Christmas, but some things have been rolling around in my head and I kinda want to talk about it. But first, for a moment, let's assume what most of you probably assume. That behind the mask of a cute fairy, there is actually a normal human who just likes to roleplay. If so, what I am about to say is going to 'break character' and talk from the perspective of a human talking to other humans. Because sometimes the outsider perspective of a creature like a fairy is helpful to talk about human issues, sometimes it is not.   I am not going to tell you if that assumption is correct. Maybe I really am a magical fairy and I am just roleplaying a human sometimes. I want to be able to preserve the magic if I can. The magical idea that maybe, just maybe, crazy things like fairies do exist. Or maybe I could be some kind of radical otherkin who completely submerged my human identity and may end up like Tingle, or come up with some kind of coy argument about how my real identity is a construct and that 'human' and 'fairy' are just roles that can be used regardless of my real body or some other possibly vaguely SJW thing. I could talk about the subject of personal identity for pages and pages.   But talking about personal identity is not really what this blog post is supposed to be about. Though it is tangentially related. What I really want to talk about is more about the way people perceive and communicate with each other. Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine if you will, that I was human. That I am even now laying in the bed of the guest room of my parent's house somewhere in North Carolina (and no, this isn't about the bathroom thing either). That right now I am on vacation, and most of my family is here. That means I would naturally want to, or at least be expected to, interact with them.   Now in this possible fictional account we are all originally from the most liberal of liberal towns in New York state (and I still live there) so this isn't going to be a tale involving an icy awkward dinner where no one talks because we have vastly different political views or anything like that. We would naturally agree on many things. But I think it's pretty clear by a lot of the things that I have said in the past, that I would have a radical streak. I have big ideas and tend to talk in overblown ways and do tend to argue a lot. Naturally I would would find it frustrating when most of my family would be totally uninterested in engaging in that type of talk most of the time, and they would find it frustrating that I often refuse to drop arguments. I also am probably impatient and clumsy about it, budding in at the wrong time, not being able to handle more then a one on one conversation very well, being very controlling and selfish, and ultimately liking too much the sound of my own voice.   I would wonder why I bother communicating my ideas to them in the first place sometimes. I would wonder if I really wanted to have a real conversation or if I rather have a soapbox like this blog to shout out my opinions into the aether. Maybe I would more just want an audience. But I don't think I really want that either. I have been thinking for a while about the odd obsession people have with fame. Why do they want it so much? Doesn't it just make everything more complicated? Plus today I found myself watching some videos relevant to the topic. For example, anyone remember Phil Fish? Not to drag up old wounds, but watching recount how he self destructed under the spot light made me wonder why people seek fame in the first place. Also there was that game, The Beginner's Guide. And watching about it also made me think about if we should really need validation or try and share a message. And then there is about gamergate (and oddly applicable to a lot of today's political issues I feel).  I am not saying all those videos are necessarily unbiased or accurate about the people and things they are about, nor am I trying to make some sort of stupid comment on human nature or the dangers of technology. I am just saying, it's kinda the same thing as well I talk to my family. Most people aren't interested in what I have to say, and it makes me wonder if it's worth it to try and get my ideas out there. And honestly? I have to wonder why I want to. Because again, I am not really good at it, and I often feel I just want a mindless audience. That's not how this works though. I either say almost nothing or I become an asshole to someone.   And honestly? I can deal with that. I don't think I really need validation one way or another. I am not sure if I really am interested in having conversations with people or if I just rather self-aggrandize myself and hear my own voice and I just enjoy writing things. In some ways I feel like Coda in The Beginner's Guide in that way. Like I am writing these blogs for me, not anyone else. But it's nice when others read them too, I am just not sure if I would be happy if I suddenly got famous. I would probably end up as either disengaging with the public or being an ass if that happened. Or both at once.
Kayzee

Kayzee

6
 

Random Fighting Game Brainfarts: Tier Select and Example

So here is a kind of weird and probably impractical idea I thought of a while ago while thinking of how fighting game characters tend to break down into tiers (warning tvtropes, yadda yadda yadda): What if the player could select between differently balanced versions of the characters? Not really even in terms of stats like speed and defense, but in terms of tweaking the moves. I won't necessarily say this would make all competitive balance stuff a non-issue, far from it. But it does allow for a bit more experimentation and shuffling nerfs and stuff around. Plus it could be a great way to make arcade-mode bosses and other stuff.   I have been thinking it off and on, and recently I was jokingly thinking about how my cute fairysona would work in a fighting game (come to think of it they might fit in with the Darkstalkers cast at least, that series could use a fairy character), and how a tier select would work out. Not getting into exact movesets or anything, but...   Name: Kayzee Lalee'lay Lalilulelo True name: A lady has got to have her secrets. And no it's not 'KilloZapit'. Feel free to guess! :3 Fighting skills: Wind magic, nature magic, basic hand to hand fighting skills.   Low to High Tiers (Normal character tiers): Quote: "No need to be violent but if you insist, let's play for a while!" Stage backdrop: Nighttime pond under a full moon with flowering lily pads in a forest with glowing lights and fairies playing or watching... very much like a RPG Maker VX Ace title screen actually. Or maybe a ring of mushrooms. Stage music: Something like .Special Moves: Wind cutter, Tornado, Fairy dust Super moves: Gale, Forest friends, All Seasons At Once (ex) Other features: Glides or stays in the air when up is held after a jump. Combos usually involve weaker but fast moves, good anti-air. Low tier may have more child-like sprites, less reach/priority/damage, but short enough so a lot of attacks go over her Mid is made to be the most balanced. High may add teleport dashes, gliding kicks/punches with better priority, but is slower and harder to combo.   God Tier: Nature Goddess (Boss character, Such as M.Bison or Rugal which may have gimmicks that break normal gameplay) Quote: "Ah, so is ever the tale. Children such as you, ever curious, seek themselves in power, for it is the only language they truly understand. To seek, to gain, or to lose, the game is all they know. Still the curious child is an amusement to us, so let us enjoy a spirited conversation in our first language!" Stage backdrop: Same with a golden moon, moonbeams glowing from above, more flowers, animals and fairies respectfully and excitedly watching. Stage music: Something like .Sprite changes: More adult, closed eyes, glowing light trailing after her, a wreath of flowers, serene smile, may open one eye and smirk a bit when using specials and supers. Has much of the stronger attacks of high tier while retaining most of the speed of mid tier, can teleport behind opponent when parring.   Eldritch Tier: True Fae (Final Boss, such as Onslaught/Abbys/Galactus which totally break normal fighting game conventions and logic) Quote: "Tsk, tsk, tsk... You really went to a lot of trouble to get here you know? It's quite rude snubbing me like that. But don't worry, I understand! You just really wanted to see my punishment! Hehehehe,,, Okay. You win! I will make sure it's extra special." Stage Background: Same forest pond, but shrouded in darkness except for the distorted light of a blood red moon. The fight is watched by shadowy figures with too wide smiles and red glowing eyes. Shadowy insects and creatures shuffle in the dark. Stage Music: Something like .Phase 1: Sprite changes: A bit more childish, eyes turn red when attacking, has a psychotic smile, otherwise perfectly clean, almost doll-like, animations more artificial. Can fly around very quickly in the air and teleport when it feels like it, doesn't flinch, teleports when hit enough (often behind opponent). Attacks are quick melee combos and wind projectiles. Super Attacks: Ill Wind, Dark Miasma, Moonshatter (Ex) Phase 2: Sprite changes: Causes a wooden tree throne to raise form the ground, sits on it and dark tentacles-like vines sprout from it creating a monster that opens dozens of eyes, all looking at their opponent. Slow, attacks mostly though the ground with poison vines and miasma. Super attacks: Falling star, Shadow rush,   Hehe, I know this was silly, just was thinking and I wanted to write something down.
Kayzee

Kayzee

6
 

Mo' Money Mo' Problems: The Future of Finance?

I think it's becoming increasingly clear to anyone who has actually been paying attention that almost everyone is pretty much screwed at this point when it comes to money. Or maybe that's just the impression I get from what I have read. The banking system has more or less rotten from the inside, the government is increasingly revealed as corrupt, more and more rich people are putting more and more money into offshore tax havens, the gap between the wealthy 1% and the rest of the population is getting larger and larger, and yet at the same time the money that the 1% has is becoming increasingly worthless.   The current banking system cannot hold, and fortunately an alternative seems to have presented it's self from nowhere to save all the world's money, at least theoretically. Cyrptocurrency. It's actually pretty amazing that an unknown hacker came in from nowhere and introduced this whole new idea of money and pretty much vanished. Right now a single Bitcoin for example is worth about $700 and more and more individuals and companies are trading it and using it. Even traditional banks are increasingly interested in the idea of using the 'blockchain' for their own distributed ledgers.   But I am not going to sit here and say their aren't problems that need to be fixed. Cyrptocurrency is still to volatile, there are concerns of new quantum computers ruining the encryption scheme it relies on, it often can be used to make tracing the flow of money difficult and possibly could make tax avoidance even worse, regulation could crack down on it, 'forking' and other community disagreements could split the base too much... And yet it seems this underground economy is becoming more and more mainstream and I have heard some people say it may take the place of traditional government controlled fiat currency someday.   Overblown hype? Maybe. Maybe not. The idea that cash would one day totally be replaced by credit sticks was a really common trope in sci-fi and futurist ponderings and that never really ended up being true. This isn't quite the same thing though. Cyrptocurrency isn't simply an account being managed by a bank or central service somewhere, it's a system of distributed encrypted ledgers where everyone is always double checking everyone else's copy. It's harder to trace and some of the new Cyrptocurrencies offer complete anonymity to make it nearly impossible. It's probably perfectly possible to even print out paper versions of bitcoins with unique keys that can serve the same function as cash.   Could this really replace old forms of money? Maybe. But if it does we will have to think about what that means and how that would change things. If we remove the government's control of currency, do we also remove their ability to collect taxes? If not, how will they be calculated and collected? If so, is there a better way to fund public projects then taxation? If banks are either gone or decentralized to the point of not mattering much anymore, how will lones such be done? Could 'smart contracts' help any of these problems?   If you hear , then the world is going to be changing very so to something very different. The old institutions will fall and so on and so forth. I can't help but be more then a little skeptical. I think it's more likely that it will continue as a sort of small part of a larger economy which is more centralized. But I do want to see what happens next and if I had extra money I might try seeing if I can get into it.
Kayzee

Kayzee

8
 

The Problem of Interest.

You know one big problem I tend to have is that I have absolutely no interest in like 99.99% of all of the RPG Maker game projects I see, even ones made by people I think of as my friends. Really I think one problem is I no longer have as much interest in RPGs in general and JRPG-style games in particular, and most of the other genres of games commonly made by RPG Maker uses (such as horror games, more pure narrative games) don't really hold that much interest in me either. It just kinda seems like most game projects I see seem to kinda end up seeming the same to me.   Ultimately, I think I am just getting old. I am sure 10 or so years ago things might have been different. Maybe even five years ago. I think I have gotten more and more picky and lazy about games since then. Ever since around the end of the PS2 era at least, when I basically decided I didn't really have that much interest in any newer consoles. For a while I switched mostly to handheld games like the DS and PSP, but eventually I sorta almost fell out of gaming altogether, only partly getting back into it with Steam a few years ago.   It's not really that I "grew out" of gaming either. Gaming is still a major part of my life. Almost 90% of how I entertain myself online is gaming related somehow, usually in the form of let's plays, or game reviews/discussion, or something related to gaming culture. I just don't really play very many anymore. It's just a lot easier to watch and discuss then to play.   Part of that is no doubt because games in general have become much more focused on story and "cinematic" elements to the point where it's almost pointless to play them anymore. I still haven't actually played Undertale for example, though I own it, partly because I was waiting for a Linux version (which is moot at this point since my laptop with Linux is being replaced by a new one with Windows 10 installed anyway), but mostly because I just don't think playing it myself will really add that much to the experience.   It really won't. I never was the type to believe that experiencing something myself made it any different. Everything for me just seems like random sense data anyway. It's not that I can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy or anything like that, at least intellectually. But emotionally it seems more and more that everything is almost equally out of touch and remote. I guess it's kind of like depression only I am not sure if it actually is. Maybe this is normal for fairies actually.   This doesn't mean I don't enjoy games, I just think it means I enjoy different types of games. I am more interesting in mechanics I can play around with, things with a huge possibility space, like a lot of roguelikes, or Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress, or any game where you explore and tinker and do things. RPGs can be like that too for sure. I guess that is one reason (along with others) I hate Final Fantasy IV with a passion (though the DS version was way better) but really liked Final Fantasy V (and thought VI was merely pretty good, and VII was probably the one I thought was the best in the series, but over all liked the SaGa series more).   That doesn't mean I hate stories either. Stories to me after all are more or less just the result of an author playing a game in his own mind. Kinda like D&D really. You have the rules you set for how the world you are making works and work out the implications. You have a personality and traits for a character and work out what they would be like and what they would do. It's really a fascinating process, a way for the author to create their own worlds. Games and stories I think are in the end almost two sides of the same coin, two ways people try to do the same thing.   But when I am playing a game I want to basically create a story, not be told one. And let's face it, even a beaching storyline like Undertale with many clever paths and things it keeps track of is still you being told a story. All the paths are there from, the start and you just choose one. It's The Stanley Parable problem really. I won't deny that as a artform story and gameplay can reinforce each other's point in some cases. I would never deny Undertale should have been a movie or a TV show or anything like that. I am just saying watching someone else play is just as impactful as playing it yourself, if for different reasons maybe. I will say that both Undertale and The Stanley Parable basically require a player, but whether you are playing and reacting to events or whether you see how someone else reacts to it I think doesn't matter as much.   Blah, okay maybe all that is sort of besides the point. I am sure I have said that all before I think. The point is, I find it hard to take interest in most games that are narrative focused. But honestly? The fact they are narrative focused is only part of the problem. Maybe even not the main part, though it might be the easiest part to pinpoint and try to justify.   Another big part is just that a lot of games are tedious. They are annoying. JRPGs in particular. It's hard to get into menu based combat sometimes, though at the same time I often want to defend it, because honestly realtime action-rpg combat is worse, especially in RPG Maker. My favorite style of RPG combat personally is roguelike-style single step turn-based on-map combat, and has been basically since one of my first RPGs, Ultima VI. It's fast, gives you a ton of tactical depth, allows a unified way to explore and fight things without switching between screens, and still gives you plenty of time to plan everything out. Alas, that style of combat has basically completely vanished outside of rougelikes. Anyway, yeah. That's another big reason. I know it sounds kinda like the kind of dismissive of JRPGs and people do enough of that but that's just how I feel sometimes.   Another big part, and this is hugely subjective, is setting and style. I just don't care that much for most typical medieval European fantasy, or Tolkien-style "high fantasy", or typical sci-fi settings, or mystical eastern settings, or modern day settings, or post-apocalyptic settings, or Judeo-Christian mythology based settings, or basically any kind of setting that hasn't been done a million times before, and let's face it most of them have. It's not that you can't do creative stuff with these settings, but I am just not interested. Really the only exception is if you really really do your research and make something that has so many references that it seems to weave seamlessly into an existing mythology/setting already, and even then I am not sure.   I guess there are other reasons, but that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Though I have to say there is one common exception that always seems to perks my interest. One kind of RPG Maker project I still play sometimes. Naughty X-rated RPG Maker games. The more depraved and fetish filled the better. I know, I know, I am a total pervert, and truth be told most of them are quite bad or forgettable, but they can usually be relied on for some brief, ahem, "entertainment" at least. What can I say? Sometimes I have a one track mind. Tee-hee!
Kayzee

Kayzee

21
 

On Capitialism and Cooperation

I was having a discussion in the comments of the last blog I made and about how my comments regarding AI controlled corporations would end up with a system where the 1% that owned those corporations would benefit. Really I was more talking about a situation where the AIs them selves 'owned' the corporations and made programed decisions set in place for the good of human beings, and would naturally take over most human-run corporations by being better at the stock market. However, AI or not, the central criticism is more about capitalism as a whole really. That is, the rich 1% that own most of the means of production will never give up control of that means of production because they want to hold on to the maximum profits. But this isn't necessarily applicable anymore. The world closer to embracing a economic model where specialized skills and big ideas are much more valuable then industry and manufacturing and there are real tangible benefits to giving up total control.   This is why, for example, we have organizations like the IEEE which work to hammer out standards and protocols. It has been shown time and time again that when companies like Microsoft and Apple attempt to enforce their own propitiatory way of doing things or when formats are constrained by use of patents like GIF or MP3 there is always backlash witch births a major open competitor (Such as Linux, Android, PNG, OGG). Of those only OGG hasn't seen that wide adoption even if it is well supported, though most of MP3's patents are kinda expiring anyway.   Of course things still need to be made, but I think it's becoming much harder for people to matter in that field. The endless quest for efficiency in factories and mining operations have always marginalized the human element, and now with technology like 3D printers, small computers like the Raspberry Pi, and modular electronics like Modulo, the economy is moving more and more I think to one that favors individual creators and small flexible companies that can act without much of the large bureaucracy of a giant corporate system. We still have a long way to go of course before a total lack of dependence on operations, but it's becoming more and more feasible to just do stuff ourselves either online or in real life.   Corporations still have a role of course, as do factories and industry, but it's not unfeasible that it won't last forever. Eventually everything will be automated, interconnected and decentralized, maybe one day we will all employ lots of cheep easy to make mining drones on asteroids, have self-replicating reprogrammable nanofactories, and so on. If we get into space, let alone the shaky possibility of warp travel, it's not far fetched to assume that instead of a grand unified empire, it will be a scattered collection of people homesteading with high technology. That future may be far off, but we are making slow steady steps in that direction.   In the meantime, it's understandable to not trust capitalism, or at least not the kind of 'crony capitalism' so often seen in the world today. Even in the best case there are still many many people who can not meaningfully contribute to this new kind of economy for various reasons and will get left behind. The backlash over globalism is as much a reaction to that as it is anything else. But I honestly don't think those jobs are coming back. The middle-class blue collar worker just isn't as relevant anymore, and I doubt it will be again.   But I still feel leaning to socialism isn't the answer either, or if it is it needs to be a drastically different kind of socialism then most people are used to. The idea of 'collective ownership' is a dubious one, but then again the idea of 'ownership' is pretty dubious to begin with. Socialism to me means that everything has to be centrally managed and controlled, and that involves some sort of state (which is often easily corrupted) running around deciding how to redistribute everything. Really my idea of AI owning corporations and most means of production is actually kinda socialist, but the only reason I even suggested it is because AI isn't human and doesn't necessarily have to have a concept of self interest and it's not actually simply taking and redistributing resources from humans.   Still some socialism may be okay I guess. I was kinda a fan of Sanders, and I wish he was president instead of the clown we have now. But no use dwelling on what could have been, the more pressing question is what do we do now? I don't think the government is going to make things better any time soon, so maybe people outside it will? A lot of time and money has been invested in developing new technology to do all sorts of things, maybe we should all think about how to use it to make the world better for ourselves and everyone else instead of waiting for policy from above.
Kayzee

Kayzee

0
 

Stuck in the Controversy Bog: Thoughts on Politics.

Yes it's time for that discussion. Now I know me talking about politics in some form or another is probably not going to surprise anyone, but this is different. I am not going to talk about abstract pie in the sky theories or narrow issues (or at least I will try to tone that down). I am not going to be spewing radical solutions that involve the total reformation of society. I am going to talk about what is going on right now in the USA. Yes, yes, I know, the world is bigger then just the USA, but that's where I live right now and that's mostly what I know. I have also been following events in Iceland quite a bit and may have things to talk about a few other things happening in the world, but mostly this is going to be about dumb American stuff.   Okay first of all, I think a majority of those who are following the US election for the past however long will probably be asking the same question: What the hell happened? How did it come to this? And I am sure everyone is going to give a different answer to that question. But this is my blog so I get to answer right now. So there. Anyway here is my answer.   On the Republican side, what happened was years and years of catering more and more to outrageous reactionary rhetoric and outrage. Let's face it, whatever the merits and values of conservatism should ultimately be, Trump is the ultimate expression of outrageous reactionary rhetoric and outrage. The Republican Party created their own monster with Trump. They whipped up more and more anger at the 'liberal elites' (not all of it unjustified) and everything they stood for, becoming more and more reactionary and belligerent. And they got the candidate just perfect for that, and some of them are just now maybe realizing maaaaybe there was a line crossed somewhere. *Slow claps.* Good job for figuring out what most sane people realized decades ago.   On the Democrat side, Hillary has been in politics a long long time. She has many enemies, but also many many allies in various places. Whether you choose to see that as proof of some sort of insider conspiracy or just proof of someone who knows how to play the game (if you even see a difference between those things) is up to you. Fact is, Hillary has been pushing hard on this for years and years. She will politely cater too all sorts of agendas and positions if it means getting ahead politically. She will plan everything she can out and push as hard a she can to get ahead. She works hard and is probably not above even bending ethical principles if she thinks it's for the best. In short, she is a politician, for better or for worst. And a skilled one too if nothing else.   I don't think I need to spend a lot of time detailing the flaws of each candidate, since that topic has been reiterated over and over again in the media and online. I will say though that I believe both of them have sort of gotten a bad rap.   No really.   Trump seems like a childish brat who doesn't know how to control himself or be the least bit self aware (as well as possibly being mentally ill), but doesn't strike me as actively trying to be malicious as such. I also think he does occasionally raise some good points, he just doesn't think his plans through at all. Also I am sorta skeptical about all of the accusations made against him I have to say, but I am sure at least some of them are true. But even so, I think it all adds up to more of a spoiled brat who because he was rich and famous never learned that actions have consequences, even ones like groping. Keep in mind I am not forgiving him for his actions or ignoring them. Yes it's despicable if he really did grope woman and thought he could get away with it, and I am inclined to believe he may have. But I am also willing to believe if he did, that he really genuinely can't help himself. Still would be an awful president either way.   Okay, quick aside, and I really hope this doesn't skirt the line into victim-blaming or anything because that's that last thing I want to do, but if someone gropes you like that or worse, go to the police right away. Seriously. It doesn't matter if you are afraid they won't believe you. It doesn't matter if you are intimidated by them. Heck it doesn't even matter if you end up enjoying it. If this shit is going on an no one reports it, it's going to keep going on. They are going to think they can get away with it and molest you or other people again. Bringing it up years later when circumstances are convenient does nothing to help any other potential victims in the meantime and just casts doubt on your story. Always always ALWAYS report sexual assault as soon as possible to the proper authorities. Period. If that doesn't work, at least raise a stink about it right away. I know it's not that easy. But silence just allows things like this to happen more.   Phew, anyway. Hillary on the other hand has been basically constantly smeared and attacked by her political enemies basically since she started in politics. It's gotten to the point where frankly I am not sure if I should take any accusation against her seriously. Oh sure, I am pretty convinced that she is not completely innocent or blameless, but it's kinda no wonder she is so... constructed is a good word for it. Everything about her is a mask, a shell. The real Hillary found that she needed to retreat more and more into the mask, that she needed to force her way because the world set it's self to oppose her.   She wasn't always this way. Used to be she was an outspoken feminist who made very loud and controversial (at the time anyway) statements about how she 'could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession' and how she wasn't 'sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette'. Now most of that edge has been ground away or deeply hidden by a constructed cynical mask. Does that make her a good person? Probably not. But I don't think she is a bad person. Maybe a bit paranoid and with a bit of a temper though, but I am not sure I blame her.   So let's talk about what is at stake. Right now Russia does seem to be really pushing the US, trying it's hardest to destabilize and discredit where ever it can through hacking, bombing civilians, moving nukes around, possibly breaking treaties on nukes and so on. If Trump wins, there is a fair bit of talk that he would be in Putin's pocket and he has questioned if we should really be committed to helping out our NATO allies... or at least not with them paying a bigger share. And honestly? I sort of almost agree with him on this point. Should we really be so involved in wars, alliances, and deals on the other side of the planet for little direct benefit to us? But then again can we really afford to leave Russia, North Korea, or ISIS alone? I have been told Hillary is a 'war hawk' and is pushing too much for a fight. I am not sure I really believe it, nor am I sure that even if she was for using the threat of military action to push her agenda with other nations that that really means she would want the kind of apocalyptic confrontation some people are worried about.   I kind of doubt Russia is going to start WW3 if it can help it, North Korea doesn't quite have the capability to nuke us yet, and ISIS is kind of falling apart as everyone pretty much want them stomped out. It's possible that the USA caused most or all of these problems in the first place and that maybe the best thing we can do for everyone is go back to it's pre-WW2 level of self isolation and limited with world politics. If there IS a WW3, I don't want to be living somewhere that may end up being a part of it. I am pretty sure that's not going to be possible now. Even if Trump would tried to avoid the conflict better then Hillary, he isn't winning at this point anyway. I don't think Hillary will do anything that gets us all nuked, but who knows what Russia is going to do next.   Best course of action I can think of? Maybe moving to Iceland. The political situation over there is getting very very interesting, and more a little exciting. Okay so the story goes something like this, as far as I understand it. Back in 2008 the would wide financial crisis happened and the banks in Iceland were in trouble. There was a huge shake up about it but things ended up settling down to normal. Unlike over here in the USA where the government (foolishly) bailed them out, Iceland decided to let them hang. I believe the people blamed greedy bankers and investors and made clear they were not going to take any of their crap. Then the Panama Papers came out, implicating high ranking government officials in having offshore tax havens. And everyone in Iceland went completely ballistic. A huge storm of protests and such sweeped the nation, and eventually a early election was decided to be held. The current government parties in power were seen more and more as despicable and the radical Pirate Party which called for radical government change started sweeping in the polls, as well as a few new parties. On October 29 the decisive election will take place. If the Pirate Party win, they have lots of very interesting reforms, a new constitution, maybe direct democracy, and promise to turn Iceland into a 'Sweden for data'. It seems like if any real change is going to happen to the world, it might start here. We will have to see.   Other then that, what do I think is the most practical way forward for the USA is? Well, Hillary is going to win most likely, and I am sure Trump will throw a hissy fit and accuse the election of being rigged but I am not sure if he can really do much. I don't think he has quite enough followers that are going to be committed to starting some sort of civil war, though their might be some violence. Hillary is probably going to have a rough time as president, and unless she really makes some real change is probably going to be kicked out next election (or even assassinated maybe). I think we badly need to take a new approach with Russia, either to back off a bit or find a way to get even more forceful without risking too much of their ire. Honestly I think Putin is mostly just a troll who is poking at for weaknesses and will back off as soon as he is actually threatened, but I wouldn't bet on it. And anyway, it's possible he has a point. North Korea probably just plain needs to be stopped at this point. There is nothing good about North Korea. ISIS is, as I said, pretty much going to be taken care of because everyone can't stand them. There are other concerns and problems I know, but those are the ones I know most about. I have no idea about what's really going on in Syria or anywhere else.   I guess that's it for now.
Kayzee

Kayzee

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