This part of his argument is not self evident or intuitive and I'm not convinced that the abstract economic model maps cleanly to the messy reality. I'm much more assuaged by the fact that it seems to cost ~$1/1000 gallons to convert fresh water into potable water.
Like, if agriculture uses fresh water and data centers use potable water, the important question is how hard it is to convert fresh water into potable water?
The answer seems to be "not very" so the difference is kind of moot
Well, no, you can't play it because the source code doesn't include assets like the 3d models and textures and levels and sound files. You need to acquire those some other way if you want to build a playable version of the game.
It's like GZDoom, you have to supply your own copy of DOOM.WAD
It's a different game. It may be technically compatible with other WADs and that's useful, but if the point is to actually play Doom, your idea is basically like when I once observed people around me downloading illegal video files and I wondered why they didn't just download Big Buck Bunny instead. (I was in middle school and not into movies)
Is not so different in the end. Also, the game data it's made in a way so PWADs and total conversion stay totally coherent with texturing and world building.
Playing for instance, Strain and such with FreeDoom.wad as the main IWADs yields the same experience. Ditto with Back To Saturn X.
That isn't at all what they are saying.
They are saying that you need to provide all the game assets. Exactly like you do if you want to play the original Doom with modern source ports.
Since the game is not available to buy, this means either pulling those assets from an original retail copy, or pirating them.
> preservation & the ability to actually play a 25 year old game is more important than its capitalization
> Even if you don't want to pirate it, there are lots of copies for multiple platforms available to buy just on eBay.
This feels like a contradictory position.
On the one hand the important thing is the preservation and availability of a work. On the other hand it's okay if the it is only available as 20+ year old used copies and pirated copies.
And any preservation or restoration project is under the shadow of 3 companies (Warner Bros., Activision, and 20th Century Fox) which have all recently "complained that they may have rights to [NOLF] and may sue over it"
They like it when old games are unplayable because if gamers can't find or play the old games they'll have to pay (and pay more) for their newest games. Why compete with your own back catalog? Especially when your old game isn't full of bullshit like day one DLC, lootboxes, season passes, and microtransactions.
My first reaction to the steam machine was “you’ll own nothing and be happy about it” but yeah everyone seems happy about it… I like how old games were sold on physical cartridges or discs. Much more fun to know the experience can be relived. Kids growing up today will never have nostalgic experiences in their middle aged years since so many games are internet linked and drm locked.
> On the one hand the important thing is the preservation and availability of a work. On the other hand it's okay if the it is only available as 20+ year old used copies and pirated copies.
And any preservation or restoration project is under the shadow of 3 companies (Warner Bros., Activision, and 20th Century Fox) which have all recently "complained that they may have rights to [NOLF] and may sue over it"
No, it’s not. Warner, Activision and 20th Century can collectively suck my balls and lick deez nuts. Literally no one benefits from this.
Let me quote the person I was replying to for you:
Exactly like you do if you want to play the original Doom with modern source ports. Since the game is not available to buy, this means either pulling those assets from an original retail copy, or pirating them.
They are clearly stating that Doom is also not available to buy, which is not true.
In the post you were replying to, perhaps inserting a paragraph break before "Since the game..." might help, more than selectively quoting from it. It might then be more clear that the phrase "the game" is referring to the same game both times it's used.
I love DCSS, and in abstract I think that "meaningful decisions (no no-brainers)" is a great top priority design principle, but in practice I wish they cared more about maintaining the qualia of the game itself.
I understand why they removed food, because it wasn't "fun" or interesting to experienced players. But it was more than just a time pressure mechanic. Cutting up and eating monsters to make your bread rations go further is as thematic as the difference between Zin and Trog
Honestly, it's still potentially fun because of the logistical challenge (your carrying capacity is limited, so staying fed interferes with the ability to carry loot and equipment) and because of unique food effects that may confer mutations and resistances. Eating is very often not a "no-brainer" decision.
On the other hand, I love auto-explore and I don't think I could ever go back to a traditional roguelike that lacks it. "I want to see the entire level in case there are interesting things here" is only "not a no-brainer" if prepared food is very scarce and butchery is implausibly inefficient; walking around without interaction doesn't improve the game experience, etc. (And sure, you can balance the game around not needing to explore entire maps to gain experience, but then you spoil the fun for people who do want to do that.)
Food was almost never interesting in DCSS, except for maybe Centaurs.
Once you reached a certain point you either had a giant stack of rations or a giant stack of honeycombs if you were a Spriggan. Random mutations can happen from other non-food sources, and most items are not worth lugging around so it never really forced you to make decisions. I handled long term item storage by setting a waypoint on a square on a finished floor I used to store items. If you have ++Fire, +Cold, and +RMut then you have all of the resistance you’ll need.
FWIW I’ve won crawl dozens of times, at least once for every race and class. Placed in the top 3 for the 0.10 online tournament, both individually and my team. The two guys who beat me were both child chess prodigies, both won the Morgan Prize and both were multiple time Putnam Fellows; I went to public school and later got a GED. Felt pretty big brained after that tournament lol.
> He knew, of course, that people talked about “picturing” or “visualizing,” but he had always taken this to be just a metaphorical way of saying “thinking.” Now it appeared that, in some incomprehensible sense, people meant these words literally.
This is the quintessential aphantasic experience. I still struggle to believe that other people "see" things in their heads.
This is the fundamental question about experience.
You may be "right". What you consider to be "seeing" things in one's head may be not what's happening in that person's mind. What they call "seeing" may be something else.
The best way I can describe it is essentially generating a memory. If I were instructed to picture an apple in my mind, I could imagine a hand holding up an bog standard Red Delicious. I can imagine it free-floating. And it would be much like when I remember what happened yesterday for instance. Of course, we get into whether or not we "see" the memory or not.
So, if you are saying you do not consider yourself to have mental images, what, to your best ability to describe it, do you do when you remember an event?
Basically? It's a "sense" or "vibe". "There was a guy begging on the street" is what I remember. Not the actual words or a picture, just the "vibe" of that sentence. Definitely no touches, sounds, smells, or pictures.
My wife, who has a very visual and auditory memory, to the point that she can basically re-watch movies in her head, is still dumbfounded by this fact.
Do you see them in dreams? I normally struggle to visualize things but when I'm half asleep my imagination suddenly has color and detail that normally doesn't happen when I try to picture stuff
The hypnogogic state seems to work fine in at least some aphants, including myself. I see nothing at all when I try to visualize. I have also lucid dreamed in the past and have consciously seen things in a dream as well. I can remember the dream as having been visual in the same way I can remember seeing things with my eyes open yesterday.
Not the OP - I think it's the same process. The difference is in what my inner narrator is doing. When I asleep it is almost always gone, and this is when I typically see things in full color. When awake, my attention is split between listening to its storytelling and the mental imagery, which I believe makes the latter more dull. I noticed that the narrator is more loud when I'm in a minor mental state, like tired or annoyed. When happy/refreshed - there is no voice in my head and I can "see" things very clearly, especially their colors. So, I started looking for ways to divert my attention from the narrator. The most effective seems to keep the narrator busy with commenting on my breath ("in" and "out"), got some boost of mental clarity from that.
I can't speak about my immediate experience of dreams because I'm not dreaming right now, but when I remember my dreams I remember them the same way I remember anything else, which is to say, without mentally reproducing any visual component of the memory.
At first I had some suspicion that perhaps the findings were partly a result of interpretation of the question. After all, I don't generate a crystal clear image of what I'm thinking about - the image has some amorphous qualities and comes in and out of focus.
But dreams are ultra-visual experiences for me, to the extent where I will occasionally have flashbacks or deja vu to dream images that were exceptionally strong.
So that nullified my suspicion! That said, I do wonder if it's a spectrum, in that some people are more or less visual in their thinking, and on the extremes people may get the capability snipped, as the dim visual hum fades to black and background noise.
I still struggle to believe that some can't. There's just always been an abstract 'canvas' separate from the one signals from my eyes end up on and I can 'draw' on it by thinking about visual stimulus, and it's hazy but perceptibly there, the same way I 'hear' a song when I think about it. When this subject comes up I also always want to ask if people with aphantasia can hear sounds or music in their head. Or a taste or smell, etc..
I have aphantasia and cannot hear sounds or music in my head. I can't taste or smell things either, but I've also been going through life assuming most people can't either. From reading about it, it seems that some people can do hear things but not see them and probably various other combinations.
I have no abstract canvas to write anything on that I've ever seen.
My visual imagery is also "hazy" and somehow fleeting and unreal, but still very useful. I don't find it that hard to imagine (heh) that for some people it would be more vivid, and for others almost nonexistent – though a total lack of visualization ability is perhaps more difficult to picture (heh^2), similarly to how it's almost impossible to imagine what it is like to be born blind, for example.
It would definitely be interesting if there were more discussion on other imagined sensory modalities, too. For example, as a choir singer I'd guess that, say, keeping a given starting pitch in your head is easier for people who can mentally "hear" it. Myself I can sort of imagine sounds, but keeping a pitch in my head is more about the physically preparing my larynx to produce that pitch.
It’s probably related but not directly connected. My mind’s eye is almost totally blind but I can have John Williams conducting a full orchestra in my head if I want.
(I can’t ‘hear’ lyrics though and have great difficulty remembering them)
would your friend be able to hum the star wars theme song from memory? it seems impossible for me to be able to recreate the star wars theme song without being able to hear it in my head.
So, if you watch a poor person begging for food on the street, how do you process that in the future? Do you rely on the remembered feeling and literal observation in words? How do you not remember what you saw?
I "know" that I saw someone begging on the street. I might remember other "facts" as they seemed appropriate. But that's it. If you asked me what color their hair was or what they were wearing I would have no idea unless I had chosen to make a note of that fact.
Adding a data point. I don’t think this is aphantasia, but rather SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory). For the future, the memory has to be recorded as facts as the original experience is gone. This means the emotions and other aspects cannot be experienced again. Recording things like, I saw this, I felt like this, I intend to do this.
Not all people who can’t visualise have this SDAM thing (though it is a common overlap), but SDAM means I would remember an event like this less than a problem at work (as an example), without intentional effort to transcribe it.
This sounds a bit cold, but it’s not as cold as it looks. If I read your description of the poor person begging for food, I am emotionally moved. In a similar way, if I examine my memory of the poor person begging for food, I am emotionally moved. I might not be reliving the experience, but the narrative I’ve preserved is enough.
This is why I like listening to my wife describe things we’ve done together. I often don’t remember it, but the narrative is still emotionally impacting. She’s my external memory for things that have happened in our lives.
How will you remember this comment in 2 hours? Will you visually see the words? You don't need to visually see something that happened to remember it happened or the idea of it. I don't need to visualize Harry Potter in my head to remember the fact he has a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. I just remember the fact.
I rely on the feeling, the sounds, the words on the sign, or by analogy to another thing. I don't remember what it looked like in the way that in a dream I believe I physically see things
> That "incredibly loyal user base," as he called it, could be better served with greater investments in AOL's product and user experience, he noted.
I think there's something kind of astute here, which is that anyone who is still using AOL products at this point is someone who is very resistant to changing "email and web content properties" providers, and is likely willing to passively tolerate additional enshittification and monetization
Like, if agriculture uses fresh water and data centers use potable water, the important question is how hard it is to convert fresh water into potable water?
The answer seems to be "not very" so the difference is kind of moot