HetareKing
@HetareKing@piefed.social
- Comment on Gaming market melts down after Google reveals new AI game design tool — Project Genie crashes stocks. (A.K.A . Investors panic because they don't understand what "real" videogames are) 4 days ago:
I see a couple of major practical reasons why game (engine) devs are under no threat from this even if it gets better in the future:
Scale. Like all things AI, this is not going to scale well. This doesn’t generate code, 3D models and textures, both making games and playing them requires running the model. So if you want a game to have a persistent environment where the world behind you doesn’t get regenerated into something different after taking 8 steps, the context window is going to get real large real fast. And unlike programmed games, you can’t make choices about what’s worth remembering and what isn’t, what can be kept on persistent storage and is only loaded when it becomes relevant etc., because it’s all one big, opaque blob of context, generated by a black box; you either have it remember everything or it becomes amnesiac in a way that makes it useless. Memory availability also isn’t increasing at a rate where this becomes a non-issue any time soon.
Control. Manipulating the world though a text prompt gives a lot of control, but it’s also very course. It’s easy enough to tell it that you want a character that can run and jump, but how fast does it run? Does it accelerate and decelerate or start and stop instantly? Does it jump in a fixed arc or based on the running speed and duration of the jump button being pressed? How far and how high? You’re going to run in the limits both of what you can convey and what the language model will understand pretty quickly. And even when you can get it to do exactly what you want, it would have been faster and more practical to manipulate values directly or use a gizmo place things. But there’s no way to extract and manipulate those values, because again: big, opaque blob of context.
- Comment on Nazis Have the Dumbest Star Trek Opinions | Jessie Gender 1 week ago:
…? We’re not the producers of the shows, how is that any of our concern? They’ve got plenty of bean counters at Paramount, if a show isn’t hitting their financial goals, they’ll either cancel or retool it. All we can do is watch the shows that get made and express and discuss our opinions about it, there’s no point in the fans engaging in bean-counting themselves.
- Comment on Nazis Have the Dumbest Star Trek Opinions | Jessie Gender 1 week ago:
MAGA is an American thing, but there are plenty of people sharing their dumb opinions outside of the US.
Also, MAGA nutters aren’t actually less intelligent than anyone else, just cowardly and resentful. They don’t want to think about what’s causing the problems in the world, because then they might have to reconsider parts of their worldview and that’s scary. So they want someone to just swoop in and fix the problems without fundamentally changing anything, or failing that, gives them the feeling they have permission from society to lash out against anything they consider “abnormal” and is therefore a potential cause of the problems. And so they’ll resent anyone who criticises them for that or tries to undermine that feeling of societal permission they want or already have.
But not wanting to think about certain things is not the same as being unable to, and any intellectual capacity not spent on actually thinking about real problems and how to solve them can then be spent on how to create the impression that their opinion is dominant and therefore they’re not doing anything wrong.
Anyway, the point is that while there are definitely legitimate criticisms to be had about the newer Star Trek shows, your metric isn’t very useful for demonstrating that. To begin with, why hide behind numbers at all? It just makes it look like you’re trying convince people that your criticisms carry more weight because the world agrees with you.
- Comment on Bomberman has a lore? 2 weeks ago:
I think the story reboots every few games, so it’s not like say, the Mega Man games where every game is part of one big continuity. There’s a setting and recurring characters that’s built up over the years and that’s about it; everything else is specific to that game or subseries. Basically, the Bombermen (M/F), who may or may not be siblings, are some kind of space police from the planet Bomber and they have to fight a villain, usually but not always Bagura/Buggler, to protect the peace in the galaxy.
There is a bit of a rabbit hole (puddle, really) you can go into where some of the earlier games have a connection to the Lode Runner games, because Hudson Soft did the Famicom port of Lode Runner. It boils down to that Lode Runner used to be Bomber Man. This connection hasn’t really been relevant for a long time, but the fact that Lode Runner is a Galactic Commando may have influenced the current setting.
- Comment on Urusei Yatsura: old and new? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve seen both in full. I’d say that the new series is never as bad as the old series at its worst, but also never as good as the old series at its best. As someone who like Urusei Yatsura, the new series was a decent watch, but it hasn’t replaced the old series for me.
My biggest complaint about the new series is that it never seems to really manage to convey that sense of chaos that’s central to Urusei Yatsura’s comedy as well as the old one. My second biggest complaint is that untz! untz! untz! BGM they like to play during fast-paced scenes (especially early on) that to me doesn’t really match up with the show’s timing.
I also generally prefer the old voice acting. Now, the new series has an all-star cast, and they’re all great voice actors that do a good job embodying the characters (though Kamimiya Hiroshi as Ataru took a while for me to get used to), but I think the old cast was more willing to go all the way for the sake of comedy, whereas the new cast seems more careful about walking the tightrope between exaggerated expression and breaking character. This comparison video someone made does a good job of demonstrating this, I think. That said, I can definitely imagine some people preferring the more naturalistic acting of the new cast compared to the more theatrical and stylised performance of the old.
I do like what the new series did with Lum’s hair. A kind of combination between her iconic green hair from the anime and the oil-like refraction her hair is implied to have in the manga. And just in general, the colour palette is very pleasant.
- Comment on Brussels plots open source push to pry Europe off Big Tech 3 weeks ago:
That sounds more like tinkering around the edges to me. Whipping companies like Twitter into behaving, while it absolutely needs to happen, won’t fundamentally change anything about the dependency of Europe to those companies and the pressure the US can exert through that dependency.
- Comment on Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why 4 weeks ago:
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” - Comment on New Favourite Pokemon 5 weeks ago:
She recently evolved into Hatterene, which was… quite a shift in character.
Liko’s pretty imposing now, though, with two humanoid Pokemon taller than her. - Comment on Nvidia GeForce Now’s Time Limit Will Stop Gamers After 100 Hours Each Month 5 weeks ago:
I’m not sure I entirely buy that. For cloud gaming to be any good at all, you need a high-speed, low-latency internet connection. Yes, nowadays having an internet connection is pretty much a requirement in the industrialised world and even someone of lesser means will probably have one good enough to watch streaming video at a decent enough quality (unless they live in the middle of nowhere), but that’s not good enough. So with the expensive internet connection and the monthly subscription, cloud gaming doesn’t strike me as a very economical.
We’ve also been living in a period of diminishing returns when it comes to visual fidelity improving as hardware power does for a while now, so you can buy older, more affordable hardware and still have games look great on them. Meanwhile, I don’t think someone who insists on being able to see the surroundings accurately reflected in every window and puddle is going to accept the compression artifacts and latency of cloud gaming.
- Comment on Alternate Ending [Death Note] 1 month ago:
It seems unlikely to me that what your legal name is, is what matters. If it did, that would mean you couldn’t kill anyone who is not legally documented anywhere using the Death Note, which seems like an odd restriction for a supernatural notebook to have (there’s also the matter of people who are documented under different names in different jurisdictions or with different spellings etc.).
So I imagine it’s about what either the writer or the writee acknowledges as their name. However, one of the rules of the Death Note is:
This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person’s face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
This suggests to me that it’s the writer’s cognition that matters, meaning this wouldn’t work because the writer would still acknowledge someone’s dead name as their actual name.
- Comment on Original ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ Studio Gainax Officially Shutters After 42 Years 1 month ago:
It’s still kind of sad, but at the same time, long overdue. Gainax had been a shell of its former self for quite a while, with basically all the people who made it what it was having gone elsewhere (Khara, Trigger) a long time ago and what was left being a miserable pile of debt, tax evasion and dubious IP management.
Speaking of IP, I wonder what’s going to happen to the Daicon Film IP. It’s impossible to make money out of, so I guess it’ll end up at Khara, given Anno is there?
- Comment on Baby boomers want to axe property taxes. Millennials and Gen Z would pay for it. 2 months ago:
Most countries don’t do the absurd funding the local public school using the district’s property taxes thing, but they still have property taxes.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 47] 2 months ago:
I think there’s a 50% chance we went to the same theater, because I also went to see The Colors Within yesterday. I agree, great film. It’s interesting to me how Japanese entertainment tends to do a better job at telling a story where Christianity plays a role without being utterly obnoxious about it. Or maybe I’m just less suspicious about a Japanese creator’s intentions when it comes to this.
Anyway, I did notice a slight plot hole, maybe?
spoiler
Early in the film, Totsuko suggested she would get in trouble with the school if they found out she was fraternising with a boy, but at the end Rui participated in the performance at the school festival without any problems.
But well, it’s not that big of an issue.I already went to see Chainsaw Man a couple of weeks ago, which was great fun. I did like the first season quite a lot, but I enjoyed this different approach as well. Still a weird experience to go to the mainstream cinema and see an anime film in a packed house, though. That would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
- Comment on [Episode] This Monster Wants to Eat Me • Watashi wo Tabetai, Hitodenashi - Episode 6 discussion 2 months ago:
I think I’ve solved the main conundrum of this show. Hinako wants Shiori to eat her, but Shiori first wants Hinako to want to live, so that she’s more delicious. But if that happens, Hinako won’t want to be eaten anymore. Also, she’s worried about leaving Miko behind without a friend. Then the solution is simple: all Hinako has to do once she wants to live again is eat Shiori so that she becomes immortal (because of eating mermaid flesh). After that, she’s pretty much a youkai herself, so Miko probably won’t want to eat her anymore (at least not in that way).
MikoHina lives on forever, Shiori has become a beautiful martyr for the cause, it all works out!
- Comment on Anime studio bankruptcies and closures continue to rise for third consecutive year in Japan 2 months ago:
If you go to the official Japanese website of a show and look up where you can watch it, almost every time you’re presented with a list of close to two dozen streaming services. The exception is when one particular service (always an American one like Netflix or Amazon Prime) has exclusivity rights to it, but they’re the minority.
Exclusivity deals aside, this seems to me like a much better setup, at least from a consumer perspective. Shows are for the most part not dotted across different services, but there’s no market consolidation. And even if something isn’t on the service you’re subscribed to, it will probably be available on a service where you can just rent an individual show or episode instead of having yet another subscription. And I imagine that if they’re not competing on hostage-taking, that would mean they’re competing more on price and quality of service instead.
- Comment on [Episode] This Monster Wants to Eat Me • Watashi wo Tabetai, Hitodenashi - Episode 4 discussion 3 months ago:
Interesting how they used the lighthearted side-story to prevent complete tonal whiplash with the practically denpa song ED.
Also, Fairouz Ai can really draw, wow.
sOiwHNJrKf5Ar1l.jpg - Comment on [News] Frieren Werewolf game on sale Dec 18 3 months ago:
I imagine it’s also because the werewolves in this version of the game appear to be demons (which actually makes a lot of sense), so it also depicts the two sides in the game.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 42] 3 months ago:
Steins;Gate gets quite dark and serious, but it starts out pretty goofy, so if you’re trying to avoid comedy it would leave a pretty bad first impression. I don’t think I would recommend pushing yourself through the earlier parts to get to the later parts either, because you do need a certain attachment to the characters to appreciate the latter.
Vinland Saga, from what you’ve written, seems more up your alley. In a similar vein (bloody serious historical fiction) I also recommend Orb.
Other than that, Pluto and Monster, both thrillers based on manga by Urasawa Naoki, are very straight-laced.
- Comment on Try the other side maybe 3 months ago:
Actually, I wonder how light would interact with something that is infinitesimal in width, but does have a significant amount of depth. Have any experiments of this kind been done with graphene or something?
- Submitted 4 months ago to animemes@ani.social | 1 comment
- Comment on [Episode] Let’s Play • Let’s Play: Quest Darake no My Life - Episode 1 discussion 4 months ago:
It’s weird, it feels kind of like watching a Japanese dub of an English-language show, which I haven’t felt even with other adaptations of works originally in English. I guess it’s because it also uses the visual language of the comic? Pretty luxurious cast, though.
Anyway, the writing isn’t very good. A bunch of things just don’t seem to make any sense; the dumb incident at the office it sends half the episode or so on, the whole deal with the rating of the protagonist’s game by the streamer. Still not sure what the show is about, either, but I don’t think I have the motivation to find out.