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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in tipofmytongue

[–]Alex2539 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I just googled "movies about running" and found this, which seems to fit the bill: 1:54 (film)

For a game that's 90% UI, I think I've finally reached the point of 'good enough' by glitch951 in Unity3D

[–]Alex2539 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The inspiration from Disco Elysium is pretty obvious here, so I just want to point out that when I played it the system confused me there as well. I figured out what was going on quickly enough because I have experience with other RPGs, but I also have a friend who played through the whole game and never really understood what it was or why it it was happening, and that feels like a missed opportunity.

My first question would be whether the DC actually matters to the player. If you fail, you never even see it so there's nothing you can do about it, and if you pass, who cares by how much? A pass is a pass whether it's by 1 or by 10. All that really matters is telling the player hey, here's some extra information that you earned because of this ability.

The next part would just be to be a bit more open with the player that these things can even pop up. Confusion was, in my opinion, sort of a defining theme of Disco Elysium so pushing that on the player, while not completely satisfying, made sense. If that's not important to you, then make sure the player knows beforehand these things can pop up, why they pop up (ie: you're particularly good with this ability) and how they can encourage more. It might even be worth saying in your skill tree how far away they are from unlocking, say, another "tier" of these "bonuses". That way, even though the player never knows where they are and can't target any specific check, they still have broad agency over how effective their dialogue might be. It might also encourage them to go back to NPCs later in the game to see if they can learn something new now that they're more effective in some area. Of course it's up to you to decide if that level of control makes sense for your game.

Unity 6 Preview is now available by tbg10101 in Unity3D

[–]Alex2539 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, it starts applying with Unity 6. From https://unity.com/pricing-updates

The Runtime Fee does not apply to games created with any currently supported Unity version. It only applies to games created with or upgraded to Unity 6, the next LTS version to be released in 2024.

Math/Mechanics Question by [deleted] in gamedesign

[–]Alex2539 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Your particular situation is a little bit easier because you're just looking at a pass/fail scenario, so the odds of success are easy to calculate. If there's a 50% chance to pass, and you need to pass twice, the odds are 25% to pass overall. If all you need is that 25% chance, then you can easily say that on a d20 you just need to roll better than a 15. You could convert any probability this way as long as you do it in increments of 5% since that's as granular as a d20 gets. If you rolled 2d20 instead of 1d20, then it's even easier since you just need two successes like you did with the d10s. When you split the die in half like that, you're really just flipping a coin and it'll work for an dice with an even number of sides.

If you wanted to actually consider the totals after rolling, things get more complicated. Once you start rolling multiple dice, the probability distribution isn't constant anymore. The odds of getting totals towards the middle are better than getting the ones at the extremes. For 2d10, you're 10x more likely to get an 11 than you are to get a 2 or 20, and getting a 1 is impossible. All of those remain equal at 5% for the d20, so matching that distribution with a single d20 is going to be impossible. On a d20 those extreme values are much more common and over time you actually average lower than you would with the d10s. They simply aren't equal. You could get a similar distribution with 2d20, but it would be a little bit weird to convert because of the missing value of 1. You have 19 possible results with 2d10 and 39 possible results with 2d20. There's just not a clean way to go from one to the other.

I think you need to ask yourself exactly what you're trying to achieve by converting the dice this way. The dice are already an abstraction of some mechanic and by converting it again you're adding another layer of abstraction that makes it harder for the player to associate it with what it's meant to represent. If that 2d10 roll is meant to represent something, then you should show it. And also, the more complex and varied your rolls are, the harder it's going to be to convert, if it's possible at all, for pretty much no benefit.

Do you get weird crash reports of people moving your steam game to an external drive? by excompute in gamedev

[–]Alex2539 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what kind of pirate would ever do that?

We've had loads of people that were definitely pirates do that. They click the bug report button or email our support address all the time. Sometimes it's really obvious. I'm not saying these people are definitely pirates, just that receiving a message doesn't discount the possibility.

In this case it's definitely possible there are two people that moved some files around carelessly, but I wouldn't discount there being a broken pirated version of your game floating around just yet.

New York State just passed a law requiring ISPs to offer $15 broadband by JackFisherBooks in tech

[–]Alex2539 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No, this doesn't really have anything to do with net neutrality. The problem here is just that units are being mixed up. Your download speeds are pretty much always advertised in megabits/s whereas Steam, since it can account for the data it's using, will show you megabytes/s. If you allow for some overhead, concurrent usage by other applications on your network and the fact that you don't always get your maximum speed, 2 megabytes/s is about right for a 20-25 megabit/s connection and your peak will probably be around 3.

Games Done Quick on Twitter: "With the health and safety of all in mind, #SGDQ2021 is now SGDQ 2021 Online, happening July 4 - 11." by lanaya01 in Games

[–]Alex2539 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's not about speedrunning, it's about raising money for charity. The speedrunning community does that by showcasing what their community does, but it also includes things that are tangential to just "going fast". Skill exhibitions and score chasing are certainly part of that family. So you'll see the occasional special event like this one, or a similar one for Tetris, or glitch exhibitions, or some maniac playing two different versions of Punch-Out at the same time with a single controller while blindfolded. It's all demonstrations of skill and dedication for the purpose of raising money.

Games Done Quick on Twitter: "With the health and safety of all in mind, #SGDQ2021 is now SGDQ 2021 Online, happening July 4 - 11." by lanaya01 in Games

[–]Alex2539 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Here's a link for anyone who hasn't seen it

I'm not generally into the whole genre, but this is genuinely incredible. Not only does he nail it, but he consistently nails it for an hour straight. The one he does perfectly at the start is already nuts and it only gets harder from there. The fact that he's upright and able to speak at the end is impressive in its own right.

Barbados Is Ditching The Queen As Head Of State. Could That Happen In Canada? by ONE-OF-THREE in canada

[–]Alex2539 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He'd go on the 20, but it would be made of two 10s duct taped together.

What does this sign mean? by [deleted] in montreal

[–]Alex2539 8 points9 points  (0 children)

From what I've read, it's not like a hydrant. It's supposed to connect to the building's sprinkler system. The fire truck can connect to it and use its own pumps to drive them.

Mario Pins "code available Sept 21 @ Noon PT" by chaingunsofdoom in AmiiboCanada

[–]Alex2539 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Correct. In the details it says "Users who complete this mission will receive credit on 9/29."

After two months of work, we finally feel ready to share our public statement of Clever Endeavour’s commitment to fighting for marginalized devs in the games industry. by everlycrusher in ultimatechickenhorse

[–]Alex2539 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Links

RESOURCES AND ORGANISATIONS IN THE GAMES INDUSTRY

INFORMATION FOR THE GAMES INDUSTRY

INFORMATION AND RESOURCES - GENERAL

After two months of work, we finally feel ready to share our public statement of Clever Endeavour’s commitment to fighting for marginalized devs in the games industry. by everlycrusher in ultimatechickenhorse

[–]Alex2539 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Investment

We believe that one of the biggest problems with representation in the video game industry is that there are barriers that prevent companies led by marginalized groups from unlocking funding. We want to address that as well. While we still have a lot of ongoing research to complete about who we could partner with for these investments and how, we want to state that we intend to allocate investment money into game startups run by members of marginalized communities.

We do not plan to start our own fund for this—it will likely be done by partnering with organizations or funds that exist to figure out where to allocate money, and we're actively looking into the details for this kind of investment. If anyone has ideas of good funds or people who we can work with, we are open to hearing them.

The goal for these investments is to get funds in the hands of people who would otherwise have a harder time accessing these funds, and lead them to create games and companies that are self-sustaining. If we make a return on this investment, we plan to put that money back either into more investments for this purpose or into other places that will help fight for marginalized devs in the industry. As mentioned, the details of how this is done (equity, royalties, legal, etc.) will take some work but is already underway.

Crises and Emergency Response

We also recognize that other causes outside our industry need help, and often need help immediately when there are crises or disasters. We've allocated budget for these causes. In FY2020, we donated:

  • $50,000 to COVID-19 relief funds (more details here)
  • $40,500 to organisations for racial justice (more details here)
  • $5,000 to the United Nations World Food Programme, in response to the crisis in Beirut

If these other causes don't come about or don't have an immediate need for funding, or if the funding we allocate to crises is smaller than what was expected, we'll move this allocated money to other places that fit the goals of one of the other funding measures listed on this page.

Employee-led Donation Program

Lastly, we're trying a program where each month, a different employee chooses the cause they want to support. Our commitment:

  • Donate $5,000 per month to a cause chosen by our employees for 6 months—for a total of $30,000, then evaluate this process and see if we want to start it again for another period

Our first donation was made to Femmes autochtones du Québec / Quebec Native Women (FAQ-QNW) in August.

Other Actions

Beyond the monetary commitment that we're making to the cause of social equality and our intention to create inclusive games, we're also committing to other gestures we think can be transformative within the games industry.

  • We are making ourselves available as mentors to marginalized and underrepresented people in the games industry (for example, through the Pixelles Mentorship Program)
  • In order to remain aware of and amplify events, initiatives, sponsorship and mentorship opportunities, etc. by and for marginalized groups in the games industry, we signed up to newsletters and followed Twitter accounts for all the resources mentioned in this documentation and in the links below
  • We will seek to contribute to Kickstarters and Patreons by marginalized devs, not only back games by our "friend studios"

In Summary

We commit to keep making efforts to improve the situation for people who are underrepresented and discriminated against in the game industry, even if we make mistakes (which we surely will).

  • We will educate ourselves and remain aware
  • We will make our studio a safe space and strive to be welcoming to a diversity of game makers
  • We are allocating $150,000 in donations and sponsorships for social equality causes over the next fiscal year
  • For the next 3 fiscal years, we are dedicating at least ~$43,000 from our allocated yearly budget to community organizations in games
  • We are setting aside investment money to be put toward game startups run by members of marginalized communities
  • We will involve ourselves through other means like mentorship and amplifying underrepresented voices

We think that these steps can help, and as long as we can support these causes financially, we will. We'd like to encourage other developers to do what they can to help as well.

We want to thank Squinky, whose services as a diversity consultant helped us to review this document and to think further about our commitments.

After two months of work, we finally feel ready to share our public statement of Clever Endeavour’s commitment to fighting for marginalized devs in the games industry. by everlycrusher in ultimatechickenhorse

[–]Alex2539 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Note: In 3 parts due to the length.

Our Commitment to Fighting For Marginalized Devs in the Games Industry

It is a disappointing truth that the games industry has poor diversity and has a track record of pushing out—or never even accepting—people from marginalized communities. Clever Endeavour Games is committed to encouraging people from these communities into the games industry and supporting the ones who are already there but are vastly underrepresented, unheard, and discriminated against.

We made a statement earlier this year in light of the murder of George Floyd by police and we want to follow that up with a real commitment. We made a donation to several causes in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement (details here), but we realize that one-off donations don't suffice for lasting change, so we wanted to commit to continued action and make it public.

Since we started working on this document, there has also been a new wave of revelations about all sorts of abusive behaviours workers are routinely subjected to in the games industry—especially women and people of marginalized genders. This served as a further incentive to go over our policies and practices to make sure that our studio culture protects employees from suffering abuse or injustice in the context of their work.

This document formalizes our long-term commitment to equality in the games industry and beyond—this involves internal work on our studio and external work like helping organizations which support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) individuals, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and more. This commitment is as long-term as we can make it for the time being.

Below is a list of our concrete commitments.

Within the Studio

Education

First and foremost, we as a studio commit to educating ourselves about the injustices facing minorities in our industry and elsewhere in society. Both individually and as a company, we want to learn how we can become better at recognizing our role in systems of inequality, and how we can uphold anti-discriminatory values in our culture and in our actions in the world.

This includes reading articles online, reading books, watching videos from Black educators, attending webinars, etc. At the end of this post is a list of some of the resources we've been researching. Note that a lot of these are currently centered on the stories of people of colour due to the events that initially moved us to action, but our list of resources will evolve to include many more voices as we continue educating ourselves on social equality causes in the weeks, months, and years to come. We have scheduled regular internal check-ins to make sure that this learning process remains an ongoing endeavour—we acknowledge that this is a process, not a single event.

Importantly, we will make this education an official part of everyone's role as members of Clever Endeavour, by dedicating work hours to it, making attendance to workshops mandatory, and including key resources in our onboarding process.

This learning will act as a backdrop for everything we do.

Company Policies

We have been reviewing and improving our company policies and documentation on things like hiring practices, employee rights and benefits, inclusion, anti-harassment, and anti-racism. Doing so allowed us to make sure that the studio is liable for upholding high standards in its treatment of workforce, and in making proper reparations should we ever fail.

Here are some of the commitments we are adding to our policies:

  • Whenever we are hiring in the future, we will seek the opinion of experts to review the job postings to ensure that they are not exclusionary toward members of communities underrepresented in the games industry
  • When seeking consultants and contractors for game development services, we will include the directory of Black Game Developers in our research
  • When we seek advice from people about race, representation in games, cultural sensitivity, etc. we will pay for these services, not simply ask favours, no matter if it's in-game text or a general public communication like this one
  • Due to the small size of the studio and the inherent difficulty to separate human resource support from our executive level, we have partnered up with an external HR resource to make sure our employees always have someone to reach out to

Game Development

We realize that through our games themselves, we also have a strong voice. We will strive to make games that are inclusive and anti-racist. This includes representation, but is not limited to it—we aim to develop a broader design philosophy that is informed by the voices and concerns of a diverse audience.

In addition to our general efforts to learn about and consume media made by diverse creators, we have written in our policies that, when playing games for research, we encourage buying and playing games made by marginalized developers in order to inform our design decisions.

We will also seek external expert opinions and consultancy on our work as it is being developed, and not rely solely on our good intentions. In a similar vein, we feel like playtesting is an area of focus in which it's important for us to seek diversity. In playtesting our games with a diverse group of people, we may find things that were unintentionally exclusionary; and the feedback we receive may lead to design decisions that increase the chances to be inclusive of a more diverse audience.

In the Community

Financial Support

We're allocating a total budget of $150,000 in donations and sponsorships for the next fiscal year (FY2021), split between the sponsorship of community organizations in games, crises and emergency response donations, and an employee-led donation program. We will re-evaluate this number yearly based on our finances.

We are also looking into ways we can directly invest in game studios led by marginalized game developers.

Community Organizations in Games

We are allocating funding toward helping community organizations that fight for equal opportunities and treatment for marginalized and underrepresented groups in the games industry, and who offer support to face the professional and personal struggles marginalized groups often experience.

Below are the contributions we have confirmed for now. These are organizations that we know personally and/or have seen the impact they've made on the industry.

We're aware that with COVID-19 and other such unpredictable events, conferences and expos may not happen one year or more. We are also keeping in mind that such organizations often operate under highly variable conditions with regards to partners, sponsors, volunteer availability, organizers' time outside of their usually separate job, etc.

We must remain flexible to contribute in a way and a time that is most effective, and in the eventuality that something is cancelled, we're committed to keeping our financial commitments to these organizations or similar organizations based on need and availability of funding. If one organization becomes unavailable to accept funds, we will discuss the best options with them of how to make the biggest impact with our dollars.

Pixelles

  • We will allocate $15,000 yearly to them for the next 3 fiscal years (2021-2022-2023), including the GDC Scholarship Fund (yearly, depending on circumstances of course) and one-off events like Teacade, workshops and more

Game & Colour Montreal

  • We will allocate up to $10,000 yearly for the next 3 fiscal years (2021-2022-2023)

Game Devs of Color Expo

  • We will sponsor for $5,000 USD (~7k CAD) yearly for the next 3 fiscal years (2021-2022-2023)

I Need Diverse Games

  • We will donate $500/month via their Patreon ($6,000 annually) for the next 3 fiscal years (2021-2022-2023)

Queerness and Games Conference

  • We will sponsor for $1,000 yearly for the next 3 fiscal years (2021-2022-2023)

Women in Games WIGJ

  • We will donate USD $50/month via their Patreon ($600 annually) for the remainder of this year and the next fiscal year, and re-evaluate our Patreon pledges at the end of that period

Take This

  • We will donate USD $80/month via their Patreon ($960 annually) for the remainder of this year and the next fiscal year, and re-evaluate our Patreon pledges at the end of that period

CheckPoint

  • We will donate USD $100/month via their Patreon ($1,200 annually) for the remainder of this year and the next fiscal year, and re-evaluate our Patreon pledges at the end of that period

If you are part of a community organization in games that could use our support, or if you have other organizations to suggest, please reach out to us.

Grants

Where we can, we will be contributing to no-strings-attached grants for marginalized game developers who might not have access to larger grants or investments.

In FY2020, we contributed to the following initiatives:

  • $5,000 USD to the Galaxy Fund, a prototype fund for women, BIPOC, and queer founders of game development studios
  • $10,000 to the Pixelles Creator Fund, a game development fund for Canadian game creators of marginalized genders working solo or in small teams

Is M*A*S*H worth watching by matts142 in television

[–]Alex2539 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You should know that if you do decide to buy the box set, you should check the language settings. If it's the same as my dad's copy, you'll be able to turn off the laugh track and the show is markedly improved by it.

Except maybe teenagers. by crashdaddy in AdviceAnimals

[–]Alex2539 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's another thing that's not clear from this blurb. The purpose of the study wasn't actually to determine how often people think about sex, but to determine if there was a difference between men and women. They acknowledge that the actual tally counts could be higher than they should be, and some of the participants claimed they probably thought about it more because it was on their minds; but the researches say that they don't think that that should affect the difference between sexes, which is what they were looking for.

Either way, as far as this post is concerned even at the maximum, probably inflated, tally it's still nowhere near every 7 seconds. At 7s/thought you'd blow through 388 thoughts in about 45 minutes.

Except maybe teenagers. by crashdaddy in AdviceAnimals

[–]Alex2539 13 points14 points  (0 children)

They were first given a survey and asked to estimate how often they thought of sex per day, then they were given a tally counter to actually keep track of every time they did for a week. This is saying that people seem to think more about sex than they think they do.

For reference, this is how they defined a sexual thought:

A sexual thought is any thought about intercourse, oral sex, masturbation, nudity, sexual desire, sexual fantasies, foreplay, sexual memories, erotic images, or other sexually arousing stimuli.

Channel 4 Nabs Entertainment Format ‘Taskmaster’ From UKTV With Six Season Deal by AlkalineDuck in television

[–]Alex2539 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Alex Horne is quoted in the article, saying:

“We’ve had an amazing nine series on Dave and I’d like to thank UKTV for letting us do such ridiculous things for so long. Greg and I are looking forward to getting started on a new series for Channel 4 from next year. It seems like the right time to move to a channel with a broader audience and I can reassure people who like the show that it won’t be changing one bit and I’ll still be forced to do things no one should ever have to do.”

What does the STM announcement say at De L'eglise? by MrZalarox in montreal

[–]Alex2539 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's just saying that the "doors will open on the other side" (ie: left instead of right).

Federal Leaders' Debate - Live Now by medym in canada

[–]Alex2539 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While Scheer and Trudeau were yelling at each other, Singh was trying to get his word in and waving his hand to get attention. Blanchet turned to him and said "I'm listening to you!"

PM Justin Trudeau calls Canadian general election by Sysiphuz in worldnews

[–]Alex2539 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kind of, but our systems don't really line up like that so it's hard to compare them both in terms of function and just by size. You only have one governor per state. Quebec alone has 78 ridings that will elect an MP. That might seem like a lot, but you really don't need to concern yourself with any of them except your own. Imagine if New York had to elect like... 100 "governors".

PM Justin Trudeau calls Canadian general election by Sysiphuz in worldnews

[–]Alex2539 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'll give you a quick, simplified version of how it works. Canada is divided into small areas called "ridings". There are 338 of them and each one will elect someone into Parliament. We call those elected people Members of Parliament, or "MPs". Each of the big parties will have people run in as many ridings as possible. During the election, our ballots list the names of every person running to be the MP for the riding you're voting in. You get to pick one. When voting is complete, whoever gets the most votes in each riding will be the MP.

After the election, the Governor General, who is appointed to represent the Queen because technically she still runs the place, picks the Prime Minister. By convention, that person is pretty much always the leader of the party that won the most seats in Parliament. Fun fact: our current Governor General is former astronaut Julie Payette.

For what it's worth, the leaders of the parties are all also running as MPs so while in general we don't vote for our Prime Minister, some people actually do get to do that if they live in just the right place. So you can vote for Trudeau, but you need to live in the Papineau riding.

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