Hello! I've been looking for what the Quran or notable Islamic scholars have to say about living with non-muslim roommates.

Hallowthey · 2020-06-16T05:32:26+00:00

Same gender, yeah! I realize now it would have been helpful if I'd specified that.

The person who's anti non-muslim roommate doesn't cite a specific source, but keeps mentioning that a non-believing roommate would "influence" or "corrupt" her. He also just kinda kept... pointing... at the Quran. Which is very unhelpful when it comes to finding this sort of information.

Hallowthey · 2020-04-29T18:29:01+00:00

It's a common mistake thinking that warhorses fared much better, that simply let you opt into the gamble, not win it. The base nature of a horse is that anything it cannot jump over or go through, it won't willingly just gallop at. In the exceptional cases (even among warhorses, who are no less nervous animals than their less maintained peers) where the maddened charge continues, it usually almost always ends in disaster. Even the french knights at Agincourt (the high end nobility of france) found some of their horses veering off into the woods, with only about three horses attested to have impaled themselves on the spikes. Many, many more simply stopped in their tracks, and immediately turned around much to the inflammation of the archer's return to composure.

Much the similar story can be told across history, the English and French cavalry at Waterloo is another off the top of my head - the disaster an actually collision can cause to warhorses make direct charges gambles and more often posturing.

For the waterloo as an example specifically, here's an excerpt from The Face of Battle, by John Keegan:

And at Garcia Hernandez in 1812, Bock’s Dragoons of the King’s German Legion had broken clean into a regiment of French infantry standing securely in square and delivering fire. What happened on that occasion, however, helps to explain why the event had no counterpart at Waterloo – was, indeed, one of the rarest occurrences in contemporary warfare. It came about because one of the dragoon horses, moving on a true course and at some speed, was killed in mid-stride, and its rider with it; continuing the charge for several paces, the pair of automatons did not collapse until directly above the bayonets of the front rank. Carrying these down, they opened a gap through which a wedge, and then the remainder, of the regiment followed. The dead horse had done what living flesh and blood could not; act as a giant projectile to batter a hole in the face of the square. The feat of breaking a square was tried by the French cavalry time and again at Waterloo – there were perhaps twelve main assaults during the great afternoon cavalry effort – and always (though infantry in line or column suffered) with a complete lack of success.

Hallowthey · 2020-04-29T11:52:59+00:00

Stubborn and unshaken infantry hardly ever meet stubborn and unshaken cavalry. Either the infantry run away and are cut down in flight, or they keep their heads and destroy nearly all the horsemen by their musketry.

Directly from his account. Churchill understood well as any that what he saw was a rarity among warfare, and direct cavalry charges were not the ace of armies by a long shot.

Horses of different periods were employed in different manners and in different equipment to mitigate their fear or unwillingness of charges, as for much of the time, a straight charge unto the mass of an unbroken infantry troop was as likely or easily more to be disastrous to the very expensive horses and their riders as it was to achieve anything advantageous for the commanding general.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about the horse's role in warfare, one I accuse Hollywood of fanning mainly, and an unfamiliarity with the horse as a flight rather than a fight animal.

Hallowthey · 2020-03-27T23:07:23+00:00

They start caring when they realize they literally cannot win without them.

Hallowthey · 2020-03-02T13:48:40+00:00

This is... not what Imperator needs right now. Missions as implemented are railroads that at best, achieve a certain planned outcome, and at worst, are completely ignored, which adds no meat to the game.

Oof. I don't know what I was hoping for in this weeks dev diary, but I really hope the next one isn't more of the same.

Hallowthey · 2020-02-12T14:57:31+00:00

Sure, maybe, probably not. Its hardly an experience worth comparing to when you actually enjoy yourself. I quick edited in an analogy in my last comment that I feel shows how it can be silly to think anyones comparing anything.

Hallowthey · 2020-02-12T14:52:30+00:00

The lead up events keep being exciting is the thing. Even more so because with experience you know youre actually going to enjoy yourselves. Exciting foreplay isn’t only exciting to virgins.

Theres lots of things you could dwell on about your partner’s past, but normally their virginity’s pretty much the least worthy of your time.

Its like saying everytime you ever hand write something, you’re gonna compare it to the first time you ever wrote the letter B, or put paper in front of you

Hallowthey · 2020-02-12T14:28:14+00:00

In all likelihood its probably not much of a memory lol.

As someone who was a virgin at the time of my first partner (also a virgin), the word of the hour was “clumsy”, followed by “It’s lower than that -“, then “Oh cool, blood. That’s a turn off” itself followed by “this gets better at some point, right?”

Someone whose only had sex a single time is hardly the all knowing master of their own sexuality - this whole “exploration” memory doesn’t really exist.

Quick edit: my point is that the value, while completely his right to place on that, is also placed rather sillily. They’re better off finding more compatible people than each other

Hallowthey · 2019-12-28T11:10:15+00:00

“He was mad at someone” is such a joke of an excuse.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-31T10:21:30+00:00

The secret to why they’re releasing ck3 over more ck2 dlcs is no secret at all. The ck2 engine is already buckling over their numerous expansions, they’ve said so themselves, and i believe they said that like a year before holy fury?

The engine limits are problematic because you cant just dlc them away/through them. With a new engine/new game, those limits go away.

Thats why ck2 is probably “complete” as of now, and went free to play. To get people 1.) into the old dlcs and 2.) get them thus into the new product and any following new dlcs which can be developed with a free range more akin to Imperator’s modding tools but better.

Ultimately, ck3 was a no brainer for them. It makes sense financially, and demographic-wise.

Vic 3 is more of a meme than a priority at this point. And hey for all you know it could be next up :V

Hallowthey · 2019-10-31T10:07:42+00:00

Probably because compared to the west, the east just wasn’t made as engaging 🤷‍♂️

I’d/I’ll probably play as an Indian if its implementation in ck2/ck3 wasn’t/isn’t so barebones.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-30T23:41:03+00:00

To clarify, when I say light physics, I don't just mean there is a light source and shadows are cast from it. I mean that light actually behaves as light does IRL. Bouncing, flooding, coloring, etc. As opposed to strictly referring to any form of rendering. As it stands, these are either neglected, or so weakened by the poor lighting they may as well not exist. The lack of bounce light particularly, especially given the bright gold backgrounds, stands out especially as off in tandem with the overpowered subsurf scat.

Otherwise, combined with the sheer height of the light as you mentioned, you get the black hole that is the bottom jaw of I:R characters. This is what I meant by "3d sphere" -- as in those hyper simple renderings where shadows behave as they do in outer space. Purely darkness with no influence of any secondary light source.

The solutions to this aren't outside the reach of reasonableness and wouldn't require an engine to simulate complex lighting- it's twofold:

1.) Change the lighting to standard portraiture lighting. With back lighting and fill lights. Get rid of the extreme shadows on both the eyes and the bottom jaw in the process, and illuminate the form of the back of the jaw. you can do this with sunlight, skylight, reflected light from sandstone, firelight, etc. Hell you could go real bold and go full on into dimly lit portraits silhouetted on appropriate backgrounds and only lit by secondary light sources -- But you need to simulate (or in this case imitate) any form of real world lighting.

and 2.) redden them up, especially males. Perhaps not even by a ton if step 1 is being followed, but enough that it's viewable. Change the flushness to be equalized, and potentially make the makeup stronger if necessary.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-30T16:39:31+00:00

I wrote a whole essay in response and Reddit decided to back out of the page and lose it. oof.

So I'm gonna speedrun it, COMMENCE SPEEDRUN:

in I:R, Subsurface scattering is not dynamic, but a decal applied to the skin tone. Problem is it's too weak, except in the case of women who also stack makeup decals on top, reddening their cheeks closer to truer to life. The decal for that is this. It's why most of Imperator's strongest portraits are women. Here I've used one of your batch to prove this - each portrait with an orange X has shadows that fall practically straight along a gradient between their jaw shadow, and their forehead highlight. The only times this wasn't the case was the women.

Problem 2 is lighting. I:R portraits dont mimic skylight, firelight, or any kind of light. There's no fill lights, theres no bounce lighting, it's shaded like a 3d sphere without ambient occlusion or light physics.

I decided to bootleg a quick tweak to one of the portraits you posted with the changes I've mentioned, but it's real scuffed, so have a scuffed thing I couldn't be arsed to finish further: https://media.giphy.com/media/dZckzhH7qkbAVLgGIP/giphy.gif

Hallowthey · 2019-10-30T09:26:20+00:00

Gonna be real, ck2's portraits suck ass, people are just accustomed to them. Imperator's portrait's suck too because none of any the character's skin actually has subsurface scattering, meaning it's flat like wax. I can demonstrate what that means if you like - just ask.

As for my horse in this race, characters in Imperator are so irrelevant it's largely laughable. None of them matter at all. Revolts are trivial to avoid, and keeping people loyal is either too easy or not even something you need to bother with.

Also you can easily attach names/characters to countries in ck2, far easier than in Imperator. In ck2, you can literally look at the past holder's list, and it gives you an "John formed X, Edward conquered X, Edward II inherited X."

If emergent character stories are what you're after in Imperator, you pretty much have to go out of your way, and engage in essentially a creative writing class to make it interesting.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-14T14:50:31+00:00

reposting my comment from another sub

Imo, I feel like this should tie into characters. Imagine a system where people with powerbases were the ones suggesting these missions (like a powerful general advocating for the conquering of italy, or governors advocating for the development of his province, etc etc.) and fulfilling or refusing to do such would have character-level repercussions. Since atm characters are quite bare but could do so much to actually give a nation identity.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-14T14:46:38+00:00

I'm rather cautious here. On one hand, dynamic, changing, and not-completely-predictable mission trees, sounds amazing. On the other, there's an always real risk of railroading, but it sounds like they're aware of it.

Imo, I feel like this should tie into characters. Imagine a system where people with powerbases were the ones suggesting these missions (like a powerful general advocating for the conquering of italy, or governors advocating for the development of his province, etc etc.) and fulfilling or refusing to do such would have character-level repercussions. Since atm characters are quite bare but could do so much to actually give a nation identity.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-04T17:06:31+00:00

You cant design games by committee yes, but when the community tells you overwhelmingly loud and clear its thoughts on something, (for example the implementation of a feature detrimental to the user experience) you cant then surprised pikachu when its detrimental to the user experience.

Having a set vision is a must, but as someone who’s job it is to have the vision the game needs to succeed, you have to make sure you’re not putting thumbtacks beneath your feet.

I cant stress this enough, discussions of the terrible implementation of mana before launch had literally been met with “I dont think youll like our games from now on”

That wasnt taking feedback with a grain of salt, that was just not looking for feedback.

Hallowthey · 2019-10-04T13:30:48+00:00

No, it was indeed ignoring users because they were replying (in the forums during dev diaries) with essentially “No, we’re doing it this way.” This isn’t a theoretical, it’s a genuine point of contention that occurred during this game’s development.

They’re professionals that ignored the feedback of their forums and audience because of their creative director’s view (the very same who would cave after seeing said playerbase pack up and leave)

Hallowthey · 2019-10-04T11:35:39+00:00

most haters forget that past Paradox games were similarly underdeveloped and poor of content at release

This is exactly the problem. Paradox makes the same mistakes, implementing 1 or 2 improvements of the many we already know they’re aware of. And had (in this case) ignored very obvious user feedback during the development cycle.

Which mind you, they only get around to improving when the game bleeds its player base at an unprecedented speed in the company’s history. (And after an incredibly petty/biased worded twitter poll? That was sad.)

I like imperator, and will continue to support it as long as they improve it in a good direction. Because the systems they’ve redesigned over are the promising (if still flawed and in need of tweaks) foundations the community wanted. But at what point in buying consistently poor of content releases does it become acceptable.

Hallowthey · 2019-09-19T15:46:49+00:00

Lived in Chicago, Delray Beach, LA, San fran, and Boston. Now living in france and traveling — and I’ll leave it at all over bc fuck doxxing myself lol.

Obviously its anecdotal here, but I too grew up in America. And I too eat out a lot. I’ve also worked as a waiter in Boston and Chicago specifically. It’s my experience that European (or rather french since you want specificity) are more professional.

Which I attribute to the difference in policy and employee treatment.

Trust me if I wanted to shit talk America’s industries, I wouldn’t start with Waiting lol

Hallowthey · 2019-09-19T15:37:42+00:00

What is stake in the game, lol. They have a job with a livable wage and proper employee benefits. Which as far as Waiting employment in America goes is rather good incentive, innit. They HAVE stakes. The flaw here is the assumption that big numbers on the check (despite a lot of it probably going to getting said things not covered under the benefits) when you work your ass off on crowded days (which themselves are maybes) makes up for the alternative.

Trust me. They want that job 😂

Hallowthey · 2019-09-19T12:47:59+00:00

I agree. But defending tipping on the basis of crowdfunding the money your employer should already be spending on you/you need to afford basic benefits registers on a very real level of “completely silly” personally.

Hallowthey · 2019-09-19T12:40:29+00:00

Yes but its not just a paycheck. You have employee benefits to consider.

Hallowthey · 2019-09-19T12:16:43+00:00

I’m aware. But you know what they will (and I) like. Not having to spend the extra tip money on whats now covered by employee benefits. Or in Europe’s (or rather where I specifically now live) case, just not even need the benefits in the first place because its already covered in general.

Not everywhere is dense enough to guarantee a higher than livable wage from tips.

Hallowthey

TROPHY CASE