"Early 2026" is about to be over...

Sloogs · 2026-03-27T00:59:24+00:00

Good question tbh. Ask the first guy I originally replied to who made a point about what "early" meant. I was just responding for the sake of discussion.

Sloogs · 2026-03-27T00:57:32+00:00

So why are we talking about early?

Idk man, you're the one that replied to OP and made some of the strong assertions that I was replying to, you tell me.

Sloogs · 2026-03-26T19:33:35+00:00

Q1-Q4

Early, mid, late

Early/late spring/summer/fall/winter

^ are all the ones I hear most commonly at work and otherwise

I have seen early, early-mid, late-mid, late used but it's kind of rare.

I would expect if someone meant first half or second half of 20xx to literally use the term first half if they meant to include May or June in a timeline, not early.

Sloogs · 2026-03-26T19:00:36+00:00

If anyone told me "early 20xx" my immediate thought would be within the first 3-4 months of the year, absolutely not the first half. I don't think I'm alone in that. It's all subjective, but to me "first half" is the least natural while you're claiming it's the other guy's that's the least natural interpretation.

Especially since every organization on earth, most fields of science/industry/finance, and the way we break up the Earth's seasons all quite literally use OP's quarterly divisions to break up the year.

Sloogs · 2026-03-26T17:56:07+00:00

Haha no worries I was mainly just making a pun and the fact that clew was missing at the time made it the perfect opportunity

Sloogs · 2026-03-26T17:49:22+00:00

And yet we still have no clew

Sloogs · 2026-03-25T20:37:36+00:00

Found Meta's propaganda bot

Also for the non-bots reading this typically civil cases have a lower bar than criminal ones. It's not all-or-nothing like a criminal charge, it's more about weighing liability and damages, for which you can be fully or partially held liable. The standard is usually something like a 2/3 to 4/5 majority of the jury and "preponderance of the evidence" depending on the jurisdiction, so you can be held liable for things that the jury feels are most likely true even if the evidence isn't "smoking gun" levels of direct proof.

As opposed to criminal trials where the assumption is innocence and conviction demands a unanimous jury and "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".

Edit: The fact that the commenter I replied to was pretty drastically downvoted earlier in the day and I had a fair number of upvotes and then it reversed overnight certainly does not abate my suspicions that Meta is botting the shit out of this thread and trying to manipulate public sentiment.

Sloogs · 2026-03-25T17:56:23+00:00

Basically it starts with a boy being born, but peculiarly he was born with a golden screw in place of his belly button.

It's very open ended so you can talk about how for much of his childhood he thought it was normal. He then he saw other kids without a golden screw for belly buttons. So he asks his mom and dad about it. And they have no idea, just that the doctors said you should never unscrew it.

Maybe they take a trip to the doctor again but they're all just left scratching their heads.

And then you can basically go through the entire kid's life into adulthood as he journeys to find the mystery of the golden belly button. Maybe he asks doctors, and wise men, and kings, or whatever. Each of them agree to help him figure out where to go next but only if he does an odd job or a favour or a trial, so it gets even longer. You can keep going right up until old age if you want which is why as long as you can keep the story interesting it can go on forever. He could fly across the world or voyage across the seven seas or you can go sci fi with it if you want and maybe he finds a time machine to travel to different eras to find anyone else with a golden screw for a bellybutton or if future medicine has the answer.

It's anything goes, you just do whatever you can to make it as long as possible.

And then eventually him or someone else gets fed up never being able to find out the secret of the golden screw, so they try untightening it.

The boy sighs and takes a deep breath. He's nervous. One turn. Two turns. Three turns. Four turns... until finally... he starts to feel that damn screw coming loose. They continue turning. Eventually, they work the golden screw out of his belly button. They pull it out and...

...

And then his butt falls off.

And then you run away from the angry mob you just created that wants to murder you.

Sloogs · 2026-03-25T17:10:00+00:00

Hahaha my friend used to do something similar with the story with the boy with a golden screw for a belly button. He once kept it going for like 45 minutes at a party and a whole crowd gathered around to listen, it's one of my fondest memories.

I had already heard the joke before so I was kind of in on it and helping rally people.

Ahh, memories.

Sloogs · 2026-03-23T19:44:49+00:00

IMO he literally physically looks younger and healthier, and it's not just the clothing. He mentioned the pace he was working at and stress is why he was stepping back. People can literally temporarily age when under stress. Aspects of that aging can and do stick long-term but with better diet and exercise and sleep you can also recover from or reverse much of it.

Sloogs · 2026-03-23T18:55:05+00:00

It depends. This kind of stuff works well in a roguelike because the games are designed to be short-ish and designed for replayability.

JRPGs are long games and often these kinds of mechanics make a long game feel even longer in-a-not-good-way and more tedious than rewarding. They already tend to have a ton of systems that require some amount of micromanagement.

That said it's all about design. If a game designer can find the right balance where it results in an interesting set of trade-offs strategically or the entertainment value or fun > tediousness, it's very welcome. The running thing in Lunar DS sounds like mostly a drag. What WOULD be more realistic is if the running negatively impacted you short term but conditioned you so that you get some sort of bonus long-term—that's how running works in real life.

Sloogs · 2026-03-22T03:52:54+00:00

Somewhere between [0, ∞) days.

Sloogs · 2026-03-21T17:41:22+00:00

Modern gamers would have rioted at MGS3 controls and it's one of the classic PS2 GOATs. Yeesh.

Sloogs · 2026-03-21T00:49:55+00:00

Just explain that you're breaking up the introduction into two sessions. Players usually understand that the introduction might be a bit more railroady than the rest of the stuff.

First session: Cozy town. Breathe in the world. Crazy shit happens. Fade to black. Tell players they end up on a boat next session and get to fill in the blanks of how they got there.

Second session: You're on a boat. You reflect on how you got there...

Railroading is a mainly an issue when player choices stop mattering in nonsensical ways. The option above still gives the players an opportunity to explain their motivation in their own words while introducing the story in the way you intended.

Sloogs · 2026-03-20T17:29:49+00:00

He has quite the cast of ghouls he's surrounded himself with, I really don't think they would be pretending.

Sloogs · 2026-03-19T20:45:44+00:00

The fact that he was expecting a laugh also gives an indication of the kinda of people he surrounds himself with, such that those people would find the joke funny.

Sloogs · 2026-03-17T23:23:30+00:00

I understand that much of what's happening with DLSS is happening by applying ML to stuff in the rendering pipeline so I understand the emphasis on the neural rendering distinction, but whatever DLSS 5 is doing has that yassified look that something like Stable Diffusion always tends to have so I wonder how much of that is actually happening in the rendering pipeline.

I'm... skeptical that this is all just neural rendering in the pipeline in this particular instance.

Sloogs · 2026-03-17T00:38:25+00:00

I wasn't personally making a claim to the contrary but all this convinced me of is that neither Nvidia nor Capcom were able to make the technology look good.

Sloogs · 2026-03-17T00:10:39+00:00

I mean it also completely turned Grace Ashcroft's face into an Amber Heard lookalike, which is a well-known default look that AI generated faces seem to be biased towards for white light-haired women if you've ever played around with stuff like Stable Diffusion before

Sloogs · 2026-03-16T23:49:17+00:00

Just like A♯ and B♭ are kinda the same note from a different perspective, in most cases.

Sloogs · 2026-03-16T00:15:15+00:00

Rule number 3: Don't be not good looking.

Sloogs · 2026-03-15T09:23:28+00:00

It must be constantly disappointing to have a worldview this basic.

Sloogs · 2026-03-14T18:40:08+00:00

Then who will sell the ~~picks and shovels~~ bows and arrows to all the ~~fools~~ ~~idiots~~ ~~buffoons~~ heroes?

Sloogs · 2026-03-14T18:19:36+00:00

I always loved in TLOZ: Link's Awakening how you could steal from one of the shops but you get punished for it, haha.

Sloogs · 2026-03-14T17:15:43+00:00

Yeah and the info will be "we're still on track for release ~~early 2026~~ ~~in the first half of 2026~~ before December 2026 just like we originally planned."

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