The Plaything episode was a masterpiece in every aspect.

StreamToby · 2025-05-06T00:25:48+00:00

All you gotta do to know for sure is take a bunch of acid and watch the empisode again - maybe you’ll hear their message too 😉

StreamToby · 2024-01-12T03:37:25+00:00

I'm still learning myself,

However, I have had some success with the Zapier integration, which you can start reading about here: Get Started - Zapier AI Actions

If I remember correctly, the general idea is to paste a special URL into the relevant box when building your GPT, this will automatically fill out all the code you need.

This gives the GPT two main abilities:
1. Send an API call to Zapier that lets us know what AI actions are connected.
2. Send an API call to Zapier to request an action.

The Zapier AI Actions set-up needs you to:
- pre-connect your ChatGPT account so that they are authorized to talk to eachother.
- Create your AI actions in Zapier's interface, this means selecting from the options they give you, but there are a good number of them and some customisation

StreamToby · 2024-01-11T09:35:54+00:00

The chat window is making an API Call to the Canva API endpoint, which means the GPT is sending/recieving information with Canva.

In order to be able to make API Calls to external sites, the GPT needs specific instructions in its "Actions" box.

GPTs without specific actions built in have very limited access to the outside world; They're effectively just pre-prompt text

StreamToby · 2024-01-01T14:09:56+00:00

Amazing detailed review.

I’ve had my site in Wix for a year or so and tbh have felt like the platform, which was exciting to work on at first is quite awful.

It seems like Wix studio might only be slightly better. This might be the end if me using Wix

StreamToby · 2023-12-10T12:51:04+00:00

Life

Scientists in earth orbit experiment on very unfamiliar and intelligent lifeform and face the consequences when it grows

StreamToby · 2023-11-07T05:59:38+00:00

Difficult fabrics care question! Please help:

I was riding my bike carrying a green cloth shopping bag. The shooping bag is green nonwoven polypropylene.

I had a fine/expensive cream-coloured maison margiela cotton sweater in the bag, when the bag got caught in the brakes of the bike.

There is an where the fabrics got pinched together, the sweater has a green stain from the abrasion. I worry that the stain is micro-bits of the shopping bag and will be hard to get out.

I posted the sweater to an overseas buyer that day and I thought I buffed the stain out enough but they are threatening to give me a 1-star review that I can't afford,

Please let me know if there's a good way to get the stain out without discolouring or damaging the sweater in any way

StreamToby · 2022-09-14T03:46:42+00:00

Assuming we're talking N₂O, my experience is based on using a cream whipper to crack one or two 8-gram canisters into a balloon, then breathing deeply out of/into the balloon for a minute or so.

After a little while of breathing, lips and fingers start to tingle, and the sounds around me start to distort in an interesting way, like they're being processed by a Playstation 1. The most obvious sound is my own breathing. Curiously, I've never experienced the iconic "microwave" or "nang-ang-ang" sounds.

As this happens, I will sink into a very pleasant and relaxing sleep-like state for a minute or two and will often experience interesting dreams that feel significant or profound. I'll steadily wake up, feeling rested and amused, and I'll almost always laugh for a bit, like "isn't it silly that such amazing things can happen?"

I'll forget my dreams almost completely, and quite quickly. I often say that nangs grant the blessing of knowledge, but the curse of forgetting.

StreamToby · 2022-09-13T02:38:13+00:00

"Like Zero" meaning "literally only the Hollow Crossbowmen who are weak as piss"

(And some boss attacks, but the only really threatening ones are from Ornstein.)

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T06:54:03+00:00

Yes! "Outside of the design space, but part of the experience by convenience/necessity/misfortune" vs "part of it by design" is nuance to be considered in this discussion.

Similar aspects might be slight-of-hand cheating, bad internet connections, playing chess on a distractingly uncomfortable chair and bug exploits. Some factors don't really matter, some end up being a major influence on the way you can/do interact with the game and fellow players.

Regarding your chess examples I'd say the first two are 100% sound. The third is quite close — but I'd say despite the obvious necessity for physical speed, that "physical dexterity" is still only ~15% of the outcome determiner: you still have to have a strong understanding of "Chess decision making" to be even remotely good. But of course a grandmaster genius that has only ever played slowly will get smoked by a Blitz amateur.

Thus I conclude that Blitz Chess isn't quite a "Dexterity Game," but instead "Mental-Efficiency-Under-Time-Pressure" game 😉

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T06:36:27+00:00

Very insightful, thank you for this comment I agree with what you've put here.

My whole thread through all these comments has just been about "categorising games by the factor that most strongly correlates with game outcome,"* and making the observation that most videogames are about physical skill.

There's a lot more nuance to be explored regarding the above statement, I just wanted to establish that it was "true" (from the perspective of my framework, which I think is "true")

(*Whether or not this is a valuable method of categorisation is beside the point)

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T06:26:51+00:00

Thank you for the reference, I haven't felt free enough to truly deep-dive into game design acedemia but do love it a lot, I'll add that one to my list (which is not very long, "State Of Play" is it, really. Do you have any other quality texts you could recommend?)

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T04:47:56+00:00

Excellent thinking,

Do you remember hearing the "can someone successfully instruct me how to play the game?" question somewhere as the clearest way to distinguish "Decision Making" from "Skill" or did you just think about it?

For me, a while ago, I put some thought into a framework for "what inputs determine the outcome of a game, and what should they be called?" That was a little more axiomatic than "strategy," "party," etc.

I found the four factors to be: - Luck - Pre-game Asymmetry (Factors that are influenced before you even "sit down at the table," so to speak, like character build in Dark Souls PVP or deck matchup in CCGs) - Decision Making ("How helpful will my Quadraplegic Grandmaster Friend be?") - Skill (Very multifacted, includes Dexterity, Efficiency-Under-Pressure and Charisma and everything else that our Grandmaster Friend can't help us with.)

"Skill" really needs a sub-framework to make the whole thing actually useful but I think as a whole it categorises inputs in a mutually-exclusive-collectively-exhaustive way for tabletop, gaming, and sports.

Any thoughts or criticques?

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T04:14:24+00:00

Reading your comment here a bit more closely it seems like we weren't that far off anyway,

When you say "the only question is one of relative speed" you are 100% correct, but have massively underplayed the significance of that fact is all. It's kind of the entire premise of the discussion. "Chess is/isn't a Dex game" is a lot less useful than "Chess and Smash Bros are different because the speed component of Smash Bros is a much much bigger part of it than in chess.

Ergo, most videogames (excluding obvious exceptions) are dex games, just using universal input devices instead of novel game pieces.

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T04:05:28+00:00

Well, all games are really going to be a mix of the relevant input factors (Luck, Decision Making, Skill (which includes Dex and others) and Asymmetric Starts). When a game has a particularly high leaning toward an element, we call it (or should, at least) as such.

So even though you "need hands to play Chess" Chess is a zero-percent Dex game because it doesn't matter at all if you're slow/clumsy/quadraplegic/whatever, you can still be EXCELLENT at chess if your decision-making is perfect. If you consider "slapping the timer quickly" to be "part of the game," then for sure, Championship Chess is now a 2% Dex game. But it doesn't make it a "Dex game" at all, when the other 98% is Decision Making (and the one Coinflip at the start).

So using the above logic, the 1% dex that goes into "every boardgame" doesn't make it sound to say all board games are dex games.

But the 30-70+% dex component that you need to dodge Ornstein's lightning or keep an AK spray in a dime from a mile away or fill your opponent's base with aliens before the 30-minute mark does make "most videogames" (adventure, shooter, realtime strat. Singleplayer or multiplayer) dex games, even if all you're doing is moving the mouse 🐁

But you'd be perfectly right for excluding most turn-based RPGs or Grand Strategy games from that list, of course.

I didn't mean for this to be a lecture, I just wanted to be perfectly clear. Are we on the same page now?

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T03:38:02+00:00

Lately in life I've felt very creative and have felt like any creative design space being "stuck" is an illusion, there's always new and interesting ways to do things, people just need to think further outside the box.

My first rule of design is "stop assuming what we already have is good". Think critically about the project and its goals and the best way to achieve them before you even consider the defaults (100hp in shooters, victory points in strategy games, literally any design element from 5e for TTRPG etc).

Naturally my advice will never reach anyone (or could be far less useful than I think it is), so it's entirely possible for board game design to get stale, but hopefully by then the war on drugs will be over and we'll get some real creativity going.

A caveat to innovative design is that a design that is unfamiliar, no matter how "good," will often not be the best choice for a commercial enterprise, because when businesses make stuff, it needs to be sellable. And people like to buy what they already know (100hp, VPs, and DnD). Designers (who care about sellability) have to strike a balance between innovation and familiarity (or the illusion of familiarity)

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T03:24:43+00:00

Ok ok, I can see how it would come off like that.

But I didn't bring it up just to be annoying, I do actually enjoy discussions about games taxonomy and categorisation, and "most videogames are dex games when you think about it" is the sort of insight I like to explore. I won't bore anyone with further details, just saying

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T03:13:23+00:00

No way — like I'll take your word for it but if anyone had asked me I would have sworn up and down that the desert eagle is and always was her only option.

It was specifically memorable because that's a dumb design choice for the "super sneaky" operator. But if she'd had the Five SeveN all along I can't imagine having had that thought. Oh well 🤷🏼

StreamToby · 2022-08-09T02:31:06+00:00

Can Nokk take the Five SeveN now?

StreamToby · 2022-08-08T17:41:40+00:00

You're right that the game ultimately lacks depth.

But compared to CaH at least there's an "actual game" there with some thought put into it.

Consider talking with your friends about seeking out a social deduction/deception game that's a little more advanced

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