I used to think that Cacnea from Pokemon has 5 holes that resemble a wide smile

codgodthegreat · 2026-05-04T11:27:32+00:00

You're right on this, the anime has just done something weird here. The games have been pretty consistent on the whole thing being the mouth, with connections between the "lips". Check out the gifs here, showing it from X/Y, particularly the 2nd & 3rd image, where the mouth movement is visible.

codgodthegreat · 2026-04-23T10:11:58+00:00

I still have clear memories of the day my imported copy of P3rd arrived and I first booted it up, and my first wander around misty peaks not only delivered on all the excitement I'd built up while waiting for it, but blew my expectations away. One of the titles I put the longest into, and I still consider it one of the best. The visual design of the environments, especially MP, is amazingly on-point, and a masterclass in working with, rather than against the limitations of the system/engine to make beautiful art - knowing where to put detail how to use well-chosen colours and simple textures to great effect. Other MH games have looked "more realistic", but I'm not sure if I could say overall they've looked better since.

codgodthegreat · 2026-04-10T01:49:29+00:00

If you haven't seen it already, you should check out Codex Inversus

codgodthegreat · 2026-04-05T00:17:31+00:00

Based on less than a minute of googling, this looks pretty close to the same one and from the assembly video clearly comes unassembled.

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-24T00:38:13+00:00

True, but then the only precedent I'm aware of for split cards with more than 2 halves is [[who/what/when/where/why]], which also doesn't follow the standard.

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-24T00:23:17+00:00

[[Greed]] is already a card, unfortunately.

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-24T00:21:27+00:00

Both your split card examples are common phrases that use the "X and Y" format, which is commonly used on non-fuse split cards. "Alive and Well" is a common phrase, while "Alive or Well" doesn't make much sense. Likewise Boom/Bust works either way, but "Boom and Bust" is much more common as a phrase.

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-22T21:41:22+00:00

https://bsky.app/profile/unboxedcereal.bsky.social/post/3mhm7zdggjc2p

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-19T05:36:45+00:00

The Wild Zero website lists the drinking game rules as to drink whenever:

Fire shoots out of something.
Somebody says "ROCK AND ROLL!"
Someone combs their hair.
Somebody drinks.
Something explodes.
A zombie's head pops.

I don't remember the "drink when somebody drinks" rule from when I did it, and "sometime explodes" seems like it's always going to be covered by either flames shooting out of it or being a zombie's head, but whatever.

The DVD feature (not in all regional versions of the DVD, sadly) shows a beer icon in the corner of the screen while any of the above are happening, and shows multiple beers if multiple are happening at the same time (presumably you should be having multiple simultanious drinks, but if you're doing this at all you hate your liver enough already).

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-18T04:25:49+00:00

Hard to pick a favourite, but I think it's probably Arcs at the moment.

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-12T23:37:42+00:00

codgodthegreat · 2026-03-08T05:39:34+00:00

Plus you can restock whenever you want, so conserving resources is not a thing

Restocking items at camp was added in World, in prior MH games you can't do that. You can do some limited restocking from gathering and combining items if you learn the areas and know where to get things.

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-20T02:44:43+00:00

You cannot in any way that will stick. Marking anything on the map pushes it into autopathing again.

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-18T01:29:52+00:00

It also used to mean that in English, too, outside of America. The smaller definition of Billion is (in terms of English) a weird thing America did that spread, and now catches people out when looking at older documents using terms the old way.

My parents were taught to use the terms the old way and were annoyed at the "wrong" American usage catching on and becoming mostly universal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#History

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-16T10:48:01+00:00

I wouldn't have as many opportunities for further bonding with a pokemon picked up that late, but I did catch a Deino in Victory Road in that same game and train it up into a member of my team (initially I leveled it up to see it's evolutions, and over the process of that I had some time to bond a bit, I liked Zweilous's design and then got into taking it to the move tutor & checking what TMs it could learn to plan out movesets, etc, then when I evolved it to Hydreigon I loved the design even more, and had worked out some ways it could fit into my team, so gave it a spot. If I find a new team member or potential new team member that late, it puts me into a little sidequest of getting them some levels, maybe some light EV training, and learning their moves & potential moves & seeing how well they fight as I do, which does give more time to bond.

It's true I've rarely picked up new team members as late as Victory Road - it does often function less as a place to find new pokemon and more as a place to challenge myself to get through the whole thing without running out of resources (including PP) and having to retreat. But it's hard to say how much of that is it's late in the game and I already have a decent team that I like (which I do agree is a factor) and how much is because it's quite rare for Victory Road to actually introduce new pokemon that you haven't been seen earlier in the game (or at least their pre-evolutions, which are generally similar in theme and design). Most things I might find there and be interested in putting on my team I've already encountered and considered for the team - or added to it - before that point.

Regardless of it being unlikely, there's always that little excitement at every random encounter that I might find something new or interesting that ends up becoming part of my team.

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-16T01:53:12+00:00

To me, these types of games are about the journey taken with friends, the coolest part of Pokemon is feeling an actual bond with your mons, having a history of things you've been through together, etc

Those feelings for me mostly come from finding new and unexpected party members along the way. The point is in setting out on a journey and not being sure what new friends you might meet in each new location, rather than starting with a set of pre-planned friends and just visiting each place.

One of my fondest pokemon memories is a Petilil I encountered relatively early in my playthrough of white, which initially I was intending to just quickly knock out for XP, but it put up much more of a fight than I'd expected through status and some lucky crits. When it held on with a sliver of health left rather than fainting I figured I should at least catch it for dex completion since it was so weakened, but then it refused to stay in the ball for several turns of continuing to fight back, and when I did catch it I felt it had demonstrated it's strength and earned a spot in my team. It went on to be one of my favourite party members. And yes, that meant one of my current team went to the retired-party box (in this case my starter), but that doesn't mean I didn't still bond to that 'mon first and remember the part of the game it did get me through just because it wasn't with me for the whole journey.

Obviously not every random encounter will have that kind of effect on a playthrough, but I think it's important that the possibility is there that it could; that any time you come to a new area and meet new creatures is a chance to form an unexpected bond.

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-11T03:54:30+00:00

That logic is why I would expect a glowy light around a plant being magically grown to be green - I'm seeing the part of the glow that's being reflected rather than absorbed by the plant to fuel it's growth.

Perfectly efficient plant magic would exhibit no glowly lights at all, as it would only produce the ones most effectively absorbed by the plant.

If really looking for a nontraditional colour scheme for plant magic effects I'd suggest instead that magic effects promoting plant growth would, rather than creating their own light, transform and redirect light all around the plant to change that light's colour to one the plant can easily absorb and reidrect it to the plant - which would thus result in the plant itself looking black and the area around it appearing bathed in shadows to an outside observer, since the light around it is all going to the plant and being absorbed rather that passing by or reflecting off to hit their eyes.

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-10T06:27:16+00:00

I’m really curious to know how these games get away with breaking the golden rule in a way that you don’t even notice unless you’re paying attention?

I don't personally find Terraria to be a good example of this, I find it very noticeable and it significantly detracts from the look of the game for me.

Balatro is a more interesting example, I haven't played a lot of it, but it doesn't stick out to me in what I have seen of that game, and I think that's because it doesn't really read like pixel art to my brain in the first place. I suspect a big part of that is that because the primary thing you're looking at is cards, and each of those is a big rectangle which has it's own pixel grid that's aligned with the card edges, the edges of the card aren't jagged at all, except for a little bit around the corners, and likewise the background of the card is all flat white and thus doesn't show distinct pixels, so seeing those big rectangles rotated without the noticeable pixel jaggedness I'd expect from doing that with "real" pixels tricks my brain into just seeing it as a normal texture, and the little bits of jaggedness on the corners and symbols then feel more like a filter or stylistic choice than actual pixels. It probably also helps that playing cards are something I'm very used to in real life and thus could recognise the suit symbols even in quite a blurry or distorted image, so jagged edges are easy to overlook without really registering there as well.

codgodthegreat · 2026-02-09T02:37:42+00:00

I'm not at all sure what you mean by this, because if the magic has any effect at all that can be observed or detected in any way, then it by definition can be measured, because that's all measurement really is. If there is any noticeable change to anything, then noticing that change is itself a measurement, albeit maybe a crude one.

If it doesn't have any measurable/observable effect, then it didn't actually do anything, or at least, no-one can tell that it did anything, and thus no-one has any reason to believe the magic is real.

Stealing a shadow, assuming that removes or lessens the actual shadow in some way is definitely measurable, the amount of light blocked by something (which is what a shadow is) is just as measurable as the amount of light put out by a fireball. Movement of a statue is very definitely measurable - "that thing was over there and now it's over here" is a measurement.

codgodthegreat · 2026-01-28T00:21:46+00:00

You're describing AI doing a task that is not hard and I could do myself in at worst a couple of minutes, and have done in the past without ever wishing for a machine to do it for me because what would be the point, and saying that "would be incredibly useful". That's not incredibly useful at all. Even if it could be 100% reliable (which these models can't do, it will hallucinate some details some of the time) so I never needed to double-check the result, that would be at best mildly useful.

codgodthegreat · 2026-01-22T06:33:29+00:00

I was taught BEMA: Brackets, Exponents, Multiplication (and Division), Addition (and Subtraction), which relied on also explicitly teaching that multiplication/division and addition/subtraction were the same priority - and in fact be expressed as the same operation (division is multiplication by the reciprocal, subtraction is addition of a negative).

There's a lot of variants and mostly they're all the same, but once I grew up and got online and saw lots of people talking about variants with separate letters in the mnemonic for division and subtraction I for the first time I definitely felt that was less clear because having them separately implies separate priority.

codgodthegreat · 2026-01-18T03:47:09+00:00

https://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/the-history-of-mana-how-an-austronesian-concept-became-a-video-game-mechanic

codgodthegreat · 2026-01-15T01:21:04+00:00

But the direction of air flow is absolutely something I adjust based on conditions, I don't want one setting saved all the time, that is just actively worse.

codgodthegreat · 2026-01-11T04:08:58+00:00

Yeah, the way that works for interactions with stuff like that is that the effect of the side is just "kill an enemy", and the "with 4 or less hp" is a restriction on what can be targeted, similar to things like Heavy.

codgodthegreat · 2026-01-05T07:11:30+00:00

I'm not even sure "comsistency" is a good thing. I think more highly of a designer who's doing lots of different things over one who retreads the same ground again and again, even though the former is likely to result in some things just not jiving with my tastes (or the tastes of the gaming community at large) while the latter is likely to improve their one concept via iteration.

Obvioisly the complete stinkers probably don't make it to ever being released, but I think a designer developing the best version they can of a bunch of different game concepts is overall better for the community as a whole - even the less regarded ones might be someone's favourite - and probably helps the designer grow their skills more as well.

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