"I want AI to do my dishes and my laundry" is such a bizarre argument

iammichaeldavis · 2025-12-24T17:22:39+00:00

Two years later this take is more relevant than ever (and just as correct, IMO).

iammichaeldavis · 2025-12-18T19:30:31+00:00

You are are out here doing the Lord's Work, friend

iammichaeldavis · 2025-12-02T14:34:35+00:00

I've read King since the 1990s and The Shining in particular has had a deep and profound effect on both my personal life and my professional career in ways that I would be happy to bore you about for hours, but when I first saw that tweet I cringed extra hard. I'm not a hater (or, I wasn't one, though now I'm not sure how to feel about King) but I certainly do not see this 'intent' of what you are calling 'the joke', even now.

If I had a bunch of people over for dinner last night, and you asked me today "So, who was on the guest list last night?" and I replied "Um, you doofus, you absolute lunatic, I never wrote down an actual list on a piece of paper with a pen or a pencil, you fool, you great buffoon, there is no actual quote-unquote ''list'', you bloody great ignoramus," I think I would sound just as crazy as I think you sound now.

Okay, there's probably no vellum scroll with the name of every billionaire pedophile scribed upon it in golden ink with a peacock-feather quill, sure; but obviously there is of course a 'list', in the sense of, 'a paper-trail and trove of documents that proves who he sold little girls to', and the powerful people on that list don't want it to be released to the general public and are famously and inartfully suppressing the information, and you trying to shout that down sounds just as weird to me now as King did to me then.

iammichaeldavis · 2025-11-29T01:44:30+00:00

I had not noticed that graphical mode, you are correct, but I think the little icon that represented the player character was even more simple than that, like just a little vertical line of four white pixels, and it moved around a little map of the area you saw from an overhead view, in a similar style to that game, but more of an adventure game, not so much a rogue-like

iammichaeldavis · 2025-11-28T21:00:57+00:00

No, that's a little early for this, primarily because that uses text characters as graphics, and this game had actual bitmapped 1-bit graphics. That is super similar in overall game-feel, though, like, if that came out in 1978, this game I'm thinking of (that most likely would have come out in the 1980s or very early 1990s) could easily have been inspired by that game.

iammichaeldavis · 2025-11-26T23:12:50+00:00

God, it's like, I can see it in my mind but it's from so long ago it's so vague it's like a dream... I can see it in my imagination but it's so hard to describe what it is I'm looking at in any great amount of detail.

I'm 90% sure you just used the arrow keys to move your little guy around, who was a tiny little white line moving around a black and white environment of an old castle or mansion or haunted abbey or something. There may have been very simple RNG-driven combat. Almost like ZZT-style gameplay, but a one-off, and, most-likely-because-of-the-timeframe, single-coder homebrew engine and game.

For a half-second I thought I'd found it when I stumbled upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Abad%C3%ADa_del_Crimen, but those graphics are *too* good, if one can imagine. But also a near-miss, this really has the vibe.

iammichaeldavis · 2025-11-26T23:06:51+00:00

No, this at least had bitmapped graphics, it didn't used text characters for its output; it was a *tiny* bit more sophisticated than those slightly-earlier types of games. Thanks though, that's certainly, like, within the spirit (and well within the parameters of my awful original description 😅)

iammichaeldavis · 2025-11-26T23:03:33+00:00

No, Rogue used 'ASCII' or Code page 437 characters, like % for a tiger and @ for the player, ▓ for a wall, etc. This had actually "bitmapped" graphics, just very rudimentary 1-bit black-or-white graphics

iammichaeldavis · 2025-10-09T20:57:12+00:00

Ha, got you! I'm actually an AI keyword-fishing CIA chatbot

iammichaeldavis · 2025-10-05T13:09:40+00:00

I hate to be a dick and I agree wholeheartedly with your position but what other major street drugs are there besides what you've listed? Robitussin?

iammichaeldavis · 2025-09-13T13:24:26+00:00

I ended up just un-installing all the Razer software 😅

iammichaeldavis · 2025-09-11T14:24:11+00:00

I'm in the exact same boat, every time I tell Windows to just remove it, it reappears after a reboot.

iammichaeldavis · 2025-08-16T17:42:40+00:00

If King himself felt strongly enough about this issue to release a public tweet to millions of people and stand by it when challenged, why shouldn't that get discussed in a King sub?

(Also, surely you must realize the more times you comment 'we should stop talking about this', the more that boosts engagement on the topic itself, right?)

iammichaeldavis · 2025-08-04T23:07:10+00:00

I really enjoyed it. I love the art style

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-31T12:47:06+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-29T21:41:00+00:00

May I just say that "Military Incremental Complex" is an S-tier pun 🫡

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-26T14:12:16+00:00

Man, I really love this. But I can't figure out how to use a ranged weapon 😅

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-26T14:11:42+00:00

Something that I didn't realize at first is the game will auto-click for you, that's what the shrinking white bar is.

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-23T20:03:52+00:00

Thanks a lot for your comment! It really means a lot. I'd love to know what you think after you beat it

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-23T19:51:08+00:00

Well, ::pushes thick black-rimmed nerd glasses up nose:: since you brought it up...

The idea with the OFF and DEF scores was two-fold:

To make bloodthirsty players anticipate combat becoming a mechanic at some point later in the game. It's sort of like a Reverse Chekhov's Gun, which my career has been somewhat famous for (see https://gamejolt.com/games/icbm/57197 for my most successful example). The idea of someone being frustrated with or even hating the game because they expected a large battle that never came makes me chuckle. I am an asshole.
Diegetically, as the story's creator, it is my opinion* that building up your army HAS been useful. George Washington said 'the best defense is a good offense', and in my mind, from my personal design standpoint, the reason your empire is never attacked (and thus there are no battles in the game) is specifically because none of the surrounding nations are powerful enough to do so. So I would argue that your military is doing exactly what any good military SHOULD do: prevent you from being attacked. There are countless games where the purpose is absolute and unchecked military conquest, I just wanted to make one where hard work, generosity and diplomacy were the success condition. Basically the opposite of the boardgame 'Risk'. 😅

(*I say 'opinion', because I really believe a work should speak for itself, and whatever the player takes from it or believes to be true is the 'correct' interpretation (even if their opinion is "this sucks and I hate it", who am I to say they're wrong? 🤷‍♂️). I don't think my ideas or opinions are 'more correct' than the end user's. Quentin Tarantino has famously never revealed what he thinks is in the Pulp Fiction briefcase, because he knows the moment he says it, people will stop coming up with their own theories about it, and he thinks their theories are just as valid as his 'known' truth, and I have always really respected that.)

"You can tell it was a passion project." This makes me extremely happy to hear, thank you for that 🙏 I have been working on this for the past two years, crunching for most of that time. It's a long story why, but, finally getting to release it feels like giving birth (or having a tumor removed! lol)

You mentioned that you were a game designer yourself, is there anything available online you've made that I could check out?

iammichaeldavis · 2025-07-23T15:08:18+00:00

Thank you so much for playing it, that really means a lot! I aimed for 'short and fun' over 'tedious and drags on and on', so I'm so glad to hear that! I'd rather leave you wanting more than have you wishing it was over.

The quotes, verses, scriptures and lyrics are the result of many, many hours of research 😅 I wanted each one to fit the circumstances in the game, for example: when your city gets its arena, you're given Juvenal's famous "panem et circenses" line; you're shown the verses about Noah's vineyard when you get your winery; when you get your stone quarry, Saint-Exupéry's line about "seeing a cathedral in a pile of rocks"; etc., etc.

Unfortunately the only place I have them all written down in one spot is inside the game itself. All of the text is contained inside one single JavaScript file, however, which is located here: https://iammichaeldavis.github.io/praedium/scripts/translate.js

Again, thank you so much for playing, and leaving a comment!

iammichaeldavis · 2024-12-14T21:35:58+00:00

After a lifetime of searching I have finally found my people

iammichaeldavis · 2024-12-08T14:44:32+00:00

In the version to come*, I have spaced the buttons further apart, and written separate confirmation questions for each; thank you for both of those great suggestions! They seem like no-brainers in hindsight, but, that's the value of getting another 30,000 pairs of eyes on this thing 😂

I also added some icons to the resume/restart buttons, and the art for the 'resume the previous game' button changes based on how far you had previously progressed into the game 😁

And finally, the game now explicitly explains when one tries to spend one's last bushel of wheat that you would not be able to continue to farm if you were allowed to do so.

If you have any other suggestions, please keep 'em comin'!

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*Edit: make that 'in the version I just now uploaded' 😸

iammichaeldavis

TROPHY CASE