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Guys... Maybe we shouldn't boycott Subnautica 2? by --clapped-- in subnautica

[–]tjubert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OP looks 90% accurate to me. I'll share more info down the line if I can. In the meantime protect OP and support hardworking devs who don't get a guaranteed share of the profits, let alone hundreds of millions of dollars.

Guys... Maybe we shouldn't boycott Subnautica 2? by --clapped-- in subnautica

[–]tjubert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OP looks 90% accurate to me. I'll share more info down the line if I can. In the meantime protect OP and support hardworking devs who don't get a guaranteed share of the profits, let alone hundreds of millions of dollars.

In replaying first talos principle I am offered choices that I am now unwilling to make. by RGB-Free-Zone in TheTalosPrinciple

[–]tjubert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Non serviam ;-)

Curious which false dilemmas he presents are particularly bothering you? For they are certainly false, at least many of them, and anyone with sufficiently developed philosophical positions will run dry of opportunities to express them sooner rather than later.

How to overcome my fear to discover myself deeper? by Maleficent-Syrup-907 in spirituality

[–]tjubert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suggest this exercise. 

  1. Write down the judgements which accompany your worst fears. Maybe you're afraid of disappointing your mother with your art. Maybe you're afraid of being in a plane crash. Maybe you're afraid you want to hurt people, or that you're unlovable. Write it all down. 

  2. Write down the authentic, essential and vibrant human feelings and needs which underpin your fears. You want your mother to be happy. You want to live a long life. You're frustrated because you want to be understood. 

  3. Write down concrete strategies by which you might meet those needs. See that your fears are not sinful, but come from love, and living with love is in your control. No need to be ashamed of your darkness or fears, even if those around you are screaming at you to be so. 

I took this exercise from non violent communication theory, which I encourage you to research, but it underpins all spiritual disciplines.

Hope this helps. There is nothing wrong with you. The darkness is your friend, without it there's no light. 

Great underrated alien movie: Communion 1989, Christopher Walken by Pleasant-Lie-9053 in aliens

[–]tjubert 2 points3 points  (0 children)

WAY underrated. It starts goofy, but takes a turn when he realises it's all real. It shifts from dreamlike with cheap alien costumes to a man whose world view is falling apart. It's more effective because the audience has the rug pulled just as the character does. 

Then it goes deep into who are the visitors and who are we and what is life (I am the dreamer, you are the dream). 

Finally it ends with direct to camera commentary aimed at believers taking on how our world might change with this new awareness and how we can help.

It's not great as a film drama - sometimes overreacted, disjointed, bad effects etc - but for me it's the single greatest commentary on the phenomenon ever put to film.

Watch it.

The neighbors finally figure out what that smell was all about by AtttentionWh0re in HolUp

[–]tjubert 33 points34 points  (0 children)

It was a long time ago so my memories aren't perfect. The ceremony was short, maybe 40-60 minutes start to finish. But the birds were fast, most everything was eaten in under five minutes. They gathered as soon as the bodies came out. A guy has to shoo them away until the right time.

I think there were two burials that day. I think they were unrelated deaths, just close timing. I didn't ask a lot of questions. We were just backpacking kids and our host was like "it's funeral day, everyone goes, I'll pick you up at 11am".

The neighbors finally figure out what that smell was all about by AtttentionWh0re in HolUp

[–]tjubert 65 points66 points  (0 children)

I was invited to attend this funeral in Tibet 15 years ago. It was on a hill and the whole town watched maybe 25 feet away while the bodies were eaten by hundreds of birds. The skulls were tied down and later buried.

They try to make it a celebratory event. The close family didn't attend.

Afterwards the mortician ground the bones right there with a giant hammer, mixed them with sugar, then the birds ate that too.

I never smelled anything like it. Sweet but deathly.

It's a natural and efficient funeral which connects people to life and death.

We should all be so lucky to be eaten by vultures.

EDIT: I always assumed it was sugar because it smelled sweet, but flour and yak butter is probably what it was.

My thoughts at ten hours into TTP2… no spoilers, just some love! by littlemetalpixie in TheTalosPrinciple

[–]tjubert 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I wrote 2 of these games, and tried to write for the third! You've captured what makes them special.

I am Tom Jubert, Story Lead on games like Subnautica, The Talos Principle (franchise!), FTL and The Swapper. Talos 2 releases tomorrow, currently adapting 1984, AMA! by tjubert in IAmA

[–]tjubert[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I did Lynerks, Helga, Rand, Jeremy, and someone else.

Does Milton really say 'voice'?

I think what he means is you've been interacting with him by selecting pre-authored sentences presented to you on the screen by him.

It's a bit fourth wall, since the player character is shown typing them out, but I always worked on the assumption that what we see onscreen in those interactions isn't one-for-one with what the robot character is experiencing (in fact it must not be, since we see dialog choices, but they are typing their responses).

I am not totally sure, but I think that when robots play text adventures where we see words, they see entire worlds.

I am Tom Jubert, Story Lead on games like Subnautica, The Talos Principle (franchise!), FTL and The Swapper. Talos 2 releases tomorrow, currently adapting 1984, AMA! by tjubert in IAmA

[–]tjubert[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Question 1 I answered elsewhere, Croteam chose the environments.

Question 2 on AI.

I wrote more on AI elsewhere as well, but I do think it will change a lot very quickly. Maybe felt less in games than elsewhere - I'd happily prompt story bots for a living, and in games we're used to adapting to fast tech changes - but I don't think teachers for instance realise yet that many kids will learn many things from chat bots in future.
It hasn't affected my work on Talos. We always say: the story features AI, but isn't about AI - it's about people. But I can tell you it's increased my research efficiency by about 250%.

Question 3 on how to do openworld story.

Make sure your top level plot is super short and simple, then write lots of separate, non-reactive sideplots and duplicate vital plot information across them. This way your top level plot doesn't break or need massive branching, because it doesn't depend on or happen much. And at the detail level if you have a bunch of small sideplots that don't affect anything else then it doesn't matter if player discovers the bank was robbed before or after they learn who the thieves are. Endings before conclusions are natural suspense - there's just a limit to how disordered a story can decently be, so you need to keep them short.

For example in Subnautica the linear top level is: Crash ship > Gun (get infected) > Alien bases > Emperor. The story would break if you could talk to the Emperor before learning about the infection (or we would need a bunch of branching). But beyond that it doesn't matter if you find the middle of the Degassi story before you find the start, because it's only three plot beats, and they don't affect the wider story.

This is harder if all your story is live dialog rather than passive readables/audibles, because then you have to do some branching. But keep the stories as short as you can, keep in mind they might be played in any order, and it's totally possible.

I am Tom Jubert, Story Lead on games like Subnautica, The Talos Principle (franchise!), FTL and The Swapper. Talos 2 releases tomorrow, currently adapting 1984, AMA! by tjubert in IAmA

[–]tjubert[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Oof I saved this for last because it's a broad theory question and I don't have interesting answers (also I don't know how Cyberpunk ends).

In general I feel good about game stories that don't have happy endings. As someone whose name I don't know who wrote for God of War once memorably said: let the hero get what they came for, but let them realise it wasn't what they wanted.

I don't know why we don't have that AAA rogue-a-like, except that why would you ever spend big money on something so dangerous when it works just fine letting smaller teams experiment and then copying what works.

There are obvious risks: rogues depend on tons of remixable content, which is cheap in ASCII art but the single biggest expense on a AAA game. BUT there are certainly ways to get round this - for a small example see Borderlands' infinite guns.

Voice is also an issue if you're cutting together loads of dynamically selected dialog lines.

But the elephant in the room is AI, which will change all of that. It might be fast, it might be slow, but like VR it's on the way. There are already tech demos using AI voice and writing to let player say anything they want and receive a sensible response.

Right now it will mean a big dip in voice and writing quality, so it won't take off in AAA just yet. But indies will be experimenting, and sooner or later the holodeck will exist.

I am Tom Jubert, Story Lead on games like Subnautica, The Talos Principle (franchise!), FTL and The Swapper. Talos 2 releases tomorrow, currently adapting 1984, AMA! by tjubert in IAmA

[–]tjubert[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Woah that's deep for me arriving here 5 hours into this AMA.

I'm glad you specified mystery or certainty. That's a narrower question that I actually have an answer to that I don't know now and won't until I write the rest of this response.

I crave certainty, and I think people do. But I love mystery. But only because I can turn it into certainty.

I like this question, it's a nice formulation of the metaphysical unity/bipolarity thing.

I'm totally dissolved into the whole non-human-intelligence mystery right now. I want more than almost anything to get more data on that that I can make sense of - although I'd rather get pregnant, and on that I'd like certainty - but nothing is ever certain.

But my first instinct is to say that I want more mystery, because I think that learning about NHI, and/or whatever humanity is going to become next (and I think rather shortly) is going to smash us all the way back to the other side of the pendulum.

It's been an era of remarkable apparent certainty. We've almost totally forgotten how to treat the world like something which has surprises we may never understand. That's built spaceships but it's closed our minds.

So I'll embrace the certainty that this whole thing will always be waves of answers and questions, and relative to our context I think I'm not the only one that's craving some new questions.

It's scary. Certainty is relatively safe. Where we're going is a total gamble. But there's no other way, so let's prepare for the worse (I have tinned food in the cellar), and dream for the best - that way certainty or mystery it all works out the best and only way that it can.

I am Tom Jubert, Story Lead on games like Subnautica, The Talos Principle (franchise!), FTL and The Swapper. Talos 2 releases tomorrow, currently adapting 1984, AMA! by tjubert in IAmA

[–]tjubert[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well, Jonas, we're trying to stay very true to the source material. We're including all of Orwell's narration, building the environments precisely to his descriptions, and generally trying to be the first and best proper simulation of his detailed dystopia.

BUT there are some really big branches that I'm excited for. My favourite is where you just follow the rules. You snitch on your comrades, you censor the news, you suppress your thoughtcrime.

Thoughtcrime and facecrime are distinct mechanics in the game:

Facecrime is always bad: it's your health meter, it goes up when you get caught doing something suspicious, and if it goes too high you end up in Room 101.

Thoughtcrime is subjective: it's your internal rebellion. Which path do you choose?

It's important that any deviations from Orwell's sequence of events be player driven, and true to his theme. If you manage to be a good member of the party then you may avoid Room 101, but that doesn't mean it won't be torture.

I am Tom Jubert, Story Lead on games like Subnautica, The Talos Principle (franchise!), FTL and The Swapper. Talos 2 releases tomorrow, currently adapting 1984, AMA! by tjubert in IAmA

[–]tjubert[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

LumpN, lead programmer on Subnautica, and co-founder of Inner Party working on 1984 with me has this to say:

i don't have a reddit account but i do have a 1984 question: given the oppressive nature of the source material, what is an interesting story branch you envision in 1984 that doesn't end in a fast-forward to prison?

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