AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015  (Read 92329 times)

Offline AlexHW

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #80 on: February 15, 2015, 05:33:30 pm
I don't think I have to prove anything to you.
you are asking me to keep proving to you that my shit is related to the pixel, i tell you that it is, this is enough. if i keep arguing with you i will write a thousand posts about what is and is not and then i will be banned.
I just would like to point out how similar you're posts are to each other.
He is claiming they are, the burden of proof is on him, not on me. And just saying that the connection is there without demonstrating it is not proof.
I don't think you're being perfectly honest with yourself ptoing. Try to look at what is being demonstrated more honestly without your filters on.
lets be honest about our shortcomings here.
Show me how your shoelaces have no impact on my life if you want to be perfectly honest with your shortcomings, otherwise don't try to play me as a fool. You're acting just like how you're claiming tocky to be acting.

Also, I said I wasn't here to prove anything to you ptoing, because I've tried it in the past, and you've recreated the same response you had back then- with making claims yourself without proving them to me. I have demonstrated already the relation- I have given proof, but you are refusing to see it and just want to see it your way. You want concrete proof, but you're using symbolism and thinking it is concrete. If you're going to misunderstand what both of us are saying, then it's difficult to communicate with you. I'm not trying to discredit you- because I realize what you're trying to say, but you're not saying it truthfully to me, which is what I'm trying to advocate here. I believe you can eventually see it, which is why I'm trying to help out here, so I hope you don't think I'm just trolling or messing around- don't just brush it off, because you'd be doing a disfavor to yourself. I care for you that much at least.

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #81 on: February 15, 2015, 06:21:29 pm
I guess we got some forum drama going after all, huh.

So here's the thing, why I'm glad tocky is not banned - I tried very hard to read and understand his posts. I get a lot of his reference points (philosophy, dungeons and dragons, pixel art obv., activism stuff) and I sorta get a few connections he's making but a t the same time it's clear to me that he's having a manic episode. If I could divorce the content of his posts from the state of mind he's in, I think he'd have valuable things to say about Pixelation. But there's a manic quality to this all that makes it easier to discredit. Tocky, if I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but that's why I told you you should seek help, not to make you disappear, but to tend to the problem and then return to the content.

When someone who has been here on Pixelation for a very long time, has helped people, has paid dues without asking for anything in return (the definition of pixelation peer, mind you) is struggling, it isn't right to just minimize them and wish for them to not exist just because they're going through an unpleasant thing.

This has happened on Pixelation a few times, usually with depression. Every time it has been very difficult to handle and I don't think just 'don't be an ass' is the solution here. That's a method useful for keeping the critique boards clean of assholes who like to tear other people down.  Tocky's been quite belligerent in this thread because he's not been getting the response he thought he should have to his posts. It'll probably get him banned and he thinks it'll martyr him but not really, nobody remembers that stuff besides the moderators that had to make the call and it's not a nice memory.

So instead of just spiralling down the cycle of minimization and belligerence let's do something else to not get Tocky banned: Tocky, I am not a moderator, I can't make you a moderator, but what else can I do for you? Would you like to discuss something in particular? Is it possible to have a lucid conversation to come down from your chaos sorcery trip of the past week?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2015, 06:24:54 pm by Helm »

Offline tocky

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #82 on: February 15, 2015, 07:36:16 pm
well, im bringing the best stuff back. the CHAOS ENGINE COMMERCIAL CRITIQUE IS GOOD


preamble to the third sermon on demogorgon:
Quote
FIRST OF ALL, patrick psyduck actually wrote a response to my recent crusade, and you can see it on his blog. it's called 'in defense of dwarves' OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, and also he writes lots of good stuff you guys dont really care about.

this means, and we can see this in the length of his reply, that he has thought about what i am saying and cares about it, more than zak does, even though it be zak i am emulating and not patrick.

so why let these two guys be two corners of my NEW TRINITY? i'll show you. but you dont even know patrick, why listen to that guy?

http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/on-osr-new-wave-patrick-stewart-of.html

SECOND OF ALL, i have argued with ptoing lately. but largely not about the-form-of-the-pixel. mostly just about the-form-of-the-forum. on pixels, ptoing is infallible. the man can not make a wrong move.

THIRD, i love ptoing more than helm. i love patrick more than zak. but i still bought zak's new book, because i understand why zak is worth money.

here is a defense of zak, written by patrick: find it on patrick's blog. falsemachine.blogspot.com
anyway, the first thing about patrick is he is more-of-a-poet than zak. zak is commercial but patrick, generally, is free. third-secondly, both of these dudes are commercial, but not very. STILL: THEY HAVE PUBLISHED BOOKS AND WE CAN READ THEM.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2015, 08:24:30 pm by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #83 on: February 15, 2015, 08:24:28 pm
Haven't read that in a while, want to discuss what you thought was interesting in it. It's been a few years.

Offline tocky

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #84 on: February 15, 2015, 08:26:13 pm
ok: but there's been a commercial critique on pokemon since last time i was here. im a huge pokemon nerd. so im tempted to read that one instead.

i will edit this post.

first of all, all of the BITMAP BROTHERS games are part of the pixel canon. anyone who will not consider them throws away what is good in life. we can see that even if the robots in Z have not been influences on ptoing, they might as well have been.

IN ALL HONESTY I PREFER Z BECAUSE I PLAYED IT WHEN I WAS A KID. people don't talk about Z even though its more fun to play than is CHAOS ENGINE. it's more-tooley, so we dont consider it a pixel game. BUT IT IS ONE THO, TAUGHT ME HOW TO PIXEL IN FACT

A LOT OF THE POKEMON CHALLENGE STUFF IS REALLY NICE.

so: back to chaos engine. GOAT was still here back then. what does GOAT have to say? well, first he tells us that the BITMAP BROTHERS DID EXIST, which is helpful if oyu didnt know. then he tells us all of the chaos art is still up on http://hol.abime.net/2985/screenshot and http://www.lemonamiga.com/?game_id=1848

which is good, because we can still look at it and we dont even have to play CHAOS ENGINE unless we want to (its pretty fun).

even just looking at the art i can tell you that even BITMAP BROTHERS can teach us what DAWN BRINGER has done: you can mix red and cyan (any two complimentary colors) to make gray. but also notice the lighting: its subtle but it is bedrock.

we can see at the time that GOAT was having image hosting problems, however, all of his art is still up. none of us need be plagued bu hosting problems now, anyone can just use photobucket, which will stay up forever and has done so.

he pulls apart the dinosaur, in doing so he pulls apart the palette. he also acknowledges the detail in the pontilist tiny people standing around the dinosaur. pontilist tiny peopel is its own whole branch of pixel art with its own conventions.

he notes that the space of colors here is very complicated, even though at first glance it just appears grey. they'e doing little points of interest with complimentary colors, which is nice. points of interest in a sea of grey.

he shows us that the ramp on a metal pipe is not just a flat curve, its very complicated - but so too is anything in a bitmap brothers game. complex ramps.



then helm comes in. what does helm have to tell us? helms' images in this thread are down but i can try to remember them. in any case the words are still up.

helm tells us we should play teh game instead of just looking at the thing. fair enough, point to helm. he even tells us why we should.

helm admits he is a comics guy really but has been forced to become a pixel guy (by the muse i think).

then helm starts talking about the palette again and shows us how to make our own tiles in the bitmap brothers style. unfortunately the images arent up anymore, but i remember them and they were on point.

ANYWAY helm has studied the game CHAOS ENGINE and is made better by this study.



adamtierny comes in. he says that the pixeling (subpixel and superpixel) is good but the form is bad. bad perspective, bad bad restrictions. i will add: a bad interface. but good enough for amiga at the time.



ptoing is too busy to right write away. this is ok; hes busy.

he comes back later and he takes apart the palette. the palette in this game is subnetted like a network, all these parts that do not speak to one another.

he says that the amiga only has 4096 colors on its color space, a cube, 4 shades each of red green and blue. but it is a space and not a scheme: it is not specialised. 4096 is actually big-not-small, but whatever.

the specialised scheme for CHAOS ENGINE changes as we change levels and stuff. 16 colors for teh hud, those never change and never get used outside the hud. these are constant. another however-many-colors for the player characters. so-many for the current level, so-many for enemies. this is good and in concert with good game design. we can swap all these palettes independently of one another. we cn animate them from one frame to the next. and this lets us animate the palette on just a dude who just got hit? did they do this? i dont remember. but they can, because they have subnetted their color space.

i should post this in the CHAOS ENGINE THREAD, NOT THIS ONE


WHAT IS GOOD IN LIFE?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2015, 09:01:25 pm by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #85 on: February 15, 2015, 08:57:45 pm
I played Z at the time, was too hard for me but I really liked the art style, yes. Chaos Engine is still pretty fun if you play with a buddy and you put certain limitations on yourself (play it like a roguelike, death means game over for example, fixes a lot of problems with old games).

I wonder where Goat went. I bet he still exists.

I agree that the main asset of that bitmap brothers style, besides good design (which has nothing to do with pixels in particular) is going from a saturated color to another through a gray or three.

Good observation on the pointilist tiny people, I always adored stuff like that. I remember that there's an amiga game called Paladin I think where a sprite of a table and chair set that has one-pixel thick wooden table legs with another pixel thick shadow and I thought it was perfect somehow and would not be any better if the legs were two pixels fat with some other solution for the shadows. That has stayed with me since then.

Haha, my brain must be a bit tired, I wanted to find a picture of that and instead of going to mobygames, I google searched "paladin table legs".



Anyway, here's the actual item

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/omnitrends-paladin-ii/screenshots/gameShotId,260786/



Offline tocky

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #86 on: February 15, 2015, 09:15:06 pm
nice, also hella points for being cool to me, i dont make it easy

as far as goat, he's your friend, you find him
« Last Edit: February 15, 2015, 09:17:51 pm by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #87 on: February 15, 2015, 09:25:01 pm
tocky, if you were to do a commercial critique, which game would it be on?

Offline tocky

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #88 on: February 15, 2015, 09:28:42 pm
I DONT EVEN FUCKING KNOW. YOULL HAVE TO GIVE ME MORE TIME

morrowind i guess. good gnosis game, not a great praxis game. at least as-relates-the-pixel. certainly the best bethesda game, cruelly under-examined

in fact im already planning to write that thread, on tigs if not here

MAYBE LOOM, MAYBE A BIG BROTHER GAME. SOMETHING THAT IS AN ADVENTURE, MANIAC MANSION? DID WE DO THAT ONE ALREADY?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2015, 09:32:02 pm by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2015

Reply #89 on: February 15, 2015, 09:29:07 pm
Pixel arty game to do a commerical critique on though. Take your time.