Thanks for the encouragement to just jump in and do stuff, gaming and otherwise.

I’ve found myself having a hard time finding dedicated time to play games (i.e. without worrying about something else “over my shoulder”) and I’ve also found myself seemingly unable to “learn” new genres of games despite my wanting to get into them (so I often end up playing genres I’m already familiar with). I suspect these are related, and I also suspect that just jumping in and doing stuff more spontaneously will probably help improve things.

Congratulations!

Update: the city of Plantation has just added an event!

Project: City of Plantation note: only covers Plantation Preserve Linear Trail and Golf Course special event: September 9, 9am ~ 11am

Again, note that the project covers the whole month, even though the special event is on a particular day.

Oh, you might already know this but I just wanted to mention that there’s City Nature Challenge in May, which is also a BioBlitz run in a bunch of different places (similar to the Parks for Pollinators event in that regard).

Yeah, there’s a variety of BioBlitz events; this one just happens to be one of the bigger sets of events.

And thanks for the extra info!

We gotta step up our game, over here in North America!

Yeah, this seems like a partial solution which is not very broadly viable on its own, but can still have niche applications.

Also, pardon me for bringing up the topic of violence, but I was thinking about what electronics might have particularly short lifespans and I thought of the circuitry of kamikaze drones and missiles used in military conflicts. It’d be a curious but potentially relevant way for defense industries to be more environmentally friendly in at least some way (and it’s not like weapons production is going to stop anytime soon, regardless of moral questions).

You’re definitely right to point out that the other components are much more concerning from a pollution standpoint. Still, though, I think this improvement is certainly better than nothing. And it might be part of a more broadly applicable change in the future.

Well, $250, but yeah. The law wasn’t prepared for people being this obnoxious.

nods Fair enough.

Yeah I saw this and while I’m not a tree management expert I’m like “they basically left no leaves on these poor things”. With the insane heat we’ve been seeing, this can’t be good.

Wasn’t done by the city. Universal is getting fined for this.

This is horrible and obnoxious tree trimming. Bad for the trees, bad for urban tree canopy, bad for urban heat management, bad for carbon sequestration, and done as an insult to labor.

Yep. I heard they’re actually being fined, sadly only for $250 because old city laws limit how much they can be fined.

If any of these trees dies, I hope Universal is on the hook for replacing it.

We should definitely consider eating invasive species. This includes iguanas in Florida, as well as blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay.

Seconding basically all the (mainline) Metroid games.

So that means that programmers are being replaced with debuggers. Human debuggers.

Egads! An error SSL occurred. Secure connect to server be not here.

I’m usually playing older games of some sort. There’s retro games, like those from the 32-bit era and before, but I also play…old-ish games, ones that were released within the last decade or two. Just last year I began playing Tokyo Xanadu eX+, which was released in 2017 (albeit as the definitive version of a 2015 game).

I think a number of the indie games I play are generally newer. Though, given my tastes, many of them tend to be games designed to evoke some sort of similarity to those older styles of games. So I guess it’s an interesting question whether they count as “retro” or not.

That said, given that I pretty much only use store-bought laptops (and not of the “gaming” variety), my hardware means that I’m much better off playing older games anyway. “Newer old” games can probably still run, depending on the game, but some may be choppy and I can probably wait on those.

I knew of the stellar reputation the old Thief games have, so I bought them a while back, but have yet to play them. And I have yet to play basically any of the modern games shown. However, this video make a surprising lot of sense.

For instance, I’ve had experiences in games where I can tell that the game is visually pretty but I’m just not paying attention to it – and ironically missing out on some neat visual features – because it’s just not important to the gameplay. This may be more appropriate when I’m revisiting game areas I’ve already been to, but it can be a problem when I’m missing the awe of my surroundings because I’m too focused on making my way through the obvious walkable area and clearing out generic mooks.

Maps in games are an interesting thing. I play a lot of so-called “metroidvania” games and their ilk (heck, most of my gaming is 2D), and I don’t really like it if I’m frequently consulting my map to find my way from place to place. The best level designs in such games, in my opinion, are the cases where I end up learning to navigate the world without (or with minimal) consultation of my map. I think this generally means having sufficiently varied level design that there are memorable visual cues for where I am. A “maze of twisty passages, all alike” can be appropriate in some situations, but I find that it’s often more “organic” – especially when it comes to things like the interiors of buildings – to have recognizable details differentiating things like different hallways that would otherwise look similar. While the game might still effectively be a bunch of corridors to run through, anything from more varied theming (even just different paint colors and lighting on walls in similar parts of the same area) to architectural details that directly affect gameplay (a broken stairwell that must be jumped across vs. an intact stairwell that can just be walked up). People in real life design buildings to be easily navigable (usually) and leave environmental markers in natural spaces because this makes navigation smoother in real life.

And yes, there’s so much to be said about the value of integrating story into gameplay. In general, I feel that there’s something to be said about how videogames shouldn’t (in general) aim to be “cinematic”. A film is a medium of passive experience, but a game is a medium of active experience. Cutscenes aren’t bad per se, and even cinematic cutscenes aren’t bad per se, but care should be taken in their use. Sometimes, a fight scene rendered in-engine – even if this means 2D pixel art sprites beating each other up – can be much more immersive than a high-quality video with panning shots of the characters as they’re throwing punches and wrestling. The latter takes the player’s consciousness out of the game world, reminding them that they are merely the audience, while the former can be presented seamlessly without changing the player’s perspective (as surely the player has already gotten used to mentally processing the game world in a way that feels comfortable to them).

Thanks for sharing this video! I boosted it over on Mastodon too.

We humans put out so much trash on the internet; there’s always room (heh) for a wholesome detritivore joke to clean up after us.