Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

Dared to go into the NLife forums for a hot minute and general gist of the current conversation was ‘I have nothing against homosexuality, I just don’t like it when it’s shoved in my face’

@nessisonett In fairness, I don't like heterosexuality shoved in my face, either.

@johncalmc Sure thing. You know whoever says that most likely considers anything other than staying in the closet “shoving it in their face” though

@Voltan I said "heterosexuality" :') not that I particularly want any kind of sexuality shoving in my face, truth be told. I'm a man of the world but I also appreciate my personal space.

@johncalmc lol , i agree with this. i could really do without sex scenes in movies .

@nomither6 no I meant physically shoved in my face.

@Voltan How are you sticking to Covid restrictions in the studio? Social distancing? Face masks? Must be quite difficult in a recording studio.

@nessisonett I thought we were past "I don't want to have it shoved in my face" as a way of saying "Homosexuality shouldn't be practiced in public". It's a bit hard for me to read. Most people saying a thing like that often don't mean any harm, they were often raised to think a certain way, but they definitely do a lot of harm by saying it.

The thread made me sad for not seeing any pushback to these kinds of comments at all.

@TheBrandedSwordsman I'm all for Covid safety but it wouldn't make much sense to do all that in the studio. We treated it as a workplace, so masks off once inside. There was nobody there who wasn't currently needed though.
The Covid situation here in Poland is pretty good lately (down to ~100 daily new cases from as high as 30k back in March and April) so I'd say it was a low risk. Also I'm currently fully vaccinated myself.

@Thrillho Have you been following England's Twenty20 and ODI's against Sri Lanka? What do you reckon of the result? I'd say it was a bit of a walk in the park for the victors but the losers' side hasn't exactly been strong in recent years.

@Kidfried We're not past it, sadly. It's just the old "do whatever you want behind closed doors but behave yourself in public" mentality given a lick of paint. "I just don't want it shoved in my face" is rarely used in relation to actually having anything you're not comfortable with forced upon you, and rather just homosexuality - or whatever it is - existing. I think, in part, this way of thinking is aided and abetted by use of the word "tolerance" when talking about people of other orientations, races, etc. as though it's something to aspire to.

Tolerance. What a terrible word. I tolerate people's screaming kids in a restaurant. I tolerate new shoes feeling a bit stiff for the first week or two. Seeing a couple holding hands isn't something you should be tolerating.

Online discourse will always be a bit of a cesspit thanks to the dubious gift of anonymity, and if you throw that in with people from all different backgrounds and cultures and upbringings mixing together then it's a recipe for disaster. I frequently have my finger hovering over the "post reply" button - mainly on Twitter, honestly - and then think better of it because the drama probably won't help anyone. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't frequently aghast at some of the things I see people say on forums or Twitter or whatever.

@johncalmc Bet you and the other mods on here are having a collective sigh of relief that you don’t have to deal with the mess that the NLife mods have been wrestling with. 670 comments has to be some sort of new record.

@nessisonett I'm not a mod, thank the Gods. I've been a mod on other sites in the distant past though and it's a thankless task. Fortunately I think it generally seems pretty cool here. I check in on the forums every day whereas pretty much every other site I've ever been a part of I've posted my article or whatever and scarpered. The Internet can be a hive of scum and villainy.

@nessisonett And "they" always win. Either we have to read their complaints about how anyone who's not LGBT+ is not deserving of an article on a website, or the article gets locked, so nobody gets to celebrate their pride.

Disgusting.

This is what I do it for. The adulation of the crowds.

Yeah, hear hear indeed!

I’m not sure where to post this, since it’s a broad question that applies to really all gaming consoles I guess. So this thread is as good as any…

First off, I apologize for how ignorant I am about the technical aspects of computers and have no plans to ever pursue formal education and training in the technological realm. But gaming is my hobby, so I think I should have a surface level understanding of some things. So here goes —

Can anyone explain what a gaming engine is? I mean the technical term we use a lot to describe what developers use to create their games. I see the different engines thrown around (Unreal Engine, Frostbite Engine, Decima Engine, Fox Engine…) and I have a basic understanding, but in the most elementary and simplistic terms, what does it mean and why is it important? Is there an easy analogy in the concrete world to help me wrap my head around it? Like, is it akin to a carpenter’s toolbox when he’s trying build something? Or more like an architect’s blueprint when building a house? Or more like the foundation of a house before it’s built…?

I feel like I should know this. I hear and read chatter about these engines and it seems to be important, but it only seems to pop up in game conversation occasionally. And I’ve never felt like while playing a game that as a player that I feel the difference when playing games made from different engines. I would never know both Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn have the same engine, for example.

@Th3solution I'm not sure if I can put it in an easy analogy so I won't be attempting that. I will however try to put it in terms you can understand.

At the most general level, an engine is just the technical side of the game. It's how the software goes about displaying a rock on screen when the designer asks it to display a rock on screen.
The game's engine is responsible for things like applying texture and lighting to models, mixing sound depending on the camera's relative position to the sources, deciding which animation use for a character at a given moment. As importantly, it's about managing the limited resources of your hardware by, for example, lowering the level of detail of objects if they're far away in the scene.

Every game has an engine. Now, it's a smart thing to design an engine in a way that allows it to be reused for other projects - which is what you see with the engines you mentioned. These are usually coupled with tools that allow game devs build things to be used by that specific engine easier and faster.
The thing about these "universal" engines is that they allow devs to put more focus on actual game design and less on the low level technical side, but at the same time it being "universal" could mean it being less effective at handling some specific things.

I have a work call now but I'll gladly expand a little more in 30 minutes. Let me know if you have any specific questions in the meantime

@Voltan Thanks, and that helps. It makes some sense, although still a bit fuzzy in my mind. So as an example, the fact that Kojima was given access to Decima meant that a lot of the work for Death Stranding was already done, so to speak? So the way sound travels, the way light bounces off rocks and water, etc - most of the basic world is pre-created in a basic form already and he just adds the characters, set piece detail, and storyline?

Like if I’m creating something in Dreams, is the engine like the creation tools that they have already there which I just pull off of the shared space? Like the trees and lamps are there to copy. Or is the engine more basic things than that? Like the engine will help so the developer doesn’t have to create the logic of the world from scratch like gravity and physics, but the actual items on screen have to be built? 😅. The more I try to think about it the more confusing I think I’m making it. Which makes me think I don’t actually have a grip on it.