Guianan uses the incredible power of matter replication and atomic assembly to make chocolate cakes and fake alcohol for people. The holodeck does the same, plus generates 3d holograms with perfectly realistic fidelity, so that people can play racquetball in a pretend arena, or have a pirate adventure. I don’t think that “abusing the ship’s resources for fun” is a big problem in that era.
Not sure why you got downvoted, this is an excellent point. I’ve been an atheist for decades now but I still love to read tarot and yijing for myself and others. They’re excellent tools for self-study, brainstorming, and storytelling. I like how Jodorowsky puts it: that magic speaks with the voice of the subconscious. Manipulation of the symbolic language of dreams, as with tarot cards, can prompt the conscious mind into exploring new avenues of thought, making unexpected connections which can lead to insight.
It feels like magic in the same way (for the same reasons) that cold reading allows mentalist to trick people. In the same way that meditation and hypnosis are connected. These are tools that can be used to trick people, but you can also “trick” yourself in a controlled way to accomplish things you want.
Unrelated to the astrology discussion, I love episodes with subtle jokes like this one. That tiny smile for 2 panels. I wonder if the artist redraws each nearly identical panel in order to feel the same numbing repetition that Miles is meant to express?
Pretty interesting to consider. Astrology involves a lot more than most people know. Birth charts are a huge deal for astrologers, and where they make a lot of their money. It takes some work to compile a proper chart and people pay for them.
A birth chart starts using the precise moment and place of your birth. Then the astrologer does a lot of calculations (well, now they just use computers like everyone else, but there are books to lookup and hand calculate this stuff) to determine what celestial bodies were where at your birth.
This is where your sun sign, moon sign, and all the other detailed stuff comes from. And all of that should still be valid (well as valid as it ever was) in a space faring society. Obviously you’d need to use the local view of the sky for determining which planets and constellations to use, and the local superstitions to determine what those things are supposed to mean, but I don’t think its so ridiculous to believe that a Star Trek style humanoid alien race which has religion, language, and culture wouldn’t also have superstitions and probably, specifically, astrology.
Like how alchemy leads to chemistry, astrology is the prelude to astronomy, and both start with detailed observations of the sky. Sky watching is the basis for time keeping, and most of our advanced math started as a means of tracking time (in order to keep track of holy days, and more importantly, planting days). So i think some form of astrology could well be inevitable on the path to astronomy, physics, sociology, and other real sciences.
As to the problem of daily horoscopes. Those are based on your birth chart but modified by the current sky. That’s how you get “daily outlook for all Virgos.” In theory, you could just calculate that for the home planet and call it good.
But, we’re in the future! On a spaceship! With computers! Why not do complex, subspatial calculus to compute the exact amount of starlight from Proceon 9 bouncing off Mars and reaching the starship you’re on? If we assume Trek has solved the three body problem, so that they could calculate how much Venus’ gravity affects you anywhere in the universe, why not apply the same “logic” to whatever elusive energies are believed to power astrology?
Your daily space horroscope could include superstitions from numerous cultures in a powerful, exceedingly complex, syncretic universal astronomy.
“So you’re a Pisces? Not good, from our current coordinates, Uranus is occluded by the second sun of Chronos, you’ll find it hard to focus on relationships while the Klingon warrior spirit is filtering all your energy. I recommend embracing this, drink a raktajino, and channel the fighter’s energy into your work and overcome these obstacles. Q’pla!”
What makes a block chain better than a PostgresDB for a private currency that can only be spent in their stores?
All these jokes about naming variables and yet no serious suggestions that if you have a turtle2, what you really need is a turtle array. I like to block out all the memory I’ll need for the whole program up front, put it all in one big array, and then I can use clean, easy to remember numbers for all my variables!
Super Castlevania 4 is the best of those early ones. Rondo is pretty good also but very hard. People find charms in the first 3 but they’re a bit rough.
If you prefer the Symphony lineage, the gameboy collections are very good. Not every game is brilliant but it’s amazing value.
Programmers after slacking off for two days to improve their factories in Shapez2 because they already automated all their tasks.
If changing requirements mean you need to update the script, then updating the script is part of your job. QED. I don’t see the problem with a little job security.
I wish games just wouldn’t license music, or would attain a perpetual license that allows the work to remain whole and as intended. Can you imagine if your movie collection just auto-updated to change the soundtrack or add some new scenes in now and again? It’s fucking stupid what people put up with in games and software.
B&W was a real fun game, very interesting ideas and it really tried to be different from other games in ways that did and didn’t work.
We really take control and camera schemes for granted these days, but it took a lot of misses before we landed on the semi-standardized methods we rely on now. B&W portrayed the player as a divine hand, and you had to click and drag to literally “drag” your viewpoint around the map. You could also click on the creature to lock your hand onto it and allow you to gently move the mouse to pet it, or rapid swipe to slap it across the face!
The creature responded amazingly well too, reacting to many stimuli in the environment, mimicking actions you take, and responding to rewards and punishments. The systems of morphing it’s character model based on how far along the “devil to saint” meter were reused heavily in Fable. MS probably has a patent on the technique, the fuckers.
Anyway, super exciting to see fans reverse engineering it! I’m a big supporter of remaking classic games as new open source engines. I think projects like Spring (rts) and gzdoom really show how powerful and creatively productive a community that cultivates good, open, tools can be.
Only if you’re a composite entity created in a fluke transporter accident, right?
…
…right?
So are we switching from metacritic to NASDAQ for our game reviews now? No longer will we buy or subscribe to games, now we invest in them. With the blockchain, we will…
Maybe they confused it for another game.
Allow me to extend a warm fediverse welcome to the free people of Brazil, at last throwing off their Musky chains
Jeeze what’s next, the simple wholesome thrills of Moonman Doom?
(I don’t think they should have taken it down, political satire like killing Thatcher/Trump/Biden in a game isn’t in the same ballpark as actually bad or dangerous Doom mods like moonman or various maps that copy layouts from schools and malls.)
Maybe they’re secretly working on the PC version of Bloodborne?
Catnip lovers will see this and be like, “hell yeah”
Interesting, I’d tend to demote the initialism, ie topSecretFbiFiles.tar.gz
My Lemmy is usually more like…