So a saga is coming to its end at least. Yesterday she and I had a quite bad fight, probably for the last time in our lives now. I was both drunk and angry as fuck (anecdote about the state of mind I was in: I was on my way to gathering with friends, carried vodka bottle with me and was taking shots out of it in public tansport while listening to Rebel Son. I was shouting confused shit into the night and I took a piss in the middle of the city at the tram station, staring at the people walking past me on the other side of the road. I was wasted before arriving at the gathering, later that night I cut up my hand while I tried to cut chillis drunkenly) I told her that she's mentally ill and as much of a ruined person as her mother for both are not able to have emotionally steady relationships (which in her language more or less equalled to me calling her a slut and while I wouldn't word it that way, she got to the core of it). I pretty much negated her, communicated that she is wrong in every aspect of her whole being. The actual trigger for the whole situation was her "falling in love" with some random guy she barely knew since 3 days, which I could not stomach. Keep in mind that this was just the top of the massive shitpile our affair has turned into, after building up shit for weeks now. She didn't answer my last message, she is officially gone now and I feel release. Sure it didn't end nice at all but it ended at least.

What's left is mostly misery and pain but also a feeling that I'm slowly regaining my ratio and self-confidence. Also I start to realize a lot of things, a lot of things that actually stood between us like a wall but I couldn't see because I didn't want to. Thinking about it, I had to force myself to even accept her and now it's all coming back upon me. I didn't really appreciate what she appreciated, we basically had no other common interest and fun pastime than the physical aspect. We didn't have much to talk about, no common ground. I always wanted her to be someone she didn't want to be. Mostly I just fell in love with her out of despair and loneliness and not out of actual affection for her. There is a reason why I've found myself so drawn to an emotionally extremely instable person without any feeling of selfworth. In my heart I knew it before everything fell apart, there was nothing connecting us. She must have had the crushing feeling to not meet my needs. Still the road to recovery is a rocky one, just today I wanted to buy a pack of dumplings. The dumplings had the name of her state on it, I felt a stinging feeling in my sides. A thread about body-modifications on EC /b/, there we go again. The cigarette burns on my arm, the self-mutilation I did to myself while being drunk last year, there we go again. Thinking of a random moment in the last six months, there we go again. Everything is reminding me of her, those wounds will take some time to heal.

It's only now I have this realization as the contact with my former highschool crush is beginning to flourish. I can be myself around her, talk like I normally do (my affair, well we had a great intellectual difference), tell her about my interests (which she actually knows and adores) and passions and I do appreciate hers. She is able to take care of herself, she is a positive and valuable person. I think we're both surprised and excited about getting along so well after only having very superficial contact for years.
Is it really questionable to cure heartache with sparking a new contact? I wanted to get in touch with her for years now (and I think at some point I even, after we had lots and lots of liquor at a party, proposed to her) as I liked the way she developed since school. Really my interest was sparked that night when I posted about her on here for the first time, when I still had my hopes up with the affair. She looked stunning and I read some of my works to her outside the building. Sure some part of it is dealing with the fresh loss I experienced but there feels nothing wrong about it, as she just also lost a good friend of hers who found a gf (a common friend btw, we all kept in touch after school).
I feel like I'm repeating myself lately but the change is coming only slowly and I didn't want to accept it for quite a time but I'm ready to make terms with it by now. Also I'm listening to one of the Yoshimura albums I shared in the music thread so I somewhat feel at peace with myself. Also I cleaned the kitchen today, it didn't look so clean since a long time. And I just forgot that I had a pot of tea waiting for me.
Good night to whoever has suffered through this wall of text about the emotional state of its author.

Handed in my reworked manuscript today after a week of anxiety and alcoholism. Promptly proceeded to get wasted.
Other than that I've been playing Pathologic Classic HD the last few days and this game is really something else, it's messing with my mind.

>>18608

>Shezov book titled Dostoevsky and Nietzsche

Would like to hear more about this one after you read it, I've been eyeing it because of the racy title. Btw I think the proper transliteration is Shestov

>>18612
I'm not quite sure, but maybe this is relevant, it's an (admittedly somewhat biased iirc) documentary about "Kleinbürger" from the end of the 60s: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3nufa2

>>18625
Good night to you too, Ernst. Seems like you are moving on well, even if it isn't easy

>>18568

>Certainly it would make the bees more dependent on the keeper for protection

yes. and that's not good for the bees, in my opinion.

>How long have you been keeping bees?

i was introduced to beekeeping when i was little, around age 8. when i became older i got more interested in other things and also moved to a big city for a while. however, i eventually moved back to the village in the mid 2000s and got into beekeeping again around 10 years ago.

>>18584

>Where did you get that from?

cattle/bison breeders/farmers.

>They try to breed the Aurochs back because it was a native species of the Eurasian steppes

and forests until a few hundreds years ago, not because they consider it "superior".
ernst please. "auerochs" meat (beef from cattle such as heckrind, that is) is already marketed and sold. <spoiler>wouldn't you enjoy eating an auerochs' entrecôte? i probably would.</spoiler>.
the most effort put into recreating the auerochs is certainly because cattle breeders hope that the auerochs might possess a number of desirable traits, e.g. robust bone structure. kind of like charolais, wagyu or angus are considered "superior" to cattles races primarily used for milk production.

https://www.meinbiorind.de/auerochsen/
https://www.mainpost.de/regional/bad-kissingen/So-leben-Auerochsen-in-der-Rhoen

>At least 2 different Aurochs DNA sequence analysis have been published.

i only know about a scottish geneticist who donated his findings to the tauros programme in 2012. may i ask what's the other one?

>>18598

>Alternatively they're different genres that share a few common things that fall within the generic realm like hitpoints and weapons.

As I said and will said again, it was directly inspired by underworld and evolved from it to somple arcade form. It remain basic ideas of movment, labyrinth with search and in limited amount - itmes, but cut everything else to straight forward action, same way cutting engine to much more simple form to make computer be able to run it better and faster.

>Someone's got to make it. Even if the GM made it himself, it's still premade. Whether it's purchased or not is irrelevant. You could likewise go and learn all the skills to make your own video game, and people have done it. It's just far easier to do in paper.

Human DM can adopt. He can change game world, locations and ideas following and responding to players actions. Good GM after session will think about how change his plans for next session based on last experience. Computer can't adopt to player that much, it only have amount of pre-made content with very limited amount of how he can tweak it.
This why in 99% games for example such thing as dialogues are not actual dialogues of humans, but just interactive book of choosing "premade option 1" or "premade option 2"

>It's okay to say you're bad at them you know. Acting like you're too good for them while getting the central part of skill in Kaizo blatantly wrong doesn't really add to the whole 'superior' act you're putting on. Kaizo is about many things, not just reaction speed. It's about reactions, but also observation and pattern recognition, planning, timing and input mastery.

Answer "you just suck at it!" as childish as "you don't have fast computer this why you don't like this new game!". I never spend time on things like Kazio, but I was back almost pro-level counter strike source player because we spend on it with my fried days and weeks and years back in mid 00-s. This is a thing where you need to learn some mechanis, which take a couple of hours, but beyound this it just straight reaction time. Same way as a kid I had chienese tetris thing where I can at end beat it with super crazy speeds and 5-square figures options without problems. But all this games have too limited mechanics beyound reaction. All of them I may describe more as this thing that scientists test on monkeis - monitor where very fast appear circles of different color and you need as much as fast as you can to hit proper color button to get food. And I already said that I not interested in this at all. I not against action as whole, but it need at least have enough of other mechanics, where action is just additional things. This why Might and Magic 6 or TES Daggerfall are so nice games to play for me - because combined with freedom of movment and real time, they heavely count on building your characters, their classes and stats and games heavely count on your exploration skills. None of this skills is presented in straight action linear games.

>And yet a vast majority of them are still fundamentally just doing dice rolls, and literally just simulating polyhedrals in some cases.

By this you may describe like everything in this universe, since all events if we not go in super deep-quant physics count on "chance" of event, at least from human perspective, and you can imagine it as hidden dice. When in FPS game your pistol have damage 3-9, aren't it 3d3? And what if game have virtual systems that can every second throw trillion dices, aren't this is actual simulation of real life world to level, which is impossible on paper? In this therm, comparing pnpRPG and CRPG is like compare light tubes processor and silicon transister one. You can make processor even from your domino peaces, but how it be compare to trillions of micro-transisters in your intel i7?

>They're complimentary topics. It's moronic to design a game where mechanics don't mesh with the feel. It comes out poorly if you try and force mechanics to fit flavour at the expense of being tedious as fuck and fitting flavour to mechanics rarely works out much better. If you want to talk about one or the other, sure, but if you want to talk about games, you need both. And no, even plotless games need to consider audio-visual design as part of their mechanics. After all, the graphics are the feedback that the player gets, they need to convey what is happening while still fulfilling the intended look.

I don't want me or you "review" game in this dialogue, but to divide things. Divide things like "Morrowind have philosopichally counstructed background and very unique universe" and "Ultima Underworld invented most advanced almost fully 3d engine that inspired many other people to copy it one way or another". Gamedesighn, worldbuilding, implementation of mechanics, graphics evolved and technically and from artistic side not in linear way, and it is not best way to mish mash this things into some general category of "I feel this game better"

>Plot gives the players a reason to do something.

In plot based games. You can have any "goal", not neccecy plot. Main thing for GAME is always was and will be a gameplay. If people has no fun of actual playing game, of cource they start search excuses and reasons "why should I play it". This is error, this is mistake and this what made RPGs end where are they now. With "evolution" it ended to conclusion, that for most player gameplay is not fun, they count gameplay as obstacle between them and their "plot" which is interactive movie/book. So now games ended being more and more or "interactive movies/books" - because gameplay was cut since for most people it's now "fun" and they want just plot, or to simple games with arcade-reaction gameplay, that just replaced for people typical activities like playing tiggy at backyard.

>You can think what you want about the direction the genre went but I'll say what I've always thought. You lot brought it on yourselves. Strategy and simulation niches still live on and even thrive with far less visible support than CRPGs. If the larger group can't maintain their niche, then fault's theirs tbh.

Compuer games development industry which I described in previous post was also reason why untill late 90s early 00s minority can force their views to majority for some time, until majority not become absolute. In mid 90s even many casuals was forced to play things like System Shock or Dagerfall, because it was top games with advanced graphics, and while they don't wanted and viewed it's controls, skills systems and other features as disadvantages, they still played it because sound, music, graphics etc.
After early 00s big games no longer enforce to people - they adopt and creating mass products that appeal to majority. And majority want well basicly what you may see - interactive movies, simple action-based light adventures, with little challenge in therms of learning and navigation, without any threshold of entry.
Whlie there still low-mid cost games and indie games, I can't imagine somobedy will make with budget of modern FarCry or Call of Duty game something with gameplay like best CRPGs of early 90s unless averege horizon of interests in mankind increaced dramaticly.

>>18600

>I never spend time on things like Kazio

So in other words, you know absolutely jack shit on the topic and still want to talk absolute garbage about it in an authoritative tone? Got it. I'd assumed as such already, but it's nice to get the confirmation. RPGs are literally just using the right ability at the right time. See how fucking retarded it sounds? Your complaint here is that you use the controls in a way you personally don't like, therefore it's simple and primitive, when they can be more complex than your 'thinking man's game' with less than half the moving parts. It's hardly mature to offhandedly dismiss things you have no experience with too if you want to use that argument.

>Main thing for GAME is always was and will be a gameplay.

Then just have the code read out on the screen as you use inputs. See how far you get. If your art assets don't work in tandem with your mechanics, you get two things. Firstly, you get mechanics that aren't clearly presented. I'm going to use Mario since it's a great example. Why does touching this area kill me? Mechanically speaking it's to add platforming difficulty and enforced by code line xyz, but the player they can see that presented as spikes or munchers or whatever. Art assets presenting mechanical assets clearly and logically. The second thing is that if your mechanics don't fit your audiovisual design, you don't have the game feeling right because it's dissonant which isn't enjoyable either. Let's use a different example. Let's say that in Ultima Underworld since you love that game, jumping on enemies was the way you killed things, even though the rest of the game was unchanged. It'd feel a bit strange right? That's because the mechanic of you jumping on them to kill them doesn't fit with the rest of the game which has a lot of people using weapons against you. While saying that gameplay is the only important thing sounds nice, it's poppycock. Gameplay is nothing without art design aiding it, just like how pure AV design is a movie. Not to mention the plain truth that people like pretty things.

I'd extend art assets to language too. Because things like Zork are still presented in their own way, they're not lacking in art design, it's that the art is literary (descriptive and not exactly winning any prizes but still).

>I can't imagine somobedy will make with budget of modern FarCry or Call of Duty game something with gameplay like best CRPGs of early 90s unless averege horizon of interests in mankind increaced dramaticly.

And? Do you need one with that budget? Aren't you always going on about how they didn't do it for profit, and didn't need much money to make them? Plus a lot of a AAA game's budget is marketing. Besides which, why should a company that needs to turn a profit run a loss to make a small group of people happy? Because I bet you'd not be content if they made it and made the consumer foot the bill and I'm guessing you're probably at maybe 150% maybe 200% RRP of a mainstream game. That's the price of keeping a niche alive, it's up to the players if they think it's worth it. Besides, I kind of resent the casting of stones in glass houses in the last bit where you want people to expand their horizons while you have cut off entire genres and countries of origin from what you deem acceptable product.

>>18604

>So in other words, you know absolutely jack shit on the topic and still want to talk absolute garbage about it in an authoritative tone?

I need to fully playtrought throught all of it to understand concept of platforming game with leveldesighn which brings maximal possible difficulty that physically can be past by player, but which gives no single opportunity to any mistake? Yeah, it increase requrements to your reaction dramaticly, but how it change basic "test of reaction"? Kazio mario not unique thing to this topic, there hell lot of similar fan-maps for counter strike that brings such concept, not to metion famous "Hazardous cource 2" mod for half life which basicly in many challenges absoluetly same concpet.

>when they can be more complex

It more complex than "hit right button in right time", but more like "hit 6 buttons constantly in right time during whole game", which not change overall idea. And while it add hardness to main idea of this game - reaction, it not add any additional depths in therms of mechanics I discribed, so this why this games not interesting me.

>Then just have the code read out on the screen as you use inputs.

Well, text based games, ascii graphics games are popular. If this game offer what I want - gamedesighn, exploration and Role-playing systems that you need to build, I as nothing against such game. Early dungeoncrawlers had graphics to very limited amount, just to represent minimum amount requred for gameplay.
I don't mind plot, graphics or music at all - but they don't need to impact on gameplay. If someone add graphics and awesome music to existing game that will not damge gameplay, shure, why not. Might and Magic 2 compare to first one for example added awesome 16-color graphics (32 colors on Amiga!) and even added to to existing RPG system more mechanics, which was indeed very good thing. When gameplay sacrificed for graphics or for more wide audience - this is not good. I better prefer playing game with wireframe graphics, than moden AAA where all I can is watch cutscenes and sometimes hit X button to win.

>Let's say that in Ultima Underworld since you love that game, jumping on enemies was the way you killed things, even though the rest of the game was unchanged. It'd feel a bit strange right? That's because the mechanic of you jumping on them to kill them doesn't fit with the rest of the game which has a lot of people using weapons against you.

Well why not, if this new mechanics follow same roleplaying system set in game? If there weight mechanic for character, and if it be locked to jumping skill, it be actually pretty fun. You increase your weight by collecting more items, build more might for your character so you can carry more shit, improve your jumping skill and crush enemies with jumping on them!
More than that, TES Daggerfall have similar mechanics - you drown in water if you carry too much things, and how you may carry and how you swim based on your Strength attribute and Swimming skill. Daggerfall have Climbing skill which allow you to climb any vertical surface, with recet fan patches even properly jump from celling and from wall to wall like spiderman - again, following your climbing skill.

You see, RPG is when you play trought your character. Not trought your personall reaction skill for the most part, but trought skills you builded in your character trought this system. And I, in RPG player, more interested in using my skill to build my character, his stats, his opportunities and disadvantages, rething that just using purely mine personall skills of reaction.

>And? Do you need one with that budget? Aren't you always going on about how they didn't do it for profit, and didn't need much money to make them? Plus a lot of a AAA game's budget is marketing. Besides which, why should a company that needs to turn a profit run a loss to make a small group of people happy?

I not said about making not for profit, but making not only for profit. However problem there in capitalsim as system if you making only for profit, you aim at most wide audience, and thing aimed at most wide audience can't be complex, since all people are different ant not all people experts in one concretic niche thing. So averege big AAA product currently can be described as Austro-Hungarian railroad during world war I, when because of difference and variaty, to maintain and manage whole system all trains was forced to move at speed of slowest train in country. Same goes there - game developers aim at dumbest client, or client who want play game with maximum relax and minimum involment - this resulted in interactive movies without gameplay on one hand, and mobile "time killers" on other hand. I don't think that even you fan of both of this so called "genres".
Games like Wizardry 8 and Daggerfall showed, how fun can be more modern games with more big budgets but same aim towards callic RPG fans, and in many ways fall of CRPGs is line of coincedences tat led to decline of genere. You are not right about that it is compleatly buyer who determane what they want, corporations, espessialy big one media can enforce people to love their products trought ads, fashion, propoganda, social media. But when you do such things, you should not make mistakes. This why moden corporations pick easest way, take most wide target audience, enforcing other - less wide audiences to their products. Computer developers in late 90s or turned to this path of safer and buisness-only thing, or short or long, did some mistakes, and in this case mistakes was fatal.
While to modern EA even biggest scandals are just "drop of some 3% of their year income", for company that go to paths of innovations or which try to interest more wide audience to things that interested to less wide audience, every mistake fatal and led to bancropcy.
To case about death of Might and Magic series - you as console player probably know 3DO company, and how "well" they do buisness. It was miracle and hard work of NWC they lived untill 2003 and not died in 1995 where they should be.