That’s something I see in my workplace even without AI, just with coding/scripting/automation.

It helps you do things faster. It doesn’t ensure you’re doing the right thing (unless you have someone skilled build in all the guardrails).

So many of my coworkers are at the “This chainsaw is amazing! I bet it would be great at driving nails!” level of scripting, and AI is only making them more reckless.

People still made places for themselves, but it took some effort, and every personal site ended up being a reflection of the person who made it and their skills.

In general, people don’t tend to give themselves actual down time anymore (not looking at a screen. taking a walk, reading a book, or sitting around type shit) so when we have that level of relaxation all the built up anxiety and exhaustion comes crashing down all at once. So sleep.

Last I checked you can import it when you first run it, or from an option menu somewhere, and it adds it to the options you have when starting a new save. I just followed instructions from the GitHub.

Apparently if you have a supported ROM (check here) you just drop it in the same folder as the exe to import it.

Each game is meant to playable as a standalone thing, any direct storyline continuation from previous titles is covered in the game itself. Technically Ocarina of Time and Majora’s mask are a pair with MM as the sequel, but either can be played alone with no real loss of context. MM does build on gameplay of OoT though.

It’s not a spoiler to say that across the game series it’s generally a plot about some reincarnation of the three central figures of Link, Zelda, and Ganon. There’s often implied reincarnations of other characters too across multiple games, but that’s mostly just callback fluff for fans. There’s one game set first in the in universe timeline that sets up the impetus for the reincarnation cycle, and one game that splits the timeline into a few branches based off three different interpretations of the ending of that specific game.

The two main newest ones, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, are a two-fer as well, and are a new timeline or convergence of the split timelines depending on who you ask.

For a first time player, don’t worry about it. Whichever game you play will give you what you need to know. Any understanding of the “grand series plot” just adds some extra oomph to scenes in later released games than OoT and MM.

For anyone lamenting they don’t have a Switch 2, or looking for OoT with QoL improvements for cheaper than whatever Nintendo’s asking price is, there is a free PC port of OoT that will run as fast as your hardware can handle it without messing up gameplay speed etc, has a ton of switchable QoL features, and has mod support for using 3DS (and better) graphics/models. You can even use Master Quest’s edited dungeons with all the benefits of the 3DS version.

It’s called Ship of Harkinian. All you have to do is provide a copy of the game ROM.

At this point we already have the ridiculously extensible PC ports. There’s no shot that there won’t be mods to bring over whatever QoL this remake adds (assuming it’s anything not already in the port) within weeks of release. I’ll give it maybe a year or two for homebrew graphics mods to catch up or for someone to extract the new assets into a mod.

And there’s no debate regarding the 3DS remaster anymore. You can just shove its graphics into the port if you prefer them and flip a few settings to toggle the changed behavior.

Plus everyone knows the best way to play is with the Beatles in OOT mods (seriously go search up the stupid fucking fever dream that is the remixed OST).

Since when has banning cheating ever stopped students inclined to cheat?

I think it’s pretty obvious that you haven’t used any AI tools in a while. They have gotten considerably better at not spewing complete nonsense, and at being very convincing to people who don’t know better. We’re well past the obvious days of glue pizza and telling people to eat rocks, and entirely fabricated garbage.

My job is doing a full court push of AI to make sure we “don’t get left behind” by nebulous competitors’ hypothetical productivity gains. So I’ve started picking it up. It’s useful for searching for information using normal language terminology, and on rare occasions can call out edge cases and additional considerations early, rather than when I come to those conclusions after reading 10 different documentation sites and mentally mapping everything out.

I still think the bleeding edge early adopters were/are insane, AGI/ASI isn’t going to coalesce out of the current approaches if ever, and it’s a net negative for humanity. That all said, I see the benefits and use cases more clearly now too.

Unfortunately, not checking anything and pushing to prod now can result in things that work well enough to become relied on before it hits the wall. You end up with a project five layers past the initial slop code (that the initial slopper claims is rock solid and good to go) when the problems start showing up, then you realize that you’ve been building off slop foundation and have to tear everything back down to the frame.

Makes the whole thing worse tbh.

If they don’t love you, they aren’t the love of your life, just someone you were infatuated with.

I’m still frustrated by that shit. There were actual instances of bad shit happening in gaming news media that got drowned the fuck out by all the culture war grifters and rampant fucking incels.

• Random “ok but not GOTY” indie games getting GOTY level reviews, then people finding that the dev and the journalist(s) had a history of bar crawl pictures on twitter together.
• Leaked industry email lists where journalists openly were asking other journalists to take it easy on their dev roommate’s first release.
• A few big names in games journalism getting shit canned for writing honest reviews about how mediocre some AAA game was, when that game bought an ad on their site to the tune of a full site retheming around the game.
• Undisclosed referral links.
• Undisclosed sponsorship of good reviews.
• Some games trying to use the fact they had LGBTQIA+ representation to paint valid critiques as the same thing as bigoted harassment, when some of the critique was even coming from LGBTQIA+ folx.
• A few no name indie devs caught faking harassment and hate DMs.

It was a few big issues, a scatter of medium issues, a few minor things only noticable to obsessives, and then a massive clusterfuck of actual stalker/*phobe bullshit slopped on top.

I’m happy that shit like responsible disclosure started happening in the end, but what a fucking mess.

Not sure about skin rendering in L4D, but way back when Half Life 2 was new, one of the ways it pushed things forward was with the facial rigs and animations.

At least as far as I remember from gaming news at the time.

I remember reading that it was a big leap in terms of matching real facial muscles to the 3D rig face “muscles”, and in using those little dot things to capture actual facial movement of some of the line reads. I think Valve’s discovery and/or usage of the fact that real eye iris angles are offset by about 2 degrees was also something that was noted as a big move forward past the uncanny valley.

Hooray, a headline that doesn’t oversell it!

Some articles were heavily clickbaiting about HL2 ep3, and while there is like one early/experimental weapon model from it in this leak, it’s something fans have already known about and seen in some previously leaked testing footage.

As far as I understand it, most of this is just some additional data on things already known, and different builds of things we’ve already seen. Still awesome, but not “omg HL3 leak!”

Plot like they’re all out to get you

Come on, you gotta at least use some primer first. Kilz that shit so you seal in all the mold. Then it’s forced to become structural, and in a few years you can use your well trained mold to grow extensions to your units!