Messages

1

General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Cute and Wholesome Picture Thread

« on: June 24, 2024, 01:13:23 PM »

(I've put up a full gallery of these zoo photos on my website this morning, if anyone wants more: https://www.robhainescreative.space/visual-art/photography/2024-bristol-zoo-project/)

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« on: June 24, 2024, 10:18:22 AM »

Intolerable

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« on: June 23, 2024, 01:48:28 PM »

Squall

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« on: June 22, 2024, 11:01:26 PM »

Gaseous

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Cute and Wholesome Picture Thread

« on: June 21, 2024, 10:07:10 PM »

I went to a local conservation zoo this week with my camera:

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General Gaming - The Arcade / Re: Summer Games Fest

« on: June 18, 2024, 05:12:35 PM »

Thanks for fixing my links; I'm very out of practice at BBCode xD

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General Gaming - The Arcade / Re: Summer Games Fest

« on: June 18, 2024, 02:04:13 PM »

That's kinda my philosophy on it; I can understand violence as part of the classic videogame progression through meaningful story. (I often wish it wasn't so embedded, that you can't have a big name narrative game without being padded with hours of kobold-punching, but that's a personal digression.) But I'm not much for games which are solely thinly-veiled excuses for shooting guys in the head.

I played a few demos during the past week, and particularly enjoyed Preserve - which was a pleasant little puzzle game about building suitable little biomes for animals to live in - and Tiny Glade - a cute little Townscaper-style sandbox where you get to build little castles in a glade, with gorgeous lighting and some clever tools.

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Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: A Microfiction Thread

« on: June 18, 2024, 01:55:41 PM »

Thank you! For Having Been Broken is one of my favourites, for sure.

The header images I sourced primarily from Unsplash; most of their images are free, but uploaded by and attributed to the photographer or 3D artist. (From my experience, they've also avoided any generative AI images seeping into their catalogue, which is a welcome relief.)

A few of the images also came from NASA or Wikimedia Commons, and I created a few simple ones myself in Blender. It probably took me & my wife a month to find suitable images for every story on my site xD

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« on: June 14, 2024, 04:10:13 PM »

Irons

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Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: What are you reading?

« on: June 13, 2024, 04:49:48 PM »

I've heard really good things about Embroidered Worlds, so I really should pick it up some time.

I've just finished Tade Thompson's Rosewater trilogy, which is really fascinating near-future science fiction, with a living meteor showing up in Nigeria and setting up a foothold on Earth for potential future alien incursions. But simultaneously it heals anyone who comes close, grants a degree of psychic ability to certain humans sensitive to such things, and triggers a power struggle between the local authorities and the wider government of Nigeria. The ending of the series didn't quite land for me (though I think I understand why it was the right ending), but the journey was worth it.

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General Gaming - The Arcade / Re: Summer Games Fest

« on: June 12, 2024, 10:23:20 PM »

Yeah, I'm generally on the side of cosier narrative games, or at least more imaginative indies. FromSoft games are my one major deviation into the AAA space, but I have absolutely zero interest in FPSes and big budget games where violence is your only interaction with the world.

Much like you, Jubal, I don't handle horror well at all. My brain's way too good at extrapolating fictional horror into the real world 

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General Gaming - The Arcade / Re: Elden Ring

« on: June 11, 2024, 08:31:24 PM »

Oops, just realised rebuilding my website may break some of those image links. Tried a different approach xD

A few more of my recent favourites (CW: mild body horror/corpses):

13

General Gaming - The Arcade / Summer Games Fest

« on: June 10, 2024, 10:42:18 PM »

I've been watching some of the E3-replacement games shows with my wife this year, mostly as it's become something of a tradition. Given how rough a year it's been for the game industry, it's been fascinating to see how much time's been given to interesting indie titles, and I thought I'd share a few of the games that looked promising so far to me:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2202650/Crescent_County/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2240620/UNBEATABLE/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2963240/Generation_Exile/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1101370/Wind_Runners/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2582320/Mixtape/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2132890/Possessors/

Has anything caught your eye?

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General Gaming - The Arcade / Re: Elden Ring

« on: June 10, 2024, 04:50:37 PM »

*Very* occasionally, I have an idea of a specific shot I want to achieve and set things up accordingly, but those shots are pretty unusual.

My approach is generally to immerse myself in the world, to explore with a little more depth than I usually would playing the game, trying to find lighting or angles that result in interesting compositions. Half the time this involves parkouring around buildings, or trying to make it onto precarious cliffedges so I can get angles I wouldn't normally see in game I don't particularly want to just reproduce concept art, so it's more fun finding angles that the devs never intended, and I get to see the game from a new viewpoint.

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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« on: June 10, 2024, 11:46:14 AM »

Centenary