Active development?! It's been a while since I developed a game myself, but I've been checking out different programming languages (Go, Rust, and Zig) and libraries to get a feel for game development again. I have a irrational disinterest in using pre-made engines like Unity, Unreal, and Game Maker, so I end up making my own engine and then not much of a game on top of that.

That's an interesting perspective, I'd like to try an assortment of drugs someday to gain another perspective on things. In my little bubble I've not touched anything aside from some alcohol. Perhaps the closest I've gotten is exploring the internet and absorbing a wide range of funky content, some of which I'm sure was produced with the help of drugs, but still I don't feel like I've had a deep enough connection. It pisses me off how it's still mostly illegal and that the US is only barely navigating legalization of weed at a state level in a really clumsy manner. It's not necessarily the illegality that's stopping me, but I have enough to occupy myself with to bother seeking it out and haven't had the opportunity simply presented to me. Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong kinds of people.
 
I think I understand what you mean by thoughts forming as fractals, rudy. It's like moving to another dimension, connecting in ways you just couldn't in a mere three. I've felt that in deep conversations with others as well as getting lost in thought myself when I feel like I've had an epiphany. That, too, fades and I wonder why I thought I've had everything all figured out. Perhaps it all amounts to intellectual masturbation, but at least when it comes as a product of conversation, the bond shared between the other is strengthened.
 
I've often heard of people not wanting to bring children into such a horrible world, but part of me wonders if it's just an excuse. That's not to say that having children is some amazing accomplishment that all should strive for. In fact, I'm emphasizing that there is no need to have an excuse to *not* have children. Too often I find myself making excuses for not wanting to do things, when really an "I don't wanna" would be perfectly acceptable. Then again, perhaps "I don't wanna" is an excuse itself, a pathetic attempt at covering for my own inadequacies. The fact remains that I don't want to have children and it's not because the world is shit, but because I'd rather fuck around and drift through life. On some level it's a lack of desire to have control over another life. It's the reason why I wouldn't want a pet either. I like the idea of being left alone and leaving others alone, but it can also be a paradoxical, contrarian, or even hypocritical position to take at times. 
 
I assume we'll pull through the disasters ahead, even if most of the world's human population is wiped out and it's a living hell (even more so than now). Humans are so damned tenacious and persistent, we'll rebuild. Civilization as we know it has been shit for a long time, what scares me is that the tools to enforce the shittiness are only getting better. I don't fear AI having a sudden awakening and subjugating humans, I fear humans getting better at applying AI to subjugate humans. Nuclear weapons haven't been around long enough to definitively conclude that they'll never be used in a full-scale war. Hell, there were a couple of close calls during the cold war. The cold war was really uneven, too. China has a much better grasp at playing the game. The game of waiting and the game of economics. Not only that, but Russia is a nuclear ally of them, so it's not a matter of just two major nuclear powers opposing each other with a few minor ones sprinkled about. I don't consider it unlikely that a fuck-up could cause a chain reaction, even if world leaders think they're smart enough to know all the costs involved. 

Sure, MMA has some similarities but it's a lot less lethal. 
 
I think direct war with China could be possible, but with boundaries set. For example, China could invade Taiwan and the US would get directly involved there, but would the war spill outside of Taiwan? I have no idea. Nukes seem unlikely, but it can be difficult to determine chain reactions. The parameters are different from the last cold war. If China and Russia were to join forces, could they out-nuke us? There will certainly be a lot of cyberwarfare, economic warfare, and proxy wars, but I assume all that spending on the military will be put to use in some capacity. Of course, it could just be good ol' wasteful spending put to little use since the military is mostly just a jobs programs anyway. Our fall will most likely be from within, as you say. 

I don't think of the elites as a cabal either, but they have common goals due to their position in society and it's a lot easier to get your way when you can just pay people to spread your message and/or do your bidding. They may pay different people, but the ideas are the same (more wealth in the hands of the wealthy because I'm wealthy). I completely agree with you that they're just as ignorant and stupid. Their actions are motivated by selfishness and greed, after all. However, they can dictate the direction that society takes. Yes, there is the matter of the individual staying informed to fight back, but this is easier said than done. The average individual has bills to pay, families to raise, jobs to work that take 40+ hours a week, and they're being assaulted with an overload of information from various multimedia outlets employing armies of propagandists. It's hard to fight against narratives that are repeated everywhere around you and that have a prepared list of points and counterpoints while at the same time you're just trying to live your life. These people are paid to feed you this narrative full-time, yet you're supposed to figure out the truth while working a completely different full-time job and handling the rest of your life's responsibilities. I think part of the reason for the persistence of the 40+ hour workweek is to keep people busy so that they can't do this. It's either intentional or a shitty coincidence.
 
A collapse combined with current technologies could give us a real hell world. We've got surveillance tech that makes Nineteen Eighty-Four look like child's play. Requiring people who constantly have to watch video cameras instead of letting AI filter content of interest for people to review later? Needing to set up and maintain microphones everywhere instead of simply tapping into everyone's mobile devices? How quaint! Thinking of advanced tech, I wouldn't be surprised to see the return of gladiatorial matches and blood sports because your brain could be uploaded to computer storage for backup and then downloaded into a regrown clone of your body. We're making progress toward the regrowth of organs and interfacing with the brain through machines. Sure, we've still got a long way to go, but when that gets figured out, I could see the perceived ethics (or at least societal tolerability) of gladiatorial matches and blood sports being reclassified. Kind of an out-there side thought.
 
As for the competition with China, I could see it getting pretty nasty depending on how possible it'd be for China to knock us out of the top spot economically. Proxy wars are a given, but there is a possibility they grow into a more direct war. I remember reading somewhere that an EMP that massive wouldn't be practical. A direct war will likely mean nukes, though, and I don't know if the rulers will tolerate that even if they're safe in super bunkers. There's just a level of loss there that's too high to be worth it even for the victor that emerges (if there is one). China seems to be playing the game a hell of a lot better than the USSR. I could see the US trying economic means of destruction. Hell, they did it to Japan who is an ally. The measures would be more aggressive against China, but China is aware of them, so the US might not be able to pull them off. Either way, to reiterate on a previous post, I see competition with China giving some slack to commoners on either side for loyalty's sake, which would be welcome.

There is an air of change blowing, but it is always blowing. History gets simplified into what are considered major events, but it's all an accumulation of change. I've been awaiting this fabled reckoning of the system since 2008 when the economy was on the verge of complete and utter collapse, the first black US president was elected, and hope and change were the slogan. Occupy Wall Street seemed like a "this is it" moment and it... just sorta withered away. In fact, it's somewhat similar to the protests happening last year. The pattern went: big media gave it attention, then criticized it, then ignored it. Occupy Wall Street seemed to get serious coverage, then mockery of "the stinky moochers" or whatever, and then they ignored it. Similarly, the protests last year were given serious coverage, then too much focus was put on property damage and the narrative that "they're destroying their own communities", and then it just went away. Like OWS, the protests didn't just stop, they were just ignored because big media know that attention brings power. They do not platform ideas of change beyond milking for views. It also fed the narrative that everything was bad during Trump's presidency but Biden brought us all back to normalcy so we have nothing to complain about.
 
A similar narrative seemed to be developing around covid. The Biden administration put together a solid rollout plan, vaccinations were ahead of schedule, and the CDC was removing mask mandates. The problem is that the virus doesn't thrive based on media attention and cannot be so easily dismissed. Many were skeptical of vaccination due to the proliferation of misinformation taking advantage of so many years of people being let down and lied to by their government. On top of that, worldwide vaccination rates aren't so hot (which is a huge problem for a virus that spreads so easily and can mutate to something worse and come back) and children under 12 can't even get vaccinated (yet there's a huge push to reopen schools so that their parents can go back to the office and feed the economic machine).
 
There is an emphasis on simplified history where cause and effect are clearly defined and people and events fit into neat little packages. Real history is not so neat and clean. Perhaps this simplified representation is needed for people to make sense of things, but it's also a useful tool for propaganda, to create a narrative of what "works" and what "doesn't work". For example, non-violent resistance is highlighted in the history books because that happens to be the most convenient for the elites. They can respond with violence or just ignore you. However, the messy reality is that resistance takes many forms and then after compromise, the elites pretend that they were fine with change as long as it was asked for nicely. 
 
My fear is that we are in a very slow unwinding phase of empire collapse. The situation will keep getting worse as the parasitic rich continue to loot the country while funding media campaigns to keep the peasants fighting with one another. We won't even get the benefit of some fruit falling our way because the tree is getting barren as the empire collapses. The space race is but a distraction. While, yes, technological advances that come from that would be nice, I won't be on my deathbed thinking "ugh, I wish I was there to troubleshoot printers on Mars..." Cool gadgets and travel destinations do not necessarily lead to a higher quality of life. What most people are looking for is to just live a decent life. While this may be seen as people acting like sheep, it's a manifestation of the overwhelming force of large-scale civilization where the rules are set by people given positions of too much power. 

The world is paying more lip service, but I really don't see climate change being taken more seriously in any significant way. Entrepreneurs are doing what they've always done: inflated their own egos while hoping to make a lot of money. It doesn't matter to them if their carbon capture machines only take back 1% of yearly carbon emissions as long as they can lobby the government to force everyone to buy their machines, make bank, and tell everyone how they're making the world a better place. When the goal is extracting as much money as possible, the system will be driven over a cliff as long as it can squeeze out a few more bucks. If anything, the carbon capture machines will give an excuse to pollute further because "the machines have it covered" even when the machines don't really have it covered. It's like recycling. Most plastics aren't even recyclable and of the ones that are, it's a highly polluting process. However, it's marketed as if a difference is being made and that plastics could be green, it's just that *you* need to recycle (again, placing the blame squarely on individuals instead of the corporations that generate the vast majority of pollution). The three Rs are reduce, reuse, and recycle. Really, that's the order in which we should be doing it. We should be reducing usage first and foremost, reusing what we can, and finally recycling the rest. The "problem" under our economic system is that reducing and reusing have very limited or no profit-making potential. Often times I'll see articles like "we need to eat bugs to be sustainable" (I'd rather go vegetarian/vegan btw) or "we need to use paper straws" and it's usually because some guy invested in a bug farm or paper straw factory. Even supposed sustainability becomes an avenue to sell more shit.
 
The new space race is an extension of that ego-boosting, self-serving behavior. We're supposed to cheer on these billionaires because they're "making progress" but to what end? The cynic in me thinks of it as the rich's ultimate backup plan after they've trashed the Earth so much as to be inhabitable. Hell, even the old space race was just a show of military might. Speaking of which, it's funny to me that the US considers itself the winner of that space race when Russia did everything first, particularly everything important for military usage (spy satellites and ICBMs), but the US just moved the goalposts to the moon. Then we're told of all the great advances discovered while engaging in that space race. Yes, large well-funded collaborative efforts tend to produce great results. Take war, for example, many advancements are made there too, but does that make war worth it? Space races are much more benign, but we have to look at priorities. Should we really let a few individuals have billions of dollars to play around with while so many others live in misery? The technological advancements made are nice, but there are other -- arguably far more effective -- ways of improving people's livelihoods. 
 
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with the idea of the massive lawsuit of the American people vs the state. The supreme court will side with the system like they always do. Like it's the same issue that you point out that Bernie runs into. The system does not take kindly to change and stubbornly refuses it. We could have single payer healthcare and most of the country is even on board with the idea, but big media present the idea as absolutely impossible and the many politicians in the pockets of the industry reinforce that idea. Would the lawsuit force a conversation? Perhaps, but so has Bernie's campaigns. The problem is that the conversation is dominated by money whether it's money in media giving a bigger platform for certain ideas or money in politics getting politicians elected to act a certain way. 
 
Lower taxes aren't what bring companies to the US, it's the potential to make huge profits. The US for the longest time was the largest customer base with the most amount of money to spend. What the US should've done was take a hard stance against corporations exploiting labor (domestically or abroad) but that was never going to happen because corporations and the government are in bed with each other. Really, that was our reason for opening relations with China, just a large pool of labor to exploit. China, however, has developed into a massive customer base of its own and so we're seeing big media ringing the alarms of China being dangerous because [insert ][/insert] but in reality it's because they have the potential to compete with the US economically. What you also see are corporations catering to China to get to that huge customer base. You'll see companies give up IP rights and ownership to China just for this customer base. Taxes really mean little in the grand scheme of things, it's just a thing they complain about because they want an ever-expanding profit margin. Taxes, however, would go a long way to funding important programs that we need here (though there are claims that we could just print our way into buying everything we want like in modern monetary theory, but I say there are practical limits to that).
 
I really don't see significant change being made even by firebrand politicians. If you want to make change, you have to be a credible threat, otherwise they just mock and ignore you. However, if you're a credible threat then they will ultimately suppress you with violence, which is why you'd need to be able to back it up with force of your own. There is a theory that things were mostly as good as they were in the 50s and later because the USSR was a credible threat to US dominance and offered a comparison with which people could use as a reference to their own standing in life. The US had to sweeten the deal to keep people loyal. Similarly, I can see China rising as a viable competitor and perhaps us getting a sweeter deal out of it.

There isn't even a serious attempt at calculating carbon costs for actual legislation. That's the thing, they're not even trying to solve anything, even under the capitalist model. I haven't read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, I don't really read books in general, though I really should. It seems like it'd be right up my alley, but for whatever reason I'm averse to reading books. 
 
Regarding UBI, I think it has merit, but the implementation makes a big difference. I was very happy to hear Yang bring up UBI because it was something I wanted people to have more of a serious discussion on. Yang's implementation was shit, though, relying on highly regressive VAT to fund it and ripping apart welfare programs. The more Yang talks, the less appealing he became as a candidate. His run for mayor of NYC was just an embarrassment. Anyway, back to UBI, it feels like it might be required to sustain our current capitalist system. The whole system relies on consumption and with wages stagnating and debt reaching astronomical levels, giving people an allowance may be the band-aid that prevents a total collapse. Really, ever since 2008, it feels like we're in a system with a delayed collapse and there's been a set of half-measures designed merely to keep people just content enough to not revolt while the wealth extraction continues.
 
UBI has some potential for providing financial freedom. People would be able to refuse shitty work without facing starvation. I'm all for this leverage being provided for the common worker. I am wary about execution, though. I'd be surprised if UBI does get implemented, but I'd be even more surprised if it wasn't poorly-implemented in some way or doesn't get means-testing slapped onto it (thus making it not actually *Universal* Basic Income).

The pursuit of profit is too strong for true sustainability to be achieved. The current plan is that technology will solve everything with one such technology being the carbon capture machine. Trees and plants already exist, but you can't make as much money off of them, so instead we make machines that do a worse job and don't provide the other life-supporting functions of trees. The only way these machines are going to be sold is if companies actually had to pay for their carbon emissions and they'll drag their feet (and their lobbyists will make politicians responsible for implementing regulations drag their feet) as much as possible. Companies are excited about shaving half a cent off each unit they sell, there's no way they'd be happy about having to pay to capture the carbon they put out.
 
I don't trust tech to be the solution because tech is as scummy as any other industry out there making money but with even more effective tools to be scummy. They invade our lives and insert themselves wherever they can to extract as much information as possible and manipulate us. They claim to be making our lives better but I'm not seeing it. Being able to work from home has perhaps been my greatest convenience afforded by technology but even that is marred by expectations of being online and available for much longer hours than when we were all at the office. Even still workplaces are eager to get workers back into the office. I'm sure the expectation will be that we still log in from home after commuting back from the office when that time comes. 
 
I work in a tech-adjacent industry and I just see proposals of extracting even more money, euphemistically called "value add". I'm doing my job and thinking "is this really making any of our lives better?" I'd rather a 20 hour work week over this shit. We're forced into these lives of poor sustainability just to make a living and the choice to pollute more or use sweatshop labor is made for us by corporations looking to pinch pennies. In theory we could "vote with our wallets" but this is just a glorified game of the prisoner's dilemma (with some tragedy of the commons mixed in) and whatever slight benefit to the individual will win out, especially as wages get suppressed and cost of living keeps increasing. It's suffocating.
 
I'm not surprised by anti-intellectualism when the supposed "experts" keep fucking up, often because they pushed policies out of self interest. Government tells us that government is the problem and they self-sabotage to make it so. We were pushed into two protracted wars based on lies. The pandemic response has been half-assed and inconsistent. There was a major push to keep things open as much as possible because "the economy" and I'm sure the CDC was pressured into dropping the requirements for masks and social distancing for the vaccinated to give an appearance of normalcy (again, to keep "the economy" going by encouraging spending) but they've since had to walk back on that. People are dying from covid and now I'm seeing liberals laugh and say that they should've gotten vaccinated. Yeah, that's sure to win over people and get them to change their minds... Sure, in some cases it's deserved, like the republican leaders who pushed for an anti-vaccination stance, but a lot of these people dying are victims of misinformation in an age where misinformation runs rampant. Do they deserve death for this? I wouldn't say so.
 
The 2016 election laid bare many of the problems in the country in a grand spectacle. Democrats banded together to push out the leftist candidate, working harder to prevent Bernie from succeeding than to prevent Trump from succeeding. They pushed Hillary as an expert who knew what was best for you and she promised more of the same. People wanted change because shit really wasn't working. The stock market was reaching all-time highs, but the average person wasn't getting the benefit. 2008 was devastating and the fallout from that was never actually resolved. Two very unpopular candidates ended up being the choices after they were filtered through party-controlled processes and many didn't bother voting, then the voters were blamed for Trump getting elected. Maybe I'd actually believe the democratic party were outraged over Trump if they weren't palling around with esteemed war criminal Bush. In reality they'd happily back Trump over Bernie, even today, if this situation were to somehow arise. 

Regardless of maturity, the thing I miss the most is the creativity. Maybe I've just been going to all the wrong places or maybe the problem is just with me personally, but it certainly seems like the internet is less about creating and more about consuming. Even something like youtube, where you can upload pretty much whatever you want, is really not about the creators but the advertisers. Communities like reddit host discussion, but the format feels geared toward fishing for upvotes. There is also the issue of containment. Content on huge platforms like reddit and twitter ooze out into other parts of the behemoth and so your audience is often a lot of randos. It lacks personality. Granted, that "personality" can be awful. I would've liked to have posted my work here, but I was too scared that I was going to get shit on, which feels more devastating when the group is smaller. Like if you fuck up in a small village, everyone knows you as that guy who fucked up that one time, whereas in a big city you're less likely to have a reputation that sticks. 
 
Anyway, that creative drive to write, compose, draw, code, etc is really special and that was cultivated here (excepting some toxic behavior). Even discussion is enhanced with the message board format as posts are allowed to breathe instead of being buried in a mass of concurrent threads that aren't separated enough. Reddit and especially twitter just aren't conducive to in-depth discussion. Posts can have images, and I know in the past there was some support for arbitrary HTML. That's something I miss about that period of the internet: being more open to customization. MySpace allowed for a lot more personalization than what many platforms do now. Sure a lot of it was awful, but it was personal. 
 
I used to hunger for learning and creating, but nowadays I feel too drained after working my regular job. That could be part of it, just getting old and settling into a mundane life because, hell, it's a living. It would be nice to feel the energy of the past, maybe it just needs a community to be a part of, encouraging creativity, lighting the fire...

what has 30 million views?

What a coincidence, I also want to learn Rust and want to make a roguelike with it. The difference being that I'm too lazy.

Never did do Ludem Dare, I'm not a fan of rushing things. Perhaps I should try it since I haven't actually made anything in a long-ass time. Work and other things just drain me too much that I don't feel like doing much gamedev anymore, sadly. 

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name. Because no one is there.

Wow!! I used to play this game all the time as a kid: https://archive.org/details/win3_LASER
It's a neat little puzzle game where you try to shoot a laser at the goal point twice.

people equal shit

 
I had fun playing this game as a kid. I didn't understand the title, though.

Turned 25 this year. Been working on software development for a few years now, but not in games. I gave up on wanting to make games professionally because it seems like it'd suck all the fun out of it, so instead I just slowly work on small games on the side. Things have been good overall, except on the social end which I've been lazy about and generally pretty awful at. I think I have hermit tendencies, just feels more comfortable.
 
Came back here just now since I was looking at old images on my computer and saw this:

 
 
Back when I was rocking an 800x600 resolution.
 
Edit: I have this striking feeling like I posted this the last time I stopped by.

aaaa this is so good!! I love the style, all the little animations are perfect.. really looking forward to seeing more of this

Quote from: Supra Mairo on October 25, 2013, 05:23:56 pm

X - - - action
C - - - Jump

these seem to be mixed up? i jump with the X & fire with the C... or is this a regional keyboard thing maybe?

 
I like having the shooting button as the left one since I can better associate my middle finger with shooting.

Those closed loop systems are low-end liquid cooling. A decent air cooling system will give the same sort of temperatures without the possible risk of a leak and without the maintenance (the pump is more likely to give out in the water cooler than any part in a decent air cooling system).

A refurbished liquid cooler? Refurbished products can be spotty and I wouldn't risk it with a liquid cooler.