Good analysis, just a few nitpicks: AR is the future… when it matches human visual abilities, which may take several decades more, be it through glasses, or through a neural link. There is a deep uncanny walley in either case to overcome.
I mean we’ll see. It’s why I put it in the opinion section but I don’t see AR taking off. Pokemon Go was fun for some but overall I don’t see another AR game doing that level of success for a long time. Especially since Console, PC, and traditional mobile games do far better sales/profits than it.
LLM AI has already revolutionized AI, it’s the holy grail “glue” to keep different AIs working together, including itself.
Sorry, I meant game AI rather than general-use AI. I agree, for general use, it’s done some interesting things but people try to use it everywhere and for everything. Like games and text generation in games and they create things like “convince this AI to give you a secret code” LLM AI and toss it in a game and it sucks. The biggest issue is players getting stuck in unintended ways which seems to happen constantly with it. Additionally, for AI response and choices, there are already better systems out there like Utility AI or GOAP.
Overall, I don’t see LLM revolutionizing game AI in any area for it. Lastly, it doesn’t seem to be that useful for math or pattern extrapolation/interpolation. An example I used with ChatGPT 3.5 was simply: O’s value is 0, N is -1, and P is 1. What value is A and What value is Z? After some explaining that numbers can only be assigned once, it got a value for A of -14 (correct) and a value for Z as 25 because “Z is 25 letters after O” It took several prompts to get it to admit Z was 11. Lastly, making J = 0 and telling to pivot all values around J being 0, it messed up again.
I would argue that this explanation still requires a working knowledge of the Pythagoras theorem, even if you don’t employ the formula directly. Specifically the knowledge that the hypotenuse must be longer than either of the sides unless the angle of the non-90 degree sides are 180 and 0, essentially making it a line.
You deducted the hypotenuse must be longer than 30 since they weren’t aiming directly at the ground. Believe it or not, that’s not common sense.
Normally this is obviously correct, but in this case, we have to consider how tall the characters are. As a DM, I would rule that if any part of the character (their actual person, not including, say, the reach of the sword they’re holding) is within the 30’ circle, or could be if they actively collaborated with the cleric using free actions, then the bless would affect them.
There’s also a few definitions we need to talk about:
if the cleric (we’ll call them Carl) is 30’ in the air, that is understood to mean that if the spell holding them up there fails, they will fall 30’. By the same token, a character 0’ feet in the air can only fall 0’. We can infer that Carl’s feet (or the bottom part of the PC, at any rate) are 30 feet in air.
we consider Carl to be in the center of the 5x5 grid square in the plane A formed 30’ above the flat terrain.
the “allies are 20ft away” part is a bit too fuzzy for this to work (how many allies? which ones? they can’t all occupy the same grid square unless they’re tiny), so we’ll have to make some calls here. Let’s just consider one ally, Alice, who is 20’ away.
We consider Alice to be in the center of her grid square, in the plane T formed by the flat terrain.
When we say Alice is “20ft away” from Carl, we mean that a perpendicular line drawn through the cleric intersects with T at the center of a grid square in A–we’ll call this square C(T) and Carl’s square at current altitude C(A), and the center of C(T) is 20’ from the center of Alice’s square A(T). Visualized as a battle grid you would have C ◻◻◻ A in plane T, with 3 empty squares separating them. On a physical table, Carl would also probably be standing on a little platform or a d6 to indicate altitude.
“Range: 30ft” 30 feet from what? Definitely not Carl’s god, they’re probably not even in the room. Maybe we mean 30ft from Carl’s 3rd chakra, or maybe it’s just 30ft from any part of Carl’s person. That seems easier, let’s go with that one.
Based on some anthropometric data I found very quickly, the average human woman has a vertical reach of about 77 inches or 6’ 5". That’s naked, and she’s probably wearing boots, let’s add another inch for the soles so 6’ 6".
We can give her a little bit more of an advantage as well; the shortest path between Alice and Carl is a straight line following the radius of the sphere, so she could “lean in” a bit with her arm to get closer. She can’t go a full 45 degrees without falling prone though, so this only adds a little. Without a posable figure and a 3d model of the space in front of me I couldn’t tell you how much she could reasonably add by pointing her body and hand at an angle, so let’s just call it 2 more inches and keep measuring vertically.
We’ll call the apex of her fingertips at 80 inches above T a new plane F, and A(F) is the point where she touches that plane with her fingers.
Now we get to actually apply the Pythagorean theorem. It’s a triangle formed by the points (C(A) -> A(A) = 240") as leg 1 and (A(A) -> A(F) = 280") as leg 2. The hypotenuse, then, is 368 inches.
30ft is 360 inches. Is 80 inches of Alice enough to put a fingertip through any part of a 30ft sphere around Carl’s feet?
You ever see a dog that’s got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it’s never going to make the connection....
Yup. There’s no number of scratchers you can buy that gives you a 100% chance of winning. Sure, your chances go up the more you buy, but it never reaches 100%.
The formula is: 1 - (1-p)^N where p is the chance of winning and N is the number of scratchers you buy. Basically, you have to NOT win for N scratchers, so we multiply (since this is an AND condition, ie: you must lose scratcher A and scratcher B and scratcher C, etc) the chance of not winning (1-p) by itself for the number of scratchers bought. That’s the overall chance of not winning, so we subtract that from 1 to get the chance of winning. You could instead use the chance of winning directly, but the formula is much longer (until you simplify the equation, which would give you the same answer as above) since you’d need to add (in this case we are using OR conditions) the chances of winning 1 scratcher or 2 scratchers or 3 scratchers, etc.
1 in 30 is a 3.33% chance of winning (a 96.67% chance of not winning, for those still following along). If you buy 30 scratchers, your chance of winning is only 63.83%. For 300, it’s 99.9962%. The chance will never reach 100% because you have a number between 0 and 1 raised to the power of a positive number in the formula. The chance of winning at least 1 of N scratchers can only be 100% if the chance of winning a single scratcher is already 100%, and they don’t sell those.
However! There are rules dictating the distribution of winning scratchers in a roll. It’s obviously not 1 every 30 exactly, but it’s also not perfectly random (which could lead to long strings of losing scratchers or long strings of winning scratchers). That’s why sometimes you’ll have to wait in line behind someone while they make the gas station attendant open a whole new roll because they want to buy 100 contiguous scratchers and there were only 99 left in the old roll.
Turns out, humans don’t think true randomness “feels” random. There’s actually a game design trick where you tell the player odds that are lower than reality because the true odds “feel” lower than the reported number. Pokemon did not use this trick, so Hyper Beam (reported accuracy of 90%) feels unfair, since you remember more strongly all the times it missed when you really, really needed it to hit vs. all the times it hit.
You’re getting dragged, but I think I get your point: that it might seed suspicion and distrust among not only the characters but the players?
I think it should be Rule 0 that the DM and players all respect each other’s boundaries, so consent is always part of the equation IMHO. Likewise, if everyone at the table insists on playing a certain way that I’m uncomfortable with, then it’s time for me to find a new table.
My thought process is just so far from that, that I can’t remotely understand that point of view. The best I’ve heard is the 0 sum theory, that somehow they think if things get better for someone else it gets worse for them. Its just something I can’t understand.
Das, was wir hier gerade erleben, ist ein Spiel auf Zeit. Fossilunternehmen, ressourcenverschwendende Unternehmen und Lobbys (letzteres inkludiert die FDP) versuchen, ihre Geschäftsmodelle so lange wie möglich aufrecht zu erhalten. Je länger man ein stabiles Wirtschaftsunternehmen führt, desto besser, desto mehr positive Quartale, desto mehr Abfindung; auch wenn es nach dieser Zeit so richtig kracht und das Resultat für 99% der Bevölkerung schlechter als nötig ist. Lieber jetzt noch 5 Jahre teures katarisches LNG vom Staat stützen lassen als in aktualisierte Prozesse zu investieren. Lieber jetzt noch so viele Verbrennermotoren bauen wie möglich, wo die Leute noch alle mögliche Lügen über elektrifizierte Fahrzeuge glauben und nicht begreifen, dass ihr neuer Verbrenner spätestens 2030 einen Wiederverkaufswert von 0 hat. Und natürlich passiert das auch auf rein politischer Ebene – Politikys reden über Kreislaufwirtschaft, aber investieren immer noch stark in Systeme, bei denen nicht wiederverwertbarer Müll anfällt. Eigentlich wissen alle, dass “grünes Wachstum” auf gesamtwirtschaftlicher Ebene eine Farce ist, weil gesamtwirtschaftliches Wachstum immer zusätzliche Ressourcen bindet. Trotzdem halten wir am Kapitalismus fest. Wir wechseln unser Mantra von Effektivität zu Effizienz, obwohl es eigentlich um Subsistenz gehen müsste.
Ganz viel davon hat mit fehlendem Mut und fehlender Inspiration zu tun, aka Konservativismus.
UPDATE: I found this issue explaining the relicensing of rust game engine Bevy to MIT + Apache 2.0 dual. Tldr: A lot of rust projects are MIT/Apache 2.0 so using those licenses is good for interoperability and upstreaming. MIT is known and trusted and had great success in projects like Godot....
A “cuck” license? I have 0 interest in engaging in any meaningful conversation around “we live in a society and rigidity of value measurement cannot be without context” because thats childish at best and a dog whistle of the anti-intellectual at worst.
Not just the terminal, I mean a full remote desktop. What’s the best method? Not just from one linux machine to another machine, but also remoting from a windows machine to a linux machine....
but ok, yes, for actual remote desktop, VNC or RustDesk, despite RustDesk being some open-core implementation that holds the good stuff in the proprietary release. At least it was when I last checked it out.
ich🐭iel (feddit.de) German
Falls ihr noch eine Maus sucht, vermeidet auf jeden Fall Maus 4 von Unternehmen B. www.logitechg.com/de-de/…/lightspeed.html
Was macht man als Protest gegen steigende Energiepreise? Genau! Man protestiert mit NOCH MEHR Weihnachtsbeleuchtungen! 🤦♂️ (feddit.de) German
t-online.de/…/weihnachtsbeleuchtung-so-viel-strom…
Free Friday Today!
Hello All!...
NYT Friday 12/01/2023 Discussion
Link to crossword: www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily
Deus Ex Randomizer v2.5.5 WaltonWare Entrance Rando mode, "Zero Changes" mode easy installer, and more! Also we're finally on ModDB! (github.com)
We’re also on ModDB now www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-randomizer...
Deus Ex Randomizer v2.5.5 WaltonWare Entrance Rando mode, "Zero Changes" mode easy installer, and more! Also we're finally on ModDB! (github.com)
We’re also on ModDB now www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-randomizer...
More than 75% of web3 games failed (www.coingecko.com)
I am actually shocked that 25% of those shitcoin “games” didn’t fail
It comes up more often than you'd think (startrek.website)
What's the simplest thing humans are too dumb to grasp?
You ever see a dog that’s got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it’s never going to make the connection....
God. Damned. Genius. (startrek.website)
What's a piece of classical music that everyone knows but most people don't know they know?
18+ [vent] A rantvent about public attitudes to adult content
(Content warning: This is an anxiety driven vent post. I talk a bit about politics and payment processing. Not for the faint of heart)....
(DE) Gericht: Regierung verstößt gegen Klimagesetz (feddit.de) German
zdf.de/…/urteil-ampel-umwelthilfe-klimagesetz-sof…...
Inflation in Europe falls to 2.4%, as higher interest rates squeeze growth (www.euronews.com)
29-euro Deutschlandticket announced for students in Germany (www.iamexpat.de)
Why are all the rust projects MIT licensed?
UPDATE: I found this issue explaining the relicensing of rust game engine Bevy to MIT + Apache 2.0 dual. Tldr: A lot of rust projects are MIT/Apache 2.0 so using those licenses is good for interoperability and upstreaming. MIT is known and trusted and had great success in projects like Godot....
What's the best way to remote into a linux machine?
Not just the terminal, I mean a full remote desktop. What’s the best method? Not just from one linux machine to another machine, but also remoting from a windows machine to a linux machine....
George Takei's Based Voting Take [Rule} (files.catbox.moe)
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