Seamus Quigley

I frequently fail the Turing test.

[seamusquigley]

"I don't react well to threats. I have and will lip off to semideities and demons and monsters alike.

But this was the IRS.

A man's gotta know his limits."

Harry Dresden in Out Law. A Dresden Files novella by Jim Butcher.

[seamusquigley]

Watching select demographics of politicians all over the globe jump to support such a motion was fascinating in the same way that watching a disease proliferate under the microscope is fascinating.

Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[seamusquigley]

"That is the great pleasure of conspiracy theory—not explanation, but narrative. It is like Scheherazade."

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

[seamusquigley]

That’s libertarians for you—anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

[seamusquigley]

"Some people like to tell others what to do. They like that more than freedom. Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it’s high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It’s safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards."

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

[seamusquigley]

"Now, personally, I'd have been happier driving an armoured personnel carrier in through the front door. But since we're the Met, and not the police department of a small town in Missouri, we didn't have one."

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London book 6

[seamusquigley]

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people." Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica

[seamusquigley]

"Goddamn autocrats. They really are hardly better than shit-stained children."

Ana Dolabra, A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

[seamusquigley]

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war … and we’re winning.”

Warren Buffett

[seamusquigley]

"Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession."

Sailing To Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay

[seamusquigley]

Unencumbered and Unburdened

On resource and inventory management in Horizon: Forbidden West and Starfield.

Having just finished Horizon: Forbidden West I want to rave about one small feature; its inventory management.

Like most games with a resource economy, you can only carry so much around with you. And yet, I wasted zero time staring at boring menus trying to figure out what to drop or store.

How does it achieve this? A surprisingly simple thing. Each item has its quantity limit and if you pick up something that would put you over that item's limit it goes to your stash. When you interact with your stash there is a simple button to "fill all items to capacity."

It is liberating.

Contrast this with Starfield, a game with by far the worst inventory management I've tried in recent years. You can't carry much, your ship(s) carry surprisingly little, and you need resources to build limited storage modules at your base.

"Don't collect resources," I hear you say. "Don't upgrade my gear and ships?" I ask. "Pfft."

Starfield is, at least at heart, a Bethesda open-world RPG. It’s crafted around the same gameplay loop that drives Skyrim and Fallout. I loved those last two, spent thousands of hours playing them, yet Starfield was a huge disappointment. There is no single reason for this, but one design decision on Starfield’s approach to inventory management does significantly encumber its attempts to be fun; base storage is limited.

It's amazing how much difference that one change makes. It takes an occasional inconvenience, a periodic "Oh, I'm full, which 1-3 things should I drop so I can make it to a store and/or my base?" and turns it into a game long chore. The game is warped and twisted, no longer about exploring and getting cool gear to aid that exploration. Instead, it is a never-ending grind to get the resources you need to build more storage to store the other resources you picked up while looking for the resources you needed to build more storage…

It's exhausting.

You might be wondering, why even have a stash? Why not just have infinite player storage? Surely that’d keep the inventory management even further out of the gameplay’s way? Or why not go full reductio ad absurdum and remove resources altogether?

Tension.

A good example to explore this idea comes from the history of FPS games. Back in the era of the original Doom the player character had health. That health, if lost, had to be healed. It didn’t heal automatically, you had to pick up or use healing packs. This created a situation where a single room full of enemies could be a cakewalk or frustratingly difficult, all depending upon whether you hit that point in the game at full health and armour or at 12% health.

It was difficult for developers to design a specific difficulty for their games. They couldn’t control how you’d play up to that point. They didn’t know what shape you’d be in entering the gauntlet.

One solution was to give players a health pack just before entering the gauntlet. It does create a baseline but also starts to feel like a game is holding your hand. The solution the industry settled on was health bars that refill themselves after a few seconds of safety. This way they always know how much health you’re going to have entering a specific sequence.

The limited inventory operates similarly. The developers can craft the fight knowing the maximum amount of ammo available to the player. They can calibrate it such that it threatens to exhaust the resources available to you in the moment. And you, the player, have options if you find yourself failing due to lack of ammo.

Perhaps you’ve neglected upgrading the items that increase your carry capacity, perhaps all you need is a few extra shots. Perhaps upgrading your weapons will give you more damage per shot. Perhaps elemental weaknesses will do the same. Perhaps practise and landing more shots on weak points is the answer. Whatever approach you take, the resource scarcity has motivated you to engage more closely with the game than simply to ‘keep shooting.’

In implementing its Stash mechanic, Horizon: Forbidden west has created a game with inventory management that is in service to gameplay. Starfield, by contrast, feels like inventory management in place of gameplay.

[calamitys-child]

Just rediscovered potentially the funniest thing I’ve written in recent memory

[calamitys-child]

Imagine if people wrote all their Les Mis modern aus in the style of Victor Hugo

[calamitys-child]

An excerpt

[seamusquigley]

Imhotep is not the villain of The Mummy (1999)

I have decided Imhotep isn't really the villain of The Mummy (1999).

He and Anck-su-namun fall in love. She's clearly as into it as he is. But the Pharaoh decides she is his woman. To hell with what she wants.

Faced with death for the crime of believing she has the right to choose her lover, they strike first. The only good aristocrat is a dead aristocrat, so it's hard to hate them for that.

Yes, he attempts to bring her back from the dead, but there's no real indication that this is in any way some great and terrible threat to the world. We're just supposed to have a knee-jerk "necromancy bad" reaction.

For this he is condemned to an eternity of torment. And the Pharaoh's bodyguard turns into a hereditary order determined to ensure that his decision to deny a woman's autonomy outlives him by millennia.

And sure, ok. When released Imhotep goes on a rampage. 10 plagues and all that. But...

Anyone would be pissed off after being subjected to 3000 years of cursed torment.

It's stated that the curse itself is what made him so powerful.

To recap. If the Pharaoh had respected a woman's right to choose he wouldn't have been murdered, there would've been no reason for anyone to attempt necromancy, and there would've been no creation of a powerfully cursed being capable of visiting plagues upon the land.

[seamusquigley]

“Cancer is the aristocracy of the body. It captures the means of growth for its own use. It convinces the body to serve it, and delivers nothing in return. If it grows too much it brings the whole body down.”

— The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, Book 3 of The Masquerade

[seamusquigley]

This feels relevant today.

[fans4wga]

26 September: thread by WGA member David Slack

Twitter thread by David Slack @/slack2thefuture:

"As WGA leaders meet today to finalize our deal, we begin a new era for writers — and for labor in our industry. But we also begin to face the final and most insidious form of unionbusting propaganda: a years-long effort to sell the lie that our strike was not worth it.

Over the coming days, months, and years, the studios, streamers, and their surrogates will take every opportunity to undermine what we have won together. They will seize on the inevitable consessions and compromises made by our NegCom as proof that we “failed.”

They will urge us to overlook all that we won through hard work and unwavering solidarity. They will claim it wasn’t enough, that we should have gotten X instead of Y, that we lost more by striking than we gained in this new contract. And they will be wrong.

They will tell us that the strike was unnecessary, it was a waste of our time and our savings, that our agents or managers or lawyers could have gotten us everything we won through individual negotiations without anyone having to walk a picket line. Well… then why didn’t they?

As hard as it is to believe right now, these lies can work. They’ve worked before. During our 2017 strike authorization vote, it was shocking to discover how many members believed we lost the ‘07-08 strike, in which we went on strike for the internet — and won the internet.

This didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of years of whispering by studios and anti-union allies. And they don’t just do it because they’re bitter about losing. They push the lie that we used our power and lost because they hope to stop us from using our power to win.

Our strike was necessary because, in our individual negotiations, our employers consistently refused to acknowledge our right and reasonable demands. Because the profound changes we needed could only be won through the unique and overwhelming power of collective bargaining.

Our strike was necessary because our employers made it necessary by driving our income down 23% in 10 years. Because they refused to address free work in features, streaming coverage in comedy-variety, the abuses of mini-rooms and the threat of AI until we withheld our labor

Our strike was necessary. Our strike was effective. Our strike is a victory. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, it’s ‘cause they never want to see us stand up for ourselves again. Don’t believe it. We won this fight. We’re the WGA, and when we fight, we win. #WGAStrong"

[seamusquigley]

Cars, corruption, and inept cops: A tale of the Newfoundland T'Railway.

Let's talk about the Newfoundland T'Railway.

For most of you that don't know, the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador is the bit inside the red dotted line.

The southern island is the island of Newfoundland.

Newfoundland used to have a railway. Used to. It doesn't any more (TL;DL, corruption and capitalism).

Having closed down the railway, confining Newfoundland to a typical North American car centrism, it was converted into a trail. Hence, T'Railway. I'd rather have a railway, but a good trail is a nice thing to have. Big cloud; small silver lining.

Now, this is Newfoundland. Which means for much of its length it is used as an ATV highway. In the Metro St. John's area ATVs are banned from the T'Railway, leaving it free to be enjoyed by pedestrians and cyclists alike.

And enjoy it they do. I very much enjoy walking the Bowring Park to Downtown section of it on nice days. A friend of mine uses it to commute by bike all summer. It's a pleasant and easy walk, mostly flat, and somewhat protected at most road crossings by signs like this one.

That is, until you reach the crossing with Southside Road.

Here there is no sign. Worse, an access road has been built and paved.

Walk a little further down the trailway and it becomes clear why. Some asshole has built their garage into the back of their house, 'requiring' car access along the T'Railway.

A little further and we have a house which has also built parking 'requiring' car access along the T'Railway.

Just past the above house we finally have our "No Cars" sign.

How did the owners of that blue house get this sign placed just far enough along a pedestrian trail to allow them to use it as a driveway? What nepotistic connection did they have on the council at the time?

Still, the sign is there. Cars are once again banned and pedestrians and cyclists are both free to use the path safely...

Hmmm. How did that seadoo get there? It sure didn't travel up the (very shallow) Waterford River. Based on the garage just past it, it's very clear that the owner of this house drove past the "No Cars" sign to desposit it.

If you keep walking, you see this.

Some asshat has driven their giant SUV along the expressly pedestrian/cycle path to the garage they've built. The garage that can only be accessed by driving illegally along a pedestrian/cycle path.

The very next house has also built themselves some parking that can only be accessed by driving illegally along a pedestrian/cycle path.

A little further along we have a trailer. A trailer in a location that can only be accessed by driving illegally along a pedestrian/cycle path.

Finally, approximately 200m after crossing Southside Road, we stop seeing blatant evidence of illegal driving. And, presumably, we as pedestrians and/or cyclists can once again use the trail safely. Maybe. If car drivers decide that laws apply to them today.

The houses that got the "No Cars" sign placed partway along the trail don't surprise me; nepotism is rife in this province. Everyone knows it, everyone complains about it, and nothing is ever done about it.

What I want to know is how the houses past that sign can get away with illegally driving along a pedestrian/cycle path. There's no attempt to hide what they're doing. There's no sense that they aren't perfectly within their right to ignore the rules because they are car owners. There's not even an inkling that someone might think of enforcing the rules they're flagrantly breaking.

Fuck everything that's not a car, apparently.

[seamusquigley]

"We're problems to be solved, not citizens. That's why you never hear politicians talking about 'citizens,' it's all 'taxpayers,' as though the salient fact of your relationship to the state is how much you pay. Like the state was a business and citizenship was a loyalty program that rewarded you for your custom with roads and health care."

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow