Why triple-A RPGs focus on violence ✶

As descendants of hunter-gatherers, there’s a thrill felt by many humans, maybe around 50% of them, when swinging or launching a projectile that hits a target. The opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a good example.

Maybe this is a reason violence in video games is so popular. It lets humans express it in play without real-world consequences.

Yet, at least. See Ender’s Game, Ready Player One, drones in ongoing wars, and James Somers’ writing about AI and robotics for a glimpse of a future, or present, where joypad-controlled machines kill remotely.

The most efficient killers, however, are the ones who can convince a mob to kill for them. Unfortunately, once in a while, they take power.

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

—Primo Levi

DOOM: The Gallery Experience ✶

Admire the glasses and critically curious, somewhat worried expression of your space marine avatar while drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvers in a web browser experience “…created as an art piece designed to parody the wonderfully pretentious world of gallery openings.”

Press 1 to switch from the glass of wine to your hand and then click each artwork for a close-up, then click the title of the artwork to open its page at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Zelda Breath of the Wild controls ✶

After playing this video game art piece again yesterday I’ve updated the Zelda BotW page with a table of controls to help avoid future rage during livestreams.

Friday, 3 January 2025

Create new Textmate bundle or snippet using Bundle Editor

❦

The following doesn’t seem to be in Textmate’s manual, there are no UI buttons to press, and I’ve forgotten how to create or edit Textmate bundles often enough to write this down:

  1. Top menu → Bundles → Edit Bundles
  2. Cmd + N to create new item
  3. Name the item on right sidebar
  4. Cmd + S to save an item
  5. Cmd + Delete to delete a selected item

Examples

HTML <img> tag snippet, inserted by typing img and pressing Tab, then pressing Tab again to jump between defined fields:

<img src="${1:URL}" alt="${2:ALT Description}" width="${3:Width. Usually 650.}" class="rounded">

Date and time in UTC/Zulu format for current locale snippet, inserted by typing dz and pressing Tab:

`date +%Y-%m-%d\T%H:%M:%S%z`

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .
Abject Audio Inputs ✶

Utility to bind inputs from your keyboard to frequencies recorded from your audio devices so you can control a video game character with a musical instrument.

Tuesday, 31 December 2024

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

❦

Joan Rambo in the first episode of HyperTextHero Bannerlord streams.

Horse & Sword II: Flaghugger, or Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord (Steam), is the first video game I’ve played that follows your avatar from birth, childhood and youth (character creation phase), to a life, potential children, and death, and then onwards to your offspring’s turns around the sun.

A strategy action role-playing thing, Bannerlord takes us back to the Middle Ages in a world of fiction-based-on-fact, where romance, commerce, and leadership is punctuated by brutal melee crowd combat.

War does change. It’s humans who don’t.

HyperTextHero Bannerlord videos originally livestreamed at twitch.tv/hypertexthero will be listed here, as our orphan, Joan Rambo, gallops across lands, searching for her siblings, for power, for vengeance.

1 · Character creation, tutorial

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Image slideshow for OBS with captions generated from filenames of images in a folder

❦

A screenshot showing the slideshow running in OBS with Photoshop, Terminal, and Textmate open at HyperTextHero’s.

  1. Download Browser Image Slideshow and follow install instructions step 0 in the project description.
  2. Put images in the /images/ folder.
  3. Rename image files to: Title, ####, Author..ext …where #### is year of creation (if unsure, use c.####-####), and .ext is the file extension, such as .gif or .jpg.
  4. In Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), in the Sources window, click + and select Browser, give the source a name like Slideshow and click OK, then check the checkbox by Local file and select the downloaded BrowserImageSlideshow.html
  5. Check checkboxes for both Shutdown source when not visible and Refresh browser when scene becomes active.
  6. Run the following command from a macOS Terminal command prompt inside the BrowserImageSlideshow folder whenever a new image is added to the folder, including the first time you run it:
    ./RefreshImages.sh On Windows I think you need to run RefreshImagesW.cmd instead.

If you want diacritics (accented characters) in image captions, add the following line directly below <!DOCTYPE html> in BrowserImageSlideshow.html: <meta charset="UTF-8">

To change slideshow look and layout edit the CSS styles at the top of BrowserImageSlideshow.html, save the file, then click the eye icon next to Slideshow in OBS’s Sources twice to refresh the source and see changes.

To change slide duration, order (default is random), autoplay, and enable or disable captions, edit the settings.js file in the BrowserImageSlideshow folder.

Change slide fade duration to 1 second by changing:
let fadeDuration = slideDuration * 0.25;
…to:
let fadeDuration = 1000; // 1 second fade duration
in the JavaScript in BrowserImageSlideshow.html

Thanks to dustymethod, NaGeLBaileyVT, and SocksTheWolf for making BrowserImageSlideshow.

You can see it running during my Co-working & Studying Sound Space streams at twitch.tv/hypertexthero.

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Video game fonts

❦

An ongoing list of typefaces, or fonts, used in various video games I’ve played. It includes fonts in game user interfaces (UI) and marketing materials, and there may be guesses and mistakes.

I’ve identified these with the following tools: Friends, internet citizens, websites like What The Font, books, Mark I Eyeball, and design work experience.

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Monday, 30 December 2024

Apollo-11 HSK TV monitor polaroid pictures ✶

A click on each broken thumbnail reveals the images.

Browser image slideshow for OBS ✶

With captions generated from the filenames of the images that you put in a folder. Supports many image types including animated gifs, avif, svg, and bmp, and webp. I’ve added this to the streaming guide.

Show time in other time zones in macOS menubar ✶

With the free Hovrly utility.

Sunday, 29 December 2024

Goodbye, Jimmy Carter ✶

I came along at a time when Americans still remembered painfully the lies told and the debacle of Watergate. I was outside of Washington, I was not stigmatized by the mistakes that had been made in those previous years. And I brought a fresh face of a peanut farmer, a working man who swore never to tell a lie or make a misleading statement.

An unlucky president, and a lucky man.

Wednesday, 25 December 2024

Noticing nature ✶

Our surroundings can impact our well-being for better or worse, but we’re not always aware of these effects. This practice asks you to pay attention in particular to the feelings evoked by nature. Research suggests that people often feel positive emotions like awe, connectedness, and hope in natural settings, and taking time to acknowledge these feelings can strengthen them.

Monday, 23 December 2024

Two thousand and twenty-four

❦

2024. Click to see HyperTextHero merch using this typeface.

2024, a better spin around the sun and behind the moon than the previous one here at HyperTextHero Headquarters.

Visited friends, found more help for mom, started playing piano, and late in the year, with the help of new accessories, got my livestream back on schedule, even if temporarily as 2025 is looking busy for In Real Life movement.

Here are some of my favorite things done or discovered:

Books

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, on my display shelf.

Films & Series

A closeup of Cillian Murphy’s face from the final scene of Oppenheimer.

Songs ♫

The Gods We Can Touch vinyl cover detail, on my display shelf.

Video Games

A screenshot from a mission played with friends versus killer robots in Helldivers 2.

  • Dedicated pages with links to each episode of video games I play were made this year. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see a list of the current ones, or visit the Articles page. Variety seems to be the true name of the HyperTextHero video game game.
  • Helldivers 2. An action comedy troupe theatrically powered by the best sound track since the original Star Wars and Rambo II: The Mission.
  • Delighted to have a new Flight Simulator, but waiting for creases to be ironed off my pilot’s shirt before begining my flight around a digital Earth in 2025.
  • Starfield didn’t reach the heights of the hype, but I still enjoyed its soundscapes and occasional wild low gravity combat to finish it.
  • Kithack Model Club keeps improving. I see a bright future for this one-of-a-kind radio controlled plane, car, and boat simulator and aeronautical enginerring and 3D modelling piece of digital education by the creator of Kerbal Space Program.
  • Arma Reforger is better, too, out in the light of day, with only desync during vehicle collisions remaining in my “particularly annoying” bug list.
  • Sneaking into this list a few minutes before 2025, the strategic layers of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, along with a rekindling of Jagged Alliance 3 gave a welcome break from the always-moving nature of simulation action games I’m partial to.

Visual Art & Objects

  • Tove Jansson: Bird Blue, 1953 (detail). © Tove Jansson Estate. Photo: HAM / Maija Toivanen.
  • Trips to visit friends with a decade+ old X100S, and then the lovely X100VI, rekindled my candid photography. The VI is my first new dedicated, non-phone camera in over a decade. Thank you for making this thing, Fujifilm people!
  • Bozeman Tall winter boots (thanks, babe!)

Websites

  • Hacker News, still one of the very best places to find and discuss interesting things on the internet, thanks to moderators like dang.
  • PAXsims, “devoted to the development and effective use of games and simulation-based learning concerning issues of conflict, peacebuilding, and development in fragile and conflict-affected states, as well as to the policy application of gaming and simulation techniques.”
  • My favorite blog writer of 2024 was Simon Willison. Clear, thoughtful, expert commentary about technology, including AI.

Todo list for 2025

  • In the beginning of the day, don’t look at your phone or computer. Avoid news especially, and instead write your thoughts, draw something, work on a song, make something, anything. Don’t let your day get sucked away with things that you can’t control
  • Excercise every day. Also 20–40 minute walks or 100 basketball jumpshots, if possible.
  • Publish first original song, publish first EP.
  • Draw daily, even a 5 minute drawing. Try more drawing streams.
  • Write daily, even for 5 minutes.
  • Learn a new song or practice one or two from existing set two or three times a week.
  • Write postcards to people.
  • Continue editing YWAB.
  • Set up a weekly “office hours” stream to help people.
  • Cold water on face after any shower to help keep sinuses clear.
  • Add any streamed video game episode to YouTube and link to it from articles about the game here. Don’t worry about not finishing games. Keep going with ones you like. Let others go.
  • Set up bird/nature cam for Sound Space streams.
  • Make a 1 minute stream trailer and a 5 minute film.

Wishing you a good 2025, dear visitor!

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century ✶

Also available in a visual graphic edition.

Saturday, 21 December 2024

On Exactitude in Science ✶

A one paragraph short story by Jorge Luis Borges:

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

(Suarez Miranda,Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658)

—Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. Via Edwin Evans-Thirlwell’s RPS article about Microsoft Flight Simulator’s earth mapping quest.

Friday, 20 December 2024

Terraria

❦

Terraria Logo

Digging into the pixels in my text editor to make a cosy home for notes about pixel art-powered 2D game Terraria along with links to Terraria videos from the HyperTextHero Twitch livestream: 1

2024-12-27

Terraria is a sort of 2D Valheim.

2024-12-20

For a more comfortable user interface, when in-game click on Settings on the bottom-right and increase Zoom and UI Scale.

Hold Left Ctrl to see a preview of placement. Cut with axe, dig with pick, etc.

Press Esc to open inventory and build a workbench by right-clicking on its icon in the crafting menu on the left of the screen. When near the workbench other items appear in the crafting menu. For example, build many arrows by right-clicking on their icons continuously, then left-click on the inventory slots on the top of the screen to place them in your inventory.

Cut some trees and build a house (walls, roof, door) as soon as you can for protection from enemies, especially zombies and other abominations that come in the night. Build by dragging the wood to the top inventory bar, then press the number corresponding to the wood and left-click on the screen to build. Don’t worry, you can plant more trees.

Build background walls to complete a house (they look like a brown 4-block square). The simplest house is a box with background walls, and a door. If you add a table, a chair, and a light source like a torch an NPC will move in who can then give you tips. Right-click on the NPC, select Crafting, drag an item from your inventory to the Place a material here slot to see what you can build with it.

Thanks UK_Oxide for many of these tips, and to Mike P for joining me in my first coop Terraria game!

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Demos

❦

Video game makers sometimes publish demonstration versions of their games, that I occasionally play. When I do, I list them here.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: 1

Far Cry 6: 1 2 3 4 

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Thursday, 19 December 2024

Cooperative video games

❦

Cooperation is a human superpower, especially in video games. Here’s a list of good ones I’ve played, with the number of players supported, in alphabetical order. =todo Make tables sortable

Coop Game Name Number of Players
Arma 2, 3 128+ in dedicated servers
Arma Reforger 128+ in dedicated servers
Battle City 2
Broforce 4
Contra, Super Contra, Contra III 2
DayZ (Arma 2 mod version) 60
Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) 50+ in dedicated servers
Deep Rock Galactic 4
Diablo 2, 3, 4 4
Divinity: Original Sin II 4
Double Dragon 2: The Revenge 2
Elden Ring 5 with seamless coop mod
Elite: Dangerous 4 per wing
Fallout 76 8
Far Cry 4, 5, 6 2
Generation Zero 4
Ghost Recon Breakpoint 4
Ghost Recon Wildlands 4
GTA Online 4 Orgs, 7 Cycle Clubs, 2048 custom servers
Helldivers 2 4
IL-2 Great Battles 50+ in dedicated servers
It Takes Two 2
Jagged Alliance 3 2
Kithack Model Club 8+
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, 2024 Infinite?
No Man’s Sky 32
Noita 30 with together mod
Project Zomboid 32 only, 4 locally
PUBG 4 in squad
Red Dead Redemption 2 8
Sea of Thieves 4
Space Invaders 2
Spelunky 2 2
Starbound 4–infinite
Star Citizen 40?
Streets of Rage 4 4
Super Smash TV 2
Super Tennis 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time 2
Terraria 8
The Division 2 4
The Forest 8
Valheim 10
War Thunder 4
Watch Dogs: Legion 4

And here are other cooperative video games I hear are good, that I’m interested in playing but haven’t tried yet, with how many players each support:

Coop Game Name Number of Players
Armor Alley 2
Baldur’s Gate 3 4, 8 with mod
Bellwright 4
Enshrouded 16
Eonfall 4?
Fall Guys 40
Fury Unleashed 2
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light 2
No More Room In Hell 2 8
Nuclear Option 16
Path of Exile 2 6
Portal 2 2
Remnant: From the Ashes 1, 2 3
Rimworld 8 with mod
Risk of Rain 1, 2 4
River City Ransom 2
Roboquest 2
Satisfactory 4
Stormworks 6
Streets of Rogue 1, 2 4
Synthetick 2 4
Untitled Goose Game 2 local
Warhamer: Vermintide 2 4
Wartales 4
Windblown 3 
˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Drone dream

❦

Strange noise and wind. London? Hyde Park? Small, quick moving forms darting in the sky. Missiles from The Culture or Dune? Mini F-14 Tomcats. Zipping past me, one, two of them. They’re causing the noise and the wind? Rumbling, crumbling walls. Curled up earth. Maybe playing War Thunder test flights versus fast Mig-15s and reading about the intersection of AI and robotics brought these flying things to this dream? Phone tracking. RF (radio frequencies). Faraday cage around phone to hide it. Person-shaped small killer drone comes in through window, towards Last Known Location of phone. It approaches someone else. I sneak up on the drone to destroy it.

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Manual automatic transmission rage

❦

Having experience with both manual and automatic transmission, I’d argue manual is more difficult but gives you more control, especially for slowing down safely using low gears, and makes you focus on driving rather than the beverage placed in a drink holder or your friends’ messages in the screen of your phone as you careen past a red light into a busy intersection or pedestrians waiting for a bus.

7 years in heavy traffic in São Paulo to and from school with my dad cursing, and driving an hour and a half each way to a job in Rome for a year made me familiar with the rage on the road.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas helped transfer mine to video games then, and I have since kept the promise I made to myself that I’d never drive in traffic regularly to go to work again.

Living in a rural area now, I reluctantly co-own a car, but still think the things are best in video games like Grand Theft Auto, and that spending hours at a time in them, separated from others inside their own machines feet away from you in heavy traffic, driving in a city, is a form of insanity.

Just rambling on a Wednesday here, putting this post up as a place to write down more automobile stories from real life and virtual worlds, and to expand on a comment made over at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Further information on the effects of cars or the lack of them:

PS. I’ve put Wreckfest 1 and 2 in my list of wishes.

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Moon ✶

Always exciting to see articles by Bartosz Ciechanowski, masterful interactive physics demonstrations, joining my news feed orbit.

The Moon may be just an unassuming neighbor in the sky, but its presence affects our lives in many subtle ways. When it reflects sunlight off its scarred surface to guide the way in the darkness of night, or as it breathes life into oceans by rhythmically raising tides, or when it cloaks the Sun in a rare and awe-inspiring total solar eclipse, the Moon reminds us of the celestial world right outside of the safe confines of our planet.

Monday, 16 December 2024

HTML playing card suit symbols

❦

♠ Spades

&spades;
&#x2660;

♥ Hearts

&hearts;
&#x2665;

♣ Clubs

&clubs;
&#x2663;

♦ Diamonds

&diams;
&#x2666;

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .
ESAK ✶

These types of labels can only be rough approximations at best due to the 2-dimensional nature of x-axis and y-axis graphs, but they’re still useful, so here’s my Bartle taxonomy questionnaire result:

You are 87% Explorer

What Bartle says:

♠ Explorers delight in having the game expose its internal machinations to them. They try progressively esoteric actions in wild, out-of-the-way places, looking for interesting features (ie. bugs) and figuring out how things work. Scoring points may be necessary to enter some next phase of exploration, but it’s tedious, and anyone with half a brain can do it. Killing is quicker, and might be a constructive exercise in its own right, but it causes too much hassle in the long run if the deceased return to seek retribution. Socialising can be informative as a source of new ideas to try out, but most of what people say is irrelevant or old hat. The real fun comes only from discovery, and making the most complete set of maps in existence.

You are also:

♥ 60% Socialiser

♦ 47% Achiever

♣ 7% Killer

This result may be abbreviated as ESAK.

Richard Bartle on text:

If there was some kind of technology which could enable you to talk straight to the imagination…Well, there is. It’s called text, and it’s been around several thousand years.

One example of the value of a sprinkle of text added on top of an existing video game: A text message about seeing footsteps headed in a rough direction with estimated number of people in the group popping up in the user-made Arma 3 mission Pilgrimage added so much drama and interesting decisions to the game.

Sunday, 15 December 2024

Fight Flight!

❦

A series of videos of flying machines dueling in video game flight simulation situations. It’s HyperTextHero’s Fight Flight!

Fight Flight! 1 - P-51 D Mustang vs FW-190 Dora in DCS

˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

✶ Linked List
❦ Articles