03 November, 2010

too simple to trust me, too dull to engage, too shallow to please me

There's a lengthy excerpt from the recent Supreme Court case on what makes a video game too violent for the under-eighteens to play; I found myself surprised at how knowledgeable about video games, and the current (accurate) research ongoing on the presumed link between violent games and violence in children the Court was; especially since I thought Scalia was on the conservative side.

Go them.

In other news, I now get to add the word "neutrois" to "cisgender" on my list of Terms That Only Complicate Everything, because of a complaint over a bonehead error that DeviantArt recently pulled (and even then, it wasn't so much the mistake made, which was minor, but the way their cackhanded PR department handled it). Especially Daniel Sowers Jr., who is DeviantArt's designated agent. Bonehead that he is.

I'm not specifically trying to be exclusionary with this stance, it just bugs me. It's like the whole controversy around the gay movement. First gay, then gay and lesbian. Then gay, lesbian and bisexual. Then it was LGBT--the T for transsexual/transgender. Then 'queer' got added, and now intersexed is in there, which means pretty much the only expressions excluded from the community are strict heterosexuals (who are non-supportive, because supportive straights are apparently on board) and people who have pathological sexualities (see pedophiles, for instance). At what point does it just boil back down to "different people"? Or even better, just "people"? We're people. We want the same rights. Everybody should have these rights. Right?

Just stop inventing words, especially if there are already other terms in place that work with less effort. Get real.

The new CEO of Undead Games has decided his massive multiplayer zombie game will ship to consoles, not PCs. Interesting stance. Let's see if it works for him.

Finally, more oddity from Doomed. There's apparently a roleplayer (I shall leave off the hapless unfortunate's name, for once, because she may just be this clueless, not actively stupid) on the Doomed ship who thinks demons are big, fluffy puppies with bad teeth.

Or, to put it closer to what she said to a friend, because her (demonic) character is "nice".

How shall I best break this to the lass...In the story arc of the Doomed ship, demons are the enemy. There are no "nice" demons. If, out of sheer incongruent whimsy, a "nice" demon happens upon the ship, one of two things will happen:

1. The inhabitants of the ship will do their best to kill the demon, because of their prior experience. These are battle-scarred survivors on a ship that has literally been to Hell, and back (or local equivalent), and the inhabitants are paranoid, frightened, and occasionally insane.

or

2. The demons aboard the ship will rip the "nice" demon apart because the so-called "nice" demon is an aberration and must be destroyed.

Period. End of sentence. No negotiation. There are no nice demons on Doomed, just as their are no pure, untouched innocents on Doomed.

Or, put another way, if you are taking on one of these roles, on the Doomed ship? You're dragging in your own mythological subset, because on Doomed, neither virginal purity nor sweet, kind demonology is in evidence. (Because, as said, any evidence of either of these astounding creatures? Would be killed/raped/eaten instantly, before, after or during.)

Move on. Get a new character, dear. You'll just keep dying if you don't.

So what the hell happened to Katharine Berry and megaprim.sl? What new fresh hell are the Phoenix/Emerald devs responsible for now?

It's not going to be without its pitfalls, and likely severe ones, but when mesh uploads finally crawl their way onto the grid (assuming the grid's still there when that eventual day comes), the ten meter limit on prim size is apparently being raised to sixty-four meters.

While this will definitely help builders, especially with the loss of megaprim.sl, I'm fairly sure that's also only to be enabled on "official" SL viewers. Because we all "should" be using the official viewers, natch.

Meanwhile, for those specific-prim needs, there's always Prim Search Login. It sort of works.

At least, it's what we've got for now.

14 comments:

Edward Pearse said...

As for the creation of new words, you're not the only one who wishes people would stop adding new words that replace existing words of the same meaning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdxx8brWrcc

Emilly Orr said...

That, start to finish, was beautiful. He's brilliant.

Aunt Foggy said...

The problem with megaprim.sl is the same problem with Phoenix and Emerald and any number of other projects like this - at risk of sounding like a cranky old woman....
You have a bunch of moody, hormonal teenagers doing this stuff, and unsurprisingly - drama ensues.
You need some teams of tired old farts who are too busy trying to get the house payment made and the kids fed to engage in all the BS :)

Emilly Orr said...

Which would be a good operating theory, save for one thing:

1. Emerald didn't charge for their developed viewers.

2. Phoenix (and Ascent) doesn't charge for their developed viewers.

3. Katharine Berry never charged for megaprim.sl.

Near as I can figure, while there was a driving force behind Modular Systems to eventually be paid for coding, no one was being paid for SL viewer coding. Though I will wholeheartedly agree with you that the dev team lives hip-deep in exaggerated drama and whining, and apparently looooves it there.

Near as I've been able to figure out, Berry was the one that woke up and said--admittedly in dramatic fashion--Wau, these idiots are toxic. I don't need this crap.

Unfort, she said it publically, and there was a definite sense of both severe flounce and harsh ragequit involved.

Edward Pearse said...

Ragequit? Pfft!

I shall have to educate you on the use of the phrase Dummy Spit :-)

Emilly Orr said...

BWAHAHAHA...

I don't know; it seems like 50/50 at this point. It's half, she's simply had it, and half, having a tantrum in public. I think 'dummy spit' sounds like it mostly involves the creation of unconscious drama...though I could be wrong.

Candy said...

So, what exactly is Bs. Berry saying the Phoenix team has done to her? I'm not following here.

-Candy

Candy said...

sorry - that was supposed to be Ms. Berry... this thing needs an edit facilty.

-Candy

Emilly Orr said...

Blogger's needed that function for years; likely won't ever be implemented.

And that's the mystery, isn't it? Her personal website's back up; so, apparently, is the megaprim.sl website. She still seems committed to keeping herself out of SL, though, and reading through her back Tweets just gives the strong impression that there's been duplicity (of some kind) and if she stayed in SL/part of Phoenix development, she'd end up on some tower at MIT with an AK-47, and she'd rather go do something productive with her life.

So what happened? Who knows? I don't even know who to ask, frankly, and I'm having my own login problems with SL at present (going in to gut out the haunted house was the first time I'd been in in nearly a week; this is also the first week I missed not one, but both, of my work shifts for Solace).

(The Solace stuph I intend to apologize for, and make up if I can; for the most part, those were due to unintentionally scheduling appointments out during my standard work hours, not deliberate blowing those hours off.)

Sphynx Soleil said...

HUZZZAH! I can finish my builds! *heaves a huge sigh of relief*

Emilly Orr said...

Which seems to be the general reaction. She had so many offers to host the server box on various parcels, and so many direct messages and open tweets begging her to bring back megaprim.sl, I think she just threw up her hands and said fine.

Still curious as to what happened this time to piss her off, but as said...we may never know.

Candy said...

I use the Salt HUD, and I never really heard of megaprim.sl until reading this blog today. The Salt HUD doesn't get it's prims from megaprim.sl, does it?

-Candy

Emilly Orr said...

No, no, the SALT HUD works on a separate system.

But here's the cool thing about megaprim.sl, and why, I believe, Berry got so many emails/IMs/tweets/Plurks on it over the past week: SALT gives you a prim that is X by Y by Z. Standard. If you have a need for a 10 by 20 by 6, it's good.

What if you need that selfsame 10 by 20 by 6, but you *really* need it locked on one axis, like you need a 20 by 6 by 10, and the 6 *has* to be on Y axis? Megaprim does that. If that doesn't work, try it on 20 by 10 by 6. Or 6 by 20 by 10. Whatever. You can lock one, two, or all axes, and it's surprisingly vast on sizes.

I completed four whole sims that all needed either four meters or eight meters high for prims, no shorter, no taller, but an insane variety of lengths and widths--and I did it all through Berry's little program.

Sphynx Soleil said...

What Miss Orr is alluding to is that megaprim.sl has a MUCH larger variety of sizes of prims than the Salt HUD or the PrimSearch systems. I haven't had to "fudge" sizes (by that I mean "Oops, can't get that size, hrmmmm ok what's close, I'll readjust the rest") since I was pointed to it.

In fact, there's a couple builds where I can go back and drop the prims even further now that I can GET those exact sizings.

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...