THE PACK Message Boards

AngryGothChick wrote:Miley isn't that great of a musician

Haha that is an understatement. She is more like a product. If I'm to have a rant it will have to be on the proliferation of talentless, purely demographic-based musicians that infect as many avenues of media as possible, and despite vapid derivative works still insist on calling themselves 'artists'. I know the bourgeoisie love their safety blanket formulas but by god the weekly releases are like a constant nauseating stream of bile and regurgitation. I can't escape it!

Dear Universe,

Bite me.

- Gin

lol

Quoting the mean old teacher from Invader Zim...

"The universe is doomed... doomed... doomed... doomed... doomed... doomed... doomed... GO HOME NOW!"

:3

Doomed...
Doomed...
Doomed...

Well, I've come to accept that when my mother says she needs to use my computer "for just a minute while I check my e-mail," she actually means "for an hour or two while I look at my e-mail, look at my listing sheets, look at the campaign polls, look at my horoscope, etc., etc." That's okay, I expect it, so I can live with it.

What aggravates me is when she says she needs to use my computer "for just a minute" after midnight when I'm ready to go to bed (especially because she insists she can't see the keys without the light right over my bed on).

And that goes double for Thursdays, because she could have used the 8:00-11:00 p.m. bracket to do anything she has to on the computer instead of sitting in front of the TV complaining at the top of her lungs that there's nothing but stupid crap on (which she's watching anyway).

And truly, at this point in my life, nothing pisses me off more than when she finally signs off the computer at 1:00 a.m., and then asks me to set her alarm and mine for 6:00 a.m. "in case I don't wake up in the morning."

Am I out of line, or would that piss off anyone else here as well?

The mere fact that people do that to me when I'm away from home from 7am - 5pm at work during the week... means they have 10 hours to do whatever they have to do regarding internet before I get home. If I come home and want to hog the connection with XBox Live (it saps the bandwidth) I should have that right. People don't think of time management very often. As an opportunist, I consider the habits of others to plan my stuff.

Damn 'n a half. I think I have melamine poisoning.

Here's the story: The FDA just released a food alert. They found a batch of candy, made in China, tainted with melamine. Yeah, just like the pet food last year. Except it's candy and pre-packaged foods with milk and egg powder in the ingredients.

SO...I got a bunch of gummi roadkill candy from Oriental Trading Co. a week ago, and you have exactly one guess as to where it was made. Yeah.

The worst of it was, I got some chocolate coins in bulk from Winco earlier this week. I picked up some Dr. Scab's Monster Lab candy, too. And........I've been having a couple pieces a day.

So this morning, I woke up feeling crappy, stiff and congested. So I think I might have melamine poisoning. I'm going to my doctor in an hour and I'll have him have the lab check my blood sample out for melamine.

This is the venting thread, so here I go:

GOD DAMN THE CHINESE AND DOUBLE GOD DAMN IN BOLD CAPS ON THOSE STOOGES IN THE FDA FOR LETTING THIS s*** IN THE COUNTRY!!! I'm out $20, which on my living budget is a big chunk, and now I have to buy candy with a verifiable source to replace it! I'm cross-eyed and almost unspeakably pissed about this. BOYCOTT CHINA!! BOYCOTT CHINA!!!

Just when I think McCain and his supporters have hit rock bottom. . .

WHAT KIND OF CRAP IS THIS?!!!

Warning to all Virginia Democrats: You are supposed to vote on the 4th. Everybody votes on the 4th. This is a deliberate ploy to prevent Democrats in the battleground state from voting. I repeat, all Virgina Democrats do vote on the 4th.

Dear People,

STOP BEING OBNOXIOUS.

kthx.

*ahem*

Eff Sargent Hatred and Governor Avon-Lady.

Eff Joe the fake plumber / country music singer.

Eff the little bint that carved a B for Barack into her cheek and told police a black man did it.

Eff those Texan teenage bimbos and their "Obama loves Osama BFF" tees.

Eff the prick that lit his neighbor's Obama/Biden sign on fire.

Eff the S.O.B.s that printed the "Democrats vote on the 5th" flier.

Eff the Republicans that always responded to criticism by accusing the media of bias.

And eff the media that backed off and went soft on them because of it.

Eff Rush Limbaugh and everyone that took part in "Operation Chaos."

Eff anyone that gives half a crap about Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright.

Eff anyone that thinks shutting down abortion clinics or stopping gays from marrying is more important than the global economy.

Eff anyone that calls Obama a "terrorist," "Arab," "socialist" or "foreigner."

Eff anyone that talks about the war in Iraq the same way they talk about a hockey game.

Eff Bush, Cheney and their flunkies for putting us in this s--thole situation.

Eff the people that put Bush, Cheney and their flunkies in the White House.

And most of all, eff the people that shrugged it all off and are now voting to send us spiraling down into another four years of ruin.

*ahem* That is all. Happy voting everybody.

I'm really grateful that my friends and acquaintances are telling me not to give up on trying to make a game by myself. Really grateful. I s*** you not.

But I think I really should just give it all up.

I'm the type of artist who's all brawn and no brains, ergo I can actually draw a decent smut pic in less than an hour (which i actually did 2 weeks ago), but I can't program a f*** engine from scratch unless I use software such as Multimedia Fusion 2 and Game Maker, because wouldn't you know it, every programming parameter had to be written in moonspeak and not translated for the common idiot to understand. What, do you have to come up with initially illegible gibberish like "relative to", "events", "collisions", "alterative value" or whatever so that you'd spare the world the repeating of the video game crash of 1983? Or did you come up with those terms just so that you'd appease an approval committee that marks the performance of software based on how cryptically it speaks?

And even with user-friendly software like those, I also get lost in them because they have similar behaviours. Know what that means? That means i have to rely on other people for help, in the form of tutorials, as informative and as demonstrative as possible, and not a tutorial with walls and walls of text. First thing that should come to your mind about that would be youtube videos, right? Yeah, same here. So all should be swell with the video tutorials, right?

Nope. I'll tell you why.

The game that i want to design is a bit complicated, see. Allow me to run it down in several criterias:

- Perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEuOi8Z-6hE

- Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2JYFwTgXo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yjBtKMf50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aRfyAkryaE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYk0Pu6L1_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28BdviyRZt8 (just the item crafting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EoP8MEYAek (again, just the item crafting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAcEuPRFx0 (item crafting again)

Alright, I think you get where i'm trying to get at here. But you know what, tutorials for those kinds of games? THEY DON'T EXIST. And the handfuls that are close to the criterias I had were too simplistic, and there weren't any advanced tutorials on specific things. On one hand, I can't blame them, because I'm sure some of them don't know jack on how to make something so professional and complex. But on the other hand, i DO blame them, because some of them are completely oblivious to these games, or think it's just too plain s*** for them to acknowledge.

What are the tutorials available? The most tutorials available for MMF2 or Game Maker are tutorials on how to make platforming games. PLATFORMING GAMES. My f*** god, Mario, what have you done? Then there's the RTS tutorials, and the megaman tutorials, and the contra tutorials, and R-type tutorials that don't even look deep enough into diversifying weapons apart from a simple burst of bullets flying in a single file.

*sigh*

Trust me, I've tried looking. Looking for things like how to make a machine gun with a delayed interval between bullets or the classic Contra spread shot. From google to youtube to even random people at IRC. No such luck. They either don't know, something i can't blame them for a lot of the time, or they tell me to start learning f*** C++ on the fly. "Big surprise, making games means you have to know how to program. Start getting your hands dirty", he says.

You know something? Doing that takes time that I DON'T HAVE. Didn't hear that right? TIME THAT I DON'T HAVE.

If you had suggested me that while I was still in school and not while I'm already expelled from the s*** local educational system, I WOULD'VE HAD A CHANCE, in exchange for the talent in art that i've refined in the sanctity of my own s*** i called a bedroom for a span of 5 years. Go on ahead and lecture me for hours on end about the malvirtue of sloth. I've already dug myself way too deep in a hole where I've stuck myself in a single spectrum while bitching about how games these days just miss all the criterias i've made, with some games making me feel like it's laughing at me whenever it does miss one of my criterias.

That reminds me... WHY am i so desperate in making a game by myself?

Like I said, I'm tired of games being oversaturated with crap that doesn't fit with me 100%. Games i play fit in with me 80%, 90%, 94%, but NOT ONCE was it 100%. And as I've mentioned, some of them play like as if it's mocking the s*** out of me when it knows that it didn't fit in with me. To hell with your Gears of Bore, America, and to hell with your Stale Fantasy, Japan, both of you are at fault for making me look like the most selfish and materialistic little prick in the face of the earth. At least when I'm making my own game I get to monitor what's wrong with the gameplay so that in the end, it wouldn't feel stiff and still have a few more innovations fit in here and there.

Another reason is that I want to make a game with my OWN independent design, with minimal feedback from other people. I have seen far too much of the negativity within user feedback. Have you seen the arguments about what should and shouldn't be in a video game they all get foamy about? "LOL I WANT ANOTHER 10 SHOTOS FOR STREET FIGHTER 5" or "NONONO NO REAL-TIME COMBAT, I ONLY WANT TO MOVE WITH THE CLICK OF A MOUSE COS ANYTHING ELSE WOULDN'T MAKE IT AN ARR TEE ESS", or what about "LOL UR A NOOB, AOE AND ELEMENTAL SHOTS ARE THE COOLEST EVAR!!". And don't get me started about the hundred-page debates going on in Diablo 3 about what should stay and what should go. It's just disgusting and sad for me to read through.

The other major reason is that I'm really tired of having to switch back and forth between games to sate my hunger for gaming. I can play Contra 4 and enjoy its extreme difficulty, but no, I can't enjoy the way it's being presented because it's actually a freakin' compilation of past Contra games in the series. If i want style, I'd have to play something like Armed Police Batrider for MAME. But that means I have to turn off my DS and turn on my laptop to access and play that game, and even then APB would just be a fashion show of bullet patterns. I know that there's an up and down to everything, but do you even realize how tedious it is to constantly make up for the downs a lot more than the ups? Imagine that, a tiny little bug with a stomach the size of Canis Majoris, having to constantly switch between plates of microscopic-sized food and way too slow to switch the plates fast enough to finally be full for once.


*SIGH*


I don't know how much more a fraction of the minority such as myself should say about this. Right now I just feel like crying like a f*** baby, give up my rights to individuality as a gamer, and live my life on as a senile consumer who'll never have his dreams realized because of the constantly-multiplying setbacks.

Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a game architecht. Maybe my talent only lies in making cryptic pictures and characters that only 1 in 500 people would understand the first time they see it, and anything else remotely close to that. Maybe I should just keep editing other people's products. Maybe I'm on the steady road to being the biggest disgrace to video games, because as of now, I'm like a scientist with wild ideas, but constantly getting denied decent equipment to realize that idea because public opinion states that i'm too stupid to think that those ideas would fly. Maybe I should just keep holing myself in my perfect little illusory world after being disappointed for the umpteenth time.

You know what, who knows. I don't really care right now. I feel like killing somebody half-dead.

All I know is that my best bud went to game-making college and he still couldn't make his own game even after he graduated.

Terastas wrote:Eff anyone that gives half a crap about Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright.

Eff anyone that calls Obama a "terrorist," "Arab," "socialist" or "foreigner."

Eff Bush, Cheney and their flunkies for putting us in this s--thole situation.

Eff the people that put Bush, Cheney and their flunkies in the White House.

The first three regard statements of ignorance. McCain's campaign did lots to try and make Obama look like the bad guy, when it was all circumstantial half-truths. A little digging finds that all of it was exaggerated. Also, it wasn't entirely Bush and Cheney's administration that put us where we are, but certainly is a big part of it. Bush was forced to cater to the people that funded his campaigns earlier, such as big oil companies. If he didn't, he'd be outcast as a polititian. In light of 9-11, he did good in attacking Afghanistan. Iraq is raught with controversy though, and pointing the finger at just one person would be too easy. I'd say Bush did as much good as he did bad, which for a President, isn't good enough.

Lastly, insulting the voters that gave Bush another term can be quite infuriating. I voted for Bush, and with careful deliberation of how well he handled things years previous. As we all learned though, these days a President's second term means, "I can do what I want cuz I'm not gonna get voted for again." Most voters didn't see it coming, so blame someone else please.


I only have one genuinely serious complaint.

Eff the people that didn't vote, and complain to no end about the current President Elect.
Voting earns you the right to complain about the government. Amen.

I assume everyone in here has voted.

Kaebora wrote:Most voters didn't see it coming, so blame someone else please.

No offense, but are you sure you just didn't want to see it coming? Bush and Cheney were talking about making it illegal to speak against the government way back in 2002 -- seemed pretty obvious what would happen from where I was watching.

But just out of respect, let me rephrase that one:

Eff the people that knew what would happen but did it anyway.

Terastas wrote:

Kaebora wrote:Most voters didn't see it coming, so blame someone else please.

No offense, but are you sure you just didn't want to see it coming? Bush and Cheney were talking about making it illegal to speak against the government way back in 2002 -- seemed pretty obvious what would happen from where I was watching.

But just out of respect, let me rephrase that one:

Eff the people that knew what would happen but did it anyway.

Meh. Fair enough.

But in regards to the "making it illegal to speak against the government", that's not entirely true. It was more or less an effort to make it illegal to falsify statements regarding the government, aka "civilian-made propoganda". Though, knowing what is true and what is false would mean only going by what the politicians tell you to say, so it was seen as unconstitutional. At least their intentions weren't super-suppresive. I get where they were coming from with it, but I didn't agree with it. All the same, the supreme court would never have consented. Lets face it, politicians hate it when people slander them. Of course some might try and pass stupid laws to prevent that.

If you can be annoyed by anything short of a nuclear strike in your underpants, you should stay out of politics. Thin-skinned people don't last the distance.

I still say: "We get what we deserve." You protest that you didn't do anything that deserves the (fill in the blank) we have now, and I reply:
"We is all of us, every generation; We is everyone!"
No, I'm not using pooor grammer. I'm being exact.

We got here, that means we can leave here, too. Trouble is; the rut of the commonplace is comfortable. Fixing things requires we leave the safety and comfort of that rut we're in.
We can do it; provided we want to...and those last four words are what bites.

Terastas wrote:Well, I've come to accept that when my mother says she needs to use my computer "for just a minute while I check my e-mail," she actually means "for an hour or two while I look at my e-mail, look at my listing sheets, look at the campaign polls, look at my horoscope, etc., etc." That's okay, I expect it, so I can live with it.

What aggravates me is when she says she needs to use my computer "for just a minute" after midnight when I'm ready to go to bed (especially because she insists she can't see the keys without the light right over my bed on).

And that goes double for Thursdays, because she could have used the 8:00-11:00 p.m. bracket to do anything she has to on the computer instead of sitting in front of the TV complaining at the top of her lungs that there's nothing but stupid crap on (which she's watching anyway).

And truly, at this point in my life, nothing pisses me off more than when she finally signs off the computer at 1:00 a.m., and then asks me to set her alarm and mine for 6:00 a.m. "in case I don't wake up in the morning."

She did it again.

This evening she complained to me more than once that there was "nothing but crap and reruns" on Saturday. Then five minutes to midnight, asked to get on the computer "real quick" so she could send an e-mail (not check her e-mail, send an e-mail), knowing full damn well that I was ready to go to bed right then and there (it was literally "OK, good night Mom," "oh wait, can I get on the computer real quick?"), and surfed around until five minutes after 1:00.

Oh, and it gets better: tomorrow (now today) is the day she wants me to come to work with her, 10:00 to 5:00 because she's "worried about the visibility driving home." Call me crazy, but when somebody is about to forfeit seven hours of their day just to make five minutes of yours a little easier, I don't think it's a wise move to deliberately grate on somebody's nerves in such a way that they've vented to your face about more than once in the past.

Oh yes, I am absolutely pissed tonight, and she knows it too. She's done this many times in the past and I've brought it up many times in the past too; she knew what she was doing and she knew it would piss me off. She's either going without me, or she's going to regret it.

So here is where people's true feelings come out...

I spend way too much time thinking about werewolves when I should be out on dates looking for a wife. Why? Yeah I'm obsessed--so what? I need to get a life!

I'm sick of the way things are going in this world. All the people in high up places care about is money and/or fame at the expense of our God-given freedoms! What ever happened to morals and integrity?

I also hate knowing that I could be doing a lot more, yet am too lazy to do it. I know what the purpose of life is and where we'll all end up afterward, and yet I find myself falling in the same old ruts. I hate that I don't really care about people very much (not to harm them, but just not helping them either). I always just try to end conversations when they start instead of trying to add something or really pay attention to what people say.

I am so self centered! I hate it! I have been given so much and have such a great life with amazing parents and grew up in the best neighborhood anyone could hope to live in. All my life I've been surrounded by intelligent, caring, thoughtful, successful people and yet what do I do with everything I've learned? Not much!

I waste so much time on the internet when I could actually be spending time with my family or getting homework done or serving someone else, but nooo! I keep wasting time day after day!

Celestialwolf wrote:So here is where people's true feelings come out...

I spend way too much time thinking about werewolves when I should be out on dates looking for a wife. Why? Yeah I'm obsessed--so what? I need to get a life!

Just so you know, it's not absolutely mandatory that you get married and have a family, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You might think you have to do it because it's "normal," but in my personal experience, people that lecture others on what is and isn't normal are usually just miserable people who try to justify their own mistakes and shortcomings by insisting that it's "normal," "proper" or "the right thing to do." It's a crutch, really; a subconscious attempt to ignore their own problems by berating the alternative.

If you're not ready to start a family, you're not ready to start a family: end of story. Keep waiting for Ms. Right instead of immediately tying the knot with Ms. Right Now. That's my advice to you.

What ever happened to morals and integrity?

Morals are fine. . . For yourself. But it's reached a point where the "Moral Majority" are less interested in analyzing their own moral compasses and more interested in forcing their sense of morality on everyone else.

And much like with the marriage thing I discussed earlier, people are such windbags when it comes to morality because they're trying to put focus on someone else to distract away from their own moral shortcomings.

I have morals. They might not be the same as yours, but we'll never know because I try to keep mine to myself. If you think something has to be done, do it, and if you find something disagreeable, don't do it. That's all there has to be to it.

I don't really feel like it's any place of mine to comment on the rest, but I will say this: I got the impression midway through it that you were sort of parroting something someone else had said to you. My only advice, therefore, would be to take some time to yourself and really ask yourself why you feel that way. If ultimately it was a conclusion you came to on your own, then it might be time to start practicing what you preach, but if you can't think about your "problems" without thinking of someone else, ask yourself why that particular person would want to tell you that.

The one that stuck out for me the most was when you said you were self-centered. Trust me, if you were genuinely self-centered, you'd be too full of yourself to admit it, much less berate yourself over it. I can't say for sure, but my hunch would be that somebody just wants you to think you're being self-centered because you haven't been catering to them like they want you to. Trust me, I've been there before, and looking back, the only thing I regret was not telling them off that much sooner (the people that accuse me of being selfish and self-centered are also the people I've used this thread to rant about the most).

So before you berate yourself, please, take a moment to ask yourself if your problems are really your own or if they're someone else's.

There are a number of things you've touched upon that I can relate to, CW.

One thing that hits close to home is obsession and being too detached from reality to care about doing anything in it (which could also be seen as laziness and listlessness). I spend a worrying amount of time inside my head, because generally it's more interesting in there than it is outside, and the only thing that comes close within the scope of reality are fora, but they only do so much being writ words on a page.

And likewise, I have a similar dislike for people. I can associate with them on a singular level, and I can have respect for them. Usually this happens on the Internet. When I'm shopping in a crowd, at a party, a fair, or some other form of gathering, I have to suppress the urge to grab people and ask them if they even grasp the concept of self-awareness. Most of the time, they move like a herd, and they seem little more than workers in a hive. And I find that both amazingly alienating and scary. The more I'm exposed to people in that way, the more I dislike them, so I tend to isolate myself as much as possible so I don't become completely detached from humanity.

Our World could be so much more incredible than it is, but instead it drags on and as a race I never really know if we're getting anywhere, and our only measurable showing of going forward is Science, as in just about every other field we seem to have stopped still and we're either repeating ourselves or stagnating. There's very little wonder in the World, people rarely stop and utter "Wow." at anything, sometimes I think the majority of humanity will apathy themselves into the grave.

I think that if the majority of people didn't seem so dead inside, I could really enjoy life more. As it is though, there seem to be very few bastions of such people left, and most of them can be found on the Internet alone. Outside of those bastions, I tend to run into people whom I've never gotten an amazed or really enthusiastic reaction regarding anything, no matter how I may try to drag one out of them.

So I'd like to see things that would make any given community just a little more fantastic, just to breathe life back into it. I tend to dream about the various different elements that could do that, and obsess over 'em. Werewolves are just one of those elements, but perhaps one of the most important to me personally (if not the most).

Okay, rant-but-not-really-so-much-of-a-rant-as-it's-not-coupled-by-anger over.

I have to suppress the urge to grab people and ask them if they even grasp the concept of self-awareness

Really empathise with you there. Difference is I include myself.

Wselfwulf wrote:Really empathise with you there. Difference is I include myself.

I tend to waver back and forth.

The thing is, there are some people I respect enough to believe that they're fully aware, that they grasp potentia, and that they dream.

I spend a lot of time thinking on such topics, so usually I give myself the benefit of the doubt, as horribly egotistical as that is (and I freely admit it), but there are times when I become too deeply caught up in trying to quantify everything about myself that I begin to doubt, and I'll doubt just about everything at that point.

But I've always thought that anyone who could reach beyond their own existence, to strive for ideals far beyond what we may ever be capable of, is someone who most likely could be considered as an aware entity.

I suppose it's my respect for certain other people that keeps myself anchored, if I can believe in them, it's a great deal easier to believe in myself.

That's the paradox. Of the things I think I know, I know some of them not to be true. But if knew what those were, I wouldn't think that I knew them. Who needs qualia anyway, right?

Wselfwulf wrote:Who needs qualia anyway, right?

Hm. Fair point. Always liked that word.

I don't really add much to add beyond that, but it was stimulating to have someone to bounce such brain dumps off of. Thanks for the thoughts, Wself.