Messages

106

Drama / Re: [BRICKADIA NEWS] Port, fiance of Evar, proven to like kids

« on: August 23, 2022, 09:36:15 AM »

what did you do to this person in the brickadia discord, soukuw?

More personal attacks and apparently from 2019

so... what did he do to that person in the brickadia discord?

107

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Disgusting tricks the media will use to manipulate people.

« on: August 23, 2022, 09:27:50 AM »

all of your replies have belied the point that pretty much every war after the soviet union fell hasn't been a strategic necessity, it was just the military industrial complex creating new hot zones to keep itself alive after america's biggest threat was neutralized. the iraq invasion was predicated on the completely fabricated idea that they had WMDs.

the trojan war was fought because helen wanted to bang some hot prince over a warlord king. there's never a morally or strategically justified reason to go to war. all the refugees of war can hope for is that the war ends quickly. they don't care who wins, because there are no sides; only tragic loss of life.

the soviet union falling didn't mark any important changes in the strategies of war. armed combat has never been justified in all human history, and the 'reasons' warlords presented for why they fight are always bullstuff.

108

General Discussion / Re: Who here has never changed their avatar?

« on: August 22, 2022, 12:15:47 PM »

physically impossible to change mine

109

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Disgusting tricks the media will use to manipulate people.

« on: August 22, 2022, 07:46:16 AM »

I wrote something long without holes a couple days ago but it logged me out when I tried to post it. RQed. maybe I'll dump the sources I linked

tldr of the main point-- if your government is showing a clear interest in the outcome of a foreign war, and your first response ISN'T to do some rigorous and intellectually honest investigation as to whether your government played a role in starting that war, then there's something wrong with your mind. something called a "war on terror" should elicit hysterical laughter if you have any critical thinking abilities

i agree with this. a unique perspective perhaps, i believe strongly in the idea that invaders have a moral obligation to execute the fastest and most effective invasion possible in order to limit loss of civilian and military life.

the strength and finality of a first strike largely determines how many people will die in the future of the conflict. i like to look at the iraq invasion as one of the strongest shows of force followed by the weakest outreach and de-escalation efforts possible. a cohesive modern military force can execute a strong strike that knocks out most of a country's comms and air support, but the large size of an army leads to logistics and communication errors. these errors stack up leading to underequipped, outnumbered squads of soldiers prone to perpetrating war crimes. coalition soldiers quickly lost the support and positive perception of the local population, and most/all attempts to outreach and establish infrastructure with local tribes ended in civilian deaths as well as ambushes against coalition soldiers. not unlike them, russia will also be faced with a population of people who hate them and reject their presence if they do succeed at their invasion.

all invaders should have a strong and determined strike plan followed by a stronger, kinder humanitarian effort. however, most armies lack the latter and end up leaving countries in failed state status. failed states are exceptionally prone to insurgencies and terror, and fighting against these forces is arguably more complicated and resource and time consuming than planning an invasion. insult to injury, guerilla/asymmetrical warfare has never been studied well and we (the world) have very few examples from which to study. most written documents on asymmetrical warfare and counterinsurgency were written during and after the 1930s, as the gap in combat effectiveness between armies began to increase drastically with new weaponry. ironically, i live in a country founded on independence, militia and insurgency that actively tries to prevent other countries from reaching the same goal. you think with a history so embedded in asymmetrical warfare, the government would plan counterinsurgencies that were more effective and less detrimental to civilian life. instead, Americans are generally remembered in most parts of the middle east and south america as imperialistic invaders and not freedom fighters.

in the coming years, invasions around the pacific are highly likely. hoping for permanent peace is unrealistic and naive, instead i hope for competent invaders that bring not just armor and soldiers, but doctors, translators, humanitarian corridors ready to salvage and preserve whatever human life, property and society survives combat.

110

Off Topic / Re: 2d background parallax combined with planetoid curvature

« on: August 21, 2022, 09:48:40 PM »

alternative answer: do not change the rotation speed, change the size of the background. should remain in-sync with foreground angle, like looking at a cylinder

correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't this have no effect? if two circles of different size rotate at the same speed, they'll still always have the same angle relative to each other. the only thing i can visualize is the background having a different curvature than the foreground due to the perspective.

an orthographic camera would also not agree with this method, as without the perspective the background would look static relative to the foreground

tbh the only real solution i can think of is to have two or more different backgrounds, which would allow you to reset the origin point of the parallax when transitioning in between backgrounds. trying to find a solution with only one constant background is gonna be super forgety since you're trying to visually represent non-euclidean bullstuff in a way that doesn't ruin the illusion

i was thinking about writing a shader for the background that renders images with curvature in real-time. the one problem then would be the camera's zoom and position matrix. i could see zooming out of the planet leading to some stretching/warping of the images, i'm just wondering if there's a good formula for having the perspective remain uniform regardless of the camera's zoom of the planet

111

Off Topic / 2d background parallax combined with planetoid curvature

« on: August 20, 2022, 01:08:33 AM »

this is a really strange general math question im putting here before i post to stack exchange. this doesn't belong in mod discussion because it is not for blockland, it is just a general problem that i've been trying to wrap my head around.

i am trying to combine two different visual effects into one which i can mentally picture but on paper seems physically impossible. the two effects are as follows:

2d parallax



this one is simple. its multiple layers that use coordinates relative to the player but move at different scales to give the illusion of depth. layers that move slower (ie 1/2th the coordinates of the player) appear farther, while those that move faster fit well in a foreground.

2d planetoid with curvature



this one is a little more complicated. it usually involves deforming/texturing a circle/sphere procedurally and it uses a radial coordinate system (coordinates can repeat and are maximum 360 degrees)


the problem: combining the two.

typical parallax uses a 2d cartesian x-y coordinate system, while planetoids/circles use 2d polar r-θ coordinate system. although they can be converted between each other, a polar parallax has several problems. first, all background layers of a planet must be the same or larger in radius in order to be visible to the camera (bigger than the planet). second, they must rotate slower than the camera rotates around the planet. the 'slower rotation' of the background circle is what is stumping me up. this is only for backgrounds, while foregrounds suffer from a similar but opposite spectrum of problems.

a slower circular background will have more data than required to display, as it will take more relative rotations of the planet to fully view all its data. this data (the 'dark side' of the planet) will never actually be viewed or used by the game because it isn't physically sound and is irrelevant. a faster circular background (foreground) will have less data than can be displayed on one rotation, leading to a problem of packing more than one rotation's worth of background into one rotation.

i drew a diagram to help communicate the ideas.

green circle - outer background circle (rotates at 0.5x speed)
red circle - inner planet circle (rotates at 1x speed)



if you superimpose two circles on each other and have the outer one rotate at 0.5 speed the inner one, by the time you traverse half the planet you would've traversed a quarter of the outer circle's background



this works fine until you traverse the whole planet once, after which you've only traversed half of the outer circle. this means, your second run around the red circle, you'd have an entirely different side of the outer circle. one hacky handicapped solution i found was to just cut the outer circle in half. since only half of the outer background can be viewed in one full planetary rotation, there is no need to display/store the other half. this half could be cloned on the opposite side of the planet and the seams connected to give the illusion of one continuous circular parallax background





this solution is far from ideal and i'm still looking for a more sound, mathematical solution. for example, this method is a mind forget on foreground (backgrounds that parallax faster than the planet) because it requires packing two circles' worth of data into one. if anyone has ever encountered a mathematically similar problem in the field of trigonometry and has some insight i'd love to hear it. this problem has been driving me partially insane for the last 5 months and has been a major holdup for one of my game design projects.

112

Off Topic / Re: Hiring dev(s) for a Blockland-inspired game engine

« on: August 16, 2022, 05:51:49 PM »

Phant - would you like to continue discussion in private? We're in a "closed door" phase and trying not to hand out too much.

i'd like to continue the discussion directly once i have a better sense of what the project is about. if you aren't able to answer any of the questions whatsoever i don't see myself (or many others) taking time out of our day to reach out.

if there is any information you're willing to share publicly, please do, because there's not much to go on based on what you shared. it doesn't even have to be specific details or company secrets, even just more screenshots or a better idea of what we're seeing would help

113

Suggestions & Requests / Re: Support_EngineSounds improvements

« on: August 09, 2022, 10:11:45 PM »

yes, but not in the way you described
sounds can't loop halfway through, only the entire thing so you'll have to split your sound files

if i remember correctly, you can stop any looping or non-looping sound by playing another sound in the same slot

114

Drama / Re: Plastiware was arrested for child research

« on: August 09, 2022, 09:18:19 PM »

joshua 'douse the house' moon

115

Off Topic / Re: Hiring dev(s) for a Blockland-inspired game engine

« on: August 09, 2022, 07:05:13 PM »

to put it less harshly the minecraftesque aesthetic has been pissed into the ground by every mobile game clone or cashgrab that you will only be mocked for it no matter your sincerity, especially if you're making a sandbox game. the screenshot makes me think its a rip of roblox's early 2010s pbs terrain which of course is a rip of the craft.
footnote the textures are akin to one of those simplistic mc texture packs 11 year old me would make

i wouldn't judge the textures so harshly, it's not even in prototype phase yet. the greatest developers know how to leverage placeholders to free up more resources for the core features.

from the image in the OP alone you can see that they know how to handle UVs properly, which is arguably the hardest part of texturing. however, cubes aren't that hard to UV map so it doesn't say much. there's evidence of duplication, as seen in the trees. the terrain looks handmade but its possible they also have some rudimentary terrain generation set up.

116

General Discussion / Re: Block Gang - Judgement of Traitors

« on: August 09, 2022, 06:30:24 PM »

Name two things that go together better than Racism and accusations of child enthusiasm.

rendergoi and half of his wife's assets

117

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Dems seeing their Polls, Desperately Raid Annoying Orange's Home

« on: August 09, 2022, 06:11:15 PM »

The president as commander in chief signs off all military orders and as such "the buck stops here" in who to blame for the bad ones.

Secondly, you're completely ignoring the US backed Saudi attack on Yemen in which Obama sold $1.29 bil in smart bombs that, and I quote the human rights watch:

A few casualties is one thing, you and your administration killing thousands and wounding thousands more, a lot who were children, all civilians, is in my opinion at least worth looking into.

But we're the US so no one calls us on it for some reason

the US is a country built on the arms trade. was this $1.29 bil deal completed before or after the civilian bombings? if after, an investigation is definitely necessary. if before, you can only blame the us government for arming them, but the saidi coalition soldiers were the ones who pulled the trigger. ironically, the US also funded and armed the opposing forces of the civil war, which also committed several atrocities against civilians.

houthi fighters are a guerilla force and guerilla warfare prompts some of the worst humanitarian crises in history. its hard to accurately deliver ordinance to a target that routinely shoots and scoots behind the cover of a civilian population. armies have to make a tough call between endangering their soldiers or conducting less-than-ideal strikes on enemies hidden deep within towns and cities. it never excuses the mass killing of civilians, but stresses the need for more surgical weapons such as the US's prototype ninja hellfires which shred targets with minimal collateral damage.

all modern militaries should have a dedicated sector to preventing collateral and civilian casualties, but it's never properly funded or explored in wars where show of force and shock and awe are the invading forces' MO. for example, a mass civilian evacuation plan is impossible for armies that need a first-strike advantage to achieve their objective. letting the hostile force know exactly which cities and towns you plan on attacking is counterproductive and can potentially lead to more soldier casualties than a highly classified ambush operation.

war is hell, and the laws of war are routinely violated by all forces involved in combat. armies do the best they can to court martial war criminals after combat, but doing so during combat isn't possible when you need every soldier to be combat-effective and mobile. these decisions happen further down the pecking order than presidents or leaders are able to control.

118

General Discussion / Re: Block Gang - Judgement of Traitors

« on: August 09, 2022, 05:03:33 PM »

Name two things that go together better than Racism and accusations of child enthusiasm.

rendergoi and his wife's divorce papers

119

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Dems seeing their Polls, Desperately Raid Annoying Orange's Home

« on: August 09, 2022, 03:31:01 PM »

And Obama, don't forget the countless innocent civilians carelessly killed in his drone war

most of the drone strikes armies authorize do not have reported civilians at the time of authorization. most drone collateral is caused by bad/incomplete communication between recon teams, drone operators, ordinance operators and the people above them in rank that authorize the attack.

leaders are in a unique position where they have the power to change the world but must also take responsibility for how it changes. however, presidents aren't the only people in an army with that power. even someone like putin, who most of the world hates right now, isn't directly responsible for the artillery strikes that killed civilians. the direct responsibility falls on the ground and air crews that misidentified civilians as military targets. someone like him is indirectly responsible for authorizing and publicizing the war, but war is war and once it's started it goes sideways fast. ground units get hit by accurate fire, call artillery assistance on the position they think they're taking fire from. these positions range over several km until they narrow their targets and score an accurate hit. civilians hiding in their homes, operating vehicles or carrying long items that can be misidentified as weapons tend to be killed before anyone even realizes they are civilians. these tough decisions become even tougher during asymmetrical warfare, as anyone driving a car or even walking could carry an IED or report your position to enemies.

obama authorized the use of thousands of hellfire missiles during the waning days of the war on terror. most of these quarter million dollar missiles were good hits on enemy armor and infantry. a few of them were bad hits on civilians, and at least three were friendly fire hits on US ground vehicles. he can't be directly responsible for the mistakes of ground crew with hundreds of ranks of separation between them, nor the gunner who launched the missile on bad information reported over their comms. however, these kinds of mistakes should be planned for and targets properly investigated before the strikes. leaving ground units to take fire and report incorrect coordinates under this intense fire is very irresponsible.

120

Drama / Re: Has Tony had a single drop to drink since January 2022?

« on: August 09, 2022, 02:32:20 PM »