Is Implementing COVID19 Related Content Into Games Really That Bad?

I never expected to write a blog post related to COVID19. Though I kind of ended up in a discussion that even got me muted on a Discord Server after backing down and apologizing informally for the missteps I've done (like ambiguity). The big topic of today is: "Is it okay to build in references, memes or jokes about catastrophes like pandemics into your games."

Making Fun Of Pandemics!?

Now, why would you ridicule something this serious and terrible? Do you have no decency? Are you unable to see the seriousness of it?

These are probably the first thoughts that would come to mind.

With some exceptions, I do believe that the majority of people do know about the gravity of the situation. Many people are begged and forced to stay at home, almost everyone is tense, conflicts arise, and negative emotions ensue. This built anxiety, situational depression, sadness, and others take a toll on everyone. And everyone deals with it differently. Some people laugh at funerals, the same who will most likely make fun of COVID19. It is their way of dealing with it. Is it insensitive? Maybe, maybe not.

Insensitivity And Getting Offended Nowadays

People always get offended by all kinds of things, which is okay in and of itself. However, disallowing the people to deal with their problems could worsen the situation. I don't wanna go into what happens with people who have anxiety and situational depression and can't deal with their problems.

Responsibility And Prejudice Of Game Developers

But as a game developer, you are a public entity. 
This is something that bothers me deeply. If we can make jokes in person and our art can contain these jokes, why not the games we program? Because games are in-between software and art?

You're just adding it to make a profit off of it.
Well, this is a good point but also prejudice to some extent. Are there companies who would like to do that? Definitely. Does every company do that? No. Even more fascinating, if a company earns money with Patreon or ads, they automatically try to make cash off of COVID19 when implementing anything related.

Deeper Into The Gray Zone

We can go even deeper by integrating charity into it as well. Games, gamers, and game developers can do big things. The media doesn't approve of it or may not even mention it, but GDQ (Games Done Quick) and other events can raise millions of dollars for charity.

Maybe It's Too Early

Well, to close it off, I understand that companies or game developers don't want to do this. It is very risky to receive negative publicity for it, and it adds oil to the already tense mood.
But maybe one day, we'll be able to let go, just smile with positivity for a short moment to relieve ourselves from the negative emotions and enjoy ourselves.
Also, be alert, not anxious. Take it with humor, but do take it seriously.
Stay safe.

Acquiring Languages and Games

Since I'm coming close to writing/performing the last exam of the semester, it's about time to continue learning Japanese. What I did not expect was the number of videos about language learning vs language acquisition, which ended up in my feed. Curious as I am, I watched them, of course. And here is what I've been thinking about it.

Language Learning VS Acquisition Summary

Firstly, what is language acquisition? The idea behind it is that you do not learn the rules (grammar), vocabulary, etc. of the language (language learning). Instead, you acquire it the same way children or babies do (language acquisition). But how do babies learn the language? By being immersed in it. We start not understanding a single word, but after some time, given their context, we can figure it out. The more words we acquire, the more we can derive through what we already know. Supposedly we do not obtain through repetition as many apps do it. (for example Duolingo) ^[1]

My Approach To Such An App

For maximum immersion, throwing the player into a fictional world instead of asking questions about language makes more sense. The goal is to create a virtual environment tailored to obtaining it similar to acquiring it by living abroad. This virtual world most likely needs the player to navigate it, which means we have to teach the user words that describe these actions. (right, left, up, down, north, east, west, south, jump, etc...)

Like in real life, the player can be asked to complete quests. Starting with simple ones such as: Bring this orange to the fruit store to the right or bring this sword to the northern guard. Whether the words "right" and "northern" are marked, is a question of difficulty I would say. The idea of these quests is to teach the user the meaning of those words. Important is ensuring that the possible mistakes the player makes are limited. They might not notice subtle hints, and we don't want them to get frustrated. Naming the store of the orange quest "store" is a positive example of this. On the other hand, the sword fetching quest is going to be frustrating, since the player might not know what north, sword or guard is.

From there on out, it pretty much builds on top of each other. Slowly teaching the player vocabulary and later on grammar through context. For example, let's assume the player learns German. They already know the word "springen" (engl.: jump). Putting NPCs that react to him with "Du springst" (engl.: "You jump"), then they get subtle clues to what "du" (engl.: you) could mean. If some children say: "Wir springen" (engl.: "We jump"), and they do it, we get more clues about pronouns. This may not even be the best approach, but you can see what I'm aiming at here.

Conclusion

So, as you can see, if this approach does indeed work, it might be possible to create a fully immersive game, which supports you on your way to acquire- instead of learning a language. Done through reading and hearing, and interacting with the world and its speech.

However, this is just my thoughts on it. Whether or not it works needs to be put to the test, and maybe this post sparks a conversation between people who develop language learning applications.

^[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illApgaLgGA

My Stance On The Current Guild Wars 2 Drama

As Guild Wars 2 takes off most of my blog posts and I currently have time on my hands and can't record anything, because it's 2am... I want to take my stance on the whole Guild Wars 2 Announcement Drama that has been going on.

The Issue People Have

Reading a lot of comments on the big announcement, there's one theme that shows throughout all of the complaints. There was too much hype, and x or y did not get announced. I can understand that people who play a specific game mode, such as PvP or WvW haven't seen much content in the last months to years. Overall it would seem that Living World is the focus of updates while add-ons provided real content. It's now been 7 years of Guild Wars 2 with two add-ons and four living world seasons. Asking around my friends, I also found out that any content which is not released by an expansion pack is not considered as such. Well then, what did the announcement do wrong?

What Was ArenaNets Big Announcement?

People joke about the announcement not being a big thing. It covered a lot of topics, so that is a step up from Blizzard about the Diablo franchise. Though having new tournament seasons and mentioning that they're working on the WvW update - first of all - may not necessarily be news and secondly may not feature something new. Build templates show the same issue. This has already been announced, the only difference is that it will come soon instead of the future. The rest of the announcement - aside from merchandise, which I'm not gonna talk about - focused on the upcoming Living Story Season 5. The main event of the event so to say. The story will continue with the Far Shiverpeaks, another area that has been in Guild Wars 1 and as such is appreciated. There will be new masteries, that are gonna work differently, all the previous masteries will make a return and raid-like content as a bridge. The idea behind naming it Saga is a new policy to the updates or a new monetization concept. There's also more detail that is not relevant to the Drama. Such as Charr's background, Norn background, focus on respective characters, Jormag of course, and Scar makes an appearance.

Get To The Point

I think that's enough information for me to take my stance. Actually, there's not that much to say. If you look at the PR stunt of calling the season a Saga and them giving it such a big name, while at the same time not announcing an add-on would make it seem that the Saga is the add-on. The reason the name change was done is either a) due to a new monetization system or b) because they're gonna split the expansion into smaller updates such as the Living Story season updates. Of course, this is positive thinking. As such, the only thing that can be done is to wait for the first updates to see what ArenaNet means when they talk Saga. Maybe it's not as bad as you think. Anyways overall the announcement covered all or most topics of interest but was too ambiguous.

Additionally, ArenaNet mentioned this in 2015, and I agree with it even in 2019. A game dies with its community. Guild Wars 2 has a community, thereby it's not dead. Q.E.D.

Well, afterall, this is just my opinion. I'm not a fortune teller. Oh, wait, technically... Let's see if I guessed right.

Overhyping is an issue, I've seen multiple times. Since it makes me worry about certain games (e.g., Hytale), I should do a post about it.

Brain Interface & Brain Chip - No Thx

I don't know exactly what to write about, but new ideas will come for sure. For now, enjoy this post about my stand on the Neuralinks brain interface or brain chip.

Neuralink and the Brain Interface

Neuralink, the company Elon Musk co-founded, is working on a technology with which it will be possible to read the signals from the brain and probably send as well. This is a huge thing, positively and negatively. The procedure seems simple. Through the creation of four small holes, wires will connect a chip with the brain. This chip can be accessed with a phone app or potentially any other device.^[1]

Solution To a Problem

While we don't need to play our games literally using our brain. This would be the logical next step to virtual reality or full dive. Two important factors need to be considered. First of all, we need to considered reading brain input. Other ways exist, but they don't come as natural. With an output from the brain, we can simulate movement in a restricted area or even move objects, such as body parts, that only exist in a virtual plain. The second factor is writing to the brain. Being able to "write to the brain" allows us to simulate game-related emotions such as pain when taking damage. Additionally, it enables us to play the game in our brain instead of using a device to output it to, such as a television or VR headset.

The Fact-Based Problems

An intrusive operation near the brain definitely doesn't come without risk. There are cases where it makes sense. Mind Field, the YouTube Red series by Micheal Stevens, shows us such an example. In the episode "The Electric Brain" (Season 2 Episode 8) shows a person with a paralyzed hand. The brain interface detects the thoughts of moving the hand. These are then read by software, which sends electrical currents to the arm to stimulate the nerves resulting in hand movement.^[2] Another big issue of the chip is that it is wireless. This means that potentially other people can hack into it. Depending on what the chip actually can do to the brain, this can be even worse than we could imagine. Additionally, it's not like something you can remove like a headset or something. It's built into your body.

Conclusion

Taking all this into consideration, I am against a brain interface or brain chip. I think to find a non-intrusive solution would be a better choice for now. Even if we need the ability to write (as in send signals) to the brain, it should definitely be done in a local and safe environment. If there's a hack, we're not talking about losing your accounts or passwords. God knows how some crazy people could abusing that interface.

^[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-unveils-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-wants-to-have-human-trials-in-2020?ref=scroll

^[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXNGvDdkXZE&vl=en

Representing the Leveling of Language Comprehension

Sometimes you have this idea of making a game where the player levels things by practicing it. Sometimes you have this idea of actually making the player learn a language. While letting my mind wander and discussions the idea of having a game where you have to practice stuff to improve your level in them and your stats but you lose levels and stats at a set time I came across this other topic.

When We Learn Language

The first thing we learn when getting to a new language is the first words and sentences. Basic words and basic sentences at that. But, we have to go back a step. It would be boring this way and we probably don't want out language from the game to share the same alphabet or symbols as the Latin ones. The Latin alphabet we use is basically just symbols that are given some meaning to. Basically, we assign them the information on how to pronounce them and in which order they come (A-Z). We can even give them a value like in the ASCII code. It's the same with the greek alphabet where we additionally have the meaning of "the end" given to Ω (Omega). Another interesting aspect is that the size of the symbols can matter too. In Japanese for example characters that are written half the size are pronounced differently. This means that different attributes of the symbols can create different meanings as well.

Learning a Foreign Writing

So, when we learn foreign writing we have to understand the difference between these symbols. To someone new, the symbols don't mean anything at all. They look different but in our minds, we see all those symbols as equal. This is often just the first impression but in the end, it could represent the first level: level 0.

Given a sentence, we could represent this as:

Level 0: ???? ????? ??? ????

Next up we start to realize they're different symbols. So let's represent them as they are written as a message in this foreign language:

Level 1: 3k?Q "$k3e )dk ยง%s1

If we continue reading we might make things out that represent punctuation. With this, we can split the text into sentences.

Level 2: 3k?, "$k3e )dk ยง%s.

In the next step, we understand how to pronounce these symbols. In the Japanese language, for example, this is where we understand there is a romaji for each symbol. We've now reached level 2 and we're able to read the text.

Level 3: frd, isrfp lor shubrong.

Next up we start to understand the mechanics that make equal symbols mean different things. Like how a "k3" is read as "aa" but a "3k" as an "ar". You can make up any rules you want for this. The more rules, the more difficult to understand. Some mechanics you can use here could be, different meaning at the beginning or end or when following a certain symbol, etc..

Level 4: ard, isaap lor shubrog.

Level 4 and we can already read it. Hooray! Now we need to be able to understand it. With this next step, there are multiple ways to do it. One way would be to use transliteration for the symbols. Another way is to translate word for word. Here the Zipf law should be used.

Translating Words...

Small Excourse Zipf Law:

To keep it short, Zipf Law says that the second most used words appear half as often as the most used word. The third most half as often as the second most etc.. This has been proven to work more or less well and hence you can use this here too.

This means now we can translate simple and often used words. You can use Wolfram Alpha to look this up for example. From here on out you can decide on how many steps you want to put in. With the slowest being one word per level. For an extra level, you can categorize words together. Like "why, how, where, when" could be the same as "why".

Level 5: they, isaap lor shubrog.

Level 6: they, isaap why shubrog.

Level 7: they, hello why shubrog.

Level 8: they, hello why is.

Transliteration of Symbols...

The other way would be via transliteration. If we say we now understand how to represent those foreign symbols with our symbols we can slowly get to the language we understand. This requires the foreign language to share traits though. In our example, both languages use consonants and vocals.

Level 5: tra, fanre bex paah.

Next up we have tried to scramble the consonants and vocals to fit it more. Let's say we fit a combination where the same character is the same.

Level 6: tra, barre xbz paah.

Now let's try around with consonants and vocals until we get something similar to a caesar shift. Similar because we stay in our groups when doing the shifting. That means the letter before a "j" is not an "i" but an "h". The letter before an "o" is not a "p" but an "i". A middle step could be for example:

• Shifted too low, correct, shifted too high, ...: rhi, gemko xgy caep.

Level 7: rga gakki vgx zaam.

Level 8: she, hello why been.

Grammar

Now we have a very similar message in both cases. I changed the meaning a little so it would better match the respective procedure. This is now a sentence out of familiar words. Now we need to make finding the correct meaning and apply grammar to it.

There are two ways to do this, either grammar first or correct words first. I do think applying grammar is a more natural way.

Grammar first:

Level 9: Hello, why she been?

Words first:

Level 9: you, hello how are.

Step 10, apply the other one.

Level 10: Hello, how are you?

Finish 'Em

Yeah and that concludes some ways to scale language understanding in levels from zero to ten. These are just a few ways to do it there are many more. Actually, if you're a game designer or writer go and do the following homework. Read up on different languages (No, you don't need to learn them) and learn what's unique about them. You wanna take a look at grammar, reading and/or writing and get inspired. It doesn't even have to be a real language.

What Subscribe2PewDiePie Actually Means

It's spammed everywhere and probably gets on the nerves of people and yours too. If you don't know the implications and meaning behind all this or why it's an important thing than you're at one of a view sources where you can understand this now. If you do know about it you can very well skip reading another post.. how about the featured one on the right-hand side? >>>>>>>

The T-Series and PewDiePie War

The basic premise is that the most subscribed Youtuber PewDiePie is about to get passed by the MCN (Multi-Channel-Network) T-Series. Not a big deal, right? Well, the thing is that first of all PewDiePie has been at the top regardless of whether you want it or not. Second of all, Youtube has changed a lot. If you take back a step and look at Youtube the way it is currently evolving may be shocking. The interest in TV has been decreasing and the interest in Youtube skyrockets. This means that more and more companies will or do move to Youtube instead (for obvious reasons). That means that there are a lot of changes, cooperate deals, more companies on Youtube, etc.. One of them being T-Series an Indian MCN. So two big things are happening here now.

Conquering India

Since India is getting Internet access now, big companies, such as Google try to capture all the potential customers and catering them Youtube seems to be extremely successful, hence the growth of the T-series channel

Multi-Channel-Networks

Due to a lot of some-shady some not so shady occurrences, MCN or multi-channel-networks don't have the best reputation. Especially since the whole Defy Media story. However, the more channels they combine the more content, with higher quality at a higher frequency with a vaster grip they can produce in less time. This allows them to grow much faster, which in turn brings fame to smaller channels. This allows T-series to grow really fast.

I Don't Like PewDiePie, Why Should I Care?

It's not like the internet had an option. Aside from his current content catering to a wide audience (PewNews or Book Review covering more serious topics and Meme Review catering to the internet culture basically) he is the most subscribed individual on Youtube. If there's someone to keep above a cooperate channel it must be someone who already has the most subscribed and has not been passed yet. This is how the current situation has ended up.

Even if you do not like PewDiePie, subscribing to him is a metaphor for showing that you want the individual to be above the cooperation. This is what this symbolizes.

And as Matthew Patrick from GameTheory and FilmTheory said in one of his streams.. we can only do this now. Once T-series has passed it's over and there is no back.¹

Additionally, if you don't like PewDiePie for what he has done and because the media associates him with Nazi... he knows his mistake and has changed. He has done his part now it's time for you to do yours. It's not like he meant it. (Also Germans make fun of Hitler too...)

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prhVME-0vLI

What's Your Favorite Idea? Mine Is Being Creative!

Despite the title of this post, this is not about "Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared". Far from it even. I want to use this post to shout out to all fellow content creators, game designers or creative people. Even for those who just want to do brainstorming. Because what I'm gonna do now is point out something pretty obvious and yet - just like me - there are people out there that never gave this a thought. Literally.

The Idea Behind This

I came up with this idea of thinking about ideas when I was talking to my tutor at the Technical University Munich. In the introduction to informatics: games engineering we have the option to make our own game, in groups or solo. This project starts after getting tutoring in Unity with two example projects: A space shooter and a platformer. The discussion went about the topic of, while you can make any game project you want (no restrictions), most students do a space shooter or a platformer.

This made sense to me, so I answered: "Of course!". If you do the space shooter and the platformer in the tutorial you will have these things on your mind as of the latest. You can imagine it like a stack. Whenever you experience something it's put on the stack and when thinking about ideas you take things off the stack going down to past experiences. By now thinking further about it you would also have to take in the consideration that a handful of people might actually go into the study with no idea or not even planning to make a game as of yet. On the opposite, you have those people who already have an idea of what they wanna make, and that might not and then won't be a space shooter or platformer.

Thinking Through This Further...

That was not the end of the discussion for me. Far from it. This actually created more questions. The biggest one: "Why?". Why do we take almost only recent memories into consideration? The only case where we take older memories or experiences into consideration for our ideas is when we get triggered. The second question is what actually lead to this post: "What if we actually purposely search older memories for our ideas?". Instead of waiting for some outer force or another person to pass us the ball or trigger us, we could try to trigger it ourselves, right?

The Idea of the Idea

So, ideas come from our experiences, life choices, the influence of others, our believes and what not. Every place we've been, everything we are or have been interested in and even the people we have had to contact with it all gets soaked up by our brain and then it's saved there sometimes filtered as unnecessary or uninteresting other times saved to never be accessed ever again or at least that's how I understood it. This also means that the only time when two people have literally the same idea is if they actually grew up in the same circumstances, with the same people around them, same hobbies, same interests, same experience, etc.. Is this the reason why some twins are thinking very alike? Could be. This also means that everyone is unique in their thinking and ideas. That's amazing! Another reason to use the full capacity and not just the most recent experiences piled on the stack.

Shout Out!

And with that, this is the shout out to everyone! Ponder over this, think about how your past experiences influence ideas further and... actually don't even stop there. You don't need to do this permanently but for the sake of experiencing this... focus around the now as well and how this influences your ideas and then look for the future. I know about game designers who are like "go outside, that's where the ideas come from" and I'm like "yeah, but watching other people's ideas, especially cartoon, anime, movie or reading books also lets you experience good material".

Decide for yourself what's best for you. Everything and anything you do matters here. It will all shape the person you are and the ideas you'll have and that's scary and empowering at the same time.

Avoiding Plagiarism and "Copy-strikes" by Copying!?

Plagiarism and copying in itself is a complicated topic. While you want to protect your own creations you also want to allow other people to get inspired, experiment with your ideas and make something even greater and better that hopefully does not steal your money - you know, ain't no rest for the wicked.

Inspiration For This Post

The reason I write this post is to share this blasphemous topic with people who read my blog or come across it. I first found this in a Youtube video, which I would've loved to link to or something, unfortunately, this video is one of two that I can't seem to find. (The other one is about pro-gaming/e-sport and improving your own skill most efficiently). How much you can trust this is your own choice (as always actually) but the points mentioned made sense to me.

Plagiarism and Copying

Plagiarism is the worst thing you can do, but what is it? Plagiarism is using the work of someone else intentionally or unintentionally and claiming it's your own or not giving correct credit to the source of information. It's literally copying someone else's work without mentioning that you took it from someone. Now you would think, I just have to avoid copying someone else and everything's fine. But...

Being Human == Copying

Every idea you ever had every thought you ever had, heck even your own opinions and characteristics are inspired by things someone else has done. PUBG would not exist if there weren't Hunger Games, most of the Metroidvania's wouldn't exist if Metroid and Castlevania wouldn't have been created. Remixes wouldn't exist either. We're taking things that exist to mix everything we experienced together in our little brains and come up with new ideas. But everything we experienced can be part of the process of shaping these ideas. This also means that everything we experienced can have a different weight to the idea. So copying or plagiarism is actually realizing an idea that has extreme weights to certain inspirational resources. If you have the idea of making a Flappy Bird RPG the weight is pretty much 80% Flappy Bird 20% RPG or so, as an example. Okay, so we can avoid plagiarism and copying by avoiding to lean too strongly on a few single concrete inspirational sources. We pretty much save if we have the one unique idea no one came up with yet, right?

Well, it's not that easy, because... your brain likes to store things and contrary to believe we don't "forget" things in the sense of having those memories erased. We forget how to access memory but the memory is not gone.^[2] Also misremembering something has nothing to do with forgetting either, it has to do with us trying to access the memory again by taking what we remember and trying to reconstruct the rest. Hence why false memories may be implemented easily. You should watch the Youtube Premium show of Vsauce: Mind Field on that topic. They had an episode on this called "Do You Know Yourself". Okay, but what's the problem here?

The Problem This Causes...

The problem is that you might not remember an inspirational source and yet your brain can still use it to create ideas. You think you created an idea out of the blue and you don't remember any connection of this to any source. You are realizing your idea and once it's out on the market... it's too late. People are calling your work plagiarism and you have no idea why. This is because you might've taken too much inspiration from a source you don't remember that still exists and your work is too similar to it. Ridiculous, isn't it?

If you can't even avoid plagiarism due to your unconsciousness, you have only two choices left, really.

1. ) Intensive Research

You have always the option to search hours upon days upon weeks upon months to really make sure no one else of the 7.7 billion people on earth^[1] came up with it first. It sounds like fun, doesn't it? It does make sense to check the first few pages but completely avoiding plagiarism is may not always be possible. Luckily there is software out there to take care of this, but it's either not accessible to everyone or costs money. Beautiful, isn't it?

2.) Copy Intentionally

At first, this sounds ridiculous. It does make sense and there are actually a lot of people who may be doing this already. The idea is to copy some or multiple works intentionally throw it together and then change it so much that it no longer can be considered copying. The copying turns into inspiration. Your work will be considered unique, even by software. This is pretty much the premise of the Youtube video I mentioned earlier. This way you're safer than to assume you have a unique idea because you know you couldn't have copied the work you just copied after the changes.

Funny side-note: This is pretty much what transformative work is considered, which is actually allowed by law. You can read more on it in the law under fair use.^[3]

The only last issue that stays... what if someone copies the same source and does the same changes to it? Will we ever be able to fully avoid plagiarism? Or do we at some point give up on this as long we agree to credit people where possible and assume anyone's work not completely as their own but more as spilling of their collected information helping together to build upon our current knowledge to further our progress even more? 

Well, I guess not as long as there's money in the game... *le sigh*

^[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=world%20population
^[2] https://www.verywellmind.com/forgetting-about-psychology-2795034

^[3] https://www.lib.umn.edu/copyright/fairuse

Guild Wars 2: About the Beetle Races and Their Difficulty

I had the calculation already prepared for about a week, but I couldn't find the time to write this blog post due to, math homework (discrete structures), pgdp (abr.: Praktikum: Grundlagen der Programmierung, engl.: apprenticeship: basics of programming) and the winter update for Against the World, but now that I'm almost in the Christmas break... Time! Yes!

What's Beetle Racing?

Beetle Racing has been added to Guild Wars 2 on the patch of the 26th of November.^[1] Beetle races are race tracks with checkpoints that have a three-lap racing event to go with them gratulating the first three winners as well as time trial adventures that save yours overall best and daily time for one round or lap. Additionally, there are bronze, silver and gold rewards for these time trials that are achieved by being below a certain time. These racing tracks are designed for the beetle mount that can grow in speed when continuously rolling, especially downhill while having a super-speed ability that is bound to the endurance bar. This endurance bar fills over time, when colliding with objects, drifting or doing tricks in the air (if skilled). ArenaNet added a total of six races, which means there are now eight beetle races in-game.

• Domain of Kourna
• Mad Kings Raceway^[2]
• Kessex Hills
• Gendarran Fields
• Diessa Plateau
• Mount Maelstrom
• Brisban Wildlands
• Snowden Rifts

About the Race Tracks

Domain of Kourna

This is the first track added to the game, it's an adventure for people to experience the beetle racing for the first time and required you to have quite a good grip with the beetle to achieve gold. Not hard yet.

Mad Kings Raceway

Following the previous one, this is the second race track that was designed for the beetle and added to the game. Before the patch, this needed very good usage of the beetle. There were a lot of places that actually required you to boost and drift well enough. Especially since there were objects that unmount you on collision. It is a fairly short track though. Since the nerf you can do the track with other mounts just as well making it one of the easier ones. It's only available during the Mad King's Eve if at every.

Kessex Hills

Kessex Hills is the first of the six new ones I'm gonna talk about. Kessex Hills actually is less of a race and more a practice run. It is extremely short and asks you to do drift and learn about the speed increase when rolling downhill (if ever slightly) and the loss of speed when rolling uphill as shown to the end. Getting the drift to work and maybe using one boost is enough to get gold. It is, therefore, the one I deem the easiest.

Gendarran Fields

With Gendarran Fields the second of the six new ones were implemented. This one now features a much bigger track there are about three jumps where you can do tricks to gain endurance and multiple chances to use a boost. It's also the first map to introduce you to the water mechanic. The beetle can go over water if fast enough, it does lose speed though. According to an NPC, you can keep more momentum if you jump onto water instead of rolling into it. There is at least one spot where you most likely need to drift, which is shortly before the bridge. I recommend keeping a boost after the first water passage. Aside from that use the boosts where you're sure you can use them well. I'd deem this one the second easiest one of the new ones.

Diessa Plateau

The third one I'm gonna list goes through terrain with obstacles such as trees, bushes, walls and more in the way. There are a lot more places where you actually need to drift to get around well. You get some help thanks to some of the checkpoints working as a "start-to-drift-here"-marker. Aside from that, there isn't much more to say to this one. I deem it harder than the Gendarran Fields one though.

Mount Maelstrom

Now we're starting to get into the tough territory. Oh, and you might notice that I sorted them by the release as well as difficulty. This track starts with a lot of uphills that requires you to place your boosts at the right point. Follows up by mountainous terrain some tight corners and then even more mountainous terrain. There are a lot of spots you can easily get stuck with, you need drifting and if you don't drift correctly you're hardly better than not drifting at all. You really need to make sure you use your boosts at the right places, especially as you get hardly anything out of a boost if you can't get a grip on the ground. The boost in the air does not give you as much push as you get on the ground, quite realistically. Though even with a few mistakes here and there you can possibly get gold as the time is set gratefully.

Brisban Wildlands

Well so much about grateful time. We're starting to get a smaller window for gold now depending on how many mistakes you make. This one is considered the hardest one by people and track-wise, that's correct. However, due to the time window for gold, I do not consider this one the hardest but instead, the most time consuming one. This is the biggest and longest of the races and has many places that are mean, especially the corner at the Thaumacore Inquiry Center [&BFoAAAA=]^[3]. The end of the track through the Lionshead Outcrops is also tough. Another down, but there are a lot of points you can get stuck on, such as bushes and whatnot. There are some tricks though where you can use jumps to gain endurance through tricks to get faster endurance that way.

Snowden Drifts

Last but not least the one I consider the hardest. This is an extremely short race track but the timing is extremely tight. If it doesn't go nearly perfect you can easily pass on the gold time. Note that you do need to use two boosts at the start to negate the speed loss of uphill rolling, you need to get enough endurance to boost before the endurance refresher later on the track and you need to boost after the drift after the second bridge you cross. Additionally, depending on where you drift, there you might lift off the ground failing to get the angle to stay on track and losing control of the drift and beetle. Also, don't miss the last bridge.. that hurts. Some trees hate you, haha. So, many obstacles, endurance control, tight time, small passages, and drifts on tricky terrain. Yes, I consider this one the hardest.

Overall Difficulty Ranking

Well, to recap I would say:

1. Snowden Drifts
2. Brisban Wildlands
3. Mount Maelstrom
4. Domain of Kourna
5. Diessa Plateau
6. Gendarran Fields
7. Mad Kings Raceway (assuming you chill through it with another mount)
8. Kessex Hills

There is to say that this is my own opinion trying to weight the features and challenges each track brings with it. So there may be differences in the ranking.

Next Post Already Planned

So, I wanted this post to be about how many races you need to do or how many days it takes you only doing it daily but this post has gotten too big already. This means I'm going to split it into two posts instead. I hope you enjoy this one nonetheless. I'm probably going to write the next post tomorrow.

^[1] https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/61676/game-update-notes-november-26-2018

^[2] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mad_King's_Raceway

^[3] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thaumacore_Inquiry_Center

The Split Between Traditional and Modern Pixel Art

This is a post I wanted to write back when I made my first post about pixel art, sharing what I thought was a good post on making pixel art bigger without it looking too "blocky". Anyways after that post, I had a discussion with some people and it's really interesting.

Where Did Pixel Art Come From?

Back in the old days, when games for consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System were available. Hardware and software were limited. Due to only saving 8-bit per each pixel of an image only a limited amount of colors could be displayed.^[1] Combining this with the limited resolution Pixel Art was the best option back in the old days.^[2] Thankfully the detail in each sprite or Pixel Art, as well as the number of colors kept increasing. Continuing through to 16-bit per pixel with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System up to our 24-bit true color system that is widely spread.

Then Why Is There Still Pixel Art?

Even though we don't have the restrictions we had back in the old days, it has evolved into a style for multiple purposes. It may remind us of the old days, it's much simpler to create than drawing a full detailed picture, you have more power over each and every pixel and all the details of the picture since every pixel matters and you can decide over every of their positions, and many more I haven't captured here.

The Split Between Traditional and Modern

Now, with our much better hard- and software we are no longer restricted to the limits we had back in the old days. This resulted in a split between traditional and modern Pixel Art. So what's the difference? What makes Pixel Art traditional and what makes it modern? Where are the bounds of each?

Traditional Pixel Art

Traditional Pixel Art is very strict about its rules. Thus you are not allowed to use more than 16-bit per pixel, which can be enforced by color palettes. Additionally, you are limited in the amount of detail you can add. Plus each pixel needs to be clearly visible so that the control over each pixel is not lost. Though the exact rules may vary from person to person and additional may be added or ones may be removed. Which cuts the bounds of modern Pixel Art.

Modern Pixel Art

Breaking the limits of traditional Pixel Art, this may not be considered to be much anymore. It can be argued whether there are any rules to this but some things can be said at least. First of all, there is no limitation in colors anymore. All the colors of true color can be used for these, which means no palettes or limited color choice per pixel. Pixel Art is all about the pixels. Without any rules, isn't any computer-created art Pixel Art? This is where we can take one of the rules of traditional Pixel Art to help us. Each pixel needs to matter and a change in pixels should be visible. I think this is probably the best way to draw a line. The more detail you add the more blurry each pixel becomes and the more blurry the line between what can be considered Pixel Art and what cannot becomes as well.

Conclusion

Now, this is just my thought on this topic so I don't know how far I'm off or if I hit the bulls-eye. However, even if I'm off I consider this to be a good way to differentiate between Traditional, Modern Pixel Art and the other types of computer-aided graphics that have been made and I don't think you can do any wrong by holding onto these guidelines or rules mentioned here.

^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_color

^[2] https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/133067/Keo_Mary.pdf

Jinx - The Curse

"Don't Jinx it, don't jinx it, don't jinx it, don't jinx it.
Now you Jinxed it... "

Jinx Origin

The word Jinx also written as Jynx which supposedly stands for a spell or charm and was used to address the wryneck which is a bird that is used in divination and Magick.^[1] As a spell or charm and due to its popular use with a negative connotation it could be compared more to a curse instead.

This is also the Jinx I want to talk about. No, not the children's game, sorry.

The Idea Behind It

The basic concept behind it can be explained best on an example. Let's say we have a sports game. (I could use a player vs player match as an example but I won't xD) Before the game starts one person says that they're gonna win (or that they're gonna lose) and another person could add "Now you jinxed it" to it meaning that now they really will lose.

Thinking It Through

First, let's break it down. We have something where multiple outcomes can occur but it's not yet determined which one it will be. We have someone mention one of the outcomes and then a certain outcome to occur that is either the one mentioned or another one. Additionally in most cases when we talk about jinxing we assume a negative result.

Now I know the idea of taking Quantum Physics into consideration here is either overkill or doesn't make much sense as there is no visible relation, however, I think it is important to take this into consideration as we have no idea what really is happening and so this might be one explanation that could potentially be possible if not disproven.

So.. if we take Quantum Physics into consideration and assume that the match's outcome is in a superstate between - let's say - "Won", "Lost", "Given Up", "Stopped". Throughout the game, the end result becomes more clear. If we now take into consideration how magick is used or work we expect the result to be influenced by each participant's expectation and beliefs. These expectations and beliefs then again are influenced by telling that the match will be won (or lost).

This does not only influence the way the people perform but also modifies the reality according to our bubble system (I need some more serious name for that).^[2] So for each person that hears this the match's outcome should change accordingly.

Accordingly?

If we assume that if someone says that their team wins. Then their team should be more likely to win right? Well, it's not so simple. Saying and believing that they will win may only be on a conscious level. If we assume that someone unconsciously thinks that this cannot be the case it will result in the opposite. Additionally, if you hear something this might actually bring up memories or thoughts which go through the alternative options even if unconsciously. These may end up playing a role as well.

If you sum all this up you end up with the possibility that regardless of whether you claim to win or lose a match both cases will end up jinxing the outcome or increasing the chance to lose the match.

Generalized this means if you state that an unknown outcome is going to occur it may result in the opposite or different (most often negative) outcome.

Resources

^[1] https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=jinx
^[2] https://www.greenyneko.com/2018/09/toaru-kagaku-no-railgun-personal.html

Day Before Halloween - Fear and Being a Magick User

Greetings Sapient being. It's been a while since the last post, even had one written that I removed because I didn't realize something rendering the whole post as misinformative and wrong. It happens from time to time. I don't have a group of people who check my posts working all on my own.

Anyways we have the 30th of October on the day I'm writing this post and it's not long until Halloween. Tomorrow evening already. So I've been wondering about what to write about. You know Halloween is this famous festival where people, especially younger ones wear scary, creepy or spooky costumes and they go trick or treating - an old ritual that was performed to scare away the evil spirits. Not to be confused with Carnival where you wear scary, creepy, spooky nowadays any kind of costume to scare away whatever makes the nights longer.

To be honest... I don't have anything specific. So instead I'm gonna write two posts about how getting into magick has affected my perception of scary things and what my current relation to nightmares and scares are and the scariest things I have seen, heard or experienced in my life.

My Current Perception of Scary Stuff

The Downside of Being Scared

Depending on which direction you go into when performing rituals or magick, fear has a big factor in the result of your actions. Almost always, negatively. As such there are actual rituals that you are encouraged to do to get rid of your fears so that they can't affect the result you want to go with. The most obvious example is that of a demon. Though I must admit that I do not believe in demons in the way it has been portrait in the western world. Anyways the idea is if you're scared of a demon it gets stronger. However fear may be a more or less unconscious reaction to a situation making this kinda difficult.

Fear Rituals

Still, from personal experience, these rituals that exist seem to take care of the unconscious part not too bad. So, what's the idea of these fear rituals or rituals against fear? Basically the same thing people do when they have arachnophobia. You have to fight your fear by confronting it. The way it's done in these rituals differs from throwing yourself into a closed space with spiders or clowns if you get the thought process. As with most rituals or magick stuff, in general, this is instead done with meditation. Sorry, scary clowns that wanted to get hired. How does it work? I'm going to take the example from Frater V.D. mentioned in his book "Die Hohe Schule Der Magie" (engl.: The High School of Magic") as I've used that ritual myself and had good experiences. Additionally, it's one of the non-dangerous ones. *cough cough*

Performing the Ritual

Anyways to perform this ritual first you have to get into a comfortable position. Sitting, lying, whichever fits you best. Make sure you don't get interrupted and don't have to change your position. This will interrupt your focus. It's a meditation after all. Spend some time doing nothing, basically emptying your head so to speak. Once you're ready to go through all the things you're scared of in your head. Don't judge them just think about them or imagine them neutrally. Go through everything that comes to your mind. Once you're through every little fear or detail you repeat the phrase "Who is scared of whom?" or "Wer hat vor wem Angst?" depending on whether you prefer to use German as your "magical" language.

And that's it. Pretty simple, not too crazy. It is just meditation and it helped me.

The Results

I've performed this ritual about three times, to be honest, I haven't been scared of anything much since then and the rest is basically gone due to the believes I hold for myself at the moment. I've written about those too. Another way to get over fears is to empower yourself. It sounds crazy and egoist when you perform the "Kabbalistic Cross" claiming to be a god yourself, but whether you are or not is not to be debated, the fact is it works. Empowering yourself actually empowers yourself. You could say it's a mind trick and an amazing one at that. You may have heard one or two crazy stories about superhuman feats that were achieved in special situations like a mother protecting their child. Actually looking at research about the placebo effect and what it was able to do. Another good video for showing this is from the YouTube Red series: "Mind Field" with the host Michael Stevens from "Vsauce".

Anyways enough about the details, the fact is I've been hardly ever scared of situations. This does not mean that I'm crazy doing dangerous stuff. I'm still careful in those situations that require it, but I'm thinking things through more calmly instead of panicking.

Unfortunately, this also ruined the "scariness" factor of horror movies and games which is quite disappointing. Luckily enough Amnesia: The Dark Descent has a good story attached to it, so that's still enjoyable.

Nightmares

I still have nightmares, sorry. They're not gone unfortunately but it might not be the same as what most people experience when they have nightmares. I'm going more into the exact things I dreamed about tomorrow but for now, I can say this: 

Waking up from a supposed nightmare does not have me scared, shocked, sweating or any of these. I wake up from them just like from a normal dream. Furthermore to scary parts in the dream, I might still react as before but only for the first moment, it's like the habit taking over for the first few seconds. Afterward, I try to carefully think things through or even defend myself. If you haven't heard about it before, you can pretty easily defend yourself against literally anything in your own dream with enough practice and with the right mindset. Also part of personal development in magick.

Conclusion

So yeah, that's my current relation towards fears and scary stuff and how I got to that point. If you plan to get into magick yourself I can only advice you the described ritual. Fear is a bad thing for you in the future. Especially if you want to protect yourself from bad things that might happen. It still takes me to get through everything. Keep in mind the fear of the unknown can be described as indirect proportional to your knowledge and I assume your knowledge of ghosts, demons, youkai, magick, etc. isn't much bigger than most peoples are.

And with that... Happy Preparational Halloween. :P

Everything in Balance - The Concept of Ying and Yang

A few weeks or months ago I was talking to amount about this and it's a really interesting topic. You might have heard of Ying and Yang or the idea of balancing your life or you might have seen the thought experiment that went into a slightly different direction.

The Concept of Ying and Yang

The idea of there being a perfect balance that needs to be kept is something that appears in a lot of works from the eastern world. The idea of there being as much evil as there should be good and the idea of living a balanced life. It may seem far fetched or just some weird way of thinking but actually it's obvious if you think about it.

You know what. I'll tell you a few examples and if I can't convince you with these then you do you. :P

Balancing Your Body

Did you ever go to the doctor and let them check your blood? Our blood contains so many different things and it gets checked only for certain elements. For example, Vitamin D is not checked as it required a different procedure they can't do when doing the normal check. You probably know what I mean if not here are a few out of the top of my head: sugar, fat, (cholesterol, potassium, sodium).

So something you might have noticed is that on the paper you almost always have a top and bottom value. If you're below the minimum, it's bad, if you're above maximum, it's bad.

Additionally you probably also know that if your heart rate is too high, it's unhealthy since your heart could skip beats resulting in an irregular rhythm which means an inefficient amount of blood is pumped which most likely leads to death.

Another Story: Sunlight

Ah, the sun, isn't it awesome? It keeps our planet warm and people enjoy being tan. Well turns out the sun doesn't have sunlight only but UV rays as well. And these UV rays cause skin damage and skin cancer since they also decrease the skin's capability to regenerate. But you need UVB rays for vitamin D. An important vitamin for the bones especially.

Consumption of Alcohol and Drugs

In Vino Veritas. Wine or alcohol for that matter is believed to be healthy. We all know that people that drink a lot of wine, beer or any alcohol for that matter are intoxicated and with enough consumption die.

The Theme

You should be able to see it already. If not there's an awesome video from CollegeHumor that plays a good example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPz9Fcvb1II

Versus Vegans and Vs Meat-Only

I'm sorry, I can't leave this out. There's this discussion on whether eating meat all the time or not eating meat at all is healthier. Well reading this blog post and pondering over it you should see, guys, like our ancestors it's important to eat meat. We've been eating meat for years. No plant includes the whole composition meat has, maybe we can synthesize it, though I don't know if that will do us any good. So eating meat in small amounts is okay. A bit of meat every two weeks or having just a bit of chicken in your salad every 3rd day or so should probably be fine.

However, if you're vegan because you can't eat an animal thinking about them or if you avoid eating meat to reduce the demand of meat resulting in a decrease of production of meat thus meaningless animals are killed then don't let me stop you! You're doing a great job even if it's just this small thing. 

Conclusion

"Everything will kill you eventually."

 However, having a too high or too low consumption of things you will die faster. Thus the best idea would be to find the perfect balance of everything. Unfortunately, it's not as easy since in comparison to games we don't have a bar that tells us whether or not we're above or below a certain vitamin.

Match 3 Building Games

I use an app on my mobile phone to earn a little bit of extra cash by playing different games. It's not much... well more than my blog currently but still about one to two euro a month. Anyways while downloading and playing games I came across one that is a lot of fun to play.

Match-3 Genre

I haven't done a post about this genre but I probably should. For now, here's a short explanation of what these games are like. As the name mentions it already the idea is to match 3 or more of the same object together. It's most often seen as a puzzle game genre but this... well... just keep reading.

Merge Dragons! - Game Concept

The basic game is quite simple there are different types of objects that you merge together to upgrade them basically. You start off with growing plants that if merged form a flower. Additionally, you'll see dragon eggs at the very beginning of the game if you merge those you get a dragon. This dragon can interact with the objects in the game like getting life essence from the flower which can be used to purify dead ground that. Any objects on the dead ground can't be interacted with or moved unless you match them or purify them. In the rest of the game, you will find all kinds of different objects, especially in the camp or housing styled level. Almost all of them can be upgraded many of them can be interacted with.

Match 3 and Building

I don't know if this is the first mobile game that implemented this idea, but it's the first one I found. Now I've been wondering since it's a lot of fun and most of the fun really comes from the housing styled level and not from the puzzle levels. If you take the idea of the settlers, age of empires or any other building game and apply match-3 gameplay to it the resulting game could be quite interesting.

Now the biggest issue I see is that building games and match-3 definitely doesn't clash as seen in the mobile game I've been playing. However, for more building games like settlers or the age of empires, a match-3 theme wouldn't fit the aesthetics.

Inspiration

Having seen and played this game is quite inspiring and like with the most interesting ideas I see, it raises the question. Which other games, genres or mechanics can be matched with the match-3 genre? I have heard and seen a lot of games that implement a game concept like bejeweled and add another game concept running at the same time, like matching jewels or symbols to attack the enemy, but maybe there is a more direct implementation possible? Like a chess field of enemies and you can merge 3 smaller minions to a bigger minion and let those statues fight?

Well... let it sank in-game devs and designers.

How the PENS Model Fails Guild Wars 2

In the year of 2016, I did a seminar paper on gamification at my school. While writing this I did some research on gamification and what the reasons are why we play video games. During this research, I came across a concept or model called the PENS model. It seemed to explain the reasons pretty well and so I used this to apply it to my attempt of bringing gamification into the German classroom. However, there's something I've noticed when you apply this model to a game like Guild Wars 2...

The PENS Model 

This is a model that tries to explain why we are so engaged with games. There are more sophisticated and deeper models or concepts by now but it's pretty much the first I got to know. PENS is an abbreviation for Player Experience of Needs Satisfaction and it divides the player into one or multiple of the following types.

• Competence
• Autonomy
• Relatedness

Competence

describes all people who are satisfied by beating a challenge, being high on rankings or that achieve something. This goes from the achievement hunter to the tryhards to the people who play hardcore.

Autonomy

describes the need for making your own choices. This targets people who are interested in exploring, changing their character and look as well as generally giving the player choices. For example sandbox and open-world games work well for these.

Relatedness

is the last of these needs and describes the interaction with other people. Having a guild, playing together, talking, writing, etc.. This all falls into the category of relatedness.

So, if these are the basic needs a game that fulfills them should be a successful game.

Applying the PENS Model to Guild Wars 2

Let's go through the categories and see how well Guild Wars 2 does in them.

Competence

On the competence side, there are dungeons, fractals, and raids with partially challenge motes. Additionally, there are tons of achievements, collections. If you're interested in rankings there's a PvP, World vs World and an achievement ranking, as well as players seeking speed, clear and world records. Thus I would say competence is there.

Autonomy

Compared to many other competitors Guild Wars 2 is anything but a linear experience. You're free on how to level up, you're free on where to go, you're free on what content you want to play and you're free on what your end-content should look like. You can decorate your Guild hall, style your character however you want, including skins and the color of the armor. Additionally, the world is beautiful and one of the bigger and more interesting ones to explore. Autonomy all the way.

Relatedness

This is actually one of Guild Wars 2's strong suits. You can be in up to five different Guilds or Communities, open-world content including world events encourages playing with other people, World vs World even combines competence with relatedness allowing for huge player groups to fight each other with big amounts of players on four maps building their kingdom and conquering the kingdom of others.

But...

Regardless of Guild Wars 2 fulfilling all these desired partly better than other games there are still people who like other games more even games that do not fulfill these basic needs as much as it does. Thus there must be more to it than just the PENS model. Maybe there are more desired or more specific ones? Maybe it's the aesthetics that is disliked by people (See MDA model).

Reference: "Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In And Hold Us Spellbound" by Scott Rigby and Richard M. Ryan

Thought Experiement: In Balance With All

Through my journey through learning about magick in an unbiased way, I came across this weird concept. This concept of being in balance with all and even weirder being all.

What is a Thought Experiment?

You might have heard of common thought experiments like Schrödingers Cat or the Trolly Problem. Thought experiments allow us to think about psychological or philosophical problems, questions or concepts. They also allow us to follow an idea, concept or thesis. In the case of both examples, I named actually performing the experiments would be animal cruelty or would mean humans are being sacrificed. Of course, you could argue that this is for the greater good but I think we all agree that this just can't be done. In both examples either humans or a cat is killed directly or indirectly. Thought experiments allow us to think these experiments through and sorta simulate them with the way we know the world works. As such these are very useful to think through unusual, absurd, impossible or inhuman experiments and their outcomes without hurting anyone.

The Idea

The idea behind this thought experiment is to follow this idea of being all and in balance with all. It's a concept I talked about people that assumes that we repeat our life over and over intending to be one with everything. I have no idea how this affects different people or what kind of feelings come up going through this.

Please read the disclaimer before participating. For all I know this may help people who have depression, it could make it worse, it could open people's eyes or change their way of thinking or maybe it doesn't have any effect. Our mind is something very special and very strong as the placebo effect has shown us over and over. So participate if you want but be aware...

*** DISCLAIMER: Actually performing this thought experiment is done by your free will as such I do not take any responsibility on how this affects the reader or the performer.

Preparation

It's not as easy when reading instead of listening as you can't close your eyes and let it affect you. Something you can do however and something I'd advise you to do is take the following statements for granted. You don't need to believe them after the thought experiment, you don't need to fully believe them but give them a benefit of a doubt. If you disclaim any of the following statements you might ruin the thought experiment and the idea behind it. I also don't mind reading through it first, do as you wish. Another good idea is to write your experience down afterward somewhere and try to share it with me via my E-mail, twitter or any other way. As the experience of other people plays a big role in research and in thought experiments.

Thought Experiment

We'll start easy with something I hope many people can relate with. First, let's think about any bad thing you've ever done. Anything that can be considered bad or evil can be mentioned here and from any time in your life. Stealing something, hitting someone, cursing, destroying something, being mean, trolling, even the thought of raping, killing or in some other way wishing someone hell.

You are a bad person, you are evil.

Now think about all the good things you have done in your life, helping people, supporting someone, doing anything another person liked, making someone smile or making someone's life easier, again anything goes.

You are a good person, you are good.

Yet you are evil. You are good and evil at the same time.

Let's think about what you've learned through your world. All the information you soaked up like a sponge, school, work-life, everything you can do, all the skills you have, all the languages you speak. You are intelligent, you are wisdom.

Look at the animals they can't speak their people who are not as intelligent as you. Yet, you make mistakes, you do stupid things. Some people are more intelligent than you. There's so much you don't know so much you should know. So much you can't know.

You are stupid, you are stupidity.

Yet you are intelligent. You are wisdom and stupidity at the same time.

You do sport, don't you? You move around every day, even if it's a bit, you move more than nothing. You do more sport than other creatures, there's always some creature that does less, that is lazier.

You are an active person, you are a sport.

Do you run a mile every day? Do you do 50 push-ups every day? Do you go by bike for hours on hours? You never move as much as the next person, there are people more active than you and even if you were the most active person ever you could still be less lazy and move more.

You are lazy, you are inactivity.

Yet you are sporty. You are active and inactive at the same time.

You can feel your body, you can touch your arms and legs and you can feel it. This is your body, this is you. From head to feet this is you, this is what you are.

You are your body, this is you.

Where do your thoughts come from, is this really your body? Or are you imprisoned in the head of this body? Track your thoughts back and where they come from, are you sure this is your body? Is this really you? This isn't you, this isn't your body, you're something else.

You are something else, you are different.

Yet this is you. You are this body and you're not at the same time.

Do you remember how old you are? Of course, you do, no one forgets their age. You celebrate your day of birth every year, you're reminded of how old you are every time. This is your age, this is the number of years you have spent in this world, this is your time. You've been on this old for so long already, so much time has passed already. Thus...

You are old, you are an older generation.

You can feel it, you are still young, sometimes you don't feel how old you are, you might call it your inner child and avoid calling what is part of you, you. There's still so much you can do and no reason not to do it. Because...

You are young, you are the inner child you feel.

Yet you are old. You are old and young at the same time.

You are living in this life, maybe you're enjoying yourself and every second, maybe you're trying to achieve something unique no one else has or you try to compete with someone, whatever the reason or goal you have is you are alive, still alive.

You are alive, you are life.

Every day, every second a part of you dies, you slowly rot away. Your regeneration worsens day for day, year for a year until it can't keep up anymore.

You are dead, you are death.

Yet you are alive. You are dead and alive at the same time.

Whether or not you believe in life after death or death afterlife. Whether or not you believe in god or not. You are just a human, after all, a fragile, finite creature that in some way could be considered an animal, you are not as wise, you are not as omnipotent, you can't compare with a god-like figure.

You are normal, you are a mortal being.

Yet God has created you like a copy of him, you have the power to change things, you can learn your whole life your whole time, you can even be reborn according to believes. God isn't only in your heart.

You are god, you are immortal.

Yet you are normal, you are a mortal being.

You are construction. Yet you bring destruction.

You enjoy violence. Yet you want peace.

You love things. Yet you hate things. 

You are a demon. Yet you are an angel.

You are awake. Yet you are asleep.

You don't believe what you can't see. Yet you are a believer.

You are everything. Yet you are nothing.

You can't do anything. Yet you can do everything.

The Different Layers of Sex

A few posts ago I mentioned that sex is a topic in on itself and now I'm gonna throw myself into the hassle to shine a light on the different layers of sex. Maybe we can figure out why it is considered to be handled so immaturely in video games. This post may not be suited for children below sex education age, then again I don't think any of my posts are suited for that age of an audience.

Different Layers?

Now, some people may wonder what I mean by different layers. This has nothing to do with the act of sex. Instead, it is more about the intent or reason to have it. I don't know how many people are part of which category and this may be arbitrary. Sometimes multiple layers may be intended or maybe none of the ones listed in this post. I can say one thing at least: Sex is not all about pleasure and with that said, let's tackle the respective layer.

Pleasure

The first layer is something that might be very common especially in the younger generation. Of course, it exists. If it feels good then why wouldn't people do it? There are some consequences with this though. Sexual diseases, a chance for impregnation, especially if something goes wrong and something can always go wrong (Murphy's Law). This layer probably applies to everyone to a certain degree, however, I think it differs in strength from person to person, so that other layers are stronger shown. It's kinda like a policy or rules that are checked one after another if you see it more technical.

A person who has their focus on this layer probably doesn't care too much about who they're doing it with. This means that there's a high chance for these people to be pansexual or omnisexual. Whether they are or not also depends on social influences, at least as long homosexual is seen as a weird thing.

Love

Some people may see this as the opposite of the previous layer, there's no doubt that one of the reasons for sex is because you love someone. Whether or not love is some biological thing that drives us crazy for a person or makes us wanna sleep with them is something I'm not gonna debate here. The fact is that people who love each other have an interest in an intimate, romantic or affectionate sexual time. I would assume people in which this layer is strong have a great interest in doing it with their special one only. (heh, obviously) Also, this usually has not so much to do with having the looks. It's not about bodily features but more about the relationship. The only downside of this layer is, that the feeling of love may change over time. From experience, I would say love does not go away or decrease of disappearing, it instead kind of calms down so to say. Most couples are probably together as long the love is strong and once it starts to calm down they break up as they don't feel like they "love" each other anymore. Worst case scenario they break up after having a child already. The saying that people are together "because they're used to being together" may not necessarily be true. I think it is possible to still feel attracted or love a person without those tingly feelings in the tummy or being all into them. As I already mentioned, it's a different kind of love; More calm, less wild.

Reproduction

If you're talking about sex, you just can't leave out the biological reason behind it. Reproduction or giving birth to new life is a part of sex just like pleasure and love or intimacy. Additionally, I think there's no doubt that reproduction is a goal for some people in the world. Just imagine being able to teach and show your child the world. I can imagine that being a unique and awesome experience. Though I have heard of people not having any interest in having children, birthing them into the terrible world as is, people hating children and some being afraid of the pain or exhaustion from the first few years, the crying and aggressiveness or jerkiness of children and on, and on, and on. Some may even say no, due to the costs that are created. Whether or not this can be linked to an unconscious attempt of regulating overpopulation is another topic on its own.

Rituals

I already mentioned that I journey through the world of magick, it's interesting, gives a different perspective of the world and how things work and it's really interesting philosophically. Also, it tries to answer questions we can't answer yet. Anyways, from magick, I know that sexual intercourse can be used for rituals. Sexual magick is actually a thing that is used to channel the energies that exist during intercourse and use those to fulfill your goal or wish. This is done by two people of any sex who agree to pleasure each other while having the intent, goal or wish kept in mind. The climax is then used to release the intent, goal or wish into the unconscious. This is then followed by total silence and forgetting the act in an attempt to allow the energies to do their job in fulfilling the intent, goal or wish. At least that's how it can be described. What exactly happens is hard to tell, as there's not enough information on that. At least I don't know the details I never participated in or read into details on this topic.

That's It

As I already mentioned, these are the layers I know of, as humans can be infinitely complex there can be infinitely many layers and all of them can have different weights. Additionally, you can also see sex as a ritual to become more intimate with the person you love mixing the ritual and love layer with each other. Also, don't forget that these aren't all layers, these are the ones I would say I have noticed or that I can imagine existing. Nonetheless, it is important to analyze sex and sexuality scientifically and to ponder over it to address it in video games or other media. The more you know about it and which type of sexual behavior matches which person and vice versa the easier it is to create a befitting character or to fit the right sexual behavior to the right character. It's also an element that further completes the style of characters and type that you want to create for your game and it's also important especially in sex games that currently only focus on the pleasure layer. Even if those games try to make a romantic character I've seen it fail too often. 

Listen to Your Body?

Since I've been having issues with my sleep for quite some time, waking up all sleepy and being sleepy all day, I've looked for remedies for this. At some point, I started using the sleep detection feature from an alarm app I use on my smartphone because the original can't play through earbuds I came across this weird idea.

Listen To Your Body? What Do You Mean?

A few years ago I watched this video by Adam Conover which was about the truth of drinking eight gallons of water a day. In that video, an interesting and ridiculous simple point is being made. Why not drink when you're thirsty? It makes sense, your body knows when it needs something. You feel hungry when you need to eat, you feel thirsty when you need to drink, you feel the urge to go on the toilet when you need to empty your system, you feel pain when something is wrong, you feel cold when your bodies cooling down and you feel hot when your bodies heating up. By the way, check out Adam Conover's videos they're awesome - especially the older ones. Anyways, if you might not have guessed it, it should be the same as sleep. When you feel tired your body needs sleep.

Does It Actually Work?

Well, there are a few issues that you may have heard off and there are even some that kinda get me worried. If you ever experienced sleeping a long time, like ten hours or longer and wake up still tired then you know what worries me. If we assume that if you're tired you need sleep after sleeping for a long time waking up tired having to sleep more doesn't sound good. Worst case scenario, you would sleep through for multiple days. At least if we're assuming you always wake up restless after your sleep.

The other aspect where I see some issues is if you're really into something, which can sometimes be noticed by people who are addicted to something they might not notice or feel hunger for example. This means they won't know that their body needs food or even worse something to drink. As we all know, not drinking or eating for a certain amount of time results in a very serious illness called death.

Conclusion

Generally, it should work fine, however, I don't really trust it too much. I guess I'll give it a try for the upcoming weekend and let's see how it'll be going. If it actually works wonders I'm gonna do another post on it, if not, don't expect anything on that topic again. Just like the power napping experiment, which I aborted. It might have worked in the long run but something was off.

Sleeping Statistic

As I mentioned I use this app to track my sleeping and the app rates the sleep by a number between 0 and 100 while tracking information such as length of the R.E.M. (not the band) phase, amount of interruptions, length of sleep and last but not least sleep cycles. Here are the statistics listing my past 30 days or so. Ah, the high jump there was an error, for some reason, it counted the whole day as sleep. Yup, 23 hours of sleep. :P

Update Post June 2018, GDPR / DSVGO, Copyright

All of a sudden the comment, like and dislike function is gone and a weird German page appeared, what's going on?

Updates

I've talked to a friend who gave me some tips as a website programmer and I've followed them to my best to prevent huge issues with the GDPR / DSVGO. For some reason I missed it, probably just like it silently came to be and for some reason, I was never informed about this when we learned about homepages in school, though I guess that was way too far back. So say goodbye to all those nice features and intelligent google ads that show things you might have cared about just for safety. That's good, right? Trading in freedom and individuality for safety. Awesome.

My Stance on GDPR / DSVGO and Copyright

I didn't really think about writing about these topics at first but after the video, I saw from MatPat's game theory on PUBG and Fortnite, heard about the whole GDPR / DSVGO topic and saw it in a video of PewDiePie as well it starts to really get on my nerves. Just like I explained earlier, safety is important and anonymity is really precious. It's not worth creating a lot of work for this though. I just have a little blog and that's already quite a few things and with every feature, I provide people the more work it gets. If you have your own homepage as a private person where you sell some artwork, provide videos, have a forum and maybe some comment section and maybe even more... you're screwed by that. The biggest complaints I heard about the GDPR / DSVGO is that:

1. You need to provide users with all the saved data from them on request.

I don't have much knowledge about the exact technology of cookies and data that is saved when someone visits your page. I never really read deeply into website technology. So, a person who does not have the knowledge about that should not be held accountable if they can't provide it then. These most likely counts for private people that work in a creative field. Another issue is using a host like Blogger, Wordpress, Wix, etc.. Users of these platforms don't know what's happening in the background and as such it's hardly possible for these people to work with such a request. What if the host says no? This is outrageous. 

2. You need the consent of people in pictures you take.

Sounds okay, doesn't it? Well here is the fun part: It doesn't matter if they are identifiable. Yes, if you take a picture from a helicopter of a city as an artist or private person you need the consent of every person that is in the picture, I'm exaggerating. Honestly though, if you take a picture of the concert, you really need the consent of every person that's in the photograph. That's impossible.

This law clearly shows that people have no idea about the internet yet. Of course, there are complaints and concerns about data and cookies but it shouldn't affect people who try to earn their living with private passions. That's just wrong. When I hear about things like Art. 11/13 which they want to get through, where you have to pay money for linking to another page and stuff, where are we going with this? They're also planning to change fair use making reactions, let's plays and all that impossible due to you needing consent from the game creators/videos you use for reactions, etc. etc.. With these laws evolvement and development will take a huge blow.

My Issue With Copyright

And then there is the copy strike story with Fortnite and PUBG. They're both battle royal games, yes, but there is no reason for Fortnite to be taken down by copyright. The goal of copyright is to prevent other people from using your ideas to create a clone essentially and make it look better to cash in on your idea. Worst case they take away the customers. However Fortnite is not a copy of PUBG, sure they took the battleground royal styled game and took many elements from the way PUBG realized this genre and idea, however, they added a fully new mechanic - multiple actually - on it. Fortnite is like PUBG mixed with Minecraft, as such, it's completely different. Even better, it's an improvement for humanity. If you can take what MatPat mentioned in his video PUBG most likely evolved from Minecraft Hunger Games and Fortnite evolved from PUBG and Minecraft, the next game will take this inspiration and maybe create something even better. That's the way it should be. Imagine Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and would've copyright stroke anything that uses electricity to make light. That's just ridiculous. If someone invents something people should be allowed to use that to make something even better or different. If this copyright strike goes through, then it just shows how we're screwing ourselves over.

Where to Now?

I'm using my right to free speech to share these opinions and complaints of mine. I don't know if you agree, I don't know if I'm correct or wrong and due to preventing complications and making it easier for myself you can't share your opinion or correct me since there are no commenting options anymore. See where this is getting us to? The internet has already been screwed. I guess the only options there are is to raise awareness, try to do some petition or wait for a revolution, I'm not a fan of aggression in any way though. I joked with a friend of doing an online-Gandhi.

Links

• German Petition against DSVGO on change.org
• Reject art. 13 and art. 11 on change.org
• Good Generalization of Pro's and Con's and the parties opinion on it

About Content

Oh, you weren't scared off by the tl;dr stuff? Great. Here's some updated news about my content instead.

So, I've finished a prototype of "Against the World" and it's getting reviewed and constructive criticism (hopefully) on Coursera. By Wednesday I should know more about it. Basically, I've finished the fight scene with all the fight and interaction options plus forfeiting and defending. The secret mechanic is implemented and the mercy function as well. There will be a closed beta on the 8th of July and an open beta for Patreons on the 11th of July. The release date is the 15th of July. If you want to know a little bit more about the project you can read more here.

On the 30th of July, I have an interview at a university. This is my second try to get into studying game engineering. I have my hopes up now that I know more about how the system works.

Due to the project and the Diablo III season I've taken a break from releasing Youtube videos and from continuing the Desmina Research. I'll get back to it this week though so stay tuned.

I'm also planning to get real after the release of this project. I've got some encouragement and I'm going into getting a prototype done for a game I've planned that's called senses.

Yeah, now you're up-to-date, I guess.

My Experience With Sleeping Paralysis Phenomenon

This was a very shocking moment. I'm intentionally not saying that it was frightening or scary because it wasn't.

Good Morning, Sun!

It happens too frequently and too often that I happen to go to bed when it gets light outside and I really hate it. Regardless of that, I think there's no reason to trying to stay up it doesn't feel right so of course, I lie down into my bed, prepared to go to sleep. Occasionally depending on my mood, I try the energy practice I talked about in the My Hero Akademia post and sometimes I just fall asleep. It often happens that I hear weird noises but I either think it's just something explainable or my imagination. That's most often the case, not always though.

This Was Unexpected...

I didn't experience this before though, it's the first time for me. I don't know if I slept already but I assume I already drifted off, regardless I was awoken by a weird noise. It was like something holding its breath and breathing out near my ear. As a reaction to this noise, I immediately open my eyes widely. Well, what do you expect, we're driven by curiosity, obviously, and there I saw it. It was a black figure leaning towards my bed with its hands outstretched.

How I Reacted

Now, of course, many would've panicked. This is not how I reacted though. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was in sleeping paralysis, however, my body did not feel stiff, quite the contrary I was even able to look away closing my eyes from the shock. I mean if you open your eyes and something is too near to you, of course, you want to get the distance. Moving from a lying position is a bit tough though so it was only my head that moved, besides my consciousness or unconsciousness was already determined it was something like sleeping paralysis. After a short moment of having my body calm down, I opened my eyes again and it was gone.

Recall

The way I felt after seeing it, the way my body was pounding and my heart raced, I recall this feeling. I've felt it before. Every time I have such an experience of seeing something like that is bad, regardless of how it looks like. Spider web, shadow person, orb, vortex, whatever it is, the immediate reaction from my body is the same and afterward, it's always gone.

Final Thoughts

As a wizard I've been training myself already to get rid of any feelings of fear, these are toxic for yourself. I remember writing a post about fending off demons where I mention it that fear is a bad thing. I assume my unconsciousness is not ready yet, as I'm linking these symptoms (heart racing, throbbing body) that are initiated by the sight of something unfamiliar to fear and even though I know I'm not scared I still feel them. Then again it's the same with performing a presentation. Even if I'm 100% ready and prepared for it and I don't have any doubts my body still can't be calm.

Regardless I still think I handled the situation as good as I could, I just wish I would be able to stay unconsciously calm to better understand the situation and maybe even ask or interact with it?

For science, you know.

For the science of magic, spirituality and the psyche.