for science

[ID: Series of screenshots of a twitter thread by @JoelBurgess on 18 August 2021 that reads:

Alright, So inspired by @NPurkeypile’s bee post yesterday, here is one of my favorite bits of skyrim oral history -

the myth of the treasure fox. I’ve told this story before in talks /etc, but I don’t think I’ve shared it with twitter.

Here goes.

Among Skyrim players, you’ll occasionally see this tip: if you see a wild fox, follow it and you’ll be lead to treasure.

Sometime Shortly after shipping, we saw this going around online, and an informal investigation started. Who made foxes do this?!

The usual suspects got interrogated- myself, @jean_simonet @jonahlobe and @Markiepo0 , among others. nobody confessed.

I got curious and started digging around in scripts - nothing.

So if nobody MADE this behavior, what’s up? Jean figured it out. (as usual)

Skyrim uses something called “navmesh” for AI navigation. For non-dev folks, this is an invisible 3D sheet of

polygons that is laid over the world, telling AI where it can and cannot go. This read stuff is navmesh. you can read

about it here: http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Category:Navmesh

in most situations, you’re seeing AI decide what to do (run at player, hide in cover, etc), use navmesh to make a path,

and use navmesh to make a path, and navigate along that path. Foxes are no different. but their AI is very simplified: they basically can *only* run away. if you spook a fox, it flees.

So foxes flee. why would they flee towards treasure? This is where it get’s interesting.

If you’re close to an AI it’s in “High Process”, or the most fancy, CPU-intensive path finding, It uses the full

navmesh and will do things like line of sight and distance checks.

To contrast, there’s also “low process” used for stuff like NPCs walking a trade route across the world.

There are only updated every several minutes, and position is tracked very loosely. the bandit stabbing your face,

however, is running nav stuff many times per second.

So, @jean_simonet knew something that I didn’t (as usual)

there is a sort of “medium Process” for characters nearby, but who didnt need the complex pathing of combat.

because of the way the fox’s AI worked, (always be fleeing!) it’s basically only using this process.

This is where understanding of how Skyrim uses navmesh comes in.

Swaths of the outdoor world have simple navmesh. you don’t need to add lots of detail in a space with basic topography,

little clutter, or a low chance of combat.

so wilderness = small number of big triangles.

When you stumble across something like a camp, however, navmesh gets way more detailed. added visual detail means added

navmesh detail, and if we’re placing NPCs of any kind, we also tend to add even more detail.

So points of interest = big number of small triangles.

You see where this is going?

The fox Isn’t trying to get 100 meters away- it’s trying to get 100 *triangles* away.

You know where it’s easy to fine 100 triangles? The camps/ruins/etc that we littered the world with, and filled

with treasure to reward your exploration.

so foxes aren’t leading you to treasure- but the way they behave is leading them to areas that tend to HAVE treasure,

because POIs with loot have other attributes (lots of small navmesh triangles) that the foxes are pursuing.

To players, however, it’s the same thing.

It’s a nerdy story, but i love it.

Emergent Gameplay is often used to describe designed randomness, but this is a case of actual gameplay that nobody

designed emerging from the bubbling cauldron of overlapping systems.

And I think that’s beautiful. END ID]

Planetes is so fucking good - up until episode 11, it’s just light-hearted workplace fluff, and awe about the grandeur of space. Then in punches you in the emotional gut and shifts the tone entirely, to harsh political commentary about the way that exploitation of the global south is the basis that new technologies are slotted into - that regardless of the technologies themselves, the relationship stays the same - and on the validity of armed terrorism as a response.

Image transcript:

The only people who will reap the benefits of space development are a handful of first-world countries like America or Japan. The space development you’re so happy about is causing thr gap between the rich and poor nations to widen. If you’re a country that doesn’t have the technology to go into space, all you can do is look up at the first-world countriesas they monopolize space resources. Well, that’s how capitalism is supposed to work. And its those first-world countries that both produce space debris and have retrieved. All we really are is lapdogs for first-world countries.

\end ID

cannot even begin to imagine the Blade Runner cyberpunk shit this ladybug i found on my RGB keyboard was going through

[ID: A closeup photo of a light up RGB keyboard. The keys are black, with bright orange and pink lights coloring them from below. A ladybug sits on a wide gap between several keys, bathed in the bright pink light. End ID.]

I love that the evil universe from TOS comes up in other star trek shows. Like they could have moved on from the idea that there is a universe pretty much like ours but everybody is evil existing alongside ours. They could have just let that be a weird TOS thing, but nah every once in a while you'll be watching star trek and bam remember that evil universe where everyone is evil? Let's see what they're up to

And still nothing will ever be funnier than that evil spock is mostly the same he just has an evil goatee

And everyone's clothes are 30% slurttier

Ngl evil star trek universe has style

they make the evil episodes as an excuse to make the characters sluttier

we have to be silly together it's an imperative i can't do this alone

every time i have to eat or shower or whatever i get so pissed off. like i just fucking did all this shit yesterday

happy to update that after ryan accidentally showed his production laptop password in the latest debrief, we changed it and the password is no longer “watcher” 

my introductory paragraph insisting upon my sanity and denouncing all those who would insinuate my madness is raising a lot of questions in the reader already answered by my paragraph

IT’S FERAL FRENCHIE FRIDAY MUTHAFUCKAS

😼🗡️🪕💥🗡️☠️🕵️‍♂️🗡️🎉🙀🗡️🤺👺🗡️🩸🎶👑🗡️🏴‍☠️💩🗡️🪶📕🗡️🐈‍⬛

Katia (Witch) 🔮 Thank you for commissioning me!

Buffy and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer for my Tropetember 2023 contribution for the prompt : Enemies To Lovers.​

@tropetember

[ID: a semi realistic colored pencil drawing of Buffy and Spike kissing. /end]

i have witnessed unspeakable horrors . the horrors weren't undescribable or anything, i just had to sign an NDA

My Hero Academia's frog girl is good and deserves to be in a better not-misogynistic show.

I’m gonna put her in the Avatar universe. She’s a swamp bender now.

Who is the frog girl.

Tsuyu Asui

(via @hexagonaldecency)

You're absolutely right! I'm putting them all in the Avatar universe where they'll be treated with respect.

[ID: first few images are screencaps of Tsuyu. The last is a Tumblr tag reading: all of the girls in this show need to be isekai'ed to l into somewhere that will treat them better. /end]

Saw a post the other day that was like 'guys stop complaining about the One Piece tab, as marketing goes it's very unobtrusive'. Do we think Tumblr took that as a challenge or

Nobody was going in the one piece tab so they had to send out the fucking clown