MISC STUFF
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this area is for a slideshow of computer stuff

Fun Links
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Computer Timeline

https://sophie-swan--first-computer.weebly.com/timeline.html

Video Essay about Pokemon Maps

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXU6frnD9WA

Harun Farocki info
https://16beavergroup.org/farocki/bibliography.htm

Konami Sucks

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOYQiBHSJMw

Movie List 
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Hackers

Snowden

The Imitation Game

Mr. Robot (not a movie but whatever)

Mercury Rising

The Thirteenth Floor

Summerwars

Ready Player One

The Matrix (duh)

ExistenZ (Cronenburg <3)

Wargames

All Watched over by Machines in Loving Grace (ep 2 on Cybernetics)

Readings <3

Postscript on Societies of Control by Gilles Deleuze

My Black Death by Arthur Jaffa

Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener

Into the Universe of Technical Images by Vilem Flusser

Cracked Essay Spectrum

1
(not that cracked (least amount of departure from daily life and application)

2
3
4
5

(Borderline Delusional)

3/2+3/9

Dating Sim Game Updates

Ok the concept is pretty much in the presentation we turned in but I’ll reiterate it for the sake of homework. 
The inspiration for this game is the question of whether or not technology fascilitates methods for human connection or hinders it. For this project we will be parodying the dating sim genre, in an attempt to address the phenomenon of opting into an external force to reflect information about ourselves. Isolation in the technical age, and the role they play in reinforcing gender tropes are very apparent within the dating Sim genre. We seek to subvert this by having each potential date being a genderless inanimate object. By using the term “external force,” I mean opting into algorithmic decision making. For example, within social media algorithms, it is decided for a user what the most entertaining form of media, at a given moment, would be. Consent is made as a user continues to interact with this platform. We seek to mirror this relationship through the media of a game itself. As a user plays a game, consent, through opting into this specific game logic, is given. The player’s free will is limited as the options with a game are limited to a predetermined options.
In both Dating Sims and online quiz games, there exists a finite set of options which attempt to describe aspects of one’s personhood. While interacting with either of these systems, the player is presented another set of decisions which they may choose from. This is not freewill, it is an illusion of choice.


Besides the concept of choice, the Dating Sim genre exists possibly to

supplement human loneliness. The protagonist in this game has reached a point in their life

where they have given up on human intimacy altogether, instead looking for love in unusual

places.

2/23

2D Game Updates/

Currently I have several scripts assigned to the player (player movement and weapon) and I have a monster spawner. I’m currently trying to figure out how to get the bullets (from weapon) to do damage on the enemy and how to make the enemy more intelligent. I plan to add a corresponding health bar for both the enemy and player. I also want to add an inventory for the player so that they can simultaneoulsy farm while fighting the enemies. 

I’ve been using ChatGPT to find bugs in my scripts.

Negative and Positive Forces within the Game Word

Unrelated to the game I’m currently working on, I have several working ideas for a final game based on comics I’ve made

1.    Radio

I wrote a comic about an infintite radiostation which consists of the verbalization of combined conciousness of all the people within a single town.

e.x. it would function sort of like this at 8:20 but each “individual,” would not have any awareness of life with a body, while still having the same thoughts. 

There wouldn’t be any positive or negative force neccasarily, just a tension between whether it would be more utopic for everyone in a set environment to exist as a singularity or if the state we are in currently, as seperate bodies, is already the best case scenario.

2. Airplane

work in progress

3. Just a Cyborg Girl Living in a Cyborg World

concept: a more intelligent version of the mars rover travels to Earth in order to gather and archive different specimens. She is programmed as a woman who would become a mother-God-like figure who creates new chemical compounds to recreate a familiar (because of the environment) yet unfamiliar (due to a physical hand involved in evolution) reconstructed Earth. The chemical make up of the Earth would be identical to that which exists now (or had existed several thousands of years prior) except everything will have introduced radioactive material into its make-up. So substances would essentially be the same but with the addition of some nuclear spice.

I suppose the negative force would be the conditions of making with pre-existing materials(but that can also be a positive!) A challenge would be to sustain life or an attempt to envision life in a way which we have never seen it before.

Bonus: Dating Sim with Ruiqui

it’s gonna be a dating sim.. just 4 fun

2/9+2/16

2D Practice Game

Sprites!

I’m working first on a 2D game to understand the mechanics of putting together images, coding, and sound within Unity. 

The game is a top-down shooter. So far I’ve drawn a few test sprites in photoshop. I have player movement code down, though I’m still trying to get the shooting code to work. I’m not yet sure what to do within sound.

game2/2/2023
mapmapmap


attempt at a physical “randomly generated” map

1. Island chain with a few places unlocked

2. close up

Something that I’ve always loved most in games are the maps. These maps make it so the monetary and time restrictions of real life don’t apply, making travel accessible if only within the digital realm. In Pokemon specifically, to me, the games were about exploring to build an archive. I started out with Pokemon Leaf Green.

 

(I started playing it when I was around 5. My dad justified the time I spent playing this game by saying that it was helping me learn to read. I think it did..kinda.. I skipped over lengthy text parts.. I think the most helpful part of spending so much time with this game, was learning how to strategize while battling gym leaders and while trying to collect different items, which required jumping through hoops, and to think a few steps ahead, also while battling gym leaders. Anyways..)

In Pokemon Leaf Green, you begin as a research assistant for a professor to catelogue the different Pokemon throughout the region. This speaks to the human tendency to explore and collect. 

1/25/23
Week 2 of School 

The World of Homestuck

Homestuck is an interactive webcomic which was more of that than a game. Every few days, new pages would be posted on the website,  when this happened it was refered to as an update. Each page consisted of Gifs or still images and later on in the plot, more interactive elements were added such as the ability to explore and interact with characters within a map. 
The story begins when protaganist, John Egbert, recieves a Beta copy of the game Sburb which he can play with his online friends. (I’m not exactly sure how to explain the plot because it is very technical) basically the game isn’t what it seems and John and his friends come into contact with these internet Trolls (aliens with horns) and they all go on this intergalactic interdimensional computer game/ real life journey filled with romance, death, and exploration. Homestuck’s lore is extensive, resulting in a huge fanbase which has significantly decreased in its height since the peak around 2011. The story exists both on Earth, online, and in the dream realm where each character has an alter ego, a dream self, which live on either moons Derse or Prospit.

Because of the world’s divergence from physical space represented on one plane, the maps, I think, are very interesting. They use the traditional 2 dimensional format of a map to encapsulate both  physical distances and time. Some of these maps are fan made in order to orient a viewer in plotting out the story. It’s also nice when a complex story invites people to envision space and time by their own terms. 

Homestuck, seen as a cultural artifact, speaks to the growing popularity of meta fiction. This comic began in 2009. What attracted me to it initally was its references to real life popculture. For example, in John’s room he had a bunch of posters for shitty Adam Sandler movies. This became a relatable point of entry to the character by referencing a generationally collective subconcious through the use of media from a sort of subculture. This throwaway detail about a character’s niche architypal which to me, was a new way of building a character through using the language of pop culture which I am familiar with whether I like it or not. Being a middle schooler in 2011-2013, the cultural language was an essential point of finding discovering overlap between myself and another person where we would become friends. Whether or not I liked the instances of pop culture news of that time wasn’t neccesarily relevant because it was a continuous dialougue which would continue to shift and change around everyone, making it an easy thing to discuss with one another. 
I digress, 
reference to the physical world (and physical happenings) within stories is funny. Humor and mystery kept me hooked. 

Random Thought: I don’t think meta humor in big bugdet ‘legit media’  is that funny anymore. Examples: Good
                 Bad
Though maybe its my generational bias that makes me think that.

not about homestuck anymore

The first time I used a computer alone was to play Kitchen Story on my dad’s Facebook account. Throughout the game, you could get free coins or gifts and things by turning on notifications or by watching ads. Little did I know that I would still be clicking “sign me up for the emailing list for 10% off my next purchase,” to this day. This was my first exposure to the realm of games intersecting with personal data.

I listened to a podcast the other day about the creator of website cookies. From my crude understanding of it, cookies save pockets of data which were originally intended to streamline internet usage by, to bring data saved from one page to another. This would be used, for example, if you were online grocery shopping and didn’t want to purchase all 36 of your items separately. You now had the option to put it in your ‘cart’ which is a name given to the section which stores the information about the items you wanted to purchase. I would like to learn more about the evolution of cookies as it turned from a tool used for user convinience into user data mining by advertising. 

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other stuff I’m curious about:

1. the development of computers in relationship to military strategies

2. the evolution of computers alongside capitalism

3.the pros and cons of the internet as a social space

4.at what point will computer gaming be seen as a legitimate form of art making

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My theory:

Inspired by the Hito Steryel talk, I’m beginning to think that computers were developed as a utopic isolation of the rational aspects of human thinking. The mathematic definition of rationality is defined as, “the property of a number, quantity, or expression of being expressible, or containing quantities which are expressible, as a ratio of whole numbers.” Applying this to the logic of computers and coding, computers could only be logical based on a mutual understanding of agreed upon rules by those who use computers. (Maybe that’s why different set of code systems are called languages. They’re systems of communitcation between computers ad humans) Computers are rational, then, because they are predictable. 


But how can something as irrational as human behavior be made into, “logical,” sets of data? Anything could be logical if enough time is invested into figuring out why something happened. Even if I were to witness an action being done which disagreed with my personal logic, it would still be logical by the perspective. If someone, for example, threw a rock through my window one morning, I would probably get angry and start yelling at them. My behavior would be irrational but justified just as their behavior, to me, would be irrational but justifiable. Maybe a bird that kept taking their french fries wouldn’t leave them alone so they decided to throw a rock at it just as it flew past my window. They could tell me it was an honest mistake. Just bad luck. But I would take it as an offense. How can we (me) as (an) emotional being(s) make anything rational at all?

Week 3

In