loquaciouslacedaemonian-blog

[loquaciouslacedaemonian-blog]

I can't believe there are people on this site like six years younger than me like what the hell

#text

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Presenting DOOM boy~ I dunno, this was a stupid idea I was thinking about all day- I kinda want it to be a thing :3

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Its been a while since I animated something so I wanted to doodle something short and fun… And then I decided to make it lineless… LOVE YOU BEEBEE!

Thanks @squigglydigg for helping with the smoke!

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‘ w’;;

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The Disciples of Babel (BStain.wad map25)

ようこそ地獄のダンスホールへ… 

From Pretty design and combat megawad. WAD: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/bstain

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Southwest Asia, 1912

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Thoughts on Genocide in Undertale

I just finished playing Undertale for the first time about a few weeks ago. I sort of avoided the whole thing when it first came out a few years ago because it just seemed like some kind of flavor-of-the-month type thing, you know that thing everyone obsesses about for a while but ultimately is forgotten when something new comes along to replace it. So I was a bit uninterested in it, I only bought it last December on Steam™ because of a sale and even then still didn’t manage to cultivate enough motivation to play for a while. Since a few weeks ago I’ve played it to completion six times from total genocide to pacifism. Undertale at first seemed to be a simple if not enjoyable romp but underneath it explores intriguing themes, which Genocide in particular explores these thought-inducing themes. It’s just sort of been sitting in my brain (my thoughts on Genocide), bubbling and frothing, and I feel the urge to get my thoughts out about it coherently in writing or I might experience some kind of cartoonish episode with steam coming from my ears in nose or something.

What really strikes me as so thought provoking is how the game explores player psychology, in other words what drives a player to act in certain ways and what does that mean in regards to the player. If you have only played Undertale to completion through Neutral and Pacifist routes some of Undertale’s like more thought provoking themes will mostly be just hinted at, shallow glimpses of it here and there, notably through brief conversations with Sans and Flowey but Undertale really explores these ideas when a player commits to finishing a Genocide route.  

In Non-Genocide the player will play the game in the way that is syncretic with the most enjoyable mechanics of the game. Act’ing with monsters rather than Fight’ing them is in all respects a more interesting way to interface with the game and is rewarded with whimsical dialogue immediately and later on with dialogue with other characters, interesting Boss fights, puzzles, etc.. In Genocide all these things are sort of like just stripped away. The Fight interactions in Undertale are arguably the least interesting and most tedious way of dispatching monsters, and Genocide forces the player to use this interaction not only for all monsters encountered but forces the player to endure tedium and boredom seeking out every monster to destroy them and advancing too far into the game before doing so will prevent the player from killing them, so it also easy to make a mistake and be put on track for Neutral, rather than Genocide. All the puzzles, in Genocide, are completed before the player arrives. The areas are vacant of monsters to talk to (vacant of the ones who don’t attack you), the music of the areas is replaced with a stretched, distorted version of the normal track interlaced with roaring booms. Even Boss fights end anticlimactically with a single hit aside from Undyne and Sans.

What makes the Genocide run compelling in spite of tedium and stringent boredom is how it (Genocide) cynically deconstructs the game. In the ending for Pacifist, for instance, the player apparently defeats Asriel Dreamur through the friendships and love that the player has for the character’s they’ve spent hours befriending and becoming emotionally invested in and the world of Undertale as a whole. In Genocide, however, the source of power for the character is not given these pretenses. Undyne, the first of the two challenging fights, also draws on the same motivation that narratively the player had in Pacifist. She thinks of her friends, the world, and draws her strength from this after receiving a near fatal blow by the player character. However, she is defeated. This serves to illustrate that these things, friendship, love, emotional investment, etc., really don’t matter in the context of interfacing with Undertale. In Pacifist and Neutral the player is introduced to Determination as a recurring meme, used encouragingly on the player’s death and humorously at save points throughout the game. In the Undyne fight, this is where the idea of Determination is no longer a meme but is shown to be the true source of power for the player and character. If the player is determined then they can overcome any challenge in a game because by nature games are systems with a win goal that can be achieved by the player. Throughout Genocide save points text boxes will read simply “Determination”, as if reminding the player that their determination to finish Genocide is what gives them the power to continue enduring unpleasantness.

In the end of Neutral and Pacifist the player is introduced to the concept of Level of Violence and Execution Points as an abstraction of the player’s emotional withdrawal from the world, which, at least on a first time playing through, will in some way be acquired whether through accidental murder or purposeful. The inevitable acquisition of LVL and EXP in a player’s first time interfacing with Underatle, I think, shows that all players have some disposition towards violence and some disconnect, mentally, from their interface with the game and their effects on the world. In Genocide I felt absolutely terrible for killing Toriel, what she said in her final moments before oblivion really plucked an emotional string. As I continued through I did find it easier and easier to commit violence as my LVL increased and boredom started to be a primary emotional state, until finally by the time I reached the Core I was Alt-Tab’ed, watching YouTube™ videos while occasionally shifting my attention back to murder a monster. If that isn’t an emotional disconnect between my actions and their effect then I don’t know what is. This of course is all subjective and my personal emotional reaction will not be absolute for all players, even at the highest level that can be reached I still felt a small nub of guilt for the final murder that the player can perform at the end of Genocide.

Sans serves not only as the second and final challenge of the game and the climax of Genocide, but as personally my final severance of attachment to any character in the game. Sans is by far the most difficult fight in Undertale. Sans breaks conventions that were established by the game, Sans attacks first, you can be hurt in between attacks, Sparing leads to failure, and attacks can be commenced by Sans unexpectedly. The only way to beat Sans is to spend hours memorizing his attacks until the player acts reflexively, and you have no friends to help you like in Asreil Dreamur’s fight (the player sort of killed all their would-be-friends at this point, after all), which is perhaps the second most difficult fight in Undertale. All that’s left is Determination, determination to finish Genocide despite all the tedium, boredom, and frustration, despite the fact there is, as Sans says, no good to come from Genocide.

During the fight Sans diagnoses the player’s motivations for their chosen method interfacing with Undertale. Sans suggests that the player determines to finish Genocide not out of malice or evil but as a kind of morbid fascination. This by contrast suggests Pacifism is completed through not really any kind of moral abhorrence of violence (as nearly all players have capacity for violence), but from the player’s determination to finish the game without killing any monster. This inverts the player’s motivation in Pacifism quite cynically; a player has Determination to beat the game non-violently not out of any serious moral conviction but from a desire to see more of the game, which is almost identical for the motivations for Genocide.

After needlessly murdering Sans, the player has completed Genocide with only one door separating them from the end of the game. Asgore and Flowey die in the throne room, but not through player action, at this point the player character is now thoroughly controlled by the Fallen Human. When starting the game the player can name the Fallen Human and at first it’s thought to be naming the character the player controls, but in Pacifist it’s revealed that the character the player controls is named Frisk and in Genocide it’s the Fallen Human (which I guess is named Chara?). These two identities come about through contradictory ways of interfacing and marks opposite psychologies of player interaction with video game software. You can imagine Frisk as a manifestation of a player who becomes invested in the game emotionally, talking to all the characters, befriending them, indulging in exposition dumps of game lore, etc.. Fallen Human can be imagined to be a player who skips dialogue and grinds monsters into extinction to max stats without regard toward it’s affect upon the world.  Each manifestation of player psychology has its own conclusion, Frisk being a Deus ex Machina happy ending with man and Fallen Human being a permanent blight on the game.

Once Genocide is completed the Underground and world above are destroyed but to Reset the game has a lasting consequence to future games played. In Neutral lasting consequences of player actions were ultimately shallow and served, in my opinion, as an introduction to the consequence of Genocide. Upon completing Genocide and resetting there is a flag placed on the game that would corrupt subsequent completions of Pacifist with an ending that invalidates the happy ending. To complete Genocide it required for the player to emotionally distance themselves from the world, to accept that the characters in the game have a disposable emotional value to the player, and the corruption of Pacifist is a narrative change that reflects the player’s change (You really don’t care about the characters, huh? Well then I guess you won’t mind if I just invalidate your happy ending, then, will you?). However, I don’t believe that this blight of the game is necessarily directed toward the player’s arbitrary and cruel actions inside the game space. The consequence of genocide doesn’t really focus it’s critique on the capriciousness of players, however there is a little of that interspersed throughout the game, but more of a critique on how some players view games as disposable systems. Viewing of games as cold and impersonal systems is really what leads the player to Genocide and this is what the game critiques, not necessarily violence in of itself but the cold impersonal min-maxing that precludes emotional investment, which I feel is the ultimate thematic message of Genocide.

Man, I wrote way too many words about a game that no one even cares about anymore, I just wasted like three hours. 

#undertale text #undertale #sans #flowey #chara #genocide #frisk #undertale spoilers #writing #wasted time

[loquaciouslacedaemonian-blog]

My Quake 2-unit is FINALLY HERE! >:’3c

It has three levels following a marine who got dropped off a dropship prematurely. In order to complete this unit, the marine has to make way to the surface again where the dropships will be waiting.

How to install and play:

Download this .ZIP-file (around 5 mb).

Put the included .bsp-files in the baseq2\maps-folder.

If you don’t have a maps-folder, create it and put the .bsp-files in there.

Start up Quake 2.

In the console enter “skill 1″ (or else you will risk dying at the start).

Then enter “map olde1″ or “gamemap olde1″ (if you’re on Q2pro).

Start playing!

Please let me know what you think. :3

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世界的无产阶级高兴地接受社会主义

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Wiggle wiggle wiggle

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Music is important.

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Yeah

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They are going to jail but it was just delayed until there could be arrangements made for their disability but I guess there isn't enough time to read when you're desperate to find misandry.

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You really showed that meme

My responses get saltier every day