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Best Posts
Next in Random Thoughts: Webcomics |
Below are the posts that have interested people the most. They have either generated the most links or sparked the most discussions. One of these may even have brought you here.
Seven Springs
A true story of a couple of strange days in 1990, my senior year in high school.
Part One: Naked Girls and A Hotel-Sized Prank.
Part Two: The Terrors of Room 102, and Lessons Learned.
The goal: To write a program to procedurally generate a nighttime cityscape in just 50 hours. It turned out really well.
This is a project where I detailed the writing of a terrain engine, more or less from scratch. The posts are written in plain language and are readable by non-coders who might be curious how 3d graphics work and what challenges a game designer might face.
My crazy little web comic, which looks at Lord of the Rings through the eyes of your typical D&D player.
A humorous YouTube video I made.
Below are the posts that I think are the best. These didn’t cause a stir like the stuff above, but among all the stuff I’ve written, these are my favorites.
A look at how video games could use self-constructing scenery to cut development costs.
A discussion of how to replace the stupid system of videogame swordplay with something that will look like a real duel.
The problems with using a “Difficulty Select” option in a game, and how to replace it with something that will gracefully allow players to seek their own level.
I know Kung-Fu (Part 1) (Part 2)
The depth and complexity of the common First-Person Shooter.
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Just an off hand, under your explanation of your post “Dueling Gameplay” you have the sentence
“I discussion of how to replace the stupid system of videogame swordplay with something that will look like a deal duel.”
Should discussion be discuss, and “look like a deal duel” be “look like a real duel”?
Wow. This post is exactly one year old, and nobody noticed (or pointed out) those typos until now.
Thanks for the heads-up. Fixed.
lol, all in a days work for….
GRAMMAR MAN!
lol, all in a days work for….
GRAMMAR MAN!
Grrr!!!
I do not understand your grief my young friend. It is an accepted e-term that express emotion and feeling in a small combination of letters. In the world of typing, its easier to inform readers online of an emotion in a term that all understand without writing unneeded. I guess I could have put down “I am laughing, this situation is funny! All in a days work….” But you understood what I was trying to portray, correct? Why punish me for saving some reading time? Now, if I went the extra mile, “LULZ!!1! seez, I l337 spellz skilz nUb, WOOOOOOOT!!” then you would have permission to crucify me upon your dictionary. But the language is always evolving. “lol” is now a real term to most of us out here in the online universe. Even those that are grammar police officers. Its just simpler to express your mirth than actually saying a few words. I mean, we no longer speak in proper Victorian English do we? The standard of the language is a shape shifting melange of terms based in old usages and new terms born from culture. Have you ever used the word “cool” to show your approval of something? that wasn’t a part of our dictionary years ago. In the future I’m sure that the popular usages will be even stranger, shaped by our online culture. Let us not shun the new terms that are springing up, at least not the ones that are actually non offensive, and that we all understand. “lol” was an odd and silly phrase not too long ago, but everyone understands it, and what it means. It is just making the expressing the emotions you cannot see for your self without writing a Tolkien-like full chapter about how I found the situation funny, and actually laughed. Please, let there be peace. I promise, in my formal writing I never, ever, use such terms, but in the context of conveying emotions quickly, sometimes the e-terms make sense. later!
;) lol, later.
I agree about the evolution of language. However, when I find people who SAY “LOL” aloud as a word, I still reserve the right to punch them in the face. As an aside: I would like to point out that the word “cool”, to mean “good” or “acceptable”, first appeared in 1868 in Wilkie Collins’ “The Moonstone”. Yes: EIGHTEEN sixty-eight. It only started to mean “fashionable” in 1933, and its association with Jazz music came about from the Miles Davis’ album “Birth of the Cool”. It was in common usage even during World War II. Even more interesting: the word “dude” was first mentioned in 1883. “Foxy” was first mentioned in 1895, and “wicked”, as in cool, was first mentioned in 1920 by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
*Crickets*
…Well I think it’s interesting. I would say that I watch too much QI, but you can NEVER watch too much QI.
non offensive should be unoffensive, blast the inability to edit!
You’re absolutely right Gahaz, and as we begin to integrate the internet into more and more aspects of our lives, you can bet many more of those terms will become part of the accepted language. Who knows, perhaps in the future 1337 and txtspk may become accepted languages XD
… more reason to fear for the next generation…
I love how someone called GRAMMAR MAN out for using lol, but not for missing an apostrophe in “all in a days work”…
U rock shamaus. LOVE THHIS SITE.
Rawling, you totally missed how GRAMMAR MAN talks. Inflection and delivery are the two things you can never be sure about. He sees events happening as a small collection not in singular fashion. He groups what he does into small amounts of crime fighting. So as he sees it, he had been on a three day justice fight, that it was “all in a days work for” is refering to the way he sees time.
Or you could have just called me out on something much funnier than the lol debacle. Speaking of that, Any oopsies in my big post that took much more time.
ASSOME GAHAZ. but its not how long or short it is, its about saying somethin at all.
Hmm I can’t get these gravatars to work at all….*sniff*
Sure you can. For instance, it is working right now ;)
I know! finally my worm is free! Um, sorry, that sounded awful….
i thought it sounded funny not awful u jugde ur self to much. dont worry. everybody has there own unniqe style of saying things, like this i can say something that sounds perfect to me but no one can figure me, or it out. im very odd,, weird, watever. lol
So… Ever gonna update this?
an accepted e-term that express…
THAT EXPRESSES?
:p
Lol isn’t a word though, it’s an acronym, so it should be LOL, or L.O.L. if you’re feeling particularly pedantic.
Lol IS a word, I have heard people say it rather that say the letters.
You should update this. My nominations:
Funny review of your new graphics card:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1636
Fable 1 plot takedown:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1317
Deus Ex Invisible War takedown with very funny comic:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1607
There’s plenty of others, I’m sure, but these are just the first few I thought of.
You could definitely stand to update this. May I nominate the overview of Mass Effect 2′s plot problems (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7004), which I have seen mentioned on a few other sites so I think it at least qualifies for the first category.
I’m brand new to your site. I like what I’ve read here, but it seems to need updating.
That shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes one day, right?
@CurtisJ, since I’m feeling a bit pedantic, an acronym is a word :) If you were to say L.O.L. it is just an abbreviation, but once you start pronouncing it Lol, it is an acronym. A common example is OPEC.
I bet I can out pedantic you :). It’s an acronym if you pronounce it as a word, but if you say it as a series of letters (L.O.L.) then it’s technically an initialism. Acronyms and initialisms are both types of abbreviations. To borrow your example format: OPEC would be an example of an acronym (as would SCRAM and TASER), whereas CIA and FBI would be examples of initialisms.
Yes, I am one of those bizarre pod people that think grammar is fun.