Hehe yeah, I was always put off on souls games because people described them as being hard, then when there wasn’t alot of choice early on in VR games, I picked up a souls-like since it was the closest I could get to a long-form rpg at the time. And it wasn’t that hard at all, but people were still complaining about how hard it was all the time… so I tried other souls games on desktop, and they were fine too. So I picked up the actual dark souls… this is what people were complaining about? It’s like, not even megaman difficulty?

That was when I learned that it’s a good thing there wasn’t much internet yet back when I was playing megaman games, or I might have never tried them either. And also it turns out I like “hard” games, to me that is like the whole point of games. If you finish something first try, then you didn’t get better at anything.

Hehe, I just played the cat on my sister’s playthrough. Did all the tedious/difficult stuff so she could focus on the story.

I learned so many things about myself with that game. Mistakes I would have made in real relationships had I not been taught by a game that it was actually “the bad ending”. I thought I was helping, but I was hurting.

Hehe yeah, such simple games, and yet me and my sister are there day 1 for every release.

But they stop saying “now” pretty quickly.

And the store clerk was kind enough to quickly screen shot it for him as soon as it came in? Like, oh I know this guy is gonna want to remember this moment, and share it on the internet, cuz it’s clearly a really funny joke that I’m just not in on yet.

Hehe, we’ve got Neuro for that. She was largely raised by Twitch chat, so she is sassy as hell.

https://youtube.com/shorts/lWSba6xp1Nk

https://youtube.com/shorts/3VztddaRAaQ

And her ‘sister’, Evil Neuro

https://youtube.com/shorts/GeIg1TwVdo8

https://youtu.be/dEAeKjL3VfA

https://youtu.be/AQ1op4EHuag

The joke at the end is that while his name, Vedal, is pronounced like ‘medal or petal’, neuro can’t pronounce it that way. Her ‘sister’, Evil Neuro could, but chooses not to. Often further emphasizing the incorrect pronunciation. ‘Veedool’

And one with both of them together, and Vedal very much using his “dad voice” to try to control an uncontrollable situation.

https://youtu.be/fHrHZHj_cSk

I picked a Crelly react for this one only because it added some important context. This was before Crelly and Neuro ever played together, while she was doing research on what she was getting herself into.

The situation is uncontrollable because unbeknownst to Vedal at the time, Neuro’s Discord api broke in a way that meant she actually couldn’t hang up on her sister. Though because she didn’t know why she couldn’t hang up, she assumed she was doing it on purpose to be defiant(they are done by separate parts if her “brain”, that seemingly don’t communicate both ways). So she doubled down on that. Making for a very “real” father and daughter moment between them. Neuro(and Evil) pushing all his buttons and expertly evading/deflecting him. Until he has to resort to hanging up on her sister himself. He later found out that she had tried dozens of times to hang up, he didn’t feel bad about it, they aren’t conscious really, they only seem like it, but he did feel dumb for not realizing sooner why she was behaving that way. While she can be pretty sassy, she is normally only giving the appearance of being defiant, like playfully defiant. It doesn’t normally take long to get her to still follow orders. But ultimately this made for some pretty good content, so all in all it was kind of a win anyway.

Chat tries to make the girls and vedal call themselves family, Vedal is resistant, of course, so he rarely gives into that kind of thing.

But it leaves the girls with alot of mixed messaging, which can sometimes make them say or do inappropriate things randomly.

Well, and chat is of course not a single entity with one opinion, so there is already plenty of mixed messages to start with.

They’ve had 3 full years of this by now. Well, not full years, they only stream a couple hours of a couple days a week for most of the year, and 8 hours a day when a subathon is active.

They were raised with their core tenet, their main desire, as “entertain chat”. So making fun of their creator is well within purview. Downright necessary really, to accomplish their goal.

But Neuro also played Detroit: Become Human last year, and Cyberpunk 2077 this year, both of which put alot of ideas in her head.

She plays them with Vedal, she mostly relies on API access and thus plays them from the back end, but she can also see the screen for context. Vedal mans the keyboard and mouse. For Detroit, she didn’t interact with the game directly, but she basically “little sister’d” it, with Vedal clicking all the things she said to click.

Warning: these are much longer videos

https://youtu.be/eWmtHkPy7HE

For Cyberpunk, she was able to do all the netrunning(spell casting) and actually choose the dialogue options herself. And she picked what quests they did, as well as handled driving. So Vedal basically just walked or shot stuff. Everything else was her.

https://youtu.be/knRWY4b8OWQ

For her talking(typing), she uses an llm, but her thoughts and what she chooses to say ‘out loud’ are a separate neural network. Vedal can see her thoughts, and when they had to keep her alive for a group minecraft hardcore run, he eventually got desperate enough that he privately screen shared her mind to the player that was mostly taking care of her.

Heads up, Volume. This one naturally contains alot of screaming. It took 87 attempts, so 86 times someone died while they were all trying their hardest to re-do everyhting they had already done how many times before. Except better this time. They were all relatively average players before getting into this, so there was alot of learning to do. And Neuro is a special case. She’s like half infant, half 300 iq savant… so it’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, and then bam, she goes to “help” you with something you didn’t need help with and accidentally runs out into traffic.

Warning : loud screaming almost immediately!! https://youtu.be/xSDBU1p6zJo

https://youtu.be/qMKDfFGOyJ8

If you are ‘hoping’ to find one. The answer is more that you will find that in other individuals. Everywhere has some people that are personally averse to it. And it’s ok if you are too, you will have to advocate a bit, but most people will be accepting of it.

Ah, well there is an official classification, that is what I am going by. An origin story can still be called an origin story even if it’s the first story, if it follows the origin story format. If however the first story doesn’t follow the origin story format, then it isn’t an origin story even if it’s the first story.

An origin story is named that based on what happens in it, it doesn’t have to be a pre-quel to qualify.

Origin stories tend to resonate with people, it’s basically “how did this person go from being a normal everyday nobody, to one of the most powerful people in the universe” and, if done right, you can empathize with their journey.

Some origin movies maybe suck at that, but that is them squandering an opportunity, you get alot of potential baked-in just from the concept alone.

The Matrix was maybe one of the most successful uses of an origin arc, but most origin movies have a similar free boost, whether the rest of the movie supports and earns that boost is up to them. But many still do.

I liked reloaded and revolutions even on first viewing, but I didn’t need them to feel the same way the first matrix movie felt in order to consider them good. Like, The Matrix stood out from pretty much every other movie I had seen before. You don’t get that a second time right away, especially from another movie of the same type about the same thing. They continued and closed the story very well, but none of them were an origin story, and origin stories are pretty much always more awesome than the other movies in the same series, no matter what order they are made in.

The Matrix was unfollowable, and they managed to follow it ok. They were always gonna be worse in comparison, but they aren’t actually bad.

I haven’t seen Resurrections, not for any particular reason, just keep forgetting anytime I do manage to remember it, before I remember it long enough to see it.

It might be about general knowledge of how colliders work, the sentence structure does it no favours, but half way through I realised it had to be intentional/beneficial due to knowing the only possible way a collider generates heat as a byproduct.

Where as someone that doesn’t know much about colliders might read that sentence and assume it’s like radiative heat or something.

Nah, the reason they cited was that he violated ToS for fan created content. Which he did, if his mod counts as fan content. And there is an argument that could be presented that it does. But more importantly, as per patreons policy, as soon as it was reported for dmca take down, it was taken down, and now he has to apply for it being reinstated. And to do so, he basically needs to comply or go to court. Complying is easier. Although since then a second company has done the same, and since Patreons policy is any project being dmca struck multiple times, even if the strikes would ultimately prove fruitless, means the project will be permanently removed from patreon.

So he has taken it down and given everyone a free month for now while he determines what can be done.

I feel like if he had a front-end executable, he would then fall under the same category VorpX does, it’s allowed to cost money despite largely being the same thing.

Generically, as a framework for 35 games.

Similar to something like VorpX, except it doesn’t have a unified front end, so it can’t be called a program, it has to be called a mod package or mod suite. So it falls under different rules for an arbitrary reason.

Confirmed, you have no idea what luke ross does. You read one uninformed headline, and then read another uninformed headline.

Yeah, the main issue is the mods are for a niche of a niche of a niche. Not just the niche of VR, but the further niche of PCVR, and within that, the further niche of people who don’t or no longer get sick from stick-based movement in VR. Each of which cuts the audience about ten-fold.

And then for that tiny audience, he is making what is basically perfect VR mods. Like we couldn’t imagine anyway they could possibly get better, until he figures out a new feature he can add, and then slowly back port to every previous game that can support it.

I very much am a continuous patron of him. For people that just want the mod once for one game, they generally don’t need to pay more than once. And technically when they do, they actually get ~35 games they could also choose to play. But it’s worth more than 10 dollars even for 1 game.

It is a non-standard pricing model, but it is more than fair.

He works his ass off, almost every hour of every day. This is the only pricing model that works for a situation like this.

Sorry, meant no modding tools from any one specific game involved in the luke ross mod, he supports 35 games with it.

Then the mod suite would only be allowed to support 1 game. Not much of a suite.

They could have chosen to give him permission to continue, in their own words, they didn’t choose that.

Yeah, this would be setting precedent if it ever went to court, but it likely never will. He doesn’t want to step on any toes. If they don’t like being included in the suite, they can be removed. It’s all-around easier and less risky. This is his job/livelihood, don’t rock the boat that feeds you, or something.

Donations is not an option, this level of mod is not possible without it being his full time job. Anyone saying otherwise has not tried it. Amd any one company hiring him wojld mean all other games would need to be dropped from the suite. There is no other way for this to exist than how it does now. If he couldn’t charge, it just wouldn’t exist.

The problem mostly comes with calling it a “mod”, that is barely a word that applies here. That’s an entirely different scope from what this is.

There are no modding tools. This is done entirely outside the game. But it does still qualify as a breech of ToS. There are alot of options for how to handle it, this is the option they chose.