Seattleite

Because you can't accept that other people don't live in a world where they have to have animals killed over acts of aggression that cause no actual harm?

Uh... Clearly not what I just said, considering it was a mid-sized (about eighty pound) dog, and I had to lift it off the ground to get my hand out of its mouth.

I just had a dog bite and shake and pull at my hand as hard as he could, hard enough to physically move me, and he didn't even break the skin. Not even when I yanked my hand out of his mouth, which took enough force to lift said mid-sized dog. Not a scratch. Which is kinda neat. Sub-dermal armour? Saiyan ancestry? Really convincing android?

It is a rare day when BTG is the voice of reason... Kinda.

Would you be opposed to me sig-quoting this Seattleite? It struck me as something Freeman himself would say... :3 Knock yourself out.

It's debatable, actually. Well, they aren't the rake rip-offs and they're not hostile, I wouldn't even say they're evil per se, but they are supposed ("supports"? I need to stop posting from Apple products.) to be pretty freaky anyway.

This game isn't supposed to be horrifying on the surface. On the surface, things seem fairly mundane in terms of tone. You're playing a couple of little kids trying to make a living, and their chief concerns are mostly getting food and medical supplies, and not getting killed by mundane threats like wild animals. For the first couple hours, that's probably what the game will seem to be about. You might even start to forget the circumstances under which you left Everett, given the disarming mundanity you'll probably spend the next couple hours in. But the game gets more disturbing the farther into it you go. Some of the "dungeons" are downright terrifying, being so dark it's hard to see and what little you can see isn't good. Things move around in the darkness and stalk you, moving just out of sight and avoiding the light you create. You can often hear them, but you can't see them, and believe me that works wonders on players who aren't used to it. And the noises aren't loud, either, they're just as the edges of your hearing. Creaks and footsteps, breathing, the occasional quiet idle noise of a nearby monster, maybe just enough for you to piece together what's in there with you as you sneak around and hope you get the drop on it and not the other way around. What's more, you'll find evidence of them as you go. You might even encounter a minor enemy here or there that is related to what's going on. This isn't every ruin and abandoned household you enter, but you won't be able to immediately tell if a place is housing a terrifying monstrosity, just a couple wild animals or nothing at all. This, combined with the (not immediately obvious) complete lack of actual safety in the game's world and its tendency to throw something terrifying in your face out of nowhere as soon as you let your guard down, works into the game's tension and release cycle, and while it's not a horror game, it definitely borrows heavily from that genre. Remember, this is a game where you can get to the "safety" of your home, then wake up to find a monster at the foot of your bed that is... Uh... Totally not the rake. What's a rake? I've never heard of a "rake". Additionally, both the mythos and some of the events that happen in-game are meant to be extremely disturbing. Horrible things happen in this world, all the time, and you're going to become increasingly aware of it as the game goes on. Like the deity that apparently goes around in the shadows, unseen, impregnating women with a demonic embryo likely against their will, and having that embryo rig itself to explode so they can't get rid of it. And it gets worse. Said deity makes sure said demonic children are deformed in a way that will make their mortal families abuse and neglect them, making them play the villain, and make the deity and its demons the heroes when they come in and "rescue" them from their abusive mortal families. It also has the side benefit of making humans condition young demons to hate humans, which sure makes them more vicious in battle when they have to fight humans. (Of course, now that the demons are in charge of Seattle, people who raise demons there aren't inclined to abuse them anymore, but at this point they aren't needed to anyway.) Of course, there's more than just that. That's just one I've already brought up. Most of the mythos is pretty dark, full of terrible monstrosities and abusive deities. (Power corrupts.) The humour is there for a good reason, though. It's called bathos, basically a requirement of making such a world work. As Joss Whedon put it, "Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."

Okay, so here's something real quick about some enemies, which I forgot to post in their original descriptions. When killed, demons burst into flames, melt, dissolve, explode or otherwise self-destruct in a manner that causes damage to anything nearby. This could be seen as proof of their supernatural nature, their impurity, or whatever. You could even claim that this destruction is them being "cleansed". This isn't true at all, this is just a defence mechanism the deity that created them installed, but this illusion might last a while. (Oh, and just to take this down a disturbing route, this defence mechanism kicks in fairly early in gestation, around the end of the first trimester, meaning that the mortal women who bear these demons will die horribly if they attempt to abort them. This was likely done intentionally by the deity responsible for the creation of demons, who personally impregnantes women to create demons and really doesn't like it when people don't go along with his plans. You actually see an explosion if you near the Everett Clinic, and people nearby will mention it after it happens.) Then you go to Lake Stevens and realize angels do the same, and maybe start making connections. Though in their case, angels' self-destruction is much less violent and is actually a transformation, as their second form emerges from their ashes. Said second form is much more powerful, but is unstable and causes itself constant damage, causing it to die even if left alone, and its death causes its second form to self-destruct for real, much more violently than its first death, or even the death of a demon. (Since angels are produced much the same way, another red flag by the way, that means angel-bearing women might also be killed if they try to abort it. If done before the third trimester the unborn angel's second form won't be cognizant and can just be thrown out a window or something before it explodes, sparing the mother, but in the third trimester the angel's second form will go on a rampage until it dies, then explode with lethal force.) Interestingly, there's a third category that self-destructs when "killed": Vampires. However, this isn't a sign of a relationship between them and demons or angels because it's just one of many, MANY powers they've stolen from other monsters. Additionally, when a vampire is killed, it disintegrates harmlessly, *and* it generates a new body back at home, making them effectively unkillable. Killing them does keep them down longer than just wounding them, but it can't be prevented and there doesn't appear to be any means of keeping them down permanently. They even respawn in-game, but even if you fail to notice this it's told to you outright. (Not to mention "near death" dialogue including "You do realize I'll come back, right?", "Again? Already?", "Third time's the charm, huh?", "Four is not death, for the record.", "Oh, not this again.", "I am getting really sick of this.", "What is your problem with me, anyway?", "You are SUCH an ass.", "Can you stop killing me, please? I mean, how many does this make now? Seriously, I've lost count.", "It was worth a shot." and "Yeah, I know the drill.".)

7ut52Szpd-w

Stupidity: Too much is never enough. Meowmememe: Meo meow me memeo omeow. (This message brought to you by the committee to elect Ted Cruz.)

I cannot believe I am still taken aback by the stupidity of humanity. I was having a discussion about North Korea's nuclear arsenal by a guy who apparently does not understand the situation, history or middle school geometry, and I seriously doubt understood the mechanics of wiping one's own ass. I mean, he could have been trolling me, but he also had the Fox News logo as his avatar, so he might really be this dumb. 1. He believed North Korea had actually acquired an actual, modern nuclear weapon. They did not, they just set off a tiny atom bomb with a yield of a couple kilotons and pretended it was an modern nuclear weapon. 2. He said they could fit that on a missile and hit anywhere in the world. A. North Korea can't even make their pitiful kiloton-yield bombs fit on a missile. B. They don't have the technology to even MAKE ICBMs, much less ones that could hit anywhere in the world. 3. He then said that even if they couldn't, they didn't need to send it anywhere, they could just set it off and "destroy everything in a thousand miles", because modern bombs are "over a thousand times as powerful" as the bombs that "vaporized" Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don't even know where to START with this one, but let's break it into chunks. A. That would be 13 megatons. Most modern bombs are in the hundreds of kilotons, 1-2 megatons tops. B. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mostly destroyed by fires the bombs started, not the bombs themselves. C. Not only were these towns not vaporized, there are buildings just a few blocks from the epicentre that survived the bombings. D. A thousand times as powerful DOES NOT MEAN A THOUSAND TIMES THE RADIUS. It means TEN TIMES the radius. Explosions hit a VOLUME, not a LINE. They teach that in SIXTH GRADE. E. All of this is also ignoring the fact that even if they made a thermonuclear weapon it likely wouldn't be as powerful as ours. F. Also, even if they had a bomb powerful enough to do that, they'd never use it because it would kill ALL of them too. 4. He also thinks that they'd fire their missiles at the US, rather than South Korea. And at that point, I decided to just give up on the conversation. In summary: I need to stop being so damned surprised when people are so damned stupid.

So, I passed through the city yesterday, and the most awesome thing happened. It was kinda late, and there weren't many people around. I got to talking with this one nerdy couple next to me about Fallout 4 while waiting for the bus, and that turned into a talk about music from the '30s, '40s and '50s. That turned into a talk about dance, and I brought up the lindy hop. Not only did they know what that is (which is already impressive), the gal was a lindy INSTRUCTOR. I was a bit incredulous, but she pulled her (boyfriend? husband?) off his seat and they DID A LINDY ON THE SIDEWALK. It was over pretty fast, but if somebody had told me that would happen on a random trip through Seattle, I would have laughed at them. As it was, I was laughing pretty hard aready. EDIT: Apparently it was yesterday. I can't believe it's already 5:00 in the morning.

It happened yesterday. The people saying OurMine steals from people are apparently lying, though, and they never took any of his money or changed his password. They even notified him of the hack and their one video was taken down in less than ten minutes.

Apparently Markiplier was hacked. I didn't even notice. Apparently by some people called OurMine Team who have stolen a lot of money from Youtubers in the past according to random people in the comments but there's no evidence they've ever stolen from anybody. By the looks of it from their Twitter, they do this all the time as a publicity stunt, leak earnings information on the big channels they hack, and give the youtubers back their channels immediately. (They even notified him.) So... Kinda sucks he got hacked, but not nearly as much as people think.

Yes. The examples I would have pointed to were Nehrim for Oblivion, Day Z for Arma II, and Counter Strike and Team Fortress for Half-Life, but yours work just as well. It's not even in the same genre, really. Well, that's not even close to all the enemies I'd *like* to include. That's just the ones I'm pretty sure I can get one way or another. There's more I'd love to include, and know for a fact that I won't be able to until much later, at best. (There's some awesome things in this setting, that I'd love to show outside of pen and paper.) And I mean, one of the big ones is the thing that's supposed to be on Mercer Island. I never mentioned it before because I wasn't sure I could work it in, and honestly I'm still not sure, but it does at least have a simple model. Animation might be a slight issue, though. (Because only its textures change, its model actually doesn't have any moving parts.) Well, there's a few problems with using Fallout 4 you have to be aware of. The first one is that it basically just came out, so I'll have to wait for at least *some* of the DLC to be released, and the release of more content is going to drastically change what I can and can't do here. The second one is Fallout 4's atrocious armour system, though this mod is noticeably less combat-oriented than the original game, so hopefully it won't be *too* big of an issue. Thankfully, though, Fallout 4 makes a lot of things easier, and even more possible to begin with. One tiny example is that it's a lot easier to include enemies that fall right out of the sky. It was impossible to make enemies not take falling damage in 3 or New Vegas, but here I can set them to not take falling damage and just spawn them high up. Hell, the game even has a great landing animation for them, and I don't even need to program them to use it because it's the default. I don't actually think that'll be a problem. I mean, it sucks that I'll be limited to providing only four responses at once, but that isn't a deal breaker. Though the voiced protagonist won't be a problem, because this mod just won't have one. Unfortunately... That might just be because none of the content will be voiced, at least for some time. That's something that will have to wait until the game is released and people volunteer. Programming all the props and actions is the easy part, actually. At least as the intro is written here. None of it is any different from any other total conversion mod ever made for a Bethesda game. That said, there's been some changes to the intro that I've failed to record, and I'll copy them over real quick, probably before you read this. I appreciate the sentiment. Well, here might be a pair of small disappointments, then. The first being that the Jersey Devil won't be in for quite some time (the same can be said for a lot of enemies, actually), and the second being that there will only be two extra-planer locations available at first, one of which is used entirely for an easter egg and the other is still pretty small.

I was thinking about the excitement about being pet, really. Also they kinda look alike. Though... That's about it. Also, it's not a sword. It's a stone dogger made of pomer-granite.

http://pre09.deviantart.net/b768/th/pre/i/2015/336/a/d/lesser_dog_by_thund3r_wing-d9cx50k.png

I am noticing shocking parallels between Lesser Dog and my own dog.

The lack of a GECK is making me increasingly frustrated.

Settlements day. It's time for notes on the main in-game settlements. There's seven of note. These are Everett, Marysville, Lake Stevens, Lynnwood, Bellevue, Seattle. Each of these is controlled by a different in-game faction. Respectively, the US military, The Presence Cult, Angels, Celestials, Death Lords and Demons. As all of these are active enemies of one another. Everett: Everett is a large, relatively intact settlement and the most security-minded state in the region, on account of having enemies every direction but west. Everett is surrounded by a three metre fence topped with concertina wire, and its individual districts are separated by two-metre fences (thankfully sans the wire), with a massive police presence in the city at all times. The city's population stands at 100,000 (canonically, though it's only about 1,000 in-game), yet its police department boasts an absolutely unreasonable and counter-productive 5,000 members, surpassed only by its military population of 10,000. Such large police and military populations simply aren't viable in the long run, revealing the short-sightedness of its leaders. Culturally, Everett is a hole. (Though for different reasons than the real city.) It's a paranoid town, perpetually convinced enemies are coming for them at every moment, and everybody they don't know is a spy or a collaborator. The police are violent and panicky cowards, even by police standards, with a kill record barely acceptable under martial law, and the few police that try to actually protect and serve are reviled by the rest of the community as "naive", with the claim that actually trying to do their job is somehow putting other officers' lives in danger. (Which is bullshit.) The entire harbour and airport districts are under strict military control, zealously guarded by soldiers with orders to summarily execute intruders. Even the player's childhood isn't a shield from suspicion here, and living in this town is only marginally safer than living in a cabin in the wilderness. At least in that cabin, they won't have to risk being ventilated by twitchy, gun-toting cowards just to get a carton of milk. Marysville: Marysville is largely abandoned, with the few people that still live there being reclusive and suspicious of outsiders. Especially since they can somehow peg you as being from Everett the moment you talk to them, as if it's something in the way you talk. Their business owners will barely trade with you, selling at a massively inflated price and refusing to buy anything. Their local militia will confront you frequently, searching and interrogating you for no reason other than you being an outsider, and they won't hesitate to shoot you down, even though you're a child. And the few people who do speak to you are hated by the others, called "sympathisers", and any of them that help you will be executed as "collaborators" if you become an enemy of the militia. The reason for their paranoia may be hard to gather, but it'll become clear if you befriend one of those "sympathisers" or do a little espionage on your own. (Or if the militia decides to execute you.) These people are insane. They believe that the US Government is controlled by the Illuminati, and that everybody coming up from Everett is an Illuminist spy. Never mind that the Illuminati doesn't, you know, EXIST. They also suspect everybody from Lake Stevens of being a Templar, everybody from Seattle of being a Satanist. And of course, they are wrong on all counts. They believe only they truly understand their god's will, that their leader is in direct communication with the lord, and that the other organizations claiming to carry out this same god's will (the angels in Lake Stevens and the demons in Seattle) are misinterpreting his word. Their goal is to bring their God physically into this world, which they don't understand doesn't make sense. (I would suggest not asking them why their god would need their help, unless you happen to feel your little body needs better ventilation.) Lake Stevens: Lake Stevens is barely a city, in truth just two towns and a bunch of shitty corporate housing developments combining their powers Captain Planet style in order to pretend they deserve a city's budget. That's hardly relevant now that they're under Angel control, but the angels saw no reason to change the name, as it's not like honesty is the Church's forte anyway. The town's entire adult male population counts as a standing army, every one of them able to be plucked from their home and sent out to do battle on a moment's notice. Lake Stevens is clearly on the losing side of this war, having thrown itself ineffectually into the meat grinder since it came under Angel control in 2032. In that time, its population dropped from 30,000 to 12,000 due to a combination of extreme zeal and complete incompetence on the part of their leadership. But at least there's some hope for them, in that if stupidity ever becomes a resource, they'll be unstoppable. Culturally, the town is exhausted. Tens of thousands of deaths in battle and thousands of executions on the home front have left them feeling hopeless and defeated, despite them being legally required not to show it. There have been multiple attempted coups, but the angels are too powerful and the conspirators too few for them to succeed. Of all the settlements in the region, this one is likely the worst for you to visit, especially if you're a girl, as they will get Old Testament on you in a hurry. But if you'd like to take the occasional long-range rifle shot at an angel, that'd certainly be appreciated. Lynnwood: Lynnwood is the primary settlement and main drop zone for the Celestials. Despite being primarily a military base, Lynnwood retains a strong emphasis on education, with the college remaining open and being the only truly functional facility of higher education in the region. However, half of the college has been shut down and converted into a Research & Development facility for the Celestials' robotics division, where they developed their made to order consumer androids. (And if you think the rest of the college didn't suddenly get a lot of robotics courses added to its curriculum, you're fooling yourself.) Lynnwood is weaker militarily than Everett, Seattle or Bellevue, though stronger than Marysville or Lake Stevens by a fair measure. It owes its military strength almost entirely to technology and magic, with only the Raiders being more technologically advanced and only the Death Lords possessing stronger magic, and neither of them are present in large enough numbers or in a good enough position to be a threat to the Celestials in Lynnwood. Despite this and their frequent clashes with Everett and Seattle, they appear to be mostly using their military defensively and taking a "hearts and minds" approach to their actual conquest, focusing on improving public opinion of them in order to win popular support. Whether it's working or not is up to interpretation. Bellevue: Bellevue's population can be counted a number of ways. If you only count the living, the city's population is about 5,000. If you count the living and the undead, about 30,000. If you count the living, the undead, and animated corpses, about 200,000. Despite being so close to Seattle, and actively fighting it at all hours, Bellevue is going fairly strong and defending its position admirably. Bellevue also features a college, which has been taken over by the death lords and remade into the Bellevue Occult Institute, a special night school for vampires, offering education primarily on the occult. Attached is the Bellevue Officer Candidate School. These two facilities work closely together, as vampire officers need a considerable amount of occult education. Bellevue is very strong militarily, and manages to both resist one demonic offensive after another and launch offensives of its own, but even so Seattle is still much stronger and would demolish them if it didn't have to also fight Everett and Lynnwood. Strangely, though, they have decided to destroy all bridges leading to Mercer Island instead of taking it over, and most of their attacks seem to be aiming to acquire as much ordinance as possible, which they them immediately proceed to fire on the island. The only other things their military does is prevent people from reaching Mercer Island, and of course defend Bellevue itself. Nobody quite knows what there is on Mercer Island that they're so afraid of, but the massive beacon of light in the middle probably has something to do with it. And hopefully nobody will ever find out what, exactly, that light really is. (You want an endgame, BTG? How about you find out what the hell's going on down there.) Seattle: Seattle is the largest city on the map, taking up most of the map's southern border. With a population of nearly 600,000 in the city proper, the city's sheer population makes it the militarily strongest in the region. The fact that it's run by demons doesn't hurt either, but it still mostly comes down to the fact that there's more people in Seattle than all the other cities on the map combined. (The game doesn't even feature all of Seattle, and it still has more NPCs in it than the entire rest of the map combined.) Culturally, Seattle is obsessed with sports. This is a tragedy, as before the takeover it had so much more to offer, and all of it was thrown aside for the most idiotic pastimes humanity has ever conceived. Every night is sports night in Seattle now. Monday they go out to the ball game, Tuesday they play basketball, Wednesday is hockey day, Thursday they play lacrosse, Friday's the day for association football (that they insist on calling soccer for reasons known only to them), Saturday they're at the races and Sunday they play american football. It must be exhausting for all the people who really don't like sports, and excruciating for those smart enough to hate them. It's not hard to see what's really going on there, though, as no matter what day it is, the main event will really consist of about three hours of commercials, only occasionally interrupted by actual sport. The entire purpose of the demons forcing such a focus on sports was just to make money, and it never had anything to do with the spirit of the games, whatever that bullshit is actually supposed to mean. Outside of this, there isn't anything left, as all other facets of Seattle's culture were destroyed to make room for sports and consumerism. (At least you know they'll trade with you.) It was already heading that way for a long time, but the demons finished off any hope that this trend would reverse itself. The only other institutions of any prestige in the eyes of the demons are the armed forces, and since so few can compete in sports, that's the avenue most of Seattle's glory seekers take. And since Seattle is so strong militarily, it's turned into one big bullet magnet. If an offensive is launched, it's either on Everett or them. And the threat isn't always external, as their own citizens shoot up the place on almost a daily basis. And that's it. That's all of the settlements in-game, and most of the factions. Next post will either be on the few factions not included in this, or it'll be on extra-planar locations you can visit in-game (only two of which will be in upon release, the rest added later).

I met my girlfriend by falling asleep. And I am probably the only guy that has ever happened to.

For the record, that was hyperbole, I sober up pretty quick. Despite me and my girlfriend going through six bottles of wine together. I'm pretty sure it was a good night, but I'm a little fuzzy on the details. As a side note: I am seriously starting to doubt that hangovers actually exist.

Makes me wish I had a secobd X chromosome... Except... Wait... I have a girlfriend. Nevermind. Gentle(ish)man. And happy to report it.

Four words: I fucking LOVE wine. Actually, there's a LOT of words you could substitute "wine" with, and that would work just as well. Including sex, which I can thank wine for allowing. Thank you wine. I am intoxicated right now. Goodnight everybody. See you in 2-3 days.

How can Bloodborne be SO AWESOME offline and COMPLETE SHIT online? Anybody else get that? The PvE going straight to hell as soon as you go online, despite nobody being present and there being no gisible lag? Because FUCK does it ever do that for me. Also: If at all relevant, female Noble Scion, 20/8/15/30/30/9. +7 Ludwig's Holy Blade (considering switching to the Reiterpallasch, just got it) and +6 Hunter's Pistol (looking for Evelyn right now), Knight's garb with surgical long gloves, black hunter boots and no helm. I don't know if there's any known issues with any of those, but despite no visible lag, it's now taking noticeably longer to register control input, I'm getting hit by enemies that aren't even facing me and my character is getting caught on nothing when trying to move. I don't have any of these issues offline. Also also: I am aware that this is the pettiest vent I have ever posted. But after how heavy the last few were I think a light one is in order, and I don't get how going online can fuck up control responsiveness, collision detection and hitboxes.