Oof I’m sorry to hear it, wishing you all the best of luck. I get super nostalgic for online spaces, the idea of getting locked out of somewhere you built memories with friends is really sad

Didn’t skype shut down just this week?

This is excellent advice,

Correct. You’ll find many such valuable little gems, going all the way back to the beginning of this conversation.

Anyway, we’re eight comments deep now into you deflecting and changing the subject. Normally I’d love to drill into the details with anyone about facts and the nature of subjectivity, but just like before, I detect you’re merely scrambling into this territory because of the way you think it sounds in this moment. And I detect that just like before, you would simply run away once we began closing in on the truth.

So, you could save us both some time and just run away now? Would be pretty graceful at this point too, after your grand realization that you find my ‘opinions’ to be irrelevant lol

It’s obvious to any reader that this is a simple and complete misread, I’m sorry to say. The evidence has been laid out very plainly for you. Please feel free to consider this interaction more carefully in the future, without the burden of pride forcing some poorly constructed reply

You are of course free to disagree with the evidence, thank you for your consideration

You are very badly mistaken in your assessment of this conversation. In fact you’ll notice I have repeatedly excused you from any type of judgement. Look at how I’ve signed off my last comment; this is not a moral issue, merely a practice that has damaged you.

Alcohol is bad for you. In any amount. Ten drinks a day, one drink a week, no matter. You would be better off drinking zero alcohol. I offer this wisdom to you completely free of judgement

Do you believe the above is possible? Do you believe, having offered your opinion on why AI use is fine in your case, someone can offer the viewpoint that it is damaging without judgement?

My craft is not painting

Okay, so I was correct in my assessment that you mentioned it for completely inauthentic, point-serving reasons?

Is the creative process “damaged” because a baker doesn’t make chocolate chips from scratch for their cookies?

Yeah so, this is actually paying for premade assets, which is an established practice and what I am advocating for. It’s not comparable in any way to AI.

The metaphor you’re looking for is, “Is the creative process “damaged” because a baker doesn’t take photographs of their actual goods, and simply uses generic AI generated advertisements?” And the answer is yes, obviously the creative process has been damaged.

It is up to you and not a moral conundrum whether or not you care that you are eroding your creativity. But that is evidently what is happening, I’m sorry to say

Yeah so to be clear, listing a bunch of pursuits where creativity may thrive doesn’t really illustrate your passion for the craft. It actually makes your interest in art sound passing and sterile. My point is not that you have been banned from picking up a paintbrush, but that your creative process has been damaged.

And look, what we actually already have from you is an example of that damaged creativity and resourcefulness; you are proclaiming that a problem that has been solved for decades is “impossible” without AI. You’re also flitting back and forth seamlessly between these images being “glanced at for one second, less than art” and “semi important, needing to serve a particular taste” depending on whatever you think serves your point more in the moment. It doesn’t sound like you had any thought or justification behind it before today. Just something you were doing because it’s easy and you felt the need to come defend it today when you saw the concept taking some heat.

Which is all fine. You’d be better off just owning it rather than trying to construct some goldilocks zone of importance where it’s justified

It sounds more like AI has disempowered you to exercise your creativity tbh

Without AI, I just wouldn’t have the illustrations

Well, this situation has existed for a long time. You can buy extant asset packs, no commission necessary. They’re not too expensive, either. As you noted they are just visual aids. Actually I happen to have a supermassive amount laying around from random humble bundles over the years, that were pack-ins with other items I wanted

No judgement or anything, it’s just far from an “AI or nothing” situation

Thank you for being my friend!

I’m for it. Could sure use that tooth fairy money

I’ll report back when I try it! I was in the middle of a ten week program when they delivered it, definitely gonna use it in the next one.

I think what I’m excited to try it with is moving some heavy leg compounds to the middle of the workout after hinges. Like Bulgarians, then RDLs, then heavy belt squats. Normally once my low back is cooked from the deadlifts I can’t really do anything productive with a heavy barbell on my back. Would be a great option to have if it works well

My gym just installed a belt squat which I’m pumped to try out, supposedly the back strain is non-existent! We already have a hack which feels great on my back and absolutely messes up my quads, too. Getting hard to program regular old barbell squats lol

Yeah plenty of people develop these feelings about laser focussed games. Sekiro is a good example. Not gonna be your game if you don’t like parrying. Lots of comments online from such people who write the game off as “spam parry to win” as tho there’s no depth to it.

Huge parry fan on the other hand? Probably your favorite game, and you’re bewildered by those comments because you feel like you could write a novel about how interesting the system is and how rewarding it is to master all the way into your seventh charmless NG+ run.

I think at the end of the day, when the gameplay is simply not catered to our preferences we’re not really going to appreciate what makes it so great at what it is

Virtual Ricochet Projectile :p

It’s the game’s in-game (Crossworlds) terminology for the charged shot that bounces around, yeah. They cover it in the tutorial but the main cast basically ‘nerd emoji’s’ Sergey and they simply refer to it as “balls” for the rest of the game lol

timing-&-angling annoyances

But yeah, like I said, you just don’t like the central mechanic. It’s valid. This is the main point of contention for the minority of people who don’t click with the game, as is evidenced by filtering for negative reviews on steam

But imagine if you didn’t find it to be an annoyance, and instead found it to be inherently satisfying? One of my favorite parts about Crosscode is how unafraid they are to present you with puzzles that are not only difficult to solve in the typical sense, but also difficult to perform once you know what to do. It’s a rare treat, most games instead lean hard only into one direction (purely cerebral puzzling or purely focussed on action)

It’s a game that just gives and gives, and to the contrary of your experience, I found the constant innovation of the puzzles throughout the game is what brought it from A to S tier. I finished the final dungeon wishing there was more game to play. Imagine my delight when the DLC dropped and added another 20 hours of timing & angling goodness. Replayed the game 3 times over the years.

And yeah, frankly we should compare it to Zelda, the most celebrated and beloved puzzle adventure series of all time developed and supported for 40 years by one of the largest and most influential video game companies of all time. No joke, I think this is actually exactly where Crosscode stacks up. It’s up there for me with my favorite Zelda titles

Not a sequel, just their next game! Combat and UI look similar so far. They’re doing dev streams on their discord

I thought crosscode had the best puzzles haha. The way they built it out with the elemental system, the enemies that required puzzle mechanics you had learned, the tight timing where you had to send a ball flying and then race it to various objectives, the myriad of subtle environmental puzzles in the overworld. Could go on and on, but yeah the VRP is the game’s central mechanic so if you simply don’t enjoy lining up your shots then I imagine the game would be pretty rough lol

Crosscode for sure! They have a new game in the works as well, it looks like it will be just as good. Great time to get into it

Personally I have just always really liked the firefox icon

Thank you for creating video game content!