I am an unabashed fan of Ghostbusters 2016. The scene with Holtzmann and the pistols gives me tingles. Kevin is just a gem.

The guy has always been a piece of shit so I’m glad more people are learning this.

Seems reasonable to say that “concept artist” its a job at threat here. Thanks for your thoughts!

Also, hadn’t heard that about the Zelda movie. Wasn’t going to see it anyway because Nintendo sucks these days, but it’s still news.

Sure, garbage in, garbage out and all that. The autonomously generated stuff tends toward generic as an inherent byproduct of being a closed loop system. But that doesn’t mean a real artist couldn’t look at some boring ass slop and be inspired to explore new directions.

I think one of the common themes I’m circling these days is that “human in the loop” is a common concept around ensuring outputs from AI systems are acceptable, but a better way to look at it is that generative AI should never have a direct connection to final output. As inspiration or iteration, I think there’s potential value, but ultimately, whether it’s code, art, or content, a human should create what goes out. Using AI for intermediate acceleration is a much healthier approach than the “look how many people we can replace!” angle that’s so popular in tech.

This doesn’t solve any of the many other issues with generative AI these days, but it at least feels like a more sensible approach to the creative concerns.

I have a serious question. To preface: I am no fan of generative AI. I hate the environmental impact, the impact on our workforce, and the risk of further widening the wealth disparity across the world.

That said, do you believe that using generative AI in this case (for prototyping and rapid iteration/visualization of intermediate/non-final design concepts) is worse than, say, artists looking at the freely available online portfolios of other artists for inspiration, provided that they generate the final designs entirely by themselves?

I’m not saying it is or isn’t at this point, but I’m curious if you have a perspective on whether/how this isn’t at least one of the less-bad ways to use AI. It seems kind of like “you can’t stop someone from asking AI for help” levels of usage, not “we fired people to replace their output with slop”.

Yeah I have a pretty solid supplier for now so I don’t bother making my own, but it doesn’t look that hard as long as you can find fenugreek.

Thanks! Some recipes include cayenne, some even to the point of being inappropriately spicy. This recipe looks about right though.

Ethiopian Berbere. Trust me. You can add it to almost anything when it needs a kick of earthy umami. We keep tons of it on hand because it’s shockingly useful for something so rarely used.

Upvote for you, downvote for humanity

I would leave a flaming wreck too.

shockedpikachu.jpg

I mean they’re owned by deeply enshittified supporters of genocide, but gosh their games are pretty fun.

Don’t forget the common colloquial “I’m 14”.

I’ll have to try that sometime.

I’ll guess Metal Gear Solid but there are plenty of other bangers in the PS1 library.

That one was a delightful surprise. I enjoyed it thoroughly because I’ve always liked digital pinball as well.

I’ll admit that 100%ing (or rather “100%”ing it - iykyk) it can get pretty tiresome, but I actually found that the backtracking wasn’t too bad because the castle map was so good. For some reason I was able to remember a lot of routes in it, but I couldn’t find my way through the later games for the life of me without checking the map screen every five seconds.

There really isn’t a remaster, just ports. There’s very little to improve.

I think there may have been some voice re-recordings here or there, but otherwise most versions are pretty much the same. I think the Xbox 360 Live Arcade version is missing some unimportant FMVs and some other minor details, but it’s still completely decent.

It was a secret unlockable in the PSP game Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles with an added character and other stuff, but then you have to deal with the PSP emulation or whatever.

I’d suggest either emulating the original or getting it as a PSOne Classic on PlayStation Store unless some other route is more convenient.

Absolutely yes. It’s timelessly good. I played a bunch of the post-SotN Castlevanias on GBA and such and even with the more advanced systems and everything, none of them hit the same. It’s insane how well they nailed it on their first go.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The game so good it created the term “Metroidvania” even though the formula was basically “Metroid”.