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Proteus Jones posted:I thought I was the only one that read that. Such a weird, funny novel. I also liked that instead of footnotes it had little info insets since the 1st person narrator couldn't add hyperlinks in the ancient editor he was using. I actually also had this impression while reading along the thread. Wyrm was a novel I loved when I was 12 or so. I doubt I'd still think it was that good, but it's definitely a more solid construction than RPO.
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Apr 11, 2018 15:53
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ZeeToo posted:I actually also had this impression while reading along the thread. Wyrm was a novel I loved when I was 12 or so. I wish I could find my copy, looks like I loaned & lost it 
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Apr 12, 2018 10:56
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I binged this thread over the past few days. Thanks for it, Chitoryu. I want to comment on something that really irks me about the story (at least based on the way it was presented in the thread), and that's Wade's Extra Life. It's super annoying that Wade gets his super special day-saving perk by basically wandering around, finding a game and deciding to perfectly play it on a whim. Then he spends it when (from his perspective) everything randomly explodes. I think for the concept to be used well, it needs to fulfil at least one of the following conditions: 1. Wade needs to earn it in a way that tells us something positive about his character. Even the most clichéd ideas, like helping an old man about to PVPed to death who rewards Wade with a meagre quarter at least let the protagonist display a likeable quality. Or 2. Have Wade sacrifice himself in the final battle to let his friends get to the gate before the IOI guys. Let Wade be the guy who goes one-on-one with mechagodzilla at the cost of his 'life'. He can demonstrate that the friendships he's supposed to have formed by this point are more valuable to him than winning at any cost. Then reward him with the opportunity to keep going anyway. Obviously these aren't groundbreaking ideas, but at least the character has some agency in either obtaining or using his dumb Deus Ex Machina that way.
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Apr 12, 2018 16:33
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Roach Warehouse posted:I binged this thread over the past few days. Thanks for it, Chitoryu. The main purpose it serves is in showing that he’s worthy of Halliday’s throne because he goes that extra mile to experience the world he left behind. It’s the standard logic for sidequests offering really good rewards - because it encourages exploration and player investment - which is made creepy in the same way the rest of the book is creepy. It makes consumption of entertainment a moral imperative in and of itself. A revised version could lean into that as a sign of Halliday’s psychosis or (if you want to make him more benevolent/sympathetic) tweak it a little to convey a moral lesson that’s important to Halliday through the medium of Eighties pop-culture. Show that he wants to convey meaning through art, even derivative art, and that simply consuming what he’s tried to preserve without paying attention to the values and messages it communicates makes you unworthy of his legacy. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Apr 12, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 16:50
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The movie completely removes Archaide and has the quarter be flipped to Wade by the Curator of Halliday's Journals when he wins a bet. It's revealed at the end that the seemingly NPC Curator is actually Ogden Morrow's avatar, and he gave Wade an edge to try and beat IOI.
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Apr 12, 2018 16:55
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That's way more interesting than just having Wade random play a five hour game of Pacman, and be implausibly good at it for some reason.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:28
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I enjoyed the movie, it is not great but it was fun. Way more fun than this crappy book.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:59
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chitoryu12 posted:The movie completely removes Archaide and has the quarter be flipped to Wade by the Curator of Halliday's Journals when he wins a bet. It's revealed at the end that the seemingly NPC Curator is actually Ogden Morrow's avatar, and he gave Wade an edge to try and beat IOI. Morrow would've felt pretty silly if Wade squandered it getting killed by a bear while grinding.
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Apr 12, 2018 18:00
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Honestly, the movie could have been a lot better than it was. Drop the shaky "I'm part of the resistance" bit for Art3mis that goes away within 20 minutes because IOI raids them in their second scene, don't use weird pandering dialogue like "A real fanboy knows a hater", and make Sorrento an actually intimidating villain instead of a bumbling comedy executive who gets kicked in the balls.
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Apr 12, 2018 18:08
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chitoryu12 posted:Honestly, the movie could have been a lot better than it was. Drop the shaky "I'm part of the resistance" bit for Art3mis that goes away within 20 minutes because IOI raids them in their second scene, don't use weird pandering dialogue like "A real fanboy knows a hater", and make Sorrento an actually intimidating villain instead of a bumbling comedy executive who gets kicked in the balls. I pretty sure that there's some legal issues incorporating Weir's fanfiction but they really should have added some of that into the film to make Sorrento a more motivated villain.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:21
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I saw the movie the other day. I’m not going to say I hated it, but I had a lot of new and exciting problems with it that I didn’t with the original text, flawed though it obviously is. They didn’t even leave in the bit about Wade having no money before he stumbled onto the first key. He just, like, started out with a vehicle and fancy avatar and stuff.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:28
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burial posted:I saw the movie the other day. I’m not going to say I hated it, but I had a lot of new and exciting problems with it that I didn’t with the original text, flawed though it obviously is. They still show him having to race at the back of the pack to pick up coins from dead avatars to fill his fuel tank, but he definitely starts with a lot more than he did before. It also seems like OASIS credits are still real world currency because there's a newspaper in Wade's trailer about credits being the "new dollar" and he buys a haptic bodysuit online with his reward for finding the Copper Key. I hope there's banks in OASIS, because you could lose all of your savings if you get shot.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:51
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I just liked the dirt poor angle. Which isn’t the case even if he needed fuel, considering he had a treadmill set up in his van hideout. e: And his aunt’s boyfriend was doing PVP and stuff. She seemed way more sympathetic too. Bleh. Would’ve liked to see more of the old lady before she got killed. burial fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Apr 12, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 19:52
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chitoryu12 posted:They still show him having to race at the back of the pack to pick up coins from dead avatars to fill his fuel tank, but he definitely starts with a lot more than he did before. It also seems like OASIS credits are still real world currency because there's a newspaper in Wade's trailer about credits being the "new dollar" and he buys a haptic bodysuit online with his reward for finding the Copper Key. Honestly the penalty for dying in OASIS being so high is incredibly outdated game design and probably yet another symptom of Cline's obsession with old arcade games, and it really doesn't jive at all with the RMT angle like, it's kind of hosed-up that people can kill each other in VR really easily and the only way to avoid tons of material wealth in the process is to be the first person on Earth to play a perfect game of in-reality Pac-Man without being told to and even that apparently works exactly once loquacius fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Apr 12, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 19:57
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loquacius posted:Honestly the penalty for dying in OASIS being so high is incredibly outdated game design and probably yet another symptom of Cline's obsession with old arcade games, and it really doesn't jive at all with the RMT angle in a world utterly devoid of consequence why would you want to get rid of one of the few things that actually adds stakes
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Apr 12, 2018 20:04
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loquacius posted:Honestly the penalty for dying in OASIS being so high is incredibly outdated game design and probably yet another symptom of Cline's obsession with old arcade games, and it really doesn't jive at all with the RMT angle It's not at all clear how much credits are worth, either. They're presumably easy to get since any adventure or killing any NPC gets them, so they must be extremely devalued like Zimbabwean dollars. For the rewrite I think we're going to totally avoid that and have real money still be separate, so Wade's endorsement checks come in dollars instead of credits and you can just transfer real money to credits one way for buying new stuff in OASIS.
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Apr 12, 2018 20:04
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Mel Mudkiper posted:in a world utterly devoid of consequence why would you want to get rid of one of the few things that actually adds stakes This isn't the other thread, this is me noting bad video game design chitoryu12 posted:It's not at all clear how much credits are worth, either. They're presumably easy to get since any adventure or killing any NPC gets them, so they must be extremely devalued like Zimbabwean dollars. It would also be extremely lucrative to be basically an OASIS serial killer, just sort of hiding out in alleyways waiting to gank people from ambush all day, if that could literally pay your rent Def makes a lot more sense for it to be a virtual fake currency like in actual video games
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Apr 12, 2018 20:09
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Like any mmo oasis had several million different currencies
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Apr 12, 2018 20:10
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loquacius posted:It would also be extremely lucrative to be basically an OASIS serial killer, just sort of hiding out in alleyways waiting to gank people from ambush all day, if that could literally pay your rent I mean, that would be a pretty cool idea to show how the world outside is decaying around the game.
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Apr 12, 2018 20:11
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chitoryu12 posted:Phreaking is something I actually know a lot about. The stuff with blue boxes (playing tones directly into a phone to fake hanging up and dial numbers without the keypad) and red boxes (faking coins going into a payphone by playing the beeping sound the phone makes when a coin of particular size is dropped in) was only possible in the pre-digital days when automated switching systems used acoustic signals like that 2600 Hz tone played down the regular sound line ("in-band signaling") to dial numbers, disconnect calls, and start billing. FYI, digital telephony is much older than that. It was in R&D in the 1940s-50s, and Bell started deployment in the early 1960s. By the 1970s and 1980s much of the system was already digital. A recurring theme in the technical history of the phone system is that anything new has to be extremely backwards compatible with the old, so that they can deploy it gradually instead of having to pay to upgrade the entire system at once. So, going digital did not erase compatibility with old control tones. (The system is still mixed: the last-mile connection is analog, and still uses touch-tone dialing. You just can't fake out the system into not billing you for calls anymore.)
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Apr 13, 2018 06:38
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Maybe it's just me being hypersensitive to bad writing, but... I don't think that the people who genuinely liked Ready Player One like or even understand books. It's the literary equivalent of watching a slideshow with pictures of guns and calling it a "fun-filled action movie".
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Apr 13, 2018 08:01
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Darth Walrus posted:I mean, that would be a pretty cool idea to show how the world outside is decaying around the game. I think the above scenario was more online, but with OASIS as big as it is, I'd suspect offline robbery and murder to get game money or props would be commonplace. You have it happen in the book with Daito, but we've seen that happen in our world, too, with poopsockers killing one another over virtual goods. The biometrics required to log onto OASIS even remind of that short "Hyperreality", where its an augmented reality POV that ends with the subject getting shivved by a AR-disguised assailant, who then uses her blood to fool the security protocols and steal her identity. On a related note, how does player inventories work? I suspect all objects are "physical" objects that require hangars and chests instead of just being kept on an asset database and rezzed out of a menu interface. Like, Wade shouldn't be using virtual magic to hide his Delorean, he should just call it up over his phone, Saints Row style, and it just drops from the sky or delivered by a valet.
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Apr 13, 2018 14:16
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Young Freud posted:On a related note, how does player inventories work? I suspect all objects are "physical" objects that require hangars and chests instead of just being kept on an asset database and rezzed out of a menu interface. Like, Wade shouldn't be using virtual magic to hide his Delorean, he should just call it up over his phone, Saints Row style, and it just drops from the sky or delivered by a valet. The most that's covered is that you have an inventory that you can put any appropriately sized items into like in any RPG, but the writing is ambiguous about how you actually access it (Wade opens a menu and clicks on items initially to equip them, but several times he puts items in his "pocket" instead and that works too). Presumably the inventory isn't bound by realistic space and is only restricted by weight or slots, since Wade loads himself up with armor and weapons when going to the Distracted Globe despite wearing a suit. Also you can view your avatar in third person, but how does that work for your virtual body? The way it's written, moving around with your haptic gear perfectly simulates your actual movement. But in third person, wouldn't you be able to look behind yourself or around corners to gain an unfair advantage? It's like in GTA V how you can choose either to play in, but first person gives you a ton of disadvantages by comparison.
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Apr 13, 2018 14:30
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Young Freud posted:I think the above scenario was more online, but with OASIS as big as it is, I'd suspect offline robbery and murder to get game money or props would be commonplace. You have it happen in the book with Daito, but we've seen that happen in our world, too, with poopsockers killing one another over virtual goods. The biometrics required to log onto OASIS even remind of that short "Hyperreality", where its an augmented reality POV that ends with the subject getting shivved by a AR-disguised assailant, who then uses her blood to fool the security protocols and steal her identity. You know, there have been real-life murders over virtual items, so it is not farfetched.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:11
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Also on the subject of real world stress, the movie shows how some people react to losing their OASIS characters. One is a Japanese salaryman who has to be tackled to stop him from jumping out a window.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:31
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chitoryu12 posted:The most that's covered is that you have an inventory that you can put any appropriately sized items into like in any RPG, but the writing is ambiguous about how you actually access it (Wade opens a menu and clicks on items initially to equip them, but several times he puts items in his "pocket" instead and that works too). Presumably the inventory isn't bound by realistic space and is only restricted by weight or slots, since Wade loads himself up with armor and weapons when going to the Distracted Globe despite wearing a suit. I really started wondering about this when he's shooting the Tyrell guards and he's describing the ammunition being added to the gun's magazines as they're being fired, so it made me think that the gun is a fully functional simulation of a firearm, with working, moving parts, instead of just a prop that holds code and values, a simple database of shots to be fired, and instances bullets at the muzzle velocity with some particle flash and smoke for visual effects for gunfire. Also, we have a scene were he's wandering a hangar, instead of spinning through a menu, although that more reminded me of Star Citizen so I could see that.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:32
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chitoryu12 posted:Also on the subject of real world stress, the movie shows how some people react to losing their OASIS characters. One is a Japanese salaryman who has to be tackled to stop him from jumping out a window. yeah again if he lost a literal fungible equivalent of $60,000 in credits and items because someone sniped him from a tall building as he was parking his virtual car at his virtual workplace and is now teabagging his virtual corpse I kinda get it
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Apr 13, 2018 19:33
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Young Freud posted:Also, we have a scene were he's wandering a hangar, instead of spinning through a menu, although that more reminded me of Star Citizen so I could see that. Oh, it definitely makes sense for there to be virtual bases that you can walk around. People in real life love customizing their virtual living and working spaces, from homes in Fallout and Elder Scrolls to the apartments and garages in GTA V where you select a car by actually getting in it.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:48
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 I will admit to being inspired by the Highlander to get Glenmorangie on the rocks.
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Apr 14, 2018 23:39
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Darth Walrus posted:An army of Mocks would be funny as hell. Annoyingly inappropriate to Halliday’s Eighties wonderland, too. Personally, I liked the units from the movie with the ridiculous branding on the front. There's also another factor: IOI has basically unlimited manpower and money compared to individual gunters, so they can easily afford the cost and training for rigs that take a half-dozen people at a time to pilot properly. Combine those two factors and you get weird stuff like corporate-branded War of the Worlds walkers with a dozen raygun ball turrets, with air support from two-man Macross fighter knockoffs with missiles that also scatter recruitment flyers everywhere when they detonate. Everything takes multiple people acting in concert to use, and everything spews ridiculous corporate branding and propaganda everywhere. Section 9 posted:For the Tomb of Horrors segment, make it so that there was no walk-through FAQ for it. It wasn't on Planet Gygax so it had sort of fallen into obscurity. Nah, man. Just have a walkthrough, which then gets proven immediately wrong when some ridiculous trap triggers in the "wrong" place and everybody realizes "oh gently caress, this is some remix bullshit Halliday put together". Actually, no, run with that even further, and have it start as Tomb of Horrors but mutate through absurdly lethal recombinations of 80s stuff. Fight a hundred Heathers with lightsabers in Castle Greyskull while F-14s rain out of the sky and the Fratellis chase anyone they see with an open Ark of the Covenant! Edit: One puzzle involves having to get into a Delorean with Ferris Bueller, then floor it in reverse and go 88 mph backwards off a cliff, at which point it goes flying through the air in front of a huge backdrop of a moon and then lands in the courtyard of a shopping mall filled with zombies. One of the zombies bites Bueller, and then you have to escape from him while he makes fourth-wall-breaking quips about eating your brains. Edit edit: If you complain that Dawn of the Dead isn't even technically from the 80s, zombie-Bueller tells you to lighten up, because overthinking it makes your brains all gristly. Roadie fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Apr 16, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 22:39
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Gunship, a band that predominately does retro-style electronic music, did a song in honor of the movie's release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQaH3lh-CA4 I would have liked this in the movie more than Twisted Sister. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Apr 16, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 23:55
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Roadie posted:. Dawn Of The Dead might not be '80s but Return Of The Living Dead as sure as he'll is. Also, RotLD is where the whole "Brains" trope comes from: it's the Tar Man's signature line and there's a part where Burt & Ernst interrogate a zombie which reveals they eat brains to relieve them of the pain of death.
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Apr 17, 2018 01:15
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Young Freud posted:Dawn Of The Dead might not be '80s but Return Of The Living Dead as sure as he'll is. Also, RotLD is where the whole "Brains" trope comes from: it's the Tar Man's signature line and there's a part where Burt & Ernst interrogate a zombie which reveals they eat brains to relieve them of the pain of death. I find it so bizarre that the "braiiins" line, and the idea that zombies eat brains, has become common cultural knowledge while the ROTLD flicks haven't. I remember an interviewer asking George Romero where he got the idea for zombies to eat brains and why, and he tried to very politely explain that she was thinking of a totally different series of movies.
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Apr 17, 2018 01:24
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Vintersorg posted:MechaG in RPO looks nothing like any of the MechaG's in the past. This is  as gently caress, but it's worth noting that both Ready Player One and next year's Godzilla: King of the Monsters (in which Monarch has to battle a kaiju team-up) are produced by Warner Bros.
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Apr 26, 2018 17:36
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Osmosisch posted:I wish I could find my copy, looks like I loaned & lost it I cracked and ordered a replacement secondhand copy. Turns out Wyrm totally holds up! Its protagonist is a bit too omnipotent (software skills! Black belt karate!) and what there is of female characters doesn't get all that much agency but besides that, it's a somewhat plausible romp in a hidden, omnipresent online game with tons of bona fide nerd references that are both correctly placed and often left unexplained. Recommended, though nothing earthshattering. There's something charming about having a character explain the difference between ISDN and cable, or what the millenium bug is.
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May 14, 2018 18:26
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So, do you think Wade holds any kind of grudge against I-r0k for revealing his identity, and possibly being the cause of all the troubles that befell Wade afterwards? I don't recall if there was any mention of him after the Copper Key section.
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May 14, 2018 21:30
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The Zombie Guy posted:So, do you think Wade holds any kind of grudge against I-r0k for revealing his identity, and possibly being the cause of all the troubles that befell Wade afterwards? There's not a single mention of him afterward. He shows up for one scene where Wade and Aech make fun of him, he gets mentioned as bragging about knowing them and blowing the lid on the Tomb of Horrors being on Ludus, and then he disappears from the book much like everything and everyone else Cline couldn't figure out how to incorporate after bringing it up once.
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May 14, 2018 21:40
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Osmosisch posted:I cracked and ordered a replacement secondhand copy. Turns out Wyrm totally holds up! Its protagonist is a bit too omnipotent (software skills! Black belt karate!) and what there is of female characters doesn't get all that much agency but besides that, it's a somewhat plausible romp in a hidden, omnipresent online game with tons of bona fide nerd references that are both correctly placed and often left unexplained. Recommended, though nothing earthshattering. I managed to check out a copy from an online library. As soon as I finish Otherland, that is on my list.
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May 15, 2018 05:36
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Samizdata posted:I managed to check out a copy from an online library. As soon as I finish Otherland, that is on my list. Ha! See you in a year 
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May 15, 2018 09:54
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Osmosisch posted:Ha! See you in a year I am about halfway through the last book. I dun read fast.
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May 15, 2018 20:04
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