Hey, if anyone out there has an iPad, I have something I'd like you to try out.

MAKE SURE IT SAYS v1.3 ON TOP! If it doesn't try refreshing the page. (I wish FA was as prompt with updating a submission as it is with uploading it the first time...)

http://d.facdn.net/art/dragon103/13.....rdsplayer7.swf

This is a flash I have been working on. It lets you play music fairly easily if you understand how the layout works.
Flash unfortunately has, as I've learned, poor support for recognizing keyboard input, and as a result sometimes keys you press with the keyboard don't register with the script. But none of these problems occur while pressing buttons with the mouse (though only due to compensatory work I've done to correct similar problems it has with THAT) and I'm assuming that Flash is multi-touch compatible.

I'd be beyond happy to try out this gadget on an iPad, or similar touch screen interface, but since I don't have one perhaps someone who does could have that opportunity instead. I'd be glad to know it works if it does.

Anyone who wishes to volunteer is more than welcome to. :3 If you know someone who does, and they like music, pass this along to them. Just pass on the results to me, if you please.

Fuck you and this community.
That is all.

Hey guys,

Lately, I've been very stressed out about a friend of mine who is working on a video game project with me. For the past month, him and I were working on different parts of the game: I did some coding on the GUI and the character movement, while he did the animations. After a month and after he spent a lot of time working, I saw his animations.
However, they looked quite... bad... even for the amount of time he was given. I didn't want to tell him this but eventually I had to, because he didn't seem to think it mattered very much, and he didn't take it very well at all. He was extremely upset, telling me things like, "why don't you just do everything, then?", and I tried my best to act as professionally and as modestly as I could without avoiding the problem.

He said that I didn't know what I was talking about, because he claimed to have more experience with animation than me. However, some of the issues he had were with basic posture problems which could be resolved by using walk cycle animations on YouTube as a reference. The character's feet would protrude through the floor - something that takes seconds to fix.
He doesn't seem to have good work practices, in that he won't "sharpen the axe": He doesn't take the time to do things like familiarize himself with his environment, use reference material as guidelines such as other example animations, create a comfortable workflow where he is in control, or take time to learn tips and tricks from those who are experienced IE tutorial videos. It's also just the way he talks about the project. He'll often say "Players won't notice", or "This is good enough for X game, so its good enough for us!" and then do kind of a mickey-mouse job.
He tries to find the simplest and easiest solution, rather than one that will deliver the results players are looking for.
He seems unable to distinguish a quality result from a mediocre one.
Even little things like making sure objects are aligned and symmetrical he seems to overlook and dismiss as trivial.
I am afraid to let him do anything because I don't think he holds the same standard of quality and attention to detail that I do. However, I cannot exclude him from the project, nor do I want to because he is a good friend of mine, but its difficult to bear working with bad art and game assets. I just don't know what to tell him, and it's really eating up my sanity. x_x

Thanks for any help, support or advice you may have.

Hey, I just tried out something called OnLive. Instead of installing games and running them on your hardware, the video feed is rendered in render farms and then streamed to your computer through the internet. There is very low latency and the video quality is very good.

You get to play quite a handful of the new games for free, for 30 minutes. They're not demos, they're the full versions. I suggest you try them out!

Get an account then download the app (less than a MB).

www.onlive.com

They're retarded.

That is all.

Lately I've been hearing from others, including those who've studied music in university, that Absolute Pitch (or Perfect Pitch) is either something you have or you haven't; you are born with it or not. I'm skeptical of this.

Generally, I've noticed that while people certainly are more gifted than others at certain things, these gifts or lack thereof only define one's tendencies and rate at which he can learn something. I'm not a neurologist so I don't know how this position would stand up to the current science, but still, why do people say that it can't be trained? This blows my mind.

The reason it blows my mind is that I cannot conceive of any way for Relative Pitch, or furthermore, for auditory perception itself to be possible without some Absoluteness being part of the equation. As long as there is -some- level of absolute perception, then we have something to work with and train.

These are my two arguments supporting my position that Absolute Pitch is trainable:

1) Accuracy: Normal individuals without PP can identify accurately what octave a certain tone belongs to. PP individuals can identify accurately what semitone a certain tone belongs too. There are 12 semitones in an octave. This comparison suggests that what PP individuals have, normal individuals also have, just to 1/12th the degree of accuracy.

This accuracy might vary between individuals, for those with or without PP.
Some perfect pitch individuals might be able to identify tones to the nearest semitone, while others might be able to identify tones to the nearest quartertone, or to even a more accute pitch resolution.
Some normal individuals without PP might be able to identify tones to the nearest octave, while others might be able to identify tones to the nearest half an octave.

Since there is a gradual continuum between "normal" pitch perception, and "perfect" pitch perception, its feasible that it can be trained with gradual progressions over time and the brain doesn't have to completely rewire itself as nay-sayers have suggested - something which doesn't and probably cannot happen.

2) Memory: Relative pitch, unlike pefrect pitch and common in a lot of people, is the ability for people to determine the difference in pitch between two tones. This can occur either while the tones are playing together at the same time, or with some time in between them.

In order to compare two notes played at different times, the brain would need to reconstruct them at the moment of comparison. This reconstruction would require the brain to have, somewhere in there, a memory of the pitch in absolute terms.

Imagine an analogy with movement. Object A is moving 1 km/h faster than object B. Object C is moving 2 km/h slower than object D. Could you answer how faster or slower object A is than object C? No.
By extension, imagine that Object A and object B are moving the same speed, while object C and object D are moving the same speed. From this could you establish that A and C are necessarily moving the same speed too? No.
The only way this could be possible is if either all the objects share one common reference point, or if you had some ability to perceive the absolute motion of the objects.

This scenario is reproduced by musicians all the time regardless of whether or not they have perfect pitch. Therefore, they must either have memorized a single reference note through which they compare all other notes to, or they have some sort of perfect pitch working subconsciously.
Even if the musician who memorized one common reference note (something that isn't rare), it still requires him to be able to mentally reconstruct the note in absolute terms, bringing us back to the original problem of requiring some degree of absolute perception.
Even in this case it implies that the means he used to memorize one note can be applied to all other notes until he's individually memorized each one, and wouldn't need to perform comparisons to identify tones, thus developing absolute pitch.

Also, since common, non PP musicians can naturally identify the difference between notes after hearing them with some time in between each one, lengthening the time between the notes would be an effective way to train perfect pitch, in that he could gradually learn to reconstruct any tone in his imagination after any length of time.

From "The New Policy on Cub":

"Do we continue on with cub artwork and protect the artwork in the name of freedom of speech?"
a few lines later...
"We will not accept harassment [as we define it] of any sort. Zero tolerance. You have a choice. You can make comments or you can keep them to yourselves."

Yeah. Okay. If these idiots had it their way, this is what would go on through their heads:
"Okay, cub porn. Articulate and carefully thought out depictions of child abuse designed to be experienced with sexual pleasure. Keep!"
"Okay, rape porn. Developed to encourage viewers to pleasure themselves over the idea of scarring a helpless person for life. Keep!"
"Okay, snuff and torture porn. Enjoyed by those who manage to receive pleasure from reliving grotesquely detailed murders and unimaginable suffering in their heads. Keep!"
"Wooah, someone expressing a dissenting view? No no, can't have that. That's not free speech."

FA's administration really must not think much of our intelligence. If you can allow the kind of inane rubbish that you do, from the darkest corners of the most soiled and stinking dumpster in the back alley of the most disturbed backwater community, things which ought never see the light of day, than you damn well can allow a comment pointing out the obvious. And no, we don't have to show respect to something that can't show the slightest shred of respect, in ANY reasonable context, to something as basic and fundamental as the dignity of living beings.

If some FA admin sees this and decides to delete it, ban me, or what have you, it'll just provide me and every other witness concrete proof of how hypocritical, morally devoid and just plain fucking weak sauce the lot of you really are. After all, what is it you say... "if you don't like it, don't look at it"?

"Seems to me all the arguments in FAVOUR of cub art are completely ignorant of the very essence of what makes their fetish so abhorrent. Instead of making a valid case for why this fetish isn't completely sick and amoral they just throw around words like 'censorship' and 'freedom of speech'. Like that justifies the fact that you get off to the idea of child molestation.
Here's how I see it. NOTHING justifies getting off to the abuse and violation of a human being. I don't care if you don't ACTUALLY rape kids, you think about it and you like it. This is just my opinion, but it takes a few loose screws to feel arousal where empathy for the victims should be. Maybe instead of crying over the loss of your fap material you should reevaluate why you have a hard-on for CP when the rest of the world seems to consider it the epitome of moral degradation.
Probably I'll get flamed for saying it but honestly? No one's even tried to explain this to me without falling back on the old argument's stand-bys."

--demicoeur

*mass applause and moving orchestra music* so beautiful...

For a while I've been mulling over a scenario that is very emotional to me in my head. The scenario came to mind one day when I was playing Halo with a few of my friends, and the theme "Never Forget" was playing. You should listen to it here, especially since it might get the creativity flowing like it did with me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDZscyf8lU

I know nothing about Halo's storyline, and I haven't really played the game much. But when I heard this music, I paused for a moment and realized how upsetting it would be to have our first physical contact with another form of intelligence in the universe ultimately wind up as, well, what Halo wound up as.

Many scientists argue that any contact at all, let alone physical contact, would be the single most significant event in all of human history. They'd likely be far wiser and far more technologically advanced than us, so the possible benefits implied for humankind with regards to our standard of living, health, lifespan, quality of life and virtually everything else would be unthinkable. They'd perhaps have gone through the same struggles as a species and dealt with the same fundamental questions that burdoned and perplexed the smartest of our kind, questions that inspired entire religious systems into existence.
But all that aside, establishing a meaningful, peaceful relationship with them I feel would in many ways be like a marriage between us and the entirety of sentient life itself. A transition from being this lonely, isolated speck in a cold endless unknown, to being part of it - or to at least have someone else out there to be cold and isolated with.

I'm an atheist / agnostic, and while I don't want to represent the entire atheist community, I feel that the possibility of there being some benevolent intelligence out there who started off with the same humble beginnings as we did--waiting to discover our messed up little planet or for the right opportunity to intervene--is the closest thing I have to a god. I believe that the only way we'll have a heaven is if we make it ourselves, here on earth, with or (most likely) without help from outside sources. But sometimes it's hard to believe we'll ever reach that point on our own, despite how much I hope and wish that I'll live to see the day it happens.

So on the occasion I'll drift into my imagination and participate in scenarios that reflect these feelings and ideas I have. Lately, I've been wanting to artistically explore a scenario, perhaps with drawings, a comic, a flash animation, even a short story or something. Something which the underlying purpose is to express and emphasize the sheer disappointment I'm sure a lot of us would feel upon learning that our chances of establishing a peaceful, mutual relationship with our galactic neighbors were ruined because of the stupid, selfish decisions made by powerful members of society.

I mean, imagine hearing about something like this on the news. Perhaps its 2050, and we've had knowledge of the existence of a civilization for years since we started hearing their signals from space. Eventually it became commonplace, like ordinary knowledge. It was a breakthrough at first but since we had no way of talking back to them, eventually everyone lost interest - until they started showing up at our doorstep.

They come in peace, and with benevolent intentions. They are a fascinating race, very intelligent and heartful, who see the dignity and significance in every individual form of sentient life. They offer their hand in guiding our species to a new level of peace and enlightenment. But the people in power don't want to give up their place above everyone else. Backs are stabbed, politics runs sour and before you know it our chances of connecting a peaceful alliance disappears.
Imagine yourself hearing about this, and the disappointment, realizing that all the extraordinary things that you were originally hoping to come from this, things that would change your life and everyone else's life forever, vanish just like that... The single most definiting, most beautiful moment for humanity, ruined.

If I make something with a story structure, I'm leaning towards a sad ending. They leave and the night sky becomes silent again. Nobody knows when or if they'll come back, but the years become decades, and the main character never lives to see the day they return to save us from whatever mess we're in. Like a dream, you think it's real and that everything will be different forever, but you wake up and everything is the way it always has been.

Anyway, the problem I'm having here is in trying to express this. The underlying concept is very abstract and I can't decide on what ways of the many possible ways I should take to make it more concrete - concrete enough so that I could create something tangible with it. Originally I planned on developing it into a first-person video game which I'd release in the forseeable but distant future, once I establish myself in that line of work well enough. But I can't wait that long. I need to express myself.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I could do?

We need more zerg art. And good zerg art, not some shit thrown together in 30 minutes, or with some fetish thrown on top, that's the last thing I want to see the zerg brought into.

Just pure zergy goodness, portrayed under a sexy and inviting light. An aura of thick, damp warmth surrounding their bodies... each inch of skin and carapace encased under a thin layer of naturally occurring body oil... their heavy slithery alien bodies glistening in the sun... rawr. I apologize.

So I walk into the bathroom this morning and guess what I see.

Brown. Fucking everywhere. Everything soaked. All my shit fucking soaked in shit just as I was about to fucking go to sleep.

My landlord is a fucking lazy fat sack of shit who doesn't take care of maintenance, and my neighbors are dumb fucking drunks since I happen to live in Edmonton's party central also known as Whyte Ave. The fuckers probably poured something down the drain they were not supposed to. Maybe it was because the fucking turban hair from the previous tenants finally unclogged itself only to get stuck in the main line.

Fuck my life.

One thing that irritates me is the expectation imposed on me, that I should be interested in a girl regardless of whether I'd be interested in her as a friend, or utterly bored of her outside of a sexual relationship.

I don't give a shit about girls for the fact that they are girls. You have to share my interests and have something in common with me.

Me and my brother were discussing activities one could spend his free time on. I suggested hanging out with a group of gamers, but my brother replied "There'd be no girls there."

Who fucking cares? I told him that he shouldn't give a shit; a girl that doesn't share your interests is a waste of your time. He replied, "I can't disagree more. Your woman doesn't have to be the kind of person you'd hang out with."

This leads me to a book he was reading, called "Rules of the Game" which outlines the author's experiences in picking up chicks, and what works. This sexist chauvinist is brainwashing my brother. He makes relationships sound like a bureaucracy, requiring all participants to engage in pointless rituals like instinct driven animals.

For example, I explained to my brother that if two individuals met up with one another and realized they're a match, they should just cut the crap, go for it and see what happens. My brother replied, "Name one girl who is reasonably attractive, and who doesn't play hard to get."

I am above this nonsense, and I expect anyone I'd give a shred of respect towards to be above this nonsense as well. If you find me, or anyone unattractive because they didn't conform their individuality to this nonsense, you're a fucking waste of skin and you need to kill yourself now.

But surely girls are not like this. Surely some girls are intelligent enough to understand the difference between finding what's best for them in their own way, and being culturally indoctrinated. The world described in "Rules of the Game", as described by my brother, is fucking cancerous, and I'd rather chop my balls off than participate in it.

---

SIDE NOTES:

I meant "interests" more generally than you might think. Perhaps "compatibility", "things in common" or "meaningful connection" is better.

Video games need to evolve. I'm a gamer but lately I'm becoming more and more convinced that the gaming market is shallow and uncreative. I'm tired of it.

The main thing that I want to see phase out is the bondage video games have to the skill factor. I don't care about acquiring a skill. I don't care about being challenged. If in order to have fun I have to repeatedly push myself to get better at some task, then fuck it. When a game starts to feel more like work than play is when I put the controller down and do something else.
This is especially true (though not exclusively) for multiplayer games. If you take a step back and a good look, its utterly stupid and laughable how obsessed people can become at "being the best" at performing some random task. While it may feel good at first to "pwn noobs", you can't help but realize you're participating in nothing more than an endless e-penis measuring contest.

The fact is, our lower human emotions can turn anything into a contest, no matter how pointless, mundane, or stupid. To be the best at something for the sake of being the best at it is a shallow victory. It is very profitable to exploit these lower emotions because it causes gamers to come back and try their luck a second time, and keep coming back to maintain their topmost position, assuming they make it that far to begin with. This is "Behavioral Game Design", which is a fancy name for brainwashing players to keep coming back for more, without needing to provide more for them. (See: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featu.....ame_design.php)

I see games as an opportunity to explore other worlds, and participate in hypotheticals that would be impossible in the real world, through the eyes of someone or something other than myself. I want to experience the things I imagine when I close my eyes and daydream, or when I listen to an enchanting, spine-chilling passage of music. (Trance mostly.) I want to experience these things as though they were really, truly real. But, not even my wildest dreams involved anything along the lines of performing some repetitive mechanic in return for an output of precisely timed rewards, or winning some contest that I never knew even existed. I think the potential to experience the things we truly want to experience through this medium is being squandered in favor of cheaper, more profitable design strategies that exploit human nature. Again, I don't care about being challenged, acquiring some useless skill, performing tasks, or solving problems, especially when neither of these have any affect on the real world. While they can be supplementary to the experience of a "game" they are not the center of my interests, and be honest, neither are they for you.

The term "game" should change. Traditionally, video games were limited to competitive task performing - the figurative pulling of the lever in the skinner box (reference, see link above) - because of technological limitations, and the only alternative to that was a text-based adventure. The term game was reinforced and popularized, but now those technological limitations are no longer there.
When you think of the word "game" you usually think of forming strategies to reach a particular goal, under a certain set of rules, and I feel there is much more potential for variety of interactive experiences in store for us. Games should expand to "interactive media" to not only make room for alternatives to problem-solving based media but to redefine the games' image in the public eye as an art form and not toys for children.

I think reinventing games as a means of experiencing fantasy will also remove games' stupid dependence on violence to be entertaining, which will also be required if games are ever to be recognized as a true art form.

Lately,  cubprotest has been censored by an admin who did not agree with the views of the users who created / support the page. The main voice of the page has been nothing but modest and respectful with his views, and certainly did not stalk and harass others.

If you support anti-cub-porn by all means add his icon to your page. If you don't, you should still pass this along to as many people you know who would be concerned about unfair censorship.

If FA stands to allow submissions of any kind to be posted, then FA should also expect and stand to allow the expression of dissenting perspectives that may emerge. To not is blatantly hypocritical.

This is a reminder that you are NOT immune to criticism for the things you post.

Dragoneer, the admin responsible, says the page was not banned because of opinion differences, but this is very disputable.

Last night, I had a dream that I was banned from FA.

True story.