this was one of atla’s best jokes I swear
God, I love Russell Howard.
“Why Trump’s transgender ban is totally nuts…”
From last night’s The Russell Howard Hour on Sky 1 HD
So, I was having a down day today..
I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed until I heard my dog whining for breakfast. Even then, I fed him, and then curled up on the sofa. I knew this behaviour was bad for him, but I couldn’t face taking him out for his morning walk just yet. I was starting to panic about how I would face going outside to exercise him.. He’s a husky.. He would destroy my house if he wasn’t exercised..
But then, the most amazing thing happened.
My puppy, currently only 4 months old, could tell something was off with me. Where he usually comes up to me for a morning cuddle and then whines until I take him out, he just stayed in the kitchen and had a nap. He gave me space to calm down.
After he woke up, and he noticed I hadn’t moved from my spot on the sofa, he came and sat next to me and placed his paw on my head.
I started to laugh.
It felt like it was his awkward way of saying “There there, human.”
And, rather than whining, or becoming restless, or destructive, he simply lay on the floor next to me and kept me company. (I don’t allow him on the furniture, otherwise I feel that he would have curled up in my lap.)
He’s only just fallen asleep, and I felt a lot more relaxed and calm, mostly because of my silent and understanding companion.. and I needed to capture the moment..
✨ 🌈 🍉 Summer dreams 🍧 🌈 ✨
✨ Also check out my new iMessage stickers + download them here 💕✨
Anonymous asked:
All that stuff about making Super AI was Super Interesting, but how is the normal not-playing-games-against-itself-to-try-and-win AI designed & developed?
askagamedev answered:
Ok, so… Game AI is a really deep subject. Like… deep enough that there are professional engineers and designers who are employed full time to make this sort of thing happen. I can’t do the entire subject justice in a small post I threw together in one evening. So instead, you’ll all get a multi-part series on the topic because it’s something I find fun.
Let’s take a look at the eagle-eye view of the topic.
Developing Game AI (Part 1)
Normal game AI is definitely different from experimental/theoretical AI. Experimental AI like Deep Blue, AlphaGO, the UC Berkeley Overmind, or OpenAI are developed to see how far computer learning can go. Game AI is primarily geared towards providing a fun experience for the player. This can have some amount of overlap with experimental AI, but the fundamental goals are different, which necessitates different design and implementation. From the very beginning, we developers establish ground rules for what the AI is supposed to do, as well as its limitations. We have to answer questions like:
- Does the AI represent an equal opponent for the player? (E.g. Hearthstone, Chess, Street Fighter)
- Will the player fight many AIs at once? Is the AI effectively disposable? (E.g. Dynasty Warriors, Doom)
- Will the AI need to cooperate with the player? (e.g. Mass Effect, StarCraft)
- Will the AI need to cooperate/interact with other AI? (e.g. Fallout, Skyrim)
- Will the AI need to navigate non-uniform terrain? (e.g. Uncharted)
One of the bigger factors to the answers to these questions is how long (we think) it will take us to actually implement these things. We are, after all, always on a schedule. Complicated and extensible AI is great, but not if we can’t fit it into the schedule or budget. Once we figure out the limits of what the AI is supposed to do, we begin with rudimentary design and implementation.
AI development is generally broken into two separate parts - getting the AI to make a choice, then actually executing that choice. These two parts can be (and often are) developed independently of each other.
Making the choice would be figuring out which card to play, which spell to cast, or which ally to heal. Typically, this involves some sort of prioritization system, where the AI evaluates potential options and chooses one based on some set of established rules. Is attacking more worthwhile than using a spell? How about using an item? Should the AI try to maximize its use of mana per turn for tempo, or should it try to maximize card advantage? Which enemy should the AI target for this attack? The most dangerous one? The one with lowest HP? And how do you quantitatively define “most dangerous” anyway?
Executing the choice is the less sexy, but incredibly important part that most fans don’t think about. In fact, most of the design and implementation time for AI in games is often spent making the execution work. After the AI chooses which spell to cast, how does it actually do it? The AI probably has to move into range, which requires pathfinding. The AI has to cast the spell, which means that it can’t be taking damage, unconscious, silenced, etc. The AI might have to consider environmental hazards when pathfinding. The AI might have to consider its location in the world - say that the player is trying to kite an enemy out of its home base, but the game must stream the environment from the disc. If the player goes too far from the enemy base, it will get unloaded from system memory, and likely take enemy with it. How do we handle such cases?
In addition to that, in many games there’s also an even lower level of AI that often needs to work as well. At its most basic level, the character animation system is governed by AI as well. If the player shoots an enemy, it probably needs to play some sort of take-damage reaction, right? How does the enemy know to do that? Something has to prioritize which animations are playing when, and which take priority over what. Dying usually trumps climbing a ladder or casting a spell. There’s generally an AI that handles what animations a character needs to be playing, and when to transition from one animation to another. Remember, the machine doesn’t have any inherent concept of matching motions or positions or anything; any sort of animation transition must come from some sort of set of rules that we create. That also includes keeping track of states like death, unconscious, aggression, snared, which direction to face, etc. and that AI must be able to override or pause the higher order functions too. After all, the AI shouldn’t be trying to navigate to a point on the map if it’s dead.
Building these sorts of systems require a lot of thought and work. The vast majority of developing game AI is spent solving these kind of core problems on a system-wide level. Things like emulating a personality or adding polish touches often come super late (if at all) in the development cycle, simply because getting the core elements to work requires so much time, effort, and iteration. AI can be as simple or deep as we want, but the very basic stuff requires a lot of work to set up.
Next time, I’ll talk about how we get AI to evaluate choices.
Got a burning question you want answered?
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- Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr
- Frequent questions: The FAQ
I’ve just come to the realisation that Hermione Granger probably memory charmed her parents and packed them off to Australia long before she told Harry and Ron she’d done it at the beginning of Deathly Hallows.
She literally never goes home from Goblet of Fire onwards, spending her summers with the boys instead. In GoF she’s remarkably blase about her teeth, something her dentist parents would have noticed and felt hurt about.
If I were to guess, I’d say she probably did it after the wizarding world cup when she’d seen exactly how the wizarding world treats muggles and decided not to let that happen to her folks. Hermione knows which way the wind is blowing and gets in early. She’d be more than capable of doing it.
…Oh my God.
hermione is fucking ruthless and i will fight anyone who tells me otherwise
that was her “negative” gryffindor trait
was she incredibly brave and courageous and loyal? yes
but she was also vicious and violent and trapped a woman as a beetle in a jar for over a year because she pissed her off
hermione granger looked at the world, and looked at her magic, and looked at everyone else’s magic, and seemed to come to the conclusion that reality had better shut the fuck up and behave itself or she’d make it.
of all the kids, i think she’s dumbledore’s successor, not harry.
![mykpassion:
“[170922] Do Not Edit ♔ | Huaer
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Any native Japanese speakers here?
So, probably a bit of a long shot.. But I’m trying to learn Japanese. I think I’ve got a grasp of the basics, but I’m desperate to actually have conversations with real people that would test me more regularly in colloquial Japanese..
I have no idea where to find people willing to do that though…
And then I remembered that I have tumblr.
Soooo… Is there anyone out there, either natively Japanese or fluent in Japanese who would be willing to become my penpal?
So, I MEANT to say “oh crap, I left my phone in my car,” but what I ALMOST said was “oh no, I left my cone in my phar,” and damn, wouldn’t that have been embarrassing, but I caught myself, and what I ACTUALLY said was
“Ah, my fart cone.”
So anyway
This was a thrill from start to finish
Lol when did shipping the hero with the villain become a bad thing. Shits been happening for so long. It’s an interesting dynamic, prime for angst and betrayal and tragedy, yknow, the kinda tropes people have loved for forever? Not everything has to be sunshine and roses, and I’m not always in the mood for fluff.
I think it’s because people forget that shipping isn’t a way to use a ship as some sort of messed up “goals”, but rather it’s our way of playing dollhouse and we want some drama in our stories. It’s human nature to want to explore the human mind. Even little kids add drama to their stories. Drama is not something we put in stories and fan works because we approve of it but rather because we enjoy the emotional ride of seeing something fall apart (and to some, get out back together).
Shipping is literally a harmless way of exploring emotion and interest beyond “this is cute”. Shipping something solely because it’s cute is all fun and nice but shipping something because of the interesting dynamic creates opportunities for content. That dynamic can be good or bad, but either way, it will provoke emotion. And that is what makes shipping fun for me and for many others. Probably not everyone, but.. That’s not really anyone else’s problem.
Just giving a small update of my silly little pupper, who now has his own instagram!! Follow him on @shinobithehusky to get updates of his cuteness, antics and adventures!
Seriously, married or not I reckon Charlie Weasley would be a riot at family gatherings. Just turning up, throwing Molly a casual “Wotcher Mum! Brought the kids, hope that okay!” And Molly turns round confused, sees what he’s talking about and - “Those are not ‘the kids’ Charlie, thOSE ARE TINY DRAGONS IN ONESIES!!!!!”
I’VE BEEN LAUGHING AT THIS FOR HOURS
tsukithewolf