This is a cat.

I don't just believe, I KNOW, when a human creates, at least some of that is pure, fresh, and new. When a machine creates, it is 100% guaranteed to be purely derivative by its very nature.

Yes, many of us may be standing on the shoulders of giants with our creative works. But if one human mind can be purely innovative, how do you separate in another person which part is copying inspiration, and which part is their own, pure, innovative creative addition to the style?

They had no one to copy from. Someone, somewhere, had a moment of genuine creative inspiration and brought into the world something that had never been seen before.

I saw an AI bro make the argument that GenAI learning from the library of human material is no different from a human taking inspiration from the same sources. But who started those sources? Traditional, anime, cartoons, watercolour, abstract... someone had to develop these artstyles from SCRATCH.

Meanwhile in Slay the Spire 2...

Got one. Step 2 please.

What was your step 1 for your journey learning piano?

I saw someone say "of" is short for "have". We are truly lost as a society.

😭

I'm trying to transition from game player to game developer but this year's releases are making it very hard and they need to stop.

I call it Phantom Cat Syndrome. Except there doesn't even have to be anything there, sometimes I just hallucinate a cat in my peripheral and when I look, nothing.

As far as Australian wildlife goes, I actually think it's fairly safe here. There's a difference between things that CAN kill you and things that WANT to kill you. Sure, everything here CAN kill you, but we don't have many big predators that WANT to kill you.

Wicked Witch of the West vibes.

Spotted cat fits perfectly cradled in an arm.

This is why I'm late for things.

He is covered in fur.

Oh, ok.

HUNTING HORN FOREVER!

Imagine if, in Monster Hunter, they removed your favourite weapon from the game because it was considered weak. That'd be pretty crazy, huh?

And to cap off week 5, drawing on what I've learned so far, I made this wave effect which distorts geometry based on proximity to a target object.

Week 5: Delved into the world of shaders, creating this orb (tutorial-guided but also my own additions), which is kind of mesmerising to look at...

Also week 4, finished following a 27 hour YouTube series on making a Slay The Spire clone from scratch. Didn't really take many creative liberties with this one but learned a lot! Series found here, highly recommended if you're leaving the beginner stage of learning: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulgh...

Belated week 4 + 5 game dev learning journey update:

Week 4: Building upon week 3, recreated some mechanics from FFXIV interacting with the latency simulated character.
You might recognise Crystallize Time and also a tether mechanic thrown in.
Also wrote my first shader (the AoE effect).

Couple that with the fact that I do contribute to causes where and when I can. I pick my fights, but no one can fight every fight.

I love being told I have a responsibility to X or Y cause. Brother, I'm just trying to survive and feed my cat. Being made aware of something doesn't immediately make you responsible for it.

I think the way I've set up the latency simulator means I could also send the movement commands over a network for multiplayer, so it's a step in that direction as well for the future.

Week 3 learning game dev update: Took what I learned from the book I finished last week and made a latency simulator that can be set to varying amounts to see the effect. Also understanding how to draw a circle by representing the sines and cosines individually with the blue, red and green dots.

Week 2 learning game dev update: Basic tutorials aren't really sufficient anymore. They all teach the same concepts, just wrapped up in different packages. So now I'm reading books and following long-form educational content to get a more holistic understanding of game development.

In essence, they fired me as a content creator for their game (or made me redundant), and forced me to do something else with my life. When one door closes, another one opens. I just hope the one I'm walking through leads somewhere better.

It may turn out that I look back and realise the FFXIV devs reworking Paladin was the best thing they could've done for me, because it made me not want to play their game anymore.