Good Morning old broad, connie, Agatha, Draclvr, soot and everyone! Wide Awake Double Dark Brew is ready.

I was lucky yesterday didn't lose power and no flooding. Today the wind will still be gusty and the temps will drop into the 30s with a wind chill. I should be able to walk later this morning.

Hope you all have a better weather day and experiencing some feel of "spring"!

Gerry

Hi Dan, good one.

I think you are probably right, Jimbo Bell !! 😑

I’m genuinely frightened by AI.

I’m not opposed to it per se. I use it quite a lot, mostly as an advanced form of googling. I wouldn’t ever use it to create an image in a game, or to make voice overs. I absolutely hate that in games. (Well, I did use one image of a person in my latest game, but that was supposed to be an AI generated image, as part of the story). Coding doesn’t bother me as such, although I feel sorry for all the programmers that are losing their jobs.

Last week, I was at a restaurant with some friends. Someone wondered what music was playing, and someone else answered ”I think the music is generated by AI in real time. They do it in public places these days to avoid having to pay royalties”. He checked it with Shazam (an app that can identify music), and didn’t get any hit, which more or less is a guarantee that the music isn’t ”real”. It hadn’t struck my mind that the blues singer with the raspy voice wasn’t a real person, or that the harmonica or the guitar solo wasn’t played by real people, let alone that it wasn’t even composed by people. We’re not just talking synthesized sounds here, like digital strings used in a film score, but music created by computers. The charts on Spotify are now full of AI created music. Some have been debated. Anyone interested can look up Sienna Rose. This highly successful singer was suspected of being AI-generated, due to her lack of visual presence. When she finally uploaded a video presenting herself as a real person there was only one problem: The door frame behind her head changed shape when she moved.

As long as I can remember, a central - maybe the most central - theme in science fiction films and books has been the creation of robots that we can't differentiate from real people. Films like Blade Runner, Terminator and Westworld are all built around this concept. Why? Because it frightens us.

When music (or art if you will) can be created by machines, without us even being able to tell the difference, we’re one giant step closer to a similar scenario: A person walks in to the abovementioned restaurant, and we start a conversation about whether it’s a human or not.

However, apart from graphics and voice acting, we’re pretty far from AI being able to actually create games (especially adventure games, I think).

From people I've talked to and what I've read, the game gets better every day...I don't know if there are patches or what, but the dev seems dedicated to addressing issues. I am on vacation and have not tried it. I figure I may as well wait, anyway...

EDIT--I tried it for ten minutes. I could get nowhere. Leaves and WASD don't work for me. What is the value of WASD anyway? I requested a refund. Sad.

I have been playing this new edition since Steam updated the original game in my Library. Maybe its been too long since I played the original but I don't see any difference. Wonder if the developer has side by side images to compare with to show what they have done?

Yes, the game has been out for quite a while now. Not sure why it took so long to get to Big Fish, but better late than never.

Thanks flotsam, I was unaware of that: another one to add to the list...!🙂

Thanks, Koala!

(The festival actually featured Wagner's works)

Which is nearly as good 😊

Thanks Ana!

Steam is running a #TurnBasedThursdayFest ending 3/16 at 1pm EST

Steam Events Running - Spring discounts have started up