[TRENCHES] Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - Rule Rage

Geth

Rule Rage
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/rule-rage

Profanity at the office

Anonymous

Long ago I was a designer at a now-defunct PC game developer. We had a brilliant idea: use voice control to enhance a fantasy RPG. We figured that if you could just *tell* the NPC party members what to do (“Heal me!”) it would revolutionize the whole genre, leading to piles of money, world domination, etc. etc.

This was long before Kinect, Siri, or any other voice recognition systems were common. We cobbled together a demo, and after we tweaked the speech parameters it worked surprisingly well. The speech recognition got it right almost all the time, and it really did immerse you in the game, provided you were willing to talk to your computer.

Emboldened by our newfound success, we began crafting a real demo for publishers. Wouldn’t it be funny, we thought, if there was an Easter Egg in the demo. If you yelled in frustration at the screen we should recognize swear words and make something funny happen. (I think we settled on a spell that launched a chicken around your head that fired eggs at the enemy.) But with the demo deadline approaching, and the team crunching to make the world look beautiful, who was going to implement the Easter Egg? It turned out that duty fell to our summer programming intern, I’ll call her Sarah).

Sarah was a sweet, quiet, and slightly shy programming intern from a nearby college and immediately began digging into the problem. For the rest of the week from the programming pit we we heard her soft voice, unnaturally loud for now, interspersed with bouts of frantic typing, attempting to implement the
Easter Egg:

“FUCK!” ... “FUCK!” .... “FUCK!” ...

type type type.

“SHIT!” ... “SHIT!” ... “SHIT!” ...

We were all amused because we couldn’t tell whether she was having a problem with the feature or whether it was working as intended.

Warlock82

Ha, I like that story.

I'm guessing this never came out since I've never heard of it. Sounds like a decent idea, even if it's more of a novelty than anything else.

cB557

The art is weird in this one, but the punchline is pretty good.

klemming

Don't know what the rating for the game was, but if it specifically acknowledged swear words, would that raise its age rating to a certain level?
I assume a game rated 'E for Everyone' would get in trouble if it ended up teaching kids to swear at it to get it to do something.

SwashbucklerXX

klemming wrote: »

Don't know what the rating for the game was, but if it specifically acknowledged swear words, would that raise its age rating to a certain level?
I assume a game rated 'E for Everyone' would get in trouble if it ended up teaching kids to swear at it to get it to do something.

Back in the days before "Hot Coffee," there was pretty much a don't ask, don't tell policy on Easter Eggs.

marsilies

klemming wrote: »

Don't know what the rating for the game was, but if it specifically acknowledged swear words, would that raise its age rating to a certain level?
I assume a game rated 'E for Everyone' would get in trouble if it ended up teaching kids to swear at it to get it to do something.

It's not clear if they intended for the swearing feature to be in anything except the demo. It was something they were doing to amuse themselves and possibly the execs looking at the demo; not necessarily for the finished project.

I like in the comic that he's driving past the Airport (bar). As for the "honor system" for intersections, it's called the 4-way stop, and it sucks. Another alternative is the roundabout, which is popular in other countries and is starting to gain traction in the US.

Gosling

Issac, for the record, has a point.

Kyougu

So who is Issac rushing to try to meet?

Cause I been following this storyline but between all the jumping from character to character I can't even remember what's happening with Issac.

marsilies

He's going after Alexis, who is one of the people he hired that turned out to actually be good, but quit.

Here's her being good at her job:
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/the-worm-has-turned

Here's her looking at Toots:
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/the-dawn-of-toots

Here's her quitting, almost 2 months ago:
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/passive-then-aggressive

She didn't get a name until after she had quit:
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/firing-squad

melalton

Wow, that was 2 months ago? It seems like it was a couple of strips ago.

Also, technically, we don't know if "Alexis" is the same girl. Based on history of this comic, it could be an entirely new character from that whole bunch that Isaac hired. Or the company's accountant who we've never met. Or this could all be a hallucination in Isaac's head, as he lay drooling on the office floor.

Either way, hope we don't have to wait 2 months to find out!

> Here's her quitting, almost 2 months ago:
> http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/passive-then-aggressive
>
> She didn't get a name until after she had quit:
> http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/firing-squad

marsilies

melalton wrote: »

Also, technically, we don't know if "Alexis" is the same girl.

We don't "know," no, but the strip has only shown two people quitting, a guy and a girl. Isaac was instantly upset about the girl quitting, saying in the next strip, "I didn't realize [that] out of all these employees there'd be one I'd want not to quit," so it makes sense that when he later refers to trying to get to Alexis, who already quit, that it'd be that girl.

Some people slam the comic for being hard to follow, but I think that's usually just due to the long time between plot developments and the relatively slow update schedule. The comic hasn't ever really been obtuse to the point of what you're speculating.

forty

marsilies wrote: »

Some people slam the comic for being hard to follow, but I think that's usually just due to the long time between plot developments and the relatively slow update schedule. The comic hasn't ever really been obtuse to the point of what you're speculating.

I dunno, I think I'd be more amused by this outcome:

melalton wrote: »

Or this could all be a hallucination in Isaac's head, as he lay drooling on the office floor.