Andréa, Canis Lanonbinary

indie game dev is just about cheating, always, all the time, whenever it saves you a headache. just constantly doing the most illegal stuff. wacko art styles, hacky one-off scripts, doors that are also tables that are also clouds... games combine 15+ creative disciplines into a single medium and you do not have enough lifespan to do things with propriety

Mech pilot who ain’t giving up on no log flume exhibition race.

"No, listen, right," Dodger says over his one-too-manyth daiquiri. "Civvie mechs already do racing events, yeah? And everyone loves log flumes—"

Fletch makes eye contact with the bartender and makes an unobtrusive time to cut him off gesture.

"How the fuck are you gonna put a mech in a log flume?" Kelpie says loudly, so Fletch sighs and does it again.

"You say that," Beeper says on the other side of him, and Fletch rolls xer eyes because Beeper isn't that drunk, she's just entertaining herself. "But a lot of the racing mechs are all, y'know, titanium foam and carbon fibre and metamaterials. You could tackle 'em over yourself, with a runup. You could even strip a load of weight out of something like our SIGINT walkers—"

"Custom mechs is cheating," Kelpie declares confidently.

"Might need to scale back to something like urban powersuits, then—"

"Boo!" Kelpie throws a small handful of salted peanuts at her. "Not real mechs!"

"Well, you're already gonna need 'em waterproofed," Beeper argues, "You really gonna be a stickler about a little weight calibration?"

"We got principles," Kelpie yells. "Keep it authentic—"

"Authentic traditional mech-in-a-log-flume?" Beeper grins over her beer.

"Your face is a traditional mech-in-a-log-flume," Kelpie tells her.

"No, listen, the racing," Dodger says, doggedly drawing illegible diagrams on a damp napkin, while nobody pays attention.

"Doesn't exhibition racing imply there's also a championship?" Fletch asks politely, and Kelpie gives xer a horrified look.

"Why would you start him on that—"

Fletch gives her a tight smile and dips low behind Beeper's shoulder. "Someone thinks they saw your ex-wife down on the main strip," xie says softly, by Beeper's ear.

A wave of tension washes through Beeper, and then...back out. She turns her head, doesn't quite look at Fletch.

"C'mon and sit with us," she says back, just as soft. "I'm braver with backup. She finds me in here, I can tell her to fuck off," so Fletch finds xerself sliding onto a barstool and ordering a mocktail.

"How'd she know where to find you?" xie says, and Beeper pulls a little face and shrugs.

"Company's social media?" she says. "Come find us and say hi to Kelpie and Beeper and the gang at Mechspo! You know?" and Fletch purses xer lips and leans back in.

Even softer this time, xie says, "The office might have accidentally listed Dingo as still on manoeuvres this week," and at Beeper's sideways look, "because I was leaning over their shoulders asking nicely when they did it." Xie looks away. "She ruined your visit last time."

Beeper blinks at xer several times, and then something in her face clears, like clouds dissolving from in front of the sun, and she glows.

"We gotta take that to the Cap," she says. "We gotta take that to the Cap, because how the fuck did she know? And I haven't spoken to her, you know I haven't spoken to her, so if the Cap says are you sure you didn't let it slip yourself I can't stand in front of him and convince myself I must have, because you know I didn't—"

"What do you have to tell the Cap?" Kelpie says, looking between them with her head tilted.

"About the fabulous investment potential of Formula Log Flume," Fletch says, and reaches past Beeper to clap Dodger on the shoulder. "Tell me again how you decide the racing season starting brackets?"

It's definitely not so xie spends a second with xer arm across Beeper's shoulders. Nope. Nothing at all to do with the subtle upward curl of the corner of Beeper's mouth.

"Fuck her bullshit," Beeper says happily under her breath, and Fletch quickly hides xer own grin behind a sip of xer drink.

Spoilers: inconsequential — Nevi'im

Serene; Sustained And Sustaining#Castor:

I have made two deserts of note, and I am quite proud of them both.

I will start with the second desert. It was the barrier between Castor and Convergence. While the goal was to provide a naturalistic entrance to a space that, in actuality, required a rather slow transit time. One would approach any number of crossing points, each marked with a customs office, that would allow one to pass through a pedestrian gate and be whisked off to the other space in a rush of heat and warmth. It is a bit of magical realism, perhaps, but the desert is no less real.

It is too hot in there, even for me, but it is quite pure for that. The sands shift in the wind, form the hint of a crust that a paw might crunch through, slip and slide along the faces of dunes before tumbling down the leeward side. Very few people think to go in there, but I have. I have turned down my sensorium and bypassed the safety protocols and stepped out into the sand for days and days at a time.

It is an empty place. There is no end to the sand. There is nothing out there, I think. Perhaps it will someday resolve based upon a hidden desire, but for now, it is a procedurally generated forever.

It is beautiful.

The first desert that I built, however, is one that I am even more proud of. This was a century and change ago back on Lagrange, back before the launches were even a dream. I built a desert based on what I remember of a brief trip to the Sonora desert. This was a desert of sage, of cactus, of more rock and stone than sand.

This one is not a forever, it is an in-between. There are two city sims, each created by a friend, and they decided to merge. They did so by building an arch facing each other, and in between them, they contracted me to build my high desert. A dusty, well-worn set of tire tracks travels between them, and, while I am sure that most simply step from city to city while ignoring the desert, it has become something of a pilgrimage for many to walk that trail.

It is not wholly safe, mind. The cactus spines are sharp. There are javalinas and snakes and scorpions. There are washes that will flood in a heartbeat with little to no warning if there is rain up-slope. Mild thrills, to be sure, but thrills nonetheless.

What very few people do, however, is walk out to the mid-point between those two cities and turn in one direction or the other and walk perpendicular to the trail. The trail is a simple three to four hour hike, but there is an additional two days hike to either end until one comes to either an impassible canyon or a tall fence built of metal posts; the boundaries of the sim itself.

If you do that, you will find that you very quickly lose sight of the cities, and are left with the sounds of the wind or the coyotes or the rattle-crack of thunder, joined only by the saguaro and barrel cactus and prickly pears, the scent of sage burning in the back of your nostrils as the heat beats down on you.

I love all of the sims that I have built, and always promise myself (and my clients) that no environment is to be favored over another. I am a liar, though. This desert, this high desert, is my favorite among favorites.

It is a small lie, a harmless one, but the desert is my favorite.

(by @makyo)