Language barrier.

Also, glass barrier.

Cats run windows all the time.

Missed opportunity for gen 1/2, because this would perfectly match the Ancient Mew foil effect.

Never give Nintendo money.

Don’t use inline code / code blocks formatting for text. There’s no line breaks and the syntax highlighting is nonsense.

“Oh come on, why the fuck, there’s no possible reason this code should-- wrong variable.”

I have too many comments reading “… how did this ever work?”

“Yep, that’s moss.”

Of course it’s wrinkly, they never leave the water.

Downvotes on the comment suggest I already have.

I really adore the game-developing parts of Nintendo. I even admire their history of promoting creative randos. But their legal department is a threat to entire concepts on the internet and in general computing, so the whole company can go fuck a rake.

Never give Nintendo money.

Knowing what works is more important than knowing why that works.

Orpheus: “It’s powered by a forsaken child?”

Dr. Venture: “I didn’t use the whole thing!”

OP has an essay due.

Bless this machine!

I have some low-level projects where I am responsible for every byte of code running on very simple hardware.

There’s still problems where I throw my hands up and say “Nope, haunted. I’ll try again later.”

Magic ▭▮ More Magic

Really captured the “if not friend why friend-shaped” energy.

Half-Life as a live-action film, in continuous first-person.

The game is deliberately cinematic to begin with. You’d cut down a brisk run-through to maybe an hour of set-pieces and combat, then build out the “dialog.” In quotations because I would make Gordon canonically mute. It’d become thematic.

Gordon took the hazard course qualifications that secretly exist to staff the extraterrestial excursion team, but they’re not quite desperate enough to risk having an astronaut who can’t use the radio, so he’s stuck on Earth pushing rocks. Without a helmet, because the excursion team keeps losing equipment, what with getting attacked by aliens. The aliens think the guys in orange suits are a distinct subspecies… which keeps kidnapping their kind.

Vortigaunts in particular would be seen maybe trying communicate with scientists in labcoats (a subspecies marked by their ridiculous ties) only to spot Gordon and freak out. They all hate the POV character on-sight. If they’re on-camera, they’re gonna start waving their hands to cast deadly lightning. They’d even try to communicate with the bug-eyed subspecies in splotchy green outfits, only to get shredded by submachinegun fire. The military wears those dehumanizing masks (and speaks over radio comms you can hear) because all they were told is “secret experiments, actual zombies, existential threat.” They saw one distended human with a jaw for his ribcage and the strength to slap a dude in half, and they didn’t ask any further questions.

This all comes together in Interloper. Gordon sees the biological factory where these creatures are enslaved to manufacture more of themselves. The ones inside know nothing about Earth. They prance up, curious and burbling incoherently, pawing all over Gordon’s bright orange carapace. He sticks a gun in their faces and they consider the object fascinating. But when he puts it away and tries communicating in sign language, they scatter, and a few start waving their hands to zap him. Gordon Freeman was chosen for this event because he is physically incapable of any outcome but one.