@nwp functionally looks like XML with different symbols. do you want to just use xml? that would let you handle things like var: weapon=herosword differently.
<choice next="travel" text="Take the sword">
<var weapon="herosword">
</choice>
if not, it might help sort out your thoughts by looking into some other definition formats. what do you like and dislike about XML for your purposes? what do you like and dislike about YAML? etc
<choice next="travel">
<text>Take the sword</text>
<weapon>herosword</weapon>
</choice>
I dislike the verbosity. This is intended for writers that write thousands of lines of plaintext and once in a while set a variable or add a choice, so writing plaintext should just work (I think < is more common in text than [ but it probably doesn't make much of a difference) and be as unintrusive as possible (that's the real challenge).
user92578
I did cutscene scripting in XML and gotta say that it wasn't exactly a super fun time But perhaps it would be a nicer fit for more plain story stuff
Adding [set weapon="sword"] in the middle of plain text is the goal. Having to match closing tags feels too annoying when you care about a story and not code.
I'm mostly happy with the [tag attribute=value] syntax. It's close to HTML and works really well for inserting images and other media. But nesting looks ugly and inserting assignments looks strange due to the = sign having multiple meanings.
I feel like [set weapon="sword"] is what I want. It's pretty clean syntax. The tricky part is nesting. [tag attribute=[tag attribute=value]] is a bit jarring though.
Replacing the assignment operator with a function is an interesting idea since it elegantly avoids the problem.
onclick=set(weapon, "sword") looks better than the assignment.
I still don't like closing tags.
Originally I wanted to just let people get and set whatever variables they want, but maybe additionally having some verbs makes sense. (un)equip for held equipment and stash/drop for the inventory is probably generally useful.
Maybe even some operations. increase(strength, 2) or increase(strength, 2, 20) for adding an amount with a maximum. Hmm.
Currently the tags are just replaced by their HTML equivalent. Putting the choices at the bottom makes sense, but I've also seen stories using choices in the middle of the text to explain words or to hyperlink the last few words of the page if there is no choice to be made and it's essentially a continue button.
The HTML sets some class attributes so you can style it with a .css file.
Ah neat. If it was a group at the bottom I'd say you could distinguish them by indenting rather than tags around each, but that lacks flexibility for inline choices.
Yes, the second test was negative. And yes, it could still be one ;) but our kids test turned out negative too, so chances are that this second other kid's test was a true negative!
I mean knowing that children tend to not get infected in school makes one think keeping schools open is reasonable. In truth the reason they tend to not get infected there is probably because they close schools down in such cases.
Yes, maybe. I haven't followed the whole thing. I have had a colleague here that had her children sent home for 14 days because there was a case at school.
They used to say that kids "were more immune to it", but last week's report shows that the 10-19 group of age had more infections than any other groups; and 0-9 had nearly as many infections as the 60-69 group.
I don't know if they publish where the infections are caught.
Yeah, that looks like about what we'd expect from a lockdown that works at a 2-week lag. Will need to see the data for the next week to see if the trend continues.
Yup. They are both the number of "not recovered" people.
Then there is this beauty:
Red are the number of cases where they know when they got infected, pink is where they estimated when they got infected after the fact and blue is the estimation that takes into account that current days will get more cases reported after the fact.
But the blue curve seems very volatile and not at all reliable, even when taking the range into account.
But if it is to be believed the dip in the second curve will not last.
Something to consider: multiple things that are usually considered controls in a scientific experiment are actually variable in the data that being thrown around. For instance, is the testing method used to identify cases being held constant? Are the protocols used to determine if testing is used being held constant? As far as I know, it not - we use better tests when they become available & locally we didn't do as much testing because testing was a scarce resource.
From what I understand we're doing less now. There is an app that attempts to track who you have contact with that some people installed and they used to follow up on that, contacting people who had prolonged exposure to positives. However, now there are just too many cases to follow up on.
I heard here that some are considered positive "because it's obvious X gave it to you and you don't need to be tested, stay at home" while some others are actually tested.
Ultimately all I can do is shrug and hope the government will fix it somehow. Which seems like a bad idea knowing how much they screw up, but I don't know any better.
In the US the government can't do anything because roughly half the people think being told to wear masks is a government plot to force them into submission so they can be told to lose their freedom as the next step.
Tons more people are going to die in the US, and it's their own fault. The nasty part is if you are doing the right thing, you may still get sick since the preventive measures are so the sick ones don't give it to others, not so you don't get it yourself.
@Vaillancourt Governments are perfectly capable of enforcing rules. Declare a strict curfew, enforce with police, keep it up for 2 or 3 weeks, pandemic over (until reinfection later). They just seem to not want to do that and I don't know why.
Behavior (at least here) has also changed. Around here, time was that nobody was going out & those who did masked up. We have both state & municipal mask requirements in place at the moment, but your wouldn't know that judging from what I see when I pick my kiddo up from school.
I guess they are afraid the masses will riot. And also that they assume the vaccines will come soon (mid December here apparently) so there is no need.
"I was with some friends, we had a vote to see what we would eat. Some voted to kill and eat me, others voted for pizza. Pizza won, but we still have a problem."
74 million people voted for Trump. They will continue to fight against any sensible measures.
They will still exist in 2024; word is Trump is preparing to run again.
Sorry, I'm just really depressed about the state of my nation right now. :(
Yes, as I read his "fund the vote fraud" campaign only uses 25% of the donations to actually "fight the fraud", the rest goes to finance his political future.
@Almo I'd be curious to see why though. I read some people in rural parts of the country like him because he gives them money for whatever they need. Maybe some don't like what he's doing, but they need the money. (This would normally be an abusive situation situation, though.)
I talked to some people. One big reason is that they see Trump as pro guns and they really like their guns. If they can't have guns that rival the military then the country can become a dictatorship and that's it. So while Trump may be dumb it's still for the greater good.
There's a serious ideological divide between rural & urban US. As someone who's lived in both, I find it really troubling. Increasingly compromise - which is where the middle ground lives - is seen as a liability. Don't vote for X because they compromised on hot button topic.
Yes, however, what they don't know is that the military will always get more and better guns, and that they have more intelligence about what is going on.
Yeah this attitude first (in my lfietime) saw expression when Newt Gingrich rallied the GOP in the House to prevent the government getting funded, and they literally shut it down.
I thought they'd get voted out for it, but they didn't.
so future politicians learned that compromise was not necessary to get votes as a republican.
AS the party got more extremist, "purity testing" became more important and those willing to compromise have been pushed to the side.
@Vaillancourt They don't see it that way. They think they outnumber the military and are close enough to their level of gear and training. Guns are good at this after all, they kill even if you're an old granny who can barely walk.
@Almo Arguably the fault lies in the system where you cannot form coalitions. If third parties could form a coalition with one of the big parties their votes would matter. Also it would encourage compromises.
One thing that really bothers me is $ spent for a person / party versus $ spent getting people to vote. Personally I'd like to see some sort of matching funds. You want to lobby for martians? Cool, but you also have to pay to keep the system running smoothly & encourage fuller participation.
@nwp Yeah, I'm not a fan of the 2 party system either.
Worse yet, at least in my state, you cannot split your vote.
But hey, it will not happen before the US completely collapses, so it doesn't matter.
Nah, people understand listing candidates in order of who they like more well enough.
But to make that change you'd need democrats and republicans to vote to actively hurt themselves in an act of altruism, and currently that seems completely out of the question.
Maybe they at least manage to find the last couple of states to effectively remove the electoral college.
Arguably it would help those officials. There is a high likelihood that both of the big parties will die, but numerous new parties with real power will pop up and they'll all need people, so arguably it's fine for politicians to vote for.
no they don't find it confusing. they know third parties don't threaten the GOP since they are single-issue voters. so ranked choice only helps democrats
About "soft money" McConnell actually said "if it weren't for soft money we'd never get elected" or something
they do everything to win; and are hypocrites. Lindsey Graham in 2016 when they were blocking Obama's SCOTUS pick literally said "if the shoe is on the other foot in 2020, use my words against me." We did, had no effect.
And they CAN form coalitions; they just tend not to.
Bernie Sanders has been an "Independent" for a long time but tends to vote with the Democrats.
