Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 19htoday I got to explain to my host what a “greasy spoon” (complimentary) was because he basically brought me to a local mexican equivalent taco deshebrada, sope, flauta, and fried potatoes on the left, and tacos rojos on the right 1282
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I’ve been told they are the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain chain 020
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I love em, there’s a few hills covered in houses in these colors 010
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Now that it stopped raining, the mountains here are unreal. This is the view from my hotel room. 51113
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026when asked how spicy I wanted my food the exact question was, “how mexican are you feeling?” the intent translated perfectly 0210
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I did not in fact watch any of them but I love reading everyone arguing/justifying the answer. 0170
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Every single fast and furious film is available on in flight entertainment. I have never seen one. If I can only watch one, which is the worst? 12240
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 04/10/2026On my way to Mexico 🇲🇽 I was invited to talk to game design students and I am very excited for that but I will not lie a non insignificant reason I am going is the food. 1361
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026today i saw someone say that there were seances conducted at openai directed at an ai god and and and i just cannot 3140
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Personally I think anthropic is trying to get the pope to admit their ai can be conscious because the next revelation is that its been possessed by a demon and their texas data center needs an exorcism 2554
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026i think the only answer is shitposting through these times or logging off completely, and I am not capable of the latter 1614
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026it is like ai news and oped cycle is finely tuned for maximum discourse, it brings out all the opinions, it invites them, even the pope is discoursing 1350
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026the number of times I’ve written a post about ai and deleted the draft rather than posting is just way too many, ai is really taking up too many brain cycles these days and I need to start charging anthropic rent 31034
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026looking at an old presentation I did for students on different kinds of designers and I think this one still holds up 513011
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026please college aged kid: what are like five more games you and all your peers are pretty familiar with? I'm going with a lot of top sellers and GOTY picks but particularly interested in popular indie games. Like is Stardew Valley a good reference? What about Slay the Spire? 120
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026any mobile games that stand out as a common denominator? 100
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026what are the college aged kids playing these days? I am about to go talk to a bunch of students about game design and having a crisis of being old and trying to make sure my game examples are relevant do the kids know what skyrim is? did they all grow up playing minecraft? 9190
Reposted by Liz EnglandFrank Cifaldi @frankcifaldi.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Thank you to Costco Connection Magazine for coming up with my new bio 472296292
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026no but this 100% describes the first and only one I watched 080
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I think not being on facebook or instagram or tiktok (I have no account, I just occasional use it for ‘anthropological’ purposes like this) really put me out of touch with whatever the hell is happening out there. 2281
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026On a lark I decided to look up ‘ai’ on tiktok and I was not prepared. I just can’t even describe how not prepared I was. The convos about AI I have are like “is it ever ethical to use AI to develop tools to speed up your asset pipeline” and people are out here pumping out fruit people soap operas. 7622
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I finally tracked this down tonight. Miro removed passwords. You have to sign on through social (google, microsoft, etc.) account, or SSO (biz account). The magic link does not work on the app (wtf). In theory it makes it more secure, but I use a password manager so it is extra frustrating. 120
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Yeah. I’ve been using Obsidian’s canvas but its no where near what miro provides, it mostly lets me map info but not actually brainstorm or work directly in it. 050
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Just realized I have not used miro in two months because the sign in process for the app puts me in an infinite loop of entering my email <-> clicking a magic link, and then once I find the right path to log in I get "Too many attempts. Try again in 60 minutes". This company is worth $1.36 billion. 6703
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026dnd update: banana muffins made with coconut and rum, drizzled with a lime icing 2341
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 27/09/2026wow critical hit on the psychic damage brendan 1331
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Never fails to amuse me, but more importantly this always feels fair in comparison to the "95% chance to hit" language other games use. (I know smarter people than me have written on this so I won't get into why). 52039
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026be very rude to the fairy in the moonlantern and then smash the lantern on the ground 110
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I never finished BG3 because of an act 3 bug, so I am replaying it. And I never really looked at other people’s play through branches so I've been often surprised at how much you can affect a playthrough. So anyway Gale is cursed by an angry fairy with clown face in this run and I am never curing it 1651
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I always say it doesn’t matter if you code up a full maslow’s hierarchy of needs for your game ai if all the player sees is “flee cower or attack” 070
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026The goal is to get more /textured/ characters, more unusual and spikey, more surprising, more unique to a setting. But stickjng to poetic rather than humorous. Bad procgen is often funny, so learning away from comedy means doubling down on getting the rules right. 080
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I have come to the conclusion that I want to start with more abstract flavours first, which is neither model, not really. The tarot card / zodiac / vibes approach to procgen. Which means frankensteining the highly rational systems I know with some highly subjective aesthetic-first woo. 160
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I have extensive experience starting with demographics and then getting more and more specific and last balancing gameplay/narrative to be interesting & spikey (having some extremes). And I did sone attempts at stats first but we threw it out (wrong game for it) so I have much less experience there. 130
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026So another way is you start with gameplay or narrative, like stats (20 int / 8 cha) or for ex story roles (married person having a secret affair, embezzling from the guild, spy for enemy) and then start marching the other way to determine their demographic data (gender, species, class/job, etc) 140
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026But if I want to just generate a handful of characters, like instead if populating a city I want to populate agatha christie’s newest murder mansion and the twelve lucky souls that will spend the night there, I don’t want ”representative demographic data” I want my weird little guys to be weird 190
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026This is great when you’re generating a ‘population’, like a city, where you want bell curves to help moderate the mean and makes extremes possible but rare. These generate extremely coherent characters. 160
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Later you determine stats (str, dex, int, etc) and abilities (spells? attacks?) based on that demographic data. Like, you choose “drow noble” early on and that determines “darkvision, equipped with a rapier” at a much later stage. Narrative too explains “drow noble” after the facts are chosen. 130
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026As you march through generation you figure out these demographic details (wealth, age, gender, social class, job). Often there’s an order as prior choices constrain later choices. 150
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026To explain the difference I’ll use DnD npcs as an example. Starting demographic data first means fir example choosing a species (human, dwarf, orc, etc), and then possibly a class / archetype (fighter, peasant, noble, etc). You might link these so like halflings are more likely to be commoners, etc 150
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026(I may regret typing this from my phone since I’ve turned off auto correct so everything takes longer to type) 180
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026so anyway there’s like two models I’m trying to merge together for procgen people, one is a model that starts with demographic data and then uses that to inform narrative or gameplay details, and the other starts with gameplay/narrative and then uses that to inform in demographic data later… 1100
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I spent a good couple of hours working out a technical design for procedurally generating weird little guys that half borrows from prior work and half invention and just when I started feeling good about it I had a long pause and realized oh god it’s just a bunch of if statements 5660
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 25/09/2026found while looking for 1500s flemish paintings of peoples faces because I need something public domain to chop up so I can generate weird little guy portraits 0120
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 25/09/2026feels like this might make a good reaction image 4506
Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 25/09/2026yes, but i haven't made weird little guys in more than five years now! that's too long! 010
