Me and a friend of mine were discussing the nature of morality and law and I came up with this diagram to illustrate my thoughts on how it works.

Today I've made an angering discovery. For those who don't know, the ads I have installed for most of my new Flash movies and the rotary list that displays my other submissions [CFC quick list] are embedded in from the dumping grounds, the way you used to be able to do this was to take the link "http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/" and replace the word "item" with the word "draw". When the display stopped working in my browser I just assumed that it was Chrome's fault. Chrome has a horrible history with Flash. Then I tried it in three other browsers [IE, Firefox and Safari] and eventually learned that "draw" no longer displays the SWF file when you enter it into the HTML address bar, it just downloads. Then I previewed another SWF just using the normal "item" URL in Firefox, looked up the page info and found the actual display code for it; it was nothing like it was before. Not only that but as it turns out, the display code fucking mutates constantly making it impossible to make it properly display that content.

The only other form of uploading SWF files to Newgrounds that doesn't have a mutating address for previewing it are those that are submitted to the portal, meaning that I'd have to submit my ads, individually, to the portal before displaying them properly from a Newgrounds server. This also goes for the images in my rotary list of links.

In case you're wondering why this is important, I use embedding to prevent my CPMStar ads from locking up the preloading screen and preventing you from using the menu. The whole point of preloader ads is that they achieve the double benefit of making money while occupying the spare time it takes to load the content. A lot of the times, the ads lock up the menu for longer than it takes for the movie to load. Most people will ditch the content by this point. Either that or they just resort to using adblock. By embedding my ad in such a manner, I was performing a service to my viewers when other people didn't know how. It wasn't an alteration to the code either, it was a work around.

I also used the 2.0 version of the ads. Now for those who don't know, the 2.0 version of the ads don't lock up the screen with a video ad like the current 3.0 ones do. In case you're wondering why I embed those in when they don't lock up the screen, it's because those ads occupy a lot real estate and I can't change their size without using and embedded window.

This also kept the file size of my submissions from blowing up by five megs when I embedded the rotary list in, since that consists of about forty or so images as previews to the movies they link to.

This embedding format also allowed me to make universal edits to the CFC quick list without having to alter each individual portal submission I had that used it. Now if I want to make an update of any kind, I have to physically edit each and every SWF file and file swap them which takes something like three days to register where as file swapping one file in the dumping grounds was instantaneous.

This means that the service I've been providing to other authors with my rotary list have been losing potential hits on their content.

I have one question: why has the dumping grounds been made so useless when it had such a dynamic function?

I've done some analysis on what kind of content one can expect to do the best verses the worst based off of my monthly ad income statistics, please note that this only acknowledges one-offs since I've never made a fully original animated series:

Author
Porn
Meme
Award winning original content
Parody
Satire
Original content

From this, I can draw a flawed but possibly sound psychological model of what people prioritize in daily life: Identity, urge, crowd behavior, innovation, mockery, wit and finally, creativity. If you have anything to add to this psychological model of prioritization or the list of content success expectancies, it'd be appreciated.

Would it count as abortion?

My old friend, Rubilon, is currently trying to make some extra scratch as a Let's Player on Youtube and Twitch. Normally I don't plug shit like this but given who this is, I'm making an exception. Rubilon is, in fact, a college student studying programming languages for game design purposes. If you're interested in watching a Let's Play by someone intelligent, informative and also not, you know, DarkSydePhil, PewDiePie or Markiplier, this is for you. This blog post will be updated as he posts more videos and will act as a playlist for his X-Com LP videos. Enjoy.

I also created the animated intros/outros for his latest Let's Play videos. More updates are on the way.

This is my first time making a playlist on NG and I can already kinda tell that my three entries are already better than most as I've taken it that they should be treated like Wikis rather than just "Hey, look at this shit I found/uploaded", which is how everyone else seems to be treating them. I don't see the appeal of a single entry with a single item listed within with no photo and the description "these are my favs", especially since if I simply look at your account I can just look at your favorite content... on your favorites page. For this reason, you're probably not going to see new additions to the current collection for a while, at least not until I can submit more content. That being said, enjoy the little snippets of history I've included in the current library I just created, either that or despise it with the fury of a thousand suns, whichever comes first for you [you know who you are].

I just read Fulp's news post on the Blog update. I'm currently testing out whether or not you can use this new system to embed SWF files in your blog posts. You see, if embedding is allowed on an InvisionFree board you can embed Flash into a post using the code intended for Youtube with ease. I personally think it would beneficial to be able to do that in your news post on Newgrounds because, after the four years I've been signed up to the CPMStar ad revenue that Newgrounds provides I've noticed that in-page ads on your account page provide way more than the in-page ads on a submission page.

http://uploads.ungrounded.net/586000/586368_Bilbo_the_Diabetic__9.17_M.swf

By the way, I've just noticed that there's no preview button, why is that? That's kinda important.

EDIT: Nope. Does not work. Let's see if the DoHTML code for InvisionFree works:

[doHTML]<object width="550" height="400"><param name="movie" value="http://uploads.ungrounded.net/586000/586368_Bilbo_the_Diabetic__9.17_M.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://uploads.ungrounded.net/586000/586368_Bilbo_the_Diabetic__9.17_M.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="550" height="400"></embed></object>[/doHTML]

This is some bullshit. Why can't you embed SWF files into your blog? SWF files are pretty much the spinal cord of this website.

<object width="100" height="100"> <param name="movie" value="http://uploads.ungrounded.net/586000/586368_Bilbo_the_Diabetic__9.17_M.swf"> <embed src="http://uploads.ungrounded.net/586000/586368_Bilbo_the_Diabetic__9.17_M.swf" width="100" height="100"> </embed> </object>

I thought the NG staff were aiming to remove the whistle system and disabled upgrades for it, what gives? Did they change their minds? Will whistle blowing be integrated back into the system?

GTA 5 fails to maintain what San Andreas achieved, I'll say that right now. Despite all the technical innovations the game has it still doesn't live up to the same qualities of its predecessors.

One of the bigger disappointments in the game was the utter lack of RPG elements. Oh yes, they're there, they were carried over from San Andreas but only in a hallow mockery of what San Andreas did. None of the improvements you make to either Trevor, Michael or Frank show a physical difference made to them despite the fact that you've maxed out their strength and stamina whereas in San Andreas everything you did to change Carl's attributes showed a physical change in his body; you'd get fat if you ate a lot, you'd get thin and lanky if you swam a lot and you'd become a gamma monster if you worked out at the gym.

That may sound like a minor nit pick but you've yet to hear about how exactly you go about upgrading your traits as a character. The marksman proficiency makes sense, you go to a shooting range and hit targets and complete "challenges" until you max out and you leave the shooting range instantly because you instantly stop giving a shit about completing these "challenges". The lung capacity proficiency makes sense because in order to increase it you have to spend time underwater. How do you increase your strength? You punch people. That's about it. Oh, sure, you could play sports but what asshole actually wants to play tennis? Punching people might be tedious as all Hell but when you get right down to it, the only thing more boring than golf is tennis. Also, just to salt the wounds even further, there exists gyms in the game that you can't use. What retard made the decision to not let you use the gyms to increase your strength? Probably the same fucktard who wrote most of the satire.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that, all throughout the game, particularly the radio stations, you'll hear almost nothing but variants of "Women are all feminazis" but nothing about the men's right movement, as in the guys that want to return women's rights to the days of the 1920's and claim that women have not only never been oppressed by men but that men are oppressed by women. Fair and balanced indeed. You see, well written satire is supposed to be objective and expose the flaws in arguments made by every party, it isn't supposed to take one side. Yes, there are instances in which the script does this but it is very, very, limited by comparison of what it obviously wants to be about. I can only recall one instance in which the satire lances misogyny rather than supporting it outright and that's when someone calls Chattersphere and talks about how gay marriage is so much better than heterosexual marriage because women always gain weight after the fact and Michelle questions what he looks like to which he responds "I can almost see my penis!" However, in this game it becomes quickly apparent that the female characters written into this game are not characters of their own identities but are instead constructs designed to echo the writer's world view. 

One of the latest innovations is the stock market, which is totally useless for any purpose other than just serving as a virtual bank so that the local hospital doesn't rob me of $3000.00 and I can gyp the taxi driver for a nearly free teleportation to my desired destination. Yes, I am aware of the assassination missions in which you can use insider trading but one of those assassination attempts is actually missing an opportunity to make money; the assassination on Jay Norris; there are no competing companies to invest in prior to Norris' death that function like any of the other assassination missions, in fact, the only known competing company "Fruit computers" is nowhere to be found on the stock market and Norris himself makes a remark about how they're clear competitors just before his death.

Well, there is one way to use the stock market that I've found to be very effective and helpful. In the mission "The Long Stretch" Lamar will give you money to buy equipment with at the Ammu-Nation if you have under $1500.00. Be sure to dump everything you have into Animal Ark before going into the Ammu-Nation outlet because Lamar will only cap you off at $1500.00 so if you maintain $50.00 after doing the bank--- stock market dump, Lamar will only give you $1450.00 to compensate. After he gives you the money, buy something from the gun store that is minute and cost effective, like a pack of bullets for the handgun. Once you leave, dump the $1500.00 you have from Lamar into your Animal Ark stock. When you arrive at the "drug deal", ensure your death at the gun fight, leave the mission, reenter the mission, rinse and repeat. You see, the game doesn't acknowledge any kind of difference made during a mission in the stock market or your weapons stock so both of them will transfer over into the main game regardless of how hard you exploit its flaws and you can funnel as much money out of our dear, terribly, terribly stupid Lamar as you want. Beware though, this will only work for as long as you never actually complete the mission, after that the game will know the difference in the stock market because you're now playing the mission retrospectively from a cached memory, thus is the reason why your customized garb doesn't transfer over and neither will your stock market investments. This method is also helpful if you need to increase your stock on ammo via obtaining weapons from fallen enemies before you die.

There isn't much to say about the heists that haven't already been said, although it does feel like this concept was borrowed from somewhere, I can't recall where. It's good for the most part, I like how the dudes you select for each mission can actually level up upon succeeding missions, this is especially well thought out if only for the fact that it balances cost verses competency and the characters you chose do not increase in percentage take as they get better. There is one thing I don't like about it though, certain mixtures of different guys will have scripted events that make even choosing these characters pointless. For example, if you choose the worst marksman for the jewel heist, he is scripted to die on the highway as you're escaping on motorcycles. Why even bother trying to level up the worst man if he's destined to die? Why even give me that option in the first place? Well at least I was able to scrounge up extra money out of the deal so I suppose that one instance is forgivable, although it does bring into question how often any attempt you make to have a specific outcome to a heist will be foiled by predestined bullshit.

Beyond exploiting game mechanic flaws, the only real fun that I've been able to get out of the experience so far was riling up the cops, luring them into the ghetto and causing the cops to fire their weapons into the general direction of some gang members, hiding behind a building and letting the fight ensue as I get away with building up my stealth proficiency by nailing people in the neck. After that, I'd go out onto the battle field to either watch the fight eventually conclude or to just raid dead bodies for their loot.

It's not bad but it certainly has shortcomings. I'd rank it at about average, I'll give it a score of 4/10 for the lack of any real gameplay innovation, the partial and incomplete transfer of the RPG elements that defined San Andreas as the definitive GTA experience, the blatant and obvious misogyny with a serious lack of misandry or even critique of real life misogynist groups.

Looks like it's time to practice some good ol' fashioned genocide.