u/DogWasTakenAway

Order of the Sinking Star, aka Jonathan Blow's Jai game, has been revealed to release on October 8th 2026 on all platforms. This is on their official twitter.

Remember that Jonathan Blow previously said Jai would be publicly released a few months after the game released. Presumably Jai's release would include the game and engine code as a practical examples of Jai code. He has stated off and on during Twitch streams. (I assume he wants to wait a few months after the initial game profit dies down before basically giving us a free code version of the game.)

If all of this turns out to be true with no delays, then that puts the Jai public release at approximately either Q4 2026 or Q1 2027. So it is very close. (I can hope.)

I really like the idea of a pokemon auto battler, like the Battle Palace, but I don't want to play the entire game just to replay that one part.

Has there ever been, official or fanmade, a game like the Battle Palace but as a standalone experience? I am not super familiar with all the games and fan projects.

This is an honest question, not a rhetorical one. A lot of posts are about PJB being bad, but most most players have never had any first-hand communication with PJB ever and have very little SS14 historical knowledge.

I would really like to hear some actual good information from informed players. If you're a PJB apologist I'd like to hear from you too.

For people who have communicated with PJB over weeks, months, or years, what were your grievances with her? For people who are knowledgeable regarding SS14's history, where has PJB erred?

Preferably don't just parrot the details of the recent schism event, because that incident alone does not really explain much about the character of PJB. That is just one plot point, not the whole story.

This is mostly a sanity check to see if I'm alone in this.

Does anyone else strongly dislike the culture of SS14? (Talking about the English speaking world of SS14. I don't know about the Russian world or how other nationalities out there do things.) I know that this is super broad since every server is different, but I can't help but have noticed that, regardless of it being a US or Euro server, people seem to behave kind of similarly. And it is very different from pretty much any SS13 server.

SS13, I would saw, comparably is very edgy. Probably too edgy. This is a generalization since every server was different of course, but some of the biggest servers, like /tg/ and goonstaton, originated from edgy communities. Goonstation from Something Awful. /tg/ and /vg/ are of course from 4chan. And those major hubs cultures trickled down to the other servers.

But SS14 is a complete 180. Instead, it feels way too politically correct, to the point where it is suffocating. And moderation feels significantly worse because of it. Wizden culture, the main hub, seems to trickle down to the other servers as well. I don't know a lot about the behind the scenes at Wizden, but I have heard it has a toxicity problem. (Which I don't doubt considering the recent Server Authentication fiasco, as well as the trouble with bringing out new features like Surgery) Maybe a pseudo-psychoanalytical guess, but maybe this is partly due to how repressed the culture feels.

Now, I know criticizing political correctness makes me sound like an insensitive boomer, so here are 3 examples to demonstrate, specifically, what I mean:

1. Voxes. In a lot of SS13 servers, Voxes were implied to be the mistreated species despite being hardworking. The fact that they breath a different air made them more dependent and manipulatable in Nanotrasen's eyes. This was interesting because Voxes were one of the few species in SS13 to have any lore that wasn't just cosmetic - Their lore now had some kind of meaningful conflict. Vox Boxes, areas where they could breathe, around the station, were usually dirty at round start. This was a great use of environmental storytelling. Their lore was implicitly understood. In SS14, one of the first "Priority 0", the highest priority, PRs was to remove Vox Boxes, which was part of the larger goal of completely removing this backstory. The lore was deemed "too problematic". So now they have no backstory... This sucks IMO. Like, how are you supposed to write lore at all if you can't imply mistreatment? Conflict, drama, that's how you write good lore, and write good in general. I hate that the one species that actually lore got it removed. Now it will be a miracle if any species will ever get good lore, or lore at all, considering that both mainstream SS13 and mainstream SS14 have a deficit of writers.
2. Even lame ass jokes considered problematic. Okay so 2 examples.
   1. Once I was playing a sec officer. One of the prisoners was being a little shit, so I threw a flashbang at them once. Another sec officer caught me and asked me why I was abusing the prisoners. That person was a human with a german name. So, being caught at the moment I tried to make a dumb joke to distract from my obviously RP corrupt behavior. I said something to the effect of, "Well you're the German one, so I would assume you would be the hardass on prisoners." This caused the entire public comms to turn against me, since this was "a racial stereotype about Germans." This even reached command. HoS and Captain to threaten to demote me, based on this comment alone, and made me apologize multiple times on the spot. Feels insane to me considering it was the most lame, mundane, comment I could have possibly pulled out of my hat, and yet it was considered deeply problematic.
   2. Another example. A lame joke I use once in a blue moon is, as a greytider, is the following. I randomly approach a sec off I want to anger and say something like, "I uhh have a crime to report. Uhhh... Your mom. She's a prostitute. That's a crime I think." Once again, this feels like a relatively tame joke. Yes it is provocative, but in an RP kind of way. In RP the sec off could arrest me, or beat me, but instead multiple sec offs have either approached the mods, or nearly approached the mods, over this. All of the above events irritate me. I feel like these are the most mildly edgy jokes possible. The proverbial line in the sand feels like it is 1/4th as far as it should be, making even mundane moments like these feel risky. I feel like this is just normal human behavior and shouldn't risk getting banned, yet I do feel like I am risking a ban everytime.
3. Moderation.
   1. I hate that moderation is done in the same tone as a corporate job interview or police investigation. This is a videogame, yet mods insist on treating you as if you're a mass murderer serial rapist who stole 1 trillion dollars from the public fund when you commit a single infraction. In SS13 /tg/station or goonstation, the moderation would always stop and ask if you ruined someone else's fun, and if it turns out that you didn't, they would let you go, because that makes sense. The goal of a mod should be to make sure people are having fun, not to larp as batman, maximizing your sense of "justice".
   2. In many ways, SS14 mods feel like they practice a "Zero Tolerance" approach. Even if you do have a good reason for bending a rule, they ignore it and punish you regardless. I hate that, especially since, this just a videogame. (But if you tell a mod that you will absolutely be banned.)
   3. Even worse than all of this, I hate the concept of permabans. Permabans for hacking, illegal behavior, and people with a ban history in the double digits, somewhat make sense. But otherwise, permabans shouldn't even be allowed. What is the point in holding someone accountable for 50+ years for greytiding too hard? In real life we have the concept of a "maximum sentence". Even in game RP, in space law SOP, we have the concept of a "maximum sentence". But somehow this doesn't apply to moderation? Insane. SS14 moderation across multiple servers are way too harsh. And yes, I know people will say, "But you can just appeal it!" That is true, but is deeply unnatural. You shouldn't have to get on your knees and say that, "Taking guns from sec and giving them to clown is the worst thing I've ever done in my life! I know I ruined absolutely everyone's experience for 1 round, and nobody found it funny or anything, and due to this and my permaban is justified, but please forgive me!" Apologies should be reserved for serious things, like actual transgressions you have commit in real life, not over absurd things like this in a videogame. I feel like this should be common sense, but is somehow lost on moderation, and there's no way to actually convey this in a ban appeal without immediately getting rejected. I feel like it is a double-disservice. #1 Because it is absurdly harsh and unfair to permaban people for risky gimmicks. #2 Because the only people who will get through the ban appeal process are those smart enough to larp/lie about it and have no moral scruples about larping/lying

Does anybody agree with any of this? I don't know, maybe it is because I am probably older than most players, or because I don't really consider myself a roleplayer, that I feel this way. (For example, I don't engage in TTRPGs or RP Storytelling outside of SS.) I haven't found myself agreeing with the culture of SS14 basically ever. I feel like I am the proper amount of neurodivergent to fit in with SS14, but sometimes I feel like I don't know.

Note: I only write all of this because I love SS14. I just wish it aligned a bit more with my personality. And yes, before anybody asks, this is partially venting for my current ban(s).

What is the best current enumeration of goods that were economically important in the medieval period? And more information about their prices, places of export and import, etc. would be appreciated as well.

I am looking for the best compilation of this. Any time period in this range and any region that is European or Mediterranean is fine.

There are many pieces of fiction, games and fantasy worlds that have attempted to compile a wide list of economic goods. Most do not care too deeply about being accurate, but even when they do it is guesswork. What would you show them if you wanted to help them make a mostly accurate piece? I remember in school they showed of graphs of all the goods that were exchanged in the Columbian Exchange (not completely the right time period, but even that I would be happy to hear about), is there anything more detailed than those?

I assume this is a more difficult topic since business often replies on secrecy.