Welcome To The Fumble Invitational

December 28, 2019 3:04 PM

In previous episodes of The Fumble Dimension, hosts Jon Bois and Kofie Yeboah have worked to break basketball and football. Now, they're back to break golf, and they want the public's help. Thanks to their discovery of a golf game with an overly robust course editor, they're looking for input from fans to create a course that would make a Las Vegas miniature golf course look sedate. (SLSBNation)

In their request for help, they detail a number of "features" of the course editor, such as floating ships, drowning horses, and odd animal physics, to name a few.

posted by NoxAeternum (27 comments total)

The restrictions, as always within videogames like this, are very strange. I can understand in the case of mathematical/processing limits, but not "you can't put a fish on land." Let lunacy prevail. It is part of the possible gaming sphere.
posted by user92371 at 3:28 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

The best part is that you can't put a fish on land...but there's no problem with putting a boat there.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:30 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

The animal interaction clip is just disturbing. You can shoot a ball through a moo and the moo falls dead but the ball keeps going? It's "game is feature complete, no more fixes" in action.
posted by maxwelton at 3:38 PM on December 28, 2019

MetaFilter: Let lunacy prevail.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:41 PM on December 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'd bet the rules like "you can't put a fish on land" are because with qa tried it, filed a bug like "the fish stays in it's swimming animation", and the simple solution was "nope, can't do that."

Games programming is a bunch of special cases around what art asset to play when, turning off a few edge cases means less content, and content is expensive.
posted by aspo at 3:42 PM on December 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

It would be cruel to allow players to put fish on land, where they would suffocate due to lack of available oxygen. Boats, on the other hand, are amphibious.
posted by blakewest at 4:17 PM on December 28, 2019 [6 favorites]

I assume the no fish on land thing is actually because if they don't force the fish altitude to be less than the water surface altitude they just float into the air even when placed where there's water.
posted by ckape at 5:15 PM on December 28, 2019

So we're not gonna talk about how maxwelton just casually uses “moo” for “cow”?
posted by solotoro at 5:37 PM on December 28, 2019 [14 favorites]

The best part is that you can't put a fish on land...but there's no problem with putting a boat there.

I learned to drive in a seventies Chevy Impala. I used to refer to parking as "docking". Land boats exist IRL.
posted by srboisvert at 5:48 PM on December 28, 2019 [8 favorites]

So we're not gonna talk about how maxwelton just casually uses “moo” for “cow”?

Me and my wife routinely call cattle "beefs" (and calves "veals"), so I don't think I have any space to talk here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:06 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Me and my wife routinely call cattle "beefs" 

Ok soylent.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:30 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: You can shoot a ball through a moo
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:49 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

So we're not gonna talk about how maxwelton just casually uses “moo” for “cow”?

At the farm down the road, it's calving season, and there are small moos scampering about. So cute! (If you see a calf cavorting and you're not all "look at the tiny moo!" you're dead inside, me thinks.)

And if you understood "moo" to be "cow", surely you're not arguing they aren't perfectly cromulent synonyms?
posted by maxwelton at 10:51 PM on December 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

aspo and ckape have nailed the real reason(s), but I still prefer blakewest's answer.
posted by ®@ at 11:47 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

And if you understood "moo" to be "cow", surely you're not arguing they aren't perfectly cromulent synonyms?

I was reading it as a smartphone not cooperating with typing moose until it was clarified, so...
posted by Dysk at 3:59 AM on December 29, 2019

Make sure to fill out and share the Google Form they're using to solicit suggestions for their cursed course.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:00 AM on December 29, 2019

surely you're not arguing they aren't perfectly cromulent synonyms?

I am surely not, I think it's perfectly delightful, and I could not let it go uncommented upon.

Me and my wife routinely call cattle "beefs"

Something I recent-ish-ly learned from MeFi, is that this is not considered an incorrect usage (well, maybe it would be if you were using it to refer to dairy cows).

"Veals," on the other hand... [#teamtinymoo]
posted by solotoro at 5:23 AM on December 29, 2019

I'm tempted by thoughts of, say, a tunnel of paired stop signs which requires the ball be shot at exactly the correct direction and arc (kind of an elaborated version of the middle of clustered stop signs in this screen cap), but that leads to the problem of how the player can reach the ball if the shot hits a sign and lands in the middle of the tunnel. I also like the idea of positioning a small village that allows a player to hit a well-hit ball off the tee, carom off a bunch of buildings and land on the green, but again if your first shot isn't clean the game is just a boring slog.

Making a course that's both shitty and playable is much more difficult than making a course that is either shitty or playable.
posted by ardgedee at 6:28 AM on December 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

I was reading it as a smartphone not cooperating with typing moose until it was clarified, so...

A moo once bit my cistern
posted by cortex at 8:45 AM on December 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

Me and my wife routinely call cattle "beefs"

What an idiosyncratic way to spell beeves.
posted by ckape at 8:57 AM on December 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

beefuses
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:07 AM on December 29, 2019

I think all submission from MeFi should encourage the placement of moos all over the course.
posted by nubs at 9:46 AM on December 29, 2019

A moo once bit my cistern

I've now been sat here for five minutes trying to work out what this means or is about. Hope me?
posted by Dysk at 11:23 AM on December 29, 2019

In the opening credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there is a subtitle gag in which the person writing the subtitles claims that “a moose once bit my sister”.

Here, we have someone thinking that the use of “moo” was the result of autocorrect not liking the use of “moose”; cortex is then playing off the subtitle joke by implying that autocorrect changed “sister” to “cistern”.

Now that I’ve overexplained the joke, I am sure I will be sacked.
posted by nubs at 11:53 AM on December 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

Thank you! Both autocorrect punning and cutesy animal names are clearly beyond my holiday-tired brain...
posted by Dysk at 5:29 PM on December 29, 2019

I legitimately call my one brother brethren and my one sister cistern
posted by Jacen at 7:37 PM on January 1, 2020

Has your cistern ever been bitten by a moose?
posted by nubs at 11:07 PM on January 1, 2020