addie

@addie@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‎ ‎ ‎⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  My bath takes up the entire width of the bathroom - that place looks cavernous. Am sure I could tolerate an apartment that crappy when you can have a game of squash in between dumps.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clair Obscur's Composer Talks Going From Unknown To Scoring 2025's Most Celebrated RPG⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I found that too. The animations are misleading - just listen for when you need to press the buttons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Telegraph has deleted the seemingly made-up article⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, Fark used to be great. That bear headline is a beast.

  And then they got rid of the ‘foobies’ (ie. nudity) links off of the main page in order to appeal to advertisers, then they got rid of lots of extra stuff that upset advertisers, then they started shadow-banning paying subscribers if their posts didn’t fit the narrative. And then all the users got fed up of it all and moved ever to Reddit, where the mods were more transparent and there was more of a sense of community. How ironic.

  If your core site content is users posting links and commenting on them, then there’s probably a lesson to be learned about how important it is to treat your users well and have a welcoming, inclusive community. Probably a lesson that Lemmy users have already learned, mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon makes a modern game⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s two kinds of motion blur, really - camera based, and model based. Camera-based requires calculating one motion vector for the whole screen, which is basically free. Model-based requires projecting the motion of each vertex of the model in the projected view; one matrix multiply per vector is not ‘expensive’ on a modern graphics card. Depth of field requires comparing the depth buffer, which you’ll have already created as part of rendering, and then taking several ‘taps’ around each point on the screen to calculate the blur for the ‘focus distance’ compared to the actual distance. The final image post-processing will generally process the whole screen anyway, so you’re just throwing a couple of extra steps in for the two effects.

  Now, what does it save you? If your engine is using TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) then that’s performed by ‘twitching’ the camera a tiny amount (less than a pixel) every frame. If nothing’s moving, then you can merge the last several frames to get a really high-quality anti-alias; all the detail that wouldn’t be caught with a ‘completely static’ camera will be captured, and the result looks great. But things do move; if you recalculate ‘where things were’ then you can get a reasonable idea of what colour ought to be at each pixel. Since we need to calculate all the movement vectors to do that, then using the same info gives us the motion blur data ‘for free’ - we can add a little blur in post-processing to hide the TAA mistakes in post processing, and when implemented well(*) then it looks pretty effective. It’s certainly much, much cheaper to calculate that ‘proper’ antialiasing like MSAA.

  (*) It is also quite easy to not implement TAA well, and earn the ire of gamers for turning everything into a blurry mess. Doom (2016) does a fantastic job of it - it’s in the engine at a low level - and I’ve never seen anyone complain about that game being blurry or smeared.

  It takes time to load high-quality textures and models from disk, and it uses up the RAM budget for each frame. Using lower-quality textures and models for distant objects greatly helps rendering speed and prevents stutter, and a bit of depth-of-field hides the low-quality rendering with a bit of a smear.

  Now, if your graphics card greatly exceeds the design requirement (which was probably some kind of console) then you can switch these effects off and the game will look even better, which might make you question why they’re there in the first place. To help consoles look better with some ‘cinematic’ effects, is why.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if pure water is not conductive why would condensation be an issue for electronics?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not very easy, even then. Very pure water will absorb CO2 out of the air to make carbonates, it will strip ions from the surface of most materials you’d want a make a distillation column from. It’s a very aggressive solvent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RIP obsolete tech⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We used to do that in industrial automation. If you make any changes to the PLC / HMI / SCADA software, burn a DVD with what you changed and leave it next to the rack. No danger of bringing in viruses on a USB stick (the whole system was air-gapped) and you’d still have a backup available.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer interview: my Q&A with the creator of Lutris⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve always thought it was an otter, but never up till now have I questioned why it’s stolen an orange. They’re not the most citrus-loving of creatures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer interview: my Q&A with the creator of Lutris⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Another fantastic project that makes gaming on Linux so much easier. It’s incredibly strong in configurability and ‘robustness’. Yes, you might have to set up all of your Wine bottles and things like that, which can be a faff, but once it’s working in Lutris, it just keeps on working on Lutris.

  Great for long-running series, too. I’ve been a big fan of the XCOM series since the Amiga days; in Lutris, it’s easy to have UFO: Enemy Unknown / Terror from the Deep running in openxcom, Apocalypse in DosBox, and connected up to the Firaxis remakes in Steam. Similarly, love me a metroidvania, and have got most of the 40+ CastleVania games lined up and ready-to-go, just a double-click away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer interview: my Q&A with the Heroic Games Launcher team⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Heroic has made me start buying games on GOG again.

  I used to dual boot “Windows for games” and “Linux for work”, and would buy GOG in preference to Steam because I love what they do.

  Got rid of Windows years ago because it’s more of a PITA than it’s worth, and basically went 100% Steam because Proton is so good.

  Heroic is so awesome - better interface than Steam, in many ways - that GOG is back on the menu.

  Awesome interview as well, @PerfectDark@lemmy.world - a really interesting read.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whenever a beast is shown on screen⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You say that, but elephants, which are the largest animal alive on land today, are surprisingly quiet. They’ve got very padded feet to support their enormous weight, which means they move very quietly.

  Now, not seeing them? They were big bastards. Need some trees to hide in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Librarians in UK increasingly asked to remove books, as influence of US pressure groups spreads⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Guardian-reading lefty here. You got any links to actual transphobic articles in the Guardian itself? I’ve been reading it for years, and have never noticed anything like that, particularly it being a stance. Would be very disappointed in them if so.

  That link says that there have been 1100 articles in the Guardian, and also well-known right wing rags the Times, Mail and Telegraph, “most of” which are attacks. Bizarre to group those four papers together; one of them is very much not like the others. I would believe it of the other three, of course.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Space Quarry⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey! The images of Ryugu that were taken from Hayabusa2. What a sad lonely rock that place is - a loose collection of boulders in an endless orbit, in which it will probably continue without further interaction from now until the end of time. You could sneak a few ghosts onto that place, right enough, and no-one would notice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo Switch 2 Launches on June 5th Worldwide; 1080p Screen With 120 FPS and HDR Support, Docked Mode 4K Resolution Support Confirmed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The real advantage of a 120 Hz screen is that you get a much more graceful degradation if you dip below your fps target for a bit. If you’re targeting 30 fps but drop to 25, it still feels pretty smooth on a high-refresh screen, whereas that’s appallingly clunky on a low-refresh one. A “poor man’s gsync”, if you will.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is chasing an old high⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How’s the lag on one of those things? Doesn’t matter for an RPG, but playing some of the old platformers on a modern TV is an exercise in misery, and I just couldn’t get past the first couple of levels in Um Jammer Lammy without connecting up a PC monitor instead.

  Places where I’ve seen that live of projector are for eg. showing the football in a pub, and the sound and screen are noticeably out-of-sync.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Snow Fuff⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s easy to tell the difference between stoats and weasels. One is weasily recognised and the other is stoatally different.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, yes. But I would argue that if you have the skills to defeat eg. the Draconic Sentinel with just two runes, then it’s probably not your first rodeo. Stumbling over all the steps to eg. Varre or Hyettas quests on an unguided playthrough, which require specific things in a certain order in a huge world, are not particularly likely either. Its size works against it in that regard.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For people that really love Dark Souls and have finished it repeatedly, including challenge runs? Five hours is probably taking your time, using rubbish weapons for a laugh. For your first time playing through, hell no - probably more like thirty. The first DS has some unreasonable traps for the unwary - one of the stats is a dead end, many of the weapons scale really badly. Maybe better to start with Scholar or 3, that are better balanced.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To quote an old RockPaperShotgun comment about Dark Souls, the best decisions are the ones that you don’t know you’re making. DS definitely has storyline changes depending on where you go first, what you do and who you speak to, which is far more natural than a two-way dialogue option for “blatant RPG decision making”.

  The tragedy of Elden Ring is that it’s far too long for that. I’ve played through DS several times and would expect to get it finished in about five hours, so can play through the various plot line resolutions in a long evening of gaming. ER has a variety of ways that the DLC can play out, you say? Best book a fortnight off work so that I can get a hundred hours of gaming in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sun God⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re understating it a bit there - the sun is 99.86% of the mass of the solar system by itself. To the nearest whole percent, the solar system consists of 100% “the sun”. To the nearest 0.1%, it’s 99.9% the sun and 0.1% Jupiter.

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_mass

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Creator of Bloodborne 60fps Patch Says Sony Has Sent Him a DMCA Takedown — but Why Now?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  shadps4.net to be precise. Differs from other emulators by not emulating the hardware, but by reimplementing the API, from what I’ve read. More like Wine than eg. rpcs3.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think even when the companies have a bit of money, they tend to go overboard. I think eg. Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually so long that it’s problematic, I would have been quite happy with it at 2/3rds the length it is. Even worse would be something like Pillars of Eternity 2 - it’s great, but it goes on forever and didn’t make any money. There’s too much of it.

  Give us more games like Disco Elysium. Not that long, tonnes of replayability, and more importantly, it’s different. Really different. And the “moral choices” actually mean something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Putting the die in diet⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Bless her. If someone that really ‘loves and appreciates wine’ but ‘hates eggs’ finds that a complete nightmare, then I (who am the opposite) should leave it alone.

  She’d absolutely cooked the shit out of those eggs, though. I’d probably hate them too if I only got ‘yellow cooked until it’s a powdery dust’ as my options.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After shutting down several popular emulators, Nintendo admits emulation is legal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not that I disagree with your point about walled gardens, but “better” hardware for a handheld gaming machine needs to have a decent balance between performance and battery life. Longest plane or train journey that I’m likely to take is about five hours, and I’d need to rate any gaming hardware on the ability to run for that length of time. On that basis, the Switch is pretty much optimal. My phone has a higher resolution and can probably push more frames, but it would run hot for about forty-five minutes maximum. Plus, I’d then not be able to make calls or listen to tunes at my destination.

  Steam deck would probably be a better choice, though. Fuck Nintendo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop Killing Games Petition to UK Relaunched⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Identity is a many-layered thing, and I’d never describe myself as British unless very specifically prompted to do so, but I can at least sign that. 5,071 let’s go!

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev Larian Says Its 'Full Attention' Is on Its Next Game, 'Media Blackout' for the Foreseeable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So far we’ve had “amazing Fallout RPG on a janky engine” when (Black Isle / Obsidian) developed it, and “bland Fallout RPG on a janky engine” when Bethesda have developed it. Having both great writers and a decent engine would be amazing for Fallout, although just Obsidian and their Pillars of Eternity engine would be perfect with me.

  Larian have said that they’d like to get away from DnD 5e after working on BG3 for so long, so I’m assuming they won’t have licensed Pathfinder either. If we take the set of all possible IPs and strike out those two, then that must make Fallout more likely. (Albeit not very likely.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon expects more⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Halo: Combat Evolved sucks? That’s a hot take - been a few years, but I did enjoy playing it, massive controllers and all. Or did you have a specific one in mind?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YARRRR!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Bit narrow for satisfactory booty plundering imho, although that wheel looks convenient for tying people to before you make them “walk the plank”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British girls outdrink boys — and most of Europe⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, we’ve a minimum pricing per unit on alcohol, any kind of multipack deal is forbidden, and the licensing hours are such that it’s easier to get yourself some bennies than it is to get a drink before lunchtime; need to plan your day around getting some booze in the house.

  National drug policy should really be about minimising harm, with treatment and rehabilitation for addicts, but any kind of talk that isn’t about stringing them all up is anathema to our circus of bawbags in Westminster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anons make the worst game ever⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think every game of theirs since Dark Souls has a decent supply of homebones, and you can always ‘suicide out’ with the darksign. This a Demon’s Souls issue? Never before in the history of video games has so much jank been dropped haphazardly into a pile and ended up creating such a great game. If you can’t get stuck on geometry in that, then it’s the only technical issue it doesn’t have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I was idle and copilot was bored⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Surely i, j, k, l, m and n should be integers, and the rest should all be floats? Seems to me that this language model hasn’t been trained up on enough FORTRAN77.

  Disgraceful lack of respect.