#(new nine = rgb teams)

[yaboirezzy]

I made a thing that I wasn't sure was gonna be made, feel free to join or not

[gemharvest]

RGB idea GF wiping the floor with BF and Pico in Uno even if they team up against her (she's eating the cards)

"Uno!"

"Jesus Christ, Gee, this is the third game in a row. There's no way you're that lucky." Pico gestured to the girl, holding nine cards in his hand.

"You're just a sore loser." Girlfriend said with a small laugh. "Besides, it's not my fault Biff keeps hitting you with draw fours."

Upon being called out, Boyfriend just gave a toothy smile and shrugged. Pico stared daggers at him; at the both of them.

"It's just starting to feel suspicious, that's all." The ginger grumbled, shaking his head.

"Ska be d'bop."

"Don't you start too-"

A few more moves, and Girlfriend placed down her last card. The game officially over, Boyfriend took the cards to reshuffle for a new one. He hesitated for a moment, then looked at the stack more carefully.

"Ba bo..?" Pico looked over at the cards as well, then furrowed his brows.

"Yeah, I swear the stack keeps getting smaller each game. We're not losing cards, are we?"

Girlfriend felt a bit anxious at the boys' observation, though was able to hold a perfect poker face.

Truth be told, she wasn't that good, or even lucky, at Uno.

What gave her that winning streak? Well, her boys would get distracted easily; staring into their cards with a bit too much focus or giving their phones a quick check when it wasn't their turn. In these brief moments, she would slip a card into her mouth and eat it.

Probably not the smartest idea; though much like Boyfriend, she wasn't really known for them. It was only a couple cards a game, and neither boy paid enough attention to the others' card counts to even notice. As long as she could get away with it, she'd do it.

"It doesn't look that small? Maybe we misplaced a few cards last time we played."

Pico raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't seem to have any desire to argue.

"Maybe, I guess I'll have to keep an eye out the next time I clean."

Nice, they're still none the wiser.

Boyfriend nodded at the pair, before splitting the deck to shuffle. After a few passes, he set the deck face-down, smiling at his work; the boy probably enjoyed shuffling the deck more than actually playing the game.

Cards were dealt, and a new game began. Pico seemed to be putting an effort into paying more attention, so Girlfriend had to go quite a few turns without pulling her trick.

Eventually, his eyes turned to his own cards. Girlfriend waited a moment, making sure he was truly focused while Boyfriend agonized over what card to play himself, before carefully slipping one of her cards out and into her mouth.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Girlfriend froze, card stuck halfway in her mouth. Beside her, Pico's head was still in his cards, though his eyes were raised and staring at her.

Slowly, he lowered his cards and his stare turned into an incredulous look.

"Have you been eating your cards? Oh my god?"

Girlfriend took the card out of her mouth, now crumpled and slightly damp, and held it with the rest of her deck casually; as if she hadn't just been caught.

"Whaaaat, no... Why would I do that?" She spoke, voice feigning innocence. Pico huffed at the lie.

"Bullshit. I can't believe you're trying to pretend you didn't just get caught." Pico scolded, voice more amused than angry. "How in the hell did you even come to the conclusion that that was how you should win."

"Well... It's not like you guys had noticed cards going missing until now."

Boyfriend, Who had been staring silently up until then, suddenly burst out into a fit of musical laughter. Pico and Girlfriend followed suit, not being able to suppress chuckles at how ridiculous the situation was.

While the laughing fit was probably only a few seconds, it felt several minutes long to the trio. Pico was the first to speak after, voice still cracking slightly from the laughter.

"Oh, you are definitely banned from Uno for a while. You also owe me a new deck." He wiped a tear from his eye, still grinning as he spoke.

"Awww come on, I promise I'll stop doing it." Girlfriend pouted, giving puppy dog eyes to Pico. "The deck thing is fair though, I'll bring it the next time I'm over."

"Beebop ska doh??"

"Yeah, I'm not budging on the ban. You'll have to deal with the consequences of your actions, sweetheart." He shook his head gently while he spoke.

Girlfriend stuck her tongue out at him, playful yet clearly not happy with the decision.

"Wow, you're so mean to me over just a few cards."

[fridge-reviews]

The Talos Principle 2

Developer: CroTeam Publisher: Devolver Digital Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified Rrp: £24.99 (Humble, Steam and Epic) Released: 2nd November 2023 Available on: Humble, Steam and Epic Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard Approximate game length: 30+

Normally I would write a little story based on the game the review is about. However, this time I have a story that the first Talos Principle tangentially relates to. The first Talos Principle poses a question regarding souls and if machines can attain them. It also asks another question which is; Is a soul something you imprint upon through your life like a lump of clay or do you become moulded into the shape of your soul as you grow. I found this question interesting and posed it to my best friend (who I knew would love a debate on something like that) and she and I discussed it, or rather, we argued about it. During that argument we asked her partner what he thought. His response disappointed us both as he had no opinion at all about it, not even as a thought experiment. They broke up shortly after. So anyway, that's how the Talos Principle broke my friend's relationship…

This game is set in a world where all of humanity has long since gone extinct… Well, all organic humans are anyway. You may be wondering why would I state specifically ‘organic humans’? That’s because there are sentient robots that call themselves humanity and consider us (the organic ones) to be their ancestors. In this game, as it was with the last game, you play as one of those robots. In the first game you were the first of your kind to be born into the real world and in this one you are the last, specifically the one thousandth. You being the last one is apparently a big deal and so you walk out to a large celebration. A celebration that is short lived as it gets interrupted by Prometheus himself, or at least a representation of him. He just manages to command your race to investigate a distant island before being dragged off by Pandora. It seems something big is occurring and so you and a small team jet off to this mystery island.

As is to be expected a new game comes with new puzzles and mechanics, such as the RGB splitter that requires two coloured beams of light to create a third, such as red and blue to make green. There are also a lot of puzzles, within each of the nine biomes there are eight ‘main’ puzzles, two ‘lost’ puzzles, two statue puzzles and a golden gate puzzle that can only be accessed in the late game. There are actually more than that but telling more would be something of a spoiler.

The puzzles are scattered across each biome and are numbered from one to eight (except the two lost puzzles, the statues and the golden gate) and each biome introduces a new mechanic for you to utilise. While you don’t have to go through them in numerical order, I do strongly suggest that you at least start with puzzle number one before trying the others if only to get an understanding of the new mechanic being shown to you.

Hidden around the biomes are two ‘Sparks of Prometheus’, you can use these sparks to skip a puzzle. Though it takes three sparks to skip a single puzzle and there are only eighteen sparks to be found in the entire game, so if you do decide to use them be sparing with them.

As I mentioned in the story at the beginning of this review, the previous game posed a philosophical question ‘Can a machine have a soul? And if so is the soul developed over time or granted in full at creation?’ It seems the first half of that question was answered, so now this game poses many more questions such as if knowledge should be sought out for its own sake, the nature of self determinism and the direction that the new human society should take.

In the last game there was a journal that was accessed with the [Tab] key, in this game the journal has been replaced with something of a status screen. While in this screen you can read information on the things your companions have found, check the clues that the sphinx statues give, relisten to the voice logs you find (which will continue to play out of the status screen) and you can interact with the games social media. That’s right the new humans in this game have created some kind of twitter analog, thankfully this version is actually moderated and the discussions generally don’t get insulting or abrasive. You can, of course, ignore it however I would encourage you not to as the short conversations you have on there have an impact on certain events that happen in the story.

While in the first game you were all alone, struggling your way through the various puzzles. In this game you actually have companions that wander around the various biomes, they won’t help you with the puzzles at all, that’s your job, but they will want to speak to you about the various things you discover as you play. I really like the inclusion of these characters as they add moments of levity and sometimes an alternative perspective on the various subjects this game likes to throw at you. Plus some of the characters I genuinely grew to like and would seek them out for a conversation whenever something important happened just to hear what they had to say.

I have to say that Croteam certainly do create a beautiful looking game, the various vistas are absolutely stunning to look at. Bear in mind that the screenshots are from my rig which is running just a little over the minimum specifications. I will admit it does make me a little sad to see that Croteam are no longer using their own engine, they really have shown that they know what they're doing with the Unreal 5 engine.

On Steam Deck this game runs flawlessly. However, some of the puzzles (especially the ones that require you to do things outside of the various puzzle enclosures) can be very difficult to see simply due to the screen size.

If you like puzzles then this is a game I can highly recommend. I had an absolute blast playing through this, to the point that I found every secret, completed every puzzle and found the alternative ending. There aren't many games that get me to do that.

If this appeals to you perhaps try;

The Talos Principle Portal 2 Quantum Conundrum

----

If you’d like to support me I have a Ko-fi, the reviews will continue to be posted donation or not.

[lavmana]

Dianakko week 2021 let’s go!!!!

I’ve got chapters prepared for every day! And let me tell you, what I wrote for day 6 had GOT to be my absolute favourite. I don’t blame you for not reading it all, but if you read any chapter. Make sure you check me out on day 6!

If you want to check out everyone else’s amazing work, go follow @dianakko-week. They’re amazing and put a lot of effort into all of this.

you can find the first chapter of my series of one-shots here!  I love you all and can’t wait to see what everyone else has made. Let’s do this! ^^

[felassan]

Article: ‘Mass Effect 3 Could Have Had A Completely Different Ending’

The Mass Effect 3 ending has been a controversial subject for nine years. As it turns out, it could have been completely different.

This article is part of TheGamer’s Mass Effect week. 

Highlights:

This [the RGB endings] wasn’t always the case. According to Mass Effect 3 writer Chris Hepler, the end of Shepard’s story could have been radically different. 

Hepler started working on Mass Effect right at the beginning. Although he wasn’t formally part of the team yet, he did additional design, chipped in for playtesting, and offered a fair amount of writing feedback during development of the first game. He had a much more active role on Mass Effect 2, writing the Codex entries, the Galaxy Map, and spearheading the Cerberus Daily News initiative. By the time Mass Effect 3 rolled around, Hepler was writing EDI, Thane, Citadel missions, and was generally considered to be the project’s “loremaster.”

“The ending relies on space magic, and the lead writer, lead gameplay designer, and executive producer all just embraced that and owned it from the get-go,” Hepler tells me. “‘Any sufficiently advanced technology’ and all that. They wanted and got a really big decision that affects the whole galaxy. If you give it a moment's thought, none of the three options are perfectly moral or the ‘right’ answer for everyone. Destroy may not solve the problem of AI and organics; Control rewards the Reapers; even Synthesis, which is harder to get than the other two and sounds like it'd be permanent peace, basically violates the entire galaxy's bodily autonomy without consent. So that part, I think, works.

“Did it satisfy the fans? Hell, no, not at first, and I found a lot of the criticism to be legitimate. The Extended Cut gave us a second chance to make an ending that acknowledged many more of the players' choices, and was about as good as we could reasonably make given the decisions we'd already made. I felt a lot better about myself and us as a team after the EC came out.”

Hepler explains that fans had observed several hints throughout the trilogy that pointed in completely different directions. For example, there are aspects of the lore that actually lean towards the Citadel species allying with the Reapers in order to collectively tackle a dark energy anomaly, as opposed to the Reapers remaining as the Big Bad right up until credits roll. Hepler confirms that there are explicit lore details that lean into this idea, but that he never personally heard about capitalizing on them. Remember, this is coming from the Mass Effect loremaster - if he says there is lore to back up a dark energy anomaly that only the Reapers can save us from, it certainly exists.

“Now, what would I have done?” Hepler asks. “I wouldn't have done space magic at all. I planned to write three Codex entries on the Crucible rather than one, reflecting on what scientists think it is at first, what it appears to be once construction has really made progress, and a third detailing how it will kill the Reapers, readable right before you return to Earth.”

Hepler explains that he wanted to take inspiration from Nancy Kress’ novel, Probability Moon, in order to have the Crucible use a strong nuclear force as a weapon. Kress’ superweapon is designed to create a massive burst of energy that is completely harmless for objects that have a low atomic weight, like organic flesh made of carbon chains. This means that the vast majority of Citadel species would be virtually unaffected by a blast from this weapon.

Objects with a much higher atomic number, however, would be annihilated by the beam. This weapon is constructed in such a way that it emits life-killing radiation for anything made up of heavy metals. “So cybernetic creatures like the Reapers and husks would have their organic parts fried because they're right next to the heavy metals, but the organic creatures a safe distance away, like a civilian population, would be just fine,” Hepler says.

“The rebuilt Shepard, who had a fair bit of cybernetics, would die heroically, but that was always likely to be on the cards. In talking with Ann Lemay, another writer on the project, we theorized that the metal most likely to be the atomic weight cut-off-point was niobium, which today is used in piercings and surgical implants because it doesn't rust and you can embed it in flesh without ill effects. It's even blue when exposed to oxygen, like the glowing blue husks we've been fighting since [the first] Mass Effect. So it would make sense as a building block for the Reapers and their ultimate weakness.”

So, what happened? Unfortunately, Hepler never got to pitch his ending. The design leads moved lightning quick with their Destroy/Control/Synthesis trifecta, to the point that the whole premise had been approved before Hepler even got around to finishing his second Codex entry. As a result, he hadn’t got a full description of how this pertained to the entire galaxy yet - although looking at it now, it could have borrowed from the best bits of each ending. The Reapers would be neutralized, but the tech would be there. Given that Mass Effect is largely about the coexistence of humans and cybernetic creatures, it would also have had an impact on other aspects of the universe - what would happen to EDI?

“I [also] had some concern that Nancy Kress might notice and sue us if I didn't do my homework,” Hepler says. “And there was no time to do that homework, which would be me telling all the leads to hold off for a week while I exchanged a crap-ton of emails with my subject matter experts. ‘Sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic’ was far easier and had much more project momentum. “I recycled some of the strong-force-as-a-weapon tech into the Reaper infantry weapon, the Blackstar. In retrospect, I wish I'd spoken up more, or thought it all out faster, but them's the breaks.”

As well as Hepler’s own ending - which obviously never made it into the final game, despite sounding as if it had a lot more hard science behind it - Hepler is a big fan of the popular Indoctrination Theory. However, he was pretty open about the fact that this wasn’t something BioWare consciously designed.

“The Indoctrination Theory is a really interesting theory, but it's entirely created by the fans,” Hepler says. “While we made some of the ending a little trippy because Shepard is a breath away from dying and it's entirely possible there's some subconscious power to the kid's words, we never had the sort of meetings you'd need to have to properly seed it through the game.

“We weren't that smart. By all means, make mods and write fanfic about it, and enjoy whatever floats your boat, because it's a cool way to interpret the game. But it wasn't our intention. We didn't write that.”

[source]

[dailydianakko]

sorry if this has been asked before, but how do rgb teams comfort people?

I swear to god, this will be one of the last asks that include the majority of the new nine. Too much brain usage for my one baby brain cell. T-T And yes, this is a bit of a shitpost too; but most of my posts are anyway.

Akko- Tries to cheer them up with jokes and a mini magic show. Will try to get revenge if the situation calls for it, watch her so she doesn’t get into trouble.

Lotte- She brews  a mug of calming tea and sits with them quietly; occasionally murmuring words of comfort.

Sucy- Awkwardly pats a back, what is emotion????

Amanda- Is ready to throw down, offers advice that actually is sensible for once.

Jasminka- Wraps them up in the biggest and nicest hug ever. Has a ton of comfort food.

Constanze- Shoots whoever made them upset. Morals? What morals? There is only gun.

Hannah- Offers to humiliate them publicly, this girl has bite to her bark. Helps keep an eye out for things that upset them in the first place and helps avoid the issues.

Barbara- Shit-talks whoever upset them in the first place. A hate party is scheduled as well as a pedicure.

Diana- A bit awkward when comforting someone. Makes sure they’re warm and comfortable with a cup of tea. Offers advice and support.

[scifigeneration]

How to simulate softness

What factors affect how human touch perceives softness, like the feel of pressing your fingertip against a marshmallow, a piece of clay or a rubber ball? By exploring this question in detail, a team of engineers and psychologists at the University of California San Diego discovered clever tricks to design materials that replicate different levels of perceived softness.

The findings provide fundamental insights into designing tactile materials and haptic interfaces that can recreate realistic touch sensations, for applications such as electronic skin, prostheses and medical robotics. Researchers detail their findings in the Aug. 30 issue of Science Advances.

"We provide a formula to recreate a spectrum of softness. In doing so, we are helping close the gap in understanding what it takes to recreate some aspects of touch," said Charles Dhong, who co-led the study as a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego and is now an assistant professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Delaware. Dhong worked with Darren Lipomi, a professor of nanoengineering at UC San Diego and the study's co-corresponding author.

Based on the results from their experiments, the researchers created equations that can calculate how soft or hard a material will feel based on material thickness, Young's modulus (a measure of a material's stiffness), and micropatterned areas. The equations can also do the reverse and calculate, for example, how thick or micropatterned a material needs to be to feel a certain level of softness.

"What's interesting about this is that we've found two new ways to tune the perceived softness of an object -- micropatterning and changing the thickness," Dhong said. "Young's modulus is what scientists typically turn to in terms of what's soft or hard. It is a factor, but now we show that it's only one part of the equation."

Recreating softness

The researchers began by examining two parameters engineers use to measure a material's perceived softness: indentation depth (how deep a fingertip presses into a material) and contact area between the fingertip and the material. Normally, these parameters both change simultaneously as a fingertip presses into an object. Touch a piece of soft rubber, for example, and the contact area will increase the deeper a fingertip presses in.

Dhong, Lipomi and colleagues were curious how indentation depth and contact area independently affect the perception of softness. To answer this question, they specially engineered materials that decoupled the two parameters and then tested them on human subjects.

The researchers created nine different elastomeric slabs, each with its own unique ratio of indentation depth to contact area. The slabs differed in amount of micropatterning on the surface, thickness and Young's modulus.

Micropatterning is key to the design. It consists of arrays of raised microscopic pillars dotted on the surface of the slabs. These tiny pillars allow a fingertip to press deeper without changing the contact area. This is similar to pressing against the metal pins of a Pinscreen toy, where arrays of pins slide in and out to make a 3D impression.

"By creating these micropatterned surface structures, we produce discontinuous regions of contact where the finger presses in that are much smaller than the shadow it would cast on the surface," Lipomi said.

The team tested the slabs on 15 subjects and instructed them to perform two tasks. In the first task, they presented subjects with multiple pairs of slabs and asked them to identify the softer one in each pair. In the second task, the researchers had subjects rank the nine slabs from softest to hardest.

Overall, the slabs that subjects perceived as softer were thicker, had little to no micropatterning on the surface, and had a low Young's modulus. Meanwhile slabs that felt harder were thinner, had more micropatterning and a high Young's modulus.

Softness: a basic ingredient of touch

Experiments also led the researchers to an interesting conclusion: the perception of softness is a basic sensation, not a combination of other sensations.

"This means softness is a primary ingredient of the human sense of touch. It's like how we have RGB for color displays," Lipomi said. "If we can find the other 'pixels of touch,' can we combine them to make any tactile image we want? These are the fundamental things we would like to know going forward."

Paper title: "Role of Indentation Depth and Contact Area on Human Perception of Softness for Haptic Interfaces." Co-authors include Rachel Miller, Nicholas Root, Sumit Gupta, Laure V. Kayser, Cody W. Carpenter, Kenneth J. Loh and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, all at UC San Diego.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award (grant 1DP2EB022358) and the Office of Naval Research (grant N00014-18-1-2483).

[solitaire-dreams]

What’s Your Type? : Pokespe Fire/Water/Grass Dexholder Analysis

DISCLAIMER: Honestly, I've only read RGB, RS, DP, BW, and SM arcs in full; and parts of the Yellow and B2W2 arc. So, any information outside of these arcs is coming from Bulbapedia and is liable to be incorrect.

When it comes to the world of Pokespe, rather than the anime where we follow the never aging Ash Ketchum, we now total about 21 dexholders (our protagonists).  Each dexholder is fairly unique from one another, yet one thing always tends to be in common between them. The same thing that's always common when we pick up our consoles to start a new Pokemon journey. Picking our starters.

In the world of Pokespe, the standard starters aren't guaranteed to be the first Pokemon they will receive—quite the opposite actually—yet they will always gain one of the traditional starters at some point of their evolutionary line on their journey. (The only two exceptions are Yellow who was created for the Yellow games where Pikachu was the starter, and Whi-two or Whitley because they ran out of Unovan starters). This often has us classify the dexholders into grass, fire, and water varieties. Though this categorization goes deeper than a Pokemon in their party, but plays a large role in their characterization.

Each of the dexholders in each category share a trait that connects all of them, and will provide useful for other predictions (skip to the end if you just want to know what the other prediction is). This post is focused on breaking them down one by one.

Note: Since I was tempted enough to reblog an incorrect pokespe quote where green was the name given to the male character, for the rest of this blog, Green is the male character and Blue is the female. Got it? Good.

First off, we'll start off with the fire type dexholders. Most of you might notice some obvious similarities:

Yet, there is also one very obvious exception:

Green here doesn't tend to shout, especially as much as the other fire type dexholders. So, then what is the factor connecting them? All of them still have a very fiery spirit, and more accurately, is their strong determination towards achieving whatever goal they have. They will pursue it no matter whatever or whoever lies in their way; often leading to causing chaos or bad relationships with other people in their wake.

Green is extremely focused on becoming a strong trainer. Upon his first appearance, he is battling Mew with Charmander to train it and shows no remorse when Red tries to battle it and his Pokemon faints; rather looking down on him for not “noticing anything” during the fight. This determination continues throughout the first arc, as further demonstrated when he tries to force his way into Saffron City after Team Rocket attacks Pallet Town and takes his grandfather.

Gold has the notable trait of having a one-track mind, where he focuses on something so much he will pursue that relentlessly, and ignoring anything else that doesn't pertain to that. Though, this trait manifests itself most when Gold pursues “pretty girls” such as the Kimono Girls, gym leader Jasmine, or even Crystal upon first discovering her.

Though it still can translate in the pursuit of Gold's goals, where he initially receives a Pokedex because he wanted to use it in battle, and urgently attempts to gain a unique specialty during the GSC arc.

Sapphire's dexholder title is specifically “The Conquer” in reference to her earning 8 gym badges in 80 days. She unrelentingly goes around the region to defeat the gym leaders—causing her to start off on the wrong foot with Ruby. And she turns it into a bet to reach their respective goals in 80 days all because it stemmed from a promise she made with her childhood friend to beat the record of Red when it came to the Pokemon League.

Pearl's title is the Determiner, one he received after bonding with Azelf—the lake guardian of Willpower. He managed to bond with Azelf because he completes whatever he starts; as clarified by Diamond in the arc. Determiner, willpower, completes whatever started...yeah, this screams dedication to a goal. Especially when you consider the focus Pearl gives to Dia's and his comedy routine.

For Black though, no matter how well I could paraphrase it, I will just quote this article (bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Black_(Adventures)): “Black is a young man who aspires to be the Champion of the Unova Pokémon League. He has been dreaming of this since childhood, nine years to be exact. However, these dreams fill his head to the point where he cannot think about anything else and any attempts to cause him to pass out from mental exhaustion...Due to his dreams causing him to forget about other things, Black has the tendency to do things without considering the consequences of his actions and their effects on other people.”

I think the above proves the point well enough.

Also, I would like to briefly mention Y. While Y isn't a fire type dexholder (she's a water type), since there is no fire type dexholder in Kalos (Malva doesn't really count), she is a kind of water/fire dual type with her personality. Y shouts more than most of the other water dexholders and exhibits a more solid determination to pursue her goal of becoming a Sky Trainer, even when this runs into direct opposition with her mother's ideas for her.

Lastly, we wrap up the fire dexholder with our latest protagonist, Sun. Sun has the goal of collecting 100 million yen. Acheiving this goal has been Sun's whole time in Alola in the making. He relentlessly pursues money, even prioritizing reaching his personal goal than helping the Alola region against the Ultra Beast invasion, leading him to get sucked into Ultra Space with Solgaleo.

Next up is the water type dexholders, which personally I found the revelation most interesting. It would be difficult to derive a personality solely from the type this time. Unlike fire which is associated with offensive battling, or grass which tends to be connected to defensive, water is viewed as the balance between the two. But, this doesn't really provide any clues into what is the common thread between all these dexholders. My findings, however, were that they all tend to be secretive.

Miss Con Artist (Blue), our first water type dexholder, is literally a con artist. Her whole livelihood is based of lying and keeping the truth about her real intentions to trick people into doing whatever she wants. Plus, she has her own secrets that only come to light much later into her appearance in the first arc and beyond. Her pathological fear of birds is only hinted at during the Team Rocket battle and confirmed during the Pokemon League when battle “Professor O”. Even more shocking was her childhood under the Masked Man, who trained her because of the promise she showed as a trainer.

This transitions nicely to our other dexholder who was raised under the Masked Man, Silver. And he so happens to be a water type dexholder as well. While Silver does not purposely keeping his life before the Masked Man close to his chest, it is revealed that Silver was the son of Giovanni, an insanely big secret that heavily impacted his character.

Ruby, in order to pursue his love of contests and oppose the beliefs of his father, refuses to battle at the beginning of the RS arc. This in turn hides his amazing battling skills (plus the fact he has a FREAKING CELEBI). Additionally, when it comes to the climax of the arc, he hides from Sapphire the plan he had to team up with Courtney to control Groudon and Kyogre. While still intended for her safety, it is still another massive lie and withholding of the truth on his part.

Platinum may not be thought of as being secretive, but the speech she makes after learning Dia and Pearl weren't her bodyguards begs to differ. Most of the lies she reveals in that speech were white lights told to make her not seem inferior and were obvious to the reader, but it still goes to show that she lied a fair amount. Her wealth and connection to the Berlitz family were also discovered rather than told by Platinum. And most obviously, she hid her real name of Platinum until this time! This whole journey, her companions didn't know what her true first name was!

Lack-two or Blake is another dexholder who has lying built into his occupation. Blake is with the International Police and working undercover during the B2W2 arc (Please give us some form of closure! #freeblack2k19). He literally has to keep his true intentions of hunting down the remnants of Team Plasma from his fellow classmates. Additionally, his true personality isn't shown to others either; he puts on a womanizing and flirtatious front when he truly an emotionless officer.

Y is honestly the least secretive out of the water dexholders, but that can also be attributed to her odd Volcanion (a fire-and-water type) fusion. It may not be obvious, or not in a way you expect, but Y does hide something—her feelings. Dealing with the human depression that is X and three of her other friends while trying to all live on their own and dealing with fallout from her mother on top of one of the most cruel evil teams yet? You think she would break down, or someone would help her; but none of the characters we follow demonstrate this concern! theviolenttomboy made a short post that summarizes all the sh*t Y goes through (theviolenttomboy.tumblr.com/post/146359425406/figured-out-why-i-cant-ship-y-with-absolutely), and how she has to deal with it all on her own. In order to keep the group alive, she has to hide her emotional distress. A problem not even resolved by the end of the arc.

Finally, we arrive at the grass type dexholders. Honestly this was the most tricky for me to pin down. Mostly because we have dexholders like Dia and X who have personalities that couldn't seem more different. So, I had to take a look back, and that's when I realized something. Both of the previous characterizations centred around how they achieve their goals. Fire type dexholders barrel through whatever obstacles are in their way and water type dexholders hide information as they pursue their goals. This gave me the clue of what to analyze for the grass type dexholders and this is my conclusion:

The way grass dexholders approach their goals is the most “healthy”. They are able to self-intrinsically motivate themselves when life discourages their goals and try to achieve them in a way that doesn't tend to hurt others as much as the other two dexholder categories (most of the time).

Honestly, this probably reminds you of a generic shonen protagonist, so it is fitting that the dexholder who started this characterization was the most shonen like character of all: Red. Red is able to convince himself to keep working towards his goal of becoming the strongest trainer, despite the obstacles he faces in the form of Team Rocket or people like his rival discouraging him from developing into a stronger trainer. The way he aims to be the strongest also doesn't harm many people, if people are affected, it tends to be accidental.

Crystal manages to stay firm in her goal of catching all the Pokemon even if the other Johto dexholders just see her as a girl at first. She can motivate herself to keep working towards it, and with the caring and give-back nature of Crystal, she is certainly not harming anyone on her path to reaching her goal. Minus a few face kicks to Gold.

Emerald certainly faced a lot of adversity that pushed him down. Becoming an orphan at a young age and made fun of for his small height, initially actually causing him to go against the foundation of grass dexholders being able to motivates themselves by resulting in a dislike of Pokemon and his stature. However, he develops this grass mindset as the Emerald arc progresses, finding what he enjoys, what makes him unique, and cultivating the confidence needed to be himself—even if life is still against him. Plus, while I can't speak for much of his actions in the Emerald arc (because I haven't red FRLG yet, and I know the events are directly connected), his title of the Calmer which stems from his ability to help Pokemon feel relaxed means he is at least not harming Pokemon much during his adventure.

One of the biggest character moments for Diamond is him managing to self-intrinsically motivate himself to pursue a goal despite opposition. In this case, the goal being to stop Team Galactic and his opposition being his best friend Pearl. Regardless, he succeeds in standing up to him and working towards thwarting Team Galactic, with the worst harm caused probably being Pearl's shock at Dia standing up for himself.

White seems to exhibit a peaceful way of pursuing her goal surrounding her talent agency for Pokemon. When her goal switches after Gigi leaves her for a bit, White's new focus on getting stronger at battling is still approached in much the same way. One where she convinces herself to keep working towards improvement and does not negatively affect people along the way.

Then we have the enigma of X. X doesn't seem to follow things of “motivation” or not inadvertently bringing down others with him, but that's only when his goal isn't clear. When we start with X in the XY arc, his goal is to stay in his room; locked away from the outside world. In this context, he meets all the criteria: he ends up convincing himself to work towards his goal of staying a shut-in, despite all the pleas to change this from his friends; and most of his protest to stay inside is silent and doesn't directly or physically harm his friends.

Lastly, our final dexholder is Moon, who also conforms to this characterization fairly well. Moon is able to pursue whatever she considers a priority, unaffected by outside influences. Whether it be praise from her work early on in the SM arc, or not listening to reason before chasing after Sun in the wormholes when he is taken away; leaving Alola to face the Ultra Beasts alone.

tl; dr : Each dexholder approaches their goals differently based on the type of their starter. Fire dexholders have strong enough determination to barrel through all the obstacles to their goal, knocking down everything and everyone in their way. Water dexholders are secretive and hide important information as they work towards their goal. Grass dexholders have the “healthiest” way of reaching their goals, managing to motivate themselves to keep working towards it when life tells them otherwise.

This information may be touched on again in other posts I'm planning: a follow-up talking about the “Bronze-age” progression of dexholder characterization, one about predicting what the Gen 8 protagonists of Pokespe will be like, and another discussing trio characterization.

~Thanks for reading and I'll be back soon!

[yaboirezzy]

WOAH LOOK AT THAT A PUBLIC INVITE LINK AFTER 2 MONTHS

All jokes aside, feel free to join if you'd like, we'll give you a cookie

[charger-batteries]

MSI Alpha 15 Review

MSI's Alpha 15 made waves at its debut a year ago for using all AMD hardware, the only gaming laptop to do so at the time. Other vendors have joined the ranks since then, but MSI prepared well by refreshing the Alpha 15 ($1,199 as tested) at the end of 2020 with a more powerful "Renoir" Ryzen 7 processor and a beefier 6GB Radeon RX 5600M graphics card. The new notebook churned out great 1080p gaming performance in our testing while keeping the high-end features of the original, such as its per-key RGB backlit keyboard. Our top choices among upper-entry-level gaming rigs remain the HP Omen 15 and the Acer Predator Helios 300, but the Alpha 15 is a creditable alternative, especially if you can catch it on sale.

Touched Up by 'Renoir'

The new Alpha's eight-core Ryzen 7 4800H CPU (2.9GHz base, up to 4.2GHz boost) gives it a leg up on similarly priced Intel gaming notebooks powered by the six-core Core i7-10750H. The Helios 300 is one example, going for $1,174 on Amazon with a 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti as I typed this review.

That said, the Alpha 15 must also contend with AMD-powered notebooks; HP offers a comparably equipped Omen 15 (model 15-en0029nr) for $1,249 while the Dell G5 15 SE goes for $1,205. These minimal price differences highlight the fierce competitiveness of this segment.

The MSI looks much the same as before on the outside. Its dark silver palm rest contrasts nicely with the black of the rest of the laptop, though I'm still lukewarm about the green logo on the back of the lid. At least it's not backlit.

The lid backing is the only metal on this laptop. Considering the Alpha 15 is now $100 or $200 more expensive than last year's model, it could stand more of it to feel as sturdy as the Acer and HP laptops. That said, all its surfaces do a good job of resisting flex.

The system is slightly oversize and overweight for a 15.6-inch gamer. Its 1.1-inch thickness is 0.2 inch more than the Omen 15, and it's heavier at 5.3 pounds versus 4.6 pounds. Trim side display bezels translate to a reasonable 14.1-inch width, though a thick bottom bezel extends its depth to 9.8 inches, 0.4 inch more than the HP.

The full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) screen leaves little room for complaint. It not only offers IPS technology for wide viewing angles, an anti-glare coating, and a 144Hz refresh rate, but AMD FreeSync Premium technology to smooth out frame rates. Laptops with Nvidia G-Sync are far more expensive.

The screen has average brightness but an overall enjoyable picture with its rated 72% coverage of the NTSC gamut (about 100% of sRGB).

The Keyboard: Per-Key RGB Backlighting

Its SteelSeries-designed keyboard is one of the Alpha 15's high-end touches. It integrates with the SteelSeries Engine app for its per-key RGB backlighting and reprogrammable keys, features usually reserved for more expensive gaming notebooks. (The Omen 15 and Predator Helios 300 offer neither.)

The island-style keys have satisfyingly soft key presses and a font that says "gamer." Layout-wise, the keyboard is partially nonstandard since the arrow keys are forced into the main keyboard area, downsizing the right Shift and number pad 0 keys. (The Lenovo Legion 5i avoids this traffic jam by properly divorcing its arrow keys below the keyboard.) The Windows key is also located to the right instead of left of the space bar, though the MSI Dragon Center app lets you swap it with the Fn key if you wish. A maximum-cooling-fan button, a key to launch Dragon Center, and the power button sit above the number pad.

Meanwhile, the traditional two-button touchpad offers a smooth surface and ample space, though its physical clicks are loud.

The Alpha 15's generous port selection includes four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (three Type-A and one Type-C), Ethernet, full-size HDMI and mini DisplayPort video outputs, separate headphone and microphone jacks, and a full-size SD card reader.

The ports are divided between the left and right sides, though some are positioned right up against the front edge (near the user) so plugged-in peripherals can protrude into external mouse or elbow-resting territory. Fortunately, the included power adapter has a right-angle connector to keep a low profile.

The Alpha 15 uses an Intel AX200 wireless card for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 connectivity, an upgrade over the original Alpha's previous-generation wireless standards. However, like most gaming notebooks, it still lacks a fingerprint reader and face-recognition webcam to support Windows Hello biometrics. The 720p webcam also delivers merely average quality, like most laptops' in this price range. The stereo speakers located beneath the palm rest are equally unremarkable with their bass-shy sound.

Team Red on the Bench: Testing the Alpha 15

The Alpha 15 model A4DEK-004US that I'm testing packs an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor, a 6GB AMD Radeon RX 5600M graphics card, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive for its Windows 10 Home operating system. MSI backs it with a one-year warranty. The system was hard to find for sale as I typed this, though the close-cousin A4DEK-005US model (which doubles the SSD storage to 1TB) was available for $1,199 on Newegg with a $100 mail-in rebate that brought it to just $1,099. That's commendable hardware for the money.

For our performance benchmarks, I compared the Alpha 15 to the gaming notebooks listed below...

The HP Omen 15 teams its Ryzen chip with a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti to make an ideal comparison with (and foil for) the Alpha 15's Radeon RX 5600M. The Acer Predator Helios 300 will show what a more expensive GeForce RTX 2070 (Max-Q) can do, while MSI's Bravo 15, another all-AMD model from earlier this year, uses an entry-level Radeon RX 5500M to save money. (It was $999 as tested.) Let's go.

Storage, Media, and CPU Tests

Our first test, UL's PCMark 10, assesses general system performance across different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. The Alpha 15's score of 5,950 points is outstanding, far above the 4,000 points we like to see from high-performance PCs. The system's showing in PCMark 8's storage subtest is also competitive. (That said, most modern SSDs ace this test.)

Next up is a pair of CPU-crunching tests: Cinebench R15 stresses all available processor cores and threads while rendering a complex image, while in our Handbrake test, we transcode a 12-minute 4K video down to 1080p.

The Alpha 15 kept pace with the Omen 15 and Bravo 15, since all three use AMD's Ryzen 7 4800H CPU. The Intel-based Acer and Lenovo trailed.

The final test in this section is photo editing. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the totals. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play.

The Predator Helios 300 and Legion 5i did better here mainly because of their higher-clocked Core i7-10750H chips, which top out at 5.1GHz; the Ryzen 7 4800H reaches just 4.2GHz. The "bursty" Photoshop test tends to reward machines that can ramp processing-intensive tasks up and down quickly. Nonetheless, the Alpha 15 still makes a powerful photo-editing platform.

Graphics Tests

Our first two benchmarks in this section measure the gaming performance potential of a PC. In UL's 3DMark, we run the Sky Diver (lightweight, capable of running on integrated graphics) and Fire Strike (more demanding, for high-end gaming PCs) subtests, both DirectX 11-based. Our other gaming simulation, Unigine Corp.'s Superposition, uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene.

The Alpha 15 and Omen 15 slugged it out, though the Alpha took the lead in 3DMark Fire Strike. However, the Superposition 1080p benchmark shows their GPUs are neck and neck. Both were far ahead of the Bravo 15.

Next, we'll try some real games. We use the built-in 1080p benchmarks of Far Cry 5 (at its Normal and Ultra presets) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (at its Medium and Very High presets). Far Cry 5 uses DirectX 11, while we flip Rise of the Tomb Raider to DirectX 12.

The stalemate between the Alpha 15 and Omen 15 continued; it's clear that the Radeon RX 5600M and GeForce GTX 1660 Ti are well-matched. The GeForce RTX-equipped Predator and Legion performed slightly better.

As far as Intel versus AMD goes, the Core i7-10750H is just as capable of gaming as the Ryzen 7 4800H, though the AMD chip's two extra cores can be advantageous for livestreaming or recording gaming sessions. It's undoubtedly an all-around faster CPU.

Impressively, the Alpha 15 didn't get more than lukewarm on its top and bottom throughout my gaming sessions. Its processor and graphics card also stayed under their maximum rated temperatures—the Ryzen 7 4800H topped 86 degrees C while the Radeon RX 5600M reached just 68 degrees C.

That said, I wish the fans were quieter. It was easy to pick out the noise from across my living room while the Alpha 15 was running full tilt.

Battery Rundown Test

For our last benchmark, we measure a laptop's unplugged runtime while playing a locally stored video with screen brightness at 50 percent and audio volume at 100 percent. We use the notebook's energy-saving rather than balanced or other power profile where available, turn off Wi-Fi, and even disable keyboard backlighting to squeeze as much life as possible out of the system.

The Omen 15 lasted another hour, but the nearly nine hours of the Alpha 15 is an excellent time for a 15.6-inch gamer. MSI deserves a shout-out for vastly improving the battery life versus last year's model, which lasted barely five hours in this same scenario.

Well-Priced AMD Power, Take Two

MSI's refreshed Alpha 15 is a much stronger performer with its eight-core Ryzen CPU and Radeon RX 5600M graphics card, as it's now able to go toe-to-toe with GeForce GTX 1660 Ti notebooks. It offers high-end features not often seen at its price point—a 144Hz FreeSync Premium screen and per-key RGB backlit keyboard—and showed impressive stamina in our battery test.

It's a little chunky and could use quieter cooling fans, but its low price makes those downsides easier to digest. Well-priced and well-rounded, the Alpha 15's value torch continues to burn brightly among upper-entry-level gaming laptops.

[thelongestdamnreviews]

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

I forgot to get a screenshot of the title, so here's a picture of me stabbing a cyclops in the head with the logo watermarked on the image.

I saw that Dragon's Dogma was in the December Humble Monthly and I had some interest in the game, so I jumped on it for $10.80 with a few other games.  I wound up finishing the game at 53 hours and finishing the postgame to unlock New Game Plus at 65.  I played the game with the Xbox 360 controller only.  I took my time, but I didn't complete all of the quests or even touch Bitterblack Isle (DLC area).  I played a little of each class but stuck mostly with Strider/Assassin.

Life in Cassardis is pretty nice as a fisherman.  The days pass by in absolute peace and you couldn't be happier.  And then one day, a dragon attacks your village and you feebly attempt to fight it off, only to get your heart ripped out of your chest for your trouble.  But you don't die.  You become something more than human, an Arisen, an ageless but not immortal being challenged by the dragon to reclaim your heart.  But along the way, there are many people who need help, and what better way to sharpen one's skills than slaying countless monsters and taking their loot?  

Nope, it's not even one of those conceptual hearts like the shape.  It's your actual, beating heart the thing takes!

Dragon's Dogma is a third-person action RPG.  To me, it felt a little like a mishmash of elements from The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, and even Phantasy Star Online.  It still manages to stand as a unique product all the same, though.  The game takes place in a wide-open sandbox like TES, the combat is weighty like Dark Souls, there is climbing on giant enemies like SotC, and the team aspect reminds me of PSO though your allies are all AI-controlled.  You jump, you swing your weapon, you'll probably get knocked down, stunlocked, and die a few times starting out.  What I liked about the world was that enemies don't scale, like in Morrowind or Dark Souls.  If you go to an area you aren't meant to be in for a while, you'll certainly feel it in the encounters.  But on the other hand, you'll eventually hit a point where you overpower your enemies.  

Health had an interesting mechanic I've only seen in fighting games prior--a recoverable damage portion of the bar.  You have a green health bar, representing your current health, and when you take damage, you may have some white health bar, which represents how much magic and some other effects can heal you.  Grey/black bar is completely gone and can only be restored with items, resting, and some other things.  If you have a healer and neglect to take any restoratives, you can still be whittled to death, so keep that in mind.  Stamina governs all skill use, be it weapon or magic, as well as sprinting, clinging to giant enemies, holding objects/enemies/other people, and so on.  Thankfully, you can sprint infinitely in safe areas, so that's a very nice touch.  A weight meter pops up whenever you cross the next weight category threshold, and it's visible at all times when you're looking at the inventory.  

Sword, bow, or magic?  There are nine Vocations in DD, and they're all based around these archetypes and combinations of them.  A Fighter uses a sword and board to safely approach and dispatch enemies, while its advanced version Warrior uses only two-hander weapons to destroy enemies, and a hybrid Magick Knight can cast party-wide buffs and attack at range with unique spells as well as knock some heads in melee.  Each Vocation has nine ranks which determines the active skills and passive boons you can buy and equip, and each Vocation also adds a specific amount of points to your stats when you level up, so there is some potential for min-maxing.  You cannot sculpt an entirely-unique character out of all the skills you learn--for example, even though your Fighter can use a sword like the Assassin, you cannot use their Gouge ability.  Passive skills at least do transfer over, so there is still some flexibility to be had.  

Your Pawn is able to use six of the nine classes and they can learn and use skills exactly the same as you do.  You get to design your hero and their stalwart ally, the latter of whom will learn from your actions and attempt to act as you do when it comes to combat and other actions--this can be both good and bad, understandably.  Breaking off of combat to go pick flowers could result in your Pawn doing the same, just the same as clearing out the goblins escorting a cyclops first .  Monkey see, monkey do.  You are also able to hire two additional Pawns created by other players, though you've no impact nor control over their behavior or skills.  This is the most prevalent online aspect to the game (the other being an instanced fight against an optional superboss) and it's kinda neat to see how other people have built their helper, not only in appearance, but skills, behavior, and personality.  

Pawns are a lot more helpful than this picture leads you to believe, believe me.  

A neat thing about the character builder is that the features have a gameplay impact.  Apart from character height affecting hitbox, short and tall characters climb at different speeds, much like how a heavy character burns through (and recovers) stamina slower than a beanpole character, but they also don't flop around as much when a monster tries to shake them off while climbing.  Which is more important to you--stats or appearance?  You have specific things like faces and noses and eye shapes, and you can somewhat fine-tune them with sliders, like eyeball spacing or eyebrow height.  You're only able to pick hair/eye/skin color from a list as opposed to setting RGB values, but few games allow the latter.  There is a pretty wide variety of equipment for a number of slots:  Head, torso clothing, torso armor, leg clothing, leg armor, arms, a cloak, and two unseen jewelry slots.  Almost everything provides some modicum of defense, though some people would rather try to make an attractive ensemble out of the gear their class can use.  

The game repeatedly warns to be careful out in the wild during its loading screen tips, and it's not kidding.  While you are able to pause the game and spam health restores when things go poorly, you can't expect to do this and win every fight.  Part of combat is watching enemies and knowing when to block or dodge and when to strike back, but also striking to stagger or knockdown foes.  This applies mostly to the melee classes, but ranged classes need to make use of positioning and knowing where the enemies are, so one can't sneak up and interrupt your spell.  One neat thing is that you can actually grapple several non-giant foes that are staggered or downed--you can either pick them up direct to toss off a cliff for an easy kill, or hold them fast so your allies can get free shots while your opponent is vulnerable.  And your Pawns will do these too, so pay attention and work together to efficiently cut through everything in your way.  Just remember that even with a lantern, nights are still incredibly dark and spawns change depending on the time of day.  

When it comes to big monsters, you and your allies can and are encouraged to climb them, to gain better access to a weak point, to have a way to damage it even while it moves across the battlefield, or just to keep yourself safe from its attacks.  These fights are really where the teamwork aspect of the game shines.  You might climb on top of an armored cyclops to remove its helmet so your bow-using Pawns can drill its eye with arrows.  You might have a Mage pawn enchant your weapons with fire, which you then use to knock a griffon out of the sky by setting its wings on fire.  You might also hold on for dear life while the thing you're clinging to rages, pausing to replenish your dwindling stamina.  And the battle music changing as you've got the beast on its last legs is a nice touch too.  The controls are the only really bad part because it turns into tank controls (left/right to turn as opposed to move left/right) and it can be difficult to tell which way you're moving sometimes.  

Quests are your standard "kill X things" or "get Y items" and there are several optional escort quests.  There are no different storyline quests like the guilds in TES games, so that might be a letdown to some.  Several quests are given out on the notice boards in various safe areas, and these generally automatically reward you when you meet the criteria--though with some, you might suddenly find yourself with an extra heavy weapon you weren't accounting for, impacting your looting.  Other quests tend to deal more directly with people, as there's a somewhat obscure affection system which has some impact on the ending.  If you do some quests for one person and they start blushing with a pink glow around their heads while talking to you, you might have stolen someone's heart yourself.  

And speaking of thieves of hearts...

Music overall isn't bad.  Most people speak with a British accent or at least inflection (pretend that makes sense), and the dialog is a little dated.  Not like Elizabethan, but I can't remember ever hearing "aught" or "afore" before.  It kinda stands out to me, especially given how much Pawns tend to talk.  Pawns will make comments about things, either randomly or in proximity, and they'll note enemies and what strategies work if they know them.  There are only so many voiced lines so you'll be hearing them quite a bit, but that kinda lends the game a bit of charm.  I wound up using a trainer to adjust the sound levels due to the game assuming you're using headphones or surround sound, which I wasn't.  Look up the game on PCGamingWiki for information about that.  

The only really glaring problems I had were with the save system, fast travel, and combining.  There's only one save slot.  If you start a new game after having a save already, you erase it.  Thank goodness there's a mod for a save manager (or just using Steam Family Sharing) but that's still pretty limiting for a game like this.  The game also autosaves, but it's somewhat unreliable.  I have lost a couple of hours due to reloading a checkpoint save despite a manual save being more recent, but just get into the habit of manual save/loads.  There is fast travel, but it requires Portcrystals in the world and Ferrystones in your inventory.  There are a few Portcrystal stations placed in the world you can teleport to after an early quest, and there are portable Portcrystals you can place and warp to at almost any time--but there are only four in one run of the game and you can place a max of ten in subsequent loops, giving you a total of 13 warps with the three permanent locations.  And you are able to combine the things you find in the wild and buy in stores together to generate new items.  For example, a Shackle plus one of different kinds of metals gives a Skeleton Key, or you can combine herbs together to create more potent curatives.  When you select an item to start combining, you are given a list of known secondary items and the final product if known.  My issue is that there's no way to have that in reverse, a list of things you've made and when accessed, gives a list of every combination that makes it.  A minor issue I'll admit, but not having to consult a guide to remember how to make a Cerulean Concoction would've been a nice quality of life improvement.  At least you can do it right in the field instead of needing to be back home with your specialized equipment.  

Overall, I liked Dragon's Dogma.  I hyped myself a bit and it didn't quite make the mark, but I had a great time with it.  Just wish it was possible to have multiple characters without mods, so I could make specialized people like I always make in TES.  It controlled well and it was nice to have a small team at my back for an ARPG outing, and for the AI to mostly work well.  And slightly spoilery, but the final act (before postgame) was pretty satisfying.  When I think of a final boss dragon, this is kinda how I want the fight to go.  Even though it took me a little while during the actual fight because I kept getting grabbed or knocked off.  The game was a decent challenge, mostly at the start, but a lot of difficulty can be mitigated with a good team setup and bringing along the right items...and knowing your enemy, of course.  

Here we go again!  And wow at the timing on this shot.  

They're masterworks, all.  You can't go wrong.  

[kadobeclothing]

21 Brand Style Guide Examples for Visual Inspiration

When it comes to building a memorable brand, it’s all about consistency. When you’re shopping for your favorite cereal or coffee at the grocery store, you want to be able to spot it from a mile away. The best brands stick in our brains because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo, fonts, colors, and images. Once we see them enough, they become instantly recognizable, bringing us a clear sense of reliability and security. Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide. These branding rule books help graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and even product packaging departments all stay on the same page, and present a unified vision of the brand to the public. We’ve compiled a list of some awesome brand style guides to use as inspiration for your next branding project or website redesign. Check them out below.

What are brand guidelines? Brand guidelines, also known as a brand style guide, govern the composition, design, and general look-and-feel of a company’s branding. Brand guidelines can dictate the content of a logo, blog, website, advertisement, and similar marketing collateral.

Picture the most recognizable brands you can think of. Chances are, you’ve learned to recognize them because of the consistency across the messaging — written or visual — these brands broadcast. The same brand colors are reflected across them. The language sounds familiar. It’s all very organized and, while not rigid, it’s cohesive. Here are a few types of guidelines you’d find in a brand style guide and which parts of a brand they can influence.

Mission Statement By reputation, you might think a mission statement is in its own category of importance to a business. And it is. But your business’s mission statement is also compass for your brand style guide. A mission statement ensures every piece of content you create for your brand is working toward the same goal — and, ideally, strives to solve the same problem for your customer. Your mission statement can guide your: Blog content. Paid/sponsored content Ad copy. Visual media. Slogan or tagline. Buyer Persona By definition, a buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It can include details related to your customer’s age, gender, job title, and professional challenges. For this reason, your buyer persona should also appear in your brand style guide. Your buyer persona is your target audience, and therefore stipulates for whom your brand publishes content. Your buyer persona can guide your: Blog content. Ad copy. Visual media. Color Palette A color palette is a group of colors a company uses to design its brand, and it guides every piece of visual content the brand creates. Your color palette can be as simple or as elaborate as you want, so long as your brand doesn’t deviate from the colors you choose to include. Color palettes that feature multiple colors often dedicate specific colors to specific types of marketing content. While the first two colors of your color palette might govern your logo, for example, the next two colors might support your website and blog design. Another two or three colors might be the basis for all your printed branding material. No matter what colors you use for your color palette, make sure you identify their HEX or RGB color codes. These codes consist of numbers and letters to help you recall the exact shade, brightness, contrast, and hue you want associated with your brand, so your colors don’t gradually drift in appearance as you create new content. You can find color codes using most photo-editing or design software that comes standard on your computer. Learn more about finding and committing to color codes in this blog post. Your color palette can guide your: Logo. Website design. Printed advertisings. Event collateral. Editorial Style Guide Nowadays, an editorial style guide is the bread and butter of an authoritative brand. This component of your brand style guide can have strong implications for your PR team, as well as the people who write articles, scripts, blog posts, and website copy for your company. An editorial style guide’s main job is to commit to an editorial stylebook (such as Associated Press or Chicago), how to phrase certain products, topics the brand can and cannot write about, and even other companies the brand can and cannot mention. However, a brand’s editorial style guide can also go into much deeper detail about your buyer persona: what they like to read about, where they read it, their general reading level, etc. Your editorial style guide can guide your: Blog content. Video scripts. Website copy. Landing page copy. Public relations talking points. A knowledge base supported by your customer service team. Paid/sponsored content. Typography Typography is another visual element of your brand style guide, but it isn’t just the font you use in your company logo. Typographic guidelines can support your blog design — which font you publish articles in — the links and copy on your website, and even a tagline to go with your company logo. As you can see, the purpose of the brand style guide is to form and maintain all of the various elements of a company that, when combined, spell out the entire brand as it’s recognized. Intrigued? Check out 21 of the best ones we could find.

Style Guide Examples Medium Wolf Circus Jewelry Ollo Skype Barre & Soul Spotify Jamie Oliver Herban Kitchen Urban Outfitters Love to Ride Barbican I Love New York Cisco University of the Arts Helsinki NJORD Espacio Cultural Alienware Netflix Scrimshaw Coffee NASA New York City Transit Authority

1. Medium Medium emphasizes both typography and color in its brand style guide. Its guide also include details related to the company’s “Purpose” and “Product Principles.” See the full brand guide here.

Source: Behance 2. Wolf Circus Jewelry Wolf Circus Jewelry’s product is all about appearance. Naturally, the company’s style guide is too. The brand’s style guide includes the company’s mission statement, product details, typeface, logo variations, a color palette, and a separate set of guidelines just for advertisements. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 3. Ollo Ollo is so into color and typography, it turned its style guide into a game. Click the link below to see how much you can manipulate the brand. It’s the perfect way to show content creators how creative they can get but also still adhere to Ollo’s specific typeface and color codes. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Bibliothèque Design 4. Skype Everyone’s favorite video chat platform also has a squeaky-clean style guide for its brand. Skype, now owned by Microsoft, focuses primarily on its product phrasing and logo placement. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Microsoft 5. Barre & Soul Barre & Soul’s brand style guide includes variations of its logo, logo spacing, secondary logos, supporting imagery, and a five-color color palette. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 6. Spotify Spotify’s style guide might appear simple and green, but there’s more to the brand than just a lime green circle. Spotify’s color palette includes three color codes, while the rest of the company’s branding guidelines focus heavily on logo variation and album artwork. The style guide even allows you to download an icon version of its logo, making it easier to represent the company without manually recreating it. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Spotify 7. Jamie Oliver Jamie Oliver has an extremely thorough brand style guide, covering logo placement across all of its kitchenware products. The company also includes a large color palette with each color sorted by the product it should be shown on. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 8. Herban Kitchen Herban Kitchen has both a color and texture palette in its style guide. These guidelines help to show not just how the brand’s logo will appear, but how the company’s various storefronts will look from the outside to potential customers. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 9. Urban Outfitters Photography, color, and even tone of voice appear in Urban Outfitters’ California-inspired brand guidelines. However, the company isn’t shy to include information about its ideal consumer and what the brand believes in, as well. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 10. Love to Ride Love to Ride, a cycling company, is all about color variety in its visually pleasing style guide. The company’s brand guidelines include nine color codes and tons of detail about its secondary logos and imagery. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 11. Barbican Barbican, an art and learning center in the United Kingdom, sports a loud yet simple style guide focusing heavily on its logo and supporting typefaces. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 12. I Love New York Despite its famously simple t-shirts, I Love New York has a brand style guide. The company begins its guidelines with a thorough explanation of its mission, vision, story, target audience, and tone of voice. Only then does the style guide delve into its logo positioning on various merchandise. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 13. Cisco Cisco’s style guide isn’t just a guide — it’s an interactive brand book. The company takes website visitors page by page through its brand’s vision, mission, strategy, and even its promise before showing users their logo and allowing them to actually type using their proprietary typeface, “CiscoSans.” Where’s Cisco’s color palette, you ask? The business has a separate webpage for just that. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Cisco 14. University of the Arts Helsinki The style guide of the University of the Arts Helsinki is more of a creative branding album than a traditional marketing guide. It shows you dozens of contexts in which you’d see this school’s provocative logo, including animations. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Behance 15. NJORD NJORD’s minimalist style guide gives you everything you’d need to know to design using the brand’s logo and color palette for both web and print. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Behance 16. Espacio Cultural This cultural center in Argentina has a color palette that’s as elaborate as the artistic workshops it hosts. Nonetheless, the brand does a fantastic job of breaking down every last color code and logo placement you can find — from the building itself to the advertisements promoting it. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Behance 17. Alienware Video gamers know Alienware from its game-friendly computers, but the rest of the world knows it by the brand’s sleek aesthetic. The company organizes its brand style guide into four basic parts: voice, design, photography, and partner. The latter describes (and shows) how the brand interacts with partner brands, such as Star Wars. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 18. Netflix As far as its public brand assets are concerned, Netflix is focused primarily on the treatment of its logo. The company offers a simple set of rules governing the size, spacing, and placement of its famous capitalized typeface, as well as a single color code for its classic red logo. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Netflix 19. Scrimshaw Coffee Featuring a five-code color palette, this “laid back,” “friendly,” and “modern” brand has a number of secondary logos it embraces in various situations. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Issuu 20. NASA NASA’s “Graphics Standards Manual” is as official and complex as you think it is. At 220 pages, the guide describes countless logo placements, color uses, and supporting designs. And yes, NASA’s space shuttles have their own branding rules. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Standards Manual 21. New York City Transit Authority Like NASA, the NYCTA has its own Graphics Standards Manual, and it includes some fascinating typography rules for the numbers, arrows, and public transit symbols the average commuter takes for granted every day. See the full brand guide here.

Source: Standards Manual Want more? Read How to Create a Writing Style Guide Built for the Web [Free Template].

Source link

source https://www.kadobeclothing.store/21-brand-style-guide-examples-for-visual-inspiration/

[media-and-me]

ANDYCINE A6 Plus 4K Video Monitor Review

With LUT Preview and a new touch screen, the ANDYCINE A6 Plus 4K monitor provides video productions with an affordable and practical solution.

I received the ANDYCINE A6 Plus monitor in 2019, after using the original A6 monitor for most of the year. For a predominant Sony mirrorless and Panasonic EVA-1 shooter, having an external monitor is useful for the larger screen size, but also the additional monitoring features.

The monitor accepts HDMI inputs/loop outputs from 480p, 1080/60p, 4K/30p up to DCI 4K/24p (4096×2160), which makes this affordable monitor accessible to a range of cameras.

Advancing on the first generation A6 monitor, the A6 Plus has a number of new features that brings it in line with competition from the likes of SmallHD, SWIT and Atomos.

First up, let’s look at the LUT Preview feature

Whether you film with a Sony (SLOG), Panasonic (VLOG), Canon (C-LOG) or any other camera, filming in a LOG colour profile can pose some problems when it comes to judging exposure and essentially what the final shot will look like.

The A6 Plus overcomes this with the new LUT Preview tool; there are 4 pre-installed preview LUT’s (pulldown to REC709) for the common LOG profiles which include:

LOG-C (ARRI)

VLOG (Panasonic)

SLOG2 (Sony)

SLOG3 (Sony)

Although this feature doesn’t include other standard LOG profiles from the likes of Canon, Fujinon, Blackmagic or JVC, I would assume that with a firmware update, these could be included. One thing to bear in mind is that you should update the firmware to V1.0.7 (link here).

Additionally, much like the SWIT and SmallHD monitors it is now possible to import custom LUT’s via an SD card. If you’re shooting for a specific look or colour pallete, this is an ideal way of previewing the footage on the monitor while shooting in LOG in camera.

After discussions with the ANDYCINE team, it is only possible to import 8 LUT’s at a time. That’s not a huge library, but it is 8 more than what as possible before. Things to note when installing your custom LUT’s:

SD card needts to be in FAT32 or NTFS format.

Maximum 8 LUT files in CUBE format.

The LUT file names must be complete and in either English or Arabic.

To install the LUT’s, insert the SD card into the A6 Plus monitor, double tap the screen to bring up the main menu, then select the ‘Colour’ menu (RGB wheel).

Lut Switch should be ‘On’, and then select ‘Initializing’ under the Lut Import (SD). The LUT’s will then be imported and show as ‘Complete’.

ANDYCINE A6 Plus Monitoring Tools

Enlarging the cameras built in screen isn’t the only feature of an external monitor. The A6 Plus has a range of additional features that can aid with focus, exposure and audio levels. These include:

Histogram.

Focus Assist (with focus level and colour selection).

Zebras from 1% to 100%.

Monochorme.

False colour (2 modes).

Grids.

I use the Focus Assist tool all the time when I shoot with the Panasonic EVA-1 because the viewfinder on the camera isn’t very reliable. This ‘peaking’ feature is a great addition to ensure you nail focus every time, especially when filming with a shallow depth of field.

Pinch zoom is particularly useful for quickly checking focus or particular details in the frame.

False Colour is another advanced monitoring feature that aids with exposure, always aiming for the subject to be in the middle grey range.

New Updated Menu

The new menu design is far more advanced than the previous A6 model. The touch screen aides this greatly, meaning you can make any display or LUT changes quickly. The menu is intuitive, meaning it updates and expands depending on the settings you are changing.

The fast access menu is displayed by swiping up in the bottom zone of the screen. This displays your common settings, I have Focus Assist, False Colour, Histogram, Lut Switch, Nine Grid and Markers on mine. By double tapping the setting you can customize your quick menu too.

Filming Anamorphic With The ANDYCINE A6 Plus

YES, it is possible to monitor a ‘de-squeezed’ image using the A6 Plus. As more cameras include anamorphic filming modes (notably the Panasonic GH5/S1H and Blackmagic), the A6 provides the ideal monitoring tool to de-squeeze your footage in the following modes:

1.25x

1.33x

1.5x

2.0x

2.0x mag

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to test this feature out.

Additional Tools and Features

I’ll often use the A6 Plus when I film with a gimbal, so the size and weight of the monitor is of course important. It is possible to flip the display horizontally and vertically depending on your rigging preferences.

You may be framing your shots for a particular aspect ratio (especially as more and more content is shot in ‘portrait’ for social media content. Although the A6 Plus doesn’t have a 9:16 or 1:1 aspect ratio display included, it does have the following built in:

70%

80%

90%

16:9

16:10

4:3

5:4 (close to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram formats)

1.85:1

2.35:1 (widescreen)

Filming With The ANDYCINE A6 Plus

The A6 Plus has been my go-to monitor for filming across the world, as I mentioned above the Panasonic EVA-1 viewfinder leaves much to be desired, so a larger, brighter and featureful monitor like the A6 Plus is a reliable choice.

A lot of my filming involves fast changing locations and setups, so the higher brightness (500cd/m2) and 1000:1 contrast ratio is beneficial for filming outdoors. The backlight brightness can also be controlled by swiping left or right to decrease or increase the intensity.

When filming in New York, the A6 Plus was used with the Panasonic EVA-1 as the main monitor, it provided the clarity of focus and exposure needed when I was shooting in a dark conference area and outdoors on the streets.

The touch screen monitor is quickly accessible by double-tapping, but quick features can also be accessed by pressing the menu button or swiping, which is much easier than navigating through a complex menu.

The power consumption of the A6 Plus is very good, and I can often use the monitor for a whole shoot before needing to swap out the battery. It is also possible to power the monitor via 12V D-tap, LP-E6 or NP-F (Sony type) batteries.

Final Thoughts and Should You Buy The ANDYCINE A6 Plus?

If you film with a Sony mirrorless camera like the A7III, or the GH5, or even the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K/6K, this a great external monitor for you. It is smaller and cheaper than the SmallHD or Atomos competitors, and is just as featureful. The new A6 Plus’ menu is very easy to navigate, with clear and understandable text. This makes it even easier to install and load up your own custom LUTs.

The A6 Plus is certainly an upgrade from the less than favourable EVA-1 viewfinder, pinch zoom is fast and accurate and the battery life is a big plus point for long filming days.

What I would like to see in new firmware updates or models include 10-bit display, more in-built LUT’s for common cameras, higher brightness and HDR capabilities. What I have come to learn is that the ANDYCINE team are very easy to communicate with, answering any of my queries very quickly, and that they listen to feedback. The advancements from the original A6 monitor to the A6 Plus are great, and I look forward to seeing more from ANDYCINE in the future.

If you have any questions about the A6 Plus or how I have been filming with it, please comment below. You can purchase the ANDYCNE A6 Plus here.

[dailydianakko]

Any headcanons involving Croix and Chariot + the RGB Teams?

Lemme think, this will probably focus mostly on Croix. I’ll give Chariot her own set when I have time.

Croix comes back from jail and finds out that she has like, nine new daughters chariot why

Constanze is definitely Croix’s favorite. Croix picks up sign language fast, will fight for her tiny new daughter. Always mentoring Constanze, even learns some stuff from her.

Diana is super suspicious of Croix, a lot of loitering around her lab, lots of glaring. Croix actually is the bad influence that introduces Diana to unhealthly snack food. They bond over their idiot girlfriends. Chariot takes offense, she’s not dumb, she’s just reckless

Jasminka teams up with Chariot in getting Croix to eat proper. How long have you been eating just noodle cups croix this is why you can’t lift more than 20lbs

Amanda is the one who causes the most explosions on purpose. “What’s this do??” [Giant Explosion] Has the honor of breaking in testing all of Croix’s security systems. Chariot makes a bet on who can get through the system without triggering it first.

Akko tried to hit Croix with a broom when she first came back. It was a knee jerk response and she apologized. Croix was knocked halfway across the courtyard. The trauma of getting attacked by evil Cubes remains.

Barbara doesn’t really know what to make of Croix to be honest. Did have a lowkey crush on her when she started teaching at Luna Nova before missle crisis.

Hannah totally gives the shovel talk to Croix about hurting any of her friends. Has threatened Croix a lot honestly. Chariot is both proud and concerned. Croix gives her pro tips on how to be Ominous and have Presence.

Sucy uses Croix as a lab rat. You caused the missle crisis and almost killed us all you can handle your hair turning into flowers. Chariot gets her to stop after awhile and Croix shares chemical components with Sucy.

Lotte is a Chariox shipper, will help plan dates. Adores the friends to lovers to enemies to lovers again trope. Still keeps an eye on Croix becuase Akko is too trusting.

Chariot and Croix are the youngest teachers/adults on campus so any young adult questions are directed to them. They’re the most relatable adults. Definitely doesn’t often give detentions/demerits. Mostly goes easy on the girls. Croix only punishes for “getting caught”, Chariot is the more noble of the two.

[vrsystem-us]

Can you Game in VR on a Budget?

virtual reality or VR has been hailed as the next paradigm for gaming an immersion ever since it rolled out then rolled over back in the late 90s with early implementations like Sony's Glastron being described by John Carmack as like looking through toilet paper tubes fast forward to 2016 though and the tech was awesome but it still had a big problem the price because on top of the headset gamers in particular needed to shell out for much more powerful hardware than they would need to play the same game in flat mode but there's some good news since that time oculus who sponsored this video has dropped the price of the rift and continued development on some pretty neat invisible mechanisms that work in the background to make VR run on even relatively modest machines and we spent the last week testing to see just how modest a machine you can use and I think you'll be surprised [Music] let's begin with some of the efficiency improvements that are handled by your graphics card because in theory every frame of an image in VR needs to be rendered twice once for each I so technologies like Nvidia's single pass stereo make it so your PC only needs to setup the scenes geometry once and their lens matched shading actually cuts off any pixels which would not be visible anyway due to how the lenses in the headset work pretty neat then we've got the headset specific tech like oculus is asynchronous time warp and space warp which kick in anytime your machine can't maintain the steady 90 frames per second that's required to prevent motion sickness by generating synthetic preemptive frames that act like a sort of suspension mechanism to smooth out the low FPS bumps getting this tech working right was quite a bit of work because GPUs are designed for high throughput but not pre-emptive frame guessing so oculus worked with both GPU manufacturers as part of invidious VR works and AMD's liquid VR initiatives so it's more than a catchy slogan now let's introduce our bare minimum system so we paired up where is it here is a core i3 8100 quad-core processor and a gtx 1050 Ti and ran future marks VR mark which has a neat feature both the rifts minimum and V are ready performance requirements are baked into the results craft and what we found was that even our bottom of the barrel actually managed to meet the minimum spec bar so there you go video done peace out right no yeah no wrong so upon further analysis we actually found that while our rig was outputting 90 frames per second in the basic orange benchmark which matches up with the refresh rate of the head-mounted displays in the rift the actual target is 100 9 frames per second this is because aside from the graphics going on on the screen in VR the system also needs to read sensors and do a bunch of stuff in the background so with the overhead of VR the calculation is that a hundred and nine frames per second in flat mode should correspond to 90 frames per second in VR and superposition basically said the same thing so that setup was only good enough for like the very barest minimum spec so we do need to go a little higher but do we go for CPU or GPU well we were watching our CPU load pattern during the runs and our processor even though it's a measly core i3 well it is a quad core and it didn't look that busy so we bumped our graphics up to a GTX 1060 to see where that would get us usually people would pair such a card with an i-5 class chip but we're focusing on VR here and even with all the trickery it is still mostly GPU bound and check this out so it turns out that I 3 + 10 60 combo here actually looks good to go with a super rating in VR Marc orange room and a full bar in superpositions optimum preset so that puts our total system cost at just over nine hundred US dollars and bear in mind but that is including the Windows 10 home operating system which microsoft recently jacked up to a hundred and forty bucks so if you already have windows or whatever then now you can subtract that of course though those are synthetics so the next step is to go lab rat mode and put this to the test now normally I game in VR at home on a gtx 980ti so i will be able to tell the difference if this doesn't manage to stay as smooth so let's fire up the oculus performance profiler analysis tool and head-up display which should help us pinpoint the cause of any framerate drops that we experience oh cool okay so this is Aki redesigned home interface thing now you've got this control panel here that you can move to wherever it is that you want it to go and then you can go ahead and decide well you know which menu do you want to see oh close them so there's my library there's my explore tab here then you can kind of adjust this one over here Oh neat you can interact with the desktop as well oh that's trippy let's go ahead and look at the other monitor the one that's not capturing my experience right now ah yes hey you can mess with Ivan hey Ivan I am opening your Start menu what are you gonna do about it in fact you oh wait I probably shouldn't open fraps oh that just glitched it out I don't know I don't know what this thing is yeah thank you let's get our you monitors different sizes yep one is 4k one is 1080 dang it Ivan game now right walk around the place somewhere because she didn't mean it social so you can invite people to come over to your virtual home friends currently zero friends online thanks that's why you wanted me to open that isn't it alright what's next I've played VR shooters dang it yeah it's really fun all right well I think that's good I think that's all the evidence I need this is working awesome so for our last trick we're trying out the climb kind of the crisis of VR if you think about it that way like the graphics in this game or especially when it was first released are pretty incredible compared to what else there is now what I just alright oh that's a long way to fall huh this is maximum settings yeah go go go go look at me I'm like Superman oh-oh-oh Superman falls sometimes ok so actually that went surprisingly well but still the point remains that in a massive surprise to no one just because a benchmark gives you a good score and you can run many VR games well on a relatively inexpensive budget does not automatically mean that you can run any game maxed out in VRS I mean same ideas in flat mode right so just like flat mode if you do have some more budget and you're buying a VR gaming rig it wouldn't be a terrible idea to bump your specs a little if you want to play VR versions of flat games like fallout 4 and Skyrim since VR is more demanding but frankly I've actually found that the most fun that I've had is in games that were designed for VR and what's cool is that the climb in my opinion is more of a tech demo than an actual game and that one still ran decently and most of the VR games out there that I've tried some of which are good and free like Robo recall are not nearly as demanding because it's in the developers best interest to reach as many customers as possible with their games so our PC right here and of course we're not factoring in some of the RGB nonsense and stuff like that in our in our cost 4 but our PC here can enable a ton of awesome VR experiences exactly the way it is so thanks to you guys for watching thanks to oculus for sponsoring this video if you guys dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like is anyone wearing an LT t-shirt not no one where's your team spirit like the LT t-shirts that we have and also our community forum which you should totally join

https://youtu.be/8ZG3e_Nn2ps

[allspark]

It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like DuckTales, Ghostbusters, Star Wars Adventures, and more! All coming your way for April 10th!

CLYDE GN

Jim Benton (A/CVR) Jim Benton

An all-new original graphic novel by the author of The New York Times-bestselling series Dear Dumb Diary. When Clyde the bear decides to ditch his safe and peaceful life in Cubville and head off for the mean streets of Grizzly City, he learns, with the help of a reformed juvenile delinquent butterfly, the Bad Life isn’t always so great, and there’s something to be said for helping your friends and family even though that really does kind of stink a little.

•   Dog Man author Dav Pilkey says: “Jim Benton is a comic genius and a brilliant cartoonist!” •   DEAR DUMB DIARY has sold almost nine million books, and three recent titles in the series have been New York Times bestsellers. •   The series FRANNY K. STEIN has sold over a million books, and is now on the seventh book in the series.

DUCKTALES #20

Various (A) Various (CVR A&B) Disney

It’s another two-part adventure for Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie as Fethry Duck joins the team in the “Saga of the Super-Intern!” What chaos will be unleashed in Duckburg this time?!

GHOSTBUSTERS: 35TH ANNIV: THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS

Cavan Scott (A/CVR) Marcelo Ferreira

The 35th Anniversary of the Ghostbusters is upon us! Let’s celebrate with four spooktacular weekly comics featuring different Ghostbuster teams in all-new standalone adventures!

THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS keep losing business to a flashy new rival ghost-catching company: SPOOKS AWAY! They seem to have better gear, better threads… better everything! In fact, Spooks Away seems determined to ruin the RGB. But there’s something far more sinister than a hostile takeover going on here, and it’s up to Ray Stantz to go undercover to find out who-or what-is behind Spooks Away’s sudden rise to supernatural elimination superstardom.

The Real Ghostbusters in an all-new original adventure by the ‘busterific creative team of Cavan Scott (Star Wars Adventures) and Marcelo Ferreira (Back to the Future)!

STAR WARS ADVENTURES TALES FROM VADERS CASTLE BOX SET

Cavan Scott (A) Derek Charm, Various (CVR) Francesco Francavilla

Collecting all five issues of the popular event series! If you missed “Vader’s Castle” before, here’s your chance to read all the spooky tales from a galaxy far, far away… This set features the original covers by award-winning artist Francesco Francavilla without logos, plus a very special sketch variant of #1-perfect for conventions or in-store signings!

  Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for April 10th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like