#(they are a bunch of pixels after all)

[darkclouud9]

yippee!

this took so long I had to edit it 17 billion times before growing okay with it. it looks. okay.

cloud ☁️

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

One of the half burnt out lightbulbs in my bedroom (it has been flickering like a strobe light for months whenever it tries to work again. Not great for my epilepsy but I’m pretty sure my building forgot I mentioned it) flickered a few times (as usual) and then just worked normally (for now at least) and it’s like adjusting a camera’s aperture after it was stuck on the wrong setting for months. I forgot that the lighting could actually be decent in here without my lamp on. Fucking wild.

[strwberri-milk]

Lately I have been seeing fanart of the LADs men being jealous of their Blobbus counterparts from the new event. I would love to see you write something similar that revolves around the guy's Blobbus

Zayne doesn't really get jealous, especially not over a bunch of pixels on a screen. However, the next time he catches you fawning over the little character he'll ask if you're really going to ignore him in favour of the blue blob. You barely notice him while you're cooing over it falling over when he gently takes your phone out of your hands, pulling you onto his lap to shower you in as much attention as you've been giving your phone.

Xavier does not like that you're not talking to him because of that little blob. At first he only played the game because of you - he didn't really feel like the game was up his alley but you had so much fun talking to him about it he just had to give it a chance. It doesn't take him long to get fed up though, pouting at you from behind the phone as he asks you in that soft voice of his if you'd really rather play with that blob than him.

Rafayel is NAWT a big fan of it either. He mopes and pouts if he realises you're throwing away his attention in favour of that vaguely fish like blob. The next time you're playing on the couch he squirms his way between your phone and your face, burying his face in your neck as he gently nips and bites to return your attention to him like he deserves. If you don't respond he'll take your phone and put it in your pocket, continuing to beg for your attention.

Sylus doesn't understand it at all. He lets you have your fun with it, not taking action immediately but it also doesn't really take him all that long to retaliate. After the nth time of hearing you coo at the devious looking blob he'll sneak his arms around you, firmly planting his chin in your shoulder as he asks you if you really think it's a good idea to have been ignoring him for so long. Spoiler alert - your body is not very happy with you but you can't help the satisfaction that courses through your veins.

[sootsz]

qsmp has accidentally stumbled into a psychology experiment that would make the stanford prison experiment sob in fear. they’ve gotten a bunch of cc’s, and tens of thousands of viewers, to be deeply emotionally connected to pixel eggs. in doing so they’ve presented a problem:

how the fuck do you get outta this

the eggs were obviously never intended to be permanent (logging on every day to do tasks isn’t feasible to upkeep forever) and they were even given a vague limit of When Mama Dragon Comes Back (and then, of course, the “6 days til they die” thing). now you’ve made it so quackity (and his team) have a big ol dilemma, where two things are true: 1) they can’t keep the eggs forever since it’s not sustainable 2) you can’t take away the eggs without, oopsies, emotionally damaging your friends that you invited to have fun on your server.

turns out, when you give a group of humans all their own fully-realized individual who presents as a (weak, vulnerable) child that is in need of care from them, whatever instinct has kept us alive for generations goes “!!!!!” which is both really cool and compassionate, but also kinda concerning!

because, well: not sustainable! and if the eggs aren’t sustainable, what’s the alternative? killing them?? no! just look at jaiden’s reaction to bobby “losing” a life, even when it wasn’t his last one. or bad’s genuinely heart wrenching reaction to dapper losing a life. or how quiet and angry phil got after chayanne and tallulah had a “nightmare,” before it was resolved. that’s not acting. that’s real. what the hell will they do if the eggs actually die? from what i see, the cc’s are taking the “6 days til death” thing as something that’s avoidable. a threat that can be overcome. and for their sake, i hope it is.

ever played a dnd game where you actually feel insulted bc of smth someone’s pc did? yeah. that x20 because there’s SO much overlap between “streamer persona” and “literally just who they are”. and this level of roleplay character bleeding is cool, but i hope the eggs are handled carefully, or all those involved might end up actually hurt.

there’s also the whole added element of fans, many of whom only tune into the streams for egg content. the plot is very egg-centric. the roleplaying and characterization that the cc’s are doing is all centered around the eggs in one way or another. it’s been going on for a month, but it does not feel at all resolved, and plot-wise it would completely mess up so many plot threads happening if the eggs were all to go (charlie’s unresolved deal with lil j, quackity’s goal to bond with tallulah, the trial, etc etc) so if you take away the eggs, you risk messing up the whole vibe they’ve got going on, and facing backlash from fans who are also emotionally compromised by pixel eggs

we inherently want to protect the cute and vulnerable, and by god are these eggs cute and so very fragile. (then, there��s another layer of people’s own issues that they project onto the eggs. be it desire for paternity, some kind of maternal instinct, or, even in the matter of chayanne, using chayanne as a sort of way to cope with loss by making connections between chayanne and technoblade. which is beautiful and very sweet but would give chayanne dying some additional emotionally charged elements which i think should be avoided at all costs). there’s a reason that movies and other media generally do not kill named children characters—audiences really hate it. it’s taboo for good reason.

which leads us to

schrodinger’s egg: until sunday, they r both alive and dead. and this is both good and bad. god help us all

[tickfleato]

how to make cool blobby turing patterns in photoshop

i'll preface with i learned the basic loop from skimming a tutorial on youtube, but as someone who prefers written tutorials i'm sure many would appreciate one! also, the second part of this is some of the visual effects i figured out on my own using blending modes and stuff.

i'm using photoshop CS4 on a mac so some buttons and stuff might be in different places on windows and newer photoshop versions but all the actions are the same. my canvas is 1000x1000 pixels.

UPDATES (i'm hoping these'll show up whenever you open the readmore?)

it's possible to do something similar in krita using this plugin, made by the love @arcaedex

it's also possible to do this in photopea, a free browser alternative to photoshop! the results are pretty much identical.

FIRST off you wanna get or make a black and white image of some kind. it has to be one layer. can be noise, a photo, a bunch of lines, whatever. here's mine, just some quick airbrush lines:

now find the actions tab. idk what it looks like in newer versions of photoshop but you probably won't need to dig!

hit the little page thingy to make a new pattern. once you hit 'record', it'll record everything you do. the little square 'stop' icon will end it.

now you want to do a high pass filter. you can mess around with the radius to change the size of your squiggles, but the tutorial had it set to 6. experiment!

now add the 'threshold' adjustment layer. i use the adjustments tab but i think there's also a dropdown menu somewhere. keep it at the default, 128. merge it down. (control or command + E or you can right click it like some kind of weirdo)

and finally, the gaussian blur! the radius of this affects the shape and size of your squiggles as well. i like to keep it around 4.5 but you can mess around with that too.

after that, hit 'stop' on the action you're recording, and then repeat it a bunch of times using the 'play' button, until you have something you like, like this:

WOW!! that was fun!! and only a little tedious thanks to the power of macros. anyway, here's some fun layer blending stuff i like to do. it's with a different pattern cause i made this bit first.

anyway, using a black and white gradient (or a grey base that you do black and white airbrush on), make a layer with the vivid light. this will make the blobs look thicker or thinner.

then, for cool colors, do a gradient map adjustment layer over that:

and finally, my best friend, the overlay layer. just using a gradient here bc i'm lazy, but feel free to experiment with brushes, colors, and blending modes!

NOW GO. MAKE COOL SHIT WITH THE POWER OF MATH. AND SEND IT TO ME

also these are not hard and fast rules PLEASE mess around with them to see what kind of weird shit you can make. here's a gif. as you can see i added some random airblush blobs in the middle of it, for fun.

[foone]

I was gonna mock up a screenshot for a shitpost*, but then I realized it'd be really annoying to do because it would involve FONTS.

I'd have to match a font from a program from 1999.

And by "have to", I mean that the shitpost would in NO WAY be diminished by just faking it with another font. The idea works no matter how accurate the font is!

Unfortunately...

I care way too much about fonts to do that. I have spent YEARS matching fonts at the pixel level! I can't just turn that off.

So it would be way more annoying to do this shitpost as me, because someone else could do it in a much simpler way: don't match the font at all. Who cares? That's not the point!

I'm not sure if I'm like this because I'm autistic or if this is some completely separate bit of weird in my head. It's like being a perfectionist (WHO, ME?) but only specifically for this one thing: pre-9/11** fonts!

* the shitpost was "my dream? Pirating bunches of genders of napster***" and a screenshot of the interface where I'd searched for "gender" and it was listing different genders, get fun and weird with it, make it sound like "badly named mp3 files"**** .

** ok look, the actual cutoff point is basically "windows XP", which as we all know***** was released a month after 9/11.

*** the 1999 piracy software, not the later legal streaming service.

**** I now realize that was long enough ago that a large portion of the people reading this may never experienced that pre-torrent nightmare of badly named files.

***** speaking of weird in my brain, why is it that this is the kind of dates that I consider reference points to use in writing? Look, everyone knows that 9/11 and Windows XP are two close events (of equivalent magnitude, clearly).

****** this footnote is a lie. You cheated, like this is a Sierra Entertainment Hint Book, and this is a false question to let the book admonish you for reading ahead! But no seriously, I'm now wondering if the number of footnotes in this and an earlier post is evidence that I forgot to take my ADHD meds. This is a lot of tangents.

[cosmicdream222]

Dream life script Google Doc template ✩ pink pixel princess aesthetic

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・。.。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Sharing with everyone a Google Docs template I made to script my dream life 💕

I decorated the doc in a pink princess aesthetic, with animated pixel gifs I’ve had saved on my computer from 2006. I was living in Japan at the time and was obsessed with pixel art. 😍

✩ Dream Life Google Doc Template download ✩

⬆️ The link will make a copy directly to your Google drive.

What to use this for:

Scripting your desired life/dream life, as a void list, as a shifting script.

It’s fairly straightforward, the first page has a general summary of your desired life with umbrella affs to say that cover the entire document. Then there are area of life categories with a gratitude affirmation below each one, with space to write your desires.

A lot of my own script was inspired by the doc from baejin cafe’s perfect life sub. I literally summarized large portions of the affs from there. I removed any of my specific personal desires but left a lot of stuff that is general and fairly universal, to give you ideas or a starting point.

Of course feel free to add, delete, rearrange, customize it to your own liking. The last page has a bunch of extra decorations I made with the gifs if you want to change any of them or copy/paste them elsewhere.

Manifesting Your Dream Life Challenge idea:

Fill out the doc with all your dream life desires.

Pick a few umbrella affs that state you have all your desires already (use the ones above or make your own). Repeat these affs throughout the day, especially right after you wake up and as you’re falling asleep.

Optional: Use tapping or psych-k to reinforce your affs.

Listen to IWIIGI’s Docs Desires sub for at least 30 min everyday

Live in the state of knowing your desires are yours, they’re in the mail on their way to you right now! 💌

[akanemnon]

I totally get not wanting to do the geno run, I remember wanting to start the run, killed a single monster, and deleted the save.

A friend was mean to me for giving up on it.

This was back when the game was just a few months old, and we were 14-16 years old.

It's just... like you said. I don't want to hurt the pixilated people. Makes me feel sad. And because I was maybe 15 years old, and very sensitive, made me feel extreme empathy for these characters.

I'm really sorry your friend was mean to you because you didn't want to go throught with the genocide route. These characters are written with so much love and care, that it is no wonder that you would get attached to them and wouldn't want to hurt them. I literally feel the same way.

I have no way to confirm this, but I have heard that back in the day people used to be really mean when people didn't play Undertale the "correct" way. That kinda sounds like one of these cases.

There is nothing wrong with not wanting to do the genocide route. There is also nothing wrong with going through with it. Undertale is a game and it gives you the option to approach it in any way you like. It also reacts to the way you do it.

In the end it all boils down to what you get the most out of in the game. For some people it's the characters, for others it's the fights, and then there are those who want to scour every single thing this game has to offer. Undertale has something for everyone.

I am more than content with only doing the pacifist route and never touching the game again after that. Yes, these characters are just a bunch of lines code and pixels, but in my mind, they're quite happy with the life I could help give them on that Switch cartridge.

[kairiscorner]

the man, the myth, the legend himself dr ratio veritas ... is now made public !!

fyi . . . i have a bot request form you guys can send requests to !! updates are slow, i apologize (⁠｡⁠ŏ⁠﹏⁠ŏ⁠) but i'll try my best to get through them, and i will only do requests that fall within my comfort zone !!

DR. VERITAS RATIO

“if one day your brain shows symptoms

of dullness, then please

give the doctor a call.”

ᯓ★ catching a glimpse of him working out.

you couldn't, for the life of you, tolerate such an arrogant and narcissistic smartass like veritas ratio... but oh, you wouldn't mind seeing those muscles and that handsome face of his again, even if he himself pissed you off. luckily (or unluckily) for you, your little trip of seeing him at the gym to hand over some important documents gave you quite a good view of this egotistical man.

ᯓ★ he couldn't understand you.

to dr ratio, nobody in that damned guild really lived up to the vision he hoped; none of them shared the same sentiment or kind of intellect he possessed, and it made him frustrated and somewhat... lonely.

that was, until he met you. he had acknowledged nobody before as a genius, nobody but himself, until there was you. but there was one thing this genius couldn't decipher about you... and it was the fact you did not seek to eradicate the plague of ignorance with him in the intelligentsia guild.

why, oh why, did you reject his offer to expand the universe's knowledge with the greats... only to be a humble servant for others?

ᯓ★ your academic rival.

veritas ratio prided himself on the fact that nobody could come close to his achievements and intellect at his university, he was just that good at everything he did.

however... you ruined his peace of mind and decided to give him a run for his money by taking his spot as the top student last semester by a few points.

though, as much as you both had a mutual distaste and rivalry for each other going on... you two were paired together for an important project. and of course... you had to work together. hooray.

ᯓ★ nobody thought he would be a family man.

not a single soul that knew dr ratio ever had the feeling that he would settle down with someone he would love more than himself, than his books, theses, and knowledge–let alone have a child with them.

however, you and your child with him are living proof that even a man as cold and critical as him are capable of loving and finding their purpose as not only a scholar, a professor, a doctor... but as a parent.

ᯓ★ your ex husband.

after being married to dr veritas ratio for three years and ending your union with him after such a fruitless and one-sided relationship... you had felt so liberated, as if all those years with him were just a bad memory for you.

however, when you went out to dinner at a high-end classy restaurant, the very last thing on your mind that time was the chance of you seeing your ex husband again... only for that one slim chance to come to fruition, with you being face to face with the man who seemed to never love you when you two were together.

his amber eyes gazed back at yours with a hint of longing in them, of endless nights of longing for you, his ex spouse...

ᯓ★ he wants to be your only one.

dr veritas ratio is a universal level problem solver; capable of engineering such helpful devices that saves planets and star systems across the galaxy, delegating on important issues for the good of humanity, and an important doctor that alleviates the malady of ignorance... with 8 PhDs to his very famous and well-known name.

...it shouldn't bother him this much that you're so obsessed and giggly about a bunch of pixels across your screen that utter binary code that translates into words you comprehend... right?

then why is it that as he tries to relax in his bathtub that he can't seem to get that release he's seeking from the pent-up frustration he gets when a character from your favorite game compliments you, gives you gifts, or... says they want you to be theirs. surely, he can find a solution to this finicky problem he has to make you his again, no...?

[chaos-in-deepspace]

LADS Xavier: Horror Games | SFW Drabble

Had this idea earlier chatting with the group. Just. Xavier things. Cute boi. Happy guy. I love him. Also this is completely unedited so you're welcome in advance. Typos are a paid actor in my works.

Pairings: Xavier x Reader Warnings: Horror Games Disclaimer: This is an original fan work for “Love and Deepspace”. Do not repost on other platforms or plagiarize. All characters shown in this fic is 18+.

Blog Information | Masterlist

Xavier

Technically speaking, this had all been your idea. You had seen a new horror game that had just come out and were itching to play it. The only issue was the fact that you tended to clam up while playing scary games, so you opted to simply watch.

Which ended up with you here, sitting on the couch with Xavier. Your legs were touching under the blanket as you leaned into him, watching the screen with interest.

He had a casual expression on his face, clearly enjoying playing the game as his fingers fiddled with the controls. He was doing well despite it not being a combat-based game, and he was quick to figure out a few of the puzzles.

Your issue was his bravery. He never hesitated to do anything in this game. This meant it was going by faster than you expected, and the deeper he got into the game, the worse it got. Your heart already felt like it was going to pound out of your chest as you jumped slightly at some of the background ambiance in the game. Your hand bunched up his white hoodie, and he looked over at you for a moment.

"Are you still doing okay?" he asked, noticing how terrified you looked. He was just about to go through one of the doors of the game, and you were now squirming.

"Can you not open that door?" you finally said, your words coming out hurriedly as you stared at the screen. This was one of those horror games where the protagonist opened the door at an agonizingly slow pace, basically peering into the void for a second before fully opening it.

"You mean the door I need to open in order to progress the story?" he asked with a slight chuckle. He had obviously noticed how high-strung you had gotten during the game. It was hard to hide the way you flinched or almost whimpered whenever something scary happened on the screen.

"Ya, I feel like something scary is on the other side of it." You confessed, your eyes still locked on the screen. Xavier gently placed the controller down on his lap.

"Is our brave hunter scared of a few pixels on the screen?" He asked, his tone now teasing. Seeing how the controller was no longer in his hand gave you the confidence to look at him, a small cowl on your face.

"It's not my fault this game is terrifying." You huffed, crossing your arms. You guessed it did come with the territory of being a horror game, but still. You hadn't expected him to breeze through it and get to every single scary quick time event the game had to offer in the three hours he had been playing it.

Xavier chuckled, going to cup your cheek and tug on it, "It's alright, I promise, I'll protect you if anything decides to leave the TV and get to you." The thought had you whining at the mental image it provided. The terrifying monster crawled out of the TV, head twisted at an awkward angle as his crab walked over to you, the bones creaking...god, now you were freaking yourself out.

"Xavie, I want to be able to sleep tonight, you know." You complained, knowing he was doing this on purpose. He would often try to scare you just to see your reactions. How horror never really seemed to bother him was beyond your comprehension.

"That's fine; you can just sleep in my bed tonight. I can protect you better if you're in my arms." He said, and you blushed slightly. It wasn't like it was uncommon to share a bed with him; you two were dating for a while.

"I dunno; it might take more than that to make me comfortable enough to sleep." You murmured.

Xavier hummed as he thought, "Then how about...after we finish for the night, we get some warm milk, watch some cat videos on your phone, and then I'll read you a story in bed to help you fall asleep better?"

His offer was a good one, and it had you smiling, "Alright, deal...on one condition." You held out a single finger, and Xavier smiled, waiting for you to finish your thought, "Tomorrow morning, you wake up early enough to go to that diner across the street so I can get a greasy breakfast sandwich."

"You mean so we can get greasy breakfast sandwiches?" He corrected you, and now you were giggling.

"Ya, so we can do that together. Do we have a deal?"

"You drive a hard bargain," He began, then held out his hand to shake yours, "But I accept as long as you don't wake me up before the sun rises."

"Like I'd be awake by then anyway," You shook his hand, his grip tight on you as he dragged you into his embrace. He was now pulling you closer onto his lap, settling you between his legs. His arms wrapped around your waist as he clicked on the controller to resume the game.

"Alright, but first, we have to go through this door."

"W-wait, Xavier, no," And just as you predicted, there was something scary on the other side, and sadly, Xavier learned the hard way not to rest his chin on the head of someone who jumped when scared. Thankfully for him, he healed fast. Sadly for you...well, at least he kissed the top of your head.

[gaypleasantview]

⋆˖⁺‧₊☆ say my name. // Autumn Drop Day 2 ☆₊‧⁺˖⋆

⋆ TF-EF, necklace, binned as accessory (layerable) or BV jewelry

⋆ 512x256 textures on a 158 poly mesh

⋆ 26 simlish letters in two color options

⋆ compressed, tooltipped, come with thumbnails

Link, swatch, detailed credits and more info under the cut ♡

Hi all! Here comes my second creation this month. I love scrolling through older MTS downloads because it's full of absolute gems, and one day I stumbled upon these super cute necklaces from 2006 made by crosieramanda. I knew I needed to have them, but I also love using as much Simlish instead of English as possible in my game, so then I decided I might as well just use these as my base and go for it!

While the original necklaces have bold letters that make a statement, I felt like choosing something that would be a little more on the elegant side. I ended up using all the 26 English-to-Simlish capital letters of a font called Petal to the Metal by Franzilla. I don't know if I will ever understand which letters came from which Sims game but I'm just gonna assume these ones are something that makes sense in the TS2 universe because the first time I thought to question it was after I was halfway done with the textures. There was no going back at that point. They are labeled so you can check the tooltips in-game if you're not sure which letter is in front of you, and be careful because like a third of them just look like the letter F.

The necklaces use the well-known and well-loved mesh by Dr Pixel. Because of that, these are only available for TF to EF for now. Most of the stuff was just copied from the original files, so these pendants shine under lights just like the original ones. From the technical side of things, the files look neat but there's a couple of seemingly unused resources left in there that I first tried deleting to my best ability, which led to the necklaces not showing up in my game at all. I decided to leave those be because they are literally just a bunch of TXMT strings that barely affect the file size anyway.

Known issues: during one of my play tests I would get white seams showing up at the bottom of the mesh when zooming out. I could barely replicate that to double check so I still have no idea if it's a mesh issue or something with my recolors, and I don't really know how to fix it either, so let's hope it won't appear too much for anyone else :] Aside from that, I really should play test more because I noticed too late that on the silver necklaces, the chain and the pendants are slightly different shades. I think it happens irl too so I'm telling myself it's fine because modifying 52 files again would probably make me cry.

Credits: crosieramanda at MTS for the original English initial necklaces (check them out, they're great), Dr Pixel for the mesh, Franzilla for the Petal to the Metal font, and this source for the graphics in the post

♡ Download ♡

Mesh by Dr Pixel (MESH_DPXLalphaEaringsNecklace080405) is included. Please check if you have it in your game already before installing it.

⋆ Accessory/glasses bin: SFS | Mediafire ⋆ BV jewelry bin: SFS | Mediafire

♡ Swatch ♡

[nuttytani]

Reacting to you playing otome games

characters: dan heng and jing yuan

tw: none except- maybe not proof read?

a/n: i guess we can officially say i'm obsessed with hsr now. my brain has been annoying me to write something for these two boys, and... i guess here we are.

Dan Heng

From all the world-saving and stellaron crisis, Dan Heng wasn’t able to spend much time with you, much to his dismay. Yes, he’d share a few text messages once in a while or even call each other, but those days were getting rarer as his work became even more serious.

On one of those rare calls, he found out that you took on a new interest. “Otome games”, or so they were called. He had little knowledge about it other than knowing that it was a type of dating simulation.

He had no issues with you and your new obsession after all, it’s just a game, and you were having fun!

Or so he thought until your love with these otome games became a little too much to the point of interfering with HIS love life. Why is his cuddle time with you being taken away by some- chunk of hot pixels? Instead of your hands wrapping around his waist, they now held your phone as you giggled at that….undeniable hot chunk of pixels. (According to you, it looked a lot like him and had a similar vibe)

You even had alarms set for your daily activities for these games, which had you scrambling for your phone; all the time. Your eyes would light up at whatever dialogues your "husbando" would say. 

Internally he would be screaming; "WHY WON'T YOU LOOK AT ME THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THOSE DARN 2D MEN"

Enough was enough! Dan Heng realised that at this rate, he would be ousted from being your boyfriend by a fictional character!

 Soon enough, that's how you found yourself on the floor, with Dan Heng behind you, caging you between his arms. 

Dan Heng grumbled, "It's my turn now. Pay attention to me," while avoiding direct eye contact with you.

"Oh no, have I made my boyfriend feel neglected? I'm sorry babe!" You turned to give a reassuring pat on his head, then jokingly added, "Though I suppose... You will need to learn how to share me from now on."

You receive a smack on the head at that

Jing Yuan 

Lately, he had noticed a hype around Luofu, which he soon found out, thanks to Yanqing. According to the young boy, certain “otome games” were becoming quite popular amongst the newer generation. Something about conversing with “hot 2D men with crazy backstories” made them feel “ooh la la”. Or something along those lines, Yanqing’s exact words, not his. 

“It’s actually super fun! Would you like to play as well? You get daily 5 tickets in a day, so it keeps you on your toes. And if I'm not wrong, there's even a character who resembles you, general!”

Jing Yuan declined and suggested the young lad seek someone else for his otome games, as he deemed himself too old and out of touch for such interests. He glanced up from his paperwork to find the boy giving him a disappointed look before quickly running off.

A few days after that incident, you had also fallen prey to these games, he figured as Jing Yuan listened to you talk excitedly about a "mysterious therapist with silver hair" from a newly released game, and how the character was both sweet and suspicious.

He was glad that you were enjoying yourself. Sometimes, it can be challenging to discover new interests as we grow older. At least, that was how Jing Yuan personally felt. 

As long as no harm was done, all is good!

Harm was indeed done. A lot in fact

He eventually discovered that these "ikemen" characters on your phone were taking his rightful place as your boyfriend. 

You no longer played with his hair or let him sleep on your lap… All these activities were taken away from him as if snatching candy from a baby.

It had only been a week into your... newfound obsession. You even bought a bunch of “Visual Novels” and spent many hours holed up in your room, and staying awake late into the night.

When he got concerened as asked for you to come to bed, all he'd get was: "Just five more minutes Jun-Jun! I need to complete this chapter, I swear I'll be there in five minutes, trust me."

Hmmm, nope, trust shattered and heart also shattered. Poor Jun-Jun.

It really made him feel sad, Jing Yuan’s signature :3 face soon turned :( which everyone noticed, it was hard not to. Even you thought his new behaviour to be strange and confronted him.

“My dear, I don’t mind you having hobbies, but please, give equal love and attention to your partner and not just those fictional “silver haired therapist” of yours.” Jing Yuan pleaded you with those puppy dog eyes.

“You should have said so from the beginning! I’ll tone my playing down a little. I didn’t mean to make you feel lonely…” You felt guilty and gave him a big warm hug, much to Jing Yuan’s pleasure.

“....How about a compromise?Let's both play these games together. Pretty please? At least once? You won't regret it! We can add each other as friends.”

He gave in. 

And now he’s obsessed with it.

Much more than you. 

honkai star rail taglist: none at the moment, but if you're interested, I can make one!

[bahrtofane]

here we go again - pt.2

pt.1, pt.3

jude x fem!reader , trent x fem!reader

empty promise after another leaves you walking in the cold. alone. on valentines day. youre never speaking to another player again. but, a familair face is here to save the day

word count - 2.2k+

watch it - jude is still an ass sorrehhh. angsy angst and more angst ! ur welcome

-----

You don't know where the hell you are, what time it is. A few more minutes you're going to forget your own name and start screaming to feel something other than misery. So  much for the holiday of love. You are feeling so much love you could jump out of a plane. With no parachute. And land on a pile of rocks. 

You kick a trash can out of frustration and groan at the impact it gives your poor exposed and suffering toes. 

You can not believe the events of today. Everything keeps replaying over and over like a broken projector. The fact that he got you to dress up in your favorite special occasion floor length dress just to have it drag across the grimy dirty fucking disgusting club floor. Oh god you want him dead. 

You're deep into Birmingham nightlife by the time your senses come back to you enough to fish your phone out of your bag. The bag is a birthday gift from your mother of all people forced to be seen among that bunch of people,it makes you seeth. 

You should have known taking you to Birmingham wasn't a good idea. It made no sense in your head, why fly from Madrid to god damn Birmingham. You both live and work in Madrid? Your sweet naive mind thought he came up with something unique, something sweet. 

You groan the second your phone turns on. One too many notifications to keep up with and by the looks of it they aren't stopping anytime soon. Twitter is blowing up, you already know what it is. A bunch of low quality pixels of you entering with him and looking lost with a bunch of tacky headlines. You'll get that settled when you get home. You go to order an uber, but your phone manages to die on you miraculously. How lucky. All the times you spent trying to get a hold of Jude really drained the battery. You clench your jaw. 

Good god. You shove your phone back in your purse and keep stomping through birmingham. Shivering with each step. You didn't bring a jacket, how foolish.

You try to follow streets you think you know, but it's not going very well. There aren't very many people this far out. Leave it to fucking Jude to take you to the worlds more obscure club location. It's been about an hour since you left him at the club you think. An hour of walking through alley ways and neighborhoods that only raise the hair on the back of your neck. He couldn't even get you a ride home?

You think the last person you saw was a nurse chucking coffee at a bus station, the bus that you tried to catch but it sped away faster than your aching legs could take you. Better night than yours you're sure. You wander about trying to find at least a store open to be able to call for a taxi. 

You hear the crunch of slowing tires come up behind you, and you instantly quicken up your pace. You almost swear you hear your name shouted, but you don't stop. The second time, it's a little too clear to be mistaken for anyone else's name as the car comes to a crawl side by side to you. 

You turn on your heel harshly, “why in god's name-“ your voice dies the moment you recognize the familiar car model, and its driver. Trent. Oh.

“Get in the car." he dead pans, windows rolled at the way down, door already unlocked for you.

You wrinkle your nose, “I don't want to talk trent." 

The very last thing you need is that sorry excuse of a man to send his friend of all people to run after you and do his bidding where he fell short just hours before. This is so embarrassing it only makes you wish his car would explode. And then drive it into the club. While it's on fire. 

“I'm not letting you roam around these parts at this time, just get in." he sighs. 

You scowl, "he’s low for sending you to change my mind, after this whole fucking night why cant you leave me alone."

He gives you a look, “this has nothing to do with him, this is me. Worried for you. “

“Fuck off." you spit. 

“You’re so hard headed, just get in the damn car before someone robs you. Or worse." 

"How'd you even know I was here?" you squint at him. 

he sighs, rubbing his eyes, "i still have your location from when i picked you up for his birthday. And I heard about everything from just about everyone. "

"You have nothing else to do on valentines day?" you jab. 

He stays silent, hands wringing the steering wheel. You notice he's in what looks like pjs, Liverpool jacket thrown on top. He drove all this way for you?

You swallow your pride for a moment, hiking up your dress while you duck inside the car. Sighing in relief as the pressure is taken off your aching legs. Snapping your seatbelt over you, swinging your purse over your head and gently setting it on your lap, wiping away the tears that blur your vision. 

Your rage has turned into a simmer for now. The main goal at the moment is to just get out of these clothes and sleep till you forget what year it is. 

Trent is quiet while he lets you get comfortable, rolling up his windows backup and locking the doors. You've never sat passenger in his car before. Hell you haven't seen him in months.

“Did he touch you." he asks, turning the heater on higher.

You put your hand out in front of where the hot air blows oh so nice on your frozen hands,“What?”

“You have a bruise on the back of your arm. Did he do that? “

“No.” you sigh. 

he turns to face you, brows furrowed,“i need to know if he did. “ 

“He didn’t trent, i'm alright.'' your voice softens.

he nods, hands resting on the wheel,“where do you need to go? “

“Just take me to my hotel please."

He nods, handing you his phones to put the directions in. You watch as he takes the car out of park, making a u turn and heading out of whatever bizarre neighborhood you're in, back into the city. And  soon the freeway. Birmingham flashes by you and you try to forget the man that sits like a heavy weight in your mind.

You still wonder why Trent would make the trip all the way out just to pick you up. especially if Jude wasn't involved. You're somewhat close you suppose. The kind where you would call him a friend in a group setting, but not much more. You've spent only a couple of times truly alone. You don't know if you're that close.

 Trent has always been somewhat of a mystery to you. Few appearances and even fewer words. Jude had told you once he was shy, just taking a minute to warm up to new people. He has a habit of staring off into nothing you noticed at Judes birthday party. Always quick to snap out of it the moment eyes were on him. Oh so different from the way he plays. You've seen him now and again in highlights and clips posted on instagram. He's good, but man is he aggressive. You expect it for a defender but the man gets up in everyones space on the pitch.

A complete 180 from the way he can barely look you in the eye now. What is he thinking?

You don't let your curiosity blind you from being at least a little courteous. 

“Thank you, " you mumble, playing with the fabric of your dress, "and sorry for being a bitch.“

“Hey I don’t blame you.” he shrugs. 

You hum and leave it at that. You'll put unraveling Trent on the to do list. 

Your hotel comes into view and you thank him again for the kindness, promising to make it up to him some day. He waves you off, seeing till you're inside to leave. 

Your mind is so blurred you can barely stand anymore, every step only throws you off balance. You need your bed. Asap. Or you will fall over and die.

The hotel's heating is a welcome treat as you beeline for the elevator. The staff give you a strange look but you do NOT. have the time for any of that. Right now all you care about is getting in bed. Can this elevator hurry up? It finally comes and you lean against the metal walls when you step inside, sliding your purse lazily over you.

You all but tear your clothes off the second you make it inside your room, in a rush, wiping your makeup off while you undo your shoes, hobbling around with one foot while you dig for your pajamas. You end the night with a trip to the bathroom. Skipping on your usual night routine and just settling for a quick shower and brush of the teeth. 

Hotel covers have never felt better, warmer, safer. 

In the quiet of the room and the hum of the ac, you can't but let your thoughts consume you. Can't help but circle back to him. Why?

Why weren't you enough? Why did it have to end in fucking flames on whats supposed to be the most romantic love filled day of the year. 

You think back of every moment and piece of you shared with Jude. You remember the first time you kissed you, under the stands at his first madrid home game, clutching onto his jersey like a lifeline. He looked at you like you were the only thing that mattered. Gently holding your hand all the way back inside the building. Mumbling confessions and making you smile with every cheesy pick up line.

That jude is gone now, instead replaced by the man who you have to fight for even a second with. But are expected to drop all for. A selfish bitter man. 

It doesn't matter anymore. It's over, you can rest now and deal with the inevitable fall out as it comes. You know you're more than enough, but with the way you let yourself be treated it's hard to let yourself believe that. 

Never again though. From now, you're swearing off footballers. 

—--

You wake up as early as you can manage, getting all your things together and booking a flight out of here as soon as possible. You need to get back to madrid.

Your headache is massive as you shove the last of your things in your suitcase. You can't believe you took days off for this. Nonetheless, you need to get back. You have a team to get back to and plenty of work to get done. Real Madrid's creative department never rests does it.

Your phone has a slew of missed calls, mainly from Jude but you see a few from Trent, rather recent ones. You give him a call back but it all goes to voicemail.

The key card jams while you're locking it for the last time, it takes a hit from your hand to get the scanner working but you make it out in one piece. Smoothing your clothes down and making your way to the lobby. Sitting down for a few minutes while you confirm your flight details and triple check that you haven't forgotten anything. You hear your name and are greeted again by Trent, who's all but spriting to you. It's a little early for him to be here now isn't it. 

“Can I help you ?” 

“I'm sorry I tried calling and I couldn't answer when you called. Judes outside waiting for you. he-“

So last night really was all just a ploy from Judes end? You try to get up and far far away from him, but he stands in front of you. 

“Listen.  He told me to come and get you out there so you can talk to him and to not tell you. But obviously, I'm not. i’ll tell him you're not here yeah? Take care.”

Trent doesn't leave you with anything else, leaving in the other direction. You take this as a sign to leave while you can, grabbing one of the many taxis outside to the airport. 

—--

Trent gives Jude a scowl, “She's not there Jude, give it up. “

“I can't just lose her. “ Jude sighs, furiously typing on his phone. 

Trent rolls his yees, patience wearing thin,“You’re fucked in the head you know that? After all you’ve done to her, you still want her to come running back?”

Silence. 

“I care about you Jude I really do. But you left her walking around at 3 am with a dead phone in the middle of alleyways dude. That's not okay. “

—--

The airport has never felt lonelier, but you swallow the lump in your throat, boarding your flight home and trying to forget the man that you've come to associate it with. Madrid will be a hard place to move on in, when its walls shine with its star boy. Its halls all but cheering his name. Every corner you're bound to be reminded of him. You can do it, one way or another you won't let yourself be miserable. 

[vyxated]

Your sims 2 UI mod is breaking a bunch of textures of wall papers and certain objects. can you please address and fix this??

I'm guessing the purple looking question mark on the DX11 version of the game?

this is my game, with the sims 2 ui mod out of my mods folder, DX11 on since this is where most of that texture issue happen, cache files deleted beforehand:

so as you can see.. since it still persists without my UI mod, it's not my thing to fix but the individual creators of which the CCs with the "broken" textures belong to (or you can do it too with the DX11 batch fix tool).

(Broken in quotation as in it's not the creator's fault that there are now new requirements for setting up the texture sizes, and the devs might fix the issue from their end and make all CCs work with DX11 and DX9 regardless of how the CCs are set up.)

So far all EA wallpapers work fine, which is why I assume it's the wallpaper CCs and not the UI mod, or else we would've gotten it on the EA wallpapers too.

aside from this specific issue, I don't know of anything else, texture-wise, that could've been affected by my UI mod (so far most issue associated w/ the lovestruck patch have been addressed, only the werewolf icon left). If you have any more specifics that are not this, you're more than welcome to send another ask.

anyway, I tried to find the reason why it breaks the way it does and here's my understanding of it below the cut.

Using this nostalgia living wallpaper as an example:

on short & tall walls, you get the question mark. on medium wall, it works fine.

after running the Sims 4 Studio's DX11 fix and with my sims 2 ui mod back on, with the wall height set to short & tall:

problem fixed, and the sims 2 UI mod still doesn't affect it in any way.

what's the difference and why does it only happen on the short & tall walls? first, here's what the dx11 fix does based on andrew's comment, which suggests that any textures that are not in the power of 2 will likely get the question mark.

Build/Buy images always need mip maps. The batch fix scales non powers of 2 up or down to the nearest power of 2, so it could either increase or decrease in size depending on how close the image is to the next power of 2.

on this nostalgia living wallpaper for the short wall height:

texture before dx11 fix: 1024 x 768 pixels (768 is not a power of 2) texture after dx11 fix: 1024 x 512 pixels (512 is a power of 2)

here's a comparison between the texture sizes before the dx11 fix:

medium, which works fine: width & height are 1024 px (both are powers of 2) short & tall, which has the question mark texture: has 768 px & 1280 px height (both are not powers of 2)

on EA walls, you can always expect texture sizes to be 256 x 512 px (for short & medium) and 256 x 1024 px (for tall height walls) or 512 x 512 px and 1024 x 1024 px for square textures.

here's how you can fix the "broken" files yourself:

on Sims 4 Studio > Content Management > Batch Fixes > Misc > Update Images for DX11

and finally, additional info on what to expect when a UI mod is actually the one behind an issue (again, based on my own understanding and may not encompass every issue there are):

misplaced/mismatched icons/UIs (most known: broken GUI/buttons/empty trait icons in CAS as it gets broken every. single. patch.)

missing grey llama texture, most often attributed to missing/wrong icon texture size.

being prevented from accessing certain features/modes and may cause lastUIExceptions (sometimes non-UI mods do it too).

some features not working as intended, likely caused by conflicting UI mod files.

[otomes-world]

Six impossible things before breakfast

Little twist with sentient twst au, yes, I didn't expect this either. Masterlist with more works here

We've probably all heard the joke about "How many light bulbs does it take to (insert whatever)." Who would have thought that you would use a slightly modified version of it: how many more coincidences must happen to realize the truth.

Although can anyone really blame you for not wanting to admit that you are a bunch of colored pixels created purely for entertainment purposes? No, it even sounds nice. After all, your purpose was to create extras, a stage on which the main characters performed and shone. Those who had faces.

Did you always have yours? Could you always see it in the mirror in the morning?

Did figurative shivers run down your spine every time a faceless classmate addressed you? One of ten, hundreds, exactly the same. Have the main bunch had the same problem? That's the question you'd been asking yourself lately. Did they shrug off empty, replaceable shells, or at least for a second consider them their equals?

Perhaps the question should have been asked differently. Was this in the order of things for them, because the thought of the incorrectness of worldly norms did not flash through their heads. Or it was something simple and very banal - they did not realize that they were part of the game.

Were you special? The thought was flattering, but it was stupid to start turning up your nose. Maybe the supreme programmer, like the smart guys from Ignihyde, could consider you a virus, a bug, an annoying nuisance, which can be gotten rid of in a couple of seconds. Click and that's it, your file would be deleted.

The idea that death could be more than just literal took you by surprise.

It all started with a strange feeling of déjà vu, with a strange cyclical nature of what was happening. How the seasons did not change according to the laws of nature or, on the contrary, lasted longer than expected. Sometimes you wondered what month was going on, at least by counting. Or how you couldn’t say with certainty what year of study you were in. When was your graduation? Would it ever come?

How many times did the main characters celebrate their birthday? How many times had you celebrated it? Did you celebrate it from the start?

Lessons

Breaks

Exams

Holidays

Lessons

Was there an end to this merging stream of eternal students? Was the dormitory assignment ceremony that important? How many real “first-year students” were admitted each year? Why couldn't your educational journey end? Time adjusted and obeyed an invisible force; it existed only when it was convenient for someone.

Catching the attention of the local spotlight and getting on stage was the best way to get labeled as a "bug" and ask to be removed. However, the main threat was only the erasure of memory.

The next discovery was doubt about one’s own “specialness.” When consciousness had nothing to do, it began to cling to different details, trying to look for differences in a series of events repeated in the film.

When you knew what to look for, small mistakes that were not noticeable at first glance stand out more than usual. A slight shadow of boredom on the faces of the main ones. Lack of interest in the educational process and exams. As if only one “exam” was important in a bunch of exactly the same events. When the first years of Heartslabyul signed a contract with Ashengrotto.

With new information in mind, it became easier to identify important “events” and track time based on them. By how many times they were repeated in the endless flow of time. Taking notes and somehow recording data was more dangerous than you thought, all that was left was to come up with methods known to you alone. For example, in a dorm room on the bedside table there was a cluster of glasses, each containing specific color of pencils.

Did your roommates start to think you were weird and obsessed with order and cleanliness? Their right. You didn't care what they thought, besides, they would forget about it with the coming of a new day.

In order not to completely go crazy, you began to peer into the “faces” of other students, trying to spot at least a feature that distinguishes one from another. Either this world was too lazy, creating copy after copy in every dorm, or there was no point in trying. If you somehow came to terms with the feeling of the meaninglessness of what was happening, then the appearance of one student in several places at the same time still caused rejection.

Disgusting

If this world was someone’s experiment, then why were events cyclical? If this was a cage, then where was the exit. If this was a prison, then who was being held in it?

You made a mistake in observing a person without magic from another world. Trying to figure out whether Yuu's "world" was truly different or just as much a part of predestination as everything around. Was “Yuu” really the main one or just an extra? You could have sworn they didn't have a face. At least such clear features as all the main ones. Just as there was no character, how in each of the repeating events they could behave differently.

It was a breath of fresh air in the routine of never-ending study. The watching of the only part capable of changing in the world, subject to the same rules.

That's why, when one of the main ones suddenly approached you, you thought you were dreaming. Whether it was possible to fall asleep in the simulation was another question. Usually you went to bed, closed eyes, only to open them the next second to the sound of the alarm clock.

"Can I help you with something?" You smiled politely, but was it worth it? Could the main bunch distinguish between persons different from their privileged group.

Hunt. Was that his name? You weren't completely sure. He was part of something forbidden, something to be avoided at all costs. Part of the three “don’ts”: don’t look for information;don’t mention; don’t give yourself unnecessary temptations. Returning to the present moment, he just looked into your eyes with his constant smile, as if trying to find confirmation of something.

Like a true NPC, you continued to stand, frozen in one position and waiting for his answer. Until awareness came as abruptly as his appearance in principle. He looked straight into your eyes. Could he see your face the same way you saw it in the mirror? How long ago? Could the rest of the main ones see you too?

A billion questions were spinning in head at the same time as you tried to come up with a suitable excuse and reason to leave. The changes turned out to be too unexpected and frightening. Perhaps with the advent of a new “day” everything would return to normal.

“Is there a knight in the world who is not ready to devote all his deeds to one and only one, if this opens the veil of secrets at least a little? Will it allow him to find out what thoughts are spinning in head?”

It's a pity he was not a knight. Even though each word was pronounced with a special intonation, you only thought about how much water there was in his speech. Unfortunately, saying this out loud was an unaffordable luxury.

"..Is that so?"

“You are right, an étoile (star), I may be not one of their noble number, but even so I am not able to deny their order.” You let him continue, mentally counting down the minutes until the bell rang for lesson. “I may not have a sword in sheath, but It won`t change a way I live! Your smile can make my whole heart melt. There isn't lie in way I felt”

“I’m not good at poetry, but the rhyme is lame, Sir Hunt,” if it’s there.

“You’re right, writing poems is just one of my hobbies, to which I devote my few free leisure hours,” he continued, as if your words didn’t hurt him at all. “I hasten to assure you that there was no malicious intent in my actions. This modest hunter only wanted to greet a new connoisseur of everything beautiful and interesting."

No matter how much you hate beating around the bush, doubts creeping in from randomly thrown words. Sometimes the phrases spoken directly were the most frightening. However, not wanting to part with your role as an extra - which was burdensome, but at the same time giving a semblance of freedom - you continued to pretend to be an NPC.

"Should I congratulate you?.. Congratulations!" Any member of the film club would envy your feigned sincerity. A bell in three, two, "I don’t dare detain you any longer.”

The unsaid `like you would me` hung in the air. You had to hold out for the few remaining hours until the end. Fortunately, the main one did let you go, but smile, saying that its owner knew everything in the world, left an unpleasant aftertaste. One that your intuition suggested would accompany you for the next days.

It's going to be a very long a few hours.

[luigiblood]

Why Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online is shit

I have been very critical of Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online since the beginning, not only the very noticeably broken graphics emulation was certainly a case that everyone understood, but it did certainly make me completely avoid the Expansion Pack subscription entirely for a year because that was genuinely shit in 2021.

Now how is it in 2024? Well, it's not that much better. They did fix a lot of problems during that time for sure, and that's something that we do need to acknowledge to do at least something resembling fair criticism.

Current context

That one Dark Link room in Ocarina of Time was fully fixed, as the fog and even transparency emulation was just outright broken, somehow worse than its Wii U Virtual Console counterpart (which was already not very good), it also affected other games like Super Mario 64 where the fog was actually not correct, but oddly enough, it's not as much of a problem in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I'm not entirely sure what happened between that and Nintendo Switch Online for it to have such a massive emulation downgrade.

I've done some analysis of the software, though not a ton because I don't have that much time to waste reverse engineering emulators. Through that, I found out that iQue was responsible for the Nintendo 64 emulator on Wii U and Switch, because of the emulator framework, named "TRL," being 100% identical to their NES and GBC emulator for 3DS, confirmed to be iQue through leaked source code among other things, and the debug menu is seen on Wii U if you have more than one game ROM in the folder, and it's just like the 3DS one.

The Wii U Virtual Console N64 emulator was already seen as worse than its Wii VC counterpart, mainly due to the dark filter, but that thing has nothing to do with the emulation quality it was providing, aside from apparently some additional slight input lag on top of the already massive input lag which I find mindboggling, the graphics emulation was already considered worse than on Wii, a lot of issues that people saw on NSO were already on Wii U VC, which turned into a massive mess of complaints because, yeah, it turns out the Wii U was just not successful, but the Switch is, making obvious complaints very much more important.

The Dark Link room just happened to be using a bunch of graphical features at once which made it very noticeable when they don't work as intended. When I discussed this with other people, I couldn't help but feel terrible at the answer I get: "It's good enough."

This response annoys me to no end, but in truth, yes, the games are playable, nowadays graphically you probably wouldn't tell the difference from the real N64 with an untrained eye, and in fact, so am I at times too. But the problem is that it now becomes an actual history rewrite of how the game actually was, and you could still say that you would prefer the N64 games now than before with better framerates, better resolution, all that.

Better performance is always better?

Now this is still more of an opinion piece so here's my opinion about better framerate and better resolution: It's fucking misguided. Doing better framerate and better resolution works a lot better for games after that generation than the 32-bit and 64-bit era of the mid 90s to 2000, because the graphics looks a lot better for it and the standards are closer to the current era that we're in.

For N64 however, simply running the game better does not work as well as it should most of the time, and, frankly, seeing big polygons in 720p does not work as well as it should for most games. 2D games especially suffer from this and get some really weird filtering that just bothers me, especially in games like Yoshi's Story and Harvest Moon 64, where the emulator seemingly can't decide whether the graphics should be almost pixel perfect, or become vaseline.

Speaking of vaseline, where's the anti-aliasing? The N64 is very much known for its blurry anti-aliasing! While I'm pretty much immune to aliasing myself, I can still see it's not really respecting the original N64 very well about that, and it only deepens one of the biggest history rewrite of the N64 nowadays, where most people is more likely to look at badly emulated footage of a N64 game than seeing the game running on the original system, and this really bothers me that when you have every single other system on the service to care about this to the point of having a CRT screen filter, and even outright and pretty faithful reproductions of the Game Boy series' screens, N64 is the only one that forces you to play in its uglier HD resolution with no actual option to play games in their original resolution with some CRT filter or not, and that is just a real evidence of a lack of care to me compared to the rest of the systems.

When it comes to better framerates however, as much as I love that (Pilotwings 64 on NSO is actually one of the few experiences I can recommend on it), a lot of the games' speed are tied to the framerate, potentially making games harder than they should due to its speed being more accounted for the actual system, and sometimes, causing actual desync problems that iQue had to implement ways to manually slow the framerate down in specific moments of games just to account for it, but this only works for games that can run faster than intended. A lot of games sometimes have their framerate completely capped and doesn't run any faster.

But emulating the N64 lag is genuinely complex, and it's a problem that's not fully solved to this day even on unofficial N64 emulation, because there's way too many factors to take into account that it would probably take too much performance to figure out where it should take more time to process or not, so, on this one, I have a bit of sympathy about that as a developer, but it is still possible to roughly approximate that, even if the result can be weird; but I don't seem to notice any legit attempts about that.

Besides, a lot of people would be annoyed about the N64 lag and bad framerates, but to me if you want better framerates, in my opinion, it would be done differently, and unofficial emulation absolutely can deal with it in ways that isn't intrusive to the game's performance: If you played the N64Recomp PC port of Majora's Mask, you would know this, as RT64, the new graphics plugin powering this port (and hopefully emulators soon), actually handles interpolation between frames, allowing better framerate without sacrificing the game's performance to be better or worse than intended, and it makes for some real impressive results while still being relatively low in cost. For me this seems like a potential avenue to attempt to ease in comfort with N64 games.

Is N64 emulation really that hard?

…frankly, if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said yes, at least to my understanding back then, but also now. But if you ask me this same question now, the answer is no, mainly because of brand new standards that actually makes a huge difference in how to handle N64 emulation in current systems, even through unofficial emulation.

I know it's very easy to mock unofficial N64 emulation as relatively hard to play, and this I would agree with, but this problem is purely user faced now. The old problem of unofficial N64 emulation was mainly that not many people were doing work on it and their time is just not infinite, but that is very much changing nowadays.

The Nintendo 64 is actually a well understood system, additional research are still being done, but for the most part, we can understand the N64 to a decent degree. The actual bottleneck of N64 emulation was actually how to emulate it on current systems, when we were stuck to older graphics API standards like OpenGL and DirectX 9.

However, a shakeup happened since with Vulkan and DirectX 12, allowing deeper GPU control. This, is actually one of the most important events of computing that actually unlocked bigger N64 emulation potential and finally get rid of problems that plagued N64 graphics emulation and it started with an adaptation of THE most accurate N64 graphics plugin as Parallel-RDP, and its extremely good, but its pretty much asking on performance and requires a decent GPU (no need for the latest stuff though).

Unfortunately, not much happened since on that field, due to as I said before, a lack of developers, but now RT64 exists, and is made to be extremely performant, and especially made to be accurate without relying on any game specific code for it, which is extremely impressive and shows a lot of potential for the future, while providing tons of new features that allows enhancements like frame interpolation and more. RT64 was fully enabled because of Vulkan and DirectX 12, else it would simply not exist!

Now why did I talk about this stuff that's seemingly unrelated to NSO? Well remember that Majora's Mask PC port I talked about earlier that uses RT64? I saw that thing running on Nintendo Switch, seemingly perfectly fine, with enhancements as well.

This makes me look at N64 NSO differently, and with even more criticism than before. Instead of making good graphics emulation through Vulkan, they seemingly instead just ported the graphics emulation from Wii U VC's GX2 API to Vulkan. That isn't without effort, but it is quite frankly lazy, and means that whatever they're doing, they're not using the technology at their disposal to the fullest, especially since Vulkan is a standard that applies to pretty much every current GPU under the sun now, whatever the work is done here, it would likely work on the long term, especially the next systems after the Switch. Why Nintendo did not allow that is just sad, and a waste of time. RT64 was done by mostly a single developer, and while it took many years to be developed, these years could have been reduced a lot more if it was handled by a team fully dedicated to this, with possibly even more cutting edge to it. The ingredients are there, but the recipe was just botched.

Genuine trust issues with the quality

But aside from all this stuff I just talked about, if you didn't understand much of it, hopefully this part should help you understand other issues that I have with N64 NSO.

Remember that the first version of N64 NSO was graphically buggy, and while they did fix that over time, new games sometimes were outright buggy and possibly game breaking:

When they added Paper Mario to the service, while the game did actually receive some improvements over the Wii U VC emulator, the game, somehow, was more prone to crashes. If you game over with Watt as a partner, the emulator crashes, and you lose your progress. If you have the curiosity of hitting trees with your hammer, one of them in the snow town actually crashes the game too! Thankfully both were fixed, but you still needed to wait months! If you had no idea why crashes could be caused as Nintendo just never warns about that stuff, that is genuinely inconvenient.

When they added Kirby 64; the western version actually had a game breaking bug that makes you softlocked if you get hit in a particular way underwater. That is genuinely a terrible bug that could affect just about anybody playing the game. Thankfully, they fixed it the next week, but that REALLY shouldn't have happened to begin with!

There's also the smaller problems like Yoshi's Story's boss, Inviso, where the point of the boss is to be invisible. Except he's very visible at all times making the point of the boss moot and any respect to the original game gone. For some fucking reason, they took more than a year to finally fix it, and that's just a huge shame.

There's also how Jet Force Gemini had a worse widescreen mode and somehow thought it was good for release, thankfully fixed 2 months after, but you still had to wait 2 months!

And then F-Zero X still has genuine framerate problems to this day where the game just runs worse over time. That game is known to run a perfect 60 FPS on the original system, so there's no excuse here.

I could also mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but just look up Graslu's videos on them, he has done a full comparison, showing what's wrong with them with enough detail.

For these, I just mentioned the glaring issues plaguing several games, but a lot of times these issues just comes on their addition to the service, and then only gets fixed months later; and for me, that's an actual disrespect to the player. I understand the developer is doing their best here, but frankly, what that looks like to me is a legit constant: they visibly seems just scrambling to get games to work to a "good enough" state. I am NOT accusing iQue of this, however I accuse Nintendo to not have taken any measures to stop having these kinds of problems to begin with.

To speak better of iQue, they seem to be good at reverse engineering, as they do patch games to fix issues, or sometimes just modifications like anti-epilepsy measures or other kinds of hacks.

The controls

I had some really bad things to say about the controls, but it got partially invalidated when I played Perfect Dark on the service to see how bad it got. I think I simply overthought about it.

Now I have an opinion about the controls of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that will not please people: They're… fine. The default controls I mean. I know people have some real aversion to FPS that doesn't use a double stick, but frankly I dare say those controls didn't age as badly as you'd think. Some people say it's best played on a N64 controller but I don't agree about that, it's also okay on a regular Switch Pro Controller.

Turok however, oh boy, the default controls can be a double stick FPS… except it's reversed. That's where the ability to remap controls would be very useful here, or possibly just one moment where better forced control setups would be actually nice here.

Or how Pokémon Stadium has minigames that uses actually both the D-pad and the Stick, it could be great if the right Stick acted like the N64 Stick at that moment on a Pro Controller instead of the C Buttons!

Instead, I sometimes get told it is an excuse to get the (frankly expensive) N64 controller. Fuck no. I should not be forced to buy that, and I actually dislike using that controller, and I played tons of N64 games through emulation with different controls without having serious issues either, so for me, this isn't an excuse. Wii U VC also provided button remapping!

The forced use of ZL as the N64 Z button, and L for N64 L button for every game, also bothered me. I know they care about consistency, but then, I got actually curious to check how they handled Z and L on Wii and Wii U VC… and holy shit. They handled it right from the start. On Wii they actually just used the L button for the N64 Z button! But, the N64 B and A buttons do correspond to the B and A buttons on the current controllers regardless. Though, on that one, for most games, it's not as much of a bother, but if you're playing games like, let's say Wave Race 64 or F-Zero X, this is particularly worse.

F-Zero X has the use of strafing left and right, so I'll let you imagine how worse that sounds if you use ZL and R. NOT ZR, that's for C Buttons macros on the face buttons. It feels horrible and unintuitive, but also there's how the B and A buttons on N64 are vertical, and you just use your thumb on both buttons, making it easy to boost or to soften bounces on waves in Wave Race 64, which is a pretty darn important thing to understand, but instead you have to handle it on horizontal B and A buttons, making it a slight bit more annoying to your thumb, physically speaking. It just feels unintuitive and actually bad for your thumb, frankly.

It's where I wish games would actually make either ZR or R buttons to be swapped depending on the title, to be the R button and C button macro, and also offer an option to rotate the face buttons so that B and A would be placed on Y and B instead, corresponding more to the actual feeling of the N64 controller.

Sin & Punishment is oddly enough the only game of the bunch that comes with slightly custom controls, more adapted to the game, and I'm sorta glad that they bothered.

Just to go back to the N64 stick emulation, I also wish the sensitivity of it was managed better on current controllers. It really seems like when some games run faster than intended, added with the fact the stick isn't reproduced faithfully, some games are a lot harder to play, especially with Joy Cons if that's your only and basic options, where for example, turning the camera is way faster and you just keep wanting to reposition all the time.

Missing features

Man, imagine emulating the Controller Pak for the ability to save in games that only uses it instead of battery backed save memory in the cartridge, but then, literally never use it, ever.

Well that's what happened to Wii U VC and N64 NSO. iQue has actually emulated it, but for some reason, they never use it, and I just do not understand why, especially in games where the Rumble Pak isn't supported.

Speaking of the Rumble Pak, it is emulated, but there's one thing I just do not understand: Why isn't there code to automatically swap the Controller Pak and Rumble Pak? They have the best ways to actually handle this in ways that is pretty transparent and unobtrusive, but somehow, they don't bother with it, and it's just very strange. I know the N64 games are weird about it, but some outright allow to swap them, sometimes they even bother to remove the No Controller Pak message in Winback, but in other games they don't even bother removing the Rumble Pak swap message. It's just inconsistent and weird.

We don't have Transfer Pak emulation unfortunately, but that one, I can partially understand, it's definitely a bit messy, but it would still have been cool to play Mario Tennis and Mario Golf with your GBC characters and to level them up on the N64 games. Instead, in Mario Tennis GBC, you actually get the Transfer Pak content unlocked from the start, which is still pretty cool of Nintendo to care, and a mere reminder that they do care about these details in other apps. But in Mario Tennis on N64 NSO, the Transfer Pak courts are yet to be unlocked.

Then there's the wish to see 64DD emulated, which they initially did some work towards that back on Wii U VC, but then simply never touched in years, and then removed the code after I noticed they tried to support the fanmade cartridge ports of them. It's probably just for testing though, I don't really care that they do it like that, but I would think it's particularly crass had they used them officially on the app. This has yet to be seen again, so I don't have my hopes up. Here's hoping the Nintendo Museum made them care though, considering Doshin The Giant 64DD actually showed up there.

The future

I think I pretty much said what I wanted to say the most in one place. It might have been a little hard to read, but I really wanted to make my points very clear.

When I look at N64 NSO vs the rest of the service, I just cannot help but see how worse it is in general, I have genuine trust issues as it is very badly managed as games get added but then doesn't run properly, only to get resolved, if it does, only months later. It just makes me want to put off for later any time I wanna play a N64 game on that service, and I really want to love that service, I want to recommend y'all the biggest N64 library so far that Nintendo has given us that surpasses both Virtual Console libraries on Wii and Wii U, but I just can't.

Unfortunately, I don't see the future to be that bright. I see no reason to believe Nintendo has done any big efforts to allow a better N64 emulator, and of course, Nintendo has never really addressed complaints, and I partially blame the "good enough" feeling. When I read ArsTechnica to make an article just to complain about the borders after the N64 NSO ordeal, it just makes me feel like no matter what, this bigger complaint of mine across all of N64 NSO just cannot be seen seriously. It's a much bigger problem than borders (though, I agree, they should allow more, including pitch black borders).

I don't see any reason for Nintendo to read this either, but that's my full impressions of N64 NSO so far. Nintendo 64 NSO is just shit, and disrespectful to the legacy of the N64.

I outright accuse it to force people to buy a N64 controller just to play it correctly, which definitely worked as it definitely was out of stock several times, but if that's truly what they aimed for, then it's an app that doesn't know what audience it wants. If it aimed to be played by casuals, they'll be put off by the controls. If they aimed for the hardcore, they'll find problems, no matter what.

And it really cannot be helped when the emulator is clearly designed for the developers to manually fix problems per game instead of having a better emulator overall.