#I have to say I HATE this new switch to 100% 3D models

[childofaura]

Diamant is gorgeous, how dare you.

Ok honestly I realized the way I phrased my comment didn’t actually put across my intentions.

What I mean is that so far, Diamant is the only damn man who’s actually attractive enough for me to look at, lol.

Usually in a FEH game there’s a good solid three, maybe four guys who catch my eye. So far Diamant’s the only one because I’m so fucking starved for a man who looks like he’s at least passed puberty in this game. All we have so far is him and Vander.

(And no Boucheron doesn’t count, he looks like a pre-schooler’s head on a pro-wrestler’s body, I hate it)

[tumbling-odyssey]

Games I played in 2020

Just felt like getting my thoughts out on all the games I played this year. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for years but I always let it pass me by. Well not this year! Fuck you laziness! 

I played the first half in 2019 but finished it in 2020 so I guess I'll count it. DQ11 was my intro to Dragon Quest and what a good starting point. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of the best traditional JRPGs on the market. Characters, story, combat, it all clicks in just the right way to make a flawless game... until the end credits roll that is. 

I have no idea what happened with the post game but by god does it dive off a cliff. It undermines everything you worked to do in the main plot. The characters act brain dead and it shamelessly reuses events from the main game. Please pick up and play DQ11 but for the love of god just stop when the credits roll.

Doom is a game I knew I'd like. The heavy metal ascetic and soundtrack were right up my alley, but I just never found the time. With Eternal on the way though and having found it on the cheap at a pawn shop I figured there was no time like the present. Needless to say but I was right. I loved everything about this game. The thrill of combat, the screech of the guitars, and the silent take no shit attitude of Doomguy. Make no mistake though, I SUCK at this game. I played on easy but still got my ass handed to me on the regular. But I don't care, I was having way to much fun.

I flipped my shit when this game got leaked at the tail end of 2019. Zero 3 is my all time favourite game. To celebrate this getting announced I went and 100% Zero 3 as I hadn't done it on my current cart, and Zero 3 was still the first thing I played when I got this collection! I love that game to death and I’m glad to have it on modern consoles again. As I was under a bit of time crunch with other games releasing soon I only played 2 other games in the collection Zero 4 and ZX Advent. Until the DS collection those and 3 were the only Zero/ZX games I had so I have a lot of nostalgia for them. 

Zero 4 hold ups better then I remember. Not as good as 3 but a damn solid game with tweaks I honestly wish hit the series before its end. I remember having issues with the stage design and ya it’s not perfect, but it’s far from as bad as I thought. For ZXA this was the first time I beat the game on normal difficulty. For some reason the ZX games have always given me more trouble than the Zero games, so finally beating one on normal was very exciting. Maybe I can now finally go and beat ZX for the first time...

The Mystery Dungeon series rising from the depth to punch all those unexpecting in the face was a very welcome surprise. I had a lot of hype going into this one as I have very fond memories of my time with Red Rescue Team and even more with Explorers of Darkness. And the game lived up to it! The remastered music is great and crazy nostalgic, the 3D models are well used and don't feel as stiff as they do in the core series, and the QOL changes are near perfect... So why did I drop this game like a rock once I finished the main quest? 

Anyone familiar with Mystery Dungeon will know that the post game is the real meat of it. The story is short and all the really cool shit comes in after it's done. But I just couldn't bring myself to put more time in after I finished said story mode. I'm definitely chocking that up to me just not being in the mood then an issue with the game. Here's hoping we get an Explorers DX sometime soon. That will fucking hook me for all it's got.

Second verse same as the first. I loved this game and sucked at it horribly. Out of all the games I've played this year Doom Eternal is the one I want to go back to the most. I was not the hugest fan of some of the changes made and retained a stance that I liked 2016 better. First person platforming has never been a fun experience in my opinion and Eternal did little to change that. And I know this a lukewarm take at best but fuck Marauders!. They are so unfun to fight and ruin the pace. The Marauder in the last mook wave took me so long I was worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the game. But the more I've seen of Eternal after my playthrough makes me think I was being far to harsh. I haven't played the DLC yet either. Mostly cuss I haven't heard great things about it. Gonna wait for the rest of it to come out to see if it's worth getting. Might just replay to whole game at that point to see if it clicks with me better.

This was my second favourite game of the year, and was going to take the top slot until a certain other game came out. Addressing the elephant in room right away, I hated the ending. But I was expecting something like that, I think we all were. I won't let the ending ruin the rest of the game though. Not gonna let 1 segment colour everything that came before it. We have to see how the later parts play out to truly see if this ending was trash or not anyway. 

It took Square over a decade but they finally got an action RPG battle system that works and feels good to play. This may be my favourite battle system in an RPG period honestly. All four characters are a blast and it only gets better the more time you spend with it. Figuring out the nuances of each character’s skills and how to combine them not only with the skills of the others but how to enhance them with the right Materia set. This makes fights thrilling and satisfying when you finally best whatever was giving you trouble. Tis was the best way to bring 7′s mechanics into the modern landscape while also fixing the BIGGEST issue the OG had. The fact every character feels the same aside from Limit Breaks. 

All this on top of graphics that just look fucking stunning, a few glitched out doors aside. Fuck I still feel blown away looking at the characters models (mostly Tifa) and see how god damn pretty everyone is. Also Tifa’s Chinese dress is gift from the Gods and I still haven’t picked my jaw up from the floor after I first saw it.

In my circle of the internet there was a lot of hype for this game. So much so that I ended up buying it to see what all the hubbub was about. I had never played a Streets of Rage game before and my only experience with beat'em ups was playing a LOT of Scott Pilgrim and last year's River City Girls. Turns out Streets of Rage plays quite a bit different and it kicked my ass! So sadly I had to switch to easy to make it through but I still had a fun time with it. 

I started playing mostly as Blaze but once Adam hit the scene oooooh fucking boy. I didn’t play anyone else. There's a deceptive amount of content in this game. You can unlock almost every character from the previous games and all of them rocking their original sprites and moves. If I had more of a connection with this series I'm sure I would have gone nuts on unlocking everything. I stopped after my one playthrough and I was happy with that. Always glad to support a long overdue franchise revival.

To properly talk about P5R I think I need to air a lot of my feelings on the original game and the importance it has to me. You see, prior to 2017 I barely played games, only sticking to specific franchises. AKA Pokemon and Mega Man/Mega Man like games. Until 2016 though I still bought a lot of games. Eating up Steam sales and deals I found at pawn shops. This lead to a Steam library and shelf filled with games I've never touched outside of maybe an hour or 2. So in 2016 when I took interest in the newly released Kirby Planet Robobot I made a deal with myself. I could get the game but I HAD to beat it.  And I did just that, gaining not just a new fav Kirby game but a new rule for game purchases. If I knew I wouldn't beat a game I was not aloud to buy it. Now what does ANY of this have to do with P5 you may ask? Well... almost everything.

 I was immediately interested in P5 when it hit the west in 2017. I loved the 20 or so hours I but into P3 years ago and really liked the P4 anime I had watched around the same time. So of course with all the hype around it I wanted to dive into the series full force with P5. But I knew myself. Putting over 100 hours into a game was beyond me and I had a weird relationship with home console games as I was predominately a handheld gamer. Add in the fact I didn't even have a PS4 and I was convinced P5 would be something I always wanted to play, but never would. So when I went to the mall with a few friends and they showed me that P5 had a PS3 version, I had a dilemma on my hands. I knew I wanted to play it and I now had a way to do so. But doing that would require me to change 2 HUGE hang ups I had with games. Would I being willing to waste 60 bucks with so much working against me? Apparently I was. I immediately started going to town on this game. Making sure I spent no less then 2 hours a day playing NO MATTER WHAT. Which may not seem like a lot but it was to me... at the time.. I also had just moved to my current house, so coming home from my still relatively new job and going straight into P5 was the first real routine I formed during this heavily transitional part of my life. 

I of course ended up loving P5 and put 200 hours into it. As such my outlook on gaming was forever changed. Console games were no longer out of reach and I knew I could handle playing monster length game. I started playing way more games then I ever did before and trying out generas I never thought I would play. P5 is the main reason for this and why I'm able to make a post like this. To actually touch on Royal though? It's unarguably the better version of the game and Atlus learned all the right lessons from P4G. The new characters are great and the added section at the end is possibly the best shit Atlus has ever written. I only wish Yoshizawa joined the party sooner so I could play as her more. 

The release of this really came out of nowhere huh? Wayforward announced it was being made mid way through 2019, then there was its weird half release on the Apple store... and then suddenly it was out! Very little fanfare for this one. Is that indicative of the games quality? Luckily no. Seven Sirens is a solid addition to the series and follows up Half Genies Hero nicely. The game goes back to Shantae's Metroidvania roots and makes a TON of improvements. 

Transformations are now instant instead of having to dance for them (don't worry dancing is still in the game) making the game feel more like Pirates Curse in its fast flow. They also added the Monster Cards which take heavy inspiration from Aria of Sorrow's Soul system. A feature I'm happy to see in any Metroidvania since Aria is one of my all time favourite games. Sadly though the game does not take the best advantage of these improvements. 

Over all the game feels kinda empty. The dungeons aren't super exciting to explore nor are they challenging in any way. And the plot is very repetitive, with each dungeon repeating the same beats. Really this game feels more like set up for a better game down the line. The mechanics are all here and Wayforward has a solid art style with the sprites from Half Genie Hero. Hopefully they capitalizes on this for Shantae 6 and we get the best game in the series.

While it may not have been the most thrilling game, Seven Sirens really put me into a Shantae mood. So much so that I went back to play the 2 games in the series I had never touched. This being the first game and Risky's Revenge. Shantae 1 really is a hidden gem in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it's the definition of jank, but there's a lot of heart to this game. The sprites are great, the soundtrack is good, and the characters are funny... but it's still on the OG Gameboy and that's a massive hindrance for any game. I'm hard pressed to recommend this with how poorly its aged but I think it's better then it looks. 

Risky's Revenge on the other hand was a game that shocked me by how little it had to offer. I know this game went through a hellish development and what we got was far from what Wayforward planned to make, but it's hard to imagine a world where this was the technical BEST Shantae game. It's not a bad game by any stretch... just a boring one.

For the record my ranking of the games goes Pirates Curse>Half Genie Hero>Seven Sirens>Original>Risky’s Revenge

Sword and Shield are mediocre games at best. I know, real steaming hot take there. I managed to make my Sword playthrough a lot more fun by not spoiling myself on the new Pokemon designs for the first time since Gen 3. Either way, I enjoyed myself enough that I didn't mind playing more of it with these DLC campaigns. Plus I love the idea of Game Freak switching over to this method as apposed to making a third version, so I wanted to support it. 

Klara is a fucking top tier Poke Girl both in design and personality and is probably the highlight of Isle of Armour. GF actually went out of their way to give her multiple expressions to sell her toxic bitch personality and I love every minute of it. She sadly drifts into the background for the second half of the DLC’s story which hurts an already rough section even more. Not more then having to grind Kubfuu all the way to fucking level 70 though! That put a serious hamper on my motivation to finish the story but I pushed through anyway. Having to solo the tower with Kubfuu was at least a fun challenge though, as was the final fight with Mustard. Fuck the Diglett hunt though. Ain’t no one got time for that.

Crown Tundra may be my fav of the 2 though even if there isn't a character as good as Klara in it. The hunt for the legendaries was just pure adventure and I had a fucking blast doing it. The joy I felt when I figured out Registeel’s puzzle put a smile on my face unlike any Pokemon game since I was a kid. The whole Regi stuff was honestly a nice Nostalgia trip to my times with Emerald. The story around Calyrex was enjoyable, even if I still hate its design. Not revealing the horses before release was a good call to as it gave an honest surprise. Having to chase down the Galar forme Birds in the overworld is a great way to evolve the roaming legendaries idea and I hope GF sticks to this. Plus the Galar forme birds are some of the best legendary designs since Gen 5 and I love Chocodos way to fucking much. 

Here we are folks, my GotY. I love Panzer Paladin so fucking much. A combination of mechanics from Mega Man, Castlevania, and Blaster Master? Sign me the fuck up! This game is tailored made for me and I knew I had to play it once it started making the rounds on social media. I'll admit though, I was a bit worried when the the first full trailer dropped and showed the weapon mechanics. Breakable weapons that you have to sacrifice for checkpoints and power ups? I'm not sure about that.... Luckily I was being a complete moron and those mechanics are near perfect. 

I love the set up of each boss being a mythological creature from different cultures. They didn’t just pull the easy ones either. A lot of these things I learned of for the first time here. I love how Grit controls. Using the upward stab as a double jump and being able to pogo off enemies Shovel Knight style just felt great and satisfying. Flame was limited but it made her sections feel tense. She does more damage then you think she could at first glance. Also the only way to heal Grit being to use pods that only Flame could access was a cool idea. 

I am begging you Tribute Games, you have to make more Panzer Paladin games. Slap some new upgrades on Grit and expand what Flame can do and you have an even better sequel  on your hands. Also maybe not have so many 'gotcha' moments with enemy placement. That's really my only complaint about the game. Great music, great sprites, giant robots, unique premise, and a reference to Canadian legends. The ultimate self indulgent game for me.

It felt super out of left field for Curse of the Moon to be getting a sequel. The games fucking amazing but it was really just a tie in for the main Bloodstained product. Not something I expect to get a continuation. Either way I was pumped. If this was even half as good as the original then I was in for a great time. Which held true... cuss this legitimately is only half as good as Curse of the Moon. I still like the game, quite a lot actually. I mean how could I not with a fucking Corgi piloting a Death Train Mech. 

Something was just missing here that never made this click like the first game. Maybe it was the stage design, maybe the bosses, maybe the fact that it's a bit to long. I'm not sure. All I know is I couldn't bring myself to play all the modes like I did in the original. . Stopping part way in to the one where you can get the first games characters. I want to go back some day... I just don’t know when someday is.

This was an announcement I never saw coming. A Gundam Verses game coming to the west? That hasn't happened in the entire time I've been a Gundam fan. I had played a bit of Full Boost on my old roommates PS3 thanks to him having a Japanese account and I played Force on the Vita a few years ago. But to have the latest version fully translated with open servers? Holy hell that's a dream come true. 

Having the open betas every weekend leading up to launch was some much needed fun during this shit hole year. I had a lot of fun just fucking around with different suits and seeing what I could do with 'em. Absolutely trashing two Bael players as the Kapool is a memory I'll keep with me for a long time. Fucking danced on their graves. This gave me some new appreciation for suits like the Baund Doc and Hambrabi, the later becoming a lowkey fav as it was my main.

I've fallen off with the game in the last few months but I definitely want to go back. I hope to start learning the game and take parts in tourneys when cons aren’t death sentences anymore.

It felt like everything in my life was SCREAMING at me to start the Yakuza series. From 2 of my friends playing 0 recently, a youtuber I following live tweeting as he played through the WHOLE series back-to-back, and Yakuza 2 having a run at AGDQ 2020. Plus the constant pleas to play this series you get from following Little Kuriboh on Twitter. I finally broke and picked up 0 in the middle of August. Boooooooooy howdy did I not know what I was getting in to. And no I don't mean the content. I knew Yakuza was a series of wildly conflicting tones between the main story and side quests. What I mean is the length. I legit thought this was gonna be a 20-30 hour game. When i reached hour 30 of my playthrough and realized I wasn't even close to a conclusion, I think I knew I had bitten off more then I was planning. That misstep aside I ended up loving this game and want to play the rest of the series.... I just need to rest up first before I dive into Kiwami 1.

 Let's actually talk about the game for a moment here. Kiryu and Majima quickly clicked as likeable characters to me and I cared about their stories. Combat is fun and the multiple styles are all great.... though both the default styles take a while to get there. The mad rush I felt at the end was fantastic and the last bosses are a joy to fight. Only real complaint is the pacing of the side stories. I loved being able to just stumble into various different events while on route to the next plot objective. But this became less common as the game went on and side stories started getting more tucked away. Also hot take here, the host club mingame is more tedious then fun and I like Kiryu’s business stuff as I could do that in the background. I’m excited to dive into Kiwami and probably Kiwami 2 this year... Though I’m not sure when just yet.

Just gonna say it flat out, I think this is better the the 2018 game. The smaller scale helps in this style of game and Miles just naturally has a better move set then Peter. I'm not sure if they actually tightened up the combat system or if they just threw less bullshit enemies at you but fighting feels so much better in this one. Traversal is better too,  simply because they changed the button for tricks. In the original you have to hold down 2 face buttons to enter trick mode??? In hindsight that was such a bad call. 

Having both the heal and venom powers run off the same meter was a good idea. Making the choice between keeping yourself alive guaranteed or potentially ending a fight quicker/disposing of a problem enemy is super fun. The player having to make small choices like this during combat is what helps it not be brainless. I love all the different venom skills you get. While they all achieve the same thing in stunning opponents, how you achieve that goal is up to you. Do you want to just slug the bastard, throw 'em up in the air, tackle the shit out of them? The choice is yours. 

Only real big complaint is certain upgrades being NG+ locked. I know you want to encourage replays, but this is a shitty way to do it I feel. Also can we retire Rhino for the next game. Man has had 2 shitty boss fights now and I need a break. Between this and Spider-Verse, I'm honestly starting to like Miles as Spider-Man more then Peter.

I got this game more on a whim then anything. I was definitely interested when it was first announced for the west. Vanillaware's beautiful art style in a story about giant robots beating the shit out of Kaijus? Sign me the fuck uuuuuu-oh wait it's an RTS? I had never played an RTS's before, mainly due to the sheer concept stressing me out. So I let it fall to the wayside. The game started coming up again though towards the end of the year with GotY on everyone's minds.  This revived my interest, especially as what I HAD planned to be playing around that time was... well. Cyberpunk. Don't think I need to say much more. Also I had worried for nothing as the Real Time Strategy was not that Real Time. 

This game really lays on the analysis paralysis once you're out of the tutorial. Do you want to fight, do you want to do story, who's story do you want to do, what branch should you follow, how much should you play with this one character? It's very overwhelming at first. I decided to not go ham on just one character and swap around all the time. The twists in this game are equal parts exciting and infuriating. Learning something new always came with the caveat of more questions, or something you knew 'for sure' being disproven. Like when I learned 1 characters was actually 4 separate ones! Anyone that's played knows exactly what I'm talking about. 

Natsuno ended up being my fav and not just because of.... obvious reasons. BJ was cute if unfortunately named and her relationship with Mirua was my favourite in the game. Not that there was much competition except for maybe Ogata and Tomi. I ended up really liking the combat but I can see why RTS fans say it's the weakest part. It's far from complex and I had a winning strat by the third or so real fight. Aka spam turrets and have the Gen 1′s gank all the bosses.

One quick thing I want to share was how I beat the boss at the end of Area 2. The one where Inaba is singing. I had Hijiyama use the limit break skill to bum rush the boss right off the hop. I took out half its health in one hit but Hijiyama’s Sentinel was on death’s door. Only thing that saved him was sending in Amaguchi to blow up a bunch of missiles. Hijiyama took it out on his next attack but lost his Sentinel at the same time. It was a real clutch victory and crazy fucking anime. 

The best way to really describe Carrion is that it's a fantastic proof of concept. Can you make a game where you play as The Thing? Why yes, yes you can. Carrion just needed a bit more tweaking to really bring this concept home and be the A+ game I know it can be. As it is now the game is a bit empty. The level design is super samey and the lack of a map is fucking brutal at points. I know it would make no sense for a blob monster to have a map but somethings you just have to gameify for convenience. The level design must have done something right as even though I was completely lost I still moved from area to area properly. Hell by the time I actually looked up a map I had 1 more item to get and I learned I was one door away from beating the game. 

I love the idea of losing mass as you take damage and gaining more by eating people, but having abilities tied to size was a terrible idea. It just leads to tedium as I have to go and shed myself to the right size, do the puzzle, then of course I'm going to go back and rebuild myself to see if I can do the next segment at full power. Just make it so you can swap between abilities using the d-pad or something. I hope this game gets a sequel just so this sick ass concept can be fully realized.

[callistochan87]

Well, the experiment seems to be going well. Dunno if @erinhime83 has any thoughts about it 😂

This was mostly done because I’ve grown to really like drawing on the iPad--something about using the Apple Pencil on the screen just makes it so much easier. I’ve used a non-screen tablet for years, a Bamboo and now an Intuos , and it’s fine, but I haven’t done nearly as much art since I’ve moved, and certainly not complex art. I keep saying oh, it’s because my desk is so small and too high for me to be comfortable, or the little Tobias chair I have isn’t comfortable to sit at for hours--and, I mean, it’s true, but I have to wonder if I’ve just...shifted.

Long story short, I was looking at display tablets. The Huion Kamvas is probably the closest competitor to the Cintiq, and at $500-600 is way more affordable than a Cintiq. But man, oh man, I found someone selling a used Cintiq on eBay. Looks to be in good condition, had some parts replaced 3 years ago, and!! They’re in Canada! Canadian dollars! Free shipping!! I cannot describe to you HOW MUCH OF A DREAM THAT IS! Paying shipping is the worst, especially on eBay (I saw another Cintiq ad that was like, $70 for the Cintiq...and $368 for shipping to Canada from the US 🙃)

And they’re (fairly??) local (BC-based). They’re asking $320, and I am tempted. I know I shouldn’t. I keep telling myself that I don’t like feeling like I have to penny-pinch, and I wouldn't have to do that if I didn’t make big unnecessary purchases, like $300 Cintiqs on eBay. I don’t need a Cintiq like I need food or rent.

But I am so tempted. I keep going back to that listing to stare at it. eBay says there’s 19 days left? I worry one day I will go there and the listing will be gone, someone will have bought it.

But then I told myself that I didn’t even know how it worked. I’d never used a display tablet before, and I don’t count the iPad because Procreate is designed to work for it. I did some poking around, and found Astropad Studio. which mirrors your screen to your iPad. Apple’s Sidecar has the same functionality for free, but I tried it once and wasn’t impressed. Mostly because I’d used Sidecar so I could use my iPad as a second monitor during our last work from home period, so it was a bit weird to shift things over, and the Apple Pencil didn’t work as well. This was a 1:1 screen mirror, with additional Pencil support, AND a 30-day free trial, so I thought I’d make the most out of those 30 days.

This was also an experiment in using Clip Studio start to finish, since I got frustrated sometimes and would switch over to Photoshop, where I knew how to do stuff. But I hate subscription models and look for alternatives. Clip Studio is affordable and is a one-time payment, which I’m fine with. And O.M.G. The good news is that using Clip Studio with a display tablet is super easy! I always liked the 3D models CS offered for poses, but found position them a PITA with a mouse, or even my Intuos. But using the Pencil makes it so much easier! Makes inking easier too, although I haven’t yet found an inking brush I’m totally happy with (It could also be because I’m comparing it, in my head, to the smooth lines Illustrator generates, and I haven’t been able to mimic that 100%)

Basically any issues I had with the drawing process were more due to unfamiliarity with Clip Studio and the way the tools function. I like the idea...but I still like the idea of a Cintiq, because that was the one big downside--Astropad is a 1:1 screen mirror, so I can’t have a ref open on one screen and the program in another, I have to constantly go back and forth. I’d never used a dual-monitor setup before my current job, but now that I’ve figured it out, I do see benefits to it.

aaaaaaalso, Astropad is the dreaded subscription. Yes, per year it’s still less than what Cintiq I’m eyeballing, but at least the Cintiq would be a one-and-done thing, which is usually my preference. (There are also a couple of Astropad nitpicks that I chalk up to be being unfamiliar with it, such as the 1-finger+pencil=eraser trick that caused me to accidentally erase chunks of the image as I went, because it interpreted my resting hand as a finger, but those are minor quibbles.)

Finally, I went ahead and upgraded from PRO to EX when it was on sale (see above, re: impulse purchases) solely so I could use the “convert 3D to lines and tones” function for easy backgrounds. You can’t tell when I shrank it, but the original was just...no aliasing, jaggedly sharp lines, that were a bit too thick for my tastes, but I couldn’t thin them out no matter how I tried. So the background is a bit clunky, but it was loads easier than trying to draw one myself, so I can see an advantage there. I’ll need to play more with the settings, since there looks to be ways to smooth out the lines that I didn’t realize.

as for the colours, I keep trying to simplify my colouring, to copy comics with simpler shading, so I can put out pieces faster. It never seems to work. I keep fiddling around with gradient masks and layer masks, hoping that it might unify my colours and make shading easy, like I actually know how colours work. I tried so much to keep it simple and still wound up doing what I usually do, except painting light on dark instead of vice-versa. Still fewer colours than normal but I don’t know if it sped the process up any. Any blending was  unintentional due to the brush I used (which also didn’t consistently put down colour--it faded when I wanted solid colour, and blobbed huge blobs when I was trying to blend) but it looks okay.

For all of that, I will say that it came together quickly (I started this on Monday, finished most of it yesterday, did a couple final touchups today), although that may be because I got so focused on it that I did sketching and inks in a huge slog from like, 5-11 pm on Monday, and didn’t realize I hadn’t saved in that entire time until I tried to close it for the night and saw it was just labelled “Illustration” because I hadn’t saved it yet. 🙃

...I kind of wish the lace wasn’t there, now that I look at it. Great example at showing off some of the inbuilt lace and decoration brushes (although this one was a free downloadable asset) but...man, her butt turned out nicely enough that I didn’t want to cover it. Without the lace she looks a bit like a gymnast or figure skater, maybe it’s the leotard, but the little lace ruffle (I don’t want to call it a skirt) sort of quashes that 😂

[patrickjane92us]

The Future of Ray Tracing.

About Ray Tracing

Hey folks lets talk about Graphics and the big news around Ray tracing computer graphics have come in an incredible way since the days of the first video game. Games started off as grids of white squares on a gray background and they've advanced through 2d scenes with 8 and then 16 bit color to polygons complex textures and full 3d. Today games use tools like tessellation shaders occlusion and mapping to achieve nearly photorealistic results and we may be getting closer to that holy grail of lifelike graphics Ray tracing. Let's back up a bit since those early 3d days some of the biggest improvements in graphics have had to do with the way scenes render shadows and reflections, in 2004 doom 3 introduced some of the first high-quality dynamic shadows in gaming this meant the shadows moved with the lights and the characters in the game and the results were fantastic, eerie lighting cast long shadows on catwalks and when enemies ran through hallways lit by swinging lights they cast chaotic shadows that moved with them as they ran it all worked together to thoroughly freak out gamers of the day. Those great shadow and lighting techniques have come a long way since doom 3 but they are still today fundamentally based on the same idea called rasterization. In rasterization a scene is drawn pixel by pixel with the game engine checking things like distance texture proximity light sources and occlusion whether or not anything is in the way before they pick a color for that pixel you move pixel by pixel through a scene and calculate the color for each one based off this physics and geometry of the scene around you eventually you build an image in rasterization lighting is particularly challenging. Light sources kind of project a field where things inside that field get lighter on one side the side facing the light and cast a shadow on the other side but in the real world light doesn't just move in a straight line like that it bounces and diffuses and passes through objects all depending on what they're made of and that's a lot to account for. In rasterization for each light source the computer works out if something is blocking the path of that light and if it is the computer runs through a series of calculations to work out what to do next and the simplest it'll just cast a shadow more complex processes like ambient occlusion try to adjust for the objects in the scene tweaking the lighting to account for the way objects reflect light and cast some shadows on each other but still these methods are relatively crude the simplest forms of ambient occlusion called screen space ambient occlusion or SSAO only account for the depth of an object in the scene, it essentially tries to put more shadows on objects behind other objects but it doesn't actually account for where the lights in the scene are even advanced ambient occlusion at best creates diffuse shadows that still don't actually relate to where light is coming from and all of these methods struggle with direct light harsh shadows mixed lighting basically the wave reflections shadows and highlights all work in the real world. All of this is an attempt to get to what people call global illumination which is the idea that a graphic scene could be rendered just like the real world and here's where ray tracing comes in in the real world light sources emit photons that travel in a straight line until they hit a surface and there they can either pass through the surface be reflected or absorbed these photons bounce around and eventually some of them make it into your eyes and that's how you see. Ray tracing tries to work the exact same way but backwards it draws millions of rays outwards from the camera your perspective in a video game and then it calculates how they'll bounce around the scene whenever array bounces off an object another ray called a shadow ray is drawn towards the light sources in the scene if there's a clear path that first ray makes the object it bounced off writer and if it's blocked it casts a shadow instead the big upside to ray tracing is hyper realistic reflections shadows and highlights that don't need to be pre-rendered all of this lighting detail can be generated based off the geometry in the scene and as characters and lights move around the light changes in dynamic and realistic ways. Ray tracing is particularly good at reflections and refraction things like light moving through a glass of water and color spill or the way that a brightly colored object can change the color of other objects near it. Now ray tracing is potentially actually a simpler system than layering lighting models with shadows and shaders and occlusion but calculating the paths of millions of rays can take an incredible amount of processing power to fully rate raise a standard 1920 x 1080 HD scene you need to draw a minimum of 4 million rays to start getting good results and potentially 50 million or more the backwards system of drawing the Rays out from the camera instead of out from light sources is actually a way to try to cut down on processing by only rendering the Rays that will actually be seen by the player even with this backwards ray trick processing ray-traced images has traditionally been incredibly slow and no games currently used real-time ray tracing

Ray Tracing in Movies

The technology has been entirely limited to pre-rendered video and Hollywood movies animated Studios like Pixar extensively used ray tracing in their films and part of what makes modern special-effects blend so well with real-world footage is the use of ray tracing to create accurate lighting for every part of the scene now these Studios have the luxury of using render farms with dozens of computers working together and even here each frame can take hours to draw instead of the fraction of a second we need for a playable game “a single frame can take more than 24 hours to render”.

Ray Tracing for gaming

The new technology might be changing this, Microsoft has unveiled a new set of tools in DirectX 12 which supports ray tracing. DirectX is the set of graphics tools that power most windows games at a fundamental level and their newly announced DXR API supports ray tracing in games Nvidia also announced their own set of tools called RTX that would leverage their own hardware to speed up real time ray tracing in games, DXR should work on older Nvidia cards as software but RTX actually depends on hardware acceleration that's currently only found on Nvidia's volta line of graphics cards specifically RTX is supposed to add hardware acceleration for ray tracing area shadows reflections and ambient occlusion now this should all work together to create a more lifelike scene not one to be left out AMD announced updates to their radeon ray tracing system including support for real-time ray tracing in games and promised low-level driver support for Microsoft's DXR in the near future unity the game engine of choice for many indie developers is also incorporating AMD's Ray tracing tech into their game design tools though only for what's called baked or non moving lights so are we at the verge of a ray tracing revolution well not quite yet and here's where things actually get a little fishy. NVIDIA is saying it's volta cards will support ray tracing at a hardware level the way current graphic cards have specialized circuits and hardware for shaders or decoding video however on current Volta cards it's unclear what those special Hardware features actually are now part of the problem is that there are almost no volta graphics cards out there most volta cards are actually specialized boards used for supercomputers and AI research and the only one even approaching a consumer product is the $3,000 Titan VIII the recently announced GV 100 Quadro is a professional card that built on Volta and it looks to be extraordinarily powerful but it still isn't really a gaming card, rumors have also suggested Nvidia may entirely skip consumer cards in the volta line and while NVIDIA has said future graphics cards for gamers will incorporate the same hardware acceleration for ray tracing we don't actually know what those future graphics cards will be and as amazing as these demos look there's still more reason to be skeptical Epic's ray tracing demo at GDC was running in real time but it was running on an NVIDIA GTX station a computer that starts at around $50,000 and packs a 20 core processor in with four tesla v 100 cards each of which runs around $9,000 now confusingly tesla was also in the name of a previous Nvidia architecture but the tesla v 100 actually uses a voltage chip as great as these demos look many of them still actually had to use traditional rasterization on parts of the scene to keep the frame rates up as well this also isn't the first time we've heard announcements about real time ray racing Nvidia actually announced real time ray tracing on their Kepler chips at GDC 2012 six years ago so where does all this leave us ? But ray tracing is legit tech that really could make graphics look amazing but the demos we've seen this last year aren't even entirely ray-traced and they were running on hardware that is a long ways from what the average gamer might own Plus this isn't the first time companies have claimed ray tracing was just around the corner Intel made these claims in 2010 and so did Nvidia in 2012 there's another part of this to that as a PC gamer I hate to even talk about it but it's the consoles if running these raytrace demos on a normal gaming PC seems like a fantasy you try getting them to run on a ps4 integrating ray-tracing into a game isn't like flipping a switch it'll take serious work on the part of developers to bring ray-traced graphics into a game I'm sure in the next few years some rave developer come out with an insane ray-traced project for the PC master-race but until the consoles can come close to handling this sort of graphics rendering great racing for all may still be a long ways off.