#Minecraft rendering bug

[edwardos]

[agentmatt6]

[goldenspirits]

Why would you make something like this up

Fun fact: We know the size of the Pokémon world because Scarlet and Violet has framerate issues

[w1k]

Alright minecraft gang I need you to explain this to me.

I am a game developer, I understand how this is obviously a bizarre bug. What I don't understand is how I have never seen anyone talk about it in a community that had one and a million creepypastas revolving around the early cursed versions of this game, and what *actually* caused it.

I have my theories mostly involving GL rendering bugs but that doesn't quite explain it neatly and it's honestly been haunting me since this super obscure memory came back to me. And no it's not modded.

EDIT: People have been mentioning it's likely an early minecraft desync bug, and I agree. The fact it's chickens being lit on fire and there is a lava mot outside checks out. Even past me in the thread where that screenshot was taken thought it was just caused by chickens dying in the lava. Jury is still out on why the heck it specifically only showed down there, sometimes way farther through walls, and why it was so persistent. Also why is a chicken this hecking big.

As such in the coming days I will probably be streaming myself trying to recreate the og castle as best as I remember it in the original version where this happened to try and recreate it. Wish me luck

EDIT2: I found the og gif showing the ghost and this is only raising more questions

[jovial-thunder]

Pre-alpha Lancer Tactics changelog

(cross-posting the full gif changelog here because folks seemed to like it last time I did)

We're aiming for getting the first public alpha for backers by the end of this month! Carpenter and I scoped out mechanics that can wait until after the alpha (e.g. grappling, hiding) in favor of tying up the hundred loose threads that are needed for something that approaches a playable game. So this is mostly a big ol changelog of an update from doing that.

But I also gave a talent talk at a local Portland Indie Game Squad event about engine architecture! It'll sound familiar if you've been reading these updates; I laid out the basic idea for this talk almost a year ago, back in the June 2023 update.

We've also signed contracts & had a kickoff meeting with our writers to start on the campaigns. While I've enjoyed like a year of engine-work, it'll be so so nice to start getting to tell stories. Data structures don't mean anything beyond how they affect humans & other life.

New Content

Implemented flying as a status; unit counts as +3 spaces above the current ground level and ignores terrain and elevation extra movement costs. Added hover + takeoff/land animations.

Gave deployables the ability to have 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites; we'll probably use this mostly when the deployable in question is climbable.

Related, I fixed a bug where after terrain destruction, all units recheck the ground height under them so they'll move down if the ground is shot out from under them. When the Jerichos do that, they say "oh heck, the ground is taller! I better move up to stand on it!" — not realizing that the taller ground they're seeing came from themselves.

Fixed by locking some units' rendering to the ground level; this means no stacking climbable things, which is a call I'm comfortable making. We ain't making minecraft here (I whisper to myself, gazing at the bottom of my tea mug). 

Block sizes are currently 1x1x0.5 — half as tall as they are wide. Since that was a size I pulled out of nowhere for convenience, we did some art tests for different block heights and camera angles. TLDR that size works great and we're leaving it.

Added Cone AOE pattern, courtesy of an algorithm NMcCoy sent me that guarantees the correct number of tiles are picked at the correct distance from the origin.

pick your aim angle

for each distance step N of your cone, make a list ("ring") of all the cells at that distance from your origin

sort those cells by angular distance from your aim angle, and include the N closest cells in that ring in the cone's area

Here's a gif they made of it in Bitsy:

Units face where you're planning on moving/targeting them.

Got Walking Armory's Shock option working. Added subtle (too subtle, now that I look at it) electricity effect.

Other things we've added but I don't have gifs for or failed to upload. You'll have to trust me. :)

disengage action

overcharge action

Improved Armament core bonus

basic mine explosion fx

explosion fx on character dying

Increase map elevation cap to 10. It's nice but definitely is risky with increasing the voxel space, gonna have to keep an eye on performance.

Added Structured + Stress event and the associated popups. Also added meltdown status (and hidden countdown), but there's not animation for this yet so your guy just abruptly disappears and leaves huge crater.

UI Improvements

Rearranged the portrait maker. Auto-expand the color picker so you don't have to keep clicking into a submenu.

Added topdown camera mode by pressing R for handling getting mechs out of tight spaces.

The action tooltips have been bothering me for a while; they extend up and cover prime play-area real estate in the center of the screen. So I redesigned them to be shorter and have a max height by putting long descriptions in a scrollable box. This sounds simple, but the redesign, pulling in all the correct data for the tags, and wiring up the tooltips took like seven hours. Game dev is hard, yo.

Put the unit inspect popups in lockable tooltips + added a bunch of tooltips to them.

Implemented the rest of Carpenter's cool hex-y action and end turn readout. I'm a big fan of whenever we can make the game look more like a game and less like a website (though he balances out my impulse for that for the sake of legibility).

Added a JANKY talent/frame picker. I swear we have designs for a better one, but sometimes you gotta just get it working. Also seen briefly here are basic level up/down and HASE buttons.

Other no-picture things:

Negated the map-scaling effect that happens when the window resizes to prevent bad pixel scaling of mechs at different resolutions; making the window bigger now just lets you see more play area instead of making things bigger.

WIP Objectives Bullets panel to give the current sitrep info

Wired up a buncha tooltips throughout the character sheet.

Under the Hood

Serialization: can save/load games! This is the payoff for sticking with that engine architecture I've been going on about. I had to add a serialization function to everything in the center layer which took a while, but it was fairly straightforward work with few curveballs.

Finished replacement of the kit/unit/reinforcement group/sitrep pickers with a new standardized system that can pull from stock data and user-saved data.

Updated to Godot 4.2.2; the game (and editor) has been crashing on exit for a LONG time and for the life of me I couldn't track down why, but this minor update in Godot completely fixed the bug. I still have no idea what was happening, but it's so cool to be working in an engine that's this active bugfixing-wise! 

Other Bugfixes

Pulled straight from the internal changelog, no edits for public parseability:

calculate cover for fliers correctly

no overwatch when outside of vertical threat

fixed skirmisher triggering for each attack in an AOE

fixed jumpjets boost-available detection

fixed mines not triggering when you step right on top of them // at a different elevation but still adjacent

weapon mods not a valid target for destruction

made camera pan less jumpy and adjust to the terrain height

better Buff name/desc localization

Fixed compcon planner letting you both boost and attack with one quick action.

Fix displayed movement points not updating

Prevent wrecks from going prone

fix berserkers not moving if they were exactly one tile away

hex mine uses deployer's save target instead of 0

restrict weapon mod selection if you don't have the SP to pay

fix deployable previews not going away

fix impaired not showing up in the unit inspector (its status code is 0 so there was a check that was like "looks like there's no status here")

fix skirmisher letting you move to a tile that should cost two movement if it's only one space away

fix hit percent calculation

fix rangefinder grid shader corner issues (this was like a full day to rewrite the shader to be better)

Teleporting costs the max(spaces traveled, elevation change) instead of always 1

So um, yeah, that's my talk, any questions? (I had a professor once tell us to never end a talk like this, so now of course it's the phrase that first comes to mind whenever I end a talk)

[cornbread-but-minecraft]

Beta 4 for Cornbread's Texture Fixer is now out on Planet Minecraft! Featuring fixes to a bunch of Beta 3's issues, including the flicker on the sidebar button! (I've put the bug fixes in the general section of the changelog 'cause I'm kinda stupid)

Also, I updated the cover image slightly. I think the Trails and Tails panorama worked better for this, but changing it to the Tricky Trials one shows that the pack is being actively supported.

Link!

Changelog:

General Changes

Literally two days after I posted the previous pack version, Mojang released game version 1.21.20, which broke the pack's slabs (among other relevant changes). If I had known they were going to do that, I would have waited to post. Anyway, Cut Sandstone, Red Sandstone, Cut Red Sandstone, Prismarine Brick, Polished Andesite, Polished Diorite, and Polished Granite now all use their custom side textures again. (Removed, added terrain JSON; added blocks JSON)

The Item Stack Count should now be correctly layered over the Flying Item Renderer when quick-moving a stack of items. (Edited UI JSON)

The Item Durability Bar should now be correctly layered under the highlight when hovering over an item with durability in container screens again. (Edited UI JSON)

Tweaked nineslice information for UI texture 'mainbanners'. It should no longer be incorrectly stretched on some monitors.

Reverted outlines for Achievements button icon and Inbox button icon to black since Mojang has made the outline on the Feedback button icon black and added a Screenshot button whose icon's outline is also black. (Removed textures)

Screenshot button icon is no longer scaled incorrectly on the Pause Screen. (Added UI JSON)

Gamepad helper on Screenshot Button now properly disappears with Hide Controller Hints enabled. (Added UI JSON)

Fixed coloration on Screenshot Button icon when gamepad helper is visible. (Added UI JSON)

The icons on the Feedback Button and Screenshot Button with gamepad helper visible now properly move down a pixel when the button is pressed like other buttons in the game. (Added UI JSON)

The button on the bottom of the sidebar should no longer flicker when changing states for the first time in a session. (Added UI JSON)

The icons on the sidebar are no longer scaled incorrectly. (Added UI JSON)

Moved the icons for keyboard helpers (such as on the Select World Screen) to properly account for the shape of the keyboard key graphic they are overlayed on top of. (Added UI JSON)

Moved the Close and Minimize Buttons on the Command Block and NPC Screens to be more consistent with the rest of the game. (Added UI JSON)

The hovered and pressed textures for the Minimize Button are no longer swapped. (Added textures)

The hovered and pressed textures for the Trash Button on the NPC Screen now use the color palettes of the Close Button textures, and, as such, no longer appear swapped. (Added textures)

Fixed the top-left corner of the background for the Save/Export/Reset panel on the Structure Block Screen. (Added texture (it's the same one used for the connection between the inventory and recipe book for some reason btw))

The Help button icon on the Structure Block Screen now uses the correct texture and is the correct size. (Added UI JSON)

Tweaked positionings of various elements on the Chat Settings popup slightly. It should now appear more similar to vanilla. (Edited, removed UI JSON)

The scaling on the Paintbrush Icons on the Chat Settings text color dropdowns is no longer atrociously incorrect. (Added UI JSON)

The scaling on the label for the Chat Settings font type dropdown is no longer noticeably broken when using Mojangles font; HOWEVER, it IS now slightly broken when using Noto Sans. This is something I hope to fix in the future. (Added UI JSON)

Tweaked nineslice information for the background of dropdowns. It should no longer be incorrectly stretched in certain contexts.

The chevrons on most dropdowns should no longer be scaled incorrectly. (Added UI JSON)

The backgrounds of most scrolling dropdowns should no longer have their bottom- and right-most pixels slightly cut off. Unfortunately, this will break the size of any scrolling dropdown I've missed. If you see a dropdown that's smaller than the button used to open it, please let me know. (Added UI JSON)

Moved the scroller on scrolling dropdowns to a less broken-looking position. (Added UI JSON)

Technical Changes

Added SemVer numbers to beta entries in changelog.

Changelog entry for Alpha 3 now says I started "preparation" for Conglomeration compatibility instead of "preperation".

Properly removed custom Cartography Table assets instead of just commenting out the JSON.

Tweaked sizes and associated nineslice information of custom sidebar button textures to reduce file size and avoid slices with a size of zero.

The region for dialog backgrounds no longer calls itself the region for the close button in ui_common.json.

Global UI variable $cb_is_texture_fixer_beta_3 is now $cb_is_texture_fixer_beta_4 for obvious reasons.

Added a section to start_screen.json that makes the title screen invisible (commented out for obvious reasons). This exists solely to make it easier for me to take screenshots of the panorama.

[uzi-doorknob]

yeah totally because i'm such good friends with her haha. we've played mario kart together i would be so sad if she died horribly in a massive explosion because i left her for dead. and shot her in the face when she tried to escape

hey N i'm adding like 50 mods so if all your dogs vanish or the pod computer explodes that's probably why. not my fault by the way because these shaders are essential and so are the ICBMs

[leroymilo]

Folks, let me present: Linux Gaming

I'm pretty sure this was caused by alt-tabbing while the game was open, I had another visual bug with Minecraft but it has F3+A to refresh rendering, whereas I had to restart Dark Souls 3 to fix this.

From what I understand, this looks like an issue with UV coordinates being overwritten in the GRAM by another program while alt-tabbed.

I blame NVidia and its drivers.

[wemzissue]

i have a very specific memory of a minecraft rendering bug that used to happen on my cracked copy of the game on my dads computer that i just cant seem to find any photos of online but it freaked the fuck out of it it looked like this big ass mass of grainy dark triangles that disappeared when you got close and i only saw it once and it freaked the hell outta me

[0x5742]

I was looking forward to playing Minecraft with my roommate while I'm on my vacation this week... but... Well. Computers are terrible.

Ok first a bit of background. I play either on my computer (Java edition, 1.20.1 because I like the mods and resource packs I have, dammit) or sometimes casually on my phone (Bedrock, Android). My roommate plays on Xbox (Bedrock). We run a Java server with Geyser (which does some magic to allow Bedrock to connect) so that we can both play together. This has generally worked fine for like, the last year. Except…

Bedrock updated to 1.20.40 recently, which broke the server protocol.

Geyser put out an update to fix this.

That update also dropped support for 1.20.1, so I have to upgrade the server. That shouldn't be much trouble as I could just drop in ViaVersion so I can still connect from my PC.

except ViaVersion is broken on 1.20.2.

And then I find that my CPU is running hot for some reason, and while testing all this nonsense, it hit 80°C. So I have resigned to just playing on the tiny screen on my phone which is kind of a terrible experience and I have no idea how anyone can actually do anything this way. It's plain awful.

(Not to mention, there's a bug on the Android version that's existed for months which causes armor to render as solid flashing blocks and makes elytra disappear completely. It's hideous and at this point I don't expect it'll ever get fixed.)

[ice-cap-k]

Surviving Dead

I don’t know if it is still a thing by the time you read this, but did you know that in Minecraft there was a bug where the Ender Dragon’s breath attack would still kill you even if you were holding a totem of undying? You would lose your items and then come back where you last set your spawn…

Cross-posted on AO3 here: Surviving Dead

____________________________________________

Cleo was born the day after she died.

Now, that probably doesn’t make much sense, does it? Unless you know Cleo pretty well. Then you would agree that the statement suits her. 

She was a zombie, after all. 

You might be able to tell if you spent enough time around her. Would notice the scar beneath her eye that never fully healed or faded. Or notice the way her hair and nails never grew any longer. The pale, bloodless skin that almost looked green in certain lighting was probably the biggest clue, though. 

But it was more than that, though. Unlike the rest of the hermits who weren’t ‘undead,’ she left no trace. 

Joe was the first one to notice it after she joined the server. She had misjudged the distance on her leap. The ground came rushing up to meet here.

“Whoah!”

She knew it wouldn’t hurt when the bones broke. That she of all people had the least to worry about if she died. Respawn was a nuisance that lost you time and left you scrambling to refind your items. But that didn’t stop the fear from seizing up her arms and legs. Her brain still went blank with panic, rendering the water bucket in her inventory useless. She always did have a fear of heights, and therefore afraid of the ground itself. 

ZombieCleo fell from a high place

Cleo rolled out of bed with an annoyed sigh. At least she didn’t have to travel far without armor or tools. 

Joe was waiting for her with a chest back by the cliffside. He sat on its lid, twiddling his thumbs, when she picked her way back down.

“I put your stuff in the chest,” he offered, slipping off the lid. ”I wasn’t sure where you would have set your spawn…”

“Oh, my bed’s not far.” She flipped open the lid. Sure enough, he had laid out the armor, pick, and sword carefully along the base of the chest so they wouldn’t scratch against each other. There were also a few stray ink sacks and a flower piled in the corner. When had she picked up those?

“You know, Cleo, I… uh… I saw you fall back there.”

If it had been anyone other than Joe, she would have rolled her eyes. “Yes, I realize. No need to go rubbing it in my face now. I never claimed to be good at survival.”

“No! No no no,” Joe threw his hands out, shaking his head. “That’s not what I meant!”

“Then what did you mean?”

The chest lid creaked closed once more. Now Cleo was the one to sit down on top of it so she could lace up her armor. The buckles on the chestplate were difficult to undo with undead fingers still half numb from respawning.

Another set of hands reached into view. Joe picked up the next strap down. He slid the leather through the metal clasp for her with ease. “I don’t know… I just… I’ve never seen you drop dead right in front of me before. Or if I did I never really noticed. It looked like you didn’t leave a body behind. You vanished the instant you hit the dirt.”

“Ah.”

When your average person died, their body lingered for a moment. There would be a flash of pain as the damage to their flesh and bones set in before their consciousness moved on. The husk they had left behind would linger for a moment, nothing more than an empty shell without a soul and nowhere to go. And after that short moment passed and reality caught up with the newly respawned hermit, the body would fade away only to eventually appear sometime later as nothing more than a hollow shell destined to wander the land looking for the piece of itself that had moved on without it. Forevermore looking for something to fill the gaping hole left inside. 

A zombie, if you will. 

Cleo didn’t have that issue. She had never come across previous iterations of herself. There were no other Cleo’s wandering around the caves like there were Joes, or Jevins, or Bdubs, or any other hermit, really. Nor would that ever happen. 

She stopped bothering with the chest plate and moved on to the boots. She let Joe take it over instead. Regular laces were easier to tackle when you didn’t have circulation in your hands.

Joe took the chest plate without question. He sat down on the chest next to her, sliding the large piece of armor into his lap as he moved. Brown eyes flicked back and forth behind green glasses from the chest plate to Cleo’s face and back again. 

“It’s fine. It’s FINE. It’s just a thing I do,” she muses. “One of those things that comes with not actually being alive. Don’t go worrying about it.”

“Are you sure it’s alright?”

“Of course. It’s normal for me.”

“Does it hurt?”

“B-what?!” Cleo dropped her half-tied laces. It took a moment for her to register what he was asking before she broke down laughing. Some of the tension left Joe’s shoulders as he realized she wasn’t upset. He even chuckled along nervously. 

“No,” she said once she recomposed herself. “If anything, it hurts less when I respawn than it would when you do.” Part of it was because she didn’t have a body that would linger. Part of it was because her dead nerve endings couldn’t send out those sorts of signals at the rate a normal human body could. They were stunted and slow in comparison.

She finished up with the laces and pulled out the leggings. There were more straps on these, but she only had to loosen a few to slip back inside. 

“I’m sorry,” Joe said with a nervous smile. “I guess I never really thought about how things might be different for you, with you being a zombie and all. “You’ve just been Cleo for as long as I’ve known you, and then something like that happens in front of my face and I can’t help but think, ‘Oh! That’s different.’”

“In all fairness, you met me after all this happened.” She motioned to herself. 

“If I might ask, how did it happen?”

The strap fell from between her fingers. 

“Only if it’s alright with you, though,” Joe added. He had finished up with the chest plate by now. It rested in his lap, waiting for whenever she was ready to throw it on. He leaned over. One shoulder gently bumped against her side. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. But if you do want to…”

She pursed her lips. "I don't think it's a matter of me not wanting to. It's more like I don't think I can."

Joe's nervous eyes narrowed. She could practically see the gears in his brain go into motion as he tried to parse out what she meant. "I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."

"That’s not it. It’s more like there isn't much for me to remember. I can't recall."

Her life before her undeath was an empty gap in her mind. Sometimes there were vague notions and feelings that crept up behind her when she least expected it. For instance, she had a feeling she had been a teacher in her previous life. It was her best guess considering the odd sense of deja vu that set in whenever she lectured one of the other hermits. It felt right. 

Cleo was also fairly certain that who she had been before her untimely undeath had been a lot like who she was now. She wasn’t your typical wandering zombie. She didn’t hunger to fill some empty feeling deep inside. She still had a soul. A personality. A need to explore interests and desires. There was talent in her hands that let her build palaces and raise crops. That had to have come from somewhere. “Do you at least know how it happened?”

Sort of. But that wasn’t a very good answer.

“The first thing I can remember was being afraid. More afraid than I have ever been since,” she started. One leg of armor was fully strapped on. Her leg was firmly strapped into the greave of the other, covering everything from the knee down. The cuisse that was supposed to be covering her thigh was still hanging from the knee. Her hands moved automatically to finish tightening the leather fastenings into place. 

“It was like I just woke up that way. One moment everything’s dark, and then the next, my eyes fly open and all I can think about is ‘I can’t breathe.’ I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move either, even though it felt like I was shaking like a leaf.“

It hurt like crazy, too. Not that I was physically hurt as far as I could tell later. But I suppose it’s a bit like how you describe dying from fall damage. You guys all say that you come back feeling like every bone in your body should be broken.” 

But for me, it felt different. My skin burned like I had just been dipped in acid. When I closed my eyes, I saw an endless black sky and glowing purple eyes staring back at me. There was a little bit of that fear of falling, too. Like I thought I should have been falling through an abyss instead of lying down-“

“So that’s why you don’t like the End,” Joe cuts her off, eyes widening in realization. He pats a closed fist within the palm of his other hand like he’s just cracked a particularly difficult code.

“I don’t mind the End,” she snaps, playfully jabbing him in the side with an elbow. “I just have no illusions about it. I am fully aware that it is a terrible, dangerous place. And I have a healthy sense of self-preservation, unlike the rest of you.”

By now her legs are fully strapped into the armor. Joe offers the chest plate. He holds it up for her so she can slip inside. Then he reaches for the buckles at her side while she holds it in place. “We’re all professionals here. I’ll have you know that last time we beat the dragon I only cried once and died thrice.”

This time, Cleo really did roll her eyes. “Somehow, that’s still better than what I managed on that trip. Now where was I? Oh! So yeah, it didn’t feel like my bones were broken. I don’t think I died of fall damage, at least.”

“But the really weird part was that I woke up underground. In a box. Someone had gone and buried me. They must have thought I had been dead dead. No respawn. No fading body. Just me. And I suppose I was dead. It’s not like I have a heartbeat for them to feel anymore.

“It was pitch black down there. It took some fumbling around, but I managed to feel some other things in the box with me. There were jagged bits of ceramic. Couldn’t tell what those were. Some dead flowers were up by my head. They were nothing but dried-out leaves and petals at that point. And then there was a diamond pick. Whoever had buried me had been nice enough to put the pick in the box with me before closing the casket.

“It wasn’t enchanted, but it was better than nothing. There wasn’t much room to move around in the box. I couldn’t sit up straight or bend far enough to reach my toes, so I used the spike on one end to start scratching at the lid over my chest. It was the best I could do since I couldn’t swing it.

“The scraping noise it made was awful, but eventually I managed to break through. Soil came raining down as soon as I did. The hole I made widened as the dirt pressing down on it shifted. It all came down on top of me.

“It was heavy and it was everywhere; pressing down on my lungs, pinning my arm down… It got threateningly close to where I might just accidentally breathe it in…

“It felt like I would suffocate down there. In retrospect, it’s a good thing I don’t actually need to breathe. If I had, I probably would have been stuck in a death loop, assuming that my spawn was there at the time. It would have had to have been since that casket was the last place I had slept. And I was definitely having a panic attack so you can be sure there was no oxygen left in that box.

“And then I had to make the whole situation worse by pulling more dirt in. There was too much on top of the box. If I pushed out, it wouldn’t go anywhere. So it had to go somewhere. I had to use that pick to shove as much dirt as I could off to the bottom of the casket where my feet were.

“That seemed to do the trick, though. Once some of that soil wasn’t piled on top of the lid anymore, the ground had a bit more give to it. I could drag myself out through the mud, hand over hand…

She was vaguely aware that Joe had stopped messing with the straps hanging from her chest plate. Instead, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his chest. The armor clattered at the sudden movement. “Joe-?”

His eyes were watery behind the lenses of his glasses. His other arm pulled her in for a tighter squeeze. “You must have been so scared.” Yeah. That’s pretty much how she started explaining all this. Still, it was Joe. “Yeah.” She awkwardly brought her own arm up so she could pat his back reassuringly. “But it’s alright now.”

He returned her pat with a well-meaning one of his own against her shoulder, only to wince as the edge of her armor dug into his ribs. She pulled away and he didn’t protest. “But I still don’t get it. How did that death end up so different?”

“I’m not entirely sure after that. I just kinda rolled with what happened around me after that. It didn’t take me too long to figure out I had a few quirks. But there was one thing about that dumb box that gave me an idea or two about what happened.”

One of Joe’s eyebrows went up.

“I, uh… I went back to the gravesite later. It was so surreal, but I ended up digging it back up to check the casket for clues. It took me a while to clear out all the dirt that had spilled in from the top, but remember when I mentioned those little ceramic things I didn’t recognize?”

Joe nodded.

‘Well, when I looked at them in the daylight, they looked like broken pieces of a totem of undying.”

She paused, giving Joe plenty of time to mull over what she had just said. She watched his face flicker from one expression to another: from contemplation to confusion, to disbelief, to bewilderment. “Are you saying that you must have used a totem and it didn’t work?”

“I’m saying I don’t know for sure,” she stated plainly. “But I suspect that a totem went off and it only partially worked.” 

It made sense to her. Totems bound the soul to the body in times of extreme duress. The latent power inside was so strong that it could heal in an instant and protect the flesh from future damage, if only for a little while. So let’s say the totem wasn’t fully charged, or didn’t break fast enough, or whatever other possible mishap happened that she could reasonably think of. Was it really that unreasonable to think that the totem only half worked? It could have succeeded in anchoring her soul to this body but hadn’t been enough to actually save her.

The last few buckles on her chest plate slid into place. She was once more fully protected from the dangers of this world. Or as protected as she could manage. Both she and Joe stood up. He gave her a few steps worth of space so she could pick up the chest. 

“That’s actually terrifying to think about,” he said, burying his hands in his pockets. “I wonder if you got bugged out. Have you talked to Xisuma? Or any other admin on any other server?”

Cleo nodded. “I have. X took a look and it doesn’t show that there’s anything wrong with me. If it was a bug, it would be server-related. I am what I am no matter where I go, remember?”

“I know. I know. It’s just.. How does that even happen?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Your guess is as good as mine.” That’s all it really was, anyway. A guess. “Now come on. We’ve wasted enough time here. I need to get down in the mines if I’m going to have any diamonds this season.”

[hollislp]

Current Minecraft mods [Fabric 1.20.1]

A list of mods (with links) that I use regularly

This list assumes you have fabric api and cloth already in the mods folder

[mods in italics are not needed if using OptiFine]

[libraries and cores not included, some mods require additional mods to work]

3d skin layers

makes the outer layer of skins 3d

advancement info

shows what criteria needs to be met to get achievements

ambient sounds

adds ambient background noise

animatica

adds the ability to add animated textures without optifine

better f3

lets you choose what information is shown on the F3 menu

better mount hud

allows you to see both hunger and mount health while riding a mount

better statistics screen

makes the stats screen easier to traverse

better ping display

shows numerical ping instead of bars

chat heads

shows the head of the player along with their chat message

cit resewn

adds the ability to add custom item textures without optifine

clickthrough

allows you to click through signs and item frames into containers

continuity

allows you to add connected textures without optifine

cosmetica

adds cosmetics

cull less leaves

improves fps by leaf culling in a subtle way

death log

adds a list of causes of death and dates

debugify

fixes bugs on the minecraft bug tracker

disable custom worlds advice

turns off the "experimental features" message on worlds

draggable lists

makes lists like the texture pack list and server list draggable

dynamic fps

turns minecraft to 1 fps when not focused on

emoji type

adds the ability to type unicode symbols and emotes in chat

entity texture features

adds the ability for custom entity textures without optifine

extreme sound muffler

turn off specific sounds without a resource pack

fabric sky boxes

allows texture packs to add custom skies without optifine

fast quit

lets you return to the title screen instantly when closing a world

ferritecore

saves computer memory

friendly fire

makes it so you can't accidentally hit baby mobs and tamed mobs

immediately fast

optimizes rendering

indium

rendering optimization for the sodium mod

iris

shaders without optifine

lamb dynamic lights

dynamic lights without optifine

litematica

allows you to place a building schematic in your world

lithium

optimization

load my resources

loads game resources on start

memory leak fix

fixes several memory leaks

model fix

fixes the stitching gap in item models

mod menu

adds a menu to view and manage mods from

more chat history

increases the chat history to 300 messages

mouse tweaks

allows you to drag items into and from containers without moving the mouse

no fog

removes fog

not enough animations

adds many animations [climbing ladders, rowing boats, etc]

puzzle

easily manage optifine alternatives

reeses sodium options

adds more options for sodium

replay mod

allows you to record 3rd person gameplay

screenshot to clipboard

whenever a screenshot is taken it automatically copies to clipboard

shulkerbox tooltop

hover over shulker boxes in the inventory to see exactly what's inside

sodium extra

control more things than just base sodium

sodium

optifine alternative

symbol chat

adds a menu to type more symbols and change your chat font

visual workbench

see what items are in your workbench and what it's crafting

worldedit cui

shows what you have selected in world edit

worldedit

adds tools to make creative mode building easier

yosbr

keeps your options

zoomify

allows zoom without optifine

ORIGINS SERVER MODS

additional lanterns

more lanterns

bits and chisels

super small building

chipped

TONS of different blocks

clutter

small items like furniture and decorations

extra origins

adds more origins to the origins mod

handcrafted

more furniture and small items

origins

turn into different mobs (and more)

origins plus plus

adds even MORE origins

rocks

adds sticks and rocks

roughly enough items

adds a menu that allows you to see crafting recipes of all items

[not-radioshack]

Writeup: Forcing Minecraft to play on a Trident Blade 3D.

The first official companion writeup to a video I've put out!

So. Uh, yeah. Trident Blade 3D. If you've seen the video already, it's... not good. Especially in OpenGL.

Let's kick things off with a quick rundown of the specs of the card, according to AIDA64:

Trident Blade 3D - specs

Year released: 1999

Core: 3Dimage 9880, 0.25um (250nm) manufacturing node, 110MHz

Driver version: 4.12.01.2229

Interface: AGP 2x @ 1x speed (wouldn't go above 1x despite driver and BIOS support)

PCI device ID: 1023-9880 / 1023-9880 (Rev 3A)

Mem clock: 110MHz real/effective

Mem bus/type: 8MB 64-bit SDRAM, 880MB/s bandwidth

ROPs/TMUs/Vertex Shaders/Pixel Shaders/T&L hardware: 1/1/0/0/No

DirectX support: DirectX 6

OpenGL support: - 100% (native) OpenGL 1.1 compliant - 25% (native) OpenGL 1.2 compliant - 0% compliant beyond OpenGL 1.2 - Vendor string:

Vendor : Trident Renderer : Blade 3D Version : 1.1.0

And as for the rest of the system:

Windows 98 SE w/KernelEX 2019 updates installed

ECS K7VTA3 3.x

AMD Athlon XP 1900+ @ 1466MHz

512MB DDR PC3200 (single stick of OCZ OCZ400512P3) 3.0-4-4-8 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)

Hitachi Travelstar DK23AA-51 4200RPM 5GB HDD

IDK what that CPU cooler is but it does the job pretty well

And now, with specs done and out of the way, my notes!

As mentioned earlier, the Trident Blade 3D is mind-numbingly slow when it comes to OpenGL. As in, to the point where at least natively during actual gameplay (Minecraft, because I can), it is absolutely beaten to a pulp using AltOGL, an OpenGL-to-Direct3D6 "wrapper" that translates OpenGL API calls to DirectX ones.

Normally, it can be expected that performance using the wrapper is about equal to native OpenGL, give or take some fps depending on driver optimization, but this card?

The Blade 3D may as well be better off like the S3 ViRGE by having no OpenGL ICD shipped in any driver release, period.

For the purposes of this writeup, I will stick to a very specific version of Minecraft: in-20091223-1459, the very first version of what would soon become Minecraft's "Indev" phase, though this version notably lacks any survival features and aside from the MD3 models present, is indistinguishable from previous versions of Classic. All settings are at their absolute minimum, and the window size is left at default, with a desktop resolution of 1024x768 and 16-bit color depth.

(Also the 1.5-era launcher I use is incapable of launching anything older than this version anyway)

Though known to be unstable (as seen in the full video), gameplay in Minecraft Classic using AltOGL reaches a steady 15 fps, nearly triple that of the native OpenGL ICD that ships with Trident's drivers the card. AltOGL also is known to often have issues with fog rendering on older cards, and the Blade 3D is no exception... though, I believe it may be far more preferable to have no working fog than... well, whatever the heck the Blade 3D is trying to do with its native ICD.

See for yourself: (don't mind the weirdness at the very beginning. OBS had a couple of hiccups)

Later versions of Minecraft were also tested, where I found that the Trident Blade 3D follows the same, as I call them, "version boundaries" as the SiS 315(E) and the ATi Rage 128, both of which being cards that easily run circles around the Blade 3D.

Version ranges mentioned are inclusive of their endpoints.

Infdev 1.136 (inf-20100627) through Beta b1.5_01 exhibit world-load crashes on both the SiS 315(E) and Trident Blade 3D.

Alpha a1.0.4 through Beta b1.3_01/PC-Gamer demo crash on the title screen due to the animated "falling blocks"-style Minecraft logo on both the ATi Rage 128 and Trident Blade 3D.

All the bugginess of two much better cards, and none of the performance that came with those bugs.

Interestingly, versions even up to and including Minecraft release 1.5.2 are able to launch to the main menu, though by then the already-terrible lag present in all prior versions of the game when run on the Blade 3D make it practically impossible to even press the necessary buttons to load into a world in the first place. Though this card is running in AGP 1x mode, I sincerely doubt that running it at its supposedly-supported 2x mode would bring much if any meaningful performance increase.

Lastly, ClassiCube. ClassiCube is a completely open-source reimplementation of Minecraft Classic in C, which allows it to bypass the overhead normally associated with Java's VM platform. However, this does not grant it any escape from the black hole of performance that is the Trident Blade 3D's OpenGL ICD. Not only this, but oddly, the red and blue color channels appear to be switched by the Blade 3D, resulting in a very strange looking game that chugs along at single-digits. As for the game's DirectX-compatible version, the requirement of DirectX 9 support locks out any chance for the Blade 3D to run ClassiCube with any semblance of performance. Also AltOGL is known to crash ClassiCube so hard that a power cycle is required.

Interestingly, a solid half of the accelerated pixel formats supported by the Blade 3D, according to the utility GLInfo, are "render to bitmap" modes, which I'm told is a "render to texture" feature that normally isn't seen on cards as old as the Blade 3D. Or in fact, at least in my experience, any cards outside of the Blade 3D. I've searched through my saved GLInfo reports across many different cards, only to find each one supporting the usual "render to window" pixel format.

And with that, for now, this is the end of the very first post-video writeup on this blog. Thank you for reading if you've made it this far.

I leave you with this delightfully-crunchy clip of the card's native OpenGL ICD running in 256-color mode, which fixes the rendering problems but... uh, yeah. It's a supported accelerated pixel format, but "accelerated" is a stretch like none other. 32-bit color is supported as well, but it performs about identically to the 8-bit color mode--that is, even worse than 16-bit color performs.

At least it fixes the rendering issues I guess.

[marsbliss]

Astroneer

Astroneer is a sandbox adventure game released on early access in 2016 and full released in 2019 developed by System Era Softworks. It was developed in Unreal Engine 4. The player is tasked with exploring and colonising planets, creating structures with terraforming and collecting resources. Astroneer is also multiplayer, allowing players to interact with eachother’s worlds and explore together, which is a very appealing aspect to players. The player can craft objects such as vehicles for transportation and storage with Resin and Compound. Artist Adam Bromell wanted to go for a low poly, curved geometric shape to create something more unique. Around this time, games such as Minecraft were becoming popular, and Bromell thought that the block looking game idea had been done enough already. The idea was also to be a vibrant and eye catching game. Originally, the game was supposed to be a high-polygonal game. Additionally, low poly games are much more cost effective and allow faster loading times. With a game as large and expansive as Astroneer, a low poly look would be very efficient. Along with the terraforming aspect, it makes it very easy to create a game like this in low poly to avoid bugs and lag.

I really love the style for this game. Low poly and brightly coloured games are very visually appealing to me, they give a light hearted and relaxing, simplistic, minimalistic impression as opposed to fully 3D games that are realistically rendered, which seem more serious. The game looks very cute, and despite the vibrancy the colours aren’t too overwhelming to the point where its an overbearing eye strain. The colours are done well, the colour palettes are very aesthetically pleasing and the palettes work well together and the contrasts between almost neon colours and deeper cool tones compliment each other nicely. I have never played Astroneer, but it looks like a game I would be interested to play. It involves a creative aspect, with the terraforming mechanic, It gives a lot of opportunities to create a personalised world that involves the player more and keeps them connected to the game.

Astroneer is still relatively popular, and there are many active players online on websites such as youtube, with a series known as “100 days” where a player spends 100 days in a game to see the progress they make.

With Astroneer, I want to take inspiration from the colour palettes.

[dharshareddy189]

DIGITAL MEDIA: SOURCES AND SIGNIFICANCE

BLOG POST 8

Lighting in Video Games -

I worked as a lighting artist before and had the opportunity to work on various projects and use different lighting. Lighting in video games goes far beyond simply illuminating the environment. It's a powerful tool that shapes everything from the game's visual aesthetics to the player's emotional experience.

Lighting process in Video Games -

The lighting in video games will offer artists greater freedom to create the atmosphere and lighting style. However, we must adhere to the game's theme or primary aesthetic initially. It will be necessary for lighting artists to engage in more communication with directors or concept designers due to the increased area available for lighting design of the environment.

1. Block out lighting pass: just basic support for gameplay. Make sure players can see all the assets in the environment. No dark areas. You don't need to perfectly match the mood of the concept. 

2. Proxy lighting pass: start matching and designing the look of the environment lighting, bake reflection maps, add indirect bounce. 

3. Beta lighting pass (final lighting pass): fully address the notes from directors on lighting, check lighting performance, make sure lighting is under the budget, and keep testing the game in modules. 

4. Lighting bug fix: keep working on the lighting bugs assigned by directors or gameplay artists.

3D Lighting Tools and Software - A multitude of techniques and software are crucial for attaining optimal 3D lighting in digital environments. Autodesk Maya, Unreal Engine, Blender, and Cinema 4D are widely used applications for 3D modelling and animation. These programs include powerful lighting features that enable artists to position, customize, and animate light sources within their environments. Rendering engines like Arnold, V-Ray, and Unreal Engine include sophisticated lighting algorithms, global illumination, and real-time rendering capabilities, which improve the visual quality of 3D projects. Moreover, advanced software such as HDR Light Studio assists in the development of high dynamic range (HDR) lighting configurations, allowing artists to manipulate and explore lighting situations accurately to attain specific moods and atmospheres in their 3D scenarios.

Types of Lighting -

There are two types of lighting styles. 

1) 2D lighting style - 

In the past, the graphic capabilities of software and hardware were so limited that games had simple shapes and a poor level of detail. 

As technology advanced, designers could express more imagination and variation in their 2D game art. As a result, a wide variety of 2D art styles are now common in video games. 

Example - 

2D Pixel Art

Pixel art is among the most well-known of the many forms of video game art. In digital images, each little detail is represented by a pixel, which is essentially a square or other fundamental shape. Minecraft is a game made with a modern 2D Pixel Art style. 

Monochromatic Art

There is no universal definition of monochrome art. But monochromatic art usually has 1 or 2 colors.

If black is the only chosen colour, the artist designs most elements in black and differentiates the rest through white or shades of grey. Limbo is the best example of a Monochromatic art style. 

2) 3D Lighting Style - 

Ten years following the debut of 2D games, 3D games were released. Their meteoric rise to fame led many to believe that 2D games had finally reached their zenith. While 2D games continue to have fans, 3D game art has seen explosive growth due to the unexpected success of 3D games. 

Some examples of 3d Lighting styles are 

Realistic Lighting - 

While creating realistic art, the artist tries to make graphics look like reality as much as possible. All top projects are made in this style. Realism is mainly used in horror and survival games. One of the popular Game, Red Dead Redemption 2” uses a more realistic lighting style. 

Fantasy Realism Lighting - 

This style encompasses all science fiction, steampunk, and fantasy settings that the game developer aspires to appear realistic, even though they cannot be realized in reality.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a game made in the fantasy realism style.

My Perspective - I must follow the industry lighting workflow and keep up with lighting technology as a game designer who wants to be a lighting artist. Understanding lighting techniques can help me in a new and growing game sector.

CONCLUSION- To summarize, 3D lighting is a crucial element in the creation of video games, significantly influencing the level of immersion and visual accuracy of virtual environments. The advancement of real-time rendering technology, global illumination approaches, and physically based rendering has increased the complexity of lighting in video games. Including dynamic day-night cycles, high-dynamic range imagery, and real-time ray tracing integration has introduced a new era of unparalleled realism, empowering developers to create visually impressive and ever-changing settings. The artistic direction of a game combines with sophisticated lighting technologies to direct and influence the emotions and focus of the players. Developers can utilize industry-standard tools and graphics engines to effectively use elaborate lighting settings, ranging from complex global illumination to subtle shadowing. With the continuous advancement of technology, the future holds the promise of ever more stunning visual experiences. This will solidify the importance of 3D lighting as a fundamental element in developing fascinating and immersive video game worlds.

REFERENCE -

https://pixune.com/blog/game-art-styles/ ( ACCESSED ON 8th DEC)

Is Video Game Lighting Actually Important?-https://blog.vertexschool.com/is-video-game-lighting-actually-important/ ( ACCESSED ON 8th DEC)

https://80.lv/articles/general-pipeline-and-lighting-study-video-games-vs-vfx-commercial/ ( ACCESSED ON 8th DEC)

[leam1983]

On Fandom, Part Whatever

What kind of bugs me about fandom in general is how pointed interest in any given thing makes people see the object of their focus everywhere. Speak with a kid in his late teens or early twenties who's into Minecraft Let's Players? You'll get a bunch of asides related to VODs you've never watched or podcasts you never listened to. Post the pic of an owl on here? It's a crapshoot as to whether you'll get Owl House references or just people going Le gasp - Stolas!

And they're not even aware that Stolas dates back to Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal - or at least, props to those who do. It just keeps coming in waves; there's always someone whose sense of recognition can be triggered.

The part of me that's an old curmudgeon at forty sort of wants to point the kids to any number of Demonology references and to basic sociocritical overviews of the later Enlightenment - which saw "grimoires" like De Plancy's sort of serve as an indirect critique of the time's monarchy. Stolas, Gusion, Buer, Allocer, Crocell - all of them are references to monarchic and aristocratic aspects, rendered as satire.