#but it is fun to look at from the db perspective which is what this post is written from

[insanostyle1231]

thinking about lucien and the argonian twins. and how like. lucien couldnt have been a bad father from what we can see and hear from them like they adore him and love him and there is absolutely zero bad blood in those 2 people and theyre not even the slightest hint of bitter about anything. theyre both reserved and very helpful, hell id say teinaava is probably the most helpful to you in that whole sanctuary whenever you ask him about contracts!! and theyre responsible respectful people and like it seems lucien raised them as well as a good father should, with the addendum of teaching them how to kill but besides that, he seemed to have like (and may be a little reaching here but. this is my post i do whatiwant) supported/furthered their interests as far as we can tell because teinaava sits and reads all day! bookworm son my beloved

you can definetly say lucien only raised them as well as he did for the brotherhood, which yea true but i do think there has to be somewhat of a heart there to be able to raise 2 kids that way even if he sends you to kill them without blinking but i think that says more about luciens dedication to the brotherhood than it does his assumed love for his kids

point being: by the gods why is the cultist murder man a better dad than the fucking dragon god. what

[2n2n]

ch 119

WOOOOOO!!!! its endless fun at the JSHK

we don't know herrrrrrr... who is she! Lovely little Red House...

thankful for DBS, as the manga-UP upload (as it displayed on our tablet, I guess?) was too low-res to make this out even, let alone read it... medicine... the satchels that Amane would dissolve in water for his heart condition, and a cup of water? and some pills...

I wonder if that would simply mean, that Tsukasa never sacrificed himself at age 4 ... I would say the panel from Amane's birthday, it resembles moreso the clockkeeper's tall silhouette before young Amane... perhaps they made their proposition for a 'better' world simply, as they did in Nene-chan's dream, with her plant?

I don't know ... but it would be interesting to imagine an Amane, who simply was able to persevere through illness with medication, and still takes medication til his death (???).... a Tsukasa who was unable to do anything personally to save Amane, is interesting ... just a useless double-figure, no sacrifice to make. That is interesting to me, with Tsukasa's lack of self-value... his suicidal tendencies.

This world has a nearly unbearable amount of mystery... how did you get Tsukasa back? Do you understand what became of him? How much persisting love could 4 year old Amane have had, for his little brother? He's still on your mind, to this day ...

the cups which were immaculate and filled with tea on the table for Kou & Mitsuba, smashed ...

fun.

THE MOST UPSETTING THING IMAGINABLE!!!! what happened to your OTOUTO!!!!!!! screams.... a lone young Yugi.... scary, terrible, no no no!!!!

this made us laugh so hard at the manga-up release LOL

in just seconds we lost Nene-chan.....

Ahh one of those sublime Aida-sensei compositions... incredible... beautiful, evocative, heart-wrenching... Amane is such a labyrinth, isn't he... I love bandage boy looming over the edge of the stairs, refusing to walk up them further, poised to fall off entirely... so appropriate. And Hanako, pleasantly in place, not going anywhere....

I always love your instincts, Nene-chan. They're so strong. she's a good girl.

I don't know what to make of Kou, I have no idea what the house did with him when it disappeared him, what pulled him into that room, why, for what ...

s-scares me that this is still here in this world too.... please... why is Nene-chan destined to lose a leg or something... help....

N-Nene-chan, that's quite a strange impression of the Red House for you to have... thank you for being so kind to her, though... I think she's pretty misunderstood.... lets admire her wonder and mystery, ok?

there he is.... he has that kind of idiot quality to him... meep.

such an unbelievably beautiful shot....

Aida-sensei is a master... beautifully orchestrated... such a sweet Nene-chan... poor thing, poor thing...

it's like seeing an angel, right? Like seeing a fairy... I love Aida-sensei's taste for nervous gestures, hands...

the explosive Nene-chan hug moment!! It reminds me.....

of another......

she's both of your little fairy...

it's reassuring to see Amane looking this dumb and useless. It's comforting. It's familiar. Thank you.

yes. I understand Nene-chan would find it sexy.

ughf

[loses focus] get a blowjob idiot, get . suckedoff.... [SHAKES HEAD AROUND FURIOUSLY]

buffoon.... it's really calming to see you retain this quality, and also, it's not calming at all,

I love.... the blank-eyed blank-mouth Amane look.... becoming captivated...

oh Nene-chan... what wonderful lighting, what wonderful framing, so pretty. Nene-chan's stiff, strict pose, Amane's haphazard sloppy pose, his knit socks... fascinated, curious face....

you poor thing.... questions it hurts to ask.

I admire Nene-chan so much ... speaking from a Tsukasa perspective, I understand what it is like to have no good place in Amane's life, to imagine you're not the endgame, to imagine the best timeline in the world is one without need for you, a life with more delightful things filling it up, more happiness, intrinsically without you, without your love... though in my case, I accept it, and it's OK to die, since Amane is the only thing that could matter.... but I love to see Nene-chan confronting the pain of that very possibility for herself, the agony, is so earnest, so honest.... she wants more than anything to be special, because it's romantic, her romantic heart, she burns for significance in her love, in her passion amounting to something, in being some kind of good, her heart guiding her towards the right thing .... and not her heart guiding her selfishly, or uselessly, towards something with no room for her in it.... what I swallow, Nene-chan could never swallow, but that makes her special. It's sweet to cling and cling... to beg and cry.... what a wonderful love it is that sobs.

I feel for her so much, it would be easier to cry for her than for myself. Of course, Nene-chan could never be useless or unnecessary, she's so integral, to any chance for Amane's happiness. There can't be a world of a happy Amane without Nene-chan. Her sense for divine romance is correct, and it's something that everything in the world longs for, that kind of sentimentality... human and kaii alike, even kami. All the world it~ loves a lover~ 'cuz the lover~ loves the world~

bewitching, right? so nice to see him feeling this, even at this age... I'm sure he's never looked at another student this way. Or felt anything like this. This girl's intense feelings... radiating outward... unimaginable how thick and syrupy, right? it'll change the temperature of the room....

another beautiful panel by Aida-sensei.... so much envy for how she draws hair! I love how thin and floppy Nene-chan's feels... draping from the back of her head, over her downturned face... such a cute little pursed mouth. Impossible for her to keep her pain inside, she's not that type at all... too honest....

uaaaahhhhh 🙈it's TOO MUCH FOR THE GIRLS, AIDAIRO-SENSEI!!!! you can't do this to us/them.... noooo!!! isn't it wrong, it's like picking on the vulnerable..... iyaaaaa

such a sweet, heartfelt manga... the romance is so vivid... darling and sweet...

I like how much it hurts you, Nene-chan... I like how much you cry for it... you can't be happy for the idea of Amane's happiness alone... you wish you could give it yourself, be a part of it. You wish it included you. You wish it came from you. It's so painful because it's so selfish.... it's a wrong feeling to have. Your body wants to reject it. It feels distracted from the 'point' of happiness... what you 'want'. You 'want' a good future for Amane ... but some part of you must be begging for this world to be terrible, so you can have what you love back in your arms, for the happiness you alone could carve out for him. I respect that pain so so much.... you don't want it to be selfish to love Amane...

BIG FINISH!!!!!!!!

I love to see it yeessssss cheering hollaring whooping laughing cackling bones creaking in pain and pleasure

SHOW MEEEEEE THE SCARYYYYYYY MAN BRINGGGG HIM TO MEEEEE!!

I seriously wonder what the deal is in this situation, my god!! we all do of course... CAPTIVATING... this age Amane being here at all is a kind of time anomaly anyway, he isn't the right age and he isn't working at the school, yet here he is grading papers... does the conditions of his situation oscillate him between memoryless states? Does he operate on the living teacher .exe regularly, or is this genuinely a moment back in time? Only performed or really happening years ago? But the Amane in the school, itself, engaged with the topic of Tsukasa-kun, the rumors, likely the house (which he logically lived in, if we see him in it here now, settled)..... there just can't be a 'version' of him ignorant or helpless or only subjected to the house as an external ill, as he was seemingly actively perpetuating the school's possessions and sending students here. Fascinated by an Amane who is briefly so ignorant but can be triggered into his own memories and involvement .... is teacher.exe just so much easier to exist in while inactive?

the Red House, she seems to always exist untethered from time ...

well I'm deeply ready for the next issue's color opening, BRING MEEEE THE SCARY AMANE MANHANDLING NENE-CHAN...!!!!!! I want to know what we do with teens in this spooky mansion... what a thrilling story.

[roy-dcm2]

DBS Super Hero Reaction

I finally watched Dragon Ball Super Hero. Here’s my thoughts.

I think it’s weird that in a movie with the term “Super Hero” in the title, that LOVES to make overt references to the past, we don’t get any mention of Great Saiyaman 1 / 2. Of course, it’s all an allusion to Gamma 1 / 2 as Tokosatsu-style heroes.

Honestly, it’s really fun to see Magenta POV from the outside looking in and telling us what some people THINK is going on with Capsule Corp. I imagine he put this together from the scraps of information that he could glean from Dr. Gero’s observations. It does track.

People know about Nappa and Vegeta arriving. The Saiyan’s pod ended up at CC. And it would be easy for people to spot the Namekians living in Capsule Corp. So, you could conclude that Bulma is getting access to Alien Tech. But, Magenta also assumes that the Capsule technology is rooted in alien tech. As far as we know, it isn’t. And then Magenta jumps to the conclusion that CC is paving the way for an alien invasion… without evidence.

Obviously, Magenta is biased. Being a military organization, everything looks like a battle. He can’t contemplate that the Saiyans and Namekians are essentially refugees, and CC is just being philanthropic.

Overall, the movie is just fun! It has those original Dragonaball references for old fans like me, and the Tokusatsu stuff for the younger audience (in Japan). They are being cheeky with the Goku and Vegeta stuff. Whis forces them to fight without transforming because they had no idea what was happening in the manga. (They made this movie in the middle of the Granola arc, even though it takes place AFTER it). So, they couldn’t show off Ultra Instinct / Ego.

As I like to say, the movies are just more, and this movie gave us a bunch of really great Piccolo scenes. Him chastising Gohan, pretending to be a Red Ribbon solider, all the stuff with him and Pan. The main event fight doesn’t start until about an hour in… so, we get more time of them NOT fighting than fighting. I love it.

This is Piccolo's movie... and I don't want to hear any BS about "Piccolo is Gohan's real dad." As much as I like Piccolo. Piccolo spends half the movie telling the audience that Gohan isn't good enough. Then at the climax, Piccolo just expects Gohan to find it in himself to defeat Cell Max. Which is the the EXACT same thing Goku did during the Cell Games! Except Goku ALWAYS believed in his son!

With that all being said… I kinda wish this wasn’t canon.

Mainly, because as good as the set up is, the conclusion feels unearned. It might be a consequence of being a movie, but (in my opinion) when you have two big character developments, at least one of them should feel triumphant.

First, it irks me that Piccolo wishes to unlock his hidden power and Shenron “throws in something else.” Why can’t it just be his hidden power? Now I’m wondering what the fuck that symbol is. And this is the second time someone has WISHED for a power-up. It feels really lame and unearned. It kinda sucked when they did it for Super Saiyan God, then it sucked again when SS Blue just happened. Now, we have Orange Piccolo on that list.

Maybe they’ll explain it better in the manga, but what made SSj1 (and SSJ2 to a different extent) was how well they seeded them before they appeared. (SSJ3 sucks because they didn’t build up to it correctly.)

My theory is that it's a mix of Ultra Instinct / Ego, but it still doesn't explain how he managed to tap into either of them. You could say because Gohan talks about practicing the "demon drill" in secret, he's also been training with UI-UE in secret too.

Then there’s Beast Gohan. 25 min into the battle, Piccolo gets bodied, and Gohan rages out. I’d like to know why this isn’t just the SSJ2 transformation? What is this transformation? Where did it come from? I have my theories… but from a narrative perspective, it’s just a dues ex machina. SSJ1 was not a dues ex machine – it had real ramifications after it happened. Beast Gohan appeared to resolve the plot and then disappeared.

They need to do what they did with Slug and say - that wasn’t a real transformation. Then actually explain what "Beast Mode" is supposed to be.

7/10 – The spectacle is great, but the best part is the first half. Feel free to leave your comments (and theories about Beast Gohan) in the comments below!

[baeddel]

at the time it was a weirdly common attitude that any pvp other than 'honor dueling' was morally wrong, and that it was also dishonorable to backstab people too many times

same anon as in this post

yeah its so funny... the backstab thing is interesting because in DS1's 'rock paper scissors' the backstab fills the role of the throw, and in the old days throws used to have the same reputation. throws were cheap and grapplers were braindead. in dark souls backstab chains are 'no skill', etc.

i think in ds1 there were two reasons for the antipathy for backstabs: 1. it was VERY easy to get backstabbed in that game. more or less any whiffed attack could be BS punished, and any sort of forward movement could leave your back exposed. beginners will take huge risks all the time because they don't know what moves are risky and which aren't, so they'll wind up getting BS punished all the time, and their impression of the game will be that backstabs happen too much. because most people will never play the pvp seriously, most people end up with this impression.

2. a successful backstab places you in a very complicated mixup game. see this video. there are several ways to prepare an oki backstab, none of which beats all of your wakeups. if you roll away, they can walk behind you and backstab you. but if you just stand up and attack you'll catch them if they try that. but if they predict that they have ways of turning that into a backstab, but it won't catch rolls. but... etc. or they can give up the mixup game and just do an oki great combustion, which you cant avoid by any means, but which lets you escape the chain.

this is where DS1 is at its most fun, because it involves making a lot of reads on your opponent, and making the right one can turn the tables entirely. but most new players don't know that they're playing this game, so from their perspective someone got one BS off and they just got reamed out of the game. they can't read their opponent because they can't read at all; they don't even know what they're saying. in practice most new players will panic roll away from their opponent after a BS, which happens to be the easiest wakeup to punish. so they'll get BS'd, roll, get BS'd, roll, and say: there was nothing i could do. in fact if they just stood still they'd be out of the chain.

i will say i didn't really enjoy the pvp when i played the remaster. i only ever encounted dark bead or one-shot greatclub builds & they're obviously just not fun to play against but they're also very difficult to punish. i had been playing the original game all the way up to the remaster and you never saw builds like that. its interesting because they're obviously the best builds, but by the time the game had matured no one was using them. the same goes for TWOP; it's literally unbeatable, but no one ever used it. i think perhaps because the reason you play a game for a long time is because you find it satisfying, and winning with something degenerate isn't really satisfying. so on a long enough timescale degenerate stuff will be filtered out organically. is that true? would it obtain to other games? it doesn't seem to be true about Wolfteam, where you can buy overpowered beast forms for real world money, which people still play and claim to enjoy.

after writing this i went and looked at some old tournament bans and none of them included dark bead. is it not as good as i thought? i thought you couldn't escape a wakeup DB (or even a whiff DB on most weapons). they all ban TWOP, many also ban pursuers (??). one banned chain backstabs lmao. one banned "three consecutive uses" of DB or WOG (and said "try not to turtle"). i think most of these were just organized by children. one of them banned green blossom!

[hot-single-pigeons-near-you]

Not to Elder Scrolls post on my pigeon blog but

Just got Blackwood (not as huge a fan of the location so wasn’t gonna get it until I heard it was a dark brotherhood related quest) so here’s my thoughts so far (maybe minor spoilers? I didn’t finish it yet so nothing too big)

- Elam!!! He’s back!! My favorite character in this game, it was such a pleasant surprise, especially seeing as he seems to be a major quest character and not just a brief appearance. Didn’t get enough of him in the Dark Brotherhood questline so I’m super happy

- the location is alright, typical swampy argonion bs, it’s designed well but not my taste so I don’t have much to say haha

- I fuckin despise the elf girl who follows you around for most of the questline (forgot her name rip), her personality is alright but she easily has one of the worst models I’ve seen in this game (for a major character at least). Her eyes are just weird and I can’t place it, she looks like a rip off Harlequin. Wish she looked less weird because I feel like I’d like having her around otherwise

- the story is cool!! Sure it’s another daedric prince plotline, but I’m loving the “frame the DB” beginning, and the murder mystery vibes at the start. A shame the characters are bland, but the story makes up for it to a degree

- I have one, massive, glaring peeve above them all and it’s shockingly related to Elam. It’s the way he talks to me, as a member of the dark brotherhood. Compared to Greymoor, there is a lot more acknowledgment of my past doings (ahem, I DO know what house Ravenwatch is, Fennorian, I watched your dad send his own ass back to oblivion), but a lot of Elam’s dialogue still comes off as “you are a stranger who knows nothing of the brotherhood”, as if I’m an outsider and not his partner in crime.

It’s blatantly obvious what dialogue was tailored towards a DB player, and what was still shoehorned in from the perspective of a non DB player, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s very immersion breaking. Him talking about “this is how a dark brotherhood assassin kills” like huh?? We forgetting I am also a DB assassin?

That and the actual quest plays out the same… which is great until I’m betraying my own organization by giving away the plans for our new sanctuary? Like why the FUCK would I tell some random people about the Brotherhood’s new sanctuary if I was one of them. That pissed me off a lot

So short version: Elam is cool, elf lady can suck balls for all I care, story is pretty fun, biggest issue is that some dialogue is immersion breaking and doesn’t give credit to a player who’s previously done the DB questline

Maybe I’ll throw out my thoughts on Greymoor and Summerset if y’all like this post

[firefield]

David Bowie - Lodger (2017)

remixed by Tony Visconti

for A New Career In A New Town box set

Yesterday, I posted a review of the remaster of the original Lodger mix, and I’m reminded by comments and private messages how confusing the difference between mixing and mastering can be for people that aren’t steeped in that aspect of audio and musical art. They are two separate and important aspects of recorded music - the mix being part of the creation of the record itself, and the master a post-production technique used to optimize sound translation and playback on a wide variety of sound systems. Essentially, the goal of mastering is to replicate in your home what the artists and engineers heard of the final mix of the record on their studio monitors in the control room. Mastering (and re-mastering) is a subtle and critical-listening process and isn’t necessarily obvious for all people on all systems and in all listening environments.

Mixing and the mix-down process happens prior to mastering and radically shapes the sound of the record in very dramatic ways. This is where decisions are made as to how loud/soft each instrument will be, where they will be placed in the stereo field, how sound will enter and exit the sound stage, how sound will move (or not) from L to R and vice-versa, how sounds will be layered and which parts of all the musicians output will actually make it onto the final record.

So with Lodger (2017) Tony Visconti is able to access all of the recorded music made by all those musicians during the sessions from the master tapes, and reconstruct the album part by part. He can access unused vocal takes, guitar layers, percussive elements. He can apply entirely new effects. He can use more modern reverbs that mimic how our ears hear natural reverb in our environment, rather than be stuck with 1978’s inherent technological limitations. In other words, he can elevate the material as well as ruin it. Only rarely did DB allow his work to be remixed, outside of some repair work for live recordings. It *is* an indelible artistic stamp on the work and it’s influence over the impact of the record itself is undeniable. So when a project like this gets greenlighted by the artist, it’s a *big* deal.

Often, remix work causes much fan consternation and gnashing of teeth, and generally speaking, I get the reasoning behind that. And if this was some basement Ableton dude timestretching, looping, and dropping his own “dope” beats and calling it “Lodger 2021”, I wouldn’t be remotely interested. But when you have an artist-commissioned new mix handled by the original engineers using the original multitrack tape sessions, you’ve got a brand new window backwards in time, and that’s a revelation, especially considering the talented musicians that recorded all these tracks.

That being said, I suspect this type of work appeals more to musicians, studio rats and dedicated listeners (folks who sit down and listen to records and do nothing else but listen) More casual listeners may not be seduced by what could amount to “no big deal” by the time the last track plays. I fall into the former, so all these new juxtapositions, new balances of instruments, new soundstaging and panning, parts that were originally recorded but never used now appearing, modern reverbs and compression, and of course Tony Visconti’s personal artistic touch all amount to a pretty breathtaking look at Lodger.

I have no idea if this was done by design, but Dennis Davis just OWNS this version, and it’s sad to me that he wasn’t here to hear his work elevated. I love that TV obviously heard all that incredible isolated drum work and chose to bring it to the fore. It’s propulsive and kinetic, riveting and sensitive, and it’s like Lodger hangs on an entirely different skeleton, affecting its entire appearance. I don’t love everything about Lodger 2017 - some of the vocal treatments are a bit on-the-nose - but most of the things I originally winced at, I came to appreciate in the context of the whole as my ears and brain acclimated to this new approach. This new remix will be a treat for fans of Brian Eno’s “touch” with his treatments on this record. Liberated from the murk of the original mix, his parts feel more otherworldly and pleasantly odd.

From what I gather reading about this project, Bowie didn’t hear each and every track before he passed, but he heard most of it, and he and TV had mapped it all out ahead of time. I’m not a supernaturalist whatsoever, but it’s still fun to imagine David and Dennis together in the Afterlife, enjoying this recording. TV describes Bowie leaping out of his control room chair with joy, listening and pacing and praising what he heard, wondering aloud why they didn’t tackle this project sooner. There is no doubt he’d love everything that Tony did here and most Lodger fans will to, if you are willing to let go of what you expect to hear and embrace a new map of familiar terrain.

Ultimately, this version solidifies the connective tissue between it and Scary Monsters; surely even skeptical listeners can acknowledge that Lodger can now sit more comfortably in DB’s discographic timeline, at least from an aural perspective.

To me, this is exactly what remixes should do. Throw back the curtains, clean the window panes and point out some things you never actually saw before in the landscape, or highlight things you became so comfortable with you no longer noticed. If it’s not already completely obvious, I think Lodger 2017 is fantastic, and I have no qualms recommending it to music lovers. It in no way replaces or supersedes the original work, and certainly doesn’t diminish that snapshot in time. On the contrary, I see/hear it as a celebration of an innovative and fabulously creative period for one of rock music’s greatest artistic minds.

[aotopmha]

I saw the Broly movie in a specific way (as it is I have no other ways to see it anyway - low or high quality) and have been stewing on it a little. I'm probably going to write a much more elaborate post once the highest quality version is out. I'll also try my best to not give many spoilers here and keep it vague, but I will address the big spoiler everyone knows - Gogeta.

So, here's the stuff I really liked:

-Goku's character. He cares about getting a good fight going into it all and as always, is naive in not entirely good ways, but you also see him be very empathic and sweet and care about protecting the Earth. The usual, technically, but above all, I appreciate the balance here. I was never bothered by DBS exgaggerating Goku's traits at points to the point where I hated his character (some of those points are actually very interesting to me), but it did bug me a few times. Here, the balance is pretty much perfect to me. Aside from that, he does have a pretty interesting character moment at the end of the movie (not the obvious one, but rather something the moment implies) - it's something that will only be obvious if you think about Goku's initial story in OG DB, perhaps even something that could entirely be nothing or unintentional, but a bit of character writing I think that potentially creates a parallel between Goku and Broly that I regardless found interesting. I even thought they would make it one of the central points of the story, but it's there in a much more subdued way, to the point where it could potentially be unintentional, but I chose to think it's not.

-They fixed Broly and actually made me feel for him. He has a pretty clearly defined personality, and above all, motivations that make sense and are very human. He's still pretty basic, in that he is reserved and barely speaks, but that's part of what is also unique about him to me. Much of his personality comes from his expressions and manner of behaviour, rather than a very complex perspective on the world or elaborate dialog. The complexity he has also comes more from the circumstances and the interaction/relationships with other characters around him, rather than a straight-up clearly defined character arc. However, out of any new characters introduced in Super, I think he is the best example of a character that could have an arc that could go in several different directions. Out of most of Super's new cast I feel like he has the most room to do something with. Rather than being just a story that is finished by the end of the movie, this movie feels more like a beginning for Broly.

-Paragus. Paragus is an interesting villain because he's 100% a villain, but you can still get where he comes from - and he actually even has an arc that leads to his villainy.

-Chirai is really fun and very likeably justice-driven and proactive. She's the "heart" within the movie along with Goku and I love her for being so empathic. Lemo is the crusty old man sort of counterpart to her, empathic, but more passive about it.

- Freeza is entertaining humor-wise, but also still very hateable as a villain. I like his further development into a more effective villain. He's kinder to his subordinates, ready to retreat when things look bad, rather than just doing everything to get a victory right away - undoubtedly evil and self-serving still, but much more calm and collected about reaching his goal. It wouldn't surprise me if being so lax with him would later lead to very bad things.

-The more diverse portrayal of the Saiyans. They're not just a cold-blooded warrior race, but we also see regular workers like Gine or Beets and the social stratification of the whole society plays a big role in why the story takes place at all. Basically, we get a much more nuanced look at the Saiyans.

-Piccolo's brief role. I really liked his moment with Goku and his moment with both, Goku and Vegeta later on was a blast.

-Animation and music were mostly spot on. Great, great stuff. I thought there was some odd music placement in one scene, but beyond that, I think even some of the sillier-seeming music choices fit. There were a couple of CG moments, but they didn't distract me all that much and outside that I thought the movie looked pretty excellent throughout. This is in fact probably the best Dragon Ball has ever looked and the other big reason I can't wait for the high quality version of the movie.

I had parts of the movie I wasn't as big on as others, but I didn't straight-up dislike anything in it.

-The fights took too long. Particularly the Gogeta fight felt too long. It was a pretty-looking battle, but that was just it. The fights with Vegeta and Broly and Goku and Broly, plus their double-team at least had character stuff going. The Gogeta fight is pretty much 100% fanservice stuff outside of the finale, which did a very cool perspective thing with both participants of the fight. But, again, at the very least, it was REALLY pretty-looking fanservice stuff.

-Related to that, while it fits the more focused nature of the story, it's really odd that nobody else but Piccolo seems to notice the battle. In fact, I think Broly could've been restrained by Gohan and the other fighters just as well as Freeza.

-Gogeta is pretty much the weakest link to me in terms of plotting, though. Again, imo, nothing that ruins the whole thing because I think the outcome would be same no matter which way - getting the Potara (Goku could have just gotten them from Shin by quickly teleporting there, the movie does not address this, it just says they don't have the Potara or Senzu) would've just prevented maybe some of Freeza's beating. I think a Fusion or something of that level was actually needed considering Broly's green-haired form clearly kept up with Gogeta and he went into it after being pushed by Gogeta, so I can believe Goku and Vegeta individually would've been beaten if they pushed him.

That is, if you don't consider Ultra Instinct. Ultra Instinct probably could've also done the job, but they dance around that by having Goku do the smart thing and retreat before it could happen that he is pushed too far and have him opt for the Fusion instead. If that didn't work out, Ultra Instinct probably would've done the job, too. You could replace any of them because with any option Broly would probably be pushed into his green-haired form and defeated. Gogeta has just never been used before, so it's a more unique option.

-The Minus stuff went past pretty quickly and I actually think the rewrite is very much better than the initial Minus story, but it's still kind of bland. Bardock's story fits in what the Saiyans' life is like much better, but Gine is still boring and I still basically felt nothing for this part. In this case though, the purpose for it was just setup, which is another reason why I'm more alright with it.

I think the series has had much worse writing moments than these and it makes me happy this is the most I have to complain about. It's all mostly quality of life stuff to me and doesn't break the story or it's ideas.

Above all, I appreciate that this movie took something soulless like Broly's character and gave it soul - portions of it are clearly there to just please the fans, but the whole thing is tied together by pretty strong and heartfelt character writing and themes.

I want to definitely recommend it. If you can, support it. I want DB to continue have such heartfelt stories and look so good. This is a very good direction for the series, even if I'm bummed about the older side cast not getting to do much.

I have much more elaborate thoughts on basically all the characters and, again, 100% can't wait for the HD version. I also can't wait to dig in the themes. It has a very simple, but human core.

Right now, is it my fave DB movie? Not sure. I think it's up there.

Right now, out of those I've seen, I think only BoG tops it, though. We'll see how I'll feel on rewatches.

[jacobthespaceguy]

New life, new computer & new perspective.

I wrote this half a year ago and forgot to post this. Enjoy.

Dear Cosmonauts,

Greetings! It’s me, your boy! Did you miss me? No? Yeah, not too surprised. To be honest, I would be genuinely surprised if anyone actually read these. It’ll never stop me though. I love using this as some kind of escape. I think I’m trying to say that I’m officially back to blogging! Well actually, I never was in a state of, “blogging.” I just simply make a blog post every once in a while. So instead of being back, I guess I will simply start blogging more often. At the very least, try to. In an ideal world, I would create entries at least once a month, that’s not too much to ask for... just a few paragraphs every month. Sounds easy enough... On that note, it probably isn’t. But maybe it is. It depends on your personality.

Laziness. Saying laziness defines me is an understatement. I don’t want to be lazy nor do I wish I was. I’m honestly not too sure why I'm so lazy. I think this pandemic just made it really bad. Working from home 3/5 days of the week changes you. Early on, I figured I would be able to use this extra time to work on more music and I even started being a mixing/mastering engineer for a friend of mines. However, I ended up using this extra time to stay in bed and be useless. Some would say I'm being hard on myself but I'm not. I stay in bed and I waste my time, my friend's time, and overall, I'm just a useless human being. I feel like a failure sometimes. However, I do hold on to the hope that I can change. I want to change. Some days, I tell myself, "I'll be productive this time," but then stay in bed half the day. By the time I'm up and eaten breakfast and done my whole morning routine... it'll be 2 o'clock and the day is practically over. It's not really over, but it'll feel like it. It sucks. Now the pandemic is ending and I'll probably have to go back to work full time soon. I have no idea how I'm going to cope with that. I'm already depresso mode from things changing so much around me that I feel like a hermit and want to hide under my desk for the rest of my life. I hate change. I hate it, hate it, HATE IT. I know change is good and if my music career takes off, then they'll be a lot of change. Although, I would rather endure that kind of pressure than have to go back to work. Every day to get to my work is a 40-minute drive there, and an hour drive back since traffic is so bad. I know other people have it worse, but with how tired I am after a shift, I have days where I lay on my bedroom floor doing nothing and or nap until I finally get up to shower, eat dinner and finally get to the home activities I wanted to. However, at this point, it'll be 7 PM and I'm too tired to do anything other than watch YouTube videos until 1 AM, and then it's finally time to go to bed. It's a struggle and I can't seem to escape it.

I don't even know what I'm writing anymore and lost track of where I was going with this. I guess it's to complain about hating work and or my laziness? I originally started writing this post with the intention to talk about my new computer and how writing a blog post with it is a vibe. I bought a mid-2017 MacBook Pro back in August of 2019. It was the most absolute base model and only had 128 gb of storage and 8 gb of ram. WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF! I loved the flexibility of having a decent laptop for when I travel, but this was a bad purchase that left me financially ruined. I want to say that it was a terrible machine and I hated it. However, it ran decently most of the time and I must confess that Apple just knows what they're doing when designing computers. I can't argue though, since I started this blog, I became an Apple fanboy and I'm seriously buried in the Apple ecosystem. My phone, laptop, tablet at one point but sold, my credit card, my watch, earphones, and tracking devices are all connected to Apple and they basically run my life. However, my main machine will likely always be a Windows desktop.

Back to the MacBook Pro, my 2017 laptop having 128 gb made the machine unusable for me. Apple offering a 128 gb machine was a cardinal sin and I do the happy dance every morning knowing they no longer exist. After downloading Reason and Logic Pro, I had about 8 gb for any else I wanted to use. I couldn't even have all of Logic's sounds installed. Ugh. I never used the machine because I resented it so much. However, I recently started using it to record my vocals because the fans (despite going up 1000 db when I record in Reason) were quieter than having my desktop fans on when recording so I opted to use my MacBook Pro to record instead. In addition, it was really nice to have when I was on the go and needed a computer. Despite being a baseline laptop, it ran the project file for my song, "Nothing Was The Same," decently enough for me to get some mixing done at my Dad's house late last year. It still chugged pretty bad when I was traversing through Reason's sequencer. My final straw was when I wanted to try a vocal plug-in that refused to work on my PC so I pulled out my MacBook Pro and installed it on there and it worked perfectly. I was like, "Man, I wish this MacBook Pro just had a little more storage so I can actually use it efficiently." That's when the idea came to me, "Holy crap, let's just buy a new MacBook."

I would constantly go to Apple's website and look at their newest 16" MacBook Pro. It's when Apple finally let go of the butterfly switches on their keyboard and went back to a scissor-switch design and improved the heck out of the performance. It was a beautiful machine and I wanted it ever since they announced it. So I went back on Apple's website last week after testing that vocal plug-in and was reminded of the horrendous price. $3,000 for a decently specced computer was just too much. Someone on Reddit was telling me how great Apple's refurbished computers are and that they're basically brand new aside from the regular box it comes in. So I decided I wanted to get a refurbished MacBook Pro. However, the next morning, I decided to do a little more research and I thank God I did because after a little research, I saw how much better the new 13" M1 chip MacBook Pro was over the current 16" Intel MacBook Pro and that it was the best laptop to buy. Even better, it's cheaper. So after more research, I decided to buy a refurbished max specced out M1 MacBook Pro. I finally have 2 tb of storage. 2 TB!!! I have more storage on this laptop than on my Windows desktop. I also went with silver over space grey like my other MacBook simply because it looks so much cooler. I don't care for space grey anymore. Something about the classic silver is where it's at. Also, this keyboard is amazing! I'm using it right now to type this. The Touch Bar is pretty cool too. I thought it would be a weird adjustment but it was actually pretty seamless. My only complaint is that it's easier to tap it and do something while typing on the keyboard. Happened to me twice while typing this. Although, all I did was open the emoji window so it wasn't even an issue. However, I think I type a bit in an unconventional way than most of you reading this do so just ignore me. I would also like to brag about how quiet this computer is. I haven't heard the fan once and it's dead quiet. In fact, the M1 MacBook Air doesn't even have a fan, that's how good this new Apple silicon is. Lastly, I haven't had the computer heat up at all yet. I'm typing this using safari with a few tabs open, Logic Pro in the background and there's no part of the computer that's hot right now. My lap would've melted if I was using my 2017 MacBook and it's in great shape! I want to say this computer is a beast but, to be honest, I haven't had a chance to stress test it yet. I've had the computer for less than a week. I will definitely keep you all updated.

Wow, I can't believe I typed all of this simply because I imagined Adam Young in his basement late at night with his MacBook Pro writing his magnificent blog posts that inspired me to start this blog in the first place. For whatever reason, it's a real vibe for me and as I was fumbling through Logic Pro, I had the idea to write a blog and all of this entry just poured out from my brain to this text box. I sincerely apologize to anyone reading this far and to my future self who probably just spent 20 minutes proofreading and fixing errors I made. I'd imagine all the run-on sentences are probably infuriating. I think I spent 40 minutes to an hour just writing this.

In conclusion, I'm writing blog posts again and plan to release new entries at least somewhat often. I have quite a few ideas of things I want to talk about, so you guys will get to pick my brain soon enough. In addition, I may go public about this blog. It is public but I announced it a long time ago and I wasn't very big. But with my podcast and additional following over the years, I may finally get some readers. I'd be surprised if more than 3 people have seen my blog which I'm not upset about. I'm treating this as my personal time capsule and it's fun to go back and read. In addition, I'm going to die someday. I don't know when and how, but it provides a little bit of comfort knowing a potential love one may find this one day after my unfortunate death and get hours of personal content that they can read over any time. I don't mean to get morbid and I don't mean to say my blog is the second coming of Christ. I don't know what I'm saying other than I hope you enjoy it. Anywho, I plan to make blog posts more coherent and not so all over the place. I went from being lazy/hating work, MacBook Pros, and then to my death, all in the same post. I just got so excited once I started typing and couldn't stop. More posts to come. Thank you and goodnight.

-Sincerely,

Jacob McDonnell

[hydrus]

Version 447

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

I had a great week. The database should be a bit faster when doing file work, and I have fixed several annoying bugs. It will take your client a few seconds to update this week, maybe a minute or two if you have millions of files.

multi column lists

I gave the weird column widths another go. Some users had this fun but quite annoying situation where a dialog with a list could grow magically wider before their eyes, maybe 20 pixels four times a second, until it reached their monitor width. Other users (me included) had a handful of lists still growing or shrinking a few pixels on every reopen.

So I drilled down into the logic again and improved things. Some calculations are now more accurate, some are more precise, and I think I fixed the runaway growth situation. Let me know how you get on, and sorry for the trouble!

performance improvements

Thanks to profile feedback from users, I discovered some file routines that were working inefficiently, particularly on very large clients. Mostly unusual jobs like 'get all the trashed files that are due for deletion' or 'get the repository update files I still need to process'. It was mostly when you were looking at a small domain when a very large 'my files' domain was right next door, getting in the way of the query. Having done lots of similar improvement work for tags, I updated how files are stored this week. Several big tables are now split into many smaller pieces that do not interfere with each other. This was actually a long overdue job, so I am happy it is done.

There isn't much to say beyond 'your client should be a bit faster with files now', but let me know how you get on anyway. Mostly you should have fewer lag spikes as background jobs go about their work, but you may notice the duplicates system going a bit faster and general file searches working better too.

Some users with very large sessions have also reported CPU lag with the new session saving system. Thanks again to some user profiles, I was able to speed up session save, particularly for pages with tens or hundreds of thousands of thumbails. The next step will be optimising downloader page save, so if you have a lot of heavy downloaders, I would be interested in some profiles.

In that vein, I significantly improved the profile mode (help->debug->profile mode) this week. All the modes are now merged into one, and all the popup spam is gone. It now makes a new log file every time you turn it on, and only the most useful information is logged. I will keep working here to get more and more information profiled so we can nail down and eliminate slow code.

I have altered core components of the database this week, and it unfortunately caused some bit rot in older update routines. 447 cannot update databases older than 411, and it may have trouble updating before 436. If either of these apply to you, the client will error out or warn you before continuing. I'd like to know what happens to you if you are v411-435 so I can refine these messages.

And while I have tested this all back and forth, there may be a typo bug in some of the more unusual queries. I am sorry ahead of time if you run into any of these--send me the traceback and I'll fix them up.

full list

misc:

fixed drag and dropping multiple newline separated urls onto the client when those urls come from a generic text source

pages now cache their 'ordered' file id list. this speeds up several little jobs, but most importantly should reduce session save time for sessions with tens of thousands of files

common file resolutions such as 1920x1080 are now replaced in labels with '1080p' strings as already used in the duplicate system. also added 'vertical' variants of 720p, 1080p, and 4k

when a page preview viewer gets a call to clear its current media when it is not currently the page in view, it now recognises that properly. this was happening (a 'sticky' preview) on drag and drops that navigated and terminated on other pages

the various 'retry ignored' commands on downloaders now give an interstitial dialog where you can choose to retry 'all', '404s', or 'blacklisted' files only

manage tag siblings/parents now disables its import button until its data is loaded. imports that were clicked through before loading were being forgotten due to tangled logic, so for now I'll just disable the button!

reduced some more spiky database I/O overhead from the UI's perspective (now savepoints are performed after a result is returned, just like I recently did with transaction commit)

duplicate potentials search will now update the y in its x/y progress display if many files have been imported since the search was started and x becomes larger than y (due to y secretly growing)

fixed the default 'gelbooru md5' file lookup script. if you have a lookup script with this name, it will be updated to my new default automatically. I don't really like fixing this old system, but I am not sure when I will fit in my big rewrite that will merge it with the normal downloader system, so this is a quick fix for the meantime

if you are one of the users who had weird unfixable 404 update file problems with the PTR, please try unpausing and doing a metadata resync one more time this week. fingers crossed, this is fixed. please let me know how you get on too, fixed or not, and also if you have had 'malformed' database problems in the past

.

multi column lists:

improved the precision of longer text pixel_width->text and text->pixel_width calculations, which are particularly used in the multi-column list state saving system. another multi-column size calculation bug, where lists could grow by 1 character's width on >~60 character width columns on every dialog reopen, is now fixed

multi-column lists should now calculate last column width more precisely and accurately regardless of vertical scrollbar presence or recent show/hide

the snapping system that locks last column size to 5-character multiples can now snap up or down, increasing error tolerance

I added a hack to stop the bug some people had of multi-column lists suddenly growing wide, up to screen width, in a resize loop. I think it works, but as I cannot reproduce this error, please let me know how you get on. resizing the options->external programs panel seems to initiate it reliably for those users affected

.

profile mode:

all debug profile modes (callto, db, server, menu, pubsub, and ui) are now merged into one mode under help->debug

this new mode no longer spams popups, and it only prints 'slow' jobs to the profile log

it also makes a new profile log every time it is turned on, using mode start timestamp rather than client boot timestamp, and when profile mode is turned off, there is a popup summary of how many fast and slow jobs passed through during the log time

touched up profile code, timing thresholds, summary statements, and the help

.

special update rule this week:

due to the big file storage rework this week, there's some bit rot in older update routines. 447 cannot update databases older than 411, and it _may_ have trouble updating before 436. if this applies to you, the client will error out or warn you before continuing. I'd like to know what happens to you if you are v411-435 so I can refine these messages

.

boring database refactoring:

the primary current, deleted, pending, and petitioned files tables are now split according to service, much as I have done with mapping tables in the past. this saves a little space and accelerates many file calculations on large clients. if you have a client database script or patch that inspects 'current_files' or 'deleted_files', you'll now be looking at client_files_x etc.., where x is the service_id, and they obviously no longer have a service_id column

a new file storage database module manages these tables, and also some misc file deletion metadata

refactored all raw file storage updates, filters, and searches to the new module

the mappings and new file storage database modules are now responsible for various 'num files/mappings' metadata calculations

most file operations on smaller domains, typically trash or repository update files, will be significantly faster (since the much larger 'my files' table data isn't fattening the relevant indices, and worst case query planning is so much better)

cleaned up a ton of file domain filtering code as a result of all this

physical file deletion is now much faster when the client has many pending file uploads to a file repository or IPFS service

complicated duplicate file operations of many sorts should be a _little_ faster now, particularly on large clients

searching files with 'file import time' sort should be a little faster in many situations

tag repositories no longer bother going down to the database level to to see if they have any thumbnails to sync with

everyone also gets a local file id cache regen this week, it may take a few seconds on update

next week

Next week is a cleanup week. I would like to continue my long term database refactoring job, breaking the code into neater and saner pieces that will also support some neat future maintenance jobs. I also want to bring back the vacuum maintenance command with some new UI.

[ourescapades]

Made by Jaryelle Pilar

Photography has been one of my favourite things to do. It has been a form of expression in the things I see and feel in the moment of a certain view or object. The power of photography has a lot of varieties of meanings and perspectives with just a click. Sometimes I use photography as a tool to capture a special moment that I find very memorable and I use that to share it with the world because it had created and impacted me with a huge expression such as joy, curiosity, or could simply be sadness. Photography also encourages me to be creative and develop a personal style where I try to shift from a different view that not a lot of people would feel and once I edit it and match it with a caption to represent it, I received a lot of people saying that they find it very impressive or innovative. From that on, I decided to practice even more and join classes related to photography. I may not be as perfect or let’s say as professional; however, I do believe that it will take a lot of practice and for this assignment, the two pictures that I will compare between original and edited, will show a shift of story. 

Lately, I had been very interested in watching horror films and then I got so interested to edit 2 pictures from my original shots that I took in Canada. Picture (A) attached above that I entitled “Horrific Existence” is where I got inspired to edit the original picture to a view of loneliness or could be a sense of horror like the TV series called “The Walking Dead”. When I was editing the picture, I focused more on a black and white filter where I edited the exposure, lighting, shadow and brightness of the overall photo. The point of changing the colourful picture to black and white is because I aim to shift their perspective to something different; from joy and happiness to an impact of loneliness. For me to test and try to prove my edited picture to see if I did achieve to shift a different perspective, I did a short interview from my classmate named Shaina where she states that the original picture felt so relaxing and where she would see herself going to that place and be happy. She also said that she sees herself going there with her family. However, when I showed her the edited version of the picture, she suddenly felt lonely and felt different. She mentioned that she felt as if she was in an apocalypse where the world flips to something horrible and that she does not see herself living in a place like that because she would feel afraid and terrified. 

A week ago, I was watching a scary and very daunting movie called Anabelle. In the movie, Anabelle was believed to be a normal doll but it was actually possessed and haunted and as you stare at the doll for a long time, it will slowly give you the feeling of being creeped out. Picture (B) attached above that is entitled “The Glimpse” is where I got inspired to edit the original picture to a view of darkness. I also focused more on a black and white filter with also fixing its exposure, lighting, shadow and brightness; although, I did put a colour in the eyes of the cat. I only coloured the eyes of the cat and made it more vivid to achieve a scary or an eerie effect; moreover, by colouring the eyes, it can help people identify the object of the edited picture. For me to verify and see the result if I was able to accomplish to shift and mesmerize by the edited picture, I did a short interview from my classmate Anna where she states that the original picture is something she would just scroll if she saw in social media or in a book where she would not pay attention to. Nonetheless, when she was looking at the edited picture, she finds it very creepy and more dramatic; furthermore, she said it gave her the feeling of a darker mood and when she saw the eyes, it makes her want to stare at it even more where she finds it very hypnotizing. Also, she mentioned that if she saw this particular picture in her feed or saw this in a book, she more likely pay attention and would read the caption or the story behind it. 

The edited pictures from picture A and B will misguide the audience. Editing pictures and showing it to people will impact them because when filtering and changing its original form, it will change and cause a lot of different perspectives. Edited pictures should never be used in news media because it will disobey the rules of photojournalism. Photos that will be shown on a serious platform such as news on television or in social media should always follow the ethics of photojournalism. The rules in photojournalism are to always report and show relevant facts about a certain event that people or the public would receive the real information. It should never change the real meaning of it or rather the information behind it so that it will not lose its real reason and purpose. Knowing that each original picture that took was changed into black and white is not allowed to be used in the serious platforms. Anything you change from colour, filters, shapes, no matter what you edit, should not be presented as a press photograph because you are not documenting the real event. In terms of the main differences between art and press photography, they are absolutely different. Press photography is where you report the current event and the aim is to capture an experience that also supports a written report; therefore, it should not be edited of rather changed from its original view. However, for art photography, the method of communication is not through the event that has happened but through the artist. The artist may try to show something that will achieve an effect by the message that could be through words, emotions or just simply a creative idea they thought of. The use of art photography is to build up an emotion or behaviour to be able to appreciate their work. In terms of identifying which one is press or art photography, the original pictures that I took are press photography since it is showing it natural raw pic and for the edited pictures are considered as art photography since I was aiming to give a different view and by editing the picture, it was able to achieve a different story and perspective. 

Editing a picture will simply lose its authenticity. There is nothing wrong with editing pictures unless if you use it to report a situation, then that is something you would not consider. Editing photos through reporting is not advisable and would disobey the ethics of photojournalism. Don’t be scared, as long as you use it for something else such as a form of expression for your own art then there is nothing wrong with that. In photography, always be creative and have fun.

REFERENCES: -        DB 6 (Week 6) Documenting the great depression -        DB 9 (Week 9) Shooting the truth: Photojournalism 

All pictures that are used are owned by Jaryelle Pilar. 

[junker-town]

SB Nation on Radio Row at Super Bowl LIV

Enjoy all of our conversations with players and other personalities in one place.

SB Nation’s team brands were well represented in Miami during the week leading up to Super Bowl LIV. We’ve got a ton of content we want to share with you, and you can find links to it all below.

Pete Sweeney from Arrowhead Pride and Kyle Posey from Niners Nation are on the team beats, bringing you the latest and greatest on the Chiefs and 49ers right up through the game on Sunday. RJ Ochoa from Blogging the Boys spent the week on Radio Row with SB Nation’s NFL associate director Jeanna Thomas and podcasts executive producer John Gennaro having fascinating conversations with NFL stars, draft prospects, and other personalities.

We’ve put all of that coverage right here for your enjoyment.

Nick Mangold, former New York Jets C

Mangold talked about his first concert (Black Sabbath at Wright State University’s Nutter Center when he was 13 years old) and shared some insight on the ideal sleeping temperature for offensive linemen.

Kyle Turley, former Saints, Rams, and Chiefs OT

Turley insists cannabis saved his life, and he’s using his platform to help others learn about the health benefits. He shared his outlook on the Chiefs, Rams, and Saints, too.

Marshall Newhouse, NFL free agent OT

Newhouse was drafted by the Packers, and he was most recently with the Patriots. He talked about the retirement of Dante Scarnecchia, what Tom Brady’s really like, and the Patriot way.

Todd Fuhrman, Fox betting analyst

If you’re even remotely interested in sports betting, you don’t want to miss this one. Fuhrman shared his insight on how odds are developed for Super Bowl entertainment prop bets and much more.

Dr. Jen Welter, first female coach in the NFL

Welter is a trailblazer, and her enthusiasm for leveling the playing field for young women is contagious. She talks with us about her time as the Cardinals’ LBs coach, the 49ers’ Katie Sowers, and her Kick (Gl)ass foundation, which exposes girls to football and STEM opportunities.

Jay Glazer, Fox Sports NFL insider

Glazer shed some light on new Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy’s character. You’re not going to want to miss his insight on Jimmy Johnson’s Hall of Fame announcement, or his story on breaking the news to Michael Strahan that he wasn’t going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer.

Chad Millman, chief content officer for The Action Network

If you’re interested in sports betting and you don’t have The Action Network app on your phone, Ochoa and Millman will convince you to change that in this podcast. Chad also looked back at his Project 256, where he bet on every single NFL game in 2019 and won 56 percent of those bets.

Akshay Khanna, GM of sports at StubHub

Khanna was kind enough to join us to talk about all things Super Bowl tickets and the data behind it. It’s a fascinating and fun listen.

D. Orlando Ledbetter, Falcons beat writer for the AJC

Ledbetter joined Thomas on Radio Row to talk about the outlook for the Falcons in 2020, Austin Hooper’s future, and more.

Radio row with @jeannathomas today! https://t.co/v4xn6kWVpA pic.twitter.com/1ntSS5dCTe

— D. Orlando Ledbetter (@DOrlandoAJC) January 29, 2020

Joe Theismann, former Washington QB and Super Bowl champion

If Theismann had to pick between playing for the Niners or the Chiefs right now, he’d still choose Washington. Tune into this one for some excellent insight from a legendary player.

Christian McCaffrey, Panthers RB

Is a hot dog a sandwich? The third player in NFL history to hit 1,000 yards rushing and receiving in a single season says absolutely not.

Darren Rovell, sports business analyst for The Action Network

Rovell talked about the changes in Super Bowl host city parties over the years, why Saints fans ribbing Falcons fans about 28-3 makes no sense, and more. This is, as Rovell would say, tremendous content.

Alexa Score, Vikings sideline reporter

Come for the unparalleled insight into the Vikings, and stay for the fun. Score is a former professional wakeboarder who helps Thomas educate Ochoa about pontoon boats.

Cynthia Frelund, NFL data science for NFL Network

In one of our most fascinating conversations of the week, Frelund shares how she analyzes the offensive line and safety positions and much more.

Daniel Wallach, gaming law and sports betting attorney

We revisit Deflategate, the Ezekiel Elliott suspension, and discuss the current issue with the Saints’ connection to a lawsuit about child sexual abuse against the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Oliver Luck, XFL commissioner

If you’re dreading the end of football season, this interview with XFL commissioner Oliver Luck (yes, he’s Andrew’s dad) will get you fired up for the league to kick off its new season the weekend after the Super Bowl.

Jake Fromm, former UGA QB and 2020 draft prospect

Ochoa and Thomas chat with Fromm, AKA Jake from State Farm, about preparing for the draft and what he’s watching on Netflix, which is definitely Grey’s Anatomy.

Terry McLaurin, Washington WR

McLaurin talked about playing in the pros with Ohio State teammate Dwayne Haskins, his outlook on Washington’s future under Ron Rivera’s leadership, and details about just how important The Game against That Team Up North is for the Buckeyes.

Jay Ajayi, free agent NFL RB

Ajayi talked with us about his experience as a pro FIFA player, winning a Super Bowl with the Eagles, and whether his Super Bowl ring is bigger than Thomas’ engagement ring.

Bob Sturm, The Athletic Dallas

Sturm and Ochoa chat about all things Cowboys, including fans’ perspectives on Dez Bryant and the outlook for the team under McCarthy’s leadership.

Emmitt Smith, Hall of Fame RB

It’s not every day we get a Hall of Famer to join us to talk about Jimmy Johnson’s induction into the Hall, the outlook on the Cowboys, and more.

Jason Robbins, DraftKings CEO

Every DFS player needs to hear this. Robbins talks about the different formats available on DraftKings and the strategies behind them, as well as the community DFS can build.

Beau Tanner, former BYU DB and 2020 draft prospect

Does your team need a defensive back in the 2020 draft? Then get to know Tanner, who talked about his draft preparation process and his favorite show to binge watch on Netflix.

Will Cain, ESPN Radio

Ochoa has the hot take that Aaron Rodgers isn’t good, and much more during this chat with Cain.

Keith Ismael, former SDSU OL and 2020 draft prospect

Ismael loves to cook, he’s a big fan of the movie Ratatouille, and if your team needs an offensive lineman in the 2020 draft, you’ll be rooting for them to grab this guy.

Auden Tate, Cincinnati Bengals WR

Tate’s go-to meal? Turkey wings, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread. He’s a huge fan of The Office, further confirming his good taste. Tate joined Ochoa and Thomas to talk about all of this, as well as the Bengals.

Harrison Hand, former Temple CB and 2020 draft prospect

Matt Rhule was one of the hottest head coaching prospects this offseason, and he got snatched up by the Carolina Panthers early in the process. Hand, who transferred to Temple from Baylor, shares his unique perspective on Rhule as well as some insight into what to expect from him in the NFL.

Patrick Taylor, Jr., former Memphis RB and 2020 draft prospect

What’s the best BBQ in Memphis? Taylor’s got the answer in this podcast. He talks about his experience as a WR in high school and how his route running skills will help him in the NFL, and much more.

Xavier Woods, Dallas Cowboys S

Woods joined Ochoa to talk about all things Cowboys, including his offseason, his goals for 2020, and reality TV.

Commander Dan Kitts, lead pilot for Super Bowl flyover

We didn’t expect to land this interview, and it ended up being one of our favorites of the week. Commander Kitts will be the lead pilot for the Super Bowl flyover, and he talked about the planning and precision involved in this fascinating podcast.

Will Brinson, CBS Sports senior NFL writer

Which team will win the NFC East next year? What about the NFC South? What podcasts does Brinson’s wife listen to? Will answers all of these burning questions in our chat with him on Radio Row.

Mina Kimes, ESPN senior writer

Kimes joined us to chat about the Seahawks, obviously, and how the quarterback carousel may shake out. She shared her excellent opinions on Matt Ryan, and much more. This was one of our favorite conversations of the entire week, and you won’t want to miss it.

We’ve also got daily recaps from our beat reporters.

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

[aotopmha]

If you haven't yet, I really encourage to check the DBS manga. The art is very clean, the fights are really fun to watch. But one of it's biggest strengths imo is how the autor takes the time to explain and expand on things as opposed to the anime who dispose of more time to do it, but doesn't. And despite that, there's never any significant break in the pacing and every chapter is enjoyable. The only cons I could give it is that the BoG arc is rushed and the RoF arc is completely skipped.

Also, one thing the manga does a lot better than the anime is staying coherent to itself. The power levels of the characters are also a lot more accurate and are always explained. And if you think the manga is a simple retranscription of the anime, you’re wrong. It’s actually a retranscription of Toriyama’s original script he gives to Toei and Toyotarô. This script only gives the directives for the story and Toei and Toyotarô have to fill in blanks like they each want. So you will be surprised !   

—–

Thank you for sending this! I am actually keeping up with the manga! I can now write my wall of text on why I think the manga is the worse version of the story.

I think the last few chapters have moments that encapsulate my problem perfectly: Toyotarou is not a creator, he is a fan.

He is a very good example of a fan who is talented in some ways, but 100% a *fan* in others.

Manga:

(Chapter 27)

Anime:

(Episode 77)

The difference here is that the anime is considerably more in line with Goku’s character.

This is just a very good example: Goku is awkward, but he is not completely heartless or clueless. When he learns Bulma has a baby in the anime, he actually offers the food he bought to Bulma. He *named* Gohan and was dead while Goten was born, so the anime only has him saying he was dead when Goten was born.

In the manga, it really feels like the moment is there to make Vegeta look better, rather than to compare him to Vegeta. It’s dumping on his character in a very fan-like way. This is what I mean by the fact that Toyotarou is more fan than a creator - a creator is concerned with developing all of the story’s characters and has enough perspective to treat all characters the same way. DB itself is known for dumping on it’s side cast, but not quite in this way. You can still tell that Toriyama is a creator.

This is just one example, but the manga really is not good at actually writing the characters. There are a few good lines and moments here and there, but I don’t feel like any of the characters are really “fully-fledged” characters. As much as some of the asspulls and plot solutions at the end of the Trunks arc frustrate me in the anime, I never came to Dragon Ball for the plotting. The plotting has been iffy at points even in the original Dragon Ball portion of the story, which probably has the strongest writing out of all of the portions.

I think Goku Black and Zamasu suffer from this the most. They are very generic in the manga. I think Zamasu could’ve been a lot better in terms of execution in the anime, too, but even then, he has principles and a perspective. Goku Black was interesting because he wasn’t entirely Zamasu. Reveal or no reveal, he was part Goku and part Zamasu and that’s what made him interesting. None of this is present in the manga.

Another example would be Toppo. At this point in the manga, he feels like a more legitimate threat, but there is none of this stuff:

(Episode 81)

Toppo and Bergamo calling out Goku’s behaviour during the Zen Exhibition match is interesting. It’s actually made a thing, but currently the manga seems to ignore all of that. Toppo’s justice schtick is actually pretty fun at points, but none of that is there in the manga as of the current chapter.

Super got a lot of crap for being the “Goku and Vegeta Show” in the first three arcs, but 29 chapters in, the manga is literally all it is, with a little Trunks, Bulma and some of the side characters on the side. I appreciate the manga for trying to give personality to the Gods Of Destruction, but they’re not what should be focused on in a story that hasn’t really done anything with it’s actual main cast. 

Gohan, Krillin and Piccolo have almost literally nothing. I hope they finally have something done with them during the lead-up to the ToP or at least during the ToP. In comparison, all the “filler” in the anime serves to actually develop the characters and show their relationships.

The Pan episode, the baseball episode, the Arale episode, the Gohan-centric episode during the FT arc, the Kid Trunks moment - none of them, or something equivalent to them, is there in the manga. Even the character-specific moments like Goku getting angry when he’s told by Goku Black that he killed his family in another timeline or Vegeta beating up Goku Black aren’t there, which are some of the highlights of that arc.

I’m keeping it to pre-episode 77 stuff because the manga just passed that in the past few chapters, but right now the Hit two-parter, Gohan two-parter, Krillin two-parter or anything equivalent of them don’t exist. All good characterization I very muich appreciate.  

I’d praise the plotting for being better, but the manga has strange stuff like the Zamasu clones and Goku learning Hakai, too. The Hakai thing particularly bothers me because we haven’t seen him take interest in being a God Of Destruction, he hasn’t even seen how Beerus uses the technique in the manga and it doesn’t fit his character, either.

If you compare that to stuff like Trunks’ Spirit Sword or Super Saiyan Rage, they at least make emotional sense. They are introduced at a high point in the story, as a reward to a protagonist for his struggles. Trunks fought Goku Black many times during the story, recieving presumably several Zenkai boosts. As much as the very clumsy execution of episode 67 annoys me, Trunks didn’t actually win, either. (The same goes for the manga, here, actually, Trunks’ healing powers actually make a little more sense, even.)

I don’t like Goku forgetting the Senzu Beans and Mafuba seal in the anime, either, but it has good enough character moments in return that I can somewhat look past it.

Tl; dr The manga feels like a plot summary. You have all that plot stuff like the time travel and some of the power-ups explained better and it has better pacing in some sense (though no build-up to anything hurts it at points, too - it feels like things just “happen” too often), but the manga leaves me completely indifferent outside of it’s art. It’s just not very good at writing the characters, which I care about the most.

[grrrlsoverdramas]

so. here’s my "introduction” post for the TOKE2 kdrama exchange~. I was recommended Father is Strange, Emergency Couple and Mystery Queen.  Given I started FiS already (and hopefully will catch up soon??), and started but did not like Emergency Couple when it first aired, I figured I’d do Mystery Queen, which I have been meaning to watch anyway.

So, thoughts on Mystery Queen ep 1:

Why I haven’t already watched it: This started airing in april while I was on my trip, which is mostly why I never watched it.  But it is also no particular attachment to any of its actors, particularly Choi Kang Hee, our titular heroine, whose acting/charisma has never wowed me.

So far, Choi Kang Hee is fine, really cute, even, but always initially like her characters and then later find them lifeless and underdeveloped (I think this is also a bias against people with breathy/weak voices happening, lol).  Hopefully that doesn’t happen here, though.

And while Seul-Ok’s antics to avoid her mil were fun and very screwball, I do find that the “shrill mother/-in-laws” trope is one of the things that tires me out from this kind of thing quickly.  It is a lot of fun watching Seul-Ok be a detective, Murder She Wrote style, but a lot less fun to have people thinking she can’t, like, be friends with men or have her own desires.  I can tell this will be a further conflict, and maybe get worse (or involve her husband)? but I’m not looking forward to that.

I am looking forward to when our heroine meets the big bad full-of-himself detective, because I can tell in advance that he is going to have a hard time believing she knows what she’s doing, but she’ll show him up until he recognizes it~ I also love that this overconfident masculine guy is actually the watson to Seul-ok’s Sherlock (and that DB for pointing out that name pun)

ALSO I love her friend Kyung Mi (so concerned for her sea bream) and hope that their friendship is something that stays a part of the narrative.

And, then, Chief Joon-oh is a good example of how being handsome and nice simply aren’t enough to justify getting whatever you want in life. I don’t hate him but  he’s basically terrible at his job, and I generally don’t find that to be endearing. The cynical patrol officer under his command is one of my favorite character actors (Jung In-gi), so I’m always happy when he’s on screen, even if his character’s a jerk.

The background music (something which I don’t usually pay much attention to) is also a nice addition because it has this jazzy vibe to it, sometimes with the repeated symbol, a la the Pink Panther. 

Overall I feel pretty positive about this drama.  It has a good element of zaniness that lends it energy which is usually missing from drama procedurals. I love the sherlockian trope of having an amateur who’s great at sleuthing while the professionals keep making stupid mistakes.  I hope once she’s paired up with the guy, she doesn’t suddenly become less of a savant, because that would be no fun.  Speaking of which, do I have to spend the whole next episode from the perspective of all the dudes?  Cause that seems unnecessary.

[peopleload710]

How To Mod A Pc Game

How To Download Mods For Pc

How To Make A Mod For A Pc Game

How To Make Mods For Games

How To Mod A Pc Game Ps4

GTA 5 has been one of the most popular games in the franchise, so much so that it released back in 2013 but its fame still continues. This game ended up doubling the initial expectations of analysts as it surpassed 815 million USD within 24 hours of released. Naturally, players started adding mods adding a lot of beauty, chaos, new challenges to the already well balanced game. In this guide, you will know which are the best GTA 5 mods for PC and how to download GTA 5 Free Mods.

When you download a mod file it will usually come in one of three file types. EXE These are the easiest to install. Once the file has downloaded just double click on it and when it runs it will install itself, done, run the game and test it. Just click the subscribe button on any mod you'd like to install, and they'll be added to your game the next time you launch it. To remove a mod, you just need to click unsubscribe.

Since these are unofficial mods, make sure to only use them in single-player mode. Don’t use them in GTA Online since it is multiplayer and you might be banned for cheating. So, with that in mind, let’s check out some awesome Grand Theft Auto 5 Mods.

Nov 17, 2017 Modding PC games doesn’t follow a universal process. The required steps differ game to game and mod to mod. Generally, modding requires some kind of change to the existing game, such as tweaks.

Best GTA 5 Mods for PC (2020)

These handpicked mods will surely change the game for you – literally and figuratively. Ranging from crazy to outright silly, these mods will guarantee that you have an unforgettable experience in Grand Theft Auto 5. But in order to play the game with these mods, you must know how to install them.

How to Install GTA 5 Mods Downloads?

Installing mods is pretty simple but it totally depends on which mod it is. Check out our beginner’s guide to GTA V mods installation for all the important details.

Iron Man Mark V Mod

Ever wondered how it would feel to play this game as Iron Man? Who wouldn’t love to be a superhero like him?! This seems like a dream but it’s true. You can wear the iconic Ironman armor and roam around Los Santos, “fly” in the sky and fight like him too. Step into the shoes of Tony Stark and utilize your immense power. In this game, Iron Man need not be the good guy who is saving the world. You could play as Iron Man with villainous motives and unveil your inner darkness.

Hulk Script Mod

Want to try out some other avenger? There’s the Hulk mod which will let you Hulk Smash across the city. Jump higher, climb buildings and scream at the top of your lungs. This GTA 5 mod will give you the chance to wreak havoc everywhere and live like the raging green monster in your favorite game.

Simple Zombies Mod

Why not take it up a notch by adding zombies to the mix? You can do exactly that with the Simple Zombies Mod. Add the undead creatures to Los Santos, unleash new dangers and test your survival instincts. If you were hoping for a Zombie-based DLC for this game, just like Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare, this might be the closest thing you can get.

GTA Realism

If you want to ramp up the visuals of this video game, this is the mod you need. With more realistic physics, deadlier combat, chases, weapons, police and more, this is just like playing the game in the real world. Will you be able to survive the harsh realities of life? Find out with this GTA 5 mod. Be careful though, this isn’t for the weak of heart.

LSPD First Response Mod

Want to be the the good guys in the game? You got it! Through this police mod, you can be a cop and nab criminals. It turns the concept of the game on its head and honestly, it’s super fun. This could very well be an homage to the original cops and robbers game Race’n’Chase which formed the roots of the franchise we know today. What if the original concept was officially made into a cop game? This could be it. Maybe, just maybe, this might make you stop being a criminal from now on? We’re kidding, this will never happen.

Open All Interiors Mod

Simply put, this GTA 5 mod will open up doors for you in the game. Perfect for invading, exploring and just being your usual criminal self. In some of these rooms, you will even find NPCs. A lot of interiors get opened up with this mod which is bound to make things very exciting.

GTA RPG Mod

Are you craving some RPG elements in the game? Look no further because this mod does it for you. With it, you will be able to turn the game into an RPG with ability trees, side missions and more. If role-playing games are your forte, this might just make GTA way more interesting for you.

Bonus: Want to feel nostalgic and add Vice City in GTA 5? Well, you can. This is how to get Vice City in GTA 5.

So, go ahead and download GTA 5 free mods to enjoy the game with a brand new perspective. Take the necessary precautions before downloading any mods in general, because some reportedly have malware. So, always verify before you install.

Want more mods for other video games? We got you. Check out our mods section to get to all the fun stuff.

One of PC gaming’s biggest strengths is its flexibility, and that advantage shines brightest when you mod your PC games. While console games remain restricted to the gameplay and features shipped by developers, many PC games can be modified by the community to tweak almost any aspect of the experience. Mods can offer enhanced graphics, bug fixes, fresh quests, you name it. The best PC mods can change games completely—and sometimes kickstart whole new genres of their own.

This guide will teach you how to mod PC games, explaining the various resources available to find and install mods, as well as how to manage your mods to avoid potential conflicts. Welcome to the next stage of your adventure.

Note: We’ll start this article by explaining how to use mods in PC games, but since this is a beginner’s guide, we’ve got the why covered too. The second page details reasons you may want to mod your PC games, along with screenshots and examples of some of the more popular mods available.

How to mod a PC game

Before we begin, be aware that many multiplayer games, including Grand Theft Auto Online, will ban you if join an online session with modified files. (They’re allowed in GTA V’s single player though.) Other online games allow the use of quality-of-life mods like graphical enhancers, but ban gameplay mods. Do your homework if you want to run mods while playing online!

Got it? Good. Let’s dig in.

Modding PC games doesn’t follow a universal process. The required steps differ game to game and mod to mod. Generally, modding requires some kind of change to the existing game, such as tweaks to an .ini file or replacing texture files completely. Some mods may need more in-depth preparation, such as decompressing a game’s executable, swapping in some very specific files, and then repackaging it. Most mods will have install instructions in their readme files or on their host sites.

Fortunately, some of the biggest mod communities offer custom tools that greatly simplify the installation process. In the best cases, you’ll only need to click a button and the modding tool does everything else for you.

Nexus Mod Manager

The Nexus Mod Manager, which is still in open beta, works alongside the popular Nexus Mods site by handling mod file storage location, downloads management, and many installation paths. For the mods that support it, this allows you to just download and install from a single location instead of having to navigate a bunch of different game folders to make sure all the pieces are in place.

Steam

It should be no surprise that if you want to use Steam Workshop mods, you need to use Steam. The Workshop features within Steam allow you to subscribe to mods for games you own on the platform. Once you do, Steam will handle the installation part, then keep your mods automatically updated, just like the rest of your games library. Not all Steam games support Workshop, though.

Twitch Desktop App (previously Curse)

The Twitch Desktop App has a handful of Twitch and community features, but recently, the mods application features from the previous Curse app has been rolled into it. Much like the Nexus Mod Manager, you can install mods through the app instead of dealing with each mod installation effort individually.

Finding game mods

Finding mods for games is the easy part. It’s picking and choosing which specific mods you want that can get difficult. Regardless, there are all kinds of sites and services that host mods for gamers to download and use. Here are some of the largest repositories.

Nexus Mods

Nexus Mods is one of the most popular mod hosting sites, particularly for Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. The Nexus sites are primarily community-driven, with free hosting and distribution of mods made by just about anyone.

Mod DB

Mod DB is one of the oldest modding resource sites out there. It’s typically known for being the popular host for mods of older games (like the original Half-Life) or being the primary distributor of the very popular Brutal Doom. In 2016, Mod DB acquired GameFront—which used to be the largest mod hosting site in the world—after GameFront shut itself down.

Steam Workshop

If you couldn’t already guess, the Steam Workshop is a mod hosting resource for games on the Steam platform. Game developers can support the Steam Workshop for their games, which then allows communities to create and change the game, while handling all mod hosting and sorting through Steam directly. Steam Workshop makes modding dead simple.

Curse Mods

Curse, recently acquired by Twitch, is a multimedia organization that holds a wide range of gaming-centric media. Curse has been most popular for hosting add-ons for World of Warcraft and other MMOs.

Bethesda Creation Club

At E3 2017, game publisher Bethesda introduced the Bethesda Creation Club, a curated marketplace for mod creators to be able to make and sell content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition. You’ll find the Creation Club baked right inside those games. The idea of paid mods may be a touchy subject for some, though.

Game specific resources

Several games and series have specific community sites where most of their mods originate. The popular mods from these sources may be rehosted elsewhere, but these niche sites tend to be the primary community for the games. Here are some examples:

Fallout 1 and 2 - No Mutants Allowed

Minecraft - MinecraftMods

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Deadly Stream

On the other hand, some especially useful mods support many different games. Two notable multi-game mods are ENBseries, which enhances the graphics in many modern titles, and the_bigg’s Widescreen Mod, which adds much-needed widescreen support to classic CRPGs like Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale.

Managing PC game mods

Steam, Nexus Mod Manager, and the Twitch Desktop App are also tools for managing your mods. They show you the mods you have installed, include abilities to enable or disable individual mods, and can help let you know when an update is available.

That said, there are some mod management tools available that help in specific games. If your game of choice has enough mods, chances are someone has developed a manager for them. Here are a few popular ones:

Bethesda’s role-playing games have been a modding favorite for years now, and legions of mods are available all of them. Because of that, modders also created several key Bethesda-focused management tools.

Mod Organizer

Once the preferred mod manager for Elder Scrolls and modern Fallout games, the Mod Organizer offered much of what the Nexus Mod Manager can do with some additional features, such as being able to open up game’s data archives and save files for direct manipulation. Fun fact: Nexus Mods hired Tannin42, the creator of Mod Organizer, to work on the Nexus Mod Manager in late 2016.

LOOT: The Load Order Optimisation Tool

When you’re trying to play with a large number of mods in modern Bethesda games, the order in which they load up can be important. LOOT helps you organize your mod list and load order, saving you the time and energy of having to learn what most of the order needs to be yourself. Additionally, LOOT can help point out opportunities for optimization in some mods, such as redundant components or dirty edits that will only slow things down.

Wrye Bash

Think of this as the manual version of LOOT, with some Mod Organizer features on steroids. Wrye Bash helps you get into the thick of things in terms of mod management by helping you access the parts of mods that might need cleaning or even file merging.

Now that you’ve learned how to mod PC games, it’s time to dig into why you’d mod PC games.

Next page: What is game modding? Why you’d want to mod PC games.

Page Break

What is PC game modding?

Modding is about fine-tuning games to suit your tastes, making changes and alterations to games based on whatever you (and mod creators) see fit.

You could change something visual, you could change how your character gains power, or you could swap out the entire game soundtrack for a fan-made orchestral version. Some folks are picky about the lighting; others may change up the game’s difficulty in ways that the default Easy to Hard scale doesn’t quite fulfill; and some may just be patching some buggy parts for the benefit of the game’s fan community.

While specific mods out in the world will have some crossover, we’re going to break mods down into four major categories:

Aesthetics

Technical

Gameplay

Content

Types of PC mods

Aesthetics

The most popular mods for the most popularly modded games tend to be aesthetic mods that tweak the look and sound of a game. For many, it’s about making things prettier, more realistic, or to push their hardware a bit further than the game can on its own.

Take Skyrim, one of the most heavily modded games of all time, and take a look for some of its mods. The most subscribed mod on Skyrim’s Steam Workshop is a water retexture mod called Pure Waters by Laast. At NexusMods, the most downloaded Skyrim mod is a high resolution textures pack called Skyrim HD - 2K Textures. Skyrim has so many amazing visual mods that it’s easy to see why allkinds of games are finding new life through HD remakes.

But a picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s Skyrim running unmodded, but with Bethesda’s HD Texture packs installed…

…and here’s Skyrim with a slew of graphics mod installed: Climates of Tamriel, Natural Grass Texture Floor, Pure Waters, Realistic Lighting Overhaul, ENB, RealVision ENB, Skyrim HD - 2K Textures, Static Mesh Improvement Mod, Skyrim Distance Overhaul LOD Improvement, and Ultimate HD Fire Effects. Click the images to enlarge them if you want to bask in all the improvements.

How To Download Mods For Pc

Audio mods are only popular in some games, but they can do interesting things. Fallout 3’s GNR Enhanced adds theme-suitable music the radio and improves some of the immersion in the scripts of Three Dog, the game’s radio DJ. Other audio mods focus on quality, such as swapping out the sounds of the various guns in the games for what’s considered more accurate, higher quality versions. Towbie’s Realistic Weapon Sounds for Fallout 4 is a good example.

But there’s also a reverse side to aesthetic mods, especially visual ones. Some mods focus on decreasing visual quality, to allow games to run better on underpowered hardware or simply increase the frame rate for a more buttery feel. Many competitive players reduce graphical quality just enough so that the important details are still visible, but the framerate can be as high as the hardware will allow it to be. If a game’s options don’t quite cover what you need, you’d look to something like Torcher’s Texture Optimization Project for Fallout 4.

On this note of frame rate optimization, we’re getting dangerously close to what we’re calling technical modding.

Technical

Fixing bugs and enhancing system compatibility are the key reasons for technical modding. Sure, it may feel like every classic game is getting an HD remaster this week, but not all fan favorites are so lucky. A supportive modding community can help add a much-needed layer of modern polish.

For example, the legendary isometric RPGs of yesteryear—like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, and Planescape Torment—were designed for 4:3 display ratios and resolutions in the 640x480 through 1024x768 range. Nowadays, most gamers are running 16:9 ratios supporting 1920x1080 and higher resolution. Playing the older games on modern monitors results in ugly black bars surrounding the picture, or worse, visual stretching and distortion. To fix this, mods like the_bigg’s Widescreen Mod change how the game scales up for higher resolution, though you may need to pair it with something like GhostDog’s Planescape: Torment UI mod. GhostDog’s mod tweaks the UI and text in classic games running at modern resolution, so everything can be seen, readable, and not wildly warped.

Here’s how Planescape: Torment looks running windowed at default resolution on a 1440p display…

…and here’s Planescape: Torment in 1440p resolution using the aforementioned mod duo. Big difference, eh?

Some mods take aim at player-discovered bugs. Bethesda’s games are notorious for their (sometimes unsettling) bugs, and many Elder Scrolls modding guides start by pointing to community patches that squash them or fix hardware compatibility problems. Other games, such as Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords, may contain unfinished content, causing some weird dead ends in gameplay and storytelling. Communities have banded together to resolve these in different ways, such as The Sith Lords Restored Content mod, which utilizes unused assets in the original game as well as original efforts to effectively close off the loose ends.

But this kind of mod taps into the gameplay and content of its game, so let’s move on!

Gameplay

Gameplay mods change how you play a game, covering aspects like difficulty scaling, character progression systems, control schemes, adding or removing certain mechanics, or even interface changes.

A perfect example of a mod that alters difficulty is Brutal Doom. This mod for the earlier Doom games—not the 2016 edition—effectively cranks everything up to 11 by adding a ton of enemies and giving foes new tactics. (It also greatly expands the gore and destruction that Doom is famous for.)

How To Make A Mod For A Pc Game

The first Dark Souls game on PC used a sort of emulation to effectively translate keyboard and mouse into controller actions, and generally lacked control options. The resulting frustrations lead to the creation of the mod Dark Souls Mouse Fix and its current iteration, Dark Souls Input Customizer. These mods ditched the emulation and added raw mouse input, mouse acceleration and sensitivity settings, and key mapping. These control mods not only provide options for PC purists, but also opportunities for gamers with disabilities who depend on custom hardware and button mapping to get their game on.

Many gameplay mods can complement each other that provide a fresh experience to a game. Grim Dawn, an action RPG by Crate Entertainment, has a popular mod compilation called DAIL that combines a bunch of gameplay mods into one. DAIL can adjust the number of enemies that spawn in the game for a range of new difficulty options; it triples the amount of class trees for your character; and includes additional game types that mirror Diablo 3’s rift system or Gears of War’s Horde Mode… which takes us to the final mod category.

Content

Sometimes, you just need more. The game was either so good, or missing just enough, that someone felt the need to add even more to it. Content mods tend to be a combination of the previous categories plus additional components that add something new to the game. Mods like the earlier mentioned The Sith Lords Restored Content and Minecraft’s Tinker’s Construct introduce all kinds of content, from quests to equipment, that were not previously in the game. The additions have their own visuals, sounds, and gameplay changes all combined. They’re basically unofficial expansions.

Some mods drastically overhaul the entire game, and sometimes spark new games and genres of their own. League of Legends, DOTA, and the entire MOBA genre was birthed by a mod for the original Starcraft called Aeon of Strife. Counter-Strike started as a Half-Life mod. DayZ and battle royale games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds sprung from the Arma modding scene. And you can find full-length expansions, new factions, and more for Elder Scrolls games.

These are heavy duty mods. If you want to learn more about content and “total conversion” mods, check out PCWorld’s list of 10 influential game mods that truly changed PC gaming.

Bottom line

How To Make Mods For Games

Modding video games is a lot like playing card games or board games with house rules. While some people like to just skip the jail mechanic in Monopoly, others might want to pull out their favorite Warhammer 40k figure to take over the board in the name of the Emperor. Likewise, some gamers might want to replace Skyrim’s dragons with Macho Man Randy Savage or Thomas the Tank Engine. Anything is possible!

How To Mod A Pc Game Ps4

Now you’re armed with everything you need to know to start modding PC games. Have fun!

[astrosilverio]

Database Adventures

Big news: I have just started another batch at the Recurse Center and have 3 whole months to learn things! You might assume that that means I'd be working on braga full-time. The thing is, though, I already have the motivation and skills to work on braga outside of my 9-5, and the rate at which I learn things from it has dramatically decreased. Therefore, I'm using the bulk of my time at RC for other things, primarily building my own database.

Why a database? There are a lot of aspects of databases that I quite frankly find mysterious and the best way I could think of to de-mystify them was to work on one, so here we are. To facilitate my investigations I brainstormed a list of questions before batch, and now that it's been two weeks I think I have some perspective on some of them at least. So without further ado, for posterity, here's where I was at at the end of August, with notes from this past week.

"indexes are just b-trees" but what are b-trees besides :diagram of tree:? how do you balance them?

Wikipedia and this tutorial page have pretty much sorted this out for me, with nice diagrams of b-trees and descriptions of the algorithm for adding / removing nodes.

when do you do an index write?

I think what I was getting at here is, if you are writing a row to a transactional database that has additional indexes other than the primary, are the updates to the additional indexes included in the transaction or can they be done async. This is something that I could almost definitely get from documentation for any transactional DB, don't think it's particularly interesting.

what does a database file look like?

I can actually wave my hands and say something intelligible here. The SQL table definitions that I am familiar with generally specify sizes for each field, and it turns out that is extremely important, because each byte of a DB file is essentially counted off. They do not look like pretty CSVs or human-readable representations of tables; they're generally just really large collections of bytes and you figure out where the data you're looking for lives by counting bytes.

is all the data just stuck in one file?

Not necessarily.

does a lack of schema buy you any inherent performance gains?

There's a lot to unpack here. I think I was looking for a reason to use NoSQL other than "I don't want a schema". However, there's such a wide variety in both NoSQL and relational systems that I think it's kinda a nonsensical question.

how does one get from SQL to "I want this node in the tree"?

Eh. I'll write it.

how does INFORMATION_SCHEMA work?

Fun fact about me: I am fascinated by INFORMATION_SCHEMA. You learned it here, kids. I will tooooottaaaalllly implement it.

how does the optimizer optimize? presumably indexes and cardinality thereof

what are some good ways to confuse an optimizer?

This brought to you by that one time at work when the optimizer got confused. I am also super excited about optimizing.

how many of these questions can I answer from books?

Meta time! I was concerned that I wasn't thinking deep enough, and would end up just doing a lot of reading and not writing any code and kinda giving up with a surface level knowledge of how databases work. I was forgetting the phenomenon of question spiraling though--I wrote a pager in Python this past week and it ended up just being a large series of rabbit holes. Maybe this batch of questions is surface level, but the next batch is not.

[benandcoblog]

Reaching for the Sky w/ Derrick Bozkurt

Have a fear of heights? I’m pretty sure we all do, whether you’re on a ladder painting grandma Betty’s house or flying a drone and have that weird fight or flight response just seeing that imagery may scare you. Today, is a phenomenal day because I’m chatting with Derrick Bozkurt who has been a long time friend and colleague for various projects. Our first project together was with a company called Archon Games which was working on a first person shooter RPG called "TechnoWizard" ahhhh, the memories.

Derrick is also currently working in real estate but beating the status quo by aiding consumers with visuals in Virtual Reality (VR) and Drone Photography in both consumer and commercial real estate.  

Ben Libby: Remember the time we worked together at Archon Games, and you were the lead sound engineer? What made you transition from video games to doing photography, virtual reality and aerial photography?

Derrick Bozkurt: I do remember those days! They were great indeed, and we all had a ton of fun working on the “TechnoWizard” project together. Video games have always been my favorite form of visual entertainment, and I was excited to get to lend an ear to its soundscape. That was one of my first gigs coming right out of audio engineering school, and I had the opportunity to work on various other projects – Some with you as well – as a sound designer and composer as time went on. The Flying Cloud projects we were a part of were ahead of their time, and I’ll never forget some of the field recording sessions for our CGI monster, or overdubbing myself 100x to create a crew anthem. One of my other favorites was a game called “Z-Day”, which was an ambitious “Zombie-Survival MMO” back in 2009. Although some of these projects never saw a major release, I learned a ton, and made some great connections that I still keep in touch with today.

Photography has always been a passion of mine as well, and throughout my teens onward, I oftentimes had a camera in hand or nearby, documenting all sorts of adventures. While in college, I even got to take some classes back when they were still teaching them out of darkrooms. There is nothing quite like developing your first roll of film, and seeing the projected images literally appear before your eyes. I remember when my family got our first digital camera – It was a 1 megapixel Kodak, and it was amazing at the time. During my tenure at Apple, I was always impressed with the image quality increases year over year in regards to mobile devices. Seeing how the field has changed and adapted through the years has been very interesting, and when technologies that enabled feature rich virtual reality and flying 4k cameras became affordable, I had to be an early adopter of these new perspectives.

Nowadays, I use the skillset I have developed in these areas to also complement some of my other endeavors. Being able to apply these technologies in my own business has enabled me to provide a comprehensive set of products in the real estate and media services that I offer.

BL: DJI among others releases a lot of different aerial products, what has been your favorite so far? Can you go in depth about features?

DB: My first DJI drone was one of their Phantom series. I had been closely following the company during their earlier years, and was really impressed with what they had been able to accomplish in the arena of consumer drones in general - It’s crazy how far they have come just in past few years. My favorite ‘prosumer’ model from them is the Phantom 4 series. I honestly have not had the opportunity to fly their bigger rigs yet, but would love to get my hands on them. However, having recently picked up their Mavic Air model, I have to say that it is currently my favorite, largely because of the sheer portability of it. Even though the whole thing can fit in your pocket, you still get a 4k/60 FPS; 1080p/120 FPS camera with a 100 Mbps bit rate. Although the sensor is a little smaller, even the 12 MP stills turn out great, and being able to shoot in RAW is great. Furthermore, some of their secondary features such as pre-programmed video captures, 360 photography, and gesture controls really add to the overall package. Rumor has it, they will be releasing a new addition to their lineup this summer, so I’m looking forward to seeing that.

BL: When on a photography or video campaign up in the sky, have you ever lost a drone? If so, how did you feel?

DB: Fortunately, I have never lost a drone to date; the safety and location features of the ones I fly are actually very good. As long as one knows how to set them up, and fly with care, it’s actually pretty difficult to get yourself into much trouble. There have definitely been some adrenaline-inducing moments when the quad loses remote control reception and you have to rely on these safety measures, but I have not experienced any problems yet. I do also have a standalone GPS locator that I affix to mine whenever I feel the need, which mitigates the risk of a lost drone even further.

BL: Would you ever try to ride one of those human drones? (Apparently they use them in Dubai for filming). If you lost control, what would you do?

DB: Haha, I have seen a couple of those – Reminds me of those single-infantry flying machines the military was developing back in the 50’s & 60’s. Although the technology behind our modern products is great, nothing is ever perfect or truly fail safe. I doubt I would ever get on one of the current generation ones without enough altitude and a parachute just in case something did happen!

BL: You had a big transition going from Audio to Video / VR, what have been some experiences or failures you learned along the way?

DB: There are definitely some large and important differences between these fields and technologies. However, audio, music, video, virtual reality. . . They are all just components to the greater product or experience being created, and I am thankful to have the opportunity to learn and practice all of them. Taking into consideration how to weave visual aspects, sound design, and music all together can really make or break an experience. These components each draw upon our different senses, with the goal of creating a unified experience itself. The best creators I have seen are experts at knowing how to play these elements off each other, and this is something that I strive for myself in my own productions.

For example, one might have limited options in making a certain transition or cut from one scene to another in a film. The mood, atmosphere, and general tone of the next scene may be radically different. In situations like this, transitioning into the next sequence by the creative use of sound and/or music can make subliminally prepare the viewer, making that transition much more pleasing and natural.

Some of the most interesting challenges that face the industry right now is implementation of audio in a virtual reality environment. When it comes to determining positions and spaces in the real world, our ears are incredible pieces of hardware, and rely on a complex balance of phase, amplitude, environmental physics, and even the dimensions of our own heads that ultimately gets translated by our brains. Emulating this same type of experience in a virtual world is one of the more interesting challenges of virtual reality. There are some incredible tools out there that are truly at the forefront of their respective fields, and it is exciting to see the changes and improvements as this field continue to evolve.

I think the most important failures I have learned from all stemmed from situations that arose unexpectedly that I did not have a pre-emptive recourse for. Situations like failing gear, bad weather, scheduling short sights or the like happen to the best of us. Of course, you cannot really account for every variable that you might encounter in the field, and there is also that aspect of spontaneity that you also need to balance. Being able to adjust on the fly in any situation is imperative, and keeping your post production skills up to speed is always helpful. Sometimes, these originally perceived failures can actually turn into some of your best work, so a lot of it is mindset and perspective. The best any one can do is take account for what they have control over, have a backup plan, and be ready to adapt in your work.

BL: For those who want to get more into aerial photography, what would you recommend to get started? Any specific drone models, hardware or software?

DB: For aerial photography and videography specifically, I recommend going with one of DJI’s Mavic or Phantom series. Both of these lineups have a few versions that pack various features, depending on what you’re after, and will be less risky that throwing a few thousand dollars-worth of hardware into the air for the first time. You can really get a lot out of the source material I post production; and Adobe has probably the best all around editing suite for photo/video. Personally, I use Adobe products for photography, and Final Cut for video in most of my work.

After getting started, if you have determined to make this a source of income, or take on some bigger projects, it is imperative to get your Part 107 sUAS license from the FAA. Firstly, it is a legal requirement if you are doing any sort of commercial work with your drone. Secondly, you will learn quite a bit about reading flight charts, contacting air traffic control, weather, and other factors that may have an impact on your operations. Education is key for so many things, and have definitely helped me avoid expensive mistakes, and recover from compromised situations.  

Derrick Bozkurt lives and works in Denver, Colorado, and spends his time working in the fields of real estate, UCAAS, and media production.  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/debozkurt

https://www.facebook.com/himcolorado/

https://twitter.com/HIMColorado

http://himcolorado.com

https://www.instagram.com/derrick.bozkurt/