#easily configable

[closetfullofghosts]

Thank you Vintage Story mod Knapster by Apache on the VSMD for saving my wrist from Fatal Carpal Tunnel

[endreal]

The main (only?) reason I'm not switching the T-level system to a sev category system is because I'd have to completely retool the order of them.

[vyxated]

[Reshade add-on] Clean UI for DX11

After so so sooooo many crashes later, I finally managed to create a working setting for this add-on for DX11 games by using an older REST version 🫠

You can read the whole post on Patreon here, or below the cut for those who can't access the site.

As using REST 1.2.0 and above cause crashes whenever I create a setting or attempt to use it for a brief amount of time, I decided to use a much older version of REST (1.1.0), which turns out to be more stable to configure and use. While this means being able to use the add-on for the DX11 game, it has its own set of problems, which may/may not be a dealbreaker for some.

I decided to make a new post since the original one is quite lengthy and I want to keep DX9 and DX11 versions separate due to the different information each version has.

➡️ For the DX9 version, find it here. And here for the Patreon post.

In short, with the help of REST (an add-on for reshade/gshade), you can block/prevent shaders from affecting the UI.

// Things to know if using this version ⚠️

Some shaders will not work properly and will cause some gamma issues. If your preset look different than how it normally is (a lot darker/brighter), enable/disable your active shaders and see which one is causing it. It's easily fixed by using an alternative shader that achieve a similar look.

Shaders affected (ones I've known so far): SMAA & MartysMods_SMAA (FMAA is not affected, use this instead), FilmicAnamorphSharpen, ArcaneBloom & NeoBloom, Glamarye_Fast_Effects, MagicHDR, CRT_Lotte.

You will not be able to change your window resolution, either via graphic settings or by using SRWE. This will cause your game to stop and eventually having to force stop it with the task manager. It is recommended that you have your game in Windowed Fullscreen to avoid issues and have the add-on disabled if you want to change the resolution in-game.

// Required Files

REST add-on v 1.1.0 (testing)

REST config for v 1.1.0 (simfileshare only)

// Installation

Have ReShade with full add-on support installed for this to work.

Download the REST_ x64_1.1.0 add-on from the github linked in the requirements section as well as the config.

Extract the ReshadeEffectShaderToggler.addon file into the game's \Bin folder where your TS4_64.exe is (where you had also installed ReShade).

If you use GShade: place the .addon file in the gshade-addons folder.

Still in the \Bin folder, drop the x.x_ReshadeEffectShaderToggler_DX11.ini file you downloaded.

If you use GShade: place the .ini file in the gshade-addons folder along with the .addon file. If my config doesn't show up in the add-on menu, move it back to the \Bin folder.

Rename the file and remove the prefix and suffix. Both .addon and .ini file should share the same name for the add-on to recognize my settings = [ ReshadeEffectShaderToggler.ini ]

Open up your game. If you see the same menu as below then you’ve successfully installed the add-on & settings! Restart if needed.

I've set the shortcuts for Clear UI to match with my Effect toggle key, which is Ctrl + F2. If yours are set differently, match the shortcut of this toggle group with your effect toggle key:

Reason being, having the toggle group active will prevent you from enabling/disabling your preset. Changing the shortcut will allow you to disable & enable your preset and toggle group at the same time.

To avoid the add-on from not working, make sure to do the following:

Enable post processing effects

Disable laptop mode & edge smoothing

Set 3d scene resolution to high

As long as all of the above are met, you should not encounter any problems. This has been tested to work on all graphics settings from low to ultra. External modifications (like Simp4Settings) may/may not have an effect, but from the testing I've done it has shown no problems so far.

[cozyinhyrule]

My Favorite Stardew Valley Mods 🌱

✦ Diverse Stardew Valley ✦

Add better ethnic, racial, cultural, gender, ability, and body type diversity to Stardew Valley.

✦ To-Dew ✦

Adds a to-do list so you never forget your tasks.

✦ Gender Neutrality Mod ✦

Makes Stardew non-binary friendly with more gender inclusive language. Players can choose their preferred pronouns & how they want to be referred to using the Mod Config Menu Mod.

✦ Pregnancy Role ✦

Players can choose how they want to have children regardless of gender.

✦ NPC Map Locations ✦

Adds NPC sprites to your mini map so you can easily find everyone.

✦ Hobbit Holes ✦

Turns cabins (including multiplayer cabins) in hobbit holes.

✦ Automate ✦

Place a chest next to a machine & the machine will automatically pull raw items from the chest & push processed items into it.

✦ Family Planning ✦

Allows you to customize the maximum number of children you can have and their genders. You can also adopt children with a roommate (ie Krobus).

✦ Carry Chest ✦

Allows players to carry a chest even when it's full of items.

I also have a list of all the mods I currently use (always updated) right.... here!

I hope you enjoyed it! Also curious, what are your favorite Stardew Valley Mods? 🎮

[lyinginbedmon]

Hey Wheelchairs mod enjoyers, I've got an inquiry for y'all particularly if you have experience with being/are nonverbal (be it mutism, selective mutism, or any other form).

Seen above is the UI prototype for an upcoming craftable ingame AAC device item called the Speech Tablet. When you click on a button, it sends a translated message into the ingame chat for you. This means it can be read in a different language than your client's language setting, and that you can send potentially quite complex messages with just a couple mouse-clicks, no typing or heavy thinking needed.

What's more, the ingame narrator will even read your message out to players if they're nearby (though since the ingame narrator shares its volume setting with the entire Minecraft client, and hence can be pretty loud, this can be disabled in your client config if need be).

This is by far the closest this project has come to adding an actual accessibility device to Minecraft (instead of just a visual representation of one), and as such I want to get some input from people who might actually use it:

What messages should this tablet provide?

Right now I've got around 5 categories with capacity for up to 25 messages each, but I can expand that quite easily if necessary. I just don't have the experience to know what will/won't be useful.

So let me know!

[meadowlade]

Little Falls Farm 🏞️✨

Guess who started making their own Stardew map mods! It's me! Had way too much fun working on this I didn't realize it only took three days haha.

Featuring custom starter gift box items, diggable grass, respawning hardwood, various recolor compatibilities, and some appearance customization all easily configurable through the config file OR General Mod Config Menu. I recommend downloading GMCM for ease of configuration.

As I'm a newbie to modding, if any of y'all are interested and want to try this mod out, I would greatly appreciate any kind of feedback (or link shares!) so I can improve in the future.

Grab the mod here!

[dumbditzyginger]

Cyberpunk and Hypnok1nk

Chronic pain hit me young, and I've pretty much always had a fluid sense of identity (trending femme, but fluid nonetheless). So it's not really surprising I've always been fascinated by the idea of full-body-replacement transhumanism, Ghost in the Shell style.

Like, I don't want to be in pain anymore, but that's just a fact of the meat I'm trapped in. It's going to hurt, no matter what, for the rest of my life. It'd be nice to keep on existing but feel good instead, y'know?

And sometimes I might want to be smol and cute so I can be someone's little spoon and feel safe in their arms, while other times I might want to be a seven foot tall amazon with a giant dick. I might want both of these things alternately several times a week, and it'd be great for that to be possible.

But there's the classic thing people talk about in scifi where full-body-replacement cybernetics are a thing. The brain-computer interface. That bit where you'd (in theory) have to expose every single thing that you are to an outside connection to hook everything up.

It'd be a huge security risk, where people could turn you into a passenger in your own body, or delete your childhood and replace it with another set of memories as easily as you can move files around on your PC. And maybe they don't want you to be able to stop them, so they lock you out of your own systems while they keep hacking away at your very personhood until all that's left happily agrees that you walked off the assembly line for brothel dolls only a few hours ago and expecting you to read or have opinions would just be silly.

And yeah, like, that's a nightmare scenario, right?

But also, that's so hot, right?

But it never really occurred to me that it's also kinda the same dynamic with hypnokink. It's basically just handing your tist - whether they're an actual person or just a hypnofile you like to listen to - the keys to the kingdom. Letting them root around in your file system, ripping some folders out, dropping new media in, changing some configs.

It never occurred to me that maybe my hypnokink might have partially come from just going "y'know what, fuck it, I want a hacker to turn me into their joytoy". If I'm happy with the idea of someone getting into my head and ruining me, then the only drawback of full-body-replacement cybernetics is that it's not here yet.

I'm ready to have someone reduce my clock speed to a crawl, wipe my memory, swap my language database from English(US) to English(Grade School Dropout Bimbo), delete my optical character recognition software, and reduce me from Admin to Guest user privileges. Fuck playing it safe, I'll intentionally put myself in the same chassis as last gen's most popular sex dolls, and while most people are gonna worry about random people tapping in to their hardline ports, I'm just gonna leave my wireless wide open with no password and no firewall and accept the inevitable.

A ditz can dream...

[4ltrd]

See Update in Reblog Below!

I've futzed around with a bunch of machine translation over the years, and here's what I've landed on (for Android and Windows).

Note: For both of these, the translations are wildly imperfect. Having some knowledge of the language you're translating obviously helps, or you're going to be confused when Google or DeepL decide to infer the wrong pronouns because they aren't people and don't understand context.

EverTranslator

When I'm purely on my phone, I use EverTranslator. It's free and much better than it used to be once you make a few changes in the settings. I have it set to . . .

Joiner between text blocks: Space

Remove ending dashes: On

Remove line breakers inside text blocks: On

Remove spaces in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text: On

EverTranslator: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tw.firemaples.onscreenocr

UGT (with a controller)

Mirroring Your Screen on your PC

I cast my phone to my laptop via Windows Phone Link or ScrCpy when I use UGT.

§ Windows Phone Link

Upsides of WPL:

It should be natively included in your version of Windows (you'll need to get the app on your phone, though).

(Usually) sound will come through your PC instead of phone.

USB connection not required--you can connect wirelessly to a PC on the same internet connection. Great if your phone is charging across the room.

Downside:

Can't rotate the screen manually for apps that are weird about rotating (AKNK).

§ BlueStacks

This method ought to also work with BlueStacks, but I haven't ever used BlueStacks because I'm paranoid about where I allow my Google data to be accessed.

§ Samsung Dex

Samsung Dex doesn't rotate apps at all, so that method is straight out.

§ ScrCpy

Scrcpy via USB Debugging mirrors your Android to your PC without having to root your phone. This is a little more advanced than using Windows Phone Link or BlueStacks, but you're using your own phone without granting anyone your Google credentials AND you can rotate the screen easily (unlike Dex or Windows Phone Link).

Upsides of ScrCpy:

You can rotate the ScrCpy window on your PC by holding alt and pushing the left arrow key. Great for AKNK's outings and sleep support.

Downside:

Getting sound through your PC rather than phone via ScrCpy is less reliable. Though it supposedly ports audio to your PC natively with the latest release, I still need to use the dev's SndCpy: https://github.com/rom1v/sndcpy/blob/master/README.md

Setting Up UGT

UGT requires more work than EverTranslator, but once you've set it up, it's worth it. You can use it for anything on your PC. Congratulations, you can now play any untranslated Japanese otome game via emulator.

A walkthrough on how to set up UGT: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2741318181

You'll need to futz around with the config file a bit, especially with the autoglue, even when you move from game to game, but it's worth the hassle.

UGT normally supports controllers to make it easier/faster to translate (and save your wrists/fingers), but that feature is broken at the moment. The dev knows. So, I cobbled together a script in AutoHotKey for my Xbox controller . . .

Autohotkey: https://www.autohotkey.com/

The script: https://vatnalilja.neocities.org/UGTAHK

Once you load this script into AutoHotKey and run it, the buttons on your Xbox controller will work as follows:

UGT's normal functions will work; consult the program

A will translate the active window (use ctrl+F10 to set a translation rectangle so it's not unnecessarily translating everything onscreen—you can always use ctrl+F10 to set a new rectangle)

B will clear the translation (the equivalent of spacebar in UGT)

Y will act as the left click of a mouse button

Left joystick will act as a mouse, so you can move around the screen to select things without touching the mouse

I updated the above AHK config file so its set back to UGT default (ctrl+f12), allowing you to run it out of the box with UGT. My original version was tailored to my modified hot keys.

These AHK settings may conflict with games that require these buttons on a gamepad, but you can look up AutoHotKey's instructions and easily change them in the script. I promise it isn't hard. Otome games are usually point-and-click, though.

This is what my setup looks like on Windows with my Android phone cast to my laptop via Windows Phone Link using UGT and a controller (not that you can see the controller part). It's so big. Good for my old eyes!

Here's my setup via ScrCpy:

DeskTranslator

Another option besides UGT is DeskTranslator, which won't require you to connect Google or DeepL in the settings or set up anything in Google Cloud Dashboard, but will require you to know some Python, access PowerShell, etc.

The installation directions for DeskTranslator and its requirements are available on each repository page, and if you need help installing Python packages, you can very easily search Google for the right commands to copy/paste into PowerShell.

One nice thing about DeskTranslator is that it will give you reasonably real-time translations without having to push any keys/buttons. Use this combined with Windows' captions in a foreign language and you can have translation of spoken dialogue that has no built-in captions in your game.

You can also drag the translation box over a normal dialogue box and use it that way, too (like UGT or DeepL's app--see reblog below for more on DeepL's app).

When used with ScrCpy, you can simply hold your phone in your hand (connected to your PC by USB) and tap the screen like normal. No controller or keyboard hot keys are needed.

ScrCpy + SndCpy with Windows Captions and DeskTranslator

ScrCpy + SndCpy and DeskTranslator

If you use Apple products or a controller other than an Xbox controller, YMMV. There is a version of UGT that is on Linux and experimental on MacOSX: https://pypi.org/project/pyugt/. Godspeed.

[immortal-elements]

A "simplified" power catalyst rotation.

I have been beating my head into a wall over this build for about a week now. I've got the exact snowcrows setup, (correct golem and boon config, correct gear, everything either ascended or legendary, attribute infusions everything)

I am currently averaging about 36k dps, but I have had peaks of up to 40k. This is after hours at the training dummy practicing this rotation.

This build has a lot of moving parts. You have to keep up 10 stacks of EE. You get 3 at base, and you get 2 everytime you disable an enemy, and you get 1 everytime you get an aura (read also, the first time you combo in a new attunement, or leaping through a fire field). You have to keep up 5 stacks of Empowering Auras, which you get everytime you gain an aura, (and thankfully getting a new stack refreshes the duration of all your stacks, so this is relatively easy to upkeep). And you have to upkeep persisting flames, which means you have to hit an enemy with your fire fields 10 times every 15 seconds. This is relatively easy to upkeep, given that you have a fire field that lasts for 10 seconds and ticks 10 times, you have your jade sphere and you have the low cooldown fire sword 2. You also have to keep an eye on your energy, which is still frustrating to keep track of, making sure that every time you attune to fire you have enough for a jade sphere, and your fire augment is off cooldown. It's also a core part of your DPS to be dropping your jade spheres in other attunements, that way you can still combo. But the annoying part is, you ALSO have to keep track of whether or not you have a jade sphere deployed, because you can't build up energy with one deployed. That's why a lot of the time you might see me drop a sphere in earth attunement, attune to water, drop my sphere there, cast 1 skill, and attune to air. If you have two spheres deployed at once, it creates a longer window in which you can produce energy.

You have no utility outside of the boons your jade sphere can provide, you have no CC that you don't have to use in order to upkeep your EE stacks, you have to use everything off cooldown as soon as you can use it and then lock yourself out of the rest of that attunement's skills until your rotation comes back around to it.

This build is about spamming as many of your damage dealing abilities as you can off cooldown, it is very high APM, it is very high skill, (given that I still can't pull it off reliably above 80% of the benchmarks), and it is incredibly punishing in that if you mistime your skills or your attunement swaps you could see a drop of up to 10k DPS, (don't get locked into water attunement, trust me).

And the reward for doing that is... a DPS number that other classes can reach for much less effort and minmaxing.

Core guardian has a build that can easily reach 30k DPS by auto-attacking with hammer and occasionally using a virtue. 30k DPS for like 10 APM. Meanwhile, I'm clocking in well over 150 APM and barely getting more than 33k. This core guardian build, additionally has plenty of utility! It's got an immobilize, a lot of CC, a conditional shadowstep that you can use when you need it, and you can weapon swap to axe/shield for even more CC and comparable damage. You have a several second invuln too, in case you get in over your head, but if you don't need it you can swap that out for passive healing for your entire group as well as plenty of boons that will help boost your damage further.

I'm not against low intensity playstyles, but there has to be some sort of reward for doing a higher skill playstyle. I wish Anet wouldn't just look at target golem statistics and balance based solely off of benchmarks. It's created an undesirable state of the game in which everything is balanced to do as equal damage as possible in the hands of the top players whacking a stationary target. In an actual raid environment, classes with easier rotations, with more utility that they don't have to spend for DPS, and classes with ranged damage are going to be able to perform better than complex melee classes, whose DPS is going to TANK the moment they have to step away from the boss or dodge an attack.

And there realistically is no reward for being this good at the class. Yeah, I'm going to get to the point that I can bench 40k reliably on this class, and when I do I can proudly wear my crown of "one of the best elementalist players in the world", but I'm not going to bring this shit to actual raids. God, that's a nightmare. Samarog nabs one of my allies and I gotta say "whoops, I don't have any CC to save you, I had to spend it so that I didn't drop all my EE stacks! Don't want to be doing less damage than the healers, after all!" The reward is that I get to know a flashy playstyle that makes everything else seem like a snooze in comparison.

No, anyone who wants to do high DPS in raids is going to bring condi virtuoso, soulbeast, or willbender. Elementalist, and builds like it, will be punished in PvE as long as Anet continues balancing solely off of golem benchmarks.

[4noki-vns]

Polishing your Release: the Little Features that Could

This is a write-up for my Visual;Conference 2023 talk on polish: UX and accessibility.

I will discuss quality-of-life features and accessible design with engine-agnostic tips for implementation, walking you through case studies of existing visual novels.

This talk will guide you to answer the question: How do I give my players an improved user experience?

To create a polished visual novel is to deliver your game with both style and usability.

This talk focused on the aspect of usability and accessibility in your visual novel. How can you give your players a better user experience in terms of the following?

Core Visual Novel Experience

Accessibility

Extra QoL Features

-

I. Core Visual Novel Experience

You want your player to be able to read your narrative as conveniently for them as possible. Interactive components in your game application should mostly be there to enhance the player experience whether it is part of your narrative or there to give players more control.

I briefly touched on some common components/screens found in just about every visual novel.

Quick Menu

Be easy to click and inobtrusive

Be easy to understand

Convince your players that it actually works by providing feedback to button clicks

Text based quick menus are easy to understand, but take up lots of space. Icon based quick menus can be very abstract (what do the icons mean even if seemingly "obvious?")

You may want to consider a combination of both, but if using icon based quick menus, be sure to clarify the icons such as via tooltips.

Provide feedback when the quick menu items are clicked. Most actions just bring up a screen (obvious feedback). Skip will cause rapid movement of text on screen (easy). Auto is more subtle.

What can you do?

Change the auto button to an active state vs. idle state on press

Hide the CTC and/or quick menu on auto

Change the CTC to an "auto-mode activated" CTC

Etc.

History

Provide long enough history to backread

Provide utilities (e.g., if voice acting in game, allow voice replay)

Remember that rollback and history are two different things

Save/Load

Provide context of when and where

Provide sufficient slots for all choices without requiring player overwrite (visual novel players SAVE EVERY CHOICE)

Consider feature to indicate newest save, file deletion button, save file locking

To provide context, have a visual and timestamp, but also try providing chapter names or scene descriptions.

Configs

Provide reasonable default settings (e.g., audio at 70%)

Avoid overwhelming users by categorizing options and providing reasonable support (e.g., slider vs radio)

Provide previews

Single pagers and multi-pagers are both good. Make it easy for the player to get in, change the settings to their preferred values, and get back to the game.

Additional recommendations:

CTC icons

System sound

Splash screens (especially first time setting initializations)

-

II. Accessibility

Stating the obvious: start with good design :)

Make accessibility features easily accessed and support them:

Put it into your configs screen even if it's built in if you want to support it

Test and check that it works correctly (e.g., self voicing pronunciation, text size overflow)

Provide a reasonable number of options per feature. Whatever options you explicitly provide, you should actually be supporting them.

No one’s coming after you if the built in Ren’Py accessibility toggles overflow your textbox, but it sure will be a problem if the font sizes you’re explicitly providing are broken because that’s just a bug.

Recommended accessibility features: (italics talked about in presentation explicitly)

Self voicing

Image descriptions

Text options

Photosensitivity

Screenshake

Audio captions

Graphic images filter

-

III. Extra QoL Features

Not all features are great for all games, but some quality of life features can be very useful depending on your game. Therefore, you should know your game to know how to make the player experience better.

What's the genre?

How long is it?

What's the branching structure (if any) like?

Gameplay?

In this section, I briefly tackled exploring Aoishiro (highly recommend this game, by the way) and how some of its quality of life features are useful due to the type of game it is.

Genre?

occult fantasy, Japanese mythology

Having a glossary (with "new" indicator and alphabetization to make it usable) is very useful in game genres with lots of terms!

Length?

30+ hours (according to vndb. I took way longer, so pretty long)

Fourth item down in the first box is a togglable alarm for when skip ends! (Vibration mode, sound mode, both, or silent) Longer visual novels with large trunk portions of shared text that might get new unlocked text often need lots of skipping.

Branching?

56 endings, route unlocking mechanics

Aoishiro provides a spoiler option that lets you "mark unread content as read," unlocking content that you may not have actually been able to play through, whether it's due to difficulty or just laziness.

(This is also useful for remasters or sequels that contain previous game content but are not backward compatible save file wise.)

-

Conclusions

Make life more convenient for your players by keeping in mind UX heuristics such as:

Providing feedback & status

Error prevention & control

Recognition over recall

Consistency & standards

To polish your release, you want to make its features usable, accessible, and useful for your players!

Make baseline features with usability and accessibility.

Add additional QoL features depending on your game.

I hope this talk helps you make your visual novel a better experience for your players!

[waterpoofs]

Your Stable Diffusion Qs answered, part 1

Several of you have asked questions in the comments and msgs, wanting to generate your own Stable Diffusion AI inventions like these. I don't consider myself any kind of expert on this, I've just been messing around, pressing buttons and seeing what happens. But then, that seems to be what everyone who uses Stable Diffusion has been doing, so I guess I'm probably as qualified as anyone to share how I've done this.

So to start, I've answered the basics on what set up I'm using below. When I get a moment, I'll do another post answering questions about prompts, and then one on models.

Hardware and software

I'm running this on a 5 year old Dell XPS 8930 with a 6GB graphics card. It's just a good consumer PC, not a cutting edge supercomputer. But if all you have is a cheap laptop with no GPU, you should probably look to somebody else for guidance, this method probably won't work for you. I think there are other ways you can do it, but I have no experience with them so can't advise on those.

I installed Automatic1111's Web UI following these instructions. Since I did that, somebody has created an installer that is intended to make all that easier, but since I already did it easily enough the first way, I can't vouch for that option.

Config

The best thing to do is play around with things and see what happens. I've messed around with all the different sliders and options, but found that most of the time changing them from the default doesn't do much to improve the results. The only ones I change from the default are sampling steps, which I typically put in the ~100-120 range, and face restoration, which I usually have on during image generation but not during enlargement.

Workflow

The main secret to getting images that I deem worth posting here has little to do with getting the config right, or even writing a perfect prompt, and everything to do with generating a lot of images and binning piles of garbage, then iterating the few creations that have some promise. To get to an image worth posting I typically:

Prompt it to generate a large number of 512x512 images on a theme.

Delete most of what it creates and pick the best looking one - judged on overall composition and the design of the gear, rather than details at this stage.

Send it to the img2img tab to iterate it, typically telling it to generate half a dozen or more variations with denoising strength usually set in the 0.6-0.9 range, depending on how close it already is to what you wanted. Sometimes refining the prompt keywords at this stage too if something stands out as needing a nudge in the right direction.

Pick the best one and send it to the extras tab to enlarge it. There are lots of enlargers available. I've used 4xValar a lot. I often couple it with lollypop, which creates quite a bold, smooth and vibrant look which works well with shiny gear. But I haven't tried many, so there may be other great enlarger options out there.

Now send the enlarged image to the inpaint tab to improve any areas which have problems, like low res artifacts, bad faces or fabrics that aren't what you wanted.

For step 1, the "Script">"Prompts from file or textbox" function is useful: you can write a variety of different prompts, and create minor variations on prompts to see how different keywords affect the results. Fill the textbox with a list of prompts, set the "Batch count" to anything from 20 to 100, then leave the computer churning them out in the background for you to deal with when you have the time to do the other steps.

For step 5 I select an area of the enlarged image, tick "inpaint at full resolution", and if the selected area is larger than 512x512, try to match the width and height settings to approximately the size of the selection. I typically set denoising strength in the 0.3-0.6 range - setting it higher will have a stronger effect, but can also result in that area looking less like it belongs as part of the image, as the lighting and colour balance can end up being a mismatch. Then I write a prompt that is specific to the selected area and have it generate half a dozen options.

The image at the top of this post, for example, started as one of many dozens of guys in shiny Adidas 3 stripe waterproof sportswear, generated as one big batch, the majority of which went straight in the bin.

After img2img iterating it with small refinements to the prompt and picking the best out of a couple dozen variations, I inpainted an area including the left arm, shoulder and hood of the jacket, with a low denoising strength and a gear-specific prompt, just to give it a smoother and higher definition appearance than the enlarged low resolution image had (and still has, on the right arm and legs - they catch my eye less, so I didn't bother trying to perfect those). I then did the same for an area around the face and hands, so it would have better texture and detail, clear up a few oddities in the general shape and the hand structure, and give the guy less crudely sculpted facial hair.

It sounds like a lot of work when now I lay it all out in detail like this, but most of the work is done by the computer in the background: line up a batch of stuff for it to generate/iterate, be patient and leave it to do its thing. Then when you come back to it later, you've just got to pick out the best and do a bit of inpainting once you've got some good images to refine.

At least, that's the workflow I was using for most of these posts - until the most recent 2, filled with the painting/illustration-style creations. Those were even simpler. But I'll get to that in the post on models.

[tinypuffballofanger]

Stardew Mods I Use

Me and my partner are going to be streaming Stardew Valley over on my twitch channel starting this weekend! Putting the mods I use into a post here so I can share it easily! Mods are under the readmore.

The particularly notable mods I am using are:

Challenging Community Center Bundles

Stardew Valley Expanded

Ridgeside Village

One aesthetic mod:

Wyrd’s Seasonal Mailbox

Quality of Life type mods:

CJB Cheats Menu

CJB Item Spawner

Fast Animations

Generic Mod Config Menu

Bigger Backpack 

Better Ranching (unofficial update)

Skull Cavern Elevator

NPC Map Locations

Skill Prestige (unofficial update)

Mods to make other mods work (some of these are old and may not actually be necessary)

Content Patcher

Farm Type Manager

StardewHack

Antisocial NPCs 

Custom Companions

Custom NPC Exclusions

Extra Map Layers

Mail Framework Mod

SpaceCore

[amwult]

i'm obsessed with the versatility of the steamdeck.

i am hoping between: java minecraft using the touchpad for mouse-like aim and mod that provides me with correctly mapped button indicators. windows "only" xbox games that just released. ps2/gamecube/snes games with crt emulation.

and none of this required me to mod or 'trick' the operating system which ships with the device itself. it plugs into tv. connects easily with my xbox one, ps5, switch pro controllers. hhnngngnn.

there's a built in system wide overlay for performance stats i can toggle on and off while tweaking config to my liking. community controller mappings. &c

it comfortably fits my big stupid man hands which has been a major problem with other (especially smaller) handhelds and even some console controllers.

it's quite good :3

[didyousayboop]

How to archive your favourite podcasts before they disappear: a beginner's guide

Podcasts, unfortunately, disappear off the Internet quite often. The smaller the podcast, the more likely this is. Fortunately, we can do something to prevent this.

I have a very simple system for archiving podcasts that anyone can easily replicate:

Step 1. Search on archive.org to see if the podcast has already been saved there.

Step 2. Find the podcast’s RSS feed on the podcast’s website or on podcastindex.org.

Step 3. On Windows, paste the podcast’s RSS feed into the free, open source app Podcast Bulk Downloader: https://github.com/cnovel/PodcastBulkDownloader/releases

For Mac and Linux, you can use gPodder: https://gpodder.github.io It’s also free and open source.

Step 4. In Podcast Bulk Downloader, select “Date prefix”. This puts the episode release date in YYYY-MM-DD format at the beginning of the file name, which is important if someone wants to listen to the episodes in chronological order. Then hit “Download”.

In gPodder, go to Preferences → Extensions → check “Rename episodes after download” → Click “Edit config” → Check “extensions.rename_download.add_sortdate”.

Step 5. Create an account on archive.org with an email address you don’t care about. It’s bewildering, but your email address is publicly revealed when you upload any file to archive.org and they do not ever warn you about this. Firefox Relay is a good tool for this: https://relay.firefox.com

Step 6. Fill out the metadata fields on the archive.org, such as title, creator, description, and subject tags (e.g. “podcast”). I recommend including a jpeg or png file (jpeg displays better) of the podcast’s logo or album art in your upload. Whatever image you upload will automatically become the thumbnail. After that, go ahead and upload.

That’s it! You’re done!

If you have any questions or just want to chat about podcast preservation, feel free to email me at didyousayboop@yahoo.com.

Everyone has my permission to copy/paste, republish, and modify this guide. It’s under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

[guzsdaily]

I'm stuck

Day 87 - Jan 31st, 12.024

Apparently, writing Nix files doesn't count as "real programming", because it's being hard to code lately.

I have been writing Nix files, with are pretty much just "fancy JSON", for more than a week, and now, coding even on JavaScript is being somewhat hard on my brain. This new project is a "subproject" of the whole productivity system, and it is just a small CLI application to transform Obsidian's Markdown, into plain [CommonMark] Markdown. And my head is fighting on trying to come with solutions to code, it is like I can imagine the concept and separate the pieces of this project to work on, and I feel like even a simple task I can't just code y'know? Even when I'm being hands-off with things like dependencies count, scalability, etc. etc. Things which normally I take care in "production code".

To be honest I even don't know if I should use JavaScript for this, I choose it because it is the easiest language to just get things done, and it seems logical to use it for content-related and/or HTML-related things. However, I kinda feel I should use Go or Rust, even if I need to learn them from scratch and have a smaller related ecosystem, I don't know if I should, knowing that it is a project that I would like to not spend a lot of time, but also the idea of learning something new in the time kinda drives me another way? I don't know, maybe I will try to use Go or Rust in this project, so it's easier to use them in my future "actual" projects.

I even don't know if I should continue using Obsidian all together now, because even if it is where I settled up most everything, even when it is the center of my productivity and note-taking routine, I kinda feel locked-in a lot more than I like, and having this Obsidian-like syntax (together with all the plugin's syntaxes), it can be kinda hard to get out of it. Yes, it is impossible to me to not be locked-in some technology, but I feel like I would prefer to have everything in plain Markdown and edit it with a Neovim config, than to have a lot of things that I can't read and use without a specif editor and previewer.

However, if I continue this, I will also never work on actual projects, you know, the ones that can give me a job. But without "The System", I can't organize and share easily said projects.

I feel stuck.

---

Today's artists & creative things

Song: That Funny Feeling - by Bo Burnham

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Copyright (c) 2024-present Gustavo "Guz" L. de Mello <contact.guz013@gmail.com>

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

[thatspacepirate]

The Colors of Quake

This weird mess is the color palette that Quake uses! The original Quake engine could only display variations of these exact 256 colors due to hardware restraints, so while designing the textures for the player, the enemies, the items, the environment, and even the UI, ID Software had to make sure they only used these colors. Most of them are very brown.

Here are some very disconnected fun facts about the Quake palette!

The bottom row of the palette is for fullbright colors. These colors are usually used in flourecent lights, fires, lazers, and plasma beams, and they always display the same color no matter the light level. You can see these colors being used to their full potential in techbase mods like Alkaline, where enemies often have glowing weapons or armor!

Color #255 on the palette is often used for transparent textures such as grates, chain-link fences, vegetation, decorations, and lettered signs. Most modern Quake source ports will ignore this color if the texture starts with the "{" character.

You may have noticed that right around the halfway point of the palette, the pattern of dark-to-light colors switches. Nobody knows why this happened.

"It is important that the latter 8 palette rows are 'backwards' (light-to-dark instead of dark-to-light). It appears that the ID artists did this for no good reason in the original Quake palette, and the engine programmers were forced to add a hack to accommodate it (along with the comment "the artists made some backwards ranges. sigh"). The only area this affects is player shirt/pants color translation (where one palette row must be mapped to another)." - The Quake Wiki

Having several different variations of the same color in a palette meant that Quake could easily reuse textures by recoloring them. You can see this being used in the Multiplayer config menu, where you can change the player color. Every time you change the player's color, it's actually cycling through a row of the color palette!

While Quake's colors are often laughed at for being overwhelmingly brown, you can pull off some pretty impressive stuff with them. The texture artist and environment designer Makkon has released several truly incredible texture wads for Quake that really show how much detail you can squeeze out of a limited color palette!

ID Software's games kept using color palettes until the release of Quake 3, which used JPEGs that can hold pretty much any color. Today, modern Quake engines can render most colors just fine, so long as you use TGA images to stand in for palette-limited textures. But the original color palette has a place in the hearts of many Quake fans, and it is the standard used by most mappers and modders.