#its only good if i use the Anti-Aliasing off

[umblrspectrum]

i have a love/hate relation with the fill/bucket tool

[unlimitedtrees]

making character sprites as a one-person indie game developer

(huh. turns out this post on cohost didnt have a “read me” section”. o well. i will put the read me section Here,  before any of da actual text. click it if u dare !!)

so, i've been meaning on making a Big post talkin all about how i actually Make my games and my processes n such ,but also ive been procrastinating on making it for so long that i thought i might as well just make One part of that post now .. and its about making the Character Sprites for my games .

So. these images are the (mostly) full sprite sheets of the three characters from my game UNITRES Dreams, taken directly from the big giant 'charactersprites.png' image that i used for nearly every sprite for Most of the game's development. some quick things to make note of: First off, Trees (the first one) was one of the earliest things i made for the game, and had their sprite sheet redone Twice since then.. this first picture doesnt contain the latest sprite sheet as the new sprites were done on aesprite and im too lazy to make a sprite sheet out of them right now.

Secondly, the Second character (the pink one), had two different designs, being completely redesigned as i didnt like their first design all too much. their redesign's animations was done in aesprite, but i made a sprite sheet out of em before so i was able to just put them here. Lastly, the Third character (the blue one with the big silly hat) remained mostly unchanged as their original sprites and design were pretty good, but they needed to be cleaned up and given better colors so i ended up polishing all of their sprites.

Anyways. it's going to be hard for me to explain my actual process, as i am Bad With Words, but i will try my best.. So. for Most of my time as a game dev, I've used Paint.NET for Everything. This includes backgrounds, tilesets, and every animation ever in all of my games. For my character sprites specifically, i usually start with making the color palette (which is a whole different process where i mess around with the RGB values until i get a specific color that i think looks pretty ... its hard to describe). When making a new character, i usaully start with an Idle animation, just so i have a good base to make all the other sprites on. I just make a sketch of the character, then i do the flat colors (as my games dont have line art), and once i have the colors i start doing the rendering , where i try to pull off a sort of Sonic CD-esque , celshaded style while Also including a bit of anti-aliasing and other modern pixel art techniques to give the sprites more Depth and make them look Sharp. Idk. it's hard to describe my process in words ... i Did make a video Years ago showing off my process, but its old and my editing in that video isnt the Greatest.

So., that's my process Lol . the only thing thats really changed is that Now i use Aesprite for making the Actual Animations , as making animations with Paint.NET is Really Difficult and Annoying , as i have No Idea how the animation will Look until it actually appears ingame .. which results in the early versions of each character's animations looking a little weird (such as Trees' first two versions, the first version of the Pink character, and the Blue character's animations.. .though the blue character isnt as bad as the other two and i kept their animations mostly the same in the final game LOL).

Something that people have kind of criticized about UNITRES Dreams' animations is that some of em dont exactly ... Look Good. a lot of animations are pretty Inconsistent , with characters like Trees having inconsistent sizes in some animations and the movement in animations such as the Pink character's walking animation and various other animations (Especially the ones made in Paint.NET) looking Unnatural.

And Well .. here's the thing about making animations and sprites for something like this. When you're the Main person making an indie game, you have Tons of different parts of the game that need to be worked on while having Very little time to work on others. On Top of making every single animation for UNITRES , i had to make every single Tileset and background for every single level, On Top of making the Level Layouts , Programming , and even making sprites for things like the UI. And you have to constantly Test the game to make sure everything works and things Look good.

So. i had very little time to work on the sprites, and i Knew this. Something you have to consider is that, not only are you making the animations for the main character , you Also have to make Tons of animations and sprites for Literally Every Other Aspect of The Game . this includes Enemies , Level Gimmicks , NPCs, And the UI .. so you end up having to work on Thousands of sprites by yourself in such a short time.

I ain't the best animator , nor the best sprite artist . But , for this game I chose an art style which is Kinda simple and comfortable for me, which made making things like tilesets and backgrounds so much easier for me. The character sprites specificially only use a few amount of colors ,but also i tried my best to give them as much depth and make them as Colorful looking as i could. Also , something you might notice is that all of the playable characters dont actually have a whole lot of animations .. each of the characters only have the Exact amount of frames and animations necessary for them to Look Good moving around the levels. Aside from a few Gimmick Specific animations that arent in the sprite sheets i posted , there arent many Extra animations or animations with Tons of Frames that i wish i could have added .. and it Kind Of Sucks . Having to split my time across Three Different Characters , i had no time to make any animations Too Crazy or Too Smooth , and i couldnt include any extra animations that could add a bit of personality to the characters ... In Fact ,the Idle "animation" isnt an animation , its just a still frame. I didnt have time to even make a simple waiting animation !!

It Is What It Is. For what its worth , Ithink Im pretty proud of the animations i did for UNITRES Dreams. while i think ive become a much better artist and animator since then, i still think some animations and some of the frames look really good ..just looking at some of the still frames is really nice .. so i think i did a good job, especially for a game that was made in 2 years and is Free. And Hey, while the animations in UNITRES Dreams may not be the best or have the most smooth animations , i Did get to experiment with making more smooth animations for TREES' ADVENTURE. while ,now, i think some stuff could use some work, i am Really Proud of how some of the animations look .. ididnt get to make Too Many extra animations (there still isnt even an Idle animation), i Did get to make some cool extra animations , such as individual animations for your Jump that are based on how fast you're moving . (the original post on cohost had a buncha gifs of da animations but im Too Fuckin Tired 2 post em here LOL !!!)

So Yea . the moral of the story: making video games is kind of hard and time consuming , Especially when you're like , the Only one working on them. just make sure to plan ahead and try not to overwork urself .. make what you can and do it when you can. Thats what i think , anyways.

[arcplaysgames]

the plant's plastic, isn't it

yeah the plant is plastic

can't a boy and his cat just have a fucking summer vacation without being locked in a dream panopticon

its nice to see you girl but where the fuck is igor, in my recollection when igor has not been around, shit has been Fucked.

(I assume they couldn't get the VA for this gig, but also: i love Igor? yeah.)

It's fucking Zuckerberg, Reverie, come on. You shouldn't have installed that spyware shit on your phone!!!!

i'm gonna be real, the textures are NOT fantastic in this game, lmao. I am gonna peek at settings later. the aliases need some more anti juice.

there's a statue there?????

/googles

oh huh i.......... never noticed that. i just noticed the pretty trees. whoops. i'm a bad tourist.

Rather than directing us where we need to go to get the camping shit, the shitty AI is like "hey INSTEAD I am going to direct you to an idol event nearby" this thing is atrocious and we should uninstall it and go back to mapquest

also, I have made an Executive Decision. I am resetting my emotions on Ryuji to zero. I am taking my hatred and ire and all the times he made me uncomfortable as the player of the video game, and I'm putting them all into a box and putting those emotions away. I am going to give Ryuji Persona5Strikers another shot to not be a contemptuous little shitheel I want to eject from the story.

Mostly because his voice actor is doing such good work and I would like to like Ryuji.

But if he dehumanizes or sidelines Morgana, the deal is off, okay? Okay.

ANYWAY, Ryuji is like, hyped for this instagram girl.

Reverie only hangs out in coffee shops that have oat milk and attends shows for bands you've never heard of, he doesn't care about influencers.

OH WOW OKAY

Alice Hiiragi.... Hiiragi......... why the fuck is that familiar..............

oh, Hiiragi was the Enka singer who was married to Namatame in Persona 4 before the scandal went down. I wonder if that's relevant or just a coincidence.

oh okay so something screwy is going on and she's going to, like, kidnap all the people who have cards, or something? is she the white rabbit?

lmao no she actually references the white rabbit later. okay. i DO like her theme and vibe a whole lot, even if she is giving heavy Acid Trip Pastel Tim Burton Bad Guy energy. But Wonderland is honestly a very cool foundation for a neat villain, so I'm cool with that.

thanks, they're fake so everyone thinks i'm a soft boy when really i'm more punk rock than iggy pop at a ramones concert. hi.

I appreciate the consistency, Morgana, lmao.

uh "Keyword"?????

oh my god EMMA is just a reskinned Metanav fffffff

YOU KNOW WHAT reverie i am blaming you for this. You should have informed Morgana that you had a dream in the Velvet Room, since Morgana literally was born there and it might've clued him in to "oh hey maybe shit is going down" instead of being blissfully oblivious in vakittycation mode like a chump.

huh the anime cutscenes look way better in this game than in P5R actually. dunno why.

BUT YEP IT SEEMS ALICE HAS A PALACE. the Cognitive World is back.

oh okay that seems bad. so everyone who friended Alice with the EMMAnav is getting their hearts torn out???? what does that mean exactly? it seems bad. people need their hearts or weird shit happens, either Apathy Syndrome or having their cognition rebooted like in P5.

I am Concerned.

oh my god what is Happening there is so much on my screen right now

i think i might be bad at this oh dear

the first move Reverie learns is a pole dance, though, so I'm pretty psyched for that. maybe this will be the game where Reverie finally gets to follow his dreams and wear a skirt.

everyone is off their game at being a Thief i see

me IRL out loud: oh my god i love you

WHAT A FUCKING LOOK THAT'S AMAZING

i am sad she is probably just the first arc villain because WOW i am DIGGING this. god that FLAMINGO HEAD STAFF this is such High Kitsch, it's giving me everything.

asklfjds;af /laughing hysterically to self

okay persona 5 strikers we are starting on some high notes huh

reverie are you sure you aren't dreaming, man, this feels like a dream you might've had except the person stepping on you in stilettos would be a mean boy.

maybe that's Reverie's type. bisexual but mean-attracted.

aaaaaargh my Odin is outta battery, i gotta recharge it.

BUT SO FAR besides me fucking sucking at the gameplay THIS IS A GOOD START.

[quinnonimp]

two things. one, your art is absolutely wonderful. i love the warm tones and style. two. got any like. weird art tips. like just weird things you do that work really well. or just art tips in general lol. there's something bout your style that makes me go ':D' lmao

aaaaaa tysm !!!! very glad u like my style <33 means a lot

and yeah id say i have quite a few with the way im very experimental n passionate abt art !

>> i think my weirdest one is rly just the main way i render tbh ? like, as u can pretty easily see with my main art style is that its all very crunchy n pixelated, n thats all cause i have anti-aliasing off for my brush . i render in a pretty unorthodox way but it makes things so so so much easier and more fun for me, even if its more time consuming for several reasons

heres a little bit of an infographic ive whipped up that hopefully u can get smth out of lmao . its 6am ive been up all night drawing as usual so im having a lot of trouble doing things properly sorry sorry

and the funny thing is this is aaaaaaaaall just cause i hate blending and am scared of committing to things (esp colors) so i just decided "okay whatever im gonna be goofy and just make it all pixelated idc anymore" and it worked !! (thanks homestuck) art is sm more enjoyable since i started doing this as it fits perfectly with the way my brain works and its helped me sm with getting better at colors bc of the way i have to do every single color manually (for several reasons like how i have to keep track of every color ((which makes me recycle them a lot more making things look more united)), gradients r the most fun to do but i have to make sure all the colors "blend" together nicely, i get to change them super easily, etc etc)

however these days i HAVE been trying to get back into working with anti-aliased brushes just to get out of my comfort zone n such, but tbh the only thing its helped me with is remind me how much more fun drawing aliased is and how absolutely dogshit i am at blending FDJHJKDF

also it makes me better at minecraft skins since im so used to working with pixels !

>> another little weird thing i have that honestly just goes against basic art rules is experiment by having ur values be as close together as possible without losing contrast . this is horrible as a tip, but fun as an experiment, and for me its just fun since i already know pretty well how values work and have enough experience to break the "rules" - because lot of times good shading colors r actually lighter than the original when put under b&w

so if ur like me i would recommend trying it out ! if u dont even know what values are then this ISNT good for u, do values properly as they really help

>> if u struggle a lot with side profiles, just learn from the gorillaz demon days album art . like literally im not joking that is THE thing that made me learn to draw side profiles and id say im pretty good at them now (however the effectiveness of this probably depends on the style)

and by learn from it i mean u can just trace it with any other characters, or study it, or reference it, yadaydayada . just do wahtever with it, damon albarn dgaf

obviously this isnt gonna magically make u great at side profiles but if u want a fun art challenge or ur a big gorillaz fan like me, it could get u kickstarted !!!! especially if ur doing it with ocs or characters u like that are in a band or something

ok thats all the tips ill be giving out tonight im a little sickly victorian child rn

hope it helped . uhm . bye

[dzamie]

The AO3 Tiffany G thing

So, unlike apparently everyone else in this shitshow, I decided to actually RTFM so I'm not working off of hearsay of hearsay.

What's going on?

The AO3 is electing new board members. One of these members is aliased "Tiffany G." She's facing criticism from part of the AO3 community, who say she doesn't know enough about the AO3, she wants to censor things, and that the AO3 censoring things is bad. Other parts of the AO3 community object to this characterization, saying any of: she doesn't want to censor things, the AO3 censoring certain things is good, and the criticism is driven primarily by sinophobia (anti-Chinese racism).

Where can I find info for myself?

Search "Chat Transcript – August 1" (copy/paste, in quotes) on your search engine of choice. You'll probably either get the transcript directly, or a Tweet with a link. I'd link it here but tumblr hates external links.

Okay, so. Allegations.

Why do people say she doesn't know enough about the AO3?

She refers to herself as a newbie a couple of times, though this doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't know her stuff. However, from Tiffany G in the interview:

I hope [proposed changes to the TOS are] like more warnings and ratings for posting work so people know what to expect.

(responding to whether she believes certain content should be disallowed) That is not what I proposed actually. I would want to be more specific in the rating system and clarifications so people know what to expect.

The AO3 is well-known for its rating, warning, and tagging system. Tiffany's detractors read these responses as though someone walked into a library and said "I think it'd be cool if the nonfiction section was categorized by topic, maybe with a few levels of subdivision. We could use decimal numbers."

Additionally, earlier in the interview, she says this:

a lot of external people are very concerned about the fact that some works contain child pornography, pedophilic content, and other illegal content

This is factually incorrect. The interviewer later clarifies that the AO3 does not host any content illegal in the US (where the Archive is hosted), be it child pornography or otherwise. Her critics claim that saying that the AO3 hosts illegal content shows that she's not familiar with the site, which has a link to a report form at the bottom of every page.

Why do people say she wants to censor things?

From Tiffany G in the interview:

I support 100% “maximum inclusiveness of content”, yet there is always a boundary to everything. Since OTW is already an influential org, we need to protect our image and hold a better image to the public. I want the public to think of us as an inclusive and socially responsible community.

To members of the AO3 community who were active in fandom when LiveJournal and FF.net were major fandom sites, "we need to protect our image" reminds them of the reasons that those sites removed most queer and explicit fanworks: public image, particularly towards advertisers. More recently, Apple demanded tumblr remove sexually-explicit material in late 2018 (dropping site traffic by 50-90%), and again in late 2021 (the #girl incident), again citing the need for a family-friendly image.

This, combined with mentioning a "boundary" to "maximum inclusiveness of content," is tripping a lot of memories and causing people to think this indicates a desire to remove queer and explicit fanworks from the AO3.

Critics of this characterization point to Tiffany saying that "[removal of written sexual content of minors] is not what [she] proposed, actually."

Why do people say censoring things is bad?

*sighs, looks over at a towering pillar of books labeled "Arguments over the morality of censorship in fandom," topped with a dictionary with the entry for "archive" highlighted*

...let's save that question for another day.

Why do people say the criticism is driven by sinophobia?

Tiffany G is Chinese. She mentions a couple of times that the AO3 is banned in her home country, and the only country that has banned the AO3 is China (if you search "countries banned ao3," you get results about China; if you add "-china" to filter the country out, you mostly get fanfic about characters named Ban). There is a great amount of justified criticism of the Chinese government, particularly in regards to speech laws, but people sometimes direct their ire at Chinese citizens, expats, or their descendants instead.

Particularly, people worry that her focus on public image and illegal content is a veiled term for applying the Chinese government's restrictions on speech to the Archive.

There are undoubtedly sinophobes whose biases contribute to their criticism of Tiffany. Millions of people use the AO3, after all. However, the points addressed in this post prior to this section would remain even if she were from the US, Brazil, Germany, or anywhere else.

[g0rescream]

🦴🩸 ✄ “ℑ 𝔞𝔪 𝑮𝔬𝔯𝔢𝓢𝔠𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔪.” ✄ 🩸🦴

Hello, welcome to my blog. I probably won’t be too active, but just in case… I’ll make an introduction post.

This is mainly going to be an art blog. Maybe even some writing or small animation if I feel funny enough to do it.

If my url didn’t give it away, the media I make often has intense or upsetting themes. Please stay safe.

🧨General Info🧨

🔪🩸^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v🩸🔪

🥩 Aliases: Gore, Cryptid

🥩 Age: (Not comfortable sharing… also not a good idea to do on the internet)

🥩 Requests: [‼️OFF‼️]

🥩 Pronouns: Any are fine (If you want the preference it’s They/Them or It/Its… but it’s a very small preference.)

🥩 Orientation: Asexual

🥩 Language: English (I’m not smart or rich enough to learn a new language rn lol)

🥩 Birthday: September 6th

🥩 Nationality: American (sadly)

🥩 DNI: Basic stuff, ANTI-MOGAI, Exclusionists, truscum/transmed/TERF/radfem, people who use “narcissist” or “sociopath” as descriptors of abusers outside of official diagnoses, “““MAPs”””, Pro-shippers, NFTs, Anti-Neopronouns, people who’d dox or harass someone because they liked media you didn’t, Anti-Choice-Unless-It’s-Restricting-You *cough cough* “Pro-life”, people who tell others to end their own life

(If this DNI gets broken by any of the sad individuals listed above… I’ll just laugh at you for 2 seconds, block you, forget about your existence, & then go on with my day. Look for attention somewhere else, you no-bitches-getting bloodbag. This DNI is subject to change.)

🔪🩸^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v🩸🔪

Trivia? I guess? Idfk what else to put here lol

❌ - Mainly I make a bunch of sketches because my brain is either like a mushy pinball machine on crack bouncing between four ideas & finishing none… or a still void of infinite lethargy that can’t do shit. There’s no in between. But occasionally I’ll make something not completely terrible, & I’ll post it… like my pfp up there.

❌ - I like to draw my OCs. They are my coping mechanisms for everything ever & also they’re the content that caters to me & only me LMAOOO

❌ - I’m not particularly keen on backgrounds, & my anatomy is somewhat screwy, but I strive to do better. If there’s any constructive art tips you think you could give me, feel free to hit up my inbox… I probably won’t respond quickly, if at all. That’s mainly because of my general “shyness” (not really the best word to describe it, but hmgh), not negligence or saltiness.

❌ - I don’t really do commissions, & requests are unlikely.

❌ - Oh yeah heads up btw, I’m slightly a massive dumbass lol

❌ - I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD. Big surprise, I know.

❌ - Zodiac sign’s Virgo. Not very into astrology, surprisingly.

❌ - I like games but I suck at them lol

❌ - Fanart? From me? Less likely than you think. (Not impossible tho-)

[Yeah. Miiight update this later. Anyway, yeah, enjoy the blog full of my shyte art.]

[msbarrows]

So, as of the latest time I've updated my video card drivers, the screen capture utility I've been using for ages is suddenly once again able to actually capture my screen properly in games such as No Man's Sky. There was a process by which I could force a screen capture prior to this, but it involved hitting the screenshot hotkey, toggling out of and then back into the game, and then screenshotting a second time. This process would get the second capture to be a largely unprocessed version of the screen; the toggling seemed to force the screen at the time of toggling out into a buffer that the screen capture software could then see and read from (the first screen capture is whatever was on screen the previous time you toggled, but if you don't create it the buffering doesn't seem to occur). This was not exactly a rapid process, and the image quality also wasn't noticeably any better than the game's in-built screenshot tool. It's only real benefit was that it preserved the in-galaxy address displayed in the lower left corner, so prior to this I only used it when grabbing shots of things like starships or particularly interesting multitools.

So I've now gone from only being able to get jagged low-quality screenshots that don't have things like anti-aliasing happening, to actual decent quality screenshots, with just one capture and no toggling required. You can see the very distinct difference this makes in image quality between the first two pictures shown here.

Which of course meant I had to run around my current WIP base and take good-quality screenshots of it to show off :D

This is a semi-randomly placed base on an ice planet; I found one of those spots with a base computer in the middle of a large flat area (legacy of back when bases could only be built in specific locations and were one per save, I believe - which was before my time so that's based off of old forum posts). There were a few cave mouths in the hillsides bordering the flat area, including one particularly round one that had a very strong "that's a mine entrance" vibe to me from the way it was set into a recessed slope.

I'd been thinking of doing an on-planet frostwort farm instead of making a big gardening area for them on my freighter, because harvesting from biodomes is more plants gathered at a time (7-8 instead of 4, though they are more spread out). I decided yeah, this would be a fun place to build something (despite its lack of a power hotspot or resource node nearby) and hence ended up with this small mining-town-inspired base.

It has three mine entrances (01 is the original mine-like location), a biodome structure, starship pad with adjoining structure, a bar, powerhouse, etc. One of the caves behind the mine entrances (03) is small and very pretty with a skylight opening over top so it gets good light, and I ended up deciding to plunk my portal in there, which looks great and is only mildly dangerous when the scant handful of toxic plants have regenerated (I can live with that).

Still need to dress the interiors of a couple of the buildings, and possibly build some more of them. Have been having fun working on it for a couple of days already.

[sabertoothwalrus]

'Scusie, I have a question about digital art. How do you do your coloring? If you have a previous post or resource you talked about already then that'd be appreciated. But if not; I've just started getting back into digital art and can't remember how people did their fancy selection methods to color in their lineart. I managed somewhat myself but what would be a simple sketch irl took like an hour or two of trying to work the tablet/program. I want to enjoy it again and use it to start commissions in the future, and I don't want to be easily burned out because of the complexity. For reference, I'm using Krita.

ok I wasn't really sure how to explain it so I made a timelapse? let's see if this helps

so first of all, I'm predominantly using CSP nowadays (which I love and highly recommend), which has this nifty little feature in the bucket tool:

it can close gaps!! Now, I tend to draw pretty loose and my lines have a lot of gaps between them that are too big to close automatically, so I'll manually close them on my color layer with whichever color I'm using. I find this method works best when my pen and bucket tool have anti-aliasing turned off. I think other programs like Medibang and even Aggie.io have some sort of "smart" bucket tool, so I wouldn't be surprised if krita has something similar too.

the second method is simply Not Giving A Fuck and coloring sloppily without caring if the colors stay in the lines. I do this more for stupider comics where looking pretty doesn't matter so much

the third method is the same as the first but using a nice, textured brush so it looks Intentional and Pretty

I also tend to throw gradient maps on everything because they're so fun :)

the fourth method (which I did not demonstrate) is the good ol' polygonal lasso tool. I mostly used it when I used Photoshop. It's a really good and fast way to get all your colors blocked in without requiring so much precision, but it can still be a little tedious.

Bear in mind, I am not the kind of person that has each color on its own layer. A basic drawing like this one is lines, colors, and bg, with maybe a gradient map or adjustment layer. There are tons more ways than this to color (look into CSP's reference layers! pretty neat stuff), but these are just the ways that I like to use because I am very very lazy and am only willing to put in the absolute bare minimum effort

[enterunderscore]

Could you tell more about how you recreated the PlayStation 2 start up animation? In particular I’m wondering about the motion blur, aliasing, and other PS2 specific rendering quirks. Thanks <3

gladly! actually most of that stuff is done in blender’s compositor! i can break it down for you.

early game console motion blur was not true motion blur -- that is, the physical simulation of a camera shutter being open for too long while something is moving. to do this today, the renderer takes note of the location of every vertex in the scene during the last frame, and compares those locations to the current frame. then it will take those positional differences (sometimes creating a few extra “steps” in between those two positions for extra data) and create a blur between them, achieving this:

the PS2 (and the other consoles at the time) was a graphical powerhouse compared to its predecessor, and thanks to new rendering techniques, was able to sort of simulate motion blur without the full cost of actually simulating motion blur, like we do today.

to do this, there was a technique often referred to as “color accumulation blur”, where the last 2 or 3 frames were simply overlaid on top of the current frame at a lower opacity. it cost next to nothing, reduced aliasing (or jaggies) on some edges, and for the time was a pretty convincing full-screen motion blur effect—at the expense of it looking like “ghosting” or “afterimages”:

now, without doing some crazy render layer trickery, blender doesn’t necessarily have the compositing tools to do this exact effect (at least to my knowledge, i’m not a wizard or anything), but it’s very convenient that during the PS2 boot animation, the camera moves smoothly forwards in a single direction. 

we can't use blender's default motion blur feature for this effect, because it'll actually be high quality motion blur instead of the kind we want. blender just so happens to have a very nice feature in its compositor called directional blur.

here is first bit of the compositor node setup. here, i take the currently rendered frame, and pump it through a directional blur node, which will blur the frame outwards from the center. those “zoom” and “spin” sliders modify the intensity of the blur and the spin of the blur, and i animate those upwards as the camera gains speed towards the end of the animation. the iterations slider is what determines how many copies of the original image will be overlaid against each other to create the blur, and considering what we learned above, i set that to 2 so it looks nice and choppy.

after that, i hook up the original image and the new blurred image into an add node, adding them together!

this one's pretty simple. the PS2 typically rendered graphics at a resolution of 640x480 (it could do 240p and 480i, but for simplicity's sake i stuck with 480p). so in blender's render settings, i set the resolution to 480p.

anti-aliasing is a technique where you take a rendered image and through one technique or another, reduce the appearance of jagged edges on pixels—allowing the image to look smoother and cleaner.

the common anti-aliasing techniques of the time were extremely expensive especially for a console, so most titles didn't use it at all. this is why a lot of older games (and a lot of new ones too) can have graphics with pixelated shimmery edges. however we mostly had CRT TVs at the time back then, and CRTs are notoriously good at covering up aliasing.

blender, however, has anti-aliasing enabled by default. to fix this, we need to head over to the scene tab, and go to film > pixel filter.

blender's anti-aliasing method is called pixel filtering, and by default the "width" (strength) is set to 1.5px, which will sort of let each pixel affect the next half-pixel in all directions. it ends up looking like this:

don't worry i barely understand it either, we just need to turn it off. so i set the width to 0.01px, and bam! crispy jaggy aliasing.

finishing touches

finally, i had to give the render an old-school analog feel. the PS2 rendered digital images and sent them through a low-quality analog cable. that’s right, i’m talking about these bad boys:

since only one of these cables were used for sending a video signal, they had to send chroma (color information) and luma (brightness information) data through the same pipe... so naturally you’d get some crosstalk between the two, resulting in some odd looking color smearing: 

to achieve this in blender, we do some more compositing!

here, i am taking the frame with all effects applied up to this point, splitting it into its red, green, and blue color channels with a separate RGBA node, and then ever-so-slightly applying a blur to the blue and green channels before re-combining them back together with a combine RGBA node. it’s definitely not accurate to how chroma-luma crosstalk works in real life, but it’s good enough that the effect is convincing! (NOTE: for this screenshot i’ve dialed the blur way up to make it more apparent for this post—it’s much more subtle in my final render)

...aaaand that’s about it! 

there’s definitely a lot more at work here to make it PS2-authentic but those are the big ones! i also rendered the little colored balls of light as a separate render layer and added them on top of the frame, lowered the contrast a bit to look more like a recording of a real PS2, and turned off raytraced shadow casting.

here’s what the frame looks like before it hits the compositor:

and here it is after:

thank you for asking and thank you for reading! i love talking about this stuff.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1-3

May, 1984

THE WAR BEGINS

Oof, here we go.

Just gotta replicate the pace that let me do the Hawkeye miniseries in one go, three times in a row.

This is probably too much effort considering its Secret Wars (or more accurately Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars) and maybe there’s not going to be a lot of big changes from this in the Avengers book to really justify it.

But we’re getting Jim Shooter writing the Avengers and his non-consecutive runs were a lot better than I had remembered. And it continues the theme he had from the Avengers book.

It just makes sense in a nonsense way to cover this story.

Last relevant time in Avengers! Acting Completely Normal Vision warned the Avengers about some weird, possibly hostile energy surges right in time for an energy surge to surge energetically in Central Park.

When the Avengers went to investigate, they found a weird structure that looked like a techy coliseum maybe. When some of the Avengers wandered into it (apparently the most bankable Avengers? Sucks to be Vision and Wanda, shrug) they vanished.

In the next issue, after several days, these heroes returned, speaking of a secret war they fought. Weird stuff like She-Hulk taking the Thing’s place on the Fantastic Four happened. In other books, Spidey got a cool new suit.

Would you know more?

After being raptured in their various books, the missing superheroes all end up on one of those distinctive structures like the one that appeared in Central Park, except IN SPACE.

Its cool that the Avengers will have some company.

We’ve got a terrific 3/4ths of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men (including Lockheed but not including Kitty Pryde for some reason), the Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-Man, the totally Articulate Hulk, and hilariously Magneto is also here.

Maybe Secret Wars is just setting up the most awkward moment in the universe, as a prank show.

I think I’d enjoy a big event that turned out to be a prank show at the last minute. The fan discontent. Imagine.

Everyone introduces themselves to each other but mostly the audience and Ben Grimm claims his new codename as the Easter Bunny.

Checking, marvel wiki doesn’t have Easter Bunny listed as one of Ben’s known aliases. Cowards.

Looking up into space, Captain America spots another one of the totally cool constructs and Professor X scans that it contains EEEEEEEVIL.

Specifically Amora the Enchantress, Ultron, the Wrecking Crew, the Absorbing Man, the Lizard, VICTOR VON DOOOOOM, Kang the Conqueror, Doctor Octopus, and Molecule Man. Also, hilariously, Galactus is there.

I’m more convinced than ever that this is a prank show.

You know what would be more hilarious? If Punisher ended up on this construct.

The distribution of villains is kind of odd though. Galactus and Doctor Doom map to the FF. Doctor Octopus and the Lizard to Spider-Man. Ultron, Molecule Man, and Kang are Avengers foes. The Absorbing Man and the Wrecking Crew can go a couple ways but started off as Thor villains. And Amora is usually a Thor villain but supposedly has chilled out around this time or at least is less of a pain than her horny sister.

No X-Men villains. Because Magneto is chilling with them in the generally heroic pod.

Also, all the heroes were raptured from Earth while the villains were grabbed from Earth, from space, from Asgard, resurrected just to be here, or from the FUTURE.

I know marketing is wagging the dog but be consistent, secret organizer who we don’t know yet.

The Thing points out that Magnet is off-sides, re: being in the hero construct, and Magneto is like ‘hey, chill out dudes’ and denies specifically doing murders.

Magneto: “I know not what power transported me here from my secret lair, nor why I was placed among you -- but I find it more appropriate to ask why such as you were judged fit to be placed in my presence!”

Oof.

Burn.

Then the conversation is put on halt on account of the wildest shit any of them have ever seen.

An entire galaxy vanishes but probably not due to a wave of anti-matter.

Thor: “It’s gone! Gone -- ! Swept away like dust before some unseen, giant hand!”

And then around that last star left unswept, various chunks merge together to form some sort of world, perhaps for battle.

A nice touch for later is that you can definitely see that one of the chunks is a stray chunk of city.

Some of the villains start squabbling because close quarters, ego, etc.

But Ultron goes hey we’re allowed to fight? I’m the best at that.

Ultron: “I am Ultron! I do not understand the events transpiring! I do not understand how I came to be resurrected... nor how I came to be here! Nothing computes... Insignificant! I am Ultron! My purpose is to slay that which lives. You are all living things, ergo -- Ultron must destroy you!”

With the benefit of having read all the Avengers up to now, I feel that Ultron got up on the wrong side of the resurrection a little.

He’s not not like this but he’s not usually this turned on?

(Then again, maybe he just came back cranky)

DOOM grabs and shakes Molecule Man to do something about this because given enough time even the mighty DOOM might fall before Ultron.

Ultron is famously annoying to defeat, what with that adamantium.

But Molecule Man is in therapy after the Avengers kicked his shit and Tigra yelled at him for being a punk. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

So Doom with all his brilliant genius tells MM a cool way to help out that won’t hurt anyone. Directly.

Using his Molecule Man power over molecules to lightly toss Ultron into Galactus.

So that Galactus goes ‘who the fuck scuffed my boots’ and rips out all the energy in Ultron’s Ultron.

He can do that.

Why wouldn’t he? If he can do that to a planet, he can do it to a pissbaby robot. Even one apparently containing more power than an atom bomb.

Then, because this is one of those plots where things are always thenning, a rift opens in the nothingness of space and a heavenly esque light shines out. A warbly voice commands the action figures beat each other up.

I mean. Its more like

The Beyonder: “I am from beyond! Slay your enemies and all you desire shall be yours! Nothing you dream of is impossible for me to accomplish!”

But you have to admire that this toy commercial of a comic book is being honest and upfront about being a story where action figures bonk off of each other.

Galactus just hears ‘i can finally shake off these persistent forever munchies’ and flies off to demand prepayment for action figure bonking, with DOOM following behind him.

The Beyonder speaks up warning Galactus that hey, personal space. And that a guy that can effortlessly wipe out a galaxy is gonna have a sweet barrier but Galactus wants the hunger pangs gone and does not listen.

DOOM recognizes a bad idea when he sees one once in a while and hangs back but still gets blown out of space by the force of Galactus bonking off the Beyonder’s barriers.

Captain America: “They were swatted back like flies!”

Professor X: “To the Beyonder, even Galactus is less than a fly, Captain!”

Interruption dealt with, the Beyonder gets the show on the road and sends the two constructs to different parts of the patchwork planet.

The Marvel Super Heroes And Magneto land on some hill and quickly make sure that there are no villains excepting Magneto around.

With Magneto around, the non-X-Men raise an objection to Magneto being around.

He sank a Russian submarine with all hands back in X-Men #150 but he insists that it was self-defense and also they started it.

The X-Men’s position is ‘hey he’s a jerk but he’s our jerk plus we could use his help? The bad guys get GALACTUS, how is that fair?’

Well, they don’t say it but they’re probably thinking it.

And Hawkeye decides to be a little racist today.

Hawkeye: “You mutants stick together, huh? Well, sticking to a blood-soaked maniac like him doesn’t speak well of you, pal!”

Dude, Clint. Your dear old friend is Wanda.

Wait, why ISN’T Wanda here? Did the toy people really not want her? Fools. Her husband is toyetic as all get out.

Also, point of order, Wolverine? If anyone qualifies as ‘hey he’s a jerk but he’s our jerk!’ here its you.

Johnny “good life choices” Storm decides he’ll just kick Magneto’s ass and end the debate but yeah. Yeah, no. Magneto makes a fool of him.

And then Magneto decides eff this noise and flies off.

With Magneto alienated (good job, guys), Professor X decides this group needs some dang leadership and throws a nomination to Reed Richards. Reed defers since he’s thinking of Sue, left at home and not able to participate in the event.

Wasp, the cool leader of the Avengers, nominates instead Captain America.

Wasp: “We’re off in a strange land, up to our ears in a little secret war that may decide the fate of the universe! Some people don’t know me well! They might have doubts... and there’s no room for that!”

I’m baffled that there’s people here who don’t know Wasp who has been heroing since the 60s but sure. Cap(tain America) probably gets more crossovers and whatever.

I mean, heck, we’re talking a group of heroes consisting of the Avengers (who she already leads), the Fantastic Three (who she’s well acquainted with), and the X-Men (who I’m sure she’s met, although awkwardly its going to later be revealed that Wasp is in the Hellfire Club, but only the sex parts).

And I guess Wolverine’s extensive backstory with Cap doesn’t exist yet because Wolverine isn’t keen on him being the leader, describing him as the least of the assembled heroes. When Hawkeye is right there!

I kid because I love.

Meanwhile, DOOM wakes up adjacent to Galactus ankle and heads to a nearby fortress which he correctly assumes is where the villains have ended up.

Wait, the heroes get beamed down to a random hill while the villains get sent to an advanced fortress with weaponry and we later learn vehicles sold separately?

Kinda stacking the deck, the Beyonder.

You gave the villains GALACTUS and A FORTRESS PLAYSET right out of the gate.

The other villains tell Doom that they’ve (mostly) decided that he should be their leader. But Doom has bigger fish to fry than the prizes that the Beyonder is offering.

In typical Doomesque fashion, he wants the whole kettle. But the other villains what with their petty concerns think he’s too afraid to fight.

So he ditches.

He goes to steal-borrow a spaceship and even though he hates the thought, takes off to go talk to Richards. And then Kang shoots him out of the sky with a GIANT GUN THAT THE VILLAIN FORTRESS ALSO HAS? to stop him from allying with the heroes.

Said (marvel super) heroes see the distant explosion and fly as a group in the most hilarious way possible to check it out.

God, I have always loved this image. Its squished down into the bottom third of the page but its a delight.

They find Doom sprawled in the crash site, rambling that he’ll only speak to RICHARRRRRDS and about the Beyonder’s power. But Cap offends Doom mightily but offering him a hand up and because Doom sees pity in Cap and RICHARRRRRRDS eyes.

So he blasts the heroes and fucks off.

How very Bakugou of him.

And right as the heroes recover from that, a bunch of villains arrive to get this secret war started.

I have a fondness for this particular issue. For a long while, issue 1 was the only issue of Secret Wars I could find. So I just had the start of this story with all these non-Spider-Man non-X-Men heroes I barely knew cliffhangering into an attack by villains I really didn’t recognize except for Doc Ock and the Lizard.

It was a window into another side of the Marvel Universe. And for child me, this first issue worked perfectly to intrigue me. All these characters, the very straightforward conflict, all the complications that immediately pop up like Magneto, Galactus, and Doom. Alas, small child resources.

June, 1984

PRISONERS of War!

The heroes react slowly to the sudden villain attack but thankfully, the villains aren’t working together well. Unthankfully, half of the heroes were already knocked out by the first attack.

Meanwhile, over at Doctor Doom’s side of the plot, he flies back over to where Galactus just in time to see him finally rouse from being slapped down by the Beyonder.

Galactus floats to his feet and wanders off.

Doom: “He ignored me! As though I were a gnat buzzing at his feet! And so I am... Just as all of us, even Galactus himself, are but insects to the all-powerful Beyonder! Thus, the others have chosen to play the Beyonder’s simple game -- thereby, in effect, paying homage to him. Should I, too, pay homage? Should I worship at the feet of this god-like being -- or chose another path... one only Doom would dare!”

I think anyone that knows Doom knows which option he’s gonna choose.

He heads back to the villain fortress and finds Ultron’s deactivated body and decides Doom can use this.

Meanwhile, back at the first secret battle of the secret war, the heroes rally and start fighting back under Cap(tain America)’s leadership.

She-Hulk even gets a designated girl fight with the only female villain on the villain team.

I’d complain, I would. But at least She-Hulk isn’t the only heroine on the hero side.

She-Hulk: “Hiya! I’m the She-Hulk! You must be the Enchantress! Gee, I’ve heard so much about you -- ! You’re a not-nice lady!”

Enchantress: “A green woman? Is there no end to the varieties of mortals?”

The Enchantress magic slaps She-Hulk away and comments that she could crush She-Hulk physically but its beneath her.

Yeah, all Asgardians have some level of super strength, that’s right. Even the squishy wizards.

But all She-Hulk heard was, ‘someone I can really punch!’

She-Hulk: “I don’t often duke it out with someone solid enough to really unload on -- and slow enough to let me! Oh, wow! That was, like tubular, you know -- to the max!”

Uh. Jen, are you okay? Did you have a stroke? You don’t usually talk so much in Mario World secret world levels.

I think maybe Jim Shooter didn’t have a good grasp on her. I don’t think he’s ever written for her. And the other heroes mostly don’t vary too much from generic hero speaking patterns. Add some smart for smart characters, add some rude to Wolverine, and so on.

The battle wraps up with Kang, the Enchantress, and the Wrecking Crew captured and the rest of the villains fleeing when the battle didn’t go their way.

Cap sends Storm off to scout for a cool playset that they can use as shelter and she does so, noting that the winds on Battleworld are super easy to control. Like Battleworld was created to create ideal fighting conditions for everyone. Pretty neat, the Beyonder.

Storm finds a particularly rad fortress (”Bigger than fifty-four and a half Pentagons, I’d estimate!” Wow!) and the heroes move in.

I unironically enjoy how toyetic this story is with the fortresses and the vehicles and the weapons. Because I’m almost positive that Mattel barely capitalized on it.

There were only two playsets. Pitiful.

Over in their new headquarters, Reed stashes the captured villains in some form of psychostasis which “works by controlling aggression through brainwave modulation!”

He also sticks Enchantress in a healing pod to address that nasty case of being She-Hulked right in the face. Nothing will salve her ego though.

Captain America: “It’s no wonder that the name Mister Fantastic is renowned for compassion as well as courage! You give added meaning to the word hero, Richards!”

Whenever someone loudly announces that Reed is super compassionate, it makes me feel like they’re overcompensating.

Nobody ever makes note of, say, Captain America’s compassion.

With the prisoners (of war? Is that the whole reason for the title?) accommodated, Cap calls everyone for a meeting in a cool meeting dome he found which has a small waterfall for aesthetic and so everyone has to yell to be heard.

Wolverine yells that they should mop up the rest of the villains and get this over with.

Not mentioning that in order to “win it” they’d have to kill the villains, which none of the heroes have shown any interest in doing so far.

Cap(tain America) replies that A) planet big and they have no idea where the villains got to. And B) the remaining villains slash antagonists are Galactus, Doctor Doom, Molecule Man, Doctor Octopus, the Wrecker, the Absorbing Man, and Magneto. Not really people you mop up.

In a fun logistics bit, Cap sends out a patrol to make sure the area is secure but he also sends out two additional groups to find  if there are any places in this fortress they can sleep and whether there's any... food.

Makes me imagine a Secret Survival War where the sides have to wrestle over limited resources.

Hours later, the villains that escaped the fracas arrive back at their fortress.

I’m sort of confused here.

Maybe it took so long because they had to make sure they weren’t followed. Or maybe because they didn’t have the sweet tripod vehicle anymore. But think about the flow of events of: everyone beamed down to Battleworld > Doom ditches the villains and gets shot down > heroes investigate and Doom ditches > villains show up for cliffhanger fight.

The villain fortress should be pretty close to where that fight took place. And then the heroes find a nearby fortress of their own so their fortress should be pretty close to the villain fortress. Maybe not in the same neighborhood but surely the same zip code.

Anyway, they find that while they were gone, Doom swanned in and renamed the place the Doombase.

If they have problems with it, they can talk to his Ultron.

Which I’m surprised he didn’t rename Doomtron.

Doom also tells them that he’s in charge now.

Absorbing Man: “Aw! Who gives a hoot! I need a meal an’ sleep! You wanna be in charge, Doom? Okay by me!”

If you think about it, this is just some steps added what the villains wanted all along.

They wanted Doom to be their leader but he told them he had bigger fish to fry and fucked off. Now he’s fucked back on and told them all that he’s their leader. They initially object before reconsidering due to Doomtron but, yeah, its all gone full circle.

Doom is a lot more cordial to Molecule Man though.

Doom: “Molecule Man... uh, Mr. Reece, I believe it is? I trust you were not inconvenienced.”

Molecule Man: “Well, being absolute master of molecules I can just assimilate molecules when I want, so I never have to be hungry, and I can just shoo away dirt molecules, so I’m always nice and clean -- but I am tired!”

Doom: “I have prepared a special chamber for you! I hope you like it!”

Molecule Man: “If not, I can always reconstruct the molecules -- !”

Heh.

Nice to see Jim Shooter able to follow up on the trajectory he sent Molecule Man on.

The rest of the villains head off but Doctor Octopus, the only other brain cell in this group, hangs back to talk to DOOM.

He wants to know what he plans to do about Galactus and then shows Doom on the biggest screen TV that Galactus is standing on a mountain glowing with an awesome power.

Doom just retorts that his plans are for his forces to triumph.

Doctor Octopus: Something tells me he’s got ambitions that dwarf merely triumphing in the Beyonder’s little contest! The question is whether he will destroy us in trying to achieve them -- or immediately after fulfilling them?!

Like I said, the only other brain cell in this group.

Meanwhile, while Magneto secretly sneaks into the hero fortress for Reasons, the heroes have a quiet moment that lets this Secret Wars biz really sink in.

Wasp: “I’d be having tea in my studio now, Jenny... And lunch on my patio tomorrow... This... um... situation we’re in... is kind of... much, you know? I feel there’s just a little thin wall inside me holding back a flood of despair!”

Its a nice touch, if intentional, that Wasp only admits this kind of thing now that she’s passed off the leadership responsibilities to Captain America. Its been a recurring character beat that she’s been keeping these sorts of worries to herself as chairwoman.

Over in another part of the fortress, Cyclops complains that he was right in the middle of his dang honeymoon when he was yanked into this event.

Cyclops: “I don’t know about you, Richards, but more than angry or afraid, I feel cheated! I -- I was on the verge of real happiness...”

Oof. This really sets the tone for his marriage with Madelyne Pryor.

Spider-Man and the Human Torch even have a little conversation.

Spider-Man: “You mean it doesn’t shake you, Torch, being here? What if we don’t get home?”

Human Torch: “The Fantastic Four have been off on space missions a couple of times, Spider-Man! We’ll get back! Believe me!”

I like when they’re friends.

So, I’m not sure what Magneto’s plan actually was. He was going to sabotage the fortress’ fusion generator as a distraction but Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense Spider-Alerts him to shenanigans afoot and he runs off to the power plant while Johnny Storm goes to get the other heroes.

Magneto decides to abandon whatever his plan was and captures Wasp as a consolation prize.

Gasp, another prisoner of war!

The Thing tries to give chase but inexplicably turns back to normal, smooth skinned Ben Grimm.

Also, Magneto escapes with the Wasp.

It’s like the aardvark says, you can get what you want and still not be happy.

Captain Marvel is holding the randomly anti-mutant ball for Hawkeye here and comments that none of the X-Men showed up to help stop Magneto.

Cap(tain America) tells her to belay that.

Captain America: “Let’s keep our minds on solving problems, not creating more!”

And they can’t even go after Magneto or rescue the Wasp right now because they have bigger problems: Galactus glowing with an awesome power and a massive storm that’s forming on Battleworld.

July, 1984

TEMPEST WITHOUT, CRISIS WITHIN!

The Beyonder has thrown in a nice stage hazard to keep things fresh in the form of a massive storm raging on Battleworld, with lighting that shatters mountains and winds that could tear someone’s limbs clean off.

Or perhaps its the unintentional result of just slapping a planet together out of random stuff you have lying around. The climate must be shot to shit.

I like it either way. Secret Wars has a lot of very toyetic collisions between groups of characters so its nice when Battleworld itself manages to be an obstacle.

Over in his giant U-shaped fortress, Magneto finally unwraps Wasp from the ball of random metal crap he has her in.

He lets her wander around until she finds him so that he can be all casual and eating a space scone.

Magneto: “Do not bother trying to attack me, my dear! My person is magnetically shielded!”

Wasp: “Well, la-de-da!”

Wasp: -blows up his space scone- “You think I have to strike at you directly to hurt you, monster?”

Hilarious spite, thy name is Janet van Dyne.

She also makes the point that magnetic shielding or no, she could bring this whole room down. Her being able to knock over a small house with her pew pew hasn’t stopped being true.

Magneto hastens to ask her not to do that because neither of them want to be out in the storm outside.

Besides, he just wants to talk! And flirt!

Magneto: “You are obviously a woman of intelligence and understanding as well as great beauty -- and I am not the monster you believe I am -- which is precisely what I wish to discuss!”

Wasp: “Oh? My intelligence, understanding and beauty or your non-monsterhood?”

Magneto: “Why... both!”

Back at the hero base (which is apparently ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF CHICAGO?? I want that playset), the storm has almost completely flooded the area, leaving just the top dome and such poking above the water.

The storm keeps dropping chunks of mountain at the base but Thor is standing on top, protecting it while grinning like a loon.

Captain Marvel even speculates that Thor could calm the storm but is whipping it up into a greater frenzy instead. Those storm gods, amirite?

Hawkeye is also standing by, with his explosive arrow, thinking to himself that if Thor fails, Hawkeye will totally save the day.

I don’t know whether that’s sad or endearing.

Mostly though he’s trying to distract himself from thinking about the new wife he left behind.

Cap, Reed, and Hulk are watching the villain base because apparently they do know where it is. The storm is keeping the villains in too but Cap figures they’ll pull one desperate attack as soon as the storm breaks.

They’ve already lost four of their dudes. Plus, Galactus isn’t a team player.

Spider-Man is just swinging around, enjoying how good for swinging the random technological pipes and tubes and whatsits are when he stumbles upon the X-Men having a secret meeting.

Professor X has decided, possibly on the basis of two (2) rude comments from Hawkeye and Captain Marvel, that the X-Men just don’t belong here and that they’d be better off going and teaming up with Magneto.

This... sure is a take.

Rogue comments that the Avengers don’t trust her because of that time she kicked their asses collectively. Which, hey, very possibly. They haven’t really had a thing to say about you though. They’ve mostly been grouchy about Magneto.

Which is kinda born out by the way he tried to blow up their base and definitely kidnapped the Wasp?? And is even now aggressively eating scones at her?

That’s the Magneto you guys want to go join because he’s more your people than the Fantastic Avengers and friends are?

You know, there’s a pattern I sometimes see with the X-Men where they loudly insist that the other superheroes don’t help them and don’t care about mutant stuff while at the same time doing shit like this.

“Should we get Reed Richards, smartest dick in the world to help with the legacy virus or the techno-organic virus Stryfe shot into Xavier? NAHHHH Beast can handle it.”

“Should we stick with the other superheroes or go hang with Magneto instead in a cool mutants only U-shaped fortress? Well, U is the coolest letter that isn’t X...”

If you squint, you can definitely see Krakoa all the way in the future.

Anyway, Spider-Man overheard all of this and goes ‘I’M TELLING!’

Wolverine tries to tell him that snitches get stitches but the thing is?

Spider-Man is ridiculous. He’s a ridiculously good combination of skills and powers which lets him make chumps out of entire groups at a time.

He’s embarrassed the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and now he’s about to embarrass the X-Men.

After making them all feel foolish, Spider-Man gets away and goes to tell Reed what that doody-head Xavier said when Xavier uses his psychic powers to just wipe the entire encounter out of Spider-Man’s memory.

Yeah, it’s to cover their imminent blowing off but also? I don’t think he wants anyone else to find out how badly his X-Men just got stomped.

Psychics are too OP, I tell you what.

In fairness IN FAIRNESS, the X-Men kind of have the right to fuck right off if they wish. I don’t even know what it had to be in secret. In fact, doing it in secret is a massive dick move of its own for reasons.

What would the Fantastic Avengers have done if the X-Men had just said ‘hey we’re heading out’? Would they have put them in stasis tube jail? I doubt it.

Professor X made the decision to handle this the stupidest way for whatever reason. That scamp.

Speaking of Magneto, he’s over at the U-Lair turning down a partnership offer from DOOM. So, hey, he has standards.

Wasp has become less ‘i’ll blow up this room and your breakfast’ about him over the course of whatever the hell they discussed in their offscreen chat.

Magneto even starts to make out with her and Wasp is like ehhhhhhhhhh what the fuck why not.

Why is this happening?

I guess he has a...................... magnetic personality?

Eh? Eh??

No, but seriously, I do have a theory that I heard someplace but it’ll have to wait.

What’s weird is that there’s a Marvel What If about some spinoff babies that come about if the heroes and villains got stuck on Battleworld and never managed to leave.

Wasp has a son with Human Torch. Which is pretty weird and comes from nowhere. I guess a lot can happen during a massive time skip. My point being though, its weird that they didn’t have a Wasp/Magneto baby instead given the weird chemistry they have here.

Meanwhile, over at DOOMBASE, DOOM has some women in giant tubes.

That’s So Doom.

Doctor Doom: “All is ready -- ! This alien technology, so rich, so subtle... so easily harnessed to serve my purpose... Energy, tapped from the raging tempest... And two mortal subjects who dare to gamble for power -- knowing that to lose is death, for truly, here I shall test the limits of power a human body can contain! With the throwing of a switch... so -- the die is cast! Hear me -- ! Power must be seized -- ! Crave it! Welcome it! Drink it in, despite the pain... or it will destroy you.”

And thus are Volcana and Titania created!

Talk about lasting effects of Secret Wars! Titania is going to be around forever! Mostly annoying She-Hulk!

Where did Doom find two random women to give superpowers?

Denver, Colorado.

No, seriously.

That city chunk we saw as Battleworld formed? That’s Denver, Colorado, USA, EARTH.

Why isn’t there a miniseries or one-shot about a normal ass civilian from Denver having to deal with OH MY GOD WHERE DID EARTH GO?

I actually read an interesting thing re: this scene. It exists because Mattel asked Marvel to introduce some new female characters so Shooter wrote in these two and a third who I’ll get to when I do.

Mattel then promptly used none of these characters for the associated toyline.

The toyline, in fact, used none female characters at all. It made toys of characters who weren’t in the story but did not have a single female character.

So its very weird that they asked Marvel to introduce some but I’m not going to knock the results.

Doom introduces these two new characters to the other villains.

Hilariously, Absorbing Man guesses that Doctor Doom just made women from scratch. Because doesn’t it sound like something he could do?

Volcana and Molecule Man immediately hit it off, her being attracted to his sensitivity and him being attracted to... positive attention at all, I guess?

He muses that he could easily stop the storm outside, because molecules, but his therapist told him to let nature take its course. “Unless Doom asks me to!”

And Titania and Absorbing Man. They don’t hit it off. She either wants to hit him or hit that and its not clear and it might be both.

(Spoilers: Its both)

Titania: “You! Absorbing Man! You look like the toughest man here! Get up!”

Absorbing Man: “Whatcha got in mind?”

Titania: “I’m going to do anything I want to you! Everything I always wanted to do to everybody who used to be bigger and stronger than me! Maybe I’ll just play with you... or maybe I’ll make you eat dirt... or maybe...”

Absorbing Man: “Woman, if you got somethin’ to prove, prove it tomorrow against the guys we’re fightin’!”

Titania: “You’re backing down?”

Absorbing Man: “Nope! I just ain’t getting up! I got nothin’ to prove... to a dame!”

Would you believe that they become one of the healthiest and most stable romantic relationships in Marvel?

Speaking of weird relationships, back over at hero base, Thor goes and pops the lid on Enchanteress’ healing tube because he’s bored and wants to talk to a peer. A god peer.

Enchantress is at first more characteristically worried about what her face looks like after being She-Hulked.

But she then creates a portal so she and Thor can go have a chat.

Later, it’s morning and Hulk has been too busy stressing over losing his Banner smarts to actually keep watch or wake up Cap for watch like he was supposed to.

So when the villains ram an airship into the hero base, the heroes are not at all prepared.

Titania hurls a giant slab of wall through the room the Terrific Three are sharing, breaking Johnny Torch’s arm and ribs and knocking out the other two. He manages to get himself and co out of danger by melting through the floor.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk is carrying a big heavy as she’s been doing since the previous night and is caught unaware by Volcana who blasts her off her feet and then collapses the room on top of her.

Doctor Octopus knocks out Captain Marvel who is in the hot springs dome but gets chased away by Hawkeye, claiming that long-range firepower is his weakness.

I’m stunned at the implication that Doc Ock is one of Spider-Man’s most dangerous foes but could be scared off by Hawkeye while Spider-Man could pretty easily drop Clint’s ass. There’s some rock-paper-scissors nonsense at play here.

Spider-Man and Iron Man are also taken unawares by Ultron but manage to hide under some rubble.

Hulk leaps into the fray at Molecule Man and Doom but Cap convinces him to fall back to a defensible position.

The villains reconvene with all the captured villains freed except Enchantress (since she fucked off to have a chat with Thor) and the heroes scattered and buried under various rubbles. How the fortunes of Secret War turn.

Sure would have been nice if the X-Men had been around to help or if they mentioned they wouldn’t be. Sure would have been.

Doom: “We have accomplished much here today! And to finish it, we shall level this place so that no stone remains on stone!”

No wonder Mattel didn’t make a playset of this base! Dammit Doom, you’re ruining the merchandising!

Follow @essential-avengers​ for more of Secret Wars! At this same pace! Its sustainable! This is fine! Like and reblog too!

[punkcherries]

What brushes do you use for colouring? :O

I USE A LOTTA BRUSHES FOR A LOTTA THINGS LOL,,,,, but i can give ya a rundown of sum a the brushes ive been using lately!! (note: sometimes i mess w the settings of brushes i dl and idr which ones ive changed specifically so if the base dl's not EXACTLY the same as mine,,, oops!!)

this is the one i showed off briefly in the last ask guide thingy i did, its very sharp pixely and irregular which i think is fun! really good for making things look shiny, even if i dont use it to color a piece i might use it to add the eye shines if i feel like it :] heres the link to it!! (if i changed anything abt this one i probably just set the anti aliasing to none LOL)

(adding a cut here cus it got kinda long lol)

this one i got more recently, about the same time i downloaded the punch pencil set, but its very fun!! i like the texture, good for subtle blush details n just fun to paint with !! heres the link to it!! (i dont think ive altered the settings on this one at all since i got it so recently?? idk tho loll)

this one ive had and used for a WHILE!! back when i first really fucked around n got into painting digitally yk?? its so fun i havent been using it AS often lately but still BIG recommend. heres the link!!! (i mostly mess w the particle size setting on this one, depending on the brush size n stuff i want yk??)

ok this ones kind of a joke brush i made based on a twitch stream sum time back LMFAO as u can see the brush tip is just. kirby. its a material made by markatoto on twitch/twitter (that got taken down from the store idk why lol) and i made this brush as part of a bit, but it is actually p fun LOL u should be able to dl it thru this link?? lmk if it doesnt work and ill put it in a drive or smth instead (once again i mess w the particle size on this depending on brush size, also this is a raw .sut file which u add to csp by dragging the file into ur subtool bar just ftr)

ok this is a default brush in csp 1.10.10 and newer but its what ive been using for the more watercolor-y lookin doodles!! "wet wash" is another default brush i use for a similar effect, though its much more opaque than this one, if for whatever reason u have version 1.10.10 or newer and dont have the new brushes u can get them here!

this is the newest brush ive gotten!! also obtained from a twitch streamer, izzy belbeeps, im still gettin used to it but its very fun and smooth!! once again this is a direct dl, since the only place its been uploaded is izzy's discord server, and im not gonna reupload it anywhere else since its not mine LOL,,, so if that link dont work their discord server should be linked in their twitch bio (check out their streams while ur at it theyre a cool nonbinary latine artist with a cute lil imp avatar. mar is also cool hes a lil pink alien guy) and the brush is pinned in the announcements channel :P

again, i have and use a LOT of brushes LOL if theres a particular piece ur interested in knowing abt u can link the post or send the /post/number in an ask ig?? my memorys bad so if its an old one i might not rememebr lol sorry GJFDL

[arcadianambivalence]

Babylon Berlin, S3E6

There are times when I get so invested in these characters or weary of their futures, I can spend half an episode with my heart in my throat.  

This was one of those episodes, packed with some rather seamless character introductions, chilling historical references, and a few moments of unexpected and touching bravery.

Spoilers under the cut

Katelbach’s article on the secret rearmament is about to be published on the first page of Tempo Editorial so everyone can see that the Treaty of Versailles is being broken. But amidst this victory, the ring of a telephone cuts in.  A team of SA members is on their way to destroy the article—and Katelbach.

Richard “Fritz” and Horst “Otto” are included.  Their boss, Stennes, leads the abuse of staff members, destruction of property, and other intimidation tactics.

The editor, Heymann, gives Katelbach the original documents, then stalls the oncoming SA members long enough for Samuel to escape. Heymann is then violently beaten in front of his staff as a threat against releasing any more information.

It is the day after General Seegers (remember him?) has taken control of the military.  His daughter, Marie-Luise “Malu,” ruffles at the sudden increase in the army’s status and regulations.  She also does not agree with her dad’s principles.  She’s a law student, a few years shy of being recognized as an adult capable of making her own decisions, and she (secretly?) works for Red Aid.  

SEEGERS: “German law dictates my responsibility to care for you and your duty to obey.”

MALU: “What do you know about German law?  As a lawyer, I can tell you—“

SEEGERS: “You’re a third-year student.”  (English dub says it’s her third semester.  That’s a big difference in translation.)

MALU: “That’s long enough to know that a separation of the official and private spheres must be maintained in all areas of civil life.  Except in your parallel universe of order and submission.”

Helga mistrusts the Nazi party, but Moritz only sees it for its youth programs.  In fact, he wants to go on a trip with some new friends.  His mom argues against it: “It’s important to give back to your community, not just take.”  When Moritz lets slip that this is like practice for the military, Helga immediately puts her foot down.  She didn’t live through a war just to have her son want another one.

Meanwhile, Gereon is fine with Moritz’s boy’s group, although I imagine there are some things Moritz conveniently forgot to tell him. Moritz also wants to move in with Fun Uncle Gereon who treats him like an adult but without the responsibility.  (I’m starting to see how this may be a reaction to how Gereon was raised…)  I could write a meta on what this episode says about the generations.

Gereon tries to contact everyone in the list of lawyers, reporters, and engineers (all the great thinkers and researchers) Graf uncovered, but as he goes down the list, he discovers with rising horror just how many people have been arrested and brutalized or even killed already.  One man not yet crossed off the list?  Hans Litten.

After his name was mentioned in almost every episode, we finally, finally, meet Litten, lawyer for Red Aid and another fascinating historical figure.  Lotte asks him to get an appeal for Greta, and Litten (despite a massive backlog of other cases of injustice) takes her on.  He’s not concerned about money, few of his clients can pay anyway, which is a relief to Lotte.

In a brief scene, we’re reminded once again that Zorgibel is not doing well.  (One interesting thing about many Weimar politicians and officials is how many of them died relatively young.  Would history have been different if more of them lived longer?)

Meanwhile, Gereon and Graf discover Fritz and Otto’s real names and link them to Benda’s murder.  Gereon goes to Horst’s apartment to question him (and guess who recruited Moritz’s youth group?), but Horst is busy trying to break into Elisabeth’s house and seize Katelbach.

True to her promise last episode, Elisabeth hides Samuel.  She uses a wardrobe with a false back to cover the door to his room, obscuring the door from view and keeping anyone from seeing any of Katelbach’s papers.  And if that isn’t impressive enough, she agrees to take the evidence back to Heymann for publishing that very day.  

Needless to say, Katelbach is supremely grateful to her.  

(Perhaps their Old Married Couple banter can become Actual Married Couple banter…I can dream, can’t I?)

Remember the doctor’s visit back in episode one?  Helga finally gets the results.  She’s pregnant.  So that’s yet another thing for her to worry about in the future that, more and more, does not have Gereon in it.  

And one more thing to drive her closer to accepting Nyssen, not that he’s even remotely a good choice.  

Ms. Nyssen is embarrassed by her son.  He’s literally kept out of view in some parties.  (The speed at which he latched onto feeling like he represented a “betrayed” Germany is becoming clearer with each appearance he makes).  

Marie-Luise and her sister swap seating arrangements so she can subtly get information from Wendt.  (Speaking of which...what kind of age gap is this?  It’s clearly set up that she’s flirting for information, but if she’s not technically at the age of majority, this seems wildly inappropriate).

He quotes the conservative Ernest Junger.  She shoots back with philosopher Walter Benjamin.  I’d call this two readers flirting, but refer to the previous paragraph.  

And both want to win the conversation more than win each other.  Wendt’s speech to the party seems to be directed down at her in particular.

In a private meeting with other conspirators, Wendt suggests the NSDAP use Nazis to intimidate their enemies and demoralize the people.  The military men are not interested in this plan.  

After a very long absence from this show, Gustav Stresemann arrives to interrupt their meeting and propose a union, which is a puzzling turn of events.  Wasn’t the real Stresemann supposed to be championing the Young Plan at this point, you know, the kind of foreign “interference” these guys would hate?  Or does this represent how he didn’t come down hard enough on the rearmament?  Or does this have to do with Poland? 

But let’s return to the season’s mystery thread.

While reviewing notes from the film case, Lotte realizes Vera lied in an official statement (no surprise to us).  When she confronts Vera (who is still staying at her apartment), Vera reveals Walter pressured her to lie and that she is in grave danger for speaking to Charlotte.  

All clues seem to point to Walter, but even he does not live without fear.  Esther makes her play to star in the movie, which Walter rejects.  “You’re the wife of Edgar Kasabian, the Armenian,” he protests, to which she throws a vase at him and completely shatters his nonchalance about his boss’s wife. 

The threat is silent: Yes, I am the wife of the Armenian, and don’t you forget it.

Suddenly, the Phantom of Wittenburg seems to have been acting with a particular goal, no?

Notes:

The famous journalist Kurt Tucholsky (aka Theobald Tieger, among many other aliases) is mentioned at the beginning of the episode.

Marie-Luise quotes Walter Benjamin, a philosopher and essayist known for “On the Concept of History.”  Benjamin lived in Berlin until the Nazis’ rise to power, after which he settled in Paris, but he could not escape persecution for being Jewish there, either. He committed suicide in 1940 when turned back from the France-Spain border while trying to cross Spain to neutral Portugal.

Wendt quotes Ernst Junger, known for the WWI memoir Storm of Steel (the anti-All Quiet on the Western Front, if you will). 

Gustav Stresemann was a statesman remembered for his part in the Kellogg-Briand Pact that made peaceful resolutions seem possible.  He was very good at making friends in unlikely places, although the desire to reduce reparations was generally at the root of his choices, which I assume is the end goal of this fictional version, too.

[quinnonimp]

your colors are always sooo good :0 got any tips?

thank u v much !!

and ermmmm i think if ur someone like me who has a very difficult time committing to art things and is a bit insecure abt colors, drawing with anti-aliasing turned off is rly helpful, since u can change any of the colors very easily by using the bucket fill (tolerance set to 0 and anti-aliasing turned off, itll fill only that specific color area. plus if u want it to fill every area with that color u can turn off "apply to connected pixels only") if u wanna make adjustements whatnot

color theory wise i have a LOT of thoughts since im quite the unprofessional art-loving mess - but its 4am so i dont feel like making an entire essay (and also i dont rly think my thoughts or advice r very helpful anyway), so ill keep it short (my tips r not beginner friendly im sorry for that):

ill typically have flat colors be saturated, while shading colors desaturated

do not underestimate greys, its extremely flexible and can look like a variety of colors depending on the pallet around it

^^ these parts of the color wheel r my bff as someone who uses warm tones/red extremely often. often when i use a color i dont actually use the obvious "correct" tone, but rather smth slightly off (like making my reds be a bit on the orange side, my blues just gray, greens r a desaturated/dark yellow, etc etc)

i never use pure white, ill dabble in pure black sometimes (for sketching esp) cause it looks pretty nice as a contrast, but since i find it easier to use darker colors i dislike using pure white and u will like never see me purposefully use it unless its for a highlight or on mspaint lol

the way i usually start out deciding the pallet will be derivative of how light/colorful the darkest is or how dark/colorful the lightest color is. the main middleground color (usually for me thats a strong red) is probablymore important than both of those though, and what i tend to make the background

personally i absolutely suck at using filters/gradient maps and dont actually know how to use them to my full advantage, but do NOT be afraid to use them !!! use them all u want!! and honestly? its a talent of its own to know how to use the right filters/gradient maps/etc. ur not lesser of an artist or cheating when using these, they r viable tools at ur disposal !

ty for the question even if my response wasnt great !!

[zachnovak]

So I don’t normally log onto this account much so I haven’t seen any of the many messages and such I’ve been getting on recent posts concern some dumb drama. In a nut shell, some adults who act more like immature children from the Mean Girls universe love to make crap up and I was the current target as I.... was breathing? I dunno. Apparently I’m the anti christ or something and they haven’t gotten over that their attempts to cancel me and even cause me to commit acts of self harm with continued targeted harassment and involving me in drama I know nothing about have all failed. Frankly, it’s because I literally don’t give a shit. I come to tumblr to RP, make my posts, and then hop on my PS4, switch, class work, gym time whatever. I don’t care about drama or what’s going on in the RPC as I know it’s a shot show filled with drama and people trying gossip girl type ‘takedowns’ of others just for breathing in when they were suppose to breathe out.

Because of that crap I literally just sign on to in the RPs I’m in then close the tumble tab. I do not have a personal, I do not check out any tags other than for the face claims I use to get pics or gifs, and I go out of my way NOT to know anyone’s personal blogs or their aliases. If we talk on discord great, if not, great as well. I do occasionally make my own group and put my current one on hiatus as the recent drama turned me off but going to reopen it soon. I’ve just been part of a couple of groups since and currently. However, since some people are interested in my past here because of the nonsense, here we go.

I was on an RP called alegendreborn which was one of my first RPs on tumblr. It seemed great and welcoming. I picked one of their skeleton canons and was happy to be there. I got along with people but didn’t know how to reblog properly as I was new to tumblr and three way posts were extreme confusing. Apparently my inability to properly reblog them pissed off some of the members. Because of that I only really talked to one person in the RP who helped me learn how to reblog correctly. Also, my character had a pre-established connection to another as a ‘best friend’ so we had a couple of threads. However, I quickly noticed the min of that character could go 3 weeks to months without posting but pass all activity checks and would focus on bubble RPing with the same three muns. When this person ignored our thread for weeks I sent them three messages four days apart each that reminded them of the thread which I was told they’d post. On the last message I told this person I was ending our thread and requesting that staff change my characters group in an event they were running as they put our characters in the same group and I no longer trusted this person to post in a timely manner to me. I was quickly ‘invited to leave’ and had multiple members message me on Skype to basically tell me I was shit and an awful person for trying to get a reply I’d been waiting 2 months to get. So I left and never looked back.

I later joined an RP called warofthenewage-rpg which again seemed friendly but much more basic lore wise than the previous RP. I quickly noticed a character who was almost EXACTLY like a skeleton canon I had on an RP I made on a jcink forums RP two years before. I messaged the player of that character asking if he knew of my RP he said he did but before I could presue anything he instantly wanted to plot my character with his. I did message the main about it but was later told they ‘never got it’. We plotted our character as a couple as the chemistry they were displaying in our first few threads was very apparent and we loved posting together and could pop out paragraphs of posts minutes after the other just posted. Eventually, that min begun to became very controlling of how and what I was posting. If my character had a thought of his that wasn’t postive or lovey, he’d berate the hell out of me on Skype and threaten to end our plot. Apparently he had also been complaining the his friends in the RP and told them I posted ‘too many actions’ and that it made him feel forced to react in specific ways. That telephoned to other members and morphed into I was forcing him to do exactly what I told him to post and poweplaying/god modding him. Now I come from forum RPs and there to post A LOT and you progress the thread with each post. This is done so you’re not 30 posts in and you’re characters are still at the door that one of them knocked on in the very first post.

Eventually, most members begun to refuse to speak to me because of the complaining he did which they’d snowball into some out of this world epic drama. The staff even begun to be hostile, use the gossip blog to belittle my character, and would pretend not to receive my applications when I tried for additional characters or my wanted ads but use the info to create a very similar character or ‘update’ an existing one. Well, about 2 months of members ignoring me or belittling me followed, staff made it worse and the mun I had a plot with decided to when not telling me I suck and no one liked me, he’d say we still had our plot but then took my character out of the equation and made another character take his place. Naturally I was upset as I had been through months of harassment, belittling, and treated like crap by everyone in the RP because of this guy only to in the end be thrown away. I resolved to move my character on. I only spoke to him and two other people in the RP and one of them had a character that was insanely into my character. However, the guy I had the plot with was insanely sexually attracted to the face claim so when my character and this new one had threads, he tried to tell the RP and even the other mun that I was forcing them into posting and into smutting which was engaged by the other person in one of our threads. I was harassed by that guy for days until I dropped that plot and basically used a ‘reset’ option for my character. However, that pissed off the guy and I again was relentlessly attacked by him on Skype. After months of the members ignoring me for (to my knowledge, no reason as I never spoke with 98% of the RP) or insulting me and out right telling me to kill myself, an attempt was made and I was effectively gone for almost two months for recovery.

Almost a year later I came back and begun to remake my old jcink RP here on tumblr. It took me about 5 months to do and I dug up codes from codepen and codrops to use in the theme. I also copied the aesthetic from the jcink RP’s theme and brought it over. The RP was very popular and seen as one of the best designed and story driven ‘mutant’ type RPs around. However, an admin from another RP became very bitter at it and me. This admin ran an RPH and had their own RP in the same genre in the past. They were revamping it and noticed our RPs had a similar aesthetic, apparently monchromatic themes AKA a them that uses shades of white, grey, and black for most of its coloring was only allowed to be used by that admin. The admin attacked my RP and claimed I had stolen their theme and coding and even went so far as going into my coding and pasting selective bits of it. I was asleep when she made the original post and woke up to dozens of anon messages ranging from calling me a thief to demanding I kill myself. All my members were harassed in the same way and she had contacted all the RPHs I had asked for a shoutout or was on their spotlights of to ‘inform them’ and then openly attack them if they didn’t remove any mention of my RP and signal boost her post. She even went so far as to harass and threaten RPs I was on, that I was one, or that had a character that sounded anything like any of mine. I even had an affiliation thing started but many of those I had been added to messaged me that they were being harassed and I told them to pretend they didn’t know what was going on. I’d take the hit for them and spare them farther harassment and leave their RPs if they wanted as I was on most of them.

During this time I was recovering from everything I was being slammed with be anons and the RPs previously mentioned going off as well in some pity attempt to get revenge for... not being liked on their RPs three and two years previously? I also was collecting evidence that many of the codes this RPH claimed she made and in stole were in fact on codrops and codepen. A good amount I made myself but a large chunk were from these resource sites with some heavy edits so they’d work better on tumblr. I even had evidence that many of her own coding templates had codes directly from these sites and others with no credit given to them and her claiming she created all the coding on her own. I submitted it to many RPHs and many of them saw the error and how this person was very toxic in the community and was making more drama than helping it. Some ignored it outright as she was popular and I was just a nobody. It took 3 years to recover from it in terms of my reputation and I again shut down my RP for a bit as I had made another attempt on my own life as that person and her friends continued to harass me and attack me on their personal or RPH accounts.

The last bit of drama came when I joined an RP called Corinth Bay. At first there wasn’t any and I had long since adopted my, sign on just to post and then bounce method of being on an RP. I eventually got to know one member named Shane. @inthenamexofthemoon I think we became pretty good friends as we talked everyday for basically the whole day. We had plots, enjoyed posting, and just chatting. I noticed that RP was heavily cliquey and wasn’t aware that Shane was a part of the admin’s clique. This group had multiple issues with member complaining their characters were being ignored and people were bubble RPing with the same people over and over. I myself had to constantly ask people if they wanted to plot or just post and even the main had to post up announcement about ignoring starters to make closed ones and expanding who they post with. I also had questions on much of the lore of the RP as other than the origins of each supernatural species, the lore was very generic and vague. I asked around and got a lot of different opinions on what could or couldn’t be done by each species and just went with what was common among them all. Shane himself helped me a bit and I went with his suggestions which apparently were completely wrong as the staff had to talk to me on ‘breaking lore’.

After that, I expressed openly how I felt the staff didn’t like me and my concern that given how cliquey the place was, if the staff didn’t like me I’d probably be ‘exiled’ from the group as a whole AKA no one would post or talk to me. Which did happen with the exception of Shane. Others I had spoken to had long left and told me stories of the awfulness of some of the members and staff. So I begun working on an RP of the same genre that I had half finished years before. Shane was kept in the loop every step of the way and pinned and loved all the lore I showed him which I did to ensure it was both in-depth and easy to follow but also wasn’t ‘bad’ IE, offensive if certain things are mentioned. He loved it and ensured me it was great and pinned everything I showed him so he’d reference it when making his characters. Eventually I worked on it so much that I kept only the bare minimum activity requirements for Corinth Bay but obeyed the rules of activity to the letter. However, the staff ultimately removed me despite even admitting that they knew I still had a couple of days before failing the activity check and had actually ‘not counted’ a couple of posts I made for an event going on as I should have replied to starters for it first but it wasn’t a requirement. Also they used a blog to post up starters as many RPs like to do now only they were also slow to reblog them and never used the starter tags so they’d get buried quickly on the dash with everyone posting picture posts and what not.

Ultimately I gave up on that RP, didn’t need the toxic environment and finished mine. Shane got very quiet though and didn’t reply to my discord messages for a couple of days. When he did he suddenly got a bit hostile and everything in my RP WAS ‘problematic’ and because of that he wouldn’t be joining. I had no idea what he meant as before he said it was perfect and awesome so I asked what he meant specifically. Eveutally he told me a little of what he meant. Apparently there was racism as In the witch’s page mentioning that voodoo and other cultural magical/practices was a form of magic some witches practiced was both racist and cultural appropriation. Although voodoo was indeed a magical/belief practice used as a magical practice I decided to just remove its mention in the end. He also didn’t like that in the lore, there were female characters that were ‘bad’ and that was sexist. This I choose not to change as it’s sexist to say women can’t be villains and felt as just an excuse. Especially since my lore included many powerful women, men, and gender less entities that were villains, heroes, and neutral parties.

Eventually after opening, I decided to message the people I had previous posted with telling them the RP was ready and I’d love for them to check it out. Those from Corinth Bay I messaged were either aware I was making one and wanted to see it or were people Shane and I hinted to it being made and they had at least a slight interest in it. Admittedly, I also messaged blogs that came on the ‘recommended blogs’ part of the dash. Only those that were inactive according to the last few IC posts that were showing in their blogs. I know this gets a mixed reaction from some as some view it as a horrible thing even if the blogs are inactive but many MANY people also appriecate it and the fact that someone read their blog and was very impressed with their writing ability and character. I myself receive many of these messages on my retired blogs and don’t see an issue with it myself. Even if I did I’d just block the blog that sent it and never think of them again like a normal person.

One of the members I DIDN’T even know who they were apparently didn’t like this and decided to make drama over it. To this day I don’t know who this person even is or was when I was on that RP and still don’t as everyone drops and makes new characters when bored on there. Shane went fully 180 on me and turned vile and petty which is clearly to save face with the people on that RP. He knows me from all our talks and that the bullshit he spreads is itself false but still was a bit of a pity bitch for a while. Apparently the friend @stephwuzhere @loganlcrmans of the admin that tried to cancel me also wanted to rehash that old drama but was quickly shut down. I had no idea who this person even was at first as again, I don’t follow any tags and go out of my way to avoid personal blogs and ones like RPH, RPT, and whatever unless just asking for a quick shoutout to my RP. I had no idea that this person was also very toxic and involved in targeted harassment, grooming, and identity theft of various people in the RPC just because she didn’t like them at the moment.

I have decided to stay away from this shit storm despite some of these people still trying to drag me into it even though I literally haven’t thought about them for months and barely even remember they exist. I’ll be reopening my RP soon and hope that these people who live their privlenged lives will eventually get over themselves and do some growing up. I say their are privileged because you must be if you can harp on drama for months and keep dragging someone you have no connection or knowledge of. The rest of us, adults, have things like work, bills, school, friends, and trying to destress from watching our bank account get more and more empty to care about pity immature online drama. Especially when it’s bullshit like ‘he dared to remind me he exists’. Please, grow up and do better people. There is life outside of the internet and when you get too old to be in the RPC which is apparently a thing now, you’ll see just how stupid you were to make so much drama for no reason other than being pity, stupid, immature, brats.

[boybandsim]

leafeana replied to your post: 

WAIT i was just scrolling through your blog cause im hungry for content and saw this again and realized you asked what version i was playing? which i dont remember answering whoops

im playing it on pc! which is great bc then i get to mess around with mods (like the one that gives cindy some real clothing lol) but its also got its downsides since my computer is definitely not a gaming computer, which means graphics take a serious hit and lagging isnt uncommon

im...not sure if its royal edition?? I think windows edition has all the features of royal edition, although im not completely sure. I think luna has a cutscene in Insomnia thats only in royal edition, so once im there ill be able to tell. technically im in Insomnia now but ive time traveled back and it might be a while before i push on to the finale. after dealing with Altissia --> the start of Insomnia linearly i wanted some time to chill with the bros and pretend

everything is fine for a while. it has been a WILD ride for sure and yeah I haven't even started up any of the dlc yet! theres so much content!! ive been practicing playing as the other bros during medium-hard combat which has kept it feeling really fresh too. also its hilarious just blasting bad guys with a bazooka while the other people are in there swinging around swords and knives. and i haven't done any of the crossover quests yet, which seem big and exciting!

ill be forever sad that i missed the assassins festival but theres definitely plenty to do that I'm excited for. and im getting really into the fishing!! charmed is definitely the right word like..its not perfect at all but this game is so genuinely endearing with its characters personalites and development and its themes and music as well and it really does some things SO well.

god okay this is a lot of words. sorry for rambling and for the late reply! no one i know plays this game or has much interest in it so youre getting all my bottled up enthusiasm

PLEASE DO NOT EVER APOLOGISE FOR RAMBLING SEND ME AS MUCH AS I LOVE WORDS AND THOUGHTS AND TALKING ABOUT FFXV DUDE <3333 also literally no worries about late replies or replying at all im forever shit at them myself i get it bro nw nw nw

hell yeah pc is royal edition with a bunch of other shit and the dlcs (bar ardyn) incorporated, dont worry, also i would die for that one cindy in a decent outfit mod i know the exact one youre on about LOL (also i can recommend you some other mods if u like!!)

if i can share some knowledge with you right quick cuz i had the same problem and wouldve died to have someone tell me i went from barely 20fps on a good day to being able to run multiple programs with ffxv in the background; specialk is a very quick install and majorly helped with multithreading; otherwise for the in game options are using low resolution texture pack (assets option); shadows look near visually identical on the lowest option compared to the highest; all nvidia effects can be turned off with no significant graphic change; turning off anti aliasing entirely genuinely makes the game look better for me; i can post my full settings if itll help you and ive also read through a few tutorials for modding around lag so i can try and help you with that, i do get pretty major lag spikes though and frequently find it near impossible to stream/record, but i manage to nail that 60fps on average if im solely running ffxv with a few cut corners like those

also dont blame you with altissia, ngl i boiled through the story rollercoaster right quick after exploring most of the open world before even touching altissia and ended up ignoring all postgame content for starting a new save immediately and replaying just to get that hangout time in the open world that wasnt just go-back-in-time-through-magic-dog. but i feel you so hard dude i just want more of them chilling. literally i have 300 hours in this game already and i know half of those have been using the car listening to tunes LMFAO

yeah the crossover quests are funnn the one with terra wars is sweet and the ffxiv one is SO funny its literally hysterical i was roaring with laughter a couple times!!! and good on you practising i didnt touch any of the extended combat until my third save and yeah honestly if you want to do the postgame menaces those skillsll come in useful, its funny because the maingame bosses arent that hard but the postgame is mental. but yeah i love blowing shit up with proms bazooka it fucking rules nerds can keep their swords

ALSO SAME... i wanna play the promptis date so bad!! i wanna play episode duscae so bad!!! wanna play the platinum demo with baby noctis so bad!! knowing theyll never be ported kills meeeeee. sad & upset but as you say theres so much to do and the dlc honestly offer so much im still finding shit i havent done and ive spent a year playing already

honestly so much of this game for me is literally just booting it to go hang with the guys its really relaxing lmfaooo... hiking around with these goofy dudes. sometimes i just wanna chill with the anime boys. YEAH literally its sweet and charming and then fucking heartbreaking and even though the writing is hammy as hell im honestly so willing to forgive it. not only for the clear amount of care and love that went into specifically building the guys relationship (which anyone knows is the best and most realised part of the game) but the details and amount of lore you can uncover if you take a step and interpret a little. maybe thats too generous a statement for what was an executive nightmare and critically underdeveloped but i grew up on ffxiii and knowing the versus 13 lore and that ffxv was part of that extended canon im satisfied with it being another side to that story and running with that. i think supplemented with its additional content years after release ffxv isnt a complete experience but enough of one to leave an impact or at least it did majorly for me! ive been obsessed.

OMG sorry im nerding too its all good lol just genuinely i love this game and its hard to find people talking about it these days but i really had such a good time and still am continuing to and i love it fuck it ball hard

real shit though it has the best fishing minigame of all time hands down nothing has come close fuck the haters

[pokefan531]

Legacy AMD APU Llano Laptop for Emulation tests - Part 3

A6-3420m CPU Emulation performance

I wanted to test my laptop's APU for performance test on emulation. To recap, it is AMD's first gen APU that the CPU is based on Phenom K10 CPUs, except having boost. It is unlocked so you can overclock it with a software. By default, the A6-3420m is a quad core 1.5Ghz cpu with boost to 2.4Ghz on one core. Boost was new so it helps a little. Overclocking brings some programs significant jump. From being a weak CPU to a decent one for emulation is an interesting story. The first gen Llano APUs are all unlocked, and are the few exceptions to overclock your laptop without being an actual risk. It came out in 2011, and seeing the first gen APUs in action should be surprising. They're weak from the start, but offers decent GPU performance, and I'm offering both stock and overclocked benchmarks here for each emulator.

Benchmarks:         A6-3420m 1.5Ghz-2.4Ghz and OC A6-3420m 2.3Ghz-2.8Ghz All tests are using the lowest non stutter FPS on the exact scene for a while to see how it performs and to see how to avoid sound stuttering to have smooth experience. Retroarch is on some of the benchmark and is using DX11 as main on windows, and OpenGL for Linux and for hardware rendering. Standalone hardware rendering based emulator is preferred (ex. Standalone Flycast vs Libretro's Flycast, Standalone Mupen64Plus vs Libretro Mupen64Plus). Testing a 3D emulator is best with DirectX on Windows most of the time, and OpenGL for the rest or on Linux. Mesa drivers are the fastest and offers better compatibility. GPU bottleneck is not an issue by using native resolution without any shaders or anti-aliasing applied. The lowest FPS of a heavy game is a way to see which Emulator you could generally use. Note, if a specific system hardware or emulator to emulate one most demanding game doesn’t go fullspeed, doesn’t mean you can’t use the emulator for general good performance. BSNES’s demanding games for the CPU are three rare ST018 games. You may not play one game that is only demanding, but to see how many other popular titles perform. Some emulators may not play a demanding game due to compatibility or development issue. It’s a good way to see how good of a performance you would get to use it generally. Having over 60fps is a great way to have smooth experience and to throw any or most games without any problem.

NES: Mesen-Stock:       Megaman 2 Intro                        82.0 (100.0) Mesen-Very-High-OC:Megaman 2 Intro                        48.0 (59.5) Nestopia UE works very well and very light. Mesen by default performs fine at stock. For virtual overclocking, only the CPU overclock can barely perform. However, it's best to use Nestopia UE for those features, as well as using Runahead feature for lower input latency.

SMS/GG/Genesis/CD/32x: Genesis-GX-Nuked:  Virtua Racing Demos (MAME OPN2 / Nuked OPN2)                        118.0 (154.0) / 75.0 (93.0) The Genesis GX Plus core is too efficient to find any issue, and it is the most accurate currently and it was made for GC and Wii. Virtua Racing is the only demanding title since it uses SVP chip for 3D rendering. While it performs good, the Nuked OPN2 audio was added for more accurate sound. It seems to perform great, I suggest using MAME for fast forwarding, especially Runahead feature. 32x Virtua Racing runs around four times the fullspeed on Picodrive. I haven't tested it on Fusion yet, but assuming it will run at fullspeed.

SNES: SNES9x:            Super Mario RPG                        116.0 (163.0) Bsnes-v110 fast:   Super Mario RPG                        50.0 (63.0)                   ST018 Game                        36.0 (47.0) Higan:             ST018 Game                        21.0 (29.0) Bsnes-HD-Mode7:    Super Mario Kart 1x (2x) Testing the new Bsnes or BSNES-HD core performs really fine. Non-chip games works fullspeed out of the box. Games with Super FX2 chip or SA-1 chip are a bit demanding, and they are below fullspeed with CPU in stock. With overclocking, they are barely above 60fps. Super Mario RPG uses SA-1 chip. It would stay smooth and may not encounter small slowdowns. The most demanding games are the ones that uses ST010 DSP4 chip. Only three Japanese games use it, so they aren't common. However, they won't play at fullspeed, regardless. Higan an be used on Bsnes Standalone if you turn off all special fast features. Generally, it's best to use Bsnes since Higan's performance isn't there at all for the CPU. I also suggest the newest Bsnes standalone or HD core over any Bsnes forks you find from Retroarch. I haven’t tested the Super FX overclocking feature. I recommend the main SNES9X if you want to fast forward and use Retroarch’s Runahead for less latency, especially paired with overclocking for SA1 games. HD side on Bsnes is also tested. Using Super Mario Kart and playing the demos, and the game has DSP1 chip. On any game with Mode7, it is not fullspeed at 2x at stock CPU. For overclocking, it generally performs smooth on most Mode7 games. With Super Mario Kart, since it has an external chip, it is slightly demanding, that it goes down to almost below fullspeed. For a long test, I do get 59fps at the lowest I got, but it generally plays at fullspeed. 2x with overclocked APU should be good, as long as you don't use 2x on other games that has more demanding chip games than any DSP games.

Virtual Boy: Simple, perfect performance, regardless of hard sync.

Sega Saturn: Yaba Sanshiro is the best emulator you can use on the APU. You can enable frameskip to get the best performance as much as possible. Some parts of any games may go a bit below fullspeed, but the audio is async, so it may not be as noticable, as long as the CPU is overclocked.

PlayStation: Beetle-PSX Core:   Crash Team Racing (Interpreter / Max Perfprmance 1024 DMA)                        36.0 (45.0) / 47.0 (54.0) Mednafen:          Crash Team Racing                        41.0 (57.0) PCSX-Rearmed:      Crash Team Racing (Interpeter / Dyanmic) 57.0 (71.0) / 61.0 (81.0) PCSX-R PGXP:       Crash Team Racing (Vanilla / PGXP MEMORY + CPU 1.5x) ~85.0 (~115.0) / ~60.0 (~85.0) These are four emulators tested for the laptop and each has its own story. Beetle PSX Core from Retroarch is based on Mednafen. I am testing with the new dynamic recompiler on performance mode and most games should work with it. While the performance is noticably faster than standard interpreter, it is only more playable with overclocked CPU to barely have any lag, at least in software. Hardware rendering is quite slower on this laptop. I don't know exactly why it's slower than software, even using Linux with Mesa Drivers, but it still hits really similar speed when comparing interpreter and dynamic. If you want to do hardware with higher resolution and PGXP, use PCSX-R fork. With Crash Team Racing intro and test the ice bear scene, that's the part where I found the slowest point. Even with that, dynamic at max performance with software and host CPU overclock gives best results. Although, the interpreter on beetle is kinda slower than Mednafen and beetle is a fork of it. Mednafen is a multicore emulator, and I used its PSX emulator that is the most accurate. Without frameskip for full mesaurements, Mednafen is faster than Beetle core. Somehow, overclocking your CPU brings the performance up dramatically. It is pretty close to 60fps on few spots on CTR demos, but fullspeed on a lot of areas. It's unbelievable for standalone Mednafen to be faster then Retroarch core that you may use this for faithful emulation. Although, you can turn on frameskip for full emulation performance, I recommend not having frameskip for good response. Somehow, Mednafen doesn't use CPU boost clock for me, but still shows it's faster than Beetle core. Another Retroarch core is PCSX-Rearmed. In the last few years, we do have it for x86 and x64 PCs. It uses less accurate interpreter and Pete's Software for performance. On stock CPU, the performance reaches fullsleed most of the time, but you can encounter minor slowdown, but it's not that below. With Overclock, it reaches fullspeed on all areas of testing. Like Mednafen, it renders at 1x. Recently, we got dynamic recompiler for x86, x64, and Arm64. It made PCSX-Rearmed run at fullspeed without overclocking the CPU. For a 1x resolution, this emulator is preferred over the other two for performance. PCSX-R PGXP is a really good emulator and performs excellent. You can use Pete's OpenGL for Linux and OpenGL2 2.9 Tweak version for Windows. Pete's OpenGL 1.78 on Linux is more reliable than Windows version and just as fast as OpenGL2 2.9 tweak when using full framebuffer settings. Only difference are that OpenGL 2.9 allows shaders and xBR upscaling on textures. Both Pete's OpenGL 1.78 and OpenGL2 2.9 Tweak offers PGXP capabilities, so you should see very great polygon rendering. Only PGXP Memory for the CPU are usable with fullspeed. Combining PGXP memory and internal CPU overclock at 1.5x gets you slightly above fullspeed. Overclocking your CPU should bring more relief for fullspeed on any games. The Linux drivers, despite performing better than official drivers from AMD for OpenGL, it performs the same. Only one downside with r600g drivers at the moment on any video plugin is the lighting on Spyro on some areas, but they are minor, not severe. Regardless, you should have great experience on PCSX-R PGXP. Although, neither of the builds use .CHD iso files. I did test Windows PCSX-R PGXP on Wine, and while I was able to use OGL2 Tweak and get the same performance as Windows, I do have problems with the audio plugins and Xaudio2 driver. I do recommend finding PGXP Linux Build for easier setup. It's available as a PPA and AUR build.

N64: Angrylion Plus with Project64 using internal LLE mode plays at half the speed or lower mostly. This is gonna be a long explanation about this laptop hardware and drivers. In short, you can play many N64 games with pretty great accuracy without the use of Angrylion. However, it is a mess on Windows side. I've tested many video plugins. Windows 10 updates seems to make things a bit slower. Rice plugins are all over the place, and many of them have problems. GLN64 is not as good. Jabo's D3D8 1.6.1 is the fastest you would get. Glide64 and GlideN64 are bottlenecked by AMD OpenGL drivers, meaning that it's slower. Glide64's performance is mediocre. I tried using nGlide, and it helps a bit, it's still doesn't solve the lag on some games, mainly Quake 2 demos that's used as a test to see if the lag is present. Jabo's is the fastest, and only has minor lag because of Windows 10 updates. GlideN64 is really slow, even turning off framebuffer at 240p. It's a driver issue, and overclocking the CPU didn't help much. Quake 2 demo lag was few frames per second. I would've test Windows 7 since the laptop was made for it, but I no longer have it since 2016. Mupen64plus is slightly slower, since all plugins use OpenGL. Let's jump into Linux. This is unbelievable! I use Mesa Drivers and downloaded Mupen64Plus and got GlideN64 4.0. I tested Quake 2 demos, and by default, it's much faster than almost every plugin I tried on Windows. I overclocked the CPU, and turn off Depth Buffer to RDRAM with non-noticable regression, and it goes from minor lag to none! I bumped up the resolution and no lag is present at all. I do however set Framebuffer mode to VI origin to use less GPU usage on high resolutions. GlideN64 is really fast on Linux on this laptop. Even 3-point filtering finally works on my laptop. I recommend using standalone Mupen64Plus for Linux since it's faster. On Retroarch on Mupen64Plus-Next, I still have minor lag with the same settings. To get the easiest way to have mupen64plus with GlideN64 bundled, search M64p.

Dreamcast: Redream is the fastest emulator you can use for the CPU. It works fine at CPU stock. Reicast's fork, Flycast, is more compatible with games, but is more demanding. Even with CPU overclocking and turn off few accurate settings, it is a bit below fullspeed. On my drivers, I do have sprite glitch on Marvel Vs Capcom on Redream. It was tested on Linux, but on Windows, the performance may worsen due to dated drivers and poor OpenGL drivers.

GBA: mGBA:              Mermaid Melody PPPP Menu 141.0 VBA-Next:          Mermaid Melody PPPP Menu 126.0 VBA-M:             Mermaid Melody PPPP Menu 127.0 Plays very fine. mGBA is newer and more accurate than VBA emulators. VBA-M is the slowest generally. VBA-Next is sometimes close to mGBA's speed and sometimes by VBA-M's speed. Even when using bios and disable remove idle as shown, mGBA offers better performance.

NDS: Desmume 0.9.11+:   Pokemon Black2/White2 Title Screen (No Frameskip / Frameskip 9)                        33.0 (40.0) / 60.0+ (80.0+) MelonDS 0.83:      Pokemon Black2/White2 Title Screen (OpenGL 1x / Jit Recompiler)                        20.0 (29.0) / 00.0 (42.0) I’m testing two emulators for measurements. I'm using a jit command on Desmume Linux build for full performance. On Windows, it has OpenGL renderer, but Software is the fastest, so that's why I'm using software rendering on Desmume. I'm testing a demanding area on Pokemon B2W2. Without frameskip, you would get almost down to half fullspeed. With overclocking, you would get a bit more performance. With frameskip at max, I get fullspeed. Although, I suggest using lower frameskip, like one or two. On a lot of games, it may not need that much frameskip, generally. It performs fine on other games that have less demanding scenes. It's probably better for overclocked CPU since you can lower frameskip by one. On MelonDS, since it has an OpenGL renderer, I decide to test it myself. As a result, I get below half the speed at stock clocks. On Overclock, I get about half the speed, so it's the interpreter CPU that is the bottleneck. With beta ready Jit recompiler with default settings for pre-0.9 release, I do see some increase. It slightly passes Desmume without frameskip. However, some games will run near fullspeed and others at fullspeed. Not much has been tested for high internal resolution or other games. Your last choice to get better performance to games that are in the first 2/3 of the DS life cycle, No$GBA is your choice. It is fast and you can use Nocash or OpenGL renderer. Although, Wine has problems with OpenGL that it crashes wine. The nocash is faster and No$GBA is the fastest option while being really least accurate, like you can hear the audio have noisy sounds on couple of games, and it has problems playing Pokemon Gen 5 games. (Note!) I heard Drasic DS is gonna go Open Source after it has AARCH64 ARMv8 dynamic recompiler implemented. It is faster than Desmume that you can run it on an android emulator at fullspeed. It may not be that easy to set up since it's payware and using an emulator, but it does perform well. Although it does have a slight input lag, it still considerable for emulated Drastic DS. I haven't test it yet. Dev is working on x86-64 and x86 builds and will be out once the emulator goes free.

GameCube/Wii: Dolphin x64:       Soul Caliber 2                        36.0 (45.0) Soul Caliber 2 runs fine. At some parts, you can encounter a little slowdown. With big effects that happens during fighting, I see 3/4 of performance with overclock. Some games may play fine though, at least with overclocking. Make sure you run at 1x with async shaders, not using ubershaders. You won't play any heavier titles though. You can play with the virtual overclock options and you may set it to half the speed or quarter for some games.

PS2: While it runs at least, even with overclocking, a lot of games runs slower that it's not a recommended system to use PS2 emulators. At best, you stick with DX11 on Windows or OpenGL on Linux for PCSX2. Pushing speed to very aggressive may be appropriate for certain games that can run decently or almost fullspeed, but those are lighter titles.

PSP: PPSSPP:            God of War 37.0 (48.6) It runs games completely fine. Only demanding game is God of War. You can encounter slowdown on certain parts of the game. You can solve it by only setting the CPU clock to 222mhz on the option specifically for GOW. The game isn't constantly slow or majority of the time, it's just it has slowdowns sometimes, and goes fullspeed on other times. If God of War only has slowdowns on many enemies with the performance given above, you won't at least encounter slowdowns on the rest of PSP titles.

3DS: On overclocking too, I couldn't generally get Pokemon games to play at fullspeed on needed amount of times. It goes lower than fullspeed on battles, somewhat lower on overworld, and a bit lower than half the speed on double battle or battle royale. A lot of 3DS games runs generally slow. They barely reach fullspeed, even overclocking the CPU. Citra won't run fast enough for this system.

Dosbox: From any Dosbox builds I use as explained from previous page, it runs the dynamic recompiler fine. It reaches commonly around above near late 486 performance, around 24000. With overclock, it goes up around 36000, equivalent to 486DX4-100Mhz. Although, some 486-pentium era games are able to use more cycles without slowing down the emulator. On Interpreter, it runs around 12000, equivalent to 486DX-33Mhz. With overclock, you go to around 18000, equivalent to 486DX2-50Mhz. I do recommend Dosbox ECE, or finding Dosbox builds that has patches, and is 32bit build since 32bit dynamic recompiler is robust.

PCEM: It can run any 386 processors. 486, it can run on any SX ones pretty fine. However for DX, let's get into it. 486DX-25mhz can run fine at stock as an interpreter. Interpreter seems more constant on speed than dynamic recompiler. With Overclock, it can use DX-33mhz pretty good as an interpreter. Dynamic Recompiler is a way to get good performance for emulated CPUs and go higher, but on places like Windows 95, sometimes windows being on idle or loading things on Windows can bring the performance down a bit than expected. It can go above the targeted interpreters, but dynamic is better used on DOS mode on this laptop. On stock, it can go up to 486DX-40, and with overclock, it can go up to 486DX2-50. I use DBOPL on sound blaster setting to get a little more performance for the CPUs. The laptop can't go any higher to use Pentium CPUs, and using 3DFX Voodoo hasn't been tested, but I recommend using threads of 2 since the host CPU has four cores.

Recommended Emulators: NES: Nestopia UE SMS/GG/Genesis: Genesis GX Plus SNES: Snes9x PSX: PCSX-R PGXP, PCSX-Rearmed N64: Mupen64Plus (Gliden64, Linux), Project64 (Jabo's, Windows) Saturn: Yaba Sanshiro Dreamcast: ReDream GC/Wii: Dolphin GB/GBC: Sameboy GBA: mGBA NDS: Desmume 0.9.11+ PSP: PPSSPP PCEM: 486DX 25Mhz/40Mhz DOS: Dosbox ECE

Recommended emulators are listed as usable. If a system or emulator is not listed, it either that it won’t be playable due to speed, not past playable yet, or too fast enough to play (Stella, Atari 2600). The emulators on the list are recommended for general use. This is using stock settings on most emulators listed. Also, lighter games will perform faster, and you can toggle more settings for those games, like Runahead.

If any of you know what are the most demanding games for GBA, Saturn, Dreamcast, or DOS, let me know and comment.

Using AMD cards on OpenGL Emulators: On Windows, you can only use official AMD drivers. It runs pretty fine for DirectX stuff, but for OpenGL, a lot of OpenGL programs runs slower and sometimes broken. OpenGL drivers are not really optimized, and since Terascale GPUs aren't supported for at least four years as of this writing, you may not get to use newer OpenGL emulators or updates, even though you feel it should be more capable than how it performs. Even worse, first few generations of AMD APUs have short lifespan for graphic drivers from AMD, and Windows 10 can make things a bit slower than using the first version or using Windows 7. Again, Terascale GPUs will not have Vulkan support on any drivers.

Using Linux with Mesa Drivers, r600g: I tested OpenGL emulators on few distros with Mesa drivers. It does perform almost as good as Nvidia’s OpenGL drivers. On GlideN64, all the slowdowns on Quake 2 are gone. I don’t have that problem on Linux. The Mesa drivers are much more reliable, even if there very few errors I explained above, it's still very much stable and efficient. Trust me, it's far better than Windows.

Since we covered the CPU performance for emulators, we'll test out GPU performance of Radeon HD 6520g on the next page.

Next Page on GPU emulation performance.

Previous Page on software and emulators use.