#to my budget balancing

[qwertyprophecy]

Hello dear qwertyprophecy! Idk if you want to weigh in on this at this stage, but could I ask what your opinion is on all this Unity fee stuff? Is it really as dire as it seems?

Heya! (Re: Unity's announcement of a per-dowload fee on games made using the engine.)

I don't think I'm a good person to answer this, as I'm not involved in game dev finances nor do I even use Unity anymore, as I've switched to Godot. Personally, I glanced at the earning threshold for the fees to apply, figured I'd theoretically remain unaffected unless I had a lot of extraordinary luck. However...

From what I've heard from other devs who actually have to consider finances more thoroughly, there are many cases where it can screw devs over badly. Free demos for paid games, updates, bundles, game passes or other different monetisation models, piracy, or even DDOS-esque attacks of people reinstalling the same game over and over, just off the top of their heads. For instance, Aggro Crab Games noted that their game coming out next year on Xbox Game Pass suddenly has the risk that if it's too popular, the free download fees will eat into what they negotiated to get paid for putting the game on the pass.

Unity apparently is not giving details on how they might account for these issues, or how exactly their proprietary data model is determining the number of non-fraudulent installs. Devs are simply supposed to trust Unity to charge them fairly, which might not be the easiest to do when the company's just shown it can suddenly pull new fees out of its arse and apply them even for already completed games.

I don't have the ability to estimate what the actual cost of this change ends up being. Yet, logically speaking, would Unity make such a controversial change if it didn't increase their own bottom line? Someone's going to have to pay for that difference, and Unity seems to gamble on the devs using the engine believing it won't be them.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A procession of confessions.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[sunderwight]

had a thought of what if Airplane had leaned a little more into the self-insert idea for Luo Binghe when he was still at the early stages of writing, with an end result that Luo Binghe actually Looks Like That because he basically looks like Airplane but with long flowing hair and a more idealized figure

SQQ going "why the fuck did you make his face so pretty???" and Airplane bullshitting about plausibility while trying really hard not to blush. twisting his fingers and scuffing his toe like jeez bro he's not that good-looking...

which of course sets SQQ off because how DARE!?! not 'that' good-looking?!?! just look at him! he's xianxia Helen of Troy with a face that launched a thousand harems! like okay sure with looks like that it does make sense that half the female population was willing to timeshare a marriage with him, but it's also totally unfair to SQQ, who has no recourse against those looks either! and who could? that is the most beautiful face ever!

Airplane's getting flustered. tries valiantly to make the case that objectively speaking Luo Binghe isn't that good-looking, it's just that SQQ is biased, but boy does that not go over well. SQQ has hitched the tattered remnants of his self-perception as a straight man onto the idea that Luo Binghe is just so devastatingly attractive anyone would want to hop into bed with him, and he is not letting go of it, so Airplane is just gonna get wrecked with inadvertent compliments

bonus if the Shang Qinghua look is actually the result of several illusions because when Airplane first transmigrated in, he got the same face too, and foresaw potential problems if the half-demon protagonist turned up looking like him. so he used illusions. he doesn't actually look all that different, in fact! the illusions just make it so that when people see him, they get a strong impression that he's unremarkable, so they don't really register what his face actually looks like and their brains fill in the assumption that he must just be kinda plain

oooh ooh double bonus if the system inserted a behind-the-scenes explanation for it too, which is that Shang Qinghua is actually unwittingly related to Su Xiyan!

and the whole thing comes to light post-epilogue when Shang Qinghua's illusions get stripped away by some monster-of-the-week, while everyone except Mobei Jun has a freak out about why do you look just like Luo Binghe?! (Mobei Jun isn't freaking out because he already figured out how to see past the illusions and just assumed everyone else wasn't mentioning it for some human cultural reason or something) and then Yue Qingyuan calmly explains that Luo Binghe's mom is Shang Qinghua's matrilineal cousin. Shang Qinghua's mother and Luo Binghe's human grandmother were half-sisters.

what? how does Yue Qingyuan know? you think that Cang Qiong doesn't check up on the candidates for the peak lord positions before handing off power, doesn't make sure there are no conflicts of interest or divided loyalties to other sects? what sorts of things do people imagine Qiong Ding's diplomats do? (I don't know either but, for the purpose of this scenario at least some of it is tracking down this stuff -- YQY handled most of it personally for his generation's ascension because he didn't want anyone else digging into his and Xiao Jiu's pasts) anyways, the connection could have been troublesome for its ties to Huan Hua Palace, but by the time it came to light Su Xiyan was deceased and there was no evidence that Shang Qinghua had ever even met her. so it wasn't deemed significant enough to matter, was just made note of and then mostly forgotten

so Shang Qinghua is like "oh THAT is why you kept bringing her up to me back then?!" because at the time he'd just been fully in "haha how would I know anything about the impending plot and the tragedies I am both partly responsible for and powerless to prevent haha that's so funny shixiong I KNOW NOTHING" mode, which luckily at the time was easily read as him just not wanting a dead cousin he never met to tank his chances of securing a promotion

SQQ is floored. he is having issues about this. Shang Qinghua is related to Binghe? Shang Qinghua looks exactly like him?! wait. Binghe has human family? still alive? like grandparents and stuff out there, who might want to meet him...?

Luo Binghe decides to step in at that point because he does not want to meet any more relatives! no more surprise relatives! no!

luckily this distracts Shen Qingqiu from thinking about all of the things he's said to Airplane about Binghe's looks for long enough for Shang Qinghua to flee the scene

[joelletwo]

now this is gonna sound really stupid and i need no one to call me stupid about it -> it turns out when u make food that is more than the bare minimum to be edible. ie make it a lil fancy w a lot of flavors and textures going on (scary to me <- autist). u want to eat it more. and even tho its more work. sometimes the prospect of eating something that actually tastes great is motivating enough to get u thru the work. and so conversely it is easier to keep up a consistent eating routine. bc ur not also constantly bailing on planned mediocre dinners to eat all ur backup stock of emergency instant meals.

[glittergroovy]

can a rich cishet give me $23 to go to a queer art event tomorrow 💸🎨🏳️‍🌈 venmo: @ grubcore

[taraxacum-vulpes]

why is everyone pretending like cyberpunk edgerunners is good. the writing is so bad i hate it

[caimitos]

saw a post about projecting your ethnicity onto a character and started missing vespa ilkay. so so bad

[shorterstrides-fasterpace]

I ran today!!! It was good!

With any luck, I will run again tomorrow ☺️

[nerdie-faerie]

People will be like 'oh you go to uni, you must be smart!' mate, I've never met people with less common sense than uni students. Though what else would you expect when you stick a load of sleep deprived, overwhelmed, young adults together

[aidenwaites]

Did I mention I have a job. At the library

[klapollo]

started using my calorie tracker app again to make sure i don't eat too much OR too little, lose some of the excess weight i put on SLOWLY and make sure i'm getting enough fat/protein/carbs.....................pray i dont relapse

[audliminal]

Watching a video about particle physics history and just getting more and more furious with Reagan....

[treesah]

If the US government were smarter, it would fast-track legal residency and work status for undocumented migrants solve two problems in one fell swoop.

Currently, in Chicago, the already indebted and cash-strapped city is on the hook for at least an additional $100 million to house and support thousands of migrants that Texas bussed up from the border (breaking several federal laws while doing so, but whatever). These people have no legal residency or work status, so they are living in tent encampments and temporary shelters with no ability to apply for permanent housing, and also no ability to support themselves financially because they will be arrested and deported for seeking employment and anyone who does employ them will be heavily fined and have their business possibly shut down.

Meanwhile, my buddy who runs an auto body shop told me that he’s facing a major staff shortage, and it’s not just him but all the body shops in the city. Lots of people he had retired or died during the early COVID days, and the youngsters aren’t as productive because they need a lot of training up. Apparently some of the vocational programs out there for this stuff (that you have to pay for, incidentally) are little better than scams because they don’t teach you much that’s useful. He says he’s talked to a couple migrants who’ve been panhandling (because they legally can’t work and also it seems like whatever aid distribution the city’s promised is… inefficient) and some of them definitely have the skills and work experience to fill the staffing shortages in his shop (and they’d be willing to do it for way lower than market rate pay).

I don’t understand why we (the federal government; the City of Chicago actually does not have the jurisdiction to decide that these people are documented now) aren’t just handing out work authorizations like crazy so these people can pass an I-9 eVerify, start living regular lives instead of being condemned to eternal tent encampment limbo, and help the city save money and fill a huge labor shortage at the same time.

[apathyandmischief]

Forget throwing my phone at this point, straight men make me wanna throw my whole ass self into a lake

[what-even-is-sleep]

Trying to get ahead of an unsustainability cycle that might be starting up this week,,, (I start work).