#what kind of funky glitch is this? they better not be changing this useful feature to something fuckin stupid

[britneyshakespeare]

is anyone else havin a thing where tumblr won't let them view their archive with the usual link on desktop???? as in just their blog url dot tumblr dot com /archive??? bc on both of my blogs it's not letting me open the page and just redirects me to their stupid explore page

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Headcanons: Crankegos ⚙️

Aight, we’re doing this so buckle up, because I got a lot to share!

Note: I consider Memento one, but he’ll be in another post with Mori where I’ll go more into-depth about them both.

Mad Mike

Runs both an ice cream shop and an ice cream truck (he changes outfits depending on which he’s working at).

Once owned a highly successive business.

But it was shutdown after Silver Shepherd discovered that the ice cream was being laced with drugs.

Since then Mike tries to stop doing that..but once in a while he’ll put a tiny bit of cocaine in a scoop or two (claims it’s “extra sugar”).

Loves to bake on his days off.

Contrary to his song, he’s got a soft spot for kids and never drugs their desserts.

Struggles with his own addictions from time-to-time, but he’s getting better at dealing with the withdrawals.

Very flirtatious.

Also fluent in French, so that gives him extra brownie (pun intended) points.

Somehow, someway..he’s evaded police ever since the encounter with Silver.

Not very good at talking about his or other people’s problems...so he usually just whips up some ice cream as a temporary solution!

His eyes turn to pink and blue swirls whenever his sanity dips or if he wants to hypnotize someone who insulted his business practices.

Mike’s just a bubbly guy all around.

Blank

One of Ethan’s less malicious dark egos.

Embodies his anxiety and nightmares (though mainly the former)

Blank himself has severe anxiety issues that tend to make him panic over small things.

Corroded teases him for being a crybaby sometimes, but he can’t help he’s overly-emotional. 

Gets very self-conscious of his acne/black eyes/appearance in general, afraid of scaring people away.

Has bluish-pale gray skin.

Likes wearing baggy clothing, though it’s really only to hide the wilted vines and black veins that wrap around his arms and legs.

When he has a breakdown, black oily tears stream down his face, he shakes violently, the room get abruptly cold, and he mumbles unintelligible gibberish.

It can go on from a few seconds to almost 15 minutes straight. It's extremely hard to snap him out of it.

Has haptephobia (fear of physical contact), but he’ll let people he’s close with (like the other egos) make contact with him.

Hates being thrown in with the rest of the dark egos.

Corroded

The first of Ethan’s dark egos, albeit the more forgettable one.

He’s a rusted robot, with gray/brown skin that’s metallic in some areas (especially on his face and hands).

Completely hollow inside (physically) except for metal “bones” keeping himself together.

His eyes are also empty sockets instead of being purely black.

Like Anti he’s a glitching entity who induces paranoia in people with hushed whispers and clones of himself.

Bitter to Ethan about being used for the 5-year anniversary poster advertisement, despite that not being his intention at all.

Also resents Blank for becoming the more popular dark ego.

Regularly drinks oil.

If you call him an animatronic he can and will decimate you.

His biggest pet peeves are being taken for granted and being called a “dumb robot”.

A major weakness is his legs being so rusted they lock up and he can’t move for a long while.

Heapass

A punkish prisoner who’s best friends with Yancy.

He’s been arrested for smoking illegal drugs, dealing said drugs (with Mike, who managed to escape officers while ditching him in the process), and excessive speeding/reckless driving.

But he was sent to HTP for a fatal hit-and-run (while he was smoking grass behind the wheel).

Doesn’t talk a whole lot, but he likes to stand around and smugly grin like he’s got a trick up his sleeve.

Spoiler: He doesn’t, and if you were to ask Yancy about him he’d tell you Heap is one of the sweetest people he’s had the honor of meeting.

He did break his arm during a brawl (tho he told the warden he fell in the yard).

He’s good at keeping secrets. He has no reason to gossip unless you insult his family.

Also dyed his hair black. Just because.

Jake

Was among the many bright scientists trying to find a cure for the spontaneous zombie plague.

He was also Prof. Beauregard's assistant.

Though unfortunately he didn’t last long before he ended up turning.

Surprisingly he still retains much of his scientific knowledge.

But he can’t wrap his rotting brain around complex formulas.

So he’ll sometimes try to mix chemicals and write notes--both of which turn out to be huge messes.

With the other Crankegos, Jake has his own lab.

He gets agitated easily, so he’ll go there to calm down if he needs to.

Can still speak normally, though his voice is extremely scratchy and he hates repeating himself.

So Yahoo often translates for him.

Likes being with a group of zombies...humans not so much.

Though since the Crankegos aren’t exactly human, he doesn’t mind them at all.

Bernice

She’s the gothic mother hen of the Crankegos.

Though at the same time she’s a vicious mama bear if you dare cross her and/or her family.

She’s stern with Mike and Corroded, but very soft towards Heap, Jake, and Blank.

The prisoner often looks to her as a mother, since he didn’t have the best relationship with his own growing up.

Loved red, black, and silver makeup. Especially eyeshadow and mascara. She makes sure to visit the dye shop every so often to keep her hair a bright red.

No one knows how she pays for all those times. But she does it.

Very sassy and likes to show-off a lot, though she’s not a narcissist. 

She’s very generous, too, and can’t stand the thought of being completely obsessed with only her own happiness.

Don’t ask her if she feels weird being the only female Crankego. She’ll break your kneecaps.

Cries at animal rescue/adoption commercials all the time.

Likes wearing meme shirts to be “hashtag relatable”.

She says it exactly like that and Ethan, Heap, and Mike groan every time she does.

Saint

He’s a very holy man, of course, with much dedication to the church.

While Saint doesn’t say what church (or even what his name is for that matter) he’s from, he practices good teachings.

Scolds people if they constantly curse/take the Lord’s name in vain.

He tried integrating memes into his teachings so younger generations won’t be as bored during mass.

But when Jeremiah (Priestiplier) proofreads his writings..he just shakes his head in disapproval.

So those never see the light of day.

Thinks Blank, Corroded, and Jake are horribly cursed and regularly tries spraying them with holy water.

He just gets three annoyed inhuman beings glaring at him.

Heap and Mike confess their recent sins to him sometimes. It helps them get stuff off their chest.

Though Mike always starts out by saying “I’ve been very naughty-”

And Saint has to stop himself from slapping him with the book.

Beyond that, he’s just an all-around good dude.

Yahoo

Like Bing and Google, he’s a search engine-based android designed to answer people’s questions.

Often speaks in a soft and sincere tone of voice, though he can be firm when necessary.

One of his eyes is more cybernetic than humanlike, and it’s capable of many functions including infrared and x-ray scanners, as well as being able to instantly identify any individual he sees.

That’s how he got to know all of the Crankegos so easily.

He’s on good terms with all the Googles...except for Blue, of course, since he thinks he’s just another rival.

But Yahoo still tries to be kind regardless.

Unfortunately some take advantage of that, though Bernice and Mike usually come to his defense.

He’s terrified of water and viruses..so he tends to stay away from Blank and Corroded.

When he’s recharging, both his eyes glow purple under his eyelids.

He’s got a lot of service features, including Yahoo! Finance (to help with personal finances), Answers (a q&a), and Mail.

Kinda misses the funky logo the company had from 1996-2013

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #463

Top Ten Tweaks I Want to the Series X Experience

I got an Xbox Series X for Christmas. Well, more accurately, I got one on launch day, but for Festive Reasons it remained boxed up till Christmas. Anyway, since then, I’ve been able to play the sexiest of new Xboxes, plugged in to a moderately-fancy 4K TV for the first time too; this is my first proper taste of 4K gaming and certainly the first time I’ve ever played a game at 120fps (it was Star Wars: Squadrons, fact-fans!). So despite the dearth of exclusive content the “next-gen difference” has been very real for me.

I could go on about all the things I like about the console: how fast it is, how quiet, how genuinely aesthetically pleasing I find it when it’s sitting there on the floor, all hard angles and funky green holes (I do genuinely worry about my kids spilling apple juice into its vents however). Playing on the new Xbox is transformative in the sense that things just kinda work; it’s a smooth and painless experience navigating the dash, switching users, booting a game, etc. True, the fact that the dashboard itself is unchanged means it doesn’t jump out at you as being all-singing, all-dancing, but it’s like upgrading a phone or a PC within the same OS ecosystem; what you know, but better. Games look gorgeous in 4K, they run like butter, 120fps gaming is a treat, and HDR is transformative. However, there are a few areas where I feel improvement is needed, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

This post isn’t criticism; for the most part, these are work-in-progress areas of an always-evolving UI and general experience. Like I say, actually playing games on the thing is a joy, and its technical grunt can’t be denied (I’ve not encountered a single performance issue in Cyberpunk 2077, for example, although I have come across some amusing glitches, such as a character doing finger guns throughout an entire shootout, turning a tense combat experience into a scene from Spaced). But as we go forward, taking advantage of the power of the machine (and perhaps moving away from having to support the “old-gen” Xbox One family of consoles), here is a list of tweaks, improvements, and features I’d love to see added to the Series X/S down the road.

Manage Quick Resume: Quick Resume, when it works, is a marvel; jumping instantly to the last moment you were in a game, with virtually no loading. It feels responsive, it feels fast, it feels next gen. When it works. Understanding that there are some games where this isn’t supportable (live service games, for instance), there are too many games where it either doesn’t work right yet, or where it will spontaneously “forget” a Quick Resume. So I’d like it improved and refined. Plus, open too many games in the interim, and your Resume will likewise be “forgotten”. But how many? I dunno. I think it varies. So why can’t we see how many? Give us a Quick Resume button on the dash or in Settings, let’s see how much space is allocated to it, see what games are there, etc. Maybe a warning if one is about to be “pushed out”. Maybe we could pin a game, so it’s always in Quick Resume? Or maybe we could increase or decrease the SSD space allocated to it? Basically, it’s a terrific feature that needs streamlining.

Improved Achievements: back in the 360 era, Achievements were amazing. They really changed how I played games like Crackdown or Gears of War, and there was much friendly rivalry over Gamerscore. Since then, they’ve kinda been forgotten. Finding them now is actually a chore, and the navigation interface is almost non-existent; it’s like Microsoft don’t care. Meanwhile, Sony have overhauled their similar Trophy system, with meta-games and multiple kinds of rewards. Microsoft kinda tried this when the Xbox One launched, with time-limited “Challenges”, but it was a bit of a damp squib. However, they really need to improve Achievements. Give them their own tab on the Guide; make them really easy to view and filter, not just as a social thing, but as a reward all on their own. Use them to track game progress, give us loads of stats about each achievement! Let us pin them to our profile, or have a trophy cabinet of ones we’re most proud of. Make them relevant again, basically.

Improve the App: the Xbox app has had a lot of improvements and refinements recently, but it’s also lost a lot of functionality. There are now at least three Xbox apps anyway – a “normal” one, a Game Pass one, and one that lets you fiddle with Family settings. How about just one that does it all? View your game library, including Game Pass, and let you download and purchase games, as well as play them (I must say, the app is brilliant when it comes to cloud gaming – the touch control layout is really good too). Searching for Games on the Store but not being able to buy them feels a bit weird, and other functionality seems buried in menus. What do I want to do in an Xbox app? In order, probably view achievements, purchase and download games, and see what my friends are up to (oh, and cloud gaming, obvs). It seems weird to me that so much of this is obfuscated or impossible. I do like the ability to download games you don’t own, however (useful for pre-installing a game, especially a disc-based game), and I love the “Rewards” aspect of Game Pass; but it feels the most basic functionality is what’s missing.

Improved Guide Customisation: the Guide has improved a lot during the Xbox One’s lifetime, although I’d argue it’s still not quite the dashboard-in-miniature that you had with the Xbox 360. I like the fact that it’s now customisable, but I’d like it even more if that went further. Yes, some of this is “make it easier/better to view achievements,” but also I’d like to decide which features can be part of the Guide. Jump straight to Netflix, or a particular game? Have my Quick Resume management there? Game Pass? Oh, and make it easier to get into settings; it should be as few button presses as possible. I mean, if they essentially stuff Achievements, Games & Apps, the Store, and Settings in there, I’d be pretty happy.

Better use of Avatars: Avatars are a bit controversial I think; they’ve never been as loved as Nintendo’s Miis, and as time’s gone on their stock as only decreased. But they exist, so why not use them? It’s okay that we can get them as a sort of “live picture” when viewing a friend’s profile, but how about making it into a kind of interactive “room”, showing off Avatar Awards and with our top Achievements framed on the wall? And make more games like Joyride Turbo or A Kingdom for Keflings that make use of Avatars. MS could really do with some kind of party game, Nintendo-style, that incorporates their multiple franchises/characters, and lets you play as your Avatar. But to be honest the thing I think they should do the most is redesign them again. They’re a bit too uncanny valley at the moment; too much details but all smooth and bland, like a CG cartoon character from twenty years ago. Either allow us to make them more gnarled and grotesque like a Sea of Thieves character, or go entirely the other way and make them really stylised, like someone from Ooblets or Untitled Goose Game.

Managing Games from Dashboard: one of the things the PlayStation 5 does that sounds quite cool is the ability to jump to specific points in a game, straight from the dashboard. Whilst I don’t think it would be quite as useful, long-term, as Quick Resume, I do like the idea of “right-clicking” a game and saying “resume last checkpoint” or “go to multiplayer lobby”. At the very least I’d like the option to skip all the launch logos and go straight to the main menu. I’d also like the ability to tinker with aspects of the game right then and there; choose which elements to uninstall, say. This is sort of possible, but although a game like Gears 5 will ask you which bits to install (single-player or multiplayer components, for instance) you don’t appear to be able to uninstall separate sections, at least not from the dash. I’d like to see this implemented system-wide; imagine being able to choose exactly which games – and game modes – to install in Halo: The Master Chief Chronicles, for instance.

Customising the Home Screen: the Xbox isn’t really that customisable, which I think is a bit strange, because I spent a large part of my teens making Windows look really hideous with its vast suite of personalisation options. You can create “Groups” of games and apps, but I’d like it also if you could make your actual Home screen look more you. Instead of (or as well as) recent games, how about pinning one or two biggies? Maybe having folders that expand instead of scrolling down to other lists? Or being able to resize icons? Or how’s about we look up the list a couple of spaces and incorporate our Avatars a bit more, if we so choose?

Simplify Sign-In: I still miss the 360 controller’s little green quadrants; you always knew who you were. Nowadays, because the whole console is tied to a particular account, it can be hard keeping track if there are multiple users signed in, to the point where it’s possible to lose progress or accidentally kick a game from Quick Resume because you weren’t aware that – despite switching user – for some reason the controller was still assigned to someone else (I know it’s possible to sync a controller specifically to one profile but you shouldn’t have to rely on that). Some kind of system-level way of warning or asking who the user “is” – without changing a game’s status – would be nice, as would a permanent on-screen notification visible on the dash. Either that or rejig the controller and bring back the quadrants!

Track Game Usage: the Xbox sort of does this, but like Achievements it feels a bit half-hearted and almost forgotten about. Basically, I like to know the date I started a game, the date I last played it, how long I’ve been at it for… as well as other useless game-specific data such as how many headshots I’ve scored, how many miles I’ve ridden Roach, how many times I’ve chainsawed some dude in two, that kinda thing. They could tie all this in with the “Avatar Home Screen” idea and improved Achievements to allow you to deep-dive how you play on the Xbox!

Share Account Across Family: now most of what I’ve been talking about here as been, essentially, tweaks or redesigns of their UI; features that I’d love to see on the dashboard, either system-level or essentially as new apps. Some of these are more realistic than others, I know; some are probably of interest only to a small proportion of users who share my weird tastes. This last one is more of a re-evaluation of how Xbox views their accounts and their notion of “Family”. Basically, I’d like it if everyone in my family – that is, the four of us who live in this house and use the same Xbox, and who are all joined as an official “Family” according to Microsoft – could share all products and services in perpetuity. This doesn’t seem that unfair; if we were only using disc-based games on a pre-internet console, then there’d be nothing stopping my daughter playing my copy of Forza on another Xbox in another room whilst I’m playing Halo at the same time; or my wife theoretically playing Civ on the PC. Because games are increasingly digital and tied to an account – to say nothing of being playable only through that account’s subscription – it makes it more restrictive. I’d like it if I could install the Game Pass app on a tablet and allow my daughters to play it with their accounts, so I’m essentially sharing the service with them. Similarly, I’d like it if digital purchases could be shared among family members, not just on the “Home” Xbox (in this case my new Series X) but also on the household’s other hardware (my old Xbox One). Could they do this by requiring some kind of online handshake? Or having, I dunno, three consoles designated as a family’s machines? I think all of this may be a bit pie-in-the-sky, but you never know; Microsoft are pushing at the fringes of digital ownership and cloud gaming, so maybe acknowledging that people in a household will want to play all their games everywhere at once might mean that we’ll see some of these features sooner or later.

So there we are; ten things I’d like to see Xbox adopt going forward. As is hopefully evident, none of these are fixing glaring problems, just improving existing features, or adopting new ones that I think would be quite good. But let’s start with that Quick Resume thing, because there really are an awful lot of logos and menus at the beginning of Gears 5.

One final thing: I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve used this gif before. Oh well.

[jbrownmajorone2020]

Talking to Techs

Email conversation with technicians about how I could achieve this and some questions I had, What I asked is in Italics. Matt was extremely enlightening and useful and i will now try out the software he mentions and then email again asking about the possibilities of back projecting with reflected short throw projectors.

I was wondering if there is a way to use the waveforms of an audio signal to trigger pre-set visuals to create an animation from prints that I make. So like the setup would be a few microphones which people could play instruments or shout at or whatever. The signal from that would go into some kind of software or programming or something (this is the bit I’m confused about) that I could program to play visuals (that I have already made) based on the waveform of the audio signal.

Yes, there's quite a few software packages that may be able to do this - Arena https://resolume.com/ is designed for live VJing so has this feature built in.

In Arena you can trigger certain attributes of a clip (for example, scale, position, colour, an effect) to respond to audio - this can be an audio track or a live input (for example the output from a set of decks or a mic/instrument.)

The Arena site has a really good tutorial on this here:

https://resolume.com/training/2/11/67

For example: if someone played piano gently and they were in a minor key that produces a certain frequency so I would programme the visuals to represent that kind of thing or if someone like crashed a car into it would choose the visuals like big and distorted and stuff. I don’t know if this makes sense at all but essentially I want to do what like visual synthesisers do but with images that I make.

Yep - you could tune the audio inputs so that some frequencies respond in a different way (ie the bass frequency creates a more extreme effect).

Some sort of external mixer might be useful if you were intending to use multiple instruments.

[Then i asked about VR which may be an option but would ruin some of the participatory aspects]

Also and this might be impossible, but could you do it in vr? So the audience feels separate from reality. Anyway I’d love to know your thoughts and if you can think of anything which might work.

Interesting! I've never outputted from a visuals programme live into a VR headset. I suppose it might be possible if you could somehow stream the output into a headset - something to think about! We do have a VR headset and phone kit here which you could try out - I get the feeling that would take lots of trial and error to get the process right. If the final piece was a live projection you can easily do this in Arena - you can also record the live output to Quicktime if that helps.

Moving forward, if this is something you want to develop we could arrange an Arena tutorial in the new year?

In the meantime you can always download a trial version of Arena https://resolume.com/download/ and get to grips with it during the break - it takes some time to get used to but once

you've grasped the basics it's really fun.

Do let me know if you have any more questions - here all week.

Have a great Xmas too and speak soon!

Cheers

Matt

---------------------

Hi matt,

Hope you’ve had a great Christmas and new year with the wife, praying for that flight to Australia and that you’re you’re coping well and enjoying yourself.

This email was really helpful thanks, sorry it took so long to reply.

I am aware of a few packages that are able to effect a clip, changing the properties of one that already exists. But I was wondering if you knew of a way to directly animate a clip, that is different every time based on the frequency of live sound. like I get a bunch of images and the software chooses an image based on the frequency being played. So if I played a C4 on piano, that has a frequency of 261.6 Hz, so it would select and image which correlates with that pitch, then if It was louder ect. It would select different images, I suppose it would be some kind of matrix where the points on a graph match images, with frequency on the y axis and amplitude on the x axis so that the live sound being generated by the audience would directly trigger the images, creating an animation based on what they were playing. I had a play with Resolume and I couldn’t figure out if it can do that or not, also I couldn’t find any help on the internet for this as it is difficult to put it into a searchable sentence.

Obviously now with big mega lockdown taking full effect this doesn’t matter so much however I hope to still submit a proposal for this project with examples that I would like to generate in this way so that I don’t just make more pointless scatty films and instead it’s at least a bit more interestingly created.

No worries if you don’t think this is possible,  it may require like actual programming which is a bit long and I don’t really understand.

Anyway thank you for continuing to help us with things through lockdown, stay safe and well.

Cheers, Jay

----------------------

Hi Jay.

Yes had a good Xmas thanks - hope you did too. Interesting question...

You can plug a MIDI keyboard into Arena and assign clips to each key (i.e if you press C4 on the MIDI it would play the assigned clip). I'm not sure this is exactly what yr after however - from your explanation I think what you want is to be able to play freeform and the visuals to directly respond to those frequencies? In Arena you can assign effects (ie scale / speed / colour tint etc) to audio frequencies. So for example, you could assign a glitch effect to the audio frequency that is inputted into Arena via a mic/keyboard/existing audio track - so you could make the clip massively glitch out on the high frequencies. As for changing clips themselves based on audio frequencies - there must be some way of doing this - rerouting a layer effect perhaps - this is something I haven't done before but I'll give it a test over the next few days and get back to you.

Thinking outside of Arena - there may well be other softwares which may work better for this project - I haven't used Serato or Ableton much but they have some video functionality too - worth a look maybe? Hope that helps - I'll let you know if I have any luck with the Arena workflow.

Hope all's well and speak soon

Matt

---------------------------

Thanks Matt, 

Yea I want it to be rigged up to microphones and the audience to be able to make any sound into it so having it linked via midi wouldn’t really work. Good shout I’ll give Albeton a go, that would be pretty funky. I’m actually locked down with a real sound tech whose done loads of work with live sound (he’s my mums Boyfriend haha) I’ll see what he thinks because it may be a case of using loads of limiters/ gates assigned to small freq bands then when they get signal it triggers an image, may have to experiment with hardware ways of doing it haha. I’ll see anyway but thanks for helping out and no pressure with the arena experiments. Cheers Matt, all the best