#menu launcher

[whitespringbunker]

the way possibly The only two non-seasonal event plans i'm missing both drop from seismic activity which gets set off maybe twice a month if i'm lucky

[myothertardisisonthemun]

Can video game launchers just die? There's no good reason i should have to run some crummy, laggy, advertisement riddled, useless pseudo-website just to make a game run. For a game that runs fine entirely on my computer, there's no good reason I should need to log into an account, or connect to the internet.

What happens when the checking server closes down? What about when you want to play somewhere outside the city? They're so slow too, even the ones with minimal news and rubbish take longer to launch than the actual games.

Anti-Piracy? This is making me want to pirate to avoid this bs. I just downloaded Tor.

I don't mind online videogame stores, but the launcher is the worst development in recent history.

[sleeperagentclone]

I refuse to open the ea launcher but I also can't fucking find sims 4

[softwaluigi]

someone needs to burn epic games to the fucking ground

[s00ths4yingz0di4c]

i have decided to do a poll for fun because of a video im watching while im eating

for those curious i started playing during 1.6!! i played the demo worlds of the game on the minecraft.net website before my parents bought it for me

edit: part two for people who started playing post-1.10! edit 2: part three for pre-release players!

[midnitetech]

🚀 Clean Launcher Beta – Try It Early!

Hey Simmers! I’m excited to share the very first beta version of my new Clean Launcher—a one-stop, user-friendly tool for managing your Sims 4 mods, cleaning cache and error logs, scanning for duplicates, and even backing up your important files. All the essentials in a single, easy-to-use app built for Windows!

What’s in the Clean Launcher?

🧹 Clean & Launch: Wipes cache and error logs, then starts The Sims 4 with a single click.

🗂️ Scan Mods Folder: Detects duplicates, hidden scripts, and missing files. Fix them in a click or two!

📦 Backup: Instantly zip up your Mods, Saves, and Tray folders.

📥 Drag & Drop Installer: Drop ZIPs and mod files right in—they’ll be sorted automatically.

📁 Mod Folder Organizer: Organize a chaotic mods folder into preset categories, Undo changes.

Check for Updates: See if your installed mods have newer versions, and download them! (Currently covers all of my mods and the biggies like MCCC, UI Cheats etc. but I've hosted the library the app reads online, so as long as you have an internet connection, you're covered for updates I make.)

...and more! I'm still working on the exception helper, as I haven't gotten it quite to where I want it to be. However, the Scan Mods Folder feature includes a Create Full Report function, which you can send to me if you have an error you're struggling with.

Important: This is a BETA release, so you may run into bugs or rough edges. I’d love your feedback—every report helps make it smoother for everyone! The Help & Online menu includes a bug report form, and a User Guide, which I've also attached to the post.

📝 Submit Bug Reports

Thank you for helping shape the future of Sims 4 mod management! —midnitetech

P.S. Don’t be shy about reporting anything odd—even if you think it’s small! And as always, I never judge anyone based on their mod folder. You do you!

Windows only (currently)

PATREON (in beta testing for a week or so, then will be public. Anyone who's not a Patron and would like to test it, just message me!)

Download to your regular Downloads folder - this is NOT a mod, it's an app for Windows, and install it. I recommend you disable your antivirus as unsigned apps can give a false positive. I've scanned it with VirusTotal, and none of the major AVs are flagging it. You can also check your antivirus' quarantine section if it's already snagged it, and restore it from there.

[piratesexmachine420]

Thoughts on Linux (the OS)

Misconception!

I don't want to be obnoxiously pedantic, but Linux is not an OS. It is a kernel, which is just part of an OS. (Like how Windows contains a lot more than just KERNEL32.DLL). A very, very important piece, which directly shapes the ways that all the other programs will talk to each other. Think of it like a LEGO baseplate.

Everything else is built on top of the kernel. But, a baseplate does not a city make. We need buildings! A full operating system is a combination of a kernel and kernel-level (get to talk to hardware directly) utilities for talking to hardware (drivers), and userspace (get to talk to hardware ONLY through the kernel) utilities ranging in abstraction level from stuff like window management and sound servers and system bootstrapping to app launchers and file explorers and office suites. Every "Linux OS" is a combination of that LEGO baseplate with some permutation of low and high-level userspace utilities.

Now, a lot of Linux-based OSes do end up feeling (and being) very similar to each other. Sometimes because they're directly copying each other's homework (AKA forking, it's okay in the open source world as long as you follow the terms of the licenses!) but more generally it's because there just aren't very many options for a lot of those utilities.

Want your OS to be more than just a text prompt? Your pick is between X.org (old and busted but...well, not reliable, but a very well-known devil) and Wayland (new hotness, trying its damn hardest to subsume X and not completely succeeding). Want a graphics toolkit? GTK or Qt. Want to be able to start the OS? systemd or runit. (Or maybe SysVinit if you're a real caveman true believer.) Want sound? ALSA is a given, but on top of that your options are PulseAudio, PipeWire, and JACK. Want an office suite? Libreoffice is really the only name in the game at present. Want terminal utilities? Well, they're all gonna have to conform to the POSIX spec in some capacity. GNU coreutils, busybox, toybox, all more or less the same programs from a user perspective.

Only a few ever get away from the homogeneity, like Android. But I know that you're not asking about Android. When people say "Linux OS" they're talking about the homogeneity. The OSes that use terminals. The ones that range in looks from MacOS knockoff to Windows knockoff to 'impractical spaceship console'. What do I think about them?

I like them! I have my strongly-felt political and personal opinions about which building blocks are better than others (generally I fall into the 'functionality over ideology' camp; Nvidia proprietary over Nouveau, X11 over Wayland, Systemd over runit, etc.) but I like the experience most Linux OSes will give me.

I like my system to be a little bit of a hobby, so when I finally ditched Windows for the last time I picked Arch Linux. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to treat their OS as a hobby, though. There are better and easier options for 'normal users'.

I like the terminal very much. I understand it's intimidating for new users, but it really is an incredible tool for doing stuff once you're in the mindset. GUIs are great when you're inexperienced, but sometimes you just wanna tell the computer what you want with your words, right? So many Linux programs will let you talk to them in the terminal, or are terminal-only. It's very flexible.

I also really, really love the near-universal concept of a 'package manager' -- a program which automatically installs other programs for you. Coming from Windows it can feel kinda restrictive that you have to go through this singular port of entry to install anything, instead of just looking up the program and running an .msi file, but I promise that if you get used to it it's very hard to go back. Want to install discord? yay -S discord. Want to install firefox? yay -S firefox. Minecraft? yay -S minecraft-launcher. etc. etc. No more fucking around in the Add/Remove Programs menu, it's all in one place! Only very rarely will you want to install something that isn't in the package manager's repositories, and when you do you're probably already doing something that requires technical know-how.

Not a big fan of the filesystem structure. It's got a lot of history. 1970s mainframe computer operation procedure history. Not relevant to desktop users, or even modern mainframe users. The folks over at freedesktop.org have tried their best to get at least the user's home directory cleaned up but...well, there's a lot of historical inertia at play. It's not a popular movement right now but I've been very interested in watching some people try to crack that nut.

Aaaaaand I think those are all the opinions I can share without losing everyone in the weeds. Hope it was worth reading!

[unpretty]

way back in the day every time i reinstalled my windows partition, my first priority would be to get objectdock and launchy and rainmeter installed to make my desktop actually usable. but then for a while there i actually stopped needing it. the start menu was actually functional as a keyboard-only app launcher, and the taskbar was customizable enough that having a dock and a clock separate felt redundant. so it's extremely funny that with windows 11 i am once again installing rocketdock and rainmeter and now fluentlauncher. microsoft simply could not stop themselves from making windows unusable again.

[sims3fiend]

Sims 3 Settings Setter

DON"T USE OLD USE THIS INSTEAD: https://sims3fiend.tumblr.com/post/777075618948005888/s3settingssetter-new-new-version-new

SORRY ONE DAY I'LL LEARN HOW TO DO THIS PROPERLY LMAO I KEEP FORGETTING Proper release notes and beta edition

I've added support for setting any Config or Option setting, plus live editing of many many others, so it's now release time. Full feature explanation below, but essentially this lets you edit lots of settings ingame directly instead of having to make .package mods, and provides a "better" and more shareable way of editing GraphicsRules.sgr settings (IMO). Sorry if a new post is annoying idk what I'm doing

THIS IS A BETA, I haven't tested a lot of the settings, there are bugs, etc.

DOES NOT CURRENTLY WORK WITH THE EA VERSION

Downloads: Sims File Share Sims File Share - Less stutter config GitHub

More info about what it is (I yap a bunch) under :)

Installation and use

Please note, some settings wont appear until you load into a world.

Download the ASI file and wack it in to your Sims 3 base directory, where the ts3w.exe is located. If you're using one of the presets, make a folder called s3ss_presets and pop them in there (you'll need to activate them in the presets menu ingame).

Make sure you have an ASI loader, these are either from Smooth Patch's ASI portion or dxwrapper. I recommend dxwrapper, just make sure you set the LoadPlugins value to 1 (should be default)

Start the game, you might experience a little more of an initial "freeze" when starting the game than usual, this is from the script logging a bunch of config calls during initialization, there's like 800 or something nuts. It should not have any negative impact on regular loading or gameplay, and I plan to turn the logging off… eventually.

Press Insert to open up the menu. Go crazy and change everything, make the sun huge, crank bloom up, live.

Check the box next to a live setting to have it save for next time you launch, same thing for config but you also have to press save down the bottom because I forgot

Help I crashed/the game doesn't start with the mod!

Please send me your hooks_log.txt if you're experiencing any crashing issues. If the crash is because you set some value to like 7 billion, that's on you, you can just delete the line out of script_settings.ini or go to Settings -> Clear all settings

If you can't get the game to run with the mod, lmk also, please tell me if you're using a launcher, if you're using any other .asi mods, using dxvk, etc. as well as what operating system you're on.

Features

Live Edit

This is the new™ and now main part of the mod. I've mapped out several/most of the exes main "settings" (anything that interacts w/ 0x005a00a0 and some that don't) areas, which allows you to now, in game, change these values whereas before it was a whole arduous process of making .package mods. I mapped these all statically so some of the offsets/addresses might be wrong.

I was gunna list the settings but there's 260~ of them so maybe not?

I plan to add missing specific individual settings from Config eventually. If you think a setting is missing, or if you think I've mapped a value wrong (i.e. you know it has an effect but it's not working with my mod or is crashing you, or one value is changing multiple things), please let me know. Render/er is definitely missing some, that's because the function is scary and I don't like it.

Values (sometimes) have sliders with the min and max value I found in the exe set, if you want to go higher, you can double click to type in your own number.

Some interesting things you can do with the settings:

Set max lots higher than 8 AND increase the radius so it actually shows (will crash if set too high ~35+, need to investigate) by changing values in Streaming

Play in a game where the sun never sets or rises by editing Sky Common -> Sunset/Sunrise Time

Change shadow settings (includes the same thing as LD's shadow extender mod under), extending shadows (they will still look hideous, writing a post about why currently)

Change various light settings to get the perfect look for your game. Some popular mods edit these values for their looks (presets soon?)

Do whatever… this is…?

Game Config

The function we're hooking (0x0058c380) only seems to effect Config (GraphicsRules.sgr in the .exe directory) and Options (Options.ini in the documents/Sims3 directory), but logs a whole bunch of other thing. Feel free to toggle the option in the settings tab and try changing a bunch, it should in theory work because the function is reading and writing but somewhere it gets overridden or something idk 🤷

It lets you set any that fall under those two categories/headings, which means there's some like ForceHighLODObjects that aren't in the actual file and are settable. You might notice some show different values than what they're set as in your config, this could either be that I'm hooking it too early (I don't think I am), or the value is getting overwritten or changed somewhere in the exe. If there's a setting that's in the file but not in the list that you think does something, lmk, but it should capture everything.

I haven't mapped all of the Config/Option settings to Live Edit as they're all split up in the exe, if there's one you want in particular, lmk.

Presets

I've prepared a preset with just the essentials from my GraphicsRules file post with the idea that you can then use this with a stock GraphicsRules file instead of having to manage different versions, giving you the ability to toggle certain things back to default. I might make some visual "enhancement" presets or something later, either based off popular mods or my own insanity, we'll see.

Presets go into the s3ss_presets folder, and currently they stack rather than replace (not intentional but I might keep it)

Known issues:

Rendering toggles need to be re-toggled each load - Easy fix I'm just lazy

Options settings overwrite the actual Options.ini file (idk why??)

Occasionally D3D9 wont hook, I can't replicate this reliably to test so lmk if you can lmao

I mapped all the settings pretty hastily, so some are bound to be wrong

Was flagged as a virus briefly??? Praying this never happens again because I have no idea what to do to fix that dshjakfhhsdaj

Presets stack, if you apply a preset and you have existing values, they stack together… I kind of like that though as a concept so I just added a clear all option to settings, I might rework it later.

Some Live Edit value locations might change during gameplay, resulting in the menu displaying them incorrectly and crashing the game if edited in a broken state. I've checked most off them and they don't seem to, but Render ones did. Let me know if you experience it as I can probably find a static pointer like I did for Render.

Planned things:

Searching. God that'd be good…

Go over existing maps again, some I did early on before I supported static values, 4 float arrays, etc. so I've probably messed some up

Adding every single GraphicsRule.sgr setting to Live

Maybe adding some of my performance mods to it? Or should I keep them as their own individual thing? Mmmm I dunno

I still haven't looked at the way everyone else has been editing the "live" settings, so I should probably do that, there's probably a lot of info out there but at this point I'm too invested in my weird approach djsakfsksaffsa

Updates:

18.10.24 - Hopefully fixed an issue effect people using launchers, as well as a fix for the process hanging after quitting (would look closed but the process is still there in the bg). Also fixed presets applying. 17.10.24 - Hopefully fix a D3D issue that might've resulted in the game freezing/looking frozen. Handles D3D device resets. Will expand in the future to cover other areas maybe.

[genshin-impact-updates]

"Paralogism" Version 5.6 Update Details

Dear Traveler,

Below are the details of the Version 5.6 update "Paralogism" and the update compensation.

〓Compensation Details〓

Maintenance Compensation: Primogems ×300 (60 Primogems per hour the servers are down)

Issue Fix Compensation: Primogems ×300 (please refer to the relevant compensation mail for more details)

〓Scope of Compensation〓

Maintenance Compensation: Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2025/05/07 06:00 (UTC+8).

Compensation must be claimed before the end of Version 5.6.

Issue Fix Compensation: Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2025/05/07 06:00 (UTC+8).

Please log in and claim your compensation before 2025/05/10 06:00 (UTC+8).

Our developers will distribute compensation to Travelers via in-game mail within 5 hours after the update maintenance is finished. The mail will expire after 30 days, so don't forget to claim the attached compensation in time.

〓Update Schedule〓

Update maintenance begins 2025/05/07 06:00 (UTC+8) and is estimated to take 5 hours.

〓How to Update Game Client〓

PC: Close the game, open the Genshin Impact Launcher, and click Update.

iOS: Open the App Store and tap Update.

Android: Open the game and follow the directions on-screen.

PS5™ and PS4™: Highlight Genshin Impact from the Home Screen, press the OPTIONS button and select "Check for Update."

Xbox Series X|S: Open the system main menu, select "My games & apps," select the "Manage" tab, and on the "Updates" page, find "Genshin Impact" and confirm to update.

Please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service if you encounter any issues installing the new version. We will do our very best to resolve the issue.

〓Update Details〓

I. New Characters

5-Star Character "Tasteful Excellence" Escoffier (Cryo)

◇ Vision: Cryo

◇ Weapon: Polearm

The ex-head chef of Hotel Debord, renowned throughout Fontaine as the Patissiere Supreme and vanguard of precision gastronomy. Has incomparably strict standards when it comes to cooking.

◆ Escoffier is a support character who can consistently reduce Hydro and Cryo RES, provide healing, and deal Cryo DMG even while off-field.

Escoffier's Elemental Skill deals Cryo DMG to nearby opponents at intervals.

Her Elemental Burst regenerates HP for all party members and deals AoE Cryo DMG to nearby opponents.

Her Talent can also reduce opponents' Hydro and Cryo RES. The more characters of the corresponding Elemental Type in the party, the stronger the effect.

4-Star Character "In the Wake of Wandering Winds" Ifa (Anemo)

◇ Vision: Anemo

◇ Weapon: Catalyst

A vet from the Flower-Feather Clan who cherishes the life he leads alongside all manner of living things — people, animals, you name it.

◆ Ifa is a DPS character who excels at aerial combat and has healing capabilities.

When casting his Elemental Skill, he enters the Nightsoul's Blessing state, in which he can hover in mid-air or move rapidly. During this period, Ifa fires a Tonicshot that restores HP for the entire party. When Ifa is in the Nightsoul's Blessing state, he can also increase the Swirl and Electro-Charged DMG dealt by all party members.

His Elemental Burst deals AoE Anemo DMG and generates a wind current that pulls in opponents.

II. New Equipment

New Weapons (Examples based on Refinement Rank 1)

Symphonist of Scents (5-Star Polearm)

ATK is increased by 12%. When the equipping character is off-field, ATK is increased by an additional 12%. After healing, the equipping character and healed character(s) will obtain the "Sweet Echoes" effect, increasing their ATK by 32% for 3s. This effect can be triggered even if the equipping character is off-field.

◆ The event-exclusive 5-star weapon "Symphonist of Scents" (Polearm) can be obtained from the Event Wish. Please refer to the relevant official Event Notices for specific acquisition details.

Sequence of Solitude (4-Star Bow)

When an attack hits an opponent, deal AoE DMG equal to 40% of Max HP at the target location. This effect can be triggered once every 15s.

◆ Sequence of Solitude (Bow) and its refinement materials can be redeemed in the "Whirling Waltz" event.

III. New Main Story

1. New Archon Quest

Archon Quest Interlude Chapter: Act IV "Paralogism"

Permanently available after the Version 5.6 update

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Interlude Chapter: Act III "Inversion of Genesis"

• Complete Story Quest "Princeps Cretaceus Chapter: Act I - Traveler Observation Report."

• The "Focused Experience Mode" and "Quick Start" functions are available for this quest.

2. New Story Quest

Escoffier's Story Quest - Dulciaria Structura Chapter: Act I "Treasured Above All"

Permanently available after the Version 5.6 update

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter IV: Act V "Masquerade of the Guilty"

• The "Focused Experience Mode" function is available for this quest.

Additionally, after the Version 5.6 update until 2025/05/27 17:59, the "Quick Start" function will be available for Escoffier's Story Quest - Dulciaria Structura Chapter: Act I "Treasured Above All."

IV. New Enemies

New Boss: "The Game Before the Gate"

◇ A soldier-entity born into being through the skills of various members of the Hexenzirkel.

During the battle's first phase, Chess Game: King Piece will summon chess pieces and execute a "Cunning Gambit." When the King Piece charges forward on his "chariot," you must lure him towards the "soldiers" within the formation to rout his forces and bring the onslaught to a halt. Defeat Chess Game: King Piece to progress the game to the next phase.

During the battle's second phase, the Ascended King and the Sublimated Queen will charge up to unleash a "Lethal Blow." Continuously trigger Frozen to counteract the charging. Once the Sublimated Queen is Frozen, lure the Ascended King into charging into her. This will interrupt the "Lethal Blow" completely.

Located at Galesong Hill.

Once you reach Adventure Rank 40, you can Quick Challenge the new boss's Trounce Domain through your Adventurer Handbook in Single Player Mode.

Secret Source Automaton: Overseer Device

◇ A civilization whose magnificence once marked distant eons built this overseer device to control multiple Secret Source machines.

After it enters Sweeper Mode, it will start attacking while generating Flow Momentum. The higher its Flow Momentum, the greater the DMG it will inflict. During this time, you might be able to obstruct the buildup of Flow Momentum by using consecutive Cryo attacks...

It is said that after characters enter and maintain the Nightsoul's Blessing state for some time when fighting against it, the Secret Source Automaton: Overseer Device will enter a special "Counterstrike Mode" and change its offensive strategy...

Located in Atocpan.

V. Genius Invokation TCG

Genius Invokation TCG Gameplay Update

New Character Cards: Sethos, Xilonen and their corresponding Talent cards. Corresponding invitation duels and guest challenges have been added to the Player List.

Action Cards "Tatankasaurus," "Collective of Plenty," "Art of Sleepy Meditation," and "Sing Your Heart Out" have been added which can be purchased from Prince at The Cat's Tail.

New Card Face "Lustrous Skin" has been added which can be purchased from Prince at The Cat's Tail.

The Forge Realm's Temper is once again available. The theme of this edition is "The Forge Realm's Temper: Clever Stratagems":

1. During The Forge Realm's Temper: Clever Stratagems, you can select the parameters for each stage. Parameters that may be set include: stage difficulty, enemy health, and the round limit for the match.

2. After completing the challenge, points will be obtained based on the difficulty completed for each parameter. The best score obtained for each stage will be recorded, and will allow you to claim rewards that correspond to certain scores.

VI. Imaginarium Theater

Imaginarium Theater Update

After the Version 5.6 update, the first season of "Imaginarium Theater" will be available on June 1, 2025.

Required Elemental Types: Electro, Cryo, and Dendro

Opening Characters: Cyno, Fischl, Qiqi, Mika, Nahida, and Collei

When Imaginarium Theater is open, the corresponding Opening Characters will obtain Fantastical Blessings.

Rimegrass Blessing has been added to this season's "Brilliant Blessings."

Special Guest Stars: Furina, Dehya, Xiangling, and Xingqiu

After the first season of Imaginarium Theater begins, the characters Diluc, Keqing, Faruzan, and Diona will each gain a new "Thespian Trick" that can be exchanged from the NPC Wolfy.

After the new season of Imaginarium Theater begins, "Stella Rewards" will be added: you can receive corresponding rewards based on the highest number of Stella obtained in the current season's challenge.

VII. Spiral Abyss

Spiral Abyss Update

◇ After the Version 5.6 update, Phase 1 of the Spiral Abyss will be updated on May 16.

◆ Floor 11 Ley Line Disorder changed to:

All party members receive a 60% Cryo DMG Bonus.

All party members gain a 60% Dendro DMG Bonus.

◆ Floor 12 Ley Line Disorders changed to:

First Half: Characters' Elemental Skill Cryo DMG increased by 75%.

Second Half: Characters' Elemental Skill Dendro DMG increased by 75%.

◆ Updated the monster lineup on Floors 11 – 12 of the Spiral Abyss.

◆ Blessing of the Abyssal Moon:

Interwoven Moon

When a character's Elemental Skill hits an opponent, it will be counted (1 count can be triggered every 0.9s). When the count reaches 3, a shockwave will be unleashed at the hit opponent's location, dealing True DMG and resetting the count.

◇ Phase 2 of the Spiral Abyss will be updated on June 16.

◆ Floor 11 Ley Line Disorder changed to:

All party members receive a 60% Cryo DMG Bonus.

All party members gain a 60% Pyro DMG Bonus.

◆ Floor 12 Ley Line Disorders changed to:

First Half: When characters have 0 Energy, DMG +75%.

Second Half: Characters' Normal Attack Cryo DMG increased by 75%.

◆ Updated the monster lineup on Floors 11 – 12 of the Spiral Abyss.

◆ Blessing of the Abyssal Moon:

Ice-Cloven Moon

When a character deals Cryo DMG to an opponent, it will be counted. When the count reaches 4, a shockwave will be unleashed at the opponent's location, dealing True DMG and resetting the count. 1 such shockwave can be triggered every 4s.

VIII. Other Update Details

New Recipes:

○ Exploration or Quest Rewards: "Petit Gateau Debord: Special Edition"

○ Limited-Time Event Reward: Candy Shells

New Character Specialty Dishes:

○ Escoffier's specialty: "Gateau Debord: Magnifique"

○ Ifa's specialty: "Emotional Support"

Adds new Achievements to the "Wonders of the World" category.

Adds Set 40 of "Paimon's Paintings" chat emojis.

New Namecards:

"Escoffier: Charm": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Escoffier

"Ifa: Bro": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Ifa

"Travel Notes: Balletica": Reward obtained via the BP system

〓Adjustments & Optimizations〓

● Map

When you click on a Domain on the map interface, the right sidebar will now only display the rewards for the Domain with the highest difficulty that you can currently challenge.

Adds a "select quantity" function for custom pins to the map interface, which allows you to select multiple pins of a certain category in the same area.

● Treasure Compass

The Pyro Treasure Compass can now also locate clues for Tribal Challenges.

Now, if you reach a certain Exploration Progress in Natlan, the Pyro Treasure Compass can also locate clues to the entrance of "Tribal Secret Spaces."

The "Treasure Compass" in each area can find clues to the "Mora Chests" in the corresponding area after you reach a certain Exploration Progress in the area.

● Crafting

Adjusts the location of access to the "Filter by character" feature on the Crafting interface and optimizes the relevant interface styles.

It is now possible to switch directly to the selected character on the Crafting interface with the "Filter by character" feature.

It is now possible to switch directly to the selected character on the Crafting interface with the "Filter by character" feature. Additionally, the selected character will be automatically selected upon your next login.

Your device will remember the selected enhancement goals selected for a specific character on the Crafting interface with the "Filter by character" feature.

● Training Guide

Adds information prompts when using the "Level-Up Plan" feature.

a. When the left side of the screen shows that the required materials have been obtained, if the required materials are insufficient, the number of missing materials and progress will be displayed.

b. When materials are obtained, if the required materials can be crafted to meet the quantity requirements of the Level-Up Plan, a text prompt will appear. If all materials in the set have met the requirements, an additional prompt will appear.

● Imaginarium Theater

Adds the "Brilliant Blessing Details" interface, allowing you to see if Brilliant Blessings have been unlocked. This function can be accessed from "Party Setup," "Performance Details," and the Brilliant Blessing Performance Events selection menu.

Adds text descriptions and underline effects to some of the skill effects of "Brilliant Blessings." Click the effect name to view them.

Adds the "Restart Performance" option to the final act's finalization screen.

When you select the Theater Lobby icon on the map interface, the right sidebar will now only display the character elemental restrictions for the current season.

After selecting the "Combat: Climactic Showdown" event, the "Begin Performance" interface's "Monster List" will now display recommended character tags and tutorial hints for each target.

● Audio

Adjusts the writing of the name of Xilonen's English voice actor.

Replaces some of Kinich's English voice lines in content from previous versions.

● Other

Optimizes the interface layout of the Adventurer Handbook > Domain page.

Optimizes the interface layout and text display of the "Character" interface, and replaced some "Combat Talent" and "Passive Talent" texts with the actual category names of the corresponding skills (such as Normal Attack, Elemental Skill, Ascension Talent, etc.).

Some NPC dialogues now have an icon for the "Exit" option, and you can select this option not only by clicking, but also by pressing the hotkey (on the keyboard, this defaults to the ESC key; on the DualSense™ wireless controller, you default to pressing the Circle key if it is set as the "Cancel" key).

When you make wishes and have insufficient wish items, you can quickly obtain them by exchanging an equal amount of Primogems and Genesis Crystals on the "Wishes" page (the item exchange process now has less steps). If you do not have enough Primogems and Genesis Crystals, you will be redirected to the Shop screen.

Adds a new Teleport Waypoint to the Atocpan in Natlan due to the addition of the new Boss (The number of unlocked Teleport Waypoints required to complete the achievement "Sacred Mountain Guide" has also been adjusted. For Travelers who have already completed this achievement, after the update, the achievement completion status will remain unchanged).

Modifies the "Suggested Character Role" tag for Lan Yan in Imaginarium Theater.

〓Bug Fixes〓

● Enemies

Fixes an issue whereby there was a chance that the Aeonblight Drake and Ruin Drake would have the incorrect elemental RES increased under certain circumstances after taking various types of damage.

Fixes an issue whereby there was a chance that the weapon of "Tatankasaurus Warrior: Spiritlight Chasers" would display abnormally when entering combat.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby when challenging the Secret Source Automaton: Configuration Device, off-field characters' attacks would be unable to destroy the Accretion Mechanisms.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby when challenging the Secret Source Automaton: Configuration Device and Hunter-Seeker, when off-field characters enter and maintain their Nightsoul's Blessing state, they would not accumulate any "Adaptive Countermeasures."

● Characters

Fixes an issue whereby there was a small chance that Iansan could not quickly trigger a non-stamina-consuming Swift Stormflight under certain circumstances if the Normal Attack was pressed after the Elemental Skill was cast.

Fixes an issue whereby Iansan landed while in the Nightsoul's Blessing state, the character would move forward for a period of time when landing even without being controlled.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby after switching to Iansan to cast an Elemental Skill or Burst, the character's Nightsoul's Blessing special effects would be displayed with a delay.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby when Iansan jumped, the character would abnormally stay in mid-air or rise into the sky.

Fixes an issue whereby after updating to Version 5.4, when Furina switches her Arkhe Alignment, her outfit decorations would display abnormally.

Fixes an issue whereby Mualani's Capybara Ball would disappear abnormally when the game was paused while she was performing an idle action.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby Varesa's weapon model would display abnormally after performing Plunging Attacks.

Fixes an issue whereby Varesa's mask effect would display abnormally while she is in the "Fiery Passion" state.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby there was a chance that Varesa's Passive Talent "Tag-Team Triple Jump!" could not take effect under certain circumstances if she used an Elemental Skill and performed a Plunging Attack after her Special Elemental Burst was cast.

● System

Fixes an issue whereby the icon for "Echo: Flame-Mane" was not displayed correctly.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby when setting up the party in the Imaginarium Theater, not all characters were displayed in the "Opening and Alternate Cast members selected" list.

Fixes an issue whereby there are missing pieces of text in the description of the "Phony Bejeweled Unihornfish" furnishing.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby after setting filter conditions on the Character interface, the selected filter conditions and filter clear buttons were not displayed correctly

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby the interface displayed abnormally when operating a character in the "Character" interface using touch screen operation or controller mode.

Fixes an issue whereby the descriptions on the right sidebar of some quest pins on the "Map" interface were inconsistent with the descriptions of the quests on the "Quest" interface.

Fixes an issue whereby there were text display errors for the Archon Quest "Incandescent Ode of Resurrection" in the "Travel Log/Archon Quests" interface.

● Audio

Fixes an issue whereby the background music of the game would sound abnormal when in certain locations or performing certain operations in "Atocpan."

Fixes an issue in Co-Op Mode whereby the game would abnormally play the relevant prompt sound effect when Varesa who is controlled by another Traveler cast a special Elemental Burst.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby the landing sound effects of the "Tatankasaurus" were missing when it landed after jumping.

Fixes an issue whereby the audio for certain scenery was abnormally missing.

Fixes an issue of abnormal or missing sound effects in certain interfaces.

Fixes an issue that caused weather audio to abnormally trigger multiple times when the character repeatedly entered certain areas of Fontaine.

● Other

Fixes an issue whereby some effects that take effect "after triggering an elemental reaction" fail to take effect properly when the Shatter reaction is triggered.

Fixes an issue whereby there was a small chance that the achievement "The Peak" could not be completed.

Fixes an issue whereby certain animals in the Serenitea Pot would be abnormally affected by elements.

Fixes an issue whereby there was a chance that the "Nightsoul Transmission" tutorial would not trigger correctly.

Fixes an issue whereby special effects in certain areas of Inazuma would be abnormally targeted by some characters' attacks.

Fixes an issue whereby there was a chance that a certain puzzle in a cave below the "Ruined Armament Workshop" in the "Ancient Sacred Mountain" could not be completed, and thus the corresponding treasure chest could not be unlocked.

Fixes an issue under certain circumstances whereby when playing on PC, the Tatankasaurus would not be able to perform a flying leap when using its second sprint to cross the boost ramps at the Flame-Melding Ritual Grounds.

Fixes some text errors in certain languages and optimizes text. (Note: Related in-game functions have not changed. Travelers can view the changes in different languages by going to the Paimon Menu > Settings > Language and changing the Game Language.)

◆ Optimizes inconsistencies between certain voice-overs and the corresponding lines.

◆ Optimizes certain English translations.

〓Genius Invokation TCG Balance Adjustment〓

Adjusts the effect of the Elemental Burst generated by Character Card "Nilou": This effect will be adjusted to "Deals 2 Hydro DMG. The target character and the next character receives Lingering Aeon."

Adjusts the Elemental Burst "Lingering Aeon" DMG of the Character Card "Nilou": Hydro DMG dealt is adjusted from 3 to 2.

Adjusts the effect of the Event Card "Elemental Resonance: Sprawling Greenery": The Bountiful Cores created by Nilou can also trigger this Event Card's effect.

*This is a work of fiction and is not related to any actual people, events, groups, or organizations.

"PlayStation", "PS5", "PS4", "DualSense", "DUALSHOCK" are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

[almakrowan]

OKAY so I am starting to believe a lot of people don't realize just HOW customizable clip studio is 😌 Besides the obvious - rearranging all tools windows and sections to your liking, adjusting color from light gray to black, these 3 areas are 100% customizable!! (also, reminder, I am not affiliated with celsys or anything, i just really really like this software and i will not shut up about it anytime soon lol)

1. Command bar - it's on the very top of your screen, and you can toggle it's visibility too (with the 3 lines on the very left of it)! To choose what buttons you want to have there, go to [file] > [command bar settings]!

2. Selection launcher - this belt of buttons pops up when you make a selection, right below it. Super useful!!! I put a lot of color adjustments settings on it, but also sharpening, blurring, and the transformation tools! To edit, just press this button on it (selection launcher settings).

3. Quick access menu - especially useful if you use smartphone assistant! To edit buttons on it, just press the three lines in left top corner of the menu and go to [quick access settings]!

I'll just add one more thing I learned over the years - if you think to yourself "mann I wish this was an option here..." it most likely is 🥹 (and if it's not, you can always send suggestions to csp's tech team through the starting app!!

[lowpolynpixelated]

Call of Duty and the beast that must die

Written by: Clair Beckett

Upon booting up Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 for the first time I was assaulted with a modern "Marvel" type banner, proudly declaring the expansive media franchise that is CALL OF DUTY. I was then given three different screens filled with the names of game studios swallowed by the machine in the series' long and crumbling history of game after game after game. Call of Duty claims itself a pillar of the industry. One of the many posts that hold up the very sky of the video game landscape. It stands now before me, million dollar propaganda for the US military starring Spawn and Nicki Minaj for a limited time only, but only if you can pay the price of admission.

The next thing I was told, of course, was to make an Activision account. The game then prompted me to add my phone number and restart the game twice to make sure that all the personal data it wanted from me was set to go. Modern video games have gone so far beyond what they began as and yet they still ride the corpses of the culture the executives strangled to death loudly and proudly. Remember COD4? Remember Modern Warfare 2? Well we do! And we're happy to announce that we've rewritten and re-released them for $70 with extra US warcrimes written to look like the russians did it! Buy now and get a new golden skin for the gun that will only be in the cash shop rotation for the next two weeks!

Loading into the launchers that games like Halo and Call of Duty have become is insulting. But at least Halo has the dignity to somewhat look like a game instead of a collection of repackaged and hastily made content so that you can push its cosmetics exchange and season passes safely underneath some menus so they don't bother while you try to do the thing you paid for without logging in to your Microsoft account first. No, Call of Duty loads you into a fantastic screen filled with games you COULD own and cosmetics it wants you to spend the money on first. But how did this happen? I thought we were going to vote with our wallets? Show those big companies that we're not gonna take it anymore! Well, astute video gameist, we did. Or, folks like you did, and the resounding answer was "more forever so the money we're making off these pre-order bonuses and cosmetic mircotransations." Except it hasn't slowed down? Has it? So called "microtransactions" have ballooned up to upwards of $20 for single weapon skins or character packs, art that is made at the behest of artists who are cycled out of the offices like so many reams of paper wasted on stock reports.

Call of Duty wastes 0 time showing you all the ways you can spend money every way possible. If you select the game you "own" you'll first be prompted to upgrade to the ultimate edition, then when you select multiplayer you'll be prompted to purchase this month's battlepass, when you select what character you want to present as on each team you get bombarded with skins, pricetags displayed proudly larger than the actual name of the skin. Too, damn, far. Is what this nonsense is. Far be it from me to lay down my journalistic integrity for the absolute slog that fucking Call of Duty has become, but is this really what we play now? Is this what the multi-million dollar companies have to offer? Do you think that anyone working on these games had their passion cared for? Their intent respected? The answer, dear reader, is no.

No, no this isn't about video games anymore. But your average "gamer", as it were, hasn't cared about this in about 10 years. The "gamer culture" that has been fostered within the triple A sphere of the landscape is one of complacency and non questioning attitudes of "the next big thing must be the best because it's the next and the biggest!" when in actuality it's just the biggest number of people laid off without notice and the biggest return for five people in thousand dollar suits. Modern Call of Duty props itself up on the idea of legacy. The idea that the name itself is enough to warrant the money you pay for the content it will legally take away from you in a matter of a few short years so they can save on server costs. But what IS the legacy of Call of Duty? The original titles helped shape the first person shooter landscape, and the fourth title revolutionized multiplayer action games alongside the likes of Halo, but what came after? Almost immediately after COD4's smashing success it traded any sort of message and want for things like gameplay innovation or narrative cohesiveness for an iterative cycle at the behest of a publisher in some of the early days of the triple A landscape becoming a barren sprawl of corporate greed. Mind you I said some of the early days, corporate greed has always been intrinsically tied to the video game landscape but I digress. Call of Duty became one of the first annual franchises. Swapping developer each year back and forth to make games that were baseline iterative on the last promising "bigger and better but also the same, we promise" ad nauseam until something had to give. Modern Warfare 2 is heralded as a gold standard for the series, but it mostly has to do with the most memorable levels letting you gun down civilians in an airport. Otherwise it was the same jarheaded OO-RA gun em' down action that the first game had, minus some rather potent anti-war sentiments.

Call of Duty's legacy then is one of "gamer culture", fiercely embroiled in charging the most for the least at the promise of it being the very bleeding edge of what your new several hundred dollar machine can do. The idea of the annual franchise sold more than consoles it sold promises to people, and executives loved that. The culture I speak of you can see everwhere in the mid to late 2000s and early to mid 2010s before the absurdity of it all really started to take root. From Mountain Dew cans boasting cool spec ops dudes in tactical gear and offering double XP should you buy the sugary sludge, to commercials starring then YouTube celebrities famous for blowing things up with military grade firearms on empty land. Gamer culture was and still is top priority in ensuring people don't question the quality or practices of the things they're being sold now. As long as a company can tug on the heartstrings of millions by saying things like "We grew up playing (insert late 90s/early 2000s video game title here) so we get what makes games fun." They have carte blanche to repackage, resell, and further monetize things that should not cost that much if anything at all. The idea that the name "Call of Duty" should stand as the base pricepoint to sell you a launcher to host all the games you could own while barely showing you the ones you do is that corporate greed taken to such a far extreme it's maddening to think about why people aren't more fucking angry about this.

The great Stephanie Sterling has long spoken on points like this about companies like Activision/Blizzard, Nintendo, and EA. Titans of the industry now only famous for how many people they layoff every few months and how much they charge for games that shouldn't cost that much. In a 2019 article on how Apex Legends ended up saving Electronic Arts from major stock crashes, she said the following:

"Last generation saw the rise of the “fee to pay” game. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 made online connectivity obligatory for modern consoles, and it was only a matter of time because videogame publishers smelled an opportunity to make money from constant access to their customers. Full premium expansions for videogames gave way to downloadable content, which in turn gave way to microtransactions appropriated from free-to-play games. Only, they never made the games containing them free.

New “AAA” titles saw their entire in-game economies overhauled for the worse in order to support microtransactions. Dead Space 3, notoriously, had to reduce all its horror elements and become a traditional action game to support a desperate weapon crafting economy. This was excused by pundits and spokespeople as offering players a “choice,” without addressing the fact that psychologically manipulative gameplay elements were not things we could opt out of in the games we were paying sixty dollars for.

Having gotten away with it, however, publishers only grew worse. With traditional DLC, season passes, and multiple special editions, many companies have more than quadrupled down on their monetization, and modern games are slowly - subtly - starting to resemble starter packs more than finished products."

-Stephanie Sterling, "How Apex Legends Saved EA's Ass... In Spite of EA", Feb. 12, 2019

In microcosm I think this perfectly encapsulates what the new legacy of things like Call of Duty is. Full and even fuller priced games being stocked with more and more transactions to pull the most out of the consumer without giving anything meaningful in return. Virtual rewards for real world currency that can be taken away at a moment's notice. Fortnite is most famous for popularizing the "battlepass" style of monetization and rotating cash shop storefronts. By having you purchase funny in-game tokens to buy your skins it hoped to have you forget about the 30$ you just spent on said tokens. Call of Duty and its piers have no such interests. No, cold hard cash is the only way it presents its purchasable garbage and that's what you pay each time you give in to one of it's dozens of FOMO inducing splash screens and reminders. You are taken advantage of for your money. That's not even to touch on the genre destroying concept of "crossover content" which only serves to further drive the idea of sales over substance, with more of your favourite characters and celebrities being added to these games in the form of poorly animated and uncanny models for 20$ a pop.

This new form of selling a legacy can only end in more of the same. More skilled artists, developers, and writers being laid off into an industry that cannot afford to hire them back. Infinite growth has already reached it's glass ceiling and is pretending that it simply cannot see it due to it's see-through nature. These giants of the industry, these beasts, must die to see meaningful creative growth return to such spheres as the triple A landscape. The old must give way to the new, the nostalgia has been wrung out like so many drops from an already dry sponge. Name's are not worth paying for, and neither are concepts. We must think and act critically of these systems if we are to escape them. Voting with your wallet is a false initiative. Participating in the market they have a stranglehold on cannot lead to their downfall. This is all to say the following: Stop buying this nonsense. Look more into the independent scene. Find your new favourite games through channels like itch.io or the "indie" spaces on the other major storefronts. Pay for the games that care about what they are. And for the love of everything stop purchasing US Army propaganda. I'd like to recommend the likes of Stephanie Sterling, as previously mentioned, who's journalistic integrity and strength has persevered through some of the worst of gaming's tumultuous history. Jacob Geller, who's introspective analysis of video games as pieces of living breathing art tell so much about the passion and craft that goes into something as commonplace as "a video game". And finally Noah Caldwell-Gervais, a man who I can only describe as one of the most earnest, honest, and just plain down-to-earth guys to ever grace the gaming landscape. These three along with countless others are avenues into further understanding the type of landscape video games exist in in the modern day. I hope you come away from either this article or their work with something new, be it a game or a thought on all this mess. Thanks for reading.

Sources and links:

"How Apex Legends Saved EA's Ass... In Spite of EA"

Stephanie Sterling's work

Analyzing Every Torture Scene in Call of Duty — All 46 of Them (Jacob Geller)

How Many Clicks Does It Take To Get to the Center of Diablo? [A Franchise Retrospective] (Noah Gervais)

[project-sekai-facts]

One of Rui's most frequently used inventions outside of Nenerobo is a celebratory confetti cannon that is occasionally mentioned in birthday menu voicelines.

(All TLs in this post are from Project SEKAI ENG)

Rui initially made the cannon for Tsukasa's birthday in 2022, with most Kamiyama High students mentioning it in their menu voicelines, as well as Emu.

(TL)

It reappeared for Emu's birthday in 2022 per her request, as mentioned in Rui's menu voiceline.

(TL1 + TL2)

Its most recent appearances were Saki's birthday in 2023, where Rui lent it to Tsukasa, and Toya's birthday in the same year, where Rui let him use it.

(TL1 + TL2)

There is also a giant party popper mentioned in Rui's voicelines for Rin and Len's anniversary in 2022, and An's birthday in 2023, which may be referring to the same cannon.

Given the inconsistent description of the cannon, it's very likely that there are multiple. The confetti launcher shown in the Kamikou 2nd years illustration for the countdown to the 3rd Anniversary (the artwork at the top of this post) is most likely meant to be one of the birthday cannons, and is currently the only time one of the cannons has actually been illustrated.

[fallout-lou-begas]

Not sure if you’ve been asked this before, but what are your favorite/essential mods for new vegas? I’ve only ever played it unmodded so I’m curious

Good question! I definitely have answered this before, but that was so many years ago. It's only now that I've taken the opportunity to overhaul and modernize my own mod set-up that I've been figuring out the answer to this question myself. But I can definitely talk you through the most important parts of my new load order.

First, however, every single person modding this game in this day and age absolutely needs to start with the Viva New Vegas modding guide, and follow every step to the letter. The recommendations are air-tight and the instructions are written and presented as if you, the reader, have never even seen so much as a computer before. It's amazing. The "Base" of VNV contains nothing but bugfixes, lightweight unofficial patches, performance optimizations, and other under-the-hood stuff designed to remedy FNV's infamous stability issues while maintaining a completely "vanilla" feel. This makes it absolutely necessary, in my opinion, even for people who don't actually want to play with any (other) mods. Especially crucial to this guide is its mandate to use Mod Organizer 2; if you're using Nexus Mod Manager, Vortex, or Fallout Mod Manager any time since Biden got elected, you are shooting yourself in the foot plain and simple. The best endorsement that I can give of Mod Organizer 2 is that it mods you game completely virtually, meaning that if you fuck your mods up beyond repair, you can just go to your actual FNV launcher in your root folder and boot up the vanilla game like nothing ever happened.

And the "Extended" section of Viva New Vegas consists of more modding tools, quality of life tweaks, content restorations, and a curated list of strongly recommended gameplay modifications that nevertheless all come down to your personal preference (though deviating from their provided list may make you use your brain a little bit when choosing the right compatibility patches, and so on).

This isn't going to cover every single thing that I play with, but here's everything that I would think to suggest to anybody who asked. With that said, here's Fallout "Lou" Begas's Mod Recommendations, 2024 Edition:

Viva New Vegas Extended: Lou's Preferences

VNV Extended recommends several gameplay modifications that come down to personal preference. I installed just about all of them, with a few exceptions (I don't care at all for B42 Optics, for example). Here's some specific details:

Just Assorted Mods has a hell of a lot of features but I actually enable are breath-holding, the vanilla sprint, and the loot menu (though I flip-flop often on using JAM's Bullet Time in place of V.A.T.S.). If you install VNV and boot up the game and wonder "what is all this fucking shit on my HUD," it's probably some of Just Assorted Mods's components. Just disable the ones you don't want in the in-game Mod Configuration Menu, which you will also have available if you followed the instructions for VNV Base.

Vigor is a modernized fork of JSawyer, the mod that was originally created by FNV's own director after the game's release that tweaked a lot of under-the-hood game settings and statistical balance to his personal preferences. JSawyer Ultimate Edition a more faithful modernization of the original JSawyer whereas Vigor is "a more lightweight alternative" that dials back some of the more drastic features of JSUE. Your choice of these, or none of them, is purely personal preference, and my preference is for Vigor. Any form of JSawyer is strongly recommended if you play in Hardcore Mode.

Simple Vigor Config is used in conjuncton with Vigor and is an intuitive and easy way to overwrite Vigor's gamesetting changes with your own preference. I use the config to adjust carry weight to a much more punishing (25 + 5*STR) formula that incentivizes the use of backpacks, mindful inventory management, and companion inventory space; and to increase the starvation, thirst, and sleep Hardcore Mode rates to 10, 5, and 14 respectively.

Desert Natural Weathers is the weather mod to end all weather mods, in my view, and it includes configuration for customizing the darkness and visibility of nighttime. This effectively obsoletes former dinosaurs like Darker Nights Ultimate Edition. Refer to the post that I made on DNUE's Nexus page here for a copy of my settings to darken those dang nights with DNW.

In AIStewie's Tweaks's nvse_stewie_tweaks.ini file, I set bCustomSpecialPoints = 1 and iNumPointsToAllocate = 35. This slightly reduced starting stat spread forces you to make tradeoffs in your character creation, because it starts with a perfect middle 5 in every stat. Every addition above average will require a subtraction below average. The "Essentials" INI included with VNV Base is all that most players will ever need, so this is my one specific personal tweak that'll keep you from scrolling through every single option in the whole damn thing (though I also recommend enabling the tweaks that hide all of your skill check tags in dialogue for more immersive and less gamified roleplaying in conversation: set bNoSkillTags, bRemoveFailedSuccessText, bRemoveRedOutline, and iRemoveTags to all = 1. )

Lou's Personally Valuable or Sentimental Tweaks and Fixes

Better Pause Menu Screen (Simple Blur). I play with an ultrawide resolution and the vanilla pause menu filter doesn't actually extend past 1920x1080. So this is really vital, lol.

Vanilla Animations Weapon Scale Fix. This mod will fix a common issue with custom weapons and animation mods where your weapon will become invisible because its scale has gotten stuck at 0.

Companion Carry Weight Fix. All companions in the game have an invisible attribute called "companion suite" that, among other things, halves their carrying capacity based on their actual stats. If you play with a super low carry weight formula like I do, you can see how this is a problem. Here's the solution.

Miscellaneous Tweaks Collection includes a few files that I get great use out of: No DLC Recipes Early (great unless you integrate DLC crafting ingredients into your base game somehow) and Vendors Have Throwables (why the fuck are throwing weapons so hard to find in vanilla!). There are others that I use as well but I recommend these two the most generally.

Lucky 38 Suite Upgrade Terminal Tweak is a very cute little mod that removes the ugly wall-mounted terminal and makes you purchase your suite upgrades from the actual computer on the desk in the master bedroom instead.

I Fought the Law - Simple NCR Start finally gives you a good reason to check out NCRCF if you're not siding with the Powder Gangers.

Hire Cass Early was my "dream mod" for the longest time, and thanks to some help, it's finally a reality. Simply pick up the letter that this mod adds to the Mojave Express office in Primm and you can recruit Cass right away (through the usual persuasive requirements) without ever stepping off the road from Goodsprings to the Mojave Outpost. Part of my ongoing "make @ikroah real" project.

Harder Strip Access. Getting into Vegas to finally confront Benny should feel like a tremendous accomplishment. This mod makes it so. Better pony up the caps or call in one hell of a favor, kid! With any kind of tougher economy mods, especially, this mod makes it wonderfully Herculean to just buy your way onto the Strip.

Balance Tweaks

Pseudo-Realistic Carry Weight - No Weightless Item Overhaul and Realistic Bottle Cap Weight. The former is actually an optional file; the main file just implements the the carry weight formula that I was coincidentally already using. The latter just forces you to think strategically about how much money you're walking around with. Can you tell that I love inventory management? Note that if you give bottlecaps weight, you should definitely let yourself drop them when necessary by editing Stewie's Tweaks (bShowCurrencyInContainers = 1).

Carry Weight Affects Speed, Med-Tek Trauma Kit (Lou's Version), and More Conditions to Fast Travel. The first appearance of my own mods on this list! These three mods in conjunction tie your encumbrance and your overall health to your mobility far more strictly. I love the balancing act of packing enough supplies for an excursion while leaving enough room for loot that I can still fast travel with, and the choice to get greedy with more loot than I can comfortably carry and just hope to not run into danger on my slow walk back toward a merchant. My tweaks to the classic Med-Tek Trauma Kit mod apply this level of emergent gameplay and resource management to your limb health, though it makes the game much more difficult unless your character specializes in Medicine. I haven't tried it myself, but Simple Healing System is fully configurable, modern mod that I've had my eyes on and that might be better for most general playstyles, and it might even be compatible in conjunction with my Med-Tek mod for extra intensity!

Better Charisma (Charisma Affects Dialogue Skill Checks) and/or Charisma Affects Reputation. I've always been very frustrated with how much of a meaningless dump stat Charisma is, and the phenomenon of the 1 CHA 100 Speech player character in general. These two mods, which you can use just one of or both together, give Charisma much more meaningful and palpable functionality.

Terrifying Presence (Lou's Version), speaking of Charisma, changes the requirement for this perk from Level 6 and 70 Speech to Level 2 and 6 CHA, making it much more accessible to more types of intimidating characters. This same mod includes alternate options to take it as a trait instead, with the drawback(s) of either tanking your Speech and Barter and/or increasing your addiction chance. See also: Less Snarky Terrifying Presence.

New Vegas Karma Rebalance is a great under-the-hood mod that makes FNV's nearly vestigial karma system less nonsensical without removing it or its effects on the player entirely. Thanks to this and Mass Ownership Tweaks, which is already included in VNV Extended's recommendation of Essential Vanilla Enhancements Merged, Cass won't hate your guts just for stealing a few things from Caesar's Legion at Cottonwood Cove, especially not after you've already killed them all.

Damage Multiplier solves the sluggish damage sponge problem that plagues Bethesda engine combat by simply multiplying all damage dealt globally, both by and to the player, by a factor of your choosing. I use 2.5x, which is usually enough to kill any level-appropriate human being with a single shot to the head. 2x should be the minimum. Combine with Combat Enhancer NVSE and NPCs Use Ammo for overall faster but much more ferocious and intense combat engagements.

Visuals and Animations

Third Person Camera Overhaul. Though I'm still getting used to its extremely specific configuration settings, this is vital for a third-person enjoyer like myself. It obsoletes any and all "dynamic camera" or "shoulder swap" mods of the past. Once you figure out how it works and what you like, you're set for life.

Realistic Movement and Dramatic Inertia. Although a little goofy, it has never felt better for me to physically move around in the game than it has before. I like the weight and get-up-and-go that this mod has for me as a player, but it's especially significant in firefights and other combat situations where, now, your targets can't dodge bullets by shifting direction instantly or stopping and turning on perfect dimes. For a single, less heavyweight alternative, try 360 Movement and Diagonal Movement together instead. Each pair of these mods is incompatible with the other pair, however.

B42 Loot, B42 Interact, and B42 Inject. I recommend a lot of the B42 family of animation overhauls in general (except B42 Optics, lol) because I just love seeing my character actually do the things they're doing. For B42 Loot, I use the included config file to disable the "force pull" effect, and for B42 Interact, there exists compatibility patches between it and its more third-person oriented counterpart Animated Ingestibles, but I'd only look into that if you know what you're doing (though, I do).

Character Kit Remake is a mod that I was turned onto recently. For a long time I have scoffed at character appearance overhauls out of nostalgia for those classic gamebryo engine potato-faces and what I thought was, to be blunt, the tasteless ineptitude of the actual overhauling. But I do really like this one, even if the showcase of screenshots do a really bad job of selling it. It looks a lot better in motion and in game, I promise. i think that these people are just not good digital photographers.

Height Randomizer. It's funny how much you can get attached to a minor character when they are, for whatever reason, especially tall or short. This lightweight mod just adds some height variance to all NPCs in the game that don't already have a non-normal 1.00 height setting in vanilla.

The Strip Groove. Dance on command. Endorsed.

Items, Economy, Crafting, Survival, Repair, Etc.

Gloves Galore (Lou's Version), Power Armor Gloves, Combat Armor Gloves, and White Glove Society Wear Gloves. Anyone who has followed me long enough on here should know that I have strong, totally normal feelings about gloves.

Armed to the Teeth Redux and literally any backpack mod. I've used this duffel bag forever, for example. I love these ones because I personally love when you can physically, literally see the things that a character is supposed to be carrying.

Flashlight NVSE. Another piece of Agnes Sands's arsenal, this is the one "old" mod that I can't quit. Even if it is a little janky, I've yet to find a better directional flashlight mod. Only install this is you think you can handle wrestling with it a little, and make sure your "Exterior" flashlight settings are all on the lowest quality regardless of computer specs (or else it causes flickering). It's a must-have for darker nights, too.

Famine is the last "loot scarcity" mod you'll ever need. Combine it with Harder, Barter, Faster, Stronger from the VNV Extended recommendations list for a really tough time affording even basic necessities without tailoring your build for mercantile success... which is just how I like it.

Cheaper Repair Costs. The vanilla formula for determining the cost of weapon and armor repairs at merchants is, in a word, fucked, where it literally costs twice the weapon's base value to repair it from broken. This mod lets you adjust that proportion so that you won't be better off literally selling and buying another gun in every single case. I play with a rate of 67% (which means that paying a merchant to repair a completely broken weapon from 0% health to 100% health will cost 67% of the weapon's base value).

Alternative Repairing does too much cool, practical shit to the base repairing system to even get into here. To keep it short, it intuitively incentivizes actually scrounging for all kinds of formerly useless junk that you can now scrap for spare parts. Check it out.

Water Overhaul. Ever play with a Universal Water Bottling mod and find things suddenly far too easy? Water Overhaul combines all the convenience and sense-making of bottling water anywhere with the much-needed tradeoff of truly purified water being much rarer. All that convenient H2O is now just radioactive enough to keep Goodsprings Source from singlehandedly breaking the survival economy of the game (not to mention the literal economy).

Cowboy Coffee and Coffee Grounds, my own mod that adds brewable coffee to the wasteland. While mostly just created because it's cute, it's really nice to have a reliable and palpable source of sleep deprivation relief when playing in Hardcore Mode.

Gun Oil From Animal Fat, another mod of mine that provides a cheaper, craftable, and less demanding but less effective repair option to complement Weapon Repair Kits. I patched this one recently to fix some old issues, and it's great for incentivizing emergent gameplay (since you need to hunt for meat, and cook the meat for fat, and combine the fat with loot to make the gun oil).

Sound

Less Constant Music and Passive Combat Music Tweaked do exactly what they say on the tin and are perfect for people who like to get immersed in the natural sound of their environment, especially if you're a chronically stealthy player like me and you've trained yourself to constantly listen for enemy footsteps. I do recommend keeping Less Constant Music disabled when you first start a game, though, because until I can figure out how to add an exception to it myself, it will remove the background music from character creation at Doc Mitchell's house more often than not, and I really like that music.

SPEAKING of Doc Mitchell's music, Try Not To Get Killed Anymore is one of the first mods I ever made and it has never left my load order. It simply replaces the musical sting that plays when you die with an emphatic, tolling bell and the refrain from Doc Mitchell's theme, plus an optional version that includes his ghostly voice telling you to try not to get killed anymore. Two of my other personal sound replacers are the Mysterious Stranger Level-up Theme, Simple Snap Sound Effects for Quest Updates, and Mechanical Camera VATS.

[piratesexmachine420]

If you want to experience pre-release Minecraft for yourself and learn more about what I'm babbling on about, you should check out the Betacraft Launcher. It's got access to all the community-archived versions that the official launcher ignores, plus proxies for the ancient skin and audio file servers that pre-alpha versions used -- among a couple other things.

Here's some recommendations for versions to check out:

pre-Classic rd-160052

Classic 0.0.12a_03

Classic 0.0.14a_08

Classic 0.30 (c0.30-s-1858 and c0.30-c-1900)

4k (4k-021742 and 4k-0144, kinda its own thing but I digress)

Indev 0.31 20100110

Indev 0.31 20100128-2304

Indev 20100223

Infdev 20100227-1433

Infdev 20100415

Infdev 20100608

Alpha v1.2.6

Beta 1.2_02

Beta 1.7.3

If you have a JDK installed, you can also build Minicraft from the source here.

One note about pre-infdev Minecraft: the controls can be a little...strange, maybe check out the Wiki's 'Guides' page for help. Stuff like right click toggling between building and multiple unrelated features that all use the 'b' key at one time or another. Not everything is listed under the controls options menu. Also: don't use the built-in level save menu for indev. Use 'save to file' instead. Pre-Alpha Minecraft was played mostly in-browser on minecraft.net and used cloud saves, those cloud save servers are obviously dead now and the Betacraft 'Offline DAT Save' addon only applies to, well, pre-.mclevel .dat save files.

Finally, a note for Linux users: the very oldest of these versions have some...strange hardcoded behavior regarding audio output. If you fire up Classic and can't hear anything (and you've checked that sound is supposed to be working in that version in the first place), even with the proxy enabled and the "sound" and "music" options turned on, you may find success by running the command "sudo modprobe -r snd_aloop". This will disable the ALSA loopback audio device, and hopefully the game will start trying to push sounds through something you can actually hear. If that doesn't work, look into output of "fuser -v /dev/snd/*", or ask me for help.

[evol-astraea]

Desperate PC Tenno calling for help!

Calling all the tech-savvy players here on Tumblr who may hopefully lend me and tech support a hand. Yes, the situation is that bad. More under the cut to spare a lengthy wall of text!

I've been experiencing totally random and sudden crashes with WF since a month and half, by now.

The game first freezes for less than a minute, then crashes to desktop bringing up the window to report crashes. This happens literally anywhere and anytime in the game. During mission, at the end of the mission, while idling in the Orbiter/base of operations, sitting in the pause menu, checking the settings menu. All kind of possible scenarios. Ah, and DX11 or DX12 make no difference either.

It's driving me - and tech support - insane. Because it is so HARD to pinpoint the root cause! Every log file so far has reported some kind of General Protection Failure (GPF) error followed by different numbers.

I'm running the game on a brand new, pre-built computer from Megaport. Which I moved to from my old potato of a PC back in late November. Specs are the following: Windows 11 Home (build 24H2) Intel Core I7-12700KF, 8x 3.60 Ghz + 4x 2.70 Ghz ASUS Prime Z790-A Wifi DDR5 NVidia GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Palit 12GB 2x 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 1 TB SSD 1000 Watt PSU

I have done everything tech support has suggested me to do and: - Uninstalled and re-installed the game, - Update drivers. Being a new computer, everything is pretty much up to date. I had to do a clean install for the GPU drivers only using DDU, though, - Verified game files, - Emptied the shader cache on the drive game is saved to, - Repaired Steam library, - Lowered graphic settings, - Attempted to launch and run Warframe in Clean Boot mode to exclude background programs/services <- unsuccessfully; Steam didn't work at all (which I kind of figured would happen) and trying to launch the game straight from the launcher...triggered a download of the game files in the App Data folder on main (C) drive. O_o The random crashes don't even appear in the Windows Event Viewer. Nowhere to be found. And believe me, I have looked into every single category. I've been keeping track of the time(s) of the crashes but, alas, found nothing that could possibly be related to those. (also, I'm not a computer expert so perhaps I'm doing things wrong)

So far, the only weird thing I've noticed is...Most of the times there seemingly is a "break" in between each series of crashes. A few days at worst, 10-12 days at best. Yes, I checked even the Task Scheduler utility on Windows. Found no program/app that runs automatically that matches with the timing/days when the crashes have occurred so far.

Really losing my mind to this. It's frustrating, it's unnerving, it's making me genuinely terrified of playing the game. And the reason I got this PC in the first place was being finally able to play my favorite game without worrying about being unable to because of my old (and obsolete) machine! Because I don't know when the next crash shall decide to happen and oh boy it's gonna be so fun losing progress. Or having a couple of players reasonably angry at me for suddenly poofing as host. I'm really sorry about that, folks.

I'm already considering the option of total formatting this computer, should there be no other way. But not before entirely giving up. And maybe make things a little less complicated for tech support team.

I can't thank these guys enough for their help and most importantly patience over the past month and half. This mess has been handed to three different people already and a solution hasn't been found yet.

So, if there are fellow Tenno on Tumblr who have either experienced something like this before and found a fix or are just more knowledgeable about computers and whatnot, your help would be GREATLY appreciated. ;.;

EDIT: I forgot to mention a few important things! - Hardware temperatures are within optimal range while in game (CPU never above 65°C, GPU has been running ice cold and has rarely exceeded 50°C so far, RAM is chilling at 45°C average). - GPU memory usage averages around at max (peak) 77% on HWInfo. - CPU usage I honestly need to check! D: - Ran disk cleanup, scans with sfc, chkdsk and DISM (all through command prompts ran as admin) and no issues were found. - Checked RAM health as well with Windows' memory diagnostic tool. However, it seems to give many false positives even on perfectly functional RAM banks. Looking for a more reliable alternative. - Warframe is the only game that keeps crashing on this PC. I haven't been getting any with other games/programs (Hades II; need to test how Ultrakill performs) or any warning signs (BSODs, freezes, sluggish PC, etc) that could suggest hardware failure.