#voxel language

[the-voxel]

I have replaced past/present/future verb tenses with safety/danger verb tenses. It developed as a shorthand to warn when there was danger before they had walls around their towns and still relied on having people watch for predators.

[a-calico-rabbit]

something interesting I’ve noticed about the hermits’ Guess The Build series is that over time certain trends appear, sort of like a voxel language.

we get streams of cobwebs for movement,

three-four block “thumb-people” w/ specific color schemes to denote people,

single-block-wide columns to denote limbs,

and probably a lot more i’ve missed, and a lot more to come!

[fights4users]

- “You really think the users are still there?”

- “They better be. I don’t wanna bust out of here and find nothing but a lot of cold circuits waiting for me.”

My original interpretation of this line was that “Cold circuits” meant cold/apathetic programs, basically rude or uncaring people. In part I still believe that, maybe in the more common language use of the phrase. In this case I think it’s a bit more/sadder than that.

I’m planning a post on the future going more in depth on the mcp because the more I rewatch, reread - the more absolutely horrific it really starts to be. Take this as a little precursor to that.

The MCP cannonically absorbs or kills you. You’re lucky to be in the games at least that’s a quick death. Imagine being in one of the cities he cut off- It never registered until the storybook put it this way but the factory domain- the city of “live ones” Yori is in… is a city he’s cut off from energy and left to die a impossibly slow death. They have just enough to function but it’s not real. They’ll either be absorbed or completely taken over- a hivemind situation where they’ve died and the MCP has taken over their functions.

It’s been doing this to several domains, some of which are mentioned to be completely dead and deserted. What trons saying here is essentially “I don’t want to break out and find nothing but the MCP waiting for me. I don’t want to break out to find everyone dead”…. Cold circuits. A stiff. A husk. Dead! He meant dead programs.

It’s interesting there’s a term for it too, that slow death. As when a program Derezzes they’re energy is Redispersed through the system and that’s it. There’s no evidence or body (if you count voxels) like the grid.

[qloof]

mfb/zerog oc doodless

^ i saw a video of a teacher/tutor that was like "i spoke the kid's mother language to get him to work when he was slacking off" and immediately thought abt masamune and voxel (the text says "i'm not kidding," but PhaerohSF noted to me that "冗談じゃねぇよ" would work better in character since masamune speaks that way in the jp dub ajdjdjdjdj ty🫡)

[grumpygreenwitch]

Machina Ex Machine 27-28

Let's just accept that if Gungnir's involved, so's some strong language.

As always, if you enjoy the writing, please like and reblog. There’s no algorithms here; my publicity is you. And if you’d like to buy me a Ko-fi, I certainly won’t complain.

1+2 - 3+3.5 - 4+5 - 6+.6.5 - 7+8 - 8.5+9 - 10+11 - 12+13 - 13.5+14 - 15+16 - 17+17.5 - 18+18.5 - 19+20 - 21+22 - 22.5+23+24 - 25+26 - 27-28 - 29.29.5 - 30+31 - 32+33 - 34+35 - 36+37 - 38+39 - 40+41 - 42+ AO3 Link

TWENTY SEVEN

The virus snarled, and stumbled yet again as the engine beneath it began to falter. How was this possible? How could this be happening? They weren’t real! They weren’t real, and still they were winning, they were winning and it was losing!

It saw one of its simulacra cut in half by a disk, and its hands curled into fists. The mimics that were still on the carrier’s dock suddenly stopped trying to get past the Ancilia shields, instead dashing back and forth, presenting mobile and much more difficult targets. Still, Pevirians were nothing if not fond of disk duels, and the disks did fly.

And were prompty snatched at by the simulacra. Most failed, disks were nimble things. But many, far too many, lunged up and clamped lopsided jaws on the disks as they went. A few even allowed themselves to be derezzed just so the creatures standing shoulder by shoulder with it could snatch the disk on that brief moment. Some leapt for disks that they had no hope of catching without plummeting back down to the derelict, and plummet they did, many to their derezzing. Gungnir saw one simulacra that, in realizing it was going to miss the virus’ ship, flung the disk at its creator and then spiraled away into the dark.

The black-and-yellow talons caught that disk with ease, and brought it close. For the first time, the virus found itself in possession of a relatively intact disk. Before, such a disk had either been shattered or attached to a program that it had infected. But not this time, no. It gleamed red with captive life in its grip. It twisted it slowly, head cocking -

Another disk whirred through the air and shattered the virus’ prize. It went through its head as well, not that it seemed to affect the monstrous entity any beyond making it stagger minutely back. As the shards of the Pevirian disk fell from its hand, both halves of its head turned to follow the disk as it returned to GAM’s hand.

In the midst of the chaos, the virus began to laugh.

“Fuck,” Gungnir swore under his breath. “GAM, how bad?”

GAM watched as the virus collapsed and flowed like a black and yellow tide over the deck of the derelict, under the feet of its creatures. Disks kept raining down, and it kept flowing, burying them all, expanding further and further until the entire deck of the derelict was covered. Simulacra began to sprout from its jagged, shifting eddies like gridbugs from a terrain tear.

Please, was all GAM could think.

Somewhere, a program began to scream in agony.

The Sentry had his answer. “You can’t save them,” he told Gungnir tersely.

The screaming spread like a plague. On the other end of the tank at their backs, the sounds choked, stuttered and changed in pitch, becoming a halting confused collection of hiccups and half-words.

Gungnir leapt onto the tank and raced along its length, the cockpit popping open and the crew peeking out to try and make sense of what was going on outside. There was a program staggering and twisting in the middle of a little pocket of empty space, all that those around him could put between them and him. He kept grabbing for a disk that was not there, and his circuitry seemed to be melting directly onto his substance, the rich red growing orange-hot and brighter still as the circuit pathways began to crack and shatter.

Gungnir put his lance through the program and cut him in half. The program was sentient enough to catch a bit of his own voxels in his hands before it collapsed completely, staring in horror at the virus-yellow of them.

“Fight!” Gungnir shouted at them, yanking his lance free. “I came here to fight, not to become that thing’s slave!” He pointed the blade at the derelict. “Do for them what you’d want them to do for you!”

The fighting exploded once again, but a tremendous amount of momentum had been lost on the side of the Pevirians, and the sudden realization that the virus could, and would, infect programs remotely if it got hold of their disks was a new and deadly variable that left every program onboard the carrier reeling. Far more than sharing a city, they were friends, shipmates, battlefield family. Many couldn’t bear to lift a hand against programs they considered siblings, mentors, protegees. At several points along the line Ancilia fell because an infected program wasn’t stopped quickly enough. In at least one case the fall was literal, the infected program tackling the Pevirian and throwing them both off the carrier and onto the derelict.

And all the while, chains and cables, energy wires and data-lines, everything and anything that could be attached to a makeshift grappling hook kept flying at the lower deck. If they weren’t immediately cut, they swarmed with a new batch of simulacra that fought with new and deadly coordination.

TWENTY EIGHT

The virus watched. It waited. It devoured nearly the entirety of the derelict to spit out more simulacra. It coiled itself around a few of the simpler catapults its infected were using to try and board the Pevirian carrier, shaping itself to its workings, the principles and constants and variables of it.

The Valravn flight came around for another pass at the derelict’s engines. Suddenly, long and jagged chains of black and yellow voxels came shooting at them from the ruins of the virus’ ship. It missed four of the lightjets; it clipped two badly enough that one collapsed and began to derezz, leaving a trail of voxels behind it.

It caught three.

“Get out, bail!” Amps shouted at his people, kicking up his lightribbon and twisting his ship around to try and cut through the virus’ substance. He saw the first pilot bail, wingchute opening as they abandoned the jet; he opened fire on the small vessel at once, knowing the pilot safe. Another Valravn came up behind him and started shooting as well, and the jet disintegrated.

The infected tentacle wrapped lashed out, forcing them all to bank away before they could target the other two jets. Another pilot ejected… and was immediately caught by that flailing tendril. The last pilot, miraculously, managed to get away.

“Scav!” Amps shouted, but the line gave him nothing but static. He barely dodged out of the way of another tendril. “Valravn to Drakkar Commcom, that thing’s got two of my jets and one of my pilots!”

���If it takes the jets, it won’t need pilots,” The unfamiliar voice that had taken over the Drakkar’s communications warned, strained but still ferociously self-controlled.

“Amps, if it wants gifts,” his SysAdmin growled on the main line, “make sure it remembers that it asked for them.”

“Yes, sir,” Amps gritted out, voice full of rage. “Valravn, fall back. Get your fellow birds to safety. Enzi, watch my back.”

“With you, sir,” his second replied, and a moment later her lightjet was on his left as they turned back to the derelict, their lightribbons trailing behind them.

A chain of that vile, infected substance came at them, but Enzi shot it to voxels. Amp kept his attention on the readouts in his cockpit. One of the lightjets was responding clearly; the other kept going out of synch. He waited until he got a solid ping from it, and then he hit the self-destruct for both.

A massive double explosion lit up the guts of the derelict about a third of the way along its length. Everything on its decks was either flung up or caught in the fiery destruction, slamming against the underside of the Drakkar, peppering the inside with shrapnel. The shockwave sent both programs and simulacra skidding and stumbling, and only those who still had cover from the Ancilia were left standing.

Or, in Gungnir’s case, behind the interlocked shields of the Sentry with him. GAM dropped to one knee and stood his ground against fire, shrapnel and shockwave. A simulacra crashed against his shields and whipped around to snap at them. The Sentry dropped a shield, caught the thing by the face, slammed it against the ground a few times and flung it hard the way it had come.

And then Gungnir and him stared, the SysAdmin’s mouth open in disbelief, as the virus soared up, spread out like a great poisonous mantle, carried aloft on the gale and the shockwave of the destruction it had provoked. Thin, whip-like tendrils shot out from its mass as its momentum began to falter, and caught on to the deck above them, the collection of catwalks and half-platforms that led eventually to the command deck. “That’s clever,” Gungnir had to admit.

“It’s that by far,” GAM replied, the black faceplate full of yellow reflections.

“We’ll never get up there in time.”

“We’ve better.” GAM was entirely too aware that the virus had placed itself between the greater share of the Pevirian forces and the control center of the carrier. “Can your lance still do the thing?”

Gungnir grinned wickedly at him, and ran at the wall, away from the docking channel. “What happened to not liking old times?”

“Hate them. Will absolutely take advantage of them.” GAM ran with him.

“You know this didn’t work the last time,” Gungnir reminded him.

“It worked well enough.”

They came to a stop close enough to the outer wall of the carrier to see their reflections on it. “We hit the wall,” Gungnir reminded GAM.

“We caught the wall,” GAM corrected Gungnir.

“Sentry, did you turn into an optimist while I wasn’t looking?” The SysAdmin leapt onto GAM’s shoulders. The Sentry dropped his shield and twisted his arms around Gungnir’s legs… and took off running full-tilt at the docking channel. “You know I’ve never gotten the timing right with anyone else?”

“You never got it right with me!” GAM exclaimed, but if anything he tried to go faster, wondering why it seemed he was doomed to spend his entire existence surrounded by crazy programs.

[satoshi-mochida]

PLAYISM and Alphawing announce roguelite action game Metal Bringer for PC

Gematsu Source

Publisher PLAYISM and Samurai Bringer developer Alphawing have announced roguelite action game Metal Bringer for PC. It will launch via Steam in 2024 with English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese language support.

Get the details below.

About

Samurai Bringer, Alphawing’s previous game, is a Japanese roguelite action game released in 2022, where you play as Susanoo and defeat world-famous Japanese samurai as you collect combat techniques to create your own fighting style. It has received over 800 reviews on Steam with a Very Positive rating. Metal Bringer is the second game in the Bringer series, and this time, the setting is completely different—in this game, you fight in a science-fiction world with androids and giant robots in horde-based combat that’s even more satisfying than the last game, and of course, your combat actions will evolve as you fight. The Steam page is now up, so don’t forget to wishlist the game!

The Story

“The sky is blue, infinitely high, and infinitely vast… Whose words were these again…? Ah, I remember… It was about a virtual reality Rudra told me about. A fairy tale. How many years has it been since humanity took refuge underground? No one alive has ever seen a blue sky. And now, I’m trapped in the depths, in a small, lifeless room. Just how long have I been here…?” A young girl named Suria wakes up in a laboratory and finds out that she has been put in cyrosleep for 1000 years without her knowledge. In order to search for the rest of humanity, she builds Labor with her trusty Buds, and sends them off to investigate…

Highly Customizable Player Characters

Build and control android soldiers called “Labor,” or have them pilot giant machines called “Arms.” Each and every Labor and Arms you build is highly customizable. You can change the color and appearance of their features, or swap out parts to change their fighting styles. The sheer variety in character customization will allow you to create and fight with the mech of your dreams.

The More You Play, the Stronger You Get

In Samurai Bringer, you could mix and match combat techniques to create every step of your very own action combos. But in Metal Bringer, you instead collect “disks,” which contain apps that are installed onto your Labor. These apps strengthen your character and power up your actions in an easier and more intuitive way, making it all the more exciting and satisfying to mow down hordes of enemies as your character keeps growing stronger.

New Technologies, Both Visual and Audio

This game uses the same voxel art style as Samurai Bringer, but just like Samurai Bringer, it also implements a real-time pixel art generating system, and will also feature the newest raytracing technology for beautifully lit environments. The music too is made with the newest technology, as it is played in real time and changes according to the situation.

All-Star Creative Team

The key art and Suria’s character design is done by Suzuhito Yasuda, and on the writing team, we have Sami Shinosaki on board!

Suzuhito Yasuda (Twitter) – Illustrator, manga artist, and character designer for multiple popular games and media, such as Durarara!! and the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor series.

Sami Shinosaki – Novelist. Known for the novelizations of the Armored Core and Fire Emblem series.

Word from the Developer

Hello, I’m Takahama, the development director at Alphawing. Metal Bringer is set in a completely different world from Samurai Bringer, where you can use humanoid robots called Labor and giant mechs developed from heavy machinery called Arms to wipe out waves and waves of enemies! We’ve developed new technologies for this game, such as a technique that renders pixels in real time, and another technology that plays music in real time to make it feel as if you were accompanied by live music! Right now, we’re preparing a demo that focuses on the battle aspect of the game. We hope a lot of people will stop by our next event to try out the game!

Play the Demo at PAX West 2023

It’s been four whole years since PLAYISM last participated in PAX West, but this year we’ll be there in Seattle, from September 1 to 4! We’ll be showcasing the very first playable demo of Metal Bringer at the PLAYISM booth, so please stop by the Seattle Convention Center to try it out! Everyone who tries out the Metal Bringer demo at the event will receive a special postcard.

Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.

Announce Trailer

English

[linuxgamenews]

Aground Zero RPG Gives New Life to Base-Building Games

Aground Zero RPG is getting ready to launch the colony sim and base-building game on Linux, Steam Deck, as well as Windows PC soon. All thanks to the creative minds at Fancy Fish Games. Which is still going strong via Steam Early Access with 90% Very Positive reviews. Big news for fans of base-building and survival games— Aground Zero RPG is officially launching out of Early Access on April 4th! After a year of community-driven updates and improvements, Fancy Fish is finally bringing the full 1.0 experience to Linux and Steam Deck. If you’ve been holding off on diving into Aground Zero RPG, now’s the perfect time. This voxel-style colony sim and base-building RPG takes place in the same universe as Aground (2020) but brings a new 3D spin to the adventure. Whether you played the original or not, you can jump right in and start building, exploring, and maybe even taking to the stars.

Survive, Build, and Explore – Solo or with Friends

The world as we knew it is gone. You wake up deep underground with nothing but a quirky AI companion to guide you. Your mission? Find survivors, rebuild civilization, and reach the surface — and beyond. But how you do it is entirely up to you. Science, magic, dragons, spaceships—yes, spaceships! Aground Zero RPG has it all in the mix. And with multiplayer, you can team up with friends for co-op survival, whether on the couch, locally, or online. While offering solid Xbox controller support, which you can find on Amazon.

Aground Zero RPG 1.0 Trailer

What’s New Since Early Access?

Over the past year, Fancy Fish has packed in tons of content, shaped by player feedback. Here’s some of what you’ll find in Aground Zero RPG at launch:

Multiplayer – Play with friends locally or online

Multiple story endings – Your choices matter

Spaceships! – Build, customize, and explore the cosmos

Dragons – Raise, evolve, and ride them into battle

Magic & Science paths – Become a spell-slinging wizard or a tech-savvy inventor

The Shattered Moon – Build a moon base, because why not?

New planets & space stations – Expand your reach beyond Earth

The title will also launch with full translations in seven languages—French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and English. so even more players can enjoy the adventure.

The Team Behind Aground Zero RPG

Fancy Fish is a small indie studio led by a husband - and - wife duo, known for crafting unique, quirky titles like Aground (which became a hit in 2020). They’ve poured their passion into development, making it a release where creativity, survival, and exploration collide in the best way possible.

Ready to Play?

You can wishlist or buy Aground Zero colony sim and base-building RPG on Steam Early Access now. Along with support for Linux, Steam Deck (verified), and Windows PC. If you also want to stay in the loop, join the official Discord for updates. Also, don’t forget to check out the game’s original soundtrack by Chase Bethea, available for pre-order now. Mark your calendars — April 4th is when the 1.0 launch takes flight. Whether you’re into colony sims, space adventures, or just like a good survival challenge, this one’s got something for you!

[finalmajorprojectyear2kv]

Research - Ethical, Cultural & Environmental

Ethical Considerations

Accessibility

I have a list of a variety of accessibility features I could implement into my game from control methods, to gameplay adjustments to user interface considerations. Adding accessibility features opens the game to a larger audience and is vital for a successful game.

Privacy

The theming of the game, cyberpunk, has many tropes about a lack of data security and personal privacy for the common person. I would like for these ideas to be explored somehow in my game, as I find these very interesting. This could be done through the game level, tutorial text or maybe just the general world building.

Legality

For my project I would like to use models to make my levels and systems look more appealing, as I really enjoy creating a whole finished product rather than focussing on a incredibly in depth system.

These Voxel Hover Bike Assets by maxparata are just what I need for my game, which brings in the question of if I can or can not use these for my game. Maxparata says on the itch.io page that 'You can use it for any kind of project that you have (commercial or not) : game, movies, sceneries, 3D printing etc… My name (Max Parata) in your credits would be highly appreciated'. This means that under the Creative Commons License (CC License) it would be a CC BY, meaning they can be used in either a commercial or non-commercial as long as credit is given to the original creator.

Cultural Considerations

Game Level

I would love for different areas of the city to be themed around different cultures, and their unique architectures. For example, Cyberpunk's Japantown is heavily influenced by Japanese decor and architecture, and many residents of this area can also be heard speaking Japanese.

Language

The game will be made for English, with all the text for menus and tutorials being in English. However, I could add support for different languages by either using iconography for different UI elements, or alternatively just adding in multiple language options for players.

Environmental Considerations

Global Warming

With one of my planned features being a dynamic weather system I can create more exaggerated weather based on predictions on the effects of global warming ; some forms of exaggerated weather could be : heavy rainfall, heat waves, insect outbreaks and flooding depending on where my city would be based globally. Not only does this represent the problems with global warming, but it also fits in with the industrial and corporate tones in the cyberpunk theme.

Fuel Sources

The flying bikes and cars could utilise different fuel sources as a means of propulsion, this could change the in-game sound of the vehicle as well as any visual effect it might produce.

Hydrogen :

Split hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons, the latter of which creates an electrical current before being reuniated back with the protons and oxegyn, creating water and heat as the only byproduct. Although this is seems like the greenest fuel source, the production of hydrogen is costly and requires a lot of electricity.

Electricity :

Electricity stored in batteries is used to power an electric motor, the batteries are often made with lithium which comes with many welfare concerns from the countries that supply it. The electrical grids that charge your batteries also aren't fully green energy, meaning that the car isn't either.

Nuclear :

Nuclear energy has been barely explored for use in vehicles, with it's most serious consideration being an early concept from Ford in the 1950s. The Ford Nucleon was to be a steam-powered engine where the water was heated by a fission reaction in the back of the vehicle. This concept never came to fruition as the amount of shielding needed to prevent radioactive leakage proved too much for a small vehicle like a car.

However, the concept still remains and has been reimagined for other modes of transport like this flying hotel/cruise. This plane would utilise 20 electric engines that are powered by an on-board nuclear reactor. Although the use of nuclear energy is more feasible in this case, as the vehicle is much larger to accomodate it, it raises other issues like runway space.

Magnets :

For many years the use of magnets to levitate vehicles has been experimented with to completely remove friction between the vehicle and the ground, ultimately leading to higher maximum speeds. The main use has been in Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) trains ; as trains run on rails it is a lot easier to set up infrastructure than to create a whole new road-like type for personal vehicles.

Fuel Types used in Racing

As of 2022 the F1 cars switched from a high octane rated fuel, to a lower rated 87-octane fuel with a 10% ethanol content. These types of fuel are chemically very similar to the stuff you can get a your standard petrol station.

However, it was planned to switch to a 100% sustainable fuel type for the 2025 season with the same energy denseness so that the performance of the cars doesn't change.

[maximuswolf]

Searching for a mobile game i used to play

Searching for a mobile game i used to play Hello, I'm searching for a mobile game, here's what I remember : the visual style was like Crossy Road or Shooty Skies, it is to say Voxels. You had to slide around a 3D level avoiding obstacles and reach the end. You could change characters, there were numerous, and each one could change some gameplay element or the environnement etc.If you have any idea, don't hesitate and post it here ! Thank you (excuse my English it is not my native language) Submitted January 05, 2025 at 09:04AM by Pepicolamaster https://ift.tt/Q6RLcYB via /r/gaming

[the-voxel]

Anyone think they can help me make a copy paste of that right clump of letters? It's for the language doc. This is how I want to signify over and under tones.

[ce3dprojects]

research

what is a voxel?

A voxel is a three-dimensional counterpart to a pixel. It represents a value on a regular grid in a three-dimensional space. Voxels are frequently used in the visualization and analysis of medical and scientific data.

some Voxel artwork

Sir Carma

Crossy Road

The voxel style makes people think of Crossy Road because of its shared visual language: blocky, simple geometry, a playful and nostalgic feel, and a minimalist design that prioritizes clear and recognizable shapes. While Crossy Road doesn't use true voxels in its creation, it embodies the same kind of simplified, geometric, and modular design that voxel art is known for.

Minecraft

The voxel style immediately makes people think of Minecraft because the game popularized this visual style in a way few others have. Voxels are essentially 3D pixels, which are cubic units that make up the space in a 3D digital environment. The aesthetic of Minecraft is defined by its use of these cubes to create a blocky, grid-based world where everything from landscapes to characters is built from simple, blocky shapes.

Teardown

The voxel style makes people think of Teardown because of the game's unique use of block-based, destructible environments that combine realism with creative problem-solving. The detailed and interactive use of voxels in the game supports its core gameplay of breaking, building, and crafting within a fully simulated world, creating an experience that is both visually striking and satisfying to play.

Fugl

The voxel style makes people think of Fugl because of the game’s use of blocky, stylized graphics to create a beautiful, open-world environment that encourages exploration and freedom. The simplicity and organic feel of the voxel art complement the game’s themes of nature, discovery, and transformation, creating a serene and immersive experience for the player.

The Touryst

The voxel style makes people think of The Touryst because of its use of simplified, blocky graphics that contribute to a welcoming and vibrant game world. This style supports exploration, puzzle-solving, and adventure in an open environment, perfectly matching the game’s tone of fun, relaxation, and discovery. The approachable design also ensures that the game is engaging without being overwhelming, making it an enjoyable experience for players.

Bonfire Peaks

The voxel style makes people think of Bonfire Peaks because of its clean, modular, and minimalist aesthetic that enhances the game’s puzzle-solving mechanics and atmosphere. The use of simple, blocky shapes aligns with the game’s focus on clear, interactive, and logically challenging gameplay, while also contributing to the cozy, inviting feel that characterizes Bonfire Peaks. The voxel approach makes the puzzles engaging and intuitive, ensuring that players can easily navigate and manipulate the environment to achieve their goals.

[this-week-in-rust]

This Week in Rust 563

Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned? Tag us at @ThisWeekInRust on X (formerly Twitter) or @ThisWeekinRust on mastodon.social, or send us a pull request. Want to get involved? We love contributions.

This Week in Rust is openly developed on GitHub and archives can be viewed at this-week-in-rust.org. If you find any errors in this week's issue, please submit a PR.

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Updates from Rust Community

Official

Security advisory for the standard library (CVE-2024-43402)

Newsletters

This Month in Rust OSDev: August 2024

This Week In Bevy - Required Components, Curves, and the Bevy CLI Working Group

Project/Tooling Updates

FreeBSD considers Rust in the base system

GCC Rust - August 2024 Monthly report

This month in Servo: tabbed browsing, Windows buffs, devtools, and more!

iroh 0.24.0 - Upgrading to Quinn 11

Swiftide 0.9 - Fluvio, Lancedb and RAGAS support

Next-gen builder macro Bon 2.1 release 🎉. Compilation is faster by 36% 🚀

Nutype 0.5.0: the newtype with guarantees supports custom errors now

BackON Reaches v1

Observations/Thoughts

Defeating Coherence in Rust with Tacit Trait Parameters

Rust On Illumos

Rust for Linux revisited

Async Rust can be a pleasure to work with (without Send + Sync + 'static)

Rust - A low-level echo server using io_uring

Deploying Rust in Existing Firmware Codebases

Your own little memory strategy

Code Generation with GraphQL in Rust

How to deadlock Tokio application in Rust with just a single mutex

Is this trait sealed, or not sealed — that is the question

Beyond Ctrl-C: The dark corners of Unix signal handling

Rust to Assembly: Understanding the Inner Workings of Rust

K-Means Image Compression

Hey Rustaceans: Rust freelancers do exist!

Why Rust needs scoped generics

Rust Walkthroughs

[series] [video] Rust for Beginners in Arabic

[video] Crafting an Interpreter in Rust #01: Basic Bytecode Chunks

[video] Crafting an Interpreter in Rust #02: First Virtual Machine

[video] Explore Linux TTY, process, signals w/ Rust - Part 2/3 (signal, proc, IPC egs)

Miscellaneous

Whither the Apple AGX graphics driver?

Counting iterations - count() vs collect().len()

[audio] Learn Rust, Train Doctors – Interview With Caroline Morton

[video] Creating a modding system with Rust and WebAssembly [Voxel Devlog #21]

[video] From Zero to Async in Embedded Rust

Crate of the Week

This week's crate is vimania-uri-rs, a VIM plugin for file and URI handling.

Thanks to sysid for the self-suggestion!

Please submit your suggestions and votes for next week!

Calls for Testing

An important step for RFC implementation is for people to experiment with the implementation and give feedback, especially before stabilization. The following RFCs would benefit from user testing before moving forward:

RFCs

No calls for testing were issued this week.

Rust

No calls for testing were issued this week.

Rustup

No calls for testing were issued this week.

If you are a feature implementer and would like your RFC to appear on the above list, add the new call-for-testing label to your RFC along with a comment providing testing instructions and/or guidance on which aspect(s) of the feature need testing.

Call for Participation; projects and speakers

CFP - Projects

Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but did not know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!

Some of these tasks may also have mentors available, visit the task page for more information.

If you are a Rust project owner and are looking for contributors, please submit tasks here or through a PR to TWiR or by reaching out on X (formerly Twitter) or Mastodon!

CFP - Events

Are you a new or experienced speaker looking for a place to share something cool? This section highlights events that are being planned and are accepting submissions to join their event as a speaker.

If you are an event organizer hoping to expand the reach of your event, please submit a link to the website through a PR to TWiR or by reaching out on X (formerly Twitter) or Mastodon!

Updates from the Rust Project

416 pull requests were merged in the last week

ABI compat check: detect unadjusted ABI mismatches

rustc_target: Add various aarch64 features

ub_checks intrinsics: fall back to cfg(ub_checks)

add aarch64_unknown_nto_qnx700 target - QNX 7.0 support for aarch64le

add needs-unwind compiletest directive to libtest-thread-limit and replace some Path with path in run-make

add an ability to convert between Span and visit::Location

add missing needs-llvm-components directives for run-make tests that need target-specific codegen

add repr to the allowlist for naked functions

const fn stability checking: also check declared language features

const-eval: do not make UbChecks behavior depend on current crate's flags

coverage: rename CodeRegion to SourceRegion

create opaque definitions in resolver

debug-fmt-detail option

deny wasm_c_abi lint to nudge the last 25%

deny imports of rustc_type_ir::inherent outside of type ir + new trait solver

do not call source_span when not tracking dependencies

don't make statement nonterminals match pattern nonterminals

don't use TyKind in a lint

emit specific message for time<=0.3.35

enable Miri to pass pointers through FFI

exit: explain our expectations for the exit handlers registered in a Rust program

expand NLL MIR dumps

fix LLVM ABI NAME for riscv64imac-unknown-nuttx-elf

get rid of predicates_defined_on

implement a first version of RFC 3525: struct target features

interpret, codegen: tweak some comments and checks regarding Box with custom allocator

interpret/visitor: make memory order iteration slightly more efficient

interpret: add missing alignment check in raw_eq

interpret: do not make const-eval query result depend on tcx.sess

linker: synchronize native library search in rustc and linker

lint that warns when an elided lifetime ends up being a named lifetime (elided_named_lifetimes)

llvm-wrapper: adapt for LLVM API changes

make decoding non-optional LazyArray panic if not set

make it possible to enable const_precise_live_drops per-function

make the "detect-old-time" UI test more representative

make the const-unstable-in-stable error more clear

more unreachable_pub

move 'tcx lifetime off of impl and onto methods for CrateMetadataRef

move the Windows remove_dir_all impl into a module and make it more race resistant

process.rs: remove "Basic usage" text where not useful

re-enable android tests/benches in alloc/core

refactor: standardize duplicate processes in parser

rename BikeshedIntrinsicFrom to TransmuteFrom

replace walk with visit so we dont skip outermost expr kind in def collector

rewrite lint_expectations in a single pass

riscv64imac: allow shadow call stack sanitizer

separate core search logic with search ui

simplify some extern providers

std: move allocators to sys

stop storing a special inner body for the coroutine by-move body for async closures

stop using ty::GenericPredicates for non-predicates_of queries

tweak some attributes to improve panic_immediate_abort

use a reduced recursion limit in the MIR inliner's cycle breaker

use equality when relating formal and expected type in arg checking

use unsafe extern blocks throughout the compiler

wasi: fix sleeping for Duration::MAX

miri: add tokio io test

miri: make TB tree traversal bottom-up

miri: make Tree Borrows Provenance GC compact the tree

miri: support blocking for epoll

apply size optimizations to panic machinery and some cold functions

derive(SmartPointer): assume pointee from the single generic and better error messages

add fmt::Debug to sync::Weak<T, A>

add missing read_buf stub for x86_64-unknown-l4re-uclibc

allow BufReader::peek to be called on unsized types

core: use compare_bytes for more slice element types

fix Pin::set bounds regression

improved checked_isqrt and isqrt methods

partially stabilize feature(new_uninit)

hashbrown: add HashTable::iter_hash, HashTable::iter_hash_mut

cargo: resolve: Report incompatible-with-rustc when MSRV-resolver is disabled

cargo: resolve: Report incompatible packages with precise Rust version

cargo: pkgid: Allow open namespaces in PackageIdSpec's

cargo: fix elided lifetime

rustfmt: implement 2024 expression overflowing

clippy: extend implicit_saturating_sub lint

clippy: new lint: zombie_processes

clippy: remove feature=cargo-clippy argument

rust-analyzer: extra sugar auto-completion async fn ... in impl trait for async fn in trait that's defined in desugar form

rust-analyzer: fix handling of for in impl T for A in function body

rust-analyzer: add explicit enum discriminant assist

rust-analyzer: do not report missing unsafe on addr_of[_mut]!(EXTERN_OR_MUT_STATIC)

rust-analyzer: create an assist to convert closure to freestanding fn

rust-analyzer: implement cast typecheck and diagnostics

rust-analyzer: implement object safety and its hovering hint

rust-analyzer: suggest name in completion for let_stmt and fn_param

rust-analyzer: support fn-ptr and fn-path types for lifetime elision hints

rust-analyzer: fix incorrect symbol definitions in SCIP output

rust-analyzer: std::error::Error is object unsafe

rust-analyzer: consider field attributes when converting from tuple to named struct and the opposite

rust-analyzer: consider indentation in the "Generate impl" and "Generate trait impl" assists

rust-analyzer: don't add reference when it isn't needed for the "Extract variable" assist

rust-analyzer: fix TokenStream::to_string implementation dropping quotation marks

rust-analyzer: fix lifetime elision inlay hints breaking for ranged requests

rust-analyzer: fix name resolution of shadowed builtin macro

rust-analyzer: handle attributes correctly in "Flip comma"

rust-analyzer: lifetime hint panic in non generic defs

rust-analyzer: use Result type aliases in "Wrap return type in Result" assist

rust-analyzer: provide an option to hide deprecated items from completion

rust-analyzer: recategorize config classes

Rust Compiler Performance Triage

This week we had some trouble with our performance bot, but luckily the issue has been resolved. In the end, we saw much more improvements than regressions.

Triage done by @kobzol. Revision range: acb4e8b6..6199b69c

Summary:

(instructions:u) mean range count Regressions ❌ (primary) 0.3% [0.2%, 0.4%] 8 Regressions ❌ (secondary) 0.7% [0.2%, 1.5%] 9 Improvements ✅ (primary) -0.8% [-3.4%, -0.2%] 158 Improvements ✅ (secondary) -0.7% [-2.3%, -0.2%] 96 All ❌✅ (primary) -0.7% [-3.4%, 0.4%] 166

2 Regressions, 3 Improvements, 1 Mixed; 3 of them in rollups 19 artifact comparisons made in total

Full report here

Approved RFCs

Changes to Rust follow the Rust RFC (request for comments) process. These are the RFCs that were approved for implementation this week:

Add "crates.io: Crate Deletions" RFC

Merge RFC 3529: Add named path bases to cargo

Final Comment Period

Every week, the team announces the 'final comment period' for RFCs and key PRs which are reaching a decision. Express your opinions now.

RFCs

No RFCs entered Final Comment Period this week.

Tracking Issues & PRs

Rust

[disposition: merge] Update catch_unwind doc comments for c_unwind

[disposition: merge] stabilize const_extern_fn

[disposition: merge] stabilize const_float_bits_conv

[disposition: merge] Make destructors on extern "C" frames to be executed

[disposition: merge] Don't warn empty branches unreachable for now

[disposition: merge] Tracking Issue for char::MIN

[disposition: merge] Tracking issue for #![feature(entry_insert)]

Cargo

No Cargo Tracking Issues or PRs entered Final Comment Period this week.

Language Team

No Language Team Tracking Issues or PRs entered Final Comment Period this week.

Language Reference

No Language Reference RFCs entered Final Comment Period this week.

Unsafe Code Guidelines

No Unsafe Code Guideline Tracking Issues or PRs entered Final Comment Period this week.

New and Updated RFCs

[new] [RFC] code name support

[new] Generic Integers V2: It's Time

[new] Simplify lightweight clones, including into closures and async blocks

Upcoming Events

Rusty Events between 2024-09-04 - 2024-10-02 🦀

Virtual

2024-09-04 | Virtual (Indianapolis, IN, US) | Indy Rust

Indy.rs - Typestate Pattern in Rust: With a Strict Builder Example

2024-09-05 | Virtual (Buenos Aires, AR) | LambdaClass

Meetup Rust Septiembre [Spanish]

2024-09-05 | Virtual (Charlottesville, NC, US) | Charlottesville Rust Meetup

Crafting Interpreters in Rust Collaboratively

2024-09-05 | Virtual (Nürnberg, DE) | Rust Nuremberg

Rust Nürnberg online

2024-09-10 | Virtual (Dallas, TX, US) | Dallas Rust

Second Tuesday

2024-09-10 - 2024-09-13 | Hybrid: Virtual and In-Person (Montreal, QC, CA) | Rust Conf

Rust Conf 2024

2024-09-12 | Virtual (Berlin, DE) | OpenTechSchool Berlin + Rust Berlin

Rust Hack and Learn | Mirror: Rust Hack n Learn Meetup

2024-09-12 | Virtual (Rotterdam, NL) | Bevy Game Development

Bevy Meetup #6

2024-09-16 | Virtual | Women in Rust

👋 Community Catch Up

2024-09-17 | Virtual (Washington, DC, US) | Rust DC

Mid-month Rustful

2024-09-18 | Virtual and In-Person (Vancouver, BC, CA) | Vancouver Rust

Cells

2024-09-18 - 2024-09-20 | Hybrid - Virtual and In-Person (Vienna, AT) | Linux Plumbers Conference

Rust Microconference in LPC 2024

2024-09-19 | Virtual (Charlottesville, NC, US) | Charlottesville Rust Meetup

Crafting Interpreters in Rust Collaboratively

2024-09-19 | Virtual and In-Person (Seattle, WA, US) | Seattle Rust User Group

September Meetup

2024-09-24 | Virtual (Dallas, TX, US) | Dallas Rust

Last Tuesday

2024-09-26 | Virtual (Charlottesville, NC, US) | Charlottesville Rust Meetup

Rusty secure communication on embedded devices

2024-10-02 | Virtual (Vancouver, BC, CA) | Vancouver Postgres

Leveraging a PL/RUST extension to protect sensitive data in PostgreSQL

Africa

2024-09-06 | Kampala, UG | Rust Circle Kampala

Rust Circle Meetup

Asia

2024-09-07 - 2024-09-08 | Shanghai, CN | Rust China

Rust China Conf: Shanghai

2024-09-09 | Ramat Gan, IL | Coralogix

Rust as Scale

2024-09-14 | Bangalore, IN | Rust Bangalore

September 2024 Rustacean meetup

Europe

2024-09-04 | Oxford, UK | Oxfrod Rust Meetup Group

More Rust - Generics, constraints, safety.

2024-09-11 | Reading, UK | Reading Rust Workshop

Reading Rust Meetup

2024-09-17 | Leipzig, DE | Rust - Modern Systems Programming in Leipzig

Topic TBD

2024-09-17 | Trondheim, NO | Rust Trondheim

Making AI-models perform tasks, in Rust!

2024-09-18 | Moravia, CZ | Rust Moravia

Rust Moravia Meetup (September 2024)

2024-09-18 | Vienna, AT + Virtual | Linux Plumbers Conference

Rust Microconference in LPC 2024 (Sep 18-20)

2024-09-21 | Stockholm, SE | Stockholm Rust

Ferris' Fika Forum #5

2024-09-23 | Bratislava, SK | Bratislava Rust Meetup Group

Rust Meetup by Sonalake #6

2024-09-24 | Stockholm, SE | Stockholm Rust

Rust meetup #70

2024-09-26 | Aarhus, DK | Rust Aarhus

Talk Night

2024-09-27 | Mannheim, DE | Hackerstolz e.V.

Hackerstolz Stammtisch Rhein-Neckar

2024-10-02 | Stockholm, SE | Stockholm Rust

Rust Meetup @Funnel

North America

2024-09-05 | Lehi, UT, US | Utah Rust

Shooting Stars: Create a game from scratch in 25 minutes!

2024-09-05 | Mountain View, CA, US | Mountain View Rust Meetup

Rust Meetup at Hacker Dojo

2024-09-05 | Portland, OR, US | PDX Rust

PDX Rust September!

2024-09-05 | St. Louis, MO, US | STL Rust

Lifetimes

2024-09-07 | Longview, TX, US | Longview Code and Coffee

Longview Code and Coffee

2024-09-08 | Cambridge, MA, US | Boston Rust Meetup

Northeastern Rust Lunch, Sep 8

2024-09-10 - 2024-09-13 | Hybrid: Virtual and In-Person (Montreal, QC, CA) | Rust Conf

Rust Conf 2024

2024-09-11 | Boulder, CO, US | Boulder Rust Meetup

Boulder Elixir Meetup

2024-09-16 | Cambridge, MA, US | Boston Rust Meetup

Somerville Union Square Rust Lunch, Sep 16

2024-09-17 | San Francisco, CA, US | San Francisco Rust Study Group

Rust Hacking in Person

2024-09-18 | Virtual and In-Person (Vancouver, BC, CA) | Vancouver Rust

Cells

2024-09-19 | Virtual and In-Person (Seattle, WA, US) | Seattle Rust User Group

September Meetup

2024-09-21 | Longview, TX, US | Longview Code and Coffee

Longview Code and Coffee

2024-09-24 | Detroit, MI, US | Detroit Rust

Rust Community Meetup - Ferndale

2024-09-25 | Austin, TX, US | Rust ATX

Rust Lunch - Fareground

If you are running a Rust event please add it to the calendar to get it mentioned here. Please remember to add a link to the event too. Email the Rust Community Team for access.

Jobs

Please see the latest Who's Hiring thread on r/rust

Quote of the Week

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person ever to single handedly write a complex GPU kernel driver that has never had a memory safety kernel panic bug (itself) in production, running on thousands of users' systems for 1.5 years now.

Because I wrote it in Rust.

– Asahi Lina on vt.social

Thanks to Ludwig Stecher for the suggestion!

Please submit quotes and vote for next week!

This Week in Rust is edited by: nellshamrell, llogiq, cdmistman, ericseppanen, extrawurst, andrewpollack, U007D, kolharsam, joelmarcey, mariannegoldin, bennyvasquez.

Email list hosting is sponsored by The Rust Foundation

Discuss on r/rust

[canmom]

we are pleased to announce a new 2025 edition of the canmom glossary of computer graphics

SPIR-V: used to make your hors-v go faster Oren-Nayar: mathematical formula describing a big pizza pie microfacet: unit of measurement for insincerity cubemap: map() * map() * map() or map(map(map())). language-dependent draw call: unsucesssful combination of the party games "pictionary" and "telephone" demoscene: pronounced de-mosc-een. we think it's a type of triangle? GGX: common saying for when you just played a good game, so you want to give the other player a little kissie blit: past participle of blight RTGI: Real TransGender Info, a website from the 90s well known in the computer graphics scene MSAA, FXAA, TAA, DLAA...: apotropaic incantation, used to drive away the demon known as Djyagiz G-buffer: region of memory storing the value 0x47 pixel, voxel, texel, dexel, hogel: small pieces of data belonging respectively to a picture, a volume, a texture, a pokémon encyclopedia, and a pig

glossary of computer graphics jargon

light transport: buses, trams and low capacity rail

Metropolis light transport: art deco buses, trams and low capacity rail. gecko dancing robot optional but recommended

BRDF: Bordigist Red Dissenter Faction, a minor left communist group with six members, who formally disbanded in 1995

baking: very important for scenes containing bread

retopology: the academic study of experimenting with a receptive role in gay sex, but finding it disappointing

shader: a small program designed to run in parallel, which takes in vertex data and uses it to say cruel things to your enemies

triangle: a musical instrument

keyframe: a small gilded rectangle for displaying encryption data

deferred rendering: when you forget to render your project before the deadline

rigging: used to swing aboard an adjacent animation studio

NURBS: not an acronym, just stated with the proper emphasis

raymarching: a variant of raytracing usually seen at parades and sporting events

chromatic aberration: the offspring of a red dragon and a mind flayer

PBR: parboiled rice, used primarily as a religious offering in the context of computer graphics

Bezier curve: the number of years it would take you to earn the current net worth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, thereby becoming more Bezy. monotonically increasing with time.

[sunaleisocial]

Scientists find neurons that process language on different timescales

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/scientists-find-neurons-that-process-language-on-different-timescales/

Scientists find neurons that process language on different timescales

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists have identified several regions of the brain that are responsible for processing language. However, discovering the specific functions of neurons in those regions has proven difficult because fMRI, which measures changes in blood flow, doesn’t have high enough resolution to reveal what small populations of neurons are doing.

Now, using a more precise technique that involves recording electrical activity directly from the brain, MIT neuroscientists have identified different clusters of neurons that appear to process different amounts of linguistic context. These “temporal windows” range from just one word up to about six words.

The temporal windows may reflect different functions for each population, the researchers say. Populations with shorter windows may analyze the meanings of individual words, while those with longer windows may interpret more complex meanings created when words are strung together.

“This is the first time we see clear heterogeneity within the language network,” says Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of neuroscience at MIT. “Across dozens of fMRI experiments, these brain areas all seem to do the same thing, but it’s a large, distributed network, so there’s got to be some structure there. This is the first clear demonstration that there is structure, but the different neural populations are spatially interleaved so we can’t see these distinctions with fMRI.”

Fedorenko, who is also a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Nature Human Behavior. MIT postdoc Tamar Regev and Harvard University graduate student Colton Casto are the lead authors of the paper.

Temporal windows

Functional MRI, which has helped scientists learn a great deal about the roles of different parts of the brain, works by measuring changes in blood flow in the brain. These measurements act as a proxy of neural activity during a particular task. However, each “voxel,” or three-dimensional chunk, of an fMRI image represents hundreds of thousands to millions of neurons and sums up activity across about two seconds, so it can’t reveal fine-grained detail about what those neurons are doing.

One way to get more detailed information about neural function is to record electrical activity using electrodes implanted in the brain. These data are hard to come by because this procedure is done only in patients who are already undergoing surgery for a neurological condition such as severe epilepsy.

“It can take a few years to get enough data for a task because these patients are relatively rare, and in a given patient electrodes are implanted in idiosyncratic locations based on clinical needs, so it takes a while to assemble a dataset with sufficient coverage of some target part of the cortex. But these data, of course, are the best kind of data we can get from human brains: You know exactly where you are spatially and you have very fine-grained temporal information,” Fedorenko says.

In a 2016 study, Fedorenko reported using this approach to study the language processing regions of six people. Electrical activity was recorded while the participants read four different types of language stimuli: complete sentences, lists of words, lists of non-words, and “jabberwocky” sentences — sentences that have grammatical structure but are made of nonsense words.

Those data showed that in some neural populations in language processing regions, activity would gradually build up over a period of several words, when the participants were reading sentences. However, this did not happen when they read lists of words, lists of nonwords, of Jabberwocky sentences.

In the new study, Regev and Casto went back to those data and analyzed the temporal response profiles in greater detail. In their original dataset, they had recordings of electrical activity from 177 language-responsive electrodes across the six patients. Conservative estimates suggest that each electrode represents an average of activity from about 200,000 neurons. They also obtained new data from a second set of 16 patients, which included recordings from another 362 language-responsive electrodes.

When the researchers analyzed these data, they found that in some of the neural populations, activity would fluctuate up and down with each word. In others, however, activity would build up over multiple words before falling again, and yet others would show a steady buildup of neural activity over longer spans of words.

By comparing their data with predictions made by a computational model that the researchers designed to process stimuli with different temporal windows, the researchers found that neural populations from language processing areas could be divided into three clusters. These clusters represent temporal windows of either one, four, or six words.

“It really looks like these neural populations integrate information across different timescales along the sentence,” Regev says.

Processing words and meaning

These differences in temporal window size would have been impossible to see using fMRI, the researchers say.

“At the resolution of fMRI, we don’t see much heterogeneity within language-responsive regions. If you localize in individual participants the voxels in their brain that are most responsive to language, you find that their responses to sentences, word lists, jabberwocky sentences and non-word lists are highly similar,” Casto says.

The researchers were also able to determine the anatomical locations where these clusters were found. Neural populations with the shortest temporal window were found predominantly in the posterior temporal lobe, though some were also found in the frontal or anterior temporal lobes. Neural populations from the two other clusters, with longer temporal windows, were spread more evenly throughout the temporal and frontal lobes.

Fedorenko’s lab now plans to study whether these timescales correspond to different functions. One possibility is that the shortest timescale populations may be processing the meanings of a single word, while those with longer timescales interpret the meanings represented by multiple words.

“We already know that in the language network, there is sensitivity to how words go together and to the meanings of individual words,” Regev says. “So that could potentially map to what we’re finding, where the longest timescale is sensitive to things like syntax or relationships between words, and maybe the shortest timescale is more sensitive to features of single words or parts of them.”

The research was funded by the Zuckerman-CHE STEM Leadership Program, the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research, the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, an American Epilepsy Society Research and Training Fellowship, the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, Fondazione Neurone, the McGovern Institute, MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and the Simons Center for the Social Brain.

[satoshi-mochida]

Alliance Arts, WSS playground, and One or EIGHT announce strategy game The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily for PC

Gematsu Source

Publisher and developer Alliance Arts, and developers One or EIGHT and WSS playground have announced turn-based strategy game The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily for PC (Steam). It will launch in January 2024 with English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese language support.

Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:

About

A Villain is no less in entertaining a crowd, I bloom this world for you to be proud. “Flowers of evil” you shall witness. Allow me to give this, from thy Villainess.

The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily is a turn-based strategy game. The villainess Scarlet comes back from the guillotine. She meets a girl who knows the tech of streaming and becomes THE first Streamer. Instigate and distract the Imperial Kingdoms’ army and avenge on them.

Story

The duchess of the Imperial Kingdom, Scarlet, was deceived and falsely accused of regicide, the killing of the King. She was sent to the guillotine, but fate arrives in the form of Lily, who holds the secret of the technology to stream and the best aerial warship the Imperial Kingdom possessed.

Scarlet deems her once home, now an enemy. With the trusted aerial warship that carries the ability to “Broadcast”, she manipulates the vast military force of the Imperial Kingdom.

The battle to conquer everything, begins.

Key Features

A Turn-Based Strategy Game – A strategy game where you control the rebellion lead by the Villainess. Conquer a continent drawn in voxel-based art and defeat the Imperial Kingdom.

Control the Crowd with “Streaming” – With the aerial warship only your allies can use, you can control the battlefield through streaming. By instigating and distracting, you can secure routes to proceed and cover better grounds for battle.

Capture Commanders and Boost Your Army – By using the capture skill on the enemy commanders, you can convert them to your ally. At the beginning, there is a vast difference in the power of the armies, it is crucial to utilize even your foes.

Converse with Your Allies and Bond with Them – Each of your allied units have unique episodes, and you are able increase trust amongst them. The perks of increased trust leads to stronger units and sometimes new abilities.

Staff

Main Character Design: Rolua (Nijisanji) (▽▲TRiNITY▲▽1st Album “PRiSM” cover art, “Ready Steady” (Giga) music video illustration, pixiv supervised illustration art book “VISIONS EDGE ILLUSTRATORS BOOK Evil & Power” (Kadokawa) cover illustration, etc.)

Planning and Production: WSS playground (Needy Streamer Overload, Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth)

Scenario: Koji Itoigawa (ghostwriter of many titles)

Music: U2 AKiyama

Direction: Masked D

Production: One or EIGHT, WSS playground, Alliance Arts

*The story depicts bonds between characters and includes elements of romantic relationships between women, but there is no erotic content.

Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery. Visit the official website here.

Announce Trailer

English

Japanese

Simplified Chinese

[proceduralcaves]

Source notes: Procedural Generation of 3D Caves for Games on the GPU

(Mark et al., 2015)

Type: Conference Paper

The researchers present a modular pipeline for procedurally generating believable (not physically-based) underground caves in real-time, intended to be used standalone or as part of larger computer game environments. Their approach runs mainly in the GPU and utilises the following techniques: an L-system to emulate cave passages found in nature; a noise-perturbed metaball for 3D carving; a Marching Cubes algorithm to extract an isosurface from voxel data; and shader programming to visually enhance the final mesh. Unlike other works in this area, the authors explicitly state their aim is to demonstrate their method's suitability for use in 3D computer game landscapes, and therefore prioritise immersion, visual plausibility and expressivity in their results.

The method works in a three-stage process, with the structure first being generated by an L-system, before, secondly, a metaball based technique forms tunnels, then lastly a mesh is extracted from the voxel data produced by the previous stages. In terms of implementation, the output L-system structural data is loaded into GPU memory where it is processed by compute shaders to ultimately create tunnels, stalagmites and stalactites.

An L-system or Lindenmayer system is a type of formal grammar (a description of which strings are syntactically valid within a formal language) where strings are formed based on a body of rules, starting from an initial string, which are then translated into geometric structures using a mechanism. The L-system used by (Mark et al., 2015) works by guiding a virtual drawing agent (a 'turtle') using the alphabet and constructed strings to generate structural points which can then be connected to form the basis of a cave system. By favouring longer production rules (producing longer expansions of strings) the self-similarity and orderliness of plant-like structures often generated by L-systems with shorter rules was able to be avoided, resulting in a more chaotic structure better suited to simulating a network of tunnels. Additionally, a stochastic element to choosing and generating production rules was introduced to enhance the expressivity of the system. To handle dead ends, a method of connecting a certain percentage of ends to each other by drawing a distorted line between them was developed, and is controllable via a user defined parameter. Further to this, the ability for users to adjust production rules, macro strings, the turtle's turning angle, the containing volume and direction of the system, was introduced.

To form the walls of the cave, a metaball — in this case, "a smooth energy field, represented by a gradient of values between "empty" at its centre and "full" at its outer horizon" perturbed by a warping function to be made less spherical (to achieve more natural results) — is moved through a voxel volume (data for which was generated by the L-system process) from one structural point to the next. If a voxel is found under the radius of the metaball, the distance between the voxel and the metaball's centre is distorted using a combination of Simplex noise and Voronoi noise, giving that voxel a value between -1 and 1. Curl noise is also used to vary the height of the tunnels created. By combining and layering Simplex and Voronoi noise, the researchers were able to produce results approximating scallops and jagged cave walls. The varying shape and size of the metaball and the intricate, branching structure of the L-system paths help to give rise to advanced shapes and to add visual interest.

Stalagmites and stalactites were created by generating noise values for each voxel and picking those within a certain range as spawn points (noise was also used to determine the density of speleothems within an area). Cellular automata were used to detect the floor and ceiling at spawn points and to grow the features (the specific details of that process, including how the cellular automata algorithm was implemented, are not covered).

The volume of voxel values created by the metaball approach are processed by a Marching Cubes algorithm to extract an isosurface, similar to the Masters project method. The authors note that Dual Contouring could have been used to better represent the voxel topology, an insight that informed the decision to investigate Dual Contouring for the Masters project method. Normals are calculated for the mesh and triplanar projection is used for texturing, as well as perturbation of fragments to create a stratified appearance. Lighting, bump mapping and refraction were also implemented. The shader parameters are able to be modified to produce different aesthetics (such as ice and crystal settings).

The method developed by (Mark et al., 2015) produced visually impressive results that are believable as real-world caves. It is capable of generating a variety of features and is structurally varied, with different patterns appearing in the resulting landscapes that resemble hills, sharp peaks, plateaus and small mesas (a flat top on a ridge or hill). The choice to use an L-system is effective in producing a complex, diverging cave system that contains walkways, arches, cracks, windows and polygon arrangements that look like hoodoos (spire rock formations formed by erosion). Furthermore, the creation of their own versions of speleothems (stalactites, stalagmites, columns and scallops) increases the believability and immersive nature of the results.

Parameterisation of aspects such as the L-system rules, its level of randomness, and the pixel shader enable control over the method and increase the variety of models that can be generated, making it more likely to be compatible with a range of art styles and world settings. One potential shortcoming is that a level of familiarity and understanding of the L-system component would be required for a designer to achieve usable results through alteration of its rules and other parameters, however such an investment could be seen as worthwhile given the level of control and expression that appears to be possible based on the content included in the paper.