#4 Common PC Issues

[iniziare]

Download: Adobe Photoshop 2025 (v26.5) / Windows

I come bearing the gift of piracy as an early Easter present! Welcome to the most recent (at the time of writing) version of Adobe Photoshop, which was released on March 27th of 2025. As per usual, have a peek at the note below, as it's there to help avoid the most common issue.

Authenticity popup? In case you get a message that says Photoshop needs to be licensed, or it will uninstall itself otherwise, please have a look at this fix! (Always uninstall previous Photoshop installations prior to installing a new one)

Step 1: Download the file from my Google Drive, or Mega.nz Step 2: When done downloading, unzip it (Windows can do it for you, but I personally use a program called 7ZIP) anywhere on your PC, even your desktop works fine, and yes, you can delete it when you're done with all of these steps. Step 3: Go into the unzipped folder, click 'Setup', and Photoshop's usual installation window will pop up. Install it as per your preferences (if you aren’t too tech-savvy, don’t worry, you can leave the default installation options as they are and all will be fine). Step 4: Hit 'Launch', and well— enjoy your copy of Photoshop! (Step 5: I would absolutely love you if you could spare a reblog of this post, which is not even for my own sake, but for anyone else who might be looking to obtain a copy of Photoshop!)

If in the unlikely event that you do run into any sort of issue of any kind, my DMs and askbox are always here for you, so don’t be shy, I promise I’ll welcome you with chocolate and fruit.

While I don’t request for anything in return outside of a like if this helped you (or ideally, a reblog so that others can find this), I was asked in the past whether I had a Ko-fi, so I set one up back in the day. It’s not required at all, but it’s always appreciated. 🤍

[directdogman]

hey dog! sorry to bug you with a coding question, but i'm learning rpg maker mv for a fangame & i'm wondering how you did a couple things. if it's not too much trouble, could you quickly explain some of it? i've scrounged around as much as i can but i cant find what i need so i thought it'd be worth asking directly ^^;

how did you get the players name to show up in the message log? i know theres a plugin that adds the name windows for other characters & i've got that figured out, but i have no idea how to get the players name to show up in the history after selecting stuff

how'd you get the graphic for the route diverging choices to show & play During choices? so far ive figured out that looping the images recreates the visual but then the game doesn't progress, bc its just stuck in that loop...

how'd you disable ( + grey out) dialogue options after selecting them??

how'd you add the fullscreen option? i found a code that was supposed to add a fullscreen option to the optionscore settings but that one just breaks the plugin & i simply Don't know enough javascript to figure it out myself

i'm using all the same plugins that dialtown has so clearly these are possible without extra ones, i just don't know how to do it,, thanks for explaining your pronoun system a little while ago btw! i wasn't the one who asked but your post was super helpful when i was setting it up for myself :D

It's been close to 6 years since I started making DT, and I had to figure out a few solutions to specific issues that cropped up which I've likely forgotten now, but I'll answer what I can remember. I'm also gonna give you some advice and advise you not to use RPG Maker for projects like these.

I basically Scott Cawthon'd DT and forced the engine to yield to my demands because I wanted to use the one I knew best. A few of these solutions are over-complicated because the easier ones (which would've worked in other engines) had to be constructed differently. I'll also mention a few solutions to problems you might not have encountered (but inevitably will if you try to recreate DT.) With that out of the way...

1)

You'll want these settings for the backlog plugin. the \c[x] commands refer to standard name colours. Log special inputs set to true, followed up by this below:

\n<\c[4]\n[1]\c[0]>%1

With \n[1] being the name you want and the number after the first c being what colour you want.

I'll also save you a potential future issue: I'd actually recommend you find the backlog plugin I used in DT's files (located inside the www/js/plugins folder) and use the version I have instead of the official release if you're not already, because I made a small change to fix an error. Basically, it breaks slightly with the plugin that lets you bring up the menu during dialogue because text reloads when you leave the menu and re-enter the text box, causing text to be logged at least twice after you pause it. If you keep bringing up the menu, you'll get constant duplication. I simply added a line of code that tells the log not to have two duplicates in a row. Not a programmer, but it seems works.

2)I did it in a funny way to ensure the engine wouldn't screw it up. Basically, there's 3 steps to the event and it's kinda hard to explain (and would be annoying to reproduce without a lot of trial and error for a beginner.) It's easier if I show my code. The first thing I do is run a common event (you can also just paste this code in and run it from the event) that renders the frames used by the popup, so they're loaded into memory + ready to go.

As you can see, they're set to 0 opacity but now ready to be used. Obviously they have to be on a layer that isn't being used by anything else in the scene (and won't be during this part of the game.) I run this event ahead of time, usually 4 messages before the choice comes up or so, so even slower PCs should have time to get them up.

The 'if head' thing just switches between the files for phone/typegingi's heads. I render each frame on separate layers and toggle their opacity from one to the next on a single frame to avoid flickering (bc RPG maker's renderer is hot trash and I have to work around it. Case in point.)

Step 2 is a second command event that orders the frames to fade in.

One layer is the text (which doesn't move) and the other is the first frame of the little head animation. A switch is also turned on at the end, and this signals the animation to go, which is handled by an event on any map where a choice like this comes up.

The event page that handles the animation itself has 2 pages, one to handle the animation as it goes and the other to handle when it stops (note that you could use one page and simply use a conditional branch. I didn't.)

Set to parallel so it runs in the bg behind normal events. As you can see, every 17 frames, I command one image to fade out over a single frame and another to fade in. It loops perfectly, cycling from middle frame, to left, to middle, to right, back to middle. Finally, when you select any route diverging choice, it sets off a second switch, which activates the second event page and commands the game to dispose of the graphics and then turn itself off.

Basically, it's the same animation but with a twist. The text is faded out over 60 frames and then the same animation is played as before, except the values it fades back into go from 255, to 170 to 85. Each of those commands is also followed by a 17 second fade to the opacity of the next frame. So, frame one renders in one frame at 255. Then seventeen frame fadeout to 170... Next frame renders for 1 frame AT 170, then fades out gradually to 85. Then next frame renders at 85 during 1 frame, fades to 0. This is how i synced the turning animation to fade out convincingly.

At the very end, I turn both of the switches this event page uses off so both event pages don't continue on loop. I also have a check for the first event variable to check if the game should still think the animation is running, as a failsafe. I don't remember if this mattered.

3)It's a function in the YEP Extended Message Pack. You'll see the commands for hiding (temporarily removing) + disabling choices (greying them out) as you scroll through the help list, almost 2/3 down. The thing you have to remember though is that messages that are commanded to be hidden/disabled will STAY disabled unless you turn them back on. So, ANY time there's a possibility to make a choice with a disabled or hidden message, add this plugin command to EVERY selectable choice

ClearChoiceSettings

This will ensure the game doesn't break from having a choice permadisabled. If you use loops or labels to make the game return to a previous choice, make sure the looping point is BEFORE any logic that may disable/hide a choice so it doesn't autoenable everything if the game has to go back.

4)Make a new RPG Maker project, copy the js folder from www/data/js and open the new project alongside your other one. Then check my YEP Option core plugin and follow this path in the plugin editor

This code should work.

On a similar note, I'd also take a look at how my plugins are ordered, if your list is different. I had to meddle with the list to make sure some plugins functioned correctly. This engine is held together with duct-tape and spite, so do what this advice what you will.

Hope this helps!

[utilitycaster]

I mentioned I had more thoughts on "party of NPCs" in a recent ask, and I'm about to do a little Nein Againing, so: the original mention, from an early 4-Sided Dive (covering up to 3x21) from Taliesin, was mostly about two things: the fact that the characters (other than Imogen) were offbeat and felt like statblock archetypes (weird fey quest giver! undead witch in the woods! Guard #2!) and that only Imogen and maybe Dorian had a "feeling of intense destiny."

It did not mean they had uniquely tragic backstories (and I do not think they did); it did not mean they were uniquely impoverished and lacking in resources (indeed, they had tons of resources very early on compared to any other low-level party on CR); it did not mean they were uniquely othered by society (and I found that while that was part of their backstories, it didn't play out very strongly during the campaign, less so than frankly either the Mighty Nein in a number of places, or Vox Machina in specific locations such as Syngorn). It was literally just "wacky or archetypal, and lacking in a feeling of intense destiny."

As for lacking in destiny - I don't think that's a problem, and indeed I like characters who make their own destiny! But I think that "party of NPCs" increasingly gets quoted by people who are leery of D&D characters exercising their free will and who defend a lack of direction. I feel Bells Hells often seemed to wait around for direction, and again, that's a whole discussion that's been had many times and which gets into the meta level, but between that and the actual intended meaning Taliesin had, it doesn't make them more special to me; it makes them less.

PC vs. NPC is itself not a perfect dichotomy (in that PCs of one campaign become NPCs of another; or that someone can adopt a character like Cerkonos and make him a PC), and all it means is player character vs. non-player character. Ludinus is an NPC, but he certainly makes choices. However, EXU Divergence does a brilliant job of showing what makes a player character a person who has levels and not statblocks. Almost everyone starts as an NPC; they become a PC through the events that occur in their lives. This again is not unique to Bells Hells. Fjord and Veth were very much the Sailor and Commoner statblocks until a life-changing event occurred to them; Percy was a Noble statblock; Vex and Vax were hunters or bandits until they decided to be more than just mercenaries and join up with a group, and so on.

The issue I always had was in fact that lack of destiny - which I am taking to be external and narrative, not internal and literal. It's hard to say in a world where fate and destiny are quite real, but I think what's also important is that other campaigns actively discussed destiny vs. free will at length (in particular, Percy's conversation with the Raven Queen, and Fjord, Caleb, and Caduceus in episode 84 of Campaign 2) and engaged with it thematically in a way Campaign 3 never did. But when the Nein are introduced as a "handful of wandering destinies" I don't think the intent is to say that what they do is pre-ordained (and indeed, it's an improv medium and there's an unexpected PC death; we know it's not). I think it's more in reference to the fact that these are all people with some intent - to learn about their powers, find their family, or undo what has been done to them. Many of Bells Hells lack that (Laudna never has any clear nor consistent goals of her own that she works towards), or their motivations (free themself from Jiana and learn more about who they are, deliver the weave lens and learn about their parents, find the Gorgynei) are either over quite early or rushed past to make way for a plot that most of them are poorly grafted into, and never quite takes. I suppose that is what most makes them feel like NPCs, but that is not complimentary - it feels like they are in someone else's story, and that we're waiting for the PCs to arrive the entire time.

I think the fact that this comment is from just after episode 21 and people still cling to it for Campaign 3 is perhaps the most telling thing of all; it was a party of NPCs by vibe, and at episode 21 that's not a bad thing, but it never fails to shed that over the course of the next hundred episodes.

[swisccfinds]

Flowfit Mod by SimRealist

This mod is great if you really hate the base game equipment and enhances fitness in your sims life!

creator's notes-

Mod Summary

This mod enhances the fitness experience for Sims in the Sims 4. Bringing to life some of the common activities we do in everyday life to get in shape and become healthier.    

Summary of Changes

We added/changed the following:

NEW OBJECTS: Bringing in an Elliptical, Rower, Climber, and a new Treadmill as a first step towards expanding the FlowFit experience

COMING SOON! - FlowFit Cycle

FlowFit Ellipticore 

§1,275

The Ellipticore is the ultimate elliptical machine for anyone looking to get a full-body workout from their home. With its sleek design and advanced technology, the Ellipticore is perfect for those who want to stay fit and healthy without having to go to the gym. 

FlowFit Row 

§2,250

The perfect way to stay fit and feel like you're on a relaxing rowing trip at the same time! This machine is so realistic you'll swear you can hear the sound of water lapping against a boat. But don't worry, there's no chance of getting seasick on this machine - just a great workout and a lot of laughs when your friends ask why you're singing "Row, row, row your boat" at the gym. Plus, with adjustable resistance settings, you can choose to row upstream or downstream depending on your mood. So hop on board, and let's row our way to fitness!

FlowFit Summit  

§3,500

Introducing the Summit Climber, the ultimate workout machine for those who love to climb but hate the cold! With Summit, you can now climb the highest peaks from the comfort of your living room. No more frostbite, no more altitude sickness, just pure, unadulterated climbing fun!

FlowFit Tread  

§3,500

Hop on the latest and greatest that the fitness industry has to offer with the FlowFit Tread! This simple yet advanced fitness equipment will help you reach new heights in your fitness journey. It will help you climb every mountain, I mean hills. It will help you ford every stream or, ya know, rivers...allow you to follow every rainbow. Maybe there's gold on the other side? Till you find your dream of a fit new you! I mean, we can all dream, right?

FAQ

Do I need to activate this mod for it to work?

No, as soon as you load up a save, this mod becomes active in that save. No action is required. 

I have a suggestion for making this mod even more; where do I leave that suggestion?

Please post your suggestions while this mod is in Development in our Discord channel - #patrons-forum (https://discord.gg/x6bFyNT)

Compatible With: 

Patch 10/31/2023 PC: 1.102.190.1030 / Mac: 1.102.190.1230

Conflicts/Issues/Notable Items Observed:

None that hasn't already been noted.

Credits:

thepancake1: SR Animator

vidavic: SR Modeler

Nichole: SR Mod Producer

Thanks to the SR Linguists Team

Please show all your love and support to SimRealist and the credited creators above in the creator's notes!

download

[elderscrollsconceptart]

Some users on PC have an issue where the Oblivion Remaster shader compilation is not completing.

The game may crash during shader compilation and if you relaunch the game, you can play, but stutters and FPS issues will be worse than if you had successfully compiled shaders. Shader compilation cannot be automatically re-ran so you need to force your PC to restart the compilation.

Here are the steps I took to "fix" this issue:

1. Roll back your Nvidia GPU drivers to 572.83

If you have an AMD GPU, I believe AMD released an updated driver for Oblivion Remastered that should mean no driver rollback is needed.

2. Delete your shader cache via the Disk cleanup windows program

3. Cut/paste this file OUT of this folder path:

steamapps\common\Oblivion Remastered\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\nvidia\DLSS\Streamline\Binaries\ThirdParty\Win64\sl.pcl.dll

I personally dropped it into a desktop folder so I have it saved somewhere. Just make sure this file is NOT in that folder path anymore.

4. Delete Oblivion.ini from this location:

\steamapps\common\Oblivion Remastered\OblivionRemastered\Content\Dev\ObvData\Oblivion.ini

5. Open Oblivion Remastered and shader compilation should now begin.

If all went well the shader compilation should complete (may take a long time) and you should notice *some* improvements to stuttering as shader are now fully compiled.

Make sure you re select your graphics settings as they will have reverted to default. See below for my personal settings and performance notes. 👇

---

Next part is how I personally went from ~40fps outdoors to a solid 60fps average with occasional dips to 50fps at the lowest.

Caveat I have a high end PC, play on a 4k TV and don't play above 60fps. Your Milage may vary as everyone has their own hardware setup and graphical preferences.

---

1. Make sure your game is installed on SSD. Game just runs alot better on SSD and even warns you to make sure its installed on one.

2. FPS lock/VSync. If you need Vsync to play games like I do. Turn OFF the in-game VSYNC and force VSYNC ON in Nvidia control panel. IDK how AMD gpus work but id imagine you'd use AMDs version of control panel to do the same.

Set the FPS limit to 60fps (or whatever your preference) in the in-game settings. This can also be done instead in the Nvidia control panel so if you set the limit there, be sure to NOT have a limit set in-game settings.

3. DLSS of some kind is a must for most games these days. Especially if playing with Ray Tracing (as you can note below)

Set DLSS to either performance (looks worse, runs better), Quality (looks better, runs a bit worse), or DLAA (looks alot better but most performance hit out of all DLSS settins).

Use FSR if you are on an AMD GPU.

4. DLSS Frame Generation. This literally will give you like 10+ FPS. BUUUTT it gives you CRAZY input lag. Make sure if you use this you also set NVIDIA Reflex to Enabled+Boost. For me this game me the free 10+fps while eliminating the input lag almost entirely.

Note: If you use Frame Generation you will notice the menus in-game have a weird flutter/lag. Beyond this tho the issues are minimal.

If you use AMD GPUs make sure to use the FSR/FSR Frame Generation/XeSS options as these are AMDs versions of the NVIDIA options i discussed above

I know alot of ppl play on different hardware in general so to summarize the graphics settings:

Turn off VYSNC in game and force it via your GPU control panel. Use frame generation and DLSS/FSR as specified above. If your settings don't give you the performance you want, roll them back bit by bit.

ALSO: This may be relevant but as a precaution, make any major graphics settings changes *FROM THE MAIN MENU* After you make the changes, exit and restart the game. Sometimes the changes don't work if you make them while you have a save loaded + don't restart the game.

Hope this all helps at least somebody out there. Send asks or DM if you need any clarification, and remember, Milage may vary so experiment with your settings as needed.

[starlight-and-snowflakes]

5 strategies that have improved my executive functioning in 2023

1. Preparing tasks in advance

This tip has been one of the most useful things for me to be able to actually get the things I want to do done without getting stuck in the process. I am very prone to difficulties with task initiation and task switching. Basically I've found that if I check what activities are upcoming for that day in my calendar (but you can use any task that you want to do sometime that day) then I set the task up in advance it's a lot easier to actually do the task.

So if my goal is to stream after dinner then I turn my pc on and have my setup ready to go before dinner. If I want to do a Pilates workout I set up my mat an hour before I actually want to do the workout. If I want to go to the gym I get into gym clothes at the start of the day so I don't have to change later.

I basically eliminate all the difficult prep work and then I find doing the task so much easier when I get to it.

2. Task switching when stuck

A lot of neurodivergent people have issues with getting 'stuck' or 'frozen', myself included. Whether it's autistic inertia or decision paralysis or something else it's very common to find yourself unable to do anything at all. You'll know that even if you put your phone away or stop what you're doing you'll just continue to sit there doing nothing.

The solution to this for me has consistently been to switch goal. I want to get up and shower but can't? I'll find that I can pull my laptop out and get some work done instead (and then shower after lunch later in the day). I am stuck when I want to stream? I find I can do my skincare instead (and I ended up streaming the next day).

Yes this means you don't get your original goal done when you wanted but you get something done, and something is better than nothing.

3. Task chaining

I've found that task chaining is the easiest way for me to get multiple tasks done. It's basically building upon your success. Take the example from my task switching section where I couldn't get myself to start streaming so I decided to do my skincare instead. While doing skincare I remembered I wanted to ask my brother about a particular product. So suddenly I'm capable of going to ask him about it. I couldn't even get out of bed before but now I have the motivation to move (I keep my skincare next to my bed so I didn't have to get up prior to this). After talking to him I decide I can go downstairs and make tea (something I originally wanted to do before streaming but was too stuck to do). While downstairs my mother tells me that she has a pile of laundry for me. I decide to take it back upstairs and put it away immediately. While doing so I figure I may as well sort all the laundry that's piled up on my floor as well.

I've gone from not doing anything to completing 4 separate tasks. If I wanted to get up and put the clothes on my floor away originally I'd never have been able to do it. I built on my successfully completed tasks and chained them together. Of course you should still remember to rest after chaining a number of tasks together.

4. Prioritise harder tasks earlier

I get all my energy at the start of the day and feel quite tired by the end of the day. This is how most people feel due to how our circadian rhythms function. Because of this I have found it's a lot easier to get difficult tasks done in the morning.

So now instead of trying to clean my room or go to the gym at 5pm I'll do it at 9am. I'll save 5pm for my easy tasks, things like studying Korean, meditating, studying geography, and coding. Take some time to figure out which tasks you find easy and which you find hard. If you consistently find yourself unable to do a task that's a hint that it's difficult for you. Vice versa if you're consistently capable of a task it might be a sign it's an easier one for you.

5. Using an AI scheduler

I saved this one for last, not because it's ineffective, it's actually made a huge difference in my life. But it does cost money to take full advantage of this so I put it down the bottom. Still there's a lot to be said for using an AI scheduler. I hate choosing what to do and have always preferred to be told what tasks I should do each day. It also takes a huge amount of mental energy to decide what tasks I should do when each week and organise them in advance.

Enter Reclaim, the AI scheduler of my dreams (there are lots of other ones on the market too like Motion! Take a look around and see if you can find one you like but unfortunately they all seem paid). Reclaim does have a free version but for me their paid version is necessary to achieve my goals.

I set up all my tasks and habits in Reclaim, I can customise how often I want to do things, how long they should take, and what hours I have free. Then I just check my calendar each day and see what tasks I'm meant to do. If I end up taking more time than expected I just hit the 'reschedule' button on a task and it's automatically slotted in somewhere else that week. This has definitely made one of the biggest changes to my quality of life I could probably make a whole separate post about using Reclaim.

That's all the tips that have worked for me this year so far, maybe some of them might help you!

[burr-ell]

Conflict, Communication, and Chemistry: A Laura and Marisha PC Appraisal

A couple of people have observed across all three main campaigns that Laura and Marisha consistently make characters that ultimately don't seem to fully understand each other for various reasons, and their characters' chemistry (or lack thereof) is an outgrowth of that. And until recently, I thought that was one of those things that I personally saw but not everyone else was obligated to view the same way—chemistry is often subjective, and it’s for that reason that I tend not to take seriously a lot of the common shipping-based arguments about chemistry.

But in the most recent 4-Sided Dive, Marisha, Laura, and Sam said this:

MARISHA: I have enjoyed…of course, like, delving into the relationship is always fun, but then relationship tension is also fun. LAURA: Yeah, I feel like you guys [points between Marisha and Sam] are really big on—you really like relationship conflict too. You guys talk about that a lot. SAM: Of course. Because I don’t have any in my real life. LAURA: I’m terrified of conflict. That translates to the game as well, I don’t like conflict. SAM: You don’t like conflict? Even in the game, in this dramatic storytelling game that we’ve made together? LAURA: No! I don’t like fighting! SAM: You just want everything to go fine? LAURA: Yes!

And I think that made things click into place for me. This is the reason why their characters have this through-line, because their approaches to conflict bleed through to their character choices. Laura's characters’ issues tend to be internal; they tend not to have prolonged fights with other characters, and their arcs are often person-vs-self stories about emotional walls and struggling with self-centeredness in some capacity. Marisha's characters, on the other hand, are upfront about their problems and are completely unafraid to go toe-to-toe with other party members, and their character development is often a product of a straightforward person-vs-person or person-vs-society story about overcoming their physical obstacles. And it’s part of why their current characters’ relationship has played out in a way that’s strange and off-kilter, because their interactions do not read to me like the players really understood this about each other before the public talk show discussion quoted above.

In Campaign 1, Vex and Keyleth’s relationship is conspicuous by its absence; even within their superficial commonalities, they are not particularly drawn to each other beyond circumstance. Vex is unquestionably the leader of Vox Machina insofar as they have one, and she does this by consistently finding a compromise—when the group is arguing about their best course of action in Whitestone or Westruun or Draconia or the Nine Hells, Vex is the one who mediates and strategizes their way out. She's very good at seeing all sides of an issue, threading the needle, and coming to a decision that keeps the group happy and together. The problem is that she tends to do this at the expense of her personal needs being met; she bottles up a lot of her emotions and issues and she struggles with letting people in, and has to work on not internalizing and holding grudges.

Keyleth, on the other hand, consistently takes stances and isn't afraid to be the moral compass of the party, like when she notices how dark everyone is becoming during the Briarwood arc and fights to correct it. She lets herself feel what she feels rather than pushing it away, which allows her to overcome the physical and mental challenges of her Aramente and affords her more emotional freedom and honesty. Sometimes, though, these traits work against her—she will argue a point and continue to belabor it until someone else steps in; she can be self-righteous due to her own naïveté; and her emotional openness can be poorly-timed and lead her into indecision and dithering. One of the few one-on-one conversations Keyleth and Vex have is after Vex dies and is brought back in the Sunken Tomb, and Vex is quickly exasperated at having to deal with Keyleth’s feelings when she’s the one who died and she’s just trying to piece together what happened.

Vex is often frustrated by Keyleth's hardline beliefs and feelings and has to compromise around them; Keyleth sees conflict in a much more literal way than the internalization and masking that Vex does, and as a result never really digs deeper into who Vex is as a person. By the end of the campaign, they call each other sisters, which I think is appropriate—they're two people who care about each other but have little in common, tied together by the single factor of Vax. Outside of that commonality, there's little reason for them to be especially close the way they are with other members of the party; if there was, they’d have been close at any point throughout the previous 114 episodes.

Beau and Jester form a stronger friendship in Campaign 2, but they seem to understand just enough about each other to get along well while not being able to truly see each other. Jester is cheerful and goofy by nature, but she also projects that particular image in order to make the people around her happy and keep them together. While she will speak her mind, she doesn’t tend to stand at one end or the other of the ideological and political spectrum of issues faced by the Nein and is simply happy to have an adventure and sow some chaos. Even when having difficulties with the Traveler, Jester is willing to work through it and find a solution that works for both of them in order to preserve the relationship.

Beau, meanwhile, approaches the world abrasively and aggressively and is a bit too prepared to burn bridges with people if she thinks they aren’t worth it. While she recognizes the nuances of the conflict between the Empire and the Dynasty, she’s ultimately loyal to the Cobalt Soul’s mission of using knowledge to fight corruption. She’s perfectly happy to butt heads with Caleb or Fjord or Molly if she thinks they’re in the wrong, and her cut-your-losses mentality puts her in conflict with how important the Traveler is to Jester.

This difference is thrown into especially sharp relief not only by how they deal with their respective fathers, but also the response they think the other should have. Jester wants to reconnect with the Gentleman and for him to repair his and Marion’s relationship, while Beau has fully written off Thoreau and has no interest in reconciling. Jester is upset at Beau’s suggestion that she just forget her dad and not put effort into someone who won’t do the same for her, while Beau is less than impressed with Jester’s suggestion that Thoreau really does care about her and it might be worth it to patch things up, and the upshot of it all is that the way everything plays out makes it clear that both of them have badly misread the other’s situation.

Beau, like Keyleth before her, doesn’t seem to understand that Jester is masking a lot of insecurities and wants someone to see her for who she is and not an idealized version of her; Jester actually stops confiding in Beau after Beau tells her she doesn’t need Artagan and that she’s the actual god. Jester, meanwhile, is unwilling to set aside her dreams and fantasies and is at her happiest when she can roam and adventure freely, something for which Beau would not set aside her responsibilities and beliefs in the mission of the Cobalt Soul. They’re still good friends, but going their separate ways is a benefit to both of them.

And now we have Imogen and Laudna, whose relationship felt lacking well before it became romantic. A lot of time and energy has been spent by multiple people trying to articulate exactly why that is, and there are many reasons—Laudna’s concept seems better-suited to a short form narrative and it took about 60 episodes for her character to stop feeling entirely superfluous; the relationship lacks any substantive conflict or disagreement and the supportiveness feels more like a mutual security blanket; they seem to have little in the way of an actual dynamic outside of melodramatic plot moments. But the relevant issue here is that Laudna is, for all intents and purposes, a yes-woman who supports whatever Imogen wants to do simply because Imogen wants it (a trait that notably does not carry over to anyone else in the party—she is completely unafraid to delve into negative emotions and traits with Ashton and Orym, both of whom are played by people Marisha has historically worked with to produce some of the best relationship dynamics on the show). If Imogen wants to run off and live in a cottage or join the Vanguard or commune with Predathos or not commune with Predathos, Laudna will uncritically encourage her no matter what, because per Marisha’s words on the Laudna playlist, “Laudna will protect and attack anyone who tries to fuck with her girl”. Part of Laudna’s core concept, baked in from the beginning, is the belief that Imogen “deserves the world”. Between these two players, the one who enjoys conflict is playing a character who will do everything in her power to shield and soothe the character being played by the one who hates conflict. The result feels less like a healthy supportive relationship and more like a recipe for enablement.

When episode 77 came out, I commented that for the first time I actually started to feel something—anything at all—about Imogen and Laudna, and it’s because I started to get a sense that there might be some real potential for tension and tragedy. And now—between Laudna imploring Imogen to move on from her if she dies, Marisha seeming to suggest at one point that Laudna may not have a future at all, Imogen admitting that she’s outright disgusted by Delilah, the disconnect between the players’ approaches to conflict, Imogen (and Laura, out of character) being shocked and horrified by Laudna absorbing the soul of the Willmaster, and Laudna now intentionally working with Delilah in order to protect Imogen—I’m starting to wonder if their relationship may indeed be on a collision course.

Now this could end in multiple interesting ways: Imogen could be driven away from Laudna, who is slowly consumed by Delilah; Laudna could choose to sacrifice herself to end Delilah for good and Imogen is forced to move on; Imogen and Laudna could Thelma and Louise their way off a cliff; or maybe someone just points out how unhealthy this all is and they start to be more honest and less codependent and their relationship improves after a lot of hard work. But something has to happen. 

Laura and Marisha have, multiple times now, been asked questions about Imogen and Laudna’s relationship that they have answered with varying degrees of “we never really talked about it”, sometimes referring to in-game conversations and sometimes not, and that is both unsurprising and a bad sign of things to come. I don’t know exactly how much out-of-game conversation happened between previous canon relationships that Laura and Marisha have played, but this one desperately needs it—because for three straight campaigns, all we’ve seen is every indication that these are two players who are uniquely ill-suited to play a romance the way either of them would want to.

[marxistfurry]

Duckstation PS1 4K

To play PlayStation 1 games in 4K using DuckStation, follow these steps:

1. Download and Install DuckStation

Obtain DuckStation from its official website or GitHub repository.

Extract the files and set up the emulator on your PC. No installation wizard is required

2. Configure Video Settings for 4K

Open DuckStation and navigate to Settings > Graphics.

Adjust the Internal Resolution Scale to 9x, which corresponds to 4K resolution. If you have a lower-end PC, test lower resolutions first to avoid performance issues

Enable Texture Filtering (e.g., XBR for smoother textures) if your system can handle it

3. Enable Enhancements

Turn on PGXP Geometry Correction under the Graphics settings to fix texture warping and jittery animations common in PS1 games

Enable True Color Rendering to disable dithering and improve color depth

4. Optimize Performance

Select a suitable graphics renderer (Vulkan or Direct3D) based on your GPU capabilities under Settings > Graphics.

Enable V-Sync to reduce screen tearing if needed

5. Additional Tips

Use a controller for an authentic experience, setting it up under the Controller Configuration menu

Test games to ensure your hardware can maintain stable performance at 4K resolution (60 FPS is ideal)

These settings will allow you to enjoy PS1 games with enhanced visuals and smooth gameplay on

[thryth-gaming]

Immortal Characters

(Spoilers for The Storyteller Squad season 1, Monster's Playbook season 2, and Babylon 5 season 3 & 4 follow)

One thing that pops up when playing narrative games games is the question of how to handle truly immortal characters. One way to deal with this is to simply not allow such a concept. This is pretty common. There's an existing philosophy that TTRPGs are pointless without the risk of death as a stake in the game. Which is a rather odd philosophy given that the vast majority of fiction does not include death on the table at all, this includes high-tension thrillers. But that's a whole other tangent, let's get back to the topic of immortal characters.

So, broadly speaking the issues a lot of people have with including immortal characters are:

Dealing with how to handle the knowledge of accumulated centuries.

Dealing with the fact that they can't die, especially if other characters can.

Dealing with how to represent mechanics that put them on par with other characters.

So let's deal with these.

Knowledge

This one is pretty easy, especially in a narrative game. Skills and stats in these games don't represent strictly objective levels of knowledge but rather the likelihood that the character will have narratively relevant knowledge.

"Hey, Mr. Vampire, you've been around forever, what can you tell us about the events that happened around X date."

Failed roll: "I don't know, I was on the other side of the world at the time."

Moderately successful roll: "I think I know a rumor about that, yeah."

Successful roll: "I didn't see it myself, but I was in the next county over and we heard stories."

Very successful roll: "Yeah... I was there."

Natalie Fuinha from @thestorytellersquad handles this quite well for her character Aidan Brightwood. She's simply decided that Aidan has just managed to avoid the vast majority of major historical events. Given Aidan is a GMPC, this is a very good way to keep her from overshadowing the PCs and presents a simple general purpose approach to dealing what an immortal knows.

Also. Immortal does not necessarily mean old. It just means they can't die. So the answer to the above questions could literally be "I wasn't born yet."

Death is not a Risk

So, let's say you're playing a true immortal. Let's take things like your common vampires off the table. This for people who will not, do not, or cannot die.

Going back to the common idea that without death there aren't any stakes. What's the player risking as compared those characters that can die?

There's a lot of things that could be considered a fate legitimately worse than death.

An example of this, my character Patricia Althius for City of Mist game was a vampire in a manner of speaking, but one of her power traits was "rise from her grave." I said that basically, someone would have to find a unique method to kill her specifically, not vampires in general, and it would only have one shot to work or else she'd not be vulnerable to that again. Basically, the person had to firmly believe that this method would very specifically kill her... or else she'd just wake up sometime later. As such I listed something like "zealotry" as a weakness.

The GM extrapolated that out to the idea that she did not possess a concept of death. This is not in the terms of having no intellectual understanding of what death was, but rather than death as a metaphysical concept was removed from her and that this was the first step to her losing her entire identity piece by piece.

This is a case where the character isn't really immortal, but rather is unable to die. These are not the same thing and this is one case of a potential fate worth than death.

So basically in that game, the GM decided I was able to physically recover from even death. However, that still left a host of other character ending statuses I could be subject to, including mental breakdown, incarceration in a deep pit, the metaphysical erasure of her identity as a person, or transformation into something like a stone statue.

Mechanical Perspective

Pivoting on this to look at it from a mechanical standpoint. Hitting the end of a health status is more about the character being removed from the scene (such as in Fate or other games with a soft take-out mechanic) or being removed from the game (such as in Monster of the Week where most hunters can take up to 7 Harm with the 8th killing them.). But as these are narrative games, you don't necessarily have to define "removed from the game" as physically dead.

An angel that has pulled a Gandalf at Moria and been dispersed from physical manifestation is not dead but nor are they able to influence the story anymore. The same with a master or original vampire for whom the common methods don't work and he just keeps coming back like Castlevania or Hammer-Horror's Dracula. They may simply be gone for now. An immortal mummy might physically subdued long enough to lock in a sarcophagus and drop in the ocean. There's so many ways for an immortal to be taken out of the picture permanently that can be easily explained within the flexible mechanics of a narrative system.

Impact on Resurrection

Just like removal from the game does not necessarily equate to physical death in a narrative game, resurrection mechanics are basically just a method to return a character to the game. And Immortality will impact.

For example, the traditional sort of resurrection/raise the dead spell as seen in D&D and other such games might work on a slain human, werewolf, or other such mortal, physical entity, but that ritual is not going to help you bring back the angel that just lost their physical incarnation, or bring back the master vampire from his ashes.

In a narrative system, returning a character to the game has to directly address how they were removed from it in the first place.

They may have to find a new vessel for the angel to inhabit or perform a certain blood rite to bring back a vampire. The mummy that was dropped in the ocean will have to be tracked down and pulled out of the water a la Captain America. A character who has lost their identity down to metaphysical level has to be given it back in some way. The immortal kept trapped in the bottom level of a black box prison must be located and broken out.

All of these are variations on the same sort of process you would do for a resurrection.

What's really fun is that in a narrative game you can also involve the "dead" character in the attempt to resurrect them.

In a lot of ways, the ritual to insert Casey Davis back into reality in @monstersplaybook was a resurrection ritual and the means by which she was originally saved were the start of the ritual. So that whole stretch of time where everybody forgot Casey Davis existed despite her walking around was basically a long extended period punctuated with both handling the current monster as well as addressing the slow erasure of their friend. Basically, Casey was participating in her own resurrection the entire time.

The Storyteller Squad also has an example of this after then-Felicity banished Damien accidentally and the team had do a whole ritual to summon him back to Earth. And in the meantime, Damien had to dodge demons and demon spawn in the Place Apart. Basically, he had to survive hell while the rest of the team worked to get him out of hell.

Another option would be for the character being resurrected to go through a whole vision journey to examine their life and what they want out of it, a bit similar to Sheridan's situation in Babylon 5 season 4.

This sort of proactive whole-team involvement is great for the player so that they don't end up just sitting on their thumbs during something that really should be a heavy spotlight moment for them.

Similar Resilience to Mortals

Another problem people run into is in how they reconcile the fact that the immortal, literally unkillable angel has the same or similar numbers of health boxes as the mortal bartender.

As with the knowledge question this is fairly simple.

Immortality does not instantly make one an invincible badass.

As with skills and stats, health in narrative games is not an objective measure of simple physical well being but rather a narrative device to convey how dire their situation is getting. It's movie/TV injuries.

The first is the simplest answer, but the second isn't much more difficult especially since you can address most of this in the way you describe the injuries.

Using MotW again because the numbers are small and convenient.

Remember also that in a lot of narrative games a move or action is not necessarily the same sort of seconds-long slice of time you'd get in something like D&D. In Monster of the Week, I often describe moves as a camera cut. So let's look at two examples of hunters, a truly unkillable and physically powerful immortal character and the other a plucky college student.

If they cornered into trying to kick some ass with a werewolf and take 2 Harm, then it may look like this.

For the immortal that's going to look like an extended fight sequence of a drag-out fight with both sides raining damage down on each other, dodging, healing, but eventually it coming out with the immortal dealing however much damage they do (it's unimportant to the topic) but taking 2 Harm.

For the plucky college student it might instead by an extended stalking and chase scene with the werewolf just missing them several times but finally at the end being able to get a claw into the them even as the college student manages to hit them in the face with a silver serving platter.

Within the story, the immortal took a lot actual more blows than the college student, but mechanically and narratively, they are in approximately the same amount of danger.

As usual with a lot of these issues, the answer in a narrative game is embrace the subjective nature of the mechanics and accept that 1 Harm for an immortal and 1 Harm for a college kid are not objectively the same amount of physical punishment received.

[caxycreations]

If I lose out on the victory points from ONE MORE MATCH because of a little shit that can't handle losing...

Several matches in a row now, I've had the other player quit out the INSTANT they would have lost.

Most recent one was especially infuriating.

Rant below the cut, with a lot of game-specific terms and info.

Yes, I'm pissed, I paid $90USD for this fucking game and I want to have a good time, but every single match I wind up suffering from boredom because nobody else in the goddamn community wants to actually FIGHT.

See, I play SSj4 Gogeta, and he's pretty hated in the community. Why is he hated, you ask?

Because he has an ability to instantly go into Max Power/Sparking mode. Sparking mode gives the following benefits:

Boosted melee damage

Boosted ki blast damage

Boosted Super damage

Access to one use of your Ultimate

Instant Movement if you block while moving in any direction

Increased max number of ki blasts per volley

So it's a pretty big deal, you know?

SSj4 Gogeta also requires 3 Skill Stocks to USE that Instant Sparking Ability. For reference, Skill Stocks start at 0 for all players, and -slowly- build up over the course of the match.

Normally, to enter Sparking Mode, you need to have a full ki bar, at least one Skill Stock, and then you need to charge for ~3 full seconds to enter Sparking Mode by filling the ki bar a second time, which is ONLY possible while you have a Skill Stock.

So, the biggest thing people hate about fighting SSj4 Gogeta is that he can enter Sparking...For three times the cost of entering Sparking normally, and for more than twice as much of a wait, because of how long it takes to get Skill Stocks to charge up.

They also dislike his stats; he does just way too much damage, apparently, despite Mr. Satan, the lowest damage character in the entire game, being able to do about two thirds of an entire health bar of damage with one combo (you get 3-4 health bars), which is BARELY LESS than Gogeta.

And he gets 1 extra health bar. But, given how much damage EVERYONE does, that means next to nothing.

So, to recap, people hate SSj4 Gogeta because:

He's able to "instant Spark" after waiting several times longer than just -Sparking normally- (and it leaves him vulnerable the entire 2 seconds he's activating the ability)

He has 12% more damage per hit than Hercule, the lowest-damage character in the game

He has 1 more bar of health (several characters match him, but the people whining never play those characters) so he can take -one- more combo or -one- more super than normal, and ultimates don't insta-kill him.

So you may ask yourself "Well Caxy, how do you play? Are you abusing these things?"

FUCK NO.

I don't waste my time with supers or ultimates. Every time I've ever bothered using one, it's been blocked, perfect-dodged, or Skill Countered (actual name of the ability, if you have 2 or more Skill Stocks you can Skill Counter to deflect or negate the attack entirely) because supers and ults in this game ARE NOT WORTH THE EFFORT unless you know, beyond all doubt, that you CAN get them off.

So I'm a melee fighter. I get right in your face and wail on you until you die.

In theory.

See, there's another ability. Perfect Counter. If you hit the right buttons at the right time, you'll not only perfect-block the hit, but you'll counter with a knockback.

And that leads to some really good fistfights, with both players trading hits back and forth, trading PCs, etc

It's fun, when they actually want to fight you.

Enter...

The Problem™

Nobody wants to fight.

They'll PC, knock me back, then start charging ki, and they will do that over and over, until they can either use the Super they want to use, or they can hit Sparking and ult me.

Now, on most characters this isn't an issue. I'm pretty good at dodging a lot of the common Supers, and the Ults are pretty garbage unless you secure a stagger so your opponent can't dodge or block before using it.

But the ones that upset me are specifically Broly, the Legendary Super Saiyan, from Dragonball Z.

Why?

Because his ki blasts gain infinite use when he enters Sparking, he has an Instant Spark ability, and every single Z Broly player does the same thing:

Focus on pure defense until they can Instant Spark, knock you away, activate Instant Spark the picosecond after hitting you away, then spam ki blasts at you until the last segment of their Sparking, at which point they cast their Ultimate.

Why is this frustrating, if Ultimates are so easy to handle?

Because the ki spam means you're stuck guarding or deflecting the blasts, and can't dodge, and Z Broly's Ultimate is Unblockable so you HAVE to dodge it.

You can't just let him hit you, cause then you'll be staggered when he casts. But you can't block or deflect either, cause then you'll be mid-animation.

Even abilities like Afterimage Strike and Wild Sense, which auto-dodge one melee, super, or ultimate, will not work against his ultimate.

So, what specifically happened to piss me off enough to type up ALL OF THIS?

I fought a Z Broly. I melee'd him to about half of one bar left. He managed to knock me back and pop instant sparking. He spammed ki blasts. He hit me with his ult. I had half a bar left. Evenly matched. Perfectly balanced.

I ran in for a melee, stunned him, then gave him a taste of his own medicine by popping my own instant sparking, stunned him again, and cast my ult at point blank.

You know your ult hit when a cutscene plays showing the ultimate animation. It started to play, I watched him "disintegrate" in the beam, and the second he did, BEFORE the cutscene was over, before it counted my win, before his last tic of health disappeared...

He disconnected from the match. Alt+f4'd his way out of the loss.

Which returned me to the lobby, without gaining the Rank Points for the win, because the match "did not conclude", because he disconnected before it could be done.

He was so determined to win that he relied WAY too heavily on the cheapest trick in the game.

He was so determined NOT to lose that he hit alt+f4 instead of taking the loss and moving on.

I fucking hate the kind of people that make up most of the communities of EVERY fighting game, but when the game itself DOES NOTHING to punish players for playing like douchebags, it's even worse.

The "penalty" for quitting out of a match? A warning that you quit out last time. Do it too often and they -slightly- increase how long it takes you to queue up.

The worst part is there's a setting to specifically exclude players with a high quit-out rate, which I have enabled so I don't get quitters, which means that guy has a clean record but for some reason just COULD NOT stand the idea of losing to me with his cheap-ass trick.

Fuck Bandai-Namco.

Fuck Spike Chunsoft.

Fuck the guy playing Broly.

[exhausted-archivist]

In regards to my last reblog on the scale of Thedas, latitude and stuff. I’ve been thinking about how much thought I give all this. Especially because this topic is one I’ve been talking with a lot of people about lately. It crops up a lot with people who, like me enjoy natural world building or are fanfic writers. Or really anyone who sits down and reads the lore at length. More times then not the question of Thedas’s scale comes up.

So, I want to establish I am very well aware that I’m likely giving it more thought than the devs. I have that luxury as a fan and consumer of the series. It is extremely relevant for me because I like making maps for the series, plotting out travel paths, and scaling things for da ttrpg campaigns I write.

So because I think about it a lot, I notice all the many different scales of Thedas in terms of travel time. How the scale they gave the ttrpg doesn’t match up with any scale they established in the main games or books. I think if the devs sat down and thought about establishing a standard scale and also considering just basic stuff we also wouldn’t have the Deep Roads be 2-4 miles / 3.21-6.43 km below sea level and display a lack of geothermal qualities. I think they’d consider how they built a world with at least 9.1 million people and tons of mega fauna such as giants and dragons and 14’/4.26 m tall bears that hunt dragons, all squished into roughly 1/4 of Europe and how much that isn’t really sustainable. How there would be much more impact if nature encroachment in civilization and how common things like that would be in places. Which they do consider it to a degree, I’m not saying they don’t. But I think if they thought about it just to make the world something that holds up a little better to idle musings, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. That the world would feel more real and alive and also narratively give them more to work with.

The contradictions and lack of consideration for the natural world has always been one of my critiques of Dragon Age, among other things. The reason why that is, is mostly because of a noticeable trend the lack of natural world building in fantasy. It’s a topic that has been discussed elsewhere and at length by other people, but to summarize nature is slowly having less and less impact in fantasy even in an ambient quality. Obviously this isn’t a universal statement, nor a universally required thing for a story to explore and have. That there are things that do focus on and explore it, but speaking in general terms, it is a trend in the majority of media.

Which for me is a bummer as it is an aspect of writing and world building I enjoy. I really like themes of man vs nature and to have that you need to have a basic level of natural world building. Which BioWare doesn’t really explore in Dragon Age despite having elements of it - such as how regular raw lyrium is explosive, mages get sick around all lyrium unless it is diluted to a safe amount for mages, and raw lyrium straight up kills them if they’re in the same room.

So then you have questions of how do mages go/handle being underground with such a risk? Dwarves have stone sense but would mages be able to tell when they’re getting close to large lyrium deposits because they’re getting sick? Does this impact grey warden mages? Darkspawn mages?

Things that don’t get fully acknowledged or explored despite being mentioned casually in codices most people don’t read. And they don’t for a couple of reasons such as potential coding issues but also all the questions you’d have to ask:

How would you implement that as a mechanic? Would you lock mage players out of entire areas featuring raw lyrium? Would they take environmental damage if you wanted the players to explore it regardless? Would it be a mechanic only applied by in harder difficulty modes? Do you acknowledge it in banter but not in any other way? Create a way to explain why the pc mage and their mage companions aren’t dropping dead?

BioWare’s answer seems to seemingly just ignore it because it would make gameplay too challenging/punishing and likely might not be fun for a player to deal with. But they compromise by keeping the lore active in the canon through codices and low impact additions. Which is a completely okay solutions, not my preferred but I get why they do it.

When I approach this lore, I do so without expecting them to fully flesh out each nation or know which city has the most resources and the geologically rich lands in said country. Dragon Age, and BioWare in general, relies on semi-soft world building. The world was after all designed for a game. They only need to build out what they need and what hopefully won’t paint them into a corner with future installments.

Additionally, the writing style for Dragon Age doesn’t suit the hard world building that I prefer, I’m quite aware of that but also know that when it comes to talk about world building in any media, there is always the issue of people (like me) who world build for fun and consider all these small aspects but ultimately they aren’t always needed and necessary for the story a game like Dragon Age is telling.

Dragon Age is told with the intention of things being given from an unreliable narrator. Built on the concept of: there’s three sides to the truth, what x thinks happens, what y thinks happens, and then what actually happened. Which works and I love the premise.

That said, I think that it also impacts lore that shouldn’t be subjected to the unreliable narrator. Foundation or anchor lore points to be specific. Which, as we know, BioWare has always struggled with consistency in their lore, particularly with Dragon Age.

Distance is one of those foundational points that shouldn’t change, and it’s also one of those points that you don’t have to give exact travel times. You can leave it vague and stick to the official statements like the ones we have of Ferelden being the size of England (or Ireland depending on the source you use). If you’re going to be giving specifics, then I think being consistent with how long it travels to get to point a to b and not changing it multiple times in one game should be a basic expectation that is met.

Other ones the series has and is pretty consistent with is how we know Thedas has 24 hours a day, they have seasons like we expect, and are in the southern hemisphere.

Do they sometimes slip up because editing doesn’t catch they’ve made a reference that applies only to the northern hemisphere? Yeah, and that’s not bad. There are a lot of people working on the project and things slip through.

I know I have the luxury to think about Thedas in a capacity that allows for the hard world building that I like. I also know I focus on and enjoy aspects of lore that are not exactly popular for their main audience and are pretty niche.

I don’t expect BioWare to world build how I do because I’m not world building for a massive and varied audience. Not even when I do world building for my tabletop games, because I’m catering to a smaller and more specific audience.

Still I think it’s valid and worth pondering these little elements of the world building. For fun, appreciation, and to nurture one’s own creativity and understanding of media, the world, and what they think makes a believable world.

Devs might not have time to consider it but we sure do and that’s half the fun of enjoying media I think.

[aortaplatinum]

I got Bioshock 2 in the recent Steam sale cause I fuckin loved the first game but I played it on 360 so there were frame drops and the end credits didn't play. But that PALES in comparison to the absolute shitshow that is the PC port of Bioshock 2. Both of em. OG and Remastered. It's shameful that 2K is even selling such a broken product.

First up, both are very crashy. No one in the community knows what exactly causes the crashing and 2K doesn't give enough of a shit to fix it. So players just have to save constantly since the game only autosaves at the start of each 20-90 minute level. And the Remaster takes this shit to the next level, by locking the ability to quicksave behind a fucking 2K account. Like "just let us have your data and you can make neurotically saving every 3 minutes less of a hassle!"

I tried the OG version first [buying Remastered on Steam gives you the OG as well] since I heard it was more stable, but nope, crashing every few minutes at random. Then I tried the remaster, and shockingly it's way more stable. I only started getting crashes in Pauper's Drop- where it was just as bad as the original version.

But even that's up in the air because in one of the Steam discussion forum posts I was scouring for a solution, a user said to open the config.ini file and increase the texture streaming memory limit, because it comes limited to LESS THAN 1GB. So some of the worst issues may have been caused by something as trivial as a memory leak and poor optimization. I cranked it up to 8GB of the 16GB of RAM I have and like I said that seemed to work, but everyone has crash issues in Pauper's Drop, usually with the first big meathead Slicer you fight or with the Big Sister fight.

So depending on the combination of hardware in your computer, and how much research you've done on PCGamingWiki and Steam discussions you can either have crashes so common they make the game unplayable and corrupt your save file, or almost no issues at all, in one of the two versions of the game, at seemingly random, due to no fault of your own.

Get hype for Bioshock 4!

[slashedout]

My Windows XP x64 desktop. I have it installed on my main PC alongside other operating systems, and boot into it to either mess about with, get a nostalgia hit, or play around and try to get stuff not-supporting-XP working.

Windows XP remains surprisingly usable today. There are several updated web browsers - one recent appearance is Supermium, which ports the newest/almost-newest Chromium and permits use of Discord, Youtube etc without a sweat under XP (plus it has several privacy tweaks from Ungoogled Chromium, for those conscious of that).

Windows XP had an especially vibrant custom theme landscape - in part because it remained supported and widely used for a humongous amount of time. As such people made great-quality custom themes that encompass all kinds of design trends that popped up over the years. The theme used by me here is "Watercolor Emico: Black" by Jamush, which is one of my all-time favorites.

In service of 4/13, which happened yesterday, I have put up a Homestuck wallpaper, in this instance one of my favorite ones that has stuck around with me on those XP x64 setups ^^. I believe that this

is the original, but it has a couple of small quirks, like the way darker space on the right. I have wrangled it quite a bit on my own end, but I don't remember what I precisely did since it's been ages. It does appear to be a vectorized picture of Skaia, which would make it "recreatable" for anyone interested. Overall, I enjoy using this system - I normally use Linux, but when I get a desire to use Windows this usually does perfectly. It does, however, have several things that later Windowses clearly do better - for example, the audio system got greatly enhanced in Vista, with per-application volume settings. Additionally, and this may be a problem with my drivers, I get pops and slight skips in certain programs and games (for example, VVVVVV) under XP that I do not get on other systems. Older Windowses certainly had their own warts indeed (as someone who generally doesn't like newer Windowses, I do apprecieate being able to use older Windows versions regularly, to have further perspective on what changes in the later versions I would call definite improvements, and what I would rather have be similar to the older versions ^^)

A very important thing to note is that my hardware is old enough for XP x64 to still be supported driver-wise. You generally can't install Windows XP on newer hardware by default, and while there are modded drivers, custom drivers and workarounds, it is certainly not a task for the feeble. Additionally, the XP x64, being based on Server 2003, and not being a particularly common system (Vista/7 were the first x64 OS's that properly "took off" to put it highly clumsily), has spottier driver support than "regular" 32-bit XP. Indeed, I have to use my GPU with a single screen, as plugging in a second monitor bluescreens the computer! (this is an issue with the driver under specifically 64-bit systems, and while there is a patched version for a later driver version than what I use, that driver version has its own issues and keeps resetting itself into washed-out-colors-mode (clamping the colours to 16-235/"limited RGB" ). So I stick with the older driver version and just use it with a single screen) So yeah, have an inpromptu-and-overlong description of an OS install I have particularly enjoyed messing about with recently :D

[zeawesomebirdie]

Going insane in your askbox again <3 true friendship right there. Anyway so you've probably noticed I am so so into Baldur's Gate 3 right now so I just want to let the thoughts out in a discombobulated fashion. There are no fun parallels here (or are there? I think I can do fun parallels) this is just word vomit because I can't play the game until either my dad finds a way to let me play from across the Channel or until Christmas. Because I couldn't bring my good PC all the way to England and my laptop sure as fuck doesn't have the specs to play it. So.

I don't know how much you've seen of it but one of my favourite things is explaining media to people in too much detail so I will pretend you only know that there's hot characters in it. It's an RPG based on the D&D system (and set in a D&D world) where you're an adventurer kidnapped by one of those yucky psychic-powered tentacle monsters, a mindflayer. You and the whole ship of kidnappees have those nasty little mindflayer tadpoles inserted in your brain (like in TCW on Geonosis, this time it's through the eye), and even though you blow up the mindflayer ship and save yourself by the end of the tutorial, that little tadpole is going to make you into a mindflayer in a few days (that's how they reproduce). So you embark, originally, on a quest to not transform into an actual monster, and it all spirals from there. On the way, you get to meet other people who have common interests with you, the main ones being six other people with a tadpole in their brain, who can team up with you & become your companions because they also don't want to become mindflayers, but there's also lots of cool NPCs of course.

The game plays pretty close to actual D&D, if you've played it/seen people play it, so there's all the classes (except artificer alas), the spells, the combat is turn-by-turn, and you roll dice for a lot of stuff that requires skills. There's a lot of options for how you play things, dialogue, actions, etc, and it doesn't feel as "good normal thing to do vs the most cartoonishly cruel thing ever" as a lot of those immersive RPGs do (it does sometimes but way less). The story looks pretty insane from what I've seen trying not to spoil myself too much, and I say that in a very positive way.

And okay, I'm going insane about the story, sure, but mostly it's the companions. The main six are really fleshed out and interesting, their voice actors all did a great job, their writing is great, and they're so so compelling aargh. In order of when you meet them, we have... 1) Lae'zel the Githyanki, a race of alien looking green guys from a different plane of reality with a very warrior culture. They have a deep hatred of mindflayers, so Lae'zel is extremely intense about finding a cure for the tadpole issue, and they're very ferocious, so she's pretty abrasive if you haven't befriended her. 2) Shadowheart the cleric, who's a bit racist at first to be honest, and very mysterious... In part because she doesn't remember much of her life, in part because she's secretive about the bits she does remember. Then the next two are in the same area and you can see whichever first, but 3) Gale of Waterdeep, the scrungly wizard, and yes he really is so scrungly. Wizards in D&D are the spellcasters who weren't born with magic but who studied it and who owe their powers to hours of reading books, consequently he's kind of a nerd. He also asks to eat your magic items pretty early on because he's got a condition where he needs to eat magic or bad things happen. 4) Astarion, my beloved, the pale elf, the vampire spawn. Yes, him, you know who it is everyone posts about him and they're correct to do so, I mean what's not to love? He's a vampire, he's hot, he's judgy and flirty and fucked up, his morals are atrocious, absolutely great character. 5) Wyll Ravengard, the Blade of Frontiers, a charming knight in shining armour type, who given his skill with a rapier you'd think is some kind of fighter, but actually he's a warlock with a patron who's both hot and suspect. And 6) Karlach (pronounced Kar-lack, not Kar-lash), a tiefling with a burning engine for a heart and the nicest personality of any of the companions honestly. She's tall, she's strong, all the lesbians want her, and because of the engine-for-a-heart thing she runs really really hot and subsequently she can't touch things (or people) or they burn.

That's the main guys, which you can also play as if you want (but it's not the best idea for a main playthrough, you're better off creating your own adventurer and then maybe on a second/third/etc. playthrough trying one of the origins characters, or the Dark Urge, which, that's something else entirely, ignore that). They're all interesting and fun and I want to do their quests so bad and I would romance all of them at the same time if I could, but alas they're not all into polyamory. My first run is 100% going to be romancing Astarion, because I love them all but I am positively insane about him.

Now I've tried not to spoil myself too much but let's be honest I still managed to, so, eh, but it's more like sunlight through the leaves of a tree, there's still a lot of shadows, I just have a clear-ish picture of a certain amount of stuff. From that picture, I'll say that I love interactions between the companions especially, like I find all the similarities and differences between them so interesting, and the different relationships they could have fascinate me.

For example, and yes I have Astarion tunnel vision, there's an interesting dynamic with him and Wyll, or him and Karlach, there's room for fun stuff with him and Gale as well, and honestly if I knew Shadowheart and Lae'zel well enough I could say there's something there as well but I don't - except that Lae'zel and Astarion are often together in the morals thing. Oh yeah there's a companions approval thing, so sometimes when you do an action they'll approve or disapprove, and it's weighted based on how important the issue is to them. Lae'zel approves of violence, Wyll approves of helping people, etc. Well Lae'zel loves violence, because that's her culture, and Astarion - also likes violence lol, and he doesn't like stopping to save all the pathetic lifeforms you encounter. So in that way they're both focused on the goal, curing themselves from the tadpole, unwilling to stop and help every damsel in distress, and they think the best resolution to a conflict is someone's blood outside of their body.

Shadowheart and Lae'zel have this hate relationship where at the start of the game Shadowheart is kind of against Lae'zel's people (kind of rightfully so, their reputation as fierce warriors who'll destroy anything as long as it means getting rid of a mindflayer isn't exactly wrong), and Lae'zel isn't nice to anyone but especially not those who antagonise her (and people love to make them fuck about it, which. Yeah. Yeah, make them fuck about it). Karlach is part of Wyll's backstory, he was meant to kill her because she killed people but you can like, smooth things over and uncover truths or something (I haven't played that part yet!) and she can join your party and it's good now, but there's a connection there. I'm trying to connect Gale to someone but honestly I don't know now that I think about it, I need to look into him some more he's so fun to me.

But you could argue that there's things that they all have in common - I feel like, off the top of my head, they all have this authority figure who sucks in their life? Gale has Mystra, the goddess he follows (followed?) who apparently sucks violently as a person, Astarion has Cazador, the vampire who turned him and abused him for centuries, Shadowheart has I think Shar, her goddess, Wyll has Mizora, his patron who's hot and shitty, I mean she's a warlock patron, Karlach has I believe Zariel, who - kept her trapped in one of the nine Hells?, and Lae'zel has whatever the fuck is happening with the Githyanki and their queen Vlaakith which honestly sounds like a shitty cult. Like they've all got fucked up authority figures <3 it's different flavours, like Astarion and Karlach actually have a fair bit in common with the way they were treated (but they're opposites in the way they reacted, which to be fair they weren't in the exact same situation so y'know - Karlach is joyful and passionate and pretty straightforward, Astarion is sarcastic and secretive and guarded, and also he approves of you letting children get hurt), or Gale and Shadowheart who both have religion/deity issues, and Wyll and Karlach share a person from their past that sucks, but like. Lil group of fucked up homies <3 I can't wait to hold all of their hands while we decimate whoever hurt them.

I'm not kidding btw there's a scene at the start where you can literally crush the skull of the mindflayer who abducted you (off screen but it does make a crunch) and I can't wait to do the closest thing to that that the game will allow to Cazador :) I think I'm also going to have a Reaction to Gale's storyline but I've managed to keep the details fuzzy for now so I don't know more.

So hi this is me chewing at drywall desperately waiting to get to play the game <3 how's it going in DC land, having fun with all the Robins? I personally think you should look at Gale a little, he has a vibe in common with Obi-Wan (the "looks like an english professor, is actually pretty slutty" vibe) and also he says pish posh unironically and he wears pyjamas at camp (everyone else just takes off some layers and looks kind of dressed for the club, he full on gets the velvet pj top out, it's incredible). Though Wyll is also very charming, like I keep going on about how Astarion is incredible because of course I think that, and Gale has the nerd charm, and next to that Wyll looks a little Less (and he has hours less of content I think), but the man has a charm. And the ladies are great too, it's just that you're less into women, but -

Oh wait I forgot to say: you know how in D&D there's 6 stats, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, and the highest any of your stats can be at character creation is 17 and the lowest is 8? Astarion, unsurprisingly, has an 8 in strength, he's a rogue, it's normal; Gale also has an 8, but he's a nerd who loves books, so that's fair; and Karlach and Lae'zel both have 17 in strength, because they're great warriors, so that tracks. Shadowheart has a 13, which is fair for a cleric, and Wyll - Wyll, even though he's great with a rapier, is a warlock, and warlocks cast with their charisma, so it's not his highest stat, but it's fine, it's not going to be the dump stat either, right? Wrong. 8 strength for Wyll. It kills me every time. You've got those three women, two of whom could snap you in half and the third who could probably win at arm wrestling against random men, and three men, all with 8 in strength. 8 for an adventurer is pathetic, to be clear. 8 is your dump stat. The human average is 8 or 9. Adventurers are well above human in terms of stats. 8 in strength is normal for a wizard, but man, Wyll on his own, but also the combo of all of them having 8 in that one stat? It kills me.

(for the anecdote, their stats are roughly as follows: Astarion has an 8 in strength and a 17 in dexterity, normal for a rogue, and only 10 in charisma, which is truly enough to get him into bad situations and not enough to get out of them; Gale is a squishy wizard who, obviously, put all his points into intelligence, which - in D&D intelligence is book smarts and wisdom is street smarts, and it's the casting stat for wizards, so that tracks, his charisma manages to be higher than Astarion's also; Lae'zel has a 17 in strength and an 8 in charisma, which also tracks, she's a warrior and she doesn't need words to make people pay attention to her, she's also got a good constitution; Karlach also has the 17 strength, but her 8 is in intelligence, normal for her background and normal for a barbarian, and she has the same constitution as Lae'zel, a respectable 15; Shadowheart has a 17 in wisdom, which actually shines an interesting light on her character now that I think about it, and she's got the same 8 in charisma as Lae'zel, which, they should kiss about it; and Wyll's 17 is in charisma, which makes him the most charismatic of the group, which tracks with his vibe and the way he behaves on top of making sense for game mechanics, because once again warlocks cast with charisma. This game is turning me into a D&D player the way 3½ years of my bestie talking my ears off about the TTRPG didn't)

Actually I didn't even get to the fun point of Karlach and Astarion being contrasts in so many ways!! Because she's nice, he's mean, okay, but also. They're both kinda touch starved, but she's once again very open about it, she's overtly sad she can't touch people or pets because of her burning skin, and it feels like if you helped her with that she'd be trying to start a cuddle pile every evening at camp with zero shame about it, and also apparently there's a horny aspect to the no touch frustration thing if you're in a romance with her, because you both want to go for it but her skin says no. Astarion has spent 200 years obeying every order of a very cruel vampire lord, and he's both kind of desperate for someone to be nice to him, but also really really against people getting close to him in every sense of the term. He does also like cuddles though <3 and then there's the Wyll-Astarion thing, where Wyll is this very prince charming kinda guy, saves the widow and the innocent, just goes around helping people all the time, absolute bleeding heart, and Astarion spent 200 years suffering, hoping that someone would help, and nobody came - which is part of why he disapproves of you helping people, seeing people be so nice everywhere makes him mad, because he certainly didn't get any kindness for most of him life! You're saying that there are kind adventurers who help poor victims of fate, that there's actually a lot of those guys, it's just that none of them crossed his path, ever, in 200 years, when he was one of many and his sire is somewhat notorious?

Actually, thinking of that, there's a dialogue with Gale where Astarion says that the others can go pray to their deities if they want, but he won't, and Gale asks him if he's every prayed to any of them. He just goes "oh, I did, every one of them. None answered" and like. Arghhhh. The god worldbuilding in those two sentences!! Because there's gods of lots of things in the setting. Gods of the forgotten, the downtrodden, the victims, the abused, and the implications of that!!! I love the idea of deities actually existing, but them being both very human and also completely inhuman. Human in that they are Like Us, prone to the same fits of temper, the same cruelty, the same extremes as us, including also kindness, but inhuman in that it's pushed to eleven and distorted, because they're not actually human, either they never were or they aren't anymore. This shines a light on the human facet of them, because here it's about people, even well intentioned, kind people, turning away from suffering because it's complex and nuanced and difficult to help. Astarion was a vampire spawn, and he'd done terrible things, and his master was powerful, so... The gods are like us, they look away from pain and misery too. Insane sentences. Especially because the other gods we see also suck: Gale's goddess seems very shitty, and Shadowheart's also looks uuuh bad. I love the "gods suck" because in D&D lore those aren't just the christian god, they're kind of human, and a little bit of greek mythology vibes I would assume, and for real some of them just ascended to godhood from humanity, it's a thing that happens. So. Yeah. Sucks for Astarion obviously but that makes my brain effervescent. It's so crunchy for the worldbuilding. None of them answered..... Chewing on drywall!!

ANYWAY this is a BEAST holy shit. I have many thoughts about this game. Crunch crunch crunch. Good night beloved sleep well thank you for at least reading the unhinged ramblings, when I get the game I'll be back with even less hinges <3 can't wait for the wedding I'm going to be honest <3 <3

Ram my beloved. This is me rn:

Thank you for the hinges in my inbox!!! This was a delight to wake up to!!! No I don't understand at all but I am loving this for you!!!! May you get this game soon!!!!!!

(And thanks for all the context, like half my dash is this game and I think my boyfriend is playing it but I have somehow remained Unknowledgable about everything, so I appreciate it!!)

You asked how things are going in DC land. So. Funny story.

I'm still recovering from covid, like I'm negative now but by the Force I'm still so sick. I can't write. Like at all. Like I can't even tell you the last time I was too sick to write, it never happens. So my current fanfic reading word count is a 1.5 million words in the last three weeks. And I now have plans to make a rec list. And that's not even all!

I've also written three folk songs for superbat. Because I am Totally Normal about themb. I have spent the last several months trying to write songs In General and then three weeks of covid later I have three. About stupid idiots being in love. Because I'm Clearly Normal about them. And I low key am now just going to write a whole entire album because why not, and because none of the songs are explicitly fansongs they just sound like normal folk songs, so who's gonna know but me anyway (and all of tumblr. Bc if I manage to finish this thing I will never shut up about it)

AND. And I've also watched several movies, and started another TV show, exclusively so I could understand more fic. And that is. Going. My parents are very confused. The librarians probably get a kick out of my requests. My brothers have already started teasing me. I am having the time of my life

Also Dick is my favourite character, he's beautiful and wonderful and such a good oldest brother I love himb he is baby. I'm still working on learning about the other Robins, but I've read enough fic and seen enough comics to know sort of who the others are, it's just that my interest in things tends to fall in the pre-90's category, which means Dick is the only Robin for a lot of what I'm reading/watching

I love you, I hope you are enjoying your weekend and you and your hinges are always welcome in my inbox <3

[publicschooll]

Interview Tips for 2024

In February of this year, I had the opportunity to interview the McNulty scholars at Hunter College to help them prepare for summer internships and grad school. In my career, I’ve interviewed, hired, and onboarded thousands of folks in hospitality, retail, and healthcare. I’ve learned a few things about what employers and hiring managers are looking for, so I decided to send them a guide to help them prepare based on the feedback I had for them and the questions they had for me and share it with all of you(Shocker, what’s your weakness was asked by almost everyone!). 

1. Create Your Elevator Pitch 

Your elevator pitch is not only an opportunity to showcase the important work you do but also to convey your personal story. Your elevator pitch should have the three C's, clarity, conciseness, and confidence. If you don't believe in yourself no one else will. Consider adding what you do, how you do it, and why you do it, typically in less than 3 minutes. Here's some groundwork from Indeed on writing your next pitch. Always make sure to tailor it to your specific audience. 

2. ABA (Always Be Asking)

The quickest way to lose engagement during an interview is not to have any questions prepared. Even if the interviewer has answered every question about the school/role, use this time to ask them a question about themself relative to their journey and lean on that interest to establish a connection. You can ask questions like:

What keeps you here?

What was your career trajectory?

What are three words you would use to describe working here?

What are some qualities that someone needs to have to be successful here?

What's one initiative you worked on this year that you're proud of?

These questions also give you insight into the company and any issues that may be present before jumping in. Is the person hesitant in their response? Doesn’t speak positively about leadership or work-life balance? Doesn’t have any good initiatives to share? You are interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing you! Be sure to be an active listener and ask follow-up questions to your interviewer. Here's a good list of other questions to ask if you're ever stuck keep these in your arsenal. 

3. Be PC When Discussing Former Employers You Despise

We all have employers/bosses that weren't our favorite. Avoid going on rants that bash them. Instead, focus on what you learned from that experience and why this particular employer/school entices you. You can use phrases like the ones below to convey that it was a difficult experience without outright expressing it.

Working/being there was an interesting experience

I learned a lot about myself and my expectations for my next role 

I believe everyone deserves a safe environment and that's why I'm interested in being here

I was allowed to do things outside of my job description to enhance my skills 

Heather at Glassdoor has written some tips that include avoiding giving unnecessary information. (I agree!)

4. Answering Common Questions Like What's Your Weakness?

Instead of using cookie-cutter answers like I work too much or I'm too dedicated, use this as an opportunity to show self-awareness and positivity. You can say, I wouldn't define these as weaknesses because they make me who I am but this year I am working on x skill. 

Time Management - Managing competing priorities has always been difficult for me due to time constraints but being more organized and aligning with leaders/peers on what needs to get done helps me push through. 

Patience - I am self-sufficient so at times I find it difficult to work on a team if the pace is not as fast as I would like it to be. I've been working on this through team-building workshops and seeking out opportunities to work in groups. 

Delegation - I struggled with delegation because I felt as if I could do a better job faster. I'm learning that there is beauty in the process of helping others grow and learn. I use project management tools to maintain a sense of control while allowing my team to work at their own pace.

Conflict Averse - I avoided giving feedback because I thought it would start a conflict or I would be looked at in a negative light. I'm working on balancing feedback with empathy and understanding that no one grows in their comfort zone including myself.

5. Brag About Yourself!

"Stories enable us to give credence to reality" - Ingram

When bragging about yourself, share your experiences, contributions, results, and of course challenges. It’s okay to be vulnerable about obstacles and opportunities faced(appropriately, of course). Your vulnerability displays resilience and problem-solving skills. Be sure to phrase statements as open-ended questions to engage folks and encourage dialogue about your story. Emphasize the importance of your community by mentioning mentors, teachers, peers, and collaborators. You all are incredibly smart, resourceful, and impactful!

[circuitwala]

Printed Circuit Board Basics

Most of us are using Printed Circuit Board in our daily life. Printed Circuit Boards are used in almost all the Electronic products, from consumer gadgets such as PCs, tablets, smartphones, and gaming consoles to industrial and even high tech products in strategic and medical electronics domains.

Here, we have some statistics for you that shows how many electronic devices connect worldwide from 2015 to 2025. This statistic shows an increase in the use of a number of PCB in people daily life. Hence, CircuitWala took this opportunity to provide a basic knowledge about PCB via this article.

There are so many books available online which teach about Printed Circuit Board design and hardware part. There are few links available online which shows only a few basic fundamentals of PCB and few are there for Basics of Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design. Few which gives good know knowledge on Printed Circuit Board terminology. But in the end for the hobbyist, there is no such material available which make their work easy.

Now days there few online designing websites available which allow hobbyist and students to create their design and Printed Circuit Board fabrication part. These websites provide limited features and charge high for the full edition. We, @CircuitWala are in try to provide one platform which provides plenty of Printed Circuit Board knowledge digitally to make your work simple and easy.

Alternatives of PCB include wire wrap and point-to-point construction. Creating a layout of PCB is a little bit time-consuming method as compared to its alternative solution but manufacturing of PCB is cheaper and faster then other wiring methods as electronic components are mounted and wired with one single part.

Let’s start with some basics of Printed Circuit Board with this article. Here in this article we will discuss about history of PCB to understand the emerge of PCB, Types of PCB to make your complex PCB a very simple using different types, Usage of PCB to provide you an idea to create more Printed Circuit Board projects, Advantages and Disadvantages, Possible Future to know about new technological change in Printed Circuit Board manufacturing and also about how to destroy and manage your PCB’s e-waste? We know you are eager to know all the stuff in details but before that let’s make a simple definition of Printed Circuit Board.

What is Printed Circuit Board?Printed Circuit Board is an electronic device made of conductive material(FR-4) like copper which connects components mounted on it to to get desired output by providing an input on another end.

When the board has not mounted with any of the components is called as Printed Circuit Board or Printed Wired Board. Mounting of an electronic component on Printed Circuit Board is called as PCB assembly.

History of Printed Circuit BoardThe invention of Printed Circuit Board was by Austrian engineer Paul Eisler as part of a radio set while working in England around 1936.

In early days before Printed Circuit Board became common in use, Point-to-Point construction was used. This meant some bulky and unreliable design that required plenty of sockets and regular replacement of it. Most of this issue directly address when PCB went into regular production.

Originally, every electronic component had wire leads, and the PCB had holes drilled for each wire of each component. The components’ leads were then passed through the holes and soldered to the PCB trace. This method of assembly is called Through-Hole construction. There is one other method to mount component is called as Surface Mount.

Type of Printed Circuit BoardPCBs are produced from the different types of material and on the basis of that material PCBs are divided mainly into two parts: Rigid PCB and Flexible PCB. Nowadays, a combination of Rigid and flexible PCB is also possible and that is called as Flexi-Rigid PCBs.

Most of the PCBs are built in layers. The inner layer is the base material called as a substrate. Rigid PCBs are mainly made of material like epoxy materials and Flexible PCBs are made of plastic material that can withstand high temperatures.

Rigid PCBs are generally, hard materials that hold the component in a better way. The motherboard in the tower of a computer is the best example of Rigid PCBs. Flexible PCBs fundamental material allows PCB to fit into forms that Rigid PCBs can not. Flexible PCBs can turn round without harmful the circuit on PCB.

All Rigid and Flexible PCBs can come in three formats by layers: Single Layer, Double Layer, and Multi-Layer.

1. Single Layer PCBSingle Layer PCBs have been around since the late 1950s and still dominate the world market in sheer piece volume. Single Sided PCBs contain only one layer of conductive material and are best suited for low-density designs. Single-sided PCBs are easy to design and quick to manufacture. They serve as the most lucrative platform in the industry.

2. Double Layer PCBDouble Layered printed circuit board technology is conceivably the most popular type of PCB in the industry. Double Sided PCB (also known as Double-Sided Plated Thru or DSPT) circuits are the gateway to advanced technology applications. They allow for a closer (and perhaps more) routing traces by alternating between top and bottom layers using vias.

3. Multi Layer PCB

Multilayer PCB is a circuit board that has more than two layers. Unlike a Double-Sided PCB which only has two conductive layers of material, all multilayer PCBs must have at least three layers of conductive material which are buried in the center of the material.

Usage of Printed Circuit BoardBy reading this article till this point, we hope that you are now able to get about printed circuit boards. Now, we will make you understand about different applications of printed Circuit Board.

In this digital world, Printed Circuit Board is in almost all our daily life electronic devices and in our industrial electronics as well. Below are the industries where PCBs are used:

Possible FutureNowadays, most of the circuits are replaced to produce Printed Circuit Board from the old methods. Revolution in technology made many of the processes automated and hence it is easy to manufacture PCB. But still, these processes are a bit expensive to hire, involve toxic waste and use high temperatures and acids. With technological advances we have seen in the past years, it is not hard to imagine PCB will soon be revolutionized. Not only that but research institutes predict a more ‘green’ future for PCBs; PCBs being made of paper.

Electronic Waste (e-waste)Electronic Waste or e-waste is described as discarded electrical or electronic devices. Informal processing of e-waste in developing countries can lead to adverse human health effects and environmental pollution.

Electronic scrap components contain a hazardous substance such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, or brominated flame retardants. Recycling and disposal of e-waste may involve significant risk to health of workers and communities in developed countries and great care must be taken to avoid unsafe exposure in recycling operations

Nowadays, developing countries are encouraging electronic users to take care while recycling the e-waste or submit them to the organization who are involved in such activities.

SummaryIn this blog, we have learned the basics of Printed Circuit Board. CircuitWala is planning to write as many blogs to provide more and more knowledge of Printed Circuit Board. Either it is basics or manufacturing or usages or advantages and disadvantages of PCBs. We will also try to make our users/customers up to date for the new technology innovations, including past histories and revolution of the PCB industries.

In the next blog, we will look at more briefly about the different types of Printed Circuit Board. We also understand the process to make it and different usage and application for the same.