#Construction Work Order Software

[veteransroofig]

Prestartr’s Work Order Management Software streamlines maintenance and service operations with automated tracking, real-time updates, and seamless team collaboration. Easily create, assign, and monitor work orders to boost efficiency and reduce downtime. With intuitive dashboards and mobile access, manage tasks anytime, anywhere. Simplify workflows and enhance productivity with Prestartr!

[prestartr]

Enterprise Scheduling Software

Streamline your construction projects with Enterprise Scheduling Software from Prestartr. Optimize timelines, manage resources, and improve team collaboration with this powerful, cloud-based platform designed for efficiency, scalability, and real-time project scheduling across large construction operations.

[maddie-dog-story-blog]

The Baby Doctor

Reposting this because it seems to have disappeared from this blog for some reason! Enjoy!

This wasn't supposed to happen! She was never supposed to be here. She was a smart, intelligent, capable woman. She had graduated from medical school for God's sake. But, she had pissed off the wrong nurse. Now, here she was, helplessly her diapers for the entertainment of the whole labor and delivery night shift.

It has been the third week of Dr. Bun's residency. She was on the tail end of a horrendous on-call shift. She was working through her charts and, in her delirium, got sloppy in her attention to detail. She accidentally ordered that one of her patients should be given a deadly amount of pain killers to deal with post-delivery pain.

Luckily for her patient, the doctor supervising the young doctor did not trust her yet. He caught her mistake, fixed it, then tracked down Dr. Bun to give her some aggressive constructive criticism. That's where Dr. Bun fucked up.

Rather then owning her mistake and promising to do better, Dr. Bun deflected the blame onto the nursing staff. Specifically, she alleged the nurse treating the patient, Nurse Angela, must have got in the system and messed up the order. Dr. Bun's supervisor was skeptical, but chose to trust his newest charge. He let the resident off with a warning and went to give the nurse a piece of his mind.

Unfortunately for Dr. Bun, the software the hospital used to treat patients kept careful record of precisely who made what orders. Fortunately for the girl, however, her supervisor had no idea that software has that capability. Nurse Angela, in the other hand, was very aware of it.

A couple of days later, when Dr. Bun was back in the hospital changing into her scrubs for the shift, Nurse Angela walked into the room holding two things--a print out from the record keeping software pinning the deadly medication order on Dr. Bun and a bulky, white adult diaper.

"Dr. Bun, I have a bone to pick with you. You pinned a potentially deadly mistake on me when, both you and I know I had nothing to do with it," Nurse Angela said. "That sort of dishonest, manipulative behavior is something I'd expect from a naughty toddler, not a doctor."

Dr. Bun began to feel upset at being challenged so directly by a person she considered beneath her.

"I didn't lie! You must have screwed up my orders, nurse," Dr. Bun, spitting out the word nurse as if it was the worst epithet imaginable.

Nurse Angela just calming walked up to the young, arrogant doctor and handed her the print out of the record confirming Dr. Bun's mistake.

"That is not what this says. Did you know dishonesty is a fireable offense at this hospital? One that the hospital reports to the medical board as well as any future employers?" Nurse Angela asked rhetorically. The older nurse smiled as the young woman's face dropped.

"I… uh… I'm so sorry! I'll do anything to make this up to you! Anything, just, please, don't tell anyone!" The resident pleaded.

The nurse's grin widened, becoming predatory. She motioned with the white, fluffy object in her other hand.

"Well, like I said Doctor, you've been acting more like a toddler than the responsible adult you are supposed to be. I think you need a reminder of that at all times from now on. Until I decide otherwise, if you want to keep your job here, you will wear and use one of these at all times when you are at work. The hospital's bathrooms are off limits to you, and, like the naughty toddler you are, you are not allowed to change yourself. If you want your wet or messy butt changed, you will have to track down one of the nurses in my labor and delivery unit and convince them to change you, understood?"

The young woman had no idea how to respond to that. Her eyes darted between the document in her hand and the bulky adult diaper being held by the nurse. Thoughts of being fired and her career being ruined darted through her head. She couldn't afford to pay back her student loans if she wasn't working as a doctor.

Backed into a corner, Dr. Bun did the only thing she could. She accepted Nurse Angela's offer.

Dr. Bun immediately found herself changed into the first of what would be many diapers by the nurse in the locker room. The next few weeks were full of humiliation and torment for the doctor as she adjusted to her knew position as the nursing units pet toddler, but, eventually her work days fell into a comfortable pattern.

She would use the restroom just prior to leaving work to minimize the risk of messy 'accidents.' She'd report to work where one of the nurses would help her get dressed for her shift. Then, she would proceed with her day as normal, seeking out a nurse for a change when she felt her diaper get too full.

Yes, it was humiliating to have the waistband of her scrubs pulled back or her crotch squeezed by another woman to have her diaper checked. Yes, it sucked laying on a locker room bench while her ass was wiped by someone she considered her subordinate. However, the human mind was resilient and could get used to anything once it happened enough.

Plus, her new situation has some benefits. She was getting praised by her supervisors for how well she worked with the nursing staff. Plus, not having to run to the bathroom all the time gave her more freedom to care for her patients. After a month as the hospital's diapered doctor, Dr. Bun would actually describe things as going well.

Nurse Angela was happy to see Dr. Bun's turn around, but noticed she was starting to get cocky again. The positive reviews from her supervisors lead her to once again become increasingly condescending towards the nursing staff. So, to remind the young doctor of her position, the nurse made Dr. Bun another offer she couldn't refuse.

That's how the young, professional woman with a medical degree found herself here. Nurse Angela has thrown a special, team building party at her home for all of her fellow labor and delivery nurses. The young doctor was also invited as entertainment.

When Dr. Bun arrived, she was stripped of her adult clothes. She was diapered, put in an childish shirt with padded mittens, and had a pacifier slipped in her mouth. She was instructed she was nothing more than a baby for the evening, not allowed to speak, walk, or care for herself in anyway. Worst of all, a suppository was shoved up her cute little bottom.

A baby blanket was laid in the middle of Nurse Angela's living room and she was instructed to stay on it. As her co-workers arrived and began to surround her, cooing at her like she was an actual baby, the babified doctor's stomach began to rumble and cramp. Once the last guest arrived, she couldn't take it anymore. Tears of embarrassment running down her face, Dr. Bun got onto all fours, sticking her diapered ass into the air as a wet fart escaped her butt cheeks.

Nurse Angela looked down and smiled. She drew everyone's attention to the scene. "Look everyone, I think the baby's about to make a stinky for us!"

Dr. Bun's coworkers laughed as they watched her lose control. Closing her eyes and grunting loudly, Dr. Bun pushed out a huge load of crap into her bulky diaper. She closed her eyes as she did it, pretending she was anywhere but here. While she had messed herself before, and many of these women had in fact changed one of her messy diapers, it had never been so public and so humiliated. The nurses cheered the doctor on as she debased herself like an infant for enjoyment.

When the doctor was finished, Nurse Angela beant down and whispered in her ear. "Remember doctor, no matter how good you are at your job or how many accolades you receive, to us, you will never be more than a stupid, untrustworthy little baby. Now sit in your mess and play with your toys. It's going to be a long night."

Dr. Bun could only do as she was told, suck on her pacifier and cry as she came to terms with the fact that she'd be these nurses plaything for the rest of her life.

[thecomfywriter]

✨👾 thecomfywriter’s guide to self-publishing 👾✨

navigation post get my book, Throne of Vengeance! TNV anthologies ToV community!

hi, fools! this was long overdue. forgive me—i got distracted. anyhow! welcome to the official guide to self-publishing, as requested by satoh (@@satohqbanana). i’m going to give you tips based on my own process, but by all means, feel free to deviate and add/remove steps for your own process. some steps are mandatory though. no skipping 😤

okay i’m not going to yamble too much, lets get into it.

1.0 finishing the draft

2.0 the editing process (copyediting vs line editing vs beta reading)

3.0 the latent period (!!!)

4.0 pre-publication marketing

5.0 the cover + blurb

6.0 the final read-through

7.0 pre-orders and marketing

8.0 publish!

1.0 finishing the draft:

stop procrastinating and write, dodohead. words on the page. it doesn’t have to be perfect. you don’t have to agonize over that one line for an entire afternoon. stick to the vision and get the words on the page.

if you’re wondering why i’m saying it doesn’t have to be perfect when we’re talking about publishing a (hopefully good) book, it’s because there’s still the editing process later down the line to worry about typos, grammar issues, beta reader feedback, and all that jazzy good stuff. right now, you need to have your vision and get it down. this isn’t your polished copy. but you need to have your draft completed before you go anyways. so stop moping over whether “elucidate” is the word you want to use in that sentence and finish the sentence.

lol. with love <333

2.0 the editing process:

now you can worry about elucidate and its purpose in the sentence. the editing stage has many sub phases. copy-editing and the line editing. you can hire someone to do this for you or do it yourself. maybe get a friend to help. doesn’t matter. you just have to be critical and thorough. no sugarcoating. no, “oh ill just let this slide” or “i don’t wanna be mean so i won’t give real helpful feedback” editors. proper editors who will say it as it is.

copy-editing (as i understand it) is big book concept editing:

are there plot holes? is the lore consistent? does it make sense? is it unclear? is the story even interesting? how’s the pacing? what about the characters? too many? not enough? the voices aren’t distinct? the style is inconsistent? none of the characters feel like separate or fully formed people?

this is the phase where all those questions are addressed. once the overall concepts and structure of the book has been editing, constructively analyzed, and you’ve gotten feedback for it, go back to step one and revise your draft based on the critique. you don’t move on until those big concept issues are addressed.

done? okay, now it’s time for line editing.

exactly as the name implies, you’re going line per line, word per word, and catching any typos, grammar errors, punctuation—all that jazzy good stuff. REALLY BE THOROUGH. get a fresh pair of eyes on it. hire someone. put it through an editing software like grammarly. but be THOROUGH.

do the words you use make sense? are you using british or american english? slang? are you writing too much purple prose? do the sentences flow? are you using too many commas (stop that. don’t be afraid of periods).

you really need to understand the grammar and syntax rules of the english language to do this step on your own. otherwise, get help. or learn. whatever works with your budget lol.

done line editing? great! send it to a beta reader/ a friend, a writeblr mutual, someone you hired—just make sure they aren’t dancing around feedback and they give it to you as it is. i had a friend straight up tell me one of my drafts was ass LOL because the characters voices were too blurry and she never knew who was talking. there were some slow pointless chapters and the pacing was inconsistent. thus, i went back to step 1 and revised based off her feedback and came back with another draft.

don’t be afraid of critique. you need it to grow.

3.0 the latent period:

this is where you take a step back from the draft, preferably for months, and avoid interacting with it to give your mind a break and reset your eyes. this is a huge stage because this is where i want you fools to get your copyright and isbns in order.

GET. YOUR. BOOK. COPYRIGHTED.

do not share it until it is copyrighted. you can copyright unpublished materials. technically it is your intellectual property even before you copyright it, but that little ©️ is your legal shield. COPYRIGHT YOUR BOOK.

it costs ~$60 to make sure no one can steal your shit. this is nonnegotiable. do this.

i also got an isbn for my book so i could publish it with other services apart from KDP and expand the market. hence why some people were able to buy it off barnes and noble, for example. i highly recommend.

this is also the phase i started looking at platforms i wanted to publish on/with and reading the contracts. i’m being serious. read the contracts. make sure it aligns with what you want and what you’re comfortable with. don’t skim. don’t just accept. you’re putting your signature on that, bro. read it properly.

the publishing platforms i used were ingramspark and KDP. you’re gonna need to know your book dimensions too. so have an idea so you can estimate the printing costs.

the settings i did for mine were off white, 6x9 paper with the recommended gutter margins (used KDPs excel calculator to determine) and black and white ink (no colour) to get the lowest printing cost per book. ingram spark was similar. only thing with ingram spark is you need your page number to be even (no 575–it has to be 576) and KDP has a 600 page limit. so bear that in mind.

4.0 pre-publishing marketing:

you have to generate hype for your book. now that its copyrighted, its safe to share excerpts, little quotes, make edits for your characters or oc profiles to generate an audience. i did this mainly on tumblr vis tag games and whatnot, but honestly? that's the BARE MINIMUM lol.

don't be like me. i hate social media so i honestly did not market my book the way i know i should have (and still should). i still don't market my book because lol... i dont wanna 🥲

BUT! like it said--dont be like me. make an author website (a proper one. pay for the domain if you can, otherwise use the free domain, but make a professional author platform for yourself and your biography. you'll need this to set up a goodreads author account and claim your book on there). use instagram and make an author instagram profile (i technially have one here, but i never use it lol womp womp i just hate instagram sue me) and promote your book with the teasers. go on pinterest and make moodboards or "book trailers" through a carousel of images. USE TIKTOK. i know it's a plague platform (i dont like it, clearly), but it is where you will find the most fruits for your marketing.

this stage is all about generating hype for your book. why? so when you set your book up for preorder (and, yes, you will be doing that so you have a general idea of market demand and interest), you have people who are genuinely invested and want to buy your book.

marketing ideas because apparently i'm your free publicist:

oc edits

character moodboards

quotes and excerpts

that one trend on tiktok where you give the vibe of the book and a soundtrack // song to it

oc / book soundtracks

"would you read a book about..." [list the themes / enticing tagline elements of your story] -- it's a trend on tiktok

platforms to promote your book:

tiktok (#booktok)

instagram (#books, #readers, #bookstagram)

tumblr (#readers, #bookblr, #writers of tumblr, #reading, #writers, #book reccs; don't just use writer hashtags, is what i'm saying)

wix or the like to make your website

twitter (a lot of authors have official twitter accounts. once again, i never bothered OOPS)

youtube (making videos talking about your book--the ogs of this blog know LOL-- compiling playlists, etc)

also, don't be afraid to make or commission art for your ocs. speaking of which...

5.0 the cover and the blurb

you can't avoid it anymore. you need to make a cover and write a back of the book blurb // synopsis for your book.

YES i know its hard to describe your book in a non-spoilery, enticing way. work on it. struggle through it. get help. but get it done. you can't finish your cover until it is done.

NOTE! if you are making your own cover, the dimensions are only going to be .25" longer than your page dimensions if it is hardcover. ALSO you gotta make it a pdf file. one pdf file that contains the back of the book, the spine, and the front of the book laid out as one page. this is why you need to get the blurb down.

if you're making it by yourself: play around with fonts, use canva + photopea // photoshop. add chrome, but not too much chrome. use references and easter eggs of important plot elements for your visual pieces. current book trend is text-dominant covers with interesting font and stylistic elements. i.e. tov has the title "throne of vengeance" as the main eye-catcher, in a metallic, legible but stylistic font, BUT there is the dragon ouroborous ring and the iron-rose dagger on the cover as well. the colours are intentional. the entire cover is an easter egg for the book, almost like a spoiler for those who know. make it engaging. enticing. you wanna draw readers in, but also make fans hyperanalyze and interpret the elements you chose.

another thing--you'll need to know your page count to know how thick the spine should be. so bear that in mind.

commissioning an artist may be expensive. i actually did commission someone for tov. i probably wont for the remainder of the series since this was the most expensive part for me. depending on who you get, it can range from $300 - >$1000. so just keep that in mind. i queried a lot before i commissioned the artist for my cover. and she was very in tune with the books themes, the symbolic motifs, and the general aura of the story when she created the cover. that is a good cover artist. don't pay someone if they dont take the time to learn about your book before making the cover.

resources to use:

photoshop/photopea

canva

reedsy (for finding artists to commission)

i can't think of anymore on the top of my head oops. ALSO if you're gonna use images, pay attention to copyright. you can't use copyrighted pinterest images for your covers. just saying.

6.0 the final read-through:

it should have been some months by now. time to read through your own book, start to finish, and see how you like it. catch any last minute errors, see whether you're satisfied with the end product, make any final revisions. this is the draft you're going to submit for preorder. the pdf cover will be your cover. the blurb will be your blurb.

also, in this phase, add your dedications, your acknowledgements, and your author blurb. oh yeah babes you need a headshot. i just used a picture from vacation LOL oops i dont like taking headshot pictures i got lazy womp womp.

anyways, your author blurb should describe you in a tag line (G.K> Multani, otherwise known as Naveena Khedar, is a pre-med student with a passion for writing... or something like that). then describe your credentials. have you written before? doesn't have to be same genre, but you want to represent your portfolio. list other books, articles, or journals you've written. then you as a person--hobbies, interest, etc outside of writing. finally, list your socials or where people can find you.

7.0 preorders and marketing:

publish the draft on KDP and ingram spark for preorder. announce that your book is available for preorder. it should take about a week for it to be approved and the preorder link to go live. and then repeat the marketing steps from step 4, but this time with your cover and a link to shove down people's throats :)

8.0 publish!

the date it goes live, make it an event! host a live-publish session! do something fun! have a party! do a book signing! go buckwild go crazy!

i did a live-vc session and unboxing.

oh yeah, also... while we're here. go buy/read my book.

Throne of Vengeance Official Synopsis

Buy my book, Throne of Vengeance: Volume One

Read Throne of Vengeance: Volume One PDF

lol :)

--

okay i have to go back to studying for exams. let me know if i missed anything.

COPYRIGHT YOUR BOOKS.

okay cheerios bye!

[askagamedev]

Is more complicated, or more work to write code for The Game EA Sports FC if you were starting from scratch than it would be to write code for any other large scale game, like an MMORPG also done from scratch? Or GTA6 i.e.? (Licensing issues aside)

Code systems are code systems. Good code architecture tends to follow pretty universal principles, regardless of whether the system is governing loot tables or lighting systems. Constructing software systems is about seeing the general rules at work and using those to write code that adheres to those rules.

It really helps to take a larger view of what a game is from a software engineering perspective. A game (or any major piece of software) is a bunch of systems comprised of smaller subsystems, and how those individual systems interact with each other. All code systems all need to do three things:

Determine when the system needs to do its work

Return the processed results from that internal work to external systems that need those results to do their own work

Do their own internal work to process and handle requests correctly

When planning out what a system will do, it helps to divvy up the work into these three buckets. Once you know what the system needs to do, the engineer can break down the individual functions and data members she'll need in order to actually do that work.

Let's move forward with an example - say that I wanted to build a stealth takedown system in my action adventure game. The design document says that I want the player to be behind an unaware enemy, press a button, and then play a paired animation that kills the enemy. Using the three buckets mentioned previously, let's break it down.

When does the system need to do its work?

Player and enemy position

Player and enemy facing direction

Enemy awareness state

Game controller input state

What results do I need to provide?

I need to know when the player meets the conditions of being behind and facing an unaware enemy (call the UI system to show the button prompt)

I need to call the animation system to play the animations on the player and the enemy (call the animation system to play the animation)

I need to kill the enemy (call the damage system to kill the enemy)

What do I need to do the internal work to provide those results?

I need to calculate whether the player is behind the enemy

I need to calculate whether the player is facing the enemy

I need to determine whether the enemy is aware of the player

I need to know when the player presses the attack button

As each of these elements is built and works, we can use them to interact with each other. Logical checks like whether the player is behind the enemy will determine whether the action can be taken. Actions like performing the takedown animations are then attached to the conditions. These combine to form the rules from the designer and a system is born.

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[hoshibatake]

FREEDOM – Virtuality and Ideals/Chapter 5

Previous chapter

<An evening one week later. In the real world, Trickstudio>

Subaru: Oh. Anzu’s here! Otsukaresama¹～

Subaru: Come over here. Come laze around with us☆

Subaru: ...Huh? Work first, fun later? Oh, right. We were supposed to have a review meeting about FREEDOM.

Hokuto: Don’t tell me that you forgot.

Subaru: I remembered, but when I saw Anzu, I got so happy it slipped my mind♪

Mao: I’m glad to see her too, but isn’t that getting a bit too excited?

Mao: We’ve been seeing quite a lot of her since we started hanging out in Trickstudio regularly, don’t you think?

Subaru: You just don’t get it, Sari～. Any time you see someone you love a who~le lot is a time to be happy.

Subaru: Anzu, what’s up? ...Oh, you wanna hear about FREEDOM’s current status while we wait for Ukki～?

Hokuto: We can tell you that, but you have administrator privileges, so can’t you just check the data directly?

Hokuto: ...Fumu. You want us to be able to build freely without any worries, so you only log in when there’s an error?

Subaru: You don’t need to hold yourself back, though. You’re welcome at any time☆

Subaru: But thanks for being considerate, anyway. The current status, huh…?

Subaru: Oh, right. Our four avatars finally formed a unit～♪

Subaru: Out of their own initiative, of course. We’re Trickstar, after all☆

Hokuto: Yes. Putting the surrounding circumstances aside for a moment, I can’t help but be impressed at the realism.

Mao: Yeah, and their actions since they formed a unit have been reminiscent of ours as well. Subaru and Hokuto’s avatars have been jumping the gun, holding live performances in all sorts of places…

Mao: ...but my and Makoto’s avatars have been putting effort into city building and helping out citizens, instead of focusing purely on idol activities.

Mao: It kinda reminds me of the time when we just formed Trickstar♪

<Flashback. Five days earlier, in the information room>

Makoto: (FREEDOM is our first job of the fiscal year, so the agency must have high expectations too.)

Makoto: (In order to get good results, we first need to focus on building the city. This is my strong suit, so I’ve gotta give it my all!)

Makoto: (I’m following the plan I drafted using my experience with previous simulation games I’ve played…)

Makoto: (...but it’s pretty hard to balance it with those idol activities. A lot of things don’t turn out like I want them to.)

Makoto: (The fact that it’s not just about city building is what makes this game so interesting, but it also complicates things, so I’m having a hard time.)

Makoto: (I feel like I’m doing exactly what I should be doing, but the results don’t reflect that. Hrm…)

Makoto: (An online strategy guide would… not exist yet. Of course it wouldn’t. The game isn’t out yet, after all.)

Makoto: (I could still give looking it up on our internal network a shot. Although I really doubt I’ll find anything♪)

Makoto: (...Huh? I got a hit.)

Makoto: (“City Building Plans ‘FREEDOM’. Documentation for internal use.” ...Some of this information wasn’t in the documents we were given.)

Makoto: (Actually, it seems like I’ve stumbled upon some pretty significant information?)

Makoto: (…)

Makoto: (“Choosing idols and having them freely construct a city, using the software we developed in cooperation with this game company.”)

Makoto: (“If they are successful, that virtual city will then be built in reality”...)

Makoto: I already thought that it was strange that this job only consisted of playing a game. So that’s the plan.

Makoto: The reason why they’re letting us build this city however we want is still a mystery to me, but I never thought our city would become real…

Makoto: Actually, that’s a huge issue!

Makoto: The four of us have just been building our own versions of an ideal city, but it would by no means be an ideal city in reality!

Makoto: It’s overrun by dinosaurs and full of factories, with the occasional zombie outbreak and a theme park that’s without power most of the time. We can’t let them build that in real life!

Makoto: There’s a high chance that they would just cancel the whole thing, but I don’t want to let our first job of the year end in failure either.

Makoto: I’ll just have to correct our course, and turn it into a city we can be proud of…!

<Several days later. The dormitory, Makoto’s room>

Makoto: (…)

Makoto: (...Oof. How many all-nighters have I pulled now? I’ve lost count.)

Makoto: (By overhauling the factory area, I’ve increased the factories’ energy consumption, but now they’re less destructive to the environment.)

Makoto: (And I tore down all of the city in order to fix the infrastructure. I’ve widened the roads and improved traffic flow…)

Makoto: (I’ve built more parks, improving the citizens’ living conditions. The ambiance in the city should be much better now, but…)

Makoto: (It’s nowhere near ideal. There’s just not enough time.)

Makoto: (I feel like the career system... or rather, the idol activities that are being organized because of it are getting in the way of the development of the city.)

Makoto: (When they’re called upon, the avatars automatically start prioritizing idol activities.)

Makoto: (Their training takes up a lot of time, and when people gather for concerts, they end up leaving a big mess in the city...)

Makoto: …

Makoto: Maybe I should make the avatar ‘me’ leave Trickstar.

Makoto: I feel like their idol activities wouldn’t really change, even if ‘I’ wasn’t there. I’m sure ‘I’ would have more to contribute in terms of city building.

Makoto: The others might be a little disappointed, but I feel like this is the better option…

Makoto: But my eyelids feel so heavy… I can’t……

TL notes:

This is a standard expression used when greeting someone who has been working.

Translated by me, proofread by Altea (@icaruswasthesun on Twitter)

Next chapter

[mk-writes-stuff]

Character Intro: Cassie

Tumblr ate this post last time I tried to do it, so let’s try it again! Character intro 2 for my darling girl Cassie

Cassie is a clone of the Head of Sixth Station, Cassiopeia, so she wasn’t born in the traditional sense - she was decanted. Chronologically, she’s been decanted for about a year and a half when the story starts, but she was the physical and mental equivalent of twenty-four when she was decanted, so she’s about twenty-five now.

Cassie’s experience on Sixth Station was unpleasant, to say the least. Clones are not legally considered people anywhere on the seven stations, but Sixth Station takes that to an extreme. Cassiopeia is constantly farming clones for slave labour and, eventually, to expose to the magical radiation surrounding the stations in hopes that they’ll develop magical powers. The life of a clone is short and brutal, full of exhausting labour, strict and cruel punishments, and the knowledge of an inevitable, brutal death.

Cassie had enough. After about six months of this, she escaped and stowed away on a cargo ship bound for Seventh Station. She got out undetected, but the cargo bay was poorly insulated from the radiation surrounding them and her right arm received bad radiation exposure, forcing her to hack into a sliding door and sever it to prevent the spread of dangerous radiation-induced illness. The radiation did also give her a magical affinity for and understanding of machines, however, which she uses to her advantage.

She spent about a year on the lower half of Seventh Station, making friends, dating women, and working as hired muscle. She spent her spare time constructing a mechanical arm to replace the one she’d had severed.

Unfortunately, it all came to an end when she was sent by her supervisor to visit the upper half of Seventh Station. She was detected by radiation detectors as having magical abilities and was whisked away to become the bodyguard of the heir of Seventh Station, Belladonna - with the understanding that this was all in name and Belladonna would soon kill her to steal her magical powers.

But, for reasons unbeknownst to Cassie, Belladonna hasn’t killed her. And also, she’s really unfairly hot.

That’s Cassie for you. She likes women and punching things, in no particular order. Despite the “dumb muscle” impression she gives off with her jacked appearance and lack of decorum, there’s a lot more going on in her head than meets the eye. Cassie is an angry, passionate woman driven by a deep-seated fear of her own past and identity and a longing to make sure no one else ever has to go through what she went through. She’d do anything to help others escape their torment, but can’t bring herself to confront what happened to her - when push comes to shove, she doesn’t know what to do with her problems, other than punch them or run. She’s kind, fiercely independent, and deeply loyal to those she loves, but she struggles to address the parts of her she’s escaped.

Appearance-wise, Cassie is a tall, muscular woman with a mechanical metal arm that starts just below her shoulder for a right arm. She has a variety of hand attachments, but usually prefers a simple clamp. She has pale skin with a few scars, long blonde hair that’s constantly out of control, and mismatched eyes - one blue, one purple, although she hides the latter under an eye patch. For most of the story, she wears white armour and black clothes underneath as her guard uniform, but she’s in sweatpants the minute she’s off-duty.

Here’s a picrew of her:

Fun facts about Cassie:

She’s completely illiterate and relies on text-to-speech and dictation software for her work

She doesn’t know what a hairbrush is

Her name is Cassie because the first time she was asked for her name, she almost said “Cassiopeia” on instinct but stopped herself halfway through

Unbeknownst to her, she’s a misprint clone (meaning the brain conditioning that was given to her while she was being grown failed in some aspect). Her misprint was on the personality imprint meant to make her docile and subservient

In very early development of the story, her name was Cass

I hope you like Cassie - she’s very fun to write. As always, questions and comments are welcome!

[peggycatrerr]

i think it’s really really important that we keep reminding people that what we’re calling ai isn’t even close to intelligent and that its name is pure marketing. the silicon valley tech bros and hollywood executives call it ai because they either want it to seem all-powerful or they believe it is and use that to justify their use of it to exploit and replace people.

chat-gpt and things along those lines are not intelligent, they are predictive text generators that simply have more data to draw on than previous ones like, you know, your phone’s autocorrect. they are designed to pass the turing test by having human-passing speech patterns and syntax. they cannot come up with anything new, because they are machines programmed on data sets. they can’t even distinguish fact from fiction, because all they are actually capable of is figuring out how to construct a human-sounding response using applicable data to a question asked by a human. you know how people who use chat-gpt to cheat on essays will ask it for reference lists and get a list of texts that don’t exist? it’s because all chat-gpt is doing is figuring out what types of words typically appear in response to questions like that, and then stringing them together.

midjourney and things along those lines are not intelligent, they are image generators that have just been really heavily fine-tuned. you know how they used to do janky fingers and teeth and then they overcame that pretty quickly? that’s not because of growing intelligence, it’s because even more photographs got added to their data sets and were programmed in such a way that they were able to more accurately identify patterns in the average amount of fingers and teeth across all those photos. and it too isn’t capable of creation. it is placing pixels in spots to create an amalgamation of images tagged with metadata that matches the words in your request. you ask for a tree and it spits out something a little quirky? it’s not because it’s creating something, it’s because it gathered all of its data on trees and then averaged it out. you know that “the rest of the mona lisa” tweet and how it looks like shit? the fact that there is no “rest” of the mona lisa aside, it’s because the generator does not have the intelligence required to identify what’s what in the background of such a painting and extend it with any degree of accuracy, it looked at the colours and approximate shapes and went “oho i know what this is maybe” and spat out an ugly landscape that doesn’t actually make any kind of physical or compositional sense, because it isn’t intelligent.

and all those ai-generated voices? also not intelligent, literally just the same vocal synth we’ve been able to do since daisy bell but more advanced. you get a sample of a voice, break it down into the various vowel and consonant sounds, and then when you type in the text you want it to say, it plays those vowel and consonant sounds in the order displayed in that text. the only difference now is that the breaking it down process can be automated to some extent (still not intelligence, just data analysis) and the synthesising software can recognise grammar a bit more and add appropriate inflections to synthesised voices to create a more natural flow.

if you took the exact same technology that powers midjourney or chat-gpt and removed a chunk of its dataset, the stuff it produces would noticeably worsen because it only works with a very very large amount of data. these programs are not intelligent. they are programs that analyse and store data and then string it together upon request. and if you want evidence that the term ai is just being used for marketing, look at the sheer amount of software that’s added “ai tools” that are either just things that already existed within the software, using the same exact tech they always did but slightly refined (a lot of film editing software are renaming things like their chromakey tools to have “ai” in the name, for example) or are actually worse than the things they’re overhauling (like the grammar editor in office 365 compared to the classic office spellcheck).

but you wanna real nifty lil secret about the way “ai” is developing? it’s all neural nets and machine learning, and the thing about neural nets and machine learning is that in order to continue growing in power it needs new data. so yeah, currently, as more and more data gets added to them, they seem to be evolving really quickly. but at some point soon after we run out of data to add to them because people decided they were complete or because corporations replaced all new things with generated bullshit, they’re going to stop evolving and start getting really, really, REALLY repetitive. because machine learning isn’t intelligent or capable of being inspired to create new things independently. no, it’s actually self-reinforcing. it gets caught in loops. "ai” isn’t the future of art, it’s a data analysis machine that’ll start sounding even more like a broken record than it already does the moment its data sets stop having really large amounts of unique things added to it.

[obsixwi]

How to Order From Antique Beast

I've noticed a number of people have various Antique Beast items, primarily the Black Cat Headdress, on their wishlist. I've also seen instances where these headdresses are heavily scalped on secondhand websites, so I just wanted to put out a PSA - Please don't buy overpriced secondhand Antique Beast! They still open up their shop regularly, and while it was quite difficult to snag items the first couple of times post-2020 that they reopened their shop, the demand seems to have returned to normal, and it's not nearly as difficult to buy items before they close the shop again.

The way Antique Beast works is they will send email list subscribers an email one day before their shop is set to open. They will also update the website to include any one-offs or new releases. They will then open up the webshop at the scheduled time and close it once they reach their maximum quantity of orders.

The easiest way to make sure you don't miss updates is to subscribe to their mailing list, which you can do here! It's also best to create an account so that your mailing information is saved for faster checkout. To create an account, click here. If you can't read Japanese, Google Translate is sufficient for helping navigate the website.

Buttcape of Stephano.me also has a tutorial on how to order from Antique Beast from 2017, which you can read here. It includes information about signing up for the newsletter and how to register an account.

You might be wondering, "Ok, if there's already a tutorial, why are you making this post?" For one thing, since this tutorial is a few years old, people may not be aware of it if they're a newer lolita! Another reason is because I wanted to add a few notes on faster checkout and customization.

As I noted before, sometimes Antique Beast will post one-off items on their shop. If you fall in love with an item deeply and want to be first in line for checkout, you can enter items into your cart and enter your customer info before the shop opens. Once you reach the shipping selection page, there won't be any options to choose from until the site officially opens, so you can hit refresh until a shipping option appears - from there you can just check out regularly!

Another thing that's not talked about a lot is that Antique Beast offers size customization and fabric customization. To ask for something to be customized, just leave it in the notes section before checking out. For sizing, they can only offer a limited amount of increase or decrease from the original garment, presumably because they're working from one pattern. For fabric options, you can ask for different colors (I've seen multiple colorways of the Cat Headdress) or different types of fabrication! So far I have asked for items to be made in velveteen and organza, and I've also seen pleather variations of items. Since these fabric options aren't available to purchase on the site directly, just add the item that you want customized into your cart, and make a note of what you want changed in the notes section.

According to the FAQ, you can also customize the types of trim or ribbon on an item, or you can ask for things like sleeves to be made like that of another item. You can also do things like ask for skirt versions of dresses, ask for a headband or comb instead of ribbons, etc.

If you make a customization request, the owner will email your back within a few days to confirm your request, as well as the price, since there is typically an extra charge for custom items. She may also email back to verify how you want something to look. For example, when I asked or an organza headdress, she asked for details about how I wanted it constructed and how translucent I wanted the final version to be:

The owner uses translation software to write emails, but I've never had a problem communicating with her in English. She will also include an estimated time of departure for your package, which usually takes around one or two months. The amount of time it takes for the package to reach you depends on the shipping method you choose.

Hope that helps anyone who had questions about how to purchase from Antique Beast!

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I have a world that has always had floating islands for as long as people lived there and now it has grown into a high-tech society, and even though they build structures on these islands, they've never actually learned how the islands float. What would make that possible? Lots of theories and lots of tests... but exactly how they float continues to elude them. But what? Like add in some unknown metal or whatever they cannot find the properties of or what? Or maybe whatever that actually made them float they've never found and all the individual pieces they've chipped off these floating islands ahas never had the same property if broken off? And for some reason tests on the broken pieces and the parts intact somehow always display the same results?

This is never meant to be found out and not at all the point of my story, just for aesthetic, so handwaving is alright, but this also is a society growing up with that giant mystery hanging over the heads that they're seeing every day and directly impacting their lives.. it's got to seep into culture and everything.

Tex: Do you know how the internet works? Would you be able to describe a motherboard and its functions? How to construct it? What about CSS sheets? Domain names? What a security protocol is and what hacking is? How much does it cost to host a website? If I handed you all the materials, could you duplicate the hardware and software that comprises the internet?

You still use the internet, though, don’t you? Do you spend a lot of time wondering about any of that while you’re surfing the web, or chatting with your friends? No, most likely not - you just use it.

It’s the same concept as your floating islands - while understanding how something you use works is great, most of the time it’s unnecessary to the actual usage of the thing. Most likely there will be some experts developing a field of study, who accumulate and aggregate knowledge on specific subjects in order to develop a knowledge base for whomever comes after them.

If there’s a cultural reason to learn more than basic interactions, then most likely what will happen is that the entire field of scientific study will also be improved - if your islands float because of some form of gravitational field, what else can gravitational fields affect? So on and so forth.

Licorice: Is this world a uni-state? Or do some of these islands form their own nation-states? Floating islands would be constantly changing the territorial waters to which they can lay claim. Or perhaps, if an island floats into the territorial waters of a fixed state, that state might seek to claim it? What international laws and customs have grown up to deal with such situations?

How big are the largest of these islands? How small is the smallest? How far do they float?

Do the islands follow a predictable route, in the same way that, say, the Gulf Stream does, or the planets in their orbit? Can humans know where any given island will be a year, ten years, a hundred years or a thousand years from now? Or do they float completely at random?

You mentioned many different theories having been proposed for why the islands float, but none having been proved. People being what they are, there are probably also some conspiracy theories “floating” around, maybe a religious cult or two, people who believe it’s “against nature” to investigate the “blessing” of the floating islands, perhaps a doomsday prophecy about “the day the islands cease to move…” and so on. 

[usafphantom2]

The 1,000th F-35 Has Been Built

Delays with a key upgrade program mean Lockheed Martin has yet to deliver the 1,000th F-35 and others to their customers.

Tyler RogowayPUBLISHED Jan 10, 2024 1:28 PM EST

Lockheed Martin has built the 1,000th F-35, but delays with a key upgrade program mean it is parked away awaiting delivery.

A newly produced F-35 is seen in its primer colors in Fort Worth, Texas. Lockheed Martin capture

Lockheed Martin has hit a huge milestone in F-35 Joint Strike Fighter production. However, that accomplishment, while outstanding, is complicated by the ongoing saga surrounding the development and testing of Tech Refresh-3 (TR-3) hardware configuration. TR-3 underpins the F-35's future capabilities, known collectively as Block 4. Delays with TR-3 mean that F-35s are being parked and not delivered after they are constructed, waiting for these features. So is the case for the 1,000th F-35.

Lockheed Martin

We asked Lockheed Martin about the status of deliveries of F-35s, including the 1,000th example, and they gave us the following statement:

"We continue to produce F-35s at rate and have jets in various stages of the final production process. Once these jets receive the necessary TR-3 hardware and final TR-3 software is available, they will continue through the production process, including parking, until they are delivered."

Regardless, hitting the 1,000 mark is really an incredible accomplishment for the controversial program that has struggled significantly at times.

As of early January, the F-35 enterprise has amassed over 773,000 flying hours, trained over 2,280 pilots and 15,400 maintainers across 14 flying services around the world, and flown more than 469,000 total sorties. There are now 32 bases and 11 ships hosting or capable of hosting F-35 units. As of now, there are a whopping 17 countries participating in the international Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program.

Current and expected future F-35 operating bases/ships. Lockheed Martin

Demand for the F-35 has never been higher. Recent geopolitical events and shifting threats have spiked orders. For newer customers or existing ones that are ordering more jets, getting TR-3 jets and potentially Block 4 capabilities will be of significant value. They will be receiving a far more mature aircraft and one with drastically expanded capabilities and growth potential than past versions.

Block 4 will include many new features, including much-expanded processing power, new displays, enhanced cooling, new EOTS and DAS electro-optical sensors, and a slew of additional weapons that will really unlock the F-35's potential. Above all else, the jet's new radar and electronic warfare suite should give it its biggest boost. The electronic warfare aspect alone is the biggest advantage Block 4 will bring, according to the Air Combat Command's top uniformed officer.

Some of the unclassified upgrades are expected to be part of Block 4. The exact configuration is not publicly disclosed just yet. DOD

The current issue is that F-35s need a new hardware backbone and associated baseline software, collectively called TR-3, to handle the various demands of the Block 4 upgrades. TR-3 has and continues to suffer numerous delays in its development.

The increasing age of the F-35 program's current fleet of test jets and other limitations in existing test infrastructure, especially with regard to software labs on the ground, have compounded these issues. The first flight of an F-35 test jet with a version of the TR-3 backbone took place in January 2023 and efforts are underway to create a dedicated TR-3 test force with a total of six Joint Strike Fighters.

A US Air Force F-35A test jet. USAF

As of December, the expectation is that the development of TR-3 will be finished sometime between April and June of this year, according to Defense News. If that schedule holds, this work be done between a year and 18 months later than expected.

The delays have also translated into significant added costs for the F-35 program. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing in December, Representative Donald Norcross, a Democrat from New Jersey, said that problems with TR-3 had led to a $1 billion cost overrun. The full estimated cost of the F-35 program though the end of its expected lifecycle in the 2070s is currently pegged around around $1.7 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

USAF

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing last month, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the current head of the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), seemed less than optimistic about the likelihood of there being no further TR-3 delays.

"Relative to the stability issues that were that we're seeing, we are working through them. ... I wish I had all of the solutions in place that prove to me that when I do something in the lab, it's going to show up that way in the air," Schmidt told the assembled legislators. "We have a number of fixes addressing the stability challenges. We will get to a stable, capable, maintainable airplane here."

However, "the data tells me it will be in the middle of spring, but I would have had a more positive answer six months ago ... so I don't have a super solid 'I can guarantee you this date,'" he added.

After the completion of the development of the TR-3 package, these improvements will still need to be integrated into existing jets. The F-35 program is separately pursuing upgrades to the Pratt & Whitney F135 engines that power all variants of the Joint Strike Fighter, as well as power and thermal management systems, which will also be critical for enabling Block 4 capabilities. The issues surrounding the F135 engine have become a very hot topic of debate.

In the meantime, the U.S. military has made clear that it will not accept any new F-35s until the TR-3 issues are ironed out. This is ostensibly because the necessary checkout flights cannot be conducted on the jets until the hardware and its core software work reliably.

So, for at least another few months, the 1,000th F-35, and many others, are set to stay parked away waiting for work on the core TR-3 upgrades to be finished.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

[hezekiahwakely]

As anticipated, here are my extensive red string notes from the pilot:

God knows how relevant any of this will turn out to be, but I'm nothing if not a collector of trivial information

Very long text beneath the cut:

Page 1

The Magnus Protocol Pilot 10/25/23

Characters (in order of appearance)

Alice Dyer -O.I.A.R. employee -Dated Sam in uni -Jokester -Training Sam -Gets along with Colin

Teddy Vaughn -Retiring from the O.I.A.R. after 4 (?) years -Going into insurance field

Colin Becher -O.I.A.R. IT Manager -Vegetarian 🥬 -On the hook of "his nibs" (boss, male) -Sensitive about FR3-d1 app development, communicates w/politicians, trying for 2 years -Only gets along w/Alice -Knows computers are listening -Jokes about being killed

Lena Kelley -O.I.A.R. Team/Department Manager -Authoritative, follows protocol -Doesn't think Gwen is qualified for management

Gwendolyn Bouchard -O.I.A.R. employee -Backlog of casework -Dislikes Lena, wants her job -Dedicated to detail -Accused of nepotism by Alice -Thinks current job is beneath her -"Not like most people." *static*

Samama Khalid (Sam) -New O.I.A.R. employee -Dated Alice in uni -Wanting to 'get back on his feet' -Familiar with TMI -Didn't know what the Incidents were before hire!!

Page 2

Pilot notes con. 10/25/23

Listening Tech - Turns on by itself 💡

Dated computers (O.I.A.R.)

"Manager's speakerphone" (Lena's)

CCTV (O.I.A.R. breakroom?)

Cell phone (Alice's)

*O.I.A.R. formed in 70s? Accor. to Alice*

*Response Department no longer exists*

Still in onboarding paperwork, "Response 121"

Sam ticked this box

Tech Specs

O.S. = Windows NT 4.0 (modified) -Extended support for this O.S. was ended Dec. 31, 2004 IRL -Runs on workstations connected by LAN -Similar GUI to 95; comes w/Internet Explorer

FR3-d1 -Custom research software circa mid-90s -Flags Incidents and creates a database -Can search private/protected sources (email) -Alice claims no one has understood its workings for 15 years -Written in German source code

*1 Year = Average Employee Stay*

Page 3

Pilot notes con. 10/25/23

Classification System

Used in FR3-d1's database

Structure: CATXRXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX

CATXRX -> From reference table (CAT = Category?) First four digits -> Main subject of Incident DPHW (?) Next eight digits -> Date of Incident Last eight digits -> Current date

Example: CAT2RC1157-12052022-13012024* -First one we hear they file. "1157" is the "DPHW" for "dolls, watching."

*Jan. 13, 2024 is the date of Sam's onboarding/training (after Teddy's going-away party)

*as listed in transcript; in-show, it's quoted as 22102023, or Oct. 22, 2023

Page 4

Pilot notes (con.) 10/25/23

FR3-d1's Voice to Text/Text to Speech

Voices (named by Alice, which Gwen dislikes):

Neil = Alex

Chester = Jonny

(those two most common)

Augustus = ?

Neil's Incident

Occurs in "Cyberspace" via the transcript

"I'm so sorry. I should have listened. I just couldn't face the thought of the rest of my life never hearing him again, I had to try." First lines 😢

Email from Harriet Winstead to Darla Winstead, May 12, 2022

Recitations *can* be paused by pressing "space"!

Chester's Incident

Also occurs in "Cyberspace"

Topic: Magnus Institute Ruins.

On forum, user RedCanary, begins April 10, 2022. Explored 4/19-20/22.

Third floor gone. No old papers.

Suspicious, occult (?) graffiti, stains (!)

Took box with strange symbols (same as ones on walls/floors)

4/30/22 Posted image of gore/eyes, possibly of themself. Banned + did not return.

Page 5

Pilot notes con. 10/25/23

Early release video Case #: CAT1RA1353-03102023-22102024(listed as 202"3" on Patreon)

Video was posted 10/22/23.

Listed as "Incident" on Patreon.

According to transcript, the O.I.A.R. offices are located in Royal Mint Court.

Johson (sic) Smirke Building

Main building.

5 storeys, Grade 2 listed.

Designed by James Johnson, but constructed between 1807-1812 by Robert Smirke after Johnson died. To be used for mint.

Entrance lodge also built by Smirke, in front of building.

Page 6

Pilot - Public Release -TMAGP#001

Changes:

Sam's first incident number - today's date

CAT2RC1157-12052022-13012024 -> CAT2RC1157-12052022-09012024

Voice (first incident)

Neil -> *Norris*

Minor word/date changes in incidents.

Minor line read differences.

Descriptions of Incidents in new transcript:

Norris': CAT1RBC5257-12052022-09012024 Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret [Email]

Chester's: CAT23RAB2155-10042022-09012024 Transformation (Eyes) -/- Trespass [chat log]

[askagamedev]

So how much $ (in general) does it cost to produce a fully animated/rigged, fully voiced 1-3 minute cutscene in a game that’s in ongoing development (something like SWTOR, where they have a lot of prebuilt assets)? Like just a general low range and high range?

I’m seeing a lot of people complaining about prioritizing content they want, and don’t know enough about the behind the scenes costs to properly communicate they’re being unrealistic with their complaints.

The cost of any content in game dev is directly proportional to how much new stuff needs to be created for that content. In order to create a basic conversation cutscene to put into a game, we would need:

A narrative designer to write the script for the cutscene

A cinematic designer to script out the cinematic - which characters speak, in which order, with what timing, in which location, and what other actions they would take over the course of the cutscene

Animations for the characters to play in those positions

A rig for those characters to play those animations

Character models for the characters involved

Voice recordings for the characters to speak

A tool with which to set all of these parameters and organize the cutscene

A game system that can parse the tool data and assets and construct the cutscene from them

A script system to start playing the cutscene when the proper conditions are met

This doesn't include extra stuff like VFX, music, lighting, environments, props, etc. that might need to be created for certain specific cutscenes. In an ongoing game like SWTOR, element numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 were already built long ago and already exist. As long as the designers can create the characters with the in-game character creator and reuse the existing rigs, no new resources need be expended to create them. If you need a completely new custom character model, that takes time from a character artist and a texture artist. If the character needs to animate differently than everyone else (i.e. needs its own rig), that's time from a rigger to create. If the cutscene needs new animations we need to bring on an animator to spend time building the new animations needed for the cutscene.

Using some napkin math, let's consider costs. We usually use the $10,000 per month figure to pay for a developer (salary, benefits, rent, utilities, software licenses, etc.) or approximately $2,500 per development week per person. Let's assume that each task takes a developer a week to complete.

Write the script (Narrative designer)

Script the cinematic (Cinematic Designer)

Record audio (Sound Designer + Voice Actor + studio time)

Rig one new character (Rigger) x however many new characters

Animate one animation (Animator) x however many new animations

Model one new character (Character Artist + Texture Artist) x however many new characters

Track all tasks and keep everyone on schedule (Production)

Test and validate that the cutscene works (QA)

At the very minimum, we need the script, the cinematic, production, and the QA tester, so a very bare bones cutscene that reuses all assets and has no new VO (say it only reuses the alien language) would cost 4x$2,500 = $10,000. If we add voice recording and keep it to one voice actor (let's say she voices both characters in the cutscene), then the cost jumps to 7x$2,500 = $17,500 because we need the sound designer, the voice actor, and the recording studio time. Adding in two new animations (e.g. one character throwing a punch and the second character reacting to getting punched) would add another two weeks of animator time, raising the cost to 9x$2,500 = $22,500. And so on and so forth. Those costs add up very quickly.

There are ways to get a "bulk" discount of course - we hire voice actors for blocks of four or eight hours, so we can record multiple cutscenes during that session and share some of those costs. We can create one new character and reuse her across multiple cutscenes so that we get more value out of her. Things get cheaper if we reuse stuff more, but they still cost a lot up front. The bulk discounts only really work if the things we're paying for can be reused multiple times though - the more specific an asset is (e.g. a kissing animation), the harder it is to reuse and the more expensive it tends to be relative to other assets.

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Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[gayturians]

So what do you consider to be middle class in this day and age?

tbh i hate the term bc it feels like an old metric in a new century of capitalism. i think the middle class is far tinier than people want to say it is, but! people above that line are not immediately rich and people below it are not automatically poor. (it's why i was wordy with "not-poor-but-not-wealthy")

my view of middle class is financial stability. you have savings. rent and bills may pinch but you still have money to put back most paydays. if the water heater breaks, you fix it and replace what you spent in a few months.

a lot of people calling themselves middle class don't fit that description, and that's precisely my problem with it. a lot of people who think they're middle class aren't, and a lot of people who notice that difference think that's what poor looks like. i know people like this, who eventually have their "Oh." moment when they realize, oh wait, there's a basement under that rock bottom.

for example. i have three uncles, who all have wives and kids:

uncle 1: prison job. wife's a receptionist. they rent a modest home and sometimes struggle but always find a way. they once saddled my grandfather with minor debt they couldn't afford to pay off and bought five season passes to disneyworld the same year. wife thinks minimum wage should be lower because "lazy bums shouldn't get paid closer to what i do when i have a degree."

uncle 2: cop. (acab) wife's a stay-at-home mom. they were given a decent chunk of property and he can afford it. they've had medical bills that didn't crush them. she spent ten years calling us poor and disgusting.

uncle 3: software job. wife's a teacher. he built his own nice house. they never hurt for money. he is classist in every way you could imagine. he's the one to say you're poor because you don't budget, because you buy $50 work boots instead of $500 work boots that last longer.

my uncles would appear to be in different financial groups, but they are all middle class, and are prime examples of my post. They Could All Be Me One Day. someone would tell me to show solidarity with them (maybe not the cop) but where's the solidarity from them?

it's incredibly nuanced and i'm not trying to lash out from a place of "middle class people don't want or worry for anything, fuck you." i'm trying to speak constructively on the perspective of someone who is very poor and very angry, bc a lot of people talking about solidarity don't seem to realize or want to accept that in order to achieve that, you have to undo the harm caused by classist "not-poor" people.

it is not enough to preach solidarity at poor people. they cannot stand in solidarity with someone who does not want to be associated with them. that work needs to be done by the middle class first, and then you can try building something worthwhile.

[root-of-theseus]

Mechari: The land of Robots, Technology, and Scientific Discovery

Founded by: Sir Babbage - Maker of the first Machine

Capital: E Wing: Residential (Also known as: EntranceWay, EW, or 01100101 01110111)

Notable Locations/Districts: E Wing: Residential NW Wing: Medical & Mechanical NE Wing: Communications & Production SW Wing: Quality Assurance & Exports SE Wing: Military & Construction

Symbol: The Golden Square ■ (sometimes a golden plus ✚), a brass cog wheel with a pure black square in the middle ⛯ (Sometime's referred to as Cog's mind or The Lighthouse), a red heartbeat/pulse/diagnostic

Language(s): Universal Tongue, .bin = 01100010 01101001 01101110 (Binary), technically every translatable language

Pantheon: Cog (the fabled 'first machine' and a talked about philosophical conundrum between all robots)

Previous Keepers/Overseers: Sir Babbage, Dr. Turing, Dr. Gale

Current Keeper/Overseer: W0<3 (Aliases: W03 for strangers, Woe for respected people, and W for family)

Exports: Medical Equipment/Medications, Various Chemicals, All forms of Hardware and Software, Fibre Optics/Communication Systems, Recycling, and Research.

Residents: All mechanical beings, no humans choose to live here willingly (except one.)

Reasons to Visit/Live there: To get lost, to order materials.

Miscellaneous information:

Mechari was originally founded as a research centre that was a hub for all scientists to congregate without hassle or political nonsense. The country used to house various humanoids alongside robots until W03 came into power.

A harsh propaganda campaign fuelled by Patria Magia had Mechari's residents feel uneasy about their leader becoming a robot compared to the humans they had in the past, and were encouraged to move, much to the chagrin of W03. This event tanked their economy for almost two decades, as he worked hard to get the country to become self-sustaining.

This worked out in his favour, as the economy is now stable again. It's also one of the few places that provides all types of bots with jobs, energy, and shelter compared to the rest of the planet which has a mild disdain at best and utter hatred at worst.

Most bots who live there just want to be left alone to their own devices, and couldn't care less about the opinions of humanoids. New robot residents are usually refugees built in other countries that have escaped forced servitude, or built from scratch from recycled materials if necessary. Though sometimes there's a rare occasion where two robots will couple up and build a bot of their own.

Gender and sexuality are seen as null by the oldest generations of bots (60+ years), opting to be called it, and rarely bothering with relationships. Bots which were made during the period of time that Dr. Gale was an Overseer (under 60) enjoyed the presentation of femininity (referred to as 0 or Port) and masculinity (referred to as 1 or Plug). There's no design that says you have to look a certain way to be referred to as either, but some robots have opted to follow humanoid presentations. Unfortunately, the outside world still refers to bots typically as it/its or offensively as robot.

If humanoids do enter the factory, they're usually left alone unless they cause trouble. Most robots understand that sometimes, people want to get lost or focus on their work. But the occasion has become less frequent in recent years.

The most recent humanoid visitor turned resident is Oxsvan. And, well... That's where the story starts.

[wanderersrest]

Diabolos Est Machina Part 1: Defining Artificial Intelligence

Special thanks to my sister, who helped inspire me to do this series.

Welcome to the first part of Diabolos Est Machina, the series covering AI ethics in relation to the Devil Gundam! Today, we'll be covering the basics of artificial intelligence! Yes, that's right! This is actually a school lesson!

Something to also keep in mind is that artificial intelligence is a broad field, so we will have to do a lot of defining today. We're going to take a look at what artificial intelligence is, the different concepts that make up the field of artificial intelligence, and why we would create an artificial intelligence in the first place.

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence (AI for short) is a field of study in computer science that focuses on allowing a computer to perceive the world around it as if it were a human. As we are all aware, computers are not sentient beings. The idea behind AI is to make it so that a computer can perform certain tasks where complex decision-making is concerned. At its most basic, an AI is practically a large nest of conditional statements (If X Then Y Else Z). In fact, calling it an AI is even a bit of a misnomer; a more apt name would be Complex Information Processing, but that doesn't roll off the tongue the way Artificial Intelligence does.

When created, the AI is like that of a baby. And like all babies do, the AI needs to learn. And the way most AI today can achieve this is through Machine Learning, since using just conditional statements would be exhausting and prevent the AI from being able to change its outputs dynamically. Machine Learning is a pretty broad and complicated subject itself, but the gist of it is that Machine Learning is the means by which an AI can learn how to do a given task. If you've ever heard of things like Neural Networks (NN) or Large Language Models (LLM), they are both applications of Machine Learning.

The AI has to be trained with a given data set in order for it to be able to accomplish a given task. To understand this a little bit better, lets take a quick look at a field I am actually pretty knowledgeable on: Computer Vision. Computer Vision, as its name suggests, is the field of AI where the general goal is to make a computer able to perceive visual data using cameras. So for something like facial recognition, we would need to train the system on a data set of some kind. So we train the AI on a data set consisting of two things: faces and not faces. The goal during the training phase is to reinforce the AI (in this case our facial recognition software) on what is or is not a face. We repeat this training process until the AI is able to differentiate faces from non-faces.

So, Why Make An AI? What's Its Purpose?

Like any form of automation, the purpose of AI is to perform tasks at a more efficient rate than what humans are capable of achieving. In a more positive light, AI is useful in its ability to remove the human element from dangerous, and in some cases outright impossible, tasks. On the other hand (and I'm willing to bet this is probably what you know AI for dear reader), AI is also used by major corporations to force people out of their jobs for the sake of the bottom line.

Another purpose for the existence of AI is in research, specifically when it comes to understanding how human consciousness works. The idea, like most constructed models in general, is to create a sort of simulacrum of how human intelligence works. There are, of course, a couple of issues with this.

The first is that we don't really know how human intelligence works, so how would we even be able to create something that models human intelligence if we barely understand human intelligence in the first place?

The second problem is that, as they currently stand, AI systems are not very smart.

Okay, IBM Watson is kind of smart, but that was almost ten years ago. Yes, I can feel myself aging rapidly...

But even Watson has the same problem as most AI systems, which is they are reliant on the data they are trained on. And because the data they are trained on is almost always a very specific type of data, it means that most AI systems are only good at doing one specific task and pretty much nothing else.

"But Kaien," you might ask, "What about Artificial General Intelligence? If we just made a system that could handle different tasks instead of just one then-"

NO. It's already enough of a pain in the ass to make an AI system that can handle one specific task really well. The idea that we are close to any kind of general AI that can do a multitude of tasks (let alone do them well) is, to be frank, something a snake oil salesman would tell you. Even when they handle tasks that they are supposed to be good at doing, AI systems can and do fail.

A prime example of a specific AI system failing is Amazon's Rekognition being used by the ACLU to highlight how a facial recognition system can incorrectly flag non-criminals as criminals due to systemic racial biases. It's surprising if this is your first time hearing about facial recognition in a major capacity; not so much if you know that computer vision software can and will occasionally label cats as dogs.

To put it bluntly before moving on: as they currently stand, AI systems in general are nowhere near ready to be used as a replacement for humans in pretty much every scenario where corporate ghouls try to sell them for.

Conclusion

As we wrap up this section of Diabolos Est Machina, you might be asking yourself "But why the Devil Gundam? Couldn't you cover something more iconic like HAL-9000 or Skynet?"

And to be frank, enough ink has been spilled over HAL-9000 (heck, there's an interesting paper you can read that focuses on AI ethics through the lens of HAL ), and Skynet isn't particularly interesting in my opinion due to it being more of a generic "AI overlord who is evil and wants to wipe out humanity." At least AM was an actual character...

And now to sound like a complete hypocrite, the Devil Gundam is interesting. Hear me out: a lot of this stems from the fact that a lot of the plot of G Gundam revolves around various superpowers (including THE UNDEFEATED OF THE EAST, MASTER ASIA) trying to get their hands on what is basically an AI-operated super weapon. Which is interesting, because the Devil Gundam's primary purpose was not to be used as a weapon. And next time, we will turn our focus onto the history of AI in fiction! Complete with HAL, AM, Atom, and even Skynet (without the flippant remarks this time, I swear). And most important to us: the JDG-00X Devil Gundam!

Also Hashmal might get a reference, as will the AV-0.