#SAPIEN

[explorer-in-the-darkness]

[wallsandtrains]

Sapien THR crew 2-28-2025 San Francisco

[thedaily-beer]

Williams Brothers Sapien Crazy Kveik Double IPA (Picked up at Margiotta in Edinburgh, Scotland). A 3 of 4. Dominant grapefruit and orange citrus notes in the nose and a slightly thicker body than I was expecting that carries much the same profile with more pine and a touch of resin. Quite bitter towards the finish, and nicely represents a more old-school West Coast IPA.

[happywebdesign]

People and Blogs

[omanxl1]

Various - The Future Sound Of Jazz (Ambientelectronicabstractdigitaljazz Vol. 1) (Downtempo, House)

 Sunday Jazz Continues by now y’all should know how we do during this time frame… …even though the science dropped is appropriate for any time frame as we rebuke the ongoing mind games! The game is over for some due to karmic repercussions some will even feel these percussions… …some kind of way as we let the music play per the advice of Barry White check out these sessions! Oh yeah, check…

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Halo 2's E3 demo (2003)

Opening Earth City with Mod Tools

We can enter the demo scenario(s) using Halo 2 Mod Tools (aka Halo 2 Editing Kit, or H2EK) "Tag Test" build, but we must supply a valid tag set for doing so.

Clone the H2E3 Digsite repo (or download a ZIP from GitHub, as the repo is very large and subject to quotas). Besides including the tags, this repo includes a methodology for integrating its E3 demo build tags with Halo 2's retail ("stock") tags.

To start this process, rename your existing H2EK "stock" tags directory to something else;

H2EK\tags -> H2EK\tags-stock

Now, we'll use the repo's included script to build an E3-friendly tags directory:

python.exe "F:\digsite\H2E3-main\generate_tags_dir.py" "F:\SteamClient\steamapps\common\H2EK\tags-stock" "F:\SteamClient\steamapps\common\H2EK\tags"

Notice that the "stock" retail tags are never modified by this approach. Namely to revert to using only stock tags, we can simply delete our generated H2EK\tags folder, and restore H2EK\tags-stock to its original name.

Once this is set, we can open the map via map_name command:

map_name scenarios\solo\earthcity\earthcity_e3\earthcity_e3

Using Sev's shaders in Tag Test

As part of the demo re-creation, Sev created custom pixel shaders to approximate the look of how H2's engine then looked. You'll get these by running the demo map through MCC, but with Tag Test we need to place these shaders where they can be picked up.

First, back up the retail shaders_shader_passes_shadow_shadow_apply_combined_0 and shaders_shader_passes_shadow_shadow_apply_combined_1 PSH files inside tags-stock\rasterizer\pixel_shaders_dx9. Next, copy the corresponding files from Sev's repo inside Halo-2-Custom-Shaders\E3\Full.

Running Earth City in MCC

This is much simpler than the Tag Test approach, but it lacks a command prompt.

To play, subscribe to the relevant Workshop and then start MCC in mod mode. You'll find the mission(s) listed under Halo 2 Anniversary's campaign menu.

By enabling the Blind and Acrophobia skulls we can fly around and capture no-HUD footage.

Recording footage

From here, we can use the command console to customize our display and camera position. See my main Halo 2 post for more details.

The Digsite team recommends running at 640x480 resolution, and setting classic gamma to 6.

Mixing ambient sounds

You'll find WAV assets in the H2E3 Digsite repo. To see how they are actually played back in-game, we can look at the relevant tags inside Guerilla.

These ambience stems are combined randomly at runtime. It seems that this approach was pushed to the extreme for this demo, rather than applying the "detail sounds" approach of retail.

We can use Sapien to inspect where Earth City's three soundscapes are applied.

[hellsitegenetics]

I went to the dollar general with five dollars and got some off brand pop tarts, ate one and decided it tasted weird. So I set the other aside, came back to it a couple of hours later and realized it had black mold on it, like a lot of it. So in case I end up with a not so bright fate, I would like to know what creature I get!

String identified: t t t a ga t a a gt a tat, at a c t tat . t t t a, ca ac t t a c at a a t a ac t, a t t. ca t a t gt at, t at cat gt!

Closest match: Homo sapiens genome assembly, chromosome: contig-113 Common name: Common Human

(image source)

[xanhnon]

Aenean sed pulvinar et diam

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque tempor nisl eget lacinia gravida. Ut in scelerisque lectus. Nunc non imperdiet magna, fermentum convallis libero. Cras nec orci eget tortor fermentum tempor ac pellentesque metus. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Etiam sed blandit dolor, eget convallis dui. Suspendisse interdum lectus elit, ut…

[luvingsunshine]

sapiens: a brief history of humankind

[nocturn-warrior]

Let me just remind you guys that...

AI fanfiction is not fanfiction

[khandwacity]

Aenean sed pulvinar et diam

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque tempor nisl eget lacinia gravida. Ut in scelerisque lectus. Nunc non imperdiet magna, fermentum convallis libero. Cras nec orci eget tortor fermentum tempor ac pellentesque metus. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Etiam sed blandit dolor, eget convallis dui. Suspendisse interdum lectus elit, ut…

[actordougjones]

For this #throwbackthurdsay join me in celebrating 20 years since the first HELLBOY movie was released in 2004. Playing Abe Sapien was a life changing joy. .

tbt #hellboy #comicbookmovies #superheroes #abesapien

[fury161]

portraits for a de au i think about a little bit

[alpaca-clouds]

If you claim yourself to be a feminist, please repeat this after me:

The.

Patriarchy.

Is.

Not.

Natural.

Or.

Biological.

Please, I am BEGGING you. Understand this. Humans have not evolved for patriarchy. The assholes who tell you that do so to uphold the patriarchy. It is the patriarchy trying to claim so. Athropology is VERY CERTAIN that humans have not evolved for this. Humans have lived in a matriarchal OR gender-equal society till about 12 000 years ago. (After which most humans still continued - just a few started patriarchy.)

Stop spreading this misogynic myth of patriarchy being natural. You are not helping your cause.

[dumpster2001]

Abe Sapien

[evilminji]

Actually? You know what would be darkly hilarious?

If, when the GIW can't get ghosts declared both malicious AND non-sapient/sentient? They push for "dumb animals" instead.

Which is accepted. Ghosts are animals. Checks out, says scientists everywhere.

HOW "dumb"?

What? Says the GIW, mid-victory high fives. They did not expect a follow up question. They SHOULD have, as this is the SCIENTIFIC community and that is literally their job, but here we are.

How. "Dumb"? The scientists repeate slower. What methodology did you use? What is your sample size? Are their different sub-species? Is this dimension like ours? Is Ghost the equivalent to Mammal? It says here their are humanoid ones.

What IQ are we talking about here and HOW DID YOU TEST??

A goldfish, parrot, and dolphin are all animals. WILDLY different levels of intelligence. You can't treat them the same. Technically speaking, WE are animals.

The GIW does not like where this conversation is going. Tries to shut it down.

.......well NOW the scientists are both offended AND invested. How DARE you try to push faulty science and hide the Truth from them! They're gonna do their OWN studies! *picks up the phone and dials that one embarrassing spiritualist friend they had in college* Hey! You still think you can summon ghosts? I'll pay you to try it for Science!

And like? As a Ghost? It's degrading as hell. But ALSO these fuckos just Whoopsie'd you into having both protections under the law, since animal abuse IS illegal, AND just put the ENTIRE planets scientific community on their asses.... by accident.

So you take a deeeeeeep breath you don't even need. Remember you're doing this for the little ghost babies and fluffy ghost animals. And show up at a research facility like "yes, hello, I am Ghost. Here for you to poke and prod at. Please ask me to name the object on the flash card or whatever IQ tests do these days."

Should you HAVE to prove your own fucking sentience? No. But? You do it. You're even polite about it. Ask for a copy of the study they plan to publish so you can BEAT some mother fuckers with it. The scientists nod in understanding and use the BIG font for your copy so it'll hurt more.

They've been there.

And just? Shitty people getting what they wanted only to have it blow up in their faces?? I see all these angst "but what if they were declared ANIMALS" prompts and I just?? Are we talking PARROT or goldfish!? One has the average intelligence of about a human 4yr old and the other is a FISH! People get RIGHTFULLY furious when you treat INTELLIGENT animals badly.

And would, in fact, adapt pretty easy to discovering one of said animal has become HUMAN lvl intelligent. It's easy to grasp the idea of human intelligence lvl dolphin or monkeys. Maybe there was some mutated strain, maybe in uetro tampering. Who knows. But if I tried to sell you a human intelligent housefly? Gold fish? Lizard?

You wouldn't believe me. There is some kind of trick at play.

So if GHOSTS are seen as animals? Everyone nods and then later? Someone comes in TV and very excitedly informs you "we found INTELLIGENT LIFE amongst the ghosts!" You'd believe it. Probably be really excited by your conversation starter for the day. Get a taco and move on with your life.

But? Having to willing sit for a barrage of testing? Is going to suuuuuuck so bad. Poor Danny. SATs all over again. For HOURS. At multiple facilities, just to be CERTAIN it's not a one off. All because he not certain he can insure good behavior from other ghosts and This Is IMPORTANT. He ALSO can't be certain it's even SAFE.

Might be a trap.

But if he has to do it again and again and again? Mexico to Bavaria to China to the Maldives? If this is what it takes for the scientific community to bitchslap the GIW into ORBIT before the UN? Hand him that pencil.

He has no where more important to be.

@hdgnj @nerdpoe @mutable-manifestation @ailithnight @the-witchhunter