#What does Hardware Engineer

[aidenwaites]

Worst part of 35mm is idk if any of this looks like anything until I send this off to get developed

[kraniumet]

least spirited extortion campaign

[tofupixel]

⭐ So you want to learn pixel art? ⭐

🔹 Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!

Edit: Now available in Google Doc format if you don't have a Tumblr account 🥰

Hello, my name is Tofu and I'm a professional pixel artist. I have been supporting myself with freelance pixel art since 2020, when I was let go from my job during the pandemic.

My progress, from 2017 to 2024. IMO the only thing that really matters is time and effort, not some kind of natural talent for art.

This guide will not be comprehensive, as nobody should be expected to read allat. Instead I will lean heavily on my own experience, and share what worked for me, so take everything with a grain of salt. This is a guide, not a tutorial. Cheers!

🔹 Do I need money?

NO!!! Pixel art is one of the most accessible mediums out there.

I still use a mouse because I prefer it to a tablet! You won't be at any disadvantage here if you can't afford the best hardware or software.

Because our canvases are typically very small, you don't need a good PC to run a good brush engine or anything like that.

✨Did you know? One of the most skilled and beloved pixel artists uses MS PAINT! Wow!!

🔹 What software should I use?

Here are some of the most popular programs I see my friends and peers using. Stars show how much I recommend the software for beginners! ⭐

💰 Paid options:

⭐⭐⭐ Aseprite (for PC) - $19.99

This is what I and many other pixel artists use. You may find when applying to jobs that they require some knowledge of Aseprite. Since it has become so popular, companies like that you can swap raw files between artists.

Aseprite is amazingly customizable, with custom skins, scripts and extensions on Itch.io, both free and paid.

If you have ever used any art software before, it has most of the same features and should feel fairly familiar to use. It features a robust animation suite and a tilemap feature, which have saved me thousands of hours of labour in my work. The software is also being updated all the time, and the developers listen to the users. I really recommend Aseprite!

⭐ Photoshop (for PC) - Monthly $$

A decent option for those who already are used to the PS interface. Requires some setup to get it ready for pixel-perfect art, but there are plenty of tutorials for doing so.

Animation is also much more tedious on PS which you may want to consider before investing time!

⭐⭐ ProMotion NG (for PC) - $19.00

An advanced and powerful software which has many features Aseprite does not, including Colour Cycling and animated tiles.

⭐⭐⭐ Pixquare (for iOS) - $7.99 - $19.99 (30% off with code 'tofu'!!)

Probably the best app available for iPad users, in active development, with new features added all the time.

Look! My buddy Jon recommends it highly, and uses it often.

One cool thing about Pixquare is that it takes Aseprite raw files! Many of my friends use it to work on the same project, both in their office and on the go.

⭐ Procreate (for iOS) - $12.99

If you have access to Procreate already, it's a decent option to get used to doing pixel art. It does however require some setup. Artist Pixebo is famously using Procreate, and they have tutorials of their own if you want to learn.

⭐⭐ ReSprite iOS and Android. (free trial, but:) $19.99 premium or $$ monthly

ReSprite is VERY similar in terms of UI to Aseprite, so I can recommend it. They just launched their Android release!

🆓 Free options:

⭐⭐⭐ Libresprite (for PC)

Libresprite is an alternative to Aseprite. It is very, very similar, to the point where documentation for Aseprite will be helpful to Libresprite users.

⭐⭐ Pixilart (for PC and mobile)

A free in-browser app, and also a mobile app! It is tied to the website Pixilart, where artists upload and share their work. A good option for those also looking to get involved in a community.

⭐⭐ Dotpict (for mobile)

Dotpict is similar to Pixilart, with a mobile app tied to a website, but it's a Japanese service. Did you know that in Japanese, pixel art is called 'Dot Art'? Dotpict can be a great way to connect with a different community of pixel artists! They also have prompts and challenges often.

🔹 So I got my software, now what?

◽Nice! Now it's time for the basics of pixel art.

❗ WAIT ❗ Before this section, I want to add a little disclaimer. All of these rules/guidelines can be broken at will, and some 'no-nos' can look amazing when done intentionally.

The pixel-art fundamentals can be exceedingly helpful to new artists, who may feel lost or overwhelmed by choice. But if you feel they restrict you too harshly, don't force yourself! At the end of the day it's your art, and you shouldn't try to contort yourself into what people think a pixel artist 'should be'. What matters is your own artistic expression. 💕👍

◽Phew! With that out of the way...

🔸"The Rules"

There are few hard 'rules' of pixel art, mostly about scaling and exporting. Some of these things will frequently trip up newbies if they aren't aware, and are easy to overlook.

🔹Scaling method

There are a couple ways of scaling your art. The default in most art programs, and the entire internet, is Bi-linear scaling, which usually works out fine for most purposes. But as pixel artists, we need a different method.

Both are scaled up x10. See the difference?

On the left is scaled using Bilinear, and on the right is using Nearest-Neighbor. We love seeing those pixels stay crisp and clean, so we use nearest-neighbor. 

(Most pixel-art programs have nearest-neighbor enabled by default! So this may not apply to you, but it's important to know.)

🔹Mixels

Mixels are when there are different (mixed) pixel sizes in the same image.

Here I have scaled up my art- the left is 200%, and the right is 150%. Yuck!

As we can see, the "pixel" sizes end up different. We generally try to scale our work by multiples of 100 - 200%, 300% etc. rather than 150%. At larger scales however, the minute differences in pixel sizes are hardly noticeable!

Mixels are also sometimes seen when an artist scales up their work, then continues drawing on it with a 1 pixel brush.

Many would say that this is not great looking! This type of pixels can be indicative of a beginner artist. But there are plenty of creative pixel artists out there who mixels intentionally, making something modern and cool.

🔹Saving Your Files

We usually save our still images as .PNGs as they don’t create any JPEG artifacts or loss of quality. It's a little hard to see here, but there are some artifacts, and it looks a little blurry. It also makes the art very hard to work with if we are importing a JPEG.

For animations .GIF is good, but be careful of the 256 colour limit. Try to avoid using too many blending mode layers or gradients when working with animations. If you aren’t careful, your animation could flash afterwards, as the .GIF tries to reduce colours wherever it can. It doesn’t look great!

Here's an old piece from 2021 where I experienced .GIF lossiness, because I used gradients and transparency, resulting in way too many colours.

🔹Pixel Art Fundamentals - Techniques and Jargon

❗❗Confused about Jaggies? Anti-Aliasing? Banding? Dithering? THIS THREAD is for you❗❗ << it's a link, click it!!

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE tutorial of all time for understanding pixel art. These are techniques created and named by the community of people who actually put the list together, some of the best pixel artists alive currently. Please read it!!

🔸How To Learn

Okay, so you have your software, and you're all ready to start. But maybe you need some more guidance? Try these tutorials and resources! It can be helpful to work along with a tutorial until you build your confidence up.

⭐⭐ Pixel Logic (A Digital Book) - $10 A very comprehensive visual guide book by a very skilled and established artist in the industry. I own a copy myself.

⭐⭐⭐ StudioMiniBoss - free A collection of visual tutorials, by the artist that worked on Celeste! When starting out, if I got stuck, I would go and scour his tutorials and see how he did it.

⭐ Lospec Tutorials - free A very large collection of various tutorials from all over the internet. There is a lot to sift through here if you have the time.

⭐⭐⭐ Cyangmou's Tutorials - free (tipping optional) Cyangmou is one of the most respected and accomplished modern pixel artists, and he has amassed a HUGE collection of free and incredibly well-educated visual tutorials. He also hosts an educational stream every week on Twitch called 'pixelart for beginners'.

⭐⭐⭐ Youtube Tutorials - free There are hundreds, if not thousands of tutorials on YouTube, but it can be tricky to find the good ones. My personal recommendations are MortMort, Brandon, and AdamCYounis- these guys really know what they're talking about!

🔸 How to choose a canvas size

When looking at pixel art turorials, we may see people suggest things like 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64. These are standard sizes for pixel art games with tiles. However, if you're just making a drawing, you don't necessarily need to use a standard canvas size like that.

What I like to think about when choosing a canvas size for my illustrations is 'what features do I think it is important to represent?' And make my canvas as small as possible, while still leaving room for my most important elements.

Imagine I have characters in a scene like this:

I made my canvas as small as possible (232 x 314), but just big enough to represent the features and have them be recognizable (it's Good Omens fanart 😤)!! If I had made it any bigger, I would be working on it for ever, due to how much more foliage I would have to render.

If you want to do an illustration and you're not sure, just start at somewhere around 100x100 - 200x200 and go from there.

It's perfectly okay to crop your canvas, or scale it up, or crunch your art down at any point if you think you need a different size. I do it all the time! It only takes a bit of cleanup to get you back to where you were.

🔸Where To Post

Outside of just regular socials, Twitter, Tumblr, Deviantart, Instagram etc, there are a few places that lean more towards pixel art that you might not have heard of.

⭐ Lospec Lospec is a low-res focused art website. Some pieces get given a 'monthly masterpiece' award. Not incredibly active, but I believe there are more features being added often.

⭐⭐ Pixilart Pixilart is a very popular pixel art community, with an app tied to it. The community tends to lean on the young side, so this is a low-pressure place to post with an relaxed vibe.

⭐⭐ Pixeljoint Pixeljoint is one of the big, old-school pixel art websites. You can only upload your art unscaled (1x) because there is a built-in zoom viewer. It has a bit of a reputation for being elitist (back in the 00s it was), but in my experience it's not like that any more. This is a fine place for a pixel artist to post if they are really interested in learning, and the history. The Hall of Fame has some of the most famous / impressive pixel art pieces that paved the way for the work we are doing today.

⭐⭐⭐ Cafe Dot Cafe Dot is my art server so I'm a little biased here. 🍵 It was created during the recent social media turbulence. We wanted a place to post art with no algorithms, and no NFT or AI chuds. We have a heavy no-self-promotion rule, and are more interested in community than skill or exclusivity. The other thing is that we have some kind of verification system- you must apply to be a Creator before you can post in the Art feed, or use voice. This helps combat the people who just want to self-promo and dip, or cause trouble, as well as weed out AI/NFT people. Until then, you are still welcome to post in any of the threads or channels. There is a lot to do in Cafe Dot. I host events weekly, so check the threads!

⭐⭐/r/pixelart The pixel art subreddit is pretty active! I've also heard some of my friends found work through posting here, so it's worth a try if you're looking. However, it is still Reddit- so if you're sensitive to rude people, or criticism you didn't ask for, you may want to avoid this one. Lol

🔸 Where To Find Work

You need money? I got you! As someone who mostly gets scouted on social media, I can share a few tips with you:

Put your email / portfolio in your bio Recruiters don't have all that much time to find artists, make it as easy as possible for someone to find your important information!

Clean up your profile If your profile feed is all full of memes, most people will just tab out rather than sift through. Doesn't apply as much to Tumblr if you have an art tag people can look at.

Post regularly, and repost Activity beats everything in the social media game. It's like rolling the dice, and the more you post the more chances you have. You have to have no shame, it's all business baby

Outside of just posting regularly and hoping people reach out to you, it can be hard to know where to look. Here are a few places you can sign up to and post around on.

/r/INAT INAT (I Need A Team) is a subreddit for finding a team to work with. You can post your portfolio here, or browse for people who need artists.

/r/GameDevClassifieds Same as above, but specifically for game-related projects.

Remote Game Jobs / Work With Indies Like Indeed but for game jobs. Browse them often, or get email notifications.

VGen VGen is a website specifically for commissions. You need a code from another verified artist before you can upgrade your account and sell, so ask around on social media or ask your friends. Once your account is upgraded, you can make a 'menu' of services people can purchase, and they send you an offer which you are able to accept, decline, or counter.

The evil websites of doom: Fiverr and Upwork I don't recommend them!! They take a big cut of your profit, and the sites are teeming with NFT and AI people hoping to make a quick buck. The site is also extremely oversaturated and competitive, resulting in a race to the bottom (the cheapest, the fastest, doing the most for the least). Imagine the kind of clients who go to these websites, looking for the cheapest option. But if you're really desperate...

🔸 Community

I do really recommend getting involved in a community. Finding like-minded friends can help you stay motivated to keep drawing. One day, those friends you met when you were just starting out may become your peers in the industry. Making friends is a game changer!

Discord servers Nowadays, the forums of old are mostly abandoned, and people split off into many different servers. Cafe Dot, Pixel Art Discord (PAD), and if you can stomach scrolling past all the AI slop, you can browse Discord servers here.

Twitch Streams Twitch has kind of a bad reputation for being home to some of the more edgy gamers online, but the pixel art community is extremely welcoming and inclusive. Some of the people I met on Twitch are my friends to this day, and we've even worked together on different projects! Browse pixel art streams here, or follow some I recommend: NickWoz, JDZombi, CupOhJoe, GrayLure, LumpyTouch, FrankiePixelShow, MortMort, Sodor, NateyCakes, NyuraKim, ShinySeabass, I could go on for ever really... There are a lot of good eggs on Pixel Art Twitch.

🔸 Other Helpful Websites

Palettes Lospec has a huge collection of user-made palettes, for any artist who has trouble choosing their colours, or just wants to try something fun. Rejected Palettes is full of palettes that didn't quite make it onto Lospec, ran by people who believe there are no bad colours.

The Spriters Resource TSR is an incredible website where users can upload spritesheets and tilesets from games. You can browse for your favourite childhood game, and see how they made it! This website has helped me so much in understanding how game assets come together in a scene.

VGMaps Similar to the above, except there are entire maps laid out how they would be played. This is incredible if you have to do level design, or for mocking up a scene for fun.

Game UI Database Not pixel-art specific, but UI is a very challenging part of graphics, so this site can be a game-changer for finding good references!

Retronator A digital newspaper for pixel-art lovers! New game releases, tutorials, and artworks!

Itch.io A website where people can upload, games, assets, tools... An amazing hub for game devs and game fans alike. A few of my favourite tools: Tiled, PICO-8, Pixel Composer, Juice FX, Magic Pencil for Aseprite

🔸 The End?

This is just part 1 for now, so please drop me a follow to see any more guides I release in the future. I plan on doing some writeups on how I choose colours, how to practise, and more!

I'm not an expert by any means, but everything I did to get to where I am is outlined in this guide. Pixel art is my passion, my job and my hobby! I want pixel art to be recognized everywhere as an art-form, a medium of its own outside of game-art or computer graphics!

This guide took me a long time, and took a lot of research and experience. Consider following me or supporting me if you are feeling generous.

And good luck to all the fledgling pixel artists, I hope you'll continue and have fun. I hope my guide helped you, and don't hesitate to send me an ask if you have any questions! 💕

My other tutorials (so far): How to draw Simple Grass for a game Hue Shifting

[yokowan]

re: the spacecraft failures post

there is a way to make spacecraft way cheaper/faster and we've been doing it since the 60s/70s!!!!!! it's called using a common satellite bus!

the reason you don't frequently hear about big name communications satellites or whatever failing is because they're all manufactured on a mass produced (when you're talking spacecraft, economies of scale start to kick in on runs of 20-50 units) satellite busses.

the bus contains all the "basic" stuff you need for a spacecraft. communications, propulsion, power, and a chassis to mount hardware on. if you need to make a satellite, all you need to do is make the hardware specific to your particular mission and plug it into the bus. not only does this cut down on engineering costs, it also means you know those basic components are going to work, since they've been extensively ground and flight tested.

it's a pretty basic idea. if you need a parade float, you don't make a combustion engine from scratch. you build the float and bolt it to the back of a truck. if you need a weather satellite, you don't build your power and propulsion systems from scratch. you build your instruments and bolt them to a Maxar SSL 1300.

you still need to do integration testing, of course. you need to make sure that there's no weird interaction between your own hardware and the satellite bus. but you have a lot better of an idea of what the "expected behavior" is, so you need to do a whole lot less testing to see if anything's fishy.

the one exception to this whole strategy is missions that are Weird. lunar landers, interplanetary probes, spacecraft designed for rendezvous, etc. these things have atypical requirements for the "basic" stuff. usually a lot more propellant, a lot more power generation, much bigger antennas. this is why big flagship science missions are so expensive. you can't just bolt shit to the pickup truck anymore, you need to build it from the ground up.

and when you're doing that, you need to do a lot more testing! if you built a propellant feed system from scratch, you need to know that it'll work 8 months from now when you're on the opposite side of the sun. you can't rely on previous experience and flight testing. you need to be the one doing that testing.

if these guys really wanted to be "revolutionizing the industry" they'd instead be making satellite busses for those weirder missions. and guess what! some companies are doing that! now that the demand is there, there's companies making satellite busses that are more optimized for interplanetary travel! you just don't hear about it as much because its way less glamorous. it's just a common sense idea. it just works.

oh fuck i wrote a lot whoops teehee

[prokopetz]

I've always known it was unusual that well-designed NES games could run at a steady 60fps while games for much more powerful contemporary desktop PCs struggled to hit 15, and I had an inkling that it had something to do with the system's graphics engine being implemented in hardware, but reading up on the details of that implementation really brings home how fucking nuts the decisions the system's designers made to hit that performance target are. Like, what do you mean its graphics pipeline is completely unbuffered? What do you mean it does stupid tricks with hardware registers to perform just-in-time rendering of individual pixels while the CRT television is in the middle of drawing the frame? What do you mean it schedules code execution for the horizontal blanking interval between scanlines?

Basically, what I mean to say is that hobby programmers who still develop for this thing are insane, and they have my respect.

[super-ion]

The Engineer

Part 5

(Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4)

I sure wish I could get some hardware interface testing, today's tech tells me with a disgusting smirk. His eyes make a shameless sweep of my skinsuit.

Normally, I wouldn't stare him down. Normally, I would hunch my shoulders and pretend that the joke slid right off me.

I haven't felt normal since my encounter with the Pilot in that dimly lit observation room two nights ago.

I stare until his smirk slides from his face and he begins to squirm.

I turn away, putting him out of my mind.

Morrigan and I have a date. That is to say, we do, in fact, have hardware interface testing on the schedule today. Her primary neural interface has been upgraded and I need to run it through its diagnostics, a task I am uniquely qualified for with the engineer's rig and my intimate knowledge of Her systems.

I'm… giddy. Nervous, even.

This will be the first time I plug into Her since my encounter with Her Pilot - the first time since she touched my face, since she roughly pressed her lips to my neck while I surrendered to her, with Morrigan watching the whole time.

I shudder at the memory and linger in the vestibule. I place a hand on Morrigan's bulkhead as I always do. I feel that distant thrum of Her, the dull rumble of Her heart.

“Hey beautiful,” I say to Her as I always do.

I think of the Pilot. I think of piercing blue eyes and I think of neural bleed.

I think of teeth scraping against tender flesh at the base of my neck. I think of those slender fingers winding themselves through my hair.

A noise behind me. The tech clears his throat.

My face heats and I flinch my hand away.

I climb into the cockpit to find that the cradle is already reconfigured for me. Every one of Morrigan's cockpit cameras are focused on me with a new, special kind of eagerness.

She did watch us. I'm certain of it. Even if she hadn't, the Pilot has been here and already shared everything with her.

I let out a nervous breath and clamber into the embrace of her cradle. I let Her slip into me, physically and mentally. I let Her fill the space where my loneliness is a tangible aching thing.

Telemetry streams fill my consciousness. The ping comes almost immediately after connection is established.

- STATUS?

What is my status? Before two nights ago, I had enough trouble answering that question. Now everything is more confused than ever.

“I met the Pilot,” I reply. “Your Pilot. She kissed me. I let her…”

I drag my hands over my face. Why does this feel like I'm admitting to cheating on her?

- DID YOU ENJOY IT?

I nod.

Her delight (at least as much as a machine like her can experience delight) is palpable over the neural interface. Something like relief flows through me.

Of course it doesn't bother her, why would it?

I sigh and kick off the first of a long series of diagnostic tests. As firmware validation check results start popping up in my hud, I let my mind wander.

Wander is a generous term. My mind immediately returns to the singular subject that has occupied my thoughts.

The Pilot presses herself against me. Her lips press against the space where my neck meets my shoulder, her teeth nipping gently. Her hand trails down my side, finds the hem of my shirt and lifts slightly, skin touching skin...

The memory brings with it the ghost of sensation.

All around me, Morrigan hums. All the little noises in the cockpit, all the clicks and whirs and beeps, seem to take on a new meaning as she witnesses the memory play back in my mind.

“You think a lot about neural bleed.”

I'm thinking about neural bleed now. I'm thinking about how the next time the Pilot jacks in, she will find the ghost of my thoughts in Morrigan's system. She will know how it made my breath come fast, how the memory made me stiffen. How my hands wandered unbidden along my skinsuit…

I'm not alone.

My eyes snap open in a panic and…

There she is, hovering at the threshold to the vestibule.

I don't know how long the Pilot has been watching me. Her eyes shine with the same intensity as ever, but… hungry, wanting.

It's too much. Her knowing about Morrigan and me, Morrigan knowing about us, those are one thing. Her being here now, me here with the two of them together, it's too much.

My face heats and I mumble some unintelligible apology. I send a command to Morrigan to disengage. I attempt to sit up and-

She presses a hand to my chest and shoves me back into the cradle.

“You're not going anywhere,” she purrs.

Morrigan has not disengaged.

My breath catches in my throat.

The Pilot climbs the rest of the way into the cockpit and cycles the bulkhead closed.

The space is barely big enough for the two of us and the intimacy of it sends my heart racing anew.

“Wh-what?” I gasp. “Somebody will catch us.”

“I don't fucking care,” she says as she straddles me and produces an auxiliary neural interface cable from an overhead receptacle. “Me or Morrigan could get dead in the next engagement. I don't have the time or patience to pussyfoot around.”

“They could reassign me,” I protest, “or worse.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she says with a hint of a sly grin. “You'll find that pilots usually get what we want around here.”

I can't tell if she means getting what she wants from me or from our superiors.

She hesitates, interface cable dangling in her hand. It's that same hesitation from two nights earlier, only this time it's a question for me.

Morrigan herself seems to pause with her own bated metaphorical breath. A sort of gentle hopefulness trickles over the link.

I should say no. I should excuse myself. That would be the smart rational thing to do.

I'm too close. I'm too close to both of them now.

I give the Pilot a nod.

I watch as she contorts herself, stretching her lithe arms to reach the jack in her own rig. I watch as she slides the the plug of the interface into herself. I watch as she shudders and sighs, dropping her arms and closing her eyes. I watch as her body relaxes, and for the first time since I've known her, she becomes still.

New status messages flash in my field of vision. A second user has logged in.

She opens her eyes and looks around the cramped cockpit.

“This is how you experience it?” she says.

“What?”

“The link,” she says. “There's no haptics. No biochem. It's so... shallow.”

My heart falls.

She blinks in surprise, her eyes distant.

“Fuck. I'm sorry,” she says softly. “I didn't mean it like that. I...”

My face must have given me away, or my body language. She leans towards me and brushes her lips tenderly against mine.

Then I understand. It wasn't anything on my face.

I can feel her. I feel her against me, but I also feel me against her.

It isn't sensorium. I can't feel what she physically feels. But emotion is information and information flows freely over the link.

I don't feel her so much as I feel her emotional reaction to the touch.

Neural bleed.

I open my mouth and drink her in. I wrap my arms around her to pull her close. One of us moans, I can't tell who at this point.

She pulls away.

“Holy shit,” I gasp.

“Yeah?” she replies and…

Holy shit.

Morrigan begins playing back the moments just before the Pilot Interrupted us - the memory, my need, my wandering hands.

The Pilot makes a small self-satisfied grin. I can feel her satisfaction over the link. I can feel her own reactive wanting.

Fuck. I can even feel Morrigan's need.

"The three of us, we're just this fucking tangle, aren't we?"

“You liked that, huh?” she says, leaning towards me. "Our little tryst?"

I nod.

“Can't stop thinking about it?”

I nod again.

She leans in real close and I dare not move as she brushes her lips against my ear.

“There's just one problem,” she whispers. “I think that Babygirl feels a bit left out.”

I gasp as something closes over my wrists, my ankles.

I crane my neck to look over to where safety restraints in the cradle have closed over me.

"Can't let Her get jealous, can we?" she whispers with a nip at my ear.

The Pilot straightens and spreads her arms. The space in the cockpit is so close that her fingers touch both sides easily. She draws her arms overhead, fingers drifting over the panels. She stretches languidly, the hard lines of her body on full display under her own skinsuit.

Desire and need pulse over the link - the Pilot's and Morrigan's and my own reflected back at me.

“How about we give you something else you can't stop thinking about?”

~~~~~

(Next)

@digitalsymbiote @g1ngan1nja @thriron @ephemeral-arcanist @mias-domain @justasleepykitten @powder-of-infinity @valkayrieactual @chaosmagetwin @assigned-stupid-at-birth @avalanchenouveau

If anyone else wants to get tagged (or if I missed you), let me know! Two more updates planned (fair warning, they're not going to be as happy as this one)

[simbassims]

Some info about The Sims 2: Legacy Collection

Heads up on The Sims 2 Legacy Collection: It does not have Denuvo. The .exe file for it is only 20MB and Denuvo usually weighs hugely on the executables. Meaning there is no anti-piracy active on this release. Game is also (unfortunately) still 32bit, BUT the executable has been modified to be Large Address Aware, which means it can use up to 4GB of RAM (it comes pre-installed with 4GB patch, basically) There has indeed been some alterations made to the engine, at least to some extent; they did not lie on the game description. There has been fixes on the shadows akin to simnopke's, with resolution tweaks as well. What i think has been happening to some people is hardware not being properly detected, which leads to the same old error with DirectX 9.0c and you having to utilize Graphics Rule Maker to do patch the options into the game (otherwise it would default to the lowest ones available, basically, with all the low resolutions and such). I think EA will likely patch those problems soon enough though. I will be looking further into what exactly was changed and give a follow-up. Wondering if they fixed the First-Born Syndrome?

[nasa]

Roman's primary structure hangs from cables as it moves into the big clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

What Makes the Clean Room So Clean?

When you picture NASA’s most important creations, you probably think of a satellite, telescope, or maybe a rover. But what about the room they’re made in? Believe it or not, the room itself where these instruments are put together—a clean room—is pretty special. 

A clean room is a space that protects technology from contamination. This is especially important when sending very sensitive items into space that even small particles could interfere with.

There are two main categories of contamination that we have to keep away from our instruments. The first is particulate contamination, like dust. The second is molecular contamination, which is more like oil or grease. Both types affect a telescope’s image quality, as well as the time it takes to capture imagery. Having too many particles on our instruments is like looking through a dirty window. A clean room makes for clean science!

Two technicians clean the floor of Goddard’s big clean room.

Our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has the largest clean room of its kind in the world. It’s as tall as an eight-story building and as wide as two basketball courts.

Goddard’s clean room has fewer than 3,000 micron-size particles per cubic meter of air. If you lined up all those tiny particles, they’d be no longer than a sesame seed. If those particles were the size of 16-inch (0.4-meter) inflatable beach balls, we’d find only 3,000 spread throughout the whole body of Mount Everest!

A clean room technician observes a sample under a microscope.

The clean room keeps out particles larger than five microns across, just seven percent of the width of an average human hair. It does this via special filters that remove around 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger from incoming air. Six fans the size of school buses spin to keep air flowing and pressurize the room. Since the pressure inside is higher, the clean air keeps unclean air out when doors open.

A technician analyzes a sample under ultraviolet light.

In addition, anyone who enters must wear a “bunny suit” to keep their body particles away from the machinery. A bunny suit covers most of the person inside. Sometimes scientists have trouble recognizing each other while in the suits, but they do get to know each other’s mannerisms very well.

This illustration depicts the anatomy of a bunny suit, which covers clean room technicians from head to toe to protect sensitive technology.

The bunny suit is only the beginning: before putting it on, team members undergo a preparation routine involving a hairnet and an air shower. Fun fact – you’re not allowed to wear products like perfume, lotion, or deodorant. Even odors can transfer easily!

Six of Goddard’s clean room technicians (left to right: Daniel DaCosta, Jill Bender, Anne Martino, Leon Bailey, Frank D’Annunzio, and Josh Thomas).

It takes a lot of specialists to run Goddard’s clean room. There are 10 people on the Contamination Control Technician Team, 30 people on the Clean Room Engineering Team to cover all Goddard missions, and another 10 people on the Facilities Team to monitor the clean room itself. They check on its temperature, humidity, and particle counts.

A technician rinses critical hardware with isopropyl alcohol and separates the particulate and isopropyl alcohol to leave the particles on a membrane for microscopic analysis.

Besides the standard mopping and vacuuming, the team uses tools such as isopropyl alcohol, acetone, wipes, swabs, white light, and ultraviolet light. Plus, they have a particle monitor that uses a laser to measure air particle count and size.

The team keeping the clean room spotless plays an integral role in the success of NASA’s missions. So, the next time you have to clean your bedroom, consider yourself lucky that the stakes aren’t so high!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[vexwerewolf]

Showrooms of LANCER Manufacturers

IPS-N

IPS-N showrooms are what you'd get if you slammed a truck dealership, a hardware store, a camping gear shop and a sports bar together in the Bass Pro Shops Pyramid. We're talking row upon row of shelves stocked with the most precision-engineered engine parts you can print on one side of the floor, and on the other, durable, hard-wearing survival gear. Camping stoves you can run off of your mech's coldcore, sleeping bags that'll survive a HEX charge, automatic camo cloth, the works.

Right down the middle, you've got the mech floor. They've got the Tortuga. They've got the Blackbeard. They've got the Drake. They've got the Lancaster and the Kidd. They've got the Vlad (they put a chain-link fence covered in DO NOT TOUCH signs around that one after the infamous CFO's 10-year-old Incident). They've even got the Raleigh, kinda tucked away a little bit behind the water feature, but it's there!

Everything on the shop floor is ruggedized to the point that you could take a mech's fist to it without leaving a dent - and they sometimes do that to demonstrate the engineering quality. There's a giant screen hanging from the ceiling displaying constant advertising for the mechs and IPS-N in general, usually striding purposefully through idyllic Diasporan wilderness or doing hard, honest work like starship loading or construction. There's a mixtape of the most famous bro-country hits playing 24/7.

Smith-Shimano Corpro

In a word: bespoke. Everything in this place is custom. Each and every desk is individually built according to the height of the salesperson who sits behind it, and manages to be a unique art piece without disrupting the overarching aesthetic of the showroom. Whenever there's a change of staff on the sales floor, they rearrange every single desk so that they're still in ascending order.

All of the salespeople are inhumanly pretty, by the way. This atelier has its own fully-staffed makeup and wardrobe team. You're part of a work of art when you work for SSC. Everything and everyone gleams. Even the most chic visitors might feel underdressed in the midst of all this splendour.

The mechs aren't just there to be sold, they're there to be part of the experience. You might see a Monarch holding up the ceiling like the titan Atlas himself. A Mourning Cloak might be posed provocatively like a nude statue. That Swallowtail - is it in a slightly different position every time you see it, or is that just its camouflage decals? How does it always manage to be just inside your line of sight, even when you're looking somewhere else?

They have a catwalk, like you'd see at a fashion show, but it's sized for mechs. If they really think you might make a purchase, they'll queue up the entire performance for you, and you'll get to see a Viceroy strut.

The mix tape for this showroom is a seamless mixture of complex jazz, psychedelic ambient and classical piano music. It's sophisticated and mysterious.

Harrison Armory

Imagine if America could be a showroom. Harrison Armory mech outlets are part dealership, part museum. Every mech is in its own diorama, depicting some heroic event in the Armory's glorious history. A phalanx of Sherman Mk. Is holds the line against some Diasporan slaver-tyrant's army. A Saladin fends off Karrakin hordes during the Interest War. The Genghis Mk. II? Oh, that diorama isn't open right now, it had to be closed for *coughcoughcough* and *coughcoughcough* but let's move on shall we heh heh

Everyone who works here has been in the Colonial Legion at some point, and knows every specification of the mechs they sell off by heart without even looking at their slate. If possible, the Armory tries to employ people who have actual combat experience with the mechs they're selling; people who can speak to the efficacy of their technology first-hand. It's one of the many programs which the Armory has open for retired veterans; it's easy work for decent pay, good benefits and it looks great on your Social.

The music here is a constant loop of patriotic Armory anthems. If you've ever heard the music from Starship Troopers, or the Outbreak of War from Star Ocean, you'll know what I'm talking about.

HORUS

Being a decentralized omninet collective with no official branding or even consistent manufacturing standards, it should come as no surprise that HORUS has no showrooms.

ERR:CONNECTION_INTERRUPT

CartesianWhisper: P55555t CartesianWhisper: Ignore that 5hithead CartesianWhisper: They don't have any idea what they're talking about CartesianWhisper: You want a mech, kid? CartesianWhisper: And I'm not talking the tra5h the Purv5 try to 5ell you CartesianWhisper: Or that overpriced garbage 55C want5 you to mortgage your genetic5 for CartesianWhisper: Or the macho trucker bull5hit IP5-N i5 trying to hawk CartesianWhisper: I'm talking about the REAL DEAL CartesianWhisper: The PROPER 5TUFF CartesianWhisper: Log on to rgx0582.node-7.c4l.omni CartesianWhisper: I'll 5how you what true power mean5 >:]

[elodieunderglass]

this feels like a strange question but in light of your info about how jockeys don't usually know or train with the horses they race on - what are jockeys..... for? what is the jockey doing that the horse couldn't be trained to do independently? does a good or bad jockey make a significant difference to how well a given horse does in a race?

Right?!

In a way, asking what the jockey’s for also asks the question of “why race horses?” Why do it at all, and why horses?

We sort of do it because horses are fast and exciting, and because they do what we tell them, even though it’s not in their nature. Because it’s not their nature, they have a jockey.

I’ve put this under a “Keep Reading” to save your dash.

Horses could be trained to race by themselves to some extent, but it wouldn’t be like greyhound racing - greyhounds are sighthounds, running perfectly reasonable dog software on top of ancient and serviceable dog hardware, practicing a variation of hunting behaviour. Horses wouldn’t do this; they have little desire to chase a mechanical rabbit. they have even less plan than a greyhound about what they’d do if they caught it. (Also, in terms of animal welfare, greyhound racing isn’t widely celebrated; loose animals running around aren’t better off than controlled ones.)

Racing-to-find-a-winner is not herding behaviour, even though some horses do seem to possess a natural interest in the topic. You could train some of them to understand better, and that’s what racehorse training is, but the way we have of training that is to put someone on their back to explain to them what their job is, so it all becomes circular anyway. Why do it? Why not? Why do humans race horses? Why race horses? We could just race snails; it’d be cheaper!

One answer is that when horses just Go, it isn’t super Fun. They mostly Go to pieces.

The jockey is the pilot, or software, who understands the situation and has a goal to achieve. The horse is not an engine, but a thinking animal; they have their own goals and interests, which are often satisfied by just running around in a predator-confusing fashion with their friends for 2 minutes, and then crashing into a car, eating hot chips and lying. Most of them do not really care how long 3 minutes is, what a mile means, what “pacing” is, or what “winning” is. They just have Go, and so they do that for a bit, and then fuck off.

I guess another metaphor would be Mario Kart. There are various combinations of automated and human players in a game of Mario Kart, and if racing was just about going fast, the fastest vehicle should always win. But a decent human player can beat the NPCs even if the human hasn’t bothered min/maxxing a vehicle, just because they can be moderately smart about how to race. An adult can often beat a child at Mario Kart, even if the adult takes a much worse vehicle, because in theory, brains/experience/strategy/planning factor into “who wins a race,” and we LIKE that.

Same with car racing. Why not just race autonomous vehicles? In F1, where they build their own cars, why not include the driving software in the design? Or why not remote-control them? Why bother strapping a poor driver into a flameproof suit? Fans will tell you it’s strategy. The human driver uses tactics and responsiveness and skill - but, below all this, the dark red thread of the human is risking their life and we like that.

In theory, jockeys are more intelligent than thoroughbreds, and have more of a plan: setting pace, knowing what time is, changing strategy, evaluating stamina, conducting the horse safely through traffic and over jumps, and adding a complicating element of human interest. In practice, it’s believed that they have relatively little influence on race outcomes - a bad jockey on a good horse can win or lose a race; a good jockey on a bad horse usually just loses; oh, what the hell, let’s just race snails instead - but without the jockeys, you’d have to change the name of the sport to Horses Wandering Around A Carpark Kicking Lumps Off Each Other.

Here is a bunch of baby steeplechasers practicing the concept of Go in such a way that nobody gets to Go at all. After the un-mounted Snow Dragon wipes out most of the other horses and jockeys, all of the loose horses go faster without the weight of their riders, but after an initial show of interest in the concept, the loose horses all lose interest and focus.

It was funny (because nobody was hurt) but it wasn’t what anyone really wanted. In theory, that’s what the jockey is for: they’re supposed to be the adult, in a game where you can win by doing that.

But none of it has to be happening, any more than Investments need to be Managed, you know? It would also be fine if we didn’t! Michael O’Sullivan, an Irish jockey, just died racing this very week and there’s the dark red thread again: the human is risking their life.

The consumption of animal and human in an ancient sport is fascinating and visceral and compelling; but you’re right to question it; none of it has to be that way.

As for the second half of your question: a bad jockey can make a good horse lose. A good jockey cannot make a bad horse win. But most people and most horses are not particularly exceptional, or particularly anything at all; they are just workers running in a circle.

Top jockeys on average horses win more often than other people on average horses. Top jockeys and champions exist, with year-on-year records and recorded material evidence of their decision-making and risks paying off, indicating that there’s consistency of winning across skill and experience that makes their success better-than/random; it would be worth doing a study controlling for the fact that top people are offered the best mounts.

It’s a test of horsemanship, too. Achieving flow - nonverbal command of an animal and fellow athlete, and sympathy together, such that they respect and trust you - having just met the animal - is an achievement of many skills, and if you broke a jockey’s skills down into different types, most ordinary people couldn’t do any of them. No core strength, no balance, bad hands, bad posture, no sense of body positioning, no internal timer, no ability to psychically mind-meld with an unhinged animal you don’t know personally… they’re all fairly rare, and it’s something else to make it complex and interesting for people who like that sort of thing.

Personally, I just like Killie’s little problems and the drama around them. The racing industry itself could collapse tomorrow, rendering Killie’s story historical fiction, and I’d be just as happy.

[butterbabyflapjack]

Since it's probably gonna be a few weeks before I can post the next chapter of wild animals, here's a little scene where Brian straps you to his table (or at least so it seems)

You grab what grocery bags you can, each filled with giant tarps and duct tape and heavy-duty stretch wrap; swallowing thickly as you do.

“Have you ever killed anyone like this?” you ask Brian beside you, trying to keep your mind busy with anything besides what you're about to do. “Like Dexter does…?”

He grabs a few bags, too; his filled with heavier hardware. “I sure as hell tried.” He spares you a glance. “Or at least–I tried, to…” one corner of his lips slowly quirks, “gently encourage, someone else to.”

His own brother, as you recall. Because that's not fucked up in the slightest.

“As you’re well aware,” he continues, undisturbed by whatever your expression, “seeing as how you likely helped dismantle that would-be crime scene.” 

You eye him as he adds to the weight of how many bags he carries; the memory reforming in your mind. Of breaching that little garage attached to the small, white house your trail toward catching the Ice Truck Killer led you and your team to. That little white house which belonged to him; or at least, to Rudy Cooper. And why he bought it under his own well-known alias, paraded as it was within the walls of your precinct itself, is just another testament to how cocksure the man beside you can be.

Looks like arrogance didn’t pay off for him that time.

And you find yourself barely smirking at the thought of how aggrieved that must still make him. Though its shape is quick to die, falling completely, as you remember what Deb looked like on that day you found out who Rudy Cooper really was. Her brown eyes murky, barely conscious; her frail body naked and bound to that plastic-drenched table your team found her strapped to.

For a second, a harrowing flash, you see yourself as her; can't seem to scrape the unwanted image. Tied to the chill of a lone, isolated table. Stripped bare, wrapped tight in clear plastic, helplessly unable to move, as Brian stands there just beside you. Eying you before a halo of light which hangs high above him, even higher above you. Large hands wreathed in pale, latex gloves, which creak with the motion of his fingers as he tests the trigger of some sort of drill, just within your vision, like he wants you to see as its engine burns just for you. A handsome smile on his face as he makes a meal of your abject horror beneath him.

You're forced to blink to somehow rid yourself of such a horrid scene, with it taken like smoke back to whatever paranoia it surely spawned from. Though you still struggle to think beyond how it lingers, uninvited, against the far reaches of your addled mind. Like a ghost, a warning, that still haunts you.

[wolfliving]

What has Google killed lately

IoT products.

Last year, the teams responsible for Pixel hardware and Android software were merged into one division, and Google today announced a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group.

SVP Rick Osterloh sent out a memo to employees this morning about the “voluntary exit program,” and the company confirmed to 9to5Google that this is happening.

This program applies to US employees working on Platforms & Devices, which includes Android (Auto, TV, Wear OS, XR), Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Photos, Google One, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest. Google has many people around the world working on these products, but today’s announcement is just for those stateside.

Meanwhile, this is not a company-wide offer that applies to Search, AI, or other groups, though Alphabet’s new CFO last October said “driving further efficiencies” was a key priority.

Separately, software and hardware were already two very large organizations, with some overlap. Now that things have settled in recent months, employees have a better idea of their roles. Osterloh said the division received questions about the possibility of voluntary exits since the Pixel-Android merger. Not offering people the option to leave in advance was a complaint about how Google handled past layoffs.

The memo frames this exit program as being beneficial for those who might not be aligned or passionate about the combined organization’s mission or are having difficulty with their roles, and hybrid working requirements. 

In leaving Google, employees will get a severance package, with more details internally coming soon. From what we learned, this change does not coincide with any product roadmap changes. 

Before the merger, the Google hardware division last January switched to a functional organization model where there is one team (and leader) for teams like hardware engineering across Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit. At the same time, a few hundred roles were cut. The broader unification in April was designed to “speed up decision-making” internally. 

In offering this program today, Google wants employees “to be deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency.” The statement also makes reference to “tremendous momentum” and “so much important work ahead.” Google’s full statement is below.

The Platforms & Devices team is offering a voluntary exit program that provides US-based Googlers working on this team the ability to voluntarily leave the company with a severance package. This comes after we brought two large organizations together last year. There’s tremendous momentum on this team and with so much important work ahead, we want everyone to be deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency.

[mildcharacterenjoyer]

Why Friendship Hurts

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog

Words ~ 2,446 ~

Main Characters: Tails and Omega

Minor Characters: Rouge the Bat

Warnings: Near death experience, Talk of loss, Hurt/Comfort, death mention

Routine maintenance work is something Omega needs every year. There used to be a notification that would pop up along the top banner of his internal screen notifying him to return to his creator for recalibration and a tune-up. Seeing Eggman’s logo inside of his mind enraged him greatly, but his current mechanic, Tails, was able to replace it with his own two-tailed logo.

When Omega sees the banner now, he is much more at ease sending a message to the genius fox’s phone and setting up an appointment. Rouge or Shadow would normally go with Omega, but for this specific appointment he states to his team he wants to come alone. Rouge sends a text to Prower with some worried undertones detailing some event that happened recently that almost killed her. The bat worries this might have affected her favorite murder machine, somehow.

Tails will not provide them with any private information Omega is not willing to share, but promises to look into it for her. Just as he is setting up his tools, Omega arrives through his open garage door and cuts out his jet engines to land on his own two feet. Tails waves in earnest towards his ally. “Hi Omega! Just give me a sec. I’m almost ready.”

“Hello.” The E-Series robot replies with much less volume and confidence than normal. Tails’ face falls a bit as he hears the odd tonality. Something is definitely wrong. The fox stops what he is doing and walks to Omega to give him his full attention.

“Hmm.” He frowns up at him and notices the robot is avoiding direct eye contact. Very odd behaviour for someone who wants to be noticed and heard at all times. “You don’t sound very good today. Are you feeling alright?”

“Power levels optimal.” Omega responds but does not move.

Tails gives a sigh of concern as he realizes it will take a lot more prompting to get to the core issue. “Let’s let the equipment be the judge of that. Do you want to be hooked up where you stand or do you want to walk to your normal spot?”

Omega says nothing while he trudges over to where he normally stands for maintenance. Tails follows him and secures his appendages, beginning to remove metallic plates to expose his internal interfaces and hardware ports. They don't always speak to each other during these sessions. Sometimes it's Omega cracking jokes and Tails giggling up a storm, others it's comfortably quiet between the two, but today the silence is deafening.

Tails struggles to find the words to begin his process of diagnosing Omega’s negative emotions. Machinery is one thing. He does not need to think as his fingers fly expertly through wires and across internal pistons. Trying to find the reason why a normally enraged robot is no longer enraged is not exactly his area of expertise. Still unsure of what to do, he tries to make casual conversation. “Whatcha been up to lately? Dismantling more Eggman robots?”

Omega is eerily quiet for a moment. “It has been a week since I destroyed my last Eggman robot.”

Rouge’s details of her near death experience were vague, however Tails recalls her saying it had been a week since the event. The fox is now positive Omega’s negative emotions are somehow related. “Wow. That's an impressive amount of time. How come it's been so long?”

“Directive not found.”

The sentence catches Tails by surprise and he has to ask again to fully understand. “What?”

Omega rotates his head to face Tails and flashes his eyes, his volume raising with each word he utters. “Directive. Not. Found.”

Tails flinches a bit at the sudden movement, but regains his confidence quickly and decides that maintenance could wait. He takes the tools he was using out of Omega’s body and grabs his PAD from his desk before rushing back to stand in front of the badnik. “Do you mind if I take a look?”

Omega folds his body downwards as much as the scaffolding supports would let him to better look at the fox. He dips his head once, giving Tails permission to enter his code.

He needs no second prompting and the fox’s fingers fly across his PAD through Omega’s code into the massive amounts of data collected by his processing unit. He opens a file determining Omega's main directives and his eyes widen by what he sees. There in the top slot where ‘DESTROY ALL EGGMAN ROBOTS’ would be is instead another directive. One Tails had never seen before.

“Protect Rouge and Shadow.” Tails whispers it aloud and his ears droop a bit at the melancholy feeling that washes over him. Normally, Tails would be ecstatic to see this type of directive created by a badnik, however as he looks through the rest of Omega's core directives, he can't find anything to do with Eggman anywhere. Omega loves to destroy things so this doesn't seem right to Tails at all.

“Omega?” He asks sadly. “What happened a week ago?” Omega doesn't respond.

A minute goes by and Tails frowns. “I’m not going to surf around in your code for answers. I don't like doing that. You know I don't. Please, talk to me.” The fox changes his tone. “Maybe I can help! If it's just a deleted directive I can fix it,” Omega’s head perks up at this. “But, you gotta talk to me. Please?” The mechanic clasps his hands together towards Omega.

“You will reestablish my prime directive and I will give you details of last week?” Omega clarifies with a twinge of hope interlaced in his monotone voice.

“I will. I'll start working as soon as you start talking.” Tails offers a friendly smile.

It takes Omega a second before he begins to speak. “Shadow, Rouge, and I were infiltrating an Eggman base last week.” Tails begins to flip through Omega’s deleted files to see where he might have trashed it and if there is any coding of the directive left. “A projectile from one of the robots behind us strikes Rouge unconscious. Neither I nor Shadow see this happen.”

Tails winces when he notices Omega’s voice box begin to strain. “I had a clear shot at Eggman. I could finally kill him. But, as I look behind me to see if Rouge is triumphing with me at my final blow, there is a badnik with a laser about to cut her in half.” Tails finds dozens of code strains Omega ran himself through during the event in the trash. Everything is laid out in front of him. The multiple error messages, the desperate attempts to figure out what to do, the inability to peel himself away from his target, and the solution he came to.

“I chose to remove my core directive. I did not like the outcome if I had kept it, so…it was deleted. That is what took its place. Then, I withdrew my weapons and removed Rouge from harm’s way. Shadow was preoccupied while all my processing power decided what to be the best course of action.”

“Although Shadow seems grateful, I am unhappy. The prospect of losing Rouge was too great to fulfill my purpose.” Tails listens as he puts together Omega’s ‘Destroy Eggman’ directive with bits he finds in Omega’s trash files while substituting his own code in for what he couldn't.

“There.” Tails drops it into his list of directives below his top slot where his new directive is. “Thank you Omega for telling me. I can tell it wasn't easy. Tough decisions like that don't come often, but when they do, they shake us to our core.” Tails then smiles up at the robot, meeting his eyes. “I'm proud of the way you handled it.”

Omega says nothing for a moment and the fox’s face falls at the tense silence. He watches the badnik switch out the directives in real time. “I am not proud.” Omega says eventually. “This new directive gives me feelings I do not want. I have relived the same decision for the last week and it is driving me insane. I cannot function. I want it gone. Delete it.”

“What?! I'm not going to delete your love for your friends, Omega. Can't you just switch out your core directives when necessary?”

“EGGMAN MUST ALWAYS TAKE PRIORITY!” Omega’s voice booms to full volume. “THIS NEW DIRECTIVE CAUSES ME IMMENSE PAIN AND DISTRACTION.”

The mechanic takes a second to formulate his words. “Then you delete it.” Tails felt his lip begin to tremble, trying his best not to break eye contact with Omega. “If you deleted your other directive, then you can delete this one too.” Tails steps back, allowing Omega to take his next action.

Tails watches through his digital interface as Omega’s version of a cursor hovers over the directive sitting below his top slot. It stays there, trembling, and a dialogue box opens to the side replaying the same circumstances from a week ago. The fox watches with wide eyes as the ‘Protect Shadow and Rouge’ directive involuntarily jumps back up to the top slot after the simulation finishes, relocating “Destroy Eggman” down among his regular directives.

Omega emits a sound akin to a wounded animal and tears form along the corners of Tails’ eyes. “Omega…” His breath is shaky, but he presses forward finally understanding the message that Omega needs to hear. “Sometimes…we can't choose what is important to us. Those feelings that you hate that come with your new directive, everyone feels them.” Tails wipes his eyes. “But, they’re there for a reason.”

“They prompt us to act when something we love or can't live without comes under fire. Just as your anger prompts you to act when Eggman is around, this mix of other emotions prompts you to protect the ones you care about. You act, Omega, because you know what it would be like without them, but I don't need to tell you that.” Tails reaches a hand out to pat his forearm. “You’ve been torturing yourself with the alternative choice for the past week.”

The PAD screen glitches and a new dialogue box pops up directly in the middle of the screen. “It hurts.” 

A deep pit settles itself within Tail’s core. The fox’s stomach spasms and he is unable to fight the tears anymore. His thoughts wander to Sonic and all the times his older brother had almost plunged into the jaws of death, barely rescued in time by him and his friends. “I know.” The fox whimpers, resting his head against the badnik’s arm. In a moment of vulnerability, Tails wraps his fingers around Omega’s pointer claw. “I know.” Cold metal carefully wraps around Tails’ own hand and the little fox takes a moment to let out his emotions, completely enveloping Omega’s immobile arm in a hug.

Tails lets his emotions flow. “I would do anything for Sonic.” He cries out. “I want to be there for him and support him if he’s in trouble. Because, I don't want to be without him. I couldn't live with myself if I had the choice to act, and didn't. I hate these feelings too, Omega.” Tails blinks through watery eyes up at the badnik. “But I know that who I’m feeling them for is important enough to me that all that pain won't matter in the end.”

“I just know you feel the same for Rouge and Shadow! Even if you can't express it like I can, I just know it!” Tails dries his eyes and releases Omega from his hug. He takes a bit longer to let go of his hand, a gesture that Omega seems to return. “I know you were not programmed to feel these awful feelings. Which just makes it a hundred times worse for you.” Tails stamps his feet and screams at the floor. “Curse Eggman. Curse him! For all the pain that he’s caused me, my friends, and his own creations!”

“CURSE EGGMAN!” Omega echoes. His voice box at full volume glitches from his own intense emotions.

Tails allows himself a small chuckle and puts his PAD away, taking a tissue from a nearby box and blowing his nose. 

“DISGUSTING.” The response causes Tails to cry laugh into his own tissue.

“There’s everyone's favorite rogue badnik!” He takes a second to level out the rest of his emotions and throw his used tissues away. “I missed you buddy!”

“I MISSED ME TOO. I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY SORTED OUT SAID EMOTIONS CAUSED BY THE NEW DIRECTIVE I CREATED. YOU HAVE MY THANKS, TAILS.”

“Anytime Omega!” Tails smiles and picks up the tools for regular maintenance work again.

“I HAVE ONE QUESTION.”

“What's up?” Tails returns the tools to the area he was working on before.

“DURING YOUR DISPLAY OF MEATBAG EMOTIONS, YOU SAID YOU WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR SONIC. DOES THIS INCLUDE GIVING UP YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL AND YOUR PROWESS FOR TECHNOLOGY?” 

“I would yeah!” Tails says without a second thought, counting wires as he talks. “But I also know that Sonic wants me to be the best me I can be! Even if I couldn't be a genius in the moment, it doesn't mean I can't be in the future. Friendship is all about give and take, Omega. Sonic will always make sure he helps me get back to where I want to be! And that's a reason why I know all that pain is worth it in the end.”

“THEN ROUGE WILL DO WHAT SHE CAN TO GET ME ANOTHER CLEAR SHOT AT EGGMAN!” 

Tails laughs nervously. “You’ll have to take that up with her! However, I don't think she likes Eggman enough to say no.” The robot and fox laugh together for a minute, before continuing his regular maintenance checks on the badnik. The rest of the appointment goes rather smoothly. A few jokes here and there. A couple more heartfelt moments, and Omega waves goodbye to Tails once he is mobile again.

The phone rings as Omega’s jet engines ignite outside of his garage. Tails runs to answer it, picking it up, and raising it to his face. “Hello?”

“Tails!” Rouge’s voice sounds frantic at the other end. “Thank goodness. I was beginning to get worried. It's been thirty minutes past the end of the appointment. How is Omega? Did you find what was wrong?”

Tails laughs quietly, happy to hear authentic feelings from someone normally so distant. “He’s alright. He just…” Tails lets his voice fade for a moment as he watches Omega’s form vanish into the horizon. A warm smile makes its way onto the fox’s face. “He just really cares about his friends.”

[condensed-ink]

I've been thinking a lot about #FixTF2 and I know that some might have their doubts about the movement, however, I've realized that, even if it does not succeed in getting Valve's attention, it will end up contributing towards an important development in recent years - the shift in the public perception of Valve.

If you are person who was growing up in the early 2010's then you obviously remember how Valve games were essentially the cultural zeitgeist of the time, how you would see pictures of King Gaben on every meme/YouTube thumbnail during a Steam Summer Sale. As I understand it, Valve essentially rode this wave of good will throughout the 2010's. Even when everyone was getting frustrated with the lack of sequels for games such as HL2 and L4D2, some people would just excuse it with "ah y'know Valve, not communicating and not doing anything is just their style, this is just probably part of Gaben's 5D chess - tier master plan". However, the cracks in this image have been slowly showing up for a long time:

Portal fans haven't had anything since Portal 2's release back in 2011. We have had some small VR titles but that's hardly any consolation.

Left for Dead 2 came out all the way back in 2009 with nothing afterwards. As of June of 2024, the game still has more than 10 thousand concurrent players yet it is also unplayable for a significant amount of people due to reported DDos attacks.

The suffering of Half - life fans at this point is a meme in itself. The only thing we got was HL:Alyx back in 2020 and, even though it's a very good game, it was inaccessible to a lot of people at launch due the costs and lack of VR hardware. We were left on a cliff-hanger AGAIN and four years later we have no news of any follow-up.

In my opinion, Valve to some extent could ignore these fandoms since they were smaller compared to their big earners. But it is the recent issues with these bigger titles that have started to test everyone's patience and tolerance for Valve's bullshit:

Team Fortress 2 - I mean what else is there to say: rampant cheating and idle bots, bot hosters doxxing and swatting people. The bots crisis has been destroying the game for the past 5 years. If we remember the original SaveTF2 movement, it had a more positive tone, i. e., people talking about how much they love the game and pleading Valve to fix it. Well, one shitty tweet and two years later the tone has gone from "Please fix the game" to "FIX THE FUCKING GAME YOU ASSHOLES" and rightfully so.

CS2 also has a myriad of issues. CS:GO became CS2 after the game jumped to the Source 2 engine, but the resulting game, by many accounts, is a downgrade. A lot of game modes and maps from the original game were not included and are still not present as of June of 2024. Cheaters are rampant. To what degree I cannot say but it is to an extent where a significant enough portion of the player base is affected. Also, the game hasn't had an operation (major content update) since 2021. The player count is still high, but a lot voices in the community have been chewing out Valve for this level of incompetence.

With DOTA 2 I cannot say for sure. Some people talk about neglect whilst others say the game is in a decent state considering the game still gets frequent updates and patches. At most I can say that there is a portion of players that are dissatisfied with the state of the game but most likely to a much lesser extent than in the previous cases.

HOWEVER

All of that is just one part of the double whammy, the second part is probably is much worse than the first - a lack of continuity for Valve's legacy.

I mean, let's think about it for a second here: most of us who grew with the Valve classics are probably in our mid-to late twenties at this point. Of course, I'm not saying that there aren't any younger fans but the bulk is the old guard. I'm pretty sure a lot of kids and teenagers don't even know a lot about these games and it's not their fault, they weren't old enough to experience them. The blame lies SOLELY with Valve because they have done NOTHING to boost the visibility of their older series due to the fact that they haven't bothered to make a single proper sequel for any of them.

And speaking of visibility, Valve's advertising strategy is non - existent and downright insulting . They really have this holier-than-thou perception of themselves, where they think "I am THE Valve softworks, makers of TF2 and Half-Life! How could you NOT know of us?!?!" and then expect everyone else to spread news of their games through word-of-mouth. Like, I'm sorry, Gabe, but we don't owe you shit. I'm not gonna advertise your shitty card-game and upcoming mediocre 5v5 hero shooter just because I had fun playing TF2 back in high school. Like, it's no surprise that you're not gaining any new fans when this has been your modus operandi for the past 10 years.

TO CONCLUDE

This is where we are right now: the old guard is either apathetic or straight-up hates Valve for their negligence, the younger generation barely knows about most of Valve's OG game series due to the lack of any meaningful output. At the end of the day, Valve isn't going to bankrupt, they're gonna keep taking their 30% cut from Steam and peddling gambling addictions to kids via cases. However, the era of good will is over, nobody is cutting them any slack anymore and, frankly, they deserve all the shit that's going to get thrown at them.

[itsasnoozy]

A tribute to Ethan Winters, the man whose hands had a more dramatic character arc than most protagonists.

Let's pour one out for the unluckiest man in Resident Evil History. Here is the unbelievable amount of shit Ethan Winters had to endure, described as ridiculously and as best that I can.

Part 1: Resident Evil 7 - The Worst "Meet the In-Laws" Ever

Our story begins with Ethan Winters, a systems engineer whose biggest life-or-death struggle was probably deciding whether to "Safely Remove Hardware." He gets an email from his wife, Mia, who has been presumed dead for three years.

Instead of doing the sane thing (assuming it's the world's cruellest phishing scam), he drives to a derelict swamp house in Louisiana that looks like it was condemned by ghosts.

His "Welcome" Includes:

* Finding a videotape that shows his wife going full demon-mode.

* Getting his left hand sawed off with a chainsaw by said wife. His first major hand injury, which was the start of a legendary trend.

* Getting it stapled back on by the homeowner, because apparently, in Louisiana, staples and pure spite are valid medical procedures.

* Being forced to attend a "welcome to the family" dinner where the menu consists of what appears to be human offal. He is stabbed in the face for not eating his vegetables/viscera.

* Losing a leg to a man named Jack with a shovel. In a moment that redefines "tough love," Jack casually lops off Ethan's leg only for our guy to... well, just stick it back on with some glorified herbal tea. You know, as one does. It seems major bodily dismemberment is merely a minor inconvenience for Ethan, (I mean it's not his first rodeo) who apparently has the regenerative capabilities of a starfish that's been through a blender. One has to wonder if his travel insurance covered "reattachment of limbs via questionable backwoods remedies."

* Being relentlessly hunted by the Baker family:

* Jack: A jolly, unkillable patriarch who thinks "tag" is a game you play with a shovel and who can regenerate from being literally blown to pieces. He becomes the Kool-Aid Man of paternal rage, bursting through walls to ask Ethan how his day is going.

* Marguerite: A sweet old lady who births swarms of giant insects from her body and wants to give you a big, buggy hug.

* Lucas: A Jigsaw wannabe who forces Ethan through a series of deadly escape rooms, because this family's idea of a fun game night is just Saw VI.

* Spending hours wading through the black, gooey mold that is apparently sentient and very, very angry.

* Fighting giant, pulsating mold monsters that used to be his father-in-law.

* Finally discovering this entire swamp-based hellscape is because of a bioweapon named Eveline who looks like a little girl and just really, really wants a family, even if she has to murder and mind-control them into it.

He escapes, having been stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, and psychologically tormented, only to have learned a valuable lesson: Never, ever open emails from dead people.

Part 2: Resident Evil Village - The European Vacation from Hell

You'd think after all that, Ethan would move to a quiet suburb, invest in a state-of-the-art security system, and have a crippling fear of swamps. For a while, it works. He has a daughter, Rose, and things are normal.

Then:

* Chris "Boulder-Puncher" Redfield, now leading a squad that has apparently forgotten how to use a doorbell, bursts into his house, shoots his wife about 17 times, and 'kidnaps' his baby.

* Ethan wakes up next to a crashed van in what appears to be a Transylvanian village that's having a permanent werewolf festival.

* The local welcoming committee immediately bites two of his fingers off. The right hand joins the left in its quest for eternal suffering. He just pours some magic potion on it and is fine, because his body is now held together by plot juice and confusion.

* He finds out his baby has been... uh... how shall I put this... disassembled and placed into four separate flasks, held by four local lords who are basically the world's most dysfunctional goth supergroup.

* To get his baby back, he has to face:

* Lady Dimitrescu: A nine-foot-tall countess with a hat the size of a small car and Freddy Krueger claws. She and her three insect-swarm daughters hunt him through a castle because he's a "man-thing" and probably scuffed the floors. Ethan is dragged before the lady of the hour. Lady Dimitrescu, all nine-foot of her, seems to have a very specific interior design preference: "Ethan-on-a-hook." Her delightful daughters, clearly having inherited their mother's flair for dramatic home décor, hoist him up. The resulting SHHHHINK as two rusty meathooks nonchalantly pierce his palms is the universe's way of telling Ethan that his bad day is about to get significantly worse.

* Donna Beneviento: A creepy puppeteer who doesn't even fight him directly. Instead, she plunges him into a pure psychological nightmare, culminating in him being chased by a giant, gurgling, horrifying fetus monster. This is the point where every player collectively decided to take a short break.

* Salvatore Moreau: A pathetic, slimy fish-man who cries a lot and then turns into a Godzilla-sized fish monster that tries to eat him.

* Karl Heisenberg: A steampunk Magneto who wants Ethan to help him weaponize his daughter to kill the head honcho, Mother Miranda. He is by far the most reasonable monster, and Ethan still tells him to shove it.

The Grand, Stupid Finale:

After all this, after being impaled, chewed on, mentally shattered, and having his heart literally ripped out of his chest, Ethan gets the final piece of news: He actually died back at the beginning of the Baker incident. He has been a walking, talking, regenerating MOLD MAN this entire time.

His incredible ability to survive everything and reattach his own limbs wasn't grit; it was because he's essentially a sentient, panicked fungus.

In the end, our moldy boy sacrifices himself to blow up the source of all the evil, saving his daughter and finally getting some well-deserved rest.

So, to summarize: Ethan Winters was just a guy trying to find his family, who got mutilated, tortured, and killed, only to find out he was already dead, before dying again to save the daughter he had while he was dead. R.I.P. you magnificent, incredibly unlucky bastard. Your hands will be missed.

By: ItsASnoozy

[mr-deep-downer]

and I’ve said before that my big problem with Lancer is that it doesn’t feel like mecha. From mechanically to flavor to even politically everything about it comes off as “we don’t understand this genre at all.”

To start, mechs are often presented as a solution to a problem in the same way real world military hardware is, and it’s often pointed that mechs are impractical weapons realistically, which to that I say “shut up they’re cool.” In universe they’re often justified, whether it’s through advance technology that makes other forms of weaponry obsolete or some kind of existential threat that demands the use of giant fighting robots.

Now, because Lancer was created in a vacuum as a far futuristic setting and not a narrative work where you can be a cool mercenary pilot, the mechs have no justification for why they are the way they are, and because it’s a ttrpg in the vein of DnD 4e where everything needs to have a defined gameified role, and that’s why they all feel less like mechs and more like traditional classes. There was never a real in-universe problem to solve, just a party niche to be filled.

and some of you will say “well downer that’s just not true because mechs like X were designed for Y” and to that ill retort “background fluff created to justify why X does Y does not fix the weird dissonance from playing where my mech feels less like a hulking war machine and more like a wizard.” Too much focus on expression and modularity and not enough thinking into actual practicality from a in a universe perspective where you can see an engineer drafting of a solution to a problem.

Getter Robo is an insane manga/anime series where a trio of misanthropes fight dinosaurs, demons, aliens, and sometimes each other, but the titular Getter Robo has three modes each with a specific focus in mind because it was designed with exploration originally in mind, and some of its weapons like Getter-2’s drill reflects that. The Gunbuster is something I can describe as a “total casualty annihilation” weapon with it being able to shoot beams from all sorts of ports on its body to combat swarms of space bugs as well being huge enough to straight up brawl with bigger targets. While a lot of the reason for this kind of stuff exists because someone thought it was badass, you can usually understand from a in universe perspective why these things are created if it does a good enough job to ground you in the nature of its fiction.

now tell me why the fuck there is such a disconnect between Lancer’s mech designs and the world that’s presented? why is there shit like black hole guns and time manipulation? what was the problem that it was solving? Was this just the military industrial complex at work? Battletech uses that a lot to justify why a lot of shitty mechs exists, solving problems that weren’t there to begin with.