#also it has introduced scrollbars

[sanguinarysanguinity]

How is it this new dashboard layout is

busier

more clicks to do anything

and more mousing distance to travel to do said thing

all at the same time??

[chroniclerdl]

Seven Fundamentals to Writing Better Yu-Gi-Oh Duelfics

Ever wanted to write a duelfic just as good or better than canon?

Done right, duels are memorable action scenes.

Done wrong, duels shatter the suspension of disbelief. It’s already a big ask to imagine the world revolving around a card game.

You don’t want the tragedy where your readers yank the scrollbar past your duel, or worse, close your tab. Even the small pool of duelfic readers/writers like me will skip huge chunks of your chapters when the duels sag.

By implementing basic storytelling techniques tailored to dueling, you can hook your readers into following the play-by-play.

High Stakes

Consistent Rules

Sneaks Checked

“Balanced” Gameplay

Foreshadowing Victory

Engaging Description

Dramatic Tension

1. High Stakes

When you advertise your story as a duelfic, your first duel tells readers whether or not what you wrote is worth their time.

If your characters duel without a concrete reason to rip the opponent’s throat, readers already know the outcome:

You lose.

Why? The game is pointless. Who’s dropping whatever they’re doing just to read the equivalent of your characters sipping afternoon tea? If you’re introducing the setting and characters, why can’t you introduce exciting threats?

No reader expects your first duel to decide the fate of the world, but your characters still need to bet.

Characters wager life chips.

If your character loses, they suffer death or suicide-inducing despair.

Is it too much to start with life-and-death? No. Think of the life chip as the culmination of hopes and dreams.

As the story progresses, the stakes will rise, must rise. How? Others will entrust the main characters with their own life chips, and/or the life chips acquire additional meaning. Consider this loose analogy: at the end of a poker tournament, gamblers sit at the final table with stacks built from the chips of others.

Life chips mean different things to different characters. Let’s take the Duelist Kingdom arc.

Yugi’s life chip is the hope to save his grandfather (and later, his own soul)

Joey’s life chip is the hope to win the prize money to fund his sister’s medical operation

Kaiba’s life chip is the hope to save his little brother (and later, his own soul)

You don’t even need your final showdown to revolve around the fate of world; it just has to be one or more things that matter to your characters.

Also, make sure to communicate the stakes, or why the characters accept uneven bets.

If you have the chops, you can also play around with disguising the stakes. As in, your character thinks they’re wagering something small, but it’s actually their life chip. However, your readers still need a vague reason to believe that a defeat will devour the character.

Always make sure the characters stake one or more life chips!

2. Consistent Rules

If you watched the Duelist Kingdom arc and tried to understand the moves everyone made, your head exploded.

Ask yourself: will the clever scheme that your hero invented drive readers crazy?

If I write a magic system that requires a wand, this applies to all. I cannot become a genius and suddenly wave my hands to cast magic.

Demonstrate the rules early, preferably in the first duel, and keep them sacred.

If you must make an exception, establish it early. In that case, the exception becomes a well-defined branch of the rules that the readers can anticipate.

Can the players magically draw the card they need, whenever they want?

If you can establish the when and why, by all means. The readers proceed with the understanding that the players can reach into their deck like a glorified toolbox.

For example, Duel Links has a concept called “skills” that function like a player’s special ability. At the time I wrote this, Yami Yugi’s “Destiny Draw” skill lets the player take any card from their deck once per duel after losing 2000LP (and even if they stacked the top of the deck earlier!).

Card should also have the same, predictable effect. If the card prevents attacks, I doubt the text discusses physical properties or mentions holding things in the air. But you knew that, right?

The rules are the laws of the universe.

3. Sneaks Checked

I love duels. I also love getting what I want.

Why does getting what I want have to be through a duel?

If we talk, maybe we can come to an agreement. If I blackmail you, maybe you’ll give in to my demands. If I shoot you, I can loot your corpse. Give the readers a good reason as to why your characters would bother with the hassle of honest dueling and can’t wiggle from the consequences of losing.

Often, the duel takes place in the context of a tournament. Hopefully, the tournament officials are keeping a good eye on the players and cracking down on cheaters.

However, even that’s not a guarantee. What’s the key concept?

Power.

The competitors have equivalent capacity for coercion (usually violence) or have a neutral referee presiding over the match with the most capacity for coercion (shoutout to gambling manga Usogui).

Anyone who enters a game otherwise has lost before the first move.

In Yu-Gi-Oh, magical and sci-fi enforcement are common. The Shadow Realm can trap the loser in a desolate hell. In a digital world, the loser suffers deletion. Or just have good tournament officials.

Be vigilant when your duel doesn’t call upon these tropes.

Your amoral characters won’t mind blindsiding your other characters, and they won’t mind blindsiding you with a plot hole.

If you’re not careful, the readers will ask you why they played uncharacteristically fair.

4. “Balanced” Gameplay

Duels should be fair and fun…for the villain.

Ostensibly, everyone plays a balanced game, designed to give both sides a sporting chance. In reality, the villain tilts the field to their favor with one or more tricks up their sleeves. Why would your villain ever fight fair?

But that’s fine. We love rooting for the underdog and watching the villain get their comeuppance.

Overpowered ability to let the villain read minds? Deck full of unbalanced cards that makes the villain’s monsters invincible with no drawback? Creator who knows every strategy in the game? Readers will turn the page as they wonder how the hero will prevail.

The more obstacles you can throw in the hero’s way, the better.

Got custom cards? No problem, just follow a couple guidelines. After all, some duelists are more equal than others.

The hero’s deck is full of regular cards that have a cost to use. For every play they want to make, their cards insist that they give up their attack, discard to play, etc.

The villain’s deck is full of rare cards that power up their game for free. So long as you can justify why the card made it to print, the villain can play whatever they want.

For every step your hero takes, the villain gets two.

5. Foreshadowing Victory

How many times have you watched a duel where the protagonist comes up with this never-before-seen card that does exactly what the protagonist needs to clinch the win? In the final showdown, no less? It’s like the writers begged to be called amateurs and idiots.

No other genre tolerates such laziness.

However, readers don’t want an infodump of the characters’ decks. Show the cards in action. To cover the deck, you'll probably need multiple duels.

This also implies you have more freedom in how your character defeats their early opponents in the duelfic.

Does that previous statement contradict what I said about never-before-seen cards clinching the win as the mark of laziness? No, because here’s the rule:

Tolerance for the hero’s new cards decreases as the story progresses.

(Notice that I specify the hero’s new cards; your villains exist to make life harder by inventing unfair tricks.)

When you must include new cards for the hero late in the duelfic, at least find a way to make them first backfire.

Now, some writers have lots of knowledge about the card pool and metagame. Can they assume the readers a priori know the hero has access to any of the available cards in a given archetype?

I’d err on the side of caution and properly foreshadow the cards before they appear late in the duelfic. Not every reader is a walking card database. They have no reason to assume something exists unless you show the card.

Take the tolerance rule into consideration when planning your duels. If you know the awesome combo you want to use for the final turn in the duelfic climax, that’s your cue to scatter the cards into the earlier duels.

Plan the last duel first and your early duels last.

6. Description

Every reader wants a front-row seat to the action.

They’re paying you their time, so make it worth the admission: sleek combatants & budget-busting fights. Kaiba invented Solid Vision technology for a reason, so help readers envision your duels.

Who’s fighting? Describe the point-of-view’s impression of the monsters’ appearances. Red-Eyes Black Dragon should be self-explanatory.

What about a decorated monster like Time Wizard?

You could go into detail about how the red clock humanoid has yellow gears that form epaulets and purple, pointy boots and a green mustache made from clock hands and so on, but such a level of minutiae bogs pacing and invites skimming.

Readers just need to hear about a purple-caped, red clock humanoid with a wand to form an image. Their imaginations can handle the little details.

Paint appearances in broad strokes and one or two brief sentences.

How are the monsters fighting? Duel Monsters is a game where the target takes the aggressor’s attack like a champ. That doesn’t mean you can’t spice it up.

For example, my opponent’s dragon attacks my weaker knight with a fireball. My knight, interested in not dying, raises his shield. Unfortunately, he screams as the flames engulf him.

You wouldn’t just stand still with a straight face if someone armed with a knife lunged for your gut.

A fight scene is a string of action and reaction.

Most people also experience life in more senses than just sight.

A dragon’s fireball is a bright reddish-orange, hot, dries the air, smoky, and explodes with a boom on impact. I never tasted a fireball, and I hope I never do, but that’s still four senses: sight, touch, smell, and sound.

Include multiple sensory details.

Let’s spare a moment to talk about the heads-up display (HUD).

In Yu-Gi-Oh, cards have multiple stats and abilities. You’re free to mention whatever you deem necessary. No set formula exists. On one extreme, you can mention nothing to keep the narrative clean at the risk of confusing the readers. At the other extreme, infodumps about the monster’s abilities provide great detail but wreck the pacing. But there’s a cozy middle.

State only what you need from the card.

If your duels occurred before the era of Synchro, you don’t need details about levels. You can just display the basic stats to determine the stronger monster. If a deck has Pendulum monsters, just mention the scale numbers when they're played as scales. And so on.

You can also make an index of new cards at the end of a chapter.

BONUS TIP! Understanding show, don’t tell.

What is show, don’t tell? At its core, this concept refers to immersing your readers in the senses and feelings instead of exposition. Unfortunately, that definition is a bit vague to execute. After writing for a while, I had my lightbulb moment.

Don’t TELL the readers how to think or force-feed them a conclusion.

SHOW your readers the evidence.

Here’s a written example from Joey vs. Rex in Duelist Kingdom. See if you can spot what makes this prose telling instead of showing.

“Joey watched nervously as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!”

You can see two failures: “nervously” and the second sentence.

Adverbs like “nervously” and other “-ly” friends get a bad rep because rookies tend to use them as telling crutches (especially beware adverbs after dialogue tags!). “Nervously” tells me how Joey reacts. But what does “nervously” look like? One character might bite their thumb. Another might fidget in their seat. The adverb in this context lacks nuance.

We also have the second sentence: “He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!” When you’re explaining the “why” to something, you’re telling. It’s like talking down to your readers.

Contrast with the next example.

“A bead of sweat rolled off Joey’s face as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.”

The first sentence shows me Joey’s physical reaction. I see him sweating, so I think he’s nervous.

We also see a second physical reaction: “He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.” This comes on the heels of the first sentence, and I also have knowledge of when Joey used the Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo in a prior duel. Combined, I think Joey is ruminating about a missed chance.

Readers are smart; they’ll catch your intention if you show the proof.

7. Dramatic Tension

I bet you know what it's like to draw a bad hand.

Imagine: The hero staggers into the arena, and the villain just needs to win one duel to take over the world. The villain draws a bunch of powerups with no monster, but the hero draws a one-turn-kill combo.

Anticlimactic. The readers throw that duelfic straight into the trash.

Don’t just write real-life duels. “It really happened” doesn’t mean it’s emotionally satisfying.

That’s why we have literary structure.

Success and setback pace together with progressive intensity to maximize dramatic tension and emotional payoff.

I’ll spare the nitty-gritty theory detail, but your duels should look like this on a basic level:

Part 1: Villain’s basic threats. Introduces the villain’s deck and style.

Part 2: Villain’s minor strategy. The villain’s first serious attempt to defeat the hero.

Part 3: Villain’s major strategy. The hero’s reversal! But the villain has worse in store.

Part 4: Hero’s imminent defeat. The hero must break through, or else will instantly lose!

Ideally, you’re also integrating the story itself into the duel; themes and duels synergize to create a stronger effect.

You may notice how the format resembles the three-act structure.

Act I is Part 1

Act II until the Act II midpoint is Part 2

Act II midpoint until Act III is Part 3

Act III is part 4.

I’ll use Yugi/Pharaoh vs. Pegasus in Duelist Kingdom as an example.

Part 1: Mind scan. Pegasus can read minds to counter combos.

Part 2: Toon World. Indestructible, cartoonified monsters attack.

Part 3: Shadow game. Toons destroyed! But playing a shadow game weakens Yugi.

Part 4: Yugi passes out. The Pharaoh must find a new way to stop Pegasus’s mind scan!

Figure out each part of the structure for your duels before writing the turn-by-turn plays.

By the way, modern real-life Yu-Gi-Oh duels don’t suit drama because the rules provide weak constraints to creating strong boards. A good modern deck usually establishes a scary turn one board and jumps straight into Part 4, whereas other card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone force the powerhouse cards to wait several turns until the player builds the mana to pay costs.

You can still write a good modern duel. Here’s a basic outline of Arc-V’s duel between Sora and Shay. Technically, “tragedy” is the structure of this duel, so I’ll make Shay the “hero” to flip it and keep matters simplified.

Part 1: Basic monsters. These clash before a monster appears from the Extra Deck.

Part 2: Frightfurs. They come one after another to crush Shay’s Raidraptors.

Part 3: Sora’s wrath. Rise Falcon survives! But Sora’s malevolent nature comes to light.

Part 4: Frightfur Chimera. Sora chomps candy and summons his biggest fusion horror!

If following the four parts is too difficult for you, that’s okay. They're just logical extensions of one basic concept. Keep the following in mind, and you’ll never go wrong:

The villain’s subsequent threats become increasingly overwhelming.

Conclusion

Much of writing a duel boils down to storytelling technique.

Let’s tl;dr the main takeaways.

High Stakes: Minimum ante is the life chip, worth a character’s hopes and dreams.

Consistent Rules: Everyone plays by the same logic.

Sneaks Checked: Characters can’t skip the duels with violence and coercion.

“Balanced” Gameplay: Villains enjoy advantages.

Foreshadowing Victory: Readers have a chance to predict the winning combo.

Engaging Description: Immerse senses and invite reactions.

Dramatic Tension: The villain makes progressively stronger threats.

As a duelfic reader/writer, I can gauge a writer's ability by measuring their duels with the fundamentals. Many fan writers struggle; even the canon writers struggle.

But writing a duelfic isn’t rocket science. With practice, minding the fundamentals will become second nature.

And don't forget to tag your story as a duelfic. It's a whole genre in fanfic, so sort it properly and help readers from the future find you.

May the heart of the cards be with you.

…

Want to see in-depth examples of my advice? I rewrote the Orichalcos arc to reimagine its untapped potential without the failures of the canon presentation. You can find it on FFnet and AO3.

[techahead]

Welcome Flutter 2.0 – Continuing Transition Beyond Mobile

Flutter 2.0 is here, folks, and we are excited to unveil what this updated open-source UI development kit has in store for us. The power of Flutter can be realized with the fact that over 150,000 Flutter applications have been launched on Google Play Store in just the past two years. The upgraded version highlights the flexibility and portability of Flutter as a complete UI toolkit and its potential to build beautiful apps for any platform of your choice – the mobile, web, desktop, and the emerging form factors such as foldable.

The framework that once started with support for just Android and iOS apps has now extended its support to web apps, MacOS, Windows, Linux, and embedded devices, unleashing your apps to run on a wide variety of different platforms. With the release, Flutter continued to progress in critical foundational areas such as performance enhancement, stability, support for the latest UI trends & widgets, and increasing accessibility.

Mobile engineers at TechAhead pay attention to some of the core enhancements of the framework highlighting its new potential in the mobile app development industry.

Flutter Web

The production-quality support for the web has been one of the major announcements in Flutter 2.0. Flutter’s web support has changed from beta to stable release focusing primarily on the performance and improvements in the rendering fidelity. The web platform has now evolved to encompass richer platform APIs that power sophisticated apps with 2D and 3D graphics and flexible layout.

Flutter for Desktop Moves Forward

Google introduced a whole bunch of changes in Flutter 2.0 as compared to Flutter 1.0, and one of the key changes include moving Flutter for Desktop’s status to Stable, which has been in the Alpha stage so far.

Flutter for Desktop also got proper support for keyboard shortcuts making it feel more like a native app on Windows, macOS, or Linux.

Flutter for Mobile: Introduces Foldable Displays

One of the most interesting things about mobile development is that phones come in many different shapes and sizes. Youngsters are now bitten by one of the latest trends, which is – Foldable phones as it enhances productivity when you are working from your home office or when you are on the go. Foldable phones give you the power to run your apps on two screens and utilize various tool screen design patterns – Extended Canvas, List-Detail, Two Page, Dual View, and Companion Pane.

Flutter has already been feature-complete for mobile apps except for one thing – Foldables. But thanks to the contributions made by Microsoft, Flutter 2.0 is now capable of supporting foldable displays. The idea behind this was to help developers take advantage of foldable and dual-screen devices regardless of the platform or app that they are building on.

Flutter Web Features

Performance

Performance has been the most significant thing the Flutter developers have made a ton of progress in. Flutter for the web can display your application in a browser in two ways –

By rendering using HTML, CSS, and Canvas – makes it faster to download and load.

By rendering using CanvasKit – heavy but gives better performance when there’s a lot on screen.

Web-specific features & widgets

Flutter 2.0 has added support for several web-specific features and widgets such as web-app deep linking, custom URL strategies, proper PWA (progressive web app) support, hyperlink widgets, text auto-fill, etc., to help you use the best of the web.

Support for laptop/desktop form factors

To help users feel right about the Flutter web experiences irrespective of whether they are using a mobile phone or a laptop and regardless of what the shape and size of your browser window is. Flutter 2.0 came with an interactive scrollbar, keyboard shortcuts and increased the default content density in desktop modes.

In addition to this, Flutter 2.0 can also be easily embedded in TVs, cars, smart home appliances facilitating the most portable and pervasive experience for the modern world.

These were some of the big features which stole the limelight. Furthermore, the world’s leading automaker – Toyota, is also leveraging Flutter to bring a best-in-market digital experience to vehicles by developing infotainment systems powered by the framework. Toyota has opted for Flutter due to its high performance, fast iteration, and smartphone-tier touch mechanics. Having said that, Google wants to continue its work with industry leaders to bring Flutter to vehicles, TVs, and other embedded devices.

With popular global brands leveraging the power of Flutter to drive their businesses, such as WeChat, Grab, Yandex Go, among others, it is certain that with the arrival of Flutter 2.0, it will become one of the most preferred app development frameworks among the businesses all across the globe.

How can TechAhead skyrocket your business growth with Flutter 2.0?

TechAhead, a leading flutter app development company, and Google’s certified development partner has successfully delivered 30+ flutter apps to its prestigious clientele, including global brands and innovative startups since the framework launched in 2017. With a dedicated team of 20+ in-house flutter developers and 11+ years of experience in developing robust, future-driven mobile apps, we transform your business idea into a future-proof mobile app in no time. Extract the most out of Flutter capabilities with TechAhead’s high-end Flutter app development solutions.

Let’s Flutter towards excellence!

Let’s Connect!

Source: https://www.techaheadcorp.com/blog/welcome-flutter-2-0/

[kerbaldevteam]

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: “Moar Boosters!!!” is now available!

Hello everyone!

New gadgets are coming from the Research and Development facility, the kind that will get Kerbals screaming: MOAR BOOSTERS!!! A brand new update is here and with it comes better performance, fresh new features, improved visuals, and new parts being added to our players’ creative repertoire!   

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: Moar Boosters!!! is an update focused on making the game perform and look better, all while introducing more quality of life features that will improve the overall player experience. We’re also bringing some new solid rocket boosters to the VAB, as well as introducing some exclusive treats for owners of the Breaking Ground Expansion.

Let’s go through some of the update’s highlights below:

Unity Upgrade

Moar Boosters!!! brings an upgrade to the underlying engine of the game to Unity 2019.2, which helped us implement performance and graphics improvements, as well as better rendering performance and a reduction of frame rate stutters. With the new tools that this upgrade provides, we’ll be able to continue refining the game in upcoming updates.

Celestial Body Visual Improvements  

Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Eve and Gilly have new high-quality texture maps & graphic shaders, and now look sharper and more realistic! You will also be able to select the celestial bodies’ shader quality in the settings and set them to low (legacy), medium or high, with improvements being visible across the board. These are just part of the first batch of celestial bodies being overhauled, slowly but surely we will continue this endeavor.

Map Mode improvements

Map mode received some adjustments too! Now you can use docking mode and stage your craft whilst in map mode. The stage display button (formerly stage mode) now serves as a toggle to show and hide the stage stack, whether you’re in flight or map view, and selected map labels will now persist when going back and forth between map and flight mode. 

New SRBs!

A range of new solid rocket boosters have been added to the game. From the tiny .625m stack size Mite to the titanic 2.5m wide, 144ton Clydesdale, these new boosters will offer a range of versatile solid-fuel options. Making History owners get an extra bonus here too with the “Pollux” and a 1.875m nose cone to fit on top of it.

Breaking Ground Exclusives

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: Moar Boosters!!!  also includes some exclusive content for owners of the Breaking Ground Expansion. A new set of fan blades and shrouds will continue to push the creativity of KSP players even further. Use them to create drones, ducted fan jets, or anything you can imagine. 

Improvements to the helicopter blades and the robotic part resource consumption have also been included. The latter will now have better info on consumption and improved options for power-out situations.

And more!

To learn more you can read the full Changelog here:

=============================v1.8.0=========================== 1.8.0 Changelog - BaseGame ONLY (see below for MH and BG changelog)

+++ Improvements

* Upgrade KSP to Unity 2019.2.2f1 version. * Standalone Windows build now uses DX11 Graphics API. Many visual improvements to shaders and FX. * Implement Unity Incremental Garbage Collection. * Implement new celestial body shaders and textures for Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Eve, Gilly. * Update Main Menu Mun terrain shader. * Add Terrain Shader Quality graphics setting. * Improve the TrackingStation load time. * Implement ability to edit Action Groups in flight. * Performance improvements to the VAB/SPH scenes. * Performance improvements in the flight scene. * Performance improvements in the Tracking Station scene. * Add ability to edit resource values in PAWs using the key input. * Add Warp to node button on dV readout in NavBall display. * Add enable/disable wheel motor Actions to all wheels. * Add ability to limit the maximum size of PAWs via settings.cfg. * Improve the Action Groups/Sets UI. * Add PAW_PREFERRED_HEIGHT to settings.cfg for players to set a prefered max height. * Made staging and docking UI available in map view * Pinned labels in map view now persist pinned even when leaving and re-entering map view * "Delete All" functionality for messages app has been implemented. * Improve the KSC grass and asphalt texture and shader to reduce tilling. * Improve textures for the VAB building on level one. * Model revamp for the level one and level two Research and Development nissen huts. * Increased precision for eccentricity in advanced orbit info display. * Upgrade VPP and improve wheel and landing leg function. * Expose global kerbal EVA Physics material via setting. * Add do not show again option to re-runnable science experiments. * Add actions for same vessel interactions functionality. * Implement per-frame damage threshold on destructible buildings. * Add vessel name title to flag PAWs. * Add a confirm dialog with the option of “Don’t display again” when a kerbal removes a science experiment data. * Disable Pixelperfect on UI Canvases to improve performance - available to configure via settings.cfg. * Increase precision for numerical editing of maneuver nodes. * Kerbal position on ladders and command pods improved. * Add ability for users to add their own loading screen pictures to the game. Folder is KSP/UserLoadingScreens

+++ Localization

* Fix incorrect naming of The Sun. * Fix Action Sets text in VAB/SPH for some languages. * Fix Text in dV KSPedia pages in Japanese. * Fix Chinese Localizations. * Fix dV readout for Chinese language.

+++ Parts

New Parts: * S2-33 “Clydesdale” Solid Fuel Booster. * S2-17 “Thoroughbred” Solid Fuel Booster. * F3S0 “Shrimp” Solid Fuel Booster. * FM1 “Mite” Solid Fuel Booster. * Protective Rocket Nosecone Mk5A (“Black and White” and “Gray and Orange”). * Add rock/dirt debris FX to the Drill-O-Matic and Drill-O-Matic Junior.

Updated Parts (reskinned): * Service Bay (1.25m). * Service Bay (2.5m).

Color Variants: * Protective Rocket Nose Cone Mk7 (New “Orange” color variant) * Protective Rocket Nose Cone Mk12 (New “Orange” color variant)

+++ Bugfixes

* #bringbackthesandcastle - Fix the Mun sandcastle easter egg from not appearing. * Fix Maneuver editor so that the mouse wheel adjusts the node now in the contrary direction (same behavior as dragging down/up). * Fix a null reference error when player threw away a vessel with fuel flow overlay turned on in the editor. * Fix an input lock when switching between Editing the vessel and the Action groups menu. * Fix user created vessels disappearing from the vessel spawn dialog. * Fix the random selection of Mun vs Orbit scene when returning to Main Menu. * Fix input field rounding on Maneuver Node editor fields. * Fix a Null reference in the Editor when selecting a part and opening the Action Part Menu. * Fix pressing Enter key confirms the game quick save dialog. * Fix PAWs will now scale downwards from the header keeping more consistency on the fields.  * Fix an input lock issue where some PAW buttons disappeared when editing a numeric slider field. * Fix Menu Navigation was missing in the quicksave dialog. * Fix Mini Settings had some items that would be skipped when navigating with the arrow keys. * Fix for remove from symmetry causing NRE in flight scene. * Fix the FL-A10 collider no longer mismatching its geometry. * Fix Control Surface and Aero Toggle Deploy Action not working in all situations. * Joysticks and gamepads on Linux are again recognized and usable. * Fix Action Groups UI and Color issues. * Fix the LV-T30 Reliant Liquid Fuel Engine ́s bottom attach node. * Fix a texture seam on the Probodobodyne Stayputnik. * Fix a z-fighting issue on the destroyed VAB at level 3. * Fix the Z-4K Rechargeable Battery Bank ́s bottom attach node. * Fix the concrete tiling texture of the SPH at level 3. * Fix a grass texture seam in front of the VAB at level 3. * Fix missing texture and animation on the level one  Administration Building flag. * Smoothened Kerbal IVA expression transitions to avoid strange twitching. * Make the LV-TX87 Bobcat exhaust FX more appropriate. * Fix kerbal portraits when launching vessel with multiple kerbals in external command chairs. * Fix drills operating when not in contact with the ground. * Fix thrust center on the Mainsale engine. * Add bulkhead profile to LV-T91 Cheetah, LV-TX87 Bobcat, RK-7 Kodiak and RE-I12 Skiff. * Fix re-rooting of surface attach nodes. * Fix kerbal IVA expression animations transitions. * Fix shadows at KSC and in flight. * Fix “sinker” warning during game load. * Fix lengthy Map Transition when lots of vessels in the save. * Fix overlap in vessel type information window. * Fix a Null Reference when copying parts with alternative colours. * Fix an error where the custom crafts were not loaded in the Load Craft dialog after navigating the tabs. * Fix a null reference when clicking the Remove Symmetry button on some parts. * Motorized wheels no longer keep generating torque even when the motor is set to ‘Disabled’ * Re-centered an off center scrollbar in the mini settings dialog. * Rebalance decoupler, MK1-3, MK1 lander can, MK2 lander can, separators costs, crash tolerances, weight.

+++ Mods

* Target framework now .NET 4.x. * DXT3 DDS formatted textures are not supported by Unity or KSP any more. You must convert to DXT5. * Added UIPartActionWindow.UpdateWindowHeight to allow mods to dynamically set the PAW max height * MapviewCanvasUtil.GetNodeCanvasContainer created as more performant method than MapViewCanvasUtil.ResetNodeCanvasContainer. Use the rest one only when you need to force a scale reset * ModuleResourceAutoShiftState added that can be used for startup/restart of parts based on resource availability. * VesselValues are now cached per frame. Can use ResetValueCache() to reset the cache.

1.8.0 Changelog - Making History DLC ONLY

+++ Improvements

* User can now click and drag and release to connect two nodes in the mission builder.

+++ Parts

New Parts: * THK “Pollux” Solid Fuel Booster

Updated Parts (reskinned): * Kerbodyne S3-14400 Tank * Kerbodyne S3-7200 Tank * Kerbodyne S3-3600 Tank

+++ Bugfixes

* Craft Thumbnails are not shown/generated for stock missions. * Fix Kerbals spawning on EVA in missions spawning on their sides (very briefly). * Fix Intermediate and Advanced Tutorial becoming stuck. * Fix Typos in some part descriptions. * Fix vessel width and height restrictions on Woomerang and Dessert in career games. * Fix camera becoming stuck if in IVA mode when a vessel spawns in a mission set to change focus to that vessel. * Fix hatch entry colliders on the M.E.M. lander can.

+++ Missions

+++Miscellaneous

+++ Mods

1.8.0 Changelog - Breaking Ground DLC ONLY

+++ Improvements

* Add renaming of Deployed Science Stations. * Add alternators (producing electric charge) on LiquidFuel Robotic Rotors. * Add propeller blade AoA, lift and airspeed readouts to their PAWs. * Add Reset to built position button in PAWs of Robotic parts which causes them to reset their Angle, RPM or Extension. * Add shutdown/restart function to robotics parts based on resource availability. * Add preset curves functionality to the KAL controller. * Add part highlighting on mouseover in KAL. * Improve Robotic Part Resource usage info in editor. * Add interact button to open PAW for Deployable Science parts. * Added new KSPedia slides for Grip Pads, Propellers and Track Editor. * Improve Robotics Parts Resource usage to use less resources when moving slower. * The PAW button “Reset to Launch Position” for robotic parts now reads as, “Reset to build:” + Angle, RPM or Extension depending on the robotic part to avoid confusion.

+++ Localization

* Fix description text on R7000 Turboshaft Engine in English. * Fix localization of resource name in robotic part PAWs. * Fix KAL help texts.

+++ Parts

New Parts with Variants: * S-062 Fan Shroud * S-12 Fan Shroud * S-25 Fan Shroud * R-062 Ducted Fan Blade * R-12 Ducted Fan Blade * R-25 Ducted Fan Blade * Readjusted the liftCurve, liftMachCurve and dragCurve values on the propellers and helicopter blades.

Rebalanced Robotic Resource Consumption values: * G-00 Hinge * G-L01 Alligator Hinge * G-11 Hinge * G-L12 Alligator Hinge * G-W32 Hinge * Rotation Servo M-06 * Rotation Servo M-12 * Rotation Servo M-25 * Rotation Servo F-12 * EM-16 Light Duty Rotor * EM-32 Standard Rotor * EM-64 Heavy Rotor * EM-16S Light Duty * Rotor, EM-32S Standard Rotor * EM-64S Heavy Rotor * 1P4 Telescoping Hydraulic Cylinder * 3P6 Hydraulic Cylinder * 3PT Telescoping Hydraulic Cylinder * R121 Turboshaft Engine  * R7000 Turboshaft Engine 

+++ Bugfixes

* Fix Deployed Science Log and Message system spam. * Fix Deployed Science parts sometimes exploding when coming off rails if in contact with another part (kerbal, etc). * Fix Deployed science parts being visible during the astronaut complex when opening that scene from the Editor. * Fix Robotic Parts using EC when moving to initially set position on launch. * Fix slider numeric values in some PAW fields could go out of range. * Fix autostrut processing for some use cases regarding root part being robotic part. * Fix autostrut delay when vessel comes off rails for vessel with robotic parts. * Fix Actions at the end of KAL track not firing in Play Once mode. * Fix separation of the blades when attached to an active rotor. * Fix rotation of cargo parts in extended tooltips. * Fix cargo part icons appearing in Astronaut Complex when pinned. * Fix drag on pistons. * Fix cargo parts now rotate at the same speed as in the Editor on the inventory grid during Flight. * Fix mirroring of hinges and rotation servos. * Fix KAL Window not closing when vessel goes outta range. * Fix incorrect naming of the Sun in science experiments. * Fix mirrored attaching to rotor side nodes.

+++ Miscellaneous

+++ Modding

Kerbal Space Program 1.8: Moar Boosters!!! is now available on Steam and will soon be available on GOG and other third-party resellers. You will also be able to download it from the KSP Store if you already own the game.

Click here to enter the Grand Discussion Thread for this release.

Happy launchings!

By the way, you can download the new wallpapers of the Moar Boosters!!! art here:

1080x1920p (Most Phones)

1080x2048p (Galaxy S9)

1440x2560p (iPhone X)

Desktop 1920x1080p

Desktop 2048x1080p

Desktop 2560x1440p

[moralanxietystudio]

Buried In Words - Roadwarden Devlog

(Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm. It combines mechanics of RPGs, adventure games and Visual Novels, and you can now wishlist it on Steam!)

Since the middle of December, working on Roadwarden is mostly about writing new events, dialogues and quests. There were almost no updates on social media - I don’t have time to draw (aside of some inventory icons), and by popular demand, I try to avoid deeper spoilers. I’ve written quite a bunch of stuff, but the results won’t do for exciting screenshots.

I’m  currently focused on designing and filling up Howler’s Dell, the largest settlement in the game, so there’s a LOT of important character interactions to introduce, including quests, merchants, and lore. But in the meantime, some major changes have also been introduced:

 1. The game over screens

In the original Roadwarden’s Design Document, there were no game-overs. You could get significantly hurt during your journeys, but never to the point where you’d hit a brick wall that would make the further progress impossible. You’d need to rest and heal your wounds to participate in some events, but you could always move forward.

I’ve finally decided to change it. In most situations, reaching 0 HP won’t result in an instant death. But in some scripted encounters - usually when facing an overwhelming opponent while being completely unprepared - your character will be broken.

Still, I hope to make it as player-friendly as possible. Did you forget to save your game? Was autosave ran in an inconvenient spot? You can jump back in time a bit, no strings attached.

In various European cultures, the winged hourglass is an image related to the ephemerality of life, and it has became an important part of the Viaticum fantasy setting over ten years ago. Since there’s no single “canonic” design, I’ve had an opportunity to experiment with various approaches.

 2. New “regular” font

The text has now more space to breathe, the letters have more personality, and thanks to the serifs, it’s going to be easier to keep track of the lines you read. Everybody wins:

While the majority of feedback that I’ve gathered shares my enthusiasm, I’ve also seen some words of criticism. It’s still possible that the font is going to be replaced with a different one, but I’m convinced it’s still a step in the right direction.

Even if the font is going to be replaced again, this little feature will be kept in the game. The good old “select a font” setting now showcases a small frame that explains the most significant traits of the regular font and the pixel one. Even though the pixel font looks cool on screenshots, it won’t be gentle on your eyes.

 3. Updated inventory menu

From now on, pointing at an icon in your inventory will showcase not just the item’s brief description, but also its name.

This update was essential due to the constantly growing number of items added to the game. Usually, the player will keep using or loosing some of them as they complete more quests or take a part in more unique interactions, but you may reach a point when you’ll see a couple of dozen of icons at once, and they may start to get a bit blurry. When there was maybe 20 items in the entire game, clicking an icon to see the broader description wasn’t a large problem, but it became clear that it was a short-sighted, flawed design.

 4. Redesigned armor system

I’m not gonna lie. The gambesons that were present in the demo? They were a placeholder, waiting for a better idea to show up. And here it is.

The original two “types” of armor were related to the character’s class selected at the beginning of the game - the Warrior gets the good stuff, while both the Scholar and the Mage have a piece of trash, since they couldn’t afford anything better.

I was expecting to introduce some encounters “better” armors later in the game, and also script interactions where the better armors help you survive major injuries or even death, but I felt it was not good enough. This approach doesn’t introduce much decision making, and it introduces sort of a boring stagnancy.

The new system offers three “levels” of armor. The level 1 - “A Worn Gambeson” - offers you little to no protection. If you want to be saved during some difficult encounters, or maybe get less hurt when you screw up, you want to get to at least the level 2 - “A Decent Gambeson” - which is given to the Warrior class at the beginning of the game.

Upgrading armor requires getting in touch with a tailor, and paying them to do some fixes for you. However, when the armor “saves” you, it often also gets damaged. Its level decreases.

The 3rd level of your armor - “A Fine Gambeson” - follows the same rules. Wearing it will save you from most wounds, but during this process, it may also get torn, downgraded to level 2. As the player, you have to decide how many dragon coins you are willing to invest to keep yourself in one piece.

So simple, yet so much better. And I can still decide to introduce levels 0, 4, 5... Depending on  what will turn out to fit the larger picture.

 5. Updated journal menu

The journal has received the very needed scrollbars, which appear only when there’s too much text to fit in a single window. From now on, I don’t expect that the player will just “figure out” that they can use a mouse wheel, or drag the text box. Nice and easy:

Also, when you select a chapter (like “Quests”) or a specific entry (like the “Necromancers?” quest), the button is now highlighted, what will help you keep track of what you’ve been clicking through:

Also, unlike in the game’s demo, the “People” chapter is now cohesive with the “Quests” formatting. Originally, these sections had different sizes, what didn’t look as good as I intended.

6. Dolmen updates

Just to make it clear - the game receives a whole bunch of updates and bug fixes every week, and I don’t plan to list dozens of small adjustments just because. But this one is pretty fun for me, since it shows the progressing level of attention to detail, and the evolution of the game’s design. : )

Since the day I’ve introduced this area to the game’s prototype, I was unhappy about the low amount of visual changes it had to offer. No matter what you’d type down to solve the puzzle, the only clues you’d receive were presented in text.

The updated dolmen required some rewrites and a fair bit of drawing, but from now on, once you find something that provides a significant clue, you’ll also see a visual feedback that’s going to reflect your discovery. It will help you backtrack the older information, and focus your attention on more successful guesses. Oh, something new has showed up? I guess it’s important!

7. The world map reworks

Some of those updates are difficult to spot without a looking glass. Some percentage of the “bushes” have different colors now and a couple of new shapes; the forests and trees now cast shadows; the lake nearby the Southern Crossroads has more details; the river in the east is broader; there are new hills nearby Tulia’s Camp...

But it’s the eastern part of the map that has seen some major updates. It’s filled with hills and mountains, and because of it, it provides more limited vision than lands in the west, covered with plains and swamps. Previously, this disproportion was quite a bit larger, and I’ve decided to town it down a bit. I hope that the effect I’ve had in mind is still clear to spot.

 8. More “stable” text boxes

When the player points at an icon, it usually creates a text box with a related description. From now on, more of these text boxes will be anchored to specific parts of the screen, instead of showing up in an area related to the player’s cursor. It should make the information less chaotic, and won’t cover other icons anymore. Also, there will be no more situations when the text box is partially outside of the game’s window.

---------------------------------

Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. Remember, you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

[hydrus]

Version 381

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a good week with a couple of challenges. MPV is now ready for all windows users and is turned on by default.

MPV

Thank you to the advanced users who tested and gave feedback on MPV. I have eliminated the crashes, tightened up the jank, and am now rolling it out to all Windows users by default for video, audio, and gif/apng. All media view settings under options->media will be reset this week.

MPV is a good free media viewer. One of the core benefits of moving hydrus to Qt was being able to plug it into our media player, enabling hardware-accelerated video playback and audio. It looks just like the native player, with the seek bar beneath, but it works much faster, able to play 1080p or 4k videos at 60fps at full or unusual zooms. And of course, it makes noise!

This is early days. I have only just started plugging into MPV, so many features are basic or not yet available. The global volume and mute controls are currently some very ugly controls in the top media hover panel. Slideshows will not move forward on an MPV window (hydrus doesn't know when an MPV player has 'played once through' yet), and some processes like the archive/delete filter will need some extra workflow options now that more users will be playing videos at high res (left-click on the player pauses the video, so to set 'keep' on archive/delete, you'll have to click on some whitespace, of which there is so much less when the video is so big). Please let me know what your top priorities for improvement are, and of course, if you encounter errors or crashes, let me know. I'll keep working.

Even though it was a lot of difficult work, I am overall really pleased with how this has gone. The only big remaining bug that I need to nail down is an unusual thing where after multiple mpv viewings in a preview window, that page will stutter some query/thumbnail loading unless the mouse is moving. This is a slightly frustrating bug, but the benefits of MPV are enough that I am happy to live with it. I will also get it going for Linux and macOS, which I did not have time for this week.

the rest

Assuming that users will want to set/unset MPV and other view/zoom options for filetypes in the coming weeks, I have reworked how all of that works under ''options->media''. By default, you now set view and zoom options for 'all video files' and 'all images', and then if you have specific options for just webms or pngs, you can set those specific options to override the group default. Every user will be reset to the new defaults on update. Please have a play with this this week.

Similarly, I have reworked the UI for system:filetype. The growing list of individual filetypes are now hidden from view when not needed, and the 'group' types have tristate checkboxes for better review. It takes up less space and just feels better.

Also, I have pulled gifs and apngs out of the 'image' group and created a specific 'animation' group for them. This doesn't change much, but it makes it easier to search for or manage settings for static images vs little animations.

I fixed a bunch of the weird layouts that were accidentally introduced last week. Please report any more you find--I am still fighting to convert old wx layout code to Qt's system, so this could happen again in a place I do not notice.

full list

mpv:

mpv is now available and the default for all windows users

I believed I have eliminated the final reported mpv crash

mpv load and unload delays are greatly reduced. initial load still takes about half a second, but subsequent loads are now as quick as native renderers

mpv seems to work well for gif and apng

added a very simple global volume slider and audio mute checkbox to the media viewer top hover window. this was a quick patch--much better controls and shortcuts will come in future

mpv windows now properly re-show the cursor on mouse movement

unified mpv mouse press/release handling with native animation--click down now does pause/play and starts a drag event

unfortunately, in some cases embedding mpv requires overriding local OS number rendering (e.g. 1,234 vs 1.234). hydrus number rendering is now coerced to the english style with commas until we can figure out a better solution--sorry!

cleared up an issue where simple clicks on page tabs would trigger micro-page drags that were immediately cancelled. this situation was exacerbated when the page being left had an active mpv window. the flicker of page drag cursor is now gone, and some weird situations where static clicks during busy time could move a tab should be fixed

eliminated the recent issue in the media viewer where transitioning from one media type to another through navigation, particularly mpv->other, would flicker a single frame of the last 'other' media shown(!)

fixed a bug where repeated mpv views in the preview viewer could disable client file drag and drop

the bug where thumbnails may not waterfall in unless the mouse is moving after some mpv videos are loaded for a page is relieved but not completely fixed

if the preview window is collapsed and hidden, media will no longer ever load into it

fixed an edge-case bug where the mpv window would not like being told to show nothing when it was already showing nothing

wrapped mpv load errors in a basic graceful catch

fixed an issue some users had with loading mpv's dll

.

file types:

a new file metatype, 'animation', is added, for gif and apng. these are no longer considered 'image' for a variety of purposes

the filetype selection panel, which is used in system:filetype and import folder UI, has had an overhaul--it now has tristate 'mime group' checkboxes to represent a half-filled group and expand/collapse buttons to hide the tall filetype lists. individual filetype lists will start hidden unless their default value is a partially filled group

the media view options have a similar overhaul: they are now collapsed to general filetypes by default. you set view and zoom options for the generalised 'video' type under options->media, and if you want to set specific options for webm or anything else, you can add/delete those types to override the general default

the new default options for a fresh client are just for these general types. if mpv is available, video, animations, and audio now start with mpv as the default viewer. video and animation zoom is now flexible (not fixed to 50%, 100%, 200%) and will fill the media canvas

all media view options will be reset to this simple default on update! if you have specific zoom or display preferences, please reset them after the update--but you might like to play with mpv a bit first, as it renders at large and smooth zooms very well

.

the rest:

the new thumbnail right-click file selection routine will now only focus and scroll to the first member of the selection if no other members of the new selection are already in view

fixed some caching code and sped up the new select/remove menu count generation (which can lag for very large pages) by two to six times

sped up file filter counting code by about ten percent

fixed weird layout on: migrate database panel, duplicates page (left and right), edit shortcuts, edit import folder, and the filename tagging panel

fixed an issue where the media viewer's hover windows might flicker into view for one frame when the mouse moved over the center of the media viewer for the first time

fixed a media viewer shutdown issue that would sometimes lead to the first file in the list being opened in the shutting-down viewer for an instant or highlighted as the new thumb focus

the file maintenance system that queues up missing/broken files' urls for redownload will no longer re-select the download page on every new url

fixed an issue where a downloader's tag blacklist was not being applied on the child files of certain kinds of multiple-file post (such as with pixiv)

deleting a very long tag should no longer create a very wide confirmation dialog in the manage tags dialog

fixed some 'the panel grew a bit, but the parent window didn't grow quite enough and now it has scrollbars for two pixels of extra content' sizing issues

fixed some dialog sizing calculations when the parent window was borderless fullscreen

maybe fixed a rare event processing bug

improved quality of some misc data comparison code across the program

did some significant backend event/pubsub code cleanup, mostly related to getting mpv working a bit cleaner

improved thumbnail rendering time

improved smoothness of thumbnail fade animations (at least for when they are working right, ha ha!)

misc fixes

next week

Unfortunately, I believe that I burned out over the past four to eight weeks. I have been pushing too hard, trying and failing to keep up with my promises, and along with some IRL stuff it nuked my schedule and energy and mood. It hit a breaking point this week, and I realised I was working non-sustainably. I will fix this situation in the coming weeks by altering my schedule. I expect to scale back on overall work hours and hydrus changelog work specifically, focusing instead on keeping myself healthy first so I can face other work (like keeping up with messages and maintaining a productive workspace) and not go nuts. I will also try to promise less when it comes to timeframes so I do not feel bound to stay up late working. I apologise if you have been waiting on me for something--I lost where I was.

I would like to do some more mpv work next week, and do some code cleaning. I will also be taking a bit of time off, so it will be a light week. Thanks everyone!

EDIT: If you have trouble loading mpv, please use the new easy settings under options->media to go back to the native viewer for the main filetypes, and let me know your situation. Some users with millions of files over a network share seem to have very slow startup.

[rendersfarm]

3ds Max 2024.1 released

Autodesk has announced the release of 3ds Max 2024.1, introducing several new features and improvements to its existing tools.

The update includes significant enhancements to the Boolean Modifier, with a new caching method offering up to seven times faster loading of Boolean scenes. Additionally, the Boolean Modifier now fully supports smoothing groups, specified normals, and explicit normals that exist on input Boolean operands, effectively processing and including normal data in the result meshes created by the modifier.

The Array Modifier also receives considerable updates, including new Array By Element methods that provide users greater control over the arrangement of elements. Previously, if a source object had multiple elements and Array By Element was enabled, each element was randomly used as a clone. Now, two new Array By Element methods let you control how elements are arranged. A new ‘Variation’ parameter has been added, allowing users to adjust the angle of clones in phyllotactic spirals. Additionally, there are new parameters for the Phyllotaxis Distribution Method, offering more control over randomization.

One of the major user interface improvements in 3ds Max 2024.1 is the ability to create custom defaults through the context menus. This allows users to set user-defined default settings for many spinners, check boxes, radio buttons, text fields, drop-down menus, and colors.

For modelers and animators, there are updates to the Copy and Paste Animation commands, improving the workflow and enabling direct object or modifier parameter operations from the main UI or controllers in the Track View.

The Smart Extrude workflow now includes polygon smoothing and better support for normals, enabling a more polished result.

Several updates to spline modeling have been introduced, aimed at providing a more fluid workflow. There’s also significant performance enhancements to the VertexPaint Modifier, FFD Modifiers, and the Slate Material Editor.

Autodesk has included multiple improvements to the physical camera, color management, and customizable scrollbar sizes. The Autodesk Translation Framework (ATF) importer now supports NX 2212, SolidEdge 2023, and SolidWorks 2023.

Lastly, the release ships with MAXtoA 5.6.2.0 for Arnold 7.2.1.1, introducing an updated AOV manager, automatic Cyrptomatte setup, and the ability to set Crypto Asset tags on objects.

Source:

https://blog.superrendersfarm.com/news/3ds-max-2024-1-released/

[trustcrush]

Comp to nighttone mode

COMP TO NIGHTTONE MODE HOW TO

COMP TO NIGHTTONE MODE UPDATE

COMP TO NIGHTTONE MODE WINDOWS 10

Here’s everything you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy S21.

We’ll be posting our review of the S21 Ultra soon, but you may want to hold off on upgrading until then. The S20 Ultra’s successor launched this year as part of Samsung’s Galaxy S21 range. The S20 Ultra is also a bit pricier than the new £1149 Galaxy S21 Ultra (though not by much). With no foldable screen, you might be wondering quite why this phone costs so much. With a starting price of £1199, the S20 Ultra costs more than the iPhone 11 Pro Max (£1149) and if you look at the US prices then it’s a lot more expensive than Apple’s high-end flagship – $1499 vs $1099. During a period where consumers are holding on to their phones longer and spending less overall, this move seems somewhat odd. Instead of offering a more affordable alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus, we’ve got a far pricier option in the form of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Samsung might win the spec war, but how does it fare in the real world? Highlights include a 108MP main camera, up to 16GB RAM and a 6.9-inch 120Hz display. Are you a fan of the dark side? Or is light the only path forward? 🙂 Comment below and let's discuss.Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is the first true flagship to arrive this year – and boy, is it a powerhouse device. Before closing this tutorial, let us know which mode you like more and why. However, we like the Light Mode too, and we switch between modes once every couple of weeks. It can be more comfortable on your eyes, it can make the apps more readable, and some people might even think it is prettier. The Dark Mode can be a cool way to use Windows 10.

COMP TO NIGHTTONE MODE WINDOWS 10

NOTE: To make things even more confusing, we noticed that the new Microsoft Edge, based on the same engine as Google Chrome, respects the settings you make in Windows 10 and enables the Dark Mode when you turn it on in the Settings app.

COMP TO NIGHTTONE MODE HOW TO

Here is how to enable or disable the Dark Mode in Microsoft Edge. However, some apps, like Microsoft Edge, don't, and you have to turn it on separately. We noticed that Microsoft Office also uses the Dark Mode automatically when you set it in Windows 10.

The default black text displayed in apps turns to white, etc.

The light-gray default scrollbars used in apps become dark-gray.

The white background color used on menus turns to black.

The plain white background used in apps turns black.

When you turn on Dark Mode in Windows 10, the operating system and many of its apps change their visuals to dark colors.

COMP TO NIGHTTONE MODE UPDATE

One way to do that is by using the Windows 10 Update Assistant. Therefore, if you don't have Dark Mode on your Windows 10 computer or device, all you have to do is update Windows 10 to the latest version. Since then, it has been gradually improved, and the latest version of Windows 10 - May 2020 Update has the best Dark Mode yet. What is the Dark Mode, and how to get it in Windows 10ĭark Mode was first introduced to Windows 10 in its Anniversary Update from 2016.

Do you like the Dark Mode in Windows 10?.

Which apps support Dark Mode in Windows 10?.

How to turn off Dark Mode in Windows 10.

What is the Dark Mode, and how to get it in Windows 10.

[lahoreherald]

Major update for Amazon Kindle devices includes new UI and navigation buttons

Amazon is releasing a new interface for its Kindle readers. Which the company claims would make reading on the device more natural and easier to do. In addition to the new interface, software upgrades are scheduled to be released in the coming weeks, with the first being released next week. A report claims that Major update for Amazon Kindle devices includes new UI and navigation buttons

The initial update is likely to introduce a navigation bar similar to that found on smartphones to the Amazon Kindle e-book readers. The navigation bar will make navigating across the UI much more convenient and efficient. Users will be able to access quick toggles for the readers. If they swipe down from the top of the screen. These toggles will include controls for adjusting the brightness of the screen. And as well as the ability to toggle Airplane Mode.

A swipe from the bottom of the smartphone will bring up more shortcuts, such as quick access to the Home and Library pages.

According to reports, the second upgrade would concentrate on enhancing the eBook pages themselves. Although a modest change to the Home page will allow readers to browse up to 20 recently opened books at a time. The Library tab will receive new filters, a new collections view, and a scrollbar in the near future. Finding the appropriate book will be quicker and easier with the help of these tools.

Which Kindle devices will be updated?

Users of the Amazon Kindle 8th generation or newer devices, as well as the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 7th generation or newer will get update. And the Kindle Oasis, will be able to download the latest updates through the cloud. Amazon has stated that the first update will be available to devices “over the next few weeks,”. And that the second update will be available “later this year.”

Read Also: Facebook allegedly cheated to misinformation researchers

Published in Lahore Herald #lahoreherald #breakingnews #breaking

[loadable628]

Sex Career Sims 4

The Sims 4 Turbo Careers Mod Pack

You’ve followed your Sims to work as a Doctor, Detective and Scientist, but what about the many other careers available in the game? When it’s time to leave for work, they’ll disappear into the background and return when the work day is over.

Well, that’s not the case any longer! Introducing The Sims 4 Turbo Careers Mod Pack! For players who have both The Sims 4 and The Sims 4 Get to Work Expansion Pack, Turbo Careers turns all closed adult careers into open ones, as well as two of the teen careers (Fast Food and Barista).

Note: This is an older mod that hasn’t had any major updates for a while, so the quality isn’t as high as it could be.

20 Best Sims 4 Career Mods. Here, we are going to discuss some of the best Sims 4 careers mod that you might love to use while playing it. Using these Sims 4 career mods frees you from some restrictions that the original Sims 4 have. Listed below are the best Sims 4 jobs mods: 1.Retail. In this Sims 4 career mod, you will have to work as a.

Entering the cheat “careers.addcareer ” (no quotes, no brackets) gives the active Sim a job in the specified career. Okay, so that’s a known cheat, but what I DIDN’T know until just now was that it’s actually possible to give your Sim multiple jobs this way - it doesn’t force them to leave their current job if they have.

That said, I have a working mod to sell sex in The Sims 4! Currently it comes in two versions, “Always Accept” and “Random Accept”. “Always Accept” means that if you decide to do the interaction, it will always succeed.

Like with the careers introduced in Get to Work, when it’s time for a Sim to leave for work, you’ll receive the option to follow them, provided that there is a venue for the career in one of the worlds. If you choose “Join”, you’ll be sent to the appropriate career venue. Once there, you’ll be assigned goals to complete, which will changed based on the career and level. Getting a higher score and completing your daily task will result in higher performance which will lead to getting promoted faster.

Information and Setup

The Careers - All careers supported by the mod have a different set of goals and requirements which change as you rise up. There is also field work at the upper levels.

The Sims 4 Seasons comes with a new gardening-focused career. This new addition to the Careers list is great at making money, because Gardening is already a profitable endeavor, while taking the career is a side bonus that will give you an hourly wage without leaving your home lot. Working from home is a feature unique to this, the Social Media, Politician, and Critic Careers. This mod has been set to hidden. Hidden at 29 Jul 2020, 3:36PM by OmegaSwordEX for the following reason: No longer mantained at Nexus mods. Main download is now at a certain laboratory.

Venues and Requirements - Careers take place at venues you can create yourself or download from the gallery. Each venue has its own set of required objects. You can also choose to use a combined venue if you need to save space in the world.

Known Issues

At the moment, individual venues won’t take priority over combined ones, so for example, if you have a combined venue for the Astronaut, Athlete and Secret Agent careers but also have a separate one for the Secret Agent career, the individual one won’t be prioritized and Sims in the Secret Agent career will be sent to a random one of the two venues. Individual venues were only added late in development (after the 1.9 patch added a scrollbar to the venue list) so I haven’t had time to make them more detailed.

Some career levels don’t match up perfectly to their names and descriptions, since that would be impossible without changing them. I might make a mod in the future that renames career levels and changes their descriptions, but not right now.

When switching from a career that has its own uniform to one that doesn’t, Sims will attend work in their old uniform. This can be fixed with my Customizable Career Outfits mod.

Career events will count towards some goals in the “Party Animal” aspiration. I haven’t checked if this is exclusive to the mod or if it also effects Get to Work careers.It has been confirmed that this is an issue with the active careers system, not the mod.

Sometimes, when downloading a lot from the gallery, the game won’t automatically register it to the career events system. After downloading a work lot from the gallery or placing one from your library, set the lot type to something random, exit build mode, enter build mode again then set the lot type to the correct type. If this is your first time using the mod, I strongly suggest saving before sending a Sim to work for the first time, just to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes. If you fail to do this, you won’t receive the option to follow your Sim to work, and the venue may behave in other strange ways.

This only seems to apply to custom venue types, so you won’t need to do this to every lot to be able to receive field work on it.

You will need to pay for food and other stuff out of your own money. This isn’t entirely bad though, since you receive a lot more benefits, like skill and career gains.

When you get promoted and reach a branch off, the branch selection will appear on screen before you get teleported home, then reappear after the home lot loads. This is merely a UI glitch, it doesn’t effect gameplay

I received a report that a Sim was fired for fighting at work in the Criminal career despite it being a goal. I wasn’t able to reproduce this problem, but my unconfirmed theory is that this will happen if you fight a Sim marked as a “co-worker”. To prevent this from happening, only fight Sims outside the career.

Change Log (started 22nd June 2018)

4th June 2020 - Updated for the latest patch.

30th January 2020 - Fixed a patch issue some players were having where the career event would start on the home lot.

20th December 2018 - Fixed a patch issue where some venue types showed blank names.

17th December 2018 - Fixed an issue with the “Wash Dishes” goal not showing any text.

19th August 2018 - Fixed a LastException issue caused by the latest patch.

22nd June 2018 - Updated for Seasons: fixed a severe issue where players would be bounced back to the world screen during a holiday with day/work off.

Compatibility

Turbo Careers will conflict with any mod that alters the base “Career” files. It will also not work well with mods that change the length of the work day, as it is adapted for the default settings.

To avoid confusion: this will not conflict with mods that add new careers (though those careers won’t be made open with it either) but it will conflict with mods that alter the base of existing careers.

Download

Download Venue Changes(required for the new venue types to show up in Build Mode)

Notes

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Here are the best career and job mods for The Sims 4

We know how sometimes it feels a bit frustrating when the career and job options in The Sims 4 are limited. Good thing tons of awesome job and career mods are easily available for download – thanks to the creative minds of mod creators! If you’re on the hunt for the best Sims 4 job and career mods, we’ve got some good news! This article puts together the best one we’ve found across several sources. Check them out below!

But before that, you might also want to check out our Mega Guide: Mods and CC for The Sims 4for more detailed information about mods and custom content. More on careers in the base game, can be found in this post.

The Best out of Hundreds of Sims 4 Mods for Career and Jobs

Sex Work Career Track Sims 4

Are you looking for the best career mod for The Sims 4 in 2020? With the growing community for mods and plenty of choices available for additional career paths in the game, I know how it can be hard to find the best ones out there. Thus I have created a list of my favorite The Sims 4 careers mods, which you will find below.

By the way, if you are looking for an overview of the career paths available in the base game, you may find it here. I hope you enjoy my list! And if you think I missed anything that should be on this list, let me know in the comment box.

What are the best Sims 4 Career Mods in 2020?

Let’s get into details: my favorite career mods

The Self-Employment Career Mod

With over 363,000 downloads at ModTheSims, the Self-Employment Career Mod is definitely one of the popular ones in the Sims community. This mod is created by Neia, an active mod maker with many other career mods included in this list. This mod mainly fills the career panel for self-employed Sims when asked what they do for a living. I like this mod because it undoubtedly adds something valuable and unique to the game that is unavailable in the basic game. Give this mod a chance too, and it is really worth a try! You only need just the base game to use this one. You may download the file at ModTheSims.

Package on Four New Career Levels: Firefighter, Hotel-Employee, Stylist and Private Tutoring

I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one wishing for more career options for your Sims. Sure, there are a lot of careers included in the base game, but this mod more options that have been missed by the developers. With four new career paths for firefighters, hotel employees, stylists, and private tutors to the game, the mod package makes a great addition for fans of a larger variety of career paths. These mods, published by sims-blog.de, have more than 300,000 downloads to date at ModTheSims, making them one of the most popular mods in the community. To download the modifications, just go to this page.

The Military Career Mod

Neia introduced another great creation through the Military Career Mod. Install this mod and add a new Military Career for your Sims with three different career paths: Sims Army, Sims Navy, and Sims Air Force. Definitely worth noting, this new career mod is perfect if you want your sims to become a high-ranking general in the game. Just the base game is needed to use this in The Sims 4 game. Download the mod at ModTheSims.

The Modeling Career Mod

With so much focus on all the things demanded by fans, it’s surprising EA developers didn’t think of this themselves. So you want to make your Sims advance their career in the fashion industry? Here’s an exciting mod that KPC0528 created – The Modeling Career Mod. Choose between the two career tracks available, either Commercial Modeling or High Fashion Modeling, and your Sim can easily be the next famous international supermodel! You only need The Sims 4 base game to use this fun career mod. To download, just go to ModTheSims.

The Education Career Mod

One of the best features from The Sims 3 that many of us have been missing in The Sims4 is the teacher career track. Luckily, OhMy!! from Mod The Sims came up with The Education Career Mod that makes the education career possible in The Sims 4. Since I loved the education career in TS3, it’s understandable that this awesome creation is one of my most used mods in TS4. The career path includes ten levels, as it has been the case in The Sims 3:

Playground Monitor

Teacher’s Aide

Substitute Teacher

Elementary School Teacher

High School Teacher

Department Head

Assistant Principal

Principal

District Superintendent

You just need the base game to use this career mod. For more information about these mods and the download links, please check out the references below:

The Ultimate Teen Career Set

Since the base game offers limited career options for teen Sims, it’s not surprising that awesome mods like The Ultimate Teen Career Set by Asiashamecca get overwhelming attention from the community. I use this a lot when playing since it gives more value to the game. By using this amazing job and career mod, teen Sims can have more exciting career options, such as:

Camp Counselor

Lifeguard

Movie Theater Operations Person

Pet Store Associate

Spa Front Desk Associate

Tutor

Parking Valet

Retail Associate

Sex Careers Sims 4

The Ultimate Teen Career Set mods work well with the base game, the Get Famous Expansion Pack, as well as Neia’s Career Commons file. Click this link for more teen career mods!

The Law Career Mod

Sex Worker Career Sims 4

Another interesting modification in this list is the Law Career Mod, especially if you’re a fan of all those “law and legal” tv shows. It is a very popular job modification widely used in the community and now has over 190,000 downloads. Install this entertaining mod and have your Sims choose between four career tracks: attorney, in-house, public prosecution, and judge. The good news? Only the base game is required to use this in The Sims 4. Download the mod at ModTheSims.

The Ultimate Dancer Career Mod

I often get asked how to make a Sim a professional dancer. Here’s the answer: The Ultimate Dancer Career Mod. Thanks to Asiashamecca for creating this fun extension that I use a lot when playing The Sims 4. Perfect for aspiring dancers, here’s your chance to excel in a dancing career! This mod presents ten levels and five paths: classical ballet, modern dance, street dance, choreographer, and instructor. To use this, will need the base game and the Get Famous EP. You may download the file at TheSimsResource.

The Singer Career Mod

Whoever says that Sims cannot be professional singers is proven wrong by xTheLittleCreator through this entertaining career mod. Perfect for those who like to sing, perform, and compose songs, The Singer Career Mod makes a truly great addition to the game. In fact, it’s the kind of The Sims 4 career mods that many users have been looking forward to playing. The mod adds ten levels, starting from stage builder and ending with a global star:

Stage builder

Sound checking

Cover up

Background singer

Going solo

Opening act

Flying on the wall

Top of the chats

Interviews, magazine covers, and hits

Global star

To use it, you need the base game with the Get Famous EP installed. You may download the file and find further information at:

Film Career Mod

The Film Career Mod developed by Arriannar allows you to have a reputable film career in The Sims 4. With this career mod, you can either be a film actor or a film director, depending on which track you’d choose. It’s worth mentioning that careers added with this mod are based on the film career path from The Sims 3, including job tracks for both teenagers and adults. To use it in the game, just the base game is required. You may download the file and find further information at:

[aksbrillmindz]

flutter 2 with support from multiple platform

Google held a event called but flutter engage where they release the second version of flutterit has the same base of cross platform development but this is with the similar code base this version of flutter does not only build apps for mobile but also has the ability tomanage apps for web desktop and foldables 

so let's start exploring the flutter 2

Flutter has a very good web support

The largest declaration in Flutter 2 is the production-quality site support. Previously, the web was built on a document-centric basis. However, the web platform has evolved to allow for the distribution of richer platform APIs that enable extremely sophisticated applications to use hardware-accelerated 3D and 2D graphics, paint APIs, and versatile layout.

Flutter's web support lays the groundwork for these advancements, offering an app-focused platform that takes full advantage of everything the new web can have to offer. This update initially focuses on three app scenarios.

singer page app

progressive web app

bringing current apps to web

Google primarily focused on rendering fidelity improvements and efficiency. They added a new CanvasKit-based WebAssembly rendered.

They also included web-specific features such as URL control in the address bar, text autofill, PWA manifests, and routing. A Connection Widget was also included to ensure that a smartphone app running in the browser feels like a web app.

Flutter desktop support

Flutter's desktop support can be used as a deployment target for all Flutter apps by Google. Many improvements have been made to bring Flutter desktop up to par, including ensuring that text editing works like a native experience on all supported platforms and adding foundational features such as text selection pivot points.

The TextFormField and TextField widgets for Cupertino and Material design languages now have a built-in background menu. In addition, the ReorderableListView widget now has grab handles. This widget has always been great at shifting stuff around with a developer's minimal effort.

Another improvement for platform-idiomatic features that shows precisely for the desktop form-factor is an improved scrollbar. The revamped scrollbar widget includes a number of engaging features that are similar to those found on the screen, such as the ability to click on the track to page up and down and drag the thumb to show a track when the mouse flutters over it.

Flutter 2 adds command-line argument management to Flutter apps, allowing simple actions like double-clicking a data file in Windows File Explorer to open it in your app.

Furthermore, Google has updated its documentation on what developers to do to prepare their desktop applications for deployment to OS-specific stores.

If you continue to use the desktop beta but remain on the stable channel, you won't get new bug fixes or features as quickly as if you switched to the dev channels or beta. As a result, if you want to deliberately target Linux, macOS, or Windows, you can switch to a platform that provides quicker updates.

extended portability

Flutter is increasingly being used on platforms other than the web and traditional mobile devices. Google highlighted three collaborations that demonstrate Flutter's enhanced portability.

To begin, Canonical and Google are collaborating to bring Flutter to the desktop, with developers providing code to support deployment and creation on Linux. Canonical aims to provide dependable, beautiful experiences through a wide range of hardware configurations. And Flutter is their go-to framework for new mobile and web applications.

Second, Microsoft will expand its Flutter support. Microsoft will add contributions to the Flutter engine that help the increasing class of foldable Android devices, in addition to the existing partnership for providing premium quality Windows support in Flutter. These devices usher in new design trends, with apps that can either take advantage of the dual-screen nature of these devices to provide side-by-side experiences or expand content.

Finally, Toyota, the world's best-selling vehicle maker, announced its plans to introduce best-in-class digital experiences to cars through Flutter-enabled infotainment systems.

Flutter Fix Flutter repair is a combination of a few items. Dart Fix, an exclusive command-line alternative to the Dart CLI tool, knows where to look for a list of deprecated APIs and how to upgrade code that uses those APIs. Then there's the list of open fixes that comes with version 2 of the Flutter SDK.

Finally, it's an improved collection of Flutter extensions for IntelliJ, VS Code, and Android Studio IDEs that can show a similar list of usable solutions, such as quick fixes with little light bulbs that can help developers change their codes with their mouse.

Flutter Folio

How is it possible to write an app that adapts to multiple form factors (large, small, and medium screens), numerous idioms (desktop, web, and mobile), and various input modes (mouse, keyboard, and touch) when Flutter only supports three platforms (iOS, Android, and the web) for production apps and three more in beta (Linux, macOS, and Windows)? The scrapbooking app Flutter Folio was commissioned by Google to address this query.

Folio is a simple example of an application that can operate on several platforms using a single codebase. This app is referred to as platform adaptive because it adapts to the platform it is running on.

add to app

Developers will now benefit from Flutter by incorporating it into their existing Android and iOS applications. This functionality is called Add-to-App, and it's a perfect way to reuse Flutter code in all platforms while keeping the existing native codebase. On the beta channel, the latest APIs that allow this are in preview.

These APIs, as well as a collection of sample projects demonstrating this new trend, are documented on flutter.dev. Google will now recommend using various instances of the Flutter engine in native apps as a result of this update.

Conclusion

Flutter 2 has been released for easy usage of Android app and making Android apps easy other than that it also helps us to build apps for multiple platform we have noted the release of the new version of Flutter and brillmindz oone of the best mobile app development companies in Dubai are waiting to explore the feature

[blog-theninehertz]

Why Flutter 1.12 is the the Best Google Version of the Year 2020?

Flutter, an open-source UI framework was introduced by Google back in May 2017. Since its release, the framework has completely changed the mobile app development scenario at the global front. Businesses whether they are established brands or startups opt for flutter app development for any of their app development requisite. Because it provides the amazing visual appearance and customer experience. Also, it is pocket-friendly and you don’t have to spend money on separate apps for Android and iOS platforms.

Flutter started its journey with the beta version and Google released its first stable Flutter 1.0 version back in December 2018. Since then, Flutter has been evolved to the next level now with its total of 5 stable releases.

The Flutter app development team released its latest Flutter 1.12 version on 11th Dec, 2019. The platform which is developed eliminating around 5,303 issues from the previous versions and incorporating 5970 Pull Requests from around 484 contributors globally. In addition to this, focused towards Ambient Computing, the framework gets features and functionalities like the RangeSlier control and support for Android App Bundles and Game Controller.

Now the question arises what is ambient computing, so before disclosing the new features in Flutter 1.12, firstly we will put some light on Ambient Computing.

Ambient Computing

Ambient computing is a concept that allows access to all the services across all the devices. The devices and gadgets, we witness inter-connected in our daily life. Ambient computing does not purse older concept of flutter ‘Write Once, Run Everywhere’

In other words, we can understand Ambient Computing as the collection of devices which behaves as an extension for one another to offer a seamless user experience.This will allow developers flutter app development without deciding which device to target first. And it becomes easier for them to develop a user experience that will be fine for all platforms and devices. Including, mobile, smart homes, desktop, embedded device and smart watches.

Flutter 1.12 Version: What are the Latest Features?

Let’s have a look at what’s new in the Flutter 1.12 and how will it support your decision for cross-platform app development for your business.

1. Introduction of Dart 2.7 Programming Language

With the release of Flutter 1.12 version, the programming language has been updated from Dart 2.5 to Dart 2.7. It is expected to supply excellent development and user experience. The developers will enjoy using safe string handling (Null Safety) capabilities and Extension methods. With the Null safety feature, the developers will be able to prevent errors if the variable will have a null value. Also, they will be able to pass integer value as a string, a most common feature in the existing programming languages like Java and VB.Net.

2. Improved DartPad

The Flutter 1.12 version avails you with the improved DartPart. With the updated DartPad, you can effortlessly edit codes, run them and see rendered UI of the codes.

3. macOS Desktop Support

Another major highlight of Flutter 1.12 version is the macOS desktop support. This feature allows you with an easier development of a fully-optimized macOS application using Flutter. Also, you get benefited with the aids of incorporating Material design attributes into Flutter-based desktop software.

4. Beta Web Support

Flutter for web, which was one of the major highlights of Flutter 1.5, has also been updated in the Flutter 1.12 version. The advanced version of web support for Flutter allows developers with an easy integration of Dart compiler and the Flutter architecture effectively.

5. iOS 13 Dark Mode Support

Dark Mode is one of the top features of iOS 13 and the updated Flutter 1.12 version fully supports this feature of iOS. It also provides competency of upgraded scrollbar fidelity with enhanced haptic feedback, less drag, and shortens the duration of long press.

Full Article is Originally Published at  The NineHertz Blog on 04th February 2020

[zerbu]

The Sims 4 Turbo Careers Mod Pack

You’ve followed your Sims to work as a Doctor, Detective and Scientist, but what about the many other careers available in the game? When it’s time to leave for work, they’ll disappear into the background and return when the work day is over.

Well, that’s not the case any longer! Introducing The Sims 4 Turbo Careers Mod Pack! For players who have both The Sims 4 and The Sims 4 Get to Work Expansion Pack, Turbo Careers turns all closed adult careers into open ones, as well as two of the teen careers (Fast Food and Barista).

Note: This is an older mod that hasn’t had any major updates for a while, so the quality isn’t as high as it could be.

Like with the careers introduced in Get to Work, when it’s time for a Sim to leave for work, you’ll receive the option to follow them, provided that there is a venue for the career in one of the worlds. If you choose “Join”, you’ll be sent to the appropriate career venue. Once there, you’ll be assigned goals to complete, which will changed based on the career and level. Getting a higher score and completing your daily task will result in higher performance which will lead to getting promoted faster.

Information and Setup

The Careers - All careers supported by the mod have a different set of goals and requirements which change as you rise up. There is also field work at the upper levels.

Venues and Requirements  - Careers take place at venues you can create yourself or download from the gallery. Each venue has its own set of required objects. You can also choose to use a combined venue if you need to save space in the world.

Known Issues

At the moment, individual venues won’t take priority over combined ones, so for example, if you have a combined venue for the Astronaut, Athlete and Secret Agent careers but also have a separate one for the Secret Agent career, the individual one won’t be prioritized and Sims in the Secret Agent career will be sent to a random one of the two venues. Individual venues were only added late in development (after the 1.9 patch added a scrollbar to the venue list) so I haven’t had time to make them more detailed.

Some career levels don’t match up perfectly to their names and descriptions, since that would be impossible without changing them. I might make a mod in the future that renames career levels and changes their descriptions, but not right now.

Career events will count towards some goals in the “Party Animal” aspiration. I haven’t checked if this is exclusive to the mod or if it also effects Get to Work careers.  It has been confirmed that this is an issue with the active careers system, not the mod.

Sometimes, when downloading a lot from the gallery, the game won’t automatically register it to the career events system. After downloading a work lot from the gallery or placing one from your library, set the lot type to something random, exit build mode, enter build mode again then set the lot type to the correct type. If this is your first time using the mod, I strongly suggest saving before sending a Sim to work for the first time, just to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes. If you fail to do this, you won’t receive the option to follow your Sim to work, and the venue may behave in other strange ways.

This only seems to apply to custom venue types, so you won���t need to do this to every lot to be able to receive field work on it.

You will need to pay for food and other stuff out of your own money. This isn’t entirely bad though, since you receive a lot more benefits, like skill and career gains.

When you get promoted and reach a branch off, the branch selection will appear on screen before you get teleported home, then reappear after the home lot loads. This is merely a UI glitch, it doesn’t effect gameplay

I received a report that a Sim was fired for fighting at work in the Criminal career despite it being a goal. I wasn’t able to reproduce this problem, but my unconfirmed theory is that this will happen if you fight a Sim marked as a “co-worker”. To prevent this from happening, only fight Sims outside the career.

Change Log (started 22nd June 2018)

27th February 2025 - Buyable Dirty Dishes will show in the catalog again.

13rd December 2023 - Fixed a LastException that would occur with part-time careers.

16th March 2023 - Updated for the latest patch and Growing Together.

27th July 2022 - Updated for the latest patch.

16th March 2022 - Updated for the latest patch.

21st July 2021 - Updated for the latest patch.

12th March 2021 - I somehow accidentally undid the update from January. I don’t remember exactly what I did to cause that, but it’s fixed now.

9th March 2021 - Fixed some issues with the Culinary career, including text showing up blank.

25th January 2021 - Fixed a bug that prevented teen Sims from attending the Barista or Fast Food career normally.

4th June 2020 - Updated for the latest patch.

30th January 2020 - Fixed a patch issue some players were having where the career event would start on the home lot.

20th December 2018 - Fixed a patch issue where some venue types showed blank names.

17th December 2018 - Fixed an issue with the “Wash Dishes” goal not showing any text.

19th August 2018 - Fixed a LastException issue caused by the latest patch.

22nd June 2018 - Updated for Seasons: fixed a severe issue where players would be bounced back to the world screen during a holiday with day/work off.

Compatibility

Turbo Careers will conflict with any mod that alters the base “Career” files. It will also not work well with mods that change the length of the work day, as it is adapted for the default settings.

To avoid confusion: this will not conflict with mods that add new careers (though those careers won’t be made open with it either) but it will conflict with mods that alter the base of existing careers.

Download

Download Turbo Careers (Alternate Download)

Download Venue Changes (Alternate Download) (required for the new venue types to show up in Build Mode)

[system76]

Pop!_OS Weekly Update: Amping Up the Quality

Looks like this week is going to be two weeks worth of fun at System76. Double your pleasure, right?  :-)

OK, folks - Sri here: let me clue you in on what the busy people @System76 have been up to!

New Staff Members + Amping Up Quality:

First of all, I want to introduce two new members of our team.  The first person is Aaron Honeycutt, who will be doing customer support alongside the famous and adorable Emma Marshall.  Aaron comes from the Kubuntu community and is quite active there. With his familiarity with Ubuntu,  Aaron will be the Robin to Emma's Batman, the Honeycutt to Hawkeye.  See what I did there?  I got groans at the office when I said that.  I think I'm on a list.  I love being on lists!

The second person, Ben Shpurker, has joined us as our dedicated QA tester. Previously this role was shared between our Support, Engineering, and Management teams. And we’re really excited to have a dedicated person take on this important task. Ben’s level of detail has already really helped ensure our growing ambitions continue to meet our high standards. Since Ben has a strong Linux Background (playing with Linux since 7th grade and having interned with Red Hat twice), he will be especially laser focused on helping test Pop!_OS installation and features. This guy really doesn’t like bugs: not in his beer, not in his bed, and especially not in his software and hardware. We are going to amp up the quality with focused quality assurance through his efforts.

Every Little Detail Matters:

This round introduces several styling changes, refining the Pop!_OS user experience further, to wit: • We've introduced theme support for elementary/granite titlebars.  Those who use Elementary's Terminal will be familiar with the styling. • Introduced some new styling for the entry widget similar to the search ox in Pop!_Shop • Tab coloring in Terminal has been improved. We noticed that the tabs on the terminal previously looked out of place with the other colors that we had in light-theme. Now it should look more cohesive. • Pop!_Shop has seen some design changes in how applications are listed that should improve the presentation of applications in the store. • Design changes to how scrollbar presentation was also worked on.

Pop!_OS Beta Release:

Thank you for all the feedback that you gave us during the beta release last week.  Thanks to your efforts many bugs that were exposed through your feedback were addressed.  Please keep them coming!  Our release is less than a week away and the more feedback we get, the better the end result.  So be sure to post any feedback in our Reddit forum /r/pop_os.  If you find bugs then please create an issue at https://github.com/system76/pop-distro/issues.

As usual, we would love your feedback.  Our release is less than a week away and the more feedback we get, the better the experience!  Please make sure you post your feedback at https://github.com/system76/pop-distro/issues.

[payprosalaska]

Walmart Revolutionizes Its Training with Virtual Reality

​A quiet virtual reality revolution is occurring at Walmart. Since 2017, when the company began using virtual reality headsets in its training centers—called “Walmart Academies”—Walmart has used the technology to improve the employee experience, better assess workers’ skills and present new ways of training staff.

According to Andy Trainor, vice president of learning at Walmart, virtual reality in the retail environment makes a lot of sense, especially in stores that are open 24 hours a day. Why?

“Because you don’t have the opportunity to train after hours and you don’t want to disrupt your customers on the floor,” he said. “Virtual reality allows you to artificially create scenarios that you can’t recreate on the sales floor in a way that associates can learn in a safe environment.”

With this in mind, Walmart is using virtual reality, otherwise known as VR, in multiple ways, such as preparing employees for the commotion when customers swarm stores on Black Friday and evaluating how workers respond to angry shoppers. Additionally, VR is being used to ascertain which employees have the skills to fill middle management positions.

What Walmart executives have found is that VR works especially well when rolling out new technology and processes.

“We used VR to train associates on Pickup Towers, which are 15-foot vending machines that allow customers to pick up online orders,” Trainor said.

Since using VR, Walmart has seen improvements in employee test scores from training sessions, and the technology allows the company to introduce new training programs. 

“When we used the Oculus Rift VR headset in the classroom, we noticed an increase in test scores between 5 percent and 10 percent,” he said. “We are starting to replace some global learning management system modules that can take 30 to 45 minutes and transitioning this to a three- to five-minute module in the virtual reality environment.”

According to company executives, as of February, 10,000 of Walmart’s 1.2 million employees have taken skills management assessments using VR. Later this year, Walmart plans to train over 1 million employees across 4,000 stores using the standalone headset.

Trainor said Walmart’s HR organization helped to develop the training. Now that the company has rolled out VR to every store, HR professionals at each store will manage the devices and facilitate the training.

“It’s important to bring HR partners along the journey so they can see the benefits first hand and become an advocate for this new way of educating associates,” he said.

Align VR with Business Goals

HR managers looking to use virtual reality in their training programs shouldn’t only consider how the technology can improve employee training, but should also consider how the technology can strengthen the company’s overall business objectives. They should also think about partnering with a virtual reality vendor for at least two years, said Derek Belch, chief executive officer of STRIVR, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company that designed Walmart’s virtual reality training program.

“You have to learn what this technology is and what it isn’t, what it does and what it does not do,” Belch said. “HR managers have to think about implementing the technology in the right way. You can’t just whip up a piece of content and put it in a room and hope someone uses it.  That is just a recipe for disaster. We are seeing a lot of companies, for lack of a better term, tinker with this and they are not getting real business results.”

Research from SuperData, a Nielsen company, estimates that 71 percent of companies using VR use the technology for training.

At Fidelity Investments Inc., VR headsets are used to train new workers about empathy. These employees are guided through a virtual phone call with a Fidelity “customer” going through a financial crisis. At UPS, HTC Vive VR headsets are used to help drivers identify potential hazards while “driving” on a virtual road. American Airlines uses VR to acquaint new crew members with safety procedures before they start their jobs.

Don’t Neglect Human Interaction 

Although using VR to train employees is in its very early stages, there is huge value in using VR to train employees, said Sarah Brennan, CEO and principal of Accelir Insights, a Milwaukee-based HR technology consulting firm. Brennan predicts that VR will have a significant impact on hiring and onboarding staff.

[SHRM members-only toolkit: Managing the Employee Onboarding and Assimilation Process]

“I would not be surprised to see VR being used for hiring,” Brennan said. “Before candidates take a job, they can really understand what it would be like to do the job. They’ll get a better sense of what it feels like to be in a busy kitchen, or what it feels like to be behind a desk when you are getting yelled at by a customer.”

HR managers need to be aware that in some extreme cases—like preparing soldiers for what they might see in war zones or coaching emergency workers for what they might encounter in a terrorist attack—workers using VR need additional support, she said.

“A lot of things could go wrong, and my fear would be that we jump too far to relying only on the technology,” Brennan said. “There needs to be the communication and the opportunity for questions and interactions with another person. Managers have to make sure that they take care of the whole person. Don’t assume that the technology can handle it all.”

Nicole Lewis is a freelance journalist based in Miami. She covers business, technology and public policy.

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