#api limit basically

[soulstagger]

Compared to having to click edit, change post type, and post one by one. Being able to do like 1500 every hour automatically. Hella!

[mokeymokey]

OK so basically I don't know anything but I think the way I would propose to save the world of videogames is for there to be something like.....a standardized virtual machine, a quasi-emulator, that "emulates" an imaginary console with a defined architecture. It outputs up to a fixed resolution and framerate (let's say 1920x1080, 60fps. though I wouldn't mind it lower) and performs up to a certain calibre of graphical complexity. We can have it free and open source yadda yadda. And we'll have APIs for it and so on and basically the idea is games can just be developed and distributed as "roms" for this virtual machine.

There's almost certainly some glaring issue with this idea that I would need to know more about computerology to catch but doesn't that just sound great.. Like my inspiration here is the fact that playing old games on an emulator is frankly by far the most accessible and reliable way of video gaming nowadays. For one thing you don't have to worry about specs for each particular game or spend ages wrangling config files to get something to run if you don't have an up-to-date Gaming Machine. If you can emulate one PS2 game you can more or less emulate them all (except gran turismo 4 lol but you get the idea). Also (and this is key) it would hopefully act as a buffer against the inflation of performance demands that makes perfectly good computer hardware obsolete at an unsustainable rate. Limitations breed creativity and all that. Many many old games are still absolutely gorgeous. It's about the hand-craftedness...... I think also there is something to be said for video games not being so staggeringly huge and graphics so detailed that dev companies need to outsource half of the work to graphic design sweatshops in order to get it finished before the next god damn playstation comes out

And anyway you wanna talk about cross platform...Literally what is more cross-platform than the humble game boy advance rom. Like are you serious. You can play that shit on an egg timer. You can play that shit on a cup and string

[homunculus-argument]

Things to look for and why, regarding skincare (we're in different countries, so I don't know what brands are available to you. I'll focus on ingredients over brands as a result). It takes an average of 30 days for complete skin cell turnover, which means it can take that long to start seeing real results. Intro new product one at a time so you can better monitor for allergic/adverse reactions. And to avoid chemical burns. Really follow the directions when it comes to chemical exfoliants, here, because overdoing it can destroy your moisture barrier and make even lotion turn into a chemical burn sensation/reality

Chemical exfoliants are likely to be your best friend, here, as well as a "maintenance" ingredient.

You described your skin as having orange peel texture, which almost always means your skin type is oily. Niacinamide is going to be the key ingredient to help regulate how much oil you're putting out. The ordinary makes a good serum for that, and it's paired with a booster ingredient that helps it work better. Note, if your skin also feels tight (not tight because of a cystic zit) or is also flaky, you could be producing all that oil because your skin is dehydrated, in which case you want a really, really basic moisturizer too. Look for ceremides, because they will help to repair damage to your moisture barrier (if you've been using a LOT of different products it could be damaged, which leads to oil. You can usually tell, because everything will feel like your skin is on fire).

Acids! My beloved. They come in two categories, aha and BHA. Aha is water soluble and can not cut through heavy oil, and will not get as deep into pores when it's really oily, but they WILL support the BHA ingredients that are oil soluble. You are gonna want them both, because you need to cut through the oil and have something left to help out with the clogs. They will both make you more sensitive to UV, so grab an SPF that is basic as hell--i rec trying to avoid dimethicone when you're really oily, because it will generally make a mess of everything

You can safely do glycolic (aha) in really high concentrations up to three times a week. The ordinary has an amazing peel, nip + fab makes incredible pads.

Salicylic can't be had over the counter stronger than 2% in the states, but this is a powerhouse BHA. You want it.

You can usually find those two ingredients bundled together over here, and I rec that if you can find it because they will be formulated in complementary ratios.

If you can get your hands on raya, their aha/BHA cleansing gel + Bliss clear has a serum that is a toner with salicylic and niacinamide. Those two things together, consistently, completely transformed my skin. They're my ride or die when combined with the nip + fab.

The other ingredients to keep an eye out for in case of brand availability are enzymes. What enzymes do is break down the bonds in the oil and in your skin (not as scary as it sounds) so that the individual cells will turn over faster, shed faster, and not be able to stick around as long to get trapped into pores. Enzymes plus some aha/BHA can seriously push everything out of your pores. They are strong, and they can be found in the raya thing I mentioned.

I'm not sure how much character limit I have left. I'm more than happy to answer specific questions, and also help vet products via links/screen caps. r/skincareaddiction is another wonderful place to get in depth reviews, assuming reddit API fuckery hasn't hit them too bad. But I am not afraid to use my license/obsessive research skills, and I'm not afraid to pull out "fixed my face out of sheer spite" knowledge either, so if any of this is confusing or something you'd like more info on don't hesitate (and it could very well be confusing, I haven't had enough caffeine to self medicate the ADHD and it's past my bedtime. I've met myself at least once and know how I am). Either way I hope that this all helps on your quest

Damn, I'll have to go through with this a notebook and write everything down while re-reading. Thank you! I didn't even know asks have a character limit, but you sure used it well.

And yeah my skin type is oily as fuck. You could scrape it with a spoon and collect enough to boil it into soap.

[blackjackkent]

Programming object lesson of the day:

A couple days ago, one of the side project apps I run (rpthreadtracker.com) went down for no immediately obvious reason. The issue seems to have ended up being that the backend was running on .NET Core 2.2, which the host was no longer supporting, and I had to do a semi-emergency upgrade of all the code to .NET Core 6, a pretty major update that required a lot of syntactic changes and other fixes.

This is, of course, an obvious lesson in keeping an eye on when your code is using a library out of date enough not to be well supported anymore. (I have some thoughts on whether .NET Core 2.2 is old enough to have been dumped like this, but nevertheless I knew it was going out of LTS and could have been more prepared.) But that's all another post.

What really struck me was how valuable it turned out to be that I had already written an integration test suite for this application.

Historically, at basically every job I've worked for and also on most of my side projects, automated testing tends to be the thing most likely to fall by the wayside. When you have 376428648 things you want to do with an application and only a limited number of hours in the day, getting those 376428648 things to work feels very much like the top priority. You test them manually to make sure they work, and think, yeah, I'll get some tests written at some point, if I have time, but this is fine for now.

And to be honest, most of the time it usually is fine! But a robust test suite is one of those things that you don't need... until you suddenly REALLY FUCKING NEED IT.

RPTT is my baby, my longest running side project, the one with the most users, and the one I've put the most work into. So in a fit of side project passion and wanting to Do All The Right Things For Once, I actively wrote a massive amount of tests for it a few years ago. The backend has a full unit test suite that is approaching 100% coverage (which is a dumb metric you shouldn't actually stress about, but again, a post for another day). I also used Postman, an excellently full-featured API client, to write a battery of integration tests which would hit all of the API endpoints in a defined order, storing variables and verifying values as it went to take a mock user all the way through their usage life cycle.

And goddamn was that useful to have now, years later, as I had to fix a metric fuckton of subtle breakage points while porting the app to the updated framework. With one click, I could send the test suite through every endpoint in the backend and get quick feedback on everywhere that it wasn't behaving exactly the way it behaved before the update. And when I was ready to deploy the updated version, I could do so with solid confidence that from the front end's perspective, nothing would be different and everything would slot correctly into place.

I don't say this at all to shame anyone for not prioritizing writing tests - I usually don't, especially on my side projects, and this was a fortuitous outlier. But it was a really good reminder of why tests are a valuable tool in the first place and why they do deserve to be prioritized when it's possible to do so.

[owo-mochji]

hey wanna hear about the crescent stack structure because i don't really have anyone to tell this to

YAYYYY!! THANK YOU :3

small note: threads are also referred to internally as lstates (local states) as when creating a new thread, rather than using crescent_open again, they're connected to a single gstate (global state)

the stack is the main data structure in a crescent thread, containing all of the locals and call information.

the stack is divided into frames, and each time a function is called, a new frame is created. each frame has two parts: base and top. a frame's base is where the first local object is pushed to, and the top is the total amount of stack indexes reserved after the base. also in the stack is two numbers, calls and cCalls. calls keeps track of the number of function calls in the thread, whether it's to a c or crescent function. cCalls keeps track of the number of calls to c functions. c functions, using the actual stack rather than the dynamically allocated crescent stack, could overflow the real stack and crash the program in a way crescent is unable to catch. so we want to limit the amount of these such that this (hopefully) doesn't happen.

calls also keeps track of another thing with the same number, that being the stack level. the stack level is a number starting from 0 that increments with each function call, and decrements on each return from a function. stack level 0 is the c api, where the user called crescent_open (or whatever else function that creates a new thread, that's just the only one implemented right now), and is zero because zero functions have been called before this frame.

before the next part, i should probably explain some terms:

- stack base: the address of the first object on the entire stack, also the base of frame 0

- stack top: address of the object immediately after the last object pushed onto the stack. if there are no objects on the stack, this is the stack base.

- frame base: the address of the first object in a frame, also the stack top upon calling a function (explained later) - frame top: amount of stack indexes reserved for this frame after the base address

rather than setting its base directly after the reserved space on the previous frame, we simply set it right at the stack top, such that the first object on this frame is immediately after the last object on the previous frame (except not really. it's basically that, but when pushing arguments to functions we just subtract the amount of arguments from the base, such that the top objects on the previous frame are in the new frame). this does make the stack structure a bit more complicated, and maybe a bit messy to visualize, but it uses (maybe slightly) less memory and makes some other stuff related to protected calls easier.

as we push objects onto the stack and call functions, we're eventually going to run out of space, so we need to dynamically resize the stack. though first, we need to know how much memory the stack needs. we go through all of the frames, and calculate how much that frame needs by taking the frame base offset from the stack base (framebase - stackbase) and add the frame top (or the new top if resizing the current frame in using crescent_checkTop in the c api). the largest amount a frame needs is the amount that the entire stack needs. if the needed size is less than or equal to a third of the current stack size, it shrinks. if the needed size is greater than he current stack size, it grows. when shrinking or growing, the new size is always calculated as needed * 1.5 (needed + needed / 2 in the code).

when shrinking the stack, it can only shrink to a minimum of CRESCENT_MIN_STACK (64 objects by default). even if the resizing fails, it doesn't throw an error as we still have enough memory required. when growing, if the new stack size is greater than CRESCENT_MAX_STACK, it sets it back down to just the required amount. if that still is over CRESCENT_MAX_STACK, it either returns 1 or throws a stack overflow error depending on the throw argument. if it fails to reallocate the stack, it either throws an out of memory error or returns 1 again depending on the throw argument. growing the stack can throw an error because we don't have the memory required, unlike shrinking the stack.

and also the thing about the way a frame's base is set making protected calls easier. when handling an error, we want to go back to the most recent protected call. we do this by (using a jmp_buf) saving the stack level in the handler (structure used to hold information when handling errors and returning to the protected call) and reverting the stack back to that level. but we're not keeping track of the amount of objects in a stack frame! how do we restore the stack top? because a frame's base is immediately after that last object in the previous frame, and that the stack top is immediately after the last object pushed onto the stack, we just set the top to the stack level above's base.

[cementcornfield]

an unfortunately hilarious way to describe how how the bengals fumbled this deal. listen here

transcription (and some commentary) below

they tried friday night, they even tried on saturday into saturday night, and it continued into sunday morning actually. they could not bridge the gap, it just was not happening. there were numbers that they couldn’t figure out. there was a cash flow issue, there was a years issue. the APY was fine. it would have surpassed justin jefferson but everything else was not there. and basically, this is exactly what justin jefferson went through last year. justin jefferson also wanted to get extended after his third year, the vikings could not bridge the gap. they made him play out his fourth year and eventually it all worked out and he just became the highest paid receiver after playing four years. ja’marr’s gonna go through the same thing. he’s gonna play through his fourth year and eventually at this time next year he’s gonna try to get extended and he was looking for 36 million a year right now. if he has a ja’marr chase type of year right now, ja’marr will be able to ask for 40 million dollars a year next year and he’s going to get it from the bengals. thats where it is. 

again, i don’t know why some of these organizations decide to wait when you have the star players, just pay them because if you don’t it gets more expensive…i’ll tell you this much, ja’marr’s side? not happy about it. ja’marr himself? not happy about it as well. he thought the deal would get done, this has been four, maybe even five, months of negotiations and they thought they were on the doorstep a couple of times only for it to collapse, and we’ve said it a million times - the bengals do negotiations way different than every other team. they're way more annoying about it and this player experienced it for the first time and he’s not happy about it. but there’s nothing he can do about it, he’s gonna play through the year. he handled it with class and he’s onto playing week 2 where he should be fully healthy. 

Okay so! pretty revealing stuff!

the cash flow thing. upon further research, this isn't the classic "oh boohoo the brown family is too poor!" but actually more about guaranteed money. it's cash flow for the player throughout the deal. the bengals tend to only guarantee a certain amount in the first (and very rarely the second) year of the deal. ja'marr's camp wanted more guaranteed money throughout the contract (which basically ensures security throughout the whole thing rather than risk being cut at the end, and could also prevent him from wanting to hold out/in because he wouldn't be making much per game towards the end). it seems like the bengals had a limit on the money they'd guarantee throughout six years, not because they couldn't, but because they wouldn't. (they are billionaires and are more than capable of drumming up more liquid cash if they really wanted to, but they don't want to.)

one thing i DO find comforting though is that we are not the only team to fuck this up lol. justin tried for an extension last year, and they also couldn't bridge the gap, making him play his fourth year first. and it all ended happily, he is the highest paid receiver now. and next year, ja'marr will be.

but! ja'marr is NOT happy right now. which sucks! he's a pro and i know he can put it behind him and focus on the game. but it's just such a bummer. hopefully he can use this as motivation and play pissed off/with a chip on his shoulder/whatever, but still, annoying it got to this point!

the confirmation about how annoying the bengals are as an organization to deal with from every single agent. it really shouldn't be a secret after jessie, tee, etc. and it's such a poor reflection on us that we supposedly didn't pay those guys to pay ja'marr, and we couldn't even get that right (we will eventually, but they've already used up any good will they had from ja'marr's side, and are going to have to pay way more now!)

[crossatlanticsoftware-blog]

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[pictureamoebae]

Hey! I just wanted to say thanks for all the information you share regarding reshade. You've been my primary resource when it came to me making my own presets. Just wondering how the new relight performs differently in the game. You said it now works? It already seems to work great as is so it's hard to imagine it working even better but that's exciting!

Hi! I'm glad I've been able to help you along your ReShade journey!

qUINT_ReLight worked absolutely fine in TS4, but the one released in December, MartysMods_ReLight, wouldn't compile under dx9 (this was a compiling problem on Marty's end, he didn't realise it didn't work until I told him). He's put heaps of work into it since then, and now it does compile under dx9 (although needed a couple of last minute fixes the past couple of days - he doesn't have many dx9 games so relies on testers to spot things!).

The way ReLight's settings look changed between qUINT_ReLight and December's MartysMods_ReLight, and they've changed even more for this release. Basically the only settings that look the same when compared to the shader guide I made for it are how to position the point lights and that there are sections for 4 lights. Everything else has changed.

There is now a new light option, which creates a directional light that you can't move in terms of where it's placed but it casts shadows in different directions uniformly across the screen. There is SSS (sub-surface scattering), and the way you choose the colour of lights has also changed (instead of a colour picker now there are two sliders for temperature and tint).

I'll write a new guide at some point, once I've had more time to play around with it and can do it justice.

This latest ReLight does have a few little quirks in dx9 games. The shadows can sometimes be a little noisy, and it also suffers from some lines at the edges of cast shadows (similar to MartysMods_MXAO in dx9). This is a dx9 limitation unfortunately, and as Marty continues to iterate on his shaders to make them more powerful and better quality, dx9 implementation simply won't be able to keep up with it.

That's why some people may decide that for TS4 they prefer to stick with the older qUINT_ReLight version. It still works perfectly well, and doesn't have those little quirks that the newer, more advanced version has introduced.

However, you can choose instead to use DXVK to simulate TS4 running with the Vulkan api instead of dx9, which will banish those quirks, and let you use all of the various shaders that don't work at all or don't work very well under dx9.

To use DXVK, remove ReShade first (back up your ReShade installation beforehand in case you need it), and then just drop the correct DXVK dll file into your TS4 Bin folder. Then, you'll need to reinstall ReShade using the installer, and this time choose Vulkan as the api instead of dx9. ReShade will install as normal, and you can go ahead and use it as you normally would, but now with access to more advanced and fun shaders.

[cherrari]

do you have any examples of tech documents uve written? ive become interested in it lately especially hearing about ur experiences ..

i can't share actual work samples because like. that would be doxxing myself lol. but i can share that when i interviewed with one particularly large company they used a standard test of:

a casual guide for tic tac toe

simple api documentation

and while i ducked out of the interviews due to location conflicts, they gave me really good reviews about how these turned out, so i guess they might be useful to see what interviewers like?

the below screenshots aren't the versions i submitted (i made some minor wording adjustments and fixed a few typos) but they should give you the gist of it

the jobs i've had varied a lot, my first role was very much like the tic tac toe theme lmao (but with actual software and not like. a game). my second role was pure api documentation (specifically AWS and rabbitmq) and was basically like the second sample but much, much denser. my current one is a mix of the two. if you have any background in coding it goes a LONG way in this industry because it lets you work in "real" tech (i.e., with engineers directly). there's no shortage of writers who can write guides like the first and it will be extremely difficult to get your foot in the door if you only pursue that route, but i've never had issues finding opportunities when looking for jobs like the second

most big companies have really specific standards for writing so you need to be good at following instructions lol. like for example at my first job we had an extremely strict limit of 16 words for most sentences and 21 in rare cases. generally, the more casual a document is = the more liberty you have but there will always be rules you need to follow and you'll rarely receive a document and be allowed to write it freely, at least not in an established company. i work at a start up right now and i get to do whatever i want but that's because i'm the only writer. i try to avoid fluff words but in some cases companies do request it to "soften" sentences (you can see this a lot in the first example).

i think the most difficult part of the job is just writing what you need to write while under constraints put in by people who are often not writing. the sentence length thing is important for api documentation though i will admit. and it's not that difficult to follow when you're looking out for it even though i have chronic run on usage in my daily life

[paradoxcase]

So I've discovered this new programming game, Artifacts MMO:

The basic idea is that you control your character using a script that you write which interacts with the public API, and every single game action taken using an API call, and every single piece of game information can be retrieved using an API call. Basically, if you ever played Runescape and thought, man, writing a bot to play Runescape for me might actually be more fun than playing Runescape, but I would like to not get banned, this game is for you

This would also honestly be a great teaching/learning tool. Like, if you want to get more practice with a language, or learn a new language, or learn how to do things like use an API, but you don't have any idea for a project you can work on to do that, this game is actually great for it. You can get some very simple scripts running without anything complicated, but there's basically no limit to how complicated you can make your bot. You can have up to five characters running at once, so if you want to mess around with multithreading or concurrency, you can do that, too.

Apparently the game restarts back at zero periodically, I think it's near the beginning of a restart currently, so the leaderboards are not too intimidating right now, if that matters to you.

I've been unemployed for so long and haven't had anything to work on, especially now that my computer is still being repaired. This game is filling a void in my soul. And it doesn't consume all my time, either, because a lot of the "playtime" is just I start a long-running script and then go do something else for 10 hours, and when I come back, progress has been made

[andmaybegayer]

Have you made any more progress on the esp32+sk6812 project? I've got like 90W of wwa strip and a girl who doesn't like overhead lighting coming over next weekend

it's currently in a state where if all you want is to update a single pattern over the network and drive it out to the string, you can do that, and it should work for WWA out of the box since I believe that protocol is identical to RGB.

WiFi is easy to configure, it's in the menuconfig system so you don't have to dig around. Driving GPIO still isn't in menuconfig but it's 15 by default and easy enough to change.

Might need some patching, but the underlying driver library supports RGB, RGBW, and WWA so it should be easy and I'd be up to help you out with that specifically in pretty short order. If you already have an ESP-IDF build environment it should Just Build.

I haven't touched it in a while but basically right now you can either use the web editor or a POST request to push a script up, and you can tell it to run at a specific frame rate. If it can't meet that frame rate it'll fairly gracefully decrease the framerate, and you have access to most of standard Lua because esp-idf implements most of libc. For simple patterns you can probably get in excess of 100 000 updates per second, if you're doing any significant trigonometry I think you're probably limited to ~10 000 updates per second. Divide that by number of LED's to get frame rate maximums.

The things I'd like to do are better support for Lua libraries, some helpers for modular arithmetic and time-of-day/year scheduled operations, a few pattern slots and the ability to switch between pattern slots from scripts or an external API, and a system for registering requests to external HTTP API's that runs on a separate CPU at regular intervals so you can do that without having to mangle your main loop.

[xettle-technologies]

What Are the Costs Associated with Fintech Software Development?

The fintech industry is experiencing exponential growth, driven by advancements in technology and increasing demand for innovative financial solutions. As organizations look to capitalize on this trend, understanding the costs associated with fintech software development becomes crucial. Developing robust and secure applications, especially for fintech payment solutions, requires significant investment in technology, expertise, and compliance measures. This article breaks down the key cost factors involved in fintech software development and how businesses can navigate these expenses effectively.

1. Development Team and Expertise

The development team is one of the most significant cost drivers in fintech software development. Hiring skilled professionals, such as software engineers, UI/UX designers, quality assurance specialists, and project managers, requires a substantial budget. The costs can vary depending on the team’s location, expertise, and experience level. For example:

In-house teams: Employing full-time staff provides better control but comes with recurring costs such as salaries, benefits, and training.

Outsourcing: Hiring external agencies or freelancers can reduce costs, especially if the development team is located in regions with lower labor costs.

2. Technology Stack

The choice of technology stack plays a significant role in the overall development cost. Building secure and scalable fintech payment solutions requires advanced tools, frameworks, and programming languages. Costs include:

Licenses and subscriptions: Some technologies require paid licenses or annual subscriptions.

Infrastructure: Cloud services, databases, and servers are essential for hosting and managing fintech applications.

Integration tools: APIs for payment processing, identity verification, and other functionalities often come with usage fees.

3. Security and Compliance

The fintech industry is heavily regulated, requiring adherence to strict security standards and legal compliance. Implementing these measures adds to the development cost but is essential to avoid potential fines and reputational damage. Key considerations include:

Data encryption: Robust encryption protocols like AES-256 to protect sensitive data.

Compliance certifications: Obtaining certifications such as PCI DSS, GDPR, and ISO/IEC 27001 can be costly but are mandatory for operating in many regions.

Security audits: Regular penetration testing and vulnerability assessments are necessary to ensure application security.

4. Customization and Features

The complexity of the application directly impacts the cost. Basic fintech solutions may have limited functionality, while advanced applications require more extensive development efforts. Common features that add to the cost include:

User authentication: Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and biometric verification.

Real-time processing: Handling high volumes of transactions with minimal latency.

Analytics and reporting: Providing users with detailed financial insights and dashboards.

Blockchain integration: Leveraging blockchain for enhanced security and transparency.

5. User Experience (UX) and Design

A seamless and intuitive user interface is critical for customer retention in the fintech industry. Investing in high-quality UI/UX design ensures that users can navigate the platform effortlessly. Costs in this category include:

Prototyping and wireframing.

Usability testing.

Responsive design for compatibility across devices.

6. Maintenance and Updates

Fintech applications require ongoing maintenance to remain secure and functional. Post-launch costs include:

Bug fixes and updates: Addressing issues and releasing new features.

Server costs: Maintaining and scaling infrastructure to accommodate user growth.

Monitoring tools: Real-time monitoring systems to track performance and security.

7. Marketing and Customer Acquisition

Once the fintech solution is developed, promoting it to the target audience incurs additional costs. Marketing strategies such as digital advertising, influencer partnerships, and content marketing require significant investment. Moreover, onboarding users and providing customer support also contribute to the total cost.

8. Geographic Factors

The cost of fintech software development varies significantly based on geographic factors. Development in North America and Western Europe tends to be more expensive compared to regions like Eastern Europe, South Asia, or Latin America. Businesses must weigh the trade-offs between cost savings and access to high-quality talent.

9. Partnering with Technology Providers

Collaborating with established technology providers can reduce development costs while ensuring top-notch quality. For instance, Xettle Technologies offers comprehensive fintech solutions, including secure APIs and compliance-ready tools, enabling businesses to streamline development processes and minimize risks. Partnering with such providers can save time and resources while enhancing the application's reliability.

Cost Estimates

While costs vary depending on the project's complexity, here are rough estimates:

Basic applications: $50,000 to $100,000.

Moderately complex solutions: $100,000 to $250,000.

Highly advanced platforms: $250,000 and above.

These figures include development, security measures, and initial marketing efforts but may rise with added features or broader scope.

Conclusion

Understanding the costs associated with fintech software development is vital for effective budgeting and project planning. From assembling a skilled team to ensuring compliance and security, each component contributes to the total investment. By leveraging advanced tools and partnering with experienced providers like Xettle Technologies, businesses can optimize costs while delivering high-quality fintech payment solutions. The investment, though significant, lays the foundation for long-term success in the competitive fintech industry.

[stepswowdsen]

【KagePro】 KuroEne AU: Ene confronts Kuroha 🖤💙

Intro

Kuroha/Saeru + Uroboros Symbolism 🐍

KuroEne AU: Ene confronts Kuroha (Dialogue Scripts)

For the 2nd one, I imagined a scenario where, after Saeru's revealed his true intentions, Ene and Mary sneak into his underground lab and Ene finds his design/plans on the android body he made her and confronts him about his motives. I only posted a bit of it for now

Kuroha/Saeru reminds me of the imagery/symbolism of Uroboros (Ouroboros)

The imagery of a snake devouring its own tail to represent the cycle of destruction and rebirth

I've been meaning to make a post about this but I forgot

I was just thinking of how much this imagery/symbolism fits him...

F: I've heard of Uroboros from a game and the meaning, I never thought about associating it with Kuroha-

Tho it does fit, he destroys the future of the MekaDan and then the rebirth part is Mary reseting the world

Me: Destruction of the eyes at the end of a Route (destruction of the world) and rebirth (world rewinding back to the beginning)

Me: It would be nice to draw him with the Uroboros symbol 💗 I was thinking about how much it fits him with the context of KagePro!

Misc Rambles

When I first came off priv on this side blog, I was debating whether to use hashtags on my ramble posts or not.

I used to be on priv on my side blog cuz I was used to having priv accs for rambles with Twt and Insta, but then I came off priv when I realized how limiting Tumblr priv blogs were.

So I started using Tumblr as a public archive to remind myself of which rambles I've posted on my socials, since I copy post the rambles from my Notion docs

At first I was wondering whether to tag my posts (doodles or rambles) or not, but whenever I tried searching for stuff to ref old posts, I couldn't find them even with key words

I mainly started tagging my posts cuz Tumblr's search function was so dogshit I couldn't even search and find my own posts without them

Tumblr's search engine is ASS without hashtags

So I started using them to sort my interests and ref my posts

Ig the other option would be saving the links in a Notion doc and putting a header of what the post is about

Quote Bots

Me: Douman (FGO) and Idate (WATGBS AU) taught me that cannibalism can be a metaphor for intense love (in fiction) 👍

Me: OMG. LIMGUDA??? THIS QUOTE BOT FUCKS

THIS IS ALSO SO KUROENE OMG

I NEED TO CAPTION A LIMGUDA AND KUROENE ART POST WITH THIS

C: OP of this bot: Haha Cannibal gay esque quotes go brr

You, an intellectual: My demon meow meows are resonating with this

Me: 👍

Basically before Twt's bot API died, some accounts were gathering their favourite quotes from poets and literature and such, to post as tweets. And people would QRT with the quotes that vibed with their fave characters/ships

Not only LimGuda, but ngl this quote also fits sooo perfectly with KuroEne cuz of the symbolism of Uroboros, a snake always swallowing its own tail.

"Ouroboros (Uroboros): a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth"

Which is exactly what Kuroha/Saeru's role is by destroying the "Eyes" (killing the Mekakushi Dan who are represented by their Eye Abilities) and forcing Mary to use her powers as a Medusa to reset the timeline, causing a never ending time loop tragedy (hence, an eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth)

I first saw the Uroboros symbol in KHR with Mammon when I was 11

It reminds me of how in KHR, Mammon, who is the Mist-flame Illusionist of the Varia, has Fantasma as their frog familiar but it turns into a snake swallowing its own tail when Mammon uses their powers to fly/get more serious with their powers

Also FMA as well

F: I wouldn't call this cannibalism, just endless physical mess 😭 The fact both the moebius strip and Uroboros represents "endlessness" really shows a lot

Me: Oh yeah I meant that just in general, the quote bot mainly posts Cannibal/Ship esque quotes

KuroEne Dialogue Scripts

KuroEne AU: Kuroha joins the Mekakushi Dan and pretends to be one of them, and proceeds with the plan to kill everyone on August 15th. Mary and Ene are the only ones left and team up against Kuroha. They sneak into Saeru's underground lab, trying to come up with a plan. Ene finds his designs and plans on her body while searching through his lab and confronts Kuroha when he finds her, and Kuroha tells her how he gave her everything she wanted.

These are still WIPs but I was thinking of something like this

Not the whole thing obviously, cuz this Route is REALLY LONG. This is a snippet of KuroEne's exchange

...

KuroEne AU: Mary and Ene team up against Kuroha. Ene confronts him when they’re alone together

So I imagined this scenario would happen when Ene confronts Kuroha. Basically, Ene stalls for time while Mary goes to search the other rooms, and Ene asks him everything she's wanted to know that he kept a secret from her up until this point

(The details of his android body, how he made it, his goals/motives, why he chose to do all of this and play the game with her, etc.)

Kuroha decides to indulge her curiosity & give her answers since it's the grand finale (of their game)

Me: Was watching recent FGO story - Ordeal Call 3 (OC3) so I got inspired to write this

F: SHE CLAPPED BACK

Clock that snake

Even Kuroha brings up the fact he did give her everything she wanted

I've always HC'ed that KagePro takes place during 2014

Me: That fact's pretty much deniable. He made all her wishes come true, even if it came at a heavy cost

Yeah I imagine it probably takes place around 2010s - mid 2010s

F:

Your KuroEne AU Final Route idea of Kuroha being a helper for the Kozakura family would be such a good idea of him being able to move onto the future together, despite him revealing his evil intentions

The idea of Kuroha living along with the MekaDan and the rest of the world…

F: That's when KagePro started anyway ✨

...

Yeah I honestly think this would be the perfect ending for them

Though some things need to get fleshed out since HaruTaka are supposed to reunite in the end

It'd be nice if he uses his knowledge of tech to make a body for himself to inhabit

Maybe this time he can live out his life/existence putting his knowledge to good use instead as a guardian figure to Azami/Mary's family

Though admittedly, I'm much more interested in the XX amount of Routes in a KuroEne AU than the Final Route

Since I like exploring their endless possibilities. But a good end for KuroEne is fun to think about

F: True, KagePro doesn't end

Let them keep being reunited in multiple routes until the world ends, which is impossible-

Me: The world being constantly rewinded to the beginning means they'll get to meet again forever and ever ✨

F: Infinite sex glitch wtf 😭

Me: If I were to do a Final Route for KuroEne, I'd have to come up with a less stupid way for him getting defeated

One that's actually feasible, and not bland/boring/generic/badly written like MCA was

No way would the "embodiment of knowledge" get defeated by the power of friendship so easily…

Though right now I'm more interested in writing many KuroEne Routes

F: DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.

Me: He's going to hang onto his concept of eternity as much as he can

The only solution that I can see for this is that Kuroha uses his knowledge of tech to occupy an immortal body himself, (maybe HaruTaka gets reunited?), but he makes himself an Ene to be with

F: My guy coded a robot girlfriend props to him 😭😭

...

Also let's be fr, Kuroha would like being called "evil" and "the most evil person in the entire world" by Ene. Because it's an acknowledgement of him and his true nature

He had been pretending to be nice up until this point for the sake of the game, but Ene acknowledges him by calling him by his true name (after he's revealed all his cards and true intentions/betrayal)

He'd take it as a compliment. He'd be especially delighted at being called "the most evil person in the whole world..." It's an ego boost for him lmao

(Just gonna use this for phrasing cuz it's hard to put a defining term on their r/s in my KuroEne AU)

Like their r/s in my KuroEne AU is like lovers in a way...? But it's really messy

...

Me: Oh one thing I thought about is that he'd like getting called evil by Ene. He'd take it as a compliment. Especially getting called "The world's greatest evil" and "An evil monster"

F: I KNEW IT

Like it's an ego boost for him

"I'm so evil even my wife calls me evil I'm so good at being evil-"

Me: RIGHT

He'd brag about being evil and how they can't kill/defeat him

"Look at me I'm so evil even my wife calls me evil!"

(I'm evil and in your way)

Trying very hard to Impress gloat/call attention towards him

It strokes his ego

Me: I was debating whether I should use the term "Evil of Humanity" or "Threat to Humanity" but that's specifically a FGO term for Beasts

The Beasts in FGO are beings that manifests as calamities that threaten human history (and represent mankinds' greatest Sins/flaws)

Me: So I didn't want it to be too on the nose. It would fit him tho

Me: Especially for him to be called "The world's greatest evil" like he'd be smug at Ene saying there's no one more evil than him

F: It's like her admitting that's he's good at being evil 😭

Tbh he'd laugh at every negative comment she makes about him

Me: Like he'd be like "My cute cheeky wife is calling me evil wwww"

"Doesn't it prove how good I am at it?"

F: Him proposing to Ene in the middle of this mess would be funny to imagine (idk why I just came up with that) 💀

Me: HWHDHSHDS IT WOULD BE

Like in a lighthearted casual way

His form of "marriage proposal" would be like "I may have killed all your friends (collateral damage who cares), but I gave you everything you wanted, didn't I?"

/lh /j

KuroEne Rambles

KuroEne is one of my top fave ships (I tie all of them as no. 1), but I definitely do approach them differently from my other faves.

KuroEne is my case study ship like it's fascinating to me

I'm studying them like a hamster spinning on a wheel

My mad scientist brain (or maybe Kuroha/Saeru's mad scientist brain?) is going off the rails /lh

Every other fave ship of mine, I want them to be happy. My ship AUs are generally fluffy and focused on the ship and their character interactions and intimate moments and them spending together. Building moments of emotional rapport.

It isn't KagePro without tragedy y'all 👍

So that's why KuroEne's relationship ends up being super angsty (angst up the wazoo). I mainly write fluff for my other ships, but I clearly have a lot of fun writing angst too

It's inevitable with Kuroha's character that his ships would all be tinged in tragedy/angst

Once my faves are past the initial animosity/hostility, getting to know each other, I could definitely see my other ships in actual romantic relationships. KuroEne is different though

I see them as the type that's not really in a usual romantic relationship, but that they will meet and cross paths with each other and meet and engage in intimacy with charged sexual tension.

My ship AU for KuroEne is focused on their character interactions and intimate moments too, but for KuroEne, I want their infinite XXX amount of Routes to keep on going forever so I can keep writing their endless possibilities cuz it's so fun to think of

All the different outcomes with them fuels my creative juices (irt art and writing)

There are some ships where I'm like "I don't think of them in terms of being in a usual romance/relationship, I just think they're interesting"

And yeah. KuroEne engage in intimacy, but their r/s would be soooo complicated and messy, and that's what makes it fun.

Like I ship KuroEne mainly because they're my faves and cuz I think their dynamic/relationship potential would be interesting to explore.

I also love that Ene is really confrontational and aggressive and assertive with him (but would still be able to have a certain tenderness/softer side towards him too in their interactions)

Cuz imo KuroEne works better as a ship than KuroTaka. Their personalities mesh better together

KuroTaka still works but even though Takane/Ene are the same person, KuroTaka has much more personality clash.

She would react differently to him as Takane and clash way more with him (bite heads and get really aggressive and violent wtih him)

KuroEne is more appealing cuz their personalities balance each other out rather well. KuroTaka's personalities together is much more imbalanced

I have more thoughts on this, but, Haruka is the perfect counter to Takane, and Kuroha is the perfect counter to Ene (who has trouble being honest with her feelings and desires)

He is generally knowledgeable and good at reading people and figuring them out/their emotions/desires...

KuroEne is a different case from my other ships tho because of Kuroha's role/setup as the instigator of the time loop tragedy constantly killing the cast who retains the knowledge/memories of previous Routes...

So in these XXX amount of Routes, they get reset back to 0 at the end, everytime, and then they meet again... And so the cycle of eternity continues. And Saeru remembers all these encounters.

Their relationship is filled with conflict and tension, desperation, love, obsession, passion, yearning, desire, attachment.

KuroEne is definitely different from my other ships, cuz, in the context of a ship AU, Kuroha/Saeru loves mainly for his own sake due to his nature and selfish, twisted desires. The emotions are real, but it lacks pure, genuine love.

I imagine that the KuroEne AU started cuz he wanted to prove his theory that humans will do anything for love.

Irt how the KuroEne AU starts

He first questions humans' desire for love (that he probably mistook as lustful pleasure) then he decided to test his experiments on Ene (due to his vessel). Takane/Ene is more affected by Haruka & Konoha than anyone else. And that's how he comes up with the whole idea of the "game" with her, their trysts. And that's when he approaches her with the proposal to make her a body...

He pulls off his elaborate scheme in the most roundabout convoluted way, lol

One that he presents to the other party as being an equal trade, but ultimately benefits himself, mostly.

When he proposes the game to her, he makes an unfair trade that mostly benefits him the most, but he sees it as fair because it "benefits both parties" and the benefits/advantages of his game far outweigh the collateral damage

He considers it fair because he gives his partner everything they want... But he robs them of a future at the end.

Though it is true that Kuroha/Saeru grants all of Ene's wishes in their relationship... He caters to her wishes and appeases her personality and whims, takes her out wherever she wants, gives her gifts, and love and affection...

Kuroha gives her everything she wanted (even if it comes at a heavy cost)

That heavy cost being - He kills everyone at the end.

He gives her everything except for what she truly wants (getting to move onto the future with everyone and have a happy life)

And he gets to satisfy his desires for accumulating more knowledge (with getting to build the android body and improve on it)

It's filled with a very ILL affection, cuz he is at his core, ill.

Even Douman can be very genuine/show more tender sides...

When he reveals himself to Ene, the betrayal's gonna sink in... Like, if you spend that much time getting to know someone then the betrayal from him revealing his true intentions is gonna be devastating

I imagine they were basically living together for 1 - 2 years in one of Kenjirou's spare homes so they're constantly around each other

I imagine that he genuinely enjoyed his act of playing pretend with his S/O (and to the rest of the MekaDan, if he decides to join them and act nice) and enjoyed the time he spent with them, and that's exactly why he won't give it up.

Like...... He's gonna push back against the idea of Ene proposing moving onto the future with everyone as much as possible for the sake of his own immortality (above all else), and then, on a secondary level, for the sake of the game - the love that's keeping him fulfilled and fueling his obsession

I wrote dialogue scripts for this up above - Kuroha/Saeru immediately pushes back against Ene's ideas/notions of moving on with everyone (what he deems as foolish)

Though said dialogue scripts are still a WIP

Like. No. He gets everything he wants this way, why should he give that up and settle for anything less?

[canmom]

so there's a widely used tool called ReShade which intercepts the DirectX API calls of a game to add additional post-processing effects using the game's frame and depth buffers. basically gives you access to various deferred techniques, with certain technical caveats. common effects include bloom, depth of field, tonemapping, and screen space ambient occlusion.

one of the more ambitious effects is Screen Space Realtime Global Illumination (SSRTGI, or just RTGI), implemented in Marty's Mods. this attempts to simulate diffuse-diffuse interreflection, i.e. how the light from a brightly lit object will spill onto surrounding objects. it's a very important part of rendering bright, colourful scenes.

Global Illumination is usually handled in offline rendering by raytracing, and there's been a lot of excitement in the last few years about the new realtime raytracing acceleration hardware in graphics cards. SSRTGI doesn't use this at all: it knows nothing about the scene geometry beyond the depth buffer. instead it uses raymarching, which steps a ray forward a fixed distance at a time until it discovers an intersection with the depth buffer. Since we're using the depth buffer, the algorithm only knows about the near sides of objects.

This video is a bit rambling but it shows some of the limitations of SSRTGI:

So this has been a fun new toy to play with now my computer can handle it. For example, here's a scene with a bright dancefloor in FFXIV's default renderer, which by default has a strong green tint and desaturated colours.

The Alive preset's colour grade improves matters a lot (this scene doesn't necessarily show the best of it, but removing the green tint and desaturation is a night and day difference throughout the game)...

...but my character's legs should be affected by the bright floor. Enter SSRTGI. I can actually isolate the exact RTGI contribution:

I've turned up the ray length a fair bit compared to the Alive preset's default, since it was a bit too subtle to be worth the performance hit otherwise.

You can see that the SSRTGI models both ambient occlusion and indirect light from bright surfaces. Essentially, each pixel traces a ray in a random direction until it hits a surface visible to the camera. Then, it samples the brightness of that pixel and calculates a light contribution and AO amount. I assume it does some kind of average over neighbouring pixels to smooth out the noise.

The effect is a little subtle, but it makes the scene look more integrated...

...at the cost of a hefty framerate hit (using a 4070Ti; unmodded FFXIV runs at an 1440p ultrawide on an easy 144fps (the monitor refresh rate), without RTGI I can get into the mid 90s, with RTGI it's pretty resolutely locked at 72), and heating my graphics card up to 70-80°C (well within tolerances but it's rare to see a game push it that hard).

The effect may be a little subtle in this scene, which has a lot of high frequency detail and darker materials. It really pops in the Fall Guys crossover, which is a very bright scene.

Note the bright green reflected light on the green cube as a particularly obvious RTGI effect (although the shadow it casts is kinda janky ngl). I should really get a screenshot of the exact RTGI contribution in this area, and create a suite of comparisons like the above.

The RTGI also stands out on bright days in Ul'dah, it does a lot for the Gold Saucer, and generally it makes certain environmental light sources a bit prettier. If you turn it up too much it starts to look a bit silly, since brightly lit floors turn into brilliant torches lighting up nearby walls. But there's a comfy middle ground where it's noticeable without being too extreme. I'm looking forward to seeing how it fares in the colourful areas of the expansions, but this character isn't out of ARR yet.

So, that's cool and all, but toying around with SSRTGI, you really start to feel its limits compared to true raytracing. For example, objects will cast shadows in the indirect lighting, but the specular light contributions are not properly affected by the base game's shadowmaps, so you see speculars in places that you shouldn't. A decent number of surfaces in FFXIV have planar reflections (using the usual technique of rendering the scene inverted through the mirror to a rendertexture), which is nice, but there's no middle ground between 'perfect mirror' and 'rough specular that still reflects the scene'. And of course the other usual limitations of SSRTGI, e.g. a brightly lit surface must be visible to the camera to contribute light.

No, this is nice and all, but the people want real raytracing. Which leads me to wonder is there a way to intercept all the draw calls issued by an application, extract the geometry from them, reformat it for raytracing and feed it into the raytracing hardware - basically replace the game's entire render pipeline with raytracing?

This is going to take some research. It very likely isn't possible, or performant if it was possible, because a lot of smart tech artists have already been working hard to push the limits of ENBSeries, Reshade, etc. (Acerola has a solid video on implementing various effects in Reshade.) But the imp of the perverse in me wants to figure out if it can be done. After all, RenderDoc is capable of intercepting and analysing all the draw calls issued by an application. The question is, how severe is the overhead of on-the-fly translating rasterisation calls into raytracing calls? Most likely absolutely hideous! That's not how you're supposed to use a graphics card!

Since the hardware I develop for very definitely does not support raytracing, I have relatively little idea how you actually write a shader with raytracing. But now I kind of want to find out. If I ever get anywhere beyond idle thoughts, I'll let you know what I find out.

[bbsprint]

PMT01: Scaffold nano & Trowel pico

Scaffold nano & Trowel pico v1.1.0 have been released tonight.

Updates add a myStages to Scaffold, and QoL improvements to the powerup editing experience in Trowel pico.

Now that it's out, I'd like to also take this moment to talk about the development and release of both.

One year minus one day ago I had announced in Twitter I would work on the level editor for the demo version of BRICKBREAKER SPRINT (nano) so fans could breathe in more life to the game even in its limited state and to also showcase how much it can do with its limited toolset at the current time.

The reasoning for a completely separate technology version was simple, WebGL. WebGL in Unity is so limited for even the most basic things (I had to install a package to support cross-app copy/paste before nano+'s release!) and I said "hey, might as well give the multiplatform users something to be able to edit with, doesn't need to be just windows which is what the currently unpolished-ish trowel desktop is!"

But then it hit me that the same limitations would likely make it hell for me to support just levels downloaded as files (internally stored with "bxtp" extension btw :) ) so then... I came at a crossroads

just say FKIT and not do it, make ppl wait for BB Lite

still say FKIT and kickstart the foundation of the online service that I had planned since the first design iteration of the game

guess what I took?

I don't regret it.

Currently, Scaffold's login system is attached to itch.io. In the future, this will use my own account system (called Luna, still in development)

Now then... developing Scaffold's frontend was a challenge in itself, because I'm a masochist. I chose yet another technology to make the frontend in, this time Svelte, Sveltekit as backend saying "okay, no more fear of ServerSideRendering now that I can afford a VPS for this"

but... Svelte has been an absolute joy to work with. Its learning curve even smoother than React's (my first frontend framework, which powers cometSpectrum!), and I got everything rolling very quickly

At first, I was going to use my regular website design language, but it's kinda jank, so I said NO and started from scratch with a simpler façade. For the style I wanted to pursue... it was perfect. Some people have complimented the graphic aspect of the site, and I'm happy I could deliver exactly what I wanted. (and yes the icons being in opposite directions compared to bbsprint's UI is entirely on purpose)

BTW, the site is made in such a way that a BB theme could be used as the site's theme and every color will change except for PNG icons, i love it (this functionality is used for people using their OS's Light theme)

This is actually the first made-by-me website project that has "public" facing write actions to a database and stores actual files. It works... very well, and I am very happy about it. It's like a combination of everything I've learnt up to this point, down to API design and interop between programs.

I did say this was the foundation for Scaffold, and I plan for this game to keep Scaffold as its prime way of getting stages, even when getting to storefronts like Steam or GOG. Kind of like an osu! situation.

You're at this part of the message... wanna see how Scaffold's logo used to look like?

[vanillaxoshi]

septuplet au

Sibling competition part 3.

.

.

.

" Alright everyone it's time for our fun! Now ! Let us fill you about the rules and the race ! "

"We have three total rounds ! Each rounds will disqualified some group before the final round ! "

"Frist! We have game stations located everywhere in the school ! Competitors have to find where the station is and finish the game to gain the ribbon as a prove you finished the game !"

" Once you gain the over 3 ribbon you are qualified to enter the second round ! "

" Now everyone !Do you see that big board is locate at the middle of the field? And it's have number label on it ! All you need is one of the teammate punch through a label to get a piece of card that have a image as clue about what and where is the station is ! "

" Remember ! The card you hold must be given the station holder as a ticket to play the game ! If not you'll not able to play ! Once you finish the game they will give you a other piece of card for the next station ! "

" You're given one hour to finish the games and return to the field ! If you don't have enough ribbon or didn't return in time ! You're disqualified ! "

" Oh ! - I almost forgot to mention! Beware of the yellow caps 'Troublemakers' that is in the school ! They will be stalling you in anyway they can once you meet them ! So you gonna avoid or run away form them ! "

" So that's all the rules now ! I'll will be back for the second round explanation ! The race starts after a 30 seconds ! Once the count down end the race shall be start ! "

"Wow that's a long explanation."

" Of course it will ! After the competition that held last year, more people want to attend this . That cause the school have to bring up more exciding games for it !"

" You look very exciding for this don't you ?."

Fang giggle for Haya's excitement .

" Yeah ! Of course ! "

Cahaya is hyping beside Fang as he rambles about the competition .

10!

The crowds are all hype up as they count down for their friend and families .

9!

"So are you ready for this Fang ?"

8!

"Oh hell yeah !"

7!

" So Fang, later you go to get the card . I'll be waiting you at the......."

"Ok ! So does that mean that way is more easy to get upstairs .........."

6!

As the duo discussing there's 5 pairs of eyes are watching them from the distance.

5!

They're belongs the other septuplet siblings which are Tanah who is team up with Daun and Petir team up with Api on the field.

4!

Air are watching them form the school 2nd floor's window eating the food with Gopal .

3!

Angin is nowhere to be found .......which is strange . He's not like someone who will miss out such events , where did he go ?

2!

The competitors starts get to ready to get the card .

1!

Everyone have starts run toward to the board !

.

.

.

" Er...... Haya are you sure that you don't need a break ? You look-"

"Ha-huff- I'm fine Fang- just let me catch a breath-huff-"

They are currently on the staircase hiding form those 'troublemakers' and the other groups .

First, after Fang got the card and go to the station to finish the game . It appears that each station have limited ribbons if the station runs out ribbons they will give you the card immediately that lead to the station that still have ribbons. Which basically make the ribbon is hard to get that they end up have people to fight over the ribbons.

Which makes them a walking target , they have gain 3 ribbons already what only left is return to the field .

Cahaya don't know he should feel lucky or feel bad now . Because earlier when they got targeted they run into Tanah and Daun who's also have gain 3 ribbons . With them Cahaya and Fang runs aways as they become the new target .

Now there're are running out of time because it only have 15 minutes left . And the location they are currently need almost 10 minutes to return the field but it make it more harder because most of the competitors are still in the school looking for target .

"Hey, Cahaya ? I know a shortcut that can get us there very fast but .......you might not like it ."

" Show me - I don't think I can come up with a better plan now."

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" Huff- huff we are back- form war !!!!"

Daun lay down on the field soon they arrive the safe zone .

" Took you guys long enough ."

" Hey! It's now fair that you can just leap away with your power Petir !''

" I agreed with Daun with this."

comes from very exhausted Tanah who just run away the people that want the ribbons .

" Ha ! Suck for you guys !"

" Api don't - we are all exhausted . By the way where is Cahaya now''

" Just run in them earlier ....I don't think they can get back in time."

" Is that so ...... I immediately rush back here before I can check on them......Hum-?"

The siblings hears a familiar voice shouting from distance.

They turn their heads only see Cahaya are climbing down from a ....... Wait is that a ladder ?! From the 2nd floor ?!?!

Fang is holding the ladder .

" FANG WHERE DO YOU GET THIS LONG LADDER !?!?!?"

" I TOLD YOU IT'S A BAD IDEA !"

" DON'T YOU DARE LET GO YOUR HAND !!!!"

"I DEFINITELY WOULDN'T LET GO !!!"

Tanah and Petir looks like having a heart attack now .

Api and Daun didn't know they should be worried or amazed .

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"Huff-huff-- We made it Fang !!!!"

" Yeah ...... I decide that's a shortcut I'll never use again"

The duo have arrive the safe zone as the times up.

"Times up !!!!! congrats for the people who got into round two ! And for those who did make it don't worry and try again next year !"

" That's was a close one !"

"Alright Haya , lets hope your brothers wouldn't kill me about this ."

" I hope so......"

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I'll make two more parts for last two rounds.

The utter chaos theyre doing

The brothers would definitely get mad at fang after all that, assuming theykl do some more crazy ideas in the next two :)