#bork bork resources

[technofeudalism]

Alternatives to Mainstream Online Platforms

Facebook | Diaspora, Friendica

Twitter | Mastodon, Pleroma Left/Anarcho/Alt friendly sites: todon.nl, todon.eu, ni.hil.ist, kolektiva.social

Reddit | Raddle

Youtube | Peertube Left/Anarcho/Alt friendly sites: Squat!Net Peertube, Kolektiva Peertube

Gmail/Hotmail |

Free Riseup, ProtonMail, Tutanota, Disroot email, Autistici email

Paid Mailbox, StartMail

Instagram/Imgur/Flickr | Pixelfed

Forums | Discourse, Disroot Discourse, nodebb, Raddle

Wordpress.org | noblogs.org, network23, Pleroma

Whatsapp, Telegram, SMS | Signal (Centralized), Matrix, Briar, Silence

Slack, Discord | Matrix, Rocket Chat, Pixie.town, Revolt (Unencrypted), Mattermost, IRC, XMPP

Google Docs | CryptPad, Disroot nextcloud

Political Organizing | Amplify, Mobilizon

Events Agenda | radar.squat.net

Craigslist | Freecycle

Apple Maps, Bing Maps, Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps | OpenStreetMap

[trashshouldnt]

having the "palerom is not friends/platonic/queerplatonic" woes again lads

[ruckis-kingstarr]

btw if you wanna turn your writing into a ttf file so you can make your own font and you're chill with making accts on websites, Calligrapher is pretty cool (x)

[pforestsims]

☀️ Sunburn [BV] & Overheat [SSN] txtr default

Includes AM overheat texture fix by Epi*

Download: SFS | BOX

*In vanilla game AM overheat body overlay 3IDR is incorrectly linked to AF TXMT. @episims has kindly made a fix for it - it's incorporated with my overlay default.

Update: Added new (alternative!) version of the Sunburn default with teen overlay fix created by @episims - it contains GZPS resource overrides so now teens get correct textures BUT you need to make sure no teen sims in your game have old sunburn / suntan overlay applied when you install it!

More under the cut:

*This is obviously for The Sims 2

*Guys also get tan lines, archive contains preview pic

NOTE: TF overlay is borked - it uses AM overlay - unfortunately this issue goes deeper than TXMT / 3IDR. Tan overlay is also not right, in that case the TM is using AF texture. This default doesn't fix that.

With Epi's teen GZPS override / fix installed (it is optional, sunburn txtr default without this fix is also available) old suntan / sunburn overlays on teens (body) become non-removable. Can be removed only with Sim Blender (change appearance/..), but first you need to age sim to adult and apply tan or sunburn overlay again for the 'remove' option to appear.

So it's best to make sure you don't have any sunburned or tanned teens when you install the default with a fix.

Sunburn (pics above) consists of universal scalp and universal face texture, plus three body textures for CU, UF and UM. I've noticed PU texture in the game files but it's not used so I haven't touched it.

For Seasons EP, Eaxis recycled the BV sunburn texture. Overheated texture consists of universal scalp and universal face texture, plus four body textures: PU, CU, UF and UM, all of these are used (children and toddlers in TS2 might get overheated but are much more resistant to extreme weather than teens/adults).

My replacement has no redness on the scalp and nose. The body txtr was desaturated, made more transparent and darker, otherwise it's unchanged.

Some crunchiness cannot be avoided with transparent body overlays, especially with light-on-dark - there's always gonna be artifacts, even if actual texture looks ok. But I'm sure you'll argee it's way better than original.

Pic above: Sunburn & overheating. Fun! 🤪

[karalianne]

NaNoWriMo Fire

I have been posting comments on NaNoWriMo's Facebook page, to the most recent three posts there (copied and pasted). My latest one has apparently been blocked or something, so I'm going to start sharing here. Please do share this far and wide.

If you don't know what the NaNoWriMo fire is, I have two resources for you:

Reddit Post (took two to post the whole story)

Google Docs summary (being actively updated as things continue to burn)

So below the fold I'm pasting the comments I put on Facebook, in order. Enjoy!

March 5, 20204

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the goal here is to shutter NaNoWriMo as an organization. I wish you guys would just DO IT ALREADY instead of pretending you're trying to do right by the community. That ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS ABOMINATION of a new ML agreement is reprehensible. I hope NOBODY signs it, because it is BLATANTLY trying to put ALL BLAME for anything that goes wrong directly on the ML's. Which is ludicrous. On top of that, if people have concerns about the agreement they are automatically being removed as ML. That's not good faith. It's not transparency. I've been trying to believe the best but obviously that was really silly of me and I apologize for believing that everyone is capable of actually doing better.

March 7, 2024

The Board Update is laughable and reinforces the impression I offered in my previous comment. Basically, nobody on the Board right now was even there when all this stuff happened. NaNoWriMo the organization is not actually listening to the feedback from the community; supposedly there have been focus groups but none of the people I'm in contact with (which is a lot of people who have all been very heavily involved with the organization over the years) ever got an invitation. I am just one person, and I am aware that I am not owed anything. However, this entire thing continues to be mismanaged, and I do not for one second believe that the organization is heading in the right direction.

Again, I suggest you just shut things down completely like you're obviously planning. All the noises about trying to do the right thing, followed by this alarming lack of actually doing the right thing and incredibly tone-deaf approach, are not helping the situation. Support for the organization is dwindling, and I am not surprised. That's what happens when you ignore and/or woefully mismanage your response to concerns.

March 9, 2024

Well, I'm back for another round of "I thought I told you not to do this kind of thing." Again, I know I'm just a person and nobody has to listen to me, but I know plenty of people who agree with me.

First, regarding the FAQ for MLs, there are contradictions and missing words. I try not to criticize that sort of thing too much (in spite of being a trained proofreader) but this is supposed to be a writing organization, and you people at HQ are supposed to be writers. Do better.

Second, it has come to my attention that both the Terms & Conditions and the Codes of Conduct have been updated with no notification. That is ridiculous and unethical, not to mention poor business practice. Literally every organization I am connected to sends an e-mail to let me know when there are changes upcoming, and often those changes are outlined so I know what to expect. And then I have the option to leave if I don't agree with those changes.

If you did send a notification e-mail prior to these changes being implemented, well, hey, we already knew the e-mail system was borked so whatever. But it looks like literally NOBODY got a notification of the upcoming changes, which indicates that there was no attempt to follow best practices.

It is clear to me, and to many other people in the community, that nobody at HQ actually knows how to manage a non-profit. I'm also pretty sure you don't understand ethics or best practices. You're trying to get ahead of bad things that ALREADY HAPPENED, and if you're actually consulting a lawyer about all of these things before you do them, they are giving you horrible advice. You also needed a PR team back in like November (maybe even October).

There's a weird attitude that I've seen all over the place, that people who are being vocal about this disaster are being mean or trying to destroy NaNoWriMo or something like that. I want to be crystal clear here: People who are being vocal are speaking up on behalf of people who needed a voice. People were being abused and others decided to help them get out of that situation. When the expected solution (reporting to HQ) did not result in appropriate actions, they moved to make the situation public. (That's when I found out and got involved.)

When we were discussing problems and asking questions on the forums in November, we were trying to be productive. We were looking for answers, making suggestions, explaining what was wrong (because as we talked we learned that there was far more than just the Mod X situation that was wrong), offering our assistance... and we got shut down.

Now I'm also hearing that there has been a focus group. Who was in that focus group? How did you get the participants? Nobody I know was contacted to be on that focus group. Are you actually LISTENING to the participants? Are the people you're recruiting all folks who've made it clear they're mad at those of us who are using our voices to call out abuses of power, poor organization and business practices, and unethical behaviour? I don't care if I'm not approached to be a part of a focus group, but making sure you involve an assortment of viewpoints would be beneficial.

I am just incredibly disappointed in how everything has gone and is going. The yacht has sailed. It's time to accept that and move on.

March 12, 2024 (the one that isn't showing up)

Every time I turn around, it seems, there's something new to facepalm over. It is becoming increasingly clear that HQ is on the defensive. You need someone on staff, like, six months ago, who is actually capable of professional communication. Right now, we're receiving passive-aggressive whinges about how many e-mails there are and how you're giving up vacations in order to reply to them. At least some of the foolish "answers" on the FAQ (which again, why is that on Zendesk? That makes no sense.) have been removed. The thing is, nevermind Pepperidge Farm, the Internet remembers. EVERYTHING.

It is not professional to tell your subordinates (whether staff or volunteers) that you're giving up personal time in order to deal with a mess that is your responsibility to deal with. It is not professional to complain about having to do a job you agreed to take on.

It is not ethical to try and get anti-union verbage into an agreement for volunteers. It is not ethical to try and get volunteers to take on all liability for events they organize on your behalf.

It is incredibly rude to treat adults as if they are misbehaving children. Especially not when they are bringing you legitimate concerns and criticisms about how your organization is handling a serious situation.

And yes, a lot of this one is specifically about Kilby, because WTF? How have you been on multiple boards and not learned how to do all of this stuff properly? You were absolutely NOT the right person for the job, and it's laughable that you think you were.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The White House on Sunday released an executive order by President Trump that laid out a plan to exert the federal government’s role in California’s complex water management operations and claimed its authority to overrule state officials.

The order, dated Friday, comes after Mr. Trump traveled to the state to see the devastation from wildfires that have been raging in Los Angeles for weeks. It put formal directives behind Mr. Trump’s steady criticism of California’s leaders and their response to the fires.

In a section titled “Overriding Disastrous California Policies,” the order tasked more than half a dozen agencies with finding ways to circumvent federal and state laws that control various aspects of water management in California. It also directed the Interior Department to make decisions about how to supply water around the state, “notwithstanding any contrary state or local laws.”

More confrontational language in the order directed federal officials to stake out their authority without necessarily working alongside the state officials who manage the state’s reservoirs and plan for droughts and fires.

Interior Department officials “shall take all available measures to ensure that state agencies — including the California Department of Water Resources — do not interfere with the Bureau of Reclamation’s operation of the project,” the order said, referring to a federally operated network of dams, reservoirs, canals and other facilities.

Many of the actions outlined in the order relate to restrictions governed by the Endangered Species Act, since the region is home to several imperiled fish. One of them attempts to convene a committee known as the God Squad that can override the law, ultimately leading to the extinction of a species. Conservation groups blasted the order and threatened to sue depending on how it is implemented.

Despite the language of the executive order, the White House is constrained by existing federal laws, state laws and nature, said Karrigan Bork, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and the interim director of its Center for Watershed Sciences.

“I don’t think it changes things very much,” Mr. Bork said of the order. “And it certainly doesn’t change California’s hydrology, which imposes the most significant limits on the amount of water that can flow to the Central Valley and Southern California.”

[penultimate-step]

the new wuthering waves update literally lets you just at will get double amount of resources from grinding. doesn't change the gameplay at all just adds a little "x2?" button. And while yes this is a positive change that makes it twice as easy to play I do kind of think that if you have to implement a feature like that it is a sign that your progression system is at least a little irrevocably borked in the first place.

[bekandrew]

Laptop Necromancy

I'm running my whole art portfolio through Glaze. If you don't know, it's a program build by a group of uni students that's won awards and is designed to basically prevent AI libraries from being able to meaningfully "learn" anything from your art. It can be found here for free. It wouldn't run on my actually functional laptop (it tried rendering for 2 days straight and then got to something like "Time remaining: -200 minutes" and still never spat out anything completed). So, while waiting for the seemingly endless rendering to stop and a reply for access to their Web option, I decided to try something a little off the wall.

I ended up taking my largely non-functional old laptop (8+ yr old Dell Latitude i7) I hadn't figured out how to safely dispose of yet and see if I could give it new life. It was a mid-tier "gaming" laptop when I purchased it, though I needed the specs for heavy graphics work for work as an artist and as I was, for a time, still in uni for engineering before switching majors. It currently won't run most of the programs I need for work - it abjectly refuses to open Krita no mater what I do, and throws a fit and crashes with even GIMP sometimes. I even have to be careful with internet browsers now with that one. Its hard drive is pretty toast, hence why I needed to suck it up and get a new laptop. Something is damaged in a way I couldn't make a proper clone of the drive and something's fucked with the BIOS is fucked in a way I couldn't even run a recovery usb and it has no disk drive. It makes frightening noises from frequently trying to run its HDD at 100%. The casing itself is held together with duct tape and spite. This laptop survived several moves and homelessness before finally being too finicky to put up with after wife and I were rehoused. It literally requires support at all times to not be torn further apart by the weight of its own screen. It also needs to be elevated in a way to give the fans a little help. It's a technological senior citizen. Despite the hard drive being largely toast, the OS still works pretty fine. The RAM isn't high as I'd like, but it's not bad, either. It's main draw for this very specific purpose is the dual GPUs. There's a version of Glaze that you can force to run off a GPU instead of the CPU and make it go MUCH, MUCH (from my experience, literally 5-10 times or more faster).

I had a Solid State Drive lying around from when I'd attempted to keep the old laptop alive longer, so I stuck it in my external dock, installed Glaze on it, and filled it up with a folder of art to be Glazed. It then proceeded to take about a day and a half of fussing with graphics drivers - including uninstalling the one the uni students recommended and going back to my old one because the one they recommended was technically compatible but was borking things for some reason, and manually changing settings to force the computer to use the correct beefier GPU for the program. I also had to uninstall a ton of shit that was slowing my computer down and sometimes making it lock up entirely - things I used to need when I used that laptop for normal purposes but no longer needed there (things like Steam, Discord, Grammarly, etc).

So long as I don't run much of anything off of the internal HDD outside a couple Windows Explorer windows for viewing files and Task Manager to keep an eye on hardware status, it mostly stays nice and quiet now other than a few spikes here and there with low % usage. Glaze runs smoothly off the external SSD, the CPU and RAM usage remain pretty stable and manageable during rendering, with the GPU usage only at a little over half the computer's total capability. Despite being bested by much simpler daily usage, this old shell of a laptop now renders a resource-intensive program over in a corner and I can just check it every couple hours to see how it's doing.

[duckapus]

So... the fleshing out of Connected Cosmos: The Game is taking longer than I thought it would, but I have figured out what the eldritch monster main villain is and how it's affecting the code-napped Crossover Update universes.

I call it The Twilight. It's a pocket dimension made entirely of...for now let's call it highly corruptive mostly sentient anti-magic with a psychic hivemind structure. That's a massive oversimplification but I don't have the energy to explain the whole thing. It's invading the universes that make up the game's main areas by leaking through cracks in space-time, which creates shadow monster drones, possesses and transforms powerful and/or weak-minded beings, and slowly terraforms the universe surrounding the cracks.

Rising Star Circus actually got off...sort of lucky. While their full universe got thoroughly borked, the circus itself became part of the main hub universe, a gilded city of Sorcery on a mountaintop called Mount Nexus, which just so happens to be one of the few universes that the Twilight can't enter...outside of certain story events, of course.

Then there's Harmonia (scaled down somewhat so it's not bigger than every other map combined, so as to save on resources and not be suspicious), where Lumiere has somehow managed to cut a deal with the Twilight. At least, he thinks he has. All ten kingdoms are dealing with some sort of thematically appropriate catastrophe thanks to some powerful boss-type character being fed by a massive Twilit Rift (what I'm calling the cracks the Twilight are using) in each of them. Luminos got it worst off, with Lumiere setting up shop there and Queen Melody and most of her staff being possessed (Nimbus and a few others managed to get away).

Dreaming Gaia is... sort of okay? On one hand the Twilight aren't that much more threatening than the stuff that's already there outside of being an outside-context problem, on the other hand they resonate with Nightmare energy and the remnants of both cults are interested in them for different reasons.

And then Renata has no way to fend off extradimensional shadow monsters so they're kind of in the midst of an apocalypse right now. So on top of her occasional bouts of frantic lucidity due to her half-dose of the memory suppression virus she's also having to survive the potential end of the world with no idea if the few loved ones she can consistently remember are alive or dead. On the plus side the Twilight are close enough to Heartless that her Keyblade finally ends up manifesting to protect her.

Also, the Twilight are programmed with the secondary function of keeping anything from entering or exiting the game without the proper permissions. By force.

[azuhrasims]

I had big news on Friday!

I had a legacy challenge going back in 2020, the Unicorn Legacy. I've thought of them frequently since I last played at the end of gen 2. I tried loading into the game at some point in late 2022. I was able to the first time, but the sims behavior was borked after some update or another. I left it alone. I cam back later, after the Growing Together update, and couldn't even open the save. I was heart broken.

I worked on porting the sims to a new save, but I lost interest. I converted CC unicorn horns for all ages, because of this legacy.

On Friday, I was brave and tried to boot into the old save file again. Guess what works now? 🎉

Yesterday I started working on purging naked sims from the save - my CC has changed since 2021, okay? I purged buildings and sims from multiple worlds - this is a Build Newcrest Legacy Save, so it's focus is on Newcrest. I have more to do.

Today, I woke up and decided to make the start of a resources page for my Tumblr instead of save maintaining. Also, cleaning up Tumblr tags.

Good things, but for sure not what i thought would be happening yesterday.

Anyway, I wonder if my Baby Challenge save will open now? Hmm.

[technofeudalism]

remember: propaganda is praxis. if you have a printer, you can participate.

[ren-shonen]

Tools for Finding the Source on That Cool Art

If anybody is wondering how I have been finding the source posts on the art I've been reblogging recently, I make significant use of Google Image Search (GIS) reverse image search tool at https://images.google.com/ - where you upload an image that the search engine then uses as the search term to pull up pages that have that image on them. (Google Lens can also work in similar fashion.)

To make this faster, I use a browser addon called Search by Image by Armin Sebastian (in Firefox, but it's also available for other browsers and for mobile) which lets me just right-click on any image to pull up a GIS reverse search for it. It also will search other image search engines such as TinEye (which will sort by age, among other things).

Sometimes it takes following a few links to be able to find where someone has credited the artist by name, and that will then allow me to search for the artist's profile(s) directly. Twitter itself has a particularly robust internal search engine that allows you to search all posts by a particular account using keywords, date ranges, tweets containing links or media, etc., though you have to be logged in to use it (and Twitter is extra-borked right now, of course).

I also make significant use of an auto-translate addon called TWP - Translate Web Pages by FilipePS - very handy when search result pages are in languages I don't speak.

(I don't have the energy to write up further tips or find a proper tutorial to link, but if you've got other resources that might be useful, please feel free to add them!)

[winterinhimring]

Fair warning that that will take you way down the rabbit hole. C and its descendants belong to the family of compiled programming languages, which means that the computer doesn't actually run your code; it compiles it into a set of machine language instructions which is saved as an .exe file and then run. Most programs are only distributed as .exe files, which means that if you open them up in a debugger to see what Microsoft borked, you'll be looking at assembly, and assembly is its own beast. It's only barely comprehensible to humans, and the instructions are so specific and low-level that you're actually looking at the computer being told which segment of memory to go to. It's one step above binary. It can be learned - if you go far enough back, programmers actually recorded binary on punch cards - but it's a very different proposition from using C, which, for all that it's a challenge, does use full words. If I'm perfectly honest, it sounds to me like you're more interested in becoming a combination of a super user and a systems administrator than a programmer. Some basic C would probably still be a good idea to help you understand the foundational principles of coding, but I don't think you actually need to be fluent in it. I am less familiar with resources for systems administration than I am for programming, but I think there are some free courses out there if you Google for them.

What I would recommend for you based on what I do know is to look into the Windows SysInternals suite of tools, together with PowerShell and command prompt. SysInternals includes tools that allow you to view more detailed information about running processes than plain old Task Manager, and gives you more granular control over them. The command line (be that PS or cmd) is usually a faster way to get information about what's wrong with your computer than the GUI. This article looks like it might be a good place to start, and this one has some commands that might help you with identifying and repairing corrupted files. I would also check out SuperUser (as well as StackOverflow, my beloved) for specific problems you may be having; it works a lot like StackOverflow, but is more sysadmin-focussed. Windows Event Viewer will probably also be your friend, especially as a source of detailed error messages to search, though I bet you already know about that.

please learn how to code

like, if you're bored today, and not doing anything,

learn a little bit of coding please

[pforestsims]

If you create CC for TS2 you probably avoid using DXT1 format, because it often looks really bad, right? Well, I've got news for you😐

‣ SimPe texture viewer can't correctly decode DXT1 textures. It often displays artifacts not visible in the game.

Up until now it was not possible to extract such texture from a package without 'glitches'. @chieltbest recently shared their revolutionary YaPe package editor. It's an experimental version, for now - it's still being developed - but I've already edited 180+ CC textures with no issues. YaPe is very easy to use. It allows you to reconvert textures inside a package to different format, remove or add mipmaps with one click, replace textures with drag and drop method - supports JPEG, TIFF, DDS and more! You can get it here.

YaPe editor is also the only app I know, that allows you to extract DXT1 texture from the package file without glitches. Below the cut you'll find a little tutorial on that. I also included a detailed comparison of DXT textures built with various plugins:

Note: YaPe is a huge time saver, however I still recommend SimPe for textures with smooth gradients, where quality is very important - such as skintones, and especially dark ones (also for removing mipmaps from such content, current version of YaPe rebuilds textures in the process fixed).

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

*DXT1 format has gained a bad reputation amongst TS2 creators, mostly because of borked SimPe DXT1 texture preview/export.

But the fact is - DDS plugins (aside from SimPe DDS Builder) create DXT1 that looks quite similar or identical to flat DXT3 / DXT5.

Important thing about DXT1 format: file size is around half smaller than DXT3/5.

‣ What's wrong with SimPe DXT1 textures?

Nothing, really. SimPe /Nvidia tools DDS builder is using special settings for DXT1. It saves textures as DXT1a format.

Unlike ordinary DXT1 (DXT1c) that doesn't support transparency at all, DXT1a format has basic 1-bit transparency switch. DDS builder 'hides' black pixels from compression by enabling transparency - this trick is actually meant to reduce artifacts in some areas /thanks @chieltbest for explaining this/.

Transparent parts of DXT1a texture are displayed as black in the game, as long as TXMT doesn't have transparency enabled.

Below: DXT1a previewed in YaPe. Left pic features transparent pixels (hard to notice if you enable dark UI mode). Please note that, unlike SimPe, it displays colors and grays correctly.

‣ Extracting DXT1 texture without 'glitches' in YaPe:

Open package in YaPe editor. Preview TXTR resource, pick AltRGB24 (Raw24Bit) from dropdown menu.

AltRGB24 preview displays flattened version of the texture (texture background is exposed)

'Export DDS' button creates .dds file out of the previewed texture

/optional: If you save the changes, then you can reload the package and convert from Raw to DXT format/

exported DDS texture can be opened in apps with DDS plugin - GIMP, Paint.NET etc.

if you don't have apps with DDS plugin, you can use SimPe (click on texture in SimPe, pick 'import DDS..', choose dds exported in YaPe, then export as PNG.

Pic above: Yet Another Package Editor v0.4.0, light UI mode. My sample DXT1a texture in Alpha preview - transparent pixels are clearly visible.

⚠️ Editing original SimPe DXT1a texture with YaPe (removing or adding mipmaps - for example) and saving as DXT1 again, will most likely increase the number of 'false artifacts'

..however, the texture will still look decent in game. I edit CC with DXT1a for my own use that way - because reconverting to other formats doesn't improve texture quality, might even make it a little worse in some cases.

BUT if you're going to share such content, it might be best to reconvert it. Because if it looks very glitchy in SimPe, it also looks glitchy in Sims2Pack Clean Installer. And people might just delete it.

Alternatively, if you use DXT1 for your CC, you could inform people that "glitches" in SimPe / Clean Installer preview are not visible in the game.

DXT1 vs flat DXT 3/ 5:

(YaPe allowed me to extract SimPe DXT1a texture without glitches)

*Yes, flat DXT1 and DXT3 / DXT5 created in GIMP really looked exactly the same.

GIMP had 'perceptual error metric' option on, it slightly improves some details.

so, who won?

You be the judge. Overall, I think YaPe (v0.4.0) did really good in this particular case.

SimPe DTX3 shows more artifacts in the blue/ turquoise /black dots area but dark gradients are smoother than others. GIMP DXT had issues with black dots over the pink - red tones seep into black.

SimPe DXT1 is not bad, but has some issues - a few artifacts appeared over thin black & white stripes. Also, blurred colors in the middle became a bit crunchy. /Dark brown gradients are better than GIMP DXT tho/.

‣ DXT5 Alpha-channel quality

The difference between DXT3 and DXT5 lies only in the way transparency is handled. DXT5 can store more alpha-channel grayscale information and offers much smoother transparency.

Pic above: alpha-channels extracted from DXT5 (white = opaque parts, pure black = 100% transparent). These looked basically the same so I did another test using more demanding texture - darker alpha gradients plus thin lines:

YaPe has produced very nice alpha channel without much artifacts, the gradient looks almost as the source. SimPe DXT5 - also clean details, but surprisingly, darkest parts of the gradient are a little bit choppy. GIMP DXT5 and the other two show tiny pixel artifacts around light lines.

Last pic above is DXT3 alpha-channel for comparison - crisp details are clean, but gradients are very choppy. I've compared various plugins, all produced identical DXT3 alpha. DXT3 format is OK for stuff that's using alpha-test transparency (not smooth, not see-through) - leafy plants etc.

*Please note that's exactly why transparent clothing looks so bad when created with Bodyshop - it doesn't use DXT5, only DXT3.

GIMP DDS exporter allows you to improve transparent mipmaps for plant textures etc, you need to select 'Preserve alpha test coverage' and increase the threshold if required - it will make very thin details a bit more thick on zoom-out and reduce details disappearing.

YaPe editor also has an option to tune transparent mipmaps (increase the value with "preserve transparency" slider). YaPe lets you preview each mipmap, which is very convenient. Here's a detailed tutorial by Chieltbest.

‣ Color gradient: DXT3 /DXT5

Paint.NET (DDSFileTypePlus 1.12.13.0) did best in this case, thanks to agressive error-diffusion dithering. SimPe DDS Builder DXT 3/5 did really good and you probably won't find better DDS plugin for building clothing or skintone DXT textures, especially dark skins.

Next goes YaPe editor - gradient is quite smooth, aside from the darkest tones - quite choppy. GIMP DXT and Intel Texture Works are so-so.

*I already posted one DXT formats test here, it features darker gradients. I still need to compare how textures look as actual SimSkin or overlays in game. The TS2 game is not great at displaying grey / dark color gradations, especially on Sims...

Above, uncompressed png texture for reference.

[vvatchword]

My Laptop and Its Guts from Hell

So, as you folks know, I got sick and tired of fighting with that goddamn netbook and just decided to use some of my cash from a recent gig to buy a used laptop off of Facebook. The laptop is an Asus Zenbook Flip UX360C. The only downside is its use of an Intel CPU, but look. For $80, this was a pretty good deal.

The only downside was that its battery was borked. Worse, it was an internal battery, which I've never used in my life.

Okay, no problem. There are resources online for these kinds of things. In my case, someone--a blessed individual of whom I now love deeply, spiritually, and carnally--had done a step-by-step dissembly with photos and color-coded imagery to lead me down the path to working computerhood.

Friends.

I won't say "never again" but I will say: this computer was 100% intended to be thrown in a dumpster when its battery died. We should all be mad about this, but nobody is madder than I, the person who took it apart.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures of it mid-work. This was my setup, though, along with a little table.

There are tiny wires in here that are SO DAMN SMALL that I could have pinched them in half with my fingernails. The heat sink's screw's post broke off and I had to use electrical tape. Both wireless card posts--intended to connect to the motherboard--snapped at some point of the process. I brought Dan over to look and he said the word "sautering."

Electrical tape it is.

The laptop turned on afterward, but I hated the process so much that I haven't gone through the rest of my intended setup yet.

Jesus, what a mess.

Anyway, it works?

[cuprohastes]

The case against Procreate™

This is about the iPad software for drawing. It will make zero sense if you aren't familiar with it.

Look, Procreate's done. After years of being the standout, killer app for sketching and painting, with yearly feature updates...

... it's now failed out.

About the last three 'updates' have been "A quick compatibility update for the amazing things that are coming".

And then there were never any updates.

We're on year three of waiting for the next update. The point update from 5.3 to 5.4 is 12 months overdue. But don't worry as of today the fifth month of 2025, it's still slated for 'early' 2025. So it should be out earlier this year.

The official story was that the company wanted to dump resources into their Procreate Dreams animation app - y'know, the one that was so full of bugs that it would give you blurry results?

Well they got that out, farted out a couple of half hearted bug fixes and... nothing so far.

So where's ProCreate at?

The colour blending is borked. It used to work, now it doens't. As per https://folio.procreate.com/discussions/3/6/60347 I mean the entire point of the app is to let you put colours on a screen so this is kind of a biggy

The fill is still about as sophisticated as original flavour MS Paint. In an age where anti-aliased lines are normal, and gap detection is standard, WTF?

Smudge is a shitshow. Doesn't pay any attention to any of the brush settings apart from shape. Barely.

Camera Blur & Bokeh haven't been back ported from Procreate Dreams

No image tube for making zippers, lace etc.

No ruler guides for lining things up - Tehre's perspective guides but you can't just drag down a line for a reference or to draw a straight line with. OK you know what: No ruler tool for drawing lines or curves

The app has a texture library and an entire subsystem for tiling textures... but you can't apply them to a layer or selection

Built in 3D rendering system... but no library for adding maquettes, props, or posing dolls to use as reference.

No layer FX for outer glow, drop shadow etc.

No pixl sizes for brushes. Want to change brush size? Guess. Why? Fuck you is why. Because none of the brushes are the same size. They vary wildly, from almost a thousand pixels wide to like 20 px. And the slider tells you nothing.

So what's on the release radar for early 2025?

Uhhhh a brush library. Brush search Uhhhh Sync brushes with iCloud? For some reason? New Brush Setting! (But not what that setting might be, because why would anyone want to know?) That was promised 36 weeks ago. 9 months. People have had an entire human being get built and delivered while we're waiting for Procreate to add a search box to the brush panel. In the existing Brush Library.

It occurs to me that when they say 'Brush Library' they mean a webstore full of one click download brushes, probably with a 70/30 split and monetisation options.

Meanwhile we still can't do depth of field lens blur or fill an area without it half assing it.

Or blend colours correctly. I know I can't get overlay to work on top of Ultramarine any more. A thing that still works 100% fine in Clip Studio, Art Studio Pro, Serif or Fresco, and which used to work fine.