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hydrus · 5 years

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Version 375

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I had a great week. There are a bunch more Qt fixes, and a few other things as well.

I have fixed a bunch more bugs in the Qt code. We are getting to the end now--this is mostly smaller stuff like an unusual dialog button not working, but I have fixed another important memory leak that was causing some backend not to be deleted correctly when a media viewer closed on a video. This should radically reduce memory use for some heavily used clients.

Some windows that were large, or could expand to be, like the options dialog on some pages, were sizing off the edge of the screen. This should be fixed now, and a variety of child-window initial size calculations should be a bit more accurate--Qt manages window size a little differently than wx, and the additional buffer represented by the window title frame and border was not being taken into account.

The menubar menus should work a little snappier this week. Things like the rapid 'pending (xxx)' menu updates when a downloader is importing files with tags. The whole UI should get a little latency benefit from this during these high-traffic times.

I also gave the layout and scaling another go on clients that use UI scaling (when you tell your OS to display UI at >100% on a monitor) on high dpi displays. The experiment from last week did not go how I wanted, with pixelly scaled-up thumbnails, so I have reworked that and fixed the taglist, which was crunching tags together on these displays.

the rest

For users who have been trying to download from unreliable or tight servers, the network engine now handles connection errors and 'server was busy due to low bandwidth' errors separately, and has separate delay time options for both of these under options->connection.

There's a new danbooru login script. They apparently changed their cookies a little. If you use a danbooru login and have had trouble, please make sure your credentials carried over to the new script and give it another go.

For users who have complicated file storage failures and need some specific recovery options, there are now new jobs under the file maintenance system to quietly delete bad files from storage without affecting the db file record, and also to re-download files that are missing or broken if they have known urls. These jobs are experimental and only useful for certain file recovery scenarios, but if you have been waiting on something like this, please give them a careful go and feel free to ask for help.

full list

qt:

disabled the failed legacy high dpi scaling mode experiment (which was scaling up thumbnails and media in an ugly way) and returned to font-size-based natural ui scaling as set by the OS. a couple of non-font things like bitmap buttons and various layout margins are too small on >100% UI scale, and the splash screen is borked again, but it looks clear again. I'll keep working on this

fixed the custom taglist at >100% UI scale, which was spacing its tags at the wrong text height. this should survive changing ui scale while the program is open and environments with multiple monitors at different ui scale

re-fixed a critical old media-viewer-close-on-video memory leak from wx code to qt code. this was also a cause for some child ffmpeg processes not being terminated

fixed the media viewer not redrawing correctly when the media size completely exceeds the canvas window size

fixed the loading of the shortcut edit panel when the shortcut set a tag

fixed some url class edit path component ui

fixed and cleaned up some 'safe window size/position' calculations that were missing out the total frame geometry, meaning some dialogs were not moving up and left enough to show entirely on screen, and dialogs with parent-dimension gravity were not calculating initial size accurately

fixed focusing on the already-open manage tags text input when you hit 'manage tags' on a canvas with a manage tags dialog already open

fixed the html formula rule edit ui actually rendering html tag labels, lmao

updated boot-password entry to use the normal hydrus text entry dialog, and fixed a hydrus password cancel not setting a 'clean' exit for the next boot

fixed page layout splitter sash positions not resetting nicely from the menu command

fixed keyboard delete in the manage urls dialog

popup message titles are now in bold

popup message titles should now multiline correctly and fill available width

the popup messages manager should now set its min/fixed width more sensibly

subscription popups now will be wider if space is available

wrote a new class to manage better asynchronous updates for future Qt ui presentation

the file, pages, and pending menubar menus, which all require a db hit to generate, now operate on this new update class. all three should update faster when able and more politely and smoothly wait when the db is busy

reduced some accidental blocking in an old ui-update routine that kicked in when it was running hard

if the media_viewer frame type is set not to remember its 'last size', it will now instantiate with a small min size

when pasting new queries into a sub, if there are more than 5 or 50 that are already in or new, they will be rendered in a more compact way in order to stop the notification dialog growing too tall

improved stability of page update, splash screen update, and perhaps pubsub update

new file maintenance jobs:

added a new 'check for missing files' file maintenance job, where if the file is missing and has urls, those urls will be queued up in a new url downloader for redownload. the file record is not removed, preserving archive/inbox and import time

added a new 'check for invalid files' file maintenance job that does the same deal as above with an additional expensive byte-for-byte content check if the file is not missing

added a new 'check for invalid files' file maintenance job that only cares about invalidity--if the file is present and invalid, it is moved out but the file record is not removed

the rest:

network jobs that receive low-bandwidth error codes from the server now use a separate wait routine (previously, they piggybacked on the connection fail retry system). they have a separate cog-menu action to override these waits

the time delay multiple for connection errors and serverside bandwidth problems are now editable under options->connection. old default was 10 seconds base, now 15 and 60 seconds respectively

updated the danbooru login script

improved the precision of the thumbnail size estimate in database migration

the alphabetisation of a url class's GET paramaters on normalise is now optional. it is a new checkbox on the url class edit panel

when a default object fails to load from a png path, a simple error is now written to the log

misc cleanup

next week

I got hit by some IRL stuff right at the end of this week, including some Thanksgiving surprises, so I couldn't fit in the new downloaders I wanted to, but I have some fixes for pixiv tag search and twitter video download waiting to be added. I also couldn't get to Qt theming again, nor macOS tab DnD! So, I'll focus on those first thing so they definitely get done.

Otherwise, next week is scheduled to be a 'medium size' job week. I would like to get a long-planned overhaul of subscription data handling done. Subs are getting huge and clunky for many users, and I'd like to have them load into their dialog and do their normal work much faster, with much less CPU and HDD involved.

Happy Thanksgiving!

#release

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simplysoniferous · 5 years

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59/100

Day 58: 28/9/19 - Wednesday

I’M STILL HERE!

So things I have learnt so far: - I am still terrible at journalling

- it’s hard to practice when you’re exhausted all the time

- BUt expanding my defintions of practice was one of the best things I could have done

So I haven’t written a post in over a month, and apparently have gone over half way??? That can’t be right? Someone check my maths :P I had a rocky past month; my inexplicable tiredness has receded, but while it was around, it was hard to pull out my instrument. Coupled with that, I had some fun adventures in interrogating some of my ptsd in regards to performance (after disocciating during a performance, and crying in a singing lesson - survived both though, so ha!). Things that got me through were the fact that I had set those rules at the start about what counted as ‘practice.’ Because instead of doing the ‘wrong’ kind of music, practicing intervals or chords, or singing - event things that weren’t for my lesson or class - suddenly became activities/exercises instead of procrastination. Which also meant I got things out of them other than guilt. e.g. Have been singing ‘Birds’ from Ultimate Storytime a lot recently, particularly since I’ve been struggling with the song set for my lesson. I have found that working on the projection for that song has translated over into the second. I wonder if that would have even happened if I’d been chastising myself about not doing the right kind off practice.

Other things: Have returned the trumpet to its rightful owner, safe and sound. I now really want to by a trumpet. I’ve seen some for about $200 on Gumtree, so maybe that can be something to save for.

I can’t remember if I discussed this earlier, but nerdy music group for the scifi club at uni has had its first practices (I split it into singing and instrumental). I’m super pumped about both, but have discovered they’re going to be very different learning experiences for me, which I didn’t anticipate. Original idea was just giving people the opportunity to playing nerdy music, and to give myself a non-triggering environment to work on my ensemble skills (that is a whole post, and I’m not going to talk about it today, but maybe later). In actuality, I am learning MANY THINGS. Singing group - learning about arranging for voice is the main thing I’m learning, but a close second is trying to start a group from scratch, as in the past I’ve just run rehearsal for an already established group (show choir, yea boi!). Also, not a new thing, but I’m rusty leading rehearsals, so I’m enjoying have the opportunity to a) see where I’m out of practice and b) build up the skills I already have. I was really nervous (but not anxious! nuanced differences, it’s wild) that people would listen to me, but they followed me through 10 mins of warmups, and if you can get people to do that, I think you’re clear. We only had 4 people for that, so I’ve spoken to our president about running it as a screening and getting more people. The response I get the most from ask people to give it a try is ‘I’m not a music person,’ which is just like, insert rant here about the stratification of music making and the insidious idea that you have to ‘be a music person’ to make music. I’ve been trying to stress that the group is for people who haven’t sung before, but I know very well how scary it can be, so I totally get it. I’m really worried about being too pushy about recruiting people, so I made a couple of friends promise to tell me if that happens.

Instrumental group - wow. So I’ve never been in a chamber group before, let alone led one. Did get a bit frusrated in our first practice because friend who was performance student ended up taking on leadership role. To be clear - not frustrated at them. They were great, and offered direction when I didn’t, and also checked with me to see if it was okay. Frustration was at myself - although I know I need to cut myself some slack, since this is a new experience for me. Things I learnt: I can be just as leadery in a chamber setting as I am in a choral setting, and so goal for next time is to apply that lesson. Also, don’t trust other people’s arrangements (the one I found was kind of clunky, and some people get huge breaks with nothing to do). That sounds like I’m blaming the original arranger (and I am a little - I feel bad for the original ensemble that had to play it), but it’s also on me for not looking more critically, so partly my own. Also learning about the importance of having rehearsal marks, lmao.

Hey, so this post is really long, so I’m going to wrap it here. Sitll so many things, but I have many days to recap other things, so I’m going to - you know what, I’m going to go practice!

We’re getting there, yo.

#100 days of practice #100days #day 58 #musicblr #studyblr #violin #music major

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travllingbunny · 6 years

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The 100 rewatch: 1x01 Pilot

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: I'd give the Pilot 4/10, maybe 4.5/10 if I'm generous.

Episode opens on Clarke's voiceover. The first mention of how Ark came to be. There were "12 nations" with stations in the beginning, 97 years earlier, and the current Ark is "one station forged from the many". Which begs some questions: how did they manage to make everyone on the Ark speak English (and in American accents), why are they so culturally uniform? Did they try to do it by force? And why did big powers like China and Russia go along with it? But world-building has never been this show's strength. The opening scene shows Clarke drawing, and focuses on her father's watch. Some facts I had forgotten - the cells on the Ark were called "Skybox". Clarke says she is turning 18 in a month. This means she turned 18 sometime in late season 1 and was about 18 and a half year old in season 4. In season 5, she should be about 24 and a half year old. Abby is the first other major character to appear. Abby to Clarke "Your instincts will tell you to take care of everyone else first, like your father", stressing that this is the similarity between Clarke and Jake. "I can't lose you, too, I love you so much" First appearance of Jaha - on the video played to the Delinquents on the dropship. The kids comment: "your dad's a dick, Wells". Yes, he is. "If we knew for sure the Earth was survivable, we would send others. You are being sent down because your crimes have made you expendable". Oh god, he's awful. He became a more enjoyable character in season 4, just because of his interactions with other characters, but he's always been an a-hole. Jaha tells the kids to go to Mount Weather, explains what it is and that it has supplies for about 300 people to survive for 2 years. I had completely forgotten that there were so many Mount Weather references. This was clearly a storyline that was planned from the beginning. The first casualties on the show - 2 Delinquents who imitated Finn's stupid behavior on the dropship, but, unlike him, were killed when the ship crash-landed. When they land, it turns out they landed on a wrong mountain, instead of Mount Weather, due to a technical error. Who knew that this was the luckiest thing that ever happened to them? Clarke and Wells later insist that the kids should go to MW ASAP and find supplies. Every time someone in the episode talks about Mount Weather and says things like "We have to find Mount Weather to survive", it's so ironic now. No, you need to run as far from Mount Weather as possible. Run, run, fast, and don't turn back. At the end of the episode, they try to cross the river, and Jasper even finds a Mount Weather sign. In retrospect, they are so lucky they did not go through with it, after Jasper got speared, but who was to know? Kane looks so young compared to his season 5 self. And it's funny to see early Kane, who was kind of a bad guy. He's so pessimistic and insisting on ruthless solutions as necessary, a total opposite of where his views end up later. But the one consistent trait is that he's always been so stubborn about sticking to whatever course of action he thinks is best, and even naive about it. At this point, he's all about sticking to the rules. And here's Shumway, who seems to want the culling to happen even more than Kane does. I never understood what the supposed difference in policy was between Diana and Jaha. Diana was claiming to be fighting for the rights of the underprivileged? But Shumway is working for her, and wants the culling to happen, Jaha and Kane are intending for the culling to happen... What's the difference? They're all the same. Shumway is also the one to tell Kane about Bellamy's shooting of Jaha - and Kane says they have a traitor. Shumway close-up, he says nothing. Foreshadowing. Scene between Kane and Abby near the end of the episode. Kane says he's the only one willing to do what needs to be done so they survive. Abby: "That's the difference between us, Kane. I choose to make sure we deserve to stay alive." Ironic how they'll end up switching positions during the Dark Year. But then Abby starts hating herself over what she has become. The thing I liked best about the Pilot the first time was that it was really good at explaining the premise and getting a lot of info across, without clunky exposition. Oh god, about half of the Pilot was sooo cheesy. Most of the scenes with kids on Earth are so teen-soapy. That's why I initially preferred the stuff on the Ark (but then a few episodes later, I felt the exact opposite). Especially 90% of Octavia's lines in the Pilot are so cringey,I remember I only found it to be 'just OK' at the time I first watched it, good enough to keep watching, but I only got hooked around 1x05 when it started losing most of its CWness. But now, after having seen the rest of the show, the tone is so weird - so teen-soapy. I guess the first time, I expected the show to be like that, because of the channel it's on - a teen-soap take on post-apocalyptic SciFi. The pop songs and the scenes with kids enjoying the Earth were so corny but I guess they were meant to be, to make the contrast bigger when something bad suddenly happens, like Jasper getting speared at the end of the episode. Or that mutant deer, that was a good scene. Funny that we never get to see any of the scary nature stuff again. What happened to the man-eating water snake? The show pretty much forgets all of that later, because we get human antagonists on Earth. I also probably blanked out a lot of the cheesy teen-soapy stuff the first time, because I wasn't interested, since I didn't even remember some of it. All the potential pairings and flirtations that went nowhere now seem so random and funny. They were clearly just throwing anything to the wall to see what sticks. Who remembers that Octavia used to have a thing for Finn in the Pilot and said "Finn is mine" to Clarke, and he briefly flirted with her? Then there was Jasper's crush on Octavia, but that one actually did last a bit longer in season 1. The show really seemed to be trying to make Finn the main heartthrob. Of course, Finn's main interest was flirting with Clarke non-stop and following her around all the time. The fact he started hitting on her immediately in the dropship really makes him look bad now (whether or not that was initially intended - since they probably still hadn't planned for Raven's character to exist.)

And look, here's Kelly Hu as Kane's girlfriend/Abby's best friend, who was clearly supposed to be one of the mains, and then completely disappeared without explanation after the Pilot. Kelly Hu was even in the main credits for the Pilot, right after Bob Morley, who was credited 6th - after Eliza and Paige and Thomas McDonnel and Eli Goree and after Marie. Which pretty much fits their screentime in the Plot. I doubt they were expecting Bellamy to become the male lead, Finn and Wells were clearly treated as the male leads. Speaking of Bellamy - AARGH, that terrible slicked-back hair! My eyes, my eyes!!! I remember now why I had such mixed feelings about him in the Pilot, unlike others who said they hated him. I mean, he was clearly meant to be seen as an antagonist at this point, but most of the things he says about the privileged and the elite on the Ark is true. I still think that the Ark leaders were the first villains introduced on the show. They sucked. Even if we weren't supposed to see them as villains, and even if some of them later changed and developed (Kane). I wasn't sure how much of what Bellamy said was just him using that rhetoric to manipulate the kids. but the first time he says "let the privileged do something for a change", he said it before he learned about the wristbands. So, some of that anger was sincere. (And it was certainly justified.) A bit later we see Bellamy listening carefully and formulating a plan as Clarke is explaining to the kids that the wristbands are transmitting their life signs to the Ark.

I don't know where the later idea of Bellamy as a completely hotheaded guy who can't act in a strategic or manipulative comes from. One of the first things we saw him do in the show was manipulate a bunch of younger people into something that would help him not get caught and executed by the Ark leaders, so he could stay and protect his sister. That's what he's doing for the fist few episodes. The first kids he convinces to take the wristbands off and make others do the same are Murphy and John Mbege. It's funny that Mbege's role was at this point almost as big as Murphy's. We still haven't seen Harper or Miller.

So many scenes of conflict between Bellamy and Wells in this episode. It seems like they probably meant for that dynamic to be an important one going forward, with the two of them as foils. "See you on the other side". Oh, god. Those lines will never be the same. It's actually Finn who said it first when he was about to cross the river by rope, but then Jasper went first to impress Octavia, and said that line for the first time. And here comes the spear. "We are not alone". Well, duh. But Clarke had to say that line for a very Lost-like ending to the Pilot. Geez, I can see how this bunch of clueless, silly kids with no weapons, fooling around, looked like such a dangerous invading force to the Grounders who saw them. Yes, the season 5 comparison between them and the heavily armed mass murderers from Eligius who immediately tried to kill the first people they ran across, was soooo apt... *sigh*.

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 1x01 #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #octavia blake #abby griffin #marcus kane #jasper jordan #wells jaha

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slapegg · 7 years

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Quick Critique: Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Before I even get to the meat of this: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, IT IS VERY BROKEN. Again, even if you loved the comic and love turn-based RPGS: DO NOT GIVE THIS COMPANY MONEY, THEY RELEASED A BROKEN GAME.

Joe Mad is one of my favorite artists and I read the Battle Chasers comic pretty much just to see him draw pretty things. I only just read it a year or two ago, so I thankfully avoided the whole incident of him bailing on the series and leaving it unfinished after a main plot twist. The actual story (and most of the writing) is kind of just Dungeons and Dragons meets generic anime stuff, but it had enough moments and unique ideas here and there to make the comic series worth it, even this many years after its initial release. So Battle Chasers the comic is pretty good. Battle Chasers the video game, however, is a steaming pile of garbage.

This game is so unfinished and slapped together that I'm just going to list out a stream of the constant issues it has: It crashes. A LOT. It's not just one thing going wrong, it crashes all over the place and multiple times at different spots (inventory screen, leaving a dungeon, changing screens, and so on) I actually had a crash during the ending credits It locks up every time I try to enter the Arena forcing me to force close the game I finally managed to enter the Arena (apparently some of the difficulties work and others don't), it's a series of battles with a 20 minute time limit, I'm doing the hardest difficulty to get the final prizes, get through multiple rounds where I'm one turn away from the entire party dying or I lucked out and a character dodged an instant kill move, I'm at the last boss with 2 minutes left on the clock, deliver the killing blow with 23 seconds left on the clock, I get the Playstation level trophy for completing the Arena, the game showers me with prizes, I leave the Arena, I open the menu, the game crashes and upon relaunching sets me back at the beginning of the Arena having made no progress at all and with none of the prizes. I think I just instantly skipped over anger, sunk back in my chair, and whispered "mother fuckers" to myself for a few minutes After a battle, I lost the ability to interact with any objects. Seeing as how the dungeon required me to flip a switch to advance, I had to quit the game. This happened multiple times Frequent hitches and freezing for a second on the map, exploring, and in battle Menus aren't responsive for a few seconds after opening them I had a story scene fail to load and the game just displayed a screen full of that "missing image" pink I had a different story scene fail to load but I still got the subtitles. This one was a major story sequence so it wasn't repeatable the next time I played the dungeon so I would have liked to have seen that The voice acting is Sega Saturn levels of bad. They're horrible choices for the characters but then poorly acted on top of that. And they apply random odd filters over the readings. There's a scene in the open air in a town where your characters talk to each other but Gully sounds like her lines were recorded in a particularly echo-y bathroom. The only character I cared for was The Collector, a sinister but gleeful little monster that is likely eating the remains of dead bosses that you bring it. The Collector deserves to be in a better game than this one The text size is WAY too small The walking speed is slow. If you doubled the walking speed, it would still be too slow Battles are slow both in animation and action speed and how many hits it takes to kill a grunt enemy The core combat system is tedious and relies far too much on crits and applying status effects. Most end game fights devolve into who can apply the most debuffs to the other team and then spamming special moves that gain extra traits if the enemy has specific debuffs The music is so laid back that it (rightfully) just seems uninterested in being a part of this game, even during battles. The soundtrack is so forgettable and uninteresting that I usually turned the game audio almost off and listened to the BBC while I played. The Shipping Report pretty much matches the pace and excitement of this game Totally unnecessary crafting mechanics By the time you get enough crafting materials to build a weapon, it's worse than what you get from dungeon crawling You can't sort your crafting materials alphabetically, so when you're looking up how many of a quest item you need, have fun sorting through that mess Totally unnecessary fishing mini-game Every time you enter battle, the UI flashes a move description. I think it's loading the last thing you used in the previous battle Occasional multiple second pauses at the start of a battle before the UI will display or you can interact with it in any way Clunky menu UI Loot-based drops that do nothing to make the game more interesting Loot that isn't even interesting or exciting because most of the equipment is very similar and the vast majority of what you find is just crafting materials you won't use Major side-quests and items that are gated by random loot drops. You have to hope the characters show up on the map and then hope they drop the item you need (usually multiple times) or else start a dungeon from scratch and do it all over again Semi-randomized dungeons where the actual rooms barely change but their order does, so combined with the need to grind, the dungeons get really boring and just have you looking for the exits rather than rewarding you for exploring. Later dungeons even repeat pieces of earlier dungeons Items in shops are stupidly expensive for how little they change your stats and for the piddly amount enemies actually pay out or what items sell for. While spending a night at the inn cost me 40 coins, selling a purple rank weapon only got me 17 coins. It's actually faster to play through the whole first dungeon and get the health and mana refill before the boss than it is to grind out the money to stay a night at the inn for a large chunk of the game Just about every item you find in the wild will raise one stat but then lower multiple other ones so you kind of just have to pick one stat for a character to use and min/max the hell out of it Items in your inventory will mark themselves as new even though you've seen them before Items in the world will still sparkle as if they're unchecked even though you already have them If you have to close and restart a dungeon (say because the game crashed or locked up), it will acknowledge that you've been through the rooms but respawn the enemies past a seemingly random point. I had one dungeon where the objective was to kill two mini-bosses, I did so, saved the game in case it crashed at the boss, and upon reloading it, the mini-bosses respawned even though I had the objective that said they were dead checked off Every time the game crashes, it resets your super meter. So you can go through a dungeon, build up your meter, save it for the boss fight, the game crashes, you reload at the boss, and now you have no meter and you're at a serious disadvantage Perks and equipment will unequip themselves (this may be related to all the crashes) I met an enemy without warning that was vastly stronger than anything I'd seen in the game before, I could only do 80 damage to it per turn, and every turn it could heal itself for 84 health. And for some reason I wasn't allowed to run away from the fight so I had to sit there for 10 minutes turn by turn hitting the enemy, watching it heal, and letting it whittle down my party's health. Dying then made me lose a chunk of my money Apparently those are special enemies that offer a special reward if beaten, but it wasn't until I was at the final dungeon that I ever saw them again. I don't know if the game was broken and would no longer spawn them or what Another dungeon had a bunch of enemies that I tore through with no problem, and then I got to the boss and it killed each member of my party in 1 hit. Dying, again, made me lose a chunk of my money. So the lesson is to never sell anything until you can fully afford the thing you're trying to buy because you never know when the game is going to throw balancing out the window and punish YOU for it I don't think you can manually save without quitting the game. But quitting the game dumps everything it loaded into memory or something because when you load the game back up, it can take 40 seconds to load into your first battle. Given all the crashes, you have to save and quit often, so get used to watching the first 15 seconds or so of the opening cutscene because you can't skip to the title screen until that plays out The trophies aren't properly proofread and sometimes won't award when you earn them and instead pop the next time you load the game If a character dies from a status effect at the start of their turn, the UI is not graceful I would love to hear some kind of justification on the game's balancing because the way it's set up is that you beat a dungeon, unlock the next story dungeon, but you're not actually strong enough to progress the story yet, so you have to go back and grind the dungeon a you've already finished to level up a bit. You pretty much have to beat each level on each difficulty before you can move ahead, so by the time you're ready to move the story along, you're really, really sick of the previous dungeon Characters not in your party don't gain any experience from battle, so the game actively discourages you from trying new characters. I was level 10 when I unlocked Knolan, but he was only level 9 and the more I use my normal team, the further Knolan falls behind, so I have no reason to ever add him to my party. Changing team members just means you have to redo all the grinding you've done to level them up and hope you get some loot drops for them. Maybe it's just how I play the game, but there's really only one viable team. You HAVE to have Calibretto on your team because he's the only decent healer. Garrison is the only one that can do any decent damage. Gully is slow and focuses on defense, while Monika has high evasion, good damage, and can bog enemies down with stat debuffs so Monika is way more useful Doing end game clean up, I used my weaker teammates because my main team stopped earning experience from the early dungeons, I met those special pirate enemies with this team, was happy to have a chance to fight them, but the pirates scale to your strongest team not the team you're actually using so my level 9, 12, and 17 characters got destroooyed by the level 30 enemies The team couldn't even do New Game + properly. Starting NG+ causes you to lose all your items, so all that time you spent on random drops to get the ultimate weapons and armor was totally wasted. It's completely unnecessary to do this because all the weapons are level gated. So if you reset the character levels, you stop them from having access to the top gear from the start, but once they level up, they get their hard earned weapons back. That would have been the competent way to handle NG+ here New Game + starts you off with the whole team, but it doesn't properly handle that you've unlocked characters before their normal unlocking event, so the shops won't sell you their perk bonus or costume items. Even if you come back at the end of the game when you'd normally have those characters, the game still treats them like they haven't been unlocked yet

Even with its many, MANY glaring flaws, they have the audacity to not actually finish the game's story. You slog through all of this, beat the final boss, and the ending is barely more than "hey, buy some DLC or a sequel".

So, yeah, don't spend money on this game. The perk system is kind of neat though. You get points when you level up and you can cash them in on an attack path or a defense path. As you buy perks on each path, every 20 points you spend unlocks a bonus perk that can offer some substantial stat boosts. You can respec for free, so you can mess around with different choices as you slooowly grind out levels or boss fight currency to get more points.

Battle Chasers is bad but not in the way that most low budget games are bad. The art's great so the game looks fantastic and draws you in. It's the quality design sensibilities and usability in the game that are godawful, the gameplay is as dry as it comes, and it's an unfinished mess. Everything about this screams that the team got a slew of crowdfunding money but then nobody on the team actually knew how to make a good video game so this got rushed out the door without proper testing or fixes to hit a deadline. Battle Chasers makes me question whether Playstation cert matters. If this game, with its constant crashes and 100% reproducible lock-ups, can be released for sale, then clearly nobody is checking the actual game or doing anything remotely resembling quality control.

#Battle Chasers #nightwar #battle chasers: nightwar #airship syndicate

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velveteenau-blog1 · 7 years

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The Klanghelm VUMT Plugin & Metering Methods: Part I

Reading Time: 8-10 minutes

Hey everyone! It's Brad Smith here. Today I’ll be diving into the Klanghelm VUMT plugin, what it is, how it works, and how I use it in all three phases of the recording process. This will be broken out over two (potentially three) blog posts. Today's post will be an introduction to the plugin and I’ll talk about how I use the plugin while tracking.

The Klanghelm VUMT is a plugin I use all of the time. I love it and you'll find it all over my templates. I use it on every channel when tracking. It lives on my mix buss (both pre and post buss processing) and I'll use it throughout my mastering chain. To me, it is an indispensable tool and a big part of my metering methods and at 14 € it’s a pretty incredible bargain.

What is the Klanghelm VUMT? It is a metering plugin that painstakingly emulates the ballistics of analog style VU and PPM meters. The calibration of the meters and ballistics are customizable and the plugin also works in an additional RMS mode calibrated to the K-System.

If you're not familiar with VU or PPM meters you can read more about them here:

Sound on Sound - What’s the difference between PPM and VU meters?

Sound On Sound - How do I understand VU meters correctly?

Sound On Sound - Should I believe my meters?

For more about the K-System you can read about it here:

Digital Domain - Level Practices (Part 2)

The quick explanation is that VU meters measure average signal and PPM meters measure peak signal. Neither are perfect, but they do a pretty good job working together and for me, it's all about balancing the two. If I've got a healthy average and a healthy peak then I know I'm on the right path.

Also, 0 VU is usually (though not always) equal to +4 dBu, which is the optimal working level for most all pro analog gear. Below it and the gear is being underutilized, losing precious tone and raising your noise floor, and above it, equipment will be pushing into distortion (which may or may not be the desired result). The same is generally true in the digital realm as well. 0 VU is equal to -18 dBfs, which is the optimal calibration used for a lot of plugins.

So why do I use the VUMT? Well for me it's all about familiarity. I came up with VU & PPM meters. I know how to read them. VU meters especially. They tell me a lot about what I'm hearing and helps me improve the entire gain structure of my work right from the beginning of tracking through to the end of mastering. And the Klanghelm VUMT looks and feels like a great pair of VU or PPM meters!

Yes, the meters in Pro Tools can now be switched to either VU or PPM modes, but the vertical and digital metering feels clunky to me and I've also been looking at Pro Tools Classic meters for so long that switching to anything else is disorientating. So I use the Klanghelm in combination with Pro Tools Classic metering.

So how do I use the Klanghelm VUMT?

When tracking, I generally have the VUMT set to PPM to start on transient rich instruments (drums or acoustic guitar for example) and VU for instruments with a lot of sustain (bass, electric guitars, synths, etc...). For vocals, I'll constantly be switching between modes or have two instances of the plugin up to meter both.

When getting levels into the box, I want to get the signal right at the preamp and then push it into the converters at an optimal level. I don't want to be under or over feeding the converters. I want the signal coming in right at the sweet spot. Preamps are a different story. Preamp selection and use is all about building tone that is appropriate for the instrument, song, and production. If you want a clean signal, you'll run the preamp wide open and hit it the same way you hit the converters. I'm rarely after clean though. I'm looking for the point where the preamp starts to speak to the source it's amplifying. Generally, that involves running the preamp into some distortion. Sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. I'm totally cool with distorting the preamp, but I don't want to be distorting the converters.

Let's take a kick drum for example. Drums are a transient signal. Not a lot of average information there. When getting a kick drum level I'll start with the VUMT set to PPM and then bring the gain up with the preamp wide open until I've got the level bouncing around 0 PPM. A nice, clean, and healthy signal. If I were to do this with the meter set to VU though and had the signal bouncing around zero, not only is the preamp pushing into distortion, but the converters will be blowing up as well. No good. Converter distortion is not the distortion I'm after. Yes, clipping converters is something purposely done, particularly in mastering, but it's not the sound I want when tracking.

So once I have the PPM meters bouncing nicely around zero (or just a touch above) I'll then start looking for the tone I want out of the preamp. I'll up the input gain and bring down the output, so the level hitting the preamp is changing, but the level hitting the converters and reading on the VUMT stays the same(ish) (note: distortion reduces the dynamics of a signal so if I'm distorting the signal the peaks will come down and the average will come up). Once I've changed the level, I'll listen, evaluate, and either push the preamp further or back off until I'm hearing what I want to.

When tracking a bass guitar, on the other hand, I don't really want to look at the peak signal too much. There usually isn't a lot of it there. I want to look at the average signal coming in. So I'll pop the VUMT to VU and then start bringing up the gain until I have a nice and healthy signal bouncing around 0 VU. Then I'll repeat the push and pull on the input and output of the preamp until I have the tone I want.

This process is done with every instrument and source I'm recording. Constantly evaluating the average and the peak of signals. If it's a transient source then I'll focus on the PPM meter. If it has lots of sustain then the VU meter gets the call. For every source though I want to be paying attention to both the average and the peak information. Balancing them. And I'll definitely lean on compression and EQ to help achieve the balance I'm looking for, but that's a whole topic on its own.

The magical part about going through this process while tracking is it really helps line up the gain structure and balance of my mix in Pro Tools. I'll have plenty of healthy headroom to work with. I won't have to crank faders up or dramatically pull them down to get sources to sit properly in my mix. And I won't be crushing the input and outputs of my plugins, pushing them into distortion, or alternatively underutilizing them with a low signal.

So that leads to the next stage of the process. How do I use the VUMT when mixing? I’ll go over in Part Two of this post. Thanks for reading!

If you're interested in getting more tips and tricks from Velveteen, follow us on social, join our Facebook group, and subscribe to our email list below!

Cheers.

Brad Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brad Smith is an award winning engineer with credits such as Nuela Charles, H.I.L.L., and Arlo Maverick. Check out his work on his website by clicking here.