BC GAMING

Saved by @WebbDarrrel

foone
@Foone 3 years, 2 months ago 445 views

Save to PDF Share See On Twitter

I've only got one quest in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and it's always active.

wow, I think I just rolled a critical failure on my image capture.
I told my script to take a picture of Oblivion and instead got a badly cropped screenshot of Heroes of Might & Magic III, a game I don't even have installed

the endless questions of trying to capture fonts from modern 3D games:
1. what's the native resolution?
2. IS there a native resolution?

it looks cleaner at 1024x768 (earlier one was 640x480)
but not perfect.
maybe 800x600?

nope. I think it's 1024x768, for a simple reason:

this splash screen! it doesn't scale based on resolution, and it seems to be sized the same as 1024x768

actually, wait
why don't I just steal the font from this splash screen

ahh. I think it's just a picture. I can't edit it.

ahh, it's my favorite member of the army, General Subtitles!

dang it, look how the pipe characters look blurry at 1024x768!
so maybe 640x480 is more "native" after all?

or maybe the menu renderer is just BLURRY

and now I've somehow gotten my mouse to be stuck in a busy cursor
OS-wide. I can't click anywhere. I had to select the reply button using the keyboard

there we go. had to kill Oblivion from the task manager, but now I'm free

ok here's 640x480 vs 1024x768

as anti-aliased as it is, 1024x768 is probably the resolution I'm gonna go with.

it's a start. I don't know why X is missing or k or {

fixed X and k
{ is still missing

BTW I know I can extract the font from the datafiles. I'm intentionally not doing that.

FONT

More from foone

foone
@Foone

I was todays years old when I learned that Final Fantasy VII's Midgar Zolom is an exceptionally badly translated reference to Jörmungandr, the world serpent from Norse mythology.

The other name for Jörmungandr is Miðgarðsormr, which got rendered into katakana as ミドガルズオルム, or "Midogaruzuorumu".
But when it was translated back into English, the translator didn't get the reference.

So they split that into the city name Midgar and the rest as... "Zolom".
Which is not a word.

It was supposed to be a bit of a pun in Japanese. Midgar, the big city in FF7, is named after Midgard, the Old Norse name for the Earth (as opposed to the other realms of the Nine Worlds)

so obviously a big snake living near the city of Midgar would be the Miðgarðsormr, since that basically translate as "Midgard Serpent"

foone
@Foone

So I got out some CF cards and noticed something odd about this one. Do you see the weirdness?

How the fuck is a CF card "USB Enabled"?

So CF cards are a weird beast that act as either a PCMCIA card or an ATA/IDE card depending on a mode pin.

They're definitely not USB.

And it's not like that weird SanDisk card I have which you can fold in half and plug it in as a USB device.

Flip it over, bend it in half, and now you can plug your SD card right into a USB port pic.twitter.com/jeBefP2xU1
— foone (@Foone) May 2, 2020

It turns out the reason for "USB Enabled" is because it's a Lexar drive from the jumpSHOT era.
This is a normal CF card in most cases, you can use it in normal CF card readers and such

Advertisement

foone
@Foone

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD HOLLYWOOD STYLE TITLES TO YOUR HOME VIDEOS?
NOW YOU CAN!

This is the Sima ScreenWriter, a device for putting titles on your home videos.

It's apparently from 1992, and takes a CR2032 battery

The very minimalist IO panel. composite in, composite out, power and a switch.

foone
@Foone

A fun fact on the wikipedia page for the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor:
it is the most frequently manufactured device in history, and the total number manufactured from 1960-2018 is 13 sextillion.

That's 13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Though this picture is a bit misleading.

Even with devices this small, we couldn't make 13 sextillion of them in 60 years.

So imagine a chip like this. It's the 555 timer, which is one of the most popular integrated circuits ever made.

In 2017, it was estimated a billion are made every year.

And at the heart of it is the die, which looks like this:
(from Ken Shirriff's blog)
https://t.co/mz5PQDjYqF

And that's fundamentally a bunch of CMOS transistors (along with some diodes and resistors), which are a type of MOSFET. How many of them are on a 555?

about 25. Not many, but it's a very simple chip.

foone
@Foone

Something that I didn't realize but hurt my brain to learn:
John Norman (aka John Frederick Lange Jr.), of the Gor series of sci-fi/BDSM novels, is still alive.
He released two books (one of them a Gor book, #35), in 2019.

I guess with the fact that the series started in 1966 and feels like it's always a historical thing... I assumed he had to have quit writing and/or died back in like 1986.

Nope. Still alive, he's 89, and was apparently still writing as of 2 years ago.

also, my brain being what it is, I totally just googled for the book's cover image by entering "trans man of gor" which is NOT the title.

in my defense, how many book serieses look like this WITH THE SAMEAUTHOR FROM BOOK #1 to BOOK #35?

Anyway if you look at any this and think it's a suggestion that you should try reading any of these novels or learning anything about them, you are quite mistaken.

Gor is bad sci-fi and bad BDSM, and you should skip it for either reason.

More from Gaming

Thinking Patriot
@ThinkinPatriot

The #Q project was aimed at gamers, younger people with inquiring minds and the skill sets to educate themselves; just like a gamer has to go through a new game to find out how to play it, what tricks there are, and how to advance past certain obstacles. They have to learn and >

Dr. Rachel Kowert
@DrKowert

Early this week I ranted about a @nytimes editorial misrepresenting the scientific literature around video game uses and effects.

It's one thing for an editorial piece to mishandle scientific information, but it is another when an “educational” organization does it.

A thread.

A new training from @childrenscreens was announced called BLOOD, SWEAT, and FEARS: Understanding the Psychological Effects of Graphic and Violent Media on Children and

What a title. One that is clearly meant to instill fear, shock, awe, pearl clutching… moral panic.

For a primer on the history of the moral panic see here:

There are many points to discuss in their advertising, but for the sake of time I’ll focus on a few. Starting with this gem of an anonymous quote.

First, games are not addicting in the way as cigarettes or any other chemical addiction

See:

Advertisement

Alexander Peregrine
@AlexPeregrine

A little bit of fading video game history, inspired by both recent events and also how badly Cory Doctorow's graphic novel In Real Life (IRL) botches it.

MMORPGs in the 90s and 2000s used to rely exclusively on monthly subscriptions. That's how they paid for the servers to run them.

That's all well and fine, but even the most expansive games of that era capped out at 100 hours at most of "unique" content.

Most core gamers would finish within two months and quit. That's unsustainable.

So, how do you keep people playing? There are a few methods.

There is tried and true level grinding, of course. Make it take forever to level up.

But that's finite. How do you extend that further?

Make players do it all over again. If you want to play a different class, start over from scratch.

foone
@Foone

So someone on IRC mentioned the ending(s) to Zero Wing and I found out there's a cheat code to skip to it. I thought it might have some more "All your base" style dialogue I could put in the generator, but I really wasn't prepared for what ending #1 looked like

ending #2 is some very thin credits

ending #3 is reportedly the "true ending", at least on the European release. The Japanese version has 35 endings.

This one is... more serious? a little?

The other 32 endings are translated here, by

functionally all the japanese endings work like this. you get CONGRATULATIONS and then CATS says something to you.
usually something silly, or possibly the debug menu cheat code

Dan Kennett
@DanKennett

As nearly all teams have played 18 games, a thread checking in on who is ranked top/bottom of the #EPL for all the key numbers

Shots per match (FBREF)
16.0 City
15.8 LFC
15.6 Villa
14.5 Leeds
13.9 United
...
8.9 Newcastle
8.8 Sheff Utd
8.0 WBA

Shots conceded per match (FBREF)
7.3 City
7.9 LFC
8.9 Brighton
9.7 Chelsea
...
11.6 United (9th)
...
14.5 Leeds, Burnley
15.0 Newcastle
16.5 WBA

Penalties awarded (Opta)
10 Leicester (extremely high)
6 United, Brigton
...
1 Burnley
0 West Ham

Penalties conceded
7 Brighton, Wolves
6 Leeds, LFC
...
1 Sheff Utd, Leicester, Arsenal

You May Also Like

Tom Hirst
@tom_hirst

How to create a freelancing website that makes money.

Everything I've learned.

A thread.

As a freelancer,

Your website is everything.

First, prioritise its existence.

Second, prioritise its improvement.

The technology you use is irrelevant.

- WordPress
- Notion
- Carrd
- Wix

It doesn't matter which you choose,

What matters is you have a website.

Pick a platform that you're comfortable with.

If you can:

- Capture leads
- Add content easily
- Have a clear design

You're good.

If your website doesn't get leads,

It's not working.

Don't rest on a website that doesn't work for you.

Improve it until it does.

Noah Smith
@Noahpinion

Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)

Advertisement

$Sergio Mattei \u270c\ufe0f$

Sergio Mattei ✌️...
@matteing

With the coming challenge this week, I decided to compile a list of design resources all makers can use to spice up ✨ their projects! 😍

Thread 👇

🚨 DrawKit: Gorgeous, hand made illustrations by @JamesDaly90!

Also, one FREE custom illustration for all 24hrstartup

🙅‍♂️💩 @noshit_app: No shit - just great design resources! Find fonts, templates, and daily design inspiration. By maker @HarowitzBlack!

🛠 Figma: Visual mockup + prototyping tool. Make great mockups of your project!

💻

🤯 Digital Psychology: A great resource on how to design products that convert visitors to 🤑 sales. By maker @DaniStefanovic!

💻

Noah Smith
@Noahpinion

Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)

Factualist
@FactualistCom

Trending news of The Rock's daughter Simone Johnson's announcing her new Stage Name is breaking our Versus tool because "Wrestling Name" isn't in our database!

Here's the most useful #Factualist comparison pages #Thread 🧵

What is the difference between “pseudonym” and “stage name?”

Pseudonym means “a fictitious name (more literally, a false name), as those used by writers and movie stars,” while stage name is “the pseudonym of an entertainer.”

https://t.co/hT5XPkTepy #english #wiki #wikidiff

People also found this comparison helpful:

Alias #versus Stage Name: What’s the difference?

Alias means “another name; an assumed name,” while stage name means “the pseudonym of an entertainer.”

https://t.co/Kf7uVKekMd #Etymology #words

Another common #question:

What is the difference between “alias” and “pseudonym?”

As nouns alias means “another name; an assumed name,” while pseudonym means “a fictitious name (more literally, a false name), as those used by writers and movie

Here is a very basic #comparison: "Name versus Stage Name"

As #nouns, the difference is that name means “any nounal word or phrase which indicates a particular person, place, class, or thing,” but stage name means “the pseudonym of an