St Patty’s Day Open Thread
Happy St Patty’s Day! Or if you don’t celebrate it I hope you had a good day! I started mine out waking to the smell of battery acid in the air that I didn’t remember from the night before. My APC unit had a dying battery in it (clearly) and it finally gave up the ghost… We had them out recently and they showed no signs of bulging, that was at least until this morning… I knew there was a good reason why my throat felt like it was corroding.
I had originally wanted to do a livestream tonight, but felt too sick too. Instead I enjoyed music on my new sound card, did a little SFM and watched another person’s livestream. I’m thinking I’ll pick back up on it tomorrow after doing a little digital shopping. There are a couple things I’d like to treat myself to, and I haven’t really spent much on myself lately apart from some bargains on Nike’s and Levi’s. I might do a little tidying too. I’m sure I’ll get a better night’s sleep without the sulfuric aroma permeating out of my APC backup…
My kingdom for a skeleton
I spent a good chunk of the evening trying to animate a final scene for my upcoming Freedom Planet video, but ran into a problem with a particular model I downloaded from the Gmod workshop. I found a nice 3D model of Lilac I wanted to use for a scene to end the video, and I extracted it for SFM use. Upon playing with the model I found out after posing it for various keyframes that I couldn’t do it properly. The model doesn’t have a skeleton, but you can move around the limbs. Unfortunately, the next video won’t have as much animation as I had originally anticipated.
The gameplay will have to do most of the talking. I’ll probably release it next Sunday, (not the upcoming one).
Microsoft is doing things that I can’t complain about
I really need to stop sleeping when weird shit happens. I awoke yesterday to find Microsoft actually making somewhat of an attempt to make themselves look good on PC for once… where to start? The first thing I read yesterday was the announcement for the Halo Master Chief Collection coming to PC, and you can purchase it on Steam!
For the first time ever, The Master Chief’s story comes to PC. Featuring Halo: Reach along with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, the Halo 3: ODST Campaign and Halo 4, this is the definitive Halo experience.
Shorter Microsoft: Here’s the deal, we don’t talk about the first Halo release for Vista, and you can get our game collection outside of our shitty store. :zorak:
This came as a bit of a shocker considering Microsoft wanting to push their store onto people, and placing it on Steam also gives people like me a chance to see if it will handle under Proton. :trollface:
Of course that was shocking enough on it’s own, but Microsoft cranks it to 11 when news of DirectX12 coming to Windows 7 via World of Warcraft.
Blizzard added DirectX 12 support for their award-winning World of Warcraft game on Windows 10 in late 2018. This release received a warm welcome from gamers: thanks to DirectX 12 features such as multi-threading, WoW gamers experienced substantial framerate improvement. After seeing such performance wins for their gamers running DirectX 12 on Windows 10, Blizzard wanted to bring wins to their gamers who remain on Windows 7, where DirectX 12 was not available.
On the surface this seems like really extraordinary news, however if you take the time to think about it DirectX12 never really took off quite like how Microsoft wanted it to. When AMD open sourced their Mantle API (now Vulkan) that left Microsoft a little dead in the water as that looked much more attractive to developers. especially when developing on more than one platform. Plus with more people having little reasoning to switch to Windows 10 to take advantage of DX12 apart from maybe a handful of titles that properly utilize it. It is interesting they would do this so close to Windows 7’s end of life cycle… or is this a sign of them continuing to support it? I might have to turn my dualboot system into a triple. :trollface: My only hope is that if they do go back to Windows 7 they don’t do to it what they did with their newer OS’s/
Then to top it all off Microsoft actually did something to make Windows 10… somewhat better?
Occasionally, startup failures can occur due to hardware issues, file corruption, or incompatible 3rd party software.If Windows detects that your machine cannot start up successfully, it will try to diagnose and resolve failures due to disk issues, system file corruption, invalid registry keys, or other such causes. If all these steps are unsuccessful and your machine is still unable to start up properly, Windows will determine if the startup issue was introduced after recent driver or quality updates were installed. If so, these updates may be uninstalled automatically to get the device back to a workable state. This is only done as a last resort.
No butts about it! PS4 version of Devil May Cry 5 censors butts
If you have the PS4 version of Devil May Cry 5 you might be disappointed to find that it has been semi-censored on the US release. Caution! The following video has lady butts, if you’re offended by lady butts or butt’s in general please move onto another post and burn any Chuck Tingle novel you may own (if it’s digital make sure to burn your electronics JUST to make sure they’re sterile).
This time it isn’t just Japan’s love for lens flares… I know censorship is a big thing in games, especially when coming from Japan, but I find it interesting that if you buy it on any other platform in the west (XBox One or PC for example) you’ll get dat ass minus the lens flares… perhaps on PS4 this will be DLC in the future? :trollface:
I still find the whole thing strange though, butts are harmless on their own unless you had an explosive chili cook off… :assy: or they’re Assy McGee. Given this is limited to only the Northern PS4 release that kinda hints that someone at Sony pulled some strings as this article suggests:
So, what’s going on? Current speculation points to a recent Sony policy that appears to be about toning down sexual content on PS4. This is something that’s cropped up a few times over the past year or so. Back in October 2018, for example, Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal’s PS4 release was delayed after Sony told its publisher to remove the controversial Intimacy Mode (the Steam version, by the way, included the Intimacy Mode). At the time, the game’s localisation producer said this was the result of “a brand new policy” at Sony. Was Devil May Cry 5 on PS4 changed under the same policy? We’ve asked Capcom for comment.
Not that it matters to me; I’ll be getting the PC version when it comes down in price. :melon: I have other asses to worry about in the meantime… mainly mine.
Late Weekend Open Thread
I’ve been feeling pretty dead the last few nights… to the point that even making simple soup and sandwich even felt like a bit much. I was thinking of making something tonight, but after an accidental nap I pretty much signed off of the idea. I’m forcing myself to stay up later than usual, thanks to Pinky Up’s Tiramisu blend (black tea, coffee, white chocolate and all that good shit) has helped immensely. Now if I could just focus on one thing instead of trailing off onto different things. I’m not in the mood to work on anything, and I’ve been playing games to mainly test my new audio card. Now I’m back under Linux contemplating either tidying up or just gaming for the sake of gaming. It’s been awhile since I’ve tried playing other games under Linux… I’ve mainly been playing Crash Bandicoot during lunch breaks or editing videos, and that one stream I did recently.
So far I’ve been enjoying my new Sound Blaster! I’ll probably do a write up on it in a few days. I want to see if I can work out any other kinks before sitting down and typing to my heart’s content. It’s a Sound Blaster ZxR, an old sound card but still pricey and for a good reason. It’s an audiophile grade card, perfect if you do any A/V work. My only pet peeve so far is the desktop attachment. I LOVE that it has analog volume, but when you have it plugged directly into the sound card it’s super sensitive to the point of it being it’s own microphone! Plugging in my Shure SM58 only made the bugger all the more sensitive as Justin Bieber’s Nipples. For now when I’m under Windows I’ll use my Shure X2U DAC for mic and my sound card for listening… under Linux I’m not having much luck so far. To my knowledge support for this card should be in the latest kernel, but it only seems to show up when it pleases, and the headphone and mic channels aren’t coming through at all. I seem to be outputting sound, but not from those particular jacks. I also seem to be losing my LAN on random startups but only going into LinuxMint, and the only two things that I’ve changed recently are the kernel and adding in the sound card(s). Going back to a previous kernel seems to fix this situation, but not my audio issues. Will have to sort those when I get around to them.
Recipe Sharing: Ranch Dressing
I was going through some cookbooks last night and mentally noted that none of the ones I have carry any ranch dressing recipes, and then I became curious as to what went into a ranch dressing. My search quickly landed me on Food Network’s site, and next thing I knew I was doing some shopping during my lunch break! I followed the recipe to the letter and it tastes quite nice. For the hot sauce portion I used Dave’s Temporary Insanity Sauce, gives it a nice kick but not too overpowering thanks to the cream based dressing. I was going to make more than just a dressing, but noticed there were still plenty of leftovers to go at, perhaps tomorrow. I’m thinking soup and sandwich to combat the extremely cold weather here. This has been by far the coldest winter in all the time I’ve lived here; this morning I had to cover my face from the nose down to keep my face from freezing off, or feeling dry… I looked like some cross between an Eskimo and a Ninja, an Eskininja? :zorak: I wonder if I can make that into a thing…
Microsoft Open Sources Calculator… DaFuq?
Ummmmm…. why?
Today, we’re excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal is to build an even better user experience in partnership with the community. We are encouraging your fresh perspectives and increased participation to help define the future of Calculator.
You know… I was actually thinking the other day that there just isn’t enough calculator in anyone’s life. I mean, my decade old mp3 player I bought two years ago has one, my computers have one on each operating system, my calculators have calculators, and my kindle has a fucking calculator! I’m almost tempted to turn on my PS3 to see if that even has a calculator! if not I could see about homebrewing Windows Calculator. :v: That seems to be the only logical point where one might consider the option…
Lifestyles of the Digital and Imaginary
I had a productive semi-painless work day. Did a little more script writing, and then went off to building the next stage for future videos. Sometimes a change of scenery is nice, this will be where I do my livestreams. I wanted a more comfy scene, as streaming for my friends reminds me of the days of old when having friends over for video games and vice versa. I still have some models to spawn, such as our own chosen characters, controllers, and maybe some other household items that come to mind. If anyone has suggestions I’d like to hear them. :melon:
I’ve also finally gotten around to putting in some time off for myself. I doubt I’ll go anywhere, but I need about a week to myself for some rest. When I start having nightmares about being late for work, or being unable to leave it I know bad things will happen if I don’t try to get some proper R&R in. I’ll need it after next week… Oh god I saw my schedule, and I might actually go insane. Split days off and three graveyard shifts for my class starting at 10pm… I can’t complain too much since I do normally get two days off in a row together (one of the few perks I have left until that gets taken away), but I do hope it goes back to normal afterwards. No one needs to hear me break into insanity again… unless we’re filming it. :rick: