duckington

Once it gets to ~5 it gets to be a lot to scroll through on some UIs 🥲

Hey all. I have been tinkering on and off with godot for a month or so now, and I've spent a decent amount of time writing shaders and checking out some of the different lighting & post-processing features the engine has to offer. It's been a lot of fun!

However, despite a lot of practice and research, I haven't really been able to create something that really feels polished. Of course, I know that it takes time and effort and iteration to make a beautiful environment, just as with any other medium. Despite knowing that, I still feel like I can't really see the path from tinkering with lightmaps to something like Hyper Demon or Heavy Bullets or even something simple like Muck.

For example, I've been trying to capture the atmosphere of some of the art from Julian Faylona, especially something like this:

I had a lot of fun learning how to model the buildings, how to set up lighting and bake lightmaps and enable post-processing effects like glow, etc, etc. But it seems like I'm always missing something that brings it from "Game engine project #2857" to a striking, or at least compelling, environment.

So, I wanted to ask y'all: how do you approach polish in your projects, visual or otherwise? Is there anything specific you focus on, or anything you've had challenges with in the past that you learned from?

Again, I'm not expecting some magic trick that will magically make my projects pristine-- like any piece of art, polish is the result of many small details coming together to form a whole. I just think some pointers on what to spend time on, things to practice, details a beginner might overlook, or resources to study would be super helpful to me and many other newer devs in honing their skills!

Thanks for reading :)

Hey all,

I’ve always enjoyed TTRPGs, but never could find the right fit for my and my friend group. After trying out a bunch of different systems, one day I took the plunge on MORK BORG and have loved it since.

My group and I love the over-the-top grimdark and find it more funny than anything else, and keeping it light on the rules lets us just enjoy the story unfolding instead of having to fiddle with arcane rules and lists of items. And then the cherry on top are the excellent tables that make rolling up further adventures super easy.

However, so far, I’ve only really been running one shots. It’s super easy for characters to die, which can make running a campaign hard, but I LOVE the idea of the Calendar of Nechrubel—a probabilistic time limit that puts proverbial Sword of Damocles on the world.

Despite how cool it seems, though, I’ve never really run a full campaign before. Anyone who has played this game or one like it, what advice could you give? What is your thought process like as you’re planning out a longer story in which the characters are more or less likely to survive?

Hey guys, not sure if this is a good place for this, so let me know if this post would be better suited elsewhere.

Also, I know, I know, make sure your device is compatible with linux-- but when Newegg said "compatible with ubuntu" I naively thought that put me in the clear. Now I know better, and I'll be checking the wifi card compatibility. Anways, here's the situation:

I'm running debian bookworm on an MSI Modern notebook. On every distro I've tried, I've had an issue where my wifi acts extremely inconsistently. For a while upon a fresh install of any OS, it works wihout issue. Then, after a few weeks, and especially after too much uptime, one or more of a few different issues will start happening, seemingly at random:

• The network manager will suddenly fail to detect that there is any wifi adapter installed at all. (For some reason, this can be fixed by discharging the motherboard battery and restarting).
• Wifi networks will be visible, but will not be able to authenticate, even with correct credentials. This can occur even with unsecured wifi networks. (The time before last that this happened, it randomly fixed itself).

After about two weeks of using my system after it magically fixed itself, the wifi adapter stopped being recognized, so I did the motherboard discharge and reboot, and when I could access the wifi settings again, the authentication issue had reappeared. After several days of use, it hasn't fixed itself. So now I'm posting here, after many months of being unable to figure out a good solution.

I've tried and failed to troubleshoot this problem over many hours. Some related issues/factors that might help explain what the problem is:

• After some research, I've noted that other people have had problems with the wifi card in this laptop (MEDIATEK MT7921K (RZ608) Wi-Fi 6E 80MHz).
• Despite debian supporting secure boot, if I ever try to enable secure boot, I am given a "secure boot violation".

If anyone could help me get pointed in the right direction, show me what I could potentially reinstall or reset without having to reinstall my OS every time this happens, I would super appreciate it. And of course if I didn't include some spec please let me know and I'll update this post with the necessary spec.

Head over here and check it out :)

Edit: I've attached a properly sized png, plus find a version with a grid below. The size is 36x46 with the typeface, and 36x34 without. Do we want the typeface? And where should we put it?

I want to share an experience I had the other day that fundamentally changed the way I think about my writing and the way I process feedback.

One night before I went to bed, I had a spark of inspiration, a new idea that would finally give me a satisfying way to tackle a project that had been bouncing around in my head for a long time.

I'm a fan of constructed languages-- stuff like Klingon from Star Trek and the Elvish languages from Tolkien. One language in particular I thought would be a wonderful experience to let people learn together as a group, if only there was a way to make it enjoyable for people who weren't particularly interested in linguistics. So, for several months, the idea stuck with me, never feeling complete. Then, that night, I realized an RPG might be the perfect medium to deliver the experience of learning a fictional language in a fun, engaging way.

So, the next day I had a lot of creative energy, and I started fleshing out my ideas-- writing out rules, roles, and mechanics, imagining scenarios of people playing. After a while, I had gotten the bones to a place I felt comfortable with, and decided it was time to settle on a setting, and went with something generic with the intention of developing it further later.

Finally, I had a draft/pitch to a point where I wanted to share it and get some feedback from the language's community. Much to my surprise, I saw the creator of the language themselves had even replied to it! Unfortunately, their comment wasn't one of interest-- instead, they found that my setting had some unfortunate implications, marginalizing certain groups of people, and expressed that that didn't reflect the spirit they intended for the language.

I immediately felt deep, deep embarrassment. I hadn't meant to make any stereotypical depictions... but that was what I had done. And instead of feeling energized and excited for developing my project further, I felt completely creatively drained and upset that I had made something that went against the spirit of the very work that I was trying to promote.

After a few days of ruminating, though, I tried to forgive myself and be honest about my intentions. Though I had made something that was not inclusive, I hadn't intended to do so. I was just trying to explore the themes I was interested in, and had failed to be aware of my own biases.

So, the reason I wanted to share this story with you all was to underscore that point. If you ever make a mistake or poor creative decision that causes you to be ashamed of something you create, try to be kind to yourself. Be honest with your own intentions, and rather than being hurt by negative feedback, try to listen to it, learn from it, and grow. And more than anything, always try to exercise empathy while writing, and try to think of your messages not just in terms of what you see in them, but also what others will see in them.

Thanks for reading, I'm a pretty long-winded storyteller. Has anyone else had an experience like this before?

I had honestly forgotten that I signed up to try it out, but a week or so ago I got access to their office copilot product Duet... and it's been super weak. It can't access any context of what you're writing, making it essentially just a worse version of gpt-3.5.

Curious whether anyone else has tried it/found it useful.