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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • It’s always good to support the original publisher and encourage local libraries by reading a hard copy, so I could never endorse piracy, even for people who can’t get their hands on a physical copy. Even though it’s true that both libgen and annas-archive have ebook copies of this particular book (and can easily be found via google), I could never in good conscience direct anyone to such a site.



  • Are you set on using light sources, or would you be okay with a shader that just creates the shadows without checking for specific light sources? It looks like this might do what you want, but you might need to modify it to work with your exact use case (multiple z levels).

    Generally it seems like some kind of shader might be your best option, it seems like the 2d lights are intended for casting lights within a given z level rather than between them. If you want more complex shadows across multiple z levels, you might need to create your own light objects (just a position, color, and intensity) and pass them to a shader that does something similar to the linked example, but modified based on your lights list.

    It’s possible there’s a simpler way that someone else could chime in with (I’m pretty new to godot), but as far as I can tell the built in 2d light and shadow systems aren’t designed for different z levels, so you’d need to use something else.








  • randomsnark@lemmy.mltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLichens are things
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    2 months ago

    For anyone else who was curious about lichens covering “a not insignificant amount” of the earth’s surface, a quick google tells me it’s about 7% (according to e.g. new york times, scientific american, etc)

    Edit: oh and estimating the age of an exposed surface by lichen diameter is called lichenometry. I’m seeing stuff about it being used in geological contexts but it makes sense that it could work for old buildings too





  • You might enjoy crpgaddict, a blog that is playing through every computer roleplaying game in chronological order, providing scores for each one on various metrics. The reason I bring him up is that he doesn’t rate on a curve, or give things marks for being “good for its time” - if pool of radiance scores higher than skyrim, it’s not because it was influential or good for its time, but because he thinks it’s outright better regardless of age (just an example - I’m not saying he would actually rate those two games that way, and he has not rated skyrim). There are early 80s games that he remembers fondly and had a huge impact on the industry that he rates as like 23/100 or whatever, because the scale leaves room for the Witcher 3.

    It takes a long time to get through all those games, so he’s currently up to the early 90s, having updated his blog regularly for over a decade. But his list of highest rated games might be a good place to start.

    Oh, and while we’re talking about old-ish RPGs that would score well on his scale, I might as well mention Morrowind and the Baldur’s Gate series (before 3, obviously), which he won’t reach for a long time but has been known to hold up as solid examples of the genre. Personally I still think Baldur’s Gate 2 is great. I’m also a big fan of the quest for glory series, which crpgaddict has rated, but might not make his list of top scoring RPGs, because they’re a hybrid adventure/RPG, so not all of their strengths appear on a scale designed for pure RPGs.


  • As someone who didn’t play them back in the day, I feel like SotN holds up but Super Metroid doesn’t. Just as another opinion. I couldn’t really get into metroid fusion either. To me it feels like the moment-to-moment action gameplay is too clunky in the early metroid games I’ve played, even if the exploration element is neat. I did enjoy playing SotN for the first time a couple of years ago though. It’s been a while since I played either, so they’re not totally fresh in my memory - I guess it’s possible that I’m just more forgiving of clunky melee combat than clunky shooting.

    Tangentially related, always amuses me how “metroidvania” has become the genre name, when originally it was just a way that reviewers poked fun at the big change between SotN and earlier castlevanias. They were like “this isn’t what I expect from a castlevania, it’s a great game but maybe they should have named it metroidvania”, and the name stuck. Another odd fact about that terminology is that according to interviews, the SotN designer never played metroid - they were inspired by the non-linear exploration with different routes opened up by items/upgrades in Zelda games (although obviously adding that to castlevania’s platformer gameplay makes it more closely resemble metroid). So it should probably be considered a zeldavania.




  • randomsnark@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWho is the GOATest GOAT?
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    3 months ago

    Probably Wayne Gretzky? I don’t even know anything about ice hockey and I know he’s supposed to be the most dominant player of any sport. Like he and his brother have the record for highest combined goals of any pair of brothers: 2,857 by Wayne, 4 by Brent. If you take away all his goals, he’d be the highest scoring player of all time on assists alone. There have been 13 times when a player has scored over 100 goals in a season in NHL history: Lemieux (once), Orr (once), and Gretzy (eleven times in a row). He retired last century and still holds 57 records. I’m not gonna keep picking out examples but there’s a bunch more facts like this that sound like the old “chuck norris facts” meme but are actually true.

    “If you don’t know anything about ice hockey why do you have all these facts on hand?” - I remembered seeing this kind of list before so I did a quick Google.

    Edit: I’m seeing some different exact figures for some of these, but the general principle stands and I’m not invested enough in hockey facts to nail down which numbers are exactly right.