Scopique
ScopiqueDiscord
Special thanks to those who took part in my request for information on why they subscribed to Discord. The reason I asked is because I had a free, one week Nitro trial and as it was set to expire today, I was soliciting opinions as to whether or not people felt that Nitro was worth it.
Many people opined that sending money towards a service they use frequently was the Right Thing To Do, or at least was until Discord started getting bigger, or until people found that what they were paying for wasn’t really worth the price. Out of those who still maintain their subscription, being able to customize their experience and use stickers and cross-server emoji seems to be a big draw.
My friends and I maintain a small server, and we are near-daily users of the game streaming functionality. The question of whether or not to sub to Nitro started when I watched one friend who had Nitro stream at 1440p, and then watched another friend without Nitro who was streaming at 720p, and I could barely discern any details in the 720p stream. I’m bummed that Nitro and server-boosting only allows me to increase my bitrate, and does nothing for the streams that I watch, and things like this continue to drive my salty streak over the fact that Guilded never really succeeded in stealing Discord’s thunder.
Blender Break
After finishing my “Dark Hallway” render, I decided to take a break from Blender while I contemplate what I want to work on next. I had started working on a concept, but it turned out to be technically difficult for my current skill-set so I shelved it in favor of the “Dark Hallway”. I am also contemplating a “return to my roots” with a sci-fi interior scene, but I’m worried that I’ve tried it too many times now, and future attempts would result in my brain drifting towards the same concepts. However, now that I’m looking for reference images, that might not be the case.
TTRPG Organization
Despite no opportunities to participate in TTRPGs in my immediate or far future, I’m still obsessed with doing something with them. I’ve been trying to fit myself back into the clown-car that is my app development project, but I’m not yet in the mind-space where that can happen so in leu of that I’ve turned to off-the-shelf organization solutions.
This is a 3-year-cycle for me. I’ve seen and tried all of the Big Players in the realm, and find that they are either horribly overwrought (World Anvil) or don’t give me enough control over my data (Notion) or have absolutely ridiculous pricing (Legend Keeper) for what it offers. I decided to dive into the rabbit hole of Obsidian, since it’s free and is what I use for note-taking, and boy howdy did I find one hell of a rabbit hole.
Josh Plunkett is an Obsidian TTRPG god, who created the above layout vault while constantly assuring people that he knows almost nothing about programming or JavaScript. This thing goes hard. On his site Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials Josh enumerates the plugins he uses, provides links to those plugins, and has recorded videos on YT for pretty much every single one of them and how he uses them. I haven’t yet looked at all of his videos because there’s just so much to consume, but what I’ve seen so far has been clear and mostly concise, and all have been informative.
I have a lot to do before I could start using Obsidian for TTRPG planning, though, because I am not looking at D&D, and some of the plugins Josh uses are specific to D&D/PFRPG. I’ll need to set up my templates, rework some CSS, and get some of that sweet, sweet automation that Josh showcases for many of his pages, and I expect that to take quite a bit of time. I’m hoping I can create a template vault which I can clone (I store my vaults privately at GitHub) for when I have a campaign-on-the-brain.
Star Citizen 4.0.2
Me ending a grab bag post with a Star Citizen footnote is like how celebrities of the 40’s and 50’s used to sign off from their radio or TV shows with a signature song.
I have to say that CIG really seems to be leaning into the whole bug stomping thing. 4.0.1 was meant to address issues with 4.0, but in classic CIG fashion only swapped out old bugs for new bugs.
4.0.2 isn’t perfect, but the rate at which CIG was firing off updates on Spectrum (and copied over to the Pipeline Discord server which feeds into a special Star Citizen channel on my own server) shows that while they certainly have their work cut out for them, they are trying. I’ve had fewer issues with things like hangar management, specifically in the areas of ships vanishing into claim status, overlapping instances with other players, and the ship elevator not delivering my ships. Still, I tried a cargo mission to a planet-side output the other day and none of the freight elevators were working, which I should have recognized before I disembarked, on account of the piles of abandoned crates lying around the LZ.
As I type, 4.1 is in the hands of the Evocati (the first-line of testers who, you know, actually report stuff and don’t just bitch on Spectrum about things being broken) and it includes one new feature, item recovery. Despite saying they weren’t going to release any T0 features this year, item recovery has been a massive pain point for players for years now. We can purchase, subscribe for, or gain through seasonal grants items like armor, special weapons, and flair. With events in Pyro awarding unique ship and personal equipment it’s becoming more apparent that owning these things doesn’t mean anything if we die while using them, and die in a way that makes retrieving them impossible (like if our bodies fall through a planet or end up in the middle of Stanton’s star, which happens). T0 item retrieval will allow us to keep any equipped gear if we die, but anything in our inventory (backpack, chest, legs, etc) will be left at our site of death. In later iterations, CIG has plans to move this into an insurance-based system, much like how EVE Online works, which we’ll need to settle up before we head out into the world. Of course, any items we purchased or were granted through outside-of-the-game means will always be insured. The one concern I have is how often CIG’s notes on this subject promised that not only would players be able to always recover their attributed items, but that there would also be a provision allowing for piracy of the same. They mentioned avenues for piracy no fewer than three times, so excuse me while I refuse to believe that CIG really sees this project as both PvP and PvE. We know which side of the bread their butter is on no matter what they say.
