#technical stuff

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

Calligraphy Patching

one question i occasionally get but i'm reluctant to add it to the pinned FAQ (its SO long already) is how do i deal with smudging the ink when I'm really far into a piece, and there are one of two ways to go (third if you count a water rinsing spill in which case the whole thing has to be remade over but in my whole career its only happened like 3 times)

leave it completely alone. Sometimes the smudges are quite small, and many of folks who seek me out to commission value the human made-ness of a piece, especially a physical piece of art. They see it as like, fingerprints on a hand-thrown pot and would be disappointed if I chose to get rid of them. This is always why I ask patrons of custom art if they want me to do something about it, which leads to option 2 -

invisible underpatch! this is a thing that I learned back when I was a teenager and obsessed with drawing my own manga and learning manga making techniques, although it comes in clutch all the time now

First, get a cutting mat out and slide a blank page of the paper you were working on underneath the art you've made a mistake on.

Then using a sharp craft/xacto knife, cut out the mistake so that you cut both the error and the bottom blank paper in the same size

Flip the art around, take the blank chip of paper and fit it into the hole. Then you're gonna roll on some whiteout along the edges to help close up any gaps. Secure the patch and whiteout with some clear tape

Flip it back around and you're good to go!

You can still see the edges of where the patch was cut in if you're looking for it, but a 2cm patch on an 8.5x11 piece viewed from a wall? No way you could tell

[goldenshrikecomic]

How does a process of you making a page go, if you've not shared that before? Not really "how do you color/shade" but more like do you have a script you're working from? Do you do thumbnails for pages before you jump into the main thing?

I'm really curious about the early stages of development before you actually do the main page itself!

Script. I script the whole chapter before getting into drawing. My scripts are 90% dialogue with a little pointers to setting/gestures/action/focus. I have colors for each characters.

2. Thumbnailing. I thumbnail the whole chapter. Page layout is built depending on how much text I can or want to fit in the page, so the first thing is adding the text, and after that, doodling.

After these steps, I start going through the pages, finishing them one by one.

[phenikas]

Hyperion Propaganda - Borderlands 2, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel and Tales from the Borderlands

Part 2

[imaginariumwanderer]

Before I go I'd like to say ask and anon ask is still open! Feel free to visit my inbox if you don't mind me answering back in like May/June. Ok goodbye everyone, I'll remember you all in therapy!

[somespareserotonin-please]

All about the restricted parts or: Race to the inevitable 10 place grid penalty

What does a ferrari fan and stem major do after not getting what she wanted (a Charles Leclerc win)? Go through technical documents to try and figure out when Mercedes will get their first grid penalty, of course. So I thought might as well track it for all the teams:

Why do I think the 10 place grid penalty is inevitable? This regulation places a lot strain and emphasis on the Battery (or Energy Storage in FIA terms). The fastest / most efficient way to drive these cars is to constantly charge up to full and then drain to empty. Coincidentally, this is also a great way to reduce the life span of the lithium batteries (deep charging aka. depleting a battery to under 20% of its' capacity reduces the amount of cycles a battery can run at full power). They are only allowed to take 2 additional batteries after their starting one this year (Edit: i went a bit back and forth because these regulations are worded like ass. Main thing: they have 3 total availlable including the one in the car they ship to Australia) which I forsee to be.... not enough. If a driver gets new restricted components outside their allocation they get a 10 place penalty for that weekend and a 5 place penalty every time they need to take even more of that same part. This will happen. Maybe often.

Okay let's get into why i even made a spreadsheet lol. For clarity: the numbers are parts used from the additional allocation. So if they are allowed three total of something with the starting part and they take a new one, I will write 1/2 to track the leftover:

Australia (AUS GP):

(Car 63) George Russel: George took several new parts even before Qualifying which surprised me given he had (to my knowledge) no major shunts or things that would reasonably damage components during practice:

1/2 (ES) "Energy storage"

1/2 (PU-CE) "control electronics unit"

1/5 (PU-ANC) "power unit ancillary component"

Seeing him take a full new battery along with the control unit for it (the ES and PU-CE are listed together in the FIA restricted parts list) had me surprised, because we haven't really heard anything about it? Disclaimer: it could be the case that they can repair whatever was wrong with the starting battery in the factory and then bring it back at a later date (like everyone sometimes did with power units in past years). I don't know the state of it currently. How would I know that? otherwise ... bleak stuff for those poor lithium batteries that will each have to do so many weekends?

(Car 55) Carlos Sainz: Carlos was not able to leave the garage during Qualifying and over night took new parts to be able to participate in the race. Noticably also a new battery (rip) (Edit: some parts removed because the FIA cannot format their own documents and i because their victim) Idk why or how it says it differently here. I don't make the rules. I just run the spreadsheet. He also somehow with the others gets 6 of the PU-ANC while George has 5 availlable. (See above)

1/2 (ES) "Energy Storage"

1/2 (PU-CE) "control electronics unit"

1/5 (PU-ANC) "power unit ancillary component"

(Car 18) Lance Stroll: Only one new part and it's not the battery! probably because Newey has already said that they do not have any more spares after they broke all during testing.

1/5 (PU-ANC) "power unit ancillary component"

(Car 05) Gabriel Bortoletto:

1/5 (PU-ANC) "power unit ancillary component"

(Car 12) Kimi Antonelli: You get a new PU-ANC! And YOU get a new PU-ANC! Everyone gets one! This is the only new restricted part he took and it was after Qualifying, so at least his battery is safe... for now

1/5 (PU-ANC) "power unit ancillary component"

That's it! Or at least it was before the grand prix. Given the number of cars retired or sent into the wall (sorry Oscar) i expect there to be quite a few more before the chinese grand prix, but i won't have that info until that race weekend.

If this is actually interesting to people, i might continue this for reals.

[sadisticlens]

It still amazes me how much more depth the same model gains between programs.

[askagamedev]

What makes code “hard coded” compared to other code, why is it so difficult to change, and why would developers hard code something rather than use normal code?

In order to understand how something is "hard coded", you need to understand what we do to the code in order to make it run on your device. Code is written in a human-readable format, but there is a lot of optimization and changes that get done to the code before the device can run it. This process is called compiling and linking. The result of compiling and linking code is an executable file that the device can understand, but humans cannot. The executable that has been compiled and linked is a snapshot of the code at the time that was compiled and linked. Any changes to the code require compiling and linking again in order for the executable to reflect it.

The program often needs to make choices based on internal values while the game is running. Most of the time these values are data-driven, meaning they are read from files outside of the code (e.g. read in the information from this config file and store it as whether to run the game in windowed mode). When the game needs to decide whether to run in windowed mode, it checks the file, grabs the relevant data, and uses that to decide. Because it's pulling this information from that config file, the same executable can handle both windowed and non-windowed mode. We don't need to compile and link the executable again.

If running windowed mode were hard coded, somewhere in the code itself there would be a variable like "Windowed = true". Then, after compiling and linking the executable, that executable would always run in windowed mode and never be able to run in full-screen mode. The only way to change this would be to change the code, then compile and link the executable again. Hard coding is fast and easy to do as a first pass of things, it's a quick way to test stuff locally if you can compile and link the executable yourself.

We can't give out the code because it's copyrighted and our intellectual property. We can only give out the executables after compiling and linking because they can't be read by humans. This means that any changes made to code are fairly difficult to distribute - this is what patches are. Hard coded values can only be changed when we distribute a new executable, while data-driven values like settings in a config file are much easier to change because they don't require compiling and linking, they only require somebody to modify the file being read and not the executable itself.

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[danjaley]

Since I reinstalled the game and moved my old documents The Sims 3 folder over, I can't edit a household with more than 8 Sims. I get the original warning "too many Sims" (also households needing an adult etc.) and can't confirm. Allowing more than 8 Sims is still activated in Mastercontroller. I tried switching it off and back on. The only noticeable result was that the Sim who was active now can't open the computer's menu any more. Any ideas?

(Every time I want to shoot an update one of those surprise-bugs pops up! 😖)