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Toot toot

@zeirt

Spanish | +21 | Honestly I just browse this site sometimes
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Fun fact: We know the size of the Pokémon world because Scarlet and Violet has framerate issues

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Video games tend to do this thing called "culling," where they don't render things that aren't in use. In Breath of the Wild, there's no reason for Link to be able to see how many apples are on a tree in Hateno when he's all the way in Tarrey Town, or know how many Bokoblins are running around Hebra Mountain. Link has a radius around himself that spawns in people, enemies, items, etc, so that the player gets the full experience of a rendered world without the game having to keep track of 850 Hearty Radishes sparkling.

This is good.

Scarlet and Violet has really AGGRESSIVE culling. The devs knew the game was framey and did everything they could up until the last possible second to save on resources.

The player has a single square that's always rendered around them, which takes about 10 seconds to run across. Besides that, all that's visible is whatever the camera is facing; if the camera can't see it, it does not exist.

You might think that this would be good for performance, since the game isn't calling as many assets constantly. And you would be right, if the things culled were ALL that the game was trying to render.

We all know at this point about the memory leak problem the game has, where it won't toss garbage data it's not using. This is supposed to account for the framerate drop; however, if it was ONLY the memory leak, it should start out smoothly, then decay over time until it's unplayable.

So what gives?

This is the ocean.

It's pretty. It's got a tiny bit of reflection, some gentle waves, a nice gradient. A beautifully made ocean without repetitive textures is always nice.

THIS IS THE OCEAN.

IT IS NOT CULLED.

Look at the SIZE of this thing! Paldea is an ANT in the middle of this puddle. It's rendering ALL of this, ALL its sparkles and waves, ALL the time.

Now, this is usually the part of the post where I'm like "and because we know the size of the ocean, based on the coastlines and wind direction, we can figure out how big the rest of the planet is by comparison!" like I did with Breath of the Wild over a year ago.

No.

Another video game term you might not be familiar with is a "skybox." Basically, to give the illusion of faraway objects, clouds, mountains, etc, and to hide the black void most 3D games are built in, games will have a texture wrapped around either the level or where the player is standing. For example:

This is a level from Twilight Princess called Sacred Grove. You normally can't see the bottom parts of this, hence why it turns into a gray plane, but the parts you CAN theoretically see by looking through the trees are colored so you think you're looking at a sky. You can see the edge of the void down in the bottom right corner.

Here's another one from Twilight Princess. You can see the different textures that stack on top of each other, as well as the blue skybox that's centered around Link when he's in the area. You, as the player, FEEL like you're in a small part of a larger world, because the devs cleverly structured together elements you CAN see in other areas into the background.

More complicated versions of skyboxes, typically semi-circular, are called skydomes.

They tend to look kind of like snowglobes, because you do not need to render anything that can't be seen. There's no situation in which the player should be able to fall lower than the level, so there's no reason to render the dome into a sphere in the event that that happens.

In Scarlet and Violet, it would make sense for the skydome to end where the ocean does. There's no situation in which the player manages to go past or underneath the ocean, so even if you wanted a gigantic ocean size like they have, you don't need to use more sky to encompass that.

They did not get this memo.

You might be thinking to yourself "wow, that looks like the curvature of the Earth!"

AND YOU WOULD BE RIGHT!!!!!

Why is this here. Why is it so big. I can't even see Paldea anymore. What exactly was planned for this.

Clever readers might have noticed that I labeled this "Skysphere" and not "Skydome."

That's because it for some reason is a sphere. Paldea is sitting in the middle of a fully rendered gigantic sphere in space. For some reason.

Look at Earth. Look at Spain, which Paldea is supposed to mimic.

I overlaid Spain over Paldea and made them roughly the same size. Assuming the two to be 1:1, the OCEAN is bigger than Earth.

If I then take that size and apply it to the skysphere:

HI. WHY IS THIS A THING.

The skysphere is bigger than the PROPORTION OF THE SUN TO THE EARTH:

I will be taking this as canon sizing until the Pokémon Company comes out and either CULLS this monstrosity and stops forcing our Switches to render THE SUN, or until the Pokémon Company comes out and gives us a canon planet size.

i do feel like.....idk, doggo culture or whatever has made people very comfortable with dogs and like. i obviously love dogs i have dedicated a lot of my life to dogs but dogs.....like, uh, kill people sometimes

there's been this weird shift from like when i was a kid and it was just customary that you didn't approach dogs you didn't know and you didn't touch a stranger's dog without permission to people feeling completely entitled to just touch your dog

to the point of disregarding and even arguing with you when you say no

i have an aggressive dog and the number of people who insist "well, dogs love me" and reach out to touch him anyway is ridiculous

i feel like culturally we've treated dogs so much like children that people have largely forgotten that at the end of the day they're still animals and animals are not always predictable, logical, or even safe

Adjacent point, and possibly unpopular opinion, but it also seems like there’s been a large increase in entitlement from dog-owners too — specifically them assuming that their dog is automatically allowed into every public building or retail space, not even checking if there’s a sign on the door, and having a go at retail workers if they’re not allowed

And no it doesn’t make a difference if they’re “only small” or “well-behaved, not like other dogs”

There are many legitimate reasons that places don’t allow dogs — as stated above, they are still animals, they are unpredictable, even the most well-behaved dog could be provoked. Dogs could have messy fur, many people are allergic to dogs, many young children are scared of dogs — assuming that they should be let in places as default is a dangerous habit which definitely seems to have increased in recent years

The problem with being a Creative Person is I want to create all the things. I want to draw a little drawing. I want to write a fic. I want to write a book. I want to paint with watercolors. I want to paint with oil paints. I want to animate. I want to make something out of clay. I want to sew a dress. I want to play a song on the ukulele. I want to play a song on the cello. I want to play a song on the harp. I want to write a song. I want to write a musical. I want to make a webcomic. I want to make a video game.

I want to do EVERYTHING but I don’t have the TIME or MONEY or MOTIVATION

older lotr illustrations sometimes depict éowyn wearing ridiculously small armour. apart from the problem general sexualisation of the only female character (who really does anything), there’s another hilarious thought:

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

there’s a thundering sound in the distance as the rohirrim ride into war but rather than hoofbeats it’s the collective sound of all their cheeks clapping

the artist for this particular piece is Frank Frazetta and to be fair to him this is how he drew the orcs armor 

so the rohirrim comment is probably not that far off

That’s a man who just straight up had a problem with the concept of wearing pants into battle, and I respect that

male or female

hero or villain

sea or land

even in the snow

I guarantee you Frazetta’s Rohirrim were 100% pants-free

Good Old Frank. That man loved bodies and hated clothes so much

Frank Frazetta was the reason He-Man was designed like that; the producers conduct a study to see what art appeal the most to children, and Frank’s work came out on top in popularity. So everyone in He-Man is dressed the way they are directly because of Frazetta.

That man gave us the gift of warrior thighs and tits for everyone.

Ah, it has been too long since I have seen the no pants post on my dash. And yes, this is a rare case where it wasn’t some sexist nonsense but an egalitarian No Pants Agenda.

It’s time for my regular reblog of Gondor Needs No Pants

i need to stop picking at my face but the problem is theres Textures On There and i would prefer if there Werent

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Absolutely Devastated to discover that attempting to Remove The Textures will cause new, much more Textured Textures To Appear

Surely if I remove this new Texture, however, it will be gone forever.

By Talos, this can’t be happening.

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Reddit's tech help threads may heckle you for being an amateur but at least they don't try to gaslight you like Adobe help threads

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You think I'm joking but I'm dead serious