Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
All alliterations are accidental.
User ID: 83
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
In any case, what were you wrong about?
Pretty much everything by now.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
Hey @ZorbaTHut, what's your stance on Input Systems in Unreal?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
Thanks for asking. As always distractions abound, and time spent on this project was little. I made some progress in debugging things, but fell into a bit of a technical rabbit hole RE: Input systems. I originally used the legacy input system because that's what the example project I used as a base shipped with, then I switched to the so-called Enhanced Input System which I'm still learning about, and at the same time I wonder whether I really need all this. Can't I just query inputs directly as I used to in Unity and Godot, without needing to go through the Editor's Project Settings? Arguably that's just me wanting to reinvent the wheel and do in code what Unreal already does in the editor, and I'd be better off learning to leverage the tools that are already before me, but I also just want to do this myself because it's easy, simple and tailored to my needs and would live entirely in the codebase instead of partially in code and partially in project settings.
The editor in general has proven more cumbersome than helpful. Whatever I need is hidden away in menus that forget which tabs I had open and other non-persistent UI elements like pop-ups or self-closing windows. Project settings, compiler results, runtime console output; it always takes multiple clicks to get at those. Maybe there are shortcuts or UI settings that remedy this.
As to my original problem of not getting the camera to show what I'm doing - I made no progress there. Please query again next week!
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
Played some Kerbal Space Program 1 with mods. Had fun, but it's clunky.
Other than that, still entirely on Nebulous: Fleet Command. I'm not good at it, but I do have fun.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
I’ve certainly heard that the draft in Brazil is basically a meeting with a recruiter who just checks ‘not suited for military service because of low motivation’ if you don’t want to enlist. My guess is that outside of Finland, the koreas, and Israel, the draft is avoidable for middle class males who simply don’t want to go.
It was this way in Germany too, up until Conscription was cancelled.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
Pay it forward by being tough on your kids!
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
Eliminate all welfare for single adults without children. If you don't need to take care of anyone, then you can take care of yourself. No possibility of a life without responsibility.
This is probably a bad idea, but that's where see the clearest link between cause and solution.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
Still, I don't see this system as being worse than the alternative, and probably on par in terms of outcomes with situations like millions of children who are/were punted over to boarding schools for most of their lives and having disinterested parents. They do alright. The biggest issue with most orphans is the genes they've inherited, and we can fix that.
In boarding schools, it's still the parents who choose the school and strongly influence what the child is taught and how it is raised. Before boarding school, the child was raised by the family or at least in very close proximity to the family. After boarding school, the child remains a member of the family. It's a looser form of familial organization, but it's still there. And even orphans ultimately grow up in a society founded and shaped by and still composed of and structured for the benefit of families. Having vat-grown humans as a large part or even the majority of a population will be fundamentally disruptive in unpredictable ways. I wouldn't discount @Crake's concerns so easily, even as I agree with your point that printing humans may be better than demographic collapse. Especially his point about the sheer degree of power invested the institutions that print and raise and educate those new and infinitely available humans. Take any concerns people might have about the faults of educational systems, propaganda or state control over society, and multiply by an arbitrarily large factor, and that's probably still not enough worry given the immensity of the monster that would be created there.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
Not at all! I was entirely busy with the vacation, spending two days driving back from vacation, taking my kid to the swimming pool several times, getting my car fixed, going on a full-day job interview...
I did manage to crack open the editor and look at what I have so far. What I have is a script that spawns some 3D objects. According to the editor this does work, but I have not so far managed to get the camera to see it happen. It's more than nothing - by a hair's breadth. I'll either have to grapple some more with the editor to move my blueprints into better position, or script it so that the positioning of the spawned objects and the camera is corrected on the fly. The problem might also be that the character controller I expect to be used is actually overriden by some default that's spawned in without my say-so; there might be a setting for that buried in the project settings IIRC.
Baby steps. Please ping me again next week.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
Sure, they can go further left to align themselves more with their prospective coalition partners, but:
- That doesn't seem to be what the current CDU leadership intends to do. Granted, they're in opposition so all we have to go on is hot air, but at the very least right now they seem to flirt with various right-wing positions.
- If they swing left again, they'll probably bleed more voters and feed the AfD.
- I'm fairly confident that they are conscious of 2. and thus do 1.
- There is no niche to their left that they can occupy.
Now, when all's said and done I have no faith in the CDU and they will probably just say whatever they think gets them back into power, and once there will run a business as usual government. They do not, as far as I can tell, have any real stomach for culture warring over contentious issues. But at least strategically I don't see them going further left as a problem for the AfD.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
I have little to do with East Germany, so I have no idea what the consequences for them will be. Possibly anti-AFD coalitian governments that cannot actually govern?
For Germany as a whole, I suppose this will put a small damper on rampant leftism while destigmatizing right-wing views to a small extent. It will drag the center parties somewhat to the right, or at least away from the left. There's no telling what the next federal election will bring, though my money is on yet another barely-functional anti-AFD coalition. Or maybe I just have status quo bias.
Ultimately I am happy about this. Germany needs to get away from its infinitely damaging leftist culture warriors, and this is a step in the right direction, no matter what follows.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
FWIW I have seen several human parasite layabouts turn out to be somewhat adequate parents themselves when push came to shove. Certainly far from par, but not exactly abject failure either. Not something to be proud of as a progenitor, but at least they give the next generation after them a chance to do better.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
I enjoy being a dad even though it's been horrible for my life by all measurable indicators. Free time, health, marriage, finances, everything's much worse now. I'd still do it again. @naraburns covers the details of it. You're not actually a real human being connected to the human world you seemingly inhabit until you've become a parent. My wife regrets it, but my wife also still clings to her pre-parent identity as a hedonist who exists to consume product and gratify herself for the rest of her life.
1 I have family nearby but the relationship between them and my wife is not great. My mother in particular is kind of insane. Her family is in a state that’s about a 10-hour drive away.
Not having a grandma on standby will be a problem, and you will have it noticeably harder than parents who do. But you have money, so you can hire help or make do by working less.
2 [Housing]
Stop worrying. A baby doesn't need a big house. Having an extra room won't be an advantage at all until the child is a few years older.
3 I always saw myself having kids but I’m not sure I can really commit to losing all of my independence and free time. I tend to need a lot of down time from my job and I don’t know if I can handle being always “on” with a kid in the mix.
You can. Or rather, the person you will become under greater pressure can. The more years you've spent independent, without constant responsibility for others, with lots of free time in which to do as you please, the harder the adjustment will be, but you will sweat out a lot of inefficiencies and time-wasting behavior, you will shed many of your lowest priorities, and it will work out. You are not a delicate flower, or a creature made for leisure. To lean on the evo-psych armchair, something like that would never have survived.
4 [Risk of Faiilure]
Yeah, this might be a problem. It's always a gamble how kids turn out, and having bad genetics or a family history of problems doesn't help the odds. That said, it's your job to learn from the mistakes of your forebears. What could they have done to not screw up your relatives? What would you have done in their shoes? You will raise zero kids better than they did if you don't have any.
5 Terrified of having a severely disabled (like non-verbal autism) child which seems like a tremendous ordeal for little reward.
It might happen. It's unlikely. Everything in life is a gamble, but the odds are in your favor here. I know several families who have dealt with this kind of issue, and they all took massive damage over it, no matter how much of a smile they put on, and I wish there were some way to, to put it crassly, put such kids out of everyone's misery. But somehow the parents themselves seem not to think that way. Even that can be dealt with. But again, to repeat, it's unlikely.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
I'm on a Nebulous: Fleet Command spree. My head is designing fleets and analyzing past matches whenever I have a minute to think. Sometimes I even play the game!
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
That's a shame, but I understand. There's only so much work I'm willing to put into visualization as well (though I sometimes found it to be a more effective way of debugging).
I've lately been gravitating towards visualizing earlier because I noticed the same thing for myself. But as mentioned above, my adventures with Godot were cut short. Firstly because I noticed that my system for visualizing distant bodies using forced projection failed to account for a million things and was utter lunacy in retrospect (but I was too much of a happy amateur in just trying things out to foresee this), secondly because, as said, I got banhammered and that somewhat soured me on the whole ecosystem. I played around with the idea of setting up a rule for myself - implement nothing new until all older features are visualized; let nothing languish under the hood.
Even if this stuff is "baby-tier" I'd again encourage you to push it to some repo, or at least go into the details of what you're making, like you did above. Stuff like this scratches my autism itch real good, and it's really enjoyable to read / watch / try out the code for myself.
It sits nice and comfy in my private repo where mortal eyes are protected from the protean horrors that is my code-base. Well, it sits in half a dozen repos really, and much of the relevant code exists only in specific outdated versions and got scrapped to be replaced by new and improved versions that never actually came into being. Some of the oldest projects actually live in an abandoned dropbox with a few offline copies here and there. So I'm reluctant to make any of it public - it's a mess, it's heavily WIP projects frozen mid-experiment, tangles of loose ends, code fragments that date back over a decade to my earliest programming days.
I might make the repo for what I do with Unreal public since that will, by necessity from the difference in programming language, be a clean break and hopefully better-organized.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
Bro, post pics at least.
Your wish is my command. Witness my complete disregard for visual design.
/images/17249573044822352.webp
/images/17249573045198023.webp
Note that while the orbits are all circular, prograde and ecliptic, they needn't be - even that somewhat slapdash implementation supported any kind of standard kepler orbit.
The planet shows one specific experiment with geology and meteorology, althrough a very simple one. And the resulting elevations are obviously grossly exaggerated for ease of viewing.
Those images are all from my playing around with Godot. My Unity projects were a little more advanced in terms of simulation, but the visual presentation was about on the same level.
I also played with orbital mechanics so I know how that one goes, but what can you even do with geology? You made some some earthquake simulator or something?
I have a few semi-functional attempts behind me, but what I usually do is to split the surface mesh into tectonic plates, have some randomized mantle flow to drive the plates, then generate an elevation map from the collisions. That's the base level. Sometimes I try to complicate it further by accounting for material flow in subduction zones, having fun with hot spots, adding a third dimension to the mantle and crust or by keeping the tectonics simulation running instead of just taking a snapshot at some point. Once the terrain is baked, the weather simulation comes in to provide erosion, hydrology etc.
Weather simulation is more obvious, but then I kinda want to know how much you can simulate with what kind of code.
My simulation is baby-tier, of course. It's an extremely simplified hobbyist thing, after all. Split the atmosphere into a bunch of roughly equally distributed vertices that form a 3D mesh. Each vertex represents the local volume of air, and tracks temperature, pressure and moisture. And maybe some other stuff like aerosols, when I feel like it. Pressure differentials between neighboring vertices generate wind along the edges, which transports those air contents to other vertices. Wind also causes aeolian erosion in the terrain below. Clouds may form and rain may fall, which causes more erosion as water and surface material are carried off in streams that form along terrain edges. When those meet the sea, they deposit that material in the deltas. When all of that is settled, vegetaion grows where temperature and moisture allow it, glaciers and snowcaps form where the temperature is low enough (at least on planets with water and an atmosphere). Some more factors I forgot play into it all, but that's the rough shape of it.
And you can't actually see most of that because the visualization is too lazily done.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
Nothing specific, no. I have a bunch of ideas large and small, some of which I have previously built in other engines. I usually make little toy simulations for my own edification, concerning geology, meteorology, orbital mechanics etc. Nothing serious, nothing cutting-edge, and usually just to the point of "I can see where this is going" rather than any state fit for publication. I intend to continue doing this beacause I enjoy it. I might also stitch some of that together into something game-like, but that's not even a stretch goal, just an option.
I have considered sitting down and planning a more coherent project, but that's on hold until I better understand the engine and how quickly I can get things done with it.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
I've been trying to get into the Unreal Engine, as Zorba recommended ages ago. I stopped using Unity last year when the big pricing policy debacle depleted the last of my trust in the company, spent a few months with Godot until I ended up banned from the Discord for very politely objecting to their using the platform for political activism, and so what's left but Unreal or making an engine of my own. Lacking the free time for the latter, I chose the former.
Unreal's system requirements turned out to be unexpectedly manageable though of course noticeably heavier than Godot. I had a lot of trouble getting it to compile anything I wrote without crashing, but eventually I managed to get that settled. Now I need to actually do things with it. I spent the last two weeks on vacation, and the month prior to that in a frenzy of job application processes (including one that had me do an extensive C++/Qt/QML coding task, so I managed to sneak in some relevant practice), but I hope to get back on track in the weeks to come.
Someone please ping me next week to request a progress update, however meager. Peer pressure always works on me.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
I saw the difference, but it may still be related - my theory there would be that we both tap into the same reserves, but your shorter drives don't fully deplete them.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
I used to not have that but got it as I grew older. FWIW I've been driving moderate amounts since I was 18, and now in my mid-thirties I notice myself becoming very sleepy at the wheel whenever the drives grow long or the hours late. I can manage 1000km in a day just fine, mechanically, but man do I feel it. Driving at night ditto. It takes constant effort to keep my eyes open.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3mo ago
· Edited 3mo ago
In addition to carrots, I like to keep a small reserve of butter and bread, apples, cans of tuna, eggs (just crack them in a pan and collect your slightly burned omelette 10 minutes later), beef if my wallet is healthy (just throw it in a pan and collect your rare pseudo-steak two minutes later), and maybe a sausage or little bit of ham or bacon. You can throw it in a pan with the aforementioned eggs or just eat it as-is.
Oh, and a favorite breakfast of mine is oats, microwave-thawed berry mix and water. A whole bowl of the stuff. Can be prepared in about 30 seconds.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3mo ago
CW relevant:
The tragedy of Earth is not that so many died. Death is an inevitable part of life. The tragedy is that so many died as victims. When the crisis came, they were helpless, unable to use their deaths to buy anything of value. Millions of otherwise intelligent people had been tricked into ignoring a fundamental truth: that no man has any rights if he is unable to personally defend them. — Col. Corazon Santiago, "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"
and
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master.
And then there's every last quote from Yang. Giving a villain like him an ironclad philosophy is quite the achievement.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3mo ago
Yeah.
The Motte has spoiled me. The rest of the internet is one big pile of screaming monkeys to me.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3mo ago
IV is amazing, but I've played it so damn much that every time I launch it, what issues it has just jump right into my face to scream "DOOMSTACKS WILL RUIN YOUR FUN AGAIN!".
Mods for IV are great, but again...the AI just can't keep up with many complex mechanics they add, and the UI can't keep up with the amount of added content, most of the time.
The baby is not amenable to reason and it cannot help it. Do not attempt to reason or negotiate with the baby.
Once it's old enough to observe and learn, you must lead by example. It will imitate everything. Do nothing and say nothing that is not appropriate for the child to replicate. Your behavior will be its behavior.
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