u/frobnosticus

tl;dr: Not a "is this worth doing" post. I'm doing it.

I have this idea and I'm going to push forward with it. The frame is in a series of letters (of increasing distress over months or years as the situation reveals itself.)

Besides I write a lot but in terms of fiction I have trouble with longer form and I think this might help.

Any weird gotchas or Meta concerns that come to mind?

I've never seen that frame (not that I'm fool enough to think that means anything.) And I'd love some such well-regarded examples if they're out there.

I'm toying with the idea of just dumping it on the internet as a serial. But that's presuming a lot of confidence of future me.

What say y'all?

EDIT: In the meantime I'm fiddling through the "old libtcod" docs here: https://libtcod.github.io/docs/index2.html

If it's just a disturbance in the force then fair enough. But I can't get to RogueBasin for the tutorial.

I'm starting with a bare c++ project with a libtcod install and I'm going to fiddle my way through the python3 version. But I'd like to go native if reasonable.

I think I jammed that all in the title. But my zenbook, for some reason simply will not charge. I suppose it's possible it's charged fine but won't power on.

I can get the led on the power button to flash slowly...sometimes. But generally not repeatably.

Most "my asus laptop won't charge" search results revolve around "a max of 80%" or something similar. So I'm getting a lot of false positives.

Does it make sense for me to fetch my tiny screwdrivers on this one? Or do I have to take it to a blue shirted high school kid and pray I'm not prey?

I adore this thing and would hate to see it join the ancient laptops in "that bin in my basement."

tl;dr: NYC. What's the required "Don't Miss!"

Difficulty: Manhattan or the County of Kings (that being Brooklyn.)

But next week I'm flying back to my homeland of NYC (for the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I was in the wtc that morning.)

So WHAT, dear wireheads, does the scene look like in NYC nowadays? Is there one?

At this I'll take a dirt bar with more neon than most. A restaurant that serves

Anything. I moved from NYC in '12 and from NY to Tennessee in '15 so I'm absolutely jonesing.

"Actually, Vancouver is the most cyberpunk city." I've heard it a dozen times (and am planning a pilgrimage...soonish.)

EDIT: Whups. Knew I forgot something: "Single Player or Soloable." I'll take "multiplayer for sake of the auction house for trading." But not "gotta group to get it done."

Tired of pretending I don't love hitting rocks and trees with picks and axes, going full "I might be able to use that some day" loot goblin (you know. Like in real life.)

But crafting lately has left me a little cold. There's just not enough variety in things like Dune, the Fallout franchise or Elder Scrolls. (All of which I absolutely adore otherwise.) Even No Man's Sky runs a little dry (though I'm tremendously enjoying trying to figure out my missing recipes.)

The absolute surfeit of "survival base building craft" games keeps teasing me with "maybe this time" (with apologies to Liza Minelli.)

Difficulty: PC.

Other than that?

I'll take fantasy or sci-fi (though fantasy seems the only way this stuff goes at this level.)

• Grinding skill levels in crafting/gathering is fine with me.
• I'd love there to be recipes you have to kinda trip over to find (assuming I'm not going to go to the internet for the full list.)
• The more varieties of professions, the better. (though the WoW "pick any two" drives me bananas.)
• I'd like it to still be an RPG that's not shoving me down the main questline/plot.
• Crit success/fails in crafting wouldn't be awful.

Some examples off the top of my head: (I've played...well, I've been gaming half a Century. But don't assume I've played anything specific.)

• Windrose was good, but there wasn't all that much there. Base construction was more fun than gear building

• Skyrim: There's a breathtakingly limited universe of options.

• ESO: Seems like fewer options (though it's probably the same) but with lots of skins. Meh.

• Fallout 4 & 76: settlement crafting is fairly solid. Hunting for legendaries can be fun. But the reward to effort ratio is pretty low.

• Dune: Some cool stuff. But there's no real variety in gear once you factor out "tier." The base building is chef's kiss and they've got the "tiered crafting stations" thing down tight.

• Swtor: I seem to remember swtor having crit success mechanics with crafting. Deconstructing things with the possibility of learning a higher tier variant. But...it's been years.

• Vanguard: The old defunct "no no, this really is the spiritual successor to Everquest 2...why are you laughing?" had some great mechanics but leaned really hard on player skill rather than character skill (click timing and the like.) That might have been me not committing though.

• Satisfactory: Great mechanics but the game exists to build things as a straight-line plot. Tactically fun, strategically dull.

• Conan: Exiles: This might be the closest to what I'm looking for. I'm only a couple dozen hours into it. People kinda just chuckle when I say I'm playing it solo. So I may be doomed ;)

• No Man's Sky: Excellent. But after a decade I may have just wrung all the joy I can out of it until the next expedition. Even corvette building is just a matter of farming parts and imagining things that'll melt my 4090.

• Minecraft: Eh. I enjoy it. But it's just kinda...there.

Bonus: "The Perfect Crafting Game" (warning: This may contain contradictory rules.)

Fantasy:

• You start at "noob with some magical promise and no skill" but end up researching, questing for materials for, and creating your own tower, staff, robes, crystal ball, whatever. Crappy materials will get you through but major expeditions to exotic locations are required for "the special thing for the special ink to transcribe that one spell."
• Discoverable recipes (meaning: things you can't learn otherwise.)
• Character skill levels (like...old school runescape levels of...erm...levels.)
• Creations matter. (Sure, 973 colors of ink for your wizard's hat. But there oughta be 5,271 different wizard's hats that are really crappy if you make 'em out of tier 1 jute. But, the same recipe spun from Galladriel's hair? Perhaps I exaggerate.)

That doesn't exist and it makes me sad.

SciFi:

• Frankly? Reskin that for space ship or cyber deck.

Surely I've got some basic blind spots here.

EDIT: re: scifi and such: I have found MCC and NetCrawl. But I'm gonna have to poke around a bit before i get all "shut up and take my money."

tl;dr: Like the title says: omg more like this! Their "randomization instead of picky balance tuning" is awesome.

I'd be super in to cyberpunk settings that take similar approaches. (I'm starting my dig now. Y'all are just better at coming up with some awesome off the wall stuff I'd never heard of.)

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Previously, on "(Autistic old guy wants to vibe out to chunky wizard rulesets)[https://old.reddit.com/r/TTRPG/comments/1urw0zg/off_the_wall_question_perhaps_whos_got_the/]".

I pulled down the free quickstart probably a dozen times over the last couple months in a fit of "I should read that" and finally did a couple days ago.

AT FIRST the whole randomized characters/funneling thing looked like lazy writing "cute, but I guess it beats doing the work."

Yesterday I found a local(ish) shop that had a copy of DCC Core and I sat down and gave it a good "Oh YEAH? What about..." nerd treatment last night. I spent some time pouting about spells only going up to 5th level and such.

I HAD thought it was light on mechanics. Where's the magic item creation and such.

"What's this 'burn' thing I keep seeing reference to?" And....that was the tipping point.

It's all built in to the damn spells. The spell to craft a wizard's staff alone would literally have been worth half the price of the book to me.

By the time an hour passed I had to stop because I didn't have a notebook handy.

So, thanks to /u/towerbooks3192, /u/Jimmicky and /u/salletfriend for recommending it in my other post. Though I haven't touched Dying Earth yet.

I do think playing it would be extremely page-flippy, given the sheer volume of tables. If you put together a "quick reference" for a 3rd or 4th level magic user the spell tables would bring it to 15 pages.

o7

tl;dr: Imagine ("...if you will...") a fantasy town in the woods setting with npcs milling about "doing stuff" (Yes, I know.) I want to fiddle with fairly complex state management and interactions. I've "got some ideas..."

- "just add npcs to minecraft" is a non starter.

- I'm not looking to create a game in the normal sense. I'm trying to scratch a "would this even work?" itch. Creating a playground to test and keep up and running as a simulation.

- I have a tremendous amount of dev experience. But effectively zero in the game dev world.

- I'd like to (but don't need to) start with "Here, pull unity/godot/unreal. They have a sample template that exposes NPC behavior pretty cleanly. You can add asset packs on to that."

- I'm not super averse to something like the above with: "Oh if you get the *do exactly what you want* package on top of Engine du jour you'll be all set." But it's gotta be reasonably priced.

- I'll roll up my sleeves and go full Dear Imgui if I have to. I'd just rather a jump start.

- Programming language preference: I'm a C++ guy. So as long as it's not some JS abomination or dot not I'm golden.

- I'm not super picky about the visual paradigm. More detailed the better. But I've got to balance that out with how much work I want to do.

Does...this make any sense or is it just word salad? (I...have a tendency to screw up the balance between "enough information" and "dude...meds"...)

I'd appreciate any directional pointers you can give me.

o7

EDIT: Jumbled mess of mine: I'm looking for resources to try and learn how to create the thing so breathtakingly ineptly described below.

Disclaimer: I know s*** about f***.

I've seen...I KNOW I've seen...people using what I'll call "pattern" brushes that adapt when they overlap. If you put a single mark down it wouldn't be interesting. But once there was a clear directional...erm... "stroke?" or field where that brush was used, it would order the result according to some internal algo.

I swear I'm going to collapse into a gigglefit for not knowing any of the appropriate terms. (You know...the thingie! It does the stuff! With the lines?)

It's absolutely wild and I've...got some ideas.

Am I hallucinating this time too? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I'm not an artist in the visual sense. But I've been writing software for half a century so I'm super interested in designing such a thing (as well as using one.)

I don't even know what the proper taxonomy is to feed internet searches.

Please point me, oh experts (or neophytes) to TFM that I may R it.

• Clueless.

I know a bunch of people remap caps lock to control so I thought the answer might lie in that direction. But my searches have all thus far led to dead ends.

The surface pro keyboard has a key in the place of right-side control that describe-key reports as "<apps>".

Can I remap this so I don't have to train myself to always use my left pinky for control? Or am I doomed to carry around a keyboard with me. (I mean, I'll friggin do it. But it's the opposite of the reason I have the surface to begin with.)

I'm going to have to print out some tables all on one sheet if I want to keep going.

I started a run a few days ago. A dwarf with a 2h hammer in position 1 really cleans house.

I was doing fine...

Until gremlins literally took all my weapons and 10 gold.

So... hand to hand at -2 for a couple rooms and then...oh look!, trolls!

I made the call that with all of them dead (well, down anyway) at once my characters were able to find some way to properly finish them off without requiring a fireball.

I'll finish up the run once I make myself a quick reference or two so I don't have to bounce around in a booklet with pages falling out of it and post-its all over the place.

Just too much fun :)

Modifiers are added/subtracted to the total of an explosive 6 frenzy right? Not to every roll. That would just be madness.

EDIT: /u/jadejazzkayla FOR THE WIN! "Alexa, exit alexa plus" is the secret incantation.

"Alexa, what's the weather?"

"Well...it's like..."

"ALEXA STOP!"

No. No no no no no.

It's replacement time.

I've always been more obsessed with character creation than play and adepts of the arcane have always left me kinda wanting.

I suspect the answer is probably "3.5ed AD&D." But I'd kinda love to be wrong.

Base Pathfinder is...fine. Most other systems seem to be fairly lackluster compared to the AD&D templates.

Just wondering if something even jucier is out there.

All "weird tomes of optional rules" are on the table.

(bonus question for the terminally bored: Same question about artificers (gnomish or not). The flogiston slingiest brass and bronze "makes the WoW gnomes look like they play by the rules" arcane engineers.)

Not really a gripe. It just kinda makes me giggle or roll my eyes depending on my mood. Zooming in on the whole web page doesn't do the trick, since it doesn't scale the canvas as a whole.

So I have to open the thing in a separate tab so I can read the text on half the stuff that has it.

But nooo... "Are you trying to circumvent our revenue stream?" I mean, I wasn't. But now that you mention it I probably should save a local copy.

EDIT: Solved! Thanks to /u/wackyvorlon and /u/chemhobby I figured out the problem: The din rail spec doesn't have those fiddly bits. BUT the ALUMINUM rails DO (at least, every one I've bought.) I would not have thought to check aluminum vs. steel. I was able to order 30 8" steel rails on ebay for a buck a piece with free shipping.

EDIT EDIT: Is...there not 'solved' flair? I didn't see it.

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If you did even a cursory search for "din rail model" you'll run in to buckets of things for organizing workbenches, mounting this and that, frames for rail, etc.

I've printed a few and they all have a smooth profile.

I've bought a few little packs of rail thinking I'd gotten the wrong ones. But the profile is always the same: an extra...flange (of sorts) on the back side. It makes perfect sense for strength.

But none of the rail I've seen fit any of the inserts on the prints. Fortunately I haven't overcommitted. But I feel like I'm insane.

I'll tweak the models if I have to (I'm not real good at that but I'll hold my nose.)

But for zero of them to work suggests it's me.

EDIT: changed flair from "Advice" to "Beginner question" thinking "advice" might be "offering" and not asking.

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Not quite sure how (whether) to ask this. I've been a software developer for half a century and a big part of the key to working on detailed large scale projects for me is keeping my head fully immersed in the context of the project.

I've had a pen in my hand for at least that long, but aside from essay style writings exploring ideas I just can NOT seem to manage more than the odd vignette when it comes to prose in general or fiction in particular.

No shortage of ideas, plans, etc.

It's occurred to me over the last couple weeks that the same kind of immersion might be a part of why I can't keep with things.

So...if you're working on something large scale...how do you get yourself in to context?

Physical setting? "The is my writing only desk?" White boards with post-it notes?

Any other cool tricks? I'm super tired of fighting myself just to try and be creative.

o7

So... when you feed a new filament in to the ams ("original" version? that came with the X1C) you push that little thing back a bit and feed the filament in until it grabs. Then it does it's thing.

On bay 2, mine has, for a few months, had some kind of physical obstruction that's keeping it "pushed forward all the way." I've tried pressurized air and all manner of fiddling to no avail.

Today I decided to tear down the ams and just solve the damn problem. (I'm almost positive it's a dessicant bead.)

I got all the way down to having the screws out for the gearing mechanism for the specific bay. But I can't get the damn thing out.

I've had to walk away before...erm....putting myself in a situation where I'd be looking to upgrade. I really can't afford a new AMS right now and would like to get this going if I can.

Is there a teardown that goes all the way down to that level? There's a "one last" catch, a hidden screw, a tab...something I can't see that's holding this thing in.

If not I'll re-assemble the thing and hope like hell I didn't scratch a board trace or something and just rename it "Frodo the Three Bayed." But I'd really rather not.

The repair teardown instructions on the Bambu site are great. But they just don't go quite far enough.

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

Country

[US]

Budget

[$1000-1500, flexible if I have to be.]

Are you open to refurbs/used options?

[No]

Screen size

[Up to 15"]

Weight limit

[Any]

Purpose

[Development]

Form factor

[Standard is fine]

Intended usage

[Light 3d modelling, c++ programming, local llm if I can swing it (not vital)]

Desired battery life

[5-8 would be nice. I'm usually plugged in.]

Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life

[Performance, size, battery, weight]

Info/Requirements

[SSD >= 1T. I'd really like 64g of ddr5. But I might be dreaming at my price point. The more ports the better, bonus points for full size keyboard, I'd really prefer win10 pro to win11 (and will likely replace an 11 install). I'll be running dev in wsl mostly, freecad, openscad, several slicers, esp32 dev environments and such.]

I have an "AI Thinker ESP32-CAM" board (with it's 340 usb board plugged under it.)

Generally I use platformio. But I couldn't get even a hello world to work with this board. No errors. (Indeed it seems to build, upload, and go into monitor mode just fine.) Just no output over the wire.

I stripped down a python script I use to read other ttyUSB devices. I figured "Ah! if the code is pushing, then I'll build -> deploy -> dump out of platformio and run the python script."

Nothing.

So I grabbed the appimage of the Arduino ide and set the board up and wrote a hello world and...tada! Worked a treat.

Now. Here's the weird bit:

Start with all IDEs down and the board plugged in. Cold booted the computer.

• Kick off VS Code/PlatformIO. Customize the hello world string. Build and deploy. Same as always. Exit vs code
• Open a new terminal window, navigate to the monitor.py and kick it off. Hangs. No bytes are ever available on the read queue.
• Open the Arduino ide.

The second the Arduino ide opens the project, the python script starts pulling data that's verifiably from the platformio built code, off of /dev/ttyUSB0.

The monitor pane in the ide is also scrolling data.

What gives? The Arduino ide has got to be doing something to the port, the board, something. I assume it's related to the 340 usb adapter board. It's the only thing that makes any sense to me (which I understand has nothing to do with whether it's the culprit or not.)

As it stands I can't use these boards until I get through this madness.

Any ideas? This is so strange that it's taken me hours of isolation to get to the point where this was provably and repeatably the case.

tl;dr: "I'm gonna stop you right here." This is me trying to get my elisp legs, not me trying to merge those modes. "Just use org-mode" isn't on the table. This is just a fun project for me to get my arse in the deep end.

• The outline.el code in 30.1 is about 2k lines and looks pretty tight. (It's enviably lispilicious and has a lot to learn from.)
• The emacs wiki mode I've been using (for literal decades) is emacs-wiki.el, 2.72 and it's HUGE. Plus it seems like it was written by a human (or, well, half a dozen.)

But there's all kinds of stuff in emacs-wiki I'll never use. Inter-wiki linking (cool, but not for me), project management of some nebulous kind and...well, I could go quite on.

My thinking is: WikiWord handling isn't that tough a problem in the abstract (or in other implementations I've spun up in other languages.) But the breadth of interesting edge cases in the code is really impressive.

The white board diagram of merging the two block of functionality is pretty simple looking to me. I could make arbitrary decisions about areas of overlap and be pretty happy with it as an 0.1.

But my GOD is wiki mode a beast.

So:

• Strip the cool stuff out of wiki mode and see what I'm left with?
• Create a "bare minimum" outline-mode script and see if I can shoehorn it in?
• Grab my books and try to spin up my own wiki mode adjunct code to fold in to outline-mode? (Actually, this seems completely preposterous and...might still be easier than trying to grok wiki mode as it sits.)

Is this outside the world of a minor-mode for one or the other?

I mean, both are doing some fancy manipulation, so I'm not sure I could easily create a "mixin" that wouldn't well and truly bork the state transitions of the content handlers of either or both in the process.

How would you attack such a thing?

[ Also, yes...I'm not averse to a sidebar conversation about "If I wanted outline mode to support wiki words what I'd really use is..." But I have the time, energy and inclination to learn this stuff, so this is my best shot. ]

Whatcha got? I'm going to start ripping and tearing and seeing how far I can go until I can break both of these things in the meantime.

o7

tl;dr: 3d printing is great for prototyping and quick hit stuff. But the results are just not substantial enough.

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I've got a couple projects that are driving me bananas (short a trip as it is.) There are certainly buckets of other projects. But those two are sufficient to capture the spirit of what I'm talking about.

• The nearly ubiquitous red "desk radio" from cyberpunk 2077. I adore that thing and have wanted to build one since I first saw it.
• An old school monolithic "dumb terminal"

I've printed the radio in pla as a test to make sure the mesh extractions worked (took some tweaking.) But it, like just about everything I print using pla or petg, just feels like something I made in the kitchen with mom from a kit with Vincent Price's face on the box.

A compound curve terminal housing adds challenges of heat dissipation and the like.

So what's the level jump from 3d printing? Large pieces. Compound curves, reinforceable...

I've got a bad feeling it's "mill out of aluminum and add an enamel finish." Which, as a software guy is far beyond my (current) skill set.