/b/ - Random

Here are my results for the “Big Five Inventory” test.
Feel free to ask any questions.

https://psytests.org/result?v=ipin1ESSe7t8UE91

>>321142
You should ramble on about some computer stuff or something. I'm bored so I'll read it

>>321145
I’ve been messing around with game optimization recently. A lot of games have unnecessarily expensive graphics because the corporate demands that, there are crazy deadlines and the art of stingy programming being lost to time. I guess this is because most people go into tech now for money and wanting to solve business tasks now.
Another reason I enjoy it is because it allows me to break and explore things I have not seen before. Building web apps over and over is very boring. It just feels like Groundhog Day every time. While with reverse engineering and modding you have to constantly adapt and find new solutions every step of the way. I could be wrong about this, of course, maybe there are interesting problems in web too. But I am more so interested in the stuff that makes you ask, is this even possible at all? And can we do it even better?

So some of the stuff I learned recently was Performance Profiling. Instead of constant trial and error you can use software that helps you see what calls the program is making, what’s the bottleneck. One of the programs that is used to do this is RenderDoc. I have unfortunately not gotten around to trying this because my setup is a bit unusual for this (MacOS and Wine). But it sounds very interesting.

Another thing I learned about was the Jump Flood algorithm. I was very confused trying to understand it at first. One video i watched showed just squares jumping around to fill a screen. I was like, what? What could this specific shader possibly be used for? I could understand that this is a more efficient way to fill an area, but also it was described to be something that can calculate distance fields. What I figured out was that JFA is used to generate an outline. I am completely new to this graphics stuff, so please forgive me for being a bit stupid about it…

Hmm, what else. I decided to use git as version control or something so I could keep track of all the changes. I honestly never memorize all the commands besides the basic ones and use a cheat sheet for everything else. Maybe it’s a bad thing, I feel like others judge me for it.

Oh yeah, I found the computer graphics sub on Reddit and it seems interesting. There’s a post talking about how Gaussian blur is expensive and there’s a better alternative. I found that interesting, I should get back to it.

Also, I think most of my “optimizations” are lame. I just put a return in the beginning of the fragment function, sometimes I change the frag color to see what it affects. Yeah, I want to document what each shader does, too.

By the way, what a shader consists of is mostly the vertice function and a fragment function. A fragment means color. My understanding of this is pretty laymanish for now.

I also want to know how the pipeline works. Where is the shader called from and where the result is passed to. Maybe that would require decompiling the exe.

Oh, also the shaders are hardcoded into the exe. I wonder how then someone would mod in a shader? Deepseek said something about DLL injecting or something? I dunno.

Also, this is completely random, but a while back I tried to see if it’s possible to embed hidden messages in an image. How do people do it. It was like three years ago at this point? Maybe two. I don’t remember much so what I say may be inaccurate.

One I remember the best was gif and its color maps. Some gifs have a section that lists all the used colors, so basically you just write your message there.

For the static file types, such as jpg or png, there’s a way that changes the pic subtly. You know how every pixel is stored as numbers, basically? The method is that you change the least significant bytes into an image of your choice. This causes subtle changes in color, sometimes unnoticeable. So when you reverse the bytes you see the other image. I don’t remember what this method is called.

Of course there’s always the writing something at the end of the file method.

Now, most sites reencode the images, sometimes to compress them or whatever. I know cloudflare does this for the sites that use it? At least that’s what I thought. So the only one of these that would work is changing the bytes, because, well, the image itself is different.
There’s probably more to it, but I don’t remember much. What I remember is the imagewizard program I think? It could export as much data about a file as possible into txt format. I think that’s useful to learn about this and all.

I remember Civ 5 devs basically released the source code or something for the game. That’s cool, makes it easier to mod and stuff. But I don’t really have any ideas as to what I would even add there. I don’t exactly have the artistic skills to make the assets for a new Civ. Umm, navigable rivers? That’s probably unlikely.

>>321151
>>321149
Is civ the only game you're interested in modding?

OHHH! My dream is to hack the rom for that untranslated Kaiji game. The good one, where you’re just some guy on the ship. Maybe I could even translate it.
But that’s a very big project, I’m never finishing it on my own. The most I did was find values for text symbols in the first Final Fantasy. You do that by naming your characters and seeing what gets changed in your save files. But I was just following a tutorial.
Still, this sounds like I would enjoy it.

>>321152
No, I actually don’t care for it. I am messing with Mewgenics right now. It’s a flash looking game that for some reason does shit like light refraction above the flames.

Good thing is the devs deliberately left the game files easy to edit and stuff. It’s good for a beginner like me.

Also it’s on a custom engine that supports actual flash graphics. That’s kinda cool.

>>321154
Mewgenics rings a bell ive certainly heard of it though i unfortunately haven't had the pleasure of playing it. Did you have any ideas for things you'd like to change or add to the game?

Imagine a wonder trade system for Mewgenics. A skip dialogue button. The possibilities are endless…

Oh, I guess for Civ 5 you could make a fuck off button so the AI stops pestering you with offers you don’t care about. Someone probably made this already.

>>321155
I had a vision of a fanmade chapter that would make everything grayscale, so basically it would involve shader work. I don’t have any ideas besides making it a noire themed area. I just want to try doing the technical side.

>>321157
I take it you enjoy noir themed media. I find it intriguing myself though admittedly most of my experience with the genre comes in the form of films and comics. In any case I'm ashamed to say I wouldn't be much help in your modding efforts as I haven't tinkered with anything tech related in quite a long time. I do however wish you luck in your modding goals

On the non computer note, I remember going to /veg to find someone to play Deep Rock Galactic with. I found some discord and joined a game. Some Polish guy was like, oh how old are you? You sound like a boy and we can’t have minors in here. I think he figured I wasn’t a boy, but he told everyone I was. Not sure… The others have figured it eventually and he kinda didn’t mention anything about it.

Everyone was actively talking about so many stuff I never think about. It was awkward.

Then there was some guy who wanted to talk to me a lot, and then he asked if I was interested in black guys out of the blue. That was crazy. He turned out to be a Native American living on a reservation so I have no clue what that was about. He also talked about the fnaf movie a lot and the others told him to shut up.

I wish I was more comfortable with this because multiplayer games are the one social activity I like a lot. Like it’s my window to connect with others somewhat.

>>321158
Thanks! And it’s okay. Some of my enjoyment comes precisely from the fact it’s somewhat obscure and there’s a lot of novelty in it for me.

Not a fan of noire in particular, but I did enjoy l.a. noire. Cool game.

>>321159
Aside from deep rock galactic which are your favorite games to play with others?

>>321160
Probably terraria and left for dead. I haven’t played those in ages, though. Hmm… 100% Orange Juice?
Actually not sure. Generally I like to work towards a common goal, simulating what it would be like to solve problems with others, division of labor, etc.

There was a fun friendslop game where you’re placed into a saw-like situation and have to solve puzzles to get out. I liked solving stuff quicker than others.

Oh, Sven coop and e.y.e. were lots of fun too. You could spawn turrets in eye and what we did was kinda just run around with it while it kills stuff.

At any rate, thanks for talking to me. I appreciate it.

>>321162
No, thank you for alleviating my boredom for a time. I must confess it's getting rather late so I'll unfortunately have to take my leave but I have enjoyed chatting with you.