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4 minutes ago, Xolvix said:

Fair enough. I mean honestly - it doesn't really matter what you use, in the end all anyone cares about whether they can do what you need and are capable enough to create the content you desire. All that matters is the end result.

...and sometimes the end result doesn't need to be of good quality, and actually has more charm if it is of bad quality. ...and so you use a bad editor, and you like it. :)

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1 hour ago, Nort said:

...and sometimes the end result doesn't need to be of good quality, and actually has more charm if it is of bad quality. ...and so you use a bad editor, and you like it. :)

It can have more charm, but it really depends. I like a lo-fi charm in things when they're good, but it takes skill to make something look bad that's actually hiding a clever quality underneath. Without that skill, bad just appears bad and amateurish. I think the best example of this I can think of is Cruelty Squad. Visually looks like complete and utter garbage, has "Overwhelmingly Positive" recent and overall scores on Steam.

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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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10 hours ago, Shadow said:

MS Paint, with all it's ridicule, can do some neat (if mostly 1990s era cartoonish) stuff:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ms-paint-artworks-2014-7

I'm kinda digging the Luke Skywalker one myself.

 

I LOVE pixel art, thank you so much for sharing this!

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Since this thread is already silly, why not derail it a bit: The main thing I took from this whole ordeal is that it's annoying how long it takes to adopt new and better formats. 

There are virtually no reasons to use .gif apart from compatibility with ancient systems. Jpeg from an actual image editor instead of mspaint being much better is one thing, but there's also webp, heic, avif, jpeg xl and others, all better than their lossy or lossless predecessors and most have free implementations. Except almost nobody uses them because the adoption is glacially slow. Surprisingly Chrome and Firefox are fast, but everyone else isn't, Apple traditionally being the worst. 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Blender now supports webp output for rendering, which in its lossless version is straight up better than png or tiff, only to find out that Win10 doesn't support it natively and I have to search the web for a codec to get thumbnails in explorer.

It's the same with music files. We've had codes better than mp3, standard aac or ogg vorbis for almost 2 decades now, yet these three are still the most used codecs for streaming music. And when a platform decides to use something else, it's often a step down in quality because they push down the bitrates too much, as with youtube in the last couple years.

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39 minutes ago, vozka said:

there's also webp, heic, avif, jpeg xl and others, all better than their lossy or lossless predecessors and most have free implementations. Except almost nobody uses them because the adoption is glacially slow. Surprisingly Chrome and Firefox are fast, but everyone else isn't, Apple traditionally being the worst. 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Blender now supports webp output for rendering, which in its lossless version is straight up better than png or tiff, only to find out that Win10 doesn't support it natively and I have to search the web for a codec to get thumbnails in explorer.

It's the same with music files. We've had codes better than mp3, standard aac or ogg vorbis for almost 2 decades now, yet these three are still the most used codecs for streaming music.

The problem is you're defining better in a very narrow way — "more efficient at compressing data" — while ignoring other aspects which to most people are equally (if not more) important. Application support is one of those aspects. As your own experience with Windows 10 and WEBP shows, a "better" format is useless if nothing else supports it.

Similarly, Opus might be better at compressing audio than Ogg Vorbis and MP3, but if you can't play it on your device of choice, it is no better at all. For most uses, wide application and device support is a far more important concern than squeezing a bit more quality out of a slightly smaller file. Especially given that storage and network costs are decreasing and the size difference between a 96 kbps and a 160 kbps file is practically irrelevant.

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2 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

The problem is you're defining better in a very narrow way — "more efficient at compressing data" — while ignoring other aspects which to most people are equally (if not more) important. Application support is one of those aspects. As your own experience with Windows 10 and WEBP shows, a "better" format is useless if nothing else supports it.

Similarly, Opus might be better at compressing audio than Ogg Vorbis and MP3, but if you can't play it on your device of choice, it is no better at all. For most uses, wide application and device support is a far more important concern than squeezing a bit more quality out of a slightly smaller file. Especially given that storage and network costs are decreasing and the size difference between a 96 kbps and a 160 kbps file is practically irrelevant.

Well, yeah, the problem of slow adoption is precisely what I'm complaining about. This is kind of a circular argument - if nobody adopts it, nobody is going to use it and it's going to have little support. I do realize that this is a difficult problem to solve because companies have to basically volunteer to "passively" support it and hope it brings them advantages in the long term.

There are other aspects that I omitted as well, like for example HEAACv2 being slightly more demanding to decode (which is also the reason why Bluetooth historically used poor SBC encoding), but those are largely moot nowadays as well (even integrated bluetooth chips and cheapest SoCs can decode pretty much any audio format with no issue.

 

Your point regarding storage and network costs does not cover the whole situation, I see three issues with it. 

Firstly mobile internet is still slow in many places in the world and it's often limited. Where I live it's difficult to get more than 5 GB monthly limit for a reasonable price.

Secondly most websites are bloated as hell and any way to speed up their loading helps. This was the main reason for webp creation and adoption.

Thirdly for services like music and video streaming bandwidth is expensive and the difference between using 160 kbps and 96 kbps for the same quality can save a lot of money. That was the reason why Youtube and Soundcloud switched to more modern codecs. And not even that, Netflix in some apps already switched to one of webp successors for movie thumbnails, because in such a large scale even serving the thumbnails in a decent image quality costs a lot of money.

 

Btw in my case webp was certainly not useless, it was just an annoying situation. I use it as backup for my own use (seems to be about 1/5 of png size so far for photo-like files), so I just downloaded a codec from google to get explorer thumbnails and I don't need other people to support it. Although the fact that Facebook messenger converts webp files to... static gifs of all things, is kind of annoying (and funny).

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A slow adaptability in a graphic editor I don't personally see as a grounded argument. If I see the differences between simple Paint and say, Krita, if it is to pass from a VW beetle to a Tesla, but in the end it is only an increase in the number of tools, apart from the basic ones that are the same in both.

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2 hours ago, vozka said:

so I just downloaded a codec from google to get explorer thumbnails and I don't need other people to support it.

Just curious was it K-Lite codec pack? I was looking for the same way to fill in thumbnails also and that did it perfectly for me.

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1 hour ago, Shadow said:

Just curious was it K-Lite codec pack? I was looking for the same way to fill in thumbnails also and that did it perfectly for me.

Nope, I don't like downloading codec packs because I remember that they used to create messy situations in the system by containing outdated codecs, unneeded codecs that conflicted with other apps etc. That was about 15 years ago and it's possible the situation is entirely different, but for me it stuck (and up until now I haven't needed to install any codecs separately for about a decade). There's a google webp codec and a windows store webp codec, I used the google one. 

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  • 4 months later...

I just found this awesome cross-platform software to make and edit screenshots:

https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip

I think it's very useful for people beta testing missions and other kind of feedback based on screenshots. You can load in existing images (for example TDM screenshots) and edit them.

 

Edit: It also has upload capabilities:

Quote
  • Upload screenshots directly to imgur.com in anonymous or user mode.
  • Upload screenshots via FTP in anonymous or user mode.
  • Upload screenshots via custom user defined scripts.

Would be nice if you could also upload to Google drive folder for example (or Dropbox), or Postimage via custom script.

Edited by datiswous
postimage
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9 hours ago, datiswous said:

I just found this awesome cross-platform software to make and edit screenshots:

https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip

I think it's very useful for people beta testing missions and other kind of feedback based on screenshots. You can load in existing images (for example TDM screenshots) and edit them.

I use ShareX, also FOSS and the most complete, but sadly only for Windows. Also a very fine app is Flameshot, cross patform and also FOSS

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Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

Favorite online apps you may like too 😉

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2 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

I also tested Flameshot and it's great, but (afaics) it doesn't have the ability to edit existing images that are not created with the tool and therefore it's less useful for TDM users, because the screenshots are made inside TDM.

Thanks for the reminder about ShareX, I check it out as well.

Edit: ShareX has the same functionality and more (you can record your screen as well). Amazing. Because of the many features it does look more bloated and is therefore possibly a little more complicated, but it could be worth it.

2 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

but sadly only for Windows

Ah, that's why I didn't see it at first. Indeed a bummer.

Edited by datiswous
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1 hour ago, datiswous said:

I also tested Flameshot and it's great, but (afaics) it doesn't have the ability to edit existing images that are not created with the tool and therefore it's less useful for TDM users, because the screenshots are made inside TDM.

Thanks for the reminder about ShareX, I check it out as well.

Edit: ShareX has the same functionality and more (you can record your screen as well). Amazing. Because of the many features it does look more bloated and is therefore possibly a little more complicated, but it could be worth it.

Ah, that's why I didn't see it at first. Indeed a bummer.

Anyway the image editing in the Screenshot tools are always limited, but this isn't a problem when they have a share functión (most to imgur, but I prefer vgy.me which I use in ShareX). I simply paste the share url in this editor for further editing.

Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

Favorite online apps you may like too 😉

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26 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

Anyway the image editing in the Screenshot tools are always limited, but this isn't a problem when they have a share functión (most to imgur, but I prefer vgy.me which I use in ShareX). I simply paste the share url in this editor for further editing.

Haha I guess you're British? :D

Screenshot_20221031_125110.jpg

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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28 minutes ago, SeriousToni said:

Haha I guess you're British? :D

Yeah, I always do an extended search for tools from The Netherlands first. Everything local is always better. If not available I am forced to use garbage from other countries..

Spoiler

P.S. I know you answer to Zerg Rush, but it's a joke anyway.

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I'm from Spain. I  use vgy becaus I think its better than Imgur and faster, apart more private.

dwsCJH.png

9185Bt.png

 

Nothing in vgy

https://themarkup.org/blacklight

If you upload something in Imgur, all advertising companies know it and track you, no thanks.

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Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

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  • 5 months later...

Bad that this isn't free soft >$100

https://www.posersoftware.com

 Daz3D, basic app free

https://www.daz3d.com

Blender is the only valid FOSS alternative, maybe complemetary with Makehuman or MB-Lab, also FOSS

https://mb-lab-community.github.io/MB-Lab.github.io/

http://www.makehumancommunity.org/content/downloads.html

Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

Favorite online apps you may like too 😉

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5 hours ago, revelator said:

https://openscad.org/gallery.html though not used mainly for game development (3D printing mostly) it does have some appeal.

Well, CAD soft are a lot out there, f.Exmpl https://www.freecad.org/index.php

Also nice https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/ or https://plastisketch.urbiworx.de/app.html both online

or also https://nomadsculpt.com for mobile, from the author of SculptGL

Edited by Zerg Rush

Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

Favorite online apps you may like too 😉

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quite a load of programs which can be used but yeah blender is probably the most complete free software package available for game development. Not that it is bad but atleast in the older versions there was allways problems running it on older gfx cards not sure if that has changed ?.

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