calla's recent activity

  1. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    calla
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    Long story short, I'm writing a program for Linux that will let you script any input device with lua. Long story long, you pass one or more devices evdev devices to the program. The program grabs...

    Long story short, I'm writing a program for Linux that will let you script any input device with lua.

    Long story long, you pass one or more devices evdev devices to the program. The program grabs the devices, and it will forward all events along with the device info for each event to a callback you implement in the lua config. It creates a virtual keyboard, mouse, and gamepad (I will perhaps explore other devices in the future and/or the ability for users to define custom virtual devices from their config) and from the lua script you can send events to these virtual devices which other applications will recieve the same as they would a physical device. So at the simplest, you can use it to remap devices such as remapping a gamepad to keyboard inputs for example, or you could use it to do things like consolidate multiple physical devices into a single virtual device. The ceiling for what you could do is limited only by your imagination (and willingness to actually implement it), layers, modes, context-sensitive inputs (e.g. "if you input X with your browser focused, perform action Y"), and whatever else you might want.

    The initial idea was just for remapping gamepads with more complex features because I get frustrated by the limitations of even the more advanced systems for remapping like Steam's input system. Then I realized that all input devices go through the same kernel interface (there's even an evdev device for my power button so I may use that as a silly demo when I publish the project) so supporting other devices was not only easy but completely effortless.

    Multiple devices at a time was just a random idea I had while working on it and I was initially not going to do it but I realized it would be make the program potentially much better as an accessibility tool, although I'm sure the overlap between "benefits from additional accessibility tools for games and such" and "wants to program their input device behavior with lua scripts" is probably pretty small, but I still hope it can be useful for people in that regard.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Via: Solving the 100 GB problem in ~games

    calla
    Link Parent
    If someone's connection is that bad then I imagine this probably wouldn't be something they would want to use anyway, since it would be noticeably worse.

    If someone's connection is that bad then I imagine this probably wouldn't be something they would want to use anyway, since it would be noticeably worse.

  3. Comment on Via: Solving the 100 GB problem in ~games

    calla
    Link Parent
    In my very short amount of research after you mentioned it, part of the benefit of sending it directly to the GPU (besides the fact that you'll want it there in the end anyway) is that since it's...

    In my very short amount of research after you mentioned it, part of the benefit of sending it directly to the GPU (besides the fact that you'll want it there in the end anyway) is that since it's being decompressed on the GPU in can be used immediately, whereas typically you're processing the data twice, first decompressing it on the CPU then sending the decompressed data to the GPU. Assuming it's possible to more thoroughly compress data without scaling up the amount of time decompression takes, then you can reduce file size further which means the game overall will take up less space and you have less bandwith usage to the GPU which could help even more with load times.

  4. Comment on Via: Solving the 100 GB problem in ~games

    calla
    Link Parent
    The dev has expressed some interest in that. He even said the same thing actually, about how it would probably be easier.

    The dev has expressed some interest in that. He even said the same thing actually, about how it would probably be easier.

  5. Comment on Via: Solving the 100 GB problem in ~games

    calla
    Link Parent
    First time hearing about DirectStorage, very interesting. It's really a matter of how much ahead of time the game asks for the asset, I suppose. Something like DirectStorage would decrease load...

    First time hearing about DirectStorage, very interesting. It's really a matter of how much ahead of time the game asks for the asset, I suppose. Something like DirectStorage would decrease load times which means you don't have to ask for that data as early, but you would still be asking for it before the asset is needed, so it's a question of if your network speed can still keep up with that, so it's difficult to know if it will still work (well) for games using DirectStorage. However if DirectStorage is really as fast as is claimed, then you should also be able to apply much higher rates of compression to data, resulting in smaller files and thus less time spent downloading the data.

  6. Comment on Via: Solving the 100 GB problem in ~games

    calla
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yeah his definition of low is definitiely pretty skewed, it would depend on the game of course but I imagine it needs to be relatively high in general (unless you're using it for very small games...

    Yeah his definition of low is definitiely pretty skewed, it would depend on the game of course but I imagine it needs to be relatively high in general (unless you're using it for very small games which kind of defeats the point). Why not give it a try yourself and see how it performs?

    Edit: Apparently the average download speed in the US (based on speedtest.net results) is ~213Mbps, so maybe not as skewed of a number as I initially thought.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Via: Solving the 100 GB problem in ~games

    calla
    Link
    Via is an early access program/service that lets you forego downloading an entire game and instead it downloads parts of it on demand as you play, completely transparently as if you just...

    Via is an early access program/service that lets you forego downloading an entire game and instead it downloads parts of it on demand as you play, completely transparently as if you just downloaded and launched the game normally. The game itself still runs locally on your machine so unlike game streaming there shouldn't be any additional latency or other associated problems.

    I can't try it out myself yet because I'm on Linux, but this is very cool. Of course, I'd prefer if they stopped making have such large disk space requirements in the first place, but since that won't happen I'm happy that this exists.

    7 votes

  9. Comment on Looking for help in purchasing an eReader in ~books

    calla
    Link Parent
    How often do you have to zoom to read things? As long as it's clearly legible without zooming in most of the time then that's fine by me, would just get annoying having to zoom all the time...

    I've read plenty of manga on my libra (and before on my 6" kindle voyage), and I think it's fine, but it's kind of a personal preference thing, you'd have to see if you like it.

    How often do you have to zoom to read things? As long as it's clearly legible without zooming in most of the time then that's fine by me, would just get annoying having to zoom all the time (especially on an e-ink device).

    Might be tricky since I think you'd need someone to develop an application to read the Wikipedia database compression format, not sure if anyone has made that for the Kobo.

    Good point, didn't consider that. In any case not something I'm too attached to, I'll look into it probably much later on if I do get a Kobo (which seems pretty likely at this point).

  10. Comment on Looking for help in purchasing an eReader in ~books

    calla
    Link Parent
    Do you think the 7 inch screen of the Libra 2 would be good enough for manga? As nice as the notes would be, I'm not sure the extra $100-200 justifies it. the Elipsa 2E is also 227 ppi instead of...

    Do you think the 7 inch screen of the Libra 2 would be good enough for manga? As nice as the notes would be, I'm not sure the extra $100-200 justifies it. the Elipsa 2E is also 227 ppi instead of 300 like the others. Libra 2 seems like the best middle ground (among Kobo devices, at least, which is what everyone else is also recommending).

    As an aside, do you (or anyone else reading this) have any experience with replacing the internal SD card of Kobo devices? I read that it's doable but it's not officially supported so I'm curious on exactly how hard it would be and if it could potentially cause issues even when done correctly. I kind of like the idea of putting an offline copy of Wikipedia on there and that'd definitely be doable with a larger SD card.

    1 vote

  11. Looking for help in purchasing an eReader

    ~books Ask (recommendations)
    I want to start reading more, and I'd also like to start avoiding screens before I sleep, so I'd like to get an e-ink device that I can use for reading. I've never owned or looked into ereaders...

    I want to start reading more, and I'd also like to start avoiding screens before I sleep, so I'd like to get an e-ink device that I can use for reading.

    I've never owned or looked into ereaders before so I'm not entirely sure what the general capabilities are in this space, but heres a list of things that I consider important:

    • Absolutely essential:
      • I need to be able to put my own files (epubs, pdfs, etc) on the device to read without being forced to go through some marketplace installed on the device (if anything I'd prefer there to not be a marketplace on the device at all, or a removable one, as I would never use it). Files don't need to be added remotely, as long as I can connect it to my (Linux) computer with a USB and mount the storage or pop out the SD/microSD to do that then that's sufficient.
      • I need to actually own the device, none of the techno-feudalist bullshit like what plagues the smartphone landscape. I want to be able to remove non-essential components (e.g. marketplace) and it'd be nice if I could also tinker and install third party software freely. If possible I'd prefer a device that's mostly or completely open and FOSS by design, but I'm aware that might be asking too much. As an alternative I would also be willing to hack the device to get it in an open, FOSS state if the process isn't too complicated and it's well documented, it'd be preferable if it was that way by design but as long as I can get there one way or another I'll be content.
    • Would very much like to have:
      • In addition to regular books, it'd be nice if I could also read manga. These tend to be zip/rar files containing a series of images, so I'd assume support for reading things formatted in that way is probably less widespread if it exists at all on dedicated ereader devices.
      • Some kind of lighting so the device is usable in the dark. I don't know how this would compare to the blue light from screens (if anyone knows, please share) but I'll certainly want to use it for more than just before I sleep.
      • Some kind of system to add notes as I read might be nice, I was never good at studying and note taking in school so I don't know how much mileage I'd get out of it but in theory it'd definitely be a boon to organize information as I read or add notes to myself to look into things later or whatever.
    • Would be nice to have, can live without:
      • The ability to load music onto the device and plug in headphones to listen to music while I read. Bluetooth for audio devices isn't really something I care about, but might be desireable in case I get bluetooth headphones in the future (unlikely). Unimportant if it has built in speakers or not, as long as I can plug in headphones.
    24 votes

  12. Comment on Linux terminal emulators have the potential of being much faster in ~comp

    calla
    Link Parent
    I daily drive Linux, and I agree there are plenty of cool and interesting and well put together tools designed for usage in terminal emulators, but a lot of these tools are also very simple and...

    I daily drive Linux, and I agree there are plenty of cool and interesting and well put together tools designed for usage in terminal emulators, but a lot of these tools are also very simple and don't necessarily rely on anything specifically unique or special about terminal emulators, most of them just output plain text, maybe with escape sequences to color things. In general I think escape sequences suck to work with and terminals are also very weird about handling input.

    I don't think anything about how terminal emulators work is actively beneficial beyond compatibility, inventing a new standard wouldn't have to mean losing capability but rather going about those capabilities in new ways that aren't as limiting or awkward for developers while also introducing the potential for new capabilities. I won't claim to know what that should look like, but I hope somebody smarter than me figures that out and makes it real.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on Linux terminal emulators have the potential of being much faster in ~comp

    calla
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    Instead of making terminal emulators faster (when they're already plenty fast enough as-is) I wish more people were putting effort into not emulating old terminals at all. We have countless...

    Instead of making terminal emulators faster (when they're already plenty fast enough as-is) I wish more people were putting effort into not emulating old terminals at all. We have countless software for emulating ancient hardware, and I get that having these things around for compatibility with old programs is good, but why are we still limiting ourselves to all this cruft. I'd be very interested to see some real attempts at creating a new standard for command-line interfaces.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Let’s talk Skyrim mods! in ~games

    calla
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    Enderal, it's a total conversion mod that uses Skyrim as a base to make an entirely new game. It has a compelling story and characters, it's a fair bit harder than Skyrim, significantly better...

    Enderal, it's a total conversion mod that uses Skyrim as a base to make an entirely new game. It has a compelling story and characters, it's a fair bit harder than Skyrim, significantly better dungeon design than Skyrim, and it's fully voiced in both English and German (I can't comment on the German VO, but the English voices are, most of the time, extremely good). And you can still use most Skyrim mods for Enderal as well as it having its own modding community. It's one of my favorite games and I wish more people knew about it and played it.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on Why did you select your username for Tildes? in ~tildes

    calla
    Link
    It's just my name!

    It's just my name!

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Show ~/project: A thread to share your finished projects in ~comp

    calla
    Link
    I don't know that I feel right calling these "finished" because I definitely want to work on them more in the future, but they're stable and usable. lucky - an input daemon for Xorg configured in...

    I don't know that I feel right calling these "finished" because I definitely want to work on them more in the future, but they're stable and usable.

    lucky - an input daemon for Xorg configured in lua. I'd say there are two main benefits to using this over the alternatives (e.g. sxhkd):

    1. Better support for mouse bindings, with support for binding a callback for motion events (and how often those motion events fire so you don't overwhelm your system with a bunch of shell commands or whatever) and window enter/exit events for a mouse binding.
    2. Contextual bindings. Any binding can include a filter callback, which returns true when a binding should be active, otherwise if it returns false the input will be passed through to other applications as if it weren't bound, and you can bind the same input multiple times with different filters. There are also API functions to get various bits of information about windows so you can for example have a keybinding only active when you have a certain window focused. With enough effort this could allow you to do things like create different input modes or set up a chording system.

    mpv-youtube-chat - an mpv lua script I made that uses yt-dlp to download and overlay chat replays from Youtube livestreams and premiers inside mpv. You can load the files directly from disk as well so it can be used offline.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on The philosophy of Uncle Iroh: What does it mean to be a man? in ~life.men

    calla
    Link Parent
    I understand how you feel but I think that that's what makes Avatar so special. It's rare (or at least it felt that way when I was growing up, I don't keep up with modern children's media so maybe...

    I understand how you feel but I think that that's what makes Avatar so special. It's rare (or at least it felt that way when I was growing up, I don't keep up with modern children's media so maybe it's different now) for a piece of media made with children as the primary audience to have that sort of complex development and morality, something that actually respects the children viewing it to understand and resonate with those ideas. As a kid Avatar single-handedly shaped my worldview as well what media could be.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Minecraft Wiki strongly considering moving away from Fandom in ~games

    calla
    Link Parent
    Breezewiki is so nice, not only does it make the pages way more tolerable but it will also let you know if there is an independent wiki available that you can look at in place of the Fandom wiki.

    Breezewiki is so nice, not only does it make the pages way more tolerable but it will also let you know if there is an independent wiki available that you can look at in place of the Fandom wiki.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    calla
    Link
    Started playing the DS version of The World Ends With You for the first time recently after a post here linking to a top 15 article for DS games reminded me it existed. The story for what I've...

    Started playing the DS version of The World Ends With You for the first time recently after a post here linking to a top 15 article for DS games reminded me it existed.

    The story for what I've played so far has been kind of poorly paced I feel (examples below) but the core concept is cool and it feels like it's starting to level out the issues a bit.

    Spoiler examples of pacing issues

    Rhyme getting erased and Beat joining the Reapers both felt like they happened way too fast, I didn't feel like I had time to get attached to them as characters so these moments didn't really have much emotional impact.

    The music is really good, not really much else to say there.

    The gameplay is very cool and I think it's probably the game that uses the DS's unique gimmicks the best. You have real time combat encounters that are split between the top and bottom screen. The same enemies exist on both screens, so if you do half of Enemy A's health in damage on the top screen and the other half on the bottom, it will die. Both of your characters on each screen also share a health bar, so you can't neglect either half of combat.

    For combat the bottom screen you drag the stylus around from on your character to walk around, move it fast to dodge, and you equip different pins that are different attacks/skills that use the touch screen, so you have pins where you slash over an enemy to have your character dash in and hit them, or you tap an enemy to shoot a projectile at them, or you hold the stylus on the screen to start a fire you can drag around. There's lots of different types of pins and they each level up independently and some evolve into new pins, it's really cool.

    On the top screen it's a bit simpler, you use the dpad (or face buttons if you're using the stylus in your left hand) to do different (simple) combo paths. Performing specific combo paths (it will be random which one is the correct one, if any, for any given attack chain) will earn Fusion Stars which are just a meter to build up for a Fusion Attack, which is just a big blam that hits all the visible enemies on each screen. Combos are always initiated by pressing left or right, depending on which direction you want to attack in, and if you aren't mid attack and press down you perform a block, and if you press up you jump and avoid attacks (and you can also initiate attacks from a jump).

    The way difficulty is handled is also neat, you have four regular difficulty levels (you unlock them at various points in the story and can change it at any time). Playing on higher difficulty levels will change what enemies can drop, so if you play on a harder difficulty you get better loot (and you can still get drops for lower difficulty levels). You can also change your level at any time from 1 up to your current max, this scales your HP in combat and also effects drop rates, the lower your level relative to your max level, the higher your drop rates.

    Everything about the game is cool and interesting and I could see it becoming one of my favorite games by the end.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on The small web and minimalist websites - what are your thoughts and experiences? in ~tech

    calla
    Link Parent
    Thanks! I spent way too long trying to hack together a way to do dithering with pure CSS so it'd be more flexible and take less space but ultimately failed. All of my dithered images I use for...

    Thanks! I spent way too long trying to hack together a way to do dithering with pure CSS so it'd be more flexible and take less space but ultimately failed. All of my dithered images I use for background are under 1KB (the biggest one is only 230 bytes) so it's not like it's a big extra load or anything, but I still wish I could've figured out a way to do it.

    1 vote