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Hey there everyone.





So I finally have been able to take that idea I've been screwing around with since 2016 and turn it into a tech demo: https://punishedfelix.itch.io/the-sequence

Basically, its a braille tutor JRPG that is based heavily on Golden Sun. Instead of Djinn, you equip Braille Tablets, which you can combine in one turn and release at once, to boost the first Tablet's power. Doing this adds the letters to the "Chain" which has characters in a queue. You can decide if it inserts on the left or right side. And instead of summons you spell out words to form "signs" which release the summons instead. So, you spell out words to signify attacks.

But it's still pretty early in development. Right now I'm focusing on completing core engine features. I'm pretty close so that way I could show off the tech demo.

I have plans for a full demo at this point, I'm just cleaning up the engine and preparing to draw some of the art assets for it, and setting up a few features (such as scripting and the tileset, cuz lol it doesn't use one lmao) so that it can support the needs of that demo. I reckon I can get it almost done by the end of the year, with frequent updates.

A few cool things:
- It can scale to any resolution and automatically letterboxes, and since most of the graphics are vectors, it looks great.
- A lot of the features are loaded in from ini files at the beginning of the game, and you can modify things yourself with them.
- It features the full blind accessibility that Braillemon had, and has fully customizable HUDs, loaded in from the ini files.
- It's also extensively documented with Help, which I'm currently working on filling in.

It's free to download (even if it pesters you for a donation) so let me know what your feedback is. Thanks everyone.

Since most of us are on discord, I think it might be a good idea to have a new profile field for discord name, so we can tell who is who better.

It should be a single line text field that is displayed on a profile. I don't think it needs to be linked, it's just something that can be used to correlate a poster's identity to their discord identity. Might be a good idea to have it visible next to posts as well possibly.

If you need help setting it up, Kain, let me know and I should be able to walk you through it.

doesn't seem to be updating on refresh. can only remove it/use the defaults or I'm this lovebird.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist. Just look at this @#$%.



















also who could forget the wiki how magnum opus

http://www.wikihow.com/Run-Like-Naruto

Post all cringe inducing articles that you find on the internet here to share our mutual loathing for the state of journalism today.

Protip: Yahoo, Fox News, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and clickbait articles are great sources, but make sure that everything you're linking is not going to screw us over with ad piling.

I feel like I was the victim': Former high school teacher blames student for seducing her

In this article we learn that we should feel bad for a 23 year old woman who broke conduct by twiddling with a 17 year old student. We're supposed to feel bad because an adult can't learn how to break out of a relationship with someone who is legally still a child. We should also feel bad for this person despite their obvious exploitation and inability to take a sliver of responsibility for clearly breaking the law because they have feelings too. Apparently forgotten here is the fact that even if the child was of legal age she would still be fired for misconduct because typically having romantic relationships with the people you're supposed to be teaching is not a good learning environment, and somewhat unprofessional. But we should feel bad because this poor, innocent woman who clearly did nothing wrong and was being manipulated by a teenager can't control her vagina.

Also, note how comments are disabled, presumably to stop all of the sane people from shouting "WHAT THE @#$% IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU PIECE OF @#$%" in the comments en masse.

Golden Sun Icon Rating:  

Investigator claims 'UFO wreckage' is evidence aliens visited the Earth 250,000 years ago

If that title wasn't cringeworthy enough, the fact that it's on the "science" part of the website should scare you even more. However, we do give extra points to Fox News for acknowledging that the world is older than 6,000 years old. This is probably because the story is gleaned from The Sun.

So this is typical woo woo trash being reported as "science", since the video shows its literally just some random dude who found some piece of metal claiming all these things. Wow, great research guys. Apparently it has never occured to UFOlogists that something like this could easily be dropped into a digging site. But no, we're supposed to trust the word on something that was kept behind closed doors for at least 20 years because UFOs amirite?

Golden Sun Icon Rating:  

Reclaiming Pepe: Can the cartoon frog return to its peaceful roots?

...need I say more?

Golden Sun Icon Rating:

Yeah, a bit of a minor problem - only really noticeable on my old user account since it seems like nobody has noticed this feature has been enabled for everyone...

Kain, if you're still using the same extra fields extension, there should be a way to toggle it so that it only appears on your profile.

this is a real thing that's actually happening right now



even their website is a glory to witness

tl;dr crap developer is trying to sue people on steam and valve told them to @#$% off

I'm not really concerned about collisions, but I'm curious to know more about how Golden Sun handles moving/rotating the sprite and movement. I want to do something similar with my current game Colors but adapt it for what I've already built out. My current game feels so jerky and it basically uses the same angle/rotation so I want to model it off of Golden Sun's engine here.

Does anyone have the code of how this is handled? Or at least a model or explanation on how it works on a logical level? Like if I wanted to port it in Java or something like that. Thanks.

Yo, Kain, one of the old features that I manually took care of back in the day was "Profile Video". It's a field that basically just displays a youtube video on someone's profile, kind of like on my old account. I was wondering if you could make this feature editable to all users by default. Since we have so few members here, it shouldn't be a huge deal.

I've had this idea for an RPG engine for a while so I've started building it out. I'm using GS sprites for the visuals since it will use a similar graphics engine for the battles.

Currently I just have the basic rotation effect working, but it's pretty rad. I have it for download here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/am7kanqpujj5rj9/gsdemo.zip?dl=0

File's still uploading while I write this but yeah.

[LSDJ Memory Values:]

LSDJ is a tracker for the Gameboy that allows players to create their own chiptunes with it. I've done quite a bit of music with this nifty piece of software and I can say it's pretty dang awesome. Unfortunately, being a Gameboy game, it's completely inaccessible outside of memorization. So I may be writing a specific GB emulator that will allow blind musicians to explore this pretty awesome tool.

I may just make it so that you can write your own files and then just load it into VBA but whatever, I found these, so have fun.

Anyways, I'm dumping my findings here, so hopefully someone else finds it useful.

LSDJ Memory Values:

0xB290-0xB68F

On the SONG screen, these values include the values of the various Chains.

These values do NOT reflect the actual values on any other screen. This should only be referenced when SONG is the active screen.

Each 4 bytes indicates a row of Chains. For example, the first byte in a set of 4 is PU1, then PU2, then WAV, then NOISE. Then it repeats until reaching FF.

These values seem to be stored elsewhere when not on the SONG screen, but I can't find them.

Idea: Extract these values when SONG is first loaded and place them in an array for quick access while on this screen, and flush the array when the screen changes.

0xA080-0xA87F

On the CHAIN screen, these values include references to various phrases.

These values do not reflect the actual values on any other screen. This should only be references when CHAIN is the active screen.

Each 16 bytes reflects a single chain. Chain 00 starts at A080, chain 01 starts at A090 ect.

These values are stored elsewhere but I can't find them.

Idea: Extract these values when CHAIN is first loaded and place them in an array for quick access while on this screen, and flush the array when the screen changes. Only reference the CURRENTLY SELECTED CHAIN.

0xA880-0xB07F

On the CHAIN screen, these values are the pitch offset for each individual phrase.

Similar to the references to the phrases, each 16 bytes corresponds with each chain. So A880 is chain 00, A890 is chain 1 ect.

0xA000-0xAFEF

On the PHRASE screen, represents the various notes. C3 (the lowest note) is represented with 01 while the highest note, B8, is represented by 48.

This has a weird update format. When deleting a note, it completely erases all the notes. This also occurs if you insert the same note. Adding the same instrument clears the memory as well. The list is resorted when you change the current note.

Each 16 bytes represents a single phrase. A000 is Phrase 00, A010 is phrase 01, ect.

0xC0AD

Current screen. Values correspond to:

01 - PHRASE screen
02 - GROOVE screen
03 - CHAIN screen
04 - SONG screen
05 - TABLE screen
06 - INSTRUMENT Screen
08 - FRAME screen
09 - PROJECT screen
0A - BANK screen

I might be missing a few, it's always tricky to go and figure this one out. lol

0xC1EF

5 character string representing currently selected instrument's name. Only applicable on INSTRUMENT screen.

The following are values that monitor the cursor. They stay the same when switching screens unless otherwise specified.

0xC1CC

PHRASE screen:

Horizontal cursor position. Starts at 1. 1 is note, 2 is instrument, 3 is type of modulation and 4 is modulation modifier.

0xC1CD

PHRASE screen:

Vertical cursor position.

0xC1D2

CHAIN screen:

Horizontal cursor position. 0 is chain, 1 is transpose.

0xC1D3

CHAIN screen:

Vertical cursor position.

0xC1D7

SONG screen:

Horizontal cursor position.

0xC1D8

SONG screen:

Vertical cursor position.

[Body Integrity Identity Disorder – The Desire to Cripple Oneself]

Time to turn up the heat in the debates section. This is a copy paste of what I wrote on KYM, so pardon me. But this is super interesting things to discuss.



In the whizzing development of transgender rights, the issue of what we have the right to do with our own bodies sometimes comes up. Opponents to transgender reassignment surgery often label it as disfiguring, mutilation or simply aesthetic – while those who support it, especially those with gender dysphoria, count it as a need for their mental health.

This topic is not intended to debate over the validity of transgender-based body modifications but rather those of a more extreme nature.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder – The Desire to Cripple Oneself

Body Integrity Identity Disorder (not to be confused with tumblr-grade "transabled" people) is a rare and relatively newly recognized identity disorder, which is early in research and investigation. The disorder is usually an identity disorder that starts early in life that causes the patient to believe that they are not "born correctly" and must remove a limb in order to feel normal. There are also recorded forms of desires for paralysis, blindness and deafness. As the patient ages, these feelings of discomfort become more and more difficult to manage and impose great psychological stress on the individual. Research seems to suggest that it is indeed a valid identity disorder, however the cause is still elusive.

What is intriguing in these individuals is that the desire to be disabled is so strong, that some people will go as far as to destroy their bodies in order to achieve the form that they desire. Many will go to third world countries to have risky procedures done, while others will take these issues into their own hands. Very rarely, however, a doctor may actually operate on an individual.

This practice is extremely controversial because of the permanent nature of the operation as well as the heavy implications it has on the patient's life, as well as lives around them. Most doctors turn squeamish at the idea of an individual wanting to voluntarily destroy their bodies, and the legal and ethical complications draw doctors away even further. "What if they sue me for malpractice because it didn't turn out after all?"

Another problem is that being disabled puts a large burden on the patient's life as well as those around them. Out of all of the forms, Blind BIID logically has the least effect on those around them since blindness is a condition that doesn't require dependence in most situations outside of transportation or reading, and technology is slowly closing this gap. On the other hand however, those who wish to be wheelchair bound face a myriad of issues, such as the health problems with sitting in a wheelchair all the time, and requiring help from other individuals for essentially the rest of their lives.

Unusually though, about 70% of BIID patients actually feel better after they have transitioned. These individuals feel like a massive burden has been lifted off of their lives and they can finally live the way they were "supposed" to be, while all other therapeutic techniques have little effect on the disorder itself (although it can treat comorbid conditions).

What this raises is a huge ethics issue on how to properly treat these individuals. Since the disorder itself doesn't respond well to treatment in most cases, the progression towards more and more discomfort seems almost impossible to prevent. At the same time however, the act of crippling someone for life is something that cannot be undone and, if done to the wrong person, could end up leaving them even worse than before. However, because BIID can be extremely overwhelming, especially as the patient gets older, it may be safer to offer surgery than to require the patient to cause the damage themselves.

Should patients with BIID have an option to be able to transform their bodies as they see fit, despite the fact that they desire disability?

Additional reading:

The Role of Specific Experiences in Childhood and Youth in the Development of Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID)
Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Gender Dysphoria: A Pilot Study to Investigate Similarities and Differences
Effects of Psychotherapy on Patients Suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID)
Body Integrity Identity Disorder and Mancophilia: Similarities and Differences
Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID): How Satisfied are Successful Wannabes

Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID): interrogation of patients and theories for explanation.
Gender Dysphoria and Body Integrity Identity Disorder: Similarities and Differences (pdf download for full document)

German researcher who studies this stuff and his theories (German)

[What is your stance on legalization? If legalized, what do you believe the regulations behind it should be? If not, what punishments should be enacted?]

What's your opinion on the various issues surrounding recreational marijuana? We're all grown ups here for the most part so let's stay mature here. This thread is NOT about discussing the drug itself but rather issues surrounding it - please try to refrain from discussions about use unless they are informative.

What is your stance on legalization? If legalized, what do you believe the regulations behind it should be? If not, what punishments should be enacted?

If you believe in legalization of marijauna, how do you think that the growth of recreational cannabis should be regulated?

What is your opinion on "stoner culture"? Do you think it positively or negatively impacts marijuana legalization? How large of a subset of marijuana users do you believe this subculture to be?

Do you have any interest in indulging in marijuana, be it through smoking, edibles or otherwise?

Feel free to add a couple more issues.

Here are my thoughts.

Some people on this forum know already that I'm a regular toker. I smoke mainly for recreation but also because it does help me with insomnia and eating problems. Personally, and quite obviously, I do believe that it should be legal but with similar restrictions to alcohol. I find the drug analogous to alcohol in many ways in that it serves a social purpose and is, in comparison to other drugs, much less addictive or dangerous, and is more comparable to the negative effects of smoking or drinking.

Regarding marijuana growers, I think that the sale of pot should be restricted to licensed individuals, to promote better regulations and quality (this is why, after all, marijuana from dispensaries is much better quality and much more consistent quality than street stuff), but people should be allowed to grow their own plants, not intended for sale of product, for themselves. In many medicinal states, cannabis is allowed to be grown by holders of cards, usually limiting the number of plants allowed.

Stoner culture is extremely annoying and impedes legalization, but is a small reflection of the amount of marijuana users.

And of course, I smoke fairly regularly; I both smoke and use edibles, but less frequently. If you do decide to indulge, I should warn you that while smoking is going to be harsher on your lungs, its much easier to gauge how high you will get, as opposed to edibles. Edibles take about an hour and a half to metabolize enough for me to feel the high and as such you can easily consume too much before you know it, and thus have a much stronger high than you really should be - this can trigger panic attacks. Not fun.

Ultimately, I believe that the right to smoke should be given to citizens. It's not the government's business if I smoke when playing video games or watching movies. I never smoke in front of children or even in public, so I don't see how my private behaviour that affects nobody should be illegal.

I need bands, guys. I've been listening to Supertramp for like a month now. They're good and they really do never get old, but the problem is, that if I cross the event horizon into fan-faggotry, I will never be able to return. I've already made crossovers, I've made TF2 mods, that's how desperate my condition is. So I need balance, I need some new music, to mix up @#$%.

List some bands. BTW.

Genres I like:
-Classic/Progressive Rock
-SUPER @#$%&*! CHEESY 80s ROCK/POP
-Electronic (I can't pin down more than that, so just throw what you like)
-GOOD folk rock (not the fake hipster @#$%)
-HILARIOUSLY AWESOME ROCK BALLADS (think Styx)
-DIIIISCO
-OLD SCHOOL 90'S RAP @#$% YES
-Vidya Game OSTs


Also, do not ask me to listen to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Prince, or AC/DC. I will respond by mocking you furiously. Only plebs listen to that @#$%. If you tell me to listen to The Wall I will personally force you to listen to Crime of the Century, you pretentious uncultured swine.

just kidding but they're quite overrated and most of their music has never appealed to me

Doing anything interesting this month?

HOLY @#$% GUIZE YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS @#$%



















DJFGLKSDHFSADKJG

I had to drive through Hazel Park today to try to get a friend of mine who lives in Downtown Detroit back home, but hell no there was no way I could get through. My car is old as @#$% and could barely handle it. Water was @#$%&*! 2 feet deep in some places, and that was light. Ohmygerd. I'm back home safely and my apartment wasn't affected (I live on 3rd floor lmao) but wow. Tons of @#$%&*! damage and oh my god that @#$% was scary as @#$%.

I need to clear some stuff in my room because I predict moving out within a year so I think I could start now.

Not sure if this is okay but in short, I got a new job I start in January and I'm going to start getting ready to move out of my home within 8 months, and I need to clear out my stuff. Among the stuff being sold are Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. These are CARTRIDGES ONLY but I'm letting them go at pretty cheap prices.

If you guys don't have a copy here's the time to get them. I offer combined shipping with the two games together.

Golden Sun sold!
Golden Sun: The Lost Age

I got other stuff there too if anyone's interested which I'm willing to combine ship, so yeah. Thought I'd throw that out there.

My Other stuff is here

It's cool if you're not interested but I'd rather not throw anything out. I expect to go through rounds of selling stuff before I'm done, so yeah.

The link doesn't work. Maybe you should take it down? I've tried it several times, no dice.

[BRAILLEMON: POKEMON FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED]

BRAILLEMON: POKEMON FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED
Excuse the cheesy name, please. Harhar. Does not actually utilize Braille printing technology (might actually have connectivity to Braille displays
later though)

So what is this?!
Do you know that one guy who always wanted to be a Pokémon Master, but is blind as a bat
and can't even tell you what Pikachu looks like? Well THIS IS FOR HIM.

This game, programmed in Gamemaker 8.1,  utilizes the TTS extension to have menus and
text read to the player. It can be played completely without vision (and the game has
no graphics).

Why, you may ask?

I have three blind friends who are bored as all hell and they need something besides Monopoly
to play, of course!

Plot? Backstory?
You just turned 10! You are on your way to Professor Oak's lab to get your very first Pokémon.
It could be Bulbasaur, the Seed Pokémon. Or maybe Charmander, the Lizard Pokémon? Can't
go wrong with the Tinyturtle Squirtle though. Yup - that's right, this game is a port of
Pokémon Red and Blue for the Gameboy!

There are some differences though - the game is more like a blend between Red/Blue
and Gold/Silver.


FEATURES
Text to Speech functionality
Initial release will include 251 Pokémon and 249 moves.
EVs/IVs based on Gen III and higher formulas.
Accurate damage, stat, catch rate ect. formulas
Plotline based off of Pokemon R/B/Y

A preview video is here

CREDITS
Programmer:
Rachel Merryfield (Corvidae)
Kyle Frownfelter

Resources extracted from Pokémon Blue/Red by GAMEFREAK/Nintendo. Pokémon is
copyright GAMEFREAK 1995-2013.

Beta Testers:
...YOU?!

SUPER DOOPER SPECIAL THANKS TO KYLE FROWNFELTER FOR TAKING THE
TIME TO DEVELOP THE SAPI5 DLL, I OWE YOU ONE DUDE.
But I'm not blind! Can I play it too?
Of course! In the end I want to add networking capabilities to connect players of all
types, eyes functioning or not. The game will be condensed to be playable without
requiring graphics. Towns will be menu based, and routes will be greatly simplified. Items
and Trainers will be able to be detected from sound.

If you get an error after booting up saying that you don't have a Text to Speech engine
installed, make sure you read through readme.txt and TTS_help.html provided in the file.
Check your Text to Speech settings and see if they work. The game uses the
Microsoft voices as default and hasn't been tested with anything else just yet.

ANY OTHER ERRORS SHOULD BE POSTED HERE! Braillemon.exe will produce an error
log for every error that pops up in a session, so post its contents there so I can
fix it!

In fact, it'd really benefit me if you want to test this with perfectly fine vision, it allows
me to test on even more kinds of computers! Make sure your Text-to-Speech software
is configured or else this program will not run.



Downloads?
Hold your horses! This is in DEVELOPMENT for a reason! The game is going to be in a
development phase for a while, so some features may not be implemented yet. This page
will show development additions. There will also be an update file included in releases to
show what's new!

MOST RECENT UPDATE
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l4eyvtbabkbykaa/0.0.0.8.zip

previous builds available upon request

I am in need of non-blind testers who are willing to try this audio game
who are familiar with Pokemon to point out any awkward glitches or
unusual mechanics that stick out to you.
Thank you in advance for your comments. It's programmed all from scratch
with no external tools, bar those produced by Kyle Frownfelter, the other
programmer on the project. So catching those bugs is important!