IndigoGollum

Is there any way to move an object directly toward or away from the camera while scaling it to preserve its apparent size, so it doesn't look like it's moving or scaling? I don't think this is very useful, but it could be good for condensing a distant landscape to be visible with realistic looking scales while not requiring a huge rendering distance.

I'd like to be able to use vector rather than raster textures, mostly because raster images take up a lot of space. I'm pretty sure Blender doesn't support this natively, and the only extension i can find for it is Vectex, which hasn't been updated since 2012.

Does anything for newer versions exist, even just for use within Blender? Is there a better way to have detailed textures without huge texture files?

Thanks in advance.

I'm having some trouble getting my first party Wiimote Plus to connect to my Linux Mint laptop via bluetooth. I can get Blueman to say it's connected, but the sync button keeps flashing on the remote until i disconnect it, and it's not recognized by AntiMicroX, jstest-gtk, Retroarch, Cemu, or Super Smash Flash 2.

I've looked at WiiCan, wiimote-pad, and MoltenGamePad, and i can't figure any of those out. I installed xwiimote and xf86-input-xwiimote but they didn't seem to change anything.

Does anyone know what i'm doing wrong here or have experience getting a Wii remote to connect to Linux (ideally with a working nunchuk)?

First, i know this place is mostly for video game design. But i don't see many other places for game design beyond video games, and i have no idea where else to go for guidance with designing a sport.

I had an idea today for a new variety of bowling that i think would be best played with duckpin balls and pins. Problem is, those are apparently really expensive. A quick look online has a single ball going for $60-$80 US, and candlepin balls aren't better.

Less recently i wrote rules for another sport that would require mostly original equipment, and i don't even know where to start with getting totally custom equipment made. I guess talk to a smith or welder?

If anyone here has experience with this sort of thing, how do you get equipment for experimental games/sports without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on it? Is this why apparently nobody makes new sports?

Yesterday while working with pizza dough, i wondered if mixing dough into (wild) clay would help strengthen it. I've heard of people using water that starchy foods have been boiled in for clay, and of clay with hair mixed in, both to make it stay together better.

I'm sure this would make the clay smell pretty bad before it's fired, but just adding an acid like vinegar might help kill whatever bacteria would feed on the flour. That's what's done with starch water.

Has anyone tried this and does it help make wild clay easier to work? Would washed flour work better, so it's just gluten with less starch?

If nobody tells me it's a bad idea i probably will try it myself and get back to you all with results.

I've long been dissatisfied with maps of 3D spaces more complicated than a few storeys. Maps for things like TTRPG dungeons are usually split into levels (assuming all the rooms and corridors fit neatly into separate floors, with stairs and ladders the only signs of a third dimension), isometric (i couldn't find a good example. These look nice, but have to exaggerate the vertical dimension a lot and large maps have rooms hidden behind rooms), or everything as a single top-down map (very messy).

Digital maps should be able to solve all of these problems with things like a moving camera and transparent rooms, but in my experience they don't. The Elder Scrolls 3-5, for example, use that third kind of messy top-down map. TES II: Daggerfall has very complicated dungeons, and its map is the best map design i've seen for a 3D area too expansive to be isometric and not vertically neat enough to be split into levels. It's still terrible,^1^ but i've still never seen anything else come close to how much of a complex dungeon it lets you see. I guess video game developers have decided that making simple areas is easier than figuring out how to navigate complicated ones.

I could try to design and produce a line of translucent building blocks for physical models of complex structures, or make big Blender models for every city with an underground area bigger than a basement, or go learn how to mod Daggerfall and use its map for custom structures, but surely there must be a better option.

So how do you all handle it? Do you keep your dungeon maps neat enough or small enough to use layers or an isometric perspective? Accept the mess of a top-down view of everything? Is there some tool or drawing technique that's perfect for this sort of thing, and i just haven't found it? Am i really best off using Blender or Minecraft for this?

^1^Part of the tutorial dungeon from that game:

Why can i smell things that are spicy, but i can't smell other of what i call pseudo-tastes like astringent (dry or tannins) or cool (mint) or metallic? Are all these pseudo-tastes i'm grouping together just not actually related or not processed in similar ways?

Most of the links in my website (i haven't gotten around to all of them yet) have the size of the page they link to as a title, so you can see how big the page will be before you click the link. Is there an easy way to generate new titles for all my links based on what they link to, instead of doing it manually? Even better if it can include embedded files like images in the size preview.

I currently just edit my code in xed, my computer's built in text editor. I haven't looked into dedicated HTML editors yet, but i'd be open to trying one (that runs on Linux) if it can do this.

Thanks in advance.

I think having a thread for small questions ("What's the IPA for this sound?", "How do you write an affricate tie?", etc.) that's pinned and replaced every week or two would be good.

Just looking at new posts here in this community, i mostly see links to news articles and i don't know if it would be appropriate to make a post for a small question with a simple but hard to find answer.

Lemmy tends to have duplicate communities between different instances for many subjects, and this can make it hard to find information here. For instance, if i want to know if anyone has made a constructed language for birds, i have to go to the communities list and search for "conlang" and "constructed language", open every relevant community i find, and search each of those.

Is there a way for me to make a group of all these related communities such that i can see posts from all of them in a single place, and search within all of them at once?

I have found myself cross-posting the same thing in ten different communities because there's no single most popular one. I think something like these groups would also stop this from happening as much. If somebody is going to see my post in one of those communities, it's reasonable for me to assume they'll also have similar communities grouped together and i won't feel the need to repeat myself.

Why does fresh rosemary taste dry? I don't mean it tastes like dried rosemary, but i don't know how else to describe how it makes my tongue feel. Why is it like that?

I have a clear globe that i would like to project to a flat map. Any common projection should work, since computer programs exist for converting map projections. Where should i start?

A couple of details: First, my "globe" is an empty plastic Christmas tree ornament, so it can be hung from a string at one end but it doesn't have a stand like a normal globe does.

Second, this is a worldbuilding thing. My globe does not represent any real planet or similar body, which is why i need to make a new map from the globe instead of finding an existing one.

EDIT: To be clear, i know about projections already. I'm not worried about picking a projection. What i'm asking about is the process is for taking a physical globe and projecting that globe's surface onto a flat rectangle. I don't know how to turn an imaginary cylinder or cone sitting on my globe into a tangible physical or digital map. I don't have the means to cut up and unfold my globe until it's flat. What is the actual process for making a map from a globe, for any projection? I know this isn't how maps are traditionally made, but surely there must be a good way to do this.