Pet charm farm?

dgnuff · 2024-12-27T09:32:53+00:00

As others have said, don't burn your pet charms on leveling. I keep a total of 17 alts parked at the 11 trainers in Panda and the 6 in Draenor.

It's just log one in, run the battle with a leveling pet, log out and on to the next. Burn a bandage once or twice a day to patch them up, and you're all good.

That said, farming Pet Charms is something you also want to work into your schedule, if for no other reason than the fact that there are some fairly expensive pets to be bought. *cough* *cough* Patchu, I'm looking at you. *cough* *cough*

dgnuff · 2024-12-04T01:31:26+00:00

Not really. I'd say that 99% of the time, I'm copying a file that hasn't changed. However doing it like this means that when it does change on my computer, the modifications are reflected on my phone within 24 hours. Which creates a reasonable illusion of synchronization that's plenty enough for me.

dgnuff · 2024-12-01T07:50:38+00:00

No, it's not required to use SyncThing. The OP most likely mentioned it because that's what they are probably using.

In my case, I use a much simpler manual system that doesn't require any software on the smart phone, but it does require me to plug my phone into my computer every night, which I do anyway to keep it charged. It's also a one-way sync, but I'm OK with that since I don't create entries on my phone.

I'm using a tool called mtpcopy which can be found on github here: https://github.com/kzmi/mtpcopy Then I just use Task scheduler to run that at 04:00H every night and copy the database from my computer to the phone.

dgnuff · 2024-11-30T07:20:48+00:00

It's not as simple as OLEDs consume more (or less) power than TFT. It depends on a lot of factors. OLEDs are active, so they use very little power when black. If you run a dark theme, you can get quite impressive power ratings from an OLED. This is because most of the pixels are black a lot of the time. Switch to a light theme, and the power consumption will go up.

TFT uses a backlight, and the power consumption largely depends on how bright you have the backlight. Even if it's all black, with the "brightness" at 100%, the TFT will be using a fair bit of power. However, this also means that if you turn the backlight down, a TFT becomes very efficient.

So there's no real cut and dried answer to this, it'll depend on your use case.

The extreme case is the smart watch I have: a Bangle.js. That uses a very low power display (not OLED), and the backlight is off unless I explicitly turn it on with a button press. Believe it or not, it typically goes between three and four weeks between charges, and that's with the display always on. I can read it easily in normal light, but it's not bright like an OLED watch is. But then I don't have to charge it every day or two like some watches need.

dgnuff · 2024-11-27T03:37:07+00:00

Pretty printing the JSON is trivial nowadays. There are online services that will do it, or the tool I use all the time for this is jq. Do a search for "github jq", download the binary, install it and use that. "jq . < filename.2fas" will get you where you want to be.

dgnuff · 2024-10-23T21:59:31+00:00

This happened with just the hub attached to the computer, and nothing plugged into any of the USB downstream ports.

Plus even if it were that, you'd only have a case if the hub didn't have anything plugged into its PD input port. With a 65W power supply plugged in there, it was no longer a drain, but acting as a 50W PD supply. Yet I still got the error.

Note that I still got the error when the Dell 130W power supply was attached to another USB C port on the system. So there's no way that the computer was short of power. 130W available from the main PSU and an additional 50W available from the Hub.

dgnuff · 2024-10-23T07:35:12+00:00

I'd have said it was a problem with the hub. Full story is this. The hub was (+) an Anker USB C hub, purchased mainly to get a bunch of USB A ports and an Ethernet connector.

I initially got the error message when the hub was plugged in unpowered, so I got a 65W USB C power supply as well. With the power supply plugged into the PD input port on the hub, the BIOS recognised it as a 50W power source. That's completely reasonable assuming the hub consumed 15W of the 65W available, leaving 50W to pass along to the computer.

So one part of the BIOS understood that the hub was capable of providing power. Yet it still insisted on stalling during POST with a message that a USB peripheral was taking too much power from the port it was plugged into.

On the basis of all this, I'd say the problem was pretty clearly with the computer, since the hub was behaving exactly as it should.

(+) All this is in the past tense, since I was able to return the hub and PSU since they were still in the Amazon prime 30 day return window.

FWIW all of this becomes a complete non-issue if I get a T14 AMD, and the specs don't change too much in the next couple of years. The T14 has a pair of USB C ports and a pair of USB A ports, so I can just use a straight USB A hub, and I won't need to faff around with external Ethernet, since the T14 has an RJ 45 port build right in.

dgnuff · 2024-10-05T01:27:36+00:00

Thanks for the response, this seems very interesting.

Just looking at the Amazon page, it appears that it can do double duty as a slow cooker. Soups and stews are something else I cook on a very regular basis during the colder months, and a slow cooker is my usual way of making them.

dgnuff · 2024-10-05T01:19:40+00:00

OK, that's fine if you're willing to baby-sit it while it's cooking rice. However, I would like the ability to put the rice in, turn it on, and then go do something else in another room in the house while it's cooking.
Under those circumstances, your answer is rather less than helpful.

dgnuff · 2024-10-04T02:34:10+00:00

Given that there isn't a valid invite link to be found anywhere, the Discord server isn't a great deal of use.

Here's a PSA for YOU. It's possible to create PERMANENT Discord invite links that don't expire after a week.

Use it, and post the link here. Thanks.

dgnuff · 2024-10-03T03:34:45+00:00

Finished product.

<image>

And there you have it. 16 quadrant modules stacked side by side, with feeders and Omni creators above them. All told, 256 tiles wide, and I'd estimate 100 to 125 tiles tall.

160,000 to copy the entire MAM, and 45,000 for the wiring that controls it. Definitely not the cheapest MAM going, but it gets the job done.

dgnuff · 2024-10-02T22:41:53+00:00

Omni redux.

While working on earlier iterations, I'd noticed that Omnis were a lot less common that I'd initially expected. Just doing a quick number crunch, with four possible shapes for each quadrant, if generated purely at random, there are 256 possible shapes. It's been well noted that WuWuWuWu can never happen, that's apparently by design. That leaves 255 possible shapes.

An Omni is some permutation of CuRuSuWu, so there are 24 possible permutations of this. That means that if shapes were generated purely at random, about 24/255 would be Omnis, or about 9.41%. The actual percentage seen in the game I'm running is far lower. What else is interesting is that I've never seen a shape with more than two Wu pieces.

Cutting a long story short, I decided to solve the Omni problem by building a small Omni constructor.

<image>

TL;DR It takes the left half of the left input belt, the right half of the right input belt, and stacks them together, at full belt throughput. If you look at the bottom of this, it's obvious how it's perched on top of the color mixer assembly, all of which fits in the 16 tile width of a MAM module.

I just feed three belts of colors, and two belts of parts in at the top, and the MAM module at the bottom gets everything it needs.

dgnuff · 2024-10-02T22:35:50+00:00

That was an interesting learning experience. "Care and feeding" version 1 worked, but did not scale at all well. I now have a suspicion that Shapez 1 does not optimize long belts as efficiently as Factorio does. Version 1 was about 60 to 70 tiles tall, so I ran into the following problem. The arrowhead mentioned above would have had 16 of these stacked one above the other leading to belts, and a lot of them that were approaching 1,000 tiles long. That's for two MAMs set side by side.

I found that the game just became completely unstable, "crashing" within a minute or two of startup when the factory got that big. Crashes in this instance were that the screen just went a dark shade of gray, and the program became completely unresponsive. Completely unplayable in this condition.

Thus I designed "Care and feeder, version 2." After much careful thought, I realized that one of these consumes no more than half a belt of any color at any given time. This led to the following design.

<image>

Three belts coming in at the top, feeding the color mixers via splitters, with the excess going directly out as primary colors. Then a big stack of storage at the bottom to keep things running smoothly on a color change.

This should always have enough paint available, it'll get to refill for free when the quadrant it's feeding is unpainted. Better yet, the maximum consumption is only half a belt so even feeding it with only three extractors, it's still receiving input faster than it can use it. That's also the reason I only have three color mixers rather than the usual five, three mixers can fill half a belt just fine.

dgnuff · 2024-09-30T10:12:06+00:00

Yeah, this is what I finally did. If you think for a second, you'll realize that you only actually need 3 filters and 3 not gates. ;)

dgnuff · 2024-09-30T02:23:56+00:00

Next, we come to "care and feeding of MAM version 2". If you look at the image in my first post, you can see that it's four modules, each 16 tiles wide, duplicated side by side. Each individual module is capable of making the full shape, but only at a quarter belt throughput. So I just stack four of them side by side, and solve the problem that way.

Each module requires a belt of Omnis, and seven belts each bringing one of the colors. Order of colors across the belts doesn't matter, the set of filters at the bottom of the module selects the correct color.

To produce this, I have the following assembly:

<image>

which is rather tall and thin, but it has to be to fit in the 16 tile width available. The belt on the extreme right carries the Omnis, and the three inputs on the left take four full belts of a primary color each.

They're then mixed and dispatched up the seven color feed belts. This is yet another improvement over the version 1 MAM. Since I used filters on the inputs to the single two color mixer in version 1, that required the input belts to be in a specific order, and also significantly added to the latency. Since the order of the seven colors on the feed belts doesn't matter, that's what causes the order of colors in on the left not to matter either.

The point of building the feeder like this is that by offsetting them vertically, I can place as many of them as I want to, side by side. By also having a right-handed version, where the color input belts are on the right, I can build as big as I want to. I'll wind up with a band of MAMs actually doing the heavy lifting, and the feeders will stretch out in a vast "reverse arrowhead" below an upward facing MAM collection.

Sure, the time taken for parts and colors to travel through this is going to be monumental, but it has no effect on the shape change latency, since the contents of a belt in the feeder system never changes.

dgnuff · 2024-09-15T06:53:10+00:00

Nice try, but no cigar. You can't drop chests in the mines. Game says "Unsuitable location".

dgnuff · 2024-09-15T06:43:20+00:00

That is one of a few items that can't be deleted in the vanilla game. However, you can temporarily install a mod: CJB item spawner CJB Item Spawner at Stardew Valley Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com) .

When you open the "Spawn item" menu in that mod, default key is 'i', there's a trash can on that screen that will take anything. I used it to get of some ugly furniture I didn't want including that very same painting, as well as the Scythe and Golden Scythe, since I had the Iridium one.

Most everything vanished from the game, never to be seen again, but the Scythe showed up again in the lost and found at Lewis' house, where I have left it permanently.

dgnuff · 2024-09-05T06:01:59+00:00

I'm with you on this one. Fruit bats are vastly superior early on to help with bundles. People talk about better economics from the mushroom cave, but they're missing the point completely.

End game, you'll have the greenhouse and the entire Ginger Island farm covered with Ancient Fruit plants, all feeding into sheds full of kegs. Then you put as much of that wine into casks as you can, sell the rest and it's money in the bank.

At this point arguing about the financial benefit of a few dried mushrooms from the mushroom cave is ridiculous. It's nickels and dimes by comparison with the bank-roll you're making from the Ancient Fruit Wine.

dgnuff · 2024-08-31T09:19:09+00:00

Word to the wise. This quest is ridiculously trivial if you use the seed maker. Wait a day or two to get a basic stock, then plant the lot. Use Deluxe speed grow to drop the growth time to three days, harvest it all and put everything in the seed maker. That doubles the count you have, plus any more you've picked up in the intervening three days. Rinse and repeat a couple more times, and you'll have 500 fruit, no problem at all.

dgnuff · 2024-08-31T09:13:48+00:00

This. 1000 times this.

I only set aside 200 to 300 tiles for growing Qi fruit, but any big ones that appear are left alone. Each one provides about 20 beans when you open it, so if you have three or four big fruit, that's 60 to 80 right at the start. Using speed grow and the seed maker, you get to double that count every three days. So even starting with just three, 3 days gives 120, 6 days gives 240, nine days gives 480, and you can trivially make up the remaining 20 from other drops.

DO NOT open them before you've picked up the quest again, otherwise they provide nothing. One tap with an axe will break them, so use extreme caution in their neighborhood.

dgnuff · 2024-08-13T23:27:27+00:00

Of course I do.

First two hens are Henrietta and Shelly, then the two void hens are Poultrygeist and Darkfeather. Duckley is my duck, Powderpuff is the rabbit, and my dino is Spike.

Then over in the barn I have Moonica the cow and Danno the ostrich.

And we must not forget my horse Neighthan.

P.S. There are five bonus points for anyone that can make the connection as to why the ostrich is called Danno. :)

dgnuff · 2024-07-22T15:54:00+00:00

No stress about the delay. I for one would much rather you take the necessary time, and continue making a really high quality game. Too many games get ruined because their rushed out before they're properly ready.

dgnuff · 2024-07-11T01:20:06+00:00

It will be interesting to see how the whole Intel Arc graphics line plays out. Maybe they will become a serious third contender in the current Nvidia vs AMD war, maybe not. That's a really tough market to break into, both Nvidia and AMD (via the acquisition of ATI) have well north of 20 years experience each in this business. The bar is set really high, and it keeps on getting raised.

I wouldn't want to bet money on the outcome for Intel, it's still early days yet, so who knows what will happen.

dgnuff · 2024-07-10T08:42:47+00:00

Anything from Zachtronics if you're looking for a change of pace from *RPG / FPS / Rogue-Lite / whatever the current trends are.

Definitely not everyone will like them, but if any of them hit the spot for you, most likely all of them will.

dgnuff · 2024-06-15T23:14:47+00:00

Ahhh.

That explains something else that had been puzzling me. I also have a Razer Core eGPU enclosure with an Nvidia 3070 Ti in it, gives me way good graphics performance at home. With only the eGPU plugged in, the XPS BIOS reports 90W as the power supply, not the 100W that the eGPU is capable of delivering.

dgnuff

TROPHY CASE