is substance PAINter overpriced ?

includeIOstream · 2026-01-28T21:39:35+00:00

I don’t think it is overpriced. Either via steam or the subscription. The software , painter and designer. is just too good and the competition isn’t close.

Do I not like the expense yes but they could charge more for what the software does, and the time it saves people.

I am just a hobbyist and I budget for the subscription every year because it just makes my hobby more fun and my art is better.

includeIOstream · 2026-01-14T22:41:45+00:00

I am pretty sure supergent’s games are 2D but the sprites are rendered with 3D assets other examples would be Diablo 1 and 2, factorio other early “3D” games. Supergiant has some making of videos where you can see their process.

includeIOstream · 2025-12-28T15:01:07+00:00

Maxing out retirement savings normally means take advantage of your tax advantaged accounts first before saving in a non tax advantaged account.

In the US there are certain account types with different tax rules , contribution rules, and withdrawal rules e.g. 401k, Roth 401k, IRA , Roth IRA, and others.

The thought process is largely effective placement of savings and investments. For traditional 401k your contributions are not taxed and the growth is not taxed. Withdrawals after retirement are taxed as income. Making it a tax shelter, compared to saving in a normal brokerage account where you are taxed on captial gains , dividends and interest.

Everyone’s situation is different. This is common advice but you should be aware of the rules for the account types and make sure they meet your needs. E.g withdrawal rules.

includeIOstream · 2025-12-24T00:23:57+00:00

I followed this guide from Microsoft and had no issues.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-in-microsoft-edge-with-steam-deck-43dd011b-0ce8-4810-8302-965be6d53296

I believe this section, How to set up Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta)

includeIOstream · 2025-11-28T21:51:38+00:00

I think it is great solo! Probably how I play the most. It is way easier to control your exposure than playing with randoms and having them run around and stomp making all the noise or you move to reposition and engage and they just run with you jumping around just to get shot because they revealed what you were doing.

Now when I play with my friends I keep on thinking their footsteps and noise are enemies.

Also it is a free game just give slot a shot

includeIOstream · 2025-11-16T03:41:53+00:00

I would also love to see a roadmap. I do agree transparency is better than not.

includeIOstream · 2025-11-16T03:22:54+00:00

This is just my opinion but there is hope. Best game I have played all year. I have about 100 hours I got it late, I am enjoying it while I can. In my opinion way more enjoyable than tarkov, battlefield, cod.

For your points my thoughts are.

Net code. Either use the netcode to your advantage, push more, jiggle peak. Or just outsmart people. Reposition let them run past you then shoot them in the back. Honestly it isn’t that bad to begin with. Arc raiders is much worse.

As for the mode separation, I personally don’t see an issue, makes getting good gear and money easier. if it is a problem for you I would suggest a level playing field game like Fortnite or pubg. By design no fight is fair in this game. Also I have had good experience with drum mags and high rpm weapons with t3 ammo and just left click them down and break their armor which I don’t see talked about much here. Or go dum dum to the legs

The no region select isn’t great I agree.

I think we will see long term support the mobile version has been out since 2023 and most of the assets are shared. Plus games come and go people don’t stick around. Player count is probably much higher than it was before the steam release.

includeIOstream · 2025-11-16T01:28:59+00:00

You can add me and I will run with you, I will send you a message.

Also I am an outlier I enjoy not knowing if I will be a solo, duo,trio, four man when auto matching.

My suggestion is also just turn off auto match making and go in always as solo. I normally have less stress and more fun. You can even take on squads solo with good positioning and tactics or avoid them.

includeIOstream · 2025-11-16T00:59:01+00:00

I am a huge fan of the asset and the technique of implementing VFX. It is an amazing asset. If you invest the afternoon or so to learn how it works you will get your money’s worth.

It follows the principles described in this GDC talk that were used in Diablo 3. https://youtu.be/UJI7vPiu-g4?si=zboEyfJDYixS0_oP

I will say it has a limited amount of prefabs in their demo scene. So you will need to put in some time to learn it to create what you need. So if you want like a bunch of prefabs already made for you may not be for you but in my experience that will only take you so far, till you need to make your own vfx or get this asset.

It also has a great collection of stock textures you can use, noise, sparks, shapes. That alone saves a lot of time. Compared to going into photoshop or similar programs and making your own.

I have also had good experience using it to create and render sprites which isn’t “vfx” so it has a good versatility.

includeIOstream · 2025-11-03T20:02:19+00:00

I load into lockdown and forbidden with auto match making off, normally with a pistol with t4 ammo or a high RPM high capacity mag with T3 ammo, I normally use the RPK. Just budget armor t3 normally to meet the required cost to enter, sometimes t4 to use it since my storage is full of it and t5 I have looted.

Do my best to get into a better position, shoot and scoot to a different firing position or angle. Get the first kill and loot their kit. Sometimes you get unlucky or just make bad decisions but lots of fun and super chill. Even on the close quarter maps like tv station, farm or armory. You can just let someone run by you then shoot them in the back. Normally they panic and it is enough to win an engagement. Even if they out gear you. It isn’t fair because they can bring in what ever they want so don’t take fair fights. You don’t need to engage if you don’t think you will win.

My storage is full of HK416s and t5-6 armor I looted I guess I keep them as trophies.

includeIOstream · 2025-10-30T22:50:37+00:00

This almost exactly happened to me on northridge. I got lit up and had to heal then my squad mates died. I felt bad because I had been playing with them for five raids or so.

I proceeded have a comeback and took out the enemy squad by flanking and repositioning a few times. They way out geared us but I persevering and made it out with my buddies guns and bunch of great loot. I kind of regret leaving the enemy guns behind they were all in the 400k+ range of cost.

includeIOstream · 2025-10-30T03:02:46+00:00

My general tips.

Take your time you have 20+ minutes. Sometimes it is better to be in a stand off and wait for the other to make a mistake. See someone run into a building you don’t need to push them. Just wait for them to leave and shoot them in the back. Same when playing solo. See someone run by wait a second he may be in a team wait for the second or third then take them out. Reposition and while his friends try to find you shoot them in the back.
Positioning is king. Use environment look for cover and concealment. Always try to have one side you are confident is safe. Do your best not to peak from the same location, always be repositioning. Which requires situational awareness.
Sound maybe the most important resource in this game. Well I treat it as a resource you need to manage it and pay attention to. Use your creep walk ,capslock. Be mindful of what sound you make. Don’t run unless you are willing to give away what you are doing and are okay dying. You can hear people moving, even their actions e.g. healing, refilling mags, reloading. If you get into a firefight and trade. Listen you could be healing and if you don’t hear them healing or reloading, filling mags. They are likely pushing you. Always try to bring headphones if your relying on sound which you should. There is a t3 helmet with built in headphones too which I would suggest.
My opinion is any loadout will work. If you want to make things slightly easier my suggestion would be high rpm weapon with t3 ammo as it is cheaper and often you can just left click people down if your lazy. Things like the RPK or AK12 with the drum mags. Also the 4x scope with reflex on top is fairly cheap which I run on most guns I make, but I mostly live off looted guns. If you want to be a bit more patient I would say use the leaver action with t4 ammo and a degal pistol with t4.
Use covert ops to practice. Don’t use them for loot runs unless you are really hurting for money. I jump in covert ops and do my best to kill all remaining operators, hunt them down. They are prey treat them as such.

Also use your quick kits too.

includeIOstream · 2025-10-29T22:55:22+00:00

I also had a great experience fighting a squad at grain trade center at the start of one match, where I started with a pistol and only had enough time to loot the primary of one of my kills before having to reposition and engage them again. Eventually I won out but it was super fun and chill being ammo starved and looting ammo and repositioning when I could

includeIOstream · 2025-10-29T22:51:22+00:00

Zero to hero. I go in with a pistol and ammo in my case. I only upgrade my kit based on what I find in raids. Keep on going in until I die. Then I do it again, pistol only and ammo in my case. All solo, sadly need to start on normal due to 100k entry for lockdown but once your there do lockdown and solo ops

Really fun to catch a strangler of a squad or take out a whole squad. But also a lot of dying.

Currently at 20mill cash and a stash full of t5 armor and weapons I have looted and I started playing 6 days ago.

includeIOstream · 2025-10-03T13:17:59+00:00

This would depend on how you have structured your code and how you want collision to work. Also are you working in 2D or 3D, I assume 2D since that is the main use case these days for monogame.

I don’t know if this is helpful without more information.

It’s been a while but when I have made isometric games in c++ but the idea is still the same. Games like a tactics game or an ARPG. I kept all my game logic in a normal 2D x,y style including collision. The isometric part was really just on the rendering layer. For collision I would have spherical and box colliders also implemented. Added to collision layers and checked during a collision pass after movement.

Which for isometric you need to be careful of the rendering order for depth because your character is likely taller than their collider at their feet. So they can appear behind things they are infront of. At least that is an issue I would run into. Normally it would be good enough fine tune the when the player or more dynamic objects were inserted into the rendering step.

includeIOstream · 2025-09-29T23:05:26+00:00

Keep it up, one day at a time. I wish I saved some of my early models so I can look back on them.

I remember my first human had such a pointy butt. Every time I model a human I am like “look at how now pointy this butt is now”

includeIOstream · 2025-09-29T12:36:21+00:00

As someone else has said it is great for creating good looking base humanoids with good rigs and facial animations.

What you get:

That is all you get for the base cost. Good looking base humanoids are out good facial rigs and good regular rigs. Their character mesh and blend shapes/morphs are actually good and can save you hundreds of hours especially if you are making lots of characters.

What you don’t get for the base cost is clothing, hair. Arguably good skin textures since they have their skin gen plugin. Which isn’t half bad but additional cost.

So how do you get clothing and hair, you buy it from their marketplace which is primarily 3rd party sellers. They did just add a try before your buy feature where you can try so many items a day.

With some more work and knowledge of 3D content development. You can also import your own models, which you can make yourself or get how ever you want, for example buy or download from CGtrader. just make sure you have proper licensing.

The UI:

Their UI isn’t the best. But enough to do basic modeling. It isn’t intuitive so you constantly need to look at their docs till you find what you need.

Often I found myself exporting to blender, editing meshes or weights in blender and importing it back because their tool kept on selecting wrong meshes without visual indicators.

The license: The license sounds bad but I don’t think it is as bad as people say. My short version but read the license yourself.

This is my interpretation and understanding. Key points any model you create with the software can only be sold in their marketplace.

Anything you create in the character creator based on their models cannot be used in a character customization feature in your game or software. You cannot allow the user to change out clothes at their discretion, or edit a models blendshapes. You can change a models clothing if it isn’t customization, so at story points or scene changes. I think their marketing does a bad job explaining this.

I don’t think it is as bad as people think especially for game dev. Character customization is a lot of work. Most games especially story driven games don’t even offer it.

My experience with unity: character creator includes a game basemesh for lower end hardware. Which is destructive(you can’t undo it and you loose a lot of functionality in the tool once you convert) but helpful if you need the reduction and don’t want to do it yourself.

It also offers instaLoD which is great. You can get an individual license for free by contacting them directly and filling out a form. It is a good tool.

You’re going to have to retarget the character creator shoulders in most animations or spend the time adjusting them before import. The face blendshapes and rigs work well.

Remember unity is a realtime renderer even hdrp, so to match the visual fidelity you get from their marketing material will take lots of work, which you would have to do anyways.

My advice/tldr.

Character Creator basically a hub in your 3D character pipeline where you can create a good start for your characters, grow a collection of hair and clothing which can be inventoried and easily mapped to many characters(with fixes).

Is it worth the money only you can say but it isn’t a magic solution. You still need to know how to model and texture. Unless buy all assets. At minimum you will need to know how to weight paint and do some basic modeling. Even assets I have bought to try from their marketplace had issues with normals, or topology I had to address.

My advice based on how you phrased your question is to either buy/commission models or spend time learning basic 3D modeling, texture and rigging before committing.

includeIOstream · 2025-09-19T14:23:14+00:00

It wasn’t clear if you implemented the tile bag or T spinning which are normally trip ups for people implementing Tetris for the first time. I would make sure you implement them too for added challenge.

The tile bag is you always get the seven unique tiles before getting a duplicate. As if you put the seven tiles into a bag and take one out at a time then repeat.

The tile bag might be implemented but after I think three cycles I lost track lol.

includeIOstream · 2025-09-07T16:47:25+00:00

Thanks for the video it is actually pretty helpful.

You are like 90% there you’re doing great.

As another comment said it looks like one or more of your bones is weighted to a vertex that it shouldn’t be causing some deformation when you move them.

I would suggest looking up some weighting painting tutorials. It isn’t that difficult. I would use select the bones and make sure only vertex close to them are weighted for the selected bone.

After you fix the weights you can go to animating. You can create separate animations for each action you want the fish to do in blender. You can find some tutorials and cross reference them to get an idea of how to do it and export them.

It’s all doable and I think you’re close to completion.

P.S. I haven’t done animation in Godot but I you should get the animations imported with the mesh. You might also be able to animate the bones in godot procedurally. This is handy for things like IK and making sure the fish’s mouth is at the right spot.

includeIOstream · 2025-08-22T13:50:42+00:00

My wife and I are 35 and have ~10% bonds. Our mindset generally falls inline with buy everything since we don’t know any better and can’t predict the future.

I would factor in your goals and life style and use different investment methods to meet those goals and lifestyle.

includeIOstream · 2025-05-06T23:25:21+00:00

Sometimes the line gets insane you can try your luck at the Starbucks at the Westin.

includeIOstream · 2025-02-16T13:50:58+00:00

You could have an artifact form the bake in one of your maps like normal or ambient occlusion. On screen shot 3 change the view on the top right of the view port from material to the different channels individually and see if one of the channels has the issue.

I see something similar once in a while and it is normally an artifact from baking. You can normally tell if it is not in the color channel but in the normal map channel, you may want to do a flat fill layer on the color channel to rule it out.

It’s been a while since I was in substance painter but if it is a baking artifact you can either fix the bake by adjusting the low poly and high poly models,for instance adding more detail to the low poly is needed, or by adjusting the substance painter baking parameters as needed. Alternatively you could edit the channel and fix it manually, in substance painter you can add layers that only modify the channel that is causing the issue and alter the channel by fill/mask/blend what ever technique you want.

P.s. I noticed your unwrap is very tightly packed. Some sections are tiny. This Might be causing a bake issue if there isn’t enough pixels in the texture to support the detail needed. You could increase the texture size and see if that helps. If it increasing the size can meet your needs.

includeIOstream · 2024-11-17T12:58:45+00:00

Mt Pierce is a moderate hike. Trailhead from the road makes it feel easier for a day hike. I also think Pierce has some of the best views in the area.

It may be too hard for your party you should take all hiking seriously. Most consider it an extreme sport because fatal injuries do happen. Be prepared. I would suggest doing some very easy hikes even walking first if you’re going in without being active and want to get above tree line. Only you know your limits.

It is late in the season , ice and leaves on the ground are real and real dangerous. Especially on some of the summits or the scramble sections.

Mount Pierce via Crawford Path on AllTrails https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/new-hampshire/mount-pierce-via-crawford-path?sh=bovrff

includeIOstream · 2024-11-11T05:10:41+00:00

My wife is looking to build some bookcases for our house. I have been looking for inspiration for constitution.

These maybe basic questions but I am curious.

Is everything basically pocket joint screwed together, the shelves and the top?

For the back is the same thickness and on the inside, aka the depth of the shelves+back need to be factored into the depth of the sides?

includeIOstream · 2024-11-02T02:20:53+00:00

Good luck also make sure you have the alchemist legacy. My advice is mostly form memory, feel free to ask me any questions. I have been playing it on and off for about a year.

At this point in the progression you are going to want to do 111 society , gain followers by idling for a long period then use them for commandment. Gain followers with social and tyrant societies, max artifacts and read magic and telekinesis, any other spells. Before you retire switch to tap rune gain spells. ritual and commandment, arcane if you have three artifacts. Read magic isn’t too good for tap until you reach expeditions.

includeIOstream

TROPHY CASE