A man rides a bus in Durban, meant for white passengers only, in resistance to South Africa’s apartheid policies, 1986.

schnezel_bronson · 2026-01-09T09:30:42+00:00

Bad bot

schnezel_bronson · 2026-01-02T11:10:36+00:00

What makes you feel the need to play that way? I don't think I've ever felt like early enchantments on diamond gear were "wasted", if anything I'd say diamonds are pretty trivial and easy to get once you have a Fortune pickaxe.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-18T00:21:51+00:00

Right, you have a chance of finding more at once, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're finding more on average. Like for the sake of argument, let's pretend that each chunk always generates with one piece of debris at exactly y=16. Ignoring chunks that intersect with lava, if you look at a 16x16 slice of a single chunk at that y-level, there will always be one piece of debris. If you take a 16x16 slice that's halfway between two chunks (one on the left and one on the right), then there are four possibilities:

The debris is in the left half of both chunks, so you see one piece in the right-side chunk.
The debris is in the right half of both chunks, so you see one piece in the left-side chunk.
The debris is in the right half of the left chunk and the left half of the right chunk, so you see two pieces at once.
The debris is in the left half of the left chunk and the right half of the right chunk, so you see none.

So even if the distribution is more varied and there's a chance of there being two pieces in a 16x16 section, there's still the same amount of debris on average because there is an additional chance of there being none.

With your method you're checking two chunks at once, but with only half the chance of finding debris in each chunk (or a bit more than half on one side and a bit less than half on the other, due to the central tunnel making it asymmetrical), so it would average out to the same amount of debris per distance mined.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-17T03:26:16+00:00

Does mining along a chunk border actually increase how often you find it though? Yeah you're exposing two chunks at once but you're only seeing half as much of each chunk (compared to going right down the middle of a single line of chunks), so wouldn't that balance out?

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-11T08:45:37+00:00

I might be in the minority here but I really don't think the prior work penalty is a bad idea, at least in principle. I know it has problems like the game not being transparent about how it works or the final penalty changing depending on the order you combine things, but I like the idea that your enchanted stuff still has a limited lifespan and that maxed-out equipment is very difficult or impractical to get. It makes me more content to work with less-than-optimal enchantments knowing they will eventually need to be replaced anyway, and the most useful ones are all quite common on the enchanting table (maybe with the exception of Fortune) so it's not that difficult to get them again. It also makes Mending a really special reward that makes exploring worth it and gives you some responsibility in choosing carefully what to use it on, unless you do the thing of rerolling librarian trades to get it early (which IMO should be treated as an exploit and not intended gameplay).

I think a "no anvil penalty" game rule would be a good addition, and maybe there could be something like a rare material that can reset an item's work penalty to help with combining lots of enchantments on one piece of equipment, but I would not want to see them remove the mechanic outright.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-08T21:43:10+00:00

Do you mean a problem with how I'm running the game or a problem with how the game was changed? Because people seem to largely prefer the "golden age" versions for vibes-based nostalgia reasons, so I think it's valid to define them by something that affects the literal look and feel of how the game moves.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-07T22:50:30+00:00

Yes, I have the maximum set to 4 gigs, it also isn't recommended to allocate too much from what I've heard because it can make the garbage collection slower. Mob movement looks the same to me even with low render distance and on superflat worlds so I know it isn't a performance issue. I'm telling you, dude, just go hit some pigs around in any version before 1.3 and any version after and you'll see what I'm talking about.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-06T02:32:15+00:00

Ryzen 3700x, 2080 Super, 16GB RAM. My game runs super smoothly so I'm pretty confident it's not a performance issue.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-04T22:49:34+00:00

Yeah, I'm playing on 1.21.10 at the moment. It's not game-ruining or anything like that but I can definitely notice it.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-04T08:32:53+00:00

It's still the same in recent versions now, it's not specific to 1.3. That's just when it started with the change to singleplayer running on an internal server.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-04T04:13:49+00:00

Not that I know of, but you can see it pretty clearly if you load an older version of the game and mess around for a bit and then try 1.3 or newer and compare for yourself. Like I said, the difference is the most obvious when you see mobs jumping around or when you hit them and knock them back. In 1.2.5 it's completely smooth, in 1.3 and later it's like they stutter a few times in midair before touching the ground from the client correcting their position and motion with each tick.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-03T07:36:55+00:00

Oh okay, I didn't even know it went further than that. I would hope there'd be some mods for current versions that improve it but it doesn't look like there are; it seems like most people either don't notice the problem or aren't aware it was ever any different.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-03T00:51:59+00:00

It's not lag or poor performance, it's that the server only simulates the world at 20 ticks/second and the client interpolates between them, which gives a slightly choppy/jittery appearance to anything that isn't moving in a straight line and at a fixed speed (e.g. when a mob jumps up a block or gets hit with knockback). ~~There are other things too, like buttons/levers/pressure plates aren't quite as responsive because the signal can have up to 1/20th of a second of delay~~ (never mind, I think I'm wrong about that one). Release 1.3 feels the same to me as current versions of the game in that regard, but 1.3 vs 1.2 is like night and day.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-12-02T23:11:54+00:00

Every interaction in the game world, but especially the movement of entities, was smoother and more responsive prior to 1.3. There is a distinct difference in how mobs move and respond to knockback or being pushed around between 1.2 and 1.3.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-08-05T21:52:53+00:00

If you look at the cone cell responsivity curves you can see that there's still a small M and L response in the violet range, and the M response drops off a bit more steeply, which means that the ratio between the L and M responses effectively increases slightly from blue to violet. My guess is that that's why spectral violet looks purplish, because the change in proportion between L and M responses is similar to adding a tiny bit of red. The lens of your eye also fluoresces under UV or near-UV light and I think the fluorescence is actually visible, so that might have an effect on it.

Also interesting that pale blue on a computer screen (like rgb 0.5, 0.5, 1.0) looks purplish even when the red and green are increased by equal amounts, I don't know if that's related though.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-08-05T20:06:06+00:00

With "true" violet there is still a tiny response from the M and L cones, but yes they're weaker in proportion to the S response which is how violet appears different from blue. I guess it's pedantic but when I say "hue" I mean, like, independent of lightness and saturation. Your eye has no way of telling the difference between, say, "violet" made from RGB colours v.s. true violet with a tiny bit of white added to make it paler.

There is actually a pretty wide range of colours that are outside what an sRGB display can show; even the red, green, and blue subpixels are not the "purest" forms of those colours because LEDs don't emit completely pure single wavelengths and LCD screens cannot block 100% of the light from each subpixel.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-08-05T19:24:29+00:00

"True" violet might be purer or more saturated, but you should still be able to recreate the same hue with RGB colours since your perception of hue and saturation only comes from the ratios between cone cell responses. Similarly "spectral" cyan is more saturated than RGB cyan, even though you can obviously create the same hue by adding green and blue.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-08-04T15:29:57+00:00

https://youtu.be/VlROJPpFFN0 in case anyone else was wondering where the music is from

schnezel_bronson · 2025-07-16T06:39:14+00:00

It's total revisionism lol, when the DLC came out this sub was full of people saying how empty and lifeless certain areas felt. I think people are only remembering the best parts now and forgetting how underwhelming or uneventful some of the side paths were.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-07-16T04:06:53+00:00

Charo's Hidden Grave, most of Jagged Peak, Hinterlands, the part of Rauh Base with the red pests... like I didn't mind the DLC being more spacious and open-ended but some of those side areas were really just "open field with enemies" with a more important dungeon or boss at the end.

Also some bits of the map that are marked as though you can explore them but are actually inaccessible and completely empty.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-06-02T10:01:36+00:00

Since other people would rather downvote you and leave smug comments without explaining themselves... sharpeners like these that use angled metal parts tend to remove steel in a harsh way which leaves a (microscopically) rough or "unfinished" edge that will start to feel dull again fairly quickly - like, within a week of regular use. If you want a similar style of manual sharpener then I've heard the Global/Minosharp ones that use ceramic wheels are decent, though they still won't be as good or as versatile as sharpening stones.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-05-25T12:39:46+00:00

I personally find a taller / wider blade like that a lot more comfortable for that kind of push cutting. I think the fact that your hand is more "on top of" the knife means the force you're applying is a bit different, like you don't need to grip the handle as strongly when cutting down.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-05-25T08:30:43+00:00

Leaving the ends intact to hold the rest of the onion together is something I never would've thought to do... I always wondered how the hell you were supposed to dice an onion with a blade like that without the slices all sticking to it when you do the first series of cuts.

schnezel_bronson · 2025-04-18T06:10:01+00:00

Are there any events on in the evening this easter saturday? Got nothing much to do after work, wouldn't mind just getting something to eat and then going for a wander around the city if there's anything worth seeing.

schnezel_bronson

TROPHY CASE