I would just like them to finally release the Boimler and Mariner statues that have been on pre-order since October 2023 and for which the release date keeeeeeeeeeps slipping. Q2 2024 was the last we heard, but that’s definitely some time ago. Again.
Not impressed with Exo-6. They have my money (granted, a 25 USD pre-order) and have delivered NOTHING for almost a year now. Original planned release was Q4 2023 back when I ordered.
This worked perfectly - thank you!!
For anyone else looking here later, the final shader code (confirmed working Godot 4.2) is:
undefined
shader_type canvas_item; uniform sampler2D screen_texture : hint_screen_texture; uniform vec4 water_color : source_color; uniform sampler2D wave_noise : repeat_enable; void fragment() { vec2 water_wave = (texture(wave_noise, UV * TIME * 0.02).rg - 0.5) * 0.02; vec2 uv = vec2(SCREEN_UV.x , SCREEN_UV.y - UV.y) + water_wave; vec4 color = texture(screen_texture, uv); float mix_value = 1.0 - UV.y; float avg_color = (color.r + color.g + color.b) / 3.0; avg_color = pow(avg_color, 1.4); mix_value += avg_color; mix_value = clamp(mix_value, 0.0, 0.7); COLOR = vec4(mix(water_color, color, mix_value).rgb, texture(TEXTURE, UV).a); }
Credits to Single-mindedRyan for creating this shader in the first place.

How to apply a shader to a sprite without it becoming a rectangle?


I have been looking for a 2D reflective water shader for some time and was delighted to see that this tutorial was posted on YouTube to create just that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPr5PvSgxFo
I've had a go at implementing it and have got the reflective water rendering. It's very "Kingdom: Two Crowns" like when spread across the full width of the scene.
However, as you can see from the image above, I've drawn a pond (as a separate Sprite2D) and I've applied the water shader to the pond. It's done that, but draws the water as a rectangle.
Is there a way to apply this shader to the Sprite2D, but conform to the actual sprite (only the light blue), rather than as a rectangle?
It's not a patient game yet, but I caved and got Alan Wake 2 the other week. In the early stages so far (the game's quite scary!) but loving it.
I'd done that a few days ago, but you're right, not specifically to these suggestions. I tried the export VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_EXT_mesh_shader VKD3D_FEATURE_LEVEL=12_0 VKD3D_SHADER_MODEL=6_5 %command% and variations of it. It reduced performance significantly, so would not suggest people on more recent Mesa versions try this anymore. When I looked into it, it seemed to mainly be in place for Mesa 22.x which was still lacking mesh shader support.
Thought I'd post an update. Performance is better now, playing in 1440p with FSR2 on Balanced, graphic settings on Medium. I'm getting around 45FPS.
I'm not quite sure what the fix was in the end, but I've installed proton-ge-custom-bin from the AUR, so I've got Proton GE installed onto my system (not just within Heroic). Both the AUR and Heroic are on Proton-GE 9.7. I then added the AlanWake2.exe file to Steam, and forced compatibility to use Proton GE. So whatever extra was happening with Heroic was taken away.
I tried changing my Mesa drivers, but it appears Manjaro is even with the nonfree repo at this point, so I'm still on Mesa 24.1.1, only on the Manjaro-approved version, not the mainline Arch version.
It appears that somewhere within that combination of (1) running the game directly from Steam, (2) using the system-installed Proton-GE package, and (3) reverting to the Manjaro Mesa package the framerate got bumped from lower 20-s to mid-40s. CPU and GPU usage still hover around the 40%, so I feel there would be more improvement to be had perhaps?
I tested the game on my second PC, which is running ChimeraOS, has a 5800X3D chip, 32Gb RAM and a 7600 XT card, where it's easily hitting these framerates and better (but with higher GPU usage, hardly any CPU usage, that 5800X3D is a beast). So I wonder if my 10700K might be a bit of a bottleneck? ChimeraOS' version of Mesa is on 23.2 so maybe there are just some kinks to be worked out in the 24.1 branch?
Anyway.... long story short: I'm happy with the overall performance at this point. Happy to dive into the Overlap and deal with Nightingale!
Hi, I’ve checked but the Manjaro nonfree branch is the main one, just more up to date with the Arch main branch. Or are you suggesting a particular version?
These all sounds like good ideas to play with, thanks! I'll have a go later tonight and will update here. It would be bonkers if the mesh shaders were at fault, since I got my 7800XT specifically for that feature...
Hi, sorry, the non-free is a very Manjaro-specific thing.
TLDR: They removed a lot of proprietary video codecs from Mesa, which means that Manjaro's Mesa tends to lag behind the Arch repo. By using nonfree, the Mesa installation is pulled and compiled straight from Arch.
So yes, I'm using RADV through Mesa 24.1.1 instead of version 23.x (which is where Manjaro is still at). I wanted to be on a newer version since 24.x packed in a lot of 7000XT improvements.
Out of curiosity, have you tried AW2 with your 7800XT? How does it run for you?

Alan Wake 2 - Performance seems poorer than it should be?
I was wondering if anyone could offer some insights.
Bit the bullet and purchased Alan Wake 2 on the Epic Game Store. With the DLC on the way I just can't wait any longer and maybe this one will never come to Steam? (With Epic as publishers, who knows)
I've installed Heroic Game Launcher, downloaded the latest Wine-GE and Proton-GE, downloaded the game and managed to get it running. Tried it with both Wine-GE and Proton-GE. No noticeable difference.
My specs:
- Intel Core i7 10700K
- 48Gb RAM
- Radeon RX 7800 XT 16Gb
- Manjaro Linux, kernel 6.9
- Mesa 24.1.1 (using the mesa-nonfree repo)
- Game is installed on my 1TB NVME drive
I'm running things on Medium/High, with FSR2 on Balanced, in 2560x1440
No raytracing enabled anywhere.
Honestly, it doesn't matter what resolution I choose. Even when running is 720p on Low, the framerate is the same.
I get around 27 fps with regular dips into the lower 15-20 when I spin the camera around quickly.
I've finished the first chapter (just i
I think Burnham was referencing Book, not Tyler, when she said she knows what it’s like to lose someone but got him back. Book died during the final events of 10C, but they magically zapped him back into existence, if I recall correctly.
I prefer the world-famous song “Press X to Jason”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_56257iS77A
Since it’s about the first 5-10 minutes of the game, it’s not a big spoiler.
Stupid Jason.
Not sure either, ENT rewatch was some years ago… I think that might’ve been another time version / shapeshifter or something something?
Hah, yes! Or O’Brien, the most important Starfleet officer in history!
As a show with so much promise, I often felt Disco reached for big concepts but never quite managed to get there. It would get bogged down with pathos and dragged out plot lines. Unfortunately, season 5 felt no different. This episode dragged on and on for me. Mol and L’ak had mostly become irrelevant and were completely unnecessary in this episode.
I get the series got axed and additional scenes were shot to round things out. But that random “we’re all hugging” scene? It was weird. And didn’t the actress who played Detmer say their absence was planned and revealing anything would be a big spoiler or something? Well. No, it really wasn’t.
Kovitsch was Daniels? I think at that point of the story, he could’ve been anyone and it wouldn’t have landed. He could’ve been Sloane (not dead after all!) and it would’ve made as much sense and be just as meaningful to the story.
The progenitor plot? With a tick list of “clues” and “challenges” to lead the way, but ultimately we decide your worthiness to reshape the universe as we know it with a geometry puzzle? I can’t even.
Discovery had potential, back in the day, but disappointed year on year. I had hoped this final season would offer redemption, but alas. Decent bunch of actors, but with subpar writing that usually went nowhere coherent. I won’t miss it. Glad it’s done. I hope Paramount learnt some valuable lessons from this and moves things on.
Something about the former Primarch really reminds me of Sarris from Galaxy Quest.

Dark mode not working in GTK4 apps (like Nautilus) on Gnome 46
I am absolutely stumped and hoping someone can help me. I'm on Gnome 46, kernel 6.8, Mesa 24
When running in Wayland, dark mode works without any issue. But unfortunately, xwayland is throwing up some issues with resized game windows and mouse captures only working in the upper left quadrant of the screen. So I switched over to "Gnome on Xorg".
Dark mode works for apps like Firefox, but none of my GTK4 apps change from light-to-dark.
I've reset my dconf using dconf reset -f /org/gnome/
and I've deleted gtk-4.0, gtk-3.0 folders from .config, I've tried to delete every file or folder in .config .local that may interfere with this, but no luck.
Over on Reddit, someone recommended installing gnome-themes-extra
which has been installed on my system for a long while. Reinstalled, but made no difference.
I created a separate user and logged in. Everything works without a problem (X11 or Wayland). So there's definitely something in my current user folder not working.
The bizarre thin
Thanks for posting this here, just purchased it. Keen to dive into the 2D course and the Shaders course!
Still making my way through Phantom Liberty in Cyberpunk 2077. It’s really good, but I had already completed the base game and I find it difficult to engage/care about it, since I already know it won’t impact the endgame. I think. Unless it does? But then, I was happy with the ending I got. So yeah, something set post-ending would’ve had me more excited, I think.
Apart from that, spending some time reacquainting myself with my zoo in Planet Zoo. It’s been two years, so that’s a fun game to return to.
Did anyone else notice that the alien statues in 5x02 looked remarkably similar to the Batarians from Mass Effect?
As an open source alternative, I prefer a Jellyfin server and then using Feishin as a client. Nicer UI and options. Plex is a major no-no for me since they’ve started emailing people what they’ve been watching on their own servers. Privacy issues and required online login/plex-owned accounts for my own media? No thank you.
Have a look at Three Minutes to Eight - small indie game released on Steam a while back. Haven’t given it a good run myself yet.
And as someone else mentioned: Oxenfree. Definitely good vibes there.
The Star Trek games I played growing up were 25th Anniversary (the ship battles were too complicated for 11yo me), later on I used my own pocket money and bought Final Unity. The Chodak are still a very cool alien race added to the universe. Loved those frog faces in space suits. :-)
Played and finished Elite Force and Armada. Earl Boehn (RIP) as a main villain was a moment of teenage glee being such a massive T2 and TNG nerd.
Interested in Resurgence, my husband recently played it on his PS5 but I don’t go near that machine. 😂

Any recommendations to move on from Mesa 23.1 on Manjaro (unstable)
Hi all,
I recently got a new graphics card and am now enjoying a Radeon 7800XT after upgrading from my 5700XT.
I'm keen to move to the latest Mesa, but Manjaro Unstable (which I thought mirrored Arch very closely) is refusing to budge from Mesa 23.1.9
The reason being that 23.2 hasn't yet had a point-release.
I've tried mesa-git, found it to be quite buggy (not unexpected, it's 24.0-dev) so I went back to 23.1.9
Does anyone know of any way to get 23.2 or 23.3 going, since they've been officially released, but Manjaro rather arbitrarily decides this particular package update won't be included in the unstable branch?
(There are plenty of other packages in Unstable that don't have a point release either, so I would like some choice here, rather than stay on drivers that don't carry the full RTX improvements of later Mesa, which suddenly, on my new graphics card, I care about!)

Ahsoka Episode 8 Discussion
It's been a few days, sorry about that!
I'm curious to hear what people thought of the finale (season finale?) of Ahsoka.
I could write a lot about it, but actually found that (for once) Polygon captured my thoughts much better than I would be able to write it myself... Ahsoka never bothered telling anyone it was just the middle of a story
The tag line for that season-review seals the deal for me: "What was Ahsoka, but eight hours long?"
As I mentioned before, as someone who's been a fan of the character for years and consumed every piece of media she's been in, this was simply such a letdown for me.

Ahsoka Episode 7 Discussion
And we’re back, another week, another Revels reunion!
I didn’t check the time on this episode, but was it shorter than most? Does that mean we’re getting a feature length episode next week?
I do hope so, since I felt this episode didn’t really move the plot forward at all. Characters moved around, interacted, but nothing got pushed forward much or was resolved. Ahsoka made it to the planet though.
Hera’s side plot also… happened. Moving swiftly on from a very nice but pointless cameo. I think we get it, the New Republic can’t hunt for a massive hyperspace engine but can send three massive warships and organise a tribunal for one general. Because. Anyway.
Loved the camera work, the banter, the hugs, but… let’s hope next week makes things happen. Knowing Filoni, I’m expecting an exciting finale.

Ahsoka Episode 6 Discussion
What a shame there are only 2 episodes left. Someone wrote earlier that this has been Filoni’s weakest outing so far. I tend to agree, but more because this episode, I finally, finally didn’t want it to end. The pacing felt good, some character motives came to light and yes, finally, the Chimaera, Thrawn and Ezra make their live action introduction.
For a show called Ahsoka, she was stuck in transit for the hour we had with her. So. Maybe a better title would’ve been “Ahsoka and friends”. Or “Sabine, with a side order of Ahsoka”
Can’t believe we now need to get a good feel for Thrawn in this new domain, have Ahsoka battle it out with the evil Sith, jump back (?) to the main universe and - God, the pacing for this season has been really, really poor. Ahsoka comes to grips with Anakin’s turn, finds her mojo and has a cameo sitting in a cockpit of her own show?
At least we had a cute animal and new alien race. And the Night Sisters are clearly still alive and kicking. Loved that part

Ahsoka Episode 5 Discussion
Well, we finally got there. An episode where Ahsoka gained agency, made decisions and took hold of the story. For me, this was the first episode this season I thoroughly enjoyed.
Not going to lie, the first time Anakin called her Snips? Big moment!
And was that Rex commending her on a job well done? I do believe it was!
I really liked what Hayden Christensen did with Anakin here. I know he's a good actor (from roles besides Star Wars) but it's nice to see him given the freedom to bring some subtlety to Anakin here.
Seeing Clone Wars outfits & hairstyles? Now I need a remake of Clone Wars as live action.
Loved the classic Chopper responses, where it's not clear whether he's swearing all the time or just mumbling.
Jacen's force sensitivity played an important role, but was subtly done. But for Kanan & Hera's son to play a role in saving Ahsoka? Great.
It was an episode of Ahsoka fully focused on Ahsoka, which was great. As much as I like seeing Sabine in action, this focus

Help requested: Screenshot taken but disabled buttons still visible
Hi everyone, I was hoping someone could help me with the following. I have a button that saves a screenshot PNG to the Downloads folder when you press it.
What I want is for the button to disappear after it is pressed, so the screenshot does not include the two menu buttons called "%SaveReport" and "%BackMainMenu".
The code for the save button is listed below:
`
func _on_SaveReport_pressed():
undefined
$"%SaveReport".visible = false $"%BackMainMenu".visible = false print("I've disabled the buttons") print("That means the screenshot SHOULD be button free") take_screenshot() $"%SaveReport".visible = true $"%BackMainMenu".visible = true
`
As you can see, it calls the take_screenshot() function which is listed above:
`
func take_screenshot(): image = get_viewport().get_texture().get_image()
undefined
if OS.get_name() == "Web" or OS.has_feature('JavaScript'): print("We're on the web") # We're on the web image.clear_mipmaps() var buffer = image.save_png_to_buffer() JavaScri

Can someone help with fixing a Godot 3.4 plugin for Godot 4.1?


Hi everyone,
Pretty much as I described in my toot (text copied here). Is anyone aware of what I may need to fix to get this plugin to work again?
I'm hoping someone can help me with a Godot engine question. With the Q&A forum being read-only, I'm hoping Lemmy people can answer this one for me.
I'm trying to use this plugin for HTML5 downloads in Godot 4.1:
https://github.com/Pukkah/HTML5-File-Exchange-for-Godot
It's for Godot 3.4, but I've upgraded my projects and want to stay in 4.1.
Currently, it throws an error “Identifier JavaScript not defined in scope” (see screenshot).
Would anyone have an idea on what to fix here? Thanks!

Ahsoka Episode 3 discussion
Well. That happened.
I'm really not sure what to say about this one. I loved Clone Wars and I loved Rebels. But they were zingy, tight shows with a lot of life to them.
This episode... was not that.
There was a space battle between a ship and a few smaller ships.
There was some clattering of wooden swords between a Jedi and a non-Force-Padawan-because-erm... didn't we do the "Let Sabine be Sabine" story already on Rebels?
Oh. And there was something about Hera and the New Republic being ineffective. But we got to see her lovechild from Kanan. So wink-wink he wants to be a Jedi.
I don't know. I feel very conflicted because I desperately want to love this show. But... this episode felt very empty. Boring.
And why do I feel like I'm going to be proven right and masked-evil-Jedi-person turns out to be fallen Ezra?
That would be disappointing.
If this show is trying to tell an exciting story travelling across galaxies, finding Thrawn, adding new layers of mysticism to the universe,

Ahsoka Episode 1 + 2 discussion
Well - it’s here! The first two episodes are on Disney+
Keen to hear what everyone’s thoughts are. Needless to say, there will be lots of spoilers in this discussion.
I really liked it. Felt like a solid continuation of Rebels, a bit slow at times, but overall a solid setup for what could be a very interesting and exciting series.
I feel like we should be able to guess the identity of the masked third Sith-esque villain. Don’t think it’s a fallen Ezra (too boring a plot line) but the stance and mannerisms seemed very familiar…
Also - great to see Kevin Kiner doing the music! Nice callback to some Rebels motifs here and there.
I would’ve liked to see Vanessa Marshall as Hera, I felt her voice was so uniquely matched. This Hera seems way too girly for a maternal older Hera. And where is her son?
Hoping for a Freddie Prinze Jr cameo.
Dave Filoni must be so happy to finally tell this story. Can’t wait to see what comes next!

Where is ....? (SNW slight S2 spoiler)
Where is Chief Kyle?
I'm aware it could just be an actor-is-unavailable thing, but anyone know what happened?
Curious to see how his character could have been developed, particularly after the whole "Not Chief Kyle, he's so mean!" comment from season one as well as the impact of the crewman sacrificing himself to save Kyle's life.