It's just how things get over time, people will take out something others may consider fun, to instead boost performance. Really an inevitable optimization, as something like this could have been done by human testing and external logging, instead of an external tool to simulate attempts.

In regards specifically to Trackmania, the best solution to my mind is to split the leaderboard between analogue inputs and keyboard. I know that's basically letting the program win, but it exists now, and unless they introduce random physics or performance, the door can't really be shut.

In terms of speed running, this has also been done in other games, such as TAS runs or the AI they used in SMP64 to find new strats. I don't really seeing it going away, even if it makes runs less bespoke and more like generic IKEA furniture.

Whilst developers can ban specific ads, they can't really vet them beforehand. I think you can opt out of political ads (or maybe could at one point), but technically the ad you see is just for another app.

As an alternative solution to the ones already posed by others, you can use "Google Opinion Rewards" to get enough play store credit to buy the app. Every so often it'll just ask if you googled "Ninja Coffee Bar" (literally), and give you 10-25 cents for answering, and typically a good bit more for any follow-up questions ("How helpful were the results", etc).

If you slot Molt Reconstruct onto Garuda, she can feedback loop for infinite health and infinite energy as you use abilities.

Usually it's just a legal ass-covering, but in this case, the project most likely depends on F4SE and the address library, which injects stuff at specific places in memory. Theoretically a cracked exe could work, but given something is likely changed from the original, all memory pointer addresses those two previous tools hook into and or override could be wrong. It's less of a piracy thing, and more of a "We don't want to troubleshoot things that may require us to do illegal things". Besides, the issue would have to be fixed in the original libraries, not the mod.

FemShep was in game sculpted until the third game, which is why it looks weird and changes so much from game to game. BroShep on the other hand was a 3d scan of Mark Vanderloo I believe.

They also have a script patcher that makes it so you can use any font. A really useful feature if you replace fonts in programs or games, but the program doesn't fall back to a safe font if a character isn't supported.

OpenGL is a bit like Vulkan, but discontinued since... 2014, with a single update since then. It was actually stopped because Vulkan seemed better, and both API's were maintained by the same organisation.

In general it's more likely to work on older devices, but would be less performant than Vulkan.

DirectX is a Windows thing, so you'll just have those calls translated to Vulkan under the hood (DXVK). You'll probably get better performance from just setting it to Vulkan directly.

Edit: As some others say, for BG3 specifically, DXVK does a really good job. My personal experience is that "the best" option is very patch dependent. At launch Vulkan was best, then after a few patches did DXVK ran better, but personally I'm back to straight Vulkan, for no other reason than wanting to be a +1 in the statistics.

The Cloudflare human verification thing checks browser parameters that some extensions block or fake. Likely caused by "Canvas Blocker" if you use that. The fix is to add the specific Cloudflare subdomain this widget uses to the whitelist.

It's honestly nearly impossible to keep up with the essentials after any amount of time away. So many groundbreaking mods come out monthly, that I used to stalk the "Updated" tab just about every day.

There are so many essential and almost mandatory mods for Skyrim, lists get outdated fast. Though Lexy's LOTD list has an entire section of mostly up to date things. I'd recommend giving it a skim, though it may want you to install more mods.

Garuda is lovely in theory, with all the cool following features: infinite health, infinite energy, forced slash on any weapon, easy infinitely scaling damage, can fly using an ability loop, tonnes of iframes, one of the best (imo) melee weapons in the game.

I'd probably main her if not for how she actually is when you play her. Her pseudo-excalted claws take up far too much screen space, and can't be used on melee sorties. Also you can't change their skin, so tennogen is hampered if you're into that. Given so much of her kit is % scaling, she only needs a little strength, and massive range. Yet you're still often finding yourself out of range, with no other option than to just die, or ignore her kit entirely. And whilst her 4 mostly works with the default cone targeting, the augment mod making it hit in a circle makes the ability actually feel good to press. Even if the range of the ability now feels very small.

Still, she's probably still my favourite frame for actually "trying". All her synergies can be combo'd infinitely, but leave little downtime. Alt tabbing to search up a song, reply to a message, or do anything else is a death sentence. Comparatively I could just play Valkyr for mostly the same melee experience, and have the safety of her 4 to brain afk the entire map.

This feels like something blown more out of proportion if you actually read Paradox's reply, and of course trust it. (Reddit warning)

The highlight for me is that it seems more based on being able to add lines in the future, without having to drag the actor back into the studio for 1-3 new lines only (And that's on the generous side for what gets added per DLC). Paradox claims the original voice artist gets a fair commission from the usage of their voice for new lines, which would be nice if it's true.