Hysilens blog layout (gif size limit kicked my butt so I made the second banner a webp for it to fit, it's just not moving due to the file type)

so, i've thought about it.

SPOOK SHACK IS MY FAVORITE FACTION!

*wait what happened to HSOS6*

nothing my taste has just honestly landed itself here

Yuzuha Ukinami, Alice Thymefield, Manato Komano, Lucia Elowen, Yidhari Murphy...

"Master Diluc, you look like you're in a good mood today. It's not often that I see you picking grapes!"

"Thank you for keeping me company, Adelinde."

"It's my pleasure, Master Diluc."

but most importantly because I always find it incredible when a game is a) able to invest and innovate in story, art, and music (the music!!!! probably the most diverse in gaming) while being able to b) continuously make money

Mannnnyyy story-driven and lore-driven triple A game franchises right now are arguably struggling. While you have one-offs from smaller developers like Baldur's Gate and Clair Obscur, the delay in TES VI, the slow death of my very beloved Bioware (fuck you EA) as well as Mass Effect and Dragon Age, etc. is a signal it is increasingly difficult to make long-winded story-driven single-player experiences vis-a-vis continuous revenue-generating games like Fortnite or Marvel Rivals under the grip shareholder capitalism has on gaming.

EA also signaled in their Q1 report this year that Dragon Age Veilguard did not do well not because of the story, but because it wasn't "live service," even though manyyy longtime fans were upset over weaker storywriting and limited choice consequences (i still loved it though)

ALL OF THIS IS FRUSTRATING because people do care about the story, the lore, the dialogue, the experience of art, regardless if it's live service or not!!!!

And I think if there's something to take away from Genshin's 5th anniversary it is possible to invest in art, music, lore, story, and other creative aspects without cutting corners for the sake of "shareholder value" . While Genshin is live service, it understands what players want, and so it invests in its narrative, characters, and overall player experience of the world as an art form

Also what is that noise when she blew in his ear

TLDR: If you want to participate in Star Rail's newest "Dive into Dreams" 3D render competition (and already downloaded templates), I would suggest running a check with your antivirus of choice, especially if you use Maya for 3D.

miHoYo/COGNOSPHERE decided to host a 3D render competition Dive into Dreams as a part of Honkai Star Rail's 1st anniversary events. You may be familiar with this type of challenges from Pwnisher's videos like this one. And indeed, Pwnisher is invited as a special judge for this competition.

In accordance with the competition rules, miHoYo/COGNOSPHERE provided template files for animation and camera settings in a selection of apps such as Blender, Unity, etc. All of those files were packed into a single zip folder with gibberish name b206a8ccf899599f9a8c8f72ac9d9bc1_150411817497617782.zip. Inside this folder, there are separate archives for the app of your choice. And a surprise.

If you check this zip with an antivirus (Windows Defender in my case), it flags the file as containing Trojan:Script/Wacatac.B!ml. Now, there are cases when such mark can be a false positive, so I uploaded it to VirusTotal for verification.

Here's the direct link to the file analysis.

11 flags across multiple antivirises, 2 marks of suspicious behavior.

I contacted miHoYo/COGNOSPHERE, explained the situation and asked to check the files from their side. They actually answered, and after a brief verification reassured me that the file is safe.

So, it was a false positive aftre all, eh? Well...

They replaced the zip folder with template files. Now it's a file named 2e0631cb3ce1c6d115551c02ec005798_728531225225585212.zip and with the total weight of 109.13 MB instead of 111.75 MB of the previous file. Looks like Maya files were repacked, as DID_Template_Maya.rar archive is replaced with DID_Template_Maya_2020.7z.

Here's the direct link to the new file analysis. I added "new_" to its name before noticing that the name's gibberish actually differs from the previous one. ^^""

And while Windows Defender is totally okay with this new file, VirusTotal still shows 3 flags on Maya files.

Now, I know next to nothing about Maya, and I'm not web security expert. Maybe totally safe Maya scripts being falsely flagged by antiviruses is an ordinary Tuesday.