WTF Happened October 2024
This is the sixth recap post, affectionately titled "WTF Happened." This is a monthly news post of sorts. I'll use these recaps to briefly cover cool, exciting and also not-so-good and downright terrible events which happened in and around the past month. I'll cover things like world news, movies, TV shows, tech, VR, personal projects (like this blog), cool game releases, and anything I find out during the month that I personally think is worth mentioning. I ask around on social media toward the end of each month for ideas, and I may or may not steal credit for the news I place here! I will cite references when it suits me! Moving on....
We're exiting October AKA Halloween Month, and I just want to say, this might have been my favorite Halloween of my adult life so far. My wife and I dressed up as Zelda and Link respectively from the new Echoes of Wisdom game, and I was really happy with how her Tri-Rod staff turned out. If you want to see pics, I'm sure we have a few laying around....
In gaming news, I think the biggest news is Path Of Exile 2 finally got an official release date trailer and is slated to come out December 6th. I will try to stream the game that weekend and will play it all weekend if it's good. I'll post a most interesting games article for this past month soon and update this article with a link to that for those interested solely in video game news.
If you're into VR like I am, the biggest news in VR right now is Valve's support for hand tracking in Steam Link. I was already able to get this through Virtual Desktop, so this isn't a big deal to me personally, but having this feature in non-paid solutions is nice for others. I also think it might work better based on one game I tried it with: Alyx. It wasn't a great experience either way, and I'd still stick with actual controllers for gaming for now.
Also, an article came out that backs the theory that VR doesn't harm your eyes. I already knew this, but I didn't have an article at the ready to defend my belief until now. I'm sure some people will forever think it's harmful.
I'll post more VR game release news in the related article and link it here once it's done. For now, a quick mention is required of the upcoming Arken Age and the newly released Batman: Arkham Shadow. I won't be playing the new Batman anytime soon, I'm afraid, because I rather look at games others aren't paying enough attention to, but I'll likely grab that game around Christmas. It looks so good!
Game development news is big this month!
Fab launched! Unreal marketplace has officially been replaced by Fab, which supports more than just Unreal Engine and just sounds cool to say. Fab. Fab!
Almost all Quixel Megascans were made free on Fab for the rest of this year, and if you plan to ever use scanned photogrammetry assets in any of your projects, you should claim these Megascans before this offer expires! I still haven't done so myself, so this is also a reminder to myself to do the same!
One of my favorite, most reliable VR sculpting apps, ShapeLab, got a major update on October 2nd! With this update came the quick clone brush, which fills a void for that software that was previously a pain point for me. Along with the quick clone brush, many other features and improvements made their way into this release of ShapeLab, including pen display support. You can view the release trailer video on YouTube.
The modding community over at Counterstrike 2 is booming with some really interesting custom levels, one of which is a recreation of the original Fruit Ninja but using guns instead of sword slashes, and I must say, it's hilarious. I highly suggest you all check out the video trailer for it. It's actually a fun watch and a good way to check out what's been accomplished without actually installing CS2.
NexusMods, a fairly old modding community site which became well known thanks to its support of The Elder Scrolls games, announced support for paid mods on their platform with a few seemingly well intentioned rules. I wonder if Skyrim Together will see renewed development now that the devs could potentially see funds for their time? I don't really know the specifics about the legalities of accepting money for mods, but I know it's been a thing in the Bethesda games community and The Sims for a while. It's something I think should be allowed.
The Nintendo Music app launched October 30 and has become a point of content for many would-be fans because it did a lot wrong, including not having the entire Nintendo music catalog, not even all the popular tunes from the most popular titles.
I would say I tried it myself, but I couldn't see reason to when I already have all their soundtracks in my own personal collection alongside tons of fan remixes which are arguably more enjoyable some of the time. I honestly am surprised this isn't just all thrown onto Spotify. I mean, it looks exactly like Spotify to me except it's less selection and it's included with your Nintendo Online membership. You can read up on this app on the official promo page. I honestly couldn't care less about it, but for the sake of those without a real music collection, I guess it might be a cool membership bonus. What do you think?
Oh, and if you want to hear some really cool Zelda fan remixes, here's a collection I really like: 25YEARLEGEND
You could also check out the OCRemix's Threshold of a Dream. It's a bit more niche than the other one, but it makes a nice background soundtrack when you're writing a blog....
In related news, Nintendo's The Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap turned 20 today! On November 4th, 2004, Minish Cap was released in Japan for the Gameboy Advance. The Minish Cap was and still is one of my all-time favorite Zelda games, and I highly recommend you sail the seas to check it out. 
If you have the original hardware, this is arguably the best game for the Advance SP, although I can list a ton of games for that system which are equally awesome.
Hey! Listen! 
As if I even need to give you another reason to visit Fab, but at the risk of sounding like I'm sponsored, Fab is also giving away 6 months of Adobe Substance products. I know, that's crazy. Not that you'd get that for free but that anyone even wants to be associated with Adobe anymore. I mean, what gives, Fab?
You can read up on the Fab x Adobe offer here. Substance Modeler is a pretty cool tool, but I'd argue it's overpriced for something that didn't even work at release. It was $150 and didn't even have a working file menu, and I decided to stick with older software like Kodon, Masterpiece VR, and Shapelab. None of these are a perfect option on their own, but Shapelab is very stable, and Kodon is at least a one-time fee. Masterpiece VR is now a subscription model software, but I have a legacy version that doesn't require subscription... and is way less bloated.
In celeb news, Asmongold cleaned his house as partial penance for something rude he said about the Israel war, and honestly, it seemed sincere. Unfortunately, he only stayed off social media for a few days max before returning to brag about his half cleaned... what is that, a living room? Anyway, he later referenced something I said in a tweet as a partial motivation to clean his kitchen sink. I said, "Damn, that sink is white," implying jokingly that I couldn't tell what color his kitchen sink was due to how dirty it was. I won't show the sink picture, because it was pretty sickening, but if you want to see it, here's a link to the original tweet/post.
One of the saddest things about the United States of America is our ability to create laws and then ignore the laws in a court of law. On November 1, 2024, a Pennsylvania state judge ruled in favor of Musk's giveaway under the admission that it was not a sweepstakes and winners were all determined manually as the most ideal spokespeople for their campaign - Reuters. A lot of people, including Newsweek writers, have been referring to this whole thing as a sweepstakes, but it is not a sweepstakes and could still be considered illegal use of campaign funds. This whole sweepstakes thing is a very misleading event, because it's not a sweepstakes; It's a referral program with many buy-in requirements. A sweepstakes can be entered by anyone for a simple entry form with no entry requirements other than legal age and the ability to take on the tax burden. In Elon Musk's own words, "In appreciation for your support, you will receive $47 for each registered voter you refer that signs this petition." It likely still qualifies as a giveaway, but a sweepstakes is a much stricter form of giveaway. I would sign his petition if it was a sweepstakes entry form, but that's not what it is. I don't even have a good enough opinion of Musk that I'd believe he's picking the winners at random. Some of the evidence presented so far leans heavily in the direction of this whole giveaway being one big lottery scam designed to influence voters and not much else.
To brighten your mood after all that giveaway nonsense, here's a now 4-year-old deepfake of Robert Downey Jr and Tom Holland in Back To The Future!
That's all folks!
In closing, I just want to point out that there was a mass exodus to BlueSky from the site formerly known as Twitter. You can find me on BSky if you want to keep in touch. I'm liking BSky more and more the more I get more folks over there, so let's all have one massive Bluesky party, yeah?
Oh, and stay fresh!