swizzlestick

Altitude would be fun to see reborn. Hit 4-5k players at its peak on Steam. Now pretty much dead apart from dedicated league play.

It's a 2D flight/arena game with a variety of game modes, aircraft to fly, weapons, perks, powerups etc. Very arcade.

• ✅ Fun
• ✅ Accessible (Win/Mac/Linux/Steam)
• ✅ All ages
• ✅ Casual (games last minutes, not hours)
• ✅ Not AAA
• ✅ Free
• ✅ Runs on potato

Only drawback according to the assignment:

• ❌ Not FOSS

I wasn't aware until you told me, so that holds true. Might pick one up, that's cheap enough just for funsies.

I've not had a problem with the Chitu breed of kit - hardware or software. But I have seen some absolute horror stories from the later Mars machines. The 4 MAX (maybe the whole 4 series) has a fantastic bug where leaving the USB in while turning on will trigger the machine to start a firmware update.

A bit of a hitch when it doesn't check for firmware files being present first before wiping itself. Making the mistake of leaving the USB in at power-on effectively soft-bricks it.

Elegoo are now leaning into moving vats, which is fancy and allows for autolevelling. I think it's just a recipe for trouble and more parts to fail though.

I've stuck with iredmail for years. Spin up a VM, grab the installer, and see how it performs for you.

• oobe bypass.
• A post install script.

Alternatively, Tiny10

Can't argue with that. I still use FDM as well for a lot of models - currently running an old Ultimaker 2 and a BCN3D Sigma D25 for the bigger batch jobs.

The latter is mostly stock but the UM2 is pretty much unrecognisable from when it was new now; a real Ship of Theseus. Bigger gantry, uprated board/head/feeder and tweaked Tinker firmware to suit. Shoved a Pi with Octoprint in there too.

While you can get flex & specialty resins, you are right that you're certainly not printing them alongside the regular stuff in one run like you intend to, unless the model is redesigned in multiple parts. They are also priced to suit :|

Will be good to see what you come up with. Almost all of my prints are the work of others these days. I'm not much of a designer and the furthest I go with CAD is putting terribleness together in a 12 year old version of Sketchup 😂

You're welcome - glad to see you have it really sussed out. Finding something that works for you and knowing it won't just up and disappear off the market (as many fashion frames do) is excellent.

Can see the optician side as well - they have an established process and deviating from that is unwanted faff. However, they are perfectly capable of ordering a lens to a customer given spec. A short 'if this doesn't work then lol you suck' disclaimer is all it would take to make the sale.

Resin is well within reach of the casual hobbyist now - we're talking a couple hundred dollars to get an entry level machine, and a little extra coin for the materials/consumables. I have a (now old) Mars 3 that is ticking along beautifully.

Safety/PPE/ventilation is the main downside compared to FDM. It's a stinky job but you can't fault the results for presentable and functional parts. These things can print stuff like screw threads and other teensy features perfectly.

Offer always stands if you ever want something to demo and can't get anyone more local to help :)

A part like this is begging to be done on a resin machine. You can't beat them for the kind of shapes and tolerances you're working with here.

I'd give it a go on my FDM machine, but I have .8 nozzles loaded right now - no hope haha.

I'd be happy to turn a few of these out in resin if you don't have a machine, would only ask for the freight cost.

Teams can go fuck itself with a rock. We've taken licensing now that doesn't include it.

Still holding on to classic outlook as long as possible. The new version/skin/glow-up can go share the aforementioned rock with teams. Where's my VBA, where's my ribbon customisations, and why must it be dumbed down to Fisher-Price levels of 'user friendliness'?

A lot of my answers to user questions these days are 'Because Microsoft ™️'.

We're certainly in the midst of an interesting decade, to say the least.

It made some difference, but the racists really self-owned on that one by making the country outwardly hostile to generally white EU migrants.

This was quickly followed by an uptick in not white, non EU migrants that the casual racist abhors.

Particularly evident in NHS recruitment with EU recruits stagnating and African/Asian recruits increasing.

Aside from that, the vote has pretty much fucked us all for a couple of generations minimum. Put to vote, I would gladly rejoin, even at the expense of the Pound. We'll never see the almost 2:1 buying power against the Dollar ever again anyway.

Main topic aside, what are you doing putting bread and butter together with a fork?

All the small appliance suggestions so far are great - they remove a lot of the danger and give you an easy place to start. Same for the safety items. Even with no fear, it is sensible to have an extinguisher and fire blanket in the kitchen.

When you feel that you are ready to start picking up knives and working with flame, do it with a friend or family member that is suitably understanding & willing to teach. Simply watching it done is still familiarising yourself with the process and hopefully reducing your fears.

My sister is the same way - I am teaching her slowly. We started with baking, as all the prep work is done cold with only one heating process. Not exactly healthy, but it it gets the ball rolling on working with heat.

You'll love Anthracite Grey then.