iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 27/09/2026

Liquid Glass slider on maximum opaqueness, Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency buttons checked in Accessibility. The menus are still this transparent.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 12/08/2026

Sure hope by the time I decide to stream again there are better options than Twitch, but not holding my breath. In the meantime, here's how to turn this off.

Twitch Settings screenshot showing the new "Training for Generative AI" checkbox.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 02/07/2026

Think I can finally put Mina away for a while.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 07/06/2026

Since I'm on the subject of shitty font trends, someone somewhere decided that short wide letters with no spacing should be the hot new thing. Okay, we get it, you hate us.

trying to read this makes me feel like I hit my head on something

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 04/06/2026

It may just be a number in the grand scheme of things, but it means a lot that so many folks gave my silly little stream a shot. Thank you.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 19/02/2026

I'm developing an irrational hatred for this font. I couldn't tell you why other than I just see it and its variants everywhere now.

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" in Ltt Recoleta font.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 05/01/2026

Made a small Discord bot today. Right now this is all it does, but most of the busywork was in the setup so this feels pretty good.

The /cheese command for AtticBot returning 🧀.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 21/11/2025

Not casting judgment on Blender or the great work they do, but my professional experience has been that dropping phrases like "the full spectrum of creativity, powered by freedom" is never a good sign.

Splash screen for Blender 4.3: "A Stroke of Genius. Brush assets, faster sculpting, a revolutionized Grease Pencil, and more. Blender 4.3 got you covered."

Splash screen for Blender 4.4: "Time for Action. Improved animation workflow, better modeling, new sculpt brush, and smoother video editing, plus over 700 issues fixed."

Splash screen for Blender 4.5: "Your Best Companion. With 2 years of updates, full Vulkan support, and quality-of-life improvements, Blender 4.5 LTS is every Blenderhead's best friend."

Splash screen for Blender 5.0: "Hi Five. The full spectrum of creativity, powered by freedom." HUHH

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 16/11/2025

Been a hot minute since I've been able to iterate on the stream. When I switched to a full 3D environment, I had to abandon my personal filter redeems since I didn't know how to implement them in a way that respects the 3D space. Today I managed to grind out a solution.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 18/10/2025

Okay Portillo's I didn't order the GoonBurger™ goddamn

A Portillo's bacon cheeseburger with what I can only guess is a quarter cup of mayonnaise on one side.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 11/09/2025

Screenshot since I was promptly blocked.

Derek Powazek @fraying.bsky.social

"I'm scared of what they're gonna do in response to this" is beaten kid logic and it makes me sad for the people posting it today.

They're already doing fascism. It's already here.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 05/09/2025

Been playing a little of this to maybe stream tomorrow, and it's nothing like I thought it would be. It might also be the most 90s thing to ever exist.

Cover art for Total Distortion, a "Music Video Adventure Game".

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 11/05/2025

Been a while since I found time to work on more assorted stream props. I have no clue what's going on with the lighting under the screen, having triple checked texture, geometry and normals.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 01/05/2025

Thank you @artofjonas.bsky.social for the retro icon! I love this take. Funny enough, it reminds me of Albert from the old Twas The Night Before Christmas cartoon, which actually partly inspired my design.

A brown rat in a red flannel shirt and glasses, holding a game controller.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 24/04/2025

My honest and spoiler-free (I hope) review of Blue Prince after ~60 hours.

I'm giving Blue Prince a thumbs up because I'm grateful that it exists. I'm thankful that Tonda Ros et al committed to making more than just a puzzle game, and crafting a beautiful setting for it. I hope more future devs take a crack at this mashup genre.

Nonetheless, it's difficult for me to recommend Blue Prince outright without some serious caveats.

First, if you go into Blue Prince expecting a puzzle game experience, I think you'll be disappointed. Where most puzzle games build of the satisfaction of making simple connections and gradually peeling back the layers to get at bigger challenges, Blue Prince will often gate that satisfaction behind random chance. It starts out smoothly: you'll have enough small tasks on your checklist to accomplish at least one thing during an in-game day; as you progress, and the puzzles get more complex, you'll spend more time rerolling days for the right combination of rooms to get the one specific clue or puzzle piece you need to advance. Puzzles give way to maddeningly obtuse riddles. I'd scribbled down countless small details in my notebook, and even then clues could be interpreted in ways that lead to more dead ends.

Second, if you go into Blue Prince expecting a roguelike experience, I think you'll be disappointed. This isn't a game like Binding of Isaac where you can advance by improving your skills, or like Balatro where the core gameplay loop is addictive. In Blue Prince, your main agency is walking. There's no permanent currency to accumulate; while you will get upgrades that make future runs easier, you could still spend many consecutive runs feeling you've accomplished nothing. Resource tension is extremely tight, and the satisfaction curve uneven.

Third, there are a number of smaller game issues that exacerbate the frustration of the above. Walking outside the mansion proper is a plodding affair, and you'll be doing it frequently. My fingers got sore from skipping the histrionics attached to picking up a new item. On at least one run I clipped through the floor on my way to some important task and had to start the day over. And while accessibility options like key rebinding and color blind mode are in development, it's disappointing in 2025 that these weren't prioritized for initial release.

In spite of all these issues, I found 60 hours to sink into the game, because I wanted to see more of this watercolor mirror world and its inhabitants. Ironically, once I'd reached the endgame puzzles, and new hints and lore were coming in at a trickle, I started finding more simple joy in putting my house together Carcassonne-style, fitting as many rooms in as I could each day. But once that was no longer its own reward, I decided it was time to put the game away for a while.

Still, even if the puzzle and roguelike halves seem at times to leech off each other what makes them individually fun, I think the concept is salvageable. For example, having only three rooms to choose from on each door would feel much less painful with just one extra die (reroll) each day. The game's star system grants certain daily bonuses, but a consistent way to trade these in for gradual permanent buffs would make the grind less grindy. And if puzzles are the game's real currency, then frankly it could do with a lot more of them. Overall, the game's puzzle design has room for tightening, though it's not bad by any means.

In summary, I think I may be in love with Blue Prince, but it's a complicated and somewhat toxic relationship. There aren't many games that could make me feel so cheated of my time, so punished for doing everything it asks of me, and have me crawling back to it begging for another chance. Perhaps it's that, beyond its flaws, the gorgeous melancholy at its heart speaks to pressing truths: turning a critical eye on our own privileges, preserving history beyond censorship, finding passion and redemption under the cloud of oppression.

Blue Prince will go back on my shelf for now, but I'll keep glancing over at it, thinking of what could have been, and what may yet be.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 24/04/2025

I clipped through the floor in Blue Prince and got this screen. Well played. I swear this game will kick you in the nuts in so many ways and I still can't hate it.

Unfortunately, you tripped and must now
FALL IT A DAY

You have pushed yourself OFF the very edge of exhaustion and appear to have fainted.

The next morning you will awake in your tent with only a blurry lingering memory of a dream you were having. A dream in which you were falling.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 16/04/2025

Yeah nah. You have the option to not use a single one of these and would be better off for it. Big Tech helped engineer our last election. They will not be enacting ethical or environmental AI laws. Ever. This reads like one long Super Bowl ad for GenAI.

Screenshot of post with the user blurred:

"Support creatives. Support the earth. Push for ethical and environmental laws and standards on AI

GenAI is everywhere. There's nowhere to go that isn't using AI to some degree at this point. Can't even Google a question without it generating an AI response. Spotify has AI DJs and playlists. It's in Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, IBM... we're all using genAI services, whether we like it or not

At this point, our goals should be to push for ethical and environmental standards on AI. We have to be realistic about the situation.

I'm sure there's a good amount of folks that don't want to hear this but this is the reality: GenAI is not going anywhere. We're too far down the rabbit hole to go back.

Support creatives. Support the earth. Push for ethical and environmental laws and standards.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 11/04/2025

Cookin' up some stream silliness. 🎨: daudd.bsky.social

A brown cartoon rat with glasses types enthusiastically on a giant keyboard with one hand while holding up a microphone with the other.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 30/03/2025

One big challenge of streaming in a full 3D environment is maintaining sensible 2D layouts - making background elements visible without cluttering the scene, keeping the game screen big enough without skew, and such. This helper grid shows 80% of the total area, which I avoid going smaller than.

Screenshot of a 3D scene layout, with white grid overlay, my character on the right and a game monitor taking up most of the remaining screen space (helper possum included below).

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 24/03/2025

I won't be streaming today, but I'll be back on Wednesday for another attic deep dive: Azrael's Tear, a 3D cyberpunk grail quest adventure from 1996.

Cover of the 1996 PC game Azrael's Tear, with a man in a sci-fi outfit grabbing for a glowing blue chalice.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 25/02/2025

Here's the final tally.

Tier list of ~200 video games presented next to a tired-looking rat.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 05/02/2025

I'm likely permanently retired from mini painting, so here's one last shot of my favorite model before I clean off my painting desk for other tasks.

A painted model of a turquoise troll, yelling with hands open.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 26/01/2025

MFW I want to start streaming again but my hand tracking and outlines are all messed up

Screenshot of a 3D rat model whose arms appear to be on backwards and is trying to look angry but the model's outlines are clipping through his lips and fingers.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 23/01/2025

WIP screenshot of new stream setup for gaming. Getting to move all this stuff around in 3D space realtime is super fun.

3D vtuber environment with a cartoon rat in an attic, in front of a monitor playing Balatro, with chat messages floating behind him.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 19/01/2025

Finally downloaded Balatro and it's okay I guess but I don't get the hype.

Screenshot of Las Vegas Video Poker by Mastertronic for 8-bit Atari, which is decidedly -not- Balatro.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 18/12/2024

Building a stream environment is hard because I'll spent days obsessing over arranging objects to compose the main shots just the right way. Also my avatar is 9" tall so this attic is basically a cathedral.

Screenshot from Unity showing an empty attic floating in space.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 11/12/2024

It really speaks to my struggles with Non-24 sleep that my most-watched streamers are spread over Canada, UK and Australia.

My most watched streamers this year were MerleKoz, sushifur, ScribblyNoodle, LucienneLutrae and kofu.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 11/12/2024

@jonnee.bsky.social being way too nice to me this year

Crop from my Twitch Recap showing that JonneeCuga raided me 40 times this year.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 10/12/2024

Man, we played some good games this year.

ArniRat's 2024 Twitch recap.
New Followers: 348
Total Hours Watched: 4.71K
New Subscribers: 16
Top Categories: Nine Sols, Thief 2, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Games + Demos, Fallout 1
Total Streams: 122
Total Chats Sent: 25K
Clips: 29
Top Channel Emote: arniraHype

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 20/11/2024

it's happening (in about 2.5 hours)

Disc of the PS2 game Lifeline, and the official Logitech PS2 headset.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 10/11/2024

A couple WIPs of props I'm making for the next iteration of my stream backdrop.

Low-poly 3D model of a computer styled after the original Macintosh.

Low-poly model of a 13" tube television showing a test pattern.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 09/11/2024

post a random game in your collection Saturday

Box for the 1999 PC game Mind Rover: The Europa Project

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 28/10/2024

"I'm not going to say whether I think what Asmongold said was right or wrong" Yeah no surprise you're a centrist. Get fucked.

Pirate Software
"You should go vote.

Don't tell me who you're voting for.
Thanks."

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 07/10/2024

Settings > Moderation

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 29/09/2024

Bluesky: a play in two acts

I don't want to seem like I don't have empathy for people losing their homes. But throughout human history, people have had to move when the environment demanded it.

Move inland. Build smaller houses, with stronger materials. Own less stuff.

Very cool and fun to be dogpiled for the first time on this site in the midst of the month I've been having and have people try to hate me for hating poor people and not knowing about climate change when I grew up in poverty and I'm an organizer that works on climate policy.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 25/09/2024

I don't always get broken builds in Peglin, but when I do it almost always involves broccoli. (My last hit on the dragon did 25k damage.)

Peglin victory screen loadout: Brassicaceae Knuckles, Leaf The Rest For Later, Refreshing Punch, Training Weight, Mask of Joy, Unpretentious Pendant, Refillosopher's Stone, Peglinero's Pendant.

The orbs don't matter much since everything started around 1k damage and escalated from there.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 21/09/2024

then why did you even tell me it was there

Entry at the end of a Bluesky thread reading "Show hidden replies"

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 12/08/2024

A new friend appears! @deke.dog's Hana from Lunistice which you should all go play right now. The first one I ordered was lost in transit, but a call to Makeship got another one sent out and it's finally here!

A plush of a happy red panda on a shelf between two other plushes.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 09/08/2024

I'm still compiling my vacation photos for a blog post, but here's one more that I liked. I -think- this is the St. Louis River. The whole week is kind of a blur now.

A long rocky river winding into forest in the distance.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 28/07/2024

One last photo before I head back home in the morning. So much I want to say about the trip but I'm gonna need another week just to recuperate. Jay Cooke State Park - Carlton, MN

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 27/07/2024

Minneopa State Park - Mankato, MN

Minneopa falls in late afternoon. Trees surround the river, sun highlighting water and flat rocks below.

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Arni Rat @arnirat.tv · 26/07/2024

Got a couple more days of road trip, and a lot of photos to go through - a lot of them crap, but one goal of this trip was to get comfy with shooting manually again. Council Grounds State Park - Merrill, Wisconsin

Photo of a fishing pier on a lake, with a line of trees on the horizon and big fluffy clouds overhead.

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