@MudMan@mas.to
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MudMan

@MudMan@mas.to

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MudMan, to gaming
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

Alright, honesty time.

I find the FFVII Remake actively unpleasant to play. I don't think it's a me thing, either. Combat, movement, interactions and quests are all poorly executed. It looks good and the writing is cute, but it's a mediocre action game at best.

I can't be alone in this, right? We're all just giving it a pass on nostalgia and not talking about it and now it gets an event all to itself and it's just too late to say anything.

britt, to random
@britt@mstdn.games avatar

Friendly reminder to support Indie Game Devs ✌🏻

#Gaming #GameDev #IndieGameDev

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@WagesOf @britt Well, that's bad timing, because the Prince of Persia metroidvania is actually pretty awesome, at least so far.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@WagesOf @britt Well, the guy is referring specifically to their subscription service and why subscriptions are not growing as fast as in movies and music.

But yeah, that too. That ship sailed a long time ago, at about the same time we all stopped being pissed at Steam being required to run the boxed copy of Half-Life 2.

rodhilton, to random
@rodhilton@mastodon.social avatar

I don't know how to explain to people why I spent $800 making my 4K look like a CRT from 1995

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@rodhilton You can get CRT filters running off an emulator for free...

...and then spend the money buying actual CRTs.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@rodhilton Cool! Do I win a CRT?

EDIT: (In all seriousness I do not see the point of scalers, and it is absolutely true that no argument for a retro hardware+scaler+modern display has ever made sense to me. If you do prefer that look or it just fits your environment better more power to you, but you're absolutely right that I don't get it.)

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@rodhilton Alright, here's my attempt at empathy: I can definitely follow that argument.

Now, there are a number of reasons that doesn't work for me. Emulation lag is more fixable than display lag and definitely not "unplayable", for one. I'd also prefer a FPGA box, which will do the filtering and also support a CRT natively (at once, even) if you want to go back and forth. And CRTs not being 65 inches is a feature, not a bug. Huge displays turn retro games into pixel soup.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@rodhilton That's fair. I do miss my corner beanbag CRT station, though. I have a different setup now.

The thing is if you're gonna compromise on the that, and I do often, then I'd spend my energy on good emulation rather than good display conversion. Once you lose the display factor you're so free to mess around. I love RetroAchivements these days, they are reinvigorating. The price on high end scaling is hard to justify over tweaking emulation to be lagless for much less cost.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@rodhilton As for the quality of the filters... well, there are really good ones that will do 4K for that budget on PC. Betterr than what the scalers ship, IMO.

I agree that cheap desktop boxes running at 720p aren't the same, but for the cost of a retrotink 4K, even if you don't have a decent laptop or desktop you can use for it you can buy a very competent small form factor PC and use it that way. And you get a solid media server from the deal, too.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@paulocarrasco @rodhilton Meeeeh. There's a lot there that's misleading. He gets weirdly hung up on a decade-old article written about stand-alone emulators when the average consumer CPU was still dual core. He also implies that FPGA cores can't be inaccurate, which is a common misconception, even though he clearly understands that this isn't true.

He doesn't outright lie, but he's trying to explain the differences and he overstates the case despite the conciliatory tone.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@paulocarrasco @rodhilton For the record, I do own an Analogue Pocket and several MiSTer builds. Those things serve a purpose, especially if you want to use original I/O but they are super expensive. I have them because I want to use SNAC and CRTs with an emulation setup.

What I'm saying is that a) software emulation is good enough for most other use cases, and b) using USB inputs on FPGA or modern displays on OG hardware+scaler kinda defeats the point as it reintroduces some of the issues.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@paulocarrasco @rodhilton But hey, it's still gonna be fine. I was there when we were trying to emulate SNES and PS1 games on Pentiums running at 100MHz. We are splitting hairs to an absurd degree here.

Like I said earlier, the only bummer is that people are getting major FOMO and overspending on setups because of the hype.

boilingsteam, (edited ) to PCGaming
@boilingsteam@mastodon.cloud avatar

Did we really need MSI to jump ship to make yet another PC gaming handheld when there's already 20 options out there?

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@boilingsteam
MSI is going with Intel, so on those grounds alone I'm intrigued.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@boilingsteam Well, that is the interesting bit, isn't it? Is an ARC iGPU going to make up for the CPU once power management comes into play?

At a glance it does seem they're targeting a big higher than AMD handhelds on TDP (10-30W seems to be the target), but those numbers aren't apples to apples actoss manufacturers, so I'm waiting to see what comes out of benchmarks.

Either way the world of PC handhelds is fun right now.

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@boilingsteam I have a couple of Windows handhelds and a couple of Steam Decks.

I'm waaaay down this rabbit hole. FWIW, I default to Windows at the moment, but I think both have pros and cons.

pluralistic, to poop
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

"who knew poop shaming was even a thing?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/194trv8/who_knew_poop_shaming_was_even_a_thing/

#DisciplinaryTechnology #Bossware #SIgns #Poop

MudMan,
@MudMan@mas.to avatar

@pluralistic This can't possibly be a real thing and I'm too scared to try the QR code and attempt to find out

osma, (edited ) to random
@osma@mas.to avatar

deleted_by_author

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    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @osma I think it probably depends on how people envision "AI usage". There are definitely many custom built tools that are currently in use internally and will continue to become more frequent.

    I think the weird future that people envisioned where all writing and coding is done by ChatGPT and all art is done by Dall-E was always absurd, so if people expected a bunch of fully automated services overnight then yeah, the reality check is gonna happen.

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @osma Agreed, and true of both supporters and detractors.

    I'd like to say articles like these mean people are coming back to Earth and understanding what the tech actually is, but the framing and the writing here suggests that's not the case.

    badlogic, to random
    @badlogic@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

    orange site parenting

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @badlogic Okay, but... that seems cool?

    Like, I wouldn't let that go unsupervised with a small kid, because who knows what direction that steers eventually, but it sounds like a fun, creative activity. If you're not gonna sit down and do that yourself (or if your kid thinks the talking computer is cooler than you, which is entirely possible), that still sounds better than... you know, staring at random clips on Youtube Kids, which is a thing that people let kids do, somehow.

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @chriscunningham @badlogic Have you seen Youtube kids?

    Look, parenting is hard enough, I get why parents want to give kids a toy they just need to be within earshot of instead of actively engaged with. I don't think making up stories by bouncing back and forth with a computer is a particularly bad idea at all. Like many tech toys you still want to be aware and paying attention, but while this sounds worse than doing it yourself it seems actively fine otherwise.

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @chriscunningham @badlogic Alright, nerdy nitpicking I can do.

    That's extremely not true about the Holodeck. People ask it to come up with stuff on the spot all the time. Famously the thing makes up a sentient supervillain in response to the prompt "create an opponent that can defeat Data" on a Sherlock Holmes setting.

    If nothing else, you can be amazed that Trek predicted generative AI hallucinating horrific stuff that far ahead.

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @chriscunningham @badlogic
    Well, it's a TV show, "Riker goes to the holodeck and has a fun time" isn't exactly compelling storytelling.

    Most of the holodeck episodes include some deadly malfunction or another. It once creates a virus that somehow spreads to everybody (not even on a prompt, it's just reproducing a place), it creates sentience multiple times, with villains injuring and kidnapping people each time, both prompted and authored... it's a mess. Because TV.

    CaseyExplosion, to random
    @CaseyExplosion@mastodon.social avatar

    Added The Last Faith to my steam curator page. It's good! Like if Castlevania and Bloodborne had a baby

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1274600/The_Last_Faith/?curator_clanid=28340174

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @CaseyExplosion People keep making Castlevania Soulsborne hybrids, but what if I just don't want the Soulsborne bit? I feel like every Soulsborne piece of this and Blasphemous makes me want to play it less.

    Just make more Castlevanias, I guess is my point.

    helvetica, to random
    @helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

    this is how i would like to be able to see the weather.

    temp at now + high and low over the next 16 hours with their times and temps marked

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @helvetica Problem with that is I care about rain chance more than I do temps most of the time. The hourly forecast makes it easier to do both.

    That looks sleek, but it's maybe a bit too info-light if you live in a rainy place.

    irfan, to Steamdeck

    is the first hardware I own, second being the Steam Deck Dock. I finally know what shills feel like cos I’m now the same with Valve and I 100% want and need more hw products from them. Whatever they cook in the future, I hope it’ll include a laptop (they’ve included great speakers, mic, and amazing haptic/“fake” touchpads on the Steam Deck, I need em in a laptop), a SteamOS “console” box perhaps, and a controller as good as the built-in ones on the Deck. The cherry on top would be them selling these hardware at a low margin or even loss like they did with the Deck, to keep them affordable with the hopes of enticing more people into the ecosystem like they’ve successfully done with me.

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @irfan This is one of those where I don't know if there's sarcasm involved. Valve made controllers and consolized PCs already, and they mostly sucked.

    They also promised SteamOS support for non-Deck hardware and then quietly stopped talking about it, so the community has been supporting that without them through stuff like Chimera OS. They also promised Windows support on Deck and debatably underdelivered, but there are enough Windows handhelds that it probably doesn't matter now.

    joergi, to retrogaming German

    Something you normally don't see often in a (okay it's a telltale one). - Season 2

    MudMan,
    @MudMan@mas.to avatar

    @joergi @scummvm I mean, you finished it. Says right there that the game is over.

    Notably the other one doesn't say that, which is interesting.

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