Messages

1

Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: August 16, 2019, 10:34:09 AM »

Indeed! I think the best part about it is that a lot of these little tricks is that most of them are a result of the game being able to run on a 386/486. :p

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: August 15, 2019, 03:16:40 PM »

I managed to nail the Zero Press on Doom 2 MAP15 last night:

Holy crap, this is easier than I thought it would be.

0:55, no monsters, no secret exit.

a a a a a a a a a a pic.twitter.com/NotvqmWoe9

— Ian Burgmyer (@Spectere) August 15, 2019

It took a while to figure out the exact position to hit the switch, but after working that out it's surprisingly easy to do and fairly consistent.

The way you're supposed to do this is to fight through the yellow key area, which involves going through the inside area, hitting a switch to activate some stairs, then crawling up to the battlements and pressing a switch to open a door on the first floor, then collecting the blue key from inside the door. Along the way are some awkwardly placed enemies that tend to get in your way and make it difficult to do the necessary backtracking to get the blue key. It's slow enough that it's faster, easier, and more consistent to open up the secret exit and go through the first secret level.

The Zero Press (discovered by the runner Zero Master) takes advantage of several quirks of the Doom engine to hit the switch from the ground level.

First of all, height is not accounted for when checking for activation. If a switch is 10000 units above your head you can still press it as long as it's within your activation range. Second, two-sided linedefs do not block activation, making it trivial to hit switches through a ledge if they're positioned right (hitting the exit switch in E2M2 in the slime and activating the secret exit switch on E3M6 are two popular examples of this in action). The thing that's initially tricky about the MAP15 press, I suspect, is the distance between the player position outside of the "castle" area and the switch itself. The positioning is precise, but there's enough clues on the texture to help you line it up.

Basically, you go to the far wall, turn right, go right around the middle, find the fairly noticeable texture seam and move 3.5 texels to the right of that. Face the wall at such an angle that you move very slowly to the left, hold forward, and mash spacebar until you hear the switch press sound, then run into the castle, pick up the blue key, and complete the level normally.

Feels good, man.

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Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: August 01, 2019, 08:04:24 AM »

I need to play through Prime again. I actually started practicing speed strats in it (on the original 0-00 version, that is) several years back and was consistently able to do the early space jump, hive mecha skip, and a few boost ball bypasses. I should really get back into it at some point.

I also need to get through Prime 2 and Prime 3 (I still have a sealed copy of the latter for after I beat the former).

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: July 22, 2019, 10:02:06 AM »

I downloaded it years ago because of this video. RIP one of the better lets players on the internet, probably got a life or something.

Lives are overrated. id took them out of Doom, after all.

Gotta say, that mod looks pretty legit. I'm going to have to check that out.

And yeah, it is nice having an LPer who has a decent sounding mic setup and doesn't spend half of the video SCREAMING. IN. YOUR. EAR. I also like how he took the time to prep his videos for easy YouTube consumption and didn't just dump a bunch of massive 4 hour Twitch VODs on his channel. It's a shame he stopped.

Oh, yeah definitely need a setup if there's a chance of getting a WR.

I mean, in a pinch I could just get a USB 3 HDMI capture device, steal the webcam from my OctoPrint rig, hook up my mic, and call it a day. My PC is in the same room. It wouldn't be ideal, but it would work.

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: July 18, 2019, 08:05:58 AM »

Still on that dynasty zelda grind? I honestly don't think ive seen a single dynasty warriors speedrun in my life.

The leaderboards are pretty barren. From what I've done so far it sort of seems like I could very well be on WR pace, haha. I need to get a recording/streaming solution together soon.

I have "The Ultimate DOOM" on the steams, but all I did with it was download decaduple doom (every enemy spawn, spawns 10 of said enemy...1 imp = 10 imps, 3 imps = 30 imps) and enjoyed that, but never had the urge to beat one. Never too late to start...

Okay yeah, I need to try that. :O

I've gotten quickly beating Doom (nothing like WR pace; more like getting well under par on every level) down to a science for the most part, so that should make things very interesting. The only level I even remotely have any issues with throughout all of Doom and Doom 2 is E4M6, because fuck that cyberdemon at the end.

Oh jeez, does Decaduple Doom multiply the boss spawns as well? If so: yikes.

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: July 15, 2019, 10:12:56 AM »

2. Hyrule Warriors grinding. I'd like to get as many characters to at least level 100 as possible. Link is already there, with his closest runners (Zelda, Skull Kid, Impa, Linkle) sitting in the mid-70s to low-80s. I'd also like to clear the first four adventure maps (the first one is already done, so that leaves the Great Sea, as well as the Master Quest versions of the classic and Great Sea maps).

Slight revision: working on speedrunning this.

Also, collecting all of the skulltulas in the story mode missions. I can't adequately describe how annoying some of the hard mode one are to get (the base ones all just require you to get 1000 KOs, which is easy to do on your first run through if you know to do it).

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Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: July 15, 2019, 10:10:17 AM »

I feel your frustration with the FPS genre. CoD getting ridiculously popular for years was probably the single worst thing to happen to the genre overall, as all the industry did was copy its corridor-inspired level design. Doom 2016 proved that not only can you modernize old-school FPS design, but you can do so in a way where it works with consoles.

It's not to say that it's the only one in recent history to do so, but I'd say that it manages to successfully take what Serious Sam and the Machine Games Wolfenstein titles did, crank everything up to 12, polish the bits that were too jagged, and make something that's even more busy and chaotic than the originals. Woooooo boy, what a game. So psyched for Eternal!

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Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: July 09, 2019, 04:56:39 PM »

With monitors you generally get what you pay for, unfortunately, whether it's viewing angles, color rendition, the inclusion of adaptive sync (FreeSync/G-Sync, i.e. the ability to natively render at, say, 99hz on a 144hz panel and still maintain sync, instead of dropping to 72hz with vsync or putting up with tearing), warranty, and/or pixel transition time (not necessarily refresh rate--you can have a display that can technically do 144hz but the pixels can't go from white to black in the requisite ~7ms).

I did find an LG at the $350 price point that hits all of the points (32"—31.5" viewable, lol—1440p, 144hz, no curve) and also includes FreeSync support: LG 32GK650F-B

As far as 60hz vs 144hz, it definitely makes a difference. Weird as it may sound, whenever I get in the mood to play Super Hexagon I play it exclusively on my iPad Pro because playing it on its 120hz display is legitimately a superior experience to playing it on any of my PCs. Even silly things like mouse pointer movements feel downright sluggish when you go from 144hz to 60hz.

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Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: July 03, 2019, 01:39:57 PM »

Some games in other resolutions straight up break my pc, AND monitor. Diablo III did this, but the geforce thing autoset it to 4k for some reason and it fixed it somehow. Street fighter 4 did the same thing, only I havent figured out how to fix it yet. Literally breaks everything, my monitor goes black, and CANT POWER OFF, I literally have to unplug the monitor and re plug it back in, and it persists after a system restart. The game works, but as soon as I try to change the resolution TO 1080p, breaks, and the same thing happens if I alt tab, breaks.

That's really weird. I've had one of my monitors at work (a Dell P2214H) "crash" like that before, but it's always really rare and really inconsistent. It might be a dud.

Only played about an hour to test it, but im very pleased with DOOM. AND THE BEST PART IS PLAYING ON A RECLINER, even with my ghetto ass keyboard in my lap, mouse on the armrest setup, pretty comfortable.

I'm planning to move my PC into an office for functional purposes, but after I do that I know I'm going to miss the recliner bit. I might hook my Steam Link up to my TV just so that I can can still do that (Steam in-home streaming is very good—I played Saint's Row 4 in its entirety using it). And yeah, my run of DOOM 2016 was done with an UHDTV, lights off, and my sound system cranked. Metal as fuck. I plan to do the same thing with Eternal when it comes out.

I've also found that the recliner setup works well for Elite: Dangerous. I designed a HOTAS mount for my recliner, so whenever I decide to play that I get my X56 set up, strap on the Rift, and set up my recliner to roughly the same angle that the in-game pilot does. It ends up being pretty immersive.

And figured out my password here so actually have the luxury of typing on a real ass keyboard over some stupid mobile device.

I mean, technically you can hook a USB/Bluetooth keyboard up to a phone. I'm sure that would be a great experience.

Besides a few annoying issues, and not being used to being on a computer at all anymore, I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. Not to mention my typing speed hasn't seem to degrade at all, save for my fingers getting tired, but that'll go away with time.

Glad to hear it!

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Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: June 28, 2019, 07:55:06 AM »

Well the sonbitch is up and running...

[size=36]\o/[/size]

I couldn't even install my goddamn Nvidia drivers without a mandatory account.

The NVIDIA drivers doesn't require an account. That GeForce Experience (i.e. the driver autoupdater, which I think is still an optional package) does, but if you update the drivers manually you shouldn't have to sign in.

The fuck is this world coming to? I don't want to juggle a notepad with 2,000 different passwords.

I just gave up and started using LastPass a bunch of years ago. I would have preferred something decentralized like KeePass, but I needed something that wouldn't be an absolute PITA to sync to an immeasurable number of devices. I have it running across Windows, Linux, macOS, and iOS devices (and I used the Android version a bit when I still had a Nexus 9) and it's made my life way easier overall.

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Gaming / Re: Music Gaming Accomplishments

« on: June 24, 2019, 02:39:35 PM »

Hell yeah. I love that thing. The 17" Dell UltraScan next to it is a nice little CRT as well (it's also a Trinitron and can reliably sync at 1080p!).

This seems like a strange thing to praise, but Sony did a great job positioning the carrying handles on it. You can't see them since that stupid rubber mat is in the way (really need to clean up that half of my workshop—I'd just finished completely reorganizing my printer area so my table became a bit of a catch-all) but it's positioned right where the bulk of the weight is, so when you're hauling it around it really doesn't feel like you're carrying around a bulky 17kg box.

Oh, and one cool thing about IIDX CS is that 3rd through 8th make up a pretty sizable percentage of the PS2 games that support 240p output. Zero interlacing artifacts == sex. 9th and newer use 480i, unfortunately, so you get some very minor scanline dancing.

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Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: June 23, 2019, 06:08:41 PM »

I backed the shit out of Bloodstained when it was on Kickstarter and I'm SO FUCKING GLAD it turned out to be awesome.

I'm only about two hours in, unfortunately, since this past week (and weekend) was pretty busy. I plan to play the shit out of it this coming week, however. I did get to smack the crap out of David Hayter, though, so life is good.

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Gaming / Re: Music Gaming Accomplishments

« on: June 23, 2019, 05:59:24 PM »

Well, the mapper for Get Goal actually is an o2jammer, and actually makes o2jam charts, so there is that

Say no more. XD

It would be cool to see some video of your IIDX plays, so hopefully you figure something out.

I mean, there's always the incredibly ghetto way. Here's a video of me getting an A on A [SPH] (pretty sure it's a PB) today:

(Just realized that my KBM CS and Pop'n AC controllers are visible in that shot, heh)

I haven't heard of Hell Charge Notes, but they certainly live up to their name. I was mostly just referring to how IIDX endings tend to ratchet up the difficulty.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I've cleared Atomic Age and played plenty of IIDX RED.

I honestly forgot they added in charge notes. Kinda wish there was an easy way to play more current styles, my cap is iidx15, and beyond that, I don't have anything. I remember getting access to "cough" arcade software "cough" but the hoops to get it running is a bitch, and the lag for me was unplayable.

I have a dedicated Bemani PC running XP that I use, though my laptop with Windows 10 seems to handle it fine as well. The modern versions (from the later Lincle patches onward) tend to do a very good job at adjusting the software to work on your system. I get about the same latency as arcade cabinets do. The biggest pain point tends to be the controller—you pretty much have to use a native USB device (like an FP7, a USB modded KOC, etc) for it to play well.

Dunno how close you are to it, but there's also a Round One in Auburn Hills. There's generally a IIDX cabinet or two at those locations, as well as modern DDR, Pump, Sound Voltex, and others.

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Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: June 17, 2019, 09:53:10 AM »

Optical Media Drive, thinking of gutting the dvd drive off my current machine, or getting a shiny new blu ray, undecided yet

If you intend on using the system to watch and/or rip Blu-rays, get the BD drive, otherwise just stick with the DVD drive. There's no other compelling reason to get a BD-ROM drive on a PC.

Ram, could take the 16 gigs from my current machine, buy new ram? or get 32 gigs which could be stupid overkill, not sure

Reusing RAM is only possible if your current system uses DDR4, so keep that in mind.

16GB is still fine for most stuff, though I've been recommending 32GB more and more lately for the sake of future-proofing. That's always something that you can expand later on, though, so don't stress about it too much.

GPU, pretty lost on this one, under $300 would be nice unless I can see reason to spend more, in that case under $400 might be doable

This one got a bit easier over the past few months.

I'd recommend the RTX 2060. Its performance sits between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080, costs around $360, and includes the super hyped RTX feature set for when more games start taking advantage of that.

Alternatively, if you want to save quite a bit and get something between the 1060 and 1070, the 1660 is an good option at $220.

There's a 1660 Ti at $280, but after looking at the benchmarks it just doesn't seem worth it to me. The 1660 Ti is in an awkward place between the 1660 and the 2060, as it doesn't really offer enough over the normal 1660 when it comes to 1080p gaming yet doesn't quite have the same chops as the 2060 when it comes to 1440p performance. Plus, it obviously doesn't have the RTX feature set that the newer generation card has.

tl;dr 1060 for $220 if you want to keep the cost down or the RTX 2060 for $360 if you want to get higher fps's and do some future proofing.

OS, I just buy win10 from amazon and its easy peazy? or is there a better way? I see some for $85, and some for $100, but they say the same win10 home OEM. I don't quite understand. Should a user like myself even consider pro?

The main feature of Pro that would directly impact you is that it gives you more control over Windows updates. Not infinite control like 8.1 and under, but it allows you to defer updates for up to a year. I tend to use that feature because it seems like Microsoft gets the update launch window wrong more often than it gets it right, and I was tired of getting stung (plus there's the fact that the infamous bug from when 1809 launched that would cause your documents directory to be deleted under circumstances would have triggered on my machine if I'd installed it when it shipped).

One feature that may impact you is that Pro also lets you control your system via remote desktop. The amount of use you'd get out of that is, of course, dependent on you.

That being said, given the stability of Windows 10 thus far, I would highly recommend going to Pro if it isn't much more just so you can defer feature updates for a month or so until they get the kinks out.

As far as OEM vs. retail, it's all a matter of how the license is worded. OEM licenses are intended to be moved along with the machine, and are indicated by the stickers that Dell and friends slap on the case. Retail licenses are licensed to a person and are designed to be moved between machines. In practice, for your personal machine, it doesn't really matter. FWIW, I'm using an OEM license for my system right now.

tl;dr this is my recommendation

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Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: June 17, 2019, 09:13:34 AM »

Well some of the problem likely also stems from the ADHD. I finished the first playthrough of Nier Automata and absolutely loved it, started my second playthrough then... just stalled out and haven't felt like playing again, despite how fucking good that game is.

Ending B was the hardest one for me to get through just because the playthrough with Nines was so similar to 2B's. The only silver lining is that the hacking mechanic makes boss fights hilariously trivial, so that sped things up by quite a bit.

It really is worth pushing past it, though. I promise, the game gets a lot different after you get ending B.