Messages

1

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

2

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.

3

Gaming / Re: Music Gaming Accomplishments

« on: June 17, 2019, 09:09:12 AM »

Woo, nice! Get Goal's chart definitely gives me a huge O2 vibe. I love those freaking walls of holds that it throws at you.

I need to figure out some sort of video capture setup to add some context to everything, but I'm not sure how feasible it is right now. I've been playing the IIDX CS releases on a 14" Sony PVM that I put in my workshop, using RGB. While the end result is pretty stunning (especially the pre-9th style releases, which natively output 240p), I don't have a way of capturing RGB yet, and it's a bit of a distance away from the PC that I plan to use for capture. Right now I only have my trusty late-2012 iMac down there (still a fantastic machine after 7 years, though I'm strongly considering swapping its 3TB spinny disk for an 860 EVO) and the only USB capture device I have is a dinky Dazzle-like thing that can only capture composite using shit-tier proprietary software.

But anyyyywayyyy, I had a surprisingly good day yesterday. While a lot of it was just improving random scores from when I started heavily playing IIDX again a couple years ago, I managed to add Steel Needle [SPH] and 少年A [SPH] to my list of 10's (might have already nailed the latter via some *ahem* more legally questionable releases, but I'm not sure). I also managed to pass 3y3s [SPH] with a healthy amount over the passmark, which is a first for me. Usually on the rare occasion that I pass that I'm damn near close to border bonusing it.

Also, I have to give a shoutout to moon_child [SPH] for giving me more 78% gauge completions than any other chart ever. At least I'm a lot more consistent about clearing it now than I used to be. It's such a fucking awesome song, too.

The end has a brutal difficulty spike with really difficult LN patterns designed to fuck you right before the end IIDX style (if IIDX loved LNs the way o2jam does).

Apparently you haven't seen Acid Pumper SPA. What's even worse about that one is that it uses Hell Charge Notes, which basically work like Pump freeze arrows (kinda looks like that's how o!m does it?). If you aren't holding the button or actively spinning the turntable it's continually draining your gauge (though you're only scored based on the press and release like normal charge notes). That one's only an 11, though; I'm sure there's way worse examples that are far outside of my reach.

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Gaming / Re: Music Gaming Accomplishments

« on: June 11, 2019, 12:50:28 PM »

So I ended up setting up my PS2 and one of my FP7s in my workshop a while ago so that I can play IIDX while half-heartedly monitoring my 3D printing ventures and have managed to do some things:

• Passed Master's Mode [7K] on 7th style.
• Passed 5.1.1. [7A] and Ganymede [7H] with the classic hi-speed settings. This is way harder than it sounds. Even at HS 5.0, the scroll speeds of classic IIDX don't even come close to what you can set on tricoro and up, and both of those songs are slow and dense.
• AAA'd Romeo & Juliet [7K] on 6th style. FINALLY.
• FREAKING PASSED THE SAFARI [7K] IN NORMAL PLAY.
• Hard cleared 冥 [7K]. Considering the beginning part of it feels like a hard 10 or easy 11 I'm pretty pleased with that.

5

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: May 09, 2019, 09:21:36 PM »

Yep, 650W will be fine for what we specced out and will give you a bit of wiggle room if you want to upgrade down the road. More than anything else, make sure that it's from a decent manufacturer. That alone could save you plenty of heartache down the road.

To elaborate on that a bit: I had a power supply failure a few years ago (on raid night, too...go figure). Pressed the power button, fans started to spin up, then the system immediately shut down. The power supply had worn out to the point where it couldn't fire up the system and shut down to protect the components.

In addition to simply not being capable of holding consistent voltages, cheaper power supplies tend to lack protection circuitry. If they wear out they'll still try to provide the same amount of power. As a result they'll overheat and ultimately suffer catastrophic failure and, nine times out of ten, take something else with them. I saw one system where a cheap PSU suffered this kind of failure and pushed mains power to a hard drive. Not only did it blow out several chips but it got the HDD hot enough to melt the Molex connector into the slot.

tl;dr 650W is fine, just make sure it's not a cheap PSU. Corsair is a great choice.

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: May 07, 2019, 09:52:36 AM »

Here's some Doom shit. Some of it's old, most of it is fairly new, but it offers a pretty good idea of where I stand with a lot of the fun stuff.

Doom - E1M4
I was able to SR40 onto the ledge to do an early yellow key grab. I don't know why I never tried that before, it's actually pretty easy.

The exit pit jump (which obsoletes the early yellow key grab strat) was a bit beyond my reach. I don't know if my angle was off or if I just couldn't gain enough speed. That's the largest jump you can clear with an SR50 run, so it could be either one of the above.

Doom - E2M6

The void glide on this map was my first time actually nailing a glide in Doom. I'm not particularly consistent with it yet, but I was able to set a 43 second PB by combining a lucky setup with a quick exit switch press (pressing the exit switch from the void is a lot harder than it sounds).

Doom - E2M7

This is the big one (for me, anyway). It took me about a dozen tries but I was able to nail the rocket jump to the exit that skips, like, most of the level. I practically squealed when I managed to pull this off.

Doom - E3M6

Managed to set a PB of 9 seconds time to get to the secret exit by pressing the exit switch through the wall (3 seconds over WR, which is like an eternity for a map this short, but I was pleased to get sub-10).

Doom - E3M7

I haven't played this one all that recently, but I crushed this map at the fall Extra Life marathon that my friends held. Obviously not a 110% optimal run, but it was a fantastic footnote to an already solid (by my standards) episode 3 run. Managed to get all of the major skips on the first or second try and (I think) managed to make a labyrinthine map look reasonably straight-forward.

Doom - E4M1

Well, first of all, I managed to do a UVMAX (Ultra-Violence, 100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets) clear of this map. If you've ever played this map you'll know why that's noteworthy. If not, look it up on YouTube. Fucking yikes.

Secondly, red key grab. Not too difficult, but a little tricky to do quickly while under fire from a bunch of hitscanners.

Doom 2 - MAP06

The jump at the beginning is a bit tricky, but being able to single cycle the blue key is satisfying as hell.

Basically, instead of just riding the lift down into the titular crusher, run at an angle to the left. If you pick up enough speed and get your angle and positioning right you can slip through the bars and make an early jump to the switch that lowers the blue key lift. Hit the switch, rush to the lift that has the blue key, SR40 across the nukage, then jump on the elevator back to the beginning area right as it's about to go up. Fuckin' love it.

Doom 2 - MAP13

I was able to do the blue key grab. A bit finicky but I eventually managed to get a pretty comfortable setup down for it. Basically, you SR50 into the door that the blue key is behind and your character will push into the wall enough to grab it. Harder than the red key grab in E4M1 but nothing too noteworthy.

Doom 2 - MAP16

Pretty straightforward glide into the exit. This skips the red and blue keys and makes a fairly rough map fairly easy.

Doom 2 - MAP18

Managed a 30 second UV-speed (Ultra-Violence any%, pistol start) time on this map. Really fun to run, not quite as much fun to play through casually.

Doom 2 - MAP19

Managed to do the blue and/or yellow key skip by doing a guideless glide through the end gates. This is the video clip that I linked earlier in this thread.

Doom 2 - MAP21

I managed to (after a lot of attempts) do a keyless exit on this map.  The glide through the yellow key gate is at least guided, but it's made a lot tougher with everything shooting at you.

The blue key door skip is easy enough that I'd pretty much been doing it since the game came out (seriously, you just walk against the corner and if your angle is even close to correct you'll just walk through the gap. That's it. I don't know how they didn't catch that).

The red key skip was...rough. I'm not too sure about the exact technical details behind this, but I have a feeling it exploits the same things as E2M6's void glide. Basically, you have to push through the blue gate, glide between the blue and red gates, jam yourself into the corner, move in such a way that your weapon moves like you're running at full speed, then fire a rocket at the blue gate. I think that does one of two things: it either pushes your hitbox across the teleporter linedef that leads to the exit chamber or causes the entire player object to move enough units in one frame to bypass collision detection.

Regardless, I managed to do it after about 40-50 tries. Felt good, man.

Doom 2 - MAP22

Managed to do the blue key skip (a glide between the bars in the northeast wing of the map). It's not too difficult as far as glides go, but it's really awkward due to how they're angled.

7

Gaming / Re: Warhammer 40,000

« on: April 22, 2019, 01:59:17 AM »

Just realized that I forgot to comment on your space bugs: I like em! I think all of the tyranid armies I've seen in person (which admittedly aren't that many) have had brown or otherwise darker chitin. The white look is pretty nifty.

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Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: April 22, 2019, 01:54:58 AM »

Two games left, and so much time left in 2019...

Any idea what you're going to be playing after you get through those?

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: April 22, 2019, 01:53:12 AM »

I guess you could say I've done speedrunning since the first time I saw Quake Done Quick, though I tend to do it somewhat casually. If a trick requires excessive grind to pull off (see: OoT any%) then I'm definitely not interested. Really, I'm more about self-improvement than world records, mostly since I don't have the attention span to grind a single game for that length of time.

That's the thing that I like about the marathons that my friends host: being small events they tend to be pretty casual by comparison. While finishing games swiftly is obviously encouraged, you're not really going to see many top 10 players there (aside from EnchantressOfNumbers, but she's a local and a friend).

I do get plenty of practice beforehand (and I'm taking the Hyrule Warriors thing a bit more seriously than most, as I actually do have a real shot at nailing a WR on Definitive Edition--the boards are pretty barren) and get a very solid idea of what my capabilities are before I start. Like, for their fall Extra Life 2018 event I ended up running Metroid: Zero Mission any% and just couldn't consistently nail the bomb jump timing for early Varia (2005 Ian would be so disappointed) so I changed strats and went for a slightly longer route. To be fair, I only knew that I was running that game like a week before the event, so I didn't have much time to actually get good at it again. Regardless, I still managed an acceptable time (IIRC, it was around 1:25:?? RTA and 1:15:?? in-game--my PB is ~0:43:?? in-game).

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Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: April 19, 2019, 07:17:49 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).

As of early this morning (I have a really screwy sleep schedule, okaaaaay?) the standard Great Sea map has been fully cleared (that is to say: all non-respawning items have been collected).

I'm also going to be speed running the main story (I'm working on doing a bunch of initial planning before I start committing time to practice runs--I'll probably update this thread with my progress on that) for a charity gaming marathon that some of my friends are hosting in October.

Speaking of charity marathons, if you want to see an absolute clusterfuck of a Doom II co-op UV/HMP playthrough that I was involved in, here you go: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/411472245?t=

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Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: April 17, 2019, 08:59:31 AM »

Just don't do what I did with my current build. I figured I'd build my rig in pieces, so I ordered the PSU and...well, it just sort of sat in my basement for about eight months.

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Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: April 13, 2019, 03:59:01 PM »

Gonna have to check that one out at some point. I didn't really know much about the game until somewhat recently and now I'm kicking myself for missing out on it.

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Gaming / Re: Warhammer 40,000

« on: April 13, 2019, 03:56:42 PM »

I know of 40K and have played a couple of games (with my friend's army), but I can't say that I'm a huge tabletop gamer, sadly. I don't really have the attention span for it. :s

I love the character designs and lore, though.

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Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: April 13, 2019, 03:53:22 PM »

You really have to take negative component reviews with a grain of salt, because nine times out of ten it's someone who 1) straight up broke the thing, 2) refuses to RMA a board that's dead out of the box, 3) overclock the shit out of their components and wonder why they're running into stability issues, or 4) didn't read the manual. Also, consider the fact that people are generally more likely to leave a review if they run into issues. Seeing a 4.1/5.0 star review for a piece of hardware is actually really good. Plus, I know at least half a dozen people who have been running a variety of different ASUS boards for years with zero issues (myself included--my current system is using an ASRock board and I'm planning on replacing it with an ASUS ROG Strix board within a year due to some Linux-related issues I've experienced with the ASRock piece).

One of my friends also reported smooth sailing with their MSI board, so they seem to be another decent choice. I don't really have a huge sample set to pull from, though.

15

Creation Station / Re: 3D Printers

« on: March 30, 2019, 11:07:53 PM »

N-n-n-n-necro!

I ended up buying an X56 HOTAS (mostly for Elite: Dangerous) and decided to create and print a flight stick mount for my recliner.

So I designed and printed a recliner mount for my X56 HOTAS so that I can actually twist the stick. Can’t wait to start binge playing Elite: Dangerous again. :D

Printed on my Lulzbot TAZ 6 using ColorFabb nGen. pic.twitter.com/FIucIPgaiR

— Ian Burgmyer (@Spectere) March 31, 2019