Messages

31

Random Chat / Re: The Lamest Topic Ever Conceived

« on: March 13, 2022, 01:38:19 PM »

Eh, it's not too bad, really. As long as you don't do anything really stupid (kinking the tubing, etc) there isn't much to worry about with AIO coolers. If you have a pump failure you're basically dealing with the same failure mode as a dead air cooler (albeit a bit more dramatic, since you don't have as much of a heatsink).

You do have to be really careful if you build an open loop water cooling system. I don't think I'd want to put in the effort to maintain something like that, but I've been running AIO cooler for six years and this is the first issue I had, and it didn't cause any damage.

I should also add that Falcon Northwest overnighted me the part and I was able to get it installed relatively easily. Kinda cool that they trust their customers to do stuff like that.

32

Random Chat / Re: The Lamest Topic Ever Conceived

« on: March 04, 2022, 04:58:14 PM »

Dunno if I'd go so far as to call this rage-worthy, but my PC's water pump seems to have crapped out. You wouldn't believe how fast Windows runs when your CPU is running at a constant 100°C.

Barring a stupid, simple, easy-to-fix issue (don't really know…I didn't have much time to diagnose it last night), it like I'm going to be using macOS/Linux quite a bit within the next week or so.

33

Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing

« on: February 18, 2022, 02:14:50 AM »

I have been considering "in the future" getting one of those "new" consoles. Hard to justify with limited library, but I'd assume the xbox has enough backwards compatibility to make it pretty seamless? I ain't there yet, and I ain't sure I'll even get there at all, but I've been looking at driving sims...both consoles have their "one of those"...so...been considering it.

The Xbox's back compat is seriously impressive. I've been playing games from the OG Xbox all the way through to the Series titles and it hasn't skipped a beat. I've seen some people reporting that they were able to play a game of OG Halo across every generation (Xbox, 360, One X, Series X) using system link. Kinda mind-blowing stuff, honestly.

GamePass is a hell of a value (plus Ultimate lets you play PC games as well), and it does have titles going from the OG Xbox all the way through to the newest of the new. At this point the only thing I find myself using the Xbox 360 for is Rock Band, since most of the other stuff Just Works™.

The One/Series games also support Quick Resume, which actually puts it ahead of PC. When you swap between games that support it, it brings you right back to where you left off, largely bypassing load times and such. I heard that people had issues with it when it first debuted on the Xbox One, but it's worked exceptionally well for me so far.

There is a degree of convenience consoles have that pc's just don't "yet" have. Even having this fairly compitent laptop, it's still less effort for me to play something on switch.

Yeah, pretty much. It kinda removes the annoyance of having to maintain a complex operating system. I mean, technically they're still running a full OS but they spare you all of the bullshit associated with that.

It was kind of "convenient" to use my PC as a console stand-in for a while since it was all basically connected to the same displays, but now that I have my own place it's really nice to be able to just chill out in the living room and play some vidya.



IN OTHER NEWS, my Super Hexagon urges kicked in again, and after some experimentation I found that the best way to play it was by running the iPad version on an ARM Mac. Yes, really. This skirts around the fact that the Steam version is a mess with buggy input handling that seems to run at 62.5fps, as well as the weirdness with keyboard input on a real iPad (since I'm using touchscreen emulation on the Mac—that is, pressing the left/right arrows taps the left and right side of the screen, and clicking to select the stage).

Like, the closest I've ever gotten to 100+ seconds on any stage was 98 seconds on iPad. After not playing for a while I was able to pull this out of my ass on my second try:

34

Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing

« on: February 14, 2022, 09:40:35 AM »

I finished playing through The Gunk (Steam | Microsoft) last night. I kinda just snagged it on a whim using GamePass, and it proved to be a fun time.

It plays and controls well, at least on the Series X (oh yeah, I have one of those now…mini-review: it's more powerful than my last gaming PC, quick resume is awesome, its 120hz/FreeSync support is *chef's kiss*, and its backwards compatibility is fantastic), looks decent, and is generally pretty chill. The difficulty curve is generally pretty smooth and linear (aside from a bit of a random spike near the end), though I would never say that the game gets truly hard at any point. Generally speaking it's just a series of fairly low-tier environmental puzzles with some light combat breaking it up, and overall it's exactly as long as it needs to be without overstaying its welcome.

So yeah, it's a great title if you have a few hours free and just want to veg out. Assuming that a 5/10 is average, I think a 7/10 would be a fair score for it. It's nothing exceptional or groundbreaking, but it's a solid game with enough good moments to warrant a play through.

35

Gaming / Re: 2022 The Backloggening

« on: February 11, 2022, 10:05:02 AM »

When I originally read that I thought to myself "what tutorial?" If he meant the beginning of the game...I mean games typically have a starting period and I don't really see much wrong with Arceus.

Agreed. Arceus basically just gives you a quick tour of the mechanics rather than handcuffing you to your "rival" like the previous games do. IMO, it's everything an early game tutorial should be.

Not sure how many of the newer mainline titles you've played, but their handholding is absolutely painful. The last ones I've played were gen 7 (Sun/Moon) and it took a long time before I was even able to play the damn game.

Are there plenty of examples of Nintendo games that look better than Arceus? Yes. Do the game look like booty? ELL NAW. The way people are talking make the game sound like it looks horrible, it's still a good looking game...it's just not a GREAT looking game. People need to lay off the damn weed.

The most important thing for me is that it runs smoothly, and it definitely does.

The battle system is still not that good imo, but it does it's job in an inoffensive enough way to not ruin the good stuff imo. One thing to note, if you don't sneak on an enemy, even if they're 60 levels below you, they usually can act first. This is fine because it just rewards you for sneaking around and getting back attacks and whatnot. It's still silly to see one of those beginning bird enemies move before my level 92 garchomp however.

Yeah, I definitely noticed that.

The battle system in Pokémon has always been frustrating, and it feels like the more mechanics they add the worse it gets. I think a big part of this stems from the low TTL, which I believe is largely due to the high encounter rates in the mainline titles. There's a lot of good ideas in the battle system, but in a casual playthrough it winds up being about little more than type advantages and high power attacks (with the occasional status effect).

Maybe more trainer interaction mid battle besides run away, use item, etc?

I was kind of hoping that you'd have some options like that, such as tossing a rock to distract the target pokémon and essentially take a hit for your 'mon. It'd probably be tough to balance, but it would be a neat way to get the trainer involved a bit more (and it would be a great way to deal with those gang encounters).

It's a good start though. I've been lukewarm/negative on pokemon since the original gen 3, and this is the first game I REALLY enjoyed out of the series since gen 2, so I'm pretty optimistic to what they have in store for the future.

When it comes to the mainline titles I've switched to exclusively playing ROM hacks. I ended up getting a hundred or so hours of time out of Crystal Clear (gen 2 hack) and am currently playing Pokémon Unbound (gen 3 hack) off and on. Same general mechanics, of course, but it's amazing how much more interesting the games are when they don't constantly coddle the player.

Mass Effect (Legendary Edition)(insanity difficulty)

I noticed that this is available on GamePass, so I'm thinking about diving into these games again.

That said, the remaster of NieR: Automata is also on GamePass, so I've got some tough decisions to make…

36

Gaming / Re: 2022 The Backloggening

« on: February 04, 2022, 03:05:39 PM »

Well before Crysis came out, people would be in the mindset of "my pc is so good it can play Oblivion!". Which I recall playing on pc fine enough, on lower settings.

It was kind of a two-fold problem. The system requirements were lower than they should have been, and it was trying to force graphics cards that support certain shader models to go way beyond their capabilities.

Like, if I had an FX 5600 the game would have actually been very playable. Because I had a 6600GT, it wasn't, and there was no easy way for me to use the graphics level that an FX card would have used.

Most TES games the side chains are better than the main one, but I just wanted to get through the game. The setting/music/story isn't my gripe as much as I just don't like how the game plays at all. I gave it over 100 hours across 3 different attempts, it ain't for me. What is for me doe...

Oh yeah, no doubt. Like I said, it felt like an awkward stepping stone between the old and the new.

Probably safe to say that it wasn't as big of a deal for me as it was for you (though that level scaling can suck a draugr's dick). Fair enough.

2. Pokémon Legends: Arceus

Thanks for the writeup! I'm planning to get this after I get a few things sorted out on my Switch (like figuring out how to move my Hyrule Warriors save from EmuNAND to SysNAND without getting console banned…) and it's good to hear another positive take on it.

I'm honestly kind of glad that they didn't ramp up the graphics to an absurd level, because they did that for Hyrule Warriors: AoC and all it did was turn the game into a slideshow in some situations. The graphics look similar to HW:DE to me (basically, Wii U graphics), and that's perfectly fine. The important part is that in every gameplay clip I've seen of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the gameplay looked smooth as silk.

The only real complaint that my friends levied against it is that the tutorial is painfully long. That just seems to be a thing with Pokémon games nowadays.

Edit: I snagged Arceus this past weekend and yeah! I like it. I think the tutorial issue was a bit overstated, as they don't feel nearly as heavy handed as previous mainline installments (Sun/Moon absolutely smothers you, while Arceus still gives you plenty of room to breathe between training exercises).

Graphics are generally fine, but the higher you go the less fine they get. Still, the complaints are a bit overstated, especially considering the game is on the freaking Switch. I'd much rather the game play smoothly (and it does!) than to have Age of Calamity graphics and all of its associated framerate canyons. Either way, they're serviceable. Plus, it has the best animations I've seen in any Pokémon game to date.

I think one complaint that I have from a gameplay perspective is the way the Alpha battles are tuned. It seems kind of obvious that they should be powerful, but the issue that I have is that Pokémon's battle system already has an extremely low time to live (I mean, level 3 mons can quick attack a level 13 mon to unconsciousness in 3 turns). When you crank the attack values up to the point where an Alpha that's a half dozen levels under you can one-shot your mon with single non-crit quick attack, all it does is exacerbate that problem. To me it feels like it's less a question of strategy and more a question of raw numbers and brute force. Still, it's not really all that bad as long as you don't have to face more than one at a time. I dunno. We'll see how I feel as I get further in.

That said, it's weirdly refreshing to see enemies that can actually knock out my mons. You don't see that often in the mainline games.

Speaking of mainline games, I wouldn't be at all opposed to the gameplay style of Arceus expanded upon and becoming the primary gameplay style. Having the player character get directly involved in the world makes you feel as though you're controlling an actual character rather than just a dot on the map.

37

Random Chat / Re: The Lamest Topic Ever Conceived

« on: February 02, 2022, 12:43:25 PM »

Sometimes I wonder if people who still claim that iPhones are super expensive have actually compared prices between the two.

Obviously Apple isn't interested in the budget sector, but you can still buy a brand new iPhone for $400, and its SoC still gives the high-end Snapdragon 888 a run for its money.

Meanwhile, on the high end, Samsung's top of the line phones are way more expensive than the iPhone Pro Max while subsequently lacking features (the Galaxy Fold 3 is pretty much worse in almost every way compared to their own S21 Ultra, but it's way more expensive due to its foldable screen).

It's almost like flagship phones are expensive or something. Weird concept.


Edit: Addendum to the post above: the Watch 4 Classic has proven to be so good and bug-free that I don't even wear it anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

38

Random Chat / Re: Why FedEx is the Worst Delivery Service

« on: January 29, 2022, 09:27:23 AM »

Paid for overnight shipping on an Intel NUC. Package is now over a day late with no status updates. Customer services has no idea where the package is.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

If I had known the company I ordered it from was using FedEx I would have ordered it from somewhere else.

Edit: Literally two packages in a row arrived late. At least they arrived.

Still, if you can't make a "guaranteed delivery date," don't set guaranteed dates. Weird concept, I know.

39

Computing / Re: The Keeb Thread

« on: January 28, 2022, 03:02:55 PM »

https://idobao.net/products/idobao-id80-75-hot-swappable-mechanical-keyboard-kit?variant=33586934874243

I have the gasket mount "crystal" version of this keyboard. Thissun: https://idobao.net/collections/75-layout/products/idobao-transparent-acrylic-id80-keyboard-kit?variant=34240839975043

Currently using Kailh Polia switches with Drop + Matt3o /dev/tty keycaps.

I've been pretty impressed with this thing so far. Assembly was easy, the packaging is fantastic, and brass plates are sex (a bit on the pricey side, but worth every penny). The RGB lighting is fantastic as well, so if you want something that's a bit showy it's a good option.

Summary, I don't know what im doing, but I might get the ducky TKL and replace the switches with something else? Gateron yellows are cheap and well received, so those might be a good base to try lubing everything.

There are a couple considerations there. For one, those Ducky boards are mostly plastic. This largely comes down to personal preference, but I find that metal backplates both tend to offer a better feel and sound. Plastic tends to feel kind of mushy and sound hollow by comparison. The Drop CTRL and ID80 are both aluminum (with the ID80 crystal being brass).

One thing that I feel is a bit more important is the Ducky firmware isn't customizable. This doesn't sound like too big of a deal, but once you've dabbled with hardware remapping and layers it's hard to go back. For example, one of the things I've been consistently doing is configuring it so that holding caps lock and pressing WASD causes it to send directional keys (with Q/E being pgup/pgdn and R/F being home/end). Seems like a small thing, but it's very convenient to be able to page through a document or source code file without your hands leaving the home row.

That said, there is a pretty big cost difference. With the Ducky boards you get everything you need for $150. With the others you get just the base keyboard (no switches or caps) for the same price or more. That said, if I add up the amount of money I spent on shitty mechanical keebs (SteelSeries 6Gv2, WASD Code, Logitech G920...probably $400-500 total. None of them were all that good and two of them failed after only 13-18 months) I could have easily bought a good one years ago and ultimately spent less money overall. Thing is, you could have the most awesome switches in the world, but if you plug them into a less-than-ideal base they're still not going to feel all that great, y'know?

Also, yeah, I would consider hotswap to be mandatory. Switches do fail prematurely (one of my Kailh Polia's developed chatter after about 6 months), and it's nice to be able to just yank them out and swap them without having to bust out the soldering iron. That being said, just because you can swap them out doesn't mean that it's particularly easy. You basically have to take a metal tool and pinch these two little clips on the switch down, then pull them free of the plate and board. It's not too difficult, but then you have to repeat that another 79 times (not to mention having to remove the keycaps, then install the new switches and such). It's pretty tempting to mess with new switches once in a while, but make sure you 1) have good tools and 2) are willing to dedicate 30-45 minutes to the process.

Still, even knowing that I can't help but order neat-looking tactile/clicky switches that pop up on Drop to take them for a spin. That's how I ended up with these Polias, and they're some of the smoothest switches I've used (I still really like the crisp tactile bump that the Zealios V2s have, though...).

One thing that does make this a bit more pleasant is a switch tester. These are essentially keyboard shells that you can mount switches into so that you can get an idea of how they're going to feel. Most of them also include a bunch of switches so that you can mess around with a bunch of them. I ended up snagging this one from KBDfans that's pretty nice:

https://kbdfans.com/collections/switches-tester/products/kbdfans-72-switches-tester-all-in-one

Basically, you can order a small batch of switches, plop them in the tester, and feel them. If you don't like them, you're out maybe $4-6. If you do, just order a few more bags and get ready to do some swapping.

If you're looking for specific keyboard recommendations, I would suggest skipping the Ducky and going with either the CTRL or ID80. The initial cost is going to be a bit more, and you'll have to source your own caps and switches, but you'll have a very solid base, and a programmable microcontroller to boot.

Oh, as far as keycaps go: get PBT unless you like them becoming smooth and shiny after a few months. <_< Just to give you an idea of how long they stay textured, I have a vintage 1992 IBM Model M hooked up to my retro PC and its keycaps still have texture.

40

Gaming / Re: 2022 The Backloggening

« on: January 23, 2022, 04:42:23 PM »

Oblivion didn't strike me so much as a Fallout 3 beta test, but rather as that awkward transition from old TES to new TES. More of a proto-Skyrim, I suppose. A lot of people don't like the term "consolization," but Oblivion (and, to a greater extent, Skyrim) really feel consolized. Mechanics and complexity were stripped out in order to work with a more limited control scheme and a 10-foot UI.

I also don't think I've quite gotten over the lie on the back of the box—that is, the system requirements. When Oblivion came out I had a computer that was better than the recommended specs, yet the game was utterly unplayable. To make matters worse, if you had a graphics card with a certain feature level (like I did) you literally couldn't force the game to fall back to a lighter renderer in order for it to run better (though that had its own laundry list of issues). There was a mod called Oldblivion that would force the game to run at lower detail modes, but support dropped off for it pretty early on if I remember correctly. You had to choose between bugs and horrific frame rates. I chose to play Morrowind instead.

(Also, looking at the comments for the blog post I linked, turns out the system I built in 2008, which could easily handle Crysis, had issues with Oblivion…holy yikes.)

From what I remember from the last time I tried Oblivion (probably 2014-ish?) I had more fun with the guild quests than the main story. I remember the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines being particularly great, especially when compared with their Skyrim counterparts.

41

Gaming / Re: wut specturr'z playing

« on: January 20, 2022, 07:07:56 AM »

I've been recording a lot of Doom content. If you guys want to see it, everything's available on my YouTube channel. I settled on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday publishing schedule, though I've been adding weekend videos in due to my video backlog building up surprisingly quickly.

42

Random Chat / Re: The Thread of Excessive Rage

« on: January 09, 2022, 12:04:39 AM »

Gotta say, out of all the technologies I use, HDMI-ARC is probably the absolute fucking worst. I've never seen it work reliably. It'll be fine for a month or so then bam! Suddenly you won't get any audio out of your soundbar. Unplug everything, plug it back in, and it might work for another couple of weeks before it randomly decides that it doesn't want to work anymore. I've worked with three soundbars connected to three different TVs from three different manufacturers and they've all had issues like this.

Also, here's an honorary fuck you to whichever company (either Google or Samsung) keeps popping up full-screen update nag screens on my phone while I try to fix this stupid thing. Congrats, you're worse than Microsoft, and every time it pops up I get one step closer to just popping my SIM back into my iPhone and calling it a day.

43

Random Chat / Re: Car Audio!

« on: December 29, 2021, 06:22:38 PM »

Oh man, your phone/camera mic really didn't like that, lol.

44

Random Chat / Re: Merry Christmas 2021

« on: December 29, 2021, 06:21:28 PM »

This is a little late, but Merry Christmas (and a Happy New Year) to you too!

I pretty much just headed over to my parents' place and chilled out with them. Had dinner, watched a few movies, opened some dumb, fun little gifts, stuff like that.

The New Years shindig is going to happen at my place, and I definitely plan to get a little shitfaced since I'm won't have to drive anywhere. Probably going to watch the new Matrix movie on New Years Eve at some point. Hopefully it's at least better than the third one, but it's not like that's a high bar to clear, lol.

45

Random Chat / Re: Car Audio!

« on: December 19, 2021, 12:53:12 AM »

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

That's literally as loud as a 9mm gunshot, lol.