Author Topic: wut specturr'z playing  (Read 31398 times)

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #45 on: June 10, 2020, 01:07:26 PM »
I've been playing quite a bit of Satisfactory lately, having sunk around 26 hours into it between Thursday and Sunday. :| Granted, some of that was just the game sitting idly in the background while I watch YouTube videos, but still. Fun game. It's definitely not as complex as Factorio in terms of resource management and factory complexity (that is, it takes way fewer steps to make something) but I love the sheer verticality of it. The main issue that I have with it is that its combat really sucks, but it's far from the main focus of the game so I'll give it a pass.

I've also been playing DJMAX Respect V, as one does, and I ended up finding a key layout that feels a lot better: QWD LP[, with L.Alt and R.Alt for the L/R buttons in 8 key mode. Not only does it make 8 key comprehensible (I originally tried using my pinkies for L/R and my brain just wasn't having it), but it also makes the side tracks (L.Shift and R.Shift) far more comfortable to hit.

I'm also using a much better keyboard now. Before I was using a Logitech G910 and holy fuck was that awful. The mechanical switches on that keyboard aren't so great as it is, but a few hours of DJMAX was enough to convert tactile Romer-Gs into chattering linear switches. That's not even my usual hyperbole, either. I'm currently using a GMMK TLK with 67g Zealio V2, and after about 10 hours of moderate to intense play, these switches still feel like new. Fun.

At this point I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of a new desk, that way I can switch back to using standard monitors instead of my super laggy TV. That's throwing my timing way the fuck off, especially in songs where you actually need to read the notes. I'm using an external headphone amp/DAC, so at least the audio is on sync, but still.
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #46 on: June 10, 2020, 09:31:54 PM »
Interesting key layout choice. I use sdf space op[ for 7k in mania. For that 8k layout to feel comfortable to me I'd end up using capslock and enter on my pinkies.
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #47 on: June 11, 2020, 08:26:49 AM »
I used to use SDF KL;. That layout worked fine for me in 4K/5K/6K, but the main problem with 8K in DJMAX is the way that it displays it. It uses the same column layout as DJMAX Portable (I don't remember how the old web client and Trilogy handled it, but I imagine it was the same). With Portable, the 7th and 8th rows are overlaid on top of 123 and 456. That makes a lot of sense if you're using trigger buttons, but I couldn't get used to using A and '. Using Alt also makes it feel a bit more like SDVX, so I can carry over some of that muscle memory.

I ended up using L.Alt and R.Alt for the 7th and 8th buttons, but with the default layout that causes you to have to tuck your thumbs under your middle fingers, which is far from comfortable. In addition to that, DJMAX has side tracks, which, again, overlay 123 and 456, but are exclusive (unlike the 7th and 8th columns you don't have to worry about other notes on that side of the play field). I have those bound to left/right shift, and switching to the angled layout also makes the shift keys easier to hit.

One other potential positive is that instead of your wrists being bent to accommodate a row layout, you end up holding them%u2014and your arms%u2014at a more natural angle. After the initial weirdness wore off I found that the new layout proved to be more comfortable for intense/extended play. If you wanted to try something similar for shits and giggles, try tucking it in by one position in order to make space easier to reach (WEF KOP).

Edit: Just realized that I accidentally hijacked vlad's thread instead of posting this into mine. Fuckin' lol. Split and merged into the proper place.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2020, 08:29:04 AM by Spectere »
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #48 on: June 11, 2020, 10:12:05 PM »
Interesting, and yeah I'm somewhat familiar with how djmax handles the extra columns. I actually watched a bit of a televised tournament from korea once on youtube.
1 2 e left.alt right.alt p = backspace
feels somewhat comfortable, with thumbs on alts. But that's something I'd have to play with for a while and try different layouts to really figure out anyway.
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #49 on: June 11, 2020, 11:55:10 PM »
Yeah, I'm still not completely sold on my current layout. It's an improvement over the default, but hitting the side tracks feels a bit odd. The layout you mentioned generally feels great. If it's possible to bind the side tracks to tab and backslash, I might end up switching to that. I might end up having to change it up slightly, given that backspace is a 1.5u key, but the general concept is solid. For my hand size, I think o - = will work nicely for my right hand.

That said, I'm going to have to try that out at a later date. I managed to cut my right ring finger on a blender blade this morning, so I'm going to be relegated to 4K play for a little while. :P I should be back on 5/6/8K in a week, but for now even normal typing kinda hurts.

Edit: Yep, looks like the game is okay with this:



Edit 2: It feels way better having the side tracks buttons two rows higher. With the 1 2 e o - = layout, my pinkies naturally rest on tab and backslash. Perfect! Looking forward to giving this a proper shot after my finger heals.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2020, 12:08:44 AM by Spectere »
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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #50 on: July 02, 2020, 10:55:35 AM »
Thanks to having a relatively lag-free display, I started playing Doom Eternal again. Goddamn, that game feels good to play.

Also: DJMAX at 144hz. Words can't describe how buttery smooth it is.
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #51 on: July 02, 2020, 05:03:43 PM »
Yeah, rhythm games on high refresh rate are <3
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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #52 on: July 02, 2020, 05:08:24 PM »
When I was running my old StepMania/CF setup I was driving my CRT at 85hz (would have aimed for 120-200, but SM5 is just too heavy to do it on my old dance rig), but 144 just blows that completely out of the water.

Kinda wish I would have jumped on the bandwagon sooner.
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #53 on: July 04, 2020, 11:01:26 AM »
I play Osu!Mania at 165hz. With Flahshlight mod and a slow scroll speed, which means I basically have no note ghosting and shit is smooth as hell. Feels a bit overkill TBH, but this PC was meant to be more than just good at mania.
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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #54 on: July 04, 2020, 12:33:34 PM »
My monitors technically support being "overclocked" to 165hz (is it really overspeccing when it's supported by the manufacturer? *thinking emoji*). Haven't tried pushing them to that point yet.

And yeah, it would be a lot easier if my PC were just a gaming machine, but it does so much more than that. In some ways I kinda wish it were one or the other, considering the GPU situation (AMD's Windows drivers suck, NVIDIA's Linux drivers suck, and Intel just isn't powerful enough for gaming). I've been sort of tempted to just stick with using some sort of laptop as my productivity machine (now that I have a desk and a decent Thunderbolt dock) and keep my PC relegated to gaming duty. We'll see.
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #55 on: July 07, 2020, 01:19:13 PM »
Yeah I chuckled at the whole "it's 144hz, BUT you can overclock to 165 on the OSD" thing. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised that I haven't noticed any degradation in quality from running at 165 over 144. That was one of the first things I toyed with when I got the monitor set up.

Linux... Yeah I still haven't taken the time to figure out how to switch to the 32 bit drivers so I can try to run steam in linux. I've got a dual boot with Debian on here. Why the fuck does steam require 32bit drivers instead of 64bit anyway? Shouldn't it be time to ditch 32bit altogether except where absolutely necessary? :/
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #56 on: July 07, 2020, 04:28:58 PM »
You don't need 32 bit drivers for Linux. You need to make sure that your distro has a 32-bit userland (that is, either run a multilib distro or do some chroot magic). If your distro is kind enough to split it off into lib32 and lib64 (my work laptop runs Kubuntu 20.04 and does this, so I imagine Debian does as well), that's one way to tell.

And yeah, Valve has a really hard time getting with the program, especially considering how many times they've gotten burned by stuff like this. They drug their feet for years while Apple told the world (with increasing intensity) that they were dropping 32-bit support in macOS (up to and including displaying popups indicating that shit was gonna break soon) and then OOPS, Catalina came out and removed the 32-bit userland and OOPS, Steam stopped working! They eventually rolled out a 64-bit macOS Steam binary, but they seem to have just sorta stopped there. I'm eagerly awaiting when Apple removes Rosetta 2 from the upcoming ARM macOS builds and Valve gets caught with their pants down again.

To be as fair as possible to Valve, much of the need for 32-bit support does come from the applications themselves. I've tried to run a no-multilib distro, but so many games only provide 32-bit binaries that it ends up falling apart pretty quickly. The same issue ended up happening on macOS due to devs ignoring all of the warning signs. There were games coming out as recently as 2018 (possibly newer) that only shipped 32-bit Mac binaries, and those no longer work under Catalina. The best part is that Apple makes it stupidly easy to ship multiple architectures in a single application bundle, so user confusion is a complete non-issue on that platform. Hell, you could create an app bundle with support for PPC32, PPC64, x86-32, and x86-64 if you wanted to. So goddamn annoying.

I think another reason is that it's just so easy to be lazy when it comes to Windows, and that's where a majority of Valve's business comes from. Microsoft is the only vendor that's eagerly supporting 32-bit in new versions of their OS. Ubuntu was planning to dump it with either 19.10 or 20.04—I forgot which—but they had to roll it back solely because it would break Steam!
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #57 on: July 07, 2020, 07:54:24 PM »
TBH my linux knowledge is pretty damn weak, and the solutions I've found online basically involved completely removing the 64bit drivers and installing only the 32bit ones. i got it working once, but managed to bork things up after that and reinstalled. Never got around to figuring out what to do after that because fuck it, I have windows anyway.
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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #58 on: July 10, 2020, 12:35:49 AM »
I started playing Half-Life: Alyx tonight (err, I guess technically it would be "last night," seeing as it's after midnight and such.

I'm about 90 minutes into it right now and…goddamn. It's absolutely fantastic so far. One of my favorite moments so far has to be smacking a headcrab out of the air in mid-jump and putting about four pistol rounds into it while it's stunned. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't seem to beat headcrab zombies with a metal pipe, though. Might be a heavy-handed way of ensuring that HL:A doesn't end up becoming trivial due to "epic VR combat" (that is, waggling a melee weapon and causing it to rapidly deal damage to any target in front of you). Kind of a shame.

The pick-up system is a hell of a lot of fun, and (being able to bash head-crabs out of the way aside) is probably one of the most innovative parts of HL:A. Many VR games allow you to remotely grab an item. Generally this just involves pointing to it, looking for a highlight, pressing on the grip button, and having the item magic itself over to you in a straight line. HL:A, continuing with the trend set by HL2, makes use of gravity. Alyx gets gravity gloves very early on in the experience. To use them to grab an item across a wide gap, you gesture toward the item with an open hand, and when you see the highlight you hit the grip and flick your wrist. The item then flies toward you, with its speed and angle largely dependent on how hard/fast you flick. When it comes near you, you simply catch it. It didn't take long at all for me to get used to how much force I needed to use to get an item to me. I'm sure the catch radius is probably pretty generous, but it also feels like it's easier and more intuitive to catch objects than it is in many VR titles.

I haven't done much in the way of gunplay, and I currently only have the pistol, but so far I like how it's implemented. Weapon handling is actually done fairly realistically. Ejecting an empty mag will cause you to lose the rounds in the dropped mag, and if you empty the mag and then fire the chambered bullet you'll have to rack the slide after changing mags. About the only gripe I have is with Alyx's trigger discipline. Some games (like Gun Club VR) check the capacitive trigger sensor and will show the character holding their finger outside of the trigger guard. In HL:A, Alyx's finger is always in the trigger guard. Yes, this is a petty gripe, but as an experienced shooter it does drive me a little nuts. :P This may not be an issue on the Index's finger-tracked controllers, but I dunno (I'm on a Rift S).

As with any other VR title, it's awesome seeing everything in its proper scale. It's really easy to underestimate just how big headcrabs are until you've seen one up close and personal (and thankfully not in person. Yeech) and actually fighting the jumpy little bastards is another thing entirely. I've only dealt with two so far (and about a dozen headcrab zombies) so I have a feeling things are only going to get more frantic.

Finally: visuals. HL:A is fucking gorgeous. Easily the best VR visuals I've seen to date, by a pretty healthy margin, and despite that the game runs at a consistent 80hz on my system. It's not just that Source 2 is a shiny, modern engine, but Valve really pulled out the stops when it comes to overall detail. Striders climb up buildings, smashing terracotta roof tiles and sending dust and persistent debris all over the place. The buildings look lived in, with the cities being crammed with detail and evidence of decay, with the Eastern European vibe getting ramped up dramatically with plenty of pre-war Cyrillic leaflets and other materials in plain sight. It doesn't show off a large amount of the starting city, but the parts that it does show off are rich and dense, with an incredible attention to detail.

In terms of accessibility, the game does offer a variety of movement options, and seems to do its best to cater to everyone. Multiple movement options, a way of playing the game with a single controller, options to make seated play easier, subtitles, etc. I'm personally using controller tracked free locomotion, with 30° snap turning (I'm physically okay with smooth turning, but it's almost always too damn slow in action games). The game has several comfort features baked in as well. If it requires you to drop down a ledge, the action is smooth and slow, rather than subjecting you to the full fury of gravity. It also tends to avoid nudging the player back if they start to intersect with the scenery, allowing you to look behind objects without getting nudged all over the place against your will.

Whew. In case it wasn't obvious, I can't wait to play more of this thing. Valve really knocked it out of the park, and I hope they get back to making full-scale AAA titles instead of…Artifact. :|
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Bobbias

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #59 on: July 10, 2020, 07:07:30 AM »
That sounds awesome. I'd love to try VR (still haven't had a chance to try any at all), but with everything that's been going on I absolutely cannot justify the cost.
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