Zaemz

I never did like using RetroArch. I always thought it was overly convoluted. Also whenever I looked something up I was trying to figure out, a lot of the explanations I’d find would be oddly rude and off-putting.

If the things you’ve mentioned are true, then it kinda makes sense.

Epic has sold Bandcamp to music licensing company called Songtradr.

With you there. The workload on developers is reduced with these features, to a degree. But, instead of saved effort then getting directed to working on gameplay mechanics and such, to me it feels like many devs just see it as time/money saved, producing a game that looks and plays like one from 10 years ago, but runs like it’s cutting edge.

For instance, Abiotic Factor. That game on my RX 6800 XT runs at 40-50fps when at 100% resolution scaling at 1440p. Why? It’s got the fidelity of Half Life 1, why does it need temporal upscaling to run better? (I adore that game btw, Abiotic Factor is so much fun and worth getting even if playing alone!)

Not saying that’s how every dev is, I know there are plenty of games coming out nowadays that look and run great with creators that care. Just feels like there are too many games that rely on these machine learning based features too heavily, resulting in blurriness, smearing, shimmering, on top of poorer performance.

Just hoping the expectation that something like an RTX 4090 does not become the default cost-of-entry in order to play PC games because of this. It would be unfortunate for the ability of game developers to create and tune by-hand to become a lost art.

Lol nailed it

I think Keanu Reeves is playing Shadow.

Edit: yup - https://www.ign.com/articles/sonic-the-hedgehog-3-voice-casting

Challenge accepted.

Being honest, and I know this isn’t a laptop or some productivity device, but I personally very much dislike using any screen under 100Hz now, even for just simple desktop use. I think I get your point, that it would have made more practical sense to use a more economical display.

I just know I personally wouldn’t spring for something like this if it only had a 60Hz display, though.

Yea, man. Nothing wrong with liking how the inside of a PC looks. All those traces, different colored PCBs, shiny heatsinks, components, etc. I could take or leave RGB myself but I wouldn’t deny someome their glam.

I actually don’t understand the hate Sweet Baby gets. The most I’ve been able to understand about it is that they use inclusive language or something.

Is that honestly it? Because that seems like a lot of wasted effort spent hating something pretty dang benign…

Looks like the most action packed moment of someone hooking a hose up to a vacuum.

I surprised myself at how loud I laughed at the battery life lol

For the Dreamcast, specifically, there was a show on G4 (on cable, before merging w/ TechTV) that I remember casually watching a bajillion years ago that discussed what happened with the Dreamcast. Basically, the PS2 is what happened.

There’s this 5 second blip of the program that burned itself into my brain where someone from Sega was talking about how awesome and exciting things were one moment, and then PS2, then *cricket sounds*. They mention how they had to stop production because they literally had warehouses filled with Dreamcasts just sitting there.

It was kinda nuts for them 'cause the Dreamcast actually sold pretty ok until people learned about the PS2’s price and the fact you could watch DVDs on it, which alone was huge. Sony just fuckin instantly annihilated everyone so hard with the PS2. It wasn’t feasible, timewise or financially, for Sega to iterate on a new system fast enough and somehow dump all the systems they had lying around, and they knew if they wanted to contiue to exist, they had to switch gears to be mostly software/publishing, aside from arcade cabinets.

Though (to me, sadly) Sega shed the last of their arcade board-makin days in 2021, they are the reigning champ and legends of bigass video game machines. They made more than 500 arcade games and produced over 20 arcade system boards that ended up being able to run stuff like huge Unreal Engine 4 games on dual 50" screens. They sold the last of their arcades back in 2022, leaving a pretty dope legacy behind, even though they’re still kicking around otherwise. I guess COVID was to their arcades as the PS2 was to the Dreamcast.

Lol, pretty sure they meant Obsidian.

I’ve been watching some streams of it and Chrono Trigger was absolutely what came to mind for me. The art is gorgeous and the music is awesome too. Game’s got good vibes for sure.

10-keyless keyboards are (kinda unfortunately IMO) popular with the custom keyboard crowd. I’m actually a little surprised that it’s not available in an even smaller form-factor.

This game is amazing. One of my first obsessions, I used to just play it to explore the environments and listen to the music in the different areas.

I’ve had this situation as well with a couple of games. Total War Warhammer 3 can’t be played online (or it’s not cross-platform, which would be weird) and XCOM 2 didn’t handle modding all that well using the native client.

There are a few other games I’ve attempted but I can’t remember all of them.

Graveyard Keeper has a native client but it can’t use hardware driven cursors and its display resolution gets out of whack (on ultrawide, admittedly). The game doesn’t have native ultrawide support, to be fair, but the scaling at least works correctly using Proton.

Loop Hero has a native Linux version and it works perfectly.

Oh yeah, speaking of Zachtronics, Last Call BBS is native and also works flawlessly.

1. The versions of games compiled for Linux work about… hmmm… maybe in a 60:40 split? Oftentimes I do find myself almost immediately switching the game’s compatibility mode to use Proton on Steam if I have any issues.

2. I think both Proton and Wine receiving much, much more developer support lately is going to be a net good, longterm. Many developers don’t have the “cognitive capacity” or time to dedicate to creating a version that runs on Linux without a compatibility layer. That’s especially true for those using game engines that typically have poor support and tooling for Linux in the first place.

This is just a thought, maybe the effort being expended upon Proton/Wine will ultimately lead to solutions for compatibility issues that work without the use of “emulating” (for lack of a better work off the toppa my head) the whole Windows experience, replacing DLLs and whatnot.

3. I’m more okay with indie devs just relying on Proton, for sure. I don’t give a “pass” to large studios that don’t at least expend some effort to get the game to build and run on Linux without the use of Proton or other compatibility tools. With that said, I also understand that AAA projects have many hundreds, possibly a thousand people or more, having some part in the development process. It’s not reasonable to assume that every person working on the game can have knowledge of or maintain that every aspect of their work is compatible with both Windows and Linux.

I prolly have more to day but my thumbs are tired lol.