Computer Games

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.
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noddy
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Re: Computer Games

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Re: Computer Games

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noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

Their was a shooting atrocity today, leaving people open mouthed in horror at the twisted minds behind it.

bethesda rebooted quake as a casual gamer friendly class based multiplayer thing.
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Re: Computer Games

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Reboots are horrible creatures. I avoid them when I can.
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Pokemon Go

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

This is a serious fad, and a downright brilliant concept. You have to actually find the Pokemon by hunting for them in the community using your smartphone camera. It's like a combination of Pokemon classic and a scavenger hunt. I saw several people playing in public yesterday, scouring the mall for Pokemon.

Try it now and be part of the summer of 2016.

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noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

or not.

pokemons is half sad - people chasing cartoon wildlife through the concrete jungle and half amusing as the paranoid middle class calls the cops on the masses of kids who are finally playing outside as suggested, hah.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Image

Here we go, Nintendo Switch is almost here. Will be going out there tomorrow to see if I can snag one.

What sold me on it was this was:

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Top tier console game series being resurrected?

Forget the anime; there is never a time when Bomberman isn't fun- alone, with friends- I'm hoping it will be like the DS version where 8 people can play the full version off of one cartridge.

Zelda should be fun (though you gotta be careful with Anonuma's Zelda) and there are other games-- and can't skip over cartridges being back---but yeah, Bomberman is back! :D
Last edited by NapLajoieonSteroids on Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Computer Games

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Sw7Ju-dp7UQ

Bomberman footage
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:Image

Before Christmas I stumbled into a playstation virtual reality booth. The place was rather dead, so the sony rep. came right up and asked me if I wanted to test it out. So he sets me up and asks me which demo I'd like to check out. Being the hack that I am, I went with the one I heard positive reviews for- the Batman game. :D Well, 15 minutes later, I was more impressed than I imagined I'd be. The added sense of depth and visual freedom really did add to your immersion in the game. At one point, after being told to go do Batman-y things by the butler, I was going down an elevator overlooking the Bat cave, and my brain was sending me signals that I was too close to the edge and in danger of falling. Not bad for what is clearly the weakest headset of the big developers out there.

That being said, the downsides were apparent too.

1) There were no games for the thing and I don't think there will be anything major anytime soon (meaning, it wasn't just tacked on to a standard game like the latest Resident Evil). Lots of 20 to 40 dollar demos (I think sony calls them 'experiences'). I can't imagine the headache involved in programming a full virtual reality game. As fine as I was with the graphics, they may bother some people and I can imagine that contributing to motion sickness and eye strain. I imagine its just too much development time/money sink to justify going full in on the tech. But until someone can, why even bother?

2) The price of all the junk you need to buy is way too much for a toy. I think that's pretty self-explanatory.

3)Virtual Reality runs into the problem of Reality Reality-

Being from a long line of seafarers, I don't get motion sick; but a lot of people seem to do. Motion sickness, eye strain, other ailments, from tricking the brain with images. There are a lot of unpleasant experiences out there with these toys already.

Someone games are trying to get around it by blurring motion/smoothing out the player head movements....Batman got around it by actually not allowing you to move the character. You would sort of teleport from point to point. While that's okay, it does break the immersion they are trying to sell you on.

It did have some effect on me. 15 minutes of the headset left me with about an hour of brain fog and...what I can best describe as very very mild disassociation. I felt like I was 'there' and 'not there' afterwards. Very strange sensation.

4)Not fun not sharing the experience with other people- the demo felt like a sound-stage/museum piece. The isolation factor is a real turn-off.

Still, I'm glad I got to check it out.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Image

Here we go, Nintendo Switch is almost here. Will be going out there tomorrow to see if I can snag one.
the hardware is very cool, ive been drooling over it since i saw it in this form https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/

i tried to get the previous iteration as a developer kit but alas, the downturn arrived and my toy budget dried up.

ill be closely watching the switch, even tho i havent had much todo with nintendo over the years.

i recently downloaded the entire history of gaming roms, including all the previous nintendo's so one of my yet-another-projects is to turn a pile of plywood into a retro nintendo gaming box with a spare ARM dev board.


--

as for VR, all i have is a cheap cardboard headset for my phone which suffices for the quality of app that exists so far.

the reports are that sony has sold a hell of a lot more units than expected so real games will actually probably show up soon , instead of just tech demos.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Image

Here we go, Nintendo Switch is almost here. Will be going out there tomorrow to see if I can snag one.
the hardware is very cool, ive been drooling over it since i saw it in this form https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/

i tried to get the previous iteration as a developer kit but alas, the downturn arrived and my toy budget dried up.

ill be closely watching the switch, even tho i havent had much todo with nintendo over the years.

i recently downloaded the entire history of gaming roms, including all the previous nintendo's so one of my yet-another-projects is to turn a pile of plywood into a retro nintendo gaming box with a spare ARM dev board.


--

as for VR, all i have is a cheap cardboard headset for my phone which suffices for the quality of app that exists so far.

the reports are that sony has sold a hell of a lot more units than expected so real games will actually probably show up soon , instead of just tech demos.
That's interesting, I heard the opposite- Sony did better than expected with early adopters but then the market tanked, which is why its been hard to find them in the US.

I'll hafta look into that, if its true, I may aim to buy some used equipment next christmas season.

----

The switch's dev kit, from what I read, is both programmer friendly and cheap (compared to older nintendo dev kits)- some sites were claiming it would be as low as $440 US Dollars for the kit.

If you end up developing something on it, you gotta keep us informed.
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Re: Computer Games

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Speaking of building your own little player, I think this is neat:

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Re: Computer Games

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So I grabbed one out of a local-ish box store, which had quite the shipment, comparatively. Other places (with midnight openings as well as overnight lines) had some absurd numbers. I stopped at a store which had 3, with about 7 people ahead of me. As I was leaving, the guy behind me actually suggested I wait to see if the people in front of me were going to be able to purchase it. :lol:

Won't be setting up the machine for a while but a quick glance isn't too bad, from a consumer perspective. The screen is much smaller and heavier than I imagined it to be. The stand is a competent with 2 usb ports and what looks like a little panel that can snap off the back- don't know what it is or for what reason yet.

The tiny controllers which connect to it, are, well tiny but rest comfortably in the hands. The main buttons (and layout), despite its size, feel great. The menu-type buttons (compared to the more traditional start/select) are cheap, rubbery things which I can see wearing out and being a pan in the neck to deal with. It also comes with a docking controller so give you a bit of a more standard experience. The quality of that is better than I expected (though I had low expectations).

And I did pick up Zelda and Bomberman; so I think I'm set on the toy front for a while. :)
noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

damn, thats the slickest retro pi ive ever seen - i have all the parts to replicate it but wouldnt have the carefactor to make it that nice i think :)

i was going to use a more powerful ARM mobo (odroid) and then put most of the effort into the controller system as I have a smorgasboard of different parts for building those.

(power glove type bend resistors, wii like stablised 9dof imu's , analog and digital joystick parts, sliders, potentiometers and various pressure sensitve pads, the full caboodle)

----

switch sounds great, look foward to your impressions once its up and running properly.
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Re: Computer Games

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So it's official, Atari is back in the hardware business with the (currently named) Atari Box.

The current CEO of Atari, who has guided them towards profitability after their last bankruptcy, has said they will be debuting their first new console in 20 years, it won't be a retro console, and they've been working towards launching this over the last several years.

On that last point, some blogger pulled up some quotes from (who I'll dub) Mr.Atari going back to '13 or '14 talking about reentering the console market.

I know I'm intrigued and will be interested in what they have to offer on one condition: physical copies of games. If it is all online, the new system will be in Ouya territory and dead on arrival. People will not spend 150+ (or whatever Ouya was) for a portal machine to cheap indie pc gaming when all their devices can do that already as well as X,Y, and Z.

I also think it is a sign of a few things:

1) The people running Atari are bullish on the macroeconomic situation. Another thing which hurt the Ouya (video games in general, really) was launching right around the time of poor macroeconomic trends.

2) I've read reports that it will be pc parts; I imagine generic, off the shelf and not top of the line, which sounds brilliant-enough as far as I'm concerned.

3) It is a sign that the Microsoft/Sony era of pc gaming captivity over console gaming is loosening.


...reality says it will be some kind of Ouya device or it really is a retro console or some other gimmick which disappoints instead of delights.
noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

id never get an ouya over the nvidia shield and if i was going to go for an off brand x86 based console id just get one of those skullcanyon jobbies or simmilar i7 type nuc and then run steam.

nintendo gets away with using nvdia tegra hardware due to back catalog , mindshare and coding teams - anyone else is better off just doing android and then its just being a slightly worse shield.

ataria is just a name that some numbnuts think they can leverage but they cant because atari only existed for the 2600 and all those games are available anywhere now.

you would need serious sales numbers to get coding teams bothering to support it even if its generic x86, doubly so if it means compromising next gen 4k titles.
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Re: Computer Games

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You aren't wrong about any of it.

But I think its understated that Nintendo has a monopoly on a very specific stream of the general video game market which currently has no direct competitors. The people at the company are openly contemptuous of that back-catalog despite it being the thing that makes them money; and their teams of people go out of their way to dick around until they are in real need of a hit/money maker.

This is a company which has been suffering a good twenty+ years from a lack of a direct competitor (and foolish, errant attempts to get into the Xbox/PS4/Computer market).

2) Atari is a name only thing now, and run by numbnuts getting every dollar from the name....that's all true. But that numbnut has actually done much better with this same swindle than all the numbnuts who came before him who ran the exact same swindle (Atari has been "BACK!" in pr releases for as long as I can remember. That he has been good with it counts for something. Not much, but something.
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Re: Computer Games

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beyond the fans of the back catalog who want the next gen of them, ive understood nintendo as being the young family gaming system - bought by mums as much as dads.

is this the niche you say they own ?

too keep that riff going, playstation owns the "it just works" teenage boy and lazy dads and xbox has just stolen a percentage of that market, mainly in the usa.

Ill take your word on Atari - good for them they are now profitable, however their website indicates they are making that profit on a small catalog of multi platform games, making them a minor publisher.

ill keep my cyncism on them being a relevant console manufacturer :) steam has the fat catalog and their steam machines are hardly relevant.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:Ill take your word on Atari - good for them they are now profitable, however their website indicates they are making that profit on a small catalog of multi platform games, making them a minor publisher.

ill keep my cyncism on them being a relevant console manufacturer :) steam has the fat catalog and their steam machines are hardly relevant.
well, your cynicism is very warranted (and very realistic for a minor publisher) but it doesn't make for great flights of fancy. :lol:
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

The Steam Machine, or whatever they call it, was a terrible business decision, a panic move to counter Apple and Microsoft [and maybe facebook?] and a ripoff for players.

Whatever junk the new Atari thing will be, I don't think it will be that unless they are fully committed to going the Ouya route. They won't be leveraging players to their real customers- the game companies- if only because they aren't big enough to do something like that.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Nintendo's niche, and they are the last console maker filling it, is being an actual type of arcade gaming in the home market.

They are not a computer game maker beyond the broader sense of the term.

Sony got into the console business to undercut Microsoft in the PC gaming market. The original Playstation on down was a means to standardize PC gaming [the pitch being, standardize to Sony and they will open up PC games to the non-PC market.] That's why Microsoft jumped in an lost billions of dollars.

Now that Sony is not a threat to them, they are easing out of the console game market- notice all their "Xbox exclusives" are now Xbox or PC games?

They're going the way of Valve, online PC store with a small emphasis on the hardware sector-- selling dumbed down gaming computers to people who don't know better.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:beyond the fans of the back catalog who want the next gen of them, ive understood nintendo as being the young family gaming system - bought by mums as much as dads.

is this the niche you say they own ?

too keep that riff going, playstation owns the "it just works" teenage boy and lazy dads and xbox has just stolen a percentage of that market, mainly in the usa.

Ill take your word on Atari - good for them they are now profitable, however their website indicates they are making that profit on a small catalog of multi platform games, making them a minor publisher.

ill keep my cyncism on them being a relevant console manufacturer :) steam has the fat catalog and their steam machines are hardly relevant.
I apologize if I sound like a broken record here but Nintendo gets pigeonholed as a kiddie console for all the wrong reasons. First by their competitors and secondly by poor management.

Their most successful products: the NES, all the gameboy/ds iterations, the Nintendo Wii- were family friendly surely but not exactly kiddy.

For example, take the original gameboy

What made it successful software wise? Sports games like Tennis and Baseball and Tetris. The average age of the market for the time were men and women between 25 to 30.

What made people go nuts for the Wii? Wii Sports which people of all ages were throwing around fistfuls of money to get to.

The first three Super Mario Brothers were an absolute phenomenon here in the United States (and I assume Japan as well), and you could walk into a bar in the up to the mid-90s and find an NES connected to a television screen with grown and men gathered around it.

When the Super Nintendo came out with Super Mario World, it practically killed the series. They made it cute throughout with a cute dino sidekick and all and it went from phenomenon to merely a very popular series.

Then of course, the New Super Mario Brothers series came out, made by Nintendo B-teams, with little production value added, and it's sold 100 million copies and more importantly, it's sold systems. These 2d games quality wise are slipshod, don't get any attention from Nintendo (and Nintendo developers are on record of hating to make them) but they practically have carried Nintendo for the last ten years, And all that changed was ditching the kid friendly approach for something more aptly described as family friendly.
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Re: Computer Games

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I wouldnt say kiddie console, just family console - subtle difference :)

also wouldnt argue with any of the rest of it, two great friends of mine are long time fans of nintendo and neither would qualify as kiddie or family.

i just bought a cheap asus gaming laptop, about 1k us, 1.5k aus - perfect for programming and playing the odd game, its about my level of commitment now once you get away from the cute little ARM boards.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:I wouldnt say kiddie console, just family console - subtle difference :)

also wouldnt argue with any of the rest of it, two great friends of mine are long time fans of nintendo and neither would qualify as kiddie or family.
here's another phrase: cold market console-maker.
i just bought a cheap asus gaming laptop, about 1k us, 1.5k aus - perfect for programming and playing the odd game, its about my level of commitment now once you get away from the cute little ARM boards.
that's neat; did you happen to finish up on that retro-gaming box you were making?
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Atari meanwhile, well as expected, turned into a dud.

They are asking for people to crowdfund the project-- one where they won't reveal the expected guts of the machine; I think they revealed two plastic shells...so the priorities are in the right place. :roll:
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