PC Gaming = World of Suck

[sedrosken]

I'm hoping TWC does come out this far but that my aunt just never investigated it. Doesn't matter too awful much though, I will start to spend most of my time out of the house and away from my cave as I use the laptop I'm getting soon. School blocks almost anything worth going to. My old high school only blocked the porn and games, this one blocks almost everything -- forums, personal email, many news sites, and even the Steam servers. People with VPNs configured have endless trouble getting them to work out at school. I'm actually very surprised that they don't block Teamviewer and Youtube, though I've heard they only just lifted the ban on Youtube. Again, doesn't matter much -- when I need to download large amounts of data I just go somewhere that isn't school or home.

Expect my folding contributions to pretty well cease except for the small trickle from the laptop when I can get away with it -- I'm trading the Phenom II for a mini-iTX machine (as well as a couple of high-capacity drives to sweeten the deal) that, while too anemic for desktop use, will be perfect for running FreeNAS on. My aunt is starting to question why I run my computer all the time. I told her it was basically helping cure all sorts of diseases and I even directed her to the Folding homepage, but she still doesn't seem to believe me. I can't complain a nit since I'm basically freeloading, but it admittedly does get on my nerves a bit.

Wow. Derailed topic. Sorry.

 

[snowhiker]

That's 30,000x faster than first time I sat in a friends house and connected to another computer via modem. 110 baud. 110 CPS. And it was coolest F'ing thing in the world, back in 83-84'ish.

Actually after having re-read this I realized I made a mistake. baud <> CPS. Baud in this case referred to BITS. So 110 baud was 110 BITS-PER-SECOND or about 11 cps. 300 baud was 30 cps. I believe this was the case up to 2400 baud. Then we started to get multiple bits per baud. The "9600 baud" modems were really 2400 baud modems sending 4 bits/baud.

 

[snowhiker]

Doh, posted in wrong thread.

 

[LunarMist]

Get your huge grains of salt ready...


Canon EOS-1D X Mark II spec list.


"61pt AF (all crosstype & f/8)" and "16fps with AF/20fps in liveview" are a birders/wildlife shooters dream.

Birders/wildlife shooters want more pixels. Many are still using the 1D IV due to the low-resolution of the 1DX.
AFAIK, none of the Canon lenses can manage more than 10FPS with aperture control anyway, and everyone does not shoot wide open all the time.
Canon has been on a downhill roll lately, so who knows if they will pull a bonehead move.
Anyway, this belongs in the DSLR thread.

 

[snowhiker]

Birders/wildlife shooters want more pixels. Many are still using the 1D IV due to the low-resolution of the 1DX.
AFAIK, none of the Canon lenses can manage more than 10FPS with aperture control anyway, and everyone does not shoot wide open all the time.
Canon has been on a downhill roll lately, so who knows if they will pull a bonehead move.
Anyway, this belongs in the DSLR thread.

^^^ damn your fast Lunar. I posted in the wrong thread and was in the process of moving it when you had already replied. LOL.

 

[Mercutio]

Even Valve thinks Steam customer service is an atrocity.

I bought Prison Architect from GoG earlier in the week. It's a tiny install and it's fun in about the same way as the old Bullfrog titles like Theme Hospital.

Also, Sentinels of the Multiverse, my favorite Android game but also a PC title, finally got multiplayer support this week. It's on sale for under $10 on Android, iOS, Amazon and Steam right now and it's a lot of fun, especially since it was always intended to be a co-op multiplayer PvE game.

 

[ddrueding]

Been playing Prison Architect for the last 6 months or so on and off. With the current feature set (just got out of beta) I can manage 800 prisoners with a capacity of 1000 before things start to go off the rails.

 

[Mercutio]

The people who created Battletech want a new Battletech strategy game, similar to Mech Commander but using the tabletop rules. Their kickstarter is at just about 10x its funding goal with 14 days remaining. It will use the same 3D models as MWO, but on an isometric map.

Best part for me is that they're saying it'll have a DRM-free release via GoG, not just Steam.

 

[Mercutio]

I got to play with a Steam Controller and Steam Streaming tonight.

I built a gaming rig for a friend and we downloaded and messed around with her game collection for a while. I was just curious as to whether streaming actually works and... it sure seems to, as long as you're plugged in with wires on both sides. We mostly played Arkham Origins, which DOES look really cool.

My streaming target was the 4th generation i3 NUC in my living room. The machine doing the rendering was an i5-6600k with a GTX980.
Sitting in front of the box, framerates @ 1080p and all settings maxed were around ~90fps. Streaming seemed to just about cut that number in half, with big, laggy drops if things on screen got a little too ambitious.
Switching to 802.11 on the NUC side, even with the stupid thing ~2m and clear line of sight to my AP, FPS numbers dropped, but were still consistently over 30 most of the time. The bigger problem for my friend was that there seemed to be more frequent dropped frames. Not a HUGE deal for a Batman game but twitchy games like Super Meat Boy would be very difficult in her opinion.

All in all, I can see how the Steam box will work and I suppose the short answer is "better than I though it would."

She also had a Steam Controller.
I don't and never have like gamepads but I did give it a try. It's WEIRD. I couldn't get the hang of using it as a pointing device, supposedly something it can do. As far as I'm concerned touchpad thing on the right side can go fuck itself. It's supposed to be a trackpad-like thing. In theory you can click with it? I couldn't make it click without moving the pointer substantially. Trackpads are universally reviled for gaming. I'm not sure why they put one on a supposedly well engineered device.
The other stuff just seemed like normal gamepad stuff: too many buttons etc.
I did try it in a game called Binding of Isaac. During my ~15 minutes of messing around, I found that my center buttons got stuck down several times. I don't know how long these things have been out or if gamepads need breaking in, but it seemed like a hassle just in the little bit I did. We also found that the software will start telling you there's a connectivity problem once you get more than about 3m from the receiver. That kind of defeats the purpose of the streaming-a-game-to-the living room thing.
The controller did kind of work outside Steam, but neither of us had a game to try. It seemed to work fine for Kodi.

My friend said it probably needs a bunch of custom keymaps. Batman was the only thing that seemed like it "just worked", even though Isaac was listed as a controller title as well.
I'm not sure what the Steam Controller is supposed to do besides convince people to do everything on a mouse/keyboard.

 

[Mercutio]

My project for this weekend: figure out a decent recipe for RetroPi. I have several Pi2s and a few different gamepads sitting around. As I understand it the big challenge is getting gamepad configs right for more than one emulator, but if I can figure out two or three emulators, a Pi2, case, 8GB card and gamepad might make a really cool $50 toy.

 

[Mercutio]

The main thing I've learned so far is that every goddamned console needs a completely different gamepad and none of them are like any of the others. I have a MAME-style 6 button controller, a PS3 controller and what I've come to understand is a Super-Nintendo-style 14-button controller, but none of those quite work for everything. And it deeply sucks when the on-screen instructions say "Press Z" and you can't remember which of the 40-dozen buttons on your PS3 controller is Z since S*ny doesn't label them with letters anyway.

The ARM CPU hits its limits somewhere in the N64 library. Some titles play just fine and others are completely unplayable. I was surprised it worked at all for anything that new, but even fully overclocked with a giant donor heatsink from a Radeon 2600 sitting on the CPU, a "Zelda" game is unplayable.

My Dell Venue 8 on the other hand makes a surprisingly good almost-handheld for everything I've thrown at it. I had to disable driver signing to get it to use my PS3 controller, but it has a lot fewer hiccups.

 

[Mercutio]

The Dell Venue can't handle Wii games. My i5 NUC will, but I don't have internal antennas to pair the Wii controller with its bluetooth adapter.

Also, I signed on to play the beta version of Unreal Tournament and Epic is giving away a game called Shadow Complex. Looks like you don't have to do anything but start the Epic Games launcher to get it.

 

[Handruin]

I pre-purchased the game Firewatch and it was released today. I'm very impressed with it so far. May not be everyone's type of game but I find it very enjoyable.

 

[Mercutio]

I really want to see an Android release of X-Com 2 but apparently 2k Games closed the division of the studio that made the Android port of X-Com: Enemy Within. The PC release is another one of those Steam-only things.
Firewatch does look beautiful. I saw a bunch of screenshots from it on Imgur last night.

 

[Handruin]

I finished Firewatch in roughly 4-5 hours. It's a short game with a fun story that can mostly be described as a walking adventure with some mystery and suspense. The visuals were very good throughout the map. The timeline of the game advances quickly on a day-counting system. There wasn't much in the way of puzzles to figure out but it was mostly a story that you get to participate in by making choices in conversation. Much of everything else was fairly scripted. I don't recall any bugs during the game but for $18 it was worth the time invested in it.

The next game I'm playing is Life is Strange. It's along the same genre of a walking episodic adventure but this time from a 3rd person perspective vs 1st person. Life is Strange has more puzzles in it and more options in an interactive world. The story has been fairly engaging so far and with the addition of time manipulation (you can rewind time after choices yet your character doesn't rewind with them) it makes for an interesting and often times challenging choices in decision making. The game offers the idea of consequences based on my choices that will effect the game later. I picked up the first 6 episodes on sale for around $6 and so far it's worth the money.

 

[Mercutio]

I like the idea but I think I'll wait for a humble bundle or discounted GoG release. I'd probably like the game a lot but $20 for four hours is a bit steep.

 

[Handruin]

I like the idea but I think I'll wait for a humble bundle or discounted GoG release. I'd probably like the game a lot but $20 for four hours is a bit steep.

I agree it's probably worth waiting for a reduced price through humble or GoG. The price and content length has been showing up as a negative in reviews. I didn't mind supporting them on this project. I was mostly happy to not be funding an alpha release game that had tons of issues. I don't feel like the game offers much replay-ability because once you know the story I don't see it being that much different at the end based on the choices made.

 

[Mercutio]

Kind of a unique idea, this game company is developing a title in which you control a cat who scampers around Kowloon, the walled city/slum in China.

 

[sedrosken]

So Diablo II got it's first patch in a good long while, v1.14a.

I think this marks the first Blizzard game to get a major patch after the next game in the series releases. Guess who just got this patch as a surprise on his 98SE box when he tried to log on to Battle.net?

This update also broke DirectDraw compatibility, forcing the game to run in Direct3D mode -- now on any normal machine these days, this isn't a problem. However, my 98SE box isn't fast enough to handle the game in Direct3D mode -- DirectDraw is the best I can do and even that tends to be rather heavy in the frame-dropping category when there's a lot going on on-screen. This is probably my fault for running it on crap hardware, but now I get to uninstall Diablo II from my 98SE box because there's no point in having it installed if it runs at an unplayable speed.

I've also immediately noticed a bug in Battle.net -- If someone joins your game and then leaves, your hireling stays in the area with you but disappears from your party listing at the top left where your minions or party members go, and you can no longer equip/unequip their items. This persists into new games, and can only be fixed (and even then only momentarily) by buying a whole new hireling.

Apparently now the game will work on Intel Macs without Rosetta or Cider, but sadly will no longer work on PPC Macs. Meanwhile I can still play it on 98SE (or I COULD if it didn't force D3D).

 

[Mercutio]

I don't know if anyone else cares, but there's approximately a zillion tabletop strategy games in today's Amazon Gold Box deals, including Sentinels of the Multiverse, Zombicide and Dixit, all games I really love.

 

[Handruin]

There are some good games in there. I haven't played Zombicide yet but it looks interesting.

 

[Mercutio]

I played both it and Last Night on Earth on the same weekend. I liked Zombicide better, but they're both fun games.

 

[Handruin]

I played I Hate Zombies over the weekend. Turned out to be a compounded game of Rock Paper Scissors with a zombie theme. PAX East was this past weekend so there were plentiful opportunities to try new tabletop games.

 

[Mercutio]

I can't believe there isn't a PAX show in the midwest.

 

[Handruin]

I can't believe there isn't a PAX show in the midwest.

Maybe in the future they'll expand to other regions. They've added one in Texas but it's probably just as far of a trip as the Boston event would be from your location. Friday is the best day to go since it's not as packed as the Saturday show. If one ever does come close to your area I'd go before it becomes too crowded. The first 2-3 years in Boston were the best since it wasn't as popular.

 

[Mercutio]

C2E2 was like that as well. The first two years were 1/3 the size of the current con I think. I suppose I shouldn't complain, since we have Gen Con, but as I understand things, it has outgrown its space and is kind of a hassle to attend now too.

 

[Mercutio]

Here's a video of someone achieving a perfect game on the highest difficulty setting of the new Doom. It's five hours long. The single player game looks fantastically fun and atmospheric, and I can see a lot of notes about what id always said they wanted Quake to be like. I'm most surprised at how fluid everything is, especially with the Glory kills. The maps are enormous and surprisingly vertical. It looks like you have a lot of power to climb or jump around that I haven't seen in anything without a Zero G or swingline mod, but otherwise I get more of an old school Doom vibe than anything I've seen since 1995.

 

[sedrosken]

Was looking at open world driving games today. Test Drive Unlimited (2007) or Unlimited 2 (2011) would have been my first pick except they run SecroROM BS on PC and not only does that dog not hunt on Windows 10, period, I also oppose SecuROM in it's entirety. No torrenting around here, small rural ISP packet sniffs to keep from getting sued by the media mafia and shuts off service, so I can't even buy it and then download a cracked version afterward. Plus Win10 and the first game apparently don't play well together at all, which sucks but whatever.

I settled on Burnout: Paradise on steam. It was twenty bucks but someone gifted me some Steam funds as a grad present. I don't have it downloaded yet but the reviews were overwhelmingly positive so I'm expecting a fun experience at least.

 

[ddrueding]

TDU and TDU2 were both fun games, but quite dated at this point. Some of the Need for Speed games had a lot going for them in this regard.

 

[sechs]

I'm waiting to see how Battlefield 1 turns out

 

[sedrosken]

I'm kind of sad that the new Doom doesn't seem to be playable on an HD 4400 even with all the bells and whistles turned completely off, but honestly looking at gameplay footage I think I prefer the Brutal Doom mod in GZDoom anyway. It at least doesn't require a supercomputer (over-simplification! I know it will run on something like a 950 or 750Ti) to run. That's not to say it doesn't look fun, but I don't think it looks like sixty dollars worth of fun plus all the money I'd have to put into the desktop or into buying a console to make it run. The gameplay seems to be rather inspired by Brutal Doom in its sheer intensity and goriness anyway.

As for Need for Speed, I find that I don't really care for the underground street-racing aesthetic that it goes for. I prefer the more open spaces of games like Test Drive Unlimited. The newer Hot Pursuit game seems to go more for the classic Need for Speed feeling with an open world, but it was twenty bucks also and it's reviews were more mixed.

As for TDU and TDU2 being dated, isn't everything I do dated? :razz: For example, I just got Halo Custom Edition working and I've been having a blast playing on what few servers I can. Funny thing is, I keep getting banned from certain servers -- I'm not cheating and I'm not breaking any rules that I know of, so what gives? There are only ten servers tops that I can play on without nearly lagging out, and I'm already banned from three of them.

I was looking for something I could run comfortably on my laptop, since I only plan on turning on my desktop (and I don't plan on upgrading it anytime soon) in the event of catastrophe happening to the laptop or someone else needing it. Otherwise it will likely just accumulate dust as the laptop can basically run rings around it while barely trying.

 

[Mercutio]

There's at least one Youtube channel devoted to getting AAA titles running on minimum-spec hardware. I remember seeing him play Witcher 3 on Intel HD graphics. Your best graphics experiences will probably be on older MMOs or less intensive strategy games than graphical showpieces like driving or FPS titles.

 

[sedrosken]

I looked at the guy running Doom 4 on an HD 4600, at 720p (I think you can take it down to 800x600 minimum, so not that much lower) at the lowest settings he was getting unplayable framerates, like 20 just in the menu. No thanks. Not paying sixty dollars for a slideshow.

I can play most older games just fine, it's just that Windows 10 sometimes has problems working with them. Emulators and ROMs/ISOs (of games that I already physically own, of course, even if I have lost the consoles to time and heat) also make up a lot of the games that I play.

 

[ddrueding]

I've always enjoyed games where you can build things. I've also enjoyed games where there are multiple levels of understanding and design involved in success. EVE Online is way too good at these things, and is taking most of my game time from other things. If anyone here is interested, I now know enough to get someone into it if they would like.

 

[Handruin]

I've always enjoyed games where you can build things. I've also enjoyed games where there are multiple levels of understanding and design involved in success. EVE Online is way too good at these things, and is taking most of my game time from other things. If anyone here is interested, I now know enough to get someone into it if they would like.

I spend way too much time in Starbound building things. It's low-key and multiplayer but you don't need others in your game to have fun. The game is close to being released at version 1.0 but I've had a lot of fun with it even in its early beta and now late beta form. I host a server if you're ever interested to join in.

 

[sedrosken]

Diablo 3 can apparently run on a potato now, as I can crank the settings pretty high in 720p on the HD 4400 and still have decent FPS provided I turn 'Low FX' on. I even ran it on the desktop, runs fine there too. I guess the fact that it released in 2012 has something to do with it? It's so much more fun on PC than PS3... I can actually find an online game on PC! Too bad my latency sucks. I can barely play solo without massive lag spikes leading to an untimely death. I'll be sure to try again once I'm on campus.

GTA 5 is a game that got gifted to me randomly by a friend of mine, not even on Steam. I tried it on the desktop and it doesn't work well at all, try it on the laptop and while it gets hot enough to melt steel beams it does play at a playable framerate with everything set as low as it can go.

Regretting my purchase of Burnout Paradise. I managed to play JUST two hours (window for requesting refund) before everything started making it crash. Now I try to launch it, it makes the right noises and starts to load but crashes halfway through. Going to try the fixes listed here before I just give up and uninstall it.

 

[Handruin]

With two days until the full release of Starbound 1.0 coming I'd like to point out and advocate for their excellent original sound track by Curtis Schweitzer. You can preview and buy it over on bandcamp. I just bought it and I'm downloading the 60 tracks weighing in at 3.4GB of FLAC music for the game.

If anyone is interested, you can buy the game DRM free through humble bundle and it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. I'm planning to host a server for friends so if anyone is interested in joining it send me a message and I'll share out the info. I plan on building a shared base on a stable planet and the game plays fine even if you want to build on your own. The world is so large we may never even meet up unless you want to.

 

[Mercutio]

The soundtrack is interesting. Very Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard.

While I was looking at the game on GoG, I also noticed that Dragon Age: Origins is available DRM free on GoG for $8. I bought it again on general principle; my disc copy had EA DRM on it

 

[Mercutio]

On the subject of pro-level gamers:

I popped in to Mechwarrior Online on Sunday while showing someone while showing someone what their new PC could do. I played one random match and promptly got in a drop with a dude who got 10 out of 12 kills in the match (in a Jenner, one of the smallest units in the game). The whole match only lasted about two minutes (usually they take about 10) and I never got close enough to actually shoot at anything before that dude had killed it. I searched his in-game nick and I'm pretty sure he's one of the best players in the game. MWO games are supposed to be tiered so the good players don't play with bad, but this was definitely a case where there was a real, live Esports star type playing with a bunch of potatoes.
I will say that the guy was being kind of hilariously trollish about it, because he was doing that AND typing his shit-talk in the text chat area.

 

[ddrueding]

In EVE Online, one of the favorite hobbies of the group I'm with is to find gamers who are live-streaming and shit-talking, stalk them down in-game, and embarrass them in front of their audience. Just killing them isn't enough; try to do it with the weakest possible ship, or find other assets and destroy them as well.