Gaming thoughts, bite-size chewables - new orange flavor!

[LordDaMan]

Yeah, tapes were awful. They were better than nothing, but floppies were just miles better.

Of course, floppies on the Commodore 64 weren't much faster. Man, those drives were terribly slow. The various BIOS replacements improved it somewhat, but it took like five to ten minutes to load some programs using the stock ROMs. You'd start something loading and go get lunch.

I had a 2nd hand Atari 800. It was fully decked out and had a cassette AND a disk drive. There was some game where you played as godzilla on cassette. I successfully ran it once as it took about 15 minutes to load.

Floppies on the other hand where much faster. Nothing like a cartridge, but fast enough

 

[Deleted member 14629]

Two notes about Stellaris:

1. The Synthetic Queen (Cetana) end-game storyline is by far the most engaging end-game Stellaris has ever had. It's part of the Machine Age DLC, according to the Wiki. It's one of the only times the writing make decisions truly interesting, and there is a real balance of politics to play. In a game that generally has the story as window dressing for mechanics, this one was actually fun to read and work through.

2. I just got trolled by the game in the funniest way. I found an archeological site that had an old VIR unit in it. For those that don't know (or don't remember) that's the tutorial AI for Stellaris. If you choose to turn it on, it turns on all your tutorials as if you've never played the game before. As you might imagine, this means if procs dozens-to-hundreds of tutorial messages at you all at once, to hilarious effect. To my knowledge, that's the only time the game trolls the player directly. I had a good laugh.

 

[CommanderJameson]

I had a 2nd hand Atari 800. It was fully decked out and had a cassette AND a disk drive. There was some game where you played as godzilla on cassette. I successfully ran it once as it took about 15 minutes to load.

Floppies on the other hand where much faster. Nothing like a cartridge, but fast enough

On a BBC Micro, when you load things from tape, you get a running count of the blocks as they load. Here we switch to the tape interface, use the CHAIN to load the first thing it finds (empty quotes), and watch a program called Program load. We’re at block 0x0A.

*TAPE
CHAIN “”
Searching

Loading

Program     OA

Most games were around 40 or 50 blocks in length. Each block (512 bytes?) is around 2 seconds of data, separated by around a half to three-quarters of a second of what I think is 2400hz tone. Example.

Elite was not. Elite was 90-ish blocks, and waiting for that counter to hit 5A took a while.

 

[NavyGothic]

I picked up Warhammer 40K Mechanicus on Steam sale recently, and played about 12 hours. Fantastic atmosphere and grimdark 40K vibes, and it's a pretty fun (if simple) turn-based tactics system, but it started to feel very grindy with almost no mission variety. The animations and combat speed are very slow, so that doesn't help. I don't think I'll keep playing.


View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/673880/Warhammer_40000_Mechanicus/


However it did remind me of a little indie gem from many years ago; Templar Battleforce. Basically the same game with very basic graphics and presentation, but vastly superior tactics, combat and builds.


View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/370020/Templar_Battleforce/


I've been playing it a little bit while on a business trip, and I'm surprised at how much more I enjoy it.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

On a BBC Micro

Those were by far the best of the 8-bits. It's a damn shame that their PAL graphics didn't translate to NTSC properly. If we'd been on the same graphic standard, I think they'd have been a very serious competitor here in the States.

They did everything an Apple ][ did, better, and then added a ton more stuff. They even had extendable ROMs, with a literal expansion protocol where new ROMs could register keywords with the system for activation. You could buy new chips with new features, plug them in, and activate them with their keywords. (eg, *ADFS for a better disk filesystem.)

When the BBC Master came out, with lots of bankswitched RAM, this became even more useful, because you could load ROM images into RAM instead, so you could change loadouts easily. And even the original ROMs had a huge number of system services. And there was an expansion slot called the Tube which let you plug in new microprocessors, turning the main system into an I/O peripheral for whatever you'd plugged in. (This was how the first ARM chips were distributed, among multiple other expansion options, like an even faster 6502 or a Z80 chip to run CP/M.)

In the real world, the programs written for the higher res PAL didn't display properly on US screens, and I guess programmers weren't interested in redoing their designs, so it flopped miserably here.

 

[CommanderJameson]

The BBC Micro had a killer feature making it useful for actual work - a real 80-column display mode. I remember doing a bunch of schoolwork in Wordwise Plus, where you edited your text in the 40-column Mode 7 (aka Teletext mode) and previewed it in the 80-column Mode 3.

 

[LordDaMan]

On a BBC Micro, when you load things from tape, you get a running count of the blocks as they load. Here we switch to the tape interface, use the CHAIN to load the first thing it finds (empty quotes), and watch a program called Program load. We’re at block 0x0A.

*TAPE
CHAIN “”
Searching

Loading

Program     OA

Most games were around 40 or 50 blocks in length. Each block (512 bytes?) is around 2 seconds of data, separated by around a half to three-quarters of a second of what I think is 2400hz tone. Example.

Elite was not. Elite was 90-ish blocks, and waiting for that counter to hit 5A took a while.

I don't recall much from the Atari 800 since it was a really long time ago and haven't really used it since I got my 486.

I do know when using the cassette drive, you could hear all the beeps when loading. It also meant you could put small bits of audio in there also. That godzilla game had a bit on the middle about the capital of North Dakota and laughing about how Bizmark couldn't be a real town. Sadly I heard that joke far more times than playing the actual game.

I still have this machine somewhere in the house. Too bad the disk drive (they had a nasty design flaw where the majority of them self-destructed after so many years) went bad as that's where the majority of games where on.

 

[LordDaMan]

There's BBC BASIC for SDL, a modern implementation that runs all the old BBC BASIC code on modern machines along with some newer tricks. It also runs on anything modern be it computer or mobile device

 

[CommanderJameson]

There's BBC BASIC for SDL, a modern implementation that runs all the old BBC BASIC code on modern machines along with some newer tricks. It also runs on anything modern be it computer or mobile device

You’re going to need this.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

The BBC Micro had a killer feature making it useful for actual work - a real 80-column display mode. I remember doing a bunch of schoolwork in Wordwise Plus, where you edited your text in the 40-column Mode 7 (aka Teletext mode) and previewed it in the 80-column Mode 3.

Easy expansion to 80 columns was probably the main reason to buy an Apple ][ in the US, and the Micro was just so much better. I strongly think it could have been a major contender if they'd figured out a better way to port the hardware over.

 

[travisthehuman]

What I don't like is how crude these appeals to nostalgia get. "Look, a cassette tape! Go cry now".

"Here is a list of 80s bands. Here is another list of important video game characters from the 90s. Here is a list of popular 80s arcade games" feels like the bulk of Ready Player One.

 

[rtrefz]

I lucked out that my parents sprung for a disk drive for the c64. I didn't play with a tape drive until I trash-picked one in the early 90s.

 

[LordDaMan]

So I've been messing with modding the original Oblivion with limited degrees of success. I stumbled across the Oblivion Rebirth+ collection.

So far I have to say wow, this really makes the game look a ton better long with fixing the crashes.

The bad part? The installation is a nightmare if you don't have premium access to nexus mods. There are 400 mods and each and every one Nexus mod manager brings you to a webpage where you have to click to download each and every one of them. Considering how the entire package is 17 gigs, This takes hours to install

 

[Artichoke Sap]

From the artist of Journey, who then became the creative director on Abzu and The Pathless - Sword of the Sea:


View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2453160/Sword_of_the_Sea/

The family is a big fan of Abzu, so I'm looking forward to this, especially as it launches free on PlayStation Plus.

 

[CommanderJameson]

So I've been messing with modding the original Oblivion with limited degrees of success. I stumbled across the Oblivion Rebirth+ collection.

So far I have to say wow, this really makes the game look a ton better long with fixing the crashes.

The bad part? The installation is a nightmare if you don't have premium access to nexus mods. There are 400 mods and each and every one Nexus mod manager brings you to a webpage where you have to click to download each and every one of them. Considering how the entire package is 17 gigs, This takes hours to install

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

 

[LordDaMan]

I know. If you had the premium version of nexus mods then it's all automatic ( I think)

 

[Distraction]

It might be worth it to sign up for a month. You get faster downloads, too.

 

[Demento]

I lucked out that my parents sprung for a disk drive for the c64. I didn't play with a tape drive until I trash-picked one in the early 90s.

We had PETs at school and I convinced my parents that the C=64 was pointless without a floppy. I eventually ended up with a 1581, as well.

 

[HiroTheProtagonist]

Listening to gaming podcasts, lots of people area going gaga over Mixtape.

Now, I grew up in the 80’s and 90s. I’m squarely an elder Millenial. I have zero interest in this game.

One) I don’t have that much nostalgia for the 90’s. If any, really.
Two) It’s borrowing, per people who have played it, a LOT from DON’T NOD’s branch of narrative titles - your Life Is Strange’s, et cetera. Which I don’t like playing.

That’s pretty much it.

Now if you’ll excuse me? Some clouds over there? They need a stick waved at them. And I’m just the stick-wavin’-fool to do it!

So I watched the trailer, and while the idea doesn't grab me, it made me recall a game I haven't played in years called The Artful Escape. After spending several minutes trying to look up the name, turns out TAE was also made by the same developer as Mixtape. And while I sort-of enjoyed TAE, I played it via GamePass and would probably have been disappointed paying $20 for what was effectively a 3 hour mildly-interactive film about coming of age and dealing with the pressure of legacy set to a backdrop of vaguely arena-rock music.

Ironically, there already exists a game that plays on teenage nostalgia while also having good mechanical gameplay and a kick-ass soundtrack. It was called Bully, and it came out nearly 20 years ago.

 

[mogbert]

I finally did it this weekend. After being too "tired" to play any games for the last two months, I finally uninstalled the game I was playing before, and instead installed Stardew Valley. Just needed something to relax and enjoy incremental advancement without dying over and over like most rougelikes. I played it all weekend. I'm about half-past Fall in my first year, I've started making gold bars, but I haven't upgraded anything to gold yet. I've got four chickens and just completed my first star in the Community Center. I think I'm doing pretty well. Even my wife was happy to see me playing again.

 

[rtrefz]

I put some time into PowerWash Simulator. Playing it with a podcast running is pretty zen for me. Also, it doesn't matter how badly the TV is washed out by the sunlight. Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty much a nighttime only game due to this.

 

[Nekojin]

We had PETs at school and I convinced my parents that the C=64 was pointless without a floppy. I eventually ended up with a 1581, as well.

My parents bought me the C-64 and monitor for my birthday, then gave me the floppy drive as a Christmas present. I learned some programming in the 4-month gap, but since everything was deleted as soon as I turned off the machine, I wasn't too inspired. I wrote a little visual "play" of a small spaceship flying down to land on the ground, sprouting wheels and driving up into a larger spaceship that was already there, and the big spaceship lifting off. I showed it to my dad, who was a professional programmer... and he wasn't impressed. (He may have been a narcissist, though.)

 

[richleader]

I was mostly ok with the tape drive if only because games tended to scale as tech moved forward so as you moved from tape to 1541 to 1571 + Epyx Fastload cart, the misery mostly stayed on a plateau.

As much as I loved the C64 world, jumping sideways to the NES was a lot of fun even though it meant going from a pirate domain of infinite games (plus the occasional AAA title that stood above the rest) to games being rare and special purchases, it was a nice privilege to be able to experience both paradigms.

And really, there's no image, of a mixtape or anything, that can really sum up the different aspects of being on the ground floor of technological changes and virtual worlds (with the infinite suspension of disbelief that a child can possess) so I'm calling BS on people who want to reexperience tape drives.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

And really, there's no image, of a mixtape or anything, that can really sum up the different aspects of being on the ground floor of technological changes and virtual worlds (with the infinite suspension of disbelief that a child can possess) so I'm calling BS on people who want to reexperience tape drives.

Because of this thread, I just played around with this a little bit, selecting .TAP files and loading them into a C64. It's pretty different than a floppy, and if you used to have the volume audible, I can see being nostalgic for it, at least a little. It's a bit like the sound of a modem dialing up.

And on the 64, in my limited testing, the tape doesn't seem that much slower than the floppy drive with a stock ROM. DolphinDOS is much faster, and then apparently you can even emulate parallel-port floppies and really go fast, but I didn't try that.

 

[Diabolical]

Now that I'm done with demos for a bit (um.... 176, all told - go look at Dispatch and it's demo if you get a chance, it's hilarious)?

Up next? The Midnight Walk - where all the environments were made in clay and animated via stop motion. It looks astounding, and How Long to Beat clocks it at 4.5 to 7 hours. Should be fun.

After that? Clair Obscur!

 

[Nekojin]

Because of this thread, I just played around with this a little bit, selecting .TAP files and loading them into a C64. It's pretty different than a floppy, and if you used to have the volume audible, I can see being nostalgic for it, at least a little. It's a bit like the sound of a modem dialing up.

And on the 64, in my limited testing, the tape doesn't seem that much slower than the floppy drive with a stock ROM. DolphinDOS is much faster, and then apparently you can even emulate parallel-port floppies and really go fast, but I didn't try that.

Emulators speed up both the tape and the floppy drive so that you don't have to suffer pointless and unnecessary long loading times. Tape games could easily take 10-15 minutes to load*. Floppies could take several minutes.

* And, worse, tape games could fail the load, because the tape drive couldn't double-check the data, and if it misread a segment, it couldn't correct that. You were already past that strip of tape.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

Emulators speed up both the tape and the floppy drive so that you don't have to suffer pointless and unnecessary long loading times. Tape games could easily take 10-15 minutes to load*. Floppies could take several minutes.

* And, worse, tape games could fail the load, because the tape drive couldn't double-check the data, and if it misread a segment, it couldn't correct that. You were already past that strip of tape.

Aha. Because I was hearing the tape file, I was assuming it was running normal speed.

Floppies are normal speed on the Mister (which it why it defaults to the DolphinDOS replacement ROM), and its cores are normally very accurate, so the tape might be the correct speed on that system. I only loaded Archon 1 and 2, though.

 

[CommanderJameson]

Doom: The Dark Ages completed. Enjoyed my playthrough, but I doubt I’ll be back to it. A perfectly enjoyable gaming experience, but not one I feel the need to repeat.

Now to resume Atomfall. Which is great. I love the setting, the plot is intriguing (I’m playing it on easy “this is interactive fiction” mode), the world looks great (but come on, I’ve been to the Lakes; it’s not quite that lumpy*), and there are some fun (as in actually fun) puzzles in it. However, I do wish it had a fast travel function. There’s a lot of walking.

Once that’s done, Expedition 33 awaits. Quick question for the peanut gallery; is this going to be better on my Xbox or my PC? Xbox is connected it to a nice big OLED telly, PC isn’t.

_{*It’s the same conceit as found in AC:Valhalla. I’m very familiar with the landscape of where you first arrive in England, and whilst they got the terroir broadly correct, in the dash to make it visually “interesting”, they made Leicestershire far, far, far more hilly and mountainous than it really is. Like, by a fucking lot. Also, I liked how they made the North East (e.g. Scarborough) basically feel as though it was in the Arctic Circle, despite getting less snow and being warmer than other bits, due to the moderating effect of the sea.}

 

[Demento]

Aha. Because I was hearing the tape file, I was assuming it was running normal speed.

Floppies are normal speed on the Mister (which it why it defaults to the DolphinDOS replacement ROM), and its cores are normally very accurate, so the tape might be the correct speed on that system. I only loaded Archon 1 and 2, though.

A fastloader cart was pretty much required if you were heavily into gaming. I had the coveted "Snapshot" one, where you could push a button on the cart and snapshot RAM onto it to be restored later. Great for really hard bits of games.

 

[Diabolical]

Once that’s done, Expedition 33 awaits. Quick question for the peanut gallery; is this going to be better on my Xbox or my PC? Xbox is connected it to a nice big OLED telly, PC isn’t.

It appears there is no native HDR support for Clair Obscur on any platform, per Digital Foundry. Might impact your decision.

 

[Nekojin]

I tried Clair Obscur, and bounced off it hard. The base plot has a truck-wide plot hole*, and I don't like the turn-based-but-reflex-driven combat mode.

* What seems to be, after playing through to the beginning of the actual Expedition, an enormous plot hole. It might get explained later, but I didn't last that long.
** Don't want to discuss it here, for potentially spoiler-ish reasons. If someone wants to pursue this discussion, please PM me.

 

[MiguelMC]

I put some time into PowerWash Simulator. Playing it with a podcast running is pretty zen for me. Also, it doesn't matter how badly the TV is washed out by the sunlight. Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty much a nighttime only game due to this.

I got that with Skyrim on the Switch. Dwemer ruins weren't that bad, but nordic ruins were terrible even with candlelight. And, as we all know, Skyrim has you a wee bit of time in nordic ruins getting to know all its draugr variants...

 

[PlasticExistence]

I got that with Skyrim on the Switch. Dwemer ruins weren't that bad, but nordic ruins were terrible even with candlelight. And, as we all know, Skyrim has you a wee bit of time in nordic ruins getting to know all its draugr variants...

I misread this and thought you were powerwashing ruins for a second. "Wow, that game has more depth than I guessed!"

 

[Chito]

Once that’s done, Expedition 33 awaits. Quick question for the peanut gallery; is this going to be better on my Xbox or my PC? Xbox is connected it to a nice big OLED telly, PC isn’t.

I've been playing on both (via Xbox GamePass Ultimate Cloud). Both look great. PC looks slightly better as I'm running it in 4k with DLSS on a very nice monitor (Asus PG27UCDM) . I play it on a SmartTV with the Gamepass app sometimes, and it still looks great (Samsung S90 OLED), but not quite as crisp (this I assume is mostly due to streaming resolution of GamePass though). I use my Xbox Elite 2 controller in both cases.

 

[MiguelMC]

I misread this and thought you were powerwashing ruins for a second. "Wow, that game has more depth than I guessed!"

Admittedly, those ruins do need a good cleanup...

Back on topic, on my own end, I'm comfort-gaming Tears of the Kingdom, looking for koroks here and there (and save-scumming for lizalfos tails, because fuck the RNG after >200 h). I'm not really aiming for 100%; just chillaxing and gathering the strength needed to decide what I do near the end of my first BG3 playthrough (I'm at the house of Hope, with the orphic hammer being pretty much the last side quest currently available to me)

 

[GloatingSwine]

I wouldn't rule out an Elder Scrolls crossover for Powerwash Sim 2. Maybe you'll clean those ruins yet.

 

[Uisce Beatha]

Once that’s done, Expedition 33 awaits. Quick question for the peanut gallery; is this going to be better on my Xbox or my PC? Xbox is connected it to a nice big OLED telly, PC isn’t.

I've been playing it on my Xbox Series X & a 65" (non-OLED) and it looks great. I also bought it on Steam, but haven't tried it on my PC yet; mostly just wanted to further support the devs since I've been playing the GamePass version. Controller highly recommended either way, but I'd probably opt for the Big Ol' OLED if I had one.

 

[Quarthinos]

So I turned back on my Switch for the first time in a couple of years, and after I got the HDMI cable untangled and into my nicer monitor, I started playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. (There's an old thread about it, but it's locked.) I just got through yet another boss fight where after I beat the boss to "death" he is suddenly resurrected by the power of "cut scene", (I guess maybe because all the JRPG writers wished they were writing Anime?). And as I did when playing XBC1, I am again wondering if there's an actual (semi?) turn based JRPG that is not Yakuza where the plot is not: 'High school aged people get powers and have to defeat the evil group.' (who never STAY DEAD!)? Please? If I want to watch Dragon Ball Z, I can do that, but why does it have to be in EVERY. SINGLE. JRPG? I mean at least in FF VII Sepiroth only came back once (?) in his original form (and I was much less jaded then, perhaps), but here it just seems to be a rotating cast of the members of the Evil Gang who have the power of cut-scene, all of whom seem to think the Potaganist is not worth the effort to "properly" defeat after they use their cut-scene power (which I guess is on cooldown or something?). And the hero never just uses a goddamn ranged attack to stop them from leaving? Rex has a goddamn Batman shooting hook than can topple monsters bigger than the supposed Boss, but does he use it to stop them from running? No, no he does not.

 

[Uisce Beatha]

So I turned back on my Switch for the first time in a couple of years, and after I got the HDMI cable untangled and into my nicer monitor, I started playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. (There's an old thread about it, but it's locked.) I just got through yet another boss fight where after I beat the boss to "death" he is suddenly resurrected by the power of "cut scene", (I guess maybe because all the JRPG writers wished they were writing Anime?). And as I did when playing XBC1, I am again wondering if there's an actual (semi?) turn based JRPG that is not Yakuza where the plot is not: 'High school aged people get powers and have to defeat the evil group.' (who never STAY DEAD!)? Please? If I want to watch Dragon Ball Z, I can do that, but why does it have to be in EVERY. SINGLE. JRPG? I mean at least in FF VII Sepiroth only came back once (?) in his original form (and I was much less jaded then, perhaps), but here it just seems to be a rotating cast of the members of the Evil Gang who have the power of cut-scene, all of whom seem to think the Potaganist is not worth the effort to "properly" defeat after they use their cut-scene power (which I guess is on cooldown or something?). And the hero never just uses a goddamn ranged attack to stop them from leaving? Rex has a goddamn Batman shooting hook than can topple monsters bigger than the supposed Boss, but does he use it to stop them from running? No, no he does not.

French, not Japanese, but maybe go here: Clair Obscur Expedition 33 thread

EDIT: Oops, didn't notice the Switch detail. Not as applicable as I thought, I guess.

 

[Saikaici]

So I turned back on my Switch for the first time in a couple of years, and after I got the HDMI cable untangled and into my nicer monitor, I started playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. (There's an old thread about it, but it's locked.) I just got through yet another boss fight where after I beat the boss to "death" he is suddenly resurrected by the power of "cut scene", (I guess maybe because all the JRPG writers wished they were writing Anime?). And as I did when playing XBC1, I am again wondering if there's an actual (semi?) turn based JRPG that is not Yakuza where the plot is not: 'High school aged people get powers and have to defeat the evil group.' (who never STAY DEAD!)? Please? If I want to watch Dragon Ball Z, I can do that, but why does it have to be in EVERY. SINGLE. JRPG? I mean at least in FF VII Sepiroth only came back once (?) in his original form (and I was much less jaded then, perhaps), but here it just seems to be a rotating cast of the members of the Evil Gang who have the power of cut-scene, all of whom seem to think the Potaganist is not worth the effort to "properly" defeat after they use their cut-scene power (which I guess is on cooldown or something?). And the hero never just uses a goddamn ranged attack to stop them from leaving? Rex has a goddamn Batman shooting hook than can topple monsters bigger than the supposed Boss, but does he use it to stop them from running? No, no he does not.

Isn't that just a common complaint with anime style games that aim at the younger audiences?

That's completely on brand for Xenoblade, from what I know of the series. So what it sounds like is you're complaining about Dragonball being Dragonball. But yeah, if you're tired of Dragonball, go watch Baccano instead. I'd recommend Clair Obscur or FF16, but I don't think either of them are on the Switch?