Video games

[Jimmy Higgins]

I was thinking much the same about Visual Basic - which to be fair, I haven't used in a long time. At this point, my programming is limited to Arduinos and Teensy boards.

As for selling older games - well, I regretted when I sold off games like Ogre Battle for SNES to free up some space, so I've become a bit of a hoarder. Luckily it's pretty easy to get a hold of games these days, and even load them up on NES/SNES/etc using an Everdrive or a SD2SNES, but I still kind of miss having the original carts.

I remember using a dinosaur PC in our office to copy over the 5-1/4" games I had to 3-1/2". Now I need to do the same with the 3-1/2" to Hard Drive or CD.

 

[Patooka]

I was thinking much the same about Visual Basic - which to be fair, I haven't used in a long time. At this point, my programming is limited to Arduinos and Teensy boards.

As for selling older games - well, I regretted when I sold off games like Ogre Battle for SNES to free up some space, so I've become a bit of a hoarder. Luckily it's pretty easy to get a hold of games these days, and even load them up on NES/SNES/etc using an Everdrive or a SD2SNES, but I still kind of miss having the original carts.

I remember using a dinosaur PC in our office to copy over the 5-1/4" games I had to 3-1/2". Now I need to do the same with the 3-1/2" to Hard Drive or CD.

You might not have to. Check to see if the game is Abandonware first. Hundred of websites offer orphaned games. Another great site is gog.com. Not only do they tweek the oldies to run on win7 etc, they are also drm free and relatively cheap. Especially if you cant be fucked fiddling with config.sys on dosbox to convert ram to ems/xms

 

[Mumbles]

I was thinking much the same about Visual Basic - which to be fair, I haven't used in a long time. At this point, my programming is limited to Arduinos and Teensy boards.

As for selling older games - well, I regretted when I sold off games like Ogre Battle for SNES to free up some space, so I've become a bit of a hoarder. Luckily it's pretty easy to get a hold of games these days, and even load them up on NES/SNES/etc using an Everdrive or a SD2SNES, but I still kind of miss having the original carts.

I remember using a dinosaur PC in our office to copy over the 5-1/4" games I had to 3-1/2". Now I need to do the same with the 3-1/2" to Hard Drive or CD.

You might not have to. Check to see if the game is Abandonware first. Hundred of websites offer orphaned games. Another great site is gog.com. Not only do they tweek the oldies to run on win7 etc, they are also drm free and relatively cheap. Especially if you cant be fucked fiddling with config.sys on dosbox to convert ram to ems/xms

I went from old Atari computers (now long gone - I still have a few carts though) to Macs, which always used 3.5" floppies, so I never had to convert I can, however, agree on GOG - managed to pick up both the first two Fallout games, and the Gold Box AD&D series, for a pretty low price.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I just picked up Endless Space 2 a few days ago, it was $20 on Steam. Beautiful looking game, and a plethora of options and damn it, they all matter. This one is going to take a bit on the learning curve. Also, the classics Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are only a few bucks each...

Finally, GOG - thanks for pointing that out. My bank account hates you for it, but thanks nonetheless.

 

[Mumbles]

I just picked up Endless Space 2 a few days ago, it was $20 on Steam. Beautiful looking game, and a plethora of options and damn it, they all matter. This one is going to take a bit on the learning curve. Also, the classics Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are only a few bucks each...

Finally, GOG - thanks for pointing that out. My bank account hates you for it, but thanks nonetheless.

Heh.

GoG, and similar sites, are actually making these things *more* affordable. On the cart side, the holy grail is still Nintendo World Championship. That's not even a good title, and yet it goes for $5k for the gold version (there are...I think 13 known to exist). I can think of quite a few other games that run into the hundreds, just to have the cart in one's hands. I've said before that my Panzer Dragoon Saga game is likely worth $700 or so - that's not quite so amazing when you consider that I'd kinda like to get into the Neo-Geo collecting community. But I like knowing that the pure ROM code, and sometimes the sources, are known, and can be studied.

The early days of gaming are a bit like the early days of comics - people didn't know that some titles would get so expensive, and they had no way to predict what would get pricey. And in any case, you can likely toss out those old floppies and CDs that you have. Folks are working to archive everything, and will sell the archives to you at a relatively minor fee.

(But check to be sure, and if you actually have a gold Nintendo Word Championship cart, and not just a repro, we can still talk )

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Played Atari bowling on Thanksgiving with a niece 4 or 5 times removed. Had only played it once a long long long while back. The niece didn't know how to operate the Atari, thought they would have taught that in history.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Mumbles]

Oh dear god..

No. Wii Bowling. Because you can twist the Wiimote as you throw, and get some spin on the ball.

seriously, this was possibly the best of Wii Sports.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Oh dear god..

No. Wii Bowling. Because you can twist the Wiimote as you throw, and get some spin on the ball.

seriously, this was possibly the best of Wii Sports.

Wii bowling actually made me a better bowler.

True story.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oh dear god..

No. Wii Bowling. Because you can twist the Wiimote as you throw, and get some spin on the ball.

seriously, this was possibly the best of Wii Sports.

Yeah, I'd say the physics are a bit better in Wii Sports than Atari's game, but it was fun to play.

 

[Malintent]

I have been playing 7 Days to Die with some friends a lot lately. best zombie apocalypse survival, crafting, building game ever.

I also have been learning Unreal Engine over the past several months... ever since I got a Vive and wanted to start making my own experiences... and Epic Games provides the engine and an absolutely fantastic visual scripting development environment for FREE.

you have all seen code look like this:

    if(failure_category == true)
    {
        new_html += '<DIV style="font-size:80%;font-family:Segoe UI;color:#FF0000;font-weight:bold">'+heading+'</DIV>';
    }
    else
    {
        new_html += '<DIV style="font-size:90%;font-family:Segoe UI;color:#000000;">'+heading+'</DIV>';
    }

Coding in Unreal Engine looks like this:

So in other words, like Visual Basic?

More like visual C++.. but the "visual" is real, this time.

 

[Mumbles]

Oh dear god..

No. Wii Bowling. Because you can twist the Wiimote as you throw, and get some spin on the ball.

seriously, this was possibly the best of Wii Sports.

Wii bowling actually made me a better bowler.

True story.

This...might have been true for me, actually.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oh dear god..

No. Wii Bowling. Because you can twist the Wiimote as you throw, and get some spin on the ball.

seriously, this was possibly the best of Wii Sports.

Wii bowling actually made me a better bowler.

True story.

This...might have been true for me, actually.

It didn't make me a better bowler. It made me a sadder bowler, as I couldn't bowl in real life like I can a video game. Which is totally unlike my experiences with Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, and hunting cartoon ducks.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Wii bowling actually made me a better bowler.

True story.

This...might have been true for me, actually.

It didn't make me a better bowler. It made me a sadder bowler, as I couldn't bowl in real life like I can a video game. Which is totally unlike my experiences with Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, and hunting cartoon ducks.

Oi. I hear ya, brother.

Reminds me of that time I tried to help deal with that inmate uprising at a local mental hospital after playing Arkham Asylum. That was an awkward and painful night of not living up to my expectations of myself.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So, Civilization...

Steam is doing a sale thing, and I finally looked into it after reading that Zaccaria Pinball had an absurd sale. So I signed up, got the pinball and was browsing elsewhere. Found Commander Keen! Also Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3 and Worms Pinball. I saw Civilization, I think I have Civ I on disk somewhere as part of a bundle, I wanted the RR Tycoon II game that it was a part of many many years ago.

I know Civilization is popular, though there are differing opinions. I'm looking at III to V. I don't know if my laptop can do VI. I've read III is great, but dated. IV and V have the pros and cons. Any advice?

 

[Underseer]

So, Civilization...

Steam is doing a sale thing, and I finally looked into it after reading that Zaccaria Pinball had an absurd sale. So I signed up, got the pinball and was browsing elsewhere. Found Commander Keen! Also Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3 and Worms Pinball. I saw Civilization, I think I have Civ I on disk somewhere as part of a bundle, I wanted the RR Tycoon II game that it was a part of many many years ago.

I know Civilization is popular, though there are differing opinions. I'm looking at III to V. I don't know if my laptop can do VI. I've read III is great, but dated. IV and V have the pros and cons. Any advice?

Civilization 3 was the last 2D game, so just about any computer should be able to handle running it, although if you try to run it on an older computer, make sure you have enough RAM. Any time you are running Civilization on a computer that came out around the same time as the game, you should check and make sure you have more RAM than the requirements listed on the side of the box.

Anyway, Civilization 3 was in my opinion the most refined of the 2D games. I also have fond memories of the soundtrack. For some reason it reminded me of the soundtrack for Final Fantasy 7.

Civilization 2 is mostly notable for the advisers, who are rendered in low-res full motion video and are hilarious. The lines were cheesy and the actors clearly had fun with the material.

Civilization 4 was the first 3D game in the series. Honestly, if you think your laptop can handle 4, I would suggest 5 instead. Many consider it the best of the entire series, although 4 has one of the most amazing songs in a video game ever. One of the biggest issues I have with 4 is that like previous games, it allowed an unlimited number of military units on the same tile, which leads to what fans call the "stacks of doom" issue. If you can pile enough units into a single tile, you no longer care about things like terrain bonuses. Civ 5 placed strong limits on how many units can be in the same tile, which forces you to pay a lot more attention to the terrain and to the placement of your forces in general, while in 4 military campaigns are just about creating the biggest possible stack of doom and marching it relentlessly from city to city.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I'm also thinking of getting Civ VI on the Steam sale. Are any of the DLCs any good?

 

[Underseer]

Jimmy,
Civilization games are very RAM-hungry. Make sure you exceed the minimum requirements listed on the box by a fair amount.

Tom,
Yes. Cities now exert "loyalty pressure" using mechanics similar to religious conversion pressure. This changes the mechanics of conquest choices because a captured city can quickly flip back if you're not careful.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I’ve got 6 GB ram so I think that’ll be fine. The laptop is about 5.5 yrs old.

 

[Underseer]

I’ve got 6 GB ram so I think that’ll be fine. The laptop is about 5.5 yrs old.

The newer games might have performance problems on huge maps when you get in the late game and every plot of land is used by a city, but 6GB should be good enough for even Civ 6 depending on your GPU, and even if the GPU is weaksauce, you can probably just lower the graphics quality.

To be honest, my laptop is newer and has a semi-decent GPU and more RAM, but I usually run Civilization 6 on my desktop and use Steam to stream it to my laptop because if I run it on the laptop directly, the fan gets kinda loud on the laptop. Diablo 3 runs fine on the laptop without too much wheezing from the laptop fans, but since I prefer huge maps and science victories, by the time I get to the late game the fans get loud, and loading games takes a really long time.

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

So, Civilization...

Steam is doing a sale thing, and I finally looked into it after reading that Zaccaria Pinball had an absurd sale. So I signed up, got the pinball and was browsing elsewhere. Found Commander Keen! Also Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3 and Worms Pinball. I saw Civilization, I think I have Civ I on disk somewhere as part of a bundle, I wanted the RR Tycoon II game that it was a part of many many years ago.

I know Civilization is popular, though there are differing opinions. I'm looking at III to V. I don't know if my laptop can do VI. I've read III is great, but dated. IV and V have the pros and cons. Any advice?

Oh, you bastard. You utter, utter swine, you. There I was, perfectly happy killing dragons and whatnot in the wonderful land of Skyrim, until I saw your post and thought "Railroad Tycoon 2? It's been a while maybe I should check it out again". And yes, it had been a while, getting on 16 years. I thought I'd left that all behind me, but no, you had to pull me back in. Oh yes, it's so easy, Steam sale, €1.94, no worries, you won't regret it," Sure. 2 days later and I'm hooked again. Hooked, like a fish gasping on the line. Why couldn't you just leave well alone?

I'd castigate you further, but I have to go and work out how to connect Rochester to Kitchener while maintaining a profit ... Why did you have to remind me?