Adding to their already-large stable of franchises means they'd either have to release more games during each console cycle, or skip some franchises during some console cycles.

The idea of Nintendo releasing more games per console cycle makes me kind of nervous because Nintendo would probably already be doing so if they felt they could do so while maintaining their usually-high level of software quality.

I'm all for new gameplay experiments, though!

This is a reply to the thread "The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds" by Chrispy, posted in Otaku Chat

I definitely see what you mean about the appeal of messing with the low-level stuff!

That aspect gives me somewhat less of a boner than the idea of, I think, making a thing that runs on the gaming systems I spent so many hours playing. Like: whoa, I'm the "man behind the curtain" now, I think.

Second on the list would probably be designing (or being a part of designing) an experience for somebody. I don't know, I probably have some kind of psychological problem and need for connection that my mind thinks can be filled that way.

Third on the list would be messing with the l ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

A good reason not to wear goggles[1] is because steampunk is really horrible[2] and you wouldn't want somebody to accidentally think that you're into steampunk.














_____________________
[1] The sad thing is that I typed "Googles" and then "googles" before typing "goggles." Fuck, I think Google has won.

[2] Steampunk, as an aesthetic, is pretty cool. Who doesn't love the tinker's spirit, the inventor's spirit? Who doesn't love overwrought Victorian technology with overly ornate naming conventions? Unlike say, My Little Pony fandom, s ...

This is a reply to the thread "Goggles - Why does everyone not wear them always?" by Vortex, posted in Gen. Chat

I'm sure Sean (Stuntcock) has fathered at least ten or twenty kids on here, too.

This is a reply to the thread "Father's Day..." by Fievel, posted in Gen. Chat

Yeah, God. If I wasn't putting my spare time and programming efforts into OB, I'd be doing homebrew console stuff. So fucking cool.

Any idea how easy/hard Dreamcast homebrew is, relative to the DS or GBA?

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

Of course, if we're going to seriously geek out about what the Genesis can do in the hands of suicidally fanatic programmers, Pier Solar isn't even the game to discuss in my opinion. Check out Red Zone from 1994. I really need to get a physical cart of this at some point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZKsQ09qOk4

Two main play modes:

- Overhead helicopter segments with fully fucking rotating groundscape and trees/towers/etc convincingly rendered from multiple sprites

- Overhead on-foot corridor segments with bitmapped ceilings and polygonal walls (!) and realtime transparent ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

Terminology, aided by Wikipedia, because I know I've always mixed it up, hahaha.

HBlank interval - The period of time between when each horiz. line is drawn by the CRT.
VBlank interval - The period of time between when the last line at the bottom of the CRT is drawn, and when the beam reaches the top of the screen again.

So line-scrolling effects and their ilk are done during the hblank interval.

nategri said:
Bit shifting opcodes at work! Been meaning to try stuff like that out. (e.g. Cheesy waving-image effects like you see in a billion Commodore 64 demos).

Actuall ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

How the fuck Pier Solar combines a variety of these to simulate Mode 7, I can't imagine. But it definitely involved some creative fucking-around between scanlines.

If I had to guess at a very high 10,000-foot level, I'd say...

Well, rotation (real rotation, not shearing) is the most computationally expensive part, too expensive to do between scan lines. So we can be fairly sure that's the part they're doing ahead of time.

My guess is that they're precomputing each "ground" tile at every possible angle of rotation and storing those multiple, rotated versions of each tile in ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

nategri said:
alright who wants to start digging around the graphics hardware?

I'm glad you said "digging into" and not "diving into" because the effect would be not unlike diving into a kiddie pool, haha. There's not much there!

Like most hardware of the era, the Genesis' graphics hardware is pretty basic: several background layers, and 80 sprites. That's it.









But...

Close to literally any special effect you see on 8/16-bit hardware is done through "brute-force" (ie, you getting creative with the CPU) scanline manipulation. ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

I'm so sorry for everybody who feels the pain of losing Corey... and that's a lot of people. I can't really wrap my head around it when somebody young passes away.

Is his family holding up okay as well as can be expected?

This is a reply to the thread "The death of a OB member who was a great friend" by prophetx, posted in Gen. Chat

Kumba said:
I wish the guy had a few pictures of the hardware rig and how he adapted the SNES ROM code to execute on the Genesis processor, because I think the SNES SuperFX chip was a different architecture entirely.

This is only educated conjecture, but I'm quite sure he re-coded it from scratch on the Genesis.

nategri said:
Look-up tables! Look-up tables, everywhere!

Haha yeah, that was my guess as well, based on the clue about it eating up a ton of space on cart!

I'm also not totally sure that's how they did it and/or that's not why it was a memory hog ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

It wasn't slightly faster: it was over twice as fast. We wouldn't say a 700HP car had slightly more horsepower than a 300HP car, right?

Of course, we both know that CPU speed doesn't mean much in a console, with most of the work being done by the graphics chip(s).

What the Genesis's clock speed advantage generally meant in practice was that the Genesis was much better at games where you had a large number of independent sprites moving around - particularly sports games.

I realize many OBers were bullied in gym class and have a panic attack when thinking about sports, and that the cul ...

This is a reply to the thread "Experiment You Can Try At Home" by John Booty, posted in Gen. Chat

So, overall, this season ruled! I'd agree: best season of this series yet.

That final scene with Dany was kind of fucked-up, though. OH, LOOK AT THE WHITE WOMAN, SO PURE, SAVING THE COLORED PEOPLE WHO WERE TOO STUPID TO FREE THEMSELVES UNTIL WHITE MAMMA SHOWED UP.

I actually said to Steph, "The only thing that could make this cheesier is if she crowdsurfs" right before she... crowdsurfed.

Lord_BullGod said:
While I agree with everyone about the torture/gore porn, at this point I'm just all, "It's just HBO"

I think it just stands out more when you've r ...

This is a reply to the thread "HBO's Game of Thrones" by A Study in Pink, posted in Otaku Chat

I love you guys! Though I think I'm more like the guy who sweeps the floor in the bar where you met hahaha

This is a reply to the thread "Call-ins" by Hunky Dory, posted in Gen. Chat

Johnny Landmine said:
This has always been some strange part of its appeal to me..

Absolutely. I mean, as a lone programmer with his own quixotic (and anachronistic, probably, at this point) project I definitely appreciate this aspect of Cave Story.

I've sort of mentally prepared myself to discover, someday, that he at least had some help with the music. I'm not saying he did or even that it's likely that he did. But it wouldn't shock me. I mean: Amaya's only publicly-released musical output happens to be one of the best game soundtracks ever? That's actually too awesome for me ...

This is a reply to the thread "Cave Story" by John Booty, posted in Otaku Chat

I've actually only played the Wii/Mac/Steam "Cave Story+" version which has had the graphics redrawn for 640x480 instead of 320x240.

I keep meaning to try the original. For me the redrawn graphics are still low-enough resolution to keep that "impressionistic" feel of relatively low-tech pixel art. I wonder how you would like it, having spent so much time with the original?

I have spent a lot of time with the original's soundtrack - some days at work I listen to the Cave Story and Cave Story+ soundtracks on endless shuffle as background music while I work. The Cave S ...

This is a reply to the thread "Cave Story" by John Booty, posted in Otaku Chat

Grave said:
If you have an existing website you want to use as reference for your job hunting on an easy to remember domain, go for a personal touch, if not then just use gmail.

John Booty said:
I'm not trying to impress anybody with my email address.

By the way, the only reason I say that is because I work in the tech field and I'm no longer an independent contractor; I'm not representing myself and nobody in this field is going to be impressed I spent five minutes to set up my own email domain.

In your scenario, like you said, going with your own domain makes tot ...

This is a reply to the thread "gmail or personal email?" by A Study in Pink, posted in Gen. Chat

Did you play the PSP version? It looked so weird to me with the fancy visuals. I don't have a PSP and have never played it.

For those not familiar with Cave Story, it is pretty much the ultimate culmination of the "Metroidvania" genre and was pretty much entirely made by a single guy - graphics, music, everything - and is the only full game he's ever made.

Compared to other Metroidvania games, the play mechanics are somewhat unique because you have some pretty powerful weapons. Picture Super Metroid, but your character has the firepower of a guy from Contra or Gunstar Heroes or ...

This is a reply to the thread "Cave Story" by John Booty, posted in Otaku Chat

The frosting on most wedding cakes is fucking bullshit! One forkful and I can hear my pancreas scream: "I fucking give up."

We got much-less-sweet frosting on our wedding cake. This was a good call.

This is a reply to the thread "WEDDING CAKE" by Amanda, posted in Fatty Talk

Growing up, I hated vegetables because my mom basically just boiled all of them and they wound up tasting like shit.

Now I like pretty much everything, even brussels sprouts, except califlower and broccoli. Fukkake is a big reason for that.

This is a reply to the thread "Taste Change" by Quul, posted in Fatty Talk

I think it's great, and will eventually shift some amount of power back into the hands of people. On the other hand, what most people are short on the most is time, not material goods.

We're being pressed to work more hours than ever. For decades we've been trending toward convenience and not home-crafting things.

Printing out clothes and blankets is a nice idea, but we can already get a nice blanket for next to nothing from the store down the road.

3D printing is going to make it easier to create some niche products - things that can't be affordably mass-produced in an economical ...

This is a reply to the thread "3D printing a firearm" by Amanda, posted in News & For Sale

Yeah, I gotta get these working again.

Things have been hectic lately, been traveling on the weekends and dealing w/ Steph's gallbladder and working crazy hours on the weekdays.

What I need to do is ditch that Flash script, convert the mp3's to ogg files, and then just let the browsers' native mp3/ogg support play the files.

This is a reply to the thread "Audio Flags" by tranoidnoki@buttmail.com, posted in Site Issues

Fucking CAVE STORY, guys.

This is the opening post in his thread "Cave Story", posted in Otaku Chat

Things have been hectic lately, but I've been getting a couple workouts a week in, plus the usual exercise from mowing the lawn and walking the dog 2-ish miles a day.

Here's my workout routine. Not like anybody cares, I just want to type it out.

Curls:
10-12 reps each arm, 25 lbs
10-12 reps each arm, 25 lbs
reps until exhaustion, 40 lbs

Pushups:
30-40 pushups divided into 3 sets, I try to vary arm spacing each set

Crunches:
60-80 crunches divided into 3-4 sets

Squats:
12 reps, no weights (but I weight 240lbs, so it's still work! haha)
10 reps w/ 30lb kettlebell
?? reps ...

This is a reply to the thread "Getting small! (OB not-quite-so-fat thread)" by A Study in Pink, posted in Gen. Chat

Always my Gmail address, just because it's easier for them to remember.

I'm not trying to impress anybody with my email address.

This is a reply to the thread "gmail or personal email?" by A Study in Pink, posted in Gen. Chat

I try to use as little A/C as possible.

I'm mostly English/German/Welsh so you know I love cold and not the heat. But I prefer lots of fresh air.

Also, something about air conditioning just lulls me to sleep. When I'm sweating my fucking nuts off inside I figure I might as well go outside and get some exercise, since I'm sweating my nuts off either way.

This is a reply to the thread "Quitting Air Conditioning" by Somebody, posted in Gen. Chat

As of last year, Verizon could detect the tethering pretty easily and were redirecting you to a page that prompted you to upgrade your plan.

http://gizmodo.com/tag/verizon-jailbreak-tethering-ban

I swear I remember reading that one of the carriers had actually started adding a clause to their contracts that allowed them to auto-upgrade you to a tethering account (and charge you accordingly) if you jailbreak-tethered. But I can't find a reference to that now.

This is a reply to the thread "Tethering. Legal?" by tranoidnoki@buttmail.com, posted in Otaku Chat

Put A Bird On It! said:
I think this was more to simplify things for future seasons than to be an even bigger fuck you to the Starks. In the books Jeyne isn't there and lives on, so she keeps popping up in various places but never in an important way that affects ...

There's plenty of ways to write Jeyne/Talisa out without pregnant belly-stabbing, such as having her not be pregnant or not having her specifically be stabbed in the belly.

That's why I think it's bizarre and absolutely gratuitous that the show's writers were like, "No! we specifically need some pregnant bell ...

This is a reply to the thread "HBO's Game of Thrones" by A Study in Pink, posted in Otaku Chat

You are such a good dude. I hate that you are hurting like this. It's not fair to you. Argh.

This is a reply to the thread "There was a fire @my home ystdy when I wasnt there" by Amberwolf, posted in Gen. Chat

Scientists recommend having as many kids as possible in case you fuck some of them.

This is a reply to the thread "Pregnant ladies: have a beer" by Kirei the Klown, posted in News & For Sale