Unprofessional Fridays: 02/17/2017

who is that between Brad and Dan taped to the TV in the back? Is that Klepek?

I used to make high end audio cables for concerts and whatever... they're so cheap to make and they charge a fortune for them. Sometimes you'd cut through the insulation on multicore cables and they'd be useless, I'd cut the ends off, they'd be smaller but make them up and take them home lol. I've got a box in the attic full of all sorts of high end cables that they would have sold for tens of thousands. They were essentially worthless to them as due to the mistake they'd be too short, but also scrap copper covered in insulation isn't worth much at all.

When I was building all the stage lighting equipment as well, the company would use the cheapest possible materials and it was just such tat to me... I'd then visit their site and see how much they were charging for it.... mental.

Cables are so easy to make though, people should really make their own as it is dirt cheap.

The monitors you buy still have like 5ms of latency even on the high end 144hrz ones. I'm no expert but when you see the latency figures, they don't advertise averages, only peaks and they only advertise one type of latency, but the site I go to has like 3 types it then adds together. I remember the Sony 1080p TVs towards the end of the 1080p days a few years ago got down to like 10-16ms and that's amazing. Sadly now though all the 4K TVs are 40-150ms lol, those LG OLEDs were like 70ms in game mode and above 100 in the mode that actually looks good. The lowest I've seen is that Samsung KS8000 which was around 22ms, my Sony 4K TV is 30ms.

Sony killed Playstation Mobile on the Vita a couple years ago and it killed the Vita for me as I loved that. It essentially turned every Vita into a dev kit and it has Unity 4 support, sadly Unity 5 didn't come to Vita because they said there's no point now Sony killed PSM off...

Such a dumb move from them, but it also proved Sony don't care about the Vita.

It basically looks like a 3D version of Happy Wheels. Pretty shameless.

Rest assured, Rorie. we are thinking about your presidents a LOT lately.

God those pixels are juicy

If Oh, Dear comes out this year, it's an early contender for Best Soundtrack. That thing bumps.

So for the idea of naming games that feature oldschool tech running on modern computing power; I'm not 100% sure but I'm trying to think of an elegant riff on retrofuturism.

Retrofuturism being the concept in fiction of past societies with technology past their time. Like Victorian England with spaceships, or the Bakumatsu with steam powered Mecha. Rome with cellphones.

So games designed as if it's the 90's but running on 2017 CPU power, only with no knowledge of post 90's game design or graphical evolution to go with it. Retrofuturism.

video player running like shit.

off to kodi.

I love Rorie.

All the USB problems, the disconnects, fiddling with connectors are caused by Windows 10. Install Windows 7 and get rid of all your USB problems.

@el_dude_a_reno: Gotta agree here too. So many long freezes. Sometimes it wouldn't restart unless I used the slider. Augh.

Where's the sniper elite quick look!!! Where's my content!!!!!!!

I booted Blast Corps up in an emulator with a 360 pad and I was surprised at how well it controlled, actually. Felt really solid.

@justin258: I think it was a joke

Spicy hot take: I never really cared for Mario 64. It's a landmark game for a good reason, and was ultra-impressive in its day (seriously, if you weren't around for the Mario 64 hype, you wouldn't believe how awed we were by it), but I always hated how it controlled.

Disc Jam is fun, it's just that not enough people are playing it at least on PS4.

Once again, the people trying to make a new Windjammers don't get it.

It's about the snappiness of popping up a disc with perfect timing. The explosive energy when returning a volley. The world shakes when a disc crashes from wall to wall into the net. The music is lively and exciting.

When you're trying to recreate something emotionally resonant, something like this is the video game equivalent of re-making Jurassic Park with just dinosaurs and no people.

That Injustice wrap up was pro. I watched it in hopes of seeing a panicked evacuation and running for the hills but it ended with no hint of impending slab doom.

I don't know why but this comment reminded me of Dan's young self rap video epiphany

Wait, I've used ZSNES for the past 15 years or so; what exactly was Jeff talking about?

so what you're basically saying is don't bother trying.

Hah, that bone scanning virus episode Rorie mentioned made me finally stop watching Bones. So bad it's great!

Jay, just Google/YT "zsnes exploit"

Disc Jam is a lot of fun. I'm thankful that it was brought to my attention on this ep.

@justin258: Agreed to draw more notice to this message. There is very clear microphone peaking going on.

I hate to say I kind of agree...Rorie is kind of a downer. He seems like a great guy. I just don't enjoy listening to his stories...

I don't know if my New Orleanian tolerance for spiciness carries over to hot takes but I'm not all that amazed by that statement.

I and at least a few friends of mine feel the same about it.

I remember as a kid being stoked to finally try out an N64 outside of store demos when a friend of mine got one. First thing I wanted to see was Mario 64.

And sure, initially it was mind blowing seeing Mario in a legit [not just SM RPG] 3D world. But this was after I'd spent a good amount of time on a PlayStation and my dad's PC. So it just never hooked me.

My request that Christmas was for a PSX of my own, making the SNES my last nintendo console. Don't get me wrong, I checked out every one that came out after the N64. I was always at least intrigued. They just continued to do nothing for me. Console after console, Mario and Zelda games after Mario and Zelda games, gimmick after gimmick, I never really cared for any of it.

The Switch might break that pattern for me, but I'm really waiting to see more of its games before I make that call. It's hard to separate hype from reality these days. We'll see soon enough.

Completely agree with this. Kind of hoping there will be less Rorie when they get a new personality on the west coast.

@vengeful_pandaI think he has a very dry sense of humour, I find him entertaining

Refaux.

That's what they should call it.

@bezieh: I agree. I always enjoy when he's on. Not digging the constant complaints/negativity about him.

UltraHDMI mod for N64 is the best picture you can get. Better than rgb mod + xrgb mini. Also very expensive and limited availability.

A Mario 64 ER would be awesome

What the fuck this video almost destroyed my speakers

@shiztoid: Ah, good. I was worried it was my equipment.

@vengeful_panda said:

He can come off as a bit full-of-himself and elitist, even if he doesn't mean to, but I enjoy what he adds to the group. I definitely prefer him as a "side character" though. Like, it's a special event when he's included; not "oh god, yet another week without one of our four main staff let's get Rorie in here"

That all said, he's a different person when he's focused on just talking about a subject and was really excellent on Screened. It's too bad how that site went down as he and Alex were doing great work there, but then again maybe we'd never have GB East without it and Vinny would have just quit or something to move to NYC. So, it all works out in the end. Anyway, just wanted to chime in since I'd feel bad for Rorie if he just saw the negative comments. We appreciate you, Rorie!

@jaypb08 said:

This, I think. Nasty stuff.

Oh, and @drewbert, maybe you've already found this in your Framemeister/RGB research, but it's possible to remove some N64 blur these days.

As I understand it, there are three main causes of N64 blurriness:

1. Low-resolution textures stretched too far, due to limited cartridge size and 4KB (per-surface?) texture cache. Not much you can do about this on real hardware, but people have created high-resolution texture packs for use with emulators.
2. Anti-aliasing, enabled by software. People have managed to patch this out of many games, and on real hardware you can use GameShark codes or run patched ROMs off a flash cart. Apparently some games even get a very slight frame rate boost with anti-aliasing disabled!
3. Hardware horizontal blurring, separate from the above and not controllable by software. The UltraHDMI and recent revisions of Tim Worthington's N64RGB can disable this blurring.

Haven't tried any of the above though. I performed a simpler RGB mod on my original-model N64 a while ago, before these fancier blur-reducing options were available. It definitely results in more vibrant colours than s-video, and I have to imagine the newer options would look at least as good as what I've got.

S-video from an N64 is "fine" though, if you've no interest in hardware modding... Better than the stock composite cables, at least.

@rorie Fantasy Flight games makes a pretty good Star Wars card game now. It's what they call a "Living Card Game" (LCG), in that every month they come out with a pack of new cards that everyone get access to. There's no collecting or hunting for rare cards, so it's an even playing field.

If you want some collecting craziness, they just put out a game called Star Wars Destiny, that is a hybrid card and dice game. It's stupidly popular at the moment and the supply and demand has driven the prices way up.

Did the coins in Super Mario 64 always look that cool? Maybe nostalgia regarding anything Mario has finally hit me, but I kinda wish Nintendo went back to the older coins...

Super Mario 64 is probably still my favorite game.

When you read the comments you mostly find the Negative Nancies™. No point in complaining and calling out one man in particular like this. I always enjoy Rories presence on the show.

That was a great episode. I normally don't watch them all the way through, but I enjoyed all the games played here. Some interesting discussion and stories too.

Man, people are mean to Rorie, though. I hope he doesn't read the comments. But just in case he does:

Rorie, you're awesome. (Even though you went to Tech! haha, just kidding.)

Disc Jam looks like it could be neat, but the perspective is not great. It's also highly disappointing that there is an in-game supported method of saying "rekt," as Rorie briefly discovered. That's just stupid. The first doubles match with Jeff and Drew was hard to watch when they were more focused on the Switch discussion than on the game. I get they need to do more than just play the game, but it makes for bad video sometimes.