Jump to content

pxi

Members
  • Posts

    571
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by pxi

  1. 22 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

    Though we installed electrical power and water to the structure we don’t have a phone line or Ethernet cable but we’ll have to see what can be done. Though running an Ethernet cable through the same line shouldn’t be too troublesome as long as there’s enough room.

    Just a couple of things to think about -

    CAT5 cable can be susceptible to electromagnetic interference when run alongside power cables for long distances.  You do have versions of CAT5+ that are better shielded than normal, though they are more expensive.  Just don't run your cables right alongside the power if you can avoid it.

    Be aware of the max distance you can run a CAT5 cable - 100m.  Be absolutely sure you use solid-core cable, as the maximum length on stranded cable used for patch leads is far lower. If your run exceeds 100m that you're going to be looking at repeaters or moving to something like fibre.

    On the upside, if you only want/need 100Mbps ethernet, you can get away with wiring up pins 1, 2, 3 and 6, and using the remaining pairs for the phone line.  (You can also buy ethernet splitters that will do the same job, but really two dual-socket faceplates will perform the same function and will likely be cheaper.

  2.  

    11 hours ago, UomoCapra said:

    Patch 1.4.4 is on its way and with it various improvements and fixes such as language corrections, FX improvements, and more! As part of our commitment to continue supporting and improving upon KSP, 1.4.4 will add some cool and previously unavailable Steam functionalities that will enhance the KSP experience to users of this platform.

    And you're planning on removing RedShell when exactly?

  3. On 3/30/2018 at 3:12 PM, HebaruSan said:

    My advice is to make nice with the previous crew rather than antagonizing them. There's no good ending for this if you get into an edit-revert war.

    (I.e., somebody's at risk of getting banned, and the existing admins are probably safer than some new arrival who's fighting with them.)

    I kind of have to go along with this.

    Furthermore, hearing that you were able to be given control over someone's wiki so easily likely ensures I will *never* use wikia.  If other admins are popping up after *a day* and reverting edits, the wiki has clearly not been abandoned, regardless of what a lack of activity might imply.

    I'm not implying any wrongdoing here on your part, but i'm frankly surprised you were able to gain control over an existing wiki with so little effort.  Imagine the same situation happening if you don't keep updating the site on a regular schedule (perhaps there might simply be no need to update it), and along comes another person who emails their support and says "gimme".

  4. It's sad.

    Zombie remains as an absolutely fantastic song with a very pointedly political message, yet delivered in such a way that you could conceivably not even notice it, especially without the benefit of the video.

    They had other popular songs for sure, at the time they got a hell of a lot of airplay as well, but that song in particular arrived in the charts right as the peace process really got going in ernest, and will forever serve as a cultural touchpoint for that piece of Irish history.

    People (myself included) often throw out the phrase that xyz helped to define a generation, but that particular song really did.

  5. Just now, Nuke said:

    i was under the impression that copywrite law actually required rights holders to actively defend those rights, where failure to do so results in defacto forfeiture. 

    It's at this point you'd have to be a copyright lawyer to answer that, but I was under the impression that what you're referring to actually involves trademarks, not copyright.

  6. 4 hours ago, Nuke said:

    i think its also legal to rip games that you cant buy anymore, as these are considered abandonware.

    By rip i presume you mean download?

    Outside of cases where the rights holders have actually given permission for their stuff to be distributed (which has happened fairly frequently as some of the 'abandonware' groups have made considerable efforts to clear things in this regard) I really don't think this is the case.  Copyright doesn't expire just because someone is not profiting off of something.  And let's not pretend in an era of ebay and a healthy second-hand sales market that it's impossible to buy many of these games, it's more an issue that the rights-holder will not see any of that money.

  7. 8 minutes ago, Nuke said:

    being able to dump games is significantly easier with cd based consoles. rom dumpers are usually not that expensive if you have a large library of games to dump. 

    Agreed, depending on the console some of it can be done with as little as your standard cd/dvd drive.  On the cart end, there are also options like the Retron 5 which allegedly can be modified to perform that function as well.

    edit:

    And even outside of the legality of the process, from a software preservation point of view there is good reason to encourage as many people to do it as possible, there are still previously-unknown revisions of games popping up regularly, and a huge swathe of games that have been dumped incorrectly.  I've come across five Wii European titles in my collection that are listed as missing in the redump databases in the short time that I've been looking into it.

  8. On 11/21/2017 at 12:17 AM, Red Shirt said:

    Moving on to Project64 emulator. How well does it work at running Nintendo64 games on PC? There was a racing game (Beetle Adventure Racing) that we always found fun but the battery died in the cartridge with no easy way to replace.

    Let's say N64 emulation in general is 'reasonable'.  I personally find it good enough for the most part, others would disagree.  The main issue imo is trying to replicate the N64's gamepad layout on a common (think xbox) controller - there's simply no way I've found to map those buttons in a way that feels good.  The common consensus seems to be to map the yellow buttons to the right analog stick, but that really feels off to me, but it does seem to be the way a lot of people do it.  How much this affects you will greatly depend on the game though.

    As an aside, you may run into claims about Project 64 containing malware.  There was a kernel of truth to this at one point - the installer was bundled with adware once upon a time, but this is no longer the case.  You will however start to notice a nag screen asking you to register the program after running it a few times.  This is easily sorted by editing the configuration file, looking for a line that says 'run count' (or words to that effect) and setting the value to -1.

    On 11/21/2017 at 12:17 AM, Red Shirt said:

    Before looking into the legality (which is probably obvious - but maybe not) I want to see if this is even worth proceeding.

    The legality is reasonably straightforward.  (Standard IANAL disclaimer applies.)

    Emulation in principle and individual emulators themselves are legal.  This was established with the Sony vs Bleem lawsuit back in the 90's.  Downloading stuff off the internet and using it on an emulator is not.  There is no if and or but with that.  It doesn't matter if you own the cart, you are not making a backup by downloading stuff off the internet.  If you do own the cart or disk etc, you need to dump it yourself, which requires you to possess the means to do that, be it a rom dumper, modified console or whatever.  There is no shortcut to this.

  9. On 10/4/2017 at 11:15 PM, juanml82 said:

    You will find, for instance, that you can find a lot of old SNES roms in non warez sites, but you'll have a hard time finding a reputable site distributing Super Mario Bros SNES games, which are being sold by Nintendo to this date.

    Small point of order here: literally 99% of the sites where you'll find SNES (and other) roms are warez sites in all but the name.  The reason you won't find Nintendo first-party games on a lot of them is that Nintendo occasionally (as happened recently) goes on a copyright takedown spree.  Very little of what is available is true abandonware, you will find that for example SEGA still sell a huge amount of their back-catalogue through Steam, as well as other distribution methods like the virtual console.  The same is true for a large amount of the Neo Geo and Atari librarys.  Individual publishers like Namco and Taito frequently publish anthologies of their older games as well.  You will find all of this freely available if you spend even a small amount of time looking online.

    The difference is that in general Nintendo seem to be the company most interested in actually enforcing their copyright.

  10. You might want to have a look at this thread a quick web search threw up: https://forums.evga.com/GTX-780-and-Ti-for-SLI-m2153776.aspx

    The tl;dr is that the two cards likely wouldn't work in a SLI configuration (which is what I presume you mean by a bridge) unless they're of the same DEV number.

    As for DirextX12, I can't speak to that as I really don't know the ins and outs of it, but if it does allow you to use 2 different graphics cards outside of SLI, you'd still be limited to games that use DirectX12.

    Also you include cost of installation.  You are aware that you'd be paying $40 to have someone unscrew a couple of screws, take the side off your computer, plug the card in, and re-assemble?  Not my place to tell you how to spend your money, but it's a process that's easily doable by the end-user imo.

  11. 2 hours ago, c4ooo said:

    What about removing the microphone? Quite frankly if i was a hacker, looking at someone's face as they use the ipad would be very boring. Sound would be much more interesting/useful.

    Wouldn't disagree with that either.

  12. 2 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

    When a 6-digit odometer hits 1000000 km, it rolls back to 0 km. Bam! Integer overflow.

    Ok I'll grant you that.

    The question though is whether internally on the board Asteroids is actually rolling the score variable back to zero when the million hundred-thousand point threshold is passed.  My suspicion would be that the score continues to increment, but the display is only showing the last six five digits.  Consider my reasoning.  1 million 100,000 is not a significant number in computing like say 256 or 65536.  There is no reason for the number to overflow because you are hitting a bit-length limit.

    For all intents and purposes, yes you can probably consider it to be an overflow condition, but I really doubt it has anything to do with the limitations of 8-bit programming.

  13. 4 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

    That was the problem with older games and the 8-bit programming. That is called integer overflow.

    The high score wrapping back to 000000 when you hit a million points isn't a case of integer overflow afaik.  An 8-bit number covers from 0-255.  What you're seeing there is a case where they simply didn't include enough digits to show the score, likely because at the time such scores were thought to be impossible.

    You are correct about the Pac-Man Kill Screen though.  Other examples of this can be seen in Donkey Kong, Galaga and Dig Dug.

  14. 3 hours ago, Rosco P. Coltrane said:

    I've been buying lots of those games in Steam or GOG out of moral principle, and while trying them on the 'puter... I have to say, there is no way in hell a PC can compete with an arcade for this type of games. It just doesn't cut it, the feeling is not there. When I stand in front of the arcade I'm 14 again, I have homework I'm not doing, I know my mom will ask why I'm late... but I'm not paying for the tokens this time around. :D

    You need one (or more) of these:

    hori-real-arcade-pro-v3-sa-review-201002

    Model shown (Hori RAP V3-SA) is the one I have (actually I have 2, and I'm still kind of kicking myself that I didn't buy the other two that the local Gamestop were selling off cheap @ €40 each) all Sanwa parts internally which is what you'll find in the majority of Japanese cabs.  For fighting games they do take a little getting used to when you're used to gamepads, but once you get it, there's no going back.

  15. 3 hours ago, Castille7 said:

    This would be interesting to me but the Video is blocked in the USA. Maybe we can find a substitute? I'll try when I have a chance

    There's plenty of copies uploaded to youtube, likely you can find one that isn't blocked.  It's not a 100% accurate retelling of events from what I gather - some of the footage was edited in such a way as to ham up the antagonism between Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell - but it's an interesting glimpse into the culture nonetheless.

  16. Given that we're discussing Arcade Games, games arcades, high scores and the like, it occurred to me that some might be interested in the documentary "The King of Kong".

     

  17. I'm old enough to remember when arcades were actually arcades, and not 90% claw machines and coin pushers.  It was rare that I had the cash to spend any significant time in them though.

    I don't really have the space for one but I'd love to get hold of a Capcom Z-back cabinet - basically the iconic Street Fighter 2 style cabinet for anyone that doesn't know - good looking and designed for day-to-day operation, board swapping etc. to be performed from the front.

    It's nice to see that barcades are now beginning to fill the gap left by traditional arcades, the overwhelming majority of the games are easilly available for play in various forms, but the cabinets themselves are pieces of computing history that needs preserving.  People like John Jacobsen (http://www.youtube.com/user/blkdog7) are doing sterling work in that regard.

  18. From what I gather, he got banned from Roblox.  This is made worse because as far as I can ascertain, his account had some sort of lifetime perk applied to it which seems to have been rather costly to get.

    All in all it's a lesson in why they don't hand the nuclear codes over to anyone who just wants to take a selfie with  them.

  19. 4 hours ago, MedwedianPresident said:

    I think it'll be a bot answer anyway. A random algorithm chooses 2% of the appeals to be accepted, maybe.

    The reply you get will likely be a copy-pasted standard response.

    A bot that randomly unbans 2% of whoever asks?  Does that really sound likely to you?

×
×
  • Create New...