Windows 11 delenda est. Also inb4 "don't".

I feel like bluestacks used to be better but it gives off weird scuffed fremium windows software stink now. What's the best way to run Android apps on an x86-64 computer?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3426878

Electric Underground is a funny guy, he's basically a "we must retvrn to arcade games" guy which is funny. He has a consistent framework for viewing gamerslop though and hits some pretty good mechanical discussion and critique here.

You remember Oblivion from back in the day. It's worse than Morrowind in a lot of ways but the real-time day-night cycle and the NPC movement was engrossing. Quests where you have to go find people, and they can be in tons of locations are so interesting. Sometimes you have to figure out when someone goes home, Idk. Also characters would occasionally exhibit quirky behaviours. Every subsequent Bethesda game diminished this aspect hugely, it's one of the things I hate about Skyrim most.

Another series where the games never hit an early height of world sim again is Pokemon. Gold & Silver introduced day and night cycles that would have NPCs appear or disappear, wild pokemon encounters change, radio stations come on or off, certain items show up. For a system with 32kb of ram, it slapped. Other games have the cycle system but it's easily the most pronounced in G/S/C.

The "life sim"/'you are a loser farmer' genre as pioneered by Harvest Moon (and now happily overtaken by Stardew Valley and its ilk) have always had this kind of system, and I do like those a lot but if a game's not "about" its scheduling, it seems like they're more likely not to have it nowadays. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels had day/night at least, Metro did not... So if you know of any recent games that have really cool scheduling or realtime or day/night mechanics, hit me up. Also don't say Cybertruck'd 2077, game is boring and stupid :)

I made the apocalyptic mistake of making a genzedong xyz account through the Matrix site, and it's one of those things that requires the blood of a virgin and the tail feather of a phoenix or whatever, and will spit out most passwords with that is a very common password. I fucked up by not writing it down, even though you aren't supposed to, so now I have forgotten it.

I click "Password forgotten" in fluffychat.im/web/#/home and when I enter my email as prompted, I get an "unrecognised request" error. So I tried adding a recovery email from the Android app, from Settings > Security > Change Password > Password recovery and pressing the + button. This produces an Untrusted server " error, very good quotes use. I tried several email domains and no dice.

I beg of you to help. It would be cool if recovery email actually worked.

And it has all kinds of implications and context and shit.

How the fuck am I supposed to tell what's just people doing things at random and what's a part of all-singing-all-dancing-shit-show the neurotypicals call "social norms"? Down with NTs.

Honestly while it's really fucking annoying that refusal to participate could result in some silly neuronormo interpreting a completely innocuous action as an offense, and it can cut you off from social shit, I think it's basically the only way. The same button never does the same thing twice. Screeching rn.

And why grinding shouldn't exist. No, I will not stop, I can't sleep.

Playing Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis on GBA has me thinking about this again: it absolutely blows me away to this day that I played a huge amount of Tactics Ogre(TO) on PS1 but could not get past the battle in Dorter where you see the swordsman guy. Got decimated by blackmages and archers. That's still the tutorial. You can't even buy gear for classes other than Squires yet. And I was at the same level as the enemy.

I got roadblocked like this in Tacitcs Ogre: Wheel of Fortune on PSP as well, because really what the hell? What on earth was wrong with Training?

So I get that the Training Battles from original TO are a cludge of a thing. Yes, it is kind of weird to set the game down and let it play itself to level your units. Probably shouldn't exist, sure. The removal of this in every subsequent Yasumi Matsuno tactics game really shows off exactly why it was there, though: grinding in an SRPG is fuckin stupid. Quick question: how good would XCOM be if a story mission wiped your squad in two turns and told you to go grind random worldmap battles? Not fun! This is what Final Fantasy Tactics, (FFT) and also TO Wheel of Fortune and Reborn, actually expect you to do, apparently. Every time I have asked, this is the answer: grind random battles.

Grinding is kind of stupid in any game, "you must advance to arbitrary number to continue". Some of it happens because a designer can't really predict how a player will level, but whatever, it's something to be done away with. Turn based RPGs that don't suck commonly integrate Auto Battle so that if you need to grind it's quicker. And turn based RPGs usually have battles that can go by in a minute or two.

Battles were already kind of slow in TO, but in FFT they're excruciating. Lots of stuff is slower, with bigger fancier animations, the camera always swings around, so on. It makes a nine-tile magic spell in TO look fast. So immediately this is a dumb waste of time that takes forever, even before the XP curve forces you to do several. But also, that early in the game, when you only have squires, FFT is shockingly rude. I didn't take any deaths but I came close many times. Battling those dumb forest creatures is a real slog at that point, which is why I gave up last time. Like, fuck any game that tells me to go grind tedious battles for literal hours before the tutorial is up.

It also doesn't help that I think every single other element of FFT is worse than TO, that's just a bonus. Why is gear locked to classes? Is it such a problem if a Knight uses a shortsword, for fuck's sake? It limits your class choices to whatever is available in the shop basically. I thought switching my Squires to Knights might help me through that battle, but oops no gear at all!

Why is the squad size six tops and as small as four? Pokemon parties are larger. I can't do anything, how can I split my forces for instance to do a basic pincer when each formation has at max three guys? Every early battle is "turtle up around spawn and let the enemy come to you", riveting.

Why are the battlefields so small? 16×16? The GBA game has battlefields that are larger. Hell, TO has battlefields that are larger... I miss the huge castle ramparts with pockmarked fields leading up to a drawbridge, actually organic believable environments. (For an isometric game) There's never any room to get away... As a result of this movement and attack ranges are limited heavily as well.

Why is healing a throwable? I know there'd be healing magic later but having early game healing be dependent on throwing potions is just hateful. I miss Kachua, who limps you through early TO with extreme range heals, to help get your game started.

Why is magic awful? What are those mages actually doing? They put their hands up, a marker appears at Ramza's feet, and in a turn he goes up in flames. What kinda shit is this? How the hell do you counter that?

Why are Matsuno and the gang so obsessee with SKILLS? Take away a core mechanic, make it a SKILL!!! In TO everyone could throw stones, block hits, counterattack. Now all of that has to be specced into with skills? Which are classlocked? I really hate this to death, seriously. When every unit can counterattack, battles are deadly and you have to consider the counter before going in for a move. I miss it, now you can just bonk half the time.

Why is Wait Turn gone? This is a niche one but Wait Turn is so cool because your character's class, stats and equipment all affect it, so while it's innate to an extent you can influence it, move faster. Have lightweight, weakly-armoured high-speed killsquads. FFT's turns are just decided by speed like it's Shining Force II, which is fine I guess I just miss Wait Turn.

The end result is that I have the single dumbest take online: Tactics Ogre Good, Final Fantasy Tactics bad. I hear it said constantly that FFT is designed for beginners, but how? I have played many tactics games (Tactics Ogre, XCOM EU and 2, Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates, Shining Force Sword of Hajya, Valkyria Chronicles) and somehow I get stopped like five hours in. Real video game???

Even though a Skyrim or a Sonic Adventure 2 or an Assassin's Creed 1 are way worse games that are way worse to play, and I really do not like them at all, Final Fantasy Tactics frustrates me infinitely. It really makes my lil gamer peabrain angry. It's such a slam-dunk idea: graft the Final Fantasy job system onto Tactics Ogre. Awesome! But they seem to have fucked it up in basically every possible way and now I have this game that I hate. Grrrr, why?

How do I enjoy FFT?

Cannot sleep to save myself so-

WHAT'S UP EVERYBODY, Wii U gang here again I put some mGBA on my Wii U so I could try Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis on it. If you haven't read my Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together post, go make a meal and spend a few hours, y'know just for context. Lmao.

Easily the single biggest disappointment with the game is the Disappearance of Wait Turn. WT is easily one of the coolest things about Ogre Tactics and the rolling turn order is super fucking awesome, hardcore as shit, it's punches you gotta roll with but you can also influence it. Knight of Lodis just kinda gives up... it has Fire Emblem style PLAYERPHASE/ENEMYPHASE alternating turns where you can move any unit in whatever order. This is lame but not a dealbreaker.

The UI and interactions/controls have also been necessarily crunched in the move from Super Famicom to GBA. Some of it is beneficial, like just A/B is easier than the original game's mix of A to select and B/X to cancel... but also movement is a little clunky now, and you cannot attack then move, only move then attack.

Surprisingly enough though basically everything else has been retained. It's still the same type of turn-based tactical, unit-positioning-critical, height-advantage-heavy, physics-inflected battles from Let Us Cling Together, with none of the ugly messy changes the remakes made. The four "freely customisable" equip slots are still there, so you can load down a unit with whatever, hawkmen are still beloved, you can still do automated Training to assuage any grinding, there are "emblems" in place of the later Classmarks, but not all classes require them so there is still some degree of free switching. There is an entirely new set of magic but it works more like LUCT than the remakes' magic. It is cast in a very similar mold to LUCT.

The game is gorgeous; it reuses some assets from (the village houses) and has similar looking sprites to the Super Famicom game, (comically the main guy's overworld/combat sprite looks like Dark Knight Lans) but the 240×160 resolution hasn't caused any damage to Quest's superb sense of visual design. All the art is beautiful, the character sprites still have exactly as much animation and expression complexity as in Let Us Cling Together, and the cutscenes are pretty much on par. It's technically very close to LUCT.

That also (I guess) means it kinda runs like shit; I think Quest Corp was not very good at coding (or bug testing? optimisation?) because it seems like most of their games have bugs or technical problems. Knight of Lodis mostly has obnoxiously long 'CPU IS THINKING...' wait hangs before enemy movement, and animations that refresh at inconsistent speeds. Not very performant.

The story also isn't up to much: it's kinda like the Korean War if Worst Korea hated the US. You play as a USMC recruit (Knight of Lodis) sent to the island of Ovis, long an imperial Lodis "protectorate", to "peace-keep" in a brewing conflict where the northern half of the island (sovereign, indepentent, ostensibly bad) seems to be agitating and skirmishing. Allegedly. I wonder how long it will take the protagonist to merc his commanding officer. The writing is a bit more obvious than LUCT but oh well honestly.

I was really incredibly buttmad at almost every gameplay change they made to Wheel of Fortune and Reborn, but that's mostly because they were mucking around with an objectively perfect and completely flawless game. When it comes to a different game though, I think it's fine to play with the mechanice somewhat. While the omission of Wait Turn sucks, I'm honestly pretty pleased with how much of LUCT is retained within The Knight of Lodis. Given the limitations of the GBA, it's a pretty darn good rendition. Kinda cute. Playing Ogre makes me happy as fuck, I was getting my ass beat by the enemy's archers and having to fight my way uphill and levelling my lil dudes up a bunch, oh man I just fuckin love Tactics Ogre so much. How wonderful of Yasumi Matsuno and the game to make two of them!!! Literal Tactics Ogre 2: The Pre-Squeakwuel!!!!!

Sorry Thracia 776, you got mogged by Ogre Tactics' little bro. Next time, promise.

Go ahead and shadowdrop this you COWARDS.

Map and stat screens down the right side of the gameplay window. Thumbstick inputs for the touchscreen gimmick stuff in Dawn of Sorrow.

There's almost nothing in this that you can't get out of just plugging these roms into MelonDS. Hell, the Definitive Edition patch for Dawn of Sorrow is better, removing the touchscreen elements and anime portraits.

Another Konami L, smh.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3263596

Assuming it even comes out. I know there are some gender-related mods and stuff for Stardew Valley, and Stardew itself was a huge leap over the enforced disheteronormativity of Harvest Moon. I would like it if Haunted Choclatier was more "woke".

Good ol' buttcraft

I don't really mean in terms of mods, but like go off if you wanna. I'm a lifelong Minecraft enjoyer, played it basically from Alpha right up to release, and dropped off around 1.2ish. I've played it in bursts again over the years, but the more weird stuff they add the more weirded out I feel. I just wanna build houses with sloping rooves, sheesh... It does kind of make me wanna just give up and play Legacy Console on Wii U or something weird.

[Minecraft boomer alert I guess]

I don't totally hate what they've done with the game itself but it's clear that the launcher is a lost cause. Plus how does Java chug this badly on a Ryzen 2600? I have to choose between a performance mod that makes the game run, or pad support, because one of them uses Fabric and the other uses the other thing. Remember when Minecraft mods was just dumping .jar files into the game's directory?

I mean to ask, what is the way cool kids play Minecraft nowadays? Are there cool alternative launchers or modpaks or a specific version or whatever I can play that's cooler than Microsoft Occupied Minecraft and are more fun?

As preface, nobody who actually cares about games gives a shit about 240p on a cathode ray tube display, and any well-adjusted person will simply play Playstation games via Duckstation or something instead. That is the way to do it.

If you suck and you're me though, you might have found one of those 30" Toshiba TVs with the Orion tubes from like 2000 for free and decided to do something about it. Aside from CRTs being basically cooler OLEDs (deep deep contrast, bright colours, but also instant response time) 240p is actually pretty funny looking. There's nothing wrong with playing these games on a flatpanel with scanlines, some scanline settings and filters are actually very good. But look at these progressively drawn lines of phosphorescent light:

So maybe if you're as deranged as I am, you wanna play Playstation games with black inbetween every line on this radiation phosphor machine, how do? There's no way to load PS1 backups from a hard drive or SD card on a FreeMcBoot PS2 that I know of, (if possible please hmu) and while modern x86 PCs can be made to output 240p it's kind of a bear involving goofy software config and a weird component converter. You can buy a Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 or Orange Pi, which have composite video out that is pretty good and can do 240p. There are even LakkaTV builds for 240p for these things.

But to my mind, the most efficient option is Wiistation. If you're a you probably have at least one Wii sitting around. I have three, one of which I found in a literal garbage bin at my last job. Your Wii has also possibly been supplanted: not only is Dolphin a really good emulator, but also a Wii U can do absolutely anything a Wii can on a flatpanel. But for whatever reason, the Wii U does not do 240p, where the Wii does.

If you look around on useless loser spots like stormfront, the "common knowledge" is that the Wii is 'just not cut out for PS1 emulation'. This was true back when WiiSXR was the only option, akin to how Wii64 is not very good. But since 2022, some utter nerd has been patching up that PCSX fork as WiiStation and it's actually really good.

It has HID controller support, so you can hook up a Dualshock 3 for some authenticity but the Wii Classic Controller Pro stands in for a PS1 Dualshock pretty well. It has disc swapping, tons of options, and it keeps getting cool and funny updates that make it perform better. Most recent one came out in March.

I have tested WiiStation with a bunch of hard to run (for low-end systems) Playstation games, like Vagrant Story, the original Driver, Klonoa Door to Phantomile, Metal Gear Solid, Ridge Racer Type 4, Wipeout 3 SE all work great at 100% speed. So what doesn't work? Tekken 3 drops the occasional frame (down to 59.10fps) but is mostly pretty good, Neversoft's PS1 Spider-Man is a shockingly difficult game to run and tanks into the 40fps zone routinely. It's been performing better as the dev improves CDDA streaming and stuff but it's a torture test for this emulator.

WiiStation also has pretty much the same compatibility issues as PCSX: you'll remember from this essay that the Playstation version of classic alltime great Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is a hacked together mess full of fucked up code. It runs pretty well on WiiStation, but still spits out "Failed to load save." when loading any save from memcard. Idk what is wrong with PCSX's save format, but you could use savestates exclusively to get through. I might submit an issue on the github to be hilarious about it.

Wii homebrew development is extremely sleepy at the moment and nobody really talks about it, so it's not surprising that WiiStation flew under the radar. The Wii already has a killer niche as a dirt-cheap 240p gaming machine to hook up to a CRT for NES, Master System, Mega Drive, and SNES stuff, so to me adding "it's a pretty dang good Playstation as well" to its resume is funny. I like that about it.

I was watching "...why Skyrim?" by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it's so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn't enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It's so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!

Bethesda hasn't made a really good game since 2002, but it'll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.