Games

Detroit: Become Human

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Detroit: Become Human is one of the more emotional games that I’ve ever played. As a story-based adventure game, it’s superb.

Connor the Deviant Runner, Kara the mother, Markus the revolutionary. Each character’s story twists and turns and entwines until by the end they veer off again but continue to be influenced by the choices that lead them, your choices.

I found the story very emotion provoking. Kara’s story especially resonated, and I think perhaps she is the most human. Connor’s story splits down the middle. Whether you choose to role play or be yourself eventually his paths will make you decide who he really is. Faced with Android slavery, Markus can follow a path that would make MLK proud or paint the streets in blood, or somewhere in between. It’s left up to you and many a quick time event.

As a human, I find the games choices remarkable. Kara may represent the best in us in a grey, grey world. The crisis of conscious an identity Connor experiences aren’t that far off from what most people will eventually face. Markus’s story stabs us right in the belief, perhaps even more so if you’re familiar with America’s history. It’s even neat how the main menu Android fits into the picture, and Kamski’s test is an awesome test of humanity.

I’d give it 5/5 except for technical issues. To play via Steam Link: you need to set the game to regular Windowed mode, not Fullscreen or Boardless Window. Probably related to the company’s fondess of rolling their own tech rather than using a common game engine. Periodically the screen will go black except for overlay based UI (like interaction prompts) or go to a fuzzy outline, as if certain shaders crashed and broke the rendering until quitting to desktop and restarting the game. That may be because I have an old GTX 780, or because I don’t have the kind of AMD GPU you’d find in a PlayStation 4. But those issues were relatively minor, and most often occurring right after a check point save or major scene change.

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“Wait, isn’t that downloading too fast?”

“Alexa, what’s 45 times 8”

“Well, yeah, I guess that is a lot of bits”

Let’s just say I don’t miss the days when downloading a game’s patch could make me glad that no one called for 3 to 4 consecutive hours. Although with file sizes of modern games being measured by the Blu-ray scale, I still prefer it when the phone doesn’t ring :^o.

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Passing thought: Bestheda’s release manager used to ship new games. Then he took an arrow to the knee. 

When I was younger, my friends loved Oblivion and in retrospect it’s one of my favorite Elder Scrolls games. But Skyrim was actually the first game in the series that I played, and by then it was long enough for it to have a decent sale price. Even though it had yet to be re-released in every edition known to mer kind.

Actually now that I think of it, between PCs and consoles: I’m not sure I want to fathom how many hours I’ve spent playing Skyrim over the years. Probably more than most ES games with Oblivion coming in as a second. Hmmm… damn it now I’m tempted to play Skyrim again.

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When I saw AI: The Somnium Files added to Game Pass, I sheeplishly added it to my download queue but more caught up with the new Avengers game that landed about the same time frame. Somium seemed like a game that I might enjoy or be bored of, and I really needed some stress relief at the time. Thus smashing AIM kill bots as an alternative to exploring planet 4546B was my plan. Finally got around to trying it this weekend.

Well within a few minutes of the first “Somnium” with the quirky Aiba made me able to guess which it end of the spectrum it would be. The initial crime scene investigation is about as serious as an icepick stabbed corpse lashed to the merry-go-round. However the Aiba messing with the protangist’s dream is about as serious as smelling a potted plant and it flying up your nose.

The game manages to follow the investigations track fairly well but is peppered with insanity, game and movie references, jokes, and all kinds of quirk characters. I positively love the Boss’s office and her crazy remarks. Having reached the part where Aiba calculates the “Best” way to deal with the goon squad^, and Iris’s Somnium being a Minecraft inspired danceathon to defeat UFOs….oh so cinches it.

If these folks are making another AI/Somnium game, I am so buying it. Unless the murder mystery ends in a way that makes me want to chuck the controller through the screen. Thus far AI: The Somnium Files has been one of the most fun games I’ve played all year, lol.

^ If you weren’t amused at how underwear, porno mags, and a muscle loving bartender fit into resolving a shootout then Aiba’s trick with the fire extinguisher will surely amaze you!

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Ever since getting the Raspberry Pi Pico, there have been two experimental projects in the back of my mind.

The first is of course: how to run DooM on the Pico. Based on what I’ve seen, I suspect the main point of suffering would be the limited ram compared to a i486 machine. Most of the console ports back in the day managed to show horn things into fairly modest systems, and I bet the two cores would work great for doing video/controller input on one core while the actual game runs on the other. What I haven’t been able to decide on is what path to take to explore that project. In my mind: I kind of see it as a more “Game Boy” like hand held with a screen and controls than anything else. I certainly don’t want to do ASCII doom over COM port :P. It would also be preferable to have separate storage that can address the storage capacity of WADs without having to cookie cutter a level into available flash, making the hand held style even more appropriate.

Second is building what in essence would be a personal computer. In essence a lot like ’70s kit computers such as the Altair, but imagined through the eyes of a geek that grew up in front of an MS-DOS machine. It’s stuck in my head a while that the Pico is far more powerful than the early CP/M and DOS based systems, and that it isn’t that complicated to connect the pico to external devices. From the prospective of fun, I think it would be neat to design a simple system around the Pico and built out something like a PC around it. On the downside, while creating a disk operating system in the vain of CP/M isn’t that big a stretch: I can’t really say that I fancy bootstrapping a toolchain to write programs for a custom operating system. But it’s an idea that keeps floating around whenever I look at how powerful the Pico is.

As a side note, I kind of wonder how hard it would be to replace the CRT in an old Macintosh SE style case with a similar sized LCD panel. While gutting the rest of the insides, and just using it as the mechanical environment to mount stuff. Really, I’m not sure if that’s brilliant or sacrilegious of such historic machines. Although to be fair, people have done some strange things with the cases of old busted Macs over the years….hehe.

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Minecraft’s ‘Worst’ Server Was Exploited So Hard, Griefers Could See The Future

While I think the author’s grain of salt, or “Conflicting” feelings at the end are an apt view. I will admit, this is somewhere between utterly insane and utterly brilliant. I can’t really say that I approve of the activities, but given the anachronistic nature of the server, it seems some folks sure as frak made the most of it.

It’s rare for something to be both utterly insane and utterly brilliant at the same time.

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Random fun, or perhaps just signs that I’m getting both old and weird.

In finding myself in the mood for some Advent, the only version I’ve ever encountered on modern platforms is the version from OpenBSD’s games install set. Which shows some of the joys of FORTRAN to C conversion. The code looks like the most significant changes it’s seen in years are just related to security measures ala OpenBSD. Since I don’t have a machine running that OS handy, it’s not a quick login and run.

In debating how much poking and prodding getting code to compile on one of my Linux or Windows environments, I came across a fun little fact. ESR has a repo on GitLab dubbed Open Adventure that both compiles on Linux, and has tried to make the code more legible to modern sanities.

While trying to figure out the game from its source may be a surprisingly good idea, l find it rather covenant that it compiles and runs. Because while poking around code is what lead me to the mood to play advent, that’s a bit of a different activity from porting advent, lol.

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Xbox Gaming Lead Still Doesn’t Understand The Nintendo 64 Controller

That kind of maker two of us. I always found the N64 controller confusing and old feeling compared to the previous generation of consoles. By contrast the Play Station controller was pretty natural, and easily picked up by a kid accustomed to the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Adding the analog sticks in the Dual Shock configuration didn’t change that.
Actually one of my minor grumbles when I bought the original Xbox One was the controller. The Xbox One controller is fairly familiar but swaps the D-Pad and left thumb stick from what you’d remember on the old Dual Shocks.
The times I’ve used an N64 controller, well, let’s just say I tried not to have to move my grip 😜.

My day in pictures and yadda, yadda

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Getting up this morning: Willow was so comfortable that I had to take a picture. Got cleaned up, took the Bonnie birds for a walk, and breakfast. Calculated that my routine of breakfast sausage to share with the dogs and toast or the like, is about 560 calories. Actually the most calories is the peanut butter on the toast, lol.

Made coffee, took Willow for a walk, and then got to finish my coffee. Because by then she’s armament for her second walk. Coffee and Xbox make for a cozy morning off.

Misty has two super powers. One is hunting for food. The other is being comfortable.

A mixture of Saints Row 4, Metal Slug 3, laundry, lunch, and Twin Mirror reminds me that mixing chores and relaxation is a good plan. Forgot to hang the wash, but at least I did manage to clean my refrigerator 😂.

Pretty often I end up making pasta, but rarely beefaroni. Growing up it was a relatively common cheese delivery vehicle amongst my mother’s cooking. Actually, I don’t have any recollection of eating the canned stuff. So much as stuffing my face until a nap was warranted, lol.

Kind of worked out as a perfect storm of convenience. Had some ground Italian sausage in need of being used up, been meaning to use up the elbows for a long while, and boiling the macaroni is good for the humidity. Plus yields more food for next week, and when aren’t I okay with such food for dinner? 🤪

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 On a whim decided to boot up my old Game Boy Color since I was looking for the pencil box it lives in. Don’t think I had turned it on in a good decade, lustruum at least. Figured it would be a good first test of my new rechargeable batteries, and answer the question I’ve posed for a couple years now: does it still work?

Much to my surprise it, and joy, it powered on. Had to try and boot the Pokemon Gold cartridge at least three times to get passed the firmware’s boot screen; lack of a continue game makes me assume the coin cell must be dead. The Yu-gi-oh cartridge however booted straight away and still offers a continue button in the menu.

As far as I can tell: it seems fully functional. Pretty sure that the screen is a hell of a lot more dim then it was 21~22 years ago when my mom bought it for me at the pawn shop. But 90s era LCDs are kind of known for that, and I still find it pretty impressive that so much fun could be housed in such a small for its day, and still rather lightweight package.

Misty is not sure what to make of this odd device that looks like an oversized phone. But knows she can’t eat it.