22
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

So, a few years back I installed AntiX-21 onto a 20+ year old onto an old WinXP laptop both as a fun project and to get some practice with Linux. It worked fine, and I mostly used the resurrected laptop to watch youtube videos and listen to podcasts, which was just a fun novelty to do on such an outdated machine. Obviously I couldn't do Youtube in a browser, but I could take URLs and watch videos with VLC in 360p.

At one point VLC video playback stopped working entirely and I could only do audio, I assume because of changes to Youtube. I tried using the AntiX Updater, but even after updates playback wasn't working. Looking at the version numbers of the updated versions of SMPlayer, VLC, etc I noticed they were still not the latest versions available.

I went to the repo manager and added a bunch of repos until I saw more up to date versions of VLC and other programs in the package manager, then used AntiX Updater again and said yes to the over 1,200 updates.

Things didn't go smoothly. The updates were constantly interrupted by errors but I kept restarting the update process until I had to log off for the night. When I logged back in the following day, the desktop I had been using was missing and I could no longer connect to the Internet because ConnMan was broken. I managed to connect to my Wifi with CENI and kept trying to get the rest of the updates done. I just couldn't get ConnMan to update no matter what so I rebooted the laptop again. This time the bootup process was filled with error messages and I could no longer log in at all. I'd enter my username and password and it'd just loop back to the login screen.

I'm pretty sure my AntiX install is bricked now. I assume I should try wiping the Linux partition and reinstall?

I just wanted the latest version of VLC cri

17
submitted 3 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

I upgraded my handheld emulation setup and can now do up to Dreamcast (N64 and PSP too) on the go but I don't really know what to try out. There are a couple of DC games I've played the PS2 versions of like Resident Evil: Code Veronica and Dead Or Alive 2, which I used to test out how well Redream and Flycast worked but beyond that I'm not sure what to grab thonk

It would be fun to give Saturn emulation a shot as well but I'm not sure if it'll even be playable. From what I've read, in terms of emulation on Android devices, Saturn sits somewhere between the DC/N64/PSP tier and the Gamecube/PS2/3DS tier in hardware requirements. I figured I might as well ask for MD/Genesis recommendations to round out the Sega systems.

13
submitted 6 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Pictured: One of Yoko's alternate costumes that I initially took for mao-wave cosplay

A few days back I made a post where I asked if there was interest among Hexbear users to get together to play Resident Evil Outbreak on the Outbreak Resurrection fan server.

Turns out there was interest, probably enough to fill two lobbies, in fact. Now I'm just left wondering what the best way to co-ordinate times with other players would be. I guess Discord is the default these days but I imagine many folks here do not either want to use it in general or just don't want to give their usernames out to randos.

Feel free to make a suggestion

37
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

I've been playing Outbreak, the semi-forgotten online PS2 co-op Resident Evil spinoff with friends recently and I've had a great time, but it'd be fun to play the games with others as well, especially now that I have some idea of what I'm supposed to be doing.

They're free, have low requirements (pretty much any semi-decent computer made in the last decade should run PCSX2 just fine) and you won't need to worry about exposing your Steam/Xbox/PSN/Nintendo username as you'd just be using a free Outbreak fan server account + an ingame alias and the game allows you to set up 3 different aliases per account.

There'd be no need for voice chat either if you want to have the classic PS2 Outbreak experience and rely on the ingame ad-lib system

You'd need

  • PCSX2 (Windows, Linux, Mac), XBSX2, (On Xboxes with dev mode unlocked) a PS2 or a fat PS3
  • Patched Japanese roms of Outbreak File 1 and 2 (easy to find)
  • Memory card files with the required online settings files ( also easy to find)
  • An obsrv account

Here is a tutorial video that goes over the setup process (for Windows). The memory cards mentioned above are linked in the description. Instead of patching the Japanese roms into English yourself, you can find them pre-patched on 💿Romance

14
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Got some friends together to play through both Files and it's been a blast so far. If you like the old Resident Evils but never had a chance to play Outbreak online or if you did play it online and want to play it again I recommend checking out the fan server on a PS2 emulator.

I run out of shotgun ammo at around 0:30. Watch as I spend the next 20 seconds going to get some more but pick up the wrong box of ammo as I fiddle with the inventory chefs-kiss

8
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Resident Evil Outbreak File 1 and 2 were the last "classic" style RE games that came out before RE4. They were also multiplayer-focused online co-op games... on the PS2. In 2004. I said "still playable" in the title but honestly, even for people who were RE fans back then, it's probably more like "actually playable for the first time." The fan server is also definitely not some new thing- I think it's been around for like a decade at this point.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to play an old school survival horror game online with friends, these are the games for you. They're also pretty hard though, even if you're someone who can breeze through every other game in the franchise.

The tutorial I linked goes over through this stuff as well, but you'll need the following to play:

  • An account on the fan server forums (free)
  • ~~Legitimate American and Japanese copies of both games, ripped to a PC so you can run the required patchers to patch the Japanese isos into English~~ lol just kidding, just grab English-patched Japanese isos off the Internet
  • Memory Card files with the required online data on them (linked in video description)
  • PCSX2. As long as your machine can run PCSX2 and has an internet connection, something like a Steam Deck should work fine too (you can also apparently play the game online using an actual PS2)

You'll probably also want to wrangle some friends to play the game with you, which in my experience is the hardest part kitty-cri-texas

20
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

pronounjak-rage

1
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

After I take the SATA cable out and put it back in: Just kidding I'm fine :)

Oh you little rascal you Care-Comrade

spoilerDon't worry, I moved all my data off that drive years ago. Not exactly sure why I keep it in my system shrug-outta-hecks

14
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Turns out some tracks in Mario Kart 8 don't play nice with AMD cards.

Another victory for us Radeon owners yes-honey-left

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 19 points 7 months ago

But it's not even a cool product placement car angery

45
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

monke-beepboop

37
submitted 7 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Certain recent events in the emulation space reminded me to emulate some more Switch games, so I got the Crash Team Racing remake since Activision never bothered to bring the game out on PC. Honestly it probably worked out better this way since I could get all the DLC and Season Pass shit unlocked for free shrug-outta-hecks

Me and my friends wanted to play CTR online after we found out both Ryujinx and Yuzu had online multiplayer, but since they work by spoofing the Switch's wireless LAN connectivity and Activision couldn't be bothered to make a LAN mode for CTR:NF, we just downloaded Mario Kart instead.

After playing most of the tracks in single player to get my shader cache built for multiplayer and some test runs online, I have to say I kinda prefer Mario Kart's mechanics over CTR:NF's, and this is coming from someone who grew up playing the original CTR and never had Nintendo consoles.

I always found the timing of CTR's drifting and boost mechanics kind of finicky and annoying but in Mario Kart you literally just hold the drift button down to build boost and it feels really easy but satisfying to pull off. It also feels like the game is gently but firmly guiding you along even when you turn off all of the assistance features and that you'd have to be deliberately trying to get completely left behind. In comparison I find myself awkwardly reversing out of walls and corners in CTR:NF fairly often, usually after fucking up a powerslide boohoo

16
submitted 8 months ago by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

I've had my BSP-D8 (the black controller) for a couple of months now and overall I really like it. In terms of ergonomics and build quality it's a VAST improvement over the D3 (well, mostly) and I would highly recommend one if you're looking for a cheap but decent Bluetooth controller for your phone and can get it for 20-30 dollars or less.

I got my D3 (the red and blue controller on top) back in May last year to play emulators on an old Android phone and while it mostly did the job it was a pretty compromised experience. The sticks and face buttons are tiny, with the latter having sharp edges that combined with the aforementioned microscopic size made it feel like the buttons on a Tamagotchi or a pager or some other tiny gadget. Even worse, to ape the design of a Nintendo Switch, instead of a dpad they just had a second set of these awful buttons, making any kind of dpad-heavy games miserable to play. The shoulder buttons and triggers feel cheap and flimsy (the shoulder buttons especially) with all being incredibly mushy switches, meaning no analog trigger functionality whatsoever.

The company making these is a machine though and by November they had already put out four new controllers building on the original design, the D5, D6, D7 and D8. (No D4 because China). There's already a D9 and I think there's a D10 coming out. These are a bit more expensive though, with the D9 costing about 50 dollars when I checked.

Like I said, the D8 is a huge step up from the D3. This might be mostly because it's pretty much a direct clone of an existing, more expensive name brand phone controller instead of an original design. It feels like an Xbox controller in a telescopic form factor and is really nice to hold in your hands.

The sticks and face buttons are a standard Xbox form factor and feel perfectly fine to use. The back of the box says they're Hall Effect sticks which has apparently something to do with magnets and means they're less prone to develop stick drift. Hall Effect sticks seem to be all the rage now so that's cool I guess.

The triggers are actually analog on the D8 but are shaped more like the DualShock 4's L2 and R2 than Xbox triggers. They're okay and a huge improvement over the D3. The shoulders are the least improved part of the controller, still feeling a bit mushy, but they're still better than the D3.

Most importantly though, the controller has an actual dpad this time around. It's not the greatest dpad ever, with the directions bottoming out and pivoting oddly when fully pressed in but it's certainly enough to make platformers, etc playable and I even managed to play some fighting games with it.

There's a couple of things the D3 has over the D8 though. For starters, the D8's Start and Select placement sucks, with Select being placed above Start below the face buttons, making pressing both at the same time basically impossible. I have no clue why they didn't just copy the placement of the Start, Select and the power/menu buttons from their earlier models. The D8 also lacks the programmable back buttons the D3 has which is a shame.

The D8 does have a rumble feature which the D3 doesn't but it's so comically pathetic I don't think it adds much- not that I have been able to get it to work on in any of my emulators anyway.

As for build quality, the controller feels less cheap overall than the D3, though the print on the face buttons looks very crappy in person. My unit came with one flaw right of out of the box- when you rotate the left stick, it doesn't feel quite smooth with a small bump at about 10 o'clock. It doesn't seem to affect circularity in any gamepad tester I've tried but you can definitely feel it. I'm half tempted to open this thing and see what the stick is catching on but I'm afraid of breaking it.

As for connectivity, the D3 and D8 have several different Bluetooth modes they can boot into with different button combinations, with each one emulating different controllers, including Nintendo Switch and a standard Xinput Xbox controller. You can also plug it in via USB-C to use it wired with a PC or PS3/PS4. Each mode shows up as a separate controller which makes using it on multiple devices convenient.

All in all, as far as cheap Chinese knock-off devices go, the D8 is pretty decent and it feels good enough to use that I've even used it on my PC a couple of times which is something I can't say for the D3. If you are on the lookout for a phone controller for much less than the 60+ bucks the big name ones are going for and can find one for cheap (and are also willing to brave the chances of getting a dud) I highly recommend it.

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 15 points 9 months ago

If Xbox games are terrible, then how am I still playing Gears ~~of War~~ 5 after 4 years? smuglord

Jokes aside, Halo and Gears of War simply aren't what they used to be in the 2000s and 2010s. Halo feels like it has been cut up and reassembled like three times since Bungie already, and while Gears of War still manages feels like Gears of War, turns out that's just not enough for most people outside of a small diehard fanbase.

spoiler

I'll still keep drinking that garbage

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 16 points 9 months ago

This was in Microsoft's Minecraft launcher, so probably whenever that got introduced. I've only got the Java version though.

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Back when I played multiplayer games on the Xbox 360 I had my voice chat volume permanently turned down to zero because I didn't see how hearing obscenities yelled into those horribly low quality Xbox microphones added to the experience.

When the Master Chief Collection and Gears of War 5 launched on PC I ended up leaving the voice chat on because I became deeply amused and fascinated by the Xbox players I crossplayed with. People noisily munching Doritos into the void, middle-aged parent gamers talking to their children in between callouts, people who have really loud music blasting in their living room, groups of friends who like to play and chat together but for some godforsaken reason don't just use Xbox parties or Discord.

Naturally, there have also been horribly racist moments, like the one time some expert-shapiro -brained gamer started being racist to a black person on the same team from the moment he heard his voice, at one point telling him that his ancestors were building aqueducts while the black person's ancestors lived in mud huts cringe

In response, the black guy just made fun of how nerdy the white guy's voice sounded and how badly he was playing. I kept dying in that match because the absurd banter had me dying in real life

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've been playing Gears 5's multiplayer since it came out, and I've honestly had more fun with it since they stopped updating the game. No more stress from trying to complete the current Season before the content in it gets vaulted, playing modes I don't want and trying to do specific feats in matches. I just jump in for a few games and shoot people for the pure joy of shooting people, just like multiplayer games used to be blob-no-thoughts

FOMO is real though, looking back on the game I haven't used 98 percent of the skins, characters, banners, etc I unlocked even once but I still felt compelled to complete every season. Still, at least I wasn't big enough of a chump to spend real money in the store shrug-outta-hecks

spoilerKinda miss playing Horde with friends though

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 11 points 11 months ago

No single player DLC for you capitalist-laugh

It looks like they instead tried to repeat the GTA Online model with Red Dead Online but it failed to gain enough traction so they just gave up on the whole game. It's frustrating to see how much time and money they put into multiplayer updates, each one has several cutscenes with new characters, cutscenes and celebrity cameos and all you can think of is how cool it would've been if they had used those resources for another Undead Nightmare or GTA IV-style expansions.

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

From what I understand rotating developers seem like a standard practice at Microsoft-owned game studios. Like they only contract you for a set period and then you're out. Back when Gears 5 was still actively updated it seemed like every single community-facing developer got rotated out and all of them seemed to say something about their two years or whatever being up in their farewell messages.

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Take the Nether for example, many biomes are absolutely crawling with Hoglins and Piglins that can and will gang up to kill you if you're not careful. However, when it comes to the Hoglins, their aggro ranges are not unmanageable, they make plenty of noise alerting you to their presence and you can even ward them off with warped fungus. The Piglins will mostly ignore you if you wear at least one piece of golden armor (at least until you open a chest or try to mine gold) and they also avoid soul torches. With the addition of the gold bartering system, the piglins are probably the most interesting mob in the game, simultaneously dangerous and helpful. I like how they feel like intelligent beings that kind of tolerate you showing up on their turf if you behave.

I hadn't played much with the big Nether update and I really enjoy the mobs and mechanics it introduced. By comparison, most of these hostile mobs just fly up to you from a continent away and kill you in three hits

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

There are also mods that add all the mobs and mob variants from the now discontinued Minecraft Earth, like this one:

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/earth2java

I like having cool chicken variations chicken-bop

You might want to disable the Moobloom in one of them though since it's also covered in Friends and Foes.

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

Those annoy me less since I'm not compelled to mine them unlike copper and the new rock variants just register as background to me. With ores I feel like harvesting all of them from my mineshafts for completeness' sake, especially since the shader I'm using adds a slight glow to most of them so they stick out. I already have chests full of unsmelted copper ooooooooooooooh

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

It's a giant worm! THEY'RE SINKING CITIES WITH A GIANT WORM

[-] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When I first upgraded to Windows 10 on the very last day you still could upgrade from Windows 7 for free, it was just pictures of beautiful landscapes or ancient monuments along with a short blurb about them where the PLAY STARFIELD WITH PC GAME PASS text is in this picture. I didn't specifically turn that login screen on but I liked it so much that I kept it on. Then, maybe a year ago(?) the text stopped being about the image and turned into a generic blurb for various Microsoft services, most often Game Pass.

This is the first time I remember the image itself just being a straight up ad for something. I'm sure they were feeling clever because it's an atmospheric piece of concept art that kind of looks like the kind of photos they typically have in the rotation for these login screens.

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TheronGuard

joined 2 years ago