tomkatt

joined 2 years ago
[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 points 3 minutes ago* (last edited 3 minutes ago)

No worries. I've heard of BeamNG but don't own it and am not familiar with it to recommend. I meant BallisticNG, it's an AG racer in the style of the Wipeout games.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 points 4 minutes ago

No, Amazon took away the "Download and transfer via USB" option when downloading your books. Making it more difficult to strip DRM, but also to conveniently add it to multiple devices.

Regarding sideloading EPUBs with Calibre, it's not really doing that. Under normal circumstances Kindle can't read EPUB format at all, so Calibre will convert it to a native format, either MOBI or AZW3 generally. But with a jailbroken Kindle and KOReader, you can actually read EPUBs natively. I've actually converted my entire collection to EPUB and deleted the AZW3 and KFX files.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Depends on the model and firmware, but for most, Winterbreak is the current method.

Do note if your Kindle is updated to version 5.18.x currently it's not possible to jailbreak. There is ongoing work on a new exploit though, and a new jailbreak method (or update to Winterbreak) is expected later this year.


Edit - actually, if you're on firmware 5.18.0 the jailbreak may work. 5.18.1 and above it definitely doesn't.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

I never found much worth watching on Prime, to be honest, even before the ads issue.

As for Prime, I still benefit from the Prime shipping, but a lot of stores on Amazon ship free now even without Prime, and given where I live, 2-day shipping is not a thing. It's usually more like 4 to 7 days. I'm generally in no rush either way.

My main benefits were shipping and books, plus free games on Prime and GOG. But now the shipping is almost irrelevant, they've screwed the book thing, so all that's left is the games, many of which I won't even play.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Nice. Well, it's abandonware and I have a copy. Will have to get around to checking it out. Does it need any proton or WINE tweaks to get running?

If you're interested, WRC 7 and 10 play surprisingly well on the Deck. 7 has excellent controller support out of the box, and 10 has very good control but needs some tweaking in the settings for better control.

All the games I mentioned except for RBR have run well on the deck and handle fine on a controller. Might want to check if any are on sale, since Steam has the Racing Fest on right now. I also can't recommend New Star GP enough, it's arcade F1 style racing, and really fun.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

How's Redout 2 compared to the first one? I have the original, but have been on the fence with the sequel.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (4 children)
  • WRC 7, 10, Generations
  • Dirt Rally 2.0
  • Rush Rally Origins
  • Old School Rally
  • Super Woden GP2
  • New Star GP
  • Forza Horizon 5 (I don't own this one, but hear it's very good)
  • BallisticNG
  • Gravel
  • GRIP: Combat Racing
  • Wreckfest (don't own this either but I've played it in the past, it's good)
  • Assetto Corsa
  • Assetto Corsa Competizione
  • Descenders
  • Grid Autosport
  • Redout
  • Automobilista 2
  • V-Rally 4
  • Sebastian Loeb Rally Evo

These vary between arcade and simulation racing, and things in between. For some (Assetto Corsa games, Automobilista, WRC and Dirt Rally games) a racing wheel is highly recommended.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 19 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (6 children)

Not this one. I've been a Prime member for many years out of convenience (and because I live in the rurals and need to ship a lot of things to the house). Amazon completely fucked it up for themselves with regard to my subscription this past year or two, I'm done.

  • Removed the ability to download and sideload Kindle books
  • Ads in Prime Video
  • Followed by even more ads in Prime Video
  • Now this, and I don't even own an Alexa device

I'm done. Subscription is cancelled (has been for some time now, but unfortunately it was reupped annual). I've found alternative sources for several things I need to buy monthly/regularly that I previously would purchase on Amazon. Video was already trashed, but I barely used it. I've jailbroken my Kindles, converted all my books to EPUB, and installed KOReader on them. Wasn't a hard transition since I've had a Boox device as my main reader for some years now anyway. I've started buying my books from Kobo and other sources.

Looking into other services for online purchases and shipping. It'll be less convenient, and I'll still buy from Amazon in the event I absolutely have to, but I'd like to minimize that now.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

How is that one compared to other rally games? I have a copy but haven't gone through the trouble to figure out the install. With regards to comparisons, I currently have:

  • WRC 4, 7, 10, Generations
  • Sebastian Loeb Rally Evo
  • V-Rally 4
  • Old School Rally
  • Rush Rally Origins and RR3
  • Dirt Rally and DR 2.0
  • RSF Richard Burns Rally (haven't tested this on the deck)

I've really enjoyed WRC 7 and 10 on the Deck. 4 is decent but kind of arcade, very easy. Sebastian Loeb Rally should be sim, but the physics are a bit wonky. And V-Rally 4 is sort of simcade, leaning arcade, but rather fun.

Most of these, orther than WRC 4 can be a bit hard on the battery, so something that looks and plays well without being a battery hog would be nice.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I'm in the middle of Ikenfell (nearing the end I think). Dabbling a bit with Aim for the Ace!(Ace o Nerae!) for the SNES. Holy crap, the graphics on this one are mind blowing for a SNES game, an actual 3D camera that follows the ball.

Also in the middle of Armored Core 3 (PS2) but sidelined it for now, can only play so many games at once and I'm stuck on a mission that annoys the hell out of me (the one where you unlock the Karasawa).

Outside of the Steam Deck, wife and I have been enjoying Across the Obelisk and WH40k: Rogue Trader.

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don’t you know how much faster Trump could have solved the pandemic?

I’m sure you’re joking, but you are aware that Trump was still president for the entire first year of the pandemic, right?

[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

When I turned 30 I didn’t feel any different. When I turned 40 I didn’t feel any different. It’s just a number.

I’ve grown and changed over time, continued maturing, but still me at the core. The main reminder of my age just comes via the little aches and pains that have built up over time from injuries and the like.

People make a big deal about the milestone years, but in all seriousness, there’s no big difference between 29 and 30, just like there’s no difference from 50 to 51. Any real change is gradual, there’s no big moment.

 

I've been playing Chrono Trigger on the Steam Deck recently (Steam version) and found myself bugged by the lack of "retro" effect options. The game is great looking on a CRT or with the right shaders, and the raw blocky pixel look just didn't suit it. Normally I'd just shrug and emulate, but I wanted to play the Steam version with the new translation, and wasn't down to play it on the smaller DS screen. So like any lunatic, I went down a rabbit hole with Reshade and tested out a ton of configurations until I found something that looks pretty good on the Deck.

Links:

The Steam Deck's resolution makes it hard to work with shaders in Reshade, since most shaders are designed with at least 1080p in mind, but I came to what I think is a good solution with the following combination of shaders:

  • CRT-Frutbunn (main shader)

  • EasymodeCRT (Slight sharpen native res, fixes frutbunn's scanlines and brightness boost)

  • Vibrance (slight color saturation increase)

I've included my settings with the screenshots below. I love the depth it's adding to the image in the shading and making the characters look more grounded in the space. CT has really great colors and shading, but the raw pixel look kind of loses that. The effect is subtle, but really works well IMO. Might be hard to tell on the screenshots (be sure to open the full size images), but on the OLED Deck in handheld mode it looks great, and even has some bloom, just a really smooth but clean retro look.

I wasn't sure if it'd be a fluke and just work for Chrono Trigger, so I copied the shader config over to TMNT: Shredder's Revenge and it looks pretty great there too (and as a bonus, makes the intro video look more like the old cartoon). Seems like this should work fine for any pixel art game.

Note: If you want to try this docked, it looks good on the TV too, but you need to set EasymodeCRT's resolution (screen and frame width/height) to whatever your resolution is (I do 1080p docked, YMMV).


Full Album (Note - images don't look great here, compression)

Better pics:

TMNT comparisons:


Reshade settings

 

Really interesting sh'mup and great soundtrack. I especially like the stage 1 and stage 6 themes. It's amazing what the PC-Engine was capable of with the CD add-on.

Sadly, I'm terrible at it, and have never actually been able to play past stage 3, so good thing the first stage is such a banger. 😅

 

Fantastic game. I love the high energy beat here.

 

The current build of Jelos updated the libSDL from v2600.5 to 2800.1 and it broke a few ports. In particular the ones I know of are Panzer Paladin and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Both are fixed with the instructions below.

I saw in some threads people asking about it so here's the fix:


You'll need a copy of the 7/26 JELOS build or before from the github releases page and copy out the libSDL files from /usr/lib. To do this, you'll need to download the tar archive, then use something like 7zip to extract the SYSTEM file to a folder.

Copy off all the the libSDL2 related files that have a file size (ignore the ones that list as 0kb in size, those are symlinks). All told there are something like six files you need, the 2.0.so.02600.5 file, the ttf file, the image file, gfx file, and mixer.

You need to rename the filesaccording to the SDL2-CD.dll.config set in the game folder at /storage/roms/ports//dlls/

If you prefer, I already have all the correct files and renamed as needed. You can download them in zipped format here.


Once you have the correct files, correctly named, copy them into /storage/roms/ports//libs/

Lastly, edit the game's .sh file in /storage/roms/ports/ to add the following lines:

# # # export path for local libSDL
export LD_PRELOAD=$gamedir/libs/libSDL2.so.0

Add that to the script on its own line. I put it at line 29, after the "Loading... Please Wait." echo output line. Anywhere after the get_controls line should be fine.

If you mess up the file, or run into problems, the full file should look like this one.

From there, save it and run the game. And that should be it.

If you gather the files yourself instead of using the ones from the ZIP I linked and the game loads sideways (in portrait), get the libSDL2-2.0.so.0.2600.5 from the SYSTEM folder in the /usr/lib/SDL2-rotated path instead of /usr/lib, and copy it to your game's lib directory on the handheld, and rename it to libSDL2-2.0.so.0 to fix.

8
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by tomkatt@lemmy.world to c/vgmusic@lemmy.world
 

This is the Japanese version of Simple & Clean, the opening song for Kingdom Hearts.

Great song, been a fan of Hikki's music for over two decades now.

 

Sorry for double post the same song technically, but I love this version and Tiffany Mann's vocals are great.

 

My man on the drums is killing it in this version. Just watch him yo.

 

This song hits hard, I love it. Main theme kicks in around 28 seconds in.

 

I noticed that darker games on my x55 didn’t look good, like dark tones and blacks were almost inverted looking at stock settings. After a bit of tweaking, setting gamma from default (50%) to 67% got everything looking good.

After checking out a few YouTube videos it seems the gamma level on the display varies between units. I’ve seen it look good on default in some and even up to 100% on one video. Play with the setting and dial it in to what looks best for you.

If it helps I’m currently using:

  • brightness 68%
  • gamma 67%
  • contrast 52%
  • saturation 60%
 

Great soundtrack. This one's the battle theme from Ikenfell.

Also great game. The artwork is gorgeous (it was styled to look like a scaled up GBA game) and the combat system kind of feels like a mashup of Super Mario RPG and Mega Man Battle Network what with the tile system and timed attack bonuses.

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