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Casimir Radon posted:If you watch C64 longplay videos where the player knows what they're doing it usually doesn't take longer than half an hour. It's all a bit disappointing. I just found the part of the game I was talking about, and it is at 46 minutes in of a playthrough that goes for an hour and a half. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsASd_bV7HU&t=2826s gently caress that game.
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Dec 2, 2016 23:16
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CaptainSarcastic posted:I just found the part of the game I was talking about, and it is at 46 minutes in of a playthrough that goes for an hour and a half. It looks like after the part you got stuck at it's at least 30 minutes of wandering a featureless maze. So maybe you lucked out? 
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Dec 3, 2016 00:06
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Nice! I never had the manual for that one myself, I just watched the game in demo mode at stores a lot, and then played it on an emulator sometime this century, but I figured out which game it was for. I spent a long time wanting that game until any desire to touch the Atari 2600 died because I had totally moved on to the PC, although it was a few more years before we actually had color on our PC! Speaking of games which were indecipherable unless you had the manual, a case in point for me was the Atari 2600 game Riddle of the Sphinx, which I did have the manual for, but didn't read, so hated it as a kid. When I played it a few years ago I read the manual and actually beat it (probably in easy mode) and it felt good man. I seem to remember the game mechanics were a bit dumb in terms of where on the screen enemies would appear, but you get used to that stuff. It had some puzzles that were simple but a little challenging. I struggle to think of any PC games I could use to argue that there were lots of good games in the '80s. Commander Keen came out in 1990, and Prince of Persia was only 2 months before the end of '89. I should try replaying Alley Cat. I guess I mostly played Sierra adventure games in the '80s. I re-played Space Quest II recently. I enjoyed it, but it was the VGA remake, so does that count? Otherwise I think everything else I had in the '80s was floppies full of lots of random little games. I think Donkey Kong and Q-bert were in there, but they were probably the worst versions of those games, I don't know because they weren't really my thing that much anyway. Then there was Star Trek fleet command, Civil War stuff, casino games - all very boring.
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Dec 3, 2016 01:12
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EA made a bunch of great games for the C64 in the 1980s, and Epyx had some good ones, too. In searching to figure out the name of the game I was bitching about above I did a search on "commodore 64 ea games" on one of the attempts and was reminded of a number of really good games they put out.
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Dec 3, 2016 01:30
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I guess this doesn't have much to do with anything, but for some reasoning I was remembering playing Hot Rod (which loving owned) in my middle school shop class in the mid 90s. Like the whole class just sat there and played that and wolf 3d. The teacher didn't give a gently caress. I can't remember his name at the moment but I remember he used to exclaim "OH GOOD GRAVY" all the time
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Dec 3, 2016 04:46
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CaptainSarcastic posted:EA made a bunch of great games for the C64 in the 1980s, and Epyx had some good ones, too. In searching to figure out the name of the game I was bitching about above I did a search on "commodore 64 ea games" on one of the attempts and was reminded of a number of really good games they put out.  I just checked the entire world, looks like nobody has a tattoo of that EOA yet ... and seeing it instantly brings to mind literally every good time I had as a young child...hmmmmmmm Perhaps if I can combine it with some other things that are 100% good, so it can be the nuclear waste symbol inside the O of EOA, all on a graduation cap, that Furiosa is wearing, while she rides a penny farthing 
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Dec 3, 2016 05:23
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Dr. Quarex posted:Plus, this: At least one person got a Zune tattoo so there must be some out there. I had fond memories of when EA was called Electronic Arts and had that logo. These days, not so much.
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Dec 3, 2016 07:18
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Casimir Radon posted:If you watch C64 longplay videos where the player knows what they're doing it usually doesn't take longer than half an hour. It's all a bit disappointing. Games have just changed. 20-30 years ago, computers didn't have room for a lot of different content, so they had to get the most out of the little content they could pack. That was part forcing the player to really master the game and part encouraging exploring. I'm not trying to excuse obscure control schemes or bad adventure game "rub everything against everything" gameplay, but there was satisfaction to getting past a difficult point after several hours, even if the next time it would just take minutes. That doesn't come off well by watching a video.
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Dec 3, 2016 10:24
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EA made Studio 32 which was the main graphics program we used when I worked at MS back in the Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 days
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Dec 3, 2016 10:57
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Dr. Quarex posted:Plus, this: For anybody that's never played Ultima VII: the game's developers, Origin Systems, were in the process of being swallowed by EA while they were making the game. They were not happy about this. The plot involves you chasing two seemingly-benevolent-but-actually-evil people named Elizabeth and Abraham (E and A, get it?) And you have to destroy a giant cube, sphere and tetrahedron in order to stop a giant multidimensional villain named The Guardian - who claims to have the best interests of the world at heart - from conquering your world.
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Dec 5, 2016 11:35
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Quote-Unquote posted:For anybody that's never played Ultima VII: the game's developers, Origin Systems, were in the process of being swallowed by EA while they were making the game. They were not happy about this. The plot involves you chasing two seemingly-benevolent-but-actually-evil people named Elizabeth and Abraham (E and A, get it?) And you have to destroy a giant cube, sphere and tetrahedron in order to stop a giant multidimensional villain named The Guardian - who claims to have the best interests of the world at heart - from conquering your world. Kojima would've been proud.
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Dec 5, 2016 12:30
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Quote-Unquote posted:For anybody that's never played Ultima VII: the game's developers, Origin Systems, were in the process of being swallowed by EA while they were making the game. They were not happy about this. The plot involves you chasing two seemingly-benevolent-but-actually-evil people named Elizabeth and Abraham (E and A, get it?) And you have to destroy a giant cube, sphere and tetrahedron in order to stop a giant multidimensional villain named The Guardian - who claims to have the best interests of the world at heart - from conquering your world.  That's great.
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Dec 5, 2016 12:30
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Keith Atherton posted:EA made Studio 32 which was the main graphics program we used when I worked at MS back in the Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 days That division was eventually snuffed out in the mid-90s to due to the success of the console games divisions like EA Sports and the death of Commodore, and the creator of Deluxe Paint went on to help create 3D Studio. Kind of weird that one guy would be part of two separate revolutions in digital artwork, but history is funny like that.
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Dec 5, 2016 13:59
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Quote-Unquote posted:For anybody that's never played Ultima VII: the game's developers, Origin Systems, were in the process of being swallowed by EA while they were making the game. They were not happy about this. The plot involves you chasing two seemingly-benevolent-but-actually-evil people named Elizabeth and Abraham (E and A, get it?) And you have to destroy a giant cube, sphere and tetrahedron in order to stop a giant multidimensional villain named The Guardian - who claims to have the best interests of the world at heart - from conquering your world. When Origin was finally killed off, they burned the design docs for UO2 and their other projects in a cube/sphere/tetrahedron shaped bonfire. I remember pics of it, but I couldn't find the actual bonfire pic. Raph Koster talks about the bonfire briefly in this article about the Privateer Online that never was(though it was probably more of a real game than Star Citizen).
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Dec 7, 2016 03:04
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Having your awesome space MMORPG project killed off in favor of Earth & Beyond is extra-hilarious in hindsight, given that Earth & Beyond failed so hard that I have read more than one article talking about how Eve Online was the first space MMORPG. And, honestly, I read some retrospective somewhere that it was the ONLY one, even more hilarious.
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Dec 7, 2016 14:14
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Quote-Unquote posted:For anybody that's never played Ultima VII: the game's developers, Origin Systems, were in the process of being swallowed by EA while they were making the game. They were not happy about this. The plot involves you chasing two seemingly-benevolent-but-actually-evil people named Elizabeth and Abraham (E and A, get it?) And you have to destroy a giant cube, sphere and tetrahedron in order to stop a giant multidimensional villain named The Guardian - who claims to have the best interests of the world at heart - from conquering your world. Holy moly, I love that game and never knew that. The copy protection on that game involved finding the city at a given set of coordinates on the cloth map that came with it. I always had to have my brother figure it out because I'd mess it up.
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Dec 8, 2016 12:51
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brugroffil posted:Holy moly, I love that game and never knew that. More fun facts about Ultima, Origin and EA: E&A murder a gargoyle at the start of the game whose name translates to 'Create Love'. The Guardian is nicknamed 'The Destroyer of Worlds' and Origin's slogan at the time was 'We Create Worlds'. At the start of the game he tells you that he will be "your companion, your provider and your master!", i.e.: he's a video game publisher that works with them, finances them and ultimately dictates what they do. (Richard Garriott claims that that EA were in on the jokes in Ultima VII and were happy for them to do it, though, so that makes it a bit less funny). In Ultima V, Typing 'Electronic Arts' makes NPCs tell you off for swearing. Ultima VI has a pirate named 'Hawkins' (after then-president of EA Trip Hawkins) and he has a crew named after other EA higher-ups. Ultima VIII has a weird object that morphs between a cube, sphere and tetrahedron that doesn't do anything, but if you double click on it the Avatar will kneel before it say "I have not the strength, nor the wisdom to master such power... But one day I shall!" Ultima IX has nothing funny, good or redeeming about it at all. Apart from maybe the soundtrack which is pretty good. Quote-Unquote has a new favorite as of 15:22 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 15:18
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Quote-Unquote posted:
I don't know, it was pretty funny that, upon release, the game was unbeatable because it would crash in the fight with the Guardian (or, if you were less lucky, the fight between British and Blackthorn that you only observed). They fixed that a few months later.
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Dec 8, 2016 15:59
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Quote-Unquote posted:Ultima IX has nothing funny, good or redeeming about it at all. Apart from maybe the soundtrack which is pretty good. Plus all the horses in the game being hung for disloyalty since the programmers could not get them working is pretty funny.
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Dec 9, 2016 03:14
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A SWEATY FATBEARD posted:Here's another bit of lore from Yugoslavia. Electric TA (thermo-accumulative) furnaces.
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Dec 9, 2016 03:34
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Those are all over europe in poor areas and i judge people by them. If i see one of those hideous things in someones appartment im gonna write him off as an idiot.
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Dec 9, 2016 11:00
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Guy writing code for mega cd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH94fKtGr0M
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Dec 11, 2016 19:49
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People managing to find things to do with the new MacBook Pro thingie. https://twitter.com/valross2/status/807938333053775872
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Dec 12, 2016 08:45
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Casimir Radon posted:People managing to find things to do with the new MacBook Pro thingie. All I can hear in my head is the music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vNSnwZVNRk
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Dec 12, 2016 08:55
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Still cant believe they dropped all ports for 4 thunderbolt 3s. (Thats what they are, right?) Gonna run my 2015 MBP into the fuckin ground now.
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Dec 12, 2016 15:08
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Killswitch posted:Still cant believe they dropped all ports for 4 thunderbolt 3s. (Thats what they are, right?) Gonna run my 2015 MBP into the fuckin ground now. USB C ports carrying USB 3.1, displayport and thunderbolt, I believe. Not the worst possible choice, though one each of USB A and mini-DP would have been incredibly useful additions. At least there's a reasonable number of them and it's a nonproprietary standard.
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Dec 12, 2016 17:45
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My 2007 MBP only had 2 USB 2.0 ports on opposite sides of the chassis. That was ridiculous.
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Dec 12, 2016 19:08
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Is there a solid historical reasoning behind why Numpads/Calculators have a different number arrangement from Telephones?
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Dec 13, 2016 08:47
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Humphreys posted:Is there a solid historical reasoning behind why Numpads/Calculators have a different number arrangement from Telephones? http://www.vcalc.net/Keyboard.htm TL:DR: No one knows
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Dec 13, 2016 08:53
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Humphreys posted:Is there a solid historical reasoning behind why Numpads/Calculators have a different number arrangement from Telephones? We know why it happened, but it’s a bit of a historical accident. If either the touch‐tone telephone or the electronic calculator had been widespread at the time of the other’s development, the second to be developed would have copied the first, but the fact is that they developed independently at approximately the same time same time, the 1960s. Numpads originated on mechanical adding machines, which first looked like this:  Each column of digits had its own keys. For a zero, you depress no keys in that column. An experienced operator can actually sum numbers faster on a machine like this than on a modern calculator because they can key‐in multiple columns of digits concurrently. I believe that putting the numerals in descending order made for simpler internals, but don’t quote me on that. Whatever the cause, they all looked like this. The “ten‐key” arrangement featured on modern calculators and computer keyboards was invented in 1914, but didn’t catch on till the 1960s, when electronic calculators were first available, and the 1970s, when they became cheap enough to be on every desk. Meanwhile, circa 1960, the Bell company was developing touch‐tone telephones. The way they went about deciding which key arrangement to use was empirical: they gave people different designs to use and recorded statistics for how fast they entered numbers and how many mistakes they made. They published an article about it in their company journal in July of 1960, “Human Factors Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushbutton Telephone Sets”  IV‐A performed the best and that was the end of it. So in summary, the calculator layout existed first, but it was only used by professional number crunchers so it didn’t influence the telephone keypad’s development. Calculators later because cheap enough to become commonplace, and they stuck with the layout their precursors had used. Platystemon has a new favorite as of 13:32 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 09:04
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Pretty much "nobody knows/that's the way it's always been," yeah. Interesting that they went with 3x3+1 instead of just buttons in the old circle, though. Chillbro Baggins has a new favorite as of 12:19 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 12:15
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Other layouts have been tried, mostly on cellphones. Landline phones mostly stuck with 3x3+1 or rarely a circular layout.    
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Dec 13, 2016 13:11
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I almost miss the mad old cellphone layouts. So much more interesting that the universal flat panel touchscreen of basically all phones ever these days.
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Dec 13, 2016 13:13
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*^^  drat, everytime we get a post like this I get really wistful for the cellphones of my youth. RIP interesting design. 
jojoinnit has a new favorite as of 13:22 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 13:20
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This was my favorite phone of all that I ever owned (followed closely by the palm pre back when webos was a thing), and I wish the price for the gsm version wasn't so stupidly high
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Dec 13, 2016 13:31
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Dec 13, 2016 14:11
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 I still have 2 of these in working condition in a drawer somewhere. Yes, those are e-ink keys. They were awesome.
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Dec 13, 2016 14:12
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 unffff old lovely cellphones
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Dec 13, 2016 14:17
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I never had one of those and I always wondered how the hell you were supposed to type on those tiny keys
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Dec 13, 2016 14:20
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Kelp Me! posted:
Holy poo poo, that was the best feature phone ever and you're the only person that I've ever seen who remembers it. I kept mine well into the smartphone era because it worked so well. The e-ink keys were great and you could text like a motherfucker with it. Too bad someone doesn't redo it with modern LTE and Android. Edit: the double-angle hinge was amazing, it worked perfectly and was anvil-solid through years of abuse. Whoever designed it should be engineering bridges or something.
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Dec 13, 2016 14:27
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