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Dicty Bojangles posted:My grandmother was a piano teacher her whole life and slipped on spilled oil at an Aramco gas station in the 70’s, breaking both her forearms. Aramco settled and paid for her recovery plus damages, and she took the extra money to buy herself a full-size pipe organ, which had always been her dream. In order to house the organ in playable state she had to convert her attached garage into a second den - the organ den - where she practiced organ the rest of her life until she had to move to a nursing home in her 80’s due to dementia. Until her death at 97 she could still play Bach études when we walked her to the upright piano in the hallway outside her shared room at the home, although she had long forgotten our names and faces. Your grandmother was badass.
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Mar 20, 2024 06:29
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Unperson_47 posted:Your grandmother was badass.
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Mar 20, 2024 10:26
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Dicty Bojangles posted:My grandmother was a piano teacher her whole life and slipped on spilled oil at an Aramco gas station in the 70’s, breaking both her forearms. Aramco settled and paid for her recovery plus damages, and she took the extra money to buy herself a full-size pipe organ, which had always been her dream. In order to house the organ in playable state she had to convert her attached garage into a second den - the organ den - where she practiced organ the rest of her life until she had to move to a nursing home in her 80’s due to dementia. Until her death at 97 she could still play Bach études when we walked her to the upright piano in the hallway outside her shared room at the home, although she had long forgotten our names and faces. Your grandma loving rules. Rest in power
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Mar 20, 2024 12:43
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Dicty Bojangles posted:buy a full-size pipe organ Classic blunder when Hititophones were available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWVFEVWJMz8
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Mar 20, 2024 12:59
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Sam Battle would disagree... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluPQLh1xzlI7EMB5qIxDd_1OLE-Z_kyC Actually, Sam would probably love one of those insane instruments...
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Mar 21, 2024 03:55
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Dick Trauma posted:I don't know how I've never heard of this instrument. It sounds like sim city 2000 music
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Mar 21, 2024 04:41
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 quote:December 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. Hump master in a Chicago and North Western Railroad yard operating a signal switch system which extends the length of the hump track. He is thus able to control movements of locomotives pushing the train over the hump from his post at the hump office." Acetate negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. https://www.shorpy.com/node/27366
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Mar 23, 2024 21:11
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Mar 23, 2024 21:14
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hump office, lmao.
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Mar 23, 2024 23:13
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I think the hump system is all automated these days. Lots of railyard stuff is automated. It's how you can run a mile long train with a grand total of one engineer although you should have two for safety.
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Mar 24, 2024 03:28
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Some train cars have DO NOT HUMP written on them to discourage adventurous engineers.
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Mar 24, 2024 03:33
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Mar 24, 2024 04:46
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:It sounds like sim city 2000 music Apparently there's no way to get sc2k running unless you run the dos version or actually just install an entire virtual machine os, which is loving insane to me Like you can legit at this point probably run an entire computer inside ram as a ram drive of some kind and not notice except it's unnaturally fast
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Mar 25, 2024 10:37
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Apparently there's no way to get sc2k running unless you run the dos version or actually just install an entire virtual machine os, which is loving insane to me If you can run something in Dosbox, that's a win. Which includes Windows 3.1 and sundry. The lovely bit is the stuff that came out circa Windows 98 and relied on some stuff there
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Mar 25, 2024 11:05
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I downloaded a windows 95 era magic the gathering game off an abandon ware site and it crashes on startup with "failed to launch Dave's Cool Timer" Game development used to be cool Killingyouguy! has a new favorite as of 13:04 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 13:02
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Apparently there's no way to get sc2k running unless you run the dos version or actually just install an entire virtual machine os, which is loving insane to me The animations rely on some insane 256-colour SVGA palette swapping magic. There's a workaround for modern systems but it has the negative side effect of causing the cost of zones and stuff that shows up near your cursor to stop working. I've been trying to get a flawless modern version of SC2K Network Edition to work for almost a decade now and I'm still basically exactly where I started. The Maxis folks were on some good poo poo when they hacked that game together.
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Mar 25, 2024 13:11
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So I missclicked something today and was greeted by this screen. Made me chuckle a bit. 
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Mar 25, 2024 14:07
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Would it kill Microsoft or Google to just stick to one line of products keeping the same names and functionality and improve upon them iteratively?
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Mar 25, 2024 18:42
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Butterfly Valley posted:Would it kill Microsoft or Google to just stick to one line of products keeping the same names and functionality and improve upon them iteratively? literally yes
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Mar 25, 2024 18:50
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Butterfly Valley posted:Would it kill Microsoft or Google to just stick to one line of products keeping the same names and functionality and improve upon them iteratively? No one gets promoted for fixing an existing product.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:12
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Lowen SoDium posted:No one gets promoted for fixing an existing product. ding ding ding tech debt backlog is lame. work on the new monetization scheme
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Mar 25, 2024 19:21
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re: virtually running old machines my mom loved the screen saver called Jonny Castaway It obviously doesn't run on anything modern I found online instructions to get it working: The .scr file brings up a DOS VM and runs it in that full screen and has hooks to quit and change the resolution back when it's done. I can't believe it all works, but it does and has been solid for 3 years now and she loves it.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:40
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namlosh posted:re: virtually running old machines woah, I've never heard of this one but that's really cool I sorta miss the days of cool screen savers. Nowadays I just have my monitor turn off instead of going to a screensaver
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Mar 25, 2024 20:08
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Ah, Jonny Castaway. I fondly remember changing the date and time on the computer to trigger special events, like dating the mermaid and stuff.
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Mar 25, 2024 20:15
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VGA palette tricks are fun, and strangely simple - I used to play with it in basic. Basically, you draw with 256 numbered colors ("this is a line of color 72") and there is a table of which color to display for each number. The entries are full 24-bit color, and if you change them it immediately takes effect on the next screen refresh. So if you pick a handful of color numbers and draw a gradient with them, and then cycle the color values for those, it looks funky. 
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Mar 25, 2024 20:19
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Killingyouguy! posted:I downloaded a windows 95 era magic the gathering game off an abandon ware site and it crashes on startup with "failed to launch Dave's Cool Timer" If that's the Microprose game, that game loving rips and I hope you get it working. There's a community patch that adds a ton of updated card sets to it too.
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Mar 25, 2024 20:31
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Computer viking posted:VGA palette tricks are fun, and strangely simple - I used to play with it in basic. Basically, you draw with 256 numbered colors ("this is a line of color 72") and there is a table of which color to display for each number. The entries are full 24-bit color, and if you change them it immediately takes effect on the next screen refresh. they pulled a ton of similar tricks for the nes to get otherwise impossible parallax effects and vertical scrolling stuff. Switch out like half the sprite sheet when the frame or a line was half-rendered and crap like that.
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Mar 25, 2024 20:50
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Computer viking posted:VGA palette tricks are fun, and strangely simple - I used to play with it in basic. Basically, you draw with 256 numbered colors ("this is a line of color 72") and there is a table of which color to display for each number. The entries are full 24-bit color, and if you change them it immediately takes effect on the next screen refresh. This reminded me that I used to occasionally have Xtacy running in a window which did some eye-wateringly garish palette animations: http://web.archive.org/web/20000422141333/http://www.gweep.net/~jer/xtacy.html Good times 
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Mar 25, 2024 23:24
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Amiga games were usually 16 or 32 colors, but the Copper chip allowed you to change the palette while the screen was drawn. If you changed the palette slightly every few lines, you could achieve this kind of gradients, which made your game look a lot more colorful than was seemingly possible. I believe the image below only allocates two or three colors from the palette (clouds, sky, mountains).
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Mar 26, 2024 07:49
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The way sprites and character animation works on REAL microcomputers is so simple, to the user. Atari choo-choo 4tw
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Mar 26, 2024 08:15
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I freely admit that for the time, Shadow of the Beast pulled some impressive graphics even if the game itself wasn't.
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Mar 26, 2024 09:01
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Here's the best demo I've seen of palette shifting/color cycling, you can see the palette by clicking Options, and see how parts of it cycle to create the illusion of movement: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ And a GDC talk to go with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0
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Mar 26, 2024 09:41
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legooolas posted:This reminded me that I used to occasionally have Xtacy running in a window which did some eye-wateringly garish palette animations: That reminds me, I miss music visualizations. I know you can still run Milkdrop and stuff in standalone players, but there isn't a good way to do this for streaming music services like Spotify or Youtube Music on set Android TV boxes or Smart TVs.
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Mar 26, 2024 13:18
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Get one of the audio visualisers Techmoan shows on his channel, compatible with any device any os.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:46
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With Winamp you could set a color to be the visualizer screen, so if you chose, say, black, then any black pixel on your screen contributed to the visual effects.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:27
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Lowen SoDium posted:That reminds me, I miss music visualizations. I know you can still run Milkdrop and stuff in standalone players, but there isn't a good way to do this for streaming music services like Spotify or Youtube Music on set Android TV boxes or Smart TVs. I though about this also like last year. We have these amazing GPUs that could generate all kinds of stuff, but visualizers seem to have died out. Millennials killed another industry 
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Mar 26, 2024 18:32
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Lowen SoDium posted:That reminds me, I miss music visualizations. I know you can still run Milkdrop and stuff in standalone players, but there isn't a good way to do this for streaming music services like Spotify or Youtube Music on set Android TV boxes or Smart TVs. That and the weird plasticy smell of an inflatable chair (pretty much failed technology) is the scent of 1998 to me.
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Mar 26, 2024 21:20
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credburn posted:With Winamp you could set a color to be the visualizer screen, so if you chose, say, black, then any black pixel on your screen contributed to the visual effects. Whipped the Llama's rear end too.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:00
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I haven't stopped using winamp for 20+ years, I don't see why I'd stop now.
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Mar 27, 2024 08:59
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Just wait until the llamas catch up to you.
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Mar 27, 2024 09:21
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