| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-08, 04:52 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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 Post: #381 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
Posted by sureanem It has one microswitch, but a large touch-sensitive surface. If your finger is resting on the place where the right-mouse-button would be on a regular mouse, then when you click it registers as a right-click instead of an ordinary click. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-09, 09:35 in Games You Played Today REVENGEANCE (revision 1)
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Post: #382 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
About two weeks ago, I published an interactive fiction short story I wrote, and about one week ago I made a thread on the IF Community Forum about one of the design challenges I'd faced. I got a lot of helpful replies, recommending other games to learn from, and I've started slowly playing through them. Abbess Otilia's Life and Death is pretty straight-forward as Twine games go - you get to pick how Otilia responds to various challenges and events in her abbey, and at the end you get to see what her legacy was (influenced by your choices). What really makes this, though, is the presentation as a medieval manuscript, in black-letter type, with illustrations and notes in the margins from long-dead scholars, and just a bit of Church Latin sprinkled here and there for flavour. I wouldn't have imagined myself spending an hour or two reading about the life of a medieval nun, let alone a fictional one, but this sucked me in. Currently I'm rambling through Lancelot (playable on the Internet Archive), a game from 1988, so it's a lot more primitive than modern IF - most rooms only have a line or two of descriptive text and no actual objects. It's of the era where navigation was a challenge to be overcome, instead of an obstacle to be avoided, so I've had a lot of fun exploring all the connections between rooms and mapping them out (thanks, Kawa!). I'm still not entirely sure what the game is yet; where some games' tutorial is "how to attack and dodge" or "jumping breaks blocks", this game's tutorial is "how to be chivalrous", which doesn't particularly help me with a pressure-plate-and-dart-trap. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-22, 11:18 in How to phone app?
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Post: #383 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
Way back at the dawn of the microcomputing age, nerdy husbands bought little plastic boxes that could barely beep or display text, and justified the purchase-price to their wives with things like "I can use it to calculate the fuel efficiency of our car!" or "you can store your recipes on it!". Recently I encountered a problem of similar scope, and I wondered what the modern equivalent of those old BASIC programs is. To be specific: - I have a 700W microwave oven - Most of the food I want to heat says something like "For a 1000W oven, heat on full power for 6 minutes" - Therefore, I want a program that lets me type a number of minutes, multiplies it by 1.4, and renders the result as minutes and seconds - For example, 6 * 1.4 = 8.3999999, or 8 minutes 24 seconds So far as I can tell, my options are: - Make a webpage that does the calculation in JS, host it on a server somewhere. This is fairly straightforward and very flexible, but I hate the idea of needing an internet connection to make my phone do a thing. - Make a webpage that's a Progressive Web App with all the caching and push-notification stuff, so that the phone will cache it locally and I can run it offline. This is a lot of hoops to jump through to get the thing I want. - Write a native Android app from scratch. No, just no. - Install Python in Termux, and set up a home-screen shortcut that runs a Python script that prompts for a number then prints out the result. This is probably the best option so far, but I am disappointed if after forty years this is still the best we can do. I feel like somebody must have made some kind of spread-sheet like app where I set up labelled inputs, write a function that calculates an output, and lets me create a home-screen shortcut that runs the thing. Has anybody heard of such a beast? The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-24, 00:20 in Anyone interested in giving some Doom mapping idea's/advice?
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Post: #384 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
My first advice would be: what effect do you want to have on the player? Do you want to make them feel like a badass Hollywood action hero, gunning down demons at a full sprint? Do you want to make them feel weak and helpless, scurrying down dim corridors and trying to avoid confrontation? Do you want them to be explorers through strange realms, where just finding the level exit, or figuring out how to get to it, is an achievement in itself? The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-24, 00:23 in FUCK hsts
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Post: #385 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
HSTS is when a site administrator says "I am an adult, I know what I am doing, I'm not going to screw up my HTTPS configuration". So when the site administrator is an adult, and the site user is an adult, who should win? The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-24, 06:25 in FUCK hsts (revision 1)
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Post: #386 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
I think I've come up with a hypothetical workaround: 1. The user requests the user agent to go to Facebook 2. The user agent resolves www.facebook.com, and initiates a TLS connection 3. Through acquired knowledge (such as the Certificate Authority database and HSTS database), the user agent discovers that on the current network, "www.facebook.com" is not part of Facebook, and presents an error page to the user. 4. The error page should have a button with a label like "I am OK with connecting to a site that is not actually Facebook". 5. If the user clicks that button, the user-agent should choose a URL at random from the user's browsing history whose hostname component is not www.facebook.com, and connect to that instead. Someone file an issue on Bugzilla! The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-24, 06:35 in Anyone interested in giving some Doom mapping idea's/advice?
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Post: #387 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
I remember having lots of fun once I read the BFG FAQ and discovered that the glowy green ball is not the primary method of dealing damage. Instead, it works like this: 1. The player fires the BFG in direction D, and a big glowy green ball emerges and slowly travels in that direction. 2. When the ball hits an obstacle, it explodes. 3. When the ball explodes, the gun fires a bunch of hitscan projectiles from WHEREVER THE PLAYER IS STANDING. 4. The hitscan projectiles are fired in a random cone around D, REGARDLESS OF WHERE THE PLAYER IS FACING. So the trick is to find a long hallway beside a room with a lot of dog-fighting. Let's say you stand at the northern end of a long hallway, and fire the gun southward. You now have until the ball explodes to reposition yourself to the northern end of the room with the fighting in it. If you time it just right, you can sprint past and clear a room without even the courtesy of having to stop and aim. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-25, 13:46 in Anyone interested in giving some Doom mapping idea's/advice?
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Post: #388 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
Posted by Maxane So the thing about Doom 2 MAP01 is that it was right at the dawn of multiplayer FPS games, and for whatever reason (time constraints? lack of inventiveness?) Doom 2 didn't have any dedicated multiplayer maps, or even a way to queue up a playlist of maps - when you started a new deathmatch game, it just dumped you in MAP01 like a singleplayer or co-op game. And so while MAP01 had to function as a simple, straight-forward tutorial level for people playing the single-player campaign, it also had to function as a multiplayer map - so it has more weapons than a tutorial map really should, it puts high-value items like the plasma rifle in a wide-open place to prevent camping, etc. etc. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-27, 06:41 in Anyone interested in giving some Doom mapping idea's/advice?
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Post: #389 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
I once played a version of MAP01 modified for deathmatch friendliness. I spent some time looking it up, and it seems it was in a megawad called http://members.xoom.com/BarrieM/horizon.htm">Horizon for Legacy, specially designed to show off the features of the Doom Legacy source-port, like eight-player deathmatch and the ability to jump low walls. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to play in Chocolate Doom, and while apparently (G)ZDoom supports Legacy's extensions, those aren't available in Debian. Just for kicks, I built the latest version of Doom Legacy and took some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Bx7I5S7 The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-28, 04:00 in Anyone interested in giving some Doom mapping idea's/advice?
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Post: #390 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
As I was walking around the flooded area, the game played splashing noises all the time. I wondered if maybe that was intended as an auditory cue - you're always going to hear gunfire in a deathmatch game, but if there's one flooded room and you hear a lot of splashing, you know where the party's at. If you *don't* hear a lot of splashing, you know where the party *isn't*, and that can help narrow down the search. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-01-30, 05:01 in Mozilla, *sigh*
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Post: #391 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
They also booted Thunderbird to a newly founded subsidiary (yes, Mozilla now has those, aside of Pocket), "MZLA Technologies Corporation". For those keeping track at home, this is the second time this has happened; originally Thunderbird development happened inside the Mozilla Corporation like Firefox, but MoCo's attention and resources went mostly to Firefox and Thunderbird didn't get the attention it needed. In 2007, the Mozilla Foundation started a new company named Mozilla Messaging to manage Thunderbird, but there wasn't enough revenue to sustain it, so in 2011 the company was folded back into the Mozilla Labs group of MoCo, and Mozilla Labs was shut down in 2014. According to the blog-post, Thunderbird now has decent revenue just from volunteer donations, which is... surprising. On the other hand, it's the only mail client I've found on Linux that displays HTML messages properly and lets me compose replies, so I guess a lot of people probably find it valuable. I wonder if they've found a company somewhere with a vested interest in the continued existence of third-party email tools. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-02-05, 04:11 in Youtube
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Post: #392 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
I was using the "use redesign N-1" addon because (at the time) the latest redesign depended on a non-standard Chrome feature, so on Firefox the site was implemented using a JS fallback. I don't know whether Firefox implemented the old feature, or if YouTube updated their site to use the standards-compliant version that Firefox *does* implement, but it doesn't seem to be as slow as I remembered, so yay? The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-03-01, 11:29 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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Post: #393 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
You might be interested in a 20-minute video essay about the cinematic language of propaganda.Our mental construct of the Nazis is deeply informed by a propaganda film produced by the Nazis, for the explicit purpose of creating that mental construct. This right here is exactly the image they wanted you to think of, when you thought of them. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-03-07, 07:54 in Games You Played Today REVENGEANCE (revision 1)
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Post: #394 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
A long time ago, near the tail-end of the Nintendo DS lifespan, Square Enix released an unusual RPG called The World Ends With You. Instead of medieval fantasy, it's set in modern-day Shibuya (for values of "modern day" that include flip-phones); instead of chain-mail armour and long-swords, your characters have to equip the most stylish clothes and pins available from the various (fictional?) fashion shops around the place. It sounded pretty interesting, and apparently had a novel combat system, but I wasn't in the mood so I didn't pick it up. Later, a friend was getting rid of their DS games and happened to have a copy of TWEWY, so I got a copy for free, but I wasn't in the mood so I didn't start playing it. A few months ago, a YouTube Let's Play channel I watch suggested they might be playing TWEWY soon. I like watching Let's Play series about games I've played, or games I'm very unlikely to ever play, but watching a series about an unplayed game on the shelf within arm's reach seemed a bit much, so even though I wasn't in the mood, I dug it out. I admired the intro cinematic, the urban art-style and the music, and played through the tutorial. I proceeded to the second mission, which started off OK, but I couldn't figure out how to trigger the boss fight at the end - I just sort of wandered about, clicked on things, and sighed. Later that day, before I went to bed, I looked up a walkthrough to find out how to progress, but I'd had my fill for the day so I set it aside. Today was a pleasant afternoon and I didn't have anything else planned, so I decided to take a second crack at it. It took me a couple of goes to get the instructions in the walkthrough to work, but eventually they did, and I got my boss fight. It took me a couple of attempts at the boss fight to admit that I really didn't remember how combat worked, and then a few attempts to find the in-game tutorials so I could review them. After that, I actually managed to beat the boss. And then the post-fight cutscene dumps you into *another*, harder fight without a chance to save. *That* fight took me half a dozen more attempts, and for each attempt I had to beat the first fight again to reach the second. I spent more time reviewing the in-game tutorials, making sure I had the in-game difficulty settings as low as they could go (the level-slider adjusts *your* level, not the level of enemies) and eventually I managed to make it through to the third mission. The third mission moved me to a different part of Shibuya, introduced food and clothing shops, and a bit more world building. I was starting to have a good time, but when I reached the first story battle, once again I had my ass whooped almost immediately. Maybe the game expects you to grind a lot for XP between moving the plot forward? Maybe the game expects you to grind to increase the player's skill, rather than the character's level? Maybe I just suck horribly? But man, I feel like basic combat is fiddly and unforgiving, and the game keeps trying to pile more fiddly and unforgiving layers on top to spice things up. I don't have the time or patience to hundred-percent games or S-rank everything, and I'm OK with that. On the other hand, I'd like to think I'm skilled enough to at least experience the intended "fun part" of any mainstream game, so this experience is very frustrating. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-04-17, 16:06 in Satellaview emulation on Byuu: It doesn't work?
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Post: #395 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
To load a Satellaview game in byuu, you have to choose "Super Famicom..." from the menu, then load the base cart, then load the mini-cart containing the Satellaview game you want to play. When you load the game from the command-line, there's no way to tell byuu what kind of console to load it into. It tries to guess based on the file-extension, but it doesn't know about .bs files. So for the moment, it's not possible to play Satellaview games in byuu from a frontend. Playing them in bsnes is probably a better plan anyway. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-04-26, 01:16 in Saving controller settings on bsnes v107
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Post: #396 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
If you downloaded an official (Windows) build, the controller settings should be stored in the "settings.bml" file beside the bsnes.exe file. If you built it from source, or you moved the bsnes.exe file around after extracting it, the controller settings may be stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\bsnes\settings.bml instead. If any of those paths are missing or read-only, or you're running bsnes by double-clicking it from inside the .zip every time, I can imagine you might have problems. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-05-10, 04:21 in Resurrecting Visual Basic 3 shareware in VB6
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Post: #397 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
So far, I've yet to find a 16-bit game that actually uses the native CARDS.DLL API - maybe nobody bothered RE'ing Solitaire back then? That first article you linked to says "As a result, even shareware card games like Forty Thieves, Canfield and Constitution were able to keep their file size down considerably by referencing a file that, due to its inclusion with every Windows installation, was guaranteed to be on the system." I assume those aren't 16-bit games, then? The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-05-11, 06:50 in Where to put the bsnes folder and my games please?
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Post: #398 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
A1 - The only disadvantage to putting your games inside the bsnes folder is that if a bsnes update comes out, you can't just toss the old bsnes folder away. I'd recommend having a "Super Nintendo" folder with "Games" and "bsnes" folders side-by-side... but that's just a recommendation, doing things a different way isn't likely to break anything. A2 - No, bsnes does no have an installer, so you can put it anywhere you want. There should be a "settings.bml" file beside "bsnes.exe"; so long as that file is there, bsnes will use it to store its configuration. If you remove the file, bsnes will instead store its settings in your user folder, so you can make the emulator and games read-only (for security, or because they're on CD or whatever) and you can still configure things. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-05-12, 14:23 in Where to put the bsnes folder and my games please?
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Post: #399 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
Posted by Bob-P- Sounds great! You say I can put my “Super Nintendo” folder containing “bsnes” and “games” folders anywhere I want. I was originally thinking of putting it in my C: Drive program files (x86) folder because I thought that was a good secure place but from what you say there might not be a need and I could just leave it in my documents. I can still pin the bsnes application onto my start menu for easy access either way. I wouldn't put things in C:\Program Files\ myself, because installers and uninstallers make assumptions about what's in there, and messing around manually is a good way to break things if you don't know what you're doing. Right now I keep things in an "Archive" directory in my home folder, but previously I've kept them on an external drive. (I also agree with the things Jistuce said in his reply) The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
| Screwtape |
Posted on 20-05-13, 13:48 in Resurrecting Visual Basic 3 shareware in VB6
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Post: #400 of 443 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 1101 days Last view: 172 days |
Turns out I *do* have some of my old VB3 stuff lying around, namely a little always-on-top clock themed to look like a tool-tip. The documentation is super-cringey, so I'm not going to upload it, but I'm impressed at how polished I made it: - Choose a custom font, foreground colour, and background colour. - Automatically CAPITALISE text, or strip punctuation, in case you're using a crazy font that's missing glyphs. - A right-click menu that includes all the functionality you'd expect in Windows 3.1 (Move-with-keyboard, minimise, close, open Task Manager) along with custom menu items - A custom About dialog - A custom settings dialog, with a status-bar that displays a description of each control as it gets the keyboard focus - A Windows Help file, containing things like "Files included in this package", "installation & deinstallation", "How to use", a screenshot of the setup dialog that pops up a description of each control as you click on it, and a bunch of other stuff. Also, most of the help pages have a link that pops up the same information, but written in what my teenage self thought was a hilariously sarcastic tone of voice - If you focus the window and hit Ctrl-C, the current time is copied to the clipboard - Apparently, this app will *also* publishes the time for DDE clients to read, and the help file includes a Word 6.0 macro to insert the time into the current document - Like MS-DOS 6 (I think), if you hold Shift while it's starting, it ignores saved settings and resets to the defaults - Like Program Manager and File Manager, if you hold Shift while quitting, the settings are saved and the program does not quit It turns out, it mostly works in Wine - it can't launch Task Manager or move the window with the keyboard, the clipboard integration doesn't seem to function, but it's sitting happily in the corner of my screen and updating properly, I can drag it around, and I can use all the fancy fonts I have installed. There's one thing about it that disappoints me: the version number displayed in the About window is different from the version number in the Setup window, and the help file clearly hasn't been updated since the entire previous release. Ah well, too late to worry about it now. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. |
