March 31, 2012
On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.

It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and
a 13", and they have beautiful pictures.

I don't want to go any bigger than this. I sit right next
to my 13" (I can reach out and touch it right now), so
anything bigger would just be overwhelming.

I guess I physically could go bigger than the 19 inch,
since there's plenty of room where that one is, but
meh.

> I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.

Something that I found really interesting is even
on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually
do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite.

I decided to turn off my cable last December (paying
$55 / month to watch CBS, PBS and USA just isn't remotely
worth it, and they wanted to raise prices again.
I can get CBS+PBS off the air, and for the money I was
throwing at the cable company, I could buy every
dvd the usa network puts out and still come out ahead!).

Anyway, after turning it off, I got one of those
digital tv converter boxes and hooked up my old
antenna to it.



And the picture was actually really good. PBS on
cable, including the HD channel, was a little
fuzzy in comparison. I never noticed it before,
but for the brief time that I had both, I could
switch between cable and antenna and see a clear
difference.

The air version was a lot better.

Tried CBS... same deal. Better picture on
broadcast, even through my old tvs.


I tried it at a friend's house too, on
their hdtv with satellite. The satellite
picture for PBS looked outright *bad*
on their big television.

But the broadcast one was beautiful.
Big difference on the computer generated
shows (Dinosaur Train especially).




While I miss the USA network, I don't miss
cable. I have a better picture and a much
smaller bill over the air.

And best of all, not having USA to fall back
to, I got a new appreciation for some old
shows on channels I wouldn't have watched before...

I now watch "Seinfeld", and I love it!
March 31, 2012
On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 06:14:03 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Like the AV cords: For fuck's sake, what's with the proprietary AV connectors?

What really gets me there is the old playstation used
to have regular rca jacks. They removed it from the
design about the same time they brought out the dual shock.

Similarly, the model 1 Genesis used the same rf adapter
as the NES and SNES... but they changed it for the model 2.

Annoying!

> That's kind of another thing: If I need to be doing work, it's going to be
> damn hard if I have a bunch of games two clicks away.

This is why Windows can kill me... I get addicted to
those stupid built in games.

And Windows Vista threw a Chess game on top of it. Gah!
(nice game though, it has a good sliding difficulty
setup to keep it going.)


> Really? Cool!

http://worms2d.info/Worms_Armageddon

There's a familiar name in there :)


> It was a short, minor  thing like that, but it
> was frequent enough that it just felt like I was
> being really slowed down.

heh, that's the way I feel about most animations, in
games or not. "get on with it" is what I say.

But, in many of these games, I really like the
background music, which makes it more awesomer.

In a game with bad music, everything gets more annoying.
With good bgm, it can take its time, to an extent.

> Although, I was always more of a Lunar fan

omg, not every day I see a Lunar fan! Silver
Star Story: Complete is the reason I wanted
a playstation.

That's a beautiful game.

I don't think Working Designs has ever published
anything less than great too. My first game
of theirs was Popful Mail on the sega cd, and
that was awesome back in the day too.


It made me sad when they went out of business, but
it was probably inevitable. A company that insists
on going above and beyond on every release will just
get swamped in the game environment today.


Something awesome though: my brother emailed them
to send his condolences when they went out of business,
and actually got a personal reply from Victor Ireland,
the president. I doubt any other game company out there
has such a connection with their fans.

I love them <3


But, what sucks: one of my Lunar SSSC discs is broken!
My sister stole it one day and was playing it instead
of doing her chores.

So my mother took the game away and threw it out. I
retrieved it, but the disc had chipped.

That was the *hardest* game for me to acquire. I'll
probably never replace the physical disc now, and
am stuck on the emulator.

Gah.


But, great game. Those are cutscenes I couldn't get
enough of.



While I'm talking about great games, another good
one is Phantasy Star IV on the Genesis. II and III
were ok too, but they moved too slowly. Literally,
the character walking speed was abysmal. But, IV
bumped up the speed big time, and it was amazing.

I hate the way "phantasy star" now refers to some
shitty MMORPG though. Fuck that noise, the Genesis
is where it's at.

> Actually, that reminds me, have you seen that
> YouTube video of Sonic 2006's hub-world "gameplay"?

Nay, but a friend bought some sonic game for the PS3
recently. I played it Wednesday, actually.

The loading was annoying, but only at the start of
a stage, so not disruptive to most the play.

What got me though was the bizarre 3d stuff and
seemingly sluggish controls. It was the same levels
from Sonic 2, but it felt slow and unresponsive in
comparison to the original.

idk though, I haven't played the original for a long,
long time.

> So I don't think I've ever managed to get more than a couple hours into those.

People call me a heretic for this, but I say FFs 1, 7, and 8
are the best of that bunch (and FF Tactics on the Playstation
mixed in there too).

The SNES ones were ok, but I didn't love them. Yes, FF6
has the opera scene. Yes, it is amazing.

But the rest of it? eh, certainly not bad, but not all
that great either.

> In the PSX era, I was more into PC gaming and didn't have a PSX, so I got the PC FF7.

I've heard nothing but bad things about the PC versions.
Never played it myself, but I'm told it was slow, buggy,
and annoying...


> I realized I was only playing it to see what happens
> and was genuinely dreading/rushing-through the battles

I put 8 among the top for a few reasons: 1) I liked
the story and the main character. People call me a heretic
for this too, but "then go talk to a wall", I cheered
that line! That was sexual harassment, and Squall didn't
have to take it.

Just generally though, 8 has a fine story.

2) Enc-None. You can turn off most the fights and just
fly through the game if you want too.

3) I liked the stat twiddling too. Spend a few minutes
in preparation on the junction screen and you turn your
characters into gods. That's part of the reason I play
those games... to play god. So win.

4) I liked the card minigame too.



It isn't perfect, but it checks the big boxes in jrpg
for me.


> Never tried 9. Played a demo or two of FF10, and thought "meh", and I guess I've kinda given up on FF since.

I watched my brother play some of 10. Gah, I couldn't
really get into that one.

I barely played the PS2 at all; almost everything I've
seen of it was my brother playing it. It was just
after my time.

> storytelling has always been one of the core points of JRPGs.

eh, in Lunar they are brilliant, but in FF, they
are just accent pieces; the real story is in the
gameplay and, especially, the dialog boxes.

The best FF cutscenes are the relatively brief ones
that introduce something or finish off a sequence.
They are short and relatively infrequent - do their
job and get back to the meat.


I think the problem was as the tech advanced, they
were no longer limited in their use. The designers
before used them sparingly because that was the
most they could.

Later on, they could use it more... did use it more,
and then it just got overused.

I'm told FF9 actually has a good story though. I'll
have to play it again to tell for sure, but I betcha
it will be despite overused cutscenes, not thanks to them.


> Then the same guy behind MGS *cough*reinvented*cough* Castevania to predictably horrid results.

Blah. I'm not a big castlevania fan (I watched my brother
play a lot of SOTN - yea, I watched my brother play a lot
of stuff, happens when you share rooms for 16 years! and
it was ok but seemed to drag on and on for me. Changing
cape colors only goes so far in making up for repetition.)

> And yet somehow it was well-received.

omg it is hideo must be awesome

(ps thanks for the check, konami)

Game critics are bought and paid for by the publishers,
all of them, and the sheeple buy their crap hook, line,
and sinker.

> Yea, but it's fun to actually *agree* with someone on gaming (or anything) for a change.

aye


> That hoverbike section was just EVIL!

Yes! And worse yet with two players, you both
have to do it right together. Impossible!
March 31, 2012
On 31/03/2012 07:16, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> I hear they are doing a new 2d Worms game, written in D. I look
>> forward to it. (totally on topic now :P)
>
> Really? Cool!

See also:
* http://wormsng.com/
* http://worms2d.info/4
* https://github.com/CyberShadow/ae

See anyone you recognize there? ;)

-- 
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/
March 31, 2012
On 3/31/12, Robert Clipsham <robert@octarineparrot.com> wrote:
> See also:
> * http://wormsng.com/
> * http://worms2d.info/4
> * https://github.com/CyberShadow/ae
>
> See anyone you recognize there? ;)

Aye, CS has been great to the WA community. :)
I wonder if Deadcode (another bWA contributor) uses D now too.
March 31, 2012
Don't have the HD set stretch the image. Just watch it in the original format. Personally, I just find that looking at an LCD display is easier on the eyes than a CRT. Being able to mount it on the wall to get it away from the kids is nice too.

On Mar 31, 2012, at 2:37 AM, "Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote:

> "Walter Bright" <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:jl6a6a$1gh$1@digitalmars.com...
>> On 3/30/2012 11:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> "Adam D. Ruppe"<destructionator@gmail.com>  wrote in message
>>>> In my house's big room, I have a floor bed: a couple
>>>> blankets and pillows on the floor, next to my big tv.
>>>> (my "big tv" being a 20 year old 19" set! I'll use it till
>>>> it dies. Then duct tape it back together and get a few more
>>>> years out of it.)
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Finally! Another person that's not jumping on board the "If flatpanel HD sets are so popular then I guess I have to go spring for one, too" bandwagon!
>> 
>> Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.
>> 
>> I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.
> 
> I've seen and used HD sets. Heck, my sister has one (a fancy new one - 1080p of course) and I've watched stuff on it with her. BluRay, HDMI, all the bells & whitles, etc. Yea, the HD looks nice, but ultimately I've never gotten past the overall feeling of "Meh". YMMV, but it *honestly* just doesn't do much for me. Certainly not enough to blow hundreds of dollars on it.
> 
> And that's with HD content. A lot of my stuff is SD (and will never change to HD - it's not as if my Wii or XBox1 games/hardware are suddenly going to start outputting HD), and I've always found that SD content looks noticably *worse* on an HD set than an SD set, no matter how fancy the upscale filtering is. The upscaling/filtering artifacts are always painfully noticable and it just looks like shit. But it looks perfectly fine on an SD set. 'Course, the old HD CRTs would have been able to handle SD content perfectly fine, but you can't get those anymore.
> 
> So blowing hundreds of dollars just so half my stuff looks *worse* and other stuff looks (to me) only marginally better? Pass.
> 
> It's not like B&W -> Color. Just a higher rez. Meh, big deal. When it's commonplace to have inexpensive HD *with* extended gamut (sp?) and quality no-glasses/no-headaches 3D, and content to take advantage of all that (and without getting dizzy from all the shaky-cam bullshit), then it'll probably be enough for me to care. At one point I went from a 160x160 greyscale Handspring Vizor (PalmOS) to a 320x320 full-color Palm Zire 71. *That* was a significant difference. SDTV -> HDTV? Small potatoes, I just can't care.
> 
> 
March 31, 2012
Some of the fancier TVs operate at 120Hz and generate interpolated frames to fill the gaps. It tends to cause all sorts of problems and look terrible. Generally renders console games unplayable too, as it creates all sorts of input lag.

On Mar 31, 2012, at 6:40 AM, "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 09:35:25 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> So blowing hundreds of dollars just so half my stuff looks *worse* and other stuff looks (to me) only marginally better? Pass.
> 
> I've seen a few high def tvs. I like half of them, though not enough to displace my old set.
> 
> The ones I didn't like though are apparently the more
> expensive ones. What happens is motion looks really
> bizarre on these. I don't know how to describe it, but
> watching a show on it just feels... weird as the camera
> moves.
> 
> At first, I thought it was because these things are so
> big that it was messing with my brain.
> 
> But, I brought this up on another forum and I was told
> that's a feature in the hardware: apparently the expensive
> sets interpolate frames into regular shows and display
> more movement. So, instead of 23 fps, we get, I think,
> 30 fps, though I'm not sure, out of the same original material.
> 
> Anyway, everyone insists this is "better" and I think
> it is weird just because I'm "so used to seeing shit".
> 
> 
> 
> But blargh, I still don't like it.
March 31, 2012
"Sean Kelly" <sean@invisibleduck.org> wrote in message news:mailman.1259.1333217864.4860.digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com...
>
>Don't have the HD set stretch the image. Just watch it in the original format.

Ew, then it'll be **tiny**. Esp if it's one of those 1080p sets (which I think they all are now, right?) It'd be a tiny little postage stamp in the middle of the screen.

>Personally, I just find that looking at an LCD display is easier on the
>eyes
>than a CRT.

I'm somewhat afraid of triggering another LCD vs CRT debate, but for me personally, the only time my eyes ever seem to have a problem with CRT is if it's a computer monitor that's set to 60Hz (and seriously, who ever does that?) or i the brightness is cranked up way too high, or if I use that eye-searing black-on-white color scheme that's default on every OS (I personaly think white-on-black is much nicer looking anyway, esp. when paired with blue/purple/pink elements, so that's not really an issue for me anyway - except when using a Mac which, last I checked, didn't let you change anything about the color scheme besides highlight color and wallpaper. But I don't like Apple products anyway, so whatever ;) )


March 31, 2012
On 3/31/2012 6:53 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is
>> just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.
>
> It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and
> a 13", and they have beautiful pictures.

Not really. I have an ipod with the retina display, and the older one with the low res display. It's a tiny screen. Casually, they look the same.

But the retina display really does make a big difference! It's just a lot less eyestrain to read text on it, for one thing. And it just looks crisper.

I hope Amazon's next Kindle Fire will have a high res display, if it does I'll upgrade just for that. I'm glad Apple has raised the bar on this.


> Something that I found really interesting is even
> on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually
> do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite.

That's because your cable provider is compressing the image, and the over-the-air broadcasts do not.
March 31, 2012
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fheaogseyibtulrhfsmg@forum.dlang.org...
> On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.
>
> It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and a 13", and they have beautiful pictures.
>
> I don't want to go any bigger than this. I sit right next to my 13" (I can reach out and touch it right now), so anything bigger would just be overwhelming.
>
> I guess I physically could go bigger than the 19 inch,
> since there's plenty of room where that one is, but
> meh.
>

My bigger one is something like 27"-31" (ballpark, I don't remember the exact number), and it still looks great to me.

>> I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.
>
> Something that I found really interesting is even
> on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually
> do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite.
>

Don't know about satellite, but Cable turned to crap about a couple years ago. It used to be very good, but then they started compressing the fuck out of everything, and honest to god, half the time it looks like a fucking MPEG**1**. "Digital quality" my fucking ass. (And and there were even A/V sync issues!)

Over-the-air broadcast literally looked *better* than that *before* the digital switch! I'm not exagerating. And I'm *just* talking SD here!

And with what Time Warner charged for that shit quality? And they still expect *more* money on top of that for good^H^H^H^Hawesome stations like NHK. And they don't even show the new local subchannels like Antenna TV or PBS's Create. And then all the shows you're paying ungodly amounts of money for have *overlayed* ads? Oh yea, and the set-top boxes themselves don't even work right anymore! You push a button and they'll literally just sit unresponsive for about 10-30 seconds. Fuck that shit. I've mostly just been watching library DVDs for the last few years, and we even got rid of cable entirely a couple months ago. We don't regret it at all.

I actually watch *more* broadcast TV now. The "old show" stations and PBS have such incredibly *better* directing and editing it's rediculous. And none of that drama-queeen bullshit the other networks insist in cramming into *everything*. *Food Network* shows are all drama-queen bullshit and shaky-cam/rapid-fire-editing now! It's crazy, it's like they're *trying* be as shitty as possible! But PBS is mature enough not to pull any of that crap.

> I decided to turn off my cable last December (paying
> $55 / month to watch CBS, PBS and USA just isn't remotely
> worth it,

!!!

That's *cheap* for cable. (Still not worth it though, I agree.)


March 31, 2012
On Saturday, March 31, 2012 09:30:19 Sean Kelly wrote:
> Don't have the HD set stretch the image. Just watch it in the original format. Personally, I just find that looking at an LCD display is easier on the eyes than a CRT. Being able to mount it on the wall to get it away from the kids is nice too.

Changing the aspect ratio of an image is downright evil. It distorts the image and looks horrible. I was shocked and horrified to learn that any TVs did this at all, let alone by default, and I have no idea how anyone can put up with it.

- Jonathan M Davis