hellojavalad's recent activity

  1. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link
    Pokemon The Card Game Pocket officially launched last week. I haven't played any collectable card games out of 2 or 3 MTG matches with a family member. I like it. It is really simple (your deck...

    Pokemon The Card Game Pocket officially launched last week. I haven't played any collectable card games out of 2 or 3 MTG matches with a family member.

    I like it. It is really simple (your deck consists of 20 cards) and a match is 5-10 minutes (You need to get 3 'Points' by knocking out Pokemon, some Pokemon having a point value of 1 and others 2). Basically, I find that if I am playing a game with another person, I like quick matches and simple concepts, so this is right up my alley.

    This is the first time I've played a gacha style game, and I get the addiction of collecting things for the first time. The art on these cards is amazing, and while I haven't drawn one yet, the immersive art cards are super cool (an animation that explores the environment that Pokemon is in). I actually went ahead and spent a bit of real world money, that is something I have NEVER done before in a game.

    The solo battles are fairly good - you get rewards for meeting certain criteria. I wish there were more solo battles, and more specifically I wish there was a rogue-like mode. I don't play other digital card games, but it seems to me that you could do a lot of interesting things with something like that.

    Anyways, I'm thinking about getting into the standard card game. I'm looking to pick up a couple of decks this week and mess around with PTGC Live. I touched it a little bit but it feels kind of janky, not very intuitive to use/things aren't explained well, and has no solo mode (other than a deck test feature) to practice on.

    8 votes

  2. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    I haven't touched Qud in a couple of weeks, but loaded it up last night. At this point I am pretty sure I built a PC with a 4070 TI Super, 7800x3d, and 32GB RAM so I can play Minecraft, Caves of...

    I haven't touched Qud in a couple of weeks, but loaded it up last night. At this point I am pretty sure I built a PC with a 4070 TI Super, 7800x3d, and 32GB RAM so I can play Minecraft, Caves of Qud, and Pokemon Blue/Silver lol.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    I am definitely trying to increase communication. We have a weekly meeting with management, but I've been slowly trying to add regular short meetings with just the dev team. The goal is to help...

    I am definitely trying to increase communication. We have a weekly meeting with management, but I've been slowly trying to add regular short meetings with just the dev team. The goal is to help clear anything blocking progress, request help from the other devs, pitch new ideas, etc. The other developers are okay with this, but their 20 years of experience is mostly working on their own projects - maybe troubleshooting bugs reported from the end user - but otherwise not touching each other's work. So its remarkably different for them to collaborate - which is necessary with the goals management has.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hellojavalad
    Link
    I have more of a question. I work for a smallish company and we have three main developers, including myself. One of the problems we have is that communication is poor throughout the company,...

    I have more of a question. I work for a smallish company and we have three main developers, including myself. One of the problems we have is that communication is poor throughout the company, including the dev team (which has one full time remote worker, and two are in office 3-5 days a week). We have VERY little oversight (no one in the company is familiar with any kind of project management, we receive zero input from management outside of getting asked to work on specific tasks, with basically no follow up until it's complete). Is there any suggestions for project management? I am not team lead material but I'm trying to get kind get us more on the same page.

    I'm thinking of kind of doing an AGILE methodology and using Jira's Kanban board. Any suggestions or materials to read/watch? I'm not looking to implement an immediate large change - I am the most junior member of the team with two years experience vs the other two having 20+ at this company. But something to install and slowly get everyone involved in.

    Some details: all the devs are self-taught, though I have some college experience. We don't do what you would consider 'traditional' programming, like using a language like C++, Java, Python, etc. We use a program called FileMaker, a 'low-code', GUI oriented, database. If you aren't familiar, think MS Access with way better GUI tools and a custom scripting language where everything - code, editor, tables, GUI, lives in a single application.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

  6. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    Thanks! This looks like a good place to start

    Thanks! This looks like a good place to start

    1 vote

  7. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    Any suggestions for romhacks that just do things like remove forced HMs, or split physical/special, XP share, etc? I'm not looking for new content, nor difficulty/nuzlocke changes. Basically...

    Any suggestions for romhacks that just do things like remove forced HMs, or split physical/special, XP share, etc? I'm not looking for new content, nor difficulty/nuzlocke changes. Basically vanilla + QOL improvements.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link
    I have been feeling very high anxiety this week. I've been playing the first God of War game with my recently created ROM library, but put it aside for my ultimate 'turn brain off' game: Pokemon....

    I have been feeling very high anxiety this week. I've been playing the first God of War game with my recently created ROM library, but put it aside for my ultimate 'turn brain off' game: Pokemon.

    Specifically I am starting all the way back at Pokemon Blue with the plan to play all the mainline games through to Scarlet/Violet. Its the ultimate low-stakes game series, though the early generations are more difficult then what is to follow (Before Special/Physical split, no auto XP share, requiring an HM slave, box limitations, and a million glitches). I am generally playing with x3 speed as I have played these games a million times before, but the one thing that is negative about this is missing the music. The game just hits harder, probably the nostalgia portions of my brain specifically, when the music plays.

    I will also say that I super adore the art of the first two gens of Pokemon. I can't tell if it's that is simply a childhood thing or the aesthetic of such a low-res game. The style also feels different from how Pokemon are designed today, though it's hard to express why. There is just something less 'cute' about them and more 'strange creature', though inherently one style isn't better than an other (nor is this meant to say Pokemon aren't sometimes alien-looking today). Kind of before they 'refined' how Pokemon look through the generations.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    NP. I believe I posted Retro Game Corp's website in my initial post. While he focuses specifically on portable devices, there are PC guides on there. His youtube channel is great.

    NP. I believe I posted Retro Game Corp's website in my initial post. While he focuses specifically on portable devices, there are PC guides on there. His youtube channel is great.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    It won't boot up on it's own, you just run it like a regular application. It doesn't have a front end of it's own, it allows three ways to access your games 1) With ES-DE, this is the front end I...

    It won't boot up on it's own, you just run it like a regular application. It doesn't have a front end of it's own, it allows three ways to access your games 1) With ES-DE, this is the front end I was talking about earlier 2) Pegasus, which is an alternative front end 3) Steam ROM manager, which adds your games to Steam. This is one of the reasons why EmuDeck is popular as it was originally designed to work with the Steam Deck. So people could simply view their ROMs in Steam Big Picture mode (or whatever it is called on the Deck) alongside their PC game library. Doing this is not required, just another option to choose from.

    As for if it requires Steam, my understanding is no - you can install it without Steam present (obviously this means you could not use option #3 above). However it does use Steam Input to navigate, though it should work without it. My understanding is that essentially Retroarch doesn't like a lot of controllers, but I think anything modern probably works just fine.

    Yeah, Batocera and Lakka are Linux distros, so if you don't want to boot into a seperate OS to play them I wouldn't recomend this as a solution.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    So, I knew I wanted to have a nice visual front-end and years ago I tried to set up Emulation Station, but doing so was pretty tedious and time-consuming to tinker with. Basically after...

    So, I knew I wanted to have a nice visual front-end and years ago I tried to set up Emulation Station, but doing so was pretty tedious and time-consuming to tinker with. Basically after researching it came down to using Retrobat or Emudeck and while I had used Retrobat once in the past, wanted to give Emudeck a try.

    The setup was simple, it sets up all the emulators for you (most via Retroarch, but things like Dolphin obviously are seperate). Its as simple as run the setup, drop your ROMs and BIOS into the appropriate folder, sign into Retro Achievements if you want achievements, choose the front end visuals you want, and then run the built in scraper to download box art/manuals/video clips. You generally have the same hotkeys set across the emulator to fast forward/rewind, save/load states, etc. Only problem is the time-consuming part of building a game library :)

    tldr - Emudeck worked with pretty minimal setup and I liked it so much I'm just keeping it. By no means is it necessary, but you can watch Retro Game Corp's video on setup

    2 votes

  12. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    While I enjoy the books in a lot of ways, if you did not like the first book the rest are not dramatically different in how they are structured and written. I myself had this problem when reading...

    While I enjoy the books in a lot of ways, if you did not like the first book the rest are not dramatically different in how they are structured and written. I myself had this problem when reading The Wheel of Time novels. I did not care for the first one and gave up through the second one (My general understanding is the mid to mid-late portion of the series is generally poor before a stronger finish, which solidified my decision). So I totally get that feeling.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    hellojavalad
    Link
    I have been reading the Book of the New Sun series after playing a game called Caves of Qud. It is an interesting series taking place on Earth so far into the future the sun is dimming. It has a...

    I have been reading the Book of the New Sun series after playing a game called Caves of Qud. It is an interesting series taking place on Earth so far into the future the sun is dimming. It has a medieval setting, mixed with future technology, so things like swords exist but so do androids, flying machines, and laser guns. It is a very alien world, where sometimes you need to carefully read a description or look up a word (the author purposefully uses archaic old english words, along with greek and other languages), sometimes just to get a feeling about what something is exactly.

    While I like the prose and feel of the world, I do have some things I don't like. These books do not particuarly follow the structure of most books - there isn't really a middle beginning and end. In fact the first book starts with him in the city and ends with him reaching the wall at the end of the city and just ends.

    Second, while I understand that Severian (the main character) is not supposed to be a reliable narrator, I kind of just roll my eyes as every single woman he meets has sex with him two minutes after meeting him. And even if he 'loves' a woman he'll sleep with the next one that strolls by and not really care about how it affects the other. Dude is just knee-deep in pussy and after a while I just rolled my eyes when a woman appears in a page, because he will have sex with her within the next ten pages lol.

    I had never heard of the author, Gene Wolf, before. I like his writing style and wish I had heard of him before reading these books.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link
    After a decade of thinking about it, I finally decided to create a permanent 'every system I want' emulation set. I bought a 8 terrabyte drive (Honestly, may not be large enough. I have half of it...

    After a decade of thinking about it, I finally decided to create a permanent 'every system I want' emulation set. I bought a 8 terrabyte drive (Honestly, may not be large enough. I have half of it filled and still haven't added any PS3 or Switch games), installed emudeck, and have started the collection. So far I've decided on the following consoles:

    NES
    SNES
    N64
    Gamecube
    Wii
    Wii U
    Switch
    Master System
    Genesis
    Saturn
    Dreamcast
    PS1
    PS2
    PS3
    PSP
    Gameboy
    Gameboy Color
    GBA
    DS
    3DS
    Xbox
    Gamegear

    And then probably DOS, Arcade/Mame, Apple II, C64, Neo Geo, Wonderswan, PCEngine, Atari Jaguar. I'm skipping consoles prior to the NES, as I find that frequently their visuals and gameplay are usually not to my liking. Obviously not a limitation of storage, just the time in finding and curating the games I am interested in.

    Currently going through one console at a time and downloading all the games I have heard good things about (or bad, in say something like Shaq Fu). Then I go through lists of 'top 100' games for each and fill out what I missed.

    I never had a PS2, so I am playing God of War. I am not very far in, but this game is incredibly cinematic for the time and is STILL really impressive. The transition shots are super smooth and often beautiful.

    I JUST (last night) playing Persona 3 for the PS2. I have never played a Persona game (In fact I don't play many JRPGs in general). Does anyone have any suggestions for what Persona games to play? I started with 3 because IIRC that is what was discussed most on Giantbomb back in the day.

    Welcome to any 'hidden gem' suggestions for any of your favorite games. My go to example is Zone of the Enders for the GBA. I great little RPG that isn't super recognized and is overshadowed by it's home console brothers.

    8 votes

  15. Comment on Vox Media, on the hunt for new revenue streams, is exploring putting up a pay wall on The Verge in ~tech

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    I still check out The Verge but mostly to summarize current tech content. If there is something that is really interesting I usually end up searching for articles outside of The Verge. Honestly,...

    I still check out The Verge but mostly to summarize current tech content. If there is something that is really interesting I usually end up searching for articles outside of The Verge.

    Honestly, the thing I hate the most is how smug and cringy some of their writing is. Stuff like this article (https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24255725/combing-an-electric-rv-with-a-range-extender-just-makes-sense) where for no reason they caption this under the photo of an Electric RV: "Thor Industries debuts the world’s first hybrid Class A motorhome. Too bad it’s ugly". It's smug, shitty, unwarranted, and even though aesthetic and design is a personal thing....I don't think it remotely looks bad. I like it.

    Anyone have suggestions for tech sites these days? I don't need nitty gritty hyper-detailed breakdowns, just general 'tech news of the day'.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hellojavalad
    (edited )
    Link
    I had a house fire a few months ago that upended everything in my life. I haven't coded outside of work (I work with FileMaker, so not what most people think of when thinking about programming)...

    I had a house fire a few months ago that upended everything in my life. I haven't coded outside of work (I work with FileMaker, so not what most people think of when thinking about programming) since then. I've been majorly depressed the last two weeks and don't have any hobbies post fire (waiting on insurance to cover items I need to resume things). While I do game, nothing I play is terribly mentally stimulating. I am trying to code a bit in my free time to help knock me out of my funk.

    I had done the Roguelike tutorial earlier this year and just decided to run through it again. I'd like to do some simple game dev as a side project and I am drawing up plans for my own roguelike. As indicated above, I'm not a traditional programmer, but I am familiar with Python enough to be dangerous. It is really nice to work with an actual proper programming language and a real IDE.

    I will also note that I am trying to get into Starfield modding as well, but the Creation Kit baffles me a bit sometimes. I don't know if there is something wrong with my installation, but sometimes I load it up and get tons of warnings. Other times I do it and it's fine. And it crashes a lot. I know game engines can be big and complicated beasts, but I haven't needed to ctrl+s every five minutes worrying about crashes to desktop since I worked with Photoshop on a a low-end Windows XP high school PC.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies

    hellojavalad
    Link
    Slight spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine. Didn't much care for Deadpool & Wolverine. I re-watched the first film the day before, and the humor fell way more flat in this one. Even compared to 1 &...

    Slight spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.

    Didn't much care for Deadpool & Wolverine. I re-watched the first film the day before, and the humor fell way more flat in this one. Even compared to 1 & 2, the majority of the humor is based just on references. The action was largely underwhelming excluding the Wolverine/Deadpool fight vs the hundred or so other Deadpools (to be fair, this was really, really good). Soundtrack was dope though.

    Overall a 2/5 experience saved by a solid climax.

    1 vote

  18. Comment on DOOM and DOOM II have been combined, re-mastered, and re-released in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    Do note that My house.wad requires GZDoom, iirc

    Do note that My house.wad requires GZDoom, iirc

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Los Angeles’s mayor was contemplating a mask ban. She just got Covid. in ~society

    hellojavalad
    Link Parent
    I am curious what the rate is compared to other common diseases like the flu? I think people have largely moved on as, as the public perception has shifted to COVID becoming less severe and those...

    I am curious what the rate is compared to other common diseases like the flu? I think people have largely moved on as, as the public perception has shifted to COVID becoming less severe and those who are unhealthy or have immune deficiencies have options include immunizations.

    Not necessarily my take - I live with a cancer patient who recieves chemo so when going to large public places (airports, malls) I will take a mask with me, though I don't wear one at work (our desks our fairly far apart and I wash my hands and keep hand sanitizer with me in general.

    Anyways, mask bans are a terrible idea. There are people that require them and I can't see any logical way around this. If this is such a problem we need to look at other ways of addressing this.

    As a sidenote, COVID generally improved my medical hygiene. I do a better job of washing hands for more than five seconds, for example. When I'm sick I stay home (I am fortunate that since COVID remote work for sick employees is easily available) and only go out if I need to (if I need groceries and can't afford the delivery markup), and when I DO go out I always wear a mask.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    hellojavalad
    Link
    As I have mentioned previously mentioned, I'm really enjoying the original Doom and Doom I. I find it really interesting that people seem to have come to a consensus that Doom is the ultimate...

    As I have mentioned previously mentioned, I'm really enjoying the original Doom and Doom I.

    I find it really interesting that people seem to have come to a consensus that Doom is the ultimate run-and-gun game, that Doom 2016 is the modern evolution of Doom (and that Doom Eternal is the natural evolution of Doom 2016). Doom, specifically most of Doom 1, is not this super-hype 'gotta-keep-moving-at-all-costs' hyperfocus on movement game. A good portion of it is jump around a corner, prioritize a target, fire, and jump back behind the corner. Once you kill all the hit scanners you can generally come out freely, but I find most of my 'movement' is actually stand in one place (and in corridors, it is almost always dead center) and move a foot to the left or right to dodge an incoming projectile, then move back to the original location.

    On top of that, I would argue that Doom (again, Doom 1 in particular) rewards careful behavior over frantic action with ammunition limitations. There are certainly levels where this is not an issue - ammo is found everywhere and you'll spend the entire map nearly maxed out for at least one weapon (usually the trust shotgun) and never feel short for your other weapons. But there are levels where it is a verifiable drought. Not many ammo pickups, and most enemies are demons that don't drop any. The immediate example of this is E2M2 "Containment Area". You will be bone-dry on ammo and the map knows this, you quickly find a Beserk pickup that allows you to one or two-punch most enemies in the level. I played this on Ultra-Violence yesterday and I felt I had to be EXTREMELY cautious when approaching enemies. I find it very easy to accidentally charge toward an imp and find it suddenly starting their range attack animation. Now, I will admit, maybe I just suck at close melee combat, in every FPS I play I more or less dismiss melee attacks because I am interested in the Shooter portion of FPS, so maybe my skills here just suck.

    That being said, that map is an extreme outlier. There are maps that provide just enough ammo to get you through. You need to be ultra conservative with your movement because your currency is no longer your health, it is ammunition. It is more important to accurately shoot enemies, there is no more cross-level sniping, you need to move to midrange and do the 'shoot, move a foot left to dodge a projectile, shoot, move back a foot right to dodge another projectile, fire again'. And it's not just because you need ammo this level, if you don't remember what the next map holds you don't feel comfortable knowing you are going in with nine shotgun shells and thirty bullets for your chaingun. Even if you have a comfortable amount of plasma and rockets you don't want to waste them on low-end enemies, because coming up against a Baron without these means a slow and methodical dance involving (by my count) around sixteen shotgun shells.

    Now, again, this changes a lot for Doom II. There are more levels that take place in open outside spaces, and who can forget E1M7 which is the first time where you are rocketing (sometimes literally) across the level putting out fires everywhere all at once. But the original Doom games are not just an adrenaline fueled ballet dance of violence - they are also a slow hide and seek involving peeking around corners. I'm not bold enough to say they are cover shooters, they aren't, but there is more than one flavor of gameplay of Doom that should be acknowledged. These variations of gameplay is what makes the game good.