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Video Games - a general discussion thread — Page 319

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Possessed said:

Also, if you've got a nintendo wii it's pretty cheap on the virtual console.  I emulate it on project64 (legally... I bought it on the virtual console then there's a way to extract the rom from that)

The problem with project64, and most nintendo 64 emulators in general is...how darned inaccurate they are.

Personally, I'm waiting for Cen64 to reach beta stage, as it will eventually set a standard in accuracy that should have been reached years ago.

Nobody sang The Bunny Song in years…

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Majora's Mask, in fact, runs perfectly fine on project64.  If there's anything about it that's so inaccurate on project64 that it honestly ruins the game for you, then I seriously feel sorry for you and I question whether or not you're actually playing for fun.  I played through the whole game on it and it was great.  Also, it was nice being able to play it on a 65 inch HDTV and not have it be blurry or pixelated.  Thank you, bluedart for that.

Then again, things like frame-buffer effects being a half second off don't bother me, but hey maybe I'm weird.  I must be crazy, but things being slightly different that I would never notice unless it was pointed out to me just don't affect me at all.

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Thanks for checking out the stream tonight Bkev and whoever else was there, sorry I may have missed some of the activity in the chat room, my eyes were going all funny.

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I wasn't specifically talking about Majora's Mask.

I don't know how to explain how important emulation accuracy is to me, but I will try my best.

1. Many Super Mario 64 hacks can't run on a real n64 because they make inaccurate hardware assumptons.

2. Games like Pokemon Snap and the 64dd games are unplayable on less accurate consoles.

3. Accuracy in emulation allows for tool assisted replays to be run on an actual console.

4. Although meant for the snes, http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy">this article should explain some things. Pity it's incomplete though.

Nobody sang The Bunny Song in years…

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Danfun128 said:

I wasn't specifically talking about Majora's Mask.

I don't know how to explain how important emulation accuracy is to me, but I will try my best.

1. Many Super Mario 64 hacks can't run on a real n64 because they make inaccurate hardware assumptons. Doesn't affect my enjoyment when I'm playing it on the emulator at all.

2. Games like Pokemon Snap and the 64dd games are unplayable on less accurate consoles. I don't know much about those, but I can tell you it runs Ura Zelda perfectly.

3. Accuracy in emulation allows for tool assisted replays to be run on an actual console. Again, what does this have to do with enjoying playing a game?

4. Although meant for the snes, http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy">this article should explain some things. Pity it's incomplete though.

 While your points are valid, I honestly don't see how they have anything to do with whether or not somebody should play a game on Project64.  Maybe I misread, but I don't recall anybody saying they were trying to make a hack or a TAS, just playing the damn game.

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Leonardo said:

Thanks for checking out the stream tonight Bkev and whoever else was there, sorry I may have missed some of the activity in the chat room, my eyes were going all funny.

 It was an interesting experience...even if I am not quite sure what I was seeing... ;-)

I was once…but now I’m not… Further: zyzzogeton

“It wasn’t the flood that destroyed the pantry…”

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Possessed said:

Danfun128 said:

I wasn't specifically talking about Majora's Mask.

I don't know how to explain how important emulation accuracy is to me, but I will try my best.

1. Many Super Mario 64 hacks can't run on a real n64 because they make inaccurate hardware assumptons. Doesn't affect my enjoyment when I'm playing it on the emulator at all.

2. Games like Pokemon Snap and the 64dd games are unplayable on less accurate consoles. I don't know much about those, but I can tell you it runs Ura Zelda perfectly.

3. Accuracy in emulation allows for tool assisted replays to be run on an actual console. Again, what does this have to do with enjoying playing a game?

4. Although meant for the snes, http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy">this article should explain some things. Pity it's incomplete though.

 While your points are valid, I honestly don't see how they have anything to do with whether or not somebody should play a game on Project64.  Maybe I misread, but I don't recall anybody saying they were trying to make a hack or a TAS, just playing the damn game.

I do admit that I am very technical minded. My laptop dual-boots with Debian. I hope I didn't come of as a "Stop having fun" guy. Also, what do you mean by "URA Zelda"? I thought that didn't exist, unless you are referring to the master quest of ocarina of time.

Nobody sang The Bunny Song in years…

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There are a few various hacks that take the name as inspiration and attempt to make something more out of Master Quest.  I don't know if any of them actually finished or not, though.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Whoops, I am referring to Master Quest, because I was under the impression that Ura Zelda was the basis for Master Quest, although I guess they aren't technically the same, although master quest is still a DD game is it not?

Anyway, all I said was that I play Majora's Mask on project64, and then you come in and talked about how project64 is inaccurate in ways that don't pertain to this situation or what I was talking about in anyway whatsoever, I guess it just was a little confusing.  I use project64 to play games, and it works fine for that.  Sorry.

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Although, I wanted to play a NTSC speed Master Quest, and the only way to do that is to extract the master quest rom out of the GameCube port (which works perfectly btw, you just use dolphin to extract the rom out of the gamecube iso and it works perfectly on emulators), and, interestingly enough, when you do that it comes out as a file named urazle.n64, which seems to indicate that at the time of the gamecube port nintendo was still referring to master quest as ura zelda internally.

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I wish project64 ran right on my laptop...  :-(

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A lot of textures pop in wrong. So much so it renders the game nearly unplayable, or it's just so distracting that I can't be bothered when I have the real thing sitting right next to me.

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How odd. Have you considered trying an earlier version?  1.6 is almost 10 years old now, and it was always very stable on my mid-end laptop from about that year.  It didn't run OOT so well, but Majora's Mask I never had issue with.

I like Project64 the best mostly for its native widescreen support thanks to Jabo's Direct3D.  Playing Zelda in 16:9 without having to stretch it is nothing short of amazing.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Hmm... that's odd.  What graphics plugin are you using, and have you tried any others?  I use Glide64 for games if I'm using an HD texture pack, but Jabo seems to work fine for others.  

Also, which version are you using?  V 2.1 fixed many issues and is alot faster than 1.6, which is more popular for some reason.  Although I go back and forth between versions sometimes.  Overall 2.1 works better with most games and is much faster, but I have to use 1.6 to get Conker's Bad Fur Day to run at full speed for some reason that I'll never understand.  (Really, I don't get it.  It used to work perfectly on 2.1 for me, then I did nothing, and just suddenly one day when I booted it it would only run at 45 fps no matter what I did.  It was really quite baffling.  So I just use 1.6 for that particular game to save myself the headache.)

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bkev said:

I like Project64 the best mostly for its native widescreen support thanks to Jabo's Direct3D.  Playing Zelda in 16:9 without having to stretch it is nothing short of amazing.

 Not technically native support as it's actually just the plugin.  You can use that plugin on any emulator.  I use Glide64 because then I can use HD texture packs and play the game in HD.  Although for games that don't have a texture pack that I like I will use the Jabo plugin.

There is a texture pack available for OOT written for Jabo, but I don't use it because there isn't one for MM, and I usually play those games back to back and want the experience to be the same.  Weird of me, I know, but if MM has to be in 4:3, then I want OOT to be in 4:3 as well.  To me the extra detail in the packs is worth the ratio.

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Speaking of Zelda, this project looks really cool. It's essentially making a new Zelda game out of the assets from Ocarina of Time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i29BmvQ1Yw4

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

<span> </span>

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Fair enough, but I've never had much luck getting Jabo's plugin to work with other emulators.

I like Glide in theory, but it never gels well with my computer.  I have to set the games to super low-res for there to not be any noticeable stuttering.  Oh, well - least I have the carts somewhere if I want the real deal.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Possessed said:

Hmm... that's odd.  What graphics plugin are you using, and have you tried any others?  I use Glide64 for games if I'm using an HD texture pack, but Jabo seems to work fine for others.  

Also, which version are you using?  V 2.1 fixed many issues and is alot faster than 1.6, which is more popular for some reason.  Although I go back and forth between versions sometimes.  Overall 2.1 works better with most games and is much faster, but I have to use 1.6 to get Conker's Bad Fur Day to run at full speed for some reason that I'll never understand.  (Really, I don't get it.  It used to work perfectly on 2.1 for me, then I did nothing, and just suddenly one day when I booted it it would only run at 45 fps no matter what I did.  It was really quite baffling.  So I just use 1.6 for that particular game to save myself the headache.)

 I use V 2.1 with the default plugin. I also have a few graphical issues with the Sims 2, so I think it's just some compatibility issue with whatever graphics card I've got.

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I've been revisiting the Kyle Katarn series recently.

I owned the original Dark Forces and Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight (as well as Mysteries of the Sith) back in the late 90's, when I was still using a Windows computer.  I always had a good time playing them, but found the level design to be confusing, so I couldn't get into them as much as I would have wanted.  Also, the graphics performance on that computer wasn't the best, so I was hindered in the gameplay experience.

Once I switched to a Macintosh, I was no longer able to play any of them at all, and given the not-entirely-satisfactory experience I'd had with them, I set them aside and moved on to other things.

In 2003 I went off to college, where I was introduced to Jedi Outcast by a friend, and this reawakened my interest in the series.  The graphics and gameplay were in every way a major upgrade over the previous installments, and with Jedi Academy coming out a short time later, I soon had more fun than I'd ever had with a Star Wars game before.  The amount of time I've spent playing both of these is fairly epic, though nearly all of it has been single player, since I rarely find the experience of online gaming to be satisfactory.  My current Macbook Pro runs them with an excellent framerate; and with the source code having been released a few years ago, I now usually use the fan-made version called OpenJK, which eliminates the need for the CD-ROMs as well as providing various bug fixes.  I also have a mod that allows for the Outcast levels to be loaded into Academy, and though it has a few minor issues (not nearly as many as earlier attempts at such a mod), going through Outcast and being able to use all of Academy's improvements to the lightsaber and Force powers is a lot of fun.

By all accounts, playing Dark Forces 2 on a Mac has always been highly problematic.  Recently I discovered that it is now (finally!) possible to run it with excellent performance in Crossover, the WINE loader for OS X.  While figuring out how to install it, I found the JKE mod which provides upgraded high-res models and textures, and well as a vastly improved lightsaber animation.  So all these years later, I'm at last able to appreciate this game for what it is, and enjoy it as I never did before.  While I still find certain things about it somewhat frustrating, it is not nearly as opaque to me as it used to be, and quite a bit more fun than I remembered it.  At first I was troubled by the lack of music, which is meant to play from the CD-ROMs and is simply silent on most modern computers, but I discovered that someone went to the trouble of creating a mod to restore the music during gameplay, which was the last link to completing the experience.

One notable difference from the later games is that DF2 is very much a shooter with lightsaber and Force powers added, while Outcast and especially Academy place extensive emphasis on the Jedi aspects, with the guns being almost an afterthought.  Since I started with the original Dark Forces, which is a shooter only, there is something quite nostalgic about this.  On my most recent playthrough of Outcast I found myself wanting to use the guns a lot more—sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.  I started making my own sound mods to replace a few of the changed sound effects with ones from DF2: the concussion rifle, in particular, sounds far cooler in its original incarnation than in the Academy revision, and some of the saber sounds were also better.  (As a sound guy I'm sensitive to things like that, so I like to take whatever steps are necessary to make them the way they should.)

One of these days I'll look into getting the first Dark Forces going, as well . . .

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My problem with emulators is I just can't get used to playing console games with a keyboard instead of a control pad, I am sorry but for me it takes me right out of the game.

I would much rather play them on the classic systems I already own with the controller they were built for.

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Possessed said:

It has been rereleased for 3ds, my cousin has it.

Also, if you've got a nintendo wii it's pretty cheap on the virtual console.  I emulate it on project64 (legally... I bought it on the virtual console then there's a way to extract the rom from that)


Just one last tidbit for it.  The guy who designed all the sidequest said that he incorporated every type of situation or problem for a character to get into that he had EVER experienced or witnessed in his real life, everything.  From a family friendly filter of course.  (he was in his 30's at the time)

 Yeah I have a Wii, the next time I go somewhere with highspeed that is what I am going to get!  Thanks.

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I was playing around with something called "Space Engine" a couple of weeks ago. It was a ton of fun... but the downside was that it killed my computer :( I'm now waiting on a new motherboard before I can get back on with editing work, gaming and so on.

Ho hum.

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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DrCrowTStarwars said:

My problem with emulators is I just can't get used to playing console games with a keyboard instead of a control pad, I am sorry but for me it takes me right out of the game.

I would much rather play them on the classic systems I already own with the controller they were built for.

 You know there are adapters and outright new retro controllers with built-in USB sockets.

 

You should look into them, they're good stuff.

Forum Moderator
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Not to mention you can play with a PS3 or an XBOX 360 controller without even having to buy anything.

Also, yes I used to have that adapter to plug in a snes controller into a usb port.  Cost me like 2 bucks.  Although it doesn't have enough buttons for N64 games.  But I play all my emulated games on a PS3 controller.  It's layout is similar enough to play SNES games, but with enough buttons to play n64 games.