Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

  • 10 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • In some ways yes.

    Decompiling a game means reverse engineering the game to a point that you have a program written in C that compiles to identical machine code as the commercial release. That makes it easier, but not entirely straightforward, to just compile the game for another architecture, because it might be written for hardware-specific features that might not be present on, say, PC.

    A minor example is Mario Kart 64 has these big screens around some tracks that are playing footage of the race. That relies on a hardware quirk peculiar to the N64 and it’s been difficult if not impossible to get it working anywhere but real hardware.

    A really weird one is Super Mario 64. The retail version of the game was apparently compiled with debug flags on. The game has been decompiled, and then compiling it without the debug flag actually causes the game to run smoother, particularly in Dire Dire Docks which chugs so bad on a retail cartridge that speed runners use camera strategies to keep the submarine out of view for better performance.


  • Mario 64? Kinda yeah, because the Mario franchise has been more or less alone in the 3D platformer space, and everything since 64 has either been expansions on it like Sunshine, Galaxy and Odyssey, or that time they made the same 2D-but-in-a-3D-engine game 5 or 6 times. New Super Mario 3D World Land Wii U Switch.

    Ocarina of Time is kind of similar: the classic Zelda franchise is kind of alone, especially after the 16 bit era ended nothing has really played like a Zelda game. They’ve only made like six of them; OoT got the formula almost perfectly right on the first try even if they were pretty much just re-implementing ALttP in 3D. Majora’s Mask took the same engine and assets and made a heartburn simulator. I personally think it’s less pleasant to play because of the constant time pressure but it’s the most interesting one to study. Wind Waker returns to the formula with the sailing gimmick as “we gotta do something different” and as a way to mask loading screens. Twilight Princess was a reaction to fan clap back at Wind Waker’s perceived childishness, it’s basically OoT again, It’s also the most blatantly unfinished. Skyward Sword is just Wind Waker but worse. The control scheme is hideous. You can feel Nintendo corporate breathing down the necks of the dev team talking about "we went full Japanese on motion controls this console generation and the best we have to show for it is the pack-in bowling demo. Put in as many motion controls as possible, even if the joystick would make more sense. After that they gave up and started making Just Cause games.









  • I’ll warn you now it can get a little tedious, because you refer to the data in a spreadsheet like referencing variables in a Python script. In most fields you can type in a dimension, you can click a formula button or hit the = key and then type in a formula. Or you can reference a cell in a spreadsheet. that might look like “=spreadsheet.A4” for the contents of cell A4.

    That isn’t very readable and I don’t trust it not to break if you add rows or columns or whatever, so there’s an Alias function. You can give each individual cell a name. Which is slow and tedious. In the Addon Manager you’ll find some macros, one called EasyAlias which, select a cell, click the EasyAlias button, and the cell to the right of your selected cell gets the contents of the selected cell as an alias. In other words, if Column B is a bunch of labels and column C is the actual data, highlighting B2-B17 and clicking the EasyAlias button will automatically alias C2-C17. That feature should be built-in. There’s also a macro for clicking a dimension, clicking a sketch feature, and then semi-automatically applying a dimension. It’s slightly temperamental but it works faster than typing “Dimensions.notch_height” over and over.



  • My way into CAD software was 1. Dealing with DXF editors like QCAD. 2. Trying to tackle parametric CAD, I ran Onshape’s tutorials, they have pretty good technique tutorials, like how to draft a paperclip, that are applicable to most parametric CAD packages. Then learning how FreeCAD’s spreadsheet works.

    FreeCAD has a full-on spreadsheet built in, now it’s feature poor compared to Excel or LOCalc but you can store and calculate dimensions there and then use them in the main drawing. Other software has features that accomplish this but it’s not as flexible and familiar as a spreadsheet. FreeCAD has some usability issues but everything else out there is either drawbackware or subscription.


  • I grow cayenne peppers to save money. One plant yields so many peppers that it’s legitimately profitable.

    I do save money growing mint over buying it at the store, because mint is eternal. I’ve been making juleps and jelly out of the same mint plant for about 6 years now. But mostly I keep mint around because I like it.

    Tomatoes? It’s not really about the money, it’s that grocery store tomatoes are designed for durability rather than flavor.