The Gaming Diary: Chapter 3

[Link41]

Fortnite (NS) - Ran into some of the RFG community tonight during 50 v 50 battles.

[bickman2k]

Fortnite (NS) - Ran into some of the RFG community tonight during 50 v 50 battles.

That was me! And I was not good at it... That was literally like match 2 of me playing Fortnite.

I also beat Axiom Verge last night before I played a little Fortnite.

[Link41]

Fortnite (NS) - Ran into some of the RFG community tonight during 50 v 50 battles.

That was me! And I was not good at it... That was literally like match 2 of me playing Fortnite.

I also beat Axiom Verge last night before I played a little Fortnite.

I died moments after you did lol

[Link41]

Bayonetta (Wii U) - This has been an absolute blast so far!

[Sirgin]

I recently beat Heavenly Sword. Fun early PS3 era game. The controls are a bit clunky if you compare with God of War. Especially the puzzle sections could have been improved. I enjoyed its intersting combat scheme.

[Disposed Hero]

Trails of Cold Steel - I think I've only played this game for about an hour within the last month or so. It feels like this game is going to be more of a slow burn than Trails in the Sky was, and I wonder if it's even going to be worth it.

SMT: Soul Hackers - It's a good enough game, but not really something that should be played casually (like I do with most handheld games). I'm probably just going to put this one down.

Max Payne - Started this up again on PC. One of my favorites from back in the day. It's showing its age, but it's still fun for a playthrough.

Octopath Traveler - Really enjoying this game so far. I love the combat system. My biggest complaint is that it seems incredibly formulaic so far, but I'm only about 10 hours in and still doing all of the Chapter 1 quests, and reading Crabby's review has me excited to get to some of the later game stuff.

Dark Souls III - A friend of mine wanted to start this up and sort of tag team the game. We haven't gotten very far yet, but we're enjoying it. We can only get together to play it once or twice a week though.

Dark Souls - So I thought I would play the original Dark Souls on my own. I've never considered myself to be a big fan of this series. I played and beat Demon's Souls back when it first came out and sank a few hours into Bloodborne, but that's pretty much the extent of my experience with this series. I'm at the Taurus Demon now and dying a lot. I used to find dying often to be very frustrating which is why I typically stayed away from these games, but I think playing through games like Castlevania III and Cuphead recently have desensitized me to it.

[Raidou]

Decided, for teh LOLs, to see if I could beat the Bomb King in FF12ZA following a No License Board challenge using the gear and characters I had without advancing the story past the events following Jahara.  Originally, a successful fight was around 15mins, but now I can beat him in under 2 minutes.  Turns out that with 4 characters, 25-30 Aquara Motes, some good RNG, and tricking it to use "Call for Help" instead of "Renew" you can decimate this boss quite quickly.

Now, can I beat it without Larsa being my Cura caddie?

EDIT: With Larsa, the fight lasts 14 seconds.

[bombatomba]

Tried playing DOOM 3 on the PC and I'm really not having any fun at all.  It just seems to slow and muddy.  Feels like a huge step back for the series.

I'll have played it for about three hours tonight, after which I'm stopping and moving onto something else.

[Ikariniku]

Because my upscaling rig is made of several discrete pieces of AV hardware, I can tap it at various points for RGBs out, Component out, and HDMI out (assuming an RGBs source).  I did just that today and it made me inordinately happy. Just figured I'd share.

[MetalFRO]

Because my upscaling rig is made of several discrete pieces of AV hardware, I can tap it at various points for RGBs out, Component out, and HDMI out (assuming an RGBs source).  I did just that today and it made me inordinately happy. Just figured I'd share.

Nice! I'm slowly buying parts to put together a gaming rig for the living room, and I'm hoping to get everything set up so I can bring in older consoles to do streaming and recording.

[bombatomba]

Because my upscaling rig is made of several discrete pieces of AV hardware, I can tap it at various points for RGBs out, Component out, and HDMI out (assuming an RGBs source).  I did just that today and it made me inordinately happy. Just figured I'd share.

I can dig it.  I got a 12" PVM and must have spent twenty or thirty hours playing SNES JRPGs (and that isn't even RGB; just a higher line count).  It was like being a kid again, or at least it displays games as I remember them being (call that what you will, retro-goggles maybe).

[Ikariniku]

Nice! I'm slowly buying parts to put together a gaming rig for the living room, and I'm hoping to get everything set up so I can bring in older consoles to do streaming and recording.

I can dig it.  I got a 12" PVM and must have spent twenty or thirty hours playing SNES JRPGs (and that isn't even RGB; just a higher line count).  It was like being a kid again, or at least it displays games as I remember them being (call that what you will, retro-goggles maybe).

Streaming and capture is also my goal.  I tried some composite and component capture solutions and found them woefully inadequate, so upscaling to an HDMI friendly resolution seemed unavoidable.  However, I don't like the emulator-like sharpness that some of the higher profile upscaling solutions.  I wanted a more CRT-like appearance to the capture, so I picked up several Extron AV components to de-interlace and upscale the analog video from my systems.  I'm mostly pleased with the results, but I'm waiting on a scanline generator and the actual capture gear to do more fine tuning.

However, even with all this work done into making the upscaled image simulate a CRT as best as possible, I still plan to use CRTs for my actual gameplay monitors.  I also want the games to look like how I remember, and nothing beats CRT phosphors and the dithering effect of real scanlines.  Plus, the games were made to be played on CRTs, and I think that's worth something.

[MetalFRO]

I'm looking seriously at the RetroTINK V2 solution that just came out, because the reviews so far have been pretty glowing, and that would allow a relatively lag-free way to get analog signals moved into an HDMI solution.

[Ikariniku]

I'm looking seriously at the RetroTINK V2 solution that just came out, because the reviews so far have been pretty glowing, and that would allow a relatively lag-free way to get analog signals moved into an HDMI solution.

I was also seriously looking into the RetroTINK 2X, but then, so was everyone.  With the next available batch shipping in October, I explored other options.  My setup is surprisingly low lag, but I still plan to have a CRT monitor straight from the source. Best of both worlds, really.

EDIT: I realized I could have additionally tapped the de-interlaced, upscaled VGA RGBHV signal onto my CRT computer monitor. Missed opportunity.

[MetalFRO]

Yeah, I have thought about buying some splitters so I can pump the signal from the console into the splitter, then send 1 to a CRT TV I have, that I usually play older consoles on, and the other to a RetroTINK or similar device, which would then feed the capture card. I might still do that, but I'll have to see how my setup works out, once I have it all built.