Redemption for a Remaster.. (RDR1 as RDR2 DLC)

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HI WWW

First some music:

 

 

I was going to write about MR-VR headsets.. but this thought about RDR has been rattling around in head for a long time partner.

 

Some Background

The fanbase cried out, like wolves far from the night campfire.. for RDR1 on PC, but near going on ten years.. R* were pretty silent on the subject until one R* Dev broke the silence and revealed that the RAGE Engine version that R* San Diego used, was in-between versions and was custom to the studio at that time and could not be ported, as they no longer had access to that highly customized version.

 

Red Dead Redemption 2 was released for PC in November 2019.

 

Myself and my nephew are just getting round to completing this together.. we're about half way through.

 

GTA Trilogy Woes

I did indeed buy the GTA trilogy, pre-ordered from the R* client.. those games were a huge disappointment.. but also they were janky ports.

 

There are many reasons why to NOT port RDR.. and I agree with them all.. no, RDR1 should be rebuilt inside RDR2 using all those assists.. all that is needed is mission scripting and cutscenes.

 

Do it 'In-House' or Don't Bother..

R* have everything they need sitting there.. no need for new textures or mechanics.. it's all there already.. ready to continue the story of RDR. 

 

Grove Street's effects were a joke that no one who paid for the game laughed at.. but if done in house at R*..one of their many many studios..probably R* San Diago.

Look at the AWESOME SAUCE FFVII remake on PC!

Yes it CAN be done right if done with love.

 

Red Dead: The Complete Collection

All rebuilt inside RDR2 engine with those assets.

In Order of play:

 

Red Dead Revolver: 1860

Red Dead Redemption: 1899

Red Dead Redemption: 1911

Red Dead Nightmare : 1914

 

I hope this interested you.. as it has been a quiet story I have been telling myself around this lonely campfire as I listen to those howls in my heart getting closer..

 

Dava

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Why I Decided to Leave Consoles Behind.. My Journey into Being a Generational Gamer..

 Hi

So.. 

Q: what IS a Generational Gamer?

A: Someone familiar with console generations and console gaming, but has left it behind in pursuit of PC gaming.

This was me and a lot of other people around that time of 2010 starting thinking:  

What's wrong with consoles?.. well nothing really, they do what they say they will.

But then.. I would prefer to save a lot of money with a DIY solution for my gaming and not having to pay membership for Xbox would be good, that takes a chunk of money per year..

My journey began around 2010.. few other things had happened, I broke up with my ex.. there was a few parts to this.. one part being the way the English had treated her for me being Scottish.. at an English Airport an English Official had done something unspeakable to her because she had told them she was going to see her Scottish boyfriend/fiance, she was ex-US Army with all sorts of flying clearances.. after that I don't blame her for not wanting to come back. 

But before this, I lived in upstate NY for a few months.. and I had said to her many time I would like to build a gaming PC.. I had built PC's before and used to blog on Tech.. I was very familiar with operating systems at that time, I regularly used Ubuntu and Windows and owned a MacBook and so was also familiar with OSX.. but never a 'gaming rig'..

I got home in summer did the build one night.. and booted up.. but it shut itself down. I was shocked as I had built many PCs before.. I spent the next two months, with only a MacBook hooked up to the TV and trying to fix this strange PC problem.. after those two months, my morale in building was destroyed.

I bought a cheap PC for parts off eBay that had a Pentium D and like a slob who had his heartbroken and just gave up on life.. I just put up with a low rent experience. My ex and I broke up, I got phone call from Virgin Media, it was a salesman, he wanted to know if I would be interested in a V+ box.. we talked and I said I wasn't interested, but then he said I could split it up into 3 payments.. this interested me more and I agreed. it was £210.. £70 per installment.. the bill came and it was over by £115, not £70 as agreed.. I was furious and I couldn't afford to pay it even if I wasn't.

So at a time where I *needed* my friends to comfort me, as my friends at that time had all moved away.. I lost my internet and was isolated with just my thoughts and a broken PC. Two weeks alone with only my thoughts.

I tried and tried to get the PC working.. sometimes it would boot then suddenly cut out.. I had disassembled and rebuilt it dozens of times.. with no joy.

Months passed and so did Christmas.. all on a janky PC that was meant to be 'just for parts'. I kept trying every so often to fix the other PC as it bugged me.. near the end of winter sparks and smoke came flying out the upper left side of the board.. it was around March 2011, and I was starting to use the awful Pentium D and the graphics card I had bought for the gaming PC.. I bumped into a random stranger.. he was creating a game with MMO features and I had installed due to its low specs and he *just happened* to in when I logged.. he asked what I thought of his game etc.. and we ended up talking about the Pentium D PC and how tragic it was.. I told him about my building morale and iirc he encouraged me to give building another go.. I wasn't sure as I was still pretty crushed by that experience 

I had saved up enough to try a fresh build with all fresh parts.. and that's exactly what I did.. and on first boot.. everything worked!

Oh.. waves of relief washed over me! That confidence I had before, of building over 20 PCs jumped back in to my heart, took a moment to curse out that motherboard and I stopped.. and had a smoke while installing Windows. The world made sense again..

I think I even remember the specs.. iirc AMD AM2+ 955 (B55 unlocked to 4 cores) 8GB DDR2 GTS 450 1GB (GF116-200).. Windows 7, a fancy Zalman Water cooling tower on the CPU and a fancy Zalman ZM850-HP Heatpipe PSU.

I started gaming in ernest.. I was unsure who (platform/client) to trust.. I tried a few free games then randomly.. on the GFWL client.. GTA IV and Bioshock 2 came up for 49p each.. well I couldn't resist that! BS2 was the first game I ever completed on PC, I went on to buy the first one.. I even for the second time completed GTA IV (first time was on Xbox 360).

When I saw I could complete a whole game from start to finish I was hooked.. no wait.. half way through the game I became fascinated with frame rates and so ordered a GTX 560 2GB Gainward Phantom..

I became 'enraptured' in Rapture.. and that was me sold.. and also my Xbox 360 and meager 30 games that had taken me 6 years to amasse.. 2 years after this I would have over 300 games in my steam library alone.

Can't Cook/Won't Cook.. and this is me 11 years later with Keyboard and Mouse. Still love using my PC like a console.. for years I felt like I was cheating the system, using my PC with controller *feels* like I'm getting away with something.. hehe like its simply a console that I get better graphics and much much cheaper games.. I don't need to travel anywhere to pick up physical copies and I just pay, get a code and put that in the appropriate client..

I get everything I want from a client but don't have to pay the heavy price tag I did back in 2010..

Do I miss console gaming?... not really miss a friend I used to play with.. miss Zelda.. but that's it, and I've saved a fortune..

(aparts from this chip shortage) over the years, I choose when I upgrade and by how much.. when I saw this it inspired me to:

Ditch the TV licence (£170 per year) and go streaming only, such as Netflix and APV.. no cable box monthly £100.  12 x 100 = £1200 - £216 for NF and APV saving me £984 per year

Ditch a landline and go all in with Skype.. internet only.. no line rental or phone bills (except a free mobile thing I got.. unlimited calls and texts).. my landline is now, Skype and people can phone me there (owned number). Costs £50 per year, unli calls + land number.. Virgin Media was £20 per month, so12 x 20 = £240 - £50 = saving me £190 a year..

iirc Xbox Live was £70 a year..  for a total saving of £1244 per year. Add to this getting games for two thirds to 1/10th of the price.. not too shabby.

Streaming is like DIY TV.. you don't have random stuff you have to watch then 1 time out of ten you actually enjoy.. it's all up to you to think about what you want to watch.. just like when you play games, you decide what to play..

peace

Dava

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Just a little thanks to peeps back then (2011) at OCN who encouraged me, they softened the blow too and provided invaluable help.

Don't care about sports. I'm really not missing anything.

2 years after struggling with that PC, someone had offered to buy old parts from me. While I was arranging the parts I saw the old motherboard from the failed PC.. I looked on the back.. and ohw wow! The board was a Asus AM2+ board, *from the factory* the traces had stayed out on the translucent orange ribbon and not sunk into one corner of the PCB.. it was like 3 inches of it just how-do-you-doodley-do waving around at the back of the board.. it was touching the board and shorting.

I have never seen anything like this before or since I am glad to say.. no wonder I couldn't get that thing to boot properly. Totally not my fault.

A Daydream PC Client for Nintendo Games.. or Team Rocket does a Valve..

 Hi WWW

I have been thinking about this off and on for around a week now, and had a client idea (who didn't? am I right?) for Nintendo games on PC years ago.. now I just want it out of my head.

Nintendo don't have any juicy slice of the PC market.. even Sony do now, with their games for sale on the Epic client (yay Sony!) I've even bought a few. quite a few hehe. This is because of the culture of 'Generational Gamers' .. they are gamers who came from the console generations but switched to solely PC.. there many many of us now, I switched in 2011 and almost never looked back.. except that I missed Zelda. I don't know how many of us there are, but if someone told me it was in the hundreds of thousands and was worth a billion dollars a year.. I think I would believe them or if not, I would think they were underselling it, and it was worth a lot more.

So even Sony has a slice.. but Nintendo don't.. so what if they could 'have their cake and eat it?'.. keep their main games exclusive to Nintendo consoles, but have a easy to transfer alternative to sell as a product to PC only players?

Team Rocket Client

Imagine with me.. a Client created asif~ Team Rocket were real and the client purports to be written by Jessie, James and Meowth (JJM). In universe they are selling 'knock off' versions of Nintendo games done by secondary and often villainous version of the main characters. Such as: 

Super Wario Bros.

Team Rocket Melee Attack (Super smash bros)

Super Wario Cart (with a C)

Team Rocket; Pokemon Battle Simulator RPG

The Legend of Ganon (young Ganon's rise to power)

Waluigi's Resident E-Vole (FPS vs Zombie voles to find treasure) 

The Dark Samus Chronicles

Wart's Revenge (Donkey Kong set in Doki Doki Panic but 3D)

Princess Shokora's Tea Party (Mario Party + cheating to win)

Wario & Boshi's Bank Heist

King Dedede's Food Fight!

You get the idea..

Nintendo is super paranoid about security, this is one reason I think they haven't made the jump to a PC client yet.. with that in mind, indulge me to provide some suggestions.

Security

IF Nintendo used a unique emulator and the emulator was coded from a special file format, say FreeBSD's UFS and a requirement a sole drive was formatted to that file system for use with the client and emulator..

You can see where I'm going right?.. it effectively allows Nintendo use the hardware for the client while keeping everything encrypted. The emulator is software emulating a rare CPU.. say Xenon in combination of the unique file system and that the MAC address from the drive would be coded to the client.. this makes for a very secure package.. remember we are talking video games here and I have provided a suggestion that would keep most banks happy.

Reputation

TBH.. I'm just not happy with Nintendo's practises in relation to YT content creators and I refuse to buy another one of their current consoles, it was nasty and greedy.. and if they want to win me over back to their side they will have to do a dumper truck ton of work to accomplish that.. and on top of this I left them behind with the Gamecube (I own a Wii for legal emulation reasons but still) they aren't getting my money but they have a product I want.. Zelda.. and see the list of the other above.. I definitely want a Pokemon game.. and wouldn't it be nice to revisit a Mario game?.. and so on and so on.. until I have bought their catalogue on this client .. and they have £500-£1000 p/y of my money.. money they weren't going to get otherwise without a PC client.

Wrap Up

Those are my thoughts.. a light in-universe fun client for PC with slightly more adult themes but still with the original Nintendo comic style, with secondary characters, shining a light on potentially underused characters, transfering maps from old games over but giving a new story and new abilities.. 'Team Rocket exclusive' to PC.. and if you own a PC why wouldn't you buy/format a drive for this client and begin your adventure with Nintendo on PC. Of course you would.. as I feel many many others would.

Peace

Dava

Streaming Companies: One Resolution to Rule them All.. or Why are we still on the Oliver 1080 Poverty breadline?

 Hello.. 

Oh wandering wisp of the of the internet.. or should that be Edna the Evil TV? Sit back and relax, grab a tea, coffee or beverage of choice while I, your town crier, regale you on how Streaming Companies of Mordor have locked us all in to 1080 and stagnated the industry..

Skeptical? I don't blame you, its a large and sweeping claim.. but for balance.. remember how locked we were with DX9? that thing just would not die! until; we starved it to death. Hear ye! Hear Ye!

Some time around.. oh 2010?.. we began to get HD content.. internet broadband was fast enough that spinning wheels were slowly disappearing all over YouTube and 'potato cam' of 240p was a thing of shame... 

Like coming out of a daydream and realizing you have been staring at your friend's grandmother's boobs, and look around and everyone is staring at you.. oh my! These Mordor companies need a wake up call that it's not okay to advertise 4K and not deliver on PC nor is it okay to drag everyone's eyesight down to Magoo levels because they don't have their stuff sorted with DRM.

And that's their so called excuse.. DRM.. but that seems like more of a 'you problem' than a 'me problem'.
It's not like I/we can fix the DRM for them!
It's the 2020's.. and we are still steaming 1080 with our superfast broadband we pay a lot of money for. And don't get me started on how janky and early beta HDR PC steaming is..

Even on TV.. I have a 4K Smart TV with the appropriate apps.. looks downscaled 2K @24fps. I'm just not convinced.

So.. is it okay to take the DRM out of 1080 and rip that? no? Why are we allowed 1080 then?
Ah! because they had to! They didn't have a choice! We all had 1080 TVs.. and they wanted our money.
Wait a minute! So why are they getting the choice this time? And don't we all have 4K TVs now..??

10 years of 1080 is far too long and no one is saying anything.

We are pacified and like Oliver with an empty bowl we meekly go up to them and say; please sir, can we have some more?

Remember we pay for these services and media.. they don't just provide it for free.. flip even YT channels with a tiny fraction of these companies budgets give (imho) most users their first taste of 4K.. isn't that a failure on the companies part?? That even though their customers were paying for something their customers had to go elsewhere to get the content..

We get 1080p @24fps.. not even 1080 @ 60fps which is bad enough but a miserly 24fps.
Oh how Fagan would cackle looking at their stock prices rise.. potato shame on all these companies.. *potato* I say sir!

So if we want 4K streaming one of two things has to happen.. either we stop subbing to their service or another legitimate service streaming provider comes along and blows them out of the water by offering.. flip.. at this point I'll even take 2K@60fps.

Here, in Scotland we have a tax from England on TVs called a TV Licence. It's money they take from ill-informed people. I refuse to pay it.. and so the law provisions that if I do not use terrestrial television, I need not pay for a licence.. meaning I am confined to certain catch-up & streaming services only. And even worse than this.. the BBC is a Unionist mouthpiece for the Tories, I am Scottish Nationalist, there is no way I paying money to fund the BBC (except buying Doctor Who on iTunes).

Evil Auntie Edna sits there with a huge smile on her face; hoovering up all that lovely subscription money and dishing out Magoo vision to PC users.

Aren't we the Master-race? .. well no. Not when it comes to getting these companies to cough up what is paid for and owed.

I tried.. Kodi with the CDM extension... I tried Bluestacks with the Chrome extension.. I tried *every* browser that I could find. Nothing would give me greater than 1080@24. And in Kodi it was worse with some crazy 896p thing.. I dunno iirc. 

Now add to this to the new culture that these companies are introducing us to.. start a show then cancel.

I am familiar with the idea of commerce.. if something is profitable then keep doing it.. however.. what if short changing us is more profitable? Would they just keep doing that?

And what we have left is.. 8 to 12 episode runs of shows then cancelled that we watched in 1080@24fps for .£120/€140/$160 a year

And there's the crux.. our *only* move is to unsubscribe.. they have us cornered and they know it. What they fear is mass unsubscription.. and would that really happen for an upgrade in resolution?

So we queue up again for some more 1080poverty.. cash in hand. Like its 2009.

peace

Dava

Evil Edna pictured right:

Oliver Magoo:

*Evil Auntie Edna.. allusion to Auntie Beeb = BBC

The Perfect Storm.. Or what would be the *Ideal* Graphics Card?

Hi www

I'd like to share a few thoughts.. I originally came up with these ideas for Intel.. however, they could be applied to make the *perfect* graphics card..



Why does data need to travel around so much?.. storage to RAM.. to CPU to VRAM to..Why??

What if we had the entire system on a card? A card that could be plugged into any current PC?

Imagine with me..

Intel brings out a graphics card, the card has a 6c12t CPU.. a co-processor to compliment your Desktop's CPU. The card has an astonishing 2TB of storage which is also it's RAM/VRAM.. this is not just fantasy, I'm talking about permanence of data.. you may not know it but.. PCIE Drives are equally as fast as RAM. But I admit.. 1/3rd (15GB/s) the speed of conventional VRAM..but we must also consider that, we are reading direct from source..

It also invites the idea.. one protocol to rule them all.. PCIE. (yes yes USB too but.. not for this context).

By PCIE 5.0 the protocol will over take the mighty 45GB/s VRAM.. potentially being 128GB/s for PCIE 5.0.

Limited PCIE Lanes might have been a problem, however due to us having everything on the card.. its not a problem, the card can be designed specifically with internal PCIE lanes in mind.

For Intel this strategy yields great advantages.. a closed ecosystem (the card itself).. the Apple Mac is a great example of what you can do if you control the factors available, Apple make their operating system lighter than the hardware, and so they know how the system will perform.

The same could be true for Intel.. firstly they would have to give up those airs and graces on price to get mass adoption... however this is the perfect storm we are dreaming up so let's say they do it..

Intel make a higher end graphics processor, they include a decent CPU, they pressure chip manufacturers for PCIE 5.0, they pressure everyone to pretty much skip 4.0.. and price it around £700/$850/€850

Thinking on how they control their own card ecosystem, they would have to adhere to the most common API.. which is DirectX. There is no sense in trying to make your own API.. as we seen with Vulcan and AMD.. sure OpenGL was great for a while and even outstripped DX but that was while Microsoft was dragging its heels for Xbox 360 and DX9. The smartest way to do business would be just to accept DX as~is.. and take every line of its code and make hardware that runs it so smoothly.. it becomes more than hardware running code... it becomes a lover reciting poetry..I'm going a bit left field here with the refs.. but that's why I left blogging on OCN.. well, one of the reasons.

Think of the card like this.. DX is like it's OS, as its CPU would be specifically designed to run DX code, it *can* run normal code just like any co-processor but its best at running DX.. as it's also a storage device, it has all the data ready for gaming.

It struck me that the system I have described isn't entirely a closed system.. as DX is by Microsoft and Intel couldn't change the code to suit their hardware, but it's not all one way, as Intel could lobby Microsoft for features and code that they wished in the long run.

Intel *could* with MS's permission make a DX derivative, but that would mean convincing publishers.. and then you are back in a situation like AMD and Vulcan.

No what is clean is.. knowing DX 'chapter & small print' and making custom hardware solution solely to run that code like butter. Like loose leafs of paper are caught by the wind.. think of each one with a drawing upon it, these are the textures.

CPU & GPU & Storage; in perfect harmony.

Dava

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Refs:

Speed
*http://blog.logicalincrements.com/2018/08/data-transfer-rates-bandwidth-cpu-ram-pcie-m-2-sata-usb-hdmi/

Speed
*
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3400176/pcie-40-everything-you-need-to-know-specs-compatibility.html

Dava's Tenets of Basic Common Sense in game design.. or too many no-no's don't make a yes-yes!

Hi WWW

Here are some Cardinal Rules of game design:

Rule 1:

Don't mess with people's saves. EVER.

Rule 2:

Don't put an invisible walls anywhere inside the sandbox. to cage us inside is fine. But once inside; it is OUR PLAYGROUND.. no longer yours. .. stop picking at it.

Rule 3:

Intuitive control.. beg, borrow.. steal if you have to from other Devs and Dev publishers.. the middle tool is so vastly unimportant, that you, Dev, sweating about it, isn't helping! If a control method is popular use that instead.

Rule 4:

Let us skip EVERYTHING.. cutscenes, cinematics, intro movies (I am aware I own a Nvidia graphics card, no need to waste my time showing me a mini movie about it).

Rule 5:

Don't put things in the game I could mistake as a 'glitch'. Seriously.

Rule 6:

If I have near completed a quest and the final part fails .. not due to me misunderstanding what to do.. but the game did not allow me to do it; ensure you have checkpoints. If the game failed and not me.. that was your problem not mine.. so to stop any arguments between player and Dev.. have checkpoints while the mission is active.. if the player quits; they must *then* and *only then*.. have to restart the whole mission if it is not completed.

Rule 7:

All bugs MUST GO. Even if your game is 20 years old.. if you are making coin off the franchise and a bug is reported. fix it!


Break any of these rules and you are a BAD DEVELOPER.. it's like being a bad parent but instead  of disappointing a handful of kids.. disappointing 10's of thousands of people in one go.

@Publishers

Have a 'Gamma Team'.. who are much like Beta Testers in reverse. Gamma 'Testers'.. small team that covers all franchised games, that make coin for you as a publisher. Team of 5 to 10 people.. like a dead letter office of games publishing. You send annoyed or concerned players to them instead of  your media team having to deal with an old game.

Dava

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I *may* come back and update this with more.. but that's enough for now.

I would like to thank Ubisoft for inspiring this list.. FLIP!! It's just basic common courtesy.. don't mess with peoples save games! FC5-DLC. Whoever thought it was a good idea over at Ubisoft.. well they probably deserve all the twitter hate the Ubi media team had to deal with and I hope they passed that along to that person.. as 'feedback/suggestions'. I am sure other players had some suggestions what that Dev could do with the game!

The PCIE Lanes famine..or High Performance vs Drastically Reduced Functionality

Hi www

Today an amazing deal for a Ryzen came up. Less than half price!.. wow.. and then I thought.. 'wait don't newer CPU's have like no lanes?? (20 lanes) What does that mean for my many PCIE drives??..no, I don't have enough reason spend a fortune on a new rig, the rig I have (HP workstation) is more than capable and isn't PCIE gimped.'

Going forward we should even MORE lanes not less.. my dual X5650.. give 56 lanes EACH. Admittedly they are PCIE gen 2.. but.. 112 lanes of gen 2 vs 20 of gen3 or even 4.. nope.

This encourages me to do the unthinkable.. to recommend to people old tech.

I don't need the thing to be a server but I need the ability to have as many drives as I would like in the machine.

Let's face it.. if it's not PCIE its not the fastest possible speed. So it follows that all internal components should be PCIE to give us the fast possible performance.

Why do we need other busses in this day and age? What advantage does SATA have over PCIE?.. and even USB.. I DO think we should keep USB devices.. but couldn't the next new standard be a reworking of PCIE? For speed purposes only.. not the 75w requirement!

What can I get from on board busses that I couldn't get from a separate card of the same type?

To do as I suggest..we need 60 to 100+ lanes and 20 physical slots (at least 20 physical slots) each of the first four double spaced away from each other so no overlap. After that as tight as you like. These would be.. as I would dub them.. EXL-ATX boards and be near double the length of a ATX.. They would need fasteners at the side of the board for the lower 16 physical slots.. as the peripherals would be expected to be internal *only*..

I digress..

I don't why this isn't happening already.. but again I am bemused when case manufacturers don't work out a way to do vertical cases and insist on horizontal. The air wants to escape upwards anyway, why push it elsewhere?.. you would need a splash guard yes, but any decent fans would be able to be a splash guard anyway.

I digress .. again.. sorry..

We don't NEED all this new fancy hardware.. we have already reached a comfortable stage, however if the is .. IF THERE is to be new hardware, we should be designing it with the future in mind, not building in absurd obsolescence.

Dava