Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

We once were promised voxels...

# ? Feb 24, 2015 01:20

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 07:17

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

TerryLennox posted:

Ray tracing will become mainstay...one of these days...just you wait.

Have there been any recent attempts to get ray tracing working on modern hardware?

Lots, its just not really cost effective. It eats up too much processing time just to get better reflections. As power continues to grow though, it'll be more and more viable.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

We once were promised voxels...

Which are actually kinda making a huge comeback right now with all the Minecraft clones and whatnot.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 02:00

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Zaphod42 posted:

Which are actually kinda making a huge comeback right now with all the Minecraft clones and whatnot.

Those aren't voxels.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 02:01

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

EDIT: Whooops, thats what I get for having 2 replies open at the same time.

What I was going to say, is that those copy protect methods like Monkey Islands dial of pirate are long gone, but were pretty fun. The less enjoyable was the ones that were "what is the first word on page 15 of the manual?". The big drawback, lose it, and your SOL.

twistedmentat has a new favorite as of 03:12 on Feb 24, 2015

# ? Feb 24, 2015 02:58

Kirk Vikernes: Apr 26, 2004; Count Goatnackh

twistedmentat posted:

So the plot is now the board of Wayne Enterprises wants to oust Bruce as head?

No, that is obsolete now.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 03:08

KoRMaK: Jul 31, 2012

carry on then posted:

Take your pick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_%28graphics%29#In_real_time

I always liked this POV-ray render

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Those aren't voxels.

They're close enough that it put the idea in the mind of a generation of players/devs who will actually find out what real voxels are and use them. There's at least 1 goon project that used marching cubes to make spherical worlds and digging. Gotta go dig in the game dev megathread or the post pictures of stuff your working on thread to find them. But yes, it is a worthwhile note to point out.

e: welp I just learned how you can accidently post a new thread when trying to edit a post. First image broke tables, the reply buton was off the screen and I clicked the post button instead out of habbit.

KoRMaK has a new favorite as of 03:18 on Feb 24, 2015

# ? Feb 24, 2015 03:15

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Those aren't voxels.

Whats the difference? They're big voxels.

Not everything in Minecraft is a voxel, but the cars in Duke Nukem were called voxels and most of the objects in the game were sprites; not everything was a voxel. You can mix it up.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 05:40

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Zaphod42 posted:

Whats the difference? They're big voxels.

In a discussion about rendering, no. Minecraft is polygons all the way.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 06:06

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

TerryLennox posted:

Ray tracing will become mainstay...one of these days...just you wait.

Have there been any recent attempts to get ray tracing working on modern hardware?

If you can have this, why bother?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aKqxonOrl4Q

# ? Feb 24, 2015 06:23

Mayostard: Apr 21, 2007; In the Chamber of Understanding

Isn't Daxter a voxel?

# ? Feb 24, 2015 07:46

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Zaphod42 posted:

Whats the difference? They're big voxels.

Not everything in Minecraft is a voxel, but the cars in Duke Nukem were called voxels and most of the objects in the game were sprites; not everything was a voxel. You can mix it up.

There were no cars in Duke Nukem :smuggo:

# ? Feb 24, 2015 09:04

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Jerry Cotton posted:

There were no cars in Duke Nukem

There weren't any you could actually drive, but I've played a bunch of custom maps with scripted cars driving around (and instagib bumpers).

One of my absolute favorites for dukematches had a square office-type building in the middle with two RVs loaded with items speeding around it, one in each direction. They were filled with explosive barrels so you could blow out the sides and do drive-by shootings. As far as I remember, they actually had spawnpoints inside, too.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 09:30

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

KozmoNaut posted:

Words about some game that's not Duke Nukem

# ? Feb 24, 2015 09:35

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Jerry Cotton posted:

I played the original Duke Nukem (before it was renamed "Duke Nukum") and Duke Nukem II back when they were released, don't try to school me on old-school PC gaming, son.

But when people say Duke Nukem these days, 99% of the time they're referring to Duke Nukem 3D.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 09:41

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

KozmoNaut posted:

I played the original Duke Nukem (before it was renamed "Duke Nukum") and Duke Nukem II back when they were released, don't try to school me, son.

But when people say Duke Nukem these days, 99% of the time they're referring to Duke Nukem 3D.

I bet you also got an Xbox one when it came out.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 09:43

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Jerry Cotton posted:

I bet you also got an Xbox one when it came out.

No, but I can regale you with tales of 500-floppy boxes of pirated C64 and Amiga games.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 09:59

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Look at the rich kid with a floppy drive for his C64.

:sigh:

# ? Feb 24, 2015 10:37

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

That was many many years ago.

C64 emulators are essentially perfect these days, anyway. The only reason to hang on to a real, proper C64 is for nostalgic reasons.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 11:38

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Oh I know, but when I had a C64 at 7-8 or so I never had a floppy drive, just the shoddy tape drive that needed retuning every time you wanted to load another tape.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 12:40

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

Oh god the 1541 FDD. So slow and easy to go out of alignment.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 12:57

old bean factory: Nov 18, 2006; Will ya close the fucking doors?!

Collateral Damage posted:

Oh I know, but when I had a C64 at 7-8 or so I never had a floppy drive, just the shoddy tape drive that needed retuning every time you wanted to load another tape.

I loved that. It's like a mini game!

# ? Feb 24, 2015 13:18

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

I was seriously bemused when bought the floppy drive for my C64 some years ago for the first time (I used to have datasette all these years) and quickly discovered how fiddly and slow those things are. Now I have SD2IEC and it's absolutely great.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 13:23

hirvox: Sep 8, 2009

mng posted:

I loved that. It's like a mini game!

And sometimes you just couldn't get more than two or three bars in the signal strength display, even after half an hour of trying. Sometimes you even got the multicolored loading borders.. but not the game itself. :smith:

# ? Feb 24, 2015 14:16

Lowen SoDium: Jun 5, 2003; Highen Fiber; Clapping Larry

I don't remember voxels in DN3D, but Blood (which was done on the same engine) used voxels for a lot of the item pickups and weapon pick ups. Shadow Warrior had them too.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 14:58

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

Novalogic Games (Comanche vs Havoc, the Delta Force series) were all voxel based.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 16:39

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Jerry Cotton posted:

There were no cars in Duke Nukem

Why did I say Duke Nukem? :doh:

Brain fart. I totally totally meant Shadow Warrior. Duke had no voxels, right?

# ? Feb 24, 2015 17:38

Lowen SoDium: Jun 5, 2003; Highen Fiber; Clapping Larry

Zaphod42 posted:

Why did I say Duke Nukem? Brain fart. I totally totally meant Shadow Warrior. Duke had no voxels, right?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, It was a planned feature but wasn't completed in time for DN3D, but was read in time for Blood and Shadow Warrior.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 17:54

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Oh god the 1541 FDD. So slow and easy to go out of alignment.

I don't know if the drive was actually slow but the bus to the computer was basically the slowest it could be.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 18:16

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Jerry Cotton posted:

I don't know if the drive was actually slow but the bus to the computer was basically the slowest it could be.

Add-ons such as the Epyx Fastload corrected that, though.

AFAIK, the drive had basically the same CPU as the C64, complete with its own OS in ROM and a small amount of cache RAM.

Demoscene coders managed to exploit this to offload processing to the 1541 for increased performance.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 19:20

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

KozmoNaut posted:

Add-ons such as the Epyx Fastload corrected that, though.

AFAIK, the drive had basically the same CPU as the C64, complete with its own OS in ROM and a small amount of cache RAM.

Demoscene coders managed to exploit this to offload processing to the 1541 for increased performance.

The original drivers for the 1541 gave a throughput of 300 bytes per second or so. So 20 minutes to copy a 170k disk.

# ? Feb 24, 2015 20:34

DrBouvenstein: Feb 28, 2007; I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

I'm guessing that despite looking like everything in 3D Dot Game Heroes looking like voxels, they're actually not?

# ? Feb 24, 2015 21:58

BattleMaster: Aug 14, 2000

DrBouvenstein posted:

I'm guessing that despite looking like everything in 3D Dot Game Heroes looking like voxels, they're actually not?

Since when does that game look like it has voxels? This is what voxels look like

Delta Force 2, released in 1999

The game you mentioned is just a cruddy-looking Minecraft-alike with huge polygonal cubes mapped with textures. Voxels are conceptually and mathematically a lot different than simply building your world out of cubes as has been the fad for the last half-decade among low-effort games.

BattleMaster has a new favorite as of 22:33 on Feb 24, 2015

# ? Feb 24, 2015 22:27

KoRMaK: Jul 31, 2012

Laserjet 4P posted:

If you can have this, why bother?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aKqxonOrl4Q

Wow this makes so much sense. You ray trace out onto the geometry and project the color that the ray passes through to the geometry. So from a still image with some 3D camera info you can suddenly texture a 3d world!

# ? Feb 24, 2015 22:36

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

There's also Euclideon, who are doing interesting things with laser scanning and realtime rendering. They have a tendency to make exaggerated claims (so far, they can support infinite detail, have banished loading, and produce the world's best graphics), but they really do appear to make an interesting product. Probably better as a viewer for a scan than an interactive engine, though.

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

# ? Feb 25, 2015 00:25

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

Minecraft kinda poisons the voxel discussion well, since it uses voxels internally to store the world data, but everything's made of regular polygons. Dwarf Fortress is another game that uses voxels for storage, but it's rendered with just text graphics. A lot of newer games are using actual voxel rendering for terrain maps and deformable items however. Cryengine uses Voxels for terrain by default, for instance.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 00:32

Useless: Sep 13, 2003; I'm keeping three or four fingers crossed you get a buick up the ass before the night is over.

Computer viking posted:

There's also Euclideon, who are doing interesting things with laser scanning and realtime rendering. They have a tendency to make exaggerated claims (so far, they can support infinite detail, have banished loading, and produce the world's best graphics), but they really do appear to make an interesting product. Probably better as a viewer for a scan than an interactive engine, though.

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

When it got to the forest scene, I noticed something that stuck with me - everything is totally static. That's fine when you're in a cathedral or such, but in the forest everything from trees to grass not moving at all seems alien.

# ? Feb 25, 2015 01:32

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

Put this racist on ignore immediately!

Found this adorable piece of obsolete tech in a closet a few months ago, no idea how I came into possession of it. Windows 95, 32 mb of ram, 75 mhz processor, awww yeah. What I have my thumb on is the mouse nipple. My index and ring finger are on the left/right mouse buttons which are on the back of the sceren. Surprisingly, it ran a fully featured version of Microsoft Office. It was very uncomfortable to type on and I couldn't figure out any way to network it.

ninja edit: also, the battery no longer worked; it only ran on AC.

Gobbeldygook has a new favorite as of 06:15 on Dec 12, 2015

# ? Feb 26, 2015 22:51

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Gobbeldygook posted:

Found this adorable piece of obsolete tech in a closet a few months ago, no idea how I came into possession of it. Windows 95, 32 mg of ram, 75 mhz hard drive, awww yeah. What I have my thumb on is the mouse nipple. My index and ring finger are on the left/right mouse buttons which are on the back of the sceren. Surprisingly, it ran a fully featured version of Microsoft Office. It was very uncomfortable to type on and I couldn't figure out any way to network it.

ninja edit: also, the battery no longer worked; it only ran on AC.

Well, with 32 milligrams of memory and a 75MHz hard drive, why wouldn't it be able to run office?

# ? Feb 26, 2015 23:30

tribbledirigible: Jul 27, 2004; I finally beat the internet. The end boss was hard.

DNova posted:

Well, with 32 milligrams of memory and a 75MHz hard drive, why wouldn't it be able to run office?

Cut him some slack, he did say it was uncomfortable to type on.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 23:37

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 07:17

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

It should have a PCMCIA slot, just jam a network adapter in there and enjoy some Win95 viruses.

# ? Feb 26, 2015 23:37

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