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Oh yeah Halt and Catch Fire's final season is starting the end of the week. The timeframe appears to have moved sometime into the early 90's. I'm guessing at least 1992/3 if the mention of Mortal Kombat and the use of http in the trailer is accurate. The season appears to be focusing on the early web and search engines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EC5_dLAe40 Is that some amusing Bliss wallpaper Easter egg at 4:02 on the monitor?
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Aug 14, 2017 03:46
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The first season is a little rough. The characters are a bit ropey and melodramatic at first, but settle down. The episodes where they solve some tech puzzle are the strongest as the drama is a bit weak at first. If you hadn't seen it. It's an alternative universe where Compaq doesn't exist. The main characters work for Cardiff Electronics and build their own portable PC by reverse engineering IBM's bios. They then break from Cardiff and go rogue and look into early online interaction. It's been a joy to watch as it nails the tech without being over the top or too much wink wink and they do their research, like how to do credit card transactions in 1986 on the internet of the day.
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Aug 14, 2017 08:30
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Oh yeah. Wasn't there a batch of mystical Athalons with certain wafers that could get clocked to 1.3ghz? Had a friend obsessed with finding one. Would check out individual chips at the store to double check. God I don't miss trying to play Bf1942 or Morrowind at lowest settings on a Celeron 400. (Celery inside) with some Riva TNT2 card. You ran around in pea soup fog. Cliffracers were a terror unseen.
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Aug 14, 2017 09:03
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Grand Prize Winner posted:The inclusion 5 1/4" and 3.5" floppies is an interesting timeline thing. The 5 case got repurposed for N64 cartridges later on. Floppy disc games got big. Martian Memorandum I recall had something like 9. Monkey Island has 11. I recall they took ages to install. And they weren't cheap to make. Programmers were encouraged to keep things to one disc as more added costs in duplication and shipping weight. CD rom games hit 7 or 8 for some games like X-Files. Often they had data doubling up to prevent disc swapping. The Tex Murphy game Pandora Directive I think was one of the first DVD games that also used DVD video and needed a hardware card to decode the video.
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Aug 25, 2017 07:33
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Most CD games usually had a light or large install mode. Usually the full would do the key game data with any FMV videos left on the disc as 600mb was pretty big to put on your hard drive. Some games could run without a CD but videos or music would not play. x1 or x2 speed drives were so so slow. I think hard drives actually read faster before speed picked up. Also keeping CDs in the drive was a decent enough basic copy protection until people were able to afford drives.
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Aug 25, 2017 09:06
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I wonder when CD images became a thing. I recall in high school in the late 90s the library was clever enough to use a system to load CD images of educational software. Stuff like that Microsoft Home movie database. So many DVDs wasted making test runs. And then you had to shred them after. Images were a godsend.
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Aug 25, 2017 10:05
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Wasabi the J posted:*Pours out a forty for everyone's illegal copy of Alcohol 120%* The publisher decided to prevent the game from running if it detected Alcohol running. Even if you had a legit copy. Started a big arms war with copy protection vs images . This hit the peak with StarForce in 2006 and this has people claim that it hosed their systems. Oh and it installed at level 0 root on your PC so it blew a massive security hole. Even game demos came with it installed. At one point StarForce held a competition to prove it didn't break your system. However you had to fly your computer over to Russia on your own dime.
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Aug 25, 2017 16:08
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I swear every printer has hidden code that knows when something is due and without fail finds some way to stop working. Best I had was one that decided to ignore the local network despite printing fine a moment ago. Then after failing to get it back up I lug it across the office to hook up directly via USB. Still no dice. Had to get reception to print the documents off their machine.
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Sep 1, 2017 14:33
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The Ape of Naples posted:Are there audiophile recordings? These have been replaced by High Fidelity Pure Audio which are blurays that have nearly lossless quality.
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Oct 6, 2017 01:21
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roffels posted:What do you mean by "nearly" lossless quality?
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Oct 6, 2017 06:03
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Also stuff like bluetooth has certain versions that might work with things like phone calls, but not be able to output music.
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Dec 19, 2017 10:26
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Humphreys posted:Thanks! That worked to an extent. I found the SWF file and the game loaded but only to the intro - looks like it's trying to load another file. Or run through the index of what's been cached. For example with homestarrunner just type in "flash" into the filter results. https://web.archive.org/web/*/homestarrunner.com/*
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Jan 1, 2018 05:13
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spog posted:Come over to my place to borrow a storage medium and you'll get a disappointing sexual experience.
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Jan 15, 2018 10:04
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ladron posted:edit: according to that video, the iphone really killed it in 2007. I can assure you, it was dying looong before that. you see, in the US there's the Americans with Disabilities Act. Not exactly. However HTML by nature is much easier to parse for on-screen readers. Flash however is a series of lots of moving objects so things were often not ticked or properly labelled so inconsistency was everywhere. And then on top of that not every accessibility software supported it. Before the iPhone Blackberry and other early smart phones like a Sony Ericsson could not run anything Flash based. If they did the content scaling would stuff up completely and the site would be tiny and useable. And then things like dropdown menus or hover based items were impossible to use on a touch screen let alone the ability of phone to even run such content at speed.
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Feb 7, 2018 07:26
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:There was a horrendous decade or so when PC game controls got a lot worse due to consoles. I'm not sure they've totally recovered yet. I recall the need for speed games had no mouse support and the custom car interfaces were a pain to use.
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Apr 21, 2018 05:42
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Tunicate posted:Samsung does have better adblock options than other major brands because of how Knox works, so it isn't all bad. Touching back to graphics card hell. I recall the infamous GeForce 4 MX that I had which fought with the sound card causing a hard lock as soon as anything was uttered. This was replaced by a GeForce 2 TI that outperformed it nicely, but had rather iffy memory so it had to be overclocked else games would be be a mess of triangles. The MX was passed around like a curse until it died and was taken to pieces and decorated on a case like some hunting trophy. The GeForce 2 was replaced by a 5200FX that thanks to Microsoft not sharing Direct X 9 specs and gimping the entire range (Dustbuster) it ran half life 2 with less bells and whistles than the GeForce 2 or 4.
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Oct 7, 2018 15:47
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Even better was trying to crack copy protection codes without the manual on hand after borrowing a game. Prince of Persia's Russian Roulette letter potion room was fun. The sequel at least had the symbols in page order so you could just count them to get past easily. But stuff relying on feelies (like red cellophane reveals) to get past a certain area usually was fatal short of a lucky guess. I think one of the Trek games needed you to know coordinates out of the manual, else dump you into a impossible battle.
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Aug 18, 2019 16:28
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Access Software were pretty cutting edge. I recall being blown away by Under a Killing Moon for the fact it had freely explorable game areas compared to everything else that was click and move (Myst, 7th guest, Zork). The early games even used something called RealSound that attempted to convert low bit audio to be played through the PC speaker. Martin Memorandum was an early adopter of video clips. It stuffed 24mb of data into around 7mb. The later games kept up with tech novelties such as the ability to read from multiple CD rom drives or using DVD video with a software decoder. Apparently there's another game coming out this year.
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Aug 19, 2019 16:55
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twistedmentat posted:PushingUpRoses has a good video about the Moon Logic of old adventure games I remember asking Al Lowe about this and back then beta testing was more "will this crash?" rather than testing to how logically it played. Testers were given a walkthrough and if the game played fine without breaking, it went out. He mentioned they didn't really sit down and think about game design's user experience until the late 90s. This lead to the infamous Larry 3 bug where the part in the game at the gym had your reps multiplied based on CPU speed. Many old games relied on CPU speed to time events resulting in faster processors multiplying variables. So on a 386 this was around 25 per machine. On a Pentium 233 this blew up to around 500+ reps per machine.
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Aug 21, 2019 03:24
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Another great gently caress you was Return to Zork. The game opened with a plant you could collect right at the start. Under the command selection you had "pull". However there was a secondary menu that has "dig"to be used with a knife. As a result the plant immediately dies and breaks a quest. But at the least you could burn it and it came back to life. The worst was later on at the end game where you had to throw all your possessions into a pit. The game's bugs often meant some item was missed, as it was possible to lose items by mistake. https://www.giantbomb.com/unwinnable-state/3015-7607/
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Aug 21, 2019 04:16
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I think that already happened. https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/30/17630664/steam-abstractism-cryptocurrency-mining
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Aug 21, 2019 09:28
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bring back old gbs posted:the complicated VFX process of converting the random flailing of sandra bullock's fingers to typed text on a computer. Most UI stuff on sets are playback or comped in later (as most phone screens don't look great on camera). Some sets get semi interactive and have controls respond to touch or movements or something like a basic flash interface. I think the Matrix sequels had it so controls moved pitch and yaw displays. Much of that stuff is a pain on set as it's on playback loops so if anything ties in with the action actors have to figure out the timing or a cue. It's better to get it comped in later, plus it causes less continuity errors. Stuff like the displays on Trek were video playbacks on CRT screens. So the shutter speed on cameras were locked as to not have refresh pulsing. Later on LCD screens fixed that, in amusing ways, like the tiny windows on Enterprise that could just fit a screen for the starfield. Nowadays it's massive panels that project proper lighting into the set. Oblivion is one example of that, the apartment set was all display panels. The other amusing thing is interfaces in movies inspiring things, such as Minority Reports's floating touch interface, with its little nods of awkwardness of use with the whole thing sliding off when Cruise's character goes in for a handshake that sold it as possible. This tends to bleed into actual development where reality bites as while something like a minority report thing is roughly doable. It would be exhausting to use and very error prone.
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Oct 21, 2019 01:24
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:As a teenager I got really annoyed when Nedry was talking to the guy at the docks in Jurassic Park. "It's a goddamn QuickTime file! They didn't even block the progress bar from showing!" You also have to be on task if the movie takes place over time, else dates in calendars get random, or future days are incorrect. Another is the "experts look at stuff" where in science documentaries stuff gets made up to simplify complex data, or results, usually a video to play on a computer. In some cases keeping up the iDVD player controls adds to the look. I was watching one where the experts were in a "control room" and a bit of careful looking revealed it was them simply watching select rushes in Resolve, set to big thumbnail mode to look like different camera monitors, with a switcher panel thrown in for effect.
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Oct 24, 2019 08:21
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I have a feeling I have those speakers around somewhere. I got something similar as a kid. It also had software with text to speech things. There was also the later trend of Creative CD roms with play controls on the front and an IR sensor.
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Dec 5, 2019 09:02
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Buttcoin purse posted:Did they come with a remote control? They pretty much controlled the CD playback like a standard player. Apparently could be used to control presentations. Which is possibly what the mouse lock button is for. If that actually locked the mouse I wish I had a remote during my LAN days. http://audiodesignguide.com/cdplayer/iNFRA4800/infra48main.html#anchor1172143
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Dec 5, 2019 14:47
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Armacham posted:Not even obsolete! Bias Lighting is definitely still a thing. https://lifehacker.com/why-bias-lighting-increases-your-tvs-contrast-and-saves-1695117890 Basically when grading pictures your eye will subconsciously adapt to what's on screen vs your surroundings. So back when people fitted out suites in wood panelling and making it all nice and fancy, the brain would start subconsciously subtracting the warm tones and you'd end up making your shots extra warm trying to compensate. What most suites nowadays will have is what looks like a fluro tube on the ground. This isn't fancy mood lighting but is a bias light to stop your iris compensating for prominent colours in a room, like if you have a big red poster or the room is white or black.
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Dec 6, 2019 00:54
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mobby_6kl posted:Great, now I'm going to have to burn another CD! Then I discovered images. Trying to think when I bonafide did a CD. I have a feeling it was a bunch of music for a family member at least a decade ago. Once external drives were a thing I moved off from CDs. I don't miss lugging giant drives and power bricks around in backpacks.
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Dec 6, 2019 03:01
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Unperson_47 posted:That x10 poo poo was EVERYWHERE.
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Jan 31, 2020 01:28
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LifeSunDeath posted:Can someone explain why they always used that beige/white plastic back in the day...like they had black plastics but didn't come into popularity till the mid 90's...they always got so dingy from cigarette smoke.
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Jan 31, 2020 03:10
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Aww yeah. I got Age of Empires from that. Also this : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Noni_Fybi9c
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Feb 2, 2020 09:23
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Yeah I got an uninstall this now prompt from Adobe as they are throwing in the towel for it by the end of December.
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Oct 23, 2020 17:06
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=redTxFT-GLk
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Nov 15, 2021 15:38
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