No Man’s Sky on Mac #

Will NMS be the flagship title for whatever VR thing Apple may be announcing? Is the company finally understanding the value of video games? Maybe Diablo IV will launch on Mac and Elite: Dangerous will come back to the platform?

Wednesday, 31 May 2023

Examples of Photoshop’s AI Generative Fill #

Impressive. Want to try and don’t have an Adobe account? Use Firefly, or, soon, an open source stable diffusion web user interface.

System Shock Oral History #

I played the original System Shock briefly on a Mac at some point, and later System Shock 2 on PC, which gave me nightmares about monkeys attacking in the night.

The remake is out, apparently good, and has been added to my wishlist.

Sunday, 28 May 2023

Solution for Logitech F310 Controller Not Working with macOs #
  1. Disconnect the F310 from your Mac.
  2. Behind the F310 switch X to D.
  3. Hold the Logitech button on the front-middle of the F310.
  4. Connect the F310 to your Mac, and release the Logitech button.

The gamepad should now work. Test by pressing the MODE button, which should turn the LED on and off.

Fan of retro games and want a nicer controller? Me too. I’m looking at the 8BitDo SN30 pro and Pro 2.

Friday, 26 May 2023

Maidenhead Locator System #

Found this created-for-HAM-Radio system while inside an internet wormhole looking for a good, affordable world map with time zones and twilight lines, also known as terminator lines that show the boundary between the illuminated hemisphere, day, and the dark hemisphere, night, on a map of Earth.

Thursday, 25 May 2023

Macintosh Startup Sound #

“The startup sound was done in my home studio on a Korg Wavestation EX. It’s a C major chord, played with both hands stretched out as wide as possible (with 3rd at the top, if I recall).” He created the sound as he was annoyed with the tri-tone startup chimes because they were too associated with the death chimes and the computer crashes. He recalls that Apple did not give him permission to change the sound but that he secretly snuck the sound into the computers with the help of engineers who were in charge of the ROM chips. When Apple discovered this, he refused to change it, using various claims in order to keep the new sound intact.

Often the best work comes from a rebellious spirit.

Saturday, 20 May 2023

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Songs

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An evolving list of songs I can be asked to perform on my livestream at twitch.tv/hypertexthero. I know some better than others and tend to improvise all by ear in a sort of haphazard manner after referring to the chords.

Albert King

The Animals

Beastie Boys

Bob Marley

Black Pumas

Buddy Guy

Freddie King

  • Your Move (Freddie King)

Guns N’ Roses

Jenny O.

J.J. Cale

John Lee Hooker

Jimmy Hedrix

Kurt Vile

Madonna

Michael Jackson

Miranda Lee Richards

  • 7th Ray D#m F# D#m F# B …. oh-ohuoo B F# C# F# B F# C#

Neil Young

Nina Simone

Nirvana

Pink Floyd

Rainbow

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

REM

Robert Cray

Stevie Ray Vaugan

  • Mary Had a Little Lamb
  • Cold Shot

U2

The War on Drugs

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Thursday, 18 May 2023

Combat Pilot #

New WW2 combat flight sim with ex-IL-2 producer Jason Williams in the lead. Worth filling out the community survey for this one!

Friday, 12 May 2023

Wish: Landing Guesstimator for DCS World #

It looks like there is a way to calculate the velocity of the airplane when touching down in DCS World (see the Descent Rate on the image in this Landing & Overhead Trainer mission).

Is there a reference of where this data is stored, and could we integrate it with the Twitch API in order to create a landing guesstimator bot for DCS like SimToolkitPro allows for MSFS? I’ve put this question on Hoggit, too.

Thanks to Tim_Pickle for pointing this out during Futura_Light’s stream, and don’t forget I would also love to have something like this for IL-2.

Thursday, 11 May 2023

Writing is Thinking #

Paul Graham:

Observation suggests that people are switching to using ChatGPT to write things for them with almost indecent haste. Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it. Within a year the median piece of writing could be by AI.

I warn you now, this is going to have unfortunate consequences, just as switching to living in suburbia and driving everywhere did. When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think.

I don’t have the slightest hope of averting this switch. I often tell startups it’s safe to bet on laziness, and this is one of the biggest bets on laziness in history. The switch is going to happen, and we won’t know the consequences till it’s too late.

I’m not warning about the switch to AI in the hope of averting it, but to warn the few people who care enough to save themselves, or their kids. Learn to use AI. It’s a powerful technology, and you should know how to use it. But also learn how to write.

Writing, and also drawing, is thinking. Strange to see this post on Twitter rather than on Paul’s blog.

Wednesday, 10 May 2023

Keyboard Ghosting #

Pressing multiple keyboard keys simultaneously and having some not work. Here’s a keyboard ghosting test page, and here’s a keyboard I’m eyeing.

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Rogue-lite Flight Sims

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I want flight simulators like DCS, IL-2, War Thunder, and Microsoft Flight Simulator to have a Rogue-lite game mode.

Rogue-lites are a subgenre of roguelikes with most of the the same game design philosophies and progression elements that persist after failure, so players feels they are progressing despite setbacks.

Flight sims take a lot of time that many who love them don’t have. These fans of the genre would be delighted to jump in the cockpit and play for a quick session, say, 30 minutes to an hour, with progress tracked so we can see how many parts of our airplane are usually missing after we land.

A rogue-lite game mode in a flight sim could be to take off with a basic airplane, fly to a random waypoint on a map, and land to deliver a letter, while arbitrary enemies try to stop you.

The gameplay loop in a rogue-lite game mode, focussed on delivery something to an objective, could be something like:

  1. Random airbase and random delivery point (another airbase, road, or flat area) are chosen by the computer on the map map.
  2. Player starts with an early plane with a basic loadout. As the player completes missions, more planes and weapon loadouts are unlocked and available as a choice from the beginning.
  3. Player needs to take off, fly to delivery point, and land.
  4. Random enemy planes and/or anti-aircraft guns are placed between player and target, and sometimes on and around target delivery field itself.
  5. The more damage player takes, the less points are gained upon mission completion. The number of victories over enemies a player has is tracked, as are kill-streaks, which are displayed on the screen during the mission. And so on.

Progress and statistics would be tracked, such as consecutive (randomized) mission runs without dying, amount of letters delivered, enemy aircraft and ground targets destroyed, weapons and tech tree upgrades, cosmetics like nose-art unlocked, et cetera.

Video games like Dead Cells and Noita have good examples of these gameplay mechanics.

Satisfying sound effects and a 3D “kill cam” on the top of the screen like in War Thunder would be fun, and a fast loading speed of the 2D or 3D world would be important. Speaking of War Thunder, it is quite close to a rogue-lite sim, but I wish I could play against AI for progress unlocks and not always against other players.

A high-fidelity rogue-lite flight sim would do what Metal Gear Solid 5 does with the third-person stealth shooter: Balance a fictional alternate reality and a good-enough physics simulation that has gameplay elements like character development, points, unlocks, and humor.

The big flight sims listed at the beginning already have most of the elements required for a rogue-lite game mode. I hope at least one of the flight sim studios or members of their community make it real, and I’m willing to help make it so.

Do you know of a rogue-lite flight simulator that already exists, or have ideas about how it could be implemented in one of the above sims? Please let me know, or come discuss on Reddit or in my stream chat!

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Friday, 5 May 2023

TwitchTest for Dropped Frames Troubleshooting #

An excellent tool recommended by the OBS Project which I am using to try and find the source of my stream stability issues.

Here are my results. It looks like Chicago is my best bet, followed by New York and Ashburn, despite Toronto being closer!

Another tip:

  1. Start a stream in OBS with the Settings → Stream → Enable Bandwidth Test mode checked.
  2. After a minute or so, click Help → Log Files → Upload Current Log File → Analyse. A helpful web page will load telling you about your log and OBS config!

Here is what Jim, Open Broadcaster Studio’s lead developer says about the whole thing. Well worth reading, because it includes a detailed explanation and mentions raccoons.

I wrote all this for you. Yep, you on twitter there. For some reason I guess I just sort of snapped and wrote this entire thing just now. I did it because I literally cannot control the send function, because network congestion is not my fault, because there are a million and one reasons why network congestion can occur, and of course because I love you.

Go give Jim a few bucks a month for his work if you use OBS and can afford to.

Things to do from my end that will turn this weekend into a troubleshooting technical festival ┻━┻︵(°□°)/︵ ┻━┻:

  1. Call my WISP and ask them to send me a new base station.
  2. Buy and install a fan on my WISP base station. It has a reputation for overheating and I thought I had fixed that by getting a dedicated wireless router and plugging only the LAN cable from the streaming computer into it, but the problem is back now.
  3. Meet local neighbors and then write to the mayor and city council members of the town nearby and ask them what it would take to get cable down the road!
Impossible #

It is only impossible if you think it is impossible.

This little impossible triangle is a new emote for my stream. Years ago many thought that humans flying in machines was an impossible thing. Change your thoughts, change the world.

Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Video Game Lead Sheets #

Wonderful resource made by Jer_Roque found somehow while reading about Chrono Trigger. I play guitar by ear, never having learned to read music notation quickly enough to play by sight, but if I did, I’d be glad to have this!

Silica #

An RTS/FPS versus moon space bugs Early Access thing from Bohemia Interactive. I’ve plonked it down on my shelf of things to try on Steam.

Tuesday, 2 May 2023

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Streaming Guide

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What I’ve learned from streaming, or broadcasting video on the internet, so far. An article-in-progress to remind and teach myself things I forget while sharing what I find and learn from others.

Speaker

Your personal voice. What interests you? Why broadcast? What is your intent? Remember moments together with distant friends? Find new friends? Share knowledge? Pay bills? Combining two things you are fairly good at. What do you genuinely enjoy and perhaps can talk about in depth?

  • Sound quality.
  • Schedule and consistency whenever possible.
  • Health and ergonomics.
    • Regular breaks, timers like pomodoro timer.
    • Drinking water.
    • Comfortable chair.
    • Standing table.
    • Excercise, regular walks, especially in forests if possible.
  • Focus on a game that you enjoy and that is not one of the most-played by others, at least in the beginning.
  • Off-stream content. Blog. Reddit posts. Sharing personal experience and expertise.
  • Branding, graphic and UI design, emotes, merchandise.

Audience

  • Who do you want to talk to? What do you want them think and feel when they visit your stream?
  • Moderation. Well-defined rules and code of conduct.
  • Chat attention and etiquette. Moderators. VIPs. Chat commands (!command). :emotes. Raids.

Technology

Hardware

  • PC
  • Mic
    • Mic position
  • Headphones
  • Camera
  • Green screen
  • Internet connectivity
  • Internet Service Provider
    • Cable
    • Wireless Internet Service Provider for rural
    • Starlink

Software & Services

  • Twitch - Creator Camp
    • Resolution & Bitrate - what should you use? Lower your bitrate to improve your stream stability.
    • Dropped frames? The most likely reasons are that your bit rate is too high or your internet connection has stability issues. See this and this post by Jim, the lead developer of OBS. If you are using Twitch, use TwitchTest to test and then choose servers with at least 80 quality (baseline) or above.
    • Affiliate
    • Partner
    • Channel Points
    • Overlays
    • Alerts
    • VODs
    • Category - The primary subject of your stream. Think of categories like the Table of Contents on a book. Usually the name of the game you are playing, or the thing you are primarily doing, like cooking, music, art, or just chatting. ¶ If are starting out and love a game that everyone else loves or that just came out and everyone else is playing few if any will find you because most will be watching others play it. Maybe wait until the game is not as popular any longer, or play another game you like that is more obscure.
    • Tags - Keywords to help others find your stream, like those on the index of a book. For example, you can use the ClosedCaptions keyword to indicate that you have closed captions enabled to help users who like streams with closed captions to find your stream when they filter by tags.
    • About page - Who are you, what do you like, what do you do, and so on.
    • Highlights - Consider add stream markers at any exciting points of your stream (they are an option on the Twitch Dashboard), and later use these to create short highlights that you can also export to YouTube and place in a Highlights playlist filtered by last-published.
    • Clips
    • Subscriptions
    • Follows
      • If you find you cannot follow a channel (nothing happens when you click the Follow button) it is probably because Twitch currently has a limit of 2000 follows, so if you follow more than 2000 people you won’t be able to follow any more before unfollowing some channels.
    • Donations
    • Charity
  • OBS Studio
  • Camo Studio to turn old phone into webcam
  • StreamElements, bits, timers, polls, variations for custom bit alerts
  • Better Points
  • Triggerfyre
  • Firebot
  • Multistreaming
  • vdo.ninja to bring live video from smartphone, remote computer, or friends into OBS.
  • YouTube
  • DMCA, copyright
  • Audio libraries
  • Avatars (vtubers)

Troubleshooting

Useful information found while troubleshooting stream stability issues with Microsoft Flight Simulator:

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Saturday, 29 April 2023

TIL: The Ten Thousand Bowls of Oatmeal Problem #

Today I learned about the 10000 bowls of oatmeal problem, via a helpful clarifying comment on a thread on Hacker News:

Every bowl of oatmeal is unique, Compton explains, but that does not make them interesting or valuable. Designers use this to understand that procedural generation alone does not guarantee variety or interest, and that systems must be carefully designed to use generative methods as an expressive tool, rather than a solution in and of itself.

This led me to this post, and now I need to make my way out of yet another interesting internet wormhole and get to the stream.


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