Games Archive
Is your Windows PC not performing well when gaming? Understand how to optimize the main Windows settings you will never touch again, such as Game Mode, Power Options, and Driver Updates, step-by-step for a smoother gaming experience. Maximize Your PC Performance Gaming on computers is a popular choice for players across genres, whether playing video poker, exploring large RPG worlds, or engaging in fierce MOBA matches. The performance of these games is often determined by how well your system is optimized. Minor changes to Windows settings can significantly improve gameplay by ensuring that your computer allocates resources efficiently. Game Mode, featured in Windows 10 and later, prioritizes gaming operations for improved performance and frame rates. These adjustments, combined with regular updates, revised power settings, and eliminating unneeded background operations, ensure that your PC is ready for uninterrupted, high-performance gaming sessions in any genre. Enable Game Mode Game Mode is a feature built into Windows 10 and 11 that optimizes your computer’s gaming resources by reducing the impact of other apps. To enable Game Mode, start in ‘Settings’. Then, select the ‘Gaming’ button from the menu options. Finally, head to the game mode settings, where you can enable it. The functionality works by reducing background tasks and stopping updates while you play a game. Game Mode is a feature that works wonders when it comes to improving your gaming experience. This is especially useful when playing resource-intensive current games since it helps maintain an optimal performance level that could contribute to reaching at least 60 frames per second (FPS), which adds smoothness to game motion. Game Mode makes tasks like managing system resources much easier, leading to increased frame rates and reduced latency, which are important perks when playing online. Be it speedy engagements with opponent shooters or long trips through large open-world settings, Game Mode gives gamers the competitive edge for a deeper dive into their virtual worlds. Adjust Power Settings for Maximum Performance Optimizing display settings and power configurations is key to increasing PC gaming performance, especially on gaming laptops. It is possible to prioritize system performance. A high-performance power plan allocates most power to the system instead of a longer battery life. It’s easy to enable. Go to Settings > System > Power & Sleep, open Additional Power Settings, and choose High Performance. A suitable method of avoiding power reduction is getting power from an external power supply. If the option isn’t there, check under Show Additional Plans or create your plan. Changing these settings means that your setup can execute resource-demanding programs, resulting in a smoother and more fascinating experience. Optimize Graphics Settings in Nvidia Control Panel Modifying some settings on the Nvidia Control Panel may maximize gaming performance. Select ‘Prefer maximum performance’ from the power management settings menu to ensure that your graphics card always runs at total capacity and can even kick in during unexpected moments. Getting the other settings, such as texture filtering and monitor refresh rates, right helps to improve the visual quality and smoother the gameplay. The preferred one is the highest available. Reducing stutters consequently allows us to have the smooth experience we have been waiting for. Moreover, Nvidia also announced that G-SYNC would reduce stuttering and screen tearing problems and thus increase the overall gaming experience. Turning off VSync may result in better frames per second but may cause screen tearing. Selecting Single Display Performance Mode if you typically game on one display is another adjustment to improve gaming performance. Keeping these settings tuned and installing GPU drivers regularly is critical to ensuring that your graphics card performs at its best across all games. Disable Unnecessary Background Processes Extraneous background tasks can degrade gaming performance as they draw necessary system resources. To improve your gaming experience, remove non-essential software and free up resources for smoother gameplay. The Task Manager window shows you how many applications are running when you right-click the taskbar, select Task Manager, and go to the Processes tab. If you right-click on one of the redundant processes within the list and click on ‘End Task’, you will claim back your system resource. The Startup tab in Task Manager allows users to disable unnecessary programs during startup, which can increase startup times and spare resources for the whole system. Update Graphics Card Drivers You need to ensure that your video drivers are updated to get the highest performance out of your graphics card. If the user ignores this fact, there may be glitches, drops in frame rates, or even system crashes during play. Graphics card updates that increase responsiveness, speed, and the general quality of functioning of a system will thus provide a great core for gaming. Use software utilities such as GeForce Experience for Nvidia cards or Radeon Software for AMD cards to conveniently handle graphics card driver upgrades. These programs will detect your GPU model and download recent driver releases. Consistent updates can increase frames per second by up to 23%, significantly improving gameplay quality. Make a habit of regularly checking for the latest driver updates to avoid common gaming problems and guarantee the smooth running of the system. This proactive move not only leads to a high-quality gaming experience but also helps in keeping the game up and running without any disruptions. Configure Display Settings Optimizing display settings is vital for achieving the best gaming performance. Make sure your monitor’s refresh rate is at its highest to enhance visual smoothness while playing games. Enabling hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling can lower latency and improve graphics output. To activate this feature, navigate through Settings > System > Display > Graphics settings and switch on the hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling option. You can reduce the resolution of the monitor you are using to relieve the GPU and simultaneously make the games smoother. It is advisable to set the monitor to the recommended resolution in order to make the display sharper and improve gaming performance and overall efficiency. Disable Windows Notifications and Game Bar The Xbox Game Bar and Windows notifications
The processor in the Game Boy Advance, the ARM7TDMI, has a weird characteristic where the carry flag is set to a “meaningless value” after a multiplication operation. What this means is that software cannot and should not rely on the value of the carry flag after multiplication executes. It can be set to anything. Any value. 0, 1, a horse, whatever. This has been a source of memes in the emulator development community for a few years – people would frequently joke about how the implementation of the carry flag may as well be cpu.flags.c = rand() & 1;. And they had a point – the carry flag seemed to defy all patterns; nobody understood why it behaves the way it does. But the one thing we did know, was that the carry flag seemed to be deterministic. That is, under the same set of inputs to a multiply instruction, the flag would be set to the same value. This was big news, because it meant that understanding the carry flag could give us key insight into how this CPU performs multiplication. And just to get this out of the way, the carry flag’s behavior after multiplication isn’t an important detail to emulate at all. Software doesn’t rely on it. And if software did rely on it, then screw the developers who wrote that software. But the carry flag is a meme, and it’s a really tough puzzle, and that was motivation enough for me to give it a go. Little did I know it’d take 3 years of on and off work. ↫ bean machine Please don’t make me understand any of this.
Esports competitions are the pinnacle of competitive gaming, bringing together the top players and teams worldwide to participate in thrilling events. These events, frequently staged in enormous venues and broadcast to millions of people online, include many popular titles such as League of Legends, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike.Aside from the spectacular events, esports tournaments are well-known for the ardent fanbases that bet on who will win. Frequently updated about Dota 2 and LoL odds, these enthusiasts propel the tournaments forward, attracting larger audiences, higher stakes, and increased media coverage. These events will be greater than ever in 2024, providing unforgettable moments that will impact the future of gaming. League of Legends World ChampionshipThe 2024 League of Legends World Championship will make history as the first to be held in London, in the O2 Arena, in front of 15,000 fans. This November, twenty elite teams will compete for the coveted Summoner’s Cup and a sizable prize pool, which last year totaled $2.25 million. The competition begins with the Play-In Stage, where teams such as the MAD Lions and PSG Talon compete for a berth in the main event. The double-elimination system leaves no room for error, paving the way for thrilling comebacks and high-stakes matchups. Following the Play-In Stage, the Swiss Stage takes over, with 16 elite teams from various areas competing in a competitive five-round format. This phase guarantees exciting matchups and second opportunities, as only the most adaptable teams progress to the final rounds. The Swiss format stresses perseverance, giving fans unexpected victories and strategic games. The Worlds Anthem, performed this year by Linkin Park, is a trademark of the competition “Heavy Is The Crown.” The song reflects the tournament’s attitude of triumph over adversity, which resonates with contestants and supporters. The anthem’s dramatic music video captures the togetherness and passion that define the League of Legends community, raising Worlds to more than just a tournament. Dota 2: The InternationalThe International is synonymous with Dota 2 and continues to be one of the world’s most anticipated esports competitions. It is well-known for its large prize pools and record-breaking viewership, and it defines competitive gaming. This year, Valve is upgrading the experience with up to ten LAN events, giving fans additional options to participate in the competition at all stages. Beyond the significant rewards, The International represents strong competition and the pinnacle of Dota 2, with suspenseful and dramatic encounters. The tournament’s heritage is founded on passionate rivalries and amazing moments, making it a must-see for fans year after year. The first prize pool for 2024, financed by Valve, begins at $1.6 million and is expected to expand to more than $2.6 million through community contributions. Historically, the winning team wins more than 40% of the overall prize money, with significant benefits for other players, adding to the event’s appeal. This year’s leading contenders include Team Spirit, which is looking to make history by winning its third championship, and the Gaimin Gladiators, which finished second last year and is looking for its first TI victory. Teams such as Team Liquid, Xtreme Gaming, and newcomers The Falcons heighten the competition excitement, promising an exciting tournament full of legacy-defining moments. Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) has established itself as the leading esports championship, attracting top talent and enthusiasts worldwide. The VCT Masters will be held in Shanghai in 2024, reflecting the city’s booming esports culture. The event builds on the success of Valorant Champions 2023, which attracted a peak audience of 1.29 million. Riot Games has implemented new player trade and loan mechanisms, which adds strategic depth to this year’s event. The competition starts with regional qualifiers, in which teams from various places compete for a berth in the main event, assuring a diversified participation. The knockout stage employs a double-elimination structure, which provides second opportunities and heightens the suspense. Fans can expect intense matches and spectacular moments as teams compete for the ultimate championship. Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) The Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) is a highlight of the esports season, known for its big prize pools and high viewership. FNCS 2024 anticipates tough competition, building on last year’s success of 6 million hours watched. When it begins in early 2024, the tournament, which has a $4 million prize pool, will draw top-tier participants from all over the world. The event includes several crucial tournaments and qualifying rounds to determine the top-performing teams. Each tournament highlights regional diversity, bringing distinct strategies and growing gameplay to light. These events also emphasize Fortnite’s dynamic meta, which requires teams to adapt and excel.Renowned organizations such as FaZe Clan and TSM are anticipated to lead the tournament, while Dignitas and Team Falcons will also want to make their impact. The FNCS 2024 not only provides entertaining confrontations but also influences worldwide rankings, making each match crucial for future qualifying. Fans can expect an electrifying event as elite players compete for supremacy in one of the most prominent esports events. Apex Legends Global Series The Apex Legends Global Series is becoming increasingly popular, capturing a diverse and enthusiastic audience. The series features a huge prize pool, with $2 million committed to the World Championship finals alone. Each section of the series allows competitors to win from a $500,000 prize pool, ensuring that competition stays high at all levels. In 2023, viewership for the Apex Legends Global Series increased by 13%, totaling 47.9 million hours watched. This spike can be attributed largely to playoffs, which attract a lot of attention since they feature elite teams from diverse locations fighting in high-energy clashes that represent the game’s intense essence. This gaming event exemplifies Apex Legends’ long-term appeal to players and deeply ingrained competitive spirit. Counter-Strike 2 Major Championships The PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 promises to be a watershed moment in the Counter-Strike 2 series, with 16 elite teams vying for a $1.25 million prize pool. It will take place at Denmark’s Royal Arena from March 21 to March 31. It will showcase some of the
Nintendo, together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. on September 18, 2024. This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights. ↫ Nintendo press release Since the release of Palworld, which bears a striking resemblance to the Pokémon franchise, everybody’s been kind of expecting a reaction from both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, and here it is. What’s odd is that it’s not a trademark, trade dress, or copyright lawsuit, but a patent one, which is not what you’d expect when looking at how similar the Palworld creatures look to Pokémon, to the point where some people even suggest the 3D models were simply lifted wholesale from the latest Nintendo Switch Pokémon games. There’s no mention of which patents Pocketpair supposedly infringes upon, and in a statement, the company claims it, too, has no idea which patents are supposedly in play. I have to admit I never even stopped to think game patents were a thing at all, but now that I spent more than 2 seconds pondering this concept, of course they exist. This lawsuit will be quite interesting to follow, because the games industry is one of the few technology sectors out there where copying each others ideas, concepts, mechanics, and styles is not only normal, it’s entirely expected and encouraged. New ideas spread through the games industry like wildfires, and if some new mechanic is a hit with players, it’ll be integrated into other games within a few months, and games coming out a year later are expected to have the hit new mechanics from last year. It’s a great example of how beneficial it is to have ideas freely spread, and how awesome it is to see great games take existing mechanics and apply interesting twists, or use them in entirely different genres than where they originated from. Demon’s Souls and the Dark Souls series are a great example of a series of games that not only established a whole new genre other games quickly capitalised on, but also introduced the gaming world to a whole slew of new and unique mechanics that are now being applied in all kinds of new and interesting ways. Lawsuits like this one definitely pose a threat to this, so I hope that either this fails spectacularly in court, or that the patents in question are so weirdly specific as to be utterly without merit in going after any other game.
The Epoch Cassette Vision is often reported as the first Japanese cartridge-based game console. But reality is always a bit more complicated. In 1978, years before the Cassette Vision, two Japanese companies put together cartridge-based game consoles that were unique to Japan, but relied on technology and chips licensed from American firms. And hey, despite my whirlwind tour of Pong consoles, I never looked at GI chips. Behold, the *breathes in* Bandai Video Mate All Color TV Jack Addon 5000. (longest console name in the history of the blog?) This 1978 console was the follow-on to Bandai’s earlier Video Mate TV Jack consoles, which were more or less the same as everyone else’s Pong-on-a-chip consoles. (The TV Jack 2500 appears rather intriguing, but we’re not looking at that one today) ↫ Nicole Express As usual, Nicole’s deep dives into weird consoles you’ve never heard of are a great read, and this one is no exception. There are many things that make the Jack Addon 5000 unique and interesting, but the one thing that’s really cool is that while the game lives on the cartridge, the colour lives inside the console itself. Inside the cartridge you’ll only find the monochrome game chip; the colour is added by another chip that’s fitted inside the console. Only four cartridges were ever released for the system, so it’s not particularly more versatile than contemporary Pong clones that had multiple built-in games or game modes. Still, it’s an interesting footnote, and I’m so happy we got such a detailed look at this console.
The Box64 project, which allows you to run Linux x86-64 binaries on non-x86 architectures like ARM and RISC-V, has achieved a major milestone with its RISC-V backend. It’s been over a year since our last update on the state of the RISC-V backend, and we recently successfully ran The Witcher 3 on an RISC-V PC, which I believe is the first AAA game ever to run on an RISC-V machine. So I thought this would be a perfect time to write an update, and here it comes. ↫ Box86/Box64 blog Calling this a monumental achievement would be underselling it. Just in case you understand how complex running The Witcher 3 on RISC-V really is: they’re running a Windows x86 game on Linux on RISC-V using Box64, Wine, and DXVK. This was only made possible relatively recently due to more and more x86 instructions making their way into RISC-V, as well as newer RISC-V machines that can accept modern graphics cards. The Witcher 3 can runs at about 15 frame per second in-game, using the 64-core RISC-V processor in the Milk-V Pioneer combined with an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT GPU. That may not sound like much, but considering the complexity underpinning even running this game at all in this environment it’s actually kind of amazing. It seems Box64 could become as important to gaming on ARM and RISC-V Linux as Wine and Proton were for gaming x86 Linux. There’s still a lot more work to be done, and the linked article details a number of x86 instructions that are particularly important for x86 emulation, but are not available on RISC-V. The end result is that RISC-V has to run multiple instructions to emulate a single x86 instruction (“a whole of 10 instructions for a simple byte add”), which obviously affects performance.
Way back, Valve had the intention of making gaming on Linux a reality by allowing anyone to make PCs running SteamOS, with the goal of making Steam less dependent on the whims of Windows. This effort failed and fizzled out, but the idea clearly never died inside Valve, because ten years later the Steam Deck would take the market by storm, spawning a whole slew of copycats running unoptimised, difficult to use Windows installations. There have been hints Valve was toying with the idea of releasing official SteamOS builds for devices other than the Steam Deck, and the company has not confirmed these rumours. The company’s long said it plans to let other companies use SteamOS, too — and that means explicitly supporting the rival Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld, Valve designer Lawrence Yang now confirms to The Verge. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge This is great news for the market, as some of these Steam Deck competitors are interesting from a specifications perspective – although pricing sure goes up with that – but running Windows on a small handheld gaming device is a chore, and relying on OEMs to make “gaming overlays” to make Windows at least somewhat usable is not exactly something you want to have to rely on. SteamOS is clearly lightyears ahead of Windows in this department, so having non-Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs officially supported by Valve is great news. We’re still a long way off, though, says Valve, and the same applies to Valve’s plans to release a generic SteamOS build for any old random PC. That effort, too, is making steady progress, but isn’t anywhere near ready. Of course, there’s a variety of unofficial SteamOS variants available, so you’re not entirely out of luck right now. On top of that, there’s things like Bazzite, which offer a SteamOS-like experience, but using the Atomic variants of Fedora.
Straight from the arcade world, the Neo Geo was, without a doubt, the most expensive hardware of the 4th generation. This begs the question: how capable was it and how did it compare with the rest? In this entry, we’ll take a look at the result of one company (SNK) setting budget restrictions aside and shipping a product meant to please both arcade owners and rich households. ↫ Rodrigo Copetti Rich households, indeed. Back in the ’90s, when Nintendo was the only game in town – few people in my area cared one bit about Sega – Neo Geo was a name we only knew of vaguely. It was supposed to be a massively powerful console that was so expensive nobody bought one, and some of us even doubted it was real in the first place. Ah, the pre-internet playground days were wild.
The complete source code for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) version of Doom has been released on archive.org. Although some of the code was partially released a few years ago, this is the first time the full source code has been made publicly available. ↫ Shaun James at GBAtemp The code was very close to being lost forever, down to a corrupted disk that had to be fixed. It’s crazy how much valuable, historically relevant code we’re just letting rot away for no reason.
About a week ago, there has been a little addition to the 3dbrew wiki page about 3DS cartridges (carts) that outlines the technical details of how the 3DS cartridge controller and a 3DS cartridge talk to each other. I would like to take this opportunity to also include the 3DS itself in the conversation to illuminate which part of which device performs which step. I will then proceed to outline where I think the corresponding design decisions originate. Finally, I will conclude with some concrete ideas for improvement. ↫ Forbidden Tempura Everything you ever wanted to know about 3DS cartridges and how they interact with the 3DS.
It turns out that digital rights management and its consequences extend even beyond your passing when it comes to Steam. Valve has made it clear that no, you cannot will your Steam account or games to someone else when you die. The issue of digital game inheritability gained renewed attention this week as a ResetEra poster quoted a Steam support response asking about transferring Steam account ownership via a last will and testament. “Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable” the response reads. “Steam Support can’t provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.” ↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica My wife and I make sure we know each other’s passwords and login credentials to the most important accounts and services in our lives, since an accident can happen at any time, and we’d like to be somewhat prepared – as much as you can be, under the circumstances – for if something happens. I never even considered merging Steam accounts, but at least granting access to the person named in your will or your legal heir seems like something a service like Steam should be legally obliged to do. I don’t think Steam’s position here – which is probably par for the course – is tenable in the long-term. Over the coming years and decades, we’re going to see more and more people who grew up almost entirely online pass away, leaving behind various accounts, digital purchases, and related matters, and loved ones and heirs will want access to those. At some point over the coming decades, there’s going to be a few high-profile cases in the media about something like this, and it’s going to spur lawmakers into drafting up legislation to make account and digital goods transfers to heirs and loved ones not a courtesy, but a requirement. In the meantime, if you have a designated heir, like your children, a spouse, or whatever, make sure they can somehow gain access to your accounts and digital goods, by writing stuff down on paper and putting it somewhere safe or something similar. Again – you never know when you might… Expire.
Nearly 30 years after the launch of the Virtual Boy, not much is publicly known about how, exactly, Nintendo came to be interested in developing what would ultimately become its ill-fated console. Was Nintendo committed to VR as a future for video games and looking for technological solutions that made business sense? Or was the Virtual Boy primarily the result of Nintendo going “off script” and seizing a unique, and possibly risky, opportunity that presented itself? The answer is probably a little bit of both. As it turns out, the Virtual Boy was not an anomaly in Nintendo’s history with video game platforms. Rather, it was the result of a deliberate strategy that was consistent with Nintendo’s way of doing things and informed by its lead creator Gunpei Yokoi’s design philosophy. ↫ Benj Edwards and Jose Zagal at Ars Technica I’ve never used a Virtual Boy, and in fact, I’ve never even seen one in real life. It was mythical object when I was not even a teenager yet, something we read about in gaming magazines in The Netherlands. We didn’t really know what it was or how it worked, and it wasn’t until much later, in the early YouTube age, that I got to see what using one was actually like in the countless YouTube videos made about the device. It seems it caused quite a few headaches, was cumbersome to use, had very few games, and those that were sold ended up collecting dust pretty quickly. In that sense, it seems not a lot has changed over the past thirty years.
Electronic Arts has a long, storied history of trying to wring more money out of gamers after they’ve purchased a game — now, it appears, the company’s hard at work on its next generation of in-game ads. EA CEO Andrew Wilson admitted as much on the company’s Q4 earnings call: when an analyst asked about “the market opportunity for more dynamic ad insertion across more traditional AAA games,” he said the company’s already working on it. “We have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences,” said Wilson. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge Ads in games are definitely not new – we’ve seen countless games built entirely around brands, like Tapper for Budweiser, Pepsiman, or Cool Spot for 7-Up – and banner ads and product placement in various games has been a thing for decades, too. It seems like EA wants to take this several steps further and use things like dynamic ad insertion in games, so that when you’re playing some racing game, you’ll get an ad for your local Hyundai dealer, or an ad for a gun store when you’re playing GTA in the US. Either way, it’s going to make games worse, which is perfectly in line with EA’s mission.
With 14.9, Vanguard, Riot’s proprietary Anti-Cheat system will be deployed and active in League of Legends. This means that active enforcement of Vanguard will be in effect and working hard to make sure your queues are free from scripters, botters, and cheaters! We recently released a blog detailing the “why” behind bringing Vanguard to League that you can check out here. It’s a bit of a long read, but it does have some pictures. ↫ Lilu Cabreros in the League of Legends patch notes The basic gist is that Vanguard is a closed-source, kernel-level rootkit for Windows that runs at all times, with the supposed goal of detecting and banning cheaters from playing League of Legends. This being a rootkit designed specifically to inject itself into the Windows kernel, it won’t work on Linux, and as such, the entire League on Linux community, which has been playing League for years now and even at times communicated with Riot employees to keep the game running, is now gone. Interestingly enough, Riot is not implementing Vanguard on macOS, which League of Legends also supports – because Apple simply doesn’t allow it. This is probably the most invasive, disturbing form of anticheat we’ve seen so far, especially since it involves such a hugely popular game. It’s doubly spicy because Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company, which means a company owned and controlled by the Chinese government now has rootkits installed on the roughly 150 million players’ computers all over the world. While we’re all (rightly, in my opinion) worried about TikTok, China just slipped 150 million rootkits onto computers all over the world. One really has to wonder where these increasingly invasive, anti-privacy and anti-user anticheat measures are going from here. Now that this rootkit can keep tabs on literally every single thing you do on your Windows computer, what’s going to be the next step? Anticheat might have to move towards using webcams to watch you play to prevent you from cheating, because guess what? The next level of cheating is already here, and it doesn’t even involve your computer. Earlier this year, hardware maker MSI showed off a gaming monitor that uses “AI” to see what’s going on on your monitor, and then injects overlays onto your monitor to help you cheat. MSI showed off how the monitor will use the League of Legends minimap to follow enemy champions and other relevant content, and then show warnings on your screen when enemies approach from off-screen. All of this happens entirely on the monitor’s hardware, and never sends any data whatsoever to the computer it’s attached to. It’s cheating that literally cannot be detected by anything running on your computer, rootkit or not. So, the only logical next step as such forms of cheating become more advanced and widespread is to force users to turn on their webcams, and point them at their displays. I fired up League of Legends today on my gaming computer – which runs Linux, of course – and after the League client “installed” the rootkit, it just got stuck in an endless loop of asking me to restart the client. I’ve been playing League of Legends for close to 14 years, and while I know the game – and especially its community – has a deservedly so bad reputation, I’ve always enjoyed the game with friends, and especially with my wife, who’s been playing for years and years as well. Speaking of my wife – even though she runs Windows and could easily install the rootkit if she wanted to, she has some serious doubts about this. When I explained what the Vanguard rootkit can do, her mouse pointer slowly moved away from the “Update” button, saying, “I’m not so sure about this…”
This is a virtual DEC PDP-1 (emulated in HTML5/JavaScript) running the original code of “Spacewar!”, the earliest known digital video game. If available, use gamepads or joysticks for authentic gameplay — the game was originally played using custom “control boxes”. Spacewar! was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. It was first realized on the PDP-1 in 1962 by Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Martin Graetz, together with Alan Kotok, Steve Piner, and Robert A Saunders. ↫ Norbert Landsteiner It’s wild to me that even for the very first video game, they already made what are effectively controllers anyone today could pick up and use. Note that this emulator can run more than just Spacewar!.
One of the remarkable characteristics of the Super Nintendo was the ability for game cartridges (cart) to pack more than instructions and assets into ROM chips. If we open and look at the PCBs, we can find inside things like the CIC copy protection chip, SRAM, and even “enhancement processors”. ↫ Fabien Sanglard When I was a child and teenager in the ’90s, the capabilities of the SNES cartridge were a bit of a legend. We’d talk about what certain games would use which additional processors and chips in the cartridge, right or wrong, often boasting about the games we owned, and talking down the games we didn’t. Much of it was probably nonsense, but there’s some good memories there. We’re decades deep into the internet age now, and all the mysteries of the SNES cartridge can just be looked up on Wikipedia and endless numbers of other websites. The mystery’s all gone, but at least now we can accurately marvel at just how versatile the SNES really was.
It all started in fall of 2022, when I was watching This Does Not Compute’s video on the history of graphing calculator gaming. Around the 5 minute mark, he offhandedly mentions the kind of processors TI’s graphing calculator line uses. Most of them use the Z80, the 89 and 92 use the M68K, and the Nspire line uses an ARM-based processor. That really piqued my interest, since I already knew the processors that Sega’s retro game consoles used: The Z80 for the Master System, and the M68K for the Genesis. The calcs have a grayscale screen, but I wanted to know if anyone ever tried porting a Sonic game from the consoles to one of the calcs. ↫ grubbycoder Right off the bat, after settling on the most appropriate graphing calculator to try and port Sonic 2 to, namely the TI-84+ CE with a 48Mhz eZ80 processor (“basically a 24-bit Z80”), 256 KB of RAM and a 320×240 display, the porting process runs into some serious roadblocks before any code’s even been written. Unlike the Sega hardware Sonic 2 runs on, the TI-84+ CE has no graphics hardware, the clock speed is effectively crippled at 12-20Mhz, a file format with a size limit of 64KB per file. The rest of the story details the many difficulties that needed to be overcome, but in the end, the port is completed – and yes, you can now play Sonic 2 from the Master System on a TI graphing calculator.
Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers’ accounts — and the company isn’t answering our questions about why it went that far. Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge This is exactly what people were worried about when Nintendo and Yuzu settled for millions of dollars. Even though it’s a settlement and not a court ruling, and even tough the code to Yuzu is entirely unaffected by the settlement and freely shareable and usable by anyone, and even though emulators are legal – the chilling effect this settlement is having is absolutely undeniable. Here we have Discord going far beyond its own official policy, without even giving the affected parties any recourse. It’s absolutely wild, and highlights just how dangerous it is to rely on Discord for, well, anything. I wish that for once, we’d actually see a case related to console emulation go to court in either the EU or the US, to make it even clearer that yes, unless you distribute copyrighted code like game ROMs or console firmware, emulators are entirely legal and without any risk. You know, a recent court ruling we could point to to dissuade bullies like Nintendo from threatening innocent developers and ruining their lives because of entirely legal activities. And let me reiterate: don’t use Discord as for anything other than basic chat. This platform ain’t got your back.
Quests are a way for players to discover games and earn rewards for playing them on Discord. We started experimenting with them over the last year, and millions of you opted in and completed them. We’ve heard great feedback from developers who partnered with us to create them and from many of you who completed one. If you didn’t see firsthand, the “May the 4th” Fortnite Quest is a great example. Now, we’re opening up sponsored Quests to more game developers. ↫ Peter Sellis That’s a lot of fancy, hip words to say Discord is going to show you ads. I have an odd relationship with Discord – it holds a special place in my heart because through Discord is how I met my now-wife and mother of our children, so understandably, the chat platform has a special meaning for us. At the same time, though, Discord has been getting steadily worse and less usable over the years, and while my wife isn’t too bothered by that, I certainly am – and so we moved our instant messaging over to Signal instead. My wife still uses Discord with her friends. Seeing a platform that used to be quite usable, and easily the best way to manage a group of geographically spread-out friends, fall prey to the same kind of bullshit so many other platforms have succumbed to. Discord today is almost unrecognisable to what it was like 6-7 years ago, and now there’s even going to be ads – the final nail in the coffin for the possibility of me ever going back to using it.
Every computer has at least one heart which beats the cadence to all the other chips. The CloCK output pin is connected to a copper line which spreads to most components, into their CLK input pin. If you are mostly a software person like me, you may have never noticed it but all kinds of processors have a CLK input pin. From CPUs (Motorola 68000, Intel Pentium, MOS 6502), to custom graphic chips (Midway’s DMA2, Capcom CPS-A/CPS-B, Sega’s Genesis VDP) to audio chips (Yamaha 2151, OKI msm6295), they all have one. ↫ Fabien Sanglard I’ve watched enough Adrian Black that I already knew all of this, and I’m assuming so did many of you. But hey, I’ll never pass up the opportunity to link to the insides of the Super Nintendo.
