noticed a severe lack of wyll memes so I made a bunch.

Steamdeck OLED review/impressions

Thought I'd leave some points to my experience as I have been fiddling with it a couple of days now.

This is also, in some ways, a review of the Steam Deck as a system.

Screen

The Steamdeck has a screen which is pretty small by tablet standards today, but about the same size as the screen on the Nintendo Switch.

The OLED screen is nice and colourful. I no longer have my LCD to compare it to, but the extra few centimeters helps a lot.

I wouldn't recommend you upgrade just for the screen, however, as it is not that different from the LCD in terms of quality.

I have noticed no issues with my screen, I have seen lots of people report problems but I have identified no dead pixels or glare issues.

I am using a glossy screen with a glossy protector. I tried a matte screen protector, which helped significantly with glare, but it gave a glittery and grainy effect on the screen, so it had to be removed. The glossy protector did not affect image in any way. It was fiddly to apply all the protectors, but I got there in the end.

The good news is that the screen can go very bright, and if it is on high brightness then glare is never going to be an issue. So don't worry about which screen type you buy.

Battery

The Steamdeck has a pretty weak battery if you are running most PC games.

The LCD only lasted me an hour if I was playing Monster Hunter World or Balder's Gate 3, and if I played it to depletion, it would bug out on me. More on that shortly.

The OLED seems to have a much better battery. I have been doing a lot of low performance stuff, but I played L4D2 for over an hour earlier, and it only ate maybe 20% of the battery. I played some World today and it only ate another 20% in half an hour with a high performance game, so I think that this unit will do more comparably to the original Nintendo Switch. In all cases I had brightness maxed out.

On emulated games, if you're running gamecube or PS2, it is negligible, however if you run Wii U games it will eat a lot more power (understandably). The fastest drain for me so far was Xenoblade Chronicles X. The other Xenoblade Chronicles games can drain my Switch in an hour, so this isn't a surprise.

This was the main reason I upgraded. I don't mind having the original Switch with its poorer battery performance, but with the Steamdeck LCD it was so bad that the console was barely usable. This change may seem small, but it will make the Steamdeck much more usable for me. Especially as sometimes I am taking 6 hour flights on low voltage planes that struggle to charge my deck.

Performance

The Steamdeck can do most older games very well, but if you're aiming at something released in the past couple of years, it is going to struggle. It plays Monster Hunter Rise like a dream, and I swear that it runs Monster Hunter World better than it used to (the game was updated for deck), but Baldur's Gate 3 will look very ugly texture-wise. Then again, that game looks horrible on any computer that came out before 2021.

You will be playing most demanding games on the low to mid settings.

The irony is, while it looked horrendous, Baldur's Gate 3 performed better on deck than on my PC, and I believe this is because the game has high Memory costs. While my PC's processor and graphics card are superior, it only has 8gb of memory to the Steamdeck's 16gb.

I never played a game where the 8gb was an issue until Baldur's Gate 3. It only affected me if I was connected to lots of streams on Discord. I will compare again when I have my new mid range 32gb memory PC next week.

On the OLED, a game with low performance costs like Left 4 Dead 2 will happily push towards the 90 frames per second limit. Of course, you're going to struggle to get Monster Hunter World over 30fp unless the graphics are very low.

So the Steamdeck is about the equivalent of an entry level or mid range 2018 Gaming PC. It is outdated but it plays most of the classics well.

Controls

The steamdeck's control sticks are quite large, so they're not the best option for people with small hands like myself. However I reckon this makes the unit popular with its primary audience (adult men who struggle with the small controls of the Switch, which are perfect for me).

The haptic mouse pad is okay, but it is obviously no replacement for an actual mouse. It's slightly worse than a laptop trackpad, I think, but at least it continues to move a bit if you swipe it like a ballpoint mouse would, rather than only being "on" or "off". I report no issues with this item, it does everything you will need it to when controlling from desktop mode or with a pointer-based game.

The buttons are okay, I think the right hand buttons are too small and close to the joystick for comfort, and I think the back paddles are too large and the L5/R5 buttons are too low down. It's not exactly easy to click L5 with your baby finger if you have tiny hands like me. The xbox controller is a better option than the steamdeck base controls. It is unfortunate the console doesn't come with a stand like the Switch does, and you have to buy third party options.

What impresses me most is the gyroscopic controls built into the device. I thought playing a shooter like Left 4 Dead 2 would be impossible, but because of the gyroscope, my aiming is as good as any keyboard and mouse player! Just like when playing Breath of the Wild or Ocarina of Time 3D. Even though I can't control the joysticks very well. I don't need them for those fine little movements anymore.

I must add that the Gyro only works on its default settings if you are touching the centre of the right joystick, or the trackpad. I did not like this at all because I needed to move my thumb to press different buttons. Fortunately there was a community layout which enabled gyro at all times. I was able to change the sensitivity on the game's steam options. You may also be able to enable it or disable it permanently by messing around with your own settings.

Compatibility

The biggest obstacle to Steamdeck is the Linux operating system, which upon the console's release, had very little compatibility with most normal tools. Wii USB Helper, the Wii U emulation tool, was completely incompatible. And the reason most games need to be optimised for Deck isn't because of their actual performance costs, it's because they don't run well on Linux.

Originally when playing Devil May Cry 5, the game would crash for no reason, and playing Monster Hunter World, the textures would crash and you would be left surrounded by a glitched out void if the monster you were fighting did a move that the system didn't like.

I think that over the past year, with the popularity of Steamdeck, a lot of developers have taken to making their games run better on Linux. As for the above Wii USB helper tool, there is something called WiiUDownloader which does the same thing and is Linux compatible. So I have had a much better time.

Emulation

It was a huge pain in the ass setting everything up and troubleshooting, especially because of the closed-off technical lingo used in emulation circles. But Emudeck has been a great help in getting everything set up. It is all you need for Gamecube.

I have issues with emulation tools not searching the SD card where Emudeck is installed. They keep searching the "Home" directory for things like their BIOS. Either I need to manually write in the correct path, or it's impossible and I need to copy the bios onto the main Deck. I am not sure if this is an issue with steamdeck or the emulation tools themselves, but it was a pain.

The good news is when you finally have these games running, they play very well. I think some of them perform better on a dedicated gaming unit like the Steamdeck than they do on a Windows computer which has dozens of processes running at the same time.

Lots of work has been done with emulation tools since 2021 to give them maximum compatibility with Linux and Steamdeck, as they know this is the main portable platform for those tools now.

I have had plenty of success with PS2 games, Gamecube games, and Wii U games, once everything was set up to Steam ROM Manager and saved to Steam. You can use community controller layouts on Steam that make things way easier to set up than they would be on a Windows PC.

I haven't had any success with Yuzu, the Switch emulator. This isn't necessary for me but it just seems like it isn't finding the keys that Emudeck set up.

Docked mode

I have mostly experimented with this on my LCD prior to the latest update, but I have fiddled with it on the 3.5 update this Sunday.

I have a Toshiba LED Flatscreen TV from ten years ago. It has no issues with any consoles of any kind, though I've never tested it with a PC before.

It is 50/50 as to whether the Dock works. At first it wasn't reacting at all. Now it seems to be compatible on Gaming mode, this could be because I forced lower resolution for screen compatibility.

However, on Desktop mode, when I used the automatic settings, the screen was flickering black and turning off altogether. I searched online for a solution, but unfortunately nothing I saw was helping.

I saw that it was trying to run at 24hz 1080p. I couldn't change the framerate, but I lowered the resolution to 720p and it became locked at 60hz.

This seemed to fix the issue, but now the resolution is too small and there doesn't seem to be a way to force it to change without also lowering the framerate to unusable levels. Odd as I am pretty sure you can force Windows to a massive resolution and the text will just look very tiny on your screen.

I will attribute this to my TV being too old for a modern computer, and maybe it's just a 720p tv, as I have had no issues with the two LCD tvs that my dad owns. I'm not eager on the idea of replacing my TV just for the steamdeck, but if it has no issues in Gaming Mode, it's not going to be a priority anyway.

As for the controller connection, well, it was initially pain in the ass trying to get my xbox series x controller connected. For some reason the bluetooth wasn't doing the job. But after a firmware update on my controller, it went a lot smoother.

What I did not like was you couldn't wake Steamdeck from sleep with the controller.

I have heard this isn't a problem on the OLED, but I am sure a firmware update on the original Steamdeck could have solved the problem. And if not - Why? We have been using bluetooth controllers to wake consoles since 2006! I saw someone claim you can't wake a PC from sleep with a bluetooth controller, so I immediately tested it and... woke my PC from sleep. Why does the Steamdeck LCD have worse wireless functionality than the Nintendo Wii?

Overall

People ask on this sub if the console will replace their gaming PCs. In my case, no, as it has to be a very old gaming PC for the steamdeck to be more powerful.

Generally it hasn't replaced my Switch, either, as the Steamdeck's battery life is too limited for long sessions (or cafe gaming as I like to do), and it is a worse Multiplayer console than the Switch. Especially as I had to get the dock separately. The console's portability is limited by its great size, too. I have bought a special case that is smaller than the stock one, but it can only do so much.

However i have found the steamdeck to be useful when I am travelling with access to power outlets and want a gaming PC on the go when I am staying with my partner, or when I simply want to sit in a different room of the house and play Monster Hunter.

The OLED also has a nice screen that makes me choose to play some games on there instead of on my PC screen.

The gimmick of playing demanding Pc games on such a tiny console is fun, and the gyro functionality has opened a lot of options for me that I hadn't previously considered. Maybe it is time to return to DOOM.

I love my steamdeck. After I was happy with my OLED setup, I said goodbye to it and traded it in at CEX. I will transfer that love over to my OLED and even though it isn't immediately that useful, I will find a lot of use for it over the next year with my travelling.

Game Impressions from PAX Aus 2019

Wake the fuck up, samurai. We've got a city to burn.

Every year I go to PAX Aus with some close friends to check out the Incredible Future of Games that everyone else already checked out six months ago, along with some cool weird indie shit and some awesome retro stuff. And every year, I write a little diary of what I saw to share my impressions with my friends. This is that diary.

Doom Eternal

Okay, let's get this out of the way. I played Doom Eternal pretty much as soon as I got on the show floor. It may shock you to know that it is, in fact, good.

No pictures of the demo units, sorry, so have this big logo.

The demo started with a little grey-box tutorial map just to teach you what you need to know for the demo level, since it was taken from the middle of the game. It looked very Snapmap-y and had some Doom 2 MIDI music playing. After that we were given about 25 minutes to acquaint ourselves with the lengthy "Mars Core" mission they've been showing since E3. I was at the start of the first arena of the hell bit when I ran out of time. :(

Here are some scattered thoughts from playing:

Your standard running around and double jumping feels much the same as in Doom 2016. The dashing feels great, although I think it might reduce your air control a little afterwards as I had some trouble overshooting a platform in the floating debris bit.

Climbing walls felt a bit weird to me. You have to press E on the wall manually to grab onto it, which feels a bit unintuitive when you're plummeting past it. Also feels a bit odd considering mantling up walls is automatic. You can auto-grab onto walls if you dash into it, but I think it's only for the first bit of the dash? Maybe I'm just bad at videogames.

I think the Combat and Super Shotguns now use different ammo types? I could have swore there were situations where I could select the Combat Shotgun but not the SSG.

The Chainsaw now no longer has even the slightest pretence of being a "real" weapon. It's now just a swing animation when you press the button, like a melee attack, before bringing your weapon back up.

When you have the SSG's Meat Hook attachment, a little meathook icon appears below the crosshair. When you're close enough to an enemy to grapple onto them, the icon floats over them, indicating that it has some kind of auto-aim mechanic to reduce frustration.

There was a monster with swords on its arms that acted an awful lot like the Baron of Hell (might have been the Hell Knight, looking at the Quakecon footage of the same fight) but it looked quite different. Looked fuckin' cool, whatever it was.

The platforming but in the debris section with the giant floating red barrels was actually kind of frustrating. It wasn't always clear where you needed to go, and the climbable bits tended to blend in with the rest of the world. Then again, keep in mind I have a frankly abysmal sense of direction. Thankfully falling into the void just whacks you for a paltry five health and teleports you back onto safe ground.

The locational damage stuff is really fun. Breaking a monster's guns has a satisfying metal "PING" sound to it to inform you that the dude got fucked up and is weaker now, and that you should keep doing it.

When I picked up one of those "?" secrets, the pop-up box told me that they unlocked "collectable dolls" and "cheat codes". The former is vague, but I suspect they'll be like the mini-Doomguys but of more characters. I'd imagine the latter will be like in Rage 2.

Oh, and it looks a million bucks, too. Though you probably didn't need me to tell you that.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with what I saw and it's even more of a pity it's not coming out next month.

Not Indie Games, But Also Not Doom Eternal

The Vive Cosmos felt really comfy - the lack of cabling and the decent display resolution made it feel a lot more natural than the Gen 1 Vives I've previously used. The game they were using to demo (Audica), however, was pretty lame. A rhythm-target shooter that didn't really take advantage of the medium at all.

Bleeding Edge was not inspiring. It was basically the control point mode from TF2 or Overwatch, except every character was a third-person brawler with little emphasis on projectile weapons beyond the occasional special. It felt like someone making a claim at TF2 or Overwatch's throne several years late while bolting a weak character action game on, which is fairly odd considering how innovative and critically acclaimed Ninja Theory's previous game was.

Dreams is fairly fascinating in its potential. The creation tools weren't available in the demo build so I can’t really judge them, instead there was a choice of eight developer-made experiences ranging from Mario-inspired obstacle courses to videogames as art.

I didn't get the chance to actually play MediEvil, but I watched some folks play it and it basically just looks like the PS1 game with more triangles, with all the slightly wonky 32-bit gameplay that entails.

The demo unit for Monkey King: Hero Is Back had some utterly bizarre graphics settings for some reason that made it look like I was playing a JPEG file, with big whopping compression artifacts surrounding each character. Weird!

Not happenin’.

Indie Games

Grabimals is a brilliant local co-op puzzler where players roll around as shapes and link together to solve puzzles like catching a falling water droplet, crossing a gap or casting a shadow that matches an example image. Supposedly it's still a ways off from release, but it's already impressively polished (disregarding one hilarious crash bug we found by accident!)

Hamster Scramble is a really fun take on Puzzle Bobble, with platforming elements, team play and the ability to jump over to your opponent's screen and fuck their plans up directly. It's an absolute blast and didn't feel like it was almost a year away from release.

Fork Knights is a platform fighter with an emphasis on one-hit kills. The character designs are cute, but I can't really say the gameplay itself struck me, to be honest.

Baron is an eight-player single-screen local multiplayer dogfighter. Fairly simple mechanically, but pretty fun all things considered.

Broken Roads had some lovely hand-painted art assets and some interesting ideas like a literal moral compass, but the demo build showcased was waaaaay too early to be shown off to the public. Of the eight or so areas present in the demo, only two had any characters, interactivity or really anything other than wandering around set up, and the combat side of things was extremely rough and sequestered off to a side area as a "well, if you insist..." kind of deal.

Misadventure In Little Lon is a true-crime adventure game for mobile with a unique mechanic - each "scene" is integrated into the real world via AR, with characters (that resemble Poser models more than a little bit) speaking to you directly. Not sure if it holds up over an entire game, but it's attention-garnering at least.

Speaking of true crime, The Black Window tasks players with using an Oujia board to question Australia's first female serial killer, with responses taken from court records and letters from the time. The well-acted performances of the actual individual in question's words lends it an impressive atmosphere, which the booth added to with a big wooden oujia board type thing you could "type" on. Sort of.

ACID KNIFE is real, real early, but the aesthetic is awesome and the pixel art is great. Hopefully it grows and expands into something special.

The Vigilante Proclivities of the Longspur is an oldschool Lucasarts-inspired point-and-click adventure with a custom demo scene set at an oddly-familiar videogame convention. Pretty promising so far, but could do with a good bit of polish - I'm pretty sure there was only one sound effect in the entire demo, and dialogue was often lacking in punctuation.

I didn't get to play Hot Brass but I watched over shoulders and talked with the developers, and it looked pretty cool. It's basically a take on SWAT 4's rarely-imitated brand of tactical copwork, but with a Hotline Miami-style top-down perspective, but with all the characters abstracted down to simple board game like tokens - a circle with a coloured outline denoting attitude towards the player, with a weapon icon if armed.

Blood Metal... Blood Metal is not good. It is extensively not good. Development seems to have only started in July, so one can still hope that the bad AI, unsatisfying gunplay, buggy collision detection and complete lack of damage feedback (outside of some ridiculous, sight-obscuring gouts of blood) get fixed over time. The 80s action movie aesthetic and low-poly artstyle forces it to be compared to Maximum Action, which is at least a fun kind of jank...

This Starry Void is a real-time, tile-based 3D dungeon crawler set in an abandoned spacecraft. It seems pretty cool so far, but it could probably use some UI/UX tweaks. The attempts at a "graphic novel inspired" visual style for the environments could probably benefit from looking at how Void Bastards did things, as well.

Lethal Lawns and Beam Team are fucking arcade games with massive cabinets. In 2019. Granted, they're also on computers and coming to consoles and stuff as well, but still! They're both pretty simple games, and therefore best played in cabinet form.

Unpacking is a "zen puzzle game" by the developers of Assault Android Cactus about the second-worst part of moving house, unloading an unseen character's packing and getting a glimpse into their lives as a result. I wasn’t able to play it due to an unexpectedly-crowded booth, but the pixel art is quite lovely.

Feather is a chill game about being a bird and flying around an island trying to find its secrets. I tried the Switch port, which played alright but obviously (and understandably) toted a lower framerate than the demo PC.

Topple Pop is a cute puzzle game that blends together elements of Tetris, Puyo Puyo and that one joke game that was Tetris but with a proper physics engine. Looks cute, with a fun gimmick!

Shooty Skies Overdrive is an VR spinoff of the popular mobile shmup, and basically similar to that one shmup minigame in Valve's The Lab. Weave your plane, which is attached to one of your hands, through incoming bullets and enemies like a toy! The 3D effect on the incoming projectiles looks great, but they can tend to get in the way of the action sometimes.

Dead Static Drive has been at like the last three PAXes and it looks better every time I see it. I hope it comes out this decade.

Snow Mercy is a third-person shooter/strategy thing where you hunt down icecubes to spend on an army of snowmen to crush your opponent's base before they crush yours. Not a common genre combo, reminds me of C&C Renegade a bit.

The Adventure Pals has graphics straight out of mid-2000s Newgrounds and level design out of pretty much any european platformer, but it didn't seem too bad from my brief prodding at it. The player character is perhaps a bit too small for my elderly eyes in Switch portable mode, but that's about as far as my gripes go.

Free V Bucks Fortnite Generator

Lately, Android gaming is escalating with a strong processor and very good GPU machine. I suggest, usually there are some wonderful online games accessible for Android within the Play Keep, and great pleasurable in solitary player marketing campaign method, which happens to be an extremely awesome multiplayer match. Contrast with your mates or the planet, multiplayer online games provide you with a superior encounter with athletics and thru them. But with countless choices, what can both you and your friends Enjoy? Properly, don't worry for the reason that we are listed here that can help. We've got the best selection of multiplayer game titles which you could Participate in with anyone. Allow me to share 30 very best multiplayer games for Android:

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PUBG Cellular is without doubt one of the best online multiplayer Android online games. If you reside beneath a rock, This is PUBG Cellular: This is a royal fight match during which 100 gamers can land on an island to gather weapons and become the final gentleman (or administration). Battling games include things like solo manner, Duo manner, and Squad manner so that you could struggle for just a hen meal along with pals. A short while ago, PUBG Cellular has extra an arcade method, some new maps and evening method (among the maps in PUBG) to Argyland. There are various different types of weapons that you could use with hand grenades, smoking cigarettes grenades, health and fitness kits and more.

If you're new to PUBG Cell, you could study our report on PUBG Cell Recommendations and Tricks for the Rooster Meal.

Fortnite is another sport that doesn't need an introduction. Enjoying on line towards other players is usually a royal fighting recreation, which is de facto enjoyment. Fortune is very distinct from the public, but cartoonist graphics and many entertaining elements are utilized to simplify the game. Besides that, You can find an entire setting up system that doesn't supply another on the net multiplayer games. With weekly patches, the sport also gets fresh new content material. Even if you tumble down to play the sport, there is one area new. It really is really a good video game, but owing to this complicated weapon mechanic and building method, it might be quite challenging to Participate in, which is central to the game.

Clash Royale is yet another multiplayer match that you should look at in your Android cellphone. The large lover of this sport is as follows, and it is a spin-off with the favored system game Clash with the Clans. Clash Royale is a card recreation wherein you compete against other players to confirm by fortnite free v bucks app themselves as the best gamers for PVP. If you're looking for an entertaining online multiplayer sport, Clash Royale certainly should look one.

Very last Working day on Earth: Survival is often a no cost zombie shooter and survival approach activity. Launched in 2027, an unfamiliar insect virus eradicates most of the earth's inhabitants. All survivors follow one intention: following the revelation, you can survive With this match for as long as achievable and kill Are living zombies. Whenever you take mud to produce and supply new weapons and vehicles, your target is to survive zombies.

Miniclip's 8 Ball pool is often and valued as quite possibly the most played on line multiplayer activity on Android. This concept is straightforward: Game people Have a very direct simulator for 8 ball pool ordeals on mobile equipment. On top of that, this game has now been included to the nine ball mode for common demands, which gives buyers the most beneficial limitations to match modes. If you find yourself within the pool recreation, the mini ballroom's 8 ball pool is usually a match for yourself.

Whilst Tekken is regarded as the biggest Kombat athletics franchise, The complete Component of the recognition of your Mortal Kombat is. The war amongst the characters Arthurlm, Pure and Outworld, coupled with superpowers and X-Ray moves, some players have invested a lot of time around the console. This recreation is last but not least accessible for Android equipment with specially custom-made controls for touchscreen devices.

Many of Gameloft's best online games and contemporary mobile platform Combat 5. The most effective displays for this are unquestionably the top initial person shooter sport with great graphics, superior electricity weapons, and deep on the web multiplayer action. There is only one campaign mode on your sole warrior. General, present day beat 5 can be a recreation for FPS enthusiasts in one video game.

Minecraft is considered the most famous movie recreation on this planet. The title was very first introduced within the PC and was equally placed on the console and cell system. Established a pixel in the world. Your goal is usually to form and safeguard the earth close to you in the way you are feeling in good shape. Find mates, check out and keep by itself with close friends or favorite game titles by itself.

Badland two can be a sequel to probably the greatest aspect-scroller game titles ever. It's a sport that needs to be managed with its mates correctly. This activity delivers enjoyable, atmospheric graphics and physics-centered gameplay together While using the audio. You could Perform multiplayer with your buddies on the identical system to problem aliens together with other dark creatures while in the mysterious earth of the sport.

Properly, who isn't going to just like the outdated air hockey video game, suitable? Alright, Glow Hockey 2 is an excellent community multiplayer sport for you personally. Smartphone shows are significant and large. The strategy is simple - you Manage the striker and hit the opponent's gap. For anyone who is extravagant air hockey, you must try this match. I'm positive you can expect to find it irresistible

Chain Response is a method video game for 8 players on a similar gadget. It can be a simple but addictive game to Participate in with your pals. Gamers change to keep their jewellery in one room. Shortly a mobile reaches a important mass, the ball is getting transported into the neighboring cells, adds an additional ball, and claims the mobile for the player. Its purpose is usually to overlap and get rid of enemy cells. Seems basic? Then be sure There's a vortex.

There aren't any game titles to pack in your smartphone monitor, suitable? Okay, come straight here. The game of its variety is a mix of Twister and Belle. You use your telephone like a guidebook to dance or Call anyone. All You need to do is opt for your mobile phone, put a thumb, and concurrently dance collectively.

Yes, you go through it, Ludo! The traditional board online games on Android are at last obtainable, along with the boy appears to be good. This idea is similar towards the Loudo Board, which moves its colored token which has a dice roll. As a result of Ludo King, both you and your good friends can easily run this activity on exactly the same device. So whom are you looking ahead to? Let us protect by yourself!

How to Find the Best Online for Gaming?

Gaming has progressed very like everything else, We've got moved far forward from the globe of Super Mario Bros. and Tetris. We are now from the universe of interactive on line gaming that depends only on-line.

Why you will need the very best Web For Gaming?

Let me paint you a picture.

Just envision you invested 1000s of dollars on the state in the art Gaming rig. There's no match for the CPU and graphic card. You even acquired a flowery mouse the one that has twenty buttons. Then you are actively playing Warframe together with your buddies and your internet lags at just that moment, that just one instant which is the most essential second in The complete sport. Your squaddies immediately and you also are taking all the warmth for it. At that minute all it is possible to want for is best internet, properly, This is exactly why we have been below.

Online Buying Guideline- Gaming Edition

Common misconceptions may possibly lead you to definitely feel that slow Online implies slow downloading speed & sluggish downloading speed means, irritating, lag comprehensive gaming.

The truth, having said that, is any recreation you may perhaps Participate in will operate correctly together with your ordinary broadband connection (20+ Mbps). The only time you may need higher obtain pace is when updating or downloading a activity.

Regardless if you are into Minecraft, Fortnight or Apex Legends here are the pace bumps in the method of seamless on-line gaming.

No must scratch your head just now, let me break down the jargon wall and make almost everything basic in your case.

Latency

Latency implies the round journey time it's going to take for any packet ( Bunch of data) to obtain from your device to the online world and back again in your gadget. Recognized? Very well allow me to paint you another picture, 'You allow your property carrying a packet jam packed with stuff, and when you reach your location get all of that things checked out and then get back again to your property' This journey is called latency. You tend to be the gadget, the packet retains the info of your respective headshot in Fortnite, plus the put you went to Obtain your stuff checked is the net, so everything depends upon how briskly you return again property.

The more rapidly you come the smoother your gaming expertise will be but lemme show you that speedy return vacation time (RTT) will never increase your overall performance in Fortnite. To examine your latency you could visit Highspeedinternet.com. The latency speed is calculated in "Ping". It is important to have a low ping stage in on line games.

Jitter

Jitter is largely how much latency varies as time passes. This minimal modify in circulation can make many distinction in your gameplay. Chances are you'll experience it as Visible opacity. Or maybe a gamer may encounter it such as the gameplay has actually been thrown from sync.

You may rid of jitters by upgrading your router. The primary reason for jitters is awful Web or aged router. With me to date?

Packet loss

Let us consider you again to enough time if you ended up carrying the packet, now think about that packet instantly disappears out of your hands. What transpires to all the data or things you have been carrying with you? It gets shed and That is what known as packet loss. Each time a packet gets dropped what ever facts it absolutely was carrying vanishes. So your headshot with no scope by no means hits. The rationale for packet reduction is gradual or negative internet connection. You should Have got a higher-velocity + Constant internet connection to fight with packet reduction.

Briefly Packet Loss is the most significant enemy of voice chats above interactive online games. A packet loss of around 2% might cause enormous troubles.

Closing terms!

You should get an improved, stringer router and perhaps if that does not solve the challenge then that means its time for you to bid your provider goodbye. You might want to obtain a new Higher-Pace Internet Connection Provider that's dependable too if you want to crush the competition.

Growing Pains - Zelda, Tony Hawk, The Sims, games and related memories from my formative years

This blog post is about my personal history with video games, how they influenced me growing up, how they sometimes helped me, and more or less an excuse to write about associated memories with them.

This is a very straightforward intro, because I’ve had this post sitting as a draft for ages, trying to glue all of it cohesively, but I’m not a very good writer, so I never really succeeded. Some of these paragraphs date back at least one year. 

And I figured I should write about a lot of this as long as I still remember clearly, or not too inaccurately. Because I know that I don’t remember my earliest ever memory. I only remember how I remember it. So I might as well help my future self here, and give myself a good memento.

Anyway, the post is a kilometer long, so it’ll be under this cut.

My family got a Windows 95 computer when I was 3 years old. While I don’t remember this personally, I’m told that one of the first things I ever did with it was mess up with the BIOS settings so badly that dad’s computer-expert friend had to be invited to repair it. (He stayed for dinner as a thank you.)

It was that off-white plastic tower, it had a turbo button, and even a 4X CD reader! Wow! And the CRT monitor must have been... I don’t remember what it was, actually. But I do once remember launching a game at a stupidly high resolution: 1280x1024! And despite being a top-down 2D strategy, it ran VERY slowly. Its video card was an ATI Rage. I had no idea what that really meant that at the time, but I do recall that detail nonetheless.

Along with legitimately purchased games, the list of which I can remember:

Tubular Worlds

Descent II

Alone in the Dark I & III

Lost Eden

Formula One (not sure which game exactly)

Heart of Darkness

(and of course the famous Adibou/Adi series of educational games)

... we also had what I realize today were cracked/pirated games, from the work-friend that had set up the family computer. I remember the following:

Age of Empires I (not sure about that one, I think it might have been from a legitimate “Microsoft Plus!” disc)

Nightmare Creatures (yep, there was a PC port of that game)

Earthworm Jim (but without any music)

The Fifth Element

Moto Racer II

There are a few other memorable games, which were memorable in most aspects, except their name. I just cannot remember their name. And believe me, I have looked. Too bad! Anyway, in this list, I can point out a couple games that made a big mark on me.

First, the Alone in the Dark trilogy. It took me a long time to beat them. I still remember the morning I beat the third game. I think it was in 2001 or 2002.

There was a specific death in it which gave me nightmares for a week. You shrink yourself to fit through a crack in a wall, but it’s possible to let a timer run out—or fall down a hole—and this terrifying thing happens (16:03). I remember sometimes struggling to run the game for no reason; something about DOS Extended Memory being too small.

I really like the low-poly flat-shaded 3D + hand-drawn 2D style of the game, and it’d be really cool to see something like that pop up again. After the 8-bit/16-bit trend, there’s now more and more games paying tribute to rough PS1-style 3D, so maybe this will happen? Maybe I’ll have to do it myself? Who knows!

Second, Lost Eden gave me a taste for adventure and good music, and outlandish fantasy universes. Here’s the intro to the game:

A lot of the game is very evocative, especially its gorgeous soundtrack, and you spend a lot of time trekking through somewhat empty renders of landscapes. Despite being very rough early pre-rendered 3D, those places were an incredible journey in my young eyes. If you have some time, I suggest either playing the game (it’s available on Steam) or watching / skimmering through this “longplay” video. Here are some of my personal highlights: 25:35, 38:05, 52:15 (love that landscape), 1:17:20, 1:20:20 (another landscape burned in my neurons), 2:12:10, 2:55:30, 3:01:18. (spoiler warning)

But let’s go a couple years back. Ever since my youngest years, I was very intrigued by creation. I filled entire pocket-sized notebooks with writing—sometimes attempts at fiction, sometimes daily logs like the weather reports from the newspaper, sometimes really bad attempts at drawing. I also filled entire audio tapes over and over and OVER with “fake shows” that my sister and I would act out. The only thing that survived is this picture of 3-year-old me with the tape player/recorder.

It also turns out that the tape recorder AND the shelf have both survived.

(I don’t know if it still works.)

On Wednesday afternoons (school was off) and on the week-ends, I often got to play on the family computer, most of the time with my older brother, who’s the one who introduced me to... well... all of it, really. (Looking back on the games he bought, I can say he had very good tastes.)

Moto Racer II came with a track editor. It was simple but pretty cool to play around with. You just had to make the track path and elevation; all the scenery was generated by the game. You could draw impossible tracks that overlapped themselves, but the editor wouldn’t let you save them. However, I found out there was a way to play/save them no matter what you did, and I got to experiment with crazy glitches. 85 degree inclines that launched the bike so high you couldn’t see the ground anymore? No problem. Tracks that overlapped themselves several times, causing very strange behaviour at the meeting points? You bet. That stuff made me really curious about how video games worked. I think a lot of my initial interest in games can be traced back to that one moment I figured out how to exploit the track editor...

There was also another game—I think it was Tubular Worlds—that came on floppy disks. I don’t remember what exactly lead me to do it, but I managed to edit the text that was displayed by the installer... I think it was the license agreement bit of it. That got me even more curious as to how computers worked.

Up until some time around my 13th or 14th birthday, during summer break (the last days of June to the first days of September for French pupils), my sister and I would always go on vacation at my grandparents’ home.

The very first console game I ever played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my cousin’s Super Nintendo, who also usually stayed with us. Unlike us, he had quite a few consoles available to him, and brought a couple along. My first time watching and playing this game was absolutely mind-blowing to me. An adventure with a huge game world to explore, so many mysterious things at every corner. “Why are you a pink rabbit now?” “I’m looking for the pearl that will help me not be that.”

Growing up and working in the games industry has taken the magic out of many things in video games... and my curiosity for the medium (and its inner workings) definitely hasn’t helped. I know more obscure technical trivia about older games than I care to admit. But I think this is what is shaping my tastes in video games nowadays... part of it is that I crave story-rich experiences that can bring me back to a, for lack of a better term, “child-like” wonderment. And I know how weird this is going to sound, but I don’t really enjoy “pure gameplay” games as much for that reason. Some of the high-concept ones are great, of course (e.g. Tetris), but I usually can’t enjoy others without a good interwoven narrative. I can’t imagine I would have completed The Talos Principle had it consisted purely of the puzzles without any narrative beats, story bits, and all that. What I’m getting at is, thinking about it, I guess I tend to value the “narrative” side of games pretty highly, because, to me, it’s one of the aspects of the medium that, even if distillable to some formulas, is inherently way more “vague” and “ungraspable”. You can do disassembly on game mechanics and figure out even the most obsure bits of weird technical trivia. You can’t do that to a plot, a universe, characters, etc. or at least nowhere near to the same extent.

You can take a good story and weave it into a number of games, but the opposite is not true. It’s easy to figure out the inner working of gameplay mechanics, and take the magic out of them, but it’s a lot harder to do that for a story, unless it’s fundamentally flawed in some way.

Video games back then seemed a lot bigger than they actually were.

I got Heart of Darkness as a gift in 1998 or 1999. We used to celebrate Christmas at my grandparents’, so I had to wait a few days to be back home, and to able to put the CD in the computer. But boy was it worth it! Those animated cutscenes! The amazing pixel art animations! The amazing and somewhat disturbing variety of ways in which you can die, most of which gruesome and mildly graphic! And of course, yet again... a strange and outlandish universe that just scratches my itch for it. Well, one of which that forged my taste for them.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened or what it was, but I do remember that at some point we visited some sort of... exposition? Exhibit? Something along those lines. And it had a board games & computer games section. The two that stick out in my mind were Abalone (of which I still have the box somewhere) and what I think was some sort of 2D isometric (MMO?) RPG. I wanna say it was Ultima Online but I recall it looking more primitive than that (it had small maps whose “void” outside them was a single blueish color). 

In my last two years of elementary school, there was one big field trip per year. They lasted two weeks, away from family. The first one was to the Alps. The second one was... not too far from where I live now, somewhere on the coast of Brittany! I have tried really hard to find out exactly where it was, as I remember the building and facilities really well, but I was never able to find it again. On a couple occasions, we went on a boat with some kind of... algae harvesters? The smell was extremely strong (burning itself into my memory) and made me sick. The reason I bring them up is because quite a few of my classmates had Game Boy consoles, most of them with, you know, all those accessories, especially the little lights. I remember being amazed at the transparent ones. Play was usually during the off-times, and I watched what my friends were up to, with, of course, a bit of jealousy mixed in. The class traveled by bus, and it took off in the middle of the night; something like 3 or 4 in the morning? It seemed like such a huge deal at the time! Now here I am, writing THESE WORDS at 03:00. Anyway, most of my classmates didn’t fall back asleep and those that had a Game Boy just started playing on them. One of my classmates, however, handed me his whole kit and I got to do pretty much what I wanted with it, with the express condition that I would not overwrite any of his save files. I remember getting reasonably far in Pokémon before I had to give it back to him and my progress was wiped.

During the trip to the Alps, I remember seeing older kids paying for computer time; there was a row of five computers in a small room... and they played Counter-Strike. I had absolutely no idea what it was, and I would forget about it until the moment I’m writing these words, but I was watching with much curiosity.

The first time I had my own access to console games was in 2001. The first Harry Potter film had just come out, and at Christmas, I was gifted a Game Boy Advance with the first official game. I just looked it up again and good god, it’s rougher than I remember. The three most memorable GBA games which I then got to play were both Golden Sun(s) and Sword of Mana... especially the latter, with its gorgeous art direction. My dad had a cellphone back then, and I remember sneakily going on there to look up a walkthrough for a tricky part of Golden Sun’s desert bit. Cellphones had access to something called “WAP” internet... very basic stuff, but of course still incredible to me back then.

I eventually got to play another Zelda game on my GBA: Link’s Awakening DX. I have very fond memories of that one because I was bed-ridden with a terrible flu. My fever ran so high that I started having some really funky dreams, delirious half-awake hallucinations/feelings, and one night, I got so hot that I stumbled out of bed and just laid down against the cold tile of the hallway. At 3 in the morning! A crazy time! (Crazy for 11-year-old me.)

(The fever hallucinations were crazy. My bedroom felt like it was three times at big, and I was convinced that a pack of elephants were charging at me from the opposite corner. The “night grain” of my vision felt sharper, amplified. Every touch, my sore body rubbing against the bed covers felt like it was happening twice as much. You know that “Heavy Rain with 300% facial animation” video? Imagine that, but as a feverish feeling. The dreams were on another level entirely. I could spend pages on them, but suffice to say that’s when I had my first dream where I dreamed of dying. There were at least two, actually. The first one was by walking down a strange, blueish metal corridor, then getting in an elevator, and then feeling that intimate convinction that it was leading me to passing over. The second one was in some Myst-like world, straight out of a Roger Dean cover, with some sort of mini-habitat pods floating on a completely undisturbed lake. We were just trapped in them. It just felt like some kind of weird afterlife.)

I also eventually got to play the GBA port of A Link To The Past. My uncle was pretty amused by seeing me play it, as he’d also played the original on SNES before I’d even been born. I asked him for help with a boss (the first Dark World one), but unfortunately, he admitted he didn’t remember much of the game.

We had a skiing holiday around this time. I don’t remember the resort’s or the town’s name, but its sights are burned in my memory. Maybe it’s because, shortly after we arrived, and we went to the ski rental place, I almost fainted and puked on myself, supposedly from the low oxygen. It also turned out that the bedroom my parents had rented unexpectedly came with a SNES in the drawer under the tiny TV. The game: Super Mario World. I got sick at one point and got to stay in and play it. This was also the holiday where I developed a fondness for iced tea, although back then the most common brand left an awful aftertaste in your mouth that just made you even more thirsty.

We got a new PC in December of 2004. Ditching the old Windows 98 SE (yep, the OS had been upgraded in... 2002, I think?). Look at how old-school this looks. The computer office room was in the basement. Even with the blur job that I applied to the monitor for privacy reasons, you can still tell that this is the XP file explorer:

A look at what the old DSLR managed to capture on the shelf reveals some more of the games that were available to me back then: a bunch of educational software, The Sims 2, and SpellForce Gold. 

I might be misremembering but I think they were our Christmas gifts for that year; we both got to pick one game. I had no idea what I wanted, really, but out of all the boxes at (what I think was) the local Fnac store, it was SpellForce that stood out to me the most. Having watched Lord of the Rings the year prior might have been a factor. I somewhat understood Age of Empires years before that, but SpellForce? Man, I loved the hell out of SpellForce. Imagine a top-down RPG that can also be played from a third-person perspective. And with the concept of... hero units... wait a second... now that reminds me of Dota.

Imagine playing a Dota hero with lots of micro-management and being able to build a whole base on new maps. And sometimes visiting very RPG-ish sections (my favorites!) with very little top-down strategy bits, towns, etc. like Siltbreaker. I guess this game was somewhat like an alternate, single-player Dota if you look at it from the right angle. (Not the third-person one.)

I do remember being very excited when I found out that it, too, came with a level editor. I never figured it out, though. I only ever got as far as making a nice landscape for my island, and that was it!

A couple weeks after, it was Christmas; my sister and I got our first modern PC game: The Sims 2. It didn’t run super well—most games didn’t, because the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 wasn’t very good. But that didn’t stop me or my sister from going absolutely nuts with the game. This video has the timestamp of 09 January 2005, and it is the first video I’ve ever made with a computer. Less than two weeks after we got the game, I was already neck-deep in creating stuff.

Not that it was particularly good, of course. This is a video that meets all of the “early YouTube Windows Movie Maker clichés”.

Speaking of YouTube, I did register an account there pretty early on, in August of 2006. I’ve been through all of it. I remember every single layout change. I also started using Sony Vegas around that time. It felt so complex and advanced back then! And I’m still using it today. Besides Windows, Vegas Pro is very likely to be the piece of software that I’ve been using for the longest time.

I don’t have a video on YouTube from before 2009, because I decided to delete all of them out of embarassment. They were mostly Super Mario 64 machinima. It’s as bad as it sounds. The reason I bring that up right now, though, is that it makes the “first” video of my account the last one I made with the Sims 2.

But before I get too far ahead with my early YouTube days, let me go backwards a bit. We got hooked up to the Internet some time in late 2005. It was RTC (dialup), 56 kbps. my first steps into the Internet led me to the Cube engine. Mostly because back then my dad would purchase computer magazines (which were genuinely helpful back then), and came with CDs of common downloadable software for those without Internet connections. One of them linked to Cube. I think it was using either this very same screenshot, or a very similar one, on the same map.

The amazing thing about Cube is not only that it was open-source and moddable, but had map editing built-in the game. The mode was toggled on with a single key press. You could even edit maps cooperatively with other people. Multiplayer mapping! How cool is that?! And the idea of a game that enabled so much creation was amazing to me, so I downloaded it right away. (Over the course of several hours, 30 MiB being large for dialup.)

I made lots of bad maps that never fulfilled the definition of “good level” or “good gameplay”, not having any idea how “game design” meant, or what it even was. But I made places. Places that I could call my own. “Virtual homes”. I still distinctively remember the first map I ever made, even though no trace of it survives to this day. In the second smallest map size possible, I’d made a tower surrounded by a moat and a few smaller cozy towers, with lots of nice colored lighting. This, along with the distinctive skyboxes and intriguing music, made me feel like I’d made my home in a strange new world.

At some point later down the line, I made a kinda-decent singleplayer level. It was very linear, but one of the two lead developers of the game played it and told me he liked it a lot! Of course, half of that statement was probably “to be nice”, but it was really validating and encouraging. And I’m glad they were like that. Because I remember being annoying to some other mappers in the Sauerbraten community (the follow-up to Cube, more advanced technically), who couldn’t wrap their heads around my absolutely god awful texturing work and complete lack of level “design”. Honestly, sometimes, I actually kinda feel like trying to track a couple of them down and being like, “yeah, remember that annoying kid? That was me. Sorry you had to deal with 14-year-old me.”

At some point, I stumbled upon a mod called Cube Legends. It was a heavily Zelda-inspired “total conversion”; a term reserved for mods that are the moddiest mods and try to take away as much of the original foundation as possible. It featured lots of evocative MIDI music by the Norwegian composer Bjørn Lynne. Fun fact: the .mid files are still available officially from his website!

This was at the crossroad of many of my interests. It was yet another piece of the puzzle. As a quick side note, this is why Zelda is the first series that I name in the title of this post, even though I... never really thought of myself as a Zelda fan. It’s not that it’s one of the game series that I like the most, it’s just that, before I started writing this, I’d never realized how far-reaching its influence had been in my life, both in overt and subtle ways, especially during my formative years.

And despite how clearly unfinished, how much of a “draft” Cube Legends was, I could see what it was trying to do. I could see the author’s intent. And I’m still listening to Bjørn Lynne’s music today.

The Cube Engine and its forums were a big part of why I started speaking English so well. Compared to most French people, I mean. We’re notoriously bad with the English language, and so was I up until then. But having this much hands-on practice proved to be immensely valuable. And so, I can say that the game and its community have therefore had long-lasting impacts in my life.

I also tried out a bunch of N64 games via emulation, bringing me right back in that bedroom at my grandparents’ house, with my cousin. Though he did not have either N64 Zelda game back then.

The first online forum I ever joined was a Zelda fan site’s. There are two noteworthy things to say here:

It was managed by a woman who, during my stay in the community, graduated from her animation degree. At this stage I had absolutely no idea that this was going to be the line of work I would eventually pursue!

I recently ran into the former head moderator of the forums. (I don’t know when the community died.) One of the Dota players on my friends list invited him because I was like “hmm, I wanna go as 3, not as 2 players today”. His nickname very vaguely reminded me of something, a weird hunch I couldn’t place. Half an hour into the game, he said “hey Max... this might be a long shot, but did you ever visit [forum]?” and then I immediately yelled “OH MY GOD—IT IS YOU.” The world is a small place.

Access to the computer was sometimes tricky. I didn’t always have good grades, and of course, “punishment” (not sure the word is appropriate, hence the quotes, but you get the idea) often involved locking me out of the computer room. Of course, most times, I ended up trying to find the key instead. I needed my escape from the real world.  (You better believe it’s Tangent Time.)

I was always told I was the “smart kid”, because I “understood things faster” than my classmates. So they made me skip two grades ahead. This made me enter high school at nine years old. The consequences were awful (I was even more of the typical nerdy kid that wouldn’t fit in), and I wish it had never happened. Over the years, I finally understood: I wasn’t more intelligent. I merely had the chance to have been able to grow up with an older brother who’d instilled a sense of curiosity, critical thinking, and taste in books that were ahead of my age and reading level. This situation—and its opposite—is what I believe accounts for the difference in how well kids get to learn. It’s not innate talent, it’s not genetics (as some racists would like you to believe). It’s parenting and privilege.

And that’s why I’ll always be an outspoken proponent for any piece of media that tries to instill critical thinking and curiosity in its viewer, reader, or player.

But I digress.

Well, I’ve been digressing a lot, really, but games aren’t everything and after all, this post is about the context in which I played those games. Otherwise I reckon I would’ve just made a simple list.

I eventually got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Mario Kart DS. My sister had gotten her own just around the time when it released... she had the Nintendogs bundle. We had also upgraded to proper ADSL, what I think was about a ~5 megabits download speed. The Nintendo DS supported wi-fi, which was still relatively rare compared to today. In fact, Nintendo sold a USB wireless adapter to help with that issue—our ISP-supplied modem-router did not have any wireless capabilities. I couldn’t get it the adapter work and I remember I got help from a really kind stranger who knew a lot about networking—to a point that it seemed like wizardry to me.

I remember I got a “discman” as a gift some time around that point. In fact, I still have it. Check out the stickers I put on it! I think those came from the Sims 2 DVD box and/or one of its add-ons.

I burned a lot of discs. In fact, in the stack of burned CDs/DVDs that I found (with the really bad Sims movies somewhere in there), I found at least three discs that had the Zelda album Hyrule Symphony burned in, each with different additional tracks. Some were straight-up MIDI files from vgmusic.com...! And speaking (again) of Zelda, when the Wii came out, Twilight Princess utterly blew my mind. I never got the game or the console, but damn did I yearn badly for it. I listened to the main theme of the game a lot, which didn’t help. I eventually got to play the first few hours at a friend’s place.

At some point, we’d upgraded the family computer to something with a bit more horsepower. It had a GeForce 8500 GT inside, which was eventually upgraded to a 9600 GT after the card failed for some reason. It could also dual-boot between XP and Vista. I stuck with that computer until 2011.

We moved to where I currently live in 2007. I’ve been here over a decade! And before we’d even fully finished unpacking, I was on the floor of the room that is now my office, with the computer on the ground and the monitor on a cardboard box, playing a pirated copy of... Half-Life! It was given to me by my cousin. It took me that long to find out about the series. It’s the first Valve game I played. I also later heard about the Orange Box, but mostly about Portal. Which I also pirated and played. I distinctly remember being very puzzled by the options menu: I thought it was glitched or broken, as changing settings froze the game. Turns out the Source engine had to chug for a little while, like a city car in countryside mud, as it reloaded a bunch of stuff. Patience is a virtue...

But then, something serious happened.

In the afternoon of 25 December 2007, I started having a bit of a dull stomach pain. I didn’t think much of it. Figured maybe I’d eaten too many Christmas chocolates and it’d go away. It didn’t. It progressively deteriorated into a high fever where I had trouble walking and my tummy really hurt; especially if you pressed on it. My parents tried to gently get me to eat something nice on New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t stay in very long. I could only feed myself with lemonade and painkiller. Eventually, the doctor decided I should get blood tests done as soon as possible. And I remember that day very clearly.

I was already up at 6:30 in the morning. Back then, The Daily Show aired on the French TV channel Canal+, so I was watching that, lying in the couch while waiting for my mom to get up and drive me to my appointment, at 7:00. It was just two streets away, but there was no way I could walk there. At around noon, the doctor called and told my mom: “get your son to the emergency room now.”

Long story short, part of my intestines nuked themselves into oblivion, causing acute peritonitis. To give you an idea, that’s something with a double-digit fatality rate. Had we waited maybe a day or two more, I would not be here writing this. They kind of blew up. I had an enormous abcess attached to a bunch of my organs. I had to be operated on with only weak local anaesthetics as they tried to start draining the abscess. It is, to date, by far the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. It was bad enough that the hospital doctor that was on my case told me that I was pretty much a case worthy to be in textbooks. I even had medical students come into my hospital room about it! They were very nice.

This whole affair lasted over a month. I became intimately familiar with TV schedules. And thankfully, I had my DS to keep me company. At the time, I was pretty big into the Tony Hawk DS games. They were genuinely good. They had extensive customization, really great replayability, etc. you get the idea. I think I even got pretty high on the online leaderboards at some point. I didn’t have much to do on some days besides lying down in pain while perfecting my scoring and combo strategies. I think Downhill Jam might’ve been my favorite.

My case was bad enough that they were unable to do something due to the sad state of my insides during the last surgery of my stay. I was told that I could come back in a few months for a checkup, and potentially a “cleanup” operation that would fix me up for good. I came back in late June of 2008, got the operation, and... woke up in my hospital room surrounded by, like, nine doctors, and hooked up to a morphine machine that I could trigger on command. Apparently something had gone wrong during the operation, but they never told me what. I wasn’t legally an adult, so they didn’t have to tell me. I suspect it’s somewhere in some medical files, but I never bothered to dig up through my parents’ archives, or ask the hospital. And I think I would rather not know. But anyway, that was almost three more weeks in the hospital. And it sucked even more that time because, you see, hospital beds do not “breathe” like regular beds do. The air can’t go through. Let’s say I’m intimately familiar with the smell of back sweat forever.

When I got out, my mom stopped by a supermarket on the way home. And that is when I bought The Orange Box, completely on a whim, and made my Steam account. Why? Because it was orange and stood out on the shelf.

(As a side note, that was the whole bit I started writing first, and that made me initially title this post “growing pains”. First, because I’m bad at titles. Second, because not that I didn’t have them otherwise (ow oof ouch my knees), but that was literally the most painful episode of my entire life thus far and it ended in a comically-unrelated, high-impact, life-changing decision. Just me picking up The Orange Box after two awful hospital stays... led me to where I am today.)

While I was recovering, I also started playing EarthBound! Another bit of a life-changer, that one. To a lesser extent, but still. I was immediately enamored by its unique tone. Giygas really really really creeped me out for a while afterwards though. I still get unsettled if I hear its noises sometimes.

I later bought Garry’s Mod (after convincing my mom that it was a “great creative toolbox that only cost ten bucks!”), and, well, the rest is history. By which I mean, a lot of my work and gaming activity since 2009 is still up and browsable. But there are still a few things to talk about.

In 2009, I bought my first computer with YouTube ad money: the Asus eee PC 1005HA-H. By modern standards, it’s... not very powerful. The processor in my current desktop machine is nearly 50 times as fast as its Atom N280. It had only one gigabyte of RAM, Windows 7 Basic Edition, and an integrated GPU barely worthy of the name; Intel didn’t care much for 3D in their chips back then. The GMA 945 didn’t even have hardware support for Transform & Lighting.

But I made it work, damn it. I made that machine run so much stuff. I played countless Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods on it—though, due to the CPU overhead on geometry, some of those were trickier. I think one of the most memorable ones I played was Mistake of Pythagoras; very surreal, very rough, but I still remember it so clearly. I later played The Longest Journey on it, in the middle of winter. It was a very cozy and memorable experience. (And another one that’s an adventure wonderful outlandish alien universe. LOVE THOSE.)

I did more than playing games on it, though...

This is me sitting, sunburned on the nose, in an apartment room, on 06 August 2010. This was in the Pyrénées, at the border between France and Spain. We had a vacation with daily hiking. Some of the landscapes we visited reminded me very strongly of those from Lost Eden, way up the page...

So, you see, I had 3ds Max running on that machine. The Source SDK as well. Sony Vegas. All of it was slow; you bet I had to use some workarounds to squeeze performance out of software, and that I had to keep a close, watchful eye on RAM usage. But I worked on this thing. I really did! I animated this video’s facial animation bits (warning: this is old & bad) on the eee PC, during the evenings of the trip, when we were back at our accomodation. The Faceposer tool in the Source SDK really worked well on that machine.

I also animated an entire video solely on the machine (warning: also old and bad). It had to be rendered on the desktop computer... but every single bit of the animation was crafted on the eee PC.

I made it work.

Speaking of software that did not run well: around that time, I also played the original Crysis. The “but can it run Crysis?” joke was very much justified back then. I had to edit configuration files by hand so that I could run the game in 640x480... because I wanted to keep most of the high-end settings enabled. The motion blur was delicious, and it blew my mind that the effect made the game feel this smooth, despite wobbling around in the 20 to 30 fps range.

Alright. It’s time to finish writing this damn post and publish it at last, so I’m going to close it out by listing some more memories and games that I couldn’t work in up there.

Advance Wars. Strategy game on GBA with a top-down level editor. You better believe I was all over the editor right away.

BioShock. When we got the 2007 desktop computer, it was one of the first games I tried. Well, its demo, to be precise. Its tech and graphics blew my mind, enough that I saved up to buy the full game. This was before I had a Steam account; I got a boxed copy! I think it might have been the last boxed game I ever bought? It had a really nice metal case. The themes and political messages of the game flew way over my head, though.

Mirror’s Edge. The art direction was completely fascinating to me, and it introduced me to Solar Fields’ music; my most listened artist this decade, by a long shot.

L.A. Noire. I lost myself in its stories and investigations, and then, I did it all again, with my sister at the helm. I very rarely play games twice (directly or indirectly), which I figure is worth mentioning.

Zeno Clash. It was weird and full of soul, had cool music, and cool cutscenes. It inspired me a lot in my early animation days.

Skyward Sword. Yep, going back to Zelda on that one. The whole game was pretty good, and I’m still thinking about how amazing its art direction was. Look up screenshots of it running in HD on an emulator... it’s outstanding. But there’s a portion of the game that stands tall above the rest: the Lanayru Sand Sea. It managed to create a really striking atmosphere in many aspects, through and through. I still think about it from time to time, especially when its music comes on in shuffle mode.

Wandersong. A very recent pick, but it was absolutely a life-changing one. That game is an anti-depressant, a vaccine against cynicism, a lone bright and optimist voice.

I realize now this is basically a “flawed but interesting and impactful games” list. With “can establish its atmosphere very well” as a big criteria. (A segment of video games that is absolutely worth exploring.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever make my own video game. I have a few ideas floating around and I tried prototyping some stuff, though my limited programming abilities stood in my way. But either way, if it happens one day, I hope I’ll manage to channel all those years of games into the CULMINATION OF WHAT I LIKE. Something along those lines, I reckon.

PLAYING: Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

I’m having a blast(er)! So glad I decided to take a swing (of the lightsaber) at this game.

Why Now?

I grew up with Star Wars, but I’ve never been a super fan. I loved the movies, but I’ve not read all the books or even played most of the games. But as Disney has worked to build up the presence of Star Wars within world culture, I’ve decided to make up for lost time and play more classic Star Wars games. Partially cause of my love for late-90s games and partially cause I’m inspired by the creativity of Star Wars. But then I burned myself out on Star Wars earlier this year. Strangely, it’s been hate-playing Jedi: Fallen Order that’s made me want to jump back in. For all it’s faults and failures, Fallen Order captures the Star Wars vibe quite well, and is gorgeous.

Getting Started

Well...Dark Forces II is an old game: 1997. It does not play well on Windows 10 computers. This I discovered after booting my GOG copy and finding the play window to be a small square in the middle of my screen. When I adjusted the settings for 3D acceleration, I just got a black screen. i could play, but not see.

After much digging, I found many possible solutions. i started with the simplest first, hopeful that an acceptable level playability would suffice. Unfortunately, they did not work. So I went for the big mod install. But to install the mod, I needed the original .exe file. That was a whole other can of worms. File found, mod unpacked: I followed the instructions and renamed everything: failure.

Disheartened, I goofed around with the View Size, or something like that, and my tiny square grew to fill most the screen.

Good, fucking, enough!

It’s Ugly, but FUN!

As soon as I started playing the game, it just felt good. There’s something about these older games; I felt it while playing Thief Gold. There’s no real attempt to force the player to follow a specific path, there’s no artificial obstruction, just a level for the player to explore. While linear and design with certain surprises, I just felt free.

I’m thankful for the low-HP enemies. In the films, most folks are killed from a single laser blast. It’s generally considered fatal. So while Fallen Order stupidly had stormtroopers surviving multiple hits from a lightsaber, this game had a more reasonable 2-3 hit requirement for most enemies. There’s some tougher guys, but they’re also axe-wielders, so there’s a balance I get to shoot them from a 100 yards a way as they try to rush me.

Also, later I got a lightsaber and it’s been insta kill so far. Suck on that Fallen Order!

Level Design is interesting. The game is from ‘97, so designing 3D spaces was still an evolving craft. Every professionally-made, million-dollar-making AAA game of the mid-to-late 90s looked like a student project, for a failing student. So any game that pulled it off to some level competency was well respected.

The levels so far have been interesting, and very late 90s. They are a bit linear, with a path the designer expected the player to follow, but the spaces can be fairly large, giving the sense of a bigger world. Also, the levels tend to wrap around on themselves, like a rollercoaster. I think this is a great way to design linear levels as it brings familiarity to newly accessible parts: “Oh, this is from where that green-jerk was shooting me!”

I was a bit worried about the puzzles and key finding, but it’s not been so bad. Actually fairly clever. In level 2, there’s an elevator that will only rise if storage boxes are on it. so you have to activate the conveyor belt to bring in the boxes. But they’re too large to jump on, so you have to find the overhead platform to drop down on the boxes.

Also, there’s large crates being lowered down a shaft you need to travel up. So you have stand to the side on these slanted struts, and then run across the lowering crate to the other side before it’s too late. It’s such a simple challenge, but enjoyable and feels like it fits the level’s theme.

The third level was interesting, as my character is exploring his father’s home (mansion). Like the other levels, the designer(s) built a winding path through the large house that eventually leads to all doors being unlocked and opened. it was a very close-quarters combat situation, but interesting how it all tied together.

For a 1997 game it’s a ton of fun with interesting level design, which don’t get ass confusing as Thief’s exploration levels (thankfully!!!).

But...it’s ugly. Dark Forces 1 looked like a low-rez Star Wars texture pack for Doom. I only played it a little, but the levels felt...nonsensical. Still, while DF2 feels like a better design, the graphics can be quite horrid. They’re already low-res up close, but at a distance, Level of Detail takes effect and they get more pixelated. The characters and levels are ridiculously blocky, though clearly built with more polygons than the PS1 could muster, but the artistry behind the textures is a bit embarrassing. They capture the vibe of Star Wars, but at no point does anything feel natural.

I ended up looking up some older games to make sure all games of this era looked this bad. For the most part they did. But I know starting around 1998, a lot of Japanese companies became amazing at modeling and texturing low-poly objects for the PS1. And Naughty Dog nailed good art on PS1 out-the-gate. While I get that most developers had to learn how to make good graphics with limited technology, it’s hard to be too forgiving when so many great games seemed to effortless make such beautiful games in the late 90s.

Story

So this is where I may look like a hypocrite (probably). From a production competency standpoint, Fallen Order was great. From a storytelling standpoint, it had some good ideas marred mostly by pacing and video-gameyness. Because Uncharted overcame these things to have an engaging story that was well-paced with an action game. So I know Fallen Order had a good example to work from.

By 1997, no games had truly delivered mastered game storytelling (that I know of), so any game to try with some level of competency was pretty impressive!

And I find Dark Forces 2 impressive.

As with most games of the time, levels are bookended with story-bits. Usually it's a couple paragraphs to give context, but DF2 has live action cutscenes!! I love em. They're pretty cheesy with weak acting (or directing), but everyone is clearly trying and I love them all for it.

So far, the plot is pretty interesting. Some Dark Jedi want to find Jedi Valley to steal it's power and do bad stuff. They captured a Jedi and extracted a clue from his mind. That clue is your characters dead father. So now your character is having to relive some painful memories while learning secrets about his father and own destiny. It's both personal and epic, something I think Fallen Order struggled with.

There's also an Japanese woman playing a pilot/mechanic that's not being presented as eye-candy--so respect.

It's cheese, but the story is pretty sound so far.

LG G1 OLED TV review: Tough to improve on near-perfection

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LG G1 OLED TV review: Tough to improve on near-perfection

For years OLED TVs have delivered the best image quality available with display technology that has remained largely unchanged, but LG promised something even better for 2021. The G1 has an all-new panel not available on any other TV LG sells. The company calls it Evo and says it achieves higher brightness and improved color. My verdict? Yes, it’s slightly better than before but even in a side-by-side comparison, it was difficult to tell the difference.

Like

Best picture quality we’ve ever tested

Slightly brighter than previous models

Beautiful slim design perfect for wall-mounting

Don’t Like

Expensive

Image quality improvements over cheaper OLED TVs are minor

I set up the G1 next to the CX, the best TV I reviewed in 2020, measured both and watched a variety of TV shows, movies and games. The G1 was indeed a bit brighter than the CX but color was nearly identical, as were other aspects of picture quality like video processing and uniformity. Both looked spectacular, however, and in most material I really couldn’t say one looked better than the other.

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The main advantage the G1 has over the CX and pretty much every other OLED TV is its unique design. This TV is made to be wall-mounted — quite literally; it doesn’t even come with a stand! If you want to put it on a piece of furniture, as shown in the images in this review, you’ll have to pay $100 extra for LG’s little side legs. And that would be a shame, because something this thin should really be on a wall.

New for 2021 LG has improved its already best-in-class gaming features by adding picture modes especially for games, as well as a convenient menu that shows all gaming info and adjustments in one place. There’s a new remote and a new smart TV homepage, too. The more affordable C1 shares those features with the G1, however.

At this point, the G1 is the best TV I’ve ever tested — by a nose. I have yet to review its competitor from Sony, the A90J, which also promises a brighter panel, or any other high-end TVs like Samsung’s Neo QLED models, so that title might not last. But for people who don’t have money to burn, the extra picture quality of the G1 probably isn’t worth the extra money over mainstream OLED models like the CX or C1.

Get to know the LG G1 series

It comes in three sizes and costs a bundle: 55-inch ($2,200), 65-inch ($3,000) and 77-inch ($4,500). 

It differs from the less expensive C1 series by offering fewer sizes (the C1 has 48-inch and 82-inch options too), that Evo panel and the slimmer, wall-mount-centric Gallery design. The C1 also lacks a far-field mic for hands-free voice and a Next-Gen TV tuner, both relatively minor extras included on the G1.

OLED display technology is fundamentally different from the LED LCD technology used in the vast majority of today’s TVs, including Samsung and TCL’s QLED models.

The best LCD TVs I’ve reviewed so far scored a 9 in image quality, while OLEDs TVs like the G1 have scored a 10. High-end LCDs (especially with HDR) are brighter than OLEDs, but the picture quality on OLED TVs, including that of this G1, is superior overall.

All OLED TVs are more subject to both temporary and permanent image retention, aka burn-in, than LCD TVs. We at CNET don’t consider burn-in a reason for most people to avoid buying an OLED TV, however. Check out our guide to OLED burn-in for more.

Throw it at the wall

A TV doesn’t get any more minimalist than this. Like many sets these days the G1 is pretty much all picture when seen from the front, but it’s the side view that sets it apart. It measures just 0.8 inches deep and is designed for nearly flush wall-mounting. And as I mentioned at the top, it doesn’t even come with a tabletop stand: If you want a stand mount, it will cost $100 extra.

The G1 comes with a wall-mount bracket inset into a cavity on the back for a practically flush mount.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Here’s what it looks like flush against the wall.

Sarah Tew/CNET

This TV’s design is wasted if you don’t wall-mount it. LG includes a custom bracket in the box and instructions that make it easy to slap up yourself if you’re at all handy — although I’m guessing most people in this price bracket will hire somebody to do the job. Thanks to an inset on the back of the TV the wall mount doesn’t add any extra depth, allowing the G1 to hug the wall and present a very slim profile. Channels are built into the TV’s back to run cables through, for a cleaner installation behind the TV. LG recommends using molding to hide cables on the wall itself. Note: I didn’t mount it myself in my test basement, but I’ve mounted plenty of TVs before and this one seems like it would be a simple job.

LG’s redesigned remote still has lots of buttons and motion control.

Sarah Tew/CNET

LG revamped the remote a bit. It kept my favorite features, namely the scroll wheel and motion-tracking, while slimming it down slightly. The biggest difference is the shortcut keys at the bottom: four for streaming services and two more for the built-in voice assistants, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. The former wasn’t yet available on my G1 review sample, but LG says it will be soon. 

The G1 is also equipped with a far-field mic (not available on the C1) so you can simply say the wake word to get the TV to respond, no remote required. It responded just like I’d expect from a smart speaker to my “Alexa” commands.

Based on my experience with the CX, both Google and Alexa can do all the usual assistant stuff, including control smart home devices, answer questions and respond via a voice coming out of the TV’s speakers (yep, both voices). Basics like “What’s the weather?” works as you’d expect, complete with onscreen feedback. The G1 also works with Apple’s AirPlay 2 system, just like many other TVs, allowing my iPhone to share photos and video to the screen from the Photos app and mirror my Mac and phone screens. 

LG’s webOS menu system got a facelift for 2021 — and I’m not a fan. Gone is the small, unobtrusive overlay at the bottom of the screen that lets you keep tabs on what you’re watching. Instead there’s a full-screen homepage, similar to Roku, Fire TV and Android TV. But it has fewer apps and more, well, junk. The top two-thirds of the screen are devoted to the weather, setup tips, a search window and a Trending Now section with a random collection of TV shows and movies. Below that is an app row and, further down, sections devoted to inputs and particular streaming apps. In general it feels like a hodgepodge with too much going on, and most systems are simpler and easier to grasp.

The new homepage takes up the entire screen.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Features galore, state-of-the-art connectivity

LG says its Evo panel, available only on the G1 this year, uses a “new luminous element” for more precise lighting. The construction of the OLED pixel itself is different, with new materials for red and blue and a new green layer, all of which have narrower wavelengths compared to the pixels used on other OLED TVs. 

Key TV features

Display technology OLED LED backlight N/A Resolution 4K HDR compatible HDR10 and Dolby Vision Smart TV Web OS Remote Motion

Otherwise the G1 has the same image quality features as the C1, starting with the new Gen 4 a9 processing chip that adds scene detection and upgraded object enhancement over last year’s version. Both the G1 and C1 also have a 120Hz refresh rate. The entry-level A1 OLEDs, meanwhile, have a more basic a7 processor and 60Hz refresh rate. 

Just like last year, LG’s OLED TVs’ picture settings include a Filmmaker Mode. As promised, it turns off the soap opera effect for film-based content (yay) but so do many other modes in the G1. While plenty accurate, Filmmaker Mode is also relatively dim so I ended up using Cinema and ISF Bright for most critical viewing.

Sarah Tew/CNET

All of LG’s recent OLED models (except the A1) include the latest version of the HDMI standard: 2.1. That means their HDMI ports can handle 4K at 120 frames per second and variable refresh rate (VRR, including NVIDIA G-sync and AMD FreeSync), as well as enhanced audio return channel (eARC) and automatic low latency mode (ALLM, or auto game mode). That means they can take advantage of the latest graphics features available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. New for 2021 is a Game Optimizer mode that puts all of the TVs’ gaming-related settings in one place; see below for details.

The selection of connections is otherwise top-notch, though it no longer supports analog component video. There’s also a dedicated headphone or analog audio output and another for IR blasters, which could ease some installations.

Four HDMI inputs with HDMI 2.1, HDCP 2.2

Three USB 2.0 ports

Optical digital audio output

Analog audio 3.5mm headphone output

RF (antenna) input

RS-232 port (minijack, for service only)

IR blaster port (minijack)

Ethernet (LAN) port

Sarah Tew/CNET

Picture quality comparisons

With its slightly better picture and a couple of other minor improvements the G1 beat the CX, my previous picture quality champ, in side-by-side comparisons. According to my measurements and eyeballs, however, the brightness difference was minor enough to be invisible at times, and just about every other aspect of picture quality was virtually identical. Both TVs looked a tad better than the less expensive Vizio OLED. 

Dim lighting: The G1 performed like a champ with the lights down low — and so did the other two OLED TVs in my comparison. I checked out The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey on standard Blu-ray, and they all appeared more or less uniformly excellent: perfect black levels in the letterbox bars and deep shadows of Bilbo’s living room during the dark Dwarven chant (36:58) and plenty of details in the shadows and clothing of Thorin and company. I couldn’t see any real advantage of the G1 with this kind of theatrical situation in standard (non-HDR) material.

Bright lighting: For a TV billed by LG as an improvement in brightness, the G1’s measurements didn’t really stand out. Yes, it did measure brighter than last year’s CX by 129 nits in the most accurate HDR modes, but that’s not a huge leap and proved tough to discern in most program material. I was also surprised that the C9 I reviewed from 2019 was brighter at maximum light output and basically the same in its accurate mode. As usual, any high-end LCD is much brighter. 

Light output in nits

TV Brightest (SDR) Accurate color (SDR) Brightest (HDR) Accurate color (HDR) TCL 65R635 1,114 792 1,292 1,102 Sony XBR-65X900H 841 673 989 795 Vizio P65Q9-H1 768 629 1,305 1,084 Samsung QN65Q80T 664 503 1,243 672 LG OLED65G1 377 334 769 763 LG OLED65CX 377 290 690 634 LG OLED65C9 (2019) 451 339 851 762

I asked LG’s representatives whether my particular review sample’s brightness was typical of other G1’s and they said it was. As always, different sizes and samples can produce variations.

LG OLEDs of recent vintage have a setting called Peak Brightness that boosts the light output for SDR sources in Cinema and Expert modes. The idea is to increase contrast for brighter viewing environments while maintaining the superior color accuracy of those modes. As with most TVs, the brightest mode for HDR and SDR (Vivid on the G1) is horribly inaccurate. For the accurate color columns above on the G1, I used ISF Expert Bright (Peak Brightness: High) for SDR and Cinema mode for HDR — I recommend G1 owners do the same to get good color in bright rooms.

All recent OLED sets are still plenty bright enough for just about any viewing environment. Yes, they do get quite a bit dimmer than LCDs when showing full-screen white — a hockey game, for example — but even in those situations they’re hardly dim. The G1’s screen preserved black levels and reduced reflections very well.

Color accuracy: LG claims better color with the new Evo panel but according to my measurements and eyeballs, it’s tough to spot any difference. Color on the CX was excellent and the G1 was basically the same. An LG rep told me that the G1’s white color could look more pure, like in a hockey match, but I didn’t see or measure any differences in full-field white/gray (ones that weren’t due to very small differences in grayscale after calibration, at least). 

Watching The Hobbit was mostly the same story, although at times greens, like the grass and hillsides of the Shire (12:24), appeared a bit more greenish and less yellowish on the G1. It was a subtle difference at best, and again I didn’t see or measure any difference in green test patterns, but it could be due to the new panel. Maybe.

Color on the G1 was nonetheless extremely accurate both before and after calibration. The warm tones of Bag End’s interior and Bilbo’s skin were inviting and intimate, and outside his hobbit hole the green of the grass and trees in the golden hour sun, and the red and blue circular doorways on Bagshot Row, looked brilliant and natural. The same could be said for the other OLED TVs, however, and none delivered significantly better color than another.

Video processing: LG goes to great lengths to tout the improvement of its processing every year, but watching various material in the best picture settings the CX and G1 looked largely identical to me. 

Motion handling on the G1 is excellent and a touch better than the CX. Under TruMotion, the new Cinematic Movement setting (the default for Cinema mode) served up 24-frame cadence with a very slight hint of smoothing, improving on last year’s too-smooth Cinema Clear setting while preserving 600 lines of motion resolution. 24p purists who want no smoothing at all will opt for the Off position (the default for Filmmaker mode) and suffer the low motion resolution, while tweakers will appreciate the fine granularity of the User De-Judder mode to dial in the right amount of smoothness; anything four or lower introduced some judder to my eye, conveying a sense of film rather than soap opera effect. De-Blur settings of five or higher deliver the full 600 lines of motion resolution.

User also opens up the OLED Motion Pro menu with three levels of black frame insertion that further improve motion resolution, with 800 lines in Low and a full 1200 in Med and High. The latter introduces flicker, unfortunately, and all three are a bit dimmer than Off, but if blur really bugs you then they’re worth experimenting with. One improvement over last year is that engaging OLED Motion Pro no longer totally crushes shadow detail — it’s a bit worse but still very good. Still, I’d choose to leave it off and sacrifice some motion resolution for maximum light output and shadow detail.

Uniformity: Like all OLEDs I’ve tested the G1 was exemplary in this area, with no significant brightness or color variations across the screen and nearly perfect image quality from off-angle. Compared to the CX I did see a bit more color shift toward magenta in extreme angles with full-field mid-bright and brighter test patterns, but it disappeared when I moved closer to on-axis and never affected the image from a normal viewing angle.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Gaming: The G1’s superb image quality carries over to games, and some of its biggest 2021 features upgrades are gaming-related. The new Game Optimizer is the name of both a picture mode and a full menu system. The latter offers all-new tweaks including four game genre modes: Standard, FPS mode (said to boost shadow detail), RPG mode (to boost contrast) and RTS mode (said to enhance mid-grayscale areas). There are also sliders labeled Black Stabilizer (for adjusting dark areas) and White Stabilizer (for bright areas), as well as the OLED Motion Pro setting described above (LG says it’s particularly useful for games) and the Reduce Blue light setting (said to be easier on the eyes).

I started my test in standard mode with settings at their defaults with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla at 4K/60Hz and HDR running through my distribution amp so I could compare against the other TVs. Conducting a nighttime raid, the G1 looked most similar to the CX and the Vizio in its standard mode and all three TVs looked excellent, with the G1 delivering a touch better shadow detail already. Switching to FPS upped details even further but washed out the image a bit much for this cinematic game — although I can see it being useful in an actual FPS game if you want to reveal lurking enemies, or a very dark HDR game like Ghost of Tsushima. The RTS setting did boost midtones at the expense of some contrast, while RPG looked quite close to standard, if not as impactful to my eye. In any case it’s cool having these extra adjustment options, and I liked that they each get a dedicated menu.

Next I connected my Xbox Series X directly to the G1 to test advanced video features. VRR worked as expected, significantly reducing tearing in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and I appreciated the prominent toggle and indicator in the Game Optimizer menu that assured me VRR was engaged. Another slider labeled Fine Tune Dark Areas is available to address the issue of VRR looking too dark. I headed deep into a crypt where VRR was crushing shadows a bit — cranking up that setting, as well as the Black Stabilizer, helped. The flipside is that doing so spoiled black levels and washed out the look of the game, so (as a card-carrying contrast fiend) I’d avoid using it unless it really hurts your gameplay.

I also tried 4K/120Hz on Gears 5 and Star Wars: Squadrons, but the extra smoothness and framerate were difficult to discern in most cases. I appreciate that some games, like Ori and the Will of the Wisps, showed a splash screen indicating that 120fps was active, but most did not. I looked for confirmation in LG’s display menu but, unfortunately, it doesn’t have any. Samsung’s new 2021 Game Bar, on the other hand, does indicate 120fps.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Buried within Game Optimizer is another setting labeled “Reduce input delay (input lag)” with two options, Standard and Boost. The former, which is the default for any game, serves up an excellent lag number similar to past LG OLED models: just 13.1ms for both 1080p and 4K HDR sources. Engaging Boost cuts lag even further, to just under 10ms for both. The catch is that Boost is only available for 60Hz sources, so you can’t use it with 120Hz games or VRR. And no, I don’t think many humans would notice the extra 3ms of lag.

HDR and 4K video: It’s with HDR that you’d expect the G1’s brightness advantage to be most visible, but watching the 4K Blu-ray version of The Hobbit, differences were again very slight. Highlights like the sky behind the elven king as he turns away from Thorin (7:59) or the window in Bilbo’s study (9:06) measured slightly brighter on the G1 than on the CX according to my light meter but without measuring it was tough to see the difference by eye, even when compared side by side. Highlights on the Vizio appeared visibly dimmer than either one, for less HDR pop, but the differences were much narrower between the two LGs.

Color was likewise pretty much equally spectacular on the LGs and a step behind on the Vizio, which looked a bit duller in Bilbo’s garden and the blue sky for example (13:25). Any color improvement afforded by the G1’s new panel tech over the CX was less visible with HDR than with SDR.

I also checked out some of the most revealing HDR content around: the montage of images from the Spears and Munsil 4K HDR benchmark. Again the G1 was superb and better by a slight margin than the CX, but the G1 failed to really distance itself. Most scenes looked very similar between all three, from the crashing waves to the sunsets to the flowers to the objects on black backgrounds, and in most cases when I saw a difference it was the Vizio lagging a bit behind the other two. Spot measurements revealed mildly brighter highlights on the G1 but I couldn’t tell the difference without measuring.

The benchmark also has a 4,000 nit montage to test content mastered at that level and; again, both LGs looked very similar. They outclassed the Vizio, which looked somewhat flat in some scenes in comparison.

Picture settings, HDR notes and charts

CNET is no longer publishing advanced picture settings for any TVs we review. Instead, we’ll give more general recommendations to get the best picture without listing the detailed white balance or color management system (CMS) settings we may have used to calibrate the TV. As always, the settings provided are a guidepost, and if you want the most accurate picture you should get a professional calibration.

Before my calibration for this review the Cinema and preset was the most accurate, excellent in terms of grayscale and gamma with just a slight reddish cast (but still within my error target of delta 3). Since I now target a 2.2 gamma for my reviews dark rooms it was closer than ISF Expert Dark or the new Filmmaker modes, which both target gamma 2.4/BT 1886. ISF Bright was basically identical to Cinema, but I reserved that for brighter rooms.

For my calibration I tweaked the two-point grayscale to remove the red cast, reduced light output to my target of 137 nits and increased brightness two pips to help with shadow detail (while still keeping perfect black levels), but otherwise I left well enough alone. The grayscale and color were already so accurate on my LG-provided review sample that I didn’t need to touch the multipoint system or the color management system.

SDR dark room settings:

Picture menu:

Select Mode: Cinema (User)

Aspect Ratio Settings: 16:9 (Just Scan: On)

Additional Settings menu:

Brightness submenu:

OLED Pixel Brightness: 48

Contrast: 85

Screen Brightness: 52

Auto Dynamic Contrast: Off

Peak Brightness: Off

Gamma (Adjust Brightness): 2.2

Black Level: Auto

Motion Eye Care: Off

Color submenu:

Color Depth: 50

Tint: 0

Color Gamut: Auto Detect

Fine Tune menu: 

Color Upgrade: Off (no other adjustments)

White Balance menu:

Color Temperature: Warm 49 (no other adjustments)

Clarity submenu:

Sharpness: 0

Color: 50

Tint: 0

Super Resolution: Off

Noise Reduction, MPEG Noise Reduction: Off [for low-quality sources, some users may prefer to enable noise reduction]

Smooth gradation: Off [for low-quality sources, some users may prefer to enable]

Cinema Screen: On [may be grayed out depending on source]

TruMotion: Cinematic Movement

Reduce Blue Light: Off

SDR bright room setting [all default except for below]:

Picture Mode Settings: ISF Bright Room

Brightness menu:

OLED light: 100

Peak Brightness: High

HDR Notes: HDR Cinema and Filmmaker mode were very similar, following the electro-optical transfer function — how the TV converts data to a specific brightness — quite closely and better than Cinema Home, but Cinema was about 70 nits brighter so it’s my favorite of the three. Game Optimizer is best for gaming thanks to its processing but quite blue; for the best color accuracy for gaming you should adjust the color temperature control (Color > White Balance > Color temperatureW45).

Color checker was slightly more accurate than on the CX from last year but not great, and HDR Color Checker was worse. As usual with OLED the set covered P3 HDR gamut very well. The G1 measured brighter than the CX or the B9 from 2019, but the C9 from 2019 actually measured brighter in its least accurate and basically the same in its most-accurate settings. Once again the TV automatically detected and engaged the “HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color” setting designed for HDR sources.

TV software/firmware version tested: 3.10.29

Geek box

Test Result Score Black luminance (0%) 0.000 Good Peak white luminance (SDR) 377 Average Avg. gamma (10-100%) 2.18 Good Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) 0.40 Good Dark gray error (30%) 0.42 Good Bright gray error (80%) 0.33 Good Avg. color checker error 0.80 Good Avg. saturation sweeps error 0.79 Good Avg. color error 0.94 Good Red error 2.22 Good Green error 0.64 Good Blue error 0.46 Good Cyan error 0.97 Good Magenta error 0.98 Good Yellow error 0.36 Good 1080p/24 Cadence (IAL) Pass Good Motion resolution (max) 1200 Good Motion resolution (dejudder off) 600 Average Input lag (Game mode) 13.10 Good HDR10 Black luminance (0%) 0.000 Good Peak white luminance (10% win) 769 Average Gamut % UHDA/P3 (CIE 1976) 98.91 Good ColorMatch HDR error 5.25 Poor Avg. color checker error 3.29 Average Input lag (Game mode, 4K HDR) 13.10 Good

LG G1 OLED TV CNET review c… by David Katzmaier

Portrait Displays Calman calibration software was used in this review. 

How We Test TVs

My adventures with my PS4 and Night City

Here is what nobody asked for, my thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077.

Well well well. This certainly is a hot button topic right now. The game’s out, everyone is playing it and a fuck ton of people are complaining about it. Me as well. Playing it I mean, I spend the majority of this weekend playing it, actually, and I haven’t lost a word about it online. Full disclosure, I am playing on PS4 because I don’t have a PC that can handle it, let alone a PS5 (those fucking things are almost as rare these times as graphics cards, swear to god). I also could not play right on launch day, for a whole bunch of reasons. First, my Tabletop RPG group plays Thursdays and I’m the game master, so I can’t just drop off of the face of the earth and play Cyberpunk. I know, what a fucking nerd I am. Anyways, if that wasn’t enough, the fucking delivery service was fucking with me. My package didn’t get delivered on Thursday, for unknown reasons. Friday, it was finally due to arrive, but the mailman just didn’t think he should deliver my package. I only found out through tracking that he apparently was there and I wasn’t, despite the fact I was. Fuck that guy. I went to the post office to complain later. It turns out due to the ‘rona and the game being rated for mature audiences only, they could not deliver my package and I indeed had to pick it up from the post office, so I could verify I am of age. Usually, when this sort of thing happens and you gotta pick it up, earliest date you can pick it up is the next day, 10am... which would’ve been Saturday. Luckily for me, I was able to pick it up on Friday, despite the fact I shouldn’t be able to. Well, lucky me I guess. After coming home from work, I put the game in the console and had to wait pretty much the entire rest of the day for the fucking thing to install and patch, so that was a fucking bitch and a half. I played

After all that, I was finally able to at least make a character and play through the tutorial before going to bed.

Saturday and onward, I played roughly 20 hours, I got through the game’s story a bit and did a looooooooooot of side jobs. I played most of that time on version 1.04, the tutorial was on version 1.02.

So after explaining my situation, here are my thoughts.

The short version is, it’s a really good game that is sadly a little rough around the edges.

The long version... weeeeelll.

The game, even on PS4 with admittedly low graphics settings (the game was just not made for the thing and it shows from time to time), can look incredible. Most of that is in the lighting. By night, the city is glowing in this harsh neon tone I simply adore. By day, the city is bright and shiny, like polished chrome. The back alleys are dark, dingy and littered with trash. The city is like a maze made out of roads, alleys and underground walkways. The atmosphere this game has is what I expected and what I wanted, so A+ in that department. They also did an excellent job on the motion capture. When it comes to open world games, I’m pretty used to the shit bethesda sells you, so I was very very happy to see all the characters you meet move and emote like that. There were some rough spots, especially with everyone's favorite sleep paralysis demon Johnny, but over all the animation quality is top notch. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. The texture quality is pretty low, at least on the environment (I think the quality on the characters is pretty okay for PS4). It is noticeable in many areas, but I guess I’m okay with that. I kinda wished the environments had better texture quality but I guess it’s a small prize to pay. What was kind of distracting for me was the visual glitches I encountered. They were not as frequent as many made them out to be, but when they occurred it was very noticeable. Bodies clipping and getting stuck in geometry, being violently distorted as they are trying to get unstuck to the ground I probably propelled them into with a shotgun blast. Things flickering in and out of existence in the distance. Light effects flickering from time to time. And of course, the odd model being rendered in low-res before blending into the high-res model. The later seems to be a major gripe for many a people, but I had this happen like, maybe 10 times? At least I actively noticed it like 10 times. It usually only took about a second or two until the game caught up. It mostly happened when I took a motorcycle to get around. After going like 200 km/h and stopping at my destination, the game sometimes took a few seconds to catch up and render the area properly and granted, it’s a bit of an annoyance but well, it happened rarely enough to bother me. My theory on why this happens is it probably has something to do with how the engine (which is the latest version of their own proprietary engine, the RedEngine) handles Level of Detail. To explain, in short, level of detail is when a game uses lower resolution models and textures for objects that are far away. They look like shit because they are not meant to be seen up close. They are meant to be seen from a great distance. At a far distance, it doesn’t matter if that model has 10000 polygons or 5, because all you see is a few pixels in the vague shape of something. Its a neat trick engines use to render more on screen without using much more power, and everyone is using it. If you have played Breath of the Wild, you might have seen this when you zoom in really close with your shieka slate towards something like a shire or a building that is far away. Anyways, my theory is that due to the way the engine handles this, the game gets confused sometimes and it takes a bit until the high res model loads in, which is why you see low res models up close. It’s bad, but probably just a thing they need to patch out. I have to admit though, that I only played it on a 26 inch 1080p screen so people with larger screens might find these graphical shortcomings more distracting.

One thing I found rather annoying in regards to graphics is that sometimes UI elements take a while to load. This happens very inconsistently so I don’t know why this happens but it does suck.

I’ll be honest though and say what was important for me was less the graphics and more the gameplay, aesthetic/atmosphere and story. I already stated that I think the game delivers on the atmosphere and aesthetics, but what about the gameplay and story?

Well, it’s pretty good I’d say. Gun play is good, Cyberware is integrated well into the game, granting you new perks and abilities and the RPG Mechanics (while not being the most in depth and faithful to how the Pen and Paper Games worked) are also pretty fun to fuck around with. It works like this: You get Stat points you distribute to get bonuses to stuff and that allow you to do certain actions. Some things have a stat requirement to do, like breaking down doors or hacking into a device to collect paydata. There are also dialogue choices that have stat requirements. These are optional, but very helpful. I have to say though, it’s pretty easy to have a jack of all trades that can get past most of these things. You can see that as a positive thing or a negative thing. Outside of that, you have skills that improve when you use them. What that grants you is perk points you can freely distribute among the many, many perks you can acquire. These usually enable you to do some stuff or grand you a pretty nice bonus to something, like being able to carry a lot more shit, increasing reload speed for weapons or granting you a passive health regeneration in combat (which is pretty good). Also, pro tip, if you are playing a netrunner, get the perk that allows you to get RAM back during combat as quickly as possible. Shit is vital for you to be able to actively use your hacking abilities. Netrunning is another thing I liked. So here is the deal. There are two types of hacks: Breaching and Quick Hacks. Breaching is basically breaking into the enemies network and leaving behind malware that give you an advantage. These can be pretty strong and don’t cost you resources, but you have to do a minigame to activate the effects. How it works is that you have this grid with HEX Values. You have to hit a sequence of values to activate a malware. There was some in world explanation onto why, but I forgot. Anyways, You can chain these together to trigger multiple effects and if sequences have some overlap, you might be able to trigger multiple effects at the same time. The catch is, that you can only hit the values by going along the top most row, then the column of the value you hit first, then the row of the value you hit next, and so forth. It sounds more complicated than it is, really. As soon as you hit your first value, the timer starts ticking, so you are encouraged to first find an optimal path and then execute. It is a pretty fun and quick mini game that gives you just the right amount of challenge to make you feel like a hacker when you activate all the effects. I like it a lot. Other thing is quick hacks. These are just programs you can fire off that do any number of things. For devices like cameras, there are a set number of things you can do with a quick hack to manipulate it. I think these also tie into your hacking perks? Not sure. For people and enemies, you have programs you slot into your cyberdeck. These can do all matter of things, suited for stealth and combat. These are extremely useful for a lot of things, like blinding someone momentarily so you can steal stuff right in front of their noses, making their weapon jam so you can either run past someone or fight them without opposition, disabling their cyberware to weaken them, and plain just dealing damage. The promotional material made it sound like you have to play stealth to hack, but that's not the case at all. You can very easily specialize in shotguns or melee combat and hack your opponents to give you an edge in combat. I think it is more suited for stealth because hacking (as far as I got at least) is very focused on 1v1 encounters, but there are some things that affect a whole group of enemies, so you can still use netrunning pretty effectively in the thick of things.

The story is also pretty good. only played till chapter 2, but so far I like it. I can’t say too much and promotional material spoiled a few things about the first chapter but there were still some twists and turns I did not see coming, I’m excited to see where this goes. Outside of that, there are a lot of side missions in the game, which are also pretty good in my opinion. You don’t have dialogue choices that influence the outcome of every quest, but even the more linear quests are pretty enjoyable. At least they usually give you the ability to approach a quest your way. You can’t always solve things with words, but y’know, it is rare that you talk a gang into getting fucked over by you so it does make sense that sometimes, violence is your only way out. For those who want to play nice, there are non-lethal weapons and even guns can be made non-lethal with the right modifications. So, you can play as a pacifist, I guess. I don’t know if that does anything but there you go. What is pretty neat and sometimes challenging even, is that some quests require you to use non-lethal force. Be careful though, some quests can be failed by just walking away or doing them to late or missing dialogue options. If a dude comes to you and says he pays you to drive him somewhere RIGHT NOW, you have to get a car RIGHT NOW and drive him there. If you go away to get a car, the quest fails. I wish they told you that but I guess it makes sense. Thankfully, autosaves are usually pretty merciful and you rarely loose much progress. There was one quest that really fucked me over because apparently I didn’t talk through all the dialogue options when I should’ve. Without spoiling anything, you had to talk to a guy. After doing that, you can go to the guy who asked you to do that and get your reward, but the quest isn’t finished. If you didn’t do a thing before getting your reward, you will fail the quest down the line. You still get paid but... well, I guess you could say you get the bad end for the quest.

Sadly, Quests are also where my main issue with how the game is right now lies. There are some bugs that can render a quest objectives broken, or stuck in limbo. Some of these issues fix themselves after a while or after loading a save before the quest, but it sure as shit is annoying to do things twice because the fucking game wouldn’t let you finish the quest objective. This happened a few times for me. Two side quests got stuck in my quest log, with no quest objective. I think I even got the reward for the quest but the quest just wouldn’t register as finished. That sucks a lot. Twice or so I had to reload a save because I couldn’t progress in a quest because the game didn’t register me doing the objective. One time, during the main quest no less, I couldn’t fulfill the objective at all because the item I needed for that couldn’t be interacted with. That sucks and shouldn’t happen.

There are also the crashes. Thankfully, crashes only happened like 4 times for me in over 20 hours of playtime but still, it’s annoying.

Overall, I’d say Cyberpunk 2077 is a very good game that is plagued by some technical shortcomings, but it is very enjoyable despite all the flaws. I hope they fix these issues soon but by the look of things, they are hard at work on getting shit patched, which I can appreciate. It not as bad as some people make it out to be and it not a scam as some people have called it, it’s just another game that might have needed a bit more time in the oven.

the making of an ‘impossible’ port • Eurogamer.net

It began with Doom 2016 – a Switch port so ambitious, it simply didn’t seem possible. However, since then, a procession of technologically ambitious current-gen console titles have migrated onto the Nintendo console hybrid, culminating in the arrival of the wonderful Metro Redux from 4A Games – highly impressive conversions and perhaps the closest, most authentic first-person shooter ports we’ve seen. So what’s the secret? How do developers manage to achieve such impressive results from five-year-old Nvidia mobile hardware?

“At first, I did have really big concerns performance-wise,” admits 4A’s chief technical officer, Oles Shishkovstov. “You know, going from base PS4/Xbox One with approximately six and a half or seven CPU cores running at 1.6 GHz to 1.75GHz down to only three cores at 1.0GHz sounds scary. The GPU was fine, as graphics can be scaled up and down much easier than, for example, game simulation code.”

The results of the conversion work are certainly impressive bearing in mind the yawning gap in CPU specs. 4A started out by translating over the existing Metro Redux games from PS4 and Xbox One (and to stress the point, Switch doesn’t get last-gen ports here), a process the 4A team carried out very quickly, but this early version of the game could only manage frame-rates of around seven to 15 frames per second. The games were entirely CPU-bound.

Halving the target frame-rate from the PS4 and Xbox One’s 60fps down to 30fps was required before the task of optimising systems began. “First, we backported some optimisations from Exodus to the Redux codebase,” Shishkovstov explains. “Then we focused on animation processing on the high level and on extracting ILP (instruction-level parallelism) out of the A57 on the low level – down to assembly. The low level optimizations alone got us to an unstable 30Hz when we were not GPU bound. Then the bone LODding arrived – the CPU [issue] was ‘solved’ even with some headroom necessary for stable framerate.”

Everything you need to know about the Switch versions of Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light. Impressive stuff!

Explained like that, 4A’s solution to the Switch’s CPU limitation seems fairly straightforward but the process of coding at the assembly level – literally the native language of the Switch ARM Cortex-A57 CPU cluster – can’t have been a walk in the park. Animation sucks up a lot of processor cycles, so the idea of adding level of detail (LOD) transitions to the system makes a lot of sense.

After this, 4A moved on to GPU optimisations, and it all began with the choice of graphics API. The firm has a long history of supporting the most performant, low-level APIs, with Metro Exodus running on DX11, DX12, Vulkan and GNM across its various multi-platform releases. Switch itself supports OpenGL and Vulkan, but for optimal performance, 4A chose the API developed by Nvidia itself for best performance on Switch.

“NVN is is lowest possible graphics API on NX,” explains Shishkovstov. “CPU overhead is negligible, in most cases that’s just a few DWORDs written to the GPU command buffer. It is well-designed, clean and exposes everything the hardware is capable of. Much better than Vulkan, for example.”

And it’s here where we’re especially interested in how Switch delivers so much from so little. When the Nintendo hardware was first announced, our only experience of the Tegra X1 processor came from the Shield Android TV, where last-gen console conversions typically under-performed. It seems that NVN really makes a key difference here, with 4A suggesting that it gives direct access to the Nvidia Maxwell architecture. So what Maxwell features are used in Metro Redux?

“I am not sure I can talk that about, but we use all of them it seems,” explains Shishkovstov. “Much of our GPU optimisations were focused on reducing memory bandwidth/off-chip traffic. For example, NVN exposes a lot of controls for memory compression, tile cache behavior and binning, memory layout and aliasing. For example, the straight immediate mode rendering is only used during g-buffer creation and shadow map rendering. Every other pass, including forward rendering and deferred lighting uses binning rasteriser with different settings for tile cache.”

In common with a lot of games of this generation, Metro Redux also sees the developer make the jump to using temporal super-sampling – or temporal super resolution, as 4A calls it. The idea is very straightforward. Traditional super-sampling is the process of rendering at a higher-than-native resolution, before downsampling to the developer’s chosen pixel-count. TSR is the same basic idea, except additional detail is gleaned from past frames instead. The technology is being used extensively in improving smartphone camera quality, but outside of games, there are other uses too.

“That’s a well-known FBI solution for reading car plate numbers from the space satellites,” says Oles Shishkovstov. “The problem is it is extremely texture sampling and math heavy for the Switch’s GPU. We have to derive something which is much cheaper and without major quality compromises. It wasn’t easy. I spent more than a month on that – it seems like Maxwell GPU ISA is my native language now.

“The end result takes approximately 2ms at 1080p with only nine texture samples and tricky math. It also does anti-aliasing as a byproduct. When pushed way to hard (it happens in 1080p) the algorithm still produces pixel perfect edges and sharp texture details and only AA quality somewhat degrades – but that is barely visible even for the trained eye.”

Using temporal super resolution, Shishkovstov reckons that the concept of native resolution rendering as we know it isn’t particularly relevant, which raises some interesting questions. Look back at our analysis and you’ll see that we were able to pull a few pixel counts from individual frames. However, it’s games like this, Modern Warfare 2019 and many others that are making us consider new techniques of getting some kind of measure on image quality. Redux on Switch doesn’t look as clean as the PS4 version, but if we pull a like-for-like image of Metro from the locked 720p of the last-gen versions, image quality is on another level.

Whether you’re docked or running in handheld mode, the accumulated output is 1080p or 720p respectively, but the clarity of the image does adjust, according to content. In terms of overall clarity, the technique chosen does look especially impressive when played portably, which raises the question of how 4A scaled the game across docked and handheld modes.

“Going docked you get 2x faster-clocked GPU but only moderately more bandwidth, so it is not magically 2x faster at all, but still considerably faster,” explains Shishkovstov. “That allowed us, for example, to render per-pixel velocities for more objects resulting in slightly more correct TSR and AA. In handheld mode we only draw velocity for HUD/weapon – that’s all we can afford.

4A Games’ Metro Exodus is a simply phenomenal experience. With its supported for ray traced global illumination, this is a very forward-looking game.

“Also, Redux content was lacking geometry LODs for a lot of meshes. As the art team was busy with Exodus’ (huge) DLCs – we programmatically generated missing ones. Both docked and handheld use original PS4/X1 geometry, but handheld uses more aggressive LOD switching, although it is barely noticeable on a small screen. From the user/gamer point of view, handheld is always 720p, docked is always 1080p, otherwise they are the same.”

What’s also impressive about the Metro Redux port is its sheer consistency in maintaining its target 30fps frame-rate. It’s an important point to make because whether we’re talking about the id Tech 6 conversions, The Witcher 3, Warframe or most of the other ‘impossible ports’ to the Switch, it’s rare that you find a consistent performance level.

“I am glad we hit a consistent 30fps,” shares Shishkovstov. “The only way to hit close to 60 would be to run two render-frames per one simulation frame, at radically reduced quality and inconsistent input lag. That’s not the price I want to pay. Running at 30fps allowed no quality compromises – even the material and lighting shaders are exactly the same as PS4 and Xbox One.”

As for how the game runs so doggedly at 30fps, 4A puts it down to over-optimisation. “Even without any TSR, the game keeps producing consistent 30fps at 720p in handheld mode in over 99 per cent of frames across the whole game. TSR is more [useful] for 1080p/docked mode.”

With continued rumours of improved Switch hardware in development, I thought it would be interesting to see where Nintendo and Nvidia might choose to innovate. After all, a lot of the success of PlayStation 4’s design comes from Sony shifting focus and taking onboard developer feedback.

“Since we are generally CPU bound, additional cores would definitely be on the list. Bandwidth and GPU power never hurts either,” offers Shishkovstov. Putting CPU power at the forefront may sound surprising, but graphics scale much more easily than the core game code – and in our Switch overclocking tests, ramping up CPU frequency proved more impactful on many games than up-clocking the graphics core.

And while we’re on the subject of new hardware, what about the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft? Developers are under NDA, so can’t talk about the technical specifics of the hardware. However, key aspects of the new machines are public knowledge – such as the fact that both PS5 and Xbox Series X feature hardware accelerated support in the GPU for real-time ray tracing.

“We are fully into ray tracing, dropping old-school codepath/techniques completely,” reveals Shishkovstov – and in terms of how RT has evolved since Metro Exodus? “Internally we experimented a lot, and with spectacular results so far. You will need to wait to see what we implement into our future projects.”

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/the-making-of-an-impossible-port-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-making-of-an-impossible-port-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

Can you Game in VR on a Budget?

virtual reality or VR has been hailed as the next paradigm for gaming an immersion ever since it rolled out then rolled over back in the late 90s with early implementations like Sony's Glastron being described by John Carmack as like looking through toilet paper tubes fast forward to 2016 though and the tech was awesome but it still had a big problem the price because on top of the headset gamers in particular needed to shell out for much more powerful hardware than they would need to play the same game in flat mode but there's some good news since that time oculus who sponsored this video has dropped the price of the rift and continued development on some pretty neat invisible mechanisms that work in the background to make VR run on even relatively modest machines and we spent the last week testing to see just how modest a machine you can use and I think you'll be surprised [Music] let's begin with some of the efficiency improvements that are handled by your graphics card because in theory every frame of an image in VR needs to be rendered twice once for each I so technologies like Nvidia's single pass stereo make it so your PC only needs to setup the scenes geometry once and their lens matched shading actually cuts off any pixels which would not be visible anyway due to how the lenses in the headset work pretty neat then we've got the headset specific tech like oculus is asynchronous time warp and space warp which kick in anytime your machine can't maintain the steady 90 frames per second that's required to prevent motion sickness by generating synthetic preemptive frames that act like a sort of suspension mechanism to smooth out the low FPS bumps getting this tech working right was quite a bit of work because GPUs are designed for high throughput but not pre-emptive frame guessing so oculus worked with both GPU manufacturers as part of invidious VR works and AMD's liquid VR initiatives so it's more than a catchy slogan now let's introduce our bare minimum system so we paired up where is it here is a core i3 8100 quad-core processor and a gtx 1050 Ti and ran future marks VR mark which has a neat feature both the rifts minimum and V are ready performance requirements are baked into the results craft and what we found was that even our bottom of the barrel actually managed to meet the minimum spec bar so there you go video done peace out right no yeah no wrong so upon further analysis we actually found that while our rig was outputting 90 frames per second in the basic orange benchmark which matches up with the refresh rate of the head-mounted displays in the rift the actual target is 100 9 frames per second this is because aside from the graphics going on on the screen in VR the system also needs to read sensors and do a bunch of stuff in the background so with the overhead of VR the calculation is that a hundred and nine frames per second in flat mode should correspond to 90 frames per second in VR and superposition basically said the same thing so that setup was only good enough for like the very barest minimum spec so we do need to go a little higher but do we go for CPU or GPU well we were watching our CPU load pattern during the runs and our processor even though it's a measly core i3 well it is a quad core and it didn't look that busy so we bumped our graphics up to a GTX 1060 to see where that would get us usually people would pair such a card with an i-5 class chip but we're focusing on VR here and even with all the trickery it is still mostly GPU bound and check this out so it turns out that I 3 + 10 60 combo here actually looks good to go with a super rating in VR Marc orange room and a full bar in superpositions optimum preset so that puts our total system cost at just over nine hundred US dollars and bear in mind but that is including the Windows 10 home operating system which microsoft recently jacked up to a hundred and forty bucks so if you already have windows or whatever then now you can subtract that of course though those are synthetics so the next step is to go lab rat mode and put this to the test now normally I game in VR at home on a gtx 980ti so i will be able to tell the difference if this doesn't manage to stay as smooth so let's fire up the oculus performance profiler analysis tool and head-up display which should help us pinpoint the cause of any framerate drops that we experience oh cool okay so this is Aki redesigned home interface thing now you've got this control panel here that you can move to wherever it is that you want it to go and then you can go ahead and decide well you know which menu do you want to see oh close them so there's my library there's my explore tab here then you can kind of adjust this one over here Oh neat you can interact with the desktop as well oh that's trippy let's go ahead and look at the other monitor the one that's not capturing my experience right now ah yes hey you can mess with Ivan hey Ivan I am opening your Start menu what are you gonna do about it in fact you oh wait I probably shouldn't open fraps oh that just glitched it out I don't know I don't know what this thing is yeah thank you let's get our you monitors different sizes yep one is 4k one is 1080 dang it Ivan game now right walk around the place somewhere because she didn't mean it social so you can invite people to come over to your virtual home friends currently zero friends online thanks that's why you wanted me to open that isn't it alright what's next I've played VR shooters dang it yeah it's really fun all right well I think that's good I think that's all the evidence I need this is working awesome so for our last trick we're trying out the climb kind of the crisis of VR if you think about it that way like the graphics in this game or especially when it was first released are pretty incredible compared to what else there is now what I just alright oh that's a long way to fall huh this is maximum settings yeah go go go go look at me I'm like Superman oh-oh-oh Superman falls sometimes ok so actually that went surprisingly well but still the point remains that in a massive surprise to no one just because a benchmark gives you a good score and you can run many VR games well on a relatively inexpensive budget does not automatically mean that you can run any game maxed out in VRS I mean same ideas in flat mode right so just like flat mode if you do have some more budget and you're buying a VR gaming rig it wouldn't be a terrible idea to bump your specs a little if you want to play VR versions of flat games like fallout 4 and Skyrim since VR is more demanding but frankly I've actually found that the most fun that I've had is in games that were designed for VR and what's cool is that the climb in my opinion is more of a tech demo than an actual game and that one still ran decently and most of the VR games out there that I've tried some of which are good and free like Robo recall are not nearly as demanding because it's in the developers best interest to reach as many customers as possible with their games so our PC right here and of course we're not factoring in some of the RGB nonsense and stuff like that in our in our cost 4 but our PC here can enable a ton of awesome VR experiences exactly the way it is so thanks to you guys for watching thanks to oculus for sponsoring this video if you guys dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like is anyone wearing an LT t-shirt not no one where's your team spirit like the LT t-shirts that we have and also our community forum which you should totally join

https://youtu.be/8ZG3e_Nn2ps

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Welcome to the Meganoid(2017) post-mortem. This post-mortem goes into the details on the Meganoid figures and stats. Without context the stats are pretty much silly numbers, so please make sure to read all of this because there is more to the numbers than you might think.

So I'll keep this short, if you want to learn more about who I am, please check out my techblog and website. I've been a full-time (indie) developer since 2004. Mostly known for mobile games, but since 2015 also branching to PC games and even some consoles releases here and there (PS Vita and 3DS).  I've never had hit games that made me millions, but I have been doing very decent for many years releasing games that have found a growing fan-base in a niche area.  My biggest titles include the Gunslugs and Heroes of Loot series of games and Space Grunts.

The original Meganoid was released in 2010 on Android and iOS and was a very hard platformer with short levels that sometimes had you screaming if you didn't manage to reach the finish. For me it was a turning point in my games as I finally decided to just build games like that since those are the games I love the most. Luckily I found a niche that works for me and an audience that has been growing alongside me and my games. It also managed to reach close to a million downloads since.

Meganoid(2017) is a reboot of the franchise lifts a lot on the designs behind Spelunky, while still maintaining the difficulty of the original Meganoid game. I named it a "love child of Spelunky and Meat-boy in space", which is a very clear description of what the game is. It's not extremely original, but I'll get to that later on!

Oh, the game was also created in "just" two months, but I'll also get back to that if you keep reading..

So before Meganoid I was working on a game called Ashworld, which is a huge project for a one-man development team (which I am) and it's also an open-world game, a genre that I personally have no experience with because I often quit those games within a few hours of play-time.  Simply put: Ashworld is a huge challenge for me, and I have been working on it since June 2016.

Seeing as my games are actually my livelihood, money needs to come in on a semi-frequent basis. My business is still running fairly well, I have a huge back-log of games and they are all still bringing in money on a monthly base, but to keep it all running I do have some rules on how long game-projects can take.  Ashworld is breaking those rules due to a challenging development phase where I've been learning open-world design and also searching where the actual fun in the game-design is. So the game isn't done, and still needs a few months of work.

Enter the stage: Meganoid.

In January I decided to just do some prototyping with the hopes that I would end up with something playable that could be extended into a game. For this to work, I needed a clear design idea and direction. A game that I could almost create on automatic-mode.

This "automatic-mode" does need some nuance here, I wrote a blog about it a few weeks ago and I think it painted a wrong picture. Some comments and replies I got thrown at me were along the line of "a quick money grab". My bad on writing the article and not being clear about things, so here's to rectifying it:

The game was made in "just 2 months; and 13 years of experience".

The key part being those 13 years experience, factual there are a lot more years of experience, but the 13 years is how long I've been doing this commercially. Meganoid at it's core is a platformer with rogue-like mechanics. I've created close to 60 commercial platform games, and I've been doing rogue-like elements in my last 5-6 games. I know what to expect code-wise, and I know how to program those things without having to think about it.

To put it in some more perspective, my game Heroes of Loot 2 is a huge RPG-adventure/twin-stick shooter, and it was made in little over 4 months. So I normally work really fast and very effective.

Now think what you like about the short-development cycle, I don't plan to change your mind about it, but from a business point of view: this made sense and still delivers a quality game.

To have this game make some profit I needed it to take just a couple of months work so it would be easier to recoup on the costs AND make money on the game.

The development-cycle was pretty short, but since I had some interesting stuff pretty early on I actually showed some screenshots and gifs in the first week of development on twitter,facebook,instagram and a couple of forums. Some of this got picked up pretty early by mobile-game sites, and Toucharcade showed the first couple of video's I released in the weeks after.

I started using reddit a bit more, and finally managed to post something there without it being taken down (actually on second try, the first did get taken down because I didn't disclose that the "pre-order discounts" was on a game I made, which obviously makes a big difference../sarcasm).

The two or so weeks before the launch I already had various mobile sites mailing me for some promocodes, which is the up-side of being "known" in a market. In contrast to that there is the PC scene, where I'm basically unknown and nobody talks about my games.

The launch week I started looking at youtube streamers for the PC version, so I basically searched for big youtubers that covered games like: Spelunky, Meat boy, and a few other more recent pixel-art indie games that fit the same category as Meganoid.

I mailed all of them, close to a 100, which at least one steam-key included (for some group-youtubers I included up to 5 keys) and this all resulted in an awesome 0 streams.  I did a follow up email to a large portion of them a week later, and this resulted in 1 Streamer playing it,  yay results!

It's still possible some streamers will pick up the game later, having full inboxes, managers that handle emails slowly, or just large backlogs of video's. But I don't hold my breath for any of it.  Same goes for PC game-site reviews, so even tho I did everything "right" it basically ended up with fairly little returns on it.  The emails were short, to the point, showed a GIF of the game, bullet points, youtube trailer, quick-links and a steam-key included with a link to the website/presskit for more info. All according to the average marketing-advise.

Basically, in my opinion and experience, you need to know people to get things done. But reaching out never hurts and is also the way to get to know more people, so yeah.

Okay, okay! that's what you guys came for, I get it!

Google Play's "Best new seller" list charting

Let me first start with this, Meganoid was so far:

Featured on App-store under "New games we loved" - worldwide

Featured on Google Play "Early Access"

Featured on Google Play "New and Updated"

Top-charted (top 25) in Google Play "Best new sellers" list

Game of the Week - on TouchArcade

"Best games of the week for iOS and Android"  - Pocketgamer

Now, back to reality, for those who don't know, making money on games is HARD, on any given day there are 100-500 games released on various platforms. That's EVERY DAY! Standing out from those games is extremely hard, most games you will never see and they get like 5-10 downloads (depending on how many friends the developer has).

With my experience of doing this business for a long time, I set a fairly low but do-able goal for Meganoid: $6500 during the launch-period. I know it's a not a huge game, and it had fairly short marketing-visibility before release due to the fast development cycle.

For me a launch-period is the first month or so after releasing it. My goals is usually to make 80%-100%  of the development costs back in this first period. I calculate development costs fairly rough by multiplying each development-month with $2000 and then add any outsourced work costs. Since I do code+design+game graphics that often leaves out-source costs to music and high-res marketing art.

The $2000 is very low-end of what my cost-of-living is each month (in the Netherlands, with mortgage, girlfriend and pets). It doesn't take into account taxes and extra cash-flow for "the future". But we're talking about launch-period here, so a game will live on for a few more years and with future sales and discounts you can often double the money a game made on launch.

So for this game I had 2 months of work, that's $4000 and since there was such a short dev-cycle and I used ambient sounds from my sound-libraries, there was no music cost and just a few hundred dollars for the awesome marketing art. So let's round it to $4500.

Now the point is to get extra cashflow to cover the longer development-cycle of Ashworld and we get to a $6500 minimum revenue that I was aiming for with Meganoid.  Again this is all launch-period revenue, because obviously it's a low amount especially if Ashworld development still needs 2 or 3 months time. So I'll get to that in a few paragraphs below.

I released Meganoid on March 30 on iOS, Android and PC (steam/humble/itch, windows/osx/linux) and we're now at three weeks into the release and currently the revenue is just a little shy of the target at $6200. Which is not bad at all!

So let's dig into this $6200 launch-period amount. Where did most of it come from, and why! The biggest bulk of this comes from the iOS version, actually close to 50% of it: $3580.  On iOS the game was priced $4.99 with a launch-discount the first week making the game $3.99. Meganoid was made Game of the week at Toucharcade which most certainly helped, one of the weeks best games for iOS and Android on Pocketgamer, but sadly it had no "games we play" feature for the first weekend.

For some reason the game only showed up in the "Games we play" on Monday/Tuesday for the USA App-store, at which point it spiked to slightly below the launch spike so effectively doubling the sales in the 3/4 days it had that front page feature.  I'm pretty sure it would have done better if it did have that feature in the first-weekend (during the sale) but those things are pretty much out of my control and I'm glad it eventually did get a feature after-all (something I kind had planned for in setting my revenue targets).

Apple loved it - all over the world!

Second biggest seller was Android, now this was done a little different. I tried some beta stages on Android and this put my game into "Early Access" on Google Play a week before the launch at a $2.99 price. This price was mostly because I believe that the brave people who try out a beta shouldn't pay full price.  The game got a nice Google feature in their "Early Access" list, which only has about 20 games listed, so that's a pretty good list to be in.

The possible down-side of this is that a lot of people don't seem to be clear of understanding what "Early access" means on Google Play, so there was a lot more buying going on than I had planned for, and that means I was pushing updates daily to work out some "obviously-beta" features. Early-access users can't leave reviews during that phase, so that might have been a positive thing, the down-side of that is that many people forget to leave a review once the game was released.. so not as many reviews as I normally have during the launch-period. Not sure if I would do that again on Android, but it's been an interesting experiment.

Finally we come to the PC revenue, in total that's $900 which is split over Steam, Itch and Humble. This is also my biggest pain-in-the-butt, obviously my games still don't make much waves amongst PC gamers. Especially since about 50% of that money comes through Itch.io where I ran a pre-order with 20% discount in the two weeks leading up to the launch. So these buyers are mostly people from my own social-circles and mailing-lists, people who in many cases also buy the mobile version and in a lot of cases people who tipped up to $10 (even tho the pre-order price was $3.99!)  (THANKS!).

The humble-store sales were about 10% of that, so the rest is up to you to calculate :p

Side note:  Besides this launch-period revenue, there is also the added advantage of extra money made on back-log sales. New gamers that see Meganoid will check out my other games and in some cases end up buying a few more of my games. On top of that a lot of subscriptions to my social-circles and mailing list have happened during and after the development of Meganoid, which are all potentially future fans of my next games.

Another important thing to read about, how are the ratings? Because let's face it, making a game in two months isn't interesting if it's a crappy game. On iOS the game has a strong 4/5 star rating from gamers, and on Android it's at 4.8/5 star rating. I'd say those are pretty good ratings (most of my games are around the 4.0 - 4.5 ratings)

On Steam there are only about 4 ratings of which only 2 ratings count since they bought the game on Steam and not through my website/Itch.io or Humble. But I think "all of them" are fairly positive!

Game-site wise, well that's a mixed bag of thingies. As mentioned before, the game was made "game of the week" on Toucharcade, and it was part of the "best games for iOS and Android" that week on Pocketgamer. On the other side Toucharcade's review gave it just a 3.5/5 rating, and Pocketgamer managed to give it a 7/10.  So that's the same two websites already making for mixed-reviews.  Not sure what to think about it, and it's mostly the reason I focus on the average user-rating on app-stores since those people play the game even after a review.

PC game sites pretty much ignored the game completely, except for a few news-posts on one or two sites. But the whole game-review-site business is something for another topic. In short, those sites only talk about your game if people are already talking about your game, or if there's something controversial to be found, because that brings in readers and thus advertising-money.

Now there's always a part in a post mortem where people go say things that went right or wrong and how things could have gone different. BUT!  Meganoid was just as much an experiment as it was a way to earn some extra cash.

For one, the price: $4.99. For a PC game that's a fairly cheap price-point, and it was something I wanted to try out. Normally my newly released PC games go between $7-$10 in the launch period because I honestly think that's what my games are worth for the amount of playtime and enjoyment you get. However, a game like Meganoid is perfect to try out new stuff and I've been wondering if maybe my games would sell better at $4.99.  Haven't really compared it yet with my previous games, but my gut-feeling says I sell about as much copies at this price as I do at a more normal price of $7.99.

On mobile the $4.99 is actually on the high-end of things! More experimenting, normally I'm at max at $3.99 and often in the launch week it's at $2.99. I do believe this game could have done better at a $3.99 or $2.99. Possibly sold much more copies with the result being more revenue. Some people hinted I should have lowered the price when I got the iOS feature, but my golden rule is to not punish the instant-buying fans, which I would have done had I suddenly lowered the price within a week of it's release.

In general the gamers liked the game, which is the most important thing. One guy complained that he couldn't get past the first level so it was way to hard, another guy complained that the sound-effects sounded generic (he was a sound-designer offering to do sound effects.. that's business!). One mobile-game reviewer had a lot of problems with the touch-controls, which is ironic for a mobile-game reviewer in my opinion.

I've been pushing regular updates to Meganoid since the release, and I still have one bigger update planned. After that it will mostly complete the work on this game minus any required fixes or OS-updates.

I never create games as a service, all my games receive two or three bigger updates and then I move on. That's my business-model and that's how I stay in business.

As for the game itself, it now becomes a "back-log game". This means I'll be able to do sales and discounts with the game in the next few years. It's also possible to perhaps get it ported and released on consoles or other gadgets, and there are alternate sales-routes the game can take on platforms like Android or PC (different markets, bundles, etc).

On top of that the game engine is fairly straight-forward and easy to repurpose. So it could be possible to re-use the game, create a new game-world and content for it and release like a $1.99 game with it (in fact I already have a funny viking-style game running on the same engine, so who knows).

All those back-log options should be able to at-least  double the game's revenue within a year, so let's say the game does $10.000 in total by March 2018. Set against the 2 month development cycle (and 13 years experience!) that's not a bad deal.

For now I got some breathing room again for working on Ashworld, so follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to stay updated on that one!

(Grab Meganoid here for Windows,MacOS, Linux, iOS or Android)

21 top examples of JavaScript

JavaScript creates platforms that can engage a user and ensure that they remember your site and continue to revisit. It can be used to create games, APIs, scrolling abilities and much more.

The internet is full of web design inspiration, including great examples of JavaScript being used to bring a website to life and provide great user experiences. Here we pick some of our favourite examples of JavaScript in action for your inspiration.

01. Histography

Histography is an amazing way to explore 14 billion years of stuff

If you’ve ever watched Cosmos, you may remember Carl Sagan talking about the Cosmic Calendar. If the age of the universe was condensed into one year, recorded human history would fit within the very last seconds of 31 December.

14 billion years of events is a huge dataset, and displaying it in a browser is no easy task. But designer and developer Matan Stauber rose to the challenge – although even he wasn’t sure it would be possible: “I think the main obstacle would have to be proportions,” he explains. “How do you create a timeline when 99.9 per cent of the history we know will have to be condensed into less than one pixel of the screen?” 

The son of a historian, Stauber created Histography as a student at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, under the guidance of Ronel Mor. “If we think about ways people visualise history, timelines are probably the most common one, and yet they haven’t changed a lot since the days of the printed paper,” he says. “I saw that as an exciting design opportunity, especially today with the access to big data sources.”

The site scans and indexes events from Wikipedia, grabs the article, and pulls in a Google image and YouTube video. The data is easily discoverable and a joy to consume. If you’ve ever lost hours exploring Wikipedia articles, set aside plenty of time for this one.

02. Filippo Bello

Adoratorio opted to use CSS3 and Javascript instead of WebGL to give a sense of depth

This online portfolio showcasing the talent of Italian 3D artist Filippo Bello was conceived, designed and developed internally at Adoratorio by Enea Rossi and Alessandro Rigobello. The team were given total freedom in how to design it.

The play with depth throughout the website is very effective – the images move slowly towards the viewer, creating the impression of diving into each project. This is achieved using what is called a segment effect: the background image is replicated in different boxes that move towards the viewer. The team challenged themselves by avoiding the most obvious technologies. “WebGL is not suitable for every kind of user,” says Rossi, art director and co-founder. “So the main challenge of this site was to understand how to deepen the screen using CSS3 and JavaScript code-strings only.” 

The page transitions and the little zoom effects on the images are a nice added touch to the final result, which was – as Rossi describes it – “absolutely beyond our expectations”.

03. The St. Louis Browns

The St. Louis Browns site is styled like a vintage book

For this website about the history of the St. Louis Browns baseball team, digital agency HLK has crafted a very beautiful experience. The site reads like a well-crafted vintage book, complete with chapters and textured typography. Users can scroll through each chapter for a time-based, story-like experience.

Inspiration for the site has been pulled from 1920s manuscripts and advertisements, with many of the images directly from the years they are describing. This brings a uniquely dated feel to a modern, digital space. This is complemented by a grey-and-brown toned colour scheme, accented by a single shade of orange.

Some of my favourite parts of this site are the little details, such as the menu button (circular with a hamburger menu inside) that converts to a baseball on hover. I also love the timeline on the left-hand side, which follows the screen and updates on scroll.

The site is built using Node.js and the Express framework to allow for smooth updating and flow between content.

04. Leg Work Studio

Leg Work Studio’s site uses interactive animations to bring the experience to life

Leg Work does a lot of great work on the web, from graphic design to interaction and media. So it comes as no surprise to find that its own personal site is no exception. The studio’s personality shines through via fun, mixed-media illustrations. It combines vintage photo effects (such as the dot grid pattern) with digitally painted white accents and scans of physical handwriting to create unique art to represent the agency.

However, it is not just the illustrations that make this website notable – the interactive animations really bring it to life. Some of the illustrations themselves are actually videos instead of static visuals, created with After Effects, and website components like the sidebar animate smoothly.

The website is designed with mobile in mind, and mobile interactions are mirrored in the desktop experience, where the user can swipe with the track pad to get through the sections. The website is built using Modernizr to ensure compatibility, and jQuery for interactions.

05. Code Conf

Code Conf’s Nashville-themed site

The site for CodeConf really goes above and beyond the standard conference website. The conference was held in Nashville, Tennessee, and everything about this design pays homage to this location.

The website itself is nicely responsive and has a warm, cohesive colour palette. The whimsical illustrations give the site character and create a playful country-rock aesthetic that continues throughout the page (and even into the event itself).

No details are spared, as even the menu’s decorative horizontal rules (only seen on smaller screen sizes) flow with the country-rock aesthetic. The site implements Google Maps for location features, and is built with jQuery and AngularJS.

Everything is illustrated: all of the venues, the ‘set list’ of speakers, the call to action for buying tickets, and breaks between sections. There is also a fun cast of characters that can be found dotted around the site: vector cacti, unicorns, dragons, octocats, and cowboys and girls playing music and posing playfully around the page.

06. IBM Design

IBM Design’s site is inspired by the physical world as opposed to the digital one

In the past few years, IBM has invested in growing a design programme and steering the company towards a human-centric approach to creating software. It recently came out with the IBM Design Language, which contains an update for its animation vocabulary. It provides design guidance and resources for web developers, all open-sourced on GitHub.

What I love about this animation update (even more than the fact that it’s open sourced) is how the studio looks at IBM’s heritage and the physical world for inspiration, instead of other digital properties. Hayley Hughes, IBM design language lead, says that the team pulled inspiration from machines; in particular their solid planes, physical mass and rigid surfaces.

“From the powerful strike of a printing arm to the smooth slide of a typewriter carriage, each movement was fit for purpose and designed with intent,” she explains. “Our software demands the same attention to detail to make products feel lively and realistic.”

Why is animation so critical to IBM’s Design Language? “Just as a person’s body language helps you read the conversation, animation relays critical information that helps users understand how to navigate and use our products,” Hughes says.

07. Masi Tupungato

Image-led site for Italian wine-making project Masi Tupungato

This wonderful website from international digital creative agency AQuest for Masi Tupungato, a winemaking project based in Italy, almost lets the imagery speak for itself.

Unusually, a loading screen is used for each of the pages as the crisp fullscreen images load up. Usually this would be a big no-no – users want the content as soon as possible. However, here it actually improves the user’s experience by ensuring images are fully loaded before any content is unveiled. The design creates a sense of empathy, leaving users feeling like they’ve been to the winery and picked the grapes themselves.

The site can be on the heavy side on some pages (ranging from 1.2MB up to 5MB in weight), which could be improved by introducing some lazy loading techniques. However, despite its weight, the site is well-built, with the start render in under one second and return visits loading within the second mark too. The framework is based on unsemantic.com, which is a successor to the 960 Grid System.

When viewing the site on desktop and larger viewports, users are able to see and interact with each of the wines separately. They can take advantage of the larger screen size to display all of the wine characteristics and details side- by-side. In contrast, on the mobile site the details and description slide in and can be slid away again smoothly.

08. tota11y

tota11y makes accessibility simpler

Making accessible websites is critically important. However, the techniques and testing involved often seem like they require deep specialisation that can make web developers and designers feel like they’re adrift.

Enter tota11y: a simple tool that can be included as a JavaScript file in a page or, even more simply, used as a bookmarklet on any site. It flags items in the page that run afoul of accessibility guidelines – low visual contrast or missing textual alternatives for images, say.

Wayward elements are flagged visually, making it easy to snap a screen grab and show team members or clients exactly what the issues are, while the expanded explanations coach users on methods to quickly fix the glitches.

Khan Academy‘s website for tota11y is not overtly glamorous, but then, important work isn’t always glitzy. The down-to-business simplicity of the text – both in appearance and in content – belies the complexity of the problem the tool itself aims to alleviate.

09. Know Lupus

The Know Lupus site explores the condition in a fun, informative way

The Lupus Foundation of America (LFA) is a national organisation working to solve the mystery of lupus. Viget partnered with the LFA on a pro bono public awareness project to help the general public understand the disease.

“LFA wanted to create a fun yet informative game that would help educate the public in an engaging way, to help overcome that issue,” explains Laura Sweltz, UX designer and project lead. “Our design process focused on accomplishing that goal, while also creating something that people with lupus would actually feel excited about sharing.”

Viget’s solution was a casino-inspired card game built using React, in which each card highlights a fact about lupus. Custom illustrations by designer Blair Culbreth keep the game lighthearted while addressing the serious subject matter. Casino-inspired sound effects weave through the game.

The animations are smooth and snappy, adding another layer of delight to the game. The mobile experience is just as interactive as desktop, and responsive transitions have been fully considered. The end result is a playful experience that makes learning feel effortless.

10. The Boat

The Boat, an online graphic novel

Longform storytelling has been steadily gaining popularity on news and media sites, but broadcasting network SBS‘s The Boat, an online graphic novel based on a story by Nam Le, feels unique in both its style and execution. Sumi ink illustrations, expertly executed animations and a chilling soundscape capture the story of a young Vietnamese refugee’s journey.

To bring the story to life, illustrator Matty Huynh spent six months with Nam Le’s original prose, sketching thumbnails and iteratively creating the characters.

“I think the balance you see comes from this extended period of development,” explains producer Kylie Boltin. “That deep inward-looking period enabled the core team members to know the story inside out. We knew the story beats and we knew which moments needed to be highlighted. The guiding principle was to complement the core storytelling, rather than overpower it or add an element just for the sake of it.”

The graphic panels feel like diary sketches – urgent, imperfect and deeply emotional. This site proves just how powerful and engaging online storytelling can be in the right hands.

11. Run4Tiger

Can you run as much as a tiger? Find out with this site and your running app

Moscow-based Hungry Boys designed this show-stopping campaign site for the World Wildlife Fund Russia to raise public awareness for its Save The Tiger campaign. Why race your friends when you can race a GPS-tracked Amur tiger?

The site lets you sync your running app of choice (it currently supports nine different apps!) and pits you and other runners against the big cat, which averages 20km a day. If the tiger beats you, you donate $5 to WWF.

It’s a great concept, and there’s a great design to go with it. The sharp black and yellow colour palette – uncharacteristically bold for a charity app – conveys the urgency of the Save The Tiger initiative.

Run4Tiger’s creator Ksenia Apresyan says the team definitely had movement in mind when designing: “We wanted to make the website as dynamic as it could be. That’s why we decided to use the most fresh technologies and show our main message, made of dynamic particles, on the main page.”

Next page: 10 more top examples of JavaScript to inspire you…

12. Design Matters

The Design Matters site has a continually colour-shifting gradient background

Design Matters is a radio show launched by Debbie Millman in 2005. Over the years, Millman has interviewed over 200 designers, artists and creatives around the world. These are now housed on a beautifully redesigned site.

The first thing you notice is the morphing gradient background, which is subtle yet unique and mesmerising. The next thing you notice when you jump into an interview page is the enormous play icon overlaying the content.

“From the beginning I knew I wanted to have a giant play button on the screen, and after playing around with the design I settled on a completely transparent button,” says Armin Vit of UnderConsideration, the studio behind the site. “Since the interviews are all about transparency between Debbie and her guests, I enjoyed the visual extension of that.”

Vit used JS layout library Masonry to create a Pinterest-like grid of interview ‘pods’, each of which contains a well thought-out type hierarchy and image. As the audio is housed on SoundCloud, Vit had to figure out how to make the play button trigger a SoundCloud file via its unique ID.

What does Millman think of the site? “Armin took all the myriad must-haves for this site and created one design for me to look at,” she smiles. “I loved it the second I saw it.”

13. Wrap Genius

Food data

NYC-based designer and developer Sam Slover and team set out on a mission to document what he ate for 10 weeks, and created an interesting visual look into his diet.

“We wanted to tell the story of one person trying to figure out how to make his personal food data more meaningful,” says Slover. “So we took the audience on a journey: what does it mean to track your own food data and what insights can come of it?”

The result of his data-gathering is a one-page site that houses a beautiful collection of infographics. “It turns out there was quite a bit of data to design around,” he smiles. “We needed to make hard decisions about which areas to pursue when doing visualisations.”

Along with outlining what food was purchased, the team chose to focus on representing where the food came from, the ingredients, and an awards system where the best and worst foods were rated.

The team used Illustrator to develop the visuals, and Chart.js and D3.js to render some of the charts. While the site’s layout is simple, don’t be fooled – some serious number crunching went on behind the scenes, with the aid of a Node.js and MongoDB stack.

14. The Local Palette

Fuzzco took inspiration from the print version of this publication

The local Palate is the South’s premiere food culture magazine. In redesigning the site, the team at Fuzzco took its cues from the print magazine. “We started with a grid structure similar to the one similar found throughout the magazine,” says Fuzzco founder and creative director Helen rice. “For the typography we took a bold, modern approach and allowed space for large, engrossing photographs to reflect the engaging feeling found in print.” The navigation also mimics the look of the spine of the magazine.

The site’s stunning food photography and striking typography are arranged in a refreshingly simple layout that is a pleasure to view on any device. The recipe grids and full article pages are especially beautiful.

To build the site, the team used the – as they put it – “usual suspects” of jQuery, Sass and Typekit to serve the type. WordPress was selected to give editors flexibility in how the content is presented.

“We set up a system for editors to change the colour of some of the homepage elements to represent the current feature article,” continues rice. “This creates the same effect as a new magazine cover.”

15. Mike Kus

The portfolio of designer Mike Kus presents his stunning work in a refreshingly clean and understated manner

Here designer Mike Kus presents his stunning work in a refreshingly clean and understated manner, in which large images live alongside simple user interface elements. Bold dashes of colour come through from the portfolio items themselves, rather than from unnecessary decorative elements.

“I think of my work as the brand, hence there was no need to add a lot of style to the actual site [or its] UI,” says Kus.

The website is fully responsive and equally easy to navigate on larger and smaller screens. What makes the site such a pleasure to explore, however, is the image selection: each portfolio item uses strong, carefully selected imagery that make you want to see more of the project.

Kus notes that “one of the main issues was making sure the site had the same visual impact across all viewport sizes” – and in our opinion, it certainly does.

16. Multeor

Multeor is written in plain JavaScript using HTML5 Canvas

Multeor is a multiplayer web game developed by Arjen de Vries and Filidor Wiese and designed by Arthur van ‘t Hoog. The idea of the game is to control a meteor crashing into earth. You score points by ensuring you leave the biggest trail of destruction. Up to eight players can connect to a single game simultaneously.

Multeor is written in plain JavaScript using HTML5 Canvas and backed with a Node.js server to manage the communications between the desktop and mobile devices using WebSockets.

Rather than using one of the many game libraries, Wiese built entirely from stratch. “We decided not to use a prefab game engine,” he says, “which means rendering the graphics, detecting collisions, keeping track of entities and coding a particle system for the explosions. Not depending on a specific game engine was great fun: it gave us a lot of creative freedom and we definitely learned a lot because of it.”

17. Here Is Today

Here Is Today required a small amount of JavaScript to put the animation in place

Here is Today was created by designer Luke Twyman. He explains the motive behind the site: “Being fascinated by the scale of time, I wanted to create something that would clearly give people a sense of that vastness, and a feeling of where we sit in relation to all that’s gone before. To do this, two important features on the technical side would be some kind of zooming/scaling mechanic, and also a super clean layout.”

Twyman kept all widths relative to make the site’s message convey equally well on a smaller screen: “From the start I decided to do away with pixel measurements and pt sizes for type, and instead set my own measurement unit based on a fraction of the screen width. I set one unit to be 1/22 of the screen width and positioned and scaled everything using that unit, so the spacious layout would be maintained on different displays.”

It took just a small amount of JavaScript to put the animation in place: “The zoom mechanic is based on a simple tween animation formula, which I’ve used numerous times now, although I’d never used it in JS before. In fact this is only the second thing I’ve built using JS, but I’ve found the transition from other languages I’ve used or tried to be fairly easy, and there’s plenty of great documentation at hand online.”

18. The Trip

The Trip is an interactive film with audio, powered entirely through JavaScript and HTML5

The Trip is an interactive film with audio, powered entirely through HTML5 and JavaScript (with Flash nowhere to be seen). The complexity of the project proved challenging, as developer Otto Nascarella explains. He says, “Most of the difficulties we had during the development process were due to the lack of cross browser/devices consistency of HTML5 new technologies, so it was decided we’d ‘recommend’ Chrome for a better experience on desktops,” he says.

“The JavaScript code uses jQuery for almost everything – even though I flirted with the possibilities of using Zepto – I wrote two plugins for jQuery, [used] TextBlur to animate blur on fonts using text-shadow, that did not get used the end, and also TextDrop, the one that is responsible for the typographic animations.”

19. MapsTD

MapsTD harnesses the power of Google Maps for an immersive gaming experience

MapsTD is a tower defence game, but with a difference. You tell it where your home is, and through the power of Google Maps, it will produce a game in which you’re defending your hometown, with the baddies relentlessly charging past the streets and houses of your neighbourhood.

Creator Duncan Barclay explains how it works. “It’s obviously built using the Google Maps API, with MooTools being used for the other aspects of the UI and as a general-purpose JavaScript library. It uses several bits of functionality provided by Google Maps. As well as the map itself, the biggest part is the route finder API, which is used to work out the paths the enemies follow. Once you’ve picked a start location, it does a lookup to get the latitude and longitude. It then looks for four routes by adding or subtracting a fixed number from that latitude and longitude (to get a point due north, due east, and so on), and uses Google to find a path between the two.”

Creeps

As the game progresses, more enemies (or ‘creeps’ as he has called them) appear on screen. Barclay found himself battling to keep performance high and timings correct: “One of the biggest challenges – one that still isn’t quite right – was the timing. Firstly, if the page isn’t active, most browsers reduce how often they check if timeouts have reached the end, resulting in creeps moving in bursts rather than moving steadily. I ended up fixing that by pausing the game when the tab loses focus. The detection code was taken from David Walsh’s blog and is in the game credits.

“The other problem was that as you progressed, there were too many things happening, which resulted in the game slowing down a lot. The workaround ended up being to use harder creeps rather than more of them, and making the game incrementally more difficult each level after level 50.”

20. Command and Conquer

Command & Conquer is back, and it’s online, thanks to Aditya Ravi Shankar

This is an amazing example of how powerful today’s tools are. Aditya Ravi Shankar has used them to create an online version of classic real-time strategy game Command and Conquer.

Recreating the original 1995 game was a long and painstaking process, says Shankar. “Every little thing took time – things like selecting single units or multiple units; being able to select by drawing the box from left to right or from right to left; making sure the panning was smooth; figuring out a decent fog of war implementation; allowing for building construction, dependencies (the Power Plant is needed for the Refinery, which is needed for the Factory) and building placement (buildings cannot be constructed on top of other buildings); and depth sorting when drawing so units could move behind buildings and trees.”

It’s only when the development tasks are itemised in this way that you realise just how much work went into the project, including some very complicated logic – making it even more impressive that the entire thing could be achieved using only HTML5 and JavaScript.

21. Peanut Gallery

Peanut Gallery is a project from the Google Creative Lab

Peanut Gallery is a project from the Google Creative Lab. Valdean Klump, a producer at the Lab, explains the concept. “The Peanut Gallery is a Chrome experiment that lets users add intertitles to silent film clips by talking to their browser,” he says.

“The technology behind it is Google’s Web Speech API, a JavaScript API that lets developers integrate speech recognition into their web apps.” The project does a good job of demonstrating the Web Speech API, which displays live text updates as it tries to understand a human’s speech.

“One of our favourite features of the API is that text updates in real time while you speak,” Klump continues. “For example, if you say ‘European Union’ slowly, you can watch as the API begins by printing ‘your’ or ‘year’ and then corrects it to ‘European Union’. “Another neat feature (for English speakers only at this point), is punctuation. Say ‘question mark’, ‘exclamation point’, ‘comma’, or ‘period’ and the API will insert the correct punctuation for you,” adds Klump.

These examples of JavaScript were originally published in net magazine.

Related articles:

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This post comes from the RSS feed of CreativeBlog, you can find more here!

The post 21 top examples of JavaScript appeared first on Brenda Gilliam.

from Brenda Gilliam http://www.brendagilliam.com/21-top-examples-of-javascript/

CES 2017 Wrap Up

The Consumer Electronics Show has been and gone again. It’s the preview to the year’s technology releases (though not all will make it this year). Of course it’s full of things like new TVs, Virtual Reality and even cars these days, as cars become more like mobile phones and so do their releases.

So here’s a few things that stood out to me during CES 2017.

Panasonic GH5

While a prototype was shown at Photokina back in September 2016, CES 2017 became the platform to launch the full product. The Panasonic GH5 is the latest in a long line of highly popular Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras. I have had two cameras for many years now, the Sony HVR Z7 (which is what The Geeklee videos are shot on) and the Canon 7D. The Z7 isn’t overly portable, and unfortunately about a year ago I discovered dead pixels on my 7D. So I’ve been on the search for a nice portable camera for video and stills. I assumed I’d probably just get another Canon body and use my old lenses, but every camera shop I went to was raving on about Micro Four Thirds cameras by Panasonic and Olympus (perhaps there’s some commission involved). The general consensus was that the big brands like Canon and Nikon were dinosaurs and had failed to jump on the mirrorless bandwagon, so now it’s all about Sony, Panasonic, Olympus and Fuji. I debated it, and was reluctant for change. But after playing around with various cameras in store (including the GH5) I’m now swung to the concept of getting a GH5 and ditching Canon.

So what’s so great about the Panasonic GH5? It’s a very video orientated camera. Well it’s the first of it’s kind to do 4K at 60fps. It can also record 4:2:2 10 bit internally, which is technical stuff well above my paygrade, but is something that helps out colour graders and people doing green screen. This feature is also unheard of at this level of camera. It now has optical image stabilisation in the camera body, which means if your lens doesn’t have OIS, you will now get some stabilization, and if you combine the GH5 with one of their new OIS lenses, you will get Dual image stabilization, as the lens and camera will work together to make your video very smooth. It continues to have both a mic input and headphone port, both great features for sound, but also a new audio adapter you purchase separately that sits in the hot shoe and allows you to connect two mics via XLR connections and have greater control over the audio. Also it continues to be one of the few SLR like cameras to have a flip out screen rather than those rather pointless sliding screens that most cameras around this price point have.

For photo peoples there’s an upgrade in the sensor to 20 megapixels and a new “6K” photo mode, which feels kinda misleading as it makes it sound like you can shoot 6K video, and you kinda can, but it’s for 30 frames burst mode for the purpose of picking 18 megapixel stills out of it, which would be great for capture nice shots of fast moving or erratic subjects. This all comes in a price point of $3,000 AUD retail or about $4,000 AUD retail with a  12-60 Leica F2.8-F4 lens or 12 – 35 F2.8 constant Panasonic lens. It’s not a cheap camera, but it definitely seems like the best value camera at it’s price point. I know I want it. Now it’s just a decision whether to drop the cash or not.

 Razor’s Project Valerie laptop

Whether you’ll want it or can afford it or not is one thing, but it’s undeniable that Razor’s Project Valerie concept laptop is pretty impressive. What’s so special about it? Well it’s got not just 1, but 3x 4K screens. The screen will supposedly automatically deploy by pressing a button or software command. There’s not much in the way of specs that can be found, but it has a GTX 1080 gpu. Most current graphics card would be just getting by with just one 4K screen. Trying to run 3x 4K screens on a laptop, I feel would struggle in 4K (well 12K considering the 3 screens), without frame rate drops or low graphics settings. I imagine most games would actually be run in 1080p on each screen instead for a smooth experience.

Where 4K may come in handy though, and I think where the real market may be is for multimedia production. Whether you be doing audio or video production, or even graphics and photography, the concept of having 3x 4K screens would be massive boon to semi portable productivity. I do say “semi portable”, because this thing weighs 5.4kg, which for those whom are playing at home, is almost 4 times the weight of the Macbook Pro 15. Razor’s website shows Project Valerie’s thickness is comparable to a generic 17” gaming laptop, so for those used “desktop replacement” style laptops, the size and weight are less of an issue.

Despite Apple trying to promote things like the iPad Pro in their self proclaimed “Post-PC” world, this is truly a desktop replacement and could possibly be a bit of a game changer. Still whether the screens the turn out to be a flimsy hazard (I feel like the side screens could be damaged easily), if this turns out the be reasonable price or not (I’m expecting around $5,000AUD), or if this even comes out at all (this is a concept after all), it’s great to see Razor pushing the envelope and remaining one of the best laptop manufacturers out there, along with Microsoft and Apple. So much so that this concept laptop actually got stolen in what Razor are calling “industrial espionage”. So if you’re walking around happen to find a 3 screen laptop lying around, give Razor a call. You might end up with a $25,000USD reward.

 Faraday Future’s FF91 Electric Car

Faraday Future is a relatively new electric car company that disappointed many when it revealed it’s awesome looking, but unrealistic batmobile style electric concept car last year at CES 2016. Not to be to deterred with all the bad press it got, Faraday pushed on and headed back to reveal it’s actual first production electric car, the FF91. It’s an SUV, autonomous and is slightly faster 0-60/100 than the current Tesla Model S. Still despite all it’s impressive stats, Faraday, much like last year’s CES presentation, continue to shoot itself in the foot because it’s own ego. It so desperately wants to beat Tesla. It so desperately wants to be like Apple. And it shows in their presentations, which once again failed with various awkward moments. The worst of which was a live demonstration of self parking on stage, which failed to work, which lead to the senior vice president of R&D calling the car “lazy tonight”. Faraday have cut this moment out of both the full presentation video and the highlight reel on their official youtube channel.

Look, I want Faraday Future to succeed. I want all electric car companies to succeed because we desperately need electric cars to take over our roads. Tesla can’t do it by themselves, hence why they released their patents. But Faraday really need to step back, stop trying to be like or beat other companies, forget the hype and just get on with delivering cars people want. The fact it can be faster than a Tesla Model S is great and all but in the real world it doesn’t really mean much, shaving .2 of a second off the acceleration. Tesla used it’s acceleration stats as a way to prove electric cars can be as impressive as petrol based ones. That’s already been proven now. Faraday instead are just trying to show they can be faster than Tesla. Which is kinda pointless, because by the time Faraday release the FF91, the Tesla Model S (and maybe X and 3 as well) will likely be faster with an annual battery and software upgrade they seem to do. And the Time achieved by the FF91 was with a stripped out interior, which means it’s unlikely the production model with the extra weight of the full interior will achieve that number anyways. In fact Elon Musk already claiming that with the latest software update the Tesla Model S P100 can probably beat that figure. If you want to really impress people, produce a cheap affordable electric car with good range. That’s what most people interested in electric cars are waiting for.

Still if the FF91 interests, you can now reserve one for $5,000USD, at the risk of not knowing what the price will be, as they haven’t yet released the pricing despite opening up reservations. Perhaps though considering the Chinese investment in the company, western countries are perhaps not the real target here, and that the Chinese market is the one they are truly aiming for. And it might work. It’s a huge market, with a lot rich people, a growing middle class, and a massive need for electric cars due their rampant pollution problem. If Faraday can convince Chinese car buyers to purchase their cars over Tesla, maybe there is a “Future” for them yet.

 TPCast wireless adapter for HTC Vive VR headset

There had been rumours that HTC might already be releasing a second Vive Virtural Reality headset at CES 2017, that would be wireless. Well it turned out to be half true, and it’s probably for the best, in not to annoy early adopters who have invested big dollars into the headset. Instead what was revealed at CES 2017 was a wireless adapter made by TPCast. The adapter sits on top of the headband and means you no longer are tethered to your PC by masses of cords. One of the major criticisms of the HTC Vive was it’s cords, in particular due to it’s reliance on room tracking, the cords could often become a tripping hazard without a cable wrangler by your side. So this is a much needed upgrade. HTC are allowing 3rd party companies to create these wireless adapters instead of HTC doing it themselves, but I don’t doubt when HTC eventually do release a Vive V2.0, that it will have wireless built into the headset.

I have some doubts though. One of the biggest hurdles with VR is latency and frames rates. If these drop too much, it can make people feel sick. I’m interested to see if running things wireless will affect performance. Also, call me a conspiracy theorist but I’m not so keen having wireless devices so close to my brain for extended periods of time. Still, VR was always going to progress in this direction, so there’s unlikely unsubstantiated health concerns like mine are going to stop it. If you are interested in getting the wireless adapter, it will be out Q2 for $249USD.

 Super Retro Boy

Recently someone managed to hack a Famicon (NES) classic into a Gameboy shell. But if you are lazy and are after something a lot more expansive, then you can check out the Super Retro Boy by Retro-bit. Essentially it’s like an advanced version of the original Nintendo Gameboy that can accept Gameboy, Gameboy Colour and Gameboy Advanced cartridges. It will offer 10 hours battery life, and obviously a much better screen than the original handheld consoles. I can attest to the screens of past being terrible after recently trying out my own original Gameboy out, so this could be quite an attractive option for Gameboy collectors who wanna play their classic cartridges without restrictions of the past. It will be out in August for $79.99USD.

 Lego Boost Robots

Lego has been in the robotics game for a while now with it’s Mindstorms series of kits, but now Lego will be releasing a new type of robotics set that will be more accessible (and hopefully more affordable). Call “Boost”, these robots are potentially aimed at really young kids going by the promo photos I’ve seen. They interact with iOS and Andriod mobile apps, and require less complicated coding. The kit will include 840 pieces and will be out in August 2017. Pricing has yet to be announced.

 VW Buzz Electric Van

VW are doing everything they can to claw back their reputation after the dieselgate scandal. While an executive of VW has just been charged for fraud in the US over the incident, at the same time VW continues it’s new electric car assault. Earlier in 2016, at the Paris Motor Show VW unveiled it’s VW I.D concept car. Essentially an electric, autonomous VW Golf with up to 600km range, that is expected be priced at the same price of a diesel Golf. AT CES 2017, it showed off a new electric car concept, the VW Buzz. Also based on the I.D platform, the Buzz is the next generation Kombi many have been waiting for. It’s not the first time we’ve seen an electric Kombi concept. Only last year they revealed the BUDD-E concept. Still, it appears they are committed to releasing something along these alongs, continuing to refine the concept. 

It looks great and I particularly like the flexibility of the interior and impressive range like the I.D hatchback. I would easily be happy with either the Buzz or the original I.D Golf look a like. The problem is the I.D hatchback won’t be out until 2020, and the Buzz will follow after that (I’m guessing 2021). That’s still a long way away, but it’s good to see VW changing it’s direction and aiming to be selling 1 million electric cars by 2025. If I end up cancelling my Model 3 reservation (because I probably can’t afford it, not because it isn’t a great car), then these VWs will definitely be on my radar in a few years time.

Sony E-ink Watch

And finally, the Sony E-ink Watch concept. It’s thinner than a credit card, can change it’s whole design and look, and is just impressive tech overall. I’m not sure if I’d want this particular watch if it ever comes out, but you can definitely see where this thin screen technology could go in a wearable future.

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what do you gain by modding and overclocking? • Eurogamer.net

We’ve looked at the process of overclocking the Nintendo Switch in the past. We know that Nintendo chose to use Nvidia’s Tegra X1 below its stock specification to preserve battery life and to more effectively manage thermals. But once you’ve overclocked a compromised unit, you can’t help but wonder just how much extra performance you can unlock in any given game – and few titles challenge the Switch more than Saber Interactive and CD Projekt RED’s port of The Witcher 3. Adding further spice is that a range of mods have emerged for the Switcher port, meaning that we can actually scale the game along with CPU and GPU clock speeds.

First of all though, let’s be clear. Even without mods, The Witcher 3 is something of a miraculous conversion bearing in mind the limited capabilities of the Switch. Coders of Nintendo’s hybrid have become quite accomplished at scaling down graphics to the Maxwell-based mobile GPU but smart coding has seen the game somehow squeezed into running at a respectable frame-rate on just three available ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores running at a seemingly paltry 1.0GHz. If you own a Switch, we highly recommend this conversion as a handheld experience, though blown up large on your 4K TV, the blur factor in the visuals is just too much. But perhaps with some mods and an overclock, we can actually improve the docked experience? At the very least, perhaps we can get more of an idea of the kind of Witcher experience possible if Nintendo had stuck to Nvidia’s stock CPU and GPU clocks – 1785MHz and 921Mhz respectively.

Before we go on, you should be aware of the dangers and challenges in overclocking Switch hardware. Only select models can be exploited, for starters, and once you start delving into areas of the Horizon OS and its software that you have no business meddling with, Nintendo is will within its rights to ban your console from access to its online services. Also worth mentioning is that overclocking obviously draws extra power and creates extra heat that the Switch may have trouble dissipating. I mean, we are talking about an extra 75 per cent of CPU power paired with a 20 point upclock on the graphics core.

Modding The Witcher 3 on Switch – and overclocking the system to the max. There are some impressive results here.

My first test was all about using a mod to remove the 30fps frame-rate cap and to run the game at stock clocks and with the full-blast OC engaged. In addition to removing the cap, further mods can engage the game’s internal fps counter and reveal the exact resolution employed by the DRS system. It’s fascinating stuff, showing just how dynamic the dynamic resolution system truly is and how rarely the stock Switch hits native 720p. More often than not, in docked mode, we’re lurking at 548p in places like Crookback Bog or 636p in the early Griffin battle. Resolution is always in flux, showing just how much stress the GPU is put through.

With access to these stats, we can see just how crucial dynamic resolution scaling is – it’s the key to the mostly decent performance we see in the final game. However, DRS is all about scaling load for the GPU and doing something similar for the CPU is a lot more challenging. That’s why visiting Novigrad – our old benchmarking stomping ground – can cause real performance issues. The sheer volume of NPCs (matching PS4 and Xbox One) is an challenge for a tri-core 1GHz mobile CPU – a factor in the game dropping to 25fps. Changing the resolution won’t do anything; this is a fundamental aspect of the game’s design that can’t be swapped out or changed. The only way around these drops is to overclock the system, something we couldn’t wait to try out.

Performance gains via the unlocked frame-rate are fairly minimal, but what you do get is the DRS system tapping into the extra GPU power to interesting effect. Resolution is higher across the board, to the point where in one extraordinary scenario, pixel count increased by 45 per cent. Elsewhere, while performance gains are limited, they are still there – anything up to 4fps. It’s still an upgrade, but as you might expect, the much higher gain in CPU clocks via the OC yields more impressive results with the Novigrad market run now delivering an 8fps advantage. Not surprisingly, running the Switch flat-out like this sees the fan ratchet up to a degree I’ve never seen before – you can’t help but worry a little about the extra loud fan speeds and the extra heat the system must be kicking out.

The overclock solves one big problem: sub-30fps drops in CPU-bottlenecked environments. However, the extra power can also be deployed elsewhere via the various mods available online, in order to tackle other challenges the stock Switch has to contend with. The DRS system can be disabled completely, locking the output to native 720p (I even tried pushing higher than this, but the game tops out at this pixel count). Regardless, what you get is a clear improvement in image quality. Especially in the stress points where the res would buckle to its lowest, we get a huge gulf in clarity all round. The zoomer images directly below give some idea of the improvement but seeing it in motion is something else.

Is the overclock providing a free lunch then – a better experience with no drawbacks? Well, the improvement is palpable but it does come at a cost. Regardless of the system clock speeds, The Witcher 3 is a challenging game built around dynamic resolution for a reason – it’s really heavy on effects and the system really does need some level of scalability in its pixel-pushing. In most cases it’s fine, but honestly, forcing the max pixel count is a recipe for disaster if you want to hold 30fps in spots like Crookback Bog. Frame-rate can drop to the low 20s at that point, a performance level lower than the stock experience.

Getting the game to render at 720p is an interesting experiment but there are more direct ways to boost visual settings. Thanks to an enhanced settings mod, you can actually play with a more fleshed-out graphics options menu. This is still work in progress and most of the toggles you’d find on PC don’t work much – or at all – on Switch. The textures, for example, are locked in place at one setting since there aren’t better assets present on the cartridge or in the download. What this enhanced settings mod does add are toggles for foliage visibility, light shafts, anti-aliasing, water quality, depth of field, sharpening, and bloom. That’s on top of the existing motion blur options, included out of the box by the developers. Admittedly, most of these are post-process effects with only a fractional impact on performance – but the foliage setting is extremely powerful. It aims to fix one of the issues I had with the game: the level of pop-in.

Comparing Switch’s stock clocks against the overclock shows CPU-constrained areas like Novigrad benefit most – in this case running up to 8fps faster.

You get four presets, from low to ultra, though Switch runs at the high setting by default and so the scope for improvement isn’t huge. Even so, the jump from low to medium shows how it affects grass tuft density on the ground, as well as the rendering of trees on the horizon. Moving to ultra fills out the scene with more foliage over the base game and you can see a little more detail added across the board. Perhaps not surprisingly, this most dramatic of modded settings has the highest impact on performance. Going from low to ultra, you can lose around 3-4fps on average – so this is not a choice to take lightly. Still, it’s fascinating to see the game being tuned like this. The mod is only adding an option, the actual code for scaling this setting is seemingly baked into the game itself – it’s just that the developers don’t use it.

Another tweak that makes a tangible change is the sharpening filter. It’s popular in the modding community and the performance hit is minimal, really. High contrast points are boosted when enabled, it gives the impression of a sharper image at 720p – something you’ll see on the comparison images on this page. There’s more shimmer as a result but it’s a neat option to have nonetheless. The anti-aliasing toggle is there too if you want to go all the way – it’s not recommended, but it is an option if you want to see the game ‘raw’.

There are some interesting effects here but fundamentally, the Switch version has compromises that cannot be mitigated with existing mods. While the original, less compressed audio can be modded back in, textures will always be equivalent to the PC’s minimum – the Switch doesn’t have the memory to deliver much more. CPU optimisations like half-rate animation on distant NPCs are also hard-coded in. However, we do have some level of scalability in terms of meddling with the DRS system, tweaking visual settings and of course, ramping up CPU and GPU clock speeds. All of which raises the question: could we get The Witcher 3 running at 60fps?

This seems impossible from the outset given that 30fps is enough of a challenge but with an overclock in place we are closer than you might think. Dropping the post-process effects settings doesn’t help much but the foliage draw mod definitely does boost performance, so I ran that at the low settings. DRS is tweaked to a nigh-on constant 832×468 with only minor fluctuations. The results are obviously blurry to the extreme, the lowest point the DRS can drop to while docked. From here we have our best shot at hitting a full 60Hz refresh.

You can see the results in the embedded video. The White Orchard area is the most impressive showcase for how close it gets: as The Witcher 3 operates mostly between 55-60fps. Yes, it looks somewhat plain and barren, but it’s still remarkable how smooth the game suddenly becomes. Where the experience starts to unravel is in later, more challenging areas. The outskirts of Novigrad run between 45-60fps but even with the fluctuation it still feels better to play than the regular setup.

All of this is predicated on the game being GPU-bound and using the lower resolution as a crutch to get a better frame-rate. It’s a flawed approach across the whole game when you factor in big towns and cities, where the CPU time is the bottleneck. At lowest we’re back down to 30fps anyway in the busiest areas of Novigrad, and likewise for the village in the White Orchard. Even with max horsepower via overclocking, the Switch just can’t pull this off – but the fact we’re getting results like this at all is quite astonishing. After all, there was a time where even the concept of The Witcher 3 running on the system at all seemed almost ludicrous.

This isn’t the first time we’ve overclocked the Switch – take a look at some of our results across a range of challenging titles.

And as much as we pushed the Switch’s clocks to the limits, pushing resolution, frame-rate and visual features to the max, perhaps the biggest takeaway from our experiments here is just how solid the port running on standard hardware actually is, especially in handheld mode where the blurry image quality isn’t quite as impactful on the experience. The core fundamentals are there – the value of the mods is actually fairly limited and perhaps the biggest win comes from how the OC augments the existing tech via improved performance and noticeably higher resolution.

All of which brings us to the continued stories about a mooted Switch Pro – a unit Nintendo has categorically ruled out for 2020. Even without next-gen silicon, the latest Mariko chip in the latest Switch kit is specced to push max GPU clocks to over 1.2GHz – it’s just that Nintendo has chosen not to access this extra performance, opting for improved battery life instead. The option is there for an improved model though, maybe even a micro console – and our experiments with The Witcher 3 prove two things. First of all, extra power can benefit existing games with no extra development effort required from the developer. Secondly, overclocking the Tegra doesn’t seem to cause any compatibility or stability problems – we’ve tested a range of games with no problems. Whether any of our conclusions will ever translate into an actual official product though remains to be seen.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/what-do-you-gain-by-modding-and-overclocking-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-do-you-gain-by-modding-and-overclocking-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Welcome to the Meganoid(2017) post-mortem. This post-mortem goes into the details on the Meganoid figures and stats. Without context the stats are pretty much silly numbers, so please make sure to read all of this because there is more to the numbers than you might think.

So I'll keep this short, if you want to learn more about who I am, please check out my techblog and website. I've been a full-time (indie) developer since 2004. Mostly known for mobile games, but since 2015 also branching to PC games and even some consoles releases here and there (PS Vita and 3DS).  I've never had hit games that made me millions, but I have been doing very decent for many years releasing games that have found a growing fan-base in a niche area.  My biggest titles include the Gunslugs and Heroes of Loot series of games and Space Grunts.

The original Meganoid was released in 2010 on Android and iOS and was a very hard platformer with short levels that sometimes had you screaming if you didn't manage to reach the finish. For me it was a turning point in my games as I finally decided to just build games like that since those are the games I love the most. Luckily I found a niche that works for me and an audience that has been growing alongside me and my games. It also managed to reach close to a million downloads since.

Meganoid(2017) is a reboot of the franchise lifts a lot on the designs behind Spelunky, while still maintaining the difficulty of the original Meganoid game. I named it a "love child of Spelunky and Meat-boy in space", which is a very clear description of what the game is. It's not extremely original, but I'll get to that later on!

Oh, the game was also created in "just" two months, but I'll also get back to that if you keep reading..

So before Meganoid I was working on a game called Ashworld, which is a huge project for a one-man development team (which I am) and it's also an open-world game, a genre that I personally have no experience with because I often quit those games within a few hours of play-time.  Simply put: Ashworld is a huge challenge for me, and I have been working on it since June 2016.

Seeing as my games are actually my livelihood, money needs to come in on a semi-frequent basis. My business is still running fairly well, I have a huge back-log of games and they are all still bringing in money on a monthly base, but to keep it all running I do have some rules on how long game-projects can take.  Ashworld is breaking those rules due to a challenging development phase where I've been learning open-world design and also searching where the actual fun in the game-design is. So the game isn't done, and still needs a few months of work.

Enter the stage: Meganoid.

In January I decided to just do some prototyping with the hopes that I would end up with something playable that could be extended into a game. For this to work, I needed a clear design idea and direction. A game that I could almost create on automatic-mode.

This "automatic-mode" does need some nuance here, I wrote a blog about it a few weeks ago and I think it painted a wrong picture. Some comments and replies I got thrown at me were along the line of "a quick money grab". My bad on writing the article and not being clear about things, so here's to rectifying it:

The game was made in "just 2 months; and 13 years of experience".

The key part being those 13 years experience, factual there are a lot more years of experience, but the 13 years is how long I've been doing this commercially. Meganoid at it's core is a platformer with rogue-like mechanics. I've created close to 60 commercial platform games, and I've been doing rogue-like elements in my last 5-6 games. I know what to expect code-wise, and I know how to program those things without having to think about it.

To put it in some more perspective, my game Heroes of Loot 2 is a huge RPG-adventure/twin-stick shooter, and it was made in little over 4 months. So I normally work really fast and very effective.

Now think what you like about the short-development cycle, I don't plan to change your mind about it, but from a business point of view: this made sense and still delivers a quality game.

To have this game make some profit I needed it to take just a couple of months work so it would be easier to recoup on the costs AND make money on the game.

The development-cycle was pretty short, but since I had some interesting stuff pretty early on I actually showed some screenshots and gifs in the first week of development on twitter,facebook,instagram and a couple of forums. Some of this got picked up pretty early by mobile-game sites, and Toucharcade showed the first couple of video's I released in the weeks after.

I started using reddit a bit more, and finally managed to post something there without it being taken down (actually on second try, the first did get taken down because I didn't disclose that the "pre-order discounts" was on a game I made, which obviously makes a big difference../sarcasm).

The two or so weeks before the launch I already had various mobile sites mailing me for some promocodes, which is the up-side of being "known" in a market. In contrast to that there is the PC scene, where I'm basically unknown and nobody talks about my games.

The launch week I started looking at youtube streamers for the PC version, so I basically searched for big youtubers that covered games like: Spelunky, Meat boy, and a few other more recent pixel-art indie games that fit the same category as Meganoid.

I mailed all of them, close to a 100, which at least one steam-key included (for some group-youtubers I included up to 5 keys) and this all resulted in an awesome 0 streams.  I did a follow up email to a large portion of them a week later, and this resulted in 1 Streamer playing it,  yay results!

It's still possible some streamers will pick up the game later, having full inboxes, managers that handle emails slowly, or just large backlogs of video's. But I don't hold my breath for any of it.  Same goes for PC game-site reviews, so even tho I did everything "right" it basically ended up with fairly little returns on it.  The emails were short, to the point, showed a GIF of the game, bullet points, youtube trailer, quick-links and a steam-key included with a link to the website/presskit for more info. All according to the average marketing-advise.

Basically, in my opinion and experience, you need to know people to get things done. But reaching out never hurts and is also the way to get to know more people, so yeah.

Okay, okay! that's what you guys came for, I get it!

Google Play's "Best new seller" list charting

Let me first start with this, Meganoid was so far:

Featured on App-store under "New games we loved" - worldwide

Featured on Google Play "Early Access"

Featured on Google Play "New and Updated"

Top-charted (top 25) in Google Play "Best new sellers" list

Game of the Week - on TouchArcade

"Best games of the week for iOS and Android"  - Pocketgamer

Now, back to reality, for those who don't know, making money on games is HARD, on any given day there are 100-500 games released on various platforms. That's EVERY DAY! Standing out from those games is extremely hard, most games you will never see and they get like 5-10 downloads (depending on how many friends the developer has).

With my experience of doing this business for a long time, I set a fairly low but do-able goal for Meganoid: $6500 during the launch-period. I know it's a not a huge game, and it had fairly short marketing-visibility before release due to the fast development cycle.

For me a launch-period is the first month or so after releasing it. My goals is usually to make 80%-100%  of the development costs back in this first period. I calculate development costs fairly rough by multiplying each development-month with $2000 and then add any outsourced work costs. Since I do code+design+game graphics that often leaves out-source costs to music and high-res marketing art.

The $2000 is very low-end of what my cost-of-living is each month (in the Netherlands, with mortgage, girlfriend and pets). It doesn't take into account taxes and extra cash-flow for "the future". But we're talking about launch-period here, so a game will live on for a few more years and with future sales and discounts you can often double the money a game made on launch.

So for this game I had 2 months of work, that's $4000 and since there was such a short dev-cycle and I used ambient sounds from my sound-libraries, there was no music cost and just a few hundred dollars for the awesome marketing art. So let's round it to $4500.

Now the point is to get extra cashflow to cover the longer development-cycle of Ashworld and we get to a $6500 minimum revenue that I was aiming for with Meganoid.  Again this is all launch-period revenue, because obviously it's a low amount especially if Ashworld development still needs 2 or 3 months time. So I'll get to that in a few paragraphs below.

I released Meganoid on March 30 on iOS, Android and PC (steam/humble/itch, windows/osx/linux) and we're now at three weeks into the release and currently the revenue is just a little shy of the target at $6200. Which is not bad at all!

So let's dig into this $6200 launch-period amount. Where did most of it come from, and why! The biggest bulk of this comes from the iOS version, actually close to 50% of it: $3580.  On iOS the game was priced $4.99 with a launch-discount the first week making the game $3.99. Meganoid was made Game of the week at Toucharcade which most certainly helped, one of the weeks best games for iOS and Android on Pocketgamer, but sadly it had no "games we play" feature for the first weekend.

For some reason the game only showed up in the "Games we play" on Monday/Tuesday for the USA App-store, at which point it spiked to slightly below the launch spike so effectively doubling the sales in the 3/4 days it had that front page feature.  I'm pretty sure it would have done better if it did have that feature in the first-weekend (during the sale) but those things are pretty much out of my control and I'm glad it eventually did get a feature after-all (something I kind had planned for in setting my revenue targets).

Apple loved it - all over the world!

Second biggest seller was Android, now this was done a little different. I tried some beta stages on Android and this put my game into "Early Access" on Google Play a week before the launch at a $2.99 price. This price was mostly because I believe that the brave people who try out a beta shouldn't pay full price.  The game got a nice Google feature in their "Early Access" list, which only has about 20 games listed, so that's a pretty good list to be in.

The possible down-side of this is that a lot of people don't seem to be clear of understanding what "Early access" means on Google Play, so there was a lot more buying going on than I had planned for, and that means I was pushing updates daily to work out some "obviously-beta" features. Early-access users can't leave reviews during that phase, so that might have been a positive thing, the down-side of that is that many people forget to leave a review once the game was released.. so not as many reviews as I normally have during the launch-period. Not sure if I would do that again on Android, but it's been an interesting experiment.

Finally we come to the PC revenue, in total that's $900 which is split over Steam, Itch and Humble. This is also my biggest pain-in-the-butt, obviously my games still don't make much waves amongst PC gamers. Especially since about 50% of that money comes through Itch.io where I ran a pre-order with 20% discount in the two weeks leading up to the launch. So these buyers are mostly people from my own social-circles and mailing-lists, people who in many cases also buy the mobile version and in a lot of cases people who tipped up to $10 (even tho the pre-order price was $3.99!)  (THANKS!).

The humble-store sales were about 10% of that, so the rest is up to you to calculate :p

Side note:  Besides this launch-period revenue, there is also the added advantage of extra money made on back-log sales. New gamers that see Meganoid will check out my other games and in some cases end up buying a few more of my games. On top of that a lot of subscriptions to my social-circles and mailing list have happened during and after the development of Meganoid, which are all potentially future fans of my next games.

Another important thing to read about, how are the ratings? Because let's face it, making a game in two months isn't interesting if it's a crappy game. On iOS the game has a strong 4/5 star rating from gamers, and on Android it's at 4.8/5 star rating. I'd say those are pretty good ratings (most of my games are around the 4.0 - 4.5 ratings)

On Steam there are only about 4 ratings of which only 2 ratings count since they bought the game on Steam and not through my website/Itch.io or Humble. But I think "all of them" are fairly positive!

Game-site wise, well that's a mixed bag of thingies. As mentioned before, the game was made "game of the week" on Toucharcade, and it was part of the "best games for iOS and Android" that week on Pocketgamer. On the other side Toucharcade's review gave it just a 3.5/5 rating, and Pocketgamer managed to give it a 7/10.  So that's the same two websites already making for mixed-reviews.  Not sure what to think about it, and it's mostly the reason I focus on the average user-rating on app-stores since those people play the game even after a review.

PC game sites pretty much ignored the game completely, except for a few news-posts on one or two sites. But the whole game-review-site business is something for another topic. In short, those sites only talk about your game if people are already talking about your game, or if there's something controversial to be found, because that brings in readers and thus advertising-money.

Now there's always a part in a post mortem where people go say things that went right or wrong and how things could have gone different. BUT!  Meganoid was just as much an experiment as it was a way to earn some extra cash.

For one, the price: $4.99. For a PC game that's a fairly cheap price-point, and it was something I wanted to try out. Normally my newly released PC games go between $7-$10 in the launch period because I honestly think that's what my games are worth for the amount of playtime and enjoyment you get. However, a game like Meganoid is perfect to try out new stuff and I've been wondering if maybe my games would sell better at $4.99.  Haven't really compared it yet with my previous games, but my gut-feeling says I sell about as much copies at this price as I do at a more normal price of $7.99.

On mobile the $4.99 is actually on the high-end of things! More experimenting, normally I'm at max at $3.99 and often in the launch week it's at $2.99. I do believe this game could have done better at a $3.99 or $2.99. Possibly sold much more copies with the result being more revenue. Some people hinted I should have lowered the price when I got the iOS feature, but my golden rule is to not punish the instant-buying fans, which I would have done had I suddenly lowered the price within a week of it's release.

In general the gamers liked the game, which is the most important thing. One guy complained that he couldn't get past the first level so it was way to hard, another guy complained that the sound-effects sounded generic (he was a sound-designer offering to do sound effects.. that's business!). One mobile-game reviewer had a lot of problems with the touch-controls, which is ironic for a mobile-game reviewer in my opinion.

I've been pushing regular updates to Meganoid since the release, and I still have one bigger update planned. After that it will mostly complete the work on this game minus any required fixes or OS-updates.

I never create games as a service, all my games receive two or three bigger updates and then I move on. That's my business-model and that's how I stay in business.

As for the game itself, it now becomes a "back-log game". This means I'll be able to do sales and discounts with the game in the next few years. It's also possible to perhaps get it ported and released on consoles or other gadgets, and there are alternate sales-routes the game can take on platforms like Android or PC (different markets, bundles, etc).

On top of that the game engine is fairly straight-forward and easy to repurpose. So it could be possible to re-use the game, create a new game-world and content for it and release like a $1.99 game with it (in fact I already have a funny viking-style game running on the same engine, so who knows).

All those back-log options should be able to at-least  double the game's revenue within a year, so let's say the game does $10.000 in total by March 2018. Set against the 2 month development cycle (and 13 years experience!) that's not a bad deal.

For now I got some breathing room again for working on Ashworld, so follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to stay updated on that one!

(Grab Meganoid here for Windows,MacOS, Linux, iOS or Android)