Screw the skins, but I have a few friends that drag me in to fortnite from time to time and having the Mega Buster as a weapon is really fun.

The lemons are slow, but pack a punch.

I think the MChat is going to be just as good as it has been for the last decade.

I'm sorry to hear it Rez. Over a month late, but I hope you are getting by ok and that the insurance agents have met Nibbles and taken a trip to the mauling tent.

I was actually really impressed with it. The band was entirely on point, the speed runner only got accidentally hit maybe thrice, and for a live show the game had to be a modded version with custom sound track queueing. I believe it was a modded cart still running on a SNES or equivalent FPGA as all the slowdowns were accurate. They also threw in a few easter eggs (sprite swap, special text boxes with meta commentary or jokes, etc...).

The band played all the music through the first 3 levels, then skipped the 'Weapon get" and "Stage Select" music while the original BGM played after that, this went hand in hand with the pace picking up. Sometimes for boss battles they would play other boss tunes, and on longer levels they would weave in other famous tracks, like MM2 Wily stage 1.

At the end, there was a custom in game credits roll for the band, managers, audio guys, and crew.

I'd say my extensive knowledge of the game and 'purist' attitude towards speed running spoiled the show a little once I realized it was a custom ROM, and it wasn't any% or 100%. Grabbed the easy hearts, maybe 2 sub tanks, and all upgrades before Sigma. By the end and a couple drinks I was just vibing and enjoying the music in a crowd of nerds in a small and very loud venue.

Apparently last year they did Super Mario World, and make Portland a yearly stop. Depending on what game they accompany next year, I'd definitely go again. The whole show was maybe 1:20 from opening to credits, which was just in time for people to get bored of boss music.


Musically, I was pumped up the whole time. Loud drums with great fills during transitions, 2 lead guitars that often battled back and forth, and a bassist who played the bass junk funky and fun enough that it was notable without overshadowing the core guitar melodies.

If they're near you, it's well worth the sub-$50 tickets!

I hate when I swing through and forget to check if I'm logged in and it seems dead.

Then I log in and it's dead.

EXCEPT TODAY, MY BEAUTIES! Friggin half the board is flapping (after a month of life)

Based on the footage I've seen, they just have the pedals and experience to nail it in the moment.

I think the SNES (or whatever) has BGM off, and sound effects play full volume alongside the live music. Also, they integrate classic MegaMan and some later X stuff into appropriate levels at transition points. Storm eagle is great, but they've play X2 Hunter stage 1 after getting the helmet upgrade.

I'm gonna take a break from Alan Wake 2 (which I've been working on for over a year, on and off) this week and just blast through the first 3 games in the X collection in preparation for this show.

I love the Super Guitar Bros cover of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac with Dan Avidan.

Even if it was total amateurs, it's worth $30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N06-HNJzu0A

I did a 5 hour drive to see Not Another D&D Podcast in NYC at Radio City Music Hall last month, and this might be the nerdiest show I've ever been to.

Got tickets in Portland, Maine for the 19th (about 45 minutes South of me). Pretty ding dang jazzed, flier attached.

I was big into Game Grumps a decade ago (and catch some of their viral stuff lately), so I know Super Guitar Bros through their albums with Dan Avidan/Ninja Sex Party.

Live accompaniment to a MMX speedrunner is gonna be silly and just so refreshing for a live show.

Is the show only going to be an hour? My PB is under an hour for 100%. I hope they have SFX on, instead of muted. I also hope they play on original hardware, or FPGA equivalent.

well if he really bought the farm than at least he went out before the dawning of "X video game soundtrack done in Y style" AI garbage

Well, thank god I'm dealing with the opposite of THAT. Check out my new post in the X games board for some wonderful news.

We can just hit the report button on everything.

Surely that will summon him.

I clicked and got a lot of Georgia O'Keefe paintings....

20 years.

Over half my life on this forum. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Except maybe a new X game.

Sick.

Maybe we have an internal design contest then submit our best?

"The Robot Master Design Contest for Mega Man: Dual Override is now open!
We're looking for designs of a Robot Master who has a right arm with immense suction powers!
Will your design be the one to face Mega Man in the game!?
Draw, Mega Man fans, for everlasting peace!"

https://www.capcom-games.com/megaman/do/en-us/contest/


Immense suction powers.

I like a Robot Master with a suction engine that fills a giant air bladder on their back which uses the air to play the bagpipes. The bag will deflate while shooting homing musical note attacks, or shockwaves. MegaMan can be sucked into the bagpipe bladder and temporarily pop it when escaping. The weakness would either pop the bag with every hit or gum up the sucker.

Call it PipeMan, or BagMan. Or ScotsMan.

I didn't mean to shush that long, I think they're gone and


 ITS ON, YA WIBBLEDY SQIBBLEDY PLANTY PUNK

Get yer britches ready, if you want this thread back, youz gonna have to foight me for it!

Mate shush, the #####ing rozzers are 'ere.

We ain't don nuthin. I ain't got no knoife. I am rightly right side up.

My dead cat does that.

Please expound upon this terrifying statement.

Roight, youv made me flippy dippy, im fixin to get out moy knoife.

Ooof you flipped me.

(I can't seem to edit my avatar)

We ain't seen a mod round these parts in 7 days.

If you turn MMM upside down you get the WWW.

Thank you, guys. This place means a lot and I'm happy to share pictures on my son with you.

He's been an easy baby until teething. Now we are in the most sleepless hell.

The first time he pulled himself to standing was when I was sleeping on the floor of the nursery, terrifying. See attached.

See attached.

Lots of doo doo.

Mountains.

I was tempted to wait 12 days to keep the pattern going.

I've got the most posts in this thread, so  I  have squatter's rights now.

Eat doo doo Snare.

If he gets a handheld of any kind, it'll have Mega Man. I intend to raise the boy on PC, though. We will see how the market looks in 4-5 years. Could probably get him a steam deck for $100 by then.

I'm a dad now. This is my first time posting my son on a 'public' internet place, but I figured its safe enough to share with y'all.

Crap. You took it.

Speaking of physical releases good job touching grass John. Don't let Rez bully you, they put him in covid lockdown back in 1920.



Dodgeball is what I'm playing. Also looking to learn to play ambidextrously.

I love dodgeball, and kickball. Was in a kickball league for a summer about 10 years ago.

Throwing lefty is so dang hard. I can disc golf lefty (mostly) but throwing a ball smoothly is TOUGH. Every time I feel super rigid and even if I get distance/power it is all arm snap, not form.

What changed in Strange 2? Wanda bad now. Wanda dead? Bad Stranges? Fight with Music! Strange has the worst CGI third eye and a new lady pal.

I missed that he wasn't even sorcerer supreme any more and that it was Wong now. I spent the whole movie wondering why they made a film about a weaker and lesser alternate universe Dr. Strange, hoping we would encounter the prime MCU one. Whoops, they nerfed the MCU one (charismatically, mentally and magically) and it was him all along. I left confused and disappointed.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a dumb popcorn movie, with a lot of low brow comedy, but it weaves that amongst good (to great) acting, fun R-rated violence (especially in the first third), insane and unexpected cameos for some beloved edge characters, and an overall wholesome(?) story.

I appreciate the insights, Mike. "As far as I understand" is definitely rooted in my experiences in Maine, one of the least diverse, and (I believe) it is the least black state in the continental 48. I'm also in the more liberal part of the state, where every corporate culture I've been in has been extremely pro-diversity. I guess I wasn't thinking about it from the point of view of more diverse and (often) oppressive areas, and I guess I didn't give it as much attention as it didn't relate to my experiences at all, and wasn't what I thought I'd get from a Marvel show. It's been years since I watched it, but thinking back on it a bit more it holds a bit more weight than I thought.

I also agree that Dr. Strange 2 was doodoo and character murder for Wanda. Strange 1 was middle of the road for MCU at the time, but at least it played a part in the episodic MCU leading up to Infinity/Endgame. Strange 2 was especially bad because, like, what's the payoff? Who cares about the next things. They dropped the ball hard. Deadpool 3 gets right up in their face with it (literally in Jon Favreau's face).

I think Loki and Wandavision were pretty fine shows and showed a promising future.

Falcon and Winter Soldier was like a weird slice of life show for half of it that made me wish it was half as long. I understand what they were going for, but how much can an Avenger talk about a mortgage and a boat? It would fit in the 80's or 90's, but we've had a black president. As far as I understand, that kind of corporate racism is anachronistic for a show taking place in the 2020s.

She-Hulk was a #####in mess though, and turned me off of all of it. Haven't been into anything since that.

I thought it was good, dumb fun, which is all I expect from a Deadpool movie.  There have been some things in all 3 I didn't enjoy as much as other parts so overall they're all about on par with each other for me, and I like them.

I cried watching Deadpool 2. Didn't cry for 3. not as good, but still fun enough. If you didn't watch Loki, you're gonna be lost as ##### on TVA stuff.

See attached.

MOSTLY though, I've been playing disc golf. The local course has stadium lights over the short 9 hole course on weeknights and I've been competing at a semi-professional level. With the shoulder injuries I've had, I've had to learn to play ambidextrously and last night I got my first left handed ace (hole in one).

When I say local course, it's 5 minutes away, and is the only course with lights in the state, and has 3 of the top 100 18 hole courses in the USA on it's premises. Arguably the fanciest disc golf place in the state. Pretty friggin cool to be local to, and had no impact on where we bought our house. *cough*

Balatro.

I see cards in my minds eye, I see cards in my sleep

I put some time in on the demo. Haven't had time for the full release but next time I'm on the road and need something my laptop can play? I'm all about it.

Still working through Baldurs gate 3 when I can, and messing with The Finals besides. Fun ftp shooter. Very clean, great environmental destruction, and the maps change constantly, with multiple variants of each. Simple class assignment (small/medium/large characters) makes it a great game to just drop in and frig around in. Also completely objective teeam based with 3-4 teams of 3 competing.

Apart from Tetris 99 and Switch Sports, I don't actually use my switch. I got one of the original switch runs that can be modded/hacked for a good deal on ebay, and I own TOTK on cart. I just ripped the whole shebang onto my PC because I refuse to play a AAA open world high end RPG at 720p 30fps. I've got TOTK running pretty flawlessly at 4k 60fps on my PC. Some areas have a dip, and there are a few weird issues, but overall it's such a better experience. On the switch itself, the occasional drops to sub 20fps were what I would call unplayable. If the new switch can use DLSS to keep framerates high, I'm all about it.

Thankfully, some of the huge pushes this generation are 120fps and variable refresh rate. I refused to get a PS5 until I had a monitor that could do those, as I'd be wasting the potential. 2 years ago I got the LG C1 48" OLED and it has been amazing for everything. No signs of burn in yet, and any weirdness is corrected by the automated 'pixel cleaning' routine.

Variable refresh rate (NVidia GSync and AMD Freesync) cannot be overemphasized. VRR is better at 40fps than raw 60-70fps, just because of the better frame timing consistency. No tearing, no judder, just an intelligent connection between monitor and GPU pipeline, syncing the current framerate to the monitor.

I think going with a specific AI upscaling algorithm for the new switch it'll be much harder to get consistent performance out of any emu-lators, and I think impossible without an nVidia GPU. As these 'AI' algorithms become more hardware dependent (chat GPT runs on NVidia), I think manufacturers are going to be able to sequester the market to the extreme determent of the consumers.

Even right now, wanna do AI locally? NVidia tensor cores. anything else? 1/3 that efficiency at best.

Fun thing, the word emu-lator without the dash still auto translates to "computer program of dubious legality". For the record (Mods), I did it all 100% legally and I own the hardware, I ain't no pirate.

Asking any AI for anything subjective is gonna be a bad time. Have you compared the free perplexity results against Bard and GPT?

The scary thing is that in this day and age, 'objective' facts are being obfuscated by the media for clicks, and a lot of AI's will take any stated fact as fact. They aren't great at dealing with comparing and contrasting sources for the best result. AIs specialize in making anything it thinks is a fact sound like a fact.

Also, probably 90% of "AI" branded stuff is just a gimmick in a package. It's all just really stupid trained algorithms. Honestly, I think the artistic and visually interpretive aspects are the strongest right now. The 'AI' algorithm for NVidia's DLSS is so flippin' good. It's ability to upscale and interpolate new frames constantly surprises me. I have a 4K OLED monitor and if a game has DLSS, I'm hard pressed to see a difference between native and balanced. Here are the native render resolutions that get upscaled to 4K, for reference.

Quality: 2560x1440p
Balance: 2227x1253p
Performance: 1920x1080p
Ultra Perf: 1280x720p

It's good enough that the new Switch is going to be using the same 'Tensor AI' cores on the custom NVidia Tegra processor for upscaling, and I betcha it'll be downright competitive, as Sony and XBox both use AMD hardware, and use AMD FSR for upscaling. FSR is improving constantly, and it's nice to play God of War Ragnarok at 90fps, but if it was on NVidia I would barely notice the upscaling where FSR can have some really ugly artifacts. I hope that they add the new FSR 3 Frame Generation technology on consoles soon, as it will really breathe life into them as they age and games push further into the 30FPS max range without upscaling. FSR is generally inferior though, as it takes from the GPU overhead as it doesn't have specialized pipelines specifically for that kind of 'AI' upscaling work.

Just did a little research on the Rabbit R1.

It's effectively a stripped down phone (specs wise) that uses an always on connection to act as basically a better version of the other major "AI" assistants. For $200 flat, it seems like a decent device, and I can see devices like it actually helping visually impaired people.

If all the integrations work flawlessly, it could definitely be a fun tool.

I use all android, have multiple google home/nest devices in the house. I don't need any of them, but they simplify stuff around the house (thermostat control from bed, dimmers for lights and controlling them). If I'm doing chores it's nice to have my podcasts/audiobooks playing synced on every one of them in the house. It should be noted that Google does keep stripping functionality from the default assistant, and most believe they will switch to a subscription based AI service (Bard) for all Nest devices to have 'improved functionality'. I'd argue that Nest devices get less reliable every year. Commands I have been using for 4 years just don't work any more, and it's integrations with music and TV commands are total garbage now. I can't trust it to play the correct song any more. If I say "Hey Google, Play Flowers by Miley Cyrus". It'll say, 'ok, Flowers by Miley Cyrus, playing on Spotify." then either the wrong song or a whole incorrect playlist starts. It's bad now. Rant over.

One thing I have decided though, is that I will not depend on any 'cloud connected' service. Partly because I'm out in the boonies, but partly because I'd rather just have analog backups and options for everything. Any cloud service or smart home integration I use is for convenience only. I've heard too many horror stories of trying to get Apple, Google, or IFTTT routines to be reliable, but a single authentication error in the pipeline can break the whole chain.

Only for the latest parts, with watercolors.

And AI device? Not a program? Or are you grabbing a higher end NVidia A-series graphics card?

Snare is using it in the MChat 2.0 thread under general to expand artwork.

I toy with it a little, but it's pretty much a novelty to me still.

Nibbles is the best. Look at those beautiful flesh wings, he's his own mauling tent now.

Pre-skinned? Booooooring.

But totally badass.

Sheit's gorgeous.

The successful hunt is a foregone conclusion. The skinning is what we're after.

Sounds like things are going well for you Alex! 

Living your dream, kind of jealous.

Yes. Imp skinning.

If you use AI as a hobbyist, I'm all for it. It's the people who try to use it commercially or alter/steal other's work with it that piss me off. The extension of the watercolor is actually really friggin neat.

I like the frog a lot.

Just noticed the capitalized bobcat and also realizing I haven't heard anything from the comedian of the same name in ages. Is he worm food? Tell us John.

He's directing and writing mostly. He is 61 years old, and his only product of note for 2023 was being a guest voice on 'The Patrick Star Show", which I didn't know existed and upsets me. Why do spinoffs have to be 'The (insert character's name) Show'? They could have called it Star Power, or Star Power Hour.

Also hey I'm between jobs right now. Working sucks.

Not my Bobcat skins!

This is the best Rez ever.

Hi all, sorry that I haven't been here, I think the issues came after the server was automatically upgraded to a new version of PHP.  I will try and sort things soon.

Hope you are all doing alright.

Thanks Abe! Hope things are good on your end, too!

Oh, hello Abe. I'm doing okay. Remember when I was ten years old? That was wacky. I'm thirty-three now. We're all currently embarking on a journey to hell in order to find you.

See MChat v2.0

We're so close to hell. Snare, was your drawing of the next issue in progress when he came back? Did you actually open the portal?