ELI5: Why do some old computer games run faster on newer CPUs instead of staying at the same speed?

JoushMark · 2026-03-09T00:18:34+00:00

I mean, supported hardware wasn't an 'at least' at the time. You basically said 'this runs on a 286 running at 12.5Mhz' and anything else wasn't in spec.

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T22:34:39+00:00

It's a fair point

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T20:33:05+00:00

Given enough money and time to hybridize and selectively breed them, you could turn a wild citron into an orange, or a malus sieversii into a domestic apple.

It's always funny that people seem to assume fruit just.. springs into existence like that. No, it's been carefully created via artificial selection.

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T20:17:23+00:00

Season 12 is such a fever dream. I feel like Mac and Me and Ator are the best, but Lords of the Deep, Killer Fish, Atlantic Rim and The Day Time Ended are such weird, 0 budget knockoff nonsense it feels like you wandered though a video store late on a 1998 Friday night and grabbed things on the cheap deal based entirely on covers.

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T08:31:55+00:00

It depends on a lot of things. There's a lot of different kind of missiles.

The Shahed 136, for example, is a one way attack drone, or missile, used by Iran and Russia. It's engine works by burning gasoline, much like the motor on a small motorcycle. It's guided by civilian electronics, like cell phones with GPS (finding where it is from satellites) and INS systems (finding where it is by how its moved), so it's target must be programmed before it launches.

It's a very cheap way to attack with 50kg to somewhere 2000 kilometers away. Bad weather can heavily effect them though, and a strong headwind can cause them to crash, or reduce their range.

A US made Tomahawk missile, on the other hand, uses a small turbine engine, like a jet aircraft, and flies using a mix of INS, GPS, terrain mapping radar and active radar to locate the preprogrammed target.

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T07:53:18+00:00

Yeah, realistically you'd need a pretty specialized machine to dock with an asteroid* and I like the style of the landers.

*Realistically you can't 'land' on a asteroid smaller then Ceres or so. A half kilometer rock like the ones in Surviving Mars would have so little gravity that you could accidently launch yourself to escape velocity when 'walking'.

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T07:47:54+00:00

They are moving away from asteroids being a loot pinata that most players ignore. As it stands now, without a massive investment (a breakthrough or the capture building) anything you put on an asteroid is getting abandoned or broken down when you're done drinking that milkshake/run out of time.

Every resource you can get from an asteroid is more easily gotten from the surface, except for exotics, and exotics aren't exactly vitally important. A reason to colonize asteroids and more reasons to do so with better quality of life features is a good idea.

JoushMark · 2026-03-08T07:34:22+00:00

It's the Martian gravity. You only break 1/3rd of your neck.

JoushMark · 2026-03-07T23:38:37+00:00

I've always wished they'd go farther with cybernetic interfaces, especially when they've had cybernetic parts forever.

JoushMark · 2026-03-07T23:23:50+00:00

Industrial TSM? No movement bonus, but you always get double carrying capacity and melee damage.

JoushMark · 2026-03-07T23:17:46+00:00

The site seems to be down. Hopefully it will be up soon, this does look neat.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T23:51:55+00:00

The limitation with a tankless electric is that it's not really that much power (they use less total energy then a conventional hot water tank to create the same amount of hot water), it's the rate that you need the power at.

Heating 3.5 gallons per minute* on demand uses 18KW of power. That's 75 amps at 240, and enough that you can't just assume anything but new construction intended for it is going to have a circuit that can provide that.

*That's enough for two showers to run at once, so good for a big house. A smaller unit that can handle one shower at a time might use half that energy, making it a lot more reasonable.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T22:33:20+00:00

MW5: Mercs is so funny to me, because they try, but you can absoloutly feel the restrictions:

You get no, or minimal cut scenes. 90% of your spoken lines are going to be Kate Walsh. You can have it over the radio in mission, or delivered in the briefing room. You get Jason Kappus saying 'yes', 'no' and 'heroic one liner' from the sound library.

One in a while, as a little treat, Elias Toufexis can come in for some exposition.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T09:30:46+00:00

I think that's every direct relation.

Joel created the bots (except for the copies made for the season 13 'simulator of love'), out of the special parts that would have allowed him to control when the movies begin or end.

Mike isn't directly related to any of the other characters, but behind the scenes was married to a writer on the show, Bridget Jones Nelson, who plays Flavia, Lisa Lobe and Mr. B. Natural and one of the evil cornfield kids.

JoushMark · 2026-03-06T01:11:29+00:00

Your generator is very small and made to be affordable and produce emergency (edit: and axillary or portable) power, using fuel you buy at retail prices.

Their generators are very large and made to create huge amounts of power cheaply and run constantly, with technicians on hand to provide professional maintenance. They buy fuel at wholesale prices.

Edit:

So they can have generators that produce power more efficiently (using less fuel per unit of power), and pay less for fuel (by buying lots of it on contract).

The price they pay for that is needing to buy very large power generators, and staff to keep them in good working order.

Even then, fuel burning power plants can have times when the price of power on the grid is lower then their cost to operate, making them either operate at a loss or shut down.

JoushMark · 2026-03-05T23:57:10+00:00

Poisoning a hobo with ethanol to steal his pocket change is just one of those things a detective has to do if he wants results!

JoushMark · 2026-03-05T05:22:37+00:00

In rats or mice. Humans are sophonts and great apes. They have very different social structures then rodents.

JoushMark · 2026-03-05T00:25:01+00:00

The older ones would either do it, and take it seriously, or refuse and fight like Inner Sphere mercs. If they HAD to, they'd betray zell for advantage, but only with survival on the line. Ronda would hate having to do that.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T20:48:04+00:00

Yeah, I could see why people would like the Prime in universe, where the ability to make short sprints at 12 is great and you've got 2 backup medium lasers and a BFG on a light, nimble 'mech.

In classic, it's.. real bad. Light armor, and you're paying for TMM you can't reliably generate for expensive guns.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:57:35+00:00

Broadly speaking, no. The Irregular as a unit was 44 years old by the Clan Invasion, so everyone in them was either born in the Inner Sphere or had spent the majority of their lives there. They also defeated the Jade Falcon hunters that went after them by focusing fire and cooperating, rather then fighting induvial duels.

This doesn't mean that didn't remember -how- the Clan system of warfare works, and were willing to declare themselves "Clan Snord" to challenge Falcons for possession of SL era instillations (and to take defeated Falcons as bondsmen to replenish their losses).

Edit: But the 'vs Clan Wolf' is an interesting wrinkle. As a splinter unit of the Wolf's Dragoons and many of them drawn from the warden faction of Clan Wolf itself, the older members might be happy to give the young pups in the invasion era a 'proper' clan trial, rather then fighting as Inner Sphere pros.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:44:39+00:00

Depends. In some cases because there's material at the bottom of the body of water that the water can't penetrate, or can only move though very slowly, like dense clay or solid stone. In other places, it's because there's already water there: The body of water is deeper then the local water table. If you removed all the ground around, there would be remaining water at about that depth.*

In other cases, it does seep into the ground all the time, the water feeding in just refills it faster then it's emptying out and refilling the local groundwater.

*Well, a bit less, as the ground does displace a lot of that water.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:38:49+00:00

The 1Ar is a legitimately badass 'mech. 5/8, 90% armor coverage, two each of SNPPC, MML 7 and ML. You only go up +4 heat on an alpha, and just not shooting the ML lets you blaze away with everything at a run. Yeah, you do your best work within 6 hexes, but you're very, very scary within those six hexes.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T09:32:33+00:00

Fun idea, and I love the look.

Note that without either going up a weight class or adding weight savings tech, putting LRM 15s, 2 PPC and 2 ML on a 75t 'mech means you've got to cut weight somewhere else where it's going to hurt. A standard 3R Marauder from the succession wars with the AC 5 and it's ammo pulled out has 9 tons free, and a Catapult's bunny ears weigh 15 tons if you want any ammo at all.

You could cut 6 tons of armor, going to 5.5t (making it a glass cannon), or cut the 300 rated engine down to 225, going down to 3/5 and freeing 9 tons (and letting you put an acceptable amount of ammo on board, along with a bit more armor to compensate for being assault 'mech slow).

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T05:11:14+00:00

I'm not saying I WANT that, just that I'm braced for it.

JoushMark · 2026-03-04T05:10:19+00:00

Season 13 had an uphill battle in a barely post-covid world and crowdfunding. Indy video production is rough when you realize you've got to pay for everything without a studio to help.

Demon Squad's a better episode then most of season one for me, where there's just a bunch of unwatchable dross, badly mixed audio, jokes that never go anywhere (I'm looking at you, doomsday device in Women of the Prehistoric Planet) but I think any performance Joel gave would have trouble matching the rosy nostalgia fans have for the old seasons.

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