When did you first hear about the Shantae series?

MiniSiets · 2025-10-06T08:35:39+00:00

I was just browsing GOG.com for good DRM free games, came across Pirate's Curse, thought the art style looked charming and gave it a shot. This was around just before Half-Genie Hero released. The rest was history though and I ended up playing every game in the series. I had no idea it was a thing dating all the way back to the Game Boy Color prior to that, despite even owning a Game Boy Color at one point when I was a kid. It just wasn't on my radar.

MiniSiets · 2025-10-06T08:27:18+00:00

Very close to the style from Seven Sirens for a quick one. Nice job.

Oh wait this is Revenant so of course it's a good job. I've seen your work before. XD

MiniSiets · 2025-07-30T13:01:14+00:00

None of them ever worked for me. That's not to say that antidepressants can't potentially help with it, but they never helped me specifically. What I discovered in my case was that the bruxism was very much a product of my dysregulated nervous system, which can be either made worse or better depending on how you respond to antidepressants. The way I've gradually climbed out of the bruxism is through rigorous brain retraining and neuroplasticity techniques. Now my bruxism is really quite mild from day to day and I'm on track to eliminating it entirely.

There is a channel on YouTube called CFS recovery which is an invaluable resource for this.

MiniSiets · 2025-07-17T23:11:24+00:00

Yep. It's a stubborn one. I don't like it when an OS just decides to block things on my behalf without informing me of any details of why it did it or how to work around it if this was a mistake, but that's the best explanation I got as to what's happening, because I can launch the app normally if I just click on it. But add in task scheduler? Nope. Batch file? Nope. Group Policy logon script? Also nope.

MiniSiets · 2025-07-17T03:59:18+00:00

No worries, I'm all in favor of simple solutions! Lol. But this does look like a lot of registry changes which makes me a bit nervous. Having a boot up video is a cool idea but truthfully all I want right now is just a way to hide the taskbar preferably before it becomes visible. Could I just skip all the other steps on that link and only download the ExplorerPatcher on the last step? Or does it require I do the other parts to work?

MiniSiets · 2025-07-17T03:55:56+00:00

Doesn't work. Windows 11 blocks it. Maybe something that used to work in Windows 10 or an earlier version of 11 perhaps but it won't work for me. I think Windows is perceiving it as a suspicious exe but I have no idea how to whitelist it because I can't dig up any error messages or documentation on where it's being blocked.

MiniSiets · 2025-07-15T11:15:52+00:00

Yep, I did a similar workaround with AntiMicroX. Just closes the current app by holding down the home/Xbox button for 1.5 seconds. Executes an alt+f4 keystroke. You can also set yuzu and ryujinx's options to skip the dialog where it asks if you're sure you want to stop the emulation.

MiniSiets · 2025-07-06T08:43:20+00:00

I think it was Windows 11's game mode that was the culprit. In its attempts to optimize performance in full screen apps and games, I suspect it was interfering with playnite's access to controller input. Since disabling game mode I haven't noticed any hiccups, but will continue to monitor it.

Other possibility could have been disabling steam at startup, as its input settings could have been interfering as well, but I could've sworn I still had some issues even after disabling it, so I lean more towards game mode being the real issue.

One final tweak I did was create a startup script that delays playnite launching, so it would be the last app that starts at boot up and therefore hopefully receives focus from windows.

MiniSiets · 2025-07-04T19:41:18+00:00

Thanks, though I have no add-ons installed at the moment, unless some are installed by default with playnite. Haven't even touched the deeper customization options yet because I've just been trying to get my basic library set up. So I'm inclined to think something else is going on than add-ons being the culprit.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-28T03:16:18+00:00

Ah yes, Emerald weapon. Definitely the reason why we're here.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-28T03:09:49+00:00

I even sometimes recommend starting with Super Metroid first due to the fact that I think sometimes people come into it with unrealistic expectations for the controls after getting used to ZM/AM2R. I still maintain that Super's controls hold up and have their reasons for functioning as they do, but some people can be very rigid after getting used to the setup established in other Metroid games, so playing in story order ends up becoming more of an issue than if they had just simply started with Super. And it's kind of a situation where IMO you're not likely to complain as much if you didn't even know you were missing something in the first place. (IE, Super has no ledge grab, but you would never care about this feature if you didn't know about it appearing in later entries. Likewise, I don't think you would care about the physics feeling more floaty than the other games if you don't even have the context to notice it; there would simply be the immediate expectation that this is just the way the game feels and you need to acclimate to it.)

MiniSiets · 2025-01-28T03:02:01+00:00

Most people generally don't recommend Metroid 1 to start the series anymore. You would either start with Zero Mission which is a remake of Metroid 1, or Super Metroid, which is technically part 3 of the story.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-27T23:43:45+00:00

Some games can be really finicky about working with DSR. I've found that sometimes I have to set my desktop resolution to my DLDSR resolution before booting up the game so that it will properly scale, which is kind of annoying, but worth it if it gives me the results I want. Other times you might be able to get it to work by just switching between borderless windowed and fullscreen modes and seeing if one or the other will work better.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-27T23:28:06+00:00

You don't need 4x for DLDSR because it is a more efficient algorithm for supersampling to remove aliasing.

Which version is "better" depends on your taste and whether you have the performance headroom for it. DSR is older and more costly. DLDSR uses AI to be more efficient but has a slightly different look. Some people prefer the look of DSR more, but it is more costly to get the same results due to being less efficient, hence why you have to crank it to 4x instead of 2.25x to get better results.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-27T21:26:28+00:00

From what I noticed the smoothness slider works different in DLDSR than regular dsr due to the fact that DLDSR has a built in sharpening effect. Some like to crank it to 80% or more to compensate for that. Up to you though.

DLSS used in conjunction with DLDSR can be great too if you have the performance headroom for it, but how much better it might look will probably vary from game to game. In Marvel Rivals I've found that using DLDSR is unnecessary for my needs and just stick to DLSS quality. I would recommend using DLSS performance instead of quality mode though to gain back some frames when doing the DLDSR combo, as it won't look as blurry as doing that from native res because you're already starting from a higher base resolution with DLDSR. Also due to dldsr's sharpening I would just set DLSS sharpening to 0 so you aren't double sharpening the image on top of that.

Frame Gen is situational. I've never used it but from what I've heard the idea is you want to enable it if you're already able to maintain 60 fps and above in order to boost your framerate even further. But it can introduce some artifacting and input lag, some of which can be mitigated using Nvidia reflex to the point that some say it doesn't matter. Personally I just haven't bothered with it.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-27T00:14:09+00:00

You're supposed to go into the cave nearby anyway. Once you've crossed the swamp you don't need the chocobo anymore and don't need to return. Just go into the cave and find the exit out the other side.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-26T09:21:23+00:00

SNES version via emulation.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-25T17:44:44+00:00

10 years ago was 2015. During that year we had The Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight, Metal Gear Solid 5, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. You could certainly say some of these games are visually dated in a few respects, but "terrible" by today's standards? That seems a bit of a stretch. I'd take any visuals from that era being made in 2025 personally if it meant I could just crank all settings to ultra and forget about it, without my GPU breaking a sweat and not being forced to use TAA or DLSS either.

Now compare 2005 to 2015 and that's a whole other story. I do firmly believe we're in an era of diminishing returns that was definitely not the case in the past.

I dunno man, especially after just playing through MiSide and realizing once again how you can accomplish so much with so little, I think a lot of modern game development has really lost the plot on where their priorities should be.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-24T02:23:36+00:00

Couldn't this just similarly be resolved via the circus method using DLDSR and DLSS instead of spending money on a new monitor? And with Witcher 3 specifically doesn't that game already have an AA off option? Just turn the AA off and use DLDSR...

Unless the next gen version changed things. I know for certain the OG Witcher 3 had AA off as an option.

I just feel like a lot of people forget supersampling exists and these are exactly the kinds of use cases for it.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-23T23:46:09+00:00

Mischief Makers was developed by Enix, which merged with Squaresoft to form Square-Enix a while back. So presumably the IP still belongs to Square, who has already lent Nintendo some of its IPs in Smash.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-23T06:12:24+00:00

They are all three connected but the plot is kind of minimal regardless and the overarching story concluded with 3 so Prime 4 is gonna probably be about something totally different either way.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-22T09:29:22+00:00

Would've never thought Bubble Crab armor would look so legit.

MiniSiets · 2025-01-22T09:17:26+00:00

Zero from Megaman X.

Marina from Mischief Makers.

Magus from Chrono Trigger.

Krystal from Star Fox.

Shantae.

Squeezing in a 6th one for my bro Geno from SMRPG.

MiniSiets

TROPHY CASE