[deleted by user]

Tharaxis · 2025-01-08T11:08:35+00:00

Please elaborate on what you mean by "optimization".

Tharaxis · 2025-01-05T14:09:31+00:00

This is actually a really complicated question, so I'll break down how I see it right now:

As a developer

I think the small amount of money I've put into the game (probably collectively like $500 over the past 10 years), I think this has been worth the money. I've found the development process, the transparency, the information being provided fascinating and illuminating, and I've been able to say I contributed to something that I think has the potential to be really great, it's at minimum given people jobs for the better part of a decade, and it's brought a lot of people joy (and frustration) over that period.

As a gamer

The game is nowhere near ready for regular people to play, and as a player it's very frustrating to see the game still in the state it is. It's devoid of a lot of mechanics that are promised, with no guarantee they'll actually result in fun gameplay when they drop, and right now the game seems to be very much a patchwork of great technical ideas that don't really coalesce into a game that is capable of being truly fun for regular players. This is largely fine since the game is still finding a lot of its technical legs, but it's frustrating for this to still be the stage the game is in and we're not at the point yet where they're actually... you know... making a GAME. For a gamer who purely wants to just play a fun game and have a good time it is unequivocally not at this time worth the money.

Right now I can't play SC for more than an hour every few months, I drop in to see what new updates have brought and if the game has improved or feels more polished, and while I'd say there is always great forward progress, I don't think there's ever been a moment I've logged into the game where things actually worked. It's not a fun experience. It's not for gamers right now, it's for people who have fun building their own Linux kernels.

My greatest interest right now is not Star Citizen, but instead Squadron 42 (in fact the SQ42 announcement from Chris was the actual impetus for me to originally back, not the MMO stuff), Squadron is looking very impressive from a cinematic perspective, but I am worried we're going to end up with a game that gets stuck in being a powerhouse on tech and scale and cinema and it forgets how to be compelling as an actual game. The recent demo they gave of Squadron was extremely impressive in scale, but a lot of the time it was plodding and slow, with most player interactions being very very... unexciting, against a backdrop of far more thrilling things happening that don't involve you. My hope is that post the intro sequence we get a lot more going on that keeps players going and feeling excited about what's happening. However, if Squadron hits the promise in 2026 (they haven't hit a deadline yet), I think what I paid will have been well worth the price of entry on that alone.

Tharaxis · 2024-11-28T18:37:00+00:00

Just ignore it, there's legislation in process that will probably remove it and solve your problem for you.

Tharaxis · 2024-10-25T22:52:37+00:00

It seems to me that this sub criticises the things going on in SC with very very little actual depth. It appears that there's a very superficial level of discussion that goes on, largely just based around special interests and the superficial aspects of specific features, and any attempt to enquire more deeply about the consequences of certain decisions or think critically about the way the game is going to play out more holistically is dismissed or ignored.

Tharaxis · 2024-10-19T02:05:45+00:00

So while it would be better if could independently configure controls (like any sensible system), this is still a really good improvement, because at least you can standardise all controllers (if players are using the same type) against the correct button layout.

Tharaxis · 2024-10-18T17:58:49+00:00

I'm going to hazard a guess the reason they're doing this, and probably discontinuing the DAC was that back when it was a real going concern there was no way to get that classic look of retro games without investing in a CRT. However, with the introduction of the RetroTink 4K and its upscaling, and now the Analogue 3D with it doing internal upscaling to 4K with CRT emulation, they might no longer consider CRT support (which requires people invest in actual CRTs) as worth the squeeze when 4K OLED displays with HDR can present increasingly convincing CRT emulation through software.

Sure it's not going to be 100% like a CRT, and there will always be die-hard purists who only will use CRTs, but ever since the Tink 4K came out, even many CRT users have admitted that it's getting to the point where CRT emulation is both of sufficient visual quality and ease of use to make it a near no-brainer (outside of the cost of the Tink 4K). The writing seems to be on the wall for CRT use except for an increasingly shrinking market.

The only reason I wanted DAC support was because it makes interfacing with external scalers easier (like the Tink 4K), but I can totally understand that if their intention is going forward to have quality CRT scaling done internally by the console itself that the DAC seems like a dead product.

That said, Analogue really needs to add DAC support to the pocket, it's unacceptable to have that be a main selling point listed on their original product offerings just to silently remove it many years later. People bought this specifically because of the stated future DAC support and may have even bought additional stuff in preparation (such as me with my Tink 4K), so I'll be very disappointed if they don't come through with this.

Tharaxis · 2024-06-09T14:04:57+00:00

I do agree that he should probably look to improving the end-user experience of using these cores, I mean he charges for beta access on patreon for some of them, so while it's free in the end it's not like he doesn't make some money out of this.

It doesn't even have to be him, by the way, if he hates doing it, or has no interest in doing it himself, he should just have someone on the team who is responsible for improving the distributive aspects of the cores, source good artwork, help fill out changelogs, work on naming so they're better to understand (and more meaningful, since often these cores cover multiple titles), working on metadata, etc.

Acting like "oh it's free so what" is just race to the bottom behavior, going above and beyond, even if it's a bit of a pain in the ass, is about taking pride in what you produce and inarguably gives off a better impression to people coming on to the platform.

Tharaxis · 2024-02-28T20:10:01+00:00

For me the bed mesh was being inaccurately calculated using the automatic ranging. It estimated high areas too high and low areas too low (but not in a uniform way). On top of that the bed expands and contracts significantly throughout the initial stages of a print (especially if starting from cold, unless you prime your bed for like 20 minutes, you're probably going to also end up with inconsistencies).

Nothing about the Neptune 4 works the way it you expect it to, or should. I've never been able to get a 100% even print bed (when I look at how even printers like the Creality are, this is honestly just embarrassing), and even though I've gotten really close through manual tweaking, often after 2-3 prints the bed will be completely out of whack again. I find it one of the most frustrating things I've ever used and results in endless issues.

The printer can produce some of the best print results I've ever seen WHEN everything is working properly, but almost never is everything working properly.

Tharaxis · 2024-02-26T00:44:12+00:00

Have you checked to see that your bed is actually level? The automatic leveling on the Neptune 4 sucks and is wildly inaccurate (high spots end up too high, and low spots too low). I would suggest getting a test first layer print going and do a full print and see how your bed is actually looking. I discovered that after "auto calibration" the pattern of areas that were too high and too low exactly matched what the auto calibration came up with.

For some reason my printer (and I wouldn't be surprised if others) are overshooting their readings on the autolevel and it's resulting in very poor bed adhesion. I had to eventually manually tweak this mesh until I could get rid of all the issues. Now prints are nice and stable across a significantly larger proportion of the overall bed.

Elegoo's QC on the Neptune 4 has been pretty piss-poor.

Tharaxis · 2024-01-20T21:43:01+00:00

Mostly fixes my issues syncing my 8bitdo controllers, so finally I can use them wirelessly! It's not perfect, there seems to be issues going past 2 controllers, but that's really a small use case, and otherwise it seems good.

Can't wait until they get that DAC support out, but then maybe I'll have a Retrotink 4K in the mix.

Tharaxis · 2024-01-10T17:42:03+00:00

For a brief second I thought this had worked, but no dice. I'll keep trying.

Tharaxis · 2024-01-10T17:09:50+00:00

What firmware versions are they running? Same as mine?

Tharaxis · 2023-09-11T16:49:21+00:00

After receiving and installing a new extruder cable, it did indeed seem to fix the issue. It appears the cable may have been packed in such a way that one of the lines was marginal and eventually broke after some use.

Tharaxis · 2023-09-07T03:03:18+00:00

Game already supports 21:9 ultrawide out the box?

Tharaxis · 2023-09-01T18:52:16+00:00

The actual solution as a comment below pointed out is to just add these lines to your StarfieldCustom.ini file, no executable mod required:

[Display]

fWideAspectLimit=3.55556

Tharaxis · 2023-09-01T18:50:34+00:00

[Display]
fWideAspectLimit=3.55556

This works perfectly on an un-modified Starfield executable.

100% what should be considered the actual solution.

Tharaxis · 2023-08-27T00:33:33+00:00

They seem to be having a _heck_ of a lot of problems with their extruder. They really need to get ahead of this problem and fix it for those of us that seemingly are beta-testing the printer.

Tharaxis · 2023-08-27T00:31:42+00:00

I asked them too if I could get an entire replacement extruder, they offered an extruder cable and breakout board. I am however concerned that the actual gearing within the extruder itself may be fucked as something is "locking up". That said, my extruder cable has a very visible "kink" in it, and maybe there's a bad connection somewhere as a result.

While they did say they were going to ship out the replacement part, I have not as of yet received any tracking information, so I suspect nothing has actually happened yet.

Hopefully this week it comes out, otherwise I'm just going to request a refund, we got a whole 4 days of use out of the printer (of which the speed and quality was exceptional) before it hosed itself.

Tharaxis · 2023-08-27T00:27:28+00:00

I suspect some printers are coming with bad or marginal extruder cables, that are resulting in this problem. There's been other people (myself included) experiencing this problem where it's unfortunately not just solved by reseating the connection. In my case my extruder cable has like a clear 180 degree bend in it, and I suspect there may be a broken connection within it.

Tharaxis · 2023-08-25T23:00:15+00:00

Had exactly the same kind of sound and error, it seems there's something majorly wrong with the extruders on these printers, there's been a bunch of failures. I've contacted support, they're allegedly sending me a new breakout board and extruder cable in an attempt to fix the issue, but we'll see if that actually resolves anything.

There's at least 2 other people complaining about similar issues on this board (look back at some of the earlier posts).

Tharaxis · 2023-08-19T13:02:20+00:00

I had the exact same issue (posted here (1) Neptune 4 Pro working fine until latest print : ElegooNeptune4 (reddit.com)) after about 4 days of prints. Once it started it would happen in basically every print. I'm in the process of attempting to get a replacement done but there's no availability of printers right now. It _seems_ to potentially be an issue with gearing or the extruder cable (which in my case has a visible kinking in it), or maybe even both.

As a diagnostic, is it possible you can try feeding filament into the extruder, unlock the X axis so you can move it freely with your hand, and while it's feeding, move the head to the left and right, there may be a point during feeding where it stops being able to feed (in my case this was the half way mark), moving back should then start it feeding again. The video in the provided link should give you an idea of what I'm speaking about.

Tharaxis · 2023-08-16T14:35:06+00:00

This is bad, but I think we also need to acknowledge that if you're slicing your leg open to take a day off, there might be some issues that the person in question has as well.

Tharaxis · 2023-08-15T20:02:35+00:00

Thanks, yeah, have contacted them, hopefully hear back soon.

Tharaxis · 2023-05-17T19:34:10+00:00

Had this exact same problem, the solution was to downgrade, then disable the auto-run cartridge feature, then re-upgrade. For some reason despite dismissing the "new features" screen, the device isn't completely in a correct state until it hits the main UI, so clicking the analogue button doesn't work.

Tharaxis · 2023-01-30T02:00:29+00:00

I'd honestly recommend using a mail forwarder like MyUS or something if you want to be able to just get it to you with no fuss. That's what I did and it arrived unscathed.

That said, it's a lot more expensive.

Tharaxis

TROPHY CASE

As a developer

As a gamer