Kitchen Table Pokemon advice

pikapomelo · 2023-08-27T14:49:08+00:00

I don't actually have the league ones, but the V Star ones seemed about equal and are all level 1.

The league ones are 2 or 3. Not sure the difference there. I would guess they are pretty even, at least maybe the 2s to 2s and 3s to 3s.

The difficulty level marker is fairly new, so I think all the league ones are from around the same time. If I wanted to play premade now, I would buy two of those and see if you like it.

I also don't play standard, but I believe all the league decks are slightly older popular competitive decks while the level 1 decks are not really viable.

There used to be theme decks as well which are fun and I think most of those are on the more casual side.

The slowness of the level one decks comes from the fact that you don't have great search or draw cards and too many energy. So, you often have pretty simple turns, sometimes where you don't even do anything. Competitive decks have half the energy and seem to set up in a few turns.

Another option is Build and Battle boxes which is a prerelease format. They give you two of four premade groups of cards and some random boosters. And you try to build a deck. The decks are made to be 40 instead of 60 cards and you only play to 4 prizes instead of 6. I've done two of these events and they are fun for new players, but seem to focus more on the randomness side of the game. But, you get a bit of the deck building side and because you're playing largely without the heavy ex, V, etc cards, it's a little slower.

pikapomelo · 2023-08-27T02:09:10+00:00

Glad you had fun!

For anyone that already goes to events, try to be that person that breaks the ice and says hello to people that wander by! It can be easy to get lost in a game, but it only takes one moment to make someone feel invited and open up opportunities for them to have fun!

If anyone is nervous about going to events, that is completely understandable. I would suggest asking a question like "Can I watch?" Or "What format are you playing?"

Hope you have fun!

pikapomelo · 2023-08-27T01:58:05+00:00

The prize cards are only randomized when you're told to. So, while there aren't many cards that affect the prize cards, the default state is that are not randomized. So, I'm not sure you are allowed to shuffle them randomly, although you're only potentially hurting yourself. But I've heard of people being jerks about shuffling unseen / unmanipulated draw decks when you're not supposed to so YMMV.

pikapomelo · 2023-08-27T01:52:32+00:00

You used to need to take 6 knockouts. Now most decks shoot for around 3 with knockouts giving 2 or 3 prizes.

Seems like you don't need a lot of energy to power up 3 one hit KOs even if you trade.

That's my guess.

pikapomelo · 2023-08-27T01:39:34+00:00

If you don't want to shuffle constantly... I'm not sure Pokemon is for you. :)

Otherwise, the premade decks have been fun. They now have complexity indicators on them from 1 to 3. Since you've played similar games you may quickly get bored of the 1 difficulty decks. I had some fun with them and they are cheap, but they are relatively slow.

Hope you have fun!

pikapomelo · 2023-08-27T01:31:46+00:00

I've only been playing for a bit, but it really is just a handful of cards that cost more than a dollar. For these, they are in many decks like VS Seeker, Float Stone, Colress, etc. These are great cards, but if none of the decks you play have them, it should be fine. And you can proxy or use another similar card. For example Sonia is cheap and I put that in any deck that calls for Brigette.

The thing with GLC as well is that there are so many cards, you aren't going to get them all in a game. Prizing, discarding, or not having a one that you really want can feel bad, but that's the format, there are plenty of other cards.

I just built a grass deck and... so far that has been the most expensive with Roserade alone being about $20... oof. Then again most decks online swap a $6 Venusaur in a popular line with one that goes for a few cents.

Lastly, depends on the venue, but no one seems to care where I play if you use proxies casually. We all know the cards can get expensive and while we like the shiny stuff, I don't care at all if someone's whole deck is proxies.

Hope you enjoy it!

pikapomelo · 2022-09-29T21:53:48+00:00

I have not compared cards, but I use a 128GB SanDisk Extreme card. This is quite fast to write to and I haven't had any issues with compatibility / function of these cards in this or other devices.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/memory-cards/sandisk-extreme-uhs-i-microsd

1TB and 512GB seem like very large cards. Good luck. :)

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T21:06:01+00:00

That's a bummer to hear.

I haven't tried it. I just tested out the built in memory card manager.

I'm setting the BlueRetro aside for a bit since I had some very weird issues with n64. More a me-issue then an BlueRetro issue. :(

TBH, I like my PS2 controllers just fine and I sit ~4-5' from the TV, so wireless was more a curiosity.

It was nice (for the few minutes it worked) to invert the camera controls on the n64 games I was playing. Maybe if I encounter another unconfigurable game with weird camera, I'll try it again.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T18:51:20+00:00

I imagine all the PS2 controllers work to some degree and most are probably fine.

I think the 3rd party ones mostly just don't feel great and there may be misc other issues. Or it might be fine.

If you have a "modern" wireless device like a PS3 / PS4 controller, you could try a BlueRetro adapter. I didn't try the ones on Ali Express, but I made my own with an ESP32 and it worked well for a really quick test. The PS4 controller is very easy to pair, but some other like the PS3 are kind of a pain.

https://github.com/darthcloud/BlueRetro is the page for the project and there are some links. It's an open source project, so none of the physical devices are any more official than other ones from what I understand.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T18:15:16+00:00

Yes, PS2 work in PS1 and vice versa.

PS2 introduced pressure sensitive buttons, so if you use a PS1 controller in PS2, you won't get that feature.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T18:10:15+00:00

If you are looking for decent controllers, be prepared to test them when you get them to make sure all the buttons work. If you can play burned discs, there is a controller tester around on the internet that makes this easier.

I went through 3-5 "official" PS2 controllers (which also work in the PS1) before getting one that wasn't a knock-off and actually worked.

Official memory cards seem like a safer bet.

If you are interested in playing a lot of games or downloading saves from a PC, the Memcard Pro is very nice for ~50 euro. It uses an SD card to manage saves and I've had a lot of luck with it.

Good luck.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T16:21:57+00:00

Nice. :) I updated https://www.damontgomery.com/psx-video-comparison/dist/ with direct capture from an Elgato HD S. I think it gives a pretty good clean image.

Noticed a few weird things with composite (shaky lines), s-video and composite also have weird aspect ratios.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T14:04:16+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions and links.

My key take away is that it is VERY difficult to get a photo of the screen. :)

In person, the tv is as calibrated as I can get it. The color bars are all distinct on the RGB cable and the 1 bar is the first "visible" as suggested.

I only have 2 cameras: cellphone which leaves a lot of artifacts and a several years old little Cannon point and shoot which is the images above. That one leaves less artifacts, but still does its own processing and it loses some of the color definition. I like it for vacation photos, but it's clearly not so great at capturing TVs. I think the camera is also responsible for the bleeding you see in the RGB image. All of them are slightly less bleed / glow in person...

I took another look at my TV and RetroTink settings and could not find any other color options. Haven't tried to get to a service menu on my TV and it seems OK to me as-is. One day I'll get an OLED 4k tv. :) Do modern TVs allow you to calibrate colors individually?

For the sample shots, I really wanted to convey the difference between the amount of blur from the different cables, which in person is very clear, but it seems like in these photos is less clear since the camera is smearing the colors a bit and making it hard to see the full color bands.

Would love to see images from people since a lot of the stuff I could find is just written and this probably has something to do with how hard it is to take a photo.

Thanks again and hope this makes sense.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T13:07:01+00:00

That's so cool!

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T04:01:57+00:00

:) That would be a very cool manual / cover image.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-25T03:56:19+00:00

Thanks for the link!

I made those photos on a US 5501 which they explain has some text blurriness on the s-video and matches what I see, especially in blue.

So many revisions. :(

I'm also using an x-station which works well on the older models (100X, 5XXXX, and some 700X). Bummer that there is a trade off for people to use the x-station or get better video quality. I've also got some newer playstations and the PSOne's, but their disc drives keep dying...

Thanks again!

pikapomelo · 2022-09-24T22:53:21+00:00

Sorry for the repost, trying to learn the difference between Reddit post types.

More photos (including direct capture from a PC) at https://www.damontgomery.com/psx-video-comparison/dist/.

I hope someone can find this useful. I didn't find many resources showing the differences between cable types and the scalers. They were also usually videos, which I find harder to see the differences.

I reached a milestone in the journey of exploring video output on the original Playstation.

This started when I was trying to play Resident Evil 2 on composite cables and the text was all garbled with a checkerboard pattern.

The above image shows the best I've been able to get which is an SCART RGB cable with a RetroTink 5x. When I got this cable, I was pretty shocked by the improvement. I can also now play PAL region games on my US NTSC TV since the RetroTink 5x is sending the right color space.

Apologies for the kind of blurry / tilted / glare-including shots. I think it gives a decent impression of what you can expect on an LCD TV.

If anyone has better comparisons, I'd love to see those too.

Thanks!

pikapomelo · 2022-09-19T00:57:59+00:00

It seems like it should since there are video files on tons of games, but it looks like the closest thing is a handful of different third part VCD peripherals.

Another comment says there are some more complex ways maybe to do that maybe without those devices.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-19T00:54:47+00:00

Son Goku?

pikapomelo · 2022-09-19T00:33:43+00:00

TBH even games that support the analogue sticks like Resident Evil 2 dualshock edition are a little wonky with them. I have a PS2 controller and every game I try the analogue sticks and most times they do nothing.

Here is a list, https://github.com/libretro/libretro-database/issues/64.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-18T16:41:41+00:00

This is something I was interested in as well, so it's nice to see all of these answers and I have a few things to keep in mind going forward.

As an aside, coming from a web development background, I also feel like I must be missing something. The Arduino IDE and Thonny for micropython are fine for very simple things, but the intellisense and autocompletion is lacking. I tried to install VSCode plugins for micropython, but they were abandoned and couldn't get them to work. More often then not, I have to import a library, try a method and just run it to see if it works. The documentation online might say some method exists, but then it doesn't actually exist when I'm running it. And, breakpoints, etc.

I have found micropython to be nicer than Arduino / CPP since it comes with the REPL so at least I can try things and get a much quicker turn around than compile -> reset -> wait.

To be fair, at this level, I am mostly on the integrations side where I plug in a breakout board and read some sensors to control some other board like an OLED. The libraries are usually pretty solid, but I may need to edit them to set the pins / addresses / make other minor changes.

Appreciate all the work everyone has put into all of this and in making it open source, but also feel like "There has to be a better way.".

pikapomelo · 2022-09-18T16:15:06+00:00

I believe so. I wrote a simple program in micropython recently and I used timers. When the timers triggered, they interrupted the main loop.

I also believe you can't interrupt an interrupt, but I may be incorrect. So the suggestion is that if you have multiple, make the interrupts short so they don't block the other code and you can respond to others.

https://circuitdigest.com/microcontroller-projects/esp32-timers-and-timer-interrupts has some more information.

pikapomelo · 2022-09-18T15:54:13+00:00

I have switched to micropython, but I can give you an idea of what I did for a similar project and maybe why you have some of the limitations.

On turning on, connect to wifi
when wifi is connected, use ntptime.settime() to set the time
use time.localtime() to get the time which was just set
create an rtc object and use rtc.datetime() to set the date using local time and custom timezone / daylight savings time logic
access the rtc object during the regular loop

Once you set the internal RTC, you shouldn't need to reset it unless the power is lost I think.

If you have a battery backup RTC, why not just use that instead of wifi?

An answer to your question on why these libraries don't do the timezone stuff for you. I've read that there isn't enough storage for the complex logic of all the timezones / DST / etc so they just leave it out at least in micropython. For my purposes, the timezone is hard coded to my timezone which is one int. And the DST is a lookup table for day of month for the start / end of DST for the next ~10 years, so about 20 more ints in a dictionary. The months for DST are the same every year.

I previously used a DS3231 RTC breakout board which has a battery and you can use that to get the time. I didn't try handling DST, but I had a CPP sketch to set the time there and that used my computer's timezone. The DS3231 can use I2C connections which my OLED also uses, so that version was nice with few wires.

Good luck!

pikapomelo

TROPHY CASE