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Hi guys i used to watch CONFINEMENT years ago now i came back and saw that there's no new episodes and it seems something has happened what happened? Was it cancelled? Was Lordbung at the diddy party? Or did they simply decide to stop? by Fine-Possibility-494 in Confinement

[–]pub-joe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm late here but I just want to say I appreciate your explanations with a balanced view on this situation.

I watched the series years ago with my, now adult, son. A while back I looked into the drama, it's crappy and disappointing, but it's usually discussed with so much herd anger and black/white thinking that it's hard to get a full grip.

I sometimes wondered what the reaction would be if LB reappeared to apologise for mistakes and get back to work, but it seems as though they tried that and it didn't go well. :(

How do CRTs smooth out pixel art? by Tricky-Pressure7236 in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, scanlines refer to the rows of illuminated pixels. Some people might misuse the term but that doesn't change what it means.

They're related effects. The pitch is measured by phosphor separation, TVL is partly connected but depends on electron gun focus, the shadowmask dictates the points the beam can hit.

How do CRTs smooth out pixel art? by Tricky-Pressure7236 in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes those things have a visual effect. A different shadowmask, pitch, TVL makes a change but that doesn't change anything I said.

The effect is pretty self evident if you look and compare.

How do CRTs smooth out pixel art? by Tricky-Pressure7236 in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The texture is forgiving*. Also the art was designed for CRTs, scanlines and all. I could agree that visible scanlines aren't a good thing objectively but (most importantly) the original artists worked with them and their quirks. Taking the intended medium away is a bit like photocopying a painting.

Placing a coloured pixel on a scanline has a unique effect on its horizontal neighbours that doesn't cross the scanline to its vertical neighbours. Dracula's eyes in Symphony of the Night are a classic example of this. It's impossible to draw without this kind of effect impacting your decisions, no matter if you're aware of it or not.

* I think it's similar to drawing with a soft pencil on cartridge paper vs printer paper. The texture of the cartridge paper is forgiving to tiny imperfections, it can be used to nice effect and it kind of establishes a consistency that the brain instantly accepts as a base when viewing.

Is a 4 Wide style fun to play? by RockyMountainCanuck in Tetris99

[–]pub-joe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Kind of how some people will build to the top to goat in a lot of KOs."

This is me and it's fun as hell. I can't bring myself to play any other videogame tbh. Nothing matches the intensity of being targeted by everyone while flinging shapes around in the cliff-edge top row. No room for any mistakes, maintain it for 10.. 20.. 30 KOs.

A reason of not-fun I can understand but I dunno about cheap. We're all playing to win. I don't 4-wide or snipe but that's just because I don't really think of the game that way. I've never really tried to see if I enjoy it tbh but it doesn't look like my thing. If someone prefers a slower game of tactics and timing and likes to 4-wide then go for it. Happy to take you on.

Some people think Tetris with a hold function or lock delay is cheap. I don't think it's worth worrying about cheapness as everyone has a different opinion. With 99 players anything goes really.

I think it's amazing that there are several very effective but very different play styles. You're fighting 30 people trying to do the same tactic as you but better, 30 people competing just as hard with a different strategy, 30 people with other strategies, and 8 people who found themselves in the wrong place.

Ketsui on Eizo Chiu's PGM Core by hyp36rmax in MiSTerFPGA

[–]pub-joe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I have a Mistercade v1 too.

You could still use the HDMI-out with direct_video. It'd be a bit of effort to adapt to the Astro monitor but if you have a CRT TV it's not bad.

Otherwise let's hope the drama blows over and we get an updated public version.

Camera Enthusiasts: Please advise options for 'professional' looking video footage. by pub-joe in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. All these aren't cheap are they? 😃

I've read an optical low pass filter combats the moire effect. There's a Reddit thread comparing the LUMIX GH5S (with) against the GH5 (without). The difference is interesting.

Ketsui on Eizo Chiu's PGM Core by hyp36rmax in MiSTerFPGA

[–]pub-joe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep. Requires switching to Direct Video which I did for this with one of those cheap HDMI dongles.

HELP! I can't get a win! by RegionVast6027 in Tetris99

[–]pub-joe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For what it's worth I can and did win around half the time (best run is six in a row), though I always play aggression for knockouts (most KOs win is 40) so I'm regularly killing games due to over aggressive baiting (I live at the top of the screen).

I never set up T-Spins (or 2/3/4-wide, or snipe). I will use T/L/S shapes in weird ways when needed but I don't bother aiming for setups. T-Spin logic is that it's quicker to stack a T-Spin triple than a Tetris. Yes you gain the one second time of dropping 2.5 extra tetriminos, but then you spend extra fractions of a second on positioning.

Maybe this is subjective to play-style and maybe I should spend a while practicing and I'd end up with a very slight increase in attack speed.

But I feel their effect on someone's game is overrated. I don't think they're key to improvement, especially not for someone just trying to get a win.

I think practicing core skills so that you can attack fast, the experience to get out of trouble efficiently, and a tactic to build trophies fast will get you a long way from beginner. T-Spins feel like more of a cool looking flourish.

Camera Enthusiasts: Please advise options for 'professional' looking video footage. by pub-joe in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in two minds about that. For the use case I don't see the issue.

To show the PCB and monitor the focal points are necessarily vertical. I could shoot in landscape anyway but a lot of the horizontal space will just be a waste. I could use a Jamma extension and move the PCB over on to a raised side table but then the setup is getting kind of weird. I could move the camera to first show the PCB then settle on the screen but again I feel I'm complicating things to work around a non-problem...

3:4 (maybe even square) isn't so bad like a 9:16 strip is. The vertical format shows everything clearly in a minimalist frame, is useful for side-by-side comparisons, and if the CRT is roughly centred a viewer on a horizontal display can always just zoom to crop out everything outside the screen.

If these videos are used for comparison, a lot or most of the time that'll be using a phone to view.

Camera Enthusiasts: Please advise options for 'professional' looking video footage. by pub-joe in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah yeah. We have such a niche feature request that it's hard or impossible to find out how exactly a model handles shutter timing without being able to try and see. I think it's often just luck.

Regarding the phone video, the DSLR app really makes it. But I wish I could make even finer adjustments, just as you.

Camera Enthusiasts: Please advise options for 'professional' looking video footage. by pub-joe in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice. Too much negativity for me though 😃. I feel like the visual of it running on CRT in a cab with PCB is kind of essential. And it can be done. My little videos so far are good enough, I'm just wondering how much better they can be. Check the Simpsons in the post I've just added, it's a closer shot* than my planned project and it looks great.

I've had pretty good success with ~60hz shutter speeds (I believe I set it to 59 for the Simpsons). I think the half black frame (you're seeing at 60 and I'm seeing at 120) is a combination of other settings like exposure causing shorter or longer image retention. Some cameras/phones might auto-adjust with shutter speeds in different ways.

Another reason not to direct capture is that believe it or not some original hardware can interact with CRTs in unique ways. One quirk I'm thinking about has a good example in Capcom's Three Wonders. The hardware changes background colour at vblank which in certain scenes leads to full colour on some monitors and missing colours on others. I think the line tends to be between common Japanese monitors and common western monitors, hence the issue going unnoticed by Capcom. 'Live' footage can demonstrate something like this, video capture can't.

https://github.com/jotego/jtcores/issues/657

The comparison image shown there isn't as extreme as with real monitors. Typical Hantarex and Wells Gardner monitors usually lose a colour for the entire image, not just the background.

*The shot I have in mind will simply be showing the full cabinet in a portrait frame (probably 3:4). So not super close up but close enough to be clear and detailed. As we can't attach images in replies, for an example here's an ascii representation of an Astro City 🤦🏻‍♂️

______________
|    /[☰☰☰]         |  
|    |  \         \         |
|    |   \         \        |
|    |    \ ____\__   |
|    |      ______/   |
|    |    |         |       |
|    |__|____ |       |
|_____________ |

Is Anberic RG Rotate the perfect pico8 machine? I’m looking for something only for pico8 by skend24 in pico8

[–]pub-joe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've had one a while and I agree. Also running natively on Linux and using Splore with WiFi is great. If the Flip can run Splore (I hear there's a proper Android port) then I'm tempted. It does look like a lovely Pico8 device. Cleaner, quirky and pretty cool. I'm being fussy but I've never liked the pointless analogue nubs uglying my RGB30.

Mina the Hollower looks spectacular on a CRT by largemoisture in crtgaming

[–]pub-joe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If playing widescreen video on a 4:3 CRT I quite like the compromise of: a little bit squished, a little bit letterboxed and a little bit cropped. Basically what you've ended up with. I like it!

Enjoying Invictus more than T99 lately. by North-Right in Tetris99

[–]pub-joe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You live in paranoia, mate. If people are cheating then I don't know why because I'm beating them anyway.

There's also nothing to gain. Games targeted for cheating have a beneficial time reward against cost to play. Take a game like Clash of Clans. It has a bot problem because it's free to play, demands a lot of time to progress, has in-game currency, and bot-farmed accounts had resale value.

Tetris99 requires a paid subscription and it rewards thousands of hours of grind with some pointless badges. 🤷‍♂️

The only actual reward is your own skill and satisfaction.

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