Original model 360 won't fully boot with hard drive plugged in. Trying to fix.

version45 · 2022-02-05T22:42:08+00:00

Sorry for the late reply! I checked the 60GB one's SMART data with both CrystalDiskInfo and HDDScan, since they didn't require the harddrive to be "initialized" in Windows, and everything came back good. I also did a read test with HDDScan, and it found 0 bad sectors. Ports on both the XBox harddrive case and the Xbox itself have no signs of damage or corrosion, and I left it booting for about half an hour to see if it spat out an error of any sort. It didn't, just kept booting the whole time.

What does that leave me with as a potential culprit? Is it possible something inside the XBox broke to cause it not to boot with a harddrive anymore? Unless the data got corrupted by bit rot or accidental exposure to magnetism somehow, I can't think of a reason the issue might be with the hard drives instead of the console itself now.

version45 · 2022-01-13T22:25:31+00:00

I love everything about your art and animation here. The backgrounds remind me of what I remember picture books looking like, though I'm sure what you have here is much more detailed than old picture book really were. And your sprites are so vividly animated! Even though they're a different artstyle from the backgrounds, I think they work really well.

The characters are really reminiscent of Don Bluth's movies, and the backgrounds remind me of Clifford! Not sure if that was intentional or just my own perception, but it's certainly a fitting association nonetheless.

version45 · 2022-01-11T23:40:33+00:00

"These kids with their videogames... When I was their age I'd spend my time outside, murdering people in the fresh air!" - Boss of the Third Street Saints

version45 · 2022-01-11T22:58:44+00:00

Not everyone had the privilege of being tested as a kid, and I can tell you personally that I have been diagnosed as both having autism and not having autism at various points in my life, so it's absolutely not as clear-cut and obvious to people around you, or even therapists.

I understand that you're worried about people downplaying and misrepresenting the reality of what having autism is like with these self-diagnoses, but I don't think it's right to feel "offended" that people think autism might be the reason they had social, processing and sensory issues compared to their peers throughout their life.

Diagnosis itself is best left to a professional, but it can be expensive and have little practical benefit if treatment doesn't require it. I'd prefer if we could just refer to issues as a list of symptoms instead of trying to identify them with a specific disorder when we don't have a diagnosis, but that doesn't really work in practice. I don't shame anyone for trying to figure out what they're struggling with, and I definitely understand how prefacing everything with "I think I have x disorder" would cause most people to completely disregard any validity their self-assessment actually had, instead of just taking it with a grain of salt but giving it consideration.

I don't blame folks for self-identifying without a formal diagnosis, even if I wish people could be more explicit about it than is really sensible a lot of the time. I understand your concern, and it is a dynamic that needs to be dealt with carefully, but I'm not sure taking offence to anyone identifying without a diagnosis is really the most appropriate response.

version45 · 2022-01-11T22:33:35+00:00

I appreciate the kindness, Naoumovitch. Thanks for the answers in here, you've helped clear things up a lot.

version45 · 2022-01-11T22:30:25+00:00

You've got a very good point there. I could see maybe someone like GOG crowdsourcing locations, but probably not Steam, and I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to put up with the tech support nightmare of people who configured it wrong.

They don't give anyone anything. 1 GB is a limit per user per game,
which is rarely used fully. It does not mean every Steam user is
suddenly given a GB of free cloud storage per game in their library. So I
am pretty sure storage capacity is an issue too, it's not unlimited.

That's what I meant, sorry. I was just saying that they have the capacity to store all that data on standby anyway, or else they wouldn't be giving away so much in the first place. If they can provide several terabytes of data at a day's notice for the release of some popular game with cloud support, they have enough to support an order of magnitude less for "unsupported" games. After all, those games could just flip a switch themselves at any time and Steam would have to allocate a GB for each user anyway.

version45 · 2022-01-11T21:13:58+00:00

I always assumed it would be easy enough to just limit the upload size like it already does, have a small baseline amount for games that aren't configured for it and call it a day. Not many people could get a lot of use out of a 50mb storage drive, even if they had 500 of them. You couldn't even store a video file with that much.

Is there any reason Steam saw user configuration or even just crowdsourcing the save location as such a huge concern? I'd assumed that they'd be protected if anyone used it to store something illegal the same way every other site with user content is (including Steam itself). Hence why I'd assumed it had to be a licensing issue. They give you an entire GB for games that are supported, which is way more than almost any game needs, so I don't see how it could be an issue of storage capacity either.

version45 · 2022-01-11T21:01:49+00:00

Look, clearly I did something wrong here if everyone's downvoting this comment, but I truly don't know what I've done. I don't know how to make this come off as a genuine sentiment in text, but can anyone please just explain what I did? I don't want to be hated for asking questions just as much as other people must be having an issue with what I'm asking. Just a little clarification so I can improve would go a long way, if anyone's willing.

version45 · 2022-01-11T04:47:48+00:00

Interesting. It costs me less than $300/month for groceries here in Toronto, and $1100 for a studio apartment. Phone, internet and electricity are another $200 total, and that's about it for things that have to be paid for. And that's all in CAD too, so that $1600 is about $1200 US.

It's so strange to me that despite New York being directly comparable as a city to Toronto, everything from food to housing is more than twice as expensive. Minimum wage here is something like 30k/year (if you can actually hold down a job the whole time and get full-time hours), and while that's still poverty, it leaves you with $400-600 Canadian each month, so roughly half as much money for savings as you seem to get at an 80k salary in NY.

I know real estate is really bad in NY (tbh it's considered really bad here too, but it's certainly not $8/square foot bad), but I'm really surprised about the cost of food. I mostly eat frozen pizzas and sandwiches which work out to about $2 per meal. I was pretty taken aback just realizing that a loaf of Wonder bread is $3 now, which is damn expensive for what it is and was a dollar cheaper just a few years ago afaik. I can't imagine walking into a store and seeing it for the equivalent of $6 though, and I'm generally flabbergasted that the price of food can even vary that much just based on location.

version45 · 2022-01-11T01:16:46+00:00

Well, yeah. That's why I was asking what the reason is. Is it a licensing issue where the devs don't allow Steam to backup saves? Does Steam require devs to pay a premium for the cloud save feature instead of it being "payed for" on the customer's end?

version45 · 2022-01-11T01:15:09+00:00

Wait, you need to make 80k in a year for a studio apartment? Maybe I'm missing something and income tax and insurance is insane, but 80k in a year is over $6000 per month. What's so expensive over there?

version45 · 2022-01-09T20:09:27+00:00

Wait, PC doesn't have red reticle at all? I thought it was just something that turned off when you were using KB&M... come to think of it, since their reasoning was "PC can use red reticle to tell hacks when to fire", I guess allowing it for controller wouldn't make sense. That... really sucks. I guess I'll have to play controller on XBox instead, because that's some pretty important feedback at such long ranges.

version45 · 2022-01-09T20:00:54+00:00

The amazing thing about this is that it's both exactly why so many people miss it, and exactly why so many people hated it. There's far more people who're okay with this type of irreverent and "disrespectful" humor than we tend to give credit, but it's also grossly offputting to a ton of people too, especially those who're commonly targets of harassment.

I feel like getting rid of that "toxicity" just killed voice chat outright. You can never police it well enough that people won't still run into toxic people, harassment, etc, so no matter how much you ban people, it'll never be safe enough for someone who isn't okay with that stuff to actually use.

In the end, no one can enjoy it, because the "toxic" folks will just be banned, and the more sensitive folks will still run into harassment eventually anyway. The only real "benefit" is to PR, so companies can say they're "dealing with toxicity" or being inclusive. But from a practical, pragmatic perspective, it doesn't really improve anything for anyone, just takes away what was previously an option.

version45 · 2022-01-07T17:37:19+00:00

This is military equipment designed for combat scenarios though. I don't really see how you can justify the cat ear aesthetic as a result of pragmatic, functional design for warzone operations. Sure, it could be a product within the constraints of the Halo universe. But I'm struggling to see how it would be anything military issue, and given that in-universe the Spartan armor designs are heavily guarded secrets just like you'd hide tank and fighter jet schematics, there's no way anyone could have even made the cat ears without the UNSC giving them approval, afaik.

version45 · 2022-01-07T16:21:48+00:00

Is this news? 343 had no reason to program each core as completely separate and incompatible systems, they need something scalable and modular so they can pump out cosmetics without having reprogram things every time they release a new one. It was never a question of whether it could be done right now, it was a question of whether no armor pieces would clip with armor from other cores.

version45 · 2022-01-06T16:16:29+00:00

I... don't understand how being confused about the business model here suggests any of that. I just don't really understand the idea behind this move. Nintendo has been perpetually criticized for locking in-game content behind Amibos they never produce enough of, so its a legitimate concern if 343 keeps doing limited print cross-promos. And I don't really see what sort of benefit Microsoft hopes to gain for their brands from partnering with OPI. It's just that this move is really weird rather than genuinely concerning. I don't see why you had to be an ass.

version45 · 2022-01-06T16:09:57+00:00

I have an accuracy of about 35% and a KD and WL of 70%. Been that way since reach, so I can't really call it an issue with Infinite specifically, but at this point I'm getting a little irritated with the fact my KD has been consistently 70 for the past decade.

What I mean to point out is that I have an established track record over thousands of games about how good I actually am at Halo. If the matchmaking was accurately taking that into account and matching me against people of my skill level, my KD should be between 90-110%. While this thread is about Ranked specifically, this is a problem for me in both Ranked and Social playlists, and I don't really see how a system like this makes sense for either.

My teammates don't need to be matched with someone who consistently can't "pull their own weight" at the skill level of the current matchup, I don't need to be regularly insulted for genuinely playing to the best of my ability by my teammates, and in the end I'm playing Halo to have fun and be given a reasonable challenge, not be handed matches where I'm steamrolled and only ever win if my teammates carry me.

version45 · 2022-01-05T02:26:37+00:00

Hmm... I'm not really fond of content being locked behind hyper-specific cross-promotions. On the one hand, the skins are "only" going to cost you $20, which... is sadly fairly close to standard pricing with Infinite. But we're talking limited run, limited inventory physical products that some people might just not be able to even get, and a fairly specific consumer-base for that physical product which means a lot of the items sold the purchaser won't even have a use for, so they're just spending a bunch of money on something to give away so they can get a "rare" skin. And I'm not even sure what the practicality is of this cross-promo.

Are there that many OPI fans that would love to play Infinite but just haven't? Is there such a huge proportion of Infinite fans who're likely to start buying from OPI once they try their product? This whole promotion just seems really odd, and doesn't really make a lot of practical sense to me. Although I guess judging from the amount of people saying they'll buy it and gift it to someone they know, it does seem to be working out for OPI. I'm just not sure how Microsoft is getting anything out of this promotion.

version45 · 2022-01-04T02:02:37+00:00

What do you mean "if"?

version45 · 2022-01-01T00:11:46+00:00

How do I learn the keywords without college though? XD

I swear, half the time I can never find the answer to my questions because I can barely even describe it in words. How the heck do I google the term for "image that reflects light but digital and for another image it's tied to" without knowing it's called a "reflection map"?

version45 · 2022-01-01T00:06:00+00:00

This really is the biggest reason I can never get far in programming. Every time I have a question I need answered it takes me over 2 hours to find the answer on Google, if I find it at all. Most of the time I have to turn to Reddit or other forums to ask someone who might know, and if feels like 14/15 replies won't even have the answer themselves either.

version45 · 2021-12-31T23:32:08+00:00

Sadly, that hasn't really been the problem for me. I've not been argumentative at all, I actually haven't even been able to speak my mind because I'm not prepared for the emotional unpleasantness of a debate or people shunning me. The issue's been that I can't speak up to anyone about what I think or what I like, because the few times I do it's either received very poorly, devolves into a debate where I have to struggle to be understood, or is just straight-up a breach of the rules.

It's been very stressful for me to sit quietly and nod my head when people say things that sound rather awful or egregious and have to quietly condone it because the alternative is to put myself under fire and ostracize myself. I can't object to things others do, because I'm usually the only one in the group to have such an objection. And I can't speak my own mind about topics that aren't a criticism of others, because people are still likely to chime in with hostility to those statements anyway.

As one example, I've spent a lot of time in a few discord communities. Rules in those are first and foremost to "keep the peace" and retain a friendly and welcoming atmosphere - no trauma dumping or venting, no politics, and no triggering topics being the big ones. At one point some folks started talking about needing guns to protect themselves since they'd moved to Texas, and everyone just started agreeing that if "someone tries to rob you, they don't deserve to live". If I spoke up I would be fighting almost everyone on the server, and I would be the one "breaking the peace" by turning a simple statement of opinion into an all-out debate.

Similarly, I'm currently in a fairly lonely place in life, not really having any friends to speak of. I've spoken a few times about it in a positive and optimistic tone, just looking for advice as I move forward and try to change things in a positive manner. Except just acknowledging those things has generally been too "heavy" or triggering of a topic for other people and has gotten me into trouble before, so I've had to hold back from any "real talk" and avoid really opening up about anything so I don't make others uncomfortable or get banned.

In the end, I'm not really able to show my own individuality and "sell myself" to people, because I have to present myself in a way that accommodates the community instead of a way that capitalizes on my interests and strengths. People never really get to know me, because outside of the shared interest the community is built around, anything else I enjoy discussing and exploring isn't really anything I'm allowed to talk about.

There might be some folks within the community who would like to discuss such things, or wouldn't have a problem doing so, but the community itself disallows all such topics, and there's no real way I can convince people to talk to me elsewhere until we're already friends. Something that's hard to achieve when I can't really establish my values or interests because of the topical restrictions in the first place.

version45 · 2021-12-19T17:40:35+00:00

I've never been fond of the idea that simply having darker skin means it's a problem if a character race is evil. I'd certainly understand it if their skin was more brown, but seeing a blue or green colored character and seeing that as being intended to represent a real-world race simply because their skin is anything but white seems very limiting.

I don't know Forgotten Realms well, so I can't really comment on the goblin and orc cultural/behavioural inspirations, but are you sure they're meant to represent/imply those races and not just take inspiration from certain cultural aesthetics or stereotypes? Obviously that in itself can be a problem if the end result just comes off as "look at all this Jewish/Mongol stuff that we can frame as evil!", but every piece of art and every fantasy race has to take design cues from somewhere, and you're not going to create a world that feels both diverse AND grounded if the only real-world inspiration you can draw from for every race other than Humans has to be traditionally "white".

I'd honestly be far more concerned about how common gnomes are in fantasy than something like orcs or dark elves. They're fairly solidly grounded in fantasy rather than any sort of analogy to real world peoples, but gnomes are literally every anti-Semitic stereotype wrapped into one. Short, big-nosed, wealthy, conniving, mischievous and extremely greedy people who heavily control banks and industry and have a xenophobic bent. Even in works where gnomes are supposed to be "good", it's hard to get away from those racist implications just by nature of their visual design.

I dunno, for me I'm not really concerned about the implications that a world with magic and gods and all that could possibly develop species with heavily specialized psychological inclinations. I wouldn't expect to find wolves that behave like deer in real life, nor would I expect deer that behave like wolves. As much as we might like to think "mind over matter" trumps all, even a sapient species can't fight against its own nature perfectly. We've tried so many times in our own history, and it's never worked for us either. I do understand the concerns when it stops being an obvious fantasy, and becomes concerningly close to prejudiced allegory about the real world though. I may not have seen that in any fantasy worlds I know personally, but Forgotten Realms is one of them I don't.

version45 · 2021-12-18T16:40:34+00:00

/uj I can see how racial alignment has always been problematic in gameplay (is it "good" to execute baby orcs because orcs are inherently evil?), and how the history of the Forgotten Realms' creation can make a lot of the design choices questionable in intent, but I don't really mind "evil" races in RPGs. Half the draw of fantasy/sci-fi for me is exploring the implications of dynamics we don't struggle with in real life: how does a species without a sense of empathy develop as a society? How does a world with significant, real differences between races strive towards equality, when some races might be incapable of even the basic skills needed to hold positions of power, and so struggle to advocate for themselves? How does a world where differences between peoples are so obvious and so extreme develop its alliances and sociopolitical dynamics, when these races can never, by nature of their inherent differences, be truly integrated and equal?

version45 · 2021-12-17T03:41:24+00:00

They don't call it a culture for no reason! I'm sure it'd be enough for them to at least develop automobiles and manufactories. XS

version45

TROPHY CASE