Recent Posts

126

PublicDomainVic / Re: Timed Key Repeat, With Variable Timing

« Last post by Deozaan on May 25, 2023, 11:28 AM »

No worries. It's all good. I was just trying to be helpful.

127

PublicDomainVic / Re: Timed Key Repeat, With Variable Timing

« Last post by Deozaan on May 25, 2023, 12:26 AM »

Hi Nicholas,

You might have better luck posting requests for coding snacks in the Coding Snacks section of the forum, where any interested coder may feel free respond to your request. You've posted your request directly in a section of the forum designated for PublicDomainVic to announce his personal programs and projects, and where other coders may not think to look when checking for requests to respond to.

128

DC Gamer Club / Re: Dragon Quest 2 Name Calculator/Finder

« Last post by Deozaan on May 21, 2023, 06:49 PM »

Well, after about 15 hours (and liberal use of the emulator's fast-forward feature when grinding levels), I can say my quest is complete. 😁



And I got all the RetroAchievements for the game, too. 🤓

129

Post New Requests Here / Re: Create Song Playlist

« Last post by Deozaan on May 21, 2023, 04:05 AM »

But if one simply wants a fast random 25 files to quickly listen to for a bit, no easy way.  Sorry folks.

-nkormanik (May 21, 2023, 12:57 AM)

Plex has something called Smart Playlists. You could create one to grab 25 tracks at random from your library and it will randomize it each time you select the playlist.

Similarly, you could create a Smart Playlist that matches the artist "Elton John" and limit it to 50 tracks and select them randomly and it will do that. I don't have any tracks by Elton John in my library, but I just did one for Radiohead as an example.



The only thing not shown in that screenshot is that it is grabbing them randomly. For some reason when you've selected to filter them by tracks it doesn't allow you to set how you order them. But if you set it to order them randomly while artist or album is still selected, then filter by tracks, it will keep the random part.

130

DC Gamer Club / Re: Dragon Quest 2 Name Calculator/Finder

« Last post by Deozaan on May 16, 2023, 04:58 PM »

It was a nickname I was often called as a child which I'd prefer not to share for privacy reasons. 🙂

I had actually tried the same name with the calculator as one of my many guesses, but I got different results because as an adult making guesses of all the names I recalled using in games as a child, I was capitalizing the first letter and no others. Whereas the name I wrote as a child had no such regard for proper capitalization of names. 😅

131

DC Gamer Club / Dragon Quest 2 Name Calculator/Finder

« Last post by Deozaan on May 15, 2023, 11:42 PM »

This will be of interest to virtually nobody, but I'm announcing some new software I made here anyway.

As mentioned previously, in recent months I've been playing some old emulated console games, including the original Dragon Quest games, which were known as Dragon Warrior in the USA on the NES. Dragon Quest 2 randomizes the names of the two other party members who join you on your journey, based on the name you give to the main character.

I remember as a youth feeling particularly fond of the names of the two party members I got, who were named Glynn and Gwen, but couldn't remember the hero name I had chosen to get those names. So I did some research and found the formula used to calculate the names of the hero's cousins (they're all descendants of the hero from Dragon Quest 1). After manually calculating a few of my best guesses and not getting the results I wanted, I decided to write a utility (using Godot 4) where I could enter in a name and it would calculate and display the names of the hero's cousins for me, significantly speeding up the process of guessing.

After I finished that, I still couldn't find a hero's name I might have used to get the names I wanted. So I also added a feature to brute-force search all possible hero names given a specific pair of names for the cousins.

With the brute-force searcher, I found the hero name I had entered as a child and also found a new hero name I wanted to use that still gives me the companion names I want and have started a playthrough of the game. Now that I've done that, this tool will probably never be used again by anyone, including myself. But I've decided to make it available anyway, because it might be useful to someone, somewhere. Especially considering the games have somewhat recently been re-released as a collection on Nintendo Switch and probably other consoles. Speaking of which, I've only tested this on the USA version of Dragon Warrior 2 (for NES), so I make no guarantees that you'll get the same results on any other version.

Here's a couple of screenshots showing how it works:





If you want to play around with it, you can do so here:
https://deozaan.itch.io/dq2namer

132

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on May 07, 2023, 07:37 PM »

I haven't done any emulation. What kind of emulated games are you running?

-wraith808 (March 28, 2023, 02:59 PM)

Even though it feels like I spent many, many hours playing (or watching my brother play) the first Dragon Quest game on the NES (known as Dragon Warrior in USA), somehow I never finished it. At some point my brother finished it when I wasn't around, and I wanted to see the ending, so upon my request he loaded up his save and made the arduous trek to the final boss.

When he got there, the final boss asked him to join him in ruling the world. Since this was a game that had offered false choices in the past (where selecting the "wrong" answer would just loop back to the question until you picked the correct answer) I thought it would be funny if he accepted the offer, and asked him to do so, assuming it wouldn't actually let him do that and he would be required to fight the boss. Instead, it resulted in an immediate Game Over, requiring him to reset the console to get back to the title screen. My brother didn't feel like making the trek back to the final boss all over again, and thus I missed my one and only opportunity to see the game's ending.

At least until a few weeks ago when I spent a few hours (making liberal use of the emulator's fast-forward functionality) playing through Dragon Warrior on NES and I finally completed it myself. Not only that, but I "mastered" the game by getting all the achievements on RetroAchievements. Surprisingly it only took me around 7 hours, which is really strange to me because, as I said earlier, I could swear I spent literal days as a child playing that game and never got very close to finishing it. Though I suppose it wasn't helped by the fact that I had to start over several times because my save data mysteriously kept getting erased or overwritten by my siblings. . .

133

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on May 07, 2023, 06:37 PM »

An update on this situation:

I've noticed a strong difference in how the trackpads function between the two devices. Especially when using them for dual-touch typing. On one of them, sliding my thumbs around causes the device to vibrate a lot. I can feel it under my thumbs at the trackpads themselves, and it's quite audible. Almost to the point where I'd describe it as rattling when I really get moving, or especially if both trackpads are going at once. And it's very easy to "press" the button. Just apply a small amount of pressure and it gives a satisfying "click" to let you know it has been pressed. Sometimes I click it and I think "that was a little too easy to click!" and it concerns me that it might click unintentionally at times. On the other Deck, the vibration is much more subtle while sliding my thumbs around. I can feel a light vibration in the palms of my hands at the back of the device, but not really under my thumbs at the trackpads. It's not audible to the same degree as the other one. If I put my ear a couple inches away from it then it sounds about as loud as the other one at normal/comfortable usage distance (about 2 feet). And pressing the trackpads in to "click" them requires significantly more pressure before they finally click. It's actually pretty uncomfortable having to press in so deliberately and so firmly, that I think I prefer typing the slow way with the d-pad and A button to select each letter. And when it clicks, the click is much more subtle and toned down compared to the other one.

Now I'm not fully satisfied with the trackpads of either one. It seems like one is far too sensitive and the haptics are too strong, and the other is far too insensitive and the haptics are too weak. It seems like the ideal is somewhere in the middle. Yet both devices have the same (default) settings as far as the trackpad sensitivity and haptics go.

-Deozaan (July 28, 2022, 08:18 PM)

Over time I've become quite accustomed to the way the trackpads feel on the 512GB Deck and now I'm very pleased with them rather than thinking they're too weak.

In contrast, I've become increasingly wary of the 64 GB Deck's trackpads and how they sound like they're rattling around in there. They feel and sound almost like blown out speakers. I suppose it's fitting then that the system settings allow you to adjust the haptic feedback sensitivity/strength, which is configured in decibels. And even after lowering it to the lowest setting (0 dB) on the 64 GB Deck the trackpads are still slightly stronger and audibly louder than the 512 GB Deck's trackpads at the default setting (7 dB). And the 512 GB's trackpads never feel or sound like they're rattling, yet even at the lowest setting there's still a bit of a rattle to the 64 GB's trackpads. So it's become increasingly clear to me that there has been something wrong with the rattling trackpads since the day I got it. As a result, I'll be sending the 64 GB Deck in for a repair RMA.

134

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on May 02, 2023, 01:21 PM »

Oh! I guess I missed the importance of that point because I've been using a Decky Loader plugin called Decky Cloud Save for non-Steam games for a couple of months already. But what I've been using is actually just a one-way cloud backup. It doesn't really sync the saves between devices. I'll have to rewatch the video or check it out further to get actual cloud sync working.

135

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on April 27, 2023, 02:02 PM »

I hadn't seen that yet. Though, I did see a previous video made by the same person for an earlier release of EmuDeck some time ago. It looks mostly the same, but with some nice QOL changes. I like that you can now exclude games or even attempt to correct games whose titles are not matched properly within Steam Rom Manager. That was a pain point for me in the past.

136

General Software Discussion / Re: hosting a file for downloads, capturing information

« Last post by Deozaan on April 17, 2023, 12:31 PM »

Could you link to a Google Forms survey with some required fields, and after those required fields are submitted, the last page of the Google Forms shows the download link?

137

PBOL / Re: Message trying to recover PBOL

« Last post by Deozaan on April 17, 2023, 12:27 PM »

Careful! You might give people ideas.

138

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a utility that can remap a given key or shortcut to a unicode char?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 10, 2023, 04:46 PM »

I'm glad I could be of some help.

139

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a utility that can remap a given key or shortcut to a unicode char?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 10, 2023, 03:11 PM »

I think it could be done with AHK (v2) with something as simple as:

Code: Autohotkey [Select]

1. ; Alt-4 prints £
2. !4::
3. {
4.     Send "£"
5. }

140

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a utility that can remap a given key or shortcut to a unicode char?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 09, 2023, 10:56 PM »

Try looking into "text expanders" or even AutoHotKey (AHK) rather than key remappers.

141

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on April 06, 2023, 11:35 PM »

By all accounts on ProtonDB, Halo: The Master Chief Collection works just fine despite being ranked as Unsupported, with the caveat that the game's Easy Anti-Cheat doesn't work on Deck/Linux and therefore online multiplayer doesn't work.

-Deozaan (August 30, 2022, 11:26 AM)

Thanks for this! I'd wanted to get it, but passed when I saw unsupported.

-wraith808 (August 30, 2022, 01:01 PM)

I just remembered that I did have to boot into Desktop mode and delete an EAC-related file before it would work, but other than that I didn't need to set any custom compatibility options or do other tinkering:

For the game to work at all, you need to move or remove this file: "steamapps/common/Halo The Master Chief Collection/easyanticheat/easyanticheat_x64.so" Then launch using the "Play Halo: MCC Anti-Cheat Disabled (Mods and Limited Services)" option.

-https://www.protondb.com/app/976730#7mf8VPh6e7

-Deozaan (August 30, 2022, 03:36 PM)

FYI Halo: MCC has been upgraded from Unsupported to Playable.

142

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest Game Giveaway

« Last post by Deozaan on April 06, 2023, 08:01 PM »

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is free on Steam for the next few days:
https://store.steamp..._Galactica_Deadlock/


Also, this week on Epic Game Store you can get the following games for free:

Dying Light: Enhanced Edition:
https://store.epicga.../en-US/p/dying-light


Shapez, which was mentioned previously in the Factorio thread:
https://store.epicga...n-US/p/shapez-0929c9

143

General Software Discussion / Re: best first time linux distro for windows user

« Last post by Deozaan on April 01, 2023, 03:22 PM »

Linux Mint seems pretty good to me.

144

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest Game Giveaway

« Last post by Deozaan on March 31, 2023, 12:50 PM »

Deep Sky Derelicts is free on GOG for the next 3 days:

https://www.gog.com/...e/deep_sky_derelicts

145

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on March 29, 2023, 01:48 AM »

What kind of emulated games are you running?

-wraith808 (March 28, 2023, 02:59 PM)

Short answer:

I've done a bit here and there with games/consoles dating back to the 80s all the way up to "current-gen" (Nintendo Switch) games. My incentive to install CryoUtilities was mostly to help with performance in Switch games (some of which perform rather poorly on the Switch itself).

Long answer:

Honestly, I haven't spent a lot of time playing many different emulated games. 😅 But I've spent a lot of time copying files over and getting them set up to look nice on the Deck's UI so I can play them in the future, should the desire ever arise. 🤓

I think that's more due to how I tend to play games. When I play a game that I like, I tend to go all-in and play it to death until I've done everything I want to do in it. Then when I'm finished I usually don't touch it again. Multiplayer games are a different story, since how often and for how long I play them also depends on the whims of the other players. But for single player experiences, what I described usually holds true.

But I'm also starting to get old, and looking back on the past ~35 years of my gaming experience I've started feeling nostalgic for some games I really enjoyed "back in the day" and thinking I'd like to play some of them again. I also discovered RetroAchievements a few months before I got the Deck. I thought I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but a cursory forum search isn't showing me any results. Basically, RetroAchievements are community-created achievements made for games/consoles from before achievements were a thing. So with a free account and a compatible emulator, you can earn achievements for a variety of retro games/consoles from decades past. Here's a link to my RetroAchievements profile. Any games on my profile with 5 or fewer achievements earned (which are most of them) are games that I only booted up to the title screen or played for a few minutes to see how they ran.

So even though I'm feeling nostalgic enough to play some games again that I've already played through before, the way I play games hasn't really changed. And with RetroAchievements giving me more to do in the games that I might have ordinarily done with them in the past, I'm still working on a couple of emulated games I started in October (because they were "spooky") but have less interest in playing now that Halloween is over. But because I haven't finished them yet I haven't really given myself permission to start other retro emulated games. In the meantime, I still have a backlog of PC games I want to play and I keep coming across free giveaways or cheap sales for new games that either get added to the backlog or pique my interest enough that they skip the queue and I start playing them right away.

So when I'm playing games, there's a good chance I'm not playing an emulated game. And when I'm playing an emulated game, it's probably the same one I started a while ago. Which means I'm not spending a lot of quality time playing a variety of emulated games. I think there have been only about 10 emulated titles that I've spent over an hour with on with the Deck so far.

However, as I mentioned earlier, I do occasionally boot up games for just a few minutes to see how they run on the Deck. I've done that with quite a few (many of which would not register on my RetroAchievements profile due to being for an unsupported console or the game itself just not having any achievements created for it). It has been mostly games for Nintendo consoles, including the Nintendo Switch. But I've also spent a little time with other non-Nintendo consoles as far back as the Mattel Intellivision^w and as recent as the PlayStation 3. Nothing for Xbox, though, since I've never owned any of them.

It's fun being able to play some older titles--especially multiplayer ones--on the TV without having to pull out the consoles, games, and controllers from storage.

And honestly, though I prefer having physical copies of console games for the feeling of full ownership, using/playing digital copies is so much more convenient than having to have a bunch of discs or cartridges handy and get up and swap them out any time I want to play a different game. And I really like having full control over my save data and being able to easily back it up, which hasn't traditionally been an easy/accessible thing to do on consoles. So even though I actually have a Nintendo Switch connected to my TV, I've copied my save data and dumped the game files from the cartridges and I prefer to play the games using the Deck if they run well enough on it.

146

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest Game Giveaway

« Last post by Deozaan on March 28, 2023, 11:53 AM »

Alwa's Awakening is free on GOG for a couple days:

https://www.gog.com/...game/alwas_awakening

147

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest Game Giveaway

« Last post by Deozaan on March 17, 2023, 05:15 PM »

Chenso Club is free to redeem on Steam from Fanatical if you sign up for their newsletter:

https://www.fanatica.../en/game/chenso-club

148

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on March 14, 2023, 04:15 PM »

I installed CryoUtilities mostly to get better performance with emulation than with Steam games, which seems to have helped.

149

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on March 11, 2023, 11:43 AM »

Yes, I have. But I haven't really tested it yet on any games that used to struggle to keep a constant framerate.

150

DC Gamer Club / Re: Valve Announces Steam Deck: A Handheld PC

« Last post by Deozaan on March 08, 2023, 02:11 PM »

That anniversary link sent me down a rabbit hole and somehow I ended up here:

Steam Deck Performance Boost with CryoUtilities