The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Gaming2

Evening Open Thread

Today I thought I’d do something a little different and play Portal 2 in splitscreen with my bro. We both have Steam Controllers, it felt nice to play a bit on the couch. We didn’t play for very long, fatigue and puzzles don’t match well with my brain.

On another note: There have been a couple of teaser trailers that caught my eye today. The first one regarding the new Tomb Raider coming out.

I’ve seen people speculating that classic Lara is returning, but I’m not too sure about that. Best to wait and see when a full trailer surfaces in April. Then I saw this trailer introducing a new character for the new Soul Calibur game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN1cFUQCKZo

The way Geralt said he hated portals… Someone needs to mod Geralt into Portal 2 to replace either Chell or one of the co-op bots. If that were the case I wonder who his companion would be, Triss perhaps?

Gaming

New Tomb Raider game in the works

I guess a new Tomb Raider is in the works. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is supposed to be releasing September on the 14th. Not much is really known about the game yet apart from some footage from a pre-announcement press thingy.

https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/974006042333007879?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rockpapershotgun.com%2F2018%2F03%2F14%2Fshadow-of-the-tomb-raider-springs-quite-a-few-leaks%2F&tfw_creator=rockpapershot&tfw_site=rockpapershot

What’s interesting about this is the fact that Crystal Dynamics won’t have any involvement in the development of this game. Eidos Montreal will be working on it instead. I’m guessing they’re going to keep a similar formula from the past two games, although it would be nice if they did get back to their roots… but hey, we do have a remastering of the original 3 coming to PC so at least there’s that.

Gaming / Technology2

I’m now setup to stream/record PS3 using the Elgato HD60 Pro

Last year I acquired a PS3 for $10; this included two controllers and their cables, two HDMI cables, and a copy of GTA4 I’ll never use. I figured for that kind of money it would be worth grabbing it to play games that never quite made it to any other platform, plus it’s a first generation PS3 capable of playing games going back to the PS2 and PS1. I tend to stick to emulators still, like with Klonoa for example, but you never know… it could come in handy.

After getting my hands on it I was interested in the idea of possibly streaming gameplay on the rare chance something like that could happen. But upon researching I found that could be problematic as the console has HDCP encryption preventing you from streaming or recording to an external device unless you record via composite. Unfortunately I have an Elgato HD60 Pro which only supports HDMI, and I was not going to invest in yet another capture device, especially since I don’t really use it much anymore thanks to AMD’s AVC Encoder in OBS Studio.

But I didn’t give up! I found out through continued research that using an HDMI splitter would do the trick just fine (as seen above), but not all HDMI splitters will do the job. I picked up this model on Amazon, and that bypasses the HDCP encryption perfectly. So all you really need to get it to work with your HD60 Pro is one HDMI splitter and three HDMI cables. One to go from the PS3 to the splitter, one to go from the splitter to your monitor/TV, and one to go to from the splitter to your capture card. Definitely much cheaper than getting another unit all together.

Plus, as you can see I’ve already got a game lined up. :v:

Gaming / Technology

The new Final Fantasy runs better if you pirate it

You know, it’s pretty sad when a pirated version of a game performs smoother than the paid version.

Right from the start, the pirated version loads faster than the Steam version. The Steam version needed 30 seconds in order to launch (for the first time) whereas the pirated version was ready in just 3 seconds. The second launch (by exiting and then re-launching the game immediately) needed 8 seconds for the Steam version, whereas the pirated version was – once again – ready in 3 seconds. The in-game maps also loads faster in the pirated version (58 seconds versus 1 minute and 40 seconds). Below you can find a video with the loading times for both the pirated and the Steam versions.

I’m not advocating piracy, but this kind of DRM will most likely hinder more than help as it’s only a matter of time before someone or some group cracks through your safeguards, and once word gets out that your product delivers better performance if pirated guess what people are going to do? You might get the guilt ridden people who will buy the store version and then pirate it to get what they want, but chances are for most people they’ll pirate it straight away and give a giant fuck you for using something as shitty as Denuvo. I have a couple of games in my library that either used or still use Denuvo, and fortunately I haven’t noticed much in terms of performance. But seeing things like this makes me question if it’s even worth it for companies to place this kind of DRM into their products in the first place.

Technology1

Windows 10: Store Edition

Remember when Microsoft made a version of Windows for some of their tablets that only ran their own store apps, and people were upset when they found out they couldn’t install their regular programs? Welcome to Windows 10 S, because clearly we need to have

Microsoft expects that the “majority of customers” will enjoy Windows 10 in its new S mode, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows wrote in a blog post Wednesday night.

The stunning endorsement of Windows 10’s S mode—which was formally confirmed as a mode of Windows 10 just about a day ago—was made by Joe Belfiore, who told me via Twitter that he expected the transition to take place in 2019. Belfiore’s blog post set an even more aggressive timetable, claiming that customers would be able to buy a PC with Windows 10 S mode at or near the time when the next feature update to Windows 10 drops. That update, known as Redstone 4, is expected to appear on PCs in early April

Of course you can opt out of S mode if need be, and the reasoning behind this mode is to improve performance… which I can see if you consider it won’t be able to run anything outside of the Windows Store. :v:

Gaming

All aboard the nostalgiagasm train

I’ve read more exciting news today! First, for some odd reason the newly remastered Crash Bandicoot will be coming out to PC July 10th.

Funny timing, as I’ve been contemplating getting out my Crash Bandicoot CD’s to play in an emulator (even though I could use my PS3 to play them), and comes as a surprise to me as that has always been a Playstation Exclusive. Of course I’m not going to complain, I’m just hoping it’ll be a good port. This was probably one of my favorite platforms when I was growing up. In fact this and Tomb Raider were probably my most played games during that particular period. It would be funny if that also got a remaster… oh wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-21TCbJF3g

Tomb Raider 1 looks the most impressive to me. Tomb Raider 2 not so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuo3BCY91wo

Although I’ve had issues running it and Tomb Raider 3 on my newer hardware, so at least there’s a chance of me being able to play them again and maybe even stream them., which I already had planned for Tomb Raider 1 after I’ve patched it recently to run natively in Windows. Either way, between these and the soon to be released remasters of Devil May Cry I’m pretty stoked.

All in an Overlord's day / Gaming / Work1

Boss… harder!

Today I told my fellow co-worker about my exploits through MGSV, and I mentioned how funny it was to practice CQC on your staff and see the following dialogue:

Then he had to tell me that of course they were happy to be manhandled by Big Boss, and that he’d even love to be in the same position. Mind you, the guy I’m talking to is practically a male clone of Bayonetta. Add onto that my bizarre imagination and access to a computer and you get this:

I’m not kidding, he has a similar hairstyle. Another one of my co-workers and I keep trying to convince him to wear high heels for us and he keeps refusing. Not because he doesn’t want to, he just can’t walk in them. :v:

Every time I work with him it’s another adventure. I almost feel like making illustrations of our encounters… :melon:

Gaming1

Valve is going back to making games

GAMERS REJOICE!!!! Valve is coming out of software hibernation to make… games!

Speaking at the press presentation for Valve’s latest, Artifact, Newell said: “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us, so that’s sort of good news. Hurray! Valve is going to start shipping games again.”

As someone who owns just about everything made by Valve I’m not sure if I’ll be interested in this particular title (unless it’s for SFM resources), but I do look forward to seeing them get back to their roots. Any speculations on what their other projects might be? I’m kind of nervous about Half Life 2: Episode 3/Half Life 3 being made, it’s reached Duke Nukem Forever status.