Happy Holidays!

 2020 is finally coming to an end. Can you believe that?

At the end of the year, we finally got a little time to ourselves. We expected we'd be doing all sorts of things, working on personal projects, maybe making new models for Sketchfab or learning new things inside Unreal, but we've just been resting and playing games. The last month was especially busy, so we probably need a lot of time to regain our energy.

So now we're spending that time on playing games we've meant to play, or we like playing. We started Persona 5 Royal, but we're disappointed that the localization wasn't improved at all, and we couldn't use the original game's save file for New Game +. It's a good game for chilling at night, has a wonderful atmosphere, but the story bits often have us scratching our heads.

Another game we've been playing is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (because what else would we play on a 4K TV?). It's a pretty special game for us, since we played it together very early on at the time we first met. Geril has only completed the 3DS version, and I only completed the original game on an emulator, so now we're playing it on the Gamecube, as part of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition. It's not a perfect port, but with the Gamecube controller even Geril can tolerate playing it.

There's not much left of the year, and we doubt we'll suddenly get an ungodly wind of inspiration to create something on the last day, so we're going to end the year with hopes that during the next one, we'll get more time to work on our personal projects.

Happy New Year!

Huge Screen!

Hey, Lussy here.

This month, after a lot of hesitation, we upgraded our 8-year-old-ish 1080p TV to a shiny new enormous 4K OLED TV. It is ridiculously big. Seriously, it is dominating the entire living room.

With this upgrade, we had to mess with our cable management again, but thankfully since this TV has 4 HDMI inputs, as opposed to the previous one that only had two, we could give some devices their own dedicated slot in the TV. Currently, the OSSC and PS4 are plugged directly into the tv - the PS4 didn't like sending HDR data through our cheap HDMI switches, so when the content we watched was HDR, the image kept blinking.

It's crazy how many new problems come with this upgrade, next to fixing many pre existing ones. For example, one of the biggest advantages is that the TV now properly transmits 5.1 audio through its optical out, unlike the previous one, where we had to bypass the TV with our whole audio setup. So this is cool, BUT. It only supports Dolby, not DTS, and it has a pretty significant delay. It's not an issue for movies, but for rhythm games, we find ourselves bypassing the TV still.

We are learning so much about audio and video signals due to this. For example, this TV simply does not support the NES's video output anymore, and the OSSC doesn't support it either. We still have to find a proper solution for that (without using one of those nightmarish little signal converter boxes).

Other than that, there's not much going on. We're working a lot, but that's nothing new.

Home improvement!

Hi!

Geril here, writing about our mundane days in lockdown.

We did quite a lot of home-improvement projects this month, bought some new furniture from IKEA. We also bought two sets of arcade sticks, buttons and two controller boards, so that we could play classic arcade games on our Rasberry Pi. After the assembly of the IKEA furniture, we realized that we had no surface where we could attach the arcade stick parts... but we had quite a few empty IKEA boxes. So, temporarily we assembled the arcade stick into the IKEA boxes. They work fine, and we played several classic games with them.

They look kinda flimsy, but they are just sturdy enough to work. Also, we reassembled the cable management in our media center, now with the surround sound system in mind. By the way, did you know that Star Fox on the SNES could output surround sound? Well, it can. Seriously, and it's pretty impressive. A few SNES games can use "VHS" type surround, and it's a trip to play a classic game with surround sound. It's like a super-secret level that you unlock after decades.

Apart from messing around with our setup, there's really not much to talk about. We're looking forward to the situation improving, so we can go out more.

New 3D printer!

 Hey! Geril here.

So, we bought a new 3D printer. We already had one, but it was very high maintenance and fragile, so the new one is more limited in options, but works easier.

It's a Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer that was only released in Europe. It's not perfect – it can't connect to any of our WiFi apart from Lussy's iPhone hotspot – but it gets the job done.

We're at the point of collecting games where we're just out of space. And it's pretty hard to store SNES, Mega Drive and N64 cartridges, especially when trying to also display them. I mean half the fun of collecting games is to have them on display.

But with cartridge-based games, that's never easy.

So we tried to solve this issue with a custom-made holder. Now, our printer has a meager 12x12x12 centimeter print limit, and an N64 cartridge is 116 mms in width, so we can't make a full encompassing case for those. I ended up modeling a small but tight holder that holds the cartridge by the plastic shielding next to the pins – but never touches the pins.

Other than that part, I also added leaning arms that help hold in the cartridges, and those never touch the front labels. Then I added little nubs and holes to the top and bottom so I can stack these holders.

The final print is pretty solid, but we'll probably have to glue it to a piece of furniture just to be sure.

Also, Lussy made a nice little guitar pick stand, too. We're trying to design objects for ourselves now that we have an easy way of creating them.

Other that the printing, we started messing around with a Raspberry Pi Zero. It's a fun little machine, we already played through TMNT and TMNT:TIT on it with a MAME emulator.

Aside from this, there's only work.

Sega Saturn!

Hi! Geril here.
So, we bought a Sega Saturn.

We have quite a lot of game consoles now, and the Saturn is such a weird and interesting one that we just had to buy one. I mean it uses quads (more like sprites with custom corner positions) and has a cartridge slot and an optical drive (but the cart is mostly for memory expansions and save games), and is in general just very weird.

We have a few classics for it: Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2 and Vampire Savior and also a few strange ones like the DOS classic Magic Carpet and a kinda Smash Bros. like Fighters Megamix.

The machine is fascinating. We got it refurbished, with a new lens for the drive in it, and it's kinda hilarious. We bought Virtua Fighter 2 and when we received it, we noticed that the disc had a little hole in it. Like, we can see through it.

But the Saturn still plays it. A few music skips, and the loading is probably a bit longer, but the game is working at a silky smooth 60fps.

Also we got The House of the Dead, and it's just as good as we expected. Lussy loves the House of the Dead series, but never played the first one. It's not as good as the second one, but still fun to play even without a lightgun.

By the way, we also got a "3D" controller for the Saturn, what is more or less the same as the Dreamcast Controller. Sadly only a few games work with it, but The House of the Dead is one and it makes the aiming much easier.

If you know about House of the Dead, then you know that it only got released on the Saturn in Japan. And maybe you also know that the Saturn has a region lock.

And if you know both of these then you probably know how we solved this issue. Yeah, with an Action Replay cartridge.

Good stuff, can't recommend it enough. Saturn games from Japan are cheap, and they got many more games released for the system than us.

Also, they have better disc cases than us. Saturn games' disc cases are the worst. I thought the PAL Dreamcast games had the worst disc cases, but at least those are only destroying themselves; the Saturn cases break easily and scuff up the discs inside.

We only remade Snes and N64 boxes so far, but we maybe should make custom Saturn game cases too, just to be sure.

One day we'll return to posting about our works, but we can't do that now. But we're making friends and learning a lot about Unreal 4 and just in general... we're just very tired. Like, so very tired.

Another month, another set of new stuff!

Hi! Geril here.

Our lack of free time made us concentrate more on buying stuff we always wanted to get, but never got to buy.

Lussy bought a Wacom MobileStudio Pro tablet. So far she's used it for making models, and tested Substance Painter on it. It's pretty powerful, but gets hot very quickly. Oh, and we got an Intuos Pro M drawing tablet with it as a gift. That's pretty cool too - I use it for making textures.

Did you know that you can order custom-made keyboards from Varmilo? Lussy wanted to have a full-scale keyboard with Cherry MX brown switches and a Hungarian key layout. That in itself is hard to get, but because it's a custom order, she even got to change the keys' colors one by one.

It feels high quality, nice and heavy. The only drawback is the backlight. Some of the keys are more see-through than others, and it looks weird.

Also, we put together a microphone setup with sound shielding, an audio interface, a pop filter and a nice sE studio microphone on a stand. Nothing too serious, but it's good enough for us for now.

Other than these, we've finally rearranged our living room, so we had the opportunity to change our console video connections to an OSSC-centered, mostly scart-based setup that goes through our capture card, too.

It was a pretty hard thing to setup, but in the end, it's working fine.

The main reason to rearrange the cable setup was the Hydra Scart switcher (made by Lotharek) that we recently bought. It's an excellent automatic scart switcher. It has 8 scart inputs, so now we want to connect every old console to it - except the Dreamcast ofc, because VGA quality is just the best.

And because both the OSSC and the Hydra have to work together, and there's no easy way to turn them on or off from a distance, we connected them to a smart plug. With this setup, we can quickly turn on both the OSSC and the Hydra, so we can use our old systems without fighting with their cables.

So yeah, we're updating our tools and making things more streamlined. Other than that, we're working, until we drop.

Harry Potter shenanigans!

Hi, Geril here.
Man, the weather is getting hot.

And because we have a lot of work and we're still trying not to travel, we're stuck at home at the mercy of the AC.
But we finally got a capture unit!
It's nothing serious or professional, but at least we can now capture footage of our gameplay sessions. And because we can't invite friends and family members to our flat now, we have to broadcast to have new gaming experiences together.

And because of that, we played two of the ugliest games we could find, the two Harry Potter games for the PS1!

They are glitchy, hard to control and have all the graphical issues of the good ol' PlayStation one. We captured our whole play sessions, and made some gifs and short videos out of the best moments.

The star of these games is of course Haggord, the low-res Giant.

And did anyone else notice, that Harry got through his whole year in three days or so? Like, he learnt to fly on a broomstick, then jumped over some lava and just a few minutes later he was already in a Quidditch match.

Anyway, because we finished both of these gems, we thought that we should play the GBC and GBA turn-based Harry Potter games next (just to keep with the theme), but without the ridiculous voice acting and glitches, it's just not the same.

Anyway, we're doing fine, working hard and we've learned a lot about Harry Potter. Like, did you know he can easily jump two meters? Yeah, he's magical in several ways.

Summer again!

Hey, Geril here.

This month was a long one. We bought some games online, and because I heard some good things about Shenmue, I bought a copy for the Dreamcast.
Lussy and I started playing and it blew us away. This game came out in 1999. The same year as Silent Hill, Persona 2, System Shock 2 and Donkey Kong 64, and it looks like something from the end of its generation.
It's an open world game that is fully voice-acted (although it's poor and sometimes just laughable in English), and the world is insanely detailed.
More important characters have a nearly full range of facial expressions, and some details on the characters are just mindbogglingly sharp - we also bought a VGA cable for the Dreamcast, so the image is super clean.

The gameplay is actually very clever. We got bored with the linear "do what we want you to do" gameplay in most of the current story-driven games, and playing this gem made us realize that there are different ways of telling a story in a game.
I'd call Shenmue a detective game. You have to ask people for information, and figure out who to ask and when. The time is ticking, so you have to memorize the little map, and remember who is who. This game is the ultimate fetch-quest game, and it's actually fun, because you have the option of figuring things out in your own way.
The story hasn't really captured us. I mean it's alright, but nothing new really. But the way the player is introduced to it, and how the different gameplay stlyes connect to each other still feels kinda fresh.

There are three actual gameplay modes in the game. The regular "player moving in the world, and looking for interactions"; the quick time events that are essentially cutscenes driven by choice (or rather reflexes); and Virtua Fighter... I mean fighting.
The move controls are awkward. The Dreamcast controller has only one analogue stick, and the D-Pad is on the same side, so you can't use both of them together. And because you move with the D-Pad, and look with the analogue stick, the control is a bit clumsy. But you can run with the right trigger, so at least you can run while looking. But can't turn.

What is amazing about this game is the details. You start in your home, and you can open every drawer and cabinet, and you can pick up and look at items closely.
People have their own daily routines, and you can talk to them, ask them about the your current issue. Days change into nights, NPCs will do their chores and you can even spend your full allowance in the arcades if you want to (playing Hang On or Space Harrier arcade games, among others).

I know, you can see the same things in current games too, but this game came out in 1999, and in some aspects, it is still comparable.
Technologically, Sega was obviously very proud of this game, because on the 4th disc, aka the "Passport", they even added a high-res facial test screen. It's impressive for its time, but quite boring.
They're not using any kind of mip-mapping, what is obvious on modern screens because it creates a lot of shimmering - especially because of the VGA cable. Still the game uses a lot of different textures, for environment and for the characters, and most of them are unique.
The shadow casting is basic, it looks like a flat mesh projected onto the environment. The effect what I like the most is the motion blur. Most games in the sixth generation used a basic fullscreen blur that was more annoying than good looking. But in Shenmue, the motion blur is actually a very blurry translucent mesh that lags behind the character. Genius idea.

Lussy and I have a game idea that is somewhat similar to Shenmue's base gameplay, and to urban exploration. We've been brainstorming about it for more than a year now, writing down parts of the story, testing mechanics, but nothing serious.
After we played Shenmue, we just had to rethink our expectations for our project idea, and how we should make it work.
We're probably not gonna be able to work on it now, or in the foreseeable future, but because of Shenmue we're gonna brainstorm about it more regularly.

Anyways, have a nice summer!

Staying at home!

Howdy! Geril here.

This pandemic just doesn't want to end, huh? Lussy got sick, but got better a week later.

But just before that, she got her Animal Crossing edition Switch, so at least she has that now. That game is a godsend. We can't go outside, and we can't even go out to the balcony – they are constructing a building in front of ours and now the builders are high enough to see us when we're out, and they are really loud.

So Animal Crossing: New Horizons is perfect for these times. Because we're always inside, we have no real schedule – other than our job, that we're still doing –, but because Animal Crossing is real-time, we have to be aware of what time it is.

Because of the design, the game's visuals are just very cozy. Easy on the eyes, and everything is so nice to look at. Lussy imported a lot of her favorite album's images into the game, so she feels at home.

Our only grudge with the game is the menus. Somehow Nintendo's just not really trying when it comes to menus.
Zelda BotW, Mario Odyssey and this game have kind of the same problem with the menus, they are just slow, and not comfortable. I hope they'll figure it out later. We want to buy a lot of stuff from Able Sisters, but we can only buy clothes one per slot and there's no indicator that shows if we already have that type or not.
Well, maybe they'll improve it in a later patch.

Other than that, there's not much that is happening with us.
We're solving issues, and creating code.
And planning our next trip. Whenever it can happen.

Stay safe.

We got an HTC Vive Pro!

Hey! Lussy here.

After the mess at the end of last month, we figured we might as well use some of the money we've saved for the canceled trip and get ourselves a VR headset. So that's what we did.

It wasn't the easiest thing to get used to, what with the weight of the headset and the motion sickness and how much it heats up on your forehead, but we can play semi-comfortably now.

I mostly play Beat Saber. It's a rhythm game, so of course I went into it with a rhythm-game mindset, so I got angry at it real fast. I didn't read the manual, which was unlike me, so I thought the timing of the blocks was off. I only noticed it later on that the timing wasn't graded, the quality of the cuts were. So I'm happier with it now, after I found out about it. It also has tons of custom fan-made song maps, which are... hit or miss, but they are fun to explore nonetheless. And since we're locked into the house, it makes for a pretty good workout, too.

Geril played a lot more: he has finished Half-Life: Alyx already, and played a lot of Fallout 4 VR.
We have some ideas about how to utilize VR controls in a game project, so who knows, once we have some more time for our own projects, maybe we'll create something in, VR too.

Also, we got our hands on a Gameboy Printer.
That thing is a blast. I mean, it's totally obsolete and really unnecessary, but that's what makes it so awesome.

Oh, and we're playing a lot of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, too. It's a really good game, so good in fact that Lussy bought a new Switch just so we could both play at the same time - as full fledged players, not just glorified NPCs.
But the console is in postal-limbo at the moment... hope we'll get it soon.

Bummed.

Hi, Geril here.

This month was a mess.
We were supposed to go to Japan tomorrow. We bought and booked everything: flight tickets, hotel rooms, new backpacks, power banks, and we even won four tickets for the L'Arc concerts we targeted (they do a lottery for the tickets, so we were very lucky). But because of the coronavirus outbreak, they cancelled the concerts and closed a lot of places we wanted to visit. We are quite burnt out, because we worked overtime to get things done before we go, so we're a bit under the weather.
So because all of this, we're not going to Japan.
We lost some money because of it, but we're not gonna risk our health, especially if we can't even go to the concerts.

Both of the hotels were good sports, they understood that we cancelled our reservation because of the outbreak and they gave our money back. But we're probably not gonna get our money back for the plane tickets.





But on to some better news. We got a Gameboy Printer WiFi adapter!

This little pack of circuits acts like a Game Boy printer, so when I connect my good ol' GB Camera to it, it saves the images. It also creates a WiFi signal, and if I connect to it, I can download the saved images.





Here's what they look like:

It's got a bit of a pointillism look, that I like very much.
It can even take panorama images!

The Game Boy Camera was ahead of its time... even with only 4 colors.
Maybe one day we'll use some GB camera images as masks or textures in a game project. Or not. Anyway, it's fun to make images with an old Game Boy.

Retro console video signals and the OSSC!

Howdy! Geril here.

We're going to Japan in March and we made it through the hardest part of it: we bought the plane tickets!
Earlier this month, one day we checked the plane tickets, chose which one we wanted to buy and because it was late, we went to sleep. The next day we checked it again and the price has almost doubled! Lussy had to check a whole lot of options until she found a plane that had available seats and was reasonably priced. She's a hero - I was freaking out the whole time.

Also, we bought an Open Source Scan Converter - or OSSC for short.
We have a lot of old consoles, and it's hard to make them look right on an HD flat screen. But that is where the OSSC comes into picture - literally -, because it turns the RGB analogue signal to digital. It also has awesome latency-free upscale options and can add customizable scanlines to the image.

The PS1, Megadrive and the SNES look the best, super sharp (partly thanks to the excellent Packapunch cables), and the scanlines can add a lot to the image, adding a CRT-like feeling to it.
The PS2, Gamecube, XBOX and Wii are alright, but there's no real reason to upscale a 480p image, although if the image is 480i, the OSSC can de-interlace it, which is pretty cool.

The most problematic consoles to connect are the N64 and the NES, because they have no RGB out, so the OSSC is just not compatible with them. For us, the N64 was the priority, because Lussy loves that console and the image quality of that hardware is just not good in general.
So we bought an RGB amp mod chip for the N64, and installed it just yesterday. What that little chip does is, it takes the raw RGB image from the motherboard and adds it to the output. And it helps a lot!
We connected the now RGB N64 output to the OSSC and it worked fine... but that console changes resolutions so frequently and uses such weird pixel amounts that the OSSC just can't keep up, and sometimes it only shows a black image for seconds before it cuts back to the game. So it's not optimal.

But we also have the RadX cable what we have bought for the N64, but now that we have an RGB out, it creates a really crisp and clear image, and it never cuts to black.
So we're trying to achieve video-perfection. Next, we have to do something about the NES.

Most of next month will be spent preparing for and stressing out about our trip. And work.