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.

2020!

Happy Holidays!

It's Geril.
This was a stressful end of the year for us, but at least we had a few days to chill a bit.
Lussy got a shiny new guitar and I got two buckets of bubble tea pearls for Christmas.

We haven't yet talked about it much, but we actually like making music. I play the blues harp – you can hear it as the background, ambient music in our project, Project Contrivance – and Lussy is playing bass and electric guitar in her free time. So when we work on our own pet projects, we're probably going to make our own music for it.

Oh, and we played Mass Effect 3 again. It's still hard to start it up on the Xbox One, but we finally got to the Citadel DLC, and wow, it's awesome!
Like, this is what was missing. Some humor, creative writing, characters and yeah, some fan service. I mean, seriously, this is the final game of the trilogy, they've got a lot of awesome characters, why not use them?
We haven't done the house-party part of the DLC yet, but even now, we're just happy because of this expansion. I mean, it feels like an expansion, rather than a DLC.
Best DLC ever? Maybe.

We're also upgrading most of our old consoles' video cables to Packapunch cables. These cables are awesome. I had no idea that an original SNES can output this sharp of an image.
So we now have scart cables for the GameCube, the SNES, PS1-2 and a RadX for the N64.

For a Non-CRT setup, these kinds of cables are a must and can add a lot to the image quality. We can't recommend them enough.
Now we only need a Framemeister or an OSSC.

And we also had time to assemble the game boxes.
We still want to print out more N64 and SNES boxes, but they are bigger and harder to print efficiently, so it takes a bit more time to create them.

And hey, it's 2020. We started working on this blog in 2013, seven years ago. GTA 5 and The Last of Us were the big titles that year, and we played a lot of Link Between Worlds, the shiny new console was the Wii U, and at the end of that year, the new generation of consoles – the PS4 and Xbox One – got released. So 2020 will have some similarities to 2013.

We have learned a lot, had some hard times, some good times, and overall we are now inside the game development industry.
Not really as Indie developers though.
We'll change that later. For now we'll work hard, and who knows, maybe in 2020 we'll post more about game development, and less about... everything else.

We're looking forward to the new decade.

November has come... and went.

Hi, Geril here.

Another month full of work.
And we didn't have much time for anything else.

At the end of last month, I got my hands on a GPD Win 2, and I'm having a lot of fun with it.
This is more of the same as my old GPD Win, but more powerful - and with better button positioning.
Games run on it OK, but I'd hardly be satisfied with that only. What I want is to work, and to be able to work anywhere. And Unreal Engine 4 is running on it quite well.
Nothing really surprising, but with forward rendering, the little machine can manage itself quite well.
Lussy and I have some ideas for smaller games, but with this much work, we only have free time when we're on a train, bus or in a car. But with this palmtop, we can make things on the go.

And we've also done some home improvement stuff, like printing out old video game boxes for cartridge-based games we have, in miniature, just-fitting form, and we bought some cartridge cases as well.
So we can have a classic game collection that isn't just grey cartridges on top of each other.
But again, for that, we need some time to work on it a bit, cut out the boxes, and print out labels.

But to be honest, we're very tired. We work all day and then we go to sleep, just to wake up to work some more.
We're looking forward to having some time for ourselves.