Look, a finished project!

Hi! Lussy here.
Realizing that we haven't posted yet this year was kind of a shock.

Many things happened this year. I had an ankle surgery during winter, which slowed things down considerably, and we went through several family emergencies. Rough year so far.

But on the bright side, I finally finished a personal project! I 3D modeled Hyde's (of L'Arc~en~Ciel, VAMPS and The Last Rockstars fame, and he's also active solo!) custom guitar.

Gibson Les Paul Junior - hyde (L’Arc〜en〜Ciel) by ExceptionGate on Sketchfab

(no, it's not a typo. hyde writes his name lowercase for L'Arc, and uppercase for his other bands and his solo project.)

The model and textures were made by me, with Geril assisting with fixing various issues and figuring out the normal baking process, and then he did most of the setup inside Sketchfab.

I started the project pretty much as soon as this article was released about the guitar. The end of 2022 was a nightmare however, and things went downhill for a long time, and I can't even say we're fully back on track right now. But we did have enough energy to complete this, so that's something!

The model itself was done pretty quickly. There was a lot of photo hunting, and watching live performances frame by frame to see if the image was sharp enough to reference, and figuring out what custom parts were used for the guitar. I went as far as to look up the details of the stock Les Paul Junior model and use the exact fretboard radius. I went hard. I have a full gallery of totally non-psychotic guitar closeups now.

What took the longest was the art plate. I couldn't find a photo big enough to get a 4K texture off it, and some parts were always obscured, so I had to improvise for some of it. In the end I redrew the whole thing, even the parts I could sample off of photos, because the resolution varied so much and I couldn't bear having inconsistencies. So I sat with my tablet for hours at a time, over the course of months, and it slowly came together.

I'm happy with how it came out, and it was nice to work on something not for profit or recognition or whatever (although I did post it online, so this is a bit hypocritical), but just because I could. It's not like I'm going to use this model for anything, it's not playable, it doesn't physically exist now, it just looks pretty. And I think I really needed that after working in 3D and games for so long.

I am considering other projects like this one - I considered modeling Hyde's microphone as well, because it has a crazy art plate similar to this one, and apparently I like torturing myself with that, but time will tell if that is going to happen, I guess.

And now to figure out what to do with all this unreasonably in-depth guitar knowledge I gained.

PC Engine CD-ROM² Adventures!

It's been a while!

Geril spent his whole September in Thailand, working as a motion capture technician. It was hard, but we learnt a lot, and now we have our own performance capture workflow. We're planning to buy our own set of full body mocap gear, probably early next year. Also, we're learning about virtual production in general.

We bought a PC Engine in July, when we went to Osaka/Tokyo. We made it work by powering it with our Sega Mega Drive's power supply unit. Also, we got a basic Everdrive clone and an RCA out unit. We had some fun with it, and we were amazed of what this little 8-bit console with credit card-sized cartridges can do - Bonk 3 is something that I have no clue how they managed to make. The only thing that frustrated us was the controller, especially the lack of extra controller ports. First we wanted to buy a multitap and extra controllers, but most of the online sellers don't test their controllers and they still sell them for quite a lot of money. Also, the D-pad of the PC Engine is something that Geril somewhat dislikes - it's a bit too mushy, even more than the Mega Drive/Saturn controllers' - so we looked for alternative solutions, and found a Bluetooth adapter by Humble Bazooka that uses BlueRetro's technology to connect with basically any kind of bluetooth controller. We've used BlueRetro's adapters for many of our systems already (N64, Dreamcast, Saturn, PS1), so we knew what to expect.

After it arrived, it took some time to set up, but after the initial setup it worked pretty well, so we could finally play Bomberman '93! It's such a good game. A month later Lussy bought Geril a PC Engine Interface unit and CD-ROM² (it's pronounced "PC Engine CD ROM-ROM" - yeah, seriously) for his birthday

The seller's description was "untested", and it came with a Japanese power supply that we can't use here in Europe, so it's a project that we both like to mess around with. When it arrived, we tested the standalone CD ROM unit with the Sega Mega Drive power supply, and it lit up, but the motor didn't work. We took it apart and observed as the middle gear of the three small cogs on the CD's motor turned to dust as we touched it. Now that the middle gear disintegrated, the motor whirred up and spun happily without the restriction of the now broken gear. So we looked around and ordered a 3D printed replica of the middle gear.

While we waited for the tiny gear to arrive, we also ordered a European power supply unit for the PC Engine's interface. Now you could say, "that's impossible, the PC Engine was never released in Europe" and yes, you'd be right, but nowadays, it's easy to buy new, more advanced power supplies for older systems. And Retro Game Supply does exactly that! They make new modern power supplies for all kinds of retro hardware. After Geril read their info about the products they made, we immediately bought some extra PSUs for our old systems. We used the SNES' PSU for the NES and the Mega Drive's for the PC Engine, so we bought those two. After we started using them, we noticed that the SNES and Mega Drive no longer got hot! They used to heat up quite a lot after ten minutes (never overheating though), and because we used their official PSUs, we thought that's normal. Apparently that was an issue with the power delivery, and with the new adapters from Retro Game Supply, they keep nice and cool. The only thing we disliked is that the adapters look exactly the same and the only way to distinguish them was the handwritten labels on the little plastic bags they came in. So the first thing we did was print out some labels for them. I could foresee the disasters that could happen if we didn't label these adapters. So this is a heads up if you want to buy from them - but other than that, these adapters are awesome, cool and so far we find them quite reliable.

With the tiny middle gear and the interface PSU in our hands, we finally made the PC Engine CD-ROM² spin a disc. A good tip for anybody who’s working with old CD systems: apply a bit of mineral oil on the gears, it makes them move more seamlessly, with less noise, and it minimizes the wear that happens over time.

So we've got two PC Engine CD games, the first two Princess Maker games. We're working on our pet project which is somewhat inspired by the Princess Maker series - more about that in later posts -, so we're playing the Princess Maker games frequently, and what better way to play them than on the system they were first released, right? Also because they're in Japanese, Lussy can practice her language skills with them.

Anyways, do you know about System Cards for the PC Engine? No? Well, no surprise, it's a somewhat complicated topic. Basically, to make the CD ROM-ROM work, you need a Hu-Card, a cartridge in the PC Engine to connect to the CD-ROM addon, and communicate with the rest of the system - otherwise the CD ROM-ROM can only play music discs. I've heard about this, and when we were in Tokyo I bought a System Card in Super Potato. But here's the thing, when it comes to system cards, it's all about the versions. What I bought is a v2.1 system card, because that was the highest version available in the store. So the two Princess Maker games have a little icon on the jewel case art, telling us that they're for "Super CD-ROM² Systems". What is a Super CD-ROM² system? The Super CD ROM² system is System Card 3.0. That's it. Princess Maker 2 is also compatible with "Arcade Card Pro" which is basically the most advanced system card. The difference between these cards is the extra memory they provide, so this is how they kept the PC Engine relevant and comparable to the SNES and Mega Drive throughout the years.

So what happens if you try to play a CD game but don't have the System Card it needs? Well, some games just pop an image telling you to change the system card, others play some audio, like Princess Maker one where one of the characters actually tells you that they're sorry but you have to change the card, and they can't wait to actually meet you. And then there's Castlevania... I'll come back to that in a few sentences, but first I want to mention the CD-ROM² copy protection. Well, there's none. Back in '89 NEC just didn't expect that anybody could burn their own discs at home, so the ROM-ROM eats up whatever disc it can read! And because they are rare and the price of the PC Engine and TurboGrafx 16 (the american version of the PC Engine) CD games are quite high, we're taking on the high seas, and burning our CDs. We're on the look-out for ROM-ROM games now, but it will not stop us from playing some nice 30+ years old games on a system that never got released in our region.

So one of the most famous games that got released on the Engine is Castlevania X Rondo of Blood. It's an amazing Castlevania game, some say it's the best classic, non-Metroidvania entry into the series. And yeah, that game does not look or sound like an 8-bit game at all. So of course, we wanted to play it! We burnt it, plopped it in and:

Amazing. We got trolled by a 30+ years old game. We're touched.

So we ordered an Arcade Card Pro. I mean the Castlevania mini-game is nice and all, but we'd like to play the actual game now. So our adventure with the ROM-ROM is still ongoing. We'll also try one of the retrobright methods to make the CD unit less orange, but that's something for later.

Well, that was a long post, it's time for us to go back and play some more Ys Book I&II on the Engine.

Until next time!

Japan: Round 2!

Hi! Geril here.

This month, we visited Japan for the second time since our first trip five years ago. This time, we spent a week in Osaka, then the rest of our stay in Tokyo, and Lussy ended up going to six concerts!

We went to a bunch of BookOffs and HardOffs, and bought a classic 2DS, a PC Engine and a PS1 Classic - and, of course, tons of video games and some accessories. Sightseeing and being a tourist in general is not really something that we enjoy. What we did was more in line with thrifting and urban exploring. People were a bit threatened by my looks, but Lussy blends in quite well, and Japan is the country where she can buy clothes that actually fit her without much hassle.

So far our biggest surprise when it comes to the games we bought is Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, or River City Ransom/Street Gangs as it is called in the US and Europe. We'd never played the series and when we put the cartridge into our Twin Famicom, we were blown away by how complex and impressive the game is. It's quite inspiring.

We also bought Metal Slug: 2nd Mission for the NeoGeo Pocket Color. It's so much fun, they really made the visuals and gameplay work on this tiny handheld. I love it.

Lussy found a Kanji drilling software for the DS and now she "plays" it on her 2DS. In the meantime I am trying to unlock the PS1 Classic.

We also got the first four Princess Maker games for several different game systems: the first one for the PC Engine and PS2, the second one for the PC Engine, the third one for the Sega Saturn and the fourth one for the PS2 and PSP. We're working on a pet project that is similar to the Princess Maker series, so these games serve as inspiration.

Translating Japanese text is a pain, and our only way of doing it (other than Lussy's translation skills) is Google image translate. It's far from perfect, but it works enough to get the gist of lines and helps us learn the language.

While I was mostly browsing the video game categories, Lussy managed to thrift so many new music CDs, DVDs and Blurays that we're definitely going to have to buy new shelves now. She also bought a lot of band scores, band merch and even managed to find me a Cowboy Bebop OST.

On our way back, we had to buy two additional small suitcases to fit everything in. This is the pile we ended up bringing back, although this is not everything we got, but most of the video games and other physical media are on it:

In other news, I am going to Thailand in September for work, and I needed a laptop for that, so we bought one. And because running motion capture software and UE4/UE5 at the same time requires a pretty powerful PC, we bought the best laptop available, the ROG Strix SCAR 16 G634 with a 4090 RTX GPU and 64GBs of RAM.

So far it works fine, except for the operating system. Win11 is a pain, and we don't like it.

Sadly, after we came back we got sick, which made working a lot harder; but at least now we're full of memories and stories of Japan. Let's just hope we won't have to wait 5 more years to visit again.

Photogrammetry!

Hey, Geril here.

The last blog post got lost somehow – I wrote it, sent it to Lussy and it got lost somewhere.

Anyway, this month I started doing more photogrammetry, messing around with mobile software and such. The results are varied, and it needs work before it can be used in any kind of project, but it's still fun to work on a library of photogrammetry assets.

Another piece of news is that we're going to Japan, for the second time! We're going sometime in early July, so we'll get another chance to thrift for stuff - mostly videogames and other digital media.

Otherwise, we try to work on our own projects whenever we can, but most of our time is still occupied by our jobs and our preparation for moving: arranging home renovations, sorting through stuff, that kind of thing.

It's already March!

Hi! Geril here.

Working on a new project has its ups and downs. On the one hand, fresh new ideas and goals, and on the other hand, doing things that we already did many times.

But this time we got something new. We can't say much about the project - NDA and all -, but we are now gaining experience with working with motion capture. Because of this, we were forced to learn how to use Post Process Animation Blueprints in Unreal 4, and man, we should have learnt this years ago, it makes helper-bone handling a non-issue. We used Unreal's Metahuman as the basis, so we learnt how to do it by mimicking its methods, adjusting them to our needs and changing them to fit our custom skeleton.

I really want to show off things, but we can't.

On a different note, after the massive burnout and nightmares, Lussy is finally getting back to her usual creative mode, working on a 3D model she wanted to make for months now.

Oh, and we modded a Nintendo DS Lite to output an RCA signal. We're using it with our projector, so it looks pretty nice. This pushed Lussy to finally finish Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and play Okamiden. One day I want to print a new case for the modded DS, but our 3D printer is acting up, so I'll just have to do it later.

Also, we needed an Xbox Series controller so we wanted to buy one. I asked Lussy to choose one, but she didn't like any of the controllers for sale so we ordered a custom one - Lussy designed the controller to her liking. It has our company's name on it, so it's officially ours. The extra features are nice and all but what I really like about it is its battery life.

2023!

We got through probably the hardest year of our lives so far.

Many things happened that made our lives difficult; we're moving soon and we're working on a different project now.

We're also dipping our toes into motion capture – full body, not just facial capture. So working on personal projects became somewhat hard, we rarely have time do it (again – or rather, still).

What Geril is messing around with nowadays is the iPhone app RealityScan, that creates photogrammetry in semi-real time. You basically have to take several photos of your target from all angles, and as you're taking the pictures, you can see the app building the 3D asset in AR. It can use up to 200 pictures – that you have to take inside the app –, and it uploads those to its cloud server. Making a preview can take some time, and you can only export the result into Sketchfab.

We used to upload some of our projects to Sketchfab, so we're familiar with the platform (for whatever reason, we have 4.7k followers). After the Sketchfab export, it's fairly easy to download the mesh and the two textures.

I shot a few (hundred) photos at our family Christmas, so I can share my grandmother's Christmas cookies with everybody. There's also a wooden hawk and a wall that is in a very bad shape.

We hope that we can show you something interesting this year, that we can be more active. Also, we hope that you all had happy holidays and will have a happy New Year!

Still Alive!

Sorry for the long silence. This year so far has just been too stressful to do anything but work. And because work created most of the stress and drama in our lives, it kinda fed off itself, overwhelming us to the point where we couldn't take it anymore.

So after three years, we're leaving the project we've been working on.

There were specific things that prompted the actual resignation (or more like, the last straws that broke the camel's back), but even if we end up writing about them, it won't be now, only some time in the future. We're not sure we want to even talk about the project we were on - and that makes assembling our portfolio quite hard.

Anyway, now that we're done, we can do things that we actually want to do, like improve our development skills, make our own little projects, spend time on hobbies or just in general, be less stressed.

We have several opportunities, we'll see what we want to do with our lives, but one thing is for sure, we'll need a bit of chill after this whole mess.

Also, we wrote a few posts in the last eight months that we never released, mostly because we were too tired and overworked to think about the blog. Here's some of those, just to log what happened with us in 2022 so far:

March:

We rarely talk about our actual work nowadays, but there's something that we really want to share: we've been working with iPhone's Live Link Face app, based on the Apple ARKit. Connected with Unreal 4, it allows us to use real time facial capture. It works well out of the box, but to make it work the way we wanted it to, Lussy had to adjust many things, and create logic that mimics missing features and makes everything move smoother.

One of the issues with this tech is that it can not separate the two eyebrows' movements. We worked around this by using slow-moving eyebrow blendspaces fed by the eyes' lookat position. Also, shoulder movement was added to the head movements. Honestly, what really sells the method is the simulated physics on the hair.

We'd really like to show you what we did, but we can't.

June:

This month, we got our hands on a Steam Deck.

Nice little machine, and it's a weird experience after the GPD Win 2. The most interesting thing about it is its operating system. Steam OS is a custom Linux that acts like Windows, making independent Windows-like directory systems for each software.

Control-wise it's quite agile, I (Geril) can customise it any way I want, and because we already have a Steam Controller, we know what to expect from its touch pads, and already got used to its quirks.

As somebody who played WoW a lot on the GPD Win 1 and 2, I found the Deck's options a big jump forward. There's many ways to adjust and optimize the controls, it is even possible to add scrolling menus and context sensitive values to change the controls' attributes.

We've played WoW, Hatsune Miku, Fallout 4 and a bunch of indie titles. We've even used Discord while playing WoW, and it worked just fine.

The next step is to figure out if we can use Unreal Editor on the Deck. It's not easy to set up a launcher on it, desktop mode has to be used to add the software to Steam as a Non-Steam title.

Lussy is exploring the hardware's latency with rhythm games, and on its own it works fine, but on the TV or with a controller, there is some noticeable latency.

Maybe the official dock will solve the issue, we'll see.

---

Anyway, in the coming months, look forward to a lot more content.

PIU VR!

Merry holidays and such!

Geril here.

This year was... a lot. Didn't have time for personal projects or anything. Well, at least at the end of the year we had a bit of time to just do whatever, so we're trying to achieve Lussy's ultimate goal: getting a Pump it Up arcade system in our household.

Sadly, we don't have the space or the money for an actual PIU arcade cabinet, so we went for the next best thing: emulation. But not just plain old emulation with keyboard or basic flimsy dance-pad inputs, no. We're going VR.

Well, for the inputs at least, we're not sure about the headset. We may not need that.

So in our time over the holidays, we grabbed one of Lussy's old boots, and attached the Vive controller to it. The position recognition was fine after we figured out the right way to attach the Vive controllers. What Lussy didn't like was that the moment for the actual contact with the floor was imprecise.

Because of that, the next step was to attach pressure sensors to the boots. After some cutting, wiring and duct taping, Lussy found the right positioning for the sensors, and the VR boots 0.7 was born!

We did the whole thing in Unreal 4 – because of course we did –, and used a control rig to make a basic mannequin character mimic the foot and leg movements. It was pretty hard to figure out the right rotation values, but in the end Lussy made it work with the tech we made.

I made a basic dancepad mesh and we reused some of our old assets from our older rhythm game prototype, so we actually have some visuals. Nothing fancy, but it helps us understand what's going on. Can't wait to work on it more.

In January we'll probably have no time to work on it. The start of the year is never easy and now that we have a company it's getting nightmarish. But we'll see.

November!

Hi! Geril here.

November can be a messy month, we have a lot of birthdays in our family.

Our experience with the Famicom Disk system (Twin Famicom) grew, as we expand our libary of games to it. It's a bit slow — which is something we're not used to from a classic Nintendo system — but it loads. At least usually. Other times we get something like this:

 

We like to play Guitar Hero with my sister when she comes over. We have two Guitar Hero guitar controllers and a mic, but sadly we just can't find a drumset.

Just a week ago we checked out Rockband. Back when Guitar Hero was the hot game — more than ten years ago — I was aware of Rockband, but never played it, because I had no Xbox360 or PS3, so I just played Guitar Hero on my PC. Later Lussy and I got Guitar Hero 3 for the Xbox360 and slowly bought all of the games from the series, and also a second, wireless guitar. We played a lot with my sister, too, but after we played all of the songs we like — and we can't buy new ones —, we started to get bored of it. Good thing that we realized that we can play Rockband with the same controllers!

Now we're playing the Rockband games that got released on the X360, buying them one by one.

We thought about playing the latest Rockband game — the fourth one — on the Xbox One, but because we can't connect our controllers, we can't.

I had an idea. I connected my Windows PC to my Xbox One with remote play (via the Xbox Companion app), and connected my X360 guitar to my PC, so that I could control it from there.

Sadly it didn’t quite work. I could navigate the menus, but the Xbox One acted like it was a regular Xbox controller, not a guitar. Too bad.

Burnout.

Hey! Geril here.

Well, these few months were quite a struggle to get through.

We crunched, and burned out like dried leaf set on fire. The project we're working on got an update and we've had to work a lot on it to get it to the finish line. We got a little bit of a break afterwards so we've been sorting out all the stuff we put away because of work. One of these things were the blogposts.

So what happened with us outside of work? Not much. Really, we concentrated on work so much we didn't have time for other things. 

In the last week, I learnt photogrammetry, what is basically a bunch of photos of an object taken from different angles and pulled through a photogrammetry software - I used Meshroom. Of course it's not that easy, because the result is noisy, super high-res and at a weird angle, but I can just fix those issues in Blender and bake the hi-res mesh onto a relatively low-res mesh.

After a few tries I realized that this works best with food and natural shapes, not with precise geometrical ones, so I mostly just made food-scans, removed the plate or bowl and baked the rest to a lower res version of the photogrammetry mesh, then put it back on a plate or bowl. (he is basically photographing everything before eating, and he takes a LOT more photos than your average Instagram food blogger - Lussy)

It's fun, I also baked a normal map and a few support masks – roughness and AO – so it looks pretty nice in my opinion. For optimization reasons I also made several LOD levels for the mesh, too.

Right now it doesn't have a purpose, or any plans with it, I just wanted to learn how to do it.

Also, Lussy gave me my birthday gift early this year, I got a Twin Famicom from her! It's an awesome system, a combo of the Famicom and its Disk System. I love it.

We also have a Metroid disk for it, and it runs much smoother than the PAL NES version we also have. So we're collecting Famicom and Famicom Disk games now. It's getting really hard to find a good way to store our games. We're planning to buy more shelves, but without a car it's hard to get them home.

Oh well. 

We hope that from now on we'll have more free time. We're not sure right now, but maybe.

Oculus Quest 2!

Hi, Geril here.

April is here! It sometimes looks like it's summer, then blam: snow. Oh well, April is the most bipolar month I guess.

We got our hands on an Oculus Quest 2! We already had a Vive Pro, but setting that up is never easy so it's always extra effort just making it work. That usually means we don't use it for fun, only for work. Also, it is too big for Lussy's head, so it gives her headaches when she uses it.

Well, Oculus is the other way around. There's no real setup, you just put it on your head - you may have to set up Guardian or set the bounds to stationary - and there you go, you're in VR. No cables, no pairing and it also doesn't need a PC - it has its own operating system. The controller tracking is inside-out, so it also needs no lighthouses or tracking devices.

Its quality of life features are excellent, too. With Guardian, the headset warns me when I'm too close to the edge of the Guardian space. It keeps in mind where we drew the bounds, and we can add a couch or a table to its calculations, so it understands what's happening.

Connection with a PC is straightforward. You'll need a long, good quality USB 3.1 to USB-C cable, connect it to a PC, download the Oculus app, and there you go.

The controllers are also quite good, especially after the Vive's wands. The wands are really good for precise work - because of the touchpads -, but for gaming, it just doesn't make sense. Oculus at least has analogue sticks, that are standard in gaming.

All good, right? Well, no.

The headache comes from the Quest's operating system. It needs a Facebook account and it keeps notes and information about your location and such. It's super creepy, and I really don't like it. I'm sure they can't do much with my info, but still, Facebook's way of stalking freaks me out.

Other than feeling the cold stare of the big brother, the inside-out tracking is just not as precise as the lighthouse method. It's still absolutely playable, but as someone who's using VR for work too, precision is the most important feature of a controller.

You can't buy games inside the Oculus, you must install a smartphone app and link it with the headset. This is kind of a headache, because I have to jump between devices just to buy something.

What is also disappointing is that the Oculus doesn't work in daylight. We have an unnecessarily huge balcony, with nothing on it, and I thought I could use the empty space for room-scale VR play. Nope. Oculus doesn't like UV light, and bright lights in general, they confuse it. I waited until dusk, and set up the guardian on the balcony. At dusk, it works fine, a bit weird sometimes, but manageable. I played and finished SUPERHOT VR, but by the end of it, it was dark and the Oculus stopped working again. It didn't like the darkness.

So yeah, it's an indoors-toy. Oh well.

Now, what gave me the most headaches is the wireless connection. It needed an app called VR Desktop that really didn't like our router settings. Early this month, we bought a new shiny Archer AX11000 router that is a beast, but sadly, VR Desktop just didn't like it. After a few days of trying, Lussy could finally connect through it, but I just couldn't. I turned on my PC's WiFi hotspot, that basically connected my PC straight to the headset, and that worked, but it had very short range.

But good news, they just released a beta feature that gives us an official way to connect to a PC in the latest patch! And it works without any struggle. FINALLY!

So in our experience, the Oculus Quest 2 is a good headset overall. I'd rather not give away my personal information and location, and I'll probably keep using the Vive when it comes to game development - its precision is superior - but for fun, and for showing someone what VR gaming is, the Quest 2 is the easier hardware to show off. It's also cheaper, which is surprising.

VERY tired!

 Hi, Lussy here.

There's not much to say. We've been working almost every minute of the month, and the game we were developing finally launched. We don't want to say the name of the project, but we might at one point, just not now.

We just want to sleep for a week now.

But we're planning to buy an Oculus Quest 2 early next month, so we'll have some new stuff to test.

8BitDo Arcade Stick and the Zombie GameGear!

Hi! Lussy here.

Remember those cardboard arcade controllers that we made a while back? Well, Geril bought an actual arcade controller, an 8BitDo Arcate Stick. At first I was like, "but we already have our cardboard ones... what could be better than cardboard?", but it's really an impressive piece of hardware.

I decided to try it out by playing Tekken 7 - a game I got about 3 years ago and only played once. I was skeptical about how loose the buttons felt, but after trying it with both the 8BitDo and our homemade controllers, I have to say the loose buttons are better. It was really tough to go back to our own stiff buttons after playing with it for a few hours.

Also, our sticks are built with a Zero Delay chip, and Tekken 7 really didn't want to recognize them, so in the end we had to solve that issue with Joy2Key. It was worth it after all, even though it is weird to play 2 player arcade games on the PC - we really should get Tekken for one of our consoles, so we can play on the big screen.

Other than that, we actually resurrected a Sega GameGear!

We've had a non-working one for a few years now, that we started recapping but stopped halfway. We finished it, but it was still bad, so we bought a second GameGear, that was supposed to work, aside from the sound that only worked through the jack. When it arrived, it turned out that the screen was almost dead, only visible in a very narrow window when looking at it from below.

We then tried to combine the two - the old one didn't even start up, so we tried to complement that with the power chip from the new one, and lo and behold, it worked; what's more, the screen was SO MUCH BETTER than the new one's, after the (apparently) successful recap.

So, the only issue that remained was the sound, and we solved that later by buying a sound board for it separately. We now have a fully working GameGear (man, these Sega consoles are a true hassle to keep alive).

Oh, right, and we're playing Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare on the Dreamcast. It's super sharp with the VGA output, and it's interesting to try to beat it after it terrorized me and my sleep when I was still a child. I'm getting revenge.

There wasn't much going on aside from that. We're still working, so that takes up a majority of our time, but we try to squeeze in fun things here and there, when we can.

Retro portable consoles!

Hey!

We started a company. It was a hard and very long process, but we're finally officially a company. What will this change? Nothing, actually. Just more paperwork.

Other than that, this new year started out pretty hard. A lot of work and bureaucratic shenanigans. Sadly Geril's GPU got a bit fried and Lussy's CPU is acting up because of a leak in our ceiling that took out the power for a few hours, so we have to buy some new hardware - what is not the easiest thing to do at the moment.

Also, Geril's obsession of portable gaming devices got to the point that he bought a Nokia N-Gage. And what is a console without games, right? So he got Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey, Rayman 3, Ashen and Worms World Party. They are all fine games, and they work pretty well on the little Nokia gaming device.

What is really surprising about the machine is its multitasking ability. You can make a phone call while you're playing, or you can go back to the phone's operation system anytime while a game is running. Also, you can take screenshots - even if they are a bit chunky.

So in some ways, this device was ahead of its time. But where the real issue lies is the controls. No one wants to use a num pad to play a game. It just feels uncomfortable and unintuitive. But playing an Elder Scrolls game on this four centimeter portrait screen is weird, in a good way. I can't recommend the device to many people, but if somebody like curiosities, this is certainly one.

Other than the N-Gage, we got an Atari Lynx, which is a very powerful portable console (I'd rather not call it a handheld, because it's really heavy). Geril had the most fun with Blue Lightning and Hydra, but Rampage, Rygar and Crystal Mines are fun, too.

Our biggest disappointment was the Sony Xperia Play. We got an old Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Z1i - the one with the sliding control-panel - thinking that we could play some cool older mobile games with an actual, physical controller. Sadly, that's not possible anymore, because they shut down all of its support last November. Even to jailbreak it, it would need a few applications that are no longer available. Too bad, we wanted to try the Android version of Dead Space and Mass Effect: Infiltrator and a few other old rarities.

Next month we'll try to assemble a working GameGear out of two barely working GameGears. Wish us luck.

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.