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.

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!