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Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.

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Hello everyone. I hope everyone has had a good week and has been staying cool in the summer heat. I have been playing more Nightreign. I have not attempted Purple Fulghor yet because I hadn't beaten regular Fulghor until last night. I hope to try him tonight but I've been busy. Hope you all have a good week.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by BeamBrain@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
 
 

This demo includes a playable overworld, a new dungeon (the Minotaur Temple), some updated graphics, and general improvements to make the game play more smoothly. Check it out!

@Nakoichi@hexbear.net Pin please? powercry-1

EDIT: Thanks for pin heart-sickle

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by riseuppikmin@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
 
 

Here are some educational resources/explanations for the games community about emulation and other game-related tools.

Note: Check my top-level replies in this thread as I ran out of text in the post

[Informational Resources]

Reddit's ROM Megathread - Unaffiliated with this site

Emulation Wiki

[Emulation as a field]

Emulation is the process of re-implementing the functionality of something (hardware and/or software) in a separate software environment. You're probably most most familiar in the term as it relates to game system emulation- like the Dolphin Wii and Gamecube emulator, but it's actually much broader than that.

While emulation does cover physical systems, it can also cover things that strictly exist as software. If you've ever played on WoW or any other MMO private servers, the actual underlying software that was being run was likely a server emulator (or in rare cases the actual official server software itself may have leaked or released).

These server emulators are created by analyzing the network information exchange (packets) sent from the game client to the server and those received by the client from the server. A painstaking and brutal process of analyzing these packets allows server reverse-engineering projects to then re-implement the functionality of the official servers, and then we can point the game client towards our reverse-engineered private server (that speaks the exact same "language" as the official servers). This then allows the private servers to provide additional or changed functionality (for example, more exp per quest) which allows a much more customizable experience.

Emulation can also be used to re-implement vendor solutions like the Steam API which provides various utilities like DRM (which the emulator could choose to ignore). A great example of an emulator in this regard is the Goldberg Emulator.

Let's say you've acquired (through legal purchase only of course) the clean steam files for a game and want to run it offline. Normally you wouldn't be able to because the steamworks DRM check wouldn't be able to authenticate against the official steam servers. If we instead replace the steam_api.dll (this could also be named steam_api64.dll depending on the game) with the one provided by the Goldberg Emulator, when the game makes the check for the steamworks drm authentication status, the Goldberg Emulator's implementation of steam_api.dll will simply return true and let us play our game offline. The game itself just knows that it asked for a DRM verification check to a service, and the Goldberg variant of steam_api.dll looks (to the game) exactly like the "real" version, except that it always returns that the steamworks DRM has been verified.

Refer to the readme within the Goldberg project for more information about what to do with specific games. Also take note that this only works with games that only use steamworks drm (most of them) and games using other/multiple DRM solutions won't work with this method only for offline play.

[Console Emulators]

All of the emulators listed below are my personal per-console pick. Each is at least in the recommended section of a great general emulation resource, the Emulation Wiki

Game Platform | Emulator Name | Emulation Platform | Comments

Nintendo Consoles

NES | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac

SNES | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac

SNES | bsnes-hd | Windows/Linux/Mac | Widescreen modifications for some SNES games

N64 | Simple64 | Windows/Linux | Soon to be replaced by Gopher64 by the same developer (26/3/2025) N64 emulation has a lot of viable candidate emulators, check the page here

GC | Dolphin | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android

Wii | Dolphin | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android

Wii U | Cemu | Windows/Linux

Switch | Ryubing Ryujinx Fork | Windows/Linux/Mac/ Android/iOS | Continuation of the Ryujinx project by some of the original contributors

Switch | Yuzu | Windows/Linux/Android | Killed by Nintendo 3/4/2024

Nintendo Handhelds

GB/C | mGBA | Windows/Linux/Mac

GBA | mGBA | Windows/Linux/Mac

DS | MelonDS | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android

3DS | Azahar | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android | UPDATE 2/28/2025 Pablomk7 and Lime3DS forks have joined to work on Azahar

Sony Consoles

Playstation | DuckStation | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android

Playstation 2 | PCSX2 | Windows/Linux/Mac

Playstation 3 | RPCS3 | Windows/Linux/Mac

Playstation 4 | ShadPS4 | Windows/Linux/Mac | Heavily experimental and not for casual use yet

Sony Handhelds

PSP | PPSSPP | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android

PSVita | Vita3K | Windows/Linux/Mac

Sega Consoles

Sega Master System | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac

Genesis | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac

Saturn | Mednafen | Windows/Linux

Dreamcast | Flycast | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android

Microsoft Consoles

Xbox | Xemu | Windows/Linux/Mac

Xbox 360 | Xenia | Windows

Apple Phones

iOS 2.x | TouchHLE | Windows/Mac/Android

[Graphics Packs]

A lot of emulators have texture replacement capabilities built into them. What this means is that users can manually and/or AI upscale textures from the game into higher resolution or outright replace them with other textures. There aren't currently (that I'm aware of) area that have consolidated links to these things, so you'll unfortunately have to search individual project forums and look for texture or graphic packs links.

Some known graphics packs repositories:

Dolphin Forums

Citra Forums Killed by Nintendo 3/4/2024; waiting for the dust to settle for recommendations

[Graphics API Translation Layers]

Sometimes there are scenarios where a game may only use DirectX to draw it's rendered graphics to screen and we may not want this. This could be for performance reasons (maybe the Vulkan graphics api has better performance, maybe DirectX isn't available on our OS, or maybe the DirectX version is really old and not properly supported by our OS/GPU/Driver combination). In these instances we can use translations layers to translate DirectX graphics api calls into Vulkan calls using utilities like DXVK . Explaining which files to copy over depends on a per-DirectX version basis, so you'll have to use a combination of the PCGamingWiki and DXVK documentation to figure out which files to replace.

[Graphics Post-Processing]

With a utility called ReShade we're able to inject various post-processing effects into the final stage of the graphic rendering pipelines of games. This allows you to adjust color curves, inject path-traced global illumination (a method like ray-tracing), and add a bunch of other effects to DirectX9/11/12/Vulkan games.

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"Urara will always try until the end"

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edit: replaced article with a better one

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I was playing around with it this morning and did a run through of caves in TR1. It runs at 60 fps in 1920x1080 and it's got a whole slew of bug fixes and even features like Lara's braid!

I can't even get the GOG release to run properly without bugging out so this is a godsend.

Major props to these devs.

*Also just found out they restored the skybox to the Lost Valley level and it hits totally different!

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If you can ignore the fact that you will have to DL the epic launcher to play (but not to 'claim') it, this one might be worth checking out. I've watched variety streamers like NL, ChristopherOdd, and Skoottie play a fair bit of this game and it looks fun.

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The PlayStation era had seen the proliferation of the Final Fantasy series all over the world, and launched Square into a new golden era. While series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi would only be a distant producer for Final Fantasy VIII while we was directing the Final Fantasy movie in Hawaii, he knew that he wanted to oversee another game in the series. The "fantasy" was falling by the wayside, and he wanted to use the technology used for VII and VIII to fully realize the classical style of earlier installments. But with the PlayStation 2 beating the game to market, and international players having a specific idea of the series in their head from VII and VIII, or being feeling let down by the latter, the deck seemed stacked against Final Fantasy IX...

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I love how you can have a group named "Video Games Europe", and then just have 1 (one) European company on its board, out of 13! (plus a handful of trade associations, right at the bottom, but no actual companies other than fucking Ubisoft) There's FOUR Japanese companies on here.

https://www.videogameseurope.eu/about/our-board/

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The link is an announcement at r/chesscom. The screenshot is the error message I get.

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I have made a terrible mistake

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I played the original trilogy, Apollo Justice and the first Edgeworth game on the DS back in the day.

I also played Duel Destinies when it came out but found it a little meh.

I know a few have come out since then, as well as an official English translation of the second Edgeworth game. Are any of them any good?

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By Amber V

South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) says Valve agreed to cooperate in taking down a mod that “distorted historical facts” related to the Gwangju Uprising, a pivotal event in the country’s history (as reported by ThisIsGame).

The mod in question is a fan-made total conversion mod of the hit strategy RPG Mount & Blade: Warband, originally uploaded to the game’s Steam Workshop page. Titled “Gwangju Running Man,” the mod transformed Mount & Blade: Warband’s medieval setting into a modern depiction of Korea’s Gwangju Democratization Movement.

The Gwangju Uprising was a series of student-led pro-democratic demonstrations that took place in Korea in 1980. These protests are known to have been violently suppressed by the military, resulting in a massacre of civilians, but the mod depicted protesters as armed and violent criminals (according to YNA), thus framing the military regime’s brutality as justified. Additionally, the mod brandished the image of military dictator Chun Doo Hwan as its cover.

South Korean press speculates that the uploader may have been Chinese, based on reviews by the account being written in Simplified Chinese. However, users online argue that these may be a “cover,” as denial of the Gwangju massacre is more likely to come from Korea’s own far right groups than from abroad. In response to reports, GRAC initially had the Mount & Blade: Warband mod blocked in South Korea, but subsequently teamed up with the Korean government to ask Valve to have the mod suspended worldwide.

Valve complied, and the Gwangju Running Man mod was deleted from Steam as of June 12. Valve commented that it recognizes the importance the historical event has for Korean people. This is a somewhat rare instance of the platform taking acting upon local political and historical sensitivities.

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The top of the page shows you were to download the Falcosoft midi player and the XG VST.

As a bonus here's a site with some original xg midi music from composers from around the world, very cool!

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You kids don't remember, but back then there was no politics in vidja gams.

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