FM Chiptuner and Retro Computer Nerd
https://netnomad.dxcomplex.com

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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 21st, 2024

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  • as someone approaching my 30s in america this sounds consistent with both my experience and many of my peers. our education system is more or less a trauma machine, and couple that with the demise of “third places” (places that aren’t school or home for kids to hang out in without having to spend money) and the general state of the world being hard for even adult minds fo wrap around… our world is a difficult and unpleasant place to be a kid. it ain’t a cakewalk being an adult either but it is relatively better with a relative increase in agency and more experience dealing with everything


  • i’ve been playing the Shiren the Wanderer DS remake, and even with a code to keep EXP between runs it is still kicking my ass. slowly but surely getting closer to the end though…

    i’ve also picked up SEGA Rally again thanks to the recent documentary. it’s tough to play it in manual with the 3D pad because the button layout is optimized for the wheel controller which splits both rows of buttons between each hand, but i finally found a way to make it work and it’s a whole new game now. drifting around corners with the gear shift never gets old



  • i would recon this is true more often than not for attempts at 1:1 ports. glitches are more often introduced than fixed in the porting process, so if it isn’t deliberately a remaster or offers extra content, you’re probably better off with the original in an emulator. if you’re interested in mods, it’s also worth thinking about where the reverse engineering efforts have been focused- a lot of native PC ports have been picked apart and put back together with bugfixes and new content after the fact

    sonic adventure is an example of all of the above. if you want the absolute worst version possible, just buy it off steam. if you want the best version possible, buy it off steam and mod the shit out of it. fan efforts to fix an abysmal port of a port ended up creating an experience that arguably surpasses the original before even getting into all the extra bells and whistles you can mod in

    fan ports are also increasingly becoming a thing, so i guess the moral of the story is this: as far as official offerings go, emulation is probably going to be better than a native port, but if a game has enough enthusiastic hackers, then they may have frankensteined something even better together






  • i’m honestly a little suprised this hasn’t happened sooner. there were plenty of computers with similar hardware at the time with CP/M or DOS variants, and the unix-like fuzix was originally developed for the z80 and i think has a 6502 port. that’s not meant as a knock on decrayzo though- either way this is cool as shit

    i’m curious what the culture around the famicom and FDS as computers was in japan. it was wildly popular but it never seems to come up in discussions of other 80s JP computers, so i wonder if the reason it never got a DOS straight from nintendo was because everyone including them saw it as more of a console than a computer despite the name. or maybe that’s just a westerner’s bias talking and japanese folks really do consider it as a contemporary of the PC-88 instead of the SMS





  • many retro systems have implementations of a language called BASIC, which is about as easy as it sounds. it has some quirks that aren’t transferable to newer languages and you won’t be able to make anything nearly as sophisticated as retail games for the same hardware but if you find modern engines intimidating, it can be a good place to start

    that said, +1 for godot if you want to learn a more modern tool. it’s way simpler than it may seem at first and there is a huge wealth of beginner-friendly tutorials available online



  • _NetNomad@kbin.runtoProgramming@programming.dev...
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    7 months ago

    rexx is my favorite programming language. it’s an interpreted language similar to python but it has actual visible block delimiters instead of going by indentation. the error handling system is also very convienent. the reason it probably faded into obscurity is it’s wild cowboy take on typing- EVERYTHING is a string until you try to use a math function on it. i get that it’s unrealistic for writing anything performance-sensitive but for writing shell scripts and utilities it is unmatched in it’s simplicity. it definitely comes closer than anything else i’ve ever seen to the COBOL ideal of resembling natural speech. the rexx interpreter was a default feature on the amiga and i think also os/2 but these days it’s really only ever used on mainframes and the few open source implementations for desktops and servers are a bit clumsy which is a real shame


  • it’s been pointed out that the 7800 gives you two systems and you have an SMS if you have a Mega Drive, but it’s worth pointing out that the SMS can also play SG-1000 games, which the MD cannot. the SG-1000 has a rather modest library but its very similar to both the ColecoVision and MSX1 to the point many of both console’s heaviest hitters have been ported over by fans. getting all of that PLUS the SMS library makes it the obvious choice to me IF you don’t already have an MD to play SMS games on. if you do, despite my bias i do have to say that both the NES and 2600 (via the 7800) both probably have deeper library then just the additional games SG-1000 support gets you

    if you’re torn, a ColevoVision with a RAM expansion and a 2600 adaptor gives you the SG-1000/coleco/some MSX1 AND 2600 support, and if you get a Super Action Controller too you will be the fashion envy of retro gamers everywhere. decisions decisions decisions…