audaxdreik

joined 2 years ago
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Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE in c/games@lemmy.world
AI Job Fears Hit Peak Hype While Reality Lags Behind in c/technology@beehaw.org
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

gazeon.site articles keep getting posted, what is this source? Seems to be mostly a biased, pro-AI rag.

Distrust 😠

EU says it will continue rolling out AI legislation on schedule in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 3 points 7 hours ago

I just can't get over how little we hear from academics RE: AI. It shows a clear disinterest and I feel like if they did bother to say anything it would be, "Proceed with caution while we study this further."

Instead it's always the giant corporations with vested interest in this technology succeeding. It's just so painfully transparent.

AI Job Fears Hit Peak Hype While Reality Lags Behind in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 3 points 7 hours ago

What kind of source is GazeOn? Based off the top menu items, looks like a pro-AI rag. Biased source.

To give them an ounce of credit, there are many factors that would prevent any sort of accurate reporting on those numbers. To take that credit away, they confidently harp on their own poorly sourced number of 75.

Whether AI is explicitly stated as the cause, or even effective at the job functions its attempting to replace is irrelevant. Businesses are plowing ahead with it and it is certainly resulting in job cuts, to say nothing of the interference its causing in the hiring process once you're unemployed.

We need to temper our fears of an AI driven world, but we also need to treat the very real and observable consequences of it as the threat that it is.

Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE in c/games@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 11 points 8 hours ago

For sure, πŸ’―

  • secure players’ data: there should be no sensitive player data being stored on a private game server like that anyways, you're connecting to a server, not logging into a service
  • remove illegal content: not the developer's responsibility in this case, it's the responsibility of the private server (admittedly this could get messier with net neutrality and safe harbor stuff? unclear, but point remains, it's still not the developer's responsibility here)
  • combat unsafe community content: ditto. Not the the responsibility of the developer but the private servers. It's often been argued that the smaller communities of private servers do a BETTER job of moderating themselves)
  • would leave rights holders liable: HERE IT IS! We can't let you self host something like Marvel Rivals due to all the copyrights and trademarks and brand protections. How dare you!
Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE in c/games@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 76 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (7 children)

Absolute trash statement, I really hope this bites them.

They're just repeating a lot of the same misinformation that Pirate Software had been saying, the exact things that had riled the gaming community and caused this latest wave of action. We're already primed to discount the points they're trying to make and it shows exactly how disingenuous they're being.

Positively, I hope this reflects some true fear on their end.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

As has been stated over and over and over again, private servers used to be an option until the industry decided they weren't any more. If the result of this is that it forces the industry to not make shitty, exploitative games, that's still a win for the consumers. I would rather have no game at all than something that psychologically tries to exploit my FOMO and drains my wallet.

Anyone know any "kafka-esque" music or audio stuff? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 3 points 23 hours ago

Uh, without further context, uh, Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (1991)?

Large majority of French, German and Spanish public back tough EU stance on Big Tech, despite risk to Trump relations in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 13 points 2 days ago

There are so many ways in which big tech is complicit with what's happening in the US right now, but corporations have no home.

Lack of regulations, cozying up with an authoritarian, and a populace still with significant funds to drain keep them safely within bounds while things like the GDPR keep them at bay in Europe. But rest assured, once things become too difficult/drained over here, they'll start pushing the boundaries. Likely through grassroots campaigns to make Europeans distrust the GDPR (what is the general consensus on this anyways? as an American it looks pretty good to me but I've never lived under it).

Big tech is a behemoth unto itself, and will need to be fought as such. Put up strong protections now while you can.

Windows seemingly lost 400 million users in the past three years β€” official Microsoft statements show hints of a shrinking user base in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 8 points 5 days ago

You would hope, but this is the same thing we see across almost all industries these days. It's almost like there's a root cause for it, some sort of, Iunno, economic system we could blame ...

But especially cable companies, for example. Has a dwindling customer base caused them to rethink their business strategies? Or has it caused them to try and bleed that dwindling base dryer even faster?

There's no "learning" anymore, there's riding the bus to the absolute pits of hell and just hoping you're not the CEO to be the one that has to go down with it.

Do insects have personalities? Do invertebrates in general exhibit "personalities"? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 29 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Spider warning (it's a jumping spider, so it's tiny): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/59fZMRVoHCc

Certainly nothing to the level of people or even cats and dogs, but handling does improve personality. Jumping spiders will often recognize their tanks and immediate location as safe territory. They will also start to recognize their handlers as the food bringers and "beg".

I understand if it's still offputting if you're not into creep crawlies, but jumping spiders are sometimes referred to as "octokittens" due to their tendency to be tiny little divas who sit around and clean themselves like cats. It might look a little scary, but when they start waving their front legs around like that they aren't rearing up in defense like a tarantula, that's their "give me uppies" pose. You'll see a lot of videos of them online leaping at the camera; that's not them attacking, that's them treating all of life like a jungle gym. Personally I think they're adorable and I recommend watching more videos from people who love them if you want to see more personality.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gEMPLrWh35g , tell me that's not a cat!

EDIT 2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DZkaLAoREWo , I think my favorite thing about jumping spiders is you can tell how smart they are. The way they look around and scan their environment and really seem to see things and take it in. You can almost hear the tiny gears turning in their heads as they consider things.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a-QpxmSD9jo , they'll also chase laser pointers like a cat.

Endlessly fascinating animals to me, I love them.

So you want to start playing Castlevania games (a giant primer) in c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Good write up!

For my own perspective, I'd like to add that I think they're all worth playing even if you don't stick them out. I think Castlevania is one of my favorite series to discuss from a media literacy standpoint because it's easy to the ideas as they evolved over the different games. You don't even necessarily need to attempt to tackle them in chronological order because the old ones still have a direct and simple charm to them, if that's your thing.

While Metroidvania has half of Castlevania in it (and all of Metroid), outside of Igarashi's contribution the series didn't show a whole lot of interest in following through on a lot of those ideas, especially as it attempted to break into 3D. Curse of Darkness was perhaps the closest, but still not very. It doesn't surprise me that Igarashi broke off on his own eventually and now does Bloodstained. I think it's fitting, it's a good thing to give him his own series (while still holding clear inspirations) and let him do his thing.

I was never a fan of Lords of Shadow and for the longest time I couldn't quite put my finger on why. As you state, the series is loosely defined as "gothic action with Dracula" so to say something isn't a "true" Castlevania feels disingenuous. Especially when it was so open to remaking and reinventing itself prior, so what difference is another reboot? There was a clear conversation or thread of design going through the early series up to that point and Lords just kind of tosses all that aside to go in on game design of the day. God of War as you put it. I don't want to say it's a bad game or shame you for liking it, but it's just a bit too far of an outlier for me to really embrace in a meaningful way

OP, you did not mention Vampire Survivors. HAVE YOU PLAYED VAMPIRE SURVIVORS?!

I initially wrote it off because it didn't look like the kind of game I was into, but the "we have Castlevania at home" vibe is very much intentional and endearing. We πŸ’œ you Antonio Belpaese! For $4 the game looks like a flashy mess, but it hits all the dopamine receptors in just the right way and the metagame of unlocking all the secrets is incredibly satisfying.

Which doesn't even get into the Castlevania DLC where Konami actually gave them assistance and let them use that delightfully crunchy authentic sprite art. The ending of the DLC (completing Richter's scenario) legitimately had me in tears, it's so good and the kind of love letter/wrap up to the series that Konami was never going to give us. Please don't skip this entry! 😭

We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 27 points 1 week ago

This is the current problem with "misalignment". It's a real issue, but it's not "AI lying to prevent itself from being shut off" as a lot of articles tend to anthropomorphize it. The issue is (generally speaking) it's trying to maximize a numerical reward by providing responses to people that they find satisfactory. A legion of tech CEOs are flogging the algorithm to do just that, and as we all know, most people don't actually want to hear the truth. They want to hear what they want to hear.

LLMs are a poor stand in for actual AI, but they are at least proficient at the actual thing they are doing. Which leads us to things like this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKCynxiV_8I

66
Solution: Videos Don't Play in Unity Games (pawb.social)
 

This problem is already solved, but it has troubled me across several games and in the interest of building up a lot of the historical gaming knowledge lost on forums and Reddit, I'd like to post here. I don't fully understand the problem yet, so if you have more info to share, please post.

PROBLEM STATEMENT: If you're playing an older Unity game on Steam under Linux (either on your Steam Deck or desktop) and experience black screens, errors, or crashes when a movie plays such as an opening cinematic, try re-encoding the videos with HandBrake. Credit to Bird Observer on the River City Girls discussions where I found this and generalized the instructions:

  1. From Desktop mode, right-click the game in your Steam library and select Manage > Browse local files
  2. Find the folder containing the video assets (OPTIONAL: copy the folder into a backup location to prevent having to redownload the files if you make a mistake)
  3. Start HandBrake and click Open Source, then navigate to the game folder(s) you discovered in Step 2 (download HandBrake from Discover or https://flathub.org/)
  4. Use Shift or Ctrl to select the movie assets
  5. Settings
    • Preset: Official > General > Fast 1080p30
    • Format: MPEG-4 (avformat)
    • Align A/V Start & Passthru Common Metadata βœ…
  6. Set a destination folder under To: at the bottom of the HandBrake window, I recommend a separate working directory under ~/Videos or wherever
  7. From the top menu bar, click the dropdown arrow (v) next to Add To Queue and choose Add All
  8. From the top menu bar on the right, click Queue and then select Start. This can take several minutes to complete depending on your system and how many/how large the movie files are
  9. When finished, copy the completed files from your working directory back into the appropriate game directory

NOTE: For some games using .wmv, simply re-encoding them to .mp4 and then changing the file name back to .wmv should be sufficient for the game to find the appropriate file and play it without needing to worry about further encoding or format issues.

I hope that helps someone, and again, if you have any additional steps or information to help clarify the topic, please feel free to add! I suspect this is largely applicable to Unity games, but may help with other engines where the movie assets are unpacked and easily accessible.

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[SOLVED] EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) crashing after brief use, video previews laggy and stuttering (pawb.social)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by audaxdreik@pawb.social to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
7 comments fedilink
 

2nd UPDATE: To anyone confused by this issue like I've become, there's a difference between EmulationStation and ES-DE,

https://www.reddit.com/r/emulationstation/comments/1ax92io/what_is_emulation_station_de/

EmulationStation (not DE) is an old frontend that got footing when it was used as the primary interface for RetroPie, a retro gaming operating system for Raspberry Pis. It hasn't been updated in a very long time; the last commit to main happened 6 years ago and the last release was in 2014.

EmulationStation got forked by a few different developers for their own projects; batocera-emulationstation is the fork used in Batocera OS, for example.

ES-DE is a fork of EmulationStation started by an independent developer (Leon Styhre) to be used as a general-purpose frontend. It brought a lot of quality of life features including automatic emulator scanning (which is what makes the front-end work out-of-the-box on your machine) and a pretty excellent themes engine. It's not affiliated with the original EmulationStation project, and it's actively maintained by Leon (he seems to be the only developer working on the project from what I can tell).

File locations:

  • gamelists: ~/ES-DE/gamelists//gamelist.xml
  • downloaded_media: ~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/
  • systems: ~/ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems.xml

Individual ROM paths can be set on a per system basis by changing

UPDATE: Good call, I forgot to cover the basics. After a bit more testing, it appears I don't have the issue when using the AppImage downloaded from their site, https://www.es-de.org/

Thankfully the AppImage uses most of the configurations and files I already have set in home, however the one issue I have with accepting this as a replacement is that it doesn't respect the system locations I have specified in /usr/share/es-de/resources/systems/linux/es_systems.xml. Does anyone know where/how I would modify individual system paths in the AppImage? The reason this is important to me is because I'm working with a years old ROM collection on my network drive that I need to set individual paths for each system collection (or re-sort years of ROMs into the default EmulationStation directories ..... please no ...)

Alternatively, can someone help me continue to chase down this problem? It looks like I've been able to replicate it on all 3 of my varied systems now (gaming rig, media center, laptop) so either there's something particular failing on my systems during the build process or there's an issue with the AUR package. How can I track this down and file an appropriate bug report with them, I'd like to learn how to do this proper so I can get this documented for others that may encounter the issue and contribute back.

Problem statement:

When running EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) 3.1.1 (installed from AUR), I'm able to browse through games and watch the video previews after hovering over a game for a second but the audio is noticeably stuttering and crunchy. Audio quality in video previews continues to degrade over time until EmulationStation eventually freezes after only 5-10 minutes of use.

EDIT: Further clarification, crashes only happen while video previews are actively playing which is why I feel the issue is so heavily correlated. ES-DE can continue to be used if video previews are disabled, not shown in theme, or it sits resting on a menu item that does not play a video preview.

Navigation audio is crisp, as is the input and feeling of navigating menus, it doesn't seem to be straining any system resources I can see in System Monitor. Audio in emulators launched through ES-DE is perfectly fine. All videos are stored in appropriate directories in ~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/ and play without issue when opened through VLC. They were downloaded through the built-in connection to https://www.screenscraper.fr/ using the personal account I set up, so I don't feel there are any issues with the source files.

I've also increased the VRAM limit from the default(?) value of 512MiB to 672MiB but haven't noticed any difference, I don't feel like it should need that much to begin with.

~/ES-DE/logs/es_log.txt contains no additional information after the crash. When exiting cleanly I see "ES-DE cleanly shutting down" but when frozen this line is omitted. This is probably due to me having to force quit it, if there are any ways to collect better logs or error info, please let me know.

Hardware and other info:

This is happening on two completely different systems, my gaming desktop with an AMD 5900x and 3080 RTX (proprietary drivers) as well as an old Lenovo something with Intel and something integrated. Both are running Arch with KDE Plasma on Wayland (though X11 also seems to have the issue for whatever that's worth). Let me know what other details may be helpful to provide. Audio is pipewire.

I documented my whole setup process for this so I could replicate it on any system I installed and given how dissimilar the systems are otherwise, I feel like this must be a case of some easy misconfiguration I'm missing or weird dependency I don't have installed? I've tried searching, but internet search is worthless these days. I appreciate any thoughts anyone might have on the issue, any threads I can pull would be helpful. Thanks!

14
Build old RetroArch MAME cores for ARM64? (pawb.social)
 

I've got a real pain of a problem here and I'm looking for some outside opinions on the best way to resolve it, here goes:

Recently purchased an R36S Retro Handheld (https://r36sgameconsole.com/) and installed Rocknix (https://rocknix.org/) on it. When loading arcade games in RetroArch (1.20.0) the core it's using is MAME(0.273 (unknown)). My MAME collection is 0.256 (downloaded from Internet Archive once upon a time). Everything is already scraped, I would like to avoid downloading an entire new collection to work with the 0.273 core. What's the best course of action here?

  1. Copy a compatible ARM 0.256 core to the device (where do I find this/how do I compile it myself?)
  2. Is it possible to convert my rom set to 0.273 and then I'll just switch the locked cores on all my other devices from 0.256 to 0.273?
  3. Just download a new collection

Something else I'm not considering? I know there's historical reasons for why MAME is managed like this, but in 2025 this seems untenable.

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer!

20
Streaming on Linux (pawb.social)
 

Can someone help me figure out what it even is I'm trying to do? I'm a tech savvy kinda persons and if someone just gives me the general idea/right keywords to search for I can probably figure the rest out myself, but I'm caught in a real X/Y problem.

JUNK: Arch, KDE (X11), 3080 (proprietary drivers), OBS, Elgato HD60 X, 3440x1440 ultra widescreen

I just want to do some simple streaming to Twitch/Youtube and game recording.

The Elgato obviously doesn't support my ultrawide so my original thought was to leave the UW monitor plugged in with DisplayPort (as it already is) and then plug in the Elgato with HDMI and then switch the monitor input when I'm ready to stream. The UW stretches the 2560x1440 out though, how do I configure the viewport to keep the proper aspect ratio and put black bars on the side? Alternatively, can I configure the UW to 2560x1440 with black bars and simply mirror the display, or will I take a performance hit when streaming like that? And how do I change the xconfig on the fly, is that something I'd want to write a script for?

I inherited the Elgato from a friend who gave up on streaming and while I'm not entirely opposed to spending more money on potentially more appropriate gear ....... I'd really rather not.

Like I said, if someone can just explain to me what I should be doing and give me a swift kick in the ass towards the right direction, I can do the heavy work of putting all the pieces together, I'm not looking for a total solution πŸ˜΅πŸ˜΅β€πŸ’« Thanks!

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87% Missing: the Disappearance of Classic Video Games (gamehistory.org)
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