Just out of curiosity: What button assignments do you use for TASing? Given that there are at least 9 possible savestate slots, frame advance and maybe some other controls (turbo?), it seems you would run out of unused buttons in the controller rather quickly.
Sorry to resuscitate an old (and useless) thread, but I just had to.
Initially I bought the gamepad because it was so cheap and I thought it would be cool to play some (s)nes games with it. However, I have noticed using it more and more, so I upgraded it to this:
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/gaming/pc_gaming/gamepads/devices/264&cl=us,en
Feels a lot sturdier. The old one feels like a toy in comparison.
I also have to admit that I *still* haven't tried cave story. I apologize. I'm going to download it right now.
This 'the next Windows is slower' thing has always bugged me, but I always tried to justify it by saying that perhaps it is the new features it supports - which would be all well and good if you could turn them off permanently to get a performance increase; this tends not to be the case.
And when I say "the newer version is slower than previous versions", this is not just "with all the default eyecandy turned on", but in fact everything which is useless and resource-hog turned off and disabled. I read a benchmark article somewhere (sorry I don't have a link) where they benchmarked several things in different versions of Windows up to Vista, in the same computer, with all possible non-essential resource hog features turned off, and the trend was very consistent: Each newer version was slower than the earlier version at performing the same task.[/quote]
I think Vista is an improvement over XP in every regard
Except when your XP software and hardware don't work with it.
Only minor annoyance is the inability load unsigned drivers, but all my hardware has 64-bit Vista drivers by now and those that don't are best left to the dust anyway.
Why? Other OSes don't have a problem with older hardware. For example the newest MacOS X has better out-of-the-box hardware support than ever, not to talk about Linux.
"If Windows doesn't support it, you don't need it" is typical Windows-fanatic talk, and simply false.
If something is overhyped, it's this "Vista sucks" bandwagon. It's not the supergreat improvement over XP it was supposed to be, but it's still superior.
Except for the humongously increased hardware requirements and decreased hardware and software support. (And this is not my invention. Steve Ballmer himself has admitted so much.)
Windows is probably the only OS out there for which each new version is actually slower than previous versions. For example each new version of MacOS X has been faster than the previous (with the same hardware), and eg. Linux is constantly being developed to be faster and more efficient.
Let me ask you one question: Do you understand *why* bittorrent has been chosen as the distribution channel for these avi files? It has nothing to do with being "geeky" or anything like that. It's a practical thing.
Another question: Do you understand why most sites which offer direct downloads are made so advertisement-ridden and overly complicated? And do you understand why these complications are a deterrent to many people?
Hint: The short answer to both questions is "money".
they take a ridiculously long time unless they're very new. Plus this rapes my internet
I fail to see how those two things are not mutually exclusive. You complain that bittorrent downloads extremely slowly, and immediately in the next sentence you say that it "rapes your internet". Exactly how does this happen with an extremely slow download? (Wouldn't a superfast download be more of a rape of the net connection?)
lags the computer that's downloading them
Use a better bittorrent client, then. Most clients are very lightweight and don't consume almost any resources at all.
Edit: Also, I don't see why people are so stuck up about using Javascript.
Javascript in a heavily advertisement-ridden website usually means bad things. I'm not comfortable browsing such a website with javascripts freely enabled. (Even though I do so with firefox in linux, I'm still not comfortable. With IE in Windows I wouldn't even dare to go to such a website.)
Also, javascript in such a heavily advertisiment-ridden website is very rarely the *only* thing you will have to enable in order to get the file. Often you'll have to enable cookies (which you will then have to clean up afterwards) and referrers as well.
And all this for what? To get a file which you could very easily get if the website had simply an <a> tag pointing to the file, as it should. But no, that would be too easy.
I assigned Ctrl+J to enable/disable JS, so it's hardly a problem to do that.
It's not a question of how easy or hard it is to enable javascripts (it's very easy with NoScript). It's a question of why such a site would demand javascripts enabled, given that the only thing you want to do is to download a single file. That's always suspicious.
Can't download those with javascripts disabled (I use NoScript for a reason). I can't think of *any* legitimate reason for a website to require javascripts so that you can simply download a file. They have a file, I want to download it from them. HTML has a perfectly good <a> tag for this exact purpose. What the h*** do they require javascript for?
That's just one of the stupid annoyances of those downloading sites.
On a different note: I find the "urgent seed requests" list a bit problematic: It only lists torrents based on the amount of seeders vs. the amount of downloaders. It doesn't take into account the actual speed at which data is being transferred to the downloaders. Even if there were 20 seeders and 2 downloader, that's not of much help if those downloaders are nevertheless getting 1 kB/s. This torrent will not get listed at all, even though it would urgently need seeders with better/faster upload rates.
And on the other extreme, there might be 1 seeder and 20 downloaders, and that torrent will be listed as extremely urgently needing seeders, even though the upload rate of that 1 single seeder might be 1 MB/s, so there's nothing urgent about it.
With this I don't mean to say that this should be changed, as I don't know if it's technically even possible (is it possible for a bittorrent server to know at which rate data is being uploaded to the downloaders?) What I mean is that this causes sometimes problems when trying to help:
It often happens that I check the list and see some torrent being requested with no seeders at all, or maybe just one. I start seeding it, but for whatever reason, no matter how long I seed it, none of the downloaders get a single byte from me. This happens quite often (I don't know the exact reason; sometimes this uploads at full speed to some people, sometimes it doesn't upload at all). The problem is that I'm being seen by the server as a seeder, but I might not be uploading even a single byte, so the urgency of the seeding has not changed at all, but the torrent will drop in the list (might even drop out of the list if I'm not the only seeder). It may also deter people who have automatic seeding scripts from starting to seed, as they see the torrent having seeds.
If I'm not constantly watching what happens to the torrents I'm seeding, I might be actually doing more harm than good: I'm being seen as a seeder, but I'm not uploading anything (for whatever reason). If I see that my bittorrent client is not uploading anything for a dozen of minutes, it's usually better to just stop seeding. I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem.
The first and only time I used Vista was on a laptop of a friend's relative. I got a BSOD in approximately 5 minutes. And no, I was not trying to break the system, I was playing solitaire (the one which comes with Windows).
IMO this "be careful, if you use that software you will lose all rights to what you do" FUD is no different than has been said about almost every possible license agreement out there. I agree, though, that the intention of the section could be clearer.
In my completely biased opinion tasvideos.org shouldn't even attempt to have a "neutral point of view". This site is for entertainment and fun. This is not some dead-serious encyclopedia (like wikipedia so hard tries to be, IMO often for the worse).
Trivia, tidbits, anecdotes and jokes only add positively to the description of a movie. IMO if someone gets a good laugh when he reads the description of a movie, that description has succeeded in its mission.
I honestly wonder if consoles aren't doing that already, and if not, why not. What's the big deal? Almost everyone nowadays has an usb keyboard and mouse. And if they don't, they are really cheap.
Because consoles aren't computers. A lot of people out there find computers really intimidating. Consoles are comparatively pick-up-and-play.
Nobody said anything about any console or console game *requiring* mouse+keyboard. I only wondered why no consoles and console games offer it as an *alternative* to playing with the gamepad. If someone wants to play with the gamepad, then he is free to do so, but if someone would want to play with mouse+keyboard, why not offer him the chance?
Besides, the keyboard would allow hardcore gamers a lot of additional possibilities, especially for online gaming (such as sending messages and outright chatting).
(Yes, sure, many people probably are just happy that online console games are not flooded with "LOL! FAG! U SUK!" messages, but still...)
Modern consoles are also starting to offer features where the mouse could be very useful, such as web browsing. Why not offer it? An USB port wouldn't raise the price of the console much, and adding support for USB mice to the console OS is trivial (if not actually already there).
Don't think for a moment that the keyboard/mouse combination is intuitive. It took you years to learn to use it fluently.
There's a difference, though: Most people already know how to use the mouse and the keyboard (and the latter doesn't need almost any practice at all to be used as a game controller). Also, when you get proficient with the mouse+keyboard, your gaming will be much more fluent than when you get proficient with the gamepad.
Consoles just need to work out a way of controlling an FPS that has 3 properties:
1: intuitive
2: both high rate of movement, but maintaining the opportunity to be accurate with practice
3: not shipping an aimbot.
Easy: Include a couple of USB ports and mouse and keyboard support.
I honestly wonder if consoles aren't doing that already, and if not, why not. What's the big deal? Almost everyone nowadays has an usb keyboard and mouse. And if they don't, they are really cheap.
That sounds more like he just sucks than a valid complaint. I've never had any problem with aiming in a Console FPS. Sure you have to adjust if you're coming from years of playing on PC, but that's not because the control is inherently bad.
The tiny analog joystic of the game controller requires an enormous amount of practice to get accustomed to. As I write in that page, fine-tuning the sensitivity of the joystic is of no help: If you make it more accurate, turning speed suffers. If you increase turning speed, accuracy suffers. You can't win.
Sure, there are people who would beat me 10-0 with them using the game controller and me using the mouse+keyboard, but those people have years of playing experience with the controller. It's just horrible for casual playing for people who don't have that experience.
The mouse is way more approachable. Not only is it easier and more precise to control (because it has an enormous degree of accuracy, and the turning speed is virtually unlimited), most people already have years of experience in using the mouse for accurate aiming: They do it constantly to aim at tiny icons and buttons. While it probably takes weeks if not months of constant playing with the game controller to get used to it, I bet for most people it just requires a few hours, a few days at most, to get used to the mouse as the aiming device. And they will get good at a much faster rate.
Besides, you don't have to take my word for it. Just *look* at people playing FPS games with the controller. Look their gameplay, how awkwardly and sloppily they move and turn. Even expert players. Just download some FPS speedrun which has been made with the game controller, and compare it to one which has been with the mouse+keyboard. The latter just looks a lot more smooth, natural and skillful. The simple fact that the mouse as a virtually unlimited turning speed, while the controller has an extremely limited one, makes a huge difference on how good the playing looks. It makes a huge difference on how good it feels to play the game.
I hope you are not talking about first-person shooters. Because the only way to play those is with a mouse and keyboard. Game controllers simply SUCK big time for playing FPS games. They are just plain horrible.
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/consolefps.html
Except that the Osborne effect refers to a company unintentionally killing its own product with a careless announcement of an upgrade, while in this case it was Sony killing the Sega product (which was most probably their intention).
