Optimus

I quickly realized ammo is limited purposefully to make it into a survival horror where resources are critical. I personally liked that fact. Also found the last secret after I beat the final boss, then it became not needed anymore :) p.s. Do the skellies die ever? Or shouldn't I waste ammo on them?

I find SIGIL quite different and I enjoyed it. Tough yes, but it had the progression of regular levels, it dragged me to explore and gradually clean up enemies and find the extra secrets (oof those 30 seconds sector close, how many times I idclipped instead of restarting). But they play more like traditional maps with interesting layouts and progression, rather than arena slaughtermaps, where maybe the arenas look pretty but are so generic. I really liked Sigil 1 and 2 despite their difficulty. I guess my issue with slaughtermap is not just the "throw 300 revenants at you" mentality but also they are not environments that I am really hooked to explore. There is something uninteresting to the layout despite all the effort to sanitize color usage/theme and have gorgeous looking screenshots.

No need to be discouraged if people say your maps are too easy. My philosophy is I'll create anything based on what inspires me. If oldschool adventurous maps inspire me I like to create things like that. If most people don't like it, then few might be seeking for such WADs. I tend to argue about slaughtermaps too but thinking about it, maybe I should create the WADs that I'd enjoy to play myself. I even like janky stuff. A lot of the 90s might seem overrated or outdated. I don't like the very clean concise look of many of the modern maps, especially those slaughtermaps which might look gorgeous in screenshots but very sanitized to have the same color choices and theme all over again. I kinda love the old megawads from various people where the theme and quality from level to level was so inconsistent that you didn't know what you would get. I love the 90s odd designs with weird rooms that have no place or other oddities. Slaughtermaps also try to be maybe very symmetric or very generic as they focus on the combat. They don't have the unique changes in themes and room spaces of classic WADs.

I know a lot in the community hate it but it's my choice and won't change any soon. I am so used to it and hard to move to anything else. About the filtering, I don't mind much that others prefer it. I used to play with it on because I thought in all those modern ports, the more extra features you add the better (also think of those highres upscale filters, I don't use them any more even on other things like emulators, they are gimmicks that don't necessary make things look good). But since a long I've disabled it and I like the crispy look of the original, plus I would notice some texture flats in mods would connect in an ugly way because of the filtering in the edges. The proper perspective mouselook is something that keeps me from switching too. I know some people say it alters the gameplay and I get the arguments. If there is a puzzle where you have to climb higher to shoot a button I will respect and will not shoot upwards. But if there are monsters higher in ledges or very low that you cannot see I want to be able to aim precisely (I disable autoaim). And last, I tried to play with mouse and no freelook in some other ports and my brain is locked to expect movement so maybe it's a reason I can even get motion sick a bit with some others, even if I rotate player only, my brain expects some micro up/down movements in the view. I try to correct it instinctively with my hand, something goes on there, hand-eye coordination of what was expected. There was a MOD that wouldn't run on GZDoom but required some other port and I had a hard time. So I guess I am locked in GZDoom even for the reason above. But I am fine with it.

Beat Friede DS3 by luck, after like 20-50 times dying, after grind overlevelling 50 levels, trying various armoursets and waepons and magic. It still felt luck, like if I just did something a tiny bit different I would be still here fighting another 20 times. Now I wanna go back to my DS2 challenge of collecting 1 million souls without fighting any boss. I am at 850000 and killed 12 times almost everything possible except the invisible a***holes in the shaded woods and some fire lizards down the pit. I think I'll check 900000 before emptying the whole map before fighting any boss. I wanted to do 1 million to get into Drangelic and continue there. Then decide to maybe fight the Dark Lurker (it could be your first boss without anything else, it's possible, love the paths that are possible in this game). But unless I enable the covenant of champions it might not be easy. Should have get an ascetic as a gift at start, will try again (this is also Vanilla, possibly in SOTFS it will be more enemies to clear a level and get soul memory of a million). Also, I always want to try some other games I bought. I need to check this Selaco everybody said was great. Also Northern Journey, could be something immersive and janky with atmosphere that I might like. I need to check them.. but I feel like playing the familiar things.

Yeah, I think poise mattered at least more in DS1. It's just that things don't scale as much to make it very very easy. In contrast with Elden Ring where I am getting into some big boss fights after exploring all parts I can and levelling up, and the damage taken or given seems trivial, like I am not fighting big main bosses but side bosses. It's weird. Anyway, the problem with ER right now when I play on PC, I got PC reboot and I was writing video that I lost,. I got some freezes or reboots, and in one case I got notice the CPU overheated. This game punishes your CPU, I found other people having the same problem. I just wanna stop and play some other game now.

Help, I am still stuck in the world of Souls. Had a ragequit yesterday with DS3 and uninstalled it. Then thought I need to get detox from souls. Played Spit Wad Willy for a while in DosBox. But then I had a thought, how would Elden Ring feel to me right now, because they say it's hard but something is off with DS3 difficulty. And so I tempted to break my detox and try my last ER build that is overlevelled though as I explore everything. And yes it was much nicer experience and relaxing, but also I noticed something. Most enemies respond a bit slower when they see you, and with fewer compos sometimes. They are never as manic and unfair as DS3. Plus the fact my OP build now takes very little damage. I was playing like an idiot without paying attention, hitting and getting hit sometimes. I wasn't afraid to go near enemies. So, they must have toned down the enemy responses compared to DS3. Now bosses are different thing, but you summon spirit asses, you are overlevelled becxause you explored naturally all thbe area. It naturally becomes more relaxing to play than DS3 where youa re stuck. And now I want to check another theory and will reinstall DS3. What if I grind for levels and get 30-50 levels up in few hours. Will it matter? I thought this thing never mattered in DS games enough, but in ER it makes a vast difference. In both builds my Vigor are 40, but in DS3 if I get hit hard I will go from 100% health to 30% or something, almost dead and down the ground. In ER because I OP and same 40 Vigor (and level is less at 115 while it's 125 in DS3) and I notice damage is vastly reduced, the 70% overkill might be 30%. I don't have heavy armours and those never made a big different in souls games.

Anyone else notice that benchmarks can freeze in some systems? They run fine on my 386DX. I tried on an AMD 5x86 133mhz and it freezes through and have to reboot. Recently I also got one of those Pocket386 handhelds, I tried the benchmark there and it freezes after few frames. However the game plays normally well enough without freezes (for the slow 386SX that is). It's only the benchmarks that are affected in certain systems, what could be the reason and how to avoid it?

Back at Elden Ring. The DLC is out but I am still playing the original game I left somewhere in the middle for long time now. I could jump into the DLC but I still want to finish the original first, there are simply still so many stuff I haven't done in this game yet.

I don't like most JRPGs. I prefer certain even janky western RPGs, like yesterday I was playing Eye of the Beholder on GBA version, or Fighting Fantasy on DS, or previously I played Dark Spire and skipped Etrium Odyssey even if the later is more beautiful in colors but first one is stylistic b&w and grim. I look at new or old RPGs to get into and somehow I am not attracted on the style and mechanics of many JRPGs even if I try few of them. Strange also to make that FromSoft a Japanese company does Dark Souls or newer series that all feel more of a western RPG with dark themes rather than JRPGs. It's the only exception of RPGs from Japan that I love to play (although it's more like an action RPG rather than retro turn based).

Tried timedemo 1 on my beefy 386DX 40mhz with ISA Tseng Labs. Also tried against commercial Doom. Full screen high detail then half detail High detail Doom: 7.03 FDoom: 9.247 Fdoom13h: 10.842 Half detail: Doom: 12 FDoom: 16.379 Fdoom13h: 15.602 Finally tried the new FDoomH: Full detail (320x100): 13.938 Half detail(160x100): 23.693 Interesting results matching my expectations. I am curious of Fdoom13h as it doesn't use the mode-x and have to write bytes in columns on slow VGA, but writes on the buffer and I guess fast 32bit copy of the buffer to vram on last step. So it ends up being even a bit faster than regular FDoom unless you go for half detail. Funny I tried at some point before on 486 or Pentium crippled with ISA gfx card and mode13h really paid off, but with Vesa Local/PCI card results were different. On 386 of course because CPU is main bottleneck, there is improvement but slight. You might prefer to play half res anyway, where again as I guessed now the FDoom instead of the 13h is advantage (16.379 against 15.602) because I guess the double pixel mode-x trick is utilized here. Finally was FDoomH or half-res FDoom advantage? Was 320x100 or 160x200 better? And to my guesses the less columns were better than less vertical rendering. FDoomH may be better if you want to go for the 160x100 experience. My favorite is Half Detail FDoom when I play on 386 and Full detail on 486 (I think FDoom13h didn't give or it did in the Pentium with PCI but lost on 486 slightly with VLB). I am also surprised even full detail fullscreen on 386 is less choppy than old Doom and kinda managable. Maybe with a bit of smaller window it's ok.

That's cool btw. I always was curious about an 100 lines version, with low detail to test an 160x100 version on my 386. Might be even better than if I don't prefer the potate 4x1 for pixel sizes. Pitty the player bar is not readable.

Even if I am a Nintendo fan, I only recently tried to play games in either a N64 or PS1 and I somehow prefer the visuals of PS1 in most cases because of crispy instead of blurry textures. Even if N64 has the superior GPU with proper perspective correction. But really, I tried some games side by side and I like the crispiness of PS1. I also find more PS1 games I would be very interesting to invest time to.

I want to join again!!! Count me in.

I just realized after replaying Dark Souls 2 SOTFS that they shouldn't have remade this version. There is some discussion about which is better, and most people do agree SOTFS is the definite edition, but many times I prefer to play the original and say this should have been it and nothing else. But the issue is not that I prefer one over the other, but the enemy placement is so vastly different that it creates a schism in my brain. I can play either of the two versions and enjoy my time with both, but now in my memories of what enemies to expect or where do you find certain sould item are split. Imagine if ID did two vastly different versions of classic Doom where the enemy/thing placements are so vastly different that you didn't recognize which is the original and which a pirate bootleg of the original where a kid vastly altered things in a WAD editor. Or a better phrase to put it, it's like I am stuck in a double mandela effect world, where both Berenstein and Berenstain Bears exist.