thingsiplay

joined 3 months ago
[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 19 minutes ago

So its not time to wake up yet. :-)

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately not. Lot of people asked for this and discussed with the "developers". They say its hard to implement, while preserving their other goals of providing Leaderboards and Scores (you get points for each achievement). With offline achievements its easier to cheat them. You need an account too, otherwise it would not sync to the online database. I wish there was a way to download and use it without an account, so its not possible to cheat, because I personally don't care about the online Leaderboards. This is the official reason.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

Rant incoming: love the idea and how it works with RetroArchivements. My only problem, and that's the reason I do not use them, is that with RetroAchievements games turn basically into an always-online game. Especially with handhelds this is annoying, because I do not have online connection on my Steam Deck all the time. And once I was playing a JRPG and could not play it offline, because I did not want to miss the achievement. That's when I realized this is not for me. I would love to have offline achievements.

There are also services by fans to revive the online experience of servers that are shutdown. One famous (and funny name) is Pretendo Network. I never got into these fan created online servers, but the idea is amazing.

Otherwise there are so many great games one can emulate. Also one of my favorite stuff from the emulation and retro scene are Romhacks and Mods. Think of it as Mods for your PC games, but instead for the classic console games. They can take any form, like DLC like new content like characters, vehicles, maps, randomized builds, new graphics or bug fixes, new stories, game modes, or new attacks or skill sets and even simple cheats. Romhacks are a world of its own to explore. In past years I wrote a few articles about this with many recommendations. You just need to know how to patch them (its explained in the article). Have a look as an inspiration to play next: https://thingsiplay.game.blog/2025/01/23/snes-mods-and-romhacks-collection-2025/

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Which distro has it already? I know one can try it out in CachyOS, but is it enabled and working by default? I don't think its already in Archlinux or Fedora.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 hours ago

indeed we take those

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 hours ago

Sony would have called this a "Remaster" and sold it separately for 50 Dollars.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

I hope the downloaded collection will be uploaded to the Internet Archive. This would be a pretty cool preservation.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

What is "The Year of the Linux Desktop" exactly? How do we measure this exactly and what does that even mean? (I use that phrase for memes usually.)

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Disappointing, but not surprising. The performance of the browser is not an issue on my side. These are just synthetic benchmarks, so not very interesting to me. I wonder if one can "feel" (not just measure) the difference of performance when using both browsers. I don't use Chrome and probably never will, so cannot compare.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Does Intel even have the same issue? Maybe this is an issue with AMD only. Wish they had been more explicit about the other brands and drivers.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

RADV is a driver for AMD cards. The linked blog post https://pixelcluster.github.io/VRAM-Mgmt-fixed/ title is "Fixing AMDGPU's VRAM management for low-end GPUs" and the word nvidia does not appear once in it. Unless I am misunderstanding this, it looks like AMD only. If anyone has direct confirmation that this works on Nvidia too (proprietary or open source drivers), I will update my previous replies to reflect that.

 

A "new" prototype of the game Punch-Out!! on NES was been found and archived. It's one of the most unique prototypes found ever given its a game from Nintendo. There are placeholder stuff everywhere, its unfinished and has no audio. Playable on any NES / Famicom emulator.

Download playable Rom: https://tcrf.net/images/a/a0/Punch-Out_%28Prototype%29.zip

Learn more about all the differences at: https://tcrf.net/Proto:Mike_Tyson's_Punch-Out!!

And the already linked post video from The Video Game History Foundation: This Punch-Out!! Prototype is Unlike Anything We've Seen Before

Important note: Rename the Rom to "Punch-Out!! (Proto).nes", the way No-Intro group does. Why? Because not following that naming scheme is a crime. (Just a joke, do whatever you want.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLAu1Cy9_SQ

As usual, Sumoning Salt has a massive video documentation about a games world record achievements. Its a long video, but very well narrated and put together. I personally recommend watching the video at 1.4x playback speed, if not at least 1.25 times. The video opens with Mark Cerny, the head of Playstation, being the first who did a speedrun on the game Spyro.

There are no timestamps at the moment. If they are added to the video, then I will update this post with the timestamps for listing purposes (if I notice them later).

 

There are two new entries for most popular operating systems listed for Linux Only. This coinsides with the 5% breakthrough of total Steam population (finally). But I wonder if this is an error (or April Fool's Day joke?). The two entries are just named 64 bit and 0 64 bit and its puzzling, as they have a huge percentage.

Does anyone have a clue what this is or could be?

 

I just noticed the extremely low price for the game from 2010, a historical low on Steam price for 2,99 € (and looks like in USD as well). There are still a few days left before sale ends. This is just a heads up for anyone wanting to get into the Civ series, this is an extremely cheap option of a very decent game. Lot of people didn't like Civ 6 and the current Civ 7 and therefore Civ 5 is for them the peak of modern Civilization game.

For anyone running Linux, game works perfectly fine. I played a lot.

Unfortunately this game is not on GOG yet (but other entries of the series is, weird). You can vote to bring it to GOG. In case you are interested into that:

 

https://archive.org/details/md_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260320_patched

My personal collection of Mega Drive / Genesis Romhacks, in an already patched and ready to play ROM format. Most games are patched by myself, but not all are tested. Each .md file comes with a text description, copied from the places where I downloaded the Romhacks (but sometimes also from README files, random blogs and other websites too).

  • 421 Romhacks across 166 different games (or across 163 games, depending on how you process data and count).
  • Download one package size: 182 MB
  • Unpacked size: 815 MB

flat structure: megadrive_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260320_patched_flat.7z

     megadrive_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260320/
        Sonic_Character Pak v1.0.md
        Sonic_Character Pak v1.0.txt

or sub structure: megadrive_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260320_patched_sub.7z

        Mega Drive Mods and Romhacks Collection 2026-03-20/
            Documents/
                Sonic/
                    Character Pak v1.0.txt
            Games/
                Sonic/
                    Character Pak v1.0.md

Both contain same files, just different file structure.

 

Hi guys. I just got tagged in a Github issue, that allegedly gives me a grant. I did not click the link (off course) and suspect its a scam. Never participated in something like that and don't even know their repository. I highly discourage anyone from clicking their links!

I was just looking at the user and saw the only thing this account created are 11 or 12 more discussions like these by tagging random people. My suggestion is to report the post you are tagged and report the user to Github. https://github.com/GhoulStatesman

I hope this place is correct to share this.

 

UPDATES

2026-030-20: Recreated and uploaded the "_sub.7z" archive, as the file structure was not build as intended. Not sure what happened there, but now its correct.


https://archive.org/details/snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260312_patched

My personal collection of Super Nintendo Romhacks, in an already patched and ready to play ROM format. Most (if not all) games are patched by myself, but not all are tested. Each .sfc and .smc file comes with a description, copied from the places where I downloaded the Romhacks (but sometimes also from README files, random blogs and other websites too).

  • 1009 Romhacks across 174 different games (or across 169 games, depending on how you process data and count).
  • Download one package size: 406 MB
  • Unpacked size: 2.7 GB

flat structure: snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260312_patched_flat.7z

         snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260312/
            Super Metroid_Nature v1.03.smc
            Super Metroid_Nature v1.03.txt

or sub structure: snes_mods_and_romhacks_collection_20260312_patched_sub.7z

            Super Nintendo Mods and Romhacks Collection 2026-03-12/
                Documents/
                    Super Metroid/
                        Nature v1.03.txt
                Games/
                    Super Metroid/
                        Nature v1.03.smc

Both contain same files, just different file structure.

 

2026-03-02 by GIMP Team

We’re excited to release the third release candidate of GIMP version 3.2! It contains a number of bug fixes and final polishes as we prepare the first stable release of GIMP 3.2.

Release Highlights
New Splash Screen
Non-Raster Layers
Color Operations
UX / UI Improvements
File Formats

   DDS
   JPEG2000
   OpenEXR
   Procreate Swatches
   Swatchbooker Palettes
   XMC
   WebP

Bug Fixes and Improvements
Fancier .dmg and Windows installer; and sturdier .appimage
API
Security
Around GIMP

   Website
   Translations
   Google Summer of code

Release Stats
Downloading GIMP 3.2 RC3
What’s next

What’s next

We nearly thought that the RC2 would be the last release candidate, but it turned out we found more things we were not really happy with, for a stable version. And the more we fixed, the more it became clear that a RC3 was needed.

We are now in a state where we feel happy again. Of course, there are some things we would like to spend more time on, but we have to stop somewhere. Hopefully you will think the same! So as usual, we are calling for everyone to massively test this version 3.2.0 RC3. Please everyone, test and report any issue you find!

Depending on the testing feedback, we may get GIMP 3.2.0 out very soon!

Don’t forget you can donate and personally fund GIMP developers, as a way to give back and accelerate the development of GIMP. Community commitment helps the project to grow stronger!

 

https://myrient.erista.me/ - main site

This is arguably the best site ever made for this kind of preservation. And they shutdown because of insufficient funding and increased prices for hardware. They have full sets for NoIntro, Redump, TOSEC, MAME, RetroAchivements supported games, exo sets and lots of important coverage from good Internet Archive sources. All of this with direct downloads, no ads, super fast. Everything neatly organized and always available.

Either people start donating fast, or its gone. I recommend to download as fast as possible what you need. Its closing in about a month from now on March 31st, 2026.

 

I just read how someone on RetroArch tries to improve documentation by using Copilot. But not in the sense as we might think. His approach is to let Copilot read the documentation and give him follow-up question a hypothetical developer might have. This also could be extended to normal code I guess, to pretend it being a student maybe and have it ask questions instead generating or making changes? I really like this approach.

For context, I myself don't use online Ai tools, only offline "weak" Ai run on my hardware. And I mostly don't use it to generate code, but more like asking questions in the chatbox or revising code parts and then analyze and test the "improved" version. Otherwise I do not use it much in any other form. It's mainly to experiment.

 

FINAL FANTASY VII - 2013 Edition owners can redeem the new version at no extra cost.

The world has fallen under the dominion of the Shinra Electric Power Company, a sinister corporation that has monopolized the planet's very life force as Mako energy. In the urban megalopolis of Midgar, an anti-Shinra rebel group calling themselves Avalanche have stepped up their campaign of resistance. Cloud Strife, a former member of Shinra's elite SOLDIER unit now turned mercenary, lends his aid to the rebels, unaware that he will be drawn into an epic battle for the fate of the planet, while having to come to terms with his own lost past. This new release is an upgraded version of FINAL FANTASY VII – 2013 Edition with additional features (there are no changes or additions to the story).

...

 

Just wanted to share an alias I have in use and found it useful again. It's a simple wrapper around xargs, which I always forget how to use properly, so I set up an alias for. All it does is operate on each line on stdout.

The arguments are interpreted as the command to execute. The only thing to remember is using the {} as a placeholder for the input line. Look in the examples to understand how its used.

# Pipe each line and execute a command. The "{}" will be replaced by the line.
#
# Example:
#   cat url.txt | foreach echo download {} to directory
#   ls -1 | foreach echo {}
#   find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -name 'M*' | foreach grep "USB" {}
alias foreach='xargs -d "\n" -I{}'

Useful for quickly operating on each line of a file (in example to download from list of urls) or do something with any stdout output line by line. Without remembering or typing a for loop in terminal.

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