Kris Asick

Every game treats the desktop window differently. Some show a flat image, some show the raw warped lenses rendered to the headset, some run full screen on the desktop, some run in a window, and sometimes those windows can't be resized...

*shrugs* I'll do my best to present it all in the video. :B

OK, re-recorded some of the audio-less footage... had to actually re-record one game TWICE because the initial attempt to re-record I forgot to bring the desktop window to the background so the recording software was overlaid on top of the recording. >_<

Recording VR games is... interesting... :P

It's not that I can't re-record, but the problem is that VR games are often physical, so I can't just... go record more because my body aches from BEING physical for an hour or two at a time.

For the time being I guess I'll just re-record the less-strenuous stuff. :/

I just realized the audio wasn't being captured in any of my footage for the upcoming VR related filler video...

...

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* >_<

Although the barrier to entry has been slowly dropping for years now, while compatibility with Windows software/games is also increasing. If we ever see near-parity in terms of usability and compatibility, Microsoft won't stand a chance anymore. :P

And before anyone starts taking stabs at who might've been responsible for eliciting a response like that out of me, I'm not going to reveal who it was or wasn't because I'm not gonna libel someone like that, but I will answer the obvious question:

Yes, it involved games made by GenAI. >_<

It was such an awful idea I had to respond back with, an I quote:

"I've seen better game design on 999,999 in 1 bootleg devices."

YES, I LEGITIMATELY JUST SAID THIS TO SOMEONE. *facepalm*

Yikes...

So, every once in awhile someone contacts me asking for a sponsorship thing or a collab thing or whatever, and pretty much every time it's something I don't care to be involved with and will simply decline.

I was just asked to do a collab with something GENUINELY AWFUL. o_o;

To be frank, I expect the eventual release of Windows 12 to be more like this... :P

BTW: Turns out these Windows 12 rumours have some roots in ChatGPT-generated articles...

...imagine this... MS planning Win12 as subscription/AI/NPU-requiring nonsense, an AI then hallucinates the same thing and reports a rumour on it, then MS sees the backlash and wonders WTF to do about it. :P

2026 Side Series Update YouTube video by Pixelmusement

...and the Side Series Update video is now live, along with the reveal of the new DOS Gaming side series! :D youtu.be/MInI_UhbTnk

The thing to remember about Microsoft is that they have always been a corporation of two halves: One half which understands the tech and what consumers need, another half which wants to make as much money as possible, and neither half knows how to communicate with each other. >_<

Calling it Now: Windows 12 is set to become the least-adopted version of Windows EVER. Less because of the GenAI nonsense, more because of the subscription fee and system requirements. :P

At last! New IDE Optical Drive Emulators for Retro PCs YouTube video by LGR

Fresh new hardware for aging old computers on LGR!

youtu.be/td6QdOnMvnk

The ZuluIDE and PicoIDE optical drive emulators replace your old CD/DVD drive with a MicroSD card solution for loading ISOs, including support for Redbook CD digital audio! Among other features like virtual hard disks and more

Waking up now. Gonna have a bite and then get the side series update video edited together and uploaded! :D

Heads up that I'm going to bed now, meaning the update video on the side series videos is going to be going up quite a bit later than usual, probably between 2 AM and 5 AM EST. :P

I'm sure the corporate execs and marketing department over at Disney would disagree. ;)

So yeah... spam eMails which look like they come from a legitimate site, have links TO the actual site, but clicking the link sends you to the site's redirect system and then off-site to a scam site pretending to be the place you went to.

BE CAUTIOUS.

OK, that's getting a lot more evil...

I'm starting to notice an uptick in spam eMails where all of the links are actually to LEGITIMATE websites... but the page being linked is a redirect which can send the person literally anywhere, even off-site, totally obfuscated by the redirect system. o_o;

Maybe put Moses in there too as an infant for good measure. ;)

True, I was generalizing in that moment in regards to the SSD memory chips. :B

One of my gamedev tenants: Make games I myself want to play.

If I try to make a game I DON'T want to play, I will never see it through to completion.

Even now, over 20 years after the fact, I still occasionally load up and sit down with PixelShips (original and Retro) and Super Minesweeper! :)

YES. I am working on such a game as we speak which NO ONE ELSE has ever done before.

Besides, even if you're not first with mechanics or ideas, you can still tell a story no one else has. The power of writing is infinite and a strong, compelling narrative can often be enough. :)

My game design mentality has always been: Take one or more ideas which already exist independently and mix them together in a way which doesn't exist. That's how I originally came up with PixelShips in 2000; it was basically "Pokémon, but as a space shooter!" :B

So if I buy a 2 TB drive from a manufacturer and an 8 TB drive from the same manufacturer, both the same age and physical size, there are seriously FOUR TIMES more platters in that 8 TB drive? Does that mean there's only like... two or three in the 2 TB drive? o_O

It still confuses me... At least with SSDs I get it, the actual bits of memory are physically present or not so the cost is proportional to the capacity, but HDDs are sharing identical components across wildly different capacities and yet the prices reflect the capacities not the components...? >_<

I mean, I understand "more platters", but they're already pretty packed now. Regarding density/precision considerations, what physical changes are there to allow for that? As in, what allows a platter to carry more data and what makes a head more precise within the same technological boundaries?

For instance, I could buy a 2 TB drive, a 4 TB drive, a 6 TB drive, or an 8 TB drive, all of which fit into the same physical space, so... what is the actual physical difference between them all which allows one to be 4x the capacity AND more expensive? :P

So I've got a tech question about hard disk drives which has always bugged me which maybe someone knows the answer to.

When you have multiple drives of various capacities from the same era, all with the same physical footprint, what is PHYSICALLY different between them all?

Generally speaking, I would just set the compiler to optimize for speed, add the inline keyword on my tiniest functions, and just let the compiler and linker sort it all out; I didn't want to fry my brain getting too deep into the compiler/linker weeds. :B