OT: Am I a weirdo or still normal? :-D
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I noticed that I seem to have more fun at modifying/optimizing my Retropie configuration instead of playing games :-)
Anybody else here sharing my experience?Linux retropie 4.4.8, running on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+. ROMS outsourced to USB stick formatted with exFat, 32 GB Micro SD, 2 A power supply, no overclocking
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@TimZett To me my setup is fully optimized and pretty much complete so I'm mostly actually playing the games now. But it took me 1-1.5 years to get there. ;-)
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@BobHarris said in OT: Am I a weirdo or still normal? :-D:
... But it took me 1-1.5 years to get there. ;-)Haha, so there's still a long way to go for me :-) Just started with Retropie 2 months ago.
I find it's an awesome solution.
As they say: Best things in life are free - of course I mean this only for the platform ;-) -
@TimZett Yes it's my favorite piece of tech in the house by a long shot. To me retrogaming is all about PS1/N64 and earlier so it's my single go-to console for everything oldschool.
By the way 1-1.5 years was just optimizing the Pi for all my games (and a lot of time went into figuring out how to play some Dos games). My games collection comes mostly from my PSP days..so it's more of a lifetime project :-) But I would certainly agree that finding new games and optimizing them can be just as much fun as playing them. -
I was 13 years old when my father bought me a Commodore 64, so my favourite old-school games are still a bit more pixelated :-)
For me the gaming value or appeal of computers from that era is as good as the one from more recent ones.It was very funny for me when I saw the games again which I last played 35 years back and thought: Was the picture quality really that bad?
IMO one developed quite a lot of fantasy into the games by that time, which is why ones memory suggests the game's appearance was better than it was in fact.
Anyway, the "flashback effect" feels great :-) -
@TimZett To be fair modern tv's are very harsh when it comes to displaying old games. With the right filters applied (smoothing and scanlines) the games look just as good or bad as I remember them.
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@BobHarris Very true.
There is is filter in Vice, I forgot what is the name. I think it is something about line skipping... -
@TimZett Welcome to the club. I'm spending much more time tinkering with my DIY arcade cabinet running Retropie than actually playing games. That said, I seldom play alone, so my main priority is to make my system as perfect as possible for the times when I have guests to play the games with.
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@TimZett I fully know what you mean. :D I started almost a year ago with RetroPie and Raspberry Pi and most of the time I configured and found new games to add. A lot of time was done for research, compare and decide which version of a game should be included. While I changed my priority over time and added more consoles than thought, it grew up a lot and is absolutely not perfect by any means. Almost every 2000 game was tested, researched about it, decided about which version and made sure it works and have scraped data with video preview (plus a lot of modded games, which needed more work). I also only do software stuff and have no build a cabinet or something around it. That is one of my next steps in the future. The question is, where is the line to draw and what you want to achieve. This goal should define everything you do.
@BobHarris I assume you have the previous OS installed right? The one which support gets down soon and probably like me, you have the RPi3B without +. Is this correct? At least, this is for me correct. If supports ends with the older OS and hardware, I probably will buy the newer version of it and start over again with newest OS. Someday.
@Clyde That sounds so satisfying once you got such a system for guests. My current system is just made for me (with possibly multiplayer option) and it looks more or less ugly without a cabinet. :D
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@thelostsoul The line for me was that I started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of games that I could add....games you rationally know you will probably never even get to play. I felt it got too time consuming so I decided to mainly focus on the consoles/pc/handhelds/arcadegames I knew from my childhood and ignore the rest.
Yes I still run a Jessie build on a 3B without +. All my games work flawlessly and I have all the features I need so I'm not planning to upgrade to Stretch or start a new build.
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@thelostsoul You definitely should build a cabinet. I even impressed a pretty girl with mine lately. Surprised the heck out of me. 😮 😉
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This question is relevant to my interests. I don't play very much and definitely nothing new, I hate free to play and get motion sickness from 3D fps games. I came up with this whole retrogame console (that turned in to a bartop arcade) so that I would have something to keep me from thinking about work. It included everything from lengthy planning to woodwork to tinkering with computers. I'm about 8 months in working on this on and off, and nowhere near ready. There's something weirdly satisfying about all of this. Getting emulators to work, altering the appearance of the frontend, managing game lists and so on wins over actually playing the games, at least for now. Mostly I just test games, play for a bit but then get back to tinkering.
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@Clyde That IS surprising. Not even my male friends have been very impressed with my project. Not to mention the waifu who just said "that thing is so going to the summer house", when she saw the cab.
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@m2306 There are ladies who are into this but they are rare.
My friend, when I told her about Retropie she immediately asked if I have Galaga. She always played it with her friends when she was still a teenager.
And my wife likes Prince of Persia and Tetris. The latter we even play together every now and then. She just doesn’t like that it gets faster and faster over time :-DAh, and we have this gambling hall in our small town where people from all across the area show up. Sometimes my impressionen is that there are as many girls as boys, but one has to keep in mind it’s the new generation, with boys and girls between 18 and 24 years old for the most part ;-)
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@Clyde said in OT: Am I a weirdo or still normal? :-D:
@thelostsoul You definitely should build a cabinet. I even impressed a pretty girl with mine lately. Surprised the heck out of me. 😮 😉
Very well done and good to know. Then I build two. xD If you impress a girl with such a cabinet, then she is the right person for you.
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@m2306 @TimZett I have to admit that I know of a good number of women who like to play computer or video games. And most of them don't fit the cliche of unattractive she-nerds at all.
This time, it was more of a "her, too?!" moment, since I only knew her for two weeks and the topic of gaming never came up between us before (don't want to scare them away at the first couple of dates, won't we.)
@TimZett I know a similar share of women from a gaming-themed bar called interFace here in Berlin, Germany. And I agree that in the younger generation there may be more gaming-oriented women than ever before, but even among those in their 30s and 40s today, you can find them more often than you'd think.
@thelostsoul said in OT: Am I a weirdo or still normal? :-D:
Very well done and good to know. Then I build two. xD If you impress a girl with such a cabinet, then she is the right person for you.
In my case, I definitely think she is. 😊 But enough of the ramblings of a love-stricken fool, on with the gaming talk!
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Hey im the same way i do enjoy playing the games but it has been close to a year of optimizing my retropie setup and while i personally think it could use some more tweaking its coming a long well enough
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I think there is definitely something to be said for the joy of just tinkering with something. I have definitely spent more time getting everything working right and with all the games I want. And when I finally get to a place where everything is working smoothly, instead of sitting and playing the games I start to look for more things to tinker with. Don't get me wrong I play the games too but to be honest I mainly play ones I can play for a few minutes and put down. I just don't have the same amount of time to devote to rpgs and such anymore.
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@quicksilver yeah it is fun just finding things to mess with to see just how far you can push the pi
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