Video Game News and Miscellany

Has anybody tried out "Remotr?"

http://remotrapp.com/

It looks like a DIY game streaming app that you install on your gaming PC and then you can play games on another PC, tablet, phone, or even some smart TVs, apparently.

It claims you can use it to play "at school, at work, in the car," etc, but I wonder if they've really got the latency beat.

If they do, then who the fuck needs to pay for Geforce Now?
Looks like Steam Remote Play, except more platforms you can play on. I have my doubts on how perfect it would be given the challenges other companies (not just Valve) have had making the concept work in ALL cases flawlessly. But if they've got some "special sauce" and have solved the problem, more power to them.

Geforce Now is a different market IMO, for those who don't have a "great" gaming PC, as you don't own the computer that actually runs the game, but it's in their machine farm (the cloud).
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Looks like Steam Remote Play, except more platforms you can play on. I have my doubts on how perfect it would be given the challenges other companies (not just Valve) have had making the concept work in ALL cases flawlessly. But if they've got some "special sauce" and have solved the problem, more power to them.

Geforce Now is a different market IMO, for those who don't have a "great" gaming PC, as you don't own the computer that actually runs the game, but it's in their machine farm (the cloud).
That's a good point, and it turns out that these guys have also tried to get their own cloud-based solution going called "Vortex.GG".

The remoter app is really well reviewed though, I might check it out and see if it's all it's cracked up to be.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Ok, so, Remotr...

Turns out the streaming server application works on windows 7, 8, and 10, but the client is only available for Android, IOS, and the windows 10 store. So, still not quite what I was looking for. But I gave it a try using my phone anyway.

It is ad supported. Meaning you'll see an ad every time you launch a game or close out of one. The preroll ads are all under 15 seconds, and the postroll ads are closeable after 15 seconds.

Setup is effortless. You install the streaming server application on the gaming computer (which is just clicking "next" 3 times), then login/create an account (which only requires an e-mail address and password, and takes no time). Install the app on your client device, which is just as easy. Login there. It immediately sees your host pc, no problem. In fact, it enumerated all my games instantly, be they on steam, battlenet, or whatever else. So you pick your PC to stream from (yes, you can have multiple ones and choose from them), then pick your game, watch an ad, then you're off. The only caveat is, it sometimes doesn't work if your desktop PC is locked - and the times it does work, the first thing you'll have to do on screen is unlock the PC, and then Remotr won't re-lock it for you when you're done. However, Remotr does also come with a built in "desktop" app that works more or less as well as windows remote desktop, so you can get in to unlock and relock that way - although, it's not as advanced as, say, TeamViewer, and doesn't support switching between multiple monitors and such.

So, how did they fix the lag issue?

Wellllllll they didn't, really.

Playing Left 4 Dead on my phone reminds me of playing Quake 2 deathmatch on my 28.8 modem back in 1996. There's about a half-second of input lag, and on top of that, a further second of sound desync (as in, sounds are played a half second after the action that causes the sound happens on screen, which itself is a half second after you input the click to fire the gun). It's not IMPOSSIBLE to play this way, but it isn't what I would call pleasant.

So, if you're not on your local network, FPS games kinda go out the window.

However, it's still pretty good for some other games. Darkest Dungeon seems to work ok. Admittedly, it's a turn-based game, but the input lag is much less noticeable, and it also looked sharper I think, probably owing the game not being a first person camera changing viewing angles constantly. Stardew valley and Undertale are playable, but the input lag is a little bit of a factor there, too, when it comes to movement - especially on Undertale's bullethell dynamic.

Another thing is, this wants a gamepad controller really bad. While most mainstream/multiplatform games will come with a preset bunch of onscreen/touchscreen controls, a lot don't. L4D and Darkest Dungeons I had to build my control UI from scratch - which wasn't difficult, really, other than having to remember the all keys I needed to play without being at an actual keyboard, but it was time consuming. It does, thankfully, remember your UI setup automatically so it is still there when you come back next time.

So, yeah. That's basically it. You pretty much need to be on the same LAN as the host PC (though it will let you try from anywhere, and I respect it for at least letting me try, unlike, say, Steam In-home Streaming, unless you want to screw around with Hamachi), and it works best with a game controller.

Though, I do wonder how much of the input lag comes from the latency inherent to being forced to use wifi on my client (since I can't exactly plug an ethernet cable into my phone), and if a PC-based client can shave 10 or 20 ms off its ping time for not being wireless, it might help some. Or maybe not. I don't have a windows 10 machine to test it on, so c'est la vie.
 
I got: Dropping the Headphone Jack On the Game Boy Advance SP

Also, all kinds of hot dogs can be yummy, from Ikea up to 2-star fancy home-made-in-front-of-you sausage in a honey glazed spelt bun with seven spices....But I wouldn't necessarily call all of them "proper" hot dogs.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I respect it for at least letting me try, unlike, say, Steam In-home Streaming, unless you want to screw around with Hamachi),
So just for giggles this afternoon, I decided to screw around with Hamachi.

MAN have they streamlined how it works since I last used it ~8+ years ago. It's pretty much install, and go. Within 10 minutes (largely thanks to TeamViewer) I had both my gaming rig at home and my work computer here at the office networked together on a hamachi virtual LAN. And yes, as luck would have it, Steam treats a virtual LAN the same as an actual LAN.

So I'm able to use steam "in-home" streaming now, basically anywhere with a decent internet connection.

That said, decent needs to be pretty decent. My work computer has ~25ms ping to my home computer, across the hamachi VLAN. I don't think I'd want to go much slower than that, as my adventure with Remotr showed. So... across town? Yeah maybe. From my Dad's house in Colorado? Maybe not so much.

It's clear that Steam streaming prioritizes input and screen sync over all other concerns. Playing Left 4 Dead 2 was smooth and responsive, and I was able to play it without any real problem. However, there is a LOT of compression and artifacting. And I mean A LOT. Like, sometimes 360p-youtube-alot. But control responsiveness is great. I'm going to try tweaking it a bit to see if I can improve the picture, and to what degree I can do so before control lag starts to manifest.

And, of course, another happy side effect of this is, using a Hamachi VLAN, I can pretty much stream all my pirated movies and tv shows and whatnot on the fly no matter where I am, because my home internet has 20mbit up - which is way more than is needed to stream 720p video. I got it that big to cut down on youtube upload times, but I like this, too. And, naturally, ping times aren't as important for this application.
 
You know me... I stubbornly refused to get off of XP until it absolutely couldn't do what I needed any longer. My next place to dig in my heels is apparently windows 7.
Stick it out long as you can. I have 10 and it thinks it knows what I want better than I do, to the point that it used to change all my settings back to default after shut down one night. I've had to basically make it so it can't do anything without my involvement.
 
I am amazed by your work ethic this close to the end of the month. ;)

So just for giggles this afternoon, I decided to screw around with Hamachi.

MAN have they streamlined how it works since I last used it ~8+ years ago. It's pretty much install, and go. Within 10 minutes (largely thanks to TeamViewer) I had both my gaming rig at home and my work computer here at the office networked together on a hamachi virtual LAN. And yes, as luck would have it, Steam treats a virtual LAN the same as an actual LAN.

So I'm able to use steam "in-home" streaming now, basically anywhere with a decent internet connection.

That said, decent needs to be pretty decent. My work computer has ~25ms ping to my home computer, across the hamachi VLAN. I don't think I'd want to go much slower than that, as my adventure with Remotr showed. So... across town? Yeah maybe. From my Dad's house in Colorado? Maybe not so much.

It's clear that Steam streaming prioritizes input and screen sync over all other concerns. Playing Left 4 Dead 2 was smooth and responsive, and I was able to play it without any real problem. However, there is a LOT of compression and artifacting. And I mean A LOT. Like, sometimes 360p-youtube-alot. But control responsiveness is great. I'm going to try tweaking it a bit to see if I can improve the picture, and to what degree I can do so before control lag starts to manifest.

And, of course, another happy side effect of this is, using a Hamachi VLAN, I can pretty much stream all my pirated movies and tv shows and whatnot on the fly no matter where I am, because my home internet has 20mbit up - which is way more than is needed to stream 720p video. I got it that big to cut down on youtube upload times, but I like this, too. And, naturally, ping times aren't as important for this application.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Stick it out long as you can. I have 10 and it thinks it knows what I want better than I do, to the point that it used to change all my settings back to default after shut down one night. I've had to basically make it so it can't do anything without my involvement.
It's nice to have one's suspicions confirmed.

But really, this has always been my policy with windows OSes, going all the way back to 3.11. I wait as long as possible for the bullshit to get weeded out/worked around before I switch.[DOUBLEPOST=1492810991,1492810946][/DOUBLEPOST]
I am amazed by your work ethic this close to the end of the month. ;)
Meh, it's the middle of the month :p and I've got almost all my work done but one thing that I have to wait for someone else to do their part first, anyway.

I don't plan to make a habit of it, though.. this is more just a spur-of-the-moment dry run test for applications involving my crappy old laptop and, say, going over to a friend's house.
 
As far as I know, you still can't do a perfectly clean install of video drivers in Windows 10. If you clear out all the video drivers on your PC, Windows 10 automatically installs whatever out of date drivers that it's deemed acceptable before you have a chance of installing the newest drivers. This may have changed, but I know it infuriated me when I first got it.
 
You can use the driver updaters' built-in "clean install" option, but that means your desktop gets reset to 800X600 or whatever default rez it uses for a bit, which means you have to reorganize your desktop once it's done.

I admit, I went to WinX on my machine mainly because I knew I was going to have to support all the other computers in the house, and they had all updated to WinX (even though we purposely built their machines with Broadwell/5xxx chips to ensure they would be able to continue to use 7/8.1 if they wanted). I made my machine dual-bootable with a full install of XPPro, though just in case. I sometimes wish I'd made it dual-boot with my copy of Win7x64 instead, but I'm not gonna go through the hassle of setting everything back up again now.

--Patrick
 
Cosmic Star Heroine came out today too!

Holy fuck what a time to be a gamer.

It's Zeboyd Games' love letters to Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star.

[DOUBLEPOST=1491956622,1491956249][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh, and Planescape Remastered too.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
Having now bought and played this, it's funny (and GOOD) how about 90% of the gameplay shown in that trailer is from the first 3 hours of the game. Which means no BIG spoilers.

And I know it's about the first 3 hours, because that's how much my in-game timer says I've played! As Chrono Trigger is my favorite game (period, all-in), this is a really good "gives the nostalgic feeling" but it isn't the same game either, which is also good. It's far enough away to judge it on its own merits so far, rather than being so close that it's "CT, but crappier."

The only thing I'd say I had a bit of a "huh, what?" about is how the combat works with abilities being "used up" and then needing to use a round to "refresh" them. You get used to that pretty fast though IMO, so it was a slight negative in the first hour, and then is fine.
 
I knew Stardock had the rights to Star Control. I knew Stardock was working on a Star Control game.

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS?!

THE WORLD HAS ONE JOB. TO TELL ME ABOUT STAR CONTROL.

https://www.starcontrol.com/

[DOUBLEPOST=1493072971,1493072868][/DOUBLEPOST]And now I find out that Stardock and Toys For Bob didn't come to arrangement about all the alien races? So no Spathi? No Chenjesu? No Mrnm-Hrm? DOUBLE FUCK! Now I am conflicted.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I knew Stardock had the rights to Star Control. I knew Stardock was working on a Star Control game.

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS?!

THE WORLD HAS ONE JOB. TO TELL ME ABOUT STAR CONTROL.

https://www.starcontrol.com/

[DOUBLEPOST=1493072971,1493072868][/DOUBLEPOST]And now I find out that Stardock and Toys For Bob didn't come to arrangement about all the alien races? So no Spathi? No Chenjesu? No Mrnm-Hrm? DOUBLE FUCK! Now I am conflicted.
How does one get "the rights" to a game... without getting the "rights" to what's in the game? Did they just have the rights to the game's title or something?
 
How does one get "the rights" to a game... without getting the "rights" to what's in the game? Did they just have the rights to the game's title or something?
I have no idea, but for some reason, there's no original Star Control species in the new game.
 
How does one get "the rights" to a game... without getting the "rights" to what's in the game? Did they just have the rights to the game's title or something?
That's reminiscent of what happened between Interplay and Bethesda, where Interplay sold the Fallout intellectual property to Bethesda, but leased back the IP in order to make a Fallout MMO. But midway through development, Bethesda claimed that they were only leasing the Fallout brand name to Interplay, and not any of the stuff from Fallout, eg super mutants, power armor, any Fallout characters, etc. So, Bethesda sued Interplay for using their super mutants and power armor and Fallout characters in a game that hadn't even been released yet.

While I'm usually a fan of Bethesda's games, I thought this was a pretty dickish move for them.
 
Zenimax in general is a scummy, scummy company when it comes to shit like that, going after any game with Scroll in the title for instance.
 
That's reminiscent of what happened between Interplay and Bethesda, where Interplay sold the Fallout intellectual property to Bethesda, but leased back the IP in order to make a Fallout MMO. But midway through development, Bethesda claimed that they were only leasing the Fallout brand name to Interplay, and not any of the stuff from Fallout, eg super mutants, power armor, any Fallout characters, etc. So, Bethesda sued Interplay for using their super mutants and power armor and Fallout characters in a game that hadn't even been released yet.

While I'm usually a fan of Bethesda's games, I thought this was a pretty dickish move for them.
According to the fallout wiki, the terms of the lawsuit were actually a bit more nuanced than that, and there was a fair amount of "lawyering" evident on both sides.

My reading of it is that the crux of the issue was that Interplay was to come up with $30 million and funding and start development by April 2009. Any subcontractors working the title needed written permission from Bethesda. Masthead allegedly began work on the title for Interplay in March 2009, but without Bethesda's approval. Interplay claimed to have secured $15 million in cash funding and "valued" Masthead's contribution at $20 million, but the contract between Masthead and Interplay was not a dollar-value contract, but rather a royalty share.

Key quote from the article:
Earlier in the case, Interplay had stated in 2008 that Development costs would be at least $US26.8 million and 53 Employees. However, their 10-K release at the end of 2009 confirmed Interplay had a total of 5 employees, and $279,000 in development costs.

Bethesda noted in the same pre trial memorandum that Interplay had offered no code during discovery to prove development, and that a statement in March 2009 by Interplay CEO Hearve Caen confirmed the game was not in full scale development at that time. Further to this, Interplay's development costs decreased in the following quarter, Bethesda claimed that these both prove that full scale development did not begin by the April 4, 2009.
In my opinion, everything else is "lawyering"..throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. When Bethesda tried to claim the agreement was breached and thus terminated, Interplay tried to grab all of the intellectual property back with some lawyering, at which point Bethesda said "well, we licensed you the name, but nothing else"... that was all lawyering tactics for leverage and position in the court case, in my opinion. It happens a lot in court.

From what I can tell, reading about the case and wading through the bullshit, Interplay was given 2 years to get the core development of the MMO started and have $30 million in funding. They failed to get their shit together (there evidently wasn't even the $15M in cash funding Interplay claimed for the game), and tried to get some last minute code started via Masthead in order to keep the contract alive. Bethesda called shenanigans and filed suit to terminate development due to the default.
 
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In "What the actual fuck!? Seriously!?" news...



That said, I like that it's getting a re-release/remastering. I never had the play it but always wanted to, if only for the game's infamy. As Jim Sterling said, of everyone who's aware of the game, maybe 5% actually played it. The other 95% know of it, largely thanks to lists like "Worst Games of All Time!" or "Most Controversial Games!" or something.

Hopefully, this eventually makes its way onto Steam.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
In "What the actual fuck!? Seriously!?" news...



That said, I like that it's getting a re-release/remastering. I never had the play it but always wanted to, if only for the game's infamy. As Jim Sterling said, of everyone who's aware of the game, maybe 5% actually played it. The other 95% know of it, largely thanks to lists like "Worst Games of All Time!" or "Most Controversial Games!" or something.

Hopefully, this eventually makes its way onto Steam.
Ha ha ha ha, oh, for what passed for "unacceptable" game content in the early 90s. I remember the flap about Night Trap. Those were heady, carefree days :wololo:
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It's doubly hilarious that it's rated Teen today.
Yeah really. Back then, it was like rated quintuple X, nobody would carry it, and the few that would, would require your parents to be with you while you purchased it, carrying a signed and sealed writ from your clergyman - and even then, they'd put you on a watch list.

Now, it's pretty much harmless.
 

fade

Staff member
Wow. I never even heard of that game.

Oy, those early CD-ROM games with the live-action footage and the terrible, terrible acting.
 
Wow. I never even heard of that game.

Oy, those early CD-ROM games with the live-action footage and the terrible, terrible acting.
That's crazy, it's easily one of the most infamous games of all time.





IT SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS.
 
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