Wolf_Lbh

I'd describe it as "oddly similar to photoshop". If you know how to do something in photoshop and Affinity can do it then it probably uses the same menus. Which imo is the biggest issue people have with Gimp, sure it can do almost everything photoshop can but a lot of things are strangely complicated. The only downside I've noticed with Affinity is that it doesn't yet have a Linux version but hopefully that will change soon now that it is free.

Sega Saturn fpga core has been updated and is currently shaping up to be more accurate that software emulation. There is also a console and handheld version of the MiSTer fpga coming out this week for $160 which is basically what a Sega Saturn costs on its own not counting a sd card adapter or games and the Sega Saturn has analogue video out while MiSTer has hdmi + upscaling options and 30 other consoles it supports. So I'm very happy with my decision to go with a fpga system to replace the Saturn in my own gaming setup. Important to note is the Saturn core is still under development and while it plays many games very well it doesn't play all the games a console would yet. I personally am ok with waiting while the developer works on it but someone else might not find its current state an acceptable replacement for a real Saturn yet. But I'm 100% confident it will be better than emulation in the next several weeks/months.

It is amazing how much stuff just works now. RPCS3, Vita3k, and Ryujinx get updates like every 2 days & Xenia Canary and Xemu get updated frequently as well. I just wish Citra was still chugging along as it got to like 80% of the games working but then it just lost momentum. Some really cool stuff you might enjoy: Broadcast Satellaview Games - There were actually downloadable games for the SNES. They were short but fun and The Legend of Zelda series even had one called "Ancient Stone Tablets". Some fans remade the game and you can play it in an emulator. It even has voice acting in a SNES game. Dsiware games - This was missing from the DS emulation scene for a long time so it is awesome to be able to play some of the quirky DS downloadable games. There is actually a remake of "The Legend of Zelda Four Swords" that was a free dsi game and the only version of Four Swords (which as the name suggests was a 4 player game) where you could play as a single player and have the other 3 players be npcs. That makes it the only way to play this Zelda game unless you have 4 friends and a GameCube. Widescreen PS1 and PS2 - The PS1 and PS2 emulators have a toggle to make games play in widescreen mode. Some games won't play nice with this setting but most do and you can always save per game settings. In my experience this will really improve racing games. (You can also disable dithering in PS1 games which is a personal taste thing but imo improves most 2D games) Better Wii and Wii U Controls - Being able to use mouse input instead of the wiimote makes many Wii games like 10x more playable. Not to mention using a regular controller to play the good games that are trapped on the Wii U still like Xenoblade Chronicles X and the Zelda Wind Waker and Twilight Princess remakes instead of the Wii U gamepad controller is a huge improvement. Upscaling and fps boosting - Pretty much any action/racing game will feel immensely better at a rocksteady locked 60 or 120 fps instead of the 30 fps with occasional dips to 15 fps many consoles allowed. And by increasing the resolution to 1080p or 4k you can make PS1 games look like they were released on the PS3 or Switch games look like they were made for modern consoles. (There may also be graphics packs depending on what console you are emulating that will further increase the looks) Filters - Some 2D games and early 3D games will not look the best when played at 16 times their original size but you can easily apply filters in RetroArch. The filters I like are: HQ2X - Removes some sharpness from the image. Best example is probably Chrono Trigger for the SNES. FXAA - early games were made to be played on crt tvs which had a bit of blur to them so some games would put spaces between colors as this would blur on your tv and create a transparency effect. Best Example would be the waterfall in Sonic for the Genesis is just a few blue lines if the image isn't blurred a touch. Transparency effects were also commonly used for light, clouds, and bushes so if those don't look right give this filter a shot. crt-aperture - This is my favorite scanline filter. Any console without a hdmi port probably had its games made with scanlines in mind so you could argue early games are supposed to have scanlines in them to appear correctly but it is personal taste and tbh I usually go for no scanlines and a super crisp image. Cheats - Games are supposed to be fun so use your best judgement with cheats so that you don't make things too easy for yourself but if you know where every good weapon in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom is and when they break it is just wasting your time to go farm another copy then go ahead and crank the durability or make them unbreakable so you don't need to constantly restock weapons. Savestates - I feel the same about savestates as I do cheats. Don't make the game too easy but feel free to savestate to save time. Like to cut out a long walk back to a boss that is going to kill you 100 times before you beat it or to catch a Safari Zone Pokemon that has a 4% chance to spawn and a 80% chance to escape once you do find one. Rom Patches - There are some crazy fan made patches for games. Everything from correcting the colors of the Ghost Busters Uniforms to fixing gamebreaking glitches before updates were a thing to remaking the game into something entirely new. Some of my favorite patches are undubs/unworks which keep the English text of games but replace the voices with the original Japanese as early English Voice acted games didn't take voice acting seriously and would get some unpaid intern to do it and as a result many PS1/2 era games sounded terrible in English. Also for some reason when RPGs got English releases the studios would make enemies do like 4x the damage for no reason pretty often.

Don't worry. They were busy losing 2 billion dollars last quarter. After they took down Yuzu and Citra and used ai generated lawsuits to take down Garry's Mod and a site that didn't host any roms for games currently being sold I have decided to stop supporting Nintendo games financially. I'm sure people upset about this is like a fraction of a percent of their bottom line but if they are petty enough to take down Garry's Mod I hope that fraction really burns them.

In Tech Hoarders episode 2 a video game collector that collected everything from the dawn of gaming was encouraged to whittle down their collection to just 5 consoles. I am also a gaming collector and a minimalist so that got me thinking, what is the minimum amount of consoles I would be comfortable owning to play the games I enjoy from every era. Freebies: PC, handheld pc of choice (Steamdeck), and an android phone. The following consoles can be emulated to near perfection so I wouldn't /need/ to own physical versions: Arcade - MAME Atari 2600 - Retroarch Stella Core Atari 5200 - Retroarch a5200 Core Atari 7800 - Retroarch ProSystem Core Atari Jaguar - Retroarch Virtual Jaguar Core Atari Lynx - Retroarch Beetle Lynx Core Bandai WonderSwan Color - Retroarch Beetle Cygne Core ColecoVision - Retroarch Gearcoleco Core Intellivision - Retroarch FreeIntv Core Dos - Dosbox PC Engine TurboGrafX-16 - Retroarch Beetle SuperGrafx Core PC Engine TurboGrafX-CD - Retroarch Beetle SuperGrafx Core Nintendo GBA - Retroarch mGBA Core Nintendo GBC - Retroarch Gambatte Core Nintendo GameCube - Dolphin Nintendo 64 - Retroarch Mupen64Plus-Next Core Nintendo DS - Retroarch melonDS DS Core Nintendo NES - Retroarch Mesen Core Nintendo Pokemon Mini - Retroarch PokeMini Core Nintendo SNES - Retroarch bsnes Core Nintendo Virtual Boy - Retroarch Beetle VB Core Nintendo Wii - Dolphin Nintendo Wii U - Cemu (Actually only has around 60% compatibility but plays every game I own other than Sonic Lost World) Philips CD-i - Retroarch SAME CDi Core Sega 32X - Retroarch PicoDrive Core Sega CD - Retroarch PicoDrive Core Sega Game Gear - Retroarch Genesis Plus GX Core Sega Genesis - Retroarch Genesis Plus GX Core Sega Master System - Retroarch Genesis Plus GX Core SNK Neo Geo - MAME SNK Neo Geo CD - Retroarch NeoCD Core SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color - Retroarch Beetle NeoPop Core Sony PS1 - Retroarch Beetle PSX HW Core Sony PS2 - PCSX2 Sony PSP - Retroarch PPSSPP Core (92% compatibility, of my 220 games 5 don't play) The following consoles are emulated extremely well but some games I would miss don't work: Sega Saturn - Retroarch Bettle Saturn Core (70% compatibility) Sega Dreamcast - Retroarch Flycast Core (55% compatibility) Sony PS3 - RPCS3 (69% compatibility and constantly improving) Sony PSV - Vita3k (60% compatibility and constantly improving) Xbox - Xemu (85% of games are playable, unfortunately many of the 15% that don't play are very good. Constantly Improving) Xbox 360 - Xenia Canary (Couldn't find exact number but it is constantly improving) 3DS - Lime3DS (Couldn't find exact numbers but a few of my games won't start) Nintendo Switch - Ryujinx (Couldn't find exact numbers. Constantly improving.) So based on the games I like that don't play via emulation the consoles I would keep are: MiSTer FPGA - This is an emulation device that emulates hardware instead of software known for extremely high accuracy and needing a low amount of system resources/power to accomplish it. It covers everything on the emulation list except the cd-i/gc/wii/wii u/ps2/psp and will likely have extremely high compatibility with the Sega Saturn in the near future. Basically I'd rather own this console than a sd card modded Saturn. Sega Dreamcast - CD drive replaced with a MODE ODE (SD card adapter). It is likely that in the next couple years a more powerful MiSTer FPGA will cover this console but the technology is not there yet. Sony PSTV - Vita but for the big screen. Jailbroken it can play almost every Vita game. Sony PS3 - Later model so it doesn't overheat and die. Sony PS5 - Plays ps4 and ps5 games. Also the only modern xbox exclusive game I care about is Halo 5, everything else came out on PC. Xbox 360 - Later model so it doesn't overheat and die. Also plays many of the Xbox games not supported by Xemu. 3DS Nintendo Switch - Launch model for jailbreaking. Will be replaced by Switch 2 assuming backwards compatibility and jailbreaking. The goal Linus set in the video was to get them down to 5 consoles so I feel like 8 and still being able to play 99.9% of my games is a good middle ground. Also I fully expect the PS3, PSV, and Xbox emulators to reach near complete support for their platforms in the next couple years. The only reason I don't say the same about the Switch is the Switch 2 might be more difficult to emulate. I would love to say the same about the 3DS but I feel like that emulator hasn't seen much progress even before Citra died. Also while the 360 emulator has seen a ton of progress lately it has a long way to go. I think in my dream setup I would have a PC, Handheld, Switch 2 (For online games I don't want to emulate and risk a ban), and a PS5. Sadly I'm still 6 consoles away from that but we'll see if I'm right about emulation and FPGA technology lowering that number down to 3 in the next couple years.

Right now I'm looking at a galaxy s23+ refurb. I'm putting a case on it anyways so as long as there are no scratches on the screen and it isn't beat to hell I don't care. But I kinda tuned out of the phone world because nothing that excites me has been going on for awhile so if anyone knows a better deal let me know please.

For anyone looking for a photoshop alternative and finds gimp to be really difficult to use I found out the website https://www.photopea.com/ is actually really great and has some in development ai based image editing tools that might be really handy (making inserted objects match the texture you are placing them in type things if you want to add a tattoo to someone for example)

Person asked for help You ignored what they asked for help and talked down to them as you simply restated what they were asking for help with. Didn't understand you were being hostile in the firstplace You're the one going to need luck with social disorders that advanced.

You're not gonna believe this because you evidently didn't read my post or the title but... that is exactly what I asked for advice to help me figure out. Mindblown.gif

Obviously. But there is a difference between my room is 3 degrees warmer vs my room is the temperature of the sun.

There is pretty clearly a point where performance begins to cost you exponentially more heat/power for what you get. I'm just trying to find a sweet spot between power draw and what you get for it. If you are willing to give up AAA games in 4k at max settings it shouldn't be impossible to find some significantly lower powered parts that can run your setup.

I understand that the more power a pc uses the more heat it generates but you'd think there would be a market for people that want performance without heat generation or without an insane power bill. I didn't know I was going into unknown territory here haha. Also opening a window makes it hotter because my house is cooled via ac and it is typically in the 90s or hotter outside and with my pc running it is going to be hotter than that with the window open. Unfortunately either my pc overwhelms the ac in my game room or my game room doesn't get good flow from my ac because with my pc running it will be like 90+ in my game room with the pc running. It just isn't working. I need something that I can have some fun with that won't cook me alive.

I'm looking to get a setup that can at least run AAA games at 1080p with max settings or 4k with above high settings and won't give me heatstroke if I play for a few hours. My budget for cpu, mobo, and memory is $1200 but flexible if something really good is near that range and I plan on upgrading my gpu later.

RPCS3 actually just got an update today that gives it a lot more performance on lower end computers. I'd still suggest using a jailbroken ps3 for the compatibility but if you don't have money/space for one and have a mid tier computer you can emulate most of the library pretty well.

Years ago I suggested some emulators and things have come a long way: Libretro/RetroArch - Bundles multiple emulators together so you can launch your games from a single program by simply installing the emulator cores + bioses. The cores I suggest are: Atari800 - Atari 5200 emulator Virtual Jaguar - Atari Jaguar emulator Beetle PC-FX - PC Engine emulator MelonDS - Nintendo DS emulator Gambatte - Game Boy Color emulator Messen - NES emulator Mupen64Plus-Next - Nintendo 64 emulator Pokemini - Pokemon Mini emulator bsnes - SNES emulator BeetleVB - Virtual Boy emulator Flycast - Sega Dreamcast emulator PicoDrive - Sega CD and 32X emulator Beetle Saturn - Sega Saturn emulator Beetle NeoPop - Neo Geo Pocket/Neo Geo Pocket Color emulator Beetle PSX - PS1 emulator PPSSPP - PSP emulator Other Emulators: Citra - 3DS emulator (A version of this exists in RetroArch but the core is not as good as the standalone) Dolphin - Gamecube/Wii emulator (A version of this exists in RetroArch but the core is not as good as the standalone) Cemu - Wii U emulator (Didn't have much of a library and almost all of it was ported to the Switch except for: Xenoblade Chronicles X, Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, Paper Mario Color Splash, Sonic Lost World, Star Fox Zero, and Yoshi's Woolly World. Any other Wii U game that is popular is better played on the Switch imo) PCSX2 - PS2 emulator RPCS3 - PS3 emulator (note most popular games work well and 70% of the ps3 library is listed as "playable" meaning you can finish the game with hopefully only minor crashes or glitches but some tinkering and googling may be required. It will also require a decent computer to run it. A better solution might be picking up a used ps3 off ebay and just jailbreaking it so you have 100% compatibility and everything just works. Personally I suggest the launch model ps3 as even though it costs more it is also fully backwards compatible with PS2, PS1, and PSP games) Yuzu - Nintendo Switch emulator (This is still a wip and currently ~800 games are bad/broken and 1800 games are good-perfect with almost all of the popular games being near perfect and updates happening incredibly frequently.) Vita3k - PS Vita emulator (50% of the library is listed as playable or better. Personally a PS Vita or PSTV is not that expensive to pick up off ebay and very easy to jailbreak. The PSTV would require jailbreaking to play a lot of games as it doesn't have the motion and touchscreen controls the PS Vita has but there are homebrew tools to allow you to easily play those games and I prefer to play on a tv.) Xemu - Xbox emulator with 80% of the library listed as playable. Requires a good computer. (Imo you are better off jailbreaking an xbox for 100% compatibility) Mame - a massive preservation effort that plays many consoles and arcade games as best as any program is currently able to emulate. Systems include: Atari 2600, Atari 7800, CD-i, ColecoVison, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear, Sega SG-1000, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Intellivision, Atari Lynx, Neo Geo, SuperGrafx/TurboGrafx 16/TurboGrafx CD, and Wonderswan (Note Mame isn't very user friendly even if it is the best so for any of these systems if you struggle dealing with Mame you can just use RetroArch cores instead)