February 27, 2025

In The Games Department - Palworld

You are now being reminded of Palworld.

In The Games Department - Pokémon Legends: Z-A

At the Pokémon presents, they showed information and footage of this game, and it's not bad at all for me!

Lumiose city looks good and lively. AZ as a hotel owner sounds like a cool idea, and he still has his floette by his side.

Apparently, this game will have battles with action. Your pokemon can move, and someone told me there'll be ATB bars. If that's true, then I might actually get reeled into playing this game.

Yes, I will admit it. I'm not into turn-based combat. There are other games that have magically made it work for me, but, I always felt like battles were a chore in Pokemon games.

I am looking forward to this new Pokemon game.

February 23, 2025

A Biddybuggy die cast

February 21, 2025

Okay, we're still talking about Nvidia. Some days ago, people reported that the new 50 series GPUs doesn't have support for 32-bit Physx.

Basically, physx was a feature that allowed the GPU to use astonishingly realistic physics for things like waving flags and pieces of shattered glass jumping out of a broken window.

But it was only available on Nvidia GPUs, ATI/AMD users had to turn it off on game settings or else their framerate would tank everytime the game showed realistic shattering glass and clothes ripping away.

And now that it's going away from Nvidia cards as well, it has lead to 50 series users facing the same situation on some games like Mirror's Edge, Borderlands 2, and Assassin's Creed IV, which use 32-bit Physx.

I did play Mirror's Edge back in the day, but never finished it. I became a big fan of ambient music thanks to the soundtrack (by Solar Fields). But, at the moment my computer couldn't handle the game at its full potential.

Now I'm playing it again through Wine. It runs pretty well... except for when I get to the part where the glass shatters and all the Physx effects run. Turns out that Wine (or at least my version of Wine) doesn't make my GPU handle Physx, making my CPU handle it instead, which makes the game jump from 144 fps (my refresh rate) to like... 10 fps.

Man, it was so funny seeing it happen, because I was being reminded of all these people saying "Oh yeah, I played this on a Radeon card and everytime I got to the part where the SWAT shot through the windows the game would get super laggy". Not even the 7800X3D can't handle it smoothly.

I'm still running only Linux, I haven't even put VMs in this machine yet. But I might put Windows on a secondary SSD just for some specific situations.

February 20, 2025

Last time we talked about my computer, I mentioned I was now gathering funds for a graphics card.

Well, I believe it's time to reveal that I have obtained my graphics card. I decided to get an Nvidia Geforce RTX 4070 Super.

It was pretty hard. I was still thinking about what card to get days before buying it. My power supply only has two PCI-e cables, so this narrowed down the selection to something below the Radeon 7900 XTX and the Geforce RTX 4080. I wasn't even thinking of getting something that expensive anyways.

But then, the hardest part was deciding between Radeon and Geforce. Now, if you haven't heard, Nvidia is going through an insane situation right now regarding the release of their newest generation of GPUs, the RTX 50 series.

There are plenty of videos documenting the saga, but, in summary. The series got announced at CES, featured multi frame gen (in games that support it) and other AI features. Things were getting suspicious, it appeared that the cards weren't improving a lot in actual performance. Reviewers were worried. And then the cards started shipping, but turns out that they were shipping a really low amount of them.

The 5090 shipped, only very few people got it, then it got scalped, then reviewers said it got expensive and that it barely improves upon the 4090.

Same story happened to the 5080. Barely anyone got it, it's now being sold at like double or thrice the price it was promised to be, and reviewers are saying the same thing.

And after the launch of the 5080, we had news that the power cables were getting melted and that a driver was causing screens to go black.

Oh, and recently, the 5070 ti got launched, and it was pretty much a similar story. There was no card under its promised price, it was barely an improvement, and it's hard to get. And that's where we are at right now.

So there I was, I was worrying about what card to get. I was deciding between getting a Radeon 7800 XT, a Geforce RTX 4070 Super, or a Radeon 7900 XT. The 7800 XT felt good, but, I think that for my CPU (7800X3D) I could pick something that fits it better in terms of balance. The 4070 Super was like a $100 jump, but it was also the "best value" Nvidia offered under that generation, and it also had the bells and whistles that Nvidia has. The 7900 XT was an even bigger jump, but I think it was too expensive and that I couldn't manage to gather all the money before... you know, the prices increase and I don't get to buy it for cheap.

So I actually bought the 4070 Super, and I did it some days ago, because I was predicting that prices on it would increase. I'm already seeing people noticing it's going at a higher cost now. I even heard that manufacturing on the normal 4070 has stopped, and that might also cause prices to increase.

I feel like I have to apologize for getting an Nvidia card, but, I got what fit my budget. But, I can tell you that I want to keep this card for a long time. Back in my laptop, my 2060 mobile would thermal throttle and perform just like the integrated graphics. Now I'm able to put AAA games from 2016 at ultra settings and get them to run at over 144 fps.

I'm not one of those people who always wants to play demanding games at max settings, I balance my games. Usually, I'll be playing demanding games just to take advantage of this card, but, I can't say no to anything else either. I can still go around playing games from the PS2 era, or any indie game.

What could solve the GPU crisis

Only gamers know that joke

So the new Radeon generation was teased, but people know almost nothing about it. Word on the street is that the prices will be like Nvidia cards but just a little cheaper, and it appears that it's not enough. Intel is doing okay with their GPUs... in theory. I was unable to find a B580, I have no idea why there was no store selling it at the moment I was looking for it. I hope their next GPUs come with more stock, but I also have to say that they're "not there yet".

At the moment, I think what could solve the GPU crisis is to just make integrated graphics better. The Ryzen 8700G can play triple A titles, but the most demanding ones have to be played at low settings. The Strix Halo APUs apparently can do better, but they only come in laptops, and the only one on the market costs over $2000 dollars. I hope that AMD someday makes a CPU lineup that is like the 8000g series, but that performs at the level of the Strix Halo series, and that you can put on a motherboard rather than having it soldered to a laptop. If that ends up being priced at a good price, it might be awesome for mini-PCs, it could even be a "Mac Mini killer".

But now that my PC is "complete", I think I'll go focus on what games to play, and finishing my backlog before thinking about pc parts again.

Pokemon day?

Oh yeah, the big February days are coming... the HAL anniversary, which happens... Tomorrow?! The Hollow Knight anniversary some days later, and then Pokemon day.

No idea on what I could do for the HAL anniversary. I don't have something big prepared at the moment. But, I do think I could do something fun for Pokemon day.

February 13, 2025

I made brownies! This was the first time I actually baked pastry. I thought brownies would make a good first recipe, since they're delicious, and don't take many steps, since you only have to dump the mix into a tray, without having to make little balls or use a cookie cutter.

One thing I learned is that making a whole tray of brownies requires an entire bar of butter. I see brownies in a different way now, since I will now look at a brownie and think it has like a ninth of a butter bar inside, which when used on a bread is plenty... well, I have also used plenty of butter to make garlic bread. Turns out you can turn (almost) any bread into garlic bread by melting butter on it, adding garlic powder and herbs, and then toasting it in the oven.

February 8, 2025

It's okay to eat ice cream during winter (if you're allowed to have it on your diet)

Ice cream can actually heat your body because the milk fat heats your body as it breaks down.

February 7, 2025

I'm getting to World 5 of Yoshi's Island and the difficulty spike is real!

Perhaps Nintendo knew the Super Mario World could be cheesed by either knowing the warps or by using the cape, and decided to challenge people with this game. The start is easy, but, it does get hard.

I don't really worry a lot, I got plenty of lives, and I think this game was made at the point where losing all the lives only made you like... start from the start of the level or world instead of the start of the game.

It's fine, though.

February 3, 2025

if the Switch 2 can play Cyberpunk 2077.

Only gamers know that joke.