steam deck has been probably the best thing that happened for my recreation in years
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@jonathanhogg yeah! and it runs most games, including games that my laptop (with a much more powerful CPU and a discrete GPU... ostensibly) basically can't reasonably run, for reasons that i can figure out but am too tired to spend time on it if i don't know if i like the game yet
@whitequark I even installed Elite Dangerous on mine – I doubt I will ever seriously get back into the game, but it’s wild that it works and is entirely playable
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also someone actually gave a shit (a lost art) while designing the device, as a result of which it's probably my single most cherished electronic device now. not because of the specs or the price or anything, but just because it warms my soul to interact with something that has had so much effort and intentionality put into it. (i see the fact that it's good for running games as a happy downstream consequence of that)
for example: the specs are underwhelming if you look at the numbers... until you realize that it was designed by picking the display first, then picking a GPU that can drive the display within a given power envelope, then bolting a CPU to the side that's just powerful enough to feed the GPU. this isn't how anybody designs laptops for example. (i think some gaming laptops are better but generally the system integrators don't seem to design these things so much as just slap the roof of the latest reference design, make thermals inexplicably worse, and call it a day)
@whitequark I think people in general are too obsessed with specs, instead of simply asking "can it run the software I want to run?"
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@whitequark I think people in general are too obsessed with specs, instead of simply asking "can it run the software I want to run?"
there is also not a lot of ability to know the difference for laypeople, who will easily fall for "bigger number = better". it depends a lot on what you intend to do, how much resources are required to do it, and the capabities of the hardware.
i have an old SanDisk Sansa e250 MP3 player that can play anything you can throw at it if you replace the firmware with Rockbox. this thing has an 80MHz ARM7 CPU, probably a very small amount of RAM (can't find a spec to say one way or another), and only ever chokes on OGG and large FLAC files. it can play a movie if you use the right encoding and don't mind watching a movie on a really tiny screen.
on my old 100MHz 486 DX4, with 16MB RAM, i could play low quality 128Kbps MP3s or WAV PCM, but only in linux and only if i didn't use XFree86, text-mode console only. it could barely play any MPEG1 video with no sound.
that's the RISC advantage. but nearly everything in software today is so bloated it can be hard to tell the difference.
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there is also not a lot of ability to know the difference for laypeople, who will easily fall for "bigger number = better". it depends a lot on what you intend to do, how much resources are required to do it, and the capabities of the hardware.
i have an old SanDisk Sansa e250 MP3 player that can play anything you can throw at it if you replace the firmware with Rockbox. this thing has an 80MHz ARM7 CPU, probably a very small amount of RAM (can't find a spec to say one way or another), and only ever chokes on OGG and large FLAC files. it can play a movie if you use the right encoding and don't mind watching a movie on a really tiny screen.
on my old 100MHz 486 DX4, with 16MB RAM, i could play low quality 128Kbps MP3s or WAV PCM, but only in linux and only if i didn't use XFree86, text-mode console only. it could barely play any MPEG1 video with no sound.
that's the RISC advantage. but nearly everything in software today is so bloated it can be hard to tell the difference.
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rare case where taking an existing platform and making it more like an embedded system improves quality and reliability, ha
@whitequark there is only one major thing that reminds me "this not for me, because of one personal preference". i can't stand playing first-person games with joysticks. i really need a mouse and keyboard, but mostly the mouse. i can do without in a lot of third-person games, top-down or side-scrolling, cause those formats were originally created for joysticks or D-pads.
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@whitequark there is only one major thing that reminds me "this not for me, because of one personal preference". i can't stand playing first-person games with joysticks. i really need a mouse and keyboard, but mostly the mouse. i can do without in a lot of third-person games, top-down or side-scrolling, cause those formats were originally created for joysticks or D-pads.
@burnitdown i used to be like that and then at some point i decided that i have a skill issue and fixed it. not to say the preference is unreasonable, but i evaluated the options and decided that i'd rather put in effort into something that will let me play most games (i won't play shooters like that) on it
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@discatte @eloy @whitequark that computer is dead. it sits in my dad's basement with all of the other decades of electronic junk i'll have to deal with when he dies. it's too bad, since i crammed a whole bunch of oddities into it, like an NEC 4-disc changer, "floppy" QIC tape drive, and Adaptec SCSI adapter. i had one of Sony's first 1x CD-ROM drives in there for a while too but it wasn't terribly reliable. but it was certainly well-used by the time i was done with it, sometime in 2003.
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also someone actually gave a shit (a lost art) while designing the device, as a result of which it's probably my single most cherished electronic device now. not because of the specs or the price or anything, but just because it warms my soul to interact with something that has had so much effort and intentionality put into it. (i see the fact that it's good for running games as a happy downstream consequence of that)
for example: the specs are underwhelming if you look at the numbers... until you realize that it was designed by picking the display first, then picking a GPU that can drive the display within a given power envelope, then bolting a CPU to the side that's just powerful enough to feed the GPU. this isn't how anybody designs laptops for example. (i think some gaming laptops are better but generally the system integrators don't seem to design these things so much as just slap the roof of the latest reference design, make thermals inexplicably worse, and call it a day)
@whitequark genuinely heartwarming. it's amazing how good it can be to experience this kind of exceptional object. sometimes i look at the manual for my water boiler (CV-DCC50) and feel as though i am in a small way being healed
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@burnitdown i used to be like that and then at some point i decided that i have a skill issue and fixed it. not to say the preference is unreasonable, but i evaluated the options and decided that i'd rather put in effort into something that will let me play most games (i won't play shooters like that) on it
@whitequark it may be a skill issue but it's one i've never enjoyed trying to overcome. way back when Golden Eye 007 was a popular game, i'd turn down any turn at playing cause i hate playing first-person with sticks.
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also someone actually gave a shit (a lost art) while designing the device, as a result of which it's probably my single most cherished electronic device now. not because of the specs or the price or anything, but just because it warms my soul to interact with something that has had so much effort and intentionality put into it. (i see the fact that it's good for running games as a happy downstream consequence of that)
for example: the specs are underwhelming if you look at the numbers... until you realize that it was designed by picking the display first, then picking a GPU that can drive the display within a given power envelope, then bolting a CPU to the side that's just powerful enough to feed the GPU. this isn't how anybody designs laptops for example. (i think some gaming laptops are better but generally the system integrators don't seem to design these things so much as just slap the roof of the latest reference design, make thermals inexplicably worse, and call it a day)
@whitequark I love steam deck because for some people it will be their first (and for a long time only) desktop PC. Someone will install KiCad on their steam deck and design their first PCB on it. Someone will compile their first C program on it. It's a games console and it was never meant to do any of this stuff but it's weirdly good at it, and as someone who learned to program on an NDS Lite typing out Lua programs on the touch screen I love that the next generation gets to do that too.
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@whitequark I love steam deck because for some people it will be their first (and for a long time only) desktop PC. Someone will install KiCad on their steam deck and design their first PCB on it. Someone will compile their first C program on it. It's a games console and it was never meant to do any of this stuff but it's weirdly good at it, and as someone who learned to program on an NDS Lite typing out Lua programs on the touch screen I love that the next generation gets to do that too.
@wren6991 yes yes yes 100%
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@whitequark there is only one major thing that reminds me "this not for me, because of one personal preference". i can't stand playing first-person games with joysticks. i really need a mouse and keyboard, but mostly the mouse. i can do without in a lot of third-person games, top-down or side-scrolling, cause those formats were originally created for joysticks or D-pads.
@burnitdown @whitequark Have you tried gyro + flickstick control on the Deck (or any other device supporting it)? It's true nothing beats good old keyboard + mouse for FPS games, but gyro + flickstick is a great improvement over traditional dual stick control.
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