I still use old stuff like my over decade old PCs, VGA, PS/2, analog speakers, etc.

Oh come on. Fairly informative and correct for the most part except for the title and main argument. Still, it is about Doom and binary partitions, so thats all OK.

Anything on a flat monitor is "just faking" 3D.

Yes, Doom levels could still be designed in plan view, but the in-game display of the floors, walls and ceilings is a very rudimentary, but definitely 3D, experience. Displayed objects have an obvious X, Y and Z coordinate. The Z coordinate was not used for aim (people had not got used to using a mouse for aim at that point) but it was used for display and movement.

Also forgot to complain about flat sprite monsters.

No Doom was not "computed like any other 2D game", or rather it partly was, but then on top of that it was displayed in 3D, which was a big deal back then. Yes, fake 3D, on a monitor, but definitely 3D.

Quake ran in plain VGA so the argument about 3D accelerators falls rather flat :-)

Oh man, that reminds me of coding EGA and VGA graphics using assembly code back in college! I think I still have a reference book for that somewhere.

Fallout 1 was a technically antiquated VGA (that's right, 640x480, 256 colours) post-apocalyptic turn-based tactical RPG where you could not control you team mates during combat. It was a bit buggy (and so was F2). It was Mad Max, without cars.

And yet.

Fallout is arguably the best world-building work in the history of video games. People are probably going to dispute that, but most other games are built on pre-existing lore or works, or do not have that scope*. Fallout built its world pretty much from scratch, conflating a pre-war 1950's, golden-era, overly-optimistic world-view with the bleak desolation of the nuclear holocaust that ensued (to clarify for those who really know nothing about Fallout: in this universe a nuclear war happened in the 50s**. all that's left is from that era). Beside its content which was plentiful in and of itself, this created a contrasted, yet highly coherent and mature world (and by mature I don't just mean killing friendly NPC, I mean doing Morally Very Bad Things that don't necessarily result in graphic scenes). An open world that you could roam freely, be surprised by a new discovery that you made, and at the same time find these discoveries to fit perfectly with the game's logic. In most large games you just access new areas or are carried by the story, in Fallout you would go "Holy shit I'm in the middle of a city populated by centenarian ghouls!", shortly followed by "ho, of course it's full of ghouls, that's perfectly normal". There are not many games that have this mix of unexpected/logical and dark/humorous content.

Fallout 2 had the same ho-my-God-how-could-they-get-away-with-it VGA engine (so next to zero evolution there), but quadrupled the world map (with a minimum overlap with the one from F1) and brought it fifty or so years forward, expanding the world greatly (there are now rival quasi-city-states, and your action may influence their future), while also building on the first one: some antagonists 'classes' from F1 have now grown their own identity and became NPC, and some characters are still around -- a young character you saved in F1 went back to her settlement, became its leader, built it into a town, and is now in the process of expanding it into a new state...So Fallout 2 is basically the same game, except they did that one important thing: push the game world's boundaries even more. You could never guess what next city would be like, but you could bet it would have some crazy shit in it, and yet somehow still make sense.

That's why many people don't like Fallout 3. It is not in itself a bad game, but comparatively, it's kind of coasting. Also it's too damn easy.

I'm sorry, I got carried away, you were asking if you should play the previous ones? No, you 'should' not. But you could, and for F1 & F2 you would certainly not lose your time if you know what you're getting into. And if you don't, at least go and watch their intro on Youtube, they'll give you the feel of the world.

* Possible contenders in terms of "original video game world": Elder Scrolls (vast, but less original), Deus ex (not as large), Bioshock (same), Final Fantasy (original and vast, but not as complex). Any other idea?
** Technically not the 1950s, but in practice the 50s + a bunch of high tech gizmo.

It is bullshit, but it's not a problem unique to Apple.

I've never owned a mac, but every goddamned Dell laptop I've used has had a subtly different charger, and they're mostly just a round plug!

As for usb-c for video, meh. People kvetched when they dropped the optical drive, the VGA port, etc. (Hell I remember people complaining on the windows side when laptops stopped having serial ports!) Technology moves forward... and Apple is known for pushing new techs at the expense of old ones.

Still can't believe they put a 480p camera on it, though.
Seriously, what is this? 2005?

I still use my Sharp CRT TV from January 1996, VCR from Y2K, VGA, etc.

Screenshot won't help since it's a monitor thing, not videocard. I tried to take photo of the monitor but it doesn't show up there. It is a really faint jiggling/fuzziness of sharp contrast page elements that are near such background. Like word "sarcasm" next to the checkbox when writing comments has vertical fuzziness.
It is kinda similar to when you connect some LCD monitors with VGA cable their menus have options like "pixel clock" and "phase"...Except I use DVI and can't adjust those.

>> ^dag:

Shows up fine for me too. Hmmm, maybe a CSS/browser issue?


I also note that @UsesProzac appears white on white for me. But it's fine on her profile page. I tested that on chrome and Opera. I wonder if some of this is the HDMI connection that's going through a switchbox. But then I'm sure this was a problem before I upgraded my VGA monitor in the summer...

ATI cards have given me a miserable experience too compared to Nvidia. The last ATI card which I had that was nothing but fun was my ATI VGA-Wonder in 1989.

>> ^spawnflagger:

hooray more VGA Chess.
I actually watched this last week on RocketJump. I agree the writing could be better, but it's still fun.


Glad I'm not the only one who keeps hearing VGA Chess. And yeah, characters are a bit too annoying. The accent on Zach Levi seems just...unnecessary. I feel like he's going to be the next aging actor who had one somewhat popular show but won't do much after that but will cling to his past fame.

hooray more VGA Chess.
I actually watched this last week on RocketJump. I agree the writing could be better, but it's still fun.

It's probably just me, but I constantly hear them saying "VGA Chess" each time they say "VGHS".

I'm a big fan of FreddieW, so I hope this web series is a success. Looks good so far.

>> ^bareboards2:

Who is that actor??? I recognize his voice, but can't come up with his name....

It's the brilliant Stephen Merchant.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

HDMI? How quaint. Where's the DisplayPort adapter?


Where's VGA, DVI, composite, S-Video, etc.? I don't have any HDMI monitors/TVs.