LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

Hey!  Pretty soon I’ll be gone for the summer!  Unfortunately that means no scheduled livestreams for a while…

…BUT THERE WILL BE ONE MORE BEFORE I’M GONE!  The last livestream of… the season… I guess… will be this Friday, June 20th at 7pm est!

Before I get to the regular post stuff, by the way, I just wanted to thank all of you livestream viewers.  I’m a pretty shy guy when it comes to public settings, and decided to start streaming as a way to get over that fear.  Initially, being watched and listened to live was an agonizing experience; every week I’d grow more and more terrified as Fridays approached, and it got to a point when I nearly decided to stop the streams altogether…

…but you folks were so inviting, so wonderful, so… fun.

You guys gave me the fuel to keep at it, and now I look forward to each stream.

Also, shoutout to all the lovely folks who have watched/followed/donated on Twitch!  You’re all super fun, and I’m constantly flattered beyond words that you spend your valuable time watching!

…especially when I get super frustrated while playing games.

Seriously, that Ice Titan fight… oh my god.  Damn that Ice Titan fight.

Anyways, thanks again, you guys rock.

END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!

When I happen to play games on an emulator, I get a little giddy.  Emulation software often has built-in tools that can enhance the playing experience in ways that the original hardware can’t.  Right off the bat, running older games in higher resolutions is an absolute joy and allows you to really appreciate how good a game can look.

Enhanced visuals are great, and the ability to make quicksaves even greater, but there’s one thing that stands head and shoulders above the rest:

Speeding up gameplay through frameskipping

At a boring, text filled part of a game you’ve played a million times before?  Frame skip to make it faster!  At an unskippable cutscene you’ve seen a bajillion times before?  Frame skip to make it faster!  Need to draw two hundred Ultimas from the Shumi Village and not have it take forever?  Frame skip to make it faster!  (though that one still takes quite a while)

I love frame skipping.

While playing Kingdom Hearts recently, I’d occasionally use frame skipping to get through the tortuously long and boring Gummi Ship segments, quipping, “the magic of emulation!” while doing so.

Why, I used frame skipping to speed up the final segment of the game, where we encountered the final boss segment and-

SOFTLOCK

Well, that does happen from time to time, lemme try it again and-

SOFTLOCK

Uh-oh.  Third time’s the charm right?-

SOFTLOCK

Apparently there was an issue with a texture that’s used in that boss fight that causes the emulator to crash.  I suppose I can look up a way to transfer my save file to a PS2 memory card and finish the game on the console it was made for, but I see two issues with that.

One, I don’t have a clue as to how to do that.

Two, the PS2 is in the living room… I don’t want to walk all the way over there…

The magic of emulation…