thingsiplay

Today I've reported a player in Marvel Rivals for being a cheater (it was obvious to me, even autoaim through wall playing hawkeye). And I just got a confirmation message that the player is banned until 2125... basically a 100 year ban. :D Do report them. Report toxicity as well (I get ton of confirmation). But do not report because you are angry or maybe the other player played well. It's the first time I reported someone in Marvel Rivals for cheating.

I do my part.

Finally the new Rust 1.85.0 update is here, with a new Rust Edition 2024.

Someone remaked Super Mario World in 3D in Unreal Engine 5 (no realistic graphics). The video explains what he did and its super interesting and entertaining to watch. However, there is nothing playable right now. And even if there was one, Nintendo would be fast to remove it. I hope he will publish a finished work as Open Source project, so it will live on forever.

Video description:

Full gameplay video here: youtube.com/watch?v=xy3X_txfYWI&t=0s

Made in Unreal Engine 5.

It's not a big message, so I copied it here over. To me it is notable that they specifically address a Linux Gaming distribution called Bazzite, to correct a bug/mistake on it caused by the game. This note is also under the "General" headline, so they take it serious. I am really really happy about this.

Greetings, Rivals!

We're thrilled to announce that the upcoming patch drops on February 13, 2025, at 09: 00: 00 (UTC+0)! This update will also be applied without server downtime—so you can dive right back into your epic battles as soon as the update is live!

Here's a look at what's coming in this patch:

All-New Costumes

Mister Fantastic & Invisible Woman - 60th Wedding Anniversary Combo Bundle (Store release: 2025/02/14 02: 00: 00 UTC+0)

Mister Fantastic - The Life Fantastic (Store release: 2025/02/14 02: 00: 00 UTC+0)

Invisible Woman - The Life Fantastic (Store release: 2025/02/14 02: 00: 00 UTC+0)

Bug Fixes

All Platforms

General

1. High-end computers running the Bazzite (Linux) system were mistakenly tapping into low-quality UI resources. Fear not—this issue has been rm'd!

Maps and Gameplay

1. Resolved an issue where if you scored KOs during overtime and the battle concluded at that moment, the KDA tab might not have shown its true colors. Now every victory is honored!
2. Corrected an issue where the Yggdrasill Path cart icon in the Convoy tutorial was a bit off-target. Your heroic journey can now continue with clarity!
3. A heroic sweep has been performed to fix various map collisions that could trap players or allow them to slip through walls unexpectedly. Your path to glory is now cleared!

Hero Bug Fixes

1. Doctor Strange's Portal Power: Fixed an issue where Doctor Strange's portal could be interrupted during the placement phase if an allied Loki transformed into him. The Sorcerer Supreme's magic now flows uninterrupted!
2. Jeff the Land Shark's Bubble Trouble: Resolved a quirky situation where Jeff's bubbles could, in rare instances, sneak past enemy healing gates into the spawn room. No more bubble bath break-ins!
3. Iron Man's "Armless" Attack: Addressed a tech malfunction where Iron Man's arm models could go missing after activating Armor Overdrive in certain rare scenarios. The suit's back in action—fully equipped to blast into battle!
4. Hulk & Wolverine's Team-Up Trouble: Fixed a little mischief where because of their Team-Up Ability, Wolverine's Berserk Claw Strike could, under certain situations, be activated during Feral Leap. Now, there will be no more mix-ups!
5. Hulk's Charge Hiccup: Resolved a Team-Up Ability bug where if Hulk was hit by Namor's ultimate when charging to throw Wolverine, he wouldn't be thrown afterward. Now, the power duo can deliver a one-two punch without any interruptions—Hulk smash, Wolverine slash!

Edit: Oh I forgot the Direct X and drivers links. Added it in the below link list. There is a website that hosts old versions. With Windows 98 SE I use "voodoo_graphics_driver_kit_version_3.01.00" and "directx9.0c_april2006".

I just escaped the madness of today gaming and enjoy some retro games. The original Sim City from 1989 got a re-release in 1995 as version 2 for Windows 95. This screenshots shows DOSBox-pure in RetroArch with a Windows 98 Second Edition installation to play SimCity Classic V2.0 for Windows 95 (it works with 98). BTW this is on my Linux host. It's hilarious.

The hierarchy is as follows: Linux > RetroArch > DOSBox-pure > Windows 98 > SimCity Classic V2.0 for Windows 95

It's actually the first time I played this old version for Windows. I only knew and played the SNES version before, which is dramatically overhauled (and with gamepad support off course), my favorite version to date. In case you want too, there is a lot of stuff to do and understand to get this up and running. First you have to get RetroArch installed and how the emulator core DOSBox-pure works. Then you have to manually install Windows 98 (or maybe 95) and get its drivers sorted out too. Then off course you need the game and install it too. I leave you a few links here, so in case you are interested can start doing it too.

• RetroArch: https://www.retroarch.com/
• DOSBox-pure: https://docs.libretro.com/library/dosbox_pure/
• How to install Windows in DOSBox-pure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xynDgexf5Y
• Windows ISO: I can't provide you a download link. My recommendation is to look for Windows 98 Second Edition. You will also need a key you type in during installation.
• Drivers, Direct X and other old software for Windows: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/
• SimCity Classic V2.0 for Windows 95 (32-bit) (1995): https://archive.org/details/scclassic

Little Update: Just added an exit command after the help.

Here is another little script that nobody asked for. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but I always forget how or which is the best way. Use tr? Or sed? When can I use the more efficient Bash substitutions instead, which are Bash integrated functionality of variables that saves me some extra calls. Also most solutions to title case will compress all spaces to single space after a word; not this "title" solution, which respects the spaces.

Use this like you would use grep or tr, which get input from stdin and output to stdout. There are no special options, only mode names without dashes. Multiple modes can be combined, but there is actually no reason to do so at the moment.

Example:

echo "Hello World, this is an EXAMPLE." | tocase toggle upper1

tocase:

(Note, this Beehaw instance always replaces some characters and makes the below script unusable. Copy it from the linked script instead.)

#!/usr/bin/env bash

if [ "${#}" -eq 0 ] ; then
    cat << EOF
usage: tocase option...

options:
    upper       all uppercase
    upper1      upper first character

    lower       all lowercase
    lower1      lower first character

    toggle      swap uppercase and lowercase
    toggle1     swap upper and lower of first character

    title       upper first character and lower rest of each word

examples:
    echo "Hello World, this is an EXAMPLE." | tocase toggle upper1
EOF
exit 0
fi

while IFS= read -r stdin ; do
    for argument in "${@}" ; do
        case "${argument}" in
        upper) stdin="${stdin^^}" ;;
        upper1) stdin="${stdin^}" ;;
        lower) stdin="${stdin,,}" ;;
        lower1) stdin="${stdin,}" ;;
        toggle) stdin="${stdin~~}" ;;
        toggle1) stdin="${stdin~}" ;;
        title)
            # Note: Many other solutions other than this sed command do not 
            # work on each word.
            stdin="$(sed -r 's/\<./\U&/g' <<<"${stdin}")"
            ;;
        esac
    done

    printf "%s\n" "${stdin}"
done

LGR is a YouTuber who talks and shows lot of oldschool games and computers. And he is a fan of the Sims games. The Windows re-release has still problems, but works perfectly fine out of the box on the Steam Deck. I thought this is notable and want to share his experience: Though oddly enough, the one that I've had the most success with is the Steam Deck

New version for toarchive: https://gist.github.com/thingsiplay/889cb2899f35405e10839112f5181ab3#file-toarchive

(I have added a new version of the script. The old one is renamed to 'toarchive-old'. The new script has some guard rails and more checks. Also original files can be removed automatically on success, like gzip does. But an option -r must be explicitly given here, like toarchive zip -r file.txt. Directories can be removed too, but the option uppercase -R is required here, as in toarchive zip -R my_dir. Have in mind this will use rm -r system command. Although some guard rails are in place to prevent massive fail, you should be very careful. Note that no file is removed, if -r or -R are not used at all.)

I always write little scripts and aliases that help me from time to time. I just wanted to share some of my newest simple scripts. There are probably better or easier ways to do, but writing and testing them is fun too. Both make use of the 7z command, a commandline archive tool. Posting it here, so anyone can steal them. They are freshly written, so maybe there are edge cases.

crc32sum:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Calculate CRC32 for each file.
if [ "${#}" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "crc32sum files..."
    echo "crc32sum *.smc"
else
    7z h -- "${@}" |
        \grep --after-context "${#}" '^-------- -------------  ------------$' |
        \grep --before-context "${#}" '^-------- -------------  ------------$' |
        awk '{print $1 "\t" $3}' |
        \grep -P '^[0-9A-Z]+\t'
fi

toarchive:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Create one archive for each file or folder.
if [ "${#}" -eq -1 ]; then
    echo "toarchive ext files..."
    echo "toarchive zip *.smc"
else
    ext="${1}"
    shift
    opt=()
    stop_parse=false

    for arg in "${@}"; do
        if [ ! "${stop_parse}" == true ]; then
            if [ "${arg}" == "--" ]; then
                stop_parse=true
                opt+=(--)
                continue
            elif [[ "${arg}" =~ ^- ]]; then
                opt+=("${arg}")
                continue
            fi
        fi
        file="${arg}"

        7z a "${opt[@]}" "${file}.${ext}" "${file}"
    done
fi

Article has some observation about the new statistics provided by Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam.

The Steam on Linux marketshare ended 2024 with a 2.29% against Windows at 96.1% and macOS at 1.61%. The Steam Survey numbers for January were posted this evening and they show a sizable dip for the Linux gaming use but there are also other odd discrepancies with the updated monthly figures.

...

Where things get odd though is that the January results show the English language use dropping by 8.17% down to 33.97%... Most other languages dropping too and no explanation where the 8%+ usage went from the English use.

• Website: https://freetubeapp.io/
• Download: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/releases/tag/v0.23.0-beta
• Discussions: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/discussions/6676

Features

• Add autoplay toggle to the video player by @kommunarr in #5866

• Add Shift+? shortcut to view all keyboard shortcuts in-app by @kommunarr in #6306

• Right-click or hold-click on page ←/→ arrows to access navigation history by @kommunarr in #5227

• [MacOS] Make ⌘←/⌘→ go back/forward by @PikachuEXE in #6466

• Sort user playlist videos by published date by @GLEBR1K in #6280

• Add volume and playback rate change notifications to videos by @ikizey in #6473

• Added Button to Show Original Title and Thumbnail for DeArrow by @JL0000 in #6164

• Add setting for opening URLs passed to FreeTube in a new window by @OothecaPickle in #6242

• Update 'Only Show Latest Video for Each Channel' setting to handle a custom number of videos per channel by @c-ciobanu in #5901

• Add setting blocking autoplay after long periods of inactivity by @kommunarr in #5871

• Add Gruvbox color schemes & accent colors by @DontBlameMe99 in #5887

• Add Catppuccin Frappe color theme by @DontBlameMe99 in #6445

• Add Unlisted badge on watch page for unlisted videos by @OothecaPickle in #5856

• Add --help and --new-window flags and fix --version flag by @Zander671 in #6455

• Added buttons to hide hidden channels/text by @JL0000 in #6156

• Undo feature for Remove From Playlist by @Soham456 in #5885

• Add support for hms timestamp in query string by @ChunkyProgrammer in #6012

• Show corresponding keyboard shortcuts in button labels by @kommunarr in #5857

• Local API: Display more video tags in search results by @absidue in #5926

• Invidious API: Add support for auto-dubbed audio tracks by @absidue in #5943

• Invidious API: Extract streaming data expiry date from URL by @absidue in #5997

• Show previous search queries as search suggestions by @kommunarr in #6414

• Only refresh current trending tab by @ChunkyProgrammer in #6667

• ... plus lot of bug fixes changes to existing functionalities.

https://github.com/settings/copilot

You either love or hate them; RPG Maker games. To me the oldschool Rm2k is history like a videogame console. Nowadays I play those on the Free and Open Source EasyRPG Player. This post has some game suggestions and sources compatible with EasyRPG.

1. Where to get Games
   1. rpgmaker .net
2. Game Suggestions
3. Enough is enough