Retro Games Ltd: The Spectrum

I guess it was unavoidable. To add to the pile of Spectrums and emulators, I bought Retro Games' "The Spectrum". Is it any good?

Physical appearance and connectors

The case appears as good as can be realistically expected. Perhaps the graininess of the back part is grainier than in the original, and obviously it says RETRO and not Sinclair. 

I'm not going to open it just yet, I've seen pictures of the insides though. The weight is credible, there are metal weights inside. If you need to adjust the weight up- or downwards, it shouldn't be hard to do.

The rear panel has only modern connectors: there's a kind of emulator inside, I suppose a bare-bones Linux, which then provides HDTV-out and USB connectivity.

The connectors and buttons at the back

Retro Games have entered the USB-C age, which is good. I've powered The Spectrum happily with a 20000mAh power bank, using the 5V/3A output. A Raspberry Pi -type PSU should be optimal. I've not dared to use a laptop charger, though I'm not sure why it would be a problem.

The power cable is at the "wrong" side of the computer but it's sensible to have it near the HDMI, so as not to have wires dangling from both sides.

There's a power button so the cable doesn't need to be yanked away every time. There's one USB port near the HDMI and power cable, a good place for a semi-permanent memory stick holding your games and original system ROMs.

Then there are three additional USBs, perhaps for two controllers and one for ... keyboard, if you really want to.

And a home button at the right side, surely a familiar idea to users of Multiface cartridges of old. From here you can access the game selection carousel and other system menus.

The triad of USBs is nicely placed where the original Spectrum had the edge connector, contrast this with TheC64 which had nothing at the cartridge port location. I can imagine a 9-pin joystick adapter taking its rightful place here.

Keyboard

The most important thing for me is the keyboard. Because if it doesn't work, then I'm nearly better off using an emulator on the PC. So, does it pass the muster?

First I'll say it's better than the Elite Recreated keyboard from around 2015, which I tried hard to like in my review back then. For the record I have to admit it had the Sinclair logo, and the case was perhaps in some ways more accurate.

They might not be exactly identical to the original Spectrum keys

I couldn't shake the feeling The Spectrum keyboard is a little mushy too. But this was at least in part because I had no sound on while in BASIC. Perhaps an added psychological sense of "snappiness" comes from that sound.

Turning sound on did make it more comforting, although it would be nice if the sound came from the insides of the case itself. Maybe a DIY hack will surface.

Playing games, the key presses are usually silent so the above point shouldn't matter at all. How does the keyboard fare as an authentic Spectrum controller?

The built-in games are chosen from a "carousel"

I'll say I was fine with it. Using the holy QAOP combination for games worked well, I didn't experience missed key presses or physical obstructions. Epic games like Lords of Midnight and Elite are more enjoyable this way than with a PC keyboard. I can even use the original keyboard overlays.

Perhaps surprisingly, I couldn't get into adventure games with this keyboard. I tried a few, but soon turned away in frustration. It's not the keyboard as such but the wonky and slow input that Speccy adventure games often had on offer, and I'm not a big fan of the genre anyway.

Typing BASIC works well, and this is one major difference to PC emulators. There you have to feel your way around a non-standard keyboard layout to produce the BASIC keywords. No such problems here, but admittedly it takes some guts to use that old rubber for programming.

Then some nitpicks.

It's interesting to note the printing on and around the keys are positioned just a little bit off. Perhaps it could be even an IP matter, made just different enough so it's not a full facsimile of someone else's work?

But that's not all...

Retro Games The Spectrum: ~9.6mm

The keys are just a tiny bit smaller than in the original Spectrum. This was my first intuition, and when I took out the vernier caliper, I could see the original ZX Spectrum has almost exactly 10.0mm size keys, and The Spectrum has them in the 9.6-9.7mm territory.

I'm wondering if they shrunk unexpectedly in the manufacturing process.

To me this raises the question if the original rubber mat would fit the new machine. It did seem to me the holes in the metal plate are correctly sized.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum: 10.0mm

Joystick

As my Arduino joystick 9-pin adapter didn't work with TheC64, I was a little sceptical (spectical?) if it would work on The Spectrum. But then news started coming in nearly all USB game controllers work, and I was ready to be optimistic.

I must say it passed with flying colors. I can attach a TAC-2 controller and play games without having to resort to a modern gamepad.

This one here.

Two controllers can be set, and there are ample options for configuring them.

I didn't even try the Retro Games Competition Pro-style USB joystick that came with TheC64, I assume it works and is just as bad as before.

I have no intention to test lag scientifically. My gut feel is that there is likely not much lag, but if you really go looking for it you might find it.

Spectrum games rarely have a very fast screen update anyway, so any lag would probably be lost within the general chunkiness. Using my Joystick adapter and 50hz HDMI display, I didn't feel anything was off in the fast paced Atic Atac.

Video

50hz and 60hz screen refresh rates are provided, and you have to make that choice when you first boot the computer.

I think it's crucial The Spectrum is connected to a 50hz-capable display, for authentic speed. Fortunately I have such a display, so no problem there. Normal TV-type displays can likely do this better than some computer monitors.

The screen is scaled in an integer-based way, so I didn't see any interference patterns or moire-type effects, not on a 2560 x 1440 resolution display or 1920 x 1200 display. Why I even bother to mention this is that I've found some non-commercial emulators difficult to set up in this respect.

The clear menus you'd expect from Retro Games

For authenticity, the amount of BORDER displayed can be adjusted, and this is also a game-specific setting.

For my tastes, the non-bright color levels and the BRIGHT levels are a little too close to each other. My experience is that the boot-up white screen is grayish, and the bright white really stands out.

The BASIC program below is a very rudimentary test that tells me The Spectrum generates a rock solid frame rate.

10 PAUSE 1
20 BORDER 0
30 PAUSE 1
40 BORDER 7
50 GO TO 10

Seeing "tear" or other hiccups would indicate a less than ideal experience. The border should flash consistently, as it does on The Spectrum.

A 50hz smooth frame rate in a Spectrum game is quite rare, so it's not surprising if games are not silky smooth. But it may be indicative of more subtle timing issues in the hardware? To be really sure, I would have to compare outputs to each other side by side.

After seeing a few demos that showcase horizontal scrolling, it was easier to see the frame rate is indeed smooth. It may be that a 50hz in a modern display is more mechanical than a CRT with some afterglow.

To get audio, I needed to use my HDMI-to-VGA with 3.5mm audio splitter, and it worked just as well here as with TheC64.

System

Games can be loaded using an USB stick. It should be FAT32 formatted, and you need to have games in folders that have a maximum of 256 files each.

I'd recommend NOT to have 1000s of games at hand, but to concentrate on a smaller number of games you know you can return to, and maybe a few unfamiliar ones you intend to have a crack at.

A suitably themed memory stick...

I don't have much to say about the 48 game collection that came with the computer, haven't yet tried them all really. To me it's a combination of hits and misses, some obvious inclusions (Manic Miner) and some obvious omissions (the Ultimate catalog).

From older games, I prefer simple and short ones such as Saboteur!, Bruce Lee, Splat, or Viking Raiders. But just sometimes, more epic is more fun, as with Lords of Midnight or Elite.

Compatibility issues may arise because the Retro Games ROM for Spectrum is not a Sinclair/Amstrad ROM. Fortunately this can be changed, if you think you have a permission to use the ROM. These need to be added to a specific folder path on the USB stick, THESPECTRUM/roms/ (See the large manual p. 48)

Using the default Retro Games Ltd system ROM, I could see that Manic Pietro, which uses a timing-based graphics engine to circumvent the normal attribute limits, showed some flickering. Switching over to Sinclair ROMs, this flickering ceased.

Here I have to say a speed boost would have been welcome for games such as Lords of Midnight, or Viking Raiders. But The Spectrum is set at the standard 3.5Mhz. There is a rewind option for cheating.

There are no timing adjustments, for example the "Pentagon" timings are not possible, and 128K appears to be the memory limit.

There are some reports of snapshots not working. I did find a snapshot of Bruce Lee, which works on Fuse emulator, but crashes reliably on The Spectrum. This with Sinclair ROM or not. These situations can be fixed by searching for an alternative snapshot or TAP file.

Final words

For someone who already knows their way around Spectrums, this may be just another collectible to fill the shelves. But I think it succeeds better in reaching its goal than TheC64 did, which wasn't bad either.

Some questions were left open, such as if it's possible to use an older Spectrum rubber mat, or modify an existing keyboard membrane to work on The Spectrum. Maybe I'll look into this eventually.

Parallel sawing with the Z-saw guides

A follow up to discussing the Z-saw guide. This time I'm doing parallel cuts.

Here I needed to saw 6mm MDF and I expected it to be quite easy. It was not entirely without difficulties. I picked the smaller Z-saw guide and the mini 175 saw.

After the cut.

Using similar-sized 450x800 MDF boards on top of another, I could make a fence for moving the guide smoothly and check the 90-degree by aligning the top board as close as possible. This works only if the boards have been cut accurately enough in the factory!

However, my first cut didn't really succeed. From the ends, the piece has the correct measure, but something happened near the middle, resulting in a long curve, deviating about half a millimeter.

I had a few ideas of why it happened. The third one is the important one.

Firstly, I may have pulled the guide against the fence with too much force. After all, the fence was only clamped from the ends. This couldn't really happen inwards, but perhaps vertically, just enough to disturb the guide.

Secondly, sawing ahead of the guide can result the blade veering just a little bit, and from that moment on the board itself can force the saw into misalignment that's neither easy to see or correct. If everything else is right, speed in itself shouldn't matter all that much.

Left: wrong. Right: right.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I sawed with a too steep angle. Using a lower angle should create more surface between the saw and the guide. This also makes the cut in the board act as a better guide. The saw point where the "decision" is made is closer to the guide midpoint.

For the later cuts, I tried to keep the angle low, adopted a routine for moving the guide, sawing as much as by ear as by eye. I tried to hold the guide in place, only pulling it gently and checking it is firmly against the fence.

It is important to have a good, comfortable position from where you can also see the saw alignment. The blade shouldn't bend at all against the guide.

The later cuts were about as perfect as I could hope for.

Measure and mark, use the dummy plane, dummy.

Repeats, as I've already observed, are not very simple to do with these guides.

Ideally, there would be a jig for making similar cuts without measuring each piece separately. But for that I'd have to build a rather large jig.

Fortunately I think it is enough for most cases to do an accurate marking and measurement, and use the dummy blade to simulate the cut. You have to choose how the dummy is placed in relation to the marked lines, and be consistent with this choice.

Errors might compound if pieces are sawed off from the same board, and the new measure is each time marked from the previous cut. The pieces could end up correct width but no longer precisely rectangular. This compounding should not happen if the fence can enforce the 90 degree angle for each cut.

Drawing all lines for all cuts beforehand isn't viable, as the blade thickness is difficult to factor in.

With these techniques I began to make a 38x220x89mm box using MDF slices from 800x450 boards I ordered. (The box is intended to fit a 19 inch standard rack, taking two rack units.)

Spot the mistake

The plan for sawing the material was made in Librecad. This doesn't take into account the saw thickness, so it is just an approximation of whether the material is enough for a box.

After the shaky start described above, the rest of the wall pieces were accurate.

I glued the box together using four Wolfcraft (that brand again) corner clamps and two Cocraft clamps. As the wood glue doesn't dry instantly, there's some time to adjust the corners. Much like with artists' oil paints, the slow drying is a feature, not a bug.

The corner clamps are more for keeping the pieces up and do not itself produce an accurate position.

Corner clamped

Although the Cocraft clamps only give a gentle pressure, without them the box would fall apart.

The bottom was then glued and held together with six small clamps.

I was initially well pleased with the box. But, considering the box was intended to fit a rack mount, I had made a crucial mistake.

For some reason what was meant to be the outer dimension (438) had become the inner dimension and the box ended up being 450mm wide instead of 438. This mistake was made early and I had ordered the MDF material already in wrong size.

Corner clamped and glued

What's even more unfortunate is that I'd already added reinforcing pieces to the inner corners of the box.

I pondered if I should simply build another box, but I couldn't foresee any use for the wrong sized one. The Z-saw guide and the saw came to the rescue. I cut away the ends from side and yanked them off using a clamp as leverage. Then I cut 3mm MDF to size and glued them to the ends.

The end result is not 438mm, and not as clean as the original box, but at least I can continue prototyping. Some day.

Zoo 2024

Pit Stop

A weekend was well spent at the Commodore 64 demoparty Zoo, hosted at Orivesi.

I'll mostly focus on my game release The Last Z-8, and avoid doing a separate post about it.

Ok, at least something about the demoparty. We took the partybus from Helsinki, which turned out to be 1-2 hours late! It was alternatively amusing and not-so-amusing in the cold, grey sleet of Helsinki.

Elite

In the warmth of the bus it was already fun to reflect on, but the gods of Murphy do not look so kindly on such frivolity, so a tire fell of from the bus before it even got out of Helsinki.

Fortunately a replacement bus arrived promptly and eventually, finally, we got to the party place.

Lopussa kiitos seizoo

What can I say? The concept was largely the same as 2022. The lobby greets visitors with Reprocade arcades and an exhibition of pixel art. The main hall and a second hall are filled with tables for computers and the audience.

The program was filled with compos, talks, music acts and other party features.

Pixeled Years

The pixel art exhibition was the Pixeled Years on tour, with one piece from yours truly too.

With the Party Feature, the "computer fair" elements could compete too, for example AK rigged a C64 to work with a high-end car simulator gear courtesy of Simucube, SIDrock had a matrix printer digitized image service, and so on. Also the usual market of C64 extensions, parts, magazines, stickers and games.

Stunt Car Racer

The crowd did feel a little more international than before, perhaps an indication of how party has grown from the 2013 days, becoming a more credible outlet for big name C64 demo releases.

The number of productions was quite staggering. (Demozoo link)

The Main Hall

I'm no longer very surprised by all the graphic talent, but I have to admit Worrior1's Binary Saint is a grand piece of PETSCII and Sarge "did it again" and maybe exceeded himself with SLOBBER. 

According to the slides, Multipaint still had a strong presence among the pixeling tools, but Albert is becoming more and more popular I think.

All the Young PETSCII

As my attention had been on creating a game, I could only patch together one PETSCII at the party place, All the Young PETSCII. Given the circumstances I'm strangely pleased with it. Maybe I managed to come slightly outside of my usual style. It landed on the respectable 8 out of 21 position in the compo.

I went all in and submitted a Nick Montfort-inspired Illegal, a 10 PRINT poem, an attempt at teasing something out from the BASIC ROM area where the error messages are contained. Obviously it's not a thing to win any prizes, but it was interesting to try.

Illegal, a 10 PRINT poem

From the main demo event I can't highlight a particular all-round favorite, it looked like one demo excelled in one area whereas some other might exceed in another. Possibly Artline Designs really deserved the win with their coherent Nightfall package. Stereo by Phonics was memorable in using some more unconventional cuts, and the A-side/B-side concept was brought to full fruition with music taking the center stage. Pretzel Logic's Papel is an example of showcasing huge amount of creative talent, but it was perhaps tad too long at that time and hour. Yes, the democompo ended about 3AM, with Extend's demo failing to properly load.

The Last Z-8

For the game dev compo I made The Last Z-8. (csdb link) This took about one month to create, using reasonable time on evenings and weekends, and a couple of crunch sessions near the end.

My workflows and pipelines are rather well established, and I took a relaxed attitude. For once I did not dedicate a whole lot of effort on laboring some technical point. Just sprites, PETSCII graphics as background, no multiplexing, single raster interrupt, some Goattracker tunes and effects.

I also refrained from creating any specific tools, instead using Spritemate and/or editing sprites directly in the source code for the graphics.

Intro Screen

For The Last Z-8, I mixed and mashed various games, but ultimately what it looks like is a Ghostbusters-remake, which is misleading as it's actually not very similar. 

But especially it has nearly nothing to do with The Last V-8, as I decided on the name rather late in the process.

You are first confronted with the post-apocalyptic city map, from where the other game parts are then accessed.

The City map

The car driving sequence is a Moon Patrol-style minigame paying homage to the Parker Brothers' James Bond game, and some elements may be more reminiscent of Ocean's Miami Vice.

In fact, the game started growing from trying to make some kind of send-up of that Bond game.

In contrast to Ghostbusters, you need to avoid the ghosts even in the parts where you'd be vacuuming them in the original game. Instead of trying to keep the "city energy" level low, you are encouraged to maxx it as soon as possible. There's no money and no business and no shop.

Driving to the location

All in all I tried to combine elements from as many games as possible. At beginning, the ambition was larger and I intended to have more silly minigames, but the end result only has two distinct sequences apart from the repeated map/driving/trapping screens.

The map screen has a very minimal effect on how the game plays. You may lose just a slightly more zonk energy if you choose a less optimal route.

Trapping them ghosties

Though I feel releases should be fire-and-forget, I may still want to return to this and tinker the game balance and other aspects. There's still memory left a-plenty. But no promise, really.

The games could be pre-released to the audiences already before the party. After I saw herra47 from Jani Parviainen (link) and Aquarius from Aleksi Eeben (link), I knew one of these would win and my work would place third at best. Which it did!

A detail: my game had a small Leisuresuit Larry -tribute in place, but seeing that Jani was making an entire Larry-based game, I removed it. But the reason the guy sprite is as tall as it is, is kind of because of that Larry reference!

The video could have been better edited, showing more of the game content (there is more) but I sort of doubted it would help, so I just let it show the first few minutes of the repetitive gameplay.

I also participated in the panel discussion led by Mikko Heinonen of Skrolli and V2 "let's play" videos fame, joining with industry veteran Miha Rinne and all-round clever guy Aleksi Eeben. Perhaps there were no huge surprises to the audience, but at least fun was had by the panelists. The enthusiasm tends to be infectious, and suddenly you can see the productions are important to the authors, unlike the typical Finnish "I just did this blah blah nerd thing and it was really nothing".

More Zoo next year!

Dyson Detect V15

V15

Tired of constantly walking on breadcrumbs, the old cabled Hoover massively noisy and underpowered, I took yet another middle-class/middle-age plunge and bought a Dyson.

I saw ads for an "optic" Dyson, with a green light emanating parallel to the floor. This made sense to me as I'd just been experimenting with a LED torch in the dark for hunting tiny items on the floor.

These portable Dysons are sold as bundles, there are only few main motor unit variants, but they come packaged with different set of nozzles. This one was V15 Detect "fluffy", aimed more for pet households which sounded good enough for tackling strands of long hair. 

Extra nozzles, the main one not included

The package was not too bulky to carry in public transport. Opening the box, I encountered an enormous pile of cardboard for all the sub-parts, and very minimal instructions. 

The plastic and carbon-fiber appearance wasn't very convincing at first, but the parts fit together with a nice and satisfying lock. It does feel slightly flimsy, with the long pipe and a nozzle attached, but not horribly so.

I don't like the Dyson looks and color choices all that much, but at least as it turned out, the actual design (i.e. how it works) is rather well thought out.

The head with the rolling furry bar and green "laser" light is effective. The nozzle adapts and turns along multiple axes, making operation quite gentle and flexible. The light is not a gimmick, you can easily spot hair and dirt concentrations.

The main nozzle layzoer experience

It's almost addictive. After having this experience, the other nozzles don't seem to do anything. Perhaps it could be considered "gamification", but in a good way, it gives a sense of purpose to see the dirt at first and then feel the achievement of the the dirt and hair going away.

When there was more hair, they would circle around the yellow/black bar. These were easy to remove, though.

As usual, the floors and surfaces should be in basic good condition. Porridge particles stuck on the floor won't be removed by the vacuum just like that, and the light will forever highlight them.

The bagless operation was one draw, but this is common even in many crappy hand-held vacuums, so how does the Dyson fare? Well, the trash ejector handle works nicely, so mostly you just eject to get the dirt out of the compartment.

Gun and the gun-like ejector-rod

Hair proved to be a little more tricky, though. The end of the compartment could get a little bogged with a "donut" of hair, but the entire container is also quite easy to remove.

So, on the whole this is all thought out very well.

I sung the praises of the optic "fluffy" head, the rest of the heads were not as impressive. There's this corkscrew thingy that's supposed to take out pet hair out of sofas and beds, but couldn't confirm if it's any more effective – it doesn't have a light.

As the nozzle carries a motor, it's heavy and the sound is crunchy. It's possible you really need to have cats and dogs to appreciate this one better.

The corkscrew thingy

Talking of sound, the Dyson does make some noise but it's far less whiny than the old Hoover or a Bosch hand-held I already recycled. The quality of the sound needs to be taken into consideration, too. Again something to check later, if old age changes things on this front.

The Dyson Detect is portable, yet fortunately larger than the smallest of portable vacuums, so I don't think I need two separate items. The trigger needs to be pulled all the time, with no lock function, and this can be considered a little minus. The other thing is the stiff hose is not perfectly suited for vacuuming from under sofas, so you need to be a little more nimble to reach those places.

The display that tells how many microbes, small particles and crap have been accumulated is probably just a statistical approximation based on how far the head has rolled, but why not.

ECO-mode was fine for standard floor-cleaning, this likely lasts about an hour or even more. AUTO might be better when using the various heads and trying to get into more difficult places. I dared not really use the BOOST for more than a few seconds, as it might deplete the battery under 10 minutes.

The battery is not super powerful and takes a few hours to load. I believe the idea is that cleaning doesn't take a huge amount of time and there's ample time to recharge in-between. At first I'd find all kinds of excuses to use the vacuum, so the battery also depleted faster. A plastic wall-dock was also included.

Altparty 2024

The ceremony's about to begin

I probably shouldn't make a party report before the party has ended, but hey, it's alt, it's different!

I confess I added Alt Party (11-13 October 2024, Helsinki, Museum of Technology) to the year's party roster because I just couldn't avoid going to a demoparty so near. No hotels, no badly slept nights, no stressing about the contents of my bag.

Not been to Alt Party before, there was considerable "party shyness" on my part. Even if I had some more time on my hands lately, not so sure if I would have dared to contribute to a demoparty I know so little of, and that prides on doing things differently.

Perhaps many others felt like it too, as the number of entries in compos were rather low, not in proportion to the amount of people I saw in the audience.

AI music compo starting

I was impressed by the music compos, because in some parties it becomes something of a chore. But here the low number of entries was beneficial, so the obscure music compo stayed fresh and not tiresome. 

At some point of AI music compo I could have started wondering why I need to listen to this, but then it was already over. I feel we also witnessed some reverse cheating, as at least one of the songs didn't sound like it was only a result of a prompt (and no prompt was given).

Alt Party might be a little flexible in how the compo rules are interpreted, but it may also be they needed take "all in" to have at least a number of works.

Ultimately the demo compos were fine, and the "dynamic demo" is an interesting category, having to prove that your demo has a realtime element in that it plays a little differently each time – it's not an animation or a music video. I expected having to view the demo twice would be boring, but it was in fact quite intriguing. Certainly some succeeded better in making a re-watchable demo than others.

What was dubbed as the "Temple" for this weekend

The milieu of the Museum of Technology, and the exhibition itself is worth visiting. The party organizers had gone through the effort of integrating demo culture in some of the permanent exhibition, and I felt this was a good idea. 

Esko

I'd not been there before so overall the weekend was of high value. The normal exhibition features things like old TVs, radios, computers, industrial control equipment, but also vehicles and tools. This is a very suitable environment for a demoparty.

They put a färjan in a färjan

Skrolli magazine was again present, with a Commodore 128 running Super Mario, Spike on a Vectrex, and some obscure Japanese(?) computer I already forgot. This time did 292 with the "speden spelit" speed challenge, trying a two hand approach. Apparently someone had broken 400+.

For me, the most interesting single piece of hardware on display was the Canon Cat, in working condition and you could type and try the LEAP-based text navigation. A couple of Forth-based entries were present in the 256-byte compos. I forgot who brought the Cat there, but will add that information later.

Canon Cat

Prof. Nick Montfort gave a remote presentation, going through the generative text art angle he has been exploring, mostly in the context of WWW and in the frame of collaboration. Although the "10 PRINT" work is legendary and there was ample contextualization, the presentation might have rubbed a part of the audience wrong way.

At least one person opined it was "shit" (!) and comparable to BASIC hobbyist stuff of early 1980s. The latter evaluation is perhaps not wrong, as Montfort can just as well align himself with the demoscene, Brian Eno or David Ahl's book of Basic Computer Games.

Montfort has done a consistent body of work at the uneasy intersection of demoscene, computer history, art and the study of language. Perhaps Montfort doesn't even need the demoscene, but I feel the demoscene needs people like Montfort.

Nick Montfort

It may be that going to a demoparty so near removes some of the excitement of visiting an "other" place. It became rather easy to just jump in at a convenient point of the schedule, and then leave when it looked like nothing was happening any more.

As often happens with these things, "if only I had known" I could have cobbled together some filler entries. Maybe I will be wiser the next time, if there's another Alt Party.

River Vantaa

No Man's Sky (Linux Proton)

Fixing the broken ship is one of the first tasks

With Proton, I could get No Man's Sky to work easily on Linux/Steam. And no wonder, it's about eight years old and a major release. Back then it got lukewarm reviews at best, but famously the game got a lot of upgrades and now it's supposedly very good. But is it?

After some 10 hours of play, I feel a little uncertain if I will continue far with it.

Coming from 8-bit Elite and 16-bit Frontier, at first I have to say the focus is of course much more on planetary exploration.

Here, docking isn't difficult. Or even necessary.

The basic game play is smooth, I have had no problems or crashes. WASD and mouse your way around, use the raygun to mine away rocks and plants and receive raw materials. Then craft and research and craft and build some more. And then you get past the initial survivalist and tutorial-like phases, and you can choose to fly elsewhere and trade with aliens and build bases and whatnot.

There are occasional reminders of past games. Apart from the obvious Elite comparisons, flying in space reminded me of the hilariously compact universe in Starglider 2. I had some vague Ultima/Space Rogue vibes especially when visiting the space station. But if this was Ultima, I'd already have a more coherent idea of the world and its purposes. I don't expect a linear story—best Ultimas really didn't—but there is some kind of heart missing.

Gaming went through a phase where crafting, upgrading and building had to be added to nearly all games. No Man's Sky is practically built on the entire premise. I'm guessing many are now sick of the excessive crafting and tinkering, and want more straightforward experiences. I know I do.

One of the numerous alien creatures you'll encounter

This is not to say the game doesn't have its moments. But the exceptional events also often amount to nothing, or result in the same humdrum actions you can do anyway. For example, after I built a base a trader landed with its ship to the premises, enabling me to discuss and trade. This felt nice, but I actually had very little to gain from this encounter.

The same could be said with the sudden discovery of a trading post on the planet I was exploring. It was refreshing after the rather repetitive landscapes. A bustle of activity, ships landing and taking off, persons to meet, language to learn, items to trade and ships to buy.

Yet, in the end the characters don't have even the dimensions of the hand-written short keyword dialogues of, say, Ultima IV. Granted, I've not yet learnt much of the Gek language, but it already looks like they have little to say.

Guess we're now spoiled, in 1990s small events such as these would have felt mega.

A trader appears. The Teleport in the background.

I could perhaps look even past all this vagueness, if the game's relation to space was more disciplined. And with this I mean the teleportation, and some details concerning with terrain manipulation.

The game encourages you to build a base and a teleport. After the teleport is built, you can visit the space station you have previously found, and teleport between them. Not only do you teleport, but your spaceship teleports too.

And I'm then left wondering what is the point of the spaceship logistics after all. Ok, after finding more planets you don't immediately have a teleport and a base, but discovering space stations does produce new teleport locations.

This also means the trading and upgrades aren't a minor satisfying prize after a successful journey (like in Elite). You teleport to the station, find you didn't grind enough materials on the surface, then teleport back.

Gee whizz, yet another planet and some crystals to mine

Secondly, the planets mostly provide a repetitive sandbox where everything you materially need is usually found within reasonable distance.

Well, some planets have a decent amount of macro-structure, such as oceans and subterranean caverns. Yet large wrecks, outposts, settlements tend to be the similar and also offer similar activities.

Another thing is the landscape. On first sight it offers obstacles to overcome, but if you insist you can dig a staircase through a mountain with the mining beam. The same item that enables Minecraft-esque manipulation of environment, also tends to trivialize the whole idea of the "landscape". If there's nothing that blocks your way, are you really in a credible environment?

Some happenings in the obligatory all-too-dense asteroid field

I sort of get that if the player can't move fast and teleport between systems, it could make traveling boring. But it's a game design and scale issue to solve. The exploration would be more meaningful and memorable, if it was a little more grounded.

After hitting on something that looks like might be some kind of major quest in the game, things might  begin to improve. The game is also quite good at hinting at future possibilities, such as a wheeled vehicle and different types of spaceships.

It's just sometimes there appears to be so much to do and so many threads to follow, I feel like I can't be bothered with any of them.

Despite all the missions, trading, quests, expeditions, activities and building, I can't somehow shake the feeling this is some kind of gigantic, glorified Farmville, where my next task is simply defined by what I happened to activate previously.

My base, resembling a 1970s detached house. Soon to extend underground.

I can't say the old games always solved these things much better. How Elite got around this was the fact the planets were not genuinely that different, so it didn't matter much where in the universe you were. But it at least used a simple but effective RPG fight/reward structures. 

With Frontier I felt it would be genuinely interesting to visit some distant star system, and you needed to make at least some effort to get there.

Maybe I'm envisioning a perfect space exploration game somewhere in the middle of a triangle made up from Elite Dangerous, Everspace and No Man's Sky:

From Elite Dangerous, I'd take something of the realistic nature of the universe. No instant teleports between star systems, unless as a very rare stargate-type event.

I'm not sure 3rd person walking elements should be part of the game. At least visiting space stations is exciting enough to justify it. No Man's Sky planetary exploration is I guess almost good enough as it is, but as said it could benefit more from planetary macro-structures, unevenly distributed resources and less options for manipulating the environment.

Everspace provided an enjoyable combat system and ship upgrades. Fighting against larger ships was an interesting challenge and sometimes even tremendous fun. Also the derelict ships, space stations and large asteroids were nice environments for exploring.

Exploring an underground cavern

Granted, I haven't yet seen much of what No Man's Sky has to offer, but it quite doesn't yet have the pull on me. It's a little weird that I got most Elite-vibes from Everspace, even if it's not very open. Or perhaps just because.

Thumbs up to No Man's Sky as a huge Proton-enabled game.

Dex part 2

The exploration of the Samsung Dex desk environment warranted a second look, as I purchased yet one more Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse to go with it. 

Moving the windows around certainly improved and text editing in Google Docs became easier. 

Even if I admit the mouse button has some slippy quality, it looks like the environment is not as well designed as it first appeared to be. Tiny glitches are not uncommon, and there is maybe some vestige of the touch screen interface in the way the UI buttons work.

Apps generally play more nicely with the large screen format than I expected, although it's not universal.

Sublime Text mobile version didn't quite convince me on the small screen and didn't quite win me over on the full screen either.

The focused writing app Iawriter was nice, but I find it hard to justify it as Docs works now so well. It could work better on the small screen, as there's less clutter.

When using mostly one application, such as the Docs, the system works nicely.

I didn't do a huge survey of mice and keyboards, but did some quick choices based on size, weight and portability.

The mouse is Jlab GO Charge, which can be recharged with USB-C style connector. The mouse can be set with 2.4GHz or Bluetooth interface, and there's a dongle for the 2.4-style connection. The dongle can be carried in a slot within the mouse, so it's unlikely to get lost if stored this way.

The keyboard is Logitech Keys-to-Go 2, a relatively new and not too cheap keyboard. It felt light enough with normal size keys and a standard layout.

The keyboard is powered by CR2032 batteries, which is not a huge plus, but contributes to the flatness and lightness. The 36 month battery life sounds like the usual bogus, but let's hope I don't have to switch them more than once a year. (I'm looking at you Apple Mini BT keyboard!)

At least there is a power switch to prevent accidental current draw. The Keys-to-Go 2 doesn't even weigh much more than my earlier Voxicon foldable block, 222 grams against Voxicon's 166. The shape is better for sliding into a bag compartment.

The arrow keys are tiny and the presence of the function key row might be questioned, but all in all the layout is a proper one and not a compromise like in the Voxicon. The ; : _ - are where they are supposed to be. The key feel is good but not quite as firm as in the Apple Mini.

The non-removable cover flap was a major attraction and feels worth it when traveling. I just couldn't bother with a separate box or bag for keyboard.

The flap is supposed to go under the keys when typing, there's even a magnet to help keep it in place. To me this didn't work well at first, as the keyboard "jumps" a little while typing on the mushy hinge. Another magnet near the back might have helped.

But it looks like the hinge part might become a little more loose over time, which should improve the situation.

Edit: 26.10.2024. The included batteries (2 x CR2032) died already. Not too promising...