Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20161116194210/@comment-3547390-20161208141326

Short people yelling about the privileges of being tall? Sounds like the Wizard of Oz has gone haywire!

Yeah, while I try to remain as original as possible I feel in this case that DOSQuake is just pure tedium. I mean, I have a pretty powerful computer. I know I keep saying that, but it is true my specs are nothing to scoff at and that I should be able to handle some of the most resource intensive games. Yet here I am still fighting with DOS. I used to blame the game, back with Elder Scrolls, but when even Quake causes these problems you have to point to the common integer. My problem is that I have an even wider circle of chaos because of recording. Think everything plays fast? Start recording and see how choppy it is!

Exactly what I am thinking. Hex2 is like Quake but with some of the Heretic style. If Heretic was able to improve Doom somewhat, perhaps it can pull something similar with Quake, meaning it falls more in line with the design tropes I like. It is this type of reasoning that convinces me to try it. So, want to start planning for Hexen? I know it usually takes time to set up a day, so it is good to have knowledge of when it can be done in advance. Didn't you say you were free in a little bit?

So you can hear everything clearly, good to hear my volume levels are about right. I assume it compares well to my old setup? High reverb... hmm, I will tinker around a bit more and see if I can fix that.

Minecraft is a game that has many decent qualities but many flaws. Pretty much, that is one title that is hard to play blind as it pretty much expects knowledge of what you are doing, meaning a lot of reading on a Wikia to figure out what is needed to be done. The biggest problem is that when you enter you have no idea what you are doing, what you can do, or what the point of anything really is. Eventually you learn the different patterns and what things do, then you find what appeals to you. Many love to just make things, craft and design really intricate and chaotic stuff. I am a bit weird, I like the exploration side much more to the point that my designs are often highly crude and just designed for straight efficiency. Pretty much, my goal is to get as many of the rarest things you can acquire as possible, even if I have no practical use for any of it. Note that it is a game you will play for a while, then stop for a while because it is highly repetitive. Still, the fact that I can hunt for rare and valuable virtual stuff appeals to my random obsession to collect things in games.

As I have said, it is all about potential for me, even though I am more retro-oriented since I pretty much haven't even bothered with new titles in franchises I like. I just like the idea that I could potentially play generic shooter 10001 on the highest settings. Even if it is a slight benefit for something I never use, I might end up finding a use for it and so I throw it on. Look at the expensive power supply I posted, that is pretty much twice the wattage I will ever need, but since power supplies only give what is needed I basically have what everyone else has except mine is heavily reliable due to being the flagship of Corsair, pretty much the go-to PSU company. Plus I have a lot more legroom in the event that the next graphics card takes a ridiculous amount of wattage.

I lived the humble life with my computer. I started out on my parents' computer with Windows 98 or 2000. I remember seeing games like Aliens vs Predator 2 and Spiderman: The Movie, and not being able to play either because my computer specs were on the lower side. By the time of Doom 3, we were scrabbling left and right to get something that was playable on the minimum settings, I played most of the game with severe graphics glitches and audio chopping due to a cheap soundcard and graphics card. When I got my laptop, it was nothing spectacular but was better than that PC and it became my home PC for years, a dual-core AMD with 3GB RAM and Windows 7 64 bit. My father gave me a decent pre-built computer at some point I guess, I remember having a GT 640. When I played Unreal, I kinda got interested at one point in 4k textures, so I had to upgrade my card to a 770 just to have a bit less lag. The 770 was a big card for me, it didn't fit my case, so we had to get a bigger case just to handle the whole thing, so I went with a Corsair Carbide 300R. The biggest problem was that when I was recording I would constantly get blue screens and other issues, so that is when I got fed up and decided to just go after a 4790k since I knew it would be a long investment. As I don't believe in overclocking since it destroys life for very minimal results and based on my experience with the older CPU model getting more bluescreens, I just got a Gigabyte Gaming 3 motherboard as it served my needs. I had a CX750M for a power supply, pretty dangerous in hindsight but it always worked for me. My monitor was a 24 inch Dell that cost like $100 and had 10cs or so on a DVI cable. At some point I jumped up to 1333 8GB, 4x2GB sticks, from 4GB. Only this April did I finally get 2400 16GB Ram after noting it was bottlenecking me with rendering. I remember having a 500GB and 250GB hard drive just a few years back, then the 250 failed and so I went up to 2TB, which helped with recording space. My father said since his programs weren't demanding, I could have his 1TB for my other drive if I swapped them, so I did and now have 3TB of space. My mouse and keyboard, I remember using one of the ball mice back in the day before being on a trackpad for years, but when I went back to the desktop I had a decent little Logitech mouse. Was trying to get something cheap from Walmart, but they kept failing almost instantly, so spent $80 on a keyboard/mouse pair. Still have the boxes for some of these. Sound was one thing I never skimped on. I have 5.1 speakers, but I never get to use them due to the people around me complaining too much, so I mostly use headphones. I had a Creative Blaster Soundcard, but it did nothing to improve the audio quality of my headsets due to the build-in soundboard. Due to my love of surround, I always wanted high-quality surround headsets and don't think I have used a cheap pair since my laptop days with in-ear buds (note this was around 2011 when I started on QuakeWikia, that is how fast things have changed for me, listen to some of my old videos and you can hear how atrocious the mic quality was due to a really loud laptop fan and quiet mic audio). For a while I was using the Turtle Beach PX5s, I even got a rechargeable battery station so I didn't have to constantly buy batteries. Those broke due to cheap plastic, so I moved to a newer model I thought would be more sturdy (I remember the period waiting up to these headphones to get them) the Elite 800s. That went much like this, according to people I sounded better with the new headset and enjoyed the increased quality, plus I like the tighter compression on the head.

I guess as I got more money to play with and got a nice job, I decided that my main passion was computing and so decided to put a lot into it to see what the hype was about. So far, everything I purchased has indeed been worth it. So it is natural I kinda got to the top, I pretty much have been going up tiers of quality with computing all my life from something that could barely play games to something powerful to now the goal for something excessive. The first goal I had was a second monitor, streaming is a pain on one monitor due to needing to use my phone as a secondary, plus I often found myself with pain-in-the-butt to close applications and something I want to check out momentarily. I decided upon trying to get the best monitor I could, which eventually led me to debating a few things. 1440p vs 4k, which I decided 1440p due to the much better refresh rates, and TN vs IPS vs VA. VA sounds terrible for any real gaming, TN is pretty good but has inferior colors to IPS, and IPS which has a lot of issues with light which I figured would be terrible with dark games like Thief. I also have heard IPS looks bad in darker environments. I love darkness, less distractions while gaming and the whole CRT monitor thing I used to deal with. Heh, I remember how hot it used to get due to putting a blanket over a CRT monitor. One thing I decided also was that my old monitor was TN, so I could handle TNs flaws, but didn't know how I would be with IPS so I decided to stick to TN. Researching what would allow for best visual quality and still be TN, I came up with the PG278Q.

Next I boosted my graphics card from a 770 to a Titan X Pascal. I was partly debating getting into more recent gaming, so I figured it would be best to have the best graphics card to ensure I could have the capabilities to go up since the 770 sounded like it was struggling even when it came out. Around this time I also increased my power supply to the AX1500i so I would have no expansion problems, high modularity, and because the CX750M is part of Corsair's line that is known to be unstable and I wanted something that would guarantee performance.

By this time I was more assured about the whole PG278Q being a good monitor, but still was unsure about IPS. As my old monitor was a 24' 1080p, I wanted to upgrade it to be like my new monitor, so I looked into the PG279Q. Even faster refresh rates and IPS, it sounded great, but I needed to test it. I pretty much took a long trip to a computer store that had one and brought a jacket with me. People might have thought me insane throwing a jacket over the PG279Q to see how it looked while watching Thief Let's Plays, but one big problem with IPS is that store lighting is terrible for judging this stuff. As I would be in a dark environment, I needed to see how it performed in dark areas. Now, they only had HDMI and no DisplayPort (the PG278Q is just DisplayPort, first thing not VGA or DVI I have owned, PG279Q added the inferior HDMI for more compatibility) so colors looked a lot worse. But even with a coat draped over my head, the corners looked horrible, like there was a shining beacon from that corner. TN may supposedly have worse colors, but I rather that than a giant light shining from some corner in the middle of a dark game like Thief. Needless to say, IPS is not for me, instead I bought another PG278Q while I was there.

The mouse and keyboard were always just simple and cheap, so I decided to improve them and get something that didn't require batteries. Plus my mouse didn't have the best signal and I had to ridiculously speed up everything, which meant low accuracy. The Logitech G900 Chaos Spectrum basically gave me a wireless mouse with extreme precision, which is good as I cannot stand wired mice, much like I can't stand wired headphones (I used both back on my old parents' computer, my headphones were Noise-Canceling Bose headphones that did nothing of the sort and always frustrated me due to the cord making things awkward). Plus my side buttons were updated, the old ones were junk to the point that they were a pain to press, and I got two new buttons just by pressing my mouse wheel left or right. Press a button in the middle and I can rapidly scroll through stuff to avoid tedium. Plus I love my mice fast and if someone else was to use it they would freak out, so one brilliant thing is that one simple button can regain control for them without messing up my settings.

The keyboard I chose was the K95. Unlike the mouse, the keyboard doesn't really move around, so I found wireless very pointless. Early on I realized I needed to get a mechanical keyboard since apparently membrane keyboards limit the number of key presses you can do at a time. Plus, going with red caps, I would be able to very lightly touch the keys and get results. This is something I still need to work on, it requires so little force it is hard to get used to not needing to push out of habit, plus I had to relearn positioning. As it is intended for replacing caps, they also are easier to take off, no more cutting myself just trying to get dirt from behind the H key. The RGB lighting impresses everybody, but really was just an extra feature I decided to tack on because why not for a little more. Plus as I said, the extra keys come in handy for chaotic controls, it is meant for full macros but works as well for bindings if you just make it some abstract key combo and then make a macro to access it (I don't believe in real macros, I prefer to do things myself, but different bindings for keys can definitely help).

The headset I have jumped to recently is the Arctis 7. Pretty much, the Elite 800 broke in February and broke another time recently, so I am now on my third one. As these headphones keep breaking and the PX5s broke, it must be the cheapness of the plastic Turtle Beach uses. So I decided to go with some other company besides Turtle Beach. I decided on Steelseries since they have made some very high end headphones with the Siberia line. I was looking to get them when I found out these were pretty much the new flagship, plus had better sound quality. The oddest thing has to be the price tag. I am used to paying a premium for my headsets, so less than $200 is pretty surprising for such a high-end pair. It sounds like this pair cut a lot of corners if you use it with consoles or bluetooth, but it is pretty much the perfect 7.1 surround headset to use with PC, which is all I do. This is just one more example that paying the most money doesn't mean anything, it involves a lot of research even when looking for the best of the best just to ensure you get the right product. Even then you have doubts until you get the product and you almost wonder if it will make you perform worse than before.

I figured I was just changing headphones and keeping a similar quality, but honestly the sound quality when comparing the two sounds a lot better on the Arctis 7s. Pretty much, to compare, the Elite 800s advertise 7.1 surround but feel like more bass-stereo. The Arctis 7s actually feel like I have surround sound. I played a game of Quake just to test it, I could tell which direction the enemy was. On the Elite 800s I would just hear a growl, here it sounds a lot louder in the left ear near the upper portion, so I know to look up. The Elite 800s pretty much rely on a charging station, which sounds great until you realize the magnetic base is rather weak and that the headphones have sensitive controls. What I am trying to say is that the Elite 800s have a tendency to power on when you intended to charge them, resulting in you actually wasting the rest of the battery life than charging it up to full. All of this means that while this is a charging cable, I rather have this because at least I can tell when the charging device is connected. I also gained 5 hours battery life so I don't need to hopefully rush off as much as I did in the past with stuff. Another benefit was comfort, these are made with some unique fabric that is a lot more comfortable than normal headphones and make normal headphones feel weird. The fabric of these also feel odd because it is so different for me, but I feel a lot better wearing these than the old leather style, especially since oddly enough I feel like this pair is held better on my head. Probably the only thing I miss is the cool feel of the leather, this fabric definitely feels warmer. The reason why my headphones would usually break was because they were discomforting, so I would adjust the height of the ear pieces over and over. This is done by a strap at the top that is a lot easier to move without messing with any plastic, meaning a lot less likely to break with a lot better audio quality and battery life. Even the build quality feels better, the panels on the Elite 800s were a bit wobbly and always felt unstable. I also like the controls on the side so things are less likely to constantly change and the fact that everything serves 1 function here (the Elite 800s pretty much had things where if you held it for too long, it did X while otherwise it did Y, plus it LOVED to change sides on the earpiece (meaning same ear, but opposite side, meaning it wasn't just on backwards) for no real explicable reason. Want to power off? Well, you just turned Noise Cancellation on and Bluetooth is trying to find a connection.). Here, it feels like things just work. Even if the wheel may be bumped, it is easy to fix. Another issue with the Turtle Beaches was high-pitch sounds, I had to get used to a lot of noise coming out of my headphones at all times, including hissing during normal play and high pitched whines when hitting buttons. It makes the Arctis 7s a bit weird for me, since I am expecting to suffer slight ear pain when turning on my headphones and adjusting the volume. Plus the Elite 800s pretty much are said to have a weak microphone, the big feature is the fact that it is hidden but the problem is that it is not that good. It served me and people were pretty happy, but the Arctis 7s are said to have a much better mic sound. I will say from personal tests that I like the sound of these a lot more, I feel like I am in a studio, where the Elite 800s always had a mechanical sound to them that bugged me even if others insisted it was good. The only thing worse about the microphone or even the headset is the microphone's noise gate, I am pretty much making a lot of noise in the background and there seems to be some background noise to these units. Those issues I think are fixable by playing around with my recording software, there are a lot of effects for audio to help with this type of stuff. Plus, unlike the Elite 800s, I have a physical microphone I need to position near my mouth. It is a very new experience to me, all others have either been desk models or the in-ear, so trying to find the right position is also key here.

Yeah, as I said, I have a passion for improving my computer experience. As said, most of my internals are still the 4790k setup with 16GB RAM and other things that are quite decent, but could be made more ridiculous "just in case".