[HN Gopher] Behold GoldenEye 007 with four screens - dream come ...
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Behold GoldenEye 007 with four screens - dream come true or
travesty?
Author : Tomte
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-05-06 14:31 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| fernandotakai wrote:
| playing goldeneye with 4 players is such an amazing memory from
| my childhood. the screen cheating screams were constant -- to the
| point where we (as in, my group of friends) decided that screen
| peaking was worth an arm punch (without retaliation). and the
| group would judge if the offender was screen peaking or not!
|
| oh and only the "noobs" (as in, the younger of our group) could
| pick oddjob, because it was almost cheating.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Totally invented this in 1997 with a cross shaped piece of
| cardboard stuck to the TV screen. Radars off too for extra
| jumpiness.
| dannyfraser wrote:
| No radar, auto-aim off, license to kill, pistols, go!
| jonplackett wrote:
| I was hoping this was going to be the announcement that it's
| coming to the Switch N64 emulator
| voidfunc wrote:
| Doubt that would ever happen. Probably a licensing nightmare
| since Microsoft owns Rare now plus whatever licensing issues
| they would have with the Bond franchise holders.
| lelandfe wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/05/how-to-play-multiplay...
|
| ArsTechnica's article includes more detail in how exactly they
| got this to work - it's pretty great/disgusting.
| dehrmann wrote:
| You'd have to do some buffering, but I guess you could "just"
| (this is way easier with digital tech) buffer scanlines, send
| the first half of it to one screen, the second have to another
| at half speed, and replay the line for the next scanline?
| What's nice is you don't have to buffer a full frame to do
| this, so there wouldn't be a frame of lag.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wish they'd change the link to this as it contains more
| technical details.
|
| Edit: nevermind, shame that you can't flag your own comments
| for moderator attention. I know I can email but I feel like
| it's not important enough to warrant one.
| codingkoi wrote:
| My siblings and I would tape a monopoly board to the TV to split
| it vertically and then play team games to get around "screen
| cheating". I think it had the best of both worlds. We were still
| in the same room but we could ambush and sneak up on each other.
| Definitely less expensive than this solution.
|
| Goldeneye 64 was the best bang for our buck of any game we ever
| bought. We did the same thing with Perfect Dark.
| 14 wrote:
| I was going to mention Perfect Dark. Probably my favourite game
| to this day. So many good wasted childhood hours playing this
| game.
| stevesearer wrote:
| I loved Perfect Dark but never completed the game as my
| system would always freeze due to the number of explosions
| during the last level's boss battle. Even with the expansion
| memory pack thing.
| RileyJames wrote:
| Yep, remember doing that once or twice in halo 1.
|
| Ultimately, screen cheating is a feature.
|
| Halo worked well as the pistol (starting weapon) is all you
| really need. So there's no massive disadvantage on spawn.
|
| I remember playing online 2v2 (halo on xbox, there was no
| online so it was actually system link, lan, run over the
| network. Bloody hard work from Australia) in which screen
| cheating is most definitely a feature.
|
| Nothing more bonding for two brothers to duke it out 1v1, and
| then discover you're leagues ahead of everyone online in 2v2.
| udp wrote:
| We used to position the TV such that it was split between two
| bunks of a bunk bed. One player below and one player above.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Perfect dark was such a great game. Heaps of innovative
| concepts.
|
| Not sure screen cheating would work very well against the
| sniper that can shoot through walls though.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| the second mode on all weapons made perfect dark absurdly
| unique. the laptop gun was super fun and innovative.
| megablast wrote:
| Screen cheating is a valid form of play though. You have to be
| good to know where someone is by quickly looking at their
| screen.
| noobermin wrote:
| 18 year old me would say "only noobs think this"
| ddingus wrote:
| Yup. Knew those layouts cold. People knew
| willismichael wrote:
| That's incredible. Somebody actually found a genuinely
| enjoyable use of a monopoly board.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I like Monopoly, but this made me laugh.
| willismichael wrote:
| Thanks. My problem with Monopoly is that I always feel like
| about 10 or 15 minutes into the game it is clear who the
| winner will be, and then the next two hours are a slow
| grind in which everybody else slowly becomes dust.
| [deleted]
| ddingus wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| I wanted to do that forever. Never had the hardware, but being
| around media people meant I knew it was possible.
|
| Dream come true, in my view!
|
| All that killer analog gear being tossed and this happens.
|
| Now I just want to play, maybe perfect dark too.
|
| To avoid screen cheating, I liked to drop the proximity mines in
| PD and keep moving. Effective enough they were banned from family
| play, lol.
| findalex wrote:
| Pro tip: A+B will detonate a remote-mine (no need to switch to
| the watch).
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Time to rent a time machine and go back 25 years
|
| Child me is gonna be king of the playground
| jpgvm wrote:
| We do what we must because we can.
| arielweisberg wrote:
| Didn't even know screen cheating was a thing. That is just how
| the game was played. No player is at a disadvantage.
| crtasm wrote:
| There's even a game named after the term where everyone is
| invisible so you _have_ to look at the other player 's screens:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencheat
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's cheating in the same way looking at the community cards is
| in hold 'em; it's part of the game.
| basedgod wrote:
| stock n64 goldeneye is unplayable garbage
|
| https://youtu.be/ziUMJB3id8I
|
| what a waste of time
| ironSkillet wrote:
| Of course it doesn't hold up to modern standards 25 years
| later. But at the time it was released, it was considered
| outstanding and revolutionary. I mean c'mon, you could shoot
| guards in the groin and they would slowly fall to the ground
| clutching their junk in agony.
| ericlewis wrote:
| Indeed a large appeal was the technical marvel of have a 4
| person split screen game of such magnitude. Very different
| from the relative simplicity of Mario kart.
|
| Edit: it also bothers me that despite our progress on all
| technological fronts we still get halo as the best split
| screen fps experience.
|
| Edit 2: also still love playing OG 007 with friends who come
| over because if you didn't figure out how to prevent screen
| cheating you never learned how to actually play.
| dannyfraser wrote:
| Oh that last point! My friends and I used to just strafe
| along every single wall and all you could see was the wall
| texture until it was time to shoot. We knew all the levels
| so well that just the changes in lighting, or sometimes how
| quickly a door opened, were enough for us to tell where
| someone else was (avoid the coloured corridors in Complex).
|
| Screen cheating is a skill, countering it is a skill, and
| countering THAT is an even bigger skill.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| you could should their hats without damaging the guards!
| (which was great on facility (aka second mission) -- you
| could shot the hat out of a guard that was using the
| bathroom).
| ericlewis wrote:
| The game being hard was part of the appeal. It took skill.
| Maybe arguably dumb skill on the wrong areas - but skill. I'm
| not impressed that modernizing and switching the input methods
| made it "better" because my respect for them as a player will
| still come from how well they can do hobbled in the same way as
| myself.
|
| Edit: one such strategy is using odd job, the most derided of
| strategies because you were basically taking advantage of how
| difficult it was to use the Z axis. Screen cheating was
| generally not that big a deal because you could do it just as
| well as anyone else. It was more so "honor in doing so" that
| was a problem.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Oddjob was what we made the winner-goes-on play as in my
| circle of friends because his head is at headshot level. You
| headshot him by just firing from the hip.
|
| Jaws, on the other hand, was taller than everyone so everyone
| had to aim up at your head, and you could get headshots on
| everyone else without moving the reticle.
|
| Offjob's true advantage, at least for us, was that he could
| hide inside exploded boxes and he could counter Jaws.
| ericlewis wrote:
| I forgot about jaws height! It often depended on who had
| unlocked what I suppose (different friends at different
| stages, for proper competition we always had the cart with
| everything and cheats) But odd job was definitely off
| limits - I think he was actually slightly _under_ headshot
| range. But easy enough adjustment I guess.
|
| Forgot about the exploded boxes thing too! I haven't played
| much 007 since pandemic. Still got the slime green n64 and
| such though.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I haven't played in 15 years but I think you're right.
|
| When Oddjob was close, you would have to quicktap C-up
| instead of C-down to get a headshot on him while you were
| strafing around. But once he was 10+ meters away, you
| didn't have to adjust aim at all.
|
| Meanwhile, when Jaws was close, you'd have to even
| double-tap C-down to aim at his head. And even far away
| you'd only get body shots without adjusting aim. Which is
| also the disadvantage that Oddjob has trying to shoot
| everyone else in the game, thus we never considered him
| much of an advantage since he will mainly get bodyshots
| on other players.
|
| Frankly this is good PhD paper territory.
| nick_ wrote:
| Wait you can fire from the hip in goldeneye?
| ericlewis wrote:
| Yes. I'd argue zooming was less likely, the AK47 that
| looked like a bottle of Chianti and you sprayed
| everywhere being a good example. It was really hard to
| try and use the aiming mode but key to levels (I forget
| exact name) where it's a maze that people can end up on
| different stories. The one with all the hidden doors is
| what I'm referring to.
| ericlewis wrote:
| Perhaps it didn't look like it was from the hip - but for
| all intents and purposes it was. Holding down the Z
| button and aiming with the joystick was "down the
| sights". I don't recall if accuracy differs much in
| either scenario but the Z button version definitely did
| differ in accuracy when you were panic-shooting.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I just mean shooting the gun without holding R to make
| the reticle appear.
|
| IIRC Goldeneye even had horizontal-axis auto-aim which
| helped.
| causality0 wrote:
| _No screencheating here!_
|
| _puts the screens in a row so you can still screen cheat_
|
| Sigh.
|
| _That means he "happens to have a number of bits of equipment
| for messing around with video," he said._
|
| This is an important line. It was done this way because they had
| the equipment on hand, not that they think it's a good solution
| for anyone else. The bit about replicating their setup is just
| the author being dumb. You could do this with fifty bucks in
| capture and output equipment.
| Khoth wrote:
| That's just for the video showing it off, they say when people
| are playing it for real they'll arrange the screens facing away
| from each other
| argsnd wrote:
| Seems like a lot of the cheapest ways to do this might
| introduce significant latency though.
| goldenkey wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/05/how-to-play-
| multiplay...
|
| They are using analog signal processing equipment, the
| latency is probably less than a ms.
| drewtato wrote:
| This isn't the cheap way. Cheap way is converting it to
| digital and re-outputting it in 4 separate hdmi/vga
| displays.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| $10,000 to split a video signal into quarters? They got fleeced.
|
| And how is this even a story? They took a video signal and split
| it into quarters. What am I supposed to be surprised or impressed
| by?
| ericlewis wrote:
| I was sitting here thinking the same thing. You could probably
| achieve this with an rpi or two. The article is light on
| technical details unless I totally missed it..
| knolan wrote:
| I would imagine you could do it easily with a HDMI mod and some
| edid dongles for a few bucks.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It's a museum so reusing CRTs and their low latency is probably
| part of the appeal.
| djur wrote:
| Yeah, the Ars Technica article makes it clear that this is a
| temporary use of hardware they already had on hand, and the
| $10k is just an estimate of what it would cost to buy this
| vintage hardware online today.
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