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Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

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Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#91
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly even commercial software websites seem to do this a lot. Pages of text and some mostly-unrelated images with no screenshots at all. Sometimes you can learn more about a program from screenshots of it in Google Images than from the official website.

Agree totally - I want to see whether the controls for what I want to use the software for are in prominent positions, buried deep in some menu, or completely non-existent. I also want to see what other UI fluff is crowding out those controls and becoming distracting for me and my users, and how bloated the application is around other tasks that I have no use for. It's not the sole way to evaluate usefulness of softw…

Honestly half the time the site doesn't even describe what the software is for. They'll be like "CRE8TR TAKES CREATIVITY TO A NEW LEVEL", "Used by industry professionals worldwide!" If you've just come from a random link on Hacker News or something they can be incredibly vague.

Once again, a screenshot immediately shows me "oh, it's a UI wireframing tool."

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

''running ond old HW is probably counterproductive if you only value ecology'' I could be wrong, but i think the opposite than you. You are being reductionist, and only accounting for the factor of direct eletrical consumption during use, and not the total energy and natural resources spent during the equipments lifetime , specially its manufacturing (which i think is the real measure of ecological efficiency we shou…

People ignore the energy and scarcity of the materials involved in creating the hardware. It's like recharging a car battery with power from a coal plant.

Charging a car with 100% coal fired electricity is about as dirty/clean as driving a hybrid. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myt... https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=bt2

The most coal intensive region of the US is 67% coal.

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People ignore the energy and scarcity of the materials involved in creating the hardware. It's like recharging a car battery with power from a coal plant.

Charging a car with 100% coal fired electricity is about as dirty/clean as driving a hybrid. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myt... https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=bt2 The most coal intensive region of the US is 67% coal.

Instantaneously that may be true, but what about factoring in the environmental costs of manufacturing, including mining the raw materials and transporting the completed product (mass) to its final location?

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This demake is an additional game. Seems like it will just add to the energy load required to run a computer programs. Which I think is fine, frankly. Perhaps some people will play it instead of portal but even still there is the overhead of developing it. I guess if we cared about ecology we'd shut down more game servers faster.

To 'save the planet' you want as many people playing video games, watching TV, or arguing on social media as possible. If they're doing those things, consuming digital entertainment (eventually powered by renewables), then they're not out in the real world, travelling around using fossil fuels, consuming physical products, using up physical resources and emitting CO2. Pretty bleak future though.

You raise an interesting question: how many people would you be able to bus how far into nature to spend how long with zero electricity consumption to make it net-negative compared to the consumption incurred in the course of their habitual lives?

My naive orders-of-magnitude guess is ~20 people in a bus going ~100 miles (each way) would only need 2-4 days before the net goes negative.

It's kinda crazy how much compute is dedicated to streaming HD video or serving an endless scroll of Instagram.

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#96
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

''running ond old HW is probably counterproductive if you only value ecology'' I could be wrong, but i think the opposite than you. You are being reductionist, and only accounting for the factor of direct eletrical consumption during use, and not the total energy and natural resources spent during the equipments lifetime , specially its manufacturing (which i think is the real measure of ecological efficiency we shou…

> Like your example of a new smartphone or new steamdeck replacing the old Xbox Original: it is almost certain that the electrical consumption gains would not compensate, in terms of total energy and resources spent and pollution made, the discarting of the original xbox Citation needed. We're talking about a huge difference in electrical efficiency.

The “embodied energy” of a new tablet like a Steam Deck is estimated at roughly 1 GJ, which is ~275 kWh. Original Xbox draws around 100W, so you’d need to play for more than 2000 hours to get anywhere close to the energy cost of creating a new device.

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Embodied_energy#:~:t....

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the purpose of life to only work on "useful" things? I ask that genuinely.

No that’s fair. But “de”-make is going backwards. If that’s what you like that’s great more power to you but it feels opposite to what we usually do with is build new things. But I guess it could be argued he is building a new thing even though it’s an old thing on an older thing

I think there are two points here:

The first point is more-or-less: the OP should be using their talents for something "better". I don't think this is a really interesting question.

Them more interesting point is: "is this project useful?"

The end product likely won't directly serve some "useful" purpose, like making money or even being played by others.

On the other hand, building such a thing is _likely_ going to teach the poster a large number of useful skills that will serve them for "useful" projects.

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that’s fair. But “de”-make is going backwards. If that’s what you like that’s great more power to you but it feels opposite to what we usually do with is build new things. But I guess it could be argued he is building a new thing even though it’s an old thing on an older thing

I think there are two points here: The first point is more-or-less: the OP should be using their talents for something "better". I don't think this is a really interesting question. Them more interesting point is: "is this project useful?" The end product likely won't directly serve some "useful" purpose, like making money or even being played by others. On the other hand, building such a thing is _likely_ going to t…

I don’t think that’s why he’s making this and sharing it is just to learn stuff, but maybe I’m wrong.

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two points here: The first point is more-or-less: the OP should be using their talents for something "better". I don't think this is a really interesting question. Them more interesting point is: "is this project useful?" The end product likely won't directly serve some "useful" purpose, like making money or even being played by others. On the other hand, building such a thing is _likely_ going to t…

I don’t think that’s why he’s making this and sharing it is just to learn stuff, but maybe I’m wrong.

By your logic, why bother playing sports? Why watch TV? Why play chess? Why build model airplanes? Why should anyone have any hobbies at all? Only work, no play.

This is fun for him. And it is intellectually challenging difficult work. It improves his problem solving and technical abilities but obviously he is enjoying it as a hobby.

Re: Portal 64 – A demake of Portal for the Nintendo 64

#100

It's worth mentioning that the author has a YouTube channel[1] where he periodically posts videos showcasing updates he's made to the game over time. I'm surprised there isn't a link or even any kind of screenshots of the game on the Github repo, even if it is still very early in development. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@happycoder1989/videos

Looks much better than I expected. Hard to believe people are complaining about things this cool.

Looks terrific on the Vita screen
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