Thursday, August 5, 2021

Recent Questions - Arqade

Recent Questions - Arqade

What are the oldest electronic (electric?) arcade games?

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 03:55 AM PDT

Up until now I was more than sure that the history of electronic or electric arcade games (played be teenagers in "game saloons") were around early seventies / late sixties of twentieth century. However, today I have found two suspicious (to me) parts in Stanislaw Lem's "The Investigation" SF book, written in 1957.

I don't have access to actual English text for this book, so both fragments are my free translation from Polish original:

A few short-haired youths watched as one shot blue sparks at the small plane circling through the window behind the glass.

The machine next to which he stood was a metal box with glass at the top, under the glass lay a miniature green landscape full of bushes and trees (...). Hottentots catch a kangaroo. There are no Hottentots in Australia, but what's the harm? (...) He pressed the knob. A tiny kangaroo jumped out of its black hole and collapsed into clumps of bushes. (...) three twisted black figures moved to the side. He manipulated the handle, bringing it closer to the suspicious place. At the last moment, the kangaroo jumped out, broke the line of the manhunt and fell back into the thicket. They travelled the entire plastic map several times, and the kangaroo always slipped out at the last moment.

As mentioned above, the original book's text was completed somewhere in 1957-1958 (published in Polish ten years later. I don't know, if it was ever translated and published in English).

My question is: does the above description shows arcade games that was actually available at the time of the book was actually written (1957, so 65 years ago)? Or is this a part of very accurate Lem's prognosis, but in the book itself it was a pure part of fiction (as no such games existed at such times in arcade game history)?

Replacement for Space Shooter on iOS

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 12:51 AM PDT

Can anyone recommend an iOS game like "Galaxy Attack: Space Shooter", but with no in app purchase requests? I'm happy to pay for the game, but I don't want my kids endlessly watching ads and getting obsessed with buying power ups.

Can a Steam card in USD currency be redeemed in PHP currency?

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 02:54 AM PDT

I have a Steam card but it is in USD currency. I am in the Philippines so my account is in PHP currency. I can't redeem the said card because the currency is not the same.

  1. How can I redeem said card?
  2. Is it possible to redeem the card in my current state?

My friend has a Terraria server running and Rust open at the same time, how can I join their Terraria server?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 05:44 PM PDT

Title. The steam GUI when I right click on them only shows Rust options, nothing for Terraria. The Terraria server works and I was in it, left for a second, and now I can't join back, due to them opening Rust. The friend is now AFK and in the future I would like to be able to join their game while they have Rust or another game open. How can I make it so I see the option to join their Terraria world while they are playing Rust?

In the game stick with it how do you get the invisible skin?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 05:37 PM PDT

In the game stick with it how do you get the invisible skin? It seems that the only way to get this skin is by buying it, but all the other ones seem to be able to be gotten by completing a section of impossible mode, but I haven't completed the full impossible mode yet soI don't know.

It doesn't say how to get it. here is the game https://apps.apple.com/app/id1513842419.

Minecraft running at 2 fps; more than sufficient hardware specification, lag-o-meter maxed out during rendering pass and sporadic memory access errors

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 12:09 AM PDT

I've been having very persistent issues on an old laptop of mine trying to get minecraft 1.12.2 to work. I have tried a lot of things and narrowed the issue down to what is almost certainly an engine / rendering / software issue that I can't seem to pinpoint.

Here are the specifics:

  1. This computer is more than capable of running minecraft. 1ish GHZ processor, 6 GB of memory, Intel 4400. Everything I can find about these stats implies that it should work fine at 60 fps vanilla. Additionally, on my smaller, much slower, work-only mini-laptop with much worse stats, it runs better. I am very convinced it's not a hardware specification issue.

  2. FPS is locked to 1-2. Nothing I change in settings fixes this. Optifine doesn't fix it, minimum everything doesn't fix it, nothing changes. In the lag-o-meter (which I can't provide a screenshot of now due to crashes on start), the graph isn't a graph but a solid red block which occupies the entirety of the left half of the screen, leading me to believe (according to documentation I've read about the meaning of the graph) that there is a serious rendering error occuring somewhere that is blocking everything.

  3. Minecraft Version is 1.12.2 but I don't think that should matter. Running Java 8 Version 301, freshly installed. I've done everything: using MultiMC to reinstall minecraft, reinstalling Java, even completely reseting the PC itself (wiping the disk and reinstalling Windows). The problem persists. (EDIT: One thing I would note is that the laptop handles Bedrock edition without a hitch, but not Java edition. The possibility of CPU usage being a problem was brought up in the comments but the mini-laptop I used as a bench mark that runs Minecraft at an acceptable framerate has similar clock speed.)

  4. To complicate the issue (and perhaps related as well), is the fact that there are seemingly random crashes on world-load due to a MEMORY_ACCESS_VIOLATION occurring in the Java runtime itself. This issue occurred before the system reset and after as well, although after the reset I was able to launch a world successfully once before the crashes started. They only appear to occur while loading a world.

I'm at a complete loss of what to do here to get Minecraft to work on this laptop. I have no idea what would cause this and what settings would persist through a full system reset to cause this issue to persist. I'm familiar with technical computer stuff but don't know much about Java or minecraft internals so I don't know where to proceed from here, and I'm just about out of energy to throw at the problem.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Dungeons spawn under villages, myth or fact?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 02:11 PM PDT

I heard that dungeons spawn under villages in Minecraft bedrock edition, is this true or is this just a myth? Also if the data is available and they do spawn under villages what is the chance of it happening?

How do I clear my hotbar in Minecraft Bedrock Edition on PC?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 01:24 PM PDT

With the console versions of there's a button you can press to clear your hotbar in creative mode (on it's the X button). However, on PC, I'm not seeing any indicator on the screen that it's possible:

Screenshot of open creative inventory on PC.

I'm aware that I can clear my inventory with the clear command if I have cheats enabled. However, this clears the entire inventory, to include the hotbar. That's not the desired effect, and I'm not seeing anything in the control list in settings that tells me how to do it either.

Are there any keystrokes or hotkeys to clear just the hotbar?

Unlock a redstone repeater after a period of time

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 12:58 PM PDT

Context: I installed a train mod for fabric 1.16.5. The mod currently comes with what's called a "Platform Screen Doors", which will open with the train door at the same time.

I am currently trying to play an custom sound with command block when the Platform Screen Door is opened. But since it does not emit any redstone signal, I have used an observer shown below: (Command block not shown) Observer lit up for one tick when the door is opened

This by itself works as intended, where the observer would lit up for 1 tick, delay for 1 redstone tick, then repeat as long as the door is opened.

But I want it to only trigger the command block once, then wait for x seconds before it's allowed to be triggered again.

My thoughts would be to lock the repeater once it's activated, go through a bunch of repeater (for delay), then unlock it, but I can't think of how can I let it unlock by itself.

UPDATE: Hacked my way through it, but I doubt it will be reliable on long runs. My current implementation

Essentially once the observer is triggered, it will:

  1. Lock the repeater
  2. Trigger the command block for playsound
  3. Go through a lot of repeaters (So I can delay it for 20s)
  4. Set "block1" (The pink square) to air to unlock the repeater.
  5. Delay for a bit, then set block1 back to redstone dust for the next use.

Though I still can't think of how can I delay it for 20s without a lot repeaters, I don't want to use Piston + hopper as it creates sounds I also have no idea how reliable setblock command really is Sorry I usually don't touch redstone stuff, any suggestion appreciated!

Is there a limit to the achievement progress by opening chests when trading in sets of Mysterious Conch?

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 03:18 AM PDT

You can trade in three "Mysterious Conch," obtained by investigating set locations on the northern tidal flats and shore of Tatarasuna, at the little hut. So far, I have done this seven times, and each time the achievement tracker for opening chests in Inazuma progressed by one chest. Is there a limit to this?

Minecraft Bedrock overworld gold farm is sending zombified piglins to the nether

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 01:35 PM PDT

The last couple gold farm's I've made in Minecraft bedrock have had this same issue. The latest being this one here

.

The first gold farm I made, using a similar design, back in early 2020 never had this issue.

What's happening is that while the gold farm is working fine in the overworld, mobs are spawning in (or traveling to) the nether as well. This mobs are immediately hostile the next time I travel to the nether, and can number in the several dozens depending on how long the farm was active in the overworld. This often resulted in being killed almost immediately as the zombie pigman start attacking before I even finish loading into the nether.

The nether portal I use to get to the gold farm is several chunks away from the farm, however it is the closest portal to the farm.

My temporary solution was to build a portal right under the gold farm, and an equivalent linked portal in the nether. On the nether side it's very close to the portal I normally use, but most pigman that spawn from the gold farm seem to be going through the second dummy portal instead. This portal is over a pit that keeps the hostile pigman in check. However it's not 100% safe as a few pigman are either spawning in the other portal as well or the hostile pigman are causing other spawned pigman to immediately become hostile and I'm still attacked as soon as I go through to the nether.

I have to make my nether-side portals above pits now to be safe, which is quite inconvenient. My next plan is to make a turtle egg trap near the portal to hopefully gather all nearby zombie pigman. But but this and the portal pits seem like bandaids and not solutions.

Any advice would be appreciated.

On Minecraft Bedrock Edition, how do you find Mooshrooms?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 01:43 PM PDT

I've looked in most biomes, but can't find the red Mooshroom. How do I find them?

Spawned under water in Bedrock edition?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 01:16 PM PDT

I created a brand new world in (v1.17.10) to be surprised with a spawn point that is under water:

Screenshot of spawn point.

This was a shock to me since I've never seen it before, so I began researching it. It has happened to others (here is an example that I still have open), and it doesn't appear to be that rare of an occurrence. However, I couldn't find a definitive explanation on whether this was a bug, or by design. So after some more digging, I reviewed the spawn rules documentation to reveal that it's possible to specify that an entity can spawn under water, within a behavior pack:

Name Description
minecraft:spawns_underwater This component allows the mob to spawn underwater. Adding the component sets the value of it to be true, removing it causes the mob to stop spawning underwater.

I thought this was awesome, and since I'm using the default behavior and resource packs, I pulled up the vanilla packs to review them, and... there's no spawn rules contained in the vanilla pack for the player.

Is there something, somewhere, that explicitly defines that a player can spawn under water in ?

Note: Just-in-case it's important, the world is in creative mode with a seed of -1265590396 and, the following options, experiments, and cheats are enabled: Friendly Fire, Show Coordinates, Fire Spreads, TNT Explodes, Mob Loot, Natural Regeneration, Tile Drops, Caves and Cliffs, Holiday Creator Features, Creation of Custom Biomes, Additional Modding Capabilities, Upcoming Creator Features, Enable GameTest Framework, Activate Cheats, Do Daylight Cycle, Mob Spawning, Mob Griefing, Entities Drop Loot, Weather Cycle, Command Blocks Eanbled.

Are there other ways to acquire Port Noon Anecdote?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 02:03 PM PDT

Apparently, the only way to acquire Port Noon Anecdote is by going thru the Peacock's Door and merging 2 Vagabond's Map.

Are there other ways to do it?

Is it possible to "un-charge" a creeper?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 07:42 PM PDT

I know how to charge a creeper by summoning lightning on top of it:

Screenshot of a charged creeper.

I've reviewed the vanilla behavior for the creeper, and it is easy to see how a creeper becomes charged:

"minecraft:damage_sensor": {    "triggers": {      "on_damage": {        "filters": { "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "value": "lightning"        },        "event": "minecraft:become_charged"      },      "deals_damage": false    }  }

However, I've been unable to locate anything similar to the minecraft:become_charged event, in order to effectively un-charge it.

Is it possible to un-charge a creeper?

Changing gamerule from server console has no effect

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 03:09 AM PDT

I implemented a datapack, that changes certain gamerules like mobGriefing or doInsomnia based on the preferences of the players that are currently playing on the server. The datapack works in a test world realiable, but when I put it on the server the gamerule changes have no effect.

If I check the current state of the gamerule with the server console, the gamerules change if I change my preferences ingame. But if check the same thing with the server chat and an OP-Account, nothing changes. And the output from the chat seems to be the correct one.

Tests

I tested this with mobGriefing. I am the only player online, so if I change my preferences with the datapack they instantly take effect.

  • I started with no preference set. So mobGriefing was set to the default, which is true, both in console and in the chat.
  • If I now set my preference to false, the gamerule should switch to false.
  • But it did that only on the console. (Ignore the server restart, it didn't change anything)

Server console on the left, Game on the right

  • And it had no effect ingame. I tested it with a creeper.

The server runs on spigot in Java 1.16.4. I have not much experience with spigot, but I know commands and functions pretty well.

Do you have any idea, what causes this or how it could be fixed?

GTA V reverting cloud saves?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 06:00 PM PDT

As I said in my last post, my cloud saves were behind on my missions. Since I play GTA V on Geforce Now, my data always gets erased to I rely on the cloud to save my games. However, I noticed that when I reinstalled the epic version of GTA V, the saves were behind a lot. So I played for a while more, and then reinstalled again, and then they were also behind.

But the thing is, I checked the social club before I installed it and it showed the right amount of progress, but when I installed gta the progress was reverted on both gta and social club! I'm wondering what's going on, and is there a way to solve this? Could it be a problem with the Epic games save?

How can I see which bosses I haven't beat with a specific weapon yet?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 04:36 PM PDT

You get some special drops for beating a boss the first time with a particular weapon. Those are kinda useful, so I thought I might want to farm a few more of them. What I can't seem to find is a way to see which bosses I have beat with which weapon already.

Is there a way to figure out which weapon/boss combinations I haven't completed yet that will drop interesting loot?

1.8.8 Minecraft server won't run in Debian Linux

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 03:02 AM PDT

I'll make this simple.

I run small Minecraft servers on my Raspberry Pi 3B+, and it suffices for very small stuff, but I wanted more power. I grabbed an old Windows laptop that was picking up dust, wiped it, and installed Debian Linux. I copied over the Spigot server folder from my RPi into my laptop, and installed "identical" Java versions.

My Debian laptop showing its Java version

My raspberrypi showing its Java version

Running the server on the Pi has always worked flawlessly; however, when I transferred the files to my Debian, and ran them with Java, something strange happened. The server does claim to start, but when I ping the server in any way (By clicking the Refresh button on the servers page), the console SHOWERS ME in exceptions. They are all the exact same exception, but it spams it for a solid 2 or 3 minutes until I do Ctrl+C to make it stop.

The server going nuts

I believe it's also worth mentioning that the server logs this to the console when ran on the laptop

INFO: Your platform does not provide complete low-level API for accessing direct buffers reliably. Unless explicitly requested, heap buffer will always be preferred to avoid potential system unstability.

I believed it may be an issue with Spigot, but it is not. I manually downloaded the vanilla 1.8.9 server.jar, and ran that alone, to no changes in results.

What could be going on here?

(The laptop in question is a Toshiba Satellite P875-S7200 running Debian 4.19.132-1 [2020-07-24] )

Is there a Photo Mode in Final Fantasy VII Remake?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 04:41 PM PDT

In Horizon Zero Dawn there is a photo mode that allows you to manipulate the camera and obtain unique, creative screenshots. I am looking for a similar capability in Final Fantasy VII Remake. There are tons of great opportunities to capture interesting photos, with unique locations, characters, weapon and materia configurations, and lighting effects. Does this photo mode capability exist?

How to activate commands around a tagged entity with command blocks?

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 12:04 AM PDT

So I am trying to set the score of a person within two blocks of a tagged armor stand, but the commands I thought would work don't.

I have tried

execute at @e[tag=GFlag] run scoreboard players add  @a[scores{dropFlag1.0=0},team=Red,distance=..2] 1

and

execute at @a[team=Red,scores={dropFlag1.0=0}] if entity @e[tag=GFlag,distance=..2] run scoreboard players add @a[team=Red,scores={dropFlag1.0=0}] 1

but neither has had the results I wanted.

Download stuck at 100 mb every time

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 02:07 AM PDT

I downloaded 600mb Dota 2 the first time then paused and shut off my PC. The next day the download started from 100 mb. I resumed the download, it went till 800 mb, but the next day when I opened steam on offline mode it showed 1.6 GB downloaded. I restarted steam in online mode then it resumed from 200mb.

Buying Steam game while being abroad

Posted: 05 Aug 2021 12:43 AM PDT

I want to buy (pre-order) No Man's Sky from Steam. Since I'm from the Netherlands, this would normally cost me €60.

At the moment I'm on holiday in the United Kingdom. The game has a price here of £40. Because of the current exchange rate between euro and pound, this is a lot cheaper: 21%.

My question is: can I buy a Steam gift card in the United Kingdom and use it to buy the game from my own Steam account for the price it costs in the UK? If so, is this legal / do I have any risk of my account being blocked?

Thanks in advance

Minecraft split screen with xbox live

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 02:06 PM PDT

I'm having trouble getting 3 players on Minecraft. One player is connecting via Xbox live and 2 players are using the split screen but it will not let me connect the second player even before the second player going via Xbox live gets on.

Is there a quick way to delete saves off of the steam cloud?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 01:13 PM PDT

I've been playing a Endless Space for a while now, and I've got quite a few saves saved up... Any way I can clean house and mass delete the ones I no longer need?

How to join a match by IP address in CS:GO?

Posted: 04 Aug 2021 04:15 PM PDT

I'm having trouble figuring out how I can connect directly to a server via IP. How can I join a server in CS:GO by using it's IP address?
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