CorrodedCranium

Here's some on my list:

• Red Dead Redemption 2 - I do not want to deal with the Rockstar Games launcher.

• Tom Clancy's Breakpoint - The game's add-on packs feel like Ubisoft is trying to nickel and dime gamers who would instinctively buy the GOTY equivalent of a title. I do not want to deal with a Ubisoft launcher or account.

• Zombi - According to the Steam reviews it required a Uplay login to validate the game before you play and that version of the Ubisoft service no longer exists. This seems to have been rectified but I still don't trust it and don't want to go through the refund process if it hasn't.

• Skyrim VR - I've already bought too many copies of Skyrim.

A bit of a "this is why I pirate" thread but more targeted at individual games.

For context I am doing this because of EmuVR. It's a VR application that allows you to play retro games in an early 2000s bedroom on big CRT TVs. You can also use a VCR to watch movies. The problem I'm running into is a lot of movies/TV shows have been updated to be 16:9 which causes a lot of letterboxing on the 4:3 TVs.

I have tried searching around various torrent and DDL sites with minimal luck. Most of them seem to struggle with recognizing "4:3" as a search term. Adding the term "aspect ratio" seems to help but doesn't narrow it down completely and only provides a few results.

I am aware of a few individuals like threesixtyp on The Pirate Bay who put out bundles of TV shows and movies in the original aspect ratio but I'm wondering does anyone else had suggestions on how or where I could find this kind of thing? Maybe a site has an advance search section for aspect ratios for example.

I figured some kind of specialty or niche torrent site may have something. I could see something like a best retro movie pack popping up on 4chan's torrent board.

I am aware I could crop the videos with a program like Handbrake but that would take a decent amount of time to do.

It's a breadboard with an extender for a Raspberry Pi's pins flipped upside down, a Raspberry Pi Pico, jumper wires, and a clip that came with a CH341A that suffers from the issue of being 5V.

The issue I think would be length of the wires.

Any thoughts? I'd consider soldering something together but I don't have a soldering iron that would be great for something so small and I'm working with what I have on hand.

I also have a Raspberry Pi 4 and the CH341A that has the voltage issue if anyone has a better idea that might work.

For those that don't know what the sneakernet is it's essentially transferring data through physical means. For example I would occasionally download TV shows to a hard drive for a friend who didn't have access to the internet after they thought they cancelled their subscription to their ISP and acquired hundreds of dollars of debt. You can find a Wikipedia page for the term sneakernet here.

Have any of you set something up with your neighbors or family? I'd include LAN setups where content as shared as part of the sneakernet. Kind of similar to how stuff has been distributed in Cuba.

Just a silly shower thought I had after hearing about Nintendo's copyright claim against Russ from Retro Game Corps.

I have spent some time recently browsing through the various streaming options listed in the piracy and FMHY megathreads and I am curious which one people prefer.

movie-web for example works great but when you click on a title it goes right to playing where as Braflix pulls up a summary, trailer, and list of actors. Braflix also categories based on the streaming service like Apple+ and Amazon which can be good for content discovery.

Unfortunately you can't click on the streaming service categories to view more and it doesn't list a lot of other somewhat popular streaming services like Shudder. Braflix also doesn't say what whether or not something is a cam rip unlike some sites like himovies.

Some websites also handle sorting better than others or have server problems.

I don't know if people really care or if they just click on the first link they see/use what they've already been using for years.

Content discovery for me is probably the most important factor. I like being able to sort by the IMDb rating and having a section that says "If you like X you might like Y" is also nice.

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/7416619

I've been trying to mimics the functionality of Steam with open source projects. For example using Playnite as my game library manager. One thing I'm having a bit of a hard time with is finding a substitute for achievement tracking. I know achievements aren't for everyone but I find it helps motivate me to power through lulls in longer games and try out side quests.

The closest alternative I have come across is xan105's Achievement Watcher. It started in 2019, got a fair amount of attention 2020 after being posted on /r/CrackWatch by the creator, was added to various piracy megathreads, and stopped development in 2022.

It was a bit of a challenge to setup.

Some steps were:

• Grab my own Steam API so it could fetch data for the achievements.

• Alter Windows 11's notification settings so I could get the achievement unlocked notification.

• Go through the steam_emu.ini files so I could find the correct directories (ex. \Users\Public\Documents\CODEX)

• Using Achievement Watcher to generate the achievements.json and image files and placing them in the steam_settings folder of each game.

Even then I haven't been able to get it working smoothly. For Cities: Skylines for example I can unlock achievements but I don't receive a notification and they only appear after I refresh Achievement Watcher (Control + R). Most modern guides suggest using a Steam Auto Cracker but doing so appears to stop the game from working. I don't know if this is because I am utilizing repacks or if there are multiple forms of DRM at work. I could easily be missing something.

I've read there are compatibility issues with Achievement Watcher and cracks from groups/people like TENOKE.

Considering I own the games I want to play without DRM I may just try to use Goldberg myself.

Some games like Fallout New Vegas allow you to view completed challenges in-game and I imagine there are mods out there that add some form of achievement/trophy/challenge system.

There's also RetroAchievements for older games.

I've got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.

After that I'd probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn't have applications that support the file format.

What about you?

I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn't a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It's just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can't just bring in a copy of Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.

Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.

I have been thinking about the Cerveza Crista edit of Star Wars: A New Hope that sporadically splices in beer ads and the Toy Story 3 edit alternate ending where they fall into the incinerator and it made me wonder if people have come across these kind of joke versions, in full, in the wild.

It seems like a majority of the time it's just short clips being made and reposted.

I'm not talking about the edits of movies where they do things like decrease the speed of the audio so it gradually desyncs from the rest of the movie or when they replace the entire movie with the Limewire Bill Clinton ad.

I was using Spotiflyer for a while because it worked well and was available through F-Droid but it seems like the creator has moved on to an app called SoundBound that I haven't seen in the megathread or any of the other sites listed in the Other Treasures section.

I was wondering if there is a different Android app people are recommending for downloading MP3s of Spotify playlists. I am indifferent towards audio quality and don't mind missing out on a few Spotify-exclusive songs so if it is using YouTube MP3s that's fine with me.

I imagine a lot of people who are into data hoarding already know a lot of this but I thought the video was pretty neat. It briefly talks about the history of different compression formats and provides a brief blurb about why you may want to use one or the other.

I'd recommend checking it out if you want 15 minutes of background noise.

For anyone new to data compression TechQuickie and CrashCourse have videos on it. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole you could check out media compression and see how things like JPEGs and PNGs work.