Saturday, November 09, 2019

Well. I'm sorry. I'm still done with this project, but it was meant to stay online. Sadly though, no one informed me that at some point it went offline, and I've just assumed it was online still. Its probably been offline a while. At least a few months, maybe a few years.

Anyway. Its back online now. If it goes offline again, someone try to get a hold of me and let me know.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Last night I fixed my SNESJoy. I then decided to play some Mega Man X with it.

Since I've been messing with streaming, I decided it was a good opportunity to do a impromptu play through of it on twitch like I didn't get done on XMas with Zelda, A Link to the Past.

Again, it was just me playing and chatting through text chat. No mic or anything.

The total air time was just a little over 4 hours, but I took a 30m break once, and stopped to chat some (Starting at 1:57:41 you will see me stop moving for several seconds to type).

I'm an experienced MMX player, but I'm definitely not a pro. So don't expect that much. It wasn't a speedrun or anything. You will notice I stick to the X-Buster a lot, and only resort to boss weapons when I don't feel like dealing with something any further. It's a completionists run. Meaning I got everything including the Hadouken. I tried not to use it to much, as I'm used to using it in my play throughs over the years, but I did put it to some use at the end after I beat the dog and Sigma1 each once without it. That's how I rationalized using the cheesy weapon, because at that point I was getting tired.

0:05:39               - Start
0:11:29               - Chill Penguin Stage
0:19:02-0:20:22 - I idle on the stage select screen from
0:20:39               - Sting Chameleon Stage
0:34:25               - Storm Eagle Stage
0:40:51-0:41:48 - I idle on the stage select screen from
42:03                  - Flame Mammoth Stage
0:48:17-0:49:15 - I idle on the stage select screen from
49:29                  - Boomer Kuwanger Stage
58:29                  - Spark Mandrill Stage
1:09:12-1:37:39 - I take a break from
1:37:55              - Launch Octopus Stage
1:44:42              - I start collecting missed hearts
1:50:00              - I start noobing it up and get into a reverse "The Zone" at
1:58:43              - I finally get back on track and get the 7th heart
1:59:13              - Armored Armadillo Stage
2:07:35-2:11:13 - I idle on the stage select screen from
2:11:19               - Armored Armadillo Stage Replay for Subtank and "Being a Dieing Noob Part Two"
2:15:08               - Armored Armadillo Stage Replay for Hadouken Part One, Featuring me being a dieing noob some more
2:19:49               - Armored Armadillo Stage Replay for Hadouken Part Two
2:23:31               - Armored Armadillo Stage Replay for Hadouken Part Three
2:25:58               - Armored Armadillo Stage Replay for Hadouken Part Four
2:28:15               - I reach the Hadouken Capsule
2:29:44               - Sigma Stage One Attempt One
2:40:17               - Sigma Stage One Attempt Two
2:55:23               - Sigma Stage One Attempt Three
3:07:24               - Sigma Stage Two Attempt One
3:08:15               - Sigma Stage Two Attempt Two
3:22:18               - Sigma Stage Three
3:33:27               - Sigma Stage Final, Health/Energy/Extra Live Farming
3:39:17               - Sigma Stage Final, First Engage of the Bosses
3:49:54               - Stream Starts getting choppy
3:52:45 (00:00)  - Stream Cut/End of choppiness
3:59:25 (06:40)  - Start of Final Attempt
4:02:27 (09:42)  - Killing blow on Sigma/Game beat!

I had a ton of fun doing this. It was a nice learning experience, as far as learning about streaming goes. I'm not certain yet, but I would kind of like to do this more in the future. I'd just like to do it with more of an audience. If I do, I think I will give notice ahead of time like I've done with my continuation of Zelda, A Link to the Past on New Years Eve (tune in!). I may even play through MMX again at some point, and try to be less noobish. lol

Please check out the recordings for my MMX play through below

Mega Man X Play Through Part 1 (0:00:00-3:52:44)
Mega Man X Play Through Part 2 (3:52:45-4:10:11)

NOTE: For the time being I'm mirroring some posts here from my blog. In the future please check it for topics such as this.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas!

Normally for Christmas I like to release a project, an update, or even just some progress news. But given the state of my projects right now, that's just not remotely possible.

But I have an idea! Let' s have a game-a-thon of sorts!

There's something about xmas and Thanksgiving. The temperature, the lighting, the smells. It always takes me back and makes me remember playing various Legend of Zeldas. So I've been thinking, why not play through one of the greatest Zeldas of all time, A Link to the Past! And more, why not share it with others!

Twitch is something I've considered doing for awhile now, but never really looked into as I'm just not quite sure what I'd want to do on it or get out of it. So I cobbled together this plan at the last minute, and I'm not all that prepared. No mic, no fancy effects, and no real motives outside of just sharing some fun. I don't expect this to be to popular of a steam or anything today because I'm unknown in the world of streaming and there's not going to be much going on except me playing through Zelda ALttP, and maybe doing some text chatting. But I hope those of you who do watch can find some enjoyment!

DarkAkuma's Christmas Twitch Stream
 

UPDATE: I played for 1 and half hours. I decided to stop there as no one was watching, and my hands were starting to hurt. I planned to play using my SNESJoy, but at the last minute it decided to break. I played through to the Sanctuary with my wireless pad, but it annoyed me with its button sticking, missing, delays, and having to use a analog stick. I switched to the keyboard after, and while I was able to get as far as I did, it was uncomfortable and caused me to play worse then I should.

I may finish the play through on new years eve if people want. And if I can get my SNES pad working.

For now, if you want you can find the first part of my play through here.

Friday, December 20, 2013

It's with heavy heart that it's now come to this point, but it's time for me to move on.

I've enjoyed coding the projects, but despite my efforts I never got to experience the joy of adequate users acceptance or community. My most recent post was my last ditch effort to try and provoke community interaction and seems to have failed.

So at this point I can declare Z-Net I officially done. I hadn't worked on it in a while, despite knowing of some issues to address. I just couldn't get interested in it. And this was in large part due to it failing to meet my minimum expectations of population and community. Instead I chose to focus my efforts on Z-Net 3 because it was at a stage that made it more fun, and its base design goals would seem to directly address some of the issues I felt contributed to the lack of population.

As for Z-Net 3. As my recent post has indicated, there's just not much interest in that either. Perhaps in the future there could be. But for now that project is being shelved. I may work on it, or I may not. If I did, it might be with no plans of release, or I might just re-purpose it.

For me personally, I'll be trying to find new projects to keep me interested. I have a few in mind in addition to interest in some new hobbies. So I should be fine.

This site will remain for now. I'll consider re-purposing it as a brand/team for future projects, who knows. For now it will remain as is.

I'm also choosing to leave Z-Net I online for now. Just don't expect any moderation. The chat room will remain disabled. And I'll no longer offer support for it at all.

Thanks to all the loyal users throughout the years!

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

There can be only one!

Well at least to start off with...

Yes, Z-Net 3 will support an unlimited number of emulators and other programs/games. So why am I talking about only supporting one? That's because I've decided that during development and initial testing it would be more beneficial to remain focused. And when moving into a public beta phase it wouldn't be wise to have all the users split among different emulators.

I will still be working on first party addons to support other emulators as well. But mainly just to understand commonality between many different emulators and keep Z-Net 3 designed well for supporting so many. Doing so will help ensure future addons, whether made by me or whoever, will work more seamlessly with the project.

Now with that all said, we have a new question! What will that one emulator be?

ZSNES may seem obvious. But why remain so narrow minded? As nice as ZSNES has been for Z-Net and zbattle all these years, why not get Z-Net 3 started off with something new?

Some of you may think "Ok then, RetroArch!".

Haha... Nice try!

While it may be packaged and advertised as a single emulator, it's not to Z-Net 3. I've worked with adding RetroArch support to Z-Net 3, and to do so properly it's different cores are identified individually. Choosing RetroArch as a whole as the first and only supported emulator for awhile would split users up just the same as supporting several emulators.

So again...



What emulator will Z-Net 3 support first?

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

I'm writing this to inform users that the forums will not be coming back. They went down a couple weeks ago, were slated to be back up a couple days ago, and that just didn't work out.

The reason I will simply put is "free hosts". And that's also the reason they won't be coming back. I'm sick of dealing with free hosts. I could try to find another, but given my numerous past experiences, there's no reason to believe things wont just wind up the same. All the hassle just isn't worth it when they're not used all that much.

I might as well post it here, but don't use the hosts 000webhosting or biz.nf. They both essentially scam the users of the free service my drumming up phony/BS claims in an attempt to make you pay for their premium service. 000webhosting is the worse of the 2 as they do what I can only describe as extortion to get you to pay for their premium service. Just want that warning out there.

Sorry for the lack of forums from now on. Hopefully the blog comments can suffice.

Thursday, June 06, 2013

This build is a completely optional build. In it is just a few bug fixes, but mostly it's a debug/diagnostic build.

I've spent hours trying to diagnose the causes of several bugs, but sadly all I've come up with is theory's with no hard facts supporting them. Part of the difficulty of solving these issues are that the problems reside on the remote end, and all the data I can collect and review is on the local end of course. Often the remote end doesn't even know his ZNI bugged. These issues happen randomly too with no reported method of reproduction. And when they do happen, 95% of the time it's with a non-English speaking user. I'd probably even say 75% of the time it's with a user who just doesn't care about helping ZNI get through the beta by actually helping.

I've turned debug output back on by default for this build. So when the issues happen to the rare users I can talk to and are willing to help, they can submit debug logs.

But with this version, I do have to warn you. This has been specially coded to send debug info for a particular bug to a bot. Nothing personal is sent, which with ZNI would pretty much just be private messages. Whats sent is copys of channel wide messages. This is done to so that in the event a rare bug happens, I can see what that bug was created from. Normal debug.txt logging and submission to me would be insufficient, and would likely require a great amount of time waiting for all the stars to align (english speaking user, a user that cares, and the bug actually happening.). The other bugs are more common to the point that the debug.txt alone should prove sufficient, if anything will.

With this said, if you for some reason you don't believe me and feel this version is a privacy/security concern, then don't use it. If you're fine with it however, please download it and be prepared to be contacted by me to discuss a bug when it happens to you, and possibly send me your entire, or part of your debug.txt.

Z-Net I v1.2.0.3 Download