Gemini000 wrote:

Think of it this way: If you try to divide 24 by 10, you get 2.4. BUT, if you're working strictly with integers, you can't have […]
Show full quote

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

OK, but how would 16-bit mixing improve the sound quality if the samples are only 8-bit?

Think of it this way: If you try to divide 24 by 10, you get 2.4. BUT, if you're working strictly with integers, you can't have a decimal value, so you'd end up with 2 or possibly 3 instead.

If all you're doing is mixing samples with no regards to pitch or volume, then 16-bit mixing isn't a factor (technically, though it is because of something else I talk about further down) because all the math involved would be addition or subtraction. The moment you want to alter the volume of a sample or the pitch of a sample, multiplication and division come into play, which means having better granularity of the values will result in more accurate manipulation of the sound.

If you have one spot in an 8-bit waveform with a value of 24 and you're dividing the volume down to 10%, with 8-bit mixing that spot in the waveform will now have a value of 2 or 3, not 2.4. If you're doing 16-bit mixing, 24 becomes 6144, 10% of which will be 614 or 615, either of which will be much more accurate than an 8-bit 2 or 3 which would be 512 or 768 if bumped up to 16-bit.

True, most people aren't going to notice stuff like this, at least, not if the channels count is low. The thing with doing accurate mixing at the software level is that the more channels you have, the quieter everything needs to be by default to avoid distortion, in which case it becomes even more important to be doing 16-bit mixing over 8-bit.

Thanks for the accurate description of why 16 bit mixing makes sense for 8 bit samples. I wanted to respond there but didn't want to bother with the description of such. I recall this being a big deal for most early sampled music (mod, s3m, etc), where 8 bit samples were used to cut down on file size, but 16 bit mixing allowed for better sound. The thing to remember is that even though they were 8 bit samples, to account for different tones with the one sample involved slowing/speeding the sample, which without 16 bit mixing resulted in problematic losses.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 148 - Jetpack is online!

I find it somewhat hilarious that in order to keep this episode nice and G-Rated I had to intentionally avoid showing the most frustrating things that happened while I was playing this game, as the only thing graphically violent in the entire game are the death sequences... but geeze, there's a couple that are just really over the top for such a tiny sprite! :O

Other than that, didn't have too much to say. Probably a good thing because I was pretty sick during my voiceover day. Dunno with what but I recovered pretty quickly following. *shrugs*

So yeah, if I sound a little out of it, that's why. :P

It always appeared to me that the guy at the end of the level in the door was having a quick wank, how did this game ever get released!

I always thought that guy was flapping his dick around or something when he finished a level! Looks like in Kris's attempt to make this a G-rated episode, he overlooked a little something in the game! 🤣

Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting it due to the rather tiny sprites in the game. 😵

You guys are so immature. XD

The main character in Jetpack does an old dance move when he beats a level which involves rolling your fists around each other in front of your stomach, then flinging one arm into the air while leaving the other one in place, then you roll your fists again, fling your opposite arm out, repeat until you want to do other dance moves because it really does look goofy when you do it in real life. :P

I thought he was doing Mr. Burns "excellent" hands really fast and trying to balance on the door to not fall over.

Gemini000 wrote:

You guys are so immature. 🤣

The main character in Jetpack does an old dance move when he beats a level which involves rolling your fists around each other in front of your stomach, then flinging one arm into the air while leaving the other one in place, then you roll your fists again, fling your opposite arm out, repeat until you want to do other dance moves because it really does look goofy when you do it in real life. 😜

Do the Mario ? 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65uNCLBTje0

Next ADG will be a couple or so hours late, probably be up around 4 to 6 AM EDT. Going to bed now and it's not quite done yet. Had a long but very exciting day which I'll be relating in the first filler video of November. ;)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 149 - Star Control is online! :)

I kinda knew going into this one that it was a simple game, but I'd only played the second game and never the first one, so I was somewhat surprised when I discovered that the first game actually has turn-based strategy thrown in! :O

...not very GOOD turn-based strategy, but it works. Would've worked better (and made more sense) if each entity on your side got one action per turn, as opposed to having three actions total for all entities. :P

Didn't go into details about the different races and ships though, otherwise the length of the episode probably would've doubled. That... and I'm actually not very good at the Star Control games. Was never all that good at the second one and with this first one I don't seem to be any better or worse. *shrugs*

Nice one. I've always looked at the first Star Control as sort of an "Archon in space" - you have a good vs. evil side, each has its own selection of "pieces" with unique abilities, and a turn-based strategy type of game that goes into 1-on-1 realtime combat when two "pieces" meet. Then again, Paul Reiche III was on the design team for both games.

BTW, anyone else having trouble viewing *anything* on blip.tv with the Pale Moon browser? Searching the web I see mention of the problem, but no solution...

That's an excellent two-player game, doing the "melee" combat against a human opponent on the same keyboard can be a lot of fun. Computer opponent though, on lower difficulty setting is trivial to win and on higher becomes really unfair and frustrating. Because of all the time I've spent playing the the action part of the game, the strategy side of it never really caught my eye. I always knew it was there and always ended up thinking "naaah, let's have another melee" 😀
Now on to the episode of one of my favorite games, haven't seen it yet...

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 149 - Star Control is online! 😀

This may just be me, but in Firefox (v34.a2) I just get a black box where the video should be. Other videos on your site seem to work fine. It does seem to work in Chrome at least.

kolano wrote:

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 149 - Star Control is online! :)

This may just be me, but in Firefox (v34.a2) I just get a black box where the video should be. Other videos on your site seem to work fine. It does seem to work in Chrome at least.

I'm getting that too, actually. I haven't updated Firefox in awhile but I HAVE updated Flash since the last time I uploaded a video, so I think it could be Flash related.

kolano wrote:

This may just be me, but in Firefox (v34.a2) I just get a black box where the video should be. Other videos on your site seem to work fine. It does seem to work in Chrome at least.

Getting the same and I haven't updated since Firefox 28.0.

I'm using Pale Moon 24.7.2 (x64) on Xubuntu 14.04 with the Flashblock addon, and I used to be able to just click the play button to bring up the video player, but now it refuses to work. I could disable Flashblock, but I'm using it so my computer doesn't suck as much bandwidth and annoy the other housemates. 🤣

UPDATE: I just tried whitelisting the player control, all I get is a black window.

Maybe Blip pushed an update of their player just before the weekend which caused this problem to crop up, and now we have to wait until the guys at Blip return to work on it. AFAIK: The Blip staff only works weekdays.

One of the dangers of pushing an update right next to a weekend if you have no one to work on fresh new bugs during said weekend. :P

Anyone running into issues watching the show can always watch it straight off of Blip, which uses a different player than the one on my website and was working fine when I tested: http://blip.tv/adg

Not working there either. What's odd, I regularly watch videos on TGWTG and their player works but trying to see the same video on the Blip page doesn't.

Unsure about a Blip player update being the issue, unless they push out different players for different videos which would seem odd, as other Blip videos on your site were playing without issue.

The video works for me, either here at Vogons or at Blip's site; I'm currently using Firefox 31.0 and Adobe Player 15.0.0.152. Also tried IE11-64 and they work as well.

kolano wrote:

Unsure about a Blip player update being the issue, unless they push out different players for different videos which would seem odd, as other Blip videos on your site were playing without issue.

All of Season 1 and the first few episodes of Season 2 use different embedding code. That could be a part of it...