Laptop spec help required please

[Zerush]

Yeah, thats really hilarious. I use the Vivaldi browser, which by default include a nice sidescroller game, Vivaldia and also launched a 2º part , Vivaldia 2, which you find in Steam, but which you can play direct in the browser without the need of Steam. It works even in very old PC without problems and shows a quality much better than a lot of others.

[revelator]

hehe yeah i get you

before it all went to hell there were numerous engines based on idtech 1 for all kinds of stuff, browser, sidescrollers, even some rather advanced ports like darkplaces and FTE (multi engine Q1 Q2 Q3 hexen etc.). quakespasm (a modern port but in line with the original and also crossplatform), vkquake (vulkan port), glquaked3d (directx port), hell even half-life (the original) was recreated in the idtech 1 engine (xash3d) and later multiplatformed in the xash3d-fwgs port. you can even play quake in xash3d with half-life style menues. some of them can even rival modern games in visuals.

[Zerush]

I've also eg. the Tomb Raider from 2013, which certainly can compite in graphics with current games and it works smooth even in 4GB RAM, Dark Messiah the same and a lot more. No need of an NASA PC to play good games, but good devs to develop good optimized games. Do you know .kkrieger, an FPS (well, short, 1 level) which occupied only 96 KB ? Even some avatars in the forum are bigger. That is what I called optimized level Chuck Norris.

Edited August 13, 2024 by Zerush

[revelator]

i remember that one, was indeed impressive as all hell . it was built in assembler was it not ?.

[revelator]

ah no it was built using an inhouse compiler called werkzeug or simply tool. it used some rather impressive magic where instead of using textures on a per pixel basis it uses the creation history of the texture. many more things went into making it this small the actuall game would have filled about 300mb without the special methods used to store information.

[revelator]

hehe reminds me of some of the tricks we used in quake with hard baked textures ->

byte texture1[sizeof x coordinates][sizeof y coordinates] = {

 ungodly amount of numbers representing the texture data, comma seperated ofc.

};

then simply load the byte representation into the texture loader and voila .

most of the times these were used for particle effects, but you could do any number of things with them

[revelator]

real life example from tomazquake
 

byte    particle[32][32] =
{
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  4,  5,  3,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  2,  4,  7, 13, 16, 13,  8,  5,  3,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  3,  7,  9, 12, 18, 26, 30, 27, 21, 15, 11,  8,  4,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  3,  9, 17, 22, 26, 31, 37, 42, 40, 36, 29, 25, 19, 11,  5,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  2,  7, 17, 28, 34, 38, 43, 52, 59, 57, 52, 45, 39, 33, 26, 16,  7,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  6, 15, 26, 36, 45, 53, 62, 73, 80, 80, 73, 65, 56, 47, 38, 29, 17,  6,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  4, 13, 25, 34, 45, 59, 73, 86, 98,106,104, 96, 86, 74, 61, 51, 40, 29, 14,  4,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  3, 10, 22, 32, 43, 57, 76, 97,117,132,141,138,126,111, 93, 77, 63, 50, 38, 24, 10,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  6, 15, 28, 38, 52, 70, 94,123,155,179,191,188,170,143,117, 94, 75, 60, 46, 33, 18,  5,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  2,  7, 21, 33, 45, 61, 82,112,152,196,226,237,234,217,184,146,114, 88, 68, 52, 39, 24,  8,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  4, 12, 26, 38, 52, 70, 96,134,183,228,250,255,253,246,220,175,131, 98, 76, 57, 43, 27, 10,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  5, 16, 29, 41, 57, 78,107,153,208,246,255,255,255,254,240,197,143,105, 80, 60, 44, 28, 10,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  6, 18, 32, 45, 63, 85,117,163,218,250,255,255,255,255,245,205,151,109, 82, 61, 44, 29, 11,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  2, 10, 25, 37, 51, 69, 89,118,158,208,244,255,255,255,253,238,196,147,109, 82, 61, 44, 29, 11,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  4, 14, 28, 37, 50, 64, 81,105,136,179,221,244,250,248,237,211,170,130,100, 77, 58, 43, 28, 10,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  3, 10, 21, 31, 40, 53, 67, 86,112,145,183,210,218,212,196,169,137,109, 86, 68, 52, 38, 23,  7,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  3, 10, 22, 34, 43, 54, 69, 90,116,142,158,161,157,145,128,110, 90, 73, 58, 44, 31, 16,  3,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  4, 14, 26, 35, 43, 55, 72, 92,109,115,115,113,107, 99, 88, 74, 60, 48, 36, 21,  8,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  7, 15, 24, 33, 43, 57, 72, 83, 86, 86, 85, 83, 78, 70, 60, 48, 37, 25, 10,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  6, 13, 24, 33, 43, 53, 60, 63, 63, 64, 62, 58, 51, 44, 35, 25, 13,  4,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  6, 14, 24, 31, 39, 43, 43, 43, 44, 43, 40, 35, 30, 22, 12,  4,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  5, 11, 19, 27, 30, 29, 29, 30, 29, 25, 21, 15,  8,  4,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  3,  8, 14, 16, 16, 14, 15, 14, 11,  7,  4,  2,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  2,  4,  5,  5,  4,  5,  4,  3,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},
    {  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0},

};

the funny thing is if you open a texture in say notepad and copy all the comma seperated numbers in there into a construct like the above you get the same result as actually loading the real texture, cool eh

[Zerush]

Sadly exist only this one level game (~10 min), which is still playable in Windows (it's free). As full game it would have been a good competitor to Doom in less than 1MB

[revelator]

heh yeah seems after the move to 64 bit the concensus has been to cram as many bytes of random gunk into that space and damn be optimization . sure i get that not everyone is a code genious but nowadays most of them dont even try sigh... well if the state of education follows the advancements made in my time the future looks bleak indeed.

EDIT: With that i mean we are getting a bit to reliant on tech instead of using the old noggin

sad in a way most youngsters today are better users of tech but they have no idea of the inner workings of the tech they use sigh... most dont even know what you can do in CMD because DOS was long dead when they started yet the shell still exist.

one of my first games in dos was written with batch files later i learned basic but in the dos days it was a pita to track down a typo so it was usually easier to just rewrite it from scratch.

its still possible to run a real dos shell even in win11 64 with the ntvdmx64 project, which gives access to the old qbasic compiler if someone wants to try old school programming.

[Zerush]

Oh yes, in the years pre - Windows with the good old MSDOS I also made some nice things with batch files, like games or eve an agenda rolodeck, creating seudo graphic UIs with ANSII, things like this.

Yes showing programming to the kids is not a bad Idea, but not precisly beginning with this one

 

Edited August 14, 2024 by Zerush

[revelator]

hehe maybe we should not torture them with basic atleast not the basic from back yonder , C is a good starting place C++ can do some awsome stuff but the syntax can be hard to comprehend and the learning curve is pretty steep.

Python seems to be liked a lot though i would not exactly call it a programming language (though neither is using batch files with the command shell) it is more like a script language or at best a managed one. It is also pretty slow as a game engine though you can indeed write a game in it.

sadly object pascal or delphi is not a widely used language anymore despite it actually being pretty nice (there was a quake engine built in delphi one time).

C is used pretty much anywhere and runs on everything so no brainer ? hmm .

It is also pretty easy to learn the basics in C but the hard stuff can be really HARD so its not that it is a simple language hehe. Basic still exists though is a far cry from the one we where used to (freebasic for example) and luckily a lot easier to debug these days.

perl -> screams in horror nah not to bad though the syntax sometimes makes me want to rip my hair out.

java newer touch the stuff myself im more of an arabica man lol. can write games and quite a lot of other stuff in it but like python its a bit slow for game engines.

ruby well havent really tried a lot in ruby tbh. but i suspect it can do much of what python/java can.

rust well this ones a bit strange, uses llvm/clang's backend but is its own language. Gained quite some traction these later years as many opensource libraries / tools changed to it. downside 32 bit only supports the dwarf exception model by default (problematic on windows that uses the SEH model), an extension was written later to also support sjlj (better compatibility with SEH) but you have to build and enable it yourself. despite this microsoft has started using the 64 bit rust compiler as it produces superior code. the 64 bit model also uses SEH exceptions by default so works flawlessly with windows. syntax takes some getting used to and it is very unforgiving on user error, so maybe not the best starting language.

[Zerush]

Well, I think for young kids the first is to learn the programming logic, using visual apps like Turtle or maybe Scratch. Beginning with these it's easier to begin with one of those you mentioned (well, C++ if you want to cause an trauma). The good old Basic is also fine to begin with, because of a clear and easy syntaxis, certainly not to programming things like the Hellblade 2 game

Edited August 14, 2024 by Zerush

[revelator]

Oh it could be much worse we could try to teach them assembler or machine code but even experts today would be most likely break there skull if they tried that hehe. your idea is good though :).

Another good point would be to make them understand limitations in said tech, much of the muscle in todays computers is geared towards techniques to allow raytracing and why is that many wonder. Well the honest truth is that raytracing takes so much computing power that no hardware today would be able to run it if we did not use certain tricks like DLSS FSR etc.

And this wont change tomorrow or in the next maybe 20 to 30 years because we are at a point in history where moores law is actually starting to show the limitations on our current technology. For one we are at such small processing nodes in chips that they are starting to show all kinds of weird behaviour (quantum tunneling effect, heat problems due to stacking nodes, oh my...).

new technologies are in the works but they are still pretty far of in the future. So keeping your (Older heh) hardware alive is actually a good thing even if you loose on bragging rights, and tbh many older components are actually still able to run your games or what ever maybe not with a gazillion fps on a 100" 8k 256 hz monitor (yeah you could not afford it anyway).

Still you can get pretty far with knowledge of the inner workings of tech, like the guy who mounted 16 gb vram on his 3070 ti and got some rather nice numbers out of it in 4k (i did have a hunch that it might).

Or resusing some old cabby because it looked nice and was sturdy.

the Latest and greatest are not allways best in the long haul older sturdier components are even if they cant put out the numbers you see from the modern ones what matters is can they run it without it becomming a nuisance ? if yes then i rest my case.

[esme]

Okidoki, I finally bit the bullet & went with a Recoil 17 from PC Specialist

Specs I went for are

Chassis & Display: Recoil Series: 17" Matte QHD+ 240Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1600)
Processor (CPU): Intel® Core™ i9 24 Core Processor 14900HX (5.8GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM): 32GB PCS PRO SODIMM DDR5 4800MHz (1 x 32GB)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 4080 - 12.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
1TB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (3500 MB/R, 3200 MB/W)
Operating System: NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

The case seems to be made of metal not plastic & there's an optional water cooling unit, which I didn't get

For the OS I disabled fast boot & secure boot, loaded Zorin 17.2, used the entire disk, without any installation issues

Zorin is a Ubuntu fork so Ubuntu & it's other forks shouldn't have an issue if anyone else gets one of these

The only minor issue is the keyboard backlight isn't recognized by default, but the forums are full of info on sorting that out, not that I'm too bothered

I've installed TDM & it runs beautifully

I also copied my thief 1 & 2 installations from my desktop, I had to uncomment "d3d_disp_sw_cc" in cam_ext.cfg to get the gamma processing working but they run happily too

The fans switch on when booting & switch off again after a few seconds, the machine isn't stressed enough to turn them on running TDM so far - this is not a challenge btw

On the whole, I'm extremely pleased

So thanks for all the advice

[datiswous]

54 minutes ago, esme said:

17" Matte QHD+ 240Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1600)

Is that tn or ips?

[chakkman]

sRGB 100% definitely sounds like IPS. I don't think any TN can reach that (correct me if I'm wrong, I know that there are good TN panels as well).

Edited December 13, 2024 by chakkman

[revelator]

aye ips most likely, while there have been some good tn panels.

tn usually had better response times in the past but ips had better colors, ips is catching up on the respons times though so tn is largely irrelevant today.

oled is the best today though but pricey.

mostly comes down to user preference as some say the tn panels have washed out colors but my asus is a tn panel and its pretty vibrant

[esme]

On 12/13/2024 at 12:15 PM, datiswous said:

Is that tn or ips?

Sorry I have no idea, I did find a review for the 15.6" model from a few years ago that said IPS if that's a help

[revelator]

after digging a bit i had to contact them to get the specs and aye it is an ips panel

the recoil does get some good reviews though g-sync is not supported which is kinda weird since the panel is said to support it.

for gaming it is a very good laptop with good thermals, the ram are a bit on the slow side though so there is room for upgrades if you feel so inclined.

[datiswous]

On 12/15/2024 at 12:06 PM, esme said:

Sorry I have no idea, I did find a review for the 15.6" model from a few years ago that said IPS if that's a help

This is like the first thing you look at for the screen. Kind of bizar it's not in the specs. I guess that says how they think of their customers.

[revelator]

not sure though i wonder if an allready pricey model would have become less attractive if they included an oled ?.

thats not to say its good practice to leave buyers unaware , in retrospect if it had not been for the good reviews i would have seriously considered turning it back.

[GloriaPierce]

The Acer Nitro 5 should run TDM smoothly with these specs.

Spoiler

Yes, the Acer Nitro 5 with an i7-12700H, RTX 4050, and 16GB RAM should run The Dark Mod (TDM) smoothly, even on high settings. Linux compatibility depends on drivers, so check RTX 4050 support for your chosen distro. My dad runs a real estate agency, and he often needs to send high-resolution property images and videos to clients. Email wasn’t an option because of file size limits, and other transfer services were slow. After I introduced him to Filemail, everything changed. Now, he can send large files easily, and his clients receive them instantly!

 

Edited February 24 by GloriaPierce

[revelator]

yeah it seems getting a newer gfx card these days is only possible buying a premade pc with it atleast in some parts of the world. the shelves are literally vacumed for any of the newer versions in some places i heard.

i had to many bad experiences with premades to ever buy another so it bodes ill for tinkerers like me.

[chakkman]

Still wonder why people buy laptops for gaming. They're - more expensive; less powerful than a desktop PC you get for the same prize; always have performance to efficiency restraints; only come with a small screen; can't be cooled like a desktop PC; won't come with good keyboard/mice.

I.e. they're inferior in about anything, compared to a desktop PC, for gaming. The only real advantage is mobility.

[revelator]

not to forget attrocious battery life in those models that are targeted at gamers but yeah it is kinda weird.

if it is because you want the freedom of being able to code a game on the go you dont really need a gamer oriented one which in most cases cost an arm and both legs. there are plenty of cheaper models that have enough muscle.