Google: Do Evil... to your computer

(tags Google, failure, bug)

Google finally switched on the Evil Bit.

Internationally.

If this isn't Daily WTF material, then what is?

(Okay, Google already fixed what ever was wrong.)

Edit: And I was right to wait on the Google Operating System blog for a report.

What are you aiming at? Ikaruga on the XBLA

(tags game, Ikaruga, shmup, failure, bug, replay-data)

So I'm like totally excited that Ikaruga (斑鳩) is now out on Xbox Live. I downloaded it at 1900 local time, just an hour after it was released. I even bought the icon packs and theme, whoa fanboy.

I start tweaking it. Key controls are totally configurable, except for there's no rapid fire (not hold down button but the one stream many times a second button pushing emulation). The usual arcade control configuration is not the default here, because the Release is not Shot + Polarity. Also the HUD is customizable, so you can emulate the Gamecube version's vertical Absorb Bar. Oh and its all in English probably due to my system settings. This is my first time to understand the story text, actually.

I start playing it and I just collapse... I mean I totally forgot how to play this game! Ouch. I play it for an hour, switching from the regular controller to my joystick. I can't get past level 2, boo hoo. I think my best non-continue record was mid-way level 4, way back when. Unfortunately I'm feeling the old frustration kicking in. Must continue playing this game. Must.

Ikaruga plays like it should play. I didn't notice any anomalies and the dreaded PAL homing bug isn't here. Unfortunately, the menus are slow and the game asks you multiple times which storage device you want to use. WTF The menus are not the arcade experience or other home console emulations.

But take a look at this. I downloaded a replay from the top of the leaderboard, a 1CC with a respectable score of 19 million. However, starting from stage 4, there is a replay bug as if the ship's data is not recorded. The stage replay still continues, but the enemies aim their bullets at one spot slightly off screen. The picture above shows homing lasers homing onto nothing. Wut. Hopefully, only replays are the buggy. :-/

I need to fix my joystick so that it doesn't slide on my desk. And I need to fix my brain so that I can actually play this well. :0

It's still compiling: Gentoo "Ichigo" on VMWare

(tags Linux, Gentoo, VMWare, bug, resolved)

I'm slowly getting rid of stuff on my Project Asobi (1999) computer. One thing I'm trying to do is move a half-hearted VM built in Colinux running on Asobi into a more standard VM environment like VMWare Server. Both of them are Gentoo, and since Asobi itself is a Pentium III 500 MHz class computer, its slow going.

And I started an emerge command of 80 packages this morning, but its still not done even after about 12 hours now. None of them use X or KDE or whatever.

I tried to get DistCC going with my regular desktop but for some reason it doesn't hand off the batch jobs. I gotta figure this out for my sanity.

I did report a bug for one of the packages I like to use: "app-editors/qemacs-0.3.2_pre20070226 w/ USE=-X: install fails on copying "csstoqe"" They fixed it pretty quickly, which was nice.