Over the last year or so, I've been met with a lot of problems surrounding the 8k resolution. The main one has been so far this:

Final Fantasy 7 Remake:

The limitation stops at the 4k resolution (3840x2160), and every message board seems to have the same "not going to be fixed and developed is stuck working on a kitchen sink to fix the problem." I'd... hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I will not be playing at that resolution.

Normally for an 8k game, you get this resolution:

Forza Horizon 5:

Why this became such a huge issue is that this is what is going to plague many players as they upgrade to the RTX 50 series this year thinking that they will have the chance to play their "old" favorite games only to learn it has been completely obsoleted in many cases:

Some other offenders:

Synced (had actually the best 8k before they removed the option):

Ninja Gaiden Sigma:

The main one I want to talk about is Grandblue Fantasy: Relink, which I just bought today and realize they limited the option in this game as well:

The box in the center is what you get at the 4k resolution. They though it was going to be half of the screen at 8k resolution, which mistakenly allows them to believe that you get more than 1/4 of the size. At some point, if this is what is remaining at 4k resolution, I get to still browse the web while playing my favorite game. it's obsolete to think you get something worthwhile at the 4k resolution since I need 1/4 of the monitor to be able to experience the best work of art.

I have been extremely disappointed to see that this still is an issue to this day, and it's one that I think I had to start making some post about to get these companies to realize that they are going to be quick to be cut out of future discussions if they want to stay at 4k. Is my expectations too high? No. If you have the best setup, you have to test the games to see if they are up to task. I've seen Splinter Cell drop off the map because it refused to go above 720p, which was sad 10 years ago. That problem is still there.

I do not want to be the one trying to be offense and ask these new companies if their product can now meet expectation, but I don't have to run a million-dollar YouTube channel to state that they lied about what you get with the best top-level setup.

I will be continuing my unfortunate journey in this disastrous zone.

Many years ago back in 2006, I had had a better way of explaining the idea to my group of college friends when I was still in college as an undergraduate student. I had made the character a few years prior, but it did not dawn on me that I probably should explain Zelazon a bit before getting into both the problem of the design and the content that surround the character.

Firstly, Zelazon is a part of an architecture that is supposed to be more than a standard MMO character, but also a character that helps to drive the plot of the story until an MMO could be developed around the character. I had this idea for a while, but wanted to run the character online because I need to see how the archetype would hold up online.

Zelazon is a bit weird to describe as it is not my internal description of myself, but more of a story character that I borrow from in order to be able to analyze and develop the character a bit so that any external ideas that come from stay with the character versus trying to identify as Zelazon. Zelazon has his only personality, operates in his internal world, but it strictly a storyline character for the story Souless.

Why this was important is because you are not allowed to forget that you are still borrowing a character from a story to have that as an online alias; this means you can't take the character from the story since the character does not exist online.

However, the other character I had used archetypes from my friend designed, but since I've lost touch with all of the friends that I had in the past, Zelazon essentially because a problem in itself since the design has become both unusable and unplayable if you are looking at it from a multiplayer perspective. I've often thought about how to mitigate this problem, but it's hard when the people are no longer available to work on the design or have conversations about the character for development. Additionally, because I finished the outline for the story, the character is closed design since there was no more room for growth and I need to start a new project, meaning Zelazon has to be abandoned.

Just going on the story for a bit, the main boss at the end is Lord Onthra, and some people online have seen the name, but it's been relatively need with AI assistance that I could show what Onthra looks like:

Essentially, it was cool to materialize the character, but one problem I faced is that if you need artist to develop the imagery around the each character, you would need a business to create the story and need a ton of money to get the idea realized. Onthra serves as the final boss that awaits the heroes and essentially has been around for the whole book before having the main character fight the entity. Zelazon is the main character that fights against Onthra, so to me, it's hard when that boss is a direct threat to Zelazon, but Zelazon cannot fight Onthra alone. Onthra has too much HP, to many abilities, and is overpowering to the point where fighting Onthra solo is a stupid idea.

Ultimately, how Onthra and Zelazon are tied together is that they are from the same paradigm, they have similar architectures, world is the same, but without the friends, both are unlikely to see each other due to the other characters being necessary in order for the development and the plot to lead Zelazon to Onthra. It's hard because the idea has to be disbanded since Zelazon has no way of getting to Onthra without the actual people to assist in the idea. While it can be good or bad, this means that utilizing Zelazon online is akin to trying to run a guild online in an MMO without any players either playing the game or not having enough friends to fill up the guild.

It's difficult, but the idea of Zelazon comes from the older architecture of the classic idea of the heroic design, which was armor, weapons, and the usual stuff you used to see in the media before 2000 hit. It's weird, but the design is no longer relevant, and I think I could put my efforts into a better character that has more substance of today versus a design that had died out in the late 90ies.

The way I see it today is that back then, many games were new versus the old that we currently look at many of the MMO that already came out. Ideas that were innovative are now stale and uninspiring, but I do like that the development of Zelazon did yield some success since I can still talk about the character today and keep him around long enough to have a nice farewell for him.

While not as popular as some other characters as we know, it's important to have an original design so people know that you had some big-scope idea to implement in the world. It's also important to ensure that project is close when needed to ensure that the idea isn't coming back anymore. The idea is old and needed to be closed.

The ridiculousness of the size of FL Studio has been too intimidating to state the least:

Fl-Studio hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB (ibb.co)

The sheer size of the screen is so large that I just don't know how I could fathom to make a new song in this format. I have made many upgrades in the past, but it's just one that real estate is important, but to be able to fit an entire song in the screen means that I would either have to make a 10-minute song, or just accept that I have a clear visual as to how much I can work with.

It used to be so much fun in the past to make a song, but now it's just gotten to the point where it's become cumbersome (FXs can be over 100 varieties) that it just is too much to deal with.

Looking at some of the new features, it seems like the FL team has included some cloud features that I am not entirely sure about, but I cannot complain since it looks like it could be useful. I think over time, my enchantment with high-end setup has been stunted by the fact that I 1. have one, and 2. am seeing how it just increase the amount I would have to do in order to make something competitive today. I have often thought of maybe just testing the potential out, but as I grow older, I don't really see myself spending hours and hours on a song and have little exposures to show for it.

I just need people to see it for what it is.

Ever since getting my new PC in November of 2022, I have been doing a lot of testing in the 8k resolution to see how powerful 8k was in comparison to 4k, and just what possibilities there was when looking at the format.

The ride has been rough for starters. When I started, I felt like the only growth I was going to get from a high-tier pc setup was only going to be for music design since I had the perfect optimal design for the best of music composition and mastering programs. No longer would I be hindered by CPU limitations or by the old of not having X part; I could just do what I wanted. That dream was killed when I got an 8k tv which rendered every old game obsolete and stomped on prior musical ambitions as I could not fathom putting so much effort into a single song if I wasn't going to be making a professional-level song, get a music degree, or host concerts.

The main thing I have run into with the RTX 4090 is that it runs on max usage on nearly every game and currently is unable to get meaty frame that are necessary for it to be viable from a competitive standpoint. Additionally, the tv itself is limited to 60 frames, but many of the game struggle with keeping above 50 fps when yielding today's best parts without being liquid-tube cooled systems, which I doubt could help the fps any further aside from future upgrades of five or so years.

This upgrade was a painful reminder of how potential became a problem as I am really unable to think of stomaching such a cost without the upgrade being reasonable. NVIDIA was not thinking about the problem as they have been focusing on AI, but it's one of those things that the old games got killed so hard because the resolution makes them entirely obsolete, that playing them is nonexistent. May games have low-quality resolution texture and models that they don't get past the "Worth Playing" test.

One game that did pass was Ghostrunner 2, but the violence in the game is so graphic that is not really viable in the long run.

A lot of the games from early 2010 did not make the cut either, and hopefully companies are looking at today's game with an analytical lens to fix the problems plagued by the older resolution.

The problem stemmed from the fact that when they release the 3090, 8k gaming could work, but the results were poor to non-existent. Games didn't work, the GPU was bad, trying work arounds were not possible. Today, the 4090 has done significantly better, but it's one of those components that does hurt if they didn't not address the main problem of getting it to be completely functional at the price range it was being offered at. It's disappointing if you are not looking at the design and realizing that many people got robbed of the content because the GPU was poorly designed from a future-proof perspective.

I may write more articles later regarding 8k.

As I see more people engaged into gaming today, I have gotten concerned with the amount of feigning over streamers pretending to like a game, only for them to be more interested in shoving food down their face versus having a genuine interest in the game they play.

Twitch.tv currently:

In the past, there used to be so much content surrounding Mario (from Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, etc...) and it used to look like there was some content from these streamers that fit the brand. From 2018 to today, it's been astounding that the direction that has been influencing these streamers is going in a place that will lead nowhere.

As someone who used to go to plenty of tournaments in late 09 until 2016, games were never a source of revenue. Half of the time, games were something you had to go to a gaming shop to pick up, and for games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, you had to hope that people purchased the same game to get some level of competitions for the game to remain competitively viable. Aside from the old emulator arguments, there were no issues if you could find a similar gaming community and, if not, you could just avoid the game by not buying it.

Today, the streamers that play these games over and over again seem to fail to realize that the state of gaming is at an all-time low because the people who are making the game are not making them anymore. These streamers are supposed to incite interest into gaming development, to become a programmer, and to do something where they can meaningfully participate in the creation of awesome games. However, as personally being blocked from the gaming development aspect my whole life, I can clearly see why there was no chance that budding game designers would have the chance of making one.

I think in the 1990 (going way back), adult had a better perspective on how the orientation of games were to be designed. Coming from a non-technological background, the adults then had a very hardcore perspective on how technology was to be build. They were building electronics from scratch, and they knew that the ideas were fresh. Today, we have a lot of resource materials from Wikipedia to many of the YouTube videos that help individuals understand how to craft something, but in the 90s, there were not instructions in an easy format in which required either a technical prowess to be able to create a game or to be good enough to have the resources to make one.

To avoid having this sound like a documentary, it's hard to fault many of these streamers from understanding exactly what the problem is, but the main point is that computer programming is a near impossible task without a fundamental understanding of calculous mathematics, and the point that you think all these people pass that class is nonexistent. It is hard and takes too long to make a game from scratch. However, even so, it is something that permeated into fundamentally strong gaming mechanics because the mathematics had to be perfect or there was no game.

With this level of burnout from Mario games, it is hard to see how these streamers can expect anything more from viewer interest to revenue from playing the games, to just being interested in the field when there seems to be very little content being produced in today's time. E3 is no longer held, and many of the game shows are done in secret that there is little transparency on what is being developed today. Mostly, people have to check steam or buy a PlayStation to keep up with the fact that games today are now little-kid exclusive.

It's painful, but I just don't know what to say these days.

It's been a while since I have discussed anything about gaming considering that many of my gaming circle of friends have been long gone. I haven't really needed to think about it due to the amount of work I do in the real world, but having check back periodically at the state of gaming, there seems to be earth-shattering revelations that have been coming up that question the very legitimacy of gaming in it's entirety that has been hard to fathom at best.

Games like Mega Man, Street Fighter, Sonic, Sega-Related Brand, and many other contents seem to have revealings that they may not have been made by the companies that said they developed them...

At some point, companies are showing up and claiming games that are almost 40 years old and stating that they are the developers; I do not know how to take this information if they are the actual developers of these games. I am hoping that at least with Sonic, that it was solely a Sega thing, but at some point, you wonder if it's a continuous problem with expecting that one company could continue to make a long-standing brand without there being some sort of external reliance on other companies.

This would solely explain why there was no solid continuation of the brand over the years if the main gaming companies were not making the brands in an honest effort. The damage done today, if true, would be forever permeated by the fact that many consumers have been straight lied to, and the hopes that it can be repaired are nonexistent at this point.

I'm just disappointed heavily at this point. I'm stunned to the point of disbelief that even for me, it's hard to stomach that another company could have their hands on these primary brands. It's really hard to think that these brands are even accessible.

A lot to think about.

Spin - Rolling Again Remix (newgrounds.com)

Been awhile...

I am not sure if i can make anymore songs. Been working hard to ensure that I remain composed in my ability to do many of the things I used to be amazing at. Age does really take a lot of energy out of you when you start to get old.

I'll see this year if I have any energy for it.