Totally Nonsensical

It may be old news at this point, especially considering the competition is releasing alarm clocks, but I am not usually on time anyway, so how about that Playstation 5 Pro? It is after all marketed by Sony as the most visually impressive way to play Playstation games.

The new console boasts an newer AMD graphics processing unit (GPU) that can push “up to 45% faster rendering for gameplay”, as well as an artificial intelligence powered upscaling engine, and a nifty 2TB of internal storage, you’ll need to pay extra for the privilege of safely standing it upright however. This is all sounding good right? However we quickly hit the big gotcha: the price of $700USD (again without that rather attractive stand). As someone who typically buys all three consoles, these mid cycle refreshes always present a difficult buying decision. I have always loved new hardware, and the features that may come along for the ride, but I have difficulty making financial sense of them. What is clear however is that the refresh game plan is one the console makers intend to persist with.

However, what if the shock, and subsequent fervour, over that $700USD/$959CAD price point was unjustified? I liked this particular video by JayzTwoCents:

Here JayzTwoCents does what so many of us are likely to have done, head over to PC Part Picker and spec out a PC with comparable power or a PC at the same price point and then benchmark it. On the surface this makes perfect sense, the consoles nowadays (Nintendo aside) are running on at least PC adjacent hardware after all. What can be easily lost is the message, even though he clearly states it: PC hardware is expensive! And now it just got expensive for Playstation (and I suspect soon, Xbox) gamers as well. Despite preferring to play on PC personally, there is just so much value in console gaming thanks in large part to the economic model of subsidizing the hardware with the profits on the software. However I think, and the JayzTwoCents video backs it up, is that perhaps those days are coming to an end. The cost of GPUs skyrocketed during the pandemic, and while it has eased off somewhat, driving 4K 120hz is still a >$1000CAD alone adventure.

Now, yes, JayzTwoCents shows that you can probably build a PC that with upscaling can push similar pixels as the new Pro, which lets be real, is not pushing 4k60 without upscaling either (Digtal Foundry, 2024), but that comes with all the good and bad of a PC. Linux based distributions such as ChimeraOS and Bazzite offer a means of running a console like experience on your PC (and believe me, I DO), but there are still caveats along the way. Being able to sit down and play ANY game with a PS5 logo on the box, with the same performance as your buddy half the world away, just makes sense. Having said that, more and more previously exclusive Playstation titles have come to the PC, and they run swimmingly on modern hardware.

So if we can justify the Playstation 5 hardware based on comparative specifications, why does it still feel like a bad deal to some? If I had to guess, I think this is inherent to the mid cycle refresh model. Sony promises more ray-tracing wizardry, however they do not seem to be discussing any new game experiences to go with it. This, is what I find most interesting. Games still need to be designed for the lowest common denominator, or the base Playstation 5 (and in some cases even the Playstation 4), so are developers really going to take advantage of what this hardware bump provides? Sony lists some games getting a boost, however the list is small, and points to games requiring developer support. That is a pretty major stumbling block: what incentive do developers have to return to their released games and update them? That I do not know, but it seems like poor design on Sony’s part for the ecosystem as a whole. Fluid compatibility is a hallmark of the PC, I can go back and play almost anything released for the platform. This does not detract from the hardware however. Sony has built a nice piece of kit that will –on future titles at least– mean you will be less likely to have to decide between performance and quality fidelity modes.

In the end, Sony writes:

Our PS5 journey would not be possible without the millions of players that have supported us through the years and have shared with us their love of gaming. Whichever console option players choose, whether it’s PS5 or PS5 Pro, we wish to bring everyone the very best gaming experience that fits their needs.

So there we have it, a nice little hardware bump, that makes games BETTER for the Playstation gamer. While I will probably hold out for the Playstation 6, I lack the discontent with the price of the Pro. It is expensive for sure, but in this economy it may just be the way it is. I can’t tell you if the Playstation 5 Pro is worth close to $1000 Canadian dollars for anyone, only you, dear reader can make that judgement call based on your own finances. What I can do however is point out that given the price of PC components these days, maybe Sony is living up to that wish.

Nishino, H. (2024, September 10). Welcome PlayStation 5 Pro, the most visually impressive way to play games on PlayStation. Playstation.Blog; Sony Corporation. https://blog.playstation.com/2024/09/10/welcome-playstation-5-pro-the-most-visually-impressive-way-to-play-games-on-playstation/

Digtal Foundry. (2024, October 4). Exclusive - The Last Of Us Part 2 - PS5 Pro PSSR Upgrades Tested. YouTube; YouTube. youtu.be/LoQi6FE-7…

Recently, a host in a Discord server pinged me asking if we could have a feature demoed by @nuttylmao in this X post: https://x.com/nuttylmao/status/1839718888025796817. Here the poster demos having various alerts from their Twitch stream posted to a channel in their Discord. This honestly seems like a feature that should be available built in with the Discord-to-Twitch integration that already exists, but I digress. I scoured the video to try and see how they were doing it, only to find that this seems to be done with Streamer.bot, and some custom code (plugin?) for that platform. As is the Rybo way, rather than use an already solid way to solve this problem, I was determined to do it myself, and thought it might be useful to detail here. Let’s see if we can learn how to replicate the functionality on our own with some JavaScript wizardry.

So here we go, With the usual warning that I am by no means a professional developer nor is this a full tutorial (it’s more pseudo-code of my thinking), and while I did get this to work, you should probably use the Streamer.bot method instead.

Before We Begin To start with I am going to assume a couple of things, that is that you have Node.js running on something with a publicly accessible HTTPS address, are able to install packages with npm, and have registered an app at dev.twitch.tv. This will provide us with the requisite Client ID and Client Secret needed to communicate with Twitch’s services. It is paramount that the client be kept as an actual secret, so be sure to store it in a secure way, such as a secured database. Likewise the same is needed for Discord.

Now that those requirements are out of the way, this project will need a few external packages, namely TESjs, DiscordJS, and date-fns, and lastly node-twitch. The TESjs package makes interacting with EventSub, frankly, a breeze, while DiscordJS naturally gives us the tools to interact with Discord. We will use date-fns to so some quite date math, and node-twitch is handy for getting some information about the live stream.

How I chose to tackle this was first, using the TES.subscribe method to subscribe to a Twitch EventSub endpoint, and then the TES.on event handler to first grab the link to the livestream (as EventSub does not provide this). In order to get the timestamp of the alert, we do some date math in the form of taking the current time, subtracting 15 seconds (date-fns time to shine), and with that time in hand we subtract the start time of the live stream itself. This difference can then be appended to the livestream link in the form of twitch.tv/video/[video_id]?t=00h00m00s. We can then use DiscordJS’s EmbedBuilder function to create a nice looking Discord post with a direct link to when the event happened in the video (minus that 15 seconds!). For example the following (rough) code would first subscribe to an EventSub alert, and upon a cheer event triggering, run the code in the TES.on event:

tes
  .subscribe("channel.cheer", { broadcaster_user_id: "[twitch channel user_id goes here]" })
  .then(() => {
    console.log("Subscription successful");
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    console.log(err);
  });

tes.on("channel.cheer", (event) => {
  async function updateStream() {
    var timeStamp = new Date(Date.now());

    async function streamData() {
      const streams = await twitch.getVideos({
        user_id: "twitch channel user_id goes here",
        period: "day",
      });
      return streams;
    }

    const liveStreamData = await streamData();
    const liveStreamURL = liveStreamData.data[0].url;
    const liveStreamDate = liveStreamData.data[0].published_at;

    var now = new Date(timeStamp.toISOString());
    var then = new Date(liveStreamDate);

    var modDate = subSeconds(now, 15);
    var dateMath = modDate - then;
    var markerDate = convertMillis(dateMath);

    let timeStampURL = `${liveStreamURL}?t=${markerDate}`;

    const embed = new EmbedBuilder()
      .setTitle(`${event.user_name} Cheered!`)
      .setColor("#ff5aff")
      .setDescription(
        `${event.user_name} Cheered ${
          event.bits
        } Bits! on ${timeStamp.toLocaleDateString()} Link: ${timeStampURL}`
      );
    console.log(`Now: ${now} Then: ${then} Math: ${dateMath}`);
    channel.send({ embeds: [embed] });
  }

  updateStream();
});

Within the event handler, we get the latest video url as well as when it started, do that date math, and post to Discord as an embed. It is important to note that the above code lacks error handling, and should be added before any kind of production use.

Pulling this all together means we can have a running log of the major Twitch events (with the notable exception of new followers), right in Discord. This is especially useful if you like to create clips of some events, including raids and subscriptions! Having the basic requirements for a bot completed (Twitch and Discord API access), also gives us the major Lego blocks to build all sorts of fun integrations. This is just one of many. For example if one was raising money for Extra Life, you could utilize the extra-life-api package, to tie in a donation event to the timestamp on the stream as well.

To wrap up, I want to give a special thanks to @nuttylmao for the idea that sparked all of this, and until next time, may all your code be bug free, and have a wonderful day!

mitchwadair. (n.d.). GitHub - mitchwadair/tesjs: Streamline your Twitch EventSub JavaScript integration with TESjs. GitHub; GitHub. Retrieved October 12, 2024, from https://github.com/mitchwadair/tesjs

Nintendo Switch 2 will be backwards compatible, leak claims | Eurogamer.net:

That's according to Universo Nintendo, a Portuguese website that claims the Switch 2 will not only have backwards compatibility with Switch titles currently available on Nintendo's handheld system, but developers will also be able to "enhance" these games thanks to the additional processing power.

As someone with a goodly number of physical Switch games, I find myself enthusiastic about these rumours. Where I remain skeptical however is in the SoC department.

We’ve seen Apple pushing the power of their mobile SoC with the release of Death Stranding on the iPhone, do we really expect NVIDIA (and the traditionally reserved Nintendo) to have cooked up something on that level? Gosh it’d be fun!

To give myself a purpose for learning Swift, I decided to try and port my Discord bot, based on Node, to Swift. This of course means I lose the benefit of the fantastic Discord.js library.

Because I have no clue what I’m doing, I rely on these libraries to make the magic happen, so I was going to need something for Swift. Enter DiscordKit, another handy Discord library. I HIGHLY recommend following the getting started guide at: https://swiftcord.gitbook.io/discordkit-guide/, but here’s how I made the basics work:

import Foundation
import DiscordKitBot

@main
struct ribble {
    
    static func main() {
        
        let bot = Client(intents: [.unprivileged])
        let commandGuildID = ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["COMMAND_GUILD_ID"]
        
        bot.ready.listen {
            print("Logged in as \(bot.user!.username)#\(bot.user!.discriminator)!")
            
            func registerSlashCommands() async throws {
                try await bot.registerApplicationCommands(guild: commandGuildID) {
                    NewAppCommand("swifty", description: "Test The Swift Bot") { interaction in
                        print("Received swifty interaction!")
                        try? await interaction.reply("Whaddup Doe from Swift")
                    }
                }
            }
                do {
                    print("Registering interactions...")
                    try await registerSlashCommands()
                    print("Registered interactions!")
                } catch {
                    print("Failed to register interactions: \(error.localizedDescription)")
                }
        }
        do {
            try bot.login()
        } catch let error {
            print(error)
        }
        RunLoop.main.run()
    }
}

I also had to learn the Swift Package Manager. Click on your project -> Package Dependencies to get started. From here click the + and add https://github.com/SwiftcordApp/DiscordKit, and then make sure that DiscordKitBot specifically is added to your target.

Seriously, follow the official guide though. 😂

I’ve decided to try and tackle SwiftUI, and was immediately greeted by not knowing how to take the text from a textbox, format it as name components, and then update a label, ALL from a button push.

This took me way too long and too many searches to come up with 😂

    @State private var fullName = PersonNameComponents()
    @State private var enteredName: String = "Johnny Bazookatone"
    @State private var personName: String = ""
    
    
    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            TextField("Proper Name", text: $enteredName)
            
            Button("Go") {
                let formatter = PersonNameComponentsFormatter()
                self.fullName = formatter.personNameComponents(from: enteredName)!
                self.personName = fullName.formatted()
            }
          
            Text("Hello, \(self.personName)")
        }
        .padding()
    }
}

I don’t even have a use for this code, but here it is.

Writing for Hey Fluxay!:

Thank you Legion, thank you for everything. Maybe sometime this show can return reborn, but for now, it is time to say goodbye. Keep your passions, and keep being weird, you deserve it.

Seeing the What the Fluxtaposed podcast end after all these years is such a shame. Jason Lacy and his cohost’s weekly slice of life has been a mainstay since I joined @nintendogurus little community back in 2017. At times since Bobby Pauls' passing it seems like the community he built is drifting apart, but perhaps that is just the nature of life without him. We all have new paths to walk, including this very website.

In the meantime, follow fluxtaposed.com to see what comes next.

Long ago – during the OG Xbox/PS2/GameCube era – I pondered why it mattered where one played Madden online, after all the servers on the back-end are all just that… servers right? Obviously there’s more to it than that, but here we are in 2024, with an abundance of games supporting cross-play multiplayer. It’s become table stakes at this point.

The other thought I had at the time though was why aren’t games just all on each platform, and then the big 3 just compete on hardware features, y’know like the PC platform. Once again there’s very real reasons why this is not the case, but here we are again, on the cusp of it coming an inch or two closer to reality via Windows Central:

Recent reports have suggested heavily that Microsoft is planning to take games like Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves beyond Xbox and Windows, with PlayStation and Nintendo Switch versions planned. Microsoft would usually be eager to shut down rumors like this, but the total radio silence has become deafening in recent weeks, lending further credence to the rumors.

Apparently this could even include Gears of War and Starfield. I wonder though, is this really a bad thing? Gaming tribalism is a stain on the hobby, and nothing feeds into that quite like exclusives.

Perhaps in the end this could be like I envisioned, a situation where the competition is based on hardware.

Nah Nintendo would never go for it 🤣.

It’s like a Nintendo Direct… for podcast networks!

My good friends at Carpool (including the previously mentioned Lockleth) will be showing what’s upcoming for them in the year ahead. High time for a PC gaming show methinks. 😁 Check out the latest from Carpool Gaming over on Twitch:

Carpool Gaming Twitch Page

Updated to add:

After highlighting the incredible PME the other day, I thought I’d make it a regular thing! Let me introduce you to Creator spotlight.

This week check out the one and only Lockleth at their Card: Lockleth

And just for fun here’s a sample:

While we wait for me to say something totally nonsensical, I invite everyone to visit my good friend JB’s website:

PME

JB produces incredible music, including the intro to the stream!

We’re here! We’ll have more posted here soon, for now check out the YouTube channel: youtube.com/@Rybo