"I'm Sorry, What?!" The biggest bailout in the history of Descent II! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlTk7wa59A
Music. Coding. Gaming. Life.
If you've at all been keeping up with the news, you've undoubtedly read that Windows 10 is a godsend, a vast improvement over previous versions of Windows, and that you should upgrade to the latest version and you'll have absolutely no regrets.
One thing that Windows 8 had over Windows 10, however, is that it worked.
Don't get me wrong, Microsoft got a lot of things in Windows 10 right. They took the god awful start screen in Windows 8 and managed to blend it with the typical Windows 7 start menu in an appealing way. They added an action center for your notifications. They even made speech recognition a thing with Cortana, which is a pretty decent addition even if I'm not going to use it much.
But there is SO MUCH wrong with Windows 10 right now that I say that casual users should not bother upgrading until they fix the major issues. Keep in mind that I spent much of yesterday upgrading all my drivers and software in an effort to eliminate these issues, to no avail.
Perhaps the biggest issue I have with Windows 10 is items missing in the start menu and from Cortana's search. Sure, Voicemeeter may not be a common application. Skype is. No matter how I install Skype, through the "Get Skype" application they added in Windows 10, or through Chocolatey, Skype simply does not appear on my start menu at all. Even if I find Skype.exe and make a shortcut to it and throw it in c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, I still end up without access to it unless I pin it to my taskbar. What the hell, Microsoft? Having items in the start menu has been a basic Windows feature for TWENTY YEARS. You couldn't get that right?
Now, I think this might be due to the fact that Windows 10 hasn't finished indexing my computer (it was about 40% done last night when I went to bed), but still, you shouldn't have to index the start menu. If it's there, let me use it! Ugh.
Another pretty noticeable issue is the fact that sometimes you can't right click on a tile in the taskbar. If you try it, you might get a context menu, or it might do nothing. Annoying when you're trying to close windows. The workaround for me was to hover over the tile to bring up the preview, right click THAT, and close the application that way. Or you can Alt+F4, but I have so much running at any one time that often right clicking the taskbar is simpler.
A huge problem for me is the case of the disappearing USB display. I run a three monitor setup, with two standard 1080p monitors side-by-side and a DoubleSight 1024x600 touchscreen below the main display. It's wonderful when it works, and had no problems in Windows 8.1. And to be fair, it works most of the time in Windows 10... up until the point that I run Crypt of the NecroDancer full screen. And even then the screen will continue to work while the game is running. The moment I alt-tab out of the game, the display freezes up, EXCEPT for the mouse. Then I'll go back into the game and the display will be fine. When I quit the game, though, that's when the display freezes up for good, and is entirely useless.
The worst part about this is that it so far seems to only happen with Crypt of the NecroDancer. Not Descent. Not Portal. Not World of Warcraft. Not other full screen games. It's something Crypt is doing when it's full screen that is killing that display. I thought it might be drivers, but I have the latest Windows 10 drivers for both the DoubleSight display and my AMD card. This is seriously messed up.
The list of annoyances continues:
This is just an example of the beta-ness of Windows 10. Many of these issues would cause the average user so much frustration. Do yourself a favor and stay away for now, unless you are a power user, or have very basic PC needs. Hopefully Microsoft gets on the ball and fixes these soon. Without pushing a broken update.
One thing that Windows 8 had over Windows 10, however, is that it worked.
Don't get me wrong, Microsoft got a lot of things in Windows 10 right. They took the god awful start screen in Windows 8 and managed to blend it with the typical Windows 7 start menu in an appealing way. They added an action center for your notifications. They even made speech recognition a thing with Cortana, which is a pretty decent addition even if I'm not going to use it much.
But there is SO MUCH wrong with Windows 10 right now that I say that casual users should not bother upgrading until they fix the major issues. Keep in mind that I spent much of yesterday upgrading all my drivers and software in an effort to eliminate these issues, to no avail.
Perhaps the biggest issue I have with Windows 10 is items missing in the start menu and from Cortana's search. Sure, Voicemeeter may not be a common application. Skype is. No matter how I install Skype, through the "Get Skype" application they added in Windows 10, or through Chocolatey, Skype simply does not appear on my start menu at all. Even if I find Skype.exe and make a shortcut to it and throw it in c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, I still end up without access to it unless I pin it to my taskbar. What the hell, Microsoft? Having items in the start menu has been a basic Windows feature for TWENTY YEARS. You couldn't get that right?
Now, I think this might be due to the fact that Windows 10 hasn't finished indexing my computer (it was about 40% done last night when I went to bed), but still, you shouldn't have to index the start menu. If it's there, let me use it! Ugh.
Another pretty noticeable issue is the fact that sometimes you can't right click on a tile in the taskbar. If you try it, you might get a context menu, or it might do nothing. Annoying when you're trying to close windows. The workaround for me was to hover over the tile to bring up the preview, right click THAT, and close the application that way. Or you can Alt+F4, but I have so much running at any one time that often right clicking the taskbar is simpler.
A huge problem for me is the case of the disappearing USB display. I run a three monitor setup, with two standard 1080p monitors side-by-side and a DoubleSight 1024x600 touchscreen below the main display. It's wonderful when it works, and had no problems in Windows 8.1. And to be fair, it works most of the time in Windows 10... up until the point that I run Crypt of the NecroDancer full screen. And even then the screen will continue to work while the game is running. The moment I alt-tab out of the game, the display freezes up, EXCEPT for the mouse. Then I'll go back into the game and the display will be fine. When I quit the game, though, that's when the display freezes up for good, and is entirely useless.
The worst part about this is that it so far seems to only happen with Crypt of the NecroDancer. Not Descent. Not Portal. Not World of Warcraft. Not other full screen games. It's something Crypt is doing when it's full screen that is killing that display. I thought it might be drivers, but I have the latest Windows 10 drivers for both the DoubleSight display and my AMD card. This is seriously messed up.
The list of annoyances continues:
- Occasionally when you hit the Windows key, you can't type to search, and remains this way until you reboot. (Workaround is to use the Win+S combination to search via Cortana, which is the same thing, really).
- The location finder is way off. I live in southeast Houston, and it shows my location up around The Woodlands. Within a 14 mile radius, of course. Oh, The Woodlands is 50 miles away.
- You have to be an absolute power user to figure out how to get separate images as backgrounds on different monitors and NOT have Windows try to do a slideshow of those images. Basically, highlight the icons you want as your 3 background images and left click Set as Background Image. Then go into c:\Users\
\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes and delete the slideshow.ini file. If your images are not on the desired screens, flip the numbers on the filenames in this directory and REBOOT after changing them to see the updates. - The action center will refuse to open sometimes, and behave that way until you reboot. See a theme here?
- Some live tiles don't work. The calendar application used to display today's date, now it just display's the application's icon.
- PC Meter for my 8GadgetPack gadgets is not being detected by those gadgets, resulting in some of them not displaying information, such as CPU or GPU temperatures.
This is just an example of the beta-ness of Windows 10. Many of these issues would cause the average user so much frustration. Do yourself a favor and stay away for now, unless you are a power user, or have very basic PC needs. Hopefully Microsoft gets on the ball and fixes these soon. Without pushing a broken update.
Previous post:
Descent's Potential Ascent
Next post:
Crypt of the NecroDancer Bard Deathless record
Previously in Coding:
roncli.com has arrived!
Next in Coding:
Report Card: 2015
Previously in Editorials:
All Good Things and Such
Previously in Software:
Sift Shopping has arrived
Next in Software:
win-acme
Previously in Windows:
Windows Activation Woes
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roncli.com Blog
This is my blog where I give my thoughts and opinions on various topics and share my creative endeavors with the world. I run two personal blogs, but combine them here for ease of access.
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Blogger - My oldest blog using the Blogger platform contains posts full of opinions, gaming, and code.
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Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
“BART anime merch" are three words that I would not have expected to go together, but here we are. https://www.railgoods.com/bart/anime/
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Does anyone else sing the chorus to "Cherish" by Kool & The Gang to themselves whenever they play or watch streams of Balatro? Or is that just me?
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
I'm fact that's what Lingo needs: a "phone" block. The clue is an incorrect autocorrected form of the answer. 🙃
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
It's like my phone knows I've been playing Lingo. I typed in "exited" and my phone was all:
⬜️ EXCITED ------
▪️
▪️
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
A comparison of the classic Tetris and Descent communities. Not a post I write lightly, either.
https://roncli.com/blogger/3703157809000934742/a-tale-of-two-communities
martin
@luftlesen @mstdn.jp
Aptiz played #Pentis again. In the beginning you can see roncli asking in the chat for the right version. About an hour later, he broke the #PentisRankings record with 60K ! Congratulations roncli 🏆 🎉
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2052528360?sr=a&t=11267s
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Yeah, it's season 11. But the OTL Season 6 highlight reel is up, this time Fireball has taken the reins! Check out this video jam packed full of kills, deaths, silliness, and Sirius puns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXstLVjnaGo
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Over on #thatbirdhellsite, someone retweeted sympathy for the people being laid off today...
...and then said that Amazon Games was hiring. You know, the one that just had layoffs in NOVEMBER.
Honestly? Tech sucks right now.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Seriously. Why is it called Sagittarius, A Star? Clearly, it's Sagittarius, A Black Hole. Silly astronomers.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
This eslint/stylistic breakup is going to give me a headache. Don't developers have something better to do than give other developers busywork?
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Bing is so bad. https://otl.gg is being blocked in their search results, and Bing webmaster tools are absolutely useless, not telling me why it's being blocked.
Does anyone know of some way to get a human to look at this and see what's wrong with it? #bing #microsoft
Olivia W'
@WLivi @retro.pizza
it's not actually common for real hackers to use two keyboards at once; that's just a stereo type.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Me and my wife, despite buying a house of nice size, always seem to get in each other's way, be it in the kitchen, on the stairs, it doesn't matter. She's all up in my two square feet.
I often joke that all I want for Christmas is my two square feet.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Update 2: The record that beat Blue Scuti stood for one day. Blue Scuti got it back.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
I got the honor and privilege of calling the NES Tetris NTSC world record today while running Classic Tetris Wars on my Twitch channel for the very first time. It was thrilling. Congratulations to Blue Scuti for his 6,609,220 level 153 performance. https://clips.twitch.tv/DiligentDeadGoldfishDoritosChip-cx_vDMWAjKaZUK6N
TwistBit
@TwistBit @musicians.today
like, you used to use a phone line to access the internet
now the internet is accessible on your phone
nothing has changed actually
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Six Degrees of Sunday returns Sunday, January 7th, at https://twitch.tv/roncli. Cya there!
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Are you ready to get Six'd Off?
Six Degrees of Sunday, my 6DoF long play Twitch series, is getting revived for 2024. Plus, I will be producing Six'd Off, a companion YouTube series showcasing each game.
Check out the announcement for the game list and more! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeRbjjpQVZY
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
So I started a fresh YouTube channel some time ago, and yesterday I released the first real video to it.
Check out highlights from Argus Industrial Moons' run to the OTL Season 10 Best of the Rest title! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2x-GGW9FYI
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
People at work are calling Kubernetes K8, and I hate it. It's not "Kubernete"!
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Want a preview of what CTWC will be like next weekend from a gameplay perspective? CTL Season 22 finals starting now.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
No airport hell this morning, but you know that lady that talks about security at literally every airport? I just realized, she sounds old AF.
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
If this security line posted signs "5 minutes from this point", "10 minutes...", etc., They'd have to post them every foot. #airporthell
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
Did I miss Elon making another purchase? https://twitter.com/unity/status/1701650081403842851
Konstantinos Dimopoulos
@konstantinosd @mastodon.gamedev.place
That's a lovely free bundle of books for people interested in getting into games programming: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/international-day-of-the-programmer-2023-free-giveaway
Ronald M. Clifford
@roncli @mastodon.social
@shanselman Speaking of Overload, here's something you may be interested in... recently, some community members released "Overload First Strike", a single player Overload campaign that is a complete remake of the original Descent First Strike campaign.
https://overloadmaps.com/overload-first-strike
It can work with just the original game, but it works best with "olmod" as it takes advantage of some of the features it provides: https://olmod.overloadmaps.com
Scott Hanselman 👸🏽🐝🌮
@shanselman @hachyderm.io
@PossiblyMax @deepthaw ya and there are new remakes of Descent like Overload that are enhanced and there’s even hardware that Vic Putz made to make the Space Orb look like a controller with NO drivers. Works on all operating systems https://www.hanselman.com/blog/bringing-the-spaceorb-game-controller-forward-with-an-arduino-bridge-via-the-orbotron-9001
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Website Version 2.1.18, ©2021-2024 roncli Productions
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Bugs? Report on GitHub
A few updates:
Seriously, GG Microsoft, GG.
More information on missing items in the start menu. If you have more than 512 items, this happens. https://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/operating-systems/windows-10-has-a-start-menu-bug-1300603