OTHER THINGS

- Well, during 2021 sometimes I wasted (maybe?) my time making videos with AC and other things on the Fruitlab website (as Sapalm): https://fruitlab.com/social/channel/YfJF6e1AzVIKt8xF

That website lets people earn some bonuses to buy gift cards and other prizes, but several months ago they changed the earnings and closed the shop, and now you can't even buy an Amazon card. Everything changed and I don't post any video there anymore. Don't sign up to that website, it has become a scam (unless they get new suppliers). I think I will reupload some of those videos on Youtube, even if I don't like how that platform works anymore. It really doesn't deserve my art, I don't want it to be mercified, and I prefer to keep many things to myself, as they are parts of me. I'm not looking for the crowd, really.

In any case my content on that website is pretty simple, nothing special, as I didn't aim high, apart for few exceptions which are above average but in the end I lacked experience with video editing. I was at the stage of "putting things together with glue", when what I like is something elegant instead. I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, OBS, how to use the video compression... many things I probably forgot now, studying at the uni. I was mainly recording my second or third playthrough of some games and doing special content with Assetto Corsa.

I used to play Super Mario Bros 3 on the RetroArch emulator for PC. I think it's the best "vintage" Mario title, I like it too much.

I also played the original DOS version of Quake with DOSBOX. I was doing the full gameplay, and I had planned to bring The Ultimate DOOM too (which I love along with the sequels), using GZDOOM, but I stopped due to what I wrote at the beginning. To the Quake community: don't worry, I had fun with other less buggy and more optimized Quake ports, but that's the one that got me into it the first time.

I ended my decent journey on Fruitlab with some Sniper Elite V1 videos. For the time that title came out, it was really a game changer, and in some aspects I prefer it, compared to the latest V5 from Rebellion studios, even with its jankiness and the 2000s graphics. "I had a lot of fun killing nazis and dying over and over on russian grenades" quote of the year. Plus it has the dub and subtitles in Italian too, amazing.

The best thing I think I did back then was my intro, which I made with Blender, this one:

  

Little challenge: comment below if you recognize the song.

Next is a drawing I made on my tablet:

 

Btw I like Ambient music. Liminal music may be too much for me though.

 

This is a piece I made several months ago:

 

 

I just would've wanted to have a better equipment to record it. Meh, it will sound quite Lo-Fi.

 

 

This one is one of the videos I made with Assetto Corsa, probably the best one (could have been improved but there you have it):

 

When I'll upload some of my other vids on Youtube (maybe only those that are worth watching), I will link them also here.

- The first game I ever played was Mario Andretti's Racing Challenge from Electronic Arts (actually it was developed by Distinctive Software Inc.). I was 3 or 4 years old and my dad had a PC with a CRT screen (the Philips 105S, great quality for the value). 1024x768 resolution, Windows 98. And yes, this exact box with the 1.44" floppy disks.

 

I still have it, along with the monitor display. I use the latter to play arcade games of the DOS era from time to time on an early 2000s machine with an AMD Sempron CPU and an ATI Radeon X1650 Pro. The problem is that not all of the games work, the graphics card drivers for Win98 simply aren't there. In the future I may try installing DOS directly.

- Even though I like playing games and experimenting with Assetto Corsa, my hardware is pretty limited. I can say that I never played at 60 fps, and during the 2010s the best my eyes experienced was 18-23 fps, with rare spikes at 26. Even today with a GTX 1650 (low profile) it doesn't get much better. But who knows, maybe I will get a job that pays off what I've been missing in my teenager years.

- I'm learning how to use Rhinoceros and Keyshot! Very simple stuff for now. I find NURBS modeling much easier and satisfying, having started my experience with Sketchup more than a decade ago. And rendering with Keyshot is really simple, just slap a good real-world material on the parts.