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General discussionRelease: Outlaws + Handful of Missions(185 posts)(185 posts)
(185 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted March 19, 2015
All the good, all the bad, none the ugly.

<span class="bold">Outlaws + Handful of Missions</span>, a real hog-killing time, is available now for Windows, DRM-free on GOG.com.

The technical success of Star Wars: Dark Forces and its "Jedi" engine paved way for this solidly designed, beautifully hand drawn first person shooter. The art and sounds are half the reason to pick up <span class="bold">Outlaws + Handful of Missions</span>. The other half is the same kind of old-school run'n'gun FPS gameplay you know and love, but higher difficulties will call for a more calculated approach where every bullets counts. That goes both ways, so cover, stealth and your revolver will get plenty acquainted. <span class="bold">Outlaws + Handful of Missions</span> offers a single-player campaign with high quality hand-drawn cutscenes, as well as a series of individual challenge maps to hone your trigger finger.

See and hear gaming's classic wild-west spectacle with <span class="bold">Outlaws + Handful of Missions</span>, available now DRM-free on GOG.com.
Posted March 23, 2015
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shmerl: Lossy codecs are not obsolete. Pushing lossless audio for playback is a pointless waste of resources. Both lossy and lossless codecs are needed.

Let's put it this way - in the end you care about 2 things. #1: Having no degradation of the audible sound, and #2 having an ability to reencode to any format you want while keeping rule #1. #1 can be achieved even with lossy codec if you use a proper encoder. All of them have a transparency level, i.e. bitrate at which you hear no difference from the lossless original. However they can't achieve #2. The moment you reencode even from transparently encoded lossy codec to another lossy codec, there will be degradation of quality. So for #2 you need a lossless one.

That's why you should store audio in both (if we are talking about music at least). Lossy codec at transparency (Opus for example with acceptable bitrate), and lossless codec (FLAC). First one you can use for playback whenever you want (there won't be any audible difference). Second one you can use when you want to reencode to some new super duper lossy codec that can come out tomorrow which will reduce size and bitrate for its transparecny level even more.

So to clarify, it's pretty wasteful and pointless to use lossless codecs like FALC for playback. But it doesn't mean they aren't needed. They are needed for storing master copies.

In general a good article on the related subject: [url=https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html]https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html[/url]
That's a long read. Maybe some day when I have the time :)

Obsolete might be a strong word, in many places it doesn't make any difference BUT what irks me is that, by default, music and other audio sold digitally are always lossy. No way I'm buying any of that after all these years buying CD. Wasteful or not, I'd still just play the FLACs rather than convert them to anything else.

Other than the extra storage space, I don't know what resources you mean? You can play FLACs on pretty much anything these days. Reminds me of a time ten years ago when I complained that internet browsers are getting resource hogs, people just told me you have to get a better pc and stop complaining :D

I'm actually planning on doing some ABX testing as I have a pretty good hifi. Also including some streaming services.
Posted March 23, 2015
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Daliz: Obsolete might be a strong word, in many places it doesn't make any difference BUT what irks me is that, by default, music and other audio sold digitally are always lossy. No way I'm buying any of that after all these years buying CD.
Oh, absolutely. What I meant only highlights this point. They should give you an option to get the lossless source (even if you they also provide lossy versions). So users would be able to get both benefits I described above (#1 and #2). Audio CDs were lossless so they covered #2 (from which you could get #1 by reencoding yourself). What's often sold today is like you said - lossy only, so you lose ability to reencode (#2). It means the value is degraded in comparison with audio CDs even if the sold lossy version is transparent.

Some services like cdbaby let you download both lossy and lossless bundles for your purchase. That's why I prefer buying form them.

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Daliz: Wasteful or not, I'd still just play the FLACs rather than convert them to anything else.
My approach is like this. Get the music in FLAC, then encode it in Opus with bitrate around 140 Kbps (transparent). Then I back up both. And put Opus in my portable player / handset etc to listen. And if I ever want it in another codec for any reason, I take my backed up FLAC and encode again with transparency. Voilà.

Why not use FLAC everywhere? While single file is OK, if you have hundreds and thousands of them, it multiplies. Multiterabyte backup drives can store it all, but in portable devices space is still a factor. Plus, if we are talking abut transferring it over the wire (streaming or what not), bandwidth also is a valuable resource.
Post edited March 23, 2015 by shmerl
Posted March 24, 2015
Also, On Win 7, When I made bat.file which kill explorer and then start the game, color bug dissapeared. But I always use Win Xp and I play in Outlaws on Win XP,instead of it this was not observed. Gog and other man who have same propblem note this:)
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
olwin.exe
Start explorer.exe
Post edited March 24, 2015 by stasongrom
Posted June 05, 2015
WHERE ARE YOU MARSHALL
Posted March 14, 2017
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Soccorro: :D simultaneously thought and wrote the same as me. You! I like you!
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IronArcturus: Thanks! :) I also wish there was a way to play the Outlaws multiplayer online. Wouldn't it be great if Outlaws could work with GOG Galaxy?
Go To Facebook and look for Outlaws Players Lucas Arts. Its a group with over 300 people and we still play this game multiplayer. This month is Outlaws 20th anniversary and we have some great events coming up in less than 2 weeks. Some of the Devs including Clint Bajakian are in our group. If you are an Outlaws fan you CANNOT miss this event and also become a part of our amazing group. ~Lil_Senorita
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionRelease: Outlaws + Handful of Missions(185 posts)(185 posts)
(185 posts)