Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: Gaming Philosophy

NBA 2K23 – What Determines If Your Three-Point-Shot Goes In or Not?

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am going to break it down with the three-point-shot. What does determine if it goes in or not? First of all I have to say that I am not a programmer of this game. I don’t have a direct access to the source code of this game. My conclusions are relied on purely observing the software while I have been playing NBA 2K23. I have to mention that I do know a lot about programming as you might already know. I also have some knowledge of playing real basketball which helps me to draw these points.

Release of the shot

You get to set a release for the shot while you start to shoot the three-pointer. Now every release seems to be different. I can see that this mechanism that detects your shots release is very precise. It counts every millisecond. It is hard to make the release a perfect one for every shot. Sometimes also a perfect release has to be achieved in a random period of time. So, the best release can be and sometimes is different and it can also be somewhat random, also.

Your players shooting skill

Your player has the ability to shoot a three-pointer. This makes your player a better shooter. So, there are more shots going in. Your player has a very unique ability to shoot. You are getting customed to setting a good timing and rythm for your shot. Although you can maximize your skill of shooting but every shot never goes in. You have to miss one way or another.

Your defender

You can get yourself some space before you start to shoot. This makes it easier for the shot to be a successful one. I have some idea that some defending players have a skill that makes their opponent to miss more likely while they are defending a player.

Who is making the assist

I am playing currently NBA 2K23 with Philadelphia 76ers. I have noticed that when James Harden passes me the ball the success is more likely. There might be some kind of a variable that adjusts the propability more closer when Harden is making the assist.

Every shot won’t go in. Every shot also is unique. If we would gather a table of some sort of the different variables we could see how these values affect the propability of the shot being a successful one. This information is, of course, very valuable for the developers of this game. I can deeply understand why they aren’t sharing this information just for everyone. Also, this information is only my own conclusions that I have made playing the game. It also does have something to do with that I am somewhat a technically capable person in a way.

This conclusion was very short. It might help you to realize how the game actually works. It is also an answer to some of my thoughts about why am I not succeeding more better in shooting the three-pointer in NBA 2K23. So, without further reverse-engineering we can continue to play some more NBA 2K23. And maybe study a bit more about programming and game development.

Maybe There Really Is a Reason?

Posted on by Viljami

Have you ever wondered what could be a reason for collecting games? Sometimes it feels like you find yourself spending too much money for retro video games. You are getting every legendary game and also every game that gives you nostalgia. You really wish that you can come back to these games that really defined your childhood or youth. You are basically trying to save those moments and hope that you can always come back to those memories.

I  have myself found out that I don’t have so much time for playing video games today. There seems to be so many responsibilities. I want to sleep my nights as well as I can. So there’s less time for diving into a good retro game.

There seems to be a limitless count of good games. There are old games and new games. There are games for all ages and games for only grown ups. There are games for young people and games that even old people can play. How can you define what is worth keeping in your collections? How could also those people that don’t know a lot about video games learn something about them.

I am thinking about this. Maybe we should keep our history of playing video games with us. There should be museums for games. There should be books written about this subject. Because if we continue this way all these games are becoming harder and harder to find and get back into.

So, I think, there is definitely a reason for all this. With this I mean collecting video games. There are already lists of games that have been released for a gaming console. It is very valuable if someone knows also something about a game or about some games. I think literature is very valuable. And in a way we hobbyists have a very important mission that I think we have already begun to execute.

There is a reason. You have been learning to play video games. How long have you spent playing? This was a question that came to my mind as I was younger. I thought that maybe this was all a some sort of waste of time. But, actually, it never and rarely is like that. Everything you do, even ifd you are making a mistake, keeps adding up to your experience. You can think of this as you would in a roleplaying game. Everything you do keeps advancing you in some way.

Some good books come to my mind. For example the book about GameCube that I got some months ago. It’s a defnite proof of how it is possible to gather information about a game console that isn’t the newest one anymore and is getting a bit rare to find already. What were all these games about and what were the technical details of this console? I personally find this kind of information very interesting.

There are already some museums that present the history of gaming here in Finland. I think there are many museums like this all over the world. There is a website that holds every Commodore 64 game that you can think of and that does exist.

Just think about how much work it can be when you develop a video game. There are countless individuals that have been involved in all these years in game development. There are some technologies that were used. There are many game engines that were used and also many programming languages. I think every game is a valuable one. So, there really is a reason to also collecting games and keeping them in order just to show and present our valuable history. Also, I think that history in playing video games can definitely give you an edge if you are working as a game developer. So, this was something if you are looking for a reason to this all.

Does Emulation Really Hurt Someone?

Posted on by Viljami

You can spend hundreds of euros to retro video games. Where do these games come from? Some games are sold for a low price to shops that sell games that sell them forward at a more realistic price. This is how this field functions. You really cannot blame them for running a business like this. You have to get your living from somewhere. And game shops are very valuable for us game hobbyists in that they deliver us many games, consoles and all this other stuff, also, that we need to keep our hobby in a big role in our lives.

How about individuals that are selling their old video games? Once again there is this issue of money involved. You have something valuable and someone wants add just that game to his or her collection. Why not sell your game? Of course you cannot sell it at such a high price that the game shop is selling it. This makes sense, right?

Well, some people try to find a game at a low price and then sell it to someone with a higher price. This is familiar to many of us. It’s called scalping. I did notice this rice in prices. I bought Silent Hill 3 for PS2 in 2017 from a game shop. It cost me 15 euros back then. Recently I saw this same game. Its price was 75 euros. Actually, I don’t want to get rid of this game so I am not going to sell it. But if I was after an economical win situation I would probably sell this game.

So the money goes right here to the individual that is selling the game. Alternatively this amount of money goes to a game shop. This doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that big game companies are telling us that it is harmful to their business that consumers are installing emulators and running rom files on them instead of buying a physical copy of that game.

It might be the case that these huge companies would like to make more remakes out of old games. Why not bring more of those mini consoles to the markets? There would certainly be a demand for original Xbox mini console or a GameCube one. This isn’t however anything close to the reality. This is only a dream. While we have seen many classic mini consoles there isn’t going to be one made out of every legendary retro game console.

What if you bought a really powerful computer that would have enough disk space for a huge collection of game roms that could run these games on different emulators? I certainly find this option appealing. I do like buying and collecting old hardware and games. Just that I have faced issues with old hardware. They don’t seem to last for a long time. Dust might be the enemy. And I don’t have the skill necessary to fix these consoles. Currently I have several broken consoles in my storage in my apartment. It might be nice to get them repaired but I am currently also considering of getting a computer with some retro emulation so I wouldn’t have to worry about games not functioning.

Where should you start with this new idea? There are complete operating systems dedicated to retro game emulation. These are open source so they don’t actually cost you anything. You just have to have a powerful enough computer if you want to run games of PS2 or GameCube. If there is enough power in your PC you can even run PS4 games on an emulator, today. You can install, of course, emulators on your laptop or desktop. I myself am interested in this idea of having a PC that I would only use for console emulation. So, I don’t want to run Windows 10 or even any regular Linux operating system. There is something better for retro gaming.

I am talking about a retro gaming operating system. It works like this. You just install the OS and then upload the rom files, that are the actual games, to it. Then you plug your game pad and start up a game. You only turn the PC off or on and you have this simple but effective user interface that you can operate with your game pad. This is what I am talking about.

I am going to mention Lakka OS and Recalbox at this point. I have some experience with Lakka OS as I had it on a PC for maybe some months some time ago. I really liked this system. Although I found out that I wasn’t able to play anything that would require some serious power. I could run PS1 games but I would have liked to run PS2 and GameCube on this system. I just lacked the power. I am hoping that I would be able to get a more powerful PC for this purpose.

You can definitely find out more about Lakka OS and/or Recalbox. You will find them through your favorite search engine. These kind of setups can also run earlier games, like SNES or NES or something else, smoothly. Recalbox is supporting several tens of different video game consoles. Always also be critical about these thoughts I have provided here. Please use your own caution and thought when trying to accomplish your game library. Remember who put these games together and have an appreciation towards them. That might be another topic for another blog post. So, I think that’s it for this time. Thanks for reading!