Author: thedarkcave215

I’m sure you’ve heard of The Sims before, right? It’s one of the best-selling PC games of all time; I even made a post about it last year: The Sims’ 20th Anniversary
— But this post is about the “uberdumb” difficulty it takes to run the first game on Windows 10. (I think I just invented a brand-new word!) I’ll try to explain why it’s so annoying to run.

So, The Sims was released in February of 2000, before Windows XP was released. The game’s target OS demographic is Windows 95, 98, 2000, and the dreaded Windows ME. That makes it very susceptible to compatibility issues with Win10. It’ll probably be even worse when Win11 comes out soon… But the game itself runs fine in 10, the main problem is with its DRM. Since it was distributed on on a CD-ROM, they had copy protection on it to keep people from redistributing it for free. Windows 10 actually purposefully blocks SecuROM (The Sims’ DRM) from running at all which means that you have to patch the game to bypass the CD check. That’s all well and good, since there’s hundreds of guides online about how to make it run, but my problem came with installing it.

The traditional way to install the game is to run the “Start.exe” file on the disc, but for me when I try that, Start.exe sits in my task manager, doomed to do nothing until I end it manually. So, that doesn’t work… Instead I had to go into a folder somewhere else on the disk and run “Setup.exe” which runs an InstallShield program to install the game. Thankfully that works for me, so the last thing I did was patch it to bypass the CD.

But then more stuff happened… I was out hunting for old video games, when in a bin of PC games for $1 a piece, there it was… A CD of The Sims , as well as Livin’ Large & Vacation! I brought it home, installed it on my Dell Inspiron 1150, and got to work.

Then I decided to try running it on my Windows 10 computer. I knew I’d have to circumvent running the Start.exe file somehow, but there was only one problem: This was the base version of the game, and the one I had on my computer before was the Complete Collection version of the game. The base version’s disc doesn’t use InstallShield so it’s impossible to bypass the start.exe file, which is for some reason called setup.exe on the base game disc. The only way I could get it to work is by installing it into a VirtualBox running Windows XP…

Ah, well. Another day, another failed project.

Hey, folks! I’m really having a hard time remembering that this website exists for some reason… I’ve really gotta get better at posting stuff here. Anyways… Let’s catch up on all the stuff that’s happened lately.

Cicadas

The periodical cicadas, species Magicicada septendecim & M. Cassini AKA Brood X emerged this year on the east coast of the US! I was WELL within range of the emergence so I got to experience the very loud song. And believe me, it gets loud! Very loud, like a Roomba! But people sometimes EAT them as food, which I don’t get… It doesn’t sound appetizing to me at all, and they’re innocent defenseless bugs that have waited 17 years to come out and then you just turn them into food? Cruel, I must say! After their mating cycle you may begin to notice the ends of tree branches, usually oaks, are all brown & dead. This is from the newborn cicada nymphs getting their initial nutrient from the tree/bush that their respective eggs were layed on. The female lays her many eggs on the ends of tree branches and bushes so that the newborns can just drop right on the ground and burrow down so that when they come up 17 years later they’re right next to a safe tree. (Unless of course, some stupid person comes up and cuts the tree down in which case they’ll be walking for quite a while…)

Of course, we can’t forget about their less popular cousins, the Neotibicen genus. They’re the cicadas that come out yearly every summer, if you live on the east coast in an area where there’s enough undeveloped land left you’ve more than likely heard these little buggers in the morning: https://songsofinsects.com/cicadas/swamp-cicada I can safely say that I indeed have heard them before, many many times!

New laptop

(At this point my “I” cursor decided to vanish) Let’s talk business strategies, specifically Apple. They’ve established a products ecosystem that lets them just force people to upgrade their devices after several years and also make their devices very fragile and only available to repair if they’re sent to Apple itself… I ain’t having it, though! I had (still do, though) a 2017 Macbook Pro model A1708, and right from the start it had isses… Firstly, everybody I know complained about the butterfly keyboard that was introduced in the 2016 models. I was one of them, because slowly my left shift key started to not work when it was pressed in certain spots. Then, my speakers would randomly die completely and I needed to reboot. If you knew how many tabs (and just programs in general) I had open at a time when that happened , you’d know my annoyance. I also dropped it on the kitchen floor, hit the corner of the screen and made a dent in the aluminum panel that the LCD panel is attached to, and in turn also made the backlight in the bottom left corner of the screen glowing yellow. I also had the first bulletpoint on this page happen to me: https://support.apple.com/13-inch-macbook-pro-display-backlight-service

So, it became time to buy a new computer since my other one was having far too many problems. I decided to buy the 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is fully repairable and upgradable. Even though it can’t update to macOS 11.0, it’s definitely worth it to have something I don’t have to pay an overpriced sum to replace corrupted RAM. I’m writing this very page from that new computer!

Welp… My dinner’s getting cold, I’ve gotta stop typing now. Seeya!

For those of you who don’t know, the programming language that makes up the majority of the web is called HTML. (Hyper Text Markup Language) A basic HTML file looks like this:

In case you couldn’t tell, that different elements of the code are inside tags, one to start the tag <a tag> and one to end the tag. </a tag> The first line is in the “html” tag. (I think wordpress will yell at me if I use real html tags) That tells the web render-er to start reading the HTML code. Then, there’s the “head” tag. That’s effectively the HTML equivalent of a “.hxx” file (that’s C++ fyi) where you can pre-define certain things, in this case it’s CSS classes that are very similar to functions ( funtionname() ) but they predetermine what the text looks like. Here’s what that same webpage looks like in my browser:

You can do a number of different things with HTML. If you’re viewing this on a desktop then you can inspect this webpage to see what the HTML looks like. One nice thing about HTML & CSS is that you don’t need to compile it like you do with computer programs, so you don’t need tons of builds and source code and stuff. Here’s what an actually good HTML file looks like:

Well, that’s all for now. I think we’ve re-evaluated that my programming skills are pretty bad 😆 So I’ll see you next time on thefinkedfilmsdotcom!

-thedarkcave215

Hey, there! this post is gonna be about the hardest levels in Mario games. (in my experience) in order of difficulty.

8 – Tubular (Super Mario World)

This level is the 2nd level in the Special World, and it’s a crazy one! You need to use the P-Balloon to float across the map, avoid the Chargin’ Chucks, and not get hit by the Volcano Lotus’ fireballs. But we’re just getting started…

7 – 9-7 (New Super Mario Bros. Wii

In this crazy level, the whole floor is Munchers! They’re initially frozen in ice but the Venus Fire Traps shoot fire and melt them. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s Prickly Goombas that jump out of their spiked balls when hit with fire. And near the end of the level there’s Fire Bros. that throw fireballs that need to melt the ice to get the Star Coin! What in the world, dude?!

6 – World *-1: Rainbow Run (Super Mario 3D World)

This is the first bonus level in the game. There’s rolling RGB rainbows, Spiny Skipsqueaks, Ring Burners, Trapeze Bars, even a hidden Link sprite! But unfortunately, there’s far too much going on here. The rolling platforms are really hard to stay on, the Spiny Skipsqueaks are really annoying, and the Para-Biddybuds are also pretty stupid to deal with. This level has less challenge and more annoyances if anything.

5 – Bubble Blast Galaxy: The Electric Labyrinth (Super Mario Galaxy)

When Motion Controls and Bad Level Design collide, Bubble Blast Galaxy: The Electric Labyrinth is born! This is one of the hardest levels in Mario history, and there’s quite a few more, so stick around. Armed with Electric Fences, Bullet Bills, and *stutter* Star Chips… Expect to see more Galaxy levels on this list.

4 – Ghostly Galaxy: Purple Coins in the Bone Pen (Super Mario Galaxy)

The Purple Coin missions in this game are annoying, but Purple Coins in the Bone Pen is brutal! This is also the fault of motion controls, and the pull stars are incredibly annoying to use. Good luck getting this one if you have a small CRT like me…

3 – Rainbow Ride: 100 Coins (Super Mario 64)

There’s 2 ways to get this Star: Either you can spend lots of time getting the coins along the the flying carpet’s path, or you can, you know just wall jump 10-11 time in a row to get 6 blue coins. I elaborate more on why this is so difficult in my post “My Super Mario 64 120 Star NIGHTMARE” (https://thefinkedfilms.com/2020/08/06/my-super-mario-64-120-star-nightmare/)

2 – Darker Side: Long Journey’s End (Super Mario Odyssey)

This is such a stupid level. There’s pretty much only artificial challenge and no real challenge, you have to make stupidly precise jumps on a short time frame, leap from fork to fork, and so much more stupidity…

…And the #1 hardest level is…

1 – Grandmaster Galaxy: The Perfect Run (Super Mario Galaxy 2)

The only reason this one is higher on this list is purely because you have only 1 health point for the whole time, meaning you literally need to do a perfect run of this level! I don’t know what the designers were thinking when they made this level but it’s also stupidly hard. There aren’t any checkpoint either so that adds to the pain, and there’s some Fire Bros. out to ruin your day! What a pain in the rear-end.

See you tomorrow on thefinkedfimsdotcom!

-thedarkcave215

Have you all heard? There’ a NES console made out of LEGOS!

That’s what it looks like. My order arrived on Thursday and I put it together in 2 days. I have far too much time on my hands 🤣

On the other hand, there’s also a LEGO Super Mario kit!

LEGO Mario has a scanner on the bottom of him that can tell if he’s stomped on a Goomba or jumped on a question block (Yes, Mario jumps on top of them for coins) It can also tell if Mario’s jumped off the ground to make the appropriate jumping noises. If you pull his overalls off the swap them out for one of the power-up packs, he’ll exclaim “Mama-Mia!” in a surprised tone of voice, and if you knock him over, he’ll go “Oof!”

There’s just so much to love about this strange blocky fellow with a screen on his chest, but unfortunately my preorder of the starter kit hasn’t shipped yet, and you need the starter kit to get the Mario figure. I’ll post an update once it ships and/or gets here but in the meantime, I’ve got some LEGO Super Mario Bros. to play. See you tomorrow!

-thedarkcave215

Heyo, folks! Welcome back to thefinkedfilmsdotcom, the only place you can find people mentally yelling at their Roombas. (not really)

During this quarantine, I’ve taken it upon myself to try and 100% complete at many video games as possible, no surprise there. But there’s one game in question that really got on my nerves:

SUPER MARIO 64.

There’s 120 stars in the whole game, and in each of the 15 regular levels, there’s 7 in total. 6 normal missions and a star for getting 100 total coins in the level. Here’s a list of all the levels:

Bob-omb Battlefield
Whomp’s Fortress
Jolly Roger Bay
Cool, Cool Mountain
Big Boo’s Haunt
Hazy Maze Cave
Lethal Lava Land
Shifting Sand Land
Dire, Dire Docks
Snowman’s Land
Wet-Dry World
Tall, Tall Mountain
Tiny-Huge Island
Tick Tock Clock
Rainbow Ride
Castle Secret Stars (15)

Notice how Rainbow Ride is in bold because that level’s 100 coin star is a NIGHTMARE! Let me explain.

In each level, there’s a blue coin block that looks like this:

Mario has to ground-pound the block and 2-6 blue coins will appear. Each blue coin is worth 5 regular coins. In rainbow ride, there’s 6 blue coins but you have to wall jump 10-11 times to get them all. In case you’re wondering why that’s so hard, in most Mario games if you jump towards a wall you’ll start sliding down it, then if you jump you’ll wall jump off of it. In Mario 64, you don’t slide down the wall. Instead you bounce right off of it and you need to press the A button with near perfect timing. Imagine that, but about 10 times more annoying!

Everything else went relatively smoothly. There’s also 8 red coins in each regular level. You don’t have to spawn them, they’re always there but if you collect them all you’ll get 16 regular coins. (They’re 2 each)

But just today, literally about an hour ago, I managed to get the 100 coin star and 100% completed the game!

That’s all for now, thanks for reading. See you next Thursday at 11AM EST!

-thedarkcave

Heyo, folks. Welcome back to thefinkedfilms.com! Since the last time I posted here, some INSANE stuff has been going on. The COVID-19 pandemic started, the racism protests, and so much more…

But right now, I wanna take a step back and tell you what’s been happening with my life lately.

Moth Invasion

A family of moths have decided to make their home in our house. I have no clue where they came from, but we put every single one that we find outside.

More Phones!

I’ve been expanding my phone collection with some new items: Panasonic KX-TG4021, KX-TG2343, KX-TG5421, and a Uniden EXP370.

Beating More Games

I have a backlog of video games that I haven’t beaten yet. Here’s a few of them:

Every Luigi’s Mansion game

Super Mario Galaxy 1&2

Every Zelda game

and many more…

(If I beat any games on this list, I’ll take it off.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a fine quarantine!

-thedarkcave215

Scrubette is the newest addition to our robot family! She’s a Scooba 380, and… There’s actually quite a story behind how I got a Scooba. Not how I bought it, but what has been leading up to this moment…

It started back a while ago, I think it was like, January of 2017, and I asked my Aunt for a Scooba as a birthday present. I sent her the link to an eBay listing I found of one, and a few days later, it was sold. Except, even though I thought my aunt got it, it turns out some other person got it right before her! So instead, I got a lithium battery for my Roomba. 😒

The battery still works pretty well to this day, but I was very persistent. I kept on looking and looking and looking… Until my large interest for Roombas and robots in general stopped.

But fast forward a few weeks ago, and little old me is playing Sims 2. I had my sim build a CleanBot, and then… that was enough to re-ignite the fuel that kept my love for Roombas and robots going. I started with running my Roomba basically every day, then I got a battery for one of my other Roombas, Greeny. But not too long afterward, I re-started my quest to buy a Scooba. I looked around a little more, but all I could find were listings for parts only and were $30+ for shipping… But then, I stumbled across a listing that was approx. $88.54, and my impulse-buying-brain said “BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT!!!” and I listened to it. But as it turned out, I didn’t have enough money for it. 😕

Except… DUN DUN DUNN!!! Plot twist! I had recently had a birthday party, and as it turned out, I got over $100 in cash! I was finally able to make my dream come true. As soon as I could, I looked for some more listings for the other parts. It didn’t come with a charger or a virtual wall (and some other parts but we’ll get into that later) so I had to buy those separately.

The Scooba was scheduled to come on today, the 28th, but USPS had other plans. They surprised me by delivering it 4 days earlier! Actually, I already knew that thanks to the package tracking info. The Scooba and all of its other parts came on Monday the 24th. But, of course, it was far too good to be true… The Scooba was missing TWO crucial parts… Those were the Filter screen, (because it also does a light vacuum of the floors) and the battery. so, I looked for those too. and found some good listings. The filter came on Wednesday the 27th, and the battery just got here today, the 28th. I charged it up and filled the tank with water. I turned it on to start, but it greeted me with an “Uh-oh!” beep and “Check Tank” lighting up. I at first thought I needed to prime the pump for water, but after using a turkey baster that wouldn’t fit, it became clear that the pump wasn’t the problem.

Next, I tried to tighten the screws that were on the wheels. That didn’t help either. The only thing left to do was to try dumping some of the water out of the tank. And low and behold it worked! Perfectly! It ran for about half an hour because there wasn’t that much water in it, but the dirty water tank had some pretty dirty stuff in it. nearly 3 years later, and Scrubette is finally here. A few things that I noticed were that the front caster wheel kept getting stuck in the abnormally wide grout that’s in our kitchen tiles. She also got a little tangled up in the vent covers for some reason. Anyways, it cleans way better than our Braava Jet 240 does. Although, Scoobas have a tendency to break randomly… Let’s hope that this one holds on for a while! If you have any questions, requests, or anything else, please let me know in the comments!

-thedarkcave215

I’m sure we’ve all been here at some point; You’ve just come home from an exhausting day at work, your kids are asking for help with their homework, and all you want to do is escape to this virtual world where you make every decision there is to make: Well, on this exact day, 20 years ago, The Sims was launched for PC. Now, this dream could be finally fulfilled!

The Sims is a life simulation game, but the first games had a huge emphasis on building a dream home for your Sims using the easy-to-learn Build Mode & Buy Mode.

Then, 4 years later, in 2004, The Sims 2 came along, turning the whole game 3D, and also added the ability to create custom neighborhoods. It also added the days of the week, so your sim won’t have to go to work every single day.

Of course, though, people wanted more! So, in 2009, The Sims 3 was released to the public. It’s the only sims game that has a launcher.

Then, in 2014, the most game-changing outing was released and is still going strong to this day; The Sims 4! It changed the emphasis from building a home and living inside it to making a sim with a unique personality. It also added proper moods to the game, like Happy, or Tense.

It’s clear that the sims has come a long way since its first release, but I would suggest watching LGR’s The Sims review for the full story. Since I first got TS4 about a year ago, I’ve grown to love every single installment. If you haven’t already, why not try one of them out for yourself?

(Happy 20th birthday, The Sims!)

-thedarkcave215

Today was my birthday party! It was animal crossing themed and was really cool. I think the best gift I got was a Japanese Mr. Game & Watch amiibo! I don’t really know what else to say, so there ya’ have it, folks. Today was a really nice birthday party!

-Mr. Cave