I think System Shock belongs here too. It was an immersive sim in 1994, was one of the first games to make use of audio logs, and had 3D models and environments before Quake. It initially released on floppys without voice acting so it didn’t sell too well, and it wasn’t until later that it started getting more widely appreciated as the groundbreaking title it is. Another thing is that the controls and graphics can make it a bit of a pain to play today - this was before WASD and mouselook were standardized.
GOG because it’s more convenient and less ableist.
Steam’s colour scheme makes it difficult to read and causes eye strain and headaches for people with astigmatism, like me. The way the light text bleeds into the darkness surrounding it makes it difficult to read anything so I can’t be sure of the price that I’m paying without copy/pasting it into notepad or something. When I made a thread pointing this out years ago, when they disabled the old theme system, Valve’s mods banned me from the forum and deleted my thread.
I sent an email to Epic Games about the same problem in their store and got a response that could be summarized as “Don’t care, go fuck yourself.” so they are not a good option either. I don’t like gambling so I won’t use EA’s virtual casino, and I want to keep the games I buy so Ubisoft’s store is also not an option.
I’ve never had any issues with headaches, have you talked to your doctor about maybe getting a blue light filter added to your prescription? Also, you can pick a different theme for Steam as well. I’m a big fan of Metro.
It’s not blue light. It’s blurriness caused by the white of the text bleeding into the black. Straining my eyes to read it causes headaches. I can use light mode things with no problems.
Steam skins don’t reskin most of the client anymore. I used to use a light skin similar to Metro when Steam still properly supported it.
OK, in that case I would see about getting a new eye doctor, if you can. If they were doing their job right, they should have made sure the prescription you got corrected the astigmatism. My doctor worked with me to get it perfectly right, so I don’t have any issues anymore with small text, including on Steam.
If you or someone else who reads this can’t afford to get glasses, there is help available. If you’re in the US, check out New Eyes, which works with those who can’t afford to have their vision corrected.
I have glasses. This isn’t something that they can correct for me. Glasses don’t fix the shape of your eyes. Maybe this can help explain what it’s like? It’s about conferences but it’s the same for anything with that colour scheme. The smaller the text, the worse it gets.
No, glasses don’t fix the shape of your eye, but they do correct for that uneven shape. I would know, because they’ve corrected my vision and it’s now crystal clear after being blurry from astigmatism for years. It sounds to me like your prescription just isn’t quite right, because you shouldn’t have any issues if they had nailed it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dismissing that you have a problem, and I’m not defending Steam or saying they shouldn’t have more accessible options for those with sight issues. What I’m saying is it really sounds like your glasses aren’t where they need to be, and that’s why you’re having issues. With the tech they use to make lenses these days, you should definitely be able to dial in a prescription to get perfectly clear vision with astigmatism.
Steam’s colour scheme makes it difficult to read and causes eye strain and headaches for people with astigmatism, like me.
The Steam Store is just a website where a user style such as uso.kkx.one/style/219929 can be applied like any other. Game prices are just black on white using that theme:
The Steam Client itself is largely or perhaps even fully controllable via command line (…valvesoftware.com/…/Command_line_options#Steam) and you can set any color scheme to your terminal as you like:
Steam may not have color schemes for all kinds of visual impairments and that’s a legitimate criticism but Steam has a bag full of aforementioned features for customization, so with a little bit of research (I was curious about that myself, so I spent like 5 to 10 minutes) I found quite easy workarounds. As someone who does not like to be blasted in the face with light themes, I look for similar workarounds all the time.
That works for a browser but I would still need the client to install, uninstall, and manage game settings. Steam skins only work for a few areas of the client. Most of it will still be unreadable.
You could check out lemmy.world/c/dragonage? Obviously it’s a bit dead at the moment, but this is the thing: all of these little communities need to be restarted from scratch, and to do that you need to contribute your own content until enough people show up that the feed starts rolling on its own. Lemmy.world is currently the biggest instance, and that community has 102 subs already. Seems like a great place to start if you want to recreate r/dragonage on lemmy.
Since we’re dealing with very small niches still, I also recommend participating in genre communities. I’m not really seeing an active one for RPGs but something like Dragon Age would get some run on !pcgaming and !pcgaming (with the usual caveat that kbin currently isn’t always great about getting all their content out to federated instances).
Grow the genre/archetype communities enough and eventually they will naturally break out into individual property niches for sure.
Yeah, not a bad idea to hedge your bets. With all luck, it’s not for another long while. I know for myself, I’ll buy mostly on Steam, but if I got a game I really really like and want to preserve, I’ll get it on GoG then stash it on an external SSD. So if shit hits the fan and Valve grows devil horns overnight, I’ll at least have my favorite games sans DRM.
I haven't seen OpenTTD mentioned yet: https://www.openttd.org/
If you like it you may also check out OpenRCT - although this one needs original game files from RollerCoasterTycoon (a few bucks on Gog or Steam)
It kind of doesn’t. Me and my brothers will play some Rocket League on a Monday night (assuming our kids are in bed) but aside from that my gaming is exclusively single-player.
Never been a big online gamer, but since having kids that’s basically become a non-starter.
it has very simple rules, but can get really crazy creative if you know your way around it.
player base is big enough so even if you are top 1% it’s still easy to find games.
there is no balance change or new character the throws you off and relearn your game plan
it’s average 7 minutes match for replay/kick off count down and queuing time.
you can totally drop it and then come back again after finish a single player game and it’s still going to be there.
it’s free to play but I did throw Psyonix about 60~100 per year to support their operation cost. Good pack/cosmetic didn’t come up often so I usually have at least 4000 credits sitting in my account.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne