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Saperlipopette, do games w Steam Deck / Gaming News #21

Those PC-88 graphics look so good. I don’t think there’s many that have been translated to English yet.

anonymo, do krakow w Professional Design Build Architecture AZ – Insights, Projects & Best Practices

Demo accounts offer risk-free practice for beginners. Users can simulate trades, explore platform features, and neuron markets forex broker real or fake develop strategies without the fear of financial loss, building confidence before investing real money.

dan1101, do gaming w Try again
@dan1101@lemmy.world avatar

If it was me, I’d say “Little boy from…Animal Crossing??”

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

“nooooo little boy from animal crossing, don’t go into the weed cave!”
animal crossing blabber

Quetzalcutlass, (edited ) do games w What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?

Jagged Alliance 2 (especially with the 1.13 mod) is the most ludicrously detailed tactical RPG you’ll ever find. It can be a nightmare to actually play until you spend many, many hours learning all its systems, but nothing else comes close immersion-wise. You can customize every mercenary’s loadout down to individual weapon attachments, capturing different parts of the map gives bonuses that actually make sense (like being able to ship in weapons once you’ve taken the airport), you can train militias to hold onto captured sectors for you, and you can even use the in-game internet to send flowers to the main villain.

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Yeah, I really liked https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620/Jagged_Alliance_2_Gold/. The UI is pretty elderly today, though.

I haven’t been very impressed with some of the subsequent attempts to revive the series, though I still haven’t gotten around to playing https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084160/Jagged_Alliance_3/ yet, and that has much better scores than some of the intervening releases, like https://store.steampowered.com/app/57740/Jagged_Alliance__Back_in_Action/. If you haven’t tried JA3 yet either, you might consider taking a look.

EDIT: Oh, wait, yes I did play it, because I remember the intro mission that they have screenshots of.

…steamstatic.com/…/ss_0edc29526ad201a59357234cd77…

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/1084160/ss_0edc29526ad201a59357234cd77a34a5ba507208.1920x1080.jpg

I don’t recall finishing the game, though. I should go back and see what my status in that game is. Thanks for making me think of it.

Quetzalcutlass,

I’ve heard good things about 3, but haven’t bought it myself. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts if you ever get back into it!

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Just tried it, and it was some other game I was thinking of; I hadn’t played JA3 yet.

While I haven’t finished the game, thoughts:

  • It’s the strongest of the post-2 Jagged Alliance games that I’ve played.
  • Still not on par with JA2, at least relative to release year, I’d say also in absolute terms.
  • My biggest problem — I’m running this under Proton — is some bugginess that I’m a little suspicious is a thread deadlock. When it happens, I never see the targeting options show up when I target an enemy, and trying to go to the map or inventory screen doesn’t update the visible area onscreen, though I can blindly click and hear interactions. The game also doesn’t ever exit if I hit Alt-F4 in that state, just hangs. AFAICT, this can always be resolved by quicksaving (which you can do almost anywhere), stopping the game (I use kill in a terminal on Linux) and reloading the save, but it’s definitely obnoxious. Fortunately, the game starts up pretty quickly. Nobody on ProtonDB talking about it, so maybe it’s just me. I have not noticed bugs other than this one.
  • So far, not much by way of missions where one has to figure out elaborate ways of getting into areas or the like: more of a combat focus. I have wirecutters, crowbars, lockpicks, and explosives, like in JA2, but thus far, it’s mostly just a matter of clicking on a locked container with someone who has lockpicking skill. Probably more realistic — in real life, an unattended door isn’t going to stop anyone for long — but I kinda miss that.
  • The maps feel a lot smaller to me, though the higher resolution might be part of that. A lot of 3d modeling to make them look pretty. There’s a lot more verticality, like watchtowers.
  • The game also feels considerably shorter than JA2, based on the percentage of the strategic map that I’ve taken. That being said, JA2 could get a bit repetitive when one is fighting the umpteenth enemy reinforcement party.
  • Unique perks for mercs that make them a lot more meaningful than in JA2 (though also limit your builds). For example, Fox can get what is basically a free turn if she initiates combat on a surprised enemy. Barry auto-constructs explosives each day.
  • Thematic feel of the mercs from JA2 is retained well.
  • Interesting perk tree.
  • A bunch of map modifiers like fog that have a major impact.
  • Bunch of QoL stuff for scheduling concurrent tasks for different mercs.
  • Pay demands don’t seem to rise with level, though other factors can drive it up (e.g. Fox will demand more pay if you hire Steroid).
  • Feels easier than JA2, though I haven’t finished it.
  • I’m pretty sure the keybindings are different.
  • Tiny thing, but I always liked the start of JA2, where your initial team does a fast-rope helicopter insertion into a hostile sector. Felt like a badass way to set the tone. No real analog in JA3.
  • I started running into guys with RPGs early on in JA3, much earlier than in JA2.
  • JA2 has ground vehicles and a helicopter and they require you to obtain fuel. Transport logistics don’t exist in JA3, other than paying to embark on boat trips at a port (and just checked online to confirm that they aren’t just in the late game).
  • More weapon mods in JA3. Looks like some interesting tradeoffs that one has to make here, rather than just “later-game stuff is better”.

For me, it was a worthwhile purchase — even with the irritating bug I keep hitting — and I would definitely recommend it over the other post-JA2 stuff if you’ve played JA2 and want more. It hasn’t left me giggling at the insane amount of complex interactions that were coded into the game like JA2 did, though, which were kind of a hallmark of the original.

Quetzalcutlass,

Thanks for the detailed write-up! I’ll have to pick it up at some point; even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.

What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).

I don’t know what the internal mechanics are like, haven’t read material about it. From a user standpoint, I have just a list of positive and negative factors impacting my hit chance, so less information about my hit chance. I guess I’d vaguely prefer the percentage — I generally am not a huge fan of games that have the player rely on mechanics trying to hide the details of those mechanics — but it’s nice to know what inputs are present. It hasn’t been a huge factor to me one way or the other, honestly; I mean, I feel like I’ve got a solid-enough idea of roughly what the chances are.

even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.

Yeah, I don’t know of other things that have the strategic aspect. For the squad-based tactical turn-based combat, there are some options that I’ve liked playing in the past.

While https://store.steampowered.com/app/240760/Wasteland_2_Directors_Cut/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/719040/Wasteland_3/ aren’t quite the same thing — they’re closer to Fallout 1 and 2, as Wasteland 1 was a major inspiration for them — the squad-based, turn-based tactical combat system is somewhat similar, and if you’re hunting for games that have that, you might also enjoy that.

I also played https://store.steampowered.com/app/254960/Silent_Storm_Gold_Edition/ and enjoyed it, though it’s now pretty long in the tooth (well, so is Jagged Alliance 2…). Even more of a combat focus. Feels lower budget, slightly unfinished.

And there’s X-Com. I didn’t like the new ones, which are glitzy, lots of time spent doing dramatic animations and stuff, but maybe I should go back and give them another chance.

dylanmorgan, do gaming w Honestly, it confused me at like 20

It confused me at 34.

LifeInMultipleChoice,

1,2 shipped with the original console. 3 was added later.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/885030f1-5334-4dd5-ad16-2dbb0ba5bfa0.jpeg

PhobosAnomaly, do gaming w Microsoft Office gonna wreck your shit

https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/b1c93b22-2473-41a0-817e-6569ff292ef4.webp

The seven horsemen of the 90s workplace computer apocalypse.

rmuk,

I’m still pissed off that they dropped the gold(ish) colour for Outlook.

PhobosAnomaly,

Outlook 2000 was magic, even if it had more security warnings than a trip to Yemen. The current iteration of Outlook that they’re pushing with Office 365 is an absolute disaster, as if they’ve dragged it down to Teams’ level and let it rot away.

As you can tell, I’m not a fan.

tibi,

I’m holding to old outlook for as long as I can. I’ll bitch and moan when they rip it out of my hands.

Trainguyrom,

The big problems is outlook like every mail client from the early 2000s collected tons of features during the mail client wars where every client needed to do a billion different things, so now there’s dozens of random little features baked in that very few people use but those who do have built entire business processes around.

For example I observed while working at a bank that the backend finance people would use the voting feature to vote on whether to bundle certain loans together. I’ve never before or since seen anyone in any business actively use that feature. There’s lots of other little features and tunables buried deep in Outlook and it’s a royal pain as an IT person to quickly learn about whatever obscure feature a user is complaining stopped working and of course figure out what the intended workflow for the feature is to begin with before I can even start troubleshooting how to fix it

I can’t blame Microsoft for wanting to greenfield Outlook development to a new standard base that’s shared between webmail and the application, but holy crap the amount of technical debt Outlook accumulated is going to take ages to escape from.

Personally, I don’t mind Outlook (new). It sends and receives emails, it shows my Teams meetings on the calendar, and it lets me easily schedule calendar events and Teams meetings, which is all I really need. Most importantly it bypasses a ton of annoying quirks of Outlook (classic)'s license verification and M365 authentication so I generally encourage my users to use it if they don’t otherwise have a strong preference, because it saves me tickets (especially the dreaded “outlook lost teams integration” complaints where Outlook (classic) misplaced its own extension for communicating with Teams (new) and usually involves uninstalling all versions of Teams then installing Teams (Classic) and upgrading it in-place 3x to resolve)

Appoxo, (edited )
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I prefer the new color.
And hot take: I like the icons of O365 for Wort Word, Outlook, Excel and Powerpoint. And I prefer those over 2007. But I can compromise with the icons from 2013.

Edit: Halo is leaking :p

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Wort wort wort!

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I was wondering what you meant. Until I carefully read my post again and noticed…
All I can say is WORT WORT WORT

rmuk,

Agreed, the current batch of Office icons - and the updated versions rolling out soon - are excellent. I’m a big fan. But I still wish Outlook was gold.

dejected_warp_core,

Alas, Access was too powerful to make the transition to the cloud. It couldn’t be allowed to survive.

PhobosAnomaly,

Access got FoxPro’d, right in the kisser

And009,

What does it do again?

NikkiDimes,

No one truly knows, but there’s always that one guy in the office using it for god awful things it was never meant to do…

dejected_warp_core,

Access let you build visual apps, usually data-entry workflows, around its internal SQL database. You could build small apps with it using Visual Basic and a visual UI editor. Plus, all your work ships as a single file, provided the user also has Access installed. In many ways, it was like Apple’s Hypercard, but also way easier to write than webpages with the same capability. Oh, and you don’t need a server anywhere to make it work; it’s 100% local. It was also the next logical step to take after the most complex things you can do in Excel.

That said, it was crippled from the start - still very useful, but not for heavyweight stuff. It’s limited to a fixed number of UI, pages, database rows, etc, so it wouldn’t compete with more expensive MS solutions (this thing came with Office). I don’t think it got a lot of love because of that, but I personally used it to solve some real problems in the workplace, without need of any (official) developer resources.

In the present day, it would actually compete with a lot of simple business cases that are served in the cloud at some cost.

Trainguyrom,

Honestly Microsoft could’ve had a killer product with Access if they made an easier pipeline from Excel -> Access -> Win32 application/webpage with an SQL backend. Like there is some of that pipeline present, but if Microsoft actually followed that vision, created easy wizards for each step that your average office drone can complete and marketed the shit out of it, they could completely own business processes instead of a cottage industry of spreadsheets turned SAAS apps for every niche usecase that could’ve been handled by a common database frontend.

On the other hand, now we have a super easy jumping point for anyone in a large business who can program a little to spin up a new startup. Find a business process that’s currently a spreadsheet/on paper, write a database frontend to easily handle that then sell your solution to businesses looking to remove load bearing paperwork and spreadsheets

dejected_warp_core,

Exactly. Access was a dirt-cheap rapid application design (RAD) tool in disguise, and very easily could have been shaped into a smooth on-ramp to ASP, ASPX, IIS, and SqlServer solutions. In short: a hypothetical “Access.NET” would have been really something.

On the other hand, now we have a super easy jumping point for anyone in a large business who can program a little to spin up a new startup. Find a business process that’s currently a spreadsheet/on paper, write a database frontend to easily handle that then sell your solution to businesses looking to remove load bearing paperwork and spreadsheets

You just described most of my career, and how a lot of contracting shops get their start. Managers need reports, and someone has to program them. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve replaced Excel with custom software; a faster way to do this is usually welcome. That said, the cloud “Data” space is doing a lot right now to reduce this kind of task to Jupyter notebooks and some other proprietary solutions.

OfficerBribe,

It’s what many should have used instead of doing everything in gigantic macro filled Excel file.

filcuk,

Getting ptsd flashbacks from having to work with access.
Database corruption was so common I’ve had scripts in place to run automatic recoveries.
Terrible security, performance, and SQL feature support.
I’m so glad that thing is buried deep where it belongs

Azzu, do gaming w Honestly, it confused me at like 20

It’s confusing because it doesn’t make sense, what is it the left/right third of? There is no feature on the controller that has any amount of sequential things. There is no identifiable “first” or anything ordered anywhere. That’s why these buttons should be called LS, LB and LT for stick, button and trigger, which is still not perfectly intuitive without knowledge of the layout, but better than 123.

CleoTheWizard,
@CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world avatar

The general population has no clue what a button or a trigger is most of the time and also have no clue what LB,RB,LT,RT even mean. You have to sit there and go “hmmm okay I see it’s right but now I need to remember what T and B mean” and it’s unintuitive, only makes sense to those who know it already.

Whereas numbers people actually know how they work and when you just say L and R people pick up on it easier. They can just figure out that top is 1 and 2 is bottom. Even helps them understand L3 and R3 better.

I have almost never seen someone new to games understand the stick button prompt easily with Xbox. Whereas a lot of PS controller sessions taught me that people who are new can even figure that out before I jump in to help them. Plus the icons are better. Shapes are less brain work than letters for a lot of people I know.

calcopiritus,

7 year old me which didn’t know English was way more confused about the Xbox controllers. Plat station’s were way easier to understand. The problem with L3 and R3 is that I didn’t even know the sticks could be used as buttons, once I learned that, L3 and R3 made a lot of sense.

I know the L-R of Xbox were buttons, I just wasn’t able to understand which was which. Sony being a Japanese company, imagine if they named their buttons some random japanese characters. That’s what Xbox buttons were to me.

lime,
@lime@feddit.nu avatar

the ps shoulder buttons have always been labeled L1/L2 and R1/R2. literally stamped into the plastic.

LifeInMultipleChoice,

Yarp, and the 3 buttons didn’t exist when PlayStation came out (94’) they were added with the joysticks in 97’.

Ashiette,

Naaaah. They could just have labeled L3 and R3. R1 and R2 and engraved and way more intuitive than RB and RT.

ayyy,

Nobody knows wtf that letter soup stands for.

samus12345,
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

It made more sense if you grew up with the evolution of the controller. SNES - L and R are the left and right buttons on the top. PS1 - L2 and R2 are the buttons behind the left and right buttons on the top. PS1 dualshock - L3 and R3 are the left and right sticks being pressed in.

LifeInMultipleChoice,

PlayStation 1 came out having R1, R2 (right side buttons) and same for Left side buttons. The thumb sticks didn’t exist yet on the controller. So when they were added the joysticks, they needed a designation, so they said right 3 and left 3

JovialSodium, do gaming w Honestly, it confused me at like 20

7 year old me also didn’t know about the L3 and R3 buttons. But this was the controller I had at the time so perhaps reasonable.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/ffb49031-fc72-4677-98b5-ebac9ba6b141.png

SidewaysHighways,

big if true

wreckedcarzz,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

It’s actually quite small

lunarul,
dubyakay,
bampop,
@bampop@lemmy.world avatar

Hell yeah. A damn fine joystick, until the leaf switches break

Atherel,

They broke on WinterGames…

VoteNixon2016,

Unironically, the NES controller and game boy advance controls are still some of my favorites

samus12345,
@samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

These were mine:

https://atariage.com/5200/images/controllers/con_Atari5200.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WmIAAOSw2EFmKoXr/s-l400.png

The controller that came with the Atari 5200 was complete ass. That third-party one was much, much better.

Agent_Karyo, do games w Steam Deck / Gaming News #21
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

Crosswind looks promising, will need to add it to my tracking list.

Those PC88 screenshots! So damn beautiful, they ooze style.

Thanks for this!

9point6, (edited ) do gaming w One more time!

At this point we’re all assuming Warframe is an intelligence honeypot, right?

It’s bafflingly hilarious how effective it is at that

Edit: War Thunder not Warframe 🤦‍♂️

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

Well, Warframes are killer space ninjas. A number of missions they do does indeed involve the gathering of intelligence, such as Spy, mobile defence, or Capture missions.

This can be considered normal, as the usual role for a ninja is intelligence gathering, with such things as assassination and murder usually being rare objectives. However, since Warframes are from the distant future, and have some pretty insane powers, it’s easy to assume the role of ninja has expanded somewhat.

Such as into fashion… Or looking practically naked.

SatyrSack,
@SatyrSack@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Are you both confusing Warframe with War Thunder, or am I missing a joke here?

9point6,

Oh lmao, both

I brainfarted and wrote the wrong game, the other guy is running with it as a joke

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

That’s probably because you were breathing someone else’s air.

Pretty unacceptable.

FerretyFever0,

They're... not really very good ninjas. Only a few frames are really focused on stealth, and they're meant to be used for covert assassinations. Most are meant for... nuking entire maps in a few minutes.

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

It’s still stealth if no one is left to talk about it, right?

FerretyFever0,

I guess so. But that really only works in Exterminations, otherwise, new witnesses come.

Walican132,

I mean when you have the power of friendship radiation on your side I agree.

SalamenceFury,
@SalamenceFury@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, the leaks themselves don’t seem to care about nationality, we’ve had leaks from American, Italian, Chinese, Russian, British and French vehicles. Never underestimate the lengths a military nerd will go to win an argument…

yoriaiko,

Warframe tech irl… think I saw some news about warframe big story spoiler:

spoilerhumanoid robot control panel in shape of bed

Trainguyrom, do gaming w One more time!

Every time I see this meme I laugh so hard

LaunchesKayaks, do gaming w One more time!
@LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world avatar

These folks are doing God’s work. 🫡

ieatpwns, do games w Day 343 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing

I can spot an n64 texture with my hands tied behind my back!

QuentinCallaghan, do gaming w Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 22nd
@QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz avatar

Finished the main story of Enderal. Impressive for a total conversion Skyrim mod, I wish there were more like this! Feels like I may touch this game again after five years or so.

Gonzako, do games w Day 343 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing

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