I‘m always amazed at the amount of people believing the Steam Machine will be sold for the same or less than the most expensive version of the Steam Deck while being six times as powerful.
The other problem is that the tariffs could be totally different by the time it releases. I fully suspect that the tariffs are the reason that we haven’t got a price yet.
It would be funny if it is noticeably more expensive in the US though like with the Switch 2.
Just playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but there are some interesting factors at play.
The Steam Machine won’t need a screen or battery, two of the most expensive components on the Deck. So that can go into better CPU/GPU/RAM instead.
Valve proved they can make a successful physical hardware product with the deck. That gives them a lot of negotiating power with AMD to get the best deal they can.
Unlike with the Deck, they’re releasing three new gadgets in almost all major countries simultaneously. That means they may have already started manufacturing months ago, and are benefiting from economy of scale at an entirely new level.
Sure, I should have clarified not surprised by the power or the price.
It makes sense that as more and more power becomes available, the price doesn’t necessarily have to increase.
Computers (especially CPUs/GPUs/SOCs etc) are becoming more and more powerful all the time, and more and more efficient all the time. It doesn’t mean that the price of them has to rise.
The fact that it’s 6 times as powerful doesn’t mean it should be more expensive than the most expensive version of the Steam Deck. The fact that it’s 6 times as powerful should be entirely expected, given the fact that it’s newer with a larger form factor (meaning that it may not be as limited in terms of heat etc)
Hopefully this is a detailed enough comment to clearly explain my thoughts on this.
As per my understanding, Sweet Baby Inc was/is a DEI consultant that would advise on accurate portrayal of minorities in games that wished to have them represented.
How accurate they were/are or how much their input is being used, I can’t say, however the easily swayed have taken to the idea they’re an evil shadowy cabal that mind controls companies and has them add brainwashing techniques meant to bring about the downfall of western society (the MAGAts that is).
they’re an evil shadowy cabal that mind controls companies and has them add brainwashing techniques meant to bring about the downfall of western society
Being on the patient side of things, two games I’ve played in recent years and didn’t enjoy were:
God of War (2018) - it just felt like AAA slop to me. Meaningles upgrades, tons of obvious puzzles at any corner - never throwing in even a single brain teaser, boring combat - the best option was almost always to throw the axe, that thing were you start walking at a snails pace to mask loading and/or play a cutscene and on top of that your god powers being mostly cutscene exclusive. Just your bog standard AAA game with no ‘friction’ - boring.
Factorio - it just feels like work to me. On top of that, going in blind, I just didn’t enjoy building something up just to tear it down again because I’ve unlocked something new changing the requirements. Once again, feels like a job in IT. Also, resource patches being limited just gave me the weirdest kind of anxiety despite never actually seeing one run out.
Factorio’s the awakening for a lot of people on certain ends on the spectrum. My AuDHD makes it crack for me. I will say though, while the tutorial teaches you some essentials, it just throws you into the deep end once you start a real game.
I only discovered all the tips and quality of life from videos online, and there are some troubles in the game you can solve on your own but good fucking luck (belt balancing).
Might not be your kinda game, but if you ever feel like giving it another chance, check out some vids online for beginner tips (: It’s a game about stimulating the Eureka! part of our ooga booga caveman brains and it feels amazing.
I feel vindicated. I have the exact same feeling of factorio feeling too much like work, having to refactor everything because the requirements change is one of the more frustrating parts of software engineering imo, and the game feels tailored specifically to invoke that frustration.
I imagine that part gets better after the first hundred hours where you basically know what’s coming. I don’t have the patience to learn the tech tree though, given that I don’t even enjoy the game.
Yeah I’ve seen people try to balance things perfectly in factorio, but my strat is always to overproduce and let belts getting backed up balance out the throughput.
Yeah same. I’ve seen other people stockpile intermediate resources to try and smooth out bottlenecks, but I think that’s wasteful. Build extra throughout, and have as little product sitting there as possible.
I’m fuzzy on the details, but it went something like this:
I set up long resource lines of coal, copper and iron.
I needed a thing#1 and built a neat little package to build it, exactly to order and on minimal space.
I copy pasted that design 10 times left to right along my resource belt line.
Then thing#2 came along. Needed the same stuff and combined with thing#1 into thing#3. So I wrapped my resource belts, designed a second package on minimal space and also copy pasted it 10 times. So I had pairs of thing#1 and thing#2 with a line in the middle to combine them and a belt to collect them. Worked nicely.
Then:
Coal was replaced by electricity. I had no space for powerlines.
I got other types of the grab thingies, potentially simplifying my setup.
Suddenly I got sorting, making my belt setup a waste of space (I had one line per thing/resource).
All belts needed to be replaced by better belts.
Oh and:
Thing#4 came along, needing 2 of thing#1 and one thing#2 with some additional resources. Since I built to order, I basically had to start from scratch or severly hamper the production of thing#3. Also, my packages didn’t work anymore without wasting space and/or entirely fucking up resource belt management.
Therefore, I designed stuff from scratch to fit the new requirements.
That’s from the very beginning, but after repeating this pattern a few times, I gave up. Building it non-optimized felt even worse.
Interesting. Optimizing the factory for your immediate current needs sounds very tedious, because those needs change all the time. I instead optimize for expandability and adaptability. The factory game genre isn’t for everyone, but if you are interested in some tips:
My solution is usually something like:
really long line of basic resources (usually a belt of smelted copper and a belt of smelted iron, eventually adding more stuff and adding more belts of iron and copper as supplies are needed)
when I need thing 1, I make a little package that builds it, drawing resources from the line with splitters so the excess can continue down the line
thing 2 is an independent little package farther down the line
When it’s time for thing 3, I build copies of the packages for building thing 1 and thing 2 as necessary to feed the construction of thing 3, again as separate feeds splitting off the main resource line
when it’s time for thing 4, its again independent of the production of things 1-3, except they are splitting off the same main resource belt
If the resources on the main belt are insufficient to feed all of those machines, one of three things needs to happen: 1. Add more raw resource processing until your belt is full and backed up at the beginning 2. If that’s not enough, upgrade the belt 3. If you don’t have a belt upgrade available, build another main resource line and use splitters to rebalance it onto the main line
This construction allows for easy expansion without having to destroy anything. I typically don’t disassemble anything unless it’s actually a problem for some reason or I need the space. This is especially important because you often need some basic components like the level 1 belts even into the late game.
Also, once you unlock robots, you can literally copy-paste, just select an area to upgrade all belts/arms/etc. in, and a lot of other neat tricks that drastically speed things up.
And one last peace of advice: Overproduce everything and let belts backing up balance out the resource distribution. Then if you discover that belts that previously were backed up are now sparse, figure out why and optimize it, usually by adding more production of whatever the missing resource is.
Ultimately throughput is all that matters. Loss of throughput because you don’t need something isn’t wasteful. Loss of throughput because you aren’t producing enough of something is a problem to solve. Things that don’t affect throughput don’t matter and aren’t wasteful.
I played pretty much the same way De_Narm did. I tried caring less, though because I had no idea what would come next, it inevitably descended into spaghetti. I am stressed out about technical debt enough at work to be playing a technical debt simulator lol.
Dedicating the space needed to expand, ensuring everything you build is scalable, inevitably requires you to know a lot about what’s coming.
Yeah, if you know what you’re doing you can avoid these issues. I did not enjoy myself in the slightest, so after some hours of giving it a chance I decided that learning how to avoid these issues was not worth the pain. I’ll just stick to work instead.
2001 easily had the most games that were highly rated and as others have said you some real classics. The PS2 was hitting it’s stride, the original Xbox Launched, and the Gamecube was right there.
2011 also had some damn amazing games: Arkham City, Portal 2, Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Minecraft, Mortal Kombat 9, Starcraft II, Bastion, Uncharted 3, Battlefield 3 to name a few.
I cannot describe how disappointed I was in the switch when it came out, and the situation isn’t much better now. It took one huge step forwards, yes, bus also ditched a ton of really good features :
No cameras !?
No microphone !?
No analog triggers
No 3D display
No stylus support
No Streetpass
No personality (fun apps, menu music, themes…)
Even the Motion controls, which are still a thing, do not feature any IR reference point, making the Wii still the best implementation of motion aim outside of VR.
The games are great, but these days I personally play the Wii U and 3DS more often, because unlike the switch these platforms still offer some experiences that are just not possible elsewhere.
In fact, the Wii U and 3DS are currently the only consoles I would recommend actually possessing physically. Wii U emulation is really annoying (though Steam Deck can get there, with a cable in the way), and good luck finding anything for the 3DS that does the 3D part any better than a New 3DS XL.
Some of the things make sense, but overall I agree.
3D display simply died, everybody did it for a while but so few things used it well that it wasn’t worth the cost (especially since it hurts quality unless you can get the player to use special glasses).
You could use touchscreen compatible stylus, but no extra features connected to it.
Definitely miss analog triggers, which also hurts emulation (GameCube). Something streetpass-like could’ve been put in the mobile app (which also is way too limited and supported by too few games).
Absolutely miss customization too.
Gen 1 Switch should also already have gotten a top side USB C port - with support for accessories like a camera + mic (which wouldn’t have necessarily been built in, but supported).
Switch 2 could benefit so much from better local discovery especially now that it has GameShare, you could have it passively advertise supported games so you could discover opportunities to play even games you don’t have (much like how Download Play used to work on the Nintendo DS and GBA)
This one is it for me. The game really does so much with so little. The reality of the game is that it is a roughly linear sequence of closed levels (with some hub levels thrown in) that feels like a cohesive, connected world. It’s absolutely incredible!
Yes, I go back and replay the game every few years. Its grittiness is definitely a bit silly to me now, but when I was a kid, I was enchanted by it. While the Jensen games did not have the charm of the OG, the first was still decent, and it’s a shame Square Enix drove it into the ground with the second Jensen title.
DX:MD is one of the most fun stealth games, it’s just unfortunate they put vent shafts everywhere. Absolutely tragic what Square Enix did with the preorder bullshit.
Having played a lot of raft with my kids, I can say I never would have thought of it for this. But looking back, yeah, there is a good deal of world building going on.
I have an 8bitdo zero 2 that I’ve had for a few years.
I kept it on my key chain for a long time. It would be in my pocket for 8 hour workdays in which I worked outside and got wet. It still works despite having been through all that.
I used to stick my phone to a magnetic mount in my car sometimes and used the controller to play emulated games. Nowadays I use a retro handheld or a steam deck.
I recommend 8bitdo very highly in general. Most of their controller feel really solid and completely nail the retro aesthetic they are copying.
The zero 2 isn’t like that though. It feels cheap and light, but it has held up well.
I actually had an 8BitDo Zero 2 a while back, but lost it. That was my first attempt at finding a solution for gaming on my phone, but didn’t like how I had to either prop my phone up with something or lean over a table to see my screen. I didn’t know about that clip-on device, though! If I can find the controller I lost, this will certainly be the cheapest solution for me. Thanks!
Ah, of course it's about the serious violations on free speech in checks notes the brutal dictatorships of Britain and Germany. The dictatorship of common sense dictating you how not to be an asshole.
eh, the exaggeration aside…the trend lately IS extremely worrying.
especially the treatment of protesters.
that said I’m pretty sure that’s got little to do with this situation…tend to agree with the others ITT: “libertarian” and “free speech” is seldom a good combination of words…
I can't deny there were some cases where the authorities have exaggerated. Especially recently. But you know where these people are actually coming from.
but do we? Microsoft is absolutely a mega-corp and would not hesitate to screw over people for money. If you’re anti-bigoty, don’t assume they’re your friend. Maybe someone “insulted” Charlie Kirk, or said that ICE are Nazis. Remember Jimmy Kimmel? I get your sarcasm in your original post, but I think you’re making an assumption that corporations are in the right when they take down speech, when they’d just as quickly shut down a trans-supportive group as they would a transphobic group.
This seems entirely tangential to the thread. At least from what I’m reading, they’re discussing whether Britain and Germany allow freedom of speech. Nobody in the thread seems to be talking about MS’s stance.
I think the statement that Microsoft is not your friend is noncontroversial, a given, and applies to every large corporation on the planet.
Curious. Hadn’t heard of them at all and they seem to have made solid progress.
So I went to their “github” link which goes to their own self hosted (codeberg?) which is a big ol’ orange flag because it implies that either they don’t understand what git actually is or they assume their audience doesn’t… I can see that it is a yuzu fork. Not inherently bad but it does explain the progress for something nobody ever heard of until… today. And that has implications for the project getting a pretty strong C&D because of the shenanigans Yuzu was allegedly doing to get such strong compatibility on release day for so many games. Yellow flag, we’ll say.
Just skimming the last few MRs? Seeing a LOT of “waiting reviews” on the merged side of things which is another orange flag. Best case scenario it means they don’t understand how to map their SDLC to their tools, worst case scenario it means they aren’t actually doing thorough code reviews which is playing with fire when it comes to a console with as many leaks as the Switch.
Also no Releases. Which further suggests they have no idea how to use their tools. So did some digging on the readme and it looks like the project itself probably began 6 months ago with git.eden-emu.dev/…/d29d7b931c6ae8c035992d7a15d96a…
So yeah. Not sure how much they have contributed to the fork but everything I am seeing is just making me want to remind people that a LOT of people are going to make yuzu forks and you should think about what is going into the code you are going to blindly run. And… it kinda makes me think less of whatever blog site ran this interview.
To elaborate. There is nothing wrong with forking a project (assuming all licenses are upheld which, at a glance, this does). But the beautiful thing about git is that it is fundamentally decentralized so ANYONE can make a fork. And EVERYONE does. So the important things to check are if they actually have any idea how to run a project or are fly by night “hackers”. The former is how you make something stronger. The latter is how you get a whole shit ton of unacknowledged CVEs. And a great indicator is how they use their tools and implement an SDLC. And a huge indicator into that is how merge requests are handled.
One more edit. What allegedly sealed the fate of Yuzu (and Ryujinix) was very strong evidence that the devs had been looking at the various Switch leaks/hacks and were using pirated pre-release copies of games to improve 0-day compatibility.
Now, I am obviously not a lawyer so I can’t say whether they WERE doing things nefariously. But if you spend enough time dabbling in reverse engineering, you rapidly spot the telltale “intuitions” that come from somebody “cheating”. Because they aren’t testing code against behaviors or even using tools to speculate what C code created that assembly. They are looking at code and then writing an interface/re-implementation of it. And that is a MASSIVE no no because it gets you well past the bleem lawsuit and starts making you liable for a lot of penalties that we DO have precedent for.
As for the pre-release copies? It is, again, hard to not think they had copies of Tears and what not pre-release. And while it is possible that for every major release all the devs went to stores that broke embargoes… yeah.
And the implications of this for a fork that was very publicly taken down is… they know they are potentially working with poison fruit.
It’s been popular in the Steam Deck emulation scene because of its performance for most titles running better on the hardware compared to Ryujinx/Forks (Although because of those orange flags you mentioned, now it makes sense why EmuDeck refuses to provide support or streamlined installation in their menus).
Hopefully the ship is above board, but right now we’re able to reap the performance benefits as users - although I’ll probably stick to Ryujinx on my proper desktop PC.
I guess I wonder how much of that is just that… yuzu was REAL fucking good and this is Yuzu (if you check the source since their website doesn’t seem to acknowledge that?).
From a skimming of the code (if they aren’t going to do proper code review, why would I?), the main deltas seem to be related to CI/CD, branding, package updates, and MAYBE improved controls/interfaces more geared towards the android client.
And, to be clear, I think there is a lot of value in maintenance. But when you have to dig relatively deep to even see this is a fork and they already have donation links plastered everywhere?
Yeah… I would be a bit more concerned over making sure this is “above board” as it were.
Which… is honestly really shit to the actual yuzu devs who put the work in. And it isn’t like Nintendo is going to say “Wow, that really good emulator might not be the one we had taken down. Let’s actively not look and instead cry into our money”. If they want it down, they’ll look for a reason. And then REALLY quickly see it is the same codebase they had removed already.
I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Eden before this! It’s the choice for emulating on Android now! They’re very well established, and seem to be vouched for by all the ‘big’ names in the emulation and handhelds scene.
Obviously practicing your own caution is important, but Eden isn’t some unknown fly-by-nighter. They’re very, very much a known name now.
I don’t see anything that says they don’t understand Git or Github.
They know people will look for them on Github, and they do their official releases there. They host their code on the non-profit Codeberg site for reasons of their own. People can still fork from there. They just can’t click a button on Github to do it. They can, however, click a button on Codeberg to fork.
It sounds to me like they did understand all of this, and decided to let internet popularity work for them (host releases on Github for discoverability and fraud prevention) without giving up how they wanted to manage their code.
Why? It sounds like an old link description that they didnt update. Webdev likely isnt their top priority being emulation devs, and frankly, they may not care.
Github/codeberg are both git, so its pretty irrevelant which one you link to. They just host the git repos, which give no shits about what web platform they live on.
bin.pol.social
Ważne