Sort of surprised Elite Dangerous never made your list. It seems like it would be right up your alley! I've invested thousands of hours in Elite Dangerous and several thousands hours across the entire Elite franchise.
I've had lots of fun with more recent space games, but to this day Star Citizen's Squadron 42 is the closest I've seen any game come to Elite's level of flight control and maneuvering. I would say it's currently held down by how they try to manage additional content and flushing out existing content. Endgame content isn't as exhilarating as I'd hoped, but there's still plenty to do in the game to keep you busy for hundreds if not thousands of hours.
Elite certainly isn't without it's faults and I'd be pleased to see more contenders in this space (ha!), but I also recognize that space sandbox games are very difficult to get right.
I will probably add E:D to the list, but under protest. ;P
I kickstarted it, and I just honestly didn’t find it that much fun. Once Frontier started doing lots of “balance” changes that nerfed money accrual, I really bounced off. I’m not someone who plays any single game exclusively, but it felt like it was going to take 60+ hours just to move up each ship level, and I wasn’t gonna wait 6+ months realtime, or however long it would’ve taken, to buy an Anaconda (and not be able to afford insurance, and lose it anyways).
There has always been ways to make stupid money in the game.
My favorite has been to cozy up to a local faction so I can get assassination assignments that pay the big bucks, and void opal mining was still super lucrative last I checked.
Bounty hunting is a bit slow, but taking on a a mercenary contract with a faction to fight for them in conflict zones pays well IIRC.
The real grind is engineering your ships and weapons, though that was also improved significantly by making it so re-rolling your mods can only make them better, never worse.
Dark Souls 1 and 2 had notoriously horrible PC ports, and Elden Ring was one of the only games that Valve stepped in to fix themselves through Proton due to its horrible stuttering. Regardless of their intentions, their familiarity with PC hardware is still definitely a “work in progress”.
Because elden ring lags and struggles to keep fps at 60 sometimes with a 3080, why even try to go higher. I’d also saybthay playing ultra wide gives a vision advantage and PvP and invaders being a thing I’d prefer not.
Flawless widescreen has an fps uncap option as well as letting the game fully support ultra wide. (The game is fucking stupid and renders in ultra wide anyway and then just puts black bars to force 16:9) You of course have to play without online features because you can’t use anti cheat at the same time.
It doesn’t fuck with the mechanics or anything does it? I tried unlocking Katamari Damacy when I got it on Steam and it worked but also became unplayable 😮💨
So far I haven’t noticed any mechanics changing, but I might be missing something? It miiiiight mess up stuff like parry timing, but I don’t think it does.
This kind of infuriates me. On rare occasions loading into the game (unmodified) it’ll glitch out and forget to render the borders for a good 5 minutes or until first teleport. Like come on! I can see it! I know you’re doing it!
Another game, Code Vein (shut up, I love it, just embrace some trash from time to time) did the same thing. I could tell because the layering was messed up and your partner’s nameplate would render over the black borders by mistake …
I just finished playing X3: Terrain Conflict, and I’ll never play another X game.
As an achievement hunter, I normally play past the point of normal enjoyment, but this game told me, more or less, to go fuck myself.
The first kick in the nuts was completing “Dead Is Dead” mode.
You don’t get to save (with the exception of shutting the game down, but the save will delete upon starting it back up).
The game is prone to crashes, meaning you can have your entire save wiped in an instant because the game decides it doesn’t like it when you use the fast forward function within 10 seconds of a cut scene.
On top of that, one of the campaigns requires you to set up a massive complex of microchips and silicon, which also has a chance of triggering a crash each time you place a factory down.
The final 2 achievements are basically “grind until we say stop”. Which functionally resulted in me leaving my computer on overnight, four nights in a row.
The fact that the devs left the game in this state is inconsiderate at best, and disrespectful at worst.
Besides, the game is basically just an excel sheet simulator, it really isn’t very engaging.
Great write up, thank you for sharing and I can’t wait for Part 2! I’ve never heard of X4, but now you’ve got me curious to check it out. I appreciated your thoughts on Stellaris. I played Stellaris after Crusader Kings and found myself wishing it had a little more of Crusader Kings in it, so it’s interesting to hear you describe it as having “a high focus on randomized events, narrative events, and overarching story lines.” Maybe I need to give that another chance, too.
Od kilku lat sprawdza mi się porządna obudowa żelowa i szybka - ważne, żeby nie oszczędzać na obu. Nie używam telefonu do walki wręcz, ale kilka upadków z ręki na posadzkę (również z uderzeniem narożnikiem) przeżył.
That is actually #5 on my Small Games list. It sort of straddles the line in terms of size and complexity, but in the end I think it really falls under being a small, Indie game, being as it’s FOSS and community-developed and all.
There is also the lesser known, but quintessential space game: Space Rangers (GOG). It takes a little figuring out, since it’s a Russian game from 2003 (and a successor of the 1999 game) and they kind of tend to be obtuse like that; but, its genuinely the coolest space sandbox I’ve played. It’s kind of a space Mount and Blade: you can fight aliems, you can trade, you can be a mercenary, or a pirate, and the game accomodates for all of that. At whim, it switches between the core X4-esque gameplay to an RTS, or to a text quest, some of which are basically an entire game of their own. The English translation is a little spotty, but it’s good enough.
Sadly for me unless they’re fixing their terrible networking/co op system and adding an option to turn off the insanely annoying invasion system in giving it a pass.
As much as I enjoyed the base game, I don’t think I can put up with that along with having to relearn how to play.
Same, I’m having a hard time deciding how to play the upcoming dlc, do I just wait till seamless updates? That could take like a month+ or do I bite the bullet and make a vanilla char again to prep…
So many great games mentioned, like Sins of a Solar Empire (will have to get back into it sometime), Homeworld, Freespace, and Galactic Civilizations. Thanks for reminding me of them!
Oh, and since we’re on the topic, here’s a great playthrough by Tom Francis that showcases how great the Galactic Civilizations II AI is.
Although, I have to ask: no Endless Space? Not even 2? I had a great time playing it, to be honest. Probably not as complex as the aforementioned GalCiv but it was a ton of fun for me, nonetheless.
I got into gaming late and don’t have a ton of time to play, so I’m not a super experienced gamer. I LOVE No Man’s Sky. Any thoughts on which of these I would enjoy most if I feel like branching out?
If you’re a fan of the procgen exploration, Avorion, Starbound, or Elite:Dangerous
If you’re a fan of the multiplayer interaction, Eve Online or Star Citizen.
If you’re a fan of the base-building, Space Engineers or X4.
If you’re a fan of the Alien interactions, that’s very tough, but probably X4 or Star Control 2/ The Ur Quan Masters. xD
There aren’t a lot of other single games that have as many systems as NMS does.
I think that I would probably say start to check out X4 if you want 3D, and Starbound if you don’t mind 2D. Be warned, X4 does not fit well with “not much time to play”, though.
Signal i Matrix. Od momentu wprowadzenia przez Signala wsparcia dla pseudonimów, tak naprawdę nie robi mi teraz różnicy, gdzie dostanę wiadomość.
Sugeruję omijać Telegrama z takich względów, że po prostu oni kłamią. Niby “nie udostępnili niczego identyfikującego służbom”, no ale potem wyszło na jaw, że indyjskiej policji jednak udostępnili numery telefonów podejrzanych. No i do tego wiele jeszcze innych machlojek.
U podstaw Matrix to protokół tak jak wspominany wcześniej XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), za to Signal to po prostu aplikacja w wersjach dla klienta i serwera. Plus oczywiście Signal używa swojego protokołu — czyli zestawu specyfikacji kryptograficznych i szyfrowania typu end-to-end.
Signal jest scentralizowany, a Matrix i XMPP są zdecentralizowane — czyli w Signalu nie postawisz swojego serwera, a korzystając z Matrixa lub XMPP każdy sobie taki serwer może deploynąć kulturalnie i elegancko.
Sam korzystam zarówno z Signala jak i Elementa (na Matrixie).
Najbardziej przyszłościowo — warto byłoby iść w kierunku zdecentralizowanych rozwiązań, ale zanim się ludzie nauczą i porezygnują z najłatwiejszych / najpopularniejszych beznadziejnych rozwiązań, trochę czasu jeszcze upłynie…
Jak pojawi się zrozumienie i przekonanie do rozwiązania typu Signal to potem będzie już z górki.
Z tym, że kanały są otwarte, więc tylko połączenie jest szyfrowane.
Element, SchildiChat et al. wspierają szyfrowanie bezpośrednich konwersacji domyślnie. Kanały też można zaszyfrować, po prostu nowi nie będą mieli jak dostać się do historii wiadomości (jak dobrze pamiętam).
Tak. Kiedyś nawet napisałem o tym artykuł u siebie na blogu (i tu ogólnie chodzi o metadane jako pomocne współrzędne do ustalenia co kto robił), ale go skasowałem (mam wciąż jednak dostęp do wersji roboczej). Potrzebowałbym po prostu weryfikacji swoich wypocin u kogoś, kto się na tym lepiej zna.
Wybierasz sobie klienta - z mojej strony polecam Dino lub Gajim na kompa, Conversations lub jeden z jego forków (np. Monocles) na Androida,
Wybierasz sobie serwer. disroot.org jest spoko, możesz też poprzeglądać listę niektórych serwerów tu: list.jabber.at
Zakładasz konto i używasz ☺ Na niektórych serwerach możesz założyć konto przez klienta, na innych musisz przez przeglądarkę (w celach antyspamowych).
Lista różnych publicznych kanałów rozmów grupowych (nie wszystkie sympatyczne afaik): search.jabber.network
Ewentualnie dla leniwych / do przekabacania znajomych którym skończy się cierpliwość w połowie punktu pierwszego: quicksy.im . Od autora Conversations, logujesz się numerem telefonu, możesz znajdować innych też po numerze, nie ma wyboru serwerów itp (ale wszystko i tak jest open source). Ale pod spodem jest zwykłe XMPP i możesz rozmawiać z użytkownikami z innych serwerów.
bin.pol.social
Najstarsze