JackbyDev

@JackbyDev@programming.dev

Any pronouns. 33.

Professional developer and amateur gardener located near Atlanta, GA in the USA.

I’m using a new phone keyboard, please forgive typos.

Profil ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.

'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski

According to videogame patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon, the USPTO granting Nintendo these latest patents isn’t just a moment of questionable legal theory. It’s an indictment of American patent law....

JackbyDev,

Prior art exists of that though so you wouldn’t be able to. I know you’re making a joke though lol.

JackbyDev,

What’s frustrating is that the thing that is arguably questionable (the art of some of the characters) isn’t what is the subject of anything. Nope. Ball throwing.

JackbyDev,

I thought this was about the ball throwing to capture monsters

JackbyDev,

I fucking hate Nintendo.

JackbyDev,

It was the last battlefield I played, and only the open beta. Because it was only during the open beta I remember the absolute blinding flashlights lol. Like a portable flashbang gun.

JackbyDev,

Except there are consequences for failure. See the timeline split stuff.

JackbyDev,

Tears of the Kingdom was amazing. The only thing BotW did better was how it felt riding on horseback through Hyrule field dodging lasers. But that was the high point, the average experience in BotW was less fun that TotK for me.

TotK really might be one of my top 5.

It’s too hard to really rank every game. I spent a ton of time on Minecraft over the years but haven’t recently. Like over a decade ago I liked gmod and still spent so much time on it but haven’t played recently.

Lately colony management games have been scratching the itch. Do id probably say Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, and Oxygen Not Included.

JackbyDev,

Plus with games never explaining how some of their mechanics work and not giving you any realistic way to experimentally determine it, why wouldn’t I look it up online?

A big one that comes to mind is stuff like attacks, armor, and HP. Games handle them differently and very rarely tell you exactly how they work.

JackbyDev,

I’m gonna push back on this idea. Take Rimworld. It’s also a “have the wiki open” game. The game tells you how long plants take to mature, but there is a mechanic that plants “rest” a certain amount of time that isn’t mentioned anywhere, so the figure is just flat wrong for all plants by some factor (same factor for all plants). I love these types of games, but it’s not an excuse for relying on wikis to explain things.

JackbyDev,

Nothing wrong with buying on day one, but don’t pre order. I get your point, they don’t make bad games, but we’ve seen this pattern often where beloved devs fall from grace. It’s just not worth it. Like they said, they don’t run out of digital copies.

If you really really wanna preorder something physical, maybe I can understand that, but I really only do PC gaming as of now, console gaming for me is pretty rare, so I don’t have much of an opinion on it.

JackbyDev,

Especially if it’s a console game. If it’s PC I can typically manually edit things to fix them, but consoles are locked down. I still remember Fallout 3 when I finished the Operation Anchorage DLC it also marked some other random quest I never started as complete. Realizing I could fix that bug with a console command on PC (ironic lol) made me not wanna play on consoles unless I really have to.

JackbyDev,

Let me arbitrarily change the difficulty whenever I want. I hate games that don’t let you do this. The worst offender was Resident Evil Village. It let me lower it but wouldn’t let me increase it back without starting over.

JackbyDev,

It’s hilarious to me when people whine to devs that changing the difficulty is bad, because what, do we really want to view beating a single player game as competitive? It’s single player. Who cares.

JackbyDev,

Just give me explicit visual cues on when I’m supposed to party and I’ll be happy. I hate when devs assume I understand what “just about to hit” means.

JackbyDev,

Yeah. Like… Uh. Major spoiler. Don’t open if you haven’t finished.

Frost Punk 1 spoilerThe sheer length of the end game freeze was crazy. Of course, if you knew just how long and how intense it would be then it wouldn’t really be fun to encounter. The fun of that is the surprise of how long and intense it is, even with the game telling you that you need tons of food it’s still crazy.

But even apart from that, there are times when you make decisions based on limited information only to realize there is something that gives you more options soon after, and if you’d pursued that other thing you wouldn’t have needed the first thing. These was a bit of that in FP1 and FP2. I liked 1, didn’t finish 2 but I still liked it. My main complaints about 2 were the UI being wonky and a few mechanics not being very clear.

I appreciate the devs of FP1 making it so buildings didn’t need to be smushed. There used to be this way you could trick the game into shoving more buildings in than it typically allowed, but they just made that happen by default. Changes like this deserve praise. Pointless micromanagement should always be eliminated.

JackbyDev,

Edit: Also I proved my gaming prowess back when easy games had not been invented yet.

This is so true lmao. Every time I play old NES games I’m dumbfounded. It’s like half because they’re hard and half because the design is wonky. So much has changed since then.

I guess part of it is because arcade games were meant to drain your quarters and older games sort of followed that style to an extent.

JackbyDev,

I like to set the difficulty high enough to where I don’t feel the game is too easy, but low enough so that I’m not getting frustrated and feeling like the challenge is bullshit.

JackbyDev,

Banished is so nostalgic but replaying it is so bad lol. I love colony management games. Probably my favorite genre. Rimworld is my favorite at the moment.

What game sequel ruined a beloved franchise or character for you? angielski

You fell in love with a game and it's characters, sunk hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into it. It became a comforting, immensely satisfying part of your daily life. Then you heard a sequel was coming and got really hyped but when it came out it was utter rubbish......

JackbyDev, (edited )

Creating a d&d campaign is difficult, and publishing it in a way that communicates what needs to be known is tricky. It’s almost the opposite of a novel. In a novel you need to save twists and turns until the end. In a d&d campaign the DM needs to know them all from the start. But you also don’t want to overwhelm someone with too much information. But you don’t want someone who is following the module closely instead of using it as inspiration to “write” themselves into a corner because they didn’t know something would happen in a specific way later.

The main published modules for 5e are all a little different in how they present everything. Some may be better than others for certain DMs and certain groups.

JackbyDev,

Evil Genius 2. I loved Evil Genius 1 as a kid. It was far from perfect and had a lot of bugs, but it was a blast. I’m fully aware there’s a lot of rose tinted goggles going on for it in my mind. But I thought the new one would fix problems and be more enjoyable. It did improve on the first in a lot of ways, but it was so so grindy.

In EG1 you could send you minions into the world to steal money and complete missions (that gave points or loot, like stealing the Eifel Tower). I’m EG2, they kept this mechanic, but anyone you send to the world map is just gone. They cannot come back. This leads to just an annoying constant flow of recruiting more minions, training them to upgrade, and them being sent to the map forever to never return. It would perhaps be slightly better if you could increase the rate you recruit minions like the first game, but instead they always come at a constant rate and there is a button to recruit more but it’s buried in a menu. So many things in this game are buried in a menu.

Another frustration, they added a feature to automatically tag enemy agents that come to your base (to be killed, captured, distracted, etc) but they’re all under different research tiers. Why require the research at all? Right clicking agents and saying “tag for capture” is just pointless busy work. Even in the original you could hold control when you did it and it would flag the whole group. Not anymore. You can only tag one at a time.

There are just so many little things like this that made the game so annoying to play. I wanted to like it. But I just couldn’t enjoy it. The new art style is worse, too. It keeps the spy fi aesthetic but it’s much more cartoonish. The game is more diverse which is nice, the original was like all men. I also liked what they did with John Steele, the main antagonist more or less. Canonically you beat him and killed him but they pass on his mantle to new agents and train them to be like him. And they’re relatively weak, but like a constant threat.

JackbyDev,

It was one of the few times I really got hyped about a game as an adult.

What’s the best written Pokémon game? angielski

Like, the series isn’t famous for its writing, but I absolutely loved the last part of Arceus. The Volo fight hit me out of nowhere, and the fact the fight itself was actually challenging was a very pleasant surprise. I wish we got a little bit more of an explanation for potato mochi guy, but the game has just the right...

JackbyDev,

Would’ve been cooler if N didn’t use pokéballs. Just a minor flavor change.

JackbyDev,

Okay?

JackbyDev,

Yeah, remember how big of a stink Internet Explorer on Windows was in the 90s? Imagine if Internet Explorer blocked you from downloading other browsers. That’s basically what Google Play Store has been doing. Why it’s taken this long to get fixed is beyond me, but I’m glad it’s happening.

Hits the griddy with Thanos or something, idk, I don’t play Fortnite.

JackbyDev,

Swap the () and []! 🩵

JackbyDev,

All of them.

JackbyDev,

Payment processing should be treated like a utility.

JackbyDev,

It doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be ran by the state.

JackbyDev,

I worked a little bit for a company that worked with payment processor networks. This is my understanding (and don’t view this as a defense of them, I don’t necessarily think they’re good). There are a ton of banks. Every bank having their own POS machines would be difficult. Imagine going to one that doesn’t support your bank. So payment processors sort of provide that bridge so devices only need to know how to talk to one (or a handful) of networks and the same for the banks.

JackbyDev,

There are standards already for the format of some of the messages. These options being subpar is how we got things like PayPal originally, so who knows.

JackbyDev,

I thought it was obvious you meant Collective Shout.

JackbyDev,

There was a question about Daedric Princes in a trivia game I went to recently. They gave four of them and you had to match what they were the prince of. I felt confident about two but only got one right. Of course I got Shegorath right.

JackbyDev,

I feel you, but imagine if a game dev trained their own LLM exclusively on their own content. Only their own dialogue and lore. Could be fascinating then. Not something I wanna see a lot of work out into at the expense of other things, but could be interesting.

And to reiterate, I genuinely mean only trained on data the studio has a copyright on already.

JackbyDev,

I thought Sanguine or whatever was the murder one but I remembered wrong. They gave the four categories and we had to match them. I thought Malacath might be based on Malakith from War Hammer and that seemed pretty hedonistic but it was a 50/50. (Well, I thought it was a 50/50 lol.) The last was Mephala who I thought might be lies. And if you know the lore well you probably already knew Mephala was the fourth they mentioned lol.

JackbyDev,

I don’t know, I may have transcribed from the wiki wrong.

JackbyDev,

First one was a cool premise but really annoying in some ways. The game sort of assumes you get certain fragments of blue prints by certain points but doesn’t actually make them easy to find nor really give you any hints to find them.

For people who’ve played it was for the sea moth and and later the moon well.

JackbyDev,

It was weirdly a little light on crafting in some ways. But extremely heavy in others. I tried playing it like Minecraft and stockpiling stuff but that’s not really the way. I found it slightly more enjoyable to gather things only when I needed them.

Also the game has no map and I’m REALLY bad with directions. Like REALLY bad.

JackbyDev,

So I think you were just playing it wrong.

Look, I genuinely get your point, and I was tracking with you until you said this. Fuck off. Fuck for with this stupid bullshit. I was not playing wrong. I was playing it the same way everyone else does. I was exploring. I was collecting. I was finding new things. It was getting very clear that the distances the game expected me to travel were meant to be done much faster than what I was capable of. I was getting multiple upgrades for things that I couldn’t use because I didn’t have the thing that lets me install them. It’s been ages since I’ve played and I’m not psychic so I’ll never know what the actual devs’ intent was, but something was off. I’d definitely missed something. What’s more annoying is that I was finding multiple blueprints I already had or something? I don’t remember the context. Like you needed 3 fragments or something. And I’d find more like “ah surely this is the third for the thing I need” only to get the 5th of something I already had. It was give years ago when I played, at least, so I’m probably explaining wrong.

But don’t fucking say I was playing wrong. That’s such a condescending, brain dead thing to say to someone who is critiquing a game.

“Hey, based on what’s going on and getting tons of upgrades and not unlocking the thing to install the upgrades, I think I’ve missed something and I have no idea where to find it. It would be nice if there was a way to unlock this without scouring every inch of the ocean I’ve been through multiple times and without looking it up online.” No, you’re just playing wrong! It’s a game about exploration and discovery!

🙄

JackbyDev, (edited )

Yeah, I think people look at that criticism and think I mean I want super explicit bright glowing objects with a Skyrim style HUD that points me directly to where I need to go to get blue prints. Nah. Some ideas:

  1. Some way to tell if there aren’t any more in an area so you don’t waste time looking when there isn’t anything.
  2. Some sort of device that tells you how close some are, but not where they are. Like the classic “beep … beep … beep beep beep BEEPBEEPBEEPBPBPBBPBP” thing that gets more frequent as you approach. But make the max range relatively small.
  3. I think they were called life pods? Like the other crashed emergency escape pods. For things you’re expected to get like the sea bike (I don’t remember the name), sea moth, and moon well maybe always put some blue print fragments on life pods you find later. This way you can’t miss them (unless you’re really really not paying attention). You can still make it so you get them earlier on, but this way in case you missed some somehow you can always “catch up” to where the devs expect you to be. Like if they expect you to get them ~10% in, then make it so the life pods you find ~25% in give you what you are missing for the sea moth.
  4. A bit of a map system. This one is controversial, so I’m putting it last. A huge appeal of the game is not having a map. But even just a blank screen showing you all your way points, but not showing you where you are or what biomes are around would be useful. Then do something like show where blueprints are in an area. Maybe something like once you get two of three it shows you the general area where the remaining ones are, but doesn’t put a marker on the HUD.

Because with games like this where progression isn’t gated behind actually having some of these items, you can get in weird states where you get further in and didn’t get them. But maybe >95% of players did. The other <5% just missed something somehow. And then there’s no real clue on where to.go to back track to get it. And you can get in these annoying situations where it seems like you should have it but you aren’t sure, and you don’t want spoilers so you don’t look it up. Then when you look it up maybe you see a spoiler and it turns out you shouldn’t have it yet, that’s common. Other times you missed something super obvious in some very random area you only needed to go to once and never checked again because it seemed empty.

But it’s just so infuriating when people say things like “you’re not playing right” like, I’m getting frustrated because I’m playing right! If I wasn’t checking everywhere I could miss things. So I have to check everywhere to make sure I don’t. But then you can still miss things because there’s no real way to guarantee if you actually checked everything.

JackbyDev,

I don’t think I had scanner room blue print.

JackbyDev,

I don’t need hints because I’m not playing the game and I’m not planning on continuing. I’d gotten further than you think. But for context I’d already begun to explore the deeper areas when I ran into this conundrum. I built a stupidly long oxygen tube to get down there. I think the game expects you to have the sea moth first. That was one of the first moments I thought something was wrong. Then I think once I got it I couldn’t take it down there without an upgrade because I also didn’t have the moon pool unlocked. You’re talking about life pods, I never had a problem finding life pods. Those were easy and fun. It was going deeper without the sea moth and upgrades that was troublesome.

JackbyDev,

I explored around the wrecks.

JackbyDev,

Uh, yeah, that’s the point of all regulations. To make you not pick bad things.

JackbyDev,

People got wise to it lol. People were posting flowcharts about not buying games until they were on flash deals if you want them. Also some years I think they did something that led people to believe only having specific games on your wishlist was advantageous which led to people removing everything from their wishlist except for stuff that was more expensive. That disproportionately hurt indie devs.

All in all I think I’m glad it’s gone. Plus the games (like that racing thing) never made sense to me.

JackbyDev,

Do you have evidence to support that the flash deal prices aren’t the prices that are there for the entire length of the sale now?

JackbyDev,

Just because something is legally correct doesn’t mean it is ethical. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it is immoral.

JackbyDev,

The sarcasm was clear, btw, to me at least. You meant indie as in small. “Small games like, oh, I don’t know, Team Fortress 2!”

JackbyDev,

I don’t know about this game (nor do I really care to), but if it’s a single player game you could already do that with cheat enginess even if progression isn’t tied to achievements.

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • •
  • test1
  • krakow
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • fediversum
  • esport
  • rowery
  • tech
  • muzyka
  • turystyka
  • NomadOffgrid
  • Technologia
  • Psychologia
  • ERP
  • healthcare
  • Gaming
  • Cyfryzacja
  • Blogi
  • shophiajons
  • informasi
  • retro
  • Travel
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • gurgaonproperty
  • slask
  • nauka
  • sport
  • Radiant
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny
    •