Wonder if H4 will really continue off WOA’s ending; or if it’ll be some weird reboot.
Tap for spoilerFor those who don’t know, the ICA, signature org 47 follows, was dismantled in WOA’s story since it was basically a servant of Providence. Providence itself was too large to destroy, so Diana still runs it, basically just dismantling as much as she can.
I might even be interested in some form of main character switching for Hitman if they can invent someone that has most of 47’s capability with some interesting nuance. (No, the spoiler is not that 47 dies)
I think the studies showing how certain minds can be targeted and manipulated by dark gambling patterns made me think differently about gambling. I’m less likely to blame the victims now - in many ways it can be difficult or near-impossible for them to control those impulses. I’d at least like lootbox gambling slop to be regulated the same as casinos.
Look how popular fantasy sports is now. It’s basically just the casino industry seeking out new avenues to cheat the definition of “Playing odds to win cash”.
Don’t forget, “Turns out it was a losing bet to back DEI and Trans people”.
This is something scared, pathetic, loser, feral, spineless, sociopathic, moronic fascists come up with to try to win a crowd larger than an elevator; Assume the outcome as a foregone conclusion and try to talk around it, or claim it’s already happened.
Respond directly. “What? That’s ridiculous. I’ve never even seen ANY AI that I liked. Who told you it was going to pervade everything?”
I was recently discussing Farcry 2 with some friends and how cool the fire spread system was - And how it essentially was never used again after that title....
Take a look at Half-Life 2’s old Face Poser software. I feel like you don’t see that sort of action-level control much anymore.
Indie studios are evading the need for lipsync entirely, by making simple models, giving people masks, putting them on radio overlays, etc. AAA studios are overengineering it, putting a $4,000,000 actor in a motion capture suit for each of their cutscenes to capture every fine detail as they stare in wonder at the white ping-pong ball in the studio with the sign written; “LOOK HERE”.
Face Poser was a good median; it’s where the director gets control, but you don’t need a vast technical setup beyond animations, some vowel extraction, and some basic know-how. It means that if the director wants to add a criticism “No, character B should give a dubious, unsure look when character A says that”, it’s something they can apply directly rather than ask the animators to do by hand.
For some reference, old machinima like Clear Skies, or my own “AS” made use of Face Poser.
I feel like I get where he’s coming from, but I can see the revulsion.
I picture someone asking their AI to write a rules engine for a gamemode and getting masses of duplicative, horrific code; but in my own work, my company has encouraged an assistive tool, and once it has an idea of what I’m trying to do, it will offer autocomplete options that are pretty spot on.
Still, I very much agree it’s hard to sort the difference and in untrained hands can definitely lead to unmaintainable code slop. Everything needs to get reviewed by knowledgeable human eyes before running.
Looking for people your own age to game with? Over 30 Clan has been around since 2010 and has grown to over 1,500 members, and for the last 6+ years it’s been my home base. Any given night you’ll find folks jumping into everything from Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders to Overwatch 2 and more....
Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game....
Developers should spend effort vouching for a launch without startup logos. Even if supporting libraries/publishers are credited some other way, startup movies take up a lot of time when gamers launch the game many times.
Trails in the Sky has a feature where you can choose to launch the game directly into your most recent save game rather than ending up at the menus. This would be a boon for many singleplayer games, especially those with densely animated menus.
I could still see it as an admission of imperfection.
Arc Raiders includes an “unstuck” feature. They’re aware their physics system isn’t infallibly perfect, and getting stuck permanently could lead to loss of hard-earned gear. So, if a player is in one spot for more than a minute, they offer an option to teleport you to a safe place a few feet away.
Watch Dogs 2 had an “invasion” system like Dark Souls, but it also allowed pausing in the world anytime you weren’t being invaded. It’s been a nice thing to point to anytime Souls fans make that excuse.
I’d love it if a group could collude on a standard for music signals.
Imagine this: You have a music player following this signal standard.
Game starts, it signals GAME_STARTED, and the media player signals STOP_GAME_MUSIC, so the game itself plays no BGM, leaving it to the music player. But, then the game can also signal later on: THEME_MENUS, THEME_EXPLORE, THEME_COMBAT, THEME_BOSS; and the media player can respond to that by cross fading between playlists built for each.
On the gacha front, I play Zenless Zone Zero. Parry mechanics are nothing new, but I love both the way they have you parry by swapping in an agent to take the blow, and the very detailed effects and animations they have for each attack.
It’s still a gacha, and I remind myself to stop playing anytime it bores me; but it manages to hold my attention decently.
Yeah…a long time ago I learned lessons about patience, delayed satisfaction, and ended up building a large roster in that game without giving them a dime. I could afford their packs, but it seems like a bad price ratio especially when acknowledging the low chances.
An article from this weekend that seemingly got buried by soundbites about the Steam Machine price in the same interview, but given that we have no information on price, this seems way more interesting to me. I mean…I basically self-select games that don’t use these kinds of anti-cheat at all, but this is important...
I remember back when playing DRM video in a web browser on an open source operating system seemed like a worrying impossibility. Many sites stayed stuck on closed-source flash players for that reason alone. It was a while before we ended up with this solution I only partly understand - where the DRM decoding is handled through some kind of trusted block, that generally doesn’t have full OS control?
It’s rare, but there’s a few indie games where I did not wait for a sale, even knowing I wouldn’t play it for a while, because I wanted to be supportive to devs that made something I wanted.
I had a PC connected to my tv for a while, main issue was I didn’t want to use a mouse or keyboard to interact with it. I tried desperately to get more ways of starting via controller or other lite interface devices, but nothing convenient. It was an old machine, so eventually I gave it away.
I feel like a lot of these pointer devices miss the simplicity of a remote. A simple one will have a tough time entering passwords, but it’s perfect and simple for the most common actions: Turn on without walking across the room, open the most recent application, play the next episode of the series I was watching last, usually just by mashing confirm. (Nothing to tell it to go fullscreen: Because that’s an obvious assumption for everything)
Running it all on a PC just adds more steps, unless you follow a LOT of guides to configure it to get through those things easily.
I’d really like it if web standards were better at allowing a video website to be navigated with an “Up/Down/Left/Right/Confirm/Back” device, so that you didn’t need apps for everything. That would be good for consumer devices like Apple TVs as well as people running home PC setups.
Trails in the Sky has some interesting logic behind this where the gameplay serves the story.
You’ll do some quests for people who actually end up being evil later in the plot. There’s also party members who temporarily join you while they have time off from their other job - then as the story progresses, their “lunch break is over” and they go back to their life. So, if you try to save content for later, it won’t be there anymore.
Those little things end up putting more focus on what is accessible at a given moment, so a level 60 player isn’t going back to the starting area to wrap up quests he doesn’t care about for completion.
I can’t remember which ones, but I recall some games out there that were putting out new console versions, and kind of sputtered when marketing them for PC.
It’s Game, from 15 years ago!
Yeah, we know. Steam still sells it.
But can it run in HD?
Yes.
Oh. Uh……is it really still available for sale?
Yeah, it-…Hey, wait, you just pulled it!
$60!
I don’t know if it’s “favorite”, but an old classic was Aquaria. It had a surprising amount of content, even to the point of several secret bosses, and an absolutely excellent soundtrack. Sadly, the main guy behind it is dead now. Ori was also fantastic.
What is the best current gaming laptop that comes with Linux pre-installed? I don’t want to “pay Microsoft” by buying a Windows-licensed machine. Please suggest the best value-for-money option (original retail price) with 32 GB or more of RAM. I’m willing to upgrade hardware myself, but I want a high-quality, durable...
Just minutes before it was set to deliver its financial results for the first half of its 2025-26 fiscal year, Ubisoft mashed the brakes on the whole thing, postponing the release of its results to an unspecified future date. The company also requested that European exchange Euronext halt trading of the company’s shares and...
On a pedestrian level, I’ve really liked the slow move from “SNES aesthetic” to “PS1/PS2 aesthetic”. My first console was an N64, so I guess I never had much nostalgia for the 8-bit days, and I feel like 3D gives a lot of opportunities for intelligent asset reuse to give a game lots of content.
Yes! For instance, say you’re making a character action game about big flashy jumping attacks. It took a long time to make the attack animations and now you need to provide the player with unlockables to encourage exploring, or some DLC.
If you have a 2D game, you’d need to do a LOT to integrate any new cosmetics, or characters, into your existing protagonist. But in 3D, if your character finds a hat, it’s very simple to just attach it to the model. Even swapping to a new playable character, you can retarget animations as long as proportions are similar.
It might be simple attachment if a character is using skeletal animation, eg Intrusion 2. That art style isn’t used often because the direct limb tweeting is often overly visible. Often, most character frames are hand drawn or at least prerendered.
In these hand drawn styles, a character’s head could appear to enter Z depth as part of the drawing (imagine a 6 frame animation of a character spinning a sword like a top). When that happens WHILE they’re also wearing an attached hat, the hat must rotate and adjust for the depth as well - which means new drawings, even if you’re able to specify the positions of the character’s head during each frame of the animation.
We could be talking past each other with bad descriptions that need visuals, though.
One thing I see as underestimated is that having a major standard device is huge for indie development and could greatly benefit the most flourishing artistic landscape....
I’ll first admit I predicted Valve wasn’t bothering with a Steam Machine again. I was proven wrong.
But I still absolutely don’t see it being more popular than the Steam Deck. They don’t have the production scale to make them at the Xbox / PlayStation hardware-per-dollar values, so they’ll still be an enthusiast item for people aware they’re buying a prebuilt PC.
So yes, you do already see this; indies target the Steam Deck as a supreme metric for Linux compatibility (and if someone complains HDR doesn’t work on his desktop Mint install, well, whatever). Valve even promotes some store presence to indies that do a bit of work to certify this. We’ve seen lots of games get patches mentioning Steam Deck related fixes - even when the game is a windows build using Proton.
A few adult games made me realize I like the base concept of the game if it finds a way to feel rewarding and doesn’t ratchet up in difficulty (eg, mechanics that cover half the screen in stones)
Still haven’t really located a game that applies the match 3 formula in a way that makes me want to keep playing. EA’s touch is definitely one of those souring aspects.
Following on from the success of the Steam Deck, Valve is creating its very own ecosystem of products. The Steam Frame, Steam Machine, and Steam Controller are all set to launch in the new year. We’ve tried each of them and here’s what you need to know about each one....
I suppose it’s not the first time Valve has counted to 3; in terms of releasing 3 projects. They released the Orange Box which had 3 games in it. But they never put out a 3rd iteration of things.
So expect this to be the last Steam Controller and Steam Machine, if we count the old 3p hardware Linux boxes and Index headset they helped with.
I’m still a little curious how that will work for games. Are they going to somehow emulate Win32 amd64 games? Do devs have to recompile them in some new way? Will engines support it beyond Unity and Unreal?
Winter burrow on steam is being released today, (Nov 12th). I went to the forums to see complete chaos. People arguing and calling out the developers about using sweet baby inc. and hiding it, others wondering what the big deal is like myself. It could just be the anti woke gamers, but there were other complaints. I got the demo...
I understand Valve being libertarian about not moderating people excessively, what I’d like to see are better tools like shared blocklists or general moderation for any developer that doesn’t wish to control their own Community page.
I once tried writing a guide for Paper Mario, and it was then I realized how much effort, consultation, and typing all of these are. It’s in some ways not a surprise that walkthroughs are now just video playthroughs of the game (often involving someone backtracking 3 times as they figure out a puzzle) - that takes a lot less effort than conscious text recorded outside of a game.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of Soulslikes, but none of the ones made by FromSoft. Their style of providing poor explanations of mechanisms just makes no sense to me, even if you want to give players those moments of self-driven discovery.
I tend to look around Steam for various games and demos that barely anyone knows about. Some of them are actually pretty good and innovative, so I’ll list them here....
I’m cautious but a little curious about this one, because QA could actually be a very good target for AIs to work with.
It might not kill jobs. Right now, engineers finish a task and the limited number of QA engineers can’t possibly test it enough before release. That game-breaking bug you found in a game? I’m sure some QA had it in their plan to test every level for those bugs, and yet they just didn’t have enough time - and the studio couldn’t justify hiring 20 more QA squads. Even if they do upscale AI testing, they’ll need knowledgable QA workers to guide them.
This is often extremely rote, repetitive work. It’s exactly the type of work The Oatmeal said is great for AIs. One person is tuning the balance on the Ether Drive attack, and gives it an extra 40% blarf damage. He tries it, sees it works fine, and eagerly skips past the part of the test plan to verify that all cutscenes are working and unaffected to push it in. An AI will try it out, and find: Actually, since an NPC uses an Ether Drive in a late-game cutscene, this breaks the whole game!
Even going past existing plans, QA can likely find MORE work for AIs to do that they normally wouldn’t bother with. Think about the current complexity of game dev that leads to the current trope of releasing games half-finished to eventually get patched. It won’t help patch games, but it’ll at least help give devs an up-to-date list of issues.
That said, those talking about human creativity and player expectations are still correct. An AI can report a problem with feedback that a human can say “No, that looks fine. Override that report.” It will also be good to do occasional manual tests, and lament “How did the AI think this was okay??”
It WAS a good idea when first used. And, when imported across to Far Cry, they also tried to come up with new forms of climbing and even puzzles to get you up. Then, simply because the internet made memes about it through repeat emphasis (repeating an old mechanic alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing) they responded, took the system out, and even lampshaded it in Far Cry 5 - WHILE other devs as far as Nintendo/Zelda were copying it.
Theres a lot to condemn Ubisoft for, but the towers thing always irked me. Call open worlds as a whole boring, but it suggests it’s not the sort of game to keep your interest anyway.
I got sick about dystopian chaotic worlds that don’t work - where the hero’s journey is about saving the world from some impending ruin, or about preventing a starving dystopian city from being blown up.
In Trails, the conversations you have with NPCs remind you that while you’re on the trail of some bandits or suspicious people, other people are not evacuating, sheltering in fear, etc; they’re living their lives, keeping up to date on modern trends, making travel plans to other countries.
So, so many worlds just don’t have space for characters to have those thoughts. It’s always fear around impending disasters, or how to respond to a fight, or grim poetry about how much the world has fallen into darkness.
It especially hurts that some people live so much of their lives in these fictional worlds that they start to believe people would be like that when they go outside. Worlds like the one in Trails, even if they spend a lot of time being boringly polite, are a nice call back to reality.
Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up...
I’m dual booting with Windows because of a project I’m finishing that would be difficult to move OS, but Cachy is now my gaming OS. It’s nice to move away from the “forced” behavior from Windows.
Tangentially, a few UI decisions felt locked-in on Ubuntu and Mint too; or at least I couldn’t find an easy way to change them. I’m still a little annoyed my scroll wheel changes form options but it’s a minor thing.
I’ve definitely run into some snobbish “Accept my incorrect solutions and be grateful, or go back to Windows, newb” types of people. I don’t have much love for them. I recognize it takes patience to acclimate new users, but it’s part of the job.
By and large I’m preferential to just stay with something that works; part of what pushed me off it has just been Microsoft themselves enshittifying the experience. I feel like I remember a day when Windows start search actually took you to what you wanted, and now “notepad” immediately queries the shopping network before your own program list, and when you get Notepad open it has a Copilot button.
You’re doing the right thing as long as you stay on an OS that keeps you going day in and day out. I tried Linux earlier in the year on two distros that did NOT work as well as the internet said they would, and went back to Windows. More recently, tried another one and there were stupid difficulties - but I got past them, at a time when Windows issues were just giving me “This is the way it is now, just put up with it”.
I’m not so sure Valve is the right maintainer for the core desktop. The Deck works well, but mainly what Valve is maintaining is the Game Mode feature and Proton. Everything else is largely better handed off to a bigger group.
Certainly interesting to look at the fastest-growing distros: Ubuntu (the well-known, popular option), Bazzite (the gaming-marketed one), Freedesktop (someone else can answer this for me), and CachyOS (the side-gaming one? Not quite a gaming OS but very good at it)
Yup, I had this exact experience. Installed Bazzite because it was a “gaming OS”. Had trouble just installing any non-gaming apps, or looking up guides to do so. Even gaming wasn’t perfect.
Installed CachyOS, and yes, there are annoyances, but also a nice path to fix them. It’s both a good gaming OS, and a daily driver for casual use.
Yeah, filesystem is a slow battle of forfeiture. Everyone wants to say “I’ll just use FAT, or NTFS, because both Windows and Linux support them!” And then it inevitably gives them performance issues among other problems.
I still use either for the drives where both of my dual boot OS’s need to access them, but I recognize it’s not a good place for games (I have some old, light ones that I’m not worried about accessing on NTFS, but big ones like Helldivers are out). It may even be a good excuse to learn more detailed partitioning so you can slowly shrink/eliminate what’s still using the two compatibility formats.
Distro choice is a tricky problem. I say that as someone that kinda settled on one; my own experience has not always matched others. But I will admit, it’s nice to stay on an interface not too far from Windows’ taskbar.
As ‘Hitman’ Turns 25, IO Interactive CEO Talks Eminem-Slim Shady Collab, ‘007 First Light’ Inspiration and Future of the Video Game Franchise: ‘Of Course There’s Going to Be’ a ‘Hitman 4’ (variety.com) angielski
Valve dev counters calls to scrap Steam AI disclosures, says it's a "technology relying on cultural laundering, IP infringement, and slopification" (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again angielski
I was recently discussing Farcry 2 with some friends and how cool the fire spread system was - And how it essentially was never used again after that title....
Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production (share.google) angielski
The glory days of Epic Games are long gone and Tim Sweeney is a god damn moron.
A chill gaming community for the 30+ crowd angielski
Looking for people your own age to game with? Over 30 Clan has been around since 2010 and has grown to over 1,500 members, and for the last 6+ years it’s been my home base. Any given night you’ll find folks jumping into everything from Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders to Overwatch 2 and more....
Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) angielski
Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game....
What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? angielski
What game do you absolutely love that you know yourself is bad, but love it anyway?...
Valve Addresses Steam Machine Anti-Cheat Concerns, Says It's Working Towards Support (thisweekinvideogames.com) angielski
An article from this weekend that seemingly got buried by soundbites about the Steam Machine price in the same interview, but given that we have no information on price, this seems way more interesting to me. I mean…I basically self-select games that don’t use these kinds of anti-cheat at all, but this is important...
It feels good to support angielski
Valve confirms Steam Machine will be priced ‘like a PC with the same level of performance’ (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Gaming Pet Peeves angielski
What are some things that just get under your skin about games?...
Google’s latest swing at Chromebook gaming is a free year of GeForce Now (arstechnica.com) angielski
We don't have to make it complicated angielski
What is your favorite Metroidvania? angielski
I haven’t played a Metroidvania in a while and I’m looking for suggestions of some good ones to try. Some I would recommend:...
Fatekeeper - Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Gaming Laptop with Linux Preinstalled and 32GB+ RAM? angielski
What is the best current gaming laptop that comes with Linux pre-installed? I don’t want to “pay Microsoft” by buying a Windows-licensed machine. Please suggest the best value-for-money option (original retail price) with 32 GB or more of RAM. I’m willing to upgrade hardware myself, but I want a high-quality, durable...
Uh oh: Ubisoft postpones its quarterly financial report at the last minute and halts stock trading (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Just minutes before it was set to deliver its financial results for the first half of its 2025-26 fiscal year, Ubisoft mashed the brakes on the whole thing, postponing the release of its results to an unspecified future date. The company also requested that European exchange Euronext halt trading of the company’s shares and...
Steam Machine is huge for indie development angielski
One thing I see as underestimated is that having a major standard device is huge for indie development and could greatly benefit the most flourishing artistic landscape....
Our first look at the Steam Machine, Valve’s ambitious new game console (www.theverge.com) angielski
Today's featured article on Wikipedia: Bejeweled (en.wikipedia.org) angielski
Bejeweled is perhaps the brightest shining gem of casual PC gaming.
Valve announces three new products: the Steam Frame, Steam Machine and Steam Controller (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Following on from the success of the Steam Deck, Valve is creating its very own ecosystem of products. The Steam Frame, Steam Machine, and Steam Controller are all set to launch in the new year. We’ve tried each of them and here’s what you need to know about each one....
Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] (store.steampowered.com) angielski
No prices yet. I may never financially recover from this.
Winter burrow SBI controversy angielski
Winter burrow on steam is being released today, (Nov 12th). I went to the forums to see complete chaos. People arguing and calling out the developers about using sweet baby inc. and hiding it, others wondering what the big deal is like myself. It could just be the anti woke gamers, but there were other complaints. I got the demo...
Elden Ring Nightreign The Forsaken Hollows - Gameplay Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype? angielski
Some hidden gem demos and games I've found on Steam (2025) angielski
I tend to look around Steam for various games and demos that barely anyone knows about. Some of them are actually pretty good and innovative, so I’ll list them here....
Square Enix says it wants generative AI to be doing 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027 (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Assassin's Creed is a "forever brand" because Ubisoft supported huge risks with it, ex director says: "Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpaste companies" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint? angielski
What games have what you’d call really good worldbuilding, and what in particular do you like about them?...
Linux gamers on Steam finally cross over the 3% mark (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up...