MentalEdge

MentalEdge, wczoraj

Wait until you find out about the child labour stuff.

There may not be sweatshops in the developed world, but you can bet your ass a lot of roblox “dev studios” are really just one or two adults, exploiting a bunch of kids for free labour via discord.

Oh, and then there’s the fully integrated speculative market for assets and cosmetics, where ten-year-olds gain and lose thousands of real dollars in robux.

The ecosystem around Roblox is a complete shitshow that no sane parent should allow a kid anywhere near.

MentalEdge, 2 dni temu

Remember when they said Galaxy would get linux support? That didn’t happen, and that promise got quietly retracted…

That said, Heroic is unofficial but has worked quite well.

MentalEdge, wczoraj

Heroic gets a lot closer in this regard.

MentalEdge, 8 dni temu

How tf did they think a PS3 era piss-filter would improve things?

There is so much you could absolutely tear into, what the hell do they think they are doing?

MentalEdge, 8 dni temu

It wasn’t for me, either, but I’m fairly certain the point of Goat Simulator is that there isn’t one.

MentalEdge, 8 dni temu (edited 8 dni temu)

People don’t hate these companies because they “don’t cater to them”. They love or loved the games, but these companies then turn around and try to screw their own fans out of every cent, nugget of personal data, and free time, that they have. There is no anger like the anger of a true fan.

To get that pissed, you had to have cared quite a lot to begin with.

The rest, are simply indifferent.

That, is why people are upset enough to experience schadenfreude when their stocks and releases fail. Because that is an event that SHOULD be proving to these companies that if they keep pushing the bullshit, they soon won’t be catering to anyone anymore. Hence it’s something that gives fans hope that they will pull their shit together and get back to doing right by their own franchises and talent.

And we are not all in the same boat. Some of us just want good games.

Even when companies like Ubi make good games, they come with a shitload of strings like “but the monetisation is unethical” or “the devs were forced to crunch” or “the company leadership did nothing about a festering company culture of criminal mysogyny”.

Simply by operating as ruthlessly as they do, these companies are slowly convincing the world they are “non-decent” institutions. Such institutions need massive restructuring, when the don’t deserve complete disassembly.

And angering your fans is a process that only goes one way. Every fan you piss off enough to make them swear to never again give you a chance, is one you probably wont ever have as a customer again.

Yeah, some will be malicious enough to cheer at the individuals getting screwed over when megacorps eat shit. But every sane person is cheering because there is now a large pool of talent looking to do something good with their skill, out from under the thumb of managers demanding every mechanic be optimized for monetization, rather than gameplay.

This person isn’t wrong to be disgusted with people who cheer at jobs being lost, but he is also MASSIVELY out of touch with how his own company is operating, and how it is coming to be viewed by the world as a result.

MentalEdge, 28 dni temu (edited 28 dni temu)

Any AG racing fans in here?

BalisticNG is my latest main game, but my love began with the WipEout series.

I also enjoy Redout and Redout 2, but the lack of weapons means I can only go so long before needing to play WipEout or BNG again.

Obligatory mention of !ballisticng

MentalEdge, 28 dni temu

2048 is so good. I love the teams each having three craft types. The tracks are really fun, with both wide sections where you can go flat out without a care, and narrow parts where you have to really thread the needle and use the airbrakes with total precision.

If you haven’t already, check out BallisticNG. It’s a retro style re-implementation of the classic WipEout physics, and the upcoming update will fully implement the 2048 physics mode.

!ballisticng

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

They seem to be getting back into it.

There was Alyx, at first. But today there’s Deadlock, two more rumoured games, and now this?

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

As long as there are killer 1st party titles exclusive to a console platform, there’s a reason to buy one.

Counterargument: some of us consider this kind of arbitrary BS a reason NOT to buy one.

And that’s before you even consider the additional crap consoles pull, like Nintendo making the only way to back up your saves a fucking subscription service.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Don’t buy steelseries.

I like the DualSense controller. Yes, it’s “for playstation” but all controllers work on PC nowadays. Especially on Linux, the driver for PS controllers is in the kernel, and they can work both wired and via Bluetooth.

It even supports using the special features of the DualSense in some games, like the adaptive triggers when playing Rift Apart or Forbidden West.

And the touchpad works as a mouse, which is handy.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Yes.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Really? I know her range is kind of insane but I don’t hear Hale in McGinnis at all.

Edit: Some people say it sounds like Erica Luttrel, which jives with me. McGinnis sounds almost exactly like Bangalore from Apex.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

It’s one of the few games where I switch between mouse and controller when on foot vs in a car. They’re damn near undrivable with wasd.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Oh, it’s even worse on wasd. It’s like only being able to steer by wild swerving.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

“The potential here is absurd,” wrote app developer Nick Dobos in reaction to the news. “Why write complex rules for software by hand when the AI can just think every pixel for you?”

“Can it run Doom?”

“Sure, do you have a spare datacenter or two full of GPUs, and perhaps a nuclear powerplant for a PSU?”

What the fuck are these people smoking. Apparently it can manage 20 fps on one “TPU” but to get there it was trained on shitload of footage of Doom. So just play Doom?!

The researchers speculate that with the technique, new video games might be created “via textual descriptions or examples images” rather than programming, and people may be able to convert a set of still images into a new playable level or character for an existing game based solely on examples rather than relying on coding skill.

It keeps coming back to this, the assumption that these models, if you just feed them enough stuff will somehow become able to “create” something completely new, as if they don’t fall apart the second you ask for something that wasn’t somewhere in the training data. Not to mention that this type of “gaming engine” will never be as efficient as an actual one.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Ok.

Try to get an image generator to create an image of a tennis racket, with all racket-like objects or relevant sport data removed from the training data.

Explain the concept to it with words alone, accurately enough to get something that looks exactly like the real thing. Maybe you can give it pictures, but one won’t really be enough, you’ll basically have to give it that chunk of training data you removed.

That’s the problem you’ll run into the second you want to realize a new game genre.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Obviously.

But at what point does that guidance just become the dataset you removed from the training data?

To get it to run Doom, they used Doom.

To realize a new genre, you’ll “just” have to make that game the old fashion way, first.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

You are completely missing what I’m saying.

I know the input doesn’t alter the model, that’s not what I mean.

And “general” models are only “general” in the sense that they are massively bloated and still crap at dealing with shit that they weren’t trained on.

And no, “comprehending” new concepts by palette swapping something and smashing two existing things together isn’t the kind of creativity I’m saying these systems are incapable of.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Bloated, as in large and heavy. More expensive, more power hungry, less efficient.

I already brought it up. They can’t deal with something completely new.

When you discuss what you want with a human artist or programmer or whatever, there is a back and forth process where both parties explain and ask until comprehension is achieved, and this improves the result. The creativity on display is the kind that can unfold and realize a complex idea based on simple explanations even when it is completely novel.

It doesn’t matter if the programmer has played games with regenerating health before, one can comprehend and implement the concept based on just a couple sentences.

Now how would you do the same with a “general” model that didn’t have any games that work like that in the training data?

My point is that “general” models aren’t a thing. Not really. We can make models that are really, really big, but they remain very bad at filling in gaps in reality that weren’t in the training data. They don’t start magically putting two and two together and comprehending all the rest.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

In a couple sentences? In a way that doesn’t approach, equal or exceed the effort of training the model with that data to begin with?

You insist these models can do new things out of nothing, and you keep saying “all you have to do, is give them something”.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

My argument was and is that neural models don’t produce anything truly new. That they can’t handle things outside what is outlined by the data they were trained on.

Are you not claiming otherwise?

You say it’s possible to guide models into doing new things, and I can see how that’s the case, especially if the model is a very big one, meaning it is more likely that it has relevant structures to apply to the task.

But I’m also pretty damn sure they have insurmountable limits. You can’t “guide” and LLM into doing image generation, except by having it interact with an image generation model.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Even if it is, it’s a derivation I’ve been sorely missing. Ever since Battleborn got shut down, there’s been a Battleborn shaped hole in my heart. Deadlock fits in that hole really well.

It’s possible that the whole impetus for creating Deadlock came from something like that. Someone at valve, like me, enjoyed the hell out this particular mix of mechanics.

There’s nothing like it. Dota doesn’t do the trick, neither does Overwatch. Of all things, the closest thing might be Titanfall 2’s titan combat.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Don’t they supposedly have a couple other games in the works, too? What are the chances they’re working on three new MOBAs?

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

No. Some also like Gigantic, but they never appealed to me enough to try em.

I was in the Battleborn beta, and had such a blast I absolutely had to keep playing, so I bought it day one.

I was really sad to see it be loved by those that played it, and hated as an “Overwatch clone” by everyone else.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

If you play or want to play: !deadlock

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

No. More a third person Battleborn, actually. Or Dota with guns. It has items, ability leveling, hero leveling, lanes, NPCS, all the MOBA things.

And no, Battleborn never played like Overwatch.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

It’s not for everyone, but it has fit surprisingly well into the Battleborn-shaped hole in my heart.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Deadlock or Battleborn?

I’d say yes. But you do have to figure out how to apply the MOBA way of thinking. How to stack the stats of items, abilities and leveling up, into doing a shitload of damage without dying.

That applied to Battelborn, and it does in Deadlock, too.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

I’d be very worried if a studio was pumping out several full-scale games a year. Did you mean publisher? I find following publishers to be pretty hit or miss, they usually deal with a multitude of game studios whose output will vary wildly. The days of EA making a bunch of EA games is over, now people care whether it’s Dice, Respawn or BioWare, and what the specific game is like.

Studios still just making games do exist. Kojima Productions, Santa Monica, Guerilla, Remedy, Fromsoft, Square Enix, Larian, Id Tech, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, CDPR…

They’re just relatively fewer and farther between as so many studios have pivoted to spending years and years working on one live service title or another, and the rest of these you only really hear from once in several years, when a game comes out.

For publishers, Devolver and Paradox come to mind.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Yes and no.

It’s not as good as dead space, and not as scary.

It does have decent atmosphere, cool visuals, etc. The combat system is very good. Much more action game than horror game. The melee system meant that not running out of ammo and being careful with your shots wasn’t as important as in dead space.

It falls short in several disappointing ways. The “stealth” system is a joke. There’s a level where you have to sneak around “blind” monsters that only act on sound, except you can walk right up to them and just melee kill them, LOUDLY, without any of the others reacting.

So the stealth sections are completely trivial.

There’s a pretty interesting enemy in the form of the automated security robots of the prison, except it literally shows up in just the tutorial, where it shows you how to deal with them, but then they’re utterly absent in the rest of the game.

The whole game is really impressive in a couple ways (graphics and animation, the combat system) but it feels like 50% of what was supposed to be in it was cut, and like several mechanics never got implemented.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

It was good in many ways. And it expands on dead space in many ways mechanically, it just didn’t follow through in some aspects.

The guns are cool and there’s a very satisfying melee system.

But the melee system is overpowered, which means monsters are less scary. The sound-based stealth sections where you go through rooms full of blind monsters that allegedly react to sound, have the monsters being completely deaf to melee kills, which means you can just walk up to them one by one and clear the room.

And you’re right about the story. The game should have had LORE, but it’s just the bare minimum generic excuse to have a horror setting.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

That it’s a good game on it’s own premise

It doesn’t really even manage that. It’s not bad, there’s a lot to like, but playing it I ran into a lot of stuff I wish was there, but wasn’t.

The story was one thing, but it completely fails at bulding tension. DS1 fills you with adrenaline at regular intervals, but in Callisto Protocol the second I realized the “sound-sensitive” blind enemies don’t react to the noise of melee combat, it was like all the air went out of the balloon.

That’s a perfect microcosm of the whole game. Really neat ideas, really good execution, but only to 90%. And that last 10% matters. A LOT.

The combat system is great, but it doesn’t lean into it at all. The final boss is just a bullet sponge that makes no clever use of any mechanics, and the game is so obsessed with trying to be DS (and TLOU) with boring stealth sections and puzzles.

You end up spending a lot of time wishing combat was happening.

I feel like a Callisto Protocol 2 that leans into the things worked, and fixed just a couple small things that get near working, could be amazing.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Rebirth when.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

!deadlock has a thread for inviting and getting invited in case the guy who already commented doesn’t get you in.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

I’d be suggesting Battleborn if it wasn’t dead…

Maybe Predecessor (paragon reboot)?

Marvel Rivals might be a bit too close to Overwatch, or maybe that’s a good thing?

You might consider just not playing ranked. In anything. Assigning a number to my skill level and that of others had a negative effect on my relationship with games and using them to have fun. Recognizing that and just playing to play instead of to appease the rating system, has led to much more fun coming out of my fun.

It doesn’t mean you can’t get better at the game over time, only that you’ll be the judge of your progress, instead of an arbitrary number that won’t ever feel truly fair.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

I completely disabled both text and voice chat, and haven’t looked back.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

…

Ok yeah that’s really fucking uncool.

There are absolutely actors who are down to do that stuff but you can’t hire people with a script sight-unseen and just drop stuff on them that might straight up give some people a panic attack to even think about, let alone re-enact.

Title makes you think there are actors who don’t want games in general to contain explicit adult content, but this is 100% reasonable, and yet another reason voice actors and game industry workers need to unionize.

I bet your ass the same shit is happening with asset creators and animators.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

In some countries, some people, in some parts of the industry, are unionized. It’s not even close to being the norm. It’s only slowly starting to happen.

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu

Rock and stone!

!drg

MentalEdge, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Literally just sat and benefitted from the hype to get some sales, then shat all over everything right before people actually start having fun.

Nevermind that if it went live, likely would have meant even more sales.

MentalEdge, 2 miesiące temu

It’s going to require a crowdstrike type fuckup, exploit, or privacy scandal on a widely used AC like EAC before public opinion changes on this.

So many games are making the trade-off and it only makes sense because players don’t understand what they are giving in to.

MentalEdge, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah, but it didn’t affect gamers. People don’t care until something either does affect them, or in a VERY in your face kind of way, could.

Crowdstrike, unfortunately, is a funny “lol the corporates fucked their own shit up” case and the average gamer simply won’t connect the dots.

MentalEdge, 2 miesiące temu

Good. Hopefully they actually get somewhere with that.

I’m just not seeing popular opinion among gamers wising up to the risks of kernel level access.

MentalEdge, 2 miesiące temu

Dunno. But it seems like its bulletproofing has been accurately translated into the game.

MentalEdge, 2 miesiące temu

bingo

MentalEdge, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

2 and 3 feel like saints row knock-offs for 12-year-olds.

The first game was… Genuinely different in a lot of ways.

The mod is called Living City and adds so much, it might almost be the real Watch Dogs 2 we never got. What the series could have been had it not gone off the rails.

15 minute video that showcases the many, many things the mod adds to the game.