MentalEdge

MentalEdge, 7 miesięcy temu

What the others said.

Maybe you need to take a break from games and indulge in some other, or new, hobby.

I like audiobooks, electric skateboards, cycling, manga… And more.

You could also expand the kinds of games you play. I keep trying new genres and if one gets boring I try something else.

Don’t force yourself if you aren’t having fun. That’s a quick way to really ruin something you like.

I’ve gone through several episodes of feeling like there’s nothing I want to play… But, if I keep giving things a chance, and make sure not to burn myself out by trying to find something too hard, or forcing myself to play something because it “supposed” to be fun, even when right then it isnt, something eventually gets me hooked right back in.

Most recently that has been Deadlock. I can’t get enough of it and the feeling is the best.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

Actual game website

Also it’s apparently already being completely destroyed by a cheater.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

The environments in the game are truly insane.

The mind place IMO is one of the most graphically impressive rooms I’ve seen in any game. Saga looks SO REAL in it.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

Did you get the scare that can happen in the Mind Place?

There’s one point in the story, where after interacting with the clue board and exiting out, turning around, a cultist will appear in the room.

If you got used to just switching between the different things in the mind place using the buttons, though, instead of walking around, it never happens.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

That’s a good community idea. And I’m on the right instance for it. Remedy is Finnish, after all.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

They wont.

Remedy games have been “underperforming” despite rave reviews for a while. Yet they’ve been chugging along doing what they think is neat, instead of caving into the current money-making models.

And in this case, the Epic partnership definitely hurt the game. And they know it did. Before AW2, it was microsoft putting the breaks of Quantum Break despite it being great.

Control was the first time since Max Payne I felt they truly achieved the success that their level of quality deserves (and even then it was a timed epic exclusive).

Now Remedy has set themselves up to finally self-publish the follow-up to Control. I can’t wait.

Remedy has fans, but something always seems to get in the way.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

It’s published by Epic (Control was published by 505). Unless Epic significantly compromises on their insistence of pushing the Epic store, it wont happen.

Ever.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Extremely unlikely. AW2 was funded by Epic, not just paid off to be a timed exclusive like Control (which was published by 505).

That means Epic decides where it gets distributed.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

We know one of their WIP titles is a PvE multiplayer game set in their connected universe. Aside from that, nothing more is known, except for your generic corporate “we’re excited about our future projects with Remedy” statements from 505.

I’d be very suprised if Remedy turns around and makes it overtly exploitative.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Ok. Unfortunately it sounds like you’re asking me to stop liking a studio that I like, based on speculation about how a future title of theirs might work. That’s not an actionable argument.

Nothing about a multiplayer title requires it be made in a way that will break whenever the official servers go down. You are assuming this one will work that way, and I’ll grant you it likely will.

But the change we both want isn’t going to come from voting with our wallets, but even harder.

It’ll come from something like this.

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

…

That pedestal being, that they keep making games that are just plain good, despite at the same time being involved with shit industry practices by working with Microsoft and Epic?

I think that particular pedestal is pretty fucking deserved. And one that looks their faults in the eyes.

They keep making good stuff, while marred by the bullshit that allows them to fund the studio.

Why do you think I’m specifically excited for them to finally do something fully self-published, so they can make something I can enjoy with no fucking strings attached?

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Have you been petting the deer?

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

Have you noticed that the deer in the Mind Place will tell you how many you haven’t found?

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

• Katana ZERO
• Hades
• Satisfactory

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

It hurts

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

!photomode

MentalEdge, 8 miesięcy temu

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, 8 miesięcy 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, 8 miesięcy temu

Heroic gets a lot closer in this regard.

MentalEdge, 9 miesięcy 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, 9 miesięcy temu

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

MentalEdge, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy 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, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy 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, 9 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu

Yes.

MentalEdge, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu

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

MentalEdge, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy temu)

If you play or want to play: !deadlock

MentalEdge, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu

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

MentalEdge, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy 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, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy 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.