Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.
While I disagree with your comment on the definition of “enshittification”, I agree that forced stealth sections are just bad design. I remember those have been a thing for a long time now, and before then it was ice levels.
Copying from a later reply: I was reading their definition as being too specific. Imo enshittification is any time the relative average quality of a class of products or services decreases, either due to increased prices or decreased quality at the same price. This can be applied to a specific product or service, but can also describe a decline in quality across an industry.
I was reading your definition as being too specific. Imo enshittification is any time the relative average quality of a class of products or services decreases, either due to increased prices or decreased quality at the same price. This can be applied to a specific product or service, but can also describe a decline in quality across an industry.
What recent events? Why don’t you tell us what these recent events are? Would you, perhaps, care to expand on what these recent events might be? Because it seems like if you’re crying about that, then maybe you’re not a nice person.
I couldn’t get through Halo 4’s campaign when it was released as part of the MCC, nor was I able to get though Halo Infinite’s (it wasn’t bad, just… meh; nowhere near as good as the Bungie campaigns but not trash either, just not as good). I would still like the option to play Halo 5 on PC just so I have the ability to play the main campaign, plus I’ve heard it’s the best multiplayer Halo? But yeah. Even if I never actually play it, it’s nice to have the option.
On a tangential note, I think 343’s Halo games would have been considered good if it wasn’t for Bungie’s Halo. I don’t think their campaigns are honestly bad, per se (though again, haven’t tried to play H5), they’re just bad in comparison to the “OG” games.
I mean, this is a pretty normal distinction afaik (human vs non-human creations; afaik non-human creations almost always have any human copyright claims voided when challenged).
Imo what makes this special is how precise he’s being. If I understand correctly, he’s basically saying that the code for the health bar is a human creation and protected by copyright, but while the code to change the health value might be human-made, the actual values are machine-made and not under copyright (there’s probably a lot of nuance I’m skipping over, but my understanding is that’s the gist of it).
What this is saying is that the Minecraft world would not be under copyright, but anything the player built in that world would be. So you can’t copyright the world itself, but you can copyright any human-made constructions in that world.
This is wholly preferable to the alternative options which could result in things like being able to copyright AI-generated works (applying his logic to AI, they’re basically saying you can copyright any edits to an AI-gen image, but not the image itself because that was AI-gen).
No, no it wouldn’t. You’re still using math, you’re just using a different language. If apple bananas becomes apple pears after being hit by a bullet, you’ve changed the value. That is what math describes. You cannot avoid this. This is how computers work, and math is just another language to describe things. Even if every health value is a string, you still need to keep track of which string is currently in use so that you know when to kill the player. That requires math. That is what they’re talking about. It is not the in-game health indicator that is public domain, it is the actual health value in RAM that is generated and modified during gameplay.
It is better this way. Copyright is already abused to hell and back, if they expanded copyright to cover this kinda stuff then it would potentially destroy things like right-to-repair as companies could claim copyright infringement on anything that modifies their code.
[alt text: an illustration of an elderly man and a middle-aged man standing side-by-side and looking into an open garage. The old man is saying, “One day Son, all this will be yours.” The garage is filled floor-to-ceiling with old video game boxes, discs, and cartridges. ]
Meh, give it another 10yrs and Wii games will be selling at the original prices. Rip game/vintage computer collecting. You were a fun and inexpensive hobby until the rich assholes got to it.
There are still companies that make physical copies, but typically it’s in limited quantities and sadly I’ve found that most of them (especially one of the big ones, LRG) can be pretty scummy. I think the only two I’ve found that are worth buying stuff from are iam8bit and fangamer.
Sim, arcade, simcade, anything. I’m kinda disconnected from the genre and want to know what is considered the GOATs of racing games to try them out....
TrackMania – I recommend Nations Forever if you’re starting out; it’s free and Nations was the “meta” environment (different environments have different physics) for a long time, so there’s a fuckton of custom content for it.
As for what it is: it’s like the racing genre’s Quake equivalent. It’s also like super hot wheels. And it’s like Mario Maker. You make all kinds of crazy tracks with it, like Mario Maker. The tracks feature all kinds of wall rides, half-pipes, jumps, loops, and so on, with nothing more than inertia holding you to the track; like hot wheels. And finally, like Quake (and Mario Maker), the high-level players are bat shit insane.
This is the game where you get people who can hit a jump at just the right angle so they thread the needle through a series of holes barely larger than the car while travelling at speeds well above 300mph (welcome to TrackMania, I don’t think there’s a speed cap). They also do it using keyboards. Seriously. High-level TrackMania players use keyboards, not gamepads or, god forbid, racing wheels.
All of that said, no pressure because you’re mainly racing yourself, even in multiplayer. You’re trying to get the best time on a track, and multiplayer is basically the same, except your time is being compared with everyone else’s. There isn’t even any vehicle collision (strangely, there’s an option for it, but it doesn’t seem to do anything).
Huh, I was under the impression that high level players used keyboards and that gamepads were unusual. I was almost certain I’d read that keyboards were considered better because they were full-on/full-off instead of analog; the logic being that it let you respond faster. Where an analog stick would have some ramp-up time when you switch directions, a keyboard would register a full press the moment the key is pressed far enough to complete the circuit. Meanwhile, the physics of Nations were made with keyboards in mind, so analog controls wouldn’t offer that much of an improvement.
At least, I was sure that’s what I’d read.
Edit: that may have been before TrackMania 2, I’m not even sure if Nations supports analog controls. I haven’t played any of the games after Nations/United.
I was curious enough that I looked into it a bit and it sounds like the difference is negligible at this point because they added keyboard binds for partial presses in response to analog keyboards(?). Again, I haven’t played TM2 or anything after, last game I played was TMUF/TMNF, so I haven’t tried using them myself, however when I was looking to see what the kb/controller/wheel split was I found a lot of people saying that there isn’t a strong reason to use one over the other anymore due to the new binds.
Edit: it actually makes me kinda happy to talk about this. I loved the games as a teenager, but they were too niche and I never had anyone to talk to about them.
Edit 2: damn, I remember finding the OG game at Fry’s and thinking it looked like the coolest game ever and getting confused when no one else thought it was sick as fuck (everyone was into Halo and CoD, and tbf, I was into them too; but I had patrician tastes that spanned multiple genres, not like the casuals I grew up around u.u)
Do old build-engine shooters like Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, etc count?
Sapienza, Italy in Hitman has outfits for red and green plumbers.
Sam and Max has references to all kinds of things.
Hypnospace Outlaw has a ton of references to pre-y2k pop culture.
Power Wash simulator has a number of official crossovers with IPs like SpongeBob, Warhammer, Laura Croft, Final Fantasy VII, etc. (oh shit I just checked and there’s a Shrek one coming out soon).
Maybe the most significant issue is that, for some reason, the Seekers of the Storm update has tied Risk of Rain 2’s physics systems to its frame rate. When asked about it on Discord, Gearbox developer GBX-Preston said FPS-related issues, “and all the ramifications on balance/physics/attack speed/movement/etc. were not intentional. This is in our top handful of issues we’re investigating.” As a stopgap, he said players experiencing issues should lock the game at 60 fps.
Jesus Christ what a wild story. Is it possible that Craven simply wanted to do good, but “as a white, abled man” wasn’t opening doors so they felt they had to pretend to be someone else? From what it sounds like, a lot of what they and their “”“partners”“” did was legitimately helpful. The thing that leaves me confused is that they probably could have fleeced people for significantly more money but didn’t. They didn’t have to put the amount of effort into it as they did. Is it possible they were trying to do the right thing but were going about it the wrong way?
As someone is very much not cisgender, I look at it and go “Well, isn’t every FTM going to pick Body Type A with male pronouns while MTFs like myself go with Body Type B with female pronouns? Who outside of a Far Right Troll trying and failing to be funny is gonna pick the buff bearded dude and select the she/her pronouns?”
Me! What do you have against bearded, manly ladies? They’re awesome!
It is kinda lazy to have “full masculine” and “full feminine” as your only choices while pretending they aren’t just “male” or “female”, but at the same time, I think it’s a step in the right direction. Today the options might be “not-man” and “not-woman”, but the future might have “not-man”, “not-woman”, “man-woman” and “woman-man”!
Please stop putting RGB on everything? Can we return to the cool colored plastics for a bit and see what modern technology can do? I bet you could do some wild shit with modern plastics.
I’m wondering how long it is until someone pulls another Kaze and over-optimizes an old console game until it runs in 1080p@60fps on original hardware or something.
(Kaze Emanuar is a ROM hacker with a deep understanding of Super Mario 64. A couple years ago he released a video showing how he spent a ton of time optimizing the game, resulting in a game that runs on original hardware at 60fps instead of 20fps. Afaik he hasn’t released the vanilla code yet, but I’ve heard he’s used it in some of his other rom hacks and it’s apparently extremely obvious because they run significantly faster than hacks that use the default, unoptimized ROM)
TL;DR: Any recommendations for a game like Overwatch that actually functions? XDefiant was promising, but it doesn’t have “roles” that don’t require shooting, so my friend got frustrated....
Team Fortress 2? That was the game Overwatch was kinda imitating, so might be worth trying it out if you haven’t. Just keep in mind that you might have to avoid matchmaking and manually browse for servers. TF2 was having a bot problem, I dunno if valve ever fixed it.
I recently played through a demo for a game called Pinball Spire on steam, and it put me in the mood for playing pinball games. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is just due to me having bad google-foo, there don’t seem to be that many on Steam that catch my interest....
Space Cadet was one of Maxis’ Full-Tilt Pinball tables. Afaik it’s not in the public domain, Microsoft licensed it from Maxis. However, I’m not sure EA would actually enforce the copyright unless someone was making a lot of money off it.
If New Horizons was your first animal crossing game and you were disappointed by the lack of personality that the villagers had, go play the original AC. Almost no customization options outside of your house interior, but the villagers have way, way, waaaay more personality. Not really surprising since, iirc the series was originally supposed to be focused on your interactions with the villagers.
Oh man, they get absolutely pissed if you hit them +3 times with an axe or net, which is way easier to do by accident than you’d want; if you hit a villager once, the game seems to assume that you want to hit them again, so attempting to interact just results in you pummeling/slashing the villager. I’ve had them tell me I don’t deserve friends, that I’m a freak, that I’m a horrible creature who shouldn’t be around people, etc…
Even if you don’t accidentally or intentionally piss them off, they can be very rude and condescending when you first start playing. They chill out after you start interacting with them (and you have to interact if you want them to treat you nicer), but it can take weeks for them to start doing that. That’s what I love about the GameCube animal crossing; the villagers aren’t tripping over themselves to make you happy. In New Horizons, villagers basically exist to make you happy and feel better about yourself; however, they make it very clear they don’t like you at first in the original.
(Also yes, you can hit villagers with an axe in the OG game and they have a slightly different reaction to it. It’s hard to do though and would seem like a bug if it weren’t for the fact that they react differently to it)
I haven’t played City Folk, Wild World or New Leaf, however my impression is that the GC/N64 version is the only one where the villagers can be actually hostile to you. One of the biggest differences aside from personality, is that you have very little freedom when it comes to village customization. You can basically plant or cut down trees or flowers, and that’s about it.
Note: there are like, 4 different versions of the OG animal crossing, the international GameCube release is the only one with an English translation.
no autosaves and Resetti will chew you out if you reset/quit without saving (New Horizons added autosaves and almost entirely removed Resetti).
time travelling back in time relative to your last save will also trigger Resetti.
playable NES games. They can be hard to find, but you can play them if you get any (iirc you can also transfer the roms to your GBA/GBA SP to play on-the-go)
home customization is still a thing in the original; however you only have a max of 3 rooms (2nd floor, 1st floor, basement). However, you can’t customize your basement floor or walls and the basement won’t count towards your HHA score.
no “cloud” storage, all storage is in furniture items, which have a max capacity of 3 non-furniture items (clothes, tickets, flooring and walls are fine, but not furniture). This is what the basement is for. (It’s actually kinda fascinating how furniture storage works, but I won’t get into that unless you’re interested)
maximum of 15 villagers instead of 10.
you can ask villagers if they have any chores for you; this is actually a great option and I’m annoyed they removed it because it means you don’t have to repeatedly spam villager dialog with the hope they’ll eventually give you a task.
there’s an island you can visit with another house which you can use as storage if you want. However, it’s a bit difficult to access on emulators because you can only get to it if you have a GBA connected, so you have to either emulate a connected GBA or use gecko/AR code to permanently enable Kapp’n.
no town hall
there are cops (they don’t really do anything except tell you if there are any free lost items in the lost-and-found or if there are any upcoming events).
Tom Nook is the only real vendor, as afaik Mable and Able only sell custom designs. Additionally, instead of Redd, it’s Tom Nook who occasionally sells artwork for the museum.
There are probably others I’m forgetting, but that’s kinda the main gist of it.
My biggest complaint about Sims-likes is that the visual style always looks too serious. It gives me the feeling that whatever I’m going to do with my not-Sims, it’s gonna be something that makes me regret my real life.
You wanna know what I did the last time I played the Sims 2 though? I repeatedly held parties at my Sim’s house and then lured the guests into a room they couldn’t get out of. I also used the moveobjects cheat to collect police cars whenever a cop showed up to shut the party down. By the time I was done I had amassed around 70 urns, many hysterical immortal Sims (Sims with households can’t die while visiting someone’s house in the Sims 2), 4 Police cars and a fire truck.
The Sims has a mischievous air to it that tickles the devil on your shoulder and begs you to listen to them. None of the Sims-likes I’m aware of seem to have the same air.
No. It’s easier to go after the “good guys” than the bad guys because they’re easier to beat. They won’t use all kinds of slimy, underhanded tactics to fuck you over.
Edit: I don’t approve of the lawsuit against valve, but that’s the way of the world. Scummy companies and people have many tools they can use to drag you down to their level.
It appears to be part of a series of fake DMCAs. Some asshat has been going around dmca-ing sfm, Gmod, and tf2 maps under different names with a lookalike email domain.
I mean, there kinda is. Gambling addiction is a fairly well known phenomenon and while the vast majority of games aren’t purely gambling, many of them do share mechanics with gambling games. One could argue that if a game shares too many mechanics normally seen in gambling and are associated with addiction, then gambling addiction could apply.
Another thing to note is that, if I understand correctly, the modern professional definitions of “addiction” aren’t exclusive to substance abuse but include anything that can cause someone to repetitively engage in a particular behavior despite any negative effects it may have. You could argue that if someone is engaging in gaming to the detriment of their own lives, then they’re addicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the developers fault though, people can get addicted to just about any system that triggers some kind of reward in the brain.
However, to add onto the previous statement, it is fairly well documented that some games (World of Warcraft is an infamous example) are specifically designed to keep players engaged for as long as possible without any regard for the player’s wellbeing. If a game has a lot of systems that are designed to keep the player hooked for as long as possible then it’s reasonable to argue that the game is designed to be addictive. The catch is that you’d likely have to prove that the developers were being intentionally malicious.
I was speaking in a general sense. You’re right that it seems like an outlier, but it’s also possible they were playing on custom servers which could implement addictive mechanics like lootboxes. However, at the same time, it’s not the fault of Minecraft’s devs if a custom server has lootboxes. Again though, I was speaking in a general sense because I was replying to someone saying that gaming addiction is unproven boomer shit; and not about this specific case.
LISTEN UP ASSHOLES. IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS GODDAMN GAME, GO DO IT. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. EAT SHIT, PLAY CRUELTY SQUAD. I WILL NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER.
IT’S MUCH EASIER TO SEE WHEN THINGS ARE IN MOTION. EITHER WAY, IF SOMETHING MOVES, SHOOT IT. NO ONE CARES. EVERYONE IS EVIL. YOU JUST WON’T GET PAID FOR THE BODY. YOU’LL GET THE HANG OF IT IN NO TIME.
No, humble bundle isn’t run by them anymore. They haven’t been run by the wolfire guys since 2017. If I’m wrong and they are then I’m probably not buying anything from humble again.
Suing valve. Like, valve is the only company I’m okay with having the amount of marketshare they currently have. I’m legit worried that if they go too hard on the lawsuit, it could result in the monkey’s paw curling (“I wish valve didn’t have so much marketshare” “granted: steam has been spun off into its own company. Without steam, valve goes under and “steamcorp’s” new management goes public”)
I think the reason why valve is doing this is because people might buy a game at a higher price, either on Steam or another storefront, and then complain that it was cheaper on Steam or another storefront and start demanding refunds or demand that Valve reduce the game’s price on steam.
What do you do then?
If you don’t address it, you’re automatically seen as the asshole even if it was the developer’s choice.
You can give out refunds, which makes you look like the good guy, but that also looks bad to companies like Visa or PayPal (my understanding is that large numbers of refunds tend to look bad to payment processors, even if the refund was initiated from the company and not the consumer). Granted, Valve is a big enough company that they shouldn’t have issues with that kinda thing, especially since they already offer refunds, but my understanding is that it still doesn’t look good to payment processors and can make them upset.
You can ask the developer to reduce the price on steam, but what if the dev says no?
You can force the dev to reduce the price, but now you’re even more of an asshole.
You can lower the cost on your storefront and cover the difference yourself, but now you’re potentially losing money. That, if I’m not mistaken, is actually anti-competative from a legal standpoint.
You’re kinda screwed if you’re trying to be the good guy.
That’s not even getting into how bad it looks if it’s cheaper on steam than somewhere else when you have a marketshare as large as Valve’s.
Literally a used Switch game in a big, ridiculous bag with a “New” sticker on it. Imagine going into a GameStop with a game in a bag like this and convincing them to give you credit for it as “New”....
I think there was more to it than that. It seemed more like a situation where they could kill two birds with one stone. They could destroy, or at least severely damage the stock market by ensuring the hedgefunds couldn’t buy back the shorted stock, and even if they didn’t, they had the chance to become extremely wealthy while trying.
It probably would have worked too if it weren’t for those meddling kids stock brokers like Robin Hood working with hedgefunds to claw back stocks and the SEC towering over them with potential charges of market manipulation.
seeing its recent surge in popularity it seems like a lot of people found out about the whole genre of quake-like games!!! and the level design is absolutely the most thought out ive seen in years
Any game with a forced stealth section needs to have it as a warning so you know not to buy crap. angielski
Godot fork- Redot emerges after recent events within the Godot project. (github.com) angielski
EDIT context from know your meme of all places Apologies :D :...
After 11 years, Xbox One emulators are finally coming to PC - but they're not actually using emulation at all (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement (www.techdirt.com) angielski
passing on treasures (beehaw.org) angielski
[alt text: an illustration of an elderly man and a middle-aged man standing side-by-side and looking into an open garage. The old man is saying, “One day Son, all this will be yours.” The garage is filled floor-to-ceiling with old video game boxes, discs, and cartridges. ]
What are your favorite racing games? (lemmy.world) angielski
Sim, arcade, simcade, anything. I’m kinda disconnected from the genre and want to know what is considered the GOATs of racing games to try them out....
What are the best video games full of references to other media? (fedia.io) angielski
I know that World of Warcraft has several of them. What others?
Gearbox's first Risk of Rain 2 expansion gets hammered on Steam as developer admits the PC version 'is in a really bad place' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
What are some game series you would like to see revived? And if possible, which entry should the new game follow from? angielski
For example, for me, I would love a new Populous game based from what was done in Populous 3. That, and a new SimCity based on SimCity 4!
A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. (www.ign.com) angielski
I don't hate Body Type replacing Gender, I hate laziness angielski
This is a bit of a rant, but please try to stick with me through the whole thing...
Zotac Gaming Zone handheld gaming PC launches for $799 (with Ryzen 7 8840U, 120 Hz display, and dual trackpads) - Liliputing (liliputing.com) angielski
What games popularized certain mechanics? angielski
I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry....
'If You Give A Dev A Tricked Out Xbox, They’ll Patch Halo 2' - Hackaday article (hackaday.com) angielski
Looking for Overwatch alternatives angielski
TL;DR: Any recommendations for a game like Overwatch that actually functions? XDefiant was promising, but it doesn’t have “roles” that don’t require shooting, so my friend got frustrated....
Know any good pinball video games? angielski
I recently played through a demo for a game called Pinball Spire on steam, and it put me in the mood for playing pinball games. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if this is just due to me having bad google-foo, there don’t seem to be that many on Steam that catch my interest....
Let's discuss: Animal Crossing (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Paradox Interactive has completely cancelled "Life By You" (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Very surprising. The game looked like it had a lot of potential and could’ve been the most popular sims alternative, but it’s suddenly been cancelled.
$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
OlliOlli, Kerbal Space Program Teams Shut Down by GTA Publisher (www.pushsquare.com)
Gutted by this
Nintendo Forcing Garry's Mod To Delete 20 Years' Worth Of Content (kotaku.com) angielski
Garry's Mod to remove ALL Nintendo content from the Steam Workshop due to takedown (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Holy shit, I can’t even imagine the amount of mods that will get erased. There were so many fan-mods, maps, minigames, models… Fucking Nintendo…
You can't sue us for making games 'too entertaining,' say major game developers in response to addiction lawsuits (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
A handheld Xbox? Microsoft’s gaming chief can’t stop thinking about it (www.polygon.com) angielski
Rumored Nintendo Switch Flash Cart Video Shows Multiple Games on a Single Cart (wccftech.com) angielski
SEGA Reveal Teasers (Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Crazy Taxi and More) (www.youtube.com) angielski
Cruelty Squad got awarded by The National Arts Councils of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) (www.taike.fi) angielski
cross-posted from: sopuli.xyz/post/6273186...
Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
"The Next Subnautica" aims to deliver underwater survival spooks in early 2025 (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
GameStop’s definition of “New” (lemmy.world) angielski
Literally a used Switch game in a big, ridiculous bag with a “New” sticker on it. Imagine going into a GameStop with a game in a bag like this and convincing them to give you credit for it as “New”....
what does lemmy think of cruelty squad? angielski
seeing its recent surge in popularity it seems like a lot of people found out about the whole genre of quake-like games!!! and the level design is absolutely the most thought out ive seen in years