[alt text: a black-and-white image of 8 creepy human-like figures floating in the air, with a building and a tree in the background. The caption says, “When you and the boys are playing in Creative Mode and one of them says, ‘Come check out what I made’.”]
The Switch really isn’t that good. It’s just the competition is so bad right now. Nintendo sells so good because they keep making good games and knows how to appeal to the mass market, not just to a specific core audience. I don’t like many things about the Switch and that includes its hardware, software and the shop. But I’m not the core audience of this system either, so fair enough I guess.
I agree mostly and did the same. At some point when the Steam Deck was new, I really thought about getting a Switch instead alongside my PC. Because the Steam Deck is more like an extension to the eco system I already have with my PC (especially as a Linux user). On the other side, the Switch would widen the the number of games to play. You can’t buy specific games on PC, such as some of the most beloved franchises and games in history.
I went with the Steam Deck, as a fan of Steam, Linux and PC in general. The Switch system is what, 7 years old? 8? Even games from its launch time are still sold very expensive. Plus Nintendo does really bad things to the fan games and such, that I won’t support this company any longer.
It’s not just “it was”, but “it is”. I am right now playing TOTK on Yuzu (yes the one that is no longer available) at 1440p 60 fps, with around 60 hours and near the end. I played this year BOTW the same, but 130 hours! And I enjoy them with my favorite controller at the moment, the Xbox Series S controller. The experience is not perfect, but I think much better than on original hardware.
I recently booted up Half-Life 2 to replay it. I have played the absolute shit out of this game before, so 60% of it just feels like a drag to me now. It was such an amazing game but it’s sort of spoiled for me after I’ve played it too much....
I’m with the stance of Valve here. Don’t use AI, if you didn’t train the data yourself. Generative AI can be useful and safe, if you trained it yourself. Using AI itself is not the problem and even Nintendo can benefit from it.
The situation is different from the 90s companies not wanting to use computers. Using AI today is a risk of violating copyright. The reason is totally different and is not comparable.
Activision, Ubisoft, and EA, all multibillion game dev company, said they’ll be using generative AI to make their game
Because these companies don’t care stealing assets and work of others. AI makes it very easy and it won’t be too obvious. Problem with AI is, its trained on data they probably have no rights to use for. But its hard to provide evidence, until its too late and obvious.
Edit: ugh, I lost myself in this reply. It’s just geeking about the future what could be possible, mostly not worth reading if you value your time.
This is one of the most exciting developments to me, the actual AI of bots or NPCs. Not only for RPG games, I can also envision multiplayer games to be more fun playing offline with bots. Imagine they act like humans, with their hearings and trying to trick you out in Mario Kart, Street Fighter and Counter Strike. Obviously we are long way from this, but this is very exciting to me.
Also GTA where people act normal and do stuff humans would probably try too is exciting as well. In RPGs imagine you hear about a hero in a village who defends its town and you recruit him, finding out its just a normal NPC for other players, but got strong because it found a holy weapon you dropped near to him in the beginning of the game. Just totally wild idea I know, but what if the future of games (probably 50 years from now… sheesh) is extremely rich and dynamic? I have no idea how this vision could be accomplished without AI and always server connection to power servers…
Yes and no. The developers mostly still care making good games. Therefore some games are still good. Also we got a few good surprises in the last few years from these companies, so its not all lost.
I have been a PC gamer for the majority of my life. But before that, i was a console player on the NES. But NES mainly had platformers, and no 3d games. So i am not used to movement and camera controls simultaneously at all....
It’s like coming from gamepad to arcade sticks, when playing fighting games. There is nothing else you can do, other than train and play and git gud. Try the original DOOM, and I mean the first DOOM from the 90s. You don’t have to aim up or down, only left and right and its not precise as todays shooters. Maybe play that on a lower difficulty and see if you can get used to it.
Overwatch 2, which is Free To Play, has a training area and courses for heroes you can try. Take the simple Soldier, which is your average FPS character, and maybe you can get used to the controls. You don’t have to play online, just try it out against bots and do these training courses. Maybe that helps.
If you play such a shooter every day, DOOM, and others, than you will get used to it and build up muscle memory. Actually I find it exciting to learn new stuff like this and am a little bit jealous. ^^ Reminds me back when I came from console to PC and had to learn how to play shooters with mouse and keyboard.
Edit: Your age 30 is fine. Age is always an excuse, but mostly not true. I’m also from the 80s and grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit. Yet I learned how to play with arcade sticks and mouse and keyboard in addition to controllers. I’m 42 now (and proud of it). My biggest advice is, play every sort of game, not only you are comfortable with. And do it every day. git gud is the only way.
Maybe look if there are predefined set of user created controls in Steam Deck. Sometimes users create alternative control schemes optimized for controller setup. Or do your own customization with the Steam Input. That won’t make you better at aiming, but maybe you can address some pain points this way.
I don’t agree here. Playing for long time means you get better, more experienced as well. Reaction time is not all. Plus the differences of reaction time we talk about is usually only important for world class players. Normal humans like us are similar in reaction time between the ages we talk about (30 vs 20 in example). Lot of older people are playing and are better than younger people.
Having said this, every human is different and will have different degradation or changes in their body and mind. I am just generalize here, knowing that individuals might differ strongly. Have in mind, I am talking about normal players like us, not professionals or world class players, where differences in weakness are much more amplified.
And off course it depends on the games as well off course and in what rank you are. My point is that age is often an excuse without realizing the real issues, pointing it to reaction times and aging, when maybe something different is the problem.
A documentary not only about how CoD 4, but how CoD came into in the first place. I’m currently a few minutes into the video and want to share it here. Documentaries by Ahoy are always enjoyable, without too much fluff and jokes. Highly recomended....
Its built-in and therefore independent from gpu and driver or additional software, and independent of the operating system, it even works on the Steam Deck out of the box. This is a feature I waited long time for.
Sure, a few more settings wouldn’t be bad, in example for saving as video file. But I think for the sake of simplicity for the end user and also for the devs themselves (I mean Steam devs) they kept it a bit barebones when it comes to codec or resolution settings. This has to work on Windows and on Linux (not sure about Mac) and on the Steam Deck out of the box.
It’s still beta and they already said in the article some features are coming. I’m more than happy with the timeline feature, this is amazing. I set it to 16 hours at highest quality, lol.
Its huge for me, because in Linux I can only record through OBS. And OBS is suboptimal, compared to a builtin solution like this. On Steam Deck I used the plugin too, but had to remove it again, because the plugin system stopped working.
As others noted, this has background recording functionality and manual on demand recording as well. I have used manual recording software and still have OBS installed for any use case. But having Steam Recording builtin is very convenient.
configuration, its much easier to setup than any other solution if you care to get best quality and performance
convenience, integrated makes it easy to setup and use, with additional features, plus its such a fiddling to record specific windows when using external software such as OBS or similar if I don’t want to record entire screen in windowed or fullscreen mode, especially on Wayland
performance, Steam records the raw game footage from your video card and therefore has the best possible quality and performance one can get out of video recording
no overlays, Steam will only capture the game footage without fps indicator or other stats and without overlays or menus from Steam, other software would just record everything visible
timeline, resulting video is raw footage and is not encoded into a video file format for output and not useable before output to video (mp4), we can add timestamps with hotkeys while playing to mark specific points in recording, then we can mark start and end points or select certain parts in the timeline to save or export it
share, it has multiple sharing functionality besides saving to mp4 video file format
All of this is builtin and works the exact same way regardless of operating system and hardware (independent from cpu and gpu and os). No one needs to study hardware and software in order to configure it in the best possible way. If you used this on Windows, its the same on Linux, no dependency of recording software.
This is a much bigger deal than just recording footage with gnome-screenshot.
I have to run OBS separately, before gaming or when I ant to record something while I am playing already.
Configuration of the settings. While I found good settings, its still complicated for most people. Especially on Wayland (a Linux thing).
When I want to capture a game, I have to specifically run the game and select in OBS to capture this window. Or capture entire screen.
I still can’t use AV1 for recording, but I think that I managed to set VAAPI recording set to my GPU? I am not 100% sure.
The flexibility of recording and organization in the way Steam does it is way superior to any external software and custom configuration of it. With OBS I have to rename files and organize things manually, while these are done automatically for each game in Steam.
Besides Steam has background recording too, not just on demand manual recording on button press. Think of Nividias Shadowplay. With OBS I have to start end end recording manually.
While we play we can add specific markers to the timeline with hotkeys. OBS doesn’t have that.
OBS is clunky and complicated to me. The Canvas and Output resolutions are separate, which confuses me the hell out of it. I only experimented with some settings so far to record gameplay (after my new PC installation) and need to see how this works out. But if I change settings to record something different, then I have to configure it again to record gameplay. Also to use Hotkeys, I have to allow hotkeys to be used globally in my system (which I don’t want to otherwise). Because of Wayland and how it works.
All in all its must simpler and superior to do this in Steam itself now. For other use cases, I will still keep OBS, its not bad, just not straightforward for daily game recordings. But I can add other software and games to Steam and can use it with Steam Recording too (if the overlay works there).
Always sad to see a game getting delisted. But props to the devs to notify us about half a year in advance. Usually these delistings are instant without notification and then its too late for people who want to buy it. Now the game is at a good discount, 80%. If I had interest into the game and there was no FH5 on Steam, then I’d buy it.
Licensing issues with music can easily be patched out and replaced by other music. But what can they do about the cars? I guess a lifetime license for the games is too expensive, so it will be a limited license and then the delisting is only matter of time. Man this sucks.
I was a console player, now I am on PC. And I harvest the power of emulation alongside playing modern games.
Long Version
I’m an 80s guy and was fortunate enough to experience the 90s in its full glory; from Snes Jrpgs to the transitioning to 3D to the first consoles with internet connection. Nowadays I am a PC player and play ton of games through emulation. And the little cute Steam Deck on my side is the extra fun.
I played this year Breath of the Wild from the Switch, but through emulation on my PC in 60 fps, higher resolution and with my Xbox gamepad. Got all or almost all shrines in the game with over 130 hours playtime (Edit: Played it this year on Yuzu BTW. They started suing while I was playing.)! And besides that, I play old Romhacks and mods of old console games for the SNES, in example translations, bug fixes or just new stages (like DLCs from the community!). Or play games to beat highscores and times from your friends or other players in the community. There is so much to explore through emulation.
If you have a good PC and the patience, then I recommend you to get into emulation a little bit. Maybe not as hardcore as I do, but for your favorite consoles and games. You can play games that you missed back in the day in example, or just waste 20 minutes testing old games and then go back to modern games. It’s such a fun experience.
Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, and Jeff Braun in Kyoto in 1989. (Image credit: Courtesy of Jeff Braun)
After all the years, i finally see Will Wright as a real person. I only knew his avatar from the SNES game itself, back in the 90s. He looks a bit different than I had in mind. Oh and while I researched a bit, found this one:
I have nothing against supporting paid mods, if the modder wants it to be monetized. It should be the decision of the modder. Not everything must be free of charge. As long as the modder can decide it.
I think we’re missing out by not having this as an option. Modding can provide a good stepping stone into full game development, and if people can earn money for their work, they can justify spending more time on it or potentially even doing it full time.
Yes. Those who don’t want to monetize their work (which is actually respectable) would standout even more. In example there could be two versions, one free version and one paid version with a few little extras to support the developers. This is a way to handle paid software even in Open Source, in example on Android where such a payment system is integrated.
There is no need to have an account on a different platform, so I can support the developer, and another account for another platform that wants my bank accounts. I speak about patreon and and the likes. It’s all here, with my Steam account and money from Steam.
I always wanted to try this game when I was a kid. When checking out reviews on Steam I noticed someone mention that Sega was giving it away for free for their 60th anniversary (a few years ago), and that website is still up and running. Long story short, I tried it and it works. Replacing the localhost part of the URL was...
Good list. Too many specs forget about these basic information. But what about the “NETWORK: High-speed Internet connection”? I assume a connection is required while playing, because of some anti cheat or DRM? And why is High-speed connection required to play the game? Is no offline play possible?
The linked page isn’t actually proving your statement being true. It just explains in theory. Which was my point, if there are benchmarks that prove this undeniably being true. Especially in context to gaming. If a game is not fully utilizing multithreading technology, then it wouldn’t much benefit from the better ThreadDirector. Maybe this game doesn’t benefit from it much.
E3 was expensive too, with way less people seeing it live. These mega companies have enough money to pay that. It’s just a big advertising platform. Only indie devs cannot pay this, unless they are hugely successful.
It’s not the first time where a click game got viral. But it’s probably the first time having this much success. What can I say, if people find it enjoyable, go for it. But what I don’t understand is, how people cheat with even such a click game, by using bots. It’s so funny.
edit:
Despite this seemingly benign gameplay
Calling this a game or gameplay is funny in itself. People are “playing” the dumbest things if they get bored.
consoles are more popular than PC by quite a big margin.
How do you measure this? Steam alone has 130 to 150 million active users, more than Switch customers at a whole. And that does not even include some of the most popular PC games at all. I also expect PC user base to grow, it has more potential than consoles.
So yes, its a big deal for companies like Sony to open up this big to PC and to be that successful. They don’t even need to sell a console to sell games. Off course consoles will remain popular and for good reason. But most popular games are mulitsystem games and not specific to consoles anyway. In my opinion it is remarkable how much Sony focuses on PC now. I hope they keep doing it; its only beneficial for the players, the publishers and for Sony.
I mostly take issue with the smug tone of the article acting like it’s over for consoles just because they didn’t meet expectations and decided to bring some games to pc. Consoles are still extremely popular and far more powerful than the average pc according to steam hardware survey. They will still be around and successful no doubt about it.
I agree with you here. These articles are stupid telling people it would be over for consoles. It’s just clickbait or they are uninformed. Maybe besides your point that the “average pc” is that weak as you say. Most are at a level of PS4 or stronger. But that is not all you need to compare if you want to an analysis. This topic is extremely complicated. You can’t just take the average. There are far more PC users than console players. Its like taking the Game Boy into account and saying that the average game consoles is weak. That’s not the full story.
In example most monthly active users on consoles play games that could be played on a potato PC or last gen consoles too and these people probably do not buy newest games. Similar to the situation on PC.
Compared to other companies, Valve let the community use alternative community servers. Even if Valve does not care about the game anymore (sigh, one of may all time favorites), it’s possible to maintain community servers. This is something any other game wish to had, without hacking the system; it’s just part of the game. And people can even use modded communities and there exist some really cool stuff (admittedly I never tried them, I would play the game if it didn’t have the bot problem).
Is there a simple way to download the save files before they get wiped? I mean without downloading the game and sorting out where the saves are and such. Steam has a dedicated page for that: store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage (there is no download all link, but at least it’s straight forward)
It was not just 6 months later. Original GTA v was released on old gen consoles, 1 entire year later on new gen consoles, then again 1.5 years later (meaning 2.5 years later from original release) it got out for PC. But I expect it will come to PC much faster this time, as every day not releasing it is not earned money. They won’t wait until next generation. GTAv was release quite at the end of the last gen back then, this time around 6 will come out in the middle of the generation. Also the current consoles are closer to PC in hardware and software than before, so a port is easier than with v.
I hope they take their time to upgrade and optimize the PC version. This is a massive game that needs its time. Especially because PC player have higher standards than console players and a more variety in hardware that needs to be tested and ironed out as much as possible. Obviously I’m a user like you and don’t know how much truth to all of this is, but sounds plausible in my opinion.
according to unverifiable rumours. … The leak comes from an unknown and unreliable source in the gaming industry.
But continues to write an entire article about it. I wouldn’t be shocked if the rumor was set by the person who writes the article itself. Edit: Which itself is only a few paragraphs, but filled with ads, links and images on the entire page.
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hangin with the homies (beehaw.org) angielski
[alt text: a black-and-white image of 8 creepy human-like figures floating in the air, with a building and a tree in the background. The caption says, “When you and the boys are playing in Creative Mode and one of them says, ‘Come check out what I made’.”]
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Do you know any singleplayer games that are infinitely replayable? angielski
I recently booted up Half-Life 2 to replay it. I have played the absolute shit out of this game before, so 60% of it just feels like a drag to me now. It was such an amazing game but it’s sort of spoiled for me after I’ve played it too much....
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I have been a PC gamer for the majority of my life. But before that, i was a console player on the NES. But NES mainly had platformers, and no 3d games. So i am not used to movement and camera controls simultaneously at all....
MODERN WARFARE: How Call of Duty 4 Changed a Genre Forever (Documentary by Ahoy) (youtu.be) angielski
A documentary not only about how CoD 4, but how CoD came into in the first place. I’m currently a few minutes into the video and want to share it here. Documentaries by Ahoy are always enjoyable, without too much fluff and jokes. Highly recomended....
Game Recording Steam Beta (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Changes in Forza Horizon 4’s Festival Playlist and Delisting from Digital Stores (steamcommunity.com) angielski
FH4 will be delisted from MS Store and Steam on 12/15/24. DLCs have been already delisted.
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favorite gaming medium? angielski
hello hello!...
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What do you think about this post on reddit? (www.reddit.com)
The reddit comments are already locked....
NiGHTS Into Dreams (is still available for free) angielski
I always wanted to try this game when I was a kid. When checking out reviews on Steam I noticed someone mention that Sega was giving it away for free for their 60th anniversary (a few years ago), and that website is still up and running. Long story short, I tried it and it works. Replacing the localhost part of the URL was...
Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown requirements for PC angielski
I don’t know man, it looks like another unoptimized game…
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Valve Let Team Fortress 2 Rot And They Should Feel Bad About It - Aftermath (aftermath.site)
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