Katana314

Katana314, 5 godzin temu

The game seems awesome, but it is by no means indie or at all a hidden gem. It has a ton of presence.

Katana314, wczoraj

I’m cautious but a little curious about this one, because QA could actually be a very good target for AIs to work with.

1. 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.
2. 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!
3. 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??”

Katana314, 3 dni temu

I’ve always felt the tower thing was unfair.

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.

Katana314, 3 dni temu

Trails in the Sky

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.

Katana314, 5 dni temu

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.

Katana314, 5 dni temu

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”.

Katana314, 5 dni temu

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.

Katana314, 5 dni temu

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)

Katana314, 4 dni temu

My daily drivers: Outlast Trials, Dead by Daylight, Wild Assault, Helldivers 2, Warhammer Space Marine 2.

All of those work fine on Linux. It just seems to be the most toxic, gamerfuel-heavy games that go full kernel anticheat.

Katana314, 4 dni temu

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.

Katana314, 2 dni temu

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.

Katana314, 6 dni temu

Did anyone else know the reason Morpheus is “reborn” in an odd way in Resurrection is because he canonically dies in the MMORPG? I remember wanting to play that as a kid…probably didn’t miss much though.

Katana314, 6 dni temu

IGN: “Traditional gamer journalism is dying. Please support honest journalists.”
Also IGN: “Good work, 47. Now publish the article and locate an exit.”

Katana314, 6 dni temu (edited 5 dni temu)

How do people feel about this company using generative AI? That was a concern of mine around The Finals; they’ve defended the decision on voice acting and it made me wonder where else they’re using it.

EDIT: Learned some new things from the responses, certainly an interesting situation. I’ll consider them.

Katana314, 5 dni temu

It’s a little funny that all my multiplayer games work fine, and the only ones broken on Proton are mainstream ones I hate.

It’s like an invisible filter telling me “These devs are jackasses and the playerbase is toxic. Don’t play this.”

Katana314, 7 dni temu

There are definitely some ways I’d like to see media shifts, but I’m always very cautious about govt regulation around it.

For instance, I always hated how much we parodize authoritarian dystopias. The “parody” element is often lost on people, and they end up respecting it; like people who lose the irony in vouching for Helldivers’ “For Managed Democracy!” or feel like Warhammer40k’s Imperium of Man is awesome.

We probably need more Spec Ops: The Line’s, but also more hero fantasies about destroying those dystopias.

Katana314, 10 dni temu

Just get a Steam Deck, and add a hub and wireless controller.

Oh, but it won’t run full-detail AAA releases at 4K? Nothing cheap will. That is exclusively the domain of consoles, earned through direct-contact optimization with developers. That’s still enough horsepower for the thousands of great indie games on Steam, many of which are simple enough to run fine on a midsize TV on the small Deck CPU.

Basically, if someone is adamant about running high-detail games on their TV using Steam, they’re already a niche enough market that it really doesn’t make sense to build up a single SKU for them and hope for bulk manufacturing savings the same way you could for consoles.

It’s probably better off for developers to keep targeting the Deck as a general metric point anyway. The especially good news there is, once devs do that, Linux desktop gamers benefit anyway.

Katana314, 11 dni temu

I still need to start this.

But I know the feel - games that expand their emotional range often get the best reactions because moving to an extreme of seriousness, sadness, or even humor, can shock the player.

Katana314, 11 dni temu

I regret that after Ross’s stepping back, I didn’t give this issue much attention. I suppose we have to trust that it’s sifting through the slow gears of politics, but with so many “bull” responses to petitions it’s likely worth keeping public attention on it.

Katana314, 11 dni temu

I guess I should have some stance on this. I played Nier Automata, and the combat was horrendous to me. I still think there must have been some core mechanic that was unclear to me, but even on brief review, I didn’t see anything.

I dropped the difficulty down to nothing so I could quickly force through all the story content and see “what’s so amazing about this game”. And the story did nothing. It had me burst out laughing in mockery at the times players were supposed to be crying.

That could just be a quirk of that game’s story in particular. I do think some scenes I’ve enjoyed out of long JRPGs were only notable because I’d invested time and effort in them, so I think a lot is lost if the player isn’t interacting with the premise at all. It’s why I’d prefer forms of difficulty adjustment, removing just one form of challenge, over total removal of the entire gameplay system. Unfortunately, I think a lot of action games handle that poorly, in a very lazy way that doesn’t appreciate what challenges players.

Katana314, 13 dni temu

Yeah, I was able to play through most of AC: Odyssey on my deck, thanks to Lutris. I also use Heroic just because I’ve never wanted to install Epic’s launcher.

Katana314, 14 dni temu

In support of the move in spirit, but: Any ideas to prevent a company from circumventing this via dummying up contractor firms? Eg, “We employ this software company started by our founder to write our code. Coincidentally, their pay is .1% of the pay at Microsoft”

Katana314, 11 dni temu

It’s the first test bed for every developer, which means something like a headset utility is more reliably going to work on Windows. But it’s impressive even that margin is falling.

Imagine seeing Nvidia drop Shadowplay features to push their own beta app improvements, while the Linux imitator for Shadowplay still works simply and fine, and doesn’t even drop for “DRM detected” issues.

Or trying to install/update Epic/Ubisoft games needing to go through another terrible UI upgrade while Heroic and Lutris still look the same.

A year ago, I tried Linux and felt frustrated about some minor UI inconsistencies and fiddling. Recently, I tried again, and it still had stuff to work through, but I was patient for it because now I’m dealing with all that same shit on Windows.

Oh yeah, though to hotkey audio switching I ended up writing my own bash script which was clunky. Curious if anyone better than myself might take charge there.

Katana314, 16 dni temu

I can’t say I like how /Games often circles around negative attention rather than positive.

Activision spent billions on marketing so people will buy these stupid Ultra Editions. Even negative attention gets people thinking about and talking about the game.

Instead, post about the cool indie games out that you think deserve far more attention than this battle pass slop. Let Activision come check up on us and cry because for all their efforts no one even cares to hate on their game.

Theres an asymmetric game out as a demo, called Carnival Hunt. It has a really unique aesthetic, and isn’t all that fun yet, in part because of the formula being refined and players getting better at it. But I like the idea: Rather than TCM’s idea of unlocking doors towards an exit, the survivors, “bunnies”, are trying to climb the floors of a large building, with each method of ascending a floor requiring various tools and making noise. Some ways up are harder to set up but easier to repeat, others only work if the killer is ignoring them.

Katana314, 16 dni temu

I’ve always been okay with keeping gaming libraries digital - but I think the larger console population might be okay with that too if we could disconnect digital games from account-based ownership - the kind where a company can go “Oh, whoops, we lost the license to this fart sound effect. We’re going to have to remove this game from your library.”

Katana314, 17 dni temu

The only occasion I could buy that a “console makes the exclusives” is when the costs are so high that the investors decide a $60 price tag isn’t enough.

That can be alleviated with DLC, or live service bullshit; or it can become an incentive to buy a particular console.

Then, when someone is braindead and doesn’t want a big epic award winning adventure, they’ll use that same console to play Fortnite. Thus, God of War helps sell VBucks or whatever.

It’s a weird analysis, but even though we no longer see console exclusives and it’s seen as a pro consumer move, I also think it was just a way for managers to boost one quarter’s revenue, and it wasn’t really good for the console ecosystem as a whole, especially considering how it would fund future exclusive epics.

Katana314, 21 dni temu

You can get quite a few options at Itch.io if you filter for games that have an HTML5 version, and click through - much faster than installing options from Steam Next Fest. Unity and other small game engines have been perfect for that.

Katana314, 22 dni temu

A little lesson about technical projects: You will quickly reach 95% completion and have something amazing to show off. Then, 95% of the work is completing that last 5% in order to make the prototype usable.

AI is good at making itself look ready. It is nowhere near ready.

Katana314, 23 dni temu

I think this is why a certain scrolling shooter at the endgame of a certain game closely located to a tomato didn’t emotionally work for me. I can do the math - it can’t just throw that many other players at the problem to get me through the enemy ships, and the game needed to be playable off the internet since little else of it was online.

Katana314, 27 dni temu

Estelle, from Trails in the Sky.

She’s introduced as a bit of a cocky moron who constantly has to be wrangled by her more mature brother. But, there’s a slow development of competency where she starts to become decently sufficient at all the things her brother is good at, while he meanwhile lays bare some heavy emotional flaws - many of which Estelle excels at processing (call it a feminine trope, but it works).

Of note, all the rest of the Trails series have had male leads, and their pace of character development ground to a complete halt.

Katana314, 27 dni temu

If you want something a bit closer to Starfox, rather than an all-range flight arena, try Rogue Flight. It definitely evokes the power fantasy feeling, living up the classic arcade trope of “one ship being readied on a mission to save humanity”. There’s some very big-name voice actor work in it, as well.

Another good game for the “power fantasy” trope, though it’s a bit more outside the target, is Ace Combat 7. Or, perhaps any games in the series, but this one is pretty accessible. The combat is close to what you’d get in X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, but with fighter planes. It breaks from realism a little bit where needed to make the stunts fun. And, the story very much orients around the silent player character being “scary tough” in a fight, to the point enemy fighters are retreating just from seeing your wing markings.

Katana314, 28 dni temu

I realize when you search Steam there’s a lot of successful iterations of the classic Fire Emblem formula. Makes me wonder if any teams have done the same for HOMM3. I remember there was the fanmade expansion for it, it seems viable to invent a story/system from scratch.

EDIT: I should read other comments before commenting.

Katana314, 28 dni temu

I think it’s perhaps more necessary than you might think.

We have a lot of entries appearing in Steam, yes, but a huge percentage of them are investor-driven, research-founded money farms. They intelligently gather players, and they successfully evade boycotting measures, but they don’t make people happy. And, the studios that went into them used to make such games but have been bought out and squeezed out by private equity.

If somebody really wants to play an online shooter, they’ll still play COD even if they hate it, IF it’s the only good option. The more new options appear, the less valuable those entrenched games get and the more likely they collapse entirely.

We’re kind of complacent with having people like Valve around making Steam, but we kind of need more people in that space for people to turn to as every major console gets enshittified. Even Gabe Newell won’t live forever.

Katana314, 11 dni temu

The only games I’ve seen to have issues with online multiplayer are the biggest ones: COD and Battlefield. If you’re into those, I guess you do need to go Windows.

Some others I play are fine; Dead by Daylight, Wild Assault, Space Marine 2.

(No, I’m not a furry, I just like a Bad Company 2 style with infantry focus, and the abilities are pretty nice)

Katana314, 11 dni temu

I think Mint is the cleanest recommendation when you don’t want to be held liable for issues; but for gaming specifically, I ended up liking CachyOS a bit more.

It’s very bleeding-edge, which if you know tech is often a good and bad thing. But games work well. It is not quite so clean with things like installing popular apps - I’m using a package manager called “bauh”, which is relatively new, unrefined, but works. I still end up installing a few things from terminal, which I know shouldn’t be needed for casual users.

Last I tried Mint was early in the year and I think I installed from an old version. It could be what few gaming issues I saw are gone.

Katana314, 11 dni temu

Factorio has a pretty brilliant message in it.

The whole appeal, the whole marketing, in the game is about making this gigantic steampunk thing. But then, hidden in a corner is a Pollution metric - how much harm your factory is doing to this planet, thus angering the bugs.

By being so indirect about the messaging of your grand conquest, you’re made aware of how horrifically abusive corporate empires can dominate continents without really considering their goal state and its damage; and how their response can end up being violent and destructive without initially planning to “Wipe out all other life in this region so I can have it for myself”

Katana314, 28 dni temu

I wish it was easier to predict when the AI bubble is going to pop. There’s likely lots of money to be made shorting them, but it’s not something small investors can do easily - and there’s a real possibility some thousands of investors instead pull harder on the copiumand just lie to themselves for the next decade that “it’s almost there bro, we just need another lake for cooling our doubled power output”

Katana314, miesiąc temu

My general guess: The delay is tied to Denuvo. Smart devs will launch with Denuvo so that pudding-headed pirates (my label for a certain small demographic among pirates) drooling over marketing will see the trailers, try to pirate, fail, be told by crackers to wait like 2-3 weeks for them to unlock it; but instead become impatient and buy the game full price.

But the time period to capture pudding heads is not constant, and is not perfectly predictable before release. So, the developer may not want to commit to a certain release schedule where they will release on GOG, dropping Denuvo at that same time. They might even want to reserve the possibility the game will go years without dropping DRM, if it’s somehow staying constantly popular, and constantly desired by pirates, and/or they can see that the hacking communities have failed to unlock it.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

That is a conclusion made in hindsight, the easiest place to make predictions. Not every studio has the same forms of public popularity and good will they can bank on.

Also, selling millions of copies is not an indicator of a studio’s upper bounds. Publishers - even indie-oriented ones - need the lightning in bottle releases to pay for games that didn’t do well. We can’t do an experiment where KC:D2 releases on two planet Earths, one with a DRM-free release and one with DRM, and say for certain that the second wouldn’t let them additionally fund another studio’s pet project.

Basically, given how many failed releases happen that we never hear about, it can be misrepresentative to point to some good games and say “See? Studios are able to pay their mortgage.” Denuvo is able to sell to studios, costing those studios money, in part by showing raw data (that we might not ever see) explaining how it promotes early sales.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

The original Fatal Frame trilogy are some of the best horror games I’ve played. Not only are they genuinely scary without using a lot of blood, but they have difficulty that connects well with the scariness.

It occasionally feels “unfair” and makes you feel vulnerable, but is still relatively doable so that you don’t get overwhelmed. At times you’ll be retreading old ground just trying to solve a puzzle when another ghost will come at you out of nowhere.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

There’s a scene like this in one of the Telltale Sam and Max games that really deserves a better reenactment. Went something like this:

Sam: “So, Bosco, how much do you want for this…’Deadly virus’ that’s really just a tissue you sneezed into?”
Bosco: “A hundred trillion dollars.”
Max: “WHAT? That’s insane!!”
Sam: “How crazy can you get to think we’re going to pay something like that?”
Bosco: “All I know is, I keep finding the dumbest junk around my store, and think up the most ridiculous price I can imagine for them! And you two keep paying it! So who’s crazy now, fool?”

Katana314, miesiąc temu

If it’s too hard?

I’m not far enough in Silksong to give an opinion, but: Had this happen with Stellar Blade. I was playing through, actually started to enjoy the story, and it has a series of about 3 bosses at the end, interspersed with cutscenes (not fought in a row, just progressively harder). And they were awesome - challenging, but awesome. I felt rewarded for recognizing the full combo strings and parrying, as well as recognizing opportunities to get attacks in.

I get to the final boss (the “Take hand” one), and it’s a brick wall. Epic and all, but feels like a leap in difficulty for an already-tough game. I keep at it, trying my best, but it gets no easier. It’s also an unsatisfying runback after often barely getting far into the fight. Finally, having not needed it all game, I switch to the game’s built-in easy mode. Even then, it’s a challenge, and I lose if I’m not paying attention to the attacks! But, I can at least recover from those failures, and try to learn more in one go. From then, I’m eventually able to get through and see the conclusion to the story. I recognize I do not hold bragging rights to that final boss, and I’m fine with that. I liked getting to see the ending cutscene, I exhibited as much patience as I could give with the bosses…but any more than that, and I would’ve started to hate the game.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

Now I wish Valve would implement Bluesky’s idea of blocklists.

Basically, the community would pool together to make voluntary lists of “Anti-woke mobs” that just troll through forums with rage bait, and add them to that list. It would require a level of trust, and tools to confirm each addition (eg, highlight a worst-case post from that user) but could start to clean things up.

They could also let users choose to hide posts from users below a certain Steam score, making it hard to occupy space with brand new accounts.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

At the time, I predicted you were probably right - but it would still be a good value for the time that the price stayed low.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

Let’s look on the bright side - they’re rushing the talent out to the independent pastures that made Expedition 33 as quickly as possible.

Let the venture capitalists publish their 100% AI-written slop for no one to buy. The gaming world will be out here making and playing games.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

Half-Life 2. It brought me into PC gaming, as well as introducing me to Garry’s Mod, a relatively simple sandbox tool for creativity, complete with a wide array of assets to use.

I also really appreciate its moody world design that doesn’t often explain things directly to you.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

I’ve always really loved mechanics that encourage players to manage risk, especially where it relates to HP systems.

One that I enjoyed, in Cosmic Star Heroine; when your characters’ HP reaches 0, they remain on their feet for their next turn. If their HP is healed to a positive number that turn, they can continue, but their healing is halved to make that difficult. On the other hand, while in negative HP, they can also perform an attack that deals double damage - after which they’ll be KO’d.

Fatal Frame has an item that will automatically revive and full-heal you one time when you would otherwise die. However, you can only hold one of these at a time. So, if you’re playing with heavy use of healing items, burning through all your film (ammo), you might find a second one, which will make you wish you’d leaned on the first one a bit more by not bothering to heal quite so often.

Another random example: You’re in a JRPG, and going against a boss enemy that has a brutal spell that reduces people’s HP by 3/4ths. However, they have pretty limited options for actually finishing you off. At some point, players will realize their advantage, and stop spending so much time healing people to full. A similar example is a boss in Final Fantasy X. It habitually casts Zombie on your party members, meaning healing spells will damage them, and revival spells will kill them. She then frequently casts “Revive-All” on your party. If everyone’s a zombie, that means you die in one turn. However, if you stop healing, and let party members die to basic attacks, she may accidentally bring them back to life for you - and no longer zombified.

Katana314, miesiąc temu

I guess it’s at least nice for preservation, even if little progress has been made on consumer rights.