MossyFeathers

MossyFeathers, 1 month ago

Wait, do people still get excited for GTA? I thought GTA V online killed a lot of goodwill for the series.

MossyFeathers, 1 month ago

No, I’m honestly surprised. I’ve barely heard anything about GTA VI. Seriously. I don’t care about it, none of my friends have talked about it despite being the kinda game that they’d be into, and I’ve only seen one or two articles on it.

You sure it’s that highly anticipated? My observation is that people have gotten really sick and tired of AAA games, and this is a shift that’s occurred since RDR2 came out. Very few of the people I know still regularly play AAA games, and those who do almost never buy them on launch. I haven’t seen anywhere near the same amount of hype for GTA VI as I saw for GTA IV or GTA V.

You’re accusing me of being disingenuous? Maybe you’re the one who’s buying into the hype and overestimating public interest. Or perhaps the true answer is somewhere in the middle. Who knows. I was not intentionally downplaying your favorite series though.

MossyFeathers, 1 month ago

shrug Idk if it’s really that insane. Tbh I’m not convinced the hype isn’t being manufactured. I have a cousin who’s a pretty bog standard, flavor-of-the-month gamer, and he’s said nothing about GTA VI.

Not saying you’re necessarily wrong, I guess, just that something seems off.

MossyFeathers, 1 month ago

I mean, they could introduce a new character who takes shelter in a mysterious, dilapidated research facility during the 7 hour war and finds themselves in a hellish labyrinth of puzzles. Maybe said character finds Chell in the field and helps release her (there’s some speculation Chell never made it out, but was actually in some kind of biosphere based on some in-game hints).

MossyFeathers, 2 months ago

Weirdly enough, I actually care more about framerate on “pancake” (non-vr) games than I do on VR games. I can deal with 10fps in vrchat in a crowded instance. I need more like 20~30 for non-vr games.

That said, I get mentally exhausted when the framerate is <30 for an extended period of time in VRChat.

MossyFeathers, 2 months ago

Why is that fucking Jerma what the fuck

MossyFeathers, 4 months ago

Gunman Chronicles is unironically great. Granted, I love games with ludicrous numbers of weapons, but the fact that the weapons have a bazillion firing modes is fun.

MossyFeathers, 4 months ago

I miss playing multiplayer games other than VRC. However, multiplayer games just aren’t fun anymore for the exact reasons you just laid out.

MossyFeathers, 4 months ago

I disagree with FEAR simply because I’d say to play it on the hardest difficulty and go balls to the wall because the AI will fuck you over if it gets the chance; and the longer you take to clear a room, the more time the AI has to organize and execute a plan. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve seen plenty of people get stuck on FEAR because they tried to play it like a cover shooter, I’d fully agree with you.

MossyFeathers, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Sauna2000 (it’s not out yet, but there are some demos floating around).

Squirrel stapler

Cruelty Squad - depends on the kinda person you are. If you’re super open-minded about game presentation then I’d tell you to go into it blind. If not, then I’ll happily try to sell you on it. If it helps, the game looks the way that it does because of how fucking confident it is in itself; and that confidence is fully justified. Give it time, even if the first level doesn’t hook you, give it time because in my experience it will eventually hook you and reel you in and leave you thinking it’s one of the best games of all time.

Undertale

Hypnospace Outlaw

Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Give the first two a try, and if you don’t like either one, skip BRC; it’s a spiritual successor to JSRF and if you didn’t like JSRF then you probably won’t like BRC.

Hylics. If you liked that and wanted more, Hylics 2. Hylics 2 actually does something throughout the game that I’ve only ever seen as a gimmick in other games. It’s really cool and it’ll probably catch you off-guard every time it does it.

Katamari Damacy. If you liked that, there’s also We <3 Katamari.

Myst. The newest version has VR support. If you liked that, the recent Riven remaster also has VR support.

S C O R N (if you like Myst, give it a try. It feels very myst-like)

Hrot (boomer shooter, but if you like boomer shooters then you should give it a go).

If you’re at a place in your life where you’re trying to still find yourself: Night in the Woods. Especially if you’re a furry. This game is really fucking good. It’ll make you laugh. It’ll make you cry. It’ll make you miss home but also be glad you aren’t there anymore. It’ll make you question your place in life and who you are. Also, you can interact with things multiple times, make sure you don’t miss out on dialogue, you’ll regret it.

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl - This is hard to go into blind because it’s buggy as fuck and most people recommend some form of community patch even for your first playthrough. That said, play it on the highest difficulty. It’s unironically more fun once you get used to it. If it’s too hard though, don’t be fooled into thinking that dropping the difficulty will make it easier, the hardest difficulty is special (you can only take a few hits, but the same is true for most enemies), and dropping it down will result in enemy difficulty scaling becoming more traditional (buffing health and damage).

Portal (and Portal 2).

Bugsnax.

---

If I can throw in a movie too:

Willy’s Wonderland. It’s a Nicolas Cage movie and that’s all I’ll tell you. DO NOT LOOK UP THE TRAILER. I wouldn’t have watched it if I hadn’t seen the trailer, but the trailer also has huge spoilers. I’m not a huge movie person and I had to watch it after seeing the trailer, but again the trailer has spoilers. It is on my top-10 movies list now.

MossyFeathers, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Factorio, Warframe, Minecraft, Dota 2. However, the only two I’d still recommend are Factorio and Minecraft. Warframe’s grind seems to have finally burned me out for good, Dota 2 is bad. You’re not gonna have fun with Dota 2. The game concept is good, but like most competitive online games, the community fucking sucks.

In addition to Factorio and Minecraft, try Voices of the Void, The Long Drive, WEBFISHING, and Balatro.

Edit: oh yeah, and personally I have both Sims 2 and Sims 4 w/ all DLC (yeah, I toootally bought all the dlc) installed on my steam deck. Both fun games with their own ups and downs. Sims 2 is great vanilla, Sims 4 is great when heavily modded. Don’t bother downloading the F2P version of Sims 4 from Origin if you’re wanting to mod it with stuff like sacrificial’s mods. Those’ll break with every major update (and sometimes minor updates too!) and you can’t pause updates anymore. So, you’ll have to find alternative methods.

MossyFeathers, 5 months ago

Maybe the community has gotten better, but back when I played it wasn’t uncommon for mid to get salty because they fed early game and start feeding couriers to the enemy team.

MossyFeathers, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Yes, but indie games helped fix that. Dunno how deep you’ve gotten into indie games, but here’s a list of them to try:

Cruelty Squad (it is unironically one of the best games I’ve ever played. Give it a chance, it’ll grow on you)

Balatro

Buckshot Roulette

WEBFISHING

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (++if you enjoyed Jet Set Radio (Future))

Abiotic Factor

Lethal Company (I personally wasn’t a fan, but I can see the appeal; I would be more into it if there was more random junk to pick up)

Hypnospace Outlaw

Factorio (just released an expansion! Also don’t wait for sales, you’ll be waiting forever)

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (edit: forgot to mention that this is basically “be gay, do crimes: the game”. It’s short so I highly recommend 100% it, but it’s also good).

Hylics 1 & 2

The Long Drive (looks like YouTube bait, and it kinda is, but it’s also the best driving game I’ve ever seen. Literally you, a car and 5000km of road. Any engine can go into any vehicle, so yes, you can put a bus engine on a moped. I love it. There haven’t been any big updates lately though because the dev is rewriting the game to fix spaghetti code).

QT (cutesy PT parody that’s all about secret hunting. Also has two extra levels with more secrets. It’s kinda like i-spy but in first-person 3d)

Voices of the Void (I adore this game, it’s a sci-fi pseudo-horror game styled after some weird mix of gmod and Half-Life. The premise is that you’re a researcher who’s been shipped off to a radio telescope array, alone. Your goal is to search the sky for signals and learn more about the cosmos. It takes itself just seriously enough and has lots of secrets and surprises to find.)

MossyFeathers, 5 months ago

Oh yeah, the game is short so I highly recommend 100% it. I think I took 6ish hours to play the entire thing, and I think I missed a side quest. But yeah, the game is basically “be gay, do crimes: the game”.

MossyFeathers, 5 months ago

That’s not how stick drift works. If that worked, then recalibrating the controller should work. Secondly, I guess you weren’t the kinda kid who loved taking things apart and putting them back together again. Fixed stick drift on a joystick when I was a teenager by taking the joystick apart, cleaning the sensor and putting it back together again. Had no clue what I was doing and this was before youtube, yet I still managed to do it right.

MossyFeathers, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

That’s great. But how long until I can play Balatro on my iPod Classic?

(I love that indie devs occasionally port their games to nonsensical or obsolete platforms)

Edit: I actually think Balatro would translate fairly well; assuming the iPod Classic has enough ram and CPU to run a visually stripped-down version. When I had an iPod Nano I played solitaire almost obsessively. The controls were a bit slow due to the limitations of using a clickwheel, but they actually worked really well.

On a side note: does anyone know if capacitive clickwheels still under patent, trademark or whatever was keeping other companies from using them? I loved the way the iPod clickwheel felt and it sucked that no one else had a 1:1 replication of it.

MossyFeathers, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

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.

MossyFeathers, 6 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 6 months ago

recent events within the godot project

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.

MossyFeathers, 6 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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).

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

The symbols would be copyrighted, but the actual behind-the-scenes value (i.e. 20/100, 62.5/1200, etc) isn’t. That’s what they’re referring to.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

…yes? Changing the language or the way it’s presented doesn’t change the math behind the scenes. That’s not how computers work.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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).

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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).

Play TrackMania. Is fun.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

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.

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

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)

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

The binding of Isaac has shit ton of them.

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).

MossyFeathers, 7 months ago

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.

Amazing. How the fuck did you do that?

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

Sam and Max. I want some more point and click adventure games.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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?

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

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”!

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

I can confirm that you could pick spawn points in BF2 and BF2142.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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)

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

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.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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)

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

New horizons has gyroids now, but it never got the NES stuff.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

Yeah, it was part of the happy home paradise update. I don’t think you need the dlc, I think they’re part of the base game.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

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.

MossyFeathers, 8 months ago

Oh, some more differences vs New Horizons:

• 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.

MossyFeathers, 10 months ago

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.

Edit: now I want to play the Sims again.