RickRussell_CA

RickRussell_CA, 5 miesięcy temu

Outer Worlds has no space-based content. Yes, you have a spaceship, but it’s essentially a fast-travel device. One of the locations is a space station, but it’s no different than a large building (e.g. it’s not shaped like a torus or anything interesting like that).

Outer Worlds is a really fun take on the Firefly space western concept, though, as long as you understand all of your activities will take place on worlds/moons with basically the same gravity & atmosphere.

RickRussell_CA, 11 miesięcy temu

Huh. So, I actually own Lugaru, which I purchased through Humble Bundle in May 2010.

It… was not a good game. Basically anthropomorphic rabbits beating the crap out of each other, which SOUNDS good, but was not executed well.

RickRussell_CA, 11 miesięcy temu

If I remember correctly, at the time Valve justified the 30% by pointing out that Apple was charging the same for music and video content. And Valve immediately started building value-added services like forums, updaters, multiplayer support, achievements, etc. to justify the price.

If you compare what Valve was doing to the physical media distribution methods of the period, it was a MASSIVE improvement. Back then, you could sell 10000 units to Ingram Micro or PC Mall, or whatever, and you only got paid if they sold. And any unsold inventory would be destroyed and the reseller would never pay for it. And if you actually wanted anything other than a single-line entry in their catalogs, you paid a promotional fee. Those video games featured with a standup display or a poster in the window at the computer store? None of that was free; the developer was nickeled and dimed for every moment their game was featured in any premium store space.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Eh, I was there. The games were OK.

The biggest change is that we put up with a lot more repetitive gameplay back then, just because that’s how games were and there wasn’t enough horsepower to make complex stuff.

Today, you blow through a level of a modern first person game, or whatever, and see only a tiny fraction of what the game makers created for you. I played Titanfall 2 for the first time recently, and after playing the same level a few times, I noticed that a room that appears only briefly as you take an elevator past it has an extension cord coiled up on the floor. You can only see it if you look down as the elevator goes up, so you can see the floor of the room.

Old games didn’t have the room for those kinds of indulgences.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

ChatGPT, program a Metroidvania 2d retro 16 bit graphics video game featuring a naked Emilia Clarke.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Capcom has absolute authority to price its games however they see fit.

If they make choices that put them out of business, that’s on them.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I can feel the saliva-moistened Cheeto crumbs being sprayed into my face.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

What even is his complaint?

That he doesn’t a fraction of the talent required to make a game this good.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I hope it’s decent. One of the things that bugged me about the DLC for the original HZD was that they turned most combat areas into flat, contained arenas where you couldn’t really take advantage of geography and use planning to kill your targets.

Bottlenecking, laying traps, getting advantage of ground, taking advantage of limited mobility of the robots, stealth… all the gameplay videos I’ve seen look SO BORING.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

unlike HZD you actually have a limit to amount of traps you can set

Err. Hmm. One of my complaints about HZD was that it put an arbitrary limit on the number of traps you could set. Somewhere around ~25, the first trap disappears when you lay the next trap.

Reducing the number of traps is a con, not a pro. If I’m willing to gather materials and craft traps, let me use them as I see fit.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Season 29… of a video game?

I’m kind of glad I don’t play in whatever ecosystem that is. It sounds exhausting.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

And you’ve got KOTOR and Pillars of Eternity and others that are clearly D&D derivatives, but solve the problem handily with a “stash” whose contents are never accessible in combat.

I have never understood the fascination with inventory management. I just want to find stuff, and use that stuff later on. If I wanted something as boring as my actual job, I’d just do my actual job and get paid for it instead of buying a game.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

“I” is a first person pronoun that refers to the one who is speaking or writing.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

A “stash” that is only accessible outside combat mostly preserves that balance, IMO.

Most games come up with a range of ways to get around the problem, even when they do have a strictly limited inventory with encumbrance:

• Zero weight quest items
• Ability to run or fast travel while encumbered (FO4 selectable perk)
• A pet or NPC capable of carrying your less valuable stuff back to the vendor for sale (Torchlight had this, did Diablo? I haven’t played in decades.)
• Pack animals/robots
• Portable vendors (Skyrim had a demon vendor you could summon once a day)
• Bags of holding (or similar)
• Warp chests (many chests with same contents/inventory around map)

etc. ad infinitum. The fact that most games implement a variety of ways to deal with absence of an infinite inventory is kind of a tipoff that it’s more of a burden than a desirable aspect of gameplay. Most of these games are holding up a carrot (or several) to get you to pursue certain achievements just to reduce the monotony of inventory management.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

ship with an Ethernet port

I have to ask… why? The only device I’ve connected to hardwired Ethernet is a desktop PC in the same room as my router. I’ve not used ethernet for any portable device for eons. Why would you need it?

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Does the NVIDIA Tegra line support DLSS? I guess it could be based on the “Orin” line of ARM CPUs, but I can’t find anything suggesting they can do DLSS.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Classic it may not be, but every few years I fire up a copy of Oni, turn up my playlist of mid 90s mega-hits, and lay some smackdown on some terrorists.

Basically it’s the spatial exploration of a first person shooter with the fighting dynamics of something like Virtua Fighter.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I’m not sure there is much intersection between PC & console gamers and social/casual gamers.

I can’t speak for anybody else, I guess, but neither I nor any gamers I routinely interact with play these freemium/social/mobile type games. Like, at all.

I think that looking to ourselves and our habits for answers will not tell us much, as those gamers are not in our sphere of influence.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I’m not drawing some elitist lines between hardcore and casual, I’m saying that the “video gaming revenue” graph is fundamentally defective because it’s lumping together genuinely different enterprises, with different audiences, marketing, and revenue models

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I’ve been happy with my gaming laptops. I used to be like 80% travel for my job, so portable gaming was essential.

I still use a gaming laptop as my primary desktop, because it’s physically small, (relatively) quiet, and I don’t need to keep a honking big UPS to give me 20 minutes of time to save work and shut down. The battery’s not great, but it’s more than enough to get me through power interruptions, or to move the machine between power outlets.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Asus TUF started freezing on games

But what did you do to diagnose it?

ASUS isn’t responsible for software, except to guarantee that the laptop can run the version of Windows that it came with. They’re just going to run standard hardware diagnostics, and if it passes, it’s golden.

Were there errors in the event logs? Did you remove unneeded startup programs and disable unneeded services? Did you do a full OS reset/reinstall?

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Like: open world combat where you can plan and use geography to your advantage.

Hate: Inventory management

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I’m looking at you, DiMA from Fallout 4 Far Harbor

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

That they are trying to create a robust custom character experience AND a robust pregenerated character experience is pretty damn ambitious. They must be pretty happy about the results if they’re talking it up this close to the release date.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Not what you describe, but perhaps Cats and the Other Lives would catch your fancy?

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

If you’re thinking about the Fallouts, don’t forget all the Infinity Engine games (Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 and 2, Planescape Torment), and Neverwinter Nights, and Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2.

And Shadowrun (Returns, Dragonfall, Hong Kong).

There’s a universe of amazing isometric RPGs out there.

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

I have all the Infinity Engine games on… so many platforms. And CD. And DVD. And iOS, and Google Play…

RickRussell_CA, rok temu

Indeed.