frog

@frog@beehaw.org

Profil ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.

frog,

I played the entirety of “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion”, which was short, fun, and cute. I’m increasingly finding that I lack the stamina and mental headspace for large games, and I’m appreciating the little indie games a lot more. Something about the combination of cute food characters and running around committing petty crimes and ripping up documents just really appealed to me.

Yesterday I started “Earthlock”, which I got a couple of months ago in a giveaway. I’m liking it so far. Has a lot of “Final Fantasy games in the 1990s” vibes which is working for me. There’s more frogs than I expected, which is always a pleasant surprise.

frog,

It’s on my wishlist! It does look so, so cute. <3

Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski

apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...

frog, (edited )

I have mixed feelings here, because on one hand, I actually do see where this guy is coming from. I’m a game design student on a degree course structured around live client briefs and projects for contests (ie, the stuff we make has to work for people outside the university, not just ourselves), and as design lead for the first project of the course, I was fighting with a member of my own team about design decisions throughout the entire project. Dude with zero capacity for empathy spent a considerable amount of energy arguing about how it was a waste of time developing the relationship between the characters in what was explicitly supposed to be a character-driven story. The words “character-driven” were literally in the brief, and right up until the last day he was insisting it was a waste of time focusing on the characters. So I really, really feel the Starfield design lead’s frustration on the “stop arguing about shit you know nothing about” front.

On the other hand, I don’t feel it’s very professional to air this frustration in public. If people don’t like Starfield, then they don’t like it, and the design lead complaining about it on social media isn’t going to change that, nor does it paint Bethesda in a good light. It just makes him look a bit petty, I guess?

I guess it all comes down to whether the product meets expectations. Players are disappointed in Starfield, and even if they don’t know why design decisions were made, it doesn’t change the fact that the game hasn’t achieved what it was meant to achieve. People that spent a lot of money buying it have a right to feel annoyed, and being told “I’m right, you’re wrong” by the design lead isn’t helpful. And if the project does meet expectations, and it’s only a few assholes complaining, then nobody needs to say “I’m right, you’re wrong” because the end results speak for themselves. If Starfield had been a massive, widely-loved success, a few armchair devs saying “you should have done X, Y and Z instead” wouldn’t be taken seriously.

frog,

Yeah, I agree with you there. Sorry if the point wasn’t clear in my post. Like, I do legitimately understand where his frustration is coming from, because I don’t doubt for a minute that he and the rest of the team worked their asses off, and unfortunately there is a tendency for people who know nothing about game dev to think they’re experts in it (you know, the way there is for every subject.) But just because his emotional reaction to the criticism of Starfield is valid, the way he’s behaving is not okay.

And honestly, on our course we’ve had the “you’ve got to have a thick skin in this industry, because you will spend ages making something that your boss or the fans will tell you they don’t like, and you’ve just got to deal with it and fix it” talk three times already. Criticism is tough to hear, but unless what you did was so shit that it got you fired, you take the criticism and you do better next time. Seems like Emil Pagliarulo might have skipped those lessons?

frog,

I haven’t played it yet either (waiting for the price to come down, and I’m largely withholding judgement until I’ve played it myself), but my understanding is essentially it’s not a bad game, and if it had been launched 10 years ago, or from a much smaller studio, it wouldn’t have attracted so much criticism. But it’s using what is now a very old engine (and a notoriously buggy one, which I can confirm from having played other games with the same engine) which limited its potential. My feeling is it was a difficult decision either way: do you keep using the engine that the dev team has spent the last decade learning inside and out, or do you switch to something newer with more capabilities but then have the enormous challenge of retraining everyone? I don’t envy that choice.

I’m expecting to enjoy Starfield but not be wowed by it. But that’s fine, because I’m fine with playing games where I go “I enjoyed that” rather than “this changed my life”, and it’s also pretty rare for me to really dislike a game.

But… yeah, definitely sticking with my thinking that I totally understand the guy’s frustration with the way gamers so often think they know more than they do, but I don’t think his public response is very professional.

frog,

Not many. The obligatory 50% of all mobile games that I played for 5 minutes and went “I hate this”, obviously. But PC games? Hmmm. Probably “Lost Ember”, I guess. What really puzzles me about this is I played “Spirit of the North” and was utterly in love with it, to the point that it’s in my top 5, and “Lost Ember” is very similar in many respects. I ought to have loved it, and I cannot put my finger on what I didn’t like about it. I just didn’t like it.

frog,

A Golden Axe reboot is something I did not know I needed. 👀

frog,

Dorfromantik this week. One day I will have the time and energy for something more complicated. My enormous list of unplayed games is staring at me.

frog,

For me, it’s a combination of “just jump in and wing it” and building on top of working knowledge from previous similar games. But I’m very much a “learning while doing” person, so if I tried to research how to play a game first, it’s not like the knowledge would sink in. I build up a working knowledge by jumping in and trying stuff out, and a lot of knowledge has at least some cross-compatibility between games of the same genre, even if the game mechanics are a bit different. As I play a lot of games with my partner, we’re often both learning a new game at the same time, and you’d be amazed how often we’ll have a conversation that can be summarised as “I’ve discovered how to do X. It’s like Y from game Z, except you do A instead of B.”

When the game allows for it, I always play on the easiest difficulty setting while I’m learning, as that makes the game more forgiving of mistakes. There’s no shame in playing on easy mode, even for serious gamers. :)

Anyone knows about calm Windows games with 1-finger touch screen support? angielski

What I am searching for is for games that support touch screens and can be played with 1 finger / one hand. No action games with fake joysticks on the screen, just games that work with a single finger or at least one hand while lying in bed and trying to wind down. One very good example is Civilization V, which has a dedicated...

frog,

I’ll need to double check them on my touchscreen laptop this evening, but 95% sure that both Dorfromantik and Townscaper work well with the touchscreen, and they’re also some of the calmest games in existence. I’ll also check Stardew Valley, which I haven’t played on my laptop, but the Android version is compatible with touchscreen so the Windows version may be too.

frog,

I also just realised: if Civ V works with touchscreen controls, then Civ Beyond Earth probably would as well, since it is essentially the same game but with a sci-fi setting. Same developer, same controls, almost identical gameplay mechanics.

frog,

Townscaper. I find it so soothing to play because it has no expectations of me and no people. Just lots of lovely, inoffensive buildings that sometimes take unexpected forms. It’s been fun experimenting with different configurations to see if I can find any blocks I haven’t seen yet.

I’m also chipping away at my koi collection in Zen Koi. Another game that does not expect much of me and has no people in it. The Pro edition on Play Pass doesn’t have cooldowns or microtransactions either, so I can just swim around eating things and breeding new colours of fish.

Suffice to say, there’s a theme in the games I’m enjoying right now: “humans not welcome, just let me relax”.

Is Star Citizen's new server meshing tech plagiarized? angielski

Sorry if this is not the right place to ask, but am I the only one who thinks that Star Citizen’s new server meshing technology is an old hat? I believe it’s the same technology that a few highly scalable Minecraft servers have been using for years. WorldQL introduced this back in 2021, but I think the idea was around even...

frog,

Nobody owns ideas, and therefore they cannot be plagiarised. Thus, two companies having similar ideas about how to solve similar problems can never be plagiarism. Do you have proof that actual code has been copied? Or are you just assuming that the use of a similar idea means one must have directly plagiarised the other?

What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games? angielski

I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....

frog,

I just want proper Nvidia Surround/AMD Eyefinity/ultrawide screen resolution options. About 50% of games have them, 50% don’t, and it’s really frustrating to play a game where my playing experience would be so much better if I could use Surround, but the game just has no support for any resolution that isn’t 16:9.

frog,

I’m more forgiving of that kind of thing with older games that predate ultrawide resolutions, and consider it a pleasant surprise when I find an older game that works fine with it. But since I’m running a Surround setup, I have the ability to just turn off a couple of monitors and run in 16:9 if I have to - which I do for most older games. It really sucks there isn’t a good workaround for you, and others with 21:9 screens.

But it’s bloody annoying when it’s a new game that doesn’t support anything but 16:9, or only supports it badly. The only argument I can see against supporting wider resolutions is that in competitive games, apparently the wider field of view offered by screen resolutions wider than 16:9 offers an unfair competitive advantage to the players that have them. (Like one person having a better CPU or GPU, or more RAM than someone else doesn’t?!) With single player or cooperative games, where there is no competitive element that gives an advantage to whoever has the best hardware, I really can’t see any justification for not supporting non-16:9 resolutions.

frog,

Absolutely agreed. I think because the gaming industry is relatively new, it lags behind other sectors on unionisation, and that is definitely something that should change. Not necessarily to emulate Hollywood, but unionisation definitely.

frog,

Very well said. I think there is an argument that the gaming industry would benefit from more unionisation (there are very few sectors that wouldn’t benefit from it!), but emulating Hollywood doesn’t seem like the answer.

frog,

Yeah, that would be ideal. Although whether game artists would be best fitted to a tech workers union or an artists union (which does exist in some places) is a question that would need to be answered.

frog,

or there may be something in place to disable achievements when you mod the game like in Fallout New Vegas.

This is why my achievements for Skyrim look completely incongruent with my play time. Someone might assume that I’d spent 700 hours in the character creator…

frog,

I actually didn’t even realise those mods existed. I know what I’m adding to my next Skyrim playthrough. There are so many achievements I don’t have…

frog,

I think it didn’t used to either, as I have some achievements on the original version of the game, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never played it unmodded. But I have no achievements at all on the later editions, despite many, many hours of playtime.

frog,

With a side order of delayed and cancelled games.

frog,

When you don’t have a job anymore, the only thing left to do is sit at home eating lots and lots of ice cream…

frog,

The only thing more rage-inducing than getting stuck in a game and needing to Google the information I need… is finding that information on a Fandom Wiki composed of 90% ads and 10% useful content. Especially since I’m usually searching for that information on my phone, due to not all games handling Alt+Tab particularly well, and Fandom is somehow even worse on a phone. I have genuinely had moments where I’ve just closed a game and stopped playing because the information I need isn’t in the game but has to be found on a Fandom Wiki.

SEO wars only go so far when the user experience on Fandom is so awful that plenty of players would rather scroll down to use the #2 entry in the search results if it means not having to click a Fandom link. They’d only need a few occasions when the #2 entry is a better experience than using Fandom, and they’ll start using the independent Wiki purposefully.

frog,

Even with uBlock Origin installed, I find Fandom to have a very high proportion of ads. For a while I tried blocking them individually through uBlock’s element zapper, but that proved a very short term solution. Too often, it worked only on that page and if I went to another entry on the same wiki, it would be loaded down with ads again. I gave up trying. uBlock is really good with ads on most sites, but Fandom has so many that uBlock can’t get rid of them all.

frog,

It varies between browsers. On my phone (which is how I use Fandom most often - finding out information that ought to be in a game I’m currently playing), I’ve tried several different adblockers and none of them effectively de-ads Fandom. On desktop, Firefox with ublock is generally okay, but Chrome with ublock always has a couple of ads that try to sneak through.

frog,

Once the Trust Thermocline has been breached, it’s very difficult to recover, no matter how sorry you say you are…

frog,

Elon Musk demanded a cameo in Cyberpunk 2077 while wielding a 200 year old gun: "I was armed but not dangerous" (www.pcgamer.com)

While Elon’s then-partner Grimes was recording her part in the game as cyborg popstar Lizzy Wizzy, the erratic tech billionaire turned up with an antique firearm to “insist” on being included in the game. “The studio guys were like sweating,” Grimes is quoted as saying. Musk adds “I told them that I was armed but not...

frog,

So… basically, Musk turned up at a studio and threatened the devs with a gun (which antique or not, could have been loaded and functional - shooting with antique guns is a thing) to make them put him in the game?

I know there’s a massive cultural difference around guns between the UK and the US, but I’m genuinely struggling to see how “a man has turned up to our studio with a gun because he wants us to put him in our game” doesn’t warrant a call to the police.

frog,

Thanks for the explanation! It sounds fairly similar to the law here, where it’s based on what a reasonable person would believe - so even waving a realistic toy gun at someone would get someone in trouble, if the person being threatened with it would reasonably believe it was real.

frog,

There are ways of surreptitiously sending a message to, say, someone who isn’t in the room, without making it a very obvious call to the police. Or, for that matter, just dial the number on your phone and don’t say anything other than “your gun is really impressive but I’m a bit uncomfortable with having it pointed in this direction”. The operator on the other end will know what to do with that.

Because another way Musk could ruin your life is shooting you while showing off and waving a gun around, given that he is immature and arrogant enough to have loaded it, and reckless enough for his finger to slip.

frog,

Hence why, when calling the police, you wouldn’t say who it is. Just “a man” or “a person” has come in with the gun. Which happens to be true, since until proved otherwise, Musk can indeed be accurately described as a person. Whether he manages to wiggle out of it later is less important than the immediate problem of getting the gun-wielding lunatic out of the studio.

frog,

I don’t think the Polish are more likely to be fine with having a gun waved at them than any other nationality.

frog,

Yeah, hence why I said “until proven otherwise”. At some point someone will pull the mask off and reveal the monstrosity underneath. But until then we have to be the bigger people, give the benefit of the doubt, and assume he is actually a human being.

frog,

I’m so glad I’m not the only one that thinks this! I can see how and why it happened, as the art style became increasingly stylised and exaggerated over the years, but visually it’s really, really not my cup of tea. It feels like what happens when you spend all your time just drawing the same thing over and over (ie, two specific characters) to the point that they become increasingly caricaturised and distorted.

No one else I know dislikes the art, and like… I dunno, it’s a successful and well-loved comic that a lot of people enjoy. I don’t begrudge them that success. It’s just not a visual style that works for me. And it’s kind of nice to know others have noticed the same thing and it’s not just that my perception was completely off.

frog,

Now you mention it, yeah, it does give me some Ren and Stimpy vibes.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind - a platformer where anything you can't see doesn't exist (tymowskyy.itch.io) angielski

Hi! Last month me and a few friends participated in the 1-BIT game jam, the theme of which was light & dark. We really liked how our game turned out and decided to develop it further into a proper demo in the following weeks....

frog,

My initial thoughts are that I absolutely love the concept! Really cool idea to play with object permanence (or lack thereof) as a game mechanic. I got as far as level 11, and at that point found that my reflexes just aren’t good enough to handle the fast moving platform - but I’ll give it another go later to see if I can get past it.

frog, (edited )

I heard from a friend that, allegedly, Riccitiello sold a load of his shares in Unity last week, almost like he knew those shares would be worth less this week… No idea if there’s any truth to it. You know how rumours can be.

I’m starting a game design degree on Monday, and I know Unity is on the syllabus (though not until later in the year). Guess it’ll be interesting to start the term with a conversation about how useful knowledge of Unity will be long term. Since the majority of graduates from this university go into or start indie studios (due to geography), how Unity treat smaller developers is definitely going to be relevant.

frog,

I think it definitely depends on how the course is assessed, what content it covers, and how much of that content the student needs to have absorbed to be considered to have met the requirement to pass. I just completed one in the UK where, to put it in simple terms, you had to get 10/10 to pass, and you got higher grades if you went above and beyond. But that’s because each module had a set of criteria and you had to demonstrate proficiency in all of them at least once in the coursework, and you got extra credit if you demonstrated “very good” or “excellent” proficiency. (This grading system is unusual in this country, but it exists for very skills-focused courses, where demonstrating proficiency with doing something is more important than showing you know something.)

By that standard, a game with “only” 7/10 would have significant chunks missing in a way that would make it unplayable. A 10/10 game would be average: everything that’s meant to be in there is there, but it’s only done the bare minimum to make a functional game. Every part of the game that could be described as “very good” or “excellent” would earn it ratings above 10.

Not that I’m saying games should be graded this way. It’d be ridiculous and confusing. But it just demonstrates that what constitutes a “failing” grade definitely varies not only between countries, but between different courses. Which means I actually agree that basing game reviews on the grading system of the US educational system is flawed: it makes too many assumptions about what constitutes “passing” or “failing”.

frog,

My preferred approach is to ignore the number/percentage rating entirely, and focus on what the review actually says. Maybe the reviewer is marking it down because of stuff I don’t care about, and the good parts of the game are exactly the things I value highly. Or maybe they’ve given something a 9/10 but the things they love about it are things that would make me hate it. There are so many more important things when deciding if I want to buy and play a game than what overall percentage it was given in reviews.

frog,

Your list of ideas meshes pretty well with what I’d like to see: something that’s independent and not just shilling whatever their sponsors are selling; something that presents various perspectives to give an overall view of a game, rather than one influencer’s opinion; and coverage of a wide variety of games beyond the AAA titles. Loving the idea of covering mods and older titles, and don’t forget the indie games.

I’d definitely be more inclined to follow such an outlet if it was in a written format on the fediverse. Maybe I’m just really old, but following influencers and streamers on Twitch and YouTube has never clicked with me. Too much self-aggrandisement, not enough on-topic discussion. For that matter, the other thing I really miss is written guides to games. That’s probably beyond the scope of what you have in mind, but it’s another area of games coverage where too much is on YouTube and Twitch.

Just… more games, less capitalism please?

(Personal finances permitting, I’ll happily support an outlet with good quality content, especially if it’s freely available and not put behind a paywall. I’m so much more amenable to “donate if you like my content” over “you can’t see this until you cough up some cash”.)

frog,

Been playing Spirit of the North this week. I’ve actually finished it, including 100% achievement completion, because it’s not a huge game. What is really sticking out to me right now, though, is that I adore this game. I like a lot of games, but it’s pretty rare for me to absolutely love one.

I’ve also just finished a run through Baldur’s Gate 2, playing a bard for the first time ever. I enjoyed the class more than I thought I would. Onwards to Throne of Bhaal next week!

frog,

I would have thought all those games use very similar rules

They actually don’t! Because each of the D&D games used whichever edition of D&D was current at the time, and the rules of D&D varied a lot between editions. So Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 used 2nd edition, while Neverwinter Nights uses 3rd edition, and Baldur’s Gate 3 uses 5th edition. So it’s not so much an issue with Bioware or the Infinity Engine, as much as 2nd edition D&D is… not as intuitive as some of the later ones. Just as an example, in 2nd edition a lower armour class (AC) score is better than a higher one: without that knowledge, it’s very easy to use the wrong gear.

That said, a lot of BG/BG2’s encounters are really, really tough if you’re relying primarily on physical attacks. Having a wizard in the party with the right spells makes a huge difference. While there’s a lot of party configurations that can work, a solid mix would be 3 fighter/ranger/paladin/etc, 1 wizard/arcane spellcaster, 1 cleric/divine spellcaster, and 1 thief.

With Neverwinter Nights, because it’s based on 3rd edition, if you’ve played either of the Pathfinder games, you’ll find the ruleset pretty similar. Pathfinder as a system forked from D&D 3.5, so while there’s some differences in the finer details, most of it will be very familiar and will largely do what you expect it to.

frog,

So, yeah, the fact that it’s a beautiful game is definitely part of it! Visually it’s stunning, and the music is also really beautiful. I also think it’s superbly written: there’s absolutely no dialogue, but there is still a narrative as you play through each area, and I think that’s genuinely very hard to do well, but Spirit of the North does. I really got invested in the relationship between the two characters. There’s also no combat or fighting in the game, so it’s all focused around the platforming and puzzle elements.

I can definitely see why it’s not to everyone’s tastes. It got “very positive” on Steam, so it’s rated more highly on PC than on the PS, and the negative reviews it did get are complaining about either the controls or the game not telling you what you need to do. So the former is fair, I think: the devs focused on making a beautiful game, so it’s about the experience, not the mechanics. The controls aren’t bad as such, but they’re not as smooth as you’d expect for a platformer, I guess? You get the occasional moment of “why didn’t I make that jump?” But there’s no “miss the jump, die, restart the level” mechanics, so it’s normally 1-3 jumps that you need to repeat if you fall. I found the platforming elements really forgiving in terms of not punishing you for screwing up.

The second criticism, that the game doesn’t tell you what you need to do, I think is unfair. The direction you need to go in is always the way that feels most intuitive, either because of a path, wall, or just the shape of the terrain. Some of the puzzles need you to stop and think about them, and the game doesn’t hold your hand by going “and do this here, and that there, and then that”.

The game I’d most compare it to is Abzu, but with more Nordic and less ocean vibes. If you’ve played Abzu and enjoyed it, then you’ll probably enjoy Spirit of the North too.

frog,

Yeah, the limited spell slots are straight up just a mechanic from D&D, so that’s something you’ll find in all CRPGs using 2nd and 3rd edition. It gets easier at higher levels, as you have more spell slots, but in BG at low levels, you do just have to rest often. It is fine to have wizards using, say, a sling for the easy fights and save their spells for when they really need them. If it helps, though, with most quests there’s no actual time pressure, so you can’t fail it if you do have to do one fight, then rest, then the next fight, and rest again. If you like turn-based, BG and BG2 have settings for auto-pausing with each turn, which replicates a turn-based system by allowing you more time to plan out your next move.

frog,

Agreed with the lack of foreshadowing in BG1 and BG2! While sometimes fights are foreshadowed, either by the details of the quest or the terrain (hmmm, it’s a long, wide staircase with a long, wide hall at the bottom - is there a dragon at the end? Yes, yes there is), there are definitely some really tough fights without much warning about what’s coming. I probably underestimate this in my own playthroughs, because I’ve played it enough that I know from experience what enemies each fight has, but it’s definitely a lot harder for new players.

frog,

It’s definitely worth a shot. It’s actually a pretty small game: I didn’t rush, and spent 6 hours on it the first time I played (and 16 hours for 100% achievements). So even if you find it’s not for you, it’s a pretty small time investment to find out. :)

frog,

games that were smaller in scope

I think this is the crux of the issue. There’s been a trend for AAA to push for bigger and more ambitious games, which leads to long, expensive development cycles. But pretty much everyone who is passionate about gaming can point to a game that stuck with them not because it was huge and ambitious, but because it did one thing really well. Games don’t have to be huge to be amazing.

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