jqubed

jqubed, 16 dni temu

I understand it’s not just impacting US developers, as the price of these development kits is also going up across Europe and elsewhere. That’s likely because those “macroeconomic” conditions extend beyond just US tariffs, with currency fluctuations, production costs, and other elements impacting pricing.

I’m thinking they don’t sell that many dev kits so maybe the price is going up for Europe also simply because all of the kits ship from China to Redmond and get distributed to the rest of the world from there. Like, I kind of doubt they even build and sell enough in a year to fill a single shipping container.

jqubed, 18 dni temu

My experience was only playing at friends’ houses who had Play Stations, but I never felt like one was better than the other. I appreciated the mechanic of upgrading items helped to give a different element to the game instead of it being the same thing Nintendo was doing but with different characters. What we really played a lot with friends, though, was Battle Mode on Mario Kart. I don’t think CTR had that, or else no one thought it was as good. It really hasn’t been as good in Mario Kart either since the Wii version I’d say.

jqubed, miesiąc temu

Is that a native macOS app or are you running it in a virtual machine or Wine/CrossOver, something like that?

jqubed, miesiąc temu

Apple is trying to get games running on macOS, most obviously with the Game Porting Toolkit to make it easier for developers to release Mac versions, but they still face an uphill climb mostly because of the reputation that Macs can’t run games. Of course, Apple would also prefer that these games be sold on the App Store instead of Steam or the Epic Games Store, and I think a lot of developers aren’t too interested in that.

It would be funny if gaming on Linux ends up getting more traction than macOS because of Valve’s efforts with Proton despite the much larger macOS market share.

jqubed, miesiąc temu

There’s a part of me that would be tempted to buy a Nintendo 64 if I ever found one, just for the authentic experience with Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, and a few others.

The classic tracks usually vary some in newer versions of Mario Kart. Typically I’d say it doesn’t make a difference, mostly cosmetic, but sometimes it’s significant. SNES Rainbow Road is one I’d say is dramatically easier in the remakes, and I’ve seen comparisons showing wholesale changes on others to the extent they’re hardly even the same track. It mostly seems to impact the SNES and GBA tracks, though. Not as many real differences in tracks that were already 3D models.

jqubed, 2 miesiące temu

I saw something within the past year or so that looked like a new version of Paperboy and I got excited but then it turned out it wasn’t and I was disappointed.

jqubed, 2 miesiące temu

This whole saga has been fascinating in that it has revealed an entire side of gaming I really didn’t know existed. I’m not looking very deeply into it, but just seeing how much exists and how many categories and classifications go into it is surprising, although I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised given how long I’ve been online.

jqubed, 3 miesiące temu

From a studio that also released a winemaking sim called Terroir. Seems like an interesting outfit!

jqubed, 3 miesiące temu

comic/meme into to CSI: Miami YEAAAAHHHH!

jqubed, 3 miesiące temu

And at those prices I’ve bought it at least twice

jqubed, 5 miesięcy temu

TIL Zynga still exists

jqubed, 5 miesięcy temu

Yeah, I’ve never played Madden online. That’s very much a couch game to me still. Not that I’ve played it much in years. I picked up my first copy in over a decade a couple years ago when it was on sale at the end of the season.

jqubed, 6 miesięcy temu

I haven’t seen it mentioned and feel like it should count, since it really just had a solo programmer working with a graphic designer and musician, but RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 took a big chunk of my gaming time.

jqubed, 7 miesięcy temu

It looks fun, but that price is going to be something to make me pause

jqubed, 7 miesięcy temu

Does 2020 work?

jqubed, 7 miesięcy temu

I never pay full price for any of the games, they always have a few discounted and rotate through their full catalog eventually.

jqubed, 9 miesięcy temu

One I haven’t seen mentioned is Puerto Rico. One thing I like is there is essentially no random chance to this game; everything that happens is a result of choices you or your opponents make.

jqubed, 9 miesięcy temu

Despite including a numpad like the Intellivision controller, the GameStation Go doesn’t currently include any games from Atari’s recently purchased Intellivision library. But [YouTube reviewer who was hands-on at CES] GenXGrownUp says including those titles—alongside Atari Lynx and Jaguar games—is not “off the table yet” for the final release.

I only know of the Atari Lynx from reading about the history of Chip’s Challenge but I’d be interested in seeing that.

jqubed, 9 miesięcy temu

Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

Even better, the “violent video game” they’re blaming is Among Us!

screenshot of NBC article
(Not my screenshot, and I haven’t actually read the article)

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

I started working in local TV news 17 years ago. I figured out pretty quickly there’s enough actual news happening to fill the 24-hour cable channels, but sending out reporters and photographers (maybe even producers) is expensive. It’s much cheaper to just have somebody in the studio blabbering on about a few things and trying to stoke reactions from the audience. It can even build a bigger audience than actual news.

Sports radio and TV is an even bigger (though less damaging) example of this. They have a lot of time to fill when games aren’t on, and a lot of times they just put someone on who will give the dumbest take possible just to get the audience mad and have an argument with someone else in the studio or even let the audience call in to argue.

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

Not too much earlier; Wikipedia says the game was invented in 1986 by psychology student Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student at Moscow State University.

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

If you enjoy the game you should check out The Traitors with its many international variants. I was surprised to read that the productions provide psychologists to help the contestants as it gets traumatic, but when I watched the first UK season there were a lot of people getting into emotional distress.

There have been a lot of people cast who really shouldn’t be on the show; it’s just a game!

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

The biggest difference of the TV show versus the home game is the home game just ends whenever all the killers are found. The TV show has to reach a set number of episodes, so there are mechanisms built-in to make sure there’s always at least one traitor up to the final episode.

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

I guess it depends which version you watch; I think the U.S. and Canada versions are 44 minutes without commercials, but yeah, it does have some filler. When someone’s actually good at the strategy it can be interesting hearing them talk through their plans.

jqubed, 10 miesięcy temu

I always enjoyed the Portal 2 trailers with Cave Johnson

Panels

Bot Trust

Turrets

Boots

Perpetual Testing Initiative

jqubed, 11 miesięcy temu

Burn it down! Burning people. He says what we’re all thinking.

jqubed, rok temu

I wish it said more about the camera sensor; guess I’ll have to look that up separately

jqubed, rok temu

I think in the US I’ve heard ETF/ACH transaction fees are usually around $2.50? It might be possible to have that apply across a batch, though, as in if you submit 10 payments to 10 different people as a single transaction it’s still just $2.50, or 25¢ per person. I’m only getting this from hearing accountants complain at companies I’ve worked with, so I don’t understand the details. But I’ve seen it pretty common with companies doing payouts to want to see a minimum amount before they actually send the payment, otherwise it’s not worth doing.

jqubed, rok temu

Like, I don’t need to have TSW5? It will just put them on my account if I ever do buy it later?

jqubed, rok temu

Yeah, I feel like I trust Steam as long as Gabe is calling the shots at Valve. I’m sure it helps that they’re a private company. Hopefully whoever takes over after him will have learned the lesson that you can make a nearly unimaginable amount of money in this industry without putting the screws to the consumer. If they were public or let the business “experts” in I’m sure there would be all sorts of moves to extract more money from customers that would end my trust, but I feel like overall I have a couple of decades of experience at this point that Valve isn’t actively trying to hurt me.

jqubed, rok temu

It’s not actually fully built or operational yet, if that’s a deal-breaker for you clicking in. It’s an interesting project, though!

I don’t think it addresses yet how the food pieces will be added to the game.

jqubed, rok temu

Offhand I can only think of one movie (and sequels) where “didn’t read the book” made the movie significantly better: The Bourne Identity. Those books really were awful!

jqubed, rok temu

Can the Stream Deck be used with other VR systems? I’d just assume not so I’d never looked at it for that.

jqubed, rok temu

I always wanted to get that and drive my cities but never did

jqubed, rok temu

I don’t see it mentioned often, but basically my favorite has been the GameCube controller. Massive primary button with the secondary button the same shape but smaller and next to it, with the alternate (X/Y) buttons a different shape that flow around the primary, all in easy reach but all different to the touch. Especially when I’m playing the Xbox or Switch for a while and then switch to playing the other I’m messed up on the controllers for a little while since Nintendo and Microsoft swap the A and B buttons but both keep A as the primary button (I think a legacy of the original NES/Famicom putting the A button closer to the right hand and the B button farther in, to the left of the A).

I’d prefer the right thumb stick to be the same shape as the left, and it needs a left shoulder button, but beyond that I’d pretty much keep the layout as-is, maybe a slightly different size/shape to better fit in hands. I’ve seen a few third-party controllers like that for the Switch but haven’t looked into them enough to buy one.

jqubed, rok temu

Maybe Chris Sawyer will release a new game again

jqubed, rok temu

There are two different ownerships that are being conflated here. When you buy a book, let’s say it’s a new book, just released, and rapidly becoming a best seller. You own your copy of the book, you can read it, you can make notes in it, you can lend it to a friend but while your friend has the book you can’t read that book yourself, or you can sell the book again but once you sell it you won’t be able to read it anymore until you purchase another copy or go to the library. What you’re not allowed to do just because you have the book is make copies of it to sell or give away (which is somewhat challenging to do anyway with a physical book that has hundreds of pages), you’re not allowed to make and sell an audiobook recording of the book, you’re not allowed to go and make a movie based on the book. You’re not allowed to take the characters and write a sequel to the book and sell it. The author still owns the rights to the contents of the book.

In the early days of books, especially the 19th century as books became easier to produce and more people could read, a lot of this started to become problems. People with printing presses would see a book people like, get a copy, and start printing and selling copies on their own. They made translations and sold copies in other countries. People would produce plays based on the books, and depending on where it was performed the author might never know about it. This was all usually done without the involvement of the author and the author often was not paid from these. A surprising number of highly regarded and top selling authors wound up making very little money from their books because they weren’t being paid for most of the copies being sold. Many died poor. This led to the development of the concept of copyright and various other associated rights.

These rights became more complicated as media progressed. With audio recordings there are multiple rights involved: the person who wrote the song has a copyright on the actual music and lyrics, and the person who performed the song has a copyright to the recording of their performance. Sometimes these are the same person, sometimes they’re different.

The laws kept getting more complicated. With software, the developer or publisher owned the software, often because the developer was working under contract to the publisher or sold the software to the publisher. It’s kind of rare to sell the actual software to a customer, and is usually done only for corporate or government clients. In that case the entire rights to the software are transferred and the publisher/developer can’t sell another copy to someone else. Much more commonly only a license to the software is sold to many different customers, and what exactly that license involves can vary widely in the legal terms of that license (which most people never read). Some are very restrictive. It used to be that a lot of licenses specifically tied the copy that you purchased to the hardware you first installed it on. If that hardware died or you purchased a new model, too bad, you’re now supposed to buy a new copy. Some licenses said you’re not allowed to change the code of the software, some licenses allow it. Ten or fifteen years ago people didn’t really think about the idea of streaming gameplay and creating a video from a game was considered a derivative work and not allowed, like making a movie from a book. Now a lot of licenses explicitly allow streaming gameplay, but some older games that weren’t planning for it might not have the rights to stream the music from the game.

If you violated those rights in the past, the terms technically said those rights ended and you were supposed to stop using the license. In practice this was on the honor system and the licensor would rarely know about it, unless they sent an auditor to check compliance, which was usually only worth doing at large companies. With the internet, companies now have the ability to actually access your computer and monitor your use of the software you’ve licensed. They can even disable your access to this software. Unfortunately, of course, a lot of companies have gone the greedy route and used this to their own advantage and at cost to the customer. Not everyone does, though. It’s really important to know what the terms of the license say. If they say they can delete the game you’ve bought and not refund you, don’t buy from them. Don’t give them money for this crap. Let the game flop, even if it otherwise looked great. Support the developers and publishers who want to support the customers. Read the terms on your software; you should always have the option to say you don’t agree and get your money back if you don’t go through with installation. And the laws that allow bad licenses don’t have to stay as they are; some jurisdictions are friendlier to consumers than others.

jqubed, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Bill Dauterive

A matrix showing characters from King of the Hill and whether or not they know what cryptocurrency is and if they invest in it. Bill Dauterive does not know what it is but does invest in it.

jqubed, rok temu

I play through both Portal games every few years; maybe every 5 or 6. I think I’m due again soon.

jqubed, rok temu

Have you ever done this?

xkcd 1244

jqubed, rok temu

I’m assuming people who already bought the game can still play it?

jqubed, rok temu

Far more interesting for that to be Microsoft’s decision than Walmart’s

jqubed, rok temu

I didn’t even know this was still around