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I find grids helpful when I’m the game master, because they simplify the job of fairly resolving distance and AoE mechanics, and speed the game along. Also in big strategy games, because they allow me to plan ahead on a map with many (often stacked) units without unfair surprises.

I’m enjoying the gridless approach here, though. The computer handles the geometry crunching, there aren’t too many actors for me to keep track of, and the freedom of movement lets me play with tactics that would be impossible on a grid.

Worth noting: I don’t think D&D has ever required a grid, so it might be inaccurate to say this game has gotten rid of it.

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He focuses on the visual aspects of the game, which are indeed wonderful and contribute a lot to immersion, but to me, a host of other elements contribute at least as much to making this game stand above the rest. The writing, acting, world richness, player agency, variety of story possibilities, battle mechanics, and sound design, for example. There’s so much to love that even with all the bugs, it’s still a lot fun.

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It has been a while since I played Divinity: Original Sin 2, and I’m still in Act 1 of BG3, but from memory:

D:OS2 has fewer bugs and better performance. This isn’t surprising, of course, since it has had more time for polish.

From what I’ve seen so far, BG3 has:

• More balanced battle mechanics. In particular, battles aren’t dominated by excessive surface/cloud effects or telekinetic barrel drops, and I haven’t yet had a fight where I felt unfairly disadvantaged by my party lacking one specific ability.
• Far fewer instances of the targeting UI lying to me and causing frustration in battle.
• More world to explore.
• Richer lore, as told through books and journals all over the world. It reminds me a bit of Elder Scrolls in this respect.
• More interesting writing. (This might be subjective, but I would be surprised if most people disagreed.)
• More character depth.
• More immersive voice acting. (For example, the voice actors almost always understand the context of their lines. They often didn’t in D:OS 2, which I found distracting.)
• Better character animation (outside of cut scenes, some of which are a bit awkward).

The gameplay is indeed similar, of course, as it’s the same kind of game, from the same studio, using a revision of the same engine. But this one is IMHO better in almost every respect, and I think I’m more likely to play it again when I’m done.

i am somewhat suspicious that people think Baldur’s gate is some novel masterpiece

Novel? Not really, except maybe to people who haven’t played its predecessor, or good BioWare games, or D&D. More like an improvement on what came before it.

when really it’s that Divinity is super under rated

Where in the world have you seen D:OS2 underrated? I sure haven’t.

and relatively unknown by comparison.

Well, yes, that’s to be expected. D:OS2 didn’t have half a century of role playing game history or Hasbro’s marketing budget behind it.

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Spoilers suck.

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Swen said that they had to pay Hasbro to use D&D and that Hasbro didn’t provide them with any funding.

I don’t think that precludes Hasbro from marketing the game. It might be interesting to see what promotional stuff they have had a hand in. At the very least, it’s on the digital games page of the official D&D site.

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I hear Baldur’s Gate 3 has local co-op.

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Made minor GPU time improvements on the Vulkan renderer.

Confirming: Vulkan performance is a little better in this build.

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Well, if you’re talking about the ones in the list, it doesn’t. They’re fixed. :)

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Thankfully, you can save and reload anywhere, so experimenting is a viable way to figure things out.

If you ever end up wanting details on the mechanics, you could read the relevant bits (especially part 2) of the D&D basic rules, which this game seems to mostly follow.

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I give it a 9 as it is today. If the upcoming patches fix certain bugs and optimize performance, I’ll raise that to a 10. It’s already the best game I’ve seen in years.

Disclosure: I’m familiar with D&D, but I think they did a pretty good job making it fun even for people who aren’t.

I say buy, unless your graphics hardware is close to the minimum requirements. (It currently struggles at the low end.) In that case, I still say buy, but be prepared to return it if you can’t find settings that let it run smoothly.

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Subnautica.

Damn fine game, too, if you look past the engine bugs.

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The excellent sound design helps, too. :)

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"I don’t believe you heard us or Larian say that this was about parity in terms of parity.

Well, that clears everything up. Thanks, Phil.

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Yuck.

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I don’t like Epic’s exclusivity deals.

I don’t like Epic’s invasive “telemetry” libraries.

I don’t like Epic’s client helping itself to whatever data it wants on my computer.

I don’t like Epic’s ethics.

I don’t like Epic’s leadership.

I don’t like Epic’s investors.

Come to think of it, I don’t like anything about Epic. I won’t be giving them my money or granting them access to my computer.

Valve, GOG, and Itch are far more deserving of my support.

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I’m aware of it. It doesn’t resolve the biggest problems with Epic. In fact, it arguably makes them worse, by encouraging more people to accept Epic’s policies and run their code. (Note that Epic Store games run Epic code regardless of how they’re launched; it’s built in to the executables.)

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My source is me, by examining binaries and their behavior. (That is, the binaries themselves are the source.)

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I doubt that a good game studio can remain good for long after being acquired by EA, Activision, or similar.

Thanks for the fun, BioWare. We’ll miss you.

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I can only imagine how poorly games will run if the Switch has to devote resources to Denuvo as well.

Pokemon Go added code obfuscation (I forgot the name of the company that provided it) some months after it was first released. Phones started running very hot, battery life dropped drastically, and people who played a lot had to replace their batteries (or phones) in a fraction of their normal lifetime. Also, as you imagined, performance dropped significantly.

ono, rok temu

Getting direct3d and vulkan working with actually useful performance

They definitely spent an ass-load of money on that

[citation needed]

I’m not aware of Valve or Doitsujin ever revealing how much they paid him to make DXVK. I assume they paid him reasonably well, but I doubt it was an ass-load.

the fact that Wine was around for 25 years before that just goes to show that no one else was willing to do that.

Or maybe that Wine was a lot more work than the direct3d-to-vulkan shim that was done mainly by one person (now two people).

Valve definitely helped by funding a few key projects, and packaging them in Steam made them convenient to use, but I think exaggerating their role unfairly diminishes the much larger body of work (done by other people) that makes it possible at all.

Proton stands on the shoulders of giants.

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Wine is the best emulator.

(It would be a mistake to call it a hardware emulator, but that’s not the only kind of emulator.)

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The OS matters to me. Where my money goes matters to me. I would rather have a Steam Deck.

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These get mentioned a lot:

• Mindustry
• Unciv
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon
• Battle for Wesnoth

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Seconded. If OP lives anywhere near a city, there’s probably an electronics repair shop within reach that would solder on a new connector for less than the cost of a new SSD.

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I hope this leads game engine developers to improve their optimization skills. Chances are the technique(s) needed here have been around for decades.

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It’s obviously impossible for me to recommend specifics without seeing their code and data. But a lot can be done in 10 GiB with some effort and clever resource management. They might have to make fundamental changes to their engine if they didn’t plan for such constraints ahead of time, so maybe it won’t happen for this game. But what they learn through this experience could benefit their future work.

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We get it, you’re a huge xbox fan and you’re disappointed it doesn’t have a release date.

No, you really don’t.

Please take your misguided rant elsewhere.

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Mate, nobody has made that assumption. (And Carmack is not the only one who can see there’s probably room for improvement here.)

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Are you sure it has to be keyboard-only? Would a mouse or cheap touchpad work with your off hand, so long as the games don’t require fast response or fine accuracy?

Slay the Spire is a mouse-driven deck-builder.

Crypt of the Necrodancer is a rhythm-based roguelike that uses only four keys to play.

Both are excellent.

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I have no doubt that the game is outstanding, but after seeing headlines like this all week, it really smells like an advertising campaign.

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Not advertising. These are the Steam reviews.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive, but I hope you’re right.

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Setting appropriate expectations for one’s own work is one thing, but I’ll never understand why some people feel the need to deride others for exceeding them.

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Text of the accepted answer from that thread:

As I understand it, even the most current version of the game links to a horribly outdated version of openssl that is no longer shipped by modern Linux distributions. The publisher has neither fixed this nor bundled the version they need, so you will not be able to start the program due to missing openssl-1.0.so. Most distributions provide a special package to install this legacy library, commonly named openssl-compat or similar. You could also choose any of a number of highly questionable sites that purport to host downloads of this obsolete library.

Meanwhile, Wine runs the Windows version of the game fine. If I recall correctly, I didn’t even need to adjust any settings in Wine to get it to work.

ono, rok temu

Here’s the original article:

automaton-media.com/en/news/20230808-20590/

Sounds like Nintendo wants to go on a litigation spree.

A related patent defines a mechanic that prevents Link from grabbing an object he is on top of using Ultrahand, which also seems rather intuitive. The patent does, however, go into details such as the mechanic also blocking Link from using Ultrahand on objects which have been joined to an object he is on top of.

The word “obvious” comes to mind.

“a game processing method capable of enriching game presentation during a waiting period in which at least part of the game processing is interrupted” and consists of filling up the loading period that ensues after the user inputs their fast travel destination with a sequence in which an image of the starting point’s map transitions into a map of the destination. After this sequence, the character is placed into the virtual space of the destination.

So, that thing films have been doing for decades?

I hope the patent examiners have some sense in their heads when considering these.

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Yes, it’s nice.

Thankfully, we can appreciate things that are obvious or aren’t novel without granting a society-funded monopoly on them. In fact, both those criteria generally disqualify them from patent, for good reason.

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I suspect Valve is truly refurbishing these, rather than blindly reselling returned units with a refurb label (as we sometimes see from certain retailers). Good for them!

Portable, Windows-free gaming just got more affordable. I love it.

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Selling online games and then shutting down the service should forfeit the right to interfere with reverse engineering projects. Maybe even require opening up the service specs so reverse engineering wouldn’t be needed.

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The open beta starts August 10.

nitter.net/playpalia

ono, rok temu

I smell poorly compressed textures/media at resolutions much higher than most people need.

Come on, Larian. Be better.

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How What do you call these games

I call them management sims, but I’m sure there are other names for the genre, too.

Rimworld is one of my favorites.

Mindustry has been getting a lot of praise. I hope to check it out soon.

Cities: Skylines is popular, and Cities: Skylines II is due soon.

Satisfactory is good (although the Steam version used Epic Games telemetry, which has been called out for being rather invasive, last time I looked).

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Thank you.

I was very close to reporting and blocking a certain user who has been spamming meme trash for the past couple of days. A little bit doesn’t bother me, but dominating the forum with it is selfish, and makes it a place I don’t want to be.

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Takes a lot of risk out of the game.

Indeed. But on the other hand, the thing at risk is the player’s time, and only the player can manage it appropriately. A game that doesn’t respect that can quickly become a chore.

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it might be designed to increase engagement to keep you addicted

Perhaps, but that can just as easily backfire. A game that disrespects my time earns my contempt, both for it and for the people who made it.

For example, I returned Red Dead Redemption 2 and now avoid Rockstar games, in part for this reason.

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beating it without the paraglider

Did you keep a tally of dishes and potions consumed? Because I’m guessing it was more than a few.

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I was thinking more about stamina than health, from having to climb your way to high places without usable overhangs.

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I don’t know how it is in this game, but in their previous game, each of the origin characters brought unique goals and quests into play, on top of the usual backstories.

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5e offers three ways to generate ability scores: dice rolls, the standard array, and point buy. Sounds like you’re using the point buy variant in this game.

media.wizards.com/2018/…/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf#…

It also gives bonuses to certain ability scores based on the race you choose (or maybe some other criteria in whatever changes they’ve made for One D&D) so 16 isn’t really the max even at level 1.