@troyunrau@lemmy.ca
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troyunrau

@troyunrau@lemmy.ca

Centrist, progressive, radical optimist. Geophysicist, R&D, Planetary Scientist and general nerd in Winnipeg, Canada.

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troyunrau,
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This is a great question. It’s like asking when a rock is too small to be a planet. I suspect there were be a definition eventually that mirrors the planetary definition – something like “spherical(ish) and clears its orbit”. The issue is that Mars would lose its two moons under that definition.

So we might end up with something like “moons” vs “natural satellites” and Mars will just have to suck it up.

Rockstar has some of the most restrictive mission design I've ever experienced

I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 again recently and have been thoroughly enjoying it, but this one thing has always bugged be about this game and Rockstar games in general, and that’s how restrictive they are with their mission design. You decide to get off your horse too early when riding to an objective, mission...

troyunrau,
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A good contrast is something like Outer Worlds, where there is usually multiple possible outcomes. I think it comes from their Fallout lessons learned and GURPS background. Love the game design. (Dislike the combat, but that is a separate thing.)

troyunrau,
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I’ll ignore the market share question and talk a little about history. The compatibility layer is what killed OS/2 back in the day.

See, IBM (with OS/2) and Microsoft (with Windows 2.x and 3.x) were cooperating initially. Windows was the new kid on the block, and MS was allowing IBM to make a windows application compatibility layer on OS/2 in the early days. Think Windows 2.x/3.x. This was a brilliant stroke on behalf of MS, since the application developers would choose the Windows API and develop against that API only. Soon, there were no real native OS/2 apps being sold in any stores. Once MS Office came about, OS/2 was effectively a dead commercial product, outside of the server space.

The parallel here is that wine allows developers to target only the Windows API (again). This means you don’t have to bother with linux support at all and just hope that Proton or whatever will do the work for you.

There are some modern differences though. First: Linux didn’t start as a major competitor to Windows in the desktop/gaming space. We’d all love the Linux marketshare to increase, but largely there isn’t a huge economic driver behind it. So Linux will increase or not and the world will keep on turning. We’re not risking being delegated to history like OS/2. The second: the compatibility layer is being made as an open source project, and this isn’t MS trying to embrace-extend-extinguish in the same way that their assistance to IBM implementing that layer was. (We could quibble about .Net and Mono and others though.)

So I don’t think it’ll play out the same way. Linux will be okay. It’s already a vast improvement from prior years.

Historically, there was nothing like a killer hardware situation for OS/2 – no equivalent of the Steam Deck – that was driving wide hardware adoption to encourage additional native apps. Valve has done more for linux desktop adoption in the last few years than anyone that came prior.

troyunrau,
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I was trying to keep my comment short(ish), but you’re not wrong. There are other complications :)

SimCity Classic in RetroArch - Who needs Windows 11 when you can play on Windows 98? (beehaw.org)

Edit: Oh I forgot the Direct X and drivers links. Added it in the below link list. There is a website that hosts old versions. With Windows 98 SE I use “voodoo_graphics_driver_kit_version_3.01.00” and “directx9.0c_april2006”....

troyunrau,
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Just use wine on windows ;)

troyunrau,
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Fuck Musk. But also, this is a nothingburger – there are plenty of spent upper stages floating around the solar system.

troyunrau,
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A 32 but integer can store a number up to four billion. If measuring RAM size in integer bytes, 32GB would be 0 bytes, because that integer would wrap around four times.

Assuming windows, if you right click on the executable, you may be able to choose to run it in a compatibility mode of some sort (like XP mode or something) in which case it should report smaller memory to the game, probably.

troyunrau,
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No Man’s Sky. Again. It keeps sucking me back in.

EU4 with Anbennar mod – update just released with a bunch of new stuff.

Is there any (single player playable) game with $10 which has made you point any go "haha" or given you an equivalent feeling because it was that enjoyable for every moment you played it?

This is a very strict bar with a limiting price requirement. As for the title of the post, I fully mean giving the enjoyable feeling 100% of the time. Put forth the niche games which do this, because I do not know of any popular AAA or popular/fairly big developer indie which does this. The game must be playable for 100 hours at...

troyunrau,
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Only games I’ve passed 100 hours on:

Pokemon (multiple versions)

No Man’s Sky

Many Paradox games: CK2, CK2, EU4, Stellaris

troyunrau,
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If it’s a game I’m going to get hundreds, or sometimes thousands of hours from, then I’ll pay more. If you look at price per hour spent on entertainment, it’s hard to compare. However, you often have to wade through a bunch of shitty overpriced games to find those gems.

Okay, back to EU4 now ;)

troyunrau,
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Damn, I actually loved that temple.

troyunrau,
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I’ll play devil’s avocado.

There are some genres that were effectively created by the Japanese gaming industry (Nintendo and others). Pokemon and monster hunting/battling. Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest and JRPGs. Hell, I’d even say visual novels (like Steins;Gate and others). Japan has been hugely successful at exporting these genres that were already domestically successful. And so they became the reference standards.

But if you were to look at racing games, or flight sims, or dozens (if not hundreds) of other categories, you’d see that they’ve failed to break into these genres with any significant effect. Not because they don’t have the technical skills, but rather, they don’t fall into their niche.

Cherry picking Mario and Zelda is unfair.

troyunrau,
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No! I’ve heard it is quite the investment if you want to start at the beginning. Is there a later jumping in point that works well, in your opinion?

troyunrau,
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Sure. Tales games tend to be high fantasy settings where each game is its own setting (much like Final Fantasy in that sense). They tend to have a lot of “war against heaven corrupted” kind of vibes. But largely there’s a lot of places to explore, NPCs to talk to, and a bunch of great little skits that trigger between your team. They tend to be lighter on graphics in exchange for length and depth of story. But it’s also somewhat linear, and carefully crafted and you can sort of lose yourself in finding the next story beat.

But they also typically have active combat systems where it’s about button mashing and combos. This is the part I don’t like :)

troyunrau,
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I’ve played all the old school Square and Enix stuff. FF6 is my goat.

troyunrau,
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I’ve never heard of this, so it is perfect as a recommendation! Because now I have something to look into :)

troyunrau,
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Yeah, that’s a good option perhaps. I grabbed em recent because of a steam sale, but never played them before. Appreciate the rec :)

ryujin470, to gaming

If you were to reproduce the art style of a video game, what video game would you choose?

troyunrau,
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Outer Worlds. Colourful corporate dystopian. Purpleberry Crunch!

troyunrau,
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Yes, but how. The details matter

troyunrau,
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That article is light on implemention details. It talks a lot about the legislation itself, and ways in which it might be implemented.

troyunrau,
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This is a pop-science problem and not a real science problem. Any astronomy imaging system worth its salt has image stacking algos that remove transients easily enough.

troyunrau,
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Hi, it’s me. An actual scientist. Did grad school in planetary science. The same techniques we use to spot asteroids are the techniques used to spot satellites. But removing them is even simpler. It’s not algorithmically hard at all.

In fact, it’s so simple that I’ll write it out: take several images (at least three) in quick succession and take the median value across those images.

Oh hey, that was easy. Makes a good despeckle filter too for cosmic ray strikes or whatever else.

troyunrau,
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Is this unmodded? I’ve never played it, and this screenshot alone intrigues me enough…

troyunrau,
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Even more amazing that it was found in the era it was. People were pouring over the skies looking for the next big planet, and instead they found this little guy.

There are still some orbital dynamics suggestions that something large and dark is lurking out there – an ice giant. But it’s still largely conjecture. It’d be interesting to see how they define it should they find something very large (say Neptune mass), but it hasn’t cleared its orbit. Is it a planet or not? :D

troyunrau,
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I have this Tshirt

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/0d7c2700-1e4d-46c9-98a1-ca2a335656f0.png

I get groans

troyunrau,
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Ah shit, a switcheroo!

troyunrau,
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Stellaris. Absolutely fantastic.

troyunrau,
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Definitely a different kind of creative thinking involved haha

troyunrau,
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Godspeed! I don’t think Ariane 6 will go down in history as a successful rocket, mostly on account of the shift in economics forced on the rest of the industry by SpaceX. But I do get excited for debut launches – some very clever people worked very hard on this. :)

Long Dark dev criticises Manor Lords for lack of updates, Hooded Horse CEO replies that not every game needs to be "some live-service boom or bust" (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

Interesting thoughts about how to define success for video games in today’s market, particularly for those using early access. Lots of respect for Hooded Horse’s CEO, Tim Bender, he says all the right things and seems genuine....

troyunrau,
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I know one of the Long Dark devs – chill AF – and if they are a representation of their company culture, then I would consider this less of a snipe, and more of a business model observation one would make over beers.

But, yeah, it is yet to be seen if Manor Lords is a flash in the pan, or has a long tail (like Paradox games or No Man’s Sky or others).

troyunrau,
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Business people post on LinkedIn. I do too. Gotta know your audience.

troyunrau,
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Dragon Age Origins, first run ever. Had to apply the 4GB patch, and it still crashes occasionally on modern hardware. Off and on.

BG3. Just started Act III, still in the outskirts. The third act is so imposing that I’ve taken a break just to clear headspace, hence DAO above

EU4 (Anbennar fantasy conversion mod) – geez, this game is like crack for me. I’m now well over 4000 hours. I keep circling back. Most recent run was Dwarven Adventurer into Verkal Dromak – the sleeper dwarves with the dream magic system. Long considered a hard start, you’re now aided by an early game rebellion which can sometimes cripple your main enemies, the Hobgoblin country “The Command”. Much fun.

troyunrau,
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I bet this is a falling out with Hasbro execs on royalties. BG3 royalties were a cash cow this year for Hasbro, pushing Wizards (as a division) to be quite profitable, while almost all other divisions in their company lost money.

So now the agreement is over, and Larian is like: we will own the IP on our next project instead of paying $90M to Hasbro… And fair enough – they’ve shown they can kick ass. Hasbro is probably gambling that it’s the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer. So they’ll kick tires on selling BG4 to another studio.

BG3 will go down in history as the legendary game before enshittification. Larian will make a few great games that don’t sell as well – before selling out to a whale that dumps money on the owner’s front lawn (see also BioWare). The devs who made BG3 will found indie studios and make cool shit for a decade or two. So the wheel turns.

troyunrau,
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Keep going, I’m almost there

troyunrau,
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Wildass hypothesis I just pulled out of my ass with an undergraduate degree in applied physics: maybe interaction with particles emerging from quantum vacuum?

Okay, that sounds like great technobabble. I’m going to watch star trek now ;)

troyunrau,
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Easy. If you can afford to be a space tourist, you can afford to put $5M in escrow for your future medical expenses.

Let’s take risks people!

troyunrau,
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A half dozen years ago, or thereabouts, I entered the Canadian version of this competition, just to see how I’d fare, and to look at the process. Made it through the first couple levels of screening (from 3200 applicants, I was still in the hunt at 300 remaining) but then got filtered.

Some interesting bullet points if you’re thinking of applying, assuming the NASA questions are similar to the CSA ones:

(1) ham radio, morse code, or other amateur radio operator experience is an asset.

(2) Anything aviation or amateur rocketry is an asset, but in particular a pilot’s license. Anything aviation adjacent is still useful.

(3) Russian language (this might be changing in the current political environment)

(4) Experience in an “operational environment” – I suspect this is military jargon, but if you’d don’t field research as a scientist out of wilderness camps, or anything like that where you’re in a small group for work/adventure might apply here.

(5) Medical degrees, or advanced science degrees.

(6) Physical fitness and perfect vision

When I applied, my Russian sucked, my aviation experience was tangential (but copious), and I was a grad school dropout (from a planetary science program), so I didn’t float to the top. But it was enough to make it through the first layers.

There person who ended up winning was a medical-degree air force pilot. Hard to compete haha.

troyunrau,
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They are speaking truth to power at the moment, but people still play MTX mobile games so…

troyunrau,
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I’m not mad. Just disappointed.

I kid. Everyone has their own tastes and flavour preferences. I’m a fan of the book and also think Villeneuve did a pretty bang up job with Part One.

All sci fi ages poorly, some ages more poorly. Dune has the advantage of being a universe where they fought a war with computers, thus they’ve more or less been banned. This helps them avoid references to aged tech like most sci fi, giving it a bit of a reprieve there. If you read novels that were contemporary with it, you’ll find a lot of rooms full of tapes for computer systems, and similar. But perhaps that is more your style.

Personally, I dislike “psi” powers in my sci fi. And Dune, like many others in its era, is obsessed with this notion that “you only use 10% of your brain… imagine what you could do it you unlocked more!?” Modern neuroscience has completely pooh-poohed the idea, but if you read anything classic sci fi, you need to tolerate it. In the case of Dune, I tolerate it because the world building is worth it.

troyunrau,
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Aside from the fact that anything with mass cannot travel at the speed of light… Lots of fun things happen as you approach the speed of light. There’s an excellent mostly-hard sci fi novel called Tau Zero that explores this concept in depth and, despite being older, is worth the read.

(1) Time dilation (the universe and you have different clocks).

(2) blueshifting of objects in front of you. At 0.95c, basically all visible starlight in front of you has been blueshifted into ionizing radiation. Fun fun.

(3) shape distortion. You become more needle-shaped – getting very long and skinny, as observed by the rest of the universe.

(4) you become a nuke. At .99c if you run into anything, your kinetic energy related explosion would be roughly 6x the Tsar Bomba (largest nuke ever detonated) for each kg of mass. Or, put another way, each kg of your mass would impact with the energy of 3kg of antimatter contacting 3kg of matter. Boom.

Sci fi always overlooks the last one. Near light speed combat is basically firing buckets of sand at planets and blowing them up.

troyunrau,
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Right! And that’s not even one percent of lightspeed.

troyunrau,
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All six people who still play Diablo 4 probably bought it though…

troyunrau,
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Depends on the stone. The coefficient of heat flow in stone is very low, so the heat will take forever to flow through the stone. But it should be quite evenly warmed at the top in a few hours if you keep feeding the fire. And it would be more or less immune to flare-ups and other issues.

However, you’d need to use a big slab of granite or something with more-or-less uniform properties, zero porosity (so no moisture or air bubbles are expanding or flashing to steam), and there’s still a chance that fast heating or cooling causes it to crack.

Or just use a metal slab with a pizza stone on top.

troyunrau,
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It’s a fantastic little adventure platformer, wrapped up with cat physics. Some of the missions you end up doing don’t seem catlike at all, but I forgive them – most cats wouldn’t properly move a plot along without the prompting of their robot friend either. ;)

It’s a very nice game, and at a good price point. :)

troyunrau,
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Robot opens door for cat. Cat sits and looks

troyunrau,
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BG3 still. Just started Act 3 for the first time. Astarion as my main.

troyunrau,
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Yeah. If you’re a conpletionist like me, you just run around picking up junk to sell to vendors so that you can buy one of every available named weapon (and store it in camp and never use it)…

Oh, there’s plot? Sorry, busy systematically looting an entire castle… I kid. A little.

I’m really enjoying how each character has a good arc, and that those arcs feel so substantially different from one another.

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