soulsource
@soulsource@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on VR is so 90s 1 month ago:
Revisionist? I am old, I was there. But if you don’t believe me: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian
(And while I didn’t own a Symbian phone myself, a good friend did. Oh, but what I owned was a tablet computer. Way back in 2002. And now you will likely call me a Revisionist again, because I owned a device before Apple invented it…)
- Comment on VR is so 90s 1 month ago:
It’s funny that you mention the iPhone - a device that had zero innovation compared to its competitors, and just managed to take the market because of marketing.
- Comment on Let's discuss: Visual Novels 1 month ago:
While Visual Novels are not my favourite genre, there are a few entries that I would like to highlight, because I enjoyed playing them quite a lot:
- Pyre: While it isn’t marketed as Visual Novel, it pretty much is one. To be precise, it is a Visual Novel with sports-game elements. The world-building in this one is excellent, as is the art. The visuals alone would make this game worth playing, but there is also the soundtrack, and the gameplay of the sports events is pretty fun too. Oh, and the story. This game really requires tough choices. It’s from the same studio that made Hades, Transistor and Bastion, and it shows.
- Griftlands: Again, not marketed as Visual Novel, despite very clearly being one. This one is a Visual Novel with card battles and deck-building. Just as with Pyre, the world-building in this one is outstanding. The card battles are well done. It’s no Slay the Spire, but it’s still pretty good. Also, it has some of the best jokes I have seen in games recently.
- Loren the Amazon Princess: Again a Visual Novel that is primarily marketed as something else - this time Role Playing Game. And to be honest, it has everything you would expect from an RPG: inventory management, character stats, JRPG-style turn-based battles, trading, a world map,… But it’s still pretty much a Visual Novel with RPG elements. It has a massive scope for an indie game, and is overall pretty well done. To be blatantly honest, I played this mainly for the RPG parts, but the story isn’t bad either, once one gets past the initial “I see your party has no rogue, mind if I join?” part. The setting is still being actively developed by the studio behind it, who have released several other visual novels (with and without RPG elements) set in the same world, with recurring characters.
- Comment on VR is so 90s 1 month ago:
Yes. That’s why I was utterly confused when big companies dug out hat dead horse (yet) again.
And they are still trying to ride it.
- Comment on Looking for a Tales-like RPG without active combat 1 month ago:
Yep. And the worst part is the Fear-of-Missing-Out when disabling them.
Like, there is nothing stopping you from just not doing the kingdom management mini-game, except that nagging feeling that you might actually miss out on some content…
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 29th 1 month ago:
Currently? Potionomics. I just wanted something that I can finish quickly, because of the upcoming release of House of Light, but now I am still not done with my play-through, so I kinda cannot start House of Light just yet.
But in a couple of days, as soon as I am done with Potionomics?
House of Light. And that for quite some time, I expect.
- Comment on Looking for a Tales-like RPG without active combat 1 month ago:
And the predecessor, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is amazing too.
- Comment on Nintendo and Pokémon are suing Palworld maker Pocketpair 2 months ago:
It depends on what kind of patent. I just googled the term I had used before, and it is indeed what I expected it to be: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
And yes, that name is stupid. That’s why I am happy that my native language, German, has a better distinction between “Patent” (what you described) and “Geschmacksmuster” (design patent).
About patents being public: They are. That’s because the idea behind patents is that after they expire, anyone can use them to build the technology they describe. The temporary exclusive usage rights that they offer are meant as an incentive for inventors to publish their findings. The only problem is that the legal situation did not keep up with the creativity of patent lawyers… (I will stop now, otherwise this will turn into an endless rant about how broken the patent system is.)
- Comment on Nintendo and Pokémon are suing Palworld maker Pocketpair 2 months ago:
I’m not sure how the term “patent” is to be interpreted here. It could be used like back in the days when Apple sued Samsung because their phone had rounded edges too…
Like a “design patent” (sorry, I’m not a native English speaker, so I’m unsure if this is the correct translation).
A lot of the pals in the game look quite close to Pokémon. Not identical, of course, but so similar that one just has to wonder if the design has been “inspired” by Pokémon…
- Comment on What are the scariest games you've played? 2 months ago:
Amnesia.
- Comment on Palworld will not change to free to play model, dev claims [VGC] 2 months ago:
Short answer: Whales.
Long answer: Watch the South Park episode on the topic. They explain it in detail. It’s titled “Freemium Isn’t Free”.
- Comment on M*crosoft's search engine is borderline unusable 2 months ago:
Need to enshittify it enough to make the AI features feel like an improvement.
- Comment on [Request] Retro Recommendations 3 months ago:
Oh, and just in the moment I hit send, I remembered another gem from the olden times:
Unreal World: Basically the survival game. 99% of today’s survival games are just a pale shadow of this. I mean, nowadays there are even “survival” games without hunger mechanics or proper simulation of wounds… No, this is not one of those easy mode survival games. This is Fantasy Finland, and it’s the Fantasy Iron Age. Available for free or, if you want updates faster, also for money on Steam.
- Comment on [Request] Retro Recommendations 3 months ago:
If I weren’t currently at work and would have time to think about the answer, I could probably come up with more titles, but those are the top 2 that come to mind, if I ignore cRPGs (at least that’s how I read your “avoiding final fantasy-esque” requirement):
Settlers 2: It’s new enough to still look decent by today’s standards, and has amazing game design. Available at GoG.
Star Control 2: One of the best early open world games. The graphics have definitely aged by today’s standard, but the humour hasn’t. Or maybe it has, but just a bit. Available for free and open source.
- Comment on Paradox CEO admits company made "wrong calls in several projects" in wake of Life By You's cancellation 3 months ago:
Just look at the trailer. Of course there is still some animation jank, but the overall visuals are just stunning.
It’s so uncanny valley that I might feel bad for deleting the pool ladders (or whatever the equivalent of that is in inZOI).
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 28th 3 months ago:
I would like to answer Vagrus, as that is what I would want to play.
However, I spent way too much of my spare time playing Lean4, and that isn’t even supposed to be a game!
Almost all the rest of my gaming time goes into Palworld multiplayer with my wife. What left about 1 hour for Vagrus last week…
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 14th 4 months ago:
I wanted to play Baldurs Gate 3 multiplayer with my wife, but couldn’t convince her. She really doesn’t like turn-based combat, and the game has too much dialogue for her taste…
So, we are now playing Palworld instead. It’s a lot of fun in multiplayer, but still quite grindy.
- Comment on I asked what your fave controllers are, now. What is the worst controller you have used? 4 months ago:
Xbox Series X/S.
It isn’t even particularly bad by itself, but compared to its predesessors (Xbox One and Xbox 360) the Xbox Series X/S gamepad is a clear step back when it comest to build quality (just try pressing the D-Pad buttons without thinking “this is cheaply made”), and that comparison is what makes me hate it.
And what adds insult to injury is that the quite expensive Elite version of the controller is just as cheaply built as the regular model…
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 30th 4 months ago:
Technically I’m still playing “Vagrus - The Riven Realms”, but I didn’t play much lately, since I rediscovered my love for the Lean4 programming language and am now playing around with a formally validated heap again.
- Comment on Technical quality of life advice 4 months ago:
Not really that big of a deal, but Baldur’s Gate 3 can be launched with the
–skip-launchercommand line parameter to, well, skip the launcher. - Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 23rd 4 months ago:
I wanted to be a bit more productive in my spare time, but I have made a huge mistake:
I started playing Vagrus - The Riven Realms again.The world building in Vagrus is excellent. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy Roman empire, and there is a massive amount of text that details the world, and the people living in it. There is so much to read, that the devs even thought it necessary (and rightfully so) to display a warning about the sheer amount of text on the game’s startup screen, with the suggestion to refund it if one doesn’t enjoy a lot of reading. Sooo, of course this is the perfect game for me - or would be if I had more spare time.
The game is a mixture of trading sim and role playing game. You play a vagrus (a caravan leader), and travel the land trading wares, transporting passengers, spreading gossip and doing missions for different factions, you also have a lot of story elements that you can (and should) follow. There is turn-based combat, and during story events there are plenty of skill checks.
The game is relatively difficult, due to its interwoven mechanics. You need to calculate relatively tightly in order to make a profit, but if you loose people in combat, not having reserves might lead into a morale-loss and hunger death spiral… Also, due to the game’s grim settings, the choices one faces are more often than not to either do what is right, or to survive.
- Comment on Open world games, need recommendations 7 months ago:
I would recommend to play this on Switch though. That’s because, unlike the PC version, the Switch version can be played without an Ubisoft Account. All one has to do is to disconnect the Switch from the internet, and suddenly the game runs without login.
- Comment on Open world games, need recommendations 7 months ago:
I would recommend to play Skyrim on PC though. Even if your computer is old, you should be able to get a much better experience from it than the Switch version.
I mean, I played it on the Xbox 360, and it worked like a charm. On an ancient three-core console with 256 MiB of RAM.
Then I wanted to replay it on the Switch, and was disappointed. There are a lot of physics glitches on the Switch, but what is worse is that the NPC pathfinding takes a lot longer on the Switch, such that NPCs move in nonsensical directions during combat, as they start to follow paths that they would have needed several seconds earlier. Instead of moving near the player to attack, they move near the position where the player had been some time ago. This is particularly bad on the overworld, but also noticeable in dungeons.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 24th 7 months ago:
I loved that game, and completed it twice, but the last chapter (or last 2 chapters - depending on which ending you get) is super annoying. The encounters are repetitive, and there are quite a lot of them. It’s almost the same group of enemies again, and again, and again. Once you have a working strategy those encounters aren’t even that challenging, but if you play turn-based, they take a lot of time…
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 24th 7 months ago:
I’m still hooked on Backpack Battles. It’s slow enough that medicine-induced-brain-fog ridden me can play it, and it’s a lot of fun.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 17th 8 months ago:
Backpack Battles. I should have never bought this. It’s eating all my spare time.
- Comment on Need advice for android gaming 9 months ago:
I don’t know that particular system, so I can’t give any hardware-specific suggestions. However, it might be worth checking out the games that previously were included in Humble Mobile Bundles, especially the very first ones. Sorry, I don’t have a nice to browse list, but this site seems usable enough: barter.vg/bundles/3/76/
That said, OpenTTD is available on F-Droid. That should keep you busy for a while 😉
- Comment on What games do you think are unfairly snubbed when talking about the best games of all time? 10 months ago:
There are some amazing fan projects though:
- While it isn’t a remake, OpenMW improves upon the original game’s graphics - it does not change textures or models though, just rendering features.
- Skywind is a remake though - it uses the engine of Skyrim to recreate Morrowind.
- Skyblivion is the same idea, but with Oblivion.
- Comment on Most legible scottish person 11 months ago:
War ja auch nicht ernst gemeint. Ich bin bei diversen Chats im Freundeskreis eigentlich immer der einzige, der auf Hochdeutsch antwortet 😉.
- Comment on Most legible scottish person 11 months ago:
A geh, is doch iagendwie liab, oda?
Übahaupt, jetzt wo si Hochdeutsch imma mea duachsetzt, und vü junge Leit übahaupt nimma richtig östareichisch^1^ redn leanan, missn ma doch schaun, dass unsa Sproch net oafoch ausstiabt, oda?
Mia hom a a longe Tradition, wonns um Mundoatdichtung geht. Da Dichta von da obaöstareichischn Hymne zum Beispü, da Stelzhamer Franz, hot gonz vü in Mundoat gschribn.
Und weis ma grod eifoit: Es gibt a a eigene Wikipedia in unsam Dialekt: bar.wikipedia.org Oba do dua i ma söm schwah, dass i des vasteh. De is scho in da äagstn von de oagn Mundoatn gschribm.
(So, jetzt woas i net, wöcha Sproch i im Dropdown do untn auswöhn soid… Wei wirklich Deitsch is des jo net…)
[^1^] I am fully aware that the dialect I’m writing in is not called “Austrian”. The two big dialects spoken in Austria are “Alemannic” and “Bavarian”, and the one I’m writing is the Bavarian dialect. I’m only using the word “östareichisch” here, because that’s what I expect most people to use in spoken conversation.