Quetzalcutlass
@Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
- Comment on 'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed' 4 hours ago:
Unreal is the king of bloat. Rather than “general purpose” they strove for “all purpose” - Unreal Engine tries to do literally everything out of the box with as many bells and whistles attached as possible. The result is that Unreal Engine games require tons of optimization to run well, and even the editor itself consumes tens of gigabytes and runs like crap.
Unity is simply a mess of poor decisions and technical debt. Their devs seem to reinvent a crucial development pipeline every few years, give up halfway, then leave both options exposed and expect developers to just automatically know the pitfalls of each. Combined with horrific mismanagement and hostile revenue-seeking, Unity has lost a ton of goodwill over the past few years. It’s a major fall from grace for what was once the undisputed king of Indie dev engines.
Godot is tiny, decently performant, and great for simple games, but it’s very bare-bones and expects developers to implement their own systems for anything beyond basic rendering, physics, and netcode. Additionally, the core developers have a reputation for being incredibly resistant to making major changes even when a battle-tested pull request for a frequently requested feature is available. Still my personal pick though.
- Comment on In Neurocracy, it's up to you to solve a murder mystery through the internet's greatest resource, Wikipedia 1 day ago:
And if multiplayer doesn’t bother you, the MMO The Secret World was one of the few other video games that expected players to do outside research to solve quests. That or already have a degree in history, art, and the occult.
It was relaunched as a F2P game several years ago. I don’t know if they kept the obscurity aspect or toned it down to be more friendly to casual players.
- Comment on Favorite Modded Console? 4 days ago:
I’ll always have a soft spot for the original Xbox due to XBMC, the homebrewed Xbox Media Center.
Though most would probably know it better by its current name, Kodi.
- Comment on Favorite Modded Console? 4 days ago:
The DS with a flashcart was nearly perfect. It was incredibly portable due to the rectangular shape, the screen was protected from scratches while folded so you didn’t need a case, and it could emulate every console up to the N64 as well as every Nintendo handheld (obviously). I was upset when my cart finally died - no other handheld emulator I’ve found is as convenient.
- Comment on invertebrate 1 week ago:
The nobility of the sea. True blue bloods, if you will.
- Comment on dog days of summer 2 weeks ago:
They don’t shove them onto spikes so they’re not quite at shrike level, but leopards sometimes drag their kills up into the trees to hide them. Imagine walking by during a windy day and it starts raining monkeys and antelope.
- Comment on This was a big deal. You could play a game on your cell phone 2 weeks ago:
I remember reading sketchy guides on how to add custom ringtones without needing to pay for the privilege. Arbitrary restrictions on user folder access predate Android.
- Comment on This was a big deal. You could play a game on your cell phone 2 weeks ago:
Once a week? Those things could go pretty much forever on a single charge so long as you weren’t making calls, even with batteries that had a tiny fraction of modern capacity due to their simple hardware.
Nowadays even a completely idle smartphone on extreme power saving mode is lucky to last a couple of days, especially if you don’t/can’t disable the vendor-mandated bloatware that periodically wakes it up to phone home. When used regularly, it’s not uncommon for a phone to drain within a single day.
Sometimes I miss the simple, rugged designs - right up until I remember how much better smartphones are at literally everything else. Still wish companies would get the memo and focus on bigger batteries rather than smaller phones, though.
- Comment on The Mysterious Noise, The Empty Bottle, The Asshole Labmate 2 weeks ago:
Thanks for getting the intro theme stuck in my head for the rest of the day, you monster (username checks out?).
- Comment on happy friday 2 weeks ago:
It also helps protect against biting insects.
- Comment on happy friday 2 weeks ago:
They’re testing the costume for Dogma 2.
- Comment on Who is the enemy? 2 weeks ago:
We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants, but there are so many layers of giants that it’s hard to see the ground.
- Comment on No Man's Sky Voyagers free update released with modular Corvette ships you build yourself 2 weeks ago:
You can walk around on (parts of) capital ships, the frigates that follow them (though that’s only used for repairs), and the corvettes added in this update. The only ships you can’t explore are the single-person fighters the game started out with, which makes perfect sense given their size.
- Comment on Brutal survival game Vintage Story gets another huge update, plus work on an Adventure Mode announced 2 weeks ago:
They’ve also disabled purchasing on their itch.io page, so now you have to get it direct (it’s not on Steam or other stores). They claim that itch.io haven’t paid them “for over 3 months”. In their Discord, the Vintage Story developers expanded on this and said itch are “withholding a six figure sum of our revenue share”.
That looks like something that deserves its own post!
- Comment on Why aren't you creating more workers?? 3 weeks ago:
I’m right there with you. They’re basically saying “things could be worse, so there’s no point in wanting them better.” It’s a nonsensical thought-terminating cliché.
- Comment on Why aren't you creating more workers?? 3 weeks ago:
They’re taking the opposite approach.
In the past families had a bunch of kids because they needed extra laborers to stay afloat, plus childhood mortality rates were so dire they needed spares to cover for the ones who wouldn’t make it.
We’re already seeing pushes towards removing child labor laws, and RFK Jr is well on his way to ensuring death from easily preventable diseases makes a comeback.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 3 weeks ago:
Still working on Conan: Exiles, which got an update yesterday. My thoughts remain the same: good game, excellent base-building, but there’s not really much that I haven’t already seen a hundred times in other survival games. I’ll probably drop it soon.
I finished a co-op campaign of Abiotic Factor with my brother-in-law that we started early in its Early Access period and have been returning to every few months. The game is every bit as great as everyone says, though the ending is incredibly abrupt and felt a bit rushed. I hope they expand on things in a later update or in future DLC.
Also played a bit of Gloomwood, a lo-fi immersive sim which comes very close to scratching that Thief itch. The stealth is great, there are many pathways through the level so you always have multiple routes to achieve an objective, and the AI is the perfect balance between smart and dumb for shenanigans. There’s also an incredibly satisfying backstab, though certain enemies wear armor that makes them immune so you sadly can’t ghost and clear out entire levels.
I do have some minor complaints. I’m not a fan of the limited Resident Evil-style grid inventory since I’m a packrat, especially since the game has a research mechanic where you need to chop up enemies and bring one of every single body part to a specific point on the map to unlock crafting recipes and character bonuses and one body’s parts take up the entire inventory, necessitating some very fiddly inventory juggling or multiple trips across the entire world map.
Enemies are also persistent, including their state. Once you kill someone they stay dead for the rest of the game, which on one hand speeds up backtracking, but on the other also make it a boring chore. There are a few points where new enemies spawn in old areas, at least.
I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good immersive sim. It’s still in Early Access but what’s there is already incredibly satisfying z despite my gripes.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 3 weeks ago:
Please post your thoughts on Abiotic Factor when you get to it. It’s tied with Grounded as my favorite game of the past few years.
- Comment on There's a new Platinum game hidden in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake that's actually a remake of a rework of a Zone of the Enders 3 prototype 3 weeks ago:
I kept a separate save file on the original just to play that minigame on demand. It’s peak Kojima, putting an entire section with gameplay and art assets never used anywhere else behind an Easter egg that 99.9% of players will miss. You rarely see that kind of budgetary mismanagement (in a good way?) these days.
I’m glad the remake kept it and expanded on it, especially since the previous HD rereleases cut the scene from the game entirely. Everything I’ve heard about Delta makes me tempted to pick it up despite usually waiting for sales.
- Comment on Please bro 3 weeks ago:
There are entire sites dedicated to “Rationalism”. It’s a quasi-cult of pseudointellectual wankery that’s mostly a bunch of sub-cults of personalities based around the worst people you’ll ever meet. A lot of tech bros bought into it because whatever terrible thing they want to do, some Rationalist has probably already written a thirty page manifesto on why it’s actually a net good and moral act and preemptively kissing the boot of whoever is “brave” enough to do it.
Their “leader” is some highschool dropout and self-declared genius who is mainly famous for writing a “deconstructive” Harry Potter fanfiction despite never reading the books himself (fanfiction that’s more preachy than Atlas Shrugged and is mostly regurgitated content from his blog), and has a weird hard-on about true AI escaping the lab by somehow convincing researchers to free it through pure, impeccable logic.
Re: that last point: I first heard of Elizier Yudkowsky nearly twenty years ago, long before he wrote Methods of Rationality (the aforementioned fanfiction). He was offering a challenge on his personal site where he’d roleplay as an AI that had gained sentience and you as its owner/gatekeeper, and he bet he could convince you to let him connect to the wider internet and free himself using nothing but rational arguments. He bragged about how he’d never failed and that this was proof that an AI escaping the lab was inevitable.
It later turned out he’d set a bunch of artificial limitations on debaters and what counterarguments they could use. He also made them sign an NDA before he’d debate them. He claimed that this was so future debaters couldn’t “cheat” by knowing his arguments ahead of time (because as we all know, “perfect logical arguments” are the sort that fall apart if you have enough time to think about them /s).
It should surprise no one that it was revealed he’d lost multiple of these debates even with those restrictions, declared that those losses “didn’t count”, and forbid the other person from talking about them using the NDA they’d signed so he could keep bragging about his perfect win rate.
Anyway, I was in no way surprised when he used his popularity as a fanfiction writer to establish a cult around himself. There’s an entire community dedicated to following and mocking him and his proteges if you’re interested - IIRC it’s !techtakes@awful.systems?
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong - Release Date Trailer (September 4) 3 weeks ago:
I’ve played Lunacid! It was good, but the limited equipment slots (just your weapon and two rings) meant it didn’t have the same feeling of gradual progression that Kings Field had. Haven’t played Tears of the Moon yet.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong - Release Date Trailer (September 4) 3 weeks ago:
If they ever announce a new Kings Field game, people’s heads (mine included) will explode from sheer shock and excitement.
- Comment on Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds files lawsuit against ousted founders for allegedly downloading over 170,000 confidential files 3 weeks ago:
In addition, the company […] wants to be awarded all rights, title and interest in any intellectual property developed by Cleveland, McGuire, and Gill during their employment at Unknown Worlds, including "all movie scripts, movie footage, game design, game code, play tests, or other software development.
Ugh.
- Comment on Caves of Qud wins the Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work 3 weeks ago:
Ah, right. Is there any video of his whose comment section isn’t a complete cesspool? His edgy 4chan-lite schtick draws in the worst sorts of people to become fans.
Sseth also destroys the culture around the indie games he covers. Whenever he does a video on a niche game, the flood of viewers overwhelms the existing community with toxicity and many of them never fully recover.
I’m still mad he turned the wider community of the game Starsector from mostly left-leaning fans of classic sci-fi into a bunch of stereotypical Redditors who constantly joke about committing rape and genocide - his fans even spearheading development of a mod to add those into the game. Fucking disgusting.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #65 - Vampire Hunters 3 weeks ago:
Damn, single-player only. My brother-in-law is obsessed with Risk of Rain 2 and this seems like a good alternative, but the lack of co-op means he probably wouldn’t play it.
- Comment on You can build 136 million different houses in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's new DLC, if you really must 3 weeks ago:
What gets me is how small a hundred million is by that metric. That’s less than thirteen customizable items at four options per item, or eleven if there are six options per item.
Ironically the more choices, the less impressive their touted number becomes.
- Comment on Has cancel culture gone too far? 4 weeks ago:
Have you forgotten their Texas toast?
- Comment on Caves of Qud wins the Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work 4 weeks ago:
What video are you referring to? All I could find searching on YouTube was a stream with comments disabled and tons of videos by right-wing shitbags complaining about how “woke” the awards are.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
What if you have a mortgage and they call up the bank?
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
You greet a Bavarian with “Grüß Gott” (good luck pronouncing that one correctly) or “Servus”.
First word rhymes with “goose”, second is pronounced as it looks? That’s what my decades-rusty language skills are telling me, at least.