MajorHavoc

@MajorHavoc@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Oof.

  “The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult,”

  Makes me suspect they were woefully behind the rest of the field in development practices. My team, and many others, gained productivity when all the wasteful manager ego stroking in-person meetings stopped.

  Alternately, it tells us they rely on a weird dev kit with a lot of esoteric hardware. Though I would still call that out as being super out of date. Nothing is particularly hard to emulate today, for teams that prioritize having rebuildable test environmenta.

  Just wild.

  Bummer about the layoffs. Probably won’t fix their agility problem, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony is now FromSoftware owner Kadokawa's largest shareholder⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  “Smart as paint, ye are lads! Smart as paint!” - Long John Silver

  “He’s got one leg, Jim! Count 'em: … … One …”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What MMORPG are you playing, and why?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m still playing endless Luanti while waiting for Guild Wars 2 to get SteamDeck verified.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Off-Topic Friday⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Cheers!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve is fixin' to start some arguments over the holidays because 'All adult members in a Steam Family' can see your Steam Replay page⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The other dwarf game I played was The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.

  Ha. I suppose that counts!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve is fixin' to start some arguments over the holidays because 'All adult members in a Steam Family' can see your Steam Replay page⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  “Dwarf” getting added as a catwgory was a publicity stunt write in campaign by Deep Rock Galactic players, if I recall correctly.

  There’s not a ton of games with the tag, but both DRG and Dwarf Fortress tend to get a lot of play hours by their players, I think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The $700 price tag isn’t hurting PS5 Pro’s early sales⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I kind of get that. I stopped buying PlayStations when the PS3 was so hard to get for so long.

  But I’ve never owned a PlayStation that I didn’t love.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The $700 price tag isn’t hurting PS5 Pro’s early sales⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure this tells us much, since the first buyers are usually the ones who don’t care what it costs.

  The big question is how long can it maintain the higher price, once the enthusiasts all have theirs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The four horsemen of unmet financial expectations⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m no pirate, but if I was, I would pirate Mass Effect 3.

  It’s definitely one of the titles that makes me feel like EA is handing out eye patches.

  Am I misunderstanding that it’s single player?

  Why in the world can’t I just give them some cash and get to play it offline without spyware?!

  I know who will let me play Mass Effect 3 offline without spyware.

  And they be good hearted folks, once we get to know them. Aye!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - PC Announcement Trailer (Coming Jan 23, 2025)⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s surprisingly capable hardware.

  I know, right?! It keeps surprising me, in a nice way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - PC Announcement Trailer (Coming Jan 23, 2025)⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. It’s been a weird journey. I’m playing a lot more high graphics titles now that I can just quickly check for a ‘SteamDeci Verified’ badge.

  On the one hand, mine is a first generation portable, so there’s a lot of never going to run.

  On the other, it keeps surprising me what gets ported to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls Online developer votes to unionise⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice. An effective union is probably the only thing that will bring me back to shopping for AAA titles again, so this seems like a win for everyone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - PC Announcement Trailer (Coming Jan 23, 2025)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  FFVII on SteamDeck maybe? I would probably play that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you have any recommendations for casual games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I love Rogue Legacy as a casual game. In the early game, it’s decidedly not cozy, due to missing mechanics and how common unwinnable rooms are.

  Rogue Legacy 2 fixes these issues, and adds a ton of difficulty sliders, and can be tuned to be fantasticly cozy,

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you have any recommendations for casual games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. I would probably start with Dave the Diver, in their case.

  It’s so good. Decently chill. Great vibe throughout. The Boss fights each have a simple gimmick to win, and they don’t try to be clever about it. (Nothing pisses me off like “we changed the pattern of interaction five to turn a narrow victory win into a loss”. Game designers need to cut that out.) Thankfully Dave the Diver has the classic two patterns per battle, and aims for predictable fun. And the Boss fights are rare, anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you have any recommendations for casual games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. The Breach is fantastic. Ready to pick up and set down. Utterly fantastic tactical gameplay. Cool tech, interesting progression options.

  All that said, it’s not my go-to cozy game, because it’s atmosphere is too well done.

  They only thing about “The Breach” is that it’s so dang well done that I can’t take a turn not seriously. It regularly makes me make movie heroism level of decisions. Do I make the safe play, or try to save everyone? Am I willing to sacrifice my pilot for this win?

  The vibe is fantastic, but decidedly not cozy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony will be releasing "VENOM: THE LAST DANCE" on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on January 21.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t believe “the best of the trilogy” made it into the box.

  I imagine it’s a direct quote from a lukewarm review.

  I honestly love these movies.

  But even I know there’s some tongue in cheek in that quote.

  Maybe they chose the quote on purpose?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Off-Topic Friday⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oof. I am so tired of AI hype at conferences.

  I’m as pleased as anyone for the delightful jump in tooling quality that LLMs can provide.

  But, no, we’re not about to hit the singularity. And no, a clever word regurgitation engine wasn’t the only thing holding back my go-it-alone brilliant start-up idea.

  Oh well. I’m sure I’ll make good enough money cleaning up the messes left by people who bet too hard on unproven technology… Again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some great games that require you to bust out a notebook and pen?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Star Trek for Sega Genesis certainly fit this criteria.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Making peace with liking very few games?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. If Satisfactory every gets SteamDeck verified, I may never play anything else again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YEET⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I love the idea that our first message to aliens might be “FRESH WATER ONLY. NO WASTE.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ambition⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m missing a lot of these things, but I’ve decided that my logical next step is to bootstrap Spain’s and Mexico’s space programs. (This is sarcasm. I have a snowballs chance in hell of going to space, and I’m okay with that.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨alpha⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a Google Beta.

  I am effectively immortal, but I will probably someday disappear without notice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Warner Bros. will be releasing "CONSTANTINE" (2005) on 4K Ultra HD on February 18.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This movie is an overlooked gem.

  It has no business being as well executed as it is, considering the budget and niche topic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Greatest video game ever played?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. Tomb Raider is wayup there.

  I remember being relieved when I survived the encounter with the bear, knowing that it was definitely going to be the scariest creature I would encounter. Lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Greatest video game ever played?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Only downside is Microsoft’s greedy ass owns it

  I feel compelled to mention Luanti here, just in case it’s not on your radar. Also VoxLibre.

  It’s uh, well it’s done.

  And it’s fully open source so it continues to grow.

  And it’s lighter and faster and has cleaner network code than MineCraft.

  And it doesn’t have M$ enshitifying it.

  Disclaimer: I love this game and want to see the community grow and grow forever. It’s so good and I want to keep playing it until I die.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Notorious Ursnif Banking Trojan Uses Stealthy Memory Execution To Avoid Detection⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Damn. This is interesting.

  I was pretty sure there wasn’t any further market for my VBscript skills. Turns out I’ve been turning down breaking bad money?

  The mirror universe evil version of me must not talk about his work much. I would die of embarrassment. I’m almost impossible to embarrass, but I draw the line at VBScript.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Perfctl Campaign Exploits Millions of Linux Servers for Crypto Mining and Proxyjacking⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure that the image is the only thing AI generated in this one.

  I didn’t catch a single novel detail about Perfectl to support the claim that it’s one of the most advanced threats. I’m not saying it’s not just that I didn’t catch in this article why it is.

  Maybe it’s there among all the noise and I just missed it.

  There’s a lot of the usual stuff. Maybe the novelty is just having it all in one worm? Other worms effectively have the same impact since they usually phone home, anyway, and a human invokes each of those other tools, if able.

  TL;DR: Worm targets Bitcoin, but isn’t above using infected open source developer packages (citation missing though - would love to know which packages). Uses usual techniques for usual reasons.

  Maybe the novelty is that a bunch of the usual manual steps are maybe being invoked automatically? It’s not clear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Young people were becoming more anxious long before social media, and we should not be fixated on simplistic explanations that reduce the issue to technical variables, researcher says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been trying, but it’s tough. Is there a book club or something where we can share tips?

  (I’m kidding. Instead I’ve settled for making sure they experience the great movies, books and videogames.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Young people were becoming more anxious long before social media, and we should not be fixated on simplistic explanations that reduce the issue to technical variables, researcher says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  make me question who bankrolled this research group.

  Yeah. This reads a lot like “well known harmful but profitable product not as harmful as previously understood”. I’ve seen that headline a lot of times over the years, and rarely was it honest.