Sunsofold

@Sunsofold@lemmings.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Give an inch take an inch⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The NASA computers were among the most advanced computer science of their day. They were built by engineers with cutting edge technology. Chrome is a web browser, an absurd behemoth intended to view everything from a static page from twenty years ago to a dynamically assembled webapp using frameworks even the app’s creator doesn’t know one tenth of, but still has to import, and the whole thing is built to spy on what you do while you surf for cat pics and pussy pics for the ten trillionth time, feeding google’s monopoly.

  Not even apples to oranges. Apples to the lump formerly known as the planet Pluto.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Minecraft’s VR support is now gone⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Headline from the future:

  MS announces Minecraft VR, will cost less than $5/month when you buy a full five year subscription

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your favorite indie game?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to see someone play Vagante, check out Pakratt13 on the tubes. He did a daily show of roguelikes for a bit and vagante was in the rotation. That’s how I heard about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your favorite indie game?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I play, almost exclusively, non-AAA games. Some gems, known and hidden:

  • Autonauts and Autonauts Vs Piratebots - Cute automation games
  • Spelunky - Elegantly simple and well executed platformer
  • BPM: Bullets Per Minute - Rhythm FPS. Others have tried. None I have found have been as good.
  • Immortal Redneck - FPS roguelite
  • Ziggurat - FPS Roguelite
  • Receiver II - Unique FPS roguelike. Every part of everything that moves is simulated. The hammer on your gun hits a firing pin which hits the primer on the cartridge. You can get stovepipes, misfires, double feeds, etc. You don’t reload by hitting ‘reload’ but go through the full manual of arms in a shooter where the tolerances for failure are fairly slim.
  • Valley - running game. The feeling of letting a hill propel your running to otherwise impossible speeds, bottled. Nice little story too.
  • Dredge - Lovecraftian fishing game.
  • Tunnet - lovecraftian network technician simulator. Build a network to allow communication between computers in an underground society with unspeakable horrors occasionally destroying your mind/body.
  • Opus Magnum - Programming puzzles
  • Vagante - roguelike with tight tolerances
  • Ruiner - Cyberpunk slash n dash with a soundtrack half by Sidewalks and Skeletons. Very fun.
  • Tails Noir - Detective story. Normally find the anthro thing a bit tiresome but this was pretty good. Well written. Not a ))))
  • Elderborn
  • Moonlighter
  • Webbed
  • A Story About My Uncle
  • Tormentor X Punisher
  • Tin Can
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendations for "girly" games?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never played it but ‘Pony Island’ seems to have a pink color scheme and I’m guessing it’s about ponies, so maybe?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It can be that. Never played Ghosts so I don’t know about that one in particular. Some games do other things with it, but that sort of thing is absolutely usable to create that ‘trapped’ feeling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to produce the sensation of being trapped you have to use the feeling of power and loss. It stems from the sense of ‘If I could just…’ If I could just get out there, I could defeat that henchman for him. If I could just get out there, I could solve that riddle for him. If I could just escape this box, all would be fixed.

  Now, the trick is, because this is a video game, players have a reduced sense of agency. The player’s sense of capacity is ‘what happens when you hit the button.’ Mario, before more modern adaptations, had a capacity to move left and right, jump, run, and ‘use ability.’ The player never had the ability to do anything else, so it never feels like a limitation. No one ever said, ‘playing Mario makes me feel trapped because I could beat Bowser if I could just access the cannon that’s right over there.’

  So, to produce the feeling of confinement, one must create the sense of power, and then take it away. Give the player enough power that they could even defeat the dragon, but then take it from them so they feel limited. If you can find a way to make it feel like it’s not even forced, as in they feel like they could have won the game in Act 1, Scene 1, but their lack of skills as a player were what made them lose, all the better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If that’s the style of game you are looking for, I could see a structure of 'do code golf puzzles to:

  • program robots to help the knight directly’
  • ‘trick’ henchmen or magical castle elements (abstracted coding) into doing things that help the Knight’
  • write the guard’s ‘daily action plan’ so they patrol in a way that doesn’t get the knight caught’
  • complete abstract ‘magical haxors’ that open the dragon’s firewalls’
  • social engineer the dragon between runs to let you have more supplies’
  • give simple instructions to collections of small woodland creatures to do simple things that add up to a real goal (in the vein of Opus Magnum)’
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendations for "girly" games?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I played one a few months back that might fit the bill. ‘Garden Life: a Cozy Simulator’ It’s a game where you grow/decorate a garden of flowers and sell/give them to people. Very pleasant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Will We Know If The Trump Tariffs Were A Good Idea?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s kind of subjective.

  There are two broad views on whether something ‘was a good plan.’ Generally, everyone agrees that accomplishing the intended goal is the first requirement, but people tend to divide then on whether there is a secondary requirement. Many hold that the second necessary requirement is that the action doesn’t violate prior tenants.

  e.g. if the goal is to get children out of a burning building, actually getting them out is generally a minimum requirement for ‘a good plan’, however, if the plan is to get them out by punting them out the window, it would be argued by many that the plan was bad because it violates a prior tenant to not hurt the children.

  For the tariffs, it is almost a given that it will create a better business environment for companies that want to compete in sectors where tariffs act as a protectionist measure. However, it is also generally a given that the tariffs will cause financial pain for the average American, whose standard of living depends on cheap foreign labor. For many people, the damage done to the American public is like the punting. It violates established values, and thus becomes a bad idea.

  This also all assumes the stated goal is the real goal. The claim is the tariffs are intended to help American businesses, but the general interpretation is that’s a lie. Many people believe the tariffs are simply a threat to get obedience from other governments. From this view, the tariffs are a failure, because essentially no power has been gained over the rest of the world, and many places that were cooperating freely before now have antipathy toward the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EBay binding arbitration⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Did you read those papers you signed when you started your job? You probably agreed to this there as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨thicc boie⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Chonky and fat are the same thing. Did they mean floofy?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t even know about it until I read this comic, but now I’m one of the salty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed. Role queue was dumb. I liked having the ability to look at how things have been going and say ‘They’re doing X. I’ll swap to this character and screw up their plans.’ The thing I loved most about OW was that it wasn’t locked into the left click first competition. Their Widow is causing trouble? Lucio>wall climb>drop in>boop them out of their safety bubble and get them shredded. Distract them behind a shield to the left so someone on the right can sneak up on them. Or go Sombra and do an invis run/tele to magdump into their head at point blank. Or go monkey and pig meatwall to get close enough to ruin her day. Whatever. Just something with more intelligence than left-click and die repeatedly.

  I miss Mayhem too. People complained that it took too long to die/kill but that was what was amazing about it. How many games can you say have ever felt like you were in an epic fight where every thrust, parry, twist, duck, and swing mattered? Where you don’t win by the luck of a single shot but have to tactically manipulate enemy attention so you can change the angle of attack so it favors your healer over their Junkrat? Battles won or lost by the timing and precision placement of a Zarya hole catching the targets thrown by a Lucio boop to hold them just off the payload just long enough to get to the next checkpoint?

  Man, I miss that game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Might sound odd to some, but Overwatch.

  Early Overwatch was great. Then some updates made it better. The only things wrong with it were design choices that were made for financial reasons. Then they made it much worse. Then they made it worse. And worse. And then they made 2, which turned it into just another ‘left-click on the target’ game, because those make more money. It saddens me that it died.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if the sun suddenly went out? - xkcd's What If?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ten Candles LARP?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jack Black tells Minecraft Movie audience to stop throwing popcorn⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This just in: Actor does promotional stunt to promote their movie, tune in next time to hear about how a certainpolitician has shockingly told people to vote for them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget the internet is global. People for whomever English is a second language are much more common than they once were.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you use your blinker in a car?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I do, but I am slightly discouraged from doing so by the drivers in my area. People are always so terrified of not being the first waiting at the next red light, they see a turn signal as a warning to ‘speed up and go past this car before they can get ahead of you.’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people develop feelings for someone?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Happy to help.

  There are a lot of things in human society you are expected to ‘just know,’ which is silly. Human social dynamics is so complex psychology, sociology, and their various related fields are possible doctorate fields, but when someone says 'How do I know the difference between, ‘love’ and ‘love love?’ people will just say, ‘You just know.’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people develop feelings for someone?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll toss on a bit more here if they can’t. If you are great at making friends then you probably have some idea of ‘signals’ that someone is interested in someone. Flirting is the process of displaying those signals toward someone you find attractive in the hopes of getting feedback signals. It’s a way of subtly allowing people to show their intentions without risking the embarrassment of a direct rejection. You can learn to play the game if you want. Some people really enjoy it. Some people don’t.

  Note, though, it is entirely possible to skip it if you are willing to be a bit forward, and simply say, ‘I find you very attractive and like you a lot. Would you be interested in going on a date and seeing how things feel?’ This risks the awkwardness of a direct rejection, the possible discomfort for the other person if they feel intimidated by you, but cuts through the extra layers of process and can be a refreshing burst of earnestness for many people.

  You’ve asked how it’s different from friend interactions. The baseline difference is expectation and physicality. In a basic friendship, there is little expectation and little contact. You might not expect much more from a low level friendship than from a decent stranger. (Pass me the salt) A good friend is someone you can expect more of, and by whom are expected of more. (Help me move.) A best friend is someone for whom you would be expected to take serious personal risk, and who you would expect to take personal risk for your sake. (I need to get across the border, no questions asked.)

  Romance takes many forms but the general guideline is friendship, plus physical attraction. Low level friendship plus physical attraction is where friends-with-benefits usually sit. Good friendship plus physical attraction is usually a girl/boyfriend. Best friend status with physical attraction is where you get to long term partner status.

  There are a lot of nuances to all of it, so that’s a brutal oversimplification, but it’s a place to start building a framework for understanding.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should we boycott games with loot boxes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If the loot boxes affect your ability to win, don’t buy the game. If they are just cosmetic, meh.

  But don’t stop there. If it has day one DLC, don’t touch it. If it has DLC to patch game functions that should be in the base game, don’t touch it. If it has any kind of pay to win function, don’t touch it. If it has a subscription, don’t touch it. If it’s a pre-order, don’t touch it. If it’s put out by a conglomerate publisher that eats real developers and shits out imitations of their IP, don’t touch it.

  And most of all, teach these things to gamer kids and their parents. Kids are ignorant of the effect their purchases, and parents don’t have the time and energy to go learn for themselves. Spreading awareness helps everyone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How wil people react if Trump is right about Tariffs?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Saying ‘the response’ is kind of pretending it’s a monolith. There will be a lot of carefully considered discussion, regardless of what the result is, because that’s what adult humans do. Then there will be the great lumps of BS that are projected by party mouthpieces and parroted by the party followers. I’m less interested in the social media chatter as a response and more interested in the response from the other countries.

  China’s choice to place export restrictions on things like Yttrium and other rare earth metals, when they control ~3/4ths of the world’s supply, could put companies around the world out of business or under Chinese soft power. Some of America’s biggest blue chip companies are reliant on those materials. China is not going to make it easy if even possible to get those elements for US companies. Companies in Europe and Asia could also be targetted with it as an implementation of Chinese soft power.

  Another issue to consider is the recovery itself. The market always craps its pants when Trump speaks because the thing the market loves is predictability and Trump is unpredictable. It’s hard to say how comfortable the investor class will be with taking risks on new investments when one announcement from the oval office can drop share prices to a new 52 week low.

  Facing all this, it’s hard to care much about the chatter from party loyalists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How wil people react if Trump is right about Tariffs?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ignoring whether he is or not, as that is a DEEP dive into world economics, the response would have some variance, because nothing is monolithic, but I expect the prominent responses would be for supporters to cheer and gloat, for the independents to cheer and hope, with timing deciding the midterms, and for the opposition to drop it and focus on all the other problems with Trump.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Already transitioning. Been half doing it for ages. This’ll just be the last bit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What open-world games on Steam have satisfying movement, like Arkham Knight or Spider-Man?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What open-world games on Steam have satisfying movement, like Arkham Knight or Spider-Man?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I absolutely LOVED Mirror’s Edge. That feeling of hitting flow in game and out of game as you just move smoothly from point to point was just amazing. I played originally on PS2 and almost got the plat trophy. I loved trying not only to find the fastest path but the smoothest, the weirdest, the pacifist, etc. It was great.

  Then I tried 2 for like 5 seconds before I dropped it. It immediately felt like a betrayal of the first game. I hated the UI. I hated the color grade. I hated the style. I hated what seemed like a turn toward the violent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about men⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I’ve seen/heard, it’s not specifically the ‘crying.’ It’s a general effect from online life. Online activities are much, much easier than in person. Want to feel a connection to someone? Here’s vloggers, talking straight at you in painfully earnest tones about everything in their life. Want someone to entertain you? Here’s half a dozen companies fighting to be the one you turn to. Hungry? Forget cooking. Here’s delivery options from everywhere. Horny? Porn! It’s all a click away and you don’t even need to put on pants. If getting a need met enough to get you to tomorrow takes no effort, many people aren’t going to put in the work to get, not even a guarantee, but only a chance at something better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A perennial favorite

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon uses Discord⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  *for telling people they are responsible for what others do in a chatroom they may look at once and then ignore.

  I am in discords I never engage with, but literally only have as a place I can search for answers, like a niche alternative to stack overflow. It is absurd for me to be held to the standard of policing everything that happens on those servers just in case some of it might be bad. Discords can also have permissions limited viewing. Are we supposed to know what happens in the channels we can’t see?

  More importantly, despite how much work it is to do so, punishments have to be applied on an individual level. Punishing people who are in a class is too vague.