rtxn
@rtxn@lemmy.world
I take my shitposts very seriously.
- Comment on The biggest video game stinkers of 2025, according to Metacritic 1 day ago:
Nintendo sees rock bottom as a challenge.
- Comment on Anon reality checks your fantasy 1 day ago:
A Song of Ice and Fire, basically.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 1 day ago:
The rules are on the same page I linked (www.indiegameawards.gg/faq), under the “Game Eligibility” tab. Regarding AI, the document contains a grand total of one sentence:
Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination.
I’m assuming the definition of what that entails is “at their discretion”, meaning whatever they feel like at the moment. I see that sentiment reflected in this thread too.
Unfortunately the boundary between “AI” and “not AI” is the polar opposite of sharp and well-defined. I’ve used Allegorithmic Substance Designer a lot for CGI work (before Adobe ate the devs; fuck Adobe, all my homies hate Adobe), and it contains a lot of texture generator algorithms from simple noise to complex grunge textures. Things like Perlin noise and Voronoi diagrams are well-known algorithms. What about an algorithm that uses real-world samples? Machine learning is not the same as AI, so is that allowed? Where’s the line? I’m reasonably certain that everybody has a different answer based on different criteria.
I gave them the benefit of doubt and assumed that they had defined the exact line of what is and isn’t allowed, but apparently I was wrong.
- Comment on Anon reality checks your fantasy 1 day ago:
Shut up, Elrond. Where was this certainty when all you had to do was kick Isildur into the pit to save the entire fucking world?
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 1 day ago:
The issue is not that the game was disqualified. If the rules clearly and unequivocally state that at no point can generative AI be used (and also clearly state what, in the spectrum from algorithms -> machine learning -> chatbot slop, they consider to be unacceptable, which I don’t know if they did or not, but that’s not the point), then there is no controversy, and I’m not criticising that.
The issue is that the article completely disregards mitigating facts that counter the narrative. There are no credible sources linked in the article save for one that was grossly misrepresented. Critically, we don’t know what Sandfall actually said before the nomination or after, or how the decision to disqualify was made, only the second-hand account in the FAQ. The article presents circumstances in a biased way, leading the reader to interpret it with the assumption that there are AI-generated assets currently in the game. It is, frankly, sloppy journalism.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 1 day ago:
Horrid article.
From the IGA’s statement:
[…] the use of gen AI art in production […] does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place.
- Comment on OP has a realization 4 days ago:
We, stupid primitive monkey people, can make drones that hover in place by counteracting extermal forces, and VR devices that can track their position in space only using visual reference, but apparently the super advanced aliens with their gravity-defying technology can’t figure it out.
- Comment on Stardew Valley Creator Says 1.7 Update Will Contain 'More Character/Social Stuff' and a New Farm Type 4 days ago:
For fuck’s sake CA, please let me give you my money
- Comment on Larian CEO Responds to Divinity Gen AI Backlash: 'We Are Neither Releasing a Game With Any AI Components, Nor Are We Looking at Trimming Down Teams to Replace Them With AI' 6 days ago:
You know it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, right?
In the early design phase, for example, quick placeholder objects are invaluable for composing a scene. Say you want a dozen different effigies built from wood and straw – you let the clanker churn them out. If you like them, an environment artist can replace them with bespoke models, as detailed and as optimized as the scene needs it. If you don’t like them, you can just chuck them in the trash and you won’t have wasted the work of an artist, who can work on artwork that will actually appear in the released product.
- Comment on What are your gaming highlights of 2025? 1 week ago:
Most of those games are no longer being sold outside secondary markets (used games, collectibles, that sort). Neither the publisher nor the developers will ever profit from a “legitimate” sale.
For other games that are still being sold on first-party marketplaces, which is more or less limited to Switch 1 games, you tell me why Nintendo deserves to be treated charitably.
- Comment on What are your gaming highlights of 2025? 1 week ago:
This year I unsubscribed from FFXIV. Speaking only for myself, Dawntrail was a massive drop in nearly all aspects after Endwalker. The music and environment were great, I was positively giddy when I reached Solution Nine… but the characters are unlikable, the antagonist is boring and one-dimensional, there is hardly any payoff for setups, one of the most significant conflicts gets resolved with a fucking pep talk, most of the first half of the main story only exists to extol about how much of a chad the current monarch is. Somehow the second half gets even worse with multiple contrived plot points relying on characters being idiots and the player being a passive observer, including the reintroduction of a high profile issue that had been present for the entire DECADE of the game’s existence and resolved in a high profile way in Shadowbringers. Wuk Lamat was fine. Overused and dumb as a pair of boots, but fine.
On the completely different end of the spectrum, Warframe is in the best place it’s ever been. The last four major updates (1999, Isleweaver, Vallis Undermind, and The Old Peace) have been fucking phenomenal, both in terms of story and gameplay. The Old Peace (released literally a few days ago) also contains the most valid crashout in history. Rap tap tap, little piggy. The new gamemodes are fun, fast-paced, and so far haven’t outstayed their welcome, although like always, I’m worried about their longevity since they’re essentially content islands.
Warframe’s music is exceptional. I’ll always appreciate the works of Keith Power (he gave us We All Lift Together and This Is What You Are), but the current composer Matt Chalmers has elevated the game’s music both in quality and variety. Starting with 1999, there are no songs that I ever want to skip, and that includes the virtual boy band. Even if you have no interest in the game, you shouldn’t skip the music: TennoConcert 2025 (Matt is the eternally chilled out dude who sings From The Stars), Tethra Jahrak, Lullaby of the Manifold, and (potential spoilers) Roses from the Abyss.
In terms of smaller games, I fell off the wagon and had several all-night benders in Factorio. If you’re anywhere near the spectrum, that game is like crack cocaine. I had a lot of fun in Project Wingman and the biggest furball in history, I replayed Star Wars: Republic Commando, and rediscovered my appreciation for games where the player is not the Chosen One. Against all wisdom, I finally played The Mystery Of The Droods. Even knowing what awaited me, I was unprepared for the absolute jank.
- Comment on Anon is a linguist 1 week ago:
That’s just Python’s generator syntax. Not all that difficult to parse once you get a feel for it. Plus syntax highlighting helps.
[OUTPUT_ITEM for INPUT_ITEM in INPUT_ITERABLE if CONDITION]
- Comment on [id Software, the] Studio Behind Doom [and Quake, Wolfenstein] Just Unionized 1 week ago:
They probably mean professionals that are hired by clients on a retainer agreement as opposed to working for an employer on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. Legal advice, legal representation, financial advice, personal assistants, individual contractors, and so on.
One could make the argument that since the retainer is not an employment contract, and the retained professional is not one of many employees (instead usually individuals or small teams), that collective bargaining doesn’t make sense. The difference is that the retainer agreement is much more specific and favors the person whose services are retained, compared to employment contracts and labour laws in the USA.
- Comment on Anon is a linguist 1 week ago:
[lady for lady in ladies if lady.is_single]just doesn’t have the same bop. - Comment on [id Software, the] Studio Behind Doom [and Quake, Wolfenstein] Just Unionized 1 week ago:
Chemistry. Gets really dull without ions.
- Comment on The Game Awards begins 11 hours from now. What are you looking forward to? 1 week ago:
Megaman hasn’t even done anything wrong (yet)… but we HATES IT!
- Comment on The Game Awards begins 11 hours from now. What are you looking forward to? 1 week ago:
!clem
- Comment on The Game Awards begins 11 hours from now. What are you looking forward to? 1 week ago:
Half-Life Alyx 2
- Comment on Anon is a fan of GabeN 2 weeks ago:
Not at a loss. We still don’t know the prices of the new wave of hardware, but some Valve spokesperson has said that they wouldn’t subsidize the price of the hardware with future game sales. They’ve also said, when the Steam Deck was launched, that affordability was a massive factor in the design, and that some of the decisions to make that happen were “painful”.
- Comment on Anon is a fan of GabeN 2 weeks ago:
I know this novel strategy that Valve employs might be difficult to conceptualize for people whose thinking only extends as far as “company evil, success bad”, so let me summarize it in a format that is easier to understand:
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 3 weeks ago:
My opinion is the exact opposite. Narrative games, even action shooters, need to have high action and low action parts in balance. If high action segments are excessive, it can lead to combat fatigue. If low action parts are excessive, the player gets bored and the pacing dies.
Half-Life 2 E1, the “Low Lives” chapter, has probably the most stressful combat in the game because the player has to balance so many things. Shooting the zombies attacking Gordon versus helping Alyx fight. Helping Alyx versus keeping the flashlight charged. All of that in oppressive darkness. Combat fatigue sets in. The short puzzle segments, even as simple as crawling through a vent to flip a switch, are opportunities to take a breath, absorb the environment, and prepare for the next segment – especially at the end of that particular chapter, when the player escapes the zombies and has a chance to wind down.
At the same time, puzzles, by their slower nature, are excellent for delivering narrative and player training, and to let the player absorb the atmosphere. Alyx’s first encounter with the stalkers in “Undue Alarm” wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact if the player could just pop them in the head and move on.
In contrast, most of “Highway 17” is just a prolonged vehicle-based puzzle. By the time the player reaches the large railway bridge, they might be sick of driving. I know I was. It’s a relief to finally engage in some platforming and long-range combat while traversing the bridge.
So what are the narrative values of my two examples? The cinderblock seesaw in “Route Kanal” is just player training. A show, don’t tell method to let the player know that physics puzzles will be a factor. It’s also a short break after the on-foot chase, before the encounter with the hunter chopper. In “Water Hazard”, the contraptions serve a larger narrative purpose: they’re the tools of the rebels’ refugee evacuation effort. The player utilizes them like one of the refugees would have.
- Comment on Valve dev counters calls to scrap Steam AI disclosures, says it's a "technology relying on cultural laundering, IP infringement, and slopification" 3 weeks ago:
auto complete
It’s called lexical analysis or lexical tokenization. It existed long before LLMs, it doesn’t rely on stolen code, and doesn’t consume a small village’s worth of electricity. Superficial parallels with chatbots do not make it AI – it’s a fucking algorithm.
- Comment on Valve dev counters calls to scrap Steam AI disclosures, says it's a "technology relying on cultural laundering, IP infringement, and slopification" 3 weeks ago:
Then you should hold yourself to higher standards than “people”.
- Comment on Valve dev counters calls to scrap Steam AI disclosures, says it's a "technology relying on cultural laundering, IP infringement, and slopification" 3 weeks ago:
Maybe some people, who are an ocean away from me, have been gaslit into thinking they can’t be anything other than a consumer. I know it can be difficult to grasp the concept, but you can refuse a service if the terms are unacceptable. It is possible to go into a transaction with open eyes and full knowledge of the rights granted to you by law.
- Comment on Valve dev counters calls to scrap Steam AI disclosures, says it's a "technology relying on cultural laundering, IP infringement, and slopification" 3 weeks ago:
consumers
This is very much a pet peeve, but be careful about how you use “consumer” versus “customer”. They each imply completely different power dynamics.
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 3 weeks ago:
I want to see puzzles that are implemented using the physics engine. And I don’t mean “toss the axe in the proper arc to trigger the gate” physics. I mean “stack the bricks on one end of the seesaw to balance it long enough to make the jump to the next platform”. Or “use the blue barrels’ buoyancy to raise the platform out of the water”.
- Comment on Paradox Takes the Blame for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Sales Flop, Announces $37 Million Write-Down 3 weeks ago:
They absolutely are, in terms of gameplay. Ozzy Mandus and The Crankhog Machine sacrificed most of the gameplay Frictional’s Amnesia became known for. There are no light mechanics. Barely any physics puzzles. The pigmen are braindead. Even if it’s a better story and atmosphere than The Dark Descent, it’s a lesser game. Even Still Wakes The Deep only goes as far as “throw the object to make the thing look away” when you’re not just responding to non-diegetic prompts.
You can make the argument that walking simulators have a place in the gaming landscape, and you’d be right, but by their nature, they are the exact opposite of what Bloodlines 1 was and what Bloodlines 2 should have been. Why Paradox decided it was a good idea to entrust with it a studio that has only made things that it never should have been is a fucking mystery to me.
- Comment on Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production 3 weeks ago:
There is a massive secondary market for in-game items (primarily CS skins) that Valve refuses to combat or even officially acknowledge. Some of it is legitimate, some of it is literal lottery for children. And since every transaction takes place on Steam, they get a cut of that.
- Comment on Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production 3 weeks ago:
Valve revolutionized Linux gaming; Tim categorically rejects it.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams; Tim welcomed them with open arms.
Valve enforces honesty regarding AI slop; Tim wants to literally deceive people.He’s like that annoying kid who didn’t get invited to a birthday party and vowed to always do the opposite of what the popular kid does. Petulant fucking overgrown child.
- Comment on Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) 3 weeks ago:
For over-the-shoulder games, separate field-of-view AND CAMERA DISTANCE.
For player-hosted games, an option to reject hosts using unsuitable hardware or low bandwidth, high latency networks. My gripe is specific to Warframe on the Switch 1, but if the developers of any game can’t/won’t operate public game servers and choose to offload the responsibility to the players, the choice should belong to the players.
