addie

@addie@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam winter sale is now live⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Generally, companies are trying to maximise profit, which means that the price will be reduced only when it’s stopped selling at the previous and they want to make sales the next, more price-conscious, segment of the market. They might want some quick bucks if the company is in financial trouble, or to ‘make the news’ with a sale if they need some publicity.

  BG3 sold shedloads, is still selling shedloads, was on multiple games-of-the-year list and generally ranks amongst the best games of all time, often at the top; and Larian seem sufficiently flush with cash from the success of it. So like you say, don’t hold your breath waiting for a big sale, it doesn’t make sense for them to do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Got the most actual quoted lines from the book of any film version, plus you’ve got all of Dicken’s direct-to-reader moralising delivered by Gonzo. And as well as being very faithful to the book, it is a superb film as well.

  Michael Caine excels as Scrooge, too. I wouldn’t say that he was better than Alastair Sim was in his version - that’s a performance that would take some beating - but there’s not much in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Twilight Princess decompilation project reaches 99% completion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Zelda 3? You get fast travel quite early and the world is packed with stuff, it’s not absurdly huge. Doesn’t have that bloody owl in it either, telling you the obvious at great length.

  Certainly not Wind Waker, anyway. Now there is a slow game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Twilight Princess decompilation project reaches 99% completion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Best story, for sure. Most emotionally affecting is Majora’s, for me, but TP is close.

  Don’t think the gameplay holds up. The Wii version is pure waggle, but even on the Gamecube, there’s a lot of filler - empty space and backtracking. Doesn’t respect your gaming time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Seeing so many corn posts today⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Criminal waste of elotes, though. I’ll have them if they don’t want them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This song, it's infectious⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  On account of Dan Ek’s bullshit, have cancelled Spotify this year in favour of Qobuz, and am much happier all round.

  Last year’s ‘wrapped’ was just AI generated slop all round. After a year of listening to metal and electronica, got a top five of stuff that I’m not sure I’d listened to at all. Who would have thought the great plagiarism machine, trained to produce the most average output from any given input, would not do well on input that diverges from the mean?

  I’d probably have preferred a completely random K-Pop selection; might have been an interesting listen, try out something new.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women would rather do drugs than go to therapy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  He did shake things up with a lot of new ideas. I’d like to think that proving him wrong has gotten us to a better place; it’s the fin de siecle version of being wrong on the internet, everyone writes to correct you. Kind of sucks for everyone that got the bad advice in the meantime, tho.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Definitely how it went for me⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The industrial design has improved enormously since then, as well. The days of using the same connector for different voltages, or connectors which can be rotated are gone. Everything has a keyed connector or similar pokayoke that means it only fits to the correct place, and only one way around. CPUs don’t suicide if you forget to attach their system cooler, they just throttle. Much better, and obvious in retrospect that it should always have been that way.

  Apart from the front panel connectors on a motherboard, of course. Those fiddly little bastards can get straight to hell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I support pluto⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  … and it’s been doing it for long enough that it, and all the other plutinos, have settled into a 2:3 resonant orbit with Neptune, which takes 165 years to orbit the sun by itself.

  Space is really big and the timescales are really long, in a way which doesn’t really make sense on human scales, except for things which are so fast that they also don’t make sense on human scales, like core-collapse supernovas.

  The good news is that we’re good at doing maths and we’ve built some big computers to do that maths, so we’ve no problems ‘popping a few zeros’ into the sums that we do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Happy American import day⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a Celt from Scotland.

  Rothe is correct; that’s not how we used to celebrate it. Our Hallowe’en involved carving a tumshie out of the vegetable we call a turnip, but which the rest of the UK calls a swede. A tumshie being a scary face - hollowing it for a candle is out of the question; a turnip is much too hard. Might involve reading some spooky stories and perhaps a fancy-dress party. Fireworks aren’t out of the question; we’ll have some ready for Nov 5.

  No trick-or-treating, no pumpkins - those are Americanisms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's learn some words in the Finnish language⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  ‘Ty chuju jebany’, nice.

  Our Polish taxi driver does a very solid line in ‘kurwa’ every other word, but it’s always nice to expand your horizons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Minecraft is removing code obfuscation in Java Edition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed - most Java IDEs have FernFlower built in, so it’s dead easy.

  Decompiled Java is surprisingly close to the original, especially compared to eg. decompiled C++; good luck with that. You get all the class, function and variable names back on the original line numbers.

  What you do not get back is any comments. So you can see what and how, but not why. Admittedly, most comments are kind of useless and do not explain ‘why’ very well, but for weird-but-critical code they can be essential.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed - I’ve seen more people recommend Hannah Montana Linux (apt-based) than any of those for newcomers recently.

  You are entirely right that a Linux distribution is really just its package manager, the default packages installed, and some remote repositories which may (or may not) have had some customisation applied, which will have been pulled and built from a source repository somewhere. All that’s really needed to swap between eg. Arch, Manjaro or Cachy is to update the repo files and issue a package manager update command, although I’d probably like to verify my backups and get a stiff drink first.

  The House of Linux is built out of bricks, and the bricks aren’t that scary - you can take them to bits and look at them if you like, they’re usually zipped-up folders of text files and the binaries you’d get from compiling them yourself. But if that’s not what you’re used to, then yeah - 🤯 .

  In all seriousness, I wish that most distros had art half as good as what Void Linux has - got some really gifted people, there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Strangely enough, “Windows always fucking up my dual boot setup” is what caused me to drop Windows for good about a decade ago. And Linux gaming has come on absolutely leaps and bounds since then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  True, but network effects are important to that.

  There were huge numbers of people that wouldn’t move to Linux because it didn’t support all of their games. Now it does, and lots of people are moving.

  There are lots of people that won’t move to Linux because they have a random bit of hardware that’s not supported, or a highly-specific bit of software they need to do their job that only runs on Windows. The manufacturers wouldn’t support Linux because not enough people used it. Ah, but now we have all the gamers, so there are quite a lot of people using it.

  Each domino that falls encourages the rest. Steam Linux users are more than 3x Steam macOS users, and we’re not that far from overtaking it for general desktop usage. In some regions, that’s already the case, and while the Windows 10 exodus can move to Linux easily, they’d need to buy new hardware fo use the Mac operating system. Not many companies would question providing Apple support; once Linux has a comparable share, it would be foolish to leave that out of consideration as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Listen, there’s dozens of Linux users on Void, Slackware and Gentoo. Dozens! Especially the ones wanting to run the latest games. Can’t just leave all of them out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Strangely, the search page for ProtonDB shows the ‘proton rating’ for games which have a ‘native but abandoned / broken’ native Linux build, whereas the actual page for the game just shows ‘native’ and I can’t see the button to show the rest of the information. I’m sure it used to be there; they’ve started hiding a lot of stuff in favour of making the ‘steam deck’ results more prominent. But in some cases, ‘proton rating even with a native Linux build’ is quite important.

  eg. Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising.

  • search page shows 'gold’
  • actual page says ‘native’, but ‘loads of rendering issues, really slow, broken on multi-monitor setup, use proton instead’.

  Mark of the Ninja: Remastered:

  • search page says 'platinum’
  • actual page says ‘native’, but ‘frequent deadlocking issues makes game unplayable, use proton instead’.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Emulating the Impossible' - my interview with a developer of RPCS3⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fascinating stuff, thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If it works it works⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Speaking as someone with a chemical engineering degree and twenty years in industry:

  • we have some really complicated computer programs and simulations for all the important stuff, then we add ten percent for safety and round it up to the next standard size. We don’t buy 292 mm pipe, we just use 300 mm, because that’s what’s on the shelves.

  • you need to be able to decide quickly whether results you’re seeing are sensible, usually to order-of-magnitude, and whether eg. it will take an hour to fill a tank, or a week. We usually don’t care whether it’s 55 minutes or 56. You need to be able to do those sums in your head, though.

  3 is more than accurate enough as an engineering approximation for pi. In fact, 5 is close enough, and much easier to work with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Republican? Democrat? There is a third option:⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that’s UK. We’ve a million streets like that, those trees in the park-looking bit opposite. I’d imagine the house with the bins is a hotel or a B&B, something like that, because otherwise it would be odd to have so many the same colour - green is compostable and black is ‘bottles and cans’ where I live, and you normally just get one of each.

  Don’t know what the green stripe on the road is. Our cycle lanes don’t look like that, aren’t that colour. I’m guessing it’s some “who’s allowed to park where in London” thing, residents-only or something like that. They’re a strange bunch, Londoners.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Controller's stick is upgradeable!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, nice. I destroyed my first one playing Sekiro; the trigger buttons are really awkward to get to pieces to replace the internals, and my replacement Steam controller is almost too valuable to use, since I can’t replace it any more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon achieves new heights⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And having to buy shoes and trousers from specialists, and having your feet hang off the end of the bed in hotels, and wandering into spiderwebs that no-one else has disturbed yet, and not being able to adjust the shower high enough away from home. Gift that keeps on giving.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  InXile did Wasteland 2/3 and Torment: Numenara. All fine RPGs.

  Completely agree that the talent needs to go elsewhere - this deal is the death knell for creative works at EA. I’d be careful about what you promise on Kickstarter, though. Signing up to lots of stretch goals is likely to burden your game with lots of tickbox features that don’t make any sense.

  In fact, I’d say that Bloodstained (while generally excellent) would be improved by cropping out some stuff. The crafting, cooking and crop farming could just be chopped out whole, and put all the upgraded gear in the place where you find items. Would swap out some of the enemy and boss count for a bit more variety. And ‘hard mode’ could have done with some playtesting and a general rebalance, or just be renamed ‘infrequent crazy difficulty spike’ mode. But someone paid for those tickboxes and so we’ve got them.

  Letting RPG designers run completely free from publishers can be a recipe for disaster, too. Pillars of Eternity? Excellent. PoE2? Unbelievably unfocussed and sprawling, disrespectful of your time, goes nowhere fast. Could possibly have made two games out of it if someone had told them to chop it in half and then polish the bits, but was a bit of a studio killer instead, could never sell enough to cover the costs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t ask for this.

  The original looks fine; it’s gone from ‘okay for 2000’, through to ‘dated’ and back to ‘retro charm’ again. Plus you can turn up the resolution and fps to silly levels, which wasn’t the originally intended effect but is pretty nice.

  All early 3D games look so bad that the slight year-on-year improvements are nearly irrelevant now. A hideous AI texture ‘upgrade’ doesn’t bring it to to modern standards, and distracts from the truly amazing game behind it all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox invests big into indies, signs Game Pass deals with over 50 studios⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  48 studios will be closed before they get a game out, and then the other two will be closed after making something award-winning and genre-redefining, and the IP will never see the light of day again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Piss off!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m subscribed to oxygennotincluded@lemmy.ml - seems dead, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ladies get urself a mothman⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I prefer to pretend that Dune and Dune Messiah are the only books in the series, and in particular that his son never wrote anything. Makes for a much more satisfying tale.

  Also works for ‘underground worm film’ Tremors. Done perfectly after the first one, no sequels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Or ‘love hotels’. You want to rent a room by the hour, Mario gets his cut.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight Silksong Patch Version 1.0.28497 Now Live⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The harpoon works just fine too, one-hits the stick insects and does her some damage as well if you can line it up. She’s not very dangerous if you know her moveset, but that’s an education learned by many runbacks.

  Doesn’t say they’ve fixed the comedy bug where if you look at the map while on one of the collapsing platforms, then when you fall through then the game stops accepting input, Hornet just stares at it forever. Only glitch I’ve found, quite impressive for a day one purchase.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The time for “collaborate and listen” has passed. Now, the time for Nintendo to bring down hammer go hammer mc hammer yo hammer and the rest can go and play has arrived.