dual_sport_dork
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
- Comment on 'My personal failure was being stumped': Gabe Newell says finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been 'copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers' 16 hours ago:
I think most gamers would have been perfectly happy with a trip to the Borealis just for the closure of the thing, even if the gameplay brought little to nothing new to the table other than some nice new visuals and arctic setpieces.
Instead we got Half Life: Alyx which was a stunning albeit niche experience in the same old City 17, which retconned Episode 2’s cliffhanger with another, different cliffhanger. For fuck’s sake, Gabe.
- Comment on Half-Life 2 is currently 100% for its 20th anniversary 1 day ago:
My account is so old I have (or had, before they normalized the format) a four digit steam ID. I “owned” Half Life 2 for like four months before it released thanks to getting a code free in the box with my Radeon 9800 Pro back in the day. For a short and glorious flash of time in the summer of 2004, I was guaranteed a copy of the most hotly anticipated game ever, even though nobody could play it yet, and also owned an example of the fastest video card on the planet. Damned if I didn’t mow a fuckton of lawns and reinstall Windows and Outlook an a horde of septuagenarians’ computers to afford that card.
And no, they do not stop asking about your age.
- Comment on Half-Life 2 is currently 100% for its 20th anniversary 1 day ago:
Neat, but.
Even HL: Alyx left us with just as much of a cliffhanger as the end of HL2 Episode 2…
- Comment on They used to be all metal too. Its time for a revolution 1 day ago:
Typically they are – for two of the same reasons, first being that most of the “salt alternatives” in use, the original “salt” in this case being sodium chloride, are also chlorides (potassium or calcium chloride, usually) and it’s that chlorine ion that’s corrosive. They also all turn the meltwater into an electrolyte, forming an easy electrical connection between the various metals in your vehicle’s parts and dramatically accelerating galvanic corrosion.
Technically any compound composed of positive and negatively charged ions that balance out to a net neutral is a salt, chemically speaking, and by definition they are compounds, i.e. held together with weak ionic bonds via their electrostatic charges and not molecules held together with strong covalent bonds. This means they like to liberate their constituent ions easily, allowing whatever-it-is they’re composed of to readily react with something else.
TL;DR: Pretty much all salts, not just sodium chloride salt salt, are corrosion promoters.
- Comment on This might blow up in our face 2 days ago:
Anthropogenic global warming is not a “debate.” It is a scientific consensus among a significant majority of the world’s scientists across a full spectrum of disciplines, whereas the counter opinion remains a minority pushed almost exclusively by monied interests.
Have you done any “research?” Are you a qualified expert in any relevant field? I predict that you are not.
- Comment on Enshittification only hurts product itself, not users. 1 week ago:
And the whole chat censoring thing, and Microsoft doubling down on banning players on all servers for chat content in their own private servers.
- Comment on On a lighter note: Why do people still buy fast food? 1 week ago:
That’s the neat part: I don’t.
Not anymore. I scaled back my fast food consumption quite a bit in previous years, but when the prices of everything skyrocketed to absurd levels during COVID I just quit going to fast food places and never looked back. I get Taco Bell or something like, maybe two or three times a year now and that’s usually when I’m on a road trip or something. Otherwise they can get bent as far as I’m concerned.
If I want slop it’s cheaper and honestly also easier to just buy a TV dinner from any of the selection of general goods stores within walking distance of my house and pop it in the microwave. And these days probably faster, too, because I don’t have to deal with the McAttitude or inevitably discover that the fast food place is trying to run with half the staff it’s supposed to have because its franchise owner is a greedy prick, nor have to worry about getting sucked into the thrice-weekly fistfight in the parking lot, nor getting caught in the crossfire because some fuckmuch is salty about not getting enough ketchup packets and decides to shoot up the joint.
- Comment on When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amoré 2 weeks ago:
When an eel lunges out and takes a bite from your snout, it’s a moray.
- Comment on World of Warcraft adds $90 mount to in game store 3 weeks ago:
CIVIVI knives are generally pretty legit. Trust me, I can go much more mall ninja if you like.
This leaps to mind.
- Comment on World of Warcraft adds $90 mount to in game store 3 weeks ago:
Gee, for the same money… a digital brontosaurus for Orc Game that you need to pay a recurring subscription to actually use, can be taken away from you at any time, or one day the servers may simply be turned off erasing not only your “investments” but also your years of “work.” Or, I don’t know, a CIVIVI Hyperpulse with a groovy pattern welded blade that also happens to be a physical object you can actually hold in your hands and keep forever. Just to pick something out of a hat.
What a tough choice!
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
I think the best way to approach Spiritfarer is as a somewhat cryptic expression if its core conceit: Thanklessly doing a bunch of repetitive chores for dying relatives who mostly act still like dicks towards you for your trouble, and bending over backwards to structure your time and living space around catering to them. The only reward for hard work is more work, and ever more specific and petulant demands. This inevitably evolves to all of your obligations piling up to the point that there literally aren’t enough hours in the day and your progress in your own life (or your boat) grinds to a halt. And when they finally die you’re stuck dealing with all their stuff, forever.
And while hilarious when taken as a whole, perhaps from the perspective of it all being an elaborate troll, it actually makes for a kind of lousy video game.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
As much as the rest of the game is an exercise in tedium and complete disrespect of the player’s time and intelligence, the thunderstorm event in Spiritfarer is pretty rad, and definitely one of its high points.
At least the first time. The charm wears off after the 9th or 10th time you do it just because you need to grind for the one material you can get from it, and only from it.
- Comment on $250 Analogue 3D will play all your N64 cartridges in 4K early next year 4 weeks ago:
The cartridge connector is not proprietary. It’s just a commodity off the shelf card edge socket.
- Comment on Why do people see Adopting a Husky Personality and Culture through life inherently bad 4 weeks ago:
I think this one can be summed up as the old, “The nail that sticks up gets pounded down.” I don’t think it’s really any deeper than that.
Behave or exhibit yourself in a way that people don’t get, and the response from some is to just get irrationally angry and/or stupid about it. Logic does not apply.
- Comment on Suggestions? Games that won't make me feel alone? 5 weeks ago:
Shitpost level reply: Any of the Gradius games.
One of the power ups you can buy is literally to dispense friends (options) which follow you around and shoot alongside you. You can crank out as many as you want, at least within reason. And in some of the Parodius games they are literally little dudes. Or depending on your character, little octopi, cats, or penguins.
- Comment on Suggestions? Games that won't make me feel alone? 5 weeks ago:
Katamari Damacy
Which typically culminates in rolling up everyone on Earth by the time you get to the final stage, no less. If that’s not a group hug, I don’t know what is.
- Comment on Steam Now Warns Consumers That They're Buying a License, Not a Game During a Purchase 5 weeks ago:
Obviously no one’s seen it happen first hand. It’s a projection based on what’s known about the materials and how they’re made. Burned CD-R’s have definitely been out in the real world for people to learn how short their lifespans can be, though.
Nobody could “prove,” for instance, that the Voyager 1 could stay operational in deep space for 47+ years when it was launched in 1977, but the engineers could still predict and they launched it anyway, and it did. I don’t think your argument really holds water.
- Comment on Steam Now Warns Consumers That They're Buying a License, Not a Game During a Purchase 5 weeks ago:
Don’t conflate a mastered CD with an aluminum data layer with a recordable CD-R or CD-RW, which use organic dyes that have a significantly shorter lifespan.
A properly manufactured CD can last 200+ years if it’s stored in a dry environment free of UV exposure and high levels of moisture.
Even a quality CD-R can’t really be expected to retain all of its data integrity for much more than 10 years.
- Comment on Steam Now Warns Consumers That They're Buying a License, Not a Game During a Purchase 5 weeks ago:
Sony shipped fucking root kits on their CD that would hijack your PC and screw with backup software.
Worse, this thing from Sony was on music CD’s and not even games.
The Sony Rootkit debacle is one of the reasons that I still will not do business with Sony in any of its guises, for any reason, no matter the price. And believe me, I have a long memory.
- Comment on Ok boomer 5 weeks ago:
Don’t worry, even if we don’t give them the theft excuse they’ll just lie about it anyway and do whatever they wanted to do, regardless of our input or reality. If a retail corporation wants to raise prices, they will raise prices. There is nothing you or me or anyone else can do about it.
The only winning move is not to play the game.
- Comment on Ok boomer 5 weeks ago:
It works fine until someone tries to buy an age restricted item (ye gods help you if you have more than one!) or inevitably every available kiosk is being hogged by a octogenarian who can’t figure out the machine at they all take half an hour each to check out.
For your convenience, half of the machines are broken, and the employee assigned to unjam the remaining working ones when they get their electronic knickers in a twist is on lunch.
This situation has gotten so bad that my local Home Depot has started assigning an employee to “assist,” i.e. work the machine from start to finish, every customer at the self checkout. So for those of you keeping score at home, that means what we’ve done is reinvented the standard checkout lane, except worse, and both people are standing on the same side of the counter for some reason.
- Comment on Man Resigns on First Day After Indian Boss Expects Overtime Without Pay: Work-life Balance is 'Western Behaviour' - News18 5 weeks ago:
Certainly.
By the way: Nice hat.
- Comment on Man Resigns on First Day After Indian Boss Expects Overtime Without Pay: Work-life Balance is 'Western Behaviour' - News18 5 weeks ago:
Fuck you, and let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And I get paid.
- Comment on Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare coming to PC October 29 5 weeks ago:
I would wager someone with an MBA got their knickers in a twist about “PC being the most pirated platform,” did that thing like in cartoons where the dollar signs in their eyes turn into cents signs instead, and decided to just 86 the whole thing because they were deathly afraid that a couple hundred people who never in a million years would have paid for it in the first place would download it off of Kazaa or whatever was popular back then instead of giving Rockstar any money.
Just a guess.
- Comment on Are there Cozy shooter games? 5 weeks ago:
The new port is not perfectly fine if it randomly crashes to desktop all the time.
Oh, and I also forgot to mention that several of the achievements are still bugged and don’t pop, which has been a known issue since release and still hasn’t been fixed. So yeah. Bethesda is gonna do Bethesda stuff.
You can still have a “vanilla” experience using other source ports. That’s what, e.g. Chocolate Doom is for. Except it may stay running on your PC for more than eleven consecutive minutes at a time. So if that’s what turns your crank, go for it. You’re right – not everything needs to be GZDoom and Brutal. But other options definitely exist, and I recommend any of them over what was shoveled out officially. You can even have a pretty durn vanilla experience in GZDoom if you want to, while still retaining much broader support for mods than the official release. Me personally, I can’t do mouse control with no vertical look. It made me seasick in the 90’s, and it still does now. That’s a deal breaker. I was a keyboard-only player in the DOS era.
I will also add that if you are going to play the new Sigil expansions or Legacy of Rust, they’re virtually impossible on Ultra Violence and Nightmare without mouselook. These maps were clearly designed with a modern source port including mouse aim in mind, and this was apparently shitcanned later in development for some unfathomable reason. Like, why even leave the crosshair there, then?
- Comment on Are there Cozy shooter games? 5 weeks ago:
I will also add to this that there is absolutely no reason to buy the “new” re-release of Doom and Doom 2 that’s out on Steam now except to rip the IWADS out of it to put in a source port – any other source port – rather than the garbage it comes with. And only do so if you want the new Legacy of Rust episodes. Everything else is, er, readily available online. And has been for decades.
The new NEX based engine these run on now is maddeningly inferior to basically every open source Doom engine port currently available. In addition to not supporting vertical mouse look at all, “for authenticity,” (but by default it slaps a crosshair on your screen, which the original didn’t have…) it also looks like garbage on modern displays and crashes constantly which is something that baffles me. Running Doom ought to be a solved problem by now in 2024, but this fucker crashes on me more now than it did on my 486 back in 1994. It’s buggier than a trailer park mattress in a swamp.
I recommend GZDoom, personally. You can add Brutal Doom to make the gameplay experience significantly more bombastic as well, if that sort of thing appeals to you.
- Comment on Are there Cozy shooter games? 5 weeks ago:
Well, as others have noted I think “cozy” is probably a loaded term in this context. However, I will throw these recommendations into the ring also: The first couple of Serious Sam games, and also Painkiller. Both of them are firmly in the “murdering tons of dudes” genre, and are significantly less tactical than the likes of Medal of Honor/Call of Duty/Battlefield.
That is to say, not at all.
There is none of that sucking your thumb to regenerate health, popping out from the chest-high walls inexplicably strewn everywhere taking potshots with your gun like a hillbilly jack-in-the-box. Rather, their gameplay loop involves herding and managing a massive horde of enemies, prioritizing your targets, and keeping yourself moving. Like a sheep dog with a chaingun.
People try to call the original Doom games a horde shooter. They really aren’t. These two, however, definitely are.
- Comment on Replacing an old mini fridge 1 month ago:
If you want a good laugh, or possibly just transform into a pillar of salt, you could stick a temperature logger in your fridge to see if it’s actually holding its setpoint (your big one, that is, not the mini fridge).
I did that in our office fridge a few weeks ago just for a lark. The results were… not good.
- Comment on Replacing an old mini fridge 1 month ago:
If that pattern holds then a modern one should be ~4x more energy efficient…
Also bear in mind that there is only a single evaporator in that thing, so it’s not a case of “just the freezer isn’t working.” The refrigeration system in there has partially failed, wholesale, and you only notice it first in the freezer because that’s the coldest compartment and stuff melting is a very obvious tell. That fridge is probably working its compressor constantly in a vain little mechanical attempt to reach its temperature setpoint, which it will never accomplish because it’s lost compression or has a slow refrigerant leak or whatever. So it’s consuming even more electricity than it otherwise would, and replacing it with just about anything would be a net improvement.
- Comment on Replacing an old mini fridge 1 month ago:
The manufacturer(s) will publish an energy guide label with their estimated kWh/year energy usage for any given model. Using your Kill-a-Watt or whatever energy monitoring device you have, it should be fairly trivial to measure a day’s worth of energy consumption from your old fridge and multiply it by 365 to get a yearly figure.
Then just see if A < B.
I’ll start with among the cheapest and junkiest available, the Avanti RA31B3S (which has a separate freezer compartment). The manufacturer claims it burns 320 kWh/year.
