Vlyn

@Vlyn@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm the developer of WalkScape, the RuneScape inspired fitness MMORPG where you progress by walking IRL. We're now accepting more people to the Closed Beta!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also there’s already a ton of depth on the game

  I think I’m too jaded in this regard. Reading the wiki I don’t really see depth. Sure, there are activities with fun names, but they are all the same (you start the activity, you walk to finish it, you get random rewards). And all the items seem to be either for selling, basic crafting or just giving you a boost percentage for the activities you’re already doing.

  What the activities are missing are risk/reward, decision making, surprises, etc. Or as you’d say in game design “meaningful choices”.

  Sure, you have the choice on what skill you work on, but besides skill go up, items to make the activity faster and gold (not sure what it’s for, besides buying mats/items again?) that seems to be it.

  I guess combat could help if there’s actual resource investment and risk there. Like are you going to tackle this level 10 monster for higher rewards, with more likelihood to either fail (or spend extra resources on healing potions or whatever)? Or play it save and go against weaker monsters? There should also be extra gold sinks to work for / use the money you accumulated, be it limited use items, cosmetics and so on. And of course ways to play the game differently from other players, like classes, masteries, skill trees or whatever (and no, clicking an activity that says “Sandcastle Building” vs clicking “Ship repair” aren’t really choices).

  Just from someone who values gameplay a lot, I don’t see much difference in playing the game for an hour or 100 hours, in the end it keeps boiling down to the same actions with no depth attached. Personally I didn’t see the game value of it, compared to a step tracker (just that the step tracker doesn’t stop counting when it’s “full”, I didn’t like the step mechanic either where you get bonus steps only. If I’ve done my walking for the day I want to spend the steps, not select an activity and I get double steps for it next time I walk).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm the developer of WalkScape, the RuneScape inspired fitness MMORPG where you progress by walking IRL. We're now accepting more people to the Closed Beta!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah yeah, I’m not a big mobile game fan and heavily play PC games. I just missed the draw of it, but had wrong expectations probably. In my head it was more of a sandbox combat game with gathering/crafting, so I kept trying to get to the actual game part :)

  While I’m not motivated at all by just achievements or grinding for grinding sake (incremental games are a slight exception there, but progress is much faster / you do have some goals dangled in front of your face). You’re probably aiming more for a classic fitness tracker, but instead of step counts, graphs and so on you present it in game form. Which is valid, but just not what I was after.

  As it gets brought up in this thread: When it came out I actually liked Pokemon GO, because the gameplay was interesting. Originally it only showed Pokemon near you and how far they are away (with 1, 2 or 3 foot steps). Which meant you wandered around and actually met people back in the city, grouped up to search or they knew where it was. That all got dumbed down until everyone was just sitting at the same spot and farming unfortunately :-/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm the developer of WalkScape, the RuneScape inspired fitness MMORPG where you progress by walking IRL. We're now accepting more people to the Closed Beta!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I tried it out a while ago and didn’t mesh with it at all. Like the options I had was gather things, minor crafting and traveling. But zero goals or combat (as far as I could tell at the beginning). So after going around, gathering and crafting a bit I got bored and gave up.

  Hell, I even traveled around to just find if there are any encounters or places with more happening and I didn’t find anything.

  So it felt meaningless to grind with nothing to grind for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Use Zotero⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Good joke, you’d have to double and triple check every single citation as LLMs love to hallucinate.

  I wouldn’t risk my title or expulsion because an LLM fucked up my work. Even one missed reference or a false citation could cost you plenty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you prefer to buy games on Steam or GOG?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Steam simply due to the convenience and already having a ton of games there. Steam sales are nice too of course.

  GOG is awesome, but more for older games or for games I want to play at a LAN. Like the good old days where you hang out with friends, throw a CD (or now USB stick) their way and ten minutes later you’re playing together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elden Ring – Patch Notes Version 1.12⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s an easy mod to uncap fps, it works. There’s a mod for ultra wide, it works.

  It’s not an engine limitation, you can already play like this with mods. But you can’t play online because of changing the files…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elden Ring – Patch Notes Version 1.12⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No ultrawide support, no DLSS, no removed fps cap, no precompiled shaders to remove the stutter, …

  From makes good games, but when it comes to technology they either suck or are just lazy as hell.

  The biggest joke is that ultrawide already renders the full screen width, they just put black bars on top to not give the player an advantage, lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Anon" has problems with cybersecurity [Mod approved non-greentext]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Use a password manager, no need to remember shit then (besides your master password). For example if you want a local solution KeePass and sync the file (I use Dropbox, it’s encrypted anyway). You can also access it on Android with the sync.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Humanity making progress like it always does⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I still remember 10 years ago when I was driving on the Autobahn at 130 km/h and a juicy bug hit the windshield. It was literally a loud splat. Besides the grill always being covered in bugs.

  Hasn’t happened since, nowadays I can count the number of bugs on the grill with one hand. And that’s after months of driving.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Over 10 years later 7 Days to Die is going to leave Early Access⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately it’s pretty much just a label change and a price increase, not an actual 1.0 update :-/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon learns about nuts⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ouch, I had to think about what it’s in my motherlanguage and it’s actually earth nuts (Erdnüsse in German).

  If you had asked me how they grow it would have been a 50/50 if I got it wrong.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would be a good glue to repair this spatula with that wont he toxic or come undone in a dishwasher?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  News flash: Even if they do that, your body is already full of microplastics as it’s in your food. So not sure if this is going to help even one bit :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon has memory loss⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it indicates that the story is fake and written by a human. AI would do better, lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon notices what they've taken from us⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That was the first thing I missed when I went to a Galaxy S22. But aodNotify works great as replacement (you can make your own notification light this way and customize it, not a lot of battery drain either due to the OLED screen). But yeah, removing the notification light sucked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Employees Say ‘Sizable Portion’ Of Gearbox-Owned Studio Has Been Laid Off⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What has that to do with this argument? The lay-offs in the last six months were mostly due to massive overhiring while money lending was cheap. Now interest rates are up and those companies are trying to keep their profits up (or become profitable in the first place).

  And the thing is: They hired so many people, even with the lay-offs the headcount is still higher than it was a few years ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Employees Say ‘Sizable Portion’ Of Gearbox-Owned Studio Has Been Laid Off⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s simply not true, projects are usually done in stages. You got pre-production, production, testing, launch, post-production, …

  So take an employee who mainly works in pre-production. Based on what you said they’d be laid off after everything is done and production starts, right? But that’s not how it works. Those people immediately start with the pre-production work of either the next project, or the DLCs for the current one.

  There’s always more to do, after launch of a game you can’t have your developers sit around idle, you need the next project already prepared and ready to go. That’s why game DLCs sometimes release only months after launch, they have been worked on for a while.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some websites have a "Continue Reading" button?⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Articles usually have images and possibly embedded videos. So it’s not just text.

  Even so, a decent webserver wouldn’t really care.

  Maybe it loads faster for mobile users though if you only load text and a single image at first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam keeps on winning⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No exception was provided for this last time I looked through the subscriber agreement. I’m not real keen on reading through it again. Can you share the relevant portion?

  Ah, it’s unfortunately not in the contract. They do it (See for example this answer where another family member got the account after their little brother died), but it looks like it’s not a guarantee.

  As for the big red button at Valve, I can only find snippets of information. The only “official” one: imgur.com/4sa1Ln6 Most information is just from interviews or private messages, claiming there is an inner senior circle at Valve and they do have a contingency plan.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam keeps on winning⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.

  If you want to preserve your games nowadays your best option is buying from GOG and backing up your installers (it’s DRM free and with no launcher). But it’s a massive hassle compared to just using Steam and having auto updates. The GOG launcher that does updates for you exists, but it’s a bit meh.

  Anything that’s delisted will, outside of piracy, die when the account holders die.

  Not totally true, it’s allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die…

  Valve isn’t going broke anytime soon, they get around a 30% cut of every game sold and on top of that they also get a cut from all the steam market transactions. Valve is a privately owned company, which means no shareholders who want constant growth for any price, so for a company worth around 7.7 billion USD in 2022 I’m really not afraid Steam will go away anytime soon.

  And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that’s worth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam keeps on winning⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Preservation is a joke. Sure, for super old games sold on cartridges it works. But for anything around… 1998 to 2010 or so? Forget it.

  Even when you owned the original PC CDs with the box, the game updates are no longer available (Developer might not even exist anymore, site is shutdown). And if you get the wrong DRM like SecuROM you can’t start your game at all. Valid CD key or not (I tried it with Sacred 2, couldn’t get it to run due to the DRM servers being gone. Support from the shop I bought it years ago just gave me a Steam key afterwards, lol). And of course even if you get things to run, the online servers are no longer available, so that limits it to singleplayer games mostly.

  Looking back at all the games I bought right now Steam is doing the best job when it comes to actually keep them running. GOG is a good second place. Hell, my PC doesn’t even have a DVD drive anymore, it’s simply not necessary.

  Having played on PC for the last ~27 years I really don’t understand the nostalgia. PC gaming back then was a major hassle between physical media, manual game patching (version 1.01a to 1.01b to 1.02 to 1.1 to …) and shitty DRM that barely worked. We can only hope Steam isn’t going down the gutter, but for now they rake in tons of cash and it’s a privately held company so it should be fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This person's rejection reason⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean that’s what you get for writing the date wrong :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"The Day Before" makers Fntastic are shutting down.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That was fast. Their claim of 5 years in development is histerical.

  The city map is a bought asset for a few hundred bucks. The survival mechanics were a bought kit too.

  If you cut out marketing you could build that type of asset flip in weeks to months.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do people want games that are just stories without any gameplay, these days? Why not just watch a movie for that?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s why niche titles like Elden Ring or Baldurs Gates 3 totally flopped. Ah, wait…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grim Dawn Version v1.2.0.0 coming November 16th!⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Holy shit that’s a beefy update. It also modernizes the gameplay with active dodges and cooldown potions.

  I really need to get back to it after D4 :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a bit unsure there, but it could be building frustration? Sure, a good bunch of users left Reddit for example and Lemmy had a huge influx. But Reddit didn’t die, the user numbers are going back down again.

  So where others blame too much growth on bad quality posts and comments, I’d say we don’t have enough growth to sustain a lot of communities properly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you moderate yourself?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Less sleep it is!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are phone notification LEDs still a thing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It was the first thing I noticed missing when upgrading to a new phone (OnePlus 5 to Galaxy S22). It sucked, always on display uses too much battery and all I wanted was a colored notification LED.

  I’m now using aodNotify (Free version is enough, but I decided to pay once because it was so good) and now I got a little animation in the notification color of my choice again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nowadays, on certain games and game launchers, you can play the game before its fully downloaded. How is possible?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not how it works at all, what are you even talking about?

  Most games that offer this feature download a limited set of the game files. For example the first few areas of the game (but with full quality, no low resolution bullshit). The idea is that as you play it keeps downloading the rest. Though if you play too fast or load in a save you might hit a wall where the game forces you to wait and download the rest.

  Other games like Guild Wars 2 (an MMO) does it differently. It downloads all the assets it needs and the starting zones. But you can actually go into end-game zones too with a partial download, but then you have to wait in a loading screen while the game only downloads the zone you want to go to.

  The big game sizes are usually sounds and overall content (cinematics, also textures but you don’t have to load all of them, only the ones needed for now), if 99% of players are in the starting area of the game while downloading you can take your sweet time to download endgame areas for example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They were lucky Aladdin was such a cool dude⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  By a lot! It would also cut every overdrawn bank account by half :)

  Unfortunately it’s just “bank balance”, so actual debts outside of that wouldn’t be touched.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why a ton, and not a megagram?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  But it literally is a kiloton? Mostly getting used for explosives if you talk about it, but it’s used:

  kiloton /ˈkɪlə(ʊ)tʌn/
  noun: kiloton; plural noun: kilotons; noun: kilotonne; plural noun: kilotonnes
  a unit of explosive power equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT.

  The reason megagram isn’t used much is because it would be shortened to mg. Which is usually milligram. Sure, you could go the “Mg” route compared to “mg”, but that sucks. So “t” for ton works well. It’s just another name though, it doesn’t matter.