Carighan

Carighan, 1 month ago

Yeah but for many low-power applications, it’s a damn cool development. Like I have a bluetooth keyboard and a few controllers that could eaisly fit a battery 3x-4x the current size inside no problem, so there’s no need to waste lithium on that.

Carighan, 1 month ago

I think the mistake was ever thinking that one company is “good” while the other is “bad”. Companies are just different flavors of bad once they grow above a size of, well, once they are companies.

Carighan, 1 month ago

I dunno, I don’t think the game would benefit from flat combat and meanigless crafting grinds.

Carighan, 1 month ago

Yeah because in some ways it’s unrealistic. But we need a decision on what the “expected lifetime” of a video game is , I suppose. Much like how for rental flats there exists standards how long a kitchen, a bathroom, etc, last on average until they need refurbishment.

So if it comes down to say 10 years, then you cannot shut down your online services before those 10 years are up. As video games can be expected to last that long. Although I wonder whether this means they could shut it down after 5y if they refund everyone 50% of their sales price.

Carighan, 1 month ago

Yeah it’d be tricky. I would rather see a law that requires companies to keep their games accessible for X years minimum from release, which also affects online services.

Then at least it’s a universal single standard.

Carighan, 1 month ago

Plus, this is Bethesda, and in particular their open world games. They have always been shit the fans had to fix if they wanted to play it, as the foundation was solid but the company didn’t do any actual development.

Carighan, 1 month ago

It’s pretty late in its life, could be that anyone who would be a potential sale got one at this point? I remember that being, at the time, the reason for the sharp decline in Ocarina of Time sales in Japan, they effectively sold one to everyone who has an N64 so they “maxed out”.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Well yeah it is. It’s also heavy on the mtx, non-pushy as they stay (for now). Compared to something like DRG I really don’t feel the appeal, apart from maybe having overplayed DRG at this point.

Carighan, 2 months ago

unfinished release

I feel “early access” has this implication that it’s not just a product that is unfinished being sold for money with a pinky promise that it’ll get better in the future. It’s better than a normal release that ends up being unfinished, but only by being somewhat open about it.

That being said, game looks fantastic. If they keep at this, could become something really really cool in the future.

Carighan, 1 month ago

Yeah plus from a consumer perspective it’s nothing special.

It’s just a buggy release, only the bugginess and unfinishedness is known and openly announced. Which makes it more earnest, of course. On the other hand just like with any other release you have 0 guarantee or influence over whether missing features get added in the future and/or bugs get fixed. If the content is worth the money asked it’s a buy, if not it’s a wait.

Carighan, 2 months ago

My favorite one, even though it is a bit different of course, is Against The Storm, a roguelike city builder that essentially removes all the later stages and makes you re-live the first 20-60 minutes of a fresh - and highly randomized - map again and again.

To me it removes all the tedium I always get from city builders. It’s tense, and somewhat depressing in its setting, but also very pretty and super fun.

Carighan, 2 months ago

And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world.

That’s the real big issue here, IMO: The North Korea approach. Kids are starting to become able to spend money who were indoctrinated with this. Because to them it’s the north. It’s just a part of this entertainment that you continuously spend small amounts of cash. To them it’s normality.

Carighan, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

TL’DW? It’s >1 hour, and would probably be <5 minutes read as an article.

(edit)
Well, got this rather generic description of the game itself out of Gemini at least:

Scanner Sombre is a walking simulator with horror and desolation elements made by Introversion Software, a UK based indie developer. The game centers around exploring caves with a laser gun that shoots in random directions. The laser gun creates a color gradient on the visor to map the contours of the cave and reveal the player’s surroundings.
The caves are shrouded in darkness and the only light comes from the player’s laser gun. The sound design is important to the feeling of isolation as the player can hear their own footsteps and the constant whine of the laser gun. There are also strange apparitions that show up on the visor, adding to the creepy atmosphere.
The player character, Ethan, is trapped in a cave and doomed to relive his journey forever. He descended into the caves to explore ancient ruins but never made it out. The upgrades the player finds throughout the game are actually downgrades that Ethan experiences on his journey downwards.
The story for the game was added after the main development process was finished and some aspects of the storytelling are not well thought out. Scanner Sombre was not a commercial success and Introversion Software did not make another game for seven years.___

Carighan, 2 months ago

Of the alternative is waiting 90 minutes in line, sure, why not?

Carighan, 2 months ago

and what little they did release was insultingly barebones

I mean OTOH for those who bought it, the content there at the time was worth the money asked. Sure it was somewhat barebones but the game is also cheap-ish and if you get a bunch of cool hours out of it with friends, well worth.

Carighan, 2 months ago

I don’t. They have so many great studios in there, and you just know those will be the ones fully closed in procedures.

Carighan, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

It is quite a gimmick, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing tbh. Its neat if you’re a hobbyist dev in particular to expand the way you think about input vs in game design so that when faced with things such as analog triggers, gyro controls or touch surfaces you got a better intuitive thought process.

I will however say that to me, the main use ends there. A neat gimmick in particular for gamedevs.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Can they please not? I’d rather not have Blizzard stay Blizzard, seeing what they did to WoW, SC2, D3, D4, DI, Overwatch and worst of all, Heroes of the Storm.

Carighan, 2 months ago

person behind Overwatch 2

is still held in high regard

Ouff. I guess marketing earned their bonuses, sure.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Oh I had not yet heard that they’re turning the ship around. That’s really really cool. After all this time I just stopped following stuff around it since it got so depressing over the years.

She’s the one from WoWC, right?

Carighan, 2 months ago

Yeah if I give 1% of my income, good luck with that. But have you considered taking 99,999% of those who are rich (leaving them with still easily enough they’ll never have to work again), and getting actual amounts of money that way.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Why?

Carighan, 2 months ago

That’s in fact why some universities patent their research stuff in the first place, to ensure nobody else can. They’ll then make it a policy to take 0€ in licensing fees, but this precludes anybody else from starting to lock the tech behind money.

Source: My uni back in the days had a few dozen patents for exactly this reason, too.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Weird Crew reporting in, running up to you using ESDF. 😅

Carighan, 2 months ago

Maybe we should rationalize their CEO with an actual pipeline, to use another euphemism…

Carighan, 2 months ago

Honest would be “We’re firing people to make our short term profits look better. That’s what my bonuses are based on, after all!”.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Well, not 1-to-1, although there were some clones.

But plenty games took on the idea behind it. The most direct would probably be Crying Suns, which features a type of character-to-station assignment, real time placement element and roguelike generated galaxy traversal. It changes each element, but the pieces are all there.

Other games take more indirect inspiration. The Bomber/Space/etc Crew games focus on the move-people-around-the-ship part of FTL, clearly. There were a few games where something chases you through generated levels so you cannot linger and explore it all.

Carighan, 2 months ago

It’s all stock assets, so he IS a billionaire, he just cant access those billions unless he liquidates his stock assets.

Funny, I can’t access the number on my bank account either unless I liquidate that. Sometimes it’s soothing to know even billionaires don’t actually have a Scrooge McDuck style money bin with actual cash in it to swim around in.

Carighan, 2 months ago

It comes after getting “blasted” I would assume.

Carighan, 2 months ago

I already got stuck on the name tbh.

I really don’t get how the “Claw” is not a keypad for the left hand or a mouse. Both would be things a gamer might intuitively think of as a “claw” thing. A gaming handheld?! Why? Because you apparently got the hardware out of a claw machine?!

Carighan, 2 months ago

Well yeah, sure, if your target audience is 8 years old. I guess. 🤷

Carighan, 2 months ago

Damn, I thought MSI’s mascot was more or less officially the bluescreen? 😛 Didn’t know they changed that.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Yeah exactly, the middle was always pretty empty and aimless.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Exactly, people somehow expect this to be fixed overall without each individual having to change, which they’ll naturally do one-by-one. Utopian ideas are nice, but it’s a bit very unrealistic to expect everyone to wake up at the exactly same UTC time suddenly and no longer be bigots. That’s not how this changes. It changes one by one.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Yeah but if you think about it, at the local level isn’t that how you want your politicians to work? They experience something that bothers them, and instead of just grumbling about it they go into politics to get elected and change it?

I mean if our politicians worked that way (driven by a single personal desire and hence the relative percentage of votes reflects how much the population wants each desire to influence policy), that’d be quite the improvement!

Carighan, 2 months ago

What I hate most about this is how they now moved to Rocket Chat.

Come on people. Use a forum. Get the message, finally. Do it!

Carighan, 2 months ago

They don’t really need a chat though, do they? For their purpose of user-interfacing development and tracking, a forum would be much more useful when coupled with a code hosting system, no?

Can do bug reporting/tracking and development through the latter, while the former allows discoverable FAQ, dev-to-user and user-to-user support. With chat, the last point is just about impossible plus it’s not discoverable.

Carighan, 2 months ago

That’s the extra funny part, their subreddit is rock solid since they had it a fair while ago.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Rocket.Chat and Matrix come to mind. The latter’s element client (the default) even looks extremely Discord-ish.

Carighan, 2 months ago

Essentially just Playnite then?

Carighan, 2 months ago

You’re new to Ubisoft, right? Ubisoft needs online on installation cm because their shit is so buggy that not even the installer could make it all the way without a crash if not for day 1 patches. No need for DRM if the game doesn’t work!