Used to play strategy games quite a lot 20 or so years ago. AoE, Homeworld, Red Alert. But I never got very deep into them.
The main reason I don't like strategy games anymore is that most of them simply boil down to micromanagement and actions-per-minute. That is not how my brain works. I hate micromanaging and multitasking. I love planning tactics, doing recon and analyzing the situation (as long as I don't have to do statistical analysis with spreadsheets for that), setting goals and executing plans.
Best strategy game I've ever played? X3: Terran Conflict. Once you set your plans in motion everything works pretty much automatically—you don't have to order your traders or military forces around constantly or set up product batches in your factories manually. You set up parameters by which your assets work, and aside from occasional tweaking and optimization you leave them to their own devices. Instead you concentrate on the actual grand strategy or a single battle at hand or putting out some random brushfire that needs your attention without the worry about your "villagers" standing around idle because they can't figure out there's a fresh patch of fish 100 meters to the left.
Plus you're there, in situ, as an actual participant in the world, not an abstract godhand hovering over the map. First-person strategy. Commanding two task groups steamrolling through a sector from the bridge of your cruiser, sipping coffee as turrets put on a massive fireworks around you is epic.
I think my first Bethesda game was Skyrim and I love Skyrim. I’ve played through Skyrim when it first came out I played through it again in the DLC came out. I played through it again on the switch I have since played through it again on PC. I love Skyrim. I played it so many times and I know it’s a meme to keep re-releasing...
You're not alone. I'm in the same spot. I love the humor of Fallout and I really liked the TV series; I have played Morrowind, Oblivion, more Skyrim playthroughs than I can remember but I bounced off FO3 pretty hard. For me it was the dreary environment and overall decay of the world.
People in FO3 just didn't seem to care much about their living conditions and this doesn't seem like what would happen in actual post-collapse society. People in general love surrounding themselves with art and beauty, rusty scrap metal shacks wouldn't be around two centuries after the bombs drop. Earthship, stucco and clay bricks are low tech but can be made very pretty and livable. Murals and paintings made using various pigments, colorful textiles, basreliefs, carvings and sculptures of ceramic, wood and stone would be everywhere, sprinkled with surviving pre-war artifacts that's been restored, maintained and cherished with pride.
Plant life would also recover quite fast and be lush in a post-atomic war world—Chornobyl is a prime example how nature claims back human-abandoned land just decades after a nuclear event. Deserts in FO should not be all dreary brown misery; there would be a thriving ecosystem of both flora and fauna. Two centuries is enough time for the most dangerous radioisotopes to decay away and you wouldn't really find places where radiation would stop wildlife reclaiming the land. More mutations and birth defects, yes, but life will find a way.
And this overall miserable representation of post-apocalyptic world is the reason FO games never really clicked for me even though the satire and tone hit the spot.
Well, let's light 'em bridges up in glorious RGB rainbows anyway, just under the pretense of "PC Gaming Month", concurrent with a Steam sale of coincidentally LGBT+ themed games🙃
...And thus a truly cosmic amount of salt shall be generated by both conservatives and g4m3r manchildren🤪
Better controller support—I'm not limited to what MS or Sony deem as "certified" or "authorized" hardware. Most of the really good hardware (VKB, Virpil, Arduino) will never be available for consoles and what little is available is bad at best.
Best sims are PC only (DCS, Il-2, E:D, X series, Hunternet etc)
Sims support 3rd party auxiliary software (TacView, EDDiscovery, OMH, EDMC etc) for better experience and that's simply not going to be possible on consoles, ever.
For other games, modding experience on PC is simply better. SKSE and ENB is what keeps Skyrim going and makes it still relevant 13 years later. Can't have this kind of code injection and wrappers on consoles.
If I ever get into retrogaming, emulation is the way, especially since actually acquiring retro console games in their original physical format is bound to become a very expensive collector's hobby if you don't have your own collection from childhood already or don't have local second-hand options.
This is good. Modding can turn into the deepest dependency hell ever and not having access to a specific version of mod A can make mod B that you really love unusable. See: Skyrim VR and Unofficial Patch.
Vortex is not a launcher, it's a mod manager. And you don't have to use it, there are alternatives. But you should use a mod manager, manual installation/uninstallation is really bad practice that can and will break things.
Like Skyrim this one is far more playable in third person, and I really recommend giving that a try.
Haven't played FO, but hell, no, Skyrim (and Morrowind, and Oblivion) in 3rd person is janky AF. Bethesda games never were meant to be played in 3rd person—I suspect the option is there simply for vanity cam, screenshots and modding.
My dream vehicle: electric tadpole velomobile. Efficient, stable even in winter conditions, weather protection. Unfortunately unaffordable at the moment, prices starting at around 9000€. Plus living in a condo storing one safely while not in use is a difficult endeavor.
Writes a song at 115 BPM. Makes it use double time. Occasionally changes tempo to 161 BPM half-time. Adds three layers of polyrhythms to it. Spices things up with metric modulation between 4/4, 13/8 and 17/7. Hides a sample of the "trolololo song" somewhere in there.
I find cartoonish moustache-twirling "evil" boring. Playing as morally grey characters is most compelling. Whether my character is a hero or a villain depends on whom you ask and at which point in history. Damage one faction and help another, when it's ambiguous who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are. Steal, rob and assassinate for what you believe is a "good cause". Set up dictators to avert death and destruction, then betray and terminate the them with extreme prejudice when they have served their purpose and become a liability. And so on.
Or just go full mercenary; everyone hates you, believes you have no principles and thinks they have the moral high ground, but at the end of the day everyone needs your specialist expertise. Every client is one missed payment away from becoming a target and every target is one bribe away from becoming a client—unless the target is eg slavers or pirates, because you actually do have principles.
For example, in X3:TC I single-handedly brought peace and prosperity into the universe: fought off Khaak threat; contained Xenons and completely denied their incursions into human and alien space alike; set up industry that boosted the economy at large for everyone; hired a lot of people for very good salaries. But, I had the monopoly in most industries; a fleet of warships capable of steamrolling everyone else if I wished so; literally owned a whole sector; controlled trade routes via the Hub; set up alliances with the pirate factions letting them roam free, trading illegal goods with them, building infrastructure for them. In short, very much a shady dystopian megacorps🙃
A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible...
it can’t be a bag for dry food because it won’t keep the food dry.
What dry foods actually need to be in a watertight container and how often do you immerse your packaged dry food in water or leave it in a humid environment? Back when I hiked a lot our circle of friends packed all the dry food we took into reusable fabric bags and had no problem keeping it dry for weeks in snow and rain.
Quite a lot of dry food is packaged in paper or carton—flour, cereal, couscous, sugar etc. For some reason (at least where I live) most dry food that are my staples like rice, pasta, buckwheat is packaged in plastic but could just as well be packaged in paper. It's not like rice or pasta is more vulnerable to humidity than couscous or sugar (packaged in paper/carton).
There are legitimate uses for these kind of lights on work vehicles, but they should never be used on public roads. Using these in a city is pure, 100% distilled assholery.
But on the contrary some games have adaptive music, and interestingly it’s a bit more like John Williams’ view on movie soundtracks : it’s made to adapt to what’s happening in real time. When it’s done right it’s everything but boring.
Elite: Dangerous does this extremely well (IMO it has some of the best sound designs out there, not only music but everything else, too, including the dynamic range). The music is never this generic bombastic horn sections, and it's different in different environments and situations, always somberly haunting at the edge of consciousness and enhancing, not overpowering, the gameplay.
Footage widely shared on social media showed a massive blast at Israa University, prompting US President Joe Biden’s administration to ask Israel for clarification....
Hiram claimed that his troops felt in danger due to intelligence that Hamas had a network of tunnels under the university
You're fucking soldiers in a fucking war zone. You're always in danger, there is no way to be safe in a war. If you think that the enemy is upon you, you change your position—do you even tactic, wimps? Did you learn anything in your basic training, maggots? Fucking cowards, go back home and play counterstrike if you want to feel safe.
Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident....
Most likely the module, if it is a separate module and not part of the SoC of the infotainment system or whatever, works over CAN bus and the car will throw errors when it doesn't detect its presence, or doesn't detect the SIM card. Might even refuse to start if that module is missing. Might be possible to remove the antenna so the car thinks it's just outside of the service area, but if it's built into the PCB and the PCB is cast into resin/silicone for waterproofing, even this might be extremely difficult. Probably the module is also serialized* so replacing it with a "dummy" module or a module from a junkyard won't spoof the system, either.
*Manufacturers have been serializing even airbags for years, making replacing a faulty one with one from a junkyard impossible.
Power over Ethernet
Perl Object Environment
PowerOpen Environment
Product of Experts
Platform for Open Exploration
Post Occupancy Evaluation
Port of entry
Control. Liked it despite being in 3rd person view up until the mezzanine fight an hour or two in, then realized that the enemies are just dumb high DPS bullet sponges, the PC is a low DPS squishy and fighting from a cover or any other tactical approach I'm used to doesn't work.
EDIT: There was also a spellcrafting mod for Skyrim where the endboss was immunebto all magic and would teleport away as soon as you got too close while summoning a bazillion powerful minions. At level 50...60 it was litwrally impossible to figjt the bastard. After many tries I just console killed the bugger and was done with it.
Maybe I'll give it a retry at some point in the future. If I can recall my forgotten Epic login credentials, that is. Too busy with the thargoid war for the next few years, though.
In Sekiro you have a choice around two thirds into the game which causes the game to end immediately (with a very bad ending); since the game autosaves all the time, once you make that choice you have to start the entire game over and get to that point again to make a different choice.
Yeah, that's bad game design IMO unless the game is an hour or two long. The player should be able to roll back when they fuck up that much. In fact, only one save file and no way to roll back if it gets corrupted or you realize how badly you have fucked up is always a bad design.
I finished Control last week, likely the best game to marry a creepy funhouse with a sprawling government office that you’ll ever play. I was up and down on this one for a few months. There’s a fun narrative and plenty of atmosphere, but I wasn’t always enjoying the gameplay....
I made it to the mezzanine fight an hour or two in and realized that the NPC-s are just dumb high DPS bullet sponges and the PC is a low DPS squishy. The worst way to ramp up difficulty. Trying to fight tactically from the cover didn't work and I lost interest. Too bad, I liked the atmosphere and even forgave the 3rd person only camera (normally I disqualify a game instantly if it doesn't allow 1st person view).
tons of titles try to go for realism and showing off the scale correctly, which is neat for space nerd
As one of those space nerds, I'm glad we have games like Elite: Dangerous, Starfield, X series, Independence War etc. Choice is good and I, along with many others, love 1:1 scale sandboxes to fly a virtual spaceship in, fight , trade and explore. There are plenty of fast action games including space shooters like Star Wars Squadrons for those who don't appreciate the emptiness and loneliness of space and don't want the travel-and-life-in-space part in a space game.
Starfield is the only new game from past 5 years I'm excited about and going to buy once I upgrade my GPU. It's a life-in-space sandbox that complements E:D well by doing things the latter does not.
I'm an Elder Scrolls veteran (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim), I know quite well what Bethesda games do well and what not. And they have always clicked for me, even though all of them are flawed in different ways.
As for ship combat, as long as it's comparable to X3, it's fine. I'm not expecting Children of a Dead Earth or Independence War🙂
To be honest, Freelancer was kind of "meh". Graphics and character animation were very nice, but ship and station design was weird and the combat felt shallow and one-dimensional. In short, too arcade-y. No joystick support was the real downer, space ship combat never feels good with mouse.
For the perspective, though, before Freelancer I played and modded the absolute crap out of Independence War 2 and that is still the pinnacle of space combat that doesn't feel like WWII dogfight arcade in space while still being rather accessible and intuitive.
After updating my drivers to get screen recording working again (last version was 22.something and ReLive mysteriously decided to stop working) I find that whenever I try to overclock my old RX570, the whole system crashes, no matter what settings I use (even if I increase the GPU frequency just 1 MHz). Used to be rock solid for...
To an extent, motherboards, too, and even before the GPU prices went ballistic. I bought a Z87 mobo back in the day for 80 or 90€ and the most expensive mobos were around 300€ or so. The X570 mobos in 2019 started at 250€ and 550 mobos didn't even get released until at the end of 3000 series Ryzen. Who in their right mind would pair a 200€ R5 3600 CPU with a 250€ mobo?
I bet most of the budget-minded people who bought a R5 3600 CPU never got to use PCIe 4.0. And to add insult to injury, budget GPU-s started using PCIe 4.0 x8 (or even x4) instead of x16, effectively gimping them on budget mobos.
Todd Howard agrees that it was a bit of a pain to get right, as he said in a recent interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. "[Space combat] was way harder than we thought … We see a lot of space games where you're gonna have like, derelict ships or other things to fly around, just to get a sense of motion,...
Elite: Dangerous is a 6DOF "simcade" and the higher level AI ships have almost no restrictions as to how they can fly (low level ones can be quite clumsy and clueless). They can pull off shots with railguns and fixed lasers a human player never can. A wing of 3 or 4 of these can absolutely shred an unprepared player—just go into a medium/high intensity conflict zone in a lightly engineered ship and face off the opforce spec ops team solo. The only reason why the high level NPC-s can be defeated more easily than experienced players is that they have non- or lightly modified weapons, hulls and shields (meaning less speed, DPS and "health" than player ships) and they don't use the really advanced flying techniques players have figured out and learned to use.
Different rules and restrictions for AI in a space combat game are necessary for the meatbags to be able to compete. The computer can maneuver perfectly, have perfect power management, have perfect SA, never messes up input timing, never misses a hitscan shot, is not affected by joystick deadzones, jitter and drift.
Oh, the hubris of some mod authors. Most of the Bethesda mod community is quite fed up with shit like that after Arthmoor shenanigans. I believe there is already an agreement that the unofficial patch for Starfield will be open source and not a monopoly of one mod author. Cathedral vs. parlor.
It's only a time when an alternative, open mod that does the same thing better will be released.
At least Oblivion, unlike Skyrim, had actual classes (let's not talk about the leveling system, shall we?) and spell making. Plus some really, really good questlines (including the main quest, and the whole Shivering Isles expansion was rad AF). The cities also felt larger than in Skyrim and the Arcane University was an actual university, not a random village school with 3 students. Role-play wise Skyrim was the weakest of the three modern ES games.
The only game that scratches the space exploration itch Elite doesn't quite scratch (I mean, Elite is very good, but has it's shortcomings when it comes to on-foot stuff). Ship interiors, base building and having actual life on planets, not just some fungoida and bacterium patches, alone are a reason to be excited about Starfield. Also, jetpack combat.
Funny how Elder Scrolls veterans are enjoying the game for what it is while bitter Playstation diehards, wishful thinkers with gigabyte-sized dreams.txt and bandwagon-o'-hate jumpers are complaining about things that never were to be so loud you can clearly hear the "Reeeeeeeeeee...." from Alpha Centauri😏
Honestly, the best platform to play Bethesda games is PC anyway. What makes Bethesda special is their embracing of modding, and PC being an open platform allows for much, much more in that respect. IIRC, on Playstation one couldn't even use custom assets in mods, and console makers will never allow script extenders, .NET frameworks and ENB series that allow for amazing stuff on PC.
Powerful enchantment (slrpnk.net)
Gamers Are Becoming Less Interested in Games With Deep Strategy, Study Finds (www.ign.com)
The future is here (sh.itjust.works)
Fallout Series (Why don’t I like it?)
I think my first Bethesda game was Skyrim and I love Skyrim. I’ve played through Skyrim when it first came out I played through it again in the DLC came out. I played through it again on the switch I have since played through it again on PC. I love Skyrim. I played it so many times and I know it’s a meme to keep re-releasing...
Florida won't light bridges in rainbow colors for Pride Month this year (www.advocate.com)
Duality of old men (files.catbox.moe)
You either grow up to be a wise old man or a complete menace to society
That's a lot of corned beef... (lemmy.world)
Older patient gamers: what is your preferred gaming platform?
I used to be a PC-only gamer but the older I get the more I gravitate toward very ‘simple’ platforms....
Fallout TV show popularity prompts NexusMods to issue traffic warning (www.eurogamer.net)
Fallout 4
So I figured it’s about time I gave this game a shot....
EVs are booming but electric bikes are really cutting emissions (www.theguardian.com)
Chechnya bans all music deemed too fast or too slow (edition.cnn.com)
Authorities in the Russian Republic of Chechnya have announced a ban on music that they consider too fast or slow.
Roleplaying evil characters
So, I almost never play evil characters in most CRPGs - despite the potential fun to be had - and recently I’ve been thinking about why....
The New York Times Simulator - A free casual game about manufacturing consent (www.youtube.com)
Fully playable in the browser here!
Unprecedented GPS jamming attack affects 1600 aircraft over Europe (www.newscientist.com)
A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible...
Say Hello to Biodegradable Microplastics (today.ucsd.edu)
Tesla Cybertruck: A Tragedy On Four Wheels [Adam Something] (www.youtube.com)
Piped link / Invidious link...
I hate the term "Boomer Shooter"
Not to say I hate the genre, I actually love me some Dusk or Turbo Overkill, but why, oh why are they called Boomer Shooters?...
Final Fantasy music legend Nobuo Uematsu thinks modern ‘movie-like’ game music is uninteresting | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com)
Legendary video game music composer Nobuo Uematsu says he doesn’t think some modern video game soundtracks are as interesting as those in older games.
Senior IDF officer censured over demolition of Gaza university without approval (www.timesofisrael.com)
Footage widely shared on social media showed a massive blast at Israa University, prompting US President Joe Biden’s administration to ask Israel for clarification....
Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies (www.nytimes.com)
Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident....
'I Think We Should Kill 'Em All,' GOP Rep. Andy Ogles Says of Palestinians in Gaza (www.commondreams.org)
Inflation screwing you over? Just invest! (sopuli.xyz)
Rule (feddit.de)
Playing Pillars of Eternity for the first time
I’m really enjoying it so far. I’m solidly in the middle of Act 2 and about to start The Winter March part 1....
What difficult games/game challenges did you give up on?
Be it a game that’s difficult in its entirety, or a particular challenge in a game that you just couldn’t complete....
Games that force you to make hard choices
Hey all!...
Control - the first game to get me to turn on cheats in decades
I finished Control last week, likely the best game to marry a creepy funhouse with a sprawling government office that you’ll ever play. I was up and down on this one for a few months. There’s a fun narrative and plenty of atmosphere, but I wasn’t always enjoying the gameplay....
Seasoned RPG devs from Obsidian and Bioware blame the temporary death of the isometric CRPG on 'vibes-based forecasting' from retailers (www.pcgamer.com)
"I can't stress enough how often I'd hear a retail rep declare a genre/style/look was dead with zero supporting data."
Todd Howard says it took 7 years to make Starfield fun to play: "I thought we would find the answers faster" (www.gamesradar.com)
Anyone knows a fix for AMD Adrenalin 23.9.2 overclock crash? (kbin.social)
After updating my drivers to get screen recording working again (last version was 22.something and ReLive mysteriously decided to stop working) I find that whenever I try to overclock my old RX570, the whole system crashes, no matter what settings I use (even if I increase the GPU frequency just 1 MHz). Used to be rock solid for...
Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’ (kotaku.com)
lol. lmao.
Todd Howard says that Starfield's ship AI sucks on purpose so players can actually hit stuff: 'You have to make the AI really stupid' (www.pcgamer.com)
Todd Howard agrees that it was a bit of a pain to get right, as he said in a recent interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. "[Space combat] was way harder than we thought … We see a lot of space games where you're gonna have like, derelict ships or other things to fly around, just to get a sense of motion,...
Creator of Cracked Paid Starfield DLSS 3 Frame Generation Mod Will Place "Hidden Mines" in Future Mods (wccftech.com)
The creator of the paid Starfield DLSS 3 Frame Generation mod, PureDark, has said that he will be placing "hidden mines" in his future mods....
Game prices are too low, says Capcom exec (www.eurogamer.net)
Capcom's president and chief operating officer has said he thinks game prices should go up.Haruhiro Tsujimoto made the …
Modder Behind Oblivion Fan Remake Vows to See It Through Whether Bethesda Releases a Remaster or Not (www.ign.com)
Bethesda: Thank you to more than 10 million Starfield explorers for creating the biggest launch in Bethesda history (twitter.com)
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