NuXCOM_90Percent

@NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As with SO much about tim sweeney: he is touching on something very important for all the wrong reasons.

  The reality is… probably 99% of games SHOULD have that disclosure by the current rules. So many modern tools have “AI” tools integrated into them these days. A LOT of the modern Adobe tools fundamentally are based on generative AI (think “magic wand” in Photoshop but better). Similarly… what is the difference between asking chatgpt to write you a script, asking someone who may have asked chatgpt to do it, and having an editor that feeds all your data to openai?

  And… you can bet that Unreal Engine is going to be integrating more and more of those tools.

  I very much do appreciate the intent and I make it a point to check on that when I am buying games on Steam. In large part because… the people (knowingly) using AI tend to not be using it responsibly. Its not a full deal breaker but it very much puts the game into that “ONE thing and they can piss off” territory.

  But at the same time? A game I’ve been working on (on and off) for a few years has very heavy Dwarf Fortress inspirations and relies quite heavily on simulation to advance world state. And while the odds of me ever publishing that are pretty low… I do actually wonder how that would work with disclosures. And I very much assume a lot of the more crazy awesome devs are having the same concerns and just hoping nobody notices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Guild Wars Reforged, a free 20th anniversary revamp of the original Guild Wars, arrives this December⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  On the one hand? Cool

  On the other hand? Holy crap, GW1 has official gamepad support before GW2…

  On my third hand (it is one of those pinchy grabby things): I am gonna be REAL curious how this shakes out.

  I loved GW1 back in the day. Five or six months back I got it in my head to replay the campaigns and… they are REAL bad

  1. Prophecies is the original campaign and is, narratively, the coolest (and really drills down how Humans are actually the Elves of Tyria which just went even farther with GW2). It is also the one that was specifically designed to require coop and the henchmen, if anything, make the game worse which is why general guidance is to not start in Prophecies or to make a mad rush to Nightfall to get proper Heroes). Laranity gonna have to work in overdrive to put out enough videos to tell people to not make a Prophecies character…
  2. Even once you have a full roster of maxed out Heroes, the level scaling means that you are basically constantly in a slog against rapid healing enemies until you get the right skills to make the right builds to stop that… and the way skills work in GW1 is that you have to buy them from specific vendors (or steal them from specific bosses) which means you actively can’t make a solid build until a good chunk of the way through multiple campaigns
  3. And, regardless of those builds, the way fast travel works is that you can only fast travel to towns/outposts. So to complete a quest or reach the next mission that often involves a 10-40 minute slog through one or more zones of constant level cap enemies just to find the next town/mission before you have to log off for the evening. Which is a REALLY bad feeling when you aren’t even sure what path to take to get to the next outpost

  I DO think GW1 can be “modernized” with minimal changes.

  1, Add more skill vendors to Lion’s Arch or even the starting hub areas. Especially since it sounds like Reforged is getting rid of the DLC/expansions and making it one bundle. 2. Arguably also allow us to buy those skills regardless of our class (so Necro can buy Mesmer skills). This removes a lot of the importance of Ascending but also makes building out those Heroes so much faster 3. Similarly, let’s add a Hero or two to Prophecies and Cantha so it isn’t a mad rush to Nightfall. 4. Add more fast travel points to the maps. I would almost say to just make all the respawn shrines fast travel points but there are probably balance issues there

  Do that and GW1 stops being a slog where you need an hour or two per session to make any progress and instead lets people focus on the REALLY fun builds you can make for different characters.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The PS3, in large part, sold because it was THE best blu ray player out there. At a time when games on the Sony were actively worse than any other platform (because the CBE was a mofo for third parties), the PS3 was heavily buoyed by it weirdly being one of the cheapest blu ray players out there. And the PS2 was a REALLY good DVD player which heavily contributed to its market dominance.

  For people who already have an AVR and are used to doing all their own infrastructure, it matters less. For people who essentially plug one box into the one “good” port on their TV? When there is one 1k USD box that can only do games and one 1k USD box that does games and netflix and youtube and disney plus?

  It might not be a huge deal in the long run (especially with TVs having a lot of this functionality built in) but it is a talking point with no good answers. And that impacts the idea of it being “an entry point”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Basically all the services more oriented at TV/movies (Amazon, Max, probably the movies you can buy on Youtube, etc) all tend to either lock all content behind an HDCP handshake or higher resolution streams.

  So you might be able to watch the latest Glenn Howerton movie on your linux HTPC but it will be a lower res stream with no HDR or surround sound. It is a very known problem that sheepishly comes up any time someone asks about how they can build their own nvidia shield or whatever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nier creator Yoko Taro would like you to know he has been working on games, they just keep getting cancelled⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who played every Drakengard… Taro tells amazing stories that very much understand how to use the medium to drill the emotional and philosophical beats home. Most of his games probably should have never gotten anywhere close to shipping.

  But yeah. Sincerely doubt it is a sign of quality control and better pipeline control…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course they have considered it. It is literally their model for handheld form factor gaming laptops (aka “Steam Deck”). And it is what they tried with round 1 of Steam Machines.

  The real problem is going to be… all the problems that those of us with a Linux HTPC have. Streaming of media won’t be a thing since most services have DRM that relies on HDCP handshakes these days. Also people are going to learn the fun way why that AMD setup only supports “HDMI 2.0” (although there are workarounds to get most 2.1 functionality out of a display port adapter). Let alone just general weirdness that tends to not come up when everything is one integrated device.

  Consoles have gone a LONG way towards ruining “it just works”. But I spent an hour or so yesterday finally flashing my display port dongle and it involved a second device to SSH into my HTPC and, in the process, I ended up needing to re-pair my xbox controller afterwards. I am used to that kind of bullshit and think it is fun. The first time that happens to someone you can expect all of social media to start caring that GabeN is a weird rich lunatic and insisting that Kojima-san and Sony will fix everything with the PS6 or whatever bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kerbal Space Program spiritual successor Kitten Space Agency releases pre-alpha for free⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’mma be honest?

  Even if this is comparable to KSP1 in terms of gameplay… I just cannot cause even a fraction of the hell and suffering that Jeb Kerman has experienced to cute little kitty cats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Ops 7 single-player doesn't allow pausing or mission checkpoints on top of being always-online⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I saw an argument about this on a different forum.

  it sounds like the root problem is related to the SP campaign providing MP progression. So, because apparently how many times you’ve prestiged a 1911 is a major concern, all of that requires phoning home (the olds among us may remember when this was literally UbiDRM back for SC Conviction and the like…).

  From what I could tell: If you gracefully disconnect then you keep your checkpoints. If you lose connectivity, you lose your progress for the entire mission.

  It sucks since there really is nothing like a CoD spectacle out there. But if you just want a good FPS campaign with some fun moments? Get your Steam on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve says it’s still waiting for better chips to power Steam Deck 2⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think they are more likely waiting to see how supply chains and pricing shakes out.

  ARM has a LOT of power and portability implications and lets them leverage cell phone hardware. But the Ryzen AI Maxes are kind of monsters in the laptop space (and that is essentially what a steam deck is).

  Get the steam machines and frames out there, see how they settle, and then check in for what hardware lets them meet the price point they want for Steam Deck 2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Controller⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wooo. Was worried when the icon didn’t have “gamepad + touchpads” but the “ai generated render for legal purposes” did.

  Time will tell on the ergonomics. But Valve know their shit and the Steam Deck is genuinely pleasant to use so I assume the size and angle should mean the d-pad and face buttons are still fully usable. Rather than the mess of a switch controller where only the tiniest of hands can use them without cramping.

  Currently leaning “three steam controllers, maybe a steam frame when we know more” since I already have an HTPC under my TV.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Controller 2 Got A New Icon And It Further Confirms The Layout⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Eww.

  The touchpad are amazing but do not replace an analog stick or dpad. If this is legit, it is going to be the steam controller 1 all over again where it really is only good for games without xinput gamepad support

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Full Story of BOOX: How a Chinese Startup Revolutionized the Global E-Reader Market⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Used an Onyx Boox or whatever for eight or nine months last (?) year. Liked it a lot. And REALLY wish Kobo would “steal” the idea of just letting me sync notes straight to a webdav rather than having to shenanigans. Of course… the Booxes ALSO have mysterious traffic to and from Chinese servers which puts a damper on using it for anything meaningful.

  But I think my biggest issue was kind of… the thing that made the Onyx so good. I loved that it was a (really jank) android device for the purposes of accessing kindle and whatever else. But that meant it was also incredibly unstable and it increasingly made it clear that android app design philosophy is designed for fast updating displays, not e-ink.

  And while I think I could have found a third party e-reader app… the built in one is REAL shit and clearly designed with having a few PDFs in memory rather than actually being a “library on the go”.

  So I ended up getting a Kobo and am super happy. I still occasionally grab my onyx if I am playing an older game and want to put a prima guide or whatever on the side but… yeah.

  Also apparently the onyx was incredibly fragile? I never noticed a problem but saw LOTS of carnage pictures of people who put it in a too tightly packed bag.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Battlefield 6 releases today and it will not be playable on any Linux / SteamOS system⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the more interesting/concerning aspect is:

  EA have spent the past year or so rapidly disabling linux access for past Battlefield games (Allegedly 3 worked as of July but I vaguely remember that not being true anymore). EA have also been working to be bought out by some of the worst people on the planet.

  And a common thing with acquisitions like that is some of that “why would they do that?” starts making sense. So… yeah.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does Helldivers 2 have such a bloated install size on PC? Old hard drives, says dev⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Amazon has a Crucial BX500 2 TB SSD drive for 106 USD

  While I fully understand the need for devs to support older hardware, this is also a very low cost upgrade that has a massive impact on user experience. Hell, for 20 something years now there have been articles about how getting an SSD (now nvme) is the biggest noticeable performance improvement someone can do.

  As for the topic at hand: I like that they support older systems. But this is also similar to language packs (and high res textures back in the day) where it REALLY should be handled via an opt-in DLC-like system. Because the reason people “need” massive amounts of storage on their gaming systems is BECAUSE of stuff like this. That support for a spinner means the people with SSDs or NVMEs need to spend more disk space on this game which means they need bigger storage which means they start going cheaper and…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does Helldivers 2 have such a bloated install size on PC? Old hard drives, says dev⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  So uh… you find a lot of people around you tend to ask that, huh?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Costco Confirms It's Removed Xbox Consoles, Calling It A "Business Decision"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not to the degree MS is expected to.

  The next generation is going to be a complete shitshow. But right now? Signs are that the PS5 will stay mostly stable whereas the xbox is going to get a head start on said shitshow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Costco Confirms It's Removed Xbox Consoles, Calling It A "Business Decision"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This likely has nothing to do with the ongoing brand problems.

  Microsoft have increasingly been threatening massive price hikes because of “tariffs”. Costco doesn’t want to deal with an expensive but also volatile item.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta Accused of Torrenting Porn to Advance Its Goal of AI ‘Superintelligence’⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At this point we are going to find out that the only thing they WEREN’T torrenting were linux ISOs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The only companies that can really compete with Valve for scale are MAYBE Asus. And if they just release approximately the same SKU as Valve or one with minor updates they can maybe get some market share but… why would you not buy the Valve one in that case?

  So we instead get a case where they leverage something closer to their gaming laptops SKU… and the price goes up a lot. Although, to be clear, 1k for a “gaming laptop” is actually a REALLY good price… which is why gaming laptops are a stupid purchase.

  And that mostly just leaves the Aya Neos and GPDs of the world. They more or less paved the way for Valve but they just can’t produce (and import) at scale to compete so you mostly get niche SKUs that specifically target a type of gaming (often emulation) or come with keyboards everyone hates and so forth.

  Which sucks because I really would like there to be competition to encourage Valve to keep pushing the envelope… and Valve would likely like it so they don’t have to release a new gameboy every other year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rumor: There Is A Performance Gap Between Switch 2 Game Cards Vs. Internal Storage⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Like the cartridges? No shit?

  Different storage types have different read performances. That is true whether it is a random ass cartridge, an sd card, or internal (generally nvme) storage. Its why one of the biggest noticeable performance upgrades people could do in the 10s and 20s was moving their OS from HDD->SSD or SSD->NVME and why some games strongly encourage installing it to the fastest storage you have.

  Hell, I specifically named my drive mounts based on the speed “category” of the NVMEs on my mobo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨POSTAL 2 Redux has launched on Kickstarter⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

  Yeah, fuck that shit

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨POSTAL 2 Redux has launched on Kickstarter⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wooo. Just what we need in 2025! Animal abuse, pissing on people until they vomit, and very timely islamophobia!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Itch.io are seeking out new payment processors who are more comfortable with adult material⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The canary was when the exact same thing happened (with much greater impact) to pornhub.

  Nobody cared. and Pornhub Corp STILL can’t use credit cards and are dependent on bank orders and cryptocurrency.

  And I can’t see a lot of developers going out of their way to prioritize this. Because it is easy to say you are sex positive. It is another thing to actually stand with smut and risk getting attacked by all the same groups.

  Also, you know what else is a de facto monopoly? Steam! (cue all the usual suspects). You know what people will never stop whining about? Games not having Steam versions.

  So yeah. Gamers Rise Up?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve change Steam's rules to let banks and credit card firms prohibit "certain kinds of adult only content"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
  1. No it won’t. People aren’t going to change their bank because their debit card doesn’t like a company
  2. It wouldn’t change anything. Take a look at said debit card. Notice how it is probably either Visa or Mastercard (Discover if you’re nasty (ain’t nobody use American Express)). THOSE are the companies that matter
  3. Don’t use your debit card for online purchases. Get a credit card. The fees are the same on the vendor end and you get much better protections AND cash back

  And its always worth remembering what happened with Pornhub back in 2022. I genuinely don’t care what anyone thinks (or were told to think by the tates of the world…) about porn. “Special Interest Groups” largely speareheaded by right wing fascists built up a narrative that Pornhub was nothing but revenge porn (not wrong) and child porn (still way less than facebook or twitter. And I am talking 2022 twitter, not mechahitler twitter) which led to credit card companies immediately cutting it off and the company wiping almost its entire video library almost literally overnight.

  And while I do think that was a net good, it is worth remembering where it came from and the implications of christofacists pressuring Visa et al to boycott a company for you.

  So this is mostly Valve saying “We aren’t going to fight this fight and it is on you”. Which… considering how the usual response to a journalist fighting for the truth is “UGH! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU LINK TO PAYWALLED CONTENT!!!”… I don’t blame Gabe The Knife Collecting Libertarian at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Youtuber PewDiePie is going all in on deGoogling and the Steam Deck is one of the surprising tools that's helping him to 'escape'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just to be clear: if someone has actively shown growth then I am all for them moving past shit (obviously the amount of growth required depends on the level of shitty before but). James Gunn being kind of the poster child for that where he was an edgelord dipshit when he was younger. But every time that comes up, almost everyone around him makes it clear that he has grown significantly and he owns up to it every time.

  Like… look at idubbz. I, and many others, aren’t sure if we can ever actually “forgive” him considering how much abuse we received because of people directly quoting his hate. But he also (at least briefly. Not sure what he has done since) made it a big point of actually APOLOGIZING. And… getting a lot of shit and hatred from other youtubers who refuse to apologize for their shittiness for whatever reason (shoutout to moistcritical for breaking his apolitical stance to aggressively insist Ian didn’t need to apologize for slurs and bigotry…).

  Contrast that with “he said the N word a lot a few years back but hasn’t done it recently” with no indication beyond that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Youtuber PewDiePie is going all in on deGoogling and the Steam Deck is one of the surprising tools that's helping him to 'escape'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yup. We see this with StopKillingGames too where it is “Well. So what if asmongold literally advocated for genocide and ethnic cleansing? He is on our side and that is what is most important!”.

  pewdiepie I think mostly fell off the past few years so no idea if he has shown any sign of growth. But it is still a GREAT message to say “Racism is less important than my OS of choice”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Net.Attack() is a very unique take on survivor-like roguelikes with programming your abilities⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Played a bit of this the last time… GOL posted almost that exact same article?

  The interface and concept is cool but it feels less like programming and more like assembling lego blocks (the visual coding interface is also basically what the mindstorms had). Mostly because you have no real control over what functions/constructs you use outside of what you get as drops or what rolls in the store. So it is less “I am gonna do something clever to optimize my loop and do more damage” and instead just chaining a bunch of commands together and giggling when you get a for(3) drop.

  And the survivors/bullet heaven aspect is also kind of lacking. Full disclosure, I only did the first character/encounter. But there were no boss enemies I could see and I basically only had 2.5 attacks (laser/ping and a shockwave or nuke). So it felt ridiculously samey even over the course of a single [looks like they delisted the demo so I can’t see my play time. Maybe 10 minutes?] run.

  I dunno. The concept is REALLY cool to me and a zachtronics bullet heaven sounds AMAZING. But this ain’t it. Would probably be better if we instead had only certain instructions as drops and the rest (branches, jumps, loops… which are just the previous two, etc) instead controlled by complexity metrics (total instructions, memory, computational intensity, etc).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yakuza studio's historical action brawler is revealed as Stranger Than Heaven⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  REALLY excited since it looks like it will be continuing the “detective” aspects of Judgment.

  Also REALLY REALLY concerned because, as expected, this is going to be Taichi Century across different decades in Japan… and they aren’t skipping the 1940s. INCREDIBLY good potential for the kind of social commentary RGG is amazing at but also… INCREDIBLY bad potential for the really fucked up propaganda that Ishin reminded us all of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mr. Deepfakes, Largest deepfake porn site shuts down forever due to critical service provider terminating their service permanently.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The 404 Media article is much better (than a screenshot…) www.404media.co/mr-deepfakes-the-biggest-deepfake…

  it was a tube site with UGC. So more likely they lost user/account data (hopefully to sources that will leak that shit) and don’t want to try to start from zero in the modern hellscape where there is no reason to use them over any other non-consensual porn site.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WW2 shooter Squad 44 from Offworld updates Easy Anti-Cheat enabling Linux support⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ER2 is also MUCH less oriented towards the sweaties.

  The Expanded Squad Universe games are just a deranged phenomenon. No actual progression outside of a match but it is basically always half people roleplaying (generally in the most racist way imaginable) and half the most insanely sweaty people on the planet. Like… pro FGC players care less about the moment to moment than those Squad players.

  But yeah. Easy Red 2 is REAL good. And it looks like the new DLC dropped today.