NuXCOM_90Percent

@NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shock horror, Ark 2 has been delayed, with its story now apparently at the whims of Vin Diesel⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  It was apparently announced in 2020 so assume they put him on the short list in closer to 2018. So 7-ish years ago.

  And… Vin Diesel of 2018 (even 2022) was a REALLY good pick. Nerds like him because of Riddick. Normies like him because of Dom. And he is very much the kind of celebrity who will go WAY too hard on marketing for video games/“nerd shit”.

  Of course, in the interim we received MANY reminders that he is, at best, a perv and more likely a sex pest. And the Fast and the Furious series cratered harder than gal gadot getting yeeted off an airplane on the world’s longest runway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox dev clarifies there will be an AI 'kill switch'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps Mozilla doesn’t quite fit into this category,

  Then don’t fucking compare it to rape

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox dev clarifies there will be an AI 'kill switch'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  …

  MAYBE don’t trivialize rape by comparing a software you don’t like to… rape.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Total War: THREE KINGDOMS gets a GOG release along with various DLC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  3K is a delightful hot mess.

  For those unaware: It was theoretically a historical Total War (e.g. Medieval and Shogun) set in the Chinese Warring States period. But, as the title suggests, it is very heavily influenced by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms version of that period where most of those historical generals are borderline demigods to begin with. AND it is very much “The book based on the movie based on the book” where their version of ROTK is very heavily influenced by Dynasty Warriors.

  So the end result is a historical TW that is VERY clearly a mod for Total Warhammer. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, but basically nobody was actually happy since it wasn’t Dynasty Warriors enough for the Total Warhammer crowd and didn’t really care about the logistics and politics of The Warring States for sickos like me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t speak to xbox controllers, but I have a VM on my desktop for updating my 8bitdo controllers and de-drm’ing my kobo (formerly kindle) purchases.

  For the former, the qemu gui “redirect usb device” is sufficient.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Do we know what valve defines “release” as?

  This has come up a lot over the years but between “early access” games that launch in borderline beta form and live games that never leave it (and if you see a similarity between those: congrats, you now understand how important marketing is)… what is the actual difference between a fully new release and a game that just got a major update with 10 hours of story content?

  This semi-famously came up back pre-pandemic when Alex Navarro made a fairly impassioned soapbox about Fire Pro World and how if they didn’t discuss it for Giant Bomb’s GOTY the year it entered EA then they never would… and then was immediately shut down. Although Jeff Gerstmann has often talked about how GOTY discussions are really just shopper’s guides and he has always approached them from that perspective.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Larian want to release Divinity in "three to four years", and they're making limited use of generative AI⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Concept/placeholder art always sneaks through. It is just the reality of development. You can’t hold off on all level design until all assets are finalized and you can’t restart from scratch every time an asset is updated. Sometimes it is generative ai bullshit. Sometimes it is a picture of someone’s cat. There are plenty of examples of this throughout the decades.

  Like all things, it is about quality control and how much studios (are allowed to) care.

  I don’t blame people for being freaked out. Even acknowledging this is a yellow flag. But it also is actually a really good use case for generative AI since it will allow everyone to more or less work in parallel. I… don’t like the placeholder text aspect but there is also a lot to be said about UI/UX using actual “speaking cadence” text rather than just lorem ipsum.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GOG formally announce their GOG Patrons subscription donation system⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  GOL is a useful news aggregator but a REALLY shitty blog site. I subscribe to the RSS feed but basically never click through an article since the only useful information comes from the headline in almost all cases. So “oh, that sounds cool, let me search for a better source”

  It is just that the mods of this board love to post every single GOL blog post for Engagement purposes, I guess.

  ---

  But yeah. I like CD Projekt and GoG. But they have a long history of downright performative activism. They’ll do or say whatever will increase sales in a given month but rarely follow through. Even their raison d’etre of “sell old games” has faded. But, because they still talk a big game, nobody cares that they have just as much “gooner bait” as Steam (AND in a format that doesn’t broadcast to all your friends that you are jacking it. Just saying…).

  I will definitely buy old games “new” at GoG. Which leads to a lot of hilarious moments where I remember something existed (Warhammer Mark of Chaos), go to see if it is there, and realize I bought it three years ago.

  The “tip jar” and now “donation” subscription just… feel REALLY REALLY bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Our industry has been strip-mined’: video game workers protest at The Game Awards⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But guys. This game was made with ONLY 30 people. And keighley is one of us. He let Ms Piggy neg him!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Total War: Warhammer 40,000 wants to be "the seminal Warhammer 40K game," says its devs, who sell me in just 8 words: "You can customize the fingers on Space Marines!" plus Gamestar article⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A huge chunk of Space Marine 2’s story is about how Titus basically got screwed over by the Imperium for the sin of… treating Guard like human beings and fighting back against Chaos. A big arc is even that his squadmates (other Spesh Mahrines) don’t entirely trust him but learn to do so. And while I haven’t gotten around to it yet, I would be shocked if Owlcat didn’t take some pot shots at the zealots in Rogue Trader.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Total War: Warhammer 40,000 wants to be "the seminal Warhammer 40K game," says its devs, who sell me in just 8 words: "You can customize the fingers on Space Marines!" plus Gamestar article⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  All fandoms have the people who REALLY don’t get the message. Chief amongst them is basically any time chuds listen to Rage Against The Machine. Others are the people who key in that Vegeta is awesome but don’t understand why so much of that is centered around the Buu saga and him rejecting who he used to be.

  As for 40k? Yeah. I do have a problem with the people who very unironically worship the imperium.

  But it is also worth remembering how many of the beloved (imperium) stories are about actively defying that. Eisenhorn and Ravenor are both poster children for radicals who regularly fall afoul of the more puritan of their orders. Gaunt is regularly set up to die by other Imperial Guard. Hell, we somehow got a sequel to frigging Space Marine (game) and both of those are very much about the fundamental flaw in how the imperium fights Chaos.

  Hell, the Ciaphas Cain series is literally space Blackadder with so many plots basically being about Ciaphas actively trying to prevent the imperium from killing both him and itself (to the point Inquisitors cover for him… and only one of them is after his Cain).

  And of the lesser known books and games? So many of them are fundamentally tragedies that highlight the futility of war with PLENTY of characters dying for the stupidest of reasons.

  Is 40k anti-fascist? At one point, maybe. But it very much hasn’t been for the past 30 or so years and there are a LOT of stories about GW actively interfering when a writer gets too close to the actual point.

  But it is also important to remember the power that these long running cultural touchstones have. Star Wars has very much flirted with politics for its entire almost 50 year run. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. But, as a result, Andor was immensely powerful for having 40 years worth of build-up to an episode that centered around a speech in which a politician condemned fascism and genocide. And… a lot of people were kinda forced to listen to that “against their will” because they like the laser swords.

  Do I at all think Total Warhammer 40k is going to be that? No. But it will continue to do what 40k has done for decades: Chuds will cheer because chuddiness. And the rest of the fanbase will increasingly realize “so… the super fascist armies are bad?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union, with 165 workers at Doom studio the latest to vote in favour⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because suddenly this erases the fact that the parent company, who gets all the money for that game (devs do not get royalties and any sales based bonus windows are long past) are still constantly glazing israel and the idf?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Larian reveal a new Divinity RPG that boasts "greater breadth & depth than ever before"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As much as I love D:OS (and acknowledge almost the entire studio is geared for that)… I REALLY want this to be another ARPG (DD) or weird 00s pseudo-Gothic (D2). I would even settle for a mediocre RTS/dating game (D:DC).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework greatly expand their open source event and Linux distribution sponsorships⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And still 600 euros a month to hateful anti-trans bigots. And probably some more that I am not immediately aware of because if an org is openly donating to hate groups… it makes you wonder what skeletons the other groups they donate to have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m explicitly not going to link to it as I can’t personally vet how safe it is or its origins but:

  No. Check the various issues related to the subject matter. And hobbyist threads on sites like resetera.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. If you just want HDR, Cable Matters is the way to go.

  If you buy one and flash it with a sketchy firmware, you can get VRR. But my understanding is the HDR is a smaller range. How much that matters when the vast majority of games aren’t taking advantage of HDR is up to you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the sense that we have dongles/docks, sure. In the sense of monitors with native USB-c input? These are still fairly rare as the accepted pattern is that your dock has an HDMI/DP port and you connect via that (which actually is a very good pattern for laptops).

  As for TVs? I am not seeing ANYTHING with usb c in for display. In large part because the vast majority of devices are going to rely on HDMI. As I said above.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not that easy.

  To get HDMI 2.1 support for the Gabe Cube itself essentially requires kernel level patches. Which on a “normal” Linux device is possible (but ill advised) but on these atomic distros where even something like syncthing involves shenanigans to keep active week to week? Ain’t happening. Because HDMI is not just mapping data to pins and using the right codecs. There are a LOT of handshakes involved along the way (which is also the basis for HDCP which essentially all commercial streaming services utilize to some degree).

  There ARE methods (that I have personally used) to take a DP->HDMI dongle and flash a super sketchy Chinese (the best source for sketchy tech) firmware to effectively cheat the handshakes. It isn’t true HDMI 2.1 but it provides VRR and “good enough for 2025” HDR at 4k/120Hz. But… I would wager money that is violating at least one law or another.

  So expect a lot of those “This ini change fixes all of Windows 11. Just give money to my patreon for it” level fixes. And… idiots will believe it since you can use a dongle to already get like HDMI 2.05 or whatever with no extra effort. And there will likely be a LOT of super sketchy dongles on AliExpress that come pre-flashed that get people up to 2.09 (which is genuinely good enough for most people). But it is gonna be a cluster.

  And that is why all of us with AMD NUCs already knew what a clusterfuck this was going to be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ballparking but it will likely take closer to a decade than not for that to actually happen… and I am still not optimistic. And there are actually plenty of reasons to NOT want any kind of bi-directional data transfer between your device and the TV that gets updated to push more and more ads to you every single week.

  The reason HDMI is so successful is that the plug itself has not (meaningfully?) changed in closer to 20 years than not. You want to dig out that PS3 and play some Armored Core 4 on the brand new 8k TV you just bought? You can. With no need for extra converters (and that TV will gladly upscale and motion smooth everything…).

  Which has added benefits because “enthusiasts” tend to have an AV receiver in between.

  The only way USB C becomes a primary for televisions (since display port and usb c are arguably already the joint primary for computer monitors) is if EVERY other device migrates. Otherwise? Your new TV doesn’t work with the PS5 that Jimmy is still using to watch NFL every week.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One of PC gaming's key RAM manufacturers aren't selling to regular humans anymore, so they can peddle more kit to AI companies⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Welcome to federated social media?

  In a centralized model, you see each major version of a story once. Under a federated model? You see all of that once per copy of a message board per instance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Four Total War classics join GOG in their Preservation Program with more on the way⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  … Fuck

  Damn you GoG and Sega!!! ALL of those are fucking amazing and unique in their own ways. Well, I would probably be fine without Medieval 1 if I have 2. But also… 15 bucks for the whole lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There's now an AI warning notice browser plugin for itch.io as well as Steam⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So it looks like the underlying plugin basically just checks if there is a disclosure on the steam store page.

  So… it isn’t useless. But the vast majority of things people are buying on itch aren’t on Steam and would still be the wild west. And I am always wary of any of these plugins because you never know where it will go. Could EASILY become “This is woke so it must be AI so let’s prevent people from buying it”. And… there is also always the concern over what data you are giving the extension access to and how much you trust the extension writers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Helldivers 2 install size reduction effort yields 131GB in cuts, and you can try the slim build right now⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And it is not at all uncommon.

  There is a reason that, back in the day, there were a LOT of ways to compress game installs so that you could burn it to a CD-R and so forth. And this was incredibly prevalent on consoles up until the current generation when SSDs became default… except that a lot of games were still being developed for previous gen and older hardware PCs.

  When Blizzard made a big deal about how WoW now requires an SSD? It was for stuff like this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Helldivers 2 install size reduction effort yields 131GB in cuts, and you can try the slim build right now⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  From reading the article (gasp!):

  It looks like a large chunk of it was that they were optimizing their release for spinning disk hard drives (HDDs). With HDDs and optical media, there is a substantial impact on performance when you are fetching data that is physically close to the last data you looked at. So a common technique was to actually duplicate commonly used data.

  As an example: You fight Tyranids on sandy and snowy planets. The assets for each of those planets are in different parts of the disc/install. But you’ll need those same bugs in each planet so… you also install the Tyranid assets alongside each planet’s assets for fast fetching.

  This is ALSO why disk defragmentation used to be so important.

  But if you are assuming that everyone has an SSD (or better), those access times are nowhere near as crippling and it is a lot easier to just install the assets once.

• Linus Tech Tips Embraces Kiwi Farms
  Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.zip⁩ | ⁨4⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CD Projekt plan to release The Witcher 4, 5, & 6 within six years of one another, and oh, are those pigs flying?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Witcher 1 was 2007, 2 2011, and 3 was 2015. 9 years and some MASSIVE engine changes in between. TW1 was essentially a Neverwinter Nights mod. 2 and especially 3 made MASSIVE changes and, as of CP2077, they are an Unreal Engine house. CP2077 being 2020.

  I think it is very optimistic. I also think it is feasible if they are stabilizing on an engine and have an arc planned out. I would… expect closer to 8 or 9 years but it is plausible.

  And yeah… I could easily see it as 6 years of just trying to fix the bugs in 4.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stalker GAMMA Review | Fent Edition™ - SsethTzeentach⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So is Sseth still an obnoxious edgelord with a lot of racist and transphobic memes? Or did they move on from that?

  Very similar taste in games and love what they cover but I just can’t with “I am totally a good guy, I just think these memes are funny” in 2025. Ymfah is REAL borderline but they mostly backed off (or keep it in the videos I haven’t watched because I plan to play that game at some point…).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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”.