I’m sure they will over time, but I would guess there’s a surprising number of potential issues with any font variance. That’s the kind of thing that can appear hardware-dependently, like certain high/low-res monitors showing fonts too big, too small, or even not at all. So any bug fixes that have come through on the subject will rely on user bug reports.

If it was as simple as the font swapping feature seen in Word, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Some of the Resident Evil games felt more natural on controller than mouse for me. Even though you’re aiming and shooting, the laser sight feels more intuitive on a thumbstick. Specifically thinking of 4 and 5.

Some of the Resident Evil games felt more natural on controller than mouse for me. Even though you’re aiming and shooting, the laser sight feels more intuitive on a thumbstick. Specifically thinking of 4 and 5.

Umbrella evil. There, that’s pretty much your catch-up on every game’s story.

I guess it gets confusing with recent remakes of 2, 3, 4; they’re meant as clear entry points, and the latest version of RE1 is still a bit old (though it too is a “remake” of an ancient PS1 edition)

7 is extremely different from the others - it was even thought to be a new/different IP when it was revealed. Village is a direct sequel to that, but could also be enjoyed alone; it’s a bit more action and less creepy.

Wonder if H4 will really continue off WOA’s ending; or if it’ll be some weird reboot.

I might even be interested in some form of main character switching for Hitman if they can invent someone that has most of 47’s capability with some interesting nuance. (No, the spoiler is not that 47 dies)

Take a look at Half-Life 2’s old Face Poser software. I feel like you don’t see that sort of action-level control much anymore.

Indie studios are evading the need for lipsync entirely, by making simple models, giving people masks, putting them on radio overlays, etc. AAA studios are overengineering it, putting a $4,000,000 actor in a motion capture suit for each of their cutscenes to capture every fine detail as they stare in wonder at the white ping-pong ball in the studio with the sign written; “LOOK HERE”.

Face Poser was a good median; it’s where the director gets control, but you don’t need a vast technical setup beyond animations, some vowel extraction, and some basic know-how. It means that if the director wants to add a criticism “No, character B should give a dubious, unsure look when character A says that”, it’s something they can apply directly rather than ask the animators to do by hand.

For some reference, old machinima like Clear Skies, or my own “AS” made use of Face Poser.

Don’t forget, “Turns out it was a losing bet to back DEI and Trans people”.

This is something scared, pathetic, loser, feral, spineless, sociopathic, moronic fascists come up with to try to win a crowd larger than an elevator; Assume the outcome as a foregone conclusion and try to talk around it, or claim it’s already happened.

Respond directly. “What? That’s ridiculous. I’ve never even seen ANY AI that I liked. Who told you it was going to pervade everything?”

I think the studies showing how certain minds can be targeted and manipulated by dark gambling patterns made me think differently about gambling. I’m less likely to blame the victims now - in many ways it can be difficult or near-impossible for them to control those impulses. I’d at least like lootbox gambling slop to be regulated the same as casinos.

Look how popular fantasy sports is now. It’s basically just the casino industry seeking out new avenues to cheat the definition of “Playing odds to win cash”.

Ooh, sorry, politics not allowed. /s

Sarcasm, but it’s sad that kind of hate gets wrapped into the definitions of “political opinions” these days.

I’d love it if a group could collude on a standard for music signals.

Imagine this: You have a music player following this signal standard.

Game starts, it signals GAME_STARTED, and the media player signals STOP_GAME_MUSIC, so the game itself plays no BGM, leaving it to the music player. But, then the game can also signal later on: THEME_MENUS, THEME_EXPLORE, THEME_COMBAT, THEME_BOSS; and the media player can respond to that by cross fading between playlists built for each.

Watch Dogs 2 had an “invasion” system like Dark Souls, but it also allowed pausing in the world anytime you weren’t being invaded. It’s been a nice thing to point to anytime Souls fans make that excuse.

I could still see it as an admission of imperfection.

Arc Raiders includes an “unstuck” feature. They’re aware their physics system isn’t infallibly perfect, and getting stuck permanently could lead to loss of hard-earned gear. So, if a player is in one spot for more than a minute, they offer an option to teleport you to a safe place a few feet away.

I feel like I get where he’s coming from, but I can see the revulsion.

I picture someone asking their AI to write a rules engine for a gamemode and getting masses of duplicative, horrific code; but in my own work, my company has encouraged an assistive tool, and once it has an idea of what I’m trying to do, it will offer autocomplete options that are pretty spot on.

Still, I very much agree it’s hard to sort the difference and in untrained hands can definitely lead to unmaintainable code slop. Everything needs to get reviewed by knowledgeable human eyes before running.

I’ve never even installed the Epic Lawnchair. I just use Heroic, which works very well.

1. Developers should spend effort vouching for a launch without startup logos. Even if supporting libraries/publishers are credited some other way, startup movies take up a lot of time when gamers launch the game many times.
2. Trails in the Sky has a feature where you can choose to launch the game directly into your most recent save game rather than ending up at the menus. This would be a boon for many singleplayer games, especially those with densely animated menus.

Yeah…a long time ago I learned lessons about patience, delayed satisfaction, and ended up building a large roster in that game without giving them a dime. I could afford their packs, but it seems like a bad price ratio especially when acknowledging the low chances.

On the gacha front, I play Zenless Zone Zero. Parry mechanics are nothing new, but I love both the way they have you parry by swapping in an agent to take the blow, and the very detailed effects and animations they have for each attack.

It’s still a gacha, and I remind myself to stop playing anytime it bores me; but it manages to hold my attention decently.

Here’s aiming to be hopeful…

I remember back when playing DRM video in a web browser on an open source operating system seemed like a worrying impossibility. Many sites stayed stuck on closed-source flash players for that reason alone. It was a while before we ended up with this solution I only partly understand - where the DRM decoding is handled through some kind of trusted block, that generally doesn’t have full OS control?

I feel like a lot of these pointer devices miss the simplicity of a remote. A simple one will have a tough time entering passwords, but it’s perfect and simple for the most common actions: Turn on without walking across the room, open the most recent application, play the next episode of the series I was watching last, usually just by mashing confirm. (Nothing to tell it to go fullscreen: Because that’s an obvious assumption for everything)

Running it all on a PC just adds more steps, unless you follow a LOT of guides to configure it to get through those things easily.

I’d really like it if web standards were better at allowing a video website to be navigated with an “Up/Down/Left/Right/Confirm/Back” device, so that you didn’t need apps for everything. That would be good for consumer devices like Apple TVs as well as people running home PC setups.

Trails in the Sky has some interesting logic behind this where the gameplay serves the story.

You’ll do some quests for people who actually end up being evil later in the plot. There’s also party members who temporarily join you while they have time off from their other job - then as the story progresses, their “lunch break is over” and they go back to their life. So, if you try to save content for later, it won’t be there anymore.

Those little things end up putting more focus on what is accessible at a given moment, so a level 60 player isn’t going back to the starting area to wrap up quests he doesn’t care about for completion.

I had a PC connected to my tv for a while, main issue was I didn’t want to use a mouse or keyboard to interact with it. I tried desperately to get more ways of starting via controller or other lite interface devices, but nothing convenient. It was an old machine, so eventually I gave it away.

“Look at this! You can run GeForce Now on anything!

Also this thing we sell is a thing”

Whut, yeden can’ fek givin’ the ritesiden? Com off yen

I don’t know if it’s “favorite”, but an old classic was Aquaria. It had a surprising amount of content, even to the point of several secret bosses, and an absolutely excellent soundtrack. Sadly, the main guy behind it is dead now. Ori was also fantastic.

So I’m nowhere near a billionaire and it’s perhaps worthless to compare - but once many orgs know you are a “source of charitable donations” they spend a LOT of spam your way - and chances are good that at least half of the charities are scams that barely help anyone. So there’s likely also an unwelcome degree of effort and anxiety in ensuring charity money is used well. Hence why Bill Gates started his own.

This argument would seem to make sense, but from what I gather Bezos and Zuckerberg have lots of control of their respective companies, and can push around the board - yet they do what they do.

Well, hold on, while that industry is indeed scummy, Valve doesn’t ever see a cut of it, do they?

Valve allows developers to print their own Steam keys, and takes a 0% cut of them. Game devs use that opportunity to sell the keys to legitimate key sites, which take less of a cut than Steam does, but offer no refund guarantees or other support. Then, credit card thieves buy those keys using stolen cards, and resell them on illegitimate key sites.

So in summary, as long as Valve doesn’t take a cut on that key generation, they don’t directly profit. They just keep allowing key generation to allow game devs a bit more freedom in sale.

Hm. I’ve got an Nvidia card on Cachyos, and it’s all been fine so far.

I had an issue where an upgrade broke my drivers, but that turned out to be my fault from poor understanding.

The only handheld console that has achieved anywhere near that level of back compatibility has been the Steam Deck, and it had to release with hundreds of listed caveats about slowly adding compatibility, and many higher-fidelity games being unplayably slow. Even the PS Vita needed a lot of porting work to run PS2 games.

I seriously doubt the claims coming in.

While I think you’re ultimately right, 6 years ago I would have said the same thing about the Steam Deck idea, so I’m compelled to offer counterpoints.

Valve, very uniquely, does offer the best Linux-based digital games storefront to use on that Linux gaming PC you bought. So, they’re very much positioned to take advantage of the hardware purchase. Users aren’t “locked in”, but they are compelled in, and users may have a smoother time getting games on Steam than trying to set up controller-based launchers on Heroic or something.

It’s like when the pet isn’t literally fenced into the house, and is allowed to roam free, but is reminded that its fluffy toy and warm meals are all back at home, so it’ll never go far.

Valve also might just be more forward-thinking than most game companies most COMPANIES these days. They build goodwill this way and get people obsessed with their brand by having more wins like this.

It might be simple attachment if a character is using skeletal animation, eg Intrusion 2. That art style isn’t used often because the direct limb tweeting is often overly visible. Often, most character frames are hand drawn or at least prerendered.

In these hand drawn styles, a character’s head could appear to enter Z depth as part of the drawing (imagine a 6 frame animation of a character spinning a sword like a top). When that happens WHILE they’re also wearing an attached hat, the hat must rotate and adjust for the depth as well - which means new drawings, even if you’re able to specify the positions of the character’s head during each frame of the animation.

We could be talking past each other with bad descriptions that need visuals, though.

Yes! For instance, say you’re making a character action game about big flashy jumping attacks. It took a long time to make the attack animations and now you need to provide the player with unlockables to encourage exploring, or some DLC.

If you have a 2D game, you’d need to do a LOT to integrate any new cosmetics, or characters, into your existing protagonist. But in 3D, if your character finds a hat, it’s very simple to just attach it to the model. Even swapping to a new playable character, you can retarget animations as long as proportions are similar.

A few adult games made me realize I like the base concept of the game if it finds a way to feel rewarding and doesn’t ratchet up in difficulty (eg, mechanics that cover half the screen in stones)

Still haven’t really located a game that applies the match 3 formula in a way that makes me want to keep playing. EA’s touch is definitely one of those souring aspects.

I’ll first admit I predicted Valve wasn’t bothering with a Steam Machine again. I was proven wrong.

But I still absolutely don’t see it being more popular than the Steam Deck. They don’t have the production scale to make them at the Xbox / PlayStation hardware-per-dollar values, so they’ll still be an enthusiast item for people aware they’re buying a prebuilt PC.

So yes, you do already see this; indies target the Steam Deck as a supreme metric for Linux compatibility (and if someone complains HDR doesn’t work on his desktop Mint install, well, whatever). Valve even promotes some store presence to indies that do a bit of work to certify this. We’ve seen lots of games get patches mentioning Steam Deck related fixes - even when the game is a windows build using Proton.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/15520/AaAaAA__A_Reckless_Disregard_for_Gravity/

On a pedestrian level, I’ve really liked the slow move from “SNES aesthetic” to “PS1/PS2 aesthetic”. My first console was an N64, so I guess I never had much nostalgia for the 8-bit days, and I feel like 3D gives a lot of opportunities for intelligent asset reuse to give a game lots of content.

I understand Valve being libertarian about not moderating people excessively, what I’d like to see are better tools like shared blocklists or general moderation for any developer that doesn’t wish to control their own Community page.

I suppose it’s not the first time Valve has counted to 3; in terms of releasing 3 projects. They released the Orange Box which had 3 games in it. But they never put out a 3rd iteration of things.

So expect this to be the last Steam Controller and Steam Machine, if we count the old 3p hardware Linux boxes and Index headset they helped with.

Elden Ring: Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows: The New Frontier: Last Rites: A New Beginning: The Pursuit of More Money

I’m still a little curious how that will work for games. Are they going to somehow emulate Win32 amd64 games? Do devs have to recompile them in some new way? Will engines support it beyond Unity and Unreal?