Dialing in to a local BBS to play 4-player deathmatch DooM 2, circa 1995.

The first one wasn’t even good.

I agree, but you can get standalone silicon port covers pretty cheaply, with the bonus that you can use them in other devices too.

My last three phone cases have been Spigen. Won’t be considering changing any time soon.

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I stumbled across this today. Is it still being updated? Github suggests it’s still active but the latest release in IzzyOnDroid seems to be from 2022.

Heliboard. Unfortunately it requires a bit too much setup to recommend to anyone who isn’t tech savvy.

It’s the fourth game in the X series. Originally named after the player’s ship in the first game, the X-Shuttle. X being short for experimental.

Regarding “Foundations”, from the Release Q&A

Why is the game called X4: Foundations?
Owen: I think some people get confused because of the two different uses of the word foundations. I think some people maybe think foundation like a corporation or a charity, while we’re more thinking of the building foundation. Something we build off and what the races in the universe are building off. They’re still recovering from all the gates shut down and they’re finally getting on their feet.
Bernd: It’s funny, how we choose names. It was not not long before the presentation actually that we had a long list of possible names and some people like some, but there was no name that everybody liked. Once that we found this name, everybody seemed to like it. Partially for different reasons. But what I like about the names for X-games is always that they leave some things to interpretation just like the X itself. If the game stands for anything, then it stands for the freedom and that the game can be different things for different people.

Not sure it strictly counts as Grand Strategy as it’s more of a sandbox, but X4 might be up your alley on the sci-fi front. Build a galaxy spanning empire from a single ship; complete missions, mine, trade, explore. You -can- fly the ships, but you don’t have to. You can just sit in a station issuing orders.

If you’re into boomer shooters, you can’t go past the original doom for infinite playability. Literally 30 years worth of user created content and mods.

Short answer: yes.

Shattered Pixel dungeon is based on pixel dungeon, adds a bunch of new stuff and is reasonably actively developed.

I switched from Nova to Kvaesitso when I found out they were owned by a spyware corp. It takes a little getting used to as it does most things differently, but it’s actually good once you get past that.

Article is inaccurate. NewsCorp isn’t journalism.

Fuck. I’ve been using it for years. Thanks for the heads up, I guess.

Love your work, this is fucking great! I’ve been looking for a decent replacement for Swiftkey for a while now. Anysoftkeyboard is fine, but the emoji and swipe support is less than stellar. Once installed and configured this works great. Solid, clean, simple, intuitive.

I have a few less tech-savvy friends also looking to ditch Swiftkey. I’d love to recommend this but they’re going to need a drop in replacement; the lack of swipe and emoji prediction out-of-the-box is going to be a deal breaker. Please keep working on this project, it’s genuinely awesome! Looking forward to the next update.

So here is the jailbreak thread for the paperwhite, and here is the master list for other models.

There used to be Duokan, which was an OS-replacement. I can’t for the life of me find an install image. If you do, let me know. I’d like to try it out.

And in my searching just now I’ve also come across fread-ink (project on hold since 2020), inkbox (mostly for Kobo devices, but some kindle support) and an old hackaday article about HOPE XII which I can’t find any further information on.

Best of luck freeing your Kindle!

I have jailbroken a couple of old e-ink kindles, and as far as I know, custom ROMs just straight don’t exist any more. There have been a couple of attempts, some successful, but the device is so old they’ve pretty much fallen off the internet. The base OS is Linux, around a 2.6 kernel, and I’m fairly sure everything apart from the bootloader is just on relatively unprotected flash memory. Aside from the reader software it’s a pretty standard Linux. To the point where one of mine actually runs an old Debian chroot.

I’m not near my PC now, but I’ll link the jailbreak forums when I can. You’ll need a fair bit of technical knowledge and judicious use of archive.org, the link rot is a very real problem.

I’m in a similar situation with my partner; she does game, but only shitty repetitive predatory mobile puzzle games. I got her Stardew to try and she absolutely hated it. I have, however, had some limited success with puzzle RPGs like Ticket to Earth.

That’s one of the things that’s not explained, related to the DLC launch. There are a few different versions of the game. The console version is considered legacy and is functionally “disconnected” from the live version. It no longer receives updates outside of the occasional security or stability patch. Only PC is receiving new content. If you can get it for free it’s a good way to test out the general gameplay, but most of the community is on PC these days.

It’s the only MMO I still play regularly after three years. That said, I hesitate to outright recommend it. It’s fairly niche, and kinda still recovering from a disastrous DLC launch a couple years ago. It’s in a pretty good place now but confidence in the playerbase is still a little shaken. Mechanics-wise there’s a lot built up over the years that just aren’t explained at all in-game, so the learning curve is more of a sheer cliff face. OTOH, the community is honestly one of the most supportive I’ve ever experienced; even the griefers will chat with you after blowing you up and explain how to avoid it next time. And having the entire physically modelled milky way to explore is honestly an amazing experience. I’d suggest checking out a few streams to suss out if it’s for you, streamers are generally lovely and happy to chat with and help out new and prospective players.

Elite Dangerous. It’s so freeing to just hurl yourself out into the middle of nowhere and not come back.

The finish on my current one is pretty shot, but it’s near three years old now and I haven’t been kind to it. Structurally it’s completely fine.

Another vote for Spigen. I’ve had their cases on my last couple of phones, they hold up incredibly well.

I got it in .au

That was fast.

This is one of those utterly brilliant games that I absolutely hate playing. They had a goal, and achieved it with flying colours. It’s just too bad that goal was to create a thoroughly unpleasant, tense, frightening, harrowing experience. I had to put it down and never, ever come back to it.

The shit they will do to avoid paying actors.

Well what did you expect from an advertising company with a side hustle in web search.

Maybe with a jailbreak

No, I said I haven’t enjoyed one since 3. I tried NV because I really wanted more FO3, and I’ve seen enough videos to get why people like it, but I just didn’t. The crafting system and changes to combat mechanics felt too complicated at the time. Like, I had to go gather three different materials to build the ammo just to break one guy’s tank. I didn’t have any issue with the plot or writing, it just felt like busywork. Likewise with FO4, it’s a mile wide but an inch deep. There’s a ton of stuff to do, but very little reason to care about it. Like, yeah, some asshole stole my kid but I’m just gonna go spend however many hours building out this gas station. FO3 just felt like the perfect balance between grindy RPG mechanics and plot driven missions.

I have the same issue with a lot of modern RPGs. Like in Cyberpunk 2077 there’s all this narrative pressure because you’re dying and it seems like that should be an urgent problem to solve, but the only way to get the “best” ending is to spend as much time as possible doing unrelated sidequests and levelling up. FO3 just felt like there was always a reason you were doing what you were doing.

Yeah, I think you got it. The humour in Fallout is subtle, it’s satire. OW borders on farce.

I really wanted to like this one. On paper it sounds like exactly my jam, but it just didn’t grab me. The whole game felt tedious. Mediocre combat, very little weapon variety (just different tiers of the same kind of gun). Finicky and overcomplicated skill system that still somehow didn’t feel like it made any impact on core gameplay, and I found the humour kind of simultaneously weak and overdone. The satire is heavy-handed, and the wackiness falls flat. I haven’t enjoyed a fallout game since 3 either though, so maybe my taste has changed without me realising.

I don’t mind them as a concept. I’m just jealous I’m not young enough to have the spare time and reflexes to get in on one at the ground floor and git good, follow the meta, keep up with the lore and memes…

Story wise it’s self contained. You might be on slightly better footing with the building mechanics if you’ve played another, but it’s different enough that it’s not required.

First off you’re gonna want to grab yourself a source port like GZDoom so you can run it on a modern PC with all the extra bells and whistles. Go grab the original DooM and DooM 2 off Steam for $10 each if you somehow don’t already have them. A lot of stuff still needs access to the original .wad files.

Then check out Doomworld, the Zdoom forums and modDB for a literal ton of extra content. I suggest checking out Brutal Doom, Rekkr, Ashes, Sonic Robo Blast and Hedon for examples of what the modernised engine can do.

Fair warning though; because the mod scene is so active, you may have to sift through a lot of cruft to find something that appeals.

DooM (1993), but mostly because of the community. Constant new levels, mods, engine updates, total conversions. Even commercial games released on the engine. It just never stops.

Cool, I wish I could.