- 0 Posts
- 131 Comments
The big benefit of linux servers for most businesses is that they tend to be configure-once systems, where you set it up, verify it works then no further maintenance is needed beyond applying updates in line with your update schedule and downtime windows. Sure there will every once in a while be something that changes but far less than you see with Windows Server where some registry values stopped working with a recent windows update without warning so now you have to track down new registry values to recreate the behavior. That and tracking down why Windows decided to ignore all of your settings and reboot this time (and how to stop it again)
Historically I’ve used lutris but more recently I’ve been observing more broken scripts than not. But Lutris is extremely handy for mapping to a pile of game data that I might grab from Itch for example. I also havent been gaming as much lately so maybe I’m just hitting some weird games and that’s all.
I’ve heard good things about Heroic Launcher which apparently is actually sponsored by GOG, but I’ve yet to try it on my Linux machine
The Pokescape rom hack is pretty cool. It’s a heavy modification of Pokemon Red but with music, maps, Pokemon and characters all based on RuneScape
Project Rene was literally the biggest news in the Sims space a couple of years ago, it’s not hard to find info about it.
But you know what is hard to find? Anything supporting the wild story you spun to dunk on people who are trying to be decent to their fellow human
That’s what I was trying to say is they have everything they need mechanics-wise built into these game development environments. The difference between AAA and indie is more on the scope of how much artwork, sound design, writing, voice acting, Foley work, etc. goes into the game
A solo independent developer can pretty easily recreate the mechanics of GTA V in Unreal for example, but they can’t realistically recreate a selectively compressed representation of the entire LA and San Bernardino counties plus a 14 hour (or however long it is) single player campaign
Roblox: finally a place where kids too can experience sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, pay disputes and make risky investments in an unregulated commodities market
At least when RuneScape did it it was entirely limited to within the game and didn’t yet have a first party currency conversion system
lead dev dude who wanted players to feel ‘protective’ over Laura (dude was a weirdo).
Oh yuck!
The good news is past the first game the death cutscenes are far less gratuitous, and honestly as long as you’ve got decent enough reactions you don’t see very many of them. The third game in particular puts a ton of effort into being respectful, including for example, actually having NPCs speak in local languages with English subtitles rather than a crowd in Mexico City all speaking English for example
The death cutscenes were absolutely gratitudous in the first entry, but honestly, if you can get past that the whole series is quite good and it’s really great storytelling and acting watching Laura arc from terrified recent college graduate put into unthinkable situations that she must find a way to survive all the way to cocky know-it-all who must literally nearly end the entire world and accidentally kill many countless innocent people to finally find hubris and actually start being a decent human being
By [email protected]’s description I know what scene they’re talking about. It’s not great but it’s not as bad as they make out. Basically she ends up traveling for a bit with this really smarmy dude. Think incel used car salesman. He’s described as having greasy hair, he’s clearly not trustworthy and acts only in his own best interest, and is constantly trying to get into Ciri’s pants. But, he’s riding this incredible horse the likes of which Ciri has never seen before (and it turns out to in fact be a magical horse) and Ciri is just entranced by this incredible and majestic horse, and smarmy dude can tell, so he makes sure to use the horse to get Ciri to interact with him even though they both know she wants nothing to do with him and only gives him the light of day to see his horse.
Anyways smarmy dude and Ciri end up running from some bandits, smarmy dude is injured but plays down how badly, and basically uses this plus gifting her the horse she’s so entranced by to manipulate and guilt her into agreeing to sleep with him (from her perspective it’s been made clear how curious but nervous she is about sex, so she’s not entirely opposed, but it’s also implied up to this point that she’s far more into women than men) and then just as she’s starting to potentially enjoy the pity sex with the asshole but before either of them can actually get their pants off, he fucking dies!
She does also extremely briefly travel to Edwardian or Victorian London (I forget exactly what year it was). It’s mostly depicted through a newspaper clipping from The Sun and a rebuttle from another newspaper calling out their quoted witness for trespassing and strongly implying he was inebriated at the time and being an unreliable source. It’s quite comically written really
can you fuck a horse? that was one of the more… questionable scenes in the book.
Uhhh which book is that? If it’s the section I’m thinking of with Kelpie the horse, she’s entranced by its beauty and it’s rider/owner tries to use that to get into her pants (and ultimately died before he was successful) but I don’t believe she ever expressed sexual attraction at all to it by my memory from reading the books a couple of months ago.
the party basically needs the woman to proceed. she does not want the child. i believe it was the product of rape. yet for some reason geralt and a literal fucking vampire convince her that abortion is wrong and she should keep it instead of drinking a potion about it
The party is trying to find Ciri after her disappearance. Geralt and Cahir are having visions indicating that she’s presently in great danger and suffering (and at that she was!). Finding out while practically at the front lines of the great war that their incredible archer, Milva is pregnant completely derails their entire journey because she can’t ride, shouldn’t travel, and will need to rest in a safe area for a while (which they are at this point constantly far from anywhere safe), plus they can’t exactly bring a baby onto the battlefield they’re actively crossing. It’s one moral quandry wrapped in another. Ultimately Geralt and Cahir leave it to Milva’s decision, as does Regis the barber-surgeon/vampire who created the abortion potion.
Also it wasn’t rape. While guiding a group of elves to safety, they hid in a thicket for a night with Nilfgaurdians surrounding them and searching for them. The elves decided that since they were likely to die a horrible death at any moment that they should take the time they have to find what enjoyment they can, and Milva decided to join in. It just so happened they did not die that night and now Milva is carring a halfling for whom she does not know the fathers name (for safety no names were shared with the elves she guided)
i think they generally said that ciri lost her elder blood powers after the king of the hunt was killed right? otherwise I’m gonna be really curious how handle that as well. she should be sort of the world’s greatest sorceress otherwise.
She gave up her magic after trying to use fire as a source of power out of desperation while navigating out of the “Frying Pan” desert. She wanted to save Little Horse the unicorn after an unfortunate battle with a monster she hadn’t yet learned of, but no other sources were available. My understanding is fire as a magical source is all consuming so it is forbidden to pull from for safety reasons, but that was largely left up to interpretation.
Upon pulling from fire, she saw the imense power that presented her, the ability to rule the entire world, but also how that would hurt those she cared so deeply about, so she instead gave up her sourceress’ powers.
If you want anything to complain about in the books it should be Milva’s winging about being an illiterate farm girl that honestly was out of character and just seemed written in so she wouldn’t outshine the others
Edit: Cahir’s attraction to Ciri is also creepy as hell the way it’s written, but that might be intentional, since that’s at a point where she’s coming to realize that everyone wants something from her, everyone will tell her why she should want to give them what they want from her but nobody ever seems to care or ask what she actually wants.
I feel like the repetitive combat is more a result of combat that actually encourages dodging and using signs rather than just standing still and slicing while the enemy either hits or not based on RNG, and the fact that in combat you truly are jumping around, dodging, parrying, etc. makes it more true to the source material.
The style of combat in The Witcher 3 also makes it so that if you do find yourself in a much higher level fight than you should be you can with enough tries manage to beat it. I had one playthrough where I took on the werewolf quest while too low level for it, didn’t preserve any saves before the no turning back point for the battle. In order to save my save file I had to keep trying and failing to defeat the werewolf until I finally got the hits and dodges just perfectly enough to defeat the werewolf. It sucked but ultimately it was possible to complete and not just by an attempt with golden RNG rolls results
Ending with Ciri following the Witcher path, is Canon now
It’s canon in the books too. She was trained at Ker Moren, then trained by Yennefer but ultimately she gives up her magic entirely after pulling from fire as a source out of desperation. She remains an extremely skilled swordswoman with partial mutation
Honestly TES6 has one thing going for it and that’s that Skyrim is over a decade old now so matching the scale and scope of Skyrim is much more achievable.
In my opinion when a sequel falls flat or is outshined by an earlier entry in the series, it’s usually because the studio messed with the formula for the gameplay, not because of a change in characters
Passing the torch off to Ciri fucking entirely makes sense within the world and lore of the Witcher serie
It’s also literally what happens in the books. Ciri grows as a person and becomes a badass swordswoman while Geralt eventually swears off taking monster contracts and later actually stops killing monsters. He even goes to donate his sword before getting pulled into one last battle to protect his friends and chosen family
Yennefer trained her in some sort of sorcery arts
So I recently devoured the book series and can clarify, she was first trained as a Witcher, then as a sourceress by Yennefer, but after she was teleported into the middle of the desert and tried to use fire as a source of power out of desperation, she gave up all magical abilities as the fire was trying to consumer her. So shes a brilliant swordswoman, has partial Witcher mutation (some of the mutations come from the secret Witcher diet which she was fed at Ker Moren while being trained) and depending on when in the timeline the game takes place she would have incredible reflexes and some interdimensional travel capabilities.
There’s also some really interesting opportunities for storytelling given how Ciri’s background is just soaked in trauma. On that note, I am also curious if they intend to play down the salaciousness for this entry or not. In the books Ciri was definitely curious (and heavily implied to be bi) but remained a virgin, and by the end of the series she was still a minor by modern standards. I want to say she was 16 or so at the end of the last book.
I’m super excited to see where this game goes, because if its worthy of being released after the masterpiece that was The Witcher 3, it’s going to be brilliant
I just went through this yesterday! I did a big upgrade on my wife’s computer, fresh install of Windows on a 2TB NVMe drive replacing the aging 120GB SSD that somehow didn’t completely fill up, etc. Etc. really loved pointing epic at the installs on the secondary drive and it just ignoring them and instead spending 3 hours downloading Fortnite after we just spent 1 hour applying the last update yesterday (and another hour on a different update the day before too!) on the drive that’s RIGHT THERE IN THE COMPUTER!
LLMs have been trained so heavily on Linux documentation that you can even have it hallucinate a Linux terminal at you!
Windows bloat does a pretty good job of making fairly recent computers feel sluggish though. I just updated my work laptop with a 12th gen CPU to Windows 11 and things are noticeably more sluggish immediately following applying the update. Which is sad since its about 8 years newer than my Linux laptop with similar (but older of course) specs and the Linux laptop is significantly snappier-feeling when in use.