“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
-Yogi Berra
- 0 Posts
- 100 Comments
I’ve definitely played City of Bywater.
Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs) Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips) Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
Same. I also definitely played City of Bywater, and I know I had both Assault on Giant Mountain and Castle in The Clouds (this one was giants right?)
So Realmz is truly open world in a way that BG3 only pretends to be. In BG3, they create the sensation of this huge diversity of endings and paths you can take, but its all pretty much a fugazi: the illusion of choice when actually only a small number of endings are possible. In BG3, the choices add “color” along the way, but they don’t fundamentally change anything about the game, or what its about (like what even is the point of the game?). I have a whole essay of criticism I’ve developed on it, because I truly did enjoy it, but it was so… it pointed in the direction of how much possibility it could have but didn’t execute on it. Its really only an impression of what it claims to be.
There is no ending in Realmz. Its just a big open world. And as you dig, you find more, and more and it just keeps going. But there is no particular path to take. You just can go anywhere and find adventure along the way. There are a huge number of random encounters, and the combat style is basically top down tile based D&D, which BG3 is also, more or less. Then you get into some corner of the map in Realmz, and you find some cave or castle or dungeon to explore… and it just keeps going. And going and going and going. And instead of it being one monolithic story like BG3, its a world in which many BG3’s happen. The spider tower. The kobald army invasion. The castle in the clouds. The necromancers tower.
Another thing is, predictability/ “jail breaking”. Modern games have this expectation that we “know” everything that is possible for an item or method or whatever. This is a big departure from early games where we would often “find out” about what is possible. In modern games when something unexpected happens, the dev’s patch it and change the game. In old games when something unexpected happens… well… thats just part of the game. Dota is a great example of this, where basically, finding ways to break the game to come up with a new strategy was quite literally how the game was played. Its now devolved into a poor impression of itself. In realmz, I remember beating some adventure and its final wizard and getting a wand of polymorph. I used it on one of my characters and it polymorphed them into a red dragon and it killed the entire party. I highly doubt the game developers planned that as a possibility, but game development then was often about creating possibilities, not limiting them. Whenever anyone figures something like that out in BG3, they patch it and the game becomes a little more sterile, a little more boring.
Also, BG3 is just kinda… empty. Which I was really surprised by, considering how many studios create amazing, populated worlds with complex day night cycles and economies. In BG3, once you’ve pretty much cleared an area, thats it. Not much more to do other than advance to the next area. In Realmz, you had to watch your ass if you were really out there, because no-matter what state your party was in, a random encounter can happen at any time, and in that game, death is permanent. Also, wtf is with there not being a day night cycle in BG3? Like wth. I’ve got a damn vampire and they aren’t weak during the day and OP af at night?
Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
I might buy that bundle on just your recommendation. I never tried those but if its vaguely like Realmz, I want to try it, since I pretty much only play on my steam deck these days.
Was just now in another thread having nostalgia about this game: Reamlz.
It was distributed as freeware/ shareware back in the 90’s. You had to physically mail the producers cash if you wanted to get the expansions. I played through Balders Gate III recently and honestly, it doesn’t even come close to the replayability that Realmz had.
I’m trying to recall. I know we always had a solid supply of rechargeables underway. I also distinctly remember that there is a kind of blanked out hand off screen between players because of fog if war. I don’t recall it having any kind of sleep function. But I know it could run for several hours no issue. I don’t recall having to mind the batteries in particular.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
Oh man. When I was in the Navy, I had the game boy advance. Advance wars had this sick turn based mode, where you could get your moves in, and then stick it in your pocket and wait to hand it off. We’d have four players playing games that might take all day, sometimes days. Just make your moves, stick it in your pocket, and whenever you find your shipmate, pass it along.
I think part of this has to be related to the idea that you cant do good, creative, interesting things on e the number of cooks in the kitchen gets above a certain size, which might actually be quite small. I mean look at terraria and stardew valley. Microscopic dev teams with impact the size of asteroids in terms of total effect and the long term impact on gaming.
I think “good” in media is an extension of having a singular vision for what you are trying to do. Focus too much on crowd pleasing and you lose the plot.
Wouldn’t that be the point of focusing on the interoperability layers and recent investment in Arch?
it does not remotely get the same kind of battery life as it does in OSX
Yeah exactly. So you need to invest into finding the fixes to that. Which is what Valve appears to be doing? It might be a fishing expedition or just a virtue signal to the foss world, sure. But they did do the thing.
And yes on AMD. I did leave that window for myself to crawl out through. I think if the trip down ARM on Arch ends up being a fishing expedition, they flip over to a known quantity for a refresh.
With their recent donations to Arch Linux were focused on unblocking some issues with supporting Arch on ARM (notibally stuff needed for better automated builds) would suggest they want to stick with Arch.
Next you need good emulation layers for x64 and x86 as that is what all games are written in. Which there are leaks that say they are working on this as well.
Thats two legs of support for an ARM architecture.
But that is two big blockers that could take years to solve.
Sure. But what you are describing is “uncertainty”. Uncertainty in isolation isn’t a form of evidence. It could take years. It could not. Its not just Valve looking to solve this issue. MS has committed to ARM based interoperability; so has Apple. MS and Apple obviously want things to work seamlessly between ARM and x64, x86. The heat/ power to performance gains are just too much to leave on the table and both of those Software/ Hardware manufacturers saw this coming. If this was a project coming out of Valve & Arch doing the work; sure, I’d give it a time line of a couple to several years. But Valve while coming in with backing and there are other players looking to overcome and address the same problem. With teams like MS and Apple also working on it, I expect this to be figured out on a faster timeline. Months/ few years.
Within a couple of years and I don’t think it will be arm based.
Sure. If thats your bet thats your bet. My bet is solidly on ARM. Its what the evidence we have points at, even if there isn’t a ton of certainty around it.
Yeah idk. He pulled a 4070 and a 4090 for the comparison. Like, ok, but that doesn’t seem super fair. Like if I’m shelling out for a 4090, bruh you bet your ass I’m going to throw that into a legit case with a premium board, high ram, great cpu, all the fixings.
Much more interesting to me would be if this set up could work well with a used 30 series card. Something more price appropriate for the overall rig. It just doesn’t make sense to pair a $800 mini computer (which honestly, seem like great, fun little machines) with an almost 2k graphics card.
How about we pair it with a used, top tier card from last gen, something more price appropriate for the set up?
I completely disagree with the top comment. Dont worry about the main game.
I advocate that you go in with the mindset that you are a part of an old and important guild, and that the main story is just an extension of your every day job of being a Witcher. The “side quests” are unbelievably good. So good that half of them have better stories than entire video games and series. I didn’t bother with the main story (only in parts, organically). I just wandered the country side and “did the job of a Witcher”. There is sooooooooo much to this game. Also, get the DLC’s.
One word of warning however. The power scaling is somewhat broken. If you over-level before moving forward, the game can get pretty boring only because the enemies become trivially easy to beat.
edit: Also, try and bang anything with eyes.
10 years? Bruh 10 months. I saw some stuff recently that was image gen, and there is not a fucking chance I would be able to say it was or wasn’t generated. Like I do some aspects of this shit for a living and I’m fucked.
Code generation, image and video generation, voxel generation, voice generation.
We’re fucked. This is like, seeing the iceberg in that minute before it hits on the titantic.
This highlights the importance of anonymity and things like federated spaces on the modern web.
The tendency for people to want to take credit for their work is also at issue here, but the old Internet has a stronger, “I am my username”, emphasis on anonymity and relatively little credit taking for creativity.
I think the focus on personalities, and on single platforms gives companies leverage over as a users and creators of the Internet.I think if we were less concerned about ownership and taking credit, and more concerned about distribution and access, we can make it basically impossible for companies to gain leverage over ideas.
I think also the modern, reactionary view of copyright law is deeply problematic and counter productive. I don’t think the online left quite realizes they can’t can’t have it both ways. Like I get the instinct towards protectionism of small creators, but I think that modern concepts of copyright are fundamentally flawed at both a fundamental legal.level, but also at a conceptual level for what they are ‘pre-supposed’ to protect.
We’re in the ‘weird’ phase of a new form factor.
There are a few designs that have been interesting. I like weird, but as a steamdeck daily driver, its a pretty good starting point. Hard to improve upon.
Man. I’ve been playing forever. Holy shit some biomes get hard.
Actually the real hard mode is to not look up guides and just try to figure it out.