andrew_bidlaw
human garbage
- 3 Posts
- 151 Comments
Valve made it super convinient for their customers and they also took steps to encourage content creation with SFM, Source Engine, sharing their own assets. They created working cloud saving and mod sharing solutions, greenlighting a bunch of indies based on votes and being on the side of the customer in disputes over refunds with 2hr rule becomingthe new norm. For years, they provided and improved their service, so it’s rare to see anyone complaining about that.
Ah, and Epic killed UT4 in beta when they found their initial zombie game mode that became Fortnite gave them that much cash they could start their own marketplace with regular giveaways and exclusives going on for years. I’m fucking pissed at them for that even now. It is irrational and personal, but Valve didn’t kill my favorite game series, it’s the opposite, since they kept slowly releasing and constantly updating Dota, CS, create Alyx, keep TF2 alive, and I’m only sad Alien Swarm would never see new content. In game studios and game marketplaces, Valve are golden.
But coming back to your initial displeasment with them, the funny thing is a lot of Steam games don’t need Steam to launch. Unless devs implement some hooks and DRMs themselves, you can just launch their EXE file. Nobody really checks that, but that’s the truth, and I’ve seen some lists of games that don’t do that. On top of that, 99% offline games can be launched without internet with Steam only, you can even backup and then install some game on your PC offline if your client knows you own it. And don’t forget family sharing - although they promised to rework it, I, my partner and our friends used it a lot, and although you can’t use a game from a shared library when you are offline, if the owner plays it offline you can play it too at the same time without messing with each others’ gameplay. This lazy implementation of DRM with many workarounds and general respect to even the sleakiest, cheating customer is why I still buy games there.
I remember that at some point in the game you activate VALVE and GEARBOX switches at the panel, that was a good one, but other than that I can’t recall it. I played it right after doing HL1 at max diff, so I probably went into it and found this expansion not balanced towards that thus dropped it half way in.
The truth I don’t want to believe in, lol. But seeing the latest elections and talking to people gives your points, not mine, a ton of weight. And I probably insist on a possible awakening\redemption arc because I don’t know what to do with that on the day-to-day basis if that’s not possible, if people selling me groceries are irredeameable bastards who cheer to the pain induced onto others, but that’s on me trying to stay sane.
Either way, back to the OP: death to the russian empire, glory to Ukraine and fuck me for I’d probably only play that UE5 game on Youtube if I sell some organs (:
We may disagree with each other but I like to read your thoughts. I’m just pondering the idea of if Russia just have their government magically replaced with someone else’s, would the culture you say persist for more than a decade. I’m sceptical it would. It kinda erases the responsibility and agency of russian people themselves, making them look like empty vessels to what their powerholders put in them, but with how some thoughts about current war overtook them overnight, made them replicate these, makes me think they just don’t have a nurtured own position on most things because they are degraded to lower levels of Maslou pyramid and thus don’t hold their own beliefs but constantly cowardly adapt to whatever is in the news.
Most russian people haven’t left their region at all, except on annual holiday trips. With current prices and the withering weight of rouble, it’s unlikely someone who doesn’t do higher mid tier wages can travel outside of Russia. I’d probably advocate instead on closing programs allowing to gain citizenship by investments and creating a business. That’s how rich russians who have a significant econonical impact get their foreign passports.
I’m not sure how territorial\political losses or economical decline would make russians frustrated rn. With a total grasp on local media, Tzar can easily put a blame on other states and for his followers it works. They do sell the myth of capturing others is the way to go, and that it needs some sacrifices.
I think you’ve been caught in a trap of thinking russian commoners are somehow different to others. Vatniks aren’t an unique occasion, and it seems a lot of countries are vulnerable to have them, especially if authporitarian states put effort to nurture a culture of useful idiots somewhere else like Russia does in bordering states.
Maybe my bias is directly opposite to yours.
They will never achieve anything if they keep playing dumb. There is no reason to choose a “putin lite” over the real deal.
They won’t, unless something slaps them hard enough, maybe? But what would sober them up? Being denied the capture of Kiev - didn’t. Denied on Kharkiv -didn’t. Prigo’s march - didn’t. Prigo’s murder - didn’t. Whole forests burning and towns getting flooded - these didn’t do much. And losing parts of Kursk region didn’t do that as well. Where’s the limit to them? What would exceed their tolerance to humiliation? Idk. They are still happy to suck someone’s ass and direct their anger as the party says.
Russia currently has no culture, as many talents from Ukraine and other states left, as many conscious russian artists left too, TV programs are all about referencing and reproducing songs, movies, ideas of the past. There’s literally a genre of shows based in nostalgic reproduction and it is the only thing other than propaganda that exists and thrives. The whole country is a human centipede that sucks it’s own shit. And it’s impotent to produce anything new. There won’t be a russian Triumph of the Will because russian Leny Riefenstahl is too edgy, too different, too wrong to fit the strict borders of what’s allowed. And you can see even russian fascists like Tesak (Chopping axe) got killed for they don’t toe the line well enough. This fascist state is too afraid of their own creations.
Dead Navalny and opposition on social media are rather useless. They aren’t interesting to anyone, not to the regular russians at all, and even harmful for they focus people’s irritation on their non-existant causes. These rich libs just can’t cut it.
There should be some person or multiple persons to first teach these people to be proud of themselves, to learn that they matter, that they aren’t garbage. To get some self-esteem and disdain to how abused they are. Only then they’d start to form civil and class consciousness. Them laughing at ukrainians at Maidan is them just not getting they themselves do deserve better and can demand that.
Can’t say much on national\race question because (1) I’m too white to feel and understand oppression myself and (2) if a region would like to break out, they’d know better what they want. But (3) I feel, like some of them just can’t do so as long as set leader is supported by Kremlin. It’s a question to solve.
Tzar doesn’t need anything to land one’s ass in jail, but it’d still be followed by traditional beaurocratic procedures just like in RE\USSR and that’s the likely way it’d follow through.
And, also, having Stalker on your acc or purchasing it via russian resellers may serve as a trigger that can make agencies or just your russian teammate tell on you for lulz if your profile wasn’t set to private.
This article misses the point. The logic behind the likely regulation is that: a couple of GSC devs joined UAF (one KIA) and GSC donated to ukrainian funds -> you spend money on their products -> you have financially supported UAF. GSC wasn’t proclaimed a terrorist org (lmao) but laws here can be applied backwards if they’d need so.
Snufkin undoing the cops’ expansionism on natives’ land is rad. Game is short, has it’s downsides as per forum threads about difficult run sequence and being kinda lost on the remote island, but it’s good for everyone who doesn’t even know about moomins, ages 5-99. It’s highlight are watercolor-stylized graphics making the picture look very pretty and good writing, albeit about simple things.
There is a version of it on Internet Archive that I don’t know if it’s from Valve or not. It’s zipped installation of Steam. But I had no luck making it work, it’s webpage renderer still crashes at launch. As I’ve read into it, the old version should work for a while without updates.
He was hired by Tencent after they launched LAD iirc, I remember some news but can’t tell when it happened in the post-covid era.
But I do find small, almost theatrical worldmaps or even sets of locations as a thing writers and designers can use to achieve greater effect. Y5 had Taiga Saejima’s town and mountain locations with vibes very different to what Haruka sees in Sotenboru, and it makes more sense and gives more space for gamedevs to customize these experiences than a gameworld where these are all interconnected walkable locations.
One of the notorious examples in PS3 gen era that’s now can’t be purchased at all. It’s a derpy offroad racing game in what looks like a procedurally generated world emptier than ash deserts in Morrowind.
Yes it is, it’s 100% scripted. And yes, in the environment where you can do like 10 different actions, they start to do their routine adding ones that you used in that cycle before they get reset. In a sense, they act no more natural than monsters from a tabletop game.
But these do make me think that if we talk gamedesign with a LLM as an actor, it should too have a very tight set of options around it to effectively learn. The ideal situation is something simplistic, like Google’s dino jumper where the target is getting as far as it can by recognising a barrier and jumping at the right time.
But when things get not that trivial, like when in CS 1.6 we have a choice to plant a bomb or kill all CTs, it needs a lot of learning to decide what of these two options is statistically right at any moment. And it needs to do this while having a choice of guns, a neverending branching tree of routes to take, tactics to use, and how to coexist with it’s teammates. And with growing complexity it’s hard to make sure that it’s guided right.
Imagine you have thousands of parameters from it playing one year straight to lose and to win. And you need to add weight to parameters that do affect it’s chance to win while it keeps learning. It’s more of a task than writing a believable bot, that is already dificult.
And the way ECHO fakes it… makes it less of a headache. Because if you limit possible options to the point close to Google’s dino, you can establish a firm grasp on teaching the LLM how to behave in a bunch of pre-defined situations.
And if you won’t, it’s probably easier to ‘fake it’ like ECHO or F.E.A.R. does giving a player an impression of AI when it’s just a complicated scri orchestrating the spectacle.
Same. I’m glad you liked it and probably turned others onto another NV playthrough. I can’t play atm, and I feel jealous c:
The only thing you’ve missed is the super challenging instance that forms in the place of a camp you’ve chosen to destroy with leftover nukes. It adds nothing to the fallout experience, but if you want your ass beaten repeatedly, here you are. You can try to load your save and choose to nuke NCR\Legion and then travel to their base. These are small highly irradiated locations with high tier threats and LR-tier loot, nothing unique iirc. These fights feel 2x tighter than these tight fight moments in the original DLC.
I feel like staying in the shadow of Skyrim makes things worse for them. If only they could make a different game, like a TES spin off, to try new things like they did before Morrowind, they’d probably shift their mindset from reiterating and adjusting the same formula ad nauseam to a fewer success. Like, a small 1,5-2y project with a semi-linear action akin to The Dark Messiah of M&M, or a fucking AMID EVIL as a fantasy shooter, but about some lore-important chain of events. They can later reimplement their work on it into a better combat in TES6 and rise some hype about the franchise that is starved from any news by now. Beth have a lot of talents at hand from companies that did shooters they published. They, imho, just need to start small, because Skyrim would tower over them just like Half-Like for Valve unless they break the silence with their Alyx.
Of all possible scenarios, I want the fight for the Red Mountain. Either the original one against the dwemers with their tech, or an L4D-like one against Dagoth Ur and his blighted punks. They did a lot of performative nods to Morrowind, so why won’t they just go with it?
I look at Yakuza series and I wish Bethesda would follow their example, with remasters, spin-offs, back-references, side-series and a complete switch of original mechanics just for them to reevaluate what them and Todd want.
There may be a museum of VM images copying their system, programs and files, so you can just put them on and see what person X saw before compiling the version they shipped, see their last edits etc. I bet, comparing Carmac’s and Romero’s systems circa Doom can be a joy for at least a couple of nights.
now now now
My mind fluctuates towards having their emails too, like we have from poets and politicians of the past, and building a narrative, or even a game collected entirely in diving into a dump of their relationships and file history. A captivating idea I’d never materialize, so if some indie dev reads that - no demands, just steal that.
GooglePlay search favors popular trash, but there and on F-Droid you can still find some fun ones without ads. Searching from outside, like on a regular web search engine or lemmy\reddit subs for free games may help. I don’t mind piracy but I was glad to obtain Antimine and Mindustry. Also, there are ways to block internet or patch apps, but they usually imply you have root and may break things if not careful.
Idk about iPhone apps, but I’m sure the first solution would work too and the second means jailbreaking thus cutting off most of their praised ecosystem.