dmir

Can’t believe I’m about to find out what happened to the rest of the world outside Australia in the MAD MAX universe by living through it myself!

Battlefield + Counter-Strike.

Battlefield for scale and gameplay, Counter-Strike (like, 1.6) for paying for everything on your loadout, including guns, attachments, grenades, ammunition, other utility, and whatever vehicular stuff goes into this, because of the Battlefield aspect.

I’m finding the progression to be very smart - earlier levels felt more difficult actually because I wasn’t accustomed to the way the developers set things up. I can’t describe it too well, but as you keep solving stuff, you kind of know what to expect and have the idea of the what the solution might look like sooner, and you sort of work backwards from there.

If you want more puzzles, The Witness is also a great title. Although I found it to be downright maddening at times despite being able to beat it. I really like the variety of puzzles there, realy unique in that regard and its design. Hunting for secrets and extra stuff there takes lot, tol, though, but it’s all so beautiful and rewarding.

Times are tough, but I think a security architect is one of the positions that lets you choose an employer based on morals as well, because it pays well, and if Flock is already considering you, you probably have experience and money to pursue some integrity.

Pretty much this. I’ve been living under authoritarianism my whole life and such things are just clear as day.

Same reason so many social media or tech CEOs don’t really let their kids use the product: they know it sucks and it’s not good for you nor does it respect you or your data, they know how important privacy is - just not for you your privacy and data.

Is The Talos Principle old enough to end up here? If it is, then I’m recommending it with great ease. Feels like such a great puzzler with little to no action or reflexes required, a lovely magnitudes of secrets to hunt, both apparently tied to progression and just Easter eggs, and a lot of optional reading if you’re into lore-diving.

It’s from Croteam, the people behind Serious Sam, although I can’t say how much of the original crew worked on The Talos Principle. Still, their own engine offers itself very well to puzzle-solving and exploration through walking (or sprinting).

Such a gem.

Given how trigger-happy THE FINALS is with the ban hammer towards gyro players, I really doubt I’d be taking my chances with flickstick in that game.

But I’ve been thinking about for a while for singleplayer games, yeah. Thinking about the new DOOM trilogy for this.

Steam Deck.

The Talos Principle. It’s actually my first time playing the game despite having learned about it near launch and having seen some footage and just wondering at this mysterious puzzle-solving adventure set in such beautiful locations… And it’s every bit wonderful, much more than I had expected. And there’s so much reading, too! I actually love that part and how it’s executed, because it allows me to choose whether to go lore-learning, puzzle-solving or secrets-hunting. The latter is especially amazing here: I love spending days on trying to get to something only to learn that the solution lies in a different direction and turns out to be much simpler. I wonder if that’s intended or it’s just me.

Half-Life. A while ago I tried playing THE FINALS with gyro only and quickly found out that I gravitate towards the dual-trackpad control scheme, allowing me to achieve more and do less. However, a fast-paced online shooter that is also as demanding wasn’t the perfect choice for every time I grabbed the deck, so I tried finally beating Half-Life on Hard - and got humbled. I had thought I was kinda good with gyro, but apparently not. All the better, as it led to me mixing mouse input on the right trackpad combined with gyro as opposed to committing to gyro entirely, the latter doesn’t being that much comfortable or precise on a Steam Deck, essentially rotating your controller with your screen.

I will probably pick up THE FINALS on the Steam Deck again, too, with S11 introducing bot matches. Could be a great and fun way to practice or warm up before joining someone’s team and contributing a fraction of a fraction of what I can with mouse and keyboard at least semi-predictably.

If you can’t make the decision for yourself, especially such a inconsequential one, probably just rolle the dice or something. It can even be fun when you define multiple criteria and roll of each, ending up doing something that you already might have anyway, because it’s in your pool, but there’s still kind of discovery here, like you stumble upon something from your own collection.

I’d prefer to leave the ambiguity completely out of the equation here!

There actually might be no war at all, because some things make warfare between these two species that much more difficult.

Behind the spoiler are details from Project Hail Mary, so if you’re planning on reading/watching it yourself, best not to look there.

Gotta be so careful with what your mat says…

Sugar free drinks are taxed at 20c/l

Does that include artificial sweeteners? I have some sort of prejudice against them that I couldn’t substantiate with research, but one thing is certain: none of them felt good to me.

I am much happier with drinking less sweet beverages overall, but made with regular sugar. Actually tend to spend less that way, even if I pay more for less - I just happen to be buying that much less frequently that way.

I feel like this comment covers this pretty well: https://lemmy.world/comment/25336159

Every time I read something like this I realize just how little people understand how these things work.

The tiniest LLMs you can run on your machine are 1B, those take around 10TB of unrepeatable and well varied text to train. Let me put this into perspective, if you downloaded the whole Wikipedia, you would get 1% of the amount of data needed to train the tiniest LLM you can run. Do you think you can ethically source the remaining 99%?

What kind of game size should we expect then? Or have another “reason” to let a single-player game connect to the internet all the time so it can make API calls to remote datacenters? Isn’t it hot enough? Aren’t we in a bad enough point in time in this planet’s climate and economy?

Not to mention that having such NPCs would become the perfect excuse for the executives to expand the initiative, gradually onto the more regular and crucial NPCs and story bits, because to them, the more they can replace with AI, maybe the more KPI they get to meet and grow even fatter wallets, which is really all they care about - that will likely be coupled with increased pressure on the remaining writers, what with the beloved downsizing and all, rapidly leading to poorer quality. I don’t see how AI slop dialogue lines that definitely won’t be as instant as it is now, because whether it’s a local model or an API call, you’re subject to waiting for the lines to generate and make it to you.

There’s just no angle where even this case of only having AI take over backdrop NPCs is justifiable. The little fun that is poses is only appealing because of its novelty, but it won’t lead to a revolution in engagement and rich worldbuilding or interaction that would make the resources wasted make any sense.

There are already comments, even here, saying that it’s okay for filler NPCs and non-crucial interactions. And with the executives, this might be the perfect start, an Overton window that they slowly (if that) push open further and further, replacing more and more of the human in the art process in the name of profit.

The latter is especially disappointing, not because these people don’t care or understand art, but because the profit here is illusory, almost entirely upstream, lies in pure speculation, and kills the planet and economies at a pace that’s practically unseen. They only do it because they think everybody else is doing it and they can’t be left behind, lest the line doesn’t up and they don’t talk about the current trend on another bullshit meeting.

The corporate world is such a mistake.

The difference is real life has immeasurably more entropy and variance and randomness. Fiction is created, with intention, and good open world game design is one that leads and pushes and hints at things, preferably without being explicit - unless this explicitness is itself (mis)leading you somewhere or is just the McGuffin of the story.

Fiction without intention, even in its smaller, seemingly random encounters and details, is just messy and disrespects your time.

That actually makes me wonder how come there’s relatively few such universes and stories arouns, given that suits and highly-secretive special forces are actually pretty popular in fiction. Maybe I’m overestimating the interest in such fiction.

I would like more stuff like Control and Men in Black, especially in gaming, with deep and explorable lore and world. But I think such stories basically happen as a response to something, like the SCP and the likes being a phenomenon rather than somethin (easily) reproducible, and Men in Black being a metaphor for migration and assimilation more than anything. At some point, there’s just nothing else to say about a thing from a given angle, and instead of feeling fresh and welcome and exciting, a new entry to a theme feels stale and meaningless, completely lacking anything interesting or captivating.

Which, I think, is what Control Resonant seems to try and do right by going outside The Oldest House and turning to a different kind of gameplay and worldbuilding. I think we’ll still be able to uncover stuff through reading and optional dialogue, but I doubt it will have the same form or extent as the first game.

Speaking of Control Resonant - are you even interested in it given this shift? Please be careful with plot details, as I haven’t finished the first game yet.

I was really into SCP when it came out, and it was such a gift. Probably my favorite third-person shooter, both for its atmosphere and combat. I especially like the amount of stuff to just read and get absorbed in the lore, wonder at how the place used to look like under non-crisis circumstances.

Great screenshots! Really capture the enigmatic feel that invites you to explore the world.

Any people waiting for the sequel here, how do you feel about combat in the upcoming game? Seems like it’s going to be more melee-focused, which isn’t my thing, but I like and respect that they’re trying to do something different as opposed to making more of the same thing. That’s the same reason I love the DOOM series - that variety helps each entry have its place instead of feeling like a DLC essentially.

And him saying switching to Linux is like moving to another country instead of addressing the issues at home lol

That’s after years of talking smack against Valve and Newell, too. Which will not cease, I’m sure, but I bet he’s either real angry now or doing a lot of mental gymnastics to tell his narcissistic ass he’s not being proven wrong.

Hard disagree.

There’s some debate to have here about neuroplasticity and whether cursive handwriting (or the process of learning something involving both the cognitive resources and some rather fine hand, wrist, fingers, a bit of an arm movement), but one thing is certain: it’s a faster way to write stuff down.

I have tried journaling and other writing both in printed and cursive, and the former makes me not write at all, because there’s not enough time in this world for me to be my verbose self on paper when trying to write legible printed letters.

Cursive is just that fast. Faster if you learn to write shorter forms of the same words. Even faster if you learn some special systems, but that’s a different rabbit hole.

But I will admit that learning to be concise with one’s words without losing meaning and gravity is also beneficial, even if only for trying to push Alzheimer’s and others further into the future.