Deconceptualist

In contrast to this exec and many of the responses, another Steam Next Fest is happening right now! Go play free demos of upcoming games, 99% of which are Indies you’ve probably not yet heard of.

Yeah but like any successful politician he’ll readily compromise his principles in order to hold onto power.

If ammo got simplified then I’m sure weapon condition / repairs got the axe too. Wish is fine I suppose. But hopefully attachments like scopes and suppressors and grenade launchers are still included, those were great.

On ammo I’d be okay with simplifying NATO vs Warsaw Pact rounds because that’s a bit hard to track for anyone unfamiliar, but as you say I liked the overall immersion of matching bullets to the gun.

I’m hoping the PC modding scene takes off because that will let us customize all kinds of things.

I almost forgot about SimEarth. For some reason I was allowed to play it in grade school computer lab. I wish they would remake it so I can recreate my sentient cephalopod uprising, except with graphics that aren’t complete ass.

I never played SimLife. But no, Spore is really not like SimEarth at all. As the other person said, Spore is disappointingly shallow on all levels.

Does it have to be set in America? I’d think the genre could work almost anywhere with technological cities.

Been looking for a non-paywalled link…

This article is garbage and the headline is misleading. https://youtu.be/6zkkJtCh22E?si=4DiCNZJgOY4AzxXK

Developer Intercept Games does indeed seem to be getting shut down :( There’s coverage at Eurogamer and lots of other sites, mostly pointing back to Jason Schreier (paywalled ofc because it’s fucking Bloomberg).

It’s not at all clear what that means for the game. “Safe” seems unlikely.

FYI games on Steam don’t actually have to use any DRM. e.g. Kerbal Space Program – you can download it, close the Steam client, copy it to another folder, unplug your network cable… then go launch the .EXE from its directory and play anyway.

That’s the thing. You can launch Steam and have it just get the hell out of your way, and go enjoy your games. You don’t really have to interact with any of the features on a regular basis. For many players, that’s perfect.

But it’s actually been incredibly innovative. Proton has made Linux gaming a reality when it previously seemed impossible. Remote Play Together is basically wizardry. Steam Input is fucking brilliant and lightyears beyond other control customizations. These things are available to every Steam user gratis if you want them.

(fixed minor typos)

The fundamental mechanism is still unknown, however we do know some important details about consciousness:

• It’s not a simple binary all-or-nothing
• It can change naturally or artificially
• It’s divisible and perhaps even additive

We know this due to a number of phenomena:

• Natural variation in states like awake, alert, groggy, asleep, comatose
• Altered states due to alcohol or drugs (drunk, high, caffeinated, hallucinating, suppressed with anaesthesia)
• Disorders such as Body Identity Dismorphic Disorder (BIID - thinking a major limb doesn’t belong to your body) or Phantom Limb (sensing an limb that isn’t there). Look these up if you’re unfamiliar, they’re fascinating.

Together these and other observations suggest that consciousness is an emergent phenomena (not present in simple organ structures alone) and occurs along a scale, likely proportional to brain size. And just as your daily state can change (between sleep and wakefulness at minimum) it seems a reasonable hypothesis that other creatures experience something similar, though perhaps with a lower maximum awareness in their most alert state.

Happy birthday! I actually just started playing Journey for the first time yesterday, less than an hour I’d say (on Steam). The visuals and fluidity of controls are nice, nothing spectacular by today’s standards but I’m sure they were great back in the PS3 era. The beginning felt a little slow trudging through the sand until I understood how the scarf upgrades work. But then when I encountered another player it really started to click and go more smoothly. I like how the game encourages cooperation by pinging and refilling each other’s scarf energy, though I feel like progress might go slow again if I get stuck going solo next session. The puzzles are very simple but I was feeling sick so having a ‘cozy’ game was actually pretty nice.

That’s what happens when nobody’s been waxing the crescent.

BuzzKill is great for wrangling your notifications. Match a word or phrase and group them, snooze them, set special vibration patterns, whatever.

Ah yes the dreaded shortbarrel saltwater tank and the AK-47000 combo.

Looks pretty good, glad to see another true Linux system. No weight listed though, and no backside buttons, so we’ll see how it turns out.

One other longshot: You didn’t say what game but if it’s a smaller / indie title you could try reaching out to the devs and saying “Hey you know this would be a ton of fun on a tablet or PC touchscreen”. You never know, maybe they didn’t considere that, but they might agree that it’s a great idea and add it officially.

Chronos’ guide is the most comprehensive one I know but I don’t see anything there about trackpad multi-touch. My impression is that they’re really designed for one thumb each while you hold the Deck. (Side note, the trackpads do accept a surprisingly deep range of pressure input).

How about using the touchscreen? Many sources claim it accepts 10-finger input. Of course the game itself would probably have to support that (common on mobile but rare on PC). Or maybe there’s a plugin somewhere to map specific screen region touches to other input buttons and such.

I wish I was as brave and well-spoken as this young man.

When I was 17-18 I scored really well on a test and the US Air Force tried to recruit me. It was tempting because I was fascinated with aerospace and it would have kickstarted my career and possibly meant no student loans. I’d easily be $100k better off today if I went down that path.

But I couldn’t imagine myself dropping bombs on potentially innocent people at the behest of some smug politician, or even loading ordinance for someone else to do it. The thought made me sick to my stomach. So I figured out my own path. But that was easy for me, because there was no major conflict at the time, no one threatening me with jail, and no social repercussions from that decision. I have to wonder if I would have made the same decision if it was under Tal Mitnick’s conditions.

Oh, “CS cases” here = CounterStrike cosmetics.

My first thought was that it sounds pretty unethical to be making that much money on Customer Service tickets. Not even sure how that would work.

Well, crossed that off my Steam wishlist. And any other Capcom games.