GasBandit
Staff member
(Scratches self, twitches)
Yeah, I feel like if my desktop was working I'd be doing Space Engineers or Grounded.
I'm really hoping to see a sequel/expansion dealing with the inside of the house at this scale. Could be really cool.
GasBandit
Staff member
The scale is all messed up. I found a quarter to stand next to, and I was half it's height on edge. That means the grass is like 8 to 12 inches tall and 3/4ths of an inch wide or so.
I mean, the yard is pretty neglected, so I would expect tall grass, but this is kinda nuts.
And these wolf spiders must be the size of tarantulas.
Sovngarde's really pretty.
Hitman 3 was updated a little while back with a new map, Ambrose Island, and I've finally gotten around to playing it.
Y'know how I know that I am good at Hitman 3 now, at least a little bit? After doing a few runs through the map, I managed to come up with a strategy for Silent Assassin, Suit Only (only kill the targets, never get spotted, and never change out of your starting outfit), and my route was fast enough to get me a score within around the top 10% of players worldwide. With other maps and levels, I always at least looked some stuff up, whether it's information about the map or outright walkthroughs on Youtube. But this time, this score was all me, and I'm in the top 10% worldwide.
I am inordinately proud of myself.
Y'know how I know that I am good at Hitman 3 now, at least a little bit? After doing a few runs through the map, I managed to come up with a strategy for Silent Assassin, Suit Only (only kill the targets, never get spotted, and never change out of your starting outfit), and my route was fast enough to get me a score within around the top 10% of players worldwide. With other maps and levels, I always at least looked some stuff up, whether it's information about the map or outright walkthroughs on Youtube. But this time, this score was all me, and I'm in the top 10% worldwide.
I am inordinately proud of myself.
Minor addendum to this.
I learned today that a lot of the faster SASO runs relied on the use of a molotov cocktail, and how the game used to consider it an accident kill.
You see, to get Silent Assassin, you need to either hide your targets' bodies so that they aren't found, or have your targets die in an accident. Possible accidents include having a heavy object drop onto someone, having someone tumble over a balcony railing to their death, having someone step in a puddle that just happened to have an exposed live wire in it, etc. Previously, all fire deaths were considered accidents. This is because there wasn't any weapon in the game that you could use to deliberately produce fire, so setting someone alight required you to sabotage something, eg causing a gas leak on a stove or producing a puddle of oil at a spot you know your target is going to smoke a cigarette. However, Ambrose Island introduced the molotov cocktail weapon, the first weapon in the game that players could use to create fire. Thus, a lot of Silent Assassin runs higher up on the leaderboard involved tossing a molotov at your targets and burning them to death, which the game would count as an accident.
This was patched out a few days ago. The idea was that getting burned to death by a makeshift incendiary explosive could not plausibly be considered an accident, so from now on kills with the molotov are no longer counted as accidents. In other words, many of the scores above mine were achieved using this bug/exploit. My method doesn't. My score stands strong among people who exploited a bug for an easier solution, which means I am even awesomer than I'd previously thought.
After about three years of not playing Fallout 4, I went back to it. It was fun for a few days and then I got hit by the game-breaking 0kb bug. What probably happened was a skin from the DLC or Creator Club caused a glitch and now I can't save the game. Apparently it's a common issue for the PS4 version. It's been YEARS and Bethesda still hasn't fixed this issue?
GasBandit
Staff member
All you had to say.
Shovel Knight Dig
Hard for sure, but no harder than your average rogue lite Honestly I feel a lot of the negative critics don't play a lot of roguelites, as I am VERY used to the "Die, get upgrades based on luck, die, repeat" model.
Hard for sure, but no harder than your average rogue lite Honestly I feel a lot of the negative critics don't play a lot of roguelites, as I am VERY used to the "Die, get upgrades based on luck, die, repeat" model.
Finally started playing Disco Elysium.
The first 5 minutes were pretty good and realistically informed of my state of mind. Then it forced my character to wake up, dammit.
Good so far but....The world isn't going to get any less bleak, is it? I'm not sure I'm mentally in the right place to play this.
The first 5 minutes were pretty good and realistically informed of my state of mind. Then it forced my character to wake up, dammit.
Good so far but....The world isn't going to get any less bleak, is it? I'm not sure I'm mentally in the right place to play this.
Disco Elysium is equal parts bleakness and comedy. There will be times you will just laugh at the absurdity of what is going on.
GasBandit
Staff member
I got into the Darktide closed beta! That's good!
The launcher gripes about me not having Microsoft Gaming Services installed. That's bad.
It seems to try to launch anyway! That's good!
It then crashes, complaining that Api-ms-win-downlevel-kernel32-l2-1-0.dll is missing. That's bad.
But hey, I know I have that file, it's in /windows/System32/CompatTel ! and this bug has plagued other games before, and the fix has just been to copy the DLL into the game's executable folder. That's good.
The game now crashes because Valve EAC (easy-anti-cheat) hates that file.
That's bad.
I'm about ready to give up on this, and that sucks. I've been looking forward to this for so long.
The launcher gripes about me not having Microsoft Gaming Services installed. That's bad.
It seems to try to launch anyway! That's good!
It then crashes, complaining that Api-ms-win-downlevel-kernel32-l2-1-0.dll is missing. That's bad.
But hey, I know I have that file, it's in /windows/System32/CompatTel ! and this bug has plagued other games before, and the fix has just been to copy the DLL into the game's executable folder. That's good.
The game now crashes because Valve EAC (easy-anti-cheat) hates that file.
That's bad.
I'm about ready to give up on this, and that sucks. I've been looking forward to this for so long.
Frank reads a review: Marvel Snap is an incredible new card game. Quick matches. Fun gameplay.
Frank downloads new exciting card game: Oh this looks like a mobile game on my PC, that sucks. Oh this IS a mobile game on my PC.
Frank plays exciting new card game: Oh this is a shit mobile card game.
Frank downloads new exciting card game: Oh this looks like a mobile game on my PC, that sucks. Oh this IS a mobile game on my PC.
Frank plays exciting new card game: Oh this is a shit mobile card game.
The Sims 4
Got hooked playing this last night and most of last night. Thing is, I don't really have the patience for the building side of things. I like seeing the sims do their thing, progress, etc, but I don't have the knack or patience for building. So I thought I'd try downloading a house or two from the community options.
Unfortunately, when I do a filtered search for just base game or just the DLC I own, the search STILL mostly came up with people who used all the assets from other DLC. So the search filtering was useless.
Got hooked playing this last night and most of last night. Thing is, I don't really have the patience for the building side of things. I like seeing the sims do their thing, progress, etc, but I don't have the knack or patience for building. So I thought I'd try downloading a house or two from the community options.
Unfortunately, when I do a filtered search for just base game or just the DLC I own, the search STILL mostly came up with people who used all the assets from other DLC. So the search filtering was useless.
I love doing Sims building if there's something in particular you're looking for.
Let me look up my gallery and see if I have base game stuff.
@ThatNickGuy I do have at least 2 houses that are base game only in my gallery.
Anna_Dei is my gallery profile.
Also it looks like under Packs you can choose to show base game only housing, instead of trying to filter.
Anna_Dei is my gallery profile.
Also it looks like under Packs you can choose to show base game only housing, instead of trying to filter.
So Vampire Survivors has hit 1.0 and James Stephanie Sterling has done a ton of writing for stuff like the bestiary and it's....well, great.
My only gripe is I kind of wish the 1.0 release reset everything. Make me earn every cheivo and unlock again.
Some shots at the GCTERFS of the world.
My review of the 1.0 Release of Vampire Survivors is 120/10 Game of the Century
Seriously though, it's incredibly addicting and perfect for relaxation (for me anyway) and it's well worth the like 4 bucks it costs.
My only gripe is I kind of wish the 1.0 release reset everything. Make me earn every cheivo and unlock again.
Some shots at the GCTERFS of the world.
My review of the 1.0 Release of Vampire Survivors is 120/10 Game of the Century
Seriously though, it's incredibly addicting and perfect for relaxation (for me anyway) and it's well worth the like 4 bucks it costs.
So I decided to do another playthrough of Subnautica. However, this time around I decided to build an aquarium.
The aquarium is structured as twenty-seven sets of two-level multipurpose rooms.
The whole aquarium is powered by a single solar panel. Since this base is only being used as an aquarium, with no real power expenditures, this is sufficient.
Here you can see the two-level multipurpose room structure more clearly. The upper level is basically the "display" level, which allows unimpeded movement through all the rooms, as well as windows for aesthetics and to provide a view to the outside. The bottom level is where the alien containment units are built, and the fauna inside can be seen through the transparent floor of the upper level rooms.
Each alien containment unit would hold only one species of fauna. This allows them to multiply without issue. Here, for example, is my Peeper exhibit as seen from the upper room.
This is what the Peeper exhibit looks like from the bottom room. This also allows for a great view of the fauna, but navigating these rooms involves walking around the alien containments, and that can be both annoying and disorienting.
And, of course, I also tamed egg-laying hostile fauna in my alien containments. For example, here are my Stalker and Crabsquid exhibits.
I'm now trying to think of ways to improve the exhibits. For example, I could add native plants from each species's home biome. I also want to add more windows to the upper levels because windows just look nice, but having to gather all that quartz for the glass is a pain.
The aquarium is structured as twenty-seven sets of two-level multipurpose rooms.
The whole aquarium is powered by a single solar panel. Since this base is only being used as an aquarium, with no real power expenditures, this is sufficient.
Here you can see the two-level multipurpose room structure more clearly. The upper level is basically the "display" level, which allows unimpeded movement through all the rooms, as well as windows for aesthetics and to provide a view to the outside. The bottom level is where the alien containment units are built, and the fauna inside can be seen through the transparent floor of the upper level rooms.
Each alien containment unit would hold only one species of fauna. This allows them to multiply without issue. Here, for example, is my Peeper exhibit as seen from the upper room.
This is what the Peeper exhibit looks like from the bottom room. This also allows for a great view of the fauna, but navigating these rooms involves walking around the alien containments, and that can be both annoying and disorienting.
And, of course, I also tamed egg-laying hostile fauna in my alien containments. For example, here are my Stalker and Crabsquid exhibits.
I'm now trying to think of ways to improve the exhibits. For example, I could add native plants from each species's home biome. I also want to add more windows to the upper levels because windows just look nice, but having to gather all that quartz for the glass is a pain.
GasBandit
Staff member
I just found the "Megalovania" style boss fight in Vampire Survivors. It is rapidly making me lose interest in the game because it expects me to see areas on the screen that are smoothly cycling between transparent and 50% transparent tinge of red, overlaid on a constantly cycling and distorting fractal pattern that shifts between every RGB value.
And it feels very much like how I lost interest in Slay the Spire. Because both games have decided that losing the battle means you wasted 30+ minutes getting to it and have to start the whole run over again.
I miss when it was just a pleasant, casual, low stakes timewaster.
And it feels very much like how I lost interest in Slay the Spire. Because both games have decided that losing the battle means you wasted 30+ minutes getting to it and have to start the whole run over again.
I miss when it was just a pleasant, casual, low stakes timewaster.
This has been my complaint about virtually every game I've played for fun. Much like how every online service suddenly decides to kick out all the smut in order to increase their appeal for somebody to buy them, so many of the games I (used to) enjoy playing have altered their endgame content in order to appeal to the die-hard MtDew&Dorito crowd who just can't enjoy a game unless and until that endgame content pummels their adrenal glands like a speed bag.
Yes, even ones ostensibly aimed at "family" audiences.
--Patrick
Maybe they should make those style of endgames opt-in. They can call it "Fedora Mode" 
“git gud lol”