@nycki woah this looks so weird! I love that they found a super unique aesthetic and just went for it lol. I’m ngl I’m a bit apprehensive about it after watching a bit of the trailer but I hope it ends up being something that I’d like! I bet a ton of people will like it either way though

@biscuitsofdeath omg thank you! I really appreciate this, and I might take you up on it sometime. I’m still figuring out what I even want to do right now, but it’s great to have a potential connection (on that horrible website T_T)

@kasdeya as someone who uses lisp, don't @ me with the middle one.

but wait come back I haven't told you how everything in this language is technically a....

@hearts yess I absolutely hate this - and a lot of insecure players will nit-pick others’ choices in order to make themselves feel superior, or do other weird mind games like that, and it’s just extremely bad overall

@ada that’s fair! that’s exactly what I was trying to get at: instead of dedicated servers there’s a matchmaking system, which means that nobody can form a community and everyone is a random every time - which breeds all kinds of isolation and toxicity and is just overall terrible culturally

although also, I think that SBMM might only make sense if a game is designed to be competitive. for example it wouldn’t make sense to have SBMM for Mario Party or (I hope?) Mario Kart - since these games are designed to balance out uneven skill levels automatically

so if a game has matchmaking of any kind and that matchmaking is SBMM then I think that indicates that it’s designed to be competitive while also unintentionally(?) preventing players from forming communities and making friends within the game, and that’s an especially bad sign

esports and SBMM have done so much damage to the culture of multiplayer games

also the whole ecosystem of YouTube tutorials for how to hyper-optimize your gameplay in any given game - normalizing the idea that there are objectively right and wrong ways to play

i swithc workspace and then i see fopi :) :) :)

what’s the proper way to format a song title?

don't make me tap the sign, goddamn bitches

@emberquill thank you for this! I was so worried about RPM and rotation direction and efficiently laying out the gears, and etc. but starting simply and using a new waterwheel for every device was exactly what I needed to start getting into the mod. I’ve actually been enjoying it a fair bit now! although it’s still really hard for me to make most things lol - even a basic auto-smelter or auto-cooker took me a lot of thought and experimenting. I also had to clear away a lot of space dedicated to Create tinkering since my machines always seem to take up way more space than I expect lol

@nycki ooh I’ve heard of Mice Tea! TF isn’t my thing but I love that that exists. and yeah I would really love to see more like that too

@kasdeya I'm also tangentially reminded of jan Misali's recurring youtube segment "Conlang Critic" and how after the first few episodes he stopped asking "how good is this conlang" and started asking "how effective is this conlang at the thing it's trying to accomplish"

and I think that should be the new review standard for everything

@nycki oohh I would love that! I’m a big fan of the Second Wind YouTube channel (a video game channel that posts about game design, news, reviews, etc.) but they are so fixated on emotional depth and storytelling complexity for whatever reason. and I feel like the overwhelming majority of popular singleplayer games are fixated on that as well. and I wonder if it’s some kind of reinforcement cycle where reviewers care about these things disproportionately so games focus on them

but yeah idk I find them extremely hard to find for some reason. I actually don’t know if I’ve found any game like that that was made in the past 8 years or so. the most recent one that I can think of (and this is very very debatable) is Obduction, which came out in 2016

there’s a certain style of video game storytelling that’s deliberately light and unobtrusive and shamelessly wish-fulfill-y (Wings of Liberty is a great example) and I feel like you don’t really see it in modern games. even games that seem like they’ll have this lighter style of storytelling, really don’t. they tend to get emotional towards the end - taking me by surprise

so I wonder if I should be looking at older games to find new things to play - and try to ignore modern games

despite my Feelings about RTSes, I’ve actually been loving Starcraft 2’s Wings of Liberty campaign. I love that it doesn’t punish you for taking your time (so far, anyway. this had better not change lol) and the story seems designed entirely around wish fulfillment as well: you play as someone who is building a resistance movement against a fascist government - saving people in the process - and so far there are never any moments that feel to me like they were designed to cause pain or to make the player feel disempowered/weak/etc.

there isn’t too much talking or emotional stuff either - the game mostly gives me just enough context and atmosphere and then it’s straight into the game, which I love

also I discovered that in the options menu you can slow the game speed down. there isn’t a proper real-time-with-pause feature, but this has been good enough for me. I use the slow motion option liberally whenever I feel overwhelmed (I barely play RTSes and I have trouble even controlling the camera lol. imagine those “I taught my 80-year-old grandma to play Skyrim” videos but it’s me trying to do anything in Starcraft)

as much as Blizzard sucks (and I wish them a slow death), the sad thing is that they had (pre-Overwatch) a really unique approach to game design that I like a lot. I like a lot of their games, and I think their approach to storytelling, atmosphere, worldbuilding, etc. is perfect for me

I need some urgent #Linux help. I ran updates on Manjaro... having forgotten about the dropping of x11 support AND nVidia dropping my graphics card's support (GTX 1070 Mobile). The result... the boot text stops at CUPS (I disable the splash. I hate the splash). I can go to tty. startplasma-wayland does work, with issues.
I don't even know where to start to fix this. If I can get my login screen, and Second Life works, I'm not picky if it's x11 or wayland right now. I can fix other things later.