@Shivaekul aw thank you. yeah it’s pretty disappointing, but they still seem interested in finding some way for me to have a bike so I’m still hopeful

and yeah I think it would be! I could at least get to the nearest cluster of shops outside the huge expanse of suburbia I’m stuck in lol, and it’d be nice to have options of places to go and things to do

@trashwizard yeah I’m ngl I do love the soundtrack, and I love how Doomguy is shown in 2016. but yes omg 2016 is so punishing for no reason? like it forces you to get right up in enemies’ faces - which is a terrible idea - and then it punishes you for getting right up in their faces because that was a terrible idea. so glad I’m not the only one who didn’t like that game

@Shivaekul to be honest my units still regularly trap each other and it’s terrible lol - I wish they would at least move out of each other’s way. but omg I’m glad it’s not just me somehow not being good enough at controlling them. I really really wish Starcraft 2 had pauseable real-time! that would dramatically help me play it. I might just play with cheats tbh

@passocacornio ohhh that makes a lot more sense lol. yeah he probably wanted to know if I was going to use it off-road or if I wanted it to be able to go really fast for a race or something

@raeaw ohh omg interesting! he did mention commuting as one of the options but when I hear “commuting” I think “going to and from work 5 days a week” so that didn’t sound right to me - but it’s good to know that that was the right one to say

@codingcoyote yess omg I love the feeling of breezing through a Doom level - it’s so good. and I’ve heard really good things about BioShock 2 as well! I definitely couldn’t play it because of the story but it looks incredibly well-designed

@Shivaekul hehehe I’m glad it was funny!

unfortunately the bike is pretty much totaled - nearly every part needs to be replaced so it might not be worth the cost and effort of getting it working :/ but hopefully I can get some kind of transportation eventually!

I got a decrepit old bicycle for Christmas this year (my family is weird about money) and brought it to a bike repair place and the guy asked me “what do you plan to use this bike for?”

and I was so perplexed by that question. eventually I said “I want to travel to places because the places that I want to go to are far away from me” and he looked equally perplexed by my answer. but like what did he expect me to say? it’s like asking what I’m going to use a refrigerator for

also, hot take but Doom 2016 is not a modernization of the gameplay of Doom ‘93. it has almost nothing in common with Doom ‘93 other than the fact that you move quickly and you don’t have to reload. Doom 2016 has a lot more in common with stylized dudebro shooters of the era like Bulletstorm

a lot of games that advertise themselves as “fast-paced” feel like they’re trying to force me into a flow state - by making it so that if I ever pause to catch my breath I’ll die (Ultrakill is a good example of this). but you can’t force a flow state - that’s just going to stress me out and make me quit. the way to get me into a flow state is to let me approach the gameplay at my own pace, and let me increase that pace over time as I gain mastery

the recent “Doom” games (2016 and on) are especially bad for this because they don’t just force you to play at a very fast pace - they also force you to play in a very specific way

don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed the Starcraft 2 campaign (until it started to get too stressful/hectic for me), but my enjoyment came more from the story and context than from the clumsy control scheme and the deliberately terrible unit AI

playing Starcraft 2 feels like commanding a squad of oblivious idiots with no sense of self-preservation, except your only means of communication is pointing and grunting

this is still my favourite digitigrade feature / pawpub extension
see also https://pawpub.entities.org.uk/extension/poke

@pseudonym yes omgg - especially when the “good” path was written with morals that I don’t agree with, but the evil path is so much worse

or like, in KOTOR1 you can scam a fascist slaver out of some money by pretending to be another fascist slaver, and your party members (including a member of the race that is being enslaved) will disapprove and say that you’re profiting off of the slavery (???) and you get dark side points for it

I think I’ve learned that I don’t like when a game gives me a Telltale-style choice because:

• it always feels like I don’t have enough information to make an informed choice (and if I did, it would probably become more like an objective puzzle rather than a subjective dilemma)
• some of these choices in games are traps (and others feel like traps but might not have been intended as traps), where there’s an objectively right answer and an objectively wrong answer and the game will shame or punish me for guessing wrong
• I often learn more information about the choice I’ve made after I’ve made the choice, which generally leads to regret
• since I don’t want to be shamed or punished for my choice, I try to think of ways around the dilemma instead - like out-of-the-box solutions that might solve the problem without any downsides. and then I get upset that I can’t do those instead

I think I really enjoy thinking about ethical dilemmas in shows like Star Trek but I don’t want to actually make them in a game and be held accountable for them lol - that’s not a good feeling at all

I found this to be a very interesting point regarding LLMs, like we all know the prices are kept low right now to try and promote adoption and that enshitification will occur, but I didn't think of how the lack of enshitification in terms of ux could be a draw for people seeking simplicity.

https://mastodon.online/@mwichary/115877369194217136

I made corned beef hash yesterday and I decided to switch it up a little and threw in some poblano peppers. I highly recommend! They are now going to be part of my standard recipie, the flavour works so much better than bell peppers and still brings that extra brightness and texture.

@liese aw omg thank you! I’d definitely appreciate that - both Java and C++ scare me lol