general gaming

[slim thorn]

oh man the combo system was so weird, there's no way you'd ever figure that out without googling it, and even after I couldn't get them to execute consistently and they weren't useful enough to bother

[wind stump]

at this point i should just skip to Dawn of Sorrow since it has Soma

aka
Man Who Rocks Up To A Shrine With A Fucking Knife

[toxic seal]

I'm loving the Steam girl featured in all the sale graphics

[static bluff]

It was a good run.

[bold sonnet]

I know nothing about real football, but I love this game, it's so fun even though I rarely score

I know what is offside and Lewandowski

Oh on recording they removed the voice. Must be copyrighted

[visual hill]

the episode 5 of Jazz Jackrabbit Doom came out for the holidays 🙂
https://www.moddb.com/mods/jazz-jackrabbit-doom-tc/downloads/ultimate-jazz-jackrabbit-doom-episode-5
(it's a total conversion of Doom with the Jazz Jackrabbit gameplay and universe)

[visual hill]

3D Zidane is impressive.

[bold sonnet]

Wait wait wait... you mean there is 5 jazz jackrabbit doom levels now? Do I have to have doom on PC or is it like just download and play?

[visual hill]

it needs Doom 2, however I believe it will work the same with Freedoom: Phase 2's IWAD

[bold sonnet]

On steam or something or not necessarily?

[visual hill]

it can be on Steam or GOG or anywhere

GZDoom will automatically detect existing Doom installations from stores

[green fulcrum]

This is the last one, at least for now. This is the last piece of art that the artist was contracted for, but the contract could be renewed in 2025. Lots of people love this girl.

[visual hill]

guess the game I just played online this evening 🙂 - there's still a Discord for it!

I never played it online before

[bitter stream]

Breakout? break... Car rally? it looks familiar but like, car racing game where you bash into the other cars though I don't recall th etitle

[visual hill]

the answer is ||1NSANE||

[smoky sonnet]

i imagine you were thinking of burnout c: very good series

[bitter stream]

yeah! burnout is good fun haha

[quartz pawn]

Are you part of a squadron?

[slim thorn]

"ultimate", pfff

[slim thorn]

oh f this room

ok the Death soul was really good in that room

[fresh bane]

Unrelated but I find it really funny now everytime I see a GBA game because I remember that awful tiktok about the guy who seems to hate any type of pixel art and finds pixel art to be objectively wrong because ''that's not how pixels looked like on CRTs!!!''

cue that pic of SOTN Dracula on a CRT vs a modern digital display that nobody ever shuts up about

[visual hill]

there's a legit argument for using a saturation correction shader in GBA emulation, considering games were made very saturated to account for the GBA's poor color reproduction

but I find the appearance of pixel art on modern displays fine as it is, as long as you use integer scaling

[fresh bane]

There is a legitimate argument about the way pixel art games on modern displays especially any games that may have utilized effects that need tweaking because they don't quite work on modern displays, but that one tiktok that got really popular really muddies the water because the guy goes on this rant about how the way we see pixel art games is actually not real because developers used and intended people to only see pixels through CRTs and any game that tries to do pixel art is doing it ''wrong'' because developers intended for pixels to look realistic

[slim thorn]

oof, this Balore boss is such a perfect example of what I mean about (even the best) Castlevanias having bad movement; even after I learn all of this boss' movement patterns it's just not possible to avoid all combinations of them consistently (especially when half the windups happen off screen), after gitting gud at the avoidable stuff I still have to either save state scum or pray he just chooses to miss me often enough

BUT WHO CARES IMMA BAT NOW

oh thank god Soma-bat's flying speed is 10x what Alu-bat's was

[dire gate]

||Daddy always better than son|| (story spoiler)

[craggy vine]

AC Unity is still a little buggy. It opened in about 100p for my sister for some reason.

Wow the game has the worst control system ever. You have one button for like 5 different things. And you can only jump when the gamr decides you can jump. You are at the mercy of what the game wants you to do.

[slim thorn]

cool dragon statues

hopefully none of them come to life

[quartz pawn]

2d Castlevania artwork always goes so hard

[slim thorn]

I've played enough of these now that this room immediately hits all the nostalgia

I was not prepared for the Helluva Boss crossover

[fresh bane]

SMT reference

[fresh bane]

but is it a dragon or a wyvern gets booed off the server

[slim thorn]

ok, that's this new area fully explored, bad(?) ending time

Nire — Yesterday at 7:28 PM
[...] while playing Blasphemous I never thought "this feels like Castlevania" personally [...]

meanwhile, Castlevania:

now to see if I can figure out the true ending conditions on my own just by exploring more

I'm guessing it involves these Ancient Books, just found #3

demon from hellfires, King of Bats, beautiful nightmare, I think I have 2/3 of those

[bitter stream]

oooh good luck

[slim thorn]

in fact typing that out made me realize ||I thought it was just about collecting 3 specific souls, but if there are 3 books then it's probably also asking me to equip them. Especially since the souls I'm pretty sure 1 and 2 refer to go in my 1st and 2nd slots.||

[slim thorn]

welp, had to look up the waterfall "puzzle", never would've gotten that in a million years

hm

I'm gonna look up soul 3 because it strongly feels like it was a random drop I just wasn't lucky with

ah, ok, it is ||succubus||, and I simply didn't get a lucky drop from those

is it just me or does he look like a Death Note character now?

[bitter stream]

oh yeah, I can see the resemblance

complete with spooky eyes

[quiet swift]

A bit, yes

[slim thorn]

that fight was almost great but wow he has way too much HP lol

||I only used a save state on the phase transition, legit enough for me||

[fresh bane]

I love how his hair magically becomes messier and wavier out of nowhere just to fit the evil aesthetic

I do think it's an interesting concept to || technically play as the villain/antagonist || but I don't know enough about the game to know if they do anythng interesting with that concept

[slim thorn]

one can only presume there's a great deal of overlap between chaotic energy pouring into your soul and touching a van der graaf generator

[slim thorn]

imo the most interesting thing they've done with it is ||have a whole boss fight with a previous game's protagonist where he uses all the moves from that game against you||, see previous screenshot

well, I guess it's also the in-universe justification for the entire system of absorbing enemy souls and equipping them as active/passive abilities, which as everyone says is a strength of this specific game

[fresh bane]

Ah so that's who that is

[slim thorn]

hm, I feel like this is probably all fairly standard stuff for an endgame build of a near-100% playthrough? especially the equipment since those are just objectively better than anything else I picked up

[slim thorn]

ah, true ending credits have everyone at the end of the credits, not just Mina and Soma

glad I played that, I have to agree with the general consensus that this is probably the single best Castlevania

[fresh bane]

I'd give it a try again, but I fear I'll just drop it and not get into it just like all the other times

[slim thorn]

oh yeah if you've already tried it there's no point lol

it doesn't have a particularly slow start or anything, the movement does get zippier later on when you get the OP abilities, but the overall feel of combat and exploration is consistent throughout

[fresh bane]

I've tried multiple times in the past, I got the furthest into Order of Ecclesia but even with that one I reached a certain point where I was mindlessly playing and not really paying attention and I realized I just wasn't super getting into it so I thought I better not force it

I also tried playing through the remake of Castlevania 1 one time which was even worse because classic Castlevania is even stiffer with the controls

[slim thorn]

yeah, I gave Rondo of Blood a pass on the stiffness because it's a linear arcade-ish game so it doesn't need to be as flexible as a metroidvania

part of SotN's weirdness was still having the classic/stiff arcade controls in a non-linear environment

[fresh bane]

Oh I meant Dracula X Chronicles not Rondo of Blood

but I guess it's the same thing

[slim thorn]

yeah I was making an assumption that all the pre-SotN Castlevanias are similar on that point

[fresh bane]

the plan was to finish Dracula X Chronicles first which unlocks the remastered PSP version of Symphony of the Night and then play that but I didn't really get that far on the game before I dropped it

[slim thorn]

(though iirc Dracula X does offer Rondo as an unlockable? still Rondo's only official western release)

right, so my plan after I watched that every-Castlevania-game video was to play RoB, SotN, AoS, then the Bloodstaineds, and that would be enough Castlevanias to satisfy myself that I know what I'm talking about even if I don't find any new favorites

so next time I dip into this side of the genre it'll probably be Bloodstained: Circle Curse of the Moon

[fresh bane]

Isn't there another "of Sorrow" game or is it a spin-off/not canon/unimportant game situation?

I've heard mixed things about Curse of the Moon specifically

[slim thorn]

Dawn of Sorrow is the next game after Aria, also about Soma Cruz, on the DS instead of GBA

[fresh bane]

Oh wait, sorry, CIRCLE of the moon, the other GBA Castlevania,not the Bloodstained game

[slim thorn]

way way back when I was a teenager, Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin were the only two Castlevanias I ever played, mostly because when the DS was new I felt like trying all the highly reviewed launch titles (this also included things like my first ever Kirby game, and the then-new Trauma Center series)

[fresh bane]

Some people say it's either super good, others say it's really bad, and I never bothered to look it up lol

Right it's one of the DS ones

[slim thorn]

I even did the strikethrough "circle"

[fresh bane]

I can't keep up with all these sub titles, what happened to a good old 1 2 3 naming convention?

[slim thorn]

ironically I strongly prefer subtitles for most series, especially when they're only loosely related

[fresh bane]

The funny thing is, that specific Bloodstained game is the opposite of what I said, I heard it's actually really good and some people say it's actually even better than the other Bloodstained game

[slim thorn]

one of the few things I know about the Bloodstaineds is that Curse and Ritual are very different, to the point it's worth committing to trying both, as one won't tell me if I'd like the other

[slim thorn]

@green fulcrum

1. the "Spyro Reignited Trilogy" on Steam is the optimal way to play Spyro, right?
2. would you be interested in watching me play them? (I've never played them before)

[green fulcrum]

1. Personally, I'd say yes overall, however there's also that classic charm you get from playing the originals too, and in some ways the originals have slightly better enemy design (some of the enemies in the Reignited Trilogy get censored, removing their guns and more serious faces and replacing them with far inferior weapons that functionally act the same in gameplay but are so much less menacing in design).

2. I'd be interested to see it, yes. It's always fun seeing someone new experience one of my favorite franchises for the first time. That said, unless you're recording them for YouTube, me watching them depends on what time you stream them, because some days I just won't be able to.

[slim thorn]

yeah, that's part of why I'm asking in advance

I assume "right after it finishes installing" will be a bad time for NA time zones so I'm guessing I'll start that "tomorrow"

[green fulcrum]

Not a good time tomorrow either, I've got night shifts until the 29th.

[slim thorn]

cool, then tomorrow I'll focus on my other games like Crypt Custodian

[gaunt marten]

Hell yeah Spyro

The Reignited Trilogy is pretty good and has modern quality of life

But it's missing some of the artistic genius that made the original so pretty, especially the skyboxes

Also, there are bugs that can prevent you from finishing the game if your FPS is above 30 or above 120. You can bypass both classes of bugs by setting vsync on and setting FPS to unlimited

It has bad frame pacing issues that can cause certain sweeping camera movements to feel choppy regardless of your hardware. Exclusive Fullscreen alleviates that a bit

(but you probably won't mind either way)

[slim thorn]

indeed, I would not be surprised if I don't even notice that

[gaunt marten]

One of the FPS bugs causes a wall to block your way to never come down

[green fulcrum]

Never experienced any of the vsync or FPS bugs, though I did get some weird lighting and shadow glitches when I first played the game. A quick reset later and it was fixed.

[gaunt marten]

If your FPS is set to exactly 30 you will not run into them

If vsync is on and FPS is unlimited you will also not run into them

[green fulcrum]

As for the skyboxes, yeah, I wish they had done a better job at giving those a modern look, but what we did get was still very pretty. Autumn Plains is especially stunning.

[green fulcrum]

Mine was 60ish and I didn't run into them

[gaunt marten]

Best read the next line then

[green fulcrum]

Ah

[gaunt marten]

The new skyboxes ARE modern. They're pretty too. They're just not artistic genius like the originals

[green fulcrum]

Yeah, fair.

I still think Reignited is the definitive version of the trilogy, especially if you want all three games in one place, but I do encourage people to play the originals too if they can.

The original Spyro 2 will always hold a very special place in my heart.

Especially since it was effectively my very first console game

[slim thorn]

I'm proooooobably not going to give this series the RE treatment where I bounce between originals and remakes on a game-by-game basis

[green fulcrum]

Yeah fair

[slim thorn]

especially if the lost part is "just some skyboxes", we can compare screenshots as I get to them

[gaunt marten]

I got you

https://imgur.com/gallery/spyro-dragon-skyboxes-ripped-using-spyroworld-viewer-vocZw

[green fulcrum]

They're pretty much identical when it comes to gameplay.

[slim thorn]

I figured one of you would but not that fast lol

[green fulcrum]

Maybe a tiiiiiny bit more floaty in the remakes, but not enough to make it an issue.

Oh, there actually is one change I genuinely didn't like. Nothing to do with gameplay.

[gaunt marten]

Replaced bullets from enemies with guns with purple squishy jello

Made me sad they didn't stick to the original

[green fulcrum]

I can excuse the gun and bullet censorship, whatever. But the change I'm referring to is in the Spyro 2 remake, the Zephyr level. The Romeo and Juliet mission. In the original you get a f*cking funny scene where, after all the ordeals you go through to reach her, you discover that Juliet has a very...shall we say "manly" voice, but she was still a girl. In the remake they changed her to a generic pretty girl voice.

That bothered me, because now the humor was lost.

[gaunt marten]

Lmao

[slim thorn]

considering my entry to the PS2-era colorful animal platformers was Ratchet & Clank, guns getting censored in a remake 20 years later sounds absolutely buckwild

[gaunt marten]

In the original, the bullets were yellow triangles that moved at the same rate as the purple jello triangles

[green fulcrum]

Well, Spyro was always more kid-friendly than R&C

[gaunt marten]

In the remake the jello bullets were shiny and when they hit something they broke into bits

[green fulcrum]

But back in the 90s, kids loved guns, and parents were less concerned about it.

[light gate]

Ratchet & Clank is so much fun, honestly I wished they’d update the originals like they did on the PS3 versions. Not the remake. Not that its bad mind you.

The originals really have their moments.

https://youtu.be/Jq0wiSOBCf0?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/yghHCmlfimE?feature=shared

Another one that’s really good.

[craggy vine]

pfff these are so awesome

[green fulcrum]

"So why aren't you on one?"
"Socioeconomic disparity."

That's some advanced humor right there.

[light gate]

Its still brutally relevant

[slim thorn]

I've noticed a lot of kids' media uses the trick of <words adults will understand> whenever they can chain it into a joke that makes it natural to follow up with "oh, that means <insert simple English wikipedia summary>"

[light gate]

I do appreciate Rift Apart being good at least, might not have LOL moments all the time but there are still some great ones. Like the lack of printed instruction manuals.

Or how “it wasn’t in the contract” & among other things.

[craggy vine]

I really want to try rift apart, it seems so interesting

[light gate]

You should

[slim thorn]

playing Rift Apart felt just like when I played R&C 1-3 as a kid, just with modern graphics and gasp a girl lombax (feels like we're a decade or two late to that trend but tbh still welcome)

[craggy vine]

I should~

I also definetly appeciate a game like it in modern gaming, where games like it feel much less common now.

[slim thorn]

depends on exactly what you mean by that, personally my interest in colorful kid friendly platforming was almost entirely covered by A Hat in Time

[craggy vine]

A Hat in Time is fairly old by now though

[slim thorn]

oh no are we doing generation gaps again

it's still less than a decade old! that counts as modern!

[light gate]

Rivet rocks

[craggy vine]

But we have also had Psychonaughts 2, and also the spyro and and the crash bandicoot remakes

[craggy vine]

To be honest I actually thought it was older then that, I remember it as being like a 2012 game for some reason

Now I gotta check what year it is from

[green fulcrum]

I think it's "Psychonauts", as in astronaut.

[slim thorn]

I had to check since I play so many games long after they come out, but AHiT was 2017

[craggy vine]

Wow a hat in time is 2017.. How the fuck did I think it was so much older

[light gate]

I played AHiT so much

[slim thorn]

I'm pretty sure Aria of Sorrow was actually old

[craggy vine]

I thought I remembered it as being a game from when I was a young teen, but no it's actually fairly modern I guess

[slim thorn]

maybe because it feels like a Mario game from the early 00s?

[light gate]

Although AHiT does have a bit of rough edges. I occasionally managed to escape the map.

Or broken triggers.

I still fully recommend though.

[slim thorn]

never had that stuff happen in normal gameplay

[light gate]

Probably was because I played the stuff on release

[slim thorn]

oh yeah that would do it

[craggy vine]

I should buy a bunch of games tomorrow, load up my steam library with a bunch of new games

[slim thorn]

on some level that's just "yes it's a video game", they all have bugs that some players experience on release which get fixed later; bugs that matters to new players are the rarity

I even hit a bug or two in Nine Sols that's been fixed since

[gaunt marten]

A Hat in Time is super buggy

It's better now but still breaks a lot

[craggy vine]

What is a hat in time like? I haven't looked into the game much but I have seen a bit of it

[light gate]

It also runs bad if you have a funny cpu.

Lot of single core usage.

[slim thorn]

imo the easiest way to pitch it is to joke that A Hat in Time is one of the best 3D Mario games, because that is very close to the overall vibe

[light gate]

True.

[craggy vine]

ooh I see. I've never been in to mario games so I don't know if I would like it much then.

[slim thorn]

just slightly smaller than Odyssey

[light gate]

I missed out on playing Mario 64 as a kid (with the exception of the DS port… the less we talk about that… the better…) so AHiT filled that void for me.

[hushed onyx]

What does "basically do estus flasks" mean in this context?

Bearing in mind that I've never played a Souls game

[light gate]

R&C also helped but that game typically is somewhat more straight forward.

[hushed onyx]

I know that estus flasks do healing, but I don't know what about them is "special" that it would deserve a call-out (versus healing consumables in general, for example)

[gaunt marten]

Estus flasks are refilled upon getting to a rest site

They are not permanently lost

[slim thorn]

So, mechanically, what's special about Dark Souls estus flasks is that they're a fixed number of healing potions that you always spawn with, and you (mostly) do not get refills for them until you die or rest at a checkpoint (which respawns enemies). This is as opposed to games where you either take health from enemies, or buy "consumable" health potions that can stack indefinitely but also each one you drink once and it's gone forever regardless of respawns.

[gaunt marten]

You can also increase your capacity to hold them!

Using these mechanisms, the game designers can control how much health you have more strictly

And thus make the gameplay better balanced

[slim thorn]

it also eliminates the usual incentive to hoard items without using them; in a game where you have 5 estus flasks, that's just how much health you have to get to the next checkpoint, no reason not to spend them when you're running low

[gaunt marten]

There's also a common element where they take time to use, meaning you need to be smart about finding openings in the middle of a battle

This results in better strategic depth

[slim thorn]

yeah, that's part of what makes it more interesting than simply giving the player a 5x longer health bar

[gaunt marten]

You read my mind

[slim thorn]

Blasphemous, Ender Lilies, PoP The Lost Crown, Nine Sols all do the estus flask mechanic but call it something else, probably others I'm forgetting

[gaunt marten]

Hollow Knight

[slim thorn]

nah Hollow Knight doesn't do estus flasks, it's one of the games where you get energy/mana from hitting enemies and then convert that into heals

[gaunt marten]

Hollow Knight does it a bit differently, but it has mostly the same implications

The actual difference is you don't need to go to rest sites as much as you need to be careful not to get hit more than you deal damage

[slim thorn]

well, the HK system means theoretically infinite healing, but sure you can't stockpile potions so some of the implications are shared

[gaunt marten]

Bloodborne does it sorta like Hollow Knight

Where upon taking damage, you can strike quickly to recover most of the HP you lost

[slim thorn]

yeah, HK-style "soul" healing is the 2nd most common these days; Bo, Pseudoregalia and Rusted Moss all do that

and in most of those games the energy can also be spent on spells/special attacks instead of healing

[craggy vine]

I remember watching a friend play that on their DS and doing glitches

[light gate]

I remember liking it.

But…

The dpad controls SUCK

[craggy vine]

oh yeah totaly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isxVfl7jH-4 Also I'm watching video at the moment, it is so interesting

Idk why the embed just got deleted but it is called "Why V works and the Sole Survivor doesn't"

[gaunt marten]

Embed works for me

[hushed onyx]

Works for me, too.

[craggy vine]

It is a little weird comparing Fallout 4 to Cyberpunk but I guess it is showing examples of roleplaying

[gaunt marten]

The DS port of Mario 64 was pretty good, IMO

[craggy vine]

Oh yeah I refreshed discord and the embed worked lol

I thought a bot may have deleted it, cause it appeared for a second and then went away

[slim thorn]

why is it weird?

[craggy vine]

I just feel like Fallout 4 and Cyberpunk are both quite different games. They are both roleplaying games though, but the story and how they are played are very different.

[slim thorn]

I guess, to me they're both open world, AAA, RPGs, with a player character highly customized by the player, so it seemed natural to me

[craggy vine]

Yeaah you are right yeah

[slim thorn]

one of the Dragon Ages or Mass Effects or Elder Scrollses would've also been a natural comparison there (without even branching out to other companies lol)

[craggy vine]

They are actually a bit more similar then I initially thought yeah

I just in general feel like fallout 4 and cyberpunk are very different in gameplay. I like both of the games, but for different reasons.

[slim thorn]

yeah, even within a single subgenre the individual games can vary a lot

(and we generally want them to)

[craggy vine]

Yeaah. I guess same with how Skyrim is very different to Fallout 4 in a lot of ways despite being probably in the same sort of genre of games.

[slim thorn]

like I know I was just saying all metroidvanias these days have one of two different healing mechanics, and that's mostly great because estus flasks are a great mechanic, but there are exceptions to that rule which I think worked well (e.g. Laika simply doesn't have healing because everything's a one-hit kill, and within the context of that game's unique movement and combat systems that actually works very well)

[craggy vine]

I see yeah

[slim thorn]

and one aspect of Hollow Knight that interestingly nobody seems to be copying is how each new area will refuse to let you map it until you organically discover the NPC who will give you a map to start filling in; there's still a lot of debate over whether or not that's a good thing even for HK

[gaunt marten]

Because it fucking sucks

[slim thorn]

behold: debate

[light gate]

Oh this sucks

[slim thorn]

[light gate]

One of the reasons I stopped playing

Eugh

[gaunt marten]

There are games where you map the world as you play, games where you find maps filled in, games with no maps at all, and games where you automatically have maps

The Hollow Knight way to go about it is the worst of all

[slim thorn]

I shall continue to remain neutral on this point

[gaunt marten]

My favorite manual mapping style is Etrian Odyssey

Where at any time you can start to draw a map and mark it

[slim thorn]

any chance you know a video that would demonstrate it?

it's pretty standard for metroidvanias now to let the player put custom markers on the map (even HK had those) in addition to the map automatically filling in places you visit, so I'm not sure how that's different exactly

[gaunt marten]

No. I played it years ago on the DS

The difference is the map is not drawn for you

You are given a grid that you have to draw lines in to distinguish rooms

[slim thorn]

okay you did literally mean drawing the map

I could see the appeal of that when there's a touch screen handy

[gaunt marten]

Yep!

And you can't draw badly because it's a grid of square rooms

[craggy vine]

That randomly made me think.. I want pc games that have support for touch screens

Something where they use a toucscreen in a unique way

[gaunt marten]

Crystal Project does it like Hollow Knight, where the map is filled in as you explore, but you have to find or buy the map in order to see it

Difference is this is made optional, and you can configure the game to start with all maps, so you just automatically map the world instead

This is the official map making demonstration for Etrian Odyssey 3 https://youtu.be/xov7QHW8jww

With EO, you can place icons, write-in annotations, plan an automatic route and execute it

It's basically the best game around in terms of manual mapping

[slim thorn]

oh right, Atlus made games that aren't Persona

[craggy vine]

I just checked this guy's channel and realized he has this one video at 700,000 views and then a lot of others at under 1000, even under 500.

[slim thorn]

thanks, that is a great demonstration

I do see the appeal of this but I assume it heavily depends on the game whether "literally draw it yourself" would be immersive or tedious

[gaunt marten]

It's both

The one I played was pretty hardcore. The map making was fun enough that I wanted to keep doing it. At the time I wasn't good enough at videogames to make progress, so I stopped

[slim thorn]

meanwhile the placing map markers part is pretty standard now, to the point games get criticized for not having that (Bo )

and Lost Crown even had that feature to attach screenshots to the in-game map, I hope that becomes more common

[gaunt marten]

Oh yeah that one was cool

Steam actually has a notes feature where you can write down notes and pin them to the game or browse them through the steam overlay

It does need polish like allowing you to add pictures and embed videos

[craggy vine]

Very good feature

Does anyone here recommend a good headset for gaming? My current setup for talking in discord and in games is very annoying and I just want to get a bluetooth headset that is convenient to use.

[static bluff]

What is your budget

[craggy vine]

I haven't decided on a budget. But I want something that sounds very good and has good mic quality, while doing bluetooth.

My current headphones are Beyer Dynamic DT 770 Pros, which I will still use for general listening. I just want these for doing voice stuff in discord and games.

[static bluff]

These are wireless and of good enough quality IMHO. SteelSeries Arctis 7P+ Wireless Gaming Headset – https://a.co/d/bdqa18g

[slim thorn]

(fwiw, personally I go with a wired headset)

[static bluff]

I do as well.

[craggy vine]

I don't want wired specifically because of how inconvient it would be for what I want. I can't go USB or USB C or else I need to go into dongle city to use it on my rog ally, plus at my desktop I would have the cable going behind me to my left, because of where I put my devices when I am docking them to my desktop setup, plus then adds a huge risk of accidently pulling them down onto the ground.

I want to be able to conveniently use it with discord at my desktop (without having to spend 10 minutes setting up my microphone and standing and then setting stuff up with my big mixer) and be able to conveniently connect to my rog ally and play easily

Plus I already have wired headphones for my more pro audio listening

[craggy vine]

Does this support bluetooth at all?

I really want bluetooth, otherwise I gotta use dongles in order to use this and charge at the same time

[static bluff]

Most people say bluetooth when they really mean wireless.

audio over bluetooth is garbage

[craggy vine]

It is fine

Especially for what I want it for

[static bluff]

I have no other suggestions for you. Good luck!

[craggy vine]

I just want convenience. If I want quality, I'll set up a studio microphone and use my studio headphones.

Gah

I don't think what I want even exists

I can't find any good gaming headsets that use bluetooth

Which means I am stuck with setting up a whole pro audio mic every time I want to do discord at my desk and stuck using the shitty rog ally built in mic to do it while gaming on that

Another question then too... Does anyone know how to choose a specific input on discord? Discord only shows the device and not the input. 'Soundcraft Ui24' has 32 inputs into the computer on it. I think discord just listens to input 1 and 2 but that is my desktop audio out, I need it to listen to input 11.

Perhaps there is some app that works on linux and MacOS to make virtual devices that I link to exactly which input I want?

Unless I also just use my old audio interface and get around this issue, just can't use my speakers then.

[wind stump]

it so pretttyyyyy

[arctic fern]

Paper mario! Yes

Ttyd remake

[gaunt marten]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2276830/Kingsvein/

Steam

Kingsvein

All contact with the city of Kingsvein has been lost. As Wisp Slayer, your role is to investigate and exterminate whatever evil lurks there.Adventure through the castle and its outer reaches as you see fit - secret treasures and skulking beasts hide around every corner! Dynamic, deep, and challenging tactical combat - toss your enemies into spik...

Price

$14.99

Recommendations

223

▶ Play video

Interesting game

[dire gate]

I've been recently playing Granblue Fantasy: Relink, bought it during this winter sale

feels decent by far, I've been playing the original mobile game for 10 years at this point so the setting is extremely familiar with me(although the genre is different)

[gaunt marten]

I was about to ask if it's too mobile pilled

[dire gate]

Relink itself is a totally standalone console game

[little badger]

https://fixupx.com/epicgames/status/1872674141913968673?

[wind stump]

good thing i bought the second one, lmao

[little badger]

But imagine if it was the second one that was free

[umbral zinc]

god how does one manage to beat a Slay the Spire game

i been told it's quite easy but i got crushed again and again

i might have a skill issue building decks

[static bluff]

I wouldn't call Slay the Spire easy for new players. It's easy once you've learned all the monsters and understand the cards well.

Just remember - Go for as many relics as possible, which means boss fights

[gaunt marten]

Slay the Spire is super hard if you've played no games in the genre

[static bluff]

Yes, that too!

[gaunt marten]

It's fine once you learn it

[umbral zinc]

i bought it because Balatro activated a neuron in my head that loves card games

and i've been a fan of rogue-like stuff for years now

so yeah STS is like my second deck-builder game

(or third if Rogue Legacy counts, even tho you don't have a deck but you have to choose your skills)

[gaunt marten]

I can offer advice if you can tell me what you struggle with the most

[visual hill]

I'm playing Reignited and find it pretty good

[umbral zinc]

right now the strategy that worked for me is going full strength cards and drawing cards so i can make like +200 damage each turn

[gaunt marten]

For general advice, I recommend:
1- Don't add any cards unless they're better than the average of your deck.
2- Don't focus too hard on one archetype

[visual hill]

there are concerns about lighting not matching the original but I'm fine with it

[gaunt marten]

Don't do a "strength build"

Do a build that uses strength and other things too

[visual hill]

120 FPS works great except in Alpine Ridge, decrease to 30 FPS before entering the level (or die after changing it)

that wizard is just a fervent defender of 30 FPS gaming. 👀

[gaunt marten]

Going over 120FPS can cause sliding issues

[visual hill]

I used 144 on my TV and it was alright

(my living room TV is faster than my PC's TV)

[craggy vine]

hm yes

[eager bane]

Ally!

[visual hill]

I installed Moonlight on my LG G4 so I can stream directly from it (without needing to tether a PC or phone to it), but it only displays 60 Hz 😦

too bad, because it works quite well otherwise. The input stream is 1080p120 with AV1 and HDR and it has zero drop-outs (the TV is right next to a Wi-Fi 6 router)

the latency would be quite a bit lower if the TV actually displayed the full 120 FPS

I have a fiber optic HDMI cable that goes from my PC to the TV, but I need to physically disconnect it from the graphics card to use my main display again, since the graphics card only has one HDMI port. (DisplayPort adapters don't support VRR, so I would prefer not using it if possible)

I might try the DP adapter I have as a last resort

[faint oriole]

No, why

you guys have one?

[quartz pawn]

Yes. We have the Equestrian Naval Fleet.

[faint oriole]

Sign me up

How?

[true maple]

there's a link pinned in #1032728478782586990

[gaunt marten]

http://discord.gg/spacehorse

[rugged flax]

(Sorry Benni )

[quartz pawn]

lmao it's good.

[arctic fern]

Aboose

[wind stump]

(But I approov)

[faint oriole]

Thanks

Joined

[wind stump]

what the fuck is this room

[gaunt marten]

Made for you to grind with a piercing weapon

[wind stump]

oooh, nice drop

BONY BOIS

[river veldt]

#Witcher3- Geralt needs a sandwich or something he's like super skinny

do witchers have super fast metabolism or something

[arctic fern]

Well he's doing so much physical exercise

So

[gaunt marten]

Physical exercise is surprisingly awful at helping you lose weight

It would make you muscular and healthy but not thin

[green fulcrum]

He does a lot of running though, which does help you lose weight, as I can attest to (as can many people in the military and worldwide).

[gaunt marten]

Running burns 560 to 1040 calories an hour

It's fine if you can run for an hour, but it's far easier to cut that many calories by eating less

[fresh bane]

Regardless of whether it's easier to lose weight through diet vs exercizing, exercizing and cardio still burns calories and helps the process even if it's more benefitial in other areas (like cardiovascular health)
plus Geralt is a superhuman so I bet he has more stamina than a regular person (and also probably higher calorie intake requirements, but this is magic stuff so who knows)

[river veldt]

geraldo

[fresh bane]

more importantly though if you wanna see a skinny Geralt just look at him in Witcher 1

[river veldt]

oml

[cerulean herald]

are the witcher games standalone-ish or is it best to play all 3 of them to follow stuff better

[fresh bane]

The answer I've come across the most is that it's fine to jump straight into Witcher 3

[green fulcrum]

There is some stuff that carries over from Witcher 2 to Witcher 3, including some plot points, but it isn't really necessary to play 1 or 2 to play 3.

[fresh bane]

I think Witcher 2 probably requires context from Witcher 1 more than Witcher 3 requires vital context from 1-2

but I'm pretty sure it obviously doesn't mean nothing from 1 and 2 are brought up or important in 3

[uneven epoch]

thing is they kinda, well, just straight up ignore or retcon some stuff in 3 from the other two games, bc it would fuck shit up so to speak if you want background knowledge you like, may as well read the books too

so yeah the general consensus is "you'll b fine"

[slim thorn]

As far as deciding what to play, all 3 games should be treated as standalone things. While there is continuity and technically even save file carryover between them, the main quests are very separate, and actually doing the save file thing will mostly just annoy you at all the ways choices un-matter between games.

[cerulean herald]

I see, was pondering if I should try the Witcher
3 is like the one ppl talk about mostly, so I wondered if it was not super necessary to play the prior games then

[slim thorn]

it’s very not necessary

2 and 3 are both good but in very different ways so which to recommend depends on what you like

2 is my favourite because it’s imo the best written, in particular one of the best games I’ve ever seen at meaningful narrative choices

3 is an open world game, and does a great job of being a believable rendition of the Northern Kingdoms with tons of great side quests and gorgeous locales, but that non-linearity comes with the usual downsides of a huge open world like repeated quests and a less focused story and the like

A lot of people will tell you the combat is unplayable in one or the other, but I found it was okay in both; not as good as I’d like but never an obstacle to finishing any story stuff I cared about.

oh, right, this kinda follows from what I just said but it's worth explicitly mentioning that W2 was maybe ~25 hours for me, while I have 130 hours for just one playthrough of W3 (including DLCs); 3 is big

[visual hill]

fy_pool_day in Deus Ex multiplayer

[dense crypt]

deus ex multiplayer sounds janky

[fresh bane]

and i'm all for it

[visual hill]

What a shame.

[light gate]

Let the jank pile up in the streets…

[random steppe]

Ok listen, it's jank as fuck but you should consider it...the prologue is really bad but it gets a lot better once you get to chapter 1 and it's kind of cool seeing the locations and the references once you get to Witcher 3

That said, if the jank is too much they are apparently remaking it, at some point...we don't know when.

It's the one game that does darkness in caves really well...if you don't have a torch or a cat potion, you aren't gonna see shit, I love that.

[slim thorn]

cat is maybe the best potion in the series lol

[random steppe]

I'm gonna Nire the shit out of the remake when it comes out, by pointing out how the first was clearly better, just you wait

[river veldt]

oh they're remaking it

?

[random steppe]

Yeah they announced that in 2022

But they were just starting then so it's gonna take a bit

[hushed onyx]

I assume you mean the Witcher 1...?

That's the only one I've played any of

[random steppe]

I played it twice

Completed I mean

I have very fond memories of it, especially the one model they have for all the old ladies in the game

[hushed onyx]

I got to like Chapter 4 and that was it.

[random steppe]

The sheer aura of this character model

[slim thorn]

I assume I would've been more impressed by W1 if I'd encountered it before W3 existed

[hushed onyx]

Yeah, when I played it the latest open-world game was Skyrim

Also I still think of Witcher 3 and the like as "those new games" I "might get to someday" (but probably not)

[slim thorn]

yeah, these days I'm more used to hearing Witcher 3 thrown into the pile of "traditional/pre-BotW open world games" along with most of Ubisoft's ACs and FCs

[random steppe]

I think I'm like, one of the 3 people that played Witcher 1 in preparation for playing W2, and then was absoltely let down by W2 becuase the gameplay felt so bad compared to 1 (I agree with Ix tho, the story is pretty exceptional)

[hushed onyx]

FCs?

[slim thorn]

Far Cries

Crys?

[hushed onyx]

What's special about Breath of the Wild, except for being Zelda?

[slim thorn]

for a lot of people BotW was the first AAA open world game in a long time that recaptured that magic open worlds are supposed to have and didn't feel like just another big map riddled with icons we don't care about

whether it deserves that reputation is a big debate of course, but that is where it sits historically (even for me personally, surprisingly)

[random steppe]

To my understanding BotW just understand that you can't tell a player where everything is, an expect the exploration to be engaging

[hushed onyx]

I still think of Breath of the Wild as being "that new Zelda game" 👴

[slim thorn]

BotW/TotK certainly did a far better job of getting you to genuinely explore the in-game world instead of always blindly autopiloting to icons/waypoints like W3/FC/AC/etc

[hushed onyx]

I think you can tell here that my sense of "what's new in gaming" stopped about 2011 (not coincidentally when I started grad school...!) and hasn't really updated since.

[random steppe]

Yeah it's what ER also did, just gave player a map, kinda, with no icons and some stuff you could interpret from it and went "go ,you figure it out where everything is"

I thought I hated open world games, but I was wrong, I just disliked being told where everything was

[slim thorn]

this is also where I have to do my standard plug of small indie open worlds with more interesting movement than "set waypoint, hold direction, wait", such as A Short Hike and The Pathless and maybe Sable

[hushed onyx]

I should probably try to 100% A Short Hike sometime...but I'm in that thread, so I already get that from Rom, I don't need it from you, too

[gaunt marten]

The Pathless had too interesting movement

[slim thorn]

I thought I hated roguelites, and I was right, I just like Hades enough to override that

[green fulcrum]

I thought Hades was a dungeon crawler?

[slim thorn]

uh

well it's a procedurally generated dungeon sort of?

I mean it's certainly not Diablo-style progression

[green fulcrum]

Is it? I've never played it so I don't know.

[random steppe]

The funny thing about Hades is that variety wise it's not even that good of a rogue like

[slim thorn]

???

[random steppe]

That said, the stuff that it's there is very fun to play and doesn't try to be infinitely replayable, just a lot replayable

But you don't get as wild in variety of stuff you can find as you can in other titles in the genre

And the bosses are kind of fixed, there is not much varieyt in them

[slim thorn]

yeah that statement makes no sense to me unless we're defining "variety" in a way that ignores "these items are all useless" and "these 10 items are all the same" and similar issues with de facto/meaningful variety

[random steppe]

There aren't that many types of enemies in each floor either

[slim thorn]

ok fixed bosses is fair

actually this is probably exactly why Hades worked for me: quality (and balance?) over quantity

[random steppe]

It's okay because Hades doesn't really try to make the gameplay loop last for as long as other rogue likes

[slim thorn]

most roguelites will just roll a lot of bad runs that aren't any fun to play through and that's "expected"

[gaunt marten]

Hades has fixed rooms too!

[slim thorn]

ah, if my "134.6 hours" on Hades is considered "short" for a roguelite, then yeah, I'm never playing anything that's "long" by that genre's standards

most of the other roguelites I tried lost my interest in 1 or 2

huh, that's weirdly close to my "130 hours" on W3

[dire gate]

roguelitelite

[quiet swift]

Let's just say I've played it a fair bit

[slim thorn]

is there a way to ask Steam what my longest play times are

I'm pretty sure these 130s are up there for me (if we exclude the games I play randomizers of)

[quiet swift]

Your profile, recent activity, all recently played, then choose the all games tab and sort by playtime

[slim thorn]

ah, thanks

yep, if we rule out games I'm modding or play randomizers of, Hades and Witcher 3 are my longest play times

3rd and 4th are visual novel trilogies (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy and Zero Escape: The Nonary Games) so it's debatable whether those really count as playing "one" game for ~100 hours

then Death Stranding at 69.3 hours

[quiet swift]

I have 13 more games over 100 hours

(and then there's WoW, but that's not hours, that's years)

[slim thorn]

makes sense, I could never get into strategy games, and ER's another of those open worlds

[fickle garnet]

The only game I have over 100 hours on steam is gmod

[quiet swift]

I'm gonna screenshot the others, they're varied

[slim thorn]

also makes sense

[quiet swift]

I have gotten tired of the CK types and stellaris, but I know I'm gonna spend hours on civ 7

[slim thorn]

Hades 2 is probably the only one of those I'll play, and I dunno when I'll be in the mood for it

[quiet swift]

It's also not out of early access

[slim thorn]

yeah there's a good chance it'll be "released" by the time I am finally in the mood

[quiet swift]

My estimate will be late 2025 if not early 2026 (like, Jan)

[bold sonnet]

Like GTA 6

[slim thorn]

a lot of my favorite games had early access periods or kickstarters or whatever that I was totally unaware of until after I played the full game

[quiet swift]

Early access of Hades 2 felt really good, minus some balancing. They added a balance patch that had a few additions, then in October a content patch. Jan-feb 25 will get another big content patch and there'll be yet another in 25

1.0 will be after that but dunno how long those patches will take, and or last

[slim thorn]

is the story stuff equally good or is that harder to judge until they're close to 1.0?

[quiet swift]

Story's good so far! But those content patches are adding entire zones. It's actually a weird reverse of Hades 1

You have to go down to Tartarus through 4 zones, then there's also going up to the surface. Launch had two of those zones, recent patch had a 3rd and the 4th will be in the new years' patch

[gaunt marten]

Roguelites have highly variable length

[quiet swift]

Although I gotta say, I do like Zagreus better. I think there was more humor with him than in Hades 2

[gaunt marten]

What they do share is replayability, not actual length

Hades is one of the longest in terms of getting everything done. Most of the rest are actually pretty short, and you spend almost all of your playtime learning how to play them well

Or replaying them for the fun of it

[slim thorn]

ah, ok, that definitely tracks with my experience of bouncing off most of the others

[hushed onyx]

My longest played is Hearts of Iron IV: 1300-ish hours. Most of that in Equestria at War

I am not that great at Hearts of Iron IV

Next, Elite Dangerous, 918 hours. Also pretty bad at it.

Actually, Skyrim should have been next...993.7 hours between the OG and Special editions. Actually pretty decent at this one.

Actually I could keep going in this vein for a while, because almost all of my top games are games that I really am not good at.

I feel like some of these time figures are inflated based on how bad I am at a lot of these games...

[slim thorn]

I'm not particularly great at my favorite games either. To some extent I've just played enough metroidvanias that I can breeze through similar ones, but it's more like I hit my skill ceiling much faster than I would in other genres. I never came close to finishing Hollow Knight's "Godhome" DLC, for example.

[hushed onyx]

There's also the fact that I don't feel like I spent anywhere near the amount of time listed with some games, but that may be partially comparing to games where I know I did spend a lot of time with them.

(I won't argue at all with the Hearts of Iron IV figure, for instance)

[slim thorn]

(and there are plenty of times where that experience is a double-edged sword; Lost Crown and Nine Sols both involve a lot of parrying but the button is different, and the logic of when dodging is better than parrying is also different, so in both games I've caught myself making a mistake due to muscle memory from the other)

[hushed onyx]

The closest I have to that is Stellaris and Europa Universalis IV, where I spent a lot of time playing them at launch and for a while afterwards, but haven't played them very much for months or years while DLCs kept popping and updating mechanics.

Crusader Kings III also, to a lesser extent because younger.

[craggy vine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk2XM5o9uRs I am really loving how this thing is turning out.

[green fulcrum]

What's this game?

Oh, graphic adventure game. Never mind.

[slim thorn]

I think Crypt Custodian is the most "CaptainMario energy" game I've played in a long time. Super comfy, very low stakes plot, on the easy side as games I play go, you've seen the art style, and literally the overarching objective is just "make 10 friends".

[green fulcrum]

I love how we're now using Cap as a metric for game vibes.

[slim thorn]

case in point: the boss I just found apologized to me for starting a fight

[craggy vine]

I finally did it today... I made a public l4d2 lobby with all of my gameplay changing mods. It was funny seeing people being confused to why there were thousands of zombies flooding every part of the map

The never ending horde mod truly tests a team to how well they can stick together and help each other

[static bluff]

@random steppe Hi! I just got the first ending today. It was good. I had put the game down for a couple of years but was in the mood for an action RPG again, and this fit the bill. Anyway, I probably won't start on Ending B today (too busy), but I'm eager to keep going. Thanks for the suggestion all those years ago.

[random steppe]

Awesome, happy to hear about your impressions as you go ahead

[gaunt marten]

Obsolete gaming is only for old games no one wants to play

[craggy vine]

Boomer gaming

I get what you are saying though. Doom is old but I wouldn't call it obsolete, it still gets new mods to this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6tI1jcFKQs This is so good, covering things like cut content and theories on cyberpunk 2077

[wind stump]

amazing description

[static bluff]

Bazinga

[wind stump]

[bronze abyss]

afk clicker game

some sections were sloppy but eh

still not quite used to fighter,first playthrough on bandit was more fun

[wind stump]

somehow i'm not inclined to believe you

[bronze abyss]

bout what?

oh wait im braindead

[wind stump]

about this being an AFK game

[bronze abyss]

if you get good at parries,it p much is

[fickle garnet]

It's not

[quartz pawn]

I'm seeing a lot of Castlevania posting and it just makes me sad that they won't release Harmony Of Despair on PC.

[wind stump]

Well with the ports of the DS games, nothing is impossible... riiiiiight?

[slim thorn]

plus most of the Castlevanias aren't hard to emulate

oh HoD was for 7th gen consoles

[quartz pawn]

ye

[slim thorn]

ah this was that weird multiplayer one

ok fair I have no idea how emulation and multiplayer go together

[wind stump]

at the very least i appreciate the updated button prompts

No... Particular reason.

[slim thorn]

yeah... I still get tripped up when some random game uses B as the jump/select stuff/advance text button instead of A

which apparently included the GBA emu I was using for AoS

[sour hill]

Shoutout Ooze from Action 52

[slim thorn]

it's a lot of JP games in my experience

iirc the Final Fantasies also do that

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, the Japanese standard was right side button for confirm and bottom button for cancel

Western standard is bottom and top

[dire gate]

Balan Wonderworld had a genius solution for such problem

[gaunt marten]

The genius solution being you can't have bad controls if you don't have controls

[sour hill]

Action 52 wasn't a Japanese game, they were just being weird

[wind stump]

JONATHAN HELP MY BACK IS GOING TO GIVE OUT
nah you got this

[slim thorn]

I don't remember exactly how far I got in PoR but I'm fairly sure I didn't properly near-100% the map and get both endings like I did with AoS

[gaunt marten]

Yeah

[dire gate]

"You can't get confused if all 4 buttons do the exact same thing"

[slim thorn]

heck I probably missed an ending in DoS without even realizing it since the Castlevania ending conditions are so unhinted you'd never know without looking up that this is a trend they have

but I feel like the part of PoR where I decided I'd had enough Castlevania for a while and dropped it was a tricky boss fight with... I wanna say ||two girl vampires at once||? probably getting that mixed up with something else since it was decades ago

from Hc's map screenshots my gut feeling is Hc's not quite that far in yet

[dire gate]

DoS has 3 endings

AoS I think technically has 4

[slim thorn]

wait what

what are the other 2

[dire gate]

bad ending, normal ending, good ending, true good ending

[slim thorn]

or wait that's including the bad ending where you die to Chaos

ok what I know I got was a) beat Graham and just leave the castle, b) get to Chaos fight but die, c) defeat Chaos

which one did I miss?

[dire gate]

good ending has slightly different versions depending on if you have collected over 80% of souls

[slim thorn]

o

yeah f that lol

[wind stump]

I'm just about at the ooze pot boss

[slim thorn]

how many souls even are there

I'd guess I had 30-40 given how much scrolling I did when I was swapping souls

[wind stump]

Keremet

which i shanked to death

DOUBLE JUMP

[slim thorn]

is it an actual trend for Castlevanias to give you double jump super early compared to every other metroidvania

[wind stump]

okay that's cute

[dire gate]

[slim thorn]

nooooope

[dire gate]

112

[wind stump]

ah of course, i found a hidden item... it's a bathrobe... exclusive to Charlotte...

[dire gate]

I think 110 technically, I doubt the last 2 count

[wind stump]

she's 16.

[slim thorn]

so true true ending would be more than double the souls I got from playing normally

[wind stump]

stay classy Konami.

[slim thorn]

by Konami standards, it's progressive if they left out the jiggle physics

[wind stump]

then again there's demon maids with skull vacuums and i'm okay with that?
staaaay classy, hc.

[slim thorn]

I actually got some use out of the Persephone soul in AoS

[wind stump]

they don't drop souls in PoR
just puddings and dresses that sell for way more than they should

[slim thorn]

but the healing is a fixed +5 per "hit" so it was only useful for a relatively short time before Soma and the enemies scaled beyond it

I did think it was funny that of the <10 voiced lines in all of AoS, one of them was the demon maids saying youkoso

[dire gate]

I had to look up what PoR was, since it's not called as so in Japan

[wind stump]

[dire gate]

[slim thorn]

apparently Castlevania follows Zelda rules in that not a single subtitle is ever allowed to be a literal translation?

[dire gate]

(It's called Gallery of Labyrinth)

[slim thorn]

"Triforce of the Gods 2" = "Link Between Worlds" because reasons

[gaunt marten]

Triforce of the Gods 2 is such a terrible title

[dire gate]

Hey at least AoS and HoD are Castlevania in Japan too

(They are the only 2 mainline games titled "Castlevania" in Japan)

[slim thorn]

I guess AoS had a music word in both versions of the subtitle? though it makes both music words seem like they were selected at random

[dire gate]

I still struggle to understand why smash on switch is called Special in japan and Ultimate in other countries...

[dire gate]

Still better than Kirby Wii Deluxe (on Switch)

[wind stump]

swag

[slim thorn]

oh yeah, I did find a gun in AoS, but by the time I got to it its stats were rubbish compared to the swords I had

[wind stump]

this is peak design

is this non-linarity in MY metroidvania? (sub areas i've yet to visit)

oh my god the Skeleton Gunman drop is a spell

THAT SUMMONS SKELETONS

[visual hill]

There are 2 approaches to it: state synchronization-based netplay (for old consoles without online support) or using the console's online functionality for modern consoles. Sometimes, LAN-only functionality can be used over the Internet thanks to emulation. Many DS emulators can simulate Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (which is LAN only) over the Internet

Dolphin Wii is an interesting case because it supports both types of netplay

for Brawl, people prefer using state synchronization because it has lower latency than the official netcode (which works using Wiimfi)

Switch also has 3 networking types available (LAN, LDN, NSO) with the former two being usable in emulation. Some games support several of them too

the next time you play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, try pressing L + R + left stick on the main menu and see what happens 🙂

[quiet swift]

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/kill-knight-e981b3 free today

[fresh bane]

The reason why the word “special” was used is because he wanted to convey that the game is a special game. As to why it isn't called Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in Japan, Sakurai says “ultimate” is a word not very easy to read and distinguish in Japan.

Another name that they could have went with was Super Smash Bros. Deluxe, which would have a similar meaning to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Sakurai decided against using Deluxe as he wanted a word that is familiar to the Japanese. “Special” is often heard on television so people are familiar with it

[dire gate]

Yeah but it doesn't explain why they didn't just go with Special

[fresh bane]

Well because Ultimate was the name they wanted they just changed it for Japan

[bronze abyss]

in crescent grove rn,golems can straight up fucking one shot me

[dire gate]

They should've gone with Ultimately Special

[hushed onyx]

I mean you kind of asked for it

[fresh bane]

Fortunately nowadays less and less games have different titles in Japan or other regions vs english/internationally, I talked with Ixrec once about all the Zelda games and their completely different titles in Japan, some games I played as a kid also had completely different titles originally in japanese, the Naruto Ultimate Ninja series was actually called Naruto Narutimate Hero/Accel, the Budokai series was just DBZ, the Budokai Tenkaichi games were all Sparking, Sonic Unleashed was Sonic World Adventure (and of course, Resident Evil was Biohazard all along)

[slim thorn]

and this is all small potatoes compared to the series like Clock Tower or Kings Field where the numbers on later entries got changed in localization, making it impossible to tell which game anyone is talking about

[dire gate]

The infamous Final Fantasy 3/6

[slim thorn]

oh god I forgot early FFs did that

[bronze abyss]

oh yeah absolutely,im just surprised im only now one shot to anything

with bandit i was much more fragile through out the whole run,even when i invested in more HP

[wind stump]

God... DAMMIT Konami.

[fresh bane]

Yeah since Clock Tower 1 never came out outside Japan, Clock Tower 2 was advertised as just Clock Tower, and Clock Tower: Ghost Head/Struggle Within which was meant to be a spin off was advertised as Clock Tower 2

[wind stump]

this is very funny but i can't condone this

[bronze abyss]

pretty happy with how the character is looking rn

[hushed onyx]

Man I wish I had a Windows machine to actually play it 🙃

It's total furry bait, and I'm vulnerable

[bronze abyss]

i was recruited to this game by just being told "you should play it,it has deer butt"

[hushed onyx]

I saw an artist I follow playing it the other day, but I was aware of it before that because Angela and Sally have been appearing in furry art for a bit.

But until I saw him streaming it I didn't know anything about it except for Angela and Sally, and in fact thought Angela was the main character and that it was more like Psuedoregalia or something.

[bronze abyss]

angela

[hushed onyx]

Now I wish he was streaming Atlyss right now

[minor plover]

"I saw a battlecruiser, and battlecruisers beat empty bases, in case you guys didn't know that. Another legendary tip by uThermal."

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcjb14JWUw8

[wind stump]

LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH!~

Heyyyy, so that means this game (Portrait of Ruin) is a prequel to Aria of Sorrow!

[wind stump]

i did not abuse rng and you can't prove that.

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/fGJZ9p_Lp8Y?si=dVDbyrLrL2q5SvNn

[wind stump]

"Valve created a botnet to make lighting faster"

see this is why laymans explanations are good

[gaunt marten]

Not a botnet

[wind stump]

close enough

[gaunt marten]

It's as close to the truth as saying "Valve hires a bunch of murderers to work on their games."

[wind stump]

fair, i was just quoting a comment

[green fulcrum]

I mean, you never know.

Some of those headcrab zombie sounds in Half-Life 2 were quite disturbingly realistic.

[river veldt]

OH GOD HELP ME

[fresh bane]

''Here at Valve we're always looking to innovate and break new ground with our games. For added realism and believability, we decided to set the voice acting booth on fire and lock the doors from the outside, so we could get the most realistic portrayals of hellish screams of agony possible.''

[river veldt]

those zombie screams are genuinely really creepy

[green fulcrum]

Okay Cave Johnson.

[quiet swift]

The fast zombie screams...

(also it's not a zombie but the weird snarl sound the black headcrabs do makes my skin crawl)

[green fulcrum]

Yeah, the sound design in that game was spectacular. It's not even a horror game and yet it's scarier than many horror games out there.

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2uq5u2ROdCQ

[river veldt]

ough yeah

[quiet swift]

I believe the fast zombie screams are actually a sped up/changed Howie scream

[river veldt]

the rattlesnake sound that the poison headcrabs make is also etched into my brain

[quiet swift]

Yes! That

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjStD7EINlA the first 5-6 seconds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rhqAcCoSBQ

[green fulcrum]

That rattling you get in the first couple seconds is genuinely brain-breaking. It doesn't just sound like you heard it, it sounds like you felt it, like it was inside you.

How did Valve even do that?

Holy crap I just listened to it again and it felt like something was trying to dig out of my eyeballs. The sound design in this game is insane.

[river veldt]

Half Life 2 has the best sound design in any game ever imo

especially the guns

holy hell

[green fulcrum]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3YYVplQOSw

[wind stump]

Holy shit... The critically acclaimed MMORPG expansion! After so many years!

(because Heaven's Sword sounds like Heavensward- I'll leave now)

[dense crypt]

What game this

[quiet swift]

[quiet swift]

Right?
Also, this is making me want to replay HL2 again. And the portals.

(I still need to play Alyx... but no VR T_T)

[wind stump]

Technically Castlevania Portriat of Ruin, but I'm running it from the Dominous Collection version.

so it has stuff like rewind and a full compendium of items outside of the game (Like you can pause the emulation to look that stuff up)

[dense crypt]

Ah okay

[wind stump]

the best thing is that you can have both the status screen and the map on screen at the same time

like i give a lot of shit to AAA devs but this and the Advance collection are

*aside from one sidequest requiring an item that drops exactly once and can't be rebought but that's neither here nor there

[wind stump]

hehehehe~

holy shit it's the M*ster S*ord!

[fresh bane]

I can't tell if this is an actual CV or a CV clone

[wind stump]

It's a proper CV, Portrait of Ruin

[fresh bane]

ah I've never even heard of this one

[wind stump]

It's the middle child of the DS trilogy

[visual hill]

all 3D animation rendering is done this way at a professional level (even if it doesn't involve sending executables)

that said, sending and running executables can be done securely if they're signed and the signature is checked on the client end. A modern implementation would likely do this, there are tiny libraries for this available like minisign

[static bluff]

I was thinking about dusting off my old ff12 game and finally finishing it.

[gaunt marten]

Zodiac age or normal?

[static bluff]

Good question... I think it's normal but I'm not certain. I'm not even certain if the PS2 & memory cards still work

[gaunt marten]

Just play the remaster

Highly well-received 2018 remaster, available on PC

[visual hill]

I didn't know FF12's remaster was well-received

I thought it got a lot of criticsm for looking different and stuff

[gaunt marten]

It won a lot of awards and got high ratings!

[static bluff]

The thing is I have a save that is overpowered where I've done almost all of the jobs etc etc but I never actually finished the storyline and I kind of just want to finish the storyline

[gaunt marten]

Oh okay

I figured you had played for like six hours

[slim thorn]

lol, Portrait is the 2nd one I ever played! I think I mentioned it when we were talking Aria the other day

[craggy vine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdaqkXJIq44

Interesting video. TLDR is on PC, you can, and it is surprisingly not that buggy at all.

Makes me wonder if it was just mostly consoles that had all the bugs in this game

[craggy vine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJLhSb7j8hU I decided to watch this too and I am actually surprised at how different this playthrough is compared to mine

[arctic fern]

It was the last gen consoles mostly

[random steppe]

1.0 on PC didn't have that many game breaking bugs, it did have A LOT of glitches tho

And many frustrating half finished systems

It was pretty obvious that so many corners were cut to get to release that the game might as well have been a circle

Last Gen console it was especially egregious because the hardware limitations completely butchered an already pretty shaky software

[craggy vine]

Yeaah makes sense

Also my sister has gotten me in to Euro Truck Simulator 2

I absolutely love it even though I thought I wouldn't cause I do the same kind of thing irl

But driving for 12 hours irl is different then in the game

I love how I am just trailer reversing almost perfectly from the start, because I reverse a trailer so much irl anyway

[craggy vine]

Is pretty

[arctic fern]

hell yeah

honestly CP2077 is amazing in its current state

[static bluff]

When I upgrade my GPU, I want to play that game.

[craggy vine]

It is

Still has its bugs. I gotten in to an endless loop of falling under the map before it teleported me ages away a bit ago. And then cars weren't loading right, I saw lots of 2D sprites around me.

[craggy vine]

Also this screenshot is taken from one of the random roads leading to the edge of the map. It ends with a small bridge and this ramp at the end of it going into a canyon. I love finding weird places like this in open world games, especially when it is such an isolated place.

In fact it's funny to think about, you can be in the center of night city with cars and people everywhere, or you can be out here with probably nobody around for at least a few km.

Finding details in odd areas is cool to me as well. Like that big crane, or the items that were on the bridge like an umbrella. You are never meant to come out to this area for anything in the game, and yet there are some interesting things to see that you just never normally would see.

Even the canyon itself - it serves no purpose in the game for the most part, but stands as something cool to find if you venture out. And then the game suggests launching yourself into it and trying to get to the other side by placing a ramp. The map even shows a bit of road on the other side. I don't think it is possible to get across though.

This is another spot to. A sheet metal building that has no purpose, nothing inside. Doesn't even have a door. But it is interesting.

There is a whole area of these buildings right near it, along with some broken cars and burning tires. Interesting to look through, and I don't think the story ever brings you to it specifically.

This also makes me think of spots in Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, where there are a few spots that are just sorta there and not serving a purpose beyond having something to look at. Exploring them in Unead Nightmare is the scariest because of the zombies, also giving a reason for random buildings being so desolate.

Then you of course have the abandoned town with broken buildings, but that does serve a bit more of a purpose in the game.

[craggy vine]

Also I just had a random idea: burn Cyberpunk radio music onto a CD to put into my car

(playing it through my phone also works but physical media just feels cool)

What an interesting vibe

[craggy vine]

pfff the emote

[wind stump]

man

[little badger]

https://x.com/epicgames/status/1873398911932494095?

Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) on X

Let’s build some traps, people 🪤

Orcs Must Die! 3 is free for 24 hours! https://t.co/Ymr4JPCYVm

Twitter · Dec 29, 2024, 4:01 PM

[craggy vine]

Just realized that I have almost 80 hours in Cyberpunk, all done on my rog ally. If that doesn't show that all I need is a handheld pc for gaming then idk what would.

[fervent oar]

One of the free epic games game I got turned out to be extremely fun

Wizards of Legend is the game and it's a great roguelite

[gaunt marten]

Hell yeah, I played a bit of because it was in my borther's library it and I liked it

[arctic fern]

https://fxbsky.app/profile/katelaity.bsky.social/post/3legwpnk6mc2b

[gaunt marten]

Most websites you're on, including discord, use google analytics too! You should block them there

If you want to block analytics, I recommend using the browser version of any app, on the Firefox browser with ublock origin

From there you can install easylist to block third-party analytics

Google is not directly to blame for putting google analytics on the Switch, Nintendo is. Google is to blame for running Google Analytics to begin with

[arctic fern]

i agree with all of this
but they have added them, quietly
not great

[gaunt marten]

You should also keep in mind that many big companies gather their own first party data too.

Blocking THAT sort of tracking is a bit harder, and sometimes can't be done without ceasing to use the website

Oh, also

11.0 was released 2020

[arctic fern]

the fact i only just now hear about it isnt great

i barely use my switch these days anyway

[gaunt marten]

The fact that you only now heard about it is mostly an issue of you not investigating what gets sent from your devices

[craggy vine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAb0VPY-h1g
Cyberpunk always be providing bugs. When he went out with panam there was a big ceiling fan flying around in the sky. Also you can surprisingly basically play the whole game with throwing knives it seems.

I'm sorta happy that the bugs we mostly get now are just the funny bethesda style of bugs, not so much game breaking

You know I just thought too... It would be cool if GTA 6 would let you complete missions in way you want. You can do that in Cyberpunk. But then you go to Rockstar's open world games and the amount of fail states there are for deviating off the normal path and trying to do something your own way is a little unfun. You gotta play the games the way they want you to.

Obviously I don't image there being a whole heap of choice in GTA 6, but just to allow the player to play missions in different ways would be cool. To not fail some mission for getting spotted or for someone escaping, or anything like that.

[light gate]

I got the Deluxe Edition of Tomb Raider Trilogy (1-3), absolutely impressive.

[river veldt]

RDR2 is one of my favorite games ever made but yeah the rigidness of the missions kind of got old after a while

[craggy vine]

Yeaah. Probably especially so if you are doing a 2nd playthrough probably.

I remember this one part of nakeyjakey's videos, where he was trying to complete the game without the minimap. He got stuck on one part where all he had to do was find a secluded area among some trees, because the game wanted him to go to one specific area, which you needed to see the minimap for.

[fresh bane]

I really wish the Soul Reaver remasters were as impressive as the Tomb Raider ones considering they were done by the same team
Granted, a lot of the models especially for Soul Reaver 1 got a complete overhaul, but a lot of enviromental stuff is severely lacking in comparison, it's mostly just upscaled and I really don't know if it's that the enviroments just aged that well or if they really could've done more to them

some of the improved lighting they added to the Tomb Raider games could've definitely helped a lot with these games, there's an entire dungeon in SR2 that revolves around lights and mirrors and I can only imagine how that would've looked with actual lighting but it's mostly just a flat texture like it was in 2001 which was a little bit of a letdown

[river veldt]

ok as someone who is the guy who straight follows the compass/waypoint/minimap that was actually kind of an amazing thing for me, but i see how people don't like it

[light gate]

It looks amazing to me.

I played SR1 on the PSX and my god...

Dreamcast was the better port for sure.

[craggy vine]

I mean it is good and bad. Good that it helps guides you, but I guess also bad that there is less freedom technically.

[river veldt]

yee

[fresh bane]

It's not that it doesn't look good, it's more that compared to the work put into the Tomb Raider games, there really wasn't a lot done with this one

[light gate]

Well, Tomb Raider needed that amount of work.

And honestly I am bummed that the cutscenes are just upscaled.

Instead of remade.

[fresh bane]

That's one thing the SR remasters did better than the TR ones, for Soul Reaver they actually had an entire vault of archived stuff from the original games, from lost levels to fully recorded behind the scenes voice acting sessions to the actual FMVs, so for this remaster they didn't just upscale them but actually re-rendered (I think that's the term) the FMVs completely because they actually had the original assets for the original ones

[light gate]

Yeah, Core Design core'd too hard.

rip

Honestly i am glad Soul Reaver got some improvements, I'm looking forward to it when the physical version comes out.

(literally couldnt beat the game because i didnt know where was north)

[fresh bane]

This is probably among the most impressive changes specifically for Soul Reaver 1, they added full lip sync wherever needed as well as remade models, which is a very welcome addition and probably the most impressive one considering how the original game looked

[light gate]

wow

I am glad Aspyr is trying though.

Battlefront did get a terrible port though, and unsure what exactly happened.

Maybe time constraints idk

[fresh bane]

The director for the Soul Reaver remasters is actually a huge LoK fan and has a yt channel going back like 10+ years documenting Soul Reaver specifically, she's also the same director for the TR remasters, so I guess the difference is you have people on these projects that actually care about what they're doing

[light gate]

That makes sense.

[random steppe]

I played this as well, Reziel looks so damn good, really happy they took the time with the models

Also easly the best addition, right stick for the camera

It wasn't that desperately needed, it's more that the muscle memory of modern controls would have absolutely tore me to pieces if it wasn't there

As for the textures, it's telling that the vibe is conserved so well that I sometimes accidentally hit the switch between old and new graphics, and I didn't really notice for a while...not that the new aren't noticeably higher definition, it's just that the feeling of the place is so well preserved that you can just not notice

||(I still fucking hate swimming)||

[fresh bane]

The added camera control is great, but the camera itself is a bit bad in some areas, in Uschtenheim in SR2 the camera was absolutely horrible and dizzying, and there were some areas in SR1 where the camera is in a very awkward position usually just way too close to Raziel, and since the camera both moves with Raziel's movement AND with your mouse/analog stick it becomes a nightmare to get it to look where you want to and get it to sit still, definitely gave me a headache or two especially in the Silenced Cathedral

There are some areas that definitely suffer a bit from this thing with remastered games where the remastered version is just too bright in comparison, luckily it's not that many and it's much better than that first trailer that suffered a lot from that

I really do wish the enviroments had a bit more done to them, especially I wish the game had actual lighting this time around, some of the areas would've looked stellar with some real lighting like Tomb Raider's locations, again it's really not a case of it looking bad because the overall aesthetics of the enviroments aged really well outside of low resolutions, it's just that if a little more was done it would've been perfect

Unless you constantly switch to original mode and remastered mode like I do to compare, if you just played through entirely on the remastered mode, asides from some hurdles that remind you this is a PS1 game, it's really easy to just kind of think for a second or two that you're playing a modern game because it just overall still looks that good

[random steppe]

I am just impressed as to how faithful the whole project is

Really hoping it'll expose the series to a new audience, and maybe we'll get something else set in it

[fresh bane]

Coming from RainaAudron herself from interviews there definitely was a very careful consideration to not alter anything from the original games aesthetically and visually and to stay as faithful as possible with the entire project

Ideally the next step I think would be a Blood Omen and Defiance bundle but they could also just remake either Blood Omen or Soul Reaver 1 who knows

I don't know if maybe a whole new game especially with some of the VAs either retired or unfortunately who passed and especially without Amy Henning to write for them, that'd be a pretty careful task for whoever decides to make a new LoK game

[random steppe]

This is at the same time very controversial and the coldest take ever made, but if we ever get a new LOK, a Soulslike would fit the mold of SR really really well

More puzzle focused of course, but it'd be a good way to modernize the combat in a pretty faithful way, they even have the gimmick on a silver platter of not being able to kill your enemies without some envriomental aid because vampires

Sure as fuck it would be a better idea than fucking Nosgoth

Make me play as a vampire hunter, that'd be fucking scary

(that said I will give Nosgoth a minuscle amount of props of having made a 4v4 hero pvp game before it became everything everyone ever made)

It was a bad idea but at least it was their bad idea

[fresh bane]

I've seen people throw that idea out there including one of the devs during an interview from that big documentary about the franchise that came out recently, but I don't know, I know people probably mean just the combat but the funny thing is Souls games are the complete antithesis of the LoK franchise, they're all about combat and RPG mechanics, minus points entirely on platforming and story is completely optional compared to LoK's carefully detailed storytelling and narration, I get what people probably mean when they throw the idea out there but I feel like 'soulslike' just carries a specific meaning that probably doesn't apply that much here, and also I personally am just tired of soulslikes in particular the whole feel that a 'souls-borne-kiro-ring' game has is something I'm a little tired of seeing and I probably wouldn't like seeing in a game like this but anything is an improvement over the original games combat

The weird thing about these games is that you either go with a system like SR1 where the combat is very lowkey and not the focus at all or you go the complete opposite direction and do a Defiance and copy Devil May Cry entirely and let me do aerial combos on vampires and demons with Raziel

[random steppe]

I do think that there is quite a bit of commonalities between SR1 and DS1 at the very least

The gothic aesthetic to begin with is a given, the structure of one big seamless level and the kind of exploration are very similar.

The narrative sturcture isn't alike at all for sure

The whole idea of exploring a dead and decadent, but once great and powerful kingdom, and figuring out what happened to it is definitely something they have in common, and the whole thing of "kill these bosses and absortb their souls to grant you strenght" trope is something they both do, even if in different ways

Since SR is more of a direct revenge story, Kill Bill style

And yeah, the difference as you pointed out is the focus on combat vs focus on puzzles, Soul Reaver is a puzzle game first and foremost

But still. the similarities aren't few either

[fresh bane]

I don't know, the entire combat of Dark Souls is a little too weighty for games like Soul Reaver where some of the point is that you're playing a powerful vampire who can do cool combat things (but we never see that until Defiance), it'd be a little strange to see Raziel roll around like a Souls character and take a big swing with a steel pipe, it would feel too human, I know people really criticized Defiance for the awful camera but it really does feel like that's how Raziel and Kain would probably fight canonically, even if that game's combat was simplistic
Honestly I'd say don't over-complicate it and just copy Zelda again like they did with Blood Omen and SR if they wanted to go for a lowkey feel, of course not identical but I feel like that probably would work well enough with some of the flare SR1 and 2 have with things like heavy attacks and blocking and the side/step evades, either that or go the full Devil May Cry route again and let me do those sick combos in SR1

[fresh bane]

Eeeeh that's again more of a Zelda thing than a Dark Souls thing, the whole killing bosses and going through themed dungeons and acquiring new abilities

You're not wrong but that's more things DS1 and SR1 have in common than reasons why SR1 would fit a Soulslike gameplay style

[random steppe]

They definitely have a common inspiration, DS was explicitly inspired by Zelda and I would be surprised if SR also wasn't

It's a trope as I said, and it was before either game released, but they both do it

[river veldt]

DS1 combat my beloved

[random steppe]

I do think that mixing the puzzle nature of SR1 combat with a souls style would be a very interesting mix, also if it's a new title Reziel doesn't need to be the protagonist.

Like, you can hit them, you can stun them, but to kill them you have to use the enviorment or a limited amount of tools at your disposal is not something we saw in a souls yet to my knowledge

[fresh bane]

I just think when people bring up Souls that they get too carried away with wanting Dark Souls again that they forget Soul Reaver is mainly a platformer adventure puzzle game with combat, I'd be afraid for a situation where instead of remixing areas to be larger and more impressive, maybe even interconnected like Dark Souls 1 which is something SR1 actually does, that they'd instead replace all that with a focus on combat and god forbid grindy RPG mechanics that don't belong in these games

If a new game was to be made then we'd be playing as Kain again for sure, we can't not know what happens after Defiance's ending

[random steppe]

Dark Souls isn't really grindy, I mean it can be if you want to grind, but it isn't really meant to be.

[river veldt]

like Van Helsing from Dracula

[fresh bane]

Some people say that it's already a satisfying ending but there's just no way you can leave things off there and make a sequel about a completely new set of characters on a completely different adventure, it's Legacy of Kain after all

[river veldt]

only time i can remember grinding in DS1 is for humanity because i needed to be human to summon my beloved Solaire for the O&S fight

[fresh bane]

I'm not saying it is necessarily but for a franchise of games that aren't rpgs I wouldn't like introducing any leveling up or money-gathering mechanics like the Souls games that would make the games grindy in any way

[random steppe]

I do agree that I'd keep the progression light ,even tho I seem to remember in Defiance there was some? Been a while

Arguably, given the fucked up state of Nosgoth being Kain fault, maybe, everything set there could be read as the "Legacy of Kain" but I see what you mean.

(at least as long as the main subject of the story is Nosgoth itself)

[river veldt]

i was about to say a game where you play as Van Helsing where you hunt vampires and other monsters would be cool but thn i remembered The Witcher exists

[fresh bane]

There is a Van Helsing game

I played it all the time when I was a kid, it was basically Devil May Cry 1

[fresh bane]

Regardless of any of this I think one thing we could all agree on is a Soul Reaver remake definitely needs to cut back on those block puzzles

[random steppe]

The game already has vampire hunters, there are these dudes, and those with a flamethrower, I'd lowkey love to play a witcher like figure in Nosgoth, that has to find ways to kill vampires as a fleshy human

[fresh bane]

I did the Stone Glyph puzzle last night and that was incredibly rough

[river veldt]

they look pretty cool

[fresh bane]

Something I find fascinating about this world is that in SR1's time they seem to have blended in medieval european aesthetics with some industrial era things

[random steppe]

They kneel because they are my friends

[fresh bane]

They have functional modern style flamethrowers and Melchiah's entire area seems very industrial, they even have working electricity for lights in the human citadel

It's very strange but very interesting

[random steppe]

Yeah the flamethrower dudes look infinitely more steam punk-y

[river veldt]

this game has graphics like Messiah

do you guys know Messiah

[fresh bane]

Honestly if you're gonna do a vampire hunter in Legacy of Kain you'd have to go with a survival horror game, the vampires are just too overpowered and scary from a human perspective, as Kain you can just suck the blood from people without even having to touch them and he's just a 'regular' vampire in Blood Omen

[random steppe]

This is how they looked in the old graphics, look at that crossbow, it must be at least a dozen polygons

[fresh bane]

the flamethrowers aren't even textured in the original I think, they're just solid grey too

[random steppe]

Yeeah, that's pretty rough

[river veldt]

look at all those textures

must be a whole 16 pixels there

[quiet swift]

"Khaaaaaaaan!"

[random steppe]

Looking at the two version is just so impressive that I look at both and go "yeah, that's the same dude" given that they had to make up like, 80% of what's actually there on the texture

[fresh bane]

The people that made these really cared about the little details

The other human npcs are also pretty close

Right before Zephon's arena there's a vampire hunter split in half and it's all very low detail but in the remastered they modeled in all his guts spilling out of his torso and legs which is pretty cool

[slim thorn]

yeah that was a good example of why I try to avoid calling a game "soulslike" unless I'm also willing to specify exactly which aspect, since nobody's using it consistently

maybe a better reference point here would be Jedi: Fallen Order because that game has elements of soulslike combat but also decent platforming

[slim thorn]

not sure if I'll end up fitting Soul Reaver into my holiday gaming after all, I ended up starting Spyro instead which at least in my mind is scratching the same itch for now

[rugged flax]

r/fuckyouinparticular
https://www.rxddit.com/r/Shipbreaker/s/F5SzKll1nZ

[gaunt marten]

Fun fact: at the time soul reaver was released, some games had zero pixel textures. The PlayStation couldn't handle textures very well but could draw a lot of polygons, so they would color the corners of each polygon to make it seem like there's a texture

https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/

Crash Bandicoot 1 does that

[static bluff]

...WHOA

[gaunt marten]

Crash was 512 polygons in the first game, with textures only for his spots and his shoelaces, and his model didn’t change much through the 3 platform titles. It took me a month to settle on the perfect 512. As Andy said, we went with non-textured polygons instead of textured ones on most of the characters. Instead of texture, we used corner colors to create the textures that seemed to be there.

[gaunt marten]

The whole thread is a treasure of game development insight

[static bluff]

Thank you for sharing. Stuff like this is so amazing to me

[gaunt marten]

Yeah! The series explains in detail how making fancy tooling can be highly effective

(in situations where everyone has the same hardware)

[craggy vine]

I just decided to watch this random video while eating dinner and I then noticed.. How is his hud like this? The healing and grenade things are black, can't use the phone or call for a car, and no mission objective. I guess you can probably deselect a mission objective, but otherwise idk how he got this.

[craggy vine]

Also euro truck simulator is stupidly fun when you disable speed limiters and fines

[craggy vine]

For some reason, Euro Truck Simulator seems to be a game where TAA just doesn't really work. It looks more like FXAA, there is still tons of aliasing with lots of image edges flickering. Just sucks that the only other option is SMAA or render at above native. It works perfectly in other games it seems, just this one doesn't work. Idk if it is not implemented right or if it is the type of rendering that just doesn't work for it, it is an old game.

[gaunt marten]

You could do what I do

Just don't worry about aliasing

With higher resolutions it's not much of a problem

[slim thorn]

it's been a while since I played a game both modern and graphics-intensive enough to even give me a choice of AA types, I still haven't learned what they all mean

[craggy vine]

Also damn, I just compared the system requirements of the steam compared to the original disc copy I have, and it is crazy higher. Like a computer that could run the original may not be able to run the new updates. Went from 4gb recommended to 12 gb recommended, and went from recommending a Geforce GTS 450 to a GTX 1660. Also the modern updates apparently only work on windows 10, while the original version can work on windows XP.

[craggy vine]

I'm already rendering at native 1080p though, and the flickering from the aliasing is terrible.

I'm guessing it just comes from how many sharp geometric edges there are and how far out in the distance you generally are looking.

[gaunt marten]

It could be dependent on the kind of game, I guess

[craggy vine]

This issue is probably the reason the game offers an option to go up to 400% rendering resolution though.

And yeah probably dependant on the game

[gaunt marten]

If the game has a proper mipmapping option that can help a lot

Anisotropic filtering, if you have it, can cheaply reduce flickering without having to antialias

[craggy vine]

I do have it set to x16 anisotropic filtering

I'm guessing it's just, when you look at stuff like distant power poles, 1080p just have doesn't enough to show it right.

Oh also I have now come across 4 games that either recognise you being on a steam deck or recognise that you may be playing on one in the settings. It's an odd list, but so far I have found Content Warning, No More Room In Hell, Euro Truck Sim 2, and Cyberpunk 2077. Content Warning shows a steam deck in the controls, No more room in hells gives a warning to set proton version if it detects you are on steam deck, and then the other 2 just more recognise the existance of it in the settings.

[gaunt marten]

Here's a quick glossary:
SSAA: This is just supersampling, you run at a higher res then downscale it. Outdated. Nowadays they don't even call it antialiasing.
MSAA: Multisample antialiasing, samples each pixel multiple times looking for geometry edges and smooths the color values there out.
CSAA, EQAA: Both extend MSAA, first by storing more information per pixel, then by sampling more. It's complicated and neither are explicitly used nowadays.
FXAA: Fast approximation, looks for high contrast and blurs in post.
TAA: Temporal antialiasing, uses data from earlier frames to make sure sudden jumps are less severe.
MLAA: Morphological antialiasing, uses a few techniques like intensity or color patterns to detect edges of various kinds then uses a weighted blending algorithm to blur them out.
SMAA: Like MLAA but with diagonals and subpixel detection. MLAA is basically obsolete thanks to it.
DLSS: AI $$$ MAGIC (It uses a neural network to upscale cheaply and reduce aliasing, rather than actually doing any antialiasing)

[slim thorn]

ok but which is the good one

[craggy vine]

Very interesting, I didn't know about all of these

[gaunt marten]

The good ones are SSAA, TAA, MSAA, DLSS, depending on your priorities

SSAA is easy to implement -- just run the game at twice the resolution and you're done. It'll work perfectly, too.

Your GPU won't like it.

TAA is very effective and not that complex. Some people tend not to like it.

MSAA is almost as expensive as SSAA but often worth the tradeoff if you can't do full-on SSAA

[craggy vine]

I did that a lot when I had a more powerful gpu then what I needed, rendered the game at 4k on a 1080p monitor. It worked amazingly at reducing basically all aliasing.

[gaunt marten]

DLSS needs an Nvidia chip and basically lies to you, but I guess it's popular

[craggy vine]

DLSS is a good option to help run a game though

[steep flax]

how does fsr compare to dlss?

[craggy vine]

Despite some people complaining about it, I think TAA is my favourite. It looks the best while not being super hard to run. And then otherwise just DLSS/FSR.

[gaunt marten]

FSR and DLSS do not compare

[craggy vine]

Ah. I have never used DLSS, only FSR. But I use it to do anti aliasing in RDR1 and I don't notice any aliasing when playing.

[slim thorn]

is FSR not an AI-based upscaling thingy?

[gaunt marten]

FSR uses spatial upscaling and an edge reconstruction algorithm to increase the "effective" resolution of the shot. It's most comparable to SSAA but through a different pipeline

[craggy vine]

I guess also in Cyberpunk and I generally don't ever see any aliasing

[steep flax]

this is the extent of my knowledge too lol

[gaunt marten]

FSR doesn't use a neural network as far as I'm aware

[craggy vine]

I guess that would explain to why FSR can run on literally any gpu

[gaunt marten]

Correct

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPUOpen#FidelityFX_Super_Resolution for more details. I don't consider it AI or anti aliasing

[craggy vine]

Certainly not AI, but surely it is still anti aliasing. RDR1 and Cyberpunk allow you to turn FSR on and then go to 'native AA' to only apply anti alaising and no upscaling.

[gaunt marten]

It's more of a technique to cut costs while upscaling with minimal loss in quality

It's only anti aliasing in the sense that if you make the image higher in resolution it'll have less aliasing

So if you must include it, it'll be under SSAA

[craggy vine]

RDR1 especially, I only have the option of either FSR or FXAA

[craggy vine]

I see. Would it being doing that under DLSS as well then?

[gaunt marten]

DLSS is not even proper upscaling

[craggy vine]

Damn

[gaunt marten]

Like I said, it uses a neural network starting with lower resolution frames to invent details out of nowhere

It's fine in many situations, but if you look closely the details might not be consistent

[craggy vine]

Makes sense yeah

Perhaps then, when you set FSR or DLSS to 'native AA' in games, it basically is using it to render up I guess.

To go from 1080p to something higher

And then showing you that

[gaunt marten]

That's basically how it works

Same for SSAA

[craggy vine]

It definitely does work effectively though, RDR1 looks great for me with it, and then Cyberpunk with FSR on quality looks very good.

Yeaah makes sense

[bronze abyss]

fighter isnt broken at all btw

game also completed now on fighter,strenght only

next target is probably gonna be mage mind only

[craggy vine]

This is probably how 'RSR' is a thing on AMD, which I think is just basically giving FSR to any game.

[bronze abyss]

final char state before moving on to mage

[wind stump]

is this ATLYSS game any good

[bronze abyss]

its very good

though for now it only has around 10-20h of content depending how quickly you learn the game

its in early access p sure

this is with 2 full playthroughs of the game

[bronze abyss]

first non poon ive made

[gaunt marten]

What is the game?

[craggy vine]

The game is called [REDACTED]

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/redacted-d9d21e

[gaunt marten]

@little badger please don't use Manechat as a news feed

Only make posts if you're actually interested in talking about it

[wind stump]

triggered hc noises

[craggy vine]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3254940/My_Putrid_Ponies/ I found this game in another discord community. It looks weird as fuck, and I want to try it. Because it has ponies.

Steam

My Putrid Ponies

"My Putrid Ponies" is a horror adventure set in a once-idyllic pony ranch now overrun by undead equines. As the last surviving, your mission is to uncover the mystery behind the ponies zombies outbreak while navigating through haunting landscapes filled with danger and despair.The Gameplays:Dynamic Gameplay Perspective: Engage in heart-pounding ...

Price

$4.99

▶ Play video

Zombie pony game

[visual hill]

they didn't change any of the world geometry, probably because the altered state moves vertices (and their colors) individually and it directly impacts collision data

it would be very hard to do in a 100% compatible way if you want accurate collision

[visual hill]

ETS2's TAA implementation is subpar, I wish they just implemented FSR2/3 directly instead (since it can replace native TAA)

just to make sure, are you using its Soft mode? Sharp disables TAA when there is no motion

[random steppe]

There is also the transition to the spectral world that fucks with the geometry, so it would have been a larger task to make sure the shifts line up as they are supposed to

[craggy vine]

Aah yeah. I was using it in sharp at first but it just looked like no AA and that is probably why. Then went to soft, and it is a tiny bit better but still has some aliasing.

Still makes me think of fxaa but I also haven't used fxaa in a very long time.

Also I have this odd issue in the game. It seems to stutter a bit when I go over 150kmh. No idea to why that would be, not at all. Not like 90kmh is the fastest you go normally or anything...

[little badger]

I was going to talk about it as I have been wanting to play it for a while but I’ll keep it mind

[visual hill]

try capping your game to 60 FPS using RTSS

[little badger]

I wonder what graphics card will be needed to run gta VI

[quiet swift]

Well, 5000 series nvidia is coming out so probably that

[little badger]

[slim thorn]

if any game could get away with the Crysis strategy of "guess what GPUs will be like in 5 years and design around that", it'd be a GTA

[gaunt marten]

The Witcher 2 did "Ubersampling" and marketed it as just that.

It was actually just regular SSAA, but at the time it didn't run on consumer hardware

So in order to avoid people complaining how the game is really slow with supersampling they jazzed it up as a new thing

[little badger]

The PC release wouldn’t come out until 1-2 years after the game has came out

[visual hill]

GTA V maxed out is still super expensive due to the advanced draw distance scaling setting

mostly on the CPU

[little badger]

If you play it cali what fps do you get on gta?

[visual hill]

on my 13900K + RTX 4090 in Proton, it regularly dip below 60 FPS in forest areas at 4K max settings (FXAA + 2x MSAA), even with advanced settings all disabled

town areas were a constant 120 FPS

[little badger]

Nice. I would’ve thought the fps would go down in the city as it’s busy.

[bronze abyss]

done,beat the game with all classes offensive stats only

took a slight bit under 4 hours

also 100%'d it finally ig

[wind stump]

For anyone curious, yes I did cheese the fuck out of abusing rewind to get this as soon as possible

and somehow i sold my armor

[fresh bane]

You definitely wanna start Soul Reaver 1 whenever you feel like you can dedicate your full atention to it because if it has something in common with Dark Souls is that progression may not always be super clear, the game is very diegetic about how it hands you information about stuff and the game does have a couple of Metroidvania style moments where you really need to remember if you come across an area or a visible collectable that you could not access before but now that you obtained a new ability you could, if you even remember that a certain area even had something to collect

The new map they added for the remastered version is extremely helpful with this though, it's not a 1:1 map it's more of a Nosgoth world map with the vague locations of the places you go to but it does neatly tell you which areas may have things you haven't collected yet so you can go back and take another look around

The funny thing about the inclusion of the map is that it's something people back then used to praise the game for in a similar vein to Dark Souls because it meant the game was for hardcore gamerz ONLY

[visual hill]

Spyro also lacks a map on PS1, the remaster added one

it's probably one of the most common gameplay additions remasters do

Rise of the Triad too, I think?

[random steppe]

I think that the map thing is less about hardcore gaming and more about being able to craft levels that can effectively work without one...

[sour hill]

also immersion

[random steppe]

That's more the lack of minimap

Which more games should try to do away with IMO