general gaming

[rancid herald]

tbc I'm not necessarily talking in those terms, but I mean reworking the Os they're using to be a more generalized computer

[indigo pine]

yea. you can still install custom firmware on ps3

[indigo pine]

ai called daybreak

[wind stump]

wot dis

[indigo pine]

watchdogs legion

[astral steeple]

HOLD IT!

Log in to Among Us now to get your free Phoenix Wright cosmetics and raise your objections. Ends March 17!

[wind stump]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cwSnX1TuqfM?feature=share

[random steppe]

At 26 seconds, that animation reset movement at the end of the stairs, she should get an oscar for that

[mossy flume]

She has a whole series of these kinds of videos. She is unnervingly good at being an NPC.

[quiet swift]

https://www.gamefile.news/p/tencent-highguard-wildlight-entertainment

[slim thorn]

I remember these NPC skits being a huge fad a while back, felt like there were hundreds of content creators who'd mastered the art of NPC acting

[mossy flume]

I've only seen maybe one or two content creators do this

Mostly this woman

[visual hill]

wow, the animation is incredible

I wonder if we'll see a real person master the art of wobbly polygons

PS1 animation in real life

[mossy flume]

That was so good it didn't even register to me, I had to watch it again after you pointed it out

True 2000s game vibes

[quiet swift]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/in-a-desperate-attempt-to-undo-the-damage-of-accidentally-wiping-their-fiancees-red-dead-redemption-2-save-someone-paid-usd159-to-enlist-arthur-morgans-voice-actor-to-apologise-for-them/

[visual hill]

should have done that after I accidentally removed C:\Games last week

by the way, the issue that caused me to do so got fixed recently: https://github.com/OldUnreal/FullGameInstallers/commit/abbf6898ed06b00d3cff2fe84c68338abda181bb

so all is good, I guess

[craggy vine]

I thought something like that would be more money I admit

[quiet swift]

It depends on the actor, really

[craggy vine]

Makes sense yeah

Wonder if anyone could get the official mlp voice actors to act for something with pony...

[minor plover]

they couldn't. It'd be major lawsuitville from Hasbro.

[sacred grove]

Rather, you can't ask them to voice the mane 6 without Hasbro's permission, I'd imagine

But if it were a legally distinct pony from a legally distinct franchise/series, then sure

[minor plover]

it'd have to be sufficiently different as to not cause confusion or water down any trademarks.

[quiet swift]

"Hi, My name is Nighttime Glinting, and I wanted to say hi! No, I do not sound like one of the princesses, whatever do you mean?"

[craggy vine]

Yeaah makes sense

[visual hill]

official VAs tend to be dodgy around fan projects for this reason, e.g. Jon St John didn't want to do paid VA work for the DNF Restoration Project

so a fan VA (Gianni) did it instead

[craggy vine]

Makes sense yeah

[green fulcrum]

I have completed Spiderweb Software's Avernum 4 remake! Very good game, as usual. Impressive overhaul of the original, with lots of new twists and turns that weren't present in the original game. The story wasn't quite as compelling as the first three games, but I do like all the new lore additions as well as the fact that you can now choose to be kind and spare the main villain instead of only choosing to destroy them. It does impact the ending a fair bit if you do, and I thought that was nice.

But probably my favorite new addition was all the foreshadowing for the remakes of A5 and A6. There's a ton of stuff in this remake that calls forward to events in those two games, so I'm eagerly looking forward to how much fleshing out the devs do for those remakes when they eventually get here. (Avernum 5 is honestly my favorite one, due to just how vastly different and weird it is compared to the other five games.)

Overall, a solid 9/10. :)

And now for my next foray into RPGs...I'm a bit stumped. I want to do either Chained Echoes (JRPG) or Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader (CRPG).

So, I'll leave that one up to you guys. React with ⛓️ for Chained Echoes, or 🔨 for Rogue Trader.

Here's the trailers for both:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sttWaY-2Leo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5ukpyUa5hs

[quiet swift]

For my part, I've caught up with FF14 main story quest, and while waiting for the WoW xpac release, I think I'm gonna split time between Hollow Knight, and I've reinstalled Control. I feel like I want to replay that (last played in 2021).

[river veldt]

CONTROL MENTIONED

we have a Remedy thread

[quiet swift]

Although, I should actually play alan wake since I've never gotten more than like an hour or two in with that...

[river veldt]

#IndianaJonesandtheGreatCircle- i don't think ive ever laughed at a game as hard as i did when i went into a room looking for a key and they were like, 30 different ones on the floor

[quiet swift]

But did you choose... wisely?

[river veldt]

no, Gina had to pick the lock

[fresh bane]

oof

[bitter stream]

i loved the little book tutorials

they had cool art

[quiet swift]

The diablo/warcraft manuals (not tutorials, get it right! MANUALS!) were amazing

[bitter stream]

i'm talking about the tutorial in the book

i'm not calling the whole book a tutorial

half of it was legal speak at the end anyway

[fresh bane]

Sometimes it was mostly lore or random information like ''did you know this enemy has this much HP'' ''here's a cool map of the area'' or whatever

but in some cases, without the manual you'd be completely lost

it really is one of those weird relics of that era of gaming that are completely lost on anyone daring to revisit that era of gaming

Any old game that may have problems where it doesn't explain absolutely anything to you, then it's probably because the huge manual the game came with did explain it, and everyone just kinda accepted that was the way to play videogames

[quiet swift]

Wasn't it one of the metal gear solid that had a puzzle right in the manual? Game says "check page 2" and it says "swap the port where you connect the controller"

[fresh bane]

Colonel Campbell fortunately tells you the controller port thing directly in game, but the thing the game asks you to do pretty early on is to look on the back of the CD case for the codec number of one of the characters to progress into the game, without it you literally can't do anything

it's confusing too, because a character gives you a CD in the game right before Campbell asks you to ''read the back of the CD case'', so you think you have to examine the item in game, but you can't really do that, you have to actually read the literal game case

so if you didn't have the case for the game then you'd be completely and utterly lost

[quiet swift]

https://smetisteher.cz/manualy/warcraft2_manual.pdf

[uneven epoch]

heh, game dump

classic website, i totally forgot it existed

...gosh, can you truly run the old stuff on modern hardware i wonder? polda is the biggest thing there but https://smetisteher.cz/sportovni/winter-challenge specifically is very much my early childhood. dad's DOS in the basement still has that installed, im just unsure if the pc can still be turned on

i have to try that out some afternoon

[mossy flume]

I’m genuinely mad that we lost the manuals

They were essential

They usually had lore and all the things you needed to know about how the mechanics worked

We didn’t need to spend so much time on stupid brazen in-game tutorials because they were often seamless. If you didn’t read the manual that was fine, the game would teach you what you needed to know without telling you, but if you didn’t read read the manual you would likely have the advantage of knowing more.

[mossy flume]

I have a related thing that I can share here, but it’s a Twitter link that was just sent to me and so I can’t post it

[quiet swift]

is it a video or image? I have something that lets me download vids from twitter

[mossy flume]

Yes

It’s a video

It’s topical

[quiet swift]

DM it, i'll see if I can grab it

[mossy flume]

Cool thanks

[cerulean herald]

reminds me of that "If Mario was Triple AAA"

[quiet swift]

"Luigi’s Mansion If It Was Released In 2026"

Was the title

[bitter stream]

haha omg

that's wild

[cerulean herald]

"peekaboo"
"I got you now"
"AHHHHHHH"
"this is almost too easy"

I'd say take a shot every time this exact exchange happens, but you'd just die from alcohol poisoning

[gaunt marten]

There's also an Ocarina of Time one

[fresh bane]

''I got you now! ''
'' AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH ''

[mossy flume]

Oh? I gotta see this

[fresh bane]

to be fair the current AAA trope it's parodying isn't quite repeated lines but just constant incessant talking

[mossy flume]

Depends. Repeated lines are still a problem

They’ve gotten better about it, but some still exhibit the issue. Not uncommon with eurojank games

[gaunt marten]

I don't have attribution on it

[light gate]

So this is a bit nerdy but its mostly gaming related so...

GOG is starting to release certain games with Linux compatibility, specifically old dosbox && some Unity titles. They provide a script which tells you to run it as an app and then a GUI interface shows up and starts the procedure.

Unfortunately its a 50/50 since DosBox doesn't seem to work for me but the Unity and other engine titles do.

Its a weird method for sure.

[bitter stream]

huh, hopefully they can get it working better

[craggy vine]

That is fairly cool. I'm all for more native linux games and apps.

[slim thorn]

eh, games have always needed tutorials; a lot of what was in the really old NES-era manuals was essentially a crutch for the technology not being good enough to do in-game tutorials

truly "seamless" tutorials only work when the game is either very, very simple, or relying heavily on the player already being familiar with similar games (both of which I still see regularly in indie games)

and these days we have all sorts of game design techniques that amount to "digital manuals", from the simple menu with blobs of tutorial text, to the in-game practice arena, to more dynamic systems like gradually expanding maps and quest logs

[craggy vine]

Dusk assuming you have already played games like doom and quake

[slim thorn]

a lot of my metroidvanias can get away with "tutorials" being only an occasional on-screen button prompt, since they typically introduce only one ability per multiple hours of gameplay, and because they assume you've played at least one other 2D run/jump/attack game so those verbs alone get the point across

[graceful bridge]

https://youtu.be/sWGsMGOziqM

[quiet swift]

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/many-consumer-electronics-manufacturers-will-go-bankrupt-or-exit-product-lines-by-the-end-of-2026-due-to-the-ai-memory-crisis-phison-ceo-reportedly-says/

[quiet swift]

The best NFS

[visual hill]

this is my first time playing it, I've played NFS2/3/4 and Porsche Unleashed last year

you can clearly notice a big shift in art direction and game feel, courtesy of Blackbox

it's probably the most photorealistic early NFS game, since later entries were more stylized with all the post-processing going on

[quiet swift]

This also felt a bit more... arcade-y? The later NFS have a lot of that drift garbage, this felt like just pure speed

Although hm, i wonder if i'm thinking of 1 and not 2

[astral steeple]

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/another-step-towards-vibrant-visuals-for-java-edition

Minecraft Java is switching from opengl to vulkan

[rancid herald]

sounds like a good time to start up a memory making business

[quiet swift]

Won't work, really. The problem is that the memory making companies all buy the wafers or whatever the basic tool is from one of 2 or 3 companies, and I think one of them (TMSC or something?) is like 80% of global production. You'd need hundreds of millions or billions, and multiple years before you can even get to the starting line, and who will go with an unproven company when the industry lead exists

[rancid herald]

time to make a wafer making company

I'll get the pope to fund it and we'll call them holy wafers

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISOIOadu7LE I think Linus did a fairly good video explaining it all

Ah darn, I was one letter off. TSMC

[rancid herald]

I mean, at this point, the demand is so high probably anyone who needs some wafers

[quiet swift]

I think the materials for making those wafers are also in limited supply/limited amount of people making it, but i could be wrong

[rancid herald]

aren't they just made of silicon?

[little badger]

@green fulcrum

[astral steeple]

Damn I was gonna post that lol

[little badger]

[green fulcrum]

...Who?

[astral steeple]

Anna from frozen

That's like the role she's most known for afaik

[gaunt marten]

She's a pink hedgehog with a big hammer who has a crush on Sonic

[little badger]

[green fulcrum]

[river veldt]

yeah i know Kristen Bell from Frozen

[little badger]

Which of the 3 movies would you say is your favourite

[green fulcrum]

The third one, obviously

[little badger]

[rancid herald]

wasn't rose already in sonic?

[astral steeple]

https://www.ign.com/articles/call-of-duty-warzone-mobile-servers-will-be-turned-off-in-april-activision-confirms

There goes another one rip

[little badger]

Only appeared in the 3RD movie. But in the games she’s been in it a long time

[rancid herald]

oh

I thought this was the film

[slim thorn]

well, "appeared" in the post-credits teaser scene of the 3rd movie, framing her quite clearly as the "here's who we'll be adding in the 4th movie" character

[rancid herald]

I guess this is general gaming not general movie watching

wait is this the film or what

[cerulean herald]

yes, for the 4th Sonic movie

[rancid herald]

oh

was she not voiced in the post?

[slim thorn]

the tweet clearly had a 🍿 emoji on it

[visual hill]

it's sad Stop Killing Games is basically not being followed at all in the mobile space

[slim thorn]

honestly I was wondering that too, I think she said something in the post-credits scene but I'm not sure

[rancid herald]

you can eat popcorn while gaming!

you shouldn't. But you can

[cerulean herald]

I dont beleive she said anything in the end of 3

[rancid herald]

I just went back and checked; she's clearly voiced by Samuel L Jackson who explains she's putting a team together

[cerulean herald]

"...the Smash initiative"

[river veldt]

i like all of them but 3 is probably my favorite too

[slim thorn]

I don't remember 1 and 2 clearly enough to rank them

[rancid herald]

I remember enjoying all of them

they're decent films

Hitch is in them!

[little badger]

She didn’t. Just looked at sonic and smiled

[cerulean herald]

figured

[little badger]

Jim Carrey said he would return if the script was good

[fresh bane]

I still haven't watched Sonic 3

and weirdly enough I'm kinda fine with that, I played through Shadow Gens when it came out and 100% it so I guess it made up for it

[fresh bane]

what if Eggman Nega

I guess they're gonna do Sonic CD first?
Then they have Heroes and Shadow if they wanted to stick to a rough timeline from the games, and then Rush with the objectively best character in the franchise 🐱

but I don't know if they're gonna do that, I'm gonna guess that Sonic 4 is already gonna just start doing its own thing and maybe do a couple of nods and references and that's about it

[little badger]

Good point

[slim thorn]

Update to Your Ubisoft Account – Age Verification Requirement to access social features with non-Friends

lol. lmao even.

[fresh bane]

Good thing the only thing I used my Ubisoft account for was to get a free copy of AC Unity when the Notre Dame caught on fire

[wind stump]

Dot. Dot. Dot.

"how do i make myself feel better about eating ass at FFXIV?"
plays a bullet hell MMO

[smoky sonnet]

we love rabby steel in this house

[green fulcrum]

Since the mini-poll ended up being a tie, I've made my decision on what RPG I should play next. It'll be Chained Echoes, because it's the shorter of the two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sttWaY-2Leo

[fickle garnet]

That looks pretty cool

[green fulcrum]

Ehhhhh? Celestia? What are you doing here?

[fresh bane]

side quest after retirement

[rotund forge]

Sooooo...how bout that Poppy Playtime Chapter 5? That was...intense.

[green fulcrum]

It's already released?

[rotund forge]

Yeppers

[green fulcrum]

Huh, I thought it would be later in the year

Cool

[green fulcrum]

Welp, turns out chapter 5 is not the final chapter. Not sure how many they have planned, but a sixth one is guaranteed

[gaunt marten]

Me with deltarune

[river veldt]

i think Toby has said he plans for 7 chapters

[cerulean herald]

I was at first thinking of not playing Deltarune until the whole game was done
but then eventually I played it anyway this was before Ch 3/4 as well lol

[sacred grove]

Nope! I don't think Toby himself has ever mentioned how many chapters there are. 7 show up in the chapter select screen, and the community goes by this, but Toby never mentions the upper limit

To an outsider this sounds pedantic, but for Deltarune this is probably critical information lol

IMO, there will likely be 7 chapters for the main thing, but maybe at some point Toby will get cheeky and sneak in "chapter 0", a prologue explaining and tying together all the strange things that were set into motion. I would love something like that

[fresh bane]

Be advised supposedly RE9 is already having threads of people discussing the entire story

So if you want to play that game yourself, be careful

[fickle garnet]

... Yay

[cerulean herald]

is it out already or did it get leaked?

[fickle garnet]

It comes out next week, some people have gotten early copies of the game somehow

[bitter stream]

that's a bit annoying, it's not even out and people are posting the whole story?

[fickle garnet]

I'm going to be pissed if I get major spoilers

I was going to watch a story summary of Resident Evil to refresh myself, but now I don't want to take the risk

[bitter stream]

yeah fair enough, there's probably a bunch of spoilers in related videos

[fresh bane]

From the very vague post I saw of it, it supposedly follows up on || plot points from Revelations and Revelations 2 ||, but I did not look up the supposed thread and I just saw a post of someone vaguely mentioning those games in relation to the spoiler thread, so that's all I'm getting

I can't really control whether I come across any spoiler threads or screenshots or whatever but I'll try my best to ignore it, but there's always the youtube video spoilers that pop up with every single new game

[fickle garnet]

I just quickly found a video and saved it to my watch later, hopefully I don't see anything from recommended videos while watching it

[fresh bane]

I don't think they can actually upload any videos from the game before the release date

but expect full playthroughs or spoilers of specific moments as soon as the game is made available

[bronze abyss]

killed veol parry only in ender magnolia,thats the 5th out of around 17 bosses

[fickle garnet]

Yeah, when it releases next week, I'm just going to not watch YouTube and hope I don't get spoiled

Probably also avoid instagram too

I don't go on Instagram much, so that won't be hard

[quiet swift]

Yeesh. Streamer I sometimes watch is on a nostalgia kick and is playing heroes of the storm. Reinstalled it to check my own stats. Last match played... 9 years ago

[rotund forge]

I made a post a year ago on reddit after Chapter 4, making a theory. That theory was super confirmed in Chapter 5. I. Am. Ecstatic.

Because it was a super out there theory and I WAS RIGHT

[green fulcrum]

What was yout theory?

[rotund forge]

If you don't care about spoilers

[green fulcrum]

I just finished watching someone play the chapter so I know all of it already

[rotund forge]

So, Chapter 4 revealed that Ollie, the voice in the phone throughout Chapters 3 and 4, was The Prototype. I theorized that Ollie was Poppy's brother. ie, Elliot Ludwig's son. Well, a tape you can find in Chapter 5 is of Elliot Ludwig talking to Ollie and his voice is raspy and glitchy, and Elliot calls him My boy

I. Fucking. Called it.

Over a year ago

And Ollie says he's "just a prototype"

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameTheorists/comments/1ie8n8l/poppy_playtime_chapter_4_theory_ending_spoilers/

[green fulcrum]

Nice!

[mossy flume]

https://youtu.be/DBSnsnGIoCk?si=JbTilPWwyzszvKMe

[quiet swift]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1233590/Warhammer_Age_of_Sigmar_Storm_Ground/ 90% off

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/lggOdrakWGw

Hero of Ice Fairy back at it with holy shit this looks like a ball buster

[tepid fog]

'twas pretty alright, I think I liked chapter 4 more though

[old notch]

Has anybody had a look through the steam horse fest?

I'm trying to decide between the Starter Orders series and Horse Racing Manager. Starter Orders seems like a more established series that may have more depth(?) but also its aesthetic looks very dated, whereas Horse Racing Manager is newer and putting a more interesting spin on it.

I'm also thinking about Ranch of Rivershine, more for enjoying the 3d world and horses as opposed to the spreadsheet management of the other two.

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/PW22jwFNxU8

MARCH 5TH BAYBEEEEEE

LET'S FUCKING GGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[gaunt marten]

Slay the Spire must be good

[wind stump]

OH MY GOD THE BOI

I'M SCREAMIN G

[river veldt]

apparently Sony is shutting down Bluepoint, the developer behind the Demon's Souls and Shadow of the Colossus remakes

[mossy flume]

https://www.theverge.com/games/881578/sony-close-bluepoint-games-studio-remaster-remake-demons-souls-shadow-colossus-god-of-war

Yep

[slim thorn]

more of these baffling M-and-unA decisions

[river veldt]

"M-and-unA"?

[mossy flume]

Feeling like the business mindset of infinite hypergrowth is fundamentally incompatible with the video games industry

[slim thorn]

in biz/finance, "M&A" is short for Mergers & Acquisitions, which means exactly what it sounds like

I'm just inserting an "un"

[river veldt]

oh

[slim thorn]

to be fair, it sure was compatible for a big chunk of my life, especially when mobile gaming blew up

[mossy flume]

True

But the thing is that there's not really... much more growth to be had

[slim thorn]

I do suspect we've peaked and the industry is failing to adapt to the reality of being on a plateau

much like the tech industry

[mossy flume]

Yep

[worthy rose]

And the gigantic overspending from during covid is biting people in the ass

[slim thorn]

one of the most compelling takes I've heard on the AI bubble is that tech is so desperate to keep the hypergrowth idea going that they're forcing themselves to take on less and less plausible ideas for what the next big disruption will be

[mossy flume]

Yeah I could buy that

I get the vague sense that's the case

[rancid herald]

is this why you're Virtus now, MA? Have you been merged and or acquired?

[mossy flume]

There's been a lot of desperate grasping to find the next smartphone, but like... you can't will that into existence. Revolutions like that happen organically.

[random steppe]

I wonder though, there is something to say about the fact that I assume in no small part, gacha games coming from the east came in and sorta stole a good number of customers, especially those with disposable income, from the rest of the industry.

[mossy flume]

Mayhap

[slim thorn]

at some point we run out of humans and disposable income, so every new "innovation" has to take money away from everyone else

[mossy flume]

Yeahhhh... the thing is that while the economic pie does grow and thus everyone can benefit at (roughly) fair rates at the same time without it being a zero-sum game anymore, the problem is that there's a mindset of trying so desperately hard of growing faster than what is sustainably possible to do, therefore forcing the situation back into a roughly zero-sum game again...

[slim thorn]

The smartphone is an interesting one because, for all the flak Apple gets, sometimes deservedly, it seems like they're really careful about when they choose to start pushing a piece of technology. If the R&D says it's not ready yet, they just put it on the shelf for a few years until it is, seemingly. And I don't get that vibe from any other big tech company.

although they did jump on the AI bandwagon to some degree so they're not that special

[mossy flume]

Yeah, that's one of the big reasons why I really like Apple. Under Tim Cook this emphasis was reduced, because he focused on services rather than new products, but it's still there.

[mossy flume]

They tripped so damn hard on that.

Deeply underestimated the complexity of the problem

They've burned through THREE Siri leads

[slim thorn]

meanwhile I've never even tried to use Siri for anything

[mossy flume]

Haha

Apparently they kept trying to simply graft genAI onto Siri's existing architecture and it just never worked, which is why they've been so far behind. Reportedly, they eventually figured out that they had to rewrite Siri from scratch, but only after many failed experiments and changing the project director multiple times

[slim thorn]

I do get some use out of copilot at work, but veeeeery occasionally, maybe 5-10 times a month at this point (not counting autocomplete, where it's often impossible to tell if "pre-LLM" autocomplete would've done the same thing)

[mossy flume]

To this day I just use Siri to set timers and nothing else

[slim thorn]

and that was after our company made internal MCP servers to let Copilot directly access our in-house docs and bugtracker

[mossy flume]

Huh, neat

[slim thorn]

yeah, a few times I've asked it "fix ticket 1234" or "does this code comply with all the rules on <doc page>" and that saved significant time

[mossy flume]

I'm trying to lean less on genAIs. Don't want to become too dependent on them, and I'm finally running into more problems they can't really help much with anyway

[slim thorn]

last week I asked it to apply the readonly Typescript keyword everywhere we were missing it

that's the kind of stuff where there's literally zero risk in letting it try; if it hallucinates nonsense either the build fails or the diff won't pass code review

[mossy flume]

Ah, yeah, Claude recently did a bunch of bugfixes and modest architecture improvements in my Unity thing. Probably could've done it myself, it wasn't too hard to do, but it's the sort of thing that definitely saved me a bunch of time and drudge work that wouldn't have been terribly educational anyway

I find it handy for that sort of thing

It's not an every day thing of course, but comes up sometimes once I've accumulated enough tech debt

[slim thorn]

that's the niche I expect these tools to fall into when the insanity wears off

[mossy flume]

Same

[slim thorn]

assuming that "paying what it really costs" doesn't immediately banish every model to the shadow realm

I'm pretty sure I'll be fine even if Copilot dies tomorrow, I'm hardly "depending" on it for anything

wait this isn't #science-and-tech

[minor gorge]

~~What is the difference? ~~

[wind stump]

holy shit StS is going to have co-op

WHO UP SLAYIN THEIR SPIRE

[fickle garnet]

I've never played StS

[wind stump]

ever played a roguelite deckbuilder?

[fickle garnet]

Yeah

[wind stump]

Balatro?

[fickle garnet]

Yup

[wind stump]

You have StS to thank

[fickle garnet]

And Inscription

[wind stump]

There's a reason there's a StS set in Balatro

... actually i know there's an Ironclad skin in Dead Cells but I'm not sure if there's a specific weapon or whatever

[fickle garnet]

I should try StS sometime

[wind stump]

StS2 is going into Early Access on March 5th

[fickle garnet]

I saw

[wind stump]

i won't shut up about it

[fickle garnet]

I won't shut up about RE9 so

[slim thorn]

oh right RE9's out

I have way too much else to do

[fickle garnet]

Not yet, next week

[robust latch]

https://equestria.social/@moyme/116099852810408119

Moyme (@[email protected])

Been working on a Rainbow Factory/Pegasus Device game for a while now. It's all in 16 color EGA graphics. Everything here is still heavily WIP. :) #mlp #brony #rainbowfactory #gamedev

▶ Play video

Equestria Social Network · Feb 19, 2026, 11:19 PM

[slim thorn]

huh, in the style of the original PoP? neat

[robust latch]

yeah i thought that was pritty neat as well

[indigo pine]

that is adorable

[fickle garnet]

Untill it's not

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/A1Uv1d7n81o

[indigo pine]

ol suffer through it when I suffer through it!

[sacred grove]

Prance of Persia

[robust latch]

stealing that

[slim thorn]

oh my god it was right there

[rancid herald]

Prance = France

[mossy flume]

https://press.pokemon.com/en/releases/The-Pokemon-Company-International-to-Acquire-Excell-Brands

TPCi is acquiring the huge trading card distributor Excell Brands

They’ve been a key distributor for Pokémon, MTG, YGO, and others for years

And TIL that TPC also purchased a card printer in December, Millennium Print Group, and are building a new 1.27 million sqft printing facility just for Pokémon TCG

Hopefully that’ll help kill the scalping problem…

[fickle garnet]

I'm pretty excited for Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls

I actually want to learn this one

[fresh bane]

the FGC wasn't too hot on it unfortunately, but I didn't really get a chance to test it myself and since I already don't like 3v3 tag fighters, there's no way I'm playing a 4v4

[tawny jacinth]

I find it funny how there’s exactly one pro in CS and Valroant using a Corsair mouse

Also no, pros aren’t usually required to use a given mouse due to sponsorships. This was largely due to the incident where s1mple was forced to use a Razer mouse and would not stop complaining about it and played like shit until his management gave him his original mouse back

[fickle garnet]

Oh huh, Interesting

[astral steeple]

This is the mouse and keyboard and headset I use ngl lol

Works really good

Been using those for years now

[fresh bane]

They're still actively working on it, so hopefully they'll fix some stuff because a lot of FGC players were just critical of how the game didn't particularly feel actually good to play, there was very little player expression and the tags were all the same, so you had no variety with the tags like so many tag fighters have where there's multiple tags per character or every tag is completely different and serves different technical functions

I think they actually updated the tag system recently, which is good, but hopefully they'll address the rest, it's probably fine for any non competitive players, especially any casuals, but for anyone even moderately into fighting games who's looking for a game to dig into it seemed like there wasn't much meat on the bone for Tokon

[fickle garnet]

Damn, that's unfortunate

[astral steeple]

Huh Apparently there's a pinkie pie themed keyboard lol

[fresh bane]

On the other hand, the Avatar game looks great

https://youtu.be/QLsWZtjhRjo?si=t8gARXvnJz3u0e9a

''the fighting game'' is still such a shitty subtitle, but the actual game has been very surprising, FGC is loving it

https://youtu.be/WYaunDrEoeY?si=LnoCQ_OaZ9XwbhTI

[quiet swift]

[fresh bane]

''We want our game to be fully completed when it comes out''
What a concept

[slim thorn]

we live in a society market where such things need to be said

[light gate]

Crazy

[fickle garnet]

I'm really hoping that game is good

[mossy flume]

I didn't realize there were so many brony games on Steam these days

And of course most of them are ultra edgy

Or, uh, thirsty.

[sacred grove]

MareQuest seems to be associated with a sketchy part of the fandom that I'd rather not support

[mossy flume]

Yeah, no doubt

I've heard the same

[quiet swift]

And how are most of these even on steam? Feels like Hasbro will just piledriver all of these

[mossy flume]

Steam kinda has no moderation anymore

[sacred grove]

They don't have any MLP characters specifically

[mossy flume]

There are so many legally dubious games on Steam these days

[sacred grove]

They just use the G4-inspired style, but none of the trademarks or characters, so legally they're probably okay?

[astral steeple]

I'll still never understand how we never actually got a mainline g4 mlp game on ps4 or xbox one lol

Like

The show ran through most of the lifespan of both consoles

Would have been like easy money for hasbro

[sacred grove]

Personally I probably would never be satisfied with a pony game that Hasbro makes, unless they contract a really good developer for it

But I probably have unreasonably high standards for a pony game

[astral steeple]

Hell

Even an equestria girls game could have been good lol

[rancid herald]

games are much more expensive to make these days and adaptation slop probably doesn't justify the cost

[slender wolf]

They did make a pinball fx table since that was cheap to make

[random steppe]

My guess is that the genre MLP is best at, specifically 3d platformer spyro/donkey kong style, are pretty niche

It's not a great fit for anything else Hasbro would be okay with making a game for I think

[astral steeple]

Maybe open world adventure

With some combat in certain areas against tirek and sombra etc

All the big main villains

[fresh bane]

Hasbro is not in it for making videogames, the same way Konami shifted to pachinkos because that is simply a much more profitable business, they've always been focused on selling toys

the only game they made was the Gameloft mobile MLP game which is still going if I remember correctly, and I bet that game made them some money, so that's about as far as they probably wanted to go

[cerulean herald]

wait wasnt Maretime Bay Adventure and official game?

[fresh bane]

That's G5

[cerulean herald]

ah got it

and yeah the Gameloft game is still chugging on

looks like this was their last update/event

[fresh bane]

Oh!

I don't know if anyone mentioned anything about it but Sony shut down Bluepoint

[astral steeple]

Not surprised

They keep trying to make a successful live service game and keep failing every time lol

[dense crypt]

Okay but what about POD RACERS

[mossy flume]

They showed pods in the latest trailer

Definitely hecking mandatory. If pods aren’t prominent in this game, then they’ve completely misunderstood the assignment

[dense crypt]

BETTER be in the game

Yeah lol

They're THE Star wars racing machines, even if they're total nonsense. Suppose it was pretty obvious though, since sebulba was in the first trailer, briefly.

[quiet swift]

clearly designed to feel like starcraft. Look at screens/video on the store page.. looks like Tarkov

[cerulean herald]

I'm intrigued by Return to Ash

[fickle garnet]

Bluepoint was a game studio that made the Shadow of the Colossus and Demon Souls remakes, not a live service game

[river veldt]

afaik Sony was having them work on some weird GoW live service game before they shut them down

whichlike

is weird right because that doesn't seem like the type of game they're good at

[fickle garnet]

Why does everything have to be a fucking live service game

[cerulean herald]

in order to squeeze $$$$ outta you

[fickle garnet]

:MorganFreemantrue:

[mossy flume]

Subscription services (games and otherwise) and live service games make you spend a lot more money on the same thing than you otherwise would’ve done with a fixed price model

everything is terrible

[fresh bane]

Yes but people still spend money on them, and companies caught on to that, and when making a videogame takes as long and is as expensive as it is today, unless your videogame is actively making loads e mone then it's no good so all live service games it is then

[quiet swift]

The problem being, they keep making live service games and are trying to steal away people from existing popular live services (fortnite, COD, etc) by making small tweaks. Which doesn't work because those people will maybe glimpse at it then go back to their tried and true games. Has to be very distinct to make any lasting impact (helldivers, arc raiders)

[fickle garnet]

I'm just suck and tired of live service games. I just want good games with compelling stories and good gameplay

[mossy flume]

We don’t need to spend two billion dollars and ten years on every new video game

[fickle garnet]

Exactly

[quiet swift]

Which is why that earlier quote about the pod racing game not being live service was very welcome

[mossy flume]

And not every project needs to be so big as to need 2,000 staff members

[quiet swift]

Except GTA but that's the billion dollar gorilla in the room

[mossy flume]

Heh

[fickle garnet]

The fact that it's not live service is very exciting

[quiet swift]

It's the odd one out in the sense that it will recoup its development cost and probably quickly too

[mossy flume]

Meanwhile, Genshin Impact and Star Citizen take second and third places as the most expensive games ever made/being made

GTA6 definitely number one

Genshin Impact apparently took nearly $1B, with a budget of about $900M

[fickle garnet]

Holy shit

I did not know that

[mossy flume]

Yeah, I had no idea until a couple months ago

[quiet swift]

Oh apparently not. Monopoly go is at the top... purely because of a billion dollar marketing budget

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop GTA 6 isn't even on here, but I'd assume that's because a) unreleased and b) rockstar probably hasn't disclosed development/marketing cost yet

[mossy flume]

Yep, not yet

Current analyst estimate places it between 1 and 2 billion

But we will know eventually because their parent company is a publicly traded company

[quiet swift]

take 2?

[mossy flume]

Yep

[quiet swift]

[river veldt]

the fuck

[mossy flume]

Yeah, Monopoly Go had a stupid marketing budget for some fucking reason

Apparently it worked for them????

[river veldt]

that's like a billion dollars isn't it ???

[quiet swift]

Yep

[mossy flume]

Yes

[quiet swift]

" With over 150 million downloads, the mobile game has generated $5 billion in revenue since its launch in April 2023."

[river veldt]

well

[fickle garnet]

Genshin had almost double the budget of Cyberpunk wtf😭

[quiet swift]

So, yeah, worth it

[river veldt]

i wish i had 5 billion dollars

[mossy flume]

Yeah, it's insane

I'm not sure where the money went for Genshin

[fickle garnet]

that's a good question

[mossy flume]

But I haven't played it much because I have a hard ban on gachas

So... I can't really speak to it

Which is annoying, because there are a bunch of really cool looking games that I want to play, but they turn out to be gachas, so they may as well not exist

[quiet swift]

Genshin Impact's initial development and marketing budget was approximately
million, with ongoing, annual, live-service operational costs estimated at roughly
million per year. This high-budget,, six-week update cycle, which involves a team of over 700 people, has made it one of the most expensive games ever produced, with costs estimated to exceed
million by 2024.

900* that got cutoff

[mossy flume]

The live service-ness definitely was my guess

[quiet swift]

Also that's a huge team

[mossy flume]

Dunno how much content they make

And yeah

[quiet swift]

That's the size of WoW

[mossy flume]

True

[fickle garnet]

That's crazy

[mossy flume]

Also how do we not have numbers for Battlefield 6 on this article?

400+ million is pretty vague

[quiet swift]

Probably because they haven't had to release the full details yet

[mossy flume]

And EA is a publicly traded company (until this summer, when they're taken private..... ugh, goddammit..)

I remember when Star Wars: The Old Republic was #1 on this list when it came out

[quiet swift]

That one kept having rumors of 500 million flying around, but it's on the list at 286

[mossy flume]

Yeah, but even still, that was still the biggest number at the time

Mostly for all the VAs, I'm guessing

[quiet swift]

And the cinematics

[mossy flume]

And the bespoke scripts and animations and such for the core game

Yeah

The base game was ambitious

[quiet swift]

But yeah it's distinct that the entire game, NPCs and all, are voiced

[fickle garnet]

The cinematics were fire tho

[mossy flume]

It's kinda funny how almost no characters past the core game speak a human language

VA budget vanished

[mossy flume]

Yeah I had a blast with it

[quiet swift]

I think it's on life support, yeah. It took until... mid pandemic to finally reach its first billion in revenue

[mossy flume]

Yep

It was offloaded to a different studio

Bioware is no longer involved

[quiet swift]

And it hasn't released an xpac since I got laid off from its customer service in 2024... and actually the latest expansion was 2022

[mossy flume]

But thenew studio actually made new content, which is surprising

[quiet swift]

Yeah, Broadsword

[mossy flume]

It's supposed to be on life support

But they're actually continuing development a little bit

They also released a beta for a native macOS client last year, which is... wild

[quiet swift]

Ah. It still seems to be going

[mossy flume]

I tried it, it actually works

Yep

They have plans

[quiet swift]

On one hand, boo job loss, on the other, I AM SO GLAD WE NEVER HAD TO DO MAC SUPPORT

[mossy flume]

I wonder what their plan is here because I can't imagine they'll make much money off of it

Hahahaha yeahhhhhh

Especially these days

[quiet swift]

bullet fucking dodged

[mossy flume]

That is a remote IT nightmare

[quiet swift]

We did phone support for tech/account management (billing), and ingame support

Basically I was a GM >_>

(droid U5-N2!)

[mossy flume]

Eyyyy nice

[quiet swift]

I'm still glad I took away 90 billion credits from that one guy who was buying it from a gold seller

The absolute rage tickets he sent afterwards

oh oh

One of my favorite things was how this lady had discovered that you could buy a mount for 2000 credits, and sell it back to the vendor for 25000

And then she wondered why I took money away, saying "I thought you put it in there as a reward for people who discover it"

[mossy flume]

Oof

[quiet swift]

...Lady, no. Just no.

[mossy flume]

Haha

That's great

Alas, unfortunately, economy

[quiet swift]

And there was one guy that had this whole mathematical religion. He barely wanted anything in his ticket but went on these absolute rants

[mossy flume]

Oh no

I'm so deathly curious about this nonsense

Preach at the GMs

[quiet swift]

And there was this one guy who had severe mental issues, kept saying that everyone in trade chat (and eventually customer support too) hated him and was harassing him for even existing and made er... threats to himself? we had to get police called to him many times and they eventually got annoyed

[mossy flume]

Man, that sounds like a hell of a time

[quiet swift]

AHa!

I found an old ticket

Incoming wall

Hey (myname) , sorry if I don't belive you , see I paid for my sub at 1205 am on july first and less than 24 hours later you un subbed me , I have already sent you proof of this and you have refused the proof and want to further harrasse me by making me jump though hoops over your games FUCK UP , ITS BEEN 4 DAYS NOW WITH OUT MY ACCOUNT THAT I HAVE PAID FOR , SO THAT IS THE VERY MEANING OF SERVICES NOT RENDERED , SO YOUR COMPNAY AND MY EVIDENCE HAS BEEN HANDED OVER TO THE FEDRAL TRADE COMMISSION , AND I HOPE THEY RIP YOU GUYS A NEW ASSHOLE , AND SHUT YOU DOWN , THE 2 PLUS YEARS OFHRRASEMENT HAVE NOT BEEN FUN , BUT REALLT GETS ME IS THE LAST 4 DAYS HAVE BEEN MOST LIBERATING BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE TO STRESS OF POLICING YOUR GAME , WICH IS REALLY BAD FOR YOU AND ME , BECAUSE NOW I GET TO ADD UP ALL THE MONITARY BALUES FOR MY WIFES ACCOUNT AND MINE AND THEN TAKE YOU TO COURT FOR THAT AMOUNT PLUS SUFFERING , I WARNED YOU GUYS IF YOU LET THIS GO PAST FOURTH OF JULY IT WOULD BE THE STRAW THAT BROKE THE CAMELS BACK , SO AGAINS SORRY IF I DON'T BELIVE YOU BUT EVERYTHING YOUR COMPANY OR OITS EMPLOYEES HAVE EVER DONE FOR ME WAS MALISIOUS AND UNDERHANDED TO CAUSE GREIF AND I WISH YOU ALL THE WORST AND THAT SOME ONE CAUSES YOU AS MUCH GREIF AS YOU HAVE CAUSE ME , I AM HIGHY UNSATASFIED WITH YOUR NON CUCTOMER SERVICE AND FROM NOW ON E A GAMES WILL BE BOYCOTTED FROM MY HOME AND FAMIY FOR LIFE , IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT , I WILL SEE YOU IN COURT , OTHER WISE AT THIS POINT I WANT A FREE YEAR FOR BOTH ACCOUNTS AND BILLIONS OF CREDITS AND CARTEL COINS , FOR THE DAMAGES YOU HAVE BLATENLY CAUSED !!! MAY THE SHAFT BE WITH YOU !!!

This guy constantly kept coming back, then having an issue then stuff like this happening and etc etc. Absolutely 0 standing, legal or otherwise, of course

[mossy flume]

Damn, bro needs to touch grass

[quiet swift]

I've mentioned this before, my favorite ticket ever was a translation issue

[mossy flume]

Oh no, losing one customer, however will EA survive

[quiet swift]

So there is one section of a map somewhere where you have to interact? Destroy? Something? Some ships. They are called Ace-plugs 353 or whatever. Now, in english, this is all fine

But the game also gets translated into French and German. I don't recall what Ace (as in ace pilot) translates to in french, but it wasn't an issue

German, though...

Or the card. But anyway:

And in this, plug was not translated

[mossy flume]

Lawwwwl

Amazing

[quiet swift]

We didn't even discover it, a kindly multilingual soul sent a ticket and I picked it up

Then sent it higher up... "Erm. Issue? Sirs?"

[mossy flume]

Heh, how did they react to that? Did you ever get a response for that?

[quiet swift]

I don't think so, I think it might have been changed but it's been so long I don't remember

[mossy flume]

Heh, that is pretty great though XD

[quiet swift]

[mossy flume]

I keep hearing game translations are a constant headache

[quiet swift]

I think I have other old tickets saved elsewhere but it's on my desktop which is in storage. I am asking my old team lead if she has anything saved though

They are! One part time job I have here in LA is QA for french translations. Nothing quite as humorous but I've definitely found a few things that are "Erm. Could be considered rude? A bit?"

[mossy flume]

Hehe

[astral steeple]

Uhhhhhh

Toby fox is involved with toy story 5 apparently??????

[river veldt]

wtf it's real

[mossy flume]

Eh? What the fuck?

What even is his employment like

I guess he does contract work these days?

[astral steeple]

Probably yeah

[river veldt]

i think he just does whatever he wants nowadays he's for sure set for life from Undertale and Deltarune sales

[mossy flume]

He is indeed XD

[fresh bane]

I still couldn't believe it when I learned that Deltarune wasn't some sort of sequel to build up on the hype of Undertale, Undertale was actually the 'test run' and Deltarune was the game he wanted to make all along

so he's been working on that for well over a decade by now

[river veldt]

ye

he saw the ending of Deltarune in a fever dream he had back in like, 2011

[mossy flume]

Just some back of the envelope math across the platforms tells me that Toby Fox has made around $70-$130M between the sales of Undertale and Deltarune. Also taking into account platform revenue sharing, but not taxes

[river veldt]

holy moly

[mossy flume]

That’s one of the most profitable solo-developed video games of all time, goddamn…

[fresh bane]

also
https://youtu.be/CNVKqRDalLo?si=9KkHe-Xk0uLBq3xQ

I don't know if this was posted here already

[mossy flume]

Oh he has a team for Deltarune now?

[cerulean herald]

yeah, turned out the scope was much bigger than he realized

[mossy flume]

Then just Undertale… I guess subtract ~$30M from that

[cerulean herald]

IIRC he tried to do Deltarune solo, but realized he couldnt do it alone

[river veldt]

he writes himself but i believe he has help with programming and art

[mossy flume]

Me, as an aside: “Hm, speaking of rich indies, I haven’t heard from notch in a while.”

googles
Me: “yep, he’s still a terrible person”

[fresh bane]

''They were also concerned about this preventing new games from being made. Specifically teenagers in their bedrooms creating small games. My first thought was oh yeah, all those teen solo developers creating live service games''

[fresh bane]

There's no way he wouldn't have a team for Deltarune
I'm pretty sure developers wouldn't even want to get paid for it, they'd just plead with him to not commit the same programming attrocities he commited with Undertale's programming

[mossy flume]

Undertale was crimes

[river veldt]

man Notch is one of my biggest disappointments, i looked up to him a lot when i was younger so it sucks that he turned out to be awful

[mossy flume]

I never had much of an opinion about him, but my view went from "completely neutral" to "strongly negative" when he was going around complaining about how rich he was and how he had no idea what to do with his infinite money

He was indeed rather disappointing

He had the chance to be more interesting

[river veldt]

off topic, but this is really depressing

[mossy flume]

I did like Jonathan Blow for a while, but he gradually showed his colors too

[river veldt]

god i'd even take a Switch 2 port of the Wii game at this point

[mossy flume]

I do wonder if they would ever make a new one

Seems like one of those games they could just pop out just for the sake of being different

[rare garden]

guys

steam horse fest sale

for sale: horse games

[quiet swift]

Oh. Oh dear. (secondwind used to be the Zero Punctuation folk)

[light gate]

Holy shit I thought it was a joke

[gaunt marten]

Wikipedia says they were bought by Clickout Media who fired most of those who stayed

Under Clickout Media, The Escapist refocused its content to create reviews of online casinos and other gambling-related promotions. In 2026, Clickout Media laid off the majority of The Escapist staff, only maintaining a small staff of "AI editors" to create AI-generated content.

[quiet swift]

Well, that explains it

[gaunt marten]

Fully automated exploitative Internet artificial intelligence

[mossy flume]

Oh shit, what a stealth drop

Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen are being re-released on the Switch 1 & 2 via the eShop as standalone games with wireless multiplayer support and Pokémon Home support on February 27th

Pokémon Presents also announced for the 27th

https://youtu.be/k8c_C4vfUMo?si=eL8lRdrmLsFiYITo

Now they need to do HeartGold & SoulSilver

[bitter stream]

wait no shot

it's real

I can play Leaf Green again?

amazing, thanks for posting

[fresh bane]

Oh hey the only two Pokemon games I ever finished, Fire Red and Heart Gold

[mossy flume]

Preorders are live now, the games will unlock after the Pokémon Presents concludes, supposedly

No online multiplayer, but local wireless multiplayer support is pretty cool

Home support is awesome, kinda worth it just for that tbh

It would be neat if they did something for the event distributions too

The soundtracks for them have also just been posted to Nintendo Music

Oh, I also missed a Xenoblade thing when I wasn’t looking

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition just came out

And has an excessively long title

[orchid sundial]

it feels weird to me that they chose this instead of red and blue

or better yet, release all the gen 1-3 games simultaneously

[hasty patio]

https://www.avclub.com/the-escapist-layoffs-clickout-media

[wind stump]

WOMP

good thing Yahztee and co got out and made Second Wind

[little badger]

10 million copies sold @slim thorn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyn1b_5bw-M

[wind stump]

imagine not mentioning the FFXIV crossover?

[little badger]

Square Enix intensifies

[wind stump]

clearly that was why it was so successful, nobody knew what a NieR was before that

[cunning galleon]

Uma CLK Pyoi! Uma CLK Pyoi!

If this had realistic physics it already would've been flying

https://tenor.com/view/mercedes-benz-mercedes-clk-gtr-clk-gtr-le-mans-mercedes-clk-gtr-le-mans-gif-15549130746407056357

LeMans cars 0.001mm off the ground

[mossy flume]

They posted an explanation… of sorts

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/71365/#s1q4

[arctic fern]

https://youtu.be/k8QC2FG9Tqo i really like this youtuber, they only play horror games but somehow they always find a unique and interesting way to talk about them

[cerulean herald]

"Does Need Horror MONSTERS"

[light gate]

This kills a graphic designer

[arctic fern]

oh lol i genuinely didnt parse that

[wind stump]

DON'T DEAD

OPEN INSIDE

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/Af17SAFIZH8?si=vHgY45Q9-0ha1cIy

New Nerrel video dropped

[little badger]

Phil and Sarah are no longer with Xbox

[slim thorn]

I don't remember anything specific about any of these names. Should I?

[unreal idol]

Lmao booty

[proud warren]

oh boy, the ship sinks faster: ai exec is now the ceo

[little badger]

Phil was the head of Xbox

[slim thorn]

...that's the most non-answer answer you could've picked lol

yes I did read what you just posted

[unreal idol]

It would have been easier to just exit the console business quietly

So this will be quite the shitshow

[little badger]

Did you see the 10 million copies video I sent earlier?

[slim thorn]

I saw the ping but didn't watch it; it's a neat factoid but it's not like I'm gonna do anything with that information

[eager bane]

Phil Spencer was pretty famous for "building back up" the Xbox brand...and since the takeover of Activision, sinking the ship

[unreal idol]

Is this the same guy that said everything is an xbox

[little badger]

Ah ok

[eager bane]

I think they just bit off more than they could chew, and Microsoft management took over after the immense spenditures

[unreal idol]

Or was that just an MS thing in general

[eager bane]

I think Phil was part of making Xbox go that direction

[proud warren]

yeah, microsoft is kinda shooting their own foot rn. multiple times. with a shotgun. at point blank range

[little badger]

The AI is not going to end well

[eager bane]

Though to be honest, I don't mind Xbox games on more platforms...there's a lot worse things they've done the past couple years

I was an Xbox fan once. Now I couldn't care less

[eager bane]

It's fun to watch at least...less fun for all the ponies working there or getting laid off.

[proud warren]

what the hell even is an "AI exec" position?

[little badger]

What have you been playing lately Ixrec

[eager bane]

They're not real

for legal reasons this is a joke

[mossy flume]

https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-retiring-sarah-bond-out-matt-booty-promoted-as-microsoft-ai-exec-asha-sharma-named-new-xbox-boss-exclusive

Whoa

He's been there for like 40 years

[little badger]

Yup we were just discussing this

[mossy flume]

Please look forward to Xbox being rebranded as Copilot 360 Gaming™

[little badger]

[cerulean herald]

im switching to Playstation Gamepass /s

[wind stump]

WHY DID THIS GAME GIVE ME A JUMP BUTTON AND WHY CAN'T I STOP ABUSING IT

[slim thorn]

you should see some of the jumps the speedruns do

[wind stump]

is it really Monkey Ball if the only thing more abused than the monkeys is the laws of physics?

[proud warren]

It was an auto-default thing in an older monkey ball game, and everyone complained that the game became too easy because of it, so SEGA decided to make it s toggleable purchasesble thing rather than a default option.

[astral steeple]

Microsoft Gaming New CEO Asha Sharma on AI:

“As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us."

[slim thorn]

huh, ok, that gets 1 point

but it's not like any of us are gonna believe that before seeing it in their actions

[random steppe]

She did her homework at least

[bronze abyss]

progress is going great,approx 11 bosses left for parry only

the bad part is that next boss is lars..and lars is annoying

[rugged flax]

Phil is leaving Microsoft
https://www.theverge.com/news/882241/microsoft-phil-spencer-xbox-leaving-retirement

[mossy flume]

Yeah, it’s wild

He’s been there for about 40 years

Started as an intern

[rugged flax]

38 years, and the past 12 of those leading the Gaming division

Spencer has been at Microsoft since he first joined as an intern in 1988. In his early career at Microsoft he worked on Encarta, Microsoft Money, and Microsoft Works. Spencer joined the Xbox division in 2001, and became the general manager of Microsoft Studios in 2008. He then became the leader of the Xbox division in 2014, overseeing the launch of the Xbox Series X / S and Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass push.

Spencer has also been at the center of Microsoft’s major gaming acquisitions, including Minecraft maker Mojang, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax Media.

[arctic fern]

wait microsoft owns actiblizzard? i genuinely didnt know that

[mossy flume]

Yeah, it was huge news. One of the biggest acquisitions ever.

October 2023

[arctic fern]

i didnt pay any attention apparently

not that i give a shit about microsoft or actiblizzard

[mossy flume]

Bought them for about $70B

[arctic fern]

i didnt see the b for a sec and thought they bought it for $70

[mossy flume]

[mossy flume]

They didn’t mention the Bethesda buyout? Weird

[bronze abyss]

nvm already done,thjought it would be much harder

[arctic fern]

...zenimax owns bethesda

[mossy flume]

Oh

I keep thinking Bethesda is their own thing

[slim thorn]

yeah for a while there was a lot of talk about whether or not regulators would even allow the purchase

[arctic fern]

or they're related companis, i dont understant corporate america
but whenever you oad a bethesda game, zenimax's logo popps up

[mossy flume]

Yeah, the FTC was asking a lot of questions

[arctic fern]

OH NOW i remember

[rancid herald]

"How can I improve my mage build?"

[mossy flume]

Microsoft had to make a bunch of open promises about how they wouldn’t over-leverage the newfound market dominance

Questionable.

[arctic fern]

did they keep those promises? i clearly dont pay attention

[mossy flume]

I actually don’t know. I think so? So far?

[rancid herald]

they did, now no one plays overwatch

[mossy flume]

I think much of it was “well let games be released on PlayStation too”

[bronze abyss]

i know its surprising but overwatch is actually good now 🤯

[arctic fern]

yeah but that would require me to want to play overwatch

[rancid herald]

what is overwatch anyway

I get the impression it's like helldivers, but you fight people

[mossy flume]

Oh right, the biggest concern was whether Microsoft would force Call of Duty to only release on Xbox and PC, taking it away from Sony.

[rancid herald]

there's also a monkey man

[bronze abyss]

no its more like tf2 but competitively viable

[mossy flume]

Which… doesn’t make too much business sense, actually

But that was the big argument they had

[arctic fern]

6v6 pvp first person hero shooter
helldivers is 4player coop thrid person pve

[rancid herald]

taking Call of Duty away from Sony would probably be a good thing, force them to innovate... and by 'innovate' I mean we'd get a call of duty style game based on Horizon zero dawn

[slim thorn]

which to be fair is a combo I'd be intrigued by

[mossy flume]

Honestly you might have a point there

[arctic fern]

call of war: god of duty

last of war part 2

[mossy flume]

Hehe

[rancid herald]

I do keep thinking there's probably a market for a more fantasy based game like this

[mossy flume]

I feel like that would be a banger, yeah

[rancid herald]

Highguard sort of tried but for some reason it tried to mix high fantasy with guns

[mossy flume]

Highguard was unfocused

[arctic fern]

ighgard wasnt supposed to be AAA

[mossy flume]

It works for Final Fantasy, but… yeah

[rancid herald]

I had this thought they someone could probably make a Dresden Files based game of this nature

like, if you want to have modern gun play and magic

just go urban fantasy

[mossy flume]

Isn’t that Overwatch?

[rancid herald]

is it?

[mossy flume]

I dunno

[rancid herald]

I thought it was vaguely in the future?

[mossy flume]

I don’t play it

[rancid herald]

isn't it more sci fi?

[slim thorn]

as a non-player OW looks more sci-fi-y than anything else

[mossy flume]

Fair

[slim thorn]

but I guess live service games tend to eventually throw every genre into the blender to some degree

there's probably a sorcerer in TF2 lore I just haven't heard about yet

[arctic fern]

OW is scifi

it has robots and laser guns

and hovercars

[rancid herald]

just like the jetsons

but yeah. I feel like this sort of setting (urban fantasy) would give these studios something they're familiar with (normal real world environments) but also a bit of magic for spice

[bronze abyss]

pressed the attack button by accident so now i have to retry the boss it was in the last quarter of health as well

[river veldt]

it's like tf2 but not as funny or charming

[bronze abyss]

eh theres plenty of funny things or charm when you get a lil bit deeper into it,the characters and lore are mostly quite well developed

[rancid herald]

based on what I know of tf2, it is therefore a game about hats

[bronze abyss]

declan..... lil fucker

[visual hill]

I played a bunch of TF2 Classified last weekend

pretty good but the server I played on was being DDoS'd near the end, so everyone left

@fresh bane that reminds me, do you still play TF2? if you'd like we could hop on a server sometime 🙂

[wind stump]

i see how it is

[fickle garnet]

My dad decided to preorder RE9

[slim thorn]

bold move

[fickle garnet]

This is why I'm glad my dad is a gamer, he likes some of the same games as me, so I benefit when he buys them

[random steppe]

Still playing Rogue Trader here, I'll probably wait later this year to consider RE9 TBH, I wanna finish this, then I have KCD2 on the back burner

Which is likely another month long playthrough at the very least

[little badger]

Speaking of which

[fickle garnet]

They really shouldn't have to say this, but here we are

[little badger]

Yeah someone was bragging they got an early copy. So capcom must’ve seen it

[random steppe]

I doubt that one guy sparked a Capcom response

[little badger]

Plus some footage did surface of the game

[random steppe]

It's probably something that they know is happening in general

[little badger]

Still playing warframe gen?

[random steppe]

Yes

[little badger]

[random steppe]

Taking a couple of weeks pause to be precise, but I plan to hop back in with the new frame release in march

[little badger]

I play on my PS5 and on my mobile which runs pretty smoothly.

[fresh bane]

Yes but not actively, I re installed it recently when I was switching my games from one of my drives to the other because I wanted to hop back in at some point but I just haven't been actively playing much of anything lately because I want to get some work done first and I still haven't finished with that

[astral steeple]

Ooh this is sick

[visual hill]

"warframe gen" is a nice pun (frame generation :P)

[cunning galleon]

The GNX is beautiful

[mossy flume]

https://wccftech.com/valve-is-clearly-not-cooperating-fairly-says-ceo-leading-656m-lawsuit-against-steams-30-cut-of-game-sales/

[bitter stream]

oh interesting

What you'd hope would happen is that some developers will bring their prices down, and they'll pass that on to the consumer. I believe it will happen, because that's how markets look. But it can only happen if that price parity obligation also goes away."

"Of course, it's possible that developers would get together and make greater profits from their games. But one would hope a market would respond by saying it's in my interest to cut my price now and pass that on to the customer."
Somehow, I doubt this would happen even if they do win

[fresh bane]

This feels like a stupid thing to sue Steam over

[slim thorn]

the de facto monopoly certainly isn't good, but most of the claims cited in the article seem way off base, and I've never heard anyone claim Valve/Steam were doing actual anti-competitive practices like teaching Steam to mess with your EGS if you have both installed

[bitter stream]

EGS messed with steam installations once, IIRC

[slim thorn]

oh I didn't hear about that

[fresh bane]

The whole monopoly thing is dumb too and it's been discussed to hell and back how Steam doesn't actively work towards maintaining a monopoly, they just do it better and have done it for the longest, plenty devs have put their games in GOG and EGS, which still has Alan Wake 2 as an exclusive to this day btw, 3 years later, if we want to talk about anti-competitive practices
indie devs can also just self publish and there's sites like itch io to make that even easier

it's just such a flimsy argument

[bitter stream]

here ixrec : https://metacouncil.com/threads/epic-game-store-spyware-tracking-and-you.766/

[slim thorn]

while it's true that you can "just self publish" if the only goal is to get your game out into the world, Steam is a de facto requirement for any indie dev looking to make money, we can't dismiss that

[fresh bane]

Sure, but the argument people always make is Steam is maliciously actively trying to keep things that way, and they just can never actually prove that's the case because it isn't

[slim thorn]

for the problems that Steam itself has, like the near lack of moderation brought up the other day, I don't think competitors would help anyway, only long-overdue regulation would

[astral steeple]

Egs has never had Spyware in it

Was debunked numerous times

[slim thorn]

ok, I'm gonna be completely honest here

the fact that you are saying this, makes me more inclined to believe it's real

unless you have a citation to share

[astral steeple]

Lemme find the post real quick

It's literally directly from the GM of the EGS itself debunking it

[slim thorn]

if it's just a PR statement from Epic denying it, that wouldn't be evidence for or against

[fresh bane]

Well, of course Epic is going to try to debunk it if they actually did that

[rancid herald]

the problem with steam-as-monopoly is that to a degree there's a limit to what can be done to compete in the space of 'selling stuff'.

[astral steeple]

https://web.archive.org/web/20190404131707/https://forum.facepunch.com/general/bvnqr/Epic-Games-Store-Is-Shit-But-It-s-Not-Spyware/1/

[mossy flume]

I haven’t heard of this before

[astral steeple]

There's a facepunch thread debunking it too

[mossy flume]

Despite how scummy Tim is, I’m not sure I could believe that they would willingly do something like this
But what do I know…

[slim thorn]

yeah, Steam got that monopoly in the first place by the age-old method of selling exclusives

[rancid herald]

arguably selling exclusives is the only real way stores can compete with other stores, because otherwise everyone has the same products for the same prices

[quiet swift]

The biggest and probably actionable lawsuit against Valve at the moment is how they have pressured people using steam to not sell the game on steam AND elsewhere at the same time... if that 'elsewhere' has it discounted. So if it's on steam at like 50$, seller has a personal site to buy/download from and since there's no 30% cut, could sell it 30% cheaper. But there's been email evidence via discovery from the epic lawsuit that they do do this, and say that they will not list the game on steam if the seller sells it elsewhere cheaper

Which is anticompetitive behavior that would likely be against several laws

[astral steeple]

Tim isn't even "scummy"

A lot of his money literally goes into land conservation and saving wildlife within that land being conserved

Over like 50,000 acres of land

[quiet swift]

...this is relevant how

Does he pay you or why do you shill him/epic/fortnite so much?

[rancid herald]

this just seems like evidence that EGS does in fact spy on you

[astral steeple]

That thread literally debunks it

[rancid herald]

or whatever the accusation is

[mossy flume]

Is this “spying on you” or “they have standard analytics software”?

[astral steeple]

Also I've never been paid by epic

I just really enjoy the game itself and like supporting it

It's standard analytics stuff

People not understanding how programs work

Which that thread goes into detail on

[indigo pine]

i would like to point out that most of those things are written because E.A being E.A done some redicoulous things

[slim thorn]

hm, at a glance it seems like the metacouncil thread is describing issues not debunked by the web.archive link (at least after edits)

but I lack the knowledge to vet it myself and half the posts are using imgur links that are all dead in my country

[random steppe]

I am not sure either way, I don't know how common is for software to check for stuff like that so I don't exactly know if it's problematic or just how software like that works.

I had clients auto-detect installation folders before for example, is that why that was happening?

[mossy flume]

For what it’s worth, they actually admit to doing this, according to this article. And they explain it’s due to sloppy engineering rather than anything malicious.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/epic-games-responds-store-privacy,38835.html

[light gate]

Yeah, their client isn't exactly malicious... I still don't like em.

[mossy flume]

The only evidence I could find were difficult to interpret screenshots with little context on reddit

[astral steeple]

They're doing a full rewrite of the entire launcher

[light gate]

oh my god ABOUT TIME

[mossy flume]

Yeah, I recall them saying they were doing this.

[astral steeple]

Being rebuilt from the ground up

[rancid herald]

hopefully it includes 50k acres of woodland in the launcher this time

[mossy flume]

No ETA, I think

But supposedly they are indeed attempting to make real clients that are logical

We’ll see how it goes

[astral steeple]

It's supposed to be way faster too

The current EGS was made in unreal lol

[random steppe]

I mean I hate that the Xbox client now detects all my steam games.
It makes it impossible to keep track what I install form where and I wish it would stop doing that so I am not a big fan of software automatically snooping around the computer for "stuff"

[rancid herald]

this article is from 2019, surely it doesn't take master programmer 7 years to rewrite a launcher

[sacred grove]

Meanwhile, me who has never made an EGS account and never even installed the store before. 'cause I've never had a reason to

[indigo pine]

I am betting all my couch coins that they will shoot themselves in the foot again

[light gate]

The Launcher is based on Unreal Engine.

I shit you not.

[mossy flume]

I thought it was just some browser-based wrapper

[light gate]

I thought so too.

[slim thorn]

write what you know

[rancid herald]

I don't know what that even means but it sounds silly

[random steppe]

I mean, hammer meet nails

[rancid herald]

how do you base a launcher on a game engine?

[mossy flume]

It was certainly originally intended only as a manager for the Unreal Engine editor

[light gate]

^

[mossy flume]

And they just kept tacking on random shit

[slim thorn]

The point being made is that Unreal Engine is an engine for video games. It'd be complete overkill for a simple GUI app like an e-shop client.

[indigo pine]

same. I have a bunch of free games on epic and I still buy ehm on steam or. download them through totally legal means

[random steppe]

That said, epics has probably a lot of programmers really good at coding in that environment

[mossy flume]

I just use it so I can access the Unreal Engine editor itself

[slim thorn]

I can also buy that Unreal may have enough configuration that you can turn off all the heavy parts not needed for EGS

[mossy flume]

And even that is a clunky launcher

[sacred grove]

Game engines often include a way to produce user interfaces, since games also have user interfaces. But yeah, a whole bunch of other stuff unrelated to app development

[mossy flume]

Their Fab integration is also horrid

[rancid herald]

I wanted to learn unreal engine but I sort of gave up iirc

[slim thorn]

so as weird a choice as that would be for anyone besides Epic, maybe it's fine, better to judge EGS based on how EGS performs in practice

[rancid herald]

I keep meaning to try the godot tutorial

[mossy flume]

Can’t search what you have, you just have to go through the entire list manually

[rancid herald]

again

[mossy flume]

It’s a monster of an engine.

It is not easy to learn

It’s damn good. But it’s a monster.

[light gate]

If you crash the client, you used to get an Unreal Engine 4 crashbox.

[astral steeple]

I got a bit into trying to learn ue4 a few years ago

Figured out importing a mesh as an area you could walk around in with collision

[mossy flume]

Oh right, that happened

[sacred grove]

Unreal is basically "the" de-facto engine for AAA

[light gate]

I wished I was joking.

[slim thorn]

video game engines in general are enormous toolkits, probably every piece is easy to learn, but all the pieces you'd need to build a real game are going to be hard overall (and coding them yourself without the engine would still be much harder)

[mossy flume]

To be fair, that IS a separate debugger application that can be bundled separately

But yeah

[astral steeple]

Also they're trying to make game dev easier for people to get into with ue6

[mossy flume]

It does support your argument

[light gate]

I mean I understand the skepticism.

[astral steeple]

With combining ue5 and uefn etc too

[mossy flume]

Also true!

[rancid herald]

just include an AI in the uE6

"Timbot, make me a forest level"

[indigo pine]

unreal may be the defacto. but people won't even expirience the magic of source ;-;

[light gate]

achieved with soarce

[mossy flume]

UE6’s roadmap is focused on simplifying dev experience to some degree.

The full details of this are not yet publicly available.

UE6 will not be focusing on new features, per se

Just trying to make itself more internally consistent and more approachable

[light gate]

Also does Unreal still use blueprints right? Or is that been deprecated...?

[mossy flume]

Yes, it’s still a huge feature

And it’s still being expanded on and emphasized even more

Fortnite’s systems are heavily built with Blueprints.

But I’m not sure how much they’re used by everyone else. MY UNDERSTANDING is that AAA studios have like ~25% blueprints, ~75% real code a lot of the time

[light gate]

Ah okay, I know Voices of the Void is nearly constructed 95% using Blueprints with only like 5% for stuff that simply Blueprint doesn't perform well. (Like physics)

[mossy flume]

But it varies wildly, yeah

Blueprints aren’t going anywhere

[rancid herald]

blueprints being... ?

[mossy flume]

They’re trying to make them the default coding tool

[light gate]

visual programming

[mossy flume]

Visual programming with graphs and nodes

[rancid herald]

I see

[light gate]

Its honestly interesting, something I wished Godot didn't abandon.

[mossy flume]

It’s like Scratch on uber steroids

[light gate]

Literally!

[rancid herald]

scratch?

[astral steeple]

Also with ue6 I'm mainly hyped for the "universal cosmetics system" between ue6 Games they're pushing towards lol

Like they want it to where no matter what ue6 game you load into you can use your previously bought fort cosmetics across all of them

On top of other developers being able to have their own interoperable item shops with cosmetics that also transfer between every ue6 game too

[mossy flume]

An MIT-developed visual programming tool meant to teach absolute beginners and children how to code and how to think about code

It’s very popular

[rancid herald]

never heard of it

[slim thorn]

I'm also aware of Scratch, it's always the point of comparison whenever visual/block programming tools come up

[mossy flume]

I’ve never used it, but it’s a fairly big deal in the Learn To Code-sphere

[rancid herald]

might have been useful

took me a while to really understand the value of a dictionary in python tbh

[astral steeple]

Also with ue6 coding wise it's mainly gonna be using their new programming language "verse" afaik

[mossy flume]

Yeahhhh, they’re trying to force Verse on everyone and I hate that so much

[rancid herald]

where's that damn xkcd comic about standards

[slim thorn]

I've never done regular Scratch but I have used a visual/block programming language waaaaaaay back when I was a kid messing with Lego Mindstorms bots

[mossy flume]

(Verse being Fortnite’s custom scripting language)

[rancid herald]

I vaguely remember lego minstorms' programming

[mossy flume]

Snrk. An excessive but realistic example of Blueprints

[astral steeple]

I mean yeah they're pushing towards there being standards lol

[rancid herald]

Deviant you forgot the node to make your pixels sharp!

it's jpeging all over the place

[cerulean herald]

https://xkcd.com/927/

xkcd: Standards

Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.

[slim thorn]

yeah I'm extremely skeptical of visual/block languages as anything beyond a teaching tool

[light gate]

its a webp

[rancid herald]

it's fairly useful in geometry nodes

[slim thorn]

partly because the history of programming is littered with attempts to "make programming easy for normal people" that completely floundered because the hard part was always managing complexity and that's what programmers are actually good at

(see also AI coding tools)

[mossy flume]

It’s actually not that bad in UE. It’s a very mature system designed got production use and it ties in to almost everything you can do in UE itself. But to get fully optimal results and access to 100% of everything, you still need to write C++ instead.

That said, I hate Blueprints

[minor gorge]

Closest experience I had with this sort of programming was when I was doing robotics competitions. We had to use LabVIEW.

[mossy flume]

It works and is good for quick iteration, though

[light gate]

Could be worse.

[mossy flume]

And easy parameterization

[light gate]

"I have made an entire game in react.js because I~~ hate ~~love myself!"

[mossy flume]

It does abstract away some things so you don’t have to deal with C++, which is probably fair

Blueprints just compile to C++ anyway, I think?

Just not always the most optimal code

[light gate]

I'm not sure, I'd have to ask.

[mossy flume]

Maybe they’re going to compile to Verse instead >_>

[slim thorn]

yeah, part of why I phrased it as "skeptical" is that I've never used unreal, or literally any full-blown game engine, so it's entirely possible I'm missing critical context that makes it scale better here

[astral steeple]

The most I know how to do coding wise is a dumb little visualbasics textbox in notepad lol

[light gate]

vbs?

[mossy flume]

Unreal coding is frustrating and clunky compared to Unity’s C# API.

[light gate]

The now deprecated dangerous script format.

[mossy flume]

IMO

[light gate]

"Hey John! I got an email saying that someone loves me!"

[astral steeple]

lol

[mossy flume]

I wish they supported C# or… literally anything else.

(There are plugins, but uh, good luck)

[slim thorn]

true, these days C++ would not be my first choice for a language to write the non-engine parts of a game in

[light gate]

Goddam I wished I could use Blueprints in Godot, it would help me learn a lot.

[slim thorn]

ofc they can't easily change that now

[mossy flume]

Yeah. Their answer is Verse, though.

Which I think is a Lua-like syntax? I’m not sure

They’re making weird choices

[light gate]

||metaVerse||

[astral steeple]

I mean yeah that's why its called verse lol

[mossy flume]

At least Unity just wants to upgrade to modern dotnet

[light gate]

Ah, they dropping Mono.

[mossy flume]

I assumed it was Verse as in like a lyrical verse

[mossy flume]

Yep

Finally

The next major update is meant to update to dotnet core 10 and C# 14

[light gate]

UnityGame_BurstDebugDoNotShip

[mossy flume]

Mono is on the way out

[light gate]

Anyway, this became nerdy.

[slim thorn]

so I haven't been following the C# ecosystem

Mono being out is a good thing? is it just not maintained any more?

[light gate]

I believe the Wine project controls Mono now.

[mossy flume]

It’s not maintained anymore and it’s very very dated, with a lot of performance issues compared to modern C# and modern dotnet.

[mossy flume]

Barely

They HAVE it

But Mono is basically just dead to everyone

[light gate]

Its still good that they have it.

[slim thorn]

gtk

[light gate]

Prevents the pain when you need to port stuff on deprecated stuff, unlike XNA.

[mossy flume]

Mono has been on its deathbed for like ten years now

[astral steeple]

The one thing I'm curious on is the whole unity and unreal partnership thing lol

Like how its supposed to work exactly

[slim thorn]

so did modern dotnet go cross platform and that's why mono died

[minor gorge]

I would like to know too.

[light gate]

Would you like to know more?

[slim thorn]

if that's a genuine threat, now might be a good time to move to #science-and-tech before I ask you to make good on it

[mossy flume]

Yes, pretty much. Xamarin was killed in 2016, and that basically signaled Mono’s demise (its death was kinda expected for a while before then)

I think Unity is the only major thing out there still using Mono at this point

[minor gorge]

Interesting.

[mossy flume]

Details are supposedly expected sometime this year

[astral steeple]

Oh nice

[mossy flume]

Almost ten years to the day

February 24, 2016 is when Xamarin was axed and I believe this is also about when Mono was handed to Wine just so they can give it life support while dotnet core was built

[slim thorn]

what was Xamarin

[mossy flume]

It was the standard IDE and toolchain for dealing with Mono, it was a fork of Eclipse

It was also a cross platform IDE back when JetBrains wasn’t a thing

[quiet swift]

Okay, so much for playing alan wake 1 remastered before replaying control... every second step feels like a slight framerate rubberband, if that makes sense? It's not lagging per se but it feels like it tries to catch up for every second step despite not needing to. Feels very weird

[mossy flume]

If you had a Mac and needed to deal with .NET stuff and write C#, you needed Xamarin

It was not a very good IDE

[minor gorge]

I assume one of JetBrains' IDEs is its replacement.

[mossy flume]

Rider is their C# IDE, yep.

JetBrains puts all of their Unity and Unreal Engine debugging and profiling stuff in Rider specifically. It’s their dotnet and gamedev-oriented product.

(Also supports C++ and whatnot)

[sacred grove]

Rider is good on any desktop platform, for that matter. I'd rather use it than Visual Studio at least

[minor gorge]

Will have to look into them later.

[quiet swift]

Ah, good. Was just my computer being slow. Restarted it and alan wake's running fine now

[little badger]

The new CEO at Xbox is teasing something I hope it’s true I miss the old blade UI