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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • When I was a kid, Tomb Raider was a pretty easy game, except this one part that required absolutely perfect timing for a some running and jumping between platforms for a bonus item.

    At the start, I could make it to the next platform. After a while, I could do 2. Eventually, I got 3. After a long, long time, I finally managed to string all of them together… And screwed up the very last one.

    Here’s the thing, though. I got it on the very next attempt. I had learned that sequence so well that it actually wasn’t hard any more, even though it was nearly impossible for me at the start.

    Afterwards, my parents (who watched the whole thing) told me they had never seen me focus on something so intently for so long and they couldn’t believe I managed it.

    That’s what souls games are, from start to finish. Every single encounter is basically impossible at first, until you die and learn enough to get through it. But you start from the beginning of the game every freaking time.



  • First off, I think you’re absolutely right about your right to disable “this nonsense”. I support you in that.

    But “this nonsense” is what makes games fun for me.

    I’m not about struggling and finally overcoming.

    I’m about having an adventure. It’s the interactive version of a book, where I engage my brain a bit more and explore or solve puzzles, instead of the book just telling me the answers immediately. I enjoy gun fights in games, but I don’t want to play them even twice. I want to win them and move on to more content. Losing a scenario doesn’t make me feel even better when I win. It just drags me down.

    I have enough things in my life that I’ve accomplished by struggle that I don’t need it from games, too.

    But again, if that’s what does it for you, I think you should have it, too. There’s no good reason you can’t disable it, IMO. (Other than the devs just not providing the option.)







  • I’m going to guess “no”.

    I’m not great at art, but I’m a senior software developer and amateur woodworker.

    A saw that gets you a mostly straight cut when you need a really straight one doesn’t help a ton. It might help you break things down faster so they’re more manageable, but that probably actually means more waste and not a ton of time savings.

    Likewise, code “copilots” right now look great at first blush, but I’ve yet to have it produce any lengthy piece of code that was correct. I had one snippet that I thought was great at first glance, but by the time I was done I had modified every single line of code. Some were very subtly wrong in ways that would create weird bugs.

    As for art, I think AI is great at expressing a feeling, but a final piece is about details. Having it produce something that you can modify doesn’t seem useful for most art workflows, and it’ll trip you up on tiny details that you don’t notice until later, or not at all. There have been plenty of artists tripped up by using AI for the base art and then modifying it, and the company has even published their work publicly, only to be found out by the public because of stupid AI things that slipped past. It saved them some time, but the work wasn’t perfect and it cost them their job.






  • I’m not surprised that it’s lagging behind the other 2. To me, it feels like Honkai Impact 3rd with a coat of Persona 5 paint on it. Everything is flashy and tries to seem complicated, but it’s dead simple so far. I imagine there’s some actual strategy to the combat later, but at lower levels, it’s painfully lame.

    And the writing? Wordy as ever, and so pointless. Skipping through the text quickly makes you miss like 1/3 of it, even if you read super fast. It literally just never shows on the screen, hidden behind some scrolling text area or just not even put onscreen before advancing.

    The weapons are all just balls with faces. They seem like children’s toys instead of useful items, and it’s hard to care about them beyond the stats.

    I’m impressed they made even that $25 mil.

    The only thing that has drawn me in so far is the daily video store thing, and I just thought to myself this morning: “Shouldn’t I just find a good store game instead?”



  • There are things that you shouldn’t do or say to minors that aren’t illegal, but anyone reading them would still know it’s it’s unethical/wrong/immoral/whatever. They clearly thought he crossed that line, enough that they’d rather fire him and take a chance on losing the court case for damages for breaking the contract. And then they lost that court case.

    It clearly wasn’t just “a chat with a minor”. The rumors I’ve heard is that he was attempting to make plans to meet up with them at a convention. That would definitely be in the “big no no” category for a celebrity talking to a minor, even if nothing untoward was suggested in that conversation.