August 2025 General Game Discussion

[Colif]

i prefer steelseries mice - I need to run its software to maintain its ultra low battery usage mode - battery life is 18 days longer without RGB so I haven't really bothered looking if Microsoft supports it.
given my longest lasting mice have been steelseries I know they make good hardware as well.

All hardware makers are annoying. They all force you to use their software to access features.
Need to use RGB fusion to get any RGB on my motherboard (though it supports Dynamic lighting)
Need to use Powercolor app to get RGB on my GPU
Need to use mouse software to change profile settings, but it does save some info onto the mouse

The on-board memory on the mouse will save the last active profile in Engine. The mouse will only save the following on board:

• Basic button bindings, such as mouse/keyboard buttons
• CPI Settings
• Polling Rate
• Lighting Disabled

https://support.steelseries.com/hc/en-us/articles/15250138269837-Aerox-Family-Onboard-Memory

no hardware makers want to share.
Logitech aren't that bad really, can use dynamic lighting with their mice.

 

[neogunhero]

All hardware makers are annoying. They all force you to use their software to access features.

One thing I haven't tried yet is to see if Dynamic Lighting will persist even after uninstalling Synapse. I have to install Synapse to turn on the Dynamic Lighting option, though I bet once I uninstall it the settings will revert.

 

[Zed Clampet]

It takes a lot of work to go on hiatus in Dune Awakening. I was going to just nurture the base for a few months until Guido's xmas break, but I decided today I don't really want to bother. We'll lose the base and all the stuff in there that you can' t pick up. The rest of the stuff we can take to Arakeen and store it there. We have a few vehicles we are going to lose, which is painful and the crafting machines, power generator, water generators, etc. We may log back in in December and just say, "nah."

 

[Johnway]

Still playing POE1 and so far my build remains very, very good. So the good news i can do all the content, the bad news is that after a quick check i can probably do up to 24 challenges. 4 short of what i need. Again the problem is the serious grind or too much luck based to succeed for one person. I'll keep playing till october and see what happens.

The other Path of exile news is of course the POE2 weekend. Beat act 1 to get all the loot? yes please. bad news is that i need to download 100Gb first... unlikely to even be ready till tomorrow lunchtime. How long will it take me to get past act 1? we shall see. i mean, in POE1 you can normally blitz act 1 very quickly (if you don't do the side content). Once i've beaten act 1 i'll play a bit more before uninstalling it. Twitch is of course streaming and giving a way a free gift. EDIT: correction its a skin for your stash (a clam shell) and a helmet (helmet of the abyssal). I'm all for more cosmetics!

 

[Pifanjr]

I did another mission with the fifth character in Backpack Heroes and it went a lot better. This one let me expand my backpack size, which really helps, but it gave me some ideas on how to complete the other mission. However, I'm halfway through another attempt and it's not going very well, mostly because I have a terrible weapon for this setup and got no good relics from the first boss.

---

My friends and I continued our Barotrauma game this evening. It was going pretty well until we got to an outpost that had been overrun by aliens. We downed the first one without too much issue... or at least we thought we did. Turns out it wasn't quite dead yet and it regenerates pretty quickly. It had also fallen down the ladder into our sub and we had used most of our ammo on taking it down the first time.

Suffice it to say that we decided to reload the previous save when we play next time.

 

[Zloth]

Last time I played was before Covid. Is that long enough?

Dunno. It happens when one of their updates changes something about planets that requires them to re-generate the galaxies.

OK, I just checked, and they don't want to do any more resets. The last one was 2018. There was an update that added a bunch of new biomes, but they did it by simply adding more planets to many star systems. I guess they are taking all their desires to make really big updates to the game and dumping them into Light No Fire.

 

[BeardyHat]

Still at it with Crusader: No Remorse, but I switched over to playing on my Deck, because Retroarch is a bit janky when it comes to controls. I'm on the... Third? I think mission. They're pretty long and all a bit samey, but still fun and I'm enjoying all the FMV cutscenes in the game, what a lost art.

Also been playing GTA: San Andreas Definitive. I'm enjoying it, but not entirely sure how I feel about it. I'm having fun, but I keep thinking about GTA V, which has significantly better fidelity, but I absolutely cannot stand the characters in. That said, the characters are more fun, the world has a lot more to do and there's just something a little more interesting about it.

Will be starting something else new pretty soon too, but not sure what. I'm part of another forum that has decided to start a Retro Game Club, the votes are currently being tallied, so I'm not sure what we'll be playing yet. My nominations for the club were Descent and The Colonel's Bequest.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Waterpark Simulator on Steam

Build and run your own waterpark. Design slides, send guests flying with ragdoll physics, manage staff, and fully customize your park. Turn total madness into a five-star empire in this first-person management simulator!

store.steampowered.com

@Colif I don't remember why, but at some point you and I were discussing waterpark games. This one launched last week.

It has a free demo

The catch to this one is that it is first person, and you are picking up garbage, rescuing people who are drowning, serving hot dogs, etc. Although you can hire people at some point.

 

[Colif]

Not sure I want to be that hands on in the management - I looked at a few videos.
Thanks for the thought anyway.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Not sure I want to be that hands on in the management - I looked at a few videos.
Thanks for the thought anyway.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Probably will try the demo though.

 

[Colif]

first person would be okay if it was just one of the views. From what I saw, there is a design view and probably a menu system as well, but most is played in 1st person.

 

[Johnway]

So i put in a solid near 4 hours in POE2 and so far i'm enjoying it. the tactile wasd keys makes playing it enjoyable to play. I had come in with some preconceptions thinking it will be similar to POE1 but there are enough mechanics to make it a very different animal.

There are one or 2 things that leave me a bit mixed opinion wise. The main one being DPS. Playing as the merc it just takes a while to kill things and leading to situations of kiting. Sure, i got my head around it with the one two punch of freezing enemies and shattering them but it doesn't feel entirely fluid as i would like. Perhaps its early days by end game i will be zipping around like i do in POE1.

The other niggle is perhaps the loot side of things, its a bit stingy with it. I guess we'll see later on how it shapes up and whether like in POE i can ignore much of the loot. i mean, i'm starting to see more loot (is it level based?) but when you first start off its just seriously stingy and leading to that awful situation of kiting and slowing things down. than again, i've learnt to just aggro more monsters and make use of killing them in bigger groups.

Almost done with act 1. once i'm done with it, i might play a bit of act 2 before uninstalling it and going back to POE1 where i can blast through that and see if i can get any more rewards.

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued the mission in Backpack Heroes. In the last post I said it wasn't going well, in part because the weapon I found was terrible for the mission I was doing, where I cannot expand my inventory space.

The weapon itself only takes up two spaces, but I needed to use another spot for an item that would let me use it twice. Then I needed two more spots for a third weapon so I could use all three of my energy each round for attacking. That's 5 spots for 3 attacks, the third of which is weaker.

However, I found the perfect item for my setup. It uses one energy to trigger my weapon twice, which let me do a total of 4 attacks using only 3 inventory slots and all of them using the same weapon I fully upgraded. Then I found another 1-slot item that let me trigger the same weapon an additional time for free every turn and the second boss gave me a relic that let me keep half of my block after every turn, which turned the last area into a cake walk.

---

My friends and I also continued our Barotrauma game. We finally upgraded our submarine and promptly managed to burn it down trying to figure out the reactor. Turns out the entire sub only had a single fire extinguisher.

After a quick reload we safely arrived at our first alien ruins. We did have two deaths, but since we turned off respawn penalties that wasn't a problem and we successfully looted the place, netting me a new power cell for my alien weapon.

Next time we play we will have to do our first fight against an enemy sub. Our new sub is quite the upgrade over the old one, so we should be able to win pretty easily, but so far we've managed to turn every new situation into a new disaster so here's hoping we can get away with just a couple of respawns again.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I continued the mission in Backpack Heroes. In the last post I said it wasn't going well, in part because the weapon I found was terrible for the mission I was doing, where I cannot expand my inventory space.

The weapon itself only takes up two spaces, but I needed to use another spot for an item that would let me use it twice. Then I needed two more spots for a third weapon so I could use all three of my energy each round for attacking. That's 5 spots for 3 attacks, the third of which is weaker.

However, I found the perfect item for my setup. It uses one energy to trigger my weapon twice, which let me do a total of 4 attacks using only 3 inventory slots and all of them using the same weapon I fully upgraded. Then I found another 1-slot item that let me trigger the same weapon an additional time for free every turn and the second boss gave me a relic that let me keep half of my block after every turn, which turned the last area into a cake walk.

---

My friends and I also continued our Barotrauma game. We finally upgraded our submarine and promptly managed to burn it down trying to figure out the reactor. Turns out the entire sub only had a single fire extinguisher.

After a quick reload we safely arrived at our first alien ruins. We did have two deaths, but since we turned off respawn penalties that wasn't a problem and we successfully looted the place, netting me a new power cell for my alien weapon.

Next time we play we will have to do our first fight against an enemy sub. Our new sub is quite the upgrade over the old one, so we should be able to win pretty easily, but so far we've managed to turn every new situation into a new disaster so here's hoping we can get away with just a couple of respawns again.

One of these days I'm going to buy Barotrauma. It goes on sale quite a bit. I've just never pulled the trigger.

 

[Zloth]

I found a way to the Academy in Elden Ring a while back, but the way is shut by big glowy runes. I also found a guy that wants a key in - so I presumed there was a key in somewhere. There's a little village down below, that's probably it.

Nope.

Eventually, I noticed the friggin' glowing marker on a guy slumped next to the door. He had a map that showed exactly where to get the key. Naturally, the key is being defended by a dragon. Contrary to what Atari's Adventure taught me, it is not shaped vaguely like a duck on a spring.

 

[Pifanjr]

One of these days I'm going to buy Barotrauma. It goes on sale quite a bit. I've just never pulled the trigger.

It's definitely a unique experience. There's quite a lot of depth to the game that, as far as I'm aware, doesn't get fully explained. But the bots are very capable, ay least inside the sub, so I'd recommend playing as the captain first so you can mostly focus on steering the ship and reading all of the item descriptions. You might have to increase the font size in a config file though.