December 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

@Frindis so Guido is playing Skyrim with his mods, and it's absolutely beautiful. I asked him to post a screenshot on Steam. If he remembers I'll post it here.

 

[Frindis]

@ZedClampet That would be cool

 

[ZedClampet]

I was having a blast playing Ale and Tale Tavern until the special customers started arriving and ordering meals that I hadn't even unlocked yet. How am I supposed to serve someone trout soup if I haven't unlocked the fishing pole yet?

 

[ZedClampet]

@Frindis I've only played a few minutes of Skyrim. I'm sure that you and others who have modded it extensively knew how good it can look, but I was really surprised by it.

I'm going to ask him to send me a picture of the NPCs since I remember them looking pretty rough.

 

[Frindis]

That looks way better than anything I have done with mods. I downloaded a large collection a few years back, but it was mainly for Skyrim's *cough* females.

 

[ZedClampet]

Tis the season to buy a gaming laptop (since the new GPUs are about to come out). Here's a 17 inch Gigabyte with an RTX 4080 that's not much more expensive than just buying an RTX 4080 card.

Note, however, that they don't list the TGP, and I didn't go elsewhere to look it up. That's going to determine how well this runs. Also, it only has 16 GB of RAM, which you'll probably want to increase, but that would cost less than $100.

Gigabyte 4080 Laptop

If I did it correctly, that has PC Gamer's referral info in the link.

 

[Zloth]

Steam has put out a list of the best sellers (by gross revenue) for 2024

Best of Steam - 2024

A look back at the year's top sellers, new releases, most-played games, and more!

store.steampowered.com

Edit: Oh, and the tabs along the top provide even more stats!

 

[ZedClampet]

Steam has put out a list of the best sellers (by gross revenue) for 2024

Best of Steam - 2024

A look back at the year's top sellers, new releases, most-played games, and more!

store.steampowered.com

Edit: Oh, and the tabs along the top provide even more stats!

Glad to see a decent number of indies make the top sellers. Read somewhere that over 90 percent of the revenue is usually from AAA games, but that may not be the case this year with Palworld as the second most-played game behind Wukong.

****

@Colif Blizzard may be right that Path of Exile 2 isn't a Diablo-like. If they are just going by the combat, then it isn't like Diablo at all. The best way to describe it is 'twin stick'. The combat is like Hades and V Rising rather than Diablo.

 

[ZedClampet]

Guido has never used a mousepad before, so I got him one for Christmas. Will be interested to see if he notices a significant difference since a decent mouse will track on just about any surface these days.

 

[Colif]

Blizzard may be right that Path of Exile 2 isn't a Diablo-like. If they are just going by the combat, then it isn't like Diablo at all. The best way to describe it is 'twin stick'. The combat is like Hades and V Rising rather than Diablo.

i have avoided watching game play so I cannot really comment. I might watch some later - I didn't want to get sucked in so I avoided it instead.
POE is a Diablo game though, They have said that POE2 is a different game, they are going to continue to make POE though.

 

[Johnway]

Had a bit of time to polish off the last 2 maps for Ramp 2024 station. As previously mentioned i was touring the solar generator station. The theme is predominately sci fi or orange. Interestingly, i found the easier maps much more interesting design wise. A real highlight was the Internet explorer map which riffs on the HTML webpages of the 90s and Vapourwave. A joy to play.

The last 2 maps i played were the hardest and really hurt them. One was a lovely designed map, except it was some sort of sunder like difficulty. attacks come from all angles, little protection and the place is just packed with archviles.

The other was a slaughterfest map. SIX THOUSAND enemies. Unsurprisingly it tanked my framerate and more worrying it was incredibly boring. You don't need to fire a single shot because the cyberdemons would do most of the work. I didn't hang around to kill all enemies. I circle strafed long enough till 5000 of the monsters were dead. Only when i saw the enemie count climb higher then 6000+ i knew the exit was open. here is a screenshot of one bit.

but we're done now. Time to move onto the next station the library of oddities!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I finished the Frostpunk 2 campaign, and it was a tutorial and not a particularly interesting one in the end which was disappointing personally. However it seems theres a lot more to the game in the freeplay endless mode, different groups of survivors that inhabit your city give you access to different techs which seem to pretty heavily affect how each run can turn out, as sometimes you may not be able to access some things at all and have to work around it. Still seems good but I got side tracked and will come back later most likely...

Been playing The Last Spell, man this seems good so far. Its a tile based turn based tactics game where you control a team of heroes to kill hordes of zombie like mobs to protect a town in the centre of the map. Theres a lot of items, upgrades and abilities it seems after only a couple of hours. Between missions you spend resources earned in the battles to upgrade your town and heroes, very moreish as a cycle doesnt take all that long and mowing down the mobs as efficiently as possible is very satisfying. Loads of upgrades to get into, nice.

 

[BeardyHat]

I finished Dishonored 2 this afternoon. What a great game.

Makes me want to revisit Mooncrash for Prey, maybe even an alternate playthrough of Prey or possibly ever try Deathloop. That said, I think I've had my fill of ImSim's for the time being, so I'll probably try and find something completely different to play.

Based on @Kaamos_Llama, maybe I'll finally give the original Frostpunk a go...

 

[Pifanjr]

We have a friend staying over for Christmas today, but my wife crashed after dinner so he and I ended up playing a bunch of video games together. I just showed him all of the games I usually play with my kid that are easy to pick up, so we played

- Boomerang Fu (sadly it crashed right near the end before we knew who'd won)
- Fling to the Finish
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. I'd done the first campaign with my kid and my friend and I finished the other ones this evening.
- Unrailed. We were at the last biome (I think) when we lost track of our bucket. Our train caught on fire with only one track needed to get to the station.

It's a shame my wife wasn't feeling well, but it's been forever since I had a proper gaming session while sitting in front of the same screen with someone outside of my kid and I really enjoyed it.

 

[ZedClampet]

We have a friend staying over for Christmas today, but my wife crashed after dinner so he and I ended up playing a bunch of video games together. I just showed him all of the games I usually play with my kid that are easy to pick up, so we played

- Boomerang Fu (sadly it crashed right near the end before we knew who'd won)
- Fling to the Finish
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. I'd done the first campaign with my kid and my friend and I finished the other ones this evening.
- Unrailed. We were at the last biome (I think) when we lost track of our bucket. Our train caught on fire with only one track needed to get to the station.

It's a shame my wife wasn't feeling well, but it's been forever since I had a proper gaming session while sitting in front of the same screen with someone outside of my kid and I really enjoyed it.

I'm so glad you mentioned Unrailed. I wanted to play that and completely forgot about it.

Also, this looks like it might be a fun "play house" game:

Save 20% on Luma Island on Steam

Travel to Luma Island to go on an epic adventure by yourself or with your friends and family. Build your dream farm, master professions, collect magical Lumas, find treasures and unravel the mysteries of the island.

store.steampowered.com

Also, since you like petting cats

Save 35% on Little Kitty, Big City on Steam

You're a curious little kitty with a big personality, on an adventure to find your way back home. Explore the city, make new friends with stray animals, wear delightful hats, and leave more than a little chaos in your wake. After all, isn't that what cats do best?

store.steampowered.com

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Based on @Kaamos_Llama, maybe I'll finally give the original Frostpunk a go...

It wasnt the city building so much as the combination of the narrative beats connected to the decisions you make. Made it feel like it meant more than the numbers. I think similar or the same events happen each time you play a scenario, so it becomes easier to anticipate after the first time. At least that how I remember, it was something different.

The second game seems like theyre trying to keep what worked well but expand the scale and making it more replayable, Im pretty early but it seems to have done a good job of it so far.

 

[mjs warlord]

@ZedClampet

Something has happened to satisfactory , at the beginning of December they put out about 4 patches and ever since then i takes me about 5 minutes to get into the game.
At the main screen i click top left where the saves are located so that the game launches , i then see the word SATISFACTORY and the spinning circle for almost 5 minutes and then a shaded image of the game screen i am about to go into.

I have verified cache and cleared download cache and its still the same , i have not changed and in game setting or anything on my pc.

Can you please launch your copy of satisfactory and time how long it takes.

If any other satisfactory uses read this can you please do the same.

 

[mjs warlord]

I'm so glad you mentioned Unrailed. I wanted to play that and completely forgot about it.

Also, this looks like it might be a fun "play house" game:

Save 20% on Luma Island on Steam

Travel to Luma Island to go on an epic adventure by yourself or with your friends and family. Build your dream farm, master professions, collect magical Lumas, find treasures and unravel the mysteries of the island.

store.steampowered.com

Also, since you like petting cats

Save 35% on Little Kitty, Big City on Steam

You're a curious little kitty with a big personality, on an adventure to find your way back home. Explore the city, make new friends with stray animals, wear delightful hats, and leave more than a little chaos in your wake. After all, isn't that what cats do best?

store.steampowered.com

Hi zed i made a posting asking for your help it has been moved onto this posting

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampet

Something has happened to satisfactory , at the beginning of December they put out about 4 patches and ever since then i takes me about 5 minutes to get into the game.
At the main screen i click top left where the saves are located so that the game launches , i then see the word SATISFACTORY and the spinning circle for almost 5 minutes and then a shaded image of the game screen i am about to go into.

I have verified cache and cleared download cache and its still the same , i have not changed and in game setting or anything on my pc.

Can you please launch your copy of satisfactory and time how long it takes.

If any other satisfactory uses read this can you please do the same.

Mine launched as usual in just a few seconds. Are you using mods? One of the updates could have broken a mod. Or, possibly, one of the larger mods keeps updating and having to redownload assets.

 

[mjs warlord]

Mine launched as usual in just a few seconds. Are you using mods? One of the updates could have broken a mod. Or, possibly, one of the larger mods keeps updating and having to redownload assets.

Never use mods. I asked the same on their q and a site and the only reply i got was a cartoon of a guy falling off a broken bike

 

[ZedClampet]

Never use mods. I asked the same on their q and a site and the only reply i got was a cartoon of a guy falling off a broken bike

Do you have a save file from before this started? You could open that and see how long it takes. Your save could be getting corrupted for some reason. I would probably go ahead and make a backup of all your save files right now if you haven't done that lately.

Another possibility is that they did something weird with the update and it's trying to load too much of your massive build at the beginning, kind of like loading shaders in other games.

 

[ZedClampet]

@mjs warlord also, with all the updates, you probably need to run an integrity check of your files, which you can do both on Steam and Epic. Not sure which one you have your game in.

 

[neogunhero]

I’ve been looking at my backlog of games I want to revisit or play for the first time. The problem with a lot of these games is they simply don’t look very good. Graphics don’t bother me too much, but sometimes I can’t stand muddy low res textures. I’ve been looking at ways to make these games look prettier, and so far I’ve basically remastered GTA IV and Batman Arkham Asylum. I need to post screenshots but they will get compressed through my phone.

It’s oddly satisfying when you spend some time modding a game and it turns out looking great. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully remastered them, across both games the only real changes I’ve done are increase texture resolution and clarity, and add SSAO to soften edges with slight shadows. Even with just the texture resolution increasing, both games are in the right step to looking like full on official remasters.

GTA IV has some artifact/AA problems. Edges can look a bit jagged, especially when standing still and very noticeable in screenshots unfortunately. Need to look into that and see if there is a mod to improve AA quality or if I could just fix that in the Nvidia control panel. Besides that, I do want to find some more shading/lighting mods.

As for Batman, surprisingly the graphics are still very good considering how old the game is. The major problem was texture resolution and lack of SSAO. Add those two things in, it looks like it could have been an official remaster from a few years ago. I think one reason why the graphics are still great is that the game takes place in a lot of small areas, so that probably allowed devs to focus strongly on lighting and shadows in these smaller confined areas, rather than larger open areas.

This is honestly fun to me. It’s satisfying to see your work pay off with a great looking game. I think I will keep doing this to more games. I wanted to do something with Bioshock but I can’t seem to find any well known graphical upgrade mods.

 

[mjs warlord]

@mjs warlord also, with all the updates, you probably need to run an integrity check of your files, which you can do both on Steam and Epic. Not sure which one you have your game in.

i am on steam and verify cache and deleted download cache. i did start new game and it loaded in seconds.
No idea what is making it take so long , i deleted all old saves and made 3 new ones , i spent over an hour studying my layout and everything looks like its working as it should.

 

[ZedClampet]

i am on steam and verify cache and deleted download cache. i did start new game and it loaded in seconds.
No idea what is making it take so long , i deleted all old saves and made 3 new ones , i spent over an hour studying my layout and everything looks like its working as it should.

ugh. Did you make back-ups of your old saves? Did you try an old save?