July 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[Zed Clampet]

Sorry. Not enough sleep to make a decent post right now.

If you find a PCG article to post, please make that thread.

 

[DXCHASE]

Settled in more now. Still havent played much PC-wise with unpacking but ive really cleaned up my PC space and have it situated in front of a windowsill thats wide enough to house all the wires. Finally got ethernet up and out of the way for 3 different PC's.

Also finally able to clear the basement out with moved stuff to start setting up a more proper arcade setup...

Definitely got more work to do with it (couch coming/dartboard , lights, signs, risers to put up etc.) but ive never had a proper space to do this kind of set up away from my living room or pc area.

 

[neogunhero]

So Signal was useful for setting my mouse RGB, I was able to set it then close the program and keep settings.
I was also able to find the on-board memory settings for my keyboard via iCUE, which I also set the RGB and closed the program. I also set macros for the Nvidia app. Nice!

Reading this the next day, to expand: iCUE allowed me to save my profile on the keyboard so I don't have to keep that program running constantly, I actually uninstalled it after I was happy with my choices. SignalRGB worked good for setting my mouse RGB, and it allowed me to keep the settings even after closing the app. However, after shutting down/restarting the PC, you have to open the app again for the changes to come into effect. Razer sucks in a lot of ways, and one way they do is by forcing a rainbow wave effect on as default when neither the Signal or Razer Chroma apps are open. So I have to open the app then close it, or have it open at startup and close it manually each time I turn on my PC. Not very ideal, still looking for other ways. I saw someone on Github made a custom mouse driver program to force a solid color on at all times, but the instructions were pretty complicated, and I'm afraid having a custom mouse driver may trigger anti-cheat software in games.

Signal also wasn't the best for my keyboard. It disabled the brightness button, which allows me to go from brightness level 1-3 then off, when using Signal it was forced on the brightest setting with no way to change it. Also, the free version only allowed me to make 2 macros, using iCUE I ended up having 4. Plus, the macros are saved on board along with lighting, so now I forever have Nvidia app macros for recording clips and taking screenshots until I change it.

I think my mouse is just made by a greedy corporation that wants to force its users to use their own proprietary software. At least in the case of my Corsair keyboard I can fully uninstall the program once I'm done with it, and it's a lot less predatory looking than Razer's software. Their software is riddled with links to their other 7 programs, ads to buy their stuff, and overall just looks unnecessarily clunky and unintuitive. The mouse is great, it's very well built and works well, but the software side of things is horrendous. Still looking for a way to change it and save it to its on-board memory. I think that's part of what that custom driver I mentioned does, it bypasses the traditionally locked down on-board memory of the mouse or something of that sort.

 

[Pifanjr]

I have also updated my PC set-up: I have added a power strip so we don't have to unplug the speakers of the second PC every time I either need to plug in my laptop charger or my wife wants to plug in her phone charger. We can also plug in the wall lights again so it's slightly less dark in this corner of the house.

 

[neogunhero]

I also have 6 macro keys on my keyboard, but they aren't easy to hit (they are between the regular keys and the numpad), so I haven't figured out a use for them yet.

That's mainly why I set them to do Nvidia app stuff, they aren't easy to hit so it wouldn't work good for in-game uses. I'm not pulling off insane moves and immediately clipping it like a streamer, but every now and then if there is something funny that happens in game, I can now hit one of the macro keys to save a replay of it. Besides the Nvidia app, I can't think of any other macros I'd want to set them to, as I have two free macro keys still.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I have also updated my PC set-up: I have added a power strip so we don't have to unplug the speakers of the second PC every time I either need to plug in my laptop charger or my wife wants to plug in her phone charger. We can also plug in the wall lights again so it's slightly less dark in this corner of the house.

Talking about minor updates, I got one of these this year under the desk

https://www.ikea.com/fi/en/p/dagotto-foot-rest-black-40240989/.

As far as hours/price goes its the most Euro efficient part of my setup probably ever. Can recommend.

 

[Colif]

So I have to open the app then close it, or have it open at startup and close it manually each time I turn on my PC.

Neither has an option to start with windows?
let synapse load with windows and use task scheduler to close it

Create a scheduled task:

• Open Task Scheduler (search for "Task Scheduler" in the Start menu).
• Click "Create Basic Task..." in the Actions pane on the right.
• Give the task a name and description, then click "Next".
• Choose when you want the task to run (e.g., daily, weekly) and click "Next".
• Select the start time and click "Next".
• Choose "Start a program" and click "Next".
• In the "Program/script" field, type taskkill.
• In the "Add arguments" field, type /f /im programname.exe (replace programname.exe with the actual name of the program you want to close).
• Click "Next" and then "Finish".

I used it to delay the start-up of two of my programs, sure reduces the amount of resources used at start-up., My virtual memory usage used to hit 99% a lot on last PC, now average is 32% - no longer think I need 64gb of ram yet.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Ugh, decided to play Balatro, and got to the Finisher Blind and was prepared for anything but the Violet Vessel (earn 300,000 coins). And the kicker is that I would have been prepared for that one except that my previous Boss Blind debuffed all face cards and I had to sell the Joker that turned all cards into face cards, which was one major facet of my build.

I only ended up with about 160,000 coins, so I wasn't even close. Actually, I drew really awful cards. For instance, I started off without a single face card.

 

[Zloth]

Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children using my old company ended up working badly. All those masteries... I was thinking about deleting them, but I had something like 200 types to go through! It just wasn't worth throwing them out, so I decided to start fresh.

And it's just as fun as I remember... which is 'not much' for the opening half hour or so. But I'm already getting into the mix of things with a team of two, remembering what's what. They added some things to the game that really need to add to my Steam guide!

 

[Zed Clampet]

Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children using my old company ended up working badly. All those masteries... I was thinking about deleting them, but I had something like 200 types to go through! It just wasn't worth throwing them out, so I decided to start fresh.

And it's just as fun as I remember... which is 'not much' for the opening half hour or so. But I'm already getting into the mix of things with a team of two, remembering what's what. They added some things to the game that really need to add to my Steam guide!

I felt like I was in a tutorial for most of the last decade, but I'm going to try it again since I've successfully completed some RPGs lately.

 

[Zloth]

I felt like I was in a tutorial for most of the last decade, but I'm going to try it again since I've successfully completed some RPGs lately.

You're definitely in a tutorial for the first few missions. Skipping the tutorial just skips the first mission, where you learn how to move. There's a lot to teach.

 

[Pifanjr]

You're definitely in a tutorial for the first few missions. Skipping the tutorial just skips the first mission, where you learn how to move. There's a lot to teach.

I really dislike games that think you need to explain the entire game before you can actually start playing. Just give me the basics and let me play, then introduce new mechanics over time.

 

[neogunhero]

Talking about minor updates, I got one of these this year under the desk

https://www.ikea.com/fi/en/p/dagotto-foot-rest-black-40240989/.

As far as hours/price goes its the most Euro efficient part of my setup probably ever. Can recommend.

For the past 3-4 years I've been using a foam back roller just like this as a foot rest. Not as adjustable as the one you posted, but works very well for me. I like the grooves and can sort of

Neither has an option to start with windows?
let synapse load with windows and use task scheduler to close it

They all have that option, but ideally what I want is to not have a program open at all and have my RGB set how I want. I was able to do it on the keyboard, just not my mouse. Doing some searches, looks like this is a very common complain amongst Razer mice users. Razer claims their mice have on-board memory, but it's actually only on-board as long as their program is open. My Corsair has true on-board memory that doesn't require any additional software to run, and I wish my mouse was the same. I tried another program, OpenRGB, but it is the exact same as Razer Chroma/Synapse and SignalRGB, the program needs to stay open to apply custom RGB settings to the mouse. At the end of it all, it's just a fault of the mouse and a greedy company, and I've gone this long not bothered by it's rainbow glow that I should just be happy I got my keyboard working and really, that is more important to me between the two peripherals. Someone did mention in the Razer subreddit that you can use their software to completely turn off the RGB and it saves even after you uninstall the program, I may just do that.

I really dislike games that think you need to explain the entire game before you can actually start playing. Just give me the basics and let me play, then introduce new mechanics over time.

Teach as you play, but make it feel natural like you're slowly getting better. I really dislike when the entire game pauses to give you a massive text box to read. I don't mind it pausing to show me something quick, but not a two-paragraph explanation of how a certain unit uses their unique abilities. I've lost patience for extremely long tutorials.

 

[neogunhero]

Had my second longest life come to an end on the DayZ Frostline expansion last night. The servers had a wipe recently, so I decided to play on an Official server that had about 30 players on. For context, I typically like PVE community servers with or without mods, official servers can be harder and more brutal since there are no mods or modifiers to make the game slightly easier.

I started by rummaging through a nearby village where I stumbled upon a player inside of a house. He had a backpack and submachine gun, yet he held his fists up like he was going to punch me but then proceeded to fall to the floor dead. I presume he died of starvation or freezing, maybe a combination of both. Food and drink in Sakhal is typically frozen so you have to craft a fire to allow it to slowly come to temp, or if you have a cooking pan/pot you can reheat it much faster.

After getting a couple essentials from that village, I proceeded to run as far inland as I could. DayZ is notorious for having spawn killers who like to camp nearby the shores where new players spawn, so I booked it inwards. I ran for a very long time, found a hot spring to warm up by, ran some more, found a couple little shacks here and there, but it would be a while before I found another village. I built an impromptu fire on the side of a mountain cliff and warmed up my canned peaches and Pepsi and enjoyed my meal.

Eventually I found another village to pillage. There I found tons of great gear: extremely warm hunters pants and sweater, ushanka type hat, shotgun with a box of shells, lots of food, glowsticks and more. I was set to survive just a bit longer, and now I'll stay warmer than before. However, it was starting to get dark and the zombie were getting harder to see. I zigzagged across the main street between houses looking for anything I can get my hands on as I had a growing crowd of zombies chasing after me. I had a strategy of closing all doors inside of a house, run to one entrance and wait a bit, then sprint to the other to escape. The zombies follow you around the house, so if you're quick you can escape out the back door while they're all up front.

As I was holed up in one of the houses surrounded by zombies, I started to hear growls and barks. I looked out the window and noticed in addition to being surrounded by zombies, I was also surrounded by a pack of wild wolves. Interestingly, the wolves did not attack the zombies at all. I had no chance of outrunning the wolves as I was starting to get cold and my health was dropping. My stamina and overall speed had decreased. The only thing I could do is shoot them from inside, so I proceeded to kill all of the wolves, which only left the zombies. I decided to run to another house, which was a terrible idea. I ran out of stamina before I could reach another house, and I took a few hits from the zombies. My health had dropped to it's lowest point, on the brink of death, but I managed to clear out the last of the zombies with my shotgun.

I stood around the pile of bodies and I listened for any remaining zombies. Silence. I was finally alone, away from any threats. I was relived, as the last 20 minutes in this village was extremely intense. I made a few dumb decisions, but I think I could still survive. My immediate plan was the build a fire, eat my food, and regain my health for a bit. As I took out my steak knife to gather some firewood, I dropped to the ground, with "You Are Dead" fading into the middle of the screen. Good thing it happened right at bedtime.

 

[Colif]

Razer claims their mice have on-board memory, but it's actually only on-board as long as their program is open.

Seems my mouse only shows its colours if running its program. It can save DPI & key bind settings on 5 onboard profiles though. Razer probably does that as well I expect. Not sure what colour scheme is without program running.

The motherboard doesn't save settings or at least, I can't seem to change it. No way to change it in BIOS so every start the ram is green until the Gigabye Command centre starts. rather annoying.
GPU remembers its colour scheme at least. I only need to run its program if I am changing colours.

RGB is a pain unless you only buy from one company.

 

[BeardyHat]

Oh man, if they have a PvE mode in DayZ now, I might have to give it a go again. Last I played was when it was still a mod.

Finally home last night and boy it feels good. Traveling, especially with kids can be pretty tough, but we made it and everything is good. That said, of course I needed to work on a project immediately; it was only about 8 after the kids were in bed, so perfect time to do something little.

I bought this SN30 Pro from eBay a few weeks ago and I've been loving it. I only paid $25 for it, which is about half-price and it ended-up being basically brand new. My one bugbear with it is that I don't like the Nintendo button configuration, since I'm using it primarily as Xinput, so it functions as an Xbox controller.

So I did the frivolous and ordered some new buttons. They were "only" $10 with shipping from 8BitDo and they just arrived yesterday as well, so I figured I'd get them swapped out:

I'm much happier with that. Haven't used it to play KCD2 yet though, because the little bit of games I've played last night and this morning has been Transport Fever 2 again...this is gonna end-up being a thing.

The game is actually running in the background as I type this and boy does it hit the CPU hard. But the other day, I managed to totally fill out my map; almost all business are producing and I got an (apparently rare?) achievement for delivering every type of good to every city, which is kind of cool. I've never filled out a map this much, so it's been pretty cool to watch it all work and then go find kinks to try an iron out. I'm kind of wondering if I can make my roads still efficient, but also "pretty" so everything looks more like real roads, rather than haphazard, purely functional straight lines to places.

 

[neogunhero]

Oh man, if they have a PvE mode in DayZ now, I might have to give it a go again. Last I played was when it was still a mod.

It's not an official gamemode unfortunately, but there are lots of community servers that enforce PVE/no KOS rules. Most of them are heavily modded, but you can find vanilla PVE servers if you search it. It makes the game easier and more relaxing.

Glad you fixed the button configuration on your controller, the original way it shipped with would drive me crazy.

 

[neogunhero]

Seems my mouse only shows its colours if running its program. It can save DPI & key bind settings on 5 onboard profiles though. Razer probably does that as well I expect. Not sure what colour scheme is without program running.

The motherboard doesn't save settings or at least, I can't seem to change it. No way to change it in BIOS so every start the ram is green until the Gigabye Command centre starts. rather annoying.
GPU remembers its colour scheme at least. I only need to run its program if I am changing colours.

RGB is a pain unless you only buy from one company.

You're right about the Razer mouse saving DPI and keybinds to a profile on board, that is saved on-device and has a Profile button at the bottom to change them. However I never mess with DPI settings or keybinds once I configure them how I like, and I only ever keep one profile active, no need to switch DPI settings on the fly. However it just doesn't save the lighting, if there is no program running it will default to a rainbow cycle. For your mobo, have you tried Gigabyte App Center? It's uh... not the safest program out there (I believe it's since been patched and is safe to use now), but I have found it handy for lots of other things like updating BIOS and such.

 

[Johnway]

So a new humble choice selection and again, don't feel like spending. Even though there is stuff i would be interested in. Rogue trader is def one i want, but meh. Deaths door, wizard with a gun maybe ones i would pick. But pass for now.

Onto other goodnews. The stopkillinggames campaign is reaching its goal! The UK petition has reached its target of 100000 signatures, but we're going to keep going just in case other they reject a whole load of them for what ever reason. For The EU campaign we're nearing 85% of the signatures and thanks to some big youtubers and dedicated volunteers we will reach our goal. what happens next remains to be seen, but this is the biggest (legal) action consumers can take to making changes in the future to stop games being killed off.

 

[Colif]

For your mobo, have you tried Gigabyte App Center? It's uh... not the safest program out there (I believe it's since been patched and is safe to use now), but I have found it handy for lots of other things like updating BIOS and such.

its called Gigabyte Command Centre now, I use it for my fans and rgb already. Updates as well, but it really wants me to have Norton Antivirus and tries to download it even when I said no.
Article shows they patched that program and its also from 2023, so would hope so by now.

 

[Zimbaly]

Oh man the layoffs at Microsoft are painful.

 

[BeardyHat]

My trip completely killed my momentum on Kingdom Come 2, which is unfortunate to say the least. Maybe I'm just generally tired today (I am and I've been busy, busy, busy since I stood up this after posting this morning), but I have zero motivation to play and to listen to dialogue right now. I tried, but I just don't care.

Back to Transport Fever 2 for now, I guess...

 

[Zloth]

I really dislike games that think you need to explain the entire game before you can actually start playing. Just give me the basics and let me play, then introduce new mechanics over time.

Oh, it does that, too. First there's the one for movement, overwatch, and how cover and flanking work, which you can skip. Then you get a super-quick one to establish some character. Then one where you get your first little treasure-box things, so it explains those when you see them. And that's how it goes for a while. You'll get missions and, when there's something new, it explains what it is. It throws in bits about how the UI works as it goes along, too. Between missions it explains how your classes work, and how masteries work, and how to switch class, and how bonding works, and how crafting works, and....

The stuff between missions can get involved, but the in-mission stuff is typically just one or two dialog boxes telling you what the thing is about. Then you keep playing your mission.

 

[Colif]

Kotaku sold... amazed anyone would want to buy it.

 

[neogunhero]

Still haven't picked up anything from the summer sale besides the DayZ expansion. I'm having a lot of fun with it now, I've put a good 6-8 hours in the expansion since I bought it last week, but I'm going to need to get something for after I'm done with my yearly zombie games phase but I really have no idea what I want to pick up.

Riders Republic ultimate edition is only $15 and comes with all content for the game. I've played it before via Uplay+, and it's a pretty alright game. Not a realistic simulation by any means, very arcadey and over the top, but generally a pretty fun game. I may pick that up as something that is easy to pick up and play for a bit here and there, doesn't require a major commitment to play.