October 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Brian Boru]

They finally caught Brian

I saw Herson's video on that earlier, nice detective work.

GOG is good for games released for earlier versions of Windows and which need some tweaking to work on current versions—I assume Steam hasn't recently started packaging such.

Linux is a nice simple OS for people who aren't able to make Windows work—and could be well suited to obsolete hardware, which is a good thing for landfills. Great for servers tho, been on my little shared ones for 25 years.

AMD is fine, I've had their CPUs and GPUs before, if you count ATI. If I was building in 2025 I'd probably go for an AMD CPU, Intel haven't covered themselves in glory recently with their Boeing-like incidents.

 

[Colif]

Newest Intel CPU need bios/driver updates before they are competing even against their previous exploding CPU, in gaming anyway.

 

[ZedClampet]

Trying to play Anno 1800, but having problems. I'm at the very beginning of the game and my only quest is to attract 100 farmers. There are only 5 or 6 things to build, and I've built all of them. I have enough food, houses, warehouses, markets, etc. But the game seems to be stuck on 96 farmers. There is, so far as I can tell, nothing to do but wait for 4 more farmers, and they aren't coming. I've left the game on max speed for several minutes and no more farmers arrived. I've posted to the Steam forums to see what they say, but there aren't many players, so I'm not expecting to see answers any time soon. I may see if there is a sub-reddit, although I hate to post on reddit. Every sub-reddit has 1000 rules you have to follow.

Edit: after doing more research apparently even though the game tells you to build 10 houses for the 100 farmers (and I have 12), you actually have to build about 15 to get to 100 farmers.

 

[ZedClampet]

Anno 1800 - 1362 developers
Kingdoms Reborn - 1 developer

So far I see nothing to recommend Anno 1800 over Kingdoms Reborn. But I'm still at the beginning of the game. Maybe it will blow me away later.

Publishers complain about the high cost of making games *eye roll*

Edit: And I just went to the Kingdoms Reborn Steam forums and people are whining about the speed of development (it already has a ton of content). Such stupidity

 

[Pifanjr]

Anno 1800 - 1362 developers
Kingdoms Reborn - 1 developer

So far I see nothing to recommend Anno 1800 over Kingdoms Reborn. But I'm still at the beginning of the game. Maybe it will blow me away later.

Publishers complain about the high cost of making games *eye roll*

Edit: And I just went to the Kingdoms Reborn Steam forums and people are whining about the speed of development (it already has a ton of content). Such stupidity

It's honestly amazing what one person can do nowadays with the wide variety of free development environments and free lessons on how to use them, as well as on general game design.

 

[Frindis]

I use Epic Games, GOG, and Steam, but Steam is always the one I mostly stay on because it is just better. Epic Games is fine for the free games they give out and for occasionally playing one. GOG is fine for getting some free games, being able to import games from different platforms, and putting tons of games on external drives if needed. Steam is the OG for customizing your game library/account, regular sales, reviews, devs communication, trading, playing with friends, sales, community forums, modding, chat/voice, etc.

The whole "you don't own the game you just rent the license" has made some look more at GOG, but I don't see any of the platforms wanting to mess with their customer's game libraries (except for removing online access on older games) when they perfectly well know that people can get incredibly cheap games through grey market sites and even download them for free. It would be the downfall of any platform if they started to abuse the trust of their customers.

 

[BeardyHat]

Things you will always learn about someone if applicable:

They use GoG
They use AMD
They use Linux

Not sure if you're aware of this, but I install my GoG games via Heroic Games Launcher (a Linux application) and they run great on my RDNA GPU.

Just thought you might want to know.

Anno 1800 - 1362 developers
Kingdoms Reborn - 1 developer

So far I see nothing to recommend Anno 1800 over Kingdoms Reborn. But I'm still at the beginning of the game. Maybe it will blow me away later.

Publishers complain about the high cost of making games *eye roll*

Edit: And I just went to the Kingdoms Reborn Steam forums and people are whining about the speed of development (it already has a ton of content). Such stupidity

I've been pounding away at the Anno games for years now trying to "make them my thing", but they never quite click for me. 1800 is really cool, but I kind of dislike the idea of needing to jump around to different maps to make new colony's for my "main" one. I kind of just prefer to focus on one place. But that's probably just a minor gripe.

And people are ravenous for content; it becomes tedious. Look at Manor Lords and it's explosive success, the Dev doesn't want to expand but people are all crabby about it.

I don't understand why people can't just move on to other games and come back to something later? What's with the expectation that something needs to completely consume your life?

 

[ZedClampet]

@Brian Boru @Colif You all are acting like I criticized AMD CPUs. All I said is that people always tell you if they are using them. Their CPUs are awesome.

I don't have a problem with anything I listed, but I do get tired of hearing Linux and GoG people complain.

Also, I always tell people I don't watch TV, so I understand why people tell you things like this. That part of it doesn't bother me.

****

Took me most of the morning to unlock the House Flipper 2 Halloween house because I hadn't played in awhile. There was a whole new part of town I hadn't done jobs in.

This should be fun. It's like a horror game inside HF. They are usually pretty good.

 

[neogunhero]

@Brian Boru I tried to reply to your post, but my phone kept messing up the formatting.

One of my favorite things about companions in FC5 is how much freedom you get in commanding them. I especially enjoy having one of them pilot a helicopter while you hang out the side shooting at enemies. You never need another person to play with you, you got NPCs that will obey your every command! I had Hurk fly a helicopter while I grappled to the bottom of it and swung around trying to avoid getting knocked off by the bear below, I really should have recorded that.

The health/food/loadout mechanics of FC6 are quite strange to me. Like you said, no health indicator besides screen turning red and a big PRESS Z TO HEAL message. The food system would be much better if you could carry food items with you, and perhaps if they didn’t last as long and you could easily replace one buff for another, I would enjoy that better than having to eat from the pot at a camp. The loadout system I didn’t care for much at all, I would just customize my current one and stick with that the whole game.

As for New Dawn, I really loved it when I first played it, but don’t remember too much. I do remember really liking the customization, the makeshift weapons, and enemies having armor health bars like in The Division.

Currently in FC5 I’m focusing on getting all companions. It seems that it will take a while to take on a region boss with the Resistance mod since you must 100% every activity in the area. Even after getting Jess, Nick and Boomer, I barely made a dent in that regions progression bar. Fine by me, as I prefer to take my time with the game and not get stop dead in my tracks to be kidnapped against my will. The worst part of the whole game being fixed by this mod makes the game so much more fun.

 

[ZedClampet]

It's honestly amazing what one person can do nowadays with the wide variety of free development environments and free lessons on how to use them, as well as on general game design.

I think it would be really fascinating if a large company like Ubisoft showed the developer numbers I did above and said, "We've decided to transition more toward the small team model." They have a lot of very talented people. Put them into small groups and let them be creative. They have many years of 3D models built up, and you could keep most of the art team doing custom jobs. Plus AI could fill in the blanks. And in 2 or 3 years, instead of coming out with Far Cry 7, they put out 100 wildly creative games made with passion. The company is already going down the drain. I don't see how this could make it worse. If you didn't want to go full nuts with it, they could still afford to make, say, 10 small teams. Tell them to make their dream and see what happens.

It's never going to happen, but it would be cool to see.

 

[Brian Boru]

What's with the expectation that something needs to completely consume your life?

More recent gamers have been conditioned by the wallet draining GaaS whalers.

I had Hurk fly a helicopter while I grappled to the bottom of it and swung around

Hah, neat idea!

food system

I ignored that, I don't even build La Cantina or the Fishing Hut or Bandidos Barracks—just Hideout Network asap, then Guerrilla Garrison, and Hunter's Lodge later whenever for the clean meat—latter not needed by then of course, but…

I love that you can ignore whole systems and resource sets and still play the game fully. Eg I've never used an EMP weapon after checking them out first time—made it tactically too easy for my enjoyment.

As you're a melee fan, try a poison setup. You in full hazmat gear, and poison ordnance in some of your weapons and throwables—I found it way too easy with a stealth approach, but should be fun for some crazy melee

loadout system … customize my current one and stick with that the whole game

Same here. My all-game [as soon as I can get 'em] loadout is:
Desert Eagle pistol with AP ammo.
SPAS-12 Libertad shotgun—KSG 2nd choice, Supercharger 3rd—with more ammo perk.
Compound Bow with explosive arrow, with more arrows perk.
MGL-6 grenade launcher—or is it El Caballero, must check. Used to be RAT4.
Exterminador Supremo with headshot recharge perk.
Dynamite + 3 Proximity explosives—poison, blast, fire.

Desert Eagle + AP is by far the best weapon in the game for a non-melee strategy. My fav is picking pilots out of the planes DE replaces both AR and Sniper, with only slight loss being the 10x sight for Sniper—DE only has 6x, but that's good enough for at least 99% of uses.

SPAS is essential for those times I want to mess with enemy, eg provoke multiple 'Special Forces are hunting you' encounters at tactically interesting locations—tip, best provocation is to destroy their transport trucks, they hate that and it gains you XP! Quick-firing crowd control ftw when they rush.

Bow and Launcher are for anti-vehicle duties. The RAT4 is too limited with only 4 rounds—needs 2 shots plus Rioter air-damage Gloves to down one heavy chopper—and its big perk of lock-on is >50% negated by the MGL's accuracy at distance. Special Forces hunts up north bring out the heavy stuff.

 

[Johnway]

so as i previously mentioned in some other posts, i've been monkeying around with Ultimate doom builder and practicing making a doom 2 map. For this practice it was just a couple of rooms and just have fun bashing out a room and practicing some various techniques and practice some doom cute.

From doing nearly a 7hrs of practice, its been quite insightful (learning the processes and tips when building maps) and yet also concerning. I think the problem is that i got stuck in the detailing and honestly in map, its a lot of work for a few seconds of play. i mean the outside view i didn't finish and its just a waste of time when its less then a few seconds view. Whilst performing mapping with monsters out of the equation, it got me thinking about how it would play and frankly probably boring. I suspect designing maps is much much different then an art project.

Doing solid mapping i kinda gotten sick of it (the map isn't finished btw). Perhaps i should take a break and work on stuff like teleporting monsters, spawn room closets and focus on the game/action elements.

anyway, enjoy the pics!

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, playing a little more, I see where some of the money/developers went on Anno 1800. There's a lot of story and voice acting, etc. There's none of that in Kingdoms Reborn. And for the story, they've built a little bit of London. Also, the little people here and there are really well done and expertly animated, although I think Kingdoms Reborn does a decent job of that, just not on this level.

The thing is, I'm not sure all this is making the game better. I'm sure it helps a lot of people become immersed, though.

 

[Frindis]

@Johnway That first screenshot hit straight into the Blood game nostalgia

 

[Colif]

@Brian Boru @Colif You all are acting like I criticized AMD CPUs. All I said is that people always tell you if they are using them. Their CPUs are awesome.

It sounds unlikely as I can't see strangers you never met randomly approaching you in the street to tell you they have an AMD CPU. But I will let you live... for now.

There are millions of people out there that have no idea what CPU they have or even what it does. Most users have no need to know what is inside the box... until it suddenly stops working. The percentage of those who do have a clue is smaller than you think..

It didn't magically grow just cause they always been around computers, the idea young people would understand them through osmosis was clearly wishful thinking. Most of them understand mobile phones, but computers need an entire course to explain to them. I know as I accidentally did that course... I didn't learn a great deal.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a couple of matches of Magic the Gathering: Arena with my wife and two of our friends. My self-made deck didn't do too bad, though I lost against my friend with an all-dinosaur deck twice and against a flier focused deck once. I made some changes, but I still have no idea how to deal with the dinosaurs.

I did make an entirely rat focused deck that somehow uses 4 different mana types, which is wildly impractical but I somehow still won the one match I played with it

I think it would be really fascinating if a large company like Ubisoft showed the developer numbers I did above and said, "We've decided to transition more toward the small team model." They have a lot of very talented people. Put them into small groups and let them be creative. They have many years of 3D models built up, and you could keep most of the art team doing custom jobs. Plus AI could fill in the blanks. And in 2 or 3 years, instead of coming out with Far Cry 7, they put out 100 wildly creative games made with passion. The company is already going down the drain. I don't see how this could make it worse. If you didn't want to go full nuts with it, they could still afford to make, say, 10 small teams. Tell them to make their dream and see what happens.

It's never going to happen, but it would be cool to see.

Only a small percentage of the people who worked on the game were programmers though. A lot of it was voice actors, managers and stuff like HR and accounting.

So even if they split up the teams, they'd still have hundreds of people credited on each of the games being made.

so as i previously mentioned in some other posts, i've been monkeying around with Ultimate doom builder and practicing making a doom 2 map. For this practice it was just a couple of rooms and just have fun bashing out a room and practicing some various techniques and practice some doom cute.

From doing nearly a 7hrs of practice, its been quite insightful (learning the processes and tips when building maps) and yet also concerning. I think the problem is that i got stuck in the detailing and honestly in map, its a lot of work for a few seconds of play. i mean the outside view i didn't finish and its just a waste of time when its less then a few seconds view. Whilst performing mapping with monsters out of the equation, it got me thinking about how it would play and frankly probably boring. I suspect designing maps is much much different then an art project.

Doing solid mapping i kinda gotten sick of it (the map isn't finished btw). Perhaps i should take a break and work on stuff like teleporting monsters, spawn room closets and focus on the game/action elements.

anyway, enjoy the pics!

I think it looks quite good. Even if a player only sees each section for only a few seconds, if every section is that detailed the players will definitely notice it.

 

[ZedClampet]

It sounds unlikely as I can't see strangers you never met randomly approaching you in the street to tell you they have an AMD CPU.

Oh my god. Maybe you should not try as hard.

@Brian Boru Been playing Secrets of Magic, and it's the first thing my wife ever bought on Steam, but she hasn't started playing it yet. Pretty fun. Took me awhile to get the hang of it. Haven't really played a Match 3 in a long time.

 

[ZedClampet]

Only a small percentage of the people who worked on the game were programmers though. A lot of it was voice actors, managers and stuff like HR and accounting.

There were probably a few hundred artists/programmers/etc--people normally considered developers. Not sure who all the rest of those people are. You know how credits are. Could be anyone on there. But even at a few hundred, that's probably a lot more than necessary. Hellblade, for instance, had 15 developers, and they did quite a good job of it. That's the kind of team I'm talking about for Ubisoft--a well-rounded team with the best tools you can find. Expecting the average developer to be able to do what the best solo developers can accomplish isn't realistic. Those people are special. But a nice well-rounded small team should be able to accomplish a lot.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Frindis Maybe we should have a Doom level creation contest. Sorry about the last one. If I had known everyone else was wimping out I would have tried harder to get into it. I was having a lot of problems getting the game to work properly, and I ran the first race about 10 times (maybe a lot more. I don't remember) and never finished it because of screen resolution problems. In retrospect, it was probably because I had my screen scale set to 150 percent, but had forgotten that, and I didn't think about it at the time. That's one of those "laptop" things.

 

[Brian Boru]

I still have no idea how to deal with the dinosaurs

Any asteroid cards available?

playing Secrets of Magic

I bounced off the first one after~15 levels because some icons are too alike—I have no need of staring at individual ones to see whether they match or not.

Currently at Level 30-something in game #2, icons are much clearer with one minor criticism when they get covered by a spider's web. But I expect to finish this one. I already played the demos for #4 & 5 at BigFish sometime cos I have notes saying they're 'good' and 'very good' respectively, so looks like a great value bundle.

 

[ZedClampet]

Any asteroid cards available?



I bounced off the first one after~15 levels because some icons are too alike—I have no need of staring at individual ones to see whether they match or not.

Currently at Level 30-something in game #2, icons are much clearer with one minor criticism when they get covered by a spider's web. But I expect to finish this one. I already played the demos for #4 & 5 at BigFish sometime cos I have notes saying they're 'good' and 'very good' respectively, so looks like a great value bundle.

I just now finished level 16. Didn't really notice a problem with the icons outside of the ones webbed, but you are probably playing a lot faster than I am. I'm still getting used to Match 3 and am happy with either 2 or 3 stars and am not really paying attention to the scores. I'll go back and get 3 stars on all of them later.

 

[neogunhero]

I’ve been looking to get a new game sometime before the end of the year. Something bigger than I usually buy. Combing through my wishlist which is over 800+ games strong, I started to look at Dying Light 2. I’m a huge fan of the first, but I have heard many complaints about the sequel. Seems like a lot of the main issues have since been fixed, current community reviews sits at 79% with over 132,000 reviews. However, I see that the game has a ton of cosmetic DLC, and as far as I can tell there is no bundle of the game yet that includes everything in one package. For most people that probably isn’t an issue, as long as you get the game and the DLC with actual gameplay content, but for me I want everything all together when I finally get to play it. That’s why I waited so long to play Watch Dogs 2, I finally bought the Ultimate Edition on sale a few years after release. This isn’t the case with every game, but especially for games I’ve waited years to play after they’ve launched, I want to have every bit of content possible. I suppose I’ll wait another year or two until they inevitably release an Ultimate Edition for Dying Light 2.

 

[Frindis]

@Frindis Maybe we should have a Doom level creation contest. Sorry about the last one. If I had known everyone else was wimping out I would have tried harder to get into it. I was having a lot of problems getting the game to work properly, and I ran the first race about 10 times (maybe a lot more. I don't remember) and never finished it because of screen resolution problems. In retrospect, it was probably because I had my screen scale set to 150 percent, but had forgotten that, and I didn't think about it at the time. That's one of those "laptop" things.

It was a fun game though, a bit of a slog at the beginning, but then it opened up. As for the Doom creation contest, it might be an idea to make a poll and see how many people would like to join. If you want to do that and then make a creation contest (depending on interest) I say go for it!)

 

[DXCHASE]

Its been a minute since posting here. I wind up reading through posts and then not posting. Guess i should post more or these posts will be long like this lol.

So, current rotation of games: Diablo 4, Helldivers 2 and newly added entry Call of Duty Black OPS 6 (of course through gamepass)

Coming soon: DA Veilguard for idk how long.

Completely dropped: (at least the last couple weeks and foreseeable future) DESTINY 2

I stream some of my gameplay and you can see me get killed repeatedly in CODs MP and Campaign. Still trying to reach the subscribe button, i have the followers, the time streamed but not averaging 3 viewers a stream, its at 2.5 or somethin. Thats my current streaming goal:
www.twitch.tv/dxchasee

Diablo 4 is still going strong for me. Havent beaten the expac campaign yet due to playing it alongside my wife who only has 1-2 days a week to sit down and play it. At this point, my solo character is a chapter ahead, so im probably just going to finish that up there.

I jump in for an hour or so, do some grinding and dungeon running and get off. Playing that way keeps me from getting bored with it too quickly, not that i dont like it but running dungeons and killing bosses over and over again for the off chance of getting better gear than what i have is somethin i dont wanna do all day.



COD's new iteration is pretty good. The campaign is nice and long and has a sense of replay-ability and is easily the best installment in the last 5 games with the exception of COD Cold War. The "omnidirection" is pretty nice, esp if you are using a controller. Its good to know youre running at all times forward, backwards and side to side.

Zombies is fun but they only have 2 maps available so it can get stale quickly, esp if you get up to levels 35+ on 1 run. But still, loads of fun.

Helldivers 2... the "family" game is still around. A new warbond (small dlc) is available today but im not eager to get it, the weapon perks dont really go with the style i play this game, but still a fun game to play.

Destiny 2 has... fallen to the way-side. The new season is not all that interesting to me, the new armor sets, dungeon, halloween event... its all same ol', same ol' to me. I might just skip this season entirely. I never get FOMO and D2 at this point has so many guns and armor that i know for a fact that im not missing anything too special.


In non-game news. I broke my stove and had to buy a new one, so an emergency money sink kinda messed me up but we wanted one for ourselves (been using our LL's crappy old one) so it was something that was gonna happen.

Also got a new 55 inch OLED tv from amazons october sale. Avoided paying 2-300 usd to have it delivered in a month, came within the week. So that was nice. Looks really great. DIdnt tell the wife, she was mad at first but has come around lol.

Thats a quick summation of my time lately.

 

[ZedClampet]

I want to have every bit of content possible. I suppose I’ll wait another year or two until they inevitably release an Ultimate Edition for Dying Light 2.

So you aren't going to buy it so long as you have to pay extra for the chicken suit?

It was a fun game though, a bit of a slog at the beginning, but then it opened up. As for the Doom creation contest, it might be an idea to make a poll and see how many people would like to join. If you want to do that and then make a creation contest (depending on interest) I say go for it!)

Was just tossing stuff against the wall and seeing if it stuck. I don't even own Doom 1, but this is something I would do, but no one else here seems interested, except for Johnway, in level design or game-making, so I doubt they would put the effort into it. Would be fun for me, though. We could put all our levels together into one bigger one.