Gaming

Sorry for the link, I couldn't think of a better source to share the news, but it has all the relevant info.

I got the Cyberpunk Playground Humble Bundle, but I already own Cloudpunk, so I'm giving away the STEAM key to that game.

• Message me from my profile page (i.e. don't request it in the replies to this post)
• These giveaways tend to go fast, so don't be surprised if it's gone by the time you request it
• I'll delete the post after the game key is taken

The Shigeru Miyamoto Archive is an archive of interviews, appearances, writings, and other recordings of Shigeru Miyamoto, all summarized. It currently has over 650 entries.

Looks like a cool game

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/1586067

I discovered today that my most played game on Steam is Astronner with about 500 hours, and my second most played is Surviving Mars with about 500 hours.

I hope you guys don't mind me sharing a short video from my game, NO RELOADING: Survival Trials!

If you like what you see, do consider wishlisting and following on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769060?utm_source=acrobaticGunFuLemmy

Video games can teach deep truths about life, society and human nature.

Which ones stand out for you?

cross-posted from: https://board.minimally.online/post/12268

The math behind the game is atan2 which I use to get the angle from a thing to another thing:

function ato(from,to)
  return atan2(
    to.x-from.x,
    to.y-from.y
  )
end

And then when you give that angle to cos for the x axis and sin for the y axis you get (x,y) coords that can be multiplied by the number of pixels you want to "move" in that direction. So this function assumes a table like {x,y,a,s} and returns new a new x,y multiplied by s for "speed"...

function amove(●,s)
  s=s or ●.s
  return ●.x+cos(●.a)*s,
    ●.y+sin(●.a)*s
end

I use both those together like this to move the worms each frame. (This symbol: ∧ looks more like a worm in the Pico-8 font. If you didn't notice I like the emoji for variables 😋)

for ∧ in all(∧s) do
  ∧.a=ato(∧,웃)
  ∧.x,∧.y=amove(∧)
end

The astitue reader may have noticed amove allows one to supply their own s instead of the table's s... this is useful when you want to calculate things along something like a line, I mean the length of a worm. For example if we put everything together then we get this loop that, after a bullet (✽) moves, checks every part of a worm (for ∧t=0,∧.l do where ∧.l is worm length and ∧t is each "tail" pixel) and if they collided deletes both and plays a sound effect. amove is given each ∧t but it's not actually used to move the worm, just to reconstruct it's body for collision detection.

for ∧ in all(∧s) do
    for ∧t=0,∧.l do
      ∧x,∧y=amove(∧,∧t)
      if flr(✽.x)==flr(∧x)
        and flr(✽.y)==flr(∧y)
      then
        del(bullets,✽)
        del(∧s,∧)
      if #∧s==0 then
        sfx(2)
      else
        sfx(1)
      end
    end    
  end
end

In a report published by Nikkei, it was revealed that Sony intends to ‘pour’ financial resources into gaming research and development – to the tune of around $2.13 billion. That’s reportedly an investment that’s being made before the end of fiscal year 2024, and it’ll account for a whopping 40% of Sony’s entire R&D spending.

Sony plans to allocate a staggering 60% of all PlayStation 5 development spending to live service games exclusively for the year ending March 2026. It was also stated that there’s a grand goal in place to have no fewer than twelve live service games in the PlayStation portfolio within that same timeline.

Exciting times for everyone in Live Ops I'm sure 😉

I've been trying to find this old PSX game where you do these missions (e.g. go inside the hotel room and kill off the people/mercs inside)

I think it involved some stealth.

Missions are contained.

iirc there's a sequence of actions you should do (doesn't have to be perfect) to complete the mission.

setting: within a moder city

you use guns as main weapon.

Looking for good games for Android. By good, I mean a game with a story, no ads or in-app purchases. I'm okay with paying for it, but I'm looking for a good experience. The game should be story-based, as in it has an ending, not an infinite game. Any recommendations?

Communists in video games are typically either depicted as faceless goons for target practice or evil baby killers. Have you guys found any fair and balance or at least interesting depiction of communist in video games?

Since this is a lemmy instance for ML after all. Is there any games that you think fellow comrades should checkout?

Full spoilers for the entirety of the game follows.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, I beat the game and couldn't find any recent discussions about it here, so thought I'd make one. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the game (or on my thoughts). In no particular order:

1. The combat system was very cool! I wasn't sure about it at first and I still admittedly miss controlling a party rather than an individual, but it sure is a fast paced and varied system. I switched my eikons up a few times, with the final set I found most useful being phoenix (ignition / flames of rebirth), bahamut (wicked wheel, gigaflare), and shiva (windup, diamond dust).

   • I found that phoenix's "o" ability was the most useful most of the time but mostly used it for reaching flyers. I usually didn't otherwise find I had time for o abilities.
   • I found that most normal enemies were extremely easy, so it was best to build largely around staggering + heavy hitting the toughest enemies.

2. The ending was really sad. Though also a little confusing. It seems like Clive tried to heal Joshua, couldn't, and sacrificed himself to... I think completely destroy magic for good? Sounds like the blight would still be there, though presumably wouldn't progress anymore?

   • I like that the game used the red star again. I felt so bad when Jill realized Clive was gone.
   • TBH, "confusing" was kinda a recurring theme in the game for me. But at least some of that was surely intentional (Ultima's monologues).

3. The game sure had a lot of really badass, dramatic fights! Ifrit really helped to make some fights feel massive in scope without having much "ludonarrative dissonance" (since early game, you couldn't control Ifrit and it was supposed to be extremely taxing to fully prime). The Titan and Bahamut fights are perhaps some of the most epic Final Fantasy battles I've ever done (and I've played almost all of them)!

4. I thought it was a bit weird that the bulk of the game is based in a Fallen airship, yet you never actually restore the airship, even when you need to fly! When Origin rose, I was like "aha, time to finally restore the airship!", but nope. Felt like a tease.

   • I also really wish the game had more lore on the Fallen. They're such a prominent centerpiece of many maps, and yet the game barely delves into them at all. I kept expecting they were saving it for some big bombshell later, but nope, nothing.

5. One thing that confused me is that Ultima talked a lot about Clive needing to absorb the other Eikons, yet no Leviathan? I noticed early on that the game said there is one Eikon for each element and listed 8 elements, yet only 7 Eikons (plus Ifrit) were ever mentioned. "Leviathan the lost" even gets named dropped by Joshua and yet Ultima doesn't even seem to notice the missing Eikon. Wonder if they're saving this for DLC? Either way, it feels poorly executed considering how central Clive absorbing Eikons is to the plot.

6. Oof, Waloed was depressing. I was so hyped to see Ash, after going so long without ever even seeing this whole 'nother continent. Only for it to be a graveyard of dead and Akashic.

7. Fuck Annabella (Clive's mom). She was such a piece of shit. I kinda wonder if Ultima was influencing her from the start, or if it was only later? I suspect she betrayed Rosaria out of her own free will, considering how terribly she treats Clive from the start.

8. The treatment of Bearers was sickening. At first I was noticing parallels to American chattel slavery, but it quickly became more of a Nazi Germany kinda thing. It was a great design choice to make Clive a "bearer" so that you'd experience the bigotry firsthand. I wanted to outright murder most NPCs I met because they were so horrible.

   • It's especially sad when you later find out why Bearers are treated bad. They were originally freaking blessed and people in power were just jealous/afraid, so had to scapegoat Bearers.
   • I also felt so bad for L'ubor. He was the centerpiece of his village and yet the people who loved him turned on him so fast the instant they learned he was a Bearer. And they acted like it was some big betrayal, as if they couldn't understand why a Bearer would want to not be a Bearer.

9. The map design is very meh. The game is pretty, but aside from the mothercrystals and Fallen ruins, everything feels so grounded that it may as well be our world during medieval ages. I want a fantasy world that feels fantastic! And aesthetics aside, most maps are fairly linear. They often have some branches (many used only for specific side quests), but felt like they didn't give enough reasons to explore. The movable parts of the map feel narrow and restrictive.

   • For whatever bizarre reason, you can often find larger enemies off the beaten path, but they're rarely worth the time. The XP/AP/gil they give is hilariously bad compared to just a pack of normal enemies that you might be able to beat in a single AoE spell.

10. Early game side quests are terrible, but they get great later in the game. It's really weird. IDK why they made the early game quests so bad. It set me up to expect side quests to suck. And the game has a lot of side quests, so they probably could have trimmed a few to make the early game side quests suck less. In particular, the early game quests within the hideaway feel very forced and awkward.

11. Ultima was a decent villain. Very creepy (those eyes!). I'm not entirely sure I understand where he and his "collective" came from, but am thinking from another planet, since his final form fights in a cosmic setting and Origin is described as a ship, but looks far more like a spaceship than anything else.

    • Barnabas was also great. Super intimidating in ever scene. The battle you're supposed to lose was well executed, as you've seen a few of those "press the attack" moments by then, but it's the first one that can't be finished fast enough (I kinda wonder what happens if you cheated?).

12. I liked the twist that the crystals and magic were bad for the environment. Kinda wonder why no academics or something at least noticed that before, though. Isn't the pattern of the blight's movement kinda obvious to its cause? Kinda feels like they missed an opportunity to draw analogies to climate change, where we know what's causing it and simply refuse to do anything about it.

13. The contextual codex was a neat idea, but the execution felt lacking. It only seems to work for the main quest, despite the fact that side quests populate a huge number of codex entries. I also found that despite regularly checking it, I often would not see the new codex entries I expected to see (until I went to visit Harpocrates). New pages of existing entries were also written as if you'd only read the newest page, with lots of repetition for minimal (if any) new information. I love lore, so codexes are super appealing to me. It was sometimes disappointing for new entries to not actually say anything new.

    • It generally didn't do a good enough job at explaining new things (e.g., at the very beginning of the game, characters are talking about how they're on a mission to kill a dominant and for so long I'm like "WTF is a dominant"). And it took a little while to understand the high level global politics because the game is slow to explain them.

14. Damn, the game is long. Took me about 60 hours, doing basically everything except the cronoliths (I tried those a couple of times and gave up -- too hard and not fun to me).

15. The game does fantastic at updating NPC dialogue. I noticed so many changes to dialogue throughout the events of the game, including side quests. Lots of games barely update dialogue and it's sad cause I want to know how characters are reacting to some big event.

    • The hideaway really needed to be more compact. You spend soooo much time walking around to visit quest givers and hear updated dialogue.
    • For whatever weird reason, some major NPC dialogue (shop keepers and such) isn't fully voiced. I don't get why. It felt incomplete. I mean, I'm glad that dialogue didn't get outright cut, but would have preferred it being fully voiced.

Overall, it was a very fulfilling and fun story driven game with action packed combat. I'd give it a 9/10 (though I am a Final Fantasy fangirl, so am biased).

After some research I've narrowed down my options into these two controllers.

Use-case:

• Mostly PC gaming (It Takes Two, PS2 Emulation, etc.), Android Gaming (probably Emulation as well).
• Also my little brother has a Switch and it would be awesome to have another controller for that as well.

Why these two?

• They are available locally (Philippines) and within the budget.
• Both have Hall Effect Joysticks
• Both have good reviews and hopefully have good build quality

Why am I leaning towards 8bitdo Ultimate?

• Mostly because I think they are the same but 8bitdo has the back buttons.

Give me Reasons Why I Should Get the Gulikit KingKong 2 over the 8bitdo Ultimate

I've come to really appreciate when games aren't merely graphically pretty, but that they also take great care with their use of camera angles and animation in general. I speak particularly of cutscenes and dialogue, but frankly this question applies to the entire game.

I find there's a lot of games that do take cinematography in mind for cutscenes, but nothing else. Or at least the rest of the game is considerably less impressive than cutscenes. e.g., rather than animate something, some games will just have a text box say what happened. And dialogue in many games is very basic back and forth (often with very lackluster quality lip syncing).

RDR2 is perhaps the best game I've played so far in this regard. It felt like it animated everything carefully, even had a cinematic mode for horseback riding that I found very pleasing to use, and cutscenes often felt movie quality.

What other games (of any kind) put a lot of effort into cinematography?

I've had this massive itch for city builders for several years, but could just. never find 'the right one' for me.

I had been looking for a lighthearted and cozy builder with an initially gentle learning curve and so far it's exceeded my expectations. Thus far, Against the Storm thus far feels absolutely incredible at 21 hours invested.

What's really won me over with the games formula is that semi-RNG determines not only what resources the map has, but also what buildings you can craft. In addition, selection between RNG options determine which items you deliver and which rewards you receive: if I don't have any source of wheat.. is this potential reward with a very beneficial passive worth it? Very rarely does anything go according to plan and the name of the game is adjustment on your path to victory.

The game features zero 'rts-like' combat and no troop management. Instead, your enemy is an increasingly hostile forest, a cyclical seasonal storm, and a tug'o'war with maintaining the happiness of your civilians." All while juggling time sensitive delivery of goods to 'quest' locations.

But the best thing? All games are under one hour of unpaused gametime and in that time you'll be faced with almost constant RNG, improvisation, risk/reward, and rogue-lite decision making. Given that gameplay loop, it doesn't feel like the end of the world starting over and suffering through the early-game again.

Yes it looks complicated: but I started blind and have no desire to do anything but learn on my own. At higher difficulties, I'm sure it gets even more crazy. But everything, thus far, has been extremely intuitive.

(((As the many fine games that I've tried to replicate that AoE/The Sims 1/Roller Coaster Tycoon/Civ III feeling from my youth? Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, Prison Architect, They Are Billions, Banished, Timberborn, I suppose Endless Space/Legend, Shadows of Forbidden Gods. Against the Storm just nailed everything for me and I'm only on 2/5 difficulty.)))