Just had a play of it on tablet, and I'm hoping they don't keep that in-app purchase for additional civilizations stuff. I get that the tablet version is free and that's how they make their money, but I'd like to see them switch to a pay-up-front model on Steam, where you just unlock everything by playing. Alternately, you get most of the civs and have the option to buy the special ones as DLC or something like that.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Oh, I've got this on my iPad. Haven't played a great deal of it, but what I have played is quite enjoyable. Might get this version for the desktop, since it fills a low-overhead 4x niche that I'd like filled.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It looks fun. But it also looks like they're trying to do everything at once in a sort of No Man's Sky at release kind of way. Hopefully they can pull it off but I'm gonna be cautious.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Schattenspiegel

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe problem with this is it will tend to push a person towards trying to multitask, and multitasking is something our brains are fundamentally not good at. We're significantly more efficient doing one thing. So except if you're actually doing one thing and you need to grab stuff from different windows to do it, it's probably better to have your current focus filling the whole screen IMO.

Given the sad format and size of the majority of current screens, there is not a single thing that profits from taking up the entire screen real estate except maybe an awesome wallpaper. Everything else profits more from well organized tool sets around the current work focus and that is what tiling is good for - or at least can be good for.

Are you suggesting that huge ultrawide screens are the majority? I have my doubts about that, tbh. Or are you saying that it's better to break up a 25" (for example) screen into smaller bits?

For the latter, distraction-free word processors benefit greatly from fullscreening and hiding menus, so all you have on that monitor is your task. I use one with supplementary materials on my other monitor, and it works very well for me (procrastination aside), especially since I can give those things a workspace of their own. I imagine if I had only one Very Large Monitor I might reconsider, but this way gives me much more, and more flexible, real estate.

Similarly, I've found that spreadsheets benefit by being able to see as much as possible, so fullscreening those can be a good idea too. And, well, a lot of games.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Why would I set a reminder? We all know you'll be making a post about it when it starts, and I check here much more often than I check Steam.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I really do like Surviving Mars, but holy crap they need to balance the terraforming. Trying to get your vegetation up to 95%+ is a long, painful experience, while all the other aspects can be done much easier. Which honestly isn't how vegetation actually works, where it multiplies whether you want it or not once you have water, O2 and temperature. If not for that, I'd love the game a lot more.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KristianDo people here have any recommendations as to game modes and/or mods for someone that detests survival play styles and is just interested in building cool things, in particular big structures. I am interested in anything that increases flexibility and/or options and/or speed when it comes to building. Certainly including digging/carving and blowing things up to make ready for building.

Well, by no means an exhaustive list, I'd say these mods that I have installed would be a good start:

basic_materials
biome_lib
ethereal
homedecor_modpack
mesecons
moreblocks
moreores
moretrees
pipeworks
plantlife_modpack
technic
unified_inventory
unifieddyes
xdecor

I know one of those gives you TNT, but I forget which one. Unified Inventory gives you a good crafting guide in any case, so you can see up front what's possible to make.

Ethereal has a crystal shovel you can make (after collecting crystals from special biomes) that allows you to pick up things like dirt with grass on it without it reverting to regular dirt. Good for "seeding" grass on an island or greening a rocky area.

Farming_redo can be good if you're looking for a source of cotton to make wool out of (Minetest logic, lol). There's probably more, but that's the stuff I'm familiar with.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I've never played Minecraft itself, aside from a short time puttering around in Pocket Edition to see what all the fuss was about.

On the other hand, I've played a bunch of Minetest on my own and friends' servers, and it's fantastic. Even at its most basic I enjoy what it's got to offer, and the plugin/modding systems allow for huge variations in style of play. And all community driven, too.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I really like the paper cutout look about it. Looking forward to your thoughts to see how it plays out in practice.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: scaineSo, yeah, it can be done. Now how many big companies will have been able to actually do it within a fortnight of COVID-19 breaking out? This stuff isn't easy.

My Roommate works for the Canadian government and her current projects are all about this shit, and it's been a huge challenge. All the stuff you mentioned, plus government-specific privacy concerns, scaling while not breaking rulesets on existing switches, dealing with bandwidth overhead that was already trouble when everyone was in the office and is now getting maxed out all the time, etc. One department was only allowing half an hour VPN per day to employees who weren't doing mission-critical work. I can only imagine what mid-sized businesses are going through right now to deal with this stuff.

View this comment - View article - View full comments