Quoting: MohandevirIn my case, battery autonomy is make or break. If all this raw power is wasted because you need to cap everything to gain minutes of playtime... What are you getting? A little more powerful Steam Deck with less input options, unreadable 3rd party apps, crapy os interactions and still worse battery autonomy (the Steam Deck's autonomy is already to the limit)?

It occurs to me that this bad feature of the Ally would compound with a bad feature of the OS they're using--with little battery time it seems to me you'd really want to be able to easily suspend a game and stop using battery, but someone was saying with Windows it won't do that.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeWonder how many people go into retail stores these days. I'm a terrible example, I don't go into retail stores very often anymore! Last time I did was for a Yoga laptop, and the dude at the shop was annoying me (it was Best Buy). Would you like Anti-virus? No, would you like Office? No. Would you like... piss off. :P

Interesting point. A lot of retail stores seem to be struggling these days. And I don't shop much period, but my wife is always complaining about stores having all kind of stuff she might want but would want to try on to be sure, only available on the web, not the physical store. It's like the stores are being eaten alive by their own web divisions. So maybe physical retail isn't as much of a deal as people think any more.

That said, even if Valve never does sell them in physical stores much, they could benefit from more online retail channels. Amazon being the obvious behemoth in the room. Or BestBuy itself, say, for the web visibility not the physical stores.

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Quoting: GroganIt's going to hurt the Steam Deck for sure.

Seems likely, yeah.

Quoting: GroganMoreover, I'd expect Steam Decks to start shipping with Windows configurations soon.

Why? It seems to be sucking.

Quoting: GroganAlso, it's no coincidence that Microsoft is buying up all the big game publishers. It also wouldn't surprise me if Asus was getting near free OS licensing from Microsoft as a carrot.

That also seems likely, yeah.

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Quoting: PhiladelphusIn its continuing quest to be every Paradox grand strategy game ever made (…in SPAAAACE!), Stellaris has taken more than a few pages out of Crusader King's playbook with its latest 'Gemini' update and DLC Galactic Paragons. This is huge. I played for an hour or so this evening, and wow does this update change the game.

Some updates/DLCs focus more on end-game stuff that you won't see for hours into a campaign (like becoming the crisis in Nemesis, or Colossi from Apocalypse). The leader and government changes in the Gemini update, in contrast, change your very first decisions of the game, and look likely to remain relevant all the way through the game. You now get to pick a trait for each leader when they level up, which instantly makes them 2000% more engaging; I had to unlearn my knee-jerk reaction of instantly dismissing the pop-up about a leader gaining a new level, because now they're actually interactive and interesting. Some traits are "council traits", which only give their effects when the leader is on your council, which makes choosing traits (and which leaders to put on the council) an interesting choice. Since leaders require more attention you'll also have fewer of them at once, at least in the early game before you increase your soft cap (no more 5+ exploring science ships in the first decade, and honestly, I don't think I'll miss it). It feels a bit more like an RPG, leveling up your party members to get better and better, and I quite enjoy it. I also like that you can further customize your starting leader with a trait (possibly more depending on starting choices?) and an optional biography if you want.

(As an aside, I love that they've gotten rid of scientists having two roles; they're only explorers now, save for whoever is your head of research, who acts as chief scientist for all three research branches simultaneously. The conflict between the two roles is much diminished now, since research-affecting traits are only council traits now from what I saw, meaning you only have to worry about one scientist dual-classing [and they can still command a science ship while being councilor].)

With the two additional tradition trees from Galactic Paragons (focused on producing better leaders, and the governing council specifically), I counted sixteen traditions tree to choose from in my game. For the first time since they were introduced all the way back in Utopia, I finally felt like I had to make hard choices about which ones to get, and I love it! Picking a new tradition tree shouldn't feel like a no-brainer, and there are enough now that I can actually feel like I'm giving something meaningful up by picking another one. The council has something new called Agendas which are empire-wide bonuses that take some time to enact, and different tradition trees (along with ethics, government type, etc.) give you different ones. It remains to be seen how well it works (they take long enough to enact that I only saw a handful in my time playing), but it seems like a decent system.

I didn't take the new origin, so I can't speak to it, though it sounds solid enough. (I have this weird habit of essentially playing the last expansion [or a least a previous one] whenever a new one comes out, hence my Ocean Paradise Angler Aquatics running a MegaCorps this time around. :grin:)

Um. I'm not sure what I think of that. I don't play 4X space games to be an RPG, I play them to explore the galaxy and manage economies and research mindboggling technologies.

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Quoting: EikeI had one game, cannot remember which one, that had some... brown-and-black maybe? booklet that was supposed to not by copyable with the photocopy devices of the same age. I always wondered if that was really true.

I remember some of the old D&D dungeons you could buy ("modules") had their maps in this pale blue that was supposed to not photocopy . . . related to "blueprints" maybe?

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Wait . . . Did that trailer show the blobs building houses?!

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Quoting: EikeThe perspective I took (it's not my own, I like using Steam) is like... You've already gamed in the Nineties. You got a game, you installed it, you played it. Nothing keeps you from copying it to somewhere else, and play it there, too, simultaneously if you like. You're not caring for "accounts", you don't need and you don't want an "account" to play a game. Because, why would you?!?

Oh, come on. Pitching a bit too strong there. I remember games from back then, and they did their best to stop you from copying them. They just didn't have modern tech for it. So they'd have popups within the game asking what the fifth word on page three of the little booklet that came with the game was or some dang thing--no answer, no more game. People would just photocopy the little manual, but they were sure trying and it was annoying.

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Quoting: lectrodeI wonder how many of their players are in India, considering the mass exodus [External Link] from Windows happening there (down to 53% as of April). Roblox claims it is a "global platform that brings people together through play". Is more than 1/16th of the total world population (apparent Linux users in India alone) not enough to justify supporting the Linux platform?

(And yes, statcounter says "unknown" for what all the new devices have shifted to, however: we already know that they were planning [External Link] on dropping windows in favor of linux for government and educational institutions as of this January (and if it's what they're now teaching students on, presumably those same students would want that on their own systems) - it is probable that we're seeing the resulting shift in monthly snapshots...it's not far-fetched that statcounter doesn't support counting every single linux distribution as "linux")

That is very interesting. But a note of caution--although, yes, that "India dropping Windows for Linux" article refers to a broader national policy somewhere within it, the main body discussing real world government and educational Linux use is just about Kerala state. That's not a surprise because Kerala is run by a bunch of raving socialists who believe in unfashionable things like the public benefiting from government. But most of India is not run by people like that; most of it is run by corrupt neoliberals, some of them with fascist tendencies. In those other places I have doubts that having a policy will be enough to result in real change, especially when the bribes start flowing.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Teodosio1) This is why we should always ask for Native releases; Proton is just a fallback

And yet now every time someone does express interest in working on a native version, the masses now scream for them not to because we have Proton and native releases will forever suck/be a waste.

The masses scream that? Really?!
The occasional person says that, yeah. Let's not go overboard.

Maybe I spent too much time on Reddit. It seems any time it's come up people rally behind that idea and argue/downvote anyone otherwise.

Ah, well, so you have information I don't, since I spend zero time on Reddit.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Teodosio1) This is why we should always ask for Native releases; Proton is just a fallback

And yet now every time someone does express interest in working on a native version, the masses now scream for them not to because we have Proton and native releases will forever suck/be a waste.

The masses scream that? Really?!
The occasional person says that, yeah. Let's not go overboard.

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