Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
BATTLETECH considered complete with one last patch coming, Harebrained moving on
14 Feb 2020 at 9:07 pm UTC Likes: 1
Pay attention to how much armour the dang things have. I occasionally couldn't resist beefing up weapons a bit extra at the expense of armour and came to the conclusion that the best defence is a good defence. And on at least one occasion I bought a big mech with glorious weaponry, didn't tweak it much, didn't look too closely at the pocket descriptions about that model, and wondered why it kept dying so fast . . . then took a look and whoops! It was totally under-armoured.
What weapons . . . Dunno. Different strokes for different folks. One thing I do notice is that one big weapon does more than two little weapons totaling the same damage, because you can punch through and do real damage in one shot instead of spreading it across the armour of different locations. This is a major reason I'm not sold on missiles--with missiles you have to basically knock out every single piece of armour on your target before you can start to hurt it because you have a ton of little impacts.
But I tend to skew towards short range effectiveness--use terrain cover to get as close as possible, rush, crush opponents with stuff like AC-20s or stacks of basic medium lasers and stuff. Called shot to the head, baby! But I believe emphasis on longer range engagement can be effective for people who can do it well (ie not me), and I have to admit the indirect fire abilities of long range missiles can be nice to soften up opponents who can't shoot back. So yeah, there are various workable approaches, which I think is a good thing.
If you're gonna have a laser hog that overheats a lot, make it a mech with a good hand-to-hand attack because you can whack the opponent while cooling down.
And if you spot weapons with a few nice bonuses, all bets are off--with a couple damage boosts, suddenly a short range missile rack can become a monstrous killer, and you should forget all your normal ideas of what weapon type is effective and hammer that "buy" button.
14 Feb 2020 at 9:07 pm UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: DMGI was disappointed in this game. It looks nice, but everything is so complicated. After few battles I felt boring already. It missing some better explanation and feeling of progression. But in current state of game, when I start I do not even know, where should I grow and why. What mechs should I buy and what parts should I change. Everything is so unclear, that it's become boring. But that's just my opinion.What mechs to buy . . . well, as a rule, big is better. It's not perhaps quite always true, but it's a pretty damn good rule of thumb.
Pay attention to how much armour the dang things have. I occasionally couldn't resist beefing up weapons a bit extra at the expense of armour and came to the conclusion that the best defence is a good defence. And on at least one occasion I bought a big mech with glorious weaponry, didn't tweak it much, didn't look too closely at the pocket descriptions about that model, and wondered why it kept dying so fast . . . then took a look and whoops! It was totally under-armoured.
What weapons . . . Dunno. Different strokes for different folks. One thing I do notice is that one big weapon does more than two little weapons totaling the same damage, because you can punch through and do real damage in one shot instead of spreading it across the armour of different locations. This is a major reason I'm not sold on missiles--with missiles you have to basically knock out every single piece of armour on your target before you can start to hurt it because you have a ton of little impacts.
But I tend to skew towards short range effectiveness--use terrain cover to get as close as possible, rush, crush opponents with stuff like AC-20s or stacks of basic medium lasers and stuff. Called shot to the head, baby! But I believe emphasis on longer range engagement can be effective for people who can do it well (ie not me), and I have to admit the indirect fire abilities of long range missiles can be nice to soften up opponents who can't shoot back. So yeah, there are various workable approaches, which I think is a good thing.
If you're gonna have a laser hog that overheats a lot, make it a mech with a good hand-to-hand attack because you can whack the opponent while cooling down.
And if you spot weapons with a few nice bonuses, all bets are off--with a couple damage boosts, suddenly a short range missile rack can become a monstrous killer, and you should forget all your normal ideas of what weapon type is effective and hammer that "buy" button.
Contemporary adventure game inspired by the Philippines 'Until Then' announced
13 Feb 2020 at 6:00 pm UTC
13 Feb 2020 at 6:00 pm UTC
and they also mention that the world "hasn't ended yet"So, contemporary setting . . .
The narrative-based game 'Death and Taxes' puts the grim reaper in an office job - demo available
13 Feb 2020 at 5:58 pm UTC
13 Feb 2020 at 5:58 pm UTC
Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization."
Mind you, I've already bought Civilization . .. . II, V and VI anyway.
Mind you, I've already bought Civilization . .. . II, V and VI anyway.
The narrative-based game 'Death and Taxes' puts the grim reaper in an office job - demo available
13 Feb 2020 at 5:54 pm UTC Likes: 1
13 Feb 2020 at 5:54 pm UTC Likes: 1
And so, the Powerpuff Reaper was born!
A note on using Steam Play Proton and counting the sales for Linux (updated)
13 Feb 2020 at 5:45 pm UTC Likes: 2
But. I think without anything else happening, Proton does have the potential to grow Linux (desktop) marketshare some, and gaming marketshare slightly more as it allows dual-booters to dump that Windows partition. Heck, a plausible argument might be made that Proton has something to do with the decline in Linux Steam user share having for the moment stopped. Perhaps more importantly, Proton (if it gets anti-cheat running and generally reaches a point where it Just Works for a big proportion of AAA games) could be a big piece in the puzzle for enabling potential Linux-based plays to work and be profitable. However, those plays may or may not materialize, and even if they do, they might not succeed.
So yeah, maybe it'll get things somewhere, maybe it won't. It may indeed end up doing more harm than good. But I don't see anything else on the horizon capable of beating certain chicken-egg problems, so thus far I'd rather see it than nothing.
13 Feb 2020 at 5:45 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: EikeThat's certainly the big-number-of-dollars question. I'd have to agree that I don't think, no matter how good it becomes, that Proton can without anything else happening cause Linux marketshare to grow hugely. That takes preinstalls of some sort, and we don't have 'em, and that's that.Quoting: LinuxwarperIt isn't now you should be judging Proton harshly.I understand that it's the rescue for some (many) Linux gamers. I fear that it's hindering Linux native ports (while others think it's the possibility for Linux gaming to lift off to get more native ports on the long run). It's an astonishing piece of software for sure. So, mixed bag for me.
What I mainly wanted to say is that I don't feel it will succeed in lifting off Linux gaming, unfortunately.
But. I think without anything else happening, Proton does have the potential to grow Linux (desktop) marketshare some, and gaming marketshare slightly more as it allows dual-booters to dump that Windows partition. Heck, a plausible argument might be made that Proton has something to do with the decline in Linux Steam user share having for the moment stopped. Perhaps more importantly, Proton (if it gets anti-cheat running and generally reaches a point where it Just Works for a big proportion of AAA games) could be a big piece in the puzzle for enabling potential Linux-based plays to work and be profitable. However, those plays may or may not materialize, and even if they do, they might not succeed.
So yeah, maybe it'll get things somewhere, maybe it won't. It may indeed end up doing more harm than good. But I don't see anything else on the horizon capable of beating certain chicken-egg problems, so thus far I'd rather see it than nothing.
A note on using Steam Play Proton and counting the sales for Linux (updated)
12 Feb 2020 at 12:34 am UTC
12 Feb 2020 at 12:34 am UTC
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoIn February 3rd I purchased A Plague Tale: Innocence for one of my accounts [External Link]..Isn't the limit two weeks? So I'd figure yes.
I played it today for the first time...
Is it counted as Linux sale?
Godot Engine enters new territory with Vulkan API support merged in for the upcoming 4.0 release
11 Feb 2020 at 5:19 pm UTC
11 Feb 2020 at 5:19 pm UTC
Quoting: morgancoxukWould be good to see an Godot openGL Vs Vulkan benchmark..Might be best to wait until it's a tiny bit less experimental. Don't even know if it works yet.
Inspired by Master of Orion, free and open source 'FreeOrion' has a new release up
10 Feb 2020 at 6:48 pm UTC Likes: 5
10 Feb 2020 at 6:48 pm UTC Likes: 5
It may be the first big update in some time, but ever since I installed the game, Mint's updates often include FreeOrion updates; it seems like there's been plenty of point- or bug-fix releases.
It's really quite different from MOO. In MOO, except for the occasional wormhole you're doing FTL travel in open space; in FreeOrion they're connected by warp lines of some sort. Races are completely different. The specifics of what buildings you make on planets are almost completely different. The planets have somewhat MOO-like climate characteristics, but the way you get to colonize hostile planets is quite different; basically, planet types that are bad (for your race) hand you max population numbers that are actually negative, while various biological technologies give you max population boosts; get enough boosts to put a planet into the positive and you can colonize it (technically, you can anyway, your people just start dying; get the right tech in time and they'll start growing again). Weapon technologies are significantly different, and ship hulls are not only different but considerably more interesting--there are several broad "families" of ship hulls, like organic ones, ones that go down a path of hugeness enabled by gravitic technologies, a group of hull types made from asteroids which require an asteroid belt to make, and a family of ship hulls made of Pure Energy (muahaha!). They all have somewhat different advantages and shortcomings. In general the tech tree bears very little resemblance to the MOO tech tree, and there are quite a few interesting technologies.
Another difference is that in FreeOrion, art is almost nonexistent. It's a very bare-bones look, although you can customize what you see in an interesting, rather nerdy way, moving around and changing the size of sub-windows with different reports and stuff. Some of those sub-windows are well set-up and useful; some look like the results spit out by doing some kind of shell command, and it takes some play and thinking before you can start to figure out what all the lines of text mean. Luckily those are kind of less important ones and you can often just leave them minimized.
It can be frustrating. There have been a number of times when I tried to do something it seemed like I ought to be able to do, found I couldn't, and couldn't tell whether it was because of a glitch or because the game just wasn't telling me about some feature or limitation. Sometimes I eventually figured it out, sometimes I didn't.
Overall I'd say it's quite interesting and worth a look, but . . . let's just say you can tell it's an open source game, eh?
I'm not sure what I think about "removing micromanagement". Usually with this kind of game I'd rather micromanagement was made easier than taken away.
It's really quite different from MOO. In MOO, except for the occasional wormhole you're doing FTL travel in open space; in FreeOrion they're connected by warp lines of some sort. Races are completely different. The specifics of what buildings you make on planets are almost completely different. The planets have somewhat MOO-like climate characteristics, but the way you get to colonize hostile planets is quite different; basically, planet types that are bad (for your race) hand you max population numbers that are actually negative, while various biological technologies give you max population boosts; get enough boosts to put a planet into the positive and you can colonize it (technically, you can anyway, your people just start dying; get the right tech in time and they'll start growing again). Weapon technologies are significantly different, and ship hulls are not only different but considerably more interesting--there are several broad "families" of ship hulls, like organic ones, ones that go down a path of hugeness enabled by gravitic technologies, a group of hull types made from asteroids which require an asteroid belt to make, and a family of ship hulls made of Pure Energy (muahaha!). They all have somewhat different advantages and shortcomings. In general the tech tree bears very little resemblance to the MOO tech tree, and there are quite a few interesting technologies.
Another difference is that in FreeOrion, art is almost nonexistent. It's a very bare-bones look, although you can customize what you see in an interesting, rather nerdy way, moving around and changing the size of sub-windows with different reports and stuff. Some of those sub-windows are well set-up and useful; some look like the results spit out by doing some kind of shell command, and it takes some play and thinking before you can start to figure out what all the lines of text mean. Luckily those are kind of less important ones and you can often just leave them minimized.
It can be frustrating. There have been a number of times when I tried to do something it seemed like I ought to be able to do, found I couldn't, and couldn't tell whether it was because of a glitch or because the game just wasn't telling me about some feature or limitation. Sometimes I eventually figured it out, sometimes I didn't.
Overall I'd say it's quite interesting and worth a look, but . . . let's just say you can tell it's an open source game, eh?
I'm not sure what I think about "removing micromanagement". Usually with this kind of game I'd rather micromanagement was made easier than taken away.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hit a new all-time high player-count
10 Feb 2020 at 5:25 am UTC Likes: 1
10 Feb 2020 at 5:25 am UTC Likes: 1
So you get more joy with nojoy?
Godot Engine was approved for an Epic MegaGrant
7 Feb 2020 at 9:59 pm UTC Likes: 3
But also, when it comes to corporations I hate to break this to you, but when they make charitable donations it is not because they care about charitable causes. It is because they think their profits will in some way be enhanced, directly or indirectly. Usually it is a form of public relations (well, combined with a tax break). People suspecting such things in this case are not engaging in bizarre conspiracy theories, they are hypothesizing that this particular corporation is engaged in corporate standard operating procedure. Anyone who is shocked by such speculation needs to learn a bit more about how the world works.
This is typically also the case with wealthy celebrities' personal charitable donations--it's a form of brand building. But it's nearly always the case for corporations of much size. That's why shareholders don't get upset about corporate charitable donations--they understand that it is not taking away shareholder value, but merely a different sort of maneuver to gain it.
7 Feb 2020 at 9:59 pm UTC Likes: 3
Quoting: einherjarSigh. It's not even about "good" and "bad", it's about assuming lack of multiple personality disorder. So for instance, I don't think Madonna is evil (although I'm not a fan), but if she announced she was going to go live in a Buddhist monastery and become celibate, my first instinct would not be to think "Ah, Madonna has found religion", it would be to think "interesting publicity stunt", because that is far more consistent with her track record.Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt is really kinda LOL to me. You compare apples to pears. EPIC makes a grant, they do not want something in return. So they do not rely on what EPIC wants or not. That is a total different situation.Quoting: einherjarYou are missing the point and your insinuation is unwarranted. If someone has proved a few times that their motives are suspect, then it is not unreasonable to interrogate their motives if they do something that does not seems consistent with your assessment of their motives and personality.Quoting: EikeI do not hate and I do not love them. But I judge things they do. And even when a person/company I dislike, does something good, it is not automatically turning into something bad.Quoting: einherjarIsn't that bizarre?I'd find the opposite bizarre. You can't switch between love and hate every other day. You take into account what someone is doing and judge based on that. Of course, this judgement may change over time, but it shouldn't completely switch sides with every new action.
If they do something bad -> They get hated
If they do something god -> They get hated
To sad that the world is not only black and white, eh?
Look, I've been on a union negotiating team at contract time. And I will tell you, that while sure, sometimes a management negotiator who was perfidious before may turn over a new leaf and decide to believe in win-win, if they told you they were making you a great offer, and someone on your team was willing to just assume that was true, you would not call your fellow negotiator "Someone who sees that the world is not only black and white", you would call them "an idiot".
And if you really want to break everything down to your "Example", you end up that there is only "the good ones" and the "always bad ones". Nice, the world is so simple.
But also, when it comes to corporations I hate to break this to you, but when they make charitable donations it is not because they care about charitable causes. It is because they think their profits will in some way be enhanced, directly or indirectly. Usually it is a form of public relations (well, combined with a tax break). People suspecting such things in this case are not engaging in bizarre conspiracy theories, they are hypothesizing that this particular corporation is engaged in corporate standard operating procedure. Anyone who is shocked by such speculation needs to learn a bit more about how the world works.
This is typically also the case with wealthy celebrities' personal charitable donations--it's a form of brand building. But it's nearly always the case for corporations of much size. That's why shareholders don't get upset about corporate charitable donations--they understand that it is not taking away shareholder value, but merely a different sort of maneuver to gain it.
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