I have Crusader Kings II but I'm afraid to start playing it. I need to keep some of my hours for other things.

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Well, money where mouth is. I went and backed it, which I normally never ever do. Then I downloaded the demo/beta thing and gave it a whirl.
First, it works fine. On a laptop with Intel graphics that is not ancient but was never really meant to be a game machine. Mostly pretty snappy even. Turn processing gets a little slow, but I bet it would be way faster on my desktop, and considering work on performance improvement is likely still in the future, pretty good.
Second, it's pretty operational as a game. You can only play a couple of the races so far, and occasionally you'll see an entry in the tech tree that's grayed out and hovering over it with the mouse gets a message saying "Not yet implemented", but other than that, yeah, it works, it's functional.
As to the game itself . . . it's MOO I looking pretty and modern and with UI improvements. For better or worse, that's currently pretty much exactly what it is. The technologies are about the same, the sliders are the same, the races have different names but are mostly pretty recognizable in concept. Weapon/shield tech seems more like MOO II if my memory serves. And so, OK, just like MOO I it has a pretty good "Just one more turn" factor going, and just like MOO I colony management is pretty uncluttered and clean--maybe even more so.
But I must admit I was left with a bit of a "Is that all there is?" feeling. I was kind of looking for an evolution from MOO I, not MOO I itself with a face lift. Now mind you, this is presumably not what we're going to end up with--it's a working game, but it's also still at kickstarter phase. Plus it's apparently moddable as all hell, so there's possibilities there. So, well, we'll see.

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Well, whether it's necessary or all that useful or not, there seem to be developers out there using IL2CPP, so I'm glad Unity has Linux support coming.

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I've yacked before a few times about how there were interesting ideas and approaches in MOO I that got discarded in the genre due to the stampede to work planets like Civilization cities, and wondered what could be done with those ideas today. But I never thought someone would make the game I was musing about. Not only do I want this game, I feel like it's my duty to buy it.

Ed. to add: OK, and the background music to that video clip is the piece I have always said is the pinnacle of perfect music for space games, Mars from Holst's planets.

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Quoting: iiariI actually think the bigger future threat to your company, though, is still the next generation's love affair with mobile. My kids, for example, love Minecraft, and prefer to play it on mobile phones to computers with big monitors... They just love the touchscreen UI and want absolutely nothing to do with mice or keyboards.

The younger generation may well move away from dinky little screens as they, and more specifically, their eyes, get older. I've always felt doing much gaming on phones is a recipe for eyestrain.
We may see stuff to let them have a UI similar to a phone one while still using a bigger screen. Either big touchscreens or, hey, maybe you could do a dual screen setup where one screen is a small touchscreen, or even your phone itself, which you use for UI control, while actual documents, games etc. show on the big screen/s.

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Quoting: iiari

Quoting: [email protected]It's not the Netflix of gaming. You don't get a catalog of games to deal with.

You still have to buy your games on Stadia. Stadia simply helps offload it off the hardware.

That was my point, it wont' be the Netflix of gaming, which I think was a huge opportunity lost. As I posted above, I'm really surprised for how great the tech is that Google isn't being more aggressive with positioning this, because I think they're only, say, 85% confident in the tech status right now, not 100%. And as a long time Google fan and purchaser, they're honestly terrible at marketing and positioning their products...

They do seem to have this approach along the lines of "Build it and they will come, and then we'll, um, monetize it somehow." Then when it works, it works big, and when it doesn't, they fold the tent.
From a consumer perspective this can be good and bad. Seems like sometimes the answer comes back, "Looks like we have a way to monetize this, but it's pretty evil." and the response is "Oh well, pity we have to do that, but the next cool product won't make itself." So where say Microsoft in the old days was pretty much based on the model "Plan and commit evil acts to profit", Google may stumble into evil at times precisely because it doesn't have a plan outside the technology itself.
I may be way off base, this is just an impression.

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I wish them moderate success. Enough to help make Vulkan more dominant and developing on Linux more mainstream. Not enough to cripple normal PC gaming and leave us with all our games are belong to fickle megacorp.
Not that I'll be using it. Not my thing at all.

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I feel like this needs the Boxtron touch.

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Playing Battletech. I'm enjoying it. At first I was just leaving all my mechs pretty much stock, and trying to get a balanced group of mech pilots in terms of the abilities they went for. But I've gradually gotten a bit more opinionated about weapon mixes and what's effective, and very slightly cleverer about tactics, and I'm certainly having fun getting my hands on heavier mechs and watching them stomp some of the wimpier opponent mechs into the ground. And the campaign thingie is fairly interesting. So, good game IMO.

For anyone playing it, one of my key takeaways has been that one big weapon is usually much better than a few little weapons or a bunch of missiles doing the same damage, because mechs take damage at individual locations. So one big punch could take out a location where missiles would distribute light damage across the armour of all locations and leave the enemy intact. Having an AC20 do a called shot to the torso of a mid-sized mech and take it out in one shot is one of my favourite things. (So is stepping on puny little tanks)

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: GuestAh yes Dota....its a good game. Till you get some trolls who Teleport you onto a rock where you cant get down from. Yeah....fun times.

Oh jeez, I remember someone doing that to me every single time they saw me and they were on my team. Some people really are just out to piss others off online thinking they're funny.

Exactly. And you wanna know the best part? He said i need to beg him if i ever want off that rock. Needless to say even if i would beg a few minutes later he would drop me on that rock again. Yeah what a great time that was...

IMO, never, ever do what someone like that tells you. Just log off.

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