Having your router limit internet connectivity time is effectively the same thing these days. There are some things they can do offline but not much anymore.
I've been a fan of thatgamecompany since playing the free Flash version of Flow online and reading Jenova Chen's thesis on how to implement the flow state into gaming.
http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/Flow_in_games_final.pdf
It's pretty awesome and he's a very unique individual. Can't wait to see what they come up with next.
Personally, I'd use the router to limit access to locations and times. It's more reliable, easier to do, and lets you be less picky with your distro.
Using a DNS level content blocker like Adblock DNS is a great option, IMHO, and is super easy to setup.
(For the record, parent of 8 and 11 yr olds)
ARPG aka Action Role Playing Game.
tl;dr - Diablo or Dark Souls?
Both Diablo-likes and Souls-likes are called Action RPGs. In one, you create a "build" using gear and skills, and generally grind for hours on end looking for the perfect drop to make your build a teeny bit better. In the other, your success is based off of twitch reflexes and learning move-sets of the enemies. Gear and loot is pretty downplayed and the enjoyment comes from the elusive "git gud".
I'm not here to argue that one or the other isn't an ARPG. I'm just curious why a new designation hasn't sprouted up for one or the other to make things less confusing. It's getting even worse now that Diablo-like games aren't limited to isometric POV (they haven't been for a while but...) and now people are making souls-iike games in isometric POV. It's only natural that this would happen. But again, why is there still the confusing naming convention?
IMHO, worthless though it is, I don't get why Diablo-likes are called ARPG's. They have lots of A and no RP. (They are Gs tho.) Souls-like feel a lot more like what I would consider an ARPG. But again, my opinion is completely worthless so it's pointless to even attempt to argue about it.
My point is we should riot with pitchforks and torches at the headquarters of... the people who name genres of games... and demand they split ARPG from ARPG so we all know what we're getting into.
Like, someone went ahead and invented "bullet heaven" as a genre name since "bullet hell" didn't quite fit when you were the one with the bullets. I love that! Maybe we can do something similar like call Diablo-likes Action Grinding Games (AGG) or Loot and Build Games (LBG). I'm sure someone can think of something better while we are marching.
The original Metroid on NES was so freaking good back in the day. I'm in my late 40s at this point and I still hear songs or themes that make me go "that reminds me of Metroid". The music was iconic.
And it's gotta be said, the original reveal that the hero of the game was a (gasp) girl! I am sure it had an effect on my young impressionable mind. And the good kind of effect, the kind that makes you realize girls can be bad ass too. So awesome!
Defragging works for that.
I shrunk my Win10 partition from within Windows to make space to dual boot into linux so you definitely can shrink an active partition.
I am completely enamored with Inkbound right now. Its a turn-based tactical roguelite by the guys who made Monster Train. It has a similar feel to the combat from Marvels Midnight Suns, which I loved also. It just came out of earl access recently.
Oh and they took out all the microtransactions in the game during EA. People complained and they listened! So there are some mechanics that look like, for example, a season pass, but it's free and automatic now. I think that's pretty awesome.
Anyways, game is fun. Devs are moral. Works in linux. A++
You know with Android, you can just sideload any app you want. Still not sure why anyone buys Apple products, but hey at least you get different colored chat bubbles!
Yeah I get it. It turns out subscription services are everywhere and have been for quite some time so there's no need to really inform people about the pros and cons at this point.
Sure I don't own the games. But then again, I don't tend to replay old games ever. There are SO MANY new games coming out all the time, I've never understood the urge to go back and replay an old game. Chances are there's a new game out there that's the same idea but better.
My only point here is that GamePass Ultimate is basically paying more to have access on Windows AND Xbox and I don't use the Windows version anymore. It will save me money when it's time to renew. Hooray linux!
It's one of my only regrets from switching to linux full time last summer: the PC side of my GamePass Ultimate subscription is now useless because it requires Windows. I get it, but it still bums me out.
On the plus side, I prepaid using some crazy scam/exploit/deal/whatever from SlickDeals so it cost me like less than $100 for three years. And since I still use it on my Xbox regularly, I feel like it was still a... <glasses>... slick deal.
I remember being so insanely jazzed and proud that I got into the closed beta for SWTOR like VERY early. Wasn't so fun when the game launched and I was already burnt out on it. lol
To be fair, they didn't address a lot of the main criticisms from beta so the game predictably sunk into "Free to play" hell not too long after. Shame, it had a lot of potential.
Point is, I specifically did not sign up for this beta for the same reason as you. I think this one is worth waiting for.
TIL... Only been using Steam since a friend bought me the Orange Box a few decades ago...
Just checked, sixteen years. That doesn't make me feel old at all...
Steam seems to be down right now. Wonder if Hades is so popular that it crashed Steam. :-D
EDIT - Back up already of course. lol
Rule of thumb: if a headline is a yes or no question, the answer is always no.
I have cancer. It's SUPER fun having to deal with drug shortages every fucking month, let me tell you. Nothing makes a cancer patient feel better than having to call around to local pharmacies to see who can fill a painkiller prescription. And you can't call for a refill even a single day before your current scrip is out. So they can't have it ready for you or set it aside. You run out and then you have to fucking FIGHT to not have to deal with withdrawal on top of the pain. EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.
But you know, profits are more important than health care. So I get it. Can't have CEO's going hungry just because I'm in a little pain.
At this point, when do you even want a password to be shown? If you don’t need a password, get rid of it entirely.
Do you still do this by just pressing enter when you change your password? (i.e. entering no password as your password)
Short version: How do I install apps onto a different partition from the default in Pop_OS! (preferably from within the Pop Shop GUI)?
Long version: I have a dual boot with Windows and I shrunk my Win partition to install linux and eventually realized I wanted more space on the linux side so I shrunk my windows partition again. But Linux won't let me grow the existing partition since the free space isn't contiguous. Since I don't want to reinstall everything, I just created a data partition and have been using that for Steam installs. But I am still running low so yeah, looking to move some apps and realized it doesn't actually ask me where to install when I install. I saw this thread and figured I'd just ask.
The DLC's add a ton to the game. New storylines, new sectors (more space), new ships and buildings, new mechanics (in some), etc.
Do I think you need them all at the start? Probably not? I don't know how much things cost at this point since I've gotten all the DLC's when they came out since I got the game so it's hard for me to say whether it's "worth it" price wise. But just from a content and fun standpoint? They add a LOT to the game and are worth having for sure.
IMHO, the Split ships are the ones I prefer flying generally, so I would recommend that DLC if nothing else. But every faction has one or two ships that are best in class, it's balanced nicely that way. I just know that if I had to start the game from scratch without Split ships, I would be sad. :-D
This game scratches an itch for me that very few games do. Starting from nothing but a single scout ship and building and empire with fleets of capital ships and miners and traders... and not just owning stations, but building them module by module. There are so many different ways to play this game, from pirate lord to corporate shill to business mogul. You can follow one of the many story lines or strike out on your own from day one. sigh I really enjoy this game.
And I thought they were done updating it two updates and one DLC ago. Yet here we are with more improvements. How lucky are we?!!
Hey all!
So I switched to linux this summer and have been really enjoying it! Pretty much everything I want to play on Steam works with no issue. Everything else seems to get solved with protondb.com.
But I do miss the PC side of my Gamepass Ultimate sub. Is there any way to take advantage of that on linux? I know on Windows you need to use the Xbox app to install things and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to add them to Steam after that as a non Steam game (couldn't find the executables or whatever).
Anyways, is there some lutris workaround or something for installing and playing Gamepass Ultimate games on linux? Or am I SOL?
Thanks!
Cyberpunk 2077 didn't have the best launch (lol). But some of us enjoyed the game despite its flaws. In the time since then, they've had nearly two years to patch the issues and add QoL.
Recently, I decided to give it another go and see how far it's come since then and MAN did I enjoy the hell out of it! Like, way more than I expected. It's really a much better game now than it was at launch.
I went right from finishing Cyberpunk to Starfield and boy did it make Starfield look bad. Like, not just visually (how can a two year old game look THAT much better than Starfield??) but I mean things like the combat and the role playing are just miles better in CP2077.
And in two days (Sep 21), version 2.0 will release. This is going to be a huge patch that's free for everyone who already owns the game that adds and changes a bunch of stuff even if you don't buy the expansion (which comes out a few days after that).
Given how good v1.6 (the current version) of CP2077 is, I'd say there's no better time to dip into this game if it's something you've been thinking about.
I'm really excited to play through again. With a different build, the gameplay will feel fresh regardless of the updates. And the role playing is deep enough that I can make different choices to see different results in most of the quests I'll have to repeat. Neither of those things are true about Starfield.
Am I missing something? There's no arbitrage trading opportunities as far as I can tell so what cargo are you supposed to be hauling? Piles of looted succulents and notepads?
(Serious question! I like space trading games but I don't see that as a thing and I really am curious if I'm missing something.)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater. I actually was really excited for the game. But so far I am just not having fun.
For a little bit of reference, I just finished playing thru Cyberpunk 2077 and then jumped right into Starfield. Maybe that was a mistake because I kinda just want to go back to Cyberpunk (and I will in a few weeks when the DLC comes out).
But I'm noticing two really big issues with Starfield: first, the gunplay/combat is... let's call it underwhelming. I realize it's quite probably a skill issue and I need to just git gud, but holy crap, everything is a bullet sponge and I don't have that many bullets! Stealth seems to be pretty worthless at early levels as I don't have any high-alpha guns that can take advantage of it and, most of the time, I'm detected before I even see the bad guys. I'm just not enjoying this aspect of the game at all.
The second big issue for me is that there's a loading screen every five seconds! Again, probably a me thing, but OMG, it's driving me nuts. Get into ship, loading screen. Launch from planet, loading screen. Fly to next planet, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen. Leave ship, loading screen. I just want to go shoot things! Let me shoot things!
Okay, found some spacers, time to... oh shit, out of ammo. Let me swap to a worse gun that still has ammo. Sigh. Okay, they're dead. Let me just heal up... oh shit, out of med packs. Sigh.
Oh and wrestling with the UI is exhausting.
Anyways, I realize that this probably isn't the place to find a lot of like-minded people. But I really do want to like this game. Any tips on maybe at least ways to make the combat less of a chore?
Hi all. I'm in the market for a new Android phone and I was hoping you could help with recommendations.
Thanks to my awesome friend cancer (and its awesome friends at Phillip Morris), I had my larynx removed and can no longer speak. Because of that, I use my phone as my main form of communication, typing out things and showing my phone to people. It's in my hand all the time and it's VERY important to me.
Thanks to some of the side effects of the drugs that are keeping me alive, I am very sensitive to heat. My phone (Oneplus 7T) gets hot when I'm gaming, most phones do, and it can occasionally get too uncomfortable for me to use. It doesn't happen often though. My wife's Pixel Fold, on the other hand, gets too hot just from normal use. I've read this is a thing with the newer Pixel phones.
So the most important criterion right now is that it can't get too hot. Even when charging.
Second most important criterion is weight, since I'm constantly holding it and showing it to people... Or just sitting in bed texting. The Pixel Fold is cool and all, but too damn heavy to be lugging around everywhere.
Third would be size. With the amount I type, a bigger screen means bigger buttons and fewer typos. I know that bigger tends to mean heavier so there's a balance to be struck between this priority and the previous one. One of the reasons I'm looking for help.
Last, I tend to prefer a close-to-stock Android experience. But given the importance of my other priorities, this is lower on the list.
Some other info: I live in the US, I'm on T-Mo currently but I only buy unlocked phones, price is obviously a consideration but not a constraint, don't care about camera, nice screen and high refresh would be nice to have.
Thanks in advance for any help. It's such a pain to try to sift through all the phones every few years. I used to just pick the newest Nexus. Then the newest Oneplus. But Google and Oneplus aren't what they used to be and so I'm open to suggestions now. Thanks!
Yeah, we know. That's how updates to games work. If it didn't change forever, it means they had to roll back the update and someone's getting fired.
Games journalists: stop it with this line. It's the verbal equivalent of putting your "shocked" face in the Youtube thumbnail.
So I'm very new to linux gaming. I swapped like last month and I've really been enjoying how well everything I've tried on Steam just works these days.
But I was looking to try something a little more advanced next. I saw that there's a HD "remaster" mod for Freelancer (which is abandonware now, so easy to find for free online). As it's one of my all time favorite games, and I haven't played it in like 20 years, I thought it might be fun to check it out again.
I saw that it is on lutris and tried installing it that way. The installation goes fine but after it's done, the lutris installer just hangs with "return code 256". Googling it didn't provide me any useful info other than one guy saying just to install it directly with an empty WINE prefix. I have no idea how to do that and it sounds like it might be more of a pain in the ass than I want to deal with.
But I thought I'd just post here and see if anyone else has tried this and gotten it to work. I can always dual boot back into Windows but I'd rather not do that ever again if I can avoid it. For the record, I'm on Pop!_OS.
The game comes out today, but if you were a sucker like me and paid for the deluxe version, it's been playable for a few days now. I have to say, I really love this game!
The elevator pitch is "dark souls with guns" but after playing it for a few days, I feel like that undersells the game a bit.
Now my experience with souls games has been generally that I really don't like them, up until Elden Ring. That game was great and made me realize that my biggest problem with souls games isn't the challenge, but rather the punishing death penalty. Remnant 2 has no death penalty (other than the enemies all respawning) so it's best-case scenario for me.
Beyond that, Remnant 2 is a perfect mix of procedural and hand-crafted content. You can freely "reroll" levels because they're procedurally generated but they somehow still manage to pack those levels with puzzles to solve and secrets to discover. There are even secret classes you can unlock! You can watch Youtube videos about where to find some great weapon or whatever and realize you never got that zone in your playthrough. The story in each zone can be different in different playthroughs! Even character upgrades ("traits") are locked behind this RNG.
This aspect of it is fun to me because it limits my ability to hit up wikis and min/max my play. It makes it so I can organically just play through and see what I get and make the most of it. Yes, I do check out videos so I know to recognize key ares when I see them, but otherwise, I feel free to just experience the game more organically. I know this is a me thing and not everyone feels the need to compulsively min/max but I'm sure others will appreciate this aspect design.
There's more I'm sure I'm forgetting, but yeah I really like this game a lot. It's a AA title with no jank and almost no bugs in my play on the XSX. For only $50, it's an easy recommendation.
Anyone else playing? Thoughts on the game?
The original psybient album and the GOAT. My all-time number one "desert island album". Nothing compares.
On a side note: couldn't be more excited by this community! Here's hoping it takes off! I'll try my best not to overload with suggestions early. :-D
I'm looking into replacing our aging second car and considering the Bolt EUV. My wife has only one requirement in a new car: she has to be able to turn on the heating/cooling remotely with the app like with our Tesla. Is this something the Bolt can do?
I found a really old reddit thread that suggested that you can sort of do it by turning the car on remotely, which would turn on the climate if you left the climate on when you turn the car off. Not sure why they'd let you do this and not just put a climate button in the app but whatever works, I guess.
I just saw that they're discontinuing the Bolt tho. Might be a dumb idea to buy a car that's hard to work on and being discontinued.
It's time once again to bang my head against the wall of Linux gaming to see if I can make the switch from Windows. What's the flavor of the month for gaming distros for a Windows native that's not a moron but also wants something that just works once its set up?
Bonus points if you can point me at resources for how to put Linux on my Windows box as a dual boot without breaking my Windows installation.
EDIT - Tried Mint and Nobara and neither could figure out how to dual boot with Windows on a machine with two physical drives. I'm sure if I had a CS degree I could figure it out in short order but a little googling and messing around trying different things didn't work so I think I'm done. Maybe next time, Linux.
Okay so I have never been into the Souls games. The whole "brutally difficult" thing never appealed to me, and watching my friends play was enough to turn me off.
However I decided to take the plunge and try Elden Ring recently because of all the amazing hype. Tons of "I'm not a Souls gamer but I loved it!" kind of hype.
And it's pretty fun! I get why it got so much love.
But I also, after a week or two of play, have identified exactly what I don't like about Souls games. It turns out it's not the difficulty. I grew up playing in arcades and on the NES so I'm no stranger to trying things over and over until I get it right.
It's the damn death penalty. I cannot express the depth of my hatred of losing progress. Games with save points that are too far apart or games where you can lose items when you die, etc, are just the worst for me. And in Elden Ring, the stress that goes along with trying to get back to my corpse to get my money/XP back is stress I don't want or need.
So I ask you all this: can you recommend a Souls style game with the fun gameplay loop but without the punishing death penalty? Does that even exist or is it just not a Souls game without that? I'd love the carrot of [learn fight, get better, epic win] without the stick of [now go grind low level mobs for XP, loser].
Title basically. I can't figure out how to just show all my own posts. I tried searching using the the "created by" field but it still needs a search term so I can't just show everything.
It was a single click on RES. I must be missing something. Help pzl!
