Ladron3dfx wrote on Mar 9, 2022, 23:02:
What is with the fancy lights, when did all that change? Someone explain it to me. I'm trying to build a new PC and even the memory sticks have lights.

Kiddos fuckin love ‘em. They think the more lights there are, the better. We sell a machine with a 5600g in it, no video card but a fuck ton of lights and kids go nuts for it.

Saboth wrote on Mar 2, 2022, 16:00:
I went the gaming laptop route the last time, when my gaming PC died completely. Won't be doing that again. Not only was performance subpar, but it sounded like a hair dryer as soon as I started up a game. And of course you can't upgrade it. Still have it, but use it just to watch TV while I game on my new desktop.

I got a gaming laptop for goofing off in my downtime at work. It struggles in some games, a few of which don't make any sense at all (Hotshot racing runs terribly). It runs others with no issue. While it isn't really a desktop replacement for me, it's perfectly serviceable. The article does say you need to temper your expectations, but it's mostly pointing out that you CAN have a machine that's about 80% of what you want from a desktop, versus the very real "no desktop at all because you can't get a damn card".
Let's hope these upcoming Intel cards are actually decently powerful, reasonably priced, and easy to find. I'd bet that if that happens, suddenly Nvidia's cards will become easier to get.

ForgedReality wrote on Feb 25, 2022, 14:25:
I hope there's at least a decent damage model and semi-realistic physics. Seeing as how it seems to be focused on multiplayer, I'm betting that's not the case. The trailer looks like NFS or Forza Horizon style damage model. I'd like to see body panels crumpling and breaking off. Why can't any games seem to come out that do that? BeamNG doesn't count since that's practically undriveable. Cars fall apart just from going too fast in that one. I just want a fun driving game where I can break cars if I want to, but lets me drive and have fun if I don't want to.

Mostly the destruction, or lack thereof, is because car manufacturers are reluctant to have their cars shown as looking terrible. It's surprising they allow dents and scratches, honestly. Heavy destructability currently requires that all the cars involved are made up. It's why Burnout and BeamNG have no-name cars in them. Also, and here's where I was heading the whole time, does Wreckfest. Unlike BeamNG, Wreckfest's cars won't fall apart just from going too fast. They are absolutely designed to be torn to shreds, and magnificently.
The game is a riot, although the multiplayer seems hellbent on making sure you sit around doing nothing for at least 3-4 minutes before you ever get to race. Join a game in progress? you can't spectate, just wait until it ends. Once it does end, it sits around on the score screen for a minute and a half for no reason. Then it'll load the next map and dawdle for another two or three minutes unless everyone readies up on their car selection, which takes all of 5 seconds for anyone to pick a car, but then at least one jackass won't click "ready". Also, if anyone loads into the server while the countdown is going, well, time to start that all over, hope you brought a fucking book.
Single player and closed-lobby-multiplayer is a riot. There are tracks meant for racing, and tracks meant to test your ability to even cross the finish line in a functional car. The second kind is the most popular, because good LORD are the wrecks incredible! This is the sort of game you absolutely do NOT play from cockpit view, as the car can get so mangled that you can't see anything. Got an axle torn in half and you're pretty sure you see the missing wheel in someone's rear window? Well, if you can get all 3 wheels on the ground you might just get across the finish line anyway. Body's twisted and only 2 touch at any given time? Might be a rough last half lap, buddy. Maybe someone will plow through what's left of your car and put you out of your misery, but why not push ahead anyway? I mean, that school bus over there is cut in half, dragging the body behind the front wheels. If he's gonna try, you should too!

Sorry, that was longer than I planned.
tl;dr: Wreckfest has destructability without the vehicles feeling like they're made out of paper. Good times but long waits between races in multiplayer.

The attack on the Ukraine may not affect chip prices, but China clearly shooting for doing the same to Taiwan in the next few days absolutely WILL.

Hardline Mike wrote on Feb 24, 2022, 07:08:

Kxmode wrote on Feb 23, 2022, 20:02:

"We're not making games in our garage anymore. We have a tremendous amount of power and responsibility in this world," Miele said, adding that the games that EA and others create help shape and inform culture at large.

EA hasn't made or published games in garages for a very long time. Is that nonsense supposed to convey to clueless people that they're a cute little indie studio?

Uh... doesn't it literally say the opposite? That they aren't making games in their garage, and have a tremendous amount of power?

I think the point he's making is that EA is using that line to slip the IDEA that EA remembers making games in garages, when I'm pretty sure zero of their upper management was around during those days.

RedEye9 wrote on Feb 23, 2022, 14:29:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Feb 23, 2022, 14:04:
Why do you need "tricks" and "updates" to speed up your OS? Shouldn't you have found that in, I don't know, regression testing which is a normal and reasonable thing to do?

Step 1. Defrag your nvme pcie4.0 m.2 ssd.
Step 2. Replace power supply.
Step 3. Increase cooling.
Step 4. Profit!l!?

I love this list. On Tuesday this week, someone brought in a laptop that he'd installed a TON of "helpful" programs on. One of them was a defragmenting utility, and yes, his machine only had an SSD in it.

It now has 10% of its write capacity left, and he had that drive put in 8 months ago.

Tried out Conan Chop Chop, which has a surprising amount of buttons involved. It was fun, felt really solid.

Fuck yes, gonna be spending the weekend playing HFW. Loved the first game, excited to see there's a 60FPS mode for it. I don't have a 4K tv yet, so I'm THRILLED that devs are putting 1080p/60fps modes in their games. Ratchet and Clank has a 60FPS with raytracing mode, but it's limited to 1080p. So what? They use a bunch of AA and the game looks sharp and clean and moves butter-smooth.

lol @ that wireless signal jammer article. At the end of it, they mention another issue that took MONTHS to hunt down, and it's the sort of thing we regularly did when I worked for a coax-based internet provider. Apparently, it just wasn't a common thing to run across over there, because it should take about a week to isolate and find, not months.
I've found weird crap that caused signal issues, but mostly it was old tube tvs. One time it was a Keurig knocking out 5 houses' internet for the 5-7 minutes it heated up water in the morning. That one was actually fun to figure out. Any, ANY junk electronics can cause electrical feedback that can confuse routers, and all they need to do is be on the same local transformer (most US neighborhoods have 4-8 houses attached to one transformer).

The Half Elf wrote on Feb 18, 2022, 09:11:
Never had a crash with Cyberpunk. Just happy they finally fixed picking shit up though.

Is the game honestly worth picking up at this point? I don't expect a completely bug-free experience, but I'm not a fan of showstoppers that break quest lines and require digging around for an older save file. I'm finishing up Fallen Order, gonna play through Forbidden West and then I'll be looking for another solid single player game.

So there's some goofing around to be had, but no actual single player content yet? TEN YEARS and there's nothing but assets and interactivity?

Kajetan wrote on Feb 17, 2022, 09:58:

Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 17, 2022, 08:27:
But saying it isn't a coherent game is simply incorrect.

It is correct. You might not have a problem with that, which is fine, but NMS really IS a bundle of features on top of bad foundation.

For example the landscape rendering is getting worse with every update after Beyond. Before Synthesis you did not need a fast SSD. After Synthesis walking speed is somewhat ok, but when using a vehicle the game requires a fast SSD to pre-load all terrain textures and objects to NOT experience heaviest stuttering. I have to select the lowest quality setting to get NMS barely (!) playable again.

I really had fun with the game, modded me a nice setup, but still ... NMS a bundle of quite enjoyable features, not a coherent game. And every big update since Synthesis made performance more worse, because they did not optimise anything, just piled more and more things up in the rendering queue.

You say multiple times that it needs a fast SSD, do you mean one of the 7000mb/s ones, or do you just mean "SSD VS HDD"?
The "SSD unofficially required" complaint is rapidly ceasing to be valid. The new consoles use SSDs, and any game being made/released now will assume you have an SSD. NMS is still moving forward, and I doubt they're bothering to extensively test on hardware you should be migrating away from.

Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 16, 2022, 17:40:

Braden wrote on Feb 16, 2022, 10:45:
Got to wonder how many of them signed up just for the regular freebies and haven't actually bought anything.

Well.... I did buy one game. Got tired of waiting for Satisfactory to be available on Steam. I think my total library is nearing 150 games at this point.

I purchased Satisfactory and Journey to the Savage Planet (using one of those $10 coupons, made it like $5) on EGS. Everything else in my library is a freebie. I have no hatred for EGS, but given the choice, I go with Steam. It's not because I have a personal interest in one store or another, but because Steam can find its library again if you have to reinstall. Only Steam and Battle.net do that currently. You can "trick" EGS into seeing its games, but it has to be done one at a time. I'd rather have as few as possible needed to do such a thing. "How often are you gonna need to do that?", you say....well, installed win11, which was a wipe/reinstall, and I...don't like it much. Will wait for the spring release and if it doesn't fix the issues I have, I'll reinstall 10. If/when Win11 becomes viable, I'll wipe and reinstall again...."upgrading" never works right.

One of the Angel of Darkness covers has some deceptively impressive art…the one that’s fairly realistic, with her hands and guns blood drenched. Look at the leg that’s stepping up and forward, it looks correct, and that angle is crazy hard to make look right. Usually it ends up looking like a malformed, shortened leg. Fantastic work!
And yes, boobies everywhere. I like the cartooney one with a hilariously tiny waist and ridiculously wide hips.

Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 11, 2022, 06:54:
Related question. Have the car manufacturers actually cooperated and all the electric cars have the same connector for charging? I would hope so, but it wouldn't particularly surprise me if they were different.

Ugh, this. Last I saw, there were like 3 different connectors? Even if everyone suddenly switched to one single type, all the prior vehicles would need adapters. Honestly, that probably wouldn't be too terrible of a thing to swap out, as long as the batteries could take the charge at whatever rating they set the "generic" to.

I work in a computer repair shop and decided I should probably have Win11 on one of my two machines so I get used to various functions of it. I loaded it onto my desktop, and it's...a bit frustrating. While most functions are easy to find (and the windows search feature still hunts everything down for you), I HATE the new Start menu. After moving it over to the left, I tried to free up space on it. The top half is icons you set yourself, the bottom is "recommended", which is pretty much worthless. The worst part is, after disabling all of the Recommended section's functions, it doesn't go away. Nope, it still eats up half the start menu's space with a big, unusable empty space that has a short message begging you to turn it back on. Fuck off, Microsoft! If they don't fix this and let me use all of the space in the spring update, I'll be reinstalling Win10 on it. Yes, it's a small thing but it's completely ridiculous. Also, the supposedly much better HDR support? Yeah, no, it's exactly the same as Win10.

Keep in mind, Win11 is pretty much just a reskin of Win10, at the request of laptop/desktop makers who wanted a new thing to entice users to buy new hardware for. Hrm, maybe I'll just see if anyone makes a reskin-to-look-like-10 software package instead of reinstalling again. I mean, I *AM* interested in DirectDrive, if that ever materializes.

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Feb 4, 2022, 11:52:
Mark Z can't do anything without trying to censor the world can he.

It's not about censoring, it's about people who are utter garbage ruining something before it has a chance to get anywhere.

is the RX 6500 non-XT gonna clip even more features? Maybe it'll only run at 800x600, with 2GB of ram and only DX9 support!

* REMOVED *

This comment was deleted on Feb 2, 2022, 14:03. Reason: Intolerance (rule 2)

Saboth wrote on Feb 1, 2022, 14:17:
Translated: Fans should attack game devs who unionize to discourage them from fighting for their rights and humane treatment as they work on our games.

That's likely the plan here. The need for Unions becomes more and more obvious as companies fight tooth and nail to stop them from forming. What I don't understand is why ANY employee of a company that's looking to unionize would vote against it. Amazon is spending millions of dollars to try to stop their employees from unionizing, that should tell them, plain as day, that unionizing is in the worker's best interest. And yet they still have a surprising number of employees who vote against it.