WaltC wrote on Feb 24, 2021, 14:52:

Acleacius wrote on Feb 24, 2021, 12:12:
wtf is wrong with nvidia, they can't even get the cards they have now, out successfully.

No I'm not bitter I still don't have my rtx 3000 card yet!

And I still don't have my 6800XT. Something is rotten, and not just in Denmark, I tell you. There just isn't that big a market for $600-$1500 3d cards...but they can't even fill even that much demand.

You've heard about that whole bit-coin mining thing right? That is where all the cards are going right now, to mine etherium and other crypto currencies.

Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 20, 2021, 13:28:

RedEye9 wrote on Feb 20, 2021, 10:51:
Another prime example why Tim Sweeney and Epic Games are the only ones to root for in this saga.

The only loser in this saga will be gamers, no matter what happens.

Exactly. Neither side is good here. Heck, I agree with smaller devs that 30% cut is too much from Apple or Google or even Steam in some cases but these lawsuits or the bill proposal in the ND state legislature are not the way to go about it.

Also, I'm sure Epic would totally not love to have Steam's info in their own hands via this case. Totally not useful info for Epic Games' store.

Slick wrote on Feb 7, 2021, 19:32:

FloorPie wrote on Feb 7, 2021, 19:23:
Why would I bother with shortcuts when they're most likely going to launch their respective stores/launchers/drm fronts? The only Epic game I play regularly starts the Epic game store automatically when using the shortcut so I start Epic launcher first usually for any updates.

Right, they both accomplish the same thing.

My method takes one step (the second step is automated and hands-off), your way takes two steps where you have to wait a little while in-between the first and second step.

Why would you voluntarily choose the more convoluted way? How is it more convenient?

Desktop aesthetics, lack of shortcuts clogging up the screen. Also, because all it does is load the epic store in the background and that does take cpu time either way. In the end I still have to manually shut it down after the game session and usually because Epic puts itself on my screen automatically. Depending on the game, I might as well run the launcher first to see if their is an update before running the game. On top of that, as I mentioned earlier if I'm doing multiplayer its kinda necessary to run the launcher for that in most games.

Then you have various game devs/publishers that require you to have their launcher run as well as Steam etc.. Bloody Creative Assembly and their total war games. Elite Dangerous (Frontier is horrible with stability and account linking) is similar. Paradox has gone that route for some games (more for ease of running mods but still). Hell, even Stardock forces a launcher screen for their games. Apparently running Sins of a Solar Empire means I want to see the latest info or change my mind to run Gal Civ 3.

Slick wrote on Feb 7, 2021, 15:11:
Poll time!

How many Blues users actually launch the store before launching the game they already own? As opposed to having a shortcut for the game directly?

You'd think that most, if not all here would just launch games directly to forgo the marketing that happens anytime you open a store to play a game (even if you disable the popups, you're far more likely to browse other games or checkout current deals when interacting with a store, rather than a game shortcut).

Slick - launches games directly via windows shortcuts and never looks/cares what store its on other than when purchasing. You?

Why would I bother with shortcuts when they're most likely going to launch their respective stores/launchers/drm fronts? The only Epic game I play regularly starts the Epic game store automatically when using the shortcut so I start Epic launcher first usually for any updates. The only drm storefront I regularly run in the background on my gaming systems is Steam since thats where most of my games and friends are for chat etc.. GoG is usually all shortcuts unless its a game that requires or is better run through galaxy (all of 4-5 games on one of my systems I think).

Epic has the annoying habit of demanding to re-maximize its window from the system tray on leaving a game and instead of showing me my games list auto loads its game store front page with all the latest news about fortnite and game exclusives I don't care about. At least with Steam it shows my games list with game news from games I own that I don't usually care about.

Uplay and Origin are less annoying that Epic's client.

Cutter wrote on Jan 31, 2021, 18:31:
It's a Polygon article obviously they're going to construe anything that isn't part of their groupthink as racist and bigoted. Never mind the fact that the Japanese are probably the most xenophobic people on the planet. Never mind that every country has its own organized crime - the Yakuza as it applies to Gibson's work. This just the typical snowflake whinging. Just another assault on white men who aren't white guilty liberal extremists. It's clear they've never actually read anything by Gibson or Stephenson. Their works are the very opposite of what the idiot author is contending.

I'm actually shocked they used Orientalist instead of Asianist or something similar.

phinn wrote on Jan 27, 2021, 18:36:
Yea seems crazy, when I got my 5800X microcenter had like 30 in stock.

The 5800X is the worst price/perf of the bunch so not as much demand for them compared to the 5600X or the 12 core 5900X. I've heard many reports from people that they're usually the last to go at their local MC stores and other places.

TheBigVlad wrote on Jan 26, 2021, 14:05:

eRe4s3r wrote on Jan 26, 2021, 12:49:
This game completely replaced my Factorio addiction

That's high praise. I wouldn't go that far but it does have potential. From what I've played, I don't see the game having much replayability at the moment but that will probably change in the future as they add more features. Mod support would help a lot as well. The English translation is hilariously bad. It doesn't really affect the game, it's just funny hearing badly translated tutorials being read verbatim. I still prefer Factorio and Satisfactory but those games have had years of polish and refinement. I'm sure DSP will get there too and I'm looking forward to future updates. It's great.

Ditto what Vlad said. It definately has the charm of Factorio and Satisfactory. For an early access game it is as polished as Satisfactory was on start in 2019, which is to say very playable despite being incomplete and with amusing translations from Chinese to English.

My only big gripe so far is building conveyors and sorters could be less annoying.

Rock and stone brothers!

jdreyer wrote on Jan 24, 2021, 18:10:
Rust? Did they have a sale or something?

Popular twitch streamers started up some Rust servers recently, including roleplaying ones.

Also, if you like building games like factorio and statisfactory, take a look at Dyson Sphere.

Task wrote on Dec 31, 2020, 09:13:
They did add a zoom to the revamped AoE 2, more so than AoE 1. I haven't tried their revamped AoE III yet. Anyways, I don't see why they wouldn't add it to the latest installment.

Supposedly they've fixed all the problems with the AoE3 definitive edition but early on it was a buggy mess and worse than the original.

Avus wrote on Dec 25, 2020, 16:49:
I am happy to keep removing Wishlist items from Steam because of Epic free games.

Just an FYI for anyone interested in the game. Last I heard, only the Steam version supports multiplayer and I don't see any word on Epic's page about MP. Hence I have the basic version on Steam bought cheap after I picked up the game and dlc's on GoG last Christmas sale.

Also, I ended up preferring Iratus to DD for this type of game.

eRe4s3r wrote on Dec 23, 2020, 04:42:
None of the games on my wishlist are on sale... yay

Also.. wow.. what did people smoke to put Battlefield 5 in visual DESIGN category? Since when is "reality shooter" a design?

Yeah BF5 there threw me for a loop. I was tempted to vote for it just as a joke, but its not worth even that.

VaranDragon wrote on Dec 18, 2020, 02:08:
I heard this is the next Simcity. Good stuff.

Its better than that SimCity EA put out a few years ago that had multiplayer but the cities were the size of trailer parks. However CS often devolves into a traffic manager. The industries dlc is probably the best simply because it lets you generate decent tax base early on.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Dec 7, 2020, 12:51:
Follow up. It took 16 minutes with 30-50 second pauses between bursts of download activity maxing out my 1Gb connection. I'm guessing Steam is encrypting the game in chunks. Also, it says there is an update available but hitting the up arrow on it causes it to pause and then move right back to update available status.

At least something gets decent bandwidth.

It would be nice if Steam didn't hate my connection for some reason. I'm lucky to get 30-35MB/s out of a 1Gb connection. I get better download speeds from Rockstar, Ubisoft, GoG (browser based no less) and even Epic. 60-80 MB/s from them on average. It doesn't help that comcast seems to be throttling speeds in my area the past couple of months for some reason.

RedEye9 wrote on Dec 6, 2020, 18:40:
Sweet, I've never seen "The Living Daylights."
The first 50 minutes have been pure bond and I got 80 minutes left.

It is probably my favorite Bond movie.

Slick wrote on Nov 25, 2020, 01:54:
Don't know what you guys are talking about re: PvP

If someone kills you, you simply select "Parlay" and they can't attack you again for 10 minutes. You always respawn within 100-150m and there's no penalty.

You can also press "L" to bring up the player menu and select "defensive", which means your character has like 200% HP when being shot by another player, so it's hard to grief you.

But again, if someone kills you, just "parlay" and you become immune for 10 minutes.

I kept pwning this one loud-mouthed hillbilly over and over, and he refused to hit Parlay, and just told me I had to stop, or else he was reporting me to rockstar for griefing. I'm like LOL have you EVER played GTA online!? Also, the game devs have already implremented a feature in the game to do exactly what you want, which you refuse to use... and now you want to waste someone's time reporting me? Fucking Karens.

Yes, the system is better in RDR2 than GTA but its not fun when your horse is run over or shot out from you and it costs money to revive it via the potions I have to buy... or ride a nag back to a stables to revive my horse.

Cutter wrote on Nov 24, 2020, 20:34:
And is it a haxfest like GTAO?

No, absolutely not. Never ever would Rockstar let one of their online PC games become a hackfest. What are you, some kind of negative nellie? This ain't no GTA5 online there pardner.

Anyway yes, it can be a hack fest and with cheap online only accounts I expect it to get worse. Although lately there is a bug for some players that disconnects you in 30s-2mins of logging in, thought to be from the last small patch and update to the launcher or game so that has made me lose interest.

For a long time, Rockstar's solution to hacking issues was to basically give you your own world or small population servers where you would rarely run into another player. This was actually nice because it meant you could get things done without a hacker or just pvp ruining your moonshine runs. A month or so ago they brought back large pop servers or whatever and now you actually see more than 1-2 people in the world. It also made it harder to get legendary animal spawns and you had more chances at griefers/hackers.

Some of the pvp is fun but with so many hackers out there... it wasn't worth it. On top of that, for me the game has just been buggy since the July update. I should actually start playing single player since I have 250+ hours in online only which is mostly stable still.


TLDR, this is Rockstart trying to drum up interest in RDO and get people to buy more in game gold like GTA shard card cash. At least in GTA they offer new content worth a damn and the hackers while annoying are less of a problem at times.

Good news, DRM free HZD!

A friend got me to try Phasmophobia and it is addicting. If you have any interest in horror games its worth the $14.

HorrorScope wrote on Nov 18, 2020, 14:11:
Those with a current AMD and drivers...

First 6800XT and 3080 are very close, each has their strengths that have been measured.

There are some things that I really like with NVidia software that I use all the time or often, does AMD have any equivalent?

#1 In NV Control Panel I can set all games to run at 40% Sharpness (I can choose off to 100%) why this is important to me is we all know TAA will cause bluriness and still a lot of games themselves don't add the sharpness back in. This feature is a godsend to me, it makes TAA tits. And games that do have the sharpness the 40% doesn't over do it. Does AMD have anything like that?

#2 GeForce Softwar Alt-Z, you can go into Game Filter for quite a few of the big games and adjust color, brightness, HDR effect, Sharpen Effects etc. It is basically re-shade built in. No fuss, no muss and there is almost always a tweak here or there that I can make a game simply look better. This one is more nice to have over #1.

I know there are other Nvidia things they do, but I think #1 for me could be the biggest. Is there a good place to see all the AMD software features they have?

There are probably some YT videos showing off the "Radeon Software". The 2020 version should let you adjust/override settings globally for AA and Anisotropic, tesselation settings for games individually. The software I think has detected all of the games I have installed, certainly the steam ones it has.

On #2, it does look like you can set it for individual games for color/brightness. I've not messed with it myself so I don't know if it works on the fly though.

Man, T&L... that brings back the memories. I think it was almost two years before I played a game that used it.