What mechanics are the most fun, innovative or immersive?

I'll start with my list.

Enemies reacting to your gameplay choices in MGS V

I still think that game is a masterpiece when it comes to stealth gameplay and generally reaxtive gameplay but I thought that the system of enemies adapting to your gameplay choices was particularly clever.

The parkour system in Dying Light

I don't think any other game has pulled this off that well. Combined with the stressful night sequences this made that game a sleeper hit for me.

The lack of weapons in Subnautica

This is what turned this into one of my favourites of this year. It really makes you feel vulnerable, especially in the beginning, making for some very atmospheric and creepy gameplay.

I really like playing Civ5, when a city is behind a mountain, if properly guarded, it's nearly impenetrable.

A strategically placed city on choke points can be a shield of your whole empire. Enemy settlers or scouts can't access a vast majority of land. Also people have fun with canal cities with trading routes shortcuts, etc.

However games like civ5 only have mountains, the river tactics is weak, historically many battles were carried over river and controlling a bridge is vital.

Are there any games that focus on terrain tactics? I think combined with some aspects from Tower of Defense, the game can be quite fun.

I know games like Total War where terrain plays an important role, but it's more campaign focused. RTS is too short-lived.

From CBS: New details, trailer from "Star Trek: Discovery" Season 2

From Gizmodo: In The First Trailer For Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, The USS Enterprise Boldly Arrives

As someone outside the USA, the videos in those articles didn't work for me, but this one from Netflix UK & Ireland does work for me: Star Trek: Discovery | Season 2 Trailer [HD]

I've never really listened to very much music beyond video game soundtracks, but i'm interested in getting more into it and finding what I like. Do you have any general recommendations or "genre starter" music?

EDIT: Since a few people now have not realized how old this topic is before making a comment, see above date ↑. :)

My old PC's CPU (i7 930) started to critically fail after 8+ years of being overclocked from 2.8 to 4.0 GHz, so I decided to build a new one based on the Ultra-Compact Mini-ITX Gaming PC Build from TechBuyersGuru.

I went with Mini-ITX this time since my old PC was in a huge Antec P193 tower which weighs 16.4kg (36.2lbs) before components and so was a giant PITA to move around. The new Sugo SG13 case is roughly 1/7th the volume and initial weight so is much more convenient to move (but not build!).

p.s. I was unsure whether to post this 'buildapc' style content in ~tech or ~comp.... thoughts?

PCPartPicker Part List
^{Parts labeled incompatible are not... see "Notes" below in Build Process section.}
Salvaged from old PC:
GPU   -     $0 - EVGA - GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked ACX 2.0+ Video Card
SSD   -     $0 - Samsung - 850 Pro Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
SSD   -     $0 - Samsung - 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
HDD   -     $0 - Hitachi - Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

New Components:
Case -   $72 - Silverstone - Sugo SG13B-Q Mini ITX Tower Case
Mobo - $190 - Gigabyte - Z370N WIFI Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
CPU   - $325 - Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor
Cool - $114 - Silverstone - NT06-PRO 74.0 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
RAM   - $220 - Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
PSU   - $175 - Silverstone - 600W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply
M.2   - $143 - Crucial - MX500 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
M.2   - $143 - Crucial - MX500 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

Total:  $1382 (CAD)

Build Process w/ Pictures:

TL;DR - Behold my new Battlestation, IN ALL HER GLORY!!!

After saying goodbye to my old, heavy, oversized, Antec P193 case...
Unboxing the new one, which is almost the same volume as my UPS!...
And prepping all the new PC components for a photo op...
I began the arduous process assembling my new computer.

Everything went fairly smoothly to start. I installed the RAM, M.2 Drives, CPU and CPU Cooler before mounting the motherboard to the case, as instructed in the build guide. The CPU Cooler was a PITA to attach but that's no surprise as they always are.

Note: These "incompatible" parts listed on PCPartsPicker actually do fit together as the build guide said they would. However the RAM and CPU cooler fan are actually touching and I barely managed to squeeze them in together, so the build guide probably isn't lying when it said that particular low-profile RAM might be the only one that actually works with the cooler.

I then mounted the motherboard to the case and began slowly plugging everything else in. This was a particularly slow and frustrating process as I have pretty large hands and everything was incredibly tiny, in incredibly cramped positions, and required more finesse to get in place than I could muster with my fingers alone. As a result I wound up using long needle-nose pliers, including some bent-angle ones, to get most everything plugged in.

This is when I ran into my first major problem though... and one that was not mentioned in the build guide at all. The Case's front panel USB cable wouldn't fit in the motherboard with the CPU cooler fan in place. After trying fruitlessly to get the cable plugged in for 30min I finally gave up and decided to solve the issue the old fashioned way and it plugged in just fine afterwards. (Thanks for saving my ass yet again, Mr. Dremel!)

The other potential issue was due to the CPU cooler and case mounted PSU, which aren't supposed to work together, but once again as the build guide suggested they actually do... with a whopping 3mm clearance between them! At this point I also decided to swap out some of the ribbon power cables that came with the new PSU for some spare braided ones I had from another build since they are much nicer looking and allow for better airflow.

Note: The other supposed incompatibility listed on PCPartPicker is due to the fact that the case only officially supports 3x 2.5" drives or 1x 3.5" with 1x 2.5" but that's easy enough to get around, as explained below.

I also decided to cram an extra SSD under the front case fan, secured with double sided tape to the properly mounted SSD on the case floor panel. It worked just fine and allowed me to get my 3.5" 4TB HDD properly mounted on the underside of the top plate. Linus Tech Tips, in his similar Sugo SG13 build, even managed to squeeze 2 more SSDs above the PSU using double sided tape as well, so I guess that even leaves me with some room to expand my storage later. ;)

The rest of the build assembly process went relatively smoothly and once everything was hooked up, in position and plugged in, it booted straight into windows 10 (which was still on my old 1TB SSD). The moment when a new PC build gets past the POST is always a huge relief, however that momentary relief soon turned to dread as I quickly noticed a pretty big problem; The machine couldn't detect one of my new M.2 SATA drives.

After several hours of frustrated tinkering and much googling I finally found out the reason why, cursing PCPartPicker for not warning me and face-palming pretty hard for not having read the motherboard specs more carefully. It turns out that the Z370N motherboard actually only supports 1x M.2 SATA drive and the second M.2 slot is NVMe only. I had apparently just wasted $140+ on an M.2 SATA drive I couldn't use and my plans to configure them both in RAID 0 was shattered. But that's honestly not the worst part... in order to get the useless M.2 drive back out I had to basically FULLY DISASSEMBLE my entire build again since the NVMe M.2 slot is located on the bottom of the motherboard!

Despite the serious temptation to just leave it in there even though I couldn't use it, I wound up going through with the disassembly purely because I had a pretty good idea for how to actually make use of that second M.2 SATA drive based on something I saw on Linus Tech Tips a few months ago. So rather than leaving it in there or even returning it, after ordering myself the necessary enclosure I now have myself a pretty nice DIY 500GB Thumb drive. ;)

So several hours later after completely taking apart my new build, removing the bottom mounted M.2 SATA drive, and fully reassembling my build once again, I booted it up, it got past the POST and into Windows 10 again. I then reactivated Win 10 on the new hardware configuration (which was surprisingly painless compared to how it used to be where you needed to actually phone Microsoft) and then began the process of installing Linux Mint on the M.2 SATA drive I still had remaining.

Conclusion:
After several days of going at it now, I am finally done and my new computer is fully assembled, functional and ready to use. As always with building computers it was a bit scary, a bit painful, and more than a bit frustrating but ultimately well worth it. I couldn't be happier with the results and can't wait to overclock this bad boy when I get the chance!

Hooktube.com used to provide a private way to view youtube vids, blocking ads, bypassing region locks, and also pulling comments and search results via the api. All you had to do was replace the you in a youtube link with hook.

No more. On July 11, this appeared on the changelog:

HookTube no longer uses YouTube api for anything, and most features (channel page, search, related videos, etc) are gone. No choice.

Which was extremely bad, but at least you could still watch videos privately right?

July 16: YouTube api features are back but mp4 <video> is replaced with the standard YT video embed. HookTube is now effectively just a light-weight version of youtube and useless to the 90% of you primarily concerned with denying Google data and seeing videos blocked by your governments.

rest in pieces
It was a good run, 1.5 years. Started as a quickly made addition to the norbot project, and within long the server had to be upgraded several times. Of course YouTube Legal was an inevitability at that point.
Special thanks to the many people who created plugins and extensions for hooktube, /g/, the five people who donated anonymously, and BitChute for working hard on a real YouTube alternative. HookTube will remain operational in the present state for those who only needed it for performance reasons. See you in the next project.

:(

Alternatives include: invidio.us, youtube-dl, the Freetube desktop app, Newpipe for Android, and you’re doomed if you use iOS. ETA: Actually, I just remembered, there’s Media Grabber for the Workflow app. And Invidio mostly works on mobile.

For me, that'd be a multiplayer war sandbox. Take a big map, plop down resources, population centers and factories, spawn a lot of players who then have to organize to fight a war.

• To add espionage, you'd not hard-code a lot about the way teams organize(think removing the guild mechanics from WoW), so one could sign up with one side, then run to a different side (who do not know you already signed up with the first) and do ye olde double agent.
• Research could be modelled as being done by NPC civilians, which produces documents detailing the results. These documents must be on-site whenever the research is being used (i.e. present at factories), so it could be stolen.
• No need to go factorio on the production chains. Their purpose is mostly to enforce cooperation to reach better hardware for the guys in the field.

So, what's your crazy dream game that's never going to be built?

Months ago I decided I was going to build my own underwater remotely-operated vehicle. I got sidetracked by a kitchen remodel, but since it is now complete I will have some free time to start working on my vehicle. There are some decent videos out there where others have done the same thing, some are wildly complicated and others are basically built from items out of a scrap bin. I am hoping to land somewhere in the middle.

During the bit of research I have performed, I discovered companies selling very high-end parts, the likes of which you would find on a highly funded/sponsored deep sea expedition or a government project. I didn't find a whole lot of middle ground really, either you DIY or you dump a ton of money into it.

My plan is to use PVC for my hull. I had thought about constructing it similar to the Russian Typhoon-class submarine, with two pressure hulls within an outer hull. That would allow the electrics to reside in dry compartments while I use the void space for ballast. I even found RC submarine ballast systems on eBay which would allow me to take on water and dump it remotely so I could trim it out on the fly.

The general opinion, I have discovered so far, is to make it neutrally buoyant. As much as I would like to add that ballast tank system I may need to just keep it simple for my first attempt. Tethers also seem to be an issue, adding too much weight when they get to a certain length and if you do not take steps to make them buoyant. I thought pool noodles, but learned from someone else that they become water logged and are a bad choice. Then there is power, the trend I noticed is keeping it onboard in the form of a battery pack, but I would like to keep it ashore and just add a wire to the tether so I can not have power to worry about.

So far I have an Arduino board, some old laptops, and some rivers to explore. If we had a makerspace or hackerspace nearby I would be all set. I did search, and the closest is an hour away, which is disappointing since I know I am not the only person into ridiculous projects/hobbies around here! Anyone on here into things like this?