Reapy's recent activity
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Comment on Adulting -- what advice or encouragement did you receive / wish you had received when you were just starting out moving out? in ~life
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy LinkStar Wars Zero Company I just finished it up, about 40 hours of gameplay. It was honestly fantastic, and everything I wanted out of the game. I'm not a HUGE clone wars fan, but I do like it enough...Star Wars Zero Company
I just finished it up, about 40 hours of gameplay. It was honestly fantastic, and everything I wanted out of the game. I'm not a HUGE clone wars fan, but I do like it enough and have watched it enough to know most of the characters. They did not go hard on cameos, but there are still some good ones in the game.
There is a part of me that wonders if they lifted the code straight from xcom and midnight suns. The dialog/walking parts felt like midnight suns, and gameplay had so many xcom 'quirks' it was comical. I can't 100% place them but things like the way the camera will adjust to follow the action on enemy turns, or that weird kind of 'grind' when it is resolving buffs and/or damage is exactly like xcom. It's strange to me it would move the camera and everything exactly the same, though it is a bunch of left over xcom devs I believe.
There was a part of me hoping they would change the game feel and try to speed up buff animations, but they didn't seem to consider that. It's a nitpick I have with tactic and RPG games, buffs are fun the first few times you use them, but over time they become such a chore to do each time. For example, i was using a medic who can apply a combat stim to everyone. Now, the animation is fantastic, the character will take out and throw the stim to the character they are buffing, who catches it, then sticks themselves with the thing. It's super cool to watch, i just wish that I could use the stim, click, then immediately queue up and throw the next one while the other char is catching an stimming themselves. I realize programmatically that i challenging, but would like to see the genera move forward with someone figuring that out.
Another pet peeve was there was one enemy type that every time you either shoot them or kill them a buff happens. It became increasingly frustrating to shoot, then have to wait 30 sec while the game pauses, animation plays, pauses, effect comes up, pause etc. Every. Time. And if you AOE 4 of them, you are waiting quite a while as everything resolves. I'd love if they could find a way to sort of work it out in the background and just resolve the animations all at once.
But small nit picks aside, the game is great. They give you a set of characters that are almost all very interesting, each with one fun, unique skill. When you recruit from the random pool, they each get 1 unique trait from a unique pool for the randos that your main chars wont have access to. After that the skills come off the class picked for the character, which you are free to change at an point for zero cost through the game.
You can only use 4 characters per mission, which I think is a good size, just, I wanted to use more of my characters, I ended up not touching any randoms at all as I wanted to make use of the cast they gave us. The campaign is ok, there are choices, but really is on rails most of the time.
I played through on hard and it felt like a good balance, by the end once I had figured out how to play and my characters were leveled up, it did get quite easy, but early on I had some memorable hard missions where I was a bit low on the power curve (and game knowledge) so was struggling.
The injury system is great, though didn't seem to present a lot of pressure, nor do the job of forcing you to cycle through your team like xcom does with fatigue. If you lose your health bar the char goes down, they can be revived, and take one injury. If they go down again, they get a second, and the third time they go down, they die permanently. However I almost never felt this pressure, and once I had the game systems down, I never came close to any of the characters getting knocked out once, which freed up a lot of cost/healing pressure you might have other wise.
Speaking of pressure, the game works on a reinforcement system. You will often see 1 turn warning on doors and corridors where on the next turn, a group will rush in. I think the difficulty is in not managing this, if you aren't prepared to wipe out the next wave, and get behind cleaning up what is currently on screen, is where you can get in trouble. But this design is consistently predictable throughout the game, so it doesn't become too challenging to manage your grenades and other resources for just the right time when you need to push and get ahead of the waves.
I don't know that I am going to do a replay, but I certainly had a great 40 hours with this, and it really met my expectations. If you love xcom and/or star wars, it's a great game.
Oh and from some drama seems like the devs all got furloughed after the successful launch, which caused some review bombing. Downside of it being an EA game unfortunately.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI have similar thoughts on elden ring. There were some set pieces that I still found WOW, but it still felt like dark souls 3 was peak to me as well. What I liked about dark souls is the pacing...I have similar thoughts on elden ring. There were some set pieces that I still found WOW, but it still felt like dark souls 3 was peak to me as well. What I liked about dark souls is the pacing through dungeons. I typically HATE traps in games, but for some reason the dark souls trap dungeons are super fun to me because they make me laugh with the ways they try to catch you out with things. Elden ring, the open world is a bit boring, there isn't much going on, they just spread out the set piece dungeons, which IMHO are the meat of the game. I think also they abandoned the 'can react to everything' boss design from dark souls, and I think something is lost because of it.
I did not play the expansion yet, and I've a mind at some point in my life to redo elden ring, but looking back, I have played through dark souls III at least 3 times and really enjoyed it each time, but haven't felt the need to go back into elden ring.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentYes I really feel like grim dawn, if they are still patching it, should give the first few acts a bit of a once over to make them a little more engaging. On my replays through it when the drop...Yes I really feel like grim dawn, if they are still patching it, should give the first few acts a bit of a once over to make them a little more engaging. On my replays through it when the drop expansions I didn't often make it out of there, probably just not knowing the game well enough to know how to power through them.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI really liked snowrunners, it was such a unique game to play. It also works great multiplayer, though I did read if you put 4 people it may have issues, but with myself and my friend we had a...I really liked snowrunners, it was such a unique game to play. It also works great multiplayer, though I did read if you put 4 people it may have issues, but with myself and my friend we had a VERY good time in this game making messes of ourselves and trying to clean them up without hitting the reset button.
The game did start to feel tedious after a bit, but i got a lot of gameplay out of it. The first and second map are pretty good, by the time we got into the 3rd and 4th maps (on the first continent) I was losing steam, but really, no regrets getting to that point was super fun and it remains one of my favorite games I have played.
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Comment on Adulting -- what advice or encouragement did you receive / wish you had received when you were just starting out moving out? in ~life
Reapy Link ParentYes this is a part that I think is undervalued. If you find the right place it's not THAT bad working. I mean yes, in my mid 40's it feels like a lot day in and day out, and I can't help but feel...Yes this is a part that I think is undervalued. If you find the right place it's not THAT bad working. I mean yes, in my mid 40's it feels like a lot day in and day out, and I can't help but feel as my health isn't what it was (a lot of that being my fault for not moving and exercising, i admit!) I start to think that this mythical possible retirement thing (who knows the way finances are looking) i'm going to be old, tired, and unmotivated to do anything that I want to do with my life.
But that said, in my 20s, work was great. I had a large friend group of 10+ people, every tuesday i hung out for game night with some people, every weekend I did something with the large group. My coworkers were older at the time so i didn't do as much out of work with them, but it was a small company with people that were friends so despite being about 10 years younger on average, I still had a lot of fun in the office with them talking about different hobbies and things.
One co worker was into volleyball and in a league and I always wanted to play, so we used to practice out in the parking lot during lunch for a while until I was good enough to join the intramural league he was in, which was great fun for a few years.
Later, as more younger people got hired and the company grew as I was getting into my 30's, there was an influx of people my age, I met one of my best friends there as we had a common interest in old PC gaming and just everything in general, and several others formed a friend group with to the point we were all in a WOW guild doing raids every weekend and hanging out for a few years.
And yeah, work is work, there was lots of ups and downs with it, industries change, companies collapse, work shit happens, but, overall I can't really complain about it. I think my path was lucky, being a programmer starting in the early 2000s was almost peak timing (if i was about 5 years older i'd probably have been able to cash in on dot com boom stock options), but honestly as long as you can find a company where leadership are not jackasses, a day to day can be not too bad. My wife didn't have a similar journey, but just because the culture of the place was ass. It is a real shame what work COULD be most of the time and what people seem to do to instead, but yeah, if you do find one where people are just normal and do their work, it's not a terrible way to live. I still think 32 hour work weeks and more vacation like over in EU would make more sense, but eh.
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Comment on Adulting -- what advice or encouragement did you receive / wish you had received when you were just starting out moving out? in ~life
Reapy Link ParentA car has very low fun to cost ratio IMHO. We need a car in the US so we see it as this staple thing we are going to have to invest in, so people seem to allow themselves to go to the moon with...A car has very low fun to cost ratio IMHO. We need a car in the US so we see it as this staple thing we are going to have to invest in, so people seem to allow themselves to go to the moon with the cost because of this, rather than being very functional. In my 20s I got a subaru wrx and it was fun, but really impractical, only thing I got was tickets if i ever tried to open it up with the speed. But really a huge life impact was swapping to a honda fit, i went from like 23 mpg to 40 mpg so my gas expenses dropped in half. I had more room in the hatchback version so if i was picking up something big I wasn't out of space. The cost was also low at the time of purchase so I paid it off in 3 years. I've had the car about 10 year now and it's doing just fine, granted some bonus covid years on it sitting in the driveway is extending the life. But still paying it off and not having car payments is HUGE for your monthly budgeting. It really isn't worth just assuming you have to drop 250 to 500 into a car as a staple for your budget when you are only driving it from point a to point b. I have seen some of the 50k+ cars and I don't really see anything that exciting about them and can't understand why people would invest so much into them unless that was a central kind of life goal for them.
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Comment on Adulting -- what advice or encouragement did you receive / wish you had received when you were just starting out moving out? in ~life
Reapy Link ParentI have seen the credit card advice and I always felt, at least for me, this was terrible advice. I think inherently understanding that when you pay with a credit card it subtracts from your total...I have seen the credit card advice and I always felt, at least for me, this was terrible advice. I think inherently understanding that when you pay with a credit card it subtracts from your total bank account should be enough. If you don't have restraint I guess I don't see how having wad of cash in your wallet does, when that disappears people just go to the ATM and get another wad of cash until they run out.
I do know many people that have sworn by it, so I guess everyone knows themselves, and that may be king advise, but I know if your brain works like mine it is just a PITA to manage cash for no gain.
I guess my advise in this situation is it feels stronger to just understand that under no circumstances should you ever carry a CC balance longer than the month you are on, see the non paying of a bill as a high crime to your finances. But, otherwise, it is a super convenient way to purchase things and have some layer of purchase protection, in addition to the reward dollars slowly adding up that you don't get with cash. I realize some merchants visit the CC fees back on you so not always a total win, but it's nice every once in a while to treat yourself to something with the reward dollars, i just got a new pot and pan set with mine last month.
To piggyback on this the main thing for the young you is to not take on massive debts without a very good reason. The monthly payments seem EZ but stretching something over 5, 10, 30 years seems like an easy choice to make at 18, but as the years draw out and you really know what 20 years feels like, it's just a monkey on your back that is just always there, pulling you down anytime you feel like you might be getting ahead financially. Make sure it's worth it!
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
Reapy Link ParentAs someone that very much was a 'gamer', it was honestly before companies created it. It honestly was a thing, you paid a price socially in the 80's and 90's to be a 'gamer'. Mainstream media's...As someone that very much was a 'gamer', it was honestly before companies created it. It honestly was a thing, you paid a price socially in the 80's and 90's to be a 'gamer'. Mainstream media's representation of you was basically steve urkle on family matters, which was probably the best you'd get. If you used computers you were an outcast/loser/nerd/geek whatever. Something wrong with you for doing it. Then as you got older and still played games you were equated to knocking toddler toys around as an adult still and in some sort of adult regression because you didn't go to football games and cosplay as a bird or something. But I do remember at the time someone wrote an article about gamers is kinda dead and it's mainstream now, and I remember hating it because it felt true. In a way it was a marker that the old internet was dead too, the mass censorship, the policing with comments everything you say, the 'you didn't include or consider every identity know to mankind in your writing so you must be a piece of shit' response to everything.
I think it is historically significant in in how the internet was divided up, but probably a smaller story than that of the rise of the social media giants for the overall structure of the internet. However I will say I do firmly believe it's the cause of the alt right infection into gaming, or at least it showed them there was a way in and now they are unfortunately here to stay.
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
Reapy Link ParentThat is whole point of the video IMHO. This comment you wrote, a balanced opinion on the work done by people and situation of it, would get you labeled an alt right woman hater. There would be 50...That is whole point of the video IMHO. This comment you wrote, a balanced opinion on the work done by people and situation of it, would get you labeled an alt right woman hater. There would be 50 replies calling you a piece of shit who wants women out of gaming. "What do you mean 'poorly researched?' do you hate women? Why don't you want women in gaming? I'm sorry are you claiming zoe quinn isnt a REAL game developer because you are calling her amazing game a 'choose your own adventure'? You do realize it's about depression, it seriously helps people, are you saying you want people to be depressed?"
This was the problem, this is what the video calls out over the course of it. Nobody could call zoe a cheating pos, her boyfriend, for the crime of being male that has feelings, was labeled a crybaby. He should have just broken up, worked out, and become a better man, not try to go through his feelings and tell anybody about what she did to him, just another misogynist trying to tear down a powerful woman.
IMHO this is what drove the current right wing gaming nightmare we have. Alt right grifters started coming in and latched on to this very traffic generating, easy to label man vs woman thing. Meanwhile every single gaming related website and subreddit either nuked all discussion from orbit or you would be attacked if you didn't fall in line to the agreed narrative. Honestly that is evident reading through the comments here. So if you wanted to hear any kind of discussion that said, wow this is a really shitty analysis of gaming, the only place you were going to get it was the extreme right commentators, who bundled it along with a ton of shitty opinions.
I'm also really tired of people saying the narrative is written on gamergate and it doesn't matter because games are not serious. It's the same way that if I talked about my very small fiend group exploding at one point in my life people telling me 'that is all high school drama', it's extremely dismissive of what a person is going through, or what a community is going through.
Gamergate did destroy traditional gaming media as we know it, whether that was going to happen or not, this was the big axe that finally gave us what we have now. But that media for me was a huge part of my life, since the 80s I read gaming magazines, then websites, daily. I knew the writers, the opinions, what was in, what was out, all of that. This blew up in 2014 so that was 25 years of my life reading their stuff, and yeah, it did matter. And all those people wouldn't let us talk about it.
But ultimately I think the widespread censorship and 'you are with us or against us' attitude is what drew the line in the sand, either you stand with the 'shut up we are perfect, don't question what i do' people or you are stuck with alt right commentators.
I think this is a pattern that is old as time, where topics get bundled and forever associated with a group, even though they are not related at all and big enough to deserve their own deep dive, and human nature makes you pick one or the other, rather than examining each situation individually, as that requires too much effort.
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Comment on Who likes GTA? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentLet me see if I can give it a shot since I feel very similarly to you in many of the games you describe. For older games, when people look back on them, I think one of things people miss is taking...Let me see if I can give it a shot since I feel very similarly to you in many of the games you describe. For older games, when people look back on them, I think one of things people miss is taking into context what other games existed at the time of release. A lot articles like to sensationalize GTA for the crime, but for most people it was a new way to experience a game. Sandboxes were still relativly few and far between, and the unique things to do in GTA, the different cars you could swap to that drived differently and the scale of the city and roadways of the overhead map games were unprecidented. Nothing else like it existed.
When GTA hit and you were in 3d, it was honestly mindblowing. I was limited in playing since I didn't have a PS2, but eventualy got one and played the heck out of GTA3 and then GTA vice city. Nobody else had fake avertisements, radio programs, and real songs. Nobody else had 'grab and go' cars you could just drive around in. This was also still a time when it was very exciting to play movie scenes. Game were always reaching to be movies in a way, so all the references and setups similar to action sequences in the movies was indeed a huge fantasy.
GTA SA then brought a scale to the world, 3 differnt cities and the countryside, the working out and getting fat or strong, more vehicles, more places to go, a fun story, that imho sort of lost it at the end. GTA IV upped the graphics level but to be honest I did not get very far in this one as I didn't like the driving at all and it didn't feel like much had changed over SA, even felt a step back in places.
Then GTA 5 hit and they did everything right. The level of detail was insane, we were not used to something a simple as shooting out the specific car window and having it react appropriately. The world scale as amazingly perfect, none of the say skyrim problems where the scary mountain is about 30 seconds walk away from the town. It was paired down yet felt like the cities and places they were trying to be. All of the mini games, the scale of the world was nuts. The story is just the story, a few more crime hiest scenes we had never played, but that was starting to get old even then. But again the world was just an amazing sandbox that was unmatched at the time, despite the love or hate of the content in the game. One thing that did fade with 5 was the interactivity of the world felt like it was falling off. Once you had experienced driving and flying most of the vehicles and gone through the story, it became something you've done before. The shooting is good but it's the same shooting in every game. The slice of life elements start to have little meaning and aren't really as fun to do on their own vs other games.
With 6, it looks a lot like 5, but I think why pepole aren't going crazy is that they aren't showing us anything new in gaming. It's a nice looking GTA 6 game, and honestly, I don't expect them to do much more than that, I don't know what else they could do.
The difference is here and now, we've experienced about everything gaming can come up with, amazing life sims, amazing sandboxes, amazing shooters, amazing driving games, amazing strategy games etc. There are so many games that have given so many experiences, that GTA 6 couldn't possibly design anything as exciting as each one of their successors that punched through technology and interactivty layers in the past.
On to dark souls. I also perfer darksouls vs elden ring. The reason is simple imho, the open world in elden ring is very bland, there is nothing to do or interact with, it's usually just an open area with out any intersting geometry between amazing set pieces. Dark souls 3 is just all the set pieces connected together, and dark souls imho is best when it's doing their dungeons. Not to say elden ring is garbage, i just felt spreading it out didn't add anything and took away from the parts I like. Also they threw so many of the bosses at you that it didn't feel special beating them when you had taken down 15 of the same things by the end of the game, and also the attacks did not sick to their classing 'time to react to every attack' and some just came out way faster such that you had to know their tells vs reading animations.
Finally onto KCD2, I also played 28 hours and had to pause, but loved it. I recently got back in and reached the same spot and am doing my 'ready for talky playthrough'. The reason KCD stands out as a sandbox is again, there is nothing else like it. The way the systems work together in the game are unique to most RPGs, there is an amazing level of interactivity in how things flow. The mini games around building stuff are unknown (a part of why I like vintage story is it does similar things). The combat systems are unique. The world is incredibly realistic feeling and so not video gamey, which feel really rare. All in all both games are very unique. I also agree on the story as well, the plots are intersting, they start narrow and expand in scope, rather than throwing you into a bunch of stuff that you don't yet care about, they make you care about the thing you are doing a lot.
On RDR2 though, I really liked that one from start to finish, I think for me the main thing was the story grabbed me, and i loved the incredibly detailed animations and world crafting. That first town in the game feels like a real town, one of the most realistic towns I've played in any game, ever. Just having people call to you across the street as you walk with a far ranging audio sound is just some little detail that is missing in a lot of games.
I do hope GTA6 has a lot more work like that in it, that is really what i'm looking for over the story , and honstly have always been, just showing me something gaming hasn't done yet or at a scale that we've never seen, kind of like what baulders gate 3 did IMHO.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy LinkI've been on a gaming drought lately and mostly doing other things in my gaming time. However I did manage to come back around to kingdom come deliverance II . I had about 28 hours in when it...I've been on a gaming drought lately and mostly doing other things in my gaming time. However I did manage to come back around to kingdom come deliverance II . I had about 28 hours in when it released and I got distracted, then didn't make my way back to finishing it. I started up a fresh save was reminded how much of an amazing game it is.
I'm drawn into the voice acting and story right off, this is usually quite difficult for me to get pulled in. I had tried octo path traveler 2 recently and was feeling really MEH about it and was not able to get past about 5 hours of gameplay with that. But the KCD2 game world is beautiful to walk around in. I looked at a few mods and grabbed a graphic upscaling, an armor mod overhaul, and a nice mod that marks time sensitive quests with asterisks. I think the kingdom come games feel best when you are powerless and broke, so this early part is always particularly good. I do remember a little bit about where things are on the first map (never made it to the second map) so it's not as exciting to explore, but still very fun.
I'm really excited for star wars zero company on the 28th, so I'm probably going to end up quitting at the exact same spot last time, but damn I really do like this game and am hoping for a long enough window to finish it.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI wanted to like this game but i ended up steam refunding it. I would say I thought AC1 was an all time favorite game, the climbing tech and the city design IMHO were revolutionary at the time,...I wanted to like this game but i ended up steam refunding it. I would say I thought AC1 was an all time favorite game, the climbing tech and the city design IMHO were revolutionary at the time, the game was beautiful. I loved the story between two timelines, whenever I was in the modern time I was really sucked into the idea of the mystery. AC2 series I felt still was liking them. AC3 I really like the setting of colonial America, but it was the first one I did not finish. From that point forward I just lost the thread on them. I wanted to like black flag, but I feel like I came back to it a little too late to enjoy it.
I felt at this point the AC branding was a trope that I just started to dislike. I 100% lost interest on anything happening in the modern timeline, and I genuinely detested the damn hood shape which was so glaringly obvious and I had no clue why this got carried forward as an immovable AC piece that could not change. I tried to like unity but I didn't make it far. For origins, I made it like 10 hours but stopped caring after a bit. Odyssey I picked up on sale thinking I would like the setting but I couldn't make it like 10 minutes before my brain was screaming in protest.
I only say this because of how much I LOVED AC and AC2 early on, it was one of the few games I 100% in my life. I don't know what happened between then and now for my current feeling, maybe too much of the same and not enough variation, but it always felt like potential wasted with each new iteration of it.
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Comment on What game are you terrible at? in ~games
Reapy LinkI've thought a lot about this over the years. I think in general having played so many games i'm good at pattern recognition, I usually was the first one to figure out 'how' to win and would jump...I've thought a lot about this over the years. I think in general having played so many games i'm good at pattern recognition, I usually was the first one to figure out 'how' to win and would jump out winning early amongst most friends I had. However over time I would always fall off if anybody stuck to the game for a few months I couldn't keep up and break into high level play. I find that I have focus issues, either boredom, or even if I like the game I get some pretty bad brain drag where I don't want to think and just go down to people terrible at the game due to disinterest playing them or just exhaustion. It's funny for some of the games I was into I felt like a boss mob for skilled players, they would wake up my brain and I'd play way harder than I could normally, just enough to make them struggle to win but they would on average come out on top, just like a perfectly tuned boss should play. I am starting to think this year I might have ADHD which might contribute to this kind of on/off difficulty and am planning to try to get evaluated as an adult.
So it's been some time since I've played anything competitive and I suspect that I'm pretty slow in my late 40s, I imagine i'd be bad at anything competitive now a days. However if we are talking the breadth of like 40 years of gaming there are some absolutes for me that I'm bad at.
Driving. All things driving. I suck, suck suck. I conceptually understand what to do but damn getting through that corner right, nope. Grand tursimo 2, i have nightmares about some of the license corners. I just don't get it, if i do drive decently, it's always too conservatively, it's like too much brain effort to drive it on the edge around a track for me and I just can't do it.
Baseball. All things baseball, from rbi baseball to hard ball 3 to mlb 20xx batting just doesnt work for me. Maybe the projection or whatever it is I just have no concept of timing and batting.
Madden all years. I understand the concepts in football, but I don't know how to play this game well. There is no literature about how this black box of a game works, the community is steeped in money pay me for my secret lessons and nobody really breaks down WTF do you do to play madden well ever. I have never been able to enjoy the games much except for the times they made huge technology leaps. That was like from 4th & inches to snes maddend, to the PS2 madden, then the huge leap for dreamcast football game, which i totally forget the name, then an xbos 360 version and then I stopped caring.
Airplane dogfighting. I never got beyond turn left till you see something then shoot at it. I did find this wonderful novel about online dogfighting called 'in pursuit' I read a while back that was amazingly fascinating, so I understand now wwI / wwII dogfighting with energy management and all of that. However I did not have the joy in trying to put it into practice, so it's not something I was or could ever get decent at.
That's it for my crippling deficiencies in gaming, oh that and puzzle / word games, i'm terrible with those.
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Comment on What game are you terrible at? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI made the same mistake and tried to plow the hirata estate as soon as I found it. I did eventually overcome it, but there is another direction you can go that is imho a little gentler...I made the same mistake and tried to plow the hirata estate as soon as I found it. I did eventually overcome it, but there is another direction you can go that is imho a little gentler introduction to the game. Still, it doesn't get easier as you go and you can't out level many things like in the souls series, so you'll have to get the rhythm down for bosses, and if you don't enjoy doing it I wouldn't torture yourself with it.
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Comment on Why normal people aren’t using AI agents in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentYou are right to not trust AI to do data crunching, but what it is great at is writing code to do data crunching. In your scenario even if you do know how to put data together as an expert,...You are right to not trust AI to do data crunching, but what it is great at is writing code to do data crunching. In your scenario even if you do know how to put data together as an expert, chances are you won't know specifically about how to pull the data off a specific device nor the format, and would have to research it, and all the tedium of figuring out what each field means etc. But this is the win when you know what needs to happen, you already know you have to pull data from sources and then combine and reduce it into the numbers that have meaning to you.
This is where AI is really great, it'll get the format for your device, have data classes built, be able to explain to you what every field is, and then you can work with it how to put the data together to line up the discrepancies. If it feels algorithmically unsolvable you can have it build something to help you resolve the data out. I know for a fact you aren't the first person to try to mesh non conforming data together for a full picture and so the AI is going to know all sorts of things from other projects you know nothing about, I would not be surprised that there isn't some whitepaper somewhere it has slurped up for specifically your CPAP to Garmin comparison.
Actually I asked fable just now about it and it says there are lots of CPAP sleep apnea DIY projects out there. OSCAR is free pc software for reviewing and exploring data from a CPAP machine, and said some have better exports from SD card dumps. There is SleepHQ a cloud service and they are pushing for charting CPAP data alongside wearable data from watches. It said it sees threads on Apnea Board where people have written python tooling to visualize Garmin data directly with an eye toward importing it into OSCAR. It listed 3 bullet points of data combine issues, noon-to-noon vs midnight date convention, for the matching lines with missing entries says pandas (python data lib) has a pd.merge_asof() function designed for it that joins two time serires on nearest date with a tolerance window (as an aside wow glad i know about that now lol), and garmin's web export gives CSV/JSON while full account export gives FIT files, but there is a python library to read that fitparse/garmin-fit-sdk, and also garminconnect for pulling data via the API.
In the end you can get that overview, check each of those, pick the method and try stuff with sample data you provide it, they eye the combined output to see if it is good. Then you can make sure that it writes lots of test cases so any modifications going forward can guarantee that your data is staying accurate to the path you've chosen.
This is honestly a perfect example of how I'd use an LLM, I would have the idea you mentioned, research it, get dissuaded, and never do it. Now i'd just fire claude off on it while I'm playing video games and get something, if it turns out good could then really focus on it into something very nice for myself.
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Comment on Why normal people aren’t using AI agents in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentYeah for sure I would agree with you I can't think of too much for an LLM if you don't engage with a computer too much. I think as things get better over time the ability to talk to your computer...Yeah for sure I would agree with you I can't think of too much for an LLM if you don't engage with a computer too much. I think as things get better over time the ability to talk to your computer in a natural language is going to be pretty revolutionary when it reaches the point of just happening logically and more deterministically. Already my google searches are half the previous google keyword speak and half natural language inquiries depending what I'm looking for.
I thought of some other uses, I've actually had some good success with cooking. Basically I suck at cooking and don't have many recopies, don't know what a lot of foods are and what they taste like, and generally I struggle with making effort at things and have some anxiety. Regardless of if it makes sense or not, these have been barriers to me cooking anything new. However, I find asking LLMs about recopies and flavors etc is incredibly helpful. I can say I have these ingredients what can I make, or I want to make X, but I don't like this this and this, or I don't like this flavor profile, will it have a strong flavor if I put this in? Just really being able to get dynamic advise on things and work with whatever my cooking issues are, is way better for me than reading cooking sites or youtube videos. I dont know if it is good past basics, but it guided me through marinading some chicken and grilling it, then reheating in the air fryer with time/temps the other day.
As AI kinda finds its niche, I really do think the big gain for everyone will be natural language interfaces, either via voice or typing in order to perform tasks. We'll have debates when to use buttons vs llms and all that I'm sure, but that really is something that is quite incredible to witness right now that it can do.
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Comment on Why normal people aren’t using AI agents in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentI think for throw away mods it can be useful. My friend is not a programmer but has already made several mods for games with custom overlays or information dumps that were great. This would have...I think for throw away mods it can be useful. My friend is not a programmer but has already made several mods for games with custom overlays or information dumps that were great. This would have been unreachable for us in the past, and I 100% percent agree, the AI is never going to build one of those general mod frameworks people include in all their mods and all that, and it varies by game, but it opens the door, to it.
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Comment on Why normal people aren’t using AI agents in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentPersonal software I think is a good use case for home. Maybe you already know you could write a script to do a thing, but it's not worth the time or effort to figure it out? Now you can have AI do...Personal software I think is a good use case for home. Maybe you already know you could write a script to do a thing, but it's not worth the time or effort to figure it out? Now you can have AI do it for you, and if you don't like it, delete it without feeling like you wasted any time.
For example I now have a hugo site on my server (i do some self hosting) that is a personal wuthering waves wiki. Previously I had some notes for stuff in silverbullet (a markdown based wiki), but it was growing unwieldy and I couldn't have any nice layouts or designs without a lot of effort. I started with having the site build out a rotations (combos for each character) with a nice markup for buttons to push and colors and some variations. It grew into I can now go use the official wuwa discord bot that makes images of your characters, download those to a directory, and run a script which will scrape out the data from that (thanks to self hosted back end that is open sourced and maintained by some card generation sites). It will scrape from a community run google sheet of stats to get stat targets, it will diff how far off I am from targets on my character, then give an overall todo list page ordered by what percentage they are away from their stat targets. So now when I play i can bring up a nice layout of the characters and their rotations and check a todo list of which person to grind out. I also have a high level overview table to help me organize who would go on a team based on the things that they do, something I tend to forget.
All of this information exists in one place or another online, sure, but this is also tailored to my characters and the way that I play, and information that I need, all of it built while I was playing crimson desert over the weekend, occasionally tabbing out.
I also used claude to help me set up hosting actual budget, while it was easy to set up the software, it took a bit to figure out how to get it all set up the way i want, and asking the AI questions was much easier than going and reading through the documentation. I set up data scrapping for my information, however I still needed to set up a bunch of rules for organizing things into categories and reconciling payments etc. It also helped me set up a local llm on the server that would run (no graphics card + a lot of ram on the server) so that once a day at night it will try to categorize incoming scrapes etc. I would never have set this up if I didn't have the AI going out and finding answers to my questions so quickly and being able to talk to it so naturally.
I have done a lot of other random things at home with AI, and a lot of times it sits there doing nothing, but when i have an idea it's as simple as starting up a terminal going to claude and typing in the idea, then going back to what i was doing.
I think more and more we will be able to write custom software that fits exactly any need we have, even if it's a one shot task. I am honestly hoping they keep pushing the local models to the point that the AI industry busts wide open and LLMs are just a thing we can have on our PCs.
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Comment on The AI design aesthetic that is taking over the internet in ~comp
Reapy LinkI think the concern here is a bit of a nothing burger. Everytime a tool comes out thar does design that is all you will see for a while. Think about cliparts impact on pta flyers for example. Also...I think the concern here is a bit of a nothing burger. Everytime a tool comes out thar does design that is all you will see for a while. Think about cliparts impact on pta flyers for example. Also just the way the web has evolved such that you can classify designs by the decade, early Netscape navigator, the geocities free page look, the web ring look, then you start to see table layouts with contents down the left, then you hit WordPress era and the blog layout arrives, then cms managers get here and every software company has the same (which I personally hate ) layout for their product, and now we have Claude layouts with top cards and whatever else.
The nice thing about Claude though is you can just ask it to change it around. I've found though for one off web front ends it's super nice vs needing to think at all about making it interesting, generally im after functional myself.
Ok so really the advise is king for if you are struggling and need to get it back on track. That does make a lot more sense, and I could see after recovering from that you wouldn't necessarily trust yourself back with one in your hands after you got it sorted out. That makes a lot of sense, thank you!