Thomas-C's recent activity
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Comment on What is wrong with our thoughts? A neo-positivist credo. in ~humanities
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Comment on Elden Ring Nightreign | Reveal gameplay trailer in ~games
Thomas-C LinkSo, probably like many, watching the trailer I was excited but the more I learned about it the less enthused I got. Some folks played a build in Japan. My takeaway was that it's like a sort of...So, probably like many, watching the trailer I was excited but the more I learned about it the less enthused I got. Some folks played a build in Japan. My takeaway was that it's like a sort of b-tier, almost mod project type thing. Pick a hero (no builds), plop down on a map, the night thing is a barrier that pushes you toward a boss, you run fast, pick up loot (with colored rarities), raise some stats/gain levels in a simplified way, fight a boss, do it again. The combat is way sped up, with those new features like mantling to help speed up navigation. The map is supposed to be fixed (as in, basic layout is static, with layers of procedural elements/constraints), but it is nothing like wandering around in the original title. 3 player coop, no pvp.
Gonna be real it comes off like a mod project to me, and at least personally I'd probably put a few mods well above it with respect to the concepts being put together. I am never a fan of smashing together a bunch of stuff across a franchise, imo it's dull as hell when folks do that. The whole thing comes off dull in a way I just did not expect from this studio. Just gotta hope it's a weird small team project and not a signal for what's in store.
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Comment on Your partner asks for your phone, you refuse over privacy, they tell you they don't trust you. How do you respond? in ~talk
Thomas-C Link"Then have fun with someone else" I'm not gonna stick with someone who makes a demand like that and doesn't explain anything. It's not about what's on my phone, it's about you trying to pry into..."Then have fun with someone else"
I'm not gonna stick with someone who makes a demand like that and doesn't explain anything. It's not about what's on my phone, it's about you trying to pry into my life like you're entitled to it in order to be able to trust me, when you're a "partner" and not my spouse. My hope would be that I've done enough to earn that trust without stuff like that, because I want to respect your privacy too and let you have your own slice of life to yourself. Be my spouse and things get a little more flexible, but be ready because I'm gonna want to know what in the world got you to the point of feeling like you needed to look through my stuff. I've dealt with enough people covering for their own shady shit and getting out of sorts with it, I don't need that in my life again.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C (edited )Link ParentYou might like the book! Roadside Picnic is easy to find and doesn't take very long to read, I think I finished it in a couple of afternoons. The Tarkovsky film is also really good, but imo you do...You might like the book! Roadside Picnic is easy to find and doesn't take very long to read, I think I finished it in a couple of afternoons. The Tarkovsky film is also really good, but imo you do need to go into it with a certain mindset/expectations - it's trying to deliver on a sense of place and be contemplative. It's slow moving, has practically no action, it's mostly dudes talking in a kinda allegorical way while they trek through a weird place.
The original games imo sit somewhere near Deus Ex, they're kinda like "immersive sims" with some horror and military flavoring. At least the way I like to play, you're often scouting at range and trying to pick folks off, until they get the jump on you and then it's pretty wild. The mutants are legit pretty scary even when you know about them, because they behave differently and often gang up on you out of nowhere. A lot of your time is spent exploring, foraging, and putting together mini plans for your next outing. The firefights can be really fun, because the AI will do stuff like flank you and work their way around your position, sometimes with stuff like suppressive fire and grenades. There is some milsim/tactical shooter stuff going on, but it's mostly the mods/modpacks that lean heavily into it. The games on their own have more of an emphasis on storytelling/roleplaying.
The games dont directly deal with politics but they do have some interesting connections. There's a faction in the game, Monolith, that at least to me appears to be a stand-in for Russian imperialism - they're a group of cultists, completely hostile, controlled by a singular will that demands they take up as much of the Zone as possible while it presents to them a different picture of reality. The original games involve confronting them and ultimately the source of that singular will, itself the result of Soviet experimentation, and the sequel carries forward the consequences of what happened when you did that in some interesting ways. At least from my perspective it seems loosely allegorical - folks don't talk about the world at large in-game much at all, it's like the Zone is a microcosm of a world of ideologies playing themselves out that mirrors some of what the developers are familiar with. I'm of course absurdly biased but if they seem at all interesting, highly recommend giving them a shot.
Edit: I have a thought on the off-chance anyone more familiar with the country/region is out there/reading these. If the other factions in the game line up with real-world ideological tendencies, it would be interesting to tie that all together in an essay about the game being an allegory. I know about the game, but I don't know much about politics in Ukraine.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentYou got it, it's the Ukrainian way of spelling it, and the first game had the Russian way of spelling it. The plot doesn't talk about it, it just rolls with that spelling as though it was always...You got it, it's the Ukrainian way of spelling it, and the first game had the Russian way of spelling it. The plot doesn't talk about it, it just rolls with that spelling as though it was always the case. They did make a few changes to drive home its origin as a Ukrainian game, without directly commenting on the war as far as I can tell.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C (edited )LinkSince it released I've been playing STALKER 2. The original game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was probably one of the most important pieces of media I've ever encountered, and the sequel has allowed me...- Exemplary
Since it released I've been playing STALKER 2. The original game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was probably one of the most important pieces of media I've ever encountered, and the sequel has allowed me to relive an experience that meant a ton to me.
Back in 2007, I was gifted a laptop. Prior to that, I hadn't done much PC gaming besides Doom, Quake, and Baldur's Gate, because what I had was an eight year old desktop. I didn't know anything about system requirements, PC hardware, etc (I grew up mostly with portables). If I remember right, the laptop was an Inspiron with some sort of integrated ATI chip in it. Since the computer was new I figured, hey cool, I'll go get a few of those games I was interested in. At the store, I picked up Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Doom 3, and then I saw the box for Shadow of Chernobyl. Something about it was just too intriguing. Nothing else looked like that, a shooter that was clearly also trying to do horror in a bit of a deeper way than other stuff I'd played. I grabbed it, got home, installed it, and while i was blown away by how it looked, it did not run very well at all. The game had a dx8 mode that ran a lot better, but you lost out on all the cool lighting effects. I couldn't return the game, so instead I decided I would figure out whatever I needed to figure out to make that game work, because I just couldn't live without seeing a game with such cool lighting and weird stuff in it.
I spent many, many hours, upgrading what I could in my computer, learning about Windows so I could trim it into being as efficient as possible, and learned what every graphics option did in the game. I even did something I barely remember to mess with my graphics drivers to squeeze like 2 more frames. I learned that patches were a thing, and that mods were also a thing. Over time, it meant I learned a ton about the machine, to the point I kinda crash coursed myself into being able to do basic tech support. After tweaking just about every single thing I could, I played that game to the end in dx9 mode, at 24 fps, 1024x768, four times, on a trackpad. That's how much I adored it lol. As I was going through college, I introduced my friends to the game and we all got way into it, following the later releases and upgrading our hardware to keep up. It was an awesome experience, and years later the work of learning about the computer positioned me to get jobs doing technical support.
STALKER 2 has been like reliving that first year. The game is kinda finnicky, and there's a ton of stuff you can change. My hardware is much better (3070ti + 5900HX), so instead of fumbling with it to get it to work, it's been more about getting a clearer image and nicer effects. This time around, the modding community is just pumping out new stuff too, so I learned a bit about how you can tweak UE5 and figured out a bunch of stuff that got me where I wanted to be with it. I tried running the game on my steam deck, knowing it probably wouldn't work, and almost exactly like 2007, it worked just enough that I felt maybe I could make it perform, and spent much time trying all sorts of things (I think I was mostly successful, and have been playing on both devices for a while now).
Outside the technical end, the game itself delivers in some ways I just find phenomenal. The Zone has changed, but it's still the same place. What you did in the original games about ten years ago had consequences, and you're jumping in after all of that. It's amazing the extent to which the developers tried to bring together just about everything those games had, from the remade locations, to the music, to the way the factions have changed. Old characters return, having lived through a bunch of stuff we didn't see, and it gives the place a sense of history that I just don't get from a lot of other franchises. It feels like the Zone was there the whole time, just going along, doing Zone things, and I came back after being gone for about ten years.
The remade locations are super cool to return to. The way they've been redesigned, they communicate how people moved around and repurposed different spots as different situations unfolded. The characters talk about how the Zone has changed, and a bit about how the events of the prior games affected it. There's tons of little easter eggs, spots and stuff to find that show the developers really, really cared about the sense of place and time. While the gameplay sometimes does some funky stuff, that too is kinda part of the whole relived experience for me - I played Shadow of Chernobyl unpatched for a long time, folks don't know the horror lol. The longer I spend in it the more I come to think of the sequel's name, "Heart of Chornobyl" as having a bit of a dual meaning. There's clearly some in-game stuff that makes that make sense, but too I think it's that the sequel is a heartfelt attempt at really taking us back to something folks loved.
I'm super excited for the future too. Despite the bugginess, there's been folks rooting through files and figuring out what all is there, and it looks pretty promising to me. If the devs come through with mod tools, I think we'll see some unbelievably good stuff out of the modding community. The developers are, best I can tell, dedicated to improving it and listening to what folks have to say, it doesn't strike me at all like a product meant to just capitalize on nostalgia. It's like all the magic of a 2000's Bethesda title, a beautiful place to explore with all kinds of new things happening you can add to it. Really amazing way to cap off the year for me, the game releasing at all is pretty much a miracle and what's in it is really something special.
Edit: Just for the sake of it, here's two albums: Laptop and Steam Deck. My goal with the deck was to first get it to perform acceptably and then get back as much of the intended look as I could. It's in a state where, if I told you everything I did you'd be deeply skeptical, but if I just handed the thing to you you'd be pretty surprised/impressed. I also tried playing through Remote Play - I'd say it's about equal to native with respect to latency, like using a good bluetooth controller. Seeing the game on higher settings though on the OLED's screen is something else, it's astounding how good that looks.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C Link ParentThere's all kinds of things in the map that give away how much the developers were into it. I found one, a spot you can sit in that comes together into the original game's title screen when you...There's all kinds of things in the map that give away how much the developers were into it. I found one, a spot you can sit in that comes together into the original game's title screen when you look straight ahead. I noticed too, when you're in the redesigned locations you can sometimes hear flourishes of the old games' OST's in the music. The sense of place is off the charts, if folks get to the point of having stuff like a warfare mode it's going to be crazy good.
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Comment on How well do you cook? in ~life.men
Thomas-C Link ParentI used to live in Baton Rouge, and would go to New Orleans pretty much all the time, either on my own or with my friends. Cajun food is just too damn good, I couldn't let that disappear from my...I used to live in Baton Rouge, and would go to New Orleans pretty much all the time, either on my own or with my friends. Cajun food is just too damn good, I couldn't let that disappear from my life even when I did things like cut out meat and constrained myself to mostly rice and beans. The secret, if there is one, I think is just "another one" lol. If the recipe calls for something, do another one. 4 cloves of garlic is 8 cloves of garlic, and if you happen to grab 9 just roll with that. Let the winds carry you.
Cider vinegar really can't be underestimated in my opinion. Just about anything savory likes it. Folks around me tend to think it's going to mean being sour/pungent, but the longer things cook the more it becomes an accompaniment. I really like sour stuff so I've tried a bunch of different vinegars, and plain old cider vinegar is just hands down the most versatile, far as I can tell.
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Comment on How well do you cook? in ~life.men
Thomas-C Link ParentSure! I can think of a few things kids might enjoy experimenting with, and I'll just sit in my intuition with it for some ideas of what to do. Sauces were a big part of how I learned about...Sure! I can think of a few things kids might enjoy experimenting with, and I'll just sit in my intuition with it for some ideas of what to do.
Sauces were a big part of how I learned about flavors. For young kids, they might enjoy picking out a spice and adding it to a condiment they like. For me that was ketchup - I'd try adding garlic powder, then the next time, onion powder, and there's a lot else that works. Herbs like basil and oregano, smoky stuff like paprika and cumin, and pepper powders tend to be distinct in ketchup so they can get a good feel for how those all taste (and experience spiciness). They can also try doing the same spice with other condiments, and that will give them an idea of how different flavor profiles blend together (or when they really don't). Since it's condiments, low stakes, and you don't need a lot of any of the spices for them to be detectable.
A step up from that might be a simple "Asian" sauce - sesame oil, unseasoned rice vinegar, and soy sauce. They can work out proportions a little to get a flavor they like, and from there try adding more things to see how they taste. It's a way to avoid using those ramen flavor packets if anyone likes ramen. A good example, they can try adding ginger - first, as powder, then next time get a fresh root and grate some into it, they'll see the difference freshness makes. That sauce is friendly to seafood, so they can try things like fish sauce, and it's also friendly to sweetness by way of brown sugar or honeys. Heating it will also change the flavors a bit, so they can experiment with letting it simmer a little with different stuff and see how that works out. Citrus works with it too, so they can try things like lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, and see if they end up really liking any of them.
Perhaps a step further, they could try roasting things in vegetable oil to see what a difference that makes. A low stakes way of doing it might be with eggs or rice - roast the spice in the oil, then fry the eggs/rice in that. Roasting basil seeds makes for an oil that works with sweeter spices, like cinnamon, cardamom, or allspice, which might help them with seeing how sweet and savory can come together. As they find stuff they like, they'll have a wide range for experimenting more, and with the knowledge of the sauces, they can make anything taste a bit better. It might be a good way to help a picky eater appreciate more things, and they'll have a repertoire they can deploy at bland stuff.
Just sort of thinking to myself, a basic cheese sauce can go in a lot of different directions if the cheese has a mild flavor. Roasting some garlic in butter, then mixing in heavy cream, and whisking in something like monterey jack or mozzarella, can be combined with a specific pepper, an herb, or sweeter/nuttier stuff. One combo that I bet might turn some heads, is the roasted basil seed oil in place of butter, with nutmeg, allspice, and roasted cashews. Folks who like richer foods and sweeter stuff might really enjoy that, and you could go further by adding some smokiness with something like cumin, bacon, or a seared meat. A chipotle might be a cool choice for a sort of "southwestern alfredo" - I've yet to do that myself but my intuition seems to be cool with it.
I don't have kids yet, but this is all stuff I hope to give to them when I do. Being able to make food taste good is kinda like being a wizard, or an alchemist. You can cast a spell and make a bad day into a good one. Brew a potion that becomes a treasured piece of a family's history, the kind of memory even folks at the very end of their roads recall. The practice helps folks learn about why trying again is how we actually get dreams fulfilled. A whole lot of what's in our spice cabinets used to be precious and rare, experienced only by a select few with lots of strange delusions about their lot in life (as well as the spices lol). It might be kinda pricey on the front end, but a little goes a long way and power is always more valuable than currency.
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Comment on How well do you cook? in ~life.men
Thomas-C Link ParentOne of the things I especially appreciate about where I live, is that on occasion there are moments when I'm making something, my grandmother will try it and we will decide it is time to eat then...One of the things I especially appreciate about where I live, is that on occasion there are moments when I'm making something, my grandmother will try it and we will decide it is time to eat then and there. Lately, she's been dealing with her sense of smell being diminished, so she's asked for things with some stronger flavors. I figured this time I would take it as a challenge, to go one step past reasonable.
Grandma likes savory things and sweet things. She vastly, vastly favors the latter. I'm salty/savory/sour in my preference, so the compromise in my mind is to go savory and avoid salty.
It's a straightforward beef stew with peas, carrots, and onions, about 8 cups' worth, mild on salt and no herbs. Turns out I didn't have a potato so no potato. We had a bag of garlic peeled up, so I opened it and just sort of lazily shook it at the cutting board, deciding whatever came out is how much I would use. When I put the bag back, I remembered we had a green onion seasoned sausage, so I cut that into medallions and sauteed them with some paprika. Last time I was at the store, I found a jar of "spicy roasted onion crunch" - roasted onions in oil w/cayenne pepper. I added two big spoonfuls of that, the sausage, minced up the garlic and stirred it all together for a bit. It was still kinda thin so I added around 1/2 a cup of rice. When I got the rice, I noticed we had a can of gold hominy, and a can of red beans. I drained both and added them. In getting the can opener I passed the spice cabinet. I looked around in the spice cabinet and noticed, I had an inconvenient amount of red cooking wine left, so I put that in, and some cider vinegar. I sat for a minute and thought about it. We had some green onions I didn't know what to do with, and when I pulled them from the bag I got four, so I sliced those and stirred them in. I remembered oregano, and sprinkled some. Then I let it sit for a while and did some reading. After probably an hour or so, grandma came in, and because she saw the pot she asked to try some.
It was ridiculous. But something about the amounts worked out in a special way, because to me I could detect just about everything. Nothing seemed to have too much of an edge, or stood out too much. It's rich and spicy, the sausage gives it a really nice smoky taste thanks to searing pretty well. On spiciness I'd probably put it near a fresh jalapeno. The beans and hominy made it heartier and the rice cooked through/helped it thicken. You can tell when grandma likes something by the frequency of "thank you" and "mmhmm" - it rated exceptional.
If I had to make a guess, folks from the midwest might love it or hate it. I think someone from New Orleans would like it. I think sweetness would work with it if you did brown sugar, or something like roasted basil seeds and some cinnamon. Alternatively, other herbs might work with it, I feel like there's one in particular but I keep second guessing it. You could always add other meats, other beans. I'm not sure how I'd go about replicating it as a meatless dish, but I think it's doable, other grains could help keep it hearty and other spices could do the smokiness. I think more green vegetables would work, like green beans or okra. A roasted pepper would probably come through really clear, I feel like ancho would be a good choice for that.
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Comment on How well do you cook? in ~life.men
Thomas-C LinkI've always gotten good feedback on my cooking, and regularly try to do new stuff to get better. When I was a kid, I would cook with my mom all the time. She would let me look around in the spice...I've always gotten good feedback on my cooking, and regularly try to do new stuff to get better. When I was a kid, I would cook with my mom all the time. She would let me look around in the spice cabinet while I helped. When I found something, I'd taste it, and if I liked it, we'd make something with it. Once I started living on my own, I would go to whatever non-American markets I could find and buy lots of spices and herbs, try different things and see what was what/what worked together. In times when the budget was tight, I would buy big bags of basic stuff like rice/beans/frozen vegetables and just try different blends so it wouldn't get boring. When the budget wasn't as tight, I'd go find things I'd never tried to do before and push my skills. A big part of my dating life has been evenings spent cooking with women I liked and talking about food.
I'm not sure how to describe it but in my mind there are different flavor profiles, and in general I know what spices can get me to those flavors. I know how different stuff behaves, so I can manipulate consistency/texture, either with starches/gelatins/etc or stuff like rice/potatoes/grains. I kinda look at it like a set of tools, pieces to fit together that get at my flavor based problems.
I have some dishes I like to regularly make, that change a little now and then because the recipes mostly live in my head. I also make it a point to look in the spice cabinet even if what I'm making is simple - a little garlic powder in the grilled cheese is not something folks expect but they sure do like it. I usually buy a bunch of basic ingredients, and eventually an idea comes along and I put it all together. I'm confident if you turned me loose in someone's kitchen we'd make it to Flavortown, one way or another.
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Comment on Why do you live? in ~humanities
Thomas-C LinkI want to live out the values I've got, with faith that the better I do at that the more life will become what I'd like it to be. Adapt to what comes, thread the needle when necessary, pay...I want to live out the values I've got, with faith that the better I do at that the more life will become what I'd like it to be. Adapt to what comes, thread the needle when necessary, pay whatever the price is. I am not a particularly religious person, but I think if folks got to talking about it with me they'd find what I've got relatable. I like to learn things but I don't like pondering mysteries - I'd rather put things into practice, solve some problems, make some progress. Take some risks and see what happens. The challenge is working out how to keep to the values through the times when they aren't recognized, when they're misunderstood, when other things present obstacles and when other notions become prevailing among folks around me.
Maybe another way to say it - the point is to be here. I try to live in the moment as continuously as I can manage, be present and look intentionally for what's beautiful, interesting, and helpful. Enjoying things matters too, but not quite in the same way. Improve what can be improved, maintain what needs to be maintained, understand (and mostly ignore) what I can't control, wake up tomorrow and do it again, just grateful for the opportunity. Sometimes that's hard to do, but the challenges are all opportunities. Opportunities to strengthen, learn, and adapt.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C (edited )LinkSince Stalker 2 is coming out soon, I updated Anomaly and did the whole deal of grabbing a bunch of mods. One of the most impressive to me has been Screen Space Shaders. It's modular, so you can...Since Stalker 2 is coming out soon, I updated Anomaly and did the whole deal of grabbing a bunch of mods.
One of the most impressive to me has been Screen Space Shaders. It's modular, so you can pick out which elements you want. Turns out, you can use just about all of it without much issue, so I did that. I love the dynamic weather effects, the puddles forming in the rain really transforms the look of the game and the interactive grass/wind stuff adds a lot of life to the world. Along with that, I installed addons for immersion, like animations for using different items and more complex behavior with your weapons (like holding your gun up when you're up against a wall, more realistic/accurate recoil, etc). There's also a few that change up how factions behave and what sort of tasks folks give out.
When I play Anomaly, I like to set up Warfare and disable the story mode, taking time to really finely tune how the game begins/what factions end up doing. This time around, I decided each faction would begin with only a few squads/a single base, in a zone with a massively increased mutant/zombie population. The factions are set up to aggressively pursue territory, while the mutants/zombies present a constant threat to everybody. The zombies provide a good opportunity to scavenge gear in the early game, and as time goes on and the factions take more territory, it's a smooth sort of progression to take them on and get better stuff.
My character, "Puvic Puchik", began as a Loner/Free Stalker, wandering around and completing tasks for folks until I had some decent gear. Then, I made my way to the Great Swamp and joined up with Clear Sky, because their base is my favorite. I led a squad across the swamp to take territory, until it was just us there/I could send out squads independently to take more spots. Over that time, the other factions did their thing, and I think we're approaching a point where there's going to be a big war. Monolith has swept the northern part of the zone, primarily the CNPP and Pripyat. The other factions control the areas immediately south, and I control the whole of the southern-most territory. The big issue at the moment, is that Monolith has pushed a bunch of bandits and military into the middle, so there's a bunch of fighting going on there. My goal is to eliminate the bandits/military to build relations, and then hopefully get everybody in on a war against Monolith. The northern zone is especially difficult because it's more urban, so while I could probably go in on my lonesome and make it through, I would just frustrate myself trying to capture and hold the territory. Getting the other factions aligned means both an easier time and much more opportunity to scavenge high end gear as folks get taken out in the fighting.
Small scale, the goal right now is to get a pair of good night vision goggles so I can conduct a nighttime attack on a bandit base. I've armed myself with my favorite shotgun, a sniper rifle with some armor piercing ammo, and about a dozen grenades. If we can take out this base, the territory is a good spot to try to gather folks up for making our way north. I've also arranged a bunch of tasks that take me to this area anyway, to maximize how much of a relationship benefit I get from doing all of this. I don't know if it will be enough for the other factions to really ally with me, but I'll see, and holding this territory should mean we can keep Monolith from heading south any further than they already have. While the factions have been fighting in the middle, I've been strengthening my presence in the south, so I've got several squads heading to where I'm at to set up this new base.
Bigger picture, if we can eliminate Monolith, I'll assess my relations and go after the other factions, one by one until we dominate the whole of the Zone. If I get to that point before Stalker 2, I'm going to disable new spawns for my faction, increase the mutant/zombies to maximum, and see how long we can hold out against them.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI had some extra spare time over the past week, so I went looking around at some more mods for Diablo 2 and found another one I really liked, called Merciless. This one attempts to rework the game...I had some extra spare time over the past week, so I went looking around at some more mods for Diablo 2 and found another one I really liked, called Merciless.
This one attempts to rework the game into a slower, more difficult experience by completely transforming how you go about getting better gear. Shops don't buy things for more than 1 gold piece, and don't sell new gear as you go along. You have to use what you find, and utilize a bunch of new options to upgrade/change those pieces as you move along. Gems are primarily used to change rarity/reroll affixes, and jewels can be unsocketed for use with multiple gear pieces. Skills have been reworked a bit, and there's been some changes to how some of the weapons work. I think the modder was successful in what they were trying to do - it makes D2 feel like something from an earlier period, as if it came out sometime in the early 90's. It's especially good when playing a hardcore/ironman character, because the new setup feels much closer to a more traditional roguelike game. The drop rates were not touched, so in playing through it really drives home how well that system was put together, imo. Overall I've really enjoyed playing this one, because I feel like it makes me pay better attention to every piece I find, and make more deliberate choices about when to craft/what to craft. I've only gotten to Nightmare thus far, because a run in Normal actually took a good bit of time/was not as easy. Nightmare is a much bigger step up too. I'm excited to see how Hell goes. I'm not sure just yet whether I prefer it over the original/reimagined, but I can say for sure it's a very well done mod and I'll be following its updates for a while.
I also tried out another project called ReMoDDed that feels like having done the exact opposite of something like Merciless. Remodded feels like cranking everything up to 11 - tons of enemies, new enemies, more dungeons, new dungeons, new skills, crazy skills, tons and tons and tons of gear. It's not really a vision of the game I think works for me but I definitely see why some folks would like it. Within an hour I had a barbarian who could smash whole groups with big AoE attacks and summon a decked out barbarian companion to just completely overwhelm everything. Feels closer to a bullet hell style ARPG, just tons of stuff everywhere and you blast through super fast. I think it's one of those where it's really about the endgame, because Normal feels like a complete joke/halfway broken lol. My biggest gripe with it is that it does more class-only items, which means finding tons of stuff you can't use and what you do find, can't be given to a different character as you progress up to new stuff. You could trade to the same class of course, but I like playing as everybody/trading stuff between all the classes. There are a lot of new crafting options and things to enhance gear, that again seem best suited for when you're in Hell really building up the stuff you have. Since it goes really fast I'll probably see what that's like a bit, but overall I've enjoyed Merciless much much more.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C (edited )LinkI've been playing a mod for Diablo 2, called D2R Reimagined. Thus far I've really enjoyed it. You can see some of what's in it here. In D2 I finally got to the very end with my barbarian, Grognak....I've been playing a mod for Diablo 2, called D2R Reimagined. Thus far I've really enjoyed it. You can see some of what's in it here.
In D2 I finally got to the very end with my barbarian, Grognak. I did an off-the-cuff build, Frenzy and Double Swing with gear spec'd for attack speed, life drain, and crushing blow/open wounds/deadly strike. Took a good while, and it was def clear as I went along that while the build does work, without some pretty serious luck it would have taken a lot longer. Getting through Hell was not easy. I'd make it a few levels, then have to stop and go find better stuff. I kept hitting what felt like walls, enemies/groupings i just could not cope with until I went grinding for a while and did some runewords.
With reimagined, I decided to try the same build again ("Grognakson"). It's like the whole experience got flipped around. Where before I would work my way up to a difficult point, then regroup to get better gear/build stuff out, now I've got enough options that I can be proactive and prepare for what I know is ahead. It makes for an overall smoother experience, with a lot more freedom to explore what different stuff does and take bigger risks when crafting/upgrading/etc. The mod does a good job of taking some mechanics from later ARPG's and translating them to something suited to the sort of challenge D2 sought to offer. You can find items that upgrade the quality of different gear pieces, but they're very, very rare. You can use your gems to continuously upgrade but each time you do it, it increases the level requirement to equip. There's always a bit of a trade-off that I feel makes the whole thing cohesive/sensible, rather than just implementing things that could throw the balance off. The massive number of new uniques/sets means you do find more of those, but it's not nearly the sort of pinata experience D3 was - the legendary stuff is still, mostly really good, and because there's a lot more in the running you're less likely to come across the same stuff over and over again. For melee in particular, there are new charms that give you abilities like splash damage/multi-hits, at the cost of some of your overall damage output.
I've really enjoyed my time with it. I just got to Hell again, and it's been enough of a smoother ride that i'm gonna try to do the Uber bosses this time around. I've been starting games with the other classes too and thus far have similarly positive impressions. As much as I enjoy the original game, the changes the mod makes are so nice that I don't think I'll be going back to it any time soon.
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Comment on Community Check-In: How is everyone doing? in ~life
Thomas-C LinkPretty good all things considered. I've been engaged in pretty continuous social activity, got a few small events going and have a few more planned for the end of the year. The business isn't...Pretty good all things considered. I've been engaged in pretty continuous social activity, got a few small events going and have a few more planned for the end of the year. The business isn't really "taking off" but it is slowly doing better. I've continued trying to understand and improve with respect to delivering good care for my grandmother, which has been a fulfilling experience in exactly the way I'd hoped it would. I've spent a lot of time piecing together the history of our family, plumbing the depths and figuring out what the "story" to it really is. I think at this point I've got a narrative put together, and doing all of that has made communication go a lot better than before with everyone. There's still much to be done to achieve my bigger aim with that, but progress is progress. Step by step, folks are coming to prioritize the well being of their group. We have some extended family in Florida who were able to leave ahead of the hurricane, seems like all is going about as smoothly for them as can be expected. There are apparently quite a few over in Louisiana, so I'll probably end up making a connection with them sometime in the near future.
I've still been wandering around town and talking to people. Last time I wrote about it, Biden was still running and there was a surprising kind of support around here. That's only gotten stronger since he dropped out, and what I notice now is that it's much, much easier to be upfront about how dumb and crazy Trump's campaign is. The older folks I've talked to really enjoy laying into it now that they don't feel so much like folks will go nuts/try to bully them over who they support. They'll be more direct about how they're feeling and don't do as much of the petty arguing when disagreements come up. Folks are uncertain but not as afraid, if that makes sense, if my limited experience means anything. It's actually fairly rare I come across a die-hard on either end of politics around here. Many are just tired. As always, grain of salt, one guy in a small town, but what I've observed feels pretty significant and I see the attitudes reflected elsewhere when I go looking around online/talking to folks in other cities. Doing that helps out with my other endeavors too - it's slowly building the impression that our venue is a place where everyone is actually welcome, little bit by little bit.
Besides that, as always, doing a lot of reading, catching up with distant friends, preparing for what could be as best I can. As stuff gets more intense, it's like folks around me come to see things I thought they wouldn't, and there's always opportunity in moments like that to turn toward stuff that folks really value - their friends, their family, their community. What difficulties arise are challenges to overcome. What I can't control, I'll work around. The feeling of determination just grows over time, and when I wake up in the morning I'm just grateful it worked out this way. So, it's just a matter of continuing. Can't stop now.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI've been playing Gundam Breaker 4. It's Gunpla: The Game. Build a cool model and then go blow up other models with it. Here are the ones I've made thus far. With respect to gameplay it's very...I've been playing Gundam Breaker 4.
It's Gunpla: The Game. Build a cool model and then go blow up other models with it. Here are the ones I've made thus far. With respect to gameplay it's very straightforward, similar to a Musou/Dynasty Warriors game but with an enormous variety of stuff to find and skills/abilities to customize. It's packaged as a linear campaign that then opens up into a bunch of mission types and difficulty modes, where the further you go along the more of a demand it makes on really honing in on how you want to play/what your build does. You acquire parts by just going after folks and wrecking stuff, with a scheme for leveling/rarity that lets you take the parts you like and build them out to meet the challenges ahead.
I like it in the same way I like something like Diablo - it's a fun thing to just sort of jump into from time to time, when you've got an hour to kill or just don't want to play something very involved. Levels are simple and straightforward, just hop in, smash everything, fight a boss, done. See what all you collected, tweak your build, do it again. You can use parts from just about every Gundam series out there, with more being added as they update/add dlcs. I can't speak to the story much besides saying it's very Saturday morning cartoon/2000's anime - I tend to ignore all of that in favor of just building neat things and seeing how hard I can push it. My favorite is the Bounty Hunting, where you can pick out builds from a list of what other players have made and have a big fight against them.
The customization is just fantastic. If you like gunpla it's like a machine for making everything you ever wanted with infinite paint and access to different techniques. You can use an airbrushing effect, make things metallic or plastic, add chipping/damage, throw on add-on parts, whatever you like really. Gameplay is smooth and simple. Weapons largely determine your moveset, but depending on which parts you pick you'll be able to do all sorts of other things on top - special moves from different shows, attacks you can chain together, support abilities, so on and so forth. The parts list is crazy huge, and you have lots of tools to change things like size and orientation of nearly any part. Then, when you've got one you like, there's a whole other setup for adding skills/stats to your parts to carry it up and through the harder modes.
If you enjoy Musou games it's like one of those but with a lot of options and a solid challenge. The standard/casual modes are pretty mindless imo, but it gives you access to a harder one from the jump if you want to challenge yourself the whole way through. Combat feels good, and finding a combo of parts/weapons to chain together is pretty satisfying. I'd recommend it if you like Gundam/mecha stuff and want a more arcade-y sort of experience.
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Comment on Monster Hunter Wilds | Third trailer - Lala Barina & Scarlet Forest reveal in ~games
Thomas-C LinkEverything I have seen of Wilds has me crazy excited. It looks to me like they went hard on very small "production value/cinematic" things that really do a lot to make it look fun. Camera...Everything I have seen of Wilds has me crazy excited. It looks to me like they went hard on very small "production value/cinematic" things that really do a lot to make it look fun. Camera movements during some attacks, more interaction with the monster (clashing/locking with their open mouth looks sick), the physics of stuff like hair and cloth, it all comes together into a more movie-like appearance that I think suits the game perfectly. Wilds has been enjoyable just to watch so I can't wait to actually play.
The weapon demos look super good, iirc the charge blade has a model with a flowing skirt and long hair and it looks awesome in motion
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Comment on What game do you consider an unconventional masterpiece? in ~games
Thomas-C LinkI think I'd call Exanima one of those. It is an exceedingly difficult game to learn, and looks particularly silly when you're still getting over the learning curve. I could see most folks picking...I think I'd call Exanima one of those.
It is an exceedingly difficult game to learn, and looks particularly silly when you're still getting over the learning curve. I could see most folks picking it up, thinking it was janky dogshit and dropping it, because it looks like weird marionettes flailing on each other and doesn't tell you a damn thing about what to do. It's that if you push past, meet it where it's at and get competent at the combat, I just don't know of a game that feels quite as dynamic and immersive.
It's all about realism by way of making everything stick to a physics system. When you make a character, it matters how tall you are and what your body shape is - a short, stout character cant move very far very quickly but just about can't be knocked over. They can swing a heavy weapon in a solid way and recover fast. A tall, wiry one can create/close distance incredibly well, but you can knock yourself over swinging around too wildly. They have a reach advantage but cant hit as hard, perhaps meaning you're better off with an edged weapon. Different weapons feel different to use, because some are heavier, longer, or have a different balance despite being the same type. The weight of armor impacts your speed and maneuverability, as well as the minute ways you move when you're fighting. This applies to enemies too, and you can use their gear as an advantage - a guy in heavy plate can't turn as fast, and takes longer to recover if they're knocked off balance. Monsters aren't human, they move very differently and often much faster, which is legit scary when you're used to slow zombies and human opponents.
The consequence of this approach is that you have to give it your full attention. It takes a lot of practice to survive, and then a lot more practice to look like you know what you're doing. But once you do, it is just the most satisfying thing. When you make just the right move, swing hard and clock a dude so hard he crumples and hits a wall, it's awesome. When you learn a difficult weapon, like a flail or a halberd, you can use physics to your advantage and swing folks around/trip them up. You can learn magic that blasts folks' feet out from under them, and place objects around to try to maximize how long they'll be stuck unable to fight you. In combat, you can do stuff like duck under a high attack and stab forward, or back step just out of reach then lunge. It's dynamic in a way I've yet to see another game accomplish, even something coming from Fromsoft or the like. It looks plain, but when you're in it it's demanding just enough of your attention that you don't really have the space for thinking about how stuff looks, you're too busy making sure you aren't getting clipped by a blade or getting backed into a corner.
The actual content is top notch too. The dungeon is large and complex, highly detailed, and you have to pay attention to know where you're going. Maps are made of paper. You can't see where you are on them, and you need to find something like a compass to know how you're oriented. You need to look closely at what's on tables and underneath things, move stuff around to find important or helpful stuff. Combat is tense and enemies often surprise you - the zombie might seem slow, but then they manage to rear back and swing wide and now you've got 1/3 of your bar going red because you stepped too soon. Later on, when you encounter monsters in places like a ruined town and the sewer system, they come out of nowhere and in groups. It's legit pretty scary when one gets close and grapples you. Big things, like an ogre or a demon, can knock you so hard you fly across a room, or perhaps across a table which sends dishware and cups and stuff flying.
I think what makes it a masterpiece is that it achieves making you feel like you're really in it, at least as best as that can happen considering you're pressing buttons and moving sticks. It's so completely dedicated to a certain kind of realism that the resulting experience outclasses a whole lot of stuff I've played. It's hard to recommend but with time and patience I think anyone who pushes through would feel similar about it.
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Comment on Let's hear some Tabletop RPG stories! in ~games.tabletop
Thomas-C LinkI ended up creating/playing a character one of my friends liked so much that he reappears in campaigns from time to time. Figlindel Glorfinsnatch, a half-elf Bard from the Forest of Whimsy, joined...I ended up creating/playing a character one of my friends liked so much that he reappears in campaigns from time to time.
Figlindel Glorfinsnatch, a half-elf Bard from the Forest of Whimsy, joined the party after being found in a broken barrel by the side of a river. Prior, in the Forest of Whimsy, he offended its lord, Alurlialilundilar and his wife, Queen Illuvivarvivarita, by snorting up what remained of their magical fairy dust. After a lengthy trial he was sentenced to being sealed in the barrel and tossed off a waterfall. As he floated in the barrel he was contacted by a demon in a vision, got into an argument, and offended the demon so badly that he was denied entry to Hell, and thus survived.
In the campaign, at one point we were in a city that was under attack by an eldritch monster. We discovered that by sacrificing someone the monster could be cast into a different plane, and so Figlindel goaded his orc companion until the orc slammed his halberd through Figlindel's chest. That player rolled a 20, so Figlindel was obliterated. However, due to having offended the demon, his soul was caught in limbo while the party got together the necessary magic to revive him from a leftover skull fragment. After he recovered from soul sickness, Figlindel traveled with the party to the lair the monster came from, and along the way got access to a single wish spell.
The lair was at the southern pole, and at the southern pole was a flock of penguins. Figlindel found a penguin, named him Pingus, and used the wish spell to make Pingus sentient. Armed with a shortsword and a little leather tunic, Pingus ventured with the party until the end of the campaign, while Figlindel taught him the ways of war and the need to unify the other penguins. In the campaign's epilogue, Pingus did travel back to the southern pole and brought together his people, waged a war of conquest and became the lord penguin. Figlindel traveled back to the Forest of Whimsy, but wasn't allowed back in because they still hated him. So he reappears from time to time, a traveling madman with wild stories no one believes.
This reminded me of someone. When I was doing my degree (a BS in Philosophy, because it's fun to say and I liked neurosciencey things), I had a classmate a year ahead of me who wrote/talked like this. He wore a beret and round glasses, talked incessantly, never finished books, got in some shit over quaaludes and ended up doing some sort of self help cult. His website is still up so I assume that must have worked out ok. I won't link it because I don't need him getting a whiff of me remembering. I bring it up because of that paragraph about "powerful minds" choosing philosophers over religion, I swear that could have been written by him.
I had the most fun with philosophy when we stopped reading the ancients/western stuff and got into where it intersects with things/problem solving. Neuroscience, psychology, the big problems of broad things like politics and superstructures, shit is endlessly interesting because human beings just don't stop, and what's a solution today might tomorrow become a new problem. Epistemology was always my favorite slice, because it pretty much shatters a lot of the enlightenment-era attachment to stuff like "knowledge", "reason", "truth", etc. Folks don't all think the same about that, they don't all define the words the same way, and knowing some of the differences means being able to communicate in rare and special ways about difficult stuff with folks you might not think you could reach. Being able to crunch some absurd set of ideas and extrude them out into a simpler, more easily communicated shape is a skill, at least that's how my professors approached what we were doing. It wasn't about who was right, it was about just taking what was out there, making some sense of it, and seeing if/how it could apply to anything, with a broader aim of "find and fix a problem somewhere". Sometimes folks need words for things, a problem needs to be identified/broken down, a situation needs to be understood, before work can be done. You can work the ability to do stuff like that by trudging through what some beleaguered nerd of the past tried to say, but it comes with a challenge, don't take them too seriously. Nobody gets it 100%, and between the politics and our own psychology, some real good thoughts are probably getting left out. You're on your own there, try to avoid having those book purchases show up on anything. You'll have to steal some depending how deep you wanna go.
I'll be real I'm not sure I had a huge point to make, I just wanted to provide a bit of a counterweight to the arrogance/disdain Stove displays talking the way he does, as someone who probably investigated a bunch of the same things. He is doing beret wearer shit in my view. Trying to proclaim all human thought is madness is like telling me the sky is blue or that water is wet - no shit, my guy, we're human, take off the beret, have two beers. Ignoring other parts of the world and calling folks primitive is just being shitty at the job, too. The job is to embrace the madness - understand its forms, speak its tongues, know the way it travels, so that perhaps while it unfolds we can contribute in a good way toward making life a little nicer. At least, that's been my opinion for a while with respect to what philosophy is for/about.
Sorry to ramble, I guess I can't stop myself when the beret sensor tingles a bit. I got annoyed and skimmed too, just to be honest with you. I really enjoyed the stuff I studied, and this sort of argumentation about the absolute state of something like "human thought" feels akin to an argument about whether Goku can defeat a Gundam. I certainly am guilty of trying to talk about stuff that's too big for me, but I try to maintain a certain humility and openness to critique that feels completely absent in the way Stove expresses himself, just like my old classmate.