kaffo's recent activity
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Comment on 10,000-hour indie RPG goes free-to-play as devs aren't comfortable making "tens of thousands of dollars from people who don't play the game" in ~games
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
kaffo Link ParentThank god they changed the marble puzzle! I think everyone who played Riven knew the pain. If that's been changed I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in puzzles, it was...Thank god they changed the marble puzzle! I think everyone who played Riven knew the pain.
If that's been changed I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in puzzles, it was one of the highlights of the Myst series. -
Comment on No Man's Sky: Worlds Part I | Update trailer in ~games
kaffo Link ParentI agree it's easy to pick up and just play. I played 2 years ago and one thing that got me was the sheer length of the tutorial missions. They are thinly guised as story, but they are really...I agree it's easy to pick up and just play.
I played 2 years ago and one thing that got me was the sheer length of the tutorial missions. They are thinly guised as story, but they are really tutorial to show you everything in the game, which is great because the game is absolutely massive. But I think I played for like 50 plus hours or something and didn't finish then, I don't even know how many I had left.
I had a freighter and had all the research stuff done, but I knew I still had not done any of the content from the last few patches and had no idea how to access the content, I'd assumed the tutorial/story would lead me there but it's pretty glacially paced.
Anyway, it's an incredibly chill game, I had a lot of fun just playing it and messing around rather than trying to achieve something. There's so much to see and do you won't even know about! -
Comment on Thinking of getting into emacs, any advice? in ~comp
kaffo LinkEveryone else here is saying try Vim and I'd echo it. I learned Vim years ago in university and still find it useful when I need to work on Linux shells at work to make my life much easier. I have...Everyone else here is saying try Vim and I'd echo it.
I learned Vim years ago in university and still find it useful when I need to work on Linux shells at work to make my life much easier.
I have a vimrc I made like 10 years ago and stick with it now, it's great! -
Comment on What's a life lesson you've applied that has changed your life? in ~life
kaffo Link ParentI understand your point, but I disagree. Your friends who throw themselves 100 percent (and I'm talking living, breathing their work) are therefore by definition neglecting friendships, family,...I understand your point, but I disagree.
Your friends who throw themselves 100 percent (and I'm talking living, breathing their work) are therefore by definition neglecting friendships, family, hobbies, the possibility of kids, holidays...
Same goes for the times you go 100 percent at work or study, other things get neglected and (especially relationships) suffer.
I am not saying don't have a focus and don't work hard, but you have to draw lines and life a healthy, balanced life. If it's choosing not to take that 5th plate at the all you can ear buffet or choosing to not spend the evening with your friends because you've got to work late. -
Comment on What's a life lesson you've applied that has changed your life? in ~life
kaffo LinkI have a bunch as well, but one I always live by is "do everything in moderation". That applies to vices, life, relationships, work... I personally think it's unhealthy to apply yourself literally...I have a bunch as well, but one I always live by is "do everything in moderation".
That applies to vices, life, relationships, work...
I personally think it's unhealthy to apply yourself literally 100 percent to something and I would be worried if someone I knew did. -
Comment on Please convince me to like Fallout 76, I beg you in ~games
kaffo LinkI also tried it out when the show hit and struggled to find the great game people were raving about. I heard there was kinda a tipping point when you get to a high-ish level and you can focus on...I also tried it out when the show hit and struggled to find the great game people were raving about. I heard there was kinda a tipping point when you get to a high-ish level and you can focus on getting parts for your end game build where the game hits its stride, but I never got close to there before getting burned out on the same dozen world events and reasonably dull quests.
I played with my brother too which usually takes the strain off the content but we didn't even find much to laugh about, it felt a bit dry.All in all we got vintage story when I saw a post here and loved that, so agreed with the comments in this thread, don't try and love something you don't.
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Comment on What slow-burn game is worth the time? in ~games
kaffo LinkI just finished playing Mech Engineer which is pretty much bang on "game that needs some hours to become rewarding". It's a really niche game. There's no tutorial and there's a manual ingame you...I just finished playing Mech Engineer which is pretty much bang on "game that needs some hours to become rewarding".
It's a really niche game. There's no tutorial and there's a manual ingame you basically have to read.
The UI is intentionally (confirmed by the dev) one of the challenges of the game of navigate and understand.
It's so obscure you'll be finding out buttons on the UI that you didn't know existed 3 play through in.
And you die a lot trying to learn.
But when you get it and you understand how all the systems click together... It's very rewarding to shred aliens and thrive. -
Comment on Norwegian and or European salary expectations? in ~life
kaffo LinkI emigrated to Norway at the start of this year and kept my software engineer job from the UK and had similar questions around equivalent salary. I found it pretty hard to match to be honest. As...I emigrated to Norway at the start of this year and kept my software engineer job from the UK and had similar questions around equivalent salary.
I found it pretty hard to match to be honest. As noted below definitely find some ball park figures for salary expectation from job ads but it depends greatly on where you live. I'm rural which did drop salary expectations. Though, it was still higher around 20% higher than the UK, it wasn't as high as Oslo or Bergan where it was more like 40%.
That said, if you're coming from the US I'd be ready for culture shock if you're not well accustomed to Norwegian culture. Salary expectations here are higher on the lower ends and lower on the high ends, plus tax is higher than the US and people are expected to give a lot more to the community in general.
That said I love it here!Regardless, best of luck with the move!
Edit: Regarding your question about keeping your job. Norway will not let you work in the country as a foreigner unless you work for a Norwegian company.
That means your place of work would need to set up a Norwegian branch for you to officially work at, with Norwegian HR and Norwegian tax. You cannot get paid and still be under employment by the US business if you want to live and work in Norway, and they are very picky! -
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
kaffo LinkI just finished Pumping Simulator 2 which is another kinda janky life sim Unity game. It was really good though, I had a lot of fun for 20 hours. It really scratched that itch that my favourite...I just finished Pumping Simulator 2 which is another kinda janky life sim Unity game.
It was really good though, I had a lot of fun for 20 hours. It really scratched that itch that my favourite flash games and Half Life 2 maps from the mid 00's left.
That kinda game loop where you're always busy doing stuff and building up your garage with crap, but it's not just the refined clicker/idler format we get nowadays. Lots of running around and a fair bit of grinding, but you're always getting a new toy so it's not bad grinding.After that I'm back on Mech Enginner which I love to hate. I rage quit it after I got into a bunch of fights I basically couldn't win, but came back with a fresh pair of eyes and some new ideas to a new playthrough and it's going really well. It's not for everyone that's for sure, it's really frustrating, but the payoff is great.
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Comment on I'm looking for a suggestion on how best to organize my ideas for my weekly RPG in ~games.tabletop
kaffo LinkHonestly (if your on Android) good old Google Docs/Sheets does me wonders. I have a folder in Drive for each campaign I've ran over the years and in the folder I have my notes in whatever...Honestly (if your on Android) good old Google Docs/Sheets does me wonders.
I have a folder in Drive for each campaign I've ran over the years and in the folder I have my notes in whatever documents.
Since I can edit it from anywhere at any time (mobile or desktop) it's very easy to have an idea where ever and just blast it down in the doc.
Obviously the caveat here is it doesn't work well the bigger your world gets. I only tend to run stuff for a year or so, so nothing tends to get out of control. -
Comment on Why we should buff more than nerf in ~games
kaffo LinkI've not watched the video, but this brings to mind an interesting moment Warframe had back in the beta days. They originally intended the game to just be a third person shooter with some cool...I've not watched the video, but this brings to mind an interesting moment Warframe had back in the beta days.
They originally intended the game to just be a third person shooter with some cool character powers but there was a bug/exploit where you could crouch and sprint at the same time to power slide and do all kinds of dumb movement tricks.
Instead of patching it out, they made it a feature because people liked it so much and rebalanced a lot of the game around the movement stuff later.Wish more games did this to be honest, noone likes a nerf if its a thing they like to use.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
kaffo Link ParentGlad you are trying Noita! I am a huge fan and always push people to try it! Some tips from someone who's got like 300 hours in it and was also very frustrated at the start. Don't try to linger...Glad you are trying Noita! I am a huge fan and always push people to try it!
Some tips from someone who's got like 300 hours in it and was also very frustrated at the start.
Don't try to linger too much, try to get to the end reasonably fast and if you die that's OK! Some runs when you are new are just doomed because you run into something that's new or you don't have the muscle memory to deal with it etc. That's what's important to try and get exposure to.If you're making it down to hiisi base fairly regularly that's normal, it's a bit of a run killer for new players. It's perfectly normal to get there and die.
Some players get trapped in a loop where they spend a long time in the previous levels "powering up" for hiisi then die anyway, which just makes them more frustrated, hence I recommend just going for it. You'll learn to pick up good/fun wand builds and you'll start making it through with good consistency to see the stuff later on.Likewise it's ok to watch a wand building video or two, it's not cheating as there's so much in the game and a lot of it is totally obscure to the player you'd never work it out yourself.
Regarding mods, obviously it's good to have fun in a game, don't not have fun, but I'd err on the side of caution with some of the "cheat" mods in noita. In almost every case there is an ingame solution (including your health drops!) but learning about it, and using it is part of the game. A player with knowledge can get their grubby hands on all the goodies early in a run and be good forever.
Hopefully this helps a little, stick with it! Beating the boss is literally the tutorial in noita and it's a huge game with a lot of content!
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Comment on Getting over that game making hump? in ~games
kaffo LinkAs someone who's never successfully finished a game either, take anything I say with a pinch of salt. But I've been around game dev forums for years and it IS really hard to push through, it's not...As someone who's never successfully finished a game either, take anything I say with a pinch of salt.
But I've been around game dev forums for years and it IS really hard to push through, it's not just you.
The going chat I hear is you just need to start small and get something working. A basic, simple prototype of the thinnest slice of the game and go from there.
And it'll be hacky, horrible, written in Microsoft Excel if that's how you best work, but the point is you get something that works and go from there.
I think a lot of game devs get stuck on the implementation details (me included) for either technical stuff or just how they want to piece the game together. And the thing is none of that matters if the game sucks. The majority of successful games are hacked together at least at the start then if they are lucky touched up later.Hope this helps!
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Comment on Games where the campaign serves as the tutorial? in ~games
kaffo LinkNoita. You learn the enemies, the game systems, the world and how to interact with it properly basically until you beat the game for the first time. Then you go and play the actual game!Noita. You learn the enemies, the game systems, the world and how to interact with it properly basically until you beat the game for the first time.
Then you go and play the actual game! -
Comment on What video games have had you taking real-life notes? in ~games
kaffo LinkAnimal well was the most recent one, for obvious reasons, but I was surprised by my lack of notes by the end of it. I was also playing a game called The Slaverian Trucker and writing down notes...Animal well was the most recent one, for obvious reasons, but I was surprised by my lack of notes by the end of it.
I was also playing a game called The Slaverian Trucker and writing down notes for truck parts in different towns and cargo.
I had pages and pages of notes when I played Contraband Police earlier this year, that was a lot of fun. I had notes every day for the suspects and the current orders for what to watch out for and it was a lot of fun to cross reference.Related, the new Steam ingame note tool is pretty good for pinning stuff that's really important. But it sucks for long form notes, nothing will beat pen and paper for that.
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Comment on UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announces a 4th July general election in ~news
kaffo Link ParentAlso Scottish, although I recently emigrated to live with my partner. Honestly I'm worried that Labour gets 5 years then the tories pull the age old "it's been 5 years and they've done nothing!"...Also Scottish, although I recently emigrated to live with my partner.
Honestly I'm worried that Labour gets 5 years then the tories pull the age old "it's been 5 years and they've done nothing!" because Labour spend 5 years playing cleanup.
Then the public vote tory again for "something radical".
It's a vicious circle, people have no patience. -
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
kaffo Link ParentAlso been playing VS the past two weeks on a dedi with freinds and totally agree with you on pretty much everything you've said. I'd like to also add that the developers seem like they really know...Also been playing VS the past two weeks on a dedi with freinds and totally agree with you on pretty much everything you've said.
I'd like to also add that the developers seem like they really know what they are doing. The regular updates, strong modding support, great QoL and lots of interesting and fun systems.
The modding seems really easy play with as well, which is great after looking into modding other games and getting turned off the long list of setup.Great game, would recommend to anyone really!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
kaffo Link ParentIt's not very difficult that's for sure. I was worried it'd be hard core survival and on my first game I played the "explorer" mode which turns off enemies and relaxes a lot of the survival...It's not very difficult that's for sure. I was worried it'd be hard core survival and on my first game I played the "explorer" mode which turns off enemies and relaxes a lot of the survival mechanics, which was way too easy.
We quickly reset on standard difficulty and had a great time.
For enemies there's normal animals which for a lot of the game are going to be really dangerous unless you're prepared, which is fine because 95 percent of the time they wont bother you unless you bother them or you walk right into a hungry pack of wolves by accident.
The other enemy is the drifters which aren't that big a deal, they spawn from these temporal rifts that randomly spawn around the place and they come in waves of being more or less powerful, but for the most part they are annoying unless you get caught with your pants down in a mineshaft on your own.I'd say we struggled most with food, crops and some of the randomness of funding materials.
Crops seem to take eons to grow, even with fertiliser, which I'm not loving right now, I'm tempted to change the world setting.
Food isn't trivial with 3 people, it's a bit of a constant battle, which is good and bad.
I'd say the most annoying thing is the randomness though. You need say limestone (or other substitutes) for leather making and we spent hours looking for that to spawn. Some ores are a pig too.
The game is a little grindy if you want to make some higher tier things, like smelting and smiting chain mail is a real task, but you only need to do it once.Overall I'd say the good outweighs the bad by a long way, and you can mod/configure pretty much anything you like anyway. It's got a surprisingly healthy modding scene, and looking at the modding it looks shockingly easy.
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Comment on The Slack controversy has opened a whole new can of worms in ~tech
kaffo Link ParentYep, I agree with this. I work for a company which was acquired years ago by a fortune 500. Before the acquisition we used slack and it was very much an "engineering only" not very well formalised...Yep, I agree with this.
I work for a company which was acquired years ago by a fortune 500. Before the acquisition we used slack and it was very much an "engineering only" not very well formalised affair. But once acquired our parent corp did all the due diligence to cross the t and dot the i's because we talk trade secrets on there all day long. We now use slack officially across the org and the company knows fine well slack has all that information.
Ok this confused me a little, but I had a look to understand it.
In the article (and the Steam post they quote from) they highlight how they don't want to feel like the devs are stealing people's money for buying the game and playing less of it than the demo (or the two hour refund period). So they made the game free so everyone could just play it.
I was confused because from the article it sounds like they have no intention of making money off the game and they just want to let people play for fun.
The base game seems to include minimum 100 hours of content (the store page quotes) which is a massive amount of content for free, I am very positive about that.
But they also have like $100 of DLC split into chapters where I guess the other 900 hours come from.
I don't really feel it his quite the same mark to say:
"oh yeah we're doing a nice thing for the community, by the way at some point you still have to buy 100 dollars of DLC for more content"....
Again, I don't disagree it's a good move, but I feel like the headline missed out the fact it's not ALL free, they are making a hefty bit of cash in DLC.