secret_online's recent activity

  1. Comment on Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core | Official Early Access release date trailer – 20th May 2026 in ~games

    secret_online
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    To me the limited carry limit for each resource works in the game's favour, or at least feels like an intentional decision to me. It encourages you to deposit often and stay with the group,...

    To me the limited carry limit for each resource works in the game's favour, or at least feels like an intentional decision to me. It encourages you to deposit often and stay with the group, because that's where Molly is most likely to be. On gamemodes where there's a central depositing point it keeps that point as important, and those levels generally have a pretty closed design.

    There are marginal carry capacity upgrades you can equip: a perk that goes up to +15 that you unlock in the perk terminal the equip at the equipment terminal, and a +5 for your armour in the equipment terminal. I'm basically the scout of my group no matter which class I'm playing, so I've never had anything other than those equipped. That makes the maximum 60 and that's still less than a resupply's worth of nitra, but when I recommended someone in my friend group try the carry capacity perk it changed things for them and they no longer felt as hampered by the carry capacity. All of my load outs have those perks/upgrades selected.

    As an aside, what hazard level were you playing at? The game works better when you're under pressure. Haz 4 is usually where my group sits when we play, it keeps them coming but doesn't overwhelm us. That said, the difficulty does vary, and we've had some Haz 4s that were absolutely at the Haz 5 level. When you're under pressure you're less likely to be off on your own because you often need the firepower of multiple dwarves, which means you'll likely be closer to where you can deposit.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on It's only March, but I'm calling it – Esoteric Ebb is 2026's best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium in ~games

    secret_online
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    Solid picks for best characters, I'd put Snell somewhere up high because he is precious and I want him to live a happy life (though it's easy to put Snell highly given how much character time he...

    Solid picks for best characters, I'd put Snell somewhere up high because he is precious and I want him to live a happy life (though it's easy to put Snell highly given how much character time he gets). Meek stayed with me until the end after unlocking them. There's also a particular sentient sword that I kept around after receiving it.

    I also really appreciated Visken's characterisation and writing, even if I wanted to never have to deal with him. I say that, but curiosity led me to have the dangerous chat with him. It did not go well the first time (failed the DC by 1. The second time I met the DC). I think he was appropriately built up through his dealings more so than in direct dialogue, which made him feel more a part of the world and that's always a positive. That chat also led to a really fun minor reveal, which I appreciated.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Parseword - a delightfully complex word game from Wordle’s creator in ~games

    secret_online
    Link Parent
    I think that's just an inherent property of cryptics. You need to just know how clues are constructed before you can even start, and that means knowing the ways that words are manipulated as well...

    I think that's just an inherent property of cryptics. You need to just know how clues are constructed before you can even start, and that means knowing the ways that words are manipulated as well as all of the indicator words and phrases that tell you to do those manipulations.

    Not that I'm trying to justify this, I remember how hard it was to get started with cryptics because I didn't know the vocabulary. I just don't think there can be a version of this that has an on-ramp that isn't a lot of tutorialising. The tutorials they do have are quite good, and I kind of wish there were more that I could send to non-cryptic friends to have them learn that vocab.

    4 votes

  4. Comment on ‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: US candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate in some products in ~food

    secret_online
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    Thank you Whittaker's for saving us from the scourge that is Cadbury. There is simply no other type of chocolate in my snack drawer.

    Thank you Whittaker's for saving us from the scourge that is Cadbury. There is simply no other type of chocolate in my snack drawer.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on It's only March, but I'm calling it – Esoteric Ebb is 2026's best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium in ~games

    secret_online
    (edited )
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    I finished the game last night. I'll leave a spoiler and non-spoiler review here, but I'd also recommend reading @sparksbet's comment as well. Non-spoiler review Where to even start with this......

    I finished the game last night. I'll leave a spoiler and non-spoiler review here, but I'd also recommend reading @sparksbet's comment as well.

    Non-spoiler review

    Where to even start with this... This game isn't Disco Elysium. It is its own game. I very much enjoyed it, but if you're looking for Disco 2 then this is not it. If you put Disco aside and treat it as its own game, then I think Esoteric Ebb is a lot more enjoyable.

    I did have a few bugs on my save, mostly related to unlocking specific dialogue options on characters. Most of these were fixed in the most recent patch, but there's still one thing I think is still broken? It's not the end of the world, I'm sure that whatever was behind a particular secret door probably wasn't going to help me that much given what I had found already. There were alternate ways to find the information I needed, but I did feel lost for a while since I expected to learn certain things earlier.

    As I mentioned in my first comment, only having the 6 attributes as the voices in your head was a good decision. It allows each of them to have a clear personality and set of values holding up each of their beliefs. They very much are their own characters. It also means you don't have to think about individual ability scores like in D&D, which are just more numbers. The numbers aren't the focus of this game.

    Combat being entirely driven by the dialogue system was interesting. I feel like enemies sometimes got extra actions rather than it strictly following the initiative order. A top for anyone playing, when it's your turn you can cast spells from the spells area of the UI, you don't have to choose the dialogue options. I found this out while fighting something that has grappled me. I wanted to cast Grease, but there was no option in the dialogue, and only then did I realise that the icon in the bottom left of my screen was different, since I had been putting all of my attention on the right of the screen.

    Speaking of, prepare Grease. Grease has always been one of my favourite utility spells in D&D, and it lives up its potential here.

    Stat choices in character creation matter mostly at the beginning. My character started with high DEX and WIS, but over the course of the game I ended up having good modifiers on almost everything. And if I needed something in particular, then I could just swap items around and try again. I'd still be fifty-fifty on some rolls, but most would go in my favour.

    Be prepared for acronyms/initialisms. As the developer has stated, this is based on their homebrew, and clearly their players abbreviate and acronym things a lot. It's both a rough edge and a bit of charm. Not every acronym is important, but you'll remember the important ones. Really, the main one is NoF. It comes up a few times in context, so you'll remember it for sure.

    Overall, this is a good game. I think a good number of people on Tildes would enjoy what it has to offer. It's definitely not a recommendation to my entire friend group, but to enough of them that I will talk about it.

    Spoiler review

    EAT THE APPLE, APPLEBOY.

    I completed most of the quests. There were still 3 unstarted quests at the end of my game, and I have no idea what they are. I think I have a good grasp on what the game has to offer.

    Our cleric is an interesting character. They clearly have a lot of backstory that is revealed over time. Almost all of the skills have some hook into the backstory, which was a really nice touch. I don't know why I don't want to talk about them in the section specifically labelled for spoilers, but they really are best experienced rather than told.

    Does the ending stick the landing? I say yeah. It's not world-shattering or life-changing in any way, but I think it does a good job of thing everything together. I enjoyed the Big Bad's monologue and motivation, despite being completely against it. I listened to Urth as he explained why goblin genocide and assimilation was, in his view, necessary, before being the backup to Snell who is probably the only goblin who will ever get anything approaching closure for the crimes committed against his people. I cried a little as The Cleric opened up about his prayer to the one person who fulfilled it as we stood alone in front of the ballot boxes. I watched the credits, sad it was over but glad to have played it.

    It's not all roses (apples?). Parts of the final confrontation sequence felt like they came out of the blue and didn't have the right amount of foreshadowing. As far as I can tell, there isn't any other mention of "the smoking invisible man" than one witness, and there's absolutely no hint at all about it being Lord Gorm. Perhaps this information is made more obvious if you side with Ever-glad, but I was not doing that when I could go with the option of the Sphinx instead.

    There weren't really any hints to the grand conspiracy either, with that mostly being told (in the pillar sequence) rather than shown. It all makes sense in-universe of course, with the freestriders being involved in everything as this world succumbs to capitalism, but there's no way to put that together except in that sequence.

    I found that I didn't need to rest that often, my exhaustion got up to 3 on one day when I was pushing it, but then an esoteric event happened and I was given the effects of a long rest for a slightly shorter time period. Apart from the exhaustion, there's really no reason not to stay awake as long as possible before heading to the tower.

    I thought the story the game wove was fun and engaging, and the political lean was of benefit to the game. It had a nuanced take on nationalism vs fascism, which isn't something you see often. It showed the corruptive influences of a capital-based system, and how it can be used as a vehicle for other ideals. It had... one confrontation about extremism in social revolutions that was a bit awkwardly done and maybe needs some work. But overall, the style and actual text provided was very good, which is important for a game whose main, and really only, narative vehicle is text.

    So yeah, I really enjoyed my time with Esoteric Ebb. It gets a thumbs up from me.

    As an aside, is there anything that actually explains what the Esoteric Ebb actually is? The demi-lich skull says Jor is alive and the strings something something, Isk talks about how Power Word: Ebb simply must be involved in wars that happened while he was in stasis prison (unless I misunderstood the timeline, which is entirely possible), and Ever-glad name drops it but doesn't say anything (and I doubt it would even if you become its warlock). For something that is important enough to be the title of the game and is only name dropped by the most powerful magical users you encounter, it plays such a minor part in the story and world. Not that the title has to mean anything, but having it mentioned the way it was makes me feel like there should have been more.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on It's only March, but I'm calling it – Esoteric Ebb is 2026's best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium in ~games

    secret_online
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    I think Pratchett might be overselling it a bit, but I can certainly see why the comparison was made. The hallmarks are there; there are goofy solutions to mundane problems, mundane solutions to...

    I think Pratchett might be overselling it a bit, but I can certainly see why the comparison was made. The hallmarks are there; there are goofy solutions to mundane problems, mundane solutions to goofy problems, and goofy solutions to absolutely weird situations. My character has died of literal embarrassment, awkwardly backed out of flirting, and experienced reality-bending events and followed them up with a simple thumbs up to who must be the most traumatised goblin in the city. But it manages to be its own thing, which I appreciate. Just straight up copying Pratchett would make it a lesser game.

    GNU Terry Pratchett

    7 votes

  7. Comment on It's only March, but I'm calling it – Esoteric Ebb is 2026's best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium in ~games

    secret_online
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    I picked up this game over the weekend, and it's all I can think about. The inner dialogues are just fantastic, and paring it down to just the 6 attributes definitely works in the game's favour....

    I picked up this game over the weekend, and it's all I can think about. The inner dialogues are just fantastic, and paring it down to just the 6 attributes definitely works in the game's favour. There's clearly a lot of thought that has gone into the world building, and I wasn't at all surprised when I re-read the Steam store page and saw it was the developer's homebrew setting.

    I'm playing the game relatively straightforward at the moment, but I definitely want to do two more playthroughs in the future. I'm currently about halfway through day 3, and now some of the threads are starting to come together. I feel like I'm still missing some important dialogue, but I'm sure I'll find it eventually. I also don't know where to explore next, I get the feeling there's more deeper underground, but I just don't know how to get there yet.

    Non-spoiler update: I'm now at the beginning of day 4. I managed to find my way down, and met some important folks with some rather interesting conversations. There's still more for me to do down there, but I'll just have to do that later. I also think I have the final goal. There are still plenty of loose ends, am I even going to get to tie them up? I'll definitely see more in future playthroughs.

    Non-spoiler update: Mid-afternoon on day 4. I think I have everything I need in order to do that final objective. I do have some quests I'd like to finish, and maybe get to level 6 for the extra health before proceeding. I have a few unstarted quests in my quest tree, and I have no idea what they even could be. I only realised too late that I had the opportunity to bring a particular person to a particular location which would have helped a lot with a particular event, but that's fine.

    I am a sucker for this kind of art style, and the music builds just the right kind of atmosphere. I love that all of the weapons you find are useless, but still have the stat bonuses. I love the little bits of world building, like the theoretical debate of whether there are 4 or 8 pillars. I love that the game dunks on the "apolitical" stance at every opportunity it can. I love the little jokes and references like asking the potion seller for the strongest potions, or how someone in the developer's actual campaign clearly said "geez" in-character and then the group of them came up with a justification for why an IRL exclamation based on IRL religion makes sense in this setting. I just love how this game is so very clearly itself and not trying to be anything else.

    21 votes

  8. Comment on Bookmark management for non-technical people? in ~tech

    secret_online
    (edited )
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    I ended up building myself a tag-based bookmarking website. I can search for multiple tags at a time, and links with more matching tags get sorted to the top of the search. There is no enforced...

    I ended up building myself a tag-based bookmarking website. I can search for multiple tags at a time, and links with more matching tags get sorted to the top of the search. There is no enforced organisation system, just tags, but I can usually find the things I'm looking for with 3-4. From reading the replies here, I don't think it would solve the problem, but it is a different idea for how to organise things.

    The site is tied to my IRL name, so I am hesitant about sharing it here. I also plan on rewriting it some time in the future (edit: strike while the iron is hot, I spent all day doing the rewrite I wanted and it still works. If people desperately need a tag-based bookmarking-ish solution, DM me), so I don't want to have people relying on it when I don't even know what its future is. At least when it's my own data I can dump the database and write a script to do whatever I like with it.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Steam Next Fest recommendations and game demos in ~games

    secret_online
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    Amanita Design, makers of cute hand-drawn point and click adventure games (does anyone else remember Machinarium from like 2010-ish?), have a demo out for their next game Phonopolis. The art, as...

    Amanita Design, makers of cute hand-drawn point and click adventure games (does anyone else remember Machinarium from like 2010-ish?), have a demo out for their next game Phonopolis. The art, as always, is impeccable. They've done a great job with building the atmosphere, and I look forward to the inevitably short but incredibly sweet journey of the final game.

    6 votes

  10. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
    Link Parent
    Given you've said you don't really get Minecraft at the moment, I don't think this server would necessarily give you that "ah-ha" moment where it clicks. It's all still very self-driven which I...

    Given you've said you don't really get Minecraft at the moment, I don't think this server would necessarily give you that "ah-ha" moment where it clicks. It's all still very self-driven which I know is not how everyone wants to play games.

    At this moment in time, most of the activity on the server is people building their own things. Sometimes there will be larger community projects (Gravy's mall from last season, for instance), but these often end up being longer-runnning asynchronous projects rather than everyone-gets-together-to-do-a-thing-at-the-same-time. It feels a bit like playing singleplayer, but you can pop over to your neighbours' place to say hi and see what they're building in the back yard, or grab resources from one of the community farms that someone else built.

    Of course nothing is stopping you from doing some tourism. The central town by spawn has a good number of buildings all in their own style, the industrial area nearby is a hodge-podge of different builds that produce various resources, and peoples' personal bases are well and truly under construction. And by coming in with the mindset of a tourist you can get a feel for the vibe without committing to anything.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    secret_online
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    Well, I've been back at my Tiny Flowers mod for Minecraft. I've decided to target the next major version for my rewrite, and we seem to be pretty deep into the snapshot cycle so I'm imagining...

    Well, I've been back at my Tiny Flowers mod for Minecraft. I've decided to target the next major version for my rewrite, and we seem to be pretty deep into the snapshot cycle so I'm imagining prereleases will start any week now. Though given the announcement that they'll be switching from OpenGL to Vulkan internally there might be a few more snapshots to come. Not that it matters for my mod, I'm not doing anything low level enough to be affected by that.

    Over the last weekend I got it in my head that it would be a great and wonderful idea to finally port the mod to NeoForge. To be fair, I did also have a feature request for it but it is also something I've wanted to do.

    My first instinct was to use the Architectury Loom plugin for Gradle, which I used when porting my other small mod, to paper over the differences between the build systems for the two mod loaders, but Architectury has not updated for the removal of obfuscation in the base game so I'm unable to use it to develop for the snapshot versions of the game. So instead I searched for other ways to split the sources for the mod loaders and came across multiloader template. Instead of being a separately published Gradle plugin that supports building for both loaders, it instead has a small Gradle plugin included in the repo that calls the right things in each of the sub-projects, and the sub-projects use the normal build system from each loader. It took a little bit of time to set up, but now that it's working I'm unlikely to ever need to touch it again. And if I do, then the changes I've made are so minimal that it wouldn't be hard to just copy from the template again if it ever updates.

    But that wasn't the hard part. The hard part was registering blocks, items, and other things across the two loaders. Minecraft uses a registry system for a lot of its internals, and both mod loaders have entirely different ways of interfacing with it. Fabric's system looks much more like the game's code, while NeoForge's system is a step or two removed from the game code. Thankfully, I came across two posts that covered off how to abstract the differences away into something somewhat nice. Though the most annoying part was going through and changing all direct references to my objects to Suppliers and calling .get() everywhere, and if I missed a spot that the compiler didn't pick up because I'd been casting between types, then the game would just crash while testing. I'm glad this mod is small enough that I can test most of it pretty quickly.

    The other annoyance was data generation. My mod uses data generation to make a bunch of JSON files, and of course both loaders have slightly different entry points into the data generation system. I was able to make a lot of it common, but there's still a bit that's different between the two. But as long as they generate the same JSON files then it's fine.

    I still need to finish updating my GitHub actions workflows to support the template (mostly the ones around updating versions), but other than that I think I've done it. When the next version of the game comes out, my mod will be available for both major mod loaders. Here's the v2 branch on GitHub for anyone curious.

    4 votes

  12. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
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    I love the flag! I happened to notice it while flying around and had to stop to appreciate it. I immediately caught on to it mimicking the swoosh of the Tildes logo, so good job on that! I believe...

    I love the flag! I happened to notice it while flying around and had to stop to appreciate it. I immediately caught on to it mimicking the swoosh of the Tildes logo, so good job on that!

    I believe the dragon statue was @Bront. I love how protective she looks of the egg, almost curling up to pounce at whatever creature/player is trying to take it.

    Cool idea to use the dragon curve for the lights. It has such a distinctive shape that works well for a bespoke lighting fixture in some expensive place.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
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    Aww, now there won't be chat logs filled with murder just because I needed to get more of my own head.

    Aww, now there won't be chat logs filled with murder just because I needed to get more of my own head.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

  15. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
    (edited )
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    I definitely want to build more gas stations around the place, and if you're using a lot of rockets then it's the perfect place. Good to know, in that case the actual crafting redstone is pretty...

    I definitely want to build more gas stations around the place, and if you're using a lot of rockets then it's the perfect place.

    If you build one in my city I'm gonna add a small creeper farm and sugar cane farm to supply it

    Good to know, in that case the actual crafting redstone is pretty small (I mean, you've seen the gas station in town), and it can be reduced a bit if you don't need the indicator lights to know when it's running low on materials. I should be able to fit the redstone in a pretty small space, so there'll be plenty of room to make it pretty.

    How big are you imagining? I haven't actually been over to yours recently so I don't know what scale of building you're going for.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
    Link Parent
    This feels like the exact problem that an army of Copper Golems could help solve. Of course it would only sort items that already exist in the system, but it should keep the final overflow...

    a design of how to sort non-stackable items

    This feels like the exact problem that an army of Copper Golems could help solve. Of course it would only sort items that already exist in the system, but it should keep the final overflow relatively empty. As a bonus, they already do some level of grouping of similar items.

    4 votes

  17. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
    (edited )
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    I happened to notice the new thread while not too busy at work, so here's what I've done over the past week. The main project for the week was updating the Nether roof portal tower on top of our...

    I happened to notice the new thread while not too busy at work, so here's what I've done over the past week.

    The main project for the week was updating the Nether roof portal tower on top of our base. I was never satisfied with the previous one and we're moving away from a wood-based build palette towards what Eth has coined "Trader chic", so now was as good a time as any to design and build a new tower.

    It has both a bubblevator up to the portal (turn hard left upon entering), and also a staircase winding up the inside for more traditional foot access. Partway up the internal staircase becomes an external one before going back inside. There's some basic decoration inside, but since the space is very cramped I wasn't able to take any interesting screenshots. As usual, I invite people to come on over and take a walk up yourself. I think between this new build, the bridges going through our cave, and the Emerald Embassy in town, I have a pretty good idea of what the main stylistic elements of this style are. Now I just need to figure out how to push the boundaries in different directions and see how I can use it for different purposes.

    Also I discovered a hole that was dug under the old tower that went right into our villager area where apparently someone was wanting to start another branch of the transport network? I do actually have plans for where a rail station would go in our base eventually, which will likely connect up to @hamstergeddon's rail line. It will be much closer to where the main entrance for our base will be, which I suppose is my next major project to be thinking about. Though, I suppose if there are going to be competing rail networks, I'm happy to just connect to both of them.

    I also got around to my first armour stand work of the season, those being little monuments to the farms that Eth and I have built on the server. These can be found in the upstairs gallery of the Emerald Embassy in town.

    This does mean I now have my armour stand building kit ready to go, so I will start doing some small pieces here and there. I did do too much of it too quickly on the last season, so I want to pace myself a bit more this time.

    I've continued to keep the gas station stocked with rocket materials. Usage seems variable, but we're going through at least a couple of stacks of gunpowder per day, which about lines up with my expectations. Soon I might design a larger build that has shulker unloaders so I don't have to worry about being away for longer periods of time when I inevitably take a break from the server.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
    Link Parent
    Yes, we were doing that. The repeater is still set to 2, so it should still have the correct timings.

    Yes, we were doing that. The repeater is still set to 2, so it should still have the correct timings.

  19. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
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    J0hn and I have both had trouble with the collection side of the sand duper, even following the instructions. The water on the platform isn't instantly coming back, so items just clump up and...

    J0hn and I have both had trouble with the collection side of the sand duper, even following the instructions. The water on the platform isn't instantly coming back, so items just clump up and don't get flushed to the edges. From what I can see, the farm looks to be correct on both sides of the portal, so I have no idea why it wouldn't be working when it has been before.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    secret_online
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    @bo0tzz I had secret_offline AFKing at the witch farm and the overflow chests completely filled up, leading to the entire line of hoppers backing up. I'm thinking there should be some item...

    @bo0tzz I had secret_offline AFKing at the witch farm and the overflow chests completely filled up, leading to the entire line of hoppers backing up. I'm thinking there should be some item destruction at the end to account for the sheer number of health potions dropped by witches. Would you be ok with me adding this the next time I'm on?

    I've also thought about adding a quick filter for the undead mobs (they sink in water, so it'd be really easy before the elevator) to stop the bows and armour from filling up those chests, but I'm guessing you want those given the storage slice for bones.

    2 votes