zoroa's recent activity

  1. Comment on Cartoons such as Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, or Avatar? in ~tv

    zoroa
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    There's a lot I don't like about Korra Weak spoiler for end-of-season action scene. Why were giant mech battles how TWO seasons ended?! But it's hard not to acknowledge how the show runners swung...

    There's a lot I don't like about Korra

    Weak spoiler for end-of-season action scene. Why were giant mech battles how TWO seasons ended?!

    But it's hard not to acknowledge how the show runners swung for the fences in both series with the themes they portrayed in a children's show.

    Spoiler for a theme in Season 4 of Korra Korra's journey with PTSD was one of my earliest exposures to the idea, and felt like a very powerful depiction of how trauma can trap someone.
    1 vote

  2. Comment on Cartoons such as Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, or Avatar? in ~tv

    zoroa
    Link Parent
    I'm assuming you mean the series from 2003 and not the reboot. I hadn't thought about that in forever, and now I'm awash in a wave a nostalgia for that show.

    I'm assuming you mean the series from 2003 and not the reboot.

    I hadn't thought about that in forever, and now I'm awash in a wave a nostalgia for that show.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on Steam refund policy update - "Advanced Access" now counts towards refund window in ~games

    zoroa
    Link Parent
    Valve updated their refund policy to explicitly call out both "Early Access" and "Advanced Access": Taken from: https://www.theverge.com/24138776/steam-refund-policy-change

    Valve updated their refund policy to explicitly call out both "Early Access" and "Advanced Access":

    Here’s what Valve’s updated refund policy says about that as of today:

    REFUNDS ON TITLES PURCHASED PRIOR TO RELEASE DATE

    When you purchase a title on Steam prior to the release date, the two-hour playtime limit for refunds will apply (except for beta testing), but the 14-day period for refunds will not start until the release date. For example, if you purchase a game that is in Early Access or Advanced Access, any playtime will count against the two-hour refund limit. If you pre-purchase a title which is not playable prior to the release date, you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title, and the standard 14-day/two-hour refund period will apply starting on the game’s release date.

    Compare to earlier this month:

    REFUNDS ON PRE-PURCHASED TITLES

    When you pre-purchase a title on Steam (and have paid for the title in advance), you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title. The standard 14-day/two-hour refund period also applies, starting on the game’s release date.

    Taken from: https://www.theverge.com/24138776/steam-refund-policy-change

    10 votes

  4. Comment on Steam refund policy update - "Advanced Access" now counts towards refund window in ~games

    zoroa
    Link
    Was it widely known that playtime in Early Access didn't count towards the refund period? The "new" policy had always been my interpretation of Steam's Refund Policy, so I'd always be super wary...

    Was it widely known that playtime in Early Access didn't count towards the refund period?

    The "new" policy had always been my interpretation of Steam's Refund Policy, so I'd always be super wary of going beyond that until I was sure I wanted to keep the game.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    zoroa
    Link Parent
    I'm pretty sure I hit 60 hours for the first Octopath, and howlongtobeat suggests Octopath Traveler II is in the same boat

    I went into this one completely blind and I have no clue if I'm in for another 10 hours or if it will be a 100+ hour grindfest, like Dragon Quest 11 turned into.

    I'm pretty sure I hit 60 hours for the first Octopath, and howlongtobeat suggests Octopath Traveler II is in the same boat

    1 vote

  6. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    zoroa
    Link
    Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising I'm still on my JRPG arc. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes releases tomorrow, 2024-04-23, and I'm really excited. Coming into the weekend, I figured I'd whet my appetite...

    Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising

    I'm still on my JRPG arc. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes releases tomorrow, 2024-04-23, and I'm really excited. Coming into the weekend, I figured I'd whet my appetite by playing the first game in the series: Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising.

    Rising was the stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign that brought Hundred Heroes to life. That context was constantly top of mind, since my entire playthrough screamed: "We just need to get this out the door as efficiently as possible so we can work on Hundred Heroes". That framing was unreasonably good at rationalizing why I liked and disliked parts of this game.

    The art was by far my favorite part of the experience. The environments are gorgeous, and punch so far above the weight of everything else this game has to offer. The spritework done for the main characters and a few side characters is also great. I wouldn't be surprised if these art assets were re-used in Hundred Heroes to justify the disproportionate effort investment.

     

    That investment of effort probably wasn't something the developers could extend very far, which would explain the rest of the game felt so flat.

     

    The storytelling is anemic.

    The plot is weak, and never evolves much beyond its premise of "an adventurer leaves home for a coming of home adventure". That "adventure" is entirely comprised of helping towns people with menial tasks (side quests) until the main character falls into a "mystery" most of the way through the game.

    Every single one of the roughly 130 side quests, and a good chunk of the 31 main quests, is a fetch quest. Either "go to find a resource for me", or "go kill a monster and get this drop for me", or "go around town and talk to this person for me". The last one being the source of one especially egregious quest, where I had to talk to someone, then relay a message to the person 2 steps to their right, and then go back to end the quest. The repetition wouldn't be that bad if the quests provided some exposition about the world or an avenue to develop characters, but they don't. It's always a sentence or two of bland flavor text to initiate the quest, and at the end it's more bland flavor text of the main character asking for their reward.

    All of the characters are flat. Dialogue is only used as a utility to move the game along, seldom provides any insight that elevates the characters out of the archetypes they were introduced as, and further highlights how repetitious this game is. The only reason I even remember the main character's name is because of a gag that happens at the end of the game.

     

    Movement in the hub town feels sluggish and awkward. My entire playthrough was spent wishing I could move faster in the town. A wish exacerbated by the jerky running animations that make the characters look less like people and more like marionettes. I'd guess this is why the game immediately gives you access to fast travel in the town, that you can always access with a button press.

     

    The combat is... fine? Rising is a Hack-and-Slash Action RPG, with some borrowed elements from metroidvanias (backtracking, light platforming, 2.5D). Combat at the beginning of the game feels really rough, since you're missing a lot of what other hack and slash games would start you out with (upwards and downwards attacks, longer combos). The RPG systems (accessories, magic, weapon/armor buffs) all felt cosmetic, in that they were just stat buffs that felt imperceptible in an already too easy game.

    Despite all of those negatives, I didn't hate my time with the game. I was eventually frustrated by some background music I found repetitive, turned off the game audio, and turned on the podcast. The game started to really work for me at that point; its repetitiveness meant that I didn't really have to pay that much attention. I could just enjoy the eye candy as I mindlessly worked through the dungeons and the side quests.

    It is a shame that the storytelling was so weak. Rising takes place in a contemporary time period to Hundred Heroes, with many of the characters in Rising set to appear in Hundred Heroes (I'd imagine that's all the characters with impressive character design). Investing in the story, worldbuilding, and characters would have made for a strong payoff going into Hundred Heroes.

    I don't know that I really got anything out of playing this game, other than the Marvel-esque after-credits scene that teases the conflict in Hundred Heroes. Nor do I think I would even started (read paid for) the game had it not been bundled in my Gamepass subscription.

    2 votes

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

    zoroa
    Link
    I finally pulled the trigger on getting on home server going. I suspect @artvandelay and I both found similar resources, since I also ended up getting an HP Elitedesk 800 PC (I got a mini instead...

    I finally pulled the trigger on getting on home server going. I suspect @artvandelay and I both found similar resources, since I also ended up getting an HP Elitedesk 800 PC (I got a mini instead of the SFF one).

    I got proxmox and home assistant running surprisingly quickly. Took maybe 20 minutes.

    But the whole process has me feeling... uncomfortable?

    I have learned absolutely nothing so far, and have gained no tools for navigating home server administration with any confidence. I have no clue

    • What the tradeoffs were when I chose proxmox vs anything else (docker, bare metal)?
    • How I should be thinking about backups?
    • If there's some way I could be documenting my server configuration as code, so I can drop it into a git repo.
    • How I should be approaching the other stuff I want to use my server for that wasn't just a "download this script that sets up a proxmox vm for you".

    Most of the home server/homelab documentation has either felt like:

    • Guides targeting people who don't care about the technical details and just want something that works
    • Reference documentation for the IT professional

    I am in the middle and still feel very lost.

    I tried to fix some of my old phones

    I had some old phones with broken displays that I wanted to get running again to use as a secondary device. The phones worked fine other than the broken screens; I'd used both in the past year by mirroring them to my computer with scrcpy (one on the day I did the repairs).

    But somehow managed to brick both devices?

    I replaced the battery and display on the first phone, but was never able to get it to show any sign of life.

    I replaced the display on the second, and everything seemed to be working initially. But after a full boot, the device suddenly turned off and has not even vibrated since.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on Looking for advice on replacing my motherboard in ~tech

    zoroa
    Link
    Given the price sensitivity, and the fact that you are fine with your current performance, you're probably right that it's not worth the CPU upgrade. Though to give some context on what you can...

    Because, unlike me, most Tildes users are in the US, Canada, and Europe, when taking prices into account, multiply them by 5 in your head to have a sense of what that expense means in my country.

    Given the price sensitivity, and the fact that you are fine with your current performance, you're probably right that it's not worth the CPU upgrade.

    Though to give some context on what you can do: you're actually in a position for a decent CPU upgrade. Your motherboard is compatible with AMD's 5000 series CPUs, which is two generations newer than what you have. You'd enjoy a pretty sizeable performance lift, and many of the better CPUs in that generation have been coming down in price (in North America atleast). (I recently did a CPU upgrade from a CPU in the same generation as yours to the 5700x for around $150 USD).

    Under the assumption that you're looking for the cheapest solution here, getting the same (or another motherboard compatible with the rest of your current build) would probably make the most sense.

    Getting a more recent motherboard for AMD or Intel would require that you update other parts of your PC simulatenously (RAM + CPU).

    You may be able to find an open box/refurbished motherboard for relatively cheap.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on Hades II - Technical test sign ups now available in ~games

    zoroa
    Link
    SuperGiant is currently livestreaming gameplay from their technical test: https://www.twitch.tv/supergiantgames

    SuperGiant is currently livestreaming gameplay from their technical test: https://www.twitch.tv/supergiantgames

    7 votes

  10. Comment on How can I completely and permanently remove the ability to access the internet from a Debian derivative? in ~tech

  11. Comment on An honest assessment of American rural white resentment is long overdue in ~misc

    zoroa
    Link Parent
    My understanding is that it's typically frowned upon to dump full articles in thread comments on Tildes

    My understanding is that it's typically frowned upon to dump full articles in thread comments on Tildes

    11 votes

  12. Comment on Megathread: April Fools’ Day 2024 on the internet in ~talk

    zoroa
    Link
    Landfall Games released Content Warning, a clone of Lethal Company, that's free to claim until April 2nd

    Landfall Games released Content Warning, a clone of Lethal Company, that's free to claim until April 2nd

    8 votes

  13. Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc

    zoroa
    Link
    All you have to do is start. by @LifeOfRiza Life of Riza's videos give me nostalgia for Casey Neistat at the peak of his daily vlog series. She's able to use incredible cinematography and great...

    All you have to do is start. by @LifeOfRiza

     

    Life of Riza's videos give me nostalgia for Casey Neistat at the peak of his daily vlog series.

    She's able to use incredible cinematography and great storytelling skills to elevate what could otherwise be a boring video of her engaging in the mundanity of working on her house.

     

    A Yuzu Post-Mortem: The Great Emu-War, Pt. 2 by @MoonChannel

     

    A lawyer provides a legal analysis of the suit that Nintendo brought against Tropic Haze LLC., developers of the the Nintendo Switch Emulator Yuzu:

    The Great Emu-War continues. Yuzu, once the leading Nintendo Switch emulator, has been sued out of existence by Nintendo of America. In so doing, Nintendo has revealed its complete hand, and we have, arguably for the first time, a clear look at Nintendo's complete legal strategy against emulation.
    In this episode, we'll break down exactly what Nintendo's argument is, and look also at the mistakes Yuzu made which allowed Nintendo to put the squeeze on them.

    2023 was a Terrible Year to Look for a Publisher.... (and 2024 is Worse) by @Noclip

     

    Noclip, video game documentarians, have been developing a video game in effort of documenting parts of development that are otherwise hard to shine a light on.

    In this video, they discuss their struggles looking for a publisher for their video game during 2023.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on Redis adopts dual source-available licensing in ~tech

    zoroa
    Link
    Update: Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Valkey Community This seems to continue a pattern of: "Open Source project gets popular. Project relicenses to be more commercially viable. A fork of...

    Update: Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Valkey Community

    Today, the Linux Foundation announced its intent to form Valkey, an open source alternative to the Redis in-memory, NoSQL data store. Project contributors quickly gathered maintainer, community, and corporate support to regroup in response to the recent license change announced by Redis Inc. Valkey will continue development on Redis 7.2.4 and will keep the project available for use and distribution under the open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) 3-clause license.

    This seems to continue a pattern of: "Open Source project gets popular. Project relicenses to be more commercially viable. A fork of the pre-relicensed repo is created and maintained by the Linux Foundation".

    Previous example: Linux Foundation Launches OpenTofu: A New Open Source Alternative to Terraform

    2 votes

  15. Comment on In the AI era, is translation already dead? in ~humanities.languages

    zoroa
    Link Parent
    I'm kicking myself because I remember reading (listening to? watching?) something where a translator was making a similar conclusion, but I can't find it either. The translator made a point where...

    I read an interesting interview with a professional translator a while back — Unfortunately, I'm not able to find it anymore.

    I'm kicking myself because I remember reading (listening to? watching?) something where a translator was making a similar conclusion, but I can't find it either. The translator made a point where there are domains where the cost of a machine mistranslating a document can be tremendous (e.g. contract law).

    Separately, the video 999 - How to Make Good Use of Bad Language by Aquason was on an eye opener on how much of an art a good translation/localization is.

    The author uses the lens of a video game localization to explore how a translator chooses to represent Japanese "profanity" in English. A process which has a surprising amount of depth, since there isn't a clear 1-to-1 for how swearing is done in English vs Japanese.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Suyu Switch emulator in ~games

  17. Comment on What anime do you think could have strong crossover appeal if correctly publicized? in ~anime

    zoroa
    (edited )
    Link
    Shonen Anime, and especially Battle Shonen, tends to get conflated with the entire medium in conversation since it's the most popular genre. Anime is a really broad medium, and there is a bunch of...

    Shonen Anime, and especially Battle Shonen, tends to get conflated with the entire medium in conversation since it's the most popular genre. Anime is a really broad medium, and there is a bunch of it that side steps a lot of shonen's very obvious faults (fan service, trope-y action, etc...).

    I'm a diehard subtitle user, but have marked a couple series that have very good english dubs.

    A couple series that may appeal to folks who enjoy dark/gritty dramas (a la HBO):

    Over-the-top comedy in an every day setting (loosely in the same vein as The Office, Arrested Development, etc...)

    A couple series that I think would be easy recommends, but don't have an easy parallel to media that's been insanely popular.

    To follow his brother Hibito to the moon, Mutta will attempt to become an astronaut at the age of 32. Unaware of his own talent, Mutta chases his dreams to get back in front of his younger brother.

    The series follows Kaoru Nishimi, an intelligent, introverted first-year high school student from a wealthy family who moves cities frequently as a result of his father's career. He has consequently never made lasting friendships, but discovers jazz music after meeting classmates Sentarō Kawabuchi and Ritsuko Mukae

    edit: Vindland -> Vinland

    6 votes

  18. MangaLove, a series sharing thread: March 2024

    ~anime Ask (recommendations)
    Choose one series that you love that you think deserves more love Tell us what it is, and why. Previous posts in the series Additional Details Why MangaLove? Finding new series is hard! The medium...

    Choose one series
    that you love
    that you think deserves more love

    Tell us what it is, and why.

    Previous posts in the series

    Additional Details

    Why MangaLove?

    Finding new series is hard! The medium continues to become more mainstream and accessible, but that hasn't changed the fact that there's a lot of stuff to consume and few ways to find something you may like.

    MangaLove offers an opportunity to sift through series loved by others, including those who might have divergent tastes from you. Think of this as an opportunity to venture outside of your comfort zone, with a series that you know someone else adores, from a small pool of thoughtful hand-selected options.

    Is this just for Manga? Can I share Anime, or Manhwa, or...

    Feel free to share any Anime, Manga, Manhwa, or Manhua that you love!

    What do I post?

    Any series that you love and that you feel deserves more appreciation. There are no restrictions on genre, year, or anything else, and nothing is “too popular” or “too niche”. If you think it needs more love — for whatever reason — then it’s welcome in MangaLove.

    Please make sure to include:

    • The series name
    • The author
    • A short description of the premise
    • What you love about the series. It could be the story, the art, but it could also be your associations with it -- maybe the series reminds you of someone you love, or the period in your life when you first consume it.

    Also, commenting on others' recommendations is encouraged! If you love something that someone else shared, let them know!

    Do I have to watch/read to what everyone else posts?

    Nope. You don't have to consume anything you don't want to. This is about creating a menu of options that people can explore as they wish.

    Can I post more than one series in a month?

    Nope. Limit one! This helps us be more selective about what we choose, as well as preventing the threads from getting flooded with too many contributions to keep track of.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Amtrak adds more service throughout the US Northeast Corridor to meet growing demand in ~transport

    zoroa
    Link Parent
    When I used to do this trip semi-regularly, I used to have to book atleast a couple weeks in advance to get a more reasonable price (~$50) on Amtrak. Especially when it coincided with university...

    When I used to do this trip semi-regularly, I used to have to book atleast a couple weeks in advance to get a more reasonable price (~$50) on Amtrak. Especially when it coincided with university breaks (like right now with spring break).

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Looking for songs that include recordings of commentary in ~music

    zoroa
    Link
    At 6:11 into the song, Malcolm's Theme by Kamasi Washington layers an exerpt of Malcolm X's "Speech at Ford Auditorium" over the instruments looping the song's verse.

    At 6:11 into the song, Malcolm's Theme by Kamasi Washington layers an exerpt of Malcolm X's "Speech at Ford Auditorium" over the instruments looping the song's verse.

    1 vote