TwinIon

I see this a lot at work. I've tried to move some things to cloud based repositories that don't rely on traditional file structures, and our user base (primarily over 40) don't get it at all. Traditional file structures are very easy to understand, but if you've conceptualized all computing around that idea, it can be very difficult to let go of. The idea that a bunch of STEM profs would be inflexible doesn't surprise me at all. I remember at least one prof that had their own physical linux box that we had to ssh into to drop off our programing assignments in very specific folder structures, so their automated testing routine could go through and grade us. Any mild deviation in naming schemes would mean our assignment wouldn't be counted.

I honestly have no idea what it means for the future of this law that the first suit is being brought by someone from outside Texas who doesn't seem to really care about abortion. On the one hand it highlights the insanity of the law, on the other it feels like this particular suit may get thrown out on other grounds and leave the law intact.

Good one. I was just complaining about this in the Deathloop thread. It should be illegal to show that prompt in any game when there's nothing left to save, but especially when there is no manual save option. If you have unsaved progress, it should ask you if you want to save (or tell you what you need to do in order to save, i.e. progress to a checkpoint, etc.) otherwise it should just let you quit without making you think that maybe there's something unsaved.

I continue to love this show. The most recent episode (Atlantic City) had us laughing pretty hard at a few things. I found the "I'm more of a 12 guy" bit hilarious, and I loved Nandor's obsession with the Big Bang Theory slot machine.

While not quite the same thing as slow walking for asset loads or story, I hate climbing sections in modern games that are super linear. It's become the anti-platforming segment that was never a good idea, but has felt really outdated since the first AC. Assassin's Creed came out in 2007! A lot of these games have some similar (if slightly more limited) climbing systems. Of what interest is it to me as a player to mindlessly climb from yellow handhold to yellow handhold? Even worse, it's nearly automated in many games, so I'm not timing jumps or really doing anything other than pushing forward and jumping. Sure, they can make it really "cinematic" but it's boring as hell to play. Sometimes games will try and spice things up by not coloring the handholds, but they still only make a single possible route through some cave or tomb or whatever. So now I'm mindlessly moving through this space, but every once in a while I jump towards a ledge that looks like I should be able to grab it, but I fall to my death because it's not "the way." I blame Naughty Dog, but there are tons of games that do this. I loved Horizon Zero Dawn and its great big world to explore however I wanted. They clearly had some kind of generic climbing system, but they'd still throw in the odd climbing section.

The combination of these is Far Cry 5. For those unfamiliar, there are a few points in the game where you suddenly get kidnapped by the baddies and there's nothing you can do.

After ~15 hours I've finished the game and most of what I said in my last post holds as my final impressions. I wish there was more out of order discovery, finding a puzzle piece before understanding where it fits or solving a puzzle before I'd been asked to. It really would have encouraged and rewarded a more natural sense of discovery. That said, there is still a lot to discover, and even if you're being pointed in the right direction, it's still fun to explore. While you're not rewarded with early solutions or answers, what you are rewarded with is the knowledge of alternative routes or different ways to accomplish an objective. What the game lacks in freestyle discovery, it makes up for in freestyle game play. I changed my play style a few times in Deathloop, and each way I approached things was both fun and viable. I went in like a telekinetic tank, bursting in guns blazing and tossing henchmen around like rag dolls. I went in silently, getting in and out without anyone noticing. I'd sometimes do both, sneaking to an objective and fighting my way out when things went south. After finishing the game I looked up some videos of how people approached the final day, and while the order of events is the same, the routes, loadouts, powers, and where and when each video and myself used were all different. It was fun to watch a video of a level that I must have replayed 20 times (many of those because the game crashed..) and see routes I never found, and different assassination options I didn't know existed. Two of my pet peeves in games are when the game doesn't respect the players' time and when a game preaches options but forces you through a narrow gameplay funnel. Deathloop excels in both these areas, especially the second. The gameplay options are really robust, and have me thinking about going through the whole thing again just to do it a different way. It's also really good about not wasting your time when you don't want to. It's always giving you objectives such that it's almost impossible to get really stuck or lost. The only time the game really feels like it's not respecting my time is when I was invaded while in the middle of sneaking through a level, and even that wasn't a big deal most of the time. The difference between a human invader and the AI is pretty incredible though. The game is very easy, especially giving multiple revives available to you each time you start a segment. Killing AI invaders is not typically difficult, though sometimes they'd run and hide and it wouldn't be worthwhile to seek them out. With human invaders, it can be a real challenge. I haven't really spent any time invading myself, and I'm not sure if I'll bother. I can't help but wish the game was a bit longer or maybe a bit harder, but thats mostly because I want more reasons to keep playing. I did get crashes throughout my time with the game, maybe a total of 10 or so. In one particular instance I found a way to crash the game on demand, which was fun. Overall a great game I was happy to spend time with.

Are LED screens like this in any way cost competitive with projectors in a cinema? I know projectors aren't cheap and they burn through bulbs, but I'd have to imagine that they're going to be so much cheaper than a wall of LEDs that it wouldn't even be comparable.

Not having a flashlight. I've been playing Deathloop and still playing Destiny 2. Both use primarily baked lighting but both clearly have some support for dynamic lighting on top. Both often have you going into dark areas, but neither lets you turn on a flashlight. In Destiny there's an automatic flashlight in some areas, but you can't manually turn it on. In Deathloop it's a real frustration. I've got a great OLED display where blacks are black, but I can either have a good looking game, or one where I turn the gamma and brightness up to the point where I've got a nice gray layer over everything, but I can see stuff I'm supposed to see. Just give me a freaking flashlight already! I really hoped that Doom 3 would spell the end of this trend, but no such luck. I have a number of pet peeve mechanics, but I don't know if they really qualify as outdated, even if they were much more common in older games. A good example is the instant fail stealth mission. A lot more games take a more open approach now, where stealth is an option, but even in those games there are usually sections that instantly fail you if you're spotted.

Two extremely minor things: -I wish you could autofill any code or password you know. It's kind odd that the functionality exists, but I have to refer back to my discoveries for a code that only has one solution. -It should be illegal for a game to ask "Are you sure you want to quit? Quitting now will lose any unsaved progress" when there is no unsaved progress. Deathloop is far from unique in this regard, but I hate it every time I see it. Especially in a game that doesn't really have a save system. Great game though. Even as someone who regularly plays games on Easy, this could use a bit more difficulty that isn't from other players invading. I suppose that might make the exploration more challenging, so it's a fine line for sure, but it's pretty easy to clear out basically every enemy in an area if things go sideways. I kind of wish there was a bit more Outer Wilds / Witness level of discovery. There's a lot of "discover thing, go to different area at different time, find code / power door / whatever, go through door in different area at different time with new code", but there's a very prescribed way to do all of it. I don't know if it's mild length padding, or a technical issue, or they just want to make sure they tell all the story, but there's very little that you can find out of order. Maybe it would make things too messy in this otherwise very neat package, but it does take away from some of the genuine discovery other games might give you. There hasn't been any time where I've felt like I figured something out early or without some direction. Early in the game I spent quite a while in one area, trying to find everything I could, given that I'd gotten into a firefight and had to kill everyone. After making more than a few loops around the entire zone, I determined there wasn't much else I could do at this stage. It turns out that there was plenty more to find, but I wouldn't have access until I'd completed a few other things. That kind of dissuaded me from veering too far off course in the future. It was much more efficient to simply follow the objectives rather than wasting time trying to get somewhere locked before my time. The flip side of that is the game does allow for a huge variety in how you approach situations. Yeah, in a few scenarios you're not supposed to get caught before getting to an objective, but most of the time there are multiple ways to get anywhere, and any number of combat scenarios that can play out. The powers are varied, the maps are open, the guns feel good but none are overpowered to the point where I'm invincible. There's one location (the party) that I've toyed with a few times to find the best route and that's been a satisfying experience.

Well, pretty much all my questions were answered after another 20min or so of playtime. Your first full loop or two the game is deciding where you go, but pretty quickly you get to the primary loop of the game and you're deciding where to go when. I also pretty quickly felt powerful enough to fight off waves of enemies or more capably sneak through them once I found a silent weapon. My biggest problem with the game so far is the multiple crashes I've experienced (on the PC). Game seems to be running well enough, but complete crashes are a bummer. I'm also not really sold on the multiplayer aspect. As someone that is pretty poor at competitive multiplayer, it doesn't really appeal to me. I've been invaded by a couple actual players, and they've both had much better powers and guns than I do at my early stage. I'm not sure what the benefit is other than hoping they bring those things to me, or the challenge of real players. Thankfully, it's optional, so I've just turned it off for now.

Not a big surprise after the disagreement over Tenet's release. The Manhattan Project story seems like a good fit for Nolan. I'd argue that his last WW2 movie is probably his best film, so I'm excited about this.

Played through a tiny bit this morning. It's very charming, seems very polished, the guns feel great. It is trying really hard not to be frustrating, at least at the beginning. It gives you clear objectives and waypoints, and it keeps track of everything for you very well. They may have used a structure similar to Outer Wilds, but Deathloop begins by pointing you in a direction and consistently re-enforcing what you're trying to do and where you're doing it. By giving you checkpoints where it even saves inventory items, it's trying very hard to make sure you don't run into the common pain points associated with rougelikes or other looped games. The one thing not immediately clear to me is what the effect of "moving time forward" is. When you complete your primary objective in an area, you can move on. This resets you to full health and ammo, you keep everything you've found, and the story moves on. The game is very reassuring in that you'll have the opportunity to come back and explore and doubtless find many secrets, but I'm not sure if moving forward in time will mean that when I come back the area might be more or less guarded, or any different at all (other than presumably a different objective). I'm not very worried about it, as I'm pretty confident the game won't let me miss anything too dramatic, and right now I feel rather under-powered to clear out too much.

A rather tame report.

It's been a one way continuity with all the Marvel TV shows until the Disney+ series, though it seems that might be changing now.

So, PC or PS5?

I agree the SSO stuff is a mess, and it's a good point of reference for what IAP could become with this decision. You'll have Apples' own way to do a thing (that is required), and then you'll have third party systems that will only be allowed under specific circumstances while following Apples' rules (that happen to be designed specifically to disadvantage the third party systems). As for scummy apps, I just bring that up as a disappointing outcome of this, not something that should govern any decisions. If the judge had been a tiny bit more broad, we might see a bunch of apps move from not allowing IAP of any kind, to implementing their own payment systems. Kindle is the easiest example, but there are plenty of others like Hey that would probably allow you to sign up. Instead, the continued requirement of Apple's IAP will likely mean those apps will continue to avoid IAP of all kinds. Meanwhile, we'll probably get to at least get a glimpse of what apps without an IAP requirement might look like thanks to South Korea.

This interesting interpretation from The Verge pitches the idea that the key wording is the difference between "button" and "external link." That is, it's reasonable to conclude that the difference isn't visual, but functional. An external link sending you to a web page is one thing, and a button that opens an alternative in-app payment mechanism is another. The real key from that piece though is that the court has said it will strictly enforce this judgement and so there's going to be some real back and forth between Apple and developers, and the court will decide what the line is. The more I think about it, the more I think that will also determine the requirement to use Apple's IAP. Those words "in addition to" are doing a lot of work. I'm sure that Apple will read that as "you can't include these links or even the call to action to pay elsewhere unless you also implement IAP." I think that's a very frustrating outcome, since it would mean big companies like Netflix or Amazon would continue to avoid in app purchases because they don't want to send any money to Apple, but scamy little games will throw tons of external links at people and try every dark pattern in the book to push their victims toward their payment systems. The other thing that will be interesting to watch is how Apple denies the apps that push this too far. There are a million stories out there of devs who were rejected by the app store and never given a good reason, or given reasons that didn't make sense, or reasons that were obviously not the case. In pretty much all these stories, they're not getting much info from Apple as to what they actually did wrong. If Apple just sends vague rejections, it might take some real effort to get the courts involved, because it's unlikely to be obvious that any given rejection was because of IAP issues.

That part of the judgement is describing existing IAP models used in other products and noting that if Apple did change to one of those that they'd still get their cut. The "all models" refereed to there are "current e-commerce models" that experts testified to (presumably Google's, Amazon's, Microsoft's, etc.). All it's really saying is that under any existing in app purchase model, the platform maker gets their cut, it's not describing the remedy enacted by the judge. At least, that's how I read that section, I'm not a lawyer.

As was always going to be the case, Apple as a monopolist depends on how you define the market, and the judge didn't buy either definition. Instead she defined it as "digital mobile gaming transactions," which is why I don't think this will affect console stores but will likely apply to Google. Reading the injunction, I'm not entirely clear on where the line is. Can you implement full on Google or Amazon Pay buttons in your app like you see on many websites? Will they actually allow product level links like that old Kindle app, or is Apple going to try and force a single link out like they recently announced? Perhaps most importantly, can you implement an alternative payment button without offering Apple's IAP? The order does say "in addition to IAP" so perhaps not? If you are required to provide IAP, can you price things differently? Can you simply charge 30% more through IAP than you do if you pay directly? There's a lot of nuance here that will determine how big of a deal this ends up being. From Sweeney's reaction, it seems like he doesn't think a link out to alternative payment counts as real competition to In-App payment options. I suppose they'd hold out if you're required to implement Apple IAP while also offering other options.

Wolverine is good, but Insomniac Wolverine is great.

Every Deathloop trailer feels like it's trying really really hard to explain the premise. I just hope it's fun.

The gameplay looked great, but something seemed off to me with the faces. Animations maybe? Or was that just me?

I'm totally up for a Dark Souls quality KOTOR remake.

If anything, I'd think that no longer throwing cash down that money pit would make infrastructure spending more palatable.