I hate using AWSD as direction keys. I don’t understand why some games refuse to map the arrow keys to the same commands, but some don’t and it becomes up to me to manually set that right before playing anything.
It irritates me so much to me that if a game doesn’t let me change the key mappings, I’m probably going for a refund rather than play at all.
Back in 2021, indie developer Wolfire filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve that accused the gaming giant of anti-competitive business practices—including a long-standing habit of taking unfair cuts from game developers on its store. Valve’s 30% fees have come under criticism before—and they are notably high when compared to some other online platforms.
Ouch. I didn’t realize they took such a big cut. On the other hand, authors trying to publish to Amazon’s kindle get hit with commissions from 30%-65% before any other fees, so Steam seems downright reasonable for that particular comparison.
From where I’m sitting, though, I’ve plenty of complicated feelings. Steam might be the best option out there, but monopolies aren’t great for anybody—at the same time, business is business.
Steam’s absurd efficiency could be a product of merciless penny-pinching from indie devs, but it’s just as likely we’re watching a well-oiled machine continue to belch out cash in an expected fashion.
Is it really a monopoly with everyone from EA to GoG delivering games? I guess it is dominant enough to count. I have a hard time complaining when employees are getting good pay and I’ve continued to get good service from them. It might get scarey if/when Gabe steps down, but this all feels pretty fair for now.
Recent big sites that closed down: Jezebel, Pitchfork, Vice, Popular Science, and my hopes for the Messenger were dashed when they announced their demise: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4440773-news-startup-the-messenger-shutting-down/
LA Times and the like are hit with layoffs and – worse – Sinclair heavyweight added the Balitmore Sun to the list of ‘compromised’ media outlets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/01/15/baltimore-sun-sold-david-smith-sinclair/
That said, there are always new sites, but gaining trust and reputation takes time.
Social sites seem doomed to crest and then fall. Digg? MySpace? Friendster? Who remembers the good old days of (moderated) UseNet? Do we want any of those back? Would any of them have remained were it not for spam/bad-actors?
I’m not the lego person, but I am not taking that selfie because: 1) I don’t want to clean the house to make it look all nice before judgey relatives critique the pic, 2) my phone is old and all its pics are kinda fish-eyed, 3) I don’t actually want to spend the time doing the task right now when AI can get me an image in seconds.
Crawford said that legislators had heard from NASA, which expressed concern about the bill’s impact on programs to develop alternative proteins for astronauts. An amendment to the bill will address that problem, Crawford said, allowing an exemption for research purposes.
Opponents of the ban have said governments shouldn’t interfere with a nascent industry because of unfounded fears over safety concerns.
The carve-out for NASA doesn’t make this bill any better. The bill is obviously stifling.
That said, I really do want some extra checks that whatever agar-like substrate meat is grown in does not leech excessive quantities of hormones (think: rBST) or other chemicals into the packaged product. I would happily eat lab-grown meat, but I want to know that it is well tested for safety.
I appreciate that the “Gradient Canopy” roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn’t do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.
The warning message said the port was not open, but my guess is that the message was inexact. I doubt the port was ever restricted at all. In fact – and with no evidence one way or the other – it wouldn’t surprise me if the only issue was my old video card and the ‘port’ error was simply the first error message the game found on initial launch. For my theory to make sense, though, some initial setup piece must have completed on 1st launch such that the 2nd launch had a newly made config file or something and that extra piece let me proceed to a more accurate error.
Ooooh, I’d like that! Well, there’s 3 parts to the (random user input / scripted game output) conundrum:
It is probably easier. I used to run a program that ran its own mini server-like process to send input to other open programs. It used local ports. It didn’t need internet, but it did need ports. My first guess is that programmers already know a bunch of dev libraries that deal with ports so it is easier to use that than write something else from scratch.
NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):
You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.
So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.
When I closed that warning, the game loaded.
@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me a queue of very British ants
style: victorianpunk
If you are looking for more info, I see that 404 media has a podcast with the book author, Byron Tau (I’ve not yet listened): https://www.404media.co/interview/
Yet Christine Blasey Ford still came forward to tell us about Brett Kavanaugh, and Congress ignored the victim AGAIN.
I prefer more casual games, but I do like Slay the Spire. I don’t think I’ve tried to get past A4. I got bored with it a while back and downloaded expansions. I LOVE Downfall and kinda like PackMaster, too. If I am feeling lazy, I will do a custom run and pick my starting cards, and choose ‘slow’ and ‘big game hunter’ options as well. It makes me overpowered, but – again – is enjoyably casual for a change.
I haven’t seen the show, but my guess is that the script numbers the kids in order of appearance – because it would be really confusing to get stuff ready if they weren’t numbered in order of appearance. Imagine reading the script and seeing a first mention of the kids like:
Ghoulish child #2 darts across the hall and disappears.
You wonder, “Was there a #1?” Then you see more ghoulish kids on the pages: 4, 7, 1, 5. Are there numbers 2 and 3? 6 or 8? How many costumes do we need, and are theses kids going to appear together? Were some cut? Did the script editor forget something?
If they are in order of appearance, then the kids with bigger/speaking parts might get higher billing, but they wouldn’t get earlier numbers since non-speaking/smaller parts appeared earlier.
FYI, the bot only summarized the first of three pages.
I was happily surprised there was a season 3 since they could have stopped at the end of season 2. I’m glad they didn’t. That said, the first two seasons had a more structured story line and I think it should have gotten awards then. Season 3 was good, but didn’t have the same cohesion. There were more stand-alone episodes. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I was happy to watch them all, but I can see where some people might feel it a weaker season because of that. Still, the show should have gotten more praise sooner.
Per reuters, the 5 unaccounted for coast guard crew have been reported as dead: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/fire-breaks-out-plane-runway-japans-tokyo-haneda-airport-nhk-2024-01-02/
For anyone wondering about the last line of the bot’s summary, the byline for the story had two authors, one of whom died in June of 2023, but probably had written the bulk of the obit in advance (which is a common thing to do for aging notables). Reporter Alex Traub contributed the rest of the obit (probably dates and details).
I agree! And I’m thankful that lots of games build that in.