Here’s aiming to be hopeful…

I remember back when playing DRM video in a web browser on an open source operating system seemed like a worrying impossibility. Many sites stayed stuck on closed-source flash players for that reason alone. It was a while before we ended up with this solution I only partly understand - where the DRM decoding is handled through some kind of trusted block, that generally doesn’t have full OS control?

I feel like a lot of these pointer devices miss the simplicity of a remote. A simple one will have a tough time entering passwords, but it’s perfect and simple for the most common actions: Turn on without walking across the room, open the most recent application, play the next episode of the series I was watching last, usually just by mashing confirm. (Nothing to tell it to go fullscreen: Because that’s an obvious assumption for everything)

Running it all on a PC just adds more steps, unless you follow a LOT of guides to configure it to get through those things easily.

I’d really like it if web standards were better at allowing a video website to be navigated with an “Up/Down/Left/Right/Confirm/Back” device, so that you didn’t need apps for everything. That would be good for consumer devices like Apple TVs as well as people running home PC setups.

Trails in the Sky has some interesting logic behind this where the gameplay serves the story.

You’ll do some quests for people who actually end up being evil later in the plot. There’s also party members who temporarily join you while they have time off from their other job - then as the story progresses, their “lunch break is over” and they go back to their life. So, if you try to save content for later, it won’t be there anymore.

Those little things end up putting more focus on what is accessible at a given moment, so a level 60 player isn’t going back to the starting area to wrap up quests he doesn’t care about for completion.

I had a PC connected to my tv for a while, main issue was I didn’t want to use a mouse or keyboard to interact with it. I tried desperately to get more ways of starting via controller or other lite interface devices, but nothing convenient. It was an old machine, so eventually I gave it away.

“Look at this! You can run GeForce Now on anything!

Also this thing we sell is a thing”

I’ve mostly been playing this on desktop Linux. I think the only thing they were working on was handheld optimization and interface tweaks.

There’s still one annoying bug - on Windows, the game shows a notification if a match starts while the game is off focus. On Linux, at the moment this notification would show (if alt tabbed) the game freezes.

Whut, yeden can’ fek givin’ the ritesiden? Com off yen

I don’t know if it’s “favorite”, but an old classic was Aquaria. It had a surprising amount of content, even to the point of several secret bosses, and an absolutely excellent soundtrack. Sadly, the main guy behind it is dead now. Ori was also fantastic.

I’m kinda just transitioning out now. I have some projects to wrap up on Windows 10 LTS that use programs that wouldn’t run well through WINE. When those are done, I’ll make use of Linux alternatives to that project software, and pretty much just have my Windows boot available for dire emergencies.

As it stands, most of my gaming is transitioned over, and my Windows partition just has enough space for a few games after project work.

Hm. I’ve got an Nvidia card on Cachyos, and it’s all been fine so far.

I had an issue where an upgrade broke my drivers, but that turned out to be my fault from poor understanding.

Writing as a new CachyOS user, this is like finishing a move from Florida to New York, and then learning there’s another two hurricanes headed for your old hometown.

It might be simple attachment if a character is using skeletal animation, eg Intrusion 2. That art style isn’t used often because the direct limb tweeting is often overly visible. Often, most character frames are hand drawn or at least prerendered.

In these hand drawn styles, a character’s head could appear to enter Z depth as part of the drawing (imagine a 6 frame animation of a character spinning a sword like a top). When that happens WHILE they’re also wearing an attached hat, the hat must rotate and adjust for the depth as well - which means new drawings, even if you’re able to specify the positions of the character’s head during each frame of the animation.

We could be talking past each other with bad descriptions that need visuals, though.

Yes! For instance, say you’re making a character action game about big flashy jumping attacks. It took a long time to make the attack animations and now you need to provide the player with unlockables to encourage exploring, or some DLC.

If you have a 2D game, you’d need to do a LOT to integrate any new cosmetics, or characters, into your existing protagonist. But in 3D, if your character finds a hat, it’s very simple to just attach it to the model. Even swapping to a new playable character, you can retarget animations as long as proportions are similar.

A few adult games made me realize I like the base concept of the game if it finds a way to feel rewarding and doesn’t ratchet up in difficulty (eg, mechanics that cover half the screen in stones)

Still haven’t really located a game that applies the match 3 formula in a way that makes me want to keep playing. EA’s touch is definitely one of those souring aspects.

I’ll first admit I predicted Valve wasn’t bothering with a Steam Machine again. I was proven wrong.

But I still absolutely don’t see it being more popular than the Steam Deck. They don’t have the production scale to make them at the Xbox / PlayStation hardware-per-dollar values, so they’ll still be an enthusiast item for people aware they’re buying a prebuilt PC.

So yes, you do already see this; indies target the Steam Deck as a supreme metric for Linux compatibility (and if someone complains HDR doesn’t work on his desktop Mint install, well, whatever). Valve even promotes some store presence to indies that do a bit of work to certify this. We’ve seen lots of games get patches mentioning Steam Deck related fixes - even when the game is a windows build using Proton.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/15520/AaAaAA__A_Reckless_Disregard_for_Gravity/

On a pedestrian level, I’ve really liked the slow move from “SNES aesthetic” to “PS1/PS2 aesthetic”. My first console was an N64, so I guess I never had much nostalgia for the 8-bit days, and I feel like 3D gives a lot of opportunities for intelligent asset reuse to give a game lots of content.

It’s possible placing the thumb sticks in some slightly different way helps to avoid patent issues.

I understand Valve being libertarian about not moderating people excessively, what I’d like to see are better tools like shared blocklists or general moderation for any developer that doesn’t wish to control their own Community page.

I suppose it’s not the first time Valve has counted to 3; in terms of releasing 3 projects. They released the Orange Box which had 3 games in it. But they never put out a 3rd iteration of things.

So expect this to be the last Steam Controller and Steam Machine, if we count the old 3p hardware Linux boxes and Index headset they helped with.