This is it right here, at least for me personally. I’m a huge Dragon Age fan (played through DAO and DA2 before Inquisition’s release) who has always been vaguely interested in Larian’s Divinity Original Sin games but never made them a priority in my backlog. Seeing the cinematic cutscenes and the 3rd-person voice acted dialog for BG3 made me immediately interested and now I’m 10-ish hours deep into Baldur’s Gate and loving it!

Also slowly resigning myself to DA4 not even coming close to matching BG3 in quality given the circumstances of its development.

sick! do you think you’ll ever print these physically? I’d love to pick up a copy if you ever do. :)

sick! do you think you’ll ever print these physically? I’d love to pick up a copy if you ever do. :)

I completed all of the shrines before I beat the game, and found it enjoyable. I also really enjoyed running around the depths collecting all the lightroots. I enjoy exploring caves and wells too, so that’s next on my list to complete. Grinding for armor sets is tedious to me so I’m skipping it…

That’s helpful; this sounds like a docker issue or qBit issue then. The default qBit location for torrents is /downloads, but you’d need to make sure to point it towards the container volume mapping you’re setting up in docker.

my relevant qBittorrent compose volume mapping is as follows:

    volumes:
      - /volume1/shared/torrents:/data/torrents

Personally, I don’t separate my torrent downloads by type; I use incoming & completed folders. Here’s how I set up my qBittorrent config:

This should just be part of configuring Sonarr/Radarr settings correctly. Do you have a red message in the settings that says a download client is missing, or have you filled out the download clients settings section with your torrent client info? If yes, have you checked the “auto import from client” box? and, have you set your root library folder in the media management section?

Yeah after some googling I’m kinda thinking this is a fake screenshot, idk

Damn, never seen that before. Is it a windows 11 thing? It’s looking more and more like I’ll have to move to linux on my desktop, I guess.

Edit: hard to find a source for the image; I assume if it was real there’d be a lot more reports of this online but I’m not seeing those.

Interesting! Sakurai would say keep your params out of the code, so that you can easily tweak all params in one spot when balancing things. But maybe having all params in code is reasonable to handle when you’re a solo dev.

Another vote here for ProtonVPN, though it doesn’t support port forwarding via a GUI on Linux, only OpenSSL and Wireguard configs. I set it up with gluetun, qBittorrent, and qBittorrent-natmap and and it just works.

Unfortunately migration isn’t built into Lemmy yet, but I’d guess it’s on their feature wishlist.

There were rumors based on the Steam specs that the game would be always-online, but they moved “broadband internet connection” from Minimum to Recommended specs – so at least on PC, it’s highly likely not online only.

Gunbrella is made by the folks who did Gato Roboto, which is a short and snappy metroidvania - super stoked to see they’re working on a longer game with similar vibes!

Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought the audio mixing was a little sub-par on Stray Gods. I’m left wondering if the full release is going to be like that, or if it’s just that the demo was released before they’d done a polish pass on the audio. Hopefully that’s something reviews talk about!

Stray Gods — the demo did a great job of demonstrating what the gameplay will be like! the art is gorgeous and the voice acting is solid. I just have a few minor critiques: the soundscape of the VO felt weirdly empty and echo-y. I would have loved some additional room tone ambience, additional SFX like fabric swishes when characters turn their heads: imo it needs a little something to make it all feel cohesive. The demo was also structured so that you get a taste of later songs, but without clearly communicating that the new gameplay section was from a new part of the game, which confused me. It also made it harder to care about those choices because I’m missing the context.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood — I can’t believe they let us play for so long in the demo?! I kept thinking ok it’s going to end now but it didn’t! That’s always a nice surprise in a demo. The card design mechanic was enjoyable, and detailed enough to provide room for personalization but not too complex to be overwhelming. The mechanic also appeared in an interlude where I wasn’t expecting it (which also had a later influence on dialogue) - that was a delight, and I think is a good sign of further depth in the full game. I like that the main character has a distinct personality and isn’t a generic character or too self-insert-y. Can’t wait for the full release of the game!

Venba — the demo is short and sweet, but enough to let me know I’ll like the full game. the recipes-as-puzzles is fun, and a neat introduction to the world of Indian cooking. and ofc the art and animation is lovely - I especially loved the menu and options screens.

Saltsea Chronicles — there was clearly a lot of thought and care given to this demo. I really appreciated the initial context they provided around “here’s what’s happened in the story so far”, and the little glossary pop-ups when characters used new words was a great touch. Charming characters and world building. In dialogue choices, it wasn’t clear which character you’re making the dialogue choice for, but as I got further along I think it’s more about the vibe and not picking specific dialogue choices. Keeping my eye on this one for sure!

Slay The Princess — this is an older demo that I hadn’t tried yet. 10/10, this sucked me in for several hours. There are so many interesting options and paths to choose, and the voice acting and art is amazing. I’m very curious where this will go in the full game!

I have secretly been putting off playing Oblivion and Morrowind until the modders release Skyblivion and Skywind, haha.

I did some navmesh work on personal Skyrim mods, so I’d actually be able to help out with that… I can see navmeshing being relaxing while listening to audiobooks or podcasts. If only I didn’t have so many other personal projects! 😵

It was such a huge relief when they revealed that the protagonist for Starfield would be unvoiced, and even more when they showed character backgrounds and traits in the gameplay demo last year.

We don’t have Starfield in our hands just yet, so ofc our hope could be misplaced, but based on the evidence so far, they understand what fans loved about Skyrim and earlier games and where Fallout 4 departed from that. For me, that departure was the main quest that railroaded you into a specific sort of character and the voiced protagonist limiting dialogue to “yes/sarcastic yes/yes, but I need more info/no.” Everything they’ve shown us about Starfield makes it look like we’ll be able to come up with very different characters for each of our playthroughs, and that’s exciting.

I think having one team that works on all the mainline games contributes to BGS games being what they are. I imagine it contributes to cohesion and knowledge transfer among the devs between games, which helps maintain consistency in output over time. In an age of AAA teams churning through devs with burnout and crunch, it seems like BGS keeps a team together that has multiple years of experience collaborating, and that’s a good thing.

Re: the teaser… imo, in the context of the time, people were going to believe TES had been entirely abandoned if they didn’t release that teaser. Since BGS had alternated TES and Fallout to that point, there was the expectation that TES 6 would be the next game after Fallout 4; but instead, in 2018, they announced, “Fallout 76 is next and Starfield after that, and we haven’t forgotten TES, it’s just 3rd in line.” If they’d only announced FO 76 and Starfield, TES fans would have blown up about the franchise being dead.

I honestly don’t understand why anyone is surprised by this, or why it makes them have a negative opinion of Bethesda Game Studios.

I understood when they announced that TES VI was in development that it wasn’t in active development at this time, but that the announcement was to quell the fanbase who thought TES had been entirely abandoned.

Skyrim took 3 years, Fallout 4 took 4 years, Fallout 76 took 3 years (but wasn’t a mainline game), and Starfield took 5 years, which is the longest development time for mainline games by… one year, the horror, and it’s an entirely new IP with space systems that I’m sure took additional time to develop engine-specific features to support. I anticipate TES VI will be a larger and more ambitious game than Skyrim and will be influenced by how they’ve developed Fallout 4 and Starfield, so seeing it release in 2028 with a 5 year dev time vs. Skyrim’s 3 seems entirely reasonable.

Reminds me of this neocities site that has a collection of Gameboy Camera photos collected from the internet.

Not here for games, but I want to shout out Heave-Ho! because it’s a wonderful co-op game! Goofy physics co-op platforming. :)

The game mechanic loops around unlocking new plants in Horticular are very satisfying to me, and I especially enjoyed building habitats to attract new animals to the garden. Wanting to collect all the plants and animals in the demo really sucked me in! :)

Interesting question! For me it feels like both a social group and age-based thing. I know of a couple co-workers in their upper 30s / mid 40s who play video games and we’ll chat about games very occasionally. My ex’s friends were all mid-twenties folks and gaming was one of their multiple hobbies.

But in general, I wouldn’t bring video games up with the majority of my other co-workers, and certainly not during small talk with more-or-less strangers (chiropractor, barbers, etc), whereas every other hobby I’d be cool talking to strangers about. I think I’ve been socialized to feel like gaming is “immature” and only to be talked about with other people “in the know” so I don’t feel judged for enjoying it.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

Botany Manor – low poly indie game where the puzzles are figuring out how to grow plants. the low poly is done well and feels very painterly and cozy! the puzzles feel very short and easy to solve, and I suspect that won’t really change in the full game. I’m hoping it’ll be a $10 to $15 dollar game that I can pick up and complete in a weekend.

Jusant – a slightly janky but enjoyable rock climbing game. I’d be very curious to know if actual rock climbers feel it was represented well here? I think rock climbing in general isn’t usually the focus of an entire game so it’s neat to see it become the main game mechanic here. the physics can be a bit janky if you do things that you’re probably not supposed to do (eg. I almost got stuck with the rope under a metal support beam once) but as long as you don’t try to break it, things go well. If this releases around the $20 to $30 price point it’ll be a definite buy from me.

Sticky Business – create your own stickers and sell them! the final game needs a much broader range of options for your sticker creation, and needs a better UI view of all your stickers once you start packing them for orders. the writing feels a little clunky and generic, but it helps provide a little motivation for why you’re selling the stickers. also has a slider for music in the options but was dead silent in the demo?? honestly got my fill of it during the demo so I can’t see myself picking up the full release.

Haven’t played it yet, but I’m looking forward to trying the demo of Stray Gods – it’s got the Greek Gods vibe of Hades, and I’m a Dragon Age fan so have to give it a shot for David Gaider’s writing.

Oh and I also have to plug the demo for Horticular! It’s a relaxing, gorgeous, and satisfying garden design sim. I’m super excited for the full release of the game whenever it comes out; I played ~10 hours straight last year when the demo first launched, and it looks like it’s been well polished for this year’s Next Fest.

Awe, I was hoping to see a Hadean Lands mention in the book, but it was on his “these didn’t make the book but are great” list.

The list of games written about can be found on his substack archive here: https://if50.substack.com/archive

Interesting, thanks for this! I’ve got a reasonably sized wiki I exported from TiddlyWiki into Obsidian and it works alright; but now I’m curious if Logseq would be a better fit. All my daily and review entries in TiddlyWiki were bullet-pointed, so it should feel natural in that respect.

There are 5 games on my Steam list over 100 hours, maxing out ~300 hours: Stardew Valley, Skyrim, No Mans Sky, Don’t Starve, Cyberpunk 2077

If we include Nintendo games it probably goes up to 8: BotW, TotK, Animal Crossing New Horizons.

So at the most, I’ll spend a couple months on a game before moving on - most other games I play are either quick weekend completions, or maybe take a couple of weeks to finish. Usually when I start putting months into a game I begin to seriously question whether I’m making the best use of my time and the “what am I doing with my life” itch makes me quit games for a bit. 😅

When I was in my early teens I got my hands on a copy of Photoshop 7 from my granddad and spent so much time on tutorial websites and Worth1000, messing around with the tools and making fake digital post-its and stuff like that. I think Photoshop is definitely up there in terms of complex UIs, so having that hands-on experience was crucial in learning how to learn other UIs.

It also helped that a lot of the tutorials by that point were for CS3, which had warp features that 7 didn’t have, and I had to experiment to find workarounds for the missing tools.

Never heard of them, but just looking at a registrar comparison chart, their renewal costs are pretty high. eg. $20 for .wiki renewal at Porkbun and $30 at Hover. Maybe they bundle in a lot of services along with it that make the price worth it? but unless you’re taking full advantage of those (if they’re offered) then you could def get a better deal elsewhere.

Namecheap has okay starting prices but man their renewal prices aren’t great compared to other registrars.

I just transferred all my domains out of Namecheap into Porkbun. I think Porkbun is 10 to 50 cents more expensive than Cloudflare, but they seemed a bit easier to use and could hold all my TLDs. So far, a way better experience than Namecheap!

I run a fairly comprehensive suite of *Arr apps off a Synology DS923+ and it was somewhat straightforward to set up. Note that there’s some setting with the 923 that doesn’t make it optimal for Plex and people prefer the 920 - I run Plex off an Nvidia Shield so that didn’t matter to me.

I wrote up a step-by-step installation guide for myself, mostly for reference / any future times I might need to make changes. tossed the PDF here in case you’d like to reference, though it’s a little out of date atm because I need to switch from Mullvad to ProtonVPN for port forwarding (which you can ignore if you don’t care about port forwarding): https://mega.nz/file/9pISRSqB#w_I-6gI8Ga2u_rvTGqTezmIk_-fxnmHfAr1FapFNpEM

Most of the guide was built using these two folks’ articles as reference:

• TRaSH Guides
• Dr_Frankenstein’s Synology Docker Tutorials