Suddenly want to play Half-Life 2 again, wonder why

Is this what normies feel like when Linux users tell them to just use Linux? I have some apologies to make.

I thought they were wearing prison jumpsuits.

My opinion is the exact opposite. Narrative games, even action shooters, need to have high action and low action parts in balance. If high action segments are excessive, it can lead to combat fatigue. If low action parts are excessive, the player gets bored and the pacing dies.

Half-Life 2 E1, the “Low Lives” chapter, has probably the most stressful combat in the game because the player has to balance so many things. Shooting the zombies attacking Gordon versus helping Alyx fight. Helping Alyx versus keeping the flashlight charged. Firearms versus explosive props. All of that in oppressive darkness. Combat fatigue sets in. The short puzzle segments, even as simple as crawling through a vent to flip a switch, are opportunities to take a breath, absorb the environment, and prepare for the next segment – especially at the end of that particular chapter, when the player escapes the zombies and has a chance to wind down.

At the same time, puzzles, by their slower nature, are excellent for delivering narrative and player training, and to let the player absorb the atmosphere. Alyx’s first encounter with the stalkers in “Undue Alarm” wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact if the player could just pop them in the head and move on.

In contrast, most of “Highway 17” is just a prolonged vehicle-based puzzle. By the time the player reaches the large railway bridge, they might be sick of driving. I know I was. It’s a relief to finally engage in some platforming and long-range combat while traversing the bridge.

So what are the narrative values of my two examples? The cinderblock seesaw in “Route Kanal” is just player training. A show, don’t tell method to let the player know that physics puzzles will be a factor. It’s also a short break after the on-foot chase, before the encounter with the hunter chopper. In “Water Hazard”, the contraptions serve a larger narrative purpose: they’re the tools of the rebels’ refugee evacuation effort. The player utilizes them like one of the refugees would have.

Then you should hold yourself to higher standards than “people”.

Maybe some people, who are an ocean away from me, have been gaslit into thinking they can’t be anything other than consumers. I know it can be difficult to grasp the concept, but you can refuse a service if the terms are unacceptable. It is possible to go into a transaction with open eyes and full knowledge of the rights granted to you by law and responsibilities demanded of you by the contract.

That’s why I say “customer”. It’s a reminder to myself that I should demand equitable treatment, even if the chances are slim unless the courts get involved. You don’t have to jump into the meat grinder willingly.

consumers

This is very much a pet peeve, but be careful about how you use “consumer” versus “customer”. They each imply completely different power dynamics.

Interface configuration and DNS resolution are managed by different systems. Their file structures are different. It’s been like this for many decades, and changing it is just not worth breaking existing systems.

(I can’t believe “none pizza left beef” has a wikipedia page)

I want to see puzzles that are implemented using the physics engine. And I don’t mean “toss the axe in the proper arc to trigger the gate” physics. I mean “stack the bricks on one end of the seesaw to balance it long enough to make the jump to the next platform”. Or “use the blue barrels’ buoyancy to raise the platform out of the water”.

They absolutely are, in terms of gameplay. Ozzy Mandus and The Crank Hog Machine sacrificed most of the gameplay Frictional’s Amnesia became known for. There are no light mechanics. Barely any physics puzzles. The pigmen are braindead, which removes the challenge and the tension. Even if it’s a better story and atmosphere than The Dark Descent, it’s a lesser game. Even Still Wakes The Deep only goes as far as “throw the object to make the thing look away” when you’re not just responding to non-diegetic prompts.

You can make the argument that walking simulators have a place in the gaming landscape, and you’d be right, but by their nature, they are the exact opposite of what Bloodlines 1 was and what Bloodlines 2 should have been. Why Paradox decided it was a good idea to entrust with it a studio that has only made things that it never should have been is a fucking mystery to me.

There is a massive secondary market for in-game items (primarily CS skins) that Valve refuses to combat or even officially acknowledge. Some of it is legitimate, some of it is literal lottery for children. And since every transaction takes place on Steam, they get a cut of that.

The option doesn’t have a value. You just need to specify that the option should be present, e.g. defaults,noatime,windows_names,uid=1000,gid=1000 in fstab, or mount.ntfs -o noatime,windows_names,uid=1000,gid=1000 for manual mounts.

This comment on the UDisks github page elaborates on why the ntfs-3g driver does not automatically restrict the usable characters.

UDisks itself does mount NTFS volumes with the windows_names option, and the last comment in the same thread explains why enforcing that restriction with no way to opt out is a breaking change for some users.

uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=022,fmask=133

You can very easily fuck up your NTFS filesystem and make it unmountable in Windows. Would anyone be surprised to learn that not even Windows is fully compliant with the NTFS specifications? Some characters, like :, are valid for NTFS filenames, but illegal in Windows, and if you create such a file (e.g. in a wineprefix’s dosdevices), Windows will refuse to mount it. Ask me how I know.

The solution is to specify the windows_names option every time you mount the filesystem, both in fstab and when using mount.ntfs.

Valve revolutionized Linux gaming; Tim categorically rejects it.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams; Tim welcomed them with open arms.
Valve enforces honesty regarding AI slop; Tim wants to literally deceive people.
All that on top of what they did with third-party exclusives.

He’s like that annoying kid who didn’t get invited to a birthday party and vowed to always do the opposite of what the popular kid does. Petulant fucking overgrown child.

For over-the-shoulder games, separate field-of-view AND CAMERA DISTANCE.

For player-hosted games, an option to reject hosts using unsuitable hardware or low bandwidth, high latency networks. My gripe is specific to Warframe on the Switch 1, but if the developers of any game can’t/won’t operate public game servers and choose to offload the responsibility to the players, the choice should belong to the players.

If this is as significant an issue as you imply, please link some credible sources.

As far as I can tell, the “Chinese server” (or EU server) is just a public ID and Relay server, and necessary for the application to function unless a self-hosted server is used.

You can host the open-source ID and Relay servers for simple remote access at no cost. The pro subscription is mainly about account and device management.

services:
  hbbs:
    container_name: hbbs
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest
    command: hbbs
    volumes:
      - ./data:/root
    network_mode: "host"
    depends_on:
      - hbbr
    restart: always

  hbbr:
    container_name: hbbr
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest
    command: hbbr
    volumes:
      - ./data:/root
    network_mode: "host"
    restart: always

Then why are you complaining about not getting a Gamers Nexus video that benchmarks game performance spelled out to you when it isn’t even relevant to your use case?

Being able to use anything other than Windows without any significant loss in performance is a pretty fucking big advantage.