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Old man yells at cloud

jonandnic.com

191–200 of 239 posts

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#191

> Playing together now a means an hour of downloading content from an online service before the game even starts — and this particular game is an entirely offline one! Did nobody else spent the first 8 hours of 00s LAN parties trying to get the equipment set up, the networking to cooperate, the games shared? Then finally after a reformat of windows xp or two around 2am finally getting to the gaming? That was my only…

Ah LAN parties, AoE, BfME 2, C&C ... good days. The LAN setup times, not so much but we had it down to a spritely 1.5 hours ;)

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#192
post #39

I tried playing Civ 6 the other day with my friend, here's what happened; - Game crashed on startup - after searching online for a bit apparently changing your Steam Download Region can fix it. As in not redownloading the game from another region, just changing the setting. This worked. - Start game, started in Windowed mode and changing resolution caused the mouse to move super slowly. Restart game. Fixed. - Try to…

To be honest though, the Civilization games in particular are badly implemented. I had no end of similar issues with Civ V and Beyond Earth (didn’t play the earlier ones). I do agree with the general sentiment, but I find Civilization to be a kind of worst case scenario.

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the ability to have more than 4-5 buttons is a huge benefit It is? For whom? A few years ago, I upgraded from a 2007 Hyundai Elantra to a 2019 Subaru Legacy. The new car is better in many ways (most notably, having all wheel drive) but the HVAC situation is an absolute regression. In the old Elantra, I have physical knobs. No, not physical buttons that send digital inputs, actual physical mechanical knobs connect…

> actual physical mechanical knobs connected directly to the HVAC mechanisms I'll admit to not living in Phoenix or the like, and it did take me time to trust climate control after only having simple A/C, but I doubt I'm alone in preferring to only adjust target temperature and letting the car automatically control fan speed and vents. Dunno if Subaru is especially bad at that, but in any situation where the interior…

I used cold air and air conditioning as an example, but my problem is actually the opposite. I live in Minnesota. It gets cold here. I need a constant supply of hot air blowing at the windshield and side windows in order to keep them defrosted. Subaru, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make the "Full Auto" default to having the hot air come out of the foot vents. It also throttles the way back when it detects that the cabin is up to temperature (68°F in my case), which is ostensibly fine, but causes problems with frost. So, every time, I end up having to do a bunch of configuration to override the "smart" HVAC system in order to actually get it to appropriately balance safety and driver comfort.

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#194
post #39

I tried playing Civ 6 the other day with my friend, here's what happened; - Game crashed on startup - after searching online for a bit apparently changing your Steam Download Region can fix it. As in not redownloading the game from another region, just changing the setting. This worked. - Start game, started in Windowed mode and changing resolution caused the mouse to move super slowly. Restart game. Fixed. - Try to…

What we need is liability, and returns like in other goods.

If everyone behaved with software like when they are pissed off at shop owners for selling them faulty products, this would have been sorted out long time ago.

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#195
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire post is pretty much the definition of having rose tinted glasses when remembering the past. There was a lot of annoying shit back then too, you just choose to not retain those memories.

There's an element that all the silliness of the LAN party was technically necessary for the production, and as a grassroots thing the hardship added to the buyin and culture.

Part of the reason this was all acceptable in the LAN party era was that you were having fun together with friends while dealing with the annoyances. You could curse, you could laugh, and you could eat pizza together while you were wrestling with the faulty ethernet hub (remember those?) or whatnot. I remember I once accidentally blew a transformer at my friend's home while getting set up, and we all had a good laugh.

Nowadays, you play a game over the internet and you would be lucky to have even a friend next to you watching enthusiastically and intently.

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#196
post #82
post #39

I tried playing Civ 6 the other day with my friend, here's what happened; - Game crashed on startup - after searching online for a bit apparently changing your Steam Download Region can fix it. As in not redownloading the game from another region, just changing the setting. This worked. - Start game, started in Windowed mode and changing resolution caused the mouse to move super slowly. Restart game. Fixed. - Try to…

> Seems like we are at a point in time where the really talented people have left software engineering due to age or being promoted upwards. Agree that is a factor, but a small one. > It feels like as a collective software engineers have lost their culture and everything is too complex to grasp so we build complexity on top of a misunderstood base, and everything falls apart. Respectfully disagree here. Systems have…

4. Some countries allow the misuse of "engineering" titles even when people lack the background for having them

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#197

There was an era maybe 10-15 years ago where so many PC games were just these semi-automatic ports from the Xbox version, and they were just awful and lazy. That pretty much killed PC gaming for me. I remember it got so bad that Borderlands 2 specifically marketed on the fact that the PC version was not just a lazy port. They actually advertised that you could change the FOV.

Ah I still remember the good old days of TotalBiscuit, checking the options menu for an FOV slider for every game. I legitimately think that if it wasn’t for him, we’d still be in this rut of lazy ports. May he rest in peace.

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#199
post #32

If you showed someone from 30 years ago a modern video game, a Tesla, or even TikTok, it would absolutely blow their mind. So the author comes up with some nitpicks and declares "technology has gotten objectively worse". I guess the title checks out.

[deleted]

Re: Old man yells at cloud

#200

> Playing together now a means an hour of downloading content from an online service before the game even starts — and this particular game is an entirely offline one! Did nobody else spent the first 8 hours of 00s LAN parties trying to get the equipment set up, the networking to cooperate, the games shared? Then finally after a reformat of windows xp or two around 2am finally getting to the gaming? That was my only…

But then things improved and none of that had to be done to play with friends. We had it better then they ruined it again. I think that's the entire point.

Especially on consoles with limited patch sizes. Compare the experience of playing Call of Duty 4 on Xbox 360 to the experience of playing the newest CoD on a console. I haven't played in a long time but just reading that the first thing you have to do is download dozens of GB to play a disc you just bought is bonkers.

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