What have you been playing recently? (Other than KSP)

[Ben J. Kerman]

A lot of FSX, Emergency HQ (Do mobile games count? I haven't been able to get any of the Emergency games on PC yet), and I've been trying out OpenTTD recently. 

[Varix]

 

A lot of Spiderman...

 

 

Honestly loving this game

 

[Toaster355]

B3313.

This game... is terrifying. But somehow addictive too! It is the largest Super Mario 64 ROM hack ever made; it feels basically endless, no matter how much you've played. And I haven't heard of or played any other game in my life that captures the feeling of a dream any better than this.
Here's some random screenshots:

[AstroWolfie]

I beat Fallen Order on Sunday.

[TwoCalories]

I got onto my Minecraft survival world again to do some mining. I got about a stack of iron and I now have the in-place infrastructure (a proper mine) to start mining for rarer ores.

That being said, no self-respecting Minecrafter like myself can just leave the mine as a hole in a mountain. So I decorated it. Whatta ya think?

And now that I was properly equipped with iron gear, it was time to go out at night to do some mob hunting.

It was also at this point that I realized I had Replay Mod installed, so I had way too much fun going back in the footage and taking sick action shots.

Unfortunately, since it's been a while since I've gone mob hunting, I'm a bit rusty in predicting if I can sneak in one more hit on a creeper before I have to back away to prevent it from exploding. Next time I play, I'll get to do the absolute treat that is filling in creeper holes.

[Kerbalsaurus]

I've begun working on a city called the Mass Urbanization Project (MUP). The goal of MUP is to make virtually every ounce of the map covered in some sort of building. The map being used is the Islands map. One challenge I'm setting for myself is to have the city easily accessible to public transport, both from the inside and the outside. This includes metro stations, buses, and a train into the city. I'm going for a very futuristic look for the city, almost like a lot of Synthwave drawings.

Downtown with a space elevator (middle-left)

Progress so far.

Islands Map (image credit of Elvenkind on Steam Community)

On the inside circle of highway is where I will put high density residential, commercial, and office zones. This is pretty much the beating heart of the city. On the outside will be various industries, from vanilla industry to oil, ore, and farming, with the occasional outcrop of high density residential so people can get to their jobs. My computer will probably explode trying to run this project, but it's worth a shot.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Kerbalsaurus
Fixed and added links to image credit

[Kerbalsaurus]

The project continues, with our finished downtown! A few things I might want to change later on, but overall I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Also, I finally have a name for the city: Urbanrow. I think it's a very fitting name for such a city.

Urbanrow in its current state.

[Superfluous J]

On 12/10/2023 at 4:05 PM, Kerbalsaurus said:

Mass Urbanization Project (MUP)

I used to do similar in Sim City. I did it first in SC2K and named the city "Den City." I actually achieved maximum population possible, with arcologies on every possible square.

In SC3K I tried again and named it "New Den City" and it was much harder than with the simple simulation in 2K, but I was able to get a pretty big (and dense) city eventually.

I never played SC5K but I tried to mimic New Den City in both Cities XL and Cities Skylines. I could never keep it going to the big time, which is something I attribute to their even better simulations. People just don't want to live in an endless morass of concrete and steel, no matter what New Yorkers think

 

[TwoCalories]

So, I ventured back into the world of Minecraft PvP again...

Last time I talked about it, I was kind of sore about losing like seven Duels in a row, but I played some good 'ol Bedwars, and I had a really fun match.

Rather than do my usual tactic of being a coward and staying at the starting island defending the Bed, I did what the others usually do and just gear lightly and run out to the Middle Island. It was a lot more fun, and I could get better gear, which leveled the playing field a bit.

I had a really fun match and my team actually won (I got several kills with my sword and actually destroyed the other team's Bed for the first time in my Bedwars experience!) and more importantly, I discovered that I might have just been terrible at Duels, not PvP in general. Which is kind of nice.

I didn't get pics though, because Replay Mod wasn't working.

[Chel]

IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles has been my go to recently. Just something about actually 'flying' an aircraft as opposed to something like War Thunder, and not as complicated or expensive as something like DCS. I really enjoy just being able to roleplay as a pilot in a certain period of operations, still feeling like i'm a part of it in a way. Currently in the battle of Moscow flying a P-40, rotating to a transport aircraft next (the Li-2), with previous stints in the I-16 and MiG-3. ^^

- Rachel

Edited December 30, 2023 by Chel

[Chel]

Update: Eurotru- I mean IL-2 transport simulator has gone well. It's fun trying to deliver cargo with the threat of being intercepted. Thank god I have gunners ^^

[XLjedi]

On 12/30/2023 at 12:24 AM, Chel said:

IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles has been my go to recently. Just something about actually 'flying' an aircraft as opposed to something like War Thunder, and not as complicated or expensive as something like DCS. I really enjoy just being able to roleplay as a pilot in a certain period of operations, still feeling like i'm a part of it in a way. Currently in the battle of Moscow flying a P-40, rotating to a transport aircraft next (the Li-2), with previous stints in the I-16 and MiG-3. ^^

- Rachel

I truly miss the early days of flight sim where you flew missions and there was a storyline and campaign... and the war situation would adjust to your mission outcome.

We have truly lost something wonderful.

[Chel]

Continuing on, turns out that just being a cargo pilot on a war front is actually pretty dangerous when you're only going 260km/h max >.>

Often you are given.. 'adequate' fighter cover of 2 or 3 aircraft, but still occasionally you have to defend yourself, or just come under attack as you are, say, unloading cargo.

Night missions are by far the scariest though, with night fighters patrolling areas that could show up at any time, not to mention searchlights and AA batteries.

Still though, it is really refreshing to take a break from the combat and just fly. There are missions where nothing happens and you just deliver things to an airfield or make a supply drop, and you just take a moment and relax on your way to or from the mission.

Of course this being Moscow in 1941-42, the weather is absolutely terrible >.> and I have had.. fun.. on several occasions trying to keep myself in the air on a stable heading.

Overall though it is a really interesting way to play this game, its why I love it so much. Things can happen unexpectedly mid flight, for example my flaps and throttle jammed as I was coming in to land one night..

Or my engines can freeze if I don't keep enough power applied, which makes sense when the temperature is often double negative.

It is really fun.

- Rachel

[Chel]

1 hour ago, XLjedi said:

I truly miss the early days of flight sim where you flew missions and there was a storyline and campaign... and the war situation would adjust to your mission outcome.

We have truly lost something wonderful.

We have. This game is originally from 2013, cracks are starting to show mainly in the coding of things, altitudes of operations (Western front especially only having missions at ~2km altitude due to being based on Eastern front code), occasional janky AI and sometimes bogus hit detection, but it is a nice game regardless. i still very much enjoy it.

Kept me entertained for nearly 1,000 hours, so it must be doing something right ^^

I put it down to not being too difficult to play, but not too easy either. Just the right amount of engagement, accuracy, it just 'hits the spot'. All the little things you need to do to take off for example, learning map navigation, instrument panels, having an appreciation of what it was like to actually fly these planes, only being able to see what you can out the cockpit, just scratches that itch that other flying games couldn't for me.

The developers recently showed off their Finland and Odessa maps, for both time periods of Winter War / Barbarossa, and the 1944 battles as well, so that will be very interesting to play.

Also a strong hint towards a Korean War theatre for a new game..

- Rachel

[DDE]

Answer is in the screenshot.

Can anyone help me pinpoint why the shadow is turned into dots instead? (slightly to the right of the center of the screen)

[The Aziz]

They took the idea from KSP2's navball.

[Kerbalsaurus]

Playing Splatoon 3, I can say that if you use a Tri-Stinger and camp in Turf War I should legally be allowed to reach through your TV screen and destroy your Switch.

Edited January 3 by Kerbalsaurus
Typos

[Superfluous J]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:54 PM, DDE said:

Can anyone help me pinpoint why the shadow is turned into dots instead

I can't help you on the why, but the technical term for that is dithering. Maybe search through settings for "shadow dithering" and turn it off or slide its dial toward whatever means "less" or "better looking"

[TwoCalories]

I've been thinking of getting Digital Combat Simulator, as I really want to have an accurate dogfighting simulator. However, I've done a little research, and it seems like, to have the optimal experience, I'll need to get a whole HOTAS setup and some kind of TrackIR, which seems like a lot of money already, but then the game seems heavily reliant of DLCs for the planes. And that's not even including the amount of time I'll have to spend reading the aircraft manuals and understanding how to fly it. So, the TL;DR for that is that it seems that this game is a huge investment to play, of money and time.

So, my question to all the other DCS players is, is it worth it? And as a side question, do I really need all that specialized equipment?

[Andrew1233]

minecraft, c(l)ash royale(strongly not recommended if u have rage problems) and time shooter 2

[DDE]

Today, I have encountered magic.

One, the FPS Booster mod for Cities: Skylines it the... goat. In the middle of my urban sprawl, my FPS was down to 17. Now, I don't know what the game's odd habit of updating all the 10,000 unused interface icons had to do with it, but now it's up to a reasonable 24. I used the built-in FPS cap and I'm happy as a clam now.

Two, switching The Witcher 3 back to DX11 and letting NVIDIA "optimize" my graphics settings has made much of the dithering - which is an inherent issue of the shadow implementation in RED Engine, as I've gathered - go away.

[Geonovast]

Opus Magnum.

If you like factory and puzzle games, you'll like this one.   I'll just leave this here without any further context.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

Opus Magnum.

If you like factory and puzzle games, you'll like this one.

I've been afraid to try Opus Magnum seeing how SpaceChem ate my life about a dozen years ago

Edited January 5 by Superfluous J

[Chel]

On 1/4/2024 at 3:52 AM, TwoCalories said:

I've been thinking of getting Digital Combat Simulator, as I really want to have an accurate dogfighting simulator. However, I've done a little research, and it seems like, to have the optimal experience, I'll need to get a whole HOTAS setup and some kind of TrackIR, which seems like a lot of money already, but then the game seems heavily reliant of DLCs for the planes. And that's not even including the amount of time I'll have to spend reading the aircraft manuals and understanding how to fly it. So, the TL;DR for that is that it seems that this game is a huge investment to play, of money and time.

So, my question to all the other DCS players is, is it worth it? And as a side question, do I really need all that specialized equipment?

Coming from a simulator player in general, all you need for headtracking is a webcam. There is software that takes your head and translates it to movements based on the camera in-game, I have been using it for the last 2 years with success. Will need a little bit of finetuning, but works reasonably well if you can't afford to shell out $400+ for a 'proper' headtracker.

https://github.com/AIRLegend/aitrack - uses your camera to track your head movements (behold. my thumb over the camera)

https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack - converts those movements to the camera in-game

 

A throttle and joystick though, is kind of required. I am not sure how DCS works in comparison to IL-2, but even for IL I needed a joystick to be able to fly.

All I have myself is just a webcam (Brio 300 from Logitech) running Open/AItrack, plus a Thrustmaster setup I bought for $130 - flashy advertising on the website aside, it's pretty good and takes care of most of my needs.

https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/t-flight-hotas-x/

It does take a little investment to get into, but it's worth it i would say if you enjoy the sense of actually flying ^^

- Rachel

Edited January 5 by Chel

[AlamoVampire]

I used to play DCS but ran into a problem i cant solve. It says i have no room to DL updates but wont tell me my download path. Where the game folder is has memory (3 ssd hard drives) but wherever its trying to DL doesnt have room. 1 ssdhd for os, 1 for general gaming (where dcs is) and 1 SPECIFICALLY for MSFS2020. I loved my f16 and my f14 but have not flown for years now (2) in DCS.

one game ive been playing lately is Path of Titans. I cannot strongly enough warn you away from it. Why? Toxic griefer activity. Experience point/growth loss upon death. Players actively target and kill juvenile to adolescent dinosaurs (both as carnivore AND herbivores being the AGGRESSORS) gaining NOTHING as the aggressor. This serves to punish and impede if not outright reverse the progress of the victim. I love dinosaurs and was thrilled to find a dinosaur mmo but i find more often than not that i wholly REGRET getting it. If theyd punish “baby killers” (what players ive described above are called in PoT) and not forcibly fail your current quest, remove the forced loss of experience points and growth the game could be something. If say a billion dollar corporation like Square-Enix removed xp loss then a small company like the one that does PoT has 0 excuse for it. 
 

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