Xolvix

Man my state is stupid sometimes. The toilet paper is starting to run out again in some stores. I've already got loads of it so it ain't an issue for me but... I mean come on. It's like no-one learnt from the Melbourne/Victoria lockdown - no-one fucking starved or lacked for necessities like TP, even in one of the harshest lockdowns ever seen supply lines remained intact. But panicky people gonna panic I guess.

When put in perspective though, I'd rather deal with first world problems than third world problems. Of course I'd rather deal with no problems at all, but that ain't gonna happen until I'm dead. Or the king of the world. Working on that goal.

So ummm... you know how I posted a few days ago how COVID was basically a non-entity in my state and we had no community transmission for about 100 days? Well, we went from 0 -> 3 -> 18 cases in the span of two days. That's not much and fortunately we're enacting restrictions and can hopefully stomp on it quickly (with lessons learnt from Melbourne/Victoria), but still, unfortunate. And it's all because I opened my big mouth! Not literally mind you, but... you know what I mean.

Gigabyte H310M S2H Motherboard Intel Core i5-8400 CPU 8 GB RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Couple of TB of storage, all SSD I am in the process of procuring an upgrade to 16 GB of RAM, but only because of Cyberpunk 2077. It's been a very long time since I upgraded for any specific purpose like a game, it's normally only when enough hardware is out of date to make typical usage unacceptable... or when things die. I suppose I could upgrade the graphics as well but since I only play 1080p @ 60 Hz stuff, even "modern" titles run at acceptable performance for the most part. I also play a heck of a lot of older titles - I feel guilty when spending lots of money on a new graphics card when there's little I play to utilize it with. But that's just me.

Anyways, I enjoyed this FM, very creative and novel idea. Had performance issues like everyone else but stuck with it. I didn't get nearly as much loot as I could have but I think it was due to missing a lot of paintings.

It's what I prefer too, but I will say this though - I'm somewhat appreciative of restrictive missions that require either low or zero knockouts on the hardest difficulties, being it means you're forced to get out of your comfort zone of blackjacking everything. Such missions have certainly made me a better player, becoming more patient and more capable of ghosting. But I only like such missions when they're not overly complex in terms of layout (manors and the like); a large city/city block mission becomes a little too much. Still, having the choice is the best option. I like games which the player can choose whatever means the prefer to accomplish their objectives (like most immersive sims).

I feel somewhat bad for living in Australia. COVID-19 is basically a non-entity now; hell in my state it's been almost 100 days since the last locally transmitted case (all our new cases are the result of people from overseas who go into quarantine immediately). We've had 4 deaths in our state since the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, in total Australia has had 907 deaths since the pandemic began. The US recently reported 1,562 deaths in a single day. The US is a lot bigger but still. Europe isn't having much fun either though, so I'm not trying to gang up on the US alone. On the plus side there seems to be multiple effective vaccines in the manufacturing pipeline, so an end is coming. Hopefully we can get this shit sorted by mid next year and international travel becomes viable again.

Much appreciated, thanks! I have a question though, something from the changelog: From what I've seen, some FM authors like having knockout limits specifically on the hardest skill and I figured this FM was one of them. To be honest I'm actually happy with the change since it suits my playstyle of rendering as many people unconscious as possible so I can explore in peace, but if people didn't want the knockout limit they could just play on an easier skill level like I did originally for the mission. I've never seen a mission updated to make it easier on the hardest skill level, unless there was a serious imbalance.

Well, can't wait to play the updated version! I fear though that there's just too much to see and do - no doubt this is one of those maps that will require a replay since navigation in larger (especially city-based) FMs isn't my strong suit and I keep missing areas of interest.

Think I'm gonna have to restart this mission. I was certainly enjoying myself although I was having a slight amount of trouble linking the people mentioned in various readables to areas and NPCs I had encountered. To the point where when I finally get to the estate and find he wasn't there, and how I had to find him in a location I couldn't remember encountering and the map not really helping in this regard, I stopped playing for a while. When I tried to continue a few weeks later the confusion returned, so that wasn't great. This map is quite large and detailed, but it does demand a level of attentiveness that I must have lost despite having played TDM for years.

I know you didn't quote it, but the smiley at the end was there for a reason. I recognize that cynicism isn't really all that great and I treat it as "grumpy old man talking here!" when I mention. HOWEVER, cynicism exists due to being beat down by the industry time and time again, almost to the point of not giving a shit anymore. But I'm like you, the real gems aren't always mainstream, they're much more quiet. There's a reason I play TDM for example.

Anyways, something a bit more lighthearted while we wait...

One of the benefits of getting older is that you (in theory) get wiser, and life experience shows that fanboyism is a fools errand. Everyone has a dark side; CDPR, Valve (not a fan of Valve breaching Australian consumer law regarding refunds several years ago). Holding these companies as paragons of gaming development, worthy of worship, is pointless because it just leads to disappointment when reality comes crashing down. It's all bullshit in the end. Unfortunately it also means that if I wanted to follow my conscience and avoid companies that have been arseholes in one way or another, I'd basically have to give up gaming and most modern tech because the industry is rife with such bullshit. Not prepared to do that, so I guess we're all hypocrites in the end. --- One of the benefits of getting older is that you (in theory) get wiser. But that also translates to cynicism.

I can accept that crunch time before release is pretty normal in many industries, but people have been crunching at CP2077 for months now. There's a reason so many of the developers on Witcher 3 left after development of the main game & DLC ended. As great as the games CDPR make, they're still games in the end. Software projects often go off-track and spiral out of control, but given what I've read about relationships/marriages being destroyed because of having to commit long hours for extended periods of time... for a fucking computer game... eh. Good project managers are supposed to prevent a project from getting to such a stage. Having said this, I don't blame gamers. It's not their fault, it's the heads of companies like CDPR who accept and embrace crunch as one of those "oh well, it's how development has always been" situations, and embrace it with GUSTO. Again, some crunch I can accept. Months on end, that's ridiculous and shouldn't be hand-waved. If people think it's fine then they've lived in the bubble far too long.

That site is great. I always knew how Deus Ex was supposed to be larger and more expansive and the realities of game development cut some stuff out, but I'm surprised just how many assets were not only unused but remained within the game files and COULD still have been used if the scripting was modified to incorporate them (particularly audio files like AI barks.) By far though my favorite "cut content" is one I've known for a while. During the chapter where Paul is hiding in his apartment from UNATCO (which is of course the best place to lay low when people are after you), he asks JC to send a distress signal to Paul's mates so they can avoid being arrested or something. Turns out, there's a hidden conversation that occurs if you progress enough to send the signal but don't actually send it and just go back to Paul: I like this because they bothered to write, record and integrate the conversation into the main game, even though you can't do much with it since you still have to send the signal to continue. But it's clear there was some intent to have you able to remain at UNATCO, perhaps with a branching path kinda like how Witcher 2 provides two different branching paths at a specific point in the game. So it's "cut content" but it's not sorta.

This game looks rather expensive to make. Still, cyberpunk is one of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction and there's just not enough (good) cyberpunk games/movies out there so I'm quite hopeful this will satisfy that desire. Hell, if nothing else it should hopefully fill that hole that was caused by Deus Ex's lack of a ending to the current series of games.

I assume this is you then? https://reddit.com/r/linux/comments/j91pt8/the_dark_mod_linux/ Lots of responses, good to see.

Ah, my apologies. I do remember reading that bit on their web site, but I just assumed what they were referring to is how with most sites which contain those cookie messages, regardless of whether you click "Accept" or not, the default will be to silently accept regardless. Heck in most cases those messages don't provide an option to reject the cookies, it's more of a notification anyway, so not showing it means the same as clicking accept. Maybe that's the benefit of the extension as opposed to just the filter block list - it essentially clicks yes on those messages for you just in case you come across a site that's "good" and waits for you to accept before using cookies (which are kinda rare).

I'd like to give a thumbs-up for @STiFU's recommendation of "I don't care about cookies" (https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/) It comes in both extension form and as a filter list for an existing adblocker. Whichever one you use, it hides every single "accept cookie" popup and banner notice I've seen, and I've tried it on many sites that I know have the message and it stops every single one. It should be noted that this is all it does - hides the cookie message. It doesn't silently click the "accept" message these things usually have since, as the site states, most of these sites use cookies regardless of your option and the notice is mostly just for notification (and adhering to EU regulations of course). It's a nuisance reduction tool - if you want more control over cookies you need to look elsewhere.

Can you just alt-tab to a different window?

I use Adblock Plus, mostly out of habit. I've tried uBlock Origin but it doesn't offer anything that ABP doesn't already do, plus I know the quirks of ABP well enough and I've added several additional block lists as well as custom patterns for anything that falls through the cracks. It works well, that's all I need. I very much wish it wasn't required but the vast majority of the web is unbearably chaotic without adblocking.

So I've been steadily progressing though the campaign, did the prologue and episode 1 first despite having played it before since I wanted to refresh my knowledge of the story. I don't know how far I am through episode 2 so maybe this is answered near the end, but I gotta ask now:

Well it's not like this is my "own original game", but if we're talking about games in a similar vein to those listed, a recent one would be Ion Fury. She's basically the female version of Duke anyway. Doesn't have power armor unfortunately but does have a shit-ton of weapons.

I don't think we can help the Uyghur, at least nothing directly on an individual level. The only thing that will help is if China is less powerful/less influential and hence less capable of such barbarism. At an individual level that basically means buying fewer China-made products where possible. It's actually beneficial even beyond the treatment of the Uyghur to have China brought down several pegs, given they have so many fingers in so many pies around the world. But it's kinda like the battle of climate change - if you just look at the end result it's easy to become apathetic and feel like the problem is too big to counter (and maybe it is). As an individual you have no influence at that level, so just focus on the influence you do have and make the changes there, and maybe you'll convince others to act in a similar manner. Even if it ultimately doesn't help, you did what you could and can feel less culpable. We're told as kids that the world is fair and our stories promote the idea of good vs evil and good always winning. That's.... unfortunately not the case. The world doesn't work that way. Some people are just fucked no matter what. But you can at least do your part to make the world a better place, even indirectly.

I can't attribute it to anyone, but I remember hearing someone from ID once describe classic Doom as being more of a action/horror game, but the horror part couldn't really be represented properly at the time due to primitive rendering technology. So they had humans impaled on spikes, masses of faces embedded in walls and the like, but it didn't sell the horror theme much. But with Doom 3 the tech had caught up so it was much easier to do so. I also liked Doom 3 but understand why the newer games are more popular, because they're closer in style to the classic fast-paced action experience compared to the slower-paced methodical approach from Doom 3.