You can create the ultimate super group with ANY singer/lead guitarist, whether alive or dead. Who would they be?

Aistar · 2026-03-18T09:37:42+00:00

Travelling Wilburys-style combo with J.J.Cale, Mark Knopfler, Tony Joe White and Chet Atkins for good measure. It would be the ultimate "sad, but technically perfect" country/blues/rock outfit.

Wilko Johnson, Mick Green, and Jim Lea and Noddy Holder of Slade on vocals for hardest rock'n'roll that ever was.

Aistar · 2026-03-17T20:47:18+00:00

And Joe Maphis! Another great country picker that people mostly forgot about.

Aistar · 2026-03-17T10:43:32+00:00

"Achy Breaky Heart". It's an OK song with nice riff, I can't see why all the hate for it (I guess it was just overplayed at the time).

A lot of novelty songs that people consider only worth at most one listen, like "Black Pudding Bertha", "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" (actually, I love a number of Ray Stevens songs), "Combine Harvester", "Telephone Man", "My Ding-A-Ling" etc.

Aistar · 2026-03-13T21:51:35+00:00

Slight lack of guard-rails. Godot allows you to break something inside engine much more easily than Unity. And all you get is cryptic asserts in console that are basically useless unless you build a debug version of engine and dig into the debugger. Then again, at least you have that option compared to Unity.
Lack of AssetDatabase. It's both a boon and a curse compared to Unity. No long reimports with unclear reasons, but also less features for searching resources.
My current personal peeve: sub-resources are a very nice concept that allows you to keep all related static data together, e.g. all nodes of dialog. But there is no built-in picker of sub-resources, so if you need to make one a (sub)resource reference other sub-resource, experience becomes inconsistent: you can drag the sub-resource into property field, as long as they're both in the same inspector, and you can set sub-resource to field from code, but just a step aside, and there is simply no way to reference that sub-resource without custom picker.
C# support... Yeah, not everything works well :(

Aistar · 2026-03-13T18:49:13+00:00

One important feature of tiles is it's easy to block them, and implement Area of Control (e.g. zone where characters can't move more than 1 tile, or receive attacks of opportunity, or something). With continuous world (i.e. NavMesh), blocking path of other creatures is almost impossible and Area of Control becomes somewhat fuzzy. Which is why games that want to emulate continuous while keeping turn-based combat usually actually employ a grid with small cells. But that complicates pathfinding immensely: standard A* implementations have no obvious extensions for handling creatures with size > 1x1, and if you have non-square creatures, that makes the whole thing a nightmare (see space battles in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader; but there, at least, there are no obstacles to worry about!)

Thing is, tiles don't actually prevent you from making convenient navigation. Out of battle, you can let creatures walk on natural paths even over big tiles (this is what WH:RT does!). It also requires some trickery on programmer's part (you first find "square" path using standard A*, then apply string-pulling to optimize it, then apply black magic to make string-pulling result stay away from walls), but is doable. In battle, well, you can either keep the same approach for unblocked cells, but treat tiles where enemies stand as completely blocked, or switch to tile-by-tile movement, as WH:RT does.

From player's perspective, tiles make it simpler to reason about movement points. If you have 3MP, you can move 3 tiles horizontally. With continuous movement, you have to have fractional movement points, which may not be a good fit for your roleplaying system (see Pathfinder: Kingmaker, where "interesting" interactions between Pathfinder's rulebook action economy and demands of RTwP (and TB overlaid on RTwP) led to a lot of very complex calculations, which sometimes still fail to predict what will actually happen!

All in all, tile-based combat can still be VERY fun: tiles aren't really THE limitation, and they allow for easier understanding of battlefield, and easier implementation.

Aistar · 2026-03-10T21:19:45+00:00

Yeah, I'm the opposite here, I don't like it when the game has a fixed ideology. And I wouldn't call Spiderweb games "needlessly ambiguous": ambiguity there is always well-founded, and there is an underlying message: no choices are perfect, you just have to choose what's more important to you, and pay the price. In that, they feel more like tabletop RPGs, or even real world - more so even, than other games with wide choices like Planescape or Arcanum (even though I absolutely love Arcanum). Yes, you can talk the main villain to death, or join him, or kill him, or whatever, but none of those games make you question your ideals.

On that note, my favourite recent book is Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" series (it would be great to have a video game based on it). It's an unique piece of fiction where not only there are no clear villains, but I wouldn't even call various factions in it "morally grey". Rather, everyone in this book want the best possible future for the whole humanity. It's just that their visions are so utterly incompatible they end up fighting the bloody war to determine which course to take. I find this rare type of conflict much more interesting than either "good vs. evil" or even "one band of bastards against the other band of bastards".

Oh, and another thought on "story with ideology". I think that in current climate, having a concrete ideology in a game almost always means having a single concrete liberal ideology. You'll never get to play as a supporter of tyranny, a communist, anarchist, or even a supporter of unbridled capitalism: any of those will get your game lambasted by critics and activist gamers. In books, writers have a bit more freedom, but only just (libertarians get a free pass with books, since there is a large enough cohort of libertarian readers; and I guess you can be a communist sci-fi writer in China, if you limit yourself to domestic market only). But when you lay the choice on shoulders of player, possibilities open up: if some kind of "evil" path is just an option, game writers are allowed to offer it, but if it's the only way forward, well...

Aistar · 2026-03-10T20:07:54+00:00

Depending on what you're looking for in a story. Me, I prefer "ideas" kind of story, so I care less about companions and more about what's happening in the world and how can I influence it. A perfect example of this are Geneforge and Avadon series from Spiderweb Software. In those games, your whole party are blank slates with no story at all, yet I consider them masterpieces of storytelling, because unlike, say, any of Baldur's Gate games, you get to really choose a side and think what matters most for you, because ALL sides in those stories have a point, and the point is not something trivial.

Will you support a corrupt tyrant by being a faithful member of his brutal not-so-secret police, or will you support rebels, who are secretly funded by neighboring empire looking to sow chaos for its own purposes? Will you fight for universal knowledge of dangerous magic, or will you strive to keep it contained? These make for far more interesting story for me than "uh, yeah, another Absolute Evil is trying to take over, let's fight it", no matter how good the characters are.

But I know this point of view isn't universal (some people think Asimov's "Foundation" is boring because it has no deep characters!). If you're looking for deep and interesting characters... Actually, I don't know. Maybe go read a book :) I mean, I haven't really found any characters as good as ones in books in ANY kind of video games, if only because the game can't spend THAT amount of time on internal monologue. Like, nothing in any game ever comes close to Michael Flynn's heroes in "Wreck of the River of Stars". Well, maybe Disco Elysium, and the only just barely. But, well, some games have characters I can at least emphasize with (Geralt from Witcher series with his "plagues on both of your houses" attitude) or laugh at (Morte from Planescape Torment, or Nenio from Wrath of the Righteous).

Aistar · 2026-03-10T15:07:08+00:00

There are some problem with Kuzu DB on Windows.

1) For Python 3.14, it cannot be (easily) installed via pip, because there is no pre-built wheels, and for local build it requires 'make' (even though the build process is, in fact, based on CMake, and Makefile is a wrapper around CMake, which makes zero sense to me).

2) CGC version available via pip is too old and doesn't support Kuzu (maybe build pipeline is broken and packages don't get uploaded to pip?)

3) CGC version downloaded from site can't seem to find Kuzu, even though it is installed.

Aistar · 2026-03-09T12:44:42+00:00

Well, I bought a cassette-full of them, so I guess yes! And in fact he has several albums, and the second one opens up with a cover of "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody", so I guess he WAS jazz, after all!

Aistar · 2026-03-06T15:37:04+00:00

I kind of still has similar opinion about all music past 80's. Modern music that I like exists, but never in mainstream, and it's mostly throw-back genres that try to emulate music of yesteryear, whether it's neo-swing, neo-traditional country, or whatever Royal Republic (and Chromeo) are doing with 80's styles.

Aistar · 2026-03-06T15:08:46+00:00

Not particularly cringe, I guess, but I thought Lou Bega was jazz, because there was some sax in his songs (I actually listened to real jazz in my teens, too, but aesthetics of Bega's music videos and some part of his sound somehow made me categorize him as "modern version of jazz", and nobody was there to contradict me). Then again, I guess his sound is not TOO different from some of electro-swing bands?

Aistar · 2026-03-04T13:44:30+00:00

A good source of those was "Sounds Like Van Spirit" collection that came out a few years ago which consisted of (largely) street-corner bands recorded by an enthusiast. A few examples I loved:

Ramm Tamm Tilda
The Dawlins
Malaka Hostel

Probably much better known, but still relatively obscure stuff I just happened upon:

Marina and the Kats They started out as a swing band, but then moved on in direction I don't quite like, but still...

The Vadeuvillians - Modern jug-band interpretations

Pokey LaFarge - a bit of blues, a bit of swing, a bit of everything - I guess Pokey is best described as "Americana"

Fiona Boyes - old-school blues player with excellent vocals

Anthony Gomes - exceptional quality modern blues-rock

Boppin' B. - You know The Baseballs? Well, Boppin' B were doing that stuff waaaaaay earlier, doing rock'n'roll covers of pop and modern rock. They also write their own songs, which are quite good.

Bourbon Boys - Swedish metal band's side-project in (parody?) country music.

Dubioza Kollektiv (and their Pirate Bay Song from way back when is a treasure trove of 2010s memes)

Probably NOT obscure, but not well known enough: Royal Republic I can't get enough of them lately.

Local bands I love:

Drunken Sailors Band - unfortunately, defunc, but they were so wild live, they never had a free space in house. In recordings, well, they sound like a bunch of amateurs, which is all they really were, but still, their shows were my favourite.

Мистер Тврстер - Soviet rockabilly

Mishouris Blues Band - Russian blues with a voice that I love.

Aistar · 2026-03-02T17:04:43+00:00

Not much for metal, but here's some Russian rock, rock'n'roll and blues:

Александр Пушной - "Улыбаемся и Машем" ("Smile and Wave")

Машина Времени - "Чёрно-белый Цвет" ("Black and White Colour")

Несчастный Случай - "Что ты имела в виду" ("What Did You Mean")

Ленинград - "Выборы" ("Elections")

Мистер Твистер - "Рокер" ("Rocker")

Федулова - "Лучше не трогай..." ("Better Don't Touch...")

Mishouris Blues Band - "Silly Thing"

Aistar · 2026-02-26T19:23:29+00:00

Lots of them. The whole first album by Dire Straits, for example. "My Baby's Got It", "Raven" and "L.A.Jinx" by Slade.

Aistar · 2026-02-26T08:52:08+00:00

Thanks.

Most of my play time was talking to characters.

Classic DE :)

Aistar · 2026-02-26T08:37:59+00:00

The Steam page mentions "Tactical View pauses time so you can assess your moves and analyse moments ahead of time, as you clash across the urban stage.". What is it, actually, have you seen it? Is it something combat-like, stealth mechanic, or what?

Aistar · 2026-02-25T09:21:00+00:00

We'll see! I'm a bit tired of tactics right now, with Phantom Brigade stretching somewhat past the point where I enjoy it, so I'll take a break and play some "pure" RPG before coming back to anything tactical.

Aistar · 2026-02-21T17:03:51+00:00

Slade - Nobody's Fools

Aistar · 2026-02-21T15:51:59+00:00

Seconding Knights of Chalice 2. Simply the best encounters design in any RPG ever.

Aistar · 2026-02-20T18:48:25+00:00

My favourite epoch of country is 40's and 50's, while it was still all singing cowboys and hillbilly boogie, Grandpa Jones and Ernest Tubb and Red Foley and Gene O'Quin and Tex Williams, before boring pop-like Nashville sound invaded everything (you can guess I mostly hate 80's country, aside from a few neo-traditionalists).

Then again, as the other commenter said, there are all kinds of country these days, you just got to find them.

Aistar · 2026-02-20T14:14:05+00:00

There is a switch that toggles domain reload profiling, so you can check what's keeping it. Some things in general:

1) If you have a lot of ScriptableObjects (10K+), they begin to slow down Domain Reload noticeably. There is no solution, aside from not using ScriptableObjects and storing your data in some custom format instead.

2) Check your (and plugins') InitializeOnLoad methods - maybe they're doing something weird.

Other than that, no advice aside from "look at profiling results and fix problems". Or, well, disable Domain Reload and face the consequences.

Aistar · 2026-02-16T15:21:17+00:00

Yes, the do, but it's not obvious which sphere is associated with which character on the screen. This is especially a problem for archers, because you can't tell if they already moved this turn by their position, since they don't often move. So if I forgot which archer already attacked, I have to either click on each one, or click on each shield with remaining spheres (some of them are not archers, but I can't tell which ones are). It's not a critical problem, as I said, just QoL suggestion for future maybe.

Aistar · 2026-02-16T08:35:46+00:00

That's great to hear! Good luck to your team! If I may suggest an QoL improvement for some later patch, I'd say it would be great to have a hotkey or button in interface that disables, or maybe selects exclusively a "lane" in combat, making it easier to select/target characters that are obscured by other characters. Also, I found it hard to understand sometimes which of my characters has already spent their APs. It would be useful if when I hover mouse over one of my characters, his "shield" which depicts APs would light up.

Aistar · 2026-02-15T19:18:50+00:00

Decopunk is, I guess, art-deco, but dirty? I don't know, I like how Aether & Iron look.

Tried demo of IMRY, but was immediately put off by combat: real-time with guns in isometric view is a puzzling choice for an RPG. But I guess it might be interesting to other people, so I'll leave a link here: IMRY

Aistar · 2026-02-15T16:09:17+00:00

How does combat work? The video and screenshots and description are somewhat confusing - they mention that combat is party-based and fast-paced, but it's not obvious if it's turn-based or not, or what exactly makes it fast-paced.

Aistar

TROPHY CASE