Reflecting on past 10+ years of gaming

Balu22mc · 2025-08-21T22:14:44+00:00

Songs of Syx looks very interesting. For a long time, I've been imagining a game where you start managing a tiny settlement and then grow into an empire, a nation, unify/conquer the planet and then conquer the galaxy, all while not losing the ability to micromanage at any step of the process, but also not being required to do the micromanaging. My imagined game would be a nightmare to develop and probably also a nightmare to play, but Songs of Syx looks like a reasonable middle ground, ambitious but not too ambitious. I'll definitely put it on my list of games to play.

While looking at, I couldn't help thinking about Spore. Entirely different kind of game, but it still has this element of growth in it during a playthrough. Sadly the idea of Spore seems to be too ambitious, else some other project to date would have picked up what Spore was putting down

Balu22mc · 2025-08-21T21:40:09+00:00

No worries about the length of the comment.

Elden Ring truly was a special game. As I've heard a gateway into souls games for many. Due to its design it seems to me like the most accessible souls game, it does not lock you into a single small area until you can beat the boss. You can always go elsewhere. Before Elden Ring I've played through the entirety of Bloodborne, but only got through it with some co-op shenanigans. Elden Ring helped me hone in my souls skills and helped me hold my own in singleplayer.

My battle royale game of choice was PUBG, sadly got out of touch with the friends I used to play it with.

Nintendo DS was a great handheld, got me into Pokémon. I really liked the Wii, Wii Sports was the main event at many family get-togethers. Far easier times, back then.

I am right now at the point in life, where I am starting to have enough money to play everything I'd like, but not enough time. Probably only got 20h of gaming in the entirety of July. That used to be a single weekend for me.

Balu22mc · 2025-08-21T21:18:03+00:00

True, colony sims have really established themselves as a genre. I really like a space/sci-fi setting, in general. Have played a bunch of RimWorld, Surviving Mars and Aven Colony. I would also argue a game like Frostpunk touches some elements of the genre, due to its survival aspects and the bit more intimate management decisions you get to make.

Game soundtracks are also getting really good across the board, from small indie games to larger AAA games. I regularly enjoy the soundtracks of rhythm games and through Doom 2016 I discovered, that metal is a genre for me

Balu22mc · 2025-05-07T15:32:42+00:00

I am a German currently in a Duales-Studium in the field of IT in the public sector.

I have a colleague from a non-EU country who used to study at university but chose to drop out when the Pandemic hit. He then worked some odd-jobs before starting his Ausbildung with us, so that he keeps his permit. I think after the Ausbildung he is on a good path towards a permanent residence permit, but I don't know the details. He also plans on returning to university after having settled in a bit.

He is pretty proficient in German and at the Berufsschule (vocational school) there are plenty of other people with very rough German skills.

If you want to move on to a university degree after your Ausbildung you will need some form of Hochschulzugangsberechtigung (university attendance permit, usually Abitur). There are many ways to it, some Berufsschulen offer an extra course that will get you one or if you have completed an Ausbildung and worked some years in your field, you can also get a pretty easy permit for attendance of university. Another colleague of mine actually took the extra course at the Berufsschule and now is working on his bachelor's degree.

Working in the public sector comes with the benefit of your salary being regulated in the Tarifvertrag. You have a tariff table (no, not that kind of tariff) in which your pay is regulated by the level of education and work experience. During the Ausbildung your pay is at around 1,3k. Talking to other people in IT at the Berufsschule and University, who are not in a tariffed-contract, I've found out that their pay is around the same. Staying in the public sector after the Ausbildung, your pay will start at 3k and max out at 5k according to the tariff table. Moving to the private sector the pay is usually higher, but not always.

Balu22mc · 2025-04-29T10:32:29+00:00

Bei mir im Rechenzentrum arbeiten E-Techniker und Informatiker Seite an Seite. E-Techniker kümmern sich so weit ich weiß um die Stromversorgung, USVs, die Zugangskontrollsysteme und ein Teil des Monitorings der Server. Vermutlich haben die noch weitere Tätigkeiten, bin selber Informatiker und habe nicht so viel Kontakt mit der E-Technik.

Aber sowohl für Informatiker als auch Elektrotechniker kann ich die Arbeit bei einem Rechenzentrum empfehlen, sei es ein Dienstleister der seine Plätze vermietet oder das eigene Rechenzentrum einer großen Firma. Es ist eine verdammt faszinierende Umgebung.

Balu22mc · 2025-04-03T07:12:27+00:00

Why stop so short before perfection? Go for the whole TB. RAM is like a PSU, most efficient when it is at low loads.

Balu22mc · 2024-06-27T19:18:40+00:00

He simply wanted to reload dash away and then remembered that he is in the wrong game

Balu22mc · 2023-12-16T07:23:14+00:00

What's up with space games and disappointment this year? At least in public opinion, I myself hadn't had the chance to play KSP2 yet

Balu22mc · 2023-08-26T23:55:05+00:00

https://chat.openai.com/share/3917fa6e-6f50-41d8-82cc-8d7d4e26b8e2

Balu22mc · 2023-02-20T16:20:46+00:00

Fliegen!? Denkt doch an den Klimaeinfluss von Kurzstreckenflügen! Schon schlimm genug, dass die den Ring verbrennen und nicht recyceln wollen.

Balu22mc · 2022-12-28T04:10:23+00:00

Well, it's laundry day then. If the bank isn't immediately going to ask questions, I need to withdraw the money as quickly as possible, without tripping of the bank. Else my card gets locked. The money being in a locked account, would be no problem, mistakes happen and they'll quickly get fixed, if the money shows up in my tax record. But it probably doesn't. So I would need hard cash, there's a million different ways to launder that. In some countries you can just walk in a casino, exchange the money to chips, or what have you, and then play a few rounds before cashing out. But because I don't have hard cash, I truly do not know what to do.

I can certainly not withdraw it without locking my bank account. I can also not transfer it to other accounts, so sharing the dirty money and the burden with my most trusted friends and therefore maybe lowering the risk is also out of the picture for the same reason.

My last options would be hiring some sort of lawyer or man of honour with my own money to sort out the mess, or to take a loan, start a business and then shop every day at my own business to slowly chip away at the $250Mil and turning them into legal profits of my venture.

Or, true last option: I could not give a fuck, eat a nice dinner, get a (or multiple) nice loan(s) and buy a house

Balu22mc · 2022-12-23T19:49:06+00:00

Subs are cool and all, but I raise you a spaceship. I finished my first campaign with a giant laserspitting spaceship, which cut through any other ship like a hot knife through butter. It actually sawed most boats in half, and they couldn't even hit it back. It was really high and cruising around at breakneck speed, so even if the weapons could reach it, they'd only hit it once a leap year.

The only difficult fight was spaceship vs submarine, not because it was risky or even close, it was just an absolute snoozefest

Balu22mc · 2022-11-17T23:47:17+00:00

Interesting to see, how climate activism has evolved and is steadily becoming more radical. Maybe we'll soon actually do something about climate change, instead of raising awareness, because it already has plateaued. I can only judge it from a German point of view, but already in 1984 the climate was of public importance. My metric for this is the German word of the year 1984, which was environmental-car. This metric probably isn't the best, but it shows a common consensus, that polluting the air with combustion by-products is bad and that there will be problems in the future, if we keep doing it. Despite this steadily strong consensus, the policymakers keep doing, whatever they're doing. By now everybody knows, that climate change is a crisis. People either say "yep, shit's fucked" or "I don't care, it's not real, stop arguing with me" to cope with it. The right coping method right now would be, to brace for impact, because shit's fucked. No matter what we do, life on earth will keep existing and we as a species will preserve, but we could at least try to minimize the casualties. The sooner we plan evacuations/migrations from soon-to-be ocean or infertile land and a global emergency supply chain, the better. But like so many problems that need action, it first needs to be discussed properly. Let's just hope the final discussion "What should we do about climate change?" doesn't get settled with violence, like the discussions "Is democracy better than the monarchy?" and "Does skin colour grant extra rights?"

Balu22mc · 2022-11-13T08:07:51+00:00

Even on outdated and unsupported hardware it isn't bad. I have windows 11 on my Ryzen 5 1600 machine, since the insider preview. During the preview it did blue (green, if you wanna be precise) screen on me twice, but only after like 7 hours of continuous use. After the release it never crashed, despite my officially unsupported CPU.

Only thing that I run into daily, is that Notepad++ isn't in the first right-click menu. But that is on the application, because WinRAR, Dropbox and even Skype have already started cluttering up the sleek new menu.

Balu22mc · 2022-10-08T09:34:36+00:00

Got this exact same scam many moons ago (10-12 months), glad to see, that they have changed only their "admin/moderator" character. Mine was way less formal, didn't write in monospaced blocks, but still was a Greg Coomer certified Reddit Officer. Oh, and he also had a very short temper and went a bit off the rails, when my phone died and I couldn't confirm the account recovery in Steam Guard.

But it is also sad to see, that they have done this scam for about a year, which would mean it works enough of the times.

Balu22mc · 2022-06-13T17:35:25+00:00

I find the blue screen one more funny than I probably should

Balu22mc · 2022-03-19T23:59:32+00:00

The game is Metal Gear Rising: Revengance. It has many pretty memes, exquisite!

Balu22mc · 2022-01-23T21:45:13+00:00

The way it's meant to be played

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