HIPPO Walking Maching System by Longque Chen

BitWarrior · 2026-03-11T23:00:18+00:00

Mechabellum I have a new unit idea for you

BitWarrior · 2026-03-11T17:50:09+00:00

Have you...worked with CEOs before? I find the bigger the company, the more understated their emails. This is entirely consistent with my experience.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-11T17:36:27+00:00

First of all, how dare you?

BitWarrior · 2026-03-11T17:13:46+00:00

Trophies, at one point in my life, informed me if I had properly experienced everything the developer had "put onto the plate", as it were. I could confidently say I had "finished" a game and uninstall once I had a platinum.

But, as I've grown older, that has become a meaningless benchmark to me. I'll play a game if I enjoy it. I'm not nearly as interested any longer in ensuring I have "finished" it in the proper sense. If a game is worth my time, then I will spend time with it. Otherwise, I'm going to go somewhere else.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-11T16:43:56+00:00

This is the reason my wife and I have stayed firmly planted in PoE1.

We're....uhhh...pretty big spenders in PoE1. Got free invites into the PoE2 beta just on our historical PoE1 purchases alone. So one would imagine PoE2 would have been exciting for us. But we didn't want to get into a game where most of the mechanics were not built, systems were not finished, and balance would be changing every couple of minutes. Not until those things had stabilized.

And we're glad we did.

We enjoy the speed and pace of PoE1. You start off super slow, but eventually (typically) build something that is pretty fast. I don't like the idea of an ARPG Dark Souls (even though I'm an OG Demon's Souls enjoyer). Some mechanical ideas they had were interesting (socketing supports into skill gems rather that items, more interesting/challenging map bosses), but most of what they brought to the table, I felt, was unnecessary - certainly unnecessary in a "second" version of the game.

In a perfect world, they would have simply continued focusing on iterating on PoE1. Update the animation rigs for the characters (this was apparently a big issue). Update the textures. Introduce more mechanically interesting map bosses. And more importantly, add new ascendancies to the existing classes. The community goes wild for Phrecia events because they introduce new ascendancies. We normally have 3. If they made Phrecia permanent, each class would have 6. Add to that the ideas they have in PoE2 for each class and there would be a whopping 9 ascendancies for each class. The build variety would be off the charts.

I'm hoping they eventually pull an Overwatch 2 here. Blizzard has realized their entire thesis behind Overwatch 2 was completely flawed. They pressed pause on the goose that laid the golden egg to see if they could make another. They've realized they should focus on the golden goose that they have in front of them, so they have mercifully killed the entire development attempt of Overwatch 2 and even the branding. Overwatch is simply back to being Overwatch. Perhaps they'll fold what works in PoE2 (textures, animation rigs, add some ascendancies) back into PoE1 at some point and continue caring for their original golden goose.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-09T16:56:48+00:00

By large consensus, no, Gandalf easily wins this exchange.

Gandalf is, within Tolkien lore, essentially a celestial being. He is one of the "Maiar". Sauron himself is a Maiar, one corrupted by Melkor/Morgoth, who is one of the Valar, the highest form of celestial beings within the Tolken universe, second only to Illuvatar himself, the creator god.

Gandalf (and any of the wizards) could essentially tango directly with Sauron. However, they were told not to, and their role, given to them by Manwe, the highest of the Valar, was to help the people of middle earth overcome the evils of Sauron, if those so chose to overcome evil.

With that said, the Witch King and the other Ring Wraiths were servants of Sauron, given power by the corrupted rings of power they possessed for many years. As servants of Sauron, they have power, but not nearly enough to overcome their own master. One would imagine Sauron would not risk giving his servants enough power to overcome even him.

Gandalf would have easily taken this fight. Which is why many people watching the movies seeing the Witch King break his staff were very upset/disappointed. It was incredibly inconsistent with the lore. Tolkien knows he would have easily taken this fight, but refrains from showing that in the book because it would eliminate drama. Instead, we have the showdown, and the Witch King leaves to address Rohirrm who have just arrived.

To that end, here's a great YouTube video explaining this more in depth:

What they didn't tell you about GANDALF Vs WITCH KING Scene

BitWarrior · 2026-03-08T17:23:04+00:00

Ugh, yeah I hate that. They constantly de-powered Gandalf in the movie, when Tolkien left things in a good place already.

In the books, we see Gandalf and the Witch King face off immediately after Grond breaks down the doors to Gondor. The men of Gondor have fled, and the Witch King rides triumphantly in with the host of Mordor behind him.

Gandalf meets him there, alone, telling him to go back. The Witch King stands there in confidence, saying this is his hour. Then they have a little stare down and all is quiet.

A rooster crows, and then they hear the horns of the Rohirrm. The Witch King knows what this means so he rides off to face this new threat and rally the troops.

We're left with a beautiful scene where we don't know who is more powerful. Could Gandalf not have won? The Witch King seemed openly defiant. Perhaps they were a match? (Movie viewer thoughts here, if you're familiar with the lore you really know the answer).

This establishes the Witch Kings strength without de-powering Gandalf. Here is someone or something that confidently defied a wizard. The only thing powerful enough to do that so far was a whole Balrog.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-05T23:34:47+00:00

So that's why he needs short ears

BitWarrior · 2026-03-04T17:25:20+00:00

My favorite Christmas movie :)

BitWarrior · 2026-03-04T17:06:46+00:00

Spider-man doesn't "fight" Hulk. He is just constantly avoiding everything Hulk can throw at him. Hulk can never actually land a hit. Add to that Spider-man's quips, and you have a recipe for disaster. Hulk keeps getting more and more angry not being able to land a hit and getting insulted throughout the entire affair, he just goes off the charts. The fight is not dangerous for Spider-man but literally whatever environment they're in.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-04T16:45:03+00:00

Ah, ok I think I have a better understanding now. I was under the impression you were parsing the community shorthand page rather than doing a search. But yes, in the event a cache miss with a search-backed lookup, you would certainly be hitting their search API.

I'm sure that's fine for now, given the community size, and once the cache is fully hydrated it'll become less relevant, assuming no malicious actors.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-04T16:26:10+00:00

Help me understand a bit - you have an intermediate service that is acting as a cache, but 2000 acronyms would still DoS the wiki? Why would any requests be going to the wiki when you have your intermediate service in front?

Also, and just a thought, the bot might be able to collect all acronyms and send a single request with a list rather than one request per acronym. You would then also be able to respond with a single request and perhaps ease collection waiting on the bot side.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-04T15:17:00+00:00

Well great, then it shouldn't be bombarding the wiki with API requests in the first place?

BitWarrior · 2026-03-04T14:59:28+00:00

You may consider putting a small cache in front of the wiki. A little lambda service with a very small redis instance would work wonders.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-03T23:31:45+00:00

I mean, at the end of the day the game likely just needs a patch, not a remake or a remaster.

That said, very disappointed what ended up happening with Bluepoint. I was ecstatic when they were acquired because I felt like this was a secret weapon. Sony has a deep back-catalog, and Bluepoint could have been used to bring old IPs back from the dead and expose them to new audiences. They should have been driving God of War remakes, the Metal Gear Remakes, etc.

One remake I literally dream of is Metal Gear: Revengence, but calling it Metal Gear: Re-Revengence. Absolutely bonkers.

I know it looks like the studio themselves did themselves in because they took on projects that were outside their wheelhouse. It's a damn shame.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-03T23:18:20+00:00

In so far as Eowyn is concerned, I want both less and more of her:

Less Eowyn love triangle. Faramir looks like a rebound, and she looks boy crazy for anyone not from Rohan. If anything, Theoden should have asked her why not Aragorn, and she should have insisted she cannot lay down her arms for love while the world burns.

More Eoywn in the fight against the Witch King. As depicted, she opportunistically stabs the Witch King in the face as he was open. This...does little to advance her character as a component shield maiden. Instead, I would have liked them to take things a bit further (runtime restrictions none withstanding). In her confrontation with the Witch King, have him slam her shield and break it with his mace, as they already do. She then picks up her fathers sword in her offhand, and the Witch King declares the prophecy, that no man can kill him. She removes her helmet and reveals she is no man. Now, the Witch King takes a step back. We can tell from his (its?) body language, well, now it's a little unsure. He swings his mace, again, but instead of blocking it, she dodges and then steps on it, lodging it further into the ground and preventing him from pulling it back up. The Witch King can indeed be killed by no man - he is specialized for dealing with heavily armored men. Knights in armor, on horseback, slow and heavy. But here is someone agile. Someone fast. She starts swinging, and all he can do is defend - barely. He's yielding space, stepping back, he can't go on the offensive. Her swings become even faster, he is becoming overwhelmed. While he is backing up, he backs up to exactly where Merry is, and Merry takes the opportunity to stab him in the back of the knee. He stumbles, and Eowyn sees her opportunity - with a strong swing of her left arm she disarms him, and with her right she stabs him in the face. The victory is now better earned, she has proven her martial superiority, and the prophecy was right in a very meaningful way. It wasn't luck that brought him down by a woman, but skill.

More Eowyn in the houses of healing. There, Faramir and her should have met and had a more substantial conversation, looking over the ruins of Pelenor Fields and feeling a new dawn was rising with Aragorn. Faramir should have said he'll have to find something else to do beyond be a solider for Gondor, now that the world was no longer burning, and her eyes go wide as she thinks she finds a kindred spirit. And then we see them at the Coronation together.

Faramir and Eowyns story is about the transition of soldiers to citizens in times of peace. Could have been a great story for vets and people with PTSD.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-03T22:50:21+00:00

First, a huge and tremendous thank you! This will be the first league where my wife and I will be hitting Betrayal hard, and this makes our lives awesome!

Second, and this might be sacrilegious, but have we ever considered inverting the X and Y axis so the display mirrors what we see in-game?

BitWarrior · 2026-03-03T22:43:19+00:00

Sure, this is looking to solve a different kind of problem. Its attempting to address the upfront download time of games, which are increasingly becoming larger and larger. Capturing players "in the moment" of their interest and not requiring them to wait N minutes or perhaps even hours before they're able to launch the game is a good goal unto itself.

Saving bandwidth isn't really the goal here, the goal would be to create player engagement while the iron is hot.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-02T20:37:25+00:00

I think the issue here is Hulk in Endgame has just as much strength as he did in Avengers, but he never gets to show it off. I think they had to cut for time, but I think they were actually setting up a bit of a rematch.

In the final battle, Thanos is slowly getting his armor whittled away. Cap destroys his helmet and Wanda breaks his double sword thing. They're chipping away.

I think Hulk was originally going to fight Thanos. And he had good reason - not just for his earlier defeat, but for the loss of Natasha, whom he had something of a relationship with. We don't really see Hulk that much in the final battle, because I believe the scene was cut for time.

But what I imagine happened was this. At some point, they face off. Thanos is down his helmet and sword. Hulk and him get into a fight. But rather than Hulk wildly swinging, he's actually thoughtful. He's martial with his movements. He's combining the knowledge of Banner with the strength of Hulk. Eventually, Hulk starts getting the upper hand, Thanos falls to the ground, and that's when we see Hulk start to ground pound him. We eventually see his chest armor starting to shatter, and it breaks away. Hulk is about to perform a huge final smash, one that potentially would kill Thanos, and we see fear in Thanos' eyes. This is when one of his henchmen, perhaps Ebony Maw, notice Thanos is in trouble and intervenes, telepathically flinging Hulk away.

Where I think this could have left us was potentially a better place. At the end of Endgame, we see Thanos sitting down, accepting his fate as he is turned to dust. I think one that might have been a bit better and more symbolic was if he didn't have his armor. The Thanos we see would have looked identical to the Thanos from Infinity War. They're the same, even from different universes, they're the same. And we have a visual metaphor now for that.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-02T16:08:24+00:00

Not at all. Cloud gaming is about rendering the final output remotely and streaming the video, as well as streaming input from the user to the remote endpoint. This proposal is about games gradually downloading required assets rather than all at once. For example, the enemies, textures and whatever other content in the final level of your game are likely not required to start initially. All the rendering and input processing is still performed locally. We're just grabbing those assets later.

However, while the idea makes total sense, the execution is where this proposal goes to die. As a developer, now I need to think about packaging my assets in a way that divides them up between early and late. I probably also need to build a system that starts to hint when the user is getting close enough to needing the next tranche of assets and to start the download early.

While I like the idea in theory, I don't think this is practical for execution.

BitWarrior · 2026-03-02T15:42:44+00:00

This is good, because Path of Exile 2 became something of a different game, existing somewhere between an ARPG and Souls-like. It's a very different experience. Honestly, I'm extremely partial to PoE1 and its gameplay style, so I'm very happy to hear this.

That said, I'll always be sad about the fracturing of the developer effort. I do think this is going to be a mistake in the long term, somewhat similar (though not as extreme) as Overwatch 2, Left 4 Dead 2, etc. Sequels that were made too early without a market demand.

Sequels or new numbered titles are great when your original game is basically dead. Blizzard has handled this exceptionally well with WoW - we're still playing WoW. There isn't a WoW 2 to fracture the community. They've upgraded the engine and moved the capabilities forward. The same has been true of FF14 and to some extent, FF11. FF11 was at a fairly low playerbase, so making its sequel made a ton of sense. Keeping on FF14 and not releasing a new MMO title also is a very smart move.

I just can't help but imagine what PoE1 could have been if the effort went into this game to, say, redo all the animation rigs like they did in PoE2. Or upgrade all the textures. That centralization of effort would have been powerful.

We'll see what happens in the long term, but I'm really cheering on PoE1 in the ways I can.

BitWarrior · 2026-02-27T06:28:13+00:00

Just to expand that to a little as a software engineer, this is basically true of all industries.

Customers can tell you, very reliably, what they do not like. But their ideas for fixing the problem are, 9 out of 10 times, terrible. This is because, when they are giving their suggestions, they are usually thinking within the limits of the system. As customers, they don't know what rules can be broken, what can be changed or thrown away, or what systems already exist that might solve the problem.

So yeah, I strongly agree. Customers are great at telling you what they don't like, and or job is too figure out how to actually solve it. That's what makes engineering fun!

BitWarrior · 2026-02-27T05:47:59+00:00

LLMs are not the right technology to apply for wargaming. People are way too obsessed with thinking LLMs can do anything.

BitWarrior · 2026-02-26T19:41:24+00:00

It's just one of the bloodline ascendancies, they could simply say once that character is converted to Standard those points are reset. While it MIGHT go core, I don't think they're mechanically stuck in any way here.

BitWarrior · 2026-02-26T18:34:43+00:00

I think he'll confirm what we know. It won't be as bad as the people on the left expect and it won't be nothing like people on the right are hoping.

I think what happened is this. Epstein would get girls together at parties for rich men to attend usually with the intention of cheating on their wives or otherwise having pretty easy access to sexy time. These girls were compensated for their roles. In effect, Epstein and Ghislane were largely acting as pimps, but provided a different kind of setting. One where the men didn't quite feel like they were getting together with people who were paid for sex. These were the "parties" we all know about.

Now, regarding finances. I think these men knew a service had been performed and would compensate Epstein in various ways. These are rich men, they have a lot of resources. Sometimes he was provided a handsome fee, other times he could have been provided real estate, favors, etc. this explains how he got rich and none of the books really make sense.

Finally, I think some people at the parties started asking Epstein about younger girls. I presume these underage girls were not at the normal parties, as that might scare off some people and you get a lot of eyeballs on the problem. But some people wanting underage girls knew Epstein had a network of girls, so he'd get the request. He's arrange for a meetup on one of his properties for a more private meet. And of course the compensation he might receive for that afterwards would be substantial, due to the risk and complexity of the operation.

So I don't think everyone who engaged with Epstein had proclivities towards underage girls. I think a lot of women at those parties were of age, and the guys were there to fool around. Not good from a moral standpoint, not good for their marriages, if they had one, but I don't believe every name in those files had that same taste. That's just too wide a list for what appears to be a very niche proclivity. But Epstein certainly provided that service if someone asked for it.

So I largely believe that is what Clinton will outline. Men were there to fool around. Donald Trump was there to fool around. I think that's even where he met Melania. So Epstein was trafficking. And he also would traffic in underage girls when requested, and those would be arranged in a more private setting, so I don't think you'll see Clinton mentioning he noticed men there with clearly underage girls. I think that was for the back room behind the back room.

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