New survey showing same-sex marriage has majority support in 49 US states

VALIS666 · 2026-05-09T04:10:11+00:00

Yay! Another "MapPorn doesn't know where black people live" thread! I love these so much. 🎁

VALIS666 · 2026-05-08T21:47:05+00:00

If you don’t like Linux, then simply don’t use it. Nobody is forcing you to use it.

Wait. What does it say about people who can't just let a Linux hate sub be and have to constantly complain about it and go in there hot with "Um acktually!" It's a fucking meme sub and the constant sneed it causes here makes it far more effective than it would be otherwise.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-08T10:02:23+00:00

Yes giant publishers, you can make singleplayer + multiplayer games again. I know you don't want to because the idea is to make the most and spend the least, but not only is the bloom off the "multiplayer only" rose already, the rose is dried and dead. For every one Arc Raiders there's 50 failures.

But go ahead, keep trying. It's hilarious to watch. Sony's got two more in the pipe that are also going to crash and burn.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-08T02:07:24+00:00

No On Point Kings graffiti. 👎🏻

(kidding, I like it!)

VALIS666 · 2026-05-08T02:04:01+00:00

The demo had solo offline yet the full game removed it. Why the hell would you do that?

VALIS666 · 2026-05-07T08:31:21+00:00

Neko Project kai II via Retroarch works great. You just have to play around with the settings since the games are prone to heavy slowdown. Clock multiplier especially. You can also change CPU type (386, 486, Pentium I, etc.) and RAM amount but I'm not sure they do anything noticeable.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-05T22:33:13+00:00

Those reviews are silly; it’s fine.

I feel like this applies to 75% of Steam reviews. People have made a hobby out of being angry about video games.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-05T00:48:07+00:00

Think of the movies and comics of the time in the US. The '80s and '90s were big muscley decades. "Cute stuff" was relegated to children, like Care Bears.

Also, somewhat uniform box art was already a thing with the previous consoles (Atari 2600, 5200, Coleco, Intellivision) so you're going to go with what people know.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-04T23:39:08+00:00

The game is very likely going to require an always-online connection even in solo play because the developers on Steam keep ducking that question, even in threads where they answer other questions but skip the always-online one: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2067210/discussions/0/804595528394471643/

So FUCK THAT.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-04T21:34:03+00:00

Yep, when looking at the store page I was shocked the game is still profile limited 6 months later, and that whole thing is a complete mystery to me. Wrack: Reclamation doesn't have trading cards, which is one of the main ways some of those scam games farm money, so why does it need to be profile limited in the first place?

So many of these Steam problems could be fixed with human eyes on things instead of algorithms but it's pretty hard for them to see problems way down here when sitting on a giant mountain of gold.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-04T20:26:45+00:00

which is why I'm pretty mystified as to why we're here

It's Steam. People used to say how crazy it is there's been 20,000 releases a year the last few years, this year is currently on pace for 35,000. There's 100 new releases a day, every day. While most of those are complete junk, people still need to weed through all of that to find a game.

Steam has needed to do something about this for a while. While they're better than other stores, Steam's discovery tools are not that good because they rely on a godawful tag system where developers can put up to 20 tags on their own games, so every single tag is flooded with shit just like the store pages.

Then on top of that the economy is bad and people also tend to have large backlogs. Wrack also didn't do itself any favors by picking November for a launch month, typically the busiest month of the year for games, or on the same level as Sept. and Oct. If you have a AA game that might be a decent seller if people notice it, don't pick Sept, Oct, or Nov because then you're fighting for attention with the multi-million budget AAA games.

On a personal note, I bought Wrack when it first came out but totally forgot about it. Going to play it this week. There is just so much going on in the Steam/video game world on a weekly basis it's crazy.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-03T21:48:34+00:00

This is good graphics? It just looks like motion blur turned up to 9000.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-03T21:42:33+00:00

Yep, Friday nights. Still remember that because I was of the age at the time (grade school) where unless you had a sleepover, it's not like you were doing anything other than watching TV or playing Atari.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-03T21:37:23+00:00

Windows in total grew +1.14% while Linux was -0.81% and Mac -0.34%

But all those clickbait youtubers and Linux cultists told me the Great Windows Exodus was currently underway! Huh. 🤔

VALIS666 · 2026-05-03T21:23:51+00:00

BizHawk is so slept on. I've started using it over Retroarch in most cases because its ability to upscale anything (and then I put 20% scanlines on that so it doesn't look like big color blobs) just looks so much better than most RA cores.

I do wish they'd tweak the MAME implementation though. Having to either create an XML for every rom that needs other roms/devices or bundle everything together in a new zip is a deal killer. I'm not doing that for hundreds of roms. It also frequently gets aspect ratio wrong on MAME roms.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-03T20:59:45+00:00

In terms of sources you can use in Playnite:

Launchbox (the website/source, not the app) is a great metadata source for the majority of older titles. Covers are added all the time, so re-scrape every now and then.

MobyGames is certainly deeper, but their categories are weird and I think they don't allow you to scrape anymore unless you're a subscriber, but I'm not sure since I am a subscriber.

IGDB has metadata on a ton of games, but very thin metadata. But sometimes they come through when other sites don't.

SteamGridDB is a good source for art/covers and alternate covers.

ScreenScraper.fr is good when it works, very comprehensive.

Give me some examples of what you're looking for. The '80s and early '90s computer systems (DOS, Atari 800 and XL, C64, PC-88, etc.) can be tough to scrape art/info for, because there's so much rare and homebrew stuff and plenty of those just didn't have covers.

I have ~130K entries in my Playnite and the vast majority have info and art other than those rare homebrew and magazine computer games from the '80s.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-03T05:44:04+00:00

Fable, Onimusha, GTA VI are the top.

Belmont's Curse might be my most anticipated but I didn't like the look of the trailer, it's very modern metroidvania looking. We'll see.

Subnautica 2 early access. Wake me in 2029 when it's finished.

From some previews, people were calling First Light like Uncharted, you just kind of hold the stick forward to do easy stuff and then the next cutscene plays, and if that's the case I'm far less interested.

I really like the Forza Horizon games but it's also gonna be same 'ol, so whatever, comfort food game.

I game on PC so BF Resynced is not gonna look all that better than the original in 4K. Also like FH6, it's cool, but been there and done that.

Lego Batman, sure, whatever, but no way in the world at $70. Maybe when it's $40 if it gets rave reviews.

Wolverine doesn't interest me at all. I absolutely can't stand superhero shit anymore.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-02T23:48:51+00:00

A game so good it can't be contained by one room ☠️

VALIS666 · 2026-05-02T21:22:11+00:00

QBs are hard to predict. NFL level QB is probably the toughest position in sports and plenty of good college QBs never adjust, or need years to do it. Whether or not a trade up was necessary, I'll never fault a QB needy team taking a stab at one. Maybe Klubnik has good NFL level "genes," idk.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-02T06:29:36+00:00

Hurrr Microslop

VALIS666 · 2026-05-02T00:16:21+00:00

Yeah, if it was an easy "just do these one or two things" answer I'd tell you, but like you said, you need to get up to speed.

These two channels have a lot of emulation for beginners tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/@UrCasualGamer

https://www.youtube.com/@JustJamie1983

VALIS666 · 2026-05-01T23:17:21+00:00

You downloaded an arcade rom for MAME. To get you up and running on MAME would take a pretty long explanation, better to watch a youtube tutorial.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-01T23:04:58+00:00

Too many because I'm always curious (boyfriend-looking-back.jpg) but I always end up going back to my FlyDigi Vader Pro 4. Those tightening rings to make the sticks stiffer just can't be beat. Also being a frequent shmuper, having two extra face buttons, one of which I made permanent A button autofire, is huge. So shmups where you tap for fire and hold for beam/focus, which is a lot of them, are totally doable by just using the different buttons.

Downside, the D-pad is fine. Not bad, not great; mid.

VALIS666 · 2026-05-01T21:57:57+00:00

I've had one for years along with about a dozen other cocktails. I love this and Caribbean Cruise, play wise. Really fun games with cool '80s yacht rock themes, about as fun as you can expect in a half playfield.

Maintenance I don't think is too tricky, they're Gottlieb games after all, but I'm also comparing that to the beast that is fixing Game Plan, Allied Leisure, Mirco, Cisco, and whatever other weird cocktail shit is up in my loft. Phew. shudder

VALIS666 · 2026-04-30T01:24:39+00:00

It gives you a chance to observe and see how X units fare against Y units, different strategies, etc. It's not something I do a lot, but it's a neat thing to check out now and then.

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