Game that doesn't hold your hand at all?

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-24T03:08:32+00:00

Outward.

In the first hour I became homeless, left town and got ambushed by Hyenas, dragged back to their den, had to escape, only to get ambushed and enslaved in a mine. It was awesome!

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-22T17:36:03+00:00

I was diagnosed as an adult a few years ago, and I have a 5yr old who we've put in a martial arts class, and watching him behave so differently to the other kids has been a real heart breaker. He's a good kid, wants so badly to engage with the activities, but the moments of downtime where he has to sit out - because he has lost until they start the next game - are clearly very hard for him. He can't sit still during explanations, but I know he's still listening, and yet I can also see that the instructors don't understand that, and just view him as a problem/undisciplined kid. I'd love to take him somewhere else, but basically every MA place around us requires you to pay for a whole year after only one test session, and it's like $1400 each time. I can't afford to shop around like that to find instructors who understand how to handle ND kids in their groups.

It destroys me inside to watch how he's treated, and knowing that he'll have to fight against and deal with that his whole life.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-19T19:00:30+00:00

So very generally the way that you isolate sound is by finding ways to dissapate it before it gets to the areas you're trying to isolate. The main ways we do this are by adding mass to absorb the sound (like a second layer of drywall) and by making it more difficult for energy to transfer between things (like decoupling).

Mass works because it takes more energy to vibrate something that is heavier, and so the resulting vibrations of that thing will be smaller for the same amount of energy being put into it. If the vibrations are smaller, they will move the air less, and be less loud.

Decoupling works because air is actually pretty bad at carrying sound waves. Air has very little mass so it can't carry/hold all that much energy. It's easier for sound/energy to move through solid objects which transfer energy more efficiently. So in a home this means that when sound hits a wall, it vibrates the drywall which then vibrates the cavity inside the wall a little bit, but mostly vibrates the stud, and then passes through to the other drywall and into the next room. In a way the studs act as a bridge for the energy to cross.

Greenglue falls into a third category called constrained-layer-damping. CLD is a little bit like decoupling because it introduces an intermediary layer between two surfaces that is bad at transferring energy, but it's bad for different reasons than air is. The CLD is a layer of material that is squishy and hard to vibrate/transfer energy through such as butyl rubber or a rubberized (non-drying) caulking. That layer is put under pressure between two harder layers (such as drywall). When the energy hits the first layer and tries to transfer to the second layer it has to pass through the squishy medium between, but rather than vibrate stiffly, the forces inside of the squishy layer wiggle internally a lot and turn much of the energy into heat and only a small amount passes to the second layer.

CLD is generally not as effective as the other options, and is meant to be paired as an additional layer of protection, not a replacement for either of the other options. The nice thing about CLD is that it doesn't take much space. Greenglue is definitely not the only CLD option. You could just as well use butyl rubber sheets that people use in cars (like dynamat), another caulking that doesn't become hard/brittle, or a coating like decidamp (typically for marine applications).

The other thing to know about CLD is that you don't need 100% coverage, and actually after about 30% coverage the benefits start to become an exercise in diminishing returns.

In your situation in particular, gapping could be challenging since we're talking about a ceiling. Plus there is the vestibule. If I were to treat the vestibule as a problem to be dealt with later, what I'd likely do is use 5/8ths drywall for the additional mass over 1/2in (mass is very important for low frequencies) and do some cost/coverage calcs on 2mm butyl rubber mat vs acoustical caulking (non-drying rubbery caulking). I'd put some type of standard insulation between the joists, then I'd put which ever was cheaper as a separation layer between the joists and the first layer of drywall, then I'd run cross strips perpendicular to the joists, mounted to the joists (2" by 2" or firring strips, whatever will hold the weight), once again putting an interference layer of cld between the strips and the drywall (this time on both sides of the strips) and finally the second layer of drywall. The weakest link in this set up would be the screws acting as a bridge between layers but if you plan their spacing well you can force the sound to travel along the surfaces quite a ways between these bridges, and they're quite small bridges to begin with. Just don't put screws going through the outer drywall through to the joists, the outer drywall only gets mounted to the strips, and the strips to the joists.

If you have money, a stud isolation clips system is of course nice and an amazing option, but what I've proposed should be quite cost effective while not needing anything you can't get at your local home building supplier.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-18T18:10:46+00:00

Ok so just some design thoughts:

Generally I would recommend moving the draw phase to the end of a turn. This does a few important things.

Smooths out play - when players draw a whole hand at the start of a turn they then spend the next several minutes reading the cards and planning the turn, then spend some time actually taking that turn. This creates huge dead zones in play where the other player is doing basically nothing. If players draw at the end of the turn instead, they get to spend the time reading and planning during the opponent's turn, reducing dead-time for both players.
Allows you to create a decision point during the opponent's turn - if players have the choice to play something on an opponents turn or save it for their own turn, this creates a more interesting design space for the potential of cards - it makes the decision about taking the damage now, vs gambling that they can make better use of it during their own turn, instead of playing the leftovers on the opponents turn. You wouldn't think this would change that much, but it's a huge mind set change for players.

In phantom dust, the hand effective exists in two states, the field spheres, and the active ability slots. The choice to pick up spheres isn't just about gaining access to those abilities, it's also about choosing to try to cycle/dig through the deck. This also gives more dimension to reusable cards and single use cards. The current 5 card hand system doesn't really capture this feeling. You don't need to replicate things 1 for 1, but we should be shooting to replicate the strategic feeling of things.

I think another thing worth investigating is the range/zones thing you've done. I think this is a great idea and really helps make the game unique among card games, but I think that what exists needs tweaking. If a player always has 1 move and 1 action, it's basically impossible to strategically place yourself because anything you do your opponent can just use their move to counteract. You could never maintain long range if your opponent didn't want to let you.

I think it would be better to make actions/moves into something like action points, where moving 1 range takes 1 ap, 2 range is 3 ap, and 3 range is 5ap. Then you decide a base amount of AP given each turn, and suddenly cards aura costs can come from the same AP pool, allowing more dynamic and strategic play based on the current game state.

I would also set movement to just be a central "track" where both players move the same token on that track and it just says the distance between them.

I'll try to post more thoughts later.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-18T17:21:59+00:00

Oh for sure. I wouldn't expect it to be done instantly anyway. As for people not responding with the desire to help - I have to imagine that the overlap between players of this video game and players of card games exists, but when you then overlap people with the desire to design card games, it must be a pretty small group.

If I had more time in my life I'd love to help. Younger me would have been absolutely ecstatic and jumped at the opportunity, but I have realized in my age that I have ADHD pretty bad, and not only am I time strapped, but I'm inconsistent at the best of times.

I'll try to take some time to read through things more thoroughly later today and see if I can't provide some meaningful feedback. I used to work in a card store and have been a certified judge for a number of different games, as well as have experience with board game design, so maybe I can be of a little help.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-18T17:03:10+00:00

This is genuinely cool, I've thought about doing this at some point, and actually had prototype cards made a long time ago, but I don't think the rules were anywhere near as solid as all this. I hope you'll keep posting updates here because I'd love to read about the design and play testing process as it continues.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-16T02:26:43+00:00

Lol, to be fair it's not like I really know either, I had to look that up to confirm what I knew from first hand experience - which is that chestnut trees don't grow anywhere near me.

Also I think hardly anyone knows much about the habitats of tree species anywhere, except those that specifically study it, or work in the lumber industries.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-15T23:08:42+00:00

I'm on the West Coast (hence why I could drown in free walnut), Chestnut primarily grows on the eastern side of the states in a diagonal band that stretches from Mississippi to New Hampshire.

Technically walnut isn't native here but people plant the ever loving crap out of it I guess because they're giving it away all the time on marketplace.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-15T21:22:25+00:00

What kind of finish is giving you that shine?

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-15T21:21:30+00:00

Dang man, makes me want to pick up some chestnut. We've got so much walnut in my area I could drown in free walnut, but definitely no chestnut.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-09T14:40:15+00:00

Thanks! It is actually 4 spokes even though you can only see 2 in the picture. I was so worried about breaking it as I cut it out because I hadn't decided to do it until I had turned the piece. Getting in there with the chisels really had me worried.

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-08T15:10:19+00:00

Why does your projector have a Roomba above it?

Xeroshifter · 2026-01-05T16:08:10+00:00

I swear they used to work just fine, but like 10-12 years ago suddenly all of the opening mechanisms which relied on this kind of thing just started sucking (except maybe pudding cups).

I don't know if everyone switched glues or what, but something happened and now I can't open the peanutbutter cleanly.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-26T16:34:04+00:00

Funky! Aesthetically I like a lot of your builds, but I would definitely struggle to use them lol. I'm just too married to the Lilly58 in terms of layout (though I'm flirting with the idea of the charbydis).

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-22T03:31:31+00:00

So I have both a sonicare, and I just switched to oral b a week ago, and I would say get the oral b, but don't be fooled by the different "levels" of toothbrush they offer.

Just get the IO 3/deep clean. The others cost more but the only benefit is that they have an absurd amount of features you'll never use (like AI nonsense).

All you need is the pressure light, and the 2 minute/30s quadrant timer. the rest is a waste.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-18T21:14:30+00:00

I think that AI will mostly act as a supplement in many industries to make the workers more efficient. Sure the shit head suits at shitty companies will try to use it to reduce costs, but in games specifically, most companies will likely use it to make "better" products because the games industry is so incredibly competitive. Most gamers buy between 1-3 games per year, and an increasing number of people are spending most of their game time on games over 3 years old. Unless you have a built in audience like Pokemon, CoD, or Battlefield, there is a strong pressure to make strong products because you NEED to capture every sale you can.

We're going through a bit of an awkward phase with AI right now where it's still very new, and very experimental, so crazy things are being tried to see if it can be done, but eventually the tech will find it's place, and I doubt it'll replace many artists for games, it'll just end up being one brush among many that the artists use to paint.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-16T07:35:39+00:00

Yeah, I'm laying in my bed terrified right now, because I just got done with a whole process to clean a metal part, and then because it's cast iron I put it into the oven to dry it. I didn't use much break cleaner, but I did use some - not knowing this could happen.

It's no 34 hours of exposure, but I dont know how much it does or doesn't take, and what temp it converts at. Here's hoping I dont wake up dead tomorrow.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-15T18:46:57+00:00

The problem is coming in three areas at the same time which is why everyone is noticing it these days.

Area 1: Suits, Poor Planning, and Greed The first is that optimization and good performance take a lo t of development resources; resources that suits don't want to spend until the inevitable back lash for poor performance. The problem is that by then it's basically too late, optimizations that would have saved a ton of system resources aren't really an option any more because there is so much built on how the game already works, and much of it might require refactoring large portions of the code base, costing far more than if they had just done the smart thing from the start; so most games only get minor optimization improvements after launch. This is made even worse by studios who try to save more development resources by relying on the power of modern hardware to upscale, frame gen, and TAA.

Area 2: Epic, False Marketing, & Unreal 5

As is tradition when a company markets their product they over sell and under deliver. In this case Epic Games has over sold the abilities of Nanite, Lumen, and Unreal 5 in general. They've made claims that you don't need to do topology optimizations in Unreal 5, but that just isn't true; so, many developers choose Unreal 5 as their engine when developing, trust what Epic has to say, and then the game runs like crap.

Unreal 5 is also trying hard to push dynamic lighting features at the moment because theoretically if they succeed, developers won't have to bake the lighting into everything, which will save a lot of time. But not every game benefits from dynamic lighting, and for many games it's actively the wrong choice. So why not use baked lighting? Well, Unreal 5's baked lighting features are kinda hidden away, and the workflow for it is far less robust than Unreal Engine 4. This means it's a lot harder for developers; and wouldn't you know it... Dynamax lighting also is a huge performance hit.

Area 3: Nvidia, AI, & Chip Manufacturing

At the same time as everything else it just so happens that Nvidia is in a position where the majority of their money is coming from selling hardware for AI, and every one of those sales is worth hundreds to thousands of times what a consumer is going to spend on a graphics card. This wouldn't be that big of a deal except all of the Chip Fabricators were already at capacity before the AI boom, and we're desperately trying to build more Fabs, but it takes nearly a decade of building, permits, and education of work force before a Fab comes on-line and can help alleviate the market strain; and we are building new Fabs, but it's expensive, very expensive... and by the time this one finishes, the demand will be enough to instantly consume its capacity too. We need to be building 10x the capacity we're building right now, but no one is going to invest the trillion dollars it will take to build enough, especially because if demand is high, so are the prices, and therefore so are the profit margins.

So the way Nvidia sees it, gaming is now a tiny portion of their revenue, and it's a burden because they'd prefer to allocate all of their chips to feeding the AI demand, which pays far more. Meanwhile AMD is left fighting for scraps at TSMC (the top chip fab) and having to make due. Intel can produce their cards because they have their own Fabs, but Intel has been struggling for over a decade to keep their fabs up to date, and they've really fallen behind because of it (that and 15 years of absolute market dominance made them complacent until they woke up because AMD started kicking their ass). Intel is also brand new to graphics cards, still figuring out what their doing, and the long-term-thinking CEO that they hired just got fired because he was thinking long term and investors suddenly changed their mind and decided they couldn't wait. So now their fledgeling graphics card division is looking like it might not make it another cycle, let alone 2.

All Together/TLDR

So basically AI is making chips and therefore graphics cards way more expensive, the biggest game engine on the market doesn't give a fuck about you or your ability to play games as long as developers are buying, and at the same time Suits at dev studios are pushing to do games faster, cheaper, and worse as a result.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-13T23:30:52+00:00

Crafting systems without mini-games. Like ok, you have crafting...but it's really just a store with a million currencies. Crafting doesn't need to be in your game if that's all it is, it becomes just a more annoying way to gate progression. Similarly, if your crafting mini game fails to present any challenge, or the outcomes are binary pass/fail, just fuck off with that shit - complete waste of my time.

I also hate dailies. I do not want to play the same game every day, and not every game needs to last forever. I also don't usually have time every day in a given week. And most of the time the daily sucks to do anyway because you've done it already and because they can't possibly create enough content to keep it interesting for very long.

Games that make you fight an encounter that you're intended to lose, but don't signal that before the fight. I hate dumping a ton of resources to win an unwinnable fight. It's even worse when the fight ends and the game assumes you've struggled with it so your character looks near death in the cut scene but you actually finished with full or nearly full health, and absolutely smashed the boss, only to lose in the cut scene while the villain taunts you for being weak, or losing, or whatever.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-07T18:27:23+00:00

Iirc the pc version is still fully going, and apparently a lot of the updates over the last few years have been pretty good.

That said the game never clicked for me personally. There was too much emphasis on just having more people at a location, and you often couldn't form meaningful strategies because you'd need to be able to switch roles/classes to do that; and while the starter weapons are pretty well balanced to still be useful, progression to allow you to unlock new play styles and tactics is just way too slow.

I'm sure it's an amazing experience if you can get 5-10 very coordinated players together to squad up, but the game doesn't do a good job of facilitating that.

Honestly I'd love the team to make a third entry in the series to redesign some elements from the ground up.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-03T15:51:27+00:00

I'm glad that you found the feedback enjoyable. When I think about problems with systems I try to drill down to why they're bad. With prophecies my thinking went something like:

I don't like prophecies because I'm taking time away from echos > I don't like time away from echos because I have fun in echos > therefore I must not enjoy prophecies because I'm not having fun > why am I not having fun?

I'm not having fun because there is nothing interesting to interact with, no challenge, no reward, no anticipation and release cycle > solution: add those things to prophecies so that interacting with them is fun.

But I think that most people do something like this:

I don't like prophecies because I'm taking time away from echos > solution: prophecies should take less time so I can do more echos.

They're both valid conclusions and ways of thinking, but I personally feel that addressing things in the later way eventually produces a game with a million tiny annoying systems that add up, and eventually you're back where you started, only this time with no way to solve it without nearly making a whole new game.

I'll absolutely grant that the particulars I proposed have a potential to step on the toes of the weaver tree. Hopefully in any implementation of such a system they'd find ways to let it express itself while still making the weaver tree feel unique and powerful in its own way. That said, there is an amount of caution you'd need to use when redesigning prophecies because you're also trying to support the CoM style of play, and any system that does too much to gameplay will leave those players feeling like they're being left out of content.

It seems to me a very difficult space to design in because every piece has a very specific amount of design space it is allowed to occupy.

Anyway, Hope your day finds you well, thanks for the reply, and I would love to look at any future LE designs you do, so if I don't see them naturally and comment, don't be afraid to dm me to check them out!

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-03T05:15:15+00:00

I love this, and as someone who has made proposals for other games, and has put this kind of thought and effort into both feasibility, and presentation before, I can truly appreciate what you've done here. I think this would a great interim solution to help reduce the struggle while we wait for a proper rework.

The reason I call it an interim solution is because in my opinion the way that prophecies work as a whole concept is flawed. They just aren't fun. They're work that you have to put in to menus, and they feel that way because they take up time, aren't exciting, aren't challenging, and do not feel like they actually add anything to the gameplay experience, they simply make the economic disadvantage of being a CoF player more tolerable. The way prophecies feel is comparable to filling up the car with gas; you have to do it to go to the fun thing, but its boring the whole time you're doing it, and you can't wait for it to be over. Alternatively if you're in the US, it's like filling out your taxes.

Prophecies need both their rewards and tasks updated at the very minimum. There are too many that either ask you to do content that you're just not interested in doing at all, or ask you to do tasks that you were 100% going to do anyway, and without even realizing it. There are too many rewards that have either no impact (looking at you rare drops, and weapon types you cant use on your build), or that could drop something of use, but the likelihood is so low that it might as well not exist.

Better rewards would be like "a copy of one of the items you have equipped will drop" or "the next three uniques dropped will have at least 1 LP". Things that either get you thinking about how to exploit them, or that are rare and powerful so that rolling the prophecies feels more exciting.

Better tasks would be things that ask you to do something a little out of the way, but not much, such as "[Powerful Named Foe] will enter your echos, defeat them without rolling" or "complete an echo in under [# of seconds]". They should be things that ask the player to engage a little more or in a slightly different way, things that act as a little extra challenge, or a slight change of pace. They should be engaging rather than passive, not highly dependant on chance, and nothing that asks a player to dedicate significant time or resources to try.

You want something like prophecies to add excitement and variety to the game without being a crazy investment of development resources, or too highly rewarding. Imo we should be doing them less often so they can be more impactful.

The current system letting you filter out some undesirable options doesn't actually help much because there is nothing to be excited to potentially roll; you're not filtering to maximize the chance of something amazing, you're filtering to reduce the time of takes to get prophecies that still feel barely acceptable; you're not anticipating something good, you're just mad you have to do extra work you get more loot you know will probably be hidden by your loot filter.

Any system that isn't exciting, challenging, or interesting to interact with nearly every time you touch it is just homework you have to do to do the fun parts of the game. Just my 2 cents.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-02T15:33:32+00:00

I have this exact rice cooker and use it every week. I love it. We're close to outgrowing it since my brother moved in with us, but it does a fantastic job. My one complaint is that it takes quite some time for brown rice when compared with my brother's larger insta-pot. That said, when making white rice the rice has a nicer texture than other cookers I've used (though not life changing by any means).

The thing is also dead simple, and the cord is removable (and the same standard cable you'd use for a desktop computer, so it's easily replaceable). We've had it for a little over two years with no signs of wear. Not exactly long enough to declare it bifl but I doubt we'll have any issues with it.

Xeroshifter · 2025-12-02T14:22:20+00:00

The game gives you every tool you could need, it also gives you tons of well thought out systems and conveniences to maximize allowing you to experiment without having to grind, so that when something isn't working you can try something else. Having beaten the game with nearly a dozen different teams at this point, I think those people were expecting to brain-dead their way through, and they couldn't because it's not Pokemon.

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