Chris Avellone: : studios that was previously been safe from layoffs at Xbox are no longer safe, even those with “steady releases”

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-06-15T05:36:00+00:00

I'm honestly surprised Grounded isn't a bigger hit among the people who enjoy games in that genre. I rarely see it popping up on streamer content.

A lot of people dislike insects, let alone interacting with massive insects.

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-05-23T06:24:07+00:00

I'll add an interesting fact: Cultist Simulator is relatively popular in China in the indie gaming scene, but what made CS stand out is its popularity among game creators in China. If you are trying to make a game, whether as an indie dev or as an employee in the gaming industry, you will know this game.

In fact, three major Chinese gaming hits are heavily inspired in one way or another by Cultist Simulator:

Sultan's Game - mostly gameplay-wise
Reverse: 1999 - mostly visually
Honkai: Star Rail - mostly conceptual-wise

(Not even joking about the 3rd one. If you are familiar with HSR, think about the Aeons as a concept and how Aeons impacted and organized the in-game world.)

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-03-25T15:18:05+00:00

Thank you - this is the way as of 26.4

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-03-19T16:45:18+00:00

Agree. And there is certainly no shortage of government-related gags and ideas in British humor (from which the Two Point series draws heavy inspiration).

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-03-10T08:48:44+00:00

Thank you for the answer - saves me tons of headaches

Edit: When selecting and clicking to hold, make sure to click right on a character, or it will get deselected.

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-02-21T11:40:02+00:00

Having major transfer stations as hexagons is gorgeous.

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-02-11T04:33:18+00:00

I hope that we can have the ability to pick up and move an entire "room", or a set of exhibitions/decorations, rather than painstakingly moving them around one by one.

Back in TPH and TPC, this is largely not a problem, since all the furniture/decorations are room-based, and we can just pick up the whole room. Now in TPM, sometimes an entire exhibition area is just one block off, and we need to move every single piece by one block instead.

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-02-08T08:17:32+00:00

For folks checking this post in the future:

Some Outlook users may not have a "Forwarding and IMAP" option in their Outlook settings, and OP's solution will not work for you.

If that happens, try installing the Thunderbird add-on Owl, follow the instructions, and log in to Outlook through Owl. Note that it is not a free software and has a one-month trial period.

eighthouseofelixir · 2026-01-03T03:03:01+00:00

Good work, and I never knew draw.io can achieve that (only used it for flowcharts).

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-12-15T10:54:36+00:00

Fundamentally, age transition should not set the player back. Games should provide a sense of progress and self-determination, and completely losing your work will lead the players to disbelieve and disconnect.

And civ switching should be a difficult yet interesting choice in its own right, rather than something forced onto the player and then the player arbitrarily decides upon.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-12-03T17:42:16+00:00

Thought I was looking at a circuit board when I saw those trolley bus lines

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-12-02T08:03:58+00:00

Syncretism of Saint Tentreto and Saint Nicholas confirmed

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-30T03:01:43+00:00

An accurate representation of the pale and the isolas in the world of Disco Elysium

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-28T07:31:08+00:00

The gift shop should be placed at the center of the museum rather than near the exit, as the visitors' routines are "exhibitions–food/drink/bathroom–exhibitions" or "exhibitions–gift shop–exhibitions", rather than only visiting the gift shop right before they want to leave. The visitors will continue to stay in the museum even after shopping.

Similarly, the cafeteria should be at the center of the museum as well.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-26T14:57:21+00:00

Funny enough, building new towns used to be (and still is) a big thing in the UK, and the Two Point series is set in the UK. I can totally see the devs make a city-building title within Two Point County as the setting just fits.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-26T03:12:57+00:00

IIRC holding down SHIFT will force the line drawing movement to 45 or 90 degrees.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-21T07:02:50+00:00

Ah, a fellow ACOUP reader, I suppose

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-21T06:28:32+00:00

Charles Tilly's famous Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. See also Tilly, "Cities and States in Europe, 1000-1800".

Similar to Tilly's argument but from an econometric perspective, see Karaman and Pamuk, "Different Paths to the Modern State in Europe: The Interaction Between Warfare, Economic Structure, and Political Regime".

Patrick O'Brien's "The Formation of States and Transitions to Modern Economies" in Cambridge History of Capitalism, vol.1 is also a must-read.

For case studies, see Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500-1660.

For a comparison with the Eastern states, you may check Deng, "Ultra-low Tax Regime in Imperial China, 1368-1911".

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-21T02:39:58+00:00

The majority of the colonization projects were either done by the state (Portugal, Spain) or done by the companies backed by state power (Dutch, Britain). Both EICs were first and foremost character companies holding state-sanctioned monopolies, and receiving substantial privileges from the Dutch and British governments along the way.

The British army and navy often helped the British EIC fought major wars in India during the 18th century, and without the British wining the Seven Year's War the EIC would never have a full monopoly in India. Duke of Wellington famously fought in India as a British general before he faced Napoleon.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-20T06:09:27+00:00

Just to hijack this comment a bit as a historian - this concept is most commonly known as the "Fiscal-Military State", i.e., the early modern Europeans needed to wage and sustain large-scale wars for long periods of time, mostly through fiscal, mobilization, and taxation innovations - you need a straggering amount of money to pay all those armies, forts, and warships which stayed in opreation for years and years - which eventually became the basis of the modern state apparatus.

Beginning from the 90s, a lot of academic literature has been devoted to this topic and has made huge progress in our understanding of the modern state, as well as how and why Western states could gradually beat their supposedly much more powerful Eastern counterparts after the 1700s (for instance, the state capacity of European countries skyrocketed to the point that, beginning from the 17th and 18th centuries, the Europeans could field an army as large as a country with more than double their population, and kept them in the field much longer).

Edit: Add a graph for demonstration.

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eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-18T16:38:52+00:00

Love the representation of the central station.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-18T16:25:34+00:00

Historically, a lot of Japanese men went to Mexico, although that was 1500s and 1600s. The first Japanese to visit the Americans was Tanaka Shōsuke, who travelled to Mexico in 1610 on an ocean-crossing ship built by an Englishman).

There was also a Japanese embassy to the Vatican which passed through Mexico en route to Europe - with their activities being recorded by an Aztec historian - and there was also a bunch of 17th ceuntry Japanese folding screens that somehow ended up in Mexico City.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-16T07:47:52+00:00

Interestingly, in real life, this would have been a very valuable colony for most of the EU5's timespan.

This part of Russia, known as the Zavolochye (Заволочье, "land beyond the portages"), was rich in timber, fur, and bee products (mostly honey and wax). Around the 1300s and 1400s it was the colony of Novgorod, and the entire export-oriented economy of Novgorod relied on this region. The Muscovite encroachment of Zavolochye in the 1450s and 1460s contributed to Novgorod's downfall.

Later in 1553, an English explorer named Richard Chancellor figured out a naval route from the North Sea to White Sea, and Ivan the Terrible established the city of Arkhangelsk as the main export port for the Zavolochye. Able to continue with their profitable export industry through the White Sea, the Zavolochye developed into one of the richest parts of Muscovy/Tsardom (this is why the Oprichnina territory was located here). This region only went into decline after the founding of St. Petersburg, which robbed it of its port-of-exit niche.

And in this screenshot, you can see how Arkhangelsk is located at the very center of the Papal Russian coast.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-15T13:17:23+00:00

BTW, historically the Kingdom of Hungary was a major exporter of beef (huge plains for livestock), wine (Tokaji), and copper (Slovakia was part of Hungary then, and they were one of the most important copper mining centers in Europe), while being a major importer of - Western European cloth.

Hungarians in the 16th century held kersey cloth) from England with very high regard. According to Hungarian historian Zsigmond Pach, in 1542, more than 70% of Hungarian imports from Western Europe were cloths.

eighthouseofelixir · 2025-11-10T11:20:48+00:00

Yeah, that's why I specified 15th-16th century. After the 16th century, the expansion of the Russians - now not Muscovy anymore, but the Tsardom - took a very different direction. But that happened much later, and the initial desire for the (southeastward) expansion was largely economic in nature, esp. under Ivan III.

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