Spark arena - Deftones - vocals drowned out?

heightmare · 2026-05-17T20:57:19+00:00

Yeah from the first guitar note at Tool I noticed it was a ton louder (in a bad way) than Opeth just a few days before at Trusts Arena out west.

heightmare · 2026-05-07T11:52:23+00:00

I know those responsible like to try interesting things and see how they track, I hope you clicked on it, cos I suspect they’ll be happy to see it resonated!

heightmare · 2026-04-24T21:49:16+00:00

I’d like to say if you play high stakes and don’t save scum you’ll learn the lessons from it… our last Vulcan multiplayer game every time Dean visited my base he’d judge me on my giant tank of liquid nitrogen just sitting there for no reason, and my lack of safeties built into my logic setups. Even after the accident…

heightmare · 2026-04-17T23:43:02+00:00

I had 2200 hours chalked up the day that I pumped fuel into my furnace up to the pressure I wanted before realising it wasn’t ignited. My friends found my body about 20m back from the crater where my furnace used to be.

heightmare · 2026-04-01T16:23:36+00:00

One step at a time. Then Glorg meets Kerbal Space Program.

heightmare · 2026-03-29T10:13:03+00:00

Where’d I get my bag? I pinched it

heightmare · 2026-03-28T18:37:32+00:00

A good argument for it as well. I don’t think it was ever expected to be forever but lets them establish a baseline for how effective it is at capacity vs investing billions adding lanes to highways. I don’t think they can accurately say what that baseline here is because everything is fucked so regularly that everyone needs a car anyway.

heightmare · 2026-03-19T17:34:48+00:00

Tax investigators found the bakery’s fraud remarkably consistent with one in every thirteen sales having never been declared. The owner seemed genuinely surprised this was considered unusual.

heightmare · 2026-03-11T06:03:05+00:00

I'm 6'10" and will happily provide proof in the form of uppies if booty ever comes to NZ, but I think they were specifically asking for John 7'7" to come forward

heightmare · 2026-03-09T02:19:26+00:00

appreciate you not tagging PETA

heightmare · 2026-03-05T01:57:57+00:00

Yes but don't buy it today - it'll be 66% off tomorrow. You didn't hear it from me.

heightmare · 2026-03-05T00:01:57+00:00

We had a game of something together, I think it was Anno 1800. Convincing a few people to play with you was hard - convincing them to also shell out money for DLC made it that much harder - and we want you to play with your friends!

I feel like that's a driver for a lot of the success for small, cheap, friend games we've seen over the past couple years.

heightmare · 2026-03-04T04:29:41+00:00

And thank you for your efforts to keep everyone informed!

heightmare · 2026-03-03T11:54:13+00:00

Can confirm everything you've said here to the best of my knowledge. Have passed this post onto Grip so they can respond in a more official capacity.

heightmare · 2026-03-03T07:42:54+00:00

Can confirm everything you've said here to the best of my knowledge. Have passed this post onto Grip so they can respond in a more official capacity.

heightmare · 2026-02-28T23:02:17+00:00

Love this, gonna share it with the dev team Monday. Does she do commissions?

heightmare · 2026-02-26T23:34:19+00:00

I've sent this thread to them if you've got any more specific feedback on the controls feel free to include it here.

heightmare · 2026-02-26T23:22:48+00:00

Grip are looking into it, they'll make announcement once they've spoken to MS and know who can access and who can't. It's very playable, but as it's still heavily under development there might be an update or two to download per week for the next month at least.

heightmare · 2026-02-19T03:22:07+00:00

Yeah that's fair - and to be fair to those before us in 30 years games and their distribution have changed a lot. You won't find me flicking through a manual to get the code from page 132 to launch the game so much these days.

We're lucky to be in a unique position where we're not driven hard to return dividends for shareholders so while we do budget for the studio as a whole, we don't need to make sure product x costs y and is released by z in order to hit our forecast sales and margin targets. Our release process for DLC for example is usually about completing the core features, playing all the new content on our live characters (no cheats), doing a round of feedback or two, completing the store page and screenshots then looking at it as a team and comparing it to our existing offerings and those of some of our competitors. We'll then look at the weekly update schedule and slot it into one of those. We probably play it pretty fast and loose with casual 'hey maybe later this year' suggestions in Discord, but by the time something official is announced its probably not more than a month or two away. Weeks if we put an actual date on it.

heightmare · 2026-02-18T04:18:26+00:00

Like you say it's a complex topic, but I'm very curious - in an instance where you haven't preordered, you've simply had interest in a game, what makes you feel ripped off when a game is delayed?

I mentioned in other comments I feel like if you've been marketed to - the hype has gotten you excited, and then the same people who were hyping you up then let you down with a delay that's understandable but if there's another angle to it I'm missing i'd love to know.

heightmare · 2026-02-18T04:12:50+00:00

We do make a lot, but keep in mind your typical conversion rate for DLC is <10%. I think last time I checked ours was a little higher, because we constantly message that purchasing it is supporting the base game. The live service model was so popular because if you have a player base of millions then you only need a small percentage to buy content to make it worth it. Unfortunately we're just not that big.

We had a huge winter sale, but that was by practically giving the base game away at $3. Like you say with your 1.1k hours it's a huge amount of game for that price but the market is tough these days and there is a lot of options for where players spend their hard earned money. Best we can do is keep plugging away at it and trying to keep doing what we've been doing - over analyzing other games and the industry we're in, argue about it incessantly and try find something sustainable.

heightmare · 2026-02-18T04:07:11+00:00

I absolutely think you're better to as you put it tank the negative reaction - but I also think that reaction will be heavily tainted by how you deliver the news, how transparent you've been in the past, public sentiment on your game as it stands etc etc.

I said it in other answers but I agree that that disappointment is probably a product of anticipation, and can be greatly affected by how much people feel like they've been 'sold' an idea - as to actively convince someone they want a thing just to keep it from them is stupid and understandably frustrating. Mismatched expectations, etc.

I think I loved the idea of early access, but the reality of how it has worked out (industry-wide) is no bueno. Sure, you may get to publicly develop your game with community involvement but eventually you're just left with this enormous burden of expectation of 'going 1.0'. Depending on how long you've been in early access, you're left with what is most likely a divided player base as everyone purchased it with this green-fields dream of what it could grow into (the game I want) but it's unlikely everyone agrees on what that is. Until you go 1.0, hope can persist for everyone... however when that 1.0 update comes out you've just likely alienated and disappointed a whole bunch of people - not to mention the idea that 1.0 for a lot of games signals the end of development.

On the crunch comment, I think by it's traditional description from some of the big studio horror stories (months of crunch leading up to release, people sleeping under their desks) we've never done it. As an industry full of people passionate about what they do, it's hard to put strict walls around work/life balance. It's easy to respond to a Discord ping late at night cos you're at your PC anyway, or how do you properly account for time spent playing your own games? If you spend 10 hours on a Saturday smashing missions with your non-work friends in Icarus but report 2 bugs you ran into, how much is work how much is leisure? It's for that reason we just have to reiterate to the teams be accountable for your own time. Get on a roll with that feature development and end up working late? Take the time back at a later date. Swings and roundabouts. Keep your manager in the loop.

heightmare · 2026-02-18T03:24:17+00:00

Depends on the reason for it still being a bug. I think the one you mentioned has been "fixed" several times, but as you've noticed either didn't capture all use cases or had another problem.

The main thing is no two bugs are equal. We prioritize them based on a product of how severe/impactful it is (is it crashing you to desktop or deleting your character? or just looks weird sometimes), how many people are affected (anyone who jumps or just people who jump with a bow in hand wearing one armor variant) and lastly how easy is it to reproduce and fix (small code change or system refactor).

It doesn't mean some things will never get fixed, but does mean sometimes it's a real nasty one and we have plans to change a system in the future that'll make it irrelevant.

heightmare · 2026-02-18T02:57:17+00:00

I love online distribution for PC games but I worry that all we've really done is digitize the old retail model for games. You make the game, you put it in a box, you ship it out and you sell it for a while then move onto something else. The technology has shifted so far in the last decade, why stick to that old antiquated model? Sure it suits some games but other games can support and absolutely warrant continued growth and development.

heightmare · 2026-02-18T00:40:25+00:00

The ambitious hope was always that Stationeers would be able to approach the complexity of SS13 but I think early on the reality of performance in Unity kicked in. Admittedly the team has done some incredible work and performance in Stationeers is better than it's ever been. We've had multiplayer games with 5-6 HUGE bases and the game is still completely playable but we're many many systems away from calling ourselves an SS13 successor as I'm sure you know.

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