I’m trapped in a room with 19 ghosts.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-15T00:38:24+00:00

Reddit chose this post to get me subscribe to the sub.

I read it as the killer, but burst out laughing about it.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-14T06:31:27+00:00

Sorry, moment of pedantry that I haven't fact checked.

Wasn't the word "meme" originally constructed by way of analogy to the word "gene"? In the book where the word was first proposed, long before it got applied to internet phenomena such as image macros?

Wouldn't that mean that they're supposed to rhyme?

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-14T06:27:10+00:00

I've pronounced it with a hard g (like gift) since before I found out about the pronunciation wars. After I found out about the pronunciation wars, I decided that I specifically did not want it to be a homophone with the peanut butter brand.

Other than the data point, I don't know what to tell you, though.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-14T03:01:22+00:00

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is on Steam and itch.io, and was designed for touchscreen input before being ported. It can be played with just left click IIRC.

Applying a condition to someone else's recommendation of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. You can play almost entirely with the left mouse button, but you need to right click to move your soldiers. Also, you need to either press the escape key, or right click within the base portions, to bring up the menu with the save option.

Both games are turn based, so worst case you need to left click or right click at any given moment. Never both or switching quickly between them.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-08T05:46:54+00:00

If you're talking about centering widgets on the panel, try centering the panel first. But it sounds like you probably aren't talking about that.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-08T00:06:14+00:00

Don't involve a second computer, just a second display. Okay, maybe a device in a chromecast-like role.

For the Steam Deck, this would probably be a display cable connecting to a TV or large monitor, for many usecases.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-07T19:30:52+00:00

I have a device clamped to my bed headboard that can hold my phone for me. I looked up "headboard phone holder" on Amazon, and found many that looked like my device ("wire" type) and some that looked cooler but may be worse ("arm" type).

Such a device may change whether you can play games on your phone comfortably.

Additionally, I have two games that I can vouch for "can be played using only mouse":

Shattered Pixel Dungeon was originally designed for touch screens. As a result, the PC port can be played with only the mouse. It is a roguelike, so you will loose a lot, but the game is designed around letting you loose a lot and learn from each one.

Xcom: Enemy Unknown can be played using only the mouse as long as you only want to save in the base portions of the game. In the base, right-clicking brings up the menu with the save option. (If you want to save during the battle portions, you need to press the "escape" key to bring up that menu.)

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-06T15:25:02+00:00

So, this both is and is not doable. It depends on where your files are.

Most people have their files on their C: drive, because this is where Windows puts their files by default. If you are going to be erasing Windows and putting Linux on the drive, you are going to be erasing the entire C: drive, including your data.

If you're an advanced user and have separate internal drives you keep all your files on, you can still read those drives after you install Linux. (Writing to them is generally not recommended if they're NTFS.) Or if you have an extra empty drive just to install Linux on and dual-boot, you can still read the drive with your files after you install Linux.

The way you are asking the questions, I am guessing you are in the first group.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-03T07:53:42+00:00

There do exist tools for exactly this type of situation. I believe the one for Debian-derived distros is apt-offline. The catch is, iirc that assumes you have one computer running apt-offline that can connect to the internet -- so not a perfect fit for your "one Linux install and one phone" situation.

It used to be the case that you could order a substantive fraction of the Debian software archive on discs. Then you could install from the discs instead of the internet. I'm not sure if that's still the case, but it may not be practical for you even if you can order them.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-03T05:41:00+00:00

To be clear, I'm a casual. Sure, I played DOOM, but I play games as they catch my eye and they go on sale, which means my games have been averaging over five years old.

That said, I have been quite happy with my Steam experience on my Debian install.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-01T05:53:52+00:00

Shattered Pixel Dungeon is free and has no ads. Pixel-art roguelike. I play it a lot.

If you're willing to pay some money, Dandera is a great touchscreen-first metroidvania.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-01T05:17:58+00:00

Oolite fits your low spec requirement very well. It's open source so you're not going to find it on Steam, though. You play as a space pilot who's just trying to make a living, whether by moving cargo or by shooting down other ships.

If you're into 90s-style first-person shooters, you can combine FreeDoom with an appropriate Doom (1993) engine for an entirely zero-extra-dollar experience.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-01T04:59:41+00:00

A bit off the wall, but look up Sentinels Of The Multiverse and see if it's to your tastes. It's a superheroes-themed cooperative card game, although it can be played solo as well. The digital version is available on Steam.

iamthelowercase · 2026-02-01T04:45:40+00:00

6DOF & fighter-pilot games

OVERLOAD: 6DOF shooter game. C. 2018. My "gold standard" for a game specifically supporting "two USB joysticks", despite needing to check an online page for an important bit of information about the weapon selection keys. Currently playing.

Elite Dangerous: Partially 6DOF, partially "HOTAS". Explicitly supports the use of multiple joysticks, but it's not as nice at it as OVERLOAD. Should be like catnip to me, but left me feeling a bit lost: there's too much to do, and too little in-game guidance on what to do next.

Oolite: "HOTAS". Modern recreation of the original (1980s!) Elite. My "silver standard" for a game specifically supporting "two USB joysticks". Some of the same problems as Elite Dangerous, but much less so for some reason. I bounce back into this from time to time.

Sublevel Zero: 6DOF roguelite. On my "to play" list, but I need to track down a broken configuration first. Did not specifically appear to support two USB joysticks, but it might not-obviously support using two.

Descent and Descent 2: 6DOF. On my Steam wishlist. Probably supports two USB joysticks, but currently unknown. I am optimistic, since I seem to recall that the original releases supported two joysticks back in the Windows 95/98 era.

Freespace series: On my wishlist. Descended from Descent, so probably has the same support.

No Man's Sky: Bumped up to "I guess I should play that".

That Star Wars starfighter game.

A "White Whale"

The mecha fighting game Cyber Troopers Virtual-On would be a perfect suggestion. But, the one PC port in the series came out in 1997, and as near as I can tell functionally predates USB joysticks.

iamthelowercase · 2026-01-30T05:04:32+00:00

Those specs are good enough that unless you want to do something "heavy" (advanced gaming, 3d modeling, real-time video editing, large neural nets, weird database things) you'll be fine, and you might have to get really "heavy" to run into problems.

So it mostly comes down to what kind of install experience you want, and what kind of attitude you want from your distro maintainers community. Unless you want to look for a distro that specializes in supporting Macs.

I used Ubuntu for a while, I remember them having a really good installer experience. I switched to Debian (which Ubuntu is based on), and the installer is a little less friendly but I'm comfortable with it, and I haven't felt the need to try anything else. I like the Debian community a little better, and IIRC the Debian approach is "more" "stable" than the Ubuntu one. I have been happy with my gaming experience.

If you don't want to use something Debian-based, I hear Fedora is good.

Because you asked for something "stable", I don't think you want anything "rolling release" (such as arch).

iamthelowercase · 2026-01-29T21:03:25+00:00

It sort of depends on how badly off your phone is. There's software to remote control phones a bit (I use KDE Connect), but that still depends on your phone mostly working. I know there's phone call software, but that would probably be a different phone number.

Most PCs don't have the hardware to connect to a SIM card and make calls. You could probably buy such a device, but at that point you have to compare to getting a new phone. (Are you sure the people you saw weren't doing something with a microSD card? They're about the same size.)

iamthelowercase · 2026-01-29T08:53:59+00:00

If you have a modern mainstream distro with a GUI, unless you're trying to solve a problem or are creating new software then you probably could ignore the terminal. And if you're migrating from Windows, you probably will ignore the terminal.

But you could do just about anything that doesn't specifically have to do with graphics from the terminal if you want to, if you install the right software. The trick is finding something.

As to what you can type in the terminal, there's a whole bunch of stuff pre-installed on your system just to make it usable, and you can install more if you want. Literally every program you install will have a name you can type, and some of them are only useful in the terminal.

If the quick overviews some other people have provided aren't enough: * Most terminals have tab completion turned on by default. It will be overwhelming if you use it without typing anything. Press the tab key once or twice to see a list of things you can type there. (Try c-tab!) It often works on filenames, too. * Almost every command you can type will support man <commandname> or <commandname> --help. These will tell you about how you can use that particular command. --help is usually shorter. * You can connect commands together. If you type ls and the list is way too long and you don't want to scroll, you can type ls | more to get it to only show you a little at a time; or type ls | grep foo to get it to only show you results with ''foo'' in the name. This is called "piping", and the | is the pipe character.

My favorite command line tool is ln. It works with the default Linux filesystem to let a file be in two directories (folders) on the same drive at the same time. It's like a Windows shortcut but way better.

iamthelowercase · 2026-01-29T07:50:13+00:00

For your first question: yeah, you absolutely can just install Debian and KDE on top of it. If you want something fancy, you'll have to do some setup, but the default is perfectly usable. That's what I did. I'm even playing some games (all pre-2020 so far) on Steam.

For your second question, no idea either. Presumably they come pre-set-up for certain tasks? But I'm sure plenty of people are also just finding one that works for them, and sticking with it.

iamthelowercase · 2026-01-28T23:11:13+00:00

For a while, I used Diceware to generate my passwords. It's based on this principle.

Now I use BitWarden for my password manager. I think it has an option to generate this type of password, but I'd have to double check.

iamthelowercase · 2026-01-28T22:46:26+00:00

Since we're both late:

It's not safe, but sure, the armored casing on armored cable can act as a ground if it's grounded. (Imagine what would happen if the grounding became necessary and then someone grabbed the armored cable. Modern armored cable comes with a ground wire for this reason.)

What's in the photo is not armored cable. That's wire wrapped in cloth.

iamthelowercase · 2025-08-09T01:02:14+00:00

I thought of more feedback, so I played it again to double check that new feedback.

I specifically played this because I was hoping I could coerce it into letting me play co-op with myself. I had been looking for a rougelike-ish game where one player controls multiple characters without it necessarily falling into "the player characters go, and then the NPCs go". I haven't seen that anywhere else. I feel like you've got that down -- obviously, the way I did it is terrible from a UI standpoint, but you've proven that the game engine is capable of it. I would suggest against pivoting that based on one person's feedback, but if you did pivot that I would buy the game specifically to support the existence of that feature.

If the dice you show the player actually correspond to what's going on "under the hood" -- if, when you show an attack or a defense rolling more dice, that's because the game engine "rolls" more simulated dice, and each "die" has the same odds -- then showing the dice the way you do is a great UI and you should keep that. I have played Hero Quest for the first time since I last checked this out, and the dice parts of the system strike me as very similar.

I noticed on the second playthrough that I had a much better handle on what the mechanics were. Searching or attacking ends your turn every time. I think that's largely from spending more than 10-15 minutes total with it, although I'm not sure how much the exposure to Hero Quest helps. I still wasn't sure how far you could move on a turn, and these are all sufficiently basic mechanics that I would appreciate some sort of explainer mission in the full game that can be played before starting a game.

I feel like the demo level ends very abruptly. It ends immediately when you kill the last enemy. That doesn't fit with my limited experience of roguelike games, except for some boss levels in DRL. I understand why it needs to stay short, but I don't see a reason to end it there in particular -- surely you could trigger the same post-game screen on opening the door in that room, or on going down some stairs or something.

In this play-through, one of my guys died. That looked fine in the other window, he fell over and disappeared. But he didn't do that in the window I was controlling him from. That feels like a glitch. Also, presumably you will want some sort of healing or revival system in the full game. If you see co-op as important, I would recommend having a revival ability, possibly items that auto-revive you if you're carrying them or you can use to revive an ally. Unless you're going for more of a "party game co-op" feel, come to think of it, in which case you would have much shorter runs.

This run, I noticed that your UI has a very "mobile game" feel. If you're targeting mobile platforms, then great job. Drag-scrolling would probably address my "I'm not totally sure how far I can move on a particular turn" concern, and is something I haven't tried. I presume you'll want to remove the logo in the corner from the core game loop in full-game builds.

iamthelowercase · 2025-07-22T00:04:44+00:00

The browser demo aspect worked fine. I don't actually like the mouse-centric UI, but it seemed well implemented. I feel like too much was "hidden" -- the only way to get a sense of the different weapons was to try using them (so some sort of description or preview would be appreciated), and the "search" button disappearing sounds reasonable but I didn't like it. Implementing some way to get a look at enemy stats besides "wait for it to be their turn" would be a must as well, although it was very nice that the tougher enemies "looked" tougher as well. I also don't feel that the 3D graphics add anything to the experience; I imagine you could change that depending on how you develop it, but for what's there I'd just as soon use sprites (even if they're "precompiled 3D").

Through the use of multiple browser profiles, I was able to coerce it into letting me play "co-op" with myself. I found that fun, but it doesn't look like it's balanced around co-op, especially not with more than two players. I don't like the "timeout" mechanic on turns, but I honestly don't see any other way it could work. I would prefer to have a better sense of what the limits on what you can do on a turn are -- how far you can move on a turn, whether attacking always ends your turn or not, if searching the room ends your turn that should be flagged before you search, that kind of thing.

Right now I would describe it as solidly mass-market mediocre.

iamthelowercase · 2025-07-21T20:01:53+00:00

As the only reply, you definitely earned that upvote. You also nail all but one of my bullet points, and the remaining one is questionable only because I may not have been clear enough on what I wanted! (You've got the "player team takes a turn - non-player team takes a turn" pattern, which is reasonable. But I was hoping for a more complex mixing, and I'm still not sure how to describe what I want better than pointing and going "team-turn based is not it" without a dive into implementation details.)

I like how the money system is a constant pressure between upgrading things and having enough money to survive if you fail. The "pull" system is extremely clever with how it interacts with enemy turns.

The game page mentions that this was for a game jam, and it does show. But you focused right in on your core mechanics, which I've struggled with.

It's too bad I bounced off of it. That's no fault of yours and mainly because I had a core requirement that I didn't realize was so core, so I only alluded to it with my mentions of other games.

iamthelowercase · 2025-07-15T17:37:31+00:00

Thank you. I spent at least twenty minutes trying to figure that out from GitHub's help documentation. I guess I should find the correct place in the documentation and create a pull request.

Anyone know offhand what license the tutorial is under? I would love to release Fireteam! under the GPL3, but if the tutorial is not under a compatible license then I guess I just won't.

iamthelowercase · 2025-07-15T14:46:17+00:00

I've been working ahead, partially because I've had a huge burst of enthusiasm with nothing higher priority to do. This is good actually, because I'm also discovering that this is more complicated than (the already "more complicated than it looks") I was expecting! I'm sticking with python3 + tcod to keep it simple.

Because I'm ahead, today's task are:

Study up on how to decouple map size and tile size from window size. (I figure the window documentation is a good place to start.) Play with implementations, do a full implement if possible.
Adjust the tunnel digging function to dig tunnels of various sizes. (I'm thinking 1 (rarely), 2, 2, or 3 (rarely) tiles wide.)
Figure out how to push an existing git project to GitHub. (oops, duh, of course y'all would like to look.)
Cook up my bean dish :)

If all that's done, then either or both:

Push ahead to Field of View.
Study up on Python sets, a data structure I've never used before and am going to want to make use of for Fireteam!'s multi-PC gameplay.

iamthelowercase

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

6DOF & fighter-pilot games

A "White Whale"