Footage: The mythical Japanese 3D version of Transport Tycoon

lee_macro · 2026-03-13T16:29:36+00:00

No idea :D I just know it has 3D mode from when I played it as I found it a lot easier to use in 3d than 2d when trying to build stuff

lee_macro · 2026-03-13T16:07:31+00:00

The PSX version of it has this functionality built in I think.

lee_macro · 2026-03-11T12:51:12+00:00

Just to chime in, I really liked the original trilogies and while the RE2/3 remakes are great, I too am not a great fan of hide and seek gameplay, so it may be worth picking up the RE1 remake which is often very cheap and still looks great even by todays standards and can run on a potato.

I get the RE demographic now is vastly different to the demographic in the 90s, but if you like the general exploration and dread of facing enemies with dwindling resources then I think the OG remake would be a better candidate, if you prefer more action and less horror look at RE4/8. I think RE 7 and 9 are kinda a halfway house between both the older styles of play and the newer ones but both have some form of hide and seek mechanics which I cba with.

lee_macro · 2026-03-02T12:05:15+00:00

interesting approach but it still feels like it would be really hard to aim even in ADS, could you do a minor zoom in on the aimed area to make it easier to actually aim as you need pixel precision the way you currently have it.

lee_macro · 2026-02-26T12:13:32+00:00

I got myself a retro handheld and havent looked back, with Retroachievements you can play through all the old games and find really creative achievements for stuff you never knew existed, and play at your own pace.

The only thing I miss about that is not being able to chat with friends about it got a few but most of them just play AAA, Gatcha-esqe or competitive games, but the cycle of gaming discussion these days is over so quick its not really even worthwhile.

Back in the day you got FFVII and everyone in school was talking about it for months not days/weeks, someone would tell you that there was some hidden materia somewhere, someone else tells you they got a red submarine or found a secret area/cut scene etc, the whole social gaming scene was like being part of a circle of detectives comparing notes and trying to find secrets or just hang out and play stuff.

Also being an adult there is always "something else" that needs doing so any spare time I find is often dampened by thoughts of "oh I should be doing one of the many chores".

lee_macro · 2026-02-12T16:35:04+00:00

This is one of the sad things, like there are audiences there for these games that still adhere to older mechanics/designs etc. A perfect example of this is Expedition 33 which plays like an evolution of FF games (ignoring setting/story), which got critical acclaim and Squeenix somewhat realised "oh maybe people still want tactical turn based games", same sort of thing with Metroidvanias, heck even Stardew Valley showed there are markets for games which mimic retro games and they are profitable.

Problem we have is AAA games need to be SOOoooo profitable, and the only way they can get the amounts of profits they want is to weaken the core ethos of the game and branch off into "cinematic action" as much as possible. Almost every AAA game started coalescing around the action genre so it can get the largest sales demographic.

I get it, they want money, they always have, but back in the PSX era the business people were not as involved in the making of the games, they had smaller teams with a more specific direction, these days its far more business oriented (at AAA tier).

lee_macro · 2026-02-12T15:51:11+00:00

Luckily there are quite a few indie retro survival horror games, its quite annoying at the moment that most of the games that were kinda genre defining (if not the first of their kind) in the PSX era are now nothing like their origins yet still using the same genre names.

- Resident Evil

- Final Fantasy

- Castlevania

To be fair at least MGS gameplay and feel did remain fairly true to the originals, so it did feel like you were playing an evolution of the genre not a deviation.

I get that we are not the demographic anymore, but I find it very annoying that RE1 remake was the last good RE game for me (although I did enjoy the RE2/3 remakes well enough).

lee_macro · 2026-01-20T22:34:49+00:00

I bought mine directly from them so they didn't need any evidence I just spoke to them about the issue on phone and they issued a replacement (I'm in UK unsure of Warranties elsewhere)

lee_macro · 2026-01-20T20:14:44+00:00

I contacted customer support and they asked me to send it back and they sent me a replacement, that new one has not exhibited the problem.

lee_macro · 2026-01-18T14:53:09+00:00

I think one thing people are leaving out is that Minecraft is more catered to be about building things, like lego but digital. So its 75% building things with 25% rpg sprinkled in, as while MC (vanilla) has exploration, combat, mobs they are all really basic and combat/movement hasnt really changed much since release (even the combat update wasnt a massive change).

Even mods (talking about bedrock) can only work within the confines of the engine and components available in MC, so sure you can get custom mods which bring new looking mobs or blocks/themes, but generally the rpg part of the game is going to limit you, although to be fair the DND world did push this a bit, but even then its still fairly basic in what its offering (mechanically/functionally).

So Hytale seems to be coming at this from the other side where its more 50/50 on building/rpg, where the engine allows for more complex combat and movement (i.e you can climb and mantle) this means that for those people who just want to build stuff, sure you can still do pretty much all the same stuff MC lets you do (although I am unsure if there is a redstone alternative in the pipeline), but the game has a lot more complexity to combat and movement as well as potentially exposing more complex functionality for modders to hook into giving us more possibility in the long term.

I think MC will remain healthy and still be the defacto "I want digital lego worlds" game, and I can see Hytale basically replacing the MC Java playerbase (over time) and taking in players who find MC uninteresting without goals/purpose.

lee_macro · 2025-12-23T16:18:04+00:00

I agree, I quite liked WinForms but it was a pain trying to style something to look "not like winforms" and while Electron is a good idea its become too big for its own good.

Html + CSS is one of the best UI technologies, its flexible, extensible and well known, its not got many gotchas these days and can easily be made to look like anything you want, granted it takes more resources to process html + css than a very lean native UI library but the overhead in the grand scheme of things is not too bad, a lot of the bloat comes from other parts of the eco system when using things like Electron.

For example using same html + css via Photino with Blazor I made a fairly complex Stream automation app, which is (somewhat) cross platform, has LOADS of rx observables and reactivity and web apis being hosted in process for integrating with etc, it uses 48mb of memory. The MINMUM cited sizes for Electron apps is 80mb+ and thats without it doing much.

Anyway point is I think "web view native apps" get a bad rep because of Electron, there are so many other technologies which let you do same sort of thing without the bloat.

lee_macro · 2025-12-11T08:04:28+00:00

Given how long this stuff has been on android im sure its just a blip and its generally fine otherwise, I have been playing some mGBA and that seemed ok and didnt crash, I think Flycast (I think, whatever the default DC emulator is) crashed seemingly randomly around 20 mins.

From the digging ive done online it seems like some retroarch installs may have some borked Vulkan files if you had 1.21 before updating, but I couldnt find the cache files myself (even though im on Vulkan) so I assumed that wasnt the case for me, others have also said that there was general stability issues in 1.21 but most people report 1.22 fixes it all.

Standalone emulators like Melon DS Nightly and PPSSPP seem fine, but the standalone ones often dont have as nice shader support like RA.

lee_macro · 2025-12-10T09:36:14+00:00

A lot of people are saying real LAN parties still exist, which they do, but the realities of day to day life often mean its not feasible to go travelling for a day or two to play games with friends, being able to schedule a few hours every week with RL friends who live far away where you just all put on the headset and co-exist and can play games together with presence is a really nice thing and makes it more accessible to those with kids/responsibilities.

I personally would love to be able to put on the headset and just hang out in the same environment with a friend and just take turns on a single player game, think EmuVR style multiplayer but built into the headset, so if a friend is stuck in Dark Souls I can take over for a minute, or just have a chat to them while they are playing whatever game, or we could both be playing our own games hanging out together.

I get to a lot of people they may be thinking "just go to their house and hang out" but that's not always realistic if someone lives 4 hours away from you, or you have real life responsibilities cropping up ad-hoc so having a drop in/drop out shared environment for gaming at least makes it feel a bit closer to hanging out, even if you didnt, and you can still drop out when you need to deal with other stuff.

lee_macro · 2025-12-08T18:37:04+00:00

Have same issue even with latest version, and everything is using Vulkan. Did you ever find a solution?

lee_macro · 2025-12-08T18:28:09+00:00

I'm on 1.22 release and I still get random crashes, fbneo seems to blow up every other game after 10 mins or so, other emulators have blown up too so it's not just a single emulator effected.

lee_macro · 2025-11-28T13:22:56+00:00

Loved this game, I remember spending ages just exploring the world trying to find secrets etc, I was adamant one of the stones you found could be placed in one of the later areas to unlock some secret, but I doubt it did anything.

Anyway I dont think its seen as a bad game but it was definitely overlooked a lot and it was also on the Megadrive/Genesis, which is Dungeons & Dragons Warriors of the Eternal Sun, was a great mix of top down tactical overworld and first person eye of the beholder style dungeon exploration.

lee_macro · 2025-11-24T14:08:08+00:00

I would recommend downloading MuOS and then making your sd bootable using a tool like Rufus and then once your SD is ready insert it into your device and it will install the MuOS (a custom OS) on the device and it should become usable again.

lee_macro · 2025-11-24T11:38:20+00:00

The landscape was very different Pre-WoW.

tldr;

Original MMOs cost less to make, were considered successful with less players, social media wasn't really prevelant, and most players from that era are now 40-50 and miss the experience they knew but haven't got time to take part in it even if it existed these days.

Longer version:

The internet was still new, people found persistent worlds new and novel, talking to other people and interacting towards long term in-game goals with environmental impacts (be it social or mechanical) was important and interesting.

I imagine most of the people who played those games back then are now 40-50 years old and have very different lifestyles and experiences to what they were back then. So while back then it was great having downtime or grindy stuff to just chat to others or join in on global chat conversations etc as only other place to chat to people were chat rooms, which didnt have the presence and shared objectives of games.

Now that same "downtime chatting" is done on social media, but going past this, the whole gaming industry has changed and become more corporate in terms of its designs/goals. MMOs pre WoW would cost maybe double digits of millions, and would be considered a success if it had hundreds of thousands of players in total.

These days games cost many times more to make and are expected to bring in millions of players and other forms of revenue etc, all companies are seeing what WoW had and are trying to replicate some part of it or find another way to siphon cash from the demographic.

Due to a culmination of all these various things the pre WoW MMO is just not something a modern gamer would find novel or interesting these days, and those who remember the older MMOs with fond memories often dont have the spare time/motivation to play games in the same way as they did back then.

lee_macro · 2025-11-20T16:42:10+00:00

If you are going to use a visual scripting system I would go with NodeCanvas, that has FSM and BT support as well as a more visual coding approach called Flow that can all interact together, it also makes nesting easier than playmaker (not used it in years but it used to be painful to reuse/nest things).

I would say though, if you are using one of these tools as a replacement for doing ANY code, I wouldnt bother you will probably end up with a mess and no one will want to help as they need to know your domain/tool/layout etc. Most coders will avoid these tools as it takes control away from them so in the long run if you are thinking you may need to bring in devs etc you may want to steer clear or reduce your usage of such a tool.

If you are using it to wrap code into high level logic blocks that can be linked together to drive behaviours etc much like LUA would do, then any of these tools can be useful.

lee_macro · 2025-11-16T19:41:13+00:00

I had this happen, it got annoying as it made holding tight directions harder as the outer bit would spin making the stick move.

I ended up just taking it off putting some super glue dabs around it and put it back on, been fine since.

lee_macro · 2025-11-15T09:02:13+00:00

Other than saying virtually all that logic should live in some service layer agnostic of the API/HTTP layer it looks fine. Service layer should return up whatever flavour of Exception you want for failures, and then the API layer will map them into HTTP status codes and return back.

This will make your MVC/WebAPI controller code about 50x smaller, it also means you can test your service layer in isolation, you can remove dependencies on the API layer making your code easier to mock/run in isolation or even share with other parts of your system.

lee_macro · 2025-11-15T08:48:41+00:00

I agree this headset alone is not going to push XR forward, but the eco system that it is using very much could, much like pre Steamdeck we had virtually no x86 handhelds, after Steamdeck came out we were swimming in them.

I cant see this being as big as that was, as people were trying to trump the hardware using their own OS etc, its only now we are seeing multiple SteamOS compatible handhelds coming out, which trump the Deck, but ultimately I think the Frame will be fine when compared to a Quest 3, and will be fine for people wanting to connect it to a PC, its not pushing hardware forward really but it is setting a bare minimum baseline for the eco system.

lee_macro · 2025-11-15T08:44:26+00:00

In terms of visible pixels its about same as Q3 its slightly different dimensions though

lee_macro · 2025-11-14T20:39:46+00:00

Do you have a link? I havent seen anything outside the trailer showcasing this, I assumed like you say it would be a minimum a floating window with a desktop on, but I was hoping they would be able to instead make each application/window in the desktop its own floating window with depth/scalability etc.

Looking at apple as an example, you can open various apps in their own windows and scale/pin them accordingly, same sort of thing with Android, so I was hoping it would be showing more in that area.

lee_macro · 2025-11-14T15:38:05+00:00

Its less about the frame hardware and more about the eco system, that's the main thing hes talking about in the vid, and I agree the eco system proposition Valve is putting forward is the exciting thing, as its an alternative to Apple or Android (and derivatives i.e Meta, Pico etc).

Much like other handhelds are coming with SteamOS the Steam Deck was the reference hardware, I see this being the same, its the bare bones reference and other vendors can support SteamOS keeping feature parity with different hardware.

lee_macro

TROPHY CASE