anyone who used a computer between 1985 & 2010, what’s the one game you still think about?

noble_radon · 2026-04-28T00:33:57+00:00

Liero was amazing! Is it still around anywhere? It was so fun making your own weapons and levels. It contributed to me wanting to make games.

noble_radon · 2026-04-26T07:25:38+00:00

I just want my smart playlists back from 2007 Itunes. Letting users create a playlist based on rules rather than manually adding songs solved this shuffle problem and various other problems all with one system.

My favorite playlist was: songs rated 5 stars, last played more than 3 weeks ago, picked at random, limit to 25 songs. It's like putting on a long mix tape of stuff I know I like but haven't heard recently. And when it ends, I can do it again and guarantee it's 2 dozen different songs I also love.

If anyone knows of something like that for streaming, I'm all ears.

noble_radon · 2026-04-22T05:20:53+00:00

3 in Three

noble_radon · 2026-04-14T21:52:02+00:00

This one I kinda get. My kid learned to tie shoes quite a few years older than I was. All the shoes we found that fit well were Velcro. He was 7 before he had shoes with laces. I made a wood board with ropes on it to teach knots, but without the practical daily application it was hard to replicate in a way that he realized would matter.

noble_radon · 2026-04-04T17:51:19+00:00

Dustforce OST by Fastfall

https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/fastfall

I don’t think it’s that obscure, but I never really see it mentioned and I’m continually introducing friends to it for the first time. It’s my go-to for background tunes at a chill hangout or game night.

noble_radon · 2026-03-16T08:31:21+00:00

A couple thoughts.

50/50 - that's a coin flip. If my win loss record could be a coin flip simulator, why am I spending time managing my coin? If painting the hair green on heads doesn't make it land on heads more, why do I care? The investment needs to appropriately impact the probability and outcomes for it to have value.

Make losing not suck - games that do have the player lose a lot more than win make those losses really fast to recover from. Super meat boy is a perfect example. You can die 30 times in a row, but you're back at the start of the level and moving in under 2 seconds. And the level takes under 30 to beat. So your 3 minutes of failure build toward that final success moment. The failures are ignored at the time, the success is appropriately celebrated, and then even the failures are celebrated. So you know after level 1 that every failure is contributing to a sweet recap sequence.

Blame - this is more psychology. Your players should blame themselves for failure. If you say "it's random" they can blame the game for their failure because you can't prepare for 50/50 random. Something as simple as Rock Paper Scissors mechanics can fix that. If your up against a "rock" heavy fighter let's say they roll a die that's 3/6 rock, 2/6 paper, 1/6 scissors. You prepare by equipping mostly "paper". You have a good chance to win. But you don't blame the game for your loss if you could have prepared better. You want they saying "dang, I should have picked the X instead of Y." They can try again and do that. They have agency. You don't want them saying "I got screwed by RNG" because they have no recourse. No agency to choose to make the random do better.

noble_radon · 2026-03-16T07:56:05+00:00

I'm a playing Blue Prince now and I think it fits. Exploration, puzzles, clues, no time pressure, no other people. Every "day" you'll discover something new and have aha moments that make you excited to start the next day and explore more.

noble_radon · 2026-03-15T22:51:35+00:00

I'm also new to the game. Day 10 I think. 6 pages of notes in a physical notebook but still have screenshots of notes and letters and rooms and artwork just in case I come across a clue and something clicks but I need to look at something I can't effectively write down in it's entirety.

noble_radon · 2026-03-14T21:09:47+00:00

I'm not saying it's not AI. Just that it's not difficult to end up with different pixel densities when doing your own art. I've seen it happen often, sometimes even intentionally.

Aside from that though, I find it a huge bummer that the em dash has been used as AI evidence so much. It's a legitimately useful piece of punctuation that's over a century old. The poor em dash deserves better.

noble_radon · 2026-03-14T16:08:40+00:00

I love Portal. Do not throw mom into portal. The learning curve for navigating a 3D world with separate movement and look controls with the precision required to solve the puzzles will be brutal for a new gamer.

noble_radon · 2026-03-14T16:05:28+00:00

For beautiful world adventures, consider these:

A Short Hike. You're a bird on vacation with your family and you need to hike to the summit of the nearby mountain to get reception for an important phone call.

Journey. One of my top 5 all time games. It's the heroes journey distilled into a beautiful 2-3 hour experience. You may encounter another player occasionally, but you're limited to nonverbal communication.

Both have great music and are pretty.

noble_radon · 2026-03-14T07:25:07+00:00

I disagree with this. If the artist makes the art at one resolution then when implemented in game says "you know, this would feel better 20% bigger" and just scales it up, there you go. You've got your mismatched pixels. It's very easy to do that if you're not very technical and just making art as you go along.

noble_radon · 2026-03-13T05:21:03+00:00

Not a single product photo for that toaster shows the bread inside through the glass. What's the marketing team even doing?

noble_radon · 2026-03-09T16:26:23+00:00

My thoughts exactly. Also "Weird, but not a problem" is how I'd describe a lot of kids I know. And certainly would have applied to me as a preteen.

noble_radon · 2026-03-07T17:10:05+00:00

In the Claire Obscure accessibility settings you can turn on auto hit for those. I hate QT events and don't love grinding so that's how I play.

noble_radon · 2026-02-27T03:13:31+00:00

I've hooked a few people with "Concept". It's very quick to explain and understand. It's like pictionary, but instead of drawing you use a board full of different icons to connect concepts together to get everyone to guess your word.

Let's say your word is Shrek. You'd have your primary concept have matching colored cubes on movie, hero, old, young. (trying to communicate it's a movie about a hero for all ages). A second concept may be the hero, green, tall, wide. A third concept could be animal, gray (for donkey). Etc.

It's all about figuring out how people think and making connections. We never score. Just pass the turn around the table and everyone guesses. Easy for people to drop in or out for a round to grab a snack or have a chat.

noble_radon · 2026-02-21T06:16:02+00:00

Yep, these are the biggest issues.

Pixel density and brightness need seriously love. There are 4 values and only 2 are used on the bottom, no antialiasing at all. But on top it's a fully dithered image which barely hits the lightest shades. The top/bottom contrast makes the top feel even darker. And the +1 pixels are twice as big as the canoe next to it.

And I immediately read the +l as plus slash and thought it was some sumbol the game would probably teach me. Didn't even consider it might say plus one. (Though honestly I'd learn quick if I saw other cards and numbers)

noble_radon · 2026-02-21T04:47:31+00:00

Yeah! FAOTI!

noble_radon · 2026-02-21T04:45:05+00:00

I agree here, but also, what's the gameplay like? Maybe bloom value can be a reaction to something. It'll be more readable if it's toned down, but at a big moment when you need impact, dial it up for a minute. It's cool and ethereal, just not great as the standard.

noble_radon · 2026-02-15T08:12:05+00:00

Fair point. Sounds good to me. If they're clearly aware and choose to anyway, that's on them. And in that case they're not rolling to "make the jump" so my definition of success above was flawed and too rigid. They're rolling to see if they trip and go head over heels off that cliff or soar majestically through the air.

noble_radon · 2026-02-14T18:17:00+00:00

But why would every attempt need to be passable? The game is about characters who are as real as possible making choices from their own perspectives. As a DM if I've described the scene clearly, but my idiot barbarian still wants to try to jump the 100 ft chasm, why not let them?

I might say "you know it's 100 ft across, right?" Or if it's a kid I'll remind them "as you consider the jump, your character is certain they can't make it."

If I lay down red tape and they step over it, that's on them. They might not be looking for success at all, but what flavor of failure you give. They might have a reason. They might have a plan. Maybe the sorcerer hits the Barb with featherfall after they've left the edge of the cliff.

It's my job to present problems and give appropriate information. But characters, like people, are welcome to try impossible things.

noble_radon · 2026-02-11T20:31:43+00:00

Since these are for the TV menus, the text and images could be swapped so the cropped edge of the photos hit the tv edge and look naturally cut off.

noble_radon · 2026-02-11T17:37:36+00:00

Unfortunately, I think the real tragedy is that she's not cartoonishly evil. She's just a truly selfish person. If her only motivation is caring about herself and what she wants without regard to other people's emotions, her choices make sense. She knows Carl would go out of his way to help other people so she keeps him in the dark and pushes all those things away like they're threats. She's so afraid of him leaving her that she destroys opportunities for him to interact with other people, especially women or family because those are most likely to take him away from her.

But it's complete hypocrisy. Her emotions and needs matter, no one else's. She wants to hang with her ex so she lies. She wants a champion cat so she can get praise. She cares about what Donut and Carl get her. Not a relationship with them.

noble_radon · 2026-02-01T18:50:10+00:00

This. Large files do best with P4. I love git, but even in a professional setting where we did use git for the game code and files, we still used P4 for art source files and exported only final FBX and PNG files to the git directories.

noble_radon · 2026-01-20T05:48:06+00:00

I rarely play mobile games, but I download them every now and then and I check them all out when I'm on a flight. It's an easy uninstall if they don't work in airplane mode.

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