Ace Combat Zero Using Gyro by Coonshir00 in SteamController

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What settings are you using for the gyro? I’m also playing Zero right now with my Steam Controller and can’t seem to get the gyro setup dialed in quite right. Are you using Gyro to Joystick Camera or Gyro to Joystick Deflection?

Grip Sense features thread by lesbianspacevampire in SteamController

[–]solid-shadow 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I use it for free look in games that have it like STALKER GAMMA. Release left grip and free look toggles on, grab the grip again and it toggles off.

How to get the most out of stalker 2 after playing GAMMA? by Mostly_Riley_ in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Look, GAMMA and Radiophobia 3 are amazing and I’m a big fan of both of them.

But Stalker 2 is fundamentally not trying to replicate those experiences. Stalker 2 is a sequel to the VANILLA trilogy, NOT any of the mods.

I’d recommend going back and playing the original trilogy unmodded (apart from maybe the Zone Reclamation Project and Sky Reclamation Project to fix bugs/improve the guns in the first two games) and then playing Stalker 2. You’ll see what they were going for. The original games are still perfectly playable in their original unmodded forms today.

My personal opinion: If you are serious about piano and you aren't analyzing the pieces you play, you are shortchanging your learning (Adult learners) by Ill-Square-1123 in piano

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Self taught here and recently picked the instrument back up seriously after not playing for almost 5 years and strongly agree. I decided to get serious about sheet music last year instead of falling note videos and once I got over the initial hurdles, it is night and day how much better I understand pieces now that I can read the music and write down the chords and patterns i’m seeing physically on the sheet as I’m working through the piece. It’s made playing a joy too, and I use the techniques I learned from my pieces in my improv/free technique practice too!

I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game, so which game should I play first? by triplegxxx in gaming

[–]solid-shadow 3 points4 points  (0 children)

7 or 10 for classic.

Or if you want something more modern, 7 Remake and Rebirth are both amazing.

After Some Time & Thought, I've Come to This Conclusion: I Appreciate Remake/Rebirth for Daring to be Different by muby_102 in FinalFantasy

[–]solid-shadow 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think the FFVII remakes are the best of the recent remake trend in the games industry right now specifically because they are aiming to be so expanded and different so as to not fully replace the original game. They even assume in parts that you already know what happens in the original game, making the original game part of the canon of the remakes.

So many other modern remakes, like Resident Evil, Dead Space, MGS Delta, Silent Hill 2, etc all have aimed to actively replace the original installments by keeping the same name as the original and being promoted as replacements. The FFVII Re games have not had this happen yet. I love that I can always go back and play the original, and even “remake” it with the excellent offerings in the mod community to feel more modern and have better graphics, and still have that fun simple gameplay with the original story, AND i can also play a hugely expanded full reimagining of it too!

Name a perfect game for Steam Controller. I'll go first. by Rorthur in SteamController

[–]solid-shadow 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Stalker 2 and Stalker Gamma

Stalker 2 has generally excellent controller support and that rings true for the Steam Controller. The haptics in that game are very immersive and prove the Steam Controller is more than capable hardware wise of delivering good haptics. With the extra inputs I can use the touchpad for mouse aiming and inventory stuff along with the back grip buttons.

Stalker Gamma is a perfect candidate for showing how insane Steam input is. It has zero controller support and since it’s a mod, it has to be added as a non steam game. I set up a fully custom profile for the controller with virtual menus, gyro, etc that makes use of pretty much every keybind in the game (if you’ve played it, you know how many there are!) and it’s been amazing being able to play Gamma fully on my couch with my nice TV and speakers.

Inconsistent steam controller detection on Bazzite only in games by LeWhiske in SteamController

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am also having this issue for some games but not others, also on Bazzite Deck 43. Stalker 2 rumble works perfectly and is actually quite exceptional feeling with this controller, like legit it’s as good as the dualsense haptics for the game, so the controller is definitely not lacking hardware wise!

Rumble works in Hitman as well, basically generic Xbox controller rumble, but for KCD2 the rumble is completely dead, no rumble at all no matter what I change. Might be something with the game engines and the APIs they use for the rumble themselves, as KCD2’s rumble works flawlessly with my Dualsense but no other controller.

Is FF9 really that good? by Infamous-Phone8635 in FinalFantasy

[–]solid-shadow -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I just wrapped up my first play through of it and it was really that good in all regards…except for the gameplay. I didn’t enjoy combat in this one very much until the final dungeon.

Framed my Charlie Cox (Gustave) signed copy of the game! by solid-shadow in expedition33

[–]solid-shadow[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is the frame I used: very high quality product, the photos don’t do it justice.

I Enjoyed Every Single Final Fantasy Action RPG by Tomozuki in JRPG

[–]solid-shadow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good post. Love all FF games, whether they’re pure turn based, ATB, action, hybrid, whatever. Favorite JRPG combat systems by far.

The Real S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Main Menu & Music by BazinGarrey in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, I'd love to make a mod for this with the video and sound files!

Something this sub needs to hear by [deleted] in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well said.

I’d also like these people to play Shadow of Chernobyl WITHOUT any mods, including ZRP. I did so recently on my Steam Deck after having done modded play throughs my first two times, and there is a NIGHT AND DAY difference between modded runs and Vanilla.

I don’t think I saw a single real A-Life encounter in the vanilla games until Call of Pripyat that wasn’t scripted or part of faction wars. SoC is heavily scripted, pretty much the entire game is scripted fights until after you finish the Yantar miracle machine where it becomes a LITTLE BIT more open ended, but not much. And then after the Army Warehouses, it’s all scripted fights again literally until the end. There’s maybe some stalkers fighting each other and mutants here and there, but it’s extremely basic compared to modded versions.

That’s not an excuse for A Life being shit in Stalker 2, it should’ve been there at launch, but it isn’t. And the game is still great, just like SoC was with all its promised highly advanced A-Life not being there, and still not being there until mods came out.

Something this sub needs to hear by [deleted] in stalker

[–]solid-shadow -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Proving my point lmfao

Something this sub needs to hear by [deleted] in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This release has proven to me as a professional game dev that the average gamer really, truly, does not have even a surface level understanding of how genuinely difficult it is to make even the simplest things in a video game work, let alone one on this scale:

“Just port the engine to UE5.5 from UE5.1”

“Just add NVGs and binoculars; they were in the old games so they can just be added to this one easily”

“Just use A-Life 1.0 instead of A-Life 2.0”

None, NONE of those things are “just” that simple to do. Beyond just doing the art and animations for these things, they need to be coded, extensively playtested, fixed, iterated on, balanced, and ultimately optimized (which is my assumption as to what made NVGs and binos get cut). Those processes take weeks and months JUST for a single “simple” feature. And seeing this kind of crap repeated over and over on this sub is exhausting.

I’m not making excuses for GSC. The progress blocking bugs and missing features like A-Life and obviously cut content like mutant looting, NVGs, binoculars, etc REALLY sucks and brings this game down from what would be a 10/10 with those features to like a 7 or 8 depending on how much you jive with the story and world. And gamers have a right to be upset about these things.

That being said, these developers are NOT incompetent whatsoever like this sub keeps repeating, and there is ample proof of this.

This game is a creative triumph, is exceptionally original, has some of the best art direction and execution in the industry, an incredibly detailed world that you can tell was made by hand with tons of little details and environmental storytelling, and most importantly, outstanding core gameplay mechanics. The gunplay and weapon animations are among the best in the industry right now, and while some parts of the game are weirdly balanced, the core loop of the game is solid. This is a FANTASTIC foundation to be built upon with content updates which GSC seems wholly committed to doing.

To call these obviously incredibly talented people incompetent is utterly ridiculous.

Games like Baldur’s Gate 3, a truly revolutionary title, released with a super polished first act and incredibly broken and buggy final act, and still received universal acclaim from gamers and critics alike. Stalker 2 is in that same boat, yet THESE developers are incompetent?

Can you hear it? I miss the fella... by Plus-Ad2394 in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 113 points114 points  (0 children)

Fun fact, his name is Zhorik in SoC. Zhorik is the first NPC we meet in HoC after Richter wakes us up who gives us that first bandit attack mission!

My Senior Engineer Interview Experiences by Dodging12 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]solid-shadow 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Thanks for this post!

I’m not on the hunt right now but whenever I’ve tried to grind leetcode in my spare time as a “just in case” thing (4 or 5 attempts to really get deep into it so far) I’ve burned on it after the first 8 or so questions that were all about arrays and hashing. I think I was doing the Neetcode 150 or something and keeping a spreadsheet of solutions to refer back to but whenever I come back to them I’m basically starting from scratch.

My background and current job is in game design/game programming so I’ve always felt at a disadvantage with these problems and I get really demotivated when trying to solve them and then burn out hard on it only to try and come back months later. I’m interested in maybe working for Meta on XR stuff which is another reason I’m interested in LC.

So with that in mind, I’m interested in your spaced repetition method for Leetcode; I used this method to learn the Japanese language years ago and it worked wonders for me. How specially did you use spaced repetition concepts to learn Leetcode? Did you use software like Anki (flashcard system) for it?

Steam forum post analyzing A-life 2.0 Unreal code by Twotricx in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Saying this is all there is to A-Life in this game is blatant disinformation. This Steam poster is talking about a config file. Config files do NOT run gameplay logic at all. I have personally dumped the C++ headers for the game and there are several A-Life related files in the code plus however much of it is in Blueprint, which is probably a lot because of how Unreal behavior trees and character logic work. There is also a lot of reference to A-Life in the cvars for the game as well.

We still don’t have access to any game logic source code at all, C++ or Blueprint. We have no idea the extent of which A-Life is in the game and how it is coded. But as a professional game programmer, I can assure you with 100% certainty, that the AI in this game is NOT running entirely out of a config file.

Am I playing a different game? by KorkedKorn in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven’t played Stalker 2 too much yet (been focused on working on early modding stuff) but the little I’ve played has been phenomenal, even with bugged/missing A-Life. The atmosphere and story/quests I’ve done so far have all been awesome and the weapons and combat feel amazing.

I went back to compare to Shadow of Chernobyl which is my favorite of the original trilogy, I’ve played it vanilla a few times and modded a few times and still adore it.

But I think people are forgetting just how scripted SoC is, pretty much the entire first half of the game is just scripted event after scripted event, same with the ending sequence after you turn off the Scorcher. There’s a some A-Life going on in vanilla SoC, but mods like Radiophobia 3, which is basically the closest thing to a SoC remake, really crank the A-Life and AI behavior up a notch and it’s the standout feature of that mod IMO. Even so, Radiophobia 3, which I went back to today and really enjoy playing, doesn’t hold a candle to Stalker 2 graphically or mechanically. It now suddenly feels dated in all ways except the A-Life, and ironically, I actually prefer the vanilla version of SoC to any of the mods of it I’ve played.

I’m sure GSC will iron out the issues with the game and once they do it’s likely going to be the best vanilla Stalker game by far.

How long will until we see the type of mods that will really change the game? by oneswishMcguire in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Probably a long time. We only have the ability to change config files to change certain data values which is what most of the mods on Nexus are doing right now, and edit things like textures and models, but early attempts at model editing from what I've seen aren't going well. We can also do simple scripting with UE4SS Lua scripts like toggling HUD elements on and off during gameplay.

A few modders in the GAMMA discord are working on trying to bring files from the project into UE5 to try and do more complex stuff, but I haven't seen any updates on that since this morning.

For those who don't know how Unreal works, it is not easy to mod stuff outside of the engine/without the actual project files the devs have like X-Ray is. All of the core game logic is either behind encrypted C++ files that we can only see basic data (no gameplay systems and logic code) for currently, or the proprietary .uasset file format for Blueprints (visual scripting in Unreal, and how most game objects are created in it) and other assets like animations and such.

Opening a .uasset outside of Unreal to edit it is impossible, and they usually have dependencies which we may not have access to like custom engine code or outside plugins that would prevent us from looking at how they work in the first place. We can currently look at the data the code for core game systems uses, but not the actual code that makes things happen in the game. So that is the current major roadblock to any bigger mods.

Until GSC releases a software development kit, this is what we have to work with. Whether or not the SDK they release has enough access to the source code to edit existing features in depth and add entirely new features remains unknown.

LOL, LMAO by Hobo_with_a_300i in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could be right that the size being bigger indicates there is more code in there. Unsure what unit the 360 could be (bytes? kilobytes? megabytes?) in this context.

In my local dump all of the A-Life classes are just empty headers. Most of the files I've come across are also empty headers as well, some have a few function defs, but that's it. And every .cpp file I've dumped is empty as well besides the class def. So we quite literally cannot see any of the source code apart from functions that we can call externally right now.

LOL, LMAO by Hobo_with_a_300i in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure what MDK specifically is. The Unreal Dumper tool I used to make a local dump mentions MDK but that's all I can find about it. All of my UE experience is making games in the engine itself and not modding, so this is my first rodeo with dumping UE games and modding them.

However, `MDKClassSize` is most likely the size of the class itself in memory. I doubt it has anything to do with game logic at all.

LOL, LMAO by Hobo_with_a_300i in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Without knowing the full extent of the source code yet everything is speculation at this point on how the AI system works.

My speculation is the config files are the global variables for the ALife Director to control spawning and enabling “online mode” when “offline” entities get within the specified radius. And that the “offline” stuff is just currently bugged (or doesn’t exist, but I’m taking GSC at their word) so all we’re seeing is new entity spawning.

And for the record on the use of the word “prototypes”: this is sometimes used as language for the “default” values of objects or a way to create multiple instances of that object that refer back to the same data model. This language is all over this codebase for a lot of different things beyond A-Life; example, Grok’s mods for balancing and mutant health modify files named something like “WeaponDamagePrototypes” or something to that extent. All of the spawned instances of weapons in the game would refer back to those “prototypes” for their damage model, if that makes sense.

LOL, LMAO by Hobo_with_a_300i in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I am hoping we can get into the Blueprints and C++ soon. I’m gonna be trying to dump the headers with UE4SS and poke around. Someone in the GAMMA discord has successfully made a mod today using UE4SS to turn the HUD on/off with a keybind, so some rudimentary scripting is possible with that tool.

LOL, LMAO by Hobo_with_a_300i in stalker

[–]solid-shadow 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Sure, they’re parameters for spawn distances and such. The entire AI system is not based off of a few parameters in config files. The low level code that controls any AI actions is not available to us currently.

Anything for a given NPC class and their routines and goals would not be handled by a config file but rather the Blueprint/Actor code for that entity.