They did, but things were different. Obvious main difference being that we didn’t have centralised store apps with launchers that already do the functions you need: download, setup, updates, news, etc. (well Steam does, with workshop integration for mods and everything)

Nowadays people see launchers as an extra unnecessary step, usually requiring another account for no good reason, and, importantly, a data harvesting tool. That last one is the reason I usually see people hating a launcher. The other issue is I’ve seen a lot of complaints about is launchers simply breaking stuff for some people and not letting them play their game (especially on Linux).

(Generic summary, not specific to Owlcat here)

Well that’s a pretty extreme statement. I’ll admit World and Wilds are obviously different from the older games in some ways, but how is Wilds “garbage beyond belief”?

I’m genuinely curious, because so far I’ve seen quite a few people here claim it is somehow awful, but no one says why. Most of the negative reviews I’ve seen before have been about performance. I’ve also seen a few mention the game being too easy, but the end game has been spicy enough after they released some new monsters. I could see complaints about content initially, but it’s not like Tri had many large monsters on release either in comparison, it’s always the expansion that brings in a bunch more.

That, and it had significant performance issues for many people, along with some texture glitches. That’s why I added that little parenthetical bit about the games not being perfect on launch. World was a big shift and also had some launch issues.

I would say that’s not down to some “design by committee” art/design choice though. I’d very much agree with issues around Capcom’s monetisation (character edit vouchers, a million cosmetic packs) and their launch model (e.g.: wait another year and have all those title updates already in). But I disagree with them being pure cash grabs that are somehow artistically stunted by some corporate process to some major degree.

Maybe they should bring back the mandatory “gather 20 mushrooms” quest though for completeness I guess.

See, this would resonate more of the recent Resident Evils and Monster Hunters weren’t, as they seemed to be, also loved by old fans.

I’m specifically a Monster Hunter fan since Tri, and I think World, Rise, and Wilds have all been fantastic entries that took the DNA of the franchise and allowed it to evolve. World and Wilds have moved the franchise to finally being able to show it takes place in a real living, breathing world. To me that shows the artistic vision is very much there.

I’m not saying the games are perfect (especially on launch) or there aren’t changes people (including myself) will disagree with, but there’s no way I’d call them “barely purchase-worthy”. Especially not because of artistic constraints (and I’m very much including game design in that).

I wish that was the case for me. Unfortunately, even when I get internal emails about AI in science events at best it’s unclear. But often it’s generative AI. At this point I’m kinda just forced to assume it means genAI unless stated otherwise.

Though I guess part of that is that most research groups will specify the kind of machine learning they use. So if it’s left as AI then it’s usually generative.

Outside of that though it is true that (as seen in OP) most news articles will just label any model as AI, diluting the term entirely. And it’s probably a neural network if it’s from a reputable research group (such as in this case: a University of Cambridge group running actual human trials).

GB News… Yuck. Though good job, looks like the BBC has almost the same article.

Either way, looking at the actual published paper, they used DIOSynVax’s tech. No mention of LLMs or AI anywhere. All I can find is “computational biology” and “self-improving algorithms”.

In other words: this is using the current genAI boom to hype up/get clicks on something almost certainly designed using well-established machine learning algorithms. Oniony headline I guess, but otherwise it’s just bad journalism in my opinion.

God I fucking hate the way the term AI is used for everything now. Usually it means an LLM or some other form of generative model in laymen’s circles, but people so happily mix it up with other tools.

Since it’s ELI5 I’ll keep it very simple. It’s not like I know the exact mechanics anyway. No guarantee of pedantic correctness. I’m sure if I get anything overly wrong then someone who wouldn’t comment otherwise will correct me (please and thank you).

Let’s start from interpolation. It’s a simple maths idea: inter for between, poles for points. Let’s say you have two points. You could draw a line between them, take the middle point of that line. You’ve now introduced a new point.

This concept is used a lot in physics or maths in general. Let’s say you are writing down the speed of a car over time. You have 1 speed value per second. But you’re interested in the speed at 23.33 seconds for some reason.

Now you have a few options:

• You could take the speeds at 23 and 24 seconds and just the same as before: draw an imaginary straight line between them, and read what speed that is at for 23.33.
• You could also look at how the speed changed from 22 to 23 instead, especially if you didn’t have the 24s time written down.
• You could look at more of the speed values and try to figure out how the car’s speed changes over time, since it’s unlikely to be linear. That gets you to more complex forms of interpolation. That’s what’s used to find a more descriptive equation of motion for objects.

That may have been a bit of a tangent, but it does get us back to frame generation. We are interpolating where each pixel is between frames. Or perhaps even saying: okay, this visual object moved from X to Y, what happened between them?

The key part is: graphics already have this information. It would be wasteful to re-render an entire scene every frame, so you just look at what needs updating and how. But that means you know what happens one frame to the next. So now you just take that information and do some simple maths to figure out the in-between step, and show that to the user as well.

Performance-wise it’s not costly. The tough calculation is the update from frame to frame. It does take a bit of time though, introducing some tiny lag in your display.

Of course the actual frame gen algorithms can take a lot more data into account, but the simple idea is: between Point X and point Y there exists a point A which we can calculate relatively cheaply and display first.

Been a while since I played, but I didn’t even reach 1k hours and was trading stuff much earlier than that. In 850h I think I bought plat once, and made it to 21 (iirc) mastery total, with a dozen or two frames and weapons in store. The only thing I spent plat on is either intermediate currency for trading, or more slots (which you still get plenty of for free from events and such).

The game involves a lot of grinding to begin with, but you can easily farm a bit to find something to sell for plat.

Also Reddit misled you a bit. The game throws 50 and 75% off plat fairly regularly at you.

Especially about the competitive thing though: I’ve never had that thought. I’ve never seen it as competitive to begin with, even in a friendly way. And afaict, there’s nothing you could do with money that would give you too much of an advantage. Maybe skip a bit of the grind, but a lot comes from mastery levels, build synergies, and knowing how to play your frame right… And even then outside of Steel Path and other endgame-ish content you can easily nuke an entire level with minimal effort.

All that said: yeah, it’s a free to play game and it has a few features that will make you want to spend money. You can absolutely not spend a single cent and achieve whatever you want though, which is why people praise it. It just means playing the game more, so the question really becomes whether you enjoy the gameplay loop to begin with and how much time you’re willing to spend.

As someone originally from Hungary: as a kid I was taught I should walk on the left (if there is no pavement), so I could see the cars I’d be sharing the side of the road with. So technically it should all be reversed everywhere.

Also there is no consistent walking side tendency anywhere, and just walking to/through the shops you’d know that. Brits might do a queue but see if you can predict which side they’ll be walking on, and it’s no different elsewhere.

Not OP, but I’ll answer from my own perspective. Note that Discord terminology can be a bit weird, since a server is just a unique shared group space, but hopefully makes sense.

So you can:

• Have private chats with one or multiple individuals.
• Start audio or video calls through those chats, and screen share/stream in them.
• I’ll also mention the ability to send not just text, but images, videos, embedded GIFs, files, so on.
• in servers you get the same thing, broken into text and voice channels (the latter allowing the full range of audio, video, and screen share).
• in servers each user can be given roles to determine which channels they can see and use, or edit, among various other permissions.
• Pinned messages, @ mentions for roles.
• Though I don’t use it much anymore, the option to effectively subscribe to a channel on another server to have messages from there propagate over (e.g.: a uni club server announces an event and you see it on another server in an events channel)
• also servers don’t have any upper limits on members, at least not one I’ve ever seen hit
• Bot integration via API.
• oh, also it all works on desktop or mobile (because it’s mostly just a web app, but still)

And key thing is: all very easy to get started with, whether you’re just wanting to join a server, or start an entire community.

Big deal for my uses currently is voice chat and screen share in one place, while still being able to organise stuff into separate channels, pin messages in them, etc.

I think right now if I had to replace it, assuming I could get the people I interact with off (which is either 20 or 1500 people, depending on how much I’d want to carry with me), it’d have to be a mix of Matrix/Stoat and probably Steam’s built-in features. Maybe a classic forum. That is, if I wanted to have all the features I use. I could do with less, but it’s frustrating.

I think the alternatives will get there eventually, self-hosted even, but self-hosting also has a hardware cost.

That said, I really don’t know why software stuff was ever moved on discord. My uses are gaming and university community-related.

Yeah, fuck those poor old women, they’re religious…

Idk, regardless of my thoughts on religion and organised religion especially, I can see that these people are human. They seem to be oppressed and haven’t done anything to deserve that. We should be able to feel sympathy for them, and appreciate that their story being shared is the attention they need to have extra protection at the very least.

This seems like it fits more of a management/strategy type vibe to me.

Maybe you hear news of the 10 greatest knights of the realm coming to save you. But you don’t know what they’re great at and you only have a limited amount of instructions to give them.

You could have the first knight leave hints by telling him to leave marks in specific places. But he might be the best at combat and would be best sent against some of the other monsters guarding the path. You just don’t have the information.

But honestly, I’m not sure if that makes a player feel trapped. They have power to change things. Maybe you steadily take away that power? I’m just not sure how.

Very interesting question though.

I disagree. All our current storage methods still degrade, not to mention they almost all rely on technology to be read.

If nothing happens, sure. We can keep things preserved, know how to access the data from them, make copies as needed, etc., but that would’ve applied to the Library of Alexandria.

Most, if not all (afaik) MySpace profiles are gone. We can archive all of Facebook and Instagram, but thousands of years is a long time to not have accidents, mistakes, war or even natural degradation destroy some or all of the data carriers.

Yeah… Would be smart. So Labour, who are trying to be the Tories but from 5-10 years ago, will not do it. Gotta court those undecided centre-right and right-wing voters: the people who still believe in Brexit, even though polls show that’s definitely not a majority.

Sigh.

The Homeworld series is great with fantastic campaigns (minus Homeworld 3 I’ve heard, not even played that).

I’ll also throw in a classic Imperium Galactica 2 because I still think for a 90s 4X RTS it has so many elements that I’ve just not seen replicated since. Though usually short and quick, it has fully simulated and controllable space and ground battles; espionage; diplomacy; you assign your unlocked tech to hard points on your ships… It’s Stellaris but better in most ways, imo.

Unlikely to be it since it’s nowhere near from the last 10 years, but CITY 2000 seems like it could be similar at least artistically?

I think the best I can recommend is looking through Steam, searching for “London” and the mystery genre. I didn’t quite catch anything there that fit at a glance, but maybe you will. Similarly could be done on GOG, since it sounds like it could potentially be an older game? Or itch, but maybe the best way to search for that would be by googling london missing friend mystery site:itch.io.

I’m assuming a modern setting, with no supernatural elements and the mystery genre, so that’s the best I could do. It’s going to be very hard to find something without some details being fixed. Point and click? Photos or isometric? Is the player character visible? Do they have any identifying details? Does the pub have a name? Anything like that could do a lot.

You say you watched someone play it on youtube then you might be able to search your youtube viewing history?

If Deep Rock Galactic counts, then Monster Hunter games should as well. The hub is usually a bar/restaurant with food, drinking, and an arm wrestling mini game. You can also randomly cook meat out in the field or go to hot springs.

Many other games do have bars, but without any real interaction. Lego games and Borderlands come to mind.

Stardew Valley has cutscenes at the bar and you can play a mini game there, but not quite as interactively as DRG.

That’s all I can think of right now. It feels like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Saints Row should also have something similar to Stardew at least, but I can’t remember how much you can do in those bars. Same with MMOs I haven’t played in a while like Runescape. I’m sure if I mention them someone else will know though.

As a bonus: with modding, Lethal Company can have a casino with a bar you can get drinks at.

Late and I cannot possibly read everything here, but I’ll come back to it as well.

And just to do some due diligence:

• Saw it multiple times already, but Homeworld.
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron or many of the other Star Wars flight games before it.
• Imperium Galactica 2. Amazing space RTS with space and ground combat.
• I think one of the Formula 1 games from the era is considered among the best, but I’m not sure which. If you like F1 and racing that’s worth checking out.
• Star Trek Armada is from 2000, but very good too.
• Sid Meier games.
• Nintendo games, including Mario Kart 64. Unfortunately the first Mario Party isn’t as good as modern ones I hear, but may also be up your alley.
• Scorched Earth or Tank Wars for DOS. Worms for a more modern take on the genre.

Very space- and RTS-themed, but that’s what got my attention at the time. And they were having their golden age. Also I was very young in the 90s, so that’s all I have.

I haven’t seen any further info, other than Warner Bros Warner Bros Discovery taking down a bunch of Cartoon Network games and also Cartoon Network itself recently: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/warner-bros-is-delisting-games-again-a-half-dozen-cartoon-network-releases-have-been-removed-from-sale-on-digital-storefronts/

I’m not entirely sure what scene I would’ve said had me similar when I could still more surely remember those first years. Possibly a game I’ve forgotten since. Maybe one of the Bionicle Mata Nui Games or some other big online game. Or Imperium Galactica 2.

But a moment that will always stick with me is from the first Homeworld game: when you return from your first hyperspace voyage. That entire game was epic, including the intro sequence, but it’s that sequence that I think can stand forever as a masterpiece.