Huge update, with a lot of changes, and workshop support. Valve does it again. Quality update for a very “old” title.

Half-Life 2 is currently free on Steam

From now through the weekend (until November 18th at 10am Pacific) Half-Life 2 is free to own , so if you’ve never played before, grab it now and keep it forever.

Haha, go to the bottom an grab the gravity gun - really cool gimmick

IsThereAnyDeal link - if you want to check prices or against your owned, wishlisted or ignored games

oh my god (stuntrally screenshot)

I’ve always used aimp2, but my library broke file path metadata and the fixup tool fails to relocate them. I’ve looked at FOSS and free alternatives, and am not really, fully satisfied with any of them.

IIRC, I found none of them sufficient. Strawberry, Clementine, Audacious, MusicBee; all have dissatisfactory UI / UI structure for me. Foobar is way too minimal. From my exploration, MusicBee was the most reasonable, acceptable for me. The customizable tab setup is a confusing mess too, but otherwise… I’ve been using that for a while.

At some point I started implementing my own music player, making use of the BASS library like aimp2 does. But not much has come of that [yet?].

Maybe I can recover my aimp2 metadata, and will switch back to that.

I forgot there was a sequel. At least I think I’ve seen it before.

Grow Up is currently 75% off on Steam. Very positive ratings, and watching this ign review, seems like a decent iteration with enough fresh content. I think I will buy it 🤔 and go climbing again :D

They’ve already been doing that, right? I assume this is marketing more than new or a change?

Does it still require SMS verification? Or was that lifted? That’s where I stopped my out-of-interest signup last time.

/edit: It does not anymore. But my handle is taken now. :(

Bluesky Social is a public benefit corporation.

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I’m playing the free hexceed, which - I have to assume - has an automated translation to German.

The exit button is labeled “Ausfahrt”. Which means road exit, not program exit. German has different words for them.

I found it very funny. Seeing the program leave as a road exit. But as a translation it’s bad of course.

Have kernel-level anti-cheat systems ever stopped processes? Unrelated to the anti-cheat and the game itself?

I would imagine they would kick and ban you, not control other processes.

I had so much trouble

You could say it was… max pain

Is it good?

Wayfinder on Steam

I’m currently playing mainly the free hexceed, which to my surprise has a lot of free content. I found it mentioned elsewhere on Lemmy, and have been playing it since. hexceed is a hexagon puzzle game.

Being controllable mouse-only is nice. Needing focus it’s not always fitting to play though. :)

I also bought some pick-bundles and tried out Cash Cow DX, but it wasn’t for me.

And I tried playing The Ascend last weekend, but the Steam Controller track pad feels awful for full-degree aiming.

I’ve also been playing Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara, but am somehow on a break there currently. If I go back to a platformer on my PC, it’ll probably be that though, to continue playing through it.

playformers

You mean platformers, right? Or is playformers a term?

What do you think about full-degree aiming in platformers?

I like being able to play platformers with gamepads, but the Steam Controller has no right stick, and the track pad doesn’t feel appropriate/consistent enough for aiming.

Not that I have not played platformers with keyboard and mouse and enjoyed them. A good title will still win over a worse title, but in general, I think nowadays I prefer platformers without aiming anything.

Thinking of Webbed, I think I may have tried that with gamepad first, but had to switch to keyboard and mouse. Which worked well, and was a very enjoyable game. But I can’t chill on the couch with that control scheme.

I have not, but it’s in my library! :D

For me, great platformers have fluid and responsive controls, and either implement a forgiving persisting experience (climbing the environment) or quick and not too far-off resets (level screens).

Platforming can be great in pure platformers, action platformers, 2d or 3d. They may shift but do not limit how stories can be told and how worlds or progression can be designed.

I imagine it can be difficult to balance forgiving platforming with challenges between novice and experienced players. Often, we see alternative or stretch-goal paths for collectibles or challenges, which is a good approach to serve both kinds of players - even if maybe not total novices.

Introducing game mechanics step by step can give good introductions and learning controls, preferably in-game without dialogue, popups, or text-only introductions. They can guide into a natural level and mechanics design progression, giving a natural progression across longer gameplay.