Games

With the remaster coming out I started looking into the original game since I had never played it. I found that a mod, NorthernUI, exists that adds controller support to the game. So I decided to install a GOG copy of the game on the Steam Deck.

I tried to get Mod Organizer to work but failed. But it turns out there is a native Linux mod manager called Limo Mod Manager that can work with Skyrim. The whole process of getting it work kept me up til 2AM.

So I have the original game installed now with NorthernUI and Unofficial X Patches for bugfixes.

Anyone has suggestions for more QoL mods that can smooth out the jankiness? Thanks.

I should probably come out and say that I really don't get them, but I'll try not to be a contrarian in this thread lol. Looking for genuine perspectives.

This build requires hail of blades to output damage quickly, so you forgo phase rush, but if you take ghost you can compensate for your lack of mobility.

Many bruiser items synergize well with Alistar because of their defensive stats and passives

Guardian angel, so you can dive their team more aggressively because of the revive. While you're temporarily dead your cooldowns go off so you can combo them again

Bloodsong, you have more consistent damage than AP builds

Steraks, for CC heavy teams, the tenacity allows you to be more sticky. Even with ult cleanse, you can still be chain cc'd

Roaming boots because it's cheap

Mercurial for magic resist, and to chase down enemies with the movespeed buff

Deaths dance along with GA for heavy AD teams, synergizes well with your passive when enemies die that makes you survive better

You can go wits end if they're AP heavy, but the attack speed feels wasteful since most of the damage should be coming from the first three hits of HoB

Secondary runes are of course hexflash and cosmic insight

The reason why I think it's better than tank or AP is because if you go tank, you're less of a threat and can be more easily ignored. If you're AP, you lack consistent damage and are heavily reliant on long cooldowns.

With AD, you have more constant DPS which makes you more of a threat, and you can still be tanky with bruiser items. Combo them, auto them twice, then for the third auto you save it for your E proc. You attack very quickly due to hail of blades.

Is this viable or troll? I only play swift games nowadays so I don't know if this is good in ranked. Though I have reached platinum in the past with tank Alistar, or was it AP alistar I forgot.

Maybe this should be reserved as a for fun only build

They say it's a "Remaster" but it's clearly a remake (yeah, I know, there's generally some controversy surrounding the terms).

Oblivion was (aside from Morrowind and, I guess, Daggerfall) one of the best games I've ever played and I sunk more hours into it than Skyrim, which I only sunk into for two weeks (Oblivion was for two or three months and then I played The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask in 2008 for the first time and was blown away even more). Honestly, it was a good combination; they were excellent displays of what open-world games can be. Oblivion also had the best quests (compared to the lackluster Skyrim), but of course, retconed the lore from Morrowind, which was annoying. It was also the first game I ever played in The Elder Scrolls lore.

What are your thoughts? Apparently, it has a "Gamebryo API backlink" for mods, but uses Unreal Engine 5, which actually excited my younger brother (who is, otherwise, not really all that interested in a remake and just wants Bethesda to make another game).

Your overall thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4531612

Month old, but no early access plans is based. I believe FireWo Games is making the right choices to succeed with this ambitious game. Chinese gaming, ftw.

Major Update Highlights

• 64-Bit Support: Enhance your gaming performance and stability with our transition to 64-bit architecture.

• New Boss Units:

  • Double the Challenge: Confront two powerful new boss units, each offering unique gameplay experiences.

• Station Unit:

  • Introducing the New Station Unit: Expand your strategic options with this innovative addition.

• Shield Upgrade:

  • Fortified Defense Mechanism: Upgrade your shields to improve defense capabilities against formidable foes.

• Background Graphics:

  • Infinite Cosmic Space String: Enjoy a stunning visual experience with our newly designed infinite cosmic space continuous string in the backdrop.

Prepare for an upgraded adventure that combines enhanced visuals and intense challenges. Dive into the action and explore all these exciting new features!

Pinging those that were here before.

Discussion questions:

What video games have you played recently?

and

What are your favorite video game genres?

Question of the week:

What games of 2025 are you enjoying right now, if any?

and

What do you think of the recent Nintendo Direct? And the upcoming one on April 2nd? And, once the Direct airs, what did you think of it? (Last question is for when it airs in the future.)

I wanna see what this post says but it is requiring me to log in: https://d2mods.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=67324

If anyone already has an account there and could share what it says I would appreciate it.

I wanna see if there is a way to make Diablo 2 Resurrected take up less disk space so I can keep it around on my Deck.

I was not able to register because the site is extremely broken. I eventually was able to find a snapshot of the page here: https://megalodon.jp/2025-0418-2014-59/https://d2mods.info:443/forum/viewtopic.php?t=67324

The contents of the page are below. I was not able to the instructions to work but thought I should share for archiving:

This is basically just a draft for now :oops: It shows how to slim down the "Data"-directory.

All my mods/tutorials only have offline in mind. In this case it can vastly speedup testing for modders. I definitely don't recommend it for online. Use at your own risk!!


advantages:

    blazingly fast (nearly like good old D2!)
    great for all tests with v1.15 that don't need HD (but also useful for UI-/Item-Modders!)
    core is only 2,2GB
    HD-GUI still working
    can probably be further optimized :)

disadvantages:

    no HD in-game graphics at all (black screen, but controls still work)
    core doesn't feature any music/sound

Tools used: Ladiks CascViewer, windows explorer

requirements: ~20GB free space on system drive (NVME-drive highly recommended!), patience.

First:Temporarily DISABLE realtime protection for better performance (this vastly increases the setup). Stop file-indexing and other taxing services.
Do the core setup on your first try (skip optionals / delete where mentioned).

quick rundown for now:
Start CascViewer, go to options and choose a workfolder on your systemdrive.

1. \data\global\
extract everything. Optional: \music (0,6GB) & \video (1,8GB), \sfx(=sounds, 150mb) (all legacy mode media)

2. \data\local\
extract everything except \video. Optional: sfx (=voice files, 0,5GB)

3.1 \data\hd\
extract \items, \missiles, \objects, \overlays, \ui and all json files in root

3.2 \data\hd\character\
extract subfolder \player\ and the monsters.json

3.3 \data\hd\env\
extract subfolder \weather

3.4 \data\hd\global\
extract subfolders \excel, \ui and all jsons from root. Optional: \sfx (0,5GB ), \music (music 1,4gb), \video (2GB) for sound, music, video in HD-Mode

4. Cleanup (windows explorer / file manager)

Delete folder \hd\global\ui\lobby (320MB).

Optional: Delete folder \data\\hd\global\ui\controller (650MB) (controller support). It's not really essential and only gives some very minor menu-graphics-bugs when not used.

Go to \data\data\hd: delete all "*.model" and "*.texture" files (9031 model, 3758 texture). You can simply search for them. This might take a while ;)
Delete (the now empty) "texture" folders. Delete all "*.lowend.sprite" files (0,5GB) from data\hd\global\ui.

You'll end up with hd(1,2GB), local(944MB) & local (133MB) taking only ~2,2GB of diskspace ~34.500 files (all optionals excluded).

5. finish
Now carefully replace(!) your hd, local, global by renaming/moving folders. Run your game via "D2R.exe -direct -txt" and have fun! :mrgreen: 

This is one Direct before the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct on April 2nd that's coming up soon

This reddit post says:

As seen on the recent GameDiscover article, Valve's Steam presentation at GDC confirmed that Simplified Chinese has ever so slightly surpassed English as the primary language on Steam. Important to note, this isn't based on the ever-fluctuating hardware survey that Steam has. It is based on a report straight out of the horse's mouth.

Edit: incredible things are happening in the comment section

But there's also folks like this suggesting the sinister sisipee is using western games as a digital opium to pacify their disgruntled comstituents:

A while back I found this site called vndb (visual novel database). What fascinates me about sites like this is that they curate user reviews over a large period of time so you can find a decently reliable consensus of what is considered remarkable by the users. In the same vein as something like rateyourmusic. It isn't a perfect indicator by any means but a good starting off point.

Unfortunately a lot of games listed there are a big no no for me because of the sexual content. I browsed the top rated list and skimmed through what I would like. The first I played was a game called "The House in Fata Morgana". I thought it was pretty good. It is like a gothic horror romance story and the art style was unique despite being anime adjacent. I wished it was less heavy on the romance aspect but the romance was a core aspect of the story so I can't complain too much.

The biggest downside was that it was incredibly long and left me visual novel hungover for a really long time. Recently I started looking for a new one to play because they are super chill to play on the Steam Deck before going to bed.

I found one called "Fate/Stay Night". From the synopsis the it looked super interesting. Upon playing the game though, while it is not awful by any means, there are some parts of it that I find objectionable. It is too heavy on the romance bit which I think is undermines the larger premise. The love interest is an undying girl who didn't physically grow over the age of 13 because of a magic ritual but is emotionally and intellectually immature which I find uncomfortable. I am gonna finish it because of sunk cost but it doesn't jive much with me.

Are there any VN games that you folks have played and liked? I reckon there might be a handful decent games in this genre. Or is it doomed?

I tried using Pluvia but can't. Pluvia keeps crashing for some reason.

And I tried using Winlator, but can't get it to work for some reason (I can't find the backup file where you're supposed to deposit the setup.exe file to play games on Winlator).

How do you get Winlator and Pluvia to work?

And how do I play Disco Elysium: The Final Cut and Devil May Cry 1 to 4 on RetroArch?

Psst! Steam mistranslates its VNs!

Okay, but seriously, you can hear it from the 3:00 mark of the video onward.

So! I've been running a Fallout campaign as of recent, and well...we have Super Mutants playing baseball.

Regardless! I wanted to show off some of the maps I have spent the last few months painstakingly building block by block.

Fully interactable! Players are able to navigate their characters through this map as it is multiplayer. Have been enjoying it so far and wanted to share! This was built in Talespire.

Like a Desu: Pirate Yak in Kawaii?

Sign me up.

I got banned, and I think permanently.

How do I undo it?

Who do I contact and profusely apologize to?

h a l p

Pinging those that were here before.

Discussion questions:

What video games have you played recently?

What are your favorite video game genres?

Question of the week:

What are you most looking forward to in the rest of 2025 in terms of gaming?

and

Are you excited for the Nintendo Switch 2? Why or why not?

What you are about to watch is a recording of what may very well be the first WWII video game ever published. Milwaukee Coin Industries, Ltd. (MCI) released this in the May of 1972 (twenty‐six years after WWII officially ended), and it seems that the company went out of business sometime in the 1970s. The player takes control of an Allied aeroplane during the Axis’s North African campaign, and has to fire quickly at the targets that appear.

Despite this product’s obvious historic value, you won’t find many mentioning this as they would mention, say, Wolfenstein 3D, and copies of it are extremely difficult to find. This is my modest contribution to drawing attention towards it.

Download the latest stable version (V7.1) here (or less directly, here).

If you lack a copy of Doom II, you can get an open source version of that hence. I tested it thoroughly on that and it works great. Choose GZDoom as your source port, drag ZMC-BWV7.0 onto gzdoom.exe and you should be good to go!