Gaming

In the previous two articles about Ukrainian games, I talked about a total of 11 cool projects created by Ukrainian developers, which I highly recommend you check out. And since more than a year has passed since the last article about Ukrainian games, it's time to dive back into the world of the Ukrainian gaming industry and continue the topic of games created in Ukraine. This time there will be more of them, 10 in total, so be sure to read this article to the end.

My brother recently gave me a birthday gift: A Dell 27 Plus 4K Monitor - S2725QS - 27-inch 4K (3840 x 2160) 120Hz so we can play Warzone together.

No matter what I do, it doesn't seem to run 120 frames per second on this monitor.

I've looked at endless videos, articles, and blog posts.

The weird thing is that we also play Battlefield 6, and I can get it running at 120 fps there.

Why is this happening? Do I need a 144Hz monitor instead to be able to reach 120 fps? Any and all help is appreciated. Thank you.

Monitor settings:

• Preset mode is FPS.
• Smart HDR is on Game HDR.

PS5 settings:

• HDR is off.
• Performance mode enabled.

Here are my 3 Graphics tabs settings:

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Note that I said "successful runs", not wins. Because only one of these was a win (morgue file for the curious). Another one was... well, I didn't pick up the Orb after apporting it to me, successfully performed the Orb run, realized my mistake and returned to Zot and died on my second ascend. So, a successful run, yet not a win.

I will shortly explain the changes but if you want to read the changes yourself, you can do it here.

Unlimited inventory

Inventory was sorted in four groups: gear (items you can equip and throwing implements), potions, scrolls and evocables (wands and rechargeable items like the phial of floods). Each group has a limit of 52 items - which basically means that you will never run out of free space in your inventory. The only affected screens are [i]nventory and [d]rop. Also, most consumables now have a default shortcut (e.g. if you have a scroll of teleportation identified, it'll always be on 't', so reading it is always r+t).

Personally, I am a tidy player who hates clattered inventory so I never had problem with inventory management in crawl. Dropping 2 potions of attractions never was a run-ending decision. With that said, I do appreciate the default letters for consumables and the added convenience of looting timed portals (yaay, no more dropping all wands and potions before entering a trove!). Unfortunately, dropping potions of moonshine now takes twice as much keypresses. Literally unplayble!

Doom and ostracize, reworked Troves

Ah, mutations... who doesn't love getting Teleportitis after had the audacity of missing a shining eye with your silver javelin twice? Drinking all your potions of mutation to end up with no helmet slot (bye-bye, see invisible!) while Berserkitis still is sitting comfortably in your list of mutations... well, 0.34 invites you to forget about all this nonsense at the small, TINY cost of (maybe) giving Manifold Assault to a juggernaut~

Doom is a new mechanic that replaces stat drain and takes place of malmutation in a few cases (malmutate is still in the game but it's not as common now). It's a counter that goes from 0 all the way to 100%, giving you a random bane - an unpleasant effect that must be cured with gaining experience. A LOT OF IT (like literally two levels worth of exp)!

Doom-inflicting enemies start appearing as early as third floor, thanks to drudes, tanky demonic pieces of shit with resistances tailored specifically against alchemists and fire elementalists. Later, you will also find draugr, rare kind of zombies who inflict doom and can wield weapons even if their initial form couldn't (imagine a bear with a halberd), and ravens who can inflict doom with a ranged attack. Learn to love playing summoners, I guess :)

Another long-term damage effect is Ostracize: it temporarily reduces your maximum piety until you gain some amount of XP (roughly comparable to the banes' requirements). Unlike Doom, Ostracize doesn't appear on many enemies but it can appear as a requirement for entering troves!

And troves also got a rework. No more stupid demands like "27 scrolls of blinking". Now, the more likely demands (in my experience) are suffering a pre-announced bane or Ostracize yourself for your whole piety, or showing the slimy or abyssal rune. The interiors of troves were also reworked, now having a theme built around in-game named characters (wizards or artifact owners) while also giving you much better items! My personal favorite trove is "Ozocubu's Refrigerator".

Throughout all my games, I only suffered two banes and only once did Ostracize do something bad to me. All three of these were due to troves. So, while the new doom-inducing enemies sound really scary, banes are very avoidable even with my sloppy play style. The two banes I experienced were:

• Bane of lethargy, reducing your movement speed. Having to suffer the Chei's treatment is scary but is very manageable as long as you don't forget about it. Especially since I already had experience with playing a Cheibriados character.

• Bane of claustrophobia, which must be truly scary for a melee brute but I was an Airstrike spammer so no big problem😎 If this bane appears as a trove requirement and you're scared of it, accept it right before going into Swamp/Shoals. No walls - no problem!

As for Ostracize, I got it on my Yredelemnul run, unwisely picking it before Orcish Mines. That was tough. I still reap zombies out of my kills but all the abilities are gone and the Mines is a challenging place. Worked off some of it at the dungeon but going all the way down is scary so I was still forced to deal with orcs. And I did. I died much later, in the Snake Pit (fucking electrosnakes!!).

Overall, troves have a much more interesting cost but the rewards are really worth it (plenty of acquirement-level artifacts)!

Slime Pits

It's Extended now!!!!!

No, not really.

Slime got new scary as hell enemies, have bigger floors overall, while also preventing you from returning to upper levels until you either kill The Royal Jelly or devote yourself to their acidic grace, Jiyva the Shapeless.

There are two consolations though: first, you get to enjoy faster HP and MP regen whenever you go downstairs. So it's not like you're just thrown into the middle of gurgling and staring hell with no help. Second, floors 2-4 are guaranteed to generate a Jiyva altar in case you realized limitations of your inflexible body.

Now, I was in the Pits only once - as a mage with powerful mass destruction spells. These kinds of characters will definitely have an easier time in Slime compared to melee brutes. With that said, comparing Jiyva's domain to the likes of Dis is bizarre to me. It's hard, even harder than Vaults for some characters. Yet still easier than Zot.

Harder Realm of Zot

As everyone knows, there's only one reason for a game developer to increase difficulty of their creation: hatred burning in their cold unbeating heart.

Jokes aside, Zot did become harder and it kinda sucks for players who already struggled with getting a win. With that said, the additions are great and contribute a lot to !FUN!

First change is that scrolls of blinking aren't perfectly accurate in Zot (and during the Orb run) - they function like a barachi's jump, with a destination being randomly chosen 1-2 tiles away from your desired destination. I am actually a bit surprised that it wasn't the case in previous versions given just how powerful these scrolls are. It is, sadly, a difficulty spike.

Second change concerns the orbs. Now, the game chooses randomly between three types of orbs: orb of winter with massive cold attacks and Ostracize (the only monster with that spell that I've seen), orb of entropy with acid and negative energy attacks and a ranged doom attack and the good ol' orbs of fire, unchanged. You're informed of what type of orb waits for you by statues near the temple's entrance so you can prepare for it.

I haven't encountered orbs of entropy yet but I've dealt with orbs of winter in my almost-win run. They have Ozocubu's Refrigeration. A screen-wipe cold magic. Say goodbye to all your summons, and your own health if you didn't get cold resistances. Ostracize wasn't scary at all - it never blocked a single ability for me. Maybe I'm just lucky but either way I much prefer it to OoF's malmutate. Even if they removed berserkitis, I don't care!

And finally, the most controversial addition in this version. Boundless Tesseracts. It has the worst attack of all monsters - carelessness-inducing death clock!!!!!

Or, to stop being so dramatic, Boundless Tesseracts are a pair of summoners which you must kill until they flood the floor with orbs of instagib. The thing is, their summon rate is very slow, summons always appear beyond your vision and you must only kill one Tesseract that isn't a real enemy - it can't attack or do anything to defend itself. You need to get in one of the lungs, all buffed up and prepared, kill everything that can stand in your way and punish the summoner.

How much time do you get? Well, when I was doing it for the first time, I took my time fighting in the lung, suffered some damage, retreated to a safer place and healed to full. I don't know how many new enemies appeared but it wasn't bad at all. Like, maybe 5-6 new enemies scattered around the floor. It's fine!

Just, please, for the love of Cheibriados, don't go into the middle of hell with no buffs in hope that you will manage Tesseracts before fireballs and crystal spear make a short work of you. It's Zot. These are no mere critters.

That's it for the highlights of 0.34. There are still many additions which I didn't cover like all the new enemies, armor egos, weapon brands and types of orbs (not enemies, items). Each DCSS version is huge and full of changes worth discussing. Feel free to ask about other aspects of the game.

Happy gaming and don't forget to train your stealth~

And leave reviews saying "Bought this game because it was on the anti-woke curator's list. Thanks"?

Edit: it seems like people understand this post as a "let's buy non-woke games". I mean it as "use the list to find 'woke' games" and buy those. Not mindlessly, of course. But review-bombed "woke" games can have a harder time (especially in their forums), because of such curators and it could be a good way to discover actual good games that are subjugated to hate coming from these curators and groups.

I have a love-hate relationship with MOBAs, but Deadlock—after its new Old Gods, New Blood update—has dragged me back to the genre kicking and screaming. I've got over 2,400 hours in Dota 2 from my misspent uni years, and I'm currently sitting on 183 hours with Valve's latest and counting.

I'm having a good time, and by "good time", I mean I am magnetically attracted to this dopamine machine and cannot pull away, even while I learn about all the fun new slurs I can be called by strangers online. But that comes with the territory. I'm deep in the paint enough that I've been viciously consuming voicelines, lore, and worldbuilding when I'm not playing.

And yet, I can't shake off this sense of malaise—a feeling of "what if", and I think it's that worldbuilding to blame. Not because it's bad, but because it's very, very good.

Deadlock might be one of my favourite videogame settings in a while. It's placed within a fantastical 1950s America where magic is not only real, but it's become a heck of a lot more real within the past few decades.

An event, called the Maelstrom, opened a bunch of Astral Gates across the world—including one right above New York, dubbed the Cursed Apple. The reason it's a MOBA is because there are two patrons trying to manifest fully in this magic-flooded planet, and you've gotta stop them.

Valve's character artists and writers have taken this concept and run with it. In no particular order, here are some of my favourite facts about this setting:

• There's a governmental agency that invades people's dreams called the Sandmen.
• The Vatican has supersoldier exterminators.
• 'Hell', actually another realm called Ixia, has been permanently connected to the Earth, and also South Ixia is a member of the United States.
• Ixians have been a part of human society for so long that the game's newest character has a conversation about identity and diaspora with the New York-born Ixian Infernus.
• There's an entire Vampire: The Masquerade-style society of vampires with their own baronies.
• There's a thieves guild of time-jumpers called Paradox whose literal goal is to just put priceless items on display at pop-up museums.
• The souls of the dead power machines of war.
• New York has a Municipal Coven of witches.
• There's a Lovecraftian entity who got so bored he decided to join the service industry.
• The Djinn want part of Wyoming. This is an actual plot point.
• Jacob Lash is an asshole.

This is a game, need I remind you, which has an incomplete roster—some of whose models are also deeply unfinished (my poor Vyper), but when Valve's polish does apply, it's been cooking up some of its best designs ever, and the map is getting downright pretty, too. I whisper a quiet "hell yeah" to myself whenever I romp through The Hidden King's subwoofer-drowned base.

Which is why I'm a little sad, because, well—it's a MOBA. As we all know, introducing your friend to a MOBA (and worse, getting them into one) is a sin that will mean your soul will never see the light of heaven. But it's also, by its very nature, a pretty constraining setting.

It's three lanes and a single map—we might get a little more from Valve in the form of animated shorts and comics a la TF2 (indeed, there's already a visual novel in the works) but that's it. Deadlock's setting is worthy of its own singleplayer game—be that an RPG or a first-person shooter.

Heck, there's enough juice here where I'd subscribe to a Deadlock MMO, or merrily run my own Deadlock TTRPG campaign (maybe I still could, with Blades in the Dark's new sci-fi supplement? Oh man, don't give me ideas).

I wanna meet other agents of the OSIC. I wanna run errands for the Municipal Coven. I wanna see what Ixia and the rest of the Baroness look like. I want to chase a time thief through a Paradox exhibit. I wanna get caught in a turf war between the vampire baronies. I want a terrifying boss fight with a Venator that has express permission from the Pope to stake me.

… Ah, crap. This is what League of Legends players feel like waiting on that Riot MMO, huh.

These are, to be clear, pie-in-the-sky dreams: But they're the kind of games I think about through the tiny windows of the game that Deadlock actually is—Deadlock has an ocean-deep skill ceiling and incredible complexity, true. But it's also an infinitesimal slice of a much more interesting world I wish we could see more of.

Which, hey—it's a good problem for Valve to have, right? I salute you, artists and writers under Gabe Newell's employ: You have cooked hard enough to leave me hungry for more.

Was really nostalgic going through old Counter-Strike 1.6 maps.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/55069584

I'll miss my HOTAS / HOSAS / SIMPIT / DIY Discord channels starting next month.

Anyone knows some alternative Spaces on Matrix by chance?

I'm aware of the tiny https://matrix.to/#/#hotasdiy:matrix.org channel with 21 members. That's something I guess.

Acronyms: HOTAS = Hands on Throttle and Stick

HOSAS = Hands on Stick and Stick

SIMPIT = Simulation/Simulated Cockpit

HomeCockpit FlightSim Joystick Gamepad Controller

♻️ 🙏

If you had to pick a good love story, you might think of something classic, like Jane Austen's Emma or Casablanca. Or maybe tragic, like Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin or Romeo and Juliet. Or possibly cozy, like Heated Rivalry or Netflix's Nobody Wants This. What probably doesn't come to mind is a video game love story, and there's a good reason for that. Despite the appearance of variety, video game romances only come in one type. And it hardly even counts as a romance.

Games are still young as a storytelling medium, so the lack of memorable love stories compared film or literature is hardly surprising. What is surprising is just how little romance has changed in over three decades. In 1994, Konami's Tokimeki Memorial made popular the idea of dating in video games. It was hardly what you might call romantic, with its stat-based progress and checklist approach to relationships. But it set a precedent for how to Do Romance in games, and later titles, like Harvest Moon, built on that formula. By 2000, the likes of Baldur's Gate 2 added a stronger element of personality, with more complex characters who played important roles in bigger stories, but not necessarily in each other's lives. Relationships consisted of saying the right thing at the right time and then, like magic, love occurs. 26 years later, game romances are still written like they were in 2000, with obvious exceptions like (usually) not being as sexist anymore and occasionally being decent enough to show more than one type of love.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/hideki-sato-designer-of-segas-consoles-dies-age-75/

Mattel Electronics Auto Race was released in 1976 by Mattel Electronics as the first handheld electronic game to use only solid-state electronics; it has no mechanical elements except the controls and on/off switch. - Wikipedia

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Found a suspicious vault locked by crystal doors (can only be opened by the player), read a scroll of revelation to see what's inside.

Holy shit. A storm dragon, a hell knight, a deep elf annihilator?! Even on a fully cleared floor this party will kill you outright.

Mean game.

I’ve just finished Deathloop and while I enjoyed it I gotta say it was the wrong kind of game for me and after hitting the ending I kinda wish I’d never started it. I wasted so much time trying to get through doors only to find out that it was just a door I went through later in the plot.

Plus it started feeling really claustrophobic just going through the same locations again and again, by the end I just wanted to escape so I could get a sense of closure. Then the ending happened and it didn’t feel fulfilling at all. It honestly feels like the game just stopped. It was just two endings, both of them being extremely short and “bad”.

I’m just ranting here but the end of that game was so unsatisfying.

Awaken the latent power of your melanin and kill cops in this thought-provoking game on police brutality in America... Again!

Finally Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on PC, no need to use an emulator.

(TBoI:Re = the Binding of Isaac Rebirth)

For the curious, the combo is Chaos (the smile) + Holy Light (the eyes).