What if I told you that there are roughly 4 million steamdecks in existence. Ref

And that this is about 1\3 of the Steam Linux market. Ref and about half of the entire handheld PC market. Ref

Of course, we dont know how many MAU GOG has so maybe 4 million new customers is baby numbers, but Steam seems enamored enough of that market segment to commit huge new UI and store features (deck verification, “Runs on Deck” filters, other deck specific stuff) including the game controller mappings which do help with non-deck also but were clearly a necessary element for handhelds. Maybe deck users, it being a committed gaming platform, spend more on games?

Anyway, trying to get subscribers (always a teeny fraction of your free users) ahead of converting new non-customers into customers, seems like bad econ to me.

If GOG is so hot for game preservation why not see if they can score an emulation deal to bring lost handheld titles to PC\deck? Sega might be down, NeoGeo is owned by the Saudi’s, I’m sure they’d love some free money for their back catalog. That’s in line with Lutris’ mission of being the one game launcher for your entire library. A few strategic investments and partnerships could open up GOG as the gateway to classic gaming across devices, but that would require some vision to carry through.

I assumed the alternative was “melee combat only” not pacifism.

Also classic Doom has an entire pacifist speed running category. And a melee only category, usually called “Tyson mode”

Proper Tie Usage

Thanks for the fun summary! (Oh hey, its Atomic Poet, I follow you on Mastodon too, love your work!)

I played the newer trilogy on PC years ago and really enjoyed them, great little action games. I’m too young and American to have enjoyed the Amiga in its day, though a Commodore 128 was literally this baby’s first computer. Big Team17 fan currently too, I adored Yoku’s (sent me down a digital pinball spiral that was finally slaked by Xenotilt) and love them as a publisher too, being behind great indies like Blasphemous and Dredge!

🙏Lord, I seen all that money Fortnight is making, and I want that for me!

I want to know what word they replaced with “potatoes” and didn’t even bother to pick a close looking font.

Because the bots/trolls/feds have shifted over to driving a wedge between leftists to keep solidarity from occurring. Thus “tankie” is being thrown around heavily, people constantly bring up early Soviet support of the nazis as a reason to say “tankie=nazi” while ignoring that tankies (sue me, it’s a real term that has uses) is a broad term for all “authoritarian fascists,” many of whom came after the nazis, were very anti-nazi, and like all historical figures often had a mix of good and bad qualities.

Certainly its funny to harp on tankies while America falls to literal fascism. Who ever could benefit from scape goating and demonizing communists? Who historically, poetically even, is the famous first victim of fascism due to the strong threat they represent?

If you liked SupCom and want to recapture the magic, do check out Zero-K! It’s free (like actually, no weird micro-transactions) and open source (though buried a bit on the site) It’s based on SpringRTS, which is great to see something cool being done with Spring!

In my mind the RTS genre hit major twin peaks with SupCom and CoH1. SupCom is the best of its subgenre (massive rts? actually the recent and free Zero-K hits real good in this genre too!) CoH 1 is the top of the Dawn of War family of more tactical RTS.

I haven’t played in a long time, but I recall the story being good. The mechanics though were just so top notch! Great squad controls, not too much micro, vehicles feel really impactful, the nature of control point capture means every skirmish is very dynamic. Ah, what a classic!

No problem! It only stood out to me because it’d be an amazing coincidence if 52! fit snuggly into 2^8. Being a nerd, I have many powers of 2 memorized!

With a little playing around, it seems like 57! is the last whole number that fits (254.5 bits needed) so you could add a couple of jokers in or even use a tarot deck’s minor arcana (56 cards) and have room with a 256-bit wide BigInt, with a few bits to spare!

I got 226 bits? log2(52!) right?

I’ve always found this factoid pretty dubious. First off it’s statistical so there are no absolute truths or facts, only tendencies.

But do this experiment for yourself, I just did a few times: take all the kings and aces out. Order them (I used Spade, Club, Heart, Diamond, Aces first then kings) and put them on top of the deck. Now do 7 riffles and look through the deck.

What I found is that the 8 chosen cards are still weighted towards the top of the deck (a little less than half moved to the bottom half, but none to the bottom 1/3rd). The suits got shuffled a little but all the spades and most clubs were still in the top 1/3rd of the deck. Most of the aces and kings stayed together in close pairs or triplets, within 5 cards of each other.

So no, 7 riffles isn’t realistically good enough for fair play at actual tables. You need to mix in some cuts and pool shuffles to break up the structure of the deck and properly distribute the cards.

Uhm aktchewally, its the GNU-Linus Tech Tip system, a complete free software advice and content engine

What a strangely hostile response to an obvious joke

This is the new captcha: only an AI would know which is the real download button.

Looks like another fan of TA/SC grew up to make their own RTS, and I’m here for all of them!

DRG and Warframe also hit the critical requirement of actually being games that are fun to play!

I haven’t played a lot of WF, but I’ve got hundreds of hours on DRG. There is no grind. Getting holiday loot takes 5 to 8 matched total, and the Seasons are long and very relaxed. I maxed out XP for this season already and the next probably won’t start until at least this summer.

The community is going strong, the game is fun, Ghost Ship seems stable and like a nice place to work. It’s so stupid that more companies don’t see that they could run like this instead of chasing “get rich quick” corporate schemes that always alienate the fans.

rizzing?

The paradox of the n-word pass is similar to the paradox of the daoist leader; if you were of good enough character (as an outsider/Bourgeoisie) to warrant the privilege of leadership/cookout, then you’d be wise enough to never want to use them.

Monk knew all along, just too anxious to tell you! He’s very relieved you finally figured it out.