Good to see Birdgame Studios are saying no to AI in their beloved Bird Game series

These are awesome and you can play them super easy with the kb+mouse in flycast with a little tweaking. In both games assign your kb and mouse to ports b, c, and use "raw input" then play in full screen. Outtrigger is a bit wonky because you need to go in-game and tweak the settings to play with esdf movement, but it's simple just select the control type in game.

ANYWAY, you can also play them online via DCNET the revived seganet online service for dreamcast. Just download the nightly flycast build and it will automatically connect to the hosted servers!

I know Quake has bots online, Outtrigger I've yet to find anyone to play with. But these games are sick as hell.

The Postal series is essentially the videogame equivalent of Uwe Boll's filmography*. They're notoriously awful—the last one we reviewed was Postal 3 in 2012, which earned a dismal 21%—and they keep happening for some reason. A new addition to the lineup was announced on December 3, in fact, called Postal: Bullet Heaven. And then approximately 24 hours later, everything went very sideways.

"After revealing Postal: Bullet Paradise, a title Running With Scissors was planning on publishing but not developing, we've been overwhelmed with negative responses from our concerned Postal community," RWS wrote on X, the day after Bullet Paradise was revealed. "The strong feedback from them is that elements of the game are very likely AI-generated and thus has caused extreme damage to our brand and our company reputation.

"We’ve always been, and will always be, transparent with our community. Our trust in the development team is broken, therefore we've killed the project. We have a lot of good things coming (some you know and some you don’t)."

It's very funny to think about a videogame that's so odiously bad it doesn't even meet the standards of the guys responsible for Postal, but this is where we find ourselves. "The concerned Postal community" also comes off as a knee-slapper, although that may be unfair: Postal 4: No Regerts, released in 2022, has more than 10,000 user reviews on Steam, and a Kickstarter for Postal 2 Redux more than doubled its $250,000 goal earlier this year.

Can I explain it? Absolutely not. But there is clearly a community of some sort here, they like what they like, and they do not like generative AI: Complaints about it are plentiful on the Postal subreddit and Steam.

recently got a ps3 and put a cfw on it so i can download games. what are some yall like that ARENT on all the “hidden gems” lists/big name games everyone already played?

my only thing is, i dont like turn based combat

Gnolls? Evil demonspawn that can't stop eating people.

Owlbears? Violent and untameable.

Dragons? Greedy assholes that think they're better than you.

Various slimes? Will dissolve you. Can't even keep them as pets.

These silly glooby eye monsters? Literally the most racist fuckers alive.

Wizards of the Coast please hire me to make your game better. OK that's all.

3 person UK team set off to create a… err.. CRT themed horror game 13 years ago and after many trials and tribulations its finally out.

From the outset it has thick atmosphere along with some very authentic CRTs and ingame degausse button and some of the best visual and sound design Ive seen since alien isolation.

Its cheap and if ur a fan of basically any horror game its worth picking up.

feels like every time I check a thread about Metroid Prime 4, the conversation has completely fallen off the rails. People are taking one minor flaw or one disliked choice and acting like it single-handedly makes the entire game “0/10 Concord-level trash.” It’s wild how fast things get exaggerated.

The best example is the NPC discourse. He says, what, two lines where he tries to joke about his situation, gets excited when he sees Samus, and occasionally gives a one-sentence hint if you go out of your way to talk to him. That’s it. But somehow this tiny thing has become the meme of the game as if he’s narrating every five seconds or turning the whole atmosphere into Borderlands or something.

And look, I get why people are sensitive about tone. Metroid is known for its environmental storytelling, isolation, and meditative pacing. After Other M and the long gap before Dread, people are defensive about anything that feels out of place. But turning a few minor NPC moments into “the downfall of Prime 4” is an insane leap.

What makes it worse is the idea floating around that “we have to support it even if it’s bad, because maybe we’ll get more Metroid.” No. Blindly supporting bad decisions just signals that those decisions were good. That’s how you get more of the same problems. Criticism is necessary.

But at the same time…

Telling a dev “you’re cancer” or “you’re the reason Metroid sucks” isn’t criticism, It’s harassment. And it makes the whole fandom look unhinged.

I’m just tired. The conversation around this game has become so warped and polarized that it barely resembles actual discussion anymore. I just want to enjoy Metroid or ANYTHING without sifting through meltdown posts, doom predictions, and people reviewing the game based on a few NPCs

Can we please chill?

Here's a run down of how i got to this point. quickly prepped for the 100 year war with france, kicked it off and took the French crown in five years. marriage-maneuvered Portugal to gain the claim throne war justification then roflstomped them with France's help. spent a few decades carving Scotland up like roast haggis while fending off western HRE coalition wars between truces. Finish conquering Scotland, feed the land to one of my puppet domains to keep the perfidious scotsmen from rioting too much. spend more decades solidifying my control of Belgium, developing the economy, generally being chill. start exploring the world via exploration and stealing maps, decide to set up tiny colonies on the islands south off of Africa to expand the range of exploration I could do. notice the damn spaniards start competing with me for the island colonies. It's fucking on, you damn Castilians. notice they're actually one of the few nations friendly with me after the decades of roflstomping the coalitions, and its heir coincidentially is around the same age as mine for me to take their throne like I did with the frogs. Portugal declares war on them before I could get the claim, worried that the window of opportunity would lapse if the war took too long and fully committed to helping the Portuguese take back their (AI mine) lost land. Barely make it out of the war with like 4 months before the claim lapses, only way to take the throne is by breaking the truce and taking a stability and rep loss. If you're basically America but in the 15th century, who gives a shit! play ball! steamroll the Spanish because it's basically back-to-back wars right after they got crushed by the Anglo-French-Portuguese alliance, and now they're a part of that same alliance. leading to right now as of this posting.

Currently Bohemia, with the HRE at its back, is the military and economic hegemon and probably the only power that could give me a run for my money. I'm thinking now that I've essentially got the both Spain and France as my attack dogs to watch over the mainland while I hide on my shitty british island behind the navy, I should spend a century or so slowly work on economically developing, annexing my subjects and the other kingdoms, and working on digesting them to become world power number 1. I might try and also get hungary into the union too so I can shove a boot right up those czech dogs arse when I'm ready to rip them to shreds. After all of that, I have no idea. it's just a long wait to see what the end is like.

Also if I can make my own protestant schismic split, I'm totally going to roflstomp rome for excommunicating one of my kings during the hundred years war then excommunicating another one of my kings when it was the schism period.

That's right.

Intro

I think there are enough people around here still playing Dwarf Fortress to take another shot at running a succession game, so I'd like to kick off Hexbear Plays Dwarf Fortress: Chapter 2. Last time around, things were a little disorganized, with the duty of organizing the game passing along with the save file. I think we made it about five turns. This time we will try a different approach. I will assume the role of dictator, and as long as I don't allow my kingdom to fall to ruin, or neglect to reign in my scheming courtiers, every Friday will be Fortress Friday, where we advance the game, put files into the hands of the next player, and recount the events of the past year for our eager spectators and awaiting players.

On this inaugural Fortress Friday (today), we will discuss the scenario, rules, guidelines, and logistics of running the game, as well as putting together an initial roster of players. Based on feedback in this thread, I will generate a world, select a site, perform my duties as Expedition Leader for one year, and next Friday, the initial Fortress Friday post of this chapter will be made.

World Generation

There are a few world generation parameters we probably want to tune. We should also discuss this in this thread (if anyone cares).

Embark

The most consequential decision here is size, with 4x4 being standard. For performance reasons we could do a 3x3. Smaller would be quite caustrophobic. Larger would likely cause performance problems. Another very consequential decision is neighbors. Ideally we end up close to Humans, Elves, and Goblins to maximize trade and sieges (there was a whole siege update btw. Probably the most consequential change since they introduced Z-levels to the game).

We also have choices to make about the biome. Do we want frozen winters? Do we want good/evil alignment? Do we want savage wilderness? What kind of wildlife are we looking for (bears obviously). Other important factors are aquifers, surface water sources, types of available minerals, flux stones, sand, whether we have a sedimentary layer (only place to find fuel ores) or an igneous extrusive layer (volcanoes, magma closer to the surface, but no coke to make steel, which must come from charcoal [trees] or trade). These are mutually exclusive.

Skills

The first seven players (counting myself) can also choose skills for a dwarf if they'd like (or a role if you don't feel like looking at the whole list of skills). You can also choose a preferred gender, but genders are generated randomly before assigning skills, along with physical attributes like strength and age. I can only guarantee you'll get a beard.

The initial seven roles have all been chosen. (still open to be amended)

1. Carpenter (myself)

2. Administrator (bookkeeper, appraiser, judge of intent, leader) (@gay_king_prince_charles@hexbear.net)

3. Doc (4 diagnostician, 3 surgeon, 3, medical-adjacent) (@Doubledee@hexbear.net)

4. Militia Captain (any melee (one of axe, spear, sword, or hammer), armor user, shield user, observer, teacher) (@Oreb@hexbear.net)

5. Miner (engraver, observer, fisher/crossbow depending on surroundings) (@Moonworm@hexbear.net)

6. Miner 2 (engraver, dodger, swimmer) (hunter, fisher, herbalist, crossbow, observer) (@context@hexbear.net)

7. Farmer (planter, brewer, cook, spinner) (@booty@hexbear.net)

Names

We also have the opportunity to choose a name for the world itself, the fortress, and the site government, along with an emblem. These are all limited by Dwarven vocabulary and Grammar.

Rules / Recommendations

pending, aside from the fact that the game updates on Fridays. Also not set in stone and subject to discussion.

Generally:

• Each player has one week to advance the game one year, ending on the first day of Spring (open for debate, we could do longer in-game terms). When they have completed their term, they upload their save, and make a comment about their term in the following week's Fortress Friday post. Include a handful of screenshots. This comment will be pinned (I'm actually not sure who gets the power to do this). The next player continues playing this save.

• Generally, apply a "play it as it lies" playstyle. Don't save-scum to produce the ideal outcome or revert the pump-stack you just botched. A crescendo of minor errors exploding into catastrophe is what makes the exercise fun. We might revert in cases of outright sabotage though (unless it is funny).

• Some helper mods like DFHack can be useful, but we want to ensure the save is as compatible as possible, so some thought is needed.

• Each player claims a dwarf (by assigning a nick-name) if they haven't already. The survival of this dwarf doesn't impact your ability to keep playing.

• In each turn, the player should try to accomplish a noteworthy project. Though simply managing stockpiles and shoring up the food supply are vital functions, they are boring and don't create much of a narrative to role-play around, or generate interesting visuals. With time, the projects will grow larger and one player might not be able to complete them in one turn. It is okay to use blueprint designations to help the next player understand what you were doing, but try not to railroad them.

Players

Assigned chronologically based on applications, except for scheduling conflicts. Rotation will continue in this order, prioritizing new players and skipping over anybody who resigns.

1. (Beginning Dec. 5) Myself

2. (Dec. 12) @Moonworm@hexbear.net

3. (Dec. 19) @Doubledee@hexbear.net

4. (Dec. 26) (possibly, we'll check again in <3 weeks) @gay_king_prince_charles@hexbear.net

5. (Jan. 2) (can move up a week) @booty@hexbear.net

6. (Jan. 9) @context@hexbear.net

7. (Jan. 16) @Oreb@hexbear.net

8. (Jan. 23) @Infamousblt@hexbear.net

It looks hot

Please don't be AI slop, this looks really cool!

Only this inept child can pilot the robot that will save humanity

Remote Control Dandy with English Fan Translation for the PS1 (Yes this game is the predecessor to Robot Alchemic Drive)