Stilly

Just now, The NZA said:

...fuck, now my interest is piqued. expected a tech demo, not return to fucking ravenholm

I've got a feeling we're going there, too...

23 minutes ago, The NZA said:

any idea how much content is there? 

They've said that it's the length of Half-Life 2, so quite a bit.

I had to stop again because it scared me. Like, the zombies and headcrabs are unsettling enough when they're freaking life sized, but then they had to go and add a "find a flashlight and walk through the pitch black sewers" section. I made it about as far as my adrenaline would let me. I'll pick it back up tomorrow but God damn is it good.

Also, you can pick up markers and draw on things. Sent this screenshot to my office mate:

Half-Life: Alyx is overwhelming. Being in those environments is absolutely astounding. The level of care and obvious love for the material is evident. I want to take my time with this game and dissect it, piece by piece. I don't even know how to describe it, I got chills when the game started.

It is the single greatest VR experience I've come across thus far, and is a piece of art.

Doom Eternal review:

rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and tear and rip and

is good game - lotsa unlockables - so much doom

Update to the promised hollabox upgrade - v2 is still in beta for public sites (not us...) - v1 is available for self-hosting, but is 100% unsupported and generally not recommended by the devs. Hopefully we'll have something soon. Sorry for the multi-month delay...

I like mine, but it's getting older. Might pick up another one at this price.

CALLED IT

From The Half-Life: Alyx webpage

6 hours ago, The NZA said:

 

wait, so there hasn't been a generation of valve games since...when was episode 2, '07?  that's a long ass gen! 

 

and portals totally worth motion sickness!

That would be correct...ish. We've seen bits and pieces of the Source 2 engine here and there (DOTA 2 / the current CS:GO UI was actually done in Source 2 and then ported back to the Source engine), but we haven't seen a full fledged game, nor have we gotten the dev tools for the engine. 

I would imagine we'll get something from this. Valve is really good at fostering a mod community based around their tools, this keeps their engines at least somewhat relevant for a while. The Source engine was used for everything from Half-Life 2 to CS:GO (don't quote me on that being the last title that used /uses it), and has been significantly upgraded along the way. That being said, I think this is the first step out the door for what Valve is trying to be now. 

11 hours ago, The NZA said:

wouldn't portal have made more sense here?

Each new generation of Valve games has been heralded by a Half-Life game. I'm expecting all the Source 2 tools and other such goodies to be a part of this.

Also, I think Portal would probably cause a shit ton of motion sickness.

17 hours ago, the division of joy said:

Oh the most inaccessible of all platforms too. Fuck you Gaben.

I'm not so sure about this one. It looks like it'll probably run on just about any VR type (Index, Vive, The varied Oculus, Windows Mixed Reality) system (again, just about anything you can hook up to your computer and play stuff on Steam with), and I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to be expected to play a 2020 AAA game on at least somewhat decent hardware. 

Certainly the goal here is to sell more Index..es...Indices?...but people are freaking out about "needing a $1000+ thing to play it" when most of them probably have a PC that's vr ready, at the very least. That's just my two cents on that, though

"This is real. This is happening. And I told you so"

 I never thought I'd see the day.....

Love me some Local 58

I need a better camera.

Not sure if these guys fit in here, but here are my pride and joy. I love them:

Actually, long story, but the people that actually cared the project now have control over it. The hosting stuff had little to do with it. It's in beta for "big sites", but should be pushed our direction soonish. Hopefully we'll have a fix in the next few weeks.

Noticed that the hollabox had been down for a bit, and decided to take a look into it.

UHHHHH

Might be down for a bit...I'll see what I can figure out.

Valve needs to go anti Hong Kong, so we can get halflife 3 due to the backlash. Just sayin. 

19 hours ago, The NZA said:

sumb question but since i have them partitioned off now, can i grow grass or something else they can ear besides constantly buying hay for the silo?

Build a Silo - harvest grass with the scythe. TADA YOU'VE GOT HAY. At this point, the barns and whatnot should start autofeeding the animals each morning. Forgot about that part.

19 hours ago, The NZA said:

also ima finish the community center and prolly chill for a while, the desert dungeon is neat (and helping me fill out the museum when it's not kicking my ass) but there's not a lot left for me to do but uh, save up for catalogs? upgrade tools to iridium after using enough for sprinklers?

I mean, that's the endgame, basically. Minmax the whole thing, and try to make the most efficient farm. Do all the friendship stuff. There's still the 

 There's still a bunch of stuff left to do - but I have the most fun minmaxing the shit outta my farm.

I mean, what do you really need help with other than "What do?" - I know you've been checkin' out the wiki and such. 

I guess my best piece of advice would be to check out https://stardew.info/ and plan out your farm accordingly. Once you finish the community center, you can start buying / building little junimo huts and they'll do most of your harvesting for you.

Look into a layout that's optimized for iridium sprinklers. Kinda have a grid that goes like (Sprin is the iridium sprinkler):

Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop

Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop

Crop  Crop  Sprin Crop  Crop

Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop

Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop  Crop

And modify that for the lesser sprinklers. I'll generally overlap sections and drop a scarecrow where the sprinkler goes every 3 iterations of the pattern. The above planner will actually show you the range of the scarecrows and sprinklers so you can actually plan that shit out. If I'm going for a larger layout, I'll split my farm into two large chunks: One for a seasonal cash crop (pumpkins, etc.) that have a chance to generate giant crops, and then the other for multi-seasonal crops (wheat, coffee, etc.). 

My money makers are wine and coffee. Score some starfruit seeds or ancient seeds and plant them in the greenhouse whenever you get that going. Get a seed maker and dump the first few harvests into there to get more seeds outta them and then keep that going. Follow a similar gridlike structure as the one above. Starfruit have a higher price, but the Ancient Fruit will keep fruiting every seven days or so forever. Take these, make wine, and put them into casks and LET THEM SIT in there until they're iridium quality. They'll sell for 3300g a pop (4620g if you've got the artisan perk).

Speaking of casks - get the basement, and fill the fucker with them. Optimal basement layout for switch controller here.

Personally, I only mess with the animals for the community center challenges. They're too much upkeep for too little reward after that, in my opinion. Make sure, if you have them, that you pet and feed the little fuckers every day. Let them out in the morning during the warmer months (and close their door at night), and get a warmer for them for winter. Build a fence around their barn / coop and plant grass there to keep them happy. Usually a pattern like this is sufficient (F for fence - B for barn):

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

F                                    BBBBB               F

F                                    BBBBB               F

F                                                               F

F                                                               F

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Not to scale. You get the idea, though. Give them some leg room, but keep them in. I'm not sure if they'll screw with your crops otherwise, but don't risk it.

I can't think of anything else. If you go down into the mines, upgrade your backpack and take a bunch of food to keep your health and energy up. Save those geodes and then take a shit ton of them to Clint and make that creep work for his money. Same amethyst for Abby.

Oh, about Abby's gem fetish. You'll save your time (and marriage) if you invest in a Cystalarium and have it just make them. I think you get one during some of the community center stuff.

Alright, there's my write-up. So much of this is just trial and error and planning and what works best for me. YMMV. Have fun!

I think your current machine is better than my old rig. Plus I'm currently using that graphics card and hard drives.

No joke, the old machine was from 2010 or so, and it started making a horrible grinding noise after the move. Thing is probably a fire hazard at this point.

Guyyyysssssss....I'm ready to fuckin' game. Still need to upgrade my graphics card, but loooooooooook, lol.

I'm not going to get too far into the specifics because it's been decades since I've picked up a comic book, but after a cursory google search of the character - to me - it looks like they did a good job. I see that person in the video and (again, to me) it looks like someone of Middle Easternish descent. Regardless, that's not the comment I came here to make.

I will bet anyone 10 bucks that the PC release is going to be an Epic Store exclusive, for a bit, which makes me sad.

We're really doing this again?

IT'S AMAZING AND I LOVE IT

Okay, let's see, couldn't be that bad

- Literally one second later -

HEY EVERYONE - LAST WEEK YOU SAW A VIDEO OF HUMANS DOING HUMAN THINGS

Edit: Jesus, that guys teeth are just slightly too big for his mouth

Also, for some reason the hollabox keeps going down. I'll start looking for a solution (or alternatives, potentially) here in the next day or two, hopefully. I really don't want to drop the Discord, because I think that's a great way to keep it "out of hands", so to speak.

Anyway, enjoy everything else. Love you guys.