If you’re looking for a desktop version of SteamOS and are used to using Windows, your best bet is likely Bazzite with the KDE desktop environment. There are mixed feelings among Linux users about immutable distros, (many of the more advanced users feel it is too limiting), but there’s no denying the Bazzite is the most straightforward way to get things like Nvidia drivers and HDR.
My ex used to play that game religiously. Something about weapon swapping, butterflies, double butterflies, etc…
I have written similarly awful formulae when I needed to get a csv to export to Google Calendars, but the program I was exporting to wasn’t using Google’s accepted csv headers.
I ended up creating a template that looked at the exported csv file, and then reformatted it in a way that Google liked (and added some extra info along the way.) I needed it to only fill text if an entry actually had info in it, and hide all the text otherwise. So that I could automatically delete empty cells and avoid a bunch of empty calendar entries when importing it into Google. The resulting formula for some of the fields was… Not great. This is what controlled the “name” of each calendar event:
It takes several different potential fields, and combines them into a single field. If there are no entries, it gets left blank.
And every single time I would get it working properly, someone would add a row or change the data validation rules, so I would have to go in and update my formulae. After the fifth or sixth time that happened, I told the person making the changes that it was his job to update the formulae. Suddenly, it stopped getting changed.
Hello FBI, this is the one
The Steam Deck is actually wonderful for retro games. EmuDeck makes setting up emulators a breeze, and the roms can easily be found online legitimately ripped from your own copies of the game and loaded onto a MicroSD card.
Hah, just edited the comment for you.
that respect their time
I know you’re not talking about old school RPGs. The older games tended to pad playtime by having insane difficulty levels or by requiring grinds. Hell, my favorite JRPG (edit: Legend of Legaia) is specifically more grindy in America, because the devs decided to slash the experience and gold drop rates by like 50% for the American release, and make all of the enemies hit much harder. (Interestingly, the original enemy stats are still present in the game code, and then the game runs some “x1.25” math when the battle starts, to bump all of their stats up to the values that actually get used in combat.) So you need to be a higher level to be able to survive, and you need to grind twice as long to reach those higher levels and to be able to buy better gear. I like it despite the grind, not because of it; In most of my play throughs, I end up using cheats to avoid the grind.
and aren’t a glorified second job
I mean, games like Ultima Online, RuneScape, Diablo, and EverQuest have existed since the 90’s. Hell, RuneScape used to be extremely approachable for young players because it didn’t require a good computer or any installs; It just ran directly in your internet browser.
The bigger reason many adults feel this way is not because games have gotten longer or harder. Adults simply have less time to play. They don’t want to spend a bunch of time researching optimal builds or grinding rank in multiplayer matches. Instead, they want to fall back to the games that they already know how to play. They’re willing to ignore the fact that their favorite single player game requires 10-20 hours of grinding, because it doesn’t feel like work to them. Or if it does, they can just use cheats to get around it. They don’t need to research how to get a specific item, or how to approach a specific boss fight, because they have already done it a dozen times.
I honestly hadn’t considered Blitzball. I kind of forget it exists, since I only ever slogged through it to get Wakka’s ultimate weapon and overdrives.
edit: also 2-300 hours in oldschool RuneScape lol
I have logged over 200 hours in RuneScape just this month.
It probably helps that I have a job where I can have it running next to me. At this point, it is basically just an idle game that I only need to touch every ~15 minutes to refresh my idle logout timer. Pretty much the only times it’s not running are when I’m asleep or physically away from a computer.
Hell, even when I’m away from my computer, it keeps running as long as I can touch it every now and then to stay logged in. If I’m AFK’ing slayer with aggressive enemies, I only really need to touch it to refresh my inventory or the idle timer. Even when I’m playing other games, RuneScape just runs quietly on my second monitor.
It’s just disappointing to see how drastically the series has changed. It started as a top-down strategy RPG, and now it’s just a generic hack-n-slash game. Game publishers have shied away from games like the original Dragon Age, because they want to sell as many units as possible. And they think generic hack-n-slash games sell better. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3 have proved that there is still a large demand for more traditional RPGs, but the publishers simply don’t want to take the risk.
This is RuneScape for me. I take very long breaks, but always end up playing it again after not thinking about it for like a year or two.
My judgement will depend on which megaten game you no-lifed.
You can 100% the Sphere Grid in only a few hours, if you’re smart about it. My guess is they were going around using Clear Spheres to wipe unneeded spheres off the map and replace them. The default Sphere Grid doesn’t actually allow you to max your stats; You need to clear the existing +2 or +3 spheres, and replace them with +4 spheres instead.
Even then, maxing your stats doesn’t require 9999 hours. Unless OP was farming experience in Besaid Island (the starting area) it shouldn’t take that long to navigate the grid and farm enough replacement spheres.
And this is the real crux of the issue. If there are no penalties for ignoring the court order, then we have already entered the “we need to start lighting dome-topped buildings on fire” phase of protests. Because if the judicial branch is truly being ignored, then there is nothing to stop it from escalating to straight up “Secret Police disappearing citizens in the dark of night for having dissenting opinions” levels.
Though knowing that a homing pigeon with a thumb drive is actually faster than the fastest Internet network on the planet
Depends on how big the flash drive is, I suppose. Need to send a 1GB file? Just make a torrent. Need to send 40TB? Yeah, that hard drive is getting driven across town.
This feels a little bit like Brainfuck tbh.
For what it’s worth, I can think of one thing that would make brainfuck even worse: Instead of using 8 arbitrary characters (it only uses > < + - . , ] and [ for every instruction) for the coding, use the 8 most common letters of the alphabet. Since it ignores all other characters, all of your comments would need to be done without those 8 letters.
For example, “Hello World” in brainfuck is the following:
++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++.
If we instead transposed those 8 instructions onto the 8 most common letters of the alphabet, it would look more like this:
eeeeeeeeaneeeeaneeneeeneeenesssstonenentnneasostonnIntttIeeeeeeeIIeeeInnIstIsIeeeIttttttIttttttttInneIneeI
It has always been there, but until Trump’s first term the Nazis were at least cautious about things. They were afraid to openly and publicly spout their BS, unless they were in large groups. Because they knew that if they held up swastika signs on the street corner, that they’d very quickly get punched in the mouth.
But Trump changed that. Depending on how old you are, you may remember the “he tells it like it is/he’s not afraid to say what’s really on his mind” types of support for Trump during his first term. What a lot of those people were really saying is “he makes me feel empowered to say what’s is on my mind.” And what was on their mind was white supremacy and nazism. When the highest office in the land is tacitly (and sometimes directly) supporting white supremacists, they feel emboldened. And when they feel emboldened, they escalate.
What used to be whispered racist jokes escalated into passive racism. What used to be passive racism escalated into active racism. What used to be active racism escalated into openly hostile racism. And what used to be openly hostile racism escalated into nazism.
And the issue is that Trump/Musk have given Nazis a forum to meet other Nazis. Before, being a Nazi was a fairly lonely hobby. Finding other Nazis carried a lot of risk, because it meant potentially exposing yourself and getting your life ruined. But with Musk buying Xitter, Trump building Truth Social, etc… Yeah, suddenly the Nazis felt empowered to actually start talking to each other. The same way flat earthers used to just be your crazy uncle who smoked too much in his garage. But now that crazy uncle is part of a Flat Earth Society that regularly does large “experiments” to try and prove the earth is flat. By finding a forum to connect with other like-minded individuals, people feel emboldened as their views feel more normalized.
The server owners can’t see your phone number. Discord allows you to set a minimum verification level for users in your server. The lowest is simply having a verified email on their account. The highest is a verified email, a few minutes old (so no brand new accounts), been in the server for a few minutes, and a verified phone number. It’s just a bot prevention thing, because spammers/scammers are a big issue on large Discord servers. Especially early in Discord’s history, it was a big issue where bots would raid a server and just totally shut it down with spam links. So Discord started allowing server owners to set minimum verification levels before users could interact and send messages.
It has a decent community, yes. It’s basically the go-to gaming distro for many people.