I mean, I think not, having lived on them, and not wanting to go back.

Its about information density. The “things” we interact with, they almost never fit into an equal dimensional density across two dimensions. There is almost always more substantially more information in one dimension than the other.

A spread sheet you are interacting with is almost always either longer in one way, or wider in another. Even if it wasn’t, creating a manner in which it could be optimally viewed would make the content irrelevantly small.

We’re better off picking one of the two dimensions, committing to an orientation, and then rotating our monitor to fit that. If we do that, we’ll get more information per unit area on the screen.

We did that for decades. It was pretty miserable.

You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.

Rumi irl

Protestantism.

Its stress. You need a break, even if you can’t tell you need one. I know, because I’m in the exact same boat, and I need a break too. You and I need physical rest, time to dissociate mentally with existing responsibilities, and spiritually (emotionally) reconnect with our motivations for living.

I think its reasonable to assume these symptoms are compounded by environmental factors (like having had covid, stress, getting older, etc), but ultimately, its our own behavior to be put at blame. That doesn’t preclude the need for potentially deep recovery. For example, I was extremely burnt out 6 years ago. I made a huge number of life changes, where I knew I would be overextending myself even further, with the goal of being able to real it back in at the end to a much more simple calmer life. And it would have worked if not for the complete and total collapse of American democracy.

Realtable

Python

…so… so you made it single threaded?

[ Their after hours hobby of illegally breaking into computers and websites ]

pictures please.

Serious answers only.

The worlds too dark to take anything too seriously right now.

See the cat is asking if it can have a haburger.

No, but can I see yours for 50 tokens?

Bets: dumptruck or longback?

This abandonware site appears to have a Windows release:

Yeah I downloaded it while we were chatting. I’m going to try and get it running after work.

I’ve definitely played City of Bywater.

    Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs)
    Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips)
    Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)

Same. I also definitely played City of Bywater, and I know I had both Assault on Giant Mountain and Castle in The Clouds (this one was giants right?)

So Realmz is truly open world in a way that BG3 only pretends to be. In BG3, they create the sensation of this huge diversity of endings and paths you can take, but its all pretty much a fugazi: the illusion of choice when actually only a small number of endings are possible. In BG3, the choices add “color” along the way, but they don’t fundamentally change anything about the game, or what its about (like what even is the point of the game?). I have a whole essay of criticism I’ve developed on it, because I truly did enjoy it, but it was so… it pointed in the direction of how much possibility it could have but didn’t execute on it. Its really only an impression of what it claims to be.

There is no ending in Realmz. Its just a big open world. And as you dig, you find more, and more and it just keeps going. But there is no particular path to take. You just can go anywhere and find adventure along the way. There are a huge number of random encounters, and the combat style is basically top down tile based D&D, which BG3 is also, more or less. Then you get into some corner of the map in Realmz, and you find some cave or castle or dungeon to explore… and it just keeps going. And going and going and going. And instead of it being one monolithic story like BG3, its a world in which many BG3’s happen. The spider tower. The kobald army invasion. The castle in the clouds. The necromancers tower.

Another thing is, predictability/ “jail breaking”. Modern games have this expectation that we “know” everything that is possible for an item or method or whatever. This is a big departure from early games where we would often “find out” about what is possible. In modern games when something unexpected happens, the dev’s patch it and change the game. In old games when something unexpected happens… well… thats just part of the game. Dota is a great example of this, where basically, finding ways to break the game to come up with a new strategy was quite literally how the game was played. Its now devolved into a poor impression of itself. In realmz, I remember beating some adventure and its final wizard and getting a wand of polymorph. I used it on one of my characters and it polymorphed them into a red dragon and it killed the entire party. I highly doubt the game developers planned that as a possibility, but game development then was often about creating possibilities, not limiting them. Whenever anyone figures something like that out in BG3, they patch it and the game becomes a little more sterile, a little more boring.

Also, BG3 is just kinda… empty. Which I was really surprised by, considering how many studios create amazing, populated worlds with complex day night cycles and economies. In BG3, once you’ve pretty much cleared an area, thats it. Not much more to do other than advance to the next area. In Realmz, you had to watch your ass if you were really out there, because no-matter what state your party was in, a random encounter can happen at any time, and in that game, death is permanent. Also, wtf is with there not being a day night cycle in BG3? Like wth. I’ve got a damn vampire and they aren’t weak during the day and OP af at night?