Okay fedifriends, please give me advice on buying a game controller.
Some background: I currently play indie games with native Linux support. But I grew up with consoles, and I still think that I'd be more comfortable with a controller for some kinds of games than with a keyboard In particular, I'd like to play precision platformers with a controller. I also think a controller would be good for homebrew made for old consoles.
I have a strong preference for wired peripherals over wireless, and a strong preference for peripherals that don't require their own batteries.
When I sit down to game, I generally want to be able to start playing right away without much set-up. If a game won't launch, I might spend a few minutes adjusting drivers or settings, or I might immediately give up on that game and pick a different game.
Hence, I'd prefer if possible to find a controller that works "out of the box" with a large number of games. I don't want to spend a lot of time configuring button mappings.
So with that in mind, what controller would y'all recommend I buy?
Platformer's @caseynewton talks with Nilay Patel from @theverge about starting his popular tech newsletter, his inspirations for it, the early days of Substack, leaving that platform for Ghost and the future of online journalism.
I've been picking on #CaseyNewton a lot recently over his coverage of SubStack's recent freedom of expression controversy. So it's only fair to point out that Platformer is generally a good publication, to which I still subscribe. His article on the shuttering of iconic music magazine Pitchfork, for example, is timely and insightful;
Alright, after mucking about forever and writing some real gross code, I've got little cutscenes working in my #tic80#platformer
Dialogue is such a core part of games for me, so even for a tiny platformer I wanted to implement this -- and how to implement cutscenes in games has eluded all my past #hobbydev endeavours, so I'm feeling pretty proud to get it working~
That was the last technical hurdle; now I need to just crank out 20-30 rooms and I should have a game!
Система поиска предметов напоминает принцип, который использовался в геймдизайне игры Fallout.
Каждый предмет окружения может хранить в себе лут.
——————
The item search system resembles the principle that was used in the game design of the Fallout game.
Each object of the environment can store loot.
@caseynewton writes how he came to the decision to move Platformer from Substack after three years of building its substantial readership on the online publishing service. He talks about his search for answers from Substack's co-founders, an investigation into pro-Nazi content on the platform and the importance of understanding the thoughts of Platformer's readers.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
January 12, 2024 - Day 377 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 413
Game: Rain World
Platform: Steam
Released: Mar 28, 2017
Installed: Dec 4, 2023
Unplayed: 39d (1m8d)
Playtime: 18m
Rating: 2 - Meh
Rain World is a 2D platformer, set in a post-apocalyptic world, where you play as a "slugcat" that's been separated from its family, in an intro that's almost as depressing as Stray's intro.
The character animations are great, and the environmental design is very well done, but after 15 minutes of shimmying up and down poles and through pipes, while trying to find food and avoid predators, I wasn't really enjoying myself.
Apparently it only gets more difficult moving forward, so it looks like this was a swing and a miss.
198X is a 2D pixel-art pastiche of 1980's arcade games. It's a bit hard to characterise it other than that.
At the start of the game you're inexplicably dropped into a beat-em-up with a different name, and very little context.
This is one of the times that reading up on the game before I played it might have helped. It took me about 10 minutes to beat that stage, only for the actual game to reveal itself, which is a game about arcade games, and a coming-of-age story.
The pixel-art in this game is gorgeous. It captures a mood incredibly well, and combined with the music and voice talent, the game's backstory is well done. It's a pixel-art game where the pixel-art is actually art.
The game is built around five different kinds of arcade games that were popular in the 1980's.
Which is where I ran into problems. The second game is a side-ways scrolling sci-fi shooter, and I was always terrible at this kind of game.
Which means that's where I got stuck, repeating the same section of the game, and dying around the same point each time.
All things considered, I'd like to try and continue playing, but I'm not sure if I'll get past that section to find out.
I was going to describe Clustertruck as a first-person game of "The Floor is Lava" while jumping between moving trucks, and then discovered that's exactly how the devs describe this physics-based platformer.
You start each level on top of a moving truck and you need to get to the goal at the end of the convoy as fast as possible without touching anything that's not a truck.
It requires pinpoint timing and coordination, two things I am lacking.
Unfortunately, while it's well executed, I did not enjoy Clustertruck; it's a:
Legend of Keepers is part management sim, part turn-based strategy, part roguelite.
Turns out that all those dungeons that gamers raid are managed by the "Dungeons Company".
As a newly hired Dungeon Manager, it's your job to place mobs, hazards, and occasional spells between those so-called "adventurers" and the treasure at the end of the dungeon.
I started out figuring I'd be bored, and was kind of into it by the second round. I'm not sure if it quite hits my "good" level, but it comes close, so Legend of Keepers is (for now):
Cyber Hook is a retrowave-themed first-person parkour-with-grappling-hook 3D platformer.
Another game pulled randomly from the spreadsheet of doom.
Love the aesthetic, found the game somewhat frustrating due to the default key assignments, and my lack of general coordination.
In Just Cause, the grapple is deployed with the right mouse button, and shooting with the left.
In Cyber Hook, this is inverted. I swapped them around, which helped, but the mechanic feels just different enough to be frustrating; I have to think instead of just reacting.
The shift key is assigned slow down time, instead of speeding things up (most games assign it to run).
Speedrunning is not really my thing, so Cyber Hook just feels a bit:
Tux! by LucKey Productions 2024-02-02 (luckeyproductions.itch.io)
3D Platformer