Praise be to all of the authors of alternative start mods! NV is definitely a great vanilla solution but I still like the ability to skip the main story premise completely.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I play these days as well. Mod the game to the brim, pick a setting appropriate role (preferably one with little to no intentional combat) and go with that. Being a mundane part of the world is just much more enjoyable to me, probably due to uniqueness that comes with it.

It's a bit easier to roll with it in more linear titles but sandbox games? I'll take the "boring" stuff over glazing just for being the main character any day. I just wish more games had a more systemic rather than curated approach to their features to allow for things like this without mods. That's just my unreasonable wish though.

I'm working on the initial premise and background details for my role-play focused playthrough of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly so I decided to take a break from that for a now. Well, mostly - I'm still adding mods and tweaking the numbers so I jump in from time to time to test things out. Proper gaming sessions however are on hold until I'm ready to start from scratch.

Mod list got another boost since last week, here's how it look right now:

::: spoiler Updated mod list

• AlifePlus - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on general NPC behaviour.
• AlifeTactics - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC combat tactics.
• AlifeGuard - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC cleanup.
• AlifeBalance - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC respawn management.
• (New) AmmoCheck Enhanced - animated ammo check + secondary reload type (faster then normal but you drop replaced mag).
• (New) Animated Campfire Ignition - pretty self explanatory.
• Anomaly Feminine Player Audio - more consistent audio quality for LASS. Used it from the start but forgot to mention it before.
• Anomaly Notebook - adds an in-game journal you can use to write your own notes. It's kind of janky to use but it works.
• Anomaly: Real Distant Mutants Sounds - fixes broken mutant noises that suppose to play at certain distance ranges.
• (New) Arszi's Mutant Bleeding - pretty self explanatory.
• Arti and RavenAscendants Mags Redux - detailed magazine and ammo management.
• Beloved Photo - a simple immersion addon which allows you to use an otherwise junk item to look at it, that's it.
• Blindsides Weapon Reanimation and Rebalance - dependency for other stuff.
• Boomsticks and Sharpsticks - dependency for other mods, improved weapon animations are a nice bonus.
• (New) Camera Reanimation Project - I.N.E.R.T.I.A. - more reactive and smoother camera behaviour.
• (New) Campfire Cooking - allows you to roast meat on campfires, without the need for cooking sets. The end result isn't as good (well, that's configurable) but it can help in a pinch.
• (New) Cordon early-game tweaks + easier Fanatic training - tweaks to week 1 difficulty in Cordon and change to the tutorial quest (it makes no sense to make it a two person excursion to hunt a family of boars, especially with Stalker's AI).
• (New) Dark signal audioscape: Anomalies and blowouts - improved sounds for anomalies and blowouts.
• (New) Dark signal audioscape: Mutants - improved mutant sounds.
• Dark signal weapon soundscape - improved ambiance sounds, dependency for other mods.
• Decreased Bush Hearing Distance - NPCs can't hear you walking through bushes from the other side of the map.
• Dialogue Expanded Expanded - more NPC dialogue (direct, PDA messages etc). Had to do some manual merging with this one due to the conflict with LASS and fix some incorrect characters caused by different encoding, I think? I also left a ton more cause I was too lazy to go through all of the issues.
• (New) Dodge System - exactly what it says, a simple weight and stamina based dodge system.
• (New) Dynamic Reload Speeds - dependency for AmmoCheck Enhanced.
• (New) Dynamic Time-based Tonemap Extended - adds dynamic image tone adjustments based on time of day.
• (New) Early geiger warning - pretty self explanatory. Vanilla warnings are pretty useless since they happen right before you step into the radiation zone, leaving little to no time to react.
• (New) Even More Hideout Furniture - more items for Hideout Furniture.
• Food, drug and drinks animations - pretty self explanatory.
• FDDA Enhanced Animations - Food and Drinks - animation improvements for the above.
• (New) Fixed Vanilla Models & Textures - model and texture fixes for characters.
• He's with me - prevents friendly factions from attacking your companions, even if they are from opposing force. Not sure if I'll stick with this one but it's on for now.
• (New) Hideout Furniture - allows you to make proper hideouts with placeable stashes, light sources etc.
• (New) Hideout Furniture Expansion - more placeable items for the above.
• HTS Bars - hunger and thirst status bars. For whatever reason base Anomaly doesn't show them even though both are tracked and affect gameplay experience (I don't mind the latter but I like to have information about such things).
• HUD icons time - displays remaining time for status effect icons on the HUD.
• (New) Improved Gestures Tool - allows you to play NPC animations (sitting or laying down, leaning on stuff, various actions etc). Purely for immersion.
• Instant Tooltip+ - pretty self explanatory.
• Inventory Anrifreeze - lazy loading for in-game containers, helps with the hitching when opening things with lots of items.
• (New) Keep Crafting Window Open - pretty self explanatory.
• LASS (check full mod name) - female player character.
• LASS Population Addon - adds female stalkers to the NPC pool.
• Ledge Grabbing / Mantling - adds a simple climbing/mantling system to the game.
• (New) Meadow terrain material mask fix - pretty self explanatory.
• Michikos Weather Revamp Revised - more natural look for all weather conditions (bright and colourful for clear skies, dark and moody for rain etc) and restores moving clouds to some of them. Also comes with an option for dynamic wind behaviour (changes based on the weather and location).
• Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Bottled Water Adjusted** - change number of uses for mineral water from 3 to 5, restores the same amount of thirst (just divided by 5).
• Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Talk to Everyone** - as the name suggests, it allows you to talk to every NPC instead of just team leaders.
• MSBS Grot - cool gun that doesn't really appear in games often (ARMA 3 and Girls' Frontline are the only titles I can think of right now).
• (New) New Walk & Run Animation - pretty self explanatory.
• New Zone Mutants can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
• New Zone NPC's can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
• NPC Weapon Jamming - pretty self explanatory.
• Overheat Gunsmoke - restores Anomaly's bugged feature of gun barrels letting off smoke after lots of shooting.
• (New) Pre-Blowout Murder - adds an early warning system and tension builder in the form of crows populating the sky right before blowouts.
• (New) Remove "(BaS)"/"(BaS+Van)" label from "Boomsticks and Sharpsticks" - pretty self explanatory.
• Sickhowl's Grass Tweaks - more lush version of vanilla grass grass and trees with little to no performance impact.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 HoC - Soundscape Overhaul for Anomaly - improved ambiance sounds. I'm a bit mixed on this one - on one hand a lot of the new sounds add quite a bit to the atmosphere, on the other some changes (especially in regards to fake mutant noises) act pretty much as sound pollution, making it harder to react to real threats (in a bad way).
• Sascha's S-40 Sirens - period and region appropriate siren sounds for emissions.
• Simple FPS Monitor - pretty self explanatory, useful for tweaking my graphics settings.
• (New) Skies Redux - prettier skyboxes.
• (New) Sleep restores health - pretty self explanatory though I did change the default HP restoration from 3% per hour of sleep to 1% since I want to use it as a minor bonus rather than an intended way of healing.
• (New) Sorting Plus - type based item sorting.
• Stealth - bunch of tweaks to the stealth and detection system.
• (New) TB's 475 New Stash Locations - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) TB's Angry Chimera Growls - new audio cues for Chimeras.
• (New) TB's Bugged Stashes Fix - removes unreachable and bugged stashes from in-game use.
• Tactical Movement Speed - change movement speed depending on weapon status (holstered, lowered, drawn, aimed).
• (New) Thirst Blur Tweak - removes the annoying blur effect from the first (safe) stage of thirst.
• (New) Transition between locations without confirmation - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) Weapon Cover Tilt - makes player raise their weapon when standing close to a cover.
• Weighted Probability Weather Manager - improvements to the weather selection system.
• xlibs - dependency for other mods. :::

Since I'm taking a break from Stalker, I decided to use this opportunity to jump back into The Elder Scrolls Online. My time with the game has been... fine. Harder combat is cool and all but everything else?

I'm trying to follow the quests (both local and main story ones) to give myself some goals but the whole thing is pretty boring to be honest. It's not that writing is terrible or anything like that, it's just I really hate being the chosen one. I'm SO BORED of this position it's difficult to get invested into anything that's happening in the story. "You're special" - yay... (๑ - ᆺ -)

I dunno, maybe if I played with a group I could feel better by acting as an unimportant support character but as it is now, I'm just going through the motions. Run around, follow the quests, kill some boring bad guys, rinse and repeat. I don't think classic MMOs are for me any more.
I thought about trying Skyrim multiplayer instead since that's more role-playing focused (including non-combat roles) but that requires joining project's discord server which is an instant "no, thanks" for me.

I'm going through a bit of a rough patch right now which affects my motivation to some extent but even in better circumstances my feelings towards the game weren't much different than now. Time to browse through my library again.

Man, the full release Starbound was such a... I don't want to call it a disappointment but it's definitely a shame what happened with it. It went through so many cool mechanics throughout the development and threw away like half of them (not to mention the near complete rewrite of the lore). Such a weird situation.

I barely touched the 1.0 version but I still play some of the beta builds from time to time - they might lack in content but boy do they grab me in a way the full release never managed to.

To be clear, I'll be writing them regardless of whether I decide to post anything online or not. I'm simply not sure whether they'll be worth anyone's time outside of the game. As I said though, I'll most likely pair them with screenshot posting so there should be something worthwhile there.

I'll let you know if I decide to go through with it.

Duplicate

They really went all in with setpieces that felt like a serious crime drama. I never got to experience the multiplayer (co-op or otherwise) but what I've seen looked cool. I wonder if they're people playing it these days.

For spoilers it's:

::: spoiler <spoiler_name>

:::

It has great style! I love how much the leaned into the found footage/internet video aesthetic, as well as how they decided to go for a more naturalistic approach in regards to game ambiance (environmental sounds, diegetic music etc). It's such a unique experience in video games, especially bigger published ones.

I think the general idea for the plot and world at large is pretty good (there are some interesting and rather grim details in the background), it's just that Bungie missed the mark with how to write and present these things to actually hit the mark. It was also rushed out the door due to business shenanigans which cemented the end result.

Catalyst missed the mark for me. Between locking the moves behind skill tree, larger focus on combat and slightly reworked art style it just didn't grab me the way the original did. It's not all bad and I still want to play it to completion some day but it was kind of a disappointment nonetheless.

Still waiting for Oni 2

Best I can do is the leaked early build of the project attempted by Angel Studios. It's rough, obviously unfinished and Konoko looks a bit different but it has a somewhat working combat system you can play with and a bunch of levels to run around in. It's also prone to crashes but that's to be expected.

I watched some of the transmission and all I can say is my respect to Zelensky grew tenfold with that exchange alone.

Having to interact with these two clowns and still keeping his cool (as much as he was able to) requires A LOT of patience and will. It was horrifyingly stupid in a train wreck kind of way.

Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:

• Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
• Canon Pence (Epic Games)
• Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
• Ian Mattingly (Activision)
• Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
• Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
• Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
• Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Matt Spencer (Take 2)
• Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
• Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
• Karine Parker (Square Enix)
• Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
• Felix Falk (game)
• Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
• David Verbruggen (VGFB)
• Nick Poole (UKIE)

You know, the people who "ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood" (direct quote from their website).

Fresh update video from Ross about the campaign.

TL;DW:

• There's a chance many of the signatures for the EU petition aren't real. Keep signing to build up a safety margin. Official suggestions are: 10% more minimum, 20% pretty OK, up to 40% more for an actual safety net.
• Some countries had problems with signing using the digital ID system - suggests to use the manual method (instructions on the campaign page) or try again later.
• Someone not related with the campaign released a SKG crypto. Don't touch it, obviously.
• Ross heard about people harassing Pirate Software, asks to stop.
• He's got a lot of messages to reply to, prioritises ones important to the campaign for now.
• UK petition cleared 100k signatures. Number is most likely more reliable than the EU one.
• Link about contacting UK MP's for those who want to do more than just sign a petition.

While I can't provide you with a proper scientific answer I can offer a basic explanation - it's effort.

Browsing through the never ending amount of content online requires no effort but provides you with a dopamine rush as if you actually managed to accomplish or do something with your time. Other stuff, like watching movies, playing games, reading books, etc. requires attention and active participation, the payoff on the other hand is largely delayed (especially compared to the lazy option).

As for hacks... I don't know any. The only ways I know how to deal with it is limiting your time scrolling through this stuff and forcing yourself to do other things - it can be rough early on but you'll eventually get used to the "normal" way of functioning.

He actively misrepresented the campaign and spread misinformation about its goals. I don't know if he genuinely didn't understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake but he did a lot of damage to the momentum and perception of the whole thing.

It sucks these big creators only now pick up the mantle but it's better than nothing. There's still some time left.

Man, I really appreciate GOG. They're not perfect and, as with all corporations, one shouldn't take them completely at face value but their approach to game preservation, DRM and stuff like this are the reasons why I keep them as my primary choice for purchases whenever possible.

Is it a relatively cheap PR stunt? Maybe. Probably. It's still more than any other store did or said in regards to the recent events. Might as well grab some free publicity.

It's a jab at the Pirate Software guy, I believe.

There's a UK Parliament petition to repeal the Online Safety act. There's no guarantee it'll do anything but might be worth a try for anyone in the UK.

Is this suppose to be an article? Or is posting tweets linked on a website a new fad?

I know SC is a game many people like to dunk on (sometimes for completely right reasons) but let's not pretend like there's absolutely nothing there and CIG somehow scammed millions of players.

If anyone is actually interested in the game, I'd like to stress that you can buy the cheapest package and have access to everything using in-game money. There are also free flight events, available multiple times a year, so you can try the game out and decide for yourself if you like what's there. So far, despite horrible technical difficulties that often happen due to stress on the servers during those times the number of players keeps growing. Take that as you wish...

As for the package... Is it ridiculous? Yes, absolutely. It's 100% worth dunking on.

In case you weren't aware there's an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It's in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I've been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.

It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.