axby

@axby@lemmy.ca

See alexbarry.net for projects I’m working on, and contact info.

Also check out github.com/alexbarry

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axby,

I already basically get that half the time I boot into windows after an update. They say “let’s finish setting up your PC” and try to get you to pay for one drive, office, even game pass.

I’m so glad gaming on Linux has gotten to such a good state. I barely ever boot into windows now. (The “ad” on boot up is probably only once every few months, but that’s about as often as I boot into windows).

axby, (edited )

I don’t think it’s only you. I remember him saying (and even tweeting) that 2015 will be the last FPTP election if the liberals were elected. I was younger at the time but I remember a lot of people reluctantly voted for him instead of the NDP just to finally end FPTP and be able to choose the NDP as their first choice in the next election (but still choose the liberals as their second choice, to keep the conservatives out). Further reading for anyone interested: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_splitting

Then they won, claimed that they couldn’t find an alternative that everyone liked, and apparently that was it.

My understanding is that many people would have been happy with “anything” besides FPTP, but weren’t able to agree on their first choice? …surely it’s not that ironic? Or maybe there’s more to it than that?

Anyway overall the liberals may have still been the best choice… but this wasn’t some minor promise that he made. I think this is what was most important to a lot of people. Err… I think? No one seems to talk about it now.

edit1: added link to tweet

edit2: This article seems to summarize the timeline: globalnews.ca/…/justin-trudeau-liberals-electoral…

edit3: this seems more helpful: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Canada#2015_fe…

axby,

Thanks for posting this (I’m the original author). It’s not clear to me where to share my projects like this, many places on the internet don’t seem to welcome any form of self promotion, even if it is open source / ad free / etc.

My original post was directed towards the self hosting community, but it should still be completely useable with the github pages version (linked in the post). And stay tuned for an Android app (and maybe iOS some day), most games are great offline. I’d love to add multiplayer over bluetooth, the main time I play games like this on my phone is when I’m on a flight or when physically with someone else.

I’d love to hear feedback, especially constructive criticism! There are some other features and new games that I’d like to add, but I’d love to hear what people actually want, instead of just what I enjoy working on.

axby,

Message me on matrix in #alexgames:matrix.org if anyone wants to try playing a multiplayer game together :)

(I’m not actually very good at chess or go)

axby,

Is it fun if one person is an experienced gamer, and the other person is more casual? (And often complains that the other person is too good :( )

axby, (edited )

Rimworld is probably one of my favourite games. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested. This new expansion also seems really cool, I copied two points from the steam description that stood out to me (spoiler warning! Even the steam description has a spoiler warning before these. Hopefully most lemmy clients support spoiler tags):

spoiler warning

spoiler warning (I notice connect on Android doesn’t yet support spoiler tags)

spoiler warning

:::spoiler some spoilers from the steam description. Note the description says: Warning - Spoilers Below.

A psychically-invisible hunter of human souls screeches outside your walls, returning every night to capture a new victim. The proximity alarm goes off, but you can’t see the beast. Study samples of the creature to learn to detect it. Then, become the hunters and kill it where it lives.

A parasite has mind-controlled some of your colonists - but who? They pretend to be human as they work to infest others. Track evidence, imprison, interrogate, and medically test people to find out who is infested before it’s too late.

:::

(end spoilers)

That being said, I’ve only played the base game so far, and I think I’ve always played on the difficulty that is just one above peaceful, and I found it really hard near the end. But I’ve never bothered with killboxes, and I keep my colony wealth high I guess, I like to hoard food, silver, and everything. I also build floors (some people skip them to keep their wealth low). Perhaps I should have added: raid strength depends on your colony wealth (I think).

Does anyone have any tips for actually reaching the end game event? (Please use spoiler tags! I know a bit about it, but I think many people like to be surprised. Put :::spoiler some text that shows before users expand your spoiler before and ::: at the end.)

axby,

Thanks a lot! Usually I’m okay up until I reach near the end … spoiler-ish warning:

:::spoiler spoilers for nearing the end of the game I was doing great up until psychic ships kept crashing. I’d arrange all my colonists in a circle around the ship, and usually they could kill the mechanoids pretty easily. But sometimes one or two of my colonists would die. I tried to keep going after that, but then another ship part crashed within what felt like a few days (maybe it was 7 days), then I lost a few more. I had barely recovered from the last one.

I may have tried to start building the ship too soon. I think I had assault rifles for several colonists, and marine armour for a few.

But anyway, for a psychic ship, are you supposed to attack it, run away, and kite them back to your well defended killbox-ish base? Maybe that was really my biggest mistake. I would have just left it way on the other side of the map, but the psychic drone was getting bad. And I think there was a fire or something too? :::

(end spoilers)

It’s also possible that I had tried to challenge myself and set the difficulty to the mid level, but forgot.

Oh, also I often find myself running out of components, and just barely making it to component manufacturing before I run out. I always buy them all from traders, and try to conserve them. But even with component manufacturing, it feels like it takes forever to make one, even if I have like ~15 colonists, where a few are dedicated crafters. Maybe I just need to stay in this stage for longer, until I can get assault rifles for everyone?

And I never really read much about strategies, I generally just like to figure it out myself, but I suck at trying new things.

I guess the main thing is that I love the part where you try to survive against natural disasters and have enough food, but I’ve never gotten too into the combat. Plus it felt like it was always pretty easy up until I got to the kinds of enemies that you encounter regularly at the end of the game.

axby, (edited )

My first phone was this “dual flip” Samsung U740 (I don’t remember the model number, I just looked up “dual flip”). It could be used like a normal phone when talking, but you could also open it sideways to text and use a QWERTY keyboard. I could easily text without looking, I loved it.

Samsung U740

After that I had some moto droid with a slide out keyboard, but it was bigger and less comfortable to use.

axby,

TL;DR: I highly recommend trying and getting comfortable with swiping. I say this as a physical keyboard lover and fast normal keyboard typist. Also as someone who hates having to fix auto corrections that occasionally result from swiping.

At one point (2011-ish?) I had the droid 2 and it had a physical keyboard which I really liked, but once I tried “swiping” I stopped using the keyboard for the most part. For programming or gaming a physical keyboard on a phone is amazing (I loved playing a mario game with that keyboard, touch screens aren’t good enough for it IMO), but for general messaging, swiping is accurate enough, and super convenient IMO. I don’t think I would message people much without it.

For longer messages I often just switch to my laptop, but even this comment (which has become much longer than I intended) doesn’t feel overly painful to write via swiping.

That being said, I would still be interested in a phone with a physical keyboard if a good one exists. I did try the pinephone with a physical keyboard case, and it worked great as a mini laptop for very light terminal usage, but I feel like most of my messages on my phone are quick enough that swiping (and occasionally correcting the resulting mistakes) still feels way faster than two finger touch screen typing, and it feels fast enough to not bother folding out a keyboard.

(The physical keyboard with the pinephone was just a bit too small to comfortably type with all 5 fingers.)

axby,

edit: oops I just realized that you seem to be referring to “how can I see the letter on the keyboard”, originally I thought you meant “how can the keyboard know which letter I’m referring to if it’s ambiguous”. For me being able to see, I roughly know where all the letters are out of habit, so it’s more muscle memory than having to look. But also my finger doesn’t tend to cover most of the screen, so maybe I can’t see letters one key away from my thumb, but I can see all the others.

TL;DR: try to do curves instead of straight lines when swiping, it helps signal that you are avoiding the letters in a straight line between two letters. I think this is essential but I’m not sure if it’s really communicated anymore.

ah, voice to text also seems really convenient. I tend to prefer being silent, but if I did more hands-free stuff then maybe I’d get more comfortable using voice to text.

With swiping, you’re right that it can be a bit ambiguous if you just move your finger in a straight line from each letter you need. There are some words that often get mixed up if you do that. What I do is make a curve between letters, especially when they are close together or seem to get mixed up (or there’s a letter in between that could plausibly be added between your two endpoints). So instead of going straight from “F” to “L” on a QWERTY keyboard, I’ll do a half circle almost, curving down to “N” and back up to “L”. This might be a bad example because it doesn’t look like there are a ton of common letter combinations between “F” and “L”, I can’t think of any right now. But when it’s especially ambiguous or close together, I think the curving helps. Also over exaggerating sometimes helps, sometimes if I was swiping to the letter “A” it would use “S” or something a bit closer. I think I was not swiping far enough, and I think there is a lot of prediction at play to figure out what is most likely based on your gestures. Overall this works pretty well, now that I’m used to it, I can’t recall any specific words that are always messed up. Mistakes do happen sometimes but generally I feel like it’s faster than any alternatives (with the possible exception of voice, but I find that I rely a lot on punctuation that isn’t always captured by voice).

RE the trail, I guess I don’t notice it anymore. It actually works well enough that I don’t need to look at the keyboard very much when doing it, I tend to just look at the output, and only look at the keyboard if it entered the wrong word. (And I do occasionally just press individual keys if I’m entering a word that isn’t in the swipe dictionary). I’d also guess that you might be able to disable the trail, there are usually configurable keyboard settings.

But then again, it might not be everyone’s thing. I had tried T9 on flip phones and never liked it, but I was used to my small QWERTY flip phone. I certainly hope that they let people swiping it if it gets in the way, I don’t think it should be forced on everyone just because I strongly prefer it.

axby,

Interesting! I’m not sure how I have never heard of that. It sure looks cool.

axby,

I would totally buy a modern version as long as I could use a browser, some bank and finance apps, and rideshare. And maps. And I’d probably need a touch screen. (Obviously a modem cell radio, and GPS if the original didn’t have it)

I’m sure the small screen would occasionally be difficult and maybe require custom UIs like how Android/iOS apps do for watches. But I think I could live with it. I want to use my smart phone less anyway.

Star Citizen's first-person shooting is getting backpack-reloading, dynamic crosshairs, procedural recoil, and other improvements to 'bring the FPS combat to AAA standard' (www.pcgamer.com)

Well, I mean, I would have launched it first (as an AAA game), but I’m no game developer. 🤷 And neither are they, from the looks of it. Good at perpetually raking in money for himself and his family, though!

axby, (edited )

This would have been so exciting like 9 years ago when they first released the FPS thing. I would also be excited if they said the game is fun now, instead of some random superficial animation thing that probably doesn’t add much to the gameplay.

I love the idea of this game, but even after a few years I lost hope. I can’t believe it’s still in development like 10 years later. Does anyone know if it’s more playable now? They had some ship racing and the FPS thing before, why haven’t they just thrown together a basic world yet?

Edit: it sounds like they have thrown together a basic world. Maybe it’s worth another try now? Can you have fun for more than a few hours and actually accomplish meaningful stuff?

axby, (edited )

I agree with you for most games, people are picky and don’t understand the challenges. But this game solicited donations 10 years ago, people bought into the vision, and they were wildly successful, I think they raised $600M, which is like the most money any game has ever raised?

And despite that, 10 years later, it’s still mostly just a tech demo (edit: perhaps I’m wrong? Maybe there is $40 worth of playable content. See discussion in child comments, I haven’t tried this myself in many years, out of fear of being disappointed again). They are focused on adding cool but superficial animation things, rather than just making a fun playable experience.

If they were focused on making a fun playable (but possibly buggy and limited) game then it would be different. But instead they seem to be chasing random superficial features like projecting your face from your web cam onto your character. It feels like they are not seriously committed to making even an early access game in a reasonable timeline.

If this project was funded by some billionaire who wanted to spend 30 years to make the most amazing MMO ever with a ton of never before seen features, then that would be fine. But instead normal people chipped in $40+ to fund this game, and the developers don’t seem to be prioritizing actually making a fun playable game. It’s barely beyond a tech demo even 10 years later (edit: maybe this is not completely accurate). It is reasonable to assume that the management of this project does not care about making a playable game, they can work on whatever fun features they want, they’ve already made a ton of money.

edits: perhaps I’m wrong about the state of the game. I haven’t tried it in a while. I’ll have to give it another try.

axby,

TL;DR: I may be mistaken about how playable it is, I’ll have to give it another try. Thanks for the reassurance. I haven’t tried it myself in many years, and have only relied on articles like this to hear about the progress. Perhaps I’m biased since the comments always love to hate on Star Citizen and few people are defending it. RE single investor: if everyone who paid money for it was happy then yeah there would be no difference. But I think a lot of people paid money expecting a longer gaming experience within a few years, and instead it’s taken a long time and they’re still focusing a lot on cosmetic things rather than gameplay and content. IMO gameplay and content should be the top priority, and cool visual stuff can come later. But if piracy/mining/exploring planets/missions can actually provide ~10 hours of enjoyment without being seriously hindered by bugs, then I’m totally wrong and should update my comment.

Thanks for the info, perhaps I should update my comment. It was barely beyond a tech demo when I tried it so many years ago, but it does seem like it’s added a lot since then (and I’ve only learned about it after digging in more today). I’ve seen some comments in this post that said there isn’t much to do besides walk around and look at stuff, which matches my experience many years ago, but perhaps it’s not really accurate anymore. Some articles have talked about piracy and mining actually being viable as ways to make money to get a better ship. If those are enjoyable and not severely limited in content and so buggy that progress is hard, then I’m totally wrong and can maybe say that 10 years later my return on investment is adequate :) , and maybe in another few years there will be even more content and give me something more like ~10+ hours of enjoyment.

I know people who play several hours a week and say they’re having a great time. There’s definitely a full game in the alpha, but it’s far from polished or finished.

This is actually really reassuring to me, I’ll have to give it another try.

Every person I know who’s spent money on star citizen seems happy with their RoI.

Perhaps the people you’re talking to about it now are somewhat skewed towards people who still enjoy it for what it is now. I’ve almost forgotten and wouldn’t think to mention it to most people, but I paid $40 for it around 9 years ago, because a friend mentioned it to me and it seemed like such an amazing idea. It showed so much promise, the racing seemed fun and complex, and later I tried Squadron 42 and felt like I could see the vision coming together. But then after not trying it for a few years, I keep hearing more of the same thing: new cool superficial feature, but still lacking in significant enjoyable gameplay. I am actually kind of scared to try it again and be disappointed in the lack of content.

I realize too that Squadron 42 is apparently a fairly long and mostly finished experience? That alone might be worth $40, though I do think 10 years is a little long to wait for that. I’ll concede that they do seem to be delivering on some of the hype, it just takes way too long, and I’d rather they prioritize on something simple but playable for long periods, versus cool immersion and fancy animations and concepts.

Perhaps a lot of the people who enjoy it now enjoy the kind of role playing aspect of getting in a ship with friends and walking around exploring? I would enjoy that somewhat too, every few years, almost like a really advanced VR chat, I guess. But my friends have lost interest in this due to the never ending development cycle. And I would hate to be the one to say “hey guys let’s try this out again, it’s way better now”, and then have everyone be disappointed when someone gets stuck in a wall or the content seems really limited.

Anyway to summarize: perhaps I’m wrong, maybe the game is worth $40 now and I’ve just been biased from people loving to hate on a game that they haven’t even tried. I’ll have to give it another try.

axby,

Awesome, thanks! It’s nice to hear a perspective that is different from the mainstream. I’ve also been limited by my PC for a while, but I’ve upgraded since I last tried it, so hopefully I’ll have more luck this time.

axby,

Also pre boiling the water helps. I used to find it tasted burnt, but now I like it.

Aeropress is less of a hassle to clean, but I do like the taste of moka pot coffee when I have time. Chemex (pourover) is for my daily cup though.

axby,

I hadn’t heard of it, here’s wikipedia:

GNU Taler is a free software-based microtransaction and electronic payment system.[3][4] Unlike most other decentralized payment systems, GNU Taler does not use a blockchain.[5] A blind signature is used to protect the privacy of users as it prevents the exchange from knowing which coin it signed for which customer.[5]

Looks like this is the official website: taler.net/en/index.html

It seems interesting. I’ll have to read more about how it works.

axby,

Pictures are worth a lot of words:

image from GNU Taler website

Edit: unfortunately this is unreadable on my Lemmy client due to its transparent background and my dark mode. If there’s some way to add a white background by editing the markdown in my comment then I’d love to hear about it.

axby, (edited )

thanks, how did you do this? Did you just download it and add a background yourself (and upload via lemmy) or is there some cool markdown/lemmy trick?

I was going to say that I was on my phone and couldn’t do that, but I guess I probably could have. (edit: also I forgot that Lemmy even supports image uploading, let alone that I could link to it) I mostly just wanted to see if Lemmy supported the embedded image markdown syntax of ![description](URL to image). (It does!) I found online that some markdown variants support adding CSS at the end of the image, but it doesn’t look like lemmy supports them.

axby, (edited )

You may know this, but my understanding is that they randomly stop either to do another delivery on a different app, or to get gas/etc. (edit: I don’t think this justifies it to the customer, hence why I’ve stopped using these apps. I do have some sympathy for the driver, I have heard that the companies incentivize them to maintain a streak and take fewer breaks between drives, and somehow it seems like long unnecessary pauses aren’t penalized (perhaps because they’re hard to distinguish from traffic))

I haven’t used delivery apps in a while due to cold food and outrageous prices.

axby,

This may sound like a wild fantasy to some, but the US IRS seems to have some partnership with ID.me which supports security keys. But I’m impressed that the CRA supports TOTP before major banks so maybe this could happen.

Granted they also have separate logins for state income tax and California is… well let me just say that I’m grateful that the CRA doesn’t force you to reset your password every 4ish months. (California state income tax (FTB?) does).

axby, (edited )

Yes but you’re free to use an email provider which also supports security keys, which gmail and proton mail* do. I understand that the CRA needs to accommodate the average person who doesn’t care about security, but I think everyone in this thread appreciates when they also cater to people who care deeply about security and are willing to use strong unique passwords in a password manager and security keys or at least TOTP.

* it seems like they require keeping TOTP enabled because their mobile apps don’t support security keys. Meh.

axby,

To clarify on this: even the people who use gibberish as their password and don’t store it and rely on password resets via email are actually somewhat safe if their email is also highly safe. Maybe their password strategy for CRA implies they don’t take their email password security seriously either… but still, my point is just that “at least as secure as your email” can be an incredibly high bar if you do it right

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