Zebrazilla

Zebrazilla, 10 months ago

Here's an example of what I think we'll be seeing more of: A user getting called out and named for frequently downvoting: https://kbin.social/m/wholesome/t/80838/To-the-one-guy-who-keeps-downvoting-m-wholesome-threads

Don't think this is the last we'll see of this, and I think it definitely has the potential to impact peoples participation in the long run, with people self-censoring themselves out of fear of being called out for voting wrong.

Zebrazilla, 10 months ago

Wish the time played per operating system returned, that was highly useful to me in order to track my playtime on Steam Deck.

Zebrazilla, 11 months ago

LibRedirect is a great way to access a wealth of sites like youtube, twitter, reddit, wikipedia, etc. via alternative privacy friendly frontends instead of directly.

While not an inherent guarantee of privacy, nothing really is, it makes the process of rotating randomly between these frontend instances for each visit a breeze, and easy to hop to a random new instance if the current one is down/not working as expected.

Zebrazilla, 10 months ago

We call on all student monitoring tools to remove LGBTQ+ terms from their blocking and flagging lists to ensure that young people’s privacy isn't violated

Removing certain keywords is hardly enough to ensure their privacy. This type of surveillance has no business being in a school to begin with. As a kid I found domain blocking to be bad, more of a nuisance really due to the ease of getting around it, but this stuff is downright dystopic.

Zebrazilla, 11 months ago

Same here. Countless time. Doing my full complete playthrough right now thanks to the Steam Deck and just about to finally finish it! Definitely thinking about trying this randomizer afterwards.

Zebrazilla, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

The only real issue I've stumbled upon were random crashes, which crashes the whole Steam Deck oddly enough. Since changing to Proton Experimental I have had such crashes maybe once or twice in ~20 hours, so I would say that mitigated it.

800x500 is a great resolution to play at, I find. Every text is perfectly readable and HUD is at a great size, in fact, it feels like it's made for Steam Deck. Also changing to 32-bit color mode is a good idea.

The most important part really is the controller layout. There are some great community ones out there, though I found myself customizing it a lot to fit my personal taste.

To be frank, I haven't played further than playing through Liberty Island on GOTY, and a bit further. Personally I opted for Revision instead, with vanilla map type, vanilla soundtrack, all HDTP models to false, New Vision disabled, and normal Revision gameplay style (which brings a lot of QoL stuff, bugfixes, but nothing I've found to be really intrusive).

Revision on Steam Deck, with the changes I mentioned, is very stable and faithful enough experience in my mind. The only problem I found was that all data vault images are still for the Revision maps, so they won't line up and will quickly become confusing. I ended up manually swapping the images, which was a painstaking endeavor I wouldn't wish on anyone, but it worked out in the end. Might end up uploading it somewhere at some point, but I should instead really just report it to the team and hope it gets fixed. My main reasoning for choosing Revision was honestly the achievements, it's a fun bonus and a ton of them still apply to vanilla maps. That, and the fact that it just feels like integrates seamlessly into Steam, being a mod with its own store page. And once I'm done with this, I'm very tempted to just jump back in and play through actual Revision with Lay D Denton.

Though if I started out now, I would probably seriously consider taking a look at Transcended or Deus Ex Randomizer with Zero Rando mode (just heard of the latter first here, so I'd have to look into it more before choosing). I'm not sure how smooth the process of getting that into GOTY on Steam Deck is, and I'd miss out on those achievements from Revision of course, but it could be well worth it still.

That all said, just playing GOTY straight out of the box works, with the few things in mind which I wrote about above. There's a myriad of bugs and stuff in GOTY that are just there, of course, but it's not related to Steam Deck and still play very well.

Zebrazilla, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

That is certainly a good point, and someone on the Steam Deck subreddit had a few things to say about that. I'd definitely say proceed with caution and not be too liberal in its use maybe. No one's been using this for very long at all, so nothing's off the table. Only time will tell.

Maybe use it in select games and not all the time. Besides, the way I understood it, 70Hz is only applied once in-game and if explicitly set, so it's not applicable when no game is running - though I'm not 100% on that.

Even so, the reduction in lifespan may be negligible for all we know, and right now it probably is just a matter if one thinks the potential tradeoff is worth it. I am using it now only in select games, but these are games that I play for extended periods, however being that I am quite sensitive to the flicker at 60Hz, the 17% increase does a lot to mitigate feelings of unease for me. So personally, right now, I'd say it's worth it. If the screen dies a bit prematurely, I'd probably bite the bullet and buy a new screen, and give a try at one of those full shell replacements.

Zebrazilla, 11 months ago

Two words, Steam Deck!

This amazing device has awakened something within me, rekindling my passion for games in a way that I haven't felt in decades. After 23 years, and after restarting and attempting to play through it countless times, I'm finally on a solid trajectory to finish the original Deus Ex for the first time!

Zebrazilla, 11 months ago

Sindome is pretty neat, though it's been years since I touched it. Seems to be alive still.