Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[Mischief Maker]

GOG is directly connected to CD Projekt Red, and their Card Game-RPG hybrid Thronebreaker was a flop, so they ended up laying off several employees in early 2019. If Cyberpunk ends up a hit, GOG will stay afloat.

I stick with them because I'm a luddite who hates cloud computing and wants the ability to burn installers to disk. I have several old games from services that went tits-up that would have been lost to me forever if they weren't DRM-free and already burned to disk. I even bought a Blu-Ray XL drive that can burn 100 GB disks to keep up with modern game sizes.

As for old games, there aren't that many truly old classics left that GOG doesn't already have, and the ones it doesn't I think has more to do with the publishers than GOG itself.

Edit: fixed typo that made the situation seem way more dire than it actually appears to be.

[Sumez]

GOG is directly connected to CD Projekt Red

I thought GOG was CD Projekt Red

[Blinge]

damn man I had no idea.

[Mischief Maker]

Whoops! Typo. GOG laid people off in early 2019, not late.

And I can't find any news of them being in financial distress since then.

So to be clear, I don't think GOG is in danger of shutting down anytime soon, provided Cyberpunk doesn't bomb for some reason.

[vol.2]

Right, and aren't they connected to the Witcher as well? The Netflix show must have been good for them.

[Udderdude]

Would be pretty sad if GOG shut down. They're the only mainstream online store offering DRM free everything, as far as I can tell anyway.

[BulletMagnet]

So to be clear, I don't think GOG is in danger of shutting down anytime soon, provided Cyberpunk doesn't bomb for some reason.

Think happy thoughts.

[Blinge]

penny arcade is still a thing?

[mycophobia]

the art is so gross looking now jesus

[vol.2]

It looks like they fed the character models into an AI and now a bot is just pumping them out.

[Vanguard]

the art is so gross looking now jesus

It's unreal. Somehow western cartoon art becomes more hideous every year. Penny Arcade is an extreme example but it's happening everywhere.

Right, and aren't they connected to the Witcher as well? The Netflix show must have been good for them.

Does CD Projekt even have the rights to that? I imagine it'd be going to the original author.

[BulletMagnet]

Seems we've stumbled upon a new thing that annoys the heck out of everyone!

Does CD Projekt even have the rights to that? I imagine it'd be going to the original author.

I recall reading that the author originally didn't think the property would be very successful and sold the rights to CDPR for a one-time payment instead of royalties, but once it took off demanded they renegotiate; I believe they reached some sort of settlement, though how it breaks down I couldn't tell you.

[Udderdude]

Seems we've stumbled upon a new thing that annoys the heck out of everyone!

It doesn't look that bad to me. Sorry to be "That guy".

[Vanguard]

I recall reading that the author originally didn't think the property would be very successful and sold the rights to CDPR for a one-time payment instead of royalties, but once it took off demanded they renegotiate; I believe they reached some sort of settlement, though how it breaks down I couldn't tell you.

That's what I heard too, but I assume it was only the rights to make games based on the books.

[Sumez]

It doesn't look that bad to me. Sorry to be "That guy".

Some new PA panels look fairly "annoying", I can see what people are getting at. It's not bad art though.
Now old Penny Arcade, that was pretty bad art, and mostly just copy pasted assets. The artist guy has improved a lot over the years, and some of the stuff he makes actually looks pretty good, even if I'm not a big fan of the style either.

Honestly, the quality of the comic strips have improved over the years too. I'll admit I haven't read any over the past 2-3 years probably, but occasionally I'll see one that gets a good chuckle out of me. I'm sure there's a bunch of controversies surrounding them about various things, but fortunately I don't pay attention to that stuff.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Regardless of art quality I honestly kinda just don't get these kinds of comics that's just people standing around saying things the author wants to say and optionally providing some counter-point for the other to play off of. Should I think of them as the modern version of the ancient Greek Dialogues?

[Specineff]

I've mentioned this in the past, but sometimes they make jokes/strips that require the reader to be familiar with a topic they've discussed in their forums. Usually, if you need to explain the joke, it's not funny.

[Blinge]

It was funny to the people who didn't need it explained.

[Mischief Maker]

Log in to Netflix last night with the intention of finally watching the original 70s "Wicker Man" and it had just been removed.

GODDAMNIT!

Also, anyone who tells you adding espresso powder to chocolate chip cookie dough enhances the flavor is full of shit. The dough smells incredible but the cookies themselves wind up tasting like instant coffee and leave you jittery.

[vol.2]

The dough smells incredible but the cookies themselves wind up tasting like instant coffee and leave you jittery.

Ironically, adding instant coffee powder to confections generally produces excellent results, but doesn't really smell much like coffee. One of my favorite cakes is angel food with coffee and crushed heath bar icing.

[BrianC]

Log in to Netflix last night with the intention of finally watching the original 70s "Wicker Man" and it had just been removed.

GODDAMNIT!

I noticed half the stuff that used to be on Netflix is now on Amazon (or elsewhere with many companies doing their own streaming services). Barely any older shows on Netflix now.

[orange808]

nVidia is going to destroy ARM as we know it and they are going to drive up prices everywhere.

[BIL]

Goddamn, why are the theatrical (and SUPERIOR) cuts of Aliens and Terminator 2 so uncommon on the briney seas of the interwebs? Status quo for the last decade-plus. Always gotta go to some two-seed motherfucker with an 8gb rip, grumble grumble.

Why yes, I am complaining about pirating. EAT MY FUCKING ASS

EDIT: hoo hoo, it's done! No sentry guns in this household, you plebe! THIS TIME imma compress+keep the bastard.

EDIT2: tbf it's T2 whose DC material really stinks up the film. I keep meaning to edit it so it loses the retarded nuclear nightmare spoiler, and the soft porno Kyle Reese dream, and miscellaneous other shite, but keeps the chip scene, and the T-1000's endgame glitch. Nice magical realism in the fucker showing some signs of fatigue after absorbing that much abuse. Being frozen solid, exploded and melted in rapid succession can't be good for a phase-shifting machine! And he still beats the living dogshit out of Ahnuld, so it is not like it makes the situation any less dire!

[WelshMegalodon]

On a similar note, nobody ever has the 2006 theatrical versions of the Original Trilogy. It's always one of the recent Special Editions unless you specifically look for projects like the Team Negative One cut.

[Mischief Maker]

I take back what I just said about Espresso powder.

I just tried it again, but this time mixed the powder with the flour and other dry ingredients instead of mixing it with the wet ones first.

Dunno why but the flavor is totally different with this batch.

[Udderdude]

On a similar note, nobody ever has the 2006 theatrical versions of the Original Trilogy. It's always one of the recent Special Editions unless you specifically look for projects like the Team Negative One cut.

The one I've been keeping around is the Despecialized Editions.

[Mischief Maker]

Streamers who play FPS games on the PC with a controller.

Just... why?

A lot of streamers with preview keys totally suck at Serious Sam 4, btw. There's no cover-shooting in Serious Sam! Less bitching, more circle-strafing!

[vol.2]

Streamers who play FPS games on the PC with a controller.

Just... why?

A lot of streamers with preview keys totally suck at Serious Sam 4, btw. Less bitching, more circle-strafing!

I seriously think it's idiotic. No doubt. Input handicapping is just dumb.

FPS where always designed from the ground up to used with a mouse-keyboard. It's like playing breakout with arrow keys. WTF why would you do that?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I know someone who streams over a wireless connection. Despite being perfectly capable of doing so with how his house is setup, he refuses to run a cable to get a wired connection, and occasionally complains about connection issues such as speed when he's streaming. It's obnoxious, frankly, when it happens and he suggests it's Twitch's fault when it could just as easily be network interference (streaming on a wireless connection when you can easily setup a reliable wired connection strikes me as insane).

Streamers who play FPS games on the PC with a controller.

Just... why?

There's a few reasons I could see as justifiable. If you're talking someone with a physical handicap, might be easier to use a controller setup or something specially for that, or they're playing a game that they played originally on a console port and are trying to recreate that experience. I used to play Quake on DOS using only keyboard and had to get used to aiming that way before setting up permanent mouselook was a well-known thing.

Mouselook is definitely ideal for precise controls, especially in online VS deathmatch FPSes, so you are certainly taking a handicap by not using them. It'd be weird seeing someone do something like Fortnite with a controller.

I play Vanquish and Descent with a controller still; Vanquish was originally a console game and is designed as such (mouse controls actually make it too easy, the enemies are designed for the inherent imprecision in gamepads). Descent has way too many different buttons at once to use rapidly and I find it great as a twin stick FPS thanks to using JoyToKey to do some macro mapping like setting Strafe Up + Strafe Down to Afterburner. Same goes for Sublevel Zero, I had a really hard time when I tried playing it mouse and keyboard, but 6dof FPSes work really well with a controller.

[Mischief Maker]

Well I've allowed myself to totally get unadvisedly hyped for Serious Sam 4 to help distract from the horrors of politics these days and was watching all the Serious Sam 4 previews I could find. I came across this one guy called "Frame Rater" who has a ridiculous amount of videos doing super detailed analysis of Serious Sam. Like 10-minute long videos discussing the shotgun and the number of shots it takes against every single boss and enemy type. So today people have been given license to stream and I figured Frame Rater was gonna be the stream to watch.

And he's TERRIBLE at the game! Granted he's playing on serious difficulty, co-op mode alone, which is as hard as the game can get. But at one point he just stopped playing at a lull in the action, muted the game, then started ranting about how 90s FPS throwbacks are getting too intense and he likes casual gaming. What? Dude, you're playing Serious Sam at maximum difficulty and you've done dozens of videos about it, what did you even expect? I mean I'm replaying Serious Sam: First Encounter right now, and what I saw on his stream didn't seem any more crazy than the original.

How did he get so obsessed with Serious Sam if he can't even play? The plot? Weird!