Absolutely. I mean, I love the fact that GOG has DRM-free games. It’s really incredible how many games are available without DRM because of them.

But I’m not going to make Valve out to be the bad guy here. Valve is like 99% of the reason why gaming on Linux is viable right now.

Valve seems like a great example of how, if you don’t sell your company to venture capitalists, you can just be cool nerds that make good products. As much as I want DRM-free to be the norm, I’m also not going to vilify a company that is one of the best examples of not enshittifying right now.

I agree, and I absolutely love Sonic Adventure. I think I’ve beaten it more times than any other game I own, but the gameplay hasn’t really aged well. It’s probably my biggest nostalgia soft spot, though.

Gift link: https://aftermath.site/halo-studios-project-foundry-microsoft-343-industries-bungie?giftLink=f96c1f975fd08c951d870e9d1da32491

I’ve been loving RFF the last few months, it might be my favorite new thing I’ve found since I switched from Twitter to Mastodon. It also always shows you the artists’ fediverse usernames so you can follow them, and they usually have a Bandcamp link if you want to buy an album.

They recently said that they could use some volunteer help. I haven’t been able to check out what they need yet, but their matrix channel is #radioFreeFedi:matrix.org, I think that’s where they organize things.

Yes! And if I remember, those races actually lasted 24 minutes, right? I hadn’t played a game that did that before. I loved the fact that there was an actual endurance/focus element to that race.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit or Burnout: Paradise might be the closest to what you’re looking for. They’re both open-world games, but I don’t think they really have that open-world filler that you see a lot of. They both got remastered releases in the last few years.

GRID: I absolutely loved the original Grid (I think it was called Racedriver: Grid in Europe) when it came out.

Project CARS 2 and Assetto Corsa Competizione: A while ago I tried using a PS5 controller on PC and using the gyroscope to steer left and right by tilting the controller. It works well enough when you get used to it. It gives you more granular control than an analog stick. You really can’t tilt an analog stick 15 degrees consistently, but you can tilt the controller like that consistently. I’m not saying its as good as a racing wheel, but if you don’t have one, it’ll at least let you play games that might otherwise need a wheel. I played a decent amount of Project CARS 2 and Assetto Corsa Competizione that way.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a fun kart racing game. If you don’t have a Switch and you want something like Mario Kart, you should pick it up. It isn’t just a Mario Kart knockoff with Sega characters. Wait no… that’s exactly what it is, but it’s a good one.

Meta: !simrallyracing@lemmy.world is a community here.

I’ve found that, currently, this kind of works and kind of doesn’t. I’ve boosted a few lemmy and mbin comments from my Mastodon account, and it shows up in feeds just like you would expect it to. Unfortunately, the parent post of the thread only shows as a link to the lemmy/mbin thread, rather than showing the full text of the original post. So it’s hard for people to see the context of the comment.

Mastodon appears to see lemmyverse comments the same way it sees Mastodon comments, but the top-level post that started the thread is somehow different.

I’m hoping that this will “just work” when Mastodon gets quite-posting. You could take a Mastodon post, and then quote-post it into a community by mentioning that community’s name.

This would create a separate thread of replies, which is good. A person shouldn’t be able to suddenly thrust a bunch of community replies onto someone else’s post. So basically it’s what quote-posting is for, but sharing it with a community instead of just your own followers.

I think it’s worth as a long-term goal for the Fediverse to entirely separate the “view” aspect from the “content” aspect of platforms where reasonably possible

This perfectly describes my ideal fediverse, too. Pretty much everything we’re doing here is posting text; it can be a comment on someone else’s text, or a comment on a video, or a top-level post in a community, or a top-level post on your microblog (which is basically your own community where you’re the only top-level poster). IMO the type of fediverse server you choose should be based on which one has the best UI for the viewing and posting you’ll be doing most often, but they should all be able to show everyone else’s content as much as possible.

If I need to, I’ll create separate accounts for separate interests, like one for games and one for professional things. But I’d like to use the same account for following indie game developers (on Mastodon) and gaming communities (on Lemmy) and commenting on game review videos (on Peertube).

I also want interoperability between microblogging and threaded services, but unfortunately I’m a little skeptical about the account mirroring concept. Or, at least, I’d like more details about it.

Do users need to opt-in to have their accounts mirrored, like how they do with brid.gy right now? If there are a bunch of users with Bluesky accounts that don’t have Frontpage accounts, that would mess with the ability to have all comments showing up between the two services, and it would prevent some people from posting a comment on someone else’s comment if one of the commenters has not opted-in to have their account mirrored. Or, can a plain Bluesky account comment on Frontpage threads, but not start a thread?

I like the idea of being able to quote-post link aggregator threads to your Bluesky account, but I think ideally this would only require one account. Which would mean you could also use your Bluesky account to start a thread on Frontpage.

I would definitely pick it up – I was always curious about this game. I remember hearing about it when it first came out and I didn’t even really understand what the game was. It sounds like it was the perfect, quirky, in-group fanservice full of inside jokes for Dreamcast owners.

the day after Playstation’s 30th anniversary

Whoa, I didn’t know that. The Dreamcast’s 9/9/99 launch date in North America is so memorable, I had no idea that the Playstation came out exactly four years earlier. So there are two birthdays today!

(Disclaimer: haven’t read the article yet, definitely going to get to it later today.)

This is kind of thing where I am so torn between philosophy and pragmatism.

1. Morally, bodily autonomy is very important. Framing this as “right to repair for your own body” is a fascinating way of thinking about it, and makes a clear, ethical argument in favor or DIY medicine. And that’s on top of the fact that we shouldn’t have to rely on giant corporations for our health.
2. The potential consequences of this are terrifying, not just for misinformed people, but their children as well.

On a meta note, 404media continues to be the best subscription I’ve ever paid for.

This is one of many reasons why I’ve been trying to buy physical PC games lately.

I found a boxed copy of the GTA Trilogy recently. It was for Mac, and had probably been sitting on a shelf in some office supply store for 15 years. I don’t even have a Mac, but I bought it since I figured that, not only would it be the original, non-remade version, but it should (hopefully) have the original music as well.

I haven’t opened it yet. I’ll probably post a thread here when I do. Maybe it’ll run in a virtual machine.

I can’t imagine this one getting a PC release, so I’ll probably never play it, but I do love seeing a good 3D platformer being released. And a console mascot 3D platformer? Feels like we’re in an earlier console generation here.

Right now, a kind of weird one: the Bridget MX, from SGF Devices. It’s a 3D printed, all-button controller for fighting games. They don’t make that specific model now (it was a very early one), but this is the closest to it: https://sgfdevices.com/products/bridget-pe

At first I thought that not having a joystick would make games kind of boring. Like, too practical, not enjoyable. But no, it’s actually fun. Kind of like tapping out notes on a piano. It uses low-profile mechanical keyboard switches, and I have some stiffer, clickier switches on the way right now.

It’s meant for fighting games (Street Fighter, etc.), but I’ve used it for some 2D platformers and it worked great for those, too.

A non-3D-printed, less cheapo one would probably be even more fun to use, but I think I’ll stick with this one for now.

Same. And especially for a live service game, it’s just gone. If someone made some great 3D models and animations for an offline game, even if the game doesn’t sell very well, their work is still out there. But with a live service game, that’s just it. No one else gets to see it for more than a few days.

I also hate the fact that the dev studio will face the consequences of this, while whatever braindead exec with a master’s in bullshit administration will probably still be employed.

But at the same time… I can’t help but enjoy the spectacular failures of these anti-consumer products lately.

Yep, that’s basically all of it. ActivityPub allows a reader to send messages back to the original poster. Those messages can be a comment, or a like, an upvote, a downvote, or a many others. That’s what ActivityPub unlocks compared to RSS.

RSS only goes one way: the reader can read messages from the poster, but not send any messages to the poster.

edit: if anyone is curious about what the “many other” messages can be, the list is here, under Verbs: https://github.com/activitystreams/activity-schema/blob/master/activity-schema.md#verbs

Technically, that is part of ActivityStreams, not ActivityPub. But there is a lot of overlap there, and ActivityStreams is a necessary addition. For example, downvotes on Lemmy are not part of AP, but you’ll find them in AS, called “dislike.”

I’ve been using a PS5 controller lately. I’m on Windows, but I think it works on Linux. I also launch every game through Steam, which handles compatibility issues well.

The Steam controller is my favorite, but I wanted something that I could buy replacements for, so I started using a PS5 controller. The touchbar is not really useful (hard to reach and pretty imprecise), but it does have a gyro for aiming in FPS games. And I play a few racing games, so I wanted analog triggers, which the Switch controllers don’t have.

I bought an upgraded one from aimcontrollers.com, just to get some clicky microswitches on the d-pad, face buttons, and shoulder buttons. I hate how much I paid for it, but I do love some clicky buttons. Having looked at their site just now when posting this, apparently they now offer hall effect joysticks, too. So I might need another one. 😬

edit: Just realized that this was posted in linux_gaming. Well, I’m still pretty sure that PS5 controllers work on Linux. And I’ll be switching soon anyway, since my perfectly good PC doesn’t meet the requirements for Windows 11.