leileilol wrote on Yesterday, 23:08:

mule

I made a card/board game conversion of mule.

The only thing I don't consider complete is the formula for determining the prices of items vs player investing. Except for the crystite , if that is what is was called, that i just made a random gamble.

Last night, almost 21 years after I've started the game, I've finally completed the final storyline mission of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
I think it makes it the longest time from start to finish I've had in any game so far. Previous records belonging to Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment and StarCraft: Brood War with 13 and 7 years respectively.

The final mission ("End of the line") is not very difficult in any aspect, just very long, with five distinct parts. Starts with a break-in into a mob stronghold, fighting armed gunmen along the way, then a "boss" fight, then a timed escape mission where you are fighting the same armed gunmen as well as raging fires, constantly switching between your machine gun and the fire extinguisher. Having escaped the building you are treated to a car chase with mobsters throwing Molotov cocktails at you (but they don't seem to actually hurt the car), and finally, what I believe is the most fun part - scripted target practice against mobsters and cops chasing you while someone else is driving the car.

For the last part I quickly realized that I have to temporarily switch from my preferred 'keyboard only' to 'mouse + keys' control, because super-accurate aim is required. Enemies are shooting at you all the time and if you don't dispatch them quickly, your car eventually accumulates damage and blows up. This is exactly what happened to me on my first attempt (in line with the "beginner's luck" principle I made it almost all the way to the end before failing). On my next couple of attempts I didn't get so far.

Then I've decided that it would be much easier and faster if I didn't have to worry about the fire in part 3, and I dedicated one evening to finally passing the required 12 levels of the Firefighter side mission to earn the "fireproof" status. I had meant to do this at some point, and it seemed dumb not to do so before the one mission where the skill would be the most useful. On the subsequent attempt, I finished the game. 😎

Well, "finished" is a flexible term in Grand Theft Auto, because the open-world nature explicitly gives you a nearly-infinite number of options even after completing the main plot. As it stands, I am just over 60% progress. There are probably a couple of side missions, all the competition races, girlfriend achievements, collectibles - which I have not done yet. I will probably be returning to the game every once in a while to make some more progress, but I am not aiming for 100% (I don't think I've gotten it in previous GTA games either).

Bravo!

I don't remember if I got through the storyline already on my PREVIOUS computer, but I got pretty far at that time, to the desert missions at least. This is the only part that I still haven't forgotten in all those years. Because, to be able to pass the mission where you have to catch the airplane with the motor bike, I had to overclock the poor GeForce4 MX 440 I had at the time. That thing was indestructible despite the abuse and the broken fan.

Anyway, due to glitchy frame-rate dependent physics, the plane always got away, it was impossible to catch it unless GPU was overclocked.

I got around doing some side-stuff, but never got the nerve to get through all of it.

BTW, have you seen the video where they managed to make the game skip to the final mission?

https://www.gtabase.com/articles/beating-gta- … -speedrun-guide

NieR: Automata
I completed the first game (NieR) back on the PS3 many years ago, and really liked it. It was an attempt at bringing bullet hell shooting to a 3D open-world action game that didn't really work (bullet hell doesn't really make sense outside of pure arcade shooters imo), but got by thanks to its bizarre story and amazing dynamic soundtrack. Still, it was a fine game and clearly made with passion. I'm not far enough into Automata to really be able to form an opinion of it, but I like it so far. Fighting feels a bit less clunky, but it might just be easier, and an easier game will always have less friction early on.

But it seems like a cool story so far. After a devastating war between humans and aliens, what's left of humanity escaped to the moon and has been living there for thousands of years. In the meantime, we'd developed true AI and since then have been sending androids back to Earth in an attempt to reclaim our homeland. You play the game as an android named 2B (obviously a reference to the famous soliloquy from Hamlet), and you find that the "dumb" worker robots that humans left on Earth have begun to develop a culture, intelligence, and even emotions.

It seems alright so far, but I want to praise the soundtrack. Not because it's excellent (it is), but because it's dynamic. It reminds me of the iMUSE system. Instruments fade in and out as you enter and exit combat, transforming a sad and contemplative theme when exploring the ruins of civilization into a hectic battle theme. It even goes beyond that; at one point, you stumble upon a settlement of robots holding some kind of celebration, and if you pay attention you'll realize that all the robots are moving in step with the music. It's impressive stuff.

Dungeon Keeper FX and playing through all the Delta Forces, currently on Delta Force 2....

newtmonkey wrote on Today, 18:49:

NieR: Automata

That's one of those games that people almost universally praise, but I simply couldn't get into it. I have this on my PS4, and I gave it a shot sometime ago, but the gameplay just didn't click with me. Even so, I concur that the music was great, and the story was interesting.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the game, as I might retry it at some point in the future.