what is the latest game youre playing

MONSUTAA HANTAA WAARUDO tho

yeah hollow knight is really really good

monster hunter generations ultimate

i like s&s quite a bit
it needs work in a few key areas (like the music, which you mentioned) but it filled a void for me when it came out. it’s a p good game

how much apm can a bird achieve

man, that takes me back
and yeah i’ve never been much good at RTSes in a human competitive sense
i always played them for the campaigns

From: Tiko at 2018-10-18 11:43:32

From: applebaps at 2018-10-17 16:13:41
man, that takes me back
and yeah i’ve never been much good at RTSes in a human competitive sense
i always played them for the campaigns

I always just played custom maps (UMS in Starcraft)
I never even played the campaigns properly
but I’m finally doing that for the first time and it’s a ton of fun
almost done with the Zerg campaign in vanilla SC

also fuck wikia, it’s such a cash grab

yea to all of this

i’ve been picking up The Long Dark again recently
the Vigilant Flame update overhauled the cooking mechanics, and as much as i love the direction it’s taking the game, the initial launch of the overhaul had some weird bugs and issues
they’ve hotfixed a lot of it so i’m back on my shit

i mostly like to play on Interloper difficulty but this weekend i started working on actually completing some of the challenges, since i haven’t done any of those yet
almost done with Nomad, gonna finish it up tonight after work

update: i did it!

i just discovered The Dark Mod http://www.thedarkmod.com/main/

it’s a fan-made rebuilding of the classic Thief engine, with heavy support for fan missions and mods. basically Thief without the Thief branding. i downloaded the client and a few missions to test it out so tonight that’s what i’m all about

i also grabbed the Sneaky Upgrade fan patch collection for thief 3 (deadly shadows), which makes the game WAY better in a variety of ways https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-3-sneaky-upgrade

i actually liked thief 3 when it came out regardless, but i can’t deny the sneaky upgrade makes it a much much better game, on par with 1 and 2 without question. so once i’ve messed around in dark mod for a bit, i’ll probably start replaying thief 3 again

inevitably though i know this will all end with me just replaying thief 2 lmao >_>

all about civ 6 on the switch these days

From: Lyra at 2019-02-04 06:32:10
Playing Re7

watching him play re7, backseat driving

From: applebaps at 2019-02-03 17:05:55
all about civ 6 on the switch these days

From: Lyra at 2019-02-04 06:32:10
Playing Re7

From: roodi at 2019-02-04 19:14:26
Mario kart 8

final fantasy 9

i’ve been HELLA into zachtronics games lately (shenzhen i/o, infinifactory, tis-100, opus magnum)

really love the stiff challenge

zachtronics is a company (originally one guy named Zach but it’s a decent size now and Zach himself doesn’t run the business side of it) that makes puzzle games

http://www.zachtronics.com/

generally they’re games that involve using a set of intermediate tools or machines or code, to make things from component parts, or break them down and put them back together differently, or something

they’re also called esoteric programming games

two of them (tis-100 and shenzen i/o) literally have their own made up assembly language that the game revolves around

opus magnum is about alchemy, bonding alchemical marbles together into patterns using rotational arms

spacechem is like that too but with grabbers on a track and you’re making chemicals

exapunks is about programming viruses

infinifactory has you welding blocks together and moving stuff around on conveyors

they also made Infiniminer, which was the main inspiration for minecraft

yeah that sounds about right lol

i’ve beaten nethack precisely once in 20+ years of playing it, with a lawful human valkyrie

basically just everything went right for once, it was a once in a lifetime run where things just lined up perfectly every step of the way

yeah I gave up on playing unspoiled after about 10 years and it helped a lot lmao

what’s that one

woah what the heck, that sounds cool

oh, it’s not a video game but on the forums here some friends and i have been playing vampire the masquerade. i’m storytelling, it’s a blast

oh shit! daaaaamn

yeah the astral plane can really catch you out

started playing horizon zero dawn

it’s so goddamn good, i’m pissed that i didn’t try it sooner

been really into DJMAX Respect lately, on PS4

i put like a thousand hours into DJMAX Emotional Sense on PC back in the day and at least dabbled in Portable 1, Portable 2, and Black Square, though some of the magic was lost for me when Emotional Sense shut down

Respect is amazing. it’s kind of an anthology game, with every single Portable 1 & 2 track (which is basically most of Emotional Sense’s original track list) plus 40 more new ones. you can get clazziquai, portable 3, black square, trilogy, technika 1, 2, and 3 as DLC but like, if you want to get everything it’s expensive as hell just fyi

they also make a really really cool but suuuuuuuper expensive controller for Respect, with the trademark two turntables and something like 12 buttons. but it’s like over three hundred bucks so that’s probably not happening for me any time soon lol. in any case the game is very playable and fun on a regular controller, and people play it at the very highest level that way. (see:

the game has some really fantastic music. the new tracks for Respect are far and away some of the best in the series and that’s coming from someone with HEAVY nostalgia for the old classic stuff lol.

here’s a few samples

tok! tok! tok! (technically from tapsonic top, neowiz’s mobile rhythm game)

bullet, wanted!

killer bee

lift you up

people basically only post themselves playing it on the highest difficulties but the game is extremely accessible, way more than its closest equivalent, Beatmania IIDX. the game scales all the way down to 4 button mode and all the way up to 8 button, then two more hidden modes above that, 10 and 12 button. though the note charts are set up in a way that respects the PS4 controller’s limitations. for instance, you’ll never be asked to press left and right at the same time

here’s a 4B song, “let’s go baby”. this is one from the original game, though here it’s credited as being from Portable 1. also showcased here is DJMAX’s obsession with lesbians. seriously like every other song’s video is about gay girls lol it’s great

“let’s go baby” on 4B normal is a 2-star song. stars go from 1 to 15, with generally pretty big jumps in difficulty at 6 and 11 stars. any song can be played on any button mode, and usually there will be at least two difficulties available within that mode. so like, let’s go baby can be played on normal or hard in 4B, normal or hard in 5B, 6B, etc. sometimes there’s also a “Maximum” difficulty of a particular chart, sometimes there’s ONLY a “normal”, it varies. but there’s a looooooooooot of songs and difficulties and button modes. anyone can start getting into it somewhere

oh! and that reminds me. a lot of the older videos were in like, 240p resolution lmao. that’s how old Emotional Sense (the original game) is. so they went through and painstakingly redrew literally every old video

also distinct from IIDX is a “freestyle combo system” where basically you’re allowed to hit buttons that aren’t coming in as notes, and it doesn’t break your combo. the timing window is also fairly generous in that you can hit stuff wide to either side on the note’s proper timing and it won’t technically break your combo. however, it does sharply curtail your score unless you hit the notes dead on. so you can generally jump in really easily but there’s lots of room to get really really good

fuckin game owns. like, it’s just really good

one of the other distinctive things about DJMAX as a series is the unlockable gear/notes. fulfilling certain requirements gives you access to a good selection of different “gears” (the playing field on which the notes come in, including the score and life display, etc) and the notes themselves, which can be anything from straightforward bars to stuff like cats and eggs if you wanna get weird with it

you can also freely set the speed at which notes come in at you, even adjust it on the fly during gameplay. there’s a “Fever” mechanic that’s basically just a straight up multiplier to your score that’s kinda like star power except without the healing. triggering it repeatedly steps up the multiplier through 2x, 3x, 4x, then 5x, and doing it again before it runs out at that level just renews the 5x multiplier. you can turn this off entirely or set it to automatically go on its own if you want. you can also set various “faders” and “chaos” settings to fuck with yourself to make the game way harder, like having notes disappear partway down the field, or only appear when they’re close to the line, or making it so the speed of the track increases endlessly as it goes

also if you’re coming from more modern rhythm games, stuff based on instruments like guitar hero or rock band, you should know that DJMAX is of the old school. there’s not a backing track that stops or starts based on whether you hit the notes. it’s more that the notes themselves PLAY the track, or parts of it. and your timing determines whether the song sounds like crap or not. it’ll definitely beat a good sense of spot-on rhythm into you quickly lol. also there’s no quick healing mechanic like star power, here. every missed note (“break”) will cost you huge chunks of your life, and you only get that life back by playing many many notes with good timing. no shortcuts, play the song or fail out

From: TJ “Henry” Yoshi at 2019-05-13 20:54:36
i hope u have a good surround sound setup lul

lol

hacknet owns a lot imo
i love how central the command prompt is to the experience, it feels much more like Serious Movie Hacking than say, Uplink did

in fact, if you’re fast enough, during That One Sequence

just finished the Shadowbringers expansion story in ff14

easily the best story the FF series has ever done, easily the strongest writing I’ve ever seen in a jrpg much less an mmo

startin a minecraft bedrock SMP realm with some friends

From: The Applebaps of Video Games at 2019-04-24 00:19:46
started playing horizon zero dawn

People stopped talking about this

it’s cause breath of the wild came out like 3 days later lmao

it’s SUCH a good game though. between botw and hzd i think hzd is actually the better game overall, which is nuts to say because botw was very good. and also because prior to hzd, the dev team was mostly known for the killzone series which is not very good lol

which one is you

From: iforgotnmyname at 2019-10-09 06:55:42

From: Applebaps at 2019-10-07 16:18:19
which one is you

all of them, that’s my local high score list

all roles ascended

oh jeez

congrats, damn

actually i’m a huge nethack fan but i’ve only ever ascended a valk even though i’ve played it for over a decade. spent the first 8 years or so playing entirely unspoiled deliberately. i don’t recommend it lol

how would you rank the difficulty of each role? did you have a favorite role?

got any good stories from your ascensions?

what did your ascension kits look like, was there any real variation or did everyone end up like dual wielding artifact weapon and sword, heaviest armor, ring of free action, bag of holding, wands of digging, etc

did you have a favorite/least-favorite quest?

a friend bought me Noita for my birthday so i’m gonna play that tonight

my present to myself was Code Vein which is fun and chill so far

in other non video games news, I’ve been busting my ass for quite a long time now to get stronger at Go, and I’m starting to be able to beat certain weaker AIs pretty consistently. I think I’m at about 15 kyu now, which means I’ve come a long way this year. I started 2019 at probably about 25 kyu.

its taken nearly constant study, working problems in downtime at work, playing on my go app when I get a spare moment, grinding out match experience and being active in my local club. it’s really paying off and it feels great to see the results on the board

I play a lot of games but Go is my real passion. but I’ve played it and been garbage at it for too long. got serious about it this year finally

elite dangerous all day every day

df always owns, i like to come back and check it out every couple of years

i just discovered Slay the Spire and it’s fucking great

i always figured there was a core fun game inside the deckbuilder genre but i’d never seen an example that wasn’t a cancerous CCG with aggressive monetization shitting all over it

slay the spire proves that yes deckbuilding is fun and interesting

been revisiting old monster hunter titles, namely freedom unite on the psp and 4 ultimate on the 2ds

i have mixed feelings on 4u and feel like generations ultimate is way better. freedom unite still owns tho

also playing a lot of iceborne. feel like that’s been pretty great but i crave more classic mh

man I’m very hype for repentance

same. i feel like that takes a lot of the fun out

From: iforgotnmyname at 2020-02-08 02:30:43

From: Applebaps at 2020-02-07 16:22:28
man I’m very hype for repentance

I wasn’t aware of this untill I was looking some stuff up last night. Kinda hyped now.

yeah, a canon port of antibirth? sign me the heck up

From: meepches and pentell at 2020-02-08 03:05:01
i 100%ed the original version (until they released a third expansion or something?) and ive never played it again

theres just so many times where you didn’t get any damage powerups and everything just takes forever to kill its not about dodging anymore its about not being bored

yeah, rebirth had some serious power curve issues that it’s taken literally all of afterbirth and afterbirth+’s extra patches to correct

the game is in a pretty good place atm with all expacs fwiw but it still sucks to get locked out of treasure rooms or to get to It Lives and realize you just don’t have the power to go beyond that without it taking 3 hours

that’s just what happens when you’re the first game in your genre and don’t have the benefit of being able to look at other games to learn what not to do i guess

it could be a lot worse, too. it could be Enter the Gungeon lmao. like 80% of the guns in that game are utter shit. at least in isaac the bad picks only amount to like 10-15% of the item pool at this point

gettin back into my old-ass rpgs, playing ToME and etrian odyssey 3

From: Tiko at 2020-05-29 14:01:14
got kinda burnt out on animal crossing
playing pso2 now

same and same
what ship are you on? pm if you want

2

rip

that’s where the goons are

yeah i think it’d probably be pretty nice to be able to walk around in lobbies without having to go through the fire and frames lol

i’m training for the 2020 US e-Go Congress, it’s been moved online due to the pandemic

i’m entering the US Open and the DDK tournaments, both as a 10kyu which i think is probably about right

also playing a fuckload of Don’t Starve for some reason

oh lol yeah i’m learnin

feels like i’m right on the cusp of breaking through into SDK

i can occasionally peel a 3 or 4 handicap game off of 1k/1d amateurs but my OGS rank begs to differ

lotta stuff lol. especially when i was trying to make a breakthrough in the low DDKs i read a LOT. these days i’m more focused on playing lots and lots of games to let the theory settle in

i think the book that woke me up the most was actually not a go book, it was sirlin’s “play to win”

kageyama’s “fundamentals” was hugely influential on my play. it’s like my little yellow bible

“rescue and capture” is an excellent book of problems that helps me get stones out of bad situations a lot once i started internalizing the situations

“fighting fundamentals” by jasiek is also great though it’s a bit technical / mathematical for my current playstyle

i also train occasionally with a leela zero setup on my pc. it’s important not to play against AI too much or they can actually just crush your desire to play at all. if you just do like an opening and midgame against one and then review their recommendations afterwards you can get a lot out of it in a short time tho, usually with minimal feelings of puny mortality lol

i really can’t emphasize enough though the importance of match experience. more than anything else the thing that’s helped me get stronger has been little doses of theory coupled with LOTS of matches to let it cook into something i can use. after a while you start to recognize good and bad shape, potential places to go, forcing moves, situations where you’re in danger, where you’re alive, etc. but you really can’t fake it

YES. reviewing games is crucial. just like watching your own replays in a fighting game, or anything else like this imo. there’s two ways to do reviews i think, with their own merits and flaws

you can review right then and there after a game so it’s fresh, and do it with your opponent so you get their perspective too. this is basically impossible to do right now because of the pandemic. this improves your reading and memory though which are important skills for playing on a real board

the other way is to take an electronic game record in SGF format and feed it to an AI after you let your mind rest for a while. like a day or two later go over it with the bot and see what they think. bot reviewing gets to the heart of things but can be tough to understand at first since all you see is winrates and stuff.

i have a tsumego app on my phone and i’ll do some in my downtime too yeah

i love the game so i tend to be thinking about it a lot, going over stuff in my head with spare brain power in my downtime, or wanting to play it a lot lol. i think the game you try to get really good at should be like that, personally, because it’s going to take so much of your time, you’ll want it to be something you’re naturally inclined to want to do anyway. obsession is a plus

i go through phases of development where tsumego will help me more or reading books will help me more or playing will, etc

i also like goproyeonwoo on youtube, she’s a pretty strong korean pro who does very helpful videos in the post-AI era, i’ve found her analysis really invaluable for learning from the bots https://www.youtube.com/user/goingceo which is key to being strong now

you can definitely play too much, also

go in particular is very taxing mentally. i’ve overtrained and gotten to a point where it felt like i couldn’t make moves with any meaning

then i had to take a longer rest from the game, sometimes as long as a month where i have to just ban myself from thinking about the game or playing at all until i recover

it’s tough to know where your line is sometimes but it’s important to know so you don’t overtrain or overplay

yeah our local club here hasn’t met since the pandemic really started hitting us in March. 4 months without touching the stones, ugh. i actually just broke out my set this morning to do some research and just to like, hold and feel the stones again. i really miss it

you play chess, eh? i’ve heard that chess and go have both been seeing record numbers of people streaming and watching online lately. like 50k+ for chess on twitch which is unheard of and awesome

and thanks! this will actually be my first major tournament so i’m really looking forward to having my ass handed to me lmao. it’ll be valuable experience either way

you said you have single convex stones, what material are they? i have yunzi stones myself. love the feel, the weight, and the way they glow in the light

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-07-16 18:18:53
I’m a weird one and I love spending time holding the stones in front of the board and, for more in depth problems, will lay out the board and place/remove stones.

For some reason that helps my memory.

not weird at all! or if it is, i’m also weird. the physicality of go is a big part of what attracted me to the game in the first place

think i’m probably 4 or 5 stones stronger on a real board than online

aren’t they awesome? i won’t settle for any other material at this point. i’ve played with shell and slate japanese stones even and i prefer the yunzi tbh

yeah like, those are THE stones for a super serious retirement set just because of the history

but they tend to be quite fragile stones, they chip really easily and they’re also harvested endangered species lol

yeah

for one thing that’d be the only way to actually afford them lol

yeah definitely. same sort of appeal there

what kind of board and bowl material do you have? bamboo and ….. shit i forgot what kind of bowls i have. maple? idk. nothing special. i got a yellow mountain imports set a long time ago lol

haha almost! these are my bowls: https://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Mountain-Imports-Bamboo-Stones/dp/B0058LTQ1A/

so i guess they’re bamboo

i had no idea yunzi stones had lead in them, holy shit

i’m looking around now to get more information

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-07-16 18:28:11
If there’s interest I have previously created https://baduk.thread.zone/.

it says not authorized! is the zone private?

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-07-16 18:30:25

From: Applebaps at 2020-07-16 18:29:09
i had no idea yunzi stones had lead in them, holy shit

i’m looking around now to get more information

Some of them do. It’s not every batch. There was a scare and people were ordering lead test kits and chasing up YMI for exchanges.

jeez. well, i mean, if there’s lead in my stones… i’ve routinely snacked while playing, i’m drinking coffee even right now as i play with my set at home, i’ve played with older people on this set

i think i’d like to test my set and see. thanks for mentioning that! no matter how nice they feel or look, if they’re a health risk i’m going to take that seriously

From: Applebaps at 2020-07-16 18:29:22

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-07-16 18:28:11
If there’s interest I have previously created https://baduk.thread.zone/.

it says not authorized! is the zone private?

Fixed - I set it to private after creating it because I was thinking about the structure I wanted to open it with and then just sort of forgot about it.

cool, thanks! lemme just pop in there rq

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-07-16 18:33:42

From: Applebaps at 2020-07-16 18:32:58

jeez. well, i mean, if there’s lead in my stones… i’ve routinely snacked while playing, i’m drinking coffee even right now as i play with my set at home, i’ve played with older people on this set

i think i’d like to test my set and see. thanks for mentioning that! no matter how nice they feel or look, if they’re a health risk i’m going to take that seriously

https://www.usgo.org/news/2014/02/yunzi-stones-and-lead-an-update/

sadly, i don’t know if we can really trust test results from a chinese factory tbh. they’re at grave risk of losing face if it gets out that they still have lead contamination so they have a strong incentive to lie

i think i’ll get a home testing kit and find out if my particular stones have lead in them or not

for anyone reading this who’s not in the baduk zone: i tested my stones, it came back negative

From: Applebaps at 2020-07-16 17:15:56
also playing a fuckload of Don’t Starve for some reason

update to this: after 120 hours i finally beat Adventure Mode
i used WX-78 and i strongly recommend if you’re trying to do it too, use them. lots of gears in adventure mode

From: Tiko at 2020-07-20 22:25:00
been playing Death Stranding and the new super hot

how is that btw, the new super hot

From: Tiko at 2020-07-21 00:12:40

From: Applebaps at 2020-07-20 22:48:36

From: Tiko at 2020-07-20 22:25:00
been playing Death Stranding and the new super hot

how is that btw, the new super hot

it owns
the core gameplay is the same as the original but they added a bunch of meta progression type stuff that adds a ton of playability
the systems they use are really similar to the two games i made but implemented 100x better lolz

also added some new weapons which are neat

lol nice