i think so. it’s really a very different gameplay loop - mostly you’re laying track and maybe adjusting junctions. the level structure really eases you in, and, for better or worse, there’s no signaling but trains will ghost to avoid collisions (this slows them down, so you’re still rewarded for building good layouts where no ghosting happens)

i think at the very least, you’ll be able to tell if it’s a good fit inside of the 2 hour refund window, or you can watch some early game stuff on youtube

def checking this one out! i managed to hold off buying it on EGS for the dev to finally announce the steam version, and he’s put effort in to make it steamdeck AND mac friendly :)

also, roadmap says a more sandboxy mode is planned, which I think will be great for longevity (hopefully)

i wish i knew. i can tell you when i was laid off (in software), i was given an nda and non-disparagement contract that my severance was contingent upon so based on that experience, these companies consider severance a “gift”

edit: i think it also (duh) depends on the state - many states are “employment at will”, and i would guess in those states since they can dismiss you without cause (save for discrimination), you aren’t required to pay severance. most companies still do, but i imagine the requirement wouldn’t mesh with the concept of at will employment

i dunno how many actually got severance - i know i read the recent sony studio layoffs didn’t pay severance which is … worrying to put it lightly

hey! i watched him in HS as he absolutely ran over everything on the field!

honestly i don’t know why he did so poorly on the NFL - did he have drug/legal problems, or was he just a flop?

dang at the start of the trailer i was really hoping you’d go through the whole game with a gun but no ability to use it

one last gift with a final check and a letter congratulating them on making it to the real world. i think one of my aunts was still sending me stuff but i got a letter from my uncle i think telling me i’d made it to the real world. at some point the gifts felt nice but we’re also kinda pointless so I totally appreciated the letter and the congrats.

edit: i also agree with the other comment tho. if you see something that makes you think of someone, by all means buy them a gift! but you don’t have to force something every year

[slightly off-topic] surprisingly forthright, why can’t we get info like this in respect to the index? i would LOVE to finally get into VR but i’m certainly not paying full price for a piece of 5 year old tech in an industry that has moved as fast as VR has

fair changes, but the ONLY way forward is to fire riccitello. i don’t see how anyone can trust them again until that happens.

removal of the retroactivity piece will likely appease a large number of devs tho (dunno if it’ll be the majority but that was the biggest wtf for me)

there’s already some devious levels from the community :)

i was also happy to see it’s got new levels from the devs too - had originally thought it was only gonna contain rebuilds of existing ones

how exactly could someone not benefit in some form from their father being president? i fail to see how that’s a surprise or in any way relevant. the question is, did joe do anything illegal to benefit his SON, and the answer the evidence seems to point to is NO.

now do a poll and ask “who gives a shit about hunter biden”

i usually play with biters off so i can’t remember - are there names for the tiers of biter evolution they could use instead? would be kind of a funny semi-troll way to name them, but i guess they might not like new players not knowing what the names represent right away

wtf…can you charge someone with union busting when they run an entirely different company? this is particularly brazen of him…

feels like a warning shot against tesla workers for sure.

another article said a ng+ run is about 90 minutes. so it seems if you just wanna complete loops, the post-game is a much different pace than your first run

are unity and unreal so different that your 10 years of experience in one isn’t helpful for the other? i’m not a game developer but I had assumed it was similar to web frameworks - definitely high switching costs for porting an existing project, but as a developer looking for a job there are still many portable skills.

i’d guess it also depends on what parts of the engine you are working in?

i haven’t even gotten past the introduction of what quality is and i’m already stoked! i hope this means they have a lot of little tweaks like this planned that will force us to rethink current patterns.

That 90 minute to do a full ng+ run number is kinda nuts but an interesting design choice. I ended up not picking up starfield but I do hope someone takes this novel ng+ approach and expands on it to create a game more focused on that as a story telling tool.

Heck, THIS is what studios should be using AI for - write a solid base story and let the AI build on that to create a more truly infinite and distinct set of new loop possibilities. (I would say your first 5 or so runs should be handcrafted, tell an interesting cohesive story, and then if players still want more the AI can kick in and offer additional replayability)

Will definitely check this one out (I think it’s coming to ps+ premium or whatever the 2nd tier is and gamepass), but I swear that article read like 2 different people wrote it between the first and second halves.

With all the emphasis they seemed to have running up to release on how they crafted the environments and moving through them I’m a little disappointed there doesn’t sound to be much in the way of exploration. But the combat system sounds unique so I’ll play it just to experience that aspect alone.

really glad we got to hear about a straight up comparison against space exploration. i’ll admit i was hoping they’d go a different direction (i’ve seen people mention going underwater which i think would have been a ton of fun and a guaranteed differentiator from anything currently available)

all that aside, the most interesting parts for me are the engine changes:

• improved blueprints? how? i can’t say i’ve ever had much to complain about with factorios blueprint system
• better flying robots behavior. this one could be huge, when i built a large base it was hard to properly balance logistics robots and not feel like they were just not working as well as they should

a year away tho! that’s okay, we’ll live, i just got sucked back into satisfactory (playing sf+ which is basically bobsangels for sf and it’s GLORIOUS).

i know all us diehards will pick it up sight unseeen, but unless there’s something flashy, like a graphical overhaul (which i’m not sure the diehards would be in favor of), i do wonder how it will stand out and attract the newer players that have been playing the newer automation games and might only look at factorio skin-deep and not get as excited for.

and i’m okay with all that, but i also want their work to be appreciated by as many people as possible so here’s to hoping they can nail the marketing

i gotta ask - are people really coding like this now? telling an AI what they want to accomplish and then editing after the fact? or is this just a technique that’s being used by more junior and just-starting developers?

if it’s truly all happening locally i could see it becoming a little more mainstream but i’ve never thought most companies would be comfortable sending parts of their codebase to an upstream AI source for processing

i’ve spoken to a friend who’s learning to code and using chat-gpt to help him learn the ropes, and i think that’s a great use of it as a learning tool but i do hope we don’t go down a road where fewer and fewer people can write things from scratch (or what we referred to as “from scratch” a year ago).