John Caveson

Humble has a pretty good Starlight bundle out for the next 13 days.
Includes a good chunk of the classic Lucas Arts PC games for ten bucks.
 
$1 gets you KOTOR, Jedi Academy, and Full Throttle
BTA gets you KOTOR2, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Lego:TFA, and Jedi Outcast
$10 gets you Force Unleashed, Lego:TCS, Lego:CloneWars, AvP, and some Pinball.
 
I grabbed it because I didn't own any of the Lego games.
So I have Extras of,
-KOTOR
-KOTOR 2
-Jedi Outcast
-Jedi Academy
-Grim Fandango
-Day of the Tentacle

I got to make the first use of my Steam Deck this last week after I went with my sister and her BF to a water park in Wisconsin for a few days. Knocked out 12 or so hours on Valkyria Chronicles - a game I bought like 8 years ago but never played since it couldn't run on Wine back then. Cool device.

Sonic 1: Mindblowing at the time.  Even though Super Mario World had been released shortly before it, that game didn't have the ability to go through levels as fast or smoothly.  And if you compare it to anything but Super Mario World that was out at the time and it's insane how much better it feels while platforming.  But looking back most of the worlds are pretty poorly designed, with only Green Hill Zone being the standout.
 
Sonic 2: Much better level design and more variety than Sonic 1, and adds several nice tweaks to the engine (particularly the ability to spin dash on command.)  Cute two player features.  All around solid.
 
Sonic 3: Has one of the nicest artstyles of the 16 bit era, and adds a lot of interactivity when compared to Sonic 2.  Playing as Tails is a nice perk.  However it has that bullshit barrel in Carnival Night and is somewhat short (since they split off many of the planned levels.)  Even with the shorter length, it still gives you a better bang for your buck than most platformers in the 16 bit era.
 
Sonic and Knuckles/Sonic 3 and Knuckles: Lock on Technology dude!  Okay, it's a pretty dumb gimmick, but the game by itself is as solid as Sonic 2 and becomes something exceptional when properly combined with Sonic 3 (the only issue being some pacing problems due to level shuffling.)  This is the truly great Sonic game.
 
Sonic Adventure: Kind of a Sonic 1 situation for the 3D era.  Yeah, Mario 64 had been out for a while and that was a great platformer.  But it wasn't really a fast platformer, and not really a classic platformer in the "go through a large level just to get to the end" sort of thing.  Sonic Adventure was the first 3D game to do that well at all, even if it did have camera issues.  (A side note here: many of the collision detection problems were introduced in the Gamecube port and do not exist on the original Dreamcast version.)  But just like Sonic 1, when looking back some of the level design issues become more apparent.  There are also major ups and downs in having 6 different playmodes between the various characters; obviously not all are going to be as good.
 
Sonic Adventure 2: Basically restricted itself to what worked in Sonic Adventure 1 and polished that.  The level design is better and you don't really run into the "I have to playthrough this dumb part to get to what I'm actually interested" experience you get in Adventure 1.  This is probably the last mainline Sonic game which could be defended as "great."  The biggest mistake was probably dividing into two teams of Hero and Dark.  That didn't go so bad in this game, but led to problems such as having too many unnecessary characters or having the plot be too serious which would become bigger issues later on.
 
Sonic Heroes: There are way too many damn characters and the three character per team gimmick, while initially interesting, just bogs the game down and leads to glitches.  Way too many long multi-hit fights which should never happen in a Sonic game.  It isn't a terrible game, but it isn't very good.  People only convince themselves it is because of what is to come.
 
Sonic 06: We all know this game sucks, what is there to say about it that hasn't been said a million times?
 
Sonic Unleashed: The "day" sections are pretty good and have a lot of nice innovation to make Sonic play better in 3D.  But they took too long to make.  Rather than committing to a shorter game experience (which would actually have been comparable to how long it takes to beat something like Sonic 2) they padded it out with dumb night "werehog" sections and made you grind for emblems to unlock levels.  This is something I really hate in modern game design: intentionally padding out the game just because people think that more hours = better game.
 
Sonic Colors:  They did learn their lesson and stick to the "day" platforming model.  Unfortunately the level design is just so-so and the wisps are more gimmicky than anything.  It's okay, I guess.
 
Sonic Generations: The design is much better than colors and the only padding is done through pure 2D platforming levels, which is something that I don't mind seeing.  Pretty fun the whole way through, but it also feels like an admission that the series is long past any chance of being good since the only way that they can get something of any quality is by repeatedly reminding you of better games.
 
Sonic Lost World: Honestly I forget this game exists most of the time.
 
Sonic Forces: It's like they forgot all the lessons that they had to work so hard to learn.  The plot is dumb as hell and tonally all over the place.  You have the edgiest of edgelord villains, but at the same time the goofy classic sonic returns.  Are we meant to take him seriously in a war scenario?  The levels are short, and poorly designed for the various player tools.  I think that a lot of this could have worked if they had just committed to it; for example a game where you made your own character and the levels were set up with many paths which would be easier or harder for various builds would have been neat.  But they should have committed entirely to having your new character do everything then, which of course they were too chicken to do.

I've definitely been on the "really should just run linux" thought train as a lot of things that were barriers have been eroded away over time. I keep thinking "I really need to just rip off the bandaid and go for it" but it's hard to get off my lazy ass and do it.
 
Maybe when this version I'm running is officially dropped from support

Startpage is okay privacy-wise, but results wise it's basically just a google search on a fresh browser.  So you don't get results tailored to your search habits, but you do get the google curation.  Duckduckgo is the popular alternative but some of the companies latest moves have been kind of sketchy and I don't trust their large advertising power.  Other people suggest using Brave, Yandex or Swisscows though there are ups and downs with all of them.  Probably Brave search is the best at the moment but I don't think there is any great search engine right now.
 
For an office alternative, I use Apache OpenOffice.  My current computer came pre-loaded with "ad supported"  Microsoft Office software so I uninstalled that crap day one and have exclusively used OpenOffice on this computer from that point.  It's trivial to learn; if you know Microsoft Office you can use OpenOffice practically identically.  The only problem that I've had with it is that sometimes the office compatibility doesn't work out 100%, so if you need to send a file to someone who Microsoft Office exclusively some stuff might not display correctly and very occasionally it might not load at all.  But this seems to be bad backwards compatibility issue on Microsoft's end.  That is, OpenOffice can save stuff as a Office XP, etc. file perfectly and if you actually open it with that version of Office I'm pretty sure it's fine.  And I've never had problems with OpenOffice opening Microsoft Office files, even from the newest version.  But apparently new versions of Microsoft Office don't always load stuff from old versions of Microsoft Office correctly so you run into problems there.  But it only happens maybe 1 in 20 times.
 
Despite tinkering around with old versions of Windows I've never actually gotten off my ass and installed a version of Linux so I can't help you there.

All the more reason why Windows 10 is going to be my last Windows. Even if I wanted to upgrade to Win 11, apparently my rig is not eligible anyway, so why not start fresh? I just have to evaluate what I use my computer for in the first place.
 
I've already de-googlefied my devices. I uninstalled Chrome and now run Waterfox as my main browser (Since I distrust Firefox's management) with Startpage as the Search Engine and Adblock. On my phone I have Firefox simply because there's no other non-chromium browser in the store. The only google services I use now are Youtube and Gmail, with the latter being mostly used as a fail-safe account in case something happens to my main email. So web-browsing is covered.
 
Thanks to Proton and the Steam Deck, gaming on Linux has pretty mush achieved parity with Windows, at least with single player games. The big caveats left to tackle is VR and anti-cheat on the popular multiplayer games. However, I've kind of fallen out of the multiplayer-only phase as I've become so (justifiably) cynical towards "live service" games. And I'm tired of chasing trends trying to keep up with my online friends, only for everyone to get bored and move on to the next popular thing. The only big multiplayer shooters I play now are TF2, which is natively supported on Linux, and Halo MCC, which I have on Xbox crossplay if I want to to play some classic Halo. But, again, thanks to Valve throwing their weight around, AC devs have made it incredibly easy to have their programs be Proton-compatible.
 
As for VR, well, as amazing as an experience as it is, I can happily wait until Valve can fix SteamVR on Linux, then get an Index 2.0 whenever. Not really in a big rush to spend $1000.
 
All that leaves is a replacement for Microsoft Office. But there seems to be plenty of serviceable open-source alternatives I can learn to use.
 
All I need now is to choose a beginner-friendly distro and desktop environment that will suit my tastes. It will be a few years before Microsoft drops Win 10 support, so I can take my time.

Oscars 2022, apparently.

Now this, this is pure art right here.
 
Also, going back through this thread and seeing all of the borked links and images makes me a sad hoovy.

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
 
Extra
 

Question 1
 
Question 2
 
Question 3
 

Question 1:
 
Question 2:
 
Question 3:
 

This is going to finally reveal my age as a literal 30 something year old boomer but I've already given enough clues away for that conclusion already, so whatever.
 
Anyway,
 
Question 1:
 


 
Question 2:
 


 
Question 3:
 

Question 1
Question 2
Scuffed Question 3
 

This has been gnawing at my head for a while now, but I have three questions for everybody.
 
First one to tackle of course is the title: Which one is your G.O.A.T? Which is your favorite of each console maker, if applicable? (e.g. favorite Sega system, Nintendo system, Xbox.....)
 
Secondly, what is your favorite console generation of all time? (for reference)
 
The first two questions can be simply answered with the poll ofc, but, detailed explanations and even tier lists are welcomed and encouraged.
 
The third and final question will be more of a thought experiment/game.
 
Scenario:
 
You are forced to give up all except one of the gaming devices you own. You get to choose, however, you will be stuck with that device, your current accessories, and only the titles you presently have for it, whether physical or digital, forever. You are given a grace period of 24 hours to redownload any digital games and DLC that you have already purchased, however, you cannot upgrade storage. You cannot choose your PC*.
 
There are four (and a half) variances to this scenario:
 
You have neither Internet access, nor a PC. You have a PC with your current library of games, but no Internet access. You have Internet access, but no PC. You have both of the above. In variances 2 and 4, you are allowed to trade your PC for a second one of your consoles (including handhelds). Would you trade it in? If so, for what?  
As you can see, the third question is aimed more towards people who have more than one console along with our PCs for gaming, which I assume is most of everyone here. If you don't then....I guess you'll just die, lol.
 
*I'm regarding PCs as separate entities in this scenario as it is clearly the best choice, and thus, would make it less interesting. If you have multiple PCs, you must choose which one to keep in the relevant variants.
 
My response to the first question: 
 
 
 
Response to second:
 
Now as for the 3rd and final question:
 
I only have 3 consoles, all of which will be mentioned in my response (except handhelds ofc, that being the Gameboy Advance SP, and the Nintendo DS).
 
Of those three consoles, I generally find the Series S to be the most reliant on internet access, not only because of the one-time online check for newly installed games and initial setup, but also the plethora of online multiplayer-focused games I have on it compared to the other two consoles. The Gamecube on the other hand I find to be the opposite. Since it has no online capabilities (barring like 5 games, most of which are Japan-exclusive, and all of which need a separate broadband adapter to even use), I can rest assured that whatever game I put in, I know I'll be getting the full experience of that game, internet or not. Meanwhile, the Switch is more of my jack-of-all-trades console. It, being a Nintendo console, will have that superior offline experience, like the Gamecube, while also the capability of utilizing online functionality whenever possible, unlike the GC, but not entirely reliant on it like the Series S, all the while having a good number of 3rd parties, both modern and nostalgic, like the Series S.
 
 
And with that I look forward to your responses.

Got this on my front page just now.

 
Our boy is famous!

It disgusts me when people discriminate against others based on the color of their skin.
 
What actually makes you better or worse is eye color.
 

he's been here since the beginning

It's so silly how people try to say you shouldn't criticize a game that's still being developed, when the period where the game is still being developed is the perfect time that you SHOULD criticize it.

Did an audit on the amount of entities each map in tf2 has. Unsurprisingly, the maps with the most entities are the halloween maps mostly. The limit for a server is 2048 entities and the map with the most is pl_bloodwater (badwater event) with 1586 without any players connected. Each player, cosmetic, and weapon is an entity so each player at least will count for 7 entities.
 
1586+(24*7)=1754 entities used up by players alone. Any player with a cosmetic item in their use slot (like a spellbook or duck) will add yet another entity, and certain classes take up more entities (engineers and spies alone can take up an extra 10 each with buildings and disguises). 2048-1754 gives us 294 entities to work with in a perfect scenario. This is a halloween map, which means everyone will have a spellbook equipped (minus 24, 270 entities to work with). Any spell such as pumpkin bombs, skeletons, or monoculi will add entities, can assume 40 would be in use by these at max at any given time. so we only have 230 entities to work with.
 
This means on the map with the most entities, that if the entire server went engineer and had every cosmetic slot filled AND built all 4 buildings that the server would crash.
 
Want less coordination? 13 demoman (max cosmetics) laying out 14 stickybombs with the Scottish Resistance, and shooting 4 pills each at the same time is enough to crash the server on their own (without any soldiers launching rockets, or other projectiles existing on the map).
 
What's that? Want even LESS coordination? How about this? If you can get 6 medics (max cosmetics) to go to an area with a high ceiling (badwater event last) and look straight up and unload their entire syringe gun magazine into the sky, then the server would crash from just your guys' contributions alone. You can queue into casual servers with 6 people.
 
Basically, what I'm saying is, the fabric of tf2 universe relies on the syringe guns not being popular, since it's the most amount of entities any one player can make on their own (without exploits).
 
 

She's pretty much better now, although obviously still not perfect.

She tells me she's gonna retire and open up a shelter for dogs while also becoming a beekeeper. Which shows that her crazy personality is still intact, thankfully.

He escaped... that we could all be so lucky.