Essence_of_Meh

This game is something I've been eyeing for a few years now but never really committed to actually playing it. I finally managed to snatch the game on sale a few days ago and decided to give it a go.

Umurangi Generation is a short indie title about photography in a "shitty future" as the devs put it. They really aren't lying about that.

Gameplay is pretty fun though FAR from polished. There's a lot of movement and physics jankiness, like getting stuck on or walking through geometry, launching in the air when climbing certain parts of levels etc.
Photo grading (one of the core features of the game) is pretty wonky, with colorful shots often being graded as not having enough color, dull photos being scored as colorful and game treating certain objects as if they were in the frame even if they are completely out of view. The last one is particularly important as the game lowers your score for taking pictures of specific items for example.
Oh yeah, you also can't adjust mouse sensitivity properly for whatever reason. All that's available are a few presets instead of full control with a slider like in any other game.

Story is shown, not told (there are no dialogs at all in fact) - first through background details (like newspaper clippings and whatnot) and then directly by what's going on during the levels. I was going to write it off as "not that important to the game but still an interesting puzzle for those who want to hunt for the details" but after finishing the game I can safely say I was wrong. Heck, I was surprised how emotional the latter half (and especially the final level) felt to me.
It obviously won't be the case for everyone but I ended up liking it way more than expected.

Visuals are rather simple and minimalistic but not in a bad way - they have a cohesive style that works well with game's atmosphere. Soundtrack is also filled with some fun bops and the only negative I can say about it is the fact that some tracks feel way too energetic compared to what's going on on screen.
Levels are small, simple and offer a decent variety. They could use some polish and, maybe, a bit more details in places but overall they aren't bad.

Despite being far from perfect and even feeling like someone's first game project, I can't help but appreciate this title. It's simple, engaging and has a pretty strong direction. It's definitely worth a look (especially for the price I paid for it). It's also short, sitting at around 2-3 hours, so you won't have to worry about having to sink a lot of time for it.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness. I'm still fresh after finishing the game and haven't fully organized my thoughts but I thought this could interest someone in the game (it's on sale on Steam for another day or so).

Edit: Brainfart correction.

Publisher Phoenixx and developer PEPOSOFT have announced pixel art high-speed action game FUBUKI ~zero in on Holoearth~ HOLOLIVE ALTERNATIVE for PC (Steam). It will launch this spring. A demo will be available starting February 25 as part of Steam Next Fest: February 2025 Edition.

• Steam page
• Trailer (Japanese)

About freaking time, isn't it? Lets see if it will lead to a real change in the industry.

Additional notes:

• Both games have all the DLC (bar the IKEA collection for TS2 from I believe).
• ~~Both games have the Denuvo DRM for some reason so keep that in mind if you're worried about it.~~
  Seems to be a false alarm, EA removed any mention of Denuvo from the store pages.
• The Sims 1 will still run at its original resolution, but will now scale pixels to make better use of larger monitors while preserving the look and layout of the game.
• Old save files and mods are compatible with this version of the game (TS for sure according to the help page, I'm not certain about TS2).

The original petition failed due to two issues:

• UK government misinterpreted what the petition is about and didn't really answered to what was being asked
• early general elections canceled all ongoing petitions at the time

This attempt has a new, reworded petition to, hopefully, make it simple and clear enough to avoid any additional problems.

There are two thresholds for UK petitions:

• 10 000 signatures: official government response
• 100 000 signatures: petition will be considered for debate in Parliament

Here is a video from Ross Scott (the main organizer of the Stop Killing Games initiative) about this update.

Clickbaity title, I know, but it's an important topic. This is a followup to this video about the crunch culture in Southeast Asian outsourcing studios used by many AAA developers.

This one is specifically about toxic workplace environment rife with physical and mental abuse towards employees, with receipts and video evidence so beware if that's something you're unable to stomach.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23488749

Hello everyone!

We wanted to provide a small update before we get too far into the winter break so we’re starting this thread and will be periodically dropping additional information here as it becomes available.

As many of you have noticed, the 4.0 Preview Environment has experienced numerous issues, some of which have been cleared up and some that have not. Since opening the environment, our teams have been keeping an eye on how things are progressing to ensure we tackle emergent issues to the best of our ability.

While we will aim to have a more in-depth breakdown after the Holiday, here is a brief list of some of the significant issues that have had corrective action taken so far:

• Global Lag – Once players were jumping into the live scaled environment, we discovered that some aspects of typical player behavior were spamming the infrastructure more than expected. A series of hotfixes were deployed to reduce these systems' impact, resulting in improved interactions responsiveness and faster login queue times.
• Missions – Next up, the mission service encountered degraded performance after players had been engaging in missions post launch. After the source of the issue was identified, another corrective hotfix was applied.
• Hangar Spawn – It was discovered that the very recent change to allow players to spawn directly in the Hangar has had some unintended reduction in overall performance of the backend infrastructure. Spawning directly in the Hangar has been temporarily disabled so we can monitor the environment without this added load and ensure that this is the only cause of this issue.

In addition to these, we are currently in the middle of rolling out services updates aimed at optimizing Reputation and Mission services, Social system improvements, preventing concurrent unstows of Hangars, and safeguarding against the current leading cause of Hybrid crashes.

The RSI Knowledge Base also has a list of known issues which can be found here: https://support.robertsspaceindustries.com/hc/en-us/articles/28595368580375-Star-Citizen-Alpha-4-0-Known-Issues

If the issue you’re encountering most frequently is not listed in this thread or on the KB, rest assured we are tracking many more issues and are prioritizing and fixing them as swiftly as we can.

As always, while we are monitoring Spectrum, Reddit, and other social media platforms, the most reliable way to help us identify priority fixes will be through engagement on the RSI Issue Council. https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN

Thank you all for your continued support and we look forward to improving the 4.0 Preview experience in the days to come!

“Memories shape who I am today, so I will never forget you.”

The official PV for the original animated series False Memory, produced by FlintSugar and StudioTumble in collaboration with Bilibili, has been released!

The full series of False Memory will premiere in the second half of 2025. Stay tuned!

The union, called ZOS United-CWA, has been recognised by parent company Microsoft and is made of 461 members, including "web developers, designers, engineers, and graphic artists," the announcement said.

A majority of the unionised workers are based in Maryland, but they are also located across the US in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

This is the latest union to be created via CWA's Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA), which the organisation says has seen over 6,000 workers unionise since 2020.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23065354

As the title suggest it's a rundown of what's coming with patch 4.0.

Things mentioned:

• Server meshing
• Jump points
• Pyro (6 planets, 5 moons)
• Gangs
• Contested zones
• New settlement types (independent, outlaw, derelict)
• Junkyards
• New mission types
• Mew fauna (various types of space cow, domesticated Kopions, space mice)
• New caves (rock, sand and acidic types)
• Mission and economy updates
• FOIP improvements
• Anvil Carrack update (operable cargo pods, working blast shields)
• Quantum travel changes (acceleration rates, fuel consumption and max speed based on quantum drive)
• Mirai Guardian (fat Fury)

As the title suggest it's a rundown of what's coming with patch 4.0.

Things mentioned:

• Server meshing
• Jump points
• Pyro (6 planets, 5 moons)
• Gangs
• Contested zones
• New settlement types (independent, outlaw, derelict)
• Junkyards
• New mission types
• Mew fauna (various types of space cow, domesticated Kopions, space mice)
• New caves (rock, sand and acidic types)
• Mission and economy updates
• FOIP improvements
• Anvil Carrack update (operable cargo pods, working blast shields)
• Quantum travel changes (acceleration rates, fuel consumption and max speed based on quantum drive)
• Mirai Guardian (fat Fury)