Farbklex

Less "unnecessary" online games. To give you one tame example: Age of Empires 2 released in 1999 and is fully playable offline either as a single or multiplayer game via LAN. It has received two re-releases as AoE 2 HD edition and AoE 2 Definitive Edition. The Definitive Edition does not work offline for multiplayer games anymore. It is still the same game with updated graphics and engine but it is still just Age of Empires 2.

In order to play an actuall "Local Area Network" game, you first need to connect to the online Xbox Service. Only then will "Multiplayer" be available as an option and only then you can actually select "Local Area Network" as the "server region" for the match.

All for an updated re-release of a game from 1999.

I was at the AoE 2 DE launch LAN event at a Microsoft Store with big YouTubers and everything. They could not play LAN because right at launch, the online servers crashed due to the load. No one played a multiplayer game at this LAN...

Which one exactly? I saw one speech and that was decent.

The technical reality is: - that singel player games don't need a persistent online connection - that it is not that complicated if you develop your game with offline playability in mind from the beginning - multiplayer games can very well have an offline playable LAN mode (Age of Empires 2 is currently sold as "Definitive Edition" which does not work offline in LAN unless you connect to Xbox online services first)

The gaming industry did way too much stupid shit in the last few years and just needs to take it a notch back.

I travel to Cologne about 5 times a year. 2h ride, usually 25 minutes late in each direction. Just go to the board bistro right away, order some food (if available), grab a beer or coffee and don't look at the time.

I respect the hustle but I hate the idea.

The blacklist is easy to circumvent by offering apps with randomly generated package IDs and probably also with randomly generated signing keys per user.

This is of course more effort than just building and signing the app once, but doable.

Of course you can't have any api keys or functionality in the app, that is bound to a specific app id or signing key.

What's your market? Android being financially irrelevant seems very US-centric.

I played a prototype version of it at gamescom. It's pretty good. The graphics look good enough to emulate the original display technology.

Yes, ritual is the right word. I used to do it quite a lot during COVID with cassettes and CDs while working.

Helped me to more consciously get into work mode.

I host monthly retro gaming meetups and we use CRT TVs that we store at the local library. Luckily, more than enough are still given away for free here. Right now we have around 25.

They're just surprisingly good when paired with a good signal and an old gaming console. I still would love to have a professional monitor but they are too pricey for me. I also need to get myself a CRT monitor.

Yeah, that is strange, especially since we now have the technology to actually play full blown PC versions via abstraction layers on Android phones. A steam store with existing games on mobile is now possible.

I haven't found the docs for the Dutch version but this article shows the content of the MRZ of a French drivers license. They seem to match the Dutch ones as well.

https://trustdochub.com/en/mrz-strip-french-driving-licence/...

It's rather sad for this generation. We still host retro LAN parties regularly to play games we love. Flatout 2, Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 3, Half Life Deathmatch. Those games are about 20 years old and play just fine. We grew up with them, and they hold up to today standards amazingly well.

I kinda doubt that today's kids will be able to play Valorant, Apex Legends or Battlefield 2043 in 20 years when they host a "retro" LAN.

I am hearing about Google developing a desktop mode for probably 10 years now.

I'll just stick to Dex which has been available since forever until Google finally figures their shit out.

It looks like this is still a closed platform, isn't it?

Is there a way to just browse the chat of a public server without signing up? I would like to have a more open, low friction, internet searchable alternative to Discord. Revolt doesn't take it far enough.

I recently complained to my local cities transportation office that their mobile app for bus tickets was only available for German Google users. The actually changed it now.

We also have two friends with dedicated LAN party basements. But it's way more casual. They have 10 old office PCs each that were available for pretty much free. We meet around every two months to play old games. Stuff like Half Life 1 DM.

I,ve also started playing with Linux and Lutris to pre-install old games. Still need to figure out the netboot part.

Also regarding the Steam / Epic situation: Steam has a PC Café program where you can buy licenses which then can be used by people with their own steam accounts while they are in your local network. I set it up once and it is a neat feature.

December is a great time to take a vacation to somewhere warm if you don't like the winter. I like to travel to the Canary Islands from end of December to January. Last time we had 20-25 degrees. Definitely warm enough for the beach.

I am an android dev who works with an M1 Pro 14" on some client and private projects and I also use an M3 Pro 16" provided by one client for a specific project.

I can't tell the performance apart. Everything is absolutely good enough on both machines.

The video is made in the style of 2000s instruction videos for downloading games for free. But it only shows how to get to the Steam page of the dev's game to download the demo.

YouTube still removed the video for "Content that shows viewers how to gain unauthorized free acces to ... full video games".

And the retro games on PSN are very dissapointing.

I would love to have Tekken 3 on the PS 5 just because it is convenient. Instead they only offer Tekken 2, which is only available via the PSN subscription.

I have the same use case but with Xbox 360s since they are cheaper and easier to get here in Germany.

Haven't found a better "easy LAN party" setup than this.

A PC gaming LAN setup for 20 year old games is also dirt cheap but mostly requires 1 PC per player. The splitt screen support on PC is unfortunately very bad.

This. If it's end of life, let me install a community made Linux distro on it.

I've been at the Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition release event in Berlin. It was held at a Microsoft store with German YouTubers. Head of European Marketing for Xbox was there as well.

They couldn't play a multiplayer game because right at release, the servers were overloaded and the new version did not have a LAN mode at launch.

The whole purpose of the event was to have a kind of LAN / multiplayer gaming with the community and stream it.

Just for the sake of security, SSO should never be an enterprise only feature, yet almost everybody locks it behind high prices.

Good. I would rather have the same amount of product I am used to and pay more than have less of the product in one package.

Same goes for quality. Don't degrade your product. If it gets worse, chances are I won't buy it, no matter for what price you sell it.

If you instead keep the quality and increase the price then I might be willing to pay up just to enjoy my favourite brand of crisps.

That said, it is probably better for me that a regular sized bag of cripsps is now 175g instead of 200g.

At some point I discovered that the dishwasher I own has wifi.

I will absolutely never enable it.

I want to believe that there is a "a-lot-of-millions" business opportunity for open source, easy to repair printers that just work without giving you any crap.

Kinda like "The Framework" laptopts but for printers.

It would be better without an add. Free Outlook will become the default mail app pre installed with Windows, a commercial product that costs actual money. It is just shouldn't have ads. Just like Apple's Mail app doesn't have ads.

Having ad free software should be the norm.

Installed it again today. I use Windows only for gaming and therefore didn't care much about mail on it.