Gaming

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue file for those who can read it.

Reasons

Vine stalkers spread any damage they take between their health and their mana. Losing mana from big damage spikes is horrible on most gods as you need mana to cast your "save me" abilities. Some of the gods don't care about mana at all but they also give you no incentive to train skills that will raise your mana in the first place.

And then there's Makhleb. Their abilities cost health instead of mana (and their costs take a percentage of your maximum health so frail Vine stalkers are on discount!) and they love high Invocations skill that will bring your mana to respectable levels. To add to this, Vine stalkers have a naturally fast health regeneration so they can spam Makhleb's abilities more often.

How it went

So, after brainstorming this build, I wanted to win with it. And, after 3 unsuccessful attempts, I did exactly that.

This build has two central points: Unleash Destruction and Antimagic Bite.

Unleash Destruction is Makhleb's ability that costs a fraction of your health and... nothing more! It's completely spammable - as long as you can survive spamming it of course. And oh just how spammable it is on Vine stalkers! Why fight enemies one by one when you can destroy them with your burning/freezing/draining/corroding hatred? Get your ~~enemies~~ victims in a hallway and shoot your hellish lasers or whatever!

As it is a full range penetrating beam, it can manage summoners and the shining eyes very well too. So, while it's usefulness caps at Shoals and Swamp, it will still be useful all the way to Zot.

Antimagic Bite is a Vine stalker's special. You hit an orc wizard with a swift but weak dagger and they lose half their health and their voice can't cast the spells anymore for some reason. This is the reason Vine stalkers rule. Naturally, you want to maximize bite's damage potential by triggering it more - thus the need for a fast weapon. I started this run with an assumption that I will go with short swords and rapiers but the game had its own plans...

8096 | D:9 | Encountered Amaemon

Demon whip is no joke. While it's not as fast as a quick blade it has a higher base damage and it scales with strength which is exactly what we need. Also no "20 skill to reach mindelay" nonsense lmao.

And this is a big deal as Vine stalker's aptitudes aren't great... take a look at our main skills:

• Fighting (-1) and Evocations (-1)
• Armour and Dodging (-2), Shields (-1)
• Invocations (0)
• Maces&Flails or Short blades (-1)

Sure, it's not Mummy-level bad but still quite meh. What do you mean "you have 10 Dodging in Crystal armor"?? That's.... that was very important....

So anyway, some other stuff this build has or should get online:

• Infernal Servant: Makhleb's second ability and a glorious "meh whatever" from me. Demonic friends are nice early on but they don't scale well into late-game. Wow, a green death?? Well thank you it's poison will surely help deal with liches and orbs of fire! I HAVE MAX INVO MAKH YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE!!! ...If you see a mark that replaces Infernal Servant don't hesitate you won't miss it.

• Marks: while we're at it, let's talk marks. Makhleb gives you a choice of three marks once you reach their final rank. Marks can never be rerolled so you're stuck with what you're given for the entire run. Here's my thoughts on the four marks I've gained on my attempts:

  • Mark of Atrocity: the obvious. Makes Unleash Destruction extremely strong... and extremely costy. The moment you get it, you must stop spamming it. It proved to be too hard to manage for me so I splattered because of it.
  • Mark of Execution: as if your bite wasn't enough. You were already great at melee but now you're a beast. The mark has no downsides too so you can pick it if you're afraid of others' costs.
  • Mark of Annihilation: no more demonic friends. And now you have Orb of Destruction with explosions! Pretty nice I'd say. Highly situational as it doesn't do well with hallways but it can deal with crowds just fine.
  • Mark of Celebrant: what enables the stupid (me) to win. The closest you get to a panic button on Makhleb. If it activates you are in trouble and must figure out how to survive. I won with this one.

• Lupine talisman: this build rests on two tenets: spend health and hit really fast. Being a werewolf makes you regain your health quickly and stack up a fixed bonus to each of your attacks. C'mon 50 damage per whip's swing, you don't wanna? You aren't even risking much with your Will already being so high. Footwear is overrated anyway...

I still hate guardian spirit btw :)

Halo Infinite's art director and a developer who's worked on the franchise for 17 years, Glenn Israel, is accusing senior Halo Studios staff of "numerous unethical and/or unlawful acts."

In a series of LinkedIn posts, the long-time Halo developer says he either witnessed or was personally subjected to "blacklisting, fraud, rampant favoritism/cronyism" and "multiple harassment campaigns designed to provoke the constructive discharge of "unwanted" employees otherwise in good standing" between January 2024 and June 2025 - a few months before his eventual departure from the Xbox Game Studio.

"After filing several documented complaints with Microsoft ‘s Human Resources department in June 2025, a senior Global Employee Relations (GER) representative threatened retaliation on first contact and promised to quash any further investigation," Israel continues. He also claims that "senior Halo Studios representatives engaged in a four-day-long act of harassment intended to manufacture a cause for my termination," and that Microsoft's HR departments apparently "failed to take any appropriate disruptive action" during and after the alleged incident.

Israel adds that "the catastrophic mismanagement of Halo Campaign Evolved created an opportunity for senior Halo Studios representatives to temporarily reassign the art team from my unannounced project and falsely characterize my role as "redundant", a plainly retaliatory act."

The Halo Infinite lead makes a number of other allegations aimed at both Halo Studios and Microsoft as a whole, and in a follow-up post, he also says he suspects that "Microsoft routinely contrives or otherwise exploits layoffs to rid itself of employees who have filed proper and effective complaints."

As an ex-MSFT employee myself:

Yup, this is endemic throughout the entire company, and it's been this way for a long time.

Gunzilla Games, the studio co-founded by District 9 director Neill Blomkamp and developers of NFT-infected battle royale game Off The Grid, have been accused by a number of former employees of failing to pay staff for months on end. One former animator at the studio has also accused them of attempting to "silence" workers attempting to get the money they claim to be owed.

As reported by the likes of VGC and Insider Gaming, among the former staff accusing Gunzilla of failing to pay staff are Paul Creamer - an animator who left the studio this March - and talent acquisition lead Anna Savina.

Both made their accusations on LinkedIn. "I dedicated 3 years of my professional life to Gunzilla Games. I built teams, found top talent, and lived the company's mission 24/7," Savina wrote. "Today, I'm forced to face a significant outstanding debt that covers several months of my professional life." She claimed staff in her position are facing "significant salary delays with no clear timeline", with reach-outs to Gunzilla's CEO and CFO having yielded no response and "zero specific information" respectively.

"I'm not the only one. I know many talented colleagues who are in the same "fog". We’re not asking for bonuses, we’re demanding what we have earned," Savina added. She appears to have since updated the post to note that "the situation regarding my personal matter has been resolved".

Crossposted from https://sopuli.xyz/post/43900197

The PS4 / PS5 controllers have a light bar and games can change it's color. What are some games that support this feature?

Tlatoani: Aztec Cities has fully released!

It's an isometric citybuilder game in the style of Caesar and other Impressions Games titles, but with an Aztec theme, and is very well researched (I helped out a bit!)

Check it out if you can, it's 30% off for $13 for the launch!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3161270/Tlatoani_Aztec_Cities/

TLATOANI - 1.0 RELEASE TRAILER | PARADOX ARC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khkSv3SqlZU&lc=UgyR2uggCHE0apYEri54AaABAg

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

I forgot just how painful it is to play a pew-pew caster in Crawl so the game decided to remind me. With endless supply of mana (thanks to Sif Muna) you'd think it should be easy. Ha! Funny.

Mana management is the worst part of playing a pew-pew caster for sure but it's not the only problem. All late-game spells are noisy as hell meaning you will constantly bring in attention from the floor. Your failure rates will never reach 0% on spells that matter. 1% chance to miscast? Three times in a row, please.

Resistances become a pain in the ass near the end. Don't have Orb of Destruction or Bombard by Depths? Prepare to suffer :)
I'm not even gonna mention Zot - the Orbs are absurd!

Scott Pilgrim EX is an interesting one. It sets out to do things a little differently than its cult classic predecessor in almost every regard. They could've merely gotten the band back together to do a straightforward sequel, making up for all the bugs and balance issues that arose from having to rush the first game out to release it alongside the movie. But they didn't. Instead EX looks different, it sounds different, it's structured differently, and the roster of playable characters is entirely different aside from the obligatory Scott and Ramona. I think this mostly works out and makes for a creatively worthwhile followup that does new things with the franchise, though there are some pacing issues that keep me from being completely crazy about it.

https://mokomaze.sourceforge.io/

I was never a fan of AAA games and only a short amount of indie games actually took my mind. Mokomaze was one of them and I can't play this game in fedora as no flatpaks or rpms are available for this game.
I failed miserably while packaging this game

Someone please recommend your favourite ball in a labyrinth games that have a similar calm vibe

I am proud to announce that my open source games now has a license grant to use the MPL 2.0 instead of GNU GPL v3.0 in specific cases and now my site has info on how to optimize/tune my open source games for your experience and hardware. Link to site: https://daniel-hanrahan-tools-and-games.github.io/

• 0:00 - Intro
• 0:39 - 2D Animation
• 6:34 - Pixel Animation
• 11:49 - The Hybrids
• 17:08 - Boycott acknowledgment
• 18:03 - Naturalistic 3D Animation
• 28:32 - Stylized 3D Animation
• 42:08 - Condolences (again)
• 42:36 - Wrapping Up

When I heard Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 was back in the limelight thanks to an unusually steep $6 sale on Steam, I wasn't too surprised. Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare reboot was extremely popular in its day, reinvigorating a series that tread water through the mid-2010s and ushering in an era of followups that'd build on its reimagined progression and class systems.

MW2019 was the best these games had ever played, looked, or sounded at the time. Coming back to it now, it's obvious Call of Duty hasn't been meaningfully better since.

I'm reminded that this was Call of Duty redoubling down on grounded "realism" after years of wallrunning and jetpacks. Infinity Ward harnessed the immersive presentational qualities of a milsim within the confines of an arcadey shooter, and it's just as effective now as it was then. It's worth pointing out that this past streak of games helmed by Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and Raven just do not sound or look like this, even when it's clear they're trying to get close.

When folks say Infinity Ward's games are better made than Treyarch's, this is the stuff they're talking about. This game really checked all the boxes—excellent gunplay, memorable maps, sticky progression, and a campaign that doesn't suck (though that Highway of Death mission sure does).

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/43475467

The book readers have it figured out. I listen to book podcasts and follow a lot of (I hate this word) bookstagrammers, and the turnover of a new year is the best time to do either of those things. This is because they're all reviewing their reading goals for the year that was and the year to come. Did they finish the number of classics they'd hoped? Did they finish the bibliography of Ballard novels? And will next year be the year they really commit to #JanuaryInJapan, when all over the world people dedicate themselves to reading translated fiction from the country?

I wish we did more of the same in videogames. Our equivalent discourse gets as far as ranking the best games of the year that was, and then immediately moves on to anticipating the next year's new releases, pre-emptively stuffing our backlogs with games we'll rue not having had the time to play when the next year draws to a close. Couldn't we set ourselves some more interesting constraints?

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

It was a normal frog archer run with my fearsome amphibian and their battlemage ancestor shooting and conjuring their way through the dungeon. Between my huge damage output (thanks Harm!) and my constantly Idealized ancestor, the run was extremely easy. Thus, I entered Zot:5.

After clearing the rest of the floor, I switched my Harm amulet to another one with -Tele to prevent teleport traps and got to the Hall of Zot. Unexpectedly, orb guardians weren't alone at the entrance - a draconian gang settled there too. That confused me and my ancestor died. Which is fine, it's not like its the first time (battlemage is squishy!). I just need to reset the encounter by going to the staircase.

So, I hopped and, as I was merely two tiles from the stairs and enemies were pretty far away, I just walked to the stairs. And then...

55054 | Zot:5 | HP: 1/204 [Orb Guardian (54)]

OUCH

I didn't notice there was a moth of wrath among the enemies, and the closest orb guardian to me was zerked. Total misplay but still...

Think, now! What can I do to guarantee survival? I can't hop as it's on cooldown, can't blink as I'm under -tele, can't use Transference as my ancestor is dead. Throwing net, mephitic cloud, wand of paralysis all have a chance to fail. Invisibility and Leda's Liquefaction won't prevent their attacks.

My gaze lifted upon scrolls of summoning that were chosen over scrolls of butterflies by the RNG this run. "If only I had these..." I thought when I noticed a scroll of butterflies right there in my inventory. Unused since the very beginning of the game when I decided to play as hunter instead of hexslinger. The only scroll of butterflies I could have for this entire run.

A gentle wind pushed the orb guardian away from me as colorful insects filled the space between us. Thanking Xom for this beautiful coincidence, I went upstair and healed up to full health, and then eventually cleared the rest of the last floor and escaped with the Orb.

🦋❤️