I don’t think the convergence to x86/ARM is really lack of innovation, it’s more recognizing that being on a separate architecture doesn’t really help you. The innovation is now in form factor (e.g. the Switch), peripherals (e.g. VR or alt controllers) or software (e.g. streaming). Now, having an x86 just means your base platform is cheap and you don’t need a lot of custom work, although these platforms still get integration attention. Also makes ports much simpler.

The PS3 is actually a great example of the industry learning this lesson. The Cell architecture was really hard to leverage. It took years for any games/engines to use the Cell SPUs right.

As for Linux though, PS3 Linux was effectively just PowerPC Linux which was already fully supported years before in every major server distro. The Cell PPUs (main, boot cores) were pretty much off the shelf PowerPC. Similar to the Wii/WiiU.

Source: work in semiconductors, the Cell was one of my first platforms out of school.

I’ve always thought about that. There must be some quirk of how subspace comms work that makes it obvious when someone is aiming a message at you.

The real thing that gets me is how do view screens work? That would seem to require a shared format to encode/decode.

Oh, that’s interesting. It is pretty distinct.

Like the energy, but Comic Sans is also a war crime.

Have some links for the manipulation? I don’t think the Republicans really want to see either of them, frankly but I like Crockett.

Depends on the players. Some want to play pretend. Some want to play XCOM with dice.

That’s hilarious. I will admit, as a rank amateur writer, that reading or watching some absolute crap is more motivating than something complex and good.

Thinking “shit, man, I could do better than that” is a powerful force.

I liked Lower Decks contribution to this debate. Maybe with one merge it’s debatable, but beyond that the answer becomes clearer.

As for the Voyager game, it’s not elaborated on. Tuvix is a pretty good hero, has both the Talaxian and Vulcan traits, comes in real handy on some away missions, but it may be better to have separate Tuvok and Neelix to hold down two stations instead of one. Still debatable, but the way the game works the story doesn’t really adapt to it.

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I don’t have any issue with seeing young adults growing and dealing with trauma. This episode has a lot of pieces working together in the overall storyline, I just don’t think it was that compelling within the episode.

The drama class half of the episode didn’t really go off. Maybe because I only know the play from what the episode told me about it, but I think it’s more like the actual growth part got cut off. We spend time with drunk Tarima (yawn) and then short cut the cadets actually performing the play with each other. That would have been the climax of that story, them getting into character, relating to it, working through it and reaching some sort of understanding or catharsis but that scene gets hand waved. Probably needed a full 45 minutes to do right too.

Or the Sam story, which was closer to the mark but still failed to create tension or consequences and ended up getting resolved neatly with a happy ending. Give Sam half an episode to be dead, for people to be sad, and the Doctor half an episode to reflect on it, resolving to do better before tying it up with a bow and it could have been great.

I love that the show isn’t constantly balls to the wall action and we’re getting a lot of character focus but the story juggling bit this episode in the ass and it isn’t the first to be trying to do too much and fumble the execution.

Yeah, I think this one didn’t come together as well as it could have. Should have focused on the Sam story more and done more to make it feel like she was in real danger. When she was dead I involuntarily yelled “yeah right!”. Lo and behold a minute later it’s resolved happily. The drama class and Caleb/Tarima story could have more easily been cut short without losing anything.

Probably one of the worst eps, but I’m happy to say that’s actually a pretty high bar for this show so far and this is more meh than truly bad (here I’m flashing back to like 20 different Discovery episodes where the episode ended and I was tearing my hair out over how stupid they were - that’s the real trauma here)

Also happy to speculate that, with two episodes left, the pendulum seems likely to swing back to excitement next week and I’m here for it.

Very common here in the US as an alternative to “bless you”.

Sorry, that would mean the rich would get richer slightly slower. Best we can do is make insurance twice as expensive to appease our donors.

The hero roster will list everyone you’ve unlocked in a run, including the dead / left behind to help you figure it out. Characters can cycle off the bridge if they are injured or otherwise busy with story too, so double check Chakotay and Tom are actually gone and not just at the bottom of a list of 30 injured crewmen waiting to be treated or something.

I’m pretty sure when you get Klingon B’ellana the original is put back to normal in dialogue so that model/portrait makes sense.

But like for heroes disappearing between sectors, were they on quests? You can definitely leave people behind if you don’t fully resolve events.

Anyway, bad luck with the bugs. I’ve had it crash a couple of times or occasionally show an empty pop-up (which looks like it may be fixed now) but nothing really game breaking. Never lost more than a few cycles for reloading.

It’s a narrative game. The graphics are intended to be more functional than pretty.

I also wish there was more voice acting, but the problem there is likely that you’d need the entire Voyager cast to chime in to sound right and there is a lot of dialogue. Not to mention, even the voiced logs with Tim Russ / RDM sound off because they’re 30 years older…

As for 6GB of VRAM, I blame the engine if that’s a real number and not one from the recommended specs (which are probably more about GPU power than memory). This game runs on Steam Deck and it technically doesn’t have any VRAM.

I think it’s pretty fun. Even knowing the story beats, things go way different than on the show.

In my current (still first) run Tom and B’ellana got sucked into a black hole and died, but B’ellana’s full Klingon half is on phasers, Tuvix runs the mess and the Doctor runs the sick bay in tandem with a Malon. Voyager is armed to the teeth and just stomped the shit out of the Borg. I’m still missing a lot of heroes so I must have missed some opportunities too even though I’ve been hitting almost every mission.

Anyway, I enjoy narrative games and ones like Ixion or Fallout Shelter so this was aimed right at me.

However, I hated the suggested romantic tension between Caleb and Genesis, fortunately it didn’t went further than that.

I think they did that well. Spent one moment of “is this…?” and then moved on. Felt very young adult to me, but I also hope that’s the last of it.

Yeah, I liked the episode, nothing felt out of place in individual scenes, but you’re right it does feel like they were trying to fit too much story into too little time. There’s like four B-plots in there.

Yeah, big difference between “Starfield 2” and “Starfield 2.0”, one is a sequel, the other is a version.