I’ve also seen a variant where the king isn’t (necessarily) the real king. Each player before the game secretly marks the bottom of whichever piece they want to be their actual “king” that game, and the game is won when a player captures their opponent’s marked piece. Pieces otherwise move normally though I think this mode is typically played without the rule that you just not end your turn with your king (the secret or public one) in check.

More casual way of saying asexual. Sounds a bit less clinical than the full term.

The Fibonacci sequence tends to grow at the Golden ratio (approx 1.618) while the actual conversion is ~1.609 so it does usually work well.

In fact any Fibonacci-like sequence with different starting numbers eventually will work, after it gets past the initial crop of bad conversations, as such sequences have growth rates than tend toward the golden ratio as they grow long enough.

For example starting from 2, 9 instead of 1, 1:

2, 9, 11, 20, 31, 51, 82

20 mi ~= 32 km
31 mi ~= 50 km
51 mi ~= 82 km

With HJKLYUBN unlike these modern savages with their arrow keys.

Arbitrary units. The graph’s creator is lampshading that the graph is totally made up in an amusing way.

It’s basically saying “made-up units” and “these units were made-up too.”

Went with Linux Mint back in July, set up a dual boot in case I’d need Windows for anything. Figured something or other wouldn’t work through wine or some such. Never have booted back to Windows since.

I think the only issue I’ve had is that my 8BitDo controller won’t work via Bluetooth, but it works fine via USB. (Other Bluetooth devices have been fine, not that I have many.)

Might be time to grab Psychonauts 2 at -85% (C$12). The first game was great. Not too much else I’ve been tracking is at a price I’d go for at the moment, though I haven’t looked past my wishlist for now.

Cracking the Cryptic would be my top addition to the list. Daily solves of quality human-set variant sudoku puzzles and weekly cryptic crossword solves.

A slight correction, en-dashes are used mostly to indicate ranges like Mon–Fri. Hyphens are a separate third thing, smaller than an en-dash.

- hyphen
– en-dash
— em-dash

They get their names originally from having the same width as the letter n or m respectively in typesetting (though not all fonts follow that necessarily).

I tend to agree. They say it’s specifically for the game preservation stuff, and maybe that’s true. Most companies would create a separate non-profit with its own funding separate for such a thing (not that all those are necessarily great either). I like what GOG does in general and I think it’s important they’re there, but I don’t have any intention of donating to a for-profit business based on the claims that they’ll only do game preservation work with the funds.

I’m not spending an era reading through all the terms & conditions, but at a quick glance I can’t see anything in the legalese about what they can/can’t use GOG Patrons funding for, so it seems like it’s just paying the company monthly for a few extra perks and hoping they’ll use that cash for something positive.

“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.”

• Red Sister, Mark Lawrence.

Good book if you want something a bit like Harry Potter but aimed at a more mature audience and not funding the stripping away of human rights.

A little over a decade back, I had a laptop that came with Windows 8 but didn’t actually meet the specs for it. I installed Ubuntu back then to get the thing to run reliably, and it performed really well that way.

On my home computers I kept using Windows, but with the trend toward less ability to control your system, more ads and AI nonsense being baked in, and just general bloat, when they announced the end of life for Win 10, I decided I’d switch to dual booting Linux Mint at the start of the summer. (I’m a teacher, and it seemed like the best time was when I could deal with my computer being on the fritz for a while if I messed it up.)

I set it up as dual boot because I figured here and there I’d still need to go back to Windows for some specific reason or other but that was back in early July and I’ve yet to encounter a reason why I really need Windows, so I genuinely haven’t booted to Windows even once since the time I originally setup the dual boot and made sure it was working.

Honestly, so much of what we do these days takes place in browser windows that it barely feels different, other than it runs a little smoother and I occasionally have to run an old windows app through Lutris. (Had it installed anyway for games from GOG, and it turns out it works just as well for non-gaming apps.)

A redemption arc this late would’ve had to have been quietly making a great game, no big announcements in advance until it was done or nearly so and playable, and then letting it speak for itself.

Last time I bought audiobooks I got them from Downpour which included DRM-free downloads as either MP3 or M4B files, in addition to listening through the website or app. I believe Libro.fm may also offer this. Most of my ebooks are through Kobo and are DRM free as well.

Does depend in some cases on the publisher.

It varies within the genre. Some games try hard to take steps to minimize the ability to sit around and grind, such as by a food clock or lack of respawns. Sil, which is a *band game that tries to be closer to the original style has an XP system that grants XP for seeing an enemy the first time, and the same for killing it, and then 1/n times that XP the nth time you see that same kind of enemy thereafter. Sixth orc you see is worth 1/6 the XP, so it’s not worth farming an area hard, and still rewards exploring a lot. It also eventually just forces you deeper as the desire for a silmaril becomes more irresistible as you become stronger. Seeing 6 orcs and killing 2 is worth 3.95x an orc’s stated XP, seeing 30 and killing them all gets up to almost 8x the stated XP.

Others like most Angband variants or Tales of Maj’eyal made the decision to just let the player grind. Many of the games in that style have more open-ended progression and aren’t necessarily trying to force the player into constantly dangerous situations. The very popular Caves of Qud would fit this category.

Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Really fun roguelike game where you and enemies have to move to the beat of that floor’s song. I think part of the reason I still play it a lot is that it’s amenable to very short sessions. I’ve played enough that runs go fast and I either clear or die within 10 minutes.

Over 1200 hours now almost a decade after release, and a huge chunk of that is probably sessions of under 30 mins in length.

I only played the original one. I had a fair amount of fun with it for what it was. It can feel a bit empty and wide, but the gameplay was quite fun, even if the combat is kinda painfully easy most of the time. You can build basically however you want and become pretty OP.

Is the remake worth looking at for those who played the original? I was kinda ignoring it because I’d played through it once already. Wasn’t super sold on a second go-through.

I’m personally skipping because I already have what I’d want from this one, but I will say P4G is my favorite of the Persona series, and one of the few long JRPGs I’ve actually finished in the last several years. (P5R is also great, but 4’s more grounded story and characters, relatively speaking, give it the edge for me.)

And Cassette Beasts is a truly great Pokemon-like that has so much going for it. If you feel out of love with the Pokemon franchise, or if you still enjoy it but would want more, this is a really fun game with its own take on a lot of the mechanics. Lots of depth combined with customizable difficulty.

It seems feasible if you don’t imagine they’re all big novels. A lot of nonfiction you might borrow several of in one visit and not read front to back. Think recipe books, handicrafts, anything along those lines. Could also be smaller things like children’s books, poetry collections, etc., or some of the books were unusually expensive.

I think there’s a couple reasons they do it this way.

One is that the pre-order bonus is still available despite the game effectively being out. I imagine they spare themselves some unwanted difficulty or dissatisfied responses from people who otherwise would have missed it.

The other is this very thread. Server issues are common on an expansion pack release. This gives them a convenient excuse to put in the apology announcement. It’s a small thing but who knows, maybe it has some impact.

It’s definitely a silly twisting of words (and their double key system for the pre-order and full purchase only sillier).