- Joined
- Feb 4, 2018
Can someone explain the gist of Romancing Saga 2 to me? It looks interesting yet complex but this is also taking into account I've heard the Saga games are among the most difficult JRPG's in history.
Video Game Chat Thread - Pre-Alpha Experimental Version
- Thread starter OwO What's This?
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2023
Thank god there are mods. I can pretend that Miles is Ben Reilly and he's filling in for Peter. Makes the game better
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2022
The problem is, when was there an urban open-world game that wasn't either intended to be or taken by the public to be a "GTA clone"? True Crime: Streets of LA definitely seems to have been inspired by GTA but got labeled as a GTA clone, and that stuck on the series for the next game (True Crime: New York City). After that, a sequel to True Crime: New York City got cancelled and a third game that began development in 2007, True Crime: Hong Kong was eventually released as Sleeping Dogs by Square Enix, and that STILL got GTA comparisons.
Not much happened in way of beta material (that hasnt already been talked about or known by general people) , unreleased content this week, but we have a shitton of mod stuff to cover so stick around.
Anniversary of San Andreas was a few days ago so heres a bunch of stuff showing 20 years of progress
https://www.moddb.com/games/grand-t...grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-20th-anniversary
this covers custom missions - video below covers fixes and a link below that shows slav power's personal prefrences for GTA and they are faithful to the games artstyle so im sharing them as well, Silents Patch also went open-source.
Link to start of slav power posts, theres 1 more on the same page im just not linking it. READ NIGGA!
another game that has its anniversary not now but soon is Half Life 2, so heres a shitton of stuff for that
as aluded to above I orignally was not going to include a whole lot of beta stuff but I will include one exception which is the half life 1 net test 1, last 1 reported was net test 2 and this version was not sent out to as many people so it has a lot more unused assets.
Okay sorry now for HL2 sperging.
4ish hour edit: gmod got an update that adds more fixes to hl2 and its episodes https://gmod.facepunch.com/news/october-2024-update
^ this one is probably the biggest one to look out for due to the sheer number of maps, fixes and time and effort, sweat blood, etc was put into it.
an entropy zero mod which spins off the original series but keeps the idea of being a bad guy just as a metro cop is still being developed, this information could be incorrect on this mod in specific due to me not looking much into it which is my fault, oopsie!
another mod that certainly not dead is RTBR which has already proven themselves by actually already having released content and more content on the way see video below.
Counting this as a source mod lol
Very glad this ones still being developed.
transitioning over to HL1 heres some more mods.
this just seems to be a stylized mod, doesnt seem to be any unique mechanics as far as I can see.
this is HL1 coop but more tailored to actually be co-op and not a bajillion player coop like sven coop.
this half life mod is a type of aliens TC from the looks of it lol
going further back in time heres a quake 2 mod that makes the game a prequel to quake 2 but a sequel to quake 1, so an oreo game? Not released but looks interesting.
going even further back heres a mod for duke nukem, and below that some mods for doom
this has a demo out already, I suggest you wait longer as it is definetly still in early stages lol, iirc he just released the demo to gain more traction and employ more people to work on the mod.
this one isnt released but it is very intriguing
mod retains original level layouts of first doom episode but trys to add more visual flair.
bonus videos:
Anniversary of San Andreas was a few days ago so heres a bunch of stuff showing 20 years of progress
https://www.moddb.com/games/grand-t...grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-20th-anniversary
this covers custom missions - video below covers fixes and a link below that shows slav power's personal prefrences for GTA and they are faithful to the games artstyle so im sharing them as well, Silents Patch also went open-source.
another game that has its anniversary not now but soon is Half Life 2, so heres a shitton of stuff for that
as aluded to above I orignally was not going to include a whole lot of beta stuff but I will include one exception which is the half life 1 net test 1, last 1 reported was net test 2 and this version was not sent out to as many people so it has a lot more unused assets.
Okay sorry now for HL2 sperging.
4ish hour edit: gmod got an update that adds more fixes to hl2 and its episodes https://gmod.facepunch.com/news/october-2024-update
an entropy zero mod which spins off the original series but keeps the idea of being a bad guy just as a metro cop is still being developed, this information could be incorrect on this mod in specific due to me not looking much into it which is my fault, oopsie!
another mod that certainly not dead is RTBR which has already proven themselves by actually already having released content and more content on the way see video below.
Very glad this ones still being developed.
transitioning over to HL1 heres some more mods.
this just seems to be a stylized mod, doesnt seem to be any unique mechanics as far as I can see.
this is HL1 coop but more tailored to actually be co-op and not a bajillion player coop like sven coop.
this half life mod is a type of aliens TC from the looks of it lol
going further back in time heres a quake 2 mod that makes the game a prequel to quake 2 but a sequel to quake 1, so an oreo game? Not released but looks interesting.
going even further back heres a mod for duke nukem, and below that some mods for doom
bonus videos:
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
I think most of the people who compare every game top GTA are just retards, its like how games article generators compare every game that requires an intelligence level higher than a 10 year old a "Dark Souls like" game.
And there are plenty of open world urban games not like GTA at all and completely un comparable.
- Project Zomboid
- Prototype 2(admittedly old)
- Mirrors Edge 2
- The Division 1 & 2
- I havent played those batman games but from my understanding they are open world urban games too
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2022
Now I haven't played anything beyond Arkham City but it wasn't really in an urban environment, basically a bunch of disconnected floating chunks that didn't even feel like a city at all. No roads. It was more of a hub world than anything else.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I discovered something that went right under my nose that is a massive fucking game changer. Figuratively and literally.
Some of you might be aware of ASI mods, those things you add to games that do things you didn't knew were possible. In case you didn't know, they're just renamed DLL files, and by an ASI loader they hook onto the game's process to alter it's code at runtime. That's why they're so capable and why they're so uncommon.
Thing is, there is a limited amount of DLL names a Windows game might try to load from it's installation folder, and you'll have more ASI mods you'll want to run than that. That's where ASI loaders come in, they piggyback off of those DLL endpoints to then let ASI mods piggyback off even further, it's a weird way Windows executables work but it's beneficial for modding. The ASI loader you'll most likely get is called Ultimate ASI Loader made by ThirteenAG, a prominent member of the GTA modding community and a professional programmer.
For the longest time I was updating it for no other reason than to have the newest version, but there were no changelogs in the GitHub releases. After going back to the main page I've noticed that it has expanded well beyond just being an ASI loader, and some of the functions it adds are very interesting.
Universal windowed mode and built-in D3D8to9 are neat, but small fry compared to the main reason I'm even writing this.
For context, recently, GTA modders found out that Rockstar has left a form of mod loading in GTA IV's PC version, where by creating a directory tree mimicking the one of the game's root folder in a subdirectory by the name of "update", the game will prioritize the files in that subdirectory over the game's main files, effectively serving as a way to load modded game files without ever replacing any. A very nice and clean way to mod GTA IV which was further leveraged with FusionFix that gave GTA IV modding a renaissance of sorts.
Ultimate ASI Loader can add that to any game. Usually, when you mod games, you'll inevitably run into a situation where you have to replace a core game file, be it a texture, a model or anything else, and you'll most likely rename the original file as you do so. Now imagine having multiple files like that and having to keep track which ones you've replaced, which ones you haven't, and the amount of cases it can produce where you run into issues with other mods due to those replaced files, but you've forgotten about them and you can't figure out which ones are the culprit. It's a modding hellscape.
This completely alleviates it. You keep the original game files intact, and then you put the ones you want to be replaced in a separate folder. For example, my Need for Speed: Most Wanted installation had mods for HD vinyls and UI that relied on replacing the game files. I've done a few comparisons and deletions with clean game files so that I brought it back to vanilla while moving all the modded files out into the update folder.
Sure enough, the game loads all the modded files just fine this way, and if I rename the update folder I lose all the HD textures, it goes back to the vanilla blur. This'll make my modding life so much easier, but at the same time I'll end up redoing all the games I have installed. Remember, this is universal, as long as you maintain the directory structure and file names, it'll work on any game, it's essentially tricking the executable to load files from a different path than they want to.
To be fair we could use a game modding general for trivia like that.
Some of you might be aware of ASI mods, those things you add to games that do things you didn't knew were possible. In case you didn't know, they're just renamed DLL files, and by an ASI loader they hook onto the game's process to alter it's code at runtime. That's why they're so capable and why they're so uncommon.
Thing is, there is a limited amount of DLL names a Windows game might try to load from it's installation folder, and you'll have more ASI mods you'll want to run than that. That's where ASI loaders come in, they piggyback off of those DLL endpoints to then let ASI mods piggyback off even further, it's a weird way Windows executables work but it's beneficial for modding. The ASI loader you'll most likely get is called Ultimate ASI Loader made by ThirteenAG, a prominent member of the GTA modding community and a professional programmer.
For the longest time I was updating it for no other reason than to have the newest version, but there were no changelogs in the GitHub releases. After going back to the main page I've noticed that it has expanded well beyond just being an ASI loader, and some of the functions it adds are very interesting.
Universal windowed mode and built-in D3D8to9 are neat, but small fry compared to the main reason I'm even writing this.
For context, recently, GTA modders found out that Rockstar has left a form of mod loading in GTA IV's PC version, where by creating a directory tree mimicking the one of the game's root folder in a subdirectory by the name of "update", the game will prioritize the files in that subdirectory over the game's main files, effectively serving as a way to load modded game files without ever replacing any. A very nice and clean way to mod GTA IV which was further leveraged with FusionFix that gave GTA IV modding a renaissance of sorts.
Ultimate ASI Loader can add that to any game. Usually, when you mod games, you'll inevitably run into a situation where you have to replace a core game file, be it a texture, a model or anything else, and you'll most likely rename the original file as you do so. Now imagine having multiple files like that and having to keep track which ones you've replaced, which ones you haven't, and the amount of cases it can produce where you run into issues with other mods due to those replaced files, but you've forgotten about them and you can't figure out which ones are the culprit. It's a modding hellscape.
This completely alleviates it. You keep the original game files intact, and then you put the ones you want to be replaced in a separate folder. For example, my Need for Speed: Most Wanted installation had mods for HD vinyls and UI that relied on replacing the game files. I've done a few comparisons and deletions with clean game files so that I brought it back to vanilla while moving all the modded files out into the update folder.
Sure enough, the game loads all the modded files just fine this way, and if I rename the update folder I lose all the HD textures, it goes back to the vanilla blur. This'll make my modding life so much easier, but at the same time I'll end up redoing all the games I have installed. Remember, this is universal, as long as you maintain the directory structure and file names, it'll work on any game, it's essentially tricking the executable to load files from a different path than they want to.
To be fair we could use a game modding general for trivia like that.
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
Valve is updating Steam to better list anti-cheats used in games.
Going forward, games that install a client-side, kernel mode anti-cheat will be required to state such on their store page.
What's more interesting, however, is this:
Going forward, games that install a client-side, kernel mode anti-cheat will be required to state such on their store page.
What's more interesting, however, is this:
Glad to see Valve making more of an effort on managing things on their storefront.
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2019
Especially nice that they do this when they don't have to considering all of the competing storefronts still lack the most basic QOL features.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
There's something I realized when writing my Ultimate ASI loader tangent. "ASI scripts" were something that originated from 3D Era GTA modding. In reality, they're just DLL files that hook into the game process. Thing is, GTA III loaded ASI files by default, before any ASI loaders were made, those arose due to San Andreas lacking this functionality.
GTA IV's "update" folder loading method was left unnoticed for well over a decade, and it was discovered it would work in a way that would've made GTA IV modding so much easier back in the day, and Ultimate ASI Loader reimplements this method so that it can be used in any game.
Both of them were R*'s development leftovers. Something they've made in-house for the sake of easy debugging, like injecting a small bit of code without having to recompile the entire game, or to load in modified files in a clean way to not create confusion when replacing them.
Nowadays, ASI scripts are fundamental to modding and fixing a ton of PC games, it is the standard for injecting DLL files into games. Similarly, I can see Ultimate ASI Loader's overload feature giving a similar modding renaissance to a wide range of games, much like the aforementioned GTA IV discovery revitalized that. And both were something Rockstar Games left in there, forgotten about it, only for modders to stumble upon it, reverse engineer it and take advantage of it for their own needs.
Rockstar Games has been one of the biggest contributors to PC game modding by sheer accident.
What I do wonder about though, is that the "update" folder method was always there, but was only discovered over 15 years after the game's release. What if R* came up with another immensely useful and revolutionary modding trick that still lingers around in their games, waiting to be discovered?
GTA IV's "update" folder loading method was left unnoticed for well over a decade, and it was discovered it would work in a way that would've made GTA IV modding so much easier back in the day, and Ultimate ASI Loader reimplements this method so that it can be used in any game.
Both of them were R*'s development leftovers. Something they've made in-house for the sake of easy debugging, like injecting a small bit of code without having to recompile the entire game, or to load in modified files in a clean way to not create confusion when replacing them.
Nowadays, ASI scripts are fundamental to modding and fixing a ton of PC games, it is the standard for injecting DLL files into games. Similarly, I can see Ultimate ASI Loader's overload feature giving a similar modding renaissance to a wide range of games, much like the aforementioned GTA IV discovery revitalized that. And both were something Rockstar Games left in there, forgotten about it, only for modders to stumble upon it, reverse engineer it and take advantage of it for their own needs.
Rockstar Games has been one of the biggest contributors to PC game modding by sheer accident.
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2023
How did a game with this many red flags turn out to be so startlingly okay?
One of the developers, for reference:
And yet, despite all this, the game seems perfectly normal. I can't find any gender shit (there's a whole cast page on the game's official wiki and every single "paleofolk" not only does not have pronouns or gender listed, but also completely normal biological sexes when being written about), the fact that it's about running a shop seems to ward off any boneheaded "capitalism bad" critiques, and the worst I can really say about the game (aside from its ridiculous number of bugs) is that it's doing the whole "cosmetic day 1 DLC for an extra 5 bucks" thing that I really wish video games would just stop doing already.
I'm going to put an emphasis on seems here, by the way, because I haven't played the game yet and don't plan on starting until the devs grind their asses to dust getting rid of all the softlocking. But from what i've gathered of all its promotional material and press coverage, it seems genuinely inoffensive and more focused on the game than the message.
Maybe this has something to do with it.
- Cutesy life/chore sim
- with heavy Animal Crossing inspiration
- Revolving around dinosaurs (iykyk)
- with a lot of the marketing being based off around creating your own Donut Steal dino OC and building relationships with fictional dino people
- and conveniently leaving out any gender-specific clarifications on the various "paleofolk" (another red flag is the naming but it's so minor it won't get its own bulletpoint)'s identities in the marketing
- Published by Team 17
- Developed by an indie studio as their first title
- that literally lists "developing inclusive worlds" as part of their M.O
- as well as has a nonzero amount of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fans in it
- and, predictably, seems to have attracted an audience that almost exclusively consists of furries, troons, and furry troons.
One of the developers, for reference:
And yet, despite all this, the game seems perfectly normal. I can't find any gender shit (there's a whole cast page on the game's official wiki and every single "paleofolk" not only does not have pronouns or gender listed, but also completely normal biological sexes when being written about), the fact that it's about running a shop seems to ward off any boneheaded "capitalism bad" critiques, and the worst I can really say about the game (aside from its ridiculous number of bugs) is that it's doing the whole "cosmetic day 1 DLC for an extra 5 bucks" thing that I really wish video games would just stop doing already.
I'm going to put an emphasis on seems here, by the way, because I haven't played the game yet and don't plan on starting until the devs grind their asses to dust getting rid of all the softlocking. But from what i've gathered of all its promotional material and press coverage, it seems genuinely inoffensive and more focused on the game than the message.
Maybe this has something to do with it.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2015
yes, but be warned: it runs like shit on pc due to some engine quirks being tied to the framerate, and anything faster than 30fps makes it do weird shit. least you don't have to worry about the Games for Windows Live drm they had that made it hard to play even if you legally owned the game (source: i did) but at what cost? the update that got rid of it removed music that had their licenses expired
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Trollblade69
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2022
Trying to find a usable pirate of Bioshock 2.
This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2023
Black Ops 6 crashes every time. Does anyone have a suggestion or should I just wait until an update comes out?
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2015
there may be a fitgirl or dodi repack of 4 that has the restored music and is a cracked version of the game that had the drm on it or something, i never installed it since i already owned the game.
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2021
IIRC GTA4 on PC has a radio station that lets you create a custom station by adding audio files to one of the game's folders. I believe it was added with one of the DLCs but also functions in the base game. Theoretically you could re-create one of the stations with the cut music via this method.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Sounds like a convoluted and roundabout way to go. There are mods that do it. There are a load of mods that make GTA4 quite playable on PC, that restore cut content, add new shit, and that eliminate a lot of the bugs and crashes.