Video Games

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Wed May 23, 2012 10:11 pm

Unless they're not using hashes, in which case it may be the difference between an insensitive comparison and a sensitive one. I think that is the obvious conclusion, but the inference that hashes are not being used is a big pointer to bad security.
oh, wait.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu May 24, 2012 12:58 am

ishy wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:Oh, wonderful. Another reason for me to love forced online play when all I want is single-player anyway.
According to http://gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20120522 blizz login has A) no limited attempts and B) Isn't case sensitive

I am at a loss for words that in this day and age they have passwords which are not fucking case sensitive.

You know, I thought this was an absurd claim, and almost rejected it out of hand. Then I thought, no, this should be tested.

Yeah, so this is an absurd claim... and it is also completely true.

shau · Post by **shau** » Thu May 24, 2012 1:08 am

Fuchs wrote:Do they at least have a time delay between attempts?

Nope, I've missed it before and it let me try again immediately.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu May 24, 2012 3:09 pm

Retries is not actually a massive issue because the potential number of combinations is supposed to be crazy-high.

But lots of people do secure-but-memorable passwords by taking an unsecure (english words/names) password and changing random letters to uppercase. So making that not contribute to security is incredibly stupid.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu May 24, 2012 4:59 pm

I forgot. Is there a maximum password length? I seem to remember it being between 8 and 16 characters. If that's true, then it also thwarts the ability to use another fairly secure way of making passwords: picking four 5-6 letter words and stringing them together, like phonechairtrucksheep, or whatever.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:10 am

So, E3 appears to be a major let-down for everyone who looks forward to mainstream AAA games. For those of us who were let down by such years ago and basically only play obscure 3rd party games, nothing to worry about.

That said, GAME OF THE YEAR. I'm sure I linked to this before, but that was the standard/beta, this is DELUXE EDITION.

The page is worksafe, the game itself is not.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Wed Jun 06, 2012 3:49 pm

The Wii U looks like a hell of a piece of hardware, but doesn't really seem to have any games that I'd be interested in. And I doubt that Nintendo will use it to its full potential at any rate.

And Mass Effect 3? Everyone knows that game is shit. Who on earth would want to buy it for the Wii U?

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Jun 06, 2012 5:13 pm

Ganbare Gincun wrote:And Mass Effect 3? Everyone knows that game is shit. Who on earth would want to buy it for the Wii U?

People who want to see the WII only ending.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Jun 07, 2012 12:14 pm

Kaelik wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:I played Diablo 2 single player.
And are you going to bitch for 40 minutes about a slight stagger that occurs every once in a while and basically doesn't get in the way of play?

I know this is old, but while playing D3 yesterday, I did get killed due to lag when at full health. Granted, I didn't bitch for 40 minutes (I just walked for three minutes from the last checkpoint), but it is really fucking annoying.

Sure, it's an anecdote, but it does happen. It's not like the answer is "always stay at full health" or something.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Thu Jun 07, 2012 1:04 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:I played Diablo 2 single player.
And are you going to bitch for 40 minutes about a slight stagger that occurs every once in a while and basically doesn't get in the way of play?
I know this is old, but while playing D3 yesterday, I did get killed due to lag when at full health. Granted, I didn't bitch for 40 minutes (I just walked for three minutes from the last checkpoint), but it is really fucking annoying.

Sure, it's an anecdote, but it does happen. It's not like the answer is "always stay at full health" or something.

That's what happens when you build a game around the idea of making a ton of money off of an online auction house instead of making a good game. I see a lot of Torchlight 2 purchases in the near future.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 1:41 am

There's some nice stuff in the latest Humble Indie Bundle. I haven't tried Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP yet, and now I feel pretty good about not going for the original or Steam versions.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 5:09 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:There's some nice stuff in the latest Humble Indie Bundle. I haven't tried Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP yet, and now I feel pretty good about not going for the original or Steam versions.

The latest Humble Indie Bundle build is CRAZY GOOD. Maybe one of the best deals in gaming I've ever seen.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:12 pm

Psychonauts is a nice addition. I bought a used PS2 disk a few years ago, but it was scratched and kinda buggy. I never got further than a half hour or so.

S: S&S EP is... decent, I suppose. The controls are painfully finicky, and it feels kinda pretentious at times, but I'm having fun at least. Session 1 did inspire me to do some thinking about the presentation to go with next time I put together a dungeon exploration scenario.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:08 pm

The new X-COM game (NOT the FPS) has game footage from E3 available. It looks spectacular.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 4:31 am

Yeah, can't hardly wait for XCOM again; I played the Borderlands 2 demo, was pretty smooth (alas, had to play on a PS3 controller, so could hardly do any better than the booth babe).

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 6:56 am

Got Crusader Kings 2 yesterday, and gave the Duchess of a northern Italian duchy in the HRE a shot. Not twenty years later I conquered Rome.

You see, the Papal States controlled a majority of the count titles making up one of my Ducal titles at the start of the game. So the Pope usurped control of that title, ticking me off. Then the Emperor of the HRE went to war with the Pope over something, and I piggybacked on that to enforce my claim to that title and all the lands comprising it.

So far, CK 2 has been annoying me in the interface department but is otherwise quite good. Unlike in the original, women can inherit titles, so I plan to turn Italy into a matriarchy. Sadly, it does give me a -20 point misogyny penalty to diplomatic relations with vassals. But there's no monsterously stupid reputation mechanic that fucks crusaders over by trashing their relationships with vassals for the unpardonable crime of seizing the Holy Land from Muslim control and giving large chunks of it to said vassals. That was such incredible bullshit but is apparently gone in this version.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:21 am

I was just checking something on PC Minecraft when I noticed the title screen's little message had a number on it--110813.

So I tried it as a PC seed and it gave me desert, and extremely mountainous jungle.

I gave it a shot on the Xbox and it gave me desert, decent mountains, plenty of forest, at least two decent-sized patches of surface lava, gravel/stone fields (with one patch of surface iron ore), and enough cave openings (often in the form of a pit that's not visible until you're on top of it) to make me think the map is pretty much hollow.

With some iron buckets, I can frame up a Nether portal a layer at a time. And once I've got a portal to the Nether, I can build a home base (I've gotten to prefer making a three-wide, three-deep moat bottomed with netherrack that's been set ablaze for my "Keep monsters off my damn front porch" measures).

So yeah. I'm rather pleased with it. Wonder why 110813 was on the title screen, though.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:58 pm

So after playing some more CK2 I've found that it gives more power to kings (in high royal authority kingdoms, at least, but that's what they all turn into within a couple generations on the outside) to control what their vassals do. This is good if you're running a Kingdom but kind of sucks if you're playing a Duchy. Most dramatically, unlike in the original if your liege goes to war with someone you actually can't muster up your own troops without waiting to be asked and claim the lion's share of the rewards. This eventually led to me giving up on the matriarchy game because I found myself kind of stuck. Also, character's lifespans were directly proportional to how convenient it would be for them to die young. The first duchess had female twins and outlived both of them.

Also unlike in the original, seizing Jerusalem in a crusade gives a total of like 6000 prestige and 3000 piety instead of Realm Duress and a rage headache. I really don't like how the original handled crusades; does it show?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:58 am

On a recommendation from a friend, I got Space Marine for the Xbox.

It's actually fun so far. Fairly smooth combat, doesn't fuck around too much. Bolter rifles are actually really good for thinning out crowds of Orks.

Of course, you can't play a Space Marine. Noooo, you have to be an Ultramarine.

Still, I'll reserve judgment for later. Initial signs are promising, though.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jun 26, 2012 3:31 am

I got the two DLC quest packs for Amalur.

I'm playing Dead Kel while my sister takes Teeth of Naros.

I gotta say, Dead Kel is worth the ten bucks if you like Amalur. It's quite a lot of stuff to do.

Thus far, my favorite quest chain has been the keep you can clean out, claim, and restore. Eventually you're considered a recognized lord and get an ambassador to arrange trade deals and make alliances for you.

Not to mention the various bonuses it gives you--collecting paintings gives you various boosts. Getting your beast master to train animals gives you permanent boosts (thus far: Boggarts increase XP gain, Bears increase health, Barghests increase magic resistance, and wolves increase critical hit damage. You can also get rats, spiders and something else, but I haven't checked them out yet).

There's also a lot of loot available. By my count, about four armor sets, and something like a dozen unique weapon/armor pieces, and they aren't too shabby. I'm particularly taken with the faeblades.

And they were having fun with this one. You sail to hunt the ghost pirate Dead Kel, on the good ship Calamity, captained by a Captain Brattigan, who claims to not believe in navigation, and has gone through twenty ships in twenty years.

Oh, and there's faer gorta sailors. When they don't know you're there, they pull out brooms and suchlike and start sweeping and scrubbing.

As for Teeth of Naros, it adds a new magic flavor (Primal, which does do much damage on its own but adds some extra kick to the other elemental spells), and evidently involves a floating city and some people called Kollossae who are living statures--stone skin, glowing blue eyes, but they breathe and bleed and all that. According to my little sister, anyway.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 1:30 am

The Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut endings came out and they sucked balls. But ME3 was pretty disappointing to begin with so... meh.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 1:57 am

The necromundi et al thread reminded me of what would be pretty much my dream game: Minecraft+Civ+Fable. A game where you start out as some schmuck in the wilderness, punching trees and killing animals to build tools, then weapons, armour, a house, a castle, and so on until you're actually in more of a Fantasy RPG game, running around killing monsters and winning renown, eventually becoming a king and spreading your empire, but at any point you can go back to a previous game mode, if you feel like building something or personally stabbing dragons in the face.

So I'm curious what other Denners' dream games would be.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:42 am

I want a Moderately Multiplayer Online RPG. Servers provide massive, sprawling game worlds (just like regular MMOs, maybe procedurally generated like MineCraft or Shamus Young's Project Frontier but with monsters and towns and quests and stuff), which are persistent and can be permanently affected by players. In order to keep the chaos in check, each server has only, like, fifty players on it. Not fifty players at one time, but fifty players period. You could also do like MineCraft and let people host their own servers, in order to only let in their friends or people they know.

I'd also like to see a game that's vaguely ARG-like in that the entire gameworld treats you as though you are actually a guy on a computer. Not in the sense of breaking the fourth wall, but maybe you're controlling a robot or small team of robots, and everyone else in the game world knows you're some guy on a computer miles away from the actual 'bots you're controlling, living in some first world nation far away from the post-apocalyptic Hell that you pilot your 'bots through. It'd be cool for immersion.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:55 am

Multiplayer Online Zombie game that allows you to build and destroy all the things. Totally Persistent, and limited to a relatively small number of players.

Perhaps something where you alternate between being a special zombie of some kind and a human.

As a human, you have better environment interactions and can use stuff, and then, the better you do as a human (Probably survival time), the cooler your special zombie gets to be (Maybe like, customized zombies with points and shit.) And then the more kills you get as a zombie, the better your starting equipment as a human when your zombie dies.

But the key would be the total modification of the game world. Way better than anything current engines can do.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 6:14 am

I like games that are fairly freeform in their objectives and full of procedural generation and dynamic content. Dwarf Fortress with better controls and less micromanagement (and less dwarves, I have an irrational hatred of dwarves) would satisfy me for a decade, I suspect.

So that in mind, what I'd really like is some kind of procedurally generated world, that dynamically generates factions/events and interactions between them, probably going to have to be totally singleplayer but that's fine with me. So, you've got the Kingdom of Whachacallit, and that's great. It's doing it's thing. It's a collection of 3-4 points on the map and spheres of influence around them, the size of the sphere representing the power of Whachacallit at that particular point. You travel around on the overland map, and when you pass through the sphere of Whachacallit, the types and probabilities of events change. If you're not particularly welcome in Whachacallit, events like 'get harassed/arrested by guards' are on the table. But wilderness events like 'mauled by bear' go down, regardless.

To the east of one of Whachacallit's little dots, there's a bandit den generating its own sphere of influence which overlaps or is maybe even entirely inside of Whachacallit's, meaning when you travel through that particular area the event "bandit attack" is there (or, is more likely). But Whacallit is also hunting for that bandit den, perhaps even locally offering a reward to find it (or empty it). There are some faction values like stealth, investigation that get pitted against eachother to determine how Whachacallit and the bandit den interact. Maybe the bandit den has a named NPC associated with it. The bandits increase in power if they're lucky/have good faction stats, decrease if they don't, or get obliterated. Whatever.

To the north, a dragon has taken residence in the mountains, overlapping its sphere of influence with Whachacallit's, creating dragon raid events on Whachacallit's towns. Queue adventurer seeking.

To the south, Whachacallit has another Kingdom, Overthereland, it overlaps with, and they have minor skirmishes and border disputes bordering on an escalation to war.

To the west, Whachacallit has an upstart cult problem, the cult of Evilbadness founded by Douchewizard in order to resurrect Scarydemon. Maybe Scarydemon has the artifact sword Redhotpoker. The cult gets lucky, grows in influence, turns into a rebellion, eventually resurrects Scarydemon and splitting the kingdom in two.

And all of that has been procedurally generated and changing all the time, based on chance/comparative faction strengths/player actions. Players have to be able to partake in basically all of these things, on either side. Start a bandit den, join the bandits, murder the bandits. Start a cult, join a cult, inquisitorially purge a cult. Grab settlers, go out and found a town, burn down a town. Eventually a kingdom. Fight wars, take over kingdoms. Dungeon-crawling, solo or small party, all the way up to wars at the strategic scale. Different displays and rules for each, of course, because the same thing that handles one will not work for the other. Need to be separate minigames.

Also a lot of other things I'd want; interesting NPC generation, interesting magic item generation (no, not +3 flaming swords and +4 cold swords, more Tome style. Relatively big bonuses that are interesting and unique). Generating interesting locations in cities. Maybe some really freaky character types/flexible character generation rules. Humans to titans, liches, vampires, whatever.

Then, to top all that off, some modding tools for dropping in hard-coded quests and hard-coded NPC's and events (that's how you'd do the 'main quest,' which the game invariably has to have).

I'm insane, I know.