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Well, tis being an odd mixture of times for me. After two years and 1 month since my father passed, we finally wrapped up the estate, sold the family house. My life is pretty much now in a 100 sq ft storage unit, and I'm renting a room while I do the hunt for my first house. Having a little debate on the potential for putting up insulated / powered summerhouse/workshop in the garden of wherever I end up buying. Once that's done.. slowly unpack and figure out where my life is going. Also doing that slight mental replay where one of my closest friends just killed our 15 odd-year friendship and I have no idea what actually happened or drove them to that decision. So that's a little odd. Still, adapting and figuring it out. I guess now I'm not having to deal with all the things on my evenings and weekends, I can possibly start catching up on books and computer games and tv shows and wotnot....

Xenonauts 2 is fully released and is glorious.

Pilot was rescued apparently. Firefight with armed Iranian civilians too. Although with the Americans, they may have gunned down people needlessly. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/05/iran-f15-crew-member-rescued https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/us/politics/military-iran-airman-rescue.html "The mission to save the crew member employed hundreds of special forces troops, dozens of U.S. warplanes, helicopters, and cyber, space and other intelligence capabilities. U.S. attack aircraft dropped bombs and opened fire on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the area where the airman was hiding. As U.S. forces converged on the downed airman, a firefight erupted, two former senior military officials briefed on the operation said. The airman was equipped with a beacon and a secure communication device for coordinating with forces mounting the rescue. A senior U.S. military official described the mission to rescue the airman as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. special operations. In a final twist after the weapons officer was rescued, two transport planes that would carry the commandos and the airmen to safety got stuck at a remote base in Iran. Commanders decided to fly in three new planes to extract all the U.S. military personnel and the airmen, and they blew up the two disabled planes rather than have them fall into Iranian hands." So movie in, what, a year or two ?

Photos: Behind-the-scenes images taken by NASA's Artemis II crew : The Picture Show : NPR

Thanks, Hawke64, I will pass this on

No, I would just try it out with the help of the console. It also depends on the amount of your CON and if you have stuff like Tough, an Amulet of Greater Health, damage resistance from items like Death's Maw, Voidward and food (Rice for example) etc.

I saw it before the title edit, and started wheeze-laughing around 20 seconds in and never quite stopped. He did pretty good at staying in chr/straight-face plus his jabs at DLSS 5, heh.

Crimson Desert - EDIT - TLDR - my love/hate relationship with the game continues, basically. There really are 10/10 moments, most of the time it's a 7, and then there are the 4/10 moments/aspects. Heh. --- I think I'm a little past half-way the Main Quest - which is nowhere near "completion" of game content, mind. I might stop there for a while and just go my own way for as long as I'm able. I'm beginning to really dislike the MQ and their steps. It's boring/repetitive and hugely time-wasting re: back and forth. You can't skip-speed dialogues (only FFWD in cutscenes) and sometimes it goes on and on. The sky-Abyss puzzling is also annoying over time, even while visually/design amazing at times. --- Kliff, so far, has developed zero personality. He mostly grunts, outside of some MQ dialogues. eg, I find him easy to ignore, he's just a blank avatar while you're running around exploring. --- the poster-bounties are so not worth it because you have to take a criminal back to a faction's jail by foot or horseback. Can't teleport. And some of them are REALLY FAR AWAY. I spent an hour plus looking for a (horse) safe/non-hostile path back, once. And if you don't do them, the posters stay in your inventory forever, can't even drop them. I stopped looking at/picking up those posters. --- the 2 other playable characters, one issue is increasing their skills and refining their gear to high levels takes away from increasing the others skills/gears, because you'd need triple the resources and special Abyss skill stone thingies AND the socket "gems" to do all three equally. Maybe you can get there post-MQ with grind, but most aren't going to want to do that initially/for a long time. You're gonna mostly focus/stick on Kliff, because Kliff is the MQ One. --- what this game does well is have so many different things/systems to do and ways to do it, that players can decide what the game is, for them. I mean, technically, after chapt 6 or so, which is around where I am (I've also heard chapt. 9, if you're into the other playable chrs), you could largely ignore the MQ for 200 hours if you really wanted, etc.

One thing that nobody warns you about when you get a job in the gaming industry is just how many meetings there are. There’re daily standups, gate reviews, sprint meetings, post-mortems, sign-offs, bridge meetings, war rooms, and the list goes on and on. But one of the most important meetings is called Triage. It generally occurs on a daily or weekly cadence, depending on what part of the dev cycle you are in. This is where Production, Design, Engineering, and QA get together and discuss the latest bugs. We go over each bug written since the last Triage and decide as a group how important the bug is, who is going to fix it, and when they need to fix it by. There are three main ways that this is measured. Severity: How bad the bug is, in the eyes of the user. Priority: How soon a bug should be fixed. Repro Rate: How hard, or easy, is it to run into the bug? How likely are players to see it? This is usually measured in attempts. For example, a crash bug could happen 100% of the time, or it could only happen under very specific conditions. And one thing that is easy to forget when you’re lost in a sea of bugs, is the scale of the audience. Sure, only 10% of the testers may experience a specific issue. But 8% of the modern AAA audience is hundreds of thousands of players. You would think, with that in mind, anything that affects at least 5% of players would be treated as a serious concern. But what if I told you that while only 0.5% of women are color-blind, 8% of men are? And how many modern games have color-blind filters? The answer is not nearly enough. Accessibility features are about giving players the tools they need to enjoy the game in whichever way works best for them. If you can add color-blind filters (https://colorblindgames.com/2021/03/29/colorblind-gaming-101-the-basics/) that’s roughly 5% more potential sales. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 85% of Americans under 18 play video games at least once a week. That comes out to 205 million players in the US alone. Five percent of which, comes to 8,000,000 people. Multiple that by $60 and we’re talking serious money. So why, in a world where the dollar drives everything, are accessibility features not standard? Why are so many developers leaving so many potential players behind? It would be easy for me to blame big bad CEO’s or shareholders for the problem. But the reality is, it’s not malicious. Like most issues in life, it’s more ignorance than anything else. People just aren’t as informed on the subject as they could be. But that is starting to change. The industry is starting to come around and they are making serious investments in multiple ways. (alt text: Ishihara test was invented to measure color blindness. The image above uses different shades to create the image of Toadstool from Super Mario Bros) source: Obsidian has been leading the way for longer than most. Well before it was “cool” to make accessible games, titles like Pillars of Eternity (2013) were giving players multiple color-blind filters, detailed difficulty options, and a large suite of audio/video settings to let players decide what “good” looks like. Back in 2020 Grounded introduced the Arachnophobia filter. A setting that is now becoming default in many horror/survivor games. Hogwarts Legacy added it, but only after NorskPL released a community mod for the setting. My favorite is actually from the most recent version, Grounded 2. Can you detect the feature? It’s one of the first things you see when you start the game. (alt text: Screenshot of Grounded 2 main menu showing custom face button graphics used to inform the player where on the face the button is located.) Many of you probably pointed to the Accessibility shortcut. And that is a great example of mindful design. How do you expect people to turn on the accessibility features if they need the accessibility features enabled to get to the accessibility features? But that’s not my favorite. My new favorite is the A and Y buttons. Notice what’s different? I bet you Xbox Certification noticed that these are not authorized representations of the face buttons on an Xbox controller. But I love that they saw through the rule to find the intent. Instead of confusing players, these actually provide more information. It’s a tiny change that can have a big impact. Heck, I’m not even color-blind and these helped me after I spent the previous few weeks playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where the A and B buttons are swapped. And that’s the key to accessibility features. Not telling players how to play, but providing the options for them to play how they want to play. And they are not alone. The industry as a whole has finally seen the benefits of expanding their games and tearing down walls. For example: the Entertainment Software Association (a trade association representing the major video game developers and publishers across the industry) recently rolled out their Accessible Games Initiative. They are leading by example and starting with updating their storefronts to include Accessibility Tags. Much like you can browse by genre or feature, now you can filter games by which ones support the accessibility features you care the most about. (alt text: A black background with brightly colored stickers in the shapes of Xbox icons and accessibility products like prosthetic legs, wheelchairs, and seeing eye dogs.) And they are not alone. A whole market is forming around consulting, reviewing, and teaching about accessibility. People are getting together and demanding “Never about us, without us.” From Accessibility Labs, a startup in Tempe, AZ of former QA professionals passionate about Accessibility testing. To Microsoft’s Xbox Accessibility Guidelines, requirements that titles they publish must meet. But Tommy, I’m a developer and I want to do better. How can I make sure everyone is able to enjoy my hard work? Well, I’m glad you asked, imaginary developer person. Because while I’m passionate about the subject, I also acknowledge I’m just as ignorant as most. But together, we can work towards fighting that ignorance, in our own minds, and in others. Even the smallest changes, like the button prompts above, can have a huge impact. Bring on Accessibility experts during your design phase, don’t wait until you’re about to launch. Don’t be like so many others before you that designed fully fleshed out UI’s that rely on a cursor to navigate. Only to find out down the road this is not very accessible for people with fine motor issues. Making these changes during the design phase will save you thousands, if not millions, of dollars down the line. Embrace your lack of knowledge and seek out the experts. There are resources available to developers of all shapes and sizes. Are you a small developer that wants to do better, but just doesn’t know where to start? Support other independent gamers like Accessibility Labs. Have a good idea of what you want to do, but want to make sure you aren’t forgetting anything? Check out Microsoft’s Xbox Accessibility Guidelines. Want to support the effort in other ways? Reach out to AbleGamers, who have been fighting this fight for over 20 years. Enjoy this article and want to know more? Check out Derek Gruber on Seattle Indie’s Accessibility Awareness Month episode. The last thing I want to do is trivialize game and UX design. Accessibility is just one of countless aspects that must be considered when designing a game and it’s UI. What’s most important is that you are making the effort. Instead of asking why you should add an option, ask why you shouldn’t. When in doubt, trust the player to decide what is best for themselves. Not every feature is going to be a home run. But as long as we, as a community, are working towards improving, the rising tide will raise all ships. Sources & Resources Game Developer - Nintendo, Microsoft, EA and others unite to make accessibility messaging a priority Washington Post - Accessibility option in survival game ‘Grounded’ turns my arachnophobia into a thrill Colorblind Games - Colorblind Gaming 101: The Basics Mashable - Video games taught me I was colorblind but it's not always a friendly lesson Nexus Mods - Arachnophobia mode Seattle Indies - Accessibility Awareness Month Interview Series: Steve Saylor and Derek Gruber Able Gamers - Combating Social Isolation Through Play Accessibility Labs Microsoft - Xbox Accessibility Guidelines Entertainment Software Association (ESA) - Entertainment Software Association Introduces the Accessible Games Initiative to Provide Players with Information About Accessibility Features in Video Games

No they aren't identical, but the same can be said of any two wars. Iran has a larger population, more territory, a (veteran) standing national army with trained officers, and it is likely to receive aid from Russia and China. Long term, US casualties are likely to be higher in an invasion and partial occupation of Iran. It will also have more pronounced economic impacts. Finally, the Afghan War had the support of the US population; this one does not. The big question is how long would an invasion force have to remain?

But Afghanistan was a different war for a different reason with a different long-term US objective You have to try to differentiate US\Western conflicts to analyze outcomes objectively Iran is not the same on almost every level as Afghanistan

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. If you liked Vampyr you need to play this. Basically the same gameplay, but polished a bit more. Story and atmosphere is really good. Enemy variety is poor, but some good boss battles.

Possessor(s) I like this loading screen - it is an amusing thought that the NPC buddy drags the MC's corpse back to the checkpoint. I'd think we'd have better luck with the regular explosives, but sure, let's go find 4 people in a large city and pluck out their eyes. This was not an eye. The Land of the Magnates As the store page states, the game is "harnessing the power of Unreal Engine 5". The "power" was not enough to match the NPC portraits with the models. Is he suggesting succeeding Arthas-style? Recital Of The Heart Playtest Very realistic reasoning. Every time I see RNG in dialogues and the panel being on the side, I blame Disco Elysium. It is a demo, by the way. The full version currently costs more than I am willing to pay for the perpetual annoyance of the poor UI. I have small hopes that the developers might fix it.