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Stop Listening to Wallpaper Engine, People
54 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about current Game Pass games, a pinch of Destiny, Dota 2 and Dave's participation in Mage League, movement tech in video games, and have an unhinged rant about Wallpaper Engine in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Kirby 64 - The Crystal Shards - Rock Star [Map] Theme
Outro:
- Kirby 64 - The Crystal Shards - Rock Star Theme
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Transcript
Introduction and Pleasantries
00:00:27
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I'm of two minds, two wolves. On one hand, I was supposed to order and get medication early in the week, which is already some days behind.
00:00:50
Speaker
I just don't want to have it by the end of the week. So I'm starting to feel some of these side effects of that. Uh, so that kind of sucks. On the other hand, I got a fresh cut. That's fair. I mean, I'm not going to judge people's decision to participate or not participate in circumcision at any point in their life.
00:01:11
Speaker
Um, well, I mean, they didn't do a good enough job the first time around. I was like, all right, I'll come back in for second appointment of different Moyle. Obviously. Yes. Um, but now haircut looks good. Thank you. Everyone you'll take his word for it. I guess mine too. What we'll do is we'll just have a completely blank faced, no expression, no emotion.
00:01:38
Speaker
whitewashed background, just headshot of you as the episode in cover for the week. People will be looking through the list of episodes on whatever your favorite podcast is. Different colors of soapstone. Dave's face. They could recover.
00:02:01
Speaker
Probably not, I look like shit. No, no, I think it would be fine. We actually, we used to have different art. It didn't make the migration with us through several platforms, but some of our earlier episodes, we had like straight up copyright infringement, I think, now that I'm thinking about it, like game cover art and stuff like that, I think for Doom and some other stuff. The very first one, I believe, was actually just full photoshopped. It was like a...
00:02:30
Speaker
like a coffee shop or a bar or something like that. And I think we had icons like from the game just on the cover. There's a lot of effort.
00:02:46
Speaker
It actually wasn't a lot of effort. It was any effort, and that was too much.
Understanding Podcast Analytics
00:02:50
Speaker
So we learned our lesson. Oh, can we start by talking about some stuff that's out on Game Pass? Sure. Because I feel like some people might, oh, check out the episode of the intro. We'll listen for like two minutes and then fuck off. Right. Because granted, I do that for a lot of things.
00:03:06
Speaker
That's our analytics is we have 100 percent start rate and then by like five minutes in we're like 20 percent. It's like 15 percent. Yeah. People are here to say hello. That's not true. I don't have analytics for anything other than listen.
00:03:23
Speaker
Right, but I feel like sometimes we talk about this at like the very end. Oh, yeah, we also forget to. But I will say for any game passers out there, this is me just looking at what I haven't sold currently.
Game Pass Highlights
00:03:35
Speaker
Some things to maybe check out. Nowhere Heroes 3.
00:03:39
Speaker
I heard it's not the best. Right. But I also haven't played it. I can't really say. And I like the first two games to a degree. So I'm curious to check it out. Hifi Rush still on there. Supposedly a very good game. I haven't played too much of it. Harold Halibut.
00:03:57
Speaker
seems to be a point and click puzzle adventure, but it's all done in claymation. So for somebody who grew up on Wallace and Gromit and a certain, the one specific scene in like Zaboomafu where he goes like visiting his friends.
00:04:15
Speaker
I like claymation it's really cool and it's insane the amount of time that goes into it and then also have it not look like shit impressive um so that seems cool cassette beasts
00:04:30
Speaker
I saw a friend play. You know, it seems cool. I know nothing else about it, really glowing, glowing mediocrity. There's Frog Detective, the entire mystery. Oh, this is like. A baby's puzzle solving game, but there's a weird arm to it where if you want to like stream it, you might get some giggles.
00:04:59
Speaker
Control which we had an episode on way back that game is still still so fucking good. It's really good game If I remember correctly, it's like the ultimate edition or something like that. Also again, it's just like everything. Oh
00:05:14
Speaker
Wait, did I install the wrong edition? I'm not entirely I'm gonna I'm gonna do this because I am actually looking at the Oh, no, I can't search for control because touch controls is in this. What if I search for ultimate? Pillars of eternity battlefield Dragon Age Star Wars Battlefront, okay
00:05:31
Speaker
So if I go to it, it says play, which makes it seem like I have it installed. Um, but on the left, it just shows control standard edition. Hmm. Uh, yeah. Not sure how you did that. Um, because yeah, I'm looking at it on the game pass master list and controls installed add-ons for it. So I'm sure that's it.
The Forbidden Game Talk
00:05:50
Speaker
Um, uh, yeah, yeah, that's probably all it is. But anyways, it's just the game of the year edition or whatever the crap it's, it's all the DLC.
00:05:59
Speaker
Um, but I've been playing through some of that again for shits and gigs. Um, and I just started playing a little bit of another crabs treasure, which is supposed to be like a cute crab souls. Like Dave just specifically told me before we started, he's like, Hey, we're not talking about this game today. That's future content. That's saying anything about it. And then immediately just drops the package on the table and starts tearing into it.
00:06:28
Speaker
That's fair do I get do it should I pick something? Yeah, if you got some stuff that you know is out on game past the people might be interested in I haven't played it yet bolt gun heard good things about that shooter Space engineers friend of the show AJ Has put a million hours in that I think give or take not sure what that is a hated space games. I
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, but specifically, I know there's a lot of time on that. I put a bunch of time in man eater, which is like, if you need a cleanser game where you just want to like kill people as a shark, we've all been there. You know, it seems like a fun sandbox type thing.
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's not, I'm not gonna say it's a great game, but it is a good game and it's not that long and it has a couple really cool tracks when you activate special modes and stuff, but that's all fun. The one I'm looking forward to though,
00:07:26
Speaker
I didn't even realize Far Cry 6. I considered buying Far Cry 6 several times, but apparently it's just on Game Pass. There's a lot. If you don't have Game Pass, enumerate your reasons at this point. Senua is coming out next month.
00:07:45
Speaker
the second. I'm pretty I'm pretty excited for that. That's a day one game pass edition. I will say I do have a degree of concern or just skepticism because the bachelors are masters. Oh, a degree degree of concern. I don't know.
00:08:09
Speaker
But yeah, like there was the initial trailer where they showed like, Hey, here's what a cut scene can look like. And I was like, wow, all this fucking bad ass. And then they had some like tour of the studio type thing. I think like that's it. Um, I don't remember them showing any gameplay or anything. I'm sure it will be good. Yeah. I just want, I want it to be really good. Cause I have a lot of strong ties to the first one. You're inked. Huh?
00:08:39
Speaker
I guess you don't, you don't have a Senua tattoo, but you do have the cosplay, which is just about it. I don't anymore. That was in the last department in the closet. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Anyway, Steve's not a real fan. That's basically what we're saying here. I can't even name all of the levels. No one can. They're just, they're just the stages of grief. I think I do. I am curious though, because there's two different ways you can go. If a game is not really showing you.
00:09:08
Speaker
a lot. It could be like, hey, we don't really need to prove ourselves to you. This is going to be something you experience on the way through. We don't want to spoil it. I can respect that. That's kind of like the movie take, right? Like not giving away all the main plot beats in a trailer.
00:09:26
Speaker
But it can take a long time to make, and there's a lot of ways to screw it up. So it is kind of a good idea to give people an idea of what they're opting into. I mean, Game Pass kind of steps around that, because if Hellblade 2 is a mess, we're like, dang. But we didn't spend 60 bucks on it. Yeah. Or 70. Or more if you're in consoles. Or like $5,000 if you're in Australia.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully it's good though. Yeah, I'd love to
00:10:01
Speaker
At the end of the year, if it's like a game of the game awards, game of the year type thing, I would love to have an internal struggle to pick between so many things. Yeah. But typically, at least the past couple of years, it's been like, Hey, here are two major, like groundbreaking, like took the world by storm titles. And the other thing is like, we're indie games are just like a triple A thing that is triple A and that's it. Like it's not standout-ish by any means. They're like, Hey, we made a new version of this game.
00:10:32
Speaker
I think I have to disagree a little bit. Like I think some really absolutely tremendous games have come out and probably more than ever have. It's just, there's also been really overhyped mediocre trash that just gets dropped on us. And so it feels like there's fewer things, but like, I mean, even just from soft.
00:10:57
Speaker
has been popping off over the last couple of years between Elden Ring and Armored Core and all that jazz. Yeah, remember the like, hey, we're doing Elden Ring. We're like, oh, OK. Then we got to get started on the DLC, right? They're like, hold on, we need to drop another game quick. I'm like, what? Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:17
Speaker
No, there definitely have been a lot of good games. What I was trying to say, and I think failed too, was I would love to have a huge list to select from at the end where every game is good versus some that are just going to be very mediocre. I guess that's fair. And some of that might just be my taste. Because obviously, there's certain things I like, certain things I don't like. And they honestly could be fine games. And I'm not trying to take anybody else from that.
00:11:48
Speaker
I would love just straight bangers. No chaff. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. I think the last factor is we also don't engage as widely across a ton of games. Game Pass honestly helps a little bit because you can just try something out and then chuck it in the bin or install it and never launch it. It's turning into my Steam library is what it's doing. And that's not even going to benefit me because the games will rotate out at some point.
00:12:18
Speaker
I feel like there should be some degree of tracking
Gaming Habits and Steam Tracking
00:12:20
Speaker
for like games that you've installed and not played or like games you've installed and only played like 20 minutes of type thing. That exists for Steam. There are websites because Steam tracks your playtime for all games and it can be available through the public API if you like make your profile public.
00:12:38
Speaker
And so it'll tell you, like, here is your list of games that you've never played. And you could just watch the count go up as the years pass. Although I don't, I honestly don't buy a whole ton on Steam anymore.
00:12:54
Speaker
I say that, but I have recently purchased probably like two or three games that I've barely put time into or not launched at all. Oh, thank you for the game, by the way. Is that the second one? Oh, no, I don't have the intention to play that immediately. I think the last one I bought, though, was Last Epoch. Yeah. Which is, I mean, if you had to buy a game. Make it one that you can get, you can make a podcast episode out of it, right? That's been my rule.
00:13:24
Speaker
Which is why I'm sad that I picked up Ollie Frog Toad Skater demo. Yeah, so Game Pass popping off. It's still a really good value. Stuff will also have a nice death is showing up in the near future as well. I've heard good things about that. Should be this month, yeah.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, the stuff that's left Game Pass recently. We can talk about other things in a second, but I just wanna mention like,
00:14:00
Speaker
This is the counter argument is that it doesn't stick around forever, but it gives you plenty of time to take a shot at it, right? So the stuff that's been rotating out was there for like two years. There was the amnesia collection, Soma, which we definitely did an episode on. We did an episode on Soma. We had Soma. And it's still great. Dave made a Soma reference in
00:14:23
Speaker
Discord recently and I was like I pointed it was the Leonardo DiCaprio meme. It was like I know that I know I know that that's referencing Back for blood. I don't remember this Really? It had to do with Creating shallow copies or switching your mind around or something like that I can't remember the exact reference, but I as soon as I saw you mentioned some I was like, yeah, yeah, that's exactly exactly it
00:14:53
Speaker
Um, but yeah, honestly, I think if someone were to want to get into PC gaming, I, I mean, install steam obviously, but you know, maybe pick stuff up on sales, but you could kind of just have a lot of really, really good games on game pass. So hopefully they don't jack it up to $50 anytime soon.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think if you're just starting out, like Steam has free games or a lot of good games that go on sale pretty frequently. Like some of the stand out classics, like let's say Portal 1, for example. Epic is still having free games that will come by and you can just be like, oh, I'm going to grab that.
00:15:39
Speaker
And install it and never touch it, but you still have it. It doesn't cycle out like game pass. Right. There's still humble bundles. There's, there's so many places for you to get games where.
00:15:53
Speaker
Nine times out of ten, is it going to have the latest and greatest? No. If you want something like that, you can use something like Game Pass. And even Game Pass is not going to have all of the latest titles. It will have a good portion. Although they do have more than I would. I would still use Game Pass even if it didn't have the same number that it had. Maybe it would have taken me a little bit longer to get on board.
00:16:15
Speaker
But like day one release for star field or sinua or anything like that. It's kind of it's kind of big It's kind of the reason i'm saving a lot of money Yeah, but like for example, I want to play alan like two. Yeah, and that's not on game pass on game pass yet yet But it probably will be because i'm gonna wait at this point
00:16:34
Speaker
And obviously control was, which is also remedy. So yeah, I'm also in the gonna wait boat. If you can, like, if you can survive the wave of spoilers as other people have completed the game and news articles have moved on to other things, you can safely reemerge.
00:16:52
Speaker
Into the public that's like I like when the zeitgeist shifts off something that I want to wait on Mm-hmm, so I don't have to like worry about going to YouTube seeing a one recommended video and then something spoiled like motherfucker Yeah, yeah Yeah, that's kind of been the case on Something we'll talk about in a future episode. We'll just leave it with the teaser where it's just like I
00:17:17
Speaker
It's not a big piece of information, but I just did have something spoiled. It's hard to get around it, especially when everybody's in content creation and it's just like, how do I get eyes on my thing?
00:17:34
Speaker
Dave raised his eyebrows? I feel like maybe I said something. No, no, you're good. I mean, I was on Twitch earlier today to see part of Mango's stream, but like I saw in like the main page like, hey, here's streamers playing this game that you want to play and check out. And I'm like, well, I can't really do it. Like even when Zero Lenny had a video on
00:17:58
Speaker
the Archthrones mod for Dark Souls 3, which I'm sure I've talked about to you off podcasts and at least on here once. I'm like, oh, that looks cool.
00:18:09
Speaker
But I had to stop it because I don't want to see too much content. Exactly. Like obviously he's not going to show everything, but I want some of those certain like big aha moments. I want those to land. Yeah. And I don't want to have prior knowledge. Otherwise we're going to be like, yep, we saw that already. Yeah. It's the stuff that's going to be the hot points for his video. The stuff that's most interesting to see will also be the stuff that's most interesting to see. So that's kind of the issue with, um, with stuff like that. That's one of the reasons I like the, um,
00:18:39
Speaker
channels like Mandalore's is he'll have like a light spoiler section generally at the front where he'll like talk about gameplay you'll see some of it like yeah maybe some minor things will be spoiled but specifically he's not gonna talk about like how the story develops until after a spoiler alert so you have a point where you can just like pause the video and be like yeah I'm never gonna play this
00:19:10
Speaker
It's it's good to have the option Yeah, I I was watching some of his content recently because he keeps putting out new stuff motherfucker But I really I know he says before I'll say it again Um, I will blow his horn wink for him but he really goes into depth on certain things about like the game feel
00:19:36
Speaker
Right. Like I've never heard anybody else talk about like and here's how they handled sound design and here's the parts where it excels versus here's some parts that are really bland or they're not balanced correctly. I remember one thing he had very high praise for as far as the aesthetics was.
00:19:56
Speaker
Oh, it's gone forever. Yeah, that was a lie. You lied to me. You lied to all of these people. It's an isometric mech shooter. You know, like different types of mechs and you want a mission or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. Was that right? Yeah. It's something. It's something door that is. Troubadour is incorrect because that's like the word for a bard, but it's it's a word like that.
00:20:26
Speaker
All that said, um, I do appreciate him going in depth on some of that. Yeah. Um, I'm going to figure this game out, even if Brigadier, there we go. Brigadier. That sounds more correct. Yes. I was like, Troubadour is not it. That ain't it.
00:20:48
Speaker
Also, if I somehow am away from the mic a little bit, it's because the dog has laid next to my chair, therefore pushing my chair and it's resonating. We have real time audio next here in the form of your dog. We're going to get like a surround sound Dave effect as he spins back and forth to the left and right of the mic. Yeah, I've been checking out any games recently outside of the normal stuff.
00:21:17
Speaker
I mean, I've been playing the games that I, some stuff that I'll probably save for a future episode if it materializes, but also Destiny, which I did a search when we were, the last guest episode with a special guest, Justin, we had, at a point we're just like, yeah, this is just the Destiny
Teamwork in Destiny: A Positive Experience
00:21:40
Speaker
episode, right? That was the conceit. I went back through to figure out like,
00:21:46
Speaker
whether we had used the tracks I was going to pick or not. And the word destiny shows up in so many, so many summaries of podcasts. I feel like we talk about the game a lot, but part of it is probably because I very rarely stop playing it for an extended period of time. Make sure to join it, keep at it. Yeah, it's nice to have a,
00:22:14
Speaker
Oh, I can at least play this. Yeah. I'm not going to nerd out on everything we already covered. People can only stay in so much Destiny time. But I did have a pub match. They actually added a group finder functionality at some point. So you can be like, oh, you want to do this specific activity? Rather than going to the app, which is the way you had to do it before, you can stay in the game and do a party finder.
00:22:40
Speaker
And I was doing the onslaught, that new activity on legend difficulty, which is basically like, it's kind of like a raid difficulty for three people. It's really hard. And I had a couple misses where it's just like we died pretty early. And then the group immediately disbanded. But I ended up with these two guys that
00:23:04
Speaker
We got pretty far, but more importantly, everyone like said hi in chat and then like they were pretty positive. They were like remarking about funny things that happened. Like somebody just loaded in, ran forward, right into a pit and just instantly died. And we were all like, yep, been there and stuff like that. I walked back and revived them. But like the event takes like an hour to full clear. And we spent, we got really close to the end.
00:23:33
Speaker
What were you saying? Sorry. That seems long. It is. It is really long. I actually kind of wish it was a bit shorter because an hour for one thing is too much. Generally, it's fatiguing. But that's to go like the full 50 defense waves and the sword mode, basically. And we got pretty far on the first one and we're like it was like midnight or so. It's like, should we go again? Like it was like 1230. I'm like, yeah, like it's a good group. We don't hate each other. Let's try one more time.
00:24:03
Speaker
And second one went like even further. We didn't complete it. I've never actually completed it, but we got really far, got a bunch of loot and everybody was happy. We all typed GG's and signed off for the night. It was nice.
00:24:17
Speaker
It's it's nice to have like a positive experience online with like complete strangers Mm-hmm papers like chill having a good time and they're looking to Be nice and have fun Versus the people who were like I'm here to win and if anybody remotely gets in the way of that or if I perceive That they might be getting in the way of that I'm gonna be a total asshole. Yeah to everybody Yeah, it's just like if the vibes are chill you can kind of just
00:24:48
Speaker
You're less likely to be frustrated when things do happen, right? Like there was times people died and it was dumb. There was times I died and it was dumb, but I wasn't upset with them because I knew that they were chill and they weren't upset with me because they knew that I was chill or maybe that's the reverse. Um, but there was less pressure because of that. We're just playing a game, doing our best if we get really far cool. But regardless, we're getting rewards along the way. So.
00:25:17
Speaker
Wasn't bad nuts. That's why you do it. The rewards. You do it for the wards. I think that's pretty much the only game I played recently. I think that is not in spoiler is not in redacted territory potentially to be covered in a future episode. So what about yourself?
00:25:41
Speaker
Retacked I mean we've talked about this a little bit before finally did get around to
00:25:50
Speaker
changing out my thermal paste. That was a fun day. Somehow bricked my computer for six hours because it didn't think one of the cables was connected even though it was. All that to say, I was able to get further in Ghost Runner 2 because it didn't overheat and just turn off the machine.
00:26:11
Speaker
That's always good. That's been fun. Definitely haven't finished it yet. Keep getting sidetracked by other things, such as going back and playing some control. Oh, you're playing control again. Nice. Yeah, a little bit. Since it's all on a different platform, it's going to be all new stuff as far as it's not going to have previous save state. I don't even want any of that. Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
And my brain, it's been long enough that I've forgotten everything. But like I started thinking something like, oh yeah, it does kind of ring a bell. The game's also fairly abstract. So it's like, I find abstract games don't tend to stick around in the old noggin as long from a memorization standpoint. Control was like, there's just some nonsense happening and you're getting nonsense items and fighting nonsense enemies.
00:27:14
Speaker
It's still really good. Again, very much recommend it for anybody who's interested. And of course, Mainstay has been Dota 2. We're now starting, or already have started, Mage League Season 2.
00:27:31
Speaker
Uh, I'm saying the name of it because technically you can look it up as like its own league. It is registered and all that jazz. Oh, we have different teams on there. Um, we have not started our games yet, as far as the placement stuff where we kind of play against everybody at least once and then see what the seed order is going to be for the extra tournament. Um, so right now I'm still at a like positive and optimistic, but like maybe after we've had these two games next week, I'll be like,
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe I'll lose some of that gusto. Yeah. I mean, hopefully not. And hopefully it's still fun. I know that, like, during the previous league, I know you had a lot of fun matches there. They were fun to watch. You got the opportunity to spectate a couple of them. Yeah. I think one of the things that is fun about it is it's someone will typically stream it.
00:28:30
Speaker
And usually there'll be several people who are going to be in that voice channel and kind of doing some commentating and obs. Because even though like you're not playing, you kind of want to know how the other teams are doing. You want to be able to keep up on the memes of things that happen. Yeah, it's just it's a good social thing. Yeah, for sure.
00:29:01
Speaker
No, that's entirely fair. The only recommendation I have for this pass through is don't have a muted stream for the commentator. Although I know it was because there was no one actually in the commentating scene. Funny enough, you should mention that. There was a game on Thursday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thursday. And somebody joined the OBS channel.
00:29:30
Speaker
to say like, Hey, um, your streams, you've been muted the whole time and this is one of the tell you, but I'm telling you and he's like, Oh, okay. Apparently everybody else is coming through except for the actual person is streaming it. So, I mean, technical stuff can still happen. Um, but yeah, meme on them for it for sure. Oh yeah.
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the rare opportunities. You know you've made it when you can play a league in Dota, right? That's the thing. We've just got enough people around our bracket, like we've played against in actual games, and then they get added like, do you want to play against us again sometime in like a more formal fashion?
00:30:11
Speaker
I have fortunately, I was trying to make a joke, but I couldn't frame it right without making it grammatically incorrect. So the better joke may be, you know, you've made it when you can play league in Dota. Yeah. It is what it is. Um, yeah, no, it should be good. That's fair. And I'm all I'm, I'm a hundred percent with you. We've talked about it before, but like.
00:30:40
Speaker
I mean, I would say your comfort game is Dota, but also you're going out and meeting new people, recruiting people for your team, all of that jazz to pursue it. I'm not doing that in Destiny as much, but it is, it is my comfort slot right now where it's just like, you get a little gun.
00:30:57
Speaker
Oh my god. I'll tell one other Destiny anecdote because this is the fun gun that I have in trying to find all of these, you know, whatever god rolls and things like that through the event. But one of them is the mountain top.
00:31:15
Speaker
which is a grenade launcher that does reduce self damage, which is kind of a big deal. And you can get this with sticky grenades. And if you get a build, if you get perks and stuff that lets it reload really fast, you can put so many sticky grenades in one spot. So what happens is the first one that detonates detonates all of them. You just die, actually.
00:31:39
Speaker
it's actually not possible to survive it outside of very special circumstances. A couple of them, and you'll launch pretty far, seven of them, and you will 100% just die.
00:31:55
Speaker
unless you super so what you can do with this is just stack seven grenades as rapidly as possible hit the super button as fast as possible and then just launch across the entire map horizontally towards whatever the skybox is because that's what you're gonna hit it is just
00:32:19
Speaker
a tremendous expense of resources to drop your super on this, but it's just very funny and I love it. I like how Destiny keeps introducing things where it's like, hey, accidental movement tech, that's going to break some stuff like, fuck, we didn't we didn't account for this. I mean, they know they're on the way out. Probably not. But in either case,
00:32:43
Speaker
This was a gun people could have gotten a while ago, but, um, it's available in this, this event. It's basically, it's the best gun for rocket jumping. There's nothing even close. Um, so it's a fun time. That's it. That's my last destiny anecdote. Um, I just, I love that things like rocket jumping exist because people just found an exploit in the game at some point. They're like, Oh, well, I can do this.
00:33:11
Speaker
And then it became mainstream. Yeah. Like everybody knows what it is. You can still do it in a lot of games, but anything can kind of give you that extra distance or elevation. Finding a way to kind of, I don't want to say abuse it, but kind of leverage it in games is always fun.
00:33:30
Speaker
Because as we said before. Was it a pun? Leverage? No. No? Okay. That's fine. Well, rocket jumping. I'm a slow brain for this. No, no. I mean, maybe it's not the, maybe it wouldn't have been a strong pun anyway, so it wasn't worth derailing, but you know, leverage to a sand or something like that. But yeah, rocket jumping. It's fine. I shouldn't have called it out. I regret it. Trebuchet. Cut this point. Cut this. Cut it. All right. I'm going to do the clap.
00:33:56
Speaker
Agree though. I I love that like I think a perfect example. I mean obviously I think rocket jumping was Maybe slightly possible in doom, but I don't know why you do it. It definitely became more of a thing in quake and It's been
00:34:13
Speaker
you know, a staple in a lot of shooters since then, especially kind of like more arcadey kind of shooters and things like that, like TF2. Yeah. Easy, easy answer. Like even before they had the rocket jumper specific rocket launcher that like doesn't deal damage when you shoot enemies with it, but doesn't hurt you when you jump. Like people were using rocket launchers.
00:34:37
Speaker
Very effectively and like soldier is like I don't know if he's required or not But I know he's part of the standard team composition and like competitive TF2 and he literally probably wouldn't be if not for the fact that he could rocket jump So it's really cool that that's kept alive because it makes no sense
00:35:04
Speaker
Well, it's just like a fun as a player, like you have a game, you have certain game constraints. And anytime you feel like you're going outside the bounds of it, it feels I shouldn't be here. And it feels kind of fun, like you're somehow you've outsmarted the devs. Right. Yeah, that was the that's where skating came from and tribes for I think it was Star Sheeds tribes. Really old one.
00:35:35
Speaker
The, it had like these big maps with this polygonal texture. And it was meant to be, you know, this outdoors terrain and bases and vehicles and stuff like that. It had all that jazz, but
00:35:49
Speaker
they anticipated people would be like standing on hills shooting at each other and slowly approaching the other bases. And so the fast classes and the slow classes would have like these massive differences. There's suits in that game, but you get what I mean. And then someone realized that if you bunny hopped at like the right pace, friction didn't work. And now the fact that everybody has these like inclines and hills and things like that, these are ski slopes.
00:36:19
Speaker
And as soon as it was part of the game, the developers had the foresight to be like, we should never change this. Yes. Not even a little bit. The only thing they changed is rather than like really specific bunny hopping, you can just hold space bar to ski. It like turns your friction off. It gives you your, your, uh, skate boots and you can go for it.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of weird how that initially wasn't intended. But if you think about tribes in general, you're like, oh, that's the skating game. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's their thing. It's that it's been too much their identity. It's like it's the two things they're known for.
00:37:03
Speaker
Because before that, I didn't experience any type of sliding or bunny hopping outside of maybe some Unreal Tournament custom maps. Which, by the way, didn't get far in those. I wasn't good at the technique to do it. But just having that type of freedom of movement in a shooter
00:37:24
Speaker
feel so cool once you've mastered it. It's one of the reasons why like Titanfall 2 was so fucking fun. Oh, yeah. Oh, I can just do wall running shit. I can grapple and get a giant mech. It had so many fun options for the player to do. It's just. It augments the gameplay. Yes. Yeah, I agree entirely, like.
00:37:50
Speaker
And TF2, like it always comes back to TF2. So Titanfall 2, it also like, it did a really good job of, like the trick with some of this movement tech, like rocket jumping, you're reducing your own health. Titanfall, like if you're really popping off being a little gnat basically of a pilot, awesome.
00:38:15
Speaker
because if you screw up, you die instantly. All of the Titan weapons kill you instantly. If one of them punches you, you die. It's a giant mech. You're just a guy. So it really rewards that kind of gameplay, too, if you can pull it off, right? If you can rodeo a Titan, which is like pulling an energy core out of it,
00:38:43
Speaker
you can do a lot of damage to it if you can unload your anti-titan weapon without dying somehow like you're rewarded uh pretty massively and so there's people in that game that even though you were so vulnerable as a pilot they did they had such good evasion that it like they didn't use their actual titan right they'd call it down but they just leave it on autopilot and i didn't like that because it kind of like
00:39:09
Speaker
the power fantasy of being in the Titan and the executions are awesome, but I respect it even if I hate it. And then the game's better for it. Yeah. It's nice to have different points where like people can come in as, Hey, I'm a
00:39:29
Speaker
new player or kind of casual player. I'm going to play the game in like a pretty standard fashion. Yeah. I mean, you could take this for a lot of games and it's like, okay, that is going to be fine. 99% of the time. And then.
00:39:45
Speaker
at like the, the high end of people who are trying to do competitive stuff. Um, they will find those types of exploits or get really good at the existing movement and mechanics to take it that extra step further. Oh yeah. Cause like at day one, if you're like, Hey, does it, who would win a Titan or a pilot? You'd be like, Oh, Titan every time. Uh-huh. But then.
00:40:12
Speaker
as people have more time to practice and explore, and maybe the meta shifts a little bit, people figured out, oh, we can actually take down Titans. Yeah. This is actually just me going back into a, what's the eyebrow? Is this going, is this attack on Titan? Attack on Titan. Is this what it's going for?
00:40:36
Speaker
I was like, I think it is, but not 100% sure. We'll hear him out. Let him cook. Let him cook. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I like that. I like gameplay. I think they can also be really essential for like maintaining longevity within your game is having the ability to kind of like level up your skill set.
00:40:56
Speaker
Right? Like, you play Dota forever. If you ever, for some reason, felt like you absolutely mastered a hero in all of the circumstances that would actually come up, you're like, I know exactly how to itemize every time. I know how to counter all of these characters, everything like that.
00:41:15
Speaker
To the point where they started to get boring, you can just move the character selector just a little bit to the right and then just confirm and then your team will be like, any major support? Really? What is this? But it opens up an entire new dimension to what you can learn about the game.
00:41:37
Speaker
But that's kind of, cause like, I mean, even more than the other examples we've given, MOBAs can be, and Dota specifically, can be like an insanely deep sandbox where they're changing so many variables game by game that like, obviously you can play it forever. So what are you going to do?
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice to have the the shift to keep things fresh. Obviously, one of the very exciting things about doing major league and just don't in general is every so
Single vs. Multiplayer: Finding Balance
00:42:10
Speaker
often there's going to be a patch, major update, a new character. Oh, yeah. All that jazz. And it's obviously going to have cascading effects. It's nice to have games like that to kind of contrast. I want to have this nice single player experience.
00:42:26
Speaker
Cause I also really love those too. Right. Like I feel like I'm very much an introvert for the most part. Um,
00:42:34
Speaker
Like, I will do some social stuff, but then I'm like, oh, I'm done talking to people entirely. Like, if somebody messages me, I'll respond, of course. But like, I'm no longer seeking social engagement, right? Let me play a single player game for like an hour or something. Let me have one monitor focus. Dog asleep, hopefully, over there. I see you, yes. We will go pee after the episode. We all will. It'll be fine. We'll do it together. Outside.
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely good to have that, um, kind of like fall back to comfort and stuff like that. I do think it's easy. Sometimes it's a little too easy to be subsumed and, uh, sort of solar solo play comfort stuff. I'm especially kind of guilty of this. I'm the person who put up blackout curtains when I played persona five. Um, but.
00:43:32
Speaker
It is nice to have some dimension of that, the ability to retreat a little bit, not worry about whether you should or should not respond to people in discord because you're not in discord, right? Um, that can be, that can be fun too. Um, and then do you have a preference between the two? It really depends on my mood, but I will say, and this is kind of continuing what I said, I can end up in a situation where I'm almost like,
00:44:03
Speaker
anti-social is the wrong word, but it's the word that comes to mind where it's like, I'm just playing the single player game and not engaging with anyone that's around. So it is important for me specifically to sometimes step outside of myself and be like, what are other people doing? Yes, I could play a game about myself, but what if I see if someone else wants to play a game or something like that, right? Cause the social benefit is, is there society, uh, sociologists know. So.
00:44:31
Speaker
Play games with friends, that's what we're saying. Not all the time, but...
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah. So we didn't make it until after episode for the puppy to have to go out and pee. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker or just I've had pee in my carpet before and it's not fun. So we don't, we don't gamble anymore. It changes the man. It really does. Yeah. Yeah. Then somebody pissed on my car. Exactly. A true rite of passage. It's the defining life event. They don't want it to, they don't want you to know, but that's, that's what you come to us for.
00:45:10
Speaker
Um, that's a, that's a different take from us versus them. It's us versus they. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. And, and we hate pronouns. Why can't I call you by your, your God-given name? Uh-huh. Yeah. When Jesus named you. Anyways, Snoop Lion, have you heard his latest thing?
00:45:35
Speaker
But this isn't the news episode but there was one thing that happened recently and so I wanted to mention it because I don't understand it. So Fallout 4 was the most played game on Steam. That part isn't the thing I don't understand. Not a perfect game. It's got its problems.
00:45:57
Speaker
It's got a lot of them. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to sugar coat it. It's consecutive electric wind God. Um, but, uh, the thing that does surprise me was fallout 76 was eighth place on the steam most played games.
00:46:18
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you have any explanation for this. I'm willing to accept magic, extraterrestrial influence, group psychosis, fanboyism.
00:46:36
Speaker
I really do think that there are people who like a given franchise, myself included, who they experience the main title, so to speak. In my case, let's say like Dark Souls one, two, three. But then you're like, I played it, but I still have the itch. I still want more of that universe. Maybe start watching videos on lore, get your body videos.
00:47:01
Speaker
Maybe you start getting like physical stuff like merch or an Elden Ring jar Yeah, all right anyways this falls under like how I View Dark Souls 2 as of the three not my favorite, right a hot take but it would say Fallout 76 not their favorite follow cam, right? Yes, but I
00:47:29
Speaker
There's that itch to go back and check it out again because there's obviously something in it that was distinct to that game, right? Even if it wasn't good. Yeah. That was the thing that was distinct actually. It was shit. The rest were great. It's so different than the other ones. But I mean, there is something like there's a unique personality to each game. So people might be nostalgic for whatever that feeling was. Um,
00:48:02
Speaker
I don't really think that's it. Yeah, that's probably correct. Or it's like, Hey, I played all the other ones. I should play this one. Right.
00:48:09
Speaker
And this is a pretty big franchise on Steam. So it's true. It is true. I mean, how many of the top eight were Fallout games? I mean, I think those were the two. I think it was. I think it was four and Fallout 76. But I know there might have been some sale where it's like, hey, we don't want to give Bethesda money. All these games are five bucks and be like, oh, OK. I think there was actually a
00:48:36
Speaker
There was actually a sale going on on the Fallout games around the time that the show launched, which was smart.
00:48:45
Speaker
I lied. This is news that'll be disqualified when we talk about news in an upcoming episode. Speaking of that, um, there was a patch that's coming. They did come out or will come out. It came out at this point for fallout four to like fix some bugs, which is hilarious. Uh, like someone tried to put a positive spin on that and they're like, uh, good on Bethesda for continuing to fix bugs this long after the game launched. And I was like,
00:49:17
Speaker
Why do they need to fix bugs as long after the game launched when they're aware of them also? But they also added some content and uprise some stuff. I think they also increased the frame rate cap, which is good.
00:49:36
Speaker
I mean, that's probably one of the more valuable caps in the fallout series. Oh, that was funny currency thing. I watched the show. I know all the hip young fallout terms. I don't think there's any any fallout terms that you could classify as hip or young, but that's fair. OK. But
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It is just kind of crazy to see them taken off like that. Um, it looks a little bit, so I'm looking at the top five. Well,
Exploring Steam's Top Games
00:50:10
Speaker
let's look at, let's look at a longer list. Top five is a little bit reductive. Um, top played games in steam by current players.
00:50:21
Speaker
peak today? Can I sort by that? I don't know. Anyways, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Helldivers, which has been big forever. Well, since it came out. Helldivers 1 or 2? 2. I figured, but... The good clarification, yes. I don't want to spread misinformation more than we do intentionally on the podcast. Fallout 4, Stardew Valley, Apex Legends, Manor Lords, which is, I think early access game that came out. I've heard nothing about that one. The other ones I've at least heard of.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I know a little bit about it. So Man of Lords is like, um, it's like, uh, I think medieval esque sort of like village builder, but there's also like RTS type fights and stuff. It's super ambitious. And apparently it was made by like one guy. So, you know, it's going to be good. Typically when there's like a single developer on a game, I'm like, Oh, it's going to be an indie hit.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yes, exactly. But it's also like, it's not like, quote unquote, high production value, but it's like full 3D and all this jazz. So like it's it's a lot. It seems like it's a lot. I'm actually kind of interested in it. PUBG, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, and then Destiny right outside of the top 10, followed by TF2 Rust and blah, blah, blah. And then Baldur's Gate, which people are still playing at 14. Understandable, but like, my gosh, right.
00:51:45
Speaker
So 76 didn't stay up here, that's fair. But it has a top eight overall, right? I think it was that point in time. Okay, that point in time. Yeah, because overall, there's no way. There's no way this game has retention. It's at 18 right now. It's behind Lost Ark. Such renowned titles as Lost Ark, Crab Game, and Grand Theft Auto 5.
00:52:19
Speaker
Did Grand Theft Auto V come out? Yes. Quite a long time ago. Oh, is it six the new ones? Six is the new one, yeah. I don't follow Grand Theft Auto at all. I'll be honest. I want to poke fun at you for making the mistake. I've literally done it multiple times to myself. If someone says to you, like, how many Fast and Furious movies are there currently? Uh-huh. Like, the average person's not going to know. It's like.
00:52:47
Speaker
It's past 10. I think it's 10. It's 10. Yeah, because the next one was the most recent one. That's right. That's why you should remember it. Um, I have to mention the one underneath fallout 76 though. This is the, this is the thing. It's like neck and neck against, um, hopefully, you know, it's going to do its best. Hopefully it can stay ahead. They're both very competitive products in the market. Fallout 76 in one corner, the other wallpaper engine.
00:53:17
Speaker
I don't know if that counts. I don't know if that should really be under your software and not a game at all. I think it is as Steam classifies it, but it still racks up hours, I guess. Or concurrent players. Concurrent players. I haven't leveraged it as much. Like right now, my right monitor technically is an Armor Core 6 thing.
00:53:41
Speaker
That actually is from wallpaper engine, but just a static one not animated. And then my main one is still a screenshot I took in our core six. Yeah, that's fair. I I get lazy about like, oh, let me load this up. Or I'm sure that previously when I was having the same issues with Ghost Runner, it was not doing me any favors to also have a constant video playing on both monitors.
00:54:09
Speaker
I mean, if you had windows in front, it does disable the animation as long as it's a full screen window. Good policy. Yeah. The way I know that this is true is because wallpaper engine also has wallpapers where like there's audio attached.
00:54:26
Speaker
And the audio just stops when something's in front of it. Which makes sense. That's also kind of what you want. By the way, the worst fucking thing is like, oh, I'll grab a cool wallpaper from wallpaper engine. And then I'm going about and doing something else, or I'm watching something on YouTube. But I hear some discordant audio that doesn't exactly line up with whatever else I'm listening to. Where the fuck is that coming from? I go through my browser tabs. Nothing. I look at all the applications. Well, it's not.
00:54:54
Speaker
Oh, wallpaper engine seems to be lighting up. What the fuck? And. Stop putting audio on my fucking. I can't think of a reason you would want it. That's the issue, right? Like sometimes I can acknowledge that there's an aspect of a product that isn't for me. I don't know why that would be for anyone, right? Yeah, because the way I don't I don't experience music like, oh, let me go through my playlist of wallpapers. No, I have Spotify, I have YouTube, I have
00:55:23
Speaker
local audio that I purchased from games legally. I think I have a couple of STs on here, but yeah, it's.
00:55:42
Speaker
Like nice one-off thing. I'm like, oh, cool. That is, you know, from near automata. That's music from the game. That's cool. Right. But I don't want to be listening to it all the fucking time. Right. You know, like Japanese flutes in the rain. It has it has some appeal for a period of time. There's nothing wrong with that. I would listen to that for a while.
00:56:03
Speaker
But it's not going to be my default state when there's nothing on my desktop. Also, very rarely is there going to be nothing on my desktop. And I'm still engaged with a computer by nature of the way that computers work. Right. So the conditions for the person, for the hypothetical person that actually wants to listen to audio from wallpaper engine, they need to set it as like their non-main monitor.
00:56:33
Speaker
if they're still intending to use their computer. And then you're gonna just have to commit to never putting anything there, which is, there's layers of sociopathy at this point. You could have maybe justified this a little bit to some extent, but no, you're going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. Dave, I think we just declare war on this hypothetical type of person. This is the point of the podcast now.
00:57:01
Speaker
If you have a loved one like this, send them to us to be executed. No charge. Put on your penalty of death.
00:57:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's just yeah, they have these full ass videos as wallpapers as well. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Why wouldn't you just download that video and then watch it when you want to, but not have it be constantly playing on one monitor? You know what I mean? Yeah. Like I could see for some things I could like Nyan Cat or whatever. Like sure. Whatever. Easy loop.
00:57:39
Speaker
Um, that's also the one I could almost kind of understand having audio to under undermine my own argument. But you, you drive yourself crazy at some point, but like anything beyond that. Yeah. Like, uh, no, no, I'm thinking devil's advocate fireplace. A fireplace would also be good. Like you will log wallpaper with audio seasonal. I could see it, but counterpoint. Why wouldn't you just open up a YouTube video of that?
00:58:10
Speaker
don't really have anything there. So yeah, it's still definitely an edge case. You're going against the grain. I would be curious to hear audience thoughts on this. What do you use your wallpaper for? Yeah. For me, I just saw Jake use it once. I'm like, oh, it seems cool. I want some animated flower petals falling from a tree, like a rain effect.
00:58:36
Speaker
But I don't know, I use it so infrequently for that. The novelty is kind of what carries it. Sometimes you just don't have something up on a monitor. It's infrequent, but sometimes it's the case. You're like, oh, that's cool. There's a nice little animation going on over there.
00:58:55
Speaker
No audio, nothing to try to mix with whatever you've got going on Spotify. But it's nice for that. And some of them are a little interactive. Like there's one that is a guy, I was using it as a guy that has like an orb in his hand with like colors, RGB kind of like shifting through it. But you can drag your mouse through the orb and it causes the colors to like scatter across the screen. It's very cool. It's incredibly novelty based. So it's not the thing you just sit there and do, I think.
00:59:25
Speaker
Um, but periodically it's, it's fine. It's better than whatever default windows background thing is. So good enough. I like the hill with the cow. I'm somebody who I need a certain degree of visuals to keep my brain interested. Like I couldn't have a completely.
00:59:48
Speaker
blank background, that would drive me nuts. I'm like, oh, this is a familiar, comfy image. Awesome. I like it. But if it were to be too animated, my brain can see a notification of like an application that's running is now blinking a color because there's some update or you got a message, what have you. And it drives me insane to not click that. Yeah.
01:00:11
Speaker
So I can't have like active animations happening out of like the corner of my eye, because it really comes down to if you hit Windows key D.
01:00:26
Speaker
Are you just like, man, this is super boring or like, Oh geez, that's actually really cool. I'm glad I did this. I'm proud of myself. I just did it. And I, Jake, Jake, where are you? I can, I can attest that Dave did it. Cause I saw his screen flash as the monitors changed color. See one thing I'm not crazy about is like what, how close I am to the monitor, but I don't have.
01:00:48
Speaker
I mean, I have a lamp over there, but it's really obvious to tell when I open up something that's dark versus I open up something that's bright. Yes. Because my face changes drastically and Jake sees it. I see it.
01:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, you kind of Dave just went from white guy to the widest guy. That's basically the way to describe it. Or it like deeply could be deeply harmed by the sun's rays during the middle of summer or entirely reflective can't be harmed. I thought of a very late devil's advocate. Okay.
01:01:27
Speaker
If I had like an extra monitor that was just, let's say just for messaging. It's basically, if I had a third monitor, that was a vertical, right? Yeah. To have the matrix code going down, that would be weirdly cathartic to me. That would probably still distracting at a point, but I could see that as like an always going animated thing. Yeah. If it was kind of, if it blended in with whatever you're doing to a certain extent and it was minimalist enough.
01:01:57
Speaker
I could see it. At that point, though, you do actually start to see performance. It's because you're not taking the full screen. So wallpaper engine will be doing its thing. But anyways, I think we can basically sum up what we're trying to say as hopefully wallpaper engine overtake 76. So
01:02:18
Speaker
I mean, it definitely will over time. It's mathematically impossible for it to not succeed it. Yeah. It's also the prices, they're very similar, but not the same number of decimal points. Fallout 76 is $39.99. Wallpaper engine is $3.99. There's an extra three in there.
01:02:41
Speaker
What? Yeah. Wallpaper engine is value you said? Crazy. $4. $4. Kind of crazy. Anyways, let us know what you guys are using for your wallpaper engine. Pump those numbers up, get on that wallpaper engine grind set so we can get it ahead of Fallout 76.
01:03:01
Speaker
I'm going to launch it now. Was that believable today? I think so, yeah. They would believe that. Our listeners, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, send in your favorite wallpaper engine links, soapstone podcast at gmail.com or join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always,
01:03:30
Speaker
We'll see you in the next one. Goodbye. I love you. Goodbye. Bye.