Sonic Roboblast 2 Kart and its successor Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers are open source, and pretty fun! The exact degree to which they’re free-as-in-libre depends somewhat on Sega’s policy of turning a blind eye to fan games, so although GPL-2.0 permits commercial use I wouldn’t recommend testing it.

There is a lively modding scene (or there was for SRB2K last time I was playing it; I haven’t played RR yet). Ring Racers has single-player content if that’s what you’re looking for, I hear it’s quite challenging.

The last time I was handing out candy at my old neighborhood, kids would ring the doorbell but then they’d just stand there and stare at me until I handed them candy. You’re supposed to say “trick or treat”!

Now I live in an apartment, so I don’t get trick-or-treaters. (I have candy just in case, but nobody ever knocks.) My roommate went to hang out with his sister and hand out candy at her place, and apparently their neighborhood has decreed that trick-or-treating ends at 7 sharp now so that nobody is out after dark? I don’t get it. I thought staying out late (and, for teens, potentially unsupervised) was part of the fun!

• Do what thou wilt
• This shall be the whole of the Law
• This space intentionally left blank

https://youtu.be/4nyHPIcbn88 (nsfw lyrics)

I think you’re right, it must have been the sequel!

Is this the one where I kept trying to go visit my mom (as part of my belligerent insistence on looking for stuff to do in the open world after every mission), but the game wouldn’t let me go into any building that wasn’t the next story mission, and then later the main character got chewed out by his mom for never visiting her? I did find that annoying.

How good of a friend are we talking? I care about my roommate’s new nephew. I know his sister, and we’ve played D&D with his brother-in-law. The baby is, like, a relevant part of being friends with them. Similarly, if he went on vacation I’d want to hear about how it went, especially if anything interesting happened.

On the other hand some of my coworkers at my last job liked to talk about this kind of stuff, and I didn’t really care, but it was nice to have something to talk about while I was setting up a new printer for them, or whatever.

I can’t believe how many otherwise seemingly reasonable people are still involved in the MTG and D&D content ecosystems after Hasbro hired the fucking Pinkertons to threaten a Youtuber. How little self respect do they have? Promote a game that isn’t made by someone who would send thugs to your house!

I wonder if I can make a cheat that doesn’t do anything but turn myself into a frog…

“Real world politics”? Did I miss the news that Undead Demon Margaret Thatcher is running in the next UK election?

“We are trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.”

I’ve considered getting a bulletproof jacket or hoodie. But it’s so expensive, and can only really be worn half the year.

The stuff like backpack inserts seems like a racket. How likely are you to be wearing the backpack and get shot from behind?

There are definitely some things it is healthier not to know, and I’m pretty sure this is one of them. It’s why I don’t ask my mom questions about my dad, who I have never met since being old enough to form memories and I would like to keep it that way.

Why isn’t Echoes of Wisdom in the “upcoming” category? It doesn’t release until the end of the month.

Ohhh I probably disabled it right away and then forgot about it.

Huh, I was using Ubuntu as my daily driver circa 2014 and I don’t remember this at all… maybe I stopped just prior to them implementing it… or maybe it just didn’t make enough of an impression for me to notice.

Open-ended, “sandbox” style MMOs are a lot trickier to get right than “theme park” style ones like Star Wars: The Old Republic. Games like SW:TOR require a lot of content to be developed, but you can at least be pretty sure that if you develop fun quests then players who like questing will have fun.

For a “sandbox” style MMO, you have to design systems that lead to interesting player interactions… and then hope players actually interact. This is complicated by the market share for sandbox games being smaller overall, meaning you can’t guarantee there will actually be a sizable player population. Also sandbox-style players are sharply divided on basically every topic from “how much PvP should there be” to “how much grinding should there be” so you quickly find yourself either targeting increasingly narrow slices of players or trying to appeal to multiple playstyles at once, which is even harder.

I think this is why sandbox games have mostly moved towards smaller worlds and self-hosted servers, like ARK and Rust, where they can thrive with small player counts and individual play groups can tweak the experience to better suit their needs.

https://meetunmeat.us/product/luncheon-style-meat/

Water, Non-GMO Soy Protein, Palm Olein, Seasonings (Onion, Black Pepper), Natural Flavors, Potato Starch (Thickener), Modified Vegetable Gum, Wheat (gluten and fiber, Sugar, Yeast Extract, Vinegar, Potassium Salt and Paprika Oil (color)

My friend seems to have good success meeting people in Discord channels about his niche interests, with the caveat that there is a lot more video calling than there is hanging out, because nobody lives in the same state. Maybe join a furry chat and say hello?

Mortal men cannot long resist the influence of the Ring at such close proximity. Replace Boromir with any other human, dwarf, or elf, and some member of the Fellowship would still have turned on the ring-bearer by the end.

Hobbits are more resilient, but with long enough exposure even they can be swayed. It was only a matter of time.