I'm having problems with Discord, Spotify and Gitlab right now. I wonder which cloud service that's running a third of the internet is struggling right now!
There is also a physical USB cheat/hack/mod[0] that you can plug into your Switch that lets you automatically farm eggs, move you about automatically to hatch eggs, and then release entire boxes of Pokemon you don't need[1]. It's like factory farming Pokemon! There's support for other games and even other game console controllers too, it's an interesting device.
For Pokemon I think it's more interesting than simply memory hacking your save file and altering the Effort Values of the Pokemon, which is the simple way to go about this, though a bit boring and as I understand it very widespread if you battle online.
The Nintendo Help Line could be argued to be a microtransaction. However, callers talked to knowledgeable players who had the game in front of them, with maps, boss strategies, etc, available.
You could also send them a letter for free. The local rental place didn't have the manual for Wizardry and it's not exactly clear what many of the spells in the game do, since they have names like halito, mahalito, dios, badios, etc.
Nintendo sent me a letter explaining what this all did back in the day.
There's lots of reasons people 'cheat' in games. In this case it might be:
• You enjoy playing Pokemon but you don't want to or cannot find the time to grind out the few hours of leveling up you need to progress, or to find your specific favourite handful of Pokemon, so you use a device like this to save yourself some time.
• You want to succeed in the competitive space (yes, competitive Pokemon is a thing[0] and is ongoing right now in fact[1]) and you don't want to grind for Pokemon with specific Effort Values, which are the randomly generated numbers that effect how strong your Pokemon attacks are. So you use a device like this, though probably altering a save file would be just as easy and not detectable by Game Freak/The Pokemon Company.
• You don't really care about Pokemon, but you know you can sell Pokemon on eBay[2], so you automate it with a device like this.
> You want to succeed in the competitive space (yes, competitive Pokemon is a thing[0] [...] and you don't want to grind for Pokemon with specific Effort Values [...]
I just want to point out, if you're like me and sometimes enjoy competitive Pokemon without grinding, cheating, playing the story or even owning a device, you can play online a simulator, from which every possible, grindable setting is just a click away. [0]
It's pretty popular, with it's own Elo, tournaments, online community etc. It's pretty fun, I can recommend it.
> You don't really care about Pokemon, but you know you can sell Pokemon on eBay[2], so you automate it with a device like this.
People who are selling Pokémon on eBay are probably just hacking them in rather than going through the trouble of using a device like this to obtain them “legitimately”
Many people play competitive pokemon. Pokemom randomly generate with different "IVs", meaning different attack/defence/speed/etcs. To get "perfect IVs" takes hours if not days of searching. Many automate this process as all they're interested in is the competitive game; not catching/hatching the perfect pokemon.
I've built something similar close to ten years ago for Generation 6 Pokemon games on the 3DS. At the time that meant soldering to a bunch of test points to send inputs.
Why? Mostly because it was fun and a good learning expereince. I barely used the Pokémon I obtained, but I did use them to build a competitive team.
I... guess, if you're only looking at the outcome (boxes of caught Pokemon) it is similar?
But the linked post describes a Raspberry Pi + Capture Card + OpenCV solution that is scanning the screen to detect when Shiny Pokemon are found, which is much more involved.
The $30 'Switch Up' device I linked to seems to operate only on emulating button inputs. Like, you can record and playback a macro.
I would argue that this is actually closer to an open source version of asking an older sibling for help. Or maybe, depending on how you view it, like tricking your younger sibling into doing the boring part for you.
I make games for a living, I deeply enjoy the creative freedom of working on projects independently. After university I got my start with a SaaS accounting business, backend Python stuff - I liked it, I learned a lot and worked with some very talented and experienced programmers. Still, I love that with games I get to do deep systems work, animation work, I get to paint and design, write silly jokes, and make something a bit strange that no one else is going to make.
Now, I work independently, there's no publisher or licensing partner, perhaps if I were working for Ubisoft or Activision Blizzard or Rockstar Games I might not enjoy it so much? But I found lots of things to like working on an accounting SaaS project, so if I ever did try it, perhaps it would be just fine.
Related - has anyone listened to the new audiobooks with Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz, and so on? I'm interested because they're unabridged and look like they have very high production values, but they're also quite pricey (understandably so) if you want to buy them and download them permanently.
I have not, but I listened to all of them as narrated by Steven Briggs and quite enjoyed them. They are also unabridged, and were all available for free through Libby through my library.
Having different voices for the footnotes is the main thing from the new one that I could see being a big improvement—Briggs's footnotes are read in the same tone as the rest of the narration.
Briggs is very good. I will always have his voice and cadence in my head for Vimes. I was very happy with the audio books, and sadly I can’t often say that. The Audible versions are of mixed audio quality, some pretty bad, which is strange.
So far I've found them good (Small Gods & Witches), but Bill Nighy, who does the footnotes in the most bland ADR tone after an annoying charm effect, is by far the worst part. If you can get past or enjoy those the rest is great.
Yes, the Factorio devs had an approach where they optimised everything happening in the game in the original singlethreaded environment, before moving onto multithreaded support. That's where the game is now, and as far as I understand it the multithreading occurs on each independent set of conveyor belts or belt lanes, and there's some info on that in this blog post[0] for anyone interested.
You've misundertood the list, Lightyear ranks one place below Cars, so (on this list at least) it's viewed as worse than Cars. But better than Cars 3 and Cars 2.
Heh, it's like all those YouTube videos where someone uploads a song and the uploader puts "No copyright infringement intended" in the text description, sometimes with five or six exclamation marks just to really make sure they avoid the takedown.
Often they drop the "infringement" and just have "no copyright intended" because they don't actually know what copyright is beyond it being a word in the emails they get from youtube.
That was certainly the case for the older ground effect craft like the ekranoplan[0] (which is a very interesting read), but perhaps there are important differences/improvements with this far, far more modern model?
My dentist here in Canada has signs up that advertise that you get a free electric tooth brush if you leave a 5 star review on Google. I've not done that, it seems quite wrong, but I would imagine this is also very much against Google's policies? I was surprised how clear and obvious the signage was.
Seems to have worked though, the dentist's office has lots of 5 star reviews.
This sign always has the opposite desired effect on me. If I see a sign trading for 5-Star reviews, there isn’t any way for me to tell which reviews were written for a free burrito. So I immediately discredit all 5-star reviews the restaurant receives.
I do this anyway, I just don't trust rating systems so tend to remove the top and bottom marks.
Obv not a perfect solution and unfair to those who aren't gaming but over the top 5 star and bitchy one star reviews even when genuine aren't always that representative.
Last week I returned a borrowed suit and I was afraid to be late because it had been more than a week. The owner of the place told me it would be fine if I left a 5 stars review. Now I’m wondering how common this gaming is.
