I warned ya! Didn’t I warn ya? That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself.

Great list, especially Pantheon, it’s one of my favorite shows of all time. The mix of technological ethics, existential horror, conspiracy, and more are done fantastically. I just wish the voice audio mixing was better, but it gets a pass since they were doing it during COVID I believe. It got unduly overlooked due to the streaming weirdness, but I think it’s all on Netflix now thankfully.

If you liked it check out Mars Express, it’s a movie that touches on a lot of similar themes in a cyberpunk/neo-noir context with some amazing animation.

Which isn’t accurate and is more nuanced involving Steam keys like another user said. For instance, Prey is on sale for $6 on the PlayStation store but still $30 on Steam.

For all the gripes I have for it, Monster Hunter Wilds (PS5). It’s really streamlined to the point of being auto-pilot at times, but damn if I don’t like seeing the weapon and overall world changes, especially as a Gunlance main. I just really hope they can get more of the “friction” back, getting multiple gems on the first hunt is dumb, wound popping devolves into stunlock, and autopilot-bird encourages not playing the game. But man do I love hunting and lots of systems and odd encounters encourage doing that in this, hopefully they can scale the rest of the roster like in Sunbreak.

Gotta say I’m really concerned how posts are using a right wing trash tabloid as a source.

My personal issue with the idea of “infinite NPC dialogue” is that it defeats the purpose of minor NPCs. They’re just there to give you a nudge in the right direction or give flavor text (“Bandit activity sure has been picking up!” or “The king? He’s probably in his castle to the west.”). Turning them into a chatbot just means a player potentially spending all their time there with nothing to gain that they couldn’t get from Character.AI instead of playing the game.

I’m also curious about the implementation. AI API use isn’t free so you’d likely be requiring players to pay if they don’t meet the hardware requirements to host locally.

I also recommend Reaper, that indefinite free trial got me to buy a license. It’s able to do pretty much anything any other Digital Audio Workstation can and has great VST support.

For hooking up a MIDI instrument to a computer you have a few cheap options. Assuming there’s no USB-out for that keyboard there’s either MIDI->USB adapters (cheap but iffy) or interfaces (more expensive but reliable, I used a MIDI box for a while). Ideally you’d get a full fledged audio interface, but that can be pricey for just messing around.

As for making sounds you have a lot of options! Lots of free virtual instruments out there, though it’s nice to have an all-in-one VST like Xpand!2. The hard part is just learning how to set up connections and plug-ins in whatever DAW you choose, but it’s not that bad.

Same, I wouldn’t mind as much if Apple’s lightning-to-aux adapter wasn’t so flimsy and had better build quality, while at the same time preventing you from charging.

Yo. Wasn’t ever terribly active, but the reaction to the recent protest, both in CEO/admin response and some comments, made me realize the site wasn’t what it was when I first joined and that I don’t mesh with it anymore. I’ll miss the active niche subs I followed, but starting fresh with an alternative like here has been great.