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What are your favourite controllers?
  • I've tried it a number of times and just can't get it to work for me. Far too much travel distance for me, and the lack of tactile feedback makes it difficult. In some ways, I like the floatiness feeling that that the travel distance creates, but ultimately it wasn't worth the precision adjustments.

    I tried it for some 2D side scrollers, FPS, and 3rd person games. I liked it most for 3rd person but couldn't get a hang of the other two.

    Plus, I really like using the left touch pad as a floating menu, which the joystick can't do haha.

    Oh, I forgot to say -- the Steam Decks smaller track pad is actually nice for this reason because the shorter travel distance solves the floatiness issue for me in a lot of cases. I actually play Revita 50/50 between touchpad and joystick, just based on how I'm feeling.

  • What are your favourite controllers?
  • Careful now, the swarm of all 11 people who use the left touchpad for movement might hear you and eat you alive while they chant, "just try setting movement to the left touchpad. You'll never go back... You'll never go back ..."

  • How to get good at FPS with a controller, coming from a PC gamer?
  • Honestly, I would recommend just giving it a go. You can always save your current controller config and then go right back to it. I only say try it cause when I looked up videos I didn't quite understand, like I got the idea but it seemed weird. Actually trying it makes a lot more sense.

    Its major issue though is I felt like I was tweaking it more than I was playing, and I have found myself a very good set of controls with the Steam Controller which translated to the Deck, so I know exactly what to set for each game even on the first time. For the Flick Stick setting, I feel like one game would be fine standard settings and another game would need to change, sometimes not even getting it working. So YMMV there.

    P.S. set a binding for toggling an auto-sprint on the back paddle. Auto walking is a default for any game I play!

  • How to get good at FPS with a controller, coming from a PC gamer?
  • There are a lot of good suggestions here, that you can take advantage of, so I'll come at it from another perspective.

    With mouse and keyboard, positioning is a snippet of what we use when playing and is more of a tactical spacing. With controller, it is a necessity. This means that as you are playing first person shooters (or third person with controller), your characters movement will be 75% of what you're actually aiming with.

    On a mouse and keyboard, if you're slightly off center with a sniper, it's a simple adjustment to move to the left. Move 1cm.

    On a controller, if you're slightly off center, suddenly it isn't as simple, because the joystick is overly sensitive and so to move 1cm is a lighting fast action input, meaning that you're almost guaranteed to overshoot it, unless your joystick sensitivity is super low. Or, on the opposite end of it, if you try and move the control stick very gently (more on this later), it's not necessarily a consistent input. This is where aim assist would come in, as aiming down your sights would center it on the enemy, but I think it's a bunch of bullshit and so we'll ignore that. Instead of moving the joystick a micron of a second to properly position yourself, moving your characters body (WASD/left analog) is almost always much slower and fine tuned.

    What this means is that as you're playing games, instead of holding W and maneuvering with A, S, D for counter balance or strafing or whatever, the joystick instead is 60% of the time holding forward, 20% of the time slowly moving in a direction to position yourself better for aiming, and 10% staying still (letting go).

    Another element here is the concept of analog itself. When you're holding W, it's always 100%. When you push forward, (game depending) it ramps up from 0% towards 100%, which means that if you turn left or right, chances are that your character might slow down too, because you may be pulling down as you move. What you can take advantage of here is utilizing slow movement to always keep your character moving, which will help prevent being hit and will get you more used to fine-tuning your aim through your movements.

    When I play games on controller, I always try and use gyro, I always keep the gameplay focused on the movement first and foremost, and the analog stick at that point almost purely becomes a look/view stick over a "this is my main form of getting headshots", where your look inputs are based on getting into the center of the general area you want to aim at as quickly as possible, while letting the gyro and the characters body finish it off.

    Finally -- PLAY. Not the game, PLAY with it. Feeling weird? Move your character in circles while bunny hopping to get the feeling of the mechanics for the game, then be silly with the aiming and wiggle the joystick around to familiarize yourself with aiming with the movement wobble. Whether it's Max Payne, Smash Bros, Doom, Vanquish, Fortnite, all of these games can be manipulated by playing with the weird quirks of their engine.

    Finally finally -- I also have a harder time with FPS games on the Steam Deck compared to other methods. Doom 2016 on my Switch was fine to get used to, but on the Steam Deck some did feel odd about it. I don't have the other modern consoles and their joysticks aren't super familiar to me, but I think it may be that the Steam Deck's analog sticks feel like they have a larger travel distance (particularly compared to the Switch of course). Something you might consider trying is the Flick Stick input for the Trackpads, although I personally really, really enjoy low-friction trackball mouse input. Swipe+Tap to aim is just so good and being able to move the view, let go and have it keep moving based on the intertia I input is just perfect.

  • Slide
  • Huh, interesting reading these comments. In my area it was wood chips. Splinters everywhere, jammed between toenails and fingernails, wood chips to the face, throwing wood chips in each others eyes...

    It was not many years later that school playground was renovated to have the softer outdoor foam play floor

  • See Biden's fiery speech after shaky debate performance
  • It was far less bad than people make it out to be. I was on a stream watching and so many comments were talking about how he looked, and I'm sitting here thinking... y'all realize he's listening to Trump speak right? Anyone actually listening to what that monster has to say is going to either look befuddled or dismayed. He looked both. He definitely had some weak spots, but compared to Trump who wouldn't even answer a question and blatantly lying every other second.

    It sucks. People were basically cheering him on online, the most against him comments I saw were "they're both so old". Not commenting on the insanity or the racism or the lies, just memeing on old Biden. Which yeah he deserves it but the rhetoric is reminding me of 2016 and it does not inspire hope.

  • Game Recording Steam Beta
  • Dang this is pretty huge actually! Steam Deck has this capability through a plug-in, I imagine now it may be able to get further community development now that there's an official method. And Steam Deck aside, this should be a pretty significant benefit to low-spec gamers or anyone who just wants less software to work with.

  • Steam Deck Users Account for 10% Of All Players Using Steam Input
  • That actually seems relatively high, if we use some estimate math to guesstimate that there are 132million active monthly users and there have been 3 million Steam Decks sold, that's really about 2.27%. So for there to be about 8% more taking advantage of it does seem somewhat high

  • Balsalmic Rosemary Porkchops

    Served with oven roasted broccoli and demi-baguette toasted with garlic butter!

    • 8oz. Broccoli florets
    • 1/4 oz. Rosemary (finely chopped)
    • 10oz Pork Chops
    • 5tsp Balsamic Vinegar
    • 2 tsp sugar
    • 4 TBSP Garlic Herb Butter
    • 1 TBSP Cooking Oil
    • ~1oz Chicken stock concentrate
    • 1/4 cup water
    • Salt & Pepper as desired

    Preheat oven to 425f, halve the baguette and set in toaster (but do not toast) while you wash & dry produce. Cut broccoli to size and put on baking sheet, drizzle oil, salt, and pepper. I also added just a bit of dried basil. Roast on top rack until browned, 15-20 mins. Make sure you set your timer loud, mine was going off for 5 minutes. That said, still great, they were like chips :)

    Once that's going, strip rosemary leaves from stems and finely chop leaves for 1tsp. Pat pork dry and dry season with salt and pepper (I did both sides salted). Heat a drizzle of oil in a large pan over medium high, add pork and cook until browned and cooked through, 4-6 minutes per side. Once done, transfer to cutting board or plate. Check on the broccoli if it hasn't come out by this point.

    You can also sub other meat like chicken or beef, roughly 3-5 mins per side or 4-7 minutes per side.

    It says to wipe out pan, but since I know what's in it I decided to just add another drizzle of oil and use the current season in addition.

    Add chopped rosemary cook and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds, then stir in stock concentrate, 1/4 cup of water, vinegar, and 2 tsp of sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook stirring until reduced slightly over 3-4 minutes. Season "generously" with pepper (I am not huge on pepper so I did a little more than I usually do, it was pleasant). Turn on the toaster for the baguette. Turn off heat then add about 2-3 TBSP of garlic herb butter and stir until melted.

    Once reduced, everything is ready to be plated! Serve the pork chop topped with the balsamic rosemary sauce, roasted broccoli, and baguette with garlic butter, salt and pepper to finish!

    I very much enjoyed this one, this was the first time I have made pork chops myself and I think I did very well! I did overcook the broccoli but they were still very good, and the baguette and garlic butter were to die for.

    Paired with a Deschutes Obsidian Stout, a bit of a chocolate-espresso with some sweet aftertaste before the bitterness sets in. It went very well with the Rosemary Balsamic reduction, which was very sweet as I think I added a bit more sugar.

    All in all it was delectable!

    2
    Travel documentation apps like Journey?

    It featured geotagging and made it pretty easy to get really nicely organized albums for trips.

    However I don't really want my stuff on their servers nor am I fond of the subscription for trips I get to take maybe once a year these days.

    Currently I use syncthing and some gallery apps (immich, photoprism), but due to network conditions (CG/NAT) accessing these outside my local network can be annoying at times. Ideally I could sync&transfer photos and have them cached on the device instead, which is what Journey accomplished for me.

    6
    My first interaction with Meta Services last night. Thought I'd share what I learned. (Cross-posting from my KBin)
    imgur.com Meta tracking

    Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like WolfShadowheart.

    Meta tracking

    I was up late last night and we know how that goes - rabbit holes. This time I was trying to find some ways to make my phone feel a little snappier and possibly eliminate the issue I was having where my recent apps button stops working until I restart the phone. On Android 13 I found that if I changed to gesture based navigation it solves the problem - recent apps can be switched to for just a small change. But the fluidity of gesture based navigation got me thinking about the animation speeds, so off I went into developer mode to play with some settings. This is where the rabbit hole begins.

    (Small edit for phone!) I've only recently gotten the Sony Xperia 1IV direct from Sony, put in my TMobile SIM and have been running it the last 8 months or so. I haven't looked too much into the A13, but I made sure to do all my usual protections - disable Facebook and whatever other bloatware comes preinstalled. I saw a category to see a list of running services and there's some pretty innocuous ones - wireless charging service, accubattery, google, KDE connect, Vanced MicroG and Meta Services. It just looked like an RSS feed with a notification icon, really and I didn't think much of it.

    Well with (edit for clarity) Vanced being dead me not liking ReVanced as much (end edit) and should have switched to LibreTube much sooner, I was trying to find where and how to uninstall MicroG. I came across my active processes again and I remembered about Meta, did a little digging (and I mean little) and saw that many Android phones come with a Meta App Manager and tracking service that runs automatically in the background, whether or not you have their apps installed/disabled. We all knew about bloatware coming preinstalled, but this was the first I'd come across full on background services using data and RAM (minute as they may be).

    So I thought I'd share. It's simple, but here we are. To find them (in Android 13)

    Android Settings > Apps > See All Apps > top corner Show System

    Scroll down to the M's and be sure to disable background data, clear cache and storage, and disable these 3 Meta services.

    And if you're curious to see your Running Services, enable developer mode, navigate to it and it's the 8th option, right under "OEM unlocking". Handy for finding sneaky apps.

    While I don't use Facebook on my phone (app wrapper), I do use Instagram and I've noticed zero issues with the app. Almost like the tracking is completely unnecessary for the user experience and its removal breaks nothing! But obligatory YMMV and do this at your own risk etc. The risk is likely that Facebook wont serve you ads as well, the horror.

    Anyway, I thought I was up to date on everything that needs to be done to debloat a phone, but I found some more that I've yet to see any mentions or guides for until after I started researching what and why Meta Services was running on my phone. I thought I'd share since I'm tech savvy and try to stay up to date, so if I feel this way then there may be others who would like to know about this as well.

    8
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)AV
    averyminya @beehaw.org
    Posts 3
    Comments 843