Why virtual reality makes a lot of us sick, and what we can do about it.

A small update has gone out for Starfield on Xbox Series X|S, Microsoft Store, and Steam. This update addresses some issues with performance and stability as well as a few general gameplay issues. We are continuing to work on a larger update that will add features and improvements that we noted in our last update notes. Thank you so much for your continued feedback and support of Starfield and we look forward to a future with you on this journey.

General

• Characters: Fixed an issue that could cause some characters to not be in their proper location.
• Star Stations: Fixed an issue where Star Stations would be labeled as a player-owned ship.
• Vendors: Addressed an issue that allowed for a vendor’s full inventory to be accessible.

Graphics

• AMD (PC): Resolved an issue that caused star lens flares not to appear correctly AMD GPUs.
• Graphics: Addressed an upscaling issue that could cause textures to become blurry.
• Graphics: Resolved an issue that could cause photosensitivity issues when scrolling through the inventory menu.

Performance and Stability

• Hand Scanner: Addressed an issue where the Hand Scanner caused hitching.
• Various stability and performance improvements to address crashing and freezes.

Ships

• Displays: Fixed an issue that would cause displayed items to disappear when applied to in-ship mannequins.
• Displays: Fixed an issue that would cause items stored in Razorleaf Storage Containers and Weapon Racks to disappear after commandeering another ship.

Hardware Busters put the new 12V-2x6 connector—which is part of the ATX v3.1 standard—to the test to see how it compares to the 12VHPWR connector and the results are very encouraging. Not only does the 12V-2x6 cables appear to run at much cooler temperature, even at a 55 Ampere load, although the setup that was tested had only been running at this load for around 30 minutes. Even so, the cable and connector was only reading a surface temperature of around 46 degrees, which is well within specs.

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YouTube Video - Hardware Busters

Celebrate our 15th anniversary with incredible discounts! Enjoy up to -90% off on a wide range of classic and newer games. Explore the deals now and level up your gaming experience!

Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption - Reawakened, the mod project to rebuild the first VtM videogame in Skyrim, has shown off new gameplay of its Prague early game. The original game, which follows the story of a crusader knight from the Middle Ages all the way to the modern day, is one of those hyper-ambitious, turn of the millennium RPGs that just doesn't come all the way together, and is a prime candidate for a fan revival.

We last checked in on Redemption - Reawakened a year ago. The mod team had shown off some of its later hub areas and more dungeony levels, but project lead Galejro's latest videos show off a significant portion of the early game in Prague.

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YouTube - Daytime & Silver Mines
YouTube - Nighttime

There's a long tradition of connections between Dungeons & Dragons and the videogames based on it. Pool of Radiance, the 1998 videogame that kicked off the Gold Box series, was also released as a pen-and-paper adventure called Ruins of Adventure in the same year. More recently, Baldur's Gate 3 incorporated parts of the adventure Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus—if you want to know more about why there are so many tiefling refugees fleeing Elturel, that book has your answer. (Wyll's dad shows up in it too.)

The next D&D supplement is Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, and it includes at least a few things players of 1999's Planescape: Torment will recognize. For starters, one piece of official artwork shows the Smoldering Corpse Bar, which either still has Ignus the burning wizard on display or has found a replacement for him.

What's more, the supplement's adventure book, Turn of Fortune's Wheel, opens with a familiar scene. "You wake up in the mortuary," senior game designer F. Wesley Schneider said in a first look video. "I'm sorry to say that you've died. Morte, the snarky floating skull, greets you and you realize that there's a mystery. Your memories are fractured and every time that you come back from the dead, you come back a little different."

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a preem spy thriller adventure. However, if your V really isn't that interested in working with government types, you can choose not to sign on to a life of martinis shaken, not stirred.

Only issue is, choosing to do so locks you out of the questline—and from what I've tested, it's permanent. At minimum it'll delay your progression through the DLC's story substantially, but I don't get the sense Reed's gonna call me back.

Here's the mostly spoiler-free rundown: at the end of a mission called Lucretia My Reflection, you'll be given a choice to stay or go. If you go, you really do go—you fail the mission, and are roadblocked from proceeding.

You can still run around Dogtown, but there'll be no suit and tie galas with Mr. Elba, which is a crime in itself. Just make sure to play ball with your new friends, and you'll be golden. If you're really worried about accidentally dropping the new DLC, here's the specifics.

"Dominion of Darkness” is a strategy/RPG text game in which the player takes on the role of a Sauron-style Lord of Darkness with the goal of conquering the world. He will carry out his plans by making various decisions. He will build his army and send it into battles, weave intrigues and deceptions, create secret spy networks and sectarian cults, recruit agents and commanders, corrupt representatives of Free Peoples and sow discord among them, collect magical artifacts and perform sinister plots.Note – one game takes about 1 hour, but the premise is that the game can be approached several times, each time making different decisions, getting different results and discovering something new. Feedback is very much welcome. Very, very much. Altough game is playable and winnable now, I am still working on improving it, so all suggestions are appreciated.

Here is the game: https://adeptus7.itch.io/dominion

And here are reviews:

• Indie Sampler (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM6f4UCEgWU

• Dad's Game Review (podcast): https://www.dadsgamereview.com/blog/

• [BOKC] BlancoKix (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgNpSKToOSg

PS. If You like my writing and tales with villain protagonists, You can also read my not-so-short dark fantasy/horror story: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2022/12/14/tale-of-the-necromancer/ or listen to its audio version: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2022/12/14/tale-of-the-necromancer/

According to the voice of Astarion himself, there's a whole two hour section of Baldur's Gate 3 no one has played yet.

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"There's even something I know about that you can't get to unless you do something that I don't think anyone's going to work out," Newborn said in the livestream, which you can see him talk about in a clip above. "I was told this in confidence and I think I'm one of the few people who knows about it as well." In the stream Newborn was even asked if he could tell the person he was talking to what it is, but noted "it's one of those few things I cannot friend-DA." Just to clarify, Newborn will have signed an NDA to work on this project, unsurprisingly, but people are people and they do tell their friends things, but this seems like something so secretive he can't even do that.

Update: Sounds like this article is old and it has been found

You can already guess the third sentence: the servers have been a disaster at launch, with players forced to queue for long periods just to play alone, if they can manage to play at all. It currently sits "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam - that's 31% positive after almost 19,000 reviews.

"Online only was a huge mistake," says one review. "Imagine waiting for an hour and ten minutes and still not being able to get into a private game," says the one underneath. "this game makes me feel the developers made this game just so they could pull off the biggest heist of all time. robbing us of an offline mode," says another. There are hundreds more like this.

The official Payday X (formerly Twitter) account has been tracking the issues, noting "slow matchmaking" on September 21st, and an outright "matchmaking outage" yesterday on September 22nd. As of twelve hours ago, the account posted that they're "seeing players being able to create lobbies again," but that there "still might have a few issues" that they're working on. Throughout it all, the account has been getting roasted by players who can't play, or who simply want an offline mode.

Recently revealed Project Crawl is calling itself "an immersive first-person PvPvE dungeon crawler" and is planning an alpha playtest on Steam next week. (September 27-29)

In a series of community Q&As, Mithril Studio also explains that Project Crawl will feature various races (elves and humans and so on) and classes to choose from, "environmental interaction systems," and will eventually launch into early access after playtesting. Current party size is three players, though Mithril Studio suggests other game modes and team sizes could possibly be options in the future.

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If you want in extra early on the next contender for fantasy dungeon extraction, there's a survey to fill out to enter yourself in consideration for the alpha playtest running next week from September 27-29.

Steam Page
Alpha Playtest Signup Survey
YouTube PlayTest Teaser

AMD used to release new AMDVLK Vulkan driver updates on a near weekly basis for Linux users but that has slowed down for a while. We are approaching the end of Q3 and now AMDVLK 2023.Q3.2 has been published as their first new open-source driver release since early August.

With the time that has passed since the prior release, AMDVLK 2023.Q3.2 is at least on the heavier side for changes. AMDVLK 2023.Q3.2 brings support for quadbuffer stereo, Quake 2 RTX ray-tracing performance tuning, reducing the RS64 vs. FP32 mode overhead, reducing the AMDVLK binary size, and other optimizations.

[New features and improvement]

• Update Khronos Vulkan Headers to 1.3.261
• Support Quadbuffer Stereo
• Performance tuning for Quake2 RTX RT
• Reduce RS64 vs F32 mode overhead
• Add a setting to allow changing PWS mode
• Reduce amdvlk binary size
• Optimize the clear to single shaders
• Support dynamic sample buffer info for Extended_dynamic_state3 extension

[Issues fixed]

• Driver still reports HDR formats even when HDR mode is disabled
• CTS failure in dEQP-VK.pipeline.monolithic.executable_properties.graphics.vertex_stage*
• vkCreateRenderPass2 Crash
• Debug markers missing in RGD

Happy Friday! What are folks going to be playing this weekend?

At EVE Fanfest 2023, CCP Games unveiled EVE Vanguard, an Unreal Engine 5 powered sandbox multiplayer FPS 'module' for EVE Online.

Today, CCP Games unveiled EVE Vanguard, its next attempt at a first-person multiplayer shooter game integrated with EVE Online. Some players may still remember Dust 514, which attempted something similar but largely failed as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. CCP didn't stop trying and came up with the so-called Project Nova, though that one didn't even make it to launch.

EVE Vanguard is different in several ways, though. Firstly, it's being labeled an EVE Online 'module' and will be free for Omega subscribers; it's currently unclear whether the game can be purchased or accessed without the Omega subscription to EVE Online. Secondly, it's specifically targeting the PC platform.

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YouTube Trailer

The Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1 is setting out to be a rather disappointing collection on PC, as resolution and framerate will be locked at low values in all games.

A recent update of the collection's official website confirmed the output resolutions and maximum framerates of all included games. On PC, all games will have a maximum resolution of 1080p, a 30 FPS cap for the original Metal Gear Solid, and a 60 FPS cap for the second and third entry in the series. Needless to say, this is extremely disappointing and a missed opportunity to update some of the best games ever released.

It's been a clear decade since the last entry in this co-op crimeathon FPS series, so I was interested to play Payday 3. Payday is exactly the sort of online multiplayer I can get behind: PvE with clear but theoretically malleable goals (theft!). But although compared to Crime Boss: Rockay City it's a crushing 60st monster truck tyre, Payday 3 isn't really reinventing the Payday 2 wheel. In some respects you might think it's rolling backwards, and while dedicated Payday 2 players may well switch over to the current gen iteration, you get the sense they'll be complaining about things the whole time.

If you enjoy tower defence, video games presented as fake PC desktop environments, and big sexy mouths in Hell, cast your innumerable unblinking eyes over Heretic's Fork. The deck-building tower defence game casts you as an employee of Hell tasked with punishing sinners by building towers and deploying troops using a demonic computer system. I've played a few hours since Heretic's Fork launched yesterday and while it hasn't quite enraptured my hellbound heart, I am enjoying figuring it out—and seeing what my paperclip helper will do next.

Launch Trailer
Steam Page

At 22.5 x 9 x 3 cm, the Ayaneo Air 1S is more like a Nintendo Switch than a Steam Deck. In fact, it's a touch smaller than the Switch. Or slightly bigger than a medium-large banana. The retro model I've got in for review weighs only ~405g on my scales, which is a little heavier than my Switch at around ~400g but far lighter than my Steam Deck at ~650g. There's even a thinner and lighter model, the Air 1S Thin, though that's a limited edition.

Point is, it's a handheld gaming PC that feels more like a handheld gaming device of old than any other I've used. It's a powerful GameBoy Advance, and boy, is it powerful.

The Ayaneo Air 1S may look like it needs a downgrade to stuff all its parts into that tiny shell. But, no. It comes with the same AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip found within the AOKZOE A1 Pro or the OneXPlayer OneXFly. That's a full eight-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor. I still can't really believe that sort of spec comes in a compact PC at all. It's paired up with a Radeon 780M integrated graphics, powered by 12 RDNA 3 CUs—four more CUs than the Steam Deck's RDNA 2 chip.

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A cosy new hobbit-based Lord of the Rings spinoff game has been teased by Wētā Workshop and Private Division. Yes, it is actually happening.

Tales of the Shire was announced to celebrate Hobbit Day, and promises to provide a snuggly "heart-warming" experience set in Tolkein's Middle-earth universe. It's coming from Wētā Workshop and Private Division and will arrive sometime next year. Needless to say, I am more than a little bit excited.

To accompany this announcement, a small teaser was also released. It is short and suitably charming, showing a young person humming as she sits at a table strewn with flora and art supplies. There are also modern bits and pieces, such as headphones. She is painting in a book, and while I have nothing to base this on other than my hunch, she looks to be painting herself as a hobbit. Could this be Tales of the Shire's soon to be pint-sized protagonist?
Reveal Trailer with no gameplay

The third major patch for Baldur's Gate 3 is now being rolled out, and it includes the long-awaited Magic Mirror feature.

Players can now change their character's appearance by finding the Magic Mirror in camp. Everything other than race and subrace of your character can be altered - though it also can't be used to get rid of any "cosmetic modifications that are a consequence of your gameplay choices". Also, origin characters, hirelings and full illithids can't use the Magic Mirror.

Patch three has also added full support for the game on Mac, with Larian Studios recommending any players on Mac remove any mods and reinstall the game fresh before playing.

Recently at the Tokyo Game Show Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais spoke to CNBC about PC gaming and Steam Deck, here's what was said during the interview.

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• When talking about the power of SteamOS - "we would like to work with other hardware manufacturers, so they can adopt SteamOS in the future".
• On VR: "for Steam Deck we don't really have a VR story to it, but it's definitely something we want to explore more in the future".
• For the future: "we're not really seeing growth stop after COVID, so for us it's really important to keep working on the current version of the Steam Deck, put together software updates we just released a big SteamOS 3.5 update that's added new features we're going to keep doing that - but also work on the hardware side supply chain, retail presence, work with distributors to get the Deck available worldwide and expand its audience so we're going to be focusing on that short term - in the future we're looking at the PC market and where technology is going and see if there's any interesting opportunities there".
• When asked about console cycles, games being higher-end and Steam Deck upgrades: "right now we're looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years, we think that it's a pretty sweet spot in terms of being able to play all the experiences from this new generation and so far the new releases coming out have been great experiences on Steam Deck. We're working with developers on future releases and we're monitoring the feedback there but so far it's been pretty good on the horsepower front".

Twitter Thread

Five and a half years and endless requests from the community later, Rare has announced it'll finally be adding private servers to Sea of Thieves - meaning a single crew of up to four players can explore the world without fear of PvP encounters - starting this December, as part of the multiplayer pirate adventure's Season 10.

Season 10 itself gets underway on 19th October, and will introduce a major new feature each month ahead of 2024 - essentially meaning all content originally planned for 2023 will arrive before the end of the year, despite a painfully protracted, seven-month-long Season 9.

First up, on 19th October, Sea of Thieves will introduce Guilds, described as a "new way for players to form meaningful bonds beyond their immediate crew". Essentially, any player that's reached Captain status and has their own ship can start a guild - picking a name, logo, and emblem when then do so - which can then support up to 24 invited players.

I figured I was going to have to uninstall my Cyberpunk 2077 mods before checking out Phantom Liberty and update 2.0⁠. Most of the mods I went for on my last playthrough were difficulty and loot adjustments that'd clash with 2.0's big changes, and for the rest, mod authors would likely need to update their files to play nice with the patch. What I wasn't expecting was needing to do a clean reinstall⁠—complete with deleting some leftover files⁠—to clear up a persistent crash on startup.

I'm not sure exactly what borked my game, but big, foundational mod projects like Cyber Engine Tweaks need to be updated with each major patch in turn, and some users in the past have reported similar crash on startup issues to what I experienced. Mod author yamashi has noted on the mod's page that they will be working on a patch 2.0 version of Cyber Engine Tweaks in the coming days.

In the meantime, if you're a returning player, you may want to preemptively pull the nuclear option and do a clean install of Cyberpunk 2077 following CD Projekt's own instructions. The developer recommends:

• First, backup your save files in user/Saved Games/CD Projekt Red/Cyberpunk 2077
• Disable Steam or GOG's cloud save feature for the game (I forgot to do this but still cleared up my issue)
• Uninstall Cyberpunk and delete the following folders:
• The Cyberpunk 2077 folder in your Steam or GOG directory (ex: Seam/steamapps/common/Cyberpunk 2077)
• user/Saved Games/CD Projekt Red/Cyberpunk 2077
• user/AppData/Local/REDEngine
• user/AppData/Local/CD Projekt Red
• Restart your PC, reinstall the game, restore your saves, then reactivate cloud saves if you disabled them.

Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty will take a new role at Ubisoft once that game is done: executive producer of everything Tom Clancy's The Division. That includes oversight of all the Division-branded games: The Division 2, The Division Heartland, mobile game The Division Resurgence, and, what's this? The Division 3, which Ubisoft casually announced in the press release about Gerighty's new job.

Star Wars Outlaws and The Division 2 studio Massive Entertainment is "actively building a team" for The Division 3 right now, the press release says. As for Gerighty's current project, open world Star Wars game Outlaws, Ubisoft says he "remains fully committed" to it and that he'll "remain on the project through launch" before starting his new role.

The Division 3 is very early in development then, which helps explain the lowkey announcement—there's no trailer or even artwork to share. We've seen similarly concise, early game announcements from other big developers in recent years. Blizzard, for instance, announced last year that it's working on a survival game without giving it a name, a move we interpreted as an effort to recruit talent.

The fallout from the big Unity mess continues, with the MonoGame team jumping in to present a new plan for the future of this open-source and cross-platform framework for game developers.

If you've not actually heard of MonoGame you've likely still played something originally created with it including the likes of Bastion, Streets of Rage 4, Chasm, FEZ, Axiom Verge, Stardew Valley, Tooth and Tail and a great many more (although some moved to FNA). That's just a few taking from their limited showcase page.

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