CorrodedCranium

I'm about 30 hours into Fallout 76 so far and I'm surprised how much I am enjoying it. There's a lot of unique locations and creatures that make exploring fun. The MMO part of the game isn't super blatant outside of the microtransactions for skins and certain items. When I do come across other players it's usually because I stumbled into their camp and we just emote at each other a couple times before I move on. I don't think there is a way to actually talk with other players outside. I think there might be voice chat but I haven't tried it. The story seems pretty shallow though and mostly done through terminal entries and notes. I haven't really felt compelled to follow the main story line. I've been slowly working my way East then South doing miscellaneous quests along the way and exploring.

I'll probably play at least another 30 hours. I am not too sure how grindy late game quests will be. It costs caps to fast travel and they aren't as easy to come across as they are in Fallout 4 so if quests objectives have me wandering back and forth across long distances I've already explored I could see that getting tiring in a hurry for example.

The only bug I've come across was being unable to move sporadically in the over world and consistently being unable to move indoors. It turns out this was due to my high FPS and I needed to cap it using AMD Chill.

I do wonder what was added in the Wastelanders DLC and how the game was before it.

TL:DR I'd say it's worth picking up on sale and if you want to explore a bit. It doesn't feel as deep as other Fallout games but it's something.

Does anyone here want to play together? I'm on PC and mostly wandering around exploring but keep dumping most of my ammo into Sheepsquatchs. If you do want to play together shoot me a message and I'll give you my Steam ID.

By 'stealth archer equivalent' I mean the stereotypical easy/newbie or basic bitch way to play the game. It may be easy to pivot to and get stuck in a rut of playing that way.

I thought about this while playing Balatro. I kept trying to do creative combinations like Stone Joker and Marble Joker to see how far I could go with stone cards and pairs but pretty much always end up doing 8 Ball flushes.

I'm running into this more and more with BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and Bungo Stray Dogs.

I was wondering if anyone else has run into anything similar?

I don't think it makes a difference unless I want to use a fortune enchanted sword. Is this correct?

This is the kind of bar of soap I am talking about. It's kind of a contoured oval.

I know there are copyrights on soap shapes. I've read several soap shape patents like Theodore G Brown's hollow bar of soap designed to contain slivers of old soap and Douglas Lee's helical soap.

I've tried to go through Conopco Inc's list of patents (the trademark holder for Dove) but I can't seem to find much. They also own a plethora of other companies though so it's been challenging to swift through.

On that note I also looked for subsidiaries of Unilever (they own Dove) to see if any of them make similarly shaped bars of soap but it doesn't seem like it. Brands of soap outside of Unilever such as Irish Spring (owned by Colgate-Palmolive) do sell contoured/"dog bone" soap but I don't recall seeing any that match Dove's design.

I did find a book called Chemical Product Design: Towards a Perspective through Case Studies from 2007 and chapter 9 is titled "Design of the Dove Beauty Bar" which sounded promising but it seems to be mostly about the chemical composition and reducing soap scum in bathtubs. This is also apparently one of the theories as to why they are branded as beauty bars instead of soap. The other theory being it was an advertising tactic by David Ogilvy to appeal to women.

Someone on Reddit claims their grandfather invented the shape of Dove soap and posted the original wooden models. They backed up their claims by getting into contact with Unilever. I couldn't find any useful information in the comments.

I could probably go to a grocery store and see if any other brands have similarly shaped soap and cross reference that with the release of that style of soap by Dove to see if the copyright has lapsed but that would probably mean looking for old advertisements.

For context I was in the shower thinking about different shapes of soap and it made me wonder if that specific design (contoured oval) was originally chosen primarily to either:

A) Minimize the amount of contact on surfaces after being used to limit residue build up and prevent it from becoming stuck to tubs, shower, sinks, and so on.

B) Work better with the human body by maximizing the area that comes into contact with skin and wearing more evenly.

I imagine these days Dove would say both but that feels a bit like saying the stay-on-tabs you find on canned drinks were designed with a hole to hold your straw in place or keep bees out of your drinks during the summer.

All of this made me wondering if there was a patent somewhere and I've now spent about two hours looking for it. I don't really know why I became so invested in this. I suspect there's going to be a simple answer.

I mentioned Simitone in another post here and it made me consider giving it a try. A couple years ago I attempted to set it up (I think it may have been around 2018 after seeing a post like this on ModTheSims) but ran into some kind of issue that kept me from actually being able to play. I'm wondering is it worth the effort?

From talks in forums it seems like it isn't being developed anymore.

The SimsTek Wiki goes into specifics stating the following:

Simitone was cancelled when Rhys was sent a ceased and desist from EA over attempting to publish the project to Apple's App Store sometime after EA announced The Sims Mobile. He noted that it had the real potential to cut into EA's revenue and that the company wasn't having it. The code was released to the public but is still treated as proprietary software.

But doesn't site a source.

You can find the FreeSO final post here if you would like to read it.

For those that want to know more about The Sims Online here is the Wikipedia page.

If you want to see people playing the game several YouTubers such as CallMeKevin and Plumbella.

There are other servers that exist for FreeSO such as SimNation and FreeMyLand but I haven't tried them myself. Others such as FSO Brazil don't seem to exist anymore from what I can tell based off of a very minimal amount of digging.

Here are some other screenshots from just before the end:

Related:

Here is an article about multiplayer in The Sims 4.

FreeSO also serves as the base for Simitone.

By community projects I mostly mean mods but I'd be interested to hear about anything adjacent.

For example Simitone is self described as

On modern operating systems, The Sims has a few nagging issues that make it less than playable. Simitone can be seen as a tool to improve the playability of your existing installation of The Sims. Here are some features:

• Playable in 3D - using a combination of models generated from the 2D sprites and created by the community.

• Download the mesh pack here!

• Custom user interface that works at modern resolutions. Working on a more desktop oriented interface.

• Improved graphical performance, support for high resolutions and refresh rates.

• Custom lighting - directional lights with smooth falloffs and shadows using generated 3D meshes.

• Volcanic, a program which allows you to examine, modify and create new game objects. (from FreeSO)

But I'm not too sure how the release of legacy collection will effect their efforts. The last release was on January 16th which was a couple weeks before the release of the legacy collection and a couple weeks after the end of FreeSO.

Another example is the Sims 1/2 starter packs by voicemxil on GitHub being taken down by a DMCA. Previously these were considered the way to play the original games in The Sims community.

Other than that some Sims modding websites or mods have gone on to specify that their mods are compatible but that's about as much as I've seen.

I feel like having the early access label makes me more apprehensive about buying a game because of the amount of abandoned early access titles I own and being wary of it not having an ending. In the case of No Man's Sky I feel like I would be less grateful for all the content adding updates. I might view it as just working towards a completed project rather than doing something nice for the community or doing it out of passion.

Buying a broken game does make me a lot less likely to buy new games from a developer immediately after the release.

Other examples could be Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76, Halo MCC, and the remastered Grand Theft Auto trilogy.

Here's some on my list:

• Red Dead Redemption 2 - I do not want to deal with the Rockstar Games launcher.

• Tom Clancy's Breakpoint - The game's add-on packs feel like Ubisoft is trying to nickel and dime gamers who would instinctively buy the GOTY equivalent of a title. I do not want to deal with a Ubisoft launcher or account.

• Zombi - According to the Steam reviews it required a Uplay login to validate the game before you play and that version of the Ubisoft service no longer exists. This seems to have been rectified but I still don't trust it and don't want to go through the refund process if it hasn't.

• Skyrim VR - I've already bought too many copies of Skyrim.

A bit of a "this is why I pirate" thread but more targeted at individual games.