Good question, I think there is a bug maybe? Development on Main Assembly stopped in 2021 (which is why I recommend MA at this pricepoint) and the bug might have never been fixed. What a shame :( the game definitely wasn’t intended to do that.

edit so I did some testing, Main Assembly exits to the menu with an error if I go from being connected to the internet to being disconnected. The game plays fine in totally offline mode or when connected to the internet, the bug (at least on my deck) arises when switching between being connected to the internet to not connected while playing.

Definitely potentially pretty frustrating, worth tolerating for how cool the game is (and for $4) but frustrating nonetheless. It is a shame development on Main Assembly stopped it has some amazing ideas and vehicle mechanics!

Trailmakers is definitely very solid too, the building philosophies between the games are quite different but they are both great games.

I think it is a testament to trailmakers that it doesn’t feel hamfisted in comparison to main assembly, rather it feels like an intentionally limited construction set carefully tuned to environmental challenges in order to make tweaking fun, feel approachable and give permission to make subpar monstrosities and just wing it, tweaking as you go.

It fits the theme of trailmakers better than I realized at first. You crash land on a planet while crewing a dime-a-dozen corporate freighter. The technology you have access to from the wreckage is extraordinarily powerful but functions in very rigid systemized ways partially to allow crafting a wide variety of interoperable and compatible components but also partially because a soulless space megacorp made them lol. That being said, it feels like a fun freeing limitation in a way that emulates the play of legos well.

Main Assembly’s (in game accessible) workshop has some seriously good stuff, like someone modeled a realistic, working Nissan gtr skyline!

The build is set up with race track rock hard suspension, but it feels really fun to drive and you can absolutely powerslide and oversteer like you would expect.

https://youtu.be/UP6RI42DgQw

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2363306440&searchtext=

Here is a sports car fully set up just waiting for a model to be built around it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2196401528

This Rock Crawler is a surprisingly faithful recreation of a real life rock crawler and honestly I would believe I was playing an offroading sand crawler game if you just had me drive it with no context what game I was playing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2381297215

Check out these other buggies, every single one of these must represent so many hours of tinkering and tweaking work because each one of them feels alive and dynamic in handling in a way most dedicated racing games fail to really capture.

How about an x-wing with a cockpit view?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2397845618&searchtext=

This monster truck handles REALLY good

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2170574251&searchtext=

This car is tuned to drive like a trackmania car, and it drives awesome, it is a blast to drive at high speed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2759012431

Here is another arcadey, high performance f1-offroader hybrid, really nuanced handling with some cool suspension

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2434054909

This rally racing/small trophytruck-like vehicle doesn’t have a skin/aesthetic panels but the handling and suspension is butterrry and the workshop description indicates it has autopilot and different modes. Amazing stuff! Ridiculously fast too.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2355543998

hot wheels hot rod, handles good

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2258992409&searchtext=

Finally here is a nice, simple forklift because you always need a forklift.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2181182790&searchtext=

Or maybe a fullsize, functional truck crane!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1947787434&searchtext=

Well I am planning to build a rocket and go to the moon but alas the hardware is still a couple years out :( no fear, it will be soon though!

Sure but also ugggh

They will break the internet as much as they need to in order to accomplish this.

The third part is youtube keeps implementing more sophisticated ad blocking to the point you can’t block ads…

Bluesky is a corporate hedge to delay the social network business from becoming not a business, it is headed by variously naive or disengenous tech people who believe they are creating the future when they are mercenaries for the past.

You know when you see oil company commercials and they have lots of footage of wind turbines, solar panels and other ecofriendly crap? That is bluesky.

Yeah I think a lot of “gamers”/programming type people actually would look down on most of what farming really is and it is the reason there are so few genuine farming games.

Stardew valley is actually a farming game in both mechanics and spirit. If you think the puzzle of growing your factorio farming machine bigger and bigger is the only interesting or desirable experience of running a farm you categorically don’t understand.

Personally I haven’t managed to get into stardew valley myself but I respect the hell out of it.

Make it on the same engine as the mad max game

It won’t work but that isn’t the point, the point is to dehumanize game development. Failure is just a chance to consolidate and to normalize treating game development as a low quality of life “low skilled” job.

Just install blender from the discover app on the steam desktop, add it to steam as a non-steam game and you can launch it as you would any other game.

As for controls I prefer joysticks + gyro, but that is just me.

Yeah it is actually pretty amazing how good performance dayz gets on the deck, even on deathmatch servers with 25+ players in a small area it runs great.

The gunplay is superb especially with some of the more common weapon mods.

Not sure why arma 3 runs so much worse in comparison, the difference is massive.

Honestly mostly been learning blender, I am sure sure nobody ever intended blender to be used on a handheld gaming system but that is the beauty of the steam deck right?

Also been playing some everdell.

Coincidentally I had just downloaded Apex to start playing with a friend :(

lasers are way slower than bullets they are super easy to dodge, have you never even seen star wars?

Subspace Continuum

Yeah it is a blast splitscreen and I could care less about (american) football honestly, it is just good arcade fun.

Not Mutant Football League!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/529520/Mutant_Football_League/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1

In order for this to be accurate, the building plans would need to encoded so only the building designers have any clue how the building works and how safe it is.

Also moving around random mundane objects in the building like a picture frame on an office wall not infrequently causes a cascading and horrendous displacement of all the other objects in the building.

To open the breaker box involves operating two sets of panels, first the building tries to get you to use the new updated breaker panel interface but it was designed by the portion of the company that was told to sell more “cloud rooms” which are tiny and full of cameras that monitor residents and serve ads to them over a preinstalled intercom, so the first panel hides all the normal rooms and you have to find a latch and a set of 30 screws that when removed allows you to access the old breaker panel with all the other rooms. Every single time you open the breaker you have to repeat this process.

There is a building supervisor that used to be at least somewhat helpful when residents had questions but they got replaced by a new person. The replacement confusingly advertises nearby chain stores to you when you call them up to ask about a plumbing issue and answers specific questions about the building they are in charge of oddly, as if they were questions about buildings in general all over the world.

I feel like I am missing some key things here, but this is at least a somewhat accurate starting point for a microsoft word building.

Yeah, this is classic class warfare and the trajectory of these things has been moving away from developers having any say for a long time, the difference now is that business majors have finally found a killer app to convince society it is ok to destroy software development as a decent career… it is called AI and it doesn’t actually matter if it works or not, the point is to convince people it is only natural and right to treat software devs like worthless commodified contract labor that is just around the corner from being entirely obsolete.

I find it darkly hilarious how confident so many people who work in the software industry are that they aren’t about to have their future crushed by the rich. Again it really doesn’t matter if AI lives up to the hype at all, if AI fails to deliver and a market crash happens all the better since society will readily accept that as proof there needed to be a market correction on out of control labor costs for development, consolidation will occur and the labor of software development will be indefinitely and likely permanently devalued.

This should be clear as day to programmers but people who program for a living tend to think understanding programming is a shortcut to understanding everything and it leads to hilariously naive views from otherwise apparently very intelligent people.

Make no mistake this is the beginning of an awful era for game developers and software development.