Title. Turning off the fancy effects (which can be done with Alt+Shift+F12) improves performance slightly, but having to toggle them on and off every time I start a game is... Y'know. A thing.

I was wondering if there was a way to automate it, like game opens -> they turn off, game process ends -> they turn back on

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15572946

Summer Islands (resort tycoon/sim) 0.9.x Review

Summer Islands is a resort management tycoon/sim where you build a tourist island paradise while managing hotel capacity, retail, leisure services, utilities etc. The player will build hotels, roads, shops, restaurants, utilities to support their island resort in a Simcity 2000/3000 style interface.

The game is primarily inspired by Holiday Island (1996) developed by Sunflowers Interactive (best known for publishing the original two Anno games in the 90s) and to a lesser extent by the tourist component of the Tropico series.

This mini-review of Summer Islands 0.9.x is based on ~15 hours of gameplay, albeit with disasters disabled. I've never played Holiday Island, although I believe I would have really enjoyed the game if I tried it back in the 90s/early 2000s.

When playing Summer Islands, the first thing that you notice is the Simcity 2000/3000 style 2.5D view. The game world is based on a grid structure and all buildings have a local coverage area. The aesthetic fits well with the game and provides a nice nostalgia hit for veteran players. 3D looks nice, but if the base game de facto functions on a cell based structure, 3D can become a hindrance for gameplay if the UX doesn't communicate the true impact of your choices.

Summer Islands does have weird pixel graphic glitches (primarily in the management screens) that do become annoying after many hours of playing. The minimap is also janky and doesn't work as expected.

The early game requires a bit of min-maxing to drive expansion. You want to select a starting region with lots of flat land to minimize terraforming costs (which can get really annoying in the early game). In the early game you do want to have a very efficient money making setup.

Summer Islands is very much driven by coverage scope, incompatibilities and requirements of different buildings. These are not always intuitive. I found that to drive expansion you want to come up with modular micro-blocks that you deploy depending on the geography.

There is a large number of a different building types, albeit you do have to use your own imagination to align the different buildings in an aesthetically pleasing manner. The game would benefit from a clearer focus on different types of tourists and requirements.

The economy of the game needs a bit more balance. Early game is pretty rough and requires lots of min-maxing. The in-game achievement system is broken in the 0.9.x release series (confirmed by the dev in the steam forums); early game you won't be able to leverage the achievements as they will be too difficult, late game you will be overflowing with money and there will be no reason to bother with the achievement system.

One weakness of the game is that after a few playthroughs, by the mid-game you will be loaded with resources. In the mid to late game, there is a distinct lack of generic city building functionality. You have ~40 hotels, with associated restaurants, shops, parks, sunbathing zones, but no residential areas for the personnel that service these hotels and service buildings.

That being said, Summer Islands will appeal to players who enjoy tycoon games, this is a pretty unique experience, and those who are willing to be flexible when it comes to gameplay polish.

Did anyone here see it?

https://www.extrafabulouscomics.com/

Apple is offering discounts of up to 2,300 yuan ($318) on select models. […] Apple has become dependent on discounts to shift ‌mid-cycle ‌iPhone 15‌‌ stock, with strong competition from Huawei's latest high-end series of Pura 70 phones said to be partly behind the most recent drop in sales.

I'd like it to open an app that shows a list at once instead of the current, horribly inefficient way that makes apps mostly take up almost the whole screen, one at a time... Thanks for any ideas!

Some of you may have come across Helix - a very fast editor/IDE. Unfortunately, Helix has its own set of keybindings, modeled after Kakoune.

This was the one problem holding me back from using this excellent editor, so I soft-forked the peoject to add Vim keybindings. Now, two years later, I realize this might interest others as well, so here we go:

https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix

I‘d be happy to polish the fork - which I carefully keep up-to-date with Helix‘s master branch for now. So let me know what you think!

And yes, I‘m also looking for a more original name.

https://t.me/Crimeanwind/59702