I’m an older dude whose phase of staying up all night playing was back in the early console days. I prefer in-person tabletop RPGs like D&D, Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. Just not into computer games anymore, but that and social media seem to be most people’s primary computer activities.
Game chatter has changed over the years - I used to see a lot of talk about graphics quality and massively powerful hardware - maybe that was during a period when it was rapidly improving, I dunno. But the current focus seems to be more on game industry business decisions sucking.
Anyway I’m just wondering how common it is to use computers more for coding and other technical non-game stuff.
My main use is for porn.
Why do you think the net was born?
I never play, i always code… And i am not even that good at it 😢
Practice makes perfect!
I use the crap out of my computer.
-Video editing -Music editing -Word processing -Spreadsheets -Microprocessor programming -YouTube viewing -Image editing -Shopping -Investing -Web surfing -3D printing -CNC Routing -Website development
- Oh and gaming.
I do play games, but I also work on creative projects and watch shows/movies on my computer. I use Illustrator to create typeface designs, graphic design for laser cutting or stickers, 3D modeling and slicing programs for my 3D printer, Google Docs for writing, coding for Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, et al.
3d modeling and printing are major things now. I’m into that as well, and also playing with Arduino and ESP32 for home automation and building little robotic tings. Writing code has always felt kind of like a game to me.
I spend a lot more time coding than playing games. It’s not unusual for me to not be active on steam for a month.
I’m not a gamer. Work at computer all day, only mobile (no games either) outside work.
Audio! I’m a hobbyist musician.
Gaming is a close second.
That reminds me, for a long time I’ve had an idea for a piece of instrumental music that would be the intro to a video. I’m not a musician but used to play the piano a little. I do have a little synthesizer keyboard from when my kids were young. If I noodled out a melody on that and recorded it, is there software I could use to make it sound like multiple instruments, add drum effects etc. so it sounds real? I don’t know if there’s a musical term for doing that - flesh it out?
Maybe “arranging” or “composing”.
As for tools to make it happen: You can use a “DAW” (Digital Audio Workstation) which is how most people compose these days. I use Reaper because it’s a tiny download, very full featured, and cheap. Ableton is very popular and has the biggest community online. Cakewalk is completely free (with a sign up.) ProTools is what a lot of professionals use, though it’s dying a slow death because it’s very expensive, they’ve gone full subscription model, and the things it can do that drew people to it can be done just as well with other DAWs that aren’t so predatory.
A DAW won’t do the work for you, though. If you want something to make harmonies or drum beats for your melody for you, there are a lot of "plugin"s or "VST"s you can download that can help with that process. Or, if you just want to give something a melody and tell it to make a song, there are probably AI solutions these days.
Good luck! Beware the audio rabbit hole. This can be a cheap, or ridiculously expensive hobby.
I use online games as a way to hang out with friends. Usually it’s about an hour or two a day. The rest of my computer time is spent coding or doing work stuff.
I do 3D animation and illustration. Fortunately, running games requires the exact same kind of hardware so my workstation doubles as a playstation
No games here, I never have found them interesting for whatever reason. Because of this my laptop is a 2018 Chromebook with reflashed BIOS running Ubuntu. It has significantly less processing power than my phone but is plenty sufficient for everything I ever need a computer to do.
Same for me. Coding, 3d modeling (for fun), lately some fpv simulator to get better with drones before I shred a real one. I even worked in the gaming industry, but it just doesn’t keep me interested for long anymore.
Linux stuff
this for me too
54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.
Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.
As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It’s not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won’t run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.
Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.
For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.
gpu prices are wild, I think amds better ones are not too bad tho and can run vr flight sims fine, winwig dropped a good cheap (around 100$) my issue is warthundes the only arcadey pvp option, their next game might be good tho, I really want s good flight sim game to hop on and off, treat like cod, drop into a city to close quarter dog fight or be what I thought war thunder was (a massive war with servers for different eras you can drop in as any vehicle type lol, I was delusional)
the dopamine from vr dogfights in close quarters with buildings to fly around and use as cover is insane, I also like the landing to capture base domination mode, warthunder could be so peak if they werent abusive
Wow dude, I probably started D&D a year or two after you. It was the summer the first DMG came out. Still have those original 3 hardbacks, Deities & Demigods, etc. The DMG is pretty tattered. I actually DM a weekly 1e game at my house with some friends I found on meetup.com before Covid. We’re all really into retro - I’m gonna see how they feel about Castles & Crusades, which I’ve never played in all these years.
Here are the older edition books I have. My 1e DMG and PH have been lost to time. That copy of the Monster Manual is one of the originals. The Deities and Demigods though is NOT one of the issues with HP Lovecraft’s monsters in it. I have seen one of those editions, one of my local games stores has one for sale for over $300, but that’s not what I have. Not shown are all the 5e stuff I have. In my youth it was a challenge to save up enough to buy material when it came out. As an adult, especially since I got the wife playing, yeah… I’ve indulged quite a bit.
Those are all in great looking shape. I didn’t have the “Cthulhu Deities & Demigods” either until a few years ago - it was in a box of D&D stuff my sister bought me at a garage sale for $30. There were 7 or 8 books and maybe 15 old modules - with a couple still in the plastic. Quite a haul it was. Dunno if I mentioned above but I worked for WotC for a couple years around 2010. There was a “free table” in the break room where people put books, minis, t-shirts, whatever was cluttering up their desks - it was a gold mine.
That’s awesome!
I live about an hour away from Lake Geneva, WI, which is Gygax’s hometown and the birthplace of D&D. I worked with someone that worked at TSR during the 2e days and he has a lot of stories. (The only thing he has to say about Gary Gygax is; “The guy owes me money.”) Last April I attended a conference in Lake Geneva at the location of the very first Game Con. The Wisconsin Historical Society sponsored it. It was a great time and will be going back again this year.
My books look in great shape… From that angle. LOL… They have thousands upon thousands of hours of playing behind them over the last 40 years. Every page has smudges on them from where they’ve been turned again and again.
My gaming PC became my self-hosted server around 5 years ago. Now it runs 24/7 serving up media through Emby, providing backup/cloud/vpn services to my mobile devices, DNS adblocking for everything on the LAN/VPN, password manager syncing, and whatever else I feel like playing with :)
Time, energy, and willpower just never seem to come together for gaming anymore. And on the rare occasions it does, that PC still games just fine; even after making the move to Debian last year.
Yes
