Is there a practical reason they use those obnoxious screws or is it simply to discourage home repairs? When I had to replace my Switch’s fan last year, those insanely tiny screws were a pain in the ass to not accidentally strip.
I’m usually not one to advertise, but they provide extremely accurate and complete guides for precision electronics repair, and sell the necessary tools and parts with sufficient quality and reasonable prices.
Lack of graphics settings aren’t why I stopped playing. It’s the game mechanics. The game isn’t that fun for two major immersion breaking reasons.
Loading screens. So many loading screens. Just reminds me I’m using software instead of being in a universe.
Over reliance on fast travel. Yeah, space is boring. But why have a space setting at all if we are going to skip through it? Why bother building custom ships if there are no real challenges to overcome with them because spending time in space is not necessary at all ? Worse, it’s a bad experience because of the loading screens.
There should be a happy medium. I haven’t played Elite Dangerous in a year because I’m 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel. But the realism is out of this world. This Starfield thing of never needing to fly is too far in the other direction. I think a happy medium would be a system like Elite Dangerous, but if you need to travel more than a couple of systems over, have a long distance jump gate or something like that, and maybe autopilot. Eve online has jump gates and autopilot, but it can still take hours to cross the universe. It’s more entertaining to have a quick travel option for those scenarios. Eve has wormhole systems that will let you cross the entire universe in a few jumps, but finding those connections will take longer than just flying directly, unless you’re in a huge wormhole corporation that uses 3rd party tools to map all of the wormhole connections to known space.
I’m not sure. I guess because they go hard in the simulation aspect of the game. Although if we’re being realistic, it’s unrealistic that you’d have an interstellar space ship without an autopilot. I read that there are mods to enable autopilot, but I also read they can get your account banned, so I stopped looking into them.
Its not about good game design.
Its a kind of DRM - a move inspired by the hypothesis that making a game hard to pirate will improve sales.
The data suggests that hypothesis is false.
An EU-funded study found that profits of blockbuster movies are negatively impacted by piracy, music industry profits are unaffected, and profits from selling books and video games are increased by piracy.
Everyone loves to hate on it, but one thing that Star Citizen absolutely nails is the sense of immersion. From the time you load in until the time you are inevitably disconnected from the server, and from ground to ship to space, you are in one experience with no loading screens
I’m 50 jumps away from where I need to go, which means like 3 hours of nothing but travel
If you upgrade your fuel scoop, that’ll cut down your time severely. I can do about 30 jumps an hour with my Krait Phantom. Refuels before my FSD is even cooled down.
Given every single system in Starfield is already explored and built on, I think they should have just given up on the jump system and gone with a gate system like Freelancer or the X series. You get to fly to every point without menus while still being time efficient. The reason they didn’t go with this is presumably because of the supposed “exploring the unknown” angle, but you never explore anywhere new in Starfield anyway.
I must confess that sometimes fast travel removes a lot of value from a game. While it saves you a lot of time like a cheat. Cheats also save you time.
You see this issue when one of your core game loop isn’t enjoyable. It happens a lot in games, and you notice it if a game gives you and item or ability to play the game less.
This can be okay if this item comes in just as that loop gets boring (like you unlock special flash grab drives part way through the game). But if they let you fast travel from the beginning the likely case is that they found the whole space travel boring and they ended up providing a way around it.
Which leaves people asking “why’d you bother adding it in there”
But it worked so well with the multiplayer shooter Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League by Rocksteady Studios! /s
I know it’s not an MMO but there’s parallels there
I love the Horizon games (didn’t play the Lego version though) and it’s similar to the Batman games but don’t have any interest in an MMO or Live Action Shooter for them.
Real question: after WoW had been around for a year or so, were you still unhappy about it? I never played any of the Warcraft games before WoW and had never played any MMOs before Wow, so I had no feeling either way about the announcement. I started playing WoW because two of my close friends and two of my coworkers were playing a bunch, so it was a good way to have more gaming friends than just my one gaming friend. Were most WC3 players unhappy about the announcement? It’s clear that millions of people ended up being pretty happy about it in the end.
After WoW had been around for a year or so, were you still unhappy about it?
Nah, I enjoyed WoW well enough for what it is. When WoW was announced there was a lot of skepticism on whether or not a company that was primarily known for their RTS games could make an MMO, along with a decent amount of “Who asked for this”. In hindsight I’m also a bit bitter that we never got and never will get Warcraft 4 though. To some degree Blizzard basically stopped developing games for a few years due to WoW’s success consuming the company.
Were most WC3 players unhappy about the announcement?
I think most of them would have preferred another RTS game.
Point was Warcraft was primarily single player RTS. Yes, with multiplayer mode but MMORPG is pretty big genre shift. In the end, it’s just about using the IP, nothing more.
You gave examples of games that tried something like this that failed, I just pointed out an example where it was quite successful.
We will never know if the Horizon MMO would be good or bad. I think the IP would fit MMO genre quite well tbh.
The real issue with live service game failiures is that studios design cash grabs, not games they would want to play.
Oh, I didn’t mean this-therefore-that … I was trying to say that these two games in my experience having enjoyed the single-player, I think would have failed in the multiplayer realm as the desire doesn’t seem to be there. I’m certain there are examples in the opposite direction.
The IP “could” make sense as the gameplay goes for a very fetch questy type of mechanic and the land is vast and they could expand the lore.
I was just assuming (out of my ass) that these successful single-player story driven games are “forced” to do multiplayer games for cash grabs.
Albeit Blizzard did it for WarCraft, but I always saw Blizzard differently in this regard as it seemed like they had (very much past tense) the desire to do so.
Might have been a cash grab - in fact it likely was. But I tend to reserve my judgement. I’m not on the live service hate train - in fact I’m often interested in what they might have on offer. I like to have a main game, and live service games are great for people like me as there is always something to look forward to. And I for one fucking hate the constant cach grab fails.
People always hate on live service games just because of the label, but there is serious lack of good live service games compared to good single player games.
My comment migh’ve come partyl from a place of frustration so apologies if I was harsh or something
Quality isn’t necessarily measured by desire. One can enjoy something they never desired before it existed. And one can loathe something they always desired before it was made, see the Warcraft movie (for me, at least).
Yeah you’re absolutely right in terms of concept. I mean if you dig into my example, Suicide Squad could have been a good live-action shooter as well. Marvel Rivals is cooking right now.
I think my initial impression was switching a single-player studio over, but I lost that message in my reply. I also think it could be fun to take down mechs together as a team.
Just pulling it out of my ass, I didn’t think I see the appetite and if it’s not there then we could be left with a lackluster game.
I’m a big Horizon fan. Although I need to try Monster Hunter, my friends love it.
I vaguely remember The Matrix had an MMO that apparently evolved the lore in some crazy ways. And I’m going to guess they abandoned that for the new one.
To be fair, it was envisioned as multiplayer from the start, then dialed down and “settling” with HZD, then tried again before HFW and into the one with the 3D headset (mountain call or something?) and they kept saying they’d get to that original plan eventually. Does the Lego Horizon game have any of it? I want to believe the success of HZD and HFW as single-player helped them give that up in the end.
Never update the firmware on devices you have no issues with (if you have the choice). I learned that the hard way when I updated my LG B2 this year and now it has VRR flicker at any framerate below its refreshrate… And ofc I can‘t downgrade.
Updates for big corporate stuff rarely come with useful features or improvements anyway, just with more ads.
No, the game is still a scam because it’s been literally over a decade of development and every time I’ve been invited to go try the latest and greatest in their innovation, the game is laggy as balls and the servers never work. Also the fact that they have ships costing as much as actual automobiles that people purchase despite still being technically in beta is absolutely bonkers. They’ve had several waves of crowdfunding and the game is still in a pretty garbage state.
Trust me, I’ve wanted an actual successor to Freelancer for longer than this game has been in development, and it still doesn’t scratch the itch because whenever I try to play it, the game essentially doesn’t work.
Cost discipline is the last thing on these guys’ radar. A 20,000 dollar ship? That’s like a third of somebody’s annual salary.
More because I don’t believe a single word that comes out of Bugthesda and the fact that what they made was their same old shit but even more tedious somehow. It’s not about denial, it’s about Todd Howard being a pathological liar.
EDIT: just read the article. i forget that for the PC version they keep using the last gen version of the game lol, how difficult is it to use the current gen version?
I still have that one for 360! I was never very good, but it’s always a ton of fun to play
In my uneducated opinion, it feels like the gaming industry advanced past “quarter-eating” mechanics and have reverse engineered their way back there. The rubber-banding doesn’t feel fun/competitive anymore. Even playing solo just feels like it’s just trying to give you a taste of success in an attempt to get you to spend real money. Those of us who won’t ever “pay-to-win” just see an arbitrarily difficult or awkward game. For example, one of the later ones feels like it changes the player speed drastically based on who IT wants to do better now
EDIT: just read the article. i forget that for the PC version they keep using the last gen version of the game lol, how difficult is it to use the current gen version?
Jesus, really? It's one thing to do that for the Switch, but for PC?
Feels on brand for Bethesda to secret release this just before skyblivion mod finally gets near their release date. Kind of feels like a slap in the face to the community. I guess we will get a who did it better comparison.
Unlikely to happen, because the leadership behind the project claimed they are in contact with Bethesda, to make sure no one’s stepping on anyone’s toes. Although obviously they can just pull the rug at any time, which would be catastrophic. Given that they’ve remade basically every single asset in the game, and require the original game to be owned and installed, it should be fine
I am actually not even sure how much input Bethesda had in this. It was remastered by an outside studio contracted by Microsoft. The same studio handling the remaster of Metal Gear Solid 3, apparently.
ConcernedApe thought so, too ;) He works on Stardew his whole game development career. It is difficult to stop trying to improve the game and let your baby go after so long.
I’ve been playing and replaying it since its original PC-only release in 2016. I remember being so excited about a new game finally improving on thr Harvest Moon formula. I think it’s safe to say that today it has completely surpassed other games in the genre. The freedom and variety of tasks in the game has since enticed me towards further replays as well. It’s so inspiring how passionate Barone has been towards his creation in the long run too.
From what I’ve seen it seems a bit more targeted at teens and adults then kids and that’s kind of what I wanted Harvest Moon to be to begin with so I’m pretty excited to play it.
Also generally the added depth and how fleshed out it seems
It encapsulates some whimsy and magical elements which have always been underdeveloped in other similar games. Filled with mystery, easter eggs and constant progress and discovery. The relationship elements are a lot more mature than Harvest Moon as well. Deals with some of the grit and consequences of living in reality. All packaged together superbly.
On the exact same boat. I switched to Godot as soon as version 4 came out and have been really happy with it. I still use Unity professionally (at least until Godot 4 fixes some big issues), but most of my projects are now on Godot. God bless open source devs.
Yeah my device struggled to run any major engines so Godot kinda saved my ass when I first got into gamedev many years ago. I was going to start learning the major engines now that I have slightly better hardware, but I guess I’m skipping Unity now.
How is that tradition? It happened one time. Successor name suffixes and prefixes used: super, color, advance, mini, 64, i, 3, new, u. It could be anything.
Edit: ah no, there was also super game boy, I guess that’s the only one they repeated. But that was specifically for super NES compatibility.
Do “i”, “mini” and “new” really count as new consoles? i and new were just upgrades to the same console, I believe, and I’m not sure what “Mini” was even for…
I mean, they were direct successors. I imagine the next console won’t be something completely different than the switch, so I imagine I will be some sort of switch 2.
How about the Swiitch? You get the roman numeral 2 in there and the name’s similar enough to the original Switch, so customers will be confused as to whether this is a new console or an iteration of the current one. Just like the Wii U!
Hyping up old features as if they’re groundbreaking is a proud Bethesda tradition. I still remember laughing at their pre-release hype around the Radiant quest randomizer in Skyrim, which is virtually identical to the quest randomizer that Daggerfall had been built around fifteen years prior.
When I buy a Bethesda game, I know what I’m getting into. People bitch, but like you said, it’s the familiarity I’m going for.
And you know the modding scene is going to be good in a year or so.
Ultimately I don’t understand all the bickering. I don’t like Subway or McDonald’s, but I also don’t rant that they are no good because they don’t have lasagna on the menu.
They’ve built a library of small building blocks for character movements. These blocks can be combined in various ways to create a wide range of animations. … Instead of designing separate animations for each of these situations, they use these building blocks to put together the character’s movements naturally.
This sounds like shape keys, which is a technique already widely used in games and animation today. When you get shot in Battlefield, your character model plays a “getting shot” animation. When your character runs, it plays a “running” animation. When your character gets shot while running, these two animations are combined - it’s not a separate “shot while running” animation.
Would love to know if there’s actually some novel aspect to this “invention” but it seems more likely that this is yet another bullshit patent approved by a clueless clerk who did zero searches for prior art.
Edit: Read the patent. Not only does it describe nothing novel, it doesn’t even document what they did. All it says is basically “we created animation blocks and combine them”. The details are just a bunch of bullshit jargon spew:
attributes can include conditions, properties, events, flags, graphs, values, references, and variants
I think this would make it tough to enforce the patent if it’s actually commonly used. If I were somehow granted a patent on tap dancing, its common usage by others before me would probably cause my patent to be invalidated if I then tried to sue a tap dancer.
Not a patent lawyer, but IIRC, US patent law had some protections for things (including non-patented) that are already common practice.
Software patents get away with stupid shit like this all the time. Patent trolls claim they invented a software pattern and then sue everyone who uses it.
They would only be able to get away with this if it had already been determined that they did indeed invent that thing. Many choose not to fight cease and desists when it would be in their best interest to counter claim.
You can’t grant a patent for something that is already in the public domain at the time of filing, regardless of whether or not that thing is currently patent protected.
Edit: this is such a funny comment to want to downvote. “Fuck you with your legitimate factual information!”
Novelty is assessed against all publicly disclosed prior art, not just the stuff that has been patented.
If I publish content on a webpage that could be used as prior art later on assessing novelty.
If I invent a special lawnmower and only show my friends and family and never sell it or patent it, that could still count as public disclosure and be used against anyone wishing to patent a similar lawnmower.
I work in patents. If it wasn’t novel it wouldn’t be granted, believe me.
My experience with clients has led me to never trust lay people’s judgements on what is or is not novel.
Feel free to actually read the examiner’s comments in this patent application for an actually full understanding of the process
Or better still if you think you are able to assess novelty though a 5 minute cursory read of a patent without any reference to prior art, feel free to do my job for me. You’re clearly much more efficient and unbiased and definitely aren’t cutting any corners in your evaluation. Both in understanding the law and understanding how to assess novelty in a proper way.
I work in patents. If it wasn’t novel it wouldn’t be granted, believe me.
I work in computer graphics software. My former employer preferred that engineers liberally apply for “defensive” patents because of how often people would get a patent for something we already did and then try to sue us for it. Plus we got a small cash bonus when our patents were approved. Through this process, I was granted six patents for my work there. It would be unwise to put something to text that could be used as evidence to invalidate the patents, so I’ll just say that my opinion on how low the bar is to getting software patents approved is definitely well-informed.
understanding the law and understanding how to assess novelty in a proper way
I’ll admit I have little understanding of the legal definition of “novel”, but insofar as the intent of the patent system, the current bar is way too low for software patents. Although remedied recently, the plethora of software patents that still exist for “(Something people have done for decades) but do it on a computer” is ridiculous.
If it was something you already did prior to filing and you could prove it then their case would be extremely flimsy, but I do understand where you come from.
It really depends on jurisdiction, in the UK it’s not possible to even patent software. In Europe it is, but regulations are strict. The US patent law is a little bit wonky in this regard.
You’ve not even referenced the claims of the patent, which is actually what is protected. It’s already extremely likely the examiner has flagged these up as prior art and more and still passed it as allowable after a thorough novelty search and several rounds of amendments. Lots of things are sort of like other inventions but what they actually do lies outside of the claim scope.
The invention is not what is patented, the claims are. There are undoubtedly novel features in the claims or again the examiner wouldn’t allow it.
Barring a performance of a full novelty search where you break down the claims and compare them to the prior art individually, you aren’t convincing me that the claims aren’t novel.
Assessing novelty is one of the most difficult parts of being a patent attorney and can’t be done with a cursory search.
A locomotion system for controlling animation of a character in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment comprising: a rendering engine; a core system logic communicatively coupled to the rendering engine for executing core game logic of the virtual environment …
This is basically a description of a game engine that supports movement and animation. Descent (1994) would be the earliest production use of such an engine.
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein a key identifies one or more variables of the blackboard, the key comprising a human readable name associated with the variables to provide the selection criteria.
Congratulations, you just described “variables”, a concept at least as old as ENIAC (1945).
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein the core game logic defines one or more desired physical movements to sequence the motion type objects blocks.
Yes, that’s one way to describe “animation”
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein a selected archetype block defines a fallback archetype block, the fallback archetype block defining at least one new motion animation block or motion type block not present in the selected archetype block and inheriting any remaining motion type blocks and motion animation blocks from the selected archetype block.
Variables having a default value is the default behavior of most programming languages and software systems.
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein a selected archetype block defines the character’s default animation.
Yea, we’re talking about animation here. Default value of animation description = default animation.
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein a selected archetype block of the character is unique from a second archetype block of a second character and at least one motion type block is common across the character and the second character.
Inheritance, a property of most software designs since the 1980s.
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the motion animation blocks, the motion type blocks, and the archetype blocks is defined by a series of extensible markup language (XML)-based meta files.
Storing configuration in a data file. You’d be hard pressed to find an alternative. Maybe some genius will come along and find some way to represent it in JSON…
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein a selected attribute of a selected motion animation block includes at least one of a clip set that is used by a selected motion of the character, an overloadable animation blend tree to be used for the selected motion, named additional clips within specific clip sets, parametric blends from sets that can be named, a Boolean that specifies whether play speed of the selected motion can be modified, a minimum speed, and a maximum speed.
This seems to be the main claim of the patent, but seems to have a huge amount of prior art (see links). “Parametric blends” and other terms are just jargon.
The locomotion system of claim 1, wherein the attributes of the motion animation block are custom float values.
Oh my god. Really? Shall we also include “doubles”, “halfs”, or maybe “rationals”?
The locomotion system of claim 1, further comprising one or more transition tables to control a relationship between motion animation blocks.
“Translation table” seems to just be referring to the graph topology of the system. Yes, graphs are the most common way to represent arbitrary N:M relationships.
The locomotion system of claim 1, further comprising an in-game graphical user interface for real-time modification of at least one of the motion animation blocks, the motion type blocks, and the archetype blocks.
Node-based editing; standard practice in all 3D modeling.
A computer-implemented method for controlling animation of a character in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment comprising: executing core game logic to render the virtual environment using a core system logic communicatively coupled to a rendering engine …
Yes, you already described what a game engine is and an animation system is. Game engines certainly do have animation systems…
The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein said animating the character further comprises identifying a second archetype block, the common set of motion type blocks and the motion animation blocks of the second archetype block altering the animation of the character as a game story defined by the core game logic develops.
Picking animation keys based on game logic. What else would you base it on exactly?
The computer-implemented method of claim 12, wherein said animating the character further comprises identifying a fallback archetype block of the archetype block, the fallback archetype block defining at least one new motion animation block or motion type block not present in the selected archetype block and inheriting any remaining motion type blocks and motion animation blocks from the selected archetype block.
Yes, default values do be defaultin’.
A computer program product for controlling animation of a character in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment, the computer program product including a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a device to cause the device to perform a method comprising: executing core game logic to render the virtual environment using a core system logic communicatively coupled to a rendering engine …
Yep, software sure does run on computers. Computers are neat. And they have storage.
The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said animating the character further comprises identifying a second archetype block, the common set of motion type objects blocks and the motion animation blocks of the second archetype block altering the animation of the character as a game story defined by the core game logic develops.
Are we really going to enumerate all the permutations of engine + animation + defaults claims?
The computer program product of claim 15, wherein said animating the character further comprises identifying a fallback archetype block of the archetype block, the fallback archetype block defining at least one new motion animation block or motion type block not present in the selected archetype block and inheriting any remaining motion type objects blocks and motion animation blocks from the selected archetype block.
All the claims except 8 are “obvious” IMO. Claim 8 fails novelty because of the huge amount of prior art on the matter.
Note that I’m using “novelty” and “obvious” according to their english definitions, and the intent of patent protection. If they’re different in practice, that’s a failing of current patent law.
If you think you can do better than a patent office examiner get on it because they’re extremely well paid.
Or maybe you could stop and draw a line under what you think is correct. Have you ever considered the possibility that actually you haven’t got the first clue how to properly analyse a patent because it’s a profession that requires extensive training and eye to detail?
I know on the internet it’s fun to pretend you actually know everything because everything is a Google search away but to even properly contextualise and separate good patents and bad patents isn’t a skill you can just pick up in 5 minutes to win an argument.
It sounds more like they’re using more fundamental movements than what you’re describing, not running animation+shot animation but more like:
Both reloading a particular weapon and mantling over a walk require you to lift your arms, so the root movement of lifting your arm to reload an LMG is the same one used to grab a ledge overhead, etc.
Basically they’re just categorizing movements based on use case and direction so they can string those individual movements into different and unique patterns for individual actions.
Pressing an elevator button uses the same arm movement as opening a door, which uses the same wrist rotation movement as turning the key in a car, etc. So they just break down individual movements in the same way an LLM breaks down a voice into phonetics to string new words together.
It’s definitely possible they’re doing something novel internally, but the details that would support that interpretation are missing from the filing. One of the requirements for patents is that it “sufficient disclosure of the invention so that it can be reproduced by others”. I would say I qualify as an expert in the domain covered, and I have no idea what they’re actually doing based on the patent alone.
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