Some desperate scalpers on ebay are already trying to sell the 512GB version for 1000€. Despite the fact that you can still order one for half the price and receive it within 6-10 days.
I could be wrong, but I would bet that launderers are probably not targeting this niche device. I’d guess that the people buying them are more likely from a country that they don’t sell in. Like Australia for example.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Simply add waiting lists and a max limit of one order per person. Sucks for large families but only until the initial hype is gone.
There’s a reliable way to combat scalping in general. Start selling the item at a high price or in larger quantity and then cut the price whenever sales drop off.
Scalpers can only make money by scalping something when it is being sold below what the market is willing to pay for it in the quantity in which it is available.
On a non-economic note, I’d add that I don’t think I’d want to buy an easily-modified Linux computer system from some random person unless I planned to wipe it. How do you know that the thing hasn’t been rootkitted?
There’s a reliable way to combat scalping in general. Start selling the item at a high price or in larger quantity and then cut the price whenever sales drop off.
That alone might be effective at reducing scalping, but would also put the item beyond the reach of entire income classes.
I've worked in camera retail and the local shops do just that, actually, and it's effective. The FOMO people get their stuff first at a higher price, the shop gets a boost in margins, and everyone else gets to enjoy cheaper prices three months later (and have the early adopters sit through the bugs and first-run issues).
Can’t really do that with such a hot product. Would cause too much PR damage and outrage. Companies don’t do it because this way they basically outsource the PR problem to the scalpers while allowing them to play innocent.
The level of outrage over supply issues for a video game console is disproportionate a lot of the time. Outrage that would be better directed elsewhere, but I digress.
Oh god. Please aim higher than that. Not saying that Blender ain’t powerful, because it clearly is, but it’s UI is just plain shit. (Unless there have been some massive improvements over the last few years.)
I might have to one of these days, but man do I doubt it’s UI is usable after being such hot garbage over so many years. Such a shame too because fuck everything about Autodesk and I know Blender has some incredibly powerful tools.
Blender used to be basically unusable for me, the UI made no sense and attempting to use it after learning 3d through maya and 3ds it just didn’t work. Then they made it good, I spent a few weeks learning it a few years ago and it’s great now. What you’re describing is exactly what they went and did
So you’re not gonna try it like everyone is telling you to. I have no idea what they’re talking about because I don’t use blender but uh…me thinks you should try it instead of being stubborn and not. Seems kinda dumb.
Blender 2.79 and earlier was super-unintuitive. 2.8 gave it a fresh coat of paint it’s easier and more featureful with each version (Now 3.6, 2.8 was years ago!)
I know right! I keep wishing all software would adopt some of it’s amazing features, like hover copy-pasting, being able to right-click any button/option to set a custom keyboard shortcut for it, being able to type maths into any numerical field, etc.
I tried learning it some time ago (months, not years) and I never cussed so much in my life… maybe I’ll just get the hang of it eventually, but let’s just say, first impression on the UI is not good.
Being intimidated and lost is completely normal given that it looks like this, and there’s probably not a single person on the world to have ever used all of Blender’s features.
Watch the whole Blender 2.8 fundamentals playlist, things get way easier once you know what to ignore and what UI conventions blender uses as well have a rough overview of the feature set – because that allows you to ignore even more stuff. Then figure out what you want to do, figure out a workflow, customise the UI to make that particular thing convenient (remapping a couple of keys when you need something often, leave other things you need twice a day in the menus, etc), and bob’s your uncle.
Last, but not least: Unless you come from another 3d program and absolutely can’t be bothered to re-train your muscle memory use right-click select. Your index finger is going to thank you, it’s also a better UI convention in general as it leads to way fewer misclicks (selecting instead of manipulating or the other way around). Personally, I use space bar for the context menu (the default is play video which I rarely use, and if then shift+space isn’t exactly awkward). There’s also plenty of extensions focussed on particular workflows, e.g. F2 is very common if you do mesh editing, I also use machin3tools, especially for mode switching.
All major general-purpose 3d packages have a feature set so large that it can’t possibly fit onto keybindings, and you can’t pick them up like picking up a word processor. At the same time it’s professional software used by professionals who want to be fast and efficient, so the optimal UI isn’t “intuitive” (as in: dumbed down) but flexible and customisable. Blender’s defaults aren’t bad for some basic work but ultimately you will find them lacking, that’s not because the defaults are bad but because they are a compromise between 10000 ways to use the program. Ask three blender users how they use blender and you’ll get fifteen answers.
I wish GIMP had a full UI redesign like Blender, it could work as a Photoshop replacement for many use cases but… Jesus it’s non intuitive, flawed and it mixes opposing design principles all the time.
There was a project that renamed it to a less controversial name and updated the UI to more closely resemble modern photo manipulation tools, but they’ve stopped working on it before a major release.
EDIT: There’s PhotoGIMP by Diolinux, a Brazilian Linux YouTube channel with a really nice host. This is a set of plugins and configuration files that try to ease the transition from Photoshop to GIMP for newcomers. It’s certainly good, but as an add-on, it can’t actually fix all issues with GIMP.
Seriously just let GIMP finally die. At this point the whole branding has become a running joke with anyone who works in graphic design. Better start a new project that hasn’t that much negative baggage.
Are there other open source projects near feature parity with GIMP, though?
There are certainly other commercial software, like Affinity, and certainly some shady Photoshop clones like Photopea (and it does work really well) but nothing like GIMP, as far as I’m aware.
No sadly not. Krita is great for digital artists but otherwise not a good gimp replacement. I personally still have my Affinity Photo 2 copy that I bought on Windows and use it in a VM. But I have the feeling that even huge parts of the Linux community have given up on GIMP. A lot of people that I talked too rather use Photopea instead. That’s why I think investing in GIMP is pointless. It has been seen as a joke for almost two decades, that the branding will never undo the negative connection. That’s why I think people should start a new project and if they have a clear vision and appear competent, rise a crowdfunding campaign in the FOSS movement.
It’s been my understanding that the general populace has been asking the developers of GIMP for years now to overhaul the UI and make it much friendlier to use, and the answer came back, “No, stop asking.”
Gimp’s problem is not so much the UI, but that it has fallen way behind Photoshop in terms of features. Fixing up the UI wouldn’t hurt, but you’d still be stuck with a graphics app that’s 20 years behind the competition. It would need a heck of a lot more work to catch up.
You’re thinking of Glimpse o believe. And yes gimp really needs a change. Krita isn’t bad but not good for more graphic design oriented tasks. It’s type tools are awful.
Honestly, one thing I’m seeing frequently in comments about this is a bit frustrating. That is, people saying that they vow never to buy any games in Unity ever again on principle.
Vendor lock-in is a real thing, and part of the reason they actually tried this play. Many of these developers likely want to switch to a different engine, but don’t have the time or resources to do so. Honestly of all people hit by this situation, they probably need the help most.
Incidentally, if you are one of those devs reading this and feel you don’t know anything other than Unity, go learn something else. Diversify your portfolio. Learning a new engine isn’t hard if you know the fundamentals.
Unity dev here. Will switch on our next game, but don't have the choice for the current game that we've already invested 4 years into.
Also, bevy looks nice code-wise but it desparately needs a proper editor and GUI to make it artist friendly
Hopefully Unity doesn’t disrupt your current project too much.
But yeah, I think this is the most extreme case of a company burning trust with their users overnight in recent years (worse than Twitter IMO). It’s especially bad because many Unity users/devs have their livelihood depending on Unity, so of course they are going to change once they get a chance. The risks of not switching now massively outweigh the risks of switching.
It will just take a lot of devs/teams some time to transition. Unity will probably go under in 2-4 years, they can’t recover from this.
I’ve played around with Godot a bit, and in my view it actually makes more sense than Unity. Probably has more limitations, but hopefully those can be overcome in the next couple of years.
Thanks. We're fortunately still on 2022, so it won't really affect us at this point.
I've been keeping an eye on godot for a while, it seems like a very interesting engine. I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time for the scale and rendering quality we're usually looking for, but it might be a great option for 2D and smaller-scale projects.
There is the blender_bevy_toolkit which aims to serve Blender as an editor for Bevy. I haven’t tried it myself, but definitely will when I get to more artistic phases of my projects.
That looks like an interesting project, but it seems it hasn't been updated in over a year, and is only compatible with bevy 0.6. The current version is 0.11 or something. I've had my ass kicked before by relying on projects that didn't have a lot of support available, so I would stay out of this one.
That’s a valid point. Games released in the next 2-3 years should be probably be given a pass. My admittedly layman’s perspective is that any indie game deep enough into development that switching engines isn’t feasible most likely wouldn’t require another 4 years to ship.
I don’t know you, or what you know of the game. But I do know many people have preconceived notions of what the game is that are wrong.
If you haven’t tried it before, the early game is pretty tedious. And that can turn people off. Once you get a few bosses down and especially when you move into hard mode, it really opens up.
Protip: “It gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game.
It has to be good from the start.
If it isn’t and it can’t hook a player, you’ve just lost a customer, who likely just refunded the game as well.
Now personally: I like terraria from start to end. It got a bit boring in the middle. I used to not be able to play it at all because /something/ about the game really triggered my migraines. It doesn’t anymore, and I can play it.
Yep. The first few hours of a game are really important. If people tell me it gets better later I usually assume they are suffering from sunk-cost at that point. There are some games that genuinely start slow and end up really good, but it's not common.
Terraria is a 2D sandbox but with good progression built in with interesting bosses and items. The early game in these games are usually the most fun in my opinion, building up from nothing is satisfying.
I’m not trying to sell anyone on anything. I’m just giving honest information about the game to someone who has already said they don’t intend on playing it. I was addressing what is a common complaint about the game.
For context, I absolutely devoured that lackluster early game back in 2011. It’s just that as the game has gotten content over the years, it’s mostly been added to the latter half (probably like 2/3rds really) of the game. And also, games and peoples’ tastes have changed a lot since 2011 when the game came out.
So for me, today, the early game is a slog. And it’s something I’ve seen many others complain about. I understand the “it gets better” is often used to try to sell lackluster games, but I don’t think Terraria fits that bill. But the game legitimately gets better after the first few bosses for most peoples’ tastes.
I’d agree that “it gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game, but I dunno that a game has to be good (or at least at its best) from the start. Totally understandable if people don’t want to, or can’t invest the time into something that doesn’t grip them right away, but at least for me a slow start can be really nice, especially when a game ends up unfolding in unexpected ways later on. I can enjoy that kind of pacing, and sometimes it’s rewarding to have something start off kind of painful for one reason or another and become something much greater. At least personally I think a “weak start” can end up making the full experience better overall, as it’s kind of a part of the journey.
But of course, if you’re not enjoying it and you don’t want to continue and you want to refund it… That’s totally reasonable! A game that’s a slow burn is probably a much harder sell and not going to appeal to as broad of an audience, and I think that’s okay.
The issue is that "good" varies a lot from person to person. I like survival crafting games with an incremental tree of improvements more than boss rushes so for me it's good from the start.
I've started it so many times and it feels like I'm just mining and building houses for hours and hours, having to check some wiki to see how to trigger "the good stuff". I avoid YT "tutorials" because it's all from people who've put hundreds of hours in who assume you'll just breeze to a first boss in 20 minutes. Not knocking the game, sometimes just mining with a podcast on is relaxing, but, I dunno, it needs more oomph early on.
My kids and some friends play it all the time and I appreciate that it’s a well made, great game. I’ve watched them play it many times and enjoyed the glee emanatingfrom the players, they really do have fun.
I just can’t become immersed in that particular 2D or isometric style game. Excluding the little nightmares series and DARQ.
I think the important thing to note about Terraria is it is as much Zelda and Castlevania as it is Minecraft. That is what makes it special. A lot of the copy cats tried to do 2D Minecraft, but forgot how important the Castlevania combat was to the whole mix.
You can donate directly to Godot or FNA if you want to show support and don’t think that you’d enjoy Terraria. Personally, I love Terraria and have bought it for pretty much every system I own and everyone I know. I got interested in it after watching TotalBiscuit and Jesse Cox play it. (I can’t believe that was 12 years ago!)
There could be something to say for both donating directly to Godot and trying to support Terraria in some form because you think they’re doing good.
It depends on how activist the Terraria devs are, though. If this donation is a one-of statement from them, supporting doesn’t make as much of a statement on your part.
Yeah, now I’m concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they’ve given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.
When did the term “open source” start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that “open source” meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia
The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:
Although the OSI definition of “open-source software” is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001
Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be “open source” because the license stays with the code, and is not truly “for any purpose,” which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic’s license.
If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.
You are not allowed to distribute unreal source. From their FAQ:
Unreal Engine licensees are permitted to post engine code snippets (up to 30 lines) in a public forum, but only for the purpose of discussing the content of the snippet
But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say “I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it’s source code” then Unreal Engine fits, it’s open source.
they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity
That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I’m pretty sure isn’t an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.
Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it’s source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you’d expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).
This is definitely pedantic, but “open source” is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren’t exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.
Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck
People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we’re not going back. I don’t really think that’s a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.
You’re right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that’s a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren’t getting away with it any more.
The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can’t pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.
And some of them realistically can’t. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said “We could probably further monetize the work we’ve already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties.”
Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of “We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that’s $100,000 per minute per seat.” The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don’t have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.
as a life long gamer who has had to ‘grow up’ and learn trades to survive and pay bills. it would be hella fun and possibly cathartic to mess with a free game engine. I’ve been playing games for 30 years. Maybe it’s time i take all that knowledge and frustrate myself on a passion project. Thank You Unity for showing me GODOT.
The point isn’t even whether the terms are acceptable anymore. They tried to change the deal retroactively because they felt they had a strong position in that game developers are already invested into their ecosystem.
They may have gone back to saner terms for now but unless the entire management structure resigns, there’s no reason not to say they won’t try again in the future.
It doesn’t even matter of their management as a whole changes. No matter who it is, what matters are their actions going forward. The only way to get out of the hole they dug themselves in is years of sitting around being good.
They tried to change the deal retroactively because they felt they had a strong position
I’m honestly surprised that I have not seen by now a meme pic of Darth Vader telling Lando that the deal is being changed, but the face of Darth Vader is instead the CEO of Unity.
Not by our own accord. Unity is the seemingly cool, weed-sharing guy with shady friends who wanted to introduce you at a party one day and decided to grope your boob to tell Musk how laid back you were and they both laughed.
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