This is what I was thinking. For a first iteration to get out the door immediately it could just be windows with a “game browser” that launches full screen when you turn it on 😂
I mean, that’s what all Steam Deck competitors really are. They’re Windows 11 with atrocious launchers on top, some of which acceptable and some very buggy, plus a literal standard AMD APU that AMD is selling by the bucket, and half of them share board designs sold by Chinese suppliers pretty much ready made.
It would have to run steamos or something the complexity of all the always-online launchers that modern triple a games has is something that steam handles well, and likely a huge trip up point on any frontend slapped on a windows pc
That is literally what the first Xbox was. It’s internals was a custom mboard running a Celeron 700 and 3.5" HDD (can’t remember what the graphics was based on, maybe a GeForce MX?) with a customised Win2k OS.
All approx. It’s early and I can’t be bothered confirming those specs are 100% accurate :p
Every time I see an original Xbox I’m always amazed because in my memory it was a lot smaller. I used to carry that thing to and from school I have no idea how I managed that.
There’s a guy on youtube called CNCDan who did exactly that. SFF pc in a very nice 3d printed case with custom PCBs for the controller boards. If you’re at all interested in that sort of thing I think he has a 9 part series on how he built it.
He is the Russian equivalent of a baby boomer mandating with the implied threat of death that his own government pay a single shitty local satellite set-top box distributor (let’s be real, it’s likely just cheap chinese hardware) to develop and spread Russian culture through video game media in less than three months (which is probably already developed and was waiting for more money to market and enter production).
Sounds like he is very in touch, because that is one of the ways how U.S. culture is spreading throughout the world currently.
Sounds like he is very in touch, because that is one of the ways how U.S. culture is spreading throughout the world currently.
With the absolutely stonking caveat that the US government didn’t mandate that, it just happened naturally over time. Over decades and decades. Particularly helped by the US speaking English. In a lot of parts of the world English is a good second language.
But the only people who speak Russian is Russia. No one has Russian is their second language outside of a few Baltic states and even then often it’s a tertiary language, not a true second language. This is a huge limiter on their ability to spread culture.
I noticed that too, but the decline is very gradual which shows you how out of touch the shareholders are. I bet most are unaware they are on a sinking ship.
Sorry guys, we’re under dictator rule now. We should be getting some food coupons next week, otherwise we’ll starve. If only xxx_Epicl33tGamer69_xxx didn’t let us down in the big game last night. Oh well, such is life.
[His] opinion asserts that manipulating transient data generated during gameplay through third-party software does not infringe copyright according to the EU’s Computer Programs Directive. This distinction between protecting a game’s code and the temporary data it generates is a very significant one for all developers of game-enhancing tools.
The Advocate General also highlighted that the variable values in question are not original works of the game’s author but result from player interactions and game progression, which are unpredictable and dynamic. Since they depend on unforeseeable factors, these values lie beyond the author’s creative control.
That is an interesting distinction, the code to generate your health total is copyright but the actual health value you modify with cheats is not.
I mean, this is a pretty normal distinction afaik (human vs non-human creations; afaik non-human creations almost always have any human copyright claims voided when challenged).
Imo what makes this special is how precise he’s being. If I understand correctly, he’s basically saying that the code for the health bar is a human creation and protected by copyright, but while the code to change the health value might be human-made, the actual values are machine-made and not under copyright (there’s probably a lot of nuance I’m skipping over, but my understanding is that’s the gist of it).
I’m not explaining it properly. Imagine instead of 100 hp, there is apple bananas. That isn’t really a mathematic representation in the same way that the cheat code can change. It would be a copyrighted work of art. It wouldn’t be trivial to build an hp system to do this (in fact it would be a large undertaking), but I am not asking about practicality, just what the law would find.
No, no it wouldn’t. You’re still using math, you’re just using a different language. If apple bananas becomes apple pears after being hit by a bullet, you’ve changed the value. That is what math describes. You cannot avoid this. This is how computers work, and math is just another language to describe things. Even if every health value is a string, you still need to keep track of which string is currently in use so that you know when to kill the player. That requires math. That is what they’re talking about. It is not the in-game health indicator that is public domain, it is the actual health value in RAM that is generated and modified during gameplay.
It is better this way. Copyright is already abused to hell and back, if they expanded copyright to cover this kinda stuff then it would potentially destroy things like right-to-repair as companies could claim copyright infringement on anything that modifies their code.
Computers work with 1s and 0s. We have decided as a society that certain combinations of those equate to being copywritable. This ruling seems to be saying the result of a calculation cannot be copywritable? Wouldn’t creative tools like movie editor or photoeditor disagree? So then is the ruling actually saying these specific values used in this instance are not copywritable, changing the health to 100 for e.g., because there is no human creativity in the result of that value?
So if a programmer used an original work of art to define the state of health in the actual code, and verified the value matches the 1s and 0s that represent that work of art (thus it only ever comes down to boolean check in the logic side, and the value of the variable is never set to something simple like 0 to 100, it was using a huge amount of RAM and a very slow comparator operator.
Well, I think both are human creation, you are using the machine and the game to create something new. In that sense, a save game file could also be under the players copyright. Lets say a Minecraft world for instance.
What this is saying is that the Minecraft world would not be under copyright, but anything the player built in that world would be. So you can’t copyright the world itself, but you can copyright any human-made constructions in that world.
This is wholly preferable to the alternative options which could result in things like being able to copyright AI-generated works (applying his logic to AI, they’re basically saying you can copyright any edits to an AI-gen image, but not the image itself because that was AI-gen).
I meant minecraft world file which stores the chunks the player explored and potentially modified. And I said “could” not “must”, it depends on if hits a certain creative threshold.
If the player decides to teleport around while creating a dickbud or whatever by just the explored chunks, that could meet it.
If someone selectivly openes quests to use the open quest markers on a map in an RPG to create a dickbud, that cloud meet it as well.
The save game could tell your individual story through the game, that cloud meet the threshold as well.
Also, because the unmodified minecraft world is randomly generated, it would not be under anyones copyright.
With AI, there could also be made an argument that the selection process might make it copyrightable. Like if you take a picture of a interesting looking cloud. The clouds might be semi-random, but you selecting a specific one reaches the threshold.
A Minecraft World isn’t, not even if you draw on it with exploration as the world was generated from a random seed.
It is random, and unpredictable. You could maybe make an argument from reusing the random seed… But since the ability to turn the seed into the map isn’t something a human can replicate without Minecraft I think it also fails the test for copyright.
Nature is often random and unpredictable, but the process of selecting a interesting POV and taking a picture of it is still copyrightable.
I wouldn’t be so sure that if you discover a seed, that can be transformed using minecraft into a world with very interesting and specific properties, could not be under copyright protection.
In fact movies, pictures and books are specific numbers on a digital storage medium as well, that are transformed using a codec. That isn’t something that can be easily replicated without that codec.
I am not a copyright lawyer, but I think there are precedences where just the selection process from a stream of (semi-) random number, pictures, sound or events alone can produce copyrightable products.
Yes, and you have copyright on the photo - not the layout of the plants and trees in it, nor even the angle of the subject. Someone else can go with a camera and take their own photo without touching your copyright.
Much like with digital files, the copyright is as it is a non-random transformation of a mostly replicable media product. People don’t have a copyright on numbers, even if their 5000 trillion billion digit number happened to turn into a 1960s Disney short if you run it through the right compiler.
Yes, and you have copyright on the photo - not the layout of the plants and trees in it, nor even the angle of the subject. Someone else can go with a camera and take their own photo without touching your copyright.
A work is original if it is independently created and is sufficiently creative. Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of ways and reflect the photographer’s artistic choices like the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph, lighting, and timing. As a copyright owner, you have the right to make, sell or otherwise distribute copies, adapt the work, and publicly display your work.
So if someone intentionally reproduces a picture, they violate copyright, IIUC.
In the case of minecraft, I think a case can be made, where the “picture” is the minecraft world, and the creativity is the selection process by the artist. The artist chooses their angle, position, lighting, etc, in this case they choose properties of the world, maybe by visiting thousands of them, using seed search machines, or other reverse engineering tools etc.
I all depends on if the artist can raise their work above just the random noise they get as an input in a creative way. I am not saying that all minecraft worlds (or save games for that matter) are subject to copyright, but since we are dealing with blurry lines of copyright, it is possible.
IANAL, but I think if I would look into case law, I would find examples for both options, in some cases the “selection process” was enough to demonstrate creativity, and in other cases it wasn’t.
You are correct it isn’t about the numbers, it is about the artistic and creative product that is copyrightable, which, in case of digital art, is represented as numbers, and distribution of those might be punished by law.
I am just saying that digital art can be more that just still or moving pictures and sound. It can be a world space the artist prepared for you where you can move around.
About the section on the law, I would read it just as stating what is covered under copyright, and not what isn’t. I also just mentioned what original work is, not describing derived work.
First, we’re talking cross duristicion, since I was using the EU ruling above.
Second, I’m wondering if what that US page means is that a non-original work doesn’t get copyright protections, or that non-original work is itself in breach of copyright? Maybe I should go digging to find out.
I agree deliberately designed digital worlds are artistic creations. Just that randomly generated ones are not.
You’re probably right that legal examples on both sure probably already exist.
The crux of the matter for me is the question wherever “the selection process” alone is enough to create art or not, and depending on my mood I fall to one side or another on that question. Not specifically if it is under copyright or not, because that sort of follows from that.
Artists often use randomness in various parts of their creation process, what is really required is the human element. Is a picture of a cloud, that speaks to the photographer in some way art or just a picture of a random cloud?
I guess this has to be decided on a case by case basis, therefore I cannot completely exclude it.
I agree with all that. The edge cases are tricky and there’s no easy answer.
A painter flicking or splashing paint on a canvas presumably makes something with copyright protection.
Does an accidentally statically impossible basically impossible to tell apart version accidentally made by someone flicking and splashing their own paint infringe it? I’d hope not but can’t really argue for a rule on it that doesn’t involve believing stated goals/mind reading.
Guess not a thing us mortals/non-legal professionals can ever answer.
This makes sense to me, and is in line with recent interpretations about AI-generated artwork. Basically, if a human directly creates something, it's protected by copyright. But if someone makes a thing that itself creates something, that secondary work is not protected by copyright. AI-generated artwork is an extreme example of this, but if that's the framework, applying it to data newly generated by any code seems reasonable.
This wouldn't/shouldn't apply to something like compression, where you start with a work directly created by someone, apply an algorithm to transform it into a compressed state, and then apply another algorithm to transform the data back into the original work. That original work was still created by someone and so should be protected by copyright. But a novel generation of data, like the game state in memory during the execution of the game's programming, was never directly created by someone, and so isn't protected.
This raises a rather sticky situation for the coming years. I have been seeing more and more posts about developers using GPT generated code in various projects. If a game is made and it is found that GPT was used for some parts of the core code, does the whole project lose its copyright?
I don't see how this wouldn't be derivative work. I highly doubt a robust, commercial software solution using AI-generated code would not have modified that code. I use AI to generate boilerplate code for my side projects, and it's exceedingly rare that its product is 100% correct. Since that generated code is not copyrightable, it's public domain, and now I'm creating a derived work from it, so that derived work is mine.
As AI gets better at generating code and we can directly use it without modification, this may become an issue. Or maybe not. Maybe once the AI is that good, you no longer have software companies, since you can just generate the code you need, so software development as a business becomes obsolete, like the old human profession of "computer."
Who ever thought of this?? "Cheats are copyright infringement" is such a stupid sentence..
Not to forget the base line: if it's not in a competitive environment, what the hell do they care if someone wants to play an easier Elden Ring, or skip the 'grind 100 hours for this materials' part??
I remember when a friend of mine got that and showed it to me and I thought it sucked because it made the games too easy, but never in my life would I have thought anyone was infringing copyright by using it.
On one hand even the Nintendo Switch is just a modified Nvidia shield so this task would be a simple one for most states. On the other hand: Sanctions and insane corruption. I‘d be surprised if they manage to release anything that could keep up with Consoles from 2 generations ago.
Guess what other obscure old system used rectangular pixels? The IBM PC.
CGA and EGA used resolution modes that were multiples of 320x200 (PAR 6:5). VGA’s 16-color hi-res mode was the first to support square pixels at 640x480, and it would become a standard for years to come because TempleOS and Windows used it (you can even force Windows 7 to run in this mode!)
The NES and SNES had PAR 16:15 8:7 (oops) (which is often ignored in emulation), and so did the most common NTSC DVD-Video mode (none of the commonly used ones had square pixels but you only really notice it with subtitles - you cannot correctly display them at native resolution on an LCD).
And that’s just the successful systems I know off the top of my head.
Soviet personal computers failed for other, obvious reasons. They struggled to copy the latest chips, and the economic incentive was minuscule despite the government’s investment - very few people could afford a computer in the Eastern Bloc, and they could not be exported due to patent infringement and being years behind. The economy collapsed after USSR broke up and nobody wanted to invest to rebuild the industry.
That being said, people in the Eastern Bloc were very resourceful with what they had (mostly clones of Atari’s 8-bit home computers and IBM PCs). A blind person from Czechoslovakia made a speech synthesis sound card for an IBM-compatible PC, which functioned well enough to allow him to be employed as a full-time programmer. At least one of the three exemplars works to this day.
The story is way more interesting. Cannot dig the article, but dropping soviet originated hardware had to do also with programming languages. Western entities started with heavy lobbing, often dressed as grass root movement, for languages that for western based systems. Not sure how well supported this thesis was, but it was interesting that preferences of engineers got used for market absorption.
Not a new thing by today’s standards.
Russia has own computers on own processors produced on Micron(not to be confused with Micron Technology). But they are expensive as cast iron bridge and hard to get.
Didn’t the NES produce non-square pixels? Like pure data wise the screen was square but at some point in making it NTSC it gets stretched horizontally to 4:3?
Data-wise, the screen is 32x30 tiles, which is 256x240 pixels, or 280x240 including the border. (The height is set by the modified NTSC standard at 240p60, and the width of 256 was chosen to simplify 8-bit arithmetic, plus 24 pixels for a border.) With square pixels, the aspect ratio would be 16:15, or 7:6 including border. The video timing was chosen so that this fills the entire TV screen, which is 4:3. As a result, the pixels have an aspect ratio of (4:3)/(7:6)=8:7 (varies a little between TVs). However, the NES could only flip sprites and not rotate them 90°, so this could be taken into account when creating the rotated versions.
Another successful system with non-square pixels was the IBM PC, whose CGA and EGA cards had a 320x200 resolution (or multiples thereof in other modes), which resulted in PAR (4:3)/(8:5)=6:5. Square pixels first became available with VGA’s hi-res mode (16 colors at 640x480), adopted by systems such as Windows 3.1 and TempleOS.
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