Dystopika (Steam, Windows) is a city builder in maybe the strictest definition of that two-word descriptor, because it steadfastly refuses to distract you with non-building details. The game is described by its single developer, Matt Marshall, as having “no goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes.” Dystopika does very little to explain how you should play it, because there’s no optimal path for doing so. Your only job is to enjoy yourself, poking and prodding at a dark cyberpunk cityscape, making things that look interesting, pretty, grim, or however you like. It might seem restrictive, but it feels very freeing.
A friend of mine bought one at MSRP to add to his collection along with the likes of Anthem and Babylon’s Fall. He also picked up Suicide Squad for this reason, but he found that he unironically really enjoys that game while it’s still operational.
Right? For a game to be a collector’s item, it needs to still be able to function in its intended capacity. Additionally, they need to be considered good. Most games that become a collectable do so when they transition into the “classic” category, usually 20+ years after they released. In 2050, no one’s going to think, “Oh man, Concord was hailed as a masterpiece in its day, I need to own that piece of history!”
A lower cut. 30% revenue cut means we pay more than necessary for games and we also miss out on some indie games that cannot be profitable with such a large cut.
We already know lowering the cut doesn’t make us pay less. All it does is put more money into the pockets of the publisher.
And I very much doubt Valve’s cut is a reason indie game can’t be profitable. There are asset flips going up on Steam on a daily basis. If asset flipping wasn’t profitable we wouldn’t see them propping up like mushrooms after rain. When asset flips are more profitable than an indie game there’s something wrong with that game.
Friday was amazing, tonight was a bust (but just looking at stars on their own was pretty cool, so no regrets)… Fingers crossed for tomorrow and Monday!
Where abouts?
Where I’m at - northern Baja - of course there had to be a persistent nighttime marine layer, which only starts to clear once the sun is up.
I was for it for the first 100 clones. Now it’s in the same vein as 2d pixel shooter rougelikes, way too saturated. I never give these a second look because there’s just so many uninspired clones.
Everyone knows, the absolute best value add to a power hungry mobile device is the ability to use that power to inefficiently mine some random junk cryptocurrency.
So I hope it’s that. (No I didn’t read the article. There’s no version of this that isn’t a scam.)
Agreed. I’m not looking forward to it either. I’ll be at work, most people are probably going to call in, and there will be hours of traffic when get off.
Best chance I’ll ever have personally. Live in the path, work from home, good time. Plan is to just step outside for a bit, look at it (with protection) then back to work.
We’ve had code modding by using thunderstore since release only new thing is paradox mod store and map editor. I did get a roughly 10% performance increase on my largest city. It’s still not where I want it to be but I’m glad it’s slowly improving.
I’m glad I skipped release day. Definitely waiting to buy it on sale after it’s been fixed with updates and DLC. Sucks to see companies treat buyers like testers.
I pre-ordered, but when they started doing damage control over how performance was going to be bad before the game even launched I sighed and cancelled.
80 bucks well saved. Still waiting for it to be fixed to pick it up. Do we have mods via steam workshop yet? I’m still annoyed at them pushing their launcher.
No they are not ysing steam workshop only paradox mods. The community is using thunderstore mods but I’m pretty sure paradox brought off the modders to ensure they move over to paradox mods.
It went from the running animation looks terrible to being blown away by the moves being chained together to form an incredible sequence. Amazing fight choreography that makes me want to check out the series.
Honestly if you’re feeling that way, you might just want to watch fight compilations on YouTube. The fight animations and the rest of the show were worked on almost completely separately, and you’ll have to get through at least season 3 before people stop clipping through objects, or background characters just being shadows.
… No, sorry. The world building has such a great potential, but it’s clear that they had no direction after Monty’s death, and there are just so many random plot lines that they try to make stick, and then just never reference again. If it was just incidental stuff it might be possible to overlook, but it’s very foundational elements to the narrative that they just drop for no apparent reason.
Hbomberguy has a really good video about all of the problems that plagued production. It’s a pretty interesting watch that covers the way the story was put together, where the writers got their ideas from, and a bunch of behind the scenes stuff.
Absolutely. RWBY set the standard for quality when it came to nontraditionally produced shows online and really spawned a new era of independent media.
Ugh games of this era are gonna age like milk with this forced upscaling and blurry TAA smear shite.
More compression and upscaling… How about just better graphics? How about you make a console that can do path tracing that you can get going with a fairly cheap PC setup.
All these years and these consoles still run 720p30fps like the PS3, but it’s ok with some people because it’s using AI to be dishonest and not just lying like back in the good old days with fish AI.
Forced upscaling and blurry TAA is compensating for the fact that they can’t push graphics much further on the hardware we have. The current hardware progression has stagnated, combined with the fact that we are seeing more diminishing returns in graphics as they improve, requiring more power to deliver less of a noticeable difference.
But it doesn’t mean these games won’t look great when you disable the fakeness and run it with brute force GPU power 10 years from now.
I honestly think the current graphics we can achive are fine and where the true improvements should come from are better animation and actually good art direction.
I’m no expert on the matter, but I know this yt channel argues that the technology is already available. The thing is, big players like unreal engine devs make sub-optimal decisions when implementing these new features, leaving a lot of games being blurry and/or mal-ajusted simply by not knowing any better. Of course, art direction will always be important for a games graphics, but when the vast majority of tools available make things look bad by default, it makes sense that people will assume a better result is just not available yet.
That’s the guy who’s asking for a million dollars to “fix” unreal engine 5 despite having 0 programming experience and sends out dcma strikes for any videos that call him out on it, lol
I think the primary reason for the GPU stagnation has been the AI / GPU compute bubble over the past 5 years.
So much on-die space has been diverted away from raw rasterisation power towards CUDA, that it has artificially held back GPU progress.
When we do see the current AI bubble burst (and it does feel like we’re fast approaching that point, due to all the recent incestuous business dealings), hopefully we can see some innovation return to the sector.
As the article states, I think the biggest factor is just the slowing of Moore's Law. Not only is new tech improving at a slower pace, old tech just isn't getting cheaper to manufacture.
Though I think one more factor the article fails to account for is that console generations themselves are lasting much longer, and even bleeding into each other as last-gen games continue to get released well into the new generation. The steepest price cuts on the graph came at the end of a system's lifespan, those are just fire sale prices to clear out old stock. Comparing those numbers feels a bit misleading, because five years into an old console meant it was ready to be phased out, while five years now means we're only halfway through the generation.
I know there's a lot wrong with the industry, a lot that's worth circlejerking about, but the fact that we're seeing price increases isn't just some greedy CEO trying to pocket a few bucks, it's a sign of some serious extenuating circumstances. Whole damn economy's fucked, it's a problem bigger than gaming.
They could just not have new consoles. We’re 5 years into this console generation and still don’t have a compelling reason to bother. They could admit that Moore’s Law is dead, and stop worrying about games being giant photorealistic open worlds full of fetch quests.
I am amused to report that this is a legally distinct definitely-not-Zachtronics company that just happens to have two guys (including Zach) from Zachtronics in.
arstechnica.com
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