I love the idea of paying one-time to play offline, but it’s not currently very possible to do in-app purchases on a ROM like GrapheneOS, which you mentioned in the post as being something users (myself included) have. Will there be a way to pay outside of the in-app purchase dialogue to get access? (i.e. donate through bmac, then link account to app temporarily to confirm) I’d definitely like more of my money to go to you, rather than a play store fee.
Additionally, will there be a direct APK download at all, or will it only be available through the Play Store? (obviously privacy-preserving frontends like the Aurora Store exist, but it’s nice to have an APK download too 😊)
Thank you for making privacy the default setting, while still letting users share more if they want to. This is something I always love to see!
I’d 100% sign up for the beta right now, but since my GrapheneOS phone doesn’t have the ability to use the Play Store beta features, I’ll hold off on that so I don’t take someone’s spot :)
Depending on how the legislations now post-DMA go, it might be possible to also handle payments throughout our Portal instead of app stores. The app stores, especially Apple’s, has still a bunch of rules in their ToS about this where they might remove the game entirely if you’re not using their payment system. Android is slightly more lenient on this regard though.
The cuts Patreon already takes (a whopping 14% in total, after which we then play VAT) already affects us enough that I would definitely love to rather have my own systems, but also they offer a lot of convenience to the users that we couldn’t at this point.
But overall it would be great if we could provide a direct payment system straight from Portal, as we could price that one also significantly cheaper than using Google’s or Apple’s systems when we don’t need to pay their cuts. It’s something I really want to do to be able to make the pricing as affordable as possible, and everything depends on if it’s both feasible and allowed by the app stores. But can’t promise this, as there are a lot of factors in play whether it’s feasible to provide our own systems and if it’s allowed by the biggest stores.
When it comes to direct APK downloads, maybe if we can get a good pipeline for those. I think the most realistic option is that we’ll pick the one for an “extra release pipeline” that we can automate most easily to our current systems. Could be Aurora Store, F-Droid or some other depending on what kind of automation options they offer.
I’m not an expert on what automation options they might offer, but I know Aurora Store will essentially just pass through anything you do on the Play Store since it’s just a frontend, and for F-Droid you can host a repo where you place any updated APK to automatically make it available to anyone linked to your repo.
I know alternative payment options are probably a nightmare to properly set up and integrate, so it may not be worth the increased cut of revenue you’d get, but I’m really glad you’re considering it!
I look forward to trying the game when it comes out :)
Oh yeah, I wanted to recommend an f-droid release as well, but thought you had to open your source up for that.
I hadn’t thought of making your own repository where you don’t have to do that \o/
I’m not an expert on the process, but anyone making a custom repo should be able to store the F-Droid repo on GitHub.
It looks like you wouldn’t need to make the app open-source either, as it should be capable of just accepting an apk file. (and possibly auto update from any GitHub releases page, not sure on that though)
Again, not an expert, I haven’t made an F-Droid repo yet myself, so I may have understood something wrong, but it looks relatively straightforward according to their guide
This wouldn’t make it available to users through the default preinstalled repo in F-Droid (which is heavily privacy-focused and limited in scale) but it would allow any user to just click a link or scan a QR code to add your repo to their F-Droid app.
i spent a lot of hours as a kid playing that first wizardry game. never made it far and found it confusing and unsatisfying. later when i found nethack i learned how to be satisfied with the confusion :*)
Don’t give a damn about communities and YouTubers and what other people think - that will never help you with anything, ever. Simply check out if you like the game by yourself.
Thanks for the recommendation! I have a long list of games I want to play make graphs from, and I just checked and that game already on it. So one day, it should come
Small note. This is only for new members. From their email to existing members:
“If you’re already a paying Member via a monthly or 6 monthly subscription, then nothing will change, as long as your subscription remains active, we will continue to honour the same price you’re paying now as part of our “Grandfather Rate” which is explained in more detail in the FAQ below.”
as long as your subscription remains active, we will continue to honour the same price you’re paying now as part of our “Grandfather Rate”
So you’re locked in basically to that rate until you cancel. It’s not for new members specifically. But there’s not always going to be content that you enjoy playing. People who stay subscribed to an MMO forever are people who have tons of money to just throw away. I play World of Warcraft, and I have never just subscribed for a year at a time. Sometimes I get busy and I don’t have time to play, or there’s nothing I enjoy in the current patch.
Well, double check that your bonds are ALT for the details menu and the number keys for the skills. If it still fails, you could always bind a mouse region to click on wherever the skills are and use it as a mode shift
Honestly for an MMO it’s still a good price. MMOs in particular people sink a tonne of hours into, so it’s pennies per hour which (like gaming in general) is a pretty good rate for entertainment. That doesn’t mean huge mark ups like these are anything but infuriating.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Runescape should have tiered membership for multiple characters. For example, one character for $10, three for $20, ten for $50, etc. This would make it easier on player’s wallets, and frankly it would encourage people to play the other game modes.
Having said that, I think the larger problem is that the people that develop the game get peanuts for pay. Most of them are fans of the game and just want to work on it, but doing so shouldn’t trap them to a low income. It’s not a good sign when developers can leave the company and earn a higher salary streaming Runescape content.
What can you expect when the company is owned by an investment group.
I see what you’re saying, it is a lot of memberships taken out of the game, but I would argue no one running a bot farm is paying for membership with Earthly currency. They wouldn’t want to tie legitimate credit information to any of those accounts, and so they obtain membership through bonds purchased with in game gold.
It’s in part what has driven the cost of bonds from 5 million gold to 15 million. As a result, I’m of the opinion that bots aren’t a revenue source for Jagex.
For me, I couldn’t get behind the battle royale thing… It’s just too much pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I like intense gunfights, but for a win to be only when you’re the last team standing of everyone on the server using only the random loot you found … that’s a lot of pressure.
On the graphics front, things have changed a lot over the years:
I actually think it looks pretty decent personally and it keeps getting better. It’s not Hunt Showdown: 1896, but it’s still pretty nice visually (just more of an animation than photorealism focus).
The game looks better and better, but the performance just keeps getting worse On my PC I can’t get the game to run properly since they switched to UE5
I get what you’re saying, but I’ve been upgrading my PC over the years and still noticed that with games of big game companies, they care less and less about performance. I firmly believe that publishers, in an attempt to cut costs, tell the game studio to not prioritize performance, while trying to rely on software like super resolution algorithms, to make their games run. In some instances they reused old game Engines for a new and bigger game, for example with Cyberpunk, Stellaris and Elden Ring. Smaller developers are doing everything they can to make a game run smoothly. The best example for this is Factorio. That is my opinion and I totally understand your point of view.
I firmly believe that publishers, in an attempt to cut costs, tell the game studio to not prioritize performance
So, I agree there’s some amount of that. You also have things like Dice (the studio that makes Battlefield) where they lost their veteran development team to poor internal management.
There are also some (now fairly large) studios that are just absolutely terrible at game performance like Studio Wildcard (makers of the Ark games).
while trying to rely on software like super resolution algorithms, to make their games run.
There’s definitely some of this too. I believe the bigger issue is that games have gotten so much bigger and more expensive to develop. Making and shipping a game that runs with 4k textures, dynamic (possibly ray traced) lighting, variable rate shading (instead of manual level-of-detail systems), etc is a lot to get right.
A common thing with any software development is to take advantage of newer abstractions that make your life easier. For instance, I’m fairly confident Hunt Showdown 1896 has moved to some form of variable rate shading instead of level-of-detail (in pre-1986 when you zoomed in on some of the trees they’d literally change shape when they flipped between the models in the worst case; I’ve yet to see that post-1896). Not having to make a bunch of models and having the software “just figure out” good lower-poly models for things that are sufficiently far away is presumably a huge productivity boost. Similarly, when ray-traced lighting becomes the standard a lot of game development will get easier because setting up lighting won’t (per my understanding) require as many tricks. In both cases, it’s both less work for developers and a better result for players with the hardware to run it.
In some instances they reused old game Engines for a new and bigger game, for example with Cyberpunk, Stellaris and Elden Ring.
Old engines aren’t necessarily a bad thing (if they’re appropriately updated) and I think people focus too much on the engine vs the game play. Take Starfield, I’ve heard a lot of people complain about it on forums for copying a similar formula as some of Bethesda’s past titles.
The issue almost certainly isn’t the engine used, but the design choices associated with using that engine (and the decision to not make new things work).
Linux, Darwin (MacOS), Windows, Chrome, Firefox, etc are all long running software projects (as are Unreal Engine, Unity, Source Engine, CryEngine, etc). Occasionally, someone throws out their current product entirely and replaces it, but normally there are incremental upgrades made to provide the new functionality that’s desired.
Smaller developers are doing everything they can to make a game run smoothly. The best example for this is Factorio.
The performance profile of something like Factorio vs Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, or Hunt Showdown is extremely different.
I got in a week or so ago and immediately started walking a ton more than usual. It was also great timing because I’m in Paris at the moment, so I’m walking so much every day and leveling up like crazy as a result.
bin.pol.social
Najstarsze