I wonder why… Personally, I’d rather pirate than have to deal with them. “Free games” is not enough to forgive what they have done to the PC gaming community. They’re not that epic.
We would have never gotten the likes of Alan wake 2 if not for epics money though, which also paved the way for remedy to become more independent for future releases. I’d rather have an exclusive then nothing at all.
It’s also arguable whether or not square would’ve ported kingdom hearts to pc if not for epic paying for it as well. Which in turn allowed them to put it on steam later because the game had already been made to work for pc.
Other than how they’ve handled rocket league and harmonix, epic have done nothing but good for the pc space in my opinion. Even if a launcher is shitty, a launcher is just a launcher and at least their store runs better than gog or steams.
Alan wake 2 had massive critical acclaim what you on about and they’re now in a financial situation to publish they’re own games because of it.
And their store definitely runs better than steam and gog. Gog is the worst hanging most of the time with it often losing its penis place when going back to the previous page, and the latter is often the same on steam. Even big picture mode struggles with the steam store some times.
All of this, by the Epic Games words “Based on players reviews in Epic Games ecosystem”. From where? I can’t leave any review on any game, that I own, hillarious.
Releasing your game on EGS besides Steam is NOT straightforward and is costly for small devs
I am fed up of Epic shills spreading the narrative that EGS tools for piblishing games are better than Steam and devs are just lazy if they do not release their games on EGS. I have always debated that opinion defending that is not just a matter of just uploading the same files. It is a costly process that is commonly not worth it for small devs for just a handful of sales on EGS.
I found this comment from a dev detailing his “wonderful” experience uploading their game on EGS. Enjoy.
“Oh the store release, a million little bullshit things.
Actually I released the game on Steam on 24/04. I released multiple games on Steam before, without any issues. Steam is a breeze. I love it.
Epic? Pain.
Non-sense rules. They delayed my release by more than 10 days.
On steam you can post anything in screens and trailers. Not on Epic. Even on PEGI 18 game you have to censor blood, or not include it at all. I could not believe this. But then I watched Dead Island 2 trailer on EPic - there really is no blood even in that game video. I had a trailer with blood up for 6 months. But a week before release some reviewer noticed I have 2 seconds of blood in the trailer. They made me take it down, up the PEGI from 12 to 18 so now there is a 18+ date picker warning, and had to reupload the trailer with black blood, not red.
Million confusing settings in 3 different stages. Dev, stage, live. If you get one setting wrong, your build will not pass review. Its like doing taxes - they know what you did wrong, but they don’t tell you exactly. If they tell you, and you disagree, you have no way to opose the decision with a ticket like on Steam. You have to create unrelated support ticket that NOBODY READS FOR DAYS. Response happens after a WEEK. Which is really fucked when your release date is 3 days away and they block your review package.
If one stage review fails, THEY WILL BLOCK THE WHOLE PACKAGE. So before release I wanted to update screens, trailer, release date and add some sweet gifs into description. But I uploaded ONE SCREENSHOT with dead scientist on the ground, in pool of blood. THey rejected the whole package - that means my release date did not update, my texts didnt either. BEcause of one screenshot. They bundle these changes together and it is not possible to change it specifically.
When I created the store page, I checked a checkbox that I will do achievements and will include Epic overlay. This option is NOT REVERTIBLE. YOu cannot revert it once you do this and they do not tell you. So a year or so later I had to deal with fucking achievements that I did not even want to include anymore, because of the extra work it required compared to STeam. Same with EOS overlay. THe overlay is NOT MANDATORY, yet they blocked my build for 2 days because it did not work in Live bundle. It did in Dev and Stage. They did not tell me how to fix this.
Later I found in ONE obscure forum post that Epic named one variable in config wrong, that caused this. They named “Artifact ID” with “Artifact Name”, but it is in fact ID. My game worked with overlay when run in standalone, but not via their store. Due to one checkbox. They knew what is wrong and did not bother responding. You have no way to communicate with them. Steam responds immediately. I was so annoyed with the achievements that when I had to include them, I included only a few that I had on Steam. Also you have to ensure that your achievements all add up to 1000 EXP. If it is not exactly 1000 EXP, review fails. ON FUCKING ACHIEVEMENTS. Then they forced me to add all Steam achievements, to “keep continuity among different store fronts”. On Steam, once they approve your game build, it is approved forever. Not on Epic. They have to review every build. You can get stuck on it right before release.
They wishlist rate on Epic is roughly 10% of what I get on Steam. But because they delayed my release by 10 days. I will get minimal conversion even from that, because they release week hype is over. So what they have “only” 12% comission. 88% of nothing is nothing. Epic fucked me. Never working with them again.”
Don’t get me started on their “wonderful” support if you lose your account :D
That’s hilarious haha, that has to be the best autocorrect from my swipe typing I’ve seen yet. I’ll have to figure out what was meant to actually go there now (I’ll stick it in an edit at the end though cause that is too funny to remove)
I don’t know if this is the priority for many other users, but Epic Games is 40% owned by Tencent, a Chinese corporation. That in itself is an inappropriate level of CCP influence to me - sadly, Chinese companies don’t really get to divest themselves of government influence the way American corps do.
(That said, with Google changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name, I feel less sure of that last claim)
I really liked Avowed. It’s the first RPG since Skyrim that gave me a similar feeling. I’m almost finished with it, currently 45 hours in, which makes it the first game I’ve played this much in the last five years.
That said, I agree that it’s a bit shallow, and the story isn’t as strong as Skyrim’s. The combat actually reminded me more of Horizon Zero Dawn than Skyrim. It’s not on the level of Baldur’s Gate 3 or Skyrim, but for me, it’s easily deeper than Fallout 4, Fallout 3, or Starfield. The combat is really fun and engaging—I played as a wizard, and it was a blast.
I have to admit, I skipped some dialogues toward the end of the game because a lot of them felt like filler rather than meaningful interactions. Still, I’d rate it an 8/10 and definitely recommend it.
Yeah, rocket league is a sport game more than anything else, technically.
And, yeah, most rpgs are going to be better than all but the best sports games. It’s the sameness factor. One baseball game is much like another in what you’ll see and do on screen.
Not that rpgs can’t get samey, but they’re less so
This is heaven minus the goth women. My favorite game, a CRT, a knife, and a loaded gun? What more could I need? Maybe some offbrand diet cola and a pizza.
I use the arctis nova 7x wireless which I like, have good reviews, and are good for the price. Can’t speak much to other options but Rtings has reviews of headsets if you want to research there
I use them with both. Xbox is the odd one out. If you get the nova 7 or nova 7P, they’ll work with everything except Xbox (I think). The 7x works with everything including Xbox
The PAL version uses the original art from Japanese release. I think it even improves on it by having a white background, which looks more classy to me: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/…/10236
Tried it with a Nvidia card. The graphics were oddly blurry and grainy, especially anything in shadows, no matter the settings. Couldnt get past that. I’m not going to play potentially dozens of hours of nausea simulator.
I loved the environments in RDR2, but holy hell, the missions’ persistent denial of player agency drove me up a tree. Railroading is annoying in the best of cases. I could tolerate it in The Last of Us, which limited the places I could go but offered a wonderfully engaging story in those places and never dropped a 10-ton FAIL anvil on my head for trying something creative. In an open world game (a genre that I like because I’m encouraged to find creative solutions) I find it unforgivable.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance drove me away for similar reasons. I like games where the challenge comes from learning how to work with available tools and moves, developing my skill with them, and figuring out how to use them most effectively. Making progress that way is satisfying. KC:D chose the polar opposite of that, interfering with my ability to control my character until I slogged through seemingly endless time sinks thinly disguised as “training” sessions. This mechanic had nothing to do with developing my skill as a player, but instead just arbitrarily denied me agency. I hated it, and since the reports I’ve read suggest that the sequel does the same, I won’t be buying it or anything else from those game designers.
I guess my point is just to let you know that you’re not alone. :)
I dropped KCD 1 after ~30 hours for the same reason as you, but at least KCD has some justification - the whole point of the game is to be an ultra-realistic simulation of medieval life, a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the word.
Your character starts out not even knowing how to read, even though you, the player, obviously do to interact with the GUI. He’s the son of a blacksmith who never would have learned anything else, so he, the character, has to spend time learning basically everything, even if you, the player, already have it figured out.
You and I think that design is unfun. Clearly, though, there’s an audience for it, as KCD 2 sold something like a million copies on launch day and instantly recouped their development costs.
Yes, I’m aware of that justification. I like the idea in principle, but it doesn’t hold water in this game, because the mechanics they used to simulate ultra-realism are not realistic at all. Picking up a weapon in real life doesn’t impose a state of bodily malfunction where you have about as much control of yourself as a blind drunk standing on one stilt. I’ve used swords and bows, and trained in a fair number of other physical skills. Even my very first time, there was never a point where I suddenly found my arms or legs failing to work. The most forgiving way I can describe this implementation would be to call it a ham-fisted attempt.
Clearly, though, there’s an audience for it
It seems so. If some people enjoy slogging through those mechanics, then I’m happy for them. I have better things to do with my time.
Also “a bit too long and some noticeable jank” but damn if I don’t get really into it sometimes. Had to switch to the easier difficulty after something like 25 hours of playtime because I’m not very experienced in these types of RPGs but it’s okay because there’s still some challenge there, just not enough to really actually worry.
As a gamedev I never saw this as a big issue. Just run Debian Oldstable on your build server, link whatever you can statically, and you are good.
(However, I am talking on a purely theoretical level here - we only released one Linux game, and that was before I joined the company. I will explain our actual reasons in a separate post.)
That would kinda mean you deliver every single dependency yourself, which kinda defeats the purpose of shared dependencies, which in turn proves my point that linux distros are fragmented to fuck. It also means you have to put actual effort into building your game for a userbase that was less than 1% before the steam deck came around.
So my point still stands - proton is the best thing that could’ve happened to linux gaming because it lets windows games run on linux with the dev putting only minimal effort - or even no effort - into making the game run on linux with near native performance. Hell, at times even with better performance.
Because for decades Microsoft has yielded to Linux’s superiority with unethical anti-competitive behaviour. E.g., it’s hard to compete with hardware that comes pre-installed with Windows.
Also for decades, Linux has had awful drivers for graphics cards (among other things) and godawful usability. It’s not like Linux would have taken over the desktop computer market in 1998. Have you ever tried installing a vintage distro? It’s a nightmare.
Not been my experience at all. Or am I misunderstanding and you’re saying that’s a past problem? Because I’ve used both AMD and Nvidia drivers on Mint and they’ve both been fantastic.
They’re a lot better these days, but I remember 15 years ago I had to spend hours in a command line just to get Linux to recognize my video card, much less utilize it properly. It’s definitely come a long long way but still far from perfect
That’s harder to implement. Suddenly you need to store that extra state somewhere and don’t mess it up. The last save should already have a timestamp and is immutable. A lot less likely to get bugs that way.
The state “the game is paused” is different from " the game is paused and saved". Sure that could be another key in some atate machine but like above: it’s the “not mess it up” part that is harder.
Plus all the lines to update the state, when the menu is closed, when the game is closed (i.e should it be true or false at startup), when the game is saved obviously.
That’s at least three more lines plus the one you mentioned for no extra value. And again it’s easier to screw it up e.g. while refactoring.
I think we write our code in different enough ways that we’re not seeing eye to eye.
Tracking the state of the game being paused, when the menu is open and when the game is saved can all be a single match statement on a current “game state” variable which just holds “running/paused/paused and saved/exit” and when it becomes exit, it checks the save time. Only 2 lines of code and adding an enumerated state to the variable to add this functionality. Since the variable is enumerated, it’s really difficult to mess it up when refactoring because if you can’t pass the wrong code or else your game doesn’t save or close
Ok, I mentioned a state machine in another sub thread. It’s not as bad if you already have a state machine.
It’s still adding more complexity though - again when the value is updated. You still need to change the state when saving. You need to decide which state to use when starting the game.
There is still risk of screwing that up when refactoring. And still the value is nearly none.
Regarding state mchines, it’s a complexity in itaelf to add random flags ro the state machine. Next time you want to add another flag you need to double all the states again, e.g. PAUSED, PAUSED_AND_SAVED, PAUSED_AND_MUTED, PAUSED_AND_SAVED_AND_MUTED. I would never add mute to the logic of the menu but that’s the pnly example I could come up with. Maybe you see my point there, at least?
Complexity being added at updating also feels wrong to me. Let me pseudo code some rust (just the language I know best off the top of my head right now) at you, cause it feels like maybe I’m just not understanding something that’s making this seem easier than it is.
<span style="color:#323232;">Enum Game_State
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Paused
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Paused_Saved
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Running
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Loading
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Exit
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;">///Technically you could make Menu() part of the enum but I'd probably leave it elsewhere
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Match Game_State
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Paused </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">=></span><span style="color:#323232;"> Menu()
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Paused_Saved </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">=></span><span style="color:#323232;"> Menu()
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Running </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">=></span><span style="color:#323232;"> Main_Loop()
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Exit </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">=></span><span style="color:#323232;"> Exit()
</span>
And then your other functions always return a game_state. You’re right that adding that return would be a huge undertaking if it’s not handled in the initial building of the game, but it’s a QoL for the user that’s easily maintainable and is therefore worth doing IMO. But these two things, defining the possible game states and then always routing decisions through that game state, makes this kind of feature relatively doable
I’m sorry I don’t getting your point . You start off by agreeing that you don’t like the extra complexity that the update statements give. Then do some pseudo code of something entirely different where we all already agree is not an issue.
Then at the end your conclusion is that it is totally feasible. Why? You still didn’t adress the problem of updating the state
My point was “are state machines really that complicated? Isn’t it just something like this pseudo code and a return value from your functions?”
Basically I feel like this is a 2 step process but you seem like you either know more than I do or have a different philosophy about how this would be implemented, so I want to understand what I’m missing
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