Programs bounce around between a ton of different code segments, and it doesn’t really matter how they’re arranged within the binary. Some code even winds up repeated, when repetition is more efficient than jumping back and forth or checking a short loop. It doesn’t matter where the instructions are, so long as they do the right thing.
This machine code still tends to be clean, tight, and friendly toward reverse-engineering… relatively speaking. Anything more complex than addition is an inscrutable mess to people who aren’t warped by years of computer science, but it’s just a puzzle with a known answer, and there’s decades of tools for picking things apart and putting them back together. Scene groups don’t even need to unravel the whole program. They’re only looking for tricky details that will detect pirates and frustrate hackers. Eventually, they will find and defeat those checks.
So Denuvo does everything a hundred times over. Or a dozen. Or a thousand. Random chunks of code are decompiled, recompiled, transpiled, left incomplete, faked entirely, whatever. The whole thing is turned into a hot mess by a program that knows what each piece is supposed to be doing, and generally makes sure that’s what happens. The CPU takes a squiggly scribbled path hither and yon but does all the right things in the right order. And sprinked throughout this eight-ton haystack are so many more needles, any of which might do slightly different things. The “attack surface” against pirates becomes enormous. They’ll still get through, eventually, but a crack delayed is a crack denied.
Unfortunately for us this also fucks up why computers are fast now.
Back in the single-digit-megahertz era, this would’ve made no difference to anything, besides requiring more RAM for this bloated executables. 8- and 16-bit processors just go where they’re told and encounter each instruction by complete surprise. Intel won the 32-bit era by cranking up clock speeds, which quickly outpaced RAM response times, leading to hideously clever cache-memory use, inside the CPU itself. Cache layers nowadays are a major part of CPU cost and an even larger part of CPU performance. Data that’s read early and kept nearby can make an instruction take one cycle instead of one thousand.
Sending the program-counter on a wild goose chase across hundreds of megabytes guarantees you’re gonna hit those thousand-cycle instructions. The next instruction being X=N+1 might take literally no time, if it happens near a non-math instruction, and the pipeline has room for it. But if you have to jump to that instruction and back, it’ll take ages. Maybe an entire microsecond! And if it never comes back - if jumps to another copy of the whole function, and from there to parts unknown - those microseconds can become milliseconds. A few dozen of those in the wrong place and your water-cooled demigod of a PC will stutter like Porky Pig. That’s why Denuvo in practice just plain suuucks. It is a cache defeat algorithm. At its pleasure, and without remedy, it will give paying customers a glimpse of the timeline where Motorola 68000s conquered the world. Hit a branch and watch those eight cores starve.
Unfortunately, increasing cache seems to be the direction things are going, what with AMD’s 3D cache initiative and Apple moving RAM closer to the CPU.
So Denuvo could actually get away with it by just pushing the problem onto platforms. Ideally, this would discourage this type of DRM, but it’ll probably just encourage more PC upgrades.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with ram-less systems soon. A lot of programs don’t need much more memory than the cache sizes already available. Things like electron bloat memory use through the roof, but even then it’s likely just a gigabyte or two. Cpus will have that much cache eventually. The few applications that really need tons of memory could be offloaded to a really fast SSD, which are already becoming the standard. I imagine we’ll see it in phones or tablets first, where multitasking isn’t as much of a thing and physical space is at a premium.
That’s just not true, here are a few off the top of my head:
video games
docker containers
web browsers
productivity software
RAM is actually the one resource I run out of in my day to day work as a software developer, and I get close on my gaming PC. I have a really fast SSD in my work computer (MacBook Pro) and my Linux gaming PC (some fast NVME drive), and both grind to a halt when I start swapping (Linux seems to handle it better imo). So no, I don’t think SSDs are enough by any stretch of the imagination.
If anything, our need for high performance RAM is higher today than ever! My SIL just started a graphics program (graphic design or UI/UX or something), so I advised her to prioritize a high amount of RAM over a high number of CPU/GPU cores because that’s how important RAM is to the user experience when deadlines approach.
Large CPU caches are great, but I don’t think you can really compensate for low system memory by having large caches and a fast SSD. What is obvious, though, is that memory latency and bandwidth is an issue, so I could see more Apple-style soldered NAND next to the CPU in the coming board revisions, which isn’t great for DIY systems. NAND modules are just so much cheaper to manufacturer than CPU cache, and they’re also sensitive to heat, so I don’t think embedding them on the CPU die is a great long term solution. I would prefer to see GPU-style memory modules either around or behind the CPU, soldered into the board, before we see on-die caches with multiple GB capacity.
Well you’re right that it’s not practical now. By “soon” I was thinking of like 10+ years from now. And as I said, it would likely start in systems that aren’t used for those applications anyway (aside from web browsers, which use way more ram than necessary anyway). By the time it takes over the applications you listed, we’ll have caches as big as our current ram anyway. And I’m using a loose definition of cache, I really just mean on-package memory of some kind. And we probably will see that GPU style memory before it’s fully integrated.
It’s already sort of a thing in embedded processors, such as ARM SOCs where RAM is glued to the top of the CPU package (I think the OG Raspberry Pi did that). But current iterations run the CPU way too hot for that to work, so the RAM is separate.
I could maybe see it be a thing in kiosks and other limited purpose devices (smart devices, smart watches, etc), but not for PCs, servers, or even smart phones, where we expect a lot higher memory load/multitasking.
I had no idea 3 different colors could be over-explained and over-thought to such a degree.
For fucks sake. It’s red, white and blue you jackass. Ok, it’s silver, but might as well be the same in a picture. How much did they pay him to pick some of the most basic colors available?
Tbh I'm not really a fan of this stance either. If I'm buying a sequel I expect meaningful improvements, otherwise you're just ripping me off for something that could have been a dlc or expansion to the first game.
Tbh, a large part of payday2’s problems stem from being built on a racing game engine. Redoing pd2 on unreal straight would be of course a lot of work, but the end result would be a better product that I would pay for. Payday3 on the other hand doesn’t look like something that I would enjoy based on the fact unlike pd2.
Didn’t play it but I had to drop PD2 with about 200 hours on it after all the microtransactions got too much to deal with. Coupled with the fact that hosts could leave games in the middle of a heist with no punishment and risking your account being banned for accidentally getting on a crew with a hacker, the game lost a lot of its appeal.
It is basically impossible to be banned at all from playing payday 2. The worst you can do is equip invalid stuff, which marks you as a cheater and most people kick marked cheaters.
Idk my account was banned for about a month within the first year of the game coming out because a hacker started spawning infinite money bags on the Harvest bank. It took about a month of emails with support to get my account unbanned. It’s possible that they’ve since slacked off on enforcement, but I haven’t played the game in easily 5 years at this point.
Payday 2 did two things that drove me away: fundamental changes to the gameplay long after release that did not improve it (heavyhanded stealth nerfs), and an absolute mountain of DLC, complete with power creep.
I will be waiting quite a while before touching Payday 3 because I want to see how they will monetize it. Remember, it’s up against the likes of Deep Rock Galactic which is not at all abusively monetized. We do not need to suffer that shit again.
I mean, to be blunt, the game was never going to beat PAYDAY 2. PD2 is years of updates and content additions to make it fun despite the shitty engine, PAYDAY 3 is a brand new game with a lot of potential but all of it unrealized.
So, do people actually play Pay Day? All I know is that it’s a game. Haven’t seen trailers, haven’t seen anyone play it on Twitch, it’s like a “fake” game that’s a joke that’s been going on for a really long time
I mean the last one was released in 2013, it’s not exactly super relevant but if you’re that unaware of it I assume you were playing habbo hotel or whatever little kids played 10 years ago.
Holy shitballs. It feels like just yesterday we were firing up payday 2 on release day with a bunch of friends and risking having a seizure at any moment on the “start heist” page.
I figured yeah payday 2 was like 5 years ago, time for a new one. 10 fucking years… i need a drink!
Oh man, I feel old now. It was so fun when it came out. I remember the first time I solo stealthwd the nightclub. I kinda got burnt out when it went more absurd. Like after John wick.
Some people, like me, are probably just waiting to see what happens. Payday 2 was awesome, but after release it got microtransactioned and piecemeal DLC'd to high fucking heaven. I don't care if the beta is good, I want to see what it'll become before I get invested.
Appreciated but strange. Did they look at the sub cost and went nah or something else? I mean could have just wanted it for the beta but idk seems overkill (heh heh).
I don’t understand why anybody would pay for it while it can be cracked… sure its likely only one person in the world can crack it atm but if she wants to crack it she can and then it’s gonna be uploaded and repacked by multiple people.
I’d move the fuck away from Unity even if they did roll back all their latest bullshit.
It’s only a matter of time before they pull another stunt like that.
Remember, their shitstain of a CEO, surrounded by his troupe of yesmen, all thought this was the best idea ever.
The assisted reload was also in the first game (notably for the recoilless rifle also featured here) and requires a great deal of coordination. A great co-op mechanic with high rewards when playing it right.
It’s crazy how Forza Horizon came out of nowhere when NFS, TDU, GRID were having their time and has now become the benchmark of arcade racing. Or in other words, devs from all these franchises joined playground to make Forza Horizon what it is today.
games
Najnowsze
Magazyn ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.