I’d have thought the pain point would have been the processor architecture (ARM64) rather than operating system - MacOS still supports AMD64 using a compatibility layer but it would probably be quite a drawback to game performance.
What’s your experience here? I’m interested to hear about projects that you have done this for.
The source engine has code that’s over 20 years old. A monolithic project like a game engine, which is statically and dynamically linked with god knows how many libraries they don’t even have code for, let alone permission, to compile in a different architecture, is not gonna be an easy thing to do.
It would being better pay, better benefits, even more stable careers and better work-life balance.
It doesn’t matter how much money you’re already making, or how good your benefits already are. If you have a Union, you can negotiate for improvements. There is always room for improvement, unless you’re working at a fully-mutual workers cooperative.
I know first hand that some trades even make more than their unionized counterparts
I’d be interested to learn more, do you have a source or anything?
This is the difference between a trade union and an industrial union. You can join an industrial union elsewhere in Europe or even in the US, such as the IWW.
The extent to which you are arguing against overwhelming evidence cannot be understated. You are arguing against something less controversial than evolution.
We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions.
But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.
It’s not that you don’t have individual bargaining power. It’s just that if you were unionised, you’d have much more.
The extent to which you are arguing against overwhelming evidence cannot be understated. You are arguing against something less controversial than evolution.
We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions.
But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.
I definitely reject that my compensation, benefits, job stability, and WLB would be better if I had been unionized this whole time.
Why? What is your reasoning for rejecting this? Can you justify it? You’re just saying “no” without any thought or explanation. Do you just refuse to believe that things could be better?
I read your whole comment, but at no point does it explain why you think you wouldn’t be able to negotiate improvements with a union. What you have written essentially amounts to:
“I was able to build a really beautiful cabinet with hand tools. I reject the notion that power tools make it easier to build cabinets. I know people who have power tools but they haven’t made cabinets as nice as mine.”
If you have multiple people as a group who have the power to completely sink a business negotiating together, they stand a much better chance of improving conditions than any of them do alone.
How are you reasoning against such a self-evidently true claim?
It was an analogy. The point is that a union gives you stronger negotiation power than you have alone. By not being in a union, you’re getting worse outcomes than you would have in a union. All of the statistics we have demonstrate that unionising results in a big increase in wages and benefits. You’re basically saying “no” because you think you know better than the science. This is just like anti-vax sentiment.
I’m in the same field as you are with years more experience. Not only that, I have experience in management in the same field.
I am not denying that you have individual bargaining power that I’m sure you’re leveraging successfully.
I am just pointing out to you that if you were unionised, you’d have even more bargaining power which would almost definitely have resulted in a better outcome for you.
Collective bargaining may not be risk free, but it’s lower risk than individual bargaining, by definition.
There’s plenty of proof, and I don’t see why I need any more. You’re just refusing to acknowledge it, like a flat earther faced with the results of their experiment refusing to accept it. Just because you say “no, I don’t like this scientific proof” it doesn’t mean that I’m somehow failing to back up my argument when I refuse to give you more proof. You have THE proof of the matter. Accept it and be right, or reject it and be wrong. It’s up to you.
As for your analogy, being in a union does not mean you lose your individual bargaining rights, you can continue to negotiate your salary individually if you wish to do so. You do not lose any power or rights from being in a union. You only gain power.
Until this moment you haven’t asked me for any sources for my claim, whereas I have asked you multiple times for yours. Your basis is “just my vibes” and now you’re acting like I’m an asshole for pointing out that your position (arguing against science based on vibes) isn’t rational. Now by claiming I haven’t backed up my claims, despite pretty much accepting that they were valid until this moment, you cast me as irrational, and instead of asking for proof of my claims so you can amend your perspective, you just loftily declare that the conversation is over, because you know fine well that if it continues, your world view will be completely compromised.
Anyone who wants to see the proof can simply Google “average wage difference for unionised workers” or anything like that. You can do the same thing. I’m guessing you already have, but decided “that doesn’t apply to me” because you’re oh so special.
Lower risk often means lower reward
For investment and such, yeah sure, but not everything follows the same pattern. Unionising and collective bargaining is a perfect example, because it consistently has been shown to lower risks and increase rewards, again and again.
Act all indignant if you want to. You’re giving me a perfect platform to demonstrate the superiority of my ideology against your very weak, irrational reasoning. If you think that I’m somehow hurting my cause by revealing the inherent incoherence of your position, then yeah, sure, I’m really destroying my cause right now.
The extent to which you are arguing against overwhelming evidence cannot be understated. You are arguing against something less controversial than evolution.
We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions.
But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.
Your position is completely indefensible, and you know it, but you continue to hold it because your ego is more important than reality.
Do you know of any other groups who prioritise the preservation of their ideology over reality?
If you had any actual arguments against me, you would use them. But since you don’t, you’re just acting oh so indignant and high-handed that I had the temerity to call you out on your bullshit.
Maybe next time, if you don’t want an education, you should keep your ignorance to yourself.
There really should be a law requiring companies which provide online services to be required to release self-hosted server software once they discontinue the provision of the service.
I didn’t say they should keep the servers up forever, I agree that’s unreasonable. But it isn’t unreasonable to require that they release the software necessary for hosting the servers so that the fans/community can host servers if they so choose.
I didn’t say it had to be open source. Copyright is irrelevant as far as this topic is concerned - compiling code into binary is transformative. The only thing that matters here is patent law, and it seems easy enough to just make a law that allows non-profit infringement of patents for this explicit purpose. I don’t think there’s any legal roadblocks to releasing server software.
Plenty of games are anti-capitalist (cookie clicker is the first one that came to mind!) but they are usually critiques of capitalism by demonstrating the issues with it, rather than demonstrating alternatives.
There’s a minecraft mod where villages will give you free resources if you’ve been helpful to them in the past, but it’s quite limited. I agree it would be interesting to play a game where alternative systems are clearly depicted. Would fit well with a sci-fi game.
Oh boy, Travis Worthington comes off as such a selfish asshole in this interview. Paraphrased, and being a bit unfair to him, he just kind of says, “oh, we know fine well that we are benefiting from stealing art from others, and I’d really like if you believed that I cared about that, but the reality is that I don’t really give a shit, and if you’re an illustrator, just give up on your dreams of getting a job someday, because I certainly won’t be paying you”
Definitely gonna be avoiding indie games studios from now on.
Humans and computers see and understand artwork completely differently. If you tasked both a human and a computer to look at a painting for 10 milliseconds and asked them to recreate it from memory, how accurate would their reproductions be? It is completely wrong and very misleading to equate human learning with machine learning. They are completely different processes.
Come on man, I’ve seen you around a lot and I know you post a lot of good stuff, but to be fair, you’re not blameless here. I get that you’re not interested in a game and it’s frustrating to see lots of posts about it dominating your feed, but clearly the OP is interested and excited about it, and basically telling them to shut up about their interest just because it’s not what you want to hear about is a mean thing to do. It would be different if they posted spam links to their own blog every single day or something like that but they post all sorts of relevant news links to various communities so I think they just share stories they’re interested in, and that’s valuable to the community too! We all should be working together to build a nice friendly community to talk about what we enjoy and sometimes that means we have to tolerate others quirks and discussing things we don’t particularly care for.
Interestingly, the original elder scrolls games had a lot of procedurally generated content, it was only Morrowind that was the first “handmade” world from what I recall. But it would have been much cooler if they could have added a few interesting little secrets or stories to each planet and just had fewer of them or something.
I’m struggling to see how it ate so many dev hours.
Lots of stuff got added: space combat, ship building, the new research system, the rank challenges stuff, new lockpicking, and I bet loads of stuff besides that I forgot. Adding all of that stuff to a new game from scratch would take a good chunk of time, but I can imagine patching it all in to an ancient game engine that’s probably barely hanging together honestly it’s surprising they got some of it working at all
When the review embargo first dropped, Starfield was sitting at something like an 88 on Xbox and an 89 on PC. Not 90+ the way I think Bethesda may have been hoping, and yet still extremely good.
I’ve played Starfield (PC) a good bit by now and I’d say that mid 80s is probably fair.
The gameplay is great fun - the combat, gear, etc. is really quite similar to Fallout 4 (though without the VATS), with a Skyrim style talent tree.
The base building and ship building is quite like Fallout 4, though much improved (thankfully!) but still a bit janky.
The worldbuilding is immersive but the world itself is just okay - it’s really predictable, they play it a bit too safe, every faction is nothing we haven’t seen a dozen times before, and society hasn’t advanced at all ~400 years in the future apparently.
Characters are exactly what you expect from a Bethesda game - a bit two dimensional, but nice enough.
Graphics are good, sound design is good, music is nice but a bit too similar to Skyrim IMO.
The story is also really quite safe and derivative, reminds me simultaneously of Mass Effect and Skyrim.
The exploration is cool, but does get a bit repetitive after a while. I think more interesting “random” locations would be really good - after a few abandoned, flavourless civilian bases, you’ve seen them all.
I’m a sucker for customisable bases/houses/etc. especially for space ships, giving me all those building blocks and letting me loose in the sandbox (starbox?) is honestly hours of entertainment.
Space combat is fun, but IMO the space part of the game would be way more immersive if I did all of the ship piloting stuff in-character rather than in the UI menues, seems like a big oversight - why not have something like the galaxy map from mass effect, or have everything on displays in the cockpit? It would be much more immersive, but I guess it would have delayed the game quite a bit.
A lot of the game is juggling menues and interfaces which aren’t the best designed. very similar to Skyrim - I imagine UI redesign mods will really shine once they start coming out. It’s pretty tricky trying to figure out what stuff in your inventory is junk you accidentally picked up (looking at you, Fire Extinguisher!) and which items have a surprisingly good value-to-weight ratio (like some - but not all - of the books, or the deck of cards, surprisingly)
There are occasionally little bugs and glitches, but it’s not too bad for 2023 - nothing that makes the game unplayable or breaks major things, it’s just been stuff like glitchy animations, containers placed in the wrong place/orientation, weird physics behaviour, and I’ve noticed a couple missing textures here and there.
If you’re looking for more of a story/RPG game, I’d suggest something more like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic.
For exploration and space combat, I think No Man’s Sky is better, but with much less customisation.
For more customisation and sandbox style gameplay - but less action-oriented - Space Engineers is probably a better choice.
All in all, Starfield is a fun game - Skyrim in space is a good starting point for describing it, but it’s a lot closer to “Fallout 4, but the bombs didn’t drop”, though the game has a lot of cool extra systems beyond that. I’d be happy to recommend it to someone who would enjoy a single player sci-fi themed looter-shooter sandbox game with some mild RPG elements and player-constructed ships and bases, and I’m sure there are hundreds of hours of enjoyment there, and, as with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games, it’s likely a game that I will return to for many, many years to come
I’ve played Starfield (PC) a good bit by now and I’d say that mid 80s is probably fair.
The gameplay is great fun - the combat, gear, etc. is really quite similar to Fallout 4 (though without the VATS), with a Skyrim style talent tree.
The base building and ship building is quite like Fallout 4, though much improved (thankfully!) but still a bit janky.
The worldbuilding is immersive but the world itself is just okay - it’s really predictable, they play it a bit too safe, every faction is nothing we haven’t seen a dozen times before, and society hasn’t advanced at all ~400 years in the future apparently.
Characters are exactly what you expect from a Bethesda game - a bit two dimensional, but nice enough.
Graphics are good, sound design is good, music is nice but a bit too similar to Skyrim IMO.
The story is also really quite safe and derivative, reminds me simultaneously of Mass Effect and Skyrim.
The exploration is cool, but does get a bit repetitive after a while. I think more interesting “random” locations would be really good - after a few abandoned, flavourless civilian bases, you’ve seen them all.
I’m a sucker for customisable bases/houses/etc. especially for space ships, giving me all those building blocks and letting me loose in the sandbox (starbox?) is honestly hours of entertainment.
Space combat is fun, but IMO the space part of the game would be way more immersive if I did all of the ship piloting stuff in-character rather than in the UI menues, seems like a big oversight - why not have something like the galaxy map from mass effect, or have everything on displays in the cockpit? It would be much more immersive, but I guess it would have delayed the game quite a bit.
A lot of the game is juggling menues and interfaces which aren’t the best designed. very similar to Skyrim - I imagine UI redesign mods will really shine once they start coming out. It’s pretty tricky trying to figure out what stuff in your inventory is junk you accidentally picked up (looking at you, Fire Extinguisher!) and which items have a surprisingly good value-to-weight ratio (like some - but not all - of the books, or the deck of cards, surprisingly)
There are occasionally little bugs and glitches, but it’s not too bad for 2023 - nothing that makes the game unplayable or breaks major things, it’s just been stuff like glitchy animations, containers placed in the wrong place/orientation, weird physics behaviour, and I’ve noticed a couple missing textures here and there.
If you’re looking for more of a story/RPG game, I’d suggest something more like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic.
For exploration and space combat, I think No Man’s Sky is better, but with much less customisation.
For more customisation and sandbox style gameplay - but less action-oriented - Space Engineers is probably a better choice.
All in all, Starfield is a fun game - Skyrim in space is a good starting point for describing it, but it’s a lot closer to “Fallout 4, but the bombs didn’t drop”, though the game has a lot of cool extra systems beyond that. I’d be happy to recommend it to someone who would enjoy a single player sci-fi themed looter-shooter sandbox game with some mild RPG elements and player-constructed ships and bases, and I’m sure there are hundreds of hours of enjoyment there, and, as with the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games, it’s likely a game that I will return to for many, many years to come
Edit: Turns out that my information is outdated - hardware audio offloading support was added back in Windows 8, apparently!
Original comment: Sound processing hasn’t been offloaded to the sound card since Windows XP - you’ll get no performance improvement from having a sound card.
I’m interested in learning more! What benchmarking software are you using and how are you testing that?
Edit: I looked into it and my information was outdated - support for hardware audio offloading was added back in Windows 8! I still have no idea why they removed it between XP and Windows 8, but I’m glad it’s back.
Thanks for sharing, and for putting me right, I appreciate it! I’m very glad that they’ve backtracked on that. While it’s not a huge amount of processing in most situations, I work as a programmer and I don’t love it when I compile code and my music sounds horrible for a few seconds as the CPU gets absolutely massacred by MSBuild.
I have a DAC which is currently connected by USB - it does have SPDIF inputs as well, though. Do you happen to know if they make sound cards with USB output? Or would I need to use the SPDIF output on the card?
I might still have an old sound card kicking around (Creative X-Fi Fatality or something) but I’m not sure it’ll have Windows 8+ compatible drivers, so I might have to get a new one.
Releasing what is essentially two different consoles at the same time was such a bad idea. I can’t imagine that anyone in the engineering team thought it was a good idea. It seems like the kind of decision that is made in a board meeting that gets handed to the engineers with the caveat, “you don’t have to agree with the idea; just make it work!”
For context: I’m currently employed as a software engineer, I do consultancy on the side and I previously was a technical lead. Around 15 years of professional experience which includes a lot of mentoring/training.
It’s a cool idea - there are quite a few little things kicking around with some similarities - “advent of code” is the closest thing I can think of. I’m sure it could be very fun and educational.
Personally, and I’m going to be completely honest and frank with you, I don’t think I would play it, (though I’m definitely not the target market), but also, it’s not likely that I would recommend it to someone who wants to learn to code either.
Usually when people want to learn to code, it’s because they have some end goal in mind - they want to make an app, game, website, they want to get a job as a developer, data analyst, QA, etc. or they have something in particular which interests them - such as machine learning, embedded design, blockchain (yes, I know it’s a scam), digital music/art, etc. - and based on what they want to do, I’d recommend them some very different pathways, and it’s very unlikely that your game would be the best use of their time, to be honest.
I think, personally, this kind of learning device is only really good as a starting point for people who want to learn for the sake of learning, people who want to learn programming but have no real idea about what they want to program - this tends to be quite rare, though, because we all interact with technology from such a young age, by the time people are capable of learning programming, there would be something that gets them excited and that they would enjoy working towards.
I think what I would like to suggest to you instead, is something that I think would be - in my opinion - really cool, genuinely helpful as an educational tool, and with a lot more potential for monetisation:
The exact game you described, but rather than the game being the end goal, instead, you focus on the foundations that the game is built upon, and have the game be a tech demo for an educational, learn-to-code driven game engine.
Prioritise all of the game design tools for building the game such as the world/quest editors and make sure you have some way of supporting different languages, allowing custom assets to be easily imported, etc.
Make it nice and easy for people to build on top of - in an ideal world, it should be possible for someone to decide to make a module for an esoteric conlang and whip up a simple proof of concept adventure with your framework in an evening or two.
Then you can provide it as a subscription based online platform with some sort of limited free trial, a selection of pre-made official modules for individuals and organisations who pay, a “module marketplace” where people can design, share, and sell new adventures (where you take a cut, of course) and self-hosted (or separate) instances for schools, colleges, boot camps, and so on. who want to provide a series of adventures as supplementary learning material for classes.
I think if you put some effort into this you could make something really cool and successful. But it’s definitely a huge undertaking. If you want to take on the challenge, let me know, maybe it’s something we can work on together if you’re interested.
I think the other direction you could go is to aim for a younger demographic than you’re likely thinking of. Maybe something like 12-15 years old. It’s very important to note that I’m not suggesting you make the story/aesthetic “kid friendly”, if anything I’d suggest more the opposite, kids love things that seem really adult - but the actual challenges and content itself, keep it tuned to a younger audience. I think that age group would get the most out of a general-purpose “learning to code” educational game
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
Yeah, you’re not wrong - I guess the difference is that when it comes to battle royales, the medium is the message. I don’t give a shit about levels, ranks, customisation options, skins, perks, etc. in Call of Duty, so all of those manipulative tricks they pull in that area don’t really achieve much. But for Apex Legends, the manipulative shit is the game itself.
I’m glad you enjoy the game and I’m not trying to take that away from you, but I just have an “ick” for that genre, it feels abusive in a way I can’t really put my finger on. And yeah for sure I am overthinking it, this entire thread is an invitation to overthink video games ;p
Lots of games had duel modes without downtime, when your duel ends, you get paired up with another player whose duel ended recently. It’s a few seconds at most usually.
I never felt particularly stressed during the collection segment, just bored, and from the other guy who wrote that he likes that time to mess around with his friends, I don’t know that your experience is universal.
That feeling of tension that you describe was absolutely present for me playing traditional deathmatch. The drive to want to win was strong enough to make me give a shit about the game. Especially if it was like, a clan match or something.
Oh yeah, for sure, 100%. I know that this is incredibly opinions based. Every time I play a MOBA, I just think how much more fun I’d have playing an RTS!
Yeah, I understand that, and I guess they’re not for everyone. I’ve got pretty severe ADHD and I love the “everything happening everywhere all at once” feeling that RTS has
I would respect your opinion about my opinion if you presented it as an opinion about my opinion…
Of course it’s just my opinion. I respect people who enjoy those games absolutely, 100%. No disrespect at all. I didn’t even say anything negative about MOBAs except the fact that I didn’t personally enjoy them. You’re taking this way too personally.
Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It (www.macrumors.com)
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/10/valve-confirms-counter-strike-2-no-macos/
CD Projekt Red devs unionise after its third round of layoffs in three months (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Announcement of Discontinuation of Online Services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software (en-americas-support.nintendo.com) angielski
Archive link: archive.ph/aWo6a...
What type of game you want to see that doesn't fully exist yet?
Terraforming Mars team defends AI use as Kickstarter hits $1.3 million (www.polygon.com) angielski
‘It’s too powerful a technology’
Is It Just Impossible to Have an Honest Conversation About Starfield? (www.themarysue.com) angielski
It sure feels impossible to have an honest conversation about Starfield online right now.
A Sliding Score Means ‘Starfield’ Is Now Xbox Series X’s 47th Highest Rated Game (www.forbes.com) angielski
When the review embargo first dropped, Starfield was sitting at something like an 88 on Xbox and an 89 on PC. Not 90+ the way I think Bethesda may have been hoping, and yet still extremely good.
Sennheiser Exits Gaming Headphone Business (www.anandtech.com) angielski
Technically the successor owner of the gaming brand....
Buying Max Payne (Germany)? [SOLVED]
Hey,...
WNBA team New York Liberty will play on a Starfield-themed floor this week (www.gamescensor.com) angielski
Baldur’s Gate 3 just made the future of Xbox Series S a bit more uncertain (www.polygon.com) angielski
Larian’s RPG may have set a tricky precedent for future chats with Microsoft
Your Opinion on my Game Idea angielski
cross-posted from: beehaw.org/post/7671504...
Not counting games that were unfun because of bugs, what’s the most unfun video game that you’ve played and what made it unfun? (kbin.cafe) angielski
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.