In video games development, and more broadly in software development, Alpha state refers to a feature incomplete and largely untested state and is unrelated to internal/external sales, review, testing or release.
Alpha software is not thoroughly tested by the developer before it is released to customers.
While outside of recent trends, particularly in crowd funded games development, alpha releases to customers for paid software are less common they do occur and don’t have any bearing on the alpha state of the software.
In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon for proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions.
Further
A feature-complete (FC) version of a piece of software has all of its planned or primary features implemented but is not yet final due to bugs, performance or stability issues. This occurs at the end of alpha testing in development.
And for Beta
Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete but likely to contain several known or unknown bugs
I am both a qualified software developer, and have worked in the video games industry. I hope you have learnt something.
I’ve played maybe 10 hours total of Overwatch 2 and it is incredibly boring (to me). But it seems to get lots of updates often, heavy monetization which sucks. The steam reviews are scalding. It really makes me wonder… is it that bad? Like really? It’s hard to gauge if the game is thriving or on deaath’s door…
While some might not consider it a game mechanic I certainly do, as gaming the proceduraly created levels is a core part of certain games, see mapping tactics in Diablo 2 for example as you use knowledge of procedural generation to reduce the time to find and kill bosses!
You’ve likely listened to the same or similar lectures I have on level design and I seriously apply those lessons to every single game and UI I have influence over!
Nintendo had a stake in the company doing the broadcasts but is extremely unlikely to have retained copies of the levels.
The only way to have retained the levels is by having received them by satellaview and then disconnecting the device, for 25 years, and hoping the memory isn’t too volatile to recover.
It’s extremely fortunate that some people recorded levels on VHs and that those VHS weren’t damaged or lost.
They’ve done a great job and nailing the art style modern Pokemon games should have had, while being distinct enough to avoid any serious chances of a lawsuit winning.
Modders will be the ones running afoul of Nintendos lawyers.
This bug was introduced with the last Patch last year before they went for christmas/new year holidays. They are back since 1 week now and i think and hope they patch it as soon as possible . To be fair its only a Problem early till midgame before you got youre economy half way working, after this point you dont have money Problems at all . I find the ai pathfinding + the cargo System more gamebreaking then the money bug
On steam checking new reviews shows people are unhappy and refunding but there’s hardly any vitriol there either. Moderators are quick but not that quick.
Over on the official forums we see complaints, disappointment and frustration but little in the way of outright hatred.
I’ve yet to run across anything that crosses a line in terms of content I would moderate, however that doesn’t mean moderators didn’t nuke such comments before I could see them.
This looks like the expected reaction to a game being broken on release. The devs are simply shifting blame to the community.
You’re not familiar with the car and motorcycle industries are you?
People spend years tearing into companies over vehicles, spending hundreds or thousands of hours meticulously detailing every engineering problem, real or imagined, and shitting on anyone who disagrees.
The only difference is that car and motorcycle companies generally shield their employees from criticism to a much greater degree.
You don’t usually see the engineers names in a credit screen in your car. Those engineers aren’t generally seen shit posting on twitter about how entitled the customers are because that would get them sacked.
So because it’s “industry practice” to screw over consumers it’s somehow on consumers?
I suppose we can apply the same logic to scams, victims know about scams and fall for them anyway so it’s their own fault when their life savings get stolen.
No point in blaming the scammers. Everyone knows how it works.
So… blame the system? The devs are the antagonists in this system and the only ones with the power to stop pushing out broken garbage and marketing based on lies.
Blaming the victims won’t change the system.
There will always be people unfamiliar with the pitfalls of the system. Always fresh victims to part from their money.
So I blame the company because the company is the system. I blame the scammers because they are the system.
Oh and regulations don’t even slow down scammers of any kind. They already know they’re breaking the rules, breaking laws is just the next logical step.
A step companies are all too willing to take because the punishments cost less than they’ll profit.
I do not blame people for being fooled… because there’s always a scam good enough to fool even me. And I’m smart.
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of what this community has become, corporate bootlickers.
Excusing companies scamming customers because gamers dared to point out the scam? All because the companies quarterly profits weren’t up enough, is a really toxic state and not what this community should be.
The most elaborate space sim ever made is getting another expansion/update, most likely early in the new year. Full announcement on Youtube tomorrow Dec 20th at 16:00 CET.
I haven’t found a mod that handles what I expect from building an empire, and it would require a decent bit of work, which I’m not currently interested in doing myself.
According to Hans-Kristian Arntzen, a prominent open-source developer working on Vkd3d, a DirectX 12 to Vulkan translation layer, Starfield is not interacting properly with graphics card drivers.
simpler ship controllers and simpler planetary bases than Elite Dangerous
There’s plenty to criticise but this is just wrong. I’m really into space and flight sims and Elite Dangerous doesn’t hold a candle to Star Citizens flight model.
You can bounty hunt, mine, trade, race, pvp or explore in a ship, in a ground vehicle or on foot. You can buy most ships and vehicles in game, the exceptions being the most recent ships and some capital ships.
There are also pvp events and the occasional pve event, but I prefer the player driven events like the daymar races.
I guess new locations, some more ships and a bunch of server tech like functional server meshing are what we’re waiting on.
Care to explain how the WW2 plane flight model of Elite Dangerous is less arcady than the newtonian flight model used in Star Citizen or do you just not understand physics?
Elite Dangerous has a flight model where your ship behaves like it’s in atmosphere. You even have a throttle/speed “zone” where your ship handles best.
In essence this flight model is a very basic imitation a WW2 era plane, where due to the complex relationship between control surfaces and air speed they had ideal speeds for manoeuvring.
Elite Dangerous doesn’t model any of this using physics it’s all just fixed values and of course there’s no (or negligible) atmosphere in space.
Ever watch The Expanse where they’re going one direction full speed then they flip and burn the other direction? That’s realistic physics even if the engines being used are hand-wavy future tech.
You can do that in Star Citizen, though new players often miss that, as there are a actually two flight models.
The basic flight model is called coupled mode, where your direction of travel is “coupled” to your direction of forward momentum and has “drag” which is your ship slowing itself when you’re not using thrust, due to the chosen mode. This gives you a feeling of atmospheric control similar to Elite Dangerous.
The second mode is called uncoupled and is complete 6 degrees of freedom and your ship will maintain all momentum (it doesn’t slow down when you’re off throttle) allowing manoeuvres like the flip and burn mentioned above. This is very close to how things actually work in space though not perfect.
Oh and because atmospheric flight actually is modelled in Star Citizen, you can’t treat a dog fight in a planets atmosphere the same as a dog fight in space!
Game Freak has been allegedly hacked, with source codes for Pokemon games reportedly leaked (gbatemp.net) angielski
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Dev Says Big Budget Games Are Failing in Part Because Teams Are Over-Scoping Their Projects (www.ign.com) angielski
[Tom Warren] The PS5 Pro still hasn’t sold out in the US or UK. Looks like the $700 price point will mean this console will be readily available this holiday (lemmy.world) angielski
Is overwatch 2 really that bad? angielski
I’ve played maybe 10 hours total of Overwatch 2 and it is incredibly boring (to me). But it seems to get lots of updates often, heavy monetization which sucks. The steam reviews are scalding. It really makes me wonder… is it that bad? Like really? It’s hard to gauge if the game is thriving or on deaath’s door…
What games popularized certain mechanics? angielski
I was trying to think of which games created certain mechanics that became popular and copied by future games in the industry....
'Elder Scrolls Online: Lamenting a challenge-free landscape' - article by Biobreak blog (biobreak.wordpress.com) angielski
Stellaris gets a DLC about AI that features AI-created voices, director insists it's 'ethical' and 'we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Feeling old (lemmy.world) angielski
Deflated (lemmy.world) angielski
Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator (archive.ph) angielski
DL: nichegamer.com/sweet-baby-employees-incite-harass…
Upcoming God of War Game - News & Rumours (youtu.be) angielski
F-Zero courses from a dead Nintendo satellite service restored using VHS and AI (arstechnica.com) angielski
I mean I knew Notch was human trash but that the fuck (lemmy.world) angielski
The Pokemon Company releases a statement regarding Palworld: Inquiries Regarding Other Companies’ Games (corporate.pokemon.co.jp) angielski
Here’s a archive link, archive.ph/oT1L6
Nintendo DMCAs Palworld Mod That Makes Everything Pokémon (kotaku.com) angielski
Cities: Skylines 2 developers have noticed 'a growing tendency of toxicity in our community' (www.techradar.com) angielski
Developers of Cities: Skylines 2 have noticed a growing toxicity in their community, which is affecting engagement and creativity....
X4 gets another expansion. Announcement Wed Dec 20 - 16:00 CET. On to v7.00! (www.youtube.com) angielski
The most elaborate space sim ever made is getting another expansion/update, most likely early in the new year. Full announcement on Youtube tomorrow Dec 20th at 16:00 CET.
Report: Fall Guys dev Mediatonic "decimated" by Epic layoffs (www.gamedeveloper.com) angielski
Nexus Mods Fine With Bigots Leaving Over Removed Starfield ‘Pronoun’ Mod (kotaku.com) angielski
Creators of Slay the Spire will migrate their next game to a new engine if Unity doesn't completely revert their changes (nitter.net) angielski
Picture taken from their Twitter
Open source community figures out problems with performance in Starfield (www.destructoid.com) angielski
According to Hans-Kristian Arntzen, a prominent open-source developer working on Vkd3d, a DirectX 12 to Vulkan translation layer, Starfield is not interacting properly with graphics card drivers.
Starfield, is it getting review bombed? (youtu.be) angielski
Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
Star Citizen reaches $600 million raised but the game future is really worrying (gamerkick.com) angielski
Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
You heard him 4090 users, upgrade to a more powerful GPU.