The problem is a hash algorithm is exactly the sort of thing that copyright would be horrible at protecting. The source code is hardly relevant at all, it’s the operations that matter.
A big part of patents is to allow private sector research to occur. RCA failed and maybe patents should just fail too.
like the umbrella wedge/spring to make it open automatically.
That to me is a very specific algorithm. It’s a simple mechanism but putting it together might be a bit tricky.
That’s very similar to SHA, it’s a fairly simple set of mechanisms but the actual composure of those ideas into something that works as well as SHA does takes very specific research experience. It’s not at all an abstract idea, it’s a very concrete and specific set of operations that you invented first.
Imagine if the patent was “an umbrella can open itself with the push of button” no further details. That’s close to the level of detail some software patents are argued at and effectively what the “put a game in your loading screen” patent was awarded on.
You can’t patent the idea that “an umbrella should be able to open [somehow]” so I likewise think it’s ridiculous that someone was able to parent “your game [somehow] runs another simpler game before it runs.”
Patents should be to protect very specific research so that the private sector can do said research and profit from it. Patents should not block out broad concepts. The patent in the video game situation was and should’ve been ruled as bogus. It’s not the type of thing anyone needed to research or think about, you just literally go “what if I added a game to my loading screen” and you’re in violation.
I think software patents should really only apply to extremely tricky algorithmic “discoveries” (which I would consider inventions, as someone that’s written a SHA256 implementation from reference material, nobody is “just coming up with that”).
“Ingenuity patents” like that loading screen game are everything that’s wrong with software patents. It’s not all that crazy of an idea to add a game while waiting to play the main game. There’s no radical research required there, just an idea.
I don’t think vague ideas like “a game in a loading screen” are sufficiently creative to warrant a patent.
Nintendo is in a very envious spot in general. Hell, I think Nintendo makes some great games, I just wish they wouldn’t force me to buy yet another computer solely for the purpose of playing their games. I haven’t owned a Mario Kart or Zelda game in years but I’d love to play if I could do so on PC/Linux.
Yeah, maybe I’m just wrong in general … The above doesn’t look that different from say black ops 6 footage.
I definitely wish for a return to the linear format (or simi linear where there are a few concurrent linear quests going on). I think straight up open world just lends itself to making a lot of walking simulators.
Halo Infinity was one of the most boring games I ever played between the weapons sounding like toys and the spread out objectives with no clear central mission.
Because graphics still sell games. You can do simplified graphics like Nintendo and still sell games, but lots of people want the photo realistic experience and the bar for that has gone way way up incrementally over the years.
The latest expansion genuinely did shake up the enemies. They still need to … change something. It seems like maybe they will with the next expansion changing how they present the story. We shall see.
It’s not really beta quality. I hopped on with my brother just to see if I was interested in the game (we both played black ops, the original back on the PS3). It was actually extremely stable and pretty fun. He noticed a UI glitch but … it’s not like there was even a feedback or bug report button.
It’s just early access with the disclaimer there might be something wrong… Which isn’t that different from buying a release day game anymore unfortunately.
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.