cmhe

cmhe, 8 dni temu

I think for many content heavy games, an open source engine and copyrighted content could work financially. Someone would still have to buy the game, but the game mechanics and platform support can be enhanced and engine bugs fixed by the community.

cmhe, 8 dni temu (edited 7 dni temu)

Sure, depends on the engine, but very often there is a “scripting” part, be it quests, dialog, etc. and the where those scripting functions/library and language is implemented. The first are part of content, while the latter is part of the engine.

Also games have data tables, where the individual value for each record are part of content and the implementation of what each attribute does is implemented in the engine or some specific scripting.

Engines tent to have a clear split, because different kind of developers have different processes, and engines are often reused for multiple games.

IMO, that means that the whole game would be sources available (for the end user), while the central engine is open source.

This is just somewhat of a wishful thinking, not a requirement or whatever.

And sure, game devs releasing an engine/game as open source after they are done with it, would be great too. But I like to dream big ;)

cmhe, 7 dni temu

I am thinking of OpenMW for instance. Through reverse engineering, they where able to create an open source engine that runs the game with modern features. You still have to own those games in order to play the original levels/content.

Sure for games, which are game mechanic driven there is difficulty in separating if from the content, but in many content heavy games, it is more about the world, explorations, the story, characters etc, than the just the runtime, rendering, physics etc.

In many games the big chunks of the engine is sort of source available already, because they are written in a scripting or managed language (.Net or Java).

Making the stuff that isn’t written in such a language available to the player as well, would be great. Because that would lessen the reverse engineering burden of modders. And the next step would be to open source parts of it.

The reasons for this are the same for many commercial products to use open source lower levels of their software stack and open source their common code as well. Improving your own product by cooperating with others would be great in gaming as well.

cmhe, 11 dni temu

I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.

I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.

For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.

The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.

If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.

For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.

Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.

cmhe, 18 dni temu

When the current copyright comes from books, wouldn’t plugins or transient changes/cheats be like taking side notes with a pencil on their individual copy?

Are side notes and annotations copyright infringements?

I would love to see them argue that taking snarky side notes, which change the tone of their words, is copyright infringement.

cmhe, 18 dni temu (edited 18 dni temu)

Well, I think both are human creation, you are using the machine and the game to create something new. In that sense, a save game file could also be under the players copyright. Lets say a Minecraft world for instance.

cmhe, 18 dni temu (edited 18 dni temu)

I meant minecraft world file which stores the chunks the player explored and potentially modified. And I said “could” not “must”, it depends on if hits a certain creative threshold.

If the player decides to teleport around while creating a dickbud or whatever by just the explored chunks, that could meet it.

If someone selectivly openes quests to use the open quest markers on a map in an RPG to create a dickbud, that cloud meet it as well.

The save game could tell your individual story through the game, that cloud meet the threshold as well.

Also, because the unmodified minecraft world is randomly generated, it would not be under anyones copyright.

With AI, there could also be made an argument that the selection process might make it copyrightable. Like if you take a picture of a interesting looking cloud. The clouds might be semi-random, but you selecting a specific one reaches the threshold.

cmhe, 17 dni temu (edited 17 dni temu)

Nature is often random and unpredictable, but the process of selecting a interesting POV and taking a picture of it is still copyrightable.

I wouldn’t be so sure that if you discover a seed, that can be transformed using minecraft into a world with very interesting and specific properties, could not be under copyright protection.

In fact movies, pictures and books are specific numbers on a digital storage medium as well, that are transformed using a codec. That isn’t something that can be easily replicated without that codec.

I am not a copyright lawyer, but I think there are precedences where just the selection process from a stream of (semi-) random number, pictures, sound or events alone can produce copyrightable products.

cmhe, 17 dni temu (edited 17 dni temu)

Yes, and you have copyright on the photo - not the layout of the plants and trees in it, nor even the angle of the subject. Someone else can go with a camera and take their own photo without touching your copyright.

A work is original if it is independently created and is sufficiently creative. Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of ways and reflect the photographer’s artistic choices like the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph, lighting, and timing. As a copyright owner, you have the right to make, sell or otherwise distribute copies, adapt the work, and publicly display your work.

www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/

So if someone intentionally reproduces a picture, they violate copyright, IIUC.

In the case of minecraft, I think a case can be made, where the “picture” is the minecraft world, and the creativity is the selection process by the artist. The artist chooses their angle, position, lighting, etc, in this case they choose properties of the world, maybe by visiting thousands of them, using seed search machines, or other reverse engineering tools etc.

I all depends on if the artist can raise their work above just the random noise they get as an input in a creative way. I am not saying that all minecraft worlds (or save games for that matter) are subject to copyright, but since we are dealing with blurry lines of copyright, it is possible.

IANAL, but I think if I would look into case law, I would find examples for both options, in some cases the “selection process” was enough to demonstrate creativity, and in other cases it wasn’t.

You are correct it isn’t about the numbers, it is about the artistic and creative product that is copyrightable, which, in case of digital art, is represented as numbers, and distribution of those might be punished by law.

I am just saying that digital art can be more that just still or moving pictures and sound. It can be a world space the artist prepared for you where you can move around.

About the section on the law, I would read it just as stating what is covered under copyright, and not what isn’t. I also just mentioned what original work is, not describing derived work.

cmhe, 17 dni temu

BTW, thank you for this discussion!

The crux of the matter for me is the question wherever “the selection process” alone is enough to create art or not, and depending on my mood I fall to one side or another on that question. Not specifically if it is under copyright or not, because that sort of follows from that.

Artists often use randomness in various parts of their creation process, what is really required is the human element. Is a picture of a cloud, that speaks to the photographer in some way art or just a picture of a random cloud?

I guess this has to be decided on a case by case basis, therefore I cannot completely exclude it.

cmhe, miesiąc temu

Yes, but not with an unmodified toolkit, which opens levels as read-only, and disallows creating new levels. But there is a patch for the toolkit on nexusmods which unlocks the toolkit and makes the map editor and other stuff available. If you know what you are doing, you should be able to edit the main campaign or make your own.

I played around with it a bit, and all I can say, its complicated.

cmhe, miesiąc temu

The achievement enabling is part of the script extender

cmhe, miesiąc temu

AAAA games are clearly inferior to AAAAXY games.

cmhe, miesiąc temu

Nothing about mod support or releasing the toolkit, like they did in DA:O.

cmhe, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Sure, it is largely the fanbase, however I also think that the game industry seems to sometimes do somewhat of a “woke-washing”, meaning opically supporting the LGBTQIA movement because of financial, shitstorm-prevention or other reasons than just wanting to create more diverse and inclusive games.

For instance I like Hogwarts Legacy, but it also takes place in the Victorian era, and it seems to project the modern tolerant society ideals onto the wizarding world of that time.

Depicting the society as inclusive and diverse is somewhat history revisionist. If you play as a non-binary or trans person at that time, then you should have to deal with prejudice and marginalization, otherwise it is just “woke-wash” the history.

So, IMO there are some cases, especially in historic (fantasy) games, where injecting modern ideals and standards might not fit or needs to be better addressed, than just let it be cosmetic.

They shouldn’t do a halfhearted job.

cmhe, 3 miesiące temu

Link to the mod: gitlab.com/falloutfans/fallouty

cmhe, 4 miesiące temu

Its a bit old, but the last reports for DA:O on wine look good: appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version…

cmhe, 4 miesiące temu

I don’t remember that. AFAIK Larian has not made, and will not make any DLC for BG3.

What do you mean?

cmhe, 4 miesiące temu

AFAIK, modding is the main reason for Skyrims long term success. Sure, it did its part in inspiring people initially, but what keeps at least me coming back is my interest in trying new mods.

But it also didn’t start there with Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas use a very moddable predecessor of the Skyrim engine, and thus build the community up for Skyrim and later games.

Modability of KC:D was rather limited, so there isn’t a community around as big as the Skyrim one. That means with Skyrim, you get what you can mod into it, while with Kingdom Come, you mostly just get what you buy.

So I don’t expect it to be the next Skyrim, but never the less I am interested in it.

cmhe, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

I don’t know why you are so aggressive.

You made a good point, this is actually DLC, I just forgot about it.

I bought BG3 when it was in EA, so I got this DLC automatically, so I never really thought about it recently, I don’t even remember seeing it on any shop front.

But now that you mentioned it, I think I thought that they should probably release it for free for everyone at that time. Just like CDPR released some cosmetic ‘DLC’ for free after launch.

If I had to buy it, I probably wouldn’t.

cmhe, 5 miesięcy temu

No, the consumers are never to blame for stuff like this!

This is something that is just that we get told by the people that are lying about and hyping up a product, putting up manipulative incentives for buying it before letting us inspect it. Then releasing trash, but still appealing on our empathic nature and promising that it might get fixed later. And when things turn to shit, then it is our trust and empathy, willingness to support them, that is to blame for it. No!

If the industry exploits our good and trusting nature, then we need to fight them with regulation and laws. Our civilization and the human nature is built on trust, and that should not be undermined by short profit oriented, exploitative companies or business practices.

cmhe, 6 miesięcy temu

“next-generation PC” whatever that means.

I do hope that there never will be a next generation of PCs, i am quite happy with my old-gen Ship-of-Theseus-PC, where I occasionally replace some parts.

cmhe, 6 miesięcy temu

I like RPG games, however I don’t like it when the company has the ability and incentive to bate and switch my game into a worse version after I bought it.

Denuvo forces me to be connected to the internet, which makes playing the game on the move difficult or even impossible. It also allows them to make sure that the most current version is played. MTX means they don’t have incentives to fix the game and instead sell you the fixes, or even enshittyfy it, to squeeze out more money.

This gives me the incentive to wait a couple of years, until the game doesn’t receive any updates anymore, and then decide if the final product is worth it. And hope that I will get a good experience out of it, before the Denuvo activation servers are shut down.

So you have to wait for a few years, in order to know if the gameplay is (and stays) any good.

cmhe, 7 miesięcy temu

Do you really want auto-updates for your games, or actually just want updates-on-demand? Or just a notification with a button to update the game?

Personally I dislike Steams auto updates, because I want decide when a game should be updated. I might have mods installed, only mobile internet or a myriad other reasons not to be forced to download and apply an update right at that moment and instead just play the old version.

For saves, I normally just use syncthing. I have regularly issues with GOG and Steam cloud saves, and syncthing works well enough,

cmhe, 7 miesięcy temu

Same. I don’t even remember what ship I ordered.

I liked the game, when it was advertised as a moddable singleplayer game with drop-in drop-out co-op. As well as moddable multiplayer you can host yourself.

Now, I don’t have any interest it whatever that cluster fuck has become.

cmhe, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

True, private companies are generally more focused on customer satisfaction, but that can suddenly change, for instance when the owner dies, and the new owners don’t share the same ideals.

Private companies have a certain single point of failure built-in by having often just one or sometimes a small number of owners.

Nobody really knows what will happen when Gabe dies.

I just hope that valve becomes a worker cooperative… That would be the most stable form of company that probaly stays focused on customer satisfaction long term, since workers tend to favor providing long-term profits via good service instead of short term gains, for high frequency traders.

cmhe, 10 miesięcy temu

Game developers seem to be very afraid to change core features or the story of the game in a major way (even if the actual work would not be too extensive) after release. But there are enough examples where games improved a lot after release.

Sure, the initial impression of the game might be ruined, but that is more a consequence for the producers that most often where responsible for the rushed release, than for the gamers or developers, of the game is fixed afterwards.

cmhe, rok temu

I would take the whole “old crappy bethesda engine” meme with a grain of salt.

IMO it is a good engine, it is getting updated by them on every new game like any other engine. And there are a lot of changes all over. For that reason modders have to develop new tools to create meshes, reverse egnineer the changed data formats, etc. Saying that it is the same engine as Skyrim or Fallout 4/76 is just not true.

It is also one of the most mod friendly engine. The content creation tools from Bethesda and modders make it really easy to work with, even for people not able to code themselvs.

And personally the game looks and works fine. Of course you can critique the game itself, but attacking the whole engine is exagerated. Sure it has bugs, and you can attack bethesda about not fixing them, but suggesting that they throw away the whole engine because of a couple of bugs or subjective “looks bad” opinions is ridiculus.

Also, I don’t think just using Unity or UE4 (where bethesda devs first need to learn them first) magically fixes every complaint and bug. But it might make the game not as easily moddable.

cmhe, rok temu

I agree! The content of the game is the issue, not the engine. Bashing Bethesdas engine is just a meme, at this point.

Linux is 32 years old, people wanting to throw everything away and start new, just because they don’t like certain aspects of it, are crazy.

Personally, I don’t really care about raytracing, or even improving the graphics that much, IMO they should reuse assets and code if that will make them invest more of their time to improve their writing, quests and let people go their own paths through the quests instead of just having 2 or 3 options (do the quest, don’t do the quest and sometimes rat the people out to the authorities). So that we have BG3 level of writing and quests, in different kind of game.

And for god sakes, do simple things like let companions whisper when sneaking.

Also, New Atlantis doesn’t look build for Humans but for giants, too much scaled up.

cmhe, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Sure modders can put stuff behind paywalls, but implementing DRM, is overkill. And it would be nice if they release month old versions for free afterwards… sSo I have to see, Starfield isn’t that old yet.

BTW, I am not really getting the FSR/DLSS situation.

Shouldn’t FSR2 be working on Nvidia gpus as well and is open source? DLSS is propritary and only works on Nvidia.

So I am not really understanding the issue here, other than customers of Nvidia not having FSR2 because Nvidia hasn’t implemented the open standard, right? So they should complain to them about it.

IMO this is a bit like the fediverse vs. other social media topic, so I would complain about people creating their own propritary stuff, that is intentionally incompatible with the fediverse, and not about people that use the fediverse API in their app, but not support some propritary API.

cmhe, rok temu

That seems a bit unfair to Obsidian. They were given an engine, they where unfamiliar with and had a very short 18 months of development time, very likely because of their deal with Bethesda.