Dark_Arc

Dark_Arc, 2 days ago

Yes, they did give that exact example just with the opposite political framing.

Dark_Arc, 21 days ago

You should try Brighter Shores.

The original RuneScape developers and owners (i.e. Andrew Gower and his brothers) are back with a new game, at a new company, with an industry shattering $5.99/mo subscription price for all content.

No micro transactions, no pay to win, no outrageous DLC pricing, no bull shit … just a fun game with many similarities to OSRS but also modernizations, formula improvements, and lessons learned.

Dark_Arc, 21 days ago

I mean, fishing is more comparable to mining in RS2, there are other skills (typically refinement oriented skills) that have more down time between clicks.

Combat I definitely feel needs refinement. Though, I actually do like the fact that combat is not “I have a bow and I’m shooting something 1 tile in front of me and/or safe spotting.”

The skills are only trained in one area, but they have interactions across areas. You use resources gathered in the forest in town and in the mines. The weapons you make in the mines can be tuned to any other location (etc…)

Andrew does a pretty decent job of explaining the thought process here if you’re interested: store.steampowered.com/…/4442331835939160237

A lot of this is to solve the long time MMO issue of “new content is released but it’s only for high level players and long time layers in general have a ton of advantages in the new area.”

Dark_Arc, 28 days ago

Or at least the bar should be much much higher. Like if you’ve invented the SHA algorithm… Fine.

However, if you’ve just invented “a way to purchase something over the network via a phone”… That is not patent worthy.

Dark_Arc, 28 days ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 27 days ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 26 days ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 1 month ago

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.

youtu.be/GB20A8CitRU?si=ZN-V-FAnKjnxGHBs

Dark_Arc, 1 month ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 1 month ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 1 month ago

I use Inoreader on both desktop and mobile (they have a very feature rich app, synchronize your experience up, and have a generous free plan).

Dark_Arc, 1 month ago

I’m happy to say, IMO, you’re still using the meta RSS client haha

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

Possibly keep an eye on Diabotical Rogue… Definitely not what you want right now, but it has potential.

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

Typically live service games last a lot longer in terms of new content and updates. There are a lot of recent complete failures of live services though that didn’t make it more than a couple of months … they’re just bad games.

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

That’s not really true… No closed source software that isn’t actively developed should be expected to last forever. Eventually the binaries will get to the point where nothing will run them.

You also can’t emulate Windows. Maybe you could virtualize Linux and use wine, but even that is a tall order for “forever”.

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

You can emulate machines that can run Windows, and that’s very effective at preservation.

Hmm… I’m unaware of this, but I guess it’s theoretically possible. Still it’s a lot harder to emulate x86 + some graphics hardware than it is to emulate a Gameboy.

Wine is already better than modern Windows at running software that relies on deprecated dependencies.

Agreed, but it’s not a silver bullet and A LOT of stuff is going to be shaken up now that x86 is starting to be challenged. For a long time PCs have been entirely operating on x86 (which is arguably part of why Java died … the abstraction just wasn’t necessary). That x86 dominance I think may have given a false sense of security for software longevity.

It’s not even that it’s hard to port the games, but without the source code, it’s just not going to happen.

I kind of wish there were laws where source code had to be released after X years of inactivity, especially for games for the cultural preservation aspect. Like if you have abandoned a game and not released any new content (especially if you haven’t released even any bug fixes/have totally abandoned the game), after 10 years the game code must be released.

I don’t necessarily think it needs to be a release of rights, assets, or anything like that … but being unable to operate a game you’ve bought just because it was built for an older piece of hardware is 👎.

But live service is just purposely killing games that didn’t need to die.

Bad live services are killing (in many cases bad) games that didn’t need to die (and might have been better if less time was spent trying to force something to be a live service that didn’t need to be one).

There’s a big difference between Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League and say… PUBG, Fortnite, Hunt Showdown, WOW, RuneScape, etc

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

I don’t think Fortnite can be meaningfully preserved anymore than say, Cedar Point can personally.

Live services can also certainly transition out of a live service state; or if the source code is disclosed (per my previous statement) they can be transitioned by the community after they seize operation. Building a game like Fortnite or RuneScape just doesn’t work without it being a centralized “destination.” The experience is about the large number of players as much as it’s about the game play.

Live services are more of a destination than a product … and for match made competitive shooters and things of that ilk … I think that’s fine.

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

We’ve had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.

Interesting question… What competitive games from the last 10 years would you consider to be not live service games?

Dark_Arc, 2 months ago

I’ve never really been into fighting games; I did some Smash Brothers when I was younger but that’s about it. I think fighting games are a fairly different beast entirely; they’re a far more “couch friendly” genre.

They also don’t tend to have the absolutely massive operating costs where “it costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this map” and server costs of “it cost hundreds per month to run just a few servers (because of the complexity of processing all of the elements of an individual match” that Fortnite, PUBG, and Hunt Showdown have to deal with.

Live Service:

• steamcharts.com/app/578080
• steamcharts.com/app/1172470
• steamcharts.com/app/359550
• steamcharts.com/app/440
• steamcharts.com/app/230410
• steamcharts.com/app/2357570
• steamcharts.com/app/594650

Never adopted a live service (but a big name):

• steamcharts.com/app/1517290
• steamcharts.com/app/1238810
• steamcharts.com/app/1238840
• steamcharts.com/app/1238860

Live service is worse for the shooter genre on “eventual death” … but so far none of the popular live service shooter games have really died. Meanwhile games that haven’t and are still trying to compete with the “buy the new game for a premium price tag” (like Battlefield) are hurting. Calling of Duty is another big name that almost certainly is suffering from this problem but it can’t be charted because they reorganized their game as “everything is under ‘Call of Duty’”.

The fighting games on steam don’t even come close to any of the shooter numbers.

Other big genres like strategy do fine with the big release (in no small part because a big part of their game play is single player or “play with a well known group of friends”), e.g., steamcharts.com/app/289070 and steamcharts.com/app/413150 (both of those games also have seen almost “live service-like” levels of service via additional content throughout their lifespan).

Live services get a lot of hate on Lemmy … but there genuinely is something to them when they’re done well. They’re often better for shooters because the incremental changes allow developers to back off and fix things without totally fragmenting their community.

Battlefield 2042 and Hunt Showdown: 1896 are great examples of this … They both had rocky launches. Battlefield is a bigger franchise but because they made “extreme changes” vs incremental changes Battlefield 2042 is in much worse shape than Hunt Showdown: 1896 is and Crytek will in all likelihood be able to fix the things that people are upset about and get their numbers higher than they were. Dice/EA’s best chance is “try again next year” at this point with their model (which will almost certainly cost players another $70 minimum to get into). Even then the game will remain fragmented with all the different Battlefield games out there and the expense of getting a new one.

If you’re frugal you could’ve played Hunt Showdown from 2018-present for its original price of $29 for the battlefield community for the same time frame to play on release you would’ve needed to spent $180 minimum.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

For me, I couldn’t get behind the battle royale thing… It’s just too much pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I like intense gunfights, but for a win to be only when you’re the last team standing of everyone on the server using only the random loot you found … that’s a lot of pressure.

On the graphics front, things have changed a lot over the years:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JvbebYIorcA/sddefault.jpg

I actually think it looks pretty decent personally and it keeps getting better. It’s not Hunt Showdown: 1896, but it’s still pretty nice visually (just more of an animation than photorealism focus).

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

but the performance just keeps getting worse

That’s just the nature of PC gaming; as time goes on games look prettier but run worse.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

No it’s literally how software works. New hardware comes out, you do more with the hardware, old hardware can’t do the new things and runs worse.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

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.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

Those things normally get shutdown for copyright related claims though, no?

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

We’ve been through a lot.

This was the final straw for me. Asking for feedback about MTX and then leveraging that to raise prices. Even if that’s not what they did, their timing is beyond stupid.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

Good to know!

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

but I want to see it implemented before I believe any of it is real

As you should, they’ve let players down many many times before (myself included) making promises for things to come that never happen. A prime example is the player owned house rework that was promised in one of the original Rune Fests.

The tick rate improvements and client side prediction they demoed … they said they may never happen; however, let’s face it, they could happen they’re just unwilling to commit to hiring the developers that would be needed to make that happen.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

A problem I’ve personally run into is a lot of reviews focus entirely on MTX/monetization and this can turn into a fun game getting thrown through the floor because the corporate side decided to put in a bunch of optional purchases.

I’m not saying monetization doesn’t matter … but sometimes I really don’t care … like Lego 2K Drive has a bunch of MTX bricks I’m never going to use and the option to grind them out with a lot of play time (another thing I’m not going to bother with). Those reviews almost definitely really hurt the sales of the game (which I did end up getting and it’s actually quite solid in terms of PC kart racing) and probably killed any chance of it ever living up to its potential.

Artifact Classic (the card game by Valve) also got review bombed to hell about monetization (and that one I get a little bit more because you had to buy card packs) … but if you actually play the game (and you can for free now with all cards unlocked)… I found it to be a really fun card game. I and all my friend stopped playing when Valve announced they were just going to redo the whole thing… I suspect a lot of people did the same thing which caused the chain reaction of “nobody’s playing our game… this looks hopeless…” and the eventual abandonment of both the original game and the rework Artifact Foundry (which I … didn’t particularly care for). The people I know that knew about the game that didn’t get the game said the negative reviews basically immediately disqualified the game from consideration for them.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

I wish they released the engine like they used to. IdTech whatever version we’re on now has to be epic.

Dark_Arc, 3 months ago

I don’t know if they really do… I mean they’re derived from it, but it’s pretty unlikely any of the quake code is in CS2 or the latest call of duty.

Quake is definitely a legend though just for creating the PvP FPS scene.

Dark_Arc, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

FPS by far … Most of the time I’m uninterested or minimally interested in a game’s story. If I wanted to read a book or watch a movie… That’s what I’d be doing.

If I’m playing a game it’s normally because I want a challenge or something to do that doesn’t involve being totally idle … and also doesn’t involve a ton of thinking.

Dark_Arc, 4 months ago

I feel like even Valve Anti-Cheat can handle that level of concern though, no?

Dark_Arc, 5 months ago

Old School RuneScape potentially fits this description

Dark_Arc, 5 months ago

Yup… It looked like a really bad attempt at photo realism in 2024. At this point you either need to use cartoon-like graphics or some sort or actually pull off the photo realism.

It was pretty obvious that game was never going to reach either of those marks.

I was definitely excited for the prospect of a Sim’s competitor, but this wasn’t going to be it… I think they did the right thing pulling the plug.

Dark_Arc, 6 months ago

No idea what that means, but I do know the devs of this game also made War for The Overworld and they did a fantastic job of making and maintaining it.

I’d highly recommend their studio… and if this is the type of game you’re interested in, you should definitely check it out!

Dark_Arc, 4 months ago

I missed this! I just created a community for the game !diaboticalrogue if you want to keep tabs on it.

Dark_Arc, 6 months ago

I mean, the purchasing model was fine. It was like any other game store. It’s just it was a new service and lots of people already had existing libraries they wanted to take with them … which just isn’t how that sort of thing normally works. Particularly with the way Google had it designed so that you could play purchased games without a subscription.

Dark_Arc, 6 months ago

This reminds me of the new game Andrew Gower and his brothers have been working on, Brighter Shores. It’s a pure passion project based on a from scratch game engine that was created to make programming (even massively) multiplayer online games much easier.

The goal isn’t profit but rather, to have fun, and make a cool enjoyable game. He’s said they’ve made more than enough money from the sale of Jagex and RuneScape back in the day (which FWIW, he regrets that sale and a lot of what has happened at Jagex/to RuneScape).

I love to see game developers (and people in general that … “make it” and then go “you know what, I do have enough”).

Dark_Arc, 6 months ago

That sounds like a really cool title for a game if nothing else!

Dark_Arc, 7 months ago

I mean it’s entirely possible this was for crossplay or cross save … I doubt this is about the number of accounts created in a given year.

Dark_Arc, 7 months ago

Yes, but presumably you have accounts with those games? If not, you can play with people on those platforms but you can’t play with specific people on those platforms (e.g. a friend on the platform – which is the bigger deal in my mind with crossplay).

Like, the PSN account is the equivalent of a Bungie, Paradox, or Crytek account, something that allows the game developer to maintain a cross platform friends list? No?

I suppose they could use a room code invite system for crossplay but that’s way less convenient.

I never got into Hell Divers because it legit would not run on my system so I’m not super up on all the details but that’s been my impression of why they might want it.

Either way… With all the negative feedback I’m surprised they’re not screaming from the rooftops “we’ll do something else!” I understand Sony is tying their hands as well though.

Dark_Arc, 7 months ago

Yeah… For battle royal and extraction shooters I think it would also be pretty hard to come close to the experience on private servers.

Granted, I wouldn’t mind being able to play e.g. Hunt Showdown with some friends on a private server/in a private match. It wouldn’t be what it is today, but it could still be fun.

It’s not like games with large populations are really getting shut down anyways. The games that are killed are already dead for most people. I really only am bothered by it when it’s a clearly single player/offline friendly game.

Dark_Arc, 7 months ago

The thing about them is you need people to be at close to the same skill level or they’re just not fun.

Dark_Arc, 7 months ago

I feel like maybe Paradox expanded too much too fast.

Dark_Arc, 8 months ago

Wind Waker was an amazing game

Dark_Arc, 8 months ago

I actually really enjoyed the size of the ocean it made me feel like I was really on a journey