MacNCheezus

MacNCheezus, 15 days ago

Yeah, I wonder if that’s perhaps the result of basically stapling the old game engine onto UE5 in order to preserve the core gameplay. Back when Oblivion was first released, multicore CPUs were incredibly rare, so it’s likely the engine was not built to take advantage of them. But ever since then, most of the improvements in CPUs have come in the form of adding more cores rather than increasing clock speed, and it’s by no means trivial to convert single-threaded code into multi-threaded. Most likely it would require a complete rewrite, which they’d probably want to avoid in order not to introduce more bugs.

But of course, it could also just be UE5’s fault, since even a single core on a modern CPU should not be slower than a 2006 model.

MacNCheezus, 20 days ago

Wait, it’s already out? I heard a bunch of rumors about it just the other day and I went on Steam to look it up, and I could swear it was still targeting a release in 2026.

They must have been working overtime on this to beat Skyblivion to the finish line.

MacNCheezus, 20 days ago

According to some YouTube videos I watched, a bunch of screenshots were recently leaked, confirming the existence of this whole project, which apparently has been kept under wraps the whole time.

But yeah, I can’t help but think they wanted to get it out there before Skyblivion drops (which is likely going to be free), so they can get some of that sweet cashflow before it’s too late.

MacNCheezus, 20 days ago

They’re just trying to delay the release of Skyblivion even further by making sure the devs all end up spending the next couple of weeks playing the remaster instead of working on their own project. That way Bethesda can maximize the monetization period for their version and hopefully convince a couple of fence sitters to just give up the wait and drop some cash on the remaster.

MacNCheezus, 20 days ago

Technically, it IS a full remake since they used an entirely different engine (UE 5) instead of revamping and upgrading the original. But according to everything I’ve read and seen, it’s still faithful enough to be called a remaster.

MacNCheezus, 20 days ago

I didn’t know this was possible, but according to this comment, you are right, they literally retrofitted the entire game engine into UE 5 somehow, so the gameplay should be identical.

MacNCheezus, 5 months ago

Nah, pretty sure this isn’t about the data. They just want to encourage people to go through the effort of setting up an account and downloading their launcher in the hopes that they can then later entice you to buy something else while you’re there. Every time you run one of those free games they get to show you another offer, and since you’re already signed up, the hurdle to buying something is far lower than it otherwise would have been.

MacNCheezus, 5 months ago

Most of the free games are crap but they have on occasion given away absolute bangers (double- or even triple-A titles, although of course usually older titles or ones that didn’t sell well). I recently got The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice for free (a game I wouldn’t otherwise have bought or even known about), and I ended up having a very solid ~55 hours of fun with it. I still do all my buying either on Steam or GOG because I don’t trust Epic and I hate their godforsaken launcher so I refuse to pay for anything that’ll be tethered to it, but getting a free game of that caliber certainly made up for the pain of installing it.

MacNCheezus, 5 months ago

Correct, as an added bonus, they get to report X million monthly active users on top of that to their investors (that’s why they make you come back every week for a new game). Likely at relatively little cost to them since they don’t have to pay full price for those games.

It’s probably still expensive as hell but when you have a competitor as big as Steam in the market, you gotta be able to afford some ammunition, and the Unreal Engine likely still brings in tons of cashflow.

MacNCheezus, 5 months ago

Right. They probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this off for as long as they have been if it was just hemorrhaging money.

MacNCheezus, 5 months ago

Yes, Black Mesa costs money but it’s absolutely worth it, they put a LOT of effort into restoring the original as faithful as possible but with more modern graphics (Source engine based). I played the original Half-Life when it came out and Black Mesa definitely gave me the same amount of awe and wonder. One of the best fan remakes of any game I’ve ever seen.

Also, I see that it’s currently on sale for only $5 (75% off), at that price it’s a steal and absolutely worth it.

MacNCheezus, 5 months ago

FYI, Black Mesa is currently on sale for $4.99, absolute steal at that price.

MacNCheezus, 11 months ago

In the sense that Doom more or less invented the genre (unless you count the original Wolfenstein, I guess).

Still kind of an awful headline. While GZDoom technically IS based on “Doom tech” because it’s derived from the OG Doom source code that was released to the public, it’s still vastly more powerful than the original engine, with GPU support, beefed up lighting effects, and many of the limitations of the original engine either vastly increased or removed entirely.

MacNCheezus, 11 months ago

Right. It’s still fundamentally the same old engine, just massively beefed up. There are still many limitations that more modern engines (like the one used in the 2014 remake) don’t have.

Which BTW is another reason the title is stupid, because the remake is also just called DOOM and it was the first thing I thought of when reading it. Yes, that engine might be 10 years old by now but it’s still fairly state-of-the-art and continues to be used in other AAA games (like Wolfenstein Youngblood).

MacNCheezus, 1 year ago

Been using Matrix (Element) for a while and it’s honestly fine apart from the fact that almost no one uses it (Lemmy devs are a rare exception).

While it has many features of Discord while still being easier than IRC and encrypted to boot, I’m assuming the reason most people won’t use it is because Discord is simply more convenient. After all, that is and has been their main selling point from the beginning, aside from voice chat for gaming, which isn’t really necessary for dev communities.

MacNCheezus, 1 year ago

I had a surprisingly good time with DEATHLOOP, especially after having completed Prey 2017 earlier this year and being a little frustrated about some of the design choices that were made, and wondering if Arkane had finally lost their mojo.

I almost didn’t even want to buy it at first because it had received such mixed reviews, and it certainly took some getting used to initially, but once it clicked and I finally understood all the rules and what the game was asking of me, I couldn’t put it down anymore for like a solid week.