MentalEdge

MentalEdge, rok temu

!titanfall

MentalEdge, rok temu

Zero Dawn on the Deck is damn near perfect.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Oh dear. The only option left will be to pirate it… And in the new model, the dev might have to pay unity even for pirated installs.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

That’s fucking funny. Lots of faith in their own decisions, huh?

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

The new model makes no sense whatsoever.

If I install a game I bought on both my desktop and steamdeck, the devs have to pay unity twice. If I uninstall it and re-install it, they have to pay it thrice. Four times if I ever use my laptop to play.

If I share the game with my dad and sister via steam family share, the devs have to pay yet another two times.

But I only paid for the game once.

It’s complete insanity. Do they have to pay again for every update, does that count as a new install? What about games on subscription services?

MentalEdge, rok temu

At this rate?

It already is.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Ah. Yet another reason for game studios to turn away from commercial dev tools and turn to FOSS software like Blender and Godot.

And since game devs are, you know, developers, they can even contribute to these tools with heir dev time, improving them and accelerating the industry shift away from this commercial bullshit even more.

MentalEdge, rok temu

The real threat is Godot. It’s getting better and better. Why pay for a commercial game engine, when you can use one that comes with a literally no strings attached FOSS license? And you have full access to the source code, so you can fiddle with any line of code, if need be.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I’ve heard of no such thing.

But drama almost never kills FOSS software. It just causes it to fork. FOSS software can become like an olympic flame that just keeps getting passed from dev to dev. Once there are people actively using something, those same people are motivated to fix any issues they have with it, or add any features they are missing. That then drives improvement of the software, which in turn drives adoption, which drives more improvement…

There was huge drama around Emby going closed source, but FOSS Emby simply got forked, becoming Jellyfin.

There’s an example just within lemmy, the lemmur app apparently stopped development due to some drama, but it got forked and Liftoff picked up right where it left off.

Yes. There can be drama around FOSS projects, and there often is. Loosely organized groups of volunteers putting together serious software don’t work as efficiently as a paid team of devs led by a visionary with final say. But FOSS projects are capable of becoming self-perpetuating in a way proprietary software can never do. Once they reach a high enough level of adoption, they are very hard to kill.

And Godot is definitely up there.

MentalEdge, rok temu

!drg - Deep Rock Galactic

MentalEdge, rok temu

Indeed. Fingers crossed there’s a way to bring a save over from PS4 again like with HZD, need to play the DLC but I got the game on PS4…

MentalEdge, rok temu

Fucking finally. Still have to see if they actually go through with it.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Nintendo is absolutely one of those companies that has been breathing its own farts for too long.

A part of me is worried that they will patent this, and then just sit on the tech forever, and kill hall-effect joysticks for good.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Ghostrunner was fantastic. Cathartic AF movement. Glad to get more.

MentalEdge, rok temu

While I’m no fan of paid sponsorships holding back good games, this is untrue.

Neither nvidia nor amd block their partner devs from supporting competing tech in their games. They just won’t help them get it working, and obviously the other side won’t either, since that dev is sponsored. There are some games out there that support both, some of them even partnered.

So yes, it’s bullshit. But it’s not “literally paid” bullshit. Bethesda could have gone the extra mile, and didn’t.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

There was talk about making “steam deck optimized” versions of games that would ditch high resolution assets as they would be pointless on a 720p display. Nothing seems to have materialized.

That said, there are reasons why games are taking more and more space. Game assets cannot be compressed the same way image files intended for humans can. They have to be stored losslessly, or there WILL be rendering artefacts. And a material or texture in a game is composed of a lot more layers than just an RGB image (normal maps, specular maps, material maps, depth maps). And modern game-engines can pre-bake a lot of things that otherwise would have to be rendered in real-time. That pre-baked render data has to be stored, preferably in high resolution to avoid aliasing, and shipped along with all the other game files.

Games aren’t ballooning in size for no reason. Stuff like pre-baking essentially trades storage for the ability to get the same looks for less processing. More data layers in textures and materials allows rendering to take shortcuts in how the appearance of a surface is calculated, etc. etc. etc.

But none of this would prevent the option to not download these resource files for ALL detail levels. If you’re not gonna run a game on ultra textures, you don’t need those files sitting on your drive.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I’m fully behind the idea that you should be able to opt for not downloading the biggest texture files and 3D assets, if you’re gonna play at low settings, anyway.

But it’s worth noting that “optimizing” the file sizes of high-fidelity games isn’t really possible. You can’t compress textures or 3D assets the same way you might an RGB image. Game textures contain a lot more layers than just color, in modern games they can contain material, depth and specularity maps, just to name a few. And that’s before considering any accompanying bre-baked lighting data that entire levels may come with, which trades in the need to real-time render stuff for doing it in advance and storing how something is supposed to look, and shipping it alongside the game.

None of this can be easily compressed. It has to be retained losslessly, or you risk rendering artefacts.

Also, most game distribution services will send you an AGGRESSIVELY compressed (as in packed as a whole, using great amounts of CPU to pack it smaller without data loss) format, which your PC/console unpacks as it downloads. They too have every reason to save bandwidth.

But even then, you seldom see data savings of more than 10-30%. There just aren’t that many corners to cut.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Absolutely.

But I did want to make the point that there aren’t as many corners to cut as some might think.

And while lossless compression of course exists, better compression is usually also a processing trade-off. You can use more storage and less processing, or use more processing, and less storage.

Compression is not a magic tool that reduces file size for free, its doing math to store some given data using less bits, which then has to be done in reverse to get at the original data.

MentalEdge, rok temu

!armored_core

MentalEdge, rok temu

That’s not unusual. Or do you mean vram? Still not surprising with the detail level in the game.

MentalEdge, rok temu

I’ve felt this, too. But actually I just hadn’t figured out the right response to any given attack.

Manage your EN right, and everything is avoidable.

MentalEdge, rok temu

I mean, there are actual ACvAC fights, too.

Though I do wish the arena AIs weren’t mental three-year-olds. They go down like wet paper.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Arena should have been increasingly demanding fights that each require a unique build to conquer. Or even better, each fight should have made you use a pre-set loadout, so you’d have to explore and learn new builds, and that knowledge could then be carried into designing mechs for the campaign missions.

I bet theres a lot of people out there not changing it up at all, missing out on an a lot that the game has to offer.

Ideally each one could have made you adapt to and learn new mechanics.

But it seems each one is just a randomized loadout or a character from the story, with the exact same AI slapped on.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

It’s just an idea I had from a game design perspective.

Nier: Automata is one game with which I saw a lot of people complain, as the game does nearly nothing to get you to actually experiment with different weapon combinations and plug-in chips, and a lot of people overlook those systems because of it. And hence the experience of some players suffered.

Pre-set loadouts in arenas could have been used to address that design problem by showing players the possibilities.

Although, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be mandatory. Each arena fight could come with a “recommended AC” for countering the opponent, while still allowing players to take in their own mech should they want to. This could have come with the fights being a lot harder as well, making using your own design viable only if you know what you’re doing.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Ok.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Don’t overuse dodges, a lot of attacks will miss if you’re just boost-moving around the boss, so save the dodges for stuff that you actually need it for, so you always have EN to spare.

Don’t be afraid to burn your EN on flight when warranted, the spinny thing that the Spider does in its final phase is really easy to avoid if you just fly over it.

Don’t stop doing damage, consider having something that you can use to at least poke at the enemy just enough to keep the stun bar from decaying, so you can build it up to get a stagger. Or switch to weapons that have a high impact stat to build stagger faster.

Don’t sleep on melee weapons. They do MASSIVE damage if you can land the hit.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Whoa, subscription models hurt smaller games? Whoever could have seen this coming?

Glances at spotify.

No-one could have predicted this!

MentalEdge, rok temu

Likely because when the big games weren’t part of it yet, they were getting good payouts.

But as soon as you throw in one elephant into the pool, let alone a dozen, the rest of the swimmers are gonna have a lot less water to swim in.

MentalEdge, rok temu

In the case of both, how fair it is, depends on payment model. At least spotify is grossly unfair, to the point that there is an entire industry around bot farming plays to drain money from the payment pool.

As for game subscriptions, I’ve not looked into it much, but I know Apple’s service at least is based on hours played, which has resulted in some games on the service attempting to stretch out their playtime using things like mandatory grinding to progress in their games. With this model, developers can literally shoot themselves in the foot financially, by allowing the player to sprint. It’s stupid.

Games can’t be reduced to that simple a value. You can get the same amount of hours out of God of War as you can Binding of Isaac, but their production and purchase costs, are not, and should not, be the same.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Unfortunately, basically no game on these services, will ever get what a customer paying full price would net them.

The same goes for music. There’s simply less money to go around in the subscription model.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Right but that has the same problem as video game pricing. Ten bucks is a lot less than it used to be.

And do you listen to just one album a month? I don’t think so.

MentalEdge, rok temu

https://i.imgflip.com/1wemok.jpg

MentalEdge, rok temu

I suspect they may have chosen just the right price. People have paid more than this for controllers that don’t come with a screen attached.

MentalEdge, rok temu (edited rok temu)

It’s literally the same price as the dualsense edge. You overestimating the capacity for reason among “console enthusiasts”.

MentalEdge, rok temu

So what’s your point? That people who will pay this price do exist, or that they don’t?

Because now I feel like you’re trying to claim the former, to argue the latter.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Again, I’m confused, are you saying there are people who will buy this, or not?

And that’s a subjective and arbitrary claim. It has no logical merit in arguing for or against whether people will consider this thing worth the price.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Ok. I was confused because then your argument essentially becomes “there are people who will spend a lot of money on their hobbies and professions due to intense emotional investment, but not on this”.

I agree that the device, based on what we know, is dumb as hell, but I am also pretty sure, that a lot of playstation players will buy, and even enjoy, this thing.

I mean, I use my SteamDeck ten meters from my PC, just so I can play on the sofa instead of an office chair for a bit.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Shadow can definitely look a lot better than this picture suggests.

The biggest advancements in game graphics have not occurred in characters, except for perhaps in terms of animation and subsurface scattering tech.

The main character always gets a disproportionate graphical resource allocation, and we achieved “really damn good” in that category a while ago.

Adam Jensen didn’t look that much better in Mankind Divided, than he did in Human Revolution, but Prague IS SO MUCH MORE DETAILED than Detroit was.

Then there’s efficiency improvements in rendering brought by systems like nanite, material shader improvements, more detailed lighting systems and more efficient ambient occlusion.

Improvements in reverse kinematics is something I’m really excited about, as well.

MentalEdge, rok temu

My main point is that a headshot of the main character is not a good yardstick. The mc is always going to be rendered with enough oomph to look good, no matter the settings or game generation.

The difference in recent years has been in environment detail and material shading, lightning, things you maybe can’t even enable due to playing on older hardware.

While I agree ray tracing is a total energy hog, that’s not the only area seeing advancement. Rendering pipelines like nanite enable more graphics, AND less power consumption.

MentalEdge, rok temu

It is. Adam works for the secret underground interpol base in the middle of the city. There are abusive secret societies to dismantle, murder cases to solve, drug rings to bust, corrupt cops to beat up. Mankind Divided is a prime example of making a hub-world medium sized but super detailed, being just as good if not better than huge and full of nothing.

MentalEdge, rok temu

Another point in favour of new graphics tech, you mentioned you’re worried about artist needing to do more work. As someone who has done 3D work, I can tell you that its actually easier to make something photo-real. The hard part is making it look good within the limitations of a game engine. How to get something that looks just as good, with simpler material shaders and fewer polygons.

Tech like nanite actually eliminates the need for all that work. You can give the game engine the full-quality asset, and it handles all the difficult stuff to render it efficiently. This is why we are now seeing games that look as good as Unrecord coming from tiny new studios like DRAMA.

MentalEdge, rok temu

!helltaker