sugar_in_your_tea

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Unreal is not open source, it’s source-available. Open source generally gives freedoms like redistribution, yet that is explicitly not allowed by Unreal. To get access to the source, you need to agree to a licensing agreement with them.

That said, source-available is a lot better than most proprietary software licenses.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

But Unity mostly targets smaller devs. The big AAA studios don’t generally use Unity, they usually use Unreal or something home grown.

It’s mostly AA and indie studios that use Unity.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

That’s a leadership issue though. The CEO’s job is to communicate expectations to the board and balance long term and short term returns.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

What did I mention that’s not part of the open source definition? Btw, I’m using this one, and only mentioned redistribution, which is the first one:

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

The next big part is able derivative works, which is also not allowed as part of the Unreal license AFAIK.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

That’s only true if you’re talking about the goals of open source/free software generally.

If we’re just talking about a game engine and releasing games, being able to modify the engine is absolutely critical when optimizing a large game. So having source available is absolutely a very practical thing when using proprietary software.

So it really depends on what you’re concerned about. Source available is just as good as open source in most cases if your goal is to build closed source software. If your goal is to build open source/free software, it’s awful.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I’m pretty sure you can always modify code for personal use, you just can’t always distribute those changes. In the case of a game engine, this would mean you could modify the engine code in development, but you could not release your game with those changes in.

Unreal allows modification and distribution, but only if you’re a licensed user and only for your combined work, but you cannot distribute your own fork of Unreal, aside from a patch set for other developers.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

That’s a popular quip, but it’s just not true. If it were, Unity would lay off most of its staff and only do bug fixes. That way they’d save a ton on salary, and they probably wouldn’t lose any customers for a couple years until they fall far enough behind, so their quarterly financials would look great for about a year until they started losing customers.

This isn’t that. This is just a classic example of the leadership not understanding the business they’re in and trying to maximize profit. I think they overestimate the value of their product and what their customers are willing to pay for.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I loved Dune on Sega Genesis, and it had a great campaign IIRC. It’s too bad, because if this had a decent campaign, I’d probably get it out of nostalgia.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

No, it’s probably just being sold to pay taxes.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Or it just means they see it as compensation and are selling for taxes and expenses, not because they are worried about the long term direction of the company.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

And the 3D demos are impressive. The recent version uses Vulkan and has lots of interesting new features.

I hope this increased interest results in better funding. It’s a great project, just limited by manpower.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Yes, but it doesn’t rise to the level of “insider trading,” which means using internal-only information to make trading decisions. If they sell these stocks regularly, on a schedule, in the same quantity, it’s not insider trading.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing, you can see their trades, and they’re consistent for about the same amount. So they’re not trading because of changes going on internally, they’re trading based on a schedule, probably because they need cash flow for some reason. My guess is taxes for their stock compensation.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup, my wife has spent far more on Lost Ark than she ever spent on WoW…

I hate F2P, so I’ll be passing on this, but the model does work.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

They do have a $100 submission fee, which the developer can recoup once they have $1k in sales. So that alone cuts out a lot of the nonsense since low selling games won’t make enough to be worth the effort.

Maybe there’s an argument that the fee should be higher, but at a certain point you’re just making releasing a passion project impractical.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Nobody is claiming that, the claim is merely that a lot of the games under $5 are shovelware. I’m sure you could take it a step further and try to remove shovelware, but that’s gets really subjective really fast.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Trolls. Competitors. Vigilantes. This is the Internet.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Something something $$$.

But yeah, revenue sharing makes a ton more sense. Maybe have a per-seat option up to $X in revenue, and a revenue percent above that amount.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

IDK, I think 10 hours is plenty for any game, and 2 hours is enough for most. By two hours, you’ve likely discovered the core gameplay loop and seen how it handles progression, and by 10 hours you’ve seen whether that core gameplay loop changes throughout the game.

I don’t like negative reviews for games when they’ve spent double the time HLTB gives for a playthrough. I don’t expect to play much more than “main + extras” on any game, so any review that’s expecting content beyond that just isn’t useful for me.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Why did you spend so much time with it then? Surely you would’ve stopped after a few hours of not enjoying yourself, no?

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

IDK, I bailed around halfway through. I got to the Magus fight, and it felt really RNG dependent. If he attacked in a certain order, I would lose a team member and eventually lose because I couldn’t keep up with healing.

Maybe I was too low level, or maybe I didn’t have the right items equipped, IDK, but I completely lost interest when I failed several times without knowing what to do differently except hope that he attacked in a different order. So I bailed.

Maybe I’ll try it again sometime. I originally played on my phone, but maybe I’ll have more patience on my Steam Deck. I really enjoyed the game up to that point, but I just couldn’t bear the RNG. I have no problem failing over and over (I love the early Ys games and some bosses took a dozen tries), but I need to see some sort of progress.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

It’s clear to me that Bethesda thinks Skyrim was peak Elder Scrolls, when I think Morrowind was peak Elder Scrolls. Unfortunately, it seems too much to ask for a decent story and interesting side content.

So I just don’t buy Bethesda games anymore. I was disappointed in Skyrim, and Fallout 4 wasn’t really my thing. It also doesn’t help that I don’t like the leveling mechanics of RPGs either and tend to prefer ARPGs like Ys and Zelda where leveling isn’t a major part of the game loop. I know what Bethesda offers, and it’s just not what I’m looking for these days. I play RPGs for story and immersion, not for graphics, character builds, and mods, and Bethesda seems to be more interested in the latter than the former.

But that’s what I appreciate from Bethesda. They’re pretty consistent at delivering a certain experience, it just so happens that it’s not for me.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

One of the major disappointments imo is that space isn’t interesting. You only really go there for the odd ship battle to progress the plot or whatever, but you can’t really fly between planets, so you miss out on the cool side stories you get with Elder Scrolls games by walking between cities. I was hoping for Firefly the Bethesda game, but it’s just Skyrim stretched across planets that you fast travel between.

I want to find ships in distress, pirate outposts among asteroid fields, scuttled ships I can scavenge, etc. In other words, space should be a mechanic, not just a setting.

I think the planets are fine, but I’d rather have fewer, more densely populated planets. I don’t think space-colonizing people would only make 3-4 settlements per planet, there would be dozens if not hundreds of settlements before moving to the next planet. I’d rather buy a DLC to get access to more systems then current setup where everything is spread out. In fact, just give me Sol with Earth, Mars, and maybe one of a Jupiter’s moons being inhabited with the rest working like the planets in Starfield.

But no, it’s just Skyrim set it space, with fast travel between cities. That’s fine, just not particularly special. I may play it at some point, but it’s not what I’m looking for right now.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I guess that depends on how narrowly you define “genre.” It’s a pretty good sandbox RPG, and it’ll get even better with community mods. If that’s what you’re looking for, it’s great and way better than pretty much anything else.

But if you broaden it a bit, it has a mediocre story, mediocre combat, and mediocre exploration. So compared to other RPGs, it’s really not special.

So I’d give it a B grade. It gets Cs in many areas, but the sandbox is good enough to pull it up to a B. To get to A, it needs to excel at something, like exploration (e.g. do more with the ship in space) or economy (e.g. invest in trade routes and impact the cost of goods by flooding the market). But it doesn’t really excel at anything, it’s basically the same formula they’ve had in the past with a different setting.

It’s still a good game, it just doesn’t stand out in any particular way. For everything it does, another game does it better, and it really needs to be the best at something to get an A from me.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

The fact that you can’t space walk without cheats is what I’m getting at. I want to be able to leave the ship to go investigate some wreckage, get into someone’s airlock to bring some needed supplies to a stranded vessel, or set up a mining outpost on an asteroid. Basically, the same feel you get when walking between towns in Elder Scrolls games, but with the unique mechanics space allows.

Starfield does a lot of things pretty well, but doesn’t really stand out in any of them. There’s a lot of elements of a great game there, but it just ends up being pretty good instead. That’s still awesome and it’ll sell well, but I am looking for that special something, and I’m basically seeing Skyrim in space. Not a lot of innovation, just a mapping of that formula into a space setting.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

But it doesn’t excel at any of those play styles. It’s the classic case of “Jack of all trades, master of none.”

I guess it’s fine if it’s the only game you play, but if you have choice, I don’t see why you’d pick Starfield over other games you could get. It’s kind of like the cult around Minecraft, you can play pretty much any style you want with mods (e.g. soccer, Pokemon, roller coaster, etc), but every style is done much better in a standalone game.

So I give Starfield an 8/10 or a B, it’s pretty good, but it doesn’t really stand out in any particular way.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

It would be more immersive, just like flying into and out of planets with no loading screen would. Their Elder Scrolls games nailed that immersion, yet Starfield went backward with a bunch of loading screens and limitations.

It’s still a pretty good game, like an 8/10 or so, but to really get that GOTY 10/10 rating, they need to excel at something. Either have better immersion, or limit the scope in some way to improve other aspects of the game.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Nice. I didn’t make a Steam account until it supported Linux back in 2013 or so. So I guess I’ll be celebrating 10 years on Steam soon.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

They could also release a few campaigns that DMs could use to start from. That wouldn’t require much dev time aside from the DM tools (e.g. add a surprise if the team is doing to well in a battle, or hold back a surprise if they’re struggling).

I think a lot of people would buy story packs, even if there’s a way to make your own or get free community stories.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I don’t have a minimum, and my maximum is negotiable. I’ve played <5 hour games that felt too long, and >50 hour games that felt too short.

I generally shoot for 20-30 hours, but that’s because it seems like a sweet spot where most games with tons of filler are longer. I actually have a category for short games, because sometimes the 2-3 hour experience is what I’m looking for.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Some that I’ve played:

• Gorogoa
• Raven’s Hike
• Klocki
• A Juggler’s Tale
• Donut County
• Chronology
• Golf Club Wasteland
• Portal
• Aer
• Oxenfree
• Titan Souls
• Ittle Dew
• Doki Doki Literature Club
• Thoth
• Nuts
• 140
• Limbo
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• INSIDE

Those were all around 5 hours or less, in rough order from shorter to longer (just pulled up my Steam games by playtime). I have a few more on my list that I haven’t played yet but are likely about that length if you want more. :)

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup, both are on my list of games to play.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup, this would’ve been much better solved with expansions. Just get the core loop solid, and then build on it.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I don’t really understand the decision here, wouldn’t it be better to just put out a notice saying that it won’t see any more updates, discount it, and then move on? A lot of people like it, so I doubt it would require any real work.

Then again, if the OP actually did steal assets, I can understand taking it down to limit liability.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Created by SCKR Games, Only Up was previously removed from Steam amid accusations of copyright violations connected to various in-game assets

It was already removed for that. I’m just wondering if the accusations weren’t satisfactorily resolved, or if this is something different entirely.

Either way, it’s up to them, but I just think it’s a little odd. It seems like a great game for getting some residual income from.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

The Deck’s AMD Van Gogh APU can’t be had in any other device and is substantially different to any other chip AMD produces.

Is it really that different? I thought it was basically Zen 2 CPU cores and RDNA 2 GPU cores. It’s not an off-the-shelf SOC, but it’s also not that custom. So this seems a little hyperbolic to me. I’d say it’s pretty similar to the XBox Series S SOC (and Series X and PS5), which uses the same cores, just a different amount of each.

I also think it’s kind of interesting that they’re jumping to a VR Headset. If it’s a standalone, it’s probably not “low power.” If it’s not standalone, I think they’ll have issues transferring data fast enough to be practical. So my money is on some kind of accessory, like maybe a Steam Link 2 or a controller. Those are low power, wireless, and seem to fit the bill a bit better.

Then again, maybe it is a VR headset. But I really don’t see them competing at the low end on VR.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

And this is why I didn’t buy Starfield. I loved Morrowind and was disappointed with Skyrim, and I think it’s because I prefer a tighter, more linear story and don’t like “messing around” as much. I watched a gameplay video, and the things that player got excited about (all the side content) really didn’t grab my attention, and the story itself seemed a bit flat.

I probably would’ve loved it as a kid, but that’s not what I’m looking for these days.

So for me, BG3 is the better game. But younger me would’ve preferred Starfield. They’re both great games, just for very different audiences. And I could totally see someone having exactly the opposite opinion as me, which just shows how great both are.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

That’s just marketing fluff.

The game seems (to me) to essentially be FPS, Sci-Fi Skyrim, with some space fight minigames. There’s a lot of stuff you can do, but the main storyline is pretty short, the AI sucks, and most of the appeal is side content and looks.

That’s what I expect from Bethesda, and that’s what they delivered. It’s only really “next gen” in the procedural generation department, so it’s basically a regular Bethesda game, with a little bit of experimentation thrown in. That’s what Bethesda delivers, and they deliver pretty consistently.

I’m guessing there will be a ton of cool mods in the next few years for a deeper story, interesting space combat, etc.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I think it would be interesting to be able to hire a merchant NPC to loot for you. You’d lose a bit of the value (say, half), but the merchant would reinvest those profits to carry better items, and they’d give you a discount.

You’d have an incentive to look through the loot to take what you want, as well as an incentive to ignore the stuff you don’t. That way you get the immersiveness of an encumbrance system, without most of the tedium.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Not really. Some have space-based inventory instead of encumbrance, some have no limit, and some don’t have many items to pick up.

Weight-based inventory is relatively rare in my experience, though it’s very common for Bethesda games.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

What about a working game instead? They could just delay the launch until they’ve finished what would’ve gone into a day 1 patch before going gold.

If they did that, they could:

• start working on an expansion
• give the dev team vacation time as a celebration for going gold
• start work on the next game
• do a bunch of play testing to reduce the need for patches a year after launch (i.e. catch more bugs)

In other words, a studio shouldn’t go gold until their TODO list for launch day is done. That should be the standard, and it seems to be what BG3 did.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

And that’s why I generally prefer indie games. Many indie games are made with passion, with money being down the list of priorities. AAA games are made with money first, though there is certainly passion as well, it’s just not the top on the list. As studios and budgets get bigger, so will their expectation of profits.

So if you want better games, buy from smaller studios. Show them that you value passion over high budget.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Agreed. But I’d much rather sacrifice AAA features like mocap, voice acting, and RTX if it means a higher chance of playing a game with a lot of passion put in. Those are nice to have, but not the reason I pick a game.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Having a day one patch doesn’t make a game broken, but it is a symptom of a bad internal process. Here are the patch notes for BG3 Day 1 (not sure if 100% accurate, but this is the best source I could find). To me, that doesn’t sound like anything game breaking.

I’m not saying BG3 is the gold standard for AAA game releases, I’m merely saying it’s what we should expect for an average AAA release with some being a little better and some being a little worse.

I’m not saying every bug needs to be fixed. Even older games before SW patches were a thing had a ton of bugs. I’m just saying, the game should play well even if users never patch the game. This is really important for game preservation, so you should always be able to take the game disk and install it offline and play through the whole game and have a great experience. That’s not the standard many AAA studios hold themselves to.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I’m not saying the game needs to be perfect, but it should be a great experience beginning to end without applying any patches. As in, I should be able to take the game disk and install it without any Internet connection and play through the game with only minor bugs here and there.

This is really important for game preservation (the patch servers will eventually go offline), yet many AAA games are almost unplayable without day one patches.

I’m a huge fan of software updates for games, but those updates should merely improve an already great experience, not be the method to fix a broken game. A broken game should never leave QA.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup. And I wish more AAA titles took more risks in gameplay and storytelling, but those seem to be few and far between.

Starfield is a fantastic example. If you asked me to describe a Bethesda game set in space, it would look a lot like Starfield (but I probably would’ve missed the procedural generation). Usually AAA games are pretty much as expected, with one or two surprises on the side, and that’s it.

BG3 basically delivers on Cyberpunk’s promises (branching storylines, mocap, great visuals, etc), and it did so on launch, which is really rare.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup, I don’t use Amazon Prime and still get free shipping, it just takes a couple days longer.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Cool, maybe I’ll play it now.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I use Linux, and Steam just works better for me than GOG. I also switch between my Steam Deck and Linux desktop, and Steam just makes that seamless.

I like the idea of GOG, but Steam just works better in the service department.