• 0 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 13th, 2023
  • MrGabr@ttrpg.networktoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•How does multi-player support fit into theStop Killing Games Initiative
    7·
    3 hours ago

    I see lots of discussion about the solution / what used to be done, but I want to point out why unofficial servers stopped being easy/standard/possible to run.

    The first time big money entered esports was on private Starcraft LAN tournaments. Blizzard sued to get a cut of the proceeds, but because the privately-owned software (game and server) was running on privately-owned hardware, the courts ruled that Blizzard got no money.

    AAA companies learned from this that allowing the playerbase to run their own servers meant losing out on money, so most AAA multiplayer games with even a small chance of ending up as esports make it so they can only connect to servers operated by themselves, longevity of the game be damned. If they weren’t so desparate for every scrap of cash they could possibly generate from the game, I would bet most multiplayer game would still let you run your own servers, like they used to.

  • MrGabr@ttrpg.networktoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What is your opinion on ray/path tracing and real time upscaling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS) in video games?
    3·
    8 days ago

    Graphics are, like it or not, the main thing the majority of people look for first when they go to buy a game, and raytracing is a ridiculously easy way to achieve that in comparison to the time and skill required to elevate traditional lighting to that same level of beauty. PS5 and XSX both support raytracing, and PC graphics cards that don’t are coming up on 10 years old at this point.

    Any AAA developer is going to see those two facts, that it’s way cheaper and runs on most of the market’s hardware, and abandon development work on traditional lighting. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is RT-only, and it was a huge success.

    DLSS is in a similar boat - it reduces the need to spend time and money on optimization.

    Now, let me be clear, I lament both of these facts. I think raytracing looks gorgeous, and DLSS is usually a nice performance boost for minimal tradeoff, but I don’t think every game should look photorealistic, and some games just don’t look good with DLSS on. What I’m saying is they both make game development cheaper and faster for very little relative downside, so I wouldnt be surprised if all AAA games required raytracing within the next few years.

  • MrGabr@ttrpg.networktoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Why are there no "dark mode" books? (e-books don't count)
    20·
    4 months ago

    In a physical medium, it’s way cheaper and easier to make light color thing dark than make a dark colored thing light. “Dark mode” books would require dyeing each sheet black, then painting the text on top of each sheet, rather than what is currently done, where we bleach each sheet white, then dye the text into each sheet.

    Somewhat related - this is why printers use CMYK, rather than RGB. Computer screens use pure light, so they simply emit whatever combination of light they need to, and your eyes add them together. In a physical medium, however, what we see is based on what is reflected, i.e. not absorbed. Hence, each color of ink, in additive terms, is two colors together (cyan is green+blue, magenta is red+blue, etc). When you combine CMYK colors, you can precisely control what wavelengths of light are being absorbed in order to reflect the correct color.

  • MrGabr@ttrpg.networktoGaming@beehaw.org•Rockstar has some of the most restrictive mission design I've ever experienced
    9·
    4 months ago

    I dropped KCD 1 after ~30 hours for the same reason as you, but at least KCD has some justification - the whole point of the game is to be an ultra-realistic simulation of medieval life, a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the word.

    Your character starts out not even knowing how to read, even though you, the player, obviously do to interact with the GUI. He’s the son of a blacksmith who never would have learned anything else, so he, the character, has to spend time learning basically everything, even if you, the player, already have it figured out.

    You and I think that design is unfun. Clearly, though, there’s an audience for it, as KCD 2 sold something like a million copies on launch day and instantly recouped their development costs.

  • MrGabr@ttrpg.networktoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What explains "the Left's" rightward shift on copyright?
    2·
    5 months ago

    If AI was solely being used to advance scientific progress in exponential steps as it has for things like protein folding, I suspect these outlets would be all for it.

    This isn’t the primary driver of capital investment in AI, though. AI is booming mostly because corporate executives see it as a way they can get the fruits of skilled labor without paying for it. I don’t have any more way of knowing these particular leftist organizations’ reasons than you do, but my assumption would be that their perspective is that AI in this context is literally the most powerful tool the bourgeoisie have ever had to exploit workers - one where the end goal is to not even need the workers anymore. You couldn’t design something more perfectly antithetical to leftist values than this application for generative AI, as it is created by using the owned products of others’ skilled labor to make it possible for the owner to remove the worker from the equation. Copyright and IP law is a weapon to combat that.

    Edit - typos