Latest Comments by hell0
MMO interplanetary crafting adventure SpaceCraft from Shiro Games (Northgard, Wartales) announced
6 Dec 2024 at 9:16 pm UTC Likes: 1
6 Dec 2024 at 9:16 pm UTC Likes: 1
Interesting! Sounds like a huge project but Shiro games is no greenhorn studio, I'll be following along to see where this goes.
4X RPG 'Heart of the Machine' from Arcen Games (AI War) releases January 2025
3 Dec 2024 at 10:30 pm UTC
Game premise was really interesting, but execution was lacklustre. For example the way to get some resources is to attack and take over the corresponding production building then defend it. It works, but I was expecting something more... intelligent ? Like being able to covertly control the financial system of a big company to buy the land then erase it from their record.
I was hoping for a novel blend of stealth, economy, strategy and story. But got served a pretty average RTS.
3 Dec 2024 at 10:30 pm UTC
Quoting: Purple Library GuyDunno. I've had mixed feelings about a couple of Arcen's previous games. I seem to have liked them better in theory than in practice.Fairly accurate description of my feelings after playing the demo (older version mind you).
Game premise was really interesting, but execution was lacklustre. For example the way to get some resources is to attack and take over the corresponding production building then defend it. It works, but I was expecting something more... intelligent ? Like being able to covertly control the financial system of a big company to buy the land then erase it from their record.
I was hoping for a novel blend of stealth, economy, strategy and story. But got served a pretty average RTS.
GOG launch their Preservation Program to make games live forever with a hundred classics being 're-released'
13 Nov 2024 at 9:20 pm UTC Likes: 4
13 Nov 2024 at 9:20 pm UTC Likes: 4
Reading the headline I was expecting gog to have taken over publishing rights for these games or something similar. But given their entirely noncommittal FAQ entry, I will chuck that one in the "marketing intern had a cool idea so we ran with it" bin.
Can a game be removed from the Program?
We never want a game to be removed from the GOG Preservation Program, and at the time of this writing, we don’t see a reason it should happen.
Fedora KDE gets approval to be upgraded to sit alongside Fedora Workstation
8 Nov 2024 at 10:44 pm UTC
Either way, pretty happy about the news. Right when I was thinking of giving KDE a spin after fixing gnome's search tracker for the umpteenth time.
8 Nov 2024 at 10:44 pm UTC
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualA member of the Quality Assurance team for instance is concerned about being able to assure the quality of KDE:Seems solid at first but the entire argument hinges on the fact all "apps" are of equal complexity and quality.
For KDE, this would be extra 51 apps! Compare the scope. I believe it's impossible for us to have the same quality bar here. And even if we had a huge surge of volunteers to test those regularly, it would just mean that we'd hardly ever release, because the likelihood of discovering a broken functionality in 73 apps (22+51) is much higher than in 22 apps. Workstation is quite lean on pre-installed apps, and yet we already struggle with this, and many people get irked by the whole compose being blocked on a bug in gnome-clocks/gnome-contacts/gnome-calendar/etc.And concluding:
Either the quality requirements won't be the same, or we need to lower the Workstation one and meet somewhere in the middle for both.
Either way, pretty happy about the news. Right when I was thinking of giving KDE a spin after fixing gnome's search tracker for the umpteenth time.
Steam Deck comes to Australia on November 19
6 Nov 2024 at 10:19 pm UTC Likes: 2
6 Nov 2024 at 10:19 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: TuxeeWhy? I mean, why took it that long? With some consoles in the past I understood that the whole marketing, localization, availability of games, production capacities etc. led to different release dates in Japan, the US and Europe. But 2+ years to bring the Deck to Australia?Hi from Switzerland, where no valve hardware was ever sold despite being available in every single adjacent country. If they don't expect the profits to outweigh the hassle by a factor 10, they just don't care.
6 years after Kickstarter, Orphan Age dev Studio Black Flag shuts without a release
5 Oct 2024 at 8:25 pm UTC Likes: 1
5 Oct 2024 at 8:25 pm UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: jib_forHad no idea it was public, thanks for digging it up! It sucks for the people who lost their job, but I really can't fault the investor(s) for not wanting to cough up 700k/year if they thought the project was going nowhere.Quoting: hell0They got €32k out of their kickstarter. Being based in France, a quick search suggests a monthly salary of around 2500€ would be reasonable. With just 2 people full time, they would be out of funds after 6 months. As if that wasn't bad enough, it appears they hired more people and even external consultants (source: their kickstarter updates).10-19 employees, with a gross yearly revenue of 714 900€ for the company, you know how much the publisher put money on the game. This is public data you can found here: https://www.societe.com/societe/studio-black-flag-793709577.html [External Link]
Pretty likely that their publisher put several hundred thousands on the table before cutting their losses, not sure they deserve the flak they're getting. I for one wouldn't buy an unknown game IP with its half finished prototype for even €1000.
Simple math would tell an average gross yearly salary around 36.000€ per employee (for 19 employees), which is above the average in France, based on the fact it was a cooperative, salaries should have been flat. However, a big part could have been used to pay some third-parties, so the salary may have been lower
6 years after Kickstarter, Orphan Age dev Studio Black Flag shuts without a release
4 Oct 2024 at 7:03 pm UTC Likes: 1
4 Oct 2024 at 7:03 pm UTC Likes: 1
They got €32k out of their kickstarter. Being based in France, a quick search suggests a monthly salary of around 2500€ would be reasonable. With just 2 people full time, they would be out of funds after 6 months. As if that wasn't bad enough, it appears they hired more people and even external consultants (source: their kickstarter updates).
Pretty likely that their publisher put several hundred thousands on the table before cutting their losses, not sure they deserve the flak they're getting. I for one wouldn't buy an unknown game IP with its half finished prototype for even €1000.
Pretty likely that their publisher put several hundred thousands on the table before cutting their losses, not sure they deserve the flak they're getting. I for one wouldn't buy an unknown game IP with its half finished prototype for even €1000.
Valve (Steam) begin a direct collaboration with Arch Linux
28 Sep 2024 at 10:22 pm UTC
To be clear: they will likely want to move builds to dedicated servers for various reasons, but having an enclave does not make it a hard requirement.
28 Sep 2024 at 10:22 pm UTC
Quoting: WORMNot necessarily. In all likelihood, the enclave will not decide whether it should sign off a package on its own. Which means there should be a way for maintainers to say "this package is authorised and should be signed". This can be done in many ways, including maintainers uploading packages they built themselves (and signed with their own key) to the enclave.The enclave is essentially intended to be a way for us to PGP-sign packages with a single signing key instead of how we do it right now, which is with one personal key per packager.My assumption is this requires building on build servers instead of building on maintainers' machines like they currently do.
To be clear: they will likely want to move builds to dedicated servers for various reasons, but having an enclave does not make it a hard requirement.
Deadlock from Valve has an amusing new anti-cheat system turning cheaters into frogs
28 Sep 2024 at 9:03 pm UTC
All big names anti-cheats on the market today -VAC included- rely entirely on the client to perform the detection. Some kind of handshake with the server is included to confirm the anti-cheat has been run, but that's about it.
28 Sep 2024 at 9:03 pm UTC
Quoting: minidouI was refering specifically to cheat detection being performed server side, with no reliance on the client whatsoever.Quoting: hell0I'm wondering whether their cheat detection is server side. Some wording let me think it might be: "detection levels", "turn on the banning of users in a couple of days after the update".VAC has always been server side and there are many other anticheat that are server side on some level
I believe Valve would be the first big company to attempt it, and it could be huge if they do it properly.
All big names anti-cheats on the market today -VAC included- rely entirely on the client to perform the detection. Some kind of handshake with the server is included to confirm the anti-cheat has been run, but that's about it.
Deadlock from Valve has an amusing new anti-cheat system turning cheaters into frogs
27 Sep 2024 at 8:19 pm UTC Likes: 1
27 Sep 2024 at 8:19 pm UTC Likes: 1
I'm wondering whether their cheat detection is server side. Some wording let me think it might be: "detection levels", "turn on the banning of users in a couple of days after the update".
I believe Valve would be the first big company to attempt it, and it could be huge if they do it properly.
I believe Valve would be the first big company to attempt it, and it could be huge if they do it properly.