So, wait a minute--you cross the sea to a wild unexplored place, send scouts out to get an idea of what's out there, wipe out or at least set up defences against local menaces, and then . . . to start occupying territory you have to purchase land?!
From who, Odin? Skraeling real estate agents? Lucky Leif's Land Registry?

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Quoting: inlinuxdudeKongregate, Kartridge

If they're going to go with this "K" instead of "C" thing, they should be required to have a KDE client...

Yeah, I was thinking it was weird that something sounding like a KDE project didn't even support Linux.

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Agh. Early in the morning, hit the wrong button--quoted myself instead of editing.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut information in the modern world is infinitely reproducible for almost zero effort. The barter model of one thing for another thing is based on me giving you a thing which I then no longer have.

That's still what is happening. Many users are giving money for a game, together (hopefully) compensating for the part of their lifetime the developers invested in making it and no longer have.

Uhm, no it isn't. The developers make a game, yes. It costs them time and effort, yes. But what they then give to people for money, the game, is something they still have after they give it. There is a whole lot of effort, ingenuity and reality-distortion (eg DRM) going into maintaining the fiction that each copy of a piece of information is an individual separate thing that the seller is giving up, so we can pretend the model people accept for vegetables and steel is optimal for information as well. But it isn't--we could give everyone access to information with less effort than it takes to prevent access. We can't do that with vegetables. We would be far better off coming up with ways to compensate creators--of games and quite a few other things--that did not involve artificial rationing.

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Quoting: TheRiddickSoftware DRM still minimises potential software sale loses and is kinda needed if you have a popular multiplayer component because just look at what has happened to PUBG. Brought to its knees due to cheaters/hackers and if they couldn't sell those keys to those cheaters and they could just copy/paste the game indefinitely due to no DRM.... the developer would go under.

This extreme anti-drm movement is a bit silly IMO. There is a reason to have certain levels of DRM, its just when it goes too far is the problem!

The thing is that ultimately, the "market" model doesn't work well for software (including games) and actually, these days, most informational-based things. The idea of the market is ultimately based on barter, trading one thing for another thing of vaguely equal value, ideally in such a way that both sides (having more use for what they're gaining than what they're trading away) in effect gain. Money is an intermediary that lets you more easily substitute different things by representing the value of the things abstractly--so if you sell a thing, you get money, and then you can use it to get any arbitrary other thing you want rather than just making a limited immediate trade. But it's still about a thing for a thing, giving up one thing to get another thing.

But information in the modern world is infinitely reproducible for almost zero effort. The barter model of one thing for another thing is based on me giving you a thing which I then no longer have. It is utterly inefficient for maximizing utility in the distribution of stuff that can be freely replicated. We need to find a new model for compensating creators. Our insistence on sticking to the barter model anyway leads to all the problems we're having with copyright laws, DRM, patents and so on. Unfortunately, a better model for compensating creators would probably eliminate the business model of a lot of very large, profitable corporations, so they will go to a lot of lengths to make sure it doesn't happen. This is the kind of thing I meant by DRM only looking useful due to broader bad things about the world.

(One possible example of an alternate model--the government creates a big pool of money, and sets up a sort of public Kickstart/Patreon thing. Every citizen controls an equal share and can give their piece to whatever artists or projects they want. The stuff that gets funded is freely available to all once created--so every citizen and maybe the whole world has free access to all the games, all the music, all the books written in the country. DRM becomes instantly pointless. Of course you'd pay higher taxes.)

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DRM is bad. That said, it may not be a bad thing if Vulkan has it. The tactical issue (it may seriously harm developer uptake if Vulkan doesn't have a feature that corporations insist on) may outweigh the basic one (DRM is bad).

I mean, the way I see it goes something like this: Vulkan uptake --> Easy cross-platform development of games and other graphics-heavy things --> Fewer barriers to Linux use --> (contributes to) Eventual Linux World Domination --> Dominance of open source platform leads to greater user power and probably less DRM overall. So if Vulkan having DRM-related features is a price for its success, strategically it's probably worth it. But DRM is still fundamentally bad and I'm really not interested in contorting myself into a nuanced stance about that; any and all cases in which DRM seems like a necessary or good thing are due to broader bad things about the world we live in and how it's run. Those things should be changed.

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Quoting: jens

Quoting: Shmerl"Done right" or not, it means removing user's choice.

I prioritize "done right and just works" far above "complete freedom of users choice". Time is much to precious for me to spend hours into setting up my environment.

Because those two things are antithetical, and openness makes things work badly. Got it.

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Quoting: inlinuxdude

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Luke_NukemI read the whole article as "Iron Maiden"... Doh!

This comment made me realize it is NOT actually Iron Maiden :D
I was wondering the whole time how they got the license to use the name...

Do you think the band could enforce a game using that name, when the game makers could say it was just named after the torture device [External Link]and not the band? I mean, that's where the band got their name, and I'm sure they didn't pay anything..

Yeah, but "Ion Maiden" is cleverer anyway.

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Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI am very tired of these "retro" games with really outdated graphics that use the homage to the old school as an excuse ...

In those days, the devs did what they could with the few hardware resources they had at hand ..

Today there is no technical excuse for those archaic graphics.

You're looking at it as a technical issue but it mainly isn't, it's an aesthetic issue (even the gameplay considerations Hamish describes are ultimately aesthetic issues--a matter of what style you are interested in). It's like, there can be reasons to make a black and white movie or take black and white photographs in the modern world.
If it's not your taste then it's not your taste (it basically isn't mine either), but that doesn't mean people who have that taste are wrong. Framing it as some kind of technical failure that makes the people doing it simply at fault, is itself a category error.
De gustibus non est disputandum. Personally, the way I feel about this kind of enthusiasm for older styles is kind of the way I feel about jazz music--I think the idea is cool and wish I enjoyed the actual results more.

Meanwhile as to the game . . . cute name.

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Excellent news. Vulkan being available on Mac could have a huge impact strategically in the medium term. It will increase the take-up of Vulkan itself and going forward should make releasing games for Linux a significantly more attractive option.
And the thing is, I've gotten the impression that Vulkan has really been . . . I dunno how to put it . . . kind of on the edge between major player and also-ran, at least in the desktop computing space. How it's going to pan out in terms of adoption is still up in the air; it hasn't stalled, but it hasn't come out a clear winner either. Adding Mac as a platform is just the kind of win that can tip developers' choices and move Vulkan into the clear winner column, a major platform seeing serious adoption and delivering on its promise.
And if that happens, game (and engine) developers will be looking at a situation where using Vulkan means easy releases on all the desktop computing platforms, Windows Mac and Linux, with little reason to leave Linux out. Probably good for Mac gaming too. Plans on whether to go Mac no longer run afoul of Metal and they include a probable easy addition of Linux as a little bonus. So not only does Linux get more of the Mac stuff, but there's likely more Mac stuff to get.
Admittedly, it seems the project has some missing bits so far--but since it's both important to a moderate number of players and open source so they can do something about it, I expect those limitations to be handled at reasonable speed. I can envision a future not so far distant where the dominant answer to the question "What platforms should we target and what graphical toolset should we use?" will be "We target all three, Windows Mac & Linux, because with Vulkan it's no big hassle."

Now all we have to do is get Sony to use Vulkan. Hey, weather keeps getting freakier, we could have a cold day in Hell any time!

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