the challenge was tough and that's what put a fair amount of people off.

This is really something I never quite understood about the gaming industry. Why limit your potential revenue by catering to only one type of audience, when all it takes to be more inclusive and thus more profitable, is adding a difficulty slider?
I belong to that group that enjoys difficulty in small doses, so when I hear a game more or less bragging about how hard it is, I stop reading right there. And often enough these are games I'd otherwise enjoy. Their loss more than mine, I suppose. But still strange.

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FINALLY they're going to add MP3 support. About time, really. MP3 has been a free format since about 2014 and like it or not, is still used about 99% of the time for compressing audio files. There was never really a point in NOT supporting it.

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Quoting: DorritI have few doubts that soon, this year probably, we'll have a financial/economic crisis of epic proportions; something to make the Great Depression feel like an appetizer. It'll be interesting to see how it affects the software landscape.

Off-topic, but I wonder why you think that would happen, when there isn't the slightest indicator of a collapsing major economy anywhere on Earth. Despite almost a year of pandemic and lockdowns, the US unemployment rate is hovering below 7%. Yes, we have seen massive shifts in employment away from restaurants and entertainment sectors towards...well...Amazon and food delivery services, really. New jobs have been created while others got lost. Yes, some people still got hit hard, and I don't want to sugarcoat that. But many countries in Europe and elsewhere would be happy to have JUST 7% unemployment even WITHOUT a pandemic going on, so there is that.
And while governments racked up huge deficits in 2020, at the same time, interest rates are so dirt cheap right now, that it matters very little. With near zero interest rates, chances of state bankruptcy of any major economy are a good approximation to zero.
Even the housing market is super healthy. The pandemic made many people re-think the appeal of density (I guess it must suck being ordered to stay home in a tiny apartment that's designed to be just a place to sleep). And the lack of opportunity to waste money on bars, restaurants and related activities has left people at the higher income brackets with MORE money to spend because of the pandemic, not less. So there is a significant demand for better and larger housing, again contributing to a robust housing sector.

TL/DR: Not going to happen.

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What do you think Valve are cooking up to further Linux gaming?

Personally I think we will see a continued and (hopefully) increased engagement of Valve to further develop Proton, so that it will run Windows games, even newly released ones, without Linux users noticing any difference whatsoever. I suppose getting all this anti-cheat crap software to run is probably -the- biggest task for 2021. Proton does an amazing job already, and if Valve will put in more resources to polish it, I believe that goal can be achieved.

The above hope is based on the realization, that we might not like, but have to accept, that native Linux ports of AAA titles are dead. If I am not totally mistaken, Crusader Kings III was the only AAA title we got in all of 2020. Aspyr and Feral both have moved on to other things. Interest in Linux from big brand publishers is still zero and very likely will remain so. At least as far as AAA titles go, Proton and Linux gaming are the same thing these days.

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About time, really. The Civ Diplomacy AI is so bad that it's meme-worthy and has made almost zero progress since Civ 1 where it already acted like an escapee from Arkham Asylum.
I always found it mind-boggling how the devs could tolerate such an important aspect of the game to be in a state like this, particularly when that particular use-case (make sane diplomatic requests/offers matching the given relative standing of their nation compared to yours) isn't THAT complex.

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As long as you're not going for 4K gaming, the GeForce RTS 3060 Ti seems like a winner, and would likely be exactly what I would be going for if I was going to be building a system.

Is there still a reason to go for NVidia rather than AMD these days? I am shopping around for a new system too, but have basically ruled out NVidia, because AMD seems to be the much better deal these days, and getting rid of their proprietary driver rubbish is an added plus.

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The tile-set system in Godot really needs some love. Right now, you can't even assign properties to tiles, which means that entire genres such as 2D RPGs or RTS are practically infeasible to implement with Godot. I am so happy to see that they're not just trying to catch up with the 3D leaders out there, but still improve the 2D part as well. I am really looking forward to the 4.0 release. It can't come soon enough! :)

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Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil. :dizzy:

Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)

I guess money from slavery or child abuse doesn't matter where it comes from... ;)

I dislike Facebook with passion too, but throwing them in the same pot with the above is a little extreme.

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Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil. :dizzy:

Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)

Not if there are strings attached to that money. The worry is Facebook using their money to control Blender like a puppet.

I guess the point of a -donation- is that doesn't come with strings attached. If Facebook wanted to control Blender, they could just throw a few million at the developers to bribe them into accepting a job offer...

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Quoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil. :dizzy:

Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)

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