Quoting: WJMazepasThings like that is why i dont give a shit to Stadia.

Why blame Stadia for this? The actions of Phoenix Point's developers is not Stadia's fault.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of Stadia, mostly for it's model and it being another service that erodes the consumer's concept of ownership.

None-the-less, for situations like this, it's not Stadia that's at fault, but the developers in either their singular ignorance or apathy when they clearly can port to Linux but refuse to. Any condemnation over Linux exclusion should be leveled purely at the developers, not the service which just happened to expose the developer's hypocrisy.

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Quoting: MalYou know guys for legal topics regarding gaming and entertainment in general there is this [External Link] (imho very) interesting channel on youtube where an actual and competent US lawyer discuss and explains topics like this. At least for me it was enlightening regarding a lot of US legal disputes regarding videogame topics (like Epic vs Apple). I'd wish there was something like this for IT legal matters in general outside pure entertainment.

Anyway regarding this subject he explains how there is a lot of intellectual dishonesty from Google and publishers in general. Alex Hutchinson is correct when he says streamers don't have the rights to do what they do. And that they are the total mercy of publishers. The fact that publishers (so far) always decided to not enforce the terms of use they themselves conceived and imposed to their users (including streamers) doesn't change that a streamer today has 0 power to defend his job should a publisher decide that it don't like him anymore. The whole point of EULAs is that they can (eventually?) be enforced, that's why people take the hassle to write them.

There would be a healthier and more honest relationship between streamers and publishers if EULAs explicitly allowed for streaming.

I'm stating up front, I did not watch the video you linked, nor am I a lawyer, that said...

I don't think it's nearly as cut and dry as "streamers don't have the rights to do what they do". Even for media such as movies and books and even music, fair use laws allow for parody, criticism, review, and the ability to display segments of that work in the process, as long as the work is "transformative" in nature. On that notion, most streamers transform the game their are playing by the sheer fact they, the streamer, are interacting with it. Their narration is their performance overlapped with the backdrop of the game. The ultimate outcome is a transformed work.

In regards to EULAs... their enforceability is... questionable, and random ( EULA Wiki, Enforceability [External Link] ). Some courts uphold them. Some courts have not upheld them. In general it boils down to the specific "infringement" and how it's worded. In fact, reading beyond the section about enforceability, it seems the question over how strong a EULA is has been mocked WITHIN EULAs... seriously, how enforceable is a EULA that bothers to put in a provision about giving up your soul to the company, even if it was added in jest?

I'm not saying basing a career on streaming games is a stable choice, but I think streamers have more ground to stand on than you make it sound. They're not "quite" at the whim of developers/publishers (I say this in that, realistically, if a dev/pub came after a streamer in a legal fight, the streamer would more or less back down due more to financial reasons than true legal ones. If, somehow, you has a legal fight where both the dev/pub AND the streamer were on the same financial footing, I definitely feel the streamer would have some good footing to fight from.)

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As far as Minetest is concerned... For not having to pay for it at all, it's a solid game. To those that say it's severly lacking... well, not knowing your criteria for making that determination (ex. Only played what you get in the initial download, counting number of monsters, blocks, bioms, individual mechanics, prettiness of textures all in comparison to the big MC?) I can't argue against you. That said, if you really do spend time with Minetest outside of "I installed it and it looks like crap", you'd probably notice that it's one of those games you do need to download mods for... like Mineclone. There are others that add bioms, blocks, weapons, mobs, and I've even seen an addon for trains and mono-rails, and a lot more. While I admit Minetest will more than likely always remain a more obscure game, it definitely has plenty you can PLAY within it. And as for having to download mods... hell, Minecraft itself lives on mods. There are mods for days!

Also... it's kinda funny, if you think about it. Linux and Windows are OSes and there are people today that refuse to touch Linux because of rumors they've heard about it that persist from back in the 90s and early 00s, but here we all are on Linux because, for us, we know better. Here's Minetest. One could argue it's like the early Linux of Mine-clone games. The raw experience looks bare, and, at best, unexciting to people comparing it to Minecraft, which, in this analogy is same-era Windows, obviously. Minecraft is shiney and has a lot of default features. But, the Minetest users know that with a little time, patience, and elbow grease you'll get a game that, for those players, is at least on par with it's more popular cousin, and, maybe for those players, is even better.

As for the Microsoft accounts... well, I have an XBox account and it was apparently hacked by Russians while I had been on hiatus from XBox (from 2011 to present). When I tried working with Microsoft over the issue (for over a month) all I ever got was "your situation has been escalated to our systems team. They'll contact you if they have questions". They don't ever contact, and when I attempted to follow up, I just get verification that the systems team has the issue on file and that they would contact me. I gave up contacting Microsoft on the issue for four months now, and not once have they contacted me... so... apparently they don't care about their users. Given that, and my preexisting distrust of a company that has, in the past, verbally (at least), admitted to a hatred of Linux specifically (and non-Microsoft platforms in general), why should I trust MS with an(other) account?

Distrust of Microsoft is not Tinfoil-hat-ism. They are a company that have come out admitting they wanted to destroy other platforms in the past. Just because they've toned down their outward hostility, and perhaps acquiesced in some areas due to industry pressures, I am very hesitant to mistake that for one minute as Microsoft truly turning over a new leaf.

Sorry, that became much longer than I originally intended.

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Quoting: Liam DaweUh no, if you leave PS Plus, you will not be able to play the PS Plus redeemed games. It's always been that way [External Link]. Stadia Pro is the same, get access while you have it, then get it back if you resume it after cancelling.

0_0 ... yeah... you're absolutely right! I have died a little today. Thank you

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Quoting: Liam DaweDepends how you take it, speaking technically they are correct and this is an advert for the masses not for deeper technical stuff.

Yeah... but didn't Obi Wan make that same "certain point of view" remark when caught out on his "Vader murdered your father" statement? Audiences called BS on Obi Wan, I still kinda call BS on Google.

Quoting: Liam DaweYou're not charged to use Stadia either though. So it does work the same as what you're comparing it to on their movie/tv purchases through the Play store.

From the rest of your post, it seems pretty clear you still think you have to pay for it. You do not, they even say in the video you get a free trial of Stadia Pro when you sign up and then you can just use the service as normal if you cancel it.

Ok... fair enough. In my defense, though, their website is not exactly clear on that. I kept reading "Build a library of games that you can access as long as you’re a Stadia Pro subscriber." and it took me a couple rereads before I linked that statement to them referring to a library built from "free" games.

Also... (and maybe I missed this too), it would be really nice if they had a little chart that shows what you get as a pro vs free member.

Also, also... what if I like the "free" games? Can I buy and play them as a free member or they exclusive to pro members only? I keep looking over the site and I'm not seeing any information on that. I suppose I'd find out if I "signed up", but I don't want to sign up for a service just to answer questions I have about the service.

Quoting: Liam DaweI regularly play it across WiFi on the opposite side of my house to where the router is, where I get about ~36mb/s and it is without issues.

Again... fair enough. How is it over cellular internet? They are pushing mobile devices too, and 5G isn't exactly ubiquitous at the moment.

Quoting: Liam DaweAs they said, Stadia Pro mirrors PS Plus on the PlayStation - get access to a growing collection of titles and extra discounts to buy games.

Forgive me if I'm confused, but, PS Plus...

Are you talking the the monthly charge I pay Sony for being able to play my games online and they give me two free games a month? If so, one difference is those free games are free free. Once I nab them, they're still mine if I quit the service. Stadia on the other hand does say, of their free games "Build a library of games that you can access as long as you’re a Stadia Pro subscriber." which suggests Stadia is not exactly the same.

Or, are you talking about the service Sony has ON TOP of the one above where you can stream games?

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Honestly... Stadia is still a bit bass ackwards to me. Now, I'm not a "hard core" gamer, personally. I like good visuals and a high refresh rate like a lot of people, but I don't bug out on a frame drop or two and I can still play PS1 era 3D and enjoy the game... but still, the technical prowess to push what google says Stadia can do graphics wise would be taxing, at best, on your average (US) household's internet connection unless you're willing to shell out serious money to the ISPs. Over cell networks? In my opinion, we are no where near the level of technology where we can pull this off in a consistently stable manner.

Worse, though, is the service model. They say it's like streaming movies or music, but they're not being wholly truthful there. I subscribe to Netflix and all of their movies and TV shows are available to be to stream. I don't have any of this "you get Pro-movies every month and you can purchase non-pro movies to add to your collection". Googles own "movies" service, where I ~DO~ buy each individual movie and TV show season separately at least has the decency of NOT charging me for the service. Amazon Prime's streaming service is the only video streaming service that seems to come close to what Stadia is trying to pull, but even then, at least Prime includes their free 2-day shipping, which, given how much I, at least, get from Amazon on a yearly basis, makes up for the price of the service on its own.

So, here's Stadia... Pay monthly for the service in which they will generously give you a few games... which are probably the games that don't make much money in the first place... then buy the actual games you want to play, shell out a shiz ton of money for an internet connection that can (close to) stably stream those games, all while crossing your fingers that after all that financial investment, Google doesn't drop Stadia like so many of their other services.

I think, if you're going to call yourself the Netflix of video games (and, to be fair, I can't recall if Google themselves ever actually did), then at least use their model... monthly cost for the service, but FULL access to their ENTIRE game library.

That's my opinion anyway... and I'm old and crotchety

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: gradyvuckovic

Quoting: CreakAs a developer, I understand the urge to own and control your own code but, to make a poor analogy, developing your own game editor to make your game is a bit like developing your own Photoshop to create your textures.

No no, that is an EXCELLENT analogy.

I say that as someone who once well victim to it myself.

These days for modern 3D games you need things like inverse kinematics for positioning hands on weapons, tools for generating navigation meshes from level layouts, lightmap bakers and global illumination solutions, soft body simulation for character hair or cloth to move in the wind, ability to stream in level content in separate threads, and of course if you were writing an engine from scratch today you would be using Vulkan..

.. the idea of making a game engine for a game in 2020 is madness unless all you're making is a simple 2D game. Even then I can't help but ask 'Why?'. What exactly do you think your 2D engine is going to do that some other game engine that has been worked on by more people for longer won't do?

You've given a very narrow view of what constitutes a game, though I'm sure that wasn't your intent. If you want to make a game that looks and plays like, say, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, then no you probably wouldn't create an engine from scratch.

But let's take the example of Star Swarm (I'll let you look that up). Particularly at the time, and I daresay it's still true, other engines couldn't handle what it was doing. Not without lobbing stupidly massive computing power at the problem. And therein lies the crux: requiring obscene computing power reduces potential customers, and also makes development an utter pain. Tailoring your own code base to the desired game type has performance, sometimes stability, and development benefits in many (not all) situations.

It's a balancing act of course. If an existing game engine does all you need, use it. If not, can it be modified to do what you need, and what effort will that require. Is it complete overkill, will it limit potential customers and sales, or will it provide more.

No Man's Sky. Existing engines couldn't handle the procedural generation requirements, as in literally weren't written to handle the data precision needed. The developers had to write their own engine.

Generic game engines are great for many developers, but if you overlay the use cases in a sort of Gaussian distribution, there's still extreme ends where a pre-existing game engine simply isn't suitable. That's because not all games are the same (thank goodness), and not all developers have the same level of resources available to them.

And I've ignored something else that goes into making a game: the reasons for making it. Particularly for indie developers, there are programming language reasons (a game is a great way to hone one's skills), personal satisfaction, of just plain freedom to play around entirely unconstrained by someone else's whimsy. Graphics aren't everything, after all.

If I may add just my two cents on top of this...

If there were not some people out there that took on the challenge of making new game engines, then we wouldn't have the likes of Godot, Unity, Unreal, Game Maker, Cryengine, etc, etc. Furthermore, if *everyone* falls into the belief that it's not worth making a game engine, how many future engines with even better features or design methodologies may we miss out on?

The great many game developers out there may be best suited to make their game in a pre-existing engine. For those that are excited about going the extra (thousand) mile(s) and building something literally from the first bit onwards, it's those dedicated souls that keep the industry growing, give the others options, and allows everyone to build something new!

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As cool as this news is, my take away is more an interest in what's happening with MacOS development?!

I've been tinkering with getting a (used) Mac recently so that when I make some of my Game Jam games, I can test and release them on Mac... but if Apple is going to have me jumping through hoops just to get a program released on their system, I'm wondering if I should even bother investing.

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Quoting: LunielleWhat's the use of programs like this if you're using a game engine which already has a level editor built-in, such as, Godot?

I may still some things to learn about Godot, but, the way I see if, sure, you can build the map in Godot itself, but then it becomes built into the game... where, if you build the map outside of the engine, you can load those maps in outside of Godot's engine structure, making it easier to add more and more maps post release.

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Loved the original. I hope they add some good stuff to the already enjoyable formula of the original!

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