Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: F.UltraThe OS market have never been "lucrative" for Microsoft (except maybe in the old MS-DOS days when they had a monopoly), their big income has always been the Office suite so the OS have just been a way to maintain the de-factor monopoly so that people would continue to purchase Microsoft Office.

OS market alone no, but stranglehold and near monopoly of pre-installation of Windows is totally something they parasitically benefit from until this day due to network effects.

Oh yes, that was what I meant. The monopoly on the OS market is what enabled them to bring in the real money on the Office suite, something that they tried to redo with the Windows Games Store but failed miserably.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: NezchanThere's been some suggestion that Microsoft isn't finding the OS market to be as lucrative as it used to be, and has an eye toward moving to Google-like services instead. If that's the case, then they may be backing off from the idea that Linux is a competitor in that space. I don't pretend to know much about it, but this would be consistent with such a shift.

The OS market have never been "lucrative" for Microsoft (except maybe in the old MS-DOS days when they had a monopoly), their big income has always been the Office suite so the OS have just been a way to maintain the de-factor monopoly so that people would continue to purchase Microsoft Office.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ageresIt sure can, but I mean games are being written with multiple platforms in mind. Just a bunch of #ifdefs.

Depends on how much they have to push the hardware, if they really have to push the hardware (and I don't know the MegaDrive enough to make that judgement) then not even C fits the bill.

One example is TANGLEWOOD where the Steam version is the MegaDrive ROM running on a bundled emulator.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: sub

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: MisterPaytwickNice pixel art arcade game.

It's not pixel art, it's just native resolution to the SMD. And very well done.
I love how they haven't upped it to 60fps, retro style 2d games are horrible at such high frame rates, they belong in the 15-25 area.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: MisterPaytwickNice pixel art arcade game.

It's not pixel art, it's just native resolution to the SMD. And very well done.
I love how they haven't upped it to 60fps, retro style 2d games are horrible at such high frame rates, they belong in the 15-25 area.

Is this running through an emulator or is this a port?
Never liked the typical look due to the palette and sprite limitation
But that looks amazing if it runs on a Genesis!

They released it first as a ROM to the Sega MegaDrive, don't know if the PC version is running the rom on an emulator of they also ported it though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zXxR2B-IJc [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

In particular the music in this game (and their entire series) is seriously spot on. https://scythesaga.bandcamp.com/album/walls-closing-in-original-soundtrack [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: rustybroomhandleSeriously, they go, "hmmm... Ordering stuff online. What if... Fresh vegetables! File patent, sue."

Quoting: EikeHalf OT: I remember there's been patent claims for the usual progress bar. Does anybody know how this ended?

Apple owns that one and it's valid until 2032-01-21, though there might be more than one "progress bar patent" since the Apple one is especially for content loading:

Methods and apparatuses that automatically detect a stall of progress to download additional portion of a web page addressed by a resource address registered by a user of a browser are described. In response to the detection, whether a majority of usable content of the web page has been retrieved may be determined. An indication may be provided to the user to indicate readiness of the web page in the browser if the majority of usable content has already been loaded in a viewing area of the browser and is available to the user. Thus, the user's attention can be directed to the content viewing area to proceed interacting with the browser without a need for the user to wait for a remaining portion of the web page.

This shit just gets sillier and sillier the longer down the rabbit hole you go. For example take this patent:

Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI] based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance

Talk about holy wtf?!

edit: I think that the one you where thinking about is this one from IBM:

A dynamic progress marker icon is disclosed that dynamically changes to mark the progress of a task. In this manner, the user is kept informed of the status of a task being performed without resorting to language sensitive messages such as "Now processing object number 12 of 100" . The icon does not require a graphics display to be used and therefore can be used on both graphics and non-graphics displays. The icon of the prepared embodiment has five rows consisting of four percent (%) symbols surrounded by a border. At the beginning of a task, a task monitor quantifies the task into substantially equivalent task work units. All twenty "%" symbols are present and displayed to the user. When the task monitor determines that one task work unit has completed, one "%" symbol is replaced in the icon by a replacement character, such as a blank or null character. The replacement of one "%" symbol each time a task work unit completes continues until all of the "%" symbols are replaced, indicating 100% completion of the task. The order in which symbols inside the icon are replaced is determined by a pattern array and can be modified if desired. The symbols used inside the icon and for the border are selected to be available in virtually all languages, and can also be modified to meet the needs of a particular user.

It was brought up as an example by Richard Stallman in an article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/jun/20/comment.comment [External Link] I don't think it has even been used to sue somebody, IBM likes to patent millions of things so that whenever a competitor tries to sue them for something they can always pick up a few thousand patents that the competitor are in violation of.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: SalvatosDid the Gnome people actually post the relevant patent and claim anywhere? Not that I don’t trust them per se, but out of principle I would like to see the documents before I consider donating to their lawsuit.

I did see the patent and the claim somewhere. The patent has to do with transferring photos between devices and filtering by tags.

Transferring photos between devices . . . they've got a patent on copying files that only applies to certain kinds of files?!
Patents be crazy.

This is the very nature of software patents, there does not exists a single solid software patent and the whole shit should be abolished (software is already covered by copyright and does not require this extra layer).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: fagnerlnBlender is a pretty powerful tool, but I don't get why a lot of big companies start to support suddenly for "no reason", the interval between the articles about a big company supporting is little.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I hope that even more companies support it, it's just curious, maybe there's something big that we don't know yet.

Things like this always happen in batches. All it takes is for one large vocal company to do it; that opens the eyes for the rest that then follow shortly.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: SirLootALot

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: F.UltraBut have you not heard that the mighty SJW:s have forced all gaming publishers to only make games with female leads since 2014!

Heh, there certainly have been some debates about that issue. Apparently it didn't help all that much. Tomb Raider existed before 2014, and that's still the only truly major franchise featuring a female lead I am aware of. Other than that, there have been some rare one-hit-wonder gems like Life is Strange (it's successor-by-name-only features boy characters, so I don't count that as a female-lead franchise), Horizon or Hellblade, but in the end, video games are still largely made by men for men.

Who actually cares about the gender of a lead protagonist? It does not make a game better or worse or more or less appealing. I could play a nonbinary trans unicorn and still have a really good time even though I'd have nothing to identify with. And also I always play the german campaign when there is one even though I am not a nazi, that is because a protagonist is (most often) not meant to be someone to identify with.

Look up all the posts made on the Internet when the Battlefield V trailer appeared in 2018, but only do it if you really want to loose your faith in humanity.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KimyrielleFor some reason, I have most of these games already! :D

Still not too many games other than Tomb Raider with strong female leads around, even in 2019... :S

But have you not heard that the mighty SJW:s have forced all gaming publishers to only make games with female leads since 2014!

View this comment - View article - View full comments