Quoting: flesk

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.

Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.

Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!

Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.

Yes I know about such things but they are just building blocks, one could argue in a similar vain that this is all solved since we have access to a scripting language in BASH.

What I'm talking about is providing a full 100% complete service where game companies simply performs "make dist" at which point their game will be automagically be sent to all the preset stores, post the needed news posts etc. And this includes all the things that do not normally have an API and where the service instead would perform say HTTP POST:s to web sites and what not.

And when stores implements various changes this service should of course support it asap which of course would be #1 USP for the service. This is all practically doable for any one interested in creating a new service, the question as usual is if game devs will see it as a viable option or not (sometimes people and companies complain instead of seeking out the real solution even when it stares them directly in the eye).

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Quoting: SalvatosWell, that's assuming Epic and Discord are letting anything get onto their stores and not vetting games. Is that known at this point?

Well it remains to be seen how much vetting a 10% cut will afford. Salaries are normally the largest cost and vetting takes quite a lot of human resources so to speak.

But time will tell, I'm not on any mission play that Steam is the one and only viable platform and that a 30% cut is the only possible way. I'm simply concerned about these new stores that try to compete with a large discount while (some) people seams to assume that the service will be the same. Because I've seen this very same thing happening in my own business and quality went down the drain as a result but then games might be different than finance.

Quoting: Appelsin

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: AppelsinSteam need to get off their behinds, clean up their store for asset flip bloat and crap

My guess is that all those asset flip bloat and crap will be among the first to switch over to these new stores considering that the lower cut is so much more important to these people. And if the refund policy will not match that of steam:s (or even exist at all) then they should love it even more there.

That is of course a very real possibility. No refund, no reivews, a fresh start so to speak. It'll be interesting to see if they (Discord and Epic) have learned more from Greenlight than Steam (or Nintendo! [External Link]) seems to. GOG have largely kept out of this race top the bottom.

After checking, it seems they have refunds [External Link]. Same as Steam (14 days, 2 hours played), but not covering DLC apparently.

Quoting: SalvatosWell, that's assuming Epic and Discord are letting anything get onto their stores and not vetting games. Is that known at this point?

Unsure, but I found the following on their page [External Link]:

Here you’ll see a curated list of games for your buying pleasure! Our store has a hands-on personal approach to give you the best information about each game. Each game has a video preview on hover and a custom description so you know what the game is about so you can browse easily.

Hard to say if it's just the list you see that's "curated", or the entire library. I would assume thought that common sense dictates that if you're just starting up a store, you wouldn't want it to run over with crap from day one, so I would assume there's at least some level of vetting going on. But hey, common sense isn't everyone's cup of tea :)

Quoting: SalvatosWell, that's assuming Epic and Discord are letting anything get onto their stores and not vetting games. Is that known at this point?

Well it remains to be seen how much vetting a 10% cut will afford. Salaries are normally the largest cost and vetting takes quite a lot of human resources so to speak.

But time will tell, I'm not on any mission to pretend that Steam is the one and only viable platform and that a 30% cut is the only possible way. I'm simply concerned about these new stores that try to compete with a large discount while (some) people seams to assume that the service will be the same or better. Because I've seen this very same thing happening in my own sector and quality went down the drain as a result but then games might be different than finance so I might just be a grumpy old man here :)

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Quoting: Usual

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: UsualManaged to get an error trying out isaac rebirth on wine-staging. Do they accept wine-staging bug reports or just regular wine?

just curios on why you tried that game on wine when we have it natively?

I kept getting issues with my gamepads(ps3 controller, wireless 360 controller and logitech F310), so I wanted to see if they worked on the windows version. They did, but if you use the keyboard it doesn't work anymore.

Tried to contact Nicalis about the Linux version problem, but all I got was crickets...

Unrelated, but Super Meat Boy linux version also doesn't let you download the soundtrack. Would be happy if more users contacted Team Meat about it to see if they do something too.

I see, of course the more curious question is how anybody can play Binding of Isaac with a controller :). I've found anything else than keyboard completely horrendous in that game, but each to their own I guess. Sorry to hear that you have not gotten any reply from them, that really sucks.

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Quoting: lejimster

Quoting: CybolicIt's highly subjective. In general, humans perceive anything over 25/30 FPS as "continuous" and anything over 60 FPS as "smooth" but most can distinguish between 30 and 60 FPS and quite a few can recognise changes between 60 and 120 FPS. Above that, things get extremely subjective and most people can't see any difference.

I can tell the difference on my desktop between 144 and 120Hz. It shouldn't be that different but its night and day to me. So when people claim to be able to notice changes between even higher refresh rates, I'm not so doubtful...

This is why I'm excited about Freesync finally landing. I've never tried it as I'm Linux only and this might be the one thing that could fool my perception of frame rate.

If it's really "night and day" then it might be that your display simply behaves very differently on those two frequencies or that you really have not performed a blind comparison.

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Quoting: AppelsinSteam need to get off their behinds, clean up their store for asset flip bloat and crap

My guess is that all those asset flip bloat and crap will be among the first to switch over to these new stores considering that the lower cut is so much more important to these people. And if the refund policy will not match that of steam:s (or even exist at all) then they should love it even more there.

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Quoting: UsualManaged to get an error trying out isaac rebirth on wine-staging. Do they accept wine-staging bug reports or just regular wine?

just curios on why you tried that game on wine when we have it natively?

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GuestDid anyone even play this anymore?

Wellll, we have documented evidence of one Mac user . . .

Not so sure considering the question the "user" had and the reply (s)he got.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.

Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.

Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!

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Quoting: fleskDefinitely A Hat in Time or one of the LEGO games this time.

They have already ported the Lego games to OSX so that's not it.

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If we look at the full picture from https://oran-mor.co.uk/history/alasdair-gray/ [External Link] the text in full is "Where are we going? - Our Seed Returns to Death's Republic". It's also the last of three panes that displays Birth, Life and finally Death.

It's hard to tell if the person on the horse is male or female since breast like chest plates did exist on male armour back in the day but for me it looks like a female.

So here is hoping for Darksiders III. THQ Nordic is usually a Linux friendly publisher and they look very interested to get DS3 out to as much platforms as possible.

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