Quoting: WorMzyDon't forget there's likely to be a change in regime (and therefore policy) in one of the world's biggest bully states in the next few months, so I wouldn't be surprised if selling things to one of the world's biggest economies becomes the "in thing" again. I can see the latter getting a sweetheart deal to keep MS' market share up, although it'll be interesting to see if the damage has been done and this drive to nationally produced products stays strong.

I would be very surprised if it does, regardless of US policy. “Made in China” has become a toxic brand, and not just because of the virus.

https://bitterwinter.org/ [External Link]
https://hongkongfp.com/ [External Link]

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Quoting: notinuse

Quoting: DuncPfft. Some of us have a boxed copy. :grin:

I still have my copy, but it's the Amiga version. :smile:

Mine too. If I'm honest, it's probably not a game I would have bought myself back in the day, but a friend sold me his entire collection with his A1200 when he switched to a DOS PC.

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Quoting: MnolegI'm surprised Debian stable is not using LILO as the default boot loader. Time to go back to Slackware.

I've been using Syslinux* ever since continuing with legacy GRUB became awkward. I'm not saying it's the problem here, but GRUB 2's relative complexity always struck me as trouble waiting to happen.

*Which doesn't support Secure Boot at all. Not a problem for me, but it's obviously not a solution for everyone.

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Pfft. Some of us have a boxed copy. :grin:

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Quoting: CreakEdit:
That said, I agree that if your game tools already exist and are working, migrating to another game editor will definitely be painful, so I would not encourage doing the migration, unless the pros and cons are exhaustedly listed. I am indeed talking more about newly created game studios, doing their first game. I would advise them not to create their own game editor.

Fair enough. :grin: And, just to clarify my own point, I'm not saying that a small studio should never use an existing general-purpose engine, just that for certain types of game, in certain circumstances I can see how it might still make sense to roll your own.

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Quoting: CreakAs a game developer in a AAA games company, and although we have our own game engines, I am still not convinced that doing your own game engine is a good thing. Game engines have become beasts, it is not just a matter of graphics, it is also about sound, AI, inputs, physics, animation, data management, etc.. and, on top of that, a whole editor for the game devs and artists to integrate their stuff in the engine. That why it is preferable to talk about "game editor" rather than "game engine". The engine is just a small part of the whole piece.

Yes, I understand that, but you're doing AAA. As I said, for small-scale developers doing a particular style of simple game (I've seen indie point-and-clicks come in at under 300Mb, and there's really not a lot going on in these things; they're rarely even properly realtime), it probably does still make sense. The amount of time you spend wrestling a general-purpose engine/editor into working in your style might as well be spent writing one from scratch. Or almost from scratch. Something like SDL can handle the low-level stuff.

That goes double if you already have one, which is what it sounds like with Gilbert/TT. Sure, there's going to be maintenance required, but again: simple games, simple engine.

As 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.

Great analogy, actually. If you're doing fixed-palette pixel art, Photoshop is overkill. I don't know if Gilbert does, but in principle it's the same idea: You've already decided that you aren't trying to keep up with modern trends, so as long as your simple in-house tools still work, why change?

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Quoting: mylkayeah i know, but his games arent really that complex
i understand it for cyberpunk or other huge open world games, but a pixel style point and click.... i dont know... doesnt seem to by very economically

Look at it from the other side. For someone developing many different styles of game, gaining some knowledge of, and competence in, a general-purpose engine like Godot, Unity, or Unreal makes a lot of sense. But they're jacks of all trades. If you're sticking to one style, the knowledge and control of the codebase a custom engine gives you tends to outweigh the flexibility of a general-purpose one. And because the games aren't that complex, it isn't too hard to do. (It's beyond me, but if you know what you're doing...) I've seen single-person studios making point-and-click adventures in their own engines.

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I just discovered the Sodium optimization mod for Minecraft. Holy moly... 32-block chunk draw distance, with ludicrous framerates. :woot: Pity it doesn't support shaders, though. But in the process I also discovered the Fabric modloader, and re-discovered Xaero's minimap. So that was fun. I'd forgotten how useful the custom waypoints were in that thing. I'm not heavily into modding - I hate it when an update breaks everything - but I do like graphical tweaks and little quality-of-life things like the minimap.

On that note, I also finally got Content Manager working for Assetto Corsa. Kinda. You have to start it in what I assume is a “safe mode”, which I also assume is why the custom shaders patch doesn't work (it might be a WINE problem, but that sort of thing is usually okay with DXVK). Which means that the Sol dynamic weather mod won't work properly either. Oh, well. Better than nothing. At least it starts a bit faster than the stock launcher.

And that's about it. Has it really been a week? (Well, no... but you know what I mean. :grin: ) In Elite: Dangerous, I used my shiny new 50ly Asp to travel to the Witch Head Nebula - because I can - but I haven't really done anything there.

Ooh, actually, now that I think about it... this Medieval Fantasy City Generator [External Link] is on Itch.io, so technically that makes it a game, right? I wasted a good few hours messing with that and some of the dev's other projects.

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Quoting: RedneckI was also looking at the Raspberry PI to use it on the tv, is it smooth? Because I tried Steam Link on my Chromebook and it didn't go very well

Aside from my audio issues, I was amazed at how good it was over a wired Ethernet connection. You really wouldn't know the game wasn't running on the Pi itself. I assume there must be some minor increase in input latency, but it's not obvious.

Quoting: scaineThere are optional puzzles you can do in each area, which cause physical effects outside of that areas boundaries. Like, one I did caused a laser/ray to shine outside of its play area, over another play area. I think the intention is that you could then use that laser/ray in that new area to cause yet another effect in another area. The love and attention to detail is astounding.

That was where I really fell for the game. There's a lot of “outside the box” thinking required - in precisely its original sense [External Link] - and I like that a lot. (Maybe because I'm not very good at the metaphorical kind in day-to-day life, actually, so it exercises an area of my brain that needs it. Who knows?)

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Quoting: brokeassben

Quoting: DuncAlso Assetto Corsa to unwind when I got cheesed off with E:D

How is your performance with AC? Did you get a wheel working with it?

No, I don't have one, sadly. Performance is really good with Proton-GE. Vanilla Proton still has that issue with the onscreen widgets wrecking the framerate (and in fact there seemed to be a regression in GE a version or two ago that reintroduced it - it also seemed to lock up on launch quite a lot - but the current one seems fine here).

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