Quoting: legluondunetThe gap between today's consoles and working emulators is narrowing. We had never known an emulator that emulates a console still on sale. I don't think it's ethical to publicly release an emulator of a console that's still on sale, in my view, developers should at least wait for the end of life of a console. Nintendo is an innovative company and produces user-friendly games, switch emulators must be costing them a lot of money.

Lol, most people that make games don't sell hardware, and most hardware makers don't make games, and running software on arbitrary platforms is completely normal for everyone else but shitty console companies. Competing with them on hardware for running their games is all well and good, and should be incentivized - people should make more switch-compatible devices and compatibility tools.

The idea that being able to play software on some "non-authorized" platform is costing them money is ludicrous. Maybe they are failing to earn some money that they expected or wanted, but that wasn't already theirs, that they weren't entitled to or guaranteed to get. And if their earnings depend on manipulative, controlling tactics to make people buy hardware they don't need and that they can't control, enforcing restrictions that go beyond the laws and make technology shittier and more wasteful, then I'm be more than happy to see them earn nothing. A well-deserved "loss".

Again, this has nothing to do with piracy. Piracy exists just the same for PC games that don't need emulators. It is bad enough that they make it somewhat difficult for people with perfectly legitimate copies to transfer their games between devices, but there is no ground for going after emulators at all - the emulator violates no copyright, period.

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Dang that is one sexy DLC. Love the theme.

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I think it is important to make a honorable mention of Dominion, the boardgame that created the deckbuilding mechanic (where you change your deck as an element of play, instead of only between matches, and from a limited pool of cards with various costs instead of your entire collection) and launched an entire genre of boardgames¹, which then inspired the likes of Slay the Spire. It recently got a digital implementation (in early access): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1131620/Dominion/ [External Link] - though I must point it is a grand-daddy of those games, so you might find it way more "primitive" in many ways (no roguelite elements!). Still, a good game on its own, and interesting for its historical role.

¹ See for example:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/320430/Ascension_Deckbuilding_Game/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1008800/Shards_of_Infinity/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1063580/Aeons_End/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/438140/Star_Realms/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1569700/Hero_Realms/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/485000/Cthulhu_Realms/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/908070/Mystic_Vale/ [External Link]

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While those things are, in principle, all positive I still worry a bit that this move might end up going in a less than ideal direction.

Flathub is already pretty great now. And most app stores are complete garbage, filled with proprietary shovelware full of malicious functionality (spying, ads, lock-in...). Making flathub into an app store could easily mean a huge downgrade.

Similarly, Linux apps - in particular the simple apps that you'd get from an app store¹ - are already pretty damn good. PDF viewers, torrent clients, media players, image programs, system utilities, text editors, browsers, compression tools, it's all good; the only reason Linux isn't better than other systems is because open-source apps are generally multiplatform and make their way to Windows at least. It is definitely fair that those great apps could make their developers some cash, but I don't know if the "economic incentive" (or profit motive) would make for better apps. It would be an incentive for shovelware, for allowing bullshit into the repos/store, for showing ads "to help devs"... in my experience, the FOSS apps made with no expectation of payment are generally better than the commercial alternatives, despite the obvious advantages the latter enjoys. In the end, it depends on what posture Flathub will have - what it will allow, what it will promote, who it will hear, etc. But this "make everything into a market, it is the best thing always" mentality is suspicious.

¹ For big professional software suites like Adobe or Autodesk, they definitely aren't waiting for payment processing in an app store. For specific things like games, it's not like Flathub will replace the dedicated stores. And for many things like my city's bus app, local university or restaurant apps, and many others the barrier is not the distribution, just adoption of the system and people giving a fuck about it

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Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: Newton

Quoting: sjrObviously Cities:Skylines 2 is a mandatory purchase. :)

Not with the Paradox launcher.

I hate launchers too, but if you're boycotting every game having one, there is not a lot of choice left.

There is not a lot of AAA left, but with few exceptions indies just don't pull this bullshit. There are few games I own that have launchers, and of those most have added the launcher recently. As far as I remember, only Firaxis (the recent 2K launcher), Feral (XCOM and Total War), Paradox, Stardock, and a few isolated games like Age of Mythology.

Sure, it can be hard to avoid it (games are not interchangeable, it's not like you can just replace the game you want with another that is launcher-less), let's place the blame where it lies and not treat a small set of publishers as all of gaming.

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I'm actually not very interested in Skylines 2. Unless they have some new and revolutionary game mechanics, incremental improvements to a city builder don't feel that important - I'd rather get a game with a different setting and style. I also assume the game will be even heavier (what AAA publisher would dare not push for more graphical fidelity), which makes it particularly unattractive to me; I'd rather have a lighter Cities: Skylines than current so I could make bigger cities, play longer games, and use more mods, rather than the opposite.

Mechabellum had me 100% bought in until they put the word "PvP" on screen. An autobattler with massive armies, in a visual style I really dig, mechas... But it will depend on how much they emphasize multiplayer - not just in terms of singleplayer being fun, I can play against human opponents in an autobattler, but if they try to design for ladders and tournaments and season passes (or god forbid, microtransactions) it would be a bummer.

I like the look of Lamplighters League, and stealth tactics is a good one - though might be a bit too RPG for me. I'm not really into The Sims, but not against it either, so I'll have a look into Life By You.

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Exciting news, even though Civ 6 is still pretty fresh (I mean, they are still dropping new content right now). For all that 2K is a typical AAA studio, Firaxis has managed to avoid the worst and make some pretty damn good games (when the 2K launcher lets you play them). Wonder what they will come up with - lots of space for cool changes.

And then I wonder about Linux support. Civ 6 released not just for Mac and Linux but Switch and Android, so it seems their strategy does involve ports... but are they still going to partner with Aspyr? And if so, will Aspyr still do Linux - they seem to be moving away from it (probably with reason)? Or maybe this new focus on multiple platforms was enough for them to move in-house development to multi-platform going forward (unlikely, but we can hope...)? It's not a huge worry as proton/wine is getting better and better, and in particular can be more convenient/stable/timely than a 3rd party port... I definitely see they at least getting it steam deck certified, but then for games developed after the deck launched could this be enough to convince studios to put a little effort into native?

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: pageroundInteresting! I hope they produce a Alpha Centari 2. Keep the gameplay, update some graphics, print money. I will be watching to see what Solomon does.

I'd be happy if they updated the controls a bit too. Like, zoom the map with mousewheel and stuff.

Yeah with old strategy games the UI is often the big issue. Going back often has me thinking "how the fuck did I bear this back then", and for people that never played those games the learning curve can be too much.

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That's a really nice project, I'll definitely look more into it.

Tabletop Simulator is a good resource, because it can be used for lots and lots of different games and is fairly easy for people to make mods (no programming necessary), even if it is not the most convenient (for games that have proper digital adaptations). But being a closed, proprietary platform is less than ideal as your mod/adaptation/prototype becomes locked into it, and everyone needs to have bought it to join the game (it is decently cheap, but when you want to play a game "on the fly" it is another hurdle to make sure everyone has it or is willing to buy it on a whim).

Also, the devs of TTS can be problematic, like when they added a bunch of awful machine translations as if they had localized the game to all the languages, and it created a lot of issues for players where the game defaulted to those. So it's good to have more alternatives beyond TTS/tabletopia (and other, non-physics based implementations of course).

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Quoting: GuestAlthough I was never interested on Harry Potter, I'm split on the issue of boycotting writers that are racists or biggots. Cuz if you follow that rule, that some ppl call it "cancel culture" you have to wipe out the majority of recent and not so recent writers and artists sadly.
I guess that if a new lord of the rings games is released I would personally buy it. I'm my book the first book we should start burning is the bible and other religious books, that's the number one problem causing more wars and injustice more than anything else. Since that won't happen ever.. I will pretend JK Rowling or Tolkien are normal persons and carry on .

It isn't just about not reading a book because the author is or was a bigot. JKR actively campaigns for harmful policies, so giving her money to spend on making your and your pals' life worse is... not great. She also uses the popularity of her works to prop up her platform, regardless of whether the stories on their own are bad. We are talking about someone that had previously won a human rights award for writing beloved children's books, and then had it withdrawn for her bigoted campaigning.

It is quite different from discussing long dead authors, or even living authors that express some bigoted opinions in their private lives or in an interview but don't use the works to advertise a platform of hate and ignorance.

It also doesn't mean everyone's positive feelings and personal experiences with the fiction are invalid and you must hate it or else. Nor that the works must be forgotten and never read again. But knowing these problems is important, so it must be discussed, and it is more than understandable that people whose lives are made meaningfully less safe by the author will have strong negative feelings about it. It doesn't make them book burners or anything like that.

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Another increase? They were already dead to me since the previous one, so I guess whatever. CK2 is still plenty good and Paradox can burn for all I care.

Again, in case someone doesn't already know: exchange rate has shit all to do with purchasing power in different places, so no regional pricing isn't people getting the game "cheaper". Nor is the decision based on either of those (exchange rate or purchasing power), but rather on maximizing revenue (sales times price) - so they just figured they would make more money from the extra price than from the lost sales. For digital distribution, cost is not an issue. Indies would do well to stick with Steam's recommended regional pricing, as Steam definitely has way better marketing data than they, but AAA usually have their own.

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