I believe that the only way to obtain data ethically from software is to not automate it. Users should always be aware and explicitly choose what they share. Thus, if you want usage data, make it as easy and convenient as possible for people to go and answer a survey or post their reports, and encourage them (the simple goodwill of FOSS users posting bug reports and contributing solutions is a great example or "encouragement"). Anything the user can't measure and understand himself should not be shared, as they can't evaluate what sharing that data would mean. Yes, all this means a lot less data and a self-selected sample, and I think that is unavoidable. Simply put: asking for a blank check from users is objectionable even if you don't plan to do anything wrong with it. You should not even ask people for that much trust.

Now, if it is opt-in I don't care as much. The status quo is so bad in various respects that I'm willing to settle for this compromise (even though I still think it is far from ideal)... especially for FOSS projects, where we have more transparency and more assurances. In particular, it is more likely that the interests of users and devs align. When you give data to a proprietary developer to "improve the software", their idea of improvement is likely to be ways to manipulate you and squeeze more money out of you; it is not in your best interest to give them whatever data they want, because your goals are not necessarily theirs.

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Quoting: RaabenI wonder how some companies cared enough to go for making a port in the first place but at the same time not care to try and keep them remotely in sync, especially for multiplayer. You'd think they'd want to keep a third party porting studio close and in the loop for releases but then again, I spend my day stuck in IT at BigCorp so out of touch things like that shouldn't be surprising.

Eh, the equation is pretty easy. They are more than breaking even from the ports, so they have no reason to not do it. But they value it so, so much less than the Windows version that they aren't willing to make the tiniest change to their process to help the port.

This could be rational, as in "it would cost us more to spend dev time on it than the net value of the port". But most likely there is some big manager that just can't be arsed to do anything else, and the only reason he even allows the port is because he doesn't have to move a finger, just let the contractors do their thing and get paid. (Or something equivalent - a sales department that isn't willing to compromise on dates, some bureaucratic requirement mandated from above, a legal team that doesn't sign the correct papers on time, a company policy. Someone that isn't willing to let things change, and doesn't care about this weird port for a couple of people.)

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That is a very Stardew Valley looking game. I like it.

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For me the idea of immutable distros is quite simple, and quite sensible: just like we have things that any unprivileged user can change, and system settings that need root (with sudo as a convenient mid-way compromise, which means I almost never needed to actually log in as root), it separates things users can change and system settings. You can still install programs for yourself, or change the appearance, or other changes... but that is just overlaid on top of the base system: you can install an additional version of a library, but you can't erase the original - so your system is guaranteed to not be borked, as it retains a "recovery image" without your changes. Right now there is still some attrition to doing things that way because of all the programs that were made based on different assumptions, but with time I expect less things will need workarounds and the workarounds will get better and easier.

And Linux can easily prevent the biggest issue with Android and Windows and such, which is "unremovable bloatware" - when your OEM or carrier puts a bunch of garbage on your device that they want you to have but you don't want to. With Linux, there is little point in pushing garbage to users as anyone can just make a distro without the garbage. For example, when Canonical pushes snaps which are complete garbage, I can just download Fedora that does not have snaps. It is unfortunate that it happens but at least I have some choice.

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If they allow/support donations, I think it is the right stance (though pity they won't add proper mod support). Paid mods are indeed against the spirit of modding, and create no end of problems. People can no longer freely share and re-use content from other mods, as now it can undermine the "monetization" of those. It discourages collaboration and people tinkering with the mods themselves, and makes it more of a creator-audience split. Since many mods rely on fair use status to use copyrighted materials (in a way that is obviously transformative and also non-commercial), selling such mods is a big no-no... and for any mod, trying to stop other mods from using your own paid mod content would open a big can of worms. Then there are expectations of support for a product and other aspects of a more commercial relationship...

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While I do enjoy historical settings a lot, unit diversity and faction asymmetry are things that it doesn't do that well - and the tactical combat benefits a lot from the former. The main reason I enjoy the Total Warhammers is that, in terms of interesting setting I prefer many (but not all) of the historical ones. I think it would be wise to account for that by focusing on other elements, both on the strategic layer (political and economical elements) and also more tactical elements (promotions for units, more terrain/weather effects, battle setups, etc).

But I don't think this is a "games do poorly when there is no fantasy" situation. The series did fine with many (if not most) of the historical games, there is a lot to the games besides unit selection and diversity (some people prefer to focus on morale and terrain over army composition, or might play more for the strategic layer and fight few battles). If they did want to sacrifice the "realism" for more diversity, there is a million ways they could do it without mythology and monsters. And there are several other genres of strategy that make even better use of those fantasy elements (due to not relying so much on formations with large numbers of figures, for example). Warhammer was exceptional in many ways, but most of the games that did poorly were the smaller spin-offs - Troy (also Epic exclusive, lol), Britannia, Atilla. Rome 2 was very successful and had a long life, 3K did quite well despite being up against Warhammer 2/3, Shogun 2 I remember being well-received...

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Quoting: ElectricPrismSo is this game supposed to be related to "Pharaoh + Cleopatra" ?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/564530/Pharaoh__Cleopatra/

If so, that sounds pretty cool, I just wish the Trailer gave some indication as to the gameplay.

And there doesn't seem to be a Community Hub yet so it's really hard to tell what exactly this will be.

Edit: The best I can do is guess based on the tags?

Popular user-defined tags for this product:
Strategy
Action
RTS
Grand Strategy
Tactical

Total War is a big franchise so many people know what their games are like, especially as they have a very particular identity that no one else really does. You can look for any other total war game and have a good idea of the gameplay. No, nothing to do with city builders, it is a grand strategy game with two layers: strategic layer is turn based, expansive and fun but not too complex; tactical layer is real time, extremely detailed and units have a large amount of bodies.

But you have just zeroed on one of my main issues with the franchise: they are trying too hard to sell a AAA game, not a good strategy game. Their marketing always, always is just close-ups of individual soldiers or big aerial shots of the terrain, with no HUD, no images of the tech trees or building screens or economic overlays or anything. From the store pages and press releases, they look almost ashamed of the gameplay they created, because nothing of it is shown. It is all 3D models that you wouldn't even see during normal gameplay (you never zoom in that much) and bullshots. And then the game is heavy, with long loading screens, and you can't even zoom out enough during battles to see what is happening on two fronts... because "muh graphics."

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: lucinosAlso the reason they are doing it is that if you port to Mac then Linux port is about zero cost

I've no idea what you've been reading but that's really not true, especially given the completely different graphics APIs used - Vulkan and Metal. There's a whole bunch of other differences to take into account to from filesystem to sound system.

Yeah these days I feel like Windows and Linux are closer to one another than Mac is to either of them. What little posix compliance used to do to make it similar to Linux, is long buried beneath layers and layers of Mac not wanting to be compatible with anything else.

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That is a weird collection, a bunch of games whose trait in common is "has multiplayer".

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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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