Quoting: kernel.havok

Quoting: LeopardI'm on Linux for two years but i already bought bunch of games on Linux

Haha, You bought a bunch of games on linux therefore you should get other third parties conversion efforts for free? Sometimes this is the case (OpenXcom, OpenMW) but why should people always have to do it for free?
Besides, you talk as if you're buying games as and giving money to the same monolithic organisation. Not sure if you're just virtue signalling or what at this point.

Not exactly sure what your point is here. OpenXcom and OpenMW are recreations of the engines, from scratch, by software developers that both love the games they're building executables for, as well as love the challenge of backwards engineering the engine. These are free because they have no license in which to distribute there work in any form of paid method. Furthermore, neither project give out the original digital assets. It's expected that any user wanting to run either of these executables already has a copy of the game from which these new engines load the assets.

These people do, in their spare time, the same job as a Porter does. Here's where the difference is... we don't pay the people of these project (for the aforementioned license issue), but the payment for LICENCED porters should be fully worked out between the porter and the development house hiring them. WE, as the consumers, should NOT be responsible for their payment... at least, not in the way that seems to be the intimated by this thread.

Quoting: kernel.havok

Quoting: LeopardWe didn't say 'we don't want to pay for the game anyway'... We already bought it

If you already paid for it then you could have run the installer native in linux from 2001. What you're paying for is the convenience of running it native in linux.

If we were paying a percentage of the original total cost, then, I could agree with you. However, when you're speaking of having to pay the full price of a game for two separate OSes that, beyond small technical differences, do not otherwise force artificial limitations on developers in order to release software upon them, then, no, paying full price is complete crap. Here's why...

The majority of the data that constitutes a game (the shear data size) is almost completely in the games assets (art, audio, scripts, etc). These assets do NOT change from OS to OS. What changes is the binary data (executable and libraries), and, even then, if the initial developer is even remotely competent, the code that constitutes core game mechanics would translate over between OSes with virtually no code change. So, even within binary data, the porter is not totally redeveloping the wheel, so why should we have to pay full price if we've already done so once.

If you want to make this an issue of Entitlement, then the same right back at the developers too that feel they should be entitled to full cost twice, when the difference between a game on two OSes is the difference of (at an extreme) ~100 MEGAbytes in a package of 2 to 100 GIGAbytes.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Porters should get paid, but, it shouldn't be the customer's responsibility to worry about whether someone's financially supported or not. The developers who are too lazy (or inexperienced, if you want to be kind) to make the game cross platform in the first place and decide to hire an outside porter should be solely responsible for the financial well being of that porter... whether that be a lump-sum payment or a percentage royalty payment to the porter.

As far as whether I should have to buy the game all over again for each platform I want to play it on...
First of all, comparing having a game for Playstation and XBox to that of PCs is a bullsh*t argument. Firstly, PC has no bar to entry. Develop your game and sell. Steam, Origin, etc, are not REQUIRED to sell your game. Putting your game on Playstation and/or XBox (from what I've heard) is a chore and a half, even IF the game was written to cross support those platforms. Until Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo (to go with the big three) take the sticks out their collective asses about what games can and cannot run on their system, it, at least, makes sense you can't but a game for Playstation and expect to play it on XBox. For crying out loud, the two systems won't even talk to each other from a network perspective (and I have a huge issue with not being able to play cross network. All limitations to that degree are artificial)

Now, on the PC side of things... I absolutely abore the idea of having to pay for a game more than once if I wanted to play that game in more than one OS. Firstly, when you think of everything that comes in the game, 99% of a physical space of the game is taken up purely by Assets (graphics, audio, scripts, etc). Assets DO NOT change from platform to platform... so why am I paying for the 3D model of my in-game character twice? No! So... beyond assets, you have the Binaries (executable and associated libraries). It's in the Binaries that the porter's work is done... and the amount of work the porter has to do is proportional to how many proprietary libraries the original developer went with instead of cross platform libraries. If the developers were even a little worth their salt, the core mechanics of the game would be decoupled from the difficult to port systems (audio/graphic engines, network interfaces, and, possibly, scripts interpreters), and, as such, the porter shouldn't really even be poking in the game mechanics.

Paying full price for a game for each OS you want to play that game on is purely greed, and, I say again, it should NOT be MY responsibility to make sure any porter is paid... that's the developer's job. That said, I will concede that a small "unlock" cost is acceptable. Full price for the first OS, then a smaller percentage for each additional (say, something like 10% the base cost). As an example, I buy "AAA Game Deluxe" on Linux for $60. I want to play it on my Windows partition too, so, since I already bought the game, $6 will give me access to the game for Windows. If I want to, then, play on Mac, then $6 again.

Realistically, though... all three platforms should be default.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

[quote=AlveKatt]

Quoting: ObsidianBlkOne thing I don't get is why use logic blocks. I would have gone for one logic block, and have a visual coding language, similar to Scratch that you edit through it. https://scratch.mit.edu

http://alvekatt.deviantart.com/art/Yamato-inspired-ship-made-in-the-game-Starmade-596776972

I would suspect logic blocks exist the way they do for three reasons...
1) The game is already voxel based and it's easier to create new voxel blocks then a new sub-system
2) Including a scripting language (essentially programming) in a game means they'd have to write (or include) a runtime interpreter. They could use LUA, I suppose, but that's a relatively complex language that only hard-core modders would care to sit and learn. Creating their own scripting language would be a chore and a half... and suffer even more than using LUA as you'd be asking people to learn a language that has no use outside of the game.
3) Technically, the logic system as it stands IS a visual coding language. Why not contain that into a sing block and use a GUI for the programming part? My best guess is the complexity of doing that. Attaching the logic to the games already existing voxel system is easy. These voxels are already designed with logic as part of their code (like, how a "cannon computer" needs to be attached to "cannon barrels" to work, as an example), so exposing relatively simple logics (gates, delays, triggers, etc) is a trivial addition. Trying to do the exact same thing in a 2D space sounds simple, but you'd basically be asking for a new component of the game engine... and asking for it to integrate with the voxel component of the engine in a seamless way. That's a TON of work.

All that said, it boils down to how the engine is written. I don't work on the game, so I don't know what the code looks like, but, having tried my hand in a number of game projects, I've come to realize that more often than not, seemingly simple tasks are leagues more complex than you'd think they were, if you've never programmed before.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: AlveKattI had a problem with my mouse automatically re-centering every time I crossed sectors. Made dog fights awful.

I wonder if that has been fixed?

Sadly, it hasn't completely gone away. I've been playing fairly often over the last year or so and it's still annoying when, fighting pirates in a fast ship, suddenly the screen jumps on you.

That said... to the question of if the game is good... I'd most definitely say yes! If you love building and creating, this is a really good game! There isn't much to "explore" yet, per-say (no life on the planets, for instance), but they just recently added NPC factions which server owners can create and modify. They all have their own rules for how they interact with the environment and the players and over all add some "life" to the universe beyond just the players of the server your on.

As far as building goes, there's a very nice variety of blocks (not just square), and the logic combined with the rails systems allows for the creation of some very nice systems and effects.

My opinion, the game isn't perfect (yet, lol), but it's definitely worth the price for people who love building and survival.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Mountain ManI'm still of the opinion that this whole VR craze is going to be another short-lived novelty like 3D televisions and motion controls (other than the Nintendo Wii) once people realize that it doesn't meaningfully enhance their gaming experience. Professional applications, yes, but entertainment? I don't see it.

I have a Occulus DK1 and used it a lot when Occulus still supported Linux. Of the applications/games I was able to try/play... this is not a simply WiiMote or 3D TV. VR most definitely DOES add a "meaningful enhancement" to the gaming experience. With the environment all around you, and (visually) nothing to distract you, you most definitely feel like part of the world in which you play.

As an aside... the motion controller tech is equally important. While on its own it doesn't seem to add anything to a gaming experience (in fact, it arguably takes away), this tech is just as important for VR as a companion technology. While being worked on as we speak, in the long term, once the head/body tracking and display tech of VR has been ironed out, the motion controller tech will increase the already deep immersion of VR allowing you to use your hands. Using your hands with a TV is awkward... using them when the visuals are quite literally in your face... that would be icing on a VR cake!

All of that said, however... VR is not going to replay monitor, keyboard or mouse... at least, not for quite some time. For gamers (in the short term)... VR will be huge, I feel.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Just to put in my two cents...
I decided that, for F2P (with a lvl125 cap on skills), I'd give this game a go.

Graphically, I think the game is quite pleasing... definitely dated, but very pleasing. For a "sci-fi" game most everything has a very earthy tone to it (at least in the beginner area). That may or may not be appealing to some, but I find it quite relaxing.

The starter zone, currently, is active and the biggest thing that stands out to me is that most, if not all, of the conversations are mature and helpful. This last bit could be that most who're interested in playing this game are either long time Ryzom players or long time MMORPG players that preferred the older EQ1 generation of games.

The thing I love most about the game so far... Creating Skills! Other's have mentioned this as a point of interest, and I'm no different. I LOVE this aspect. I'm still learning all of the beginner stuff, so I've only just been introduced to it, but... I freaking LOVE the idea! Add to that the depth of the crafting system... Mmmmm

I've only had the chance to play a total of maybe three or four hours of the game so far, over at least three sessions. I found that, when I had the chance, I actually was looking forward to logging into the game. I can be a little OCD with games, and only a few rare ones can keep my attention for too long. I'm not saying this game is one of those... yet... but it has serious potential.

The game's been around for a while now, so it probably won't out right disappear any time soon, but the one worry I have is, Steam is giving the game an influx of players currently, but I can't tell how much staying power the game will have in the end. I do worry about getting into an online game that, only a few months down the road may become a ghost town. To this, I can only cross my figures.

If anyone has joined the game, feel free to look me up in game and say hello! My character's name is Draydin.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: AnxiousInfusionGodot keeps crashing and freezing on me and they want you to use their in-house, non-universal scripting language ew. Maybe I'll give this a shot.

To be fair with Godot... while the scripting language is, technically, in-house, the language is, syntactically, Python. As such, I would argue that learning the Godot scripting language wouldn't be much different than learning, for instance, Javascript using JQuery. I would also go as far as to say, if you wrote javascript code for the Atomic engine, unless it's very universal code, it wouldn't quite work outside of the Atomic environment, just as code in Godot wouldn't work quite right outside of the Godot environment, unless it was very universal.

Just my $0.02

View this comment - View article - View full comments