In particular the music in this game (and their entire series) is seriously spot on. https://scythesaga.bandcamp.com/album/walls-closing-in-original-soundtrack

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Quoting: rustybroomhandleSeriously, they go, "hmmm... Ordering stuff online. What if... Fresh vegetables! File patent, sue."

Quoting: EikeHalf OT: I remember there's been patent claims for the usual progress bar. Does anybody know how this ended?

Apple owns that one and it's valid until 2032-01-21, though there might be more than one "progress bar patent" since the Apple one is especially for content loading:

QuoteMethods and apparatuses that automatically detect a stall of progress to download additional portion of a web page addressed by a resource address registered by a user of a browser are described. In response to the detection, whether a majority of usable content of the web page has been retrieved may be determined. An indication may be provided to the user to indicate readiness of the web page in the browser if the majority of usable content has already been loaded in a viewing area of the browser and is available to the user. Thus, the user's attention can be directed to the content viewing area to proceed interacting with the browser without a need for the user to wait for a remaining portion of the web page.

This shit just gets sillier and sillier the longer down the rabbit hole you go. For example take this patent:

QuoteInteraction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI] based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance

Talk about holy wtf?!

edit: I think that the one you where thinking about is this one from IBM:

QuoteA dynamic progress marker icon is disclosed that dynamically changes to mark the progress of a task. In this manner, the user is kept informed of the status of a task being performed without resorting to language sensitive messages such as "Now processing object number 12 of 100" . The icon does not require a graphics display to be used and therefore can be used on both graphics and non-graphics displays. The icon of the prepared embodiment has five rows consisting of four percent (%) symbols surrounded by a border. At the beginning of a task, a task monitor quantifies the task into substantially equivalent task work units. All twenty "%" symbols are present and displayed to the user. When the task monitor determines that one task work unit has completed, one "%" symbol is replaced in the icon by a replacement character, such as a blank or null character. The replacement of one "%" symbol each time a task work unit completes continues until all of the "%" symbols are replaced, indicating 100% completion of the task. The order in which symbols inside the icon are replaced is determined by a pattern array and can be modified if desired. The symbols used inside the icon and for the border are selected to be available in virtually all languages, and can also be modified to meet the needs of a particular user.

It was brought up as an example by Richard Stallman in an article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/jun/20/comment.comment I don't think it has even been used to sue somebody, IBM likes to patent millions of things so that whenever a competitor tries to sue them for something they can always pick up a few thousand patents that the competitor are in violation of.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: SalvatosDid the Gnome people actually post the relevant patent and claim anywhere? Not that I don’t trust them per se, but out of principle I would like to see the documents before I consider donating to their lawsuit.

I did see the patent and the claim somewhere. The patent has to do with transferring photos between devices and filtering by tags.

Transferring photos between devices . . . they've got a patent on copying files that only applies to certain kinds of files?!
Patents be crazy.

This is the very nature of software patents, there does not exists a single solid software patent and the whole shit should be abolished (software is already covered by copyright and does not require this extra layer).

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Quoting: fagnerlnBlender is a pretty powerful tool, but I don't get why a lot of big companies start to support suddenly for "no reason", the interval between the articles about a big company supporting is little.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I hope that even more companies support it, it's just curious, maybe there's something big that we don't know yet.

Things like this always happen in batches. All it takes is for one large vocal company to do it; that opens the eyes for the rest that then follow shortly.

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Quoting: SirLootALot

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: F.UltraBut have you not heard that the mighty SJW:s have forced all gaming publishers to only make games with female leads since 2014!

Heh, there certainly have been some debates about that issue. Apparently it didn't help all that much. Tomb Raider existed before 2014, and that's still the only truly major franchise featuring a female lead I am aware of. Other than that, there have been some rare one-hit-wonder gems like Life is Strange (it's successor-by-name-only features boy characters, so I don't count that as a female-lead franchise), Horizon or Hellblade, but in the end, video games are still largely made by men for men.

Who actually cares about the gender of a lead protagonist? It does not make a game better or worse or more or less appealing. I could play a nonbinary trans unicorn and still have a really good time even though I'd have nothing to identify with. And also I always play the german campaign when there is one even though I am not a nazi, that is because a protagonist is (most often) not meant to be someone to identify with.

Look up all the posts made on the Internet when the Battlefield V trailer appeared in 2018, but only do it if you really want to loose your faith in humanity.

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Quoting: KimyrielleFor some reason, I have most of these games already! :D

Still not too many games other than Tomb Raider with strong female leads around, even in 2019... :S

But have you not heard that the mighty SJW:s have forced all gaming publishers to only make games with female leads since 2014!

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: YoRHa-2B

Quoting: 1xokWhat are the advantages of DX12 over Vulkan for developers? I can only think of the Xbox support.

Well, for starters, D3D12 works on all Windows 10 systems and has excellent driver support from all vendors.

Windows drivers shipping with Windows Update sometimes don't come with Vulkan support -> games straigt-up don't work. Driver quality is also way worse (AMD is pretty bad, Intel seems to be especially bad, only Nvidia is acceptable these days - and that also was a whole different story ~2 years ago).

On the other hand, for Windows systems that aren't Windows 10, I remember hearing that DX12 wasn't available at all. I believe that still represents quite a few dollars left on the table, although of course it's gradually shifting.

I think Xbox is the real driver behind DX12 since as you point out Windows 7 didn't support DX12 until very recently (and only for a selected few titles if I'm not mistaken). That and some devs/publishers are simply entrenched in the DX-camp (I once worked for a CEO that often bragged to potential customers how many Windows servers we had where the implication was that since Microsoft where a successful company then a company that uses their products is also be definition successful...)

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Quoting: YoRHa-2B

Quoting: LinuxwarperDo you think that it will be easier to get closer to Windows performance with VKD3D for DX12 games than with DXVK and DX11 games? Considering the similarities DX12 and Vulkan share and the opposite for DX11 and Vulkan.

Believe it or not, but mapping D3D12 to Vulkan is harder than D3D11. Yes, the APIs are similar in concept, but there are many little details which make it rather painful and introduce overhead in vkd3d. D3D11 might need more code, but it's fairly straight-forward for the most part since its abstractions are higher-level.

That said, in games where D3D12 is significantly better than D3D11, you'll find that vkd3d beats dxvk by a fair margin as well, so it's by no means slow, but there are quite a few nasty issues to sort out.

Looked over the list at https://wiki.winehq.org/Vkd3d_known_issues and oboy you where not kidding. The difference in binding model and heap descriptors does not sound fun at all, reducing overhead there is going to be a major pain.

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Quoting: mylka

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: Doc Angelo

Quoting: mylkaas far as i know stadia games dont even use vulkan for windows
i hope this will change soon, or stadia is very useless for linux gaming

Stadia doesn't run Windows on the game streaming servers. They run Debian Linux.

i know, but vulkan does and games like destiny 2 use dx on windows, even if they need vulkan on stadia

Of course it does, AAA games such as this have been in development for many years before Google even announced Stadia and there is just no way that a company like Bungie would change their entire engine from DX to Vulkan in the last weeks of release. Also the XBox version is probably their main release anyway this being Bungie after all.

weeks?
stadia was announced 7 months ago and they had some games to show, so some developers already had a dev kit back then
plenty of time to use vulkan if you ask me

Which in relation to how long they have been working on the game is "weeks". There is just no way that they after several years of tuning and optimizations for DX will just throw that out in the last 7 months of the dev cycle for their most important system.

edit: and we don't even know if the stadia version is done in-house or if they simply shipped that out to some porting company.

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Quoting: mylka

Quoting: Doc Angelo

Quoting: mylkaas far as i know stadia games dont even use vulkan for windows
i hope this will change soon, or stadia is very useless for linux gaming

Stadia doesn't run Windows on the game streaming servers. They run Debian Linux.

i know, but vulkan does and games like destiny 2 use dx on windows, even if they need vulkan on stadia

Of course it does, AAA games such as this have been in development for many years before Google even announced Stadia and there is just no way that a company like Bungie would change their entire engine from DX to Vulkan in the last weeks of release. Also the XBox version is probably their main release anyway this being Bungie after all.

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