jdreyer wrote on Sep 11, 2017, 12:13:

Jivaro wrote on Sep 11, 2017, 11:09:
My inner 15 year old is laughing at the obvious joke here.

Huh?

I'm assuming "the incredible growth of python".

headshot wrote on Sep 11, 2017, 06:26:

Tom wrote on Sep 10, 2017, 19:50:
The search bar is not redundant. The address bar is for putting in a URL. The search bar is for doing a search. Why does it have to be more complicated than that? Mozilla is trying so hard to kill Firefox...

why is having to put in urls in one place and search requests into another more complicated than doing so in just one place?

Exactly. It's not complicated. Search is not URLs. This is a poorly thought out change.

LittleMe wrote on Sep 10, 2017, 18:15:
Agreeing with CJ on this. Diminishing returns have impacted the whole industry. I'm confident we'll see many more gains in the future but for now this is how it is.

Agreed with the above.

But also, this article takes an unusual approach to defining generations. To the point where I'm not sure if it's naive or clickbait.

Long story short, they switch the definition of generations mid-way through. e.g. they go from the 7800 GTX to the 8800 GTX, skipping the 7900. But they they go from the GTX 480 to the 580 to the 680.

GTX 480 and GTX 580 use the same Fermi GPU; the latter getting a later version of the design with some errata fixes and other modifications to reduce power leakage. While NVIDIA incremented the version number, it wasn't pitched as a whole new generation any more than the 7900 GTX was. Similarly, GTX 780 is a bigger version of the Kepler GPU used in GTX 680, so it's architecturally the same generation as well (released as a mid-gen refresh, once 28nm yields improved).

If you actually compare architecture generation-to-generation, you'd get something like 580-680-980-1080. Which would still show a decrease in gains as chip complexity goes up and manufacturing gains don't come as frequently. But nothing quite so dramatic. Alternatively, if you did pure year-to-year, you'd indeed see a greater drop-off. But then you'd also have to explain why there's a 0% for 2015.

It's the kind of article that's not outright wrong. But it lacks the clarity and context to explain what's happening and why. "The reason behind this decrease is quite obvious. For starters, AMD cannot keep up with NVIDIA. Due to the lack of competition, NVIDIA does not feel the pressure to release a graphics card that will be way, way better than its previous generation offerings" is very much wrong. It makes the assumption that NVIDIA could go at a significantly faster pace without taking the time to understand why that isn't practical.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Aug 30, 2017, 12:27:

El Pit wrote on Aug 30, 2017, 11:30:
I don't know much about Denuvo - what is the problem with it? Does it forbid offline gameplay?

Depends on how they implement it. It can mean more CPU uptime if they use exe encoding. Which means the exe is in a wraper, then run in a virtual environment by the DRM to be executed. There's active crc checks against various assets used by the game(disk thrashing). Randomized movement of the exe in memory(more cpu cycles eaten), and so on. As for offline gameplay? Depends, it can but not always. Look at the implementation of Total War: Warhammer which used it. Everything about it was broken, from multiplayer to the game itself along with all the DLC which was encrypted too.

Thank you Mashiki for actually offering a well-researched explanation.

Denuvo is anti-tamper rather than true DRM. It doesn't actually contain the enforcement mechanism to prevent copies, it only protects it from being stripped out. There are a few games that do the whole asset encryption thing, but most simply encrypt the EXE.

The actual resource hit can vary based on the developer. Rime's developers managed to screw it up recently, for example. But when it's done right, Denuvo only puts tamper checks into non-perf-critical functions. Slowing down a game with DRM is obviously not a very sound strategy.

As for online activation it's a one-time online access to to fetch the necessary functions. Even basic Steam DRM requires online activation anyhow, so that bit is unavoidable. My understanding is that Denuvo doesn't have an actual always-online mode, rather that's being invoked in some games by their real DRM, but I'd have to double-check that (which is harder than it appears).

At least as far as anti-tamper solutions go, it's easily the best designed system since devs started protecting against such a thing. Which is not to say that it's very pleasant, but it's probably a reasonable compromise given market realities versus consumer rights. That said, it gets a bad reputation due to a mix of the fact that a lot of people hate any kind of security on principle, even more people don't understand the difference between anti-tamper and DRM, and of course, the pirates like to stoke the flames. Plus we've been hating DRM vendors for 20 years now, so why stop now?

Side note: especially for Sonic Mania, some kind of DRM was sadly going to be a necessity. It's a simple game that has no online functionality nor in need of patching, so it's a prime piracy candidate (there aren't any gameplay "incentives" not to pirate it). I imagine Sega wants to avoid the problems Ubisoft encountered with Rayman Origins: they released the game DRM free, and it was ridiculous how heavily it was pirated. Rayman Legends did have DRM, and reportedly saw a lot less piracy since it was no longer trivial.

Though I'm slightly confused on whether Denuvo was even intended for Sonic Mania. Given that it allowed a single bit to be twiddled to turn off the mistakenly-enabled "always online" mode of the game's actual DRM, that implies that it's not actually enforcing anti-tamper.

Nailbender wrote on Aug 25, 2017, 10:14:
OK people, this is all the HL3 we're going to get.

I'll take what I can get. After HL2ep2, closure is all I've wanted. Still, forget Valve!

loomy wrote on Aug 25, 2017, 10:43:
seems like a lot of words to say nothing

I suspect this is just a gift to the community and not actually what they had planned, because if he revealed the end of a story which valve owned, even if they never use it, I think they could and would NAIL him. but it IS shallow enough to be a game story

The guy is the lead writer of the Half-Life series. It may just be "fan fiction", but second to Gabe Newell, he's the only other person in the world that has the authority to claim what is and isn't Half-Life.

In practice, I don't expect the final game would go like this, because rarely does a game stick exactly to the script. But I could easily see this being a Half-Life game, and a fun one at that.

(And I really doubt Valve is going to mind. NDAs expire for a reason, and they obviously don't care about Half-Life anymore)

Mordecai Walfish wrote on Aug 19, 2017, 18:47:

theglaze wrote on Aug 19, 2017, 17:27:
Either way, we're lucky to have such a rich offering of quality racing titles.

Agreed. Many excellent options out there.

What's a good arcade racer these days? I'd kill for another Motorstorm (or even something lower key, ala NFS 3).

Hmm, interesting. Valkyrie is not a game that required VR in terms of game design, but boy did it sure make it a lot of fun. I wonder what non-VR players will think of it?

Gah! So much to play today. Want to play Agents, but Sonic!...

Aww!

Man, I never thought I'd say this, but f(orget) Valve.

I wish them the best of luck, but they are no longer the cutting edge masterpiece quality gaming studio they once were. Now they're just a bunch of whalers.

An interesting game, but damn the original was hard. I wonder if the EX version is any easier?

Cutter wrote on Aug 7, 2017, 20:55:
Yeah, I'm really interested in a game that's marketed by 14 year olds to 14 year olds. Christ, this is worse than Romero making one his bitch.

Except that unlike Daikatana, his genuinely looks good. The problem with talking big is that you need to be able to back it up, which is something Romero could never hope to do.

We’ll also have server-wide giveaways of the TNG Skant Uniform

They put the skant in the game?! Why?!

deqer wrote on Aug 1, 2017, 13:26:
Why they released a new game 1 month later, I dunno.

The original was a 360 game, wasn't it? That's what was released on the PC previously. Whereas this is a new game. (Or so my understanding of it goes)

Given just how much money this thing raises, am I the only person starting to think the players are getting a bum deal? Valve gets 75% of the money, so a $20M prize pool means Valve is pocketing another $60M. Which is far in excess of what all of this costs them.

jdreyer wrote on Jul 13, 2017, 03:17:
Huh, so Eve Online feeling the heat generated by Elite Dangerous?

I'm not sure I follow. EVE has had little science games in them for at least a year now, if not longer.

Well that's a shame to hear. I figured it wasn't a strong seller, but I had no idea it was that low.

However, much to my relief, I'm glad to hear that it's a loss that Introversion could afford. After skirting bankruptcy once, I was afraid that was the direction they'd be going ahead. So I hope their next game goes better for them.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 26, 2017, 22:15:
I admire them for trying something different even if it didn't work out.

Agreed. Introversion is a different kind of studio, and one we'd all be worse off without.

NKD wrote on Jun 26, 2017, 21:15:

Cram wrote on Jun 26, 2017, 21:13:
Fair point, yet FF3 (6) and Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2).

It's a pretty solid lineup on that thing. The Chrono Trigger gambit, curious.

Star Fox 2...that's a thing 20 years later apparently

SNES had way better games than the NES on the whole so the lineup is much more impressive. Earthbound is another supremely good game. Maybe they just didn't want to stick another Square game on there?

Or Square wanted $20 just for the one game...

Bundy wrote on Jun 23, 2017, 23:25:

ViRGE wrote on Jun 23, 2017, 20:31:

Rilcon wrote on Jun 23, 2017, 20:17:
Neat, good for them.

Agreed. I don't "get it", but clearly a lot of other people are enjoying it.

Yup. It's like Minecraft. My kids keep trying to get me into it but I just watch them and think, "how is this fun?"

You'll never feel so old as when you watch a half dozen tweens play Minecraft on a LAN.

Minecraft I get: building stuff is fun. But these last-man-standing survival games I just don't see the fun in them: they're slow and plodding; I'd rather have a flak cannon and a shock rifle any day of the week.

ItBurn wrote on Jun 23, 2017, 20:55:

ViRGE wrote on Jun 23, 2017, 20:32:

Dr_Dissent wrote on Jun 23, 2017, 19:42:
I'm not a lawyer. Do we get our mods back or not?

Yes. As long as they can't be used for MP, you don't make money from them, and they don't steal assets/characters from other games (including other Rockstar games).

As far as I can tell OpenIV is still closed down because of the cease and desist they received. So, still bad.

At this point I don't know if that's a separate negotiation or if they're just taking their time. But as long as it followed the above (especially the bit about not being usable for MP) they should be fine.