RogueSix wrote on Jun 9, 2025, 15:47:
Hope they fixed the shitty camera/movement control scheme.

I have heard second hand, by some who had tested it early, that the controls were significantly improved from the original game. I haven't played the EE version myself, but I remember struggling with the original NWN2 game.

Prez wrote on Jun 4, 2025, 15:12:

AI Prompts Will Soon Let a 10-Person Team Build a Game Like Breath of the Wild Where the AI Is Doing All the Dialogue and You Just Write Character Synopsis, Tim Sweeney Predicts

Sure, and it will take another decade before it's not a non-stop joke engine to be endlessly memed. Apple "Intelligence" anyone?

I know a guy in the industry; he works for a large international developer. About a year and a half ago, he was tasked with forming a team to attempt to make a complete game using "AI" (I hate that word). The team grew to 20, then 50, then 80, then 120, and that was when they shut it all down. After almost a year, all everyone was doing was trying to train the "AI" to create code, dialog, art, animations, sound, music, and then make it all work together. It just never came together. At that point they reasoned that it wasn't viable and that they would have been much further along if the same people were actually trying to make a game with their usual tools.

Let. People. Enjoy. Things.

A fantastic book on this topic is "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet", by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late

That link seems to be a trailer for a Fairy Tale 2.

The "cloud" is just "someone else's computer".

And it was more viable back when it wasn't so expensive.

ShakaUVM wrote on Oct 18, 2024, 00:01:
Subnautica 1 was amazing. The weird second game they made was not nearly as good, but they did add a bunch of new structures to build... thankfully they backported them into Subnautica 1 as well.

I didn't mind the second one, but it didn't have the "magic" of the first one. And I love that them put all the UI and other game improvements back into the original. Looking forward to this one!

I Use Cross Ventilation and Turn Down the AC to Save Big Bucks on Electric

Jeebus, these articles. I have lived in 1 apartment and 4 homes and none of them have had windows that allow for a breeze to blow through. The current place I am in, the attic insulation must be 60 years old and if we set the AC to a higher value or turn it off for an hour, the house just starts baking from its own stored heat.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Jul 14, 2024, 14:12:
Division 3 needs a major overhaul of storage space, or a different item system entirely.

This part is 100% true.

I was looking forward to seasonal characters, a la Diablo 3, but wow were there a vocal amount of people against it. It was a weird experience for me as I thought it sounds like a good idea, but when I saw some videos and feedback, there were several folks who were against it for the same reasons I liked it. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

I feel bad for this dude. It feels like the Xbox app is what is causing some of the problems. Sure, a bunch of the launchers don't let you be logged in from 2 places at once; Steam has got them beat in this area. But the other issues are really weird and not something I have seen in many many years of running 5 launchers at the same time.

There are so many good games out there, from good devs with good ideas, whether it is 1 person or 20, I feel compelled to support them, regardless if the game's genre appeals to me.

Dark Goofy meme: And I'll fucking do it again!

RedEye9 wrote on May 17, 2024, 18:05:
old slogan “‘If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going!'” https://mynorthwest.com/3956084/boeing-slogan-if-its-not-history-its-a-mystery/
meets the new motto
‘If it’s Boeing, I’m not going’

Screwdrivers Now Permitted On Boeing Flights, To Allow Passengers To Help With Maintenance

Indiana judge rules that tacos, burritos are "Mexican-style sandwiches."

I understand that the use of the word "sandwiches" is being used in the generic, but The Cube Rule has already solved this debate.

https://cuberule.com/

Tacos are Tacos and burritos are Calzones.

Always wondered why they never found the Bioware filing cabinet with Icewind Dale II in it.

BioWare never had Icewind Dale II source. It was done by Black Isle Studios and unfortunately the source code has been lost, despite many people looking for it over the years. People check around once every few years, but no luck so far.

Misia, Erin, and Jill are great devs. They would be a great addition to any game studio. I am sad that I won't be able to work with them anymore.

Well, now I have to go look up what TurboHUD4 is.

Tom wrote on Jun 25, 2023, 19:12:
Ok, given that crediting is standard practice in these two industries, it may be a red flag if someone's name is missing from the credits. But if the due diligence is as simplistic as "did your name appear in the credits? no? must be lying then, see ya", that's pretty screwed IMO. I guess in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively minor deficiency though.

That's the problem. There isn't a standard in the games industry, nor are there unions to enforce bad executives and publishers. There are guidelines, but it isn't from a body that has any sway at any developer or publisher. Its all up to the individual dev houses and good will. And "pretty screwed IMO" is absolutely correct, if that is how that place works. But you can't know if where you are applying is a rational place or not.

Tom wrote on Jun 25, 2023, 18:32:
If credits listings on games were really so important, that would seem to imply that all of the folks who work on professional software applications and MANY other things that don't have credits listings are getting screwed, can't find work, etc. But that's not even remotely the case in my experience.

Fair enough, but it doesn't imply that at all. Credits in videogames are more akin to credits in movies, than other software. The games industry is more like the movie industry, than other software. It is just the way it is. At least the movie industry has more unions that protect those workers in this specific situation.

And you are correct; none of my non-games software friends have this kind of problem. I would also say that the vast majority of non-game software doesn't have credits of any kind, so this kind of proof is never expected nor asked for.

Really it comes down to direct experience, with me in games and my cousin in movies. I know that the first 2 movies he worked on, he is neither in the credits nor are those movies listed on his IMDB profile, but he still worked on them and he can't really prove it.

Acleacius wrote:
I wonder if the Credits had something to do with the original drm, and this is only a temporary issue.

Not likely, at least not in any game engine I have ever worked with. Credits are usually either a pre-rendered movie/images or a text file that is read at run-time. This allows for easy fixes or additions in patches.

Prez wrote:
Without a mention of your contribution in the credits, can you even still include that on your resume? I'm just trying to wrap my head around just how egregious this actually is.

You absolutely can, but it really comes down to how the various companies screen your resume. There is a certain amount of fact checking that needs to be done, to make sure that someone isn't someone claiming years of experience, with nothing to back it up.

Tom wrote:
Sure, why not? What matters is that you did the work. Most people don't have their name in credits somewhere as proof that they worked on something. If you need to prove it to someone, there are other ways.

There really aren't. I will explain more at the bottom.

Prez wrote:
But it's still pretty disrespectful. Credit needs to be given or it's a slap in the face to people who I'm sure worked very hard. In my former line of work as an electrician credit was never taken. Whereas I made sure that I was properly credited on my music. In a creative endeavor it matters very much.

This, exactly. Because it all comes down to claims and proof.

Jim wrote:
Eh, I don't think this realistically matters much. they screwed up deleting the DRM files and probably deleted a credits file. Even so, these games have been out for years in Japan and also for years on steam. I doubt anyone is going to play them on GOG and look at the credits.

This is the one exception to this specific situation, in that there are other versions of the game out there that can back up their claims.


Since I have been personally responsible for the credits in the last several games I have worked on, I have a bit of insight for this situation.

In most places in North America, when you are contacted to confirm that an employee worked for your company, you are only allowed to state their start date and their end date. No comments on performance, problems, work they did, or any specifics outside of start and end dates. This is because any comment, positive or negative, opens these large corporations to lawsuits from previous employees or new employers if they don't work out. I had to sit through a very brief bit of legal training where I was told over and over, "Start date. End date." and that was it.

So, how do you prove that the years you worked at a game company were actually on a game, in the position that you are claiming? Credits are pretty much the one guarantee that what you claim is correct. Credits don't go out until most of the senior folks on a project and company have reviewed them, including Legal.

Sure, you can point people to Moby Games, and that carries a certain weight, mainly because it is crowd sourced, and based on what people read from the credits. I can send people to my entry, but because it isn't "ground truth" and it could still be wrong.

https://www.mobygames.com/person/27739/derek-french/credits/

How much of the above is correct? Well, most of it, but there are some errors. But I have enough there that it doesn't matter. But what about someone who has worked in the industry for 5 years on 3 different project that shipped, and has been screwed over for credits each time? How do they prove their work?

This is also why many developers appreciate folks that screen capture the credits of a game and upload them to YouTube. Another fairly solid record of work.

Credits in game companies are VERY political, if you work with petty, vindictive people in power. Usually, each company has a crediting policy and mostly aligns with the Game Developers association crediting standards. But in the end, it comes down to who in the company has the final say. I had one senior person come to me and demand that I remove an employee from the credits, because after contributing a significant amount of work on the project, for just over a year, the got a job offer from another big developer, and so they resigned before the game shipped. That was the reason they wanted them removed. Because they left and the senior person was a tiny, tiny, human and had their feelings hurt. So I took this to the person in charge, and they overruled the senior person, thankfully. Other times it has gone the other way. I feel confident in saying that each time that someone was removed from the credits, it was never because they didn't work on the project.

The comment about electrical work got me thinking. I have a friend who is an electrician and I know that he talked about how his name or a supervisor's is usually on permits and such, so that is the "credit" in that particular situation. Not completely the same, but I think you get my point.

bjack wrote on Jun 21, 2023, 20:42:
Requires "Epic Online Services" installed even if you play through Steam.

EOS is how we do matchmaking and multiplayer in MythForce, regardless of where you buy the game.
It does not require the Epic Games client to play on Steam.
It does not require an Epic account nor any type of linking to other account systems to play on Steam.
EOS is essentially a "driver" installed at the same time as the game is installed on Steam. After that, you can just play.