[-] Mars@beehaw.org 14 points 4 months ago

Not being intended as a joke makes it even funnier. I mean, the lack of awareness is amazing.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 10 points 4 months ago

As I said Creation Engine did mot stop another studio from being creative.

They are not being hold back by Creation Engine in game design, they are stuck in a design philosophy and production strategy that until now has and got them lots of praise and sales.

They use the chest trick because saves reworking the inventory and container system. That would take time and left the game almost the same, so they don’t.

If they used Unreal engine they’d have to build a new inventory and container system from scratch, who knows if they would end up taking the hidden chest idea (it mostly works) and porting it?

The “Update your engine Bethesda” discussion is valid from many points of view, but most of the problems with current Bethesda releases are cultural. They don’t test nearly enough, they don’t have a “fun” game until a couple months before release, they don’t coordinate the content and mechanics production in any way, the quest writing is a free for all.

And until now things worked out. So they refuse to address those issues.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 18 points 4 months ago

How would a engine change affect the game design philosophy of Bethesda?

Performance? Visuals? Alright. But game design?

Creation Engine powers Starfield and Fallout New Vegas. Quests can be complex, dynamic, with multiple endings, with lots of ways to approach them. Or they can be flat fetch quests. The tools allow both and everything in between.

Bethesda just chooses to use the current game design framework and would choose the same on any other engine.

They are actually updating their game design principles. They stopped using game design documents, they simplified the quests, they try to make sure every play through gets to see as much content as possible. Maybe they should stop updating.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 8 points 4 months ago

When has that stopped any tech or fake-tech company from making their IPO?

The IPO is where the Venture Capitalist get their paychecks. Is that or being acquired by some big tech like Google or Microsoft.

The current vc investments can not really be recouped with profits. They exist to make company valuation as big as possible before the IPO, so they can as much money as possible selling as much as the company as they can without losing control of the board.

The company will pump REVENUE just before the IPO to increase valuation, but the PROFIT right now is inconsequential in comparación with the total addressable market. It’s all pure speculation and a terrible way to make a sustainable business, but it’s the best way to get a lot of money for the VC and the founders.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 27 points 6 months ago

They tried. Then apple dropped 32bit binaries support.

Apple is a very expensive partner to have. They do whatever they want with their ecosystem and many developers have been burned when apple decides to make their work obsolete or outright copies it and makes part of the bundled in apps.

So. It would be amazing if valve updated every one of their games for new versions of macOS and if they would kept MacOS proton support. But macOS is a moving target that will break backwards compatibility whenever it suits apple. So I understand that is hard to justify the investment.

In the end MacOs and Linux where less than a 1% of the Steam user base. But one is an open ecosystem where there is competition and some semblance of respect for backwards compatibility and the other is a closed and sometimes hostile environment.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 17 points 9 months ago

It’s funny how computers are almost the only human invention that for some reason must be able to be used without learning anything.

We don’t do that for almost anything else. We expect people to learn how to drive, how to fill taxes, how to buy things on the store, how to cook, how to play chess. It seems like the only cases when someone decides learning stuff is an inconvenience is when tech people get into another field and tries to disrupt it.

I am all about making things as simple as they can be, but not simpler. Intuitive is a super relative term that depends on your knowledge and life experience. People find Office intuitive after using it for twenty years, but for me is a nightmare where legacy features intermingle with weird cloud and AI shit, and most of the time I only need a markdown file. No interface is intuitive, they are only familiar, clear, accesible, discovereable, etc.

Interface Design goes in cycles of skeuomorphism and simplification because computer stuff is not Intuitive, you have to open the way with metaphors people can understand, and when they are part of everyday life you can make the app for the virtual credit cards not look like it’s made of leather.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 20 points 10 months ago

In Spanish we have an expression, “¡No se podía saber!” It’s something like “Who could have seen it coming?”

NFTs are a bad investment? ¡No se podía saber!

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 13 points 11 months ago

It’s amazing how so many people are falling into the trap and arguing against or even in favor of Microsoft’s CoD argument.

A single game of whatever size or importance is not the problem. But it’s in Microsoft’s best interest that the discourse keeps being this lacking in nuance and centered in aspects like this.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 34 points 11 months ago

Multiple communities with the same theme in diverse servers mean lots of repeated information in my home page.

I find hard to find new niche communities. All is all, the common denominator. My home is what I already have subscribed. Local instance communities are there. But I don know a good way to get offended content from communities outside of those categories.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 9 points 11 months ago

Vivaldi is a chrome derived browser. Using it entrenches Google power over the web.

The manifest v3 debacle, weird “standards” like the recent Web Environment Integrity and more are only posible because Google controls most of the web clients through Blink and V8. They can make or break standards thanks to the massive amount of Chrome and Chromium related browsers, like Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, Edge, etc.

So, glad you like Vivaldi, but you are not that far from google and are in fact an asset for their goals.

We need Firefox alive and well. If we lose it, Google will be THE web and will control it’s foreseeable future.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 22 points 11 months ago

“Prompt Engenieer” is one of the funniest thinks that have happened in the recent history of the world.

“Learn to ask questions to a prediction algorithm and get rich! Is the work of the future! Software engineers and writers will lose their jobs, but asking questions is an evergreen field!”

Dude, if the algorithm only understand correctly formatted input is a parser. We have those.

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 19 points 11 months ago

I had a problem with my family account on Spotify and my options for asking for support were twitter dms or some meta stuff (Facebook dms?)

I was 🤏🏻 this close to cancel my account right there, but my partner still has social media accounts, so they solved it in my name.

Get a freaking email inbox…

view more: next ›

Mars

joined 1 year ago