@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

lukas

@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is" (www.gamesradar.com)

apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I get the frustration here, but it’s also kind of… idk? A “No, you just don’t understand!” response. Everyone who works in a white-collar job knows what it’s like. Everyone has different theories about why that project failed, but nobody knows the objective truth. Nobody can present a “documented and verified” list of reasons for why the project failed, not even the lead designer here. They can guess, but never reach the truth. He could repeat what he always did without changing anything in the next project, and succeed due to different circumstances, plain good luck.

Valve needs to step up on Anti-Cheat

So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

There is no anti-cheat, instead a global ban tracking system was put in place and server admins are now able to share the identities of players who have been caught cheating, banning them on every server, regardless of who is running them, by the hosts simply opting into the global ban system.

A global ban system without a more nuanced approach is a terrible idea. Operators of that global ban system will whitelist themselves, blacklist people they hate, and maybe even backdoor the mod that enables them to ban people in the first place. Server admins have no choice but to either opt into the entire system or have none at all, and both of these options suck. We’ve seen how this plays out already.

Score players by your own criteria, weight everything with different blacklists, greylists and whitelists, etc. and ban players if they exceed a threshold automatically. It won’t be perfect, but email catches most spam emails that way just fine.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I didn’t describe what could happen, but what did happen in real life. Multiple times.

MCBans is open-source btw, yet nobody checked and changed the source code, as should be expected really. Operators whitelisted alts and friends. Blacklisted server owners who didn’t appreciate that the operators of their global ban list griefed their servers with backdoors.

Another typical example is 3rd-party Discord ban lists. They whitelist their own staff. They backdoor their bots to fuck around with servers. It’s just the reality of global ban lists.

If Erlite doesn’t abuse that trust, then someone with admin access will, or Erlite’s successor. That’s a fact, not an opinion. Email spam filters prevent single trust lists with scores, multiple lists, etc.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Love to see the pen holder in use :P

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Yeah, I also love the pen holder of my IBM Model M. I don’t know about others, but I always keep a pen at my desk. So I may as well use the pen holder built into my keyboard.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

IBM Model M’s melting point is too low to protect against people that abuse the pen holder as an ashtray tho, and mine got shipped to me without protective packaging lol. It works, but a bolt mod and a destructive deep clean was necessary. Yes, Model M’s can get permanent dents and turn yellow if you put enough lit cigarettes on it. Restoration videos don’t show Model M’s as abused as this one.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Sure.

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/1b6221b3-c33a-47ef-b28e-7738391eb6d6.jpeg

Image 1: Packaging

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/def0965b-22cf-4ee6-9e11-c49028e21916.jpeg

Image 2: More Packaging

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/15165c82-4da8-4340-aff9-b6819c129512.jpeg

Image 3: Before Front

Most visible damage in this picture is above the F7 and Druck, Rollen, Pause keys. Druck, Rollen, Pause keys themselves are damaged. Previous owner probably cleaned this IBM Model M from the outside before they sent it to me. You’ll see the horrors soon enough.

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/68e01694-6834-4f33-91a3-84d2a29e1802.jpeg

Image 4: Before Label

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/26258a44-ee3d-4ca6-af0b-83cc3b70537f.jpeg

Image 5: After Back (similar to missing Before Back)

I removed the label from the back.

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/d2205054-470b-402b-9bca-ff2971848848.jpeg

Image 6: Before Assembly Front

Note the ash :(

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/e155ad30-986d-4a19-8ad6-54eff43e7a66.jpeg

Image 7: Before Assembly Back

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/67790b63-3228-48d9-808f-1c0647020474.jpeg

Image 8: Before Internals

How this melted is beyond me. Maybe due to repeated exposure to hot ash?

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/f5af63fe-0b55-493b-825d-f534d5c64343.jpeg

Image 9: After Cinematic Shot

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/db6ffbe1-7f4a-48de-a1e5-991f21d084cf.jpeg

Image 10: After Druck, Rollen, Pause Keys

Destructive cleaning on the side of the keys, though I could also look for replacement keycaps.

https://lemmy.haigner.me/pictrs/image/d2688d72-5c8d-4a87-8bcb-508f1f90dcf8.jpeg

Image 11: After Yellow Spot

More destructive cleaning.

I didn’t make any after pictures of the assembly and internals, but I gave everything a deep clean and bolt modded my IBM Model M.

Is Star Citizen's new server meshing tech plagiarized?

Sorry if this is not the right place to ask, but am I the only one who thinks that Star Citizen’s new server meshing technology is an old hat? I believe it’s the same technology that a few highly scalable Minecraft servers have been using for years. WorldQL introduced this back in 2021, but I think the idea was around even...

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Right? I felt the same thing when I saw the tech demo.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

But isn’t that exactly what the people at WorldQL accomplished already?

To actually solve the problem, something more robust was needed. I set the following goals:

  • Players must be able to see each other, even if on different server processes.
  • Players must be able to engage in combat across servers.
  • When a player places a block or updates a sign, it should be immediately visible to all other players.
  • If one server is down, the entire world should still be accessible.
  • If needed, servers can be added or removed at-will to adapt to the amount of players.

I think the last point specifically addresses your concern about dynamic server meshing. They can scale up or down depending on how many players are in an area.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I’m complaining that Star Citizen sells this technology as new and innovative even though it has been around for quite a while. Minecraft is just how I came into contact with this technology. I edited my post to reflect this.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Fair point. Minecraft itself doesn’t simulate anything in unloaded chunks afaik, so I think the WorldQL PoC can’t change that as a server plugin. They probably could if they develop a Minecraft server from scratch tho.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Thank you for your insightful comment!

What I’ve got full respect for is the multi region problem. I didn’t know that Star Citizen aims to have one global world instead of American, European, Asian, etc. worlds with the ability to travel between them with a latency penalty. I’m curious how they plan to solve that without god-tier peering and an artificial minimum latency to balance combat between distant players.

But I’m struggling to understand static and dynamic zones, maybe you can shed a light on where my understanding went downhill. Static and dynamic zones feel like an implementation detail to me. Do I care whether the replication layer(?) changes the boundaries of a zone, or discards the zone and creates a new zone with the appropriate state? No, only the process is different.

Since static and dynamic zones feel identical to me, I don’t get why a static zone can’t be an authoritative way of transferring object containers. What prevents servers assigned to a static zone from exchanging object information with the replication layer? Nothing, I assume WorldQL also does that.

Okay, so why use dynamic zones? Perhaps the implementation is easier than static zones? Everything else is identical to me, so nothing but the implementation difficulty feels important to me. Or is there a difference between static and dynamic zones about server assignment/scheduling? I don’t know.

What I do know is that my understanding is flawed.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I’m impressed that most people here chose to fight about the definition of the word plagiarism instead of discussing how Star Citizen’s server meshing technology differs from what WorldQL and GrieferGames do. Have fun, but that wasn’t the point of my post.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Yep, that is true. Sorry about that.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

For some disabled people. Microsoft can’t create a universally accessible controller that works for every disability.

IBM Model M missing springs?

I overpaid for this… IBM Model M ashtray, for the lack of a better word. I looked at pictures of the internal assembly online, and I think there’re missing springs? For example, I can’t press the upper half of the enter key because there’s just no spring there, not even blue placeholders. I can’t exactly buy new...

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Good to know! What I also didn’t know is that the spring and stabilizer placement depends on the keyboard layout. My enter, numpad plus, and numpad enter key have what I now assume are metal stabilizer bars. So I guess everything was alright after all, or do these still need stabilizer inserts? I think it’s weird that I can’t press the upper half of the enter key, though.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Still costs $2.00 + $35.20 shipping + $7.44 import sales tax = $44.64, though. I was too impatient when I bought my IBM Model M. I even saw one get sold for $35.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

It’s the ISO enter key with stabilizer judging by that image.

But I found an interesting reference that suggests that everything here works as intended.

https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_ms/shark_1389152_ibm.jpg

Image 1: 122-key IBM Model M

This layout matches mine with the following exceptions:

  • Additional keys from the 122-key variant.
  • I’ve got a two unit high numpad plus key instead of two distinct keys.
  • My layout is German QWERTZ.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Model_M_inside.jpg

Image 2: 122-key IBM Model M internal assembly

If you look at the placement of stabilizer inserts, then this matches my IBM Model M. Same exceptions apply. I couldn’t determine whether the 122-key IBM Model M enter key also uses a stabilizer metal bar, but it’s suspiciously similar to my layout nonetheless.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Apple just shoots itself in the foot with proprietary APIs that nobody else supports. Why should Valve write an additional translation layer for an OS that’s less used than Linux? macOS was always bad for gaming, it merely got worse.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I found a Model M for 105€ on a local auction website. I’ll go check it out.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Fuck around and find out chart

They can always charge 999999999999999999999999,- € for games. Keep the following rules in mind:

  • Demand always exceeds supply to an absurd degree.
  • Price elasticity doesn’t exist.
  • The average willingness to pay for games is way above the 8,40 €, approaching infinity, contrary to the European displacement study on page 170 paragraph 4.
  • 100 % of game pirates will buy games if they can’t pirate games, therefore DRM good.

Fuck around find out basic economic rules.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

When was the last time wages kept up with inflation? Games are entertainment. Money won’t be spent on entertainment when push comes to shove.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Breaking news: Company wants more money.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Trust me bro won’t work when devs phone home custom install analytics tho.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Vendors also re-use MAC addresses to cheap out on costs.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Godot also has first-class Linux support, and built a solid foundation that allows for Wayland support in the future. Developing Unity games on Linux has been broken for a while now.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

They should learn to link to unclassified but not free to distribute manuals instead of posting them directly on the forum.

Not counting games that were unfun because of bugs, what’s the most unfun video game that you’ve played and what made it unfun?

Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.

lukas,
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

Fear of missing out is a feeling, not a bs marketing buzzword.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

“We hear you. I can relate to your struggles. We’d love to solve the problem. Of course, preservation is front and centre when all these decisions are made.” isn’t quite the same as “We’re working on a solution to preserve 360 games. We came up with the following solutions so far: […]. Let us know what you think. Stay tuned!”

I wouldn’t expect anything to come from this. Microsoft employees wrap a “fuck you” in a gift, gaslight the backlash, and tap dance. When the excrement makes abrupt contact with the rotating blades of the fan, the lead self-resigns with a long-wielded and non-apologetic notice. Another Microsoft employee takes over, and leads the team with the same mindset until the next incident.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines