The "Not Worth a New Thread" Thread.

[fog]

Game Dev Tycoon pirates complain about games being pirated.

When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, we did something unusual and as far as I know unique. We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.

The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail…

Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high change to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

So if you play a pirated version of the game then the software you create in-game gets pirated so the game is harder.  Not an entirely new idea but brilliantly appropriate here. 

Better still are the people contacting the devs to complain about the in-game piracy not realising they are exposing themselves as pirates.

[T_M_C]

This isn't the first time i've heard this being done either.

I'm not sure how i feel about it.

Crackers and pirates will just upload the legit version anyway.

And i'm sure posters on Torrent sites will know the legit versions from the crippled versions.

Seems a bit of a waste of time really releasing a cripped version.

Will be interesting to hear the dev's views on whether it's had any impact on sales or not.

TMC

[fog]

Seems a bit of a waste of time really releasing a cripped version.

Will be interesting to hear the dev's views on whether it's had any impact on sales or not.

Looking around the net I would bet that's it's had a hugely positive effect on sales.  Most of the main news sites have run with the story and the devs website has been down most of the time since due to being overloaded.  Free publicity and all that.

It might not have been their original aim, but it might turn out to be a stroke of marketing genius.  


FWIW I can think of a few positives of releasing a pirated version of your own game too although it's probably not worth the effort for most of us

[fog]

Saw this sculpture on Wired and thought it looked really cool....the wire web giving the illusion of a billboard being there.  


http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/22/ghost-billboard

[T_M_C]

 

TMC

[fog]

Agh this keyboard really is dead. 

Finally the ctrl key has given up altogether.  copy/paste and pretty much everything in Paintshop now takes twice as long.

Where's my new Macbook Apple? 

[T_M_C]

This is dead impressive.

Euclideon Geoverse 2013	powered by Aeva

There was a lot of talk before about the unlimited detail tech demo's as being fake.

I remember Notch pretty much saying as much.

But this looks pretty genuine to me and really impressive.

TMC

[fog]

Yeah that looks really good.

To be fair to the doubters that street map is a hell of a lot less impressive than the detail they showed on their island demo and claimed they could do. 

The island had no gaps even on the individual grains of soil (which was stretching the truth) yet the point cloud for the street wasn't particularly dense, with noticeable gaps and data for just one side of many objects was stored, not truly 3D.

I don't doubt it's a technical achievement if real and it will have a market as they show in their video, I just think currently it's uses are fairly limited and we are a long way off that being a practical option for gaming.  Even with the low density point cloud of the street demo the frame rate doesn't look stellar and add in lighting, physics and player interaction etc and it would be a fraction of that.


Atomontage looks like a better short term target.  Visually it's more minecraft than Geovrse but it already looks an option for gaming and realtime deformation would be really cool.

Atomontage Engine - Voxelized Geometry	powered by Aeva

[T_M_C]

Yeh, voxels have come a long way..

It's something i had a brief look at a while ago.

For gaming, nothing compares to the hardware polygon / physics systems we currently have.

I can see though in the not too distant future, hardware voxel graphics card becomming mainstream.

I know voxels have been used in industry and medicine for a long time now and they are slowly entering the gaming world.

On a nerdy tech level, it's all fascinating stuff.   

TMC

[fog]

On a nerdy tech level, it's all fascinating stuff.   

It is

I would imagine a hybrid poly & voxel system using LOD would work well.  At a distance use traditional poly models then up close change to voxels.  It would save a decent amount of memory and processing too if you load the data on the fly.

[T_M_C]

So, A Uk person has finally reached the centre of Peter Molyneux's Curiosity cube.

Read the full story here.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/409138/molyneuxs-curiosity-cube-concludes-with-uk-winner/

I'm not too sure what to make of it.

I think it's a cool prize.   

TMC

[fog]

So, A Uk person has finally reached the centre of Peter Molyneux's Curiosity cube.

Read the full story here.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/409138/molyneuxs-curiosity-cube-concludes-with-uk-winner/

I'm not too sure what to make of it.

I think it's a cool prize.  

Yeah I saw that.  Money wise it's potentially a decent enough prize I just wish he wasn't so pretentious about it trying to dress it up as something different.  Don't hide behind the "god" thing, it's a cash prize.

Any input the winner will have as a "god" in Godus will only be within the parameters they already have in the game so he can't unbalance or break it.  They have also said he can be deposed which I assume they will do if he starts doing anything silly or, you know, interesting.