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MJBrune

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MJBrune ,

Some quick research send like it highly depends on the lodge. From Wikipedia

Grand Orient de France, in addition to recognising women’s masonry, decided in 2010 that there was no reason that its lodges should not be able to initiate women, thus adding another strand to international co-masonry

So it seems some do allow for co-ed rituals such as initiation. That said the whole thing sounds pretty sexist to me. I’d probably just avoid the whole organization or any ties to them. No reason to give that group more power.

MJBrune , (edited )

They are the reason WotC canceled all those in-development d&d games a year and a half ago. All WOTC published games were canceled because their CEO passed away and they scrambled to find a new one. This new CEO saw all these in-development games and canceled them in an attempt to save money, and with the Dark Alliance game released the year before, they felt there was no recouping development costs.

Overall a huge bummer. I would have liked to play an immersive sim d&d game.

MJBrune ,

Larian isn’t sharing it’s engine and I feel like even if it did, a lot of studios want the creativity of building their own thing. Not just another D&D crpg top-down isometric game. A lot of the D&D games in the works were unique and took interesting risks that might have paid off.

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,...

MJBrune ,

Ideally they didn’t have any crunch time.

MJBrune ,

Linux and F-Droid are neat and all but are almost zero users.

Linux makes up 3% of the desktop market share. You could count ChromeOS as another 3% but that’s pointless when using proton. You might as well use Gmail then.

F-Droid doesn’t provide any stats at all but almost no one even knows about F-Droid unless you are a massive privacy nerd. Even then at least those I talk to still use Google Play while understanding where their information is going rather than abandoning it entirely.

Proton is trying to be a mainstream solution to encrypted and privacy-focused email. Getting it on Windows, Mac, Android (Google Play), and iOS is far more important to them than getting it on F-Droid, the popular Linux repos, or anything else. For good reason, in my opinion, they are making a business.

MJBrune ,

Privacy focused people use more often Linux

I question the validity of that. We don’t really have any stats on that and while at face value, logically it makes sense but a quick search of that exact phrase gives me recommendations for all 3 major desktop operating systems. Cyber Security Experts I would say are a great representative of privacy-focused people and here is a bunch of them saying they wouldn’t use Linux as the host OS: quora.com/Do-cyber-security-professionals-prefer-…

While anecdotal and thus can’t be confirmed one way or another that privacy-focused people use Linux, it creates enough of a question to outright dismiss taking the statement as pure fact just from the common sense argument.

Lastly, one thing we can do is extrapolate data. ProtonMail is a privacy-focused company with 70 million users. www.wired.com/…/proton-mail-calendar-drive-vpn/ So then if ProtonMail is privacy-focused and has 70 million users (far more than the amount of Linux users on Steam as a benchmark.) then why aren’t they putting out Linux desktop support or releasing their app on F-Droid. One could extrapolate that this company which is privacy-focused and has 70 million users still doesn’t see these things as important because they feel like they couldn’t get enough users from supporting these things.

Potentially though, it might be bad to assume Proton is acting towards its own userbase and maybe for some reason it’s actively acting against it. I feel like in that case, if I was a daily Linux user, I wouldn’t want to use proton.

MJBrune ,

I feel like you are then gate-keeping the term privacy-focused to mean “You must use Linux otherwise you aren’t privacy-focused!” Either way, this points back to my original point. You need data to make this claim that more privacy-focused people use Linux. Otherwise, the opposite claim holds just as much water.

MJBrune ,

Because that checkbox undermines the security of EAC. Essentially it allows the service to run in the user space mode instead of kernel mode. This opens up a lot of hacking to games. It’s absolutely not a solution epic wants to take with their largest game.

There is also a very good reason that vac is looked at as the worse anti cheat solution in the industry. So much so that CSGO has to have third party anti cheat in their leagues.

MJBrune ,

Yeah, they don’t want EAC to be fundamentally compromised.

MJBrune ,

It’s a Linux problem because you can’t ensure a kernel module in Linux is untouched by the user. This is a design on Linux. This means Linux and secured anti cheat solutions are fundamentally at odds.

MJBrune ,

That’s simply not a great solution. You can’t make a fast paced fps feel good without trusting the client. Even quake has some factor of client trust. The issue is that even if the client sends just inputs across the network, you still end up with cheats that seems the exact inputs to click on a person’s head. You are trusting the inputs are sane. So that’s the raw metric of not trusting the client, it’s just sending the user data and the user data can be manipulated in order to cheat.

So you still failed to secure the game simply by trusting the client. It’s not possible and it’s an argument that comes from not understanding the technical challenge at play here.

MJBrune ,

Ha, k, if you believe so.

MJBrune ,

Client code isn’t trusted but no matter what the is one set of data you most trust that comes from the client. Input data. So with input data it can be manipulated that another application calculate out a headshot and sends that input. So even only trusting the client where you have to, you’ve failed to secure the game fully because you need to trust input data.

MJBrune ,

Yes but also the barrier to entry on those sorts of hacks is very high. Every houses front door lock can be picked in the matter of minutes. The issue is that lots of people don’t have that skill.

Lastly there are heuristic anti cheat but that’s really only a catch all for inhuman inputs. Not a full solution.

MJBrune ,

We’ve already established you have to trust the client to some extent in a typical game.

Also do you lock your front door despite people being able to lockpick it? Most people do because it raises the barrier to entry.

MJBrune ,

Why should they. They are in the business if making innovative and interesting games. Not innovative hardware or dealing with 2% of the marketplace. They don’t even fully support Mac which has a larger market share. I can’t blame them for making their business one of reducing risks in underdeveloped areas.

MJBrune ,

On the server side, you could check for abnormalities in a person’s stats, for example if they get >90% headshots, if they’re getting a lot of kills outside a weapon’s normal range, amount of time aiming at enemies through walls that they shouldn’t be able to see etc etc

That’s called heuristics and EAC does that as well. Why not do both?

Not saying there shouldn’t be any clientside anticheat at all but at the point of the anticheat putting itsself in kernel space it’s gone too far

Why? this isn’t the opinion of a lot of the players out there.

MJBrune ,

Most people put security cameras in their homes despite them being able to be remotely hacked. Lots of people have an Alexa which could also be seen as letting a stranger in. A lot of people use tools that could be used to compromise their direct use but trust they don’t as for things like anti-cheat being malware. That’s all FUD. There has not been a single large anti-cheat company known to be sending unneeded or personalized user data.

MJBrune ,

Epic really hasn’t done anything bad. If their worse thing is exclusive deals that make indie studios lots of money, that’s not them being bad. The worst thing you can really pin against epic is Sweeney doesn’t like Linux. Which it’s not really an os for everyone.

MJBrune , (edited )

You don’t consider bribing game publishers to only release on their platform instead of actually competing bad?

No, not really. Sony, Microsoft, Stadia, and most storefronts have exclusives with benefits. There are 30,000 exclusives on steam.

pcgamingwiki.com/…/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Ste…

Overall, you should be made at the studios that accept the offer instead of Epic. Epic is just trying to fund indie teams, typically already using their game engine.

I agree though, their storefront sucks and their client is pretty bad too. Although that doesn’t make them “bad”. That just means they have different priorities. I don’t find Linux DEs usable either. They aren’t bad, they just have different priorities.

MJBrune ,

Valve pays 0 dollars for publishers to be exclusive to Steam.

Being on Steam has always been a benefit to publishers. Even in 2004, people wanted on the platform because it’s the platform that Half-Life 2 launched. That is a built-in install base that will have advertising right in their face about your game. Valve pays 0 dollars because Valve doesn’t have to pay money, they already have other ways of paying.

I never said any of them are any better, just because it’s industry standard doesn’t make it good. If you pay publishers to release games exclusively on your platform and you are not actively funding development you are anti-competitive in my eyes. (Also Stadia doesn’t exist anymore)

EA partnered with Valve to bring EA games to Steam. (techspot.com/…/82538-ea-confirms-rumors-partnersh…) This was a direct agreement made with Steam. Not only has money changed hands but Valve has adjusted their revenue rates to get people to release on their platform because of this. Steam has built-in exclusivity clauses. You can release on other platforms but you can’t price your game differently on other platforms. Additionally, if you have a store page on Steam, you must release it on Steam at the same time or sooner than everyone else. Valve does anti-competitive stuff like this all of the time. People just make excuses or accept it but this is Valve driving away competition.

Most of the time they try to snatch up games that are already finished or were already planning to release on Steam/GOG. Sometimes they even pull games from other stores (Rocket League and Fall Guys) after they released or just before they release (Metro). That’s not the practices of someone who wants to compete but someone who wants to get into the market by force without actively doing anything good for the industry.

You should look up where most of the Valve games come from. Counter-Strike, Dota 2, L4D, Portal, Team Fortress, etc were all game studios bought up and told they’d only get to make games for Valve. Remember In the Valley of Gods? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_Santo_(company) Valve bought the team under the promise they’d continue making a game and just put the dev team on Half-Life: Alyx. I’d say Valve is almost worse because they don’t make publishing deals, they’ll buy and adsorb you into their collective.

MJBrune ,

Depends on the climbing mechanics.

MJBrune ,

I honestly don’t think he’ll be able to run. Two or three major things are counting against him.

  1. His health. He’s 77, unhealthy, and he may not make it to 78. Both his parents died very old, mother - 88, father - 93. They also had far fewer health concerns though. Plus he caught COVID-19 with most 70-year-olds getting some sort of form of long covid.
  2. He might be federally barred from office. On March 4, 2024, his insurrection trial will start and if he is found guilty it would be very difficult for any legal system to state he can still hold federal office.
  3. He might not even win the primary much less the federal election. There are a lot stronger republican candidates out there and the GOP is starting to see that Trump is a dividing force. If they don’t go with him, they might split the vote between him and a GOP, if they do go with them, they might split the vote to Democrats.

Lastly and this is like 3.5, Napovointerco might be enacted. If that ever happens the GOP might not win another election. It’s essentially a state pact that these states will honor voting with the national popular vote regardless of what the people in the states vote for. It’s almost at 270 electoral votes. At that point, it will be enacted and the national popular vote will be the deciding factor going forward. The Electoral College will be dead. This also has an interesting side effect that it might cause a civil war.

MJBrune ,

The 2024 legislation might put them over but it’s a long shot.

MJBrune ,

They might but we’ll see. Also it’s not the red states that matter. It’s the purple ones.

MJBrune ,

Yeah, potentially.

MJBrune ,

People were calling them Nazi though. Far before he was even elected. Pride saw the writing in the walls. Now though, now it’s undeniable. He’s a Nazi pushing fascism and authoritarianism.

MJBrune ,

Not really accurate. When the stock market tanked during the pandemic, everyone with a 401k panicked about it. It’s not just the rich caring about the stock market.

MJBrune ,

It absolutely depends. I’m an indie game developer. I’ve worked at various studios as an employee, contractor, and as an owner. Depending on the setup if you pay for a game I worked on I could potentially get a bonus, I could see that money directly as profits, or I could see nothing at all. Sometimes just continued survival of the studio in working at is reason enough for me to encourage people to buy the game but sometimes I’ve not liked where I’ve worked and encouraged people to pirate from a studio that rips off its employees.

So really, the best bet is to ask. The best way to support a game developer is to ask how to send the money directly and buy the game on itch.io if available.

MJBrune ,

Yes, you do, in the form of buying gas or paying taxes. You don’t even have to use the bridge to have to pay for it.

MJBrune ,

They made a justification. They showed you how people couldn’t make these things without people paying for them.

MJBrune ,

people make things all the time without being paid.

Less people make things without being paid than those who make things to get paid. That is a common fact we can both agree on. If you need the number of open source games compared to the number of paid games then I recommend you grab those numbers yourself.

MJBrune ,

It depends on the system. In taxes, yes. Use isn’t tied to paying. In consumer goods and services, they are not paid by taxes. So they do have a direct use/buy causation.

MJBrune ,

You are equating someone’s terrible hobby project to paid games like it’s 1 to 1. You are simply arguing in bad faith. Have a good day though, hopefully, one day we can converse properly.

MJBrune ,

Not at all. I just assumed you understood the basics of quality.

MJBrune ,

Yes, because there is a basic assumption. Those projects aren’t consumer-facing games. Those are hobbies. You know it and you are simply arguing in bad faith. I know actual game developers who released their games for free or under a pay-what-you-want model. They refuse to do so again because they can’t support themselves by doing it. I am a game developer and I won’t release my games for free because I need to support myself. There is all the data you need. Find me other data saying otherwise.

MJBrune ,

It’s more relevant data than you are providing.

MJBrune ,

Lunark. It’s kind of fun. I don’t know, I expected a different challenge than timing based delayed inputs. I thought it’d be more like a platformer with a story rather than feeling like an input queue fighter like dark souls.

MJBrune ,

Sure, and I agree but I’ve seen people trying to kill copyright entirely before fixing the justify their existence through labor bit. Which is entirely wrong, the current world is as such if you killed copyright you’d put million of people out of work.

MJBrune , (edited )

What you linked is not representative of what you said. That’s a patent for a very specific technique in AI navigation. Not anything to do with NPCs feeling anything.

Additionally, looking into it. This headline is a bit sensationalized it’s a patent for one method, not for the concept. “A computer-implemented method of generating speech audio in a video game is provided. The method includes inputting, into a synthesiser module, input data that represents speech content,” it’s method is a bit generic and might be challenged. Overall there are other ways of doing it though.

MJBrune ,

Yeah, I just checked after updating yesterday and didn’t have it enabled.

MJBrune ,

I’m in Washington State. Perhaps it’s something else. I had Nitro and canceled it this year. I don’t remember turning off this specific setting but maybe I did and it’s kept it since? My phone is a S21. I’ve had my Discord account since Dec 2015. The only thing I can think of is that I’ve used my Discord account in California which has slightly different privacy laws than the USA.

MJBrune ,

Conservatives seem to eat fast food more. Conservatives also seem to be home-schooled more. Lastly, liberals seem to try more food than conservatives. Conservatives typically stick to what they know and are more traditional whereas liberals explore and understand more cultures through food.

MJBrune ,

Technically they are all political and reflect the conservative and liberal mindsets.

MJBrune ,

Mint is the distro I use. I started with it in 2008 after being on some free-only Ubuntu-derived distro for about a year. After that, I went to Fedora, Arch, Manjaro then Fedora, then finally back to Mint recently.

most people don’t even have a desktop these days, so there’s not a lot of financial incentive to design a user experience there.

I don’t know if that’s true unless you separate desktops from laptops. I think most Americans at least have at least one home PC. www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/…/4068/ shows this to be true. As well as statista.com/…/united-states-adults-desktop-lapto… and I am sure more stats can be pulled up. I guess if you mean custom-built desktop computers that number is probably low but of things that need to run a 32-bit/64-bit desktop environment computer, there is probably one in every house.

MJBrune ,

No, it’s pretty basic but older games like Castle Crashers, Never Alone, and A Hat In Time. They all get about half the FPS they should on proton but also sometimes they’ll launch and get less than 5 FPS the entire time. I just relaunch and they’ll get about half again. At all times there seems to be a latency between my XBox controller to those games specifically where I don’t notice this lag in rocket league.

MJBrune ,

6.99 for a medium 2 topping pizza isn’t expensive compared to my other options. Also it’s pizza, you shouldn’t eat it every night.

MJBrune ,

The SWAT series was amazing but now I just look back at it as copaganda.

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