QuadratureSurfer

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in Dark and Darker: Now free to play.

It was on Steam, up until Nexon sued them because they suspected stolen assets were used.

So far it doesn’t look like that was true, and the case that was filed in the U.S. was eventually dismissed (since it should be handled by the courts in South Korea).

So hopefully we’ll see it back in the steam store, eventually.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in Dark and Darker: Now free to play.

Yeah, it looks like Nexon was trying to crush their competition (there was a lead developer that left Nexon and went to work on Dark and Darker).

The police didn’t find anything obvious when they investigated Nexon’s allegations. And they had already had an audit conducted by an external group:

Our code was built from scratch. Most of our assets are purchased from the Unreal marketplace. All other assets and all game designs docs were created inhouse. This has already been audited by an outside agency. As far as we know you cannot copyright a game genre.

vg247.com/dark-and-darker-devs-raided-by-police-f…

The lawsuit that Nexon filed in the U.S. was eventually dismissed, but Steam pulled the game from their store, so that damage was already done:
gamerant.com/dark-and-darker-nexon-lawsuit-dismis…

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in Dark and Darker: Now free to play.

PvPvE

Different teams are thrown in around a map, you then work with your team to try to survive and make it out to the end.

You don’t have to engage other players on other teams, but chances are they’ll engage you.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in ZOTAC Zone is yet another AMD [Windows] gaming handheld

Seriously?!

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in ZOTAC Zone is yet another AMD [Windows] gaming handheld

While you’re absolutely correct, for those who don’t know, Windows does have an IoT version of their OS that removes most of the bloatware.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to technology in Chrome: 72 hours to update or delete your browser.

Getting away from Google Maps has been a tough one. There aren’t many options there, it’s either Google, Apple, Microsoft, or OpenStreetMap.

I’ve been contributing to OSM for my local area as much as possible to update businesses and their opening hours, website, etc., but it’s not a small task.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to gaming in Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios Group is closing the Montreal studio it acquired just 8 months ago

Not just the U.S.
Avalanche Studios has their headquarters in Sweden and they’re closing their studio in Canada (per this article). Additionally, Phoenix Labs (Dauntless & Fae Farm) is a Canadian game developer and they just let go of a significant number of developers and cancelled all future projects (about 3 weeks ago): pcgamer.com/…/dauntless-developer-phoenix-labs-la…

While Microsoft was the one shutting down multiple Game Developers last month, those studios are also based all over:
Tango Gameworks - Japan
Alpha Dog Games - Canada
Arkane Studios - (Headquarters in France, but shutting down their Studio in the U.S.)
Roundhouse Studios - U.S.

Edit: formatting

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to gaming in Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios Group is closing the Montreal studio it acquired just 8 months ago

How many game studios is that within a 2 month period?!

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to technology in Tesla Cybertruck Dominated by F-150 Lightning In Sand Drag Race

Once again, the Simpsons predicted the future: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPc-VEqBPHI

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to videos in Non-Euclidean Doom: what happens to a game when pi is not 3.14159…

Hah, there’s still about 1,100 different projects still using the wrong value of Pi: github.com/search?q=3.141592657&type=code

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in AMD's Dr. Lisa Su on the role of artificial intelligence in gaming: 'Not everything has to be rendered'

Yes, but with DLSS we’re adding ML models to the mix where each one has been trained on different aspects:

Interpreting between frames
For instance, normally you might get 30FPS, but between the frames the ML model has an idea of what everything should look like (based off of what it has been trained on), so it can insert additional frames to boost your framerate up to 60FPS or more.

Upscaling (making the picture larger) - the CPU and other hardware can do work on a smaller resolution which makes their job easier, while the ML model here has been trained on how to make the image larger while filling in the correct pixels so that everything still looks good.

Optical Flow -
This ML model has been trained in motion which objects/pixels go where so that better prediction of frame generation can be achieved.

Not only that but Nvidia can update us with the latest ML models that have been trained on specific game titles using their driver updates.

While each of these could be accomplished with older techniques, I think the results we’re already seeing speak for themselves.

Edit: added some sources below and fixed up optical flow description.

digitaltrends.com/…/everything-you-need-to-know-a…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSiczcJgY1s

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in AMD's Dr. Lisa Su on the role of artificial intelligence in gaming: 'Not everything has to be rendered'

If you’re trying to compare “AI” and electrical use you need to compare every use case to how we traditionally do things vs how any sort of “AI” does it. Even then we need to ask ourselves if there’s a better way to do it, or if it’s worth the increase in productivity.

For example, a rain sensor on your car.
Now, you could setup some AI/ML model with a camera and computer vision to detect when to turn on your windshield wipers.
But why do that when you could use this little sensor that shoots out a small laser against the window and when it detects a difference in the energy that’s normally reflected back it can activate the windshield wipers.
The dedicated sensor with a low power laser will use far less energy and be way more efficient for this use case.

On the other hand, I could spend time/electricity to watch a Video over and over again trying to translate what someone said from one language to another, or I could use Whisper (another ML model) to quickly translate and transcribe what was said in a matter of seconds. In this case, Whisper uses less electricity.

In the context of this article we’re talking about DLSS where Nvidia has trained a few different ML models for upscaling, optical flow (predicting where the pixels/objects are moving to next), and frame generation (being able to predict what the in-between frames will look like to boost your FPS).

This can potentially save energy because it puts less of a load on the CPU, and most of the work is being done at a lower resolution before upscaling it at the end. But honestly, I haven’t seen anyone compare the energy use differences on this yet… and either way you’re already using a lot of electricity just by gaming.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to technology in 24 of the best free alternatives to the most popular paid software

It might be the lack of sleep, but what are you trying to say here?

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to pcgaming in Leaks Show Assassin's Creed And Rabbids Coming To Ubisoft's CoD-Like Shooter

The silly rabbit-like creature on the right of the post/article image.

QuadratureSurfer , 1 month ago to technology in US Slows Plans To Retire Coal-Fired Plants as Power Demand From AI Surges

Bitcoin difficulty chart - good point.

Effectiveness of AI powered search - Agreed, it is a very subjective topic. I don’t use LLMs for the majority of my searches (who needs hallucinated dates and times for the movies playing at a cinema near me?) and it sounds like Google is trying to use their LLM with every search now… In my opinion we should have a button to activate the LLM on a search rather than have it respond every time (but I don’t really use Google search anyway).

Translation/Transcription tech - It’s incredibly useful for anyone who’s deaf. Your average person doesn’t need this, although I’m sure they benefit from the auto-generated subtitles if they’re trying to watch a video in a noisy environment (or with the volume off).
In my own personal use I’ve found it useful for cutting through the nonsense posted by both sides of either the Ukraine/Russia conflict or the Israel/Gaza conflict (in the case of misinformation targeting those who don’t speak the language).

Generative AI - Yeah, this will be interesting to see how it plays out in courts. I definitely see good points raised by both sides, although I’m personally leaning towards a ruling that would allow smaller startups/research groups to be able to compete with larger corporations (when they will be able to buy their way into training data). It’ll be interesting to see how these cases proceed on the text vs audio vs image/art fronts.

Wasteful AI - Agreed… too many companies are jumping in on the “AI” bandwagon without properly evaluating whether there’s a better way to do something.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read through everything.