thingsiplay

joined 6 months ago
[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Current one already sold huge amount and console entered into its end of lifecycle anyway. Most who purchased it did already. So all is left is the next one. I mean lot of people won't buy it for high price anyway, so there is more or less only the hardcore fans adopting the console early. But if they don't buy it either, then the console will fail. But... this only works if other consoles have a disk drive (or cartridges).

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 35 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The best protest is not to buy their next console.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is not personal.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago
[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 days ago

Just because you like children does not make you an evil person.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 days ago

Patent is not Copyright. That's something completely different.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If recipes were copyrightable, then we couldn't sell anything on earth, because someone copyrighted it someday somewhere in the world. Recipes itself aren't creative work nor expressions of human thoughts, because everyone interprets (an expression) the recipe their way and is vastly different product. Writing a recipe is easy, there is no creativity needed either. I could write 1 million recipes and now they are mine and no one can use them if I don't allow? It does not depend which of the recipes make sense. See why this analogy does not hold up to other creative work which involves at least a little bit of creativity, such as characters or software code.

I didn't just decide to defend copyright, I just list why its needed and what positive effects it has. You just dismiss all the good reasons to have Copyright. Just ignore those parts if you got defeated and can't argue anymore. So should I stop discussing with people who disagree with me too? I think you don't even understand Copyright, as your obsession with the recipe example demonstrates.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Your recipes example is bad, because it is not an invention of creative act. I feel like people don't understand why Copyright even exist. The point is not that everything has to be Copyrightable. And those non related issues are not a reason for or against Copyright, because they are unrelated. Making money isn't even the only reason why Copyright exist.

The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

If there was no Copyright, then everyone can steal from everyone else. Why would anyone try hard to come up with something, build it out and sell it. Just so others steal it for free and destroy your shop because they have more money to advertise? And this makes Software licenses such as Open Source impossible. Maybe they make changes to the software code after stealing yours and make it proprietary. That means Microsoft could steal all Open Source software, make changes to them and built them into Windows. Then people depend on the variant from Microsoft. This undermines Open Source and would definitely destroy any competition to Microsoft.

There are many examples and reasons why Copyright is a good thing.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think you guys misunderstand my critique here.

I'm not talking about any article (your provided link from 2015, probably the one the tweet is talking about? But we don't know which study they are referencing) or personal experiences (as in the other replies to me), but about the study not linked that is been talked in the screenshot. The problem I have is, to present a narrative, then screenshot it, share without any links. We don't know if the study they talk about in the screenshot is real or any good. There is no transparency here.

Edit: Okay, so it seems like this article might be the origin of the tweet context. Looks like this article is cited often in the web, I searched it a bit. Wish these links were provided when sharing. Thanks for finding it. Also interesting the alternative theories in the same article:

There are two alternative social explanations for our results. First, players could be responding to the novelty of having a female voiced teammate in a male-dominated environment. Indeed, a female speaking while playing first-person shooter games is rare as none of the 189 players recorded were female. However, novelty is not the driver of the differences in behaviour as performance and skill mediated the number of positive and negative statements. Second, individuals may simply be responding more aggressively towards individuals with a higher pitched voice (a female in this case), as dominance is predictable by voice pitch [38]. Although we cannot rule out this possibility, it’s still in line with our finding that individuals feel more threatened by lower-status individuals.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

He did not change his mind, the AI changed, and got way less bad.

He changed his mind, because Ai started to get useful.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Add "RTFM" to the list.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Kinda curious does the same principle apply in other aspects of life?

I honestly doubt the study was done properly. It sounds like made up of people hating woman, just to create friction. Maybe there is a study, made by woman in example (doesn't have to) who felt attacked often. Yes, there are hostilities towards woman, but also towards men in general. There are many reasons. Sure some of them act like this for the described reasons in the tweet, but we don't know how many. I've seen lot of stupid studies before.

 

Collection of pre-patched Super Mario World Romhacks and Mods from SWMDB.me 202107 By Storage Manager (Repack)

Uploaded by Thingsiplay

Originally uploaded by Storage Manager at https://archive.org/details/super-mario-world-hacks (defunced now). This is a repackage of the same files. The original collection contains over 29 thousand files, only compressed as individual files. This means that Internet Archive's internal "on-the-fly-zip" doesn't work and each file has to be downloaded individually. I downloaded all files and packaged them up into multiple archives based on their category directory they were sorted into. Also the original source no longer exists, therefore this is a reupload for archival purpose.

Legacy information from original upload:

Complete: Entire collection of original upload. Each category is archived separately for easy download. The original 14 GiB full set of 29k compressed Roms. Every single Rom file is compressed as 7z.

Reduced: A script clean_smwdb.sh tries to detect multiple versions of a Rom and keeps only the newest entry of it. Furthermore bad files and unneeded categories (such as Jokes and Trash) are deleted. This reduces the total number of files from 29k to "only" 8k uncompressed Roms. Also while each category is still packaged for batch downloads, every single Rom file in it are already extracted (unlike the Complete packages).

 

I see often people say that the distro you are using doesn't matter. One can turn any distro into another. And I do not agree with that. If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions? I always said, if distros don't matter...

  • ... why distro hop?
  • ... why don't you use Ubuntu then?
  • ... why don't you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?
  • ... why don't you use Kali Linux as a server?
  • ... why don't you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?
  • ... why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro? (or vice versa)

I don't think that distros only matter to newcomers. Maybe it matters for experienced users even more.

 

Today I want to talk about a research to find and play an old game I played on mobile phones. Unfortunately it wasn't available or playable anymore and I looked into alternatives. This post is just a little history of my research, that's all. The conclusion is: Unfortunately I don't use iPhone or an Android with Google Play Store anymore, so cannot play these anymore.

2009 there was this game geoDefense Swarm, which I loved very much. Played it a lot on my iPod Touch (i think fourth gen?). https://www.mobygames.com/game/46398/geodefense-swarm/ The iPhone version of geoDefense Swarm appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. Later when I got an iPhone 5, the game was no longer playable on this device. It was just too old and not compatible. This annoyed me a lot.

Years later after switching to Android, I noticed the game geoDefense Swarm was only available on Apple devices. This annoyed me a lot.

2011 or a bit later I found out about an free game, that is inspired and very, very similar to that game: ZDefense HD. Loved that game and it was similar in look, game design and feel as geoDefense. This didn't annoy me.

6 years ago, 2020, I did a recommendation to the game on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/gwbh2m/comment/fsu29th/:

My favorite Tower Defense game is an old one, which is a free and open grid, without lanes. But it is exclusive to Apple Store and does not work on newer phones anymore. Luckily there is a new game inspired by it (you can clearly tell) and its really good too. To be honest, this is the only tower defense game I like and one of the few games I actually played on my phone.

ZDefense HD

Today in 2026 I looked at the link again and the game does not exist anymore. Maybe because its no longer compatible, who knows. This annoyed me a lot.

So I begun to research again and found this blog https://zdefense.blogspot.com/ from the developer of that game. ZDefense is also available on https://www.amazon.com/ZStudio-ZDefense/dp/B0058OUJA4 and the free variant https://www.amazon.com/ZStudio-ZDefense-Lite/dp/B0058OVI9A with Minimum Operating System: Android 2.1, so don't know how compatible this is with modern Android. Game is also not available on any other place. This annoyed me a lot.

I found out that the original GeoDefense was rebuild from scratch by original developers (if I'm correct) to be compatible with modern devices at https://www.geodefence.com/ . Bottom of the page has date 2021, so maybe outdated. The link to the AppStore works, but not the one to Google Play Store. This annoyed me a lot.

At this point, I'm so done. I would be happy if someone does a knockoff of geoDefense, that looks, feels and plays similar. All other Tower Defense games are so different. And to my surprise, there is HexDefense for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gotow.hexdefense . This looks amazing and comments are from 2026. But... I am no longer on stock Android and do not use the Play Store. And game is not available on F-Droid or elsewhere. This annoyed me a little bit.

My current research led to Infinitode 2 - Tower Defense at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prineside.tdi2 . A bit different, so not a true replacement for geoDefense or ZDefense. But it looks interesting, has even bosses! The game is even available for free on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/937310/Infinitode_2__Infinite_Tower_Defense. This didn't annoy me.

What is my conclusion? Well I'm not satisfied. This is why game preservation is important. I can find some APK files to install on the net, but I do not trust them much. Too sketchy to me to install from untrusted sources. Maybe if I get a modern Android phone again, or even an iPhone, just to game on the go, I'll try again.

(Edit: Just typos and rephrased a few sentences to make it better flow in reading.)

 

I recently added a secondary TV to my PC with KDE setup, in addition to the main monitor. I have it on a different position and angle and only turn it on for certain use cases, watching from different place. And I love the fact that I can create and build a dedicated panel with the widgets I want to have on that screen only. I don't need every panel and functionality on that screen.

Just curious, is this something Microsoft Windows users can actually do? If not, this is something I would "advertise" for Linux.

 

After almost 2 decades the Romhack project is finally finished as version 1.0. Project is called EarthBound Collection and consists of two Romhacks / Mods: 1. Beginnings Remake is the full remake with bugfixes and additional changes, while Giygas Strikes Back is the same project with the bugfixes only.

You can apply the patch directly on their website, by providing the original unpatched "EarthBound (USA).sfc" file. BTW the unpatched ROM can have different filename, check with the Inspector https://supremekirb.neocities.org/tools/rom_inspector your unpatched ROM to be sure. Nothing gets uploaded, the check and patch are done locally in your browser.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48547220

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/78E3-7431-1E88-AD59#retailers

Can I purchase Steam Gift Cards at retailers?

Yes, but only for a limited time.

We introduced Steam Gift Cards to retail stores back in 2012, and added the digital program in 2017. Unfortunately, scammers use gift cards from major brands like Steam to take advantage of all people all over the world.

We’ve responded to gift card scams over the years by taking a number of actions to protect customers, including:

  • Working with retailers
  • Working with law enforcement
  • Making changes to the cards, including adding a prominent scam warning
  • Limiting redemption to be in the currency of your Steam wallet
  • Limiting availability of cards
  • Removing cards from sale when we observed abnormal activity

As we have continued to put more and more restrictions in place, scammers have adapted. They continue to have an impact on Steam customers and other unsuspecting individuals. So we've made the difficult decision to end the Steam Gift Card program at retail stores.

As Steam Gift Cards run out of stock at retail locations, we will not be restocking them. We expect all retailers to be out of stock by the end of 2026. Though we will no longer be selling physical gift cards, you will still have the ability to use your existing gift cards on Steam whenever you choose, subject to local laws.

We also continue to offer Steam Digital Gift Cards, and are working to make this an even better experience. Guest checkout, which we added last year, is another way for family members and friends to gift Steam users with a digital card anytime.

You can learn more about gift card scams here.

 

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/78E3-7431-1E88-AD59#retailers

Can I purchase Steam Gift Cards at retailers?

Yes, but only for a limited time.

We introduced Steam Gift Cards to retail stores back in 2012, and added the digital program in 2017. Unfortunately, scammers use gift cards from major brands like Steam to take advantage of all people all over the world.

We’ve responded to gift card scams over the years by taking a number of actions to protect customers, including:

  • Working with retailers
  • Working with law enforcement
  • Making changes to the cards, including adding a prominent scam warning
  • Limiting redemption to be in the currency of your Steam wallet
  • Limiting availability of cards
  • Removing cards from sale when we observed abnormal activity

As we have continued to put more and more restrictions in place, scammers have adapted. They continue to have an impact on Steam customers and other unsuspecting individuals. So we've made the difficult decision to end the Steam Gift Card program at retail stores.

As Steam Gift Cards run out of stock at retail locations, we will not be restocking them. We expect all retailers to be out of stock by the end of 2026. Though we will no longer be selling physical gift cards, you will still have the ability to use your existing gift cards on Steam whenever you choose, subject to local laws.

We also continue to offer Steam Digital Gift Cards, and are working to make this an even better experience. Guest checkout, which we added last year, is another way for family members and friends to gift Steam users with a digital card anytime.

You can learn more about gift card scams here.

 

YouTube video: https://youtu.be/PvUPDSDZg1k?t=3183 (Invidious just doesn't find this video for some reasons)

Hey listen! I don't know how to feel about this look. I'm happy about the Remake, because it will be realized in full 3D, without the early technical limitations of Nintendo 64. But I guess we need to see this in action in the game, rather than this quick few seconds at non gameplay sequence. Will this be a re-imagining like Final Fantasy 7 Remake was? Sure the overworld map will be more interesting this time without loading screens in between the areas, with the lessons learned from Breath of the Wild. More than the graphics update, I'm very curious about the gameplay changes and how the world will be layed out. And the soundtrack off course. How far will Nintendo diverge from the original?

BTW I won't buy a Switch 2, so will miss out on this unfortunately.

Edit: As a reminder, the original game got unofficially decompiled and ported to PC (you have to provide a Rom file for the assets), with possible enhancements while staying true to the original game: https://www.shipofharkinian.com/

 

This is for developers mostly. I don't want to spoil much, the Open Source alternative Godot seems to beat Unity in a spectacular way, at least looking at the performance differences (for development and ingame). I hope this community is the right place to share this video.

Video description:


I created a basic horror game in Unity and then recreated it in Godot to find out which engine comes out on top. I've conducted a bunch of tests, such as install size, project load time, and frame rate, and I've shared the results of those tests here.

00:00 - Intro
00:32 - The Game Features before Porting
01:19 - Engine Install Size
01:58 - Engine and Project Launch Speed
02:41 - Side by Side Visual Comparison
04:33 - Unity and Godot Workflow Differences
08:17 - Script Compile Time
09:11 - Build Size
11:31 - Project Build Times
12:07 - Game Launch Time
12:28 - FPS Performance (1/4)
13:22 - FPS Performance (2/4)
14:00 - FPS Performance (3/4)
14:19 - FPS Performance (4/4)
14:42 - Conclusion
 

I really disliked the music in the new trailer for the upcoming Godzilla game. So I replaced it with the original Godzilla theme, which is much more fitting in my opinion.

Original unedited video is at https://youtu.be/8N9QN4X1pIk

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48310139

Wider, higher res images, new personalized sections and more

Today we are excited to announce the release of the refreshed Steam Store home page. Thank you to everyone who opted into the Steam Client beta and provided feedback during the beta period. The updated design is a continuation of recent improvements across the Steam store, like the game page updates we made a few months ago.

 

Wider, higher res images, new personalized sections and more

Today we are excited to announce the release of the refreshed Steam Store home page. Thank you to everyone who opted into the Steam Client beta and provided feedback during the beta period. The updated design is a continuation of recent improvements across the Steam store, like the game page updates we made a few months ago.

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