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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • AFAIK it’s a system to let Linux software bundle all of it’s dependencies up with it so it just works in a self contained way that doesn’t care about what else is and isn’t installed.

    Advantages is that they are more reliable and user friendly than traditional approaches to Linux software installation.

    Disadvantages are that they have bigger footprints where you might have the same dependencies I dependently installed for each app rather than as a single installation that they all utilise and that they need to be updated individually (as part of the flatpak.) IE if basically every app uses the same dependency and it turns out to have a huge security hole, under normal Linux software the developer would patch it, you’d update it and the hole would be filled. With Flatpaks you need each individual Flatpak developer to update the version used by their Flatpak and for you to update all those Flatpaks before the hole is plugged. I think I remember they run in some kind of sandbox to mitigate this though.



  • It looks like Kotick will be leaving after the transition so that’s a great start. My dream is that this all somehow leads to the full Overwatch PvE campaign coming back onto the table again (given that their attempts to provide long-term replay ability without doing the work seem to be floundering now, there’s a chance right?)







  • He buys companies and lets the actually competent people do the work while claiming credit.

    No he doesn’t. He meddles and interferes constantly and convinces himself that he’s adding value by doing so. That’s why Neuralink is dangerous. Meta or Alphabet or Microsoft or whoever can be trusted to let the scientists and the legal team ensure there’s very little risk of everything blowing up in their face horribly. Elon’s little empire is constantly on the verge of an absolute disaster. I would not be remotely surprised if Neuralink messes everything up so much that it sets back brain implants and BCI’s in general by decades. Purely because Elon can’t just supply the people at his businesses with the tools they need then get out of their way.





  • Unreal is good if you want to work on big expensive projects at big companies. Godot is good if you want to work on your own projects today and potentially but not definitly work on small to middle-sized projects at small to middle-sized at small to middle-sized companies in the future. Unity is fine if you want to work on small to middle-sized projects at small to middle-sized companies now and potentially in the future.

    Which sucks. There ought to be a clear and unambiguous path to chose for someone moving into game development today but since Unity keeps making weird choices that are hostile to developers whilst not continuing to improve at a good pace, it’s hard to say for sure which engine will fill in the not-Unreal Engine part of the market unless you have a crystal ball.

    Realistically the best thing is to have as strong a foundation in programming generally as you can so that switching engines is minimally disruptive (as there will always be a need to do so eventually. There’s very little chance one single engine will continue to be the standard over the 40+ years of a career.)


  • I’m not so sure about that. Godot is fantastic for making the sorts of projects they are describing. But if the relatively minor difference between Unity and Unreal’s workflow are a turn off for them, then the consciously different workflow in Godot is probably going to be a significant barrier. Personally, whilst I love Godot because it’s FOSS and lightweight and a great platform for building smaller scale games: a big part of the appeal for me is that I find the Unreal and Unity ways of doing things stupid, confusing and clumsy and the Godot way clever, clear and elegant. I know lots of people feel the exact opposite.


  • I think the game “development” industry is run by people who don’t understand the difference between a game designer and a game developer. As such there’s lots of people who only know as much about game design as the average developer does being tasked to do game design work and vice versa.


  • The reality is that it’s a lot of fuss for a game development company to switch engines but for an experienced individual developer it’s not a huge deal to switch engines. If you learn game development and design today using Unity then 100% of the game design knowledge is exactly transferable and 80-99% of the game development knowledge (depending on exactly what you’re doing) will transfer to Unreal or Godot or whatever else you might need to use later.

    It’s like a musician switching from one audio production suite to another. The musical theory stays the same and while the exact details of how to make each bit of software do stuff is different, the actual stuff you’re making it do is broadly the same.