So if seems like the peak of Good Guy Game Devs (but who still need to make money) would sell the game to normal gamers, but also offer the ability to buy a server build license.

From there, if they company goes under, they prepare to open source the game and server code in case the open source community wants to maintain both.

Is there anything else I’m missing in that assessment?

So it sounds like its an exchange of size for customizability.

If you had a different installer for each language and/or video quality, then each installation could be much smaller. But since we (gamers) want to be able to change texture quality “on the fly” via the settings menu, we have to deal with all the possible textures coming in the game files.

Does that sound like I have it right?

EVE Online developer goes independent as Fenris Creations

Me: Oh Boy, this is gonna be good :D

partners up with Google DeepMind

Me: Oh…oh…okay, never mind.

Neat.

Has anyone done this? Can you report as to how smoothly it does gaming? What would be a comparable full PC build?

Ooooo, I hadn’t heard about this.

Can you link to more info?

Edit: Nevermind, my lousy google-fu proved adequate.to find this one. Link for the lazy

Haven’t checked in it in years, but I used to have a strange affection for Magiea OS. Quick peek makes it look like last major update was 2023, so maybe not maintained anymore.

But also got really cozy with Parrot OS (home version).

Unclear. I didn’t spend much time reading the article, primarily wanted to show that guides to making it work exist.

Didn’t have time to thoroughly read the guide, but 2 minutes of searching turned this up.

Neat idea. Doubt I’ll do it, but cool to know its an option.

Nintendo Switch 2 wired controller support has been re-enabled

Wait, switch controllers are compatible with non-switch things? I’m surprised that I’m surprised at this, but never even crossed my mind to try.

I take it the normal wireless ones are not compatible though?

Eh, gonna have to soft disagree.

Its got a lot of those same elements, but you have a character that is only at one spot at a time, and so that limits how elective you can be at the expansion part.

That said, it is also not a typical RPG where you have just a character adventuring across the land. Really unique game in that its a bridge between those two broad genres.

Its honestly a very small facet of the game, and more so used to bootstrap your company/Army’s finances until you gain lordship of towns and cities (and thus collect rents).

But to try to explain how it comes together anyway:
So towns specialize in producing a single type of raw resource (grain, ore, grapes, sheep, etc) and they sell those goods mainly to a single city. A city will have 2-4 towns “feeding” it resources, and so if a city has 3 towns that bring it grain, then you’d expect the grain price to be cheaper than in a city who’s towns produce ore.

Next level, if you have two neighboring towns one producing ore and one with grain, chances are there will be a stable (and relatively low) grain price in both with reasonably high population (pop growth is primarily boosted by excess food). Imagine now an enemy army rolls up and burns all the grain towns and seiges the grain city (traders can’t enter a sieged city). After a week, this would lead to MUCH less grain in the ore city, thus prices spike.

So you, an enterprising new player with a dozen men and some spare horses, load up with cheap grain from somewhere else on the map and make a run to the ore city, selling grain at an inflated price.

Again, this general strat is good for bootstrapping the money to build a medium warband, but generally falls away as a viable source of income once you leave there early game.

Bonus factoids cause I’ve got time to kill: The game is very open ended. If you just want to be a merchant, well, I suppose no ones stopping you. But the course of action you’re nudged towards is to raise a warband and join (or build) a faction and conquer unite all the cities under one banner.

With that, I’d define the goals/stages of the game as:

Early: building a small company big enough to be helpful to you faction when fighting alongside other lords. Goal here is to buy a few workshops inside your own faction’s lands (which grant passive income).

Mid-game: you’re working to build a fighting force that can solo other mid-large forces, while obtaining / managing a city or two for your kingdom (this is where you manually trading starts to not yield enough income to keep your army paid). Goal is to become a significant political player in your faction and to gain as many cities as you can for yourself.

Endgame: by this point, you should be leading a faction. For combat, you’re gathering multiple vassals into large army’s to take key enemy cities. You’re managing the wars that spring up and determining which vassals get which cities. This is where you can finally make real territorial gains for your people.

As someone who just recently made that leap, I have to say its not as huge and daunting of a switch as it may feel, but its also not nothing of a swap.

I’d def recommend people start by using alternative app stores and getting used to that before making the swap. Was def a helpful first step for myself.

Was using F-droid for the longest time as primary app store (where I could).

This comment inspired me to swap to droidify though. A month-ish in and I’m super pleased with everything since I swapped.

Just wanted to tag in with my own personal support for this recommendation.

Which repo is ironfox in?

Oh.

Welp, my opinion still stands, even if this isn’t the right context for it.

Hmmm, that does seem weird that they wouldnt be putting in DRM. I guess I’m on board with it. They do make super solid games. I hope this showcases what can be achieved by games that do t include DRM at their core.

Anti-cheat in single player games never made sense to me. Maybe if it includes microtransactions, then i guess i could see a use case, but like, if I want to cheat at your single player game, what use would there be in stopping me?

I really like your way of explaining that.

It still feels dirty, but when is war and geopolitics ever actually clean? I feel a lot more heartened that this was the right choice after reading your response.

I understand the sanctions part and wanting to head off any potential state interference with projects like this, but “infosec reasons” feels very hand wavy.

I think I’d be a lot more comfortable if we had seen malicious/bad faith actions/communications or maybe some more specific and tangible reasons to suspect them being compromised on the part of the Russian maintainers before they were just removed.

Like, I don’t want to sound like a corporate shill, but Valve has been the most consumer friendly corporation I’ve ever seen. Even if they do meet the criteria for a monopoly, they are the model of what a company that finds itself as The Monopoly should be, in my opinion.

I have no intent to sign up for this “lawsuit”, even though I stand to gain some $500 from it. I hope Steam lives long and prospers.

Haven’t played Origins, but I’ve spent a lot of time with Odyssey which has my highest recommendation.

From a friend who’s opinion I trust, I’ve been told Origins is the less fleshed out version of Odyssey. He says that Origins started Assassin’s Creed on a new RPG focused track that really just worked for Origins and Odyssey (he claims they biffed Valhalla).