and complained on mastodon that it’s stupid design that mod logs are public. [Screenshot]

Maybe they should’ve, you know, looked at the site for 2 minutes before signing up. The modlog is linked at the bottom of every page.

Like I said, the illustration does break down.

I think OP is saying that, while you can buy a book to read it, you do not own the copyright to that book. They’re saying it’s basically the same idea with GOG.

The illustration does break down, but I think their point still stands.

I say this as a die-hard 3D Zelda fan:

I was soooo boooored in BOTW! There was no current main story. It all happened in the past. You’re basically playing through the climax the entire time. And I hated it. I mainly play Zelda for the story, and this was a very poorly told one.

TOTK was somewhat better because it gave us better characters (I will die for Tulin), a bit better characterization (I enjoyed Zelda getting a lot more fleshed out this time), and a somewhat better story… but there were still way too many reused story beats. That is to say, the story was fleshed out much better, but they still reused the overall story structure from BOTW (get the memories fight the four bosses in the four temples, etc.). They did add a fifth temple and a mid-game story thing, but that’s mostly it. They also didn’t even acknowledge how similar some things were to their counterparts in BOTW (ex. the Malice Gloom), which really bothered me. Also, some stuff just felt… unfinished. Like the reporter bird who, by the end of it all, just ends up pondering and trying to figure himself out… and that’s it. It felt like setup for DLC, but there wasn’t any.

… That was a very unintentionally long rant.

To summarize: hated BOTW; somewhat enjoyed TOTK, though it could’ve been much better.

Fair use has nothing to do with this. Fair use has to do with distributing a copyrighted work. Emulators are (ideally) running completely original code that isn’t copied from the company’s source code. This is why, for example, PCSX2 has you use “your own” PS2 BIOS instead of including it.

The PS2 BIOS is copyrighted, so it’s illegal to distribute it (and it’s never been “fair use” to distribute it). But it’s not illegal to do whatever you want with it (including dump it) as long as you own the console you’re dumping it from and as long as you don’t upload it to the internet for the purpose of distributing it to others. As far as the law is concerned, you bought the console and can do to it whatever you wish, provided you keep it to yourself and don’t distribute it to others.

Games fall under the same category. You’re free to dump your games and play them however you wish, provided you don’t distribute the dumped game to other people. However, companies are also free to implement measures (DRM) to stop you from doing that as much as possible, likely because they know more people would illegally distribute them if they didn’t.

I’ve already found two repos that successfully copied everything over before the main repo disappeared. I even built a working copy of Ryujinx from one of them. I’d probably find several more easily if I tried hard enough.

IIRC, they’re legal as long as they don’t explicitly distribute any of the copyright owner’s own code or files. That’s why, for example, PCSX2 requires you to dump “your own” PS2 BIOS and doesn’t provide any itself. Because PCSX2 doesn’t distribute the PS2 BIOS and because its way of talking to the BIOS doesn’t copy the source code, that emulator is in the clear.

Some modern emulators (ex. Ryujinx) don’t even need BIOS files (or whatever they’re called on Switch) to be able to run games. But they also don’t use Nintendo’s original code to run the game.

Take all this with a grain of salt. I’m saying it from memory.

Yeah, I’m just a big JRPG fan.

As for the Trails series, I’ve been told that the best place to start is (understandably) the beginning. Play in release order. The first three games are in 2.5D (as opposed to 3D), but they actually hold up really well.

Most people (myself included) will recommend that you use a spoiler-free guide to avoid missing hidden quests and collectibles (such as a book series you’ll collect in its entirety over the course of the first game). I’m using this spoiler-free guide for my playthrough of the first game.

It’s also recommended that you go around talking to every NPC in the town you’re in every now and then. Dialogue updates as the main quest advances and, at times, if you’ve had an interaction with an NPC in (for example) a side quest and that NPC later pops up in the main quest, the NPC will remember that interaction from the side quest. Some NPCs also pop up in later games with their stories continuing (or so I’ve been told).

Almost every single Trails game is also available DRM-free with achievements on GOG. The only one missing is the latest game (which has a “coming soon” page). The series goes on sale on GOG pretty frequently, too.

Also, examine every chest twice: once to open it and once to see the “empty chest” dialogue. The English localizers noticed that, in the Japanese version of the game, instead of having the empty chests call a single line of dialogue multiple times, each chest had its own line to call. (It was the same thing copied and pasted every single time.) So they had some fun with it and made nearly every empty chest have unique dialogue.

Also, just today, during the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st, a remake of the first game in full 3D with the modern Trails aesthetic, was announced for a 2025 release worldwide. Though I don’t know how faithful it’ll be to the original game or to its localization. So you could wait for that if you want or just play the original trilogy immediately. But, again, the originals still hold up really well.

I’ve started playing through it, but I’ve got other games currently that I’m focusing on (currently Trails in the Sky FC, then Persona 3 Reload: The Answer, and then Metaphor ReFantazio).

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Sadly, it’s not available on PC, but it is available on Nintendo Switch (US eShop page linked above) and PlayStation 4 (and PlayStation 5 through backwards compatibility).

It’s a sci-fi game made by the creators of some games you might’ve heard of in passing (namely Dragon’s Crown, Odin Sphere, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, etc.), Vanillaware. I can’t go into any details about the game itself because of spoilers, but I will say it is quite simply the best and most uniquely told story I have ever seen in a game. It’s a game you have to experience for yourself. You should go into it as blind as possible, too.

I will say the English dub of the game is also surprisingly good, considering it was recorded almost entirely in COVID lockdown. The Atlus West sound engineers (Atlus published the game in the west) must’ve worked some incredible magic to get it to sound as good as it does.

Not to be outdone by the classic Thomas the Tank Engine character skin.

FYI, SmartTubeNext has been renamed to just SmartTube.

I’ll also plug SmartTube, an Android TV app that has many of the more widely-used functions ReVanced has (blocks ads, supports SponsorBlock, etc.) among other things.

I’m curious if they still have the most downvoted comment on Reddit.

Edit: Yep.

Fortunately, it seems Game Pass subscribers have pretty much stalled out since 2021. There’s been no significant ride in subscribers since then.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-08/xbox-studio-closures-microsoft-plans-more-cost-cutting-measures-after-layoffs

What’s the number of Threads users compared to Lemmy? If the number of Threads users greatly outweigh the number of Lemmy users, then we’d simply be drowned out by all the Threads posts. That’s part one of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Extend adds functionality to Threads that Lemmy either can’t support or won’t support for a while due to development time. People migrate to Threads because Lemmy is “missing” functionality. Plus, though I’m not clear on the exact legal specifications, proprietary code can be added to open-source code, and the proprietary code would be copyrighted. In other words, Lemmy devs would have to figure out a way to interact with and mimic Threads’ proprietary code using open-source code.

Extinguish is when Threads’ support of Lemmy is eventually dropped. The users left on Lemmy have suddenly lost a huge amount of content, and they’re left with fewer users than before Threads enabled federation.

Ironically, Microsoft would later remove Cortana itself in an update.

Asking stuff like that is always a good idea, IMO. It could be the difference between a successful Linux install and a very expensive paperweight.

… Don’t ask me how to install it, though. I’ve only tried Ubuntu as a dual-boot, and that was several years ago.

Yeah, what happened with GitHub?