There is, yes, but it’s pointless. I think some people are missing the point of Alyx being a VR game, the game would suck pretty bad in pancake mode. It’s the intricate interactions with the world you simply can’t get with a mouse and keyboard that make it special compared to other Half Life games. They didn’t just make a regular Half Life game and said “well we’re just gonna force this to be in VR now”, they made a VR game and set it in the Half Life universe.

Somewhat hot take… I’d argue Boneworks (not Bonelab) was “better”, at least if you’re used to VR and if you judge by freedom and replay value. Don’t get me wrong, playing through Half Life Alyx was fun and engaging, but to me it had little to no replay value, since for all it did great in visuals, audio, accessibility, and especially story, it failed dramatically in physics. Since I played Alyx right after Boneworks, I kept trying to pick stuff up which I ended up not being able to for larger objects, and the first time I tried to knock a Combine over the head with a pipe I was so sorely disappointed. Alyx has absolutely everything Boneworks is missing, yet that physics core is what kept me coming back to the latter. It really clicked for me when I noticed how many things in Boneworks one can solve in alternate ways by “abusing” physics. Climbing is a learned skill and combat can be as much shooting as it can be using knives, fists, shoving someone off a ledge, or grabbing an enemy and throwing it at others. It’s what truly made me realize how much potential VR had, being able to interact with a full physics simulation, where even your own body is a physics object, with your physical hands is amazing.

There are feet in the camera’s face within… eight seconds. I’m surprised, but I can’t say I’m shocked.

Aside from that, it is a curious decision to make the first person camera a woman. I thought their target audience would be young men? It’s certainly a larger potential audience than lesbians, although hey, not like I mind that choice ;3

It’s not even that big of a surprise after last year’s “best VR game” was Hitman 3. That game’s VR support is, excuse my language, absolute fucking dogshit.

Bonelab was a disappointment, absolutely, but at least it was a proper damn VR game and not a mediocre game with VR tacked on for literally no reason but, I assume, some exec’s feature checklist

No no, you don’t get it. Windows has problems, but switching to Linux would be like leaving your home country because you don’t like its political trends. Where’s your OS patriotism? There’s no need for Linux, because you can just keep using Windows and hope Microsoft ends up doing what’s best for their customers products :)

I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s an actual thing the CEO and founder of Epic Games posted on Twitter: https://nitter.net/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698

As much as I theoretically agree, I can immediately think of two problems:

1. The storefronts would have to communicate

It’s against their own interest to do this. Imagine you buy all your games on Steam because of the sales (although the creators of the game of course decide the prices, but still) and then play them on your Xbox. No profit at all for Microsoft, yet they’re the ones providing all the additional services like the actual game hosting, friends system, etc. It’s not much by any means, but it does add up. The money all goes to Valve. You could even buy the games via the Steam mobile app if you don’t even own a PC. Also, even if they were theoretically fine with this, even coordinating it would be a pain. Since you could put a game on the Google Play Store, the App Store, hell maybe even F-Droid, Epic Games, GoG, Steam, the Xbox Store, and the Play Station store, and I am absolutely certain I forgot multiple other options, all of them would need to be able to communicate and decide on if you actually own the game. This would be a logistical and technical nightmare.

2. Companies would just sell mildly different versions and claim it’s a new game

You know how for example Undertale has a slightly special Nintendo Switch version where there’s… I can’t even remember, but I think it’s an additional boss. That’s just something small and cute, but let’s go with the GTA example. I have played about five hours of 5 and dropped it, so excuse me if this isn’t the best theoretical example, but let’s say the PS5 and Series X/S get the base game. Then the PS6 and new Xbox get maybe five additional cars and the game they’re selling is GTA 6 Expanded. Afterwards on switch (although by that time Nintendo’s new console would’ve released) you get blue and red weapon skins or whatever and it’s GTA 6 Switched Up. And then finally on PC you get the GTA 6 Ultimate Edition with expanded settings, better graphics, and maybe five more cars on top of those from GTA 6 Expanded. These are all technically not the same game, so you would not be able to claim them. Sure, you could argue they’re similar, but where is the exact line? That’s quite impossible to figure out - is it a cheated rehash or a mediocre remaster? Who knows

Yes and no. I’ve seen people roughly port smaller games over in a single weekend. I’d probably take a guess of about 1-2 weeks, not multiple months. Godot is surprisingly similar. Obviously it’s not all gonna be best practice, but since it also supports c#, you can more or less just copy and paste the code and slowly sift through compiler errors, replacing old Unity stuff with new Godot stuff. It’s a pain, but not quite as much as you’d expect

Take a read for yourself: Brian Bucklew porting Caves of Qud from Unity to Godot