I suppose it’s the problem with alot of sci-fi. It’s very hard to make well-done science fiction that also appeals to a wide audience. So they either have to fight for it every chance and likely put up with terrible funding, or compromise the integrity to appeal to more viewers.

Wait, I only just now looked it up to realize spirits within didn’t do well… People don’t like it? I thought it was really good. It felt very much in-line with a final fantasy type story, just without the grinding combat for hours part. Hehe.

Nah, the reason they cited was that he violated ToS for fan created content. Which he did, if his mod counts as fan content. And there is an argument that could be presented that it does. But more importantly, as per patreons policy, as soon as it was reported for dmca take down, it was taken down, and now he has to apply for it being reinstated. And to do so, he basically needs to comply or go to court. Complying is easier. Although since then a second company has done the same, and since Patreons policy is any project being dmca struck multiple times, even if the strikes would ultimately prove fruitless, means the project will be permanently removed from patreon.

So he has taken it down and given everyone a free month for now while he determines what can be done.

I feel like if he had a front-end executable, he would then fall under the same category VorpX does, it’s allowed to cost money despite largely being the same thing.

Generically, as a framework for 35 games.

Similar to something like VorpX, except it doesn’t have a unified front end, so it can’t be called a program, it has to be called a mod package or mod suite. So it falls under different rules for an arbitrary reason.

Confirmed, you have no idea what luke ross does. You read one uninformed headline, and then read another uninformed headline.

Yeah, the main issue is the mods are for a niche of a niche of a niche. Not just the niche of VR, but the further niche of PCVR, and within that, the further niche of people who don’t or no longer get sick from stick-based movement in VR. Each of which cuts the audience about ten-fold.

And then for that tiny audience, he is making what is basically perfect VR mods. Like we couldn’t imagine anyway they could possibly get better, until he figures out a new feature he can add, and then slowly back port to every previous game that can support it.

I very much am a continuous patron of him. For people that just want the mod once for one game, they generally don’t need to pay more than once. And technically when they do, they actually get ~35 games they could also choose to play. But it’s worth more than 10 dollars even for 1 game.

It is a non-standard pricing model, but it is more than fair.

He works his ass off, almost every hour of every day. This is the only pricing model that works for a situation like this.

Sorry, meant no modding tools from any one specific game involved in the luke ross mod, he supports 35 games with it.

Then the mod suite would only be allowed to support 1 game. Not much of a suite.

They could have chosen to give him permission to continue, in their own words, they didn’t choose that.

There are no modding tools. This is done entirely outside the game. But it does still qualify as a breech of ToS. There are alot of options for how to handle it, this is the option they chose.

It is indeed against their ToS, they do have this option. They also cite themselves that all he would need is their permission, but they didn’t go that route.

Other than the option they said they had, which was to give him their permission… they could have chosen that.

They didn’t, and he respected that choice. He is in the process of the week or so of hard work it’s going to take to remove the game. The mod suite is shut down in the interim while he complies.

What if there is so much passion that the mod author works 100+ hours a week on the mod. And the mod he makes is so awesome that people have no issue paying him to do that job. Honestly if every mod was this level of skill and effort, paid mods would make sense to more people. When you think of mods, “passion project” mods may be what comes to mind, that is not what this mod suite is.

This is 35 completely transformed and improved games, better than any other VR games on the market, fully supported in perpetuity, for 10 dollars. With everything he brings to these games, it’s like if 20 mod authors got together and made 20 perfectly interleaved mods that all work perfectly with each other. You don’t find this anywhere else. This isn’t a “mod”, this is unprecedented.

And while the mod is behind the paywall, most of us don’t think of it as paying for the mod, we are paying part of his wage for a day. Many of us just keep an active monthly subscription, but that isn’t necessary for people that just want the mod suite. You can just buy one month if you only want to play one game real quick, or any game that it currently supports. You would only need to update it if either the game updates and that update breaks the game (though you always have the choice of reverting and pausing updates for the game instead) or if he adds a new game that you want to play in VR.

It’s understandable not to like that it costs money, but it is very much the only option.

I agree that it isn’t just passion, it is his full time job. He clearly has passion for it too, but you can’t make a mod suite this insane on passion alone. This is years of consistent 100 hour work weeks. All dedicated to making these VR mods better than any VR port, or even “built for VR first” games.

And he drops support for the game as soon as asked. Which requires shutting down for a week to disentangle anything related to the one game specifically from the rest of the suite. I can’t say he didn’t complain, but not about the work, just that it didn’t have to go this route, but it did go this route, so he does what he has to.

While the mod is behind payment, the payment is for his work and dedication. If he had to subsist on donations, he wouldn’t be able to put 100 hours a week into it, he would need a job.

Again, the games are fully in their right to pull out, but they also admit that all he would need is their permission, they could choose to go that route, most do.

Why do people think luke ross is the same person as pure dark? I’ve seen this in other places too.

They are completely different people, they have completely different patreons, and luke ross doesn’t have time to pretend to be a whole different person on top of himself. Is it because both their mods include, in part, the acronym “dlss”? As far as I can tell that is literally the only possible link between them. And technically that’s even a stretch, because luke ross’s mod suite actually adds DL"S"SS, the extra S is for a version that works properly in stereo. Which no one and nothing else has.

When you say he “did the same thing” with rockstar. What do you think he did?

The mod is for 35 games, yes one other company decided to remove their game from the mod, and luke ross immediately did so… it took about a week of work to remove it while he locked down access to the mod suite at his own expense, sure he grumbled that it was a dumb move from rockstar but we all hoped maybe it meant rockstar was considering their own VR port so it made sense. But they didn’t.

Is that what a jerk does?

I think you have no idea what luke ross does.

I think there is nuance, the mod in question is a suite of about 35 mods that is constantly maintained/repaired as games patch and break parts of it, and is so insanely complex and impressive that it is a 100 hour a week job for the guy. That’s not something that can be done for free or for donations, It’s well beyond “a mod”. And each of those ~35 mods is like 10-20 mods in one, the list of features added to each game beyond “just” VR support is lengthy.

And it’s such an impressive thing to use, and is only done for games that have no plans to be made for VR. So it only adds sales to the games themselves. Maybe not alot, but it certainly doesn’t take anything away. Not only does he make the games VR capable, he makes sure they play the absolute best possible in VR, not only performance-wise but play-wise as well.

While they are in the right to ask that their game not be part of it, they lose out by doing so.

Without being able to charge a fixed price, a mod of this insane level of quality, quantity, and detail just wouldn’t exist instead.

People that think he is grifting or ripping people off have not actually tried the mods. It is insanely cheap for what you get. For 10 dollars you get ~35 games not just in VR, but in better VR than any company has done with their actual VR ports, and not by a small margin, not to mention they will keep working, because he doesn’t just put in all the effort to make a perfect VR game out of them once, he goes back and fixes anything that needs fixing for every single game too. Even if you don’t want to try it yourself because 10 dollars feels like too much to charge for an amazing VR version of 35 games, at least watch videos of how much people enjoy and respect his work before assuming he is some kind of jerk.

Only 2 of the 35 games have decided to pursue dmca against it in it’s entire history, it is a choice, they don’t -have- to, they choose to. ToS can always be amended if a use is deemed exceptional and worth supporting. The law, just like everything else, is not actually black and white, there is always nuance and possibility.

For both games that asked, he immediately acquiesced and spent the week or so of work it took/takes to strip out all support for that game. It’s the only option he has, this is his full time job. A fuller-time job than most people do/have.

CDprojekt Red even said all he needed was their permission, they could have gone that route.

The Harvest Moon games were also all dating sims. The main thing Stardew Valley does is have like 20x as much content and variety as a Harvest Moon game with significantly fewer bugs or abandoned concepts. And the Harvest Moon games were already great as they were. But yeah, if you literally rolled every single Harvest Moon game feature into a single Harvest Moon game, it would still come up short against Stardew Valley. And it was made primarily by one dude that charged way less than any single Harvest Moon game for it.

For the purposes of this comment “Harvest Moon games” refers to the ones made by the real Harvest Moon team, that eventually moved on to “Story of Seasons” when their franchise name was stolen from them. And also includes Rune Factory.

In those figures, do they count standalone VR headsets as consoles? Cuz they basically are. May not be the same shape, but they do the same thing. And would fill the same role in christmas shopping regards. With the Quest 3s going down to 200 USD for black friday, I have to imagine there were some units sold there.

I don’t see anything to suggest AI was used in the making of the game, but I also don’t see anything that suggests it was going to be a good game. So it may not have taken much pressure to get them to fold.

Hehe yeah, unfortunately the things you didn’t like are also on the pro side of my pro/con list.

I like that you basically have a good reason to practice all the zones until they feel like tony hawk levels, you know all the lines and how to trick across all the gaps, hehe.

Stringing one combat across every enemy in the zone, getting that multiplier way up. Nothing to really spend the money on, but still fun to do.

Man, I need to play crosscode again. I think of all the games I have played in the last 40 years, that has been the best one. Feels like it was made specifically for me.

There is also Hero’s Hour, a fresh(relatively) indie take on the HoMM series. One major difference that might be polarising is that every unit is displayed rather than being a single stack, and combat happens live rather than in turns. But you can set it super slow and pause too if need be.

I generally hate RTS, but I really enjoyed it. It’s got a fair bit of content. And so many factions that are all quite different from each other.

I have a fairly decent computer(4070s and a 7800x3d), it took about 100’000 units in active combat to start slowing it down. So no worries about how big HoMM armies can get and if it could run them all live. It can. Most of those units had to be summons, as it would take a pretty high levelled hero to have the stats necessary to field more than 10k units.

Despite most people saying it didn’t quite live up to the hype, maybe I had an appropriate amount of hype, cuz it totally lived up to the hype for me. Even initially when it was still pretty buggy at launch. Though I have also gone back and played it in VR too. I played a melee character at launch, knowing that it was going to be the most stable for the turbulent times. Then I played a precision shooter as my next character once the game got pretty fixed/stable. Then I played my tech/“caster” in VR once the game was fully good and ran well enough on my hardware that I could get comfortable frame rates(at least 90fps) using all the features the Luke Ross mod now supports for making VR look good at easy-to-run settings.

Hehe yeah. To celebrate the recent patch increasing multiplayer to 8 people. We basically started like a DnD group sessions style of playthrough. We would meet weekly and play for like 8 hours at a time. Was pretty great.

It also breaks other stuff like being able to output video to portable video glasses. A relatively niche use now, but something that will pick up considerably over the life of the console.

Having a floating 4k screen that you can put anywhere at any size is pretty nice. Don’t have to look down at your hands or hold the system up to a comfortable eye line.

I do hope that at some point they open it up a bit more. And maybe only exclude stuff that would damage the system, which is ostensibly the -given- reason for locking it down. While of course, the real reason is likely a licensing opportunity.

I do still buy their stuff. But it has been more and more often lately that I buy it and then feel ok about emulating it to add in stuff like 4k 120 fps or VR/stereoscopic or whatever.

Not sure specifically when they were added, but they are there now. Play the game once every 3 years or so, hehe. Last playthrough we did a 6 player group game. Basically played it like it was dnd sessions. That playthrough had the move speed stuff. Comes from a book seller. So if you know when that book seller was added, it would be then probably.

I think it might happen in 10, 15, 20 years… but not any sooner than that.

There are plenty of both permanent and temporary speed increases, with the permanent ones you are almost as fast as the horse. And with temporary ones you can be faster than it. No need for mods, just base game. And these are things you easily earn part way through the first year.

Recently? Or early on? The slingshot controls got an accuracy rework and also the option to be aim direction instead of pullback direction if the player prefers.

I think most of the control issues for new players unfamiliar with the genre is how precise you need to be to water crops and stuff. Those of us that have been playing farm sims(not farming simulations, totally different beast once you write both words in full like that, lol) for decades already probably don’t even remember a time when it was tough to manually align our tools to the grid. For a lot of people, stardew is their first one, and for a decent subset of them, it’s not just their first farming sim, but their first video game on a controller.

There have also been grid aligning innovations in other farming sims for onboarding new players. Some games have a modifier key you can hold down that basically turn the analog into digital movement while holding it. Your character will move exactly one grid space at a time and keep facing the same direction. That sort of thing can help, but honestly, probably better to just make the game fun enough that people are willing to keep playing while they are bad at it, to eventually get good at it. Not every farm sim can accomplish that.

Just bought one in Canada a week ago, it came in through Vancouver, like pretty much everything else does.

In the mean-time, Veloren already exists, and seems to be exactly what this is planning to be. An open source voxel mmo world builder rpg.

Also, it’s basically the same thing as Veloren, another current open source mmo voxel world builder rpg. But looks like maybe smaller voxels on average.

You don’t get nauseous using them as a steamdeck upgrade. And Quest 2 sold more units than steamdeck(5x as many). That’s just one VR headset. Full day comfort is a 100$ mod.

Yep, and a wireless VR headset for your home gaming PC has steamdeck beat. So steamdeck only has value if you don’t already have a gaming computer. Or if you need to play on a bus and couldn’t handle added latency in the game you plan on playing.

In a VR headset, you have a 4k screen, or more than one, or a triple-wide 5760x1080 screen, or anything else you want, at 120hz. And you don’t have to look down at your hands to play it or hold your hands up. Virtual desktop is about 6ms latency for your own desktop(s) in your house, and about double that for your own desktop from someone else’s house or business. But tethered to a cell connection, latency can start to get out of hand. Or if you want to stream your computer from half-way around the world. Still useable, but it does limit the types of games you can play at that point.

But, having said that. I’m probably still gonna get a Switch 2. I still like Nintendo first-party games, and I don’t plan on stealing them.

And I still have a Steamdeck, I just rarely find a use for it.

Edit: also you can do perfect 3D monitors in a VR headset. Not to mention also VR…

Cybertruck bulletproof window all over again. He really needs to stop demonstrating stuff live.

Not only was he “using” starlink, he was specifically doing it as a promotion to show that it is good for gaming. And even with that being the whole premise, it was still his kneejerk reaction to blame the connection, even though everyone watching knows that can’t be what happened. His ego couldn’t let him blame himself instead of the service he was purposefully trying to promote.

Yeah, the fact that it’s not even directly brought up, just strongly alluded to and tangentially referenced is part of what makes it such a good representation. It’s not an important aspect of the character, or relevant to the story. It’s just normal. It feels the same as hanging out with your real life trans friends, they don’t all stand around talking about what gender they are, despite some people seeming to picture it that way, hehe.

Oh… ok… I guess if they really want to invalidate the efforts that were actually gone to so they can keep justifying not playing it. They can ignore that the character is well written and just prominent enough to not feel forced, but you aren’t gonna miss it either.

Is Sirona Ryan a reference to something that I don’t know?

One of the main storyline NPCs is a well thought out and respected trans individual. Jk rowling specifically tried to tank sales of the game, there are two ways licensing can be done, a one-time upfront fee, or residuals. Her behavior suggests it was the former, though no one has specified that I know of.

Either way, us buying and playing the game is against J.K. Rowlings wishes, good enough for me. And I really enjoyed the game. It was well made if a bit generic, similar to the more recent Avowed, I enjoyed that too. Well-made, fun game, but a bit generic in some aspects.

I also played both in VR once VR mods were available. Hogwarts legacy is great in VR(specifically with Luke Ross’s mod, if you haven’t tried it recently it has made some significant strides in the past few months) Avowed in VR takes alot of hardware to run well(UEVR mod), my hardware was just below that line. Still worth it for me, but not as great of an experience.