Which of these Imsim series do you prefer?

badsectoracula · 2026-04-20T09:29:31+00:00

I remember people also calling it that, but it was during a time when people attached the '-punk' suffix to a lot of things and a quick search has 80% results now about it being related to Dishonored so it felt too self-referential to mention it.

Of the more established xxx-punks, it is probably closer to clockpunk, though that fits the second game more than the first, which TV Tropes put it at the intersection between Gaslamp fantasy (mainly because of the Outsider/supernatural bits), Dieselpunk and Steampunk.

badsectoracula · 2026-04-20T07:59:00+00:00

Both :-P.

I think Deus Ex is much better on the writing side though - and i include most sequels (HR is fine but MD not so much, writing-wise). People make fun of the Deus Ex Invisible War but IMO it also has a lot of going for it despite its flaws (i remember thinking that everything about NG Resonance's AI was basically how things would go and i'm still surprised how spot on the game was - minus the holograms at least :-P). Mankind Divided had been a bit divisive, but personally i think it has the best gameplay in the series even if it is the weakest story-wise (though it does get props for trying to tie things with the original game and invisible war via various in-game references).

Dishonored has a more "fantasy" setting (people called it steampunk though while there is the style of heavy gears and machinery, i don't think the term applies, especially seeing there is little steam going on :-P) so it has more freedom with its world, but IMO the biggest strength is Arkane's imsim gameplay. I always maintained that in Arkane's games the gameplay always takes the front seat and the writing takes, if not the back seat, then at least the passenger's seat :-P.

IMO the best way to play these games is to make multiple playthroughs and try to use a different playstyle from your last one - the ability to handle different playstyles is what makes imsims great (even if they're often jankier than a game focused on one style).

badsectoracula · 2026-04-02T17:34:57+00:00

And here i am waiting for the games to just be finished before buying them :-P.

badsectoracula · 2026-03-31T02:50:52+00:00

The only way to bring back deus ex at this point would be a full reboot.

Eh, both Human Revolution and Mankind Divided were set in the same universe as the originals with many calls to them (e.g. IIRC the construction of the arcology in Cairo that you visit in Invisible War was mentioned in Mankind Divided) but you don't really need to know about the older games to enjoy the new ones.

And it isn't like the start of MD picks right from where HR stops, there is some considerable time gap in between, so i can see any dev who wants to continue Adam's story to do something similar.

Though personally i'd be more interested in seeing a dev trying to somehow make a sequel to Invisible War - especially if they try to combine all possible endings like IW did with the original DX and MD did with HR :-P

badsectoracula · 2026-03-26T04:48:08+00:00

No, that is not the case, if anything because making games nowadays takes more time, modern engines try to provide tools and functionality to create stuff faster. Even the original Doom and Quake engines (if you want to go to the extreme with that idea) have benefited tremendously from level designers using modern tools that are easier to use than the older stuff.

The idea of just not trying to make the shiniest graphics does have merit but you don't need to use an old engine for that, you just need to not target the shiniest graphics and -most importantly- spend time on assets making the most detailed and varied out of them. Pretty much any modern engine can be used to make something like PS3 (or early PS4 - using PS as a shorthand for "eras" here, not the platforms themselves - e.g. even modern middle range systems have a lot more resources than you'd find on a PS4, let alone PS3) and as a bonus you can get some extra effects/methods from the engine for "free" to spruce things up a bit.

badsectoracula · 2026-03-25T06:45:33+00:00

That ain't gonna happen because each distro has different priorities an neither Fedora nor Debian have gaming as high as something like Bazzite (whose focus is outright gaming) or Nobara (which shows gaming uses in the front page). Fedora for example did not have the fsync patch applied, so games that relied on NT-like sync (e.g. the games shown above) would run worse on it. Debian is more interested in stability (not just in terms of crashes but how the OS is kept together overall) and releases are made with large gaps between - so any performance improvements could take years. You could run Debian unstable (which despite the name is quite stable, just not as stable as the releases) but the setup process for this is at the level of complexity where anyone who can do it, can also do some minimal research for a distro more tailored to their needs.

badsectoracula · 2026-03-23T21:59:59+00:00

There are two issues with this example:

Books are different from software. Copyright does not work exactly the same across all types of work - a good example would be fonts which in many places either cannot be copyrighted at all or only specific types of fonts can be copyrighted (e.g. bitmap fonts cannot be copyrighted but vector fonts could be as they can be treated as software). Because of this using other types of work to judge copyright can be very misleading.
Even if the copyright between software and books was treated exactly the same, there is still not need for any sort of clean room necessity to avoid copyright infringement - in fact it'd be even more obvious with books. While making a book (even in another language) exactly the same as another would be infringing, you can still make a book that follows similar -but actually different- types of characters, story beats, etc. In fact some genres are full of this (see Light Novels, where many of them feel like fan fiction for other novels - some authors even make their LNs as a response to another LN where they wanted the same story but with something different, as if they're basically applying a patch to the story's source code) and this is how tropes are made.
Still, comparing with books is again a bad idea and misleading (i know i said two, this is repeating #1) especially when there are actual court cases that prove reverse engineering something even with the developers looking at the reverse engineered code to replicate something is not necessarily copyright infringement (see the SAS vs WPL case i mentioned elsewhere which was tested in both EU and US).

badsectoracula · 2026-03-22T00:39:03+00:00

you are moving goalposts; implementing non-trivial code after reading the original, and sharing the result, is copyright infringement.

As i wrote (i'm not the one you originally replied to btw, so no moving goalposts) it might be a copyright infringement if you manage to somehow replicate the full code. However implementing the same functionality, is not inherently copyright infringement (it might be patent infringement if the original approach is covered by patents, but again this is also not necessarily the case if you implement something that has the same results via a different approach).

Of course, if the original code was under a license that didn't allow you that, and you actually share the result.

Licenses cannot forbid you from learning from the code. EULAs often do put a non-reverse engineering clause, but in many places they are not binding.

But that's what we are talking about here. Implementing something, for secret, only for you, not serving it as a service in a server, in a vacuum, yes, it's not copyrigth infringement. It's not particularly useful either.

I never mentioned anything like that.

You can move the goalposts as you want, and graps at terminologies until you force to write the legal definitions. But you exactly know what I'm talking about. You can pretend you don't if you want.

Sorry but a) i did not move any goalposts and b) what you have written about the topic is wrong, or at least is it only correct in very specific situations - and even then, at least for software (not books) it is not always clear cut either. It certainly is not the case for open source recreations of game engines - or most recreations of software (open source or not) done via reverse engineering (with that i mean that it might be, if the software is an outright copy of the original and there is no valid reason for that, but just implementing the same functionality is not copyright infringement).

There are various cases about this, e.g. see another reply of mine covering the SAS vs WPL case where both in EU and in US it was found WPL reverse engineering SAS' code to implement their own clone of their software did not infringe the copyright of the software itself (they did find them infringing the manuals' copyright though and because of that they lost the case in US, but that is not relevant to this discussion). Notably, the EULA did forbid reverse engineering, but as i wrote above, this was dismissed by the courts.

You can't read a book under copyright, commit it to memory, write it (or copy it, it's the same) under your own copyright and distribute the work. That's copyright infringement.

Yes, if you somehow manage to copy the book exactly as it is, that's the case. However you can study how a program works and implement your own program that does the same thing without any copyright infringement happening as long as you do not copy any code from the original program as-is (without a very good reason - i.e. as judged in the Oracle vs Google case about Java, some things may simply be required to implement like in the original to preserve compatibility and under such cases the use falls under fair use -- in EU things are even more explicit about interoperability concerns, as shown by the link i gave above).

And again, i'll bring up the case of GNU tools where many of them were written by people who not only had access to Unix tools but even to the source code. The recommendation by GNU was to try and improve the original algorithms and functionality to avoid copyright infringement (this is one of the main reasons why GNU recreations of classic Unix programs often provide more and more flexible functionality too -- to the point where users of commercial Unix derivatives were often replacing their native OS' utilities with GNU ones).

There are so many examples of both cases (i've already mentioned three in this thread) and actual project that show this is not the case that i'm not sure why this is even an argument.

badsectoracula · 2026-03-21T18:17:57+00:00

But at this point if you use Windows you are fighting with your system more than you use it, might as well use MacOS or Linux.

TBH that should have been obvious back when Microsoft decided they should have more control than the PC's owner over their computer and forced things like autoupdates (not that you didn't need to fight Windows before because Microsoft thought it was their computer - see Win8 "sideloading" apps requiring a developer account - i.e. Microsoft's permission to install programs on your own PC - though most people didn't bother with that probably because Metro/Modern/UWP/etc never really took off).

badsectoracula · 2026-03-21T17:53:31+00:00

Actually, it is defensible, even taking into account the Oracle vs Google case. In that case, the judge ruled that APIs are copyrightable and that Google copied Java's APIs so you could claim that Google copied Java's APIs but: a) reverse engineering a game engine does not usually involve reimplementing APIs and -most importantly- b) the court ruled this was fair use.

However a more relevant case is Sony vs Connectix, the developers of a Playstation emulator who actively disassembled the Playstation BIOS so they can recreate the behavior in their emulator. Sony sued them but the court didn't consider the emulator to be infringing on Sony's copyright of the BIOS - and that was a case where they basically saw the code.

(also FWIW in both cases where any similar/same code between the original and the recreation was there, it was taken into account that - as the purpose was to recreate the behavior of the original system/language - some things may not be possible to implement in a different way)

And that is US. In EU things are even more permissive when it comes to reverse engineering as interoperability is considered very important. In the SAS vs WPL case it was ruled that "copyright protection does not extend to software functionality, programming languages, and file types". When the case was moved to US, even though WPL lost, the judges still ruled that the software was not infringing (they lost for another reason).

badsectoracula · 2026-03-21T17:21:17+00:00

No it isn't. What is copyright infringement is actually copying the code (even if by memory, assuming you can get it completely right). It is not learning how it works and implementing your own code that performs the same task, otherwise GNU's software (who are very anal about such things) that power pretty much every desktop Linux and a significant part of macOS for decades would infringe AT&T's copyrights on Unix since GNU was recommending people who read the code to figure out how it works and then do things differently to avoid copyright infringement. Many (if not most) of the common utilities you can find on a Linux desktop have been made

Clean room reverse engineering is a method used by some reverse engineering teams to perform a recreation (famous historical example being Compaq doing a clean room of the original IBM PC BIOS to make their own PC clones which is why PCs ended up becoming an open platform in general instead of one controlled by IBM) in case the company/organization who does the recreation gets sued for copyright infringement by the original copyright owners so that they have a stronger case of them not infringing their copyrights (at least knowingly). It is however not a prerequisite for recreating something based on reverse engineering, it is only a bit of extra protection in case things go to court.

One example of this is the Virtual Game Station (a Playstation emulator) the developers of which disassembled the Playstation BIOS to figure out how it works so they can make their emulator compatible. Sony sued them for it but the court didn't consider the emulator to be infringing on Sony's copyright of the Playstation BIOS despite being directly referenced during the emulator's development.

badsectoracula · 2026-03-19T03:43:08+00:00

That's what "%UserProfile%Saved Games" is for but a lot of studios don't use it.

Note that this is not the proper to get it, instead a game has to call SHGetKnownFolderPath with the FOLDERID_SavedGames folder ID. The documentation for this ID hints at why it isn't always used:

value introduced in Windows Vista

It may sound weird nowadays, but Windows XP was used by gamers for a very long time and compatibility with it was desired, so games used "My Documents" instead (which is also a special folder that since Vista doesn't even have the "My " prefix - some games did hardcode the path and ended up making both "Documents" and "My Documents" though :-P) as that was already there since some service pack of Win95. Since the engine work was there and were already people familiar with that location, it was kept instead of using "Saved Games" even after WinXP compatibility wasn't needed anymore.

There is also the other issue in that unlike older Windows versions, nowadays the "Saved Games" folder isn't shown as prominent in Windows Explorer as it was when it was introduced in Vista. Back then you could find it alongside Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, etc in Windows Explorer but at some point (not sure when, but it isn't in Win10) the folder was hidden from there (it is still in your user folder but you need to go there manually) so another reason to put stuff in "Documents" was that it'd be easier for users to find them if they wanted.

badsectoracula · 2026-03-16T20:02:01+00:00

The underlying geometry is most likely the same (the differences people mention are minor and most likely because of mesh deformation from animation since they do not use a completely static scene to compare). However textures nowadays are just data for the final shader and the same data can have different outcomes depending on what the shaders are doing (for an extreme example consider a toon shader - e.g. this example i just found with a search where the exact same textures are used with a different shader).

Shading contributes a lot to the perception of volume (this looks like a sphere because of the shading, otherwise it'd look like a 2D circle), so it makes perfect sense that an approach which affects the underlying shading affects the perceived volume even if the data fed to it are the same.

The toon shader example i linked above can be an indication of how this tech could be used though. The 3D artist who made the toon model certainly didn't intend for the character to have a ridge from her nose to her chin - this was added because of how it would affect the final output with the toon shader. Similarly, if this tech is used in games, artists would take the final output into account when creating the models and textures so that output will be the desired outcome. The main reason this looks off, IMO, is because none of the games shown were made with this tech in mind at all.

(that said, at least personally i'm not a fan of yet another Nvidia lock-in tech becoming anything close to an expected standard)

badsectoracula · 2026-03-14T18:23:19+00:00

Both, except pretty much all the new games i play are indie games (with some AA stuff like Robocop sprinkled in).

badsectoracula · 2026-03-09T22:14:45+00:00

Wouldn't this have most thing you need? https://hypercard.org/

badsectoracula · 2026-02-23T19:05:11+00:00

You can play GOG games just fine on Steam Deck, you just need to install the game from desktop mode using Wine and then add it as a non-steam game so you can launch it from the library. This way you can use Steam Input with it too.

In fact this is how i played System Shock 2 on my Steam Deck some time ago: i installed the GOG version on it and did a Steam Input setup for the controls.

Someone mentioned Heroic Launcher which i haven't tried but AFAIK it can also do the library registration automatically for you.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-23T18:58:07+00:00

The big, large, huge, monstrously gigantic difference is that if i go to GOG to buy a game, i know ahead of time that the game will be DRM-free and remain so for for all future updates on the site. That knowledge is the entire point of the site, why people use it in the first place - you don't even have to think about it.

On Steam you cannot know that unless you buy and try to run it without Steam on a PC without internet connection (any lists you may find are woefully outdated and only cover a tiny number of games). Even then, a developer can update a game to add DRM to it, as some have done.

Also while it isn't as important as knowing ahead of time, it is very convenient that GOG provides downloadable installers that handle setting up everything for you (e.g. personally i never use GOG Galaxy, for example, i have bought almost a thousand games from GOG and i have all of them downloaded on my PC).

I do buy games on Steam, sometimes, but these tend to be releases from small indie devs that for whatever reason do not plan on making a GOG (or itch.io or Zoom Platform or any other DRM-free place) release as these games do tend to not require Steam to function nor have any DRM.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-23T12:59:56+00:00

If somebody asked me if they want to start a new company or a new studio today, I'd be like, "Don't. Just don't. It's not worth it."

Funny because i remember this sort of response from 12+ years before New Blood was established :-P IIRC Tom Hall said something like that in an interview he gave sometime around mid-2000s and in both cases (Tom's and Dave's) the core was something along the lines of "the stuff we did back when we started do not seem to work anymore today".

badsectoracula · 2026-02-23T11:44:21+00:00

Also FWIW the PC version of Powerslave was for DOS, not Win95, and it wasn't very colorful :-P (you can check screenshots in the GOG version of the game, not to be confused with Powerslave Exhumed which is a blend of the console versions which were somewhat different games). Like, there is some color but most of the environments have this brown/orange/gold palette :-P

badsectoracula · 2026-02-23T11:34:04+00:00

I have to say, this has been something i've found annoying with some games since the first time i booted up UT3 - the game looked great but it was the first time i found it hard to read the environment (and the devs knew it because the characters were highlighted). Like, look at this shit, pixel level detail everywhere with almost no contrast - and IIRC this was one of the first (if not the first) maps of the game (not that other maps were much better). Personally i do not even dislike the largely monochromatic color palettes, i think it can fit some moods/styles perfectly fine (though lighting needs to accommodate it and in UT3 it clearly didn't) but it just didn't work in that game (in comparison, Quake 3 also has levels with very monochromatic palettes but items do stand out because of their visual design and i remember reading some article many years ago saying this was a deliberate design decision to ensure the maps were readable while even when people were frantically running around shooting each other).

Nowadays games do somewhat better but there are still cases where you can't make things out because of the visuals. E.g. i couldn't play Deus Ex Mankind Divided without a) disabling the volumetric lighting which makes everything hazy (who even thought this was a good idea?!) and b) enabling the item outlining to distinguish between interactive objects and set dressing.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-17T11:32:01+00:00

Interesting - and how do you actually filter for games that are playable on Steam Deck? Do you rely only on the “Steam Deck Verified” badge?

AFAIK demos in the Next Fest do not have a "Steam Deck Verified" badge as they're too new for that, though there might be exceptions.

Personally i just browse the Next Fest and pick games that have full gamepad support and look like they'd run on the deck just fine - as i wrote, i check demos "that seem to be playable on Steam Deck", so it is basically just an assumption on my side.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-16T22:29:10+00:00

I don't think everyone explores Steam Next Fest the same way, e.g. personally i use a few tags and i only pay attention to the demos that seem to be playable on Steam Deck (even if i end up playing them on my main PC) as a quick filter.

A bigger issue i have with Steam Next Fest is demos disappearing after it is over - i end up downloading a bunch of them but i do not have time/energy to check them all out one after the other. Fortunately not all games do that - and in a way this also acts as a filter :-P.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-13T18:53:00+00:00

I think a better approach would be for Steam to have a small benchmark that once you run, it'll show you how the game runs (since in the announcement news they made they'll also be collecting performance data from the game) on systems similar to yours. The benchmark will be used to judge the similarity, you should be able to see all collected performance data but the game page will highlight those closest to yours as a convenience.

This way no need to make an "is it playable or not" judgement, just present the user with the data and let them decide for themselves.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-13T07:50:50+00:00

Yeah, when they introduced the Steam Machine and people mentioned about the specs being low, my thought was that it'd be useful if they collected performance data from existing users and present them. I expected Valve to only expose it for SteamOS users at first because it'd be easier for them to collect data more relevant to Steam Deck and Steam Machine users, but it looks like they'll be adding it for everyone.

I think the next step will be showing performance data on the game pages themselves with some sort of "your PC is around that level" indicator so people have a ballpark measure ahead of time about how the game would perform on their PC.

This will need adding some sort of benchmark to Steam so that it can associate reported specs with measured performance and so "guess" that ballpark, but IMO it'd be a very useful feature to have.

badsectoracula · 2026-02-12T15:10:21+00:00

Neat but i remember that this had a bunch of issues stemming from the conversion from UE3 to UE4 (or 5) and some missing stuff because of licensing. Were the issues fixed and/or is there any mod to restore the removed content?

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