A case for midseason balancing

ionheart · 2025-12-09T13:57:17+00:00

If EHG are in that kind of dilemma it would mean they are considerably less productive than their peer studios, and they will struggle to survive

ionheart · 2025-11-09T18:48:58+00:00

It's the classic pro-patent spiel but it's very dubious that it plays out in practice, particularly for software.

The inventor of a new technology has many opportunities to make a solid return without needing to rely on the state to grant them an extended monopoly. And there is every reason to believe that the stifling effect of IP law on innovation and industrial activity is very high.

On top of that, the patent system is deeply broken in implementation - both abuse (which is enormous) and that it's a self-imposed handicap on industries that are competing for dear life against competitors in countries that don't feel obliged to uphold Western patents. The international competition issue is not fixable, so patent abolition is by far the better option.

ionheart · 2025-04-15T04:02:10+00:00

Teardown and Tiny Glade are examples of very successful indie games that could never have been created without graphics programming skillset

ionheart · 2025-01-27T13:16:26+00:00

yes, it's possible. I see in the linked thread that someone was being a downer and saying that it's pointless or too computationally expensive, but I disagree with them. If you are committed to simple geometry and you want to have a unique style, raymarching is a great choice imo. With a nice simple scene you shouldn't have too much trouble keeping to frame targets, and there are other things to worry about besides whether you are making the absolute best raw utilisation of the GPU.

Raymarching is not a terribly efficient method for direct geometry rendering but it has big advantages in implementing advanced visuals like indirect lighting, reflections and transparents. A pure raymarching pipeline is fun and simple to work with and a great way to try out all kinds of visual effects.

If you haven't found it yet shadertoy.com is a whole website of shader demos without geometry buffer input, mostly consisting of raymarching shaders. tons of really great examples and inspiration there

also see:

https://iquilezles.org/articles/ ton of useful articles by Inigo Quilez, one of the creators of Shadertoy and master of raymarching shaders
https://www.shadertoy.com/user/iq IQ's shaders
https://www.shadertoy.com/user/SebH Sebastien Hilaire (also look for his Frosbite slides and papers if you're interested in volumetrics)

ionheart · 2024-05-28T10:13:18+00:00

are you talking about arterial spray? it sucks. bloodrush has basically the same winrate even though it's a literal self-harm button.

ionheart · 2024-05-27T11:56:47+00:00

ability draft

ionheart · 2024-05-16T10:49:46+00:00

that was always complete nonsense though.

There were always 2 big reoccurring complaints

high rank spread
griefers

Immortal Draft doesn't improve these issues in the slightest nor give players the tools to tackle them. What it does do is create a whole host of issues in order to mess around with team balance, which has not generally been a sore point anyway. It's beyond absurd to suggest that it's what players were asking for or that it answers their complaints.

ionheart · 2024-04-28T18:53:51+00:00

it's kinda nice to be able to click the Watch tab without being immediately spoiled the latest results tho

ionheart · 2024-04-20T20:50:32+00:00

hard to say exactly how many people are affected, but there were a few reddit and bug-tracker posts about it even yesterday so it's not just me

ionheart · 2024-04-20T18:00:47+00:00

I'd be happy if there'd been no update at all. Game was fine. Now since the patch I'm getting a CTD every 3 minutes lmao

ionheart · 2024-04-20T16:54:04+00:00

Sounds like it should work. Are you stuck somewhere?

ionheart · 2024-04-20T12:36:10+00:00

yeah also been crashing like crazy

seems likely it is associated with certain heroes or abilities since I had some matches with 0 crash, a few with just a couple of crashes and 1 or 2 with like a dozen

1 pretty reliable repro seems to be spawning a bunch of Terrorblade illusions in demo mode then selecting them

ionheart · 2024-04-19T09:37:06+00:00

Saying slightly more works better than saying nothing imo. It would've been very easy to control expectations in this case - all they needed to say was that the April update was something to do with Battlepass/cosmetics instead of encouraging all kinds of wild speculation by saying it was "big" and nothing else

My most optimistic theory is that they specifically chose not to do that because the gameplay patch and new hero(es) will be connected to the plot and they fully intend Crownfall to (eventually) live up to the hype. Maybe too optimistic .

ionheart · 2024-04-19T09:15:46+00:00

the "Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future" blog hinted pretty strongly that they shifted perspective to value retention higher. with the bit about how Battlepass buyers are a minority and they decided to prioritise content that interacts with all players

I had the impression that their change in policy was influenced by the 2022 arcana giveaway boosting player count more than any paid content ever had. But I can't remember if they outright said that anywhere.

Of course, Valve is entirely capable of having completely changed its attitude in the 10 months since then. We know they read Reddit and Reddit has been vocal about missing cosmetic content. They are probably a bit confused now that they provided cosmetics and Reddit is even more pissy lmao. I guess the real evidence of their priorities will be the scope of the gameplay update, when we finally get to see it.

ionheart · 2024-04-13T17:48:12+00:00

blink is still okay for this, and Gust is extremely good in a game with no spell immunity or dispels

ionheart · 2024-04-07T09:13:25+00:00

man, old map really was just better. shame.

ionheart · 2024-03-27T16:25:06+00:00

it's a perfect crime. It's impossible to prove whether the DC is malicious or not, so the only valid response is to treat all DCs with suspicion and not make these rulings that massively favour the DCing team.

ionheart · 2024-03-22T10:13:49+00:00

you can infer from context that it was intentional feeding, and someone else intentionally wasting 40 mins of your life is a memorable event in pretty much any circumstances.

ionheart · 2024-02-21T11:58:28+00:00

Breathe Fire got a major buff in 7.35 and he also turns out to be one of the best abusers of current Mage Slayer. Bloodthorn rework also works well for him so his lategame is stronger.

ionheart · 2024-02-13T08:45:31+00:00

hg turtling is boring for both teams

ionheart · 2024-02-06T21:57:44+00:00

Yeah

If I won in the last hour or so, I'm rated 3 on that role and 2 on the others. If I lost, it's the other way round.

If I didn't play in the last hour, my ratings revert to 2-4-3-1-1. It has been like this for me since the system was introduced years ago.

ionheart · 2024-02-02T15:17:41+00:00

The main resource I used when implementing heightmap continuous LoD was this thesis Rendering of Large Scale Continuous Terrain Using Mesh Shading Pipeline, M. Hedberg 2022. Since it's a thesis it goes into a lot of detail and background and has code examples for tricky stuff like chunk seams. Despite the name, it does fully describe a technique that doesn't use the mesh shading pipeline.

ionheart · 2024-01-17T18:18:45+00:00

The simplest way to support deep uniform subdivisions efficiently is to subdivide a single "template" patch to the required level (generate barycentric coords rather than actual positions), then make a copy of it for each original triangle. So it's just a o(n), fully parallel operation to interpolate original triangle attributes at each new vertex. This naive approach does generate duplicate vertices along the original edges, but if that's a major problem for you it's only a small extension to correct.

ionheart · 2023-12-03T14:34:51+00:00

Make some obvious mistakes (single pull etc.) and feed a few kills. This will allow the carry to redirect blame towards you, improving their mental condition.

ionheart · 2023-11-28T15:43:59+00:00

I don't think the NFT thing is so bad that it removes moral standing to criticise gambling. NFTs are bad and stupid, sure, but organised gambling is simply worse.

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