#proprietary engine

[linuxgamenews]

Never's End: Shape the Battlefield Experience

Never’s End the tactical RPG game where you bend the elements and shape the battlefield, is coming to Steam Deck and Linux via Windows PC. Thanks to fresh insights from the brilliant development team at Hypersect. Which is working to find its way onto Steam.

You ever get that itch for a release that lets you really mess with the battlefield? Not just move your squad around and trade blows, but reshape the world itself? That’s where Never’s End comes in — an upcoming tactical RPG from the minds at Hypersect that’s gunning to blow the roof off what turn-based combat can be. The adventures awaits us on Steam Deck, which means Linux players, we’re in the fight too.

No plans for a native Linux port, but the game plays great on Steam Deck and Steam OS.

The devs are using their own custom game engine, so a native build isn’t likely — but don’t worry. Never’s End is fully confirmed for Steam Deck, so it will run on Linux via Proton, meaning, we’re still in the game.

Set in a dying world that’s just barely hanging on, Never’s End throws you into the metal skin of an immortal warrior—reborn, reforged, and ready to battle the creeping apocalypse known only as the Never. Since you don’t just fight enemies in this title. You command the elements — fire, water, wind, and earth — to twist the battlefield itself. Flood the plains. Burn forests to ash. Freeze rivers. Collapse cliffs beneath your foes. It’s not just magic; it’s also pure chaos in your hands — and it sticks around, changing the world even after the fight is done.

Your mission in Never’s End? Defend the last human stronghold from the grotesque horrors clawing their way in. We’re talking undead wights, winged abominations, twisted squid-goat demons (yes, really)—all corrupted by the Never. But you’re also not alone. You’ll command a team of warriors, each one a vessel of power and personality, customized to your playstyle. Equip them, train them, build synergies, due to unleash combos that’ll turn the tide in even the bleakest encounters.

Never’s End | Announce Trailer

And it’s not all war and fireballs. There’s strategy between battles too. As you push back the darkness, you’ll also rebuild shattered temples and towns, grow trade routes, and bring life back to a world that’s been broken. Temples unlock stronger elemental powers. Businesses give your people purpose—and your party better gear. Blacksmiths, tavern keepers, tanneries, lumber mills—it’s all part of bringing civilization back from the edge.

The art? Absolutely gorgeous 3D pixel work—detailed, moody, and alive—crafted by Masayoshi Nishimura (yep, the guy behind Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy). The music is also great too, thanks to Doseone (Enter the Gungeon, anyone?). It's a visual feast, a Never’s End saga of pixel perfection.

This isn’t just another tactical RPG — it’s an emotional punch to the gut with brains, beauty, and brutal choices. Think Final Fantasy Tactics meets Divinity: Original Sin 2, with the open-ended exploration of Breath of the Wild. But this time, you get to twist fate.

Ryan Juckett, founder of Hypersect, said it best: “Never’s End fleshes out turn-based tactics combat with reactive systems empowering players to co-author the story and make it their own.”

And we, the players, are the co-authors.

The game hits Windows PC (Steam) late 2025. So, Steam Deck and Linux players, smash that wishlist button now on Steam. Because when the Never comes… you’ll want to be ready with Never’s End at hand.

[nyaa]

what got you so into pulling slight pranks like the pictures actually being gifs stuff

short answer is last year when I came back to tumlr for awhile i made this gif for that yugioh reblog

and people started commenting in the tags about how they felt they were losing their minds not realizing it was a gif at first so I got really into the idea of how I could play with the website itself as a medium to illicit a distorted perception of things. not out of malice. It a sort of vicarious thing for me.

You know when you were really young (before internet access) and playing a weird video game and u didn’t know why things were happening the way they were because you hadn’t quite grasped the concept of game development, or like whether or not something was a glitch or intentional (I played a lot of majoras mask and morrowind as a young kid) that’s kinda the feeling I like to bristle against.

[sreseo-blog]

MBL Audio

[molsno]

I can't believe people willingly buy new phones every year. I hate buying a new phone. every single year they get shittier and shittier so corporations can make a little bit more money. you're telling me they removed micro sd card slots because there wasn't enough room? bullshit. a micro sd card is barely any bigger than a sim card. they removed it so that you'd be forced to buy a more expensive model with more storage. they removed headphone jacks so you'd have to buy their proprietary wireless earbuds.

phones shouldn't even be allowed to receive upgrades once a year anyway. people in the democratic republic of the congo, including literal children, are forced to do incredibly dangerous and often deadly work mining the materials for these devices, destroying the environments in which they live so that these devices can be cheaply produced, and you're telling me they're purposefully engineered to become obsolete quickly? phones will no doubt continue to be a staple of daily life, but the way they're produced NEEDS to change so that they're better for all of us, including the people involved in their production. death to capitalism and death to imperialism.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A sexy, skinny defeat device for your HP ink cartridge

Animals keep evolving into crabs; it's a process called "carcinisation" and it's pretty weird. Crabs just turn out to be extremely evolutionarily fit for our current environment:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-animals-keep-evolving-into-crabs/

By the same token, all kinds of business keep evolving into something like a printer company. It turns out that in this enshittified, poorly regulated, rentier-friendly world, the parasitic, inkjet business model is extremely adaptive. Printerinisation is everywhere.

All that stuff you hate about your car? Trapping you into using their mechanics, spying on you, planned obsolescence? All lifted from the inkjet printer business model:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

That GE fridge that won't make ice or dispense water unless you spend $50 for a proprietary charcoal filter instead of using a $10 generic? Pure printerism:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

The software update to your Sonos speakers that makes them half as useful and takes away your right to play your stored music, forcing you to buy streaming music subscriptions? Straight out of the HP playbook:

https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-admits-its-recent-app-update-was-a-colossal-mistake/

But as printerinized as all these gadgets are, none can quite attain the level of high enshittification that the OG inkjet bastards attain on a daily basis. In the world championships of effortlessly authentic fuckery, no one can lay a glove on the sociopathic monsters of HP.

For example: when HP wanted to soften us all up for a new world of "subscription ink" (where you have to pre-pay every month for a certain number of pages' worth of printing, which your printer enforces by spying on you and ratting you out to HP over the internet), they offered a "lifetime subscription" plan. With this "lifetime" plan, you paid just once and your HP printer would print out 15 pages a month for so long as you owned your printer, with HP shipping you new ink every time you ran low.

Well, eventually, HP got bored of not making you pay rent on your own fucking printer, so they just turned that plan off. Yeah, it was a lifetime plan, but the "lifetime" in question was the lifetime of HP's patience for not fucking you over, and that patience has the longevity of a mayfly:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/06/horrible-products/#inkwars

It would take many pages to list all of HP's sins here. This is a company that ships printers with half-full ink cartridges and charges more than the printer cost to buy a replacement set. The company that won't let you print a black-and-white page if you're out of yellow ink. The company that won't let you scan or send a fax if you're out of any of your ink.

They make you "recalibrate" your printer or "clean your heads" by forcing you to print sheets of ink-dense paper. They also refuse to let you use your ink cartridges after they "expire."

HP raised the price of ink to over $10,000 per gallon, then went to war against third-party ink cartridge makers, cartridge remanufacturers, and cartridge refillers. They added "security chips" to their cartridges whose job was to watch the ink levels in your cartridge and, when they dip below a certain level (long before the cartridge is actually empty), declare the cartridge to be dry and permanently out of use.

Even if you refill that cartridge, it will still declare itself to be empty to your printer, which will therefore refuse to print.

Third party ink companies have options here. One thing they could do is reverse-engineer the security chip, and make compatible ones that say, "Actually, I'm full." The problem with this is that laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) potentially makes this into a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine, for a first offense.

DMCA 1201 bans bypassing "an effective means of access control" to a copyrighted work. So if HP writes a copyrighted "I'm empty" program for its security chip and then adds some kind of access restriction to prevent you from dumping and reverse-engineering that program, you can end up a felon, thanks to the DMCA.

Another countermove is to harvest security chips out of dead cartridges that have been sent overseas as e-waste (one consequence of HP's $10,000/gallon ink racket is that it generates mountains of immortal, toxic e-waste that mostly ends up poisoning poor countries in the global south). These can be integrated into new cartridges, or remanufactured ones.

In practice, ink companies do all of this and more, and total normie HP printer owners go to extremely improbable lengths to find third party ink cartridges and figure out how to use them. It turns out that even people who find technology tinkering intimidating or confusing or dull can be motivated to learn and practice a lot of esoteric tech stuff as an alternative to paying $10,000/gallon for colored water.

HP has lots of countermoves for this. One truly unhinged piece of fuckery is to ask Customs and Border Patrol to block third-party ink cartridges with genuine HP security chips that have been pried loose from e-waste shipments. HP claims that these are "counterfeits" (because they were removed and re-used without permission), even though they came out of real HP cartridges, and CBP takes them at their word, seizing shipments.

Even sleazier: HP pushes out fake security updates to its printers. You get a message telling you there's an urgent security update, you click OK, and your printer shows you a downloading/installing progress bar and reboots itself. As far as you can tell, nothing has changed. But these aren't "security" updates, they're updates that block third-party ink, and HP has designed them not to kick in for several months. That way, HP owners who get tricked into installing this downgrade don't raise hell online and warn everyone else until they've installed it too, and it's too late:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

This is the infectious pathogen business model: one reason covid spread so quickly was that people were infectious before they developed symptoms. That meant that the virus could spread before the spreader knew they had it. By adding a long fuse to its logic bomb, HP greatly increases the spread of its malware.

But life finds a way. $10,000/gallon ink is an irresistible target for tinkerers, security researchers and competitors. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the true parent of jaw-dropping ingenuity is callous, sadistic greed. That's why America's army of prisoners are the source of so many of the most beautiful and exciting forms of innovation seen today:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/king-rat/#mother-of-invention

Despite harsh legal penalties and the vast resources of HP, third-party ink continues to thrive, and every time HP figures out how to block one technique, three even cooler ones pop up.

Last week, Jay Summet published a video tearing down a third-party ink cartridge compatible with an HP 61XL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

The third-party cartridge has what appears to be a genuine HP security chip, but it is overlaid with a paper-thin, flexible, adhesive-backed circuit board that is skinny enough that the cartridge still fits in an HP printer.

This flexible circuit board has its own little microchip. Summet theorizes that it is designed to pass the "are you a real HP cartridge" challenge pass to the security chip, but to block the followup "are you empty or full?" message. When the printer issues that challenge, the "man in the middle" chip answers, "Oh, I'm definitely full."

In their writeup, Hackaday identifies the chip as "a single IC in a QFN package." This is just so clever and delightful:

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/man-in-the-middle-pcb-unlocks-hp-ink-cartridges/

Hackaday also notes that HP CEO Enrique J Lores recently threatened to brick any printer discovered to be using third-party ink:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

As William Gibson famously quipped, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." As our enshittification-rich environment drives more and more companies to evolve into rent-seeking enterprises through printerinisation, HP offers us a glimpse of the horrors of the late enshittocene.

It's just as Orwell prophesied: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a HP installing malware on your printer to force you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink – forever."

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Image: Jay Summet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

[digitalcreationsllc]

Cloud Engineer Wreaks Havoc on Bank’s Network After Firing

The engineer deployed malware, deleted code repositories, and emailed himself proprietary bank code in retaliation for being fired, impersonating a coworker in the process.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Vector AWX3 Prototype, 1992. Planned as a replacement for the Vector W8, the WX3 was to be powered by a proprietary 7.0 litre DOHC V8 engine. Planned by Vector Motors founder and chief designer Gerald Wiegert, the model designation stood for Avtech Wiegert Experimental 3rd generation. The prototype used a modified version of the W8's twin turbo V8. After a hostile takeover by the primary shareholder, Megatech, production of the AWX3 was cancelled.

[olive-pup]

Imagine the frustration of trying to do maintenance on your robot gf only to find out her wiring diagrams, code, and repair manual are considered confidential and proprietary and only factory certified technicians are allowed or able to work on her. Now imagine working tirelessly to build a wiring diagram, reverse engineer her code, and documenting troubleshooting and maintenance procedures

[treasure-mimic]

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

[failbettergames]

We are giddy to announce that we are working with tabletop roleplaying legends Magpie Games to create Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game, a fully-fledged, custom tabletop roleplaying system for Fallen London, in a big book and everything!

In Fallen London: the Roleplaying Game, players create their own characters by drawing on the factions, archetypes, and settings of the city — cutthroats, socialites, radicals, academics, and other, stranger creatures. They are brought together by a shared ambition; a very nearly unachievable goal. Such ambitions may destroy or drive mad those who pursue them… or they may change London forever. The Heart, as they say, is Destiny’s engine.

Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game is slated for release in late 2025 along with a supplement, Fallen London: Secrets of the Neath. In addition, players will be able to complete their tools for gameplay with the Fallen London Dice Pack and Fallen London Gamemaster Screen. Gameplay will consist of proprietary game mechanics currently in development by Magpie Games. We're going to introduce the project in full on August 23rd at 16:00 EDT/21:00 BST in a live stream, hosted by friend, scholar, journalist, streamer and Doctor of the Internet Kat Brewster on their Twitch channel! [PLEASE NOTE: Dear friend Johnny Chiodini has had to drop out at the last minute so utter hero Kat is picking up the host mantle and therefore the location of the Q&A has changed, go to that link instead!]

Guests will include Mark Diaz Truman and Brendan Conway from Magpie, and Fallen London creative lead Bruno Dias and me, Hannah, the one who sends the emails.

Fallen London is turning 15 in 2025 and this is our big anniversary project. We wouldn't have got here without you; we hope that this is a suitable anniversary present. 

[thatnoulguyorsomething]

Godot is better for the simple reason that, being open-source, you can fuck that much harder with the company if they try to screw you over.

So i keep seeing people sharing game maker dunking on unity.

I'll be real with you. People behind game maker are probably just as bad.

They pushed a subscription service out when the tool uaes to be a life time license and im sure they're going to find a way to force life time licenses into a subscription model.

It's being handled by the company running OperaGX.

And most recently they pushed an update that broke the sprites on every project because they rushed the update out because they wanted to meet their monthly update deadline for the subscriptions.

If your starting out game dev i would actually advise staying away from game maker.(speaking as someone who used the program for over 10 years till it started crashing on me frequently and making me have to keep buying life time licenses)

[linuxgamenews]

Din’s Champion: Explore the Latest Improvements

Din’s Champion update for the side scrolling action RPG game gets more changes on Linux and Windows PC, with a demo. Thanks to the team at Soldak Entertainment for constantly bringing fresh, creative energy. Which you can find on Steam Early Access with its 93% Very Positive reviews. It’s been over 6 months since Din’s Champion side scrolling action RPG hit Early Access, and man, it’s been a ride. Soldak is patching like mad – 23 patches in total, with 6 new ones since the last time they gave you an update. That brings us to a massive 879 total changes. Yes, you read that right. Let’s break down what’s new in this Din’s Champion update, because there’s a lot of great stuff, both big and small, and if you haven’t checked out the game lately, now’s a pretty great time.

Skill Augments Are Here

You can now customize your active skills right on your hotbar. Each skill can have a mod with 1 major augment and up to 3 minor augments. This means more build variety, more strategy, and let’s be serious — more chaos. Want your fireball to slow enemies or your melee attack to leave shockwaves? Go for it.

There’s a Demo Now!

For all Linux warriors (and Windows folks too), there is also a free demo on Steam with this Din’s Champion update. Just head to the Steam page and click that big green button. It’s a great way to get a feel for the gameplay if you're still on the fence.

Smoother UI + Newbie Love

Plus all the feedback is making the gameplay way more welcoming for new players. Cleaning up a bunch of tool tips, adding more quick tips, reworking skill descriptions, and pushing some of the harder stuff (like those annoying gargoyles) to higher levels. So if you're just getting into this title, you'll have a much easier time surviving.

Din’s Champion trailer and new update

UI-wise, there are additional features like split stack management, fixed some icon bugs, and better pickup visuals. Plus, crafting messages and item labels are now more intuitive. Small things? Sure. But they make a big difference.

Balance Tweaks & Fixes in the Din’s Champion update

Every update brings a flood of tweaks, and this one’s no different. Some highlights:

Pets no longer destroy your carefully placed blocks (thank you, Balavaeros).

Mining now makes noise—yes, monsters might come check it out. Risk vs reward, baby.

Tons of skill range rebalancing and digging changes. Want to explode through the earth? Hulk and zombie monsters are now better at digging too.

Items stack better, tool tips make more sense, and vials finally show the correct liquid colors.

Oh, and the game is also more stable now — fixing a couple of those rare crash bugs. So yeah, that’s your Din’s Champion update in a nutshell. Soldak is still cooking up more changes for the side scrolling action RPG, and the game’s growing fast. So if you haven’t played in a while, now’s a great time to jump back in and see what’s new via on Steam Early Access. Doing so with a price of $19.99 USD / £16.75 / 19,50€. Along with support for Linux and Windows PC, of course. See you in the dungeon, champions. Stay sharp and also, don’t forget to augment your skills!

[sunarryn]

DP X Marvel #20

Jazz Fenton was not supposed to become an urban legend, a media conspiracy theory, or a widely feared intern with multiple Tumblr fan accounts, but alas, here they were.

At 19 years old, Jasmine “Jazz” Fenton had moved to New York on a full scholarship to Columbia University, double majoring in psychology and business, with a minor in engineering just for fun. She wore blazers older than most Columbia freshmen, carried a briefcase instead of a backpack, and maintained a 4.0 GPA while ghost-proofing her dorm room using proprietary tech she’d built in high school. On the third day of orientation, she calmly tased a literal demon that crawled out of an upper-floor window of Butler Library and continued sipping her iced matcha like it was a Tuesday. Which, unfortunately, it was.

This act caught the attention of a lot of people, including—but not limited to—an NYPD exorcist division, a priest named Father Julio, two SHIELD interns on a coffee break, and Pepper Potts, who was in the city for a Stark Industries panel on sustainable weapons of mass deterrence.

“She tased a demon,” Pepper said slowly to her assistant.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“In broad daylight.”

“Correct.”

“And then she—what did she say again?”

The assistant glanced at their notes. “‘Don’t manifest on Ivy League property, it lowers our national rank.’”

Pepper stared into the distance. “Find her. And hire her.”

Within forty-eight hours, Jazz was sitting in a glass elevator ascending Stark Tower. She hadn’t applied for anything. She hadn’t submitted a résumé. But her phone pinged during a psych lecture with a Stark Industries-branded email that simply said, “Ms. Potts would like to speak to you,” followed by a GPS pin and a non-negotiable appointment time.

Tony, predictably, was not consulted.

“What do you MEAN she’s nineteen? What do you MEAN she’s your intern? Pepper, she built a plasma cannon in your office. In two hours. Using my old espresso machine.”

“It was broken,” Jazz added politely, scrolling through quantum schematics on her StarkPad. “And under OSHA, coffee-related injuries are still injuries. You’re welcome.”

Tony pointed a wrench at her like it was a gun. “You don’t scare me, you ginger menace.”

Jazz smiled faintly. “You should be scared. You tried to patent a neural override system with an open-ended quantum key. You’re lucky I fixed it before it broadcasted the location of every Stark tech asset on Earth.”

There was a pause.

Tony turned to Pepper. “She’s you. But worse. Why is she you but worse?”

“I don’t know,” Pepper murmured. “But I think I love her.”

The rumors started on week three.

At first, it was office gossip. Just little things. Intern was too tall. Too confident. Too quiet. You don’t trust the quiet ones. And then she reverse-engineered the Arc Reactor because she was bored on lunch break, and the quiet turned into fear.

“Is she—like—a clone or something?” asked one junior developer to another over ramen in the cafeteria.

“I heard she’s Tony’s secret daughter,” the other whispered. “Raised in a lab. Trained from birth. Like that kid in Kingsman but with algebra.”

One engineer swore they saw her casually deflect a pulse grenade using a file folder. Another caught her manually rebooting the Tower AI after it shorted out during a lightning storm—something that shouldn’t have been possible unless you had admin-level clearance, which Jazz absolutely did not have. In theory.

“Pepper,” Tony said slowly one morning, watching Jazz reprogram a malfunctioning security drone while also Skyping her Columbia psych professor, “do we have a bioengineered heir you forgot to tell me about?”

“No,” Pepper said, sipping coffee. “But if I die, she gets the company.”

Tony sputtered. “Excuse me?!”

Jazz didn’t look up. “I accept.”

The media got involved during Stark Industries’ spring gala.

Jazz, dressed in a midnight blue suit that cost more than her entire tuition, arrived at Pepper’s side like a storm. She was calm, composed, stunningly competent, and intercepted two would-be saboteurs in the first thirty minutes with nothing but a suspicious stare and a champagne flute.

“She’s Pepper’s daughter,” someone tweeted.

“She’s not old enough to be her daughter.”

“She’s her clone. Pepper 2.0. She even walks like her.”

“I would let her step on me.”

By the next morning, “#StarkHeir” was trending worldwide, and conspiracy theorists had posted side-by-side comparisons of Jazz and Pepper’s bone structures, speech patterns, and typing styles. Someone even made a Google doc of all their shared quirks. It had color-coded sections. There were charts.

Tony spent the entire week yelling.

“She’s NOT my kid! She’s not even related to Pepper!”

Pepper, annoyingly, did not help. “Technically, we don’t know she’s not.”

“Oh my god.”

Meanwhile, Jazz was unfazed.

“Should I post a clarification?” she asked.

“No,” said Pepper, texting casually. “Let them fear you.”

The Avengers had mixed feelings.

Steve was terrified of her. She reminded him too much of Natasha, if Natasha had spent her childhood in AP classes and the rest of her time inventing hover grenades. Sam and Rhodey liked her, mostly because she was polite and explained quantum mechanics in metaphors that involved pop tarts. Peter developed an immediate and debilitating crush, which she ignored with expert precision.

“Hi, Miss Fenton,” Peter said shyly one day, watching her reprogram a Stark drone mid-air while eating a bagel.

“Peter,” she said without looking up. “You have a calculus exam in twenty-two minutes and your spider-suit’s magnetic lock is uncalibrated.”

Peter turned pink. “Oh. Thanks. Wait—how did you—?”

She looked at him. “I am your god now.”

Peter nearly fainted.

Natasha liked her. Clint was afraid of her. Thor called her “Little Flame Witch” and offered to train her in Asgardian battle strategy, which she accepted, just to make Bruce nervous.

But it was Loki who said it first.

“She’s not of this world,” he muttered to Wanda during a conference meeting. “She carries too much silence for a mortal. Something follows her.”

He was right, of course.

Because sometimes, at night, the tower cameras would glitch. Alarms would blip off for three-point-two seconds. And if you reviewed the footage frame by frame, you’d catch a flicker of something—green light, spectral claws, shadows moving too fast.

Jazz never addressed it.

She just carried her ghost-hunting thermos in her tote bag and once drop-kicked a poltergeist out of the 35th floor without spilling her coffee. Pepper made her head of paranormal security the next day. Tony threw a chair.

“I HATE HER.”

“You’re jealous.”

“She made a hover-bomb out of printer ink and stale Red Vines. WHO DOES THAT.”

“She’s better than you, darling. Accept it.”

The Pentagon called.

Then SHIELD.

Then the President.

They all wanted meetings. Wanted the Stark Intern. Wanted the girl who built an anti-phasing grenade in her sleep and then used it to banish an interdimensional wraith that had haunted the UN for seventy years. She’d done it in kitten heels. While on speakerphone with Columbia discussing her thesis on behavioral disassociation and spectral trauma.

“Ms. Fenton,” said General Ross one day, sitting across from her in a secure Stark lab, “how old are you again?”

“Nineteen.”

He blinked. “And you… developed this ectoplasmic nullifier?”

“Yes.”

“From scratch?”

“I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Tony watched from the corner, snickering into a bag of popcorn.

“Careful, Ross,” he said. “She’s been known to vaporize military-grade egos.”

Jazz didn’t smile, but her eyes sparkled just a little.

The conspiracy peaked when a tabloid published an article titled “Pepper Potts’ Secret Daughter: Genius Intern or Bio-Engineered Successor?”

There were pie charts. Photos. A leaked voicemail from Tony yelling “SHE ISN’T MINE, YOU IMBECILES” that only made things worse.

One Tumblr post had over 800k notes and a list of reasons why Jazz was definitely a Potts-Stark hybrid, including, “built a laser harp,” “once told Elon Musk to ‘shut up before I make a better Tesla with a coffee maker and two forks,’” and “terrifying corporate aura.”

Jazz printed the post. Framed it. Hung it in her dorm.

Pepper just looked fond.

“I think you’ve officially surpassed me in public fear,” she said one afternoon as Jazz filed patents under twenty different shell companies.

Jazz shrugged. “You set the bar very high.”

“I’m proud of you.”

Tony sobbed in the background. “This is my nightmare.”

“Jazz,” said Pepper sweetly, “could you file a cease-and-desist against MIT for trying to recruit you illegally?”

“Already did. Also, I bought MIT using the company card.”

Tony screamed.

And through it all—ghost attacks, PR disasters, tech blackouts, alien entities, and one incident where Jazz weaponized her psych minor to dismantle a HYDRA agent’s entire worldview in a hallway—she remained completely, terrifyingly composed.

Because this was Jazz Fenton. The girl who survived Amity Park, ghost portals, mad science parents, and her half-dead little brother who punched death in the face on Tuesdays.

The Marvel universe had no idea what it had just unleashed.

But Pepper did.

She just smiled and handed Jazz her new badge: Chief Innovation Officer, Spectral Division.

“I think you’re ready for phase two.”

Jazz sipped her coffee. “Let’s haunt the world.”

[problemnyatic]

Yeah yeah linux having problems is a big joke but honestly have you considered that linux wouldn't run like shit if it didn't have to reverse engineer byzantine proprietary drivers and hardware architecture and deliberately hostile BIOS firmware and one thousand other things that exist solely to force everything that isn't a corporate OS to suffer miserably on every computer ever

[paper-mario-wiki]

(in reference to your tags) You don't understand, porn modding communities holds up the rest of the modding community. Those mfers will direct and reverse engineer every bit of code, will painstakingly model lovingly rendered nude bodies that are seamless with the base game models, and the rest of us rely on them to do what we do.

Me and every other 3d cosmetic modder I know have folders of loverslab models just because they're the highest quality nude models that we can use as bases for new outfits or when porting characters.

when da vinci drew the vitruvian man he had the same idea to capture the beauty in human form, and the world celebrated him for centuries for it.

and yet when cumzoner2053 spends 200 hours studying the particulars of Bethesda's file structure and proprietary syntax in order to create Optimized Fix for Uncut Deathclaw Scaly Cock 4k Texture Clipping theyre seen as a degenerate.

[dostoyevsky-official]

I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance, which the staff appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible — “damage” in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government. Phrases like “freaking out” are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changes are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., a not-live environment) but have already been pushed into production. This is code that appears to be mainly the work of Elez, who was first introduced to the system probably roughly a week ago and certainly not before the second Trump inauguration. The most recent information I have is that no payments have as yet been blocked and that the incumbent engineering team was able to convince Elez to push the code live to impact only a subset of the universe of payments the system controls. I have also heard no specific information about this access being used to drill down into the private financial or proprietary information of payment recipients, though it appears that the incumbent staff has only limited visibility into what Elez is doing with the access. They have, however, looked extensively into the categories and identity of payees to see how certain payments can be blocked. Adding further anxiety about the stability of the system there is, I’m told, a long-scheduled migration scheduled to take place this weekend which could interact in unpredictable ways with the code changes already described.

we are all going to starve