The glory days of Epic Games are long gone and Tim Sweeney is a god damn moron.
Of course epic doesn’t understand empowering consumers with information. They don’t care about consumers. If they did, they’d maybe try adding some long requested features to their storefront.
His expectations are just Unreal.
Tum Sweeney: “Please stop labeling all these turds, because everything will be made with shit at some point”
This is like Jared Leto giving Daniel Day-Lewis acting advice 😂
Go back in your hole, Tim.
Epic Games had glory days?
Epic Megagames certainly did.
Jill of.the Jungle was fun
Unreal Tournament 2004 was a spectacular arena shooter back in the day before Battle Royale and MOBAs completely took over. Aged like fine wine too.
Yeah, I’m old.
Some people don’t like to hear it, but Fortnite is basically the new Unreal Tournament… in the same way it’s the new Rockband. For the latter, it’s easy: Epic acquired Rockband and Guitar Hero creator Harmonix, and Fortnite Festival is just the latest version of that code, only you can’t use instrument controllers with it, only gamepads (or, I suppose, keyboards or touch screens). So what Fortnite really is, it’s a free-to-play showcase of the Unreal Engine. It’s meant to show off what it can do and anyone can pick it up and play for free. Of course, it doesn’t have all the features of Unreal Tournament. It’s pretty much just battle royale with base building. But it’s the newest version of the same engine and it’s a shooter. Not the same thing… but your skills with older UT definitely translate. My nephew got me to play it. I’d never played it before, and he had spent money on the skins and the extra stuff, so he would go around making big purple explosions and he’d attract attention. Me, I was blown away by the detail, but I found the movement just as fluid as I remembered. Once I got the hang of weapons and their grades, I was scouting out the best pistols and SMGs I could find, and shadowing his character, and when he got into fights, I’d circle around, flank his enemies, and we’d win every fight. We won our first match and I don’t think we’ve lost a match. If we did, we finished in the top 5-10%. We have an unconventional playstyle, and it’s really all me. He plays like most Fortnite players, and they engage him as such. I play like a UT player… or, more accurately, I play it like a Deus Ex player (which was based on the same UE1 that UT99 was). I pick my shots and I shoot to kill. My nephew doesn’t think I’m playing the game right, but he’s having fun and he likes winning.
That said, I don’t love the game. I keep it on my Xbox, but I only play with him (or, I suppose, I’d be open to playing with anyone who asked). Even solo (I did that once on my iPhone when Fortnite came back to iOS this year or last) I still do alright for myself. Rarely take the top spot though. I need a decoy. But if there are 100 players, there’s no shame in being in the last 5 of them.
only you can’t use instrument controllers with it
Not 100% on drum compatibility as I have no interest in Festival, but it not only supports guitar controllers, but PDP even made new models for it.
RIP Rock Band, fuck Epic.
Oh, so you have to buy new ones? Yeah, no. I have Xbox 360 and Xbox One (RB3 and RB4 era) instruments and neither generation work. I’m not buying a new guitar for Fortnite. That’s crazy.
I heard there’s a new guitar controller out (Gibson?), some like 20th anniversary thing? And I’m wondering who this is for. These games are dead.
ut99 > 2k4! But it is a close call, admittedly.
But also, epic released some absolute bangers in the 90’s, though admittedly as a publisher. eg. Castle of the Winds, One Must Fall 2097.
Lesser known, but I cannot recommend enough going back and exploring the worlds of ZZT (and by extension, MegaZeux) as an early, amateur game engine. The projects are raw but endearing and an absolutely wonderful time capsule that still has a niche but dedicated following.
Some day when I have the time, I’d like to make an extended engine similar to this. Something with a simple scripting language, extreme flexibility in character and color sets. Ability to run and host your own game worlds over SSH or something similar. Just like a real spit in the face for triple A and going the complete opposite direction of minimal but super accessible.
FuckyeahZZT!!!
So good.
somehow missed zzt entirely, never played it, seen some random screenshots back in the day and thought it was some kind of weird nethack -clone with occasional ascii graphics. But also the only few screenshots I recall looked like nethack, with ascii smiley -character instead lf @ as user avatar.
So… it’s some kind of game engine which you can script to make any kind of game, kinda?
That’s it exactly.
It’s unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it’s designed around very limited ideas, but that said it’s still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.
MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.
You can actually play right in browser, try Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182
It’s the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven’t beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.
Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it’s about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can’t process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so …
that does sound quite cool. I’ll have to check this out, feels like something I would have really enjoyed as a kid.
Thanks!
I remember one must fall 2097!
First game I ever bought.
Mailed a freaking cheque internationally, and got a box of 3.5" floppy disks back about 6 weeks later.
Wild times.
I only ever had the Shareware version with a few fighters, but played it so much.
I’m gonna get the freeware version just for the nostalgia. I used to beat the piss out of my little brother in this game.
only played the shareware, until I found out that the full game was eventually released as freeware.
Then years after I went to game store and bought One Must Fall: Battlegrounds on release day… mistakes were made.
Godlike
That was fun!
Unreal 1 was a milestone, and Unreal Engine always has been very popular, now more than ever.
Gears of War was huge.
Unreal Tournament was pretty big for several iterations.
Unreal engine is STILL used by half the video game industry.
Valve revolutionized Linux gaming; Tim categorically rejects it.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams; Tim welcomed them with open arms.
Valve enforces honesty regarding AI slop; Tim wants to literally deceive people.
All that on top of what they did with third-party exclusives.He’s like that annoying kid who didn’t get invited to a birthday party and vowed to always do the opposite of what the popular kid does. Petulant fucking overgrown child.
Valve banned shitcoins and blockchain scams
would’ve been nice if they banned gambling, too, but that’s part of their business model unfortunately.
At least the shit is all cosmetic not like EA sports games with their UT packs I guess. Low bar.
It might be cosmetic, but it can be sold, which fuels the addiction mechanic. EA is bad, too, but this whataboutism.
I hear people say this sometimes, but I don’t know what they mean. Is there part of Valve’s system that has a gambling mechanic I’ve just never engaged with?
Or is it one of their games that has gambling?
Because I’ve been using it for years as basically my sole gaming interface and haven’t seen any gambling.
The short version is that an enormous, multibillion dollar industry has been built around Valve’s item marketplace, and in particular around CS:GO skins. If that sounds completely insane and stupid, I’m with you, but it exists. Valve takes their typical cut off of all of these trades, and thus derives massive profits from it.
Here’s the long version: https://peertube.gravitywell.xyz/videos/watch/a8e6d20c-3003-4b14-b9c4-cb6a25b238e7?isPeertubeContent=1
Mainly Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike GO/2, cuz both of them have cosmetics with rarities obtained via what effectively amounts to lootboxes. In one sense they also have an out-of-game economy around these things where these items are traded for actual money
All their big multiplayer games have lootboxes and stuff like that.
Loot boxes in Counter-Strike
Tim’s strategy seems to be “Whatever Valve drops, we take because we feel Valve is missing out on something BIG! It’ll make US look great!”
And while the sad truth of the matter could very well be a maybe, depending on how the pure-epic userbase are over there towards it, it still pales to everything Steam has been built to be.
He doesn’t sound very epic to me.
Anyway, here’s a userscript/browser addon to make Steam’s AI warnings into a popup: https://github.com/seeeeew/aiwarningforsteam
definitely keep doing it then. Sweeney is consistently on the wrong side.
Bingo! Valve is one hell of a monopoly, but they don’t totally fuck their customers. Sweeney has to answer to his shareholders. Those are the real customers; not you and me.
Sweeney has to answer to his shareholders.
which is like 40% tencent.
And if it’s as he says, and eventually all games get labeled that way, what’s his problem with that? Man just doesn’t want to compete.
Beyond just Tim Sweeney sounding dumb, there’s something truly evil and malicious about this framing.
His response was to a tweet that said: Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop the “Made with AI” label. It doesn’t matter anymore. (Emphasis mine)
All well and good for that guy maybe, but why do they need to drop it and why does Tim Sweeney agree? Why is less information for the people that want to have it a necessity. And WHY does he feel compelled to comment on the behavior of his competitors in this way.
Fucking ghouls, the whole lot of them. I hope their AI creations destroy them and they suffer even a single moment of hubris.
People that are wrong this often and have the amount of power a CEO can exert over their company never ever realize they are wrong.
Because of this, they never experienced hubris or any kind of personal growth for that matter as long as it’s coming from this dumbfuck endstage capitalistic nightmare pipeline.
Some of us want quality over mass produced crap stolen from others.
I don’t know how long it’s been since I even bothered claiming the free game of the week. Like a year.
My Steam backlog is 600+ games deep so I don’t have to swim in that Epic shit. Sweeney can suck a nut.
And i bet you don’t even touch the free game you claimed because Epic launcher take forever to launch.
I’ve never even installed the Epic Lawnchair. I just use Heroic, which works very well.
Nobody wants to give their computer AIDS for a free game.
How do I filter “tim sweeney”?
Nothing epic about the guy or his company.
Epic fail.
Tbf AI tag should be about AI-generated assets. Cause there is no problem in keeping code quality while using AI, and that’s what the whole dev industry do now.
Cause there is no problem in keeping code quality while using AI,
Hahahahahahahaha
there is no problem in keeping code quality while using AI
This opinion is contradicted by basically everyone who has attempted to use models to generate useful code which must interface with existing codebases. There are always quality issues, it must always be reviewed for functional errors, it rarely interoperates with existing code correctly, and it might just delete your production database no matter how careful you try to be.
I feel like I get where he’s coming from, but I can see the revulsion.
I picture someone asking their AI to write a rules engine for a gamemode and getting masses of duplicative, horrific code; but in my own work, my company has encouraged an assistive tool, and once it has an idea of what I’m trying to do, it will offer autocomplete options that are pretty spot on.
Still, I very much agree it’s hard to sort the difference and in untrained hands can definitely lead to unmaintainable code slop. Everything needs to get reviewed by knowledgeable human eyes before running.
So don’t accept code that is shit. Have decent PR process. Accountability is still on human.
The people lazy enough to have ai generate their code aren’t going to do that. You’re acting like games didn’t already have bugs before we invented a mostly wrong shortcut that kinda looks just good enough to fake being useful.
keeping code quality is not the same as code generation
The killer app is language processing and if a localization contractor isn’t using an LLM to quickly check for style errors and inconsistencies, they’re just making it hard for them for no good reason.
