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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Correct, but said implementation will be orders of magnitude slower than implementing at a lower level…

    “order of magnitude” typically means 10x. A reasonable Lua implementation of rigidbody physics isn’t going to be 10+ times slower than an equivalent C++ version. C++ provides a lot more tools for optimization than Lua, so you’re unlikely to find a truly apples-to-apples comparison showing the difference between a Lua and C++ that isn’t a benchmark of the particular algorithms in the implementations.

    To be clear, I’m not saying Lua is faster or as fast as C++, just that you’re making it sound as if Lua is too slow for something like this. I know this isn’t a programming community, but we’re talking about programming languages, so I feel compelled to point stuff like this out.

    meaning you cannot handle lots of objects, you can only handle a few, and only with a few players if this is all networked… otherwise you get massive physics calculation innacuracy, terrible performance spikes, crashes, and if networked, server hangs/stalls, huge desync, etc.

    None of this is true.

    … than just actually having direct access to them… but that would be the case with any language …

    It is specifically a problem with embeddable languages like Lua because they’re limited by what is exposed to its VM and how. In the context of modding physics into Morrowind, it’s possible that not everything you’d need is cleanly exposed through Lua (which afaik is implemented with a third party plugin and not natively supported).

    Not saying its impossible, just saying it… I’ve never seen anyone pull off an efficient and accurate 3D physics engine in Lua, untill now with this LuaJIT implementation.

    At the risk of sounding like a dick, I think you’re bullshitting. I doubt you’ve ever seen any physics engine implemented in Lua before, much less benchmarked them or evaluated them for their “efficient” and “accurate” qualities (which are meaningless terms). Lua physics engines certainly exist, but they’re mostly gimmicks interesting to developers to study/learn as there aren’t many real world use cases for something like that. There are few reasons to choose that over a C++ physics library, not because Lua is slow, but simply because C++ is faster, and the libraries are typically much more mature and feature-rich.


  • Imma be the guy and drop an ackshually

    • Nothing about Lua would make it difficult to implement a physics engine in it compared to other languages
    • The hardest part would be integrating with Morrowind’s systems. If the engine doesn’t expose e.g. collision geometry to scripts in an efficient way, then you’ll run into some real challenges
    • Even without LuaJIT, there’s no reason to expect performance so bad you can’t implement realtime rigid body physics. Interpreted Lua is fast, but even if it wasn’t, a 60 fps performance target for physics is not tough to achieve at all


  • I think the more important insight is how desperately he is trying to appeal to the young male demographic, and going so far as to pay a pro gamer to boost his account in a video game so he can pretend to be one of them.

    Why? Probably a lot of potential reasons, but anyone with even a little bit of critical thinking skills should immediately become suspicious when they see that. Because whatever the actual reason, it probably isn’t good.




  • This is one of those radical ideas that people are terrified of, because it would kill the business models of a lot of massive corporations. It’s easy to spin that as the death of the game industry, rather than what it is: the death of a business practice.

    Like the laws against underage smoking probably wiped out billions in shareholder value, but that was objectively a good thing. Banning (or heavily regulating) in-game purchases would also be a good thing, no matter how much it affects existing players. If it leads to the death of name brands like EA, Ubisoft, etc. then who cares? The market will readjust and new players who were able to adapt to the changed environment will take their place.



  • Also the Android TV app is AWESOME!

    What do you run Android TV on? Raspberry Pi? My cheapo solution has been to use an old Android phone that supports DP alt mode (USB-C to HDMI adapter) combined with a USB hub + generic air mouse/remote + customized launcher.

    It actually works surprisingly well. I installed FCast on it, so it even works like a Chromecast. If I’m watching a video on my phone using Grayjay, I can just cast it to the phone and it will start playing automatically. The only thing stopping it from being perfect is that it can’t turn the TV on automatically. As a plus, since the phone has a battery, it’s always powered on so I don’t have to wait for stuff to boot, and it uses relatively little power.

    … but overall it’s janky and finicky, and the OEM bloatware is probably spying on me, so I’ve been looking for alternatives that can match the good parts of this setup.

    I don’t like Raspberry Pis for this because they’re overpriced. I have a couple that I could use for this, but I’m hoping to find a cheaper solution, and one that I can recommend to friends/family when they ask. (the Android phone I’m using cost me a total of $15 on ebay)



  • EA should split itself up or sell off some franchises. The current situation makes nobody happy: investors don’t like the profitability of single player games, players don’t like the live serviceification of single player games, and I’m sure devs don’t like that they can’t work on projects that likely inspired them to become game devs in the first place.

    The Sims franchise could support a medium sized studio on its own.

    I played the Sims 1&2 as a kid, and love the fuck out of them. As an adult with disposable income, I would have gladly dropped even $100 on a proper modernized rerelease of these games I love. Instead, I saved my money and downloaded them for free. Because why the hell wouldn’t I? The pirate versions are literally better. EA is squandering the potential of this and many other IPs








  • This is not a good way to look at it. Competition is good regardless. It doesn’t matter how good Valve is today, if a viable competitor comes out, Valve will be forced to get better in order to compete.

    All we need is some way to guarantee valve doesn’t become public.

    This is wrong. Valve can enshittify without going public. If you think that public corporations are the only ones that are greedy/evil/anti-consumer, then you’ve never heard of the “private equity” industry. Look up the recent fight between the FTC and U.S. Anesthesia Partners in Texas for a clear example.

    In capitalism, free market forces are what keep tug of war between produces and consumers fair, and competition is the fuel that keeps those free market forces moving. The fact that the Valve of today is both good and a monopoly is just a temporary rounding error/outlier. Over time, Valve will go to shit and consumers will suffer simply because Valve has almost no competition. This isn’t a question, it’s a fact of the mechanism of the economic system they exist in. It’s like gravity; just because you haven’t hit the floor yet doesn’t mean jumping off that building was a good idea.

    Epic games, whether you hate them or not, is fighting the good fight. They are doing shitty things (exclusivity, etc), so maybe they aren’t the chosen one who will take challenge Valve, but they are on the right side of that fight. Hoping that Valve will stay great forever is foolish.

    …but I will add that I don’t think Epic alone should be trying to take down Valve. Valve is way too entrenched in this market to be taken down with any realistic competition (probably why Epic is resorting to exclusivity deals). The FTC needs to step in and regulate the market. Idk what that would look like, but it’s possible to do it in a way that makes everyone happy. For example (off the top of my head, so probably flawed but whatever) the FTC could enforce interoperability between digital marketplaces so that consumers don’t need to install 30 different launchers to access their purchased libraries. That relatively small change could lower the bar to entry for competitors by a lot, and not be a burden to consumers at the same time. EDIT: and it would not be anything drastic like forcing a break up of Valve.