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[n9103]

My personal contention was not to further contribute to the point pool that is Epic's user base, encouraging their shitty practices, not just avoiding YAGL syndrome. 

[Robsoie]

this week freebie on the epic store is "Rise of Industry"

It's a tycoon game, but from the reviews it is said to be a mix between OpenTTD and Industry Giant and the Anno series, some mention it's more shallow than its inspirations and has some obtuse UI but other praise the focus on offer/demand economics. But after playing the tutorial it seems to have a lot going for it, though i prefer OpenTTD a lot more.
edit : seems there have been some problems for the devs : https://steamcommunity.com/app/671440/discussions/0/5561388294346272901/

next week it should be "Call of the Sea" , a game in the same genre as Myst (explore and solve puzzle) but in real time (like Obduction)

[Robsoie]

On both gog and steam there's a freebie to claim "Figment"
Looks like some adventure/action/platformer of old but with 3D visuals that look as if they were hand drawn.
note : this game has been given away in the past by indiegala and epic too in case things look familiar.

[Robsoie]

This week freebie on the epic store is " Call of the Sea "
That's a Myst-like in real time (exploration + puzzles to solve) on some strange island with some lovecraft ingredient.

Next week it should be " Warhammer 40K Gladius : Relic of War "

[delphonso]

RetroArch just went up on Steam, apparently. It's a scaffold for emulation - easy to integrate Dolphin or other emulators through it.

[hector13]

I’ve used that standalone for some things, it’s pretty good and has support for controllers too.

[n9103]

RetroArch just went up on Steam, apparently. It's a scaffold for emulation - easy to integrate Dolphin or other emulators through it.

That... doesn't seem like a solid idea. Emulation has always been a grey area/quasi-legal at best, from what I've read on it. Did something change?
Sure reverse engineering the console *can* be legal, but I wouldn't put such a large target on my back for an audit, as to do a commercial release, or more to the point, to be the distributor of such a commercial release.

Pardon the run on sentence, but IRL sick and tired.

[delphonso]

It's just the scaffold. It includes legally clear emulation and has the interface for you to hook up more questionable ones yourself. Sort of like how you can use Steam to run non-steam games, including pirated ones. Except in this case, you're running emulators through it (which you could also do directly through Steam, if the emulator is installed on your device).

[BigD145]

Emulation is entirely legal and has always been. Don't suffer from fear of corporate lawyers who do not have a legal leg to stand on.

[n9103]

The DLC list is the cores (at least most of them), and I see a few that have been questionable already.

[delphonso]

Hmm. They're probably safe on the emulation front, if they're not offering any ROMs or ISOs of games. Maybe all the more reason to get in now before they get shut down.

I expect they're fine - they've been operating for quite some time.

[Robsoie]

When i tried it a few years ago as i was curious about this kind of "emulate everything with the same program by adding cores that you need" but i really didn't liked its interface at all, and returned quickly to specialised standalone emulators that i was used to and had always served me well with their simpler and more efficient-to me UI

Apparently there was also a lot of controversy about Libretro/Retroarch at some point, mostly about one of its main devs harrassing emulator authors.
edit : found where i had read about that 
https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/s8poim/pcsx2_qt_still_needs_to_be_split_up_into_parts/htkalk1/

TwinAphex/SquarePusher/Autechre/whatever he calls himself this week is one of the most toxic people ever. He always harasses people, then tries to play the victim. He also treats RetroArch donations as his personal piggy bank.

RetroArch is parasitic. It wouldn't exist without the actual emulators. However, the RetroArch cores often provide a worse experience, giving an unfairly bad impression. They accept a lot of money for poorly repackaging other people's work.

The architecture is terrible. It doesn't actually provide useful abstractions for things you need. A great example is it's input system. Consider how for MAME in RetroArch, you have to map your actual input devices onto "RetroPads" then map that onto system inputs in MAME. It's confusing and limiting. It also doesn't provide things like autofire or input macros in the frontend layer where it belongs, forcing every core to implement it individually.

Consider that the RetroArch people drove Inolen to take ReDream closed source, drove Stenzek to give up on DuckStation, and drove skmp away from emulation. They're actively destroying the community.

RetroArch is not a project you should support.

[Frumple]

Hmm. They're probably safe on the emulation front, if they're not offering any ROMs or ISOs of games. Maybe all the more reason to get in now before they get shut down.

Specific BIOS can be a copyright issue, too, but if the emulator doesn't lean on those to function (and most don't) they're 100% fine, yeah. It's a little more complicated on the legal front than "avoid illegitimately acquired ROMs/ISOs to be in the clear", but not by much.

[delphonso]

Robsoie, thanks for bringing that to my attention!

Fuck 'em, I guess.

[dragdeler]

How "reassuring" it's not an "I'm too dumb for open source" problem... Retroarch does actually kinda suck. I have never been able to add or edit something in a meaningful way: the cores either work out of the box or don't.  Even when it works setting it up can be a pain, and then after it made you finetune a bunch of stuff, it will still not run out of the box in many cases... Controller profiles swapped, analog/d-pad issues, can't swap cds without some relatively complex datamanipulations...