No Time To Play
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Weekly Links #140

Hello, everyone! As of this weekend, a demo level of Laser Sky can be played right here on No Time To Play, or else over on Itch.io. It's an early release, so no music or menu system yet, but you can see what the gameplay is like. Please leave feedback!

This week we also have not one, but two newspieces from Techdirt: one about a game developer connecting with pirates to turn them into paying customers, the other about DRM hurting paying customers. Again. And never mind that the game is already cracked and widely available for free (just search for it). This problem could have easily been noticed on time if developers had bothered to test on anything but their own high-end workstations.

Folks, once again. PCs from 7-8 years ago, with just 2 gigabytes of RAM and a single, slow CPU core are still very common. Optimize your software, or see your sales plummet. It's a simple choice.

In more topical news, Polygon explains why the source code of classic games matters. I'll add that it's not just for the historical insights. But a lot of people who play games naturally want to make their own, and being able to study the classics is essential in any art. The difference is that in literature, or music, everything is out in the open by definition. Software, however, has source code. And without access to it, we all have to reinvent the wheel repeatedly. No wonder it never quite seems to end up round.

On a related note, here's a write-up about voxels that echoes my old one, while being much longer and less technical. It's worth a look, for the sake of comparison if nothing else. And as I'm nearing the end here, have this interview with the creators of Event[0], the new indie game everyone's crazy about.

Last but not least, a reminder that the Interactive Fiction Competition 2016 just opened yesterday. So go play some games, and enjoy.